Our black lab has established a ritual. If she spots one of us going upstairs she hastens to get on the stairs right in front of us and then stops. It’s time for a tummy rub. I’m not sure how long she would stay there. She outlasts me and I ultimately have to nudge her out of the way. As we rub her tummy she gets this far off look of ecstasy. All is right with the world.

She reminds me of my relationship with my heavenly Father. Every time I see an opportunity for a blessing I rush to the occasion. Like our dog I would linger forever. I wonder if God ever has to nudge me out of the way and say, “Hey, you’ve had enough for now.”

Do you remember the last words of the hymn, “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”? They ring in my ears, “Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.” I am not aware of ever getting enough. I am being greedy? Should I not voluntarily step aside without the nudge, if there is a nudge? Perhaps I would if I thought I was taking from another. But the joy of having an omnipresent Father is that His attention to me does not take away from you. We can both enjoy all the attention He has to share. I think the only thing that bothers me is the question of greed. Could my desire for more of Him indicate a deep selfishness? In John 6:35 Jesus said, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger. . . ” Someday?

Irony. The quest for godlikeness is, at least for me, filled with many ironies.

We are creatures of habit and love the familiar. I do not assign seats in my college classes but 90% of the time students will sit in the same chair they got the first day. When I take attendance I automatically look at the chair I associate with a particular student and am slowed down in attendance taking if someone sits on the opposite side of the room. So it was not surprising today when at Taco Bell a father and little girl entered and the little girl said, “Oh, look they are at our table.” All of the other tables were empty. There was no space problem. The problem was we were at “her” table.

It also happens at church. When we enter we go to the same seat and are just a bit put off if someone new got our seat before we did. Actually I once had a church member ask a guest to move. How’s that for being friendly and welcoming?

There is a seat mentioned in Revelation 3:21, “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.” Now there’s a seat we all should covet. The promise says it’s ours if we overcome. All right then, how do we overcome? Let’s go to John 5. Jesus said, “He that hears my word, and believes on him that sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” Don’t you just love it? Now let’s be perfectly clear about this. When we are talking about believing we are talking about allowing the Holy Spirit in to reorganize our lives after the pattern of Jesus Himself.

We have a lot of snow on the ground right now and last weekend was a bit chilly. When we arrived at our college parking lot it was 13 below zero. But even so I was taken back by what I found at our bird feeder – a frozen solid mouse. All I can figure is he was very hungry. He found all that seed and stayed too long at the banquet table. You just can’t make up stuff like this.

It is such a unique story there has to be a spiritual lesson. At first I thought of Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt. I have always thought she got a bad rap; after all some of her children were back in that city. But somehow it doesn’t quite fit. There was Jeroboam whose arm was frozen stiff when he was trying to offer a sacrifice on Mt. Gerizim. But that isn’t really very good. There is Psalm 1:1 that talks about walking, standing and sitting in sin. I guess the mouse should have kept walking. But that isn’t so good either.

The point seems to be that he stayed too long. A house guest – maybe? No.

I would like to ask for your help with this one. If you can think of a really good spiritual lesson to go with my frozen mouse, please write back to me. I would be delighted to hear your ideas.
In the meantime I don’t want to waste this opportunity to tell you how much Jesus loves you. You are very special. There is a place just for you in God’s Kingdom and if you are not there He will miss you forever. Your memory will be frozen in time.

Antique stores fascinate me because they are filled with priceless junk from my childhood. I walk around and say, “Oh, look. I had one of those. I wonder what happened to IT.” I most likely was looking at IT. Recently I was in one that had a door. I know – they all have a door. I mean this one had a door and frame displayed for sale. It was quite ornate and actually very lovely. It would have been nice in the right place. I wondered about that door. Where had it been? What or who did it keep in or out? Did anyone famous ever pass through it? Did its presence assure a child of safety?

Doors are important. They often lead us into new experiences. Yesterday our second semester began and I along with my students walked through the classroom door to a brand new experience. Will that door lead my students to new realms of thought and preparation for a wonderful life of service?

I like John 10:9 where Jesus calls Himself “The Door.” Step across that threshold and eternity beckons. Entering God’s Kingdom changes everything from our limited range of thought to endless expanses of new ideas. When we go in we leave behind guilt and are filled with new desires for growth and Godlikeness. Some doors need to be shut. Hopefully we will close the door to the old ways and not return. Alas, sometimes we do return. But thankfully we can reenter. Jesus gives us one of those stamps on our hand that allows us reentry. Well, no. We don’t need a stamp, because we didn’t pay the first time. It was free and remains free each time we are wise enough to return and hopefully stay.

We ate this evening beside three of the happiest children. All through our meal we were serenaded with happy sounds. It was better than any concert no matter how skilled the musicians. There is something magical about the sounds of happy children that cannot be surpassed by any other earthly sound. No matter how rotten our day has been and how many grousing adults we had to listen to, it all ebbs away by laughter and sounds of love. Awesome.

There are other happy sounds. I can think of baby birds chirping for the next worm, squealing puppies, off key people singing Happy Birthday, people on Let’s Make a Deal winning the Big Deal of the Day, the softness of my wife’s breath sleeping beside me. There are so many wonderful things to listen to. Right now the wind is wrapping itself around the corner of my house whispering to me, beckoning me to come and let it redden my cheeks. What happy sounds can you think of?

Of course the best sound of all will be the voice of Jesus soon saying to us, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Matthew 25:34. Now that is a HAPPY SOUND in capital letters. After we hear that we will then get to hear the sound of the redeemed, “And (they) cried with a loud voice, say, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” Revelation 7:11.

There are so many good things for us to hear but until then I still think the happy sounds of happy children are the best.

So often we misuse Romans 8:28, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” I can understand why we do it. When tragedy strikes we desperately try to make sense out of it. We don’t want some terrible loss to just happen without some meaning. It is our nature to order our lives and random horror is contrary to our sanity. When nothing seems to have a reason often we say, “Well, surely God must have had a purpose.” When I was a pastor I used to respond with, “Someday we will know.”

We live in a world filled with random events that ruin lives. We run over a road hazard and damage a tire. Fifty miles later it explodes and our car careens into a tree or worse across the center lane destroying even more lives. Let me be very plain. God did not do this. If anyone did it, it was Satan. However, most likely, it was a random bad thing that happened to good people.

So what about Romans 8:28? It is a wonderful promise that means when horror happens God can help. Something good can be worked out. It was not His will. But because He loves us so much He will bring about something positive. Now you are thinking but why didn’t He intervene before it occurred? That is a question no one on earth can answer. We don’t know. What we do know is someday we can talk to Him about it. But please do not blame God for the bad things that occur. We live in a dangerous place. It’s called Earth.

Today we received a yearly newsy updating letter from some of our friends. I was shocked when the writer said her husband is now 82. But, that cannot be! In my mind I still see him decades younger. While I am delighted to know what is happening in my friends’ lives, I do not want to update their ages. I want them to be as I think they are. I know I am aging. The mirror reminds me of that every morning but since I do not see my friends on a day to day basis I have them cataloged and frozen in time.

What does it mean to be in one’s prime? In our teens most of us are thin and fighting with our skin. In our twenties we gain a few pounds and most are at the peak of physical strength. In our thirties we gain a few more pounds and start to gray at the edges, which usually looks pretty good. People pay a lot of money to have highlighted hair. In our forties we gain a few more pounds and note lines forming on our faces. In our fifties we see that we have gained too many pounds and have to decide whether to go gray or fight white roots. In our sixties we might look good on the outside but we can tell we just can’t walk as fast or as long and stairs are a wee bit more formidable. In our seventies we start to look foolish if we are still making our hair a solid twenty-year old color.

So my question is, when we are in heaven and in eternal prime what will we look like? Will we look twenty, thirty, forty? Or heavens no, not 40,000!

An almost full moon hovers over our six degree evening. Winter has made herself at home in New England. Long gray shadows artistically lace across the snow creating eerie art that changes moment by moment. An owl fluffs his feathers while silently watching for a stray creature to satisfy his evening appetite. One would not know a storm approaches for it is still and sounds are swallowed by snow cushions hanging on the pine boughs. Our dog sits by a window on the second floor of the house ever so softly growling at any sign of life. I wonder what she thinks. Are there primal memories from ancestors past reminding her of hunting with a pack on nights such as these? As I enter the room she looks at me as if to say, “Could I please go out? I need to push the snow with my nose and feel it on my tummy as I wade. I have business out there.”

If one listens carefully one can hear my trees creak and groan in the stillness of the coming night. One can stand outside and be fascinated as one’s breath slowly ascends past one’s eyes. The flush of red cheeks is its own elixir. I am reminded of Proverbs 25:13, “As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refreshes the soul of his masters.” Solomon reminds us of cold refreshment on a hot day but let us not miss the delicious joy of it on a cold winter night. What a joy to be a faithful messenger that brings joy to our Master. How wonderful if we were always so.

We went through a bag of dog treats this afternoon watching the Patriots lose their playoff game. My wife has trained our dog to instantly come when she blows a whistle. It was a fairly easy process. Each time she blows the whistle the dog gets a treat. It seemed wonderful and foolproof until this afternoon. Every time an official at the football game blew his whistle the dog came running for a treat. I couldn’t not give her something lest her training go to waste. I just love double negatives.

She couldn’t tell the difference from our whistle and the whistle on television. She has limited intelligence. She reminded me of a church member I once had who told me God told him to divorce his wife and marry another. Of course “the other” was fifteen years younger and also prettier than the original. When I asked him how he knew that’s what God wanted him to do he answered, “When I pray with ‘the other’ I feel so close to God.” Talk about limited intelligence. I’m wondering if my dog would outscore him on a Stanford-Binet.

I sometimes think it wouldn’t matter if there was no Satan to tempt us. I think we do a pretty good job on ourselves. It is so obvious that we hear and see what we want to hear and see. We rationalize to get what we want. It is so difficult to be honest with ourselves. If we could only steel ourselves to do what God directs us to do in Scripture, we would not go wrong. We would hear the right whistle and ultimately get the right reward – eternal life.

There is a new dog book on the best seller list entitled, “You Had Me at Woof” by Julie Klam. Obviously the title is a takeoff on a movie line, “You had me at hello.” I think I could go one better since I was smitten with my wife before I had a chance to say “Hello.” She was fourteen and was on the platform in church. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Being that I cannot remember not going to church Jesus was always a part of my life. I have often wondered what it is like for someone to fall in love with Jesus. When would they say Jesus had them? Was it the first time they heard about the cross and the resurrection? Or would they say, “You had me at John 3:16?”

What is it that attracts people to the story of someone who lived here two thousand years ago? Could it be a soul hunger that haunts us with the truth that there has to be something more than this seventy years? I have a friend who upon passing away filled me with a sense of waste. He was brilliant. He was a theologian. He knew the Biblical languages like we know English. He was kind and thoughtful. To just bury all that in a box is so wrong. There has to be more.

The story of Jesus answers that need for more. His personal righteousness, His promises, His own death and resurrection, His emphasis on a personal Father God all speak to our spiritual and psychological needs. Perhaps if I had first heard of Jesus when I was an adult I would have said, “You had me when you washed Judas’ feet.”

One of my very best friends gave me an unbelievable Christmas gift. When he handed me the package I laughingly said, “Oh, you got me a new gun.” As I tore off the paper expecting something else, what to my wondering eyes did appear but a gun! He gave me a brand new still in the plastic seal Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. I was overwhelmed with a rush of childhood. I had one. I would jump off the school bus, be greeted by my dog and would grab my Red Ryder and head for the woods. As I held it in my hands I realized what a different world we live in now in the 21st century. If we saw a child wandering along fencerows with a gun, even a BB gun, someone would most likely call the police. Sixty years ago it was just a boy thing. I have no idea what happened to that childhood gun. It probably stopped working and got rusty and my mom probably threw it away.

Now I have a problem. The packaging around this new one is really nice. I don’t want to spoil it by cutting it open. So for now I have it by my desk just to look at. I know come spring I am going to want to shoot it. I hope my neighbors don’t see me and call the police. I have a few months to figure out how to get it out of the plastic seal without destroying it.

I am going to guess that you can guess what my friend said to me as I ripped off the paper. You’re right. He said, “Don’t shoot your eye out!” Ah, the words of every mother whose boy had one. I have often wondered if when God gives us new and wonderful gifts if He says, “Don’t shoot your eye out.” Alas, sometimes we do.

Everywhere I went today the question on people’s lips was “Are you ready for the snowstorm?” What followed was some inane chatter about the weather. This kind of small talk is “Social Lubricant.” Polite society prefers that we acknowledge the presence of others by expressing some interest in them. We ask, “How are you?” Most of us really don’t want to know. We prefer the answer to be, “Just fine. Thank you for asking. How are you?” The other person also doesn’t want to know what meds we are on. These are things we say to smooth encounters. That’s why they are called, “Social Lubricants.”

While watching such an exchange today I got to wondering about “Social Lubricants” in heaven. Surely we will not ask, “How are you?” Everybody will always be fine. There will be no danger of being trapped into hearing about a recent surgery. My wife suggested that instead we will ask, “Where have you been the last millennium?” or “Where are you going?” That “Social Lubricant” could stimulate some very interesting answers. There would be answers we really would like to hear about. It would take billions of years to merely visit all the places in our galaxy. After that we could start on the 100 trillion other galaxies.

This God who invites us to call Him Father is so vast and so amazing and so powerful and so knowledgeable and so aware of everything He staggers our minds. I recently heard a college student begin a prayer with “Dear Daddy.” I’m sure that’s okay. But it did jar me. He just seems to be too EVERYTHING to be “Daddy.” Perhaps I have a lot to learn.

Our eighty-pound lab can really turn on the speed. When we go outside it is like someone strapped a rocket on her back. Her hind legs dig in and off she goes tearing around the yard at top velocity. It’s fun to watch until she makes the far turn and heads back right at me with absolutely no effort to slow down. I can only imagine the devastation to me if she hits me at that speed. I doubt if 911 could help. So I freeze. She is excellent at brushing by, but I have no idea on which side she will pass. If I move at all I am in jeopardy.

As she zoomed by this afternoon I realized how important it is not to be too far to the right or too far to the left. One of my favorite authors made a point about our living balanced lives. Now I know some will say we have to make a commitment in life and we can’t just ride the fence. I would like to take the position that riding the fence IS a commitment. It is difficult to keep one’s balance. It is easy to fall off on either side and it’s not being lukewarm. It is like Goldilocks when she discovered she couldn’t eat the porridge that was too hot or too cold. The middle was just right.

People that are far left often lead us to think that anything goes while people on the far right are often judgmental and make us think their way is the only way. God loves principled thinking. That’s why He gave us the marvelous capacity of thought and freewill. When He made us in His image He set us free to think.

We are in the second week of 2011. So how are you coming on your New Year’s Resolutions? I only made one and frankly I’m not doing so well. Mine was to make fewer mistakes this year than I made last year. Instead of making fewer I think I am on a record-setting pace. Alas. I am so thankful mistakes aren’t sins. Well, some are. Sins are mistakes but not all mistakes are sins. Sometimes I think young people think we old guys just don’t know we are messing up. That’s not so. We know.

Someone told me once that Jesus never made a mistake because He was perfect. I really don’t think so. He was a carpenter. There had to be days when He cut a board too short or hit His finger with a hammer. Those things are not moral issues. He was morally perfect – not perfect perfect. In terms of morality Paul assures us Jesus had His share of temptations. If He didn’t He just doesn’t understand the human condition. But He does understand. Paul wrote, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Hebrews 4:15. It’s one of the best verses in the Bible. I get so much courage from it especially from the verse that follows. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

I really like the word “boldly.” We don’t have to crawl or beg. We are sons and daughters. We can come asking for grace and know from Ephesians 2 that we will receive lavish amounts. Hooray!

There is a wonderful family-oriented sport called Geocaching. There are over 1, 250,000 treasures hidden around the world that can be located by getting the coordinates for a cache from the Geocaching website and then with the use of a handheld GPS device be led to within a few feet of the cache. It is great fun for there are very easy ones and very challenging ones. Associated with these caches are something called “Travel Bugs.” They are objects with a registered tag number also on the Geocaching website. “Travel Bugs” move all around the world as people carry them from cache to cache. Why? Just for fun.

Four and a half years ago our California son put a small plastic black dog in a cache in California with the object of people taking it from cache to cache until it ended up at the gravesite of his son in Ohio. Yesterday it arrived. The person who took it to the cemetery took a photo of it by the gravestone. For four and a half years it was moved all over the country by gracious people trying to get it to Ohio. I am not sure how many people helped but it was a lot.

I mention this because sometimes we are so overwhelmed by the news of bad people and the bad things they do that we despair that there are any good people left in the world. There are. Many people who we do not know and never will know became involved in the project. Why did they do it? Because it was a loving thing to do. We are surrounded each day by people who care. How grand!

I was wishing you could have been with me this afternoon during a phone call with a college student’s parent. According to law I cannot reveal to a parent their child’s grades. So there I sat with his semester grades on my computer screen; I’m his advisor. Since I will not tell you who he is I can tell you his grade point average was near 0.5 on a 4.0 scale. His mom poured out her heart to me about how bad the school was. She had quite a litany of our errors. Passionately she told me how bright he was and how dull we were. The irony of this was one of his “F”s was from me. There was so much she didn’t know. First of all, she was right. He is bright. He rarely missed class. He was always on time. He engaged in class discussions. However, he never turned in one assignment nor showed up for the final exam. I kept saying, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Does any parent really know their child? We think we do. However, most parents would be horrified if they knew it all. Probably it is best the way it is. Do teachers know their students? We think we do. However, most of us would be wonderfully surprised if we knew more. Don’t you just love the idea that our heavenly Father really knows our kids and yet He is amazingly fond of them? They have no secrets from Him and yet they are the apple of His eye. That is so awesome. We are loved!

Oh, by the way. This kid is coming to see me next week. Is he ever in for a lot of “tough love.

At the risk of appearing to be a complainer I am going to go ahead and air one of my pet peeves. If you are not up for any negativity at this particular moment you should stop reading now and come back later when you are feeling grumpy. Then you can grump with me.

Here goes. I am weary of hearing people pray for “special blessings.” What’s wrong with “regular blessings”? As a matter-of-fact I am immensely thrilled each day to receive a plethora of “regular blessings.” God is so good to us. He opens the windows of heaven and rains goodness upon us. Isn’t that good enough?

If one of my sons asked me for a “special blessing” I would ask just exactly what he was talking about. Isn’t my bottomless love enough? I try. I really do try to watch for opportunities to do nice things for them. I think our heavenly Father does the same for us. “He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” Those are pretty good things.

I am going to make a guess that when most people pray and ask for “special blessings” they aren’t really thinking about what they are saying. Our public prayers are filled with platitudes and often we slip into an automatic flow of clichés to start a meeting. But that brings me to another annoyance – people praying without thinking about what they are praying. I’m sorry that’s a bit harsh and very judgmental. But maybe once in a while we could hear someone pray something “original.”

There now I have said it. I promise tomorrow to be more positive.

Just a few days after our blizzard, the temperature shot up to 50 plus degrees. You can imagine what that did to the children’s snowman in the front yard. As we left for the airport this morning to get our California children back to California our seven-year-old grandson looked out the window at the very small pile of remaining snow and said, “Look, he’s still alive!” Surrounding a little bit of snow was a withered carrot nose and some acorn caps that had been eyes and tummy buttons.

Through the years I have watched some of my very alive and large friends literally melt away until they barely filled their wheelchair. Little old ladies and little old men weren’t always so little. It’s too bad that our grandchildren can’t see us when we were as strong and vital as their parents. My students laugh when I tell them to be careful in heaven. That pretty lady you eye on the streets of gold might say, “Watch it young man. I’m your great grandmother.”

Luke 20:38 is a wonderful verse. It says, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive." Though the Bible clearly speaks of a coming resurrection of the dead (I Corinthian 15 and I Thess. 4.) Jesus wants us to understand (John 5) that once we accept Him we pass over from death to life. Though our humanity melt away we will always be alive in His memory and via His resurrecting power we shall once again breathe and move and love and do all the wonders that God longs for us. Jesus is who He says He is – The Resurrection and the Life.