Off The Grid...On The Pond

Been delightfully offline for the past couple of weeks.

Our travels have come to a much anticipated end.  And what a place to end: northern New England.  We plan to spend the remainder of this year here before heading back to Papua in January.

Through the incredible grace of some fellow followers of Jesus, we have been given the use of a quiet cabin on a lake in Vermont.  We're still in awe of this tender mercy the Lord has shown us.

The beauty that surrounds us and the miles between this world and the world we normally live in have already begun to wash some of the weariness from our souls.



I'll probably begin writing stuff in these pages a little more regularly now that we've gotten back on the grid a bit by having internet run to the cabin.  Was that a sacrilegious thing to do?  It almost feels like it.

A Much Harder Thing

I came to the story of the rich young guy in Luke 18 and honestly, I breezed right through it because I had already spent a fair chunk of time chewing on Mathew's account of this story a few months ago (here). But after my initial breeze-through, I forced myself to read it again...a couple things caught my eye.

You know the story: rich guy comes to Jesus wanting to know what he needs to do to 'inherit eternal life.' Jesus gives him a tract with the four spiritual laws. Oops, sorry...that's what we do. Jesus, on the other hand, completely forgets everything he learned in Sunday School and answers our man's question by telling him he needs to, get this, obey the law. Let's google it: see if we can find me a modern evangelism course that starts off by teaching people they need to obey the Ten Commandments. And yet this is exactly what Jesus does. Honestly, I don't have that one figured out yet. In any case, while it gives me significant pause, it didn't bother our rich guy one bit—he's got this Ten Commandment stuff in the bag and he tells Jesus as much.

Jesus doesn't dispute his claim to having been a good boy. He simply adds one more thing for the rich man to do. And this one thing puts the kabosh on his whole get-into-heaven quest. But wait, is it one thing that Jesus asks of him, or two? Jesus tells him

Sell everything you have and give to the poor,

and you will have treasure in heaven.

Then come, follow me.

My guess is that Part One—the garage sale idea—was enough to derail our guy. Getting any of us to part with our filthy lucre is a pretty tall order...and the more we have of it, the more attached to it we tend to be. But I really wonder what might have happened if Jesus had left it at that—just get rid of your stuff and you're good to go. Here we have a rich guy in complete control of his life. If all Jesus gave him was Part One, and our rich guy managed to pull it off, then all we'd end up with is a poor guy in complete control of his life. To me, Part Two—follow me—is the much harder thing.

Part One is expensive. Part Two is ruinous.

Part One bankrupts your wallet. Part Two bankrupts your self-determination.

'Tis Mercy All

Luke includes in his book the story of Jesus healing a blind beggar on the road to Jericho (18:35-43). I've read this story before, but for some reason I found some fresh things there this time. Three things.

The first is that we followers of Jesus haven't changed much over the years...we're still a mess. When the blind beggar tries to get Jesus' attention,

those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet

Not much has changed in the intervening two millenia. We who follow Christ can be completely out of sync with Him. We think the focus is getting to Jericho. We think the focus is building a huge church building so that we can "be more effective." His focus is the drunk we pass on the way into the church parking lot.

The second thing that strikes me as interesting is that when the blind beggar hears the crowd going by and asks what's going on, he is told that the one passing by is

Jesus of Nazareth

He is given the earthbound identity of Jesus. Of Nazareth. It's a town. Over there. Jesus of Nazareth...there's Fred of Nazareth walking behind him and over there is Susy of Nazareth. So that's who our blind guy has been told is going by. But when he cries out for him, he doesn't call out for Jesus of Nazareth, instead he hollers for

Jesus, Son of David

The guy was blind. But he saw things so much clearer than those who had good eyes. He could see exactly who Jesus was. He identifies Him with His kingly status. I think the blind guy saw that Jesus was indeed the Promised One from the line of David. Doesn't it seem like Jesus always responds dramatically to people who see Him with eyes of faith instead of fleshly eyes. People like this have stepped off the earth and into the kingdom of heaven...and so they see things differently. The Centurion in Luke 7 is another example of this.

The final thing that really strikes me about this story is that this blind guy obviously has a need. His eyes don't work for crying out loud! He obviously would love to have them fixed. So, you'd reasonably assume he'd yell out something like

fix my eyes!

But he doesn't. Instead, it's

have mercy on me!

Blind as bat and yet he sees perfectly. He knows that the ability to see isn't his right (everyone else can see, why can't I?). He doesn't demand that Jesus restore his right to see. I think he understood his rights very well. The text doesn't tell us explicitly, but by his simple cry for mercy, I think this man knew his rights...his sin had purchased him the right to hell. So he pleads not for his sight, not for justice, not for his rights, but for mercy. And that's exactly what Jesus gives him.

And this is exactly what I need. Mercy. As I write this, the sun is filtering through a forest still dripping from an overnight rain. The birds are singing. A woodpecker taps in the distance. Deep in the woods I can hear the brook tumbling down the mountain. I don't deserve to have ears to hear these things or eyes to take it in. This is mercy.

'tis mercy all, immense and free

--Charles Wesley

Fire Man

I'm not a very good fire starter. Sometimes it takes me a half hour to get a fire going...using newspaper, kerosene and a lighter. Come camping with me sometime and you'll see what I mean. Gotta be bad kerosene. Occasionally I hang with some folks that really aggravate my complex about my fire starting abilities.

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As I approached the mountains one hundred miles south of home, the early morning skies were crowded with heavy, wet clouds. Large areas of what filled the airplane's windshield were grey with rain. Still, when I called my destination on the radio they reported that their tiny little pocket of a valley was open. And so I pressed on, weaving my way around the rain in seams of decent visibility. I called the village several more times on the radio—and each time received the same assurance that the weather there was still open.

Imagining 'Well Done'

Been thinking a lot lately about a little phrase that Jesus uses in Luke 18:14. He's finishing up His story about the prayers of the pharisee and the tax collector (missionary and abortion doctor) and He makes this statement:

...everyone who exalts himself

will be humbled,

but everyone who humbles himself

will be exalted

Jesus inverts things on us again. But that should not be new to us—you can't read very far in any of the Gospels and not catch that the realm that Jesus describes as the kingdom of God runs very differently from the world we normally live in. What is curious to me here is that Jesus is stressing how the humility or exaltation happens. There's a humility born of our failures that comes our way whether we seek it or not. Likewise, we can have our nose to the grindstone, minding our own business and find that our work meets with some level of success—and a level of acclaim is thrust upon on us whether we're looking for it or not. But this is not what Jesus is talking about here—he carefully chooses His words and is specifically targeting our passionate desire to see ourselves honored and exalted. It's he 'who exalts himself' and he 'who humbles himself' that is in focus.

Mercy Me

One thing I've noticed as I've read through Luke's gospel this time is how often Jesus tells designer stories. He targets a specific audience. The mark of a true teacher...He doesn't have a canned message that He repeats verbatim irrespective of the context...He knows his audience and knows what they need to hear. The story that Jesus tells beginning in the ninth verse of the 18^th chapter He told specifically to be heard by a group of people who were

confident of their own righteousness

That has got to be the definition of ugly. And Jesus wants them to see it. Beyond that, He wants to turn their definition of beautiful on its head. Two guys praying. One a pastor...ok, let's say missionary...that's a little closer to home. The other an abortion doctor (worse, I think he may even have been a Democrat). The missionary confidently looks God in the eye and, with a straight face, thanks God that he is being used of God to reach the lost. Speaking of the lost, he expresses his profound gratitude that he's not like them...especially not like that lost guy over there with so much blood on his hands. Special section of hell for him.

As per Jesus' habit, He turns everything on its head. The righteous dude, despite his Mdiv and impressive list of evangelical credentials (a copy of which he presents to his Creator) isn't righteous at all...and it's the unrighteous dude that ends up able to stand in the presence of the Holy God. What gives? The abortion doctor sees no righteousness in himself, and unable to look God in the eye, he hangs his head in shame and, clinging to his pebble of faith, pleads,

God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Just a few words, packed with meaning...and beauty. Words that the pharisee writing these words needs to utter much more often. The amazing thing, and it almost seems criminal in my evangelical worldview, is that the abortion doctor

went home justified before God.

It's the 'missionary' that God rejects.

Lord, strip me of my confidence in my own righteousness. Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Do The Bums Like Us?

You can tell a lot about someone from a quick study of their friends. Who do I choose to hang with? Who feels comfortable hanging with me? Who would rather keep a respectful distance? Who can't stand being in the same room with me?

Like moths to a flame, the folks that gravitated to Jesus were generally people that I'm much afraid wouldn't be caught dead spending the weekend with your average evangelical. Checkout the preface to the 15^th chapter of Luke's gospel, found in verse 1:

Now the tax collectors and "sinners"

were all gathering around to hear him

Do the bums like us? How about gays and strident evolutionists? Sure, in the field of debate we are bound to disagree strongly, but as people, do they want to go camping with us, for instance, just because they feel warmly accepted...and we're fun to be around? We love the field of debate and the thought of camping with a beer drinking sinner gives us the heebs.

Peace In The Middle East

Just finished reading Mosab Hassan Yousef's story, Son of Hamas. Absolutely a wonderful read. Ripped through it in a couple of sittings. The story of the son of one of the founders of Hamas caught in the vortex of the eye-for-an-eye Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I've been privileged to witness a number of occasions where a people group receives the New Testament for the first time in their own language (one story here), so perhaps it's not surprising that I found the most gripping passage in the book to be where Mosab reads the New Testament for the first time in his life. This young Palestinian, deeply involved in the conflict, reads Matthew's record of the Sermon on the Mount. This is what he has to say about his first encounter with the words of Jesus:

Everything He says is beautiful. I couldn't put the book down. Every verse seemed to touch a deep wound in my life. It was a very simple message, but somehow it had the power to heal my soul and give me hope.

Then I read this: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven."

That's it! I was thunderstruck by these words. Never before had I heard anything like this, but I knew that this was the message I had been searching for all of my life.

As a simple taxi-driver for remote missionaries, I feel a bit ridiculous even commenting on the most unsolvable international problem in our world today...but looking at these words of Jesus that completely changed the direction of Mosab's life—and gave him a love for the Israeli people—it seems to me that a small movement of people, on both sides of the Jordan, comitted to loving their enemies...this would be Jesus' starting point.

2000 years after Matthew records Jesus' words, they are still having an impact in the land in which they were written...bringing true peace to a few in the Middle East.

Eden Leaking Through

Sitting on the dunes at the edge of the Grand Traverse Bay as I write this. Waves gently lap the shore. The sun is coming up behind me. The ripples on the water dance in that magical first light of day. I wonder why it is that God has allowed so much of the original wonder that He created on this planet to filter through the thick fog of sin. We have badly broken this place and it seems to me that God should have abandoned us to our own devices...with the natural consequence that complete chaos and brokenness become the absolute rule. A kind of permanent post-nuclear winter from the fallout of the sin-bomb. And, truthfully, to a large extent, that is true of the world. Yet there are still moments of beauty, tranquility and peace. Like this one.

As I walk out to the waters edge this morning, two young rabbits hop themselves out of my way. A pair of mallards float peacefully in the shallows. The sun is warming my back and it feels almost personal. The wild flowers that crest the tips of the grasses on the dunes display a beauty that seems wasteful and extravagant. Grass, this beautiful? Why?

Heaven On Earth

Traveling from Papua back to the United States is always a bit of a Twilight Zone experience.  I'm convinced if I took most Papuans and whisked them off to America, they would believe that they had died and gone to heaven.  At least until they figured out that they can't get sago here.  Everything works, everything is new, everything is sterile, so many options, so much wealth, so much fun stuff to do.  On the surface there don't appear to be any problems.  And that is a problem.

Perhaps the feeling of stepping into utopia was a bit more intense for us this time...the tropical disease department took one last parting shot at Cameron and gave him dengue fever on the first leg of our journey. If you think malaria is bad, try dengue on for size.  Google it.  He was one sick little boy.

So stepping into a world where the skeeters aren't out to kill you feels a bit like paradise.  Of course, it probably didn't help that we got off the airplane and went straight into the beautiful Amish countryside of northern Indiana.