Build It...

 

MAZ 2015 - Building a Vatu at Stotonic

Preface: Pastor Mouris is leading a community Bible study at La Crescenta Presbyterian Church on Tuesdays from 11 to Noon and is taking us through the book of Nehemiah. I’ve just finished the first paragraph of this post and now have no idea where it will take me. I thought it was to be about the difference between a ‘joiner’ and a ‘builder’. God is great.

Nehemiah was a builder. That much is well documented in the Old Testament book written by him. The book answers the 5 W’s and one H questions. Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? The ‘who’ is Nehemiah and a remnant of the exiles of Israel out of Persia. The ‘what’ is that the wall of Jerusalem is rebuilt. The ‘when’ was around 445BC, a little more than 100 years after the first wave of Israelites had returned to Jerusalem with permission from King Cyrus. The ‘where’ is the Kingdom of Judah’s capital, Jerusalem. I’ll address the ‘why’ below. The ‘how’ might be better covered in a post all its own but, for the purpose of this post let’s say by prayer, commitment to a vision, and by grace.

The question as to why is taking me places I hadn’t thought to go. Like my questions to my parents, my children of me, and now even my grandchildren, ‘why’ can be asked until we drill down to the depths of motivation. I could offer the simple answer, “because God told him to”, and to the question, “Why did God tell him to?” I would have to say, “God only knows”. I feel like that would be cheating so I’ll drill down a little bit.

There was no earthly reason for Nehemiah to uproot himself from Persia and go to a city in ruins to build a wall that the residents and previously freed exiles did not want. He was cupbearer to King Artaxerxes and had the complete trust of the king who would eat or drink anything handed to him by Nehemiah. Nehemiah lived in the palace, had everything he could want – food and shelter fit for a king. Why then, did he go?

Nehemiah was a godly man, given to prayer and fasting, and obedient to God’s Will. He heard a report from his brother Hanani upon Hanani’s return from Jerusalem and the province. The people who had returned there from exile ‘are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.” (Neh. 1:3) Nehemiah sat down and wept. He couldn’t stand the thought of God’s people being in trouble or in disgrace and he went into a time of mourning, fasting, and prayer. (Neh. 1:4)

His prayers were full and complete. Nehemiah went to God with supplication for his people and confession of his and their sins. He reminded God of His Word while interceding for the people of Israel. His period of mourning carried over to his job, which was to hand the King the cup, untainted with poison. The king asked Nehemiah why his face looked so sad even though he was not ill. Nehemiah tells us that he was very much afraid but told the king he was sad because he could not be happy knowing his ancestral city was in ruins and the gates burned. (Neh. 2:2-3)

I love this part and want this in my life – when the king asked he what he wanted Nehemiah tells us that, “Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king, ‘If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried sot that I can rebuild it.” (Neh. 2:5) That is Nehemiah’s secret. He is such a prayerful soul that he can pray and offer a response to the king in the same breath. I want that.

I’ll recap what I believe is the answer to why Nehemiah went to rebuild the wall. He was a godly man. He prayed often and deeply. He fasted and as part of his spiritual discipline and waited on God and listened for replies. He was obedient. Obedient to the point of giving up the prime position on the king’s staff. In this case, the ‘how’ was intertwined with the ‘why’. Because of these things, Nehemiah had taken on aspects of God, namely God the Creator. Nehemiah had it in him to create, to build. And that’s what he did.

I’ve been asking myself while writing this, ‘Why am I writing it? What does it have to do with my life? How will it affect me or rather, how will I use this to affect change?’ There is something in me that is broken down and in disgrace, something missing that needs to be rebuilt, a wall broken down and letting things best locked out in, or a gate is broken that won’t allow people in that need to be there. I pray that I am being obedient to His voice in this – I have missed doing mission work and service with young people and in response we have restarted Mission Arizona. There is something more, something deeper than this, I know. I also know that it will come to me as I pursue obedience, just as Jesus has done for me or to me, year over year.

I encourage you to pray and seek God to find the wall that is broken in you, the gate you need working to let Him in.

I am in His grip, always.

Jerry

Psst...Trust Me

  

She'll run like a charm, trust me.

Psst…Trust Me

Early in 2021, I was one of nine individuals who were asked and accepted a nomination to be elected to a select committee of the La Crescenta Presbyterian Church, our home church. We were elected unanimously by the congregation without receiving nominations from the floor, volunteers from those present, and without debate. Apparently, no one else was clamoring to be on the Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC) charged with finding the replacement for our longtime and beloved pastor who had announced his and his wife’s intention to move on to a new call, this one in the missionary field, a place where their hearts lay as well as the heart of the congregation.

NCAA Basketball fans will get this analogy without blinking and most will understand it. Imagine taking over for Coach John Wooden (Wizard of Westwood) upon his retirement as the UCLA Men’s Basketball coach. It took Coach Wooden several years to build his program to the point where they won 10 NCAA championships over a 12-year period, with a string of seven in a row. Only one other college program has more than seven in their history - Kentucky has eight over a 64-year period. How do you follow an act like that? How do you find a person to establish a culture of excellence of their own when expectations run so high? No wonder we didn’t have a line out the door of smiling people eager for the task of finding the next pastor.

I should not have said yes. My parents had passed away ten weeks apart only two or three months previous, I was steeped in managing their estate based in Oregon, and due to the pandemic, hadn’t been able to mourn properly or celebrate their life with family and friends, and I was a wreck. I had no right to nod my head and accept this blessing but God was at work and I desperately needed to see His hand in action, to be met by Him in ways as he so often has over my life. I cannot say that I did not look back once I put my hand to the plow (see Luke 9:62). I was days away from bowing out but knew one of us needed to exit the task more than I as her husband was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Even though I knew I was not fit for this service, I knew this – that God’s Grace is sufficient.

In somewhat typical fashion for our church, we didn’t go strictly by the book for this process. If you know much about Presbyterians, you should know we have a book for anything we do. Our outgoing pastor stayed on in an interim capacity while the search went on and our committee was tasked to complete our Mission Information Form (MIF) which is typically done by a separate and specific committee before handing the work over to the PNC.

I struggled here to find the right word for our task, to call it a journey is to belittle what we went through. Journeys are simply defined as ‘A going from one place to another usually of some distance’. I had to scroll down the list of related words my friend Webster was giving me and rejected hop, jaunt, cruise, walkabout to settle on quest, closely followed by odyssey, hike, slog and tramp. We did all those things in our search for the person called by God from time immemorial to be our next pastor.

Make no mistake about this, we knew what we were called to and what was placed in our hands – a Sacred Trust. To a person, we approached our job as a Sacred Trust, entrusted by our congregation to find someone to lead us, guide us deeper into discipleship, closer to Jesus and we were trusted by Jesus to find his Will. We opened every meeting (at least weekly for two years plus interviews and special weekends) with scripture and prayer. Each of us committed ourselves to prayer and fasting in our own fashion. We slogged, trodged (sic), and waded our way through close to 100 Pastor Information Forms (PIFs), dozens of interviews, four neutral pulpit weekends, two, yes two invitations to the call, and one Candidating Weekend that culminated in the vote of the congregation with the landslide ‘Yes’ result. Praise God!

As an aside, let me ask you a quick rhetorical question here, would you have clicked on the link if I correctly named this post A Sacred Trust? Or would you have read this far? Rhetoric aside, we all have a sacred trust to complete.

We laughed, cried, cajoled, rolled our eyes, and wondered at God’s wisdom to put us in such a place. We were humbled by the enormity of the task, heartened by the quality of men and women we interviewed, and amazed at the wisdom of each of the other people on our committee. We were likely sacrilegious from time to time. My suggestion to use my ‘Daily Decision’ app to make the choice from our short list comes to mind. Hey, the 11 Apostles cast lots to find Judas’ replacement, didn’t they? And they’d been in Jesus’ presence for three and half years. Fortunately, nobody took me seriously.

Even with all that going on, the Sacred Trust and Task proceeded as God willed. My choice of the photo I used to draw you in is apt. We were not looking for a shiny new pastor right off the Seminary showroom floor. We knew, or at least trusted, that the used model wouldn’t be a clunker nobody else wanted. The reality is, we didn’t know what make or model we would find or how many miles they had traveled. We placed our own sacred trust in God chiming our spiritual bells and letting us know which one to call.

Our congregation showed us grace, patience, and unwavering support. We would not have succeeded without it. Our Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry (COM) assigned us a pastor to support and guide us on our quest, a man who we could easily have picked to pastor the church. This man and his wife, also an ordained pastor, then came alongside the congregation to take over as interim pastor and have brought us through a period of healing and focused intention to prepare the way for our new pastor. As our interim pastor, his own Sacred Trust, he has made big asks of our PNC, the individuals on the committee and in the congregation, and the entire congregation. We needed the wake-up call to be intentional in our desire for God’s Will with this new direction.

Our trust was rewarded. The trust of the congregation was rewarded. The Sacred Trust has been fulfilled and our new pastor will be in our pulpit on July 2.

Thank you for reading and sharing a little bit of what our quest was like, our Sacred Trust. Now, go out and find a spiritual walkabout of your own, a Sacred Trust you can undertake. Our Lord will be by your side and the value is measureless.

In His grip,

jerry

My Heart Held Hostage

 

My Heart Held Hostage

I am rarely without my friend Webster except for those rare occasions when I am off the grid or phoneless, like when I take a shower. Webster doesn’t go there with me. He and I were discussing something that has been on my heart now for weeks and he says this regarding the word ‘Hostage’:

1a - person held by one party in a conflict as a pledge pending the fulfillment of an agreement. 1b – a person taken by force to secure the taker’s demands. (Merriam-Webster smartphone ap)

I must confess. The reason ‘hostage’ has been on my heart is because I am holding my heart hostage, as I frequently do. It looks sort of like this: ‘If the Dodgers win, I’ll do this; if they lose, I get to do that.’, ‘If they call, I’ll do this for them.’, ‘If that guy signals to get into my lane, I’ll let him in with a smile; if they don’t signal, to darn bad for them!’, ‘If this happens, then I’ll serve God today.’ – and so on.

When I am in that mode of operation, even if the outcome is what I want, I won’t really get all the benefits that I could have. In fact, my heart will be marred and not truly free. Just like hostages in a bank takeover need therapy for PTSD when they are released, so will my heart therapy. It is a no-win situation. The minute I chain up my heart, I’ve lost.

Rather than go to God and put demands on him for the Dodgers to win for him to get what he wants from me, I need to enjoy the game for what it is and give in to the Lord and be his servant. Except for maybe today when they lose 0-13, there is no joy in a game like that, so I should just turn it off and write something that might touch someone and meet them where they need to be met or when on the road I need to be gracious and not be surly and even if they don’t call, I need to be there for them.

It gets more serious when my heart is held hostage over my walk of faith. If I hold back because our worship isn’t the way I like it or even go so far as to think I’ll change churches if it’s not my favorite way and at the time I want it to be, then I have lost and however I worship will not be all that pleasing to the Lord. I cannot say to myself that I will reject my church if the church does not take a particular stand, then I have lost and even the service I do give the church will gain me little and my effectiveness will be limited.

It is not until I raise my hands in surrender that raising my hands in worship hits the mark.

1 Corinthians 12: 17b – “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.”

I confess that over the years, and there have been many for me, I have on occasion been flummoxed enough to pray about moving on. Thankfully, that verse in 1 Corinthians is etched on my heart and I’ve sought the Lord rather than let my emotions get the best of me and ride out of town. I’m too simple a person to understand the whole purpose of God for me, I must listen.

It is not until I take a knee and swear fealty to God that my heart will be unchained.

The writer in me thinks of it like this – when I go through life writing my story and working to fit God into it, the plot ultimately falls apart and the story makes no sense. What I need to do is figure out how to chronical God’s story and my place it. Then the plot works itself out and makes sense.

As I am encouraging myself to unchain my heart from being a hostage against my own desires, I encourage you to do so as well.

In His grip,

jj white

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

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

OJT

During the last few walks with Oliver, a wonderful lad of mixed canine decent, I have been considering that putting ‘Grandfather’ on my resume has been one of the coolest things I’ve added since June of 1979. It amazes me that I’ve come into the position with a certain amount expertise that, until I began considering it more fully, has baffled me.

When I was a child I was able to observe my own four grandparents and benefit from their love of the job. Grandpa White gave my sisters and me wheelbarrow rides around the double cul-de-sac in Gardena and let us play with his wooden hardware organizer drawers as a place for us to put play money and act like we were a store. Grandma White fixed her wonderful English cuisine meals. I especially liked the way she prepared carrots. Grandma Matt (Mattingly) always made a couple of my favorite dishes when I visited at Bass Lake – lemon meringue pie and shrimp cocktail were her specialties for me. Grandpa Matt had a way of teaching me the practicalities of daily life and snuck a $5 bill into my hand for gas as I was driving away when I was able to go up on my own. My favorite memory was him sitting us down at McDougal’s for our favorite ice cream dish. It was a banana split for me.

Those four could be gruff at times and I suppose that was due to coming through the depression and other depredations of the lives they had. I never once felt they didn’t love me. I know they did, or do. I seem to still have conversations with them now and again. Most of them were great huggers even if Grandpa Matt liked to rub his stubble on our young cheeks. I suppose the good long time I had with them burned the programming into my firmware.

When I became a man and after June, 1979 I was blessed with observing Cindy’s and my parents take to the role of grandparent and man, they are hard act to follow. From the moment each of the four held Ashley in their arms the first time I knew we had an awesome foursome of grandparents for our kids. Our mothers were creative and attentive and our fathers were watchful and protective. All of them were playful at times. One thing that stands out about them is the sense of wonderment at the joy of being a grandparent was. It is as though my observations of my and Cindy’s parents reemphasized the programming that took place when I was a boy and maybe did some debugging as well.

With all that training by osmosis I still needed some more practical lessons and there is nothing better than On the Job Training (OJT). The best teachers for grandparent OJT started with Teya and Jeremiah, then Logan and Nairi, and now Becca. Grandchildren are the best teachers of grandparents and it happens in the field, on the playgrounds and on living room floors, in their highchairs and on changing tables. We get tested here and the programming gets beta-tested right then and there and we adapt.

After twelve years of experience, one great lesson I’ve learned from them is that expectations from them are going to change as they get older and their needs get more…sophisticated. Add to it that I’m just getting older and rolling around on the floor and tossing them in the air isn’t quite as graceful. I know Teya’s experience of me will be far different than Becca’s.

Those are a lot of words to get to this point and you are likely wondering, if you’re still reading, what does this have to do with a Calvary’s Thread post about my Christianity? And these days, what does it have to do with covid-19 and faith?

Let me go here with my tangent: How did twelve fishermen, tax evaders, and otherwise tier-one individuals come to be the founders of Christianity? OJT. There were no seminaries and no Bible schools to mold them into Apostles other than the rabbinic teachings they got growing up and those somehow missed who the Messiah was to the point the leaders of these schools had Jesus put to death. Only the revelation that poured from the disciples turned some of the teaching into truth for the Jews at the time.

These guys hung out with Jesus for three and half years and were taught on the run and in the field. They were instruments in Jesus’ hands for the feeding of the five thousand, were sent out by twos to minister in His name (Mark 6:6b-13, Luke 9:1-6, and Luke 10:1-24) and otherwise assisted Jesus with his ministry. On the Job Training.

Then their mentor, teacher, and the Father of their faith was killed and they scattered only to be reeled back in to have their training refreshed. Their OJT continued in Acts and when a new teacher, or rather a teacher with a different aspect of the Father, came upon them, the lessons continued. The first big evidence that they were ready to graduate into Apostleship was Peter preaching and adding three thousand to the faith. He’d never really preached before. OJT baby.

Do you want your faith to expand, your effectiveness to grow? Wade into the river and get hip deep into the work of the Kingdom to the point the Holy Spirit has to come upon you to succeed. Learn by doing, live by grace.

In His grip,

jerry

Early Morning Foray Into the Sanctuary

I went into the Sanctuary this morning, the first time I’ve been on the church campus in a couple of weeks or so, a notable rarity for me. Such is the advantage of being a key-holder, though in days long gone by we kept a key on the ledge over the door to the Fish Bowl as the room was known. Well okay, it was a bread-knife and the doors were not the higher quality of security doors we have in place today.

The pre-dawn sky back-lit the stained-glass windows, at least the ones still in place during our refurbishing process. (give people!) Being in the place alone and in the dark is one of my favorite times there and only in part because the darkness masks the scars technology is leaving on the walls but more so because I feel God's presence. The hush was reverent as I eased my way along the empty pews, so unlike the hush that’s come over the streets and malls and parks and our beaches during our time of social distancing and hunkering down at home.

It’s easy to pray here along but difficult to focus on the greatest area of need for prayer. I’ve been wondering what the story arc is for covid-19, how its epilogue will read. I decided to ask Jesus whose likeness looked down from the round window above our altar. Alas, no answer was forthcoming. However, I’ve decided to ask it of Him each time my random reminder to pray goes off. I am surely not the answer and I’ve no brain power to bring to bear on the problem. Who is? Who will rise up and bring the answer and allow us to return to a more level and even new normal? I suspect that the answer will only come when God’s people humble ourselves in pray and heat up our passion for His Kingdom. 

Surely the answer is not to return too soon to how things were and simply power through the crisis as though the loss of even one extra person is worth the ‘boost’ to the economy so the rich can maintain robust portfolios and tout how the middle class is so better off because of it. You know the rich, those folks with concierge healthcare that can buy a covid-19 test at the drop of a hat when the folks on the front lines can’t find one to save a life? This is a folly preferred by the ignorant and greedy.

Who will rise up and provide the definition of a new normal and give guidance on how we should live and thrive? I’ll ask, and ask again and sometime someone will come forward…

Come quickly Lord.

In His grip, jerry

Surely Not I Lord

How can we be so sure it is not us?

During the Lord’s Super Jesus was reclining at the table with the twelve disciples when he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.” (Matthew 26:21 NIV)

The disciples were very sad and replied one after the other, “Surely not I, Lord?” (Matthew 26:22 NIV)

Jesus expanded on His prophesy saying that it would be better for the betrayer not to have been born. Judas then asked, “Surely not I, Rabbi?” (Matthew 26:25 NIV)

Look at the difference between how the eleven ask and how Judas offers the question. The eleven know Jesus is Lord while Judas still thinks him a simple Rabbi. That lack of revelation allowed Judas to betray our Lord out of greed. But, how could any of them been so sure he was not the one?

I prefer the English Standard Version translation of the question, “Is it I, Lord?” I can’t be sure enough to say ‘Surely not I.’

When things go a bit wrong or completely haywire we too often hear, “Not my fault” and then a bunch of dissemination coupled with defensive positioning and a digging in behind half-truths, outright lies, or self-deluded beliefs about one’s own actions and culpability.

What I need to do in those times is to respond with, ‘am I the one?” Then I need to react like David in Psalm 139:23-24, “²³Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. ²⁴See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (NIV)

I will rarely resolve anything by saying that it is not my fault. We will never advance God’s Kingdom with that approach – never come close to what we see for ourselves in God, or bring our vision for the church to fruition unless we hit the deck and cry out to be searched. And the first to do this need to be the leaders. Publicly. They cannot say that it’s the congregation’s fault, it’s not the pastor’s or elder’s or director’s fault. We must lead by example and be the first to hit our knees in repentance. It is the only way or it will be us that betray the Kingdom.

When we do this it clears the way for the Holy Spirit to act because God does not despise a broken and contrite heart. (Psalm 51)

So, take five or ten minutes today and pray to be searched. Read and meditate on Psalm 139 or use Psalm 51. Then, do it again tomorrow and act on what the Holy Spirit shows you.

In His grip,

jerry

Always Room for a Misstep

Route of the Day

Matthew 7, 13 & 14: ¹³“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. ¹⁴But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

A thought came to mind while walking with Ollie Verdoodle on the Catalina Verdugo Trail and the Ridge Motorway. I followed that one up with others I could imagine as we trekked along.

There is always room for a misstep of one kind or another – there is some sort of guarantee in that statement, just don’t try to cash it in. What is not guaranteed is an open and soft landing spot when we fall.

The Ridge Motorway is wide and there isn’t much chance of falling down the hillside on it. Unless you’re driving a motor vehicle. So there isn’t much chance of a bad spill when we trip over our own two feet, slide down-slope on the gravel, or stumble over a rock or some downed brush. Or is there? Our hands lead our trip to soften the landing and later that afternoon we are sporting a cast or two from our elbow to our wrist. We twist out of our stumble to land on our rump and miss and later that night we are being escorted down the hall for our first walk on our new hip.

Jesus is telling us in Matthew 7 that it’s easy to walk the road to destruction. But while we are tripping along Easy Street we can end up hurt before we arrive. Maybe that would be a lifesaver and lead us to later find the small gate and narrow road.

The Catalina Verdugo Trail is narrow and full of switchbacks and old slides from previous rains. Rocks strew the trail, canine companions race by as do trail bikers, and bushes grow from up-slope over the trail to block the way. It’s easy to trip on one obstruction or another, a simple task to have your boot slide out from under you. And our landing? No guarantee we’ll be anywhere near the trail when we stop. And, the same simple endings to a fall on the motorway are still available to us on the narrow trail.

What is the advantage of one over the other, narrow over wide? The end-goal.

Don’t bother with the wide gate and broad road. If you want God’s presence you’ll end up doubling back to the narrow gate anyway.

What’s the counter plan to a walk full of stumbles and falls? Prayerful vigilance. It’s the only way.

So, have an adventure and walk the narrow way with its switchbacks and steep runs – the vistas are amazing. But, be vigilant, take Jesus with you, and pray.

In His grip,

jerry

An Invitation

photo via subscription to Storyblocks

I’ve received an invitation at the end of which are the simple letters RSVP, an initialization for the French phrase répondez s’il vous plait. Please respond. The onus is not upon me to say “Sure, I’ll be there” nor is it incumbent to reply, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to attend.” I simply must reply. I fear this invitation and the choice it brings. If I demur, will another invitation ever be forthcoming? If I say yes, where on God’s earth, or rather, in his Kingdom, will I end up?

You see, this is no beckoning to attend a party, to go on a motorcycle ride, or to go out to lunch. I’ve not been summoned so much as asked to come along. I felt summoned when I accepted another term on Session (Presbyterian Church governing body) and summoned when I volunteered as Clerk of Session and, having been summoned, I obeyed. No, this is different…this invitation is one of wooing me and asking me to be in for a long journey, one that if I choose to accept it, will bring a change. We Presbyterians often resist change, humorously so.

I’ve been asked to come along on an exploration of prayer. I’m saying yes and thinking that I should document this trip, thus this Calvary’s Thread post. The guidebook I’ve picked up is Richard J. Foster’s book Prayer, Finding the Heart’s True Home. That subtitle…where then will I reside when I’m through? What will I have left behind to get there?

St. Augustine said, “True, whole prayer is nothing but love.”

To find true, whole prayer we cannot allow ourselves on ounce of hate nor smidgeon of contention. I’ve learned that I’m a man of contention with a vein of a judgmental spirit at his core. I’d rather write about things I don’t like in the church, the country, or my neighborhood – write about how my ideas are the best. But prayer? I have to put contending aside and lay bare my dark soul and expose myself to pain. What if you don’t like what I say about prayer, how I’ve written it, or you find my typos, poor grammar, and childish technique distracting to the point and miss the invitation? Suck it up White (an old coaching phrase I’ve heard over the years).

Being asked to pray is an invitation to come home to a God whose arms are open wide for us, who has been yearning for us to return to fellowship with him, to sit and talk, to rest in him, and to let go of the world. This home has a door and the door, a key. The key is prayer. The door is Jesus Christ, he is the way and the truth and the life. Without him there is no entrance, no access to the Holy of Holies where we will find God’s presence and his listening ear.

We are asked home to prayer from a country on the far side of nowhere that is filled with noise, crowds, and hurry and where we jostle each other for position to be first and to get the most. We must leave this behind and come into His rest and fellowship. I’ll take the trip and hope that I have a tentative enough grasp on the far country to let go and that I have enough connection to the Holy Spirit to offer a little travelogue of the journey.

We are invited. Let’s répondez…

In His grip,

jerry

Don’t Doddle, be Led

photo courtesy of my subscription to Storyblocks

Selected portions of versus from Psalm 23: “²…he leads me beside quiet waters, ³…he guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. ⁵You prepare a table before me…”

He leads – it is up to me to follow.

He guides – it is up to me to listen to his directions.

He prepares – it is up to me to sit down and eat.

Oliver, our most outstanding Labradoodle companion, and I walk between three and five times a week from two to four miles  at each outing depending on the route and the route depending on the day of the week and my to-do list.

For much of the time I lead Ollie on-leash. Company policy, as I think of it, requires that I keep him on leash in parks proper. On the various trails we walk that are found branching out of parks and off mainstream walkways I take him off leash as long as I am reasonably sure others aren’t nearby on the trail. If he is off leash and someone comes around he goes back on leash until we are clear again.

I keep Ollie on leash when we encounter people, with or without dogs, mainly so that I can control the encounter until I’m sure of the person and their dog. Unruly dogs we ignore. Mostly we see good people who have good dogs. There are some other reasons you might observe him on-leash and out on a trail and I’ll cover those in a bit.

Since these walks are more about getting Ollie out than me exercise I make sure to let him do dog stuff. This means that while he’s on-leash I end up with an interval workout – ten steps, stop, sniff, mark - move on. Once off his leash, he gets to stop as long as he wants while I keep moving, then sprints to catch up.

Now, once in a while he’ll get off trail. It happens and I’m not too upset unless when I call him back he doddles. Doddling doodles can be irritating. If it gets serious enough he goes back onto the leash and we walk for a little bit, no dog stops included until I feel he’s learned and then he gets off leash again as long as the coast is clear.

I have to admit, and hate doing so, but Ollie is better at this with me than I am with Jesus. I doddle. I go up a wrong path and take my own sweet time getting back on the trail where he is leading. Because Jesus is who he is and operates the way he does, it’s up to me to get back on the trail, he doesn’t clip a lead to my collar, though at times it may feel that way.

He guides me on the path of righteousness for his name’s sake. He is generally pretty quiet about it, but of late, let’s say over the last several months, he’s been rather intrusive about it and his guidance has me into things I wanted nothing to do with. I’m still straining at the leash to stop and diddle around or go my own way and it’s making the walk along the path I know to be of his choosing an unpleasant one. I fear that I won’t get to the place that it will all be for his righteousness sake. Grace here is a heavy requirement.

Sometimes I don’t feel like sitting down to eat when and where the table’s been prepared for me. There are people there and some of them are difficult to eat with. There is food there that is tough to swallow for a guy that likes fast food and copious amounts of chocolate. It’s a banquet table and requires certain manners and customs to be observed when I’d rather bolt down the food and be on my way when I’d be better off digesting the whole experience.

It is always up to us. You know, free will and all that stuff? We must make the choice to be lead, to follow our guide, and to sit and eat with our Host. Jesus would rather we do these things out of an abiding love for him rather than out of fear of reprisal.

So, let us be led by Jesus and walk alongside our Guide to sit at the banquet table with him and fill ourselves with a heavenly feast.

In His grip,

jerry

Decisions, Decisions; the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Apostles cast lots to determine the replacement for Judas...

Decisions, decisions; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let me fix something right up front that I couldn’t bring myself to do in the title. There’s the Right Stuff. It’s the decision we need to make every time if it’s there for us to make.

The ugly decision is the easiest one to describe. We make them all of the time and yet they should be the easiest ones to avoid. We know the pending action is a sin or is bad for us and we make it anyway. We drink ourselves to drunkenness or we take those office supplies. We drive under rage screaming at the doofus words we’d never utter anywhere near the front steps to the church. We smoke anyway, we flirt and carry it too far, or deny our faith. We tell our children, our spouses, our friends, pastors, and ourselves lies. And sometimes we boast about the ugly decisions we made while in certain company.

These are the classic sins, the deadly sins of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Why do we sometimes brag about them? Why do we make the decision to sin like this at all? I’m hoping by the end of this post I’ll shed some light on it. That’s what I’m trying to do here, figure it out by writing it out and end up with a little better grasp of the issue to get myself to the right stuff more often.

The bad decision does not necessarily lead to the commission of a sin. Sometimes it is just a stupid mistake we’ve made like telling ourselves we have plenty of time to step off the curb and jog-walk across the street as the signal turns yellow - surely the car speeding along the boulevard will stop for the yellow even as he accelerates. When we wake up and see the worry etched on the EMT’s face is when we accept that we’ve made a bad decision and we were just plain stooopid.

Wait a minute though. What led us to that decision? If we did a little root cause analysis we’d probably see a little seasoning of deadly sins mixed in our recipe for the bad decision. At least pride and sloth. If we make enough bad decisions they become habit. It we don’t learn from close calls, near calamities, and I-told-you-so moments, they could become deadly. And that would be wrong.

The good decision. Ah, some relief here. We’re Christians and we make plenty of good decisions like when we decide to record our favorite team and go church anyway even though we aren’t up front that morning and all the while we pray nobody says anything about the Saints’ game as if nobody has their handheld device out to watch scores for their fantasy football team. That gets us every time, doesn’t it? Still, it was the good option; who can control what’s said at the ‘party’ between services in the breezeway?

Good can be a subjective determination and in the process of decision making it’s usually made in our own mind and hopefully confirmed by others later. The big question I’m wrestling with is what makes a good decision the right decision?

Some of you may be tired of hearing about Mission Arizona when I talk about stuff. Sorry about that but for more than a quarter of a century I’ve made decisions around that yearly event and it’s something most of my friends who’ll read this are familiar with. I’ve been asked many times if I’ll be going on the upcoming MAZ. My response has been the same and now it will be true about the CASA trip replacing it. I tell them, and try to convince myself, that I’m a year to year contract with God on my involvement, just like Walter Alston was with the Dodgers. I give it careful thought and prayer and I’m trying to make the right decision which by my definition will include the right motivations. You should see what trips me up in that last sentence. It’s not ‘my definition’ that does it; it’s ‘right motivations’.

Over the years I’ve decided to go or not to go that, to me, have clearly been the Holy Spirit telling me to go while at other times it’s been habit and felt right, or it was the right thing but I was unhappy with it, or it was more me than the Holy Spirit saying to stay home but I’d convinced myself it was the spirit. There were a couple of times where I truly felt it would have been fine with God either way to go or not to go.

What’s a boy to do here? What’s the key? Waiting on the Lord. Learning His voice over your own and waiting on Him to decide. It seems that this would be simple for the event or occurrence that’s a year out, or even next week. It is not; it’s hard work separating our own desires to get down the kernel of truth that makes a right decision. It seems that it would be terribly difficult to wait on God to determine if you should cross a street or for that matter, if you should raise your hand and volunteer to serve for the request being made right then, right in front of you. It doesn’t have to be. Set yourself to walk the right path for the day, reinforce it by prayer when you awake, strengthen it with communication with Jesus through the day and when the time comes he will make it known to us.

Jesus lived this way, only doing what the Father told him, showed him. When Jesus leaned over and picked the kernel of wheat, shucked it and had a snack, the Father had shown him it was right even though the Pharisees were there to condemn the act. We can live like this. We are told we can do all that Jesus did and more. It’s a tall order, getting ourselves out of the way, and letting the Spirit lead. But it’s doable.

  

In His grip,

jerry