Good Grief...Where Did That Come From?

I believe that Christians inherently carry grief that, for the most part, remains beneath the surface. It is the grief for our God having to suffer for all of our shortcomings and the knowledge that we do not live up to the sacrifice He made for us. Our grief bubbles out from the least of events to our most poignant losses and carries with it components of the personal loss and the underlying grief for our inadequacies. Grief should never be summarily dismissed as an unchristian display of disbelief; after all, didn’t Jesus himself grieve for his friend Lazarus, his family, and friends? I encourage you to read John 11: 1 – 44 as Jesus shows us how to grieve and comfort those who also grieve, and transcend the grief to victory.

My latest brush with grief has caught me by surprise. It was like a cloud on the horizon, all fluffy and white, harmless seeming as it made its appearance, only to reveal its dark underlining as it cleared the horizon and came fully into view. For certain, this was no monsoon but a cloud that carried with it the promise of a brief shower and the potential for heavenly fireworks and the rumblings of discontent. So strange that the loss of our pet cockatiel Mo, whom I dubbed The Sentry as I dug his grave, would release such feelings complete with all the classic pains. I learned many years ago not to be ashamed of my penchant for emotional displays; they are a part of who I am and I try to embrace the moment and share it with my friends and family to become a point of bonding. I believe that grief, like many wounds, benefits from being in the open and breathing to help the healing process. Bearing that in mind, we must guard against letting the grief fester and become infected; the complications can be costly.

I let one of my greatest loses grow to the point of becoming cancerous. I’d lost one of my closest of friends, Doug Clark, to an untimely accident at the hands of a drunk driver, Doug being the only one in his car that died and was the only one in the car without a broken bone. I questioned God to the point of swearing to myself that I would ask Him for an explanation of this when I finally meet Him. Where was He for me in this? Was not Doug the first person I knelt with in prayer that opened the door to Christ to enter his heart? How could He take him like this, what was the point? I carried those questions and they fermented into a bitterness that could only be cured by a miracle healing, one came at the hands of the first Mission Arizona team I was on that, when I exposed the scars of this, laid hands on me and brought healing to my spirit. The faith and capabilities of junior high students are amazing.

Let’s wrap this up with a quick look at Jesus and Lazarus, shall we? Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus was ill but did not immediately run to Bethany to heal him. Instead, Jesus continued with what he was doing and operated in faith that God was yet to be glorified in Lazarus. Even though Jesus faced the enmity of those in the area, once Lazarus was dead he left for Bethany knowing God would be glorified in him and his friend Lazarus, “the one you love” (John 11: 3). Upon arriving on the scene Jesus faced the questions about him not being there for them and then his grief came into the open and he grieved for his friend and those who also loved Lazarus. In short, Jesus recognized that grief was on the horizon, continued to do the Father’s will, met the grief when it came upon him and his friends, and then took charge of the grief and in faith raised Lazarus from the dead. I love the last part of this scripture where Jesus says “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” To me He is saying, take off the bindings of your grief and be free, rejoice that my Kingdom draws near.” And to that I have to say that I have a large heart, plenty of room there to remember the lost in kindness, and let more in.

In His Grip - jerry

Who’s in Control Here Anyway?

Romans 7: 15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” (NIV)

I have been casting about looking for something to write about, to post in Calvary’s Thread, for weeks now as well as something for Iron Side Up and PAR and have little success to show for the casting. The struggle is not necessarily over a lack of material, there was Mission Arizona, church each Sunday, riding to work and little jaunts around town, and I spent two days in PAR’s first destination taking notes and yet, there has been no writing. I feel so strongly that I should be writing; so much so that sometimes I think that if I’m not writing or working at it then I am distracted, to the point that even sleep seems a waste of time. So then, why am I not writing? Certainly the responsibilities of work and maintaining a home and family take a lot of time and cannot logically be set aside. Indeed, if I were to set them aside, what then would I write about? Abandoning myself and my loved ones? Not likely.

This past Sunday was Music Appreciation Sunday at LCPC and the Romans scripture was read as part of Pastor Wilson’s sermon about Self Control as one of the Fruits of the Spirit and off I ran with reading more of Romans than I have in some time. Self control; I sorely lack it and thus what I do is not what I want to be doing. Putting aside sleeping, eating, working, and home responsibilities I still have hours that I can devote to story telling. My biggest enemy is time wasting and the biggest chunk of that is in front of the TV and then the other are games on my “smart” phone. How can I be saved from myself, or can I? I can, but not by myself or in myself but only through God’s grace can I change patterns that I’ve set up for decades. It doesn’t help that I have such low self-esteem when it comes to writing and believing that it makes a difference making avoidance of failure a favorite pastime. God has not made this directive easy.

My answer came later in Romans 7, good of Paul to provide the answer to the question, no?

Romans 7: 21 – 25 “So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

In light of that, I need to do several things:

1 –Believe that I delight in God’s law in my inner being and feed that consistently and the well will not be so dry and I will that much closer to the creative nature of God.

2 – Believe that I am delivered by Jesus Christ and that He continues to deliver me and act like it. Walk away from those things I hate and cling to those things I love.

3 – Don’t be satisfied with token attempts, cry out to God with continued trips to the foot of the cross in search of Calvary’s Thread.

4 – Believe that what I’m doing has merit, even if just to connect myself more firmly to His Grace.

In His grip - jj white

MAZ in the Rear View Mirror

I haven’t written a word to print in weeks, at least four since it was a week or so before Mission Arizona (MAZ) 2012 and it is now two and half weeks after. It seems a lifetime ago that we were frantically painting the last of four brick walls the team built so that we could get on the road, packing strategically so that the truck and trailer with Paul and Jacob could head straight home, and making our way to the wonderfully refurbished church sign for our team photo. Much of the emotional highs of the trip for me have already faded with a couple of weeks of turmoil at the office, two road trips to the north, and a weekend in Santa  Barbara for Teya’s birthday with my parent’s down from Oregon for the festivities. Most of the hardships of the trip filtered away during affirmations while both the kids and adults said things about each other that showed the spotlight on all that was good about this short mission trip and service week; it was like a kalidascope of great aspects of each person. People often ask if I’m going next year after each trip and I always respond that I don’t start thinking about it for at least a month after the highs and lows have evened out to allow for a more objective time of consideration and prayer. I like to draw a parallel for my participation in MAZ to Walter Alston and his tenure with the Dodgers as manager of the team. I understand that he always had a one year contract and met after each season to determine the owner’s satisfaction with his performance and he managed the team for 23 seasons. I have a year to year agreement with God on weather I go and how involved I’ll be. The process will likely be kicked off with this post and last a few months. I have much to do and need to make some significant progress on them before I’ll know for sure.

This trip was full of surprises just as each one of the twenty trips I’ve done; even the one I stayed home on a couple of years ago held a surprise which was the simple fact that I believed He wanted me home that year. This year’s biggest surprise was a dog that I just could not be mean enough to in order to keep it away; the mantel of the stern task oriented timeline driven discipline guy has worn thin. I would much prefer to laugh, play, and goof off with the kids and joke around with all the adults but that role has not been mine to play. This is not to say that I don’t have fun, I have plenty and great memories with a number of very cool kids and friends. Naynay, as the dogs shortened name came to be, was well ensconced with the early group by the time I arrived with the bulk of the team on the Monday following Easter and it was too late to impose the rules of “outside the camp” for the reservation dogs. No petting, feeding, or otherwise fraternizing with the dogs inside our sleeping area is the way I like it so that we can avoid distractions and the keep the specter of an animal coming home with us away. Dashed beyond all recognition was my resolve to stick to the plan and I have to say it must have been God’s plan with Naynay; to what purpose still remains a mystery to me.

We did a lot of work on the reservation at the Vah Ki and Stotonic Presbyterian churches. If you’ll excuse the run on sentence we replaced the floor tiles in both bathrooms, poured a concrete slab equipped with a finished block wall for seating, replaced seven or eight windows in the 1890s adobe church building, broke out bad concrete and re-poured them to make the walkways more usable to the wheel chair and walker-bound folks, installed a drip watering system to two new trees, filled in three sections of a wall to the meeting area to hold back the desert sands, painted over graffiti, restored the church sign with the artful Paige and Delany as primaries and covered it with Plexiglas to protect it from graffiti (brilliant idea Todd), repaired numerous toilets, closed in and added windows to the mud room entrance to the fellowship hall, added another sand barrier to the other entrance to the hall, sanded and painted the floor of the other 1890s adobe church and replaced about fifty feet of eight inch baseboard, cooked a meal and held a mini-VBS for the neighborhood and church folks, and dozens of other little things that escape me now. We did a lot of work and that was all good but the thing that stands out for me as special was the mini-VBS that Ashley Adamson thought of and the impromptu testimony from Kenny, the nineteen year old son of the lead elder from the Stotonic church. After sharing his heartfelt story of how he came to be saved he had each of us share something about ourselves and that was fantastic even if we kept it simple. The exchange between the Pima people and our group that evening was very gratifying. Kenny then presented our kids and adults with some reusable lunch bags with water bottles and a cool logo from an event called “Mul Chu Tha”, running in Pima is the simple translation although there is more depth to it. Then Kenny and his dad, Lenny, presented me with a tee shirt they had from a special event celebrating and depicting the flag raising on Iow Jim with the phrase “Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue”. As with many American Indian tribes I’ve seen, the Pima deeply honor their veterans; one of their own, Ira Hays, was part of the flag-raising, last in line and closest to the flag itself. I am very humbled by this and feel undeserving since I escaped the horrors of the Viet Nam War by the luck of the draft and did not serve in the armed forces.

I was at MAZ ‘12 with 35 fantastic kids and adults and thought of them often while riding to Sacramento a couple of Saturdays ago. Each of them played a significant role in this trip and it is they who make it worthwhile, their smiles and friendship gave me miles of pleasant riding along Highway 5, a long and boring route for some. I’ll have to make an attempt at listing each one and something special about them in a post. It may not surprise some to hear this next part but most of you will raise an eyebrow to it. As much as I love the Pima people of the Gila River Indian Community and cherish serving them, the biggest reason I can think of for doing this trip are the kids that go. Being a part of the opportunity they have to serve, learn to live in community in adverse conditions, seek God in new and refreshing ways, exposing them to the plight of the poor and disadvantaged, and preparing them for other avenues of service is, for me, the most rewarding aspect of the trip. It is, as it always should be, about them. All right, we can throw in all the advisors into that mix as well since we all are children of God and have much to learn. I’ve run way past my blog post length limit and still have so much to relate…

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Burger King

A couple of Sundays ago Matt, Ashley, and the kids came down from Santa Barbara for a few days at the start of Ashley’s spring break. Part of the plan for Sunday was that some of the family would take in “The Hunger Games”; I hadn’t planned on going but it ended up with Ashley, Lauren, and me. We went early enough to grab something to eat before getting into the long waiting line, something I very rarely do is to wait in line on an opening weekend for a big movie. I am more the “let’s wait a week or two, still see it on the bigger screens but not with the agony of waiting in line” type. On the way through the parking structure directly to the In and Out was a homeless man waiting around for a hand out and not being really overt about his request, if I had my blinders in place I could have, and did actually, walk right by without giving it much thought. While in line Ashley asked if we could add a cheese burger to our order for the man; what’s a dad going to do, say no? What does the Heavenly Father do when his children ask for a way to help somebody? He provides them the way. We added the burger and Ashley made the delivery. I’m very pleased with how my kids are turning out; it is quite a blessing when they show me how compassionate they are, how thoughtful, and how loving they are. It can also be a bit convicting.

Yesterday after my morning swim I decided that a Burger King breakfast was in order since it was just half a block out of my way back to the office. My path down Main Street in Alhambra to the “restaurant” from the LA Fitness took me on the opposite side from a large church whose entryway is used by homeless folks for nights. On the way by I observed a couple of them stirring and thought to myself “I’ll just stay on this side of Main on my way back and cross to office down the way” and I was immediately brought up short. I was the bad guy in the parable of The Good Samaritan, down to the very act of walking down the street on the opposite side so as not to get involved. This is not the first time I’ve wrestled with this conundrum of how to meet a need larger than myself and on this very spot and with coming face to face with the needy. I changed my approach and determined to buy gift coupons to hand to them on my way by except that Burger King sells gift cards instead and so I got one. The signals would have favored the lesser path and I had to push the walk button and wait for the signal change to take myself by them. There are three that morning while usually there are one or two and as I approached one of them was straitening up from being sick in the city flower garden and the area reeked of alcohol confirming my decision to get a gift card over cash. The unfortunate reality is that they’d use the cash for their addiction rather than what they need, food. I hand off the card to one of the men and pat him on the should giving a silent prayer and feeling broken myself rather than good about it; I probably should have dropped off my breakfast as well since there were three men and stuck to the instant oatmeal I keep in my file drawer. I’ve tossed a pebble in the rushing river trying to dam it up.

What are we to do with the homeless and the acute need of the hungry? There are any number of institutional ways of handling it and we participate in them. We have money withheld for “Habitat for Humanity” from my check and that’s good but pretty antiseptic. At LCPC we have a number of efforts underway and we support most of them. We give to the mission trips; the Rosarito Orphanage getting started, Project Dominicana, the Men’s Mexico Trip, and then there is Mission Arizona where we give and I go along and get dirty with the mission team. Our Children’s Ministry group supports the Children’s Hunger Fund as well as a number of other support efforts and our Deacon’s do the Neighbors helping Neighbors as well as supplying a closet full of food and gift cards for families in the area in deep need.

These are all good and worthy efforts to be involved in but I still wrestle with the problem when I come face to face with it. The person who is begging and hungry, standing right in front of me does not want to hear “I give at the office”. What does that do for him? I see a need for me to fundamentally change the way I approach this. First, I cannot purposely avoid the issue by walking on the other side of the street; that is no longer a real option. I need to meet the person and assess the situation for what it is in the moment. If I think that what aid I am equipped to give them is really harm, as in giving cash to the homeless person who has a substance abuse problem, then I need to address them and decline. Secondly, I need to arm myself to give some instant aid if possible perhaps by carrying gift cards/certificates to a local food place for the people I come across. I could even take this a step further and purposely make my way by this church and do a census, buy them all a breakfast and forego my own or delay my own. Thirdly, I could possibly get directly involved with one of the other missions to the poor.

At this point in my post I could let it go for your consideration but I must throw a cautionary tale out for you to think about as well. Last summer Cindy and I were taking a late walk during a weekend away and the street was pretty deserted. A homeless man stopped his cart to allow us to pass by the little bottleneck in the sidewalk and did not seem to be asking for any assistance while simply being polite. I smiled and gave him a nod in recognition of this courtesy as we moved along and we were met with an explosion of emotion from him and a tirade ensued about what I thought was so funny and a rant went on about many unrelated injustices that he’s suffered. This man was mentally and/or emotionally disturbed either as a result of or resulted in his homeless condition.  If any of us determine that we are called in some way to minister to the homeless we need to exercise some caution as to when, where, and how we go about it. The homeless can be desperate and disturbed and we need to be prepared for that and pray for guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit as we go about the Lord’s business. I guess that can be true about most things…

In His Grip - jerry

Inside Out

I have a thousand things I could put in this post; Mission Arizona is consuming my thoughts and yet I’m unprepared. My writing has dwindled to nearly nothing this week and my scripture reading has been sporadic. The conflicts in time and emphasis are poised to topple me over and in a heap. I’m in a struggle about MAZ coming up in two weeks; is this trip God’s ultimate will for me now? Is it something that He thinks is okay for me to do? Or, God forbid, is it not His will at all? The doubts are crushing and I should have seen them coming, they always do.

Still the only things I can think of to share right now are the words of a praise song from this morning that I’ll write as a prayer arrangement. “From the Inside Out” by Hillsong United:

A thousand times I’ve failed, still Your mercy remains and should I stumble again, still I’m caught in Your grace. Everlasting; Your light will shine when all else fades. Never-ending; Your glory goes beyond all fame.

Your will above all else, my purpose remains. The art of losing myself, in brining You praise. Everlasting. Never-ending.

In my heart, in my soul Lord, I give You control. Consume me from the inside out, Lord let justice and praise become my embrace to love You from the inside out.

Your glory goes beyond all fame and the cry of my heart is to bring You praise from the inside out.

Amen

The Good Shepherd

John 10: 11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”

Have you set yourself on a Lenten path of sacrifice, searching, and repentance? How is that going for you? As for me, for as long as I can remember I’ve been successful at giving things up for Lent, saying extra prayers, and getting to Easter in one piece. For this year I put the task of writing a page a day in front of me as my Lenten journey knowing I’d have to give up time wasting activities to do get it done and I’ve failed over the last several days. It takes self-discipline, the kind I apparently lack, to take something on and put aside other mindless activities. It is a lesson in failure for me but one that may be embedded deeper than those chocolate or soda free Lents of my past. While in college I took an Art History class mostly because I couldn’t draw, paint, or sculpt and I needed the “humanities” units. Our professor assigned us the task of finding a piece of art and sketching it out and then writing about the elements of the piece using our sketch to demonstrate our points. After many hours of trying to sketch out a simple charcoal drawing by Rembrandt and failing miserably just to get a semblance of his sketch on paper I was forced to give up. I couldn’t get the thing to fit the page or when I did the angles were completely wrong, and then the shading… I knew I was going to get my first F of college but I wanted to turn in something so I wrote “A Lesson in Failure” which was rewarded with an A and the explanation that my struggles in all the areas I described had given me a unique perspective and that the narrative of my struggles demonstrated that I had learned more that way than if a simple sketch came with no thought at all. Other artistic students had done some pretty nice drawings but were not rewarded as nicely as I had been. Now you know one of the reasons why I’m writing in the search for my creative side. We can learn from our Lenten mistakes because we have a good shepherd to take care of us and teach us.

Jesus is the good shepherd and it took the ultimate in self-discipline for him to lay down his life for us, his sheep. He sets the great example for us; surely we can lay aside rather simple self-seeking pleasures to take on the Kingdom purpose in our lives. If Jesus can lay down his life, I can set aside watching so much mindless TV, explore my creative side, and write a page a day. I can set aside being a mindless driving machine and be kinder on the road, set aside a driven goal at work and be a kinder colleague, or set aside my routine to listen to somebody in need of an ear before church service. I can.

John 10: 14 – 16a “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also.”

He is our shepherd, we know him, he knows the Father and through him we know the father. We must be like him and recognize when we are to be in the role of the good shepherd and lovingly tend the sheep that the Great Shepherd brings to us to care for. There are other sheep not in the sheep pen and we must bring them also and must protect them from the ravening wolves, those thieves and robbers who do not come through the gate to the sheep (John 10: 7-10). Jesus is the gate and we enter the pasture through him, become shepherds by him, and obtain the rewards of knowing the Father because of him and his sacrifice.

Good shepherds; find your sheep, tend your flocks.

On the Road to Emmaus

Luke 24, 13 – 35: “On the Road to Emmaus”                

Two men, one named Cleopas, took the opportunity of a seven mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus to talk about a tumultuous week for them where Jesus had made a triumphal entry to the city only to be buried a week later. They heard the news from the women that the body of Jesus was not found and that angels had told them He had be raised from the dead and yet they walked in unbelief along a dusty track when Jesus came to them and, I think, because of their unbelief they did not recognized them. Jesus could have told them then and there it was he they were discussing but he let them continue. I imagine that had they recognized him on their own they would have worshipped and had no need of the lessons Jesus was about to lay on them. Verse 27: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” Jesus broke bread with them in verse 30, their eyes were opened and he disappeared in verse 31 and then verse 32: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” They got up at once and did better than a 10K to get back to where they belonged and shared the story with the Disciples.

Do you find it as I do, that along whatever part of life’s journey you are on that Jesus had been walking with you, explaining himself to you, and only afterwards did we recognize Him? Our hearts burn within us, we know something, someone, is right there but we do not see it. I do it all too frequently and it is because of my unbelief that I hadn’t seen Him there with me at my deepest need. We shouldn’t fret too much about that as long as we recognize Him when he breaks bread with us and then get back to where we belong and tell the story to the other disciples.

I cling to the thought of Jesus meeting me on the way because I am so frequently on the way and busy with the journey that I need to have him meet me in that way or I fear that I’ll miss him completely. For years during Mission Arizona I’ve sought Jesus out because I just couldn’t do what was needed and felt that the trip was failing, that I was failing. Most of the time I hear the still small voice tell me that He’ll meet me on the way so I get up from me seat in the desert, start gathering the kids from their quiet times believing that He’s there and that brings me peace. He has never failed to show himself in the children or adults of the team, the people of the reservation, or some other seemingly insignificant event. I’ll be moving through the day, herding the groups along, taking stock of our progress and then Jesus is there with us. What a fortunate man I am!

It is an awesome feeling to recognize Jesus in midst of the din and clutter of our lives during the hectic chase to complete all the tasks that we’ve piled up like a homecoming bonfire stack of wood. Imagine the cacophony of questions Cleopas and his pal were bombarded with once they related their experience to the Disciples. All the side discussions, the rumble of excitement and then Jesus himself is there with them and simply says “Peace be with you.” (Luke 24: 36) He had to settle them down just like we have to settle down our children and quiet their spirits so he could explain himself to them again and impart the lesson so they would be ready once the Holy Spirit came upon them at Pentecost. In verse 45 he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. How I need that yet again, meet me in the way.

Jesus, open our minds to understand the Scriptures and see you here in our midst.