John Fischer The Catch

Well, as of 22 minutes ago, my appreciation for a certain Beatles song has just plummeted. I can no longer sing along with the Beatles “When I’m sixty-four” because… well…  as of 22 minutes ago, I am sixty-four.

I somehow never thought this would happen. Neither did the Beatles, and they already passed this milestone a few years ago. Whatever made them pick 64, I don’t know, but they should have known better. They should have known that when they hit 64, it wouldn’t feel like they thought 64 would be in their twenties. They would be a very young 64, still singing their own songs, still playing rock and roll. Age is never what it will be until we arrive at it.

Really. The guy in this song is a pathetic candidate for a nursing home – a grandparent who is wasting away, losing his hair, can’t even feed himself and needs precise language in order to understand anything. Come on now, I’m 64 and I feel none of these things, except for the losing hair part, but that’s no big deal. I’ve been doing that since I was 25.

There is one thing about being 64, however, that is different from the rest. It seems like my life has been compressed to where I feel closer to any part of it than I have ever been. My childhood is more accessible to me now than it was 30 years ago. It’s like my life has been squeezed together tightly from beginning to end so that just the significant moments stand out. All the more reason to make more of those moments – to live life significantly. Make every day a stand out day. God is over it all; he gives it all meaning.

We need a revision. When I’m eighty-four? That’s better. When I’m ninety-four? Now that’s old.

At some point along one’s process of spiritual growth, a wave of questions comes along. Some people worry about this, thinking that they are losing their faith. Suddenly it seems some of the answers you have been using appear shallow to you. Faith may start to look too simple for life, as life becomes more and more complex. As it turns out, your life may not be that much better than it was before you decided to follow Christ. For some, it may be worse. Those who try to “sell” Christianity based on the success/happiness/overall well being of the final product may look like shysters based on what you now know.

I think a lot of this disappointment is due to a common misunderstanding of what it is that we find when we find Christ. We don’t find a bunch of answers, or a system of beliefs that work, or a god that is going to guarantee us everything our culture has taught us to desire. We found a relationship with God, and finding this relationship is only the beginning.

What we have found is a lifetime of learning, growing and deepening in that relationship with God. Some of that involves pain. Some involves losing. It all involves a redirecting of our lives from one way of looking at the world to another.

What makes it worthwhile is not the end product, but the fact that, all along the way, the living God—the one who will be the center of our eternity, accompanies us.

If you read the Psalms of David, what you come away with is not the triumph of David’s exemplary life, but the heart relationship with God that holds it all together through victory and defeat, joy and sorrow, friends and friendlessness, depression and elation—the presence of God and the seeming absence of God. It’s not an altogether pretty picture. It’s not what TV preachers promise. It’s what God gives. Himself. And a major part of the finding is finding out that He indeed is enough. He is everything.

That’s what you find when you “find” Christ. It’s a little like finding what you weren’t seeking, but really wanted all along.

We’ll remember always…
Graduation day.

There’s a time a for joy, a time for tears, a time we’ll treasure through the years… And I bet many of you can access that time right now in your memories. If you can, what would the feelings be? I can think of a few.

1) It’s over. Whatever experience you had in high school or college, be it good or bad, it’s over now. You’ve written your last paper – taken your last test. There’s a strange mixture of relief and sadness – relief that it’s over, and sadness because you suddenly realize you may not see many of your friends again.

2) You will never pass this way again. As a younger person, you didn’t know this as nearly as much as you know this now, but you still had a vague sense of it. There’s an era over… a security gone… a cocoon left empty.

3) What’s next? There is an uncertain future. You’re not quite sure what to do with yourself. You’ve been working so hard on one thing and now suddenly you have finished it and your life now lacks a certain definition. Nothing’s ever going to be quite the same.

A life of faith needs to have graduation days. There are things we need to put behind us – addictions, habits, dysfunctions, sins. In fact we need more graduation days. We stick with these things way too long. We used to call people who never graduated professional students. Some of us are still student Christians when we should be teachers by now.

Come on you guys (and I’m speaking for myself here) there are too many things we’re refusing to graduate from. We need to have a little ceremony and say goodbye. We’ll have some of the same feelings of finality and uncertainty we had back then, but that’s all part of growing up.

How about you? If you had your graduation today, what would you be leaving behind? What would you be looking forward to?

So go ahead… have a little moment… sign a couple yearbooks, and get on with your life. We’ll remember always graduation day, but hopefully we’ll forget the rest as we move on to something bigger and better.

Tomorrow, our daughter, Anne, will graduate from the University of Southern California School of Medicine. The way we’ve been carrying on around here, you would think it was the coronation of the Queen.

Two days ago, we all received an email from Marti titled “Anne’s Graduation Plans and Assignments.” My wife, who is the consummate planner, put this together. It’s got every day mapped out through the weekend and a place where each of us can write in our assignments for that day. I’m carrying mine around with me and I refer to it often.

This might seem like a lot of hoopla for a grad school graduate, but anyone close to Anne knows how hard she has worked over the last three years. She deserves this. Her brother and some of his friends are planning fog horns, music and body paint for when she walks across the stage.

You know, we could all use some attention like this once in a while in our uncelebrated, sometimes ordinary lives. God rejoices over us; we should stop and do a little rejoicing ourselves, even if just to “celebrate me.”

When we had Academy Awards night at Isaiah House we thought we would have a few of the women get up and receive an award and give an acceptance speech. Every single one did. It didn’t seem to matter that it was make believe. It was a chance to be celebrated. We’ve seen this happen month after month there. Any reason to celebrate their lives is enthusiastically welcomed. After all, we’re just agreeing with God when we do this.

“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). It starts with being loved. Our ability to love God and others comes from embracing his love for us first and foremost. That love alone is worth celebrating any time.

For the Fischer family, this is Anne’s weekend. We have a reason to do this. But you do too. For the rest of you, your life – created by God, in his image, and loved by him – is reason enough. Make it a point to truly celebrate your life today.

Change always means adjusting to what’s uncomfortable. All change, even for the good, is upsetting.

It is a big responsibility to be well. There is a story in the New Testament where Jesus heals a man possessed by a legion of demons who, when facing expulsion by Jesus, ask to be sent into a herd of 2,000 pigs. Jesus grants their request and the whole herd rushes headlong into the sea and drowns. You might think the town would be happy to be rid of this menacing madman, but that’s not the case.

“A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, but they were frightened when they saw the man who had been demon possessed, for he was sitting there fully clothed and perfectly sane. Those who had seen what happened to the man and to the pigs told everyone about it, and the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and leave them alone.” (Mark 5:15-17)

Although at first it sounds odd that they would want Jesus to go away after healing someone, I don’t have to think very far past my own dysfunctions to understand this. The demon-possessed guy belongs in the graveyard, screaming, breaking his chains, and terrorizing the neighborhood. And the pigs belong on the hillside gently grazing. This is definitely a codependent town, comfortable with its accepted blend of sickness and tranquility.

Until Jesus comes and messes everything up.

Are you refusing to let Jesus into some area of your life because you know he’s going to want to touch some things that you would prefer he left alone? There’s a responsibility to being well. Being well might mean we lose our excuses for not doing more.

So what will it be: the challenge of change, or send Jesus away?

Human beings are spiritual beings. It’s one of the most obvious proofs that God exists – our notion and need of him. Who thought up the idea of God anyway? No one needed to because we’ve always had it. We have been designed with the logic and the capacity for God. It’s as if God wired us for himself and ripped out the battery, or gouged out a gaping hole in the center of our existence for him.

It’s been called a God-shaped vacuum, most eloquently expressed by Blaise Pascal, that seventeenth century mathematician/philosopher who actually discovered the vacuum, when he wrote:

What does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object – in other words, by God himself.

It’s why we worship. It’s why we create. And I am convinced it’s why we have art. The whole field of art and artistic endeavor is nothing more than our human attempts to explain and contain this void that God put in us.

The practical application of this truth is twofold. First, that we tend to this need in our own lives. Knowing God through Christ Jesus doesn’t solve the mystery. It’s a present tense longing. Even in knowing God we are not fully satisfied. Paul made it his ultimate goal to know God, and he stated it as something yet to be acquired. It’s a seeking that is not fully satisfied in the finding, or maybe better stated that the finding is a long-term process. It’s not a static, one time thing to find God. It’s a lifetime of finding him.

Second, this knowledge gives us a way of understanding our fellow man. A good deal of man’s efforts can be explained by Pascal’s “seeking in things that are not there the help [we] cannot find in those that are.” It’s a place of identity with others – a commonality we share with everyone regardless of race, culture or religion. It’s a universal truth and a starting point for addressing everything spiritual.

I heard that one of our friends who is not a Christian recently went to hear the Dalai Lama speak. Why did she go if it wasn’t that she was seeking? I am eager to talk to her about it because we can now connect on a spiritual level. I am not threatened that the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist. I am excited that my friend is seeking. This is a flame I want to fan, not put out.

“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:15,16).

I believe this because it is scripture. I believe it, but only to a point, however. I cannot fully embrace it. This is where I have to disagree with Paul because, you see, he didn’t know about me. At the time he wrote this, he may have been the worst of sinners, but that was only because I wasn’t born yet. He hadn’t met me.

So this is the only scripture I know that must be revised. Paul was not the worst of sinners, I am. And because he put it in present tense, I must too. It’s not that I was a sinner way back when. I am now. I know myself too well, and you don’t know the half of it.

And the patience – the unlimited patience – he talks about is for all the rest of you guys, because if he would show me mercy, then there is hope for everyone. Emphasis on “everyone.” If there are no worse sinners than me, then there is no one who can’t qualify for eternal life – no one outside of God’s grace.

So come one, come all! Get in on this incredible offer! No one is too bad for this; no one is beyond it. You can’t run out of God’s patience!

Everybody has a mother. You can’t say that about very many things.

Everybody has a witness. She was the first. Other than a doctor or a midwife, she was there. She was a first witness to the miracle. The first to see you crown, and be crowned, with life.

One day there wasn’t you, and the next day there was. And every day since she has shared in the miracle. She knows. Like no other, she knows.

For nine months – somewhat less for some – the miracle formed inside her. They are well acquainted – she, and the miracle. She has things she’s not telling, not because she doesn’t want to, but because she can’t. There are no words for what she knows.

Lots of mothers play dumb. They act like they don’t know when they do. (Mine was like this. Like she could never get a joke, even if you explained it to her. She ruined more jokes this way.) I knew she was faking all along. It’s the only way she can cope with the volume of information she has on us.

Makes no difference if she’s here or if she’s not, because she’s always with you. So honor her if she’s here, and honor her if she’s not. Either way, it still counts.

[A gentle reminder...]

I recently heard the story of a young kindergartener who, when asked by her teacher what she was going to create for her art project proudly announced she was going to draw a picture of God. To which the teacher announced, “But no one knows what God looks like.”

“They will in a minute,” came the bold reply.

She’s right, you know. She’s about to paint what God looks like to her, in her imagination, and she will be right. Not that God is relative to everyone’s idea of Him, but that He is so multifaceted that no one picture can capture all of Him, nor can all of the pictures together make Him up.

She is also right about the fact that we bring God to people, not only because are we are in His image, but because He dwells in us by faith.

What I love most assuredly about this statement is its audacity. “Oh, they’ll know all right, because I am about to reveal Him to them.” Would that we were all that confident about our ability to represent Christ to the world.

This was a major part of Christ’s role while on earth—to represent God to the world. “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

Our task is no less significant. If part of Jesus’ purpose was to reveal God to us, part of ours is to reveal Jesus to others. “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” Paul wrote.

What a great thing to focus on as we prepare to do anything—go anywhere—see anybody… “No one knows what God looks like?” we can say to ourselves, “But they will in a minute…”

“Excuse me, but where does that door go?”

“No one knows.”

“Have you tried to find out?”

“Yes, but it’s locked. You can see for yourself.”

“So you just stay here in this room?”

“Yes, we like it here; we have everything we need. It’s very comfortable, and nobody wants to go anywhere.”

“How long have you been here?”

“It depends on when you got here. Some have been here most of their lives.”

“What do you do with your time?”

“Oh, we’re quite busy, actually. We have meetings to attend, officers to elect, committees to serve on, evaluations to give. Not to mention seminars and classes and games and social events and…”

“Has anyone thought of knocking?”

“Oh no, we would never do that; we have to much to do here, and besides, you never know what might be on the other side. There have been a few that have knocked and the door opened for them, but they never came back.”

“But didn’t He tell us to knock and the door would be opened?”

“Yes, but we already did that. That’s what got us here in the first place.”

“How do you know He meant for this to happen only once? In the same breath, He told us to ask and seek, too. Is that supposed to happen only once?”

“That’s what I always thought. You ask Him into your heart and you seek until you find it. I found it. You know, I’m going to have to ask you to excuse me. I have an important meeting to begin.”

“Fine, but can you please ask those people over here who are blocking the door to move?”

“Suit yourself,” he said, shooing the people away, “but you’ll only find that it’s locked.”

“I know it’s locked, but I’m going to knock on it real hard.”

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. You never know what might be on the other side.”

“I know. That’s what I want to find out. Besides, if He opens the door, what have I to fear?”