All good; all God

Posted on April 26, 2013 by jwfisch
Tennessee sunset

Tennessee sunset

Bob had a tough day yesterday, but I love the way it ended. According to his report, he chose to “grab some grace and push through.” It took him a couple of hours but “peace came eventually.”

And then he writes, “My incredible wife told me to do what I had to do, so I went into the back yard with my dog, lit a cigar, and lay in the hammock staring at the late afternoon Tennessee sky. Grady, our JackChi mix jumped up on my chest, lied down and just stared at me as if to say, ‘Relax Bob; it’s all good.’ You know what, it is all good, because when I get down to it, it’s all God. I’m His and He is mine.”

This sounds almost too simple to be true, but it is. Paul put it this way in Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

God causes… This seems to indicate God is working in and through all the stuff in my life — the good and the seemingly bad. This is the truth. If it sounds like God is manipulating things behind the scenes that’s because He is.

All things... Not just a few things. Not just those things we pray about or those things that are spiritual in nature. Not just those things we do right. It’s impossible to screw this up because it says “all things.”

To work together for good... Not sure what this is exactly except that is appears to be an intertwining of events. God is somehow bringing about the eventual good out of everything in our lives. C.S. Lewis says that when we get to the end of our lives, we will look back through everything that happened, and, try as we may to find something bad, we just won’t find it. Like Grady says, “It’s all good.”

To those who love God… I suppose you could call this the one condition, but how hard it is to love God? How hard is it to love someone who first loved you enough to die for you that you might be able to be forgiven and live with Him forever?

To those who are called according to His purpose… It involves us, but it’s really God’s thing. The good is His good; the purposes are His purposes. This is all His doing whether we’re in on it or not. It’s all good, because it’s all God.

This is why, by faith, you can keep on going, because you know that this is going on. This is not just about how things end; this is how you handle being in the middle, because this is how things end.

So at the end of the day, lean back and listen to the dog. The dog has it right. “Relax, it’s all good.”

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Of bubbles and mockingbirds

Posted on April 25, 2013 by jwfisch

01a213bc-0bec-3cfd-9ead-16c1560f9a41Carole commented on my Catch yesterday about the noisy events at a crowded Starbucks. She painted a picture of everybody’s personal space (mine included) as being a bubble around them, and how we either bounced off each other or in some cases, as in the case of the guy playing hymns on his flute, our bubbles merged. “Notice how bubbles that you did not bump and merge with (however briefly) were annoying, but when the flautist entered your sphere, it was soothing to you.”

As I took in Carole’s comments, I suddenly realized how I had devalued the people who were annoying to me. I certainly didn’t like the mothers with their babies, and for sure the smacking lips couple bugged me. Even the guy on the flute bothered me until I realized he was playing hymns. I made these people less than human because they were in my way, and yet they had just as much right to be there and do what they were doing as I did.

That was all up to me. I could have chosen to merge my bubble with those around me — I could have let them into my world and merged with them, even if it was just in my mind. For instance, love is beautiful thing. My son and his new bride of a year now are always kissing. But that’s my son, and not the couple next to me. Their free expression of love was something from which I could have benefited. As for motherhood and new life, I could have entered into that beauty as well instead of just being annoyed by their loud conversation. It all depends on how you take it in.

We have a mockingbird on our block that likes to camp out just outside our bedroom window and mock. He starts in at night, when the noise of the day has subsided, and goes on until morning, piercing the silence with his musical chatter. That’s a little annoying to me, too, if I’m having trouble getting to sleep. My wife, on the other hand, likes it. She finds it welcome company to go to sleep by.

Last night we were up late with an out of town guest and Marti noticed how it was uncharacteristically quiet when we climbed into bed. She even tried to call out to the mockingbird as if it had gone to sleep on the job. “Shhhh!” I warned, thinking she might be successful. Fortunately for me, she wasn’t, but I can’t help but notice the different ways we look at the mockingbird as illustrative of how it’s really up to us to benefit or not benefit from those around us. It all depends on how you see it.

Carole’s conclusion rings true here: “Nothing positive happens until we either allow someone into our sphere or we are invited to enter someone else’s. Maybe having one’s bubble burst isn’t such a bad thing after all.”

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For free

Posted on April 24, 2013 by jwfisch

thI’m in Starbucks. A man is playing “Fairest Lord Jesus” followed by “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” on a flute, the couple next to me is smooching and making loud smacking noises with their lips, the espresso machine is shooting out steaming milk and the Grateful Dead is swearing, over and over again in the background, that they will get by. Fine for them. I’m not sure I will. This place that has long been my office away from home is starting to give me a headache. Meanwhile, three mothers come in with their babies in buggies fit for a road trip — all three talking at once as if they were trying to be heard across the Grand Canyon. I’m not sure I can work here anymore.

This particular Starbucks is across the street from the San Juan Capistrano Mission and it can fill up in a minute with tourists and school kids on field trips. The store is conveniently located a block from where I drop Chandler off for school — a half hour’s drive from home, and the reason I like to stay here on the days I drive is to save the added hour back and forth since I will be needing to be back here by 2:30 in the afternoon to bring him home. It’s convenient, but lately I’ve been noticing that I get irritable by about 1:00 p.m. and I don’t know why. Now I know. It’s the constant level of noise I unconsciously put up with as it rises and falls all day long.

Yet it’s the noise of life, and no one is being asked to respect the fact that this is doubling as my office. They most certainly don’t have to adjust to me; I must adjust to them, and if I can no longer work here, then I should find another place more suitable to my needs.

Ever wish the world were like this — that you could go to another one down the street when this one gets too crowded or uncomfortable? Some people are trying to create another world inside this one that’s safer, more manageable, and not inflicted with things like the homeless, the poor and those we find objectionable.

Suddenly the man playing hymns on his flute seems quite appropriate. He’s actually quite good and the sound is somehow soothing. Finding a way to worship God in the middle of this world seems more the thing to do than come up with another, more worshipful world. We’re going to do the worshiping anyway; no one can do this for us.

Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature,
O Thou of God and man the Son,
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,
Thou, my soul’s glory, joy and crown.

I like this guy — playing his flute for free in a crowded Starbucks. Reminds me of a lyric by Joni Mitchell

I was standing on a noisy corner
Waiting for the walking green
Across the street he stood
And he played real good
On his clarinet, for free.

I think this is a good metaphor for how to be in the world — not trying to leave it, or change it, but gladly bringing a bit of beauty to it.

I recently heard about a guy who wanted to start a Christian coffeehouse to reach the non-Christians in his community until He thought more about it and realized the community already had a coffeehouse just down the street and perhaps he should just go there.

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Prepositional truth

Posted on April 23, 2013 by jwfisch

We don’t worship God by singing Him a song; we worship God by living His life through us. Yes, I said that right — living His life as opposed to living our life. You see, we can’t even live our life for Him. We’re not good enough to do that. We must have His life in us in order to please Him.

imagesA little red flag should go up every time we hear or say, “for Him.” “For Him” sounds like we are doing God a favor and He doesn’t need any favors. He needs a life. Paul calls us “living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1). Most sacrifices are dead – all burned up on an altar. We are still alive, but we are dead to ourselves (that’s the sacrifice part) and alive to Christ (that’s the living part). We are yielded to God so that Christ can live through us by the Holy Spirit.

“Through Him” works; “In Him” works; “for Him” doesn’t. Even “with Him” is a bit off, because it puts God next to us — like we’re walking alongside each other. That isn’t it. God walked alongside people when Jesus was here. That was God “with us.” But now that He is gone, it is God “in us” through the Holy Spirit that He left us. Walking alongside is what we do. We walk alongside someone with Christ in us. That’s the way He gets His point across.

“For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing” (2 Corinthians 2:15). The prepositions are very important here. What pleases God is Christ in us. It’s not us running around doing all these great things for God that pleases Him. Truth be known, He probably finds that a bit annoying. It’s Christ living in us through a life yielded to Him that pleases God.

Look at the prepositions again. The aroma is of Christ; the aroma is to God (it pleases Him) and all this happens among other people who sense something going on they can’t explain. I know it sounds a little complicated but Christ and God are carrying on this thing in us. They’ve always had a thing together from the beginning of time; they’re just carrying it on through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. That’s all those three parts of God working together and you and I are the proving ground for all this – that is if we are sacrificed to His will and not crawling off the altar all the time, trying to do our own.

It sounds complicated when you try to explain all the pieces, but all working together, it’s not. It’s all about yielding your life to God and allowing Christ to live in you. And here’s the thing: when you do all this, that is worship. Paul calls it your “true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1). That’s a lot more than singing a song for God.

ipcSpeaking of worship, last week I began a five-part series on “What is Worship?” in an adult education class at Irvine Presbyterian Church, 4445 Alton Parkway, Irvine, California. The class is in the Jack Davis Room (I keep wanting to say Jack Daniels Room — got to watch that) at 9 a.m. on Sundays. Those of you in southern California are invited to attend. We’re over a little after 10:00 so you might have time to get to your own church service, or you are certainly welcome to attend the morning service at IPC at 10:30 a.m.. The sessions are being recorded so if the rest of you would like to listen in, the audio can be found by clicking HERE. Hope to see some of you there next Sunday!

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Hole in the heart of God

Posted on April 22, 2013 by jwfisch

th-5Ever thought about what God gave up to have us? God made us in His image that He might have fellowship with us, and immediately lost us to our selfishness and sin. That means that God created a big hole in His heart for us and has been coming after us ever since.

Some people are uncomfortable with talking about God as needing anything, but there is simply no other way to think about this — that God created a deficiency in Himself for us to show us what love is like, and to what extent He would go to reclaim what is rightfully His. This doesn’t make God less than omniscient. Just because He knows how all this is going to go down doesn’t mean He doesn’t experience the pain associated with the process. Jesus knew He was going to die — knew that He was going to be forsaken by His Father — that doesn’t take anything away from His cry from the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” If He knew the answer to that question, then why was it necessary to ask it? Because knowing it and experiencing it are two different things.

God knows what is going to happen to us, but He experiences both the loss of losing us and the joy of welcoming us back home like the prodigal son’s father. Here is the father, day after day staring down the road longing for the return of his son, feeling the hole in his heart, and when the news comes that he is coming up that road, the father can’t wait any longer and runs to meet him. I didn’t make that story up; Jesus did, and He told it to help us understand the Father God. Every part of it is true about God including the longing. Somehow this all-knowing, all-powerful God experiences the pain of losing and the joy of finding. Is this not the theme of human history — God creates us; God loses us; God goes to the ends of the earth (and hell itself) to get us back?

So why am I making such a big deal of this? Because we have clung so tightly to our theology of an omniscient God that we have missed what He put His heart through for us, and embedded in this reality is the knowledge of how valuable you and I are to Him. If there is a hole in the heart of each one of us that only God can fill, why is it so hard to imagine that there is a hole in the heart of God that only we can fill, and I mean that to be each one of us, individually? There is a (your name here)-shaped hole in the heart of God — a need that only you can fill. This makes worship a two-way street. When we worship God we are filling a place in His heart that only we can fill. Did you ever think you were that important?

One final thought: God created Eve out of a rib he took from Adam. Why did He do that if it wasn’t to show that love means losing part of yourself and needing to get it back to be whole again? And if that was necessary for Adam, why would it not be just as necessary for God to need us to complete what He took from Himself in making us? Is that not what love is like?

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? (Matthew 6:26)

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‘Why not me?’

Posted on April 19, 2013 by jwfisch

th-3We end this week where we started it — with those whose lives have been severely altered by the bombings at the Boston marathon. It’s one of the hardest questions anyone who experiences something catastrophic has to face: “Why me?”

Why did I get cancer?
Why did I lose my child?
Why did that drunk driver have to run into my car?
Why did the fire take my house and spare my neighbor’s?
Why didn’t my marriage work out?
Why did I have to lose my job?
Why did I travel all the way to Boston so I could stand right next to this bomb and lose my leg?
Why me? Why did this have to happen to me?

One of our Catch members addressed this with the following: “Before coming down with cancer 6 years ago I may have been less receptive to understanding how good can triumph over pain. I went through a period of asking ‘Why me?’ as I am sure many in the Boston tragedy have also. It wasn’t until I could say ‘Why not me?’ that God could use me to touch the lives of others and walk alongside them.”

“Why not me?” changes the whole perspective. To be sure it’s not the first reaction. One would have cause to question someone’s humanity if it was, but at some point along the way, “Why me?” can and will turn into “Why not me?” if and when one gets God’s perspective.

“Why not me?” says there is a privilege to pain. One of those privileges pointed out by James in the Bible is character, as in: “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (James 1:2-3).

Our reader points out still another privilege in pain: the ability to identify with someone else’s pain and come alongside them. I can try and comfort someone who has lost a leg, but that can go only so far as I stand there with my two legs doing just fine. Someone else who has gone through the same thing and has gained victory over it, is someone who has the right to come alongside and bring comfort and hope.

Coming alongside is what brings one out of self-pity into being able to reach out to someone else. Coming alongside is what it’s all about. Coming alongside is the way God uses us in the world.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. – 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Why me? … Why not me?

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Then sings his soul

Posted on April 18, 2013 by jwfisch

th-1For many people, he is the voice of their salvation. If you came to Christ at a Billy Graham Crusade (more than 3.2 million have), you most likely returned night after night, and the voice, other than Billy’s, that became familiar to you was that velvety baritone voice of soloist George Beverly Shea, and there wasn’t a night that Bev Shea didn’t sing “How Great Thou Art” backed up by hundreds of voices in the Crusade Choir.

Bev Shea, the man with the woman’s nickname, died Tuesday. He was 104.

O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made…

It was his signature song, and when I watch the YouTube video of that song from a 1969 New York crusade, and the applause dies down after this song, I’m ready to hear Billy. This was usually the song right before he spoke. Either one of those voices and I’m a dead duck. I want to go forward. Start “Just As I Am” and I’ll start walking.

Yet as warm and inviting as these memories are, my wife reminds me that they are from an era gone by. Chandler, even Christopher and Anne, don’t have the same attraction. Not because they don’t get it, but because it’s not for their generation. I notice that nobody has taken Billy’s place as the premiere world evangelist. I don’t think that’s because God slipped up. I think it’s because He has a different plan now.

Is that sad? Not necessarily. Not if you and I take Billy’s place. Not if we believe that the real evangelical movement is led by Christians walking alongside others. That’s where the gospel gets concrete. It’s Christ through your life and mine, being spilled out as we walk along the way. There’s no signature song for this – there are millions of songs that can work — and the message is always tailored to the times because it is coming through a personal relationship.

Even with a Billy Graham Crusade, there was a good deal of walking alongside going on. Many of those who came forward were brought by someone else, and everyone who went forward talked to someone and were encouraged to find a church and get in relationship with other Christians.

So in a real way, you and I are picking up the mantle. We just might not get a YouTube video of ourselves.

In the meantime, George Beverly Shea has gotten the wish he’s been singing about for 60 years:

When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!

You’re home, Bev. Sing it!

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Appointment with Jesus

Posted on April 17, 2013 by jwfisch

thThis is a day to gather those you love around you and be thankful.

We can be thankful that the evil afflicted upon the city of Boston two days ago caused more injury than death, but that means there are hundreds of people lying in pain today – some looking to a future without an arm or a leg. All because they came — some from long distances – to celebrate someone’s accomplishment. I say let the celebration continue. It was worth it if good can triumph over this.

Have you ever been caught in a traffic jam on a road you didn’t need to be on? There’s nothing more frustrating. You made a wrong turn, but to get back to where you were you find yourself stuck in a crowd of people going somewhere you don’t even want to go.

I imagine there are people in hospitals in Boston who traveled a great distance to be standing right next to a bomb going off in a place they didn’t belong. Like they had an appointment with terror. Yet terror doesn’t have to win. It’s up to us what we do with our appointments. Good will always triumph over evil if we choose it.

Pain is not necessarily a bad thing. Pain can also be a doorway to something deeper. Some people will curse God in their pain; others will find Him. Finding Him is part of how good triumphs.

Know that Jesus has an ear out for your pain. I just read this morning in the Gospel of Luke (18:35-43) how a blind beggar called out for Jesus to have mercy on him as He passed by in a crowd. The people tried to hush the man but he only cried louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” That caused Jesus to stop and have the man brought to Him.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked.

“I want to see,” was his reply.

Something about that reply moves me. It’s simple, direct and impossible. Yet given that he was standing right in front of the power of God, why wouldn’t he ask it? So Jesus healed him and said it was because of his faith.

Think about it: that man was blind all his life so that Jesus might pass by and not miss him. He had an appointment, too — an appointment with Jesus. Was that worth it? The man has been dead and gone for two thousand years, yet his story lives on. Imagine how many people have been affected by this story, and how many are yet to hear about it. That is good triumphing over evil.

Pray that those lying in pain today have similar appointments. That’s turning an appointment with terror into an appointment with Jesus. May it be so.

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The last word

Posted on April 16, 2013 by jwfisch

th-2We all woke up this morning feeling violated. Senseless, incomprehensible, bloody images greeted us in our newspapers and on our smart phones and computers. To some it felt very close. To others, it may have seemed far away only because we didn’t want to let it in. It seemed far away to me until my wife reminded me that if we still lived in the Boston area, our daughter could very well have been running in that marathon. And though it was far away on the other side of the country, just this last weekend, our son represented the L.A.P.D. along with other participating police departments in a benefit relay race across Nevada and California. Suddenly it wasn’t so far away.

Running races are always championing the human spirit, often raising funds for worthy causes and just generally spreading good will and encouragement to all who participate from the first to the last. To besmirch an event of such neighborliness and collaboration is an evil of exceptional depth. It violates any sense of justice we might have.

I was also greeted this morning with a story Jesus told his disciples “to illustrate their need for constant prayer and to show them that they must never give up.” In the story, a widow kept after a judge “who was a godless man with great contempt for everyone” to appeal for justice against someone who had harmed her. The woman kept after this judge so much so that she wore him out until he granted her justice just to get rid of her. Then Jesus said, “Learn a lesson from this evil judge. Even he rendered a just decision in the end, so don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who plead with him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, He will grant justice to them quickly! But when I, the son of Man, return, how many will I find who have faith” (Luke 18:1-8 NLT)?

Cry out to the Lord for justice to be done in Boston, Massachusetts. Cry out to the Lord for justice to be done in your life, and know that a compassionate, understanding God will hear you and do something about it. Indeed, He has already done something about it in that He endured another senseless, incomprehensible, bloody day when His only son suffered and died on a cross, so that evil like what happened in Boston yesterday might never have the last word.

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Where is the Kingdom?

Posted on April 15, 2013 by jwfisch

th-1“When will the Kingdom of God come?”

Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God isn’t ushered in with visible signs. You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!” or “It’s over there!” For the Kingdom of God is among you.”
– Luke 17:20-21

We have become much too obvious about identifying what is “Christian” in the world. In fact, we have lost ground trying to gain ground. We have labeled and marketed a subculture and an agenda in the world. Christians have become much too visible. If you can say, “Here it is!” or “It’s over there!” then chances are you’ve got something other than the Kingdom of God. Not sure what it is but it isn’t that. Trying to identify and establish what is Christian in culture can easily work at cross-purposes with what God is already doing in the world.

The Kingdom of God is not something you can buy or sell or purchase a ticket to. You can’t market it or vote it in. You can’t put it in power because it is already in charge. You can’t call it out because God hasn’t called it out. There will come a time when every eye will see it, but this is not that time. To pray “Thy Kingdom come” as Jesus taught us to pray is not to bring it as if it weren’t here. He told us already that it is here. It means to pray that we might be agents of doing His will on earth “as it is in heaven.”

God has been announcing the arrival of His Kingdom ever since Christ showed up in the flesh. On numerous occasions He announced the Kingdom had come, or was at hand, or was, as He said here: “among you,” or even “in you.” And if there are “no visible signs,” then the Kingdom He’s talking about must be more subtle than the “Christian” stuff we have all around us. To be sure, having all this stuff is probably a detriment to believers who need to be training themselves to find and further the Kingdom in other ways than naming it or labeling it or trying to establish it within the confines of existing social structures.

The Kingdom of God is what you see in the world when you see through the eyes of the Spirit. It is all about tuning in to God’s wavelength and participating in what He is already doing in the world. It’s quiet, subtle, more subversive than anything we can create or put in power. It is more in the wold than it is marginalized alongside it. It is God at work right off your right or left elbow. It is a dimension. It is where Christ rules as King and not ushered in by any government on earth. If you think you’ve got it; you haven’t got it.

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