Traveling

My wife, Vickie, and I leave tomorrow for a week of travel. With four children and a collie, leaving home can be more work than staying home! Fortunately, grandparents are on the way into town, the dry cleaning has been picked up, the grass mowed, work assignments turfed out, and a whole host of details have arranged.

What remains is whether Vickie and I can disengage enough from our parental and ministerial and professional roles so we can engage each other--anew and afresh. Sometimes it is easier to worry about stopping the mail than it is starting the conversation. And cutting grass can be simpler than cutting through the mist and haze that can settle in on a relationship.

Vickie and I have learned that it can take a day or two before we reconnect in the deep and fulfilling way that we long for. We have come to be patient with each other--her with me, especially! We have also learned that we do best when we stay in touch with each other, even in small ways, in everyday life.


A phone call . . . . It was Vickie with another errand before we leave. "Could you run by the bank and make a deposit?" Well, like I said, banking and lawns and dogs aside, I am looking forward to being a road trip with her!

Fuel and Flame

Spending some time reading William Law in his classic devotional work, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, I found yet another gem.


Devotion is nothing else but right apprehensions and right affections toward God. All practices, therefore, that heighten and improve our true apprehensions of God, all ways of life that tend to nourish, raise, and fix our affections upon him are to be reckoned so many helps and means to fill us with devotion.

As prayer is the proper fuel of this holy flame, so we must use all our care and contrivance to give prayer its full power—as by alms, self-denial, frequent retirements, holy readings, composing forms for ourselves or using the best we can get, adding length of time, and observing hours of prayer; changing, improving, and suiting our devotions to the condition of our lives and the state of our hearts. –William Law


Call it whatever you want to call it but God is really interested in one thing from me. . . . Me. Right apprehensions (understandings) and right affections (feelings) are the channels by which I make my way into the heart of God. My prayer and devotional life has its usual ebb and flow; yet of particular concern is that when I sense a weakness or despair, that is when I often let up. When I most ought to pray is all too often the time that I don’t. And being busy becomes an excuse—especially when I can make the claim that I writing a sermon or offering pastoral care to someone.

O Lord, grant me discernment to see the flame of my devotion to you and the heart to bring the right fuel to feed it. For you desire me and I long to be complete in you.

Courage

I wrote about Anna a few weeks ago. Today my mind is on Janice. I went to see her today but she was not in her hospital bed. The nurses said that she was out having more tests done. Janice deals with diabetes and lives with the reality of renal failure. The presenting problem this week is infection in a toe.

My last visit with her she spoke of the despair that exists in the clinic where she goes three times a week for dialysis. Spending four or five hours in a hospital three times a week prolonging the inevitable can be a dark place indeed. Stories about some of her roommates that have taken their own life are chilling. Like Anna, Janice is a hero to me. To live and walk down a dark path with hope is what I call courage.

Sunday Night at East 91st St Christian Church

The National Dialogue team representing the three major streams of the Stone-Campbell tradition were in Indianapolis last night. Newell Williams, Doug Foster, and Paul Blowers did a great job of introducing Barton Stone to about 300+ persons representing Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and Disciples of Christ.

The irony is thick here. What do you do when you are a part of church tradition that began as an attempt to get away from church tradition? How do you appropriate the heritage of a movement that sought to be a unity movement from the contemporary contexts of exclusivism? Or better yet, how do we take Scripture seriously in a tradition that has come, in some places, to think that Scripture has already been fully and completely understood?

Well the good news is that the conversation last night would lead one to see that there are many who think that the divisions of the past were big mistakes. Perhaps it is a good time, with the 200 year anniversary of the Last Will and Testament upon us (June 28, 1804) to practice some of the core values of the Stone-Campbell heritage--Christ centeredness, attention to Scripture, and an irenic pursuit of unity.

Back Home Again

Back off the road from last week, I am still trying to sort through snail mail and email. Playing golf and reading Patrick O'Brian (Master and Commander series--I am now in number 17 of I believe 18 novels!) doesn't exactly lend itself to profound thoughts so the most I can say about being away is that it is really good to slow down and disconnect from the normal stuff. I did enjoy a really long walk last Thursday through the hills and trees of eastern Tennessee. What a great way to spend time with the Maker!

Cancer, macular degeneration, food poisoning, abuse, homelessness, new diagnosis of asthma, presidential politics the week has been full of craziness. Sometimes you wonder about the weirdness that exists in our world. If there is no redemptive work going on, then why bother?

On the Water

Spring must be here because Will and I were able to launch the Dumbledore (our sailboat) this afternoon. She was ready to get back in the water. In fact, she was so ready that I forgot to disconnect the bow shackle from the trailer and had to pull her out and start all over again.

We had such fun that we ran out to the local store picked up some food from the deli and spent the early evening tinkering around. I am looking forward to warmer weather and the joy of being on the water!

God and Public Policy

David Barash, in the Chronicle Review, had a recent essay published where he presents another look at the social contract--the age-old dilemma between the good of the many and the wants of the few. After looking insightfully at the depth of the dilemma as it is expressed in the many and varied dimensions of contemporary culture, Barash notes that given the choice between doing something that would help the world or something that would further one's own interests, we inevitably do what is in our own self-interest.

Indeed. Barash has no category to talk about this phenomenon; as a psychologist, he can only describe it. What he describes as a universal experience--this relentless pursuit of self-interest--is what theologians call sin.

If Barash doesn't have a category for the phoenomenon, he does have an answer. For Barash, the answer is "the benevolent intervention of government, demanding at least a modicum of cooperation on behalf of society and the greater good." Such an answer is a sensible one. Certainly society must have government.

But what makes a government "benevolent?" How are we to assign value to the work of government? I fear that unless we open the conversation to include some redemptive work of God, then we are left with nothing but whatever the majority or whoever is in power thinks is "benevolent."

And since, if Barash is right in assuming that left to our devices that we will take the path of self-interest (I think he is right), then governemental benevolence, without divinely infused redemptive influence, will only be the path of self-interest to whoever is in power.

I think that I will pass on that.

Easter Musings

Easter brings sharp focus to the core of the Christian faith. The mystery and the wonder of the resurrection baffles the logistical and rational side of my brain. Perhaps that is why I have found the following quote by W. H. Auden a helpful reminder this Easter season:

"How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible."

If we are waiting on something possible to right the wrong in the world and set straight the mess-ups in my life and yours, then we are waiting on the something totally inadequate!

Praise be to God who stands outside that which is possible and impossible and yet chooses to meet us within the scope of ordinary human experience.!

Spring

Spring brings the grass and the weeds. Spring brings outdoor grilling and yardwork. Spring brings new life and yellow jackets.

On the whole, I really like spring! Oh well, I guess I'd better go put down my fertilizer.

Anna

Anna is facing stem cell transplant and so she is 100 miles away from her country home in the capitol city and eager to get beyond the present and into the future. Lying in a hospital bed is little comfort to a woman more accustomed to helping patients that being one.

Yet at 70 years of age she perseveres. As Anna said, "Living a long time does at least one thing for you. It gives you perspective."

So she takes one day at a time and holds on to her dream of taking a summer trip with her best friend another 70 year old widow. Making plans for a road trip!

Persevere through the present moment and keep dreaming about the future. I think that Anna has a pretty good perspective.

Prayer

45 year old guys shouldn't play basketball with 20 year old guys. Nevertheless, sometimes I do things I shouldn't do. One thing came clear though, with the completion last night of the little basketball league I've been playing in. 45 year old guys need to play the kind of basketball they can play--slow, deliberate, lots of passes, and make every shot count. You will die if you think that you can play fast break with the young Turks!

Musing over such things took on a new meaning a few minutes ago while rereading in Richard Foster's book on Prayer. He quotes Dom Chapman: "Pray as you can, not as you can't."

Unlike my basketball skills, I do think I can grow in prayer. However, like my basketball skills, it does me no good to lament what I can not do today. Pray as I can, not as I can't.

With prayer and basketball, maybe the thing is pray and to play. Don't worry about can't be said or done. It is in doing what I can do that change occurs.

Preaching Mark

How fun is it to have people say after spending 30 minutes preaching through Mark that they really enjoying getting inside what Mark was doing. Nothing fancy, just listening to the text. I am ready to preach again and Sunday is still 6 days away!

The Lion Stays!

Back from Nashville. . . . The kids wanted to share with me a film they saw some weeks ago--Secondhand Lions. So Vickie made chocolate chip cookies and poured the milk. William fired up the video and away we went to Texas and Africa and right into the heart of learning what it means to believe in something. What a wonderful movie!

Already I suspect that this movie will take its place with a few others at our house--including Princess Bride, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and of course LOTR (Lord of the Rings).

Sometimes you believe because it is the right thing to believe in!

More Basketball

Tuesday night March Madness struck the the Westlake Basketball League! After going winless for the whole season, my worndown and fatigued team found themselves seeded last and scheduled to play the number one team. How it happened I know not. However, we played our old-fashioned 2-3 defense and half-court offense and beat them. It kind of makes a winless season go down a little easier!

Other basketball news, Leslie (my oldest daughter) and I were on the campus of the University of Evansville earlier today. We stood for a moment near the memorial for the UE basketball team that perished in 1977 in a plane crash.

With the final four coming up . . . I am reminded that 2 Oklahoma State players and several staff persons were killed in a crash in 2001 while returning from a game in Colorado.

I am writing this now in Nashville but not before we stopped in at Nashville's replica of the Parthenon. Having seen the original in Athens I found the copy to be quite exciting to see. Perhaps I can say some things about Athena and ancient Greece sometime but since I am on the topic of basketball the thought that is on my mind at the moment is that in ancient Greece they built large buildings to their gods and in our culture we build big buildings to our gods as well. See you at the next game!