Something Old – Older Than Dirt

For Lauren and Taylor:

1 John 4: 7-8 “⁷Dear Friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

I did the math; it’s true. After all of these years of hearing it said of others and now approaching the time where it will be (if it hasn’t already been) said of me, “He’s older than dirt”, I have at last found something that actually is older than dirt. Love, and proved by a simple algebraic equation: if A=B and B=C, then A=C. Therefore, if God is love (1 John 4:8 above) and God created the earth or dirt (see John 1:3 below & Genesis 1) then Love is older than dirt.

John 1: 1-5 (New Living Translation) “¹In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He existed in the beginning with God. ³God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. ⁴The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”

I could easily end this post right there and be vindicated in putting a little something out there that is worthy of a few moments of thought but I want to have a little fun with this and share what drove me to write this.

My family is consumed right now, and rightly so, with the marriage of a young man, Taylor whom I’ve known and enjoyed since he was in third grade Sunday School class and come to respect as a man, to our daughter, Lauren whom I’ve known, loved, enjoyed, come to respect as a woman, along with the whole litany of emotions dads have with their kids since I’ve known she was coming on the scene and that my story had a new character to be written in for the next few chapters.

The other day I was considering what to wear at the wedding in addition to my new gray suit and I thought of getting my Grandpa Matt’s watch out of the box I keep it in and having my own “something old” with me. It is not an expensive watch, nor is it beautiful beyond what it means to me. I’ve been blessed to feel special connections to both my grandfathers and this watch is what I have from Grandpa Matt. I still feel his presence from time-to-time and I’d like to say only whenever significant events like this one are on me but he’s been “around” a few times when I’ve made a bloody fool of myself and I’ve felt his disapproval of my behavior. Oh, that cloud of witnesses can be a tricky thing.

I picked up the self-winding watch with the intent of getting it repaired so that it would be ticking the day of the wedding. I set the time on that early morning and it began ticking immediately. I put it on and wore it to the office and throughout the day and when I took it off that night before bed it had stayed within a minute of the GPS time I had set it to.

I choose to believe that Grandpa Matt is smiling with me now as I wish Taylor and Lauren that thing which is older than dirt, Love. And Love abundantly.

 

Virtual Christ

A few days ago I was taking a web-based training course at work “Ethernet VLANs”, course number 60527394 with VLAN being the acronym for Virtual Local Area Network. The course material defined virtual as being “a logical representation of a real device”. I began wondering if being Virtual Christ would be good or bad; can you blame me, wouldn’t you rather think about Jesus than Ethernet VLANs?

Can we be Actual Christ on earth? Not so much, since He is a real being having a real and resurrected body; just ask the Apostle Thomas (John 20: 26-28). How then are people to get to know Him unless He appears to them as he did to those waiting in Jerusalem (Luke 24: 36-49), on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24: 13-32), or fishing on the Sea of Tiberias (John 20: 1-14)? They will get to know Jesus just as those first-to-be-called Christians got to know Jesus (Acts 2, read it all, it’s good for you); they did it through those who already knew Him and who spoke God’s word by the power of the Holy Spirit. If we cannot be Actual Christ then we must be Virtual Christ, a logical representation of him that functions and behaves the same as the real deal.

Jesus himself encourages us to do this saying “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me.” (Matt 10: 40) Virtual Jesus.

I will be commissioned tomorrow as a Kids’ Hope mentor and have been reviewing the materials in preparation for this new adventure. Since we are in an official capacity on the school campus we cannot pray with the children we mentor and nor can we witness to them in any overt way. We are there to love them, relate to them, minister to them, and to help educate them. The official manual encourages us to “Be Jesus with skin on” to the kids.

Paul helped me out with this as well with his instructions for us to be imitators of the apostles. Read through 1 Cor: 11:1, Phil 3:17, 1 Thess 1:6, and 2 Thess 3:7 and be encouraged to imitate the apostles or those godly men and women who set the standards for service within our own churches and homes.

LANs started out as computer networks in the same room that soon spread to a network within the same building and then through a campus environment only to be one upped by “WAN”s, Wide Area Networks as transmission techniques and media improved. That’s all the internet is, a very wide area network of networks. Common users in the VLAN, those who are not related to Timothy McGee (NCIS), have no idea where the other network users are or where the equipment resides that comprise the VLAN. It acts just as a network would that resides in the home or office and is indistinguishable in its performance.

I have been blessed to know a lot of young people over the years, many who served with me during Mission Arizona (MAZ) trips where we served the Pima Indians at the Vah Ki Presbyterian church and the surrounding neighborhood. Several of those kids have friended me on Facebook and I note that those who go to MAZ and later go on to serve in the Dominican most often post profile photos of themselves with the children they meet. That is a wonderful representation of Christ and how he is with the children and a great example of Jesus with skin on. It is those times that make the deepest impressions on us as well as those we serve.

Be imitators of the apostles and of Christ; be Jesus with skin on to the people He puts in our path. Go ahead, be Virtual Christ and a powerful representation of the real device.