Category: devotional

There was a photo on the front page of our daily newspaper this morning that made me ashamed to be part of the human race.  A lady (No, a women. She was no lady.) was holding a sign that read, “Feed our Kids – Not 10,000 Refugees”.   When we allow our inner dark side to express itself in xenophobia or any other evil we allow those who despise our value system to win.  By denying what makes us special (our Christian values) we are lowered to the same ignorance as those who would destroy us.
 
What makes us special isn’t that we are richer than others and have food.  We are special because we believe our Bible that says, “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,” says the Lord. “BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD.’” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  Furthermore refugees are 99.99% not our enemies.  They are hungry people who have lost their homes and area fleeing for the same safety we enjoy.
 
When someone slaps me on the face and I slap them back, they win.  Even if I slapped them harder than they slapped me, they win.  They have reduced me to their level. They made me less like Jesus.  If we can only remember what Jesus’ very own did to Him, perhaps we can (with His help) rise to be like Him.  And just one more thought for the woman with the offensive sign, in America we have enough food for our kids and 10,000 refugees.

We are all born philosophers.  Our children are philosophers.  That’s why children delight in playing the Why Game.  It is what philosophers do.  Socrates spent his life playing the Why Game.  The city fathers couldn’t take it anymore and finally sentenced him to death.  Somewhere along the way most of us ceased asking why and changed it for what.  Maybe it happens when we go to school.  Teachers rarely ask children why.  Often we ask for the information we have poured in and hope it can be poured back out.  Thus children with good memories get good grades.  Alas, good grades don’t always mean a child knows why.

Maybe this is what Jesus meant when He said in order for us to enter the Kingdom we have to remain as children.  Maybe He wants us to keep asking why.  Now that we have Google the answers to “what questions” are just a few keystrokes away.  But Google doesn’t do as well when we ask why.
  
Why is there anything?  Why are we loved?  Why does life seem to need death?   Why can’t we mature and maintain?  Why has God redeemed us?  Why do we have choice?   When I was small and asked my Sabbath School teacher “why questions” he told me I wasn’t to ask such things.  I guess he just didn’t know the answers.  Maybe that’s one reason children stop being philosophers.  We tell them not to ask such things.
  
Why do radicals believe God is pleased when they blow themselves up and take other lives with them?  Why do they think they are pleasing God when they spread death and terror?   Perhaps it is because they have chosen the easy way.  It is easy to kill.  It is easy to destroy.  It is hard to build.  It is hard to save humanity from disease, hunger and ourselves. 

The air is filled with the sound of leaf blowers.  It is the sound of now.   There was no such sound when I was a boy.  Then the air was filled with the smell of burning leaves.  It was a fantastic smell.  I realize why we cannot do it anymore but I still wish there was a law that said one day a year we could burn our leaves.  The tang of it filling one’s nostrils was better than any fragrance at Macy’s.   Nostalgia urges me to sneak into the backyard and burn just a tiny pile; just enough to once again savor the past.   Surely I could make it small enough the local authorities would not catch me.  It is then that the still small voice in my head says, “Remember Immanuel Kant.” 

His Categorical Imperative is the ultimate moral code.  He wrote, “It is a moral law that is unconditional or absolute for all agents, the validity or claim of which does not depend on any ulterior motive or end.”  For my students I put it in my simple way of speaking.  “It is morally wrong for me to do anything it is not permissible for everyone to do.”
 
When one ponders it, it becomes but a variation of the Golden Rule.   Thus it is that sin can be anything that lessens the quality of my life and other’s lives.  I cannot throw a paper cup out my car window.  It is not for fear of the $200 fine, but for the fact that our world would look like a pig sty if everyone did so.  Morality can at times be complicated but most often it is simple enough for a child to grasp.   

Robert Frost wrote, “Not yesterday I learned to know the love of bare November days before the coming of the snow.”  “The desolate, deserted trees, the faded earth, the heavy sky.”  “These dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; She (my sorrow) loves the bare, the withered tree . . .”
 
I am so glad we live on a tilted earth.  Without the tilt we would live without the seasons.   For six years my wife and I lived almost on the equator at 4,000 feet of elevation.  It was delightfully the same every day.  We never saw it colder than 62 nor warmer than 82.  I missed the crispness of 40 degree mornings.  I missed the tang of winter on my nose.  I missed scoping a thin sheet of ice from the birdbath and peering at the out-of-focus world on the other side.
 
There are those who describe heaven as a monotonous place of perfect everything.  Will we never see the skeletons of maples reaching high above the earth against a gray sky?   However, astronomers tell us there are thousands of Goldilocks planets in our galaxy.  Surely some are tilted and some will have autumn for us to leaf peep and walk with our feet scuffling through noisy piles of brown leaves.   
 
Eternity is filled with an endless variety for us to be endlessly mentally stimulated to learn and understand the beauty of life.  How grand to see layer upon layer into its quarks, hadrons and leptons.  God is a scientist and to be like Him is to quest the depth of how and what things are.  We know why.  That was answered at Calvary.  All is for love.  There is nothing more profound. Understanding love will be our most intriguing enigma.

My wife was gone this weekend and I had to fend for myself.  I don’t usually eat very well when she isn’t around.  I have a bowl of Cheerios in the morning and the rest of the day is just picking here and there; maybe putting some leftovers in the microwave.  Last evening I found three packs of M&M’s.  Fascinating how much better things taste when one is hungry.  That first pack of M&M’s was fantastic.  So I went for two.  Great eating.  At this point I realized no one was home to chastise me for intemperance and so I ate the third pack.   It took about thirty minutes before I started to feel strange.  Wow.  It was a bad thing to have done.
 
I heard a sermon once asking what kind of person would I be if I lived where no one knew me.  I think I know the answer.  Unless I developed some self-discipline I would be a physical wreck who dies young.  It’s nice living with someone who watches over me.  I never grew up.   Really now, if I was smart I would always live the same way if someone or no one was watching because God only wants the best for me.  It’s about the abundant life Jesus promised in John 10:10. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
 
Being a Christian and living like God wants us to live is about being SMART.   If we live SMART we can always live like no one is watching, even God and my wife.  Both of them will be very happy. 

One of my favorite things to do for the state university where I teach is to supervise student teachers in our local public schools.  This morning I was in a third grade with twenty students at the beginning of the school day.  A voice came over the intercom from the principal’s office asking the children to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.  Instantly the children rose to attention.  We faced the flag, put our hands over our hearts and together we said those wonderful words.  It was a good feeling.
 
I felt a bit sad for the children whose church forbids them from doing so.  It is their loss.  I do appreciate why their church takes that stand.  They feel they are breaking the first commandment to take the pledge.  However, the commandment reads, “Thou shall have no other gods before me.”  Please note the words, “before me.”  God is not saying we should not revere and honor other things.  We just should not revere them above Him.  God is to be first in our lives.  We can have second and third and fourth and fifth things in our lives.  While I pledged my allegiance to my country I was not disavowing that my God came first.  The pledge, thanks to President Dwight Eisenhower in 1954, contains the words “under God”.   That means my pledge is under or lesser than my allegiance to God. 
 
I wish the parents of the children who didn’t stand could understand that simple concept.   It would make their lives so much richer.  Then they could have that same wonderful feeling of belonging to a community larger than just the community where they worship.  It’s great to belong.  It is one of our fundamental human needs.  We were not made to be alone.

It was cacophony.  The sounds of rap music, if you can call it music, (Wow, am I ever old!) were coming from the speakers in the ceiling and some fast talking adman was hawking Golden Oldies CDs from Time/Life on a television in the corner.  Since I was in a doctor’s office I was guessing someone was conducting research on patients, because no civilized doctor would or could have tolerated the noise.  I tried my best to focus on just one but the other continued to be extremely annoying.
 
I should be used to this by now.  All my life I have had two voices in my head competing for attention and loyalty.  There are two small voices and they are not always so small for they sometimes roar for compliance.  One promises immediate satisfaction not worrying about tomorrow and the other promises delaying gratification for a quieter but quality life.  Sometimes temptation for the immediate looks so delicious.
 
When Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness did He hear two voices or three?  (His own, Satan and the Holy Spirit.)   Did Jesus need the Holy Spirit or because He was 100 percent God was He strong enough on His own?   I am going to assert because he was also 100 percent human He, like us, needed the Holy Spirit.  (See Hebrews 4.  Tempted such as we.) 
 
If you also have a cacophony in your head claim the promise in James 1, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”   That way you will be strong enough to make the right decision.

Old cigar boxes are wonderful because that’s where we can put all manner of useless stuff that’s too meaningful to throw away.  We have one containing some old political campaign buttons.   One says, “I like Ike.”   There is an Adlai Stevenson button, two Nixon buttons along with a Kennedy.
 
I had quite a debate once with someone who thought our memories would be wiped clean in heaven.  He based his position on Isaiah 65:17.  “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”  I thought he was a bit nutty.  For what would be the use of this life and the lessons learned if we couldn’t remember anything?   The whole point of growing up is to learn and become a better person because of the mistakes and avoided mistakes of life.  If God was going to wipe our memories clean why not just start us out there and forget all this pain and suffering?
 
So what does Isaiah mean?  Have you ever had a great week somewhere that was so wonderful and so busy that you never even thought about anything else? It didn’t mean you couldn’t remember. You could if you needed to.  You just didn’t need to.  I actually think we get to have some of our meaningful useless treasures with us in heaven.  Cigar boxes filled with buttons and bows.  (My wife has her mother’s hair bow. It means a lot.)   But aren’t cigar boxes sinful?   No.  Things aren’t sinful.  People are.
 
Life is made up of memories.  The future hasn’t happened yet.  Now is but an instant.  99.999 percent of life is memories.  Without them we would be useless unprogrammed droids.

This afternoon at Denny’s I watched a man order a breakfast special.  It came with a large stack of pancakes, a strip of bacon and a pile of scrambled eggs.   He was in my natural range of vision so I could watch as he put syrup on his pancakes.  Wow did he put on syrup.  He poured and poured and then poured some more.  He ended up with a little bit of pancake with his syrup.   Then he picked up the salt shaker for his eggs after he scarfed down his bacon.  He salted and salted and then salted some more.  He looked to be about my age and I could not imagine how he had lived so long if he always ate like that.  Then I thought maybe he is in his twenties and just looks my age.
 
When I pondered the definition of sin being anything that harms you or another, I had to conclude that I watched him sin.  But he would have said, “I didn’t break any of the Ten Commandments.”  And I would have said, “Yes, you did.  You were in the process of killing yourself.”  If we limit our definition of sin to the breaking of the Ten Commandments we have missed the principle undergirding the Commandments.  The principle is to do no harm.  He harmed. 
 
So very piously I sat there mentally condemning this man while I thoroughly enjoyed my large chocolate milk shake down to the very last possible sip.  I am such a hypocrite.  Jesus would have said to me, “Judge not, that you be not judged.   Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

Unless you live in New England or are an extremely well informed football fan you probably do not recognize the name Jimmy Garoppolo .  This year he will make $1,103,744.  He has a terrific seat at all New England Patriot’s games since he is quarterback Tom Brady’s backup.  New England fans hope he never gets to play.  But today he did play.  He got to come into the game with just a few seconds on the game clock so he could take a snap and kneel down to run out the clock.  I was going to say he gets his million dollars for doing nothing, but that’s not so.  He has to be prepared at a moment’s notice to take over.  He has to memorize the playbook.  He has to stay physically conditioned.  He has to have rapport with his teammates and has to practice as much as Brady.  He is always just one play away from taking over.  He just doesn’t know if or when.
 
Our lives are similar.  We never know what challenges will come tomorrow.  Sometimes students complain about taking a particular course in their required curriculum.  They claim they will never need the information in those courses.  Psalm 127:4 uses the metaphor that our children are arrows in our quiver.  I tell my students that each class is an arrow in their quiver.  They will never know when that particular skill or knowledge base will be needed because no one knows what will be needed tomorrow.  
 
In our spiritual lives we should store away in our minds as much Scripture as possible just in case something happens where it would be needed.  The Psalmist knew.  “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”  Psalm 119:11