clean

I’ve often thought my annual read through the Bible sometimes matches the calendar. For example, the slog through Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy seems perfectly suited for January and February. It’s mostly grinding, working my way through it verse by verse, with the occasional warm ray of God’s providence shining through.

Today I had to hunt a little bit for the providence. Today I read about defiling skin diseases, and house mold, and bodily discharges. And I had to reflect a little bit to see God’s love for his people in this attention to the day-to-day afflictions that could make them miserable.

How do you explain germs and spores to people who haven’t invented the microscope. How do you communicate that skin diseases can be contagious, mold can cause sickness, that those body fluids are the best incubator for bacteria? You call them unclean and make being clean a necessary condition for social life.

Without good hygiene, camp life is deadly. In World War II, the elite unit known as Merrill’s Marauders was made combat-ineffective by diseases and diarrhea caused by the bad practices of Chinese units upstream.

It’s comforting to know that God, in his cosmic age-old fight to restore the souls of his people, cares enough about my day-to-day happiness that he also attended to the rashes and fungus that can make life a drag.

It reminds me that outreach is most effective when we attend to physical needs before spiritual ones.

forever burning

To be honest, Bible reading these days is kind of a drag. That’s because I’m back in that part of the Old Testament where God gives chapter after chapter of rules, laying out in excruciating detail everything about Jewish life.

It’s worth slogging through, though, because God doesn’t change. Whatever he was trying to do in the lives of the early Israelites, he still wants to do in my life. What I need to do is think about what God reveals about himself and obedient living in each of these commands.

This is what hit me this morning: “In the tent of meeting, outside the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law, Aaron and his sons are to keep the lamps burning before the Lord from evening till morning. This is to be a lasting ordinance among the Israelites for the generations to come.” (Exodus 27:21)

Where God is, there is light. Satan and his followers love the darkness. Keeping the lamps lit ensures that darkness never enters God’s holy place. Until the day described in Revelation, when there will be no more night because God will be with us, we light lamps against the darkness of the world.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m one of those lamps. I think God is saying here that anyplace that belongs to him must be a place of light. Later Jesus commanded me to be salt and light in the world. One of my tasks here is to drive away the darkness wherever God has put me to work.

If I am truly a Christian, then the darkness where sin lurks has no place in my home, or my office, or my hotel room when I’m traveling. In fact, my presence there should banish it.

Let there be light, always and only. Give me oil, Lord, keep me burning.

six days of work

“Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed.” Exodus 23:12

I’ve always read this as guidance about Sundays. Today, for some reason, it hit me as a commandment about working.

Our culture and our churches struggle with Sabbath observance, to be sure. But I don’t. I’m happy with Sunday as a quiet day of worship, fellowship and rest. What I struggle with, and I think most Americans do too, is the idea that I should be working more than I am.

Six days do your work. Really? The 40-hour work week is a hallmark of a civilized society. Saturdays are supposed to be for fun. In fact, smart people look for ways to work less, not more. A four or even three-day work week is the mark of a successful professional practice.

Except I’m not here for my own enjoyment. My life isn’t meant to be spent on experiences that give me pleasure. I’m here on a mission, to help my Lord restore this world and bring people back to a good relationship with him.

My job is part of that. The Bible is clear: responsible citizenship requires me to earn my own way and contribute to an orderly society. Plus, my company does good in the world. But even when I’m not working for pay, my time isn’t my own. It’s not something I can waste.

This morning, that hard truth hit me in this passage. I don’t need encouragement for more rest, more leisure. I need a kick in the pants to spend more hours productively.

fear

I used to work with a retired Chief Warrant Officer who said, “Fear is a form of respect.” You can imagine what his leadership looked like.

But he wasn’t entirely wrong. I read this morning (Exodus 20:18-20), “When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, ‘Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.’ Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.’”

God came down to the mountain to give Moses the Ten Commandments, and the little bit they could see scared the willys out of the Israelites. They didn’t want anything to do with God; they wanted to send Moses to Him as their go-between.

Why? God could have appeared as a cute little lamb, if he wanted to. The mountain could have been covered in flowers and bathed in sunshine.

But God knew our wicked hearts. He knew that we wouldn’t feel accountable to a nice fuzzy lamb. He knew that fear would always be a part of our obedience.

I need to remember that. God is awesome. God is fearsome. I can sing “What a friend we have in Jesus” all day long, but that doesn’t change the fact that God is worthy of my respect. And, yes, a healthy amount of fear.

Like C.S. Lewis wrote of Aslan the lion, who represented Jesus in in his Chronicles of Narnia, “Oh, he’s not a tame lion; he’s not tame at all. But he is good.”

effort

To me, the story of Joshua’s fight with the Amalekites (told in Exodus 17) has always been kind of odd. 

Exodus 17:10-13: “So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.”

What’s up with the hands in the air? God didn’t really need those hands to win that fight.

It makes me think of Basic Training. The second most common punishment, right after push-ups, was to hold my seven-pound M16 over my head at arm’s length. Sixty seconds of that was a long time.

Maybe God wanted some effort out of Moses. Maybe the lesson is that rather than God just taking care of me, he’ll give me something to do to help myself. 

Maybe God wanted obedience out of Moses. Maybe the lesson is that no matter how odd or unnecessary it looks to me, success will come from doing what God wants me to do.

That seems like a good place to start: Do what God tells me, no matter how it looks, and don’t expect it come without some effort. I’m sure there’s more here than that, but for this morning, that’s enough.

choices

There’s a Demotivational poster that I don’t think is very funny. The picture is of a sinking ship. The caption reads, “It may be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”

I don’t think that’s funny because for some people it’s the truth. It was for the Pharaoh of the book of Exodus. In the middle of the ten plagues that devastated Egypt, God sent this message to Pharaoh (Exodus 9:16) “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

I can’t imagine more frightening words, than to be told by Almighty God that the reason he put me where I am is so that he can show the world what the weight of his anger looks like.

God is full of love and mercy, to be sure, but his holiness cannot be flouted. He will judge those who oppose him and his people. He will get angry with anyone who drags others into sin with them.

It reminds me that any act of mine that doesn’t point people toward God, well, doesn’t point them to God. Meaning at a minimum I’m allowing them to continue in the wrong direction. Maybe what I do even encourages their sins.

I can’t say what I do only hurts me. I can’t say it’s nobody else’s business. As long as I carry the name Christian, everything I do impacts what those around me think of other Christians, and of God. My snark and meanness and impatience and self-centeredness reflect badly on God. My kindness and loving service show his ability to change lives.

In the end, then, every choice matters. Especially the visible ones.

obedient

Sometimes I wonder why I blog. And there’s no shortage of blogs, most of them written by people better equipped than I am. And it’s not like there are hundreds of people reading.

I usually don’t think about it very long. Truth is, I just need to write something. I’ve never had the time to focus on writing the great American novel, and the journalism career I started on proved not to be family-friendly, so writing for pay never worked out. But I can’t not write.

And I feel like there’s some small level of giftedness here. Sometimes I managed to string words together in a way that helps someone else. There’s an obligation to use any gift.

This morning I read, in Exodus 4:11-12, “The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’"

God said that to Moses, at the burning bush, but those words seemed meant for me. God gave me a voice. My job is to faithfully open my mouth, or open the word processor. When I do that in service to God’s people, it always seems that the words are there.

That’s true for every gift I have, including the ones I don’t use much. Too often, I’m like Moses, who replied to God, "Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else." (v13).

I remember the story of the boy and the beach full of starfish, and the advice I got a long time ago: Just do the thing you can do. Make a contribution.

So here it is, another small pack of paragraphs let loose on the world as an act of obedient service. May it bless someone as much as the reading and reflection blesses me.

fearmongering

What have you done for me lately? That’s a phrase used in business and sports to say that we can’t rest on our past accomplishments. We have to continue to contribute.

“Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. ‘Look,’ he said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.’" Exodus 1:8-10

The new king could just as well have said “What have you done for me lately?” He didn’t care that Joseph saved Egypt from famine, he didn’t care about Joseph’s family. What he saw was a bunch of foreigners living on the best part of his land, weird people with strange rituals who were quickly becoming very numerous.

So he applied the same formula I tend to apply to people I don’t know: Different + capable = scary. Or different + not capable = contemptible. Either way, they must be a threat. We must guard ourselves against them, keep them away. Control them. And, ironically, Pharaoh made the Israelites into exactly what he saw them to be, by treating them badly.

Pharaoh did it, I do it, our politicians are doing it. And some of those other people see us the same way. To attack the one who is different is a hallmark of our brokenness.

How about a different formula? Maybe different = interesting. Maybe capable = good partner. Maybe if we see others as something helpful to us, then by treating them that way they might come to see themselves that way too.

It won’t work in every case - Satan is active, after all. I just think I’ll let God guide my behavior; if Satan gets to the other guy then too bad for him.

still on duty

Being grandpa is a pretty sweet gig. I get all the fun of small children without the hassles of parenting. When they’re sad, they run to grandma. When they want to play, they come to me.

I’m at that place where my life is pretty much what I want it to be, what I’ve been working towards for five decades. I have a plan that sees me into retirement and beyond. A lot of retirees from our neck of the woods go south; I don’t think that will be me.

Jacob didn’t plan on it either. Jacob may have been like me, with a life he liked and no desire for big changes. At 130 years of age, he likely thought he was set, until his long-lost son Joseph moved him south to Egypt. Lock, stock and barrel, as they used to say to mean everything.

Genesis 46:33 and following:  "’I am God, the God of your father,’ he said. ‘Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there….’  So Jacob and all his offspring went to Egypt, taking with them their livestock and the possessions they had acquired in Canaan. Jacob brought with him to Egypt his sons and grandsons and his daughters and granddaughters—all his offspring.”

Well into his second century, Jacob set out with an extended family of almost 90 people and made his last move. He moved from the place God sent him to another place God sent him. He started over completely, in a foreign place, because it was part of God’s plan.

The moral here sounds more like a warning to me. It seems I hear God saying, “Don’t get too comfortable, Greg. You’re here to serve, and you’re not worn out yet. Stay ready and keep working; I’ll let you know when you’re off duty.”

No paybacks

Of all the things in the Joseph story that I find remarkable, Gen 45:24 may be the most interesting. Joseph, you recall, was sold to slavers by his brothers. Years later, risen to a position of power in Egypt, the brothers come to him for food. It’s a dramatic story, especially the part where Joseph tells his brothers who he really is.

The verse I’m referring to says, “Then he sent his brothers away, and as they were leaving he said to them, ‘Don't quarrel on the way!’”

The brothers would have had plenty to quarrel about. The decision to sell Joseph wasn’t unanimous. The decision to lie to Jacob about it was, but now that lie was exposed. Their chickens were coming home to roost, and it was time to parcel out the blame.

Why didn’t Joseph just let them pick away at each other? Why not let them work through the unpleasantness of their sin against him? After all, it won’t hurt anyone if they argue, and it might be good for them to have it out in the open. And a little misery for them might  be fun to think about.

Could it be that Joseph’s love was stronger than his need for payback? Even payback for such a betrayal as being sold off like a cow? Joseph’s life story is told in scripture as a foreshadowing of what Jesus would do for us, and petty stuff like paybacks wasn’t even on Jesus radar screen.

What about for me, someone who has taken Jesus' name and calls himself Christian? I guess paybacks, even the little ones, are out for me too. Getting even is for people who don’t know grace.

go up to Bethel

This morning, reading again a very familiar passage, I noticed something I’d just blown by before.

Here’s the setting: Jacob is running from that encounter with his brother/rival Esau, and God tells him to go build an altar and live at Bethel. Jacob doesn’t know it, but when he gets there God is going to renew with him the covenant He made with Abraham.

What I noticed this morning is what Jacob did first. He demanded that his entire group give up their foreign Gods. “So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem.” Genesis 35:4.

What a powerful picture of what it means to answer God’s call! Before I start, I have to get rid of any worldly thing that’s going to hold me back.

It makes me wonder about my rationalizations for wallowing in worldly culture. Some of the movies I watch and computer games I play and books I read and music I listen to serve modern day religions like humanism and atheism and relativism. In suggesting that my own happiness should be my first concern, they tempt me from God’s call. In promoting violence as a solution they mock the Prince of Peace. When they offer intimacy with anyone who attracts me as a source of joy, they destroy the marriage institution that is the model for Christ’s relationship with His church.

I think maybe I need to dig a hole under the oak tree. If I can’t bear to toss in my TV set and iPad, maybe it will at least remind me to make better choices about what I do with them.

wrestling with pigs

I get mad at people I’ve never seen. Really mad, sometimes, angry enough to wish for bad things to happen to them. There’s so much injustice in this world, and so many hateful people. My outrage seems right, it seems justified. I feel like I have the moral high ground.

What I don’t remember is that my Lord Jesus wants me to act differently than that. Love those who hate you, he told me, and be kind to the ones who persecute you.

I want to be like Jacob’s sons when the pagan Hamor raped their sister. That story is in Genesis 34. Hamor wants a treaty so he can marry Dinah. In verse 13, we read this: “Because their sister Dinah had been defiled, Jacob's sons replied deceitfully as they spoke to Shechem and his father Hamor.”

Dinah’s brothers plotted. They got the whole city to cut off their own foreskins, and then slaughtered them all while they were at a disadvantage. They got even and then some: hundreds of murders, plus theft on a huge scale, in response to one rape.

That’s the problem with rage: no punishment is enough. No amount of suffering will satisfy.

Jesus said turn the other cheek because he knew that getting even hurts me as much or more as the other guy. He knows how toxic the poisons of hatred and revenge are, and also how addictive. The world isn’t going to be fair, and God knows I can destroy myself trying to get back.

I need to practice love. I need to practice because I’m not good at it. I’m really good at put-downs and name-calling. I’m excellent at arguments, especially the imaginary ones I have in my head. I speak snark like it’s my native language. But love? I’m too self-centered.

Jesus says I have to take a different path than everyone else. He says that my actions are to be obedient to him. Instead of getting down in the gutter with the rest, I need to hold to the highest standard.

There’s a farmer-ism you hear where I live: never wrestle with a pig. The pig has fun and you get dirty.

My soul is dirty enough.

pillars and heaps

“Get it in writing.” I wish I knew how many people have given me that advice. What they mean is you can’t just take a person’s word. If they put a commitment in writing, then they can’t claim they never said it. Or they can’t forget; you always have the paper to remind them.

In the early days of this world, the time recorded in the book of Genesis, they didn’t write things down. The story of Jacob and his father-in-law Laban, which I read this morning, describes what they did instead. “Laban also said to Jacob, "Here is this heap, and here is this pillar I have set up between you and me. This heap is a witness, and this pillar is a witness, that I will not go past this heap to your side to harm you and that you will not go past this heap and pillar to my side to harm me. May the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us.’” Genesis 31:51-53.

No writing, but a ton of work. Hauling and piling up rocks is work no one does anymore; there are machines for that. And a pillar was a single large stone, probably shaped with hand tools. Hard to make, and hard to move and put up.

Laban and Jacob put in all that work into those markers, but those markers would last for generations. For Laban and Jacob, the heap and pillar would remind them to keep their motives pure if they traveled past. For their ancestors, these rocks would keep the memory alive. “Grandpa, what’s that pillar for?” “Child, your ancestors Jacob and Laban put those there. Let me tell you why.”

I doubt if anything in my life is going to last that long. What would a memory heap look like these days? I have some medals I won while serving in the Army Guard. I guess someday a great-grandchild could find one and read the citation, but he or she still won’t really know what I did or what the medal signifies. Maybe something I write will survive, but that doesn’t seem likely.

In the end I think my descendants themselves will be my marker for the world. By God’s grace, maybe someday someone will ask Jacen’s grandchildren why they are such loving, helpful people. Maybe they’ll say, “We're Christians. Our family has always relied on God, as far back as we can remember.” Maybe my grandkids will make the world stop and wonder about the Jesus they claim to serve.

If they do, they won’t be my markers. They’ll be God’s. Even better.

bought

I’ve always felt really bad for Jacob when I read Genesis 30, which describes the escalating tension between his two sister-wives as Rachel, the favorite, struggles to have children and Leah hopes her fertility will win her Jacob’s heart. In the end, Jacob becomes a tool for parenting as both wives get their servants involved.

And then, to me, verse 16 has to be the absolute worst. It reads, “So when Jacob came in from the fields that evening, Leah went out to meet him. ‘You must sleep with me,’ she said. ‘I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.’ So he slept with her that night.”

What must that feel like, to be treated as an object of barter by your wives? To be told, not asked, which bed to get into? To be swapped for some plants?

It’s another example of how God’s people in Genesis manage to mess up their marriages. And it’s a reminder of how easily I can make a hash of my own relationships.

After all, Leah and Rachel were both trying to solve important problems; they both wanted to be treated with respect and dignity by Jacob and each other. Their solutions just led to more drama and dysfunction, but what they wanted wasn’t so bad.

As I look among the people I interact with all the time, I see broken marriages and extra-marital affairs and cohabitation without marriage. I see all kinds of soap-opera behavior with kids and exes. Even a happily married man can show a messed-up idea of sex within his own marriage, or on the Internet. And I don’t have to broaden the circle very far to find same-sex relationships and even gender confusion.

The sad truth is, very few people still have a clear idea of what God meant sex and marriage to be. And there are all kinds of wrong ideas that weasel their way into my head every day, from the songs I hear, the books I read, TV shows I watch or even the daily news.

It’s a shame that God’s most beautiful gift to us, the one meant to show us what His relationship with the church is like, has been so sadly twisted by Satan. Oh, how desperately this world needs a Savior.

despising my birthright

Whenever I read the story of Esau and the red stew, I think, “What an idiot!” You remember, in Genesis 25 starting at verse 29, Esau is starving, and Jacob has some stew. Jacob makes Esau swear to give him the all the rights of the first-born son: the inheritance, authority in the family, everything. Esau does it, he swears away his future, and gets some stew. And then, in verse 34, these words of scorn: “So Esau despised his birthright.”

What an idiot, I usually think. How long would it have taken you to find your own food? Are you so short-sighted that you can’t see the value of what’s waiting for you?

Today I didn’t think that. Today I saw another idiot in the same story.

“And Greg was eager for promotion, so he agreed to give up the Sabbath to please his boss. So Greg despised his birthright.”

“And Greg was tempted, because what the others were doing looked like so much fun, and he joined with them in their worldly revelry. So Greg despised his birthright.”

“And Greg was angry, for lo, ahead of him was a driver who was both slow and stupid, and Greg took the Lord’s name in vain. So Greg despised his birthright.”

You see, I have an inheritance even more valuable than Esau’s. I have a room in a palace, and life of eternity in God’s presence, a new perfect body in a place where I’ll never be sad again. I have a birthright that I am too willing to compromise as I try to get along in the broken place where I live for the moment.

Esau and me, two idiots who can’t keep their eyes on the prize, two idiots living expediently in the moment. Good thing for the Savior, because on my own I don’t stand a chance.

my own answers

I have a faith problem: I often like my own solutions to problems better than the ones God has planned.

Oh, I don’t usually put it that way. I usually think nothing is happening, God doesn’t have a plan, it’s up to me. I get impatient. I want what I want badly enough that I find reasons to think it must be God’s will. The problem is, my answers usually don’t work out as well as if I’d just waited for God.

In Genesis 16 I read about Sarai, Abram’s barren wife who desperately wanted a son. Her solution: send in a surrogate. Her husband sleeps with her slave, who gets pregnant. The rest is predictable. Hagar scorns her mistress, who failed in this most basic role of family life. Sarai takes in out on Abram first, then treats Hagar badly enough that she runs away.

Their plan worked, sort of. Abram got his male child, Ishmael. But Ishmael grew up to be the father of twelve pagan kings. He was the forefather of the Ishmaelites, desert tribes whose “hand would be against every man, and every man’s hand against them.”

In the end, God fulfilled his original covenant with Abraham. Sarah bore him a son in their old age, Isaac, and through Isaac the nation of Israel would come to be. Sarai’s scheming wouldn’t prevent God’s plan from happening.

But it would make things harder for God’s people. More than once the Ishmaelite tribes caused trouble for the Israelites. They raided and fought with everyone, their cousins included.

I need to remember that the next time I think I know what’s right for our church building, or I want to fix someone else’s life, or I want to make my own life easier. I can’t claim to trust in God if I pray a few times and then do my own thing.

God’s timing is as perfect as his plan. My timing and my plans are as imperfect as my faith.

I guess that’s what sanctification is all about. Every day I try to get a little better, a little more holy, a little more faithful, a little more Christlike. One inch at a time I become more what God wants me to be. And this matter of trusting in His plans is a good place to start.

being different

One of the hard things about living in this state of not-yet is dealing with this world’s power figures. I’ve never met a president or king, but I did shake hands with Prince Charles once and occasionally I host the governor or a congressman for a plant tour. My power figures are the movers and shakers in my own community, the wealthy and the business leaders who have money and influence.

Since it’s hard for me to resist their persuasiveness and it’s easy to be drawn to the things they can do for me, I needed to read this from Genesis 14 this morning: “But Abram said to the king of Sodom, ‘I have raised my hand to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath  that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, “I made Abram rich.”  I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me–to Aner, Eshcol and Mamre. Let them have their share.’”

Abram had just spent days in hot pursuit and in combat, chasing down the kings who plundered Sodom and kidnapped his nephew. He must have been tired and sore and dirty. He must have felt like he deserved a reward. But he wouldn’t take one from the King of Sodom, a heathen who lived as though God didn’t exist. “You will never be able to say you were the one who made me what I am,” Abram told the king.

The lesson for me is that I can easily compromise myself by who I partner with in life. There are some people who can fill my bank account and bankrupt my soul. Far better to be like Daniel, who turned down the best another pagan king had in his palace in order to be different from the pagans.

The word we Reformed use is “distinctive.” May 2016 be a year of distinctiveness for me.

olive leaves

A good friend of mine, a soldier I served with, often said, “Don’t wish your life away.” He said this whenever someone wanted it to be tomorrow, or just couldn’t wait for Christmas, or was really ready for spring. Often that person was me. 

I can be that way because sometimes the day I’m living doesn’t seem very exciting. Often it seems bleak. At any rate, it doesn’t look nearly as good as, say, my upcoming vacation. 

This morning I read about Noah, the man who endured decades of mockery as he built the ark, and then floated inside it through the destruction of the world. Floated inside it, he and his family and the last vestiges of life on the entire planet. For forty days, rocking and pitching with the waves, no control over direction, no idea what was coming next. 

God was there, though, and after weeks afloat he gave Noah the promise of an olive leaf. 

Genesis 8:6-12 says, “After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.” 

A chapter or two later God gives the promise that he’ll never again destroy the world, and with it he gives the sign of the rainbow, but for me the olive leaf is more powerful. It comes at the height of the flood, at that point when that ark full of people and critters was blindly dependent on God. At that point, the mute message of the olive leaf seems to me to have been, “Hang on. There’s more out there than you can see.”

Thank God my life is full of olive leaves, little moments when life here on earth seems like it might be in heaven. Moments free of snark, full of kindness, brimming with beauty. Sunsets and migrating geese and a cup of hot coffee made un-requested by someone who loves me. A little promise, each one, that God is still working good in this dark world. Even in January, with the temperatures in single digits and a foot of snow on the ground.

God is faithful, no matter what our eyes tell us. That’s the promise of the olive leaf.

created to create

In video gaming there’s something called an Easter egg; it’s a little surprise tucked away somewhere in the game, undocumented, put there by the designers to give players a bit of unexpected delight when they are stumbled upon.

I often think the Bible is that way. For every epic story line and beloved character, there are dozens of short passages that don’t often get read in church, but add so much.

Genesis includes the story of a man named Lamech, a descendent of the fratricidal first murderer, Cain. I read about him in Genesis 4. Lamech himself may not be so obscure, but this part of his story might be: “Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal- Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.” (v19-22).

Those verses, to me, are an Easter egg. Tucked between the familiar stories of Cain and Abel on the one hand and Noah and the ark on the other, they tell of the start of civilization. One son who became a farmer and earthkeeper, the forefather of all human activity related to the land. Another, a musician, started the arts, those things that we think of as particularly creative and beautiful. And the third son wrought tools and made things, the first engineer and manufacturer.

Do I read too much into this, or can I find here God’s leadership and blessing on all our work? Am I right in thinking that by making the earth full of animals and minerals, by laying down the laws of physics and creating light (which produces color) and sound, by putting into us the curiosity and creativity and industry that we have, that through us God continues to this day to create? That his original creation included the latent potential for every song and building and gadget and food that has ever made us happy? That rather than giving us these things ready-made, he gave us the great blessing of allowing us to discover them?

This is why, to me, a key part of being made in God’s image is that we humans create. We innovate and design and have ideas. We carry them out for the good of our fellow man. If I do this unselfishly and in service, does it make me, in a very small way, God-like? I hope so.

why work is hard

Confession time: I’m not really all that excited about the new year.

What I have ahead of me is five months of grinding. The holidays are past, the next one is Memorial Day. Oh, I have a little Texas getaway planned, but basically the fun is over and it’s time to get back to work.

What’s so bad about that? Work is good, work has value, work brings satisfaction and meaning. And yet, we all try to spend less time at work and more time chasing our dreams, whatever they are. And usually our dreams and work are completely separate.

Genesis 3:17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.”
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

There are two things going on with my post-holiday blahs. First, work is hard and painful; it’s been that way for all mankind since Adam and Eve ate the apple. Second, my attitude toward work is messed up. I think my life should be about me, not about service. Again, because of that rotten snake and his stupid apple.

I begin this year of Bible reading as I always do, at the beginning, Genesis, where God made everything good. Where God made the perfect life for Adam and Eve. Where they, like I do every day, messed it up by thinking they knew better.

But the second chapter of Genesis is also where I first read of the great promise of a Savior. In the darkest moment, there is hope. A promise of an amazing rescue from my own bad choices and attitudes, and equipping to once more love the great work of restoration.

And so begins the greatest story ever told.

my New Year's prayer

Today is the first day of 2016. This year, no resolutions, no new goals (I have some unmet ones left over from last year). This year, a prayer.

Lord, help me to be what this messed-up world needs in order to see you.

Help me be the voice of kindness when the political rhetoric turns to name-calling and nasty accusations, when angry minorities confront complacent majorities, when my perception of your love is challenged to include people I don’t like.

Help me be the instrument of peace when the world sees Christians as the ones so eager to shoot back, and and even willing to shoot first if it means sniping an abortion doctor or wiping out a Planned Parenthood clinic. Help me to pray and love instead of fight.

Help me be the hands of compassion when the storms strike or layoffs hit or when backs are turned, so that unwed mom or gay couple or twice-divorced old bar-fly can feel just for a minute how your love has changed me.

Help me be the husband who nurtures his wife, the dad who serves his children, the son who doesn’t forget his mom and dad. Help me be the friend my friends need.

Help me to lose my self-centeredness so I can see your image-bearers the way you see them, and to lose my selfishness so that I’ll act on what I see.

Lord, in 2015 I did a lot of finger-pointing, I sneered at a lot of people, I called names and talked behind people's backs. I wasn’t a very good example of what your followers are supposed to be, and I’m afraid when the world looked at me I reinforced a lot of their bad stereotypes of what your church is.

Help me, this year, to want what you want, to love everyone as you love, and to heal and unite instead of wound and divide. Lord, this year may there be less of me and more of you.

Amen.