Dear Santa, Thank You

 

Dear Santa, Thank You

I am currently serving on La Crescenta Presbyterian Church’s Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC). The church placed a Santa Claus mailbox out front. On a lark, I wrote a quick note to Santa that read as follows: “Dear Santa, Please send us a new pastor. Preferably a shepherd after God’s own heart” and signed it with my name with a little PNC under it.

It is a miracle, Santa replied. He wrote a most welcome letter, heartfelt and hopeful, full of gratitude and humility toward the Greatest Gift Giver.

I will let the letter speak for itself:

Rest assured, though our journey as a committee has been long and arduous and seasoned with a little heartbreak, we are hopeful. We know God has for us a pastor after His own heart and he will be here in God’s own timing. And, the Lord meets us on the way…

My dad crafted a piece of intarsia, a work of art made from various types and colors of wood and using little, if any, stains. The piece he made is of a Red-tailed Hawk, my favorite bird. He signed it “For ‘Stick’ Together in His grip”.

So I will sign off on this post in the same way…Together in His grip.

jj white

Build Your Trellis

 

jj's trellis

Peter Scazzero from his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS) while writing about a ‘Rule of Life’: “Please don’t be intimidated by the word rule. The word comes from the Greek for ‘trellis.’ A trellis is tool that enables a grapevine to get off the ground and grow upward, becoming more fruitful and productive.”

Under the direction of our interim Pastor Mike Harbert, La Crescenta Presbyterian Church trekked through EHS where we learned that a Rule of Life acts as a trellis helping us to be more intentional and live in Christ and to be more fruitful. Our trellis is a structure that takes into consideration our unique set of gifts and spiritual practices and helps us to focus on God in all we do.

There were eight sessions where we first met as a large group divided into table groups for shared prayer, periods of silence, viewing video materials, and continuing through work sessions. Upon completion of the series many table groups opted to continue for two or three weeks for a deeper look into the material. Our table opted to delve into creating our own ‘Rule of Life’ by sharing our experiences and plans for our own Rule.

Craig, a co-leader of our table-group of six men, brought a package of materials he’d gleaned from his personal study and research on the topic, one for each of us. Between what Craig brought us and the information from EHS we had and have plenty of tools and materials to construct and maintain our own trellis.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a visual person relying on circuit diagrams, stick maps of microwave systems, sketches of basketball plays, timelines, and stuff like that. For my work to build a trellis I went to PowerPoint, thus the diagram shown above. Over the last few years I’ve grown into a person who has increasingly relied on writing to grapple with subjects and my thoughts about them, thus this post.

If you look at my sketch you might notice there are stakes and cross members that are blank. Mine is a work in progress and likely will be for the foreseeable future. I’ve set my stakes in the soil where the seeds of my grapevine will be planted, or roses, if you prefer. I’ve enriched the soil with a phrase I cling to, “His grace is enough because His sacrifice is complete.” Without grace I have no hope in having a healthy vine or a sound trellis. I am using the stakes to show the various Spiritual Disciplines upon which I will hang my cross members and I have noted in blue the activities I hope to engage in under those disciplines. The cross members I am putting up are the more detailed activities I plan to pursue and that incorporate the basic elements of a Rule.

Build a trellis for yourself.

As noted above, my trellis is a work in progress. I will add stakes and cross members as needed and may, at times, remove some as the focus of my life changes through the seasons. I will be tending my trellis and the vines that grow on it. I’ll need to shore up the connections between the stakes and cross members and make sure my stakes are well grounded and not coming loose. I will aerate the soil, add nutrients, and weed out the harmful plants that crop up so that the vines produce their best fruits and blooms. Ongoing maintenance of the trellis and its dependent vines is critical for my effectiveness and the peace of knowing I make a difference.

I am the oldest member of our table-group and feeling an increasing urgency to finish well the race in front of me -> to have a trellis full of grapes or lovely blooms of roses. As happens in vineyards, we are not always the people who reap the fruits, press the grapes into juice, or age the wine. We are not the only ones who walk among the trellises and enjoy the roses and still others might pick them to display and share. I am content with that.

This urgency of mine to finish well, assuming I can follow through (this is where grace is required for me), is the impetus to build and maintain a trellis, my Rule of Life, and to tend the vines growing on them.

Mind and maintain your trellis.

I believe we all have a Rule of Life, intentional and well-built or not. If not, then it is likely a heap of stakes and cross members with vines choked out with weeds and laying in rot on the ground.

Therefore, I urge you to take stock, build a trellis, plant some vines, and mind the whole thing. I believe you will be healthier and happier for it.

In His grip,

jerry

Author’s Note: Trellises (or might that be trellisi?) come in various shapes and sizes. The photo below is of Ashley’s Trellis, my daughter. She recently completed it and I have every hope of seeing it festooned with sweet peas, some I believe that are descendants from sweet peas at Bass Lake that my Grandma Matt kept. Her trellis is well designed and built with a vision for beauty and bounty and is a reflection of her own Rule of Life. I love it.

Ashley's Trellis

O’er the Bridge – Round the Bend

 

Up the Gabrielino Trail from Gould Mesa...

Whatever our journey; a Walk with God, our life, or a simple hike in the woods we come to points of choice – go over the bridge or not, go around the next bend or not.

This is the unknown. We can plan to the nth degree and still we do not absolutely know what we will find on the other side of the bridge or around the bend, or even on the bridge. We make our choice to move on or not and then go with a mix of faith and trepidation. On a hike we may have walked dozens of times and there we give little thought to the unknown beyond the possibility to meeting someone else on the trail or maybe a view of wildlife. With life, walking with God or not, there may be degrees of knowing the outcome of our choice but always laced with the possibility of surprise.

Crossing bridges is an adventure, rounding curves exploration. As the Station Fire raged on in the back country of the Angeles National Forest late in 2009 I was AT&T’s Radio Planner and Coordinator for California and Nevada (I had no counterparts in other regions). I was tasked with inspecting our microwave stations back in the forest. Okay, I was feeling particularly invulnerable after having been allowed back to our home to find it standing after I was certain to find a pile of burnt rubble and smoldering debris and I volunteered to go up into the mountains to find out how our sites fared. Actually, I didn’t volunteer, I just did it.

I rounded many bends that day and most of the bridges I crossed had been deemed safe by structural engineers. Most but not all. I was able to visit all our sites with the exception of Camp 16 whose access road was still closed due to ongoing investigations into the loss of two firefighters, our team visit to that site is story all to itself, and a sobering one at that.

During my expedition, if a long one-day trek can be called an expedition, I found surprises around several bends; three or four bears scrounging around an abandoned fire base station for food, the Sherriff’s helicopter and its crew at Mt. Disappointment, and then Camp Colby across a bridge that hadn’t yet been inspected.

Camp Colby, now known as Colby Ranch, is a location equipped with a meeting/mess hall, residential and visitor cabins, and other out buildings that all provide the infrastructure for organizations to come for educational, religious, and business retreats. The camp is connected to the communications network via one of the microwave radios I had responsibility for. I expected the camp to have been burnt to the ground, what I found was a miracle brought to us by the Grace of God and fire fighters determination beyond reason to save the camp.

I found people here, stranded and isolated. Their one vehicle was out doing errands and hadn’t been allowed back in. When I showed up it seemed I was some sort of conquering hero. This camp is nestled in the crook of three hillsides and is a wooded vale with one access road o’er a bridge to the Angeles Forest Highway. The folks there told me of the flurry of firefighting activity that had saved their little vale and this is where the heroics took place.

They had plenty of food but no communications and their loved ones had no way of knowing their condition. The radio site here was in perfect condition lacking only the power to operate it. The feed stations along the backbone of the system were in similar condition, some with singed antennas and buildings but all operational. I was able to radio out to our operations people and by the end of the day they had generators in place and the Camp Colby telephones on line.

I was informed later that the bridge I had so blithely crossed had supporting members seared and still smoldering. Our operations trucks arrived with an inspector to allow access after I had left to complete my inspections. I had unconsciously made a choice to the cross the bridge – what if I hadn’t? How long before the camp attendants’ loved ones knew they were safe? Fool that I was, I was operating under some sort of faith and shield.

It seems to me to be the ‘or not’ part of our decisions is where the risk really is. We risk not seeing the miracle, meeting the person that needs us to alter their path of destruction – we risk not seeing the waterfall round the bend or the great vista through the notch in the mountains only accessed by going over bridges, crossing streams, rounding bends, and scrambling over rocks. When I risk the ‘not’, it tends to leave an emptiness where the adventure not taken would have filled a gap.

Then there is the option of turning around and going back. The thing about this option is that we still need to cross the bridge and go back around the bends that got us there in the first place. Who knows what happened to the bridge in the meantime, or what creatures have come along behind us round the bend?

...and back down the trail.

Life is an adventure, walk its path with a greater degree of faith with open eyes for the surprise, the opportunity to achieve something great or to simply gaze over the vista, a vista otherwise known as the rest of our lives.

Always remain in His grip.

jerry

Off the Bench

 

So nice and comfy here, just give me a few more minutes...

Spiritually speaking, I have been sitting on the bench now for quite some time. I hesitate to estimate how long I’ve been picking pine because I would probably underestimate the length I’ve have been sitting on the bench or standing on the sidelines. Some would say I am mistaken with comments like, “Look at the eighteen months you’ve been on the Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC)”, “You are active with the CFC Committee”, and things of that nature. True as those things might be and as deep as the trenches are for a PNC, my heart has been missing in action. If I’m honest with myself, my inaction goes well before taking care of my folks during their end-of-life journey and the pandemic so I can hardly pin this on them.

Truth be told, I have been setting myself up for a ‘well-deserved’ sabbatical and officially withdrawing from all committees, all services – who knows how many alls I could string together with this. It is embarrassing.

I played competitive High School (CVHS Falcons) and Junior College (Glendale Junior College Vaqueros, now known as Glendale Community College) basketball. With the exception of a loosely regulated (by the CIF) Junior Varsity Season in 1971, I came off the bench, though I should have started my sophomore year at GCC, but that’s another long and sad story. The point is, I know what sitting on the bench is and can be and what my responsibilities are. Until I put myself on the spiritual bench, I never took myself out of a game and on the bench - but I knew how to come off it.

Along comes our interim pastor, Mike Harbert, with the notion of putting our congregation though a program called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality which is a mouthful to say so we are calling it EHS. Pastor Mike has also been riding alongside our PNC since the beginning so he is familiar with me and he approached me as EHS planning was underway and told me that a certain elder on our Session told him that I would be a good table leader. Now, I am familiar with this young elder and have been watching her grow as a Christian since she was a wee lass coming into Junior High and going on Mission Arizonas with me. I couldn’t very well out rightly say so no this and thus decided to give it some thought and prayer.

The prayer part is what snagged me because when I mentioned it to the Boss I heard a still small voice that has been absent for some time now and He clearly said, “Get off the bench and into the game.” Okay, the still small voice hasn’t actually been absent, I have had my ears plugged and I've focused on feeling sorry for myself. There was no condemnation in the order, simply an urging to come in and make a difference, grow, and open myself to a new way of living. Again.

I know what I’ve done to myself here with this post. I put myself in a position to be held accountable. It nearly made me run the other way but that is not how I acted when on the bench in the olden days. I’m in the game.

In His grip,

jerry

Put me in coach, I'm ready to play.

Dear Kids

 

Dear Kids,

Along with being married to your mom, being your dad is the greatest of privileges. I love you and wouldn’t change anything about who you are or how we are together. Hey, its’ us! I will not be able to capture all the blessings about being dad to you.

I am thankful that I was able to hold you in the delivery room. I don’t know how your grandfathers could handle pacing in the waiting room until their kids were born, weighed, measured, or even cleaned up. I certainly don’t know how my dad could stand it being half the world away when I was born and not seeing me until I was six months old or so. Being there right then in the moment? Awesome!

All those things listed on the card pictured below? I wouldn’t run from any of them, bring it on. I loved the whole lot of it. Being your coach, from indoor soccer to baseball, basketball, swim meet timer are memories I cherish – being your biggest fan at high school meets and drama gigs – special. I’m not sure I can pick one activity over another. I love walking with you and have having taken you for walks, watching birds, swimming, hiking, rafting…all of it has been a gas, as we used to say.

Mission trips with you to Arizona? A highlight of decades of youth ministry. You demonstrated and continue to demonstrate your caring hearts for others. I must have done something right and that is likely because of amazing grace. I suspect I’ve received far more out of being a dad than I have any right to expect. Just the same, I’ll take it.

Your adult selves continue to grow and mature. You have become outstanding parents and will continue to grow into that role as your kids grow, develop, and change. You are adaptive, creative, and loving in all the ways that are good and right. Each of you has married well and your spouses have grown into excellent parents as well. To see two melded into one and your parenting as a team pulling equally at the traces of the craft of being parents is a real joy.

Your children are a distinct please in every way. They are joyful and I love how they put up with Silly Opa. I love them in unmeasurable quantities just as I do you. Well done children, well done.

This is a glimpse of what it means to me to be a dad on Father’s Day.

Thank you.

Again, I love you.

Dad

Dear Mom and Dad

 

June 1, 2022

Dear Mom and Dad,

There is nothing I would love better than celebrating your 70^th Anniversary with you, sitting around with family and friends grouped around the lawn, the pond, up on the deck. We would raise a glass in a toast, Mimosas likely, and thank all who were there for celebrating such a rare feat of 70 years of marriage, and rightly so.

It might’ve been a bit cool when we started but don’t worry mom, it’ll warm up nicely. In the meantime, we’d be bundled up a bit and be warming each other with fond memories. Dad would be right next to you practicing his favorite pastime, keeping you warm; he was a great one for seeing you comfortable. Snippets of conversations would reach us and just as quickly, smiles would appear on our faces written in family script, age lines, some would call them, we prefer smile lines and expressions of joy accumulated over a life well lived.

I am so thankful for the legacy the two of you established for us. Cindy and I will be celebrating 46 years of marriage this year, Ashley and Matt notched their 20^th this past December, Lauren and Taylor will hit the 9-year mark in September, and Daniel and Ani just tallied up 8 years this past April. Not bad, not bad at all. Thank you.

The dance I will always remember is The Wedding Anniversary Dance in 2001 at Matt and Ashley’s wedding. It was a dance of attrition with the shortest marriages coming off the dance floor first. The last five couples were Matt’s folks Curt and Jean, Cindy and I, Kathy and Lee Craw (yet another couple the two of you had great influence with), Jan and Gene Mauk (Cindy’s parents), and you guys. What a testament!

You guys faced down events, trials, and circumstances that could have derailed the marriage. Well done. You didn’t start it off easy by getting married while the both of you were serving in the US Navy with dad being shipped overseas to Korea while mom was pregnant with me. I suppose that made me a Navy brat, short-lived as it was. You built a home in Torrance then made a big move to La Crescenta, no simple tasks.

Vacations! Oh, my Lord, the vacations we had. Bass Lake, a family destination and where we celebrated your lives, has left a multi-generational mark on us and all to the good. We had great times in Bridgeport California, fishing hiking, reading, exploring… Our family vacations with the Murphys at Balboa Island set up another tradition we still revisit from time to time.

But we cannot talk about family vacations without mentioning the trip we made to Kearny Nebraska in the Lemonwood Yellow Chevy Impala station wagon equipped with a 396 cubic inch engine. Dad had some magical way of packing gear on top of the car, one year it was a tarp arrangement and then he built a plywood box with slopped front and painted to match the car. We camped our way to Kearny to visit the Andersons. Four-corners, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, and driving through a tornado warning we had no idea was in effect. All we knew was that I had to stare out the front and call out obstacles as they appeared during lightning flashes because the headlights couldn’t penetrate the downpour.

Thank you for setting the tone for having family vacations.

I think I will finish this letter with a little about your faith and faithfulness and skip the maudlin part where I say how much I miss you and that all the memories I have come flooding back with the simplest of things, Dad’s intarsia, FB memories with Mom, and all the boxes of crap we took from your house and the treasures we are unearthing from them.

The thing that stands out the most to me is your faithfulness to Jesus, his church, and the needy folks he brought to you, people who lived with us for a time of healing, people who you served when they had nobody else. You both served as Elders in the churches you attended and your elderships had the beginnings in youth ministry as advisors and teachers and went from there to leading and guiding the churches. It has struck be recently that your ministry went from leading as elders to the pure ministry as Deacons, the get down and dirty ministry of serving the poor, the hungry, the lonely. I admire you for that.

Signing off now. 70 years is huge, one of the comforting things is knowing the count keeps growing only now in a place where you both are whole again. Thank God!

In His grip and with the deepest of loves,

jerry

People Xxxxx In Nearly Every Seat

 

LCPC Chapel

People Butts In Nearly Every Seat

Brass resounded, a two-piece timpani reverberated, and the Steinway resonated with our souls in the Chapel, a sanctuary for worship, praise, and reflection. The Altos and Basses, Tenors and Sopranos of the LCPC Cathedral Choir raised the roof and the filled the room with an incense pleasing to the Lord of Glory. It was an Easter Sunday done well.

I walked in a little later than I usually like for a normal Sunday and there were only seats here and there and my ‘usual’ seat was filled. Then I saw an opening and dove in to sit between two of my mentors, youth leaders from back in my days as a teenager finding my way into adulthood. They would later become impassioned supporters of me as a youth advisor myself. Without these two and their cohorts the church would be a shadow of itself and we would do well to cherish them, the time we have with them, their contributions then and now, and provide space and time for them to worship which is commensurate with their importance to the Lord.

A lady came in during one of the hymns looking for a place to sit amongst her friends so I slid out and ushered her in to sit between Bob and Terry then moved back a couple of rows while a woman I couldn’t recognize in her mask gave me the best of recognitions for a simple action, her hand to her heart.

It’s Easter! and meeting people’s hearts is the order of the day as we celebrate the most noble sacrifice of all time. These are lessons I learned from the likes of Teri and Bob, Jim, Glen, Alan, Dean, and my folks – so many beloved saints I can’t write them all in. I still learn from them. When the prayers came and the hymns were sung they stood or sat as they can or prefer. Standing or sitting, their hearts knelt and their eyes were on Jesus, a posture they take every day.

A message was piped in from the Sanctuary and a promise of fulfillment was given, a continuation of God’s Kingdom on earth. He calls our name – we pray and sing and answer the call. An infant was baptized and the rite was piped in.

There were people butts in nearly every seat as it should have been. This is the House of God.

Grab hold of the promise, let your heart kneel, and worship the Lamb of God.

In His grip,

jerry

Dear Ric

 

Harmony Pines - September 1995

My friend, I heard you left yesterday to walk through the gates where I am certain you heard the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Welcome to My rest.” While I am happy with that outcome for you I must confess that I am saddened by the loss, I’ve missed you for years and now I’ll kick myself for not taking a ride to Prescott.

We were partners in ministry to some incredible young people, including our own children. We washed feet together, broke bread, and hustled after kids decades younger than us. While we served under some incredible interns, directors really, we had enough in the tank to teach them a thing or to. We weren’t afraid to share our injuries with them and because of that, they were open to our hearts and heard the Gospel from us in real terms.

Many of those kids are parents now themselves, incredible parents. There are some great cooks and teachers and youth workers and yes, even an ordained Presbyterian Minister of the Word and Sacrament. Indeed, well done Ric, and well met.

One of my favorite memories with you was the Harmony Pines Camp we did along with your outstanding wife Peggy and the ever faithful James Delbis. We were between interns at the time and the four of provided the content for the weekend, “It’s Not About Me”. My future son-in-law was among the campers. But maybe I’m mixing up the camps as we did several of them up there including the one from 1995 pictured in this post.

Anyway, the lesson you brought one night was classic as you did a riff from the story I share with kids about not being bitter against God and how it separates us from Him. We were in that small meeting cabin with about a dozen or so Junior Highers with a nice fire in the fireplace and firewood all around, some we’d brought ourselves. You were driving home the point of being split from God using a sledge hammer with a log splitting wedge and pounding it out, very dramatic. With the final split a hive of carpenter bees was released into the cabin and all heck broke loose – kids screaming and running every which way and four adults opening every window and door while making a valiant attempt at ushering the poor confused bees out. Those things don’t bite or sting but they are terrifying. I think if any of the kids read this letter to you will see the whole thing all over again.

I want to thank you for all of that, you mean the world to me for it.

Let’s go back to before our ministry together to when Cindy and I rejoined the church with our little family. You and Peggy were assigned to us as we came out of the new members’ class. The system then was that each new member had an established member, or couple in the case of married couples, joining the church and you guys drew our names. You’d been warned to treat us with kid gloves because of the disillusionment we had from our old church that led to us being without a church home for somewhere around ten years. You both were so kind. A bit hesitant but so very kind. Once we shared the story with you and laughed off the tentativeness we slid right in to church life. Thank you, both of you.

You are whole now and with eyes wide open in awe of the place you are at and in Jesus’ presence. I’m grateful for that. Just the same, I’m sorry I didn’t jump on the bike and come out.

In His grip, your friend,

jerry

Lonely Vigil

 

For the most part I was alone for the day. I awoke around 3a.m. and took over for Denise as she’d had a long shift. Textbook vigil. Dad was always a fighter – on the wrestling mats of Gardena High School, in and around the gridirons of football, in the boxing ring on the USS Point Cruz. His biggest fight, he lost. Smoking is a mother-effer to kick and he couldn’t and so we were on a vigil for the final count. Emphysema was the knockout punch that smoking threw at him and he couldn’t duck it though he fended it off as long as he could because he fought death up to his final few breaths.

With the exception of a bathroom break and a few moments to force myself to eat and stand outside to pray and be met by God’s Spirit, I stayed with him from the time I awoke until I helped carry him to the transport van and watched it roll down the driveway. We tried as best we could to keep him from being restless, as good as the uneducated can with drugs prescribed by people with M.D. after their names. I pictured the final fight scene in Rocky where he took a beating from Apollo Creed only my dad couldn’t block a punch nor throw one back and there was no referee to stop the fight, nobody but me in his corner to the throw in the towel. And I did.

Bob came by at some point in time and sat with us for a half an hour or forty minutes and we talked as he kept me company. He’d lost his own mom and had his own vigil not all that long ago. Denise stopped by from time to check on me and I told her I was okay and that I had it 'under control'. The struggle for a man in respiratory distress is violence contained in one rented hospital bed. I’d lied. That’s what big brothers do. But I wasn’t okay and I knew it but by the end of the vigil I did have it under control. God’s Grace is sufficient.

Mom came over for the last couple of hours and was there with me at the end, the two of us holding dad’s hand. She had her own massive fight going on while we helped her struggle to regain her strength and endurance. Throughout the day I played various renditions of Amazing Grace for him, mom liked that. The end finally came with the three clearest and easiest breaths I’d seen him take in years. It was a quiet end to a lonely vigil.

Now I’ve just told you about people coming by and sitting with me so how could this be lonely? It was lonely by choice. I could take in their comfort only so deeply as to get me to the next moment. If I had allowed myself to connect as much as my soul screamed for I would have lost it and not been up to the task for dad, or have been there for Denise or Bob or Mom or Stacey...

It has been 537 days since this happened, why bring it up now? Because I sit removed by a couple of short miles from friends and family on their own vigil and because I love them so much that I am on vigil as well, only somewhat removed.

These are the cruelest of vigils, the meanest of fights, when we have given ourselves over to inevitability. How I hate these things. I badly want to spare them this waiting, sit in their place for them. However, I am not allowed and must suffer my own portion as best I can and pray they have peace on the front lines of their particular fight. I grieve already for my friend, his family, and his friends.

This probably sounds like a lot of unbelief and lack of faith and that is correct. It is. And so the only thing I can really say is Maranatha, come quickly Lord Jesus.

In His grip,

jerry

Where Did That Come From?

 

Where Did That Come From?

God is The Creator and he created man in his own image. Therefore, man is creative. This is the line of thinking that spurred me to become a writer. When I was young, I used to think my creativity was expressed on the basketball court. Perhaps it was true, but to be honest, it was a low target (and likely a copout) so when I couldn’t play, what then? I searched and now I write. Here I go…

While condensing my parent’s lives from a house and woodcrafter’s shop on ten acres with storage in every nook and cranny to a target of a family history and distributed memories, I have over the past 18 months drifted in and out of grief and written of it from time to time. Today I was at the storage facility where we keep boxes of stuff (tools, papers, photos, memories), high-end golf equipment, a piece of furniture, and an old workbench. My target for the day was to dismantle the workbench.

My objective was troubling to me and I went about the work with a haze of melancholy draped over my shoulders. It was easy for me to understand. The bench was older than me. My grandfather built it for his workshop in Gardena. My dad brought it to La Crescenta and put it in his little workshop that he had excavated underneath our deck in the backyard in La Crescenta and he then moved it to Merlin, Oregon and created amazing works of intarsia on it.

I moved it to the storage facility with the thought we would move it to Ashley and Matt’s new place in Santa Barbara once they were organized in their garage and they would create on it. However, the bench needed a lot of work to be stable and it was on its last legs. I discussed this at length with Ashley and we decided to move it to an alternate place which would have been in our backyard as a potting bench. It still needed a lot of work and we don’t pot much so we passed and there was no one in the family who could use it.

When I put screwdriver, claw hammer, and prybar to the bench I was saddened. I could not figure out how to get another generation out of this thing. I removed the three-sixteenth-inch steel top and decided to put it on the worktable I’d built in my own garage. As I stacked the 2x12s and 2x4s on my dolly I sunk a little deeper into glummyland but when I got down to the 1x stuff, a tongue-and-grove backing and some support strips, I remembered the Christmas trees I’d made of the old roofing materials from our front porch project and now I think there will be a Christmas tree or two to pass along. Then I remembered the bird houses and other decorative things I made from the old cedar fencing from our replacement project and I think there will be birds finding new nesting places.

The wood from a two-generation old workbench will find new life with three more generations; mine, my kids, and their kids.

Thinking about how creativity sprung from a feeling of melancholy lead me to wondering what it was that inspired God to create. Was He melancholy and then turned his creativity to making everything we see and feel? Was She lonely? These are not questions I will try to answer – they are way beyond my paygrade. It likely has something to do with the fact that God is love and needs entities to express that love toward.

While pondering this and wondering where sparks of creativity come from and what motivates someone to create, I came across one of my favorite Bible verses:

Psalm 121: 1 – “I lift up my eyes to the hills-- where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

No mater the source or who your muse is, once the spark is set to the idea, put your heart and hands to the task and see what good comes from it.

In His grip,

jerry

 

Author’s note: Melancholy may not be the proper word for me to use in describing my feelings of the day as an online definition reads, “a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause”. I know the cause but I like the term and my friend Webster’s definitions give me some latitude so I’m keeping melancholy. After all, it’s my story.

The Fast That He Has Chosen

 

Isaiah 58:6 “Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” American Standard Version

I had a hankering, a yearning, and I longed to take up a spiritual discipline I had sitting dusty on the shelf of underappreciated disciplines. I used to fast on occasion when I was hitched to particularly difficult tasks. It has been several years since I last undertook a fast to clear the way for the Holy Spirit but I’m in a place where I find that I am again in need of the discipline.

I turned to a couple of old friends, if you don’t mind me being so familiar with them. Dallas Willard and Richard J. Foster both wrote about the discipline of fasting. Dallas in his The Spirit of the Disciplines, Understanding How God Changes Lives and Richard J. in Celebration of Discipline, The Path to Spiritual Growth.

It is interesting to me that these men eschew the use of Dr. on their book covers and instead simply use their names. I have seen them both in person and their humility is worn about them like an old familiar sweater.

Dallas Willard is known for his writing on Christian spiritual formation and having had a focus on ‘phenomenology’, a study of the structures of experience and the consciousness. He says of fasting, “Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in him a source of sustenance beyond food. Through it, we learn by experience that God’s word to us is a life substance, that it is not food (“bread”) alone that gives life, but also the words that proceed from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4)”

Again, from Willard: “We learn that we too have meat to eat that the world does not know about (John 4:32, 34). Fasting unto our Lord is therefore feasting – feasting on him and on doing his will.”

And again, “Actually, fasting is one of the more important ways of practicing that self-denial required of everyone who would follow Christ (Matt. 16:24)"

In his Celebration of Discipline, Richard J. Foster quotes John Wesley: “Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it.”

Foster says, “Scripture has so much to say about fasting that we would do well to look once again at this ancient Discipline. The list of biblical personages who fasted reads like a “Who’s Who” of Scripture: Moses the lawgiver, David the king, Elijah the prophet, Esther the queen, Daniel the seer, Anna the prophetess, Paul the apostle, Jesus Christ the incarnate Son.”

There are a range of fasts: full fasts where we abstain from all food, solid or liquid, but not from water, partial fasts whereby we restrict the diet without total abstention (Daniel 10:3), and an absolute fast where nothing is taken in. For reference, these are people who fasted in the Bible: Esther in Esther 4:16 for 3 days, Paul in Acts 9:9 after his visitation, and Moses in Deut. 9:9 and Elijah in 1 Kings 19:8 for supernatural absolute fasts of 40 days.

For the most part, fasts are of an individual and personal nature. There are times when groups are called to fast such as the Day of Atonement for the Hebrews or when in 1756 the king of Britain called for a day of solemn prayer and fasting because of threatened invasion from France. Of this fast John Wesley writes, “The fast day was a glorious day, such as London has scarce seen since the Restoration. Every church in the city was more than full, and a solemn seriousness sat on every face. Surely God heareth prayer, and there will yet be a lengthening of our tranquility.” France did not invade.

In any case, group or individual, partial fast or complete or even absolute, we must remember one central tenet as Foster put it, “Fasting must forever center on God. It must be God-initiated and God-ordained.”

I have leaned on Foster for what I am thinking of as the process for fasting:

1.       Define your fast objectives. Outline whatever you hope to breakthrough on during your fast and define it but remain open the Holy Spirit to redefine it.

2.       Jesus said in Matthew 6: 16-18, “¹⁶And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ¹⁷But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

3.       Define your fast parameters. What are you giving up and living on? How long will you fast? The following are a list of progressions to take for fasting. Figure out where you fit on the spectrum from beginner to ‘old-hand’:

a.       Begin with a partial fast of 24-hours.
  i.      Use fruit juice and water, plenty of water
  ii.      Repeat weekly for several weeks
  iii.      Monitor the attitude of your heart – prayer, meditation, singing, and worship

b.   Graduate to a full fast of 24-hours with water only and lots of it. Use the normal time spent on eating for prayer and/or meditation.

c.     Step up to a 36-hour full fast, or three meals.

d.    Consider a multi-day fast of three to seven days and then after, even longer if you feel up to it. Things to consider on the long fast:
i.      The first three days are tough as the body rids itself of toxins.
ii.     Headaches are mild withdrawal systems for caffeine, consider weaning yourself prior to a long fast.
iii.  Around the fourth day your hunger pains should begin to subside but there may be feelings of weakness and occasional dizziness, these should be temporary.
iv.   You should feel stronger and more alert around the six- or seven-day mark of your fast.
v.     Your longer fasts should be broken with fruit or vegetable juice and small amounts of those until your system gets back to normal. I learned the hard way on this one. As a 20-year-old zealot of sorts I broke my 4-day fast with a big greasy burrito. It was not elegant.

Foster writes of fasts extended from seven to 40 days. I won’t go into these here. If you are moved to do anything longer than I have covered in this short post I recommend a deeper study of fasting on both the spiritual and physical levels.

CAUTION: If you have, or suspect you have, underlying medical issues consult your doctor. It is best to go into the discipline of fasting with your eyes wide open.

We must remember that the major work of scriptural fasting is in our spirit. What goes on in our hearts and souls are more important than what is occurring in our bodies. A spiritually critical period is when we break our fast and relax. Fasting can bring us breakthroughs in the spiritual realm that we can’t find any other way. I have seen it work in my own life and am looking forward to it doing so again.

We should remember Paul’s warning to the Colossians in chapter 2, verse 23, “Many things have an appearance of wisdom in promoting rigor of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh.”

Finally, let’s remember that it is His fast and the purpose is to break chains of bondage.

In His grip and under His Grace,

Jerry

Authors note: In reaction to a sermon that I alluded to in this post I swore off purchasing and eating meat. This was not a lifestyle change but a fast of protest, surely not a spiritual fast in any shape or form. I discovered that in writing this post that I no longer held my grudge and have taken up eating meat again but I have determined not to do so in the presence of my vegetarian wife, daughter, or grandson. I have perceived it as an affront to them the numerous times vegetarians have been denigrated from the pulpit.