Careful of what you forward

April Fool’s day is still a day for pranks and tricks. Some of the best ones have been pulled in the media. As reported in the McCready County Record, “…back in 1957, a BBC (British Broadcasting Corp) TV show called "Panorama" announced that because of a very mild winter and the elimination of the dreaded "spaghetti weevil," Swiss farmers were harvesting a bumper crop of spaghetti. Along with this report, the BBC ran film of "Swiss peasants" happily plucking strands of spaghetti off of low hanging tree limbs. Many viewers were taken in by this prank, flooding the BBC with calls asking how to plant their own "spaghetti trees." They were told to place a stick of dry pasta in a can of tomato paste and hope for the best.”

April Fool’s day tricks have lost a little of their luster, however, because of the Internet. Via email, we perpetuate myths like the BBC trick, over and over throughout the year. No, Madelyn Murray O’Hair has no active petition with the FCC to ban Christian programming on the air. If someone forwards the message to you and ask you to send it on, just say “no”. No, there is no movie being made called “Corpus Christi” that portrays Jesus as a homosexual. (I got this one just last week, forwarded out of the office of the City of Lake City.)

Before you forward anything; before you get incensed; make sure that you check out the truth of rumors and petitions. When we perpetuate myth at the expense of truth, we compromise our ability to stand for the Truth – and that is our primary mission.

Welcome to Spring!

It’s that wonderful time of year that is a study in contrasts in north Florida. It is beautiful, isn’t it? The trees are budding out; the birds are singing; the flowers are blooming.

But there is the flip side. All north Floridians drive the same color car: yellow. Pollen from the pines and live oaks is visible both from the car color to the sniffles of allergy sufferers. It is also dry. It doesn’t look dry because of all the green, but it is dry. Dry means the possibility of forest fires.

This contrast outside points toward the contrast in each of us. Rarely is life perfect. At the same time that we experience great happiness, we can have nagging little irritations. Or, at the same time that we experience great hurt and tragedy, we can be blessed by little things.

Christian living is a matter of choice. We chose to place the One who has demonstrated His ultimate care for us in the position of control. When the negatives come, we yield to His plan that demands our personal inconvenience or suffering. When the blessings come, we remember that it is not a matter of coincidence but of conscious giving on His part. And, we say, “Thank you”. Have you given thanks for His blessings today?

A bad place to hide

A free-tailed bat with an injured wing found a quiet, orange place to rest and recover. Things went well until the orange place suddenly began to move…rapidly. Three engines ignited with such force that mere seconds later the orange place was moving 17,180 mph. The orange place was the side of the space shuttle. NASA scientists admit the bat probably died.

When we are wounded, our tendency is to be bat-like. Too often our pattern is to go off by ourselves and try to lick our wounds. We want to find a place out of the public eye; we don’t want to seek help; and, we don’t really want to deal with the situation.

When we are wounded, Christ points us in the right direction: reconciliation and correction. We need to identify our hurt and seek to be quickly reconciled to the brother or sister who wounded us. If we don’t we can end up in a place that does not contribute to restoration. Instead, it simply explodes.

If you’ve been hurt lately, remember the bat!

The Brevity of Life

Bartlett, Tennessee is a suburb of Memphis where we spent one of our stateside assignments as missionaries. The news out of Bartlett from the weekend was about the disappearance of a former model from her home. Yesterday police went to interview a possible suspect. Before they could get to his room, he had killed himself with a long rifle – leaving a note about where her body could be found.

Just a few miles from the Baptist College of Florida are the towns of Samson and Geneva, Alabama. Yesterday a man burned his mother’s home igniting a rampage of killing that ended with 9 people being murdered before he was killed himself.

Sunday, Fred Winters stood in the pulpit at First Baptist, Maryville, Illinois and preached a message of hope. Before he could finish, a man known to be mentally ill entered the church with weaponry capable of killing 30, and ended Fred Winters life.

Psalm 39:5 declares: You, indeed, have made my days short in length, and my life span as nothing in Your sight. Yes, every mortal man is only a vapor. That wisp, that vapor can end at any moment…without explanation by human terms. Accusation will be leveled at God in these moments: how can a loving God allow something like this to happen? The response is that we live in a fallen world where man’s actions are reflective of his nature. God declares that humankind is fundamentally flawed; morally skewed; spiritually compromised. He offers Himself as the solution via His intervention in this world. But His intervention is extremely offensive to the human consciousness and people do not easily accept His revelation of their nature or His solution.

So, Christians, we press on: to proclaim Truth in the midst of self-deception. It is the Truth that Fred Winters died proclaiming: Jesus came, lived and died in self-sacrificial Love to clear the way for fallen man to come to Holy God. We must not forget that people die without that Message…and that they can die at without Him at any moment.

Grizzly details

We will pray tonight for President Obama, for our legislative and judicial leaders and for our military. We will, if not careful, complain about how terrible conditions are in our country and how the administration is making rookie mistakes in the World Series of economic competition. Some will admit to fear about the future.

One of my favorite writers over the years is Frederick Forsyth. Two of his books that you may have heard of are “The Day of the Jackal” and “the Odessa file”. Forsyth is stuck in the African nation of Guinea-Bissau right now due to the events of this weekend where the president of the country was killed by the military. Here’s how he describes what happened: "They went to his villa, threw a bomb through the window which hurt him, but didn't kill him," Forsyth told the BBC late Tuesday. "The roof came down, that hurt him but didn't kill him either.”
"He struggled out of the rubble and was promptly shot. This, however, still didn't kill him. They then took him to his mother-in-law's house and chopped him to bits with machetes," he added.*

I’ve been in the middle of an African battle. I’ve seen the terror in African eyes at the uncertainty of life and the fear of what is happening. I feel what the people of Guinea-Bissau are feeling.

So here’s what I want to say to you: Did you know that we live in the greatest country in the world, despite the problems that we face? I did not vote for our president; I disagree with much of his social agenda. Yet I will not only pray for our president, I will also render to him the respect he deserves. I will go to bed tonight and pray that the Lord will guide our government and help to have wisdom about what is right and the courage to do it. One thing I won’t fear is that the military leadership of our country will invade the White House and kill the president.

*(Copyright © 2009 AFP)

Yes, I know I’m blessed but….

The big sporting news of the week is that Tiger Woods is coming back to play golf after recovering from significant injury. He is such an incredible athlete that he won his last tournament, the US Open….with a broken leg. He has a personal fortune of 600 million dollars, homes and cars….and it’s just not fair. It is not fair that he has all of this and I don’t.

Some of the greatest Christians I know live in mud huts. They plant and they reap and they suffer when there is not enough rain. They have no money; no retirement funds, and, no real promise of government help when they get too old to work. It’s just not fair that I have more than they do.

Life is a matter of perspective. I am blessed; so blessed. I have pretty good health, a great family and some good “stuff”. Yet, if I’m not careful, I can visit with someone who has more “stuff” and feel that somehow I’ve been shorted. The problem with the title is one word: but. Real Christian living begins with being able to say, “Yes, I know I’m blessed” and then put the period at the end.

Yes, I know I’m blessed.

Doing good while doing wrong

Being from Memphis I am more aware than a lot of people about the good work done by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Recognized as the best children’s cancer hospital in the world, it fulfils an interesting legacy. The TV entertainer Danny Thomas created St. Jude with several Memphis businessmen to repay God’s blessings on his life. To expand the legacy, he influenced Arab-Americans (especially those of Lebanese descent, like himself) to support this altruistic effort. Now thousands of others have joined the support network while others experience the benefits of the ministry. Though I supported St. Jude for years in different ways, I never expected to see any direct benefit. In the last several years, one of my young cousins has received treatment and had his life extended via this dynamic medical center. I am more thankful for St. Jude than ever.

Memphis finds ways to support the hospital. One of the most visible ways is through the PGA golf stop. Originally the Memphis Open, it became the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic with St. Jude as the sponsored charity. Later, St. Jude became the primary title of the tournament as the St. Jude Memphis Classic. Federal Express began to lend huge financial support until it moved to sponsorship of the FedEx Cup on tour. It recruited Stanford Financial Group to become the financial sponsor of the golf tournament.

Stanford Financial group was raided yesterday and accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission with $8 Billion in fraud. This is the latest example of the illusion that doing good can offset doing wrong; of an altruistic public persona while being corrupt morally. It illustrates the quandary of man. The residual goodness of God left by His breathing the breath of life into Adam war marred permanently and graphically by the fall into sin. Yes, fallen man is Danny Thomas; but even more, fallen man is Bernard Madoff and Alan Stanford. The only hope for a world like this is the incredible goodness of Jesus Christ and the only way a world like this hears the message is if we live it out and share it.

Community

Last night, I was reminded of the fact that there is yearning in man’s soul for community. The community I saw in operation was expressed by people who have grown up together and have known each other over a long time. It was a fulfillment of the kind of community expressed in the old Cheers theme:

Making your way in the world todayTakes everything you've got;Taking a break from all your worriesSure would help a lot.Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to goWhere everybody knows your name,And they're always glad you came;You want to be where you can see,Our troubles are all the same;You want to be where everybody knows your name.

The challenge of church is to help us move beyond the community of a local bar or even of the local community. Isn’t it sad that we rarely achieve it? Most often people talk about where they “go” to church. They come to a worship service; listen to the hymns (and maybe sing a little); hear the sermon; and, then exit quickly out the backdoor. Community, Christian community never comes into play for them.

The biblical word that we seek is koinonia. It means partnership and sharing based on Christ’s love for us. It cannot be achieved by sitting in the same building together or even taking a piece of chicken out of the same bucket in the fellowship hall. It requires commitment to one another and that most valuable commodity, time. Don’t you want to be where everybody knows more than just your name?

Pilgrim's Progress

Pilgrim’s Progress is a classic Christian allegory written by John Bunyan, who was serving time in prison for preaching without a license. He was at the time a Baptist deacon and later became pastor of the Baptist church in his town. Since it was written in the 1600s, the style and language make reading Pilgrim’s Progress a hard slog. Still, if you’ve never read it, I would recommend it because of its spiritual value.

For me, its greatest value in my life was teaching clearly that this life that we are in is a journey and is a journey of progress. Satan loves to bring guilt to our lives by accusing us with a truth: you’re not what you ought to be. It is true. I’m not what I ought to be. With the time that has gone by since I met Christ, with the tools that I possess to access God’s Word, with the incredible manifestations of God’s power and presence that I’ve been able to observe, I should be much further in my walk with the Lord. Bunyan helps to remind me that this journey is filled with distractions, diversions and detours that slow my progress. But, there is progress!

I’ve seen this quote in various expressions over the years, but the first time stands out for me. Billy Graham had come to Memphis for a crusade. Among those who spoke as part of the crusade was one of the local news people, a black lady named Francis Kelley. She recounted her testimony – a life that had many ups and downs – but a life firmly committed to Jesus Christ. She wound it up by saying, “I’m not what I ought to be and I’m not what I’m going to be, but thank God, I’m better than I was.” Are you making progress?

On the struggle

After the Men’s Meeting last night, I returned home and watched two different basketball games. In the first, my beloved Memphis Tigers struggled (again) from the free throw line and faced losing the game. Down one with 4.5 seconds left, we turned to Antonio Anderson – a senior who had played horribly all game long. Antonio drove the length of the court straight at Tulsa’s seven foot center and banked in a layup just before time expired. In the second, Kentucky blew away Tennessee. You will remember my priorities: I pull for the University of Memphis and whoever is playing Tennessee. Kentucky’s victory was sealed by one of the greatest performances in college basketball history. Their guard, Jodie Meeks, connected for 54 points. Almost everything he threw up toward the basket went in.

The goal of Christian living is the same as the goal of college basketball: to win. Paul uses racing imagery and boxing imagery to know that we are in a process and that our goal is to obtain victory. Sometimes we struggle. When we do, it is often frustrating to look around to see a star. Life seems to be coming easy for them; they seem to be making incredible progress without much apparent effort. If we are honest, however, there are times in our lives where it also comes easy. Maybe not on the order of Jodie Meeks – but few people ever attain that level. For us, the better comparison is Antonio. A player who had struggled all game long – whose shot was not falling, who couldn’t hit a free throw. Yet, in the final timeout prior to the last 4.5 seconds, he asked the coach to be the one with the ball. Even when we fall; even when we struggle; we should always be ready to ask the Lord to use us for His glory.