"Wrong Way" Jonah

In July, 1938, eleven years following the first-ever transatlantic solo flight of Charles Lindbergh, Doug Corrigan flew his makeshift aircraft from the West Coast of the United States to New York.  That was not news.  That feat had been done many times before, but Lindbergh’s former mechanic made a name for himself immediately after that would live forever in aviation infamy.

Shortly after landing, Corrigan filed a transatlantic flight plan that was denied based on the ragtag condition of his plane.  He was allowed, however, to return to California.  So, Corrigan aimed his aircraft westward, took off, did a 180-degree turn and disappeared into the clouds over the Atlantic.

Upon his arrival in Belfast, Ireland, 28 hours later, he asked, “Where am I?” and claimed to have gotten lost.  The name “Wrong Way” Corrigan was applied and has stuck throughout history, with experts split over whether his misadventure had been truly an accident or an act of rebellion against authority.

With Jonah, it was much clearer. 

“’Arise, go to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord….”  Jonah 1:2, 3a

God gave him a three-part assignment: 

1) arise, 

2) go to Ninevah, and 

3) preach the need for repentance from their sin.  

Well, Jonah did the easy first step.  He did arise.  One-for-three hitting of a baseball for 15-20 years may punch a professional ballplayer's ticket to the Hall of Fame, but it is not so good in free-throw shooting. Or obedience.  As any good parent instinctively knows, and the rest of us learn, partial obedience is disobedience.

Jonah didn’t need maps and a compass like Corrigan. He didn’t need concordances and commentaries to discover what God was saying.  Instead of heeding the clear and direct command of God, Jonah willfully took the wrong decision, catching a ship bound for Tarshish, a city 2500 miles west across the length of the Mediterranean Sea on the Iberian peninsula, to get away from the presence of the Lord.  (Pretty sure He was there, too.)

I would like to suggest that Jonah was not running merely from the presence of God but from His will. Had God been content to let Jonah lie around watching movies and playing games, with occasional trips to the mall just to hang out, I think Jonah would not have been in such a hurry to get away from Him.  However, God had higher, nobler things in mind for Jonah.  He selected Jonah to save a city. 

Think back to September 11, 2001.  If you had been chosen, say, a week to ten days beforehand, as the person who absolutely could prevent the attacks of that day by simply going to Boston (from whence the four flights originated) and warning of the coming disaster, would you have done it? Would you have gone there and spoken, knowing that thousands of lives would be saved?

Jonah was given the chance to save a city of 120,000 people from sure destruction resulting from their moral implosion.  That would be a city today greater than Ann Arbor or Lansing, about the same population as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Topeka, Kansas—but he bailed.  Temporarily.

What does God have in store for your life? What is there—and you may not know yet—that He has for you to do, but you would rather follow your own path than His?  How many lives may be affected tomorrow or next year or over the next decade by your decisions today?  How will yours?
 

Don’t become known as “Wrong Way (fill-in-the-blank)” .  Fly to, not from, God and His will for your life.

CHARGE! I Kings 2:1-12

Yes, I know that I have failed to maintain the two-a-month pace I had hoped to keep upon pledging to return to blogging.  Still, it is only August and maybe I will still be able to make up for lost time.  To that end, I offer this entry.  

I have had a particularly rich time in I and II Kings recently while navigating through the Word of Life Quiet Time.  History, right, how compelling can that be?  Well there are still life principles that can be learned from the triumphs and failures of others and applied to individual situations these many centuries later.

Remember, this is just an observation...

It seems to me that in Western culture, we are missing the setting of landmarks in our lives and the lives of others.  That is, we often transition from one stage of life to another with nary a meaningful recognition of the passage of certain milestones.  Oh, yes, I know that we celebrate high school graduations with an open house party (though this is not true in some parts of the country, I have heard), we celebrate weddings with a ceremony and reception (the latter also not being universal), and we mark that final passage with the final acknowledgement—the eulogy, the postponed praise we give in honor of one who is no longer able to hear it.

These occasions are all great times—and there are likely others, such as the birth of a new child, for instance—for the passing along of accumulated wisdom from the oldest to the youngest.  (Whether the youngest are receptive is another topic for another day, perhaps.)  I am of the opinion that these momentous occasions call for charges to be given. 

Among the 15 noun and 21 verb entries found, a charge is defined as “an order, command, or injunction” (n.) and “to instruct or urge authoritatively, to command.”(v.)  A charge is not merely suggestive in nature, as if it was optional, but is a strongly motivational message with the desired effect of helping someone to know what the right thing is to do, and to direct them into doing it.

King David viewed the occasion of his impending death as monumental enough to give a charge to his son Solomon, instructions for ruling the kingdom.  After all, David would soon no longer be available for counsel.  David had one last shot to get it in.  David tells Solomon to be strong and to “prove yourself a man.”  Further, he says in I Kings 2:3,

“And keep the charge of the Lord your God: to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn;”

Finally, David told Solomon there were a couple guys who needed to go on his hit list, namely Joab and Shimei (“…you are a wise man and know what you should do to him…”) while advising him to repay kindness to the sons of Barzillai who aided David when he was in peril.

I certainly am not the model parent and if I had things that I would do differently—which of us does not?—I think that I should like to have been prepared with words of wisdom and encouragement for my daughter during certain stages of life—certain birthday milestones, high school graduation, the beginning of college, and the like.  I should have had solemn charges the implementation of which would enable her to better prosper in the midst of various life changes.  Sadly, there are no do-overs in life.  One can only learn and move forward with the hope of trying to do better tomorrow, as Tony Kornheiser promises daily.

The wedding of one of her elementary school classmates recently reminds me that perhaps I should prepare something for the occasion of the daughter’s wedding one day that will be full of wisdom yet pithy and instrumental to her matrimonial success.

King David was fortunate in that he could see that he was near the end of his natural life and had the opportunity to make a final charge to Solomon.  We don’t always have that privilege—death may come suddenly and unexpectedly, and does to some.  Maybe I should be working on that charge now, too.

Whatever specifics may find their way into any future charges, the wisdom of I Kings 2:3 is a good universal starting point for anyone—live according to God’s Word in order to enjoy a life blessed by God.  

The Curse of Winter

Love it or hate it, winter seems to come at least once every year and so it seems that there is little to do but make peace with the season and try to get through the best that you can.  I said, “You.”  See, I don’t mind winter so much.  I like and dislike things about each of the seasons so I celebrate—and endure—each one. 

The start of each new year occurs in the winter and along with it come multiple resolutions for more good things (working out, saving money, finishing that degree by correspondence course) and fewer bad things (smoking, overeating, whining about how terrible winter is). 

One of my resolutions, I guess, is to blog at least bi-weekly, if not more often.  Because I have not been consistent, and my daughter has dogged me about it, more blogging falls into the “good things” category.  As this is the second Saturday of the month as I begin, I will have already broken one of my main resolutions if I don’t post something before retiring for bed tonight.  Never mind the time; the day is over when I am done with it.

Here, for your consideration, are the five worst things about winter (with the best things to follow in a separate post)—

 

5) Heating bills

The high cost of heating one’s house in an effort to keep the cold air outside where it belongs is one of the worst parts of winter.  It can be controlled somewhat by employing alternate sources of heat, such as wood stoves, pellet stoves, and the like.  Costs can also be managed by choosing to live in a cooler house, as my friend Lori and her husband Kevin do.  Still, for those of us who live somewhat normally, heating bills rise and it’s no fun to pay them. 

4) Weather Whiners

They seemed to be out in more force last year than ever before, and we barely had any winter at all.  We had a dreary, snowless Christmas here—as we did again this year—and still people complained about the cold and the snow and the cloudy days and the possibility of snow and the chance that it might be cold tomorrow and on and on it goes.  Get over it.  It’s Michigan, it’s wintertime, and the temperature tends to drop a little bit and the snow is likely to fly.  The weather is not as annoying as the people who bellyache about it.  Either stop whining or move to Cuba or somewhere.  If everyone does one of these two things, I can take #4 off my list and replace it with #6.

3) Whiteouts

Of course, I am not speaking of that most valuable tools of error correction for the era of typewriters but of the worst possible driving conditions—blinding snowstorms that prevent a driver from seeing beyond the 5.75mm of the windshield.  Dangerous, indeed, and nerve-wracking, too.  Following the wracking of nerves may often come the wrecking of car.  I don’t typically mind driving around town in wintry weather, but across open spaces in blizzard conditions so as to impair my vision is not on my list of The Best Things About Winter.  This would be higher if I regularly were forced to encounter them, but I am not.

2) Postponements and Cancellations

Maybe it is just me, but I don’t like disruptions.  If I have a plan, I like the plan to be carried out.  That is why having sporting events, church services, and such postponed or canceled makes my list.  I hate that I have to settle for doing whatever was going to be my second or third choice and that I may have to reschedule an event just because there was a surplus of weather one day.  There is weather every day.  So what?

How is it that church services are canceled more and more due to weather? This was not always the case. Who better than Christians to exercise their faith in trying to assemble for instruction and worship?  While the believers are bailing out, others somehow make it faithfully into work, to the grocery store, the restaurants, and that bastion of survival supplies, the video store.

Second to church and church-event cancellations, misusing the terms “postponed” and “canceled” drives me nuts.  Listen and learn: canceled means forever gone, never going to happen, not to be rescheduled to a later date; postponed means simply that something is not going to happen on schedule and will be reset to occur on a different date.  Two very vastly different meanings and people can be misled when one is (mis)used for the other.  Be clear.

1) Illnesses

Doesn’t matter if it is influenza or the common cold, I don’t like it.  Strep throat or sinus congestion or a maniacally wild coughing fit.  If it is something you can give to me and I don’t want it, then I am against it.  They are all unpleasant, sometimes painful, and to some degree debilitating.  I mean, few things knock me out like a sinus infection—makes me feel like I have been awake for three months straight.   Winter, with people being inside more and in closer quarters, seems to breed more illnesses than the other seasons.  Being sick is my number one worst thing about winter.

It may not be a coincidence that all five of these are things about which I have limited or no control.  Not that I fancy myself a control freak; the longer I live, the more things I find over which I have limited control.  Each of these, however, cuts into my enjoyment of life and hinders my capacity to do what I want when I want, with negative side effects all their own.

So, I will try to release my grip on “what I want to do” while in the grip of Old Man Winter and just let myself roll with his blustery punches.

My first entry of 2013 is complete!  Watch for more, both of a biblical nature as well as mere opinion pieces such as this.  If you agree, great!  If you don’t, well, just remember: it’s only an observation.

Coming soon:  The Blessing of Winter

24/7—The Life of Continual Christianity

I Thessalonians 5:16-18

There is a movie called “The Glass Slipper” starring Leslie Caron, co-starring Amanda Blake (“Kitty” of television’s “Gunsmoke”) as one of the mean step-sisters, and Estelle Winwood as the scene-stealing fairy godmother.  Yes, it is a version of the Cinderella story that I saw recently.  Winwood always seemed to somehow make sense with her often clever and witty but understated observations, eventually guiding “Cinder” Ella to make the right choices.  Other times the old godmother seemed to say the craziest random things, such as—

“Cinderella, that’s a nice word.  I like it.  I also like windowsill, elbow—elll-booow, apple dumpling—that’s a comical one—ap-ple dum-pling, and pickle relish.  That has a nice snap to it:  picklerelish!”

I, too, like words, learning (and trying to remember) new ones and discovering the differences between similar words, such as “continuously” and “continually,” which I used to use interchangeably until I knew the difference and found a trick for remembering it.  (Continuously means steadily ongoing while continually means repeating over and over, like the repeating Ls in the word.)  In any case, both share the same root, to continue, and that consistency is one of the main spokes of being in God’s wheel, errr, will.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”  Most of the time, one will focus on the verbs—rejoice, pray, and thank—as one certainly should.  Let us not overlook the frequency, duration, and universality regarding these activities—always, ceaselessly, and everything.  Each of these three actions is an outward expression of an internal response to an external condition. 

We rejoice in the manifested goodness of God in our lives, though we don’t always recognize Him as the source.  The greater our appreciation of all He does for us, whether it is big or seemingly small, the greater our inner joy is and our outward expression (rejoicing) should be about all God gives us and does for us.  Thus we shortchange Him of His due glory and ourselves of joy when we fail to rejoice in His blessings.

We pray for many things, from healing of the sick to a good deal on a new car, from the salvation of lost loved ones to good weather for an upcoming family outing.  Prayer reminds us that we are essentially powerless to control most of the things around us.  This humility, this powerlessness, must compel us to pray without ceasing—what other recourse do we have other than to try to muddle along feebly in our own strength.  Whatever the case, God is pleased when bring all of our needs and cares to Him.

We thank God for everything He introduces into our lives.  This is not the same as rejoicing, which might be considered more observable by others.  Rather, gratitude is more God-directed, I think.  It is not the flippant TGIF mentality but a genuine and personal expression of thanks to God for each thing He chooses bless, challenge, or otherwise use to bring us closer to Him.

None of us is to the point of being perfectly continuous in our Christian living as we might wish we were, but a 24/7 recognition of God’s grace and goodness should help us to become more diligent in our practice of continual rejoicing, prayer, and thanksgiving.

Choosing Blindfolds and Earplugs, Jeremiah 5:20-31

How great could life be? 

Have you ever played “If Only”?  It is a game of regrets, such as, “If only I had studied more…” or “If only I hadn’t wasted so much time…” or “If only I had said…” or maybe an “If only I hadn’t…” or three might make our list as well.  Each of us has our own If Only list.  What’s on yours?

God’s people in the Old Testament must have written themselves quite a list!  In our text, God says (abridged for space), “Hear this now, O foolish people…who have eyes and see not and who have ears and hear not…this people has a defiant and rebellious heart…they do not say in their heart, ‘Let us now fear the Lord our God…’ your sins have withheld good things from you.”

How great could their lives have been had they not chosen blindfolds and earplugs?  They departed from God by covering their eyes and not seeing the many rich though sometimes routine daily blessings of God in their lives and demonstrated in Creation.  They stopped up their ears to shut out His words of guidance, instruction, love, and warning, shutting out his the effects of His Word in their lives...or so they must have thought.

See, just as obedience begets God’s blessings, disobedience engenders its own consequences.  It doesn’t really matter whether we believe it or not.  In their case, they would not get to enjoy some of the good things that God had in store for them (v. 25).   Not only didn’t they get them but they didn’t even know what they were missing, how greatly their lives could have been further enriched.  Ignorance, alas, is not always bliss.

Not content to suffer the consequences of their own sin, but they exulted in the sin of others.  At the end of the chapter, God says, “The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by their own power; and My people love to have it so.”   

New York Yankee great Mickey Mantle won a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  He was recognized early as a player whose potential was essentially limitless though his career was hindered by bad knees.  NY manager Casey Stengel said, “I never saw a player who had greater promise.”    In a pre-steroid era, the 5’11” 195-pound outfielder hammered 536 home runs over his 18-year career, some over 500 feet.  However, his penchant for alcohol would help to shorten his brilliant career and his life. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/memories/1995/95pass6.htm)

Near the end of his life, Mantle, whose father, uncles, and a son died at earlier ages than he, said, “If I’d known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.”  If only.  The popular baseball idol, upon assessing his life choices, advised his admirers, “Don’t be like me.”  For his funeral, Mantle requested that Roy Clark sing his poignant 1969 hit, “Yesterday, When I Was Young.”  With lyrics packed full of regrets, this song is certainly the national anthem for the game of If Only. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEY4LxORCeo)

While it is a game that can certainly dominate a person, the way to win at If Only is to reach the end of life having collected as few regrets as possible.  Fear God and eschew evil.  Influence others to do the same.  Strip yourself of blindfolds and bask in the goodness of God, praising Him for each blessing great and small.  Put away the earplugs that block His voice from teaching you.

Only then will you know how great your life can truly be!

2 x 2 = 1, Jeremiah 3:25

As my friend and former coworker Stacie used to remind me from time to time, “I wasn’t exactly president of the math club.” Frankly, neither was I. The good news about relationships is this—you don’t have to be. You only have to remember one equation to restore and maintain them: 2x2=1.

I never cease to marvel at the Israelites. They walk with God and prosper, then they go off to do their own thing and suffer. They lose wars, they suffer famine, they are taken captive, and after a period of time—I don’t mean hours or days, I mean years and decades—they finally figure it out and get their hearts right with God and abandon the idolatry and other sins and reestablish God to His rightful place in their individual and collective lives…but that is not the end.

The pattern recurs throughout the historical narrative of the Old Testament of the Bible. They walk with God and prosper; they turn away from Him and suffer. Second verse, same as the first. Walk with God and enjoy His blessings; abandon Him in exchange for the false gods of the cultures surrounding them. Instead of addressing the cultures and introducing them to Jehovah God, they often adapted to those cultures and collected their ungodly habits and practices.

But that is not the point of this piece. Perhaps another time. In fact, I am pretty sure of it.

The pendulumic swings of the Israelites in relationship to God are not altogether foreign to us. We often experience the same kind of near-and-far in our relationship with Him. After all, we’re only human.

Whenever the Jews did return and right their spiritual ship, there were two elements that were necessary to ignite the process of relationship restoration. Jeremiah 3:25 says,

“We lie down in our shame, and our reproach covers us. For we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers. From our youth even to this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

Here we read of their humility (personal recognition of their offenses and their wrongness) and confession (specifically identifying their shortcoming to the one offended). These two elements are necessary to make forgiveness and restoration possible.

God being God, He is in any relationship the Constant that never changes, never errs. When two imperfect people are in conflict, restoration requires these same two elements on the part of both parties every time the relationship is broken.

Few are the conflicts I have ever witnessed in which one party was completely at fault and the other was wholly holy. It almost never happens. Even if it begins that way, often it can be that the initially innocent party reacts wrongly and that sends the relationship spiraling further downward. Mr. I-Didn’t-Do-Anything-Wrong and Mr. I-Won’t-Forgive are doomed to defeat.

However, if two parties in a conflict implement these two actions—understanding that their behavior or attitude was wrong and confessing their specific offenses to one another, enabling mutual forgiveness to take place—they will find that their relationship can again experience unity. Two times two will equal one.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Jeremiah 5:1-3, 12-19

Perhaps you have heard that expression—“Be careful what you wish for--you just might get it!” It is spoken of one or to one who longs for something desirable but that might actually be unknowingly harmful to him. He sees only the short-term benefit (if there is one) and not the long-term consequences.

Sin is most often that way—showing us the glamor but not the not the gutter, teasing us with the fame but not the fallout, pushing the pride but neglecting to mention the subsequent fall. Satan is the master of the bait-and-switch tactic, advertising pleasure but selling pain.

In Jeremiah, Judah is so wicked that even one righteous man cannot be found. (Does that sound familiar? Yes, it does. It sounds a Lot familiar. It was Lot who was challenged to find a few good men in order to spare Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction and he couldn’t even find one. (The rest is history.)

See what God says of Judah in the intervening verses, 4-11: “their transgressions are many; their backslidings have increased”…”Your children have forsaken Me”…”they committed adultery…in harlots’ houses.” That’s quite a blotter full of offenses.

The kicker comes in verse 19, which would be kind of funny if it wasn’t so tragic: “And it will be when you say, ‘Why does the Lord our God do all these things to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve aliens in a land that is not yours.’”

In essence, God says, “You want to worship the false gods of other nations? Hey, that’s great. Have I got a surprise for you! You’re taking a trip. You will get to visit the lands of the people whose gods you worship! ‘Visit’ is maybe not the right word for captivity but you get the idea. You just keep doing what you do--I’ll make all the arrangements.”

God was not being cantankerous or capricious in dispatching Judah; it was a classic example of cause-and-effect. When Judah repeatedly chose to reject God, He merely gave them enough leash to continue following their own path, which led them into captivity.

Likewise, when we embrace our ways instead of God’s, unpleasant consequences are likely to follow eventually. I say “eventually” because they are not always immediate, which provides a bit of false security itself. In our drive-by need-it-yesterday mentality, we expect God’s crushing blow to occur right away and when it doesn’t, we wrongly assume that we have “gotten over” on Him.

God’s patience should not be misinterpreted as neglect. Looking back, we can likely see many instances when we might have taken one of the many exit ramps from Our Will to His Will but sped ahead recklessly toward our own preferred destination.

The challenge is to realize that we’ve missed a turn and be looking ahead for an exit to get back on His road as soon as possible before our disobedience leads to a fiery wreck in which we may not be the only ones to get burned.