Fresh Water

The Great Salt Lake in Utah is an astonishing sight. Seeing it in person, I realized it was much larger than I had imagined, and I never expected it to smell. Maybe the air was just too calm that day, but I was met with an odor akin to dead fish. That's a little strange, since the Great Salt Lake is too saline to support any icthyologic creatures. The only critters that live in the lake are brine shrimp. These little guys are plentiful, and as it turns out, it is their remains which cause the stink around the lake.
The shoreline of the lake is oddly barren - an unusual feature for a large body of water, and not what one expects at first. Obviously, however, water this salty just doesn't promote much biology.

Even more saline than the Great Salt Lake is the Dead Sea in Israel. It is ten times more salty than the ocean. Except for a scant few micro-organisms, that is definitely deader than a door nail.

There's a succinct yet beautiful verse of Scripture that speaks of a miracle that will one day happen to the Dead Sea. It's found in Ezekiel 47, and these chapters at the end of Ezekiel are actually "sister Scriptures" to those at the end of Revelation. This particular chapter describes a river of fresh and living water flowing out from beneath the temple in Jerusalem and emptying into the Dead Sea:

"When it empties into the Sea, the water there becomes fresh." Ezekiel 47:8

It is such a beautiful and refreshing picture of invigoration and healing. To read it in context is to be stirred by its imagery and encouraged by the hope it offers. The hope comes not just from the promise of life for the Dead Sea, but the way our God causes life to spring from death in all those people who have trusted Christ and are called His own.

It's a picture often described in Scripture, as the sojourners on pilgrimage in Psalm 84 are refreshed by springs of water along the way, and a bright promise is given in Isaiah 43:19 for streams flowing in a wasteland.

I long for this.

Faithful are the periods of God's faithful refreshing in my life. When my throat is parched and praises don't come easily and my eyes are dry and vision blurry, the oasis always appears at just the right time and my heart is renewed.

Empty Rhetoric, Weighty Matters

So, I guess this is partly entertainment and partly a serious matter. The video below is good for several hearty chuckles, and I think demonstrates how vacuous political rhetoric really is.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

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One of those final statements is, "I guess when Obama says this stuff, I don't think he really means it!" Now that's funny, but it's funny because we think it's true.

But this post is not meant to be a political statement. This post isn't about words and rhetoric, but about action. In 2002, President Bush signed into law the Born Alive Infant Protection Act and in 2003, he signed into law the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act: proof positive that this man is pro-life and he demonstrated it in his actions. I am afraid, truly, of the direction our nation will head in the next four years in regard to abortion "rights" with a democratic (and heavily liberal) congress and a democratic (and certainly liberal) President.

Now more than ever it's time to pray, to educate, and to inform. I'll let John Piper close this post for me:

Thinking All Wrong

I had a mild epiphany this weekend.

Staring down the barrel of some difficult situations lately, I've been wondering what I've done wrong and how it is that I've failed so miserably. Surely this smothering hopelessness is my fault!

Well, the epiphany happened in the car with the music up loud (Skillet, Whispers In The Dark). The Lord sort of suddenly revealed to me that I've been thinking all wrong about my circumstances.

It sounds so elementary, but what I realized was that difficulty is not defeat. In fact, opposition is actually opportunity.

In truth, I should regard these times as the battle I've been given to fight. I've been placed at a position on the front line. It is now my commission from heaven to fight, defend and win. I must say, this does appeals to my male sensibilites.

All of a sudden it was as if I realized, "Wait - I don't have a knife to my throat - I have a sword in my hand - let's get to work!" I was stirred with all kinds of courage. The change in perspective was a weight lifted off my chest. I felt like I could stand, narrow my gaze, grip the hilt and prepare to defend the line.

Of course life is hard. I think it's supposed to be. I wasn't left here to just wait things out. No true believer is. We are meant to fight for and defend our families, spouses, churches and ultimately the Truth of the Gospel itself.

Almighty God, help me, though I fear, to fight bravely!

Abortion: Always Wrong

The videos below are parts one and two of a powerful and riveting testimony from an abortion survivor. It is a must see. Now, more than ever, people who know the truth should be standing up, standing out, and defending the lives of the unborn.

As Warm As Tears

In 1991, Phil Keaggy released a CD entitled "Beyond Nature", which was based entirely on the life and writings of C.S. Lewis. The album is entirely instrumental, and is some of the most beautiful guitar playing I've ever heard. One of the tracks is called "As Warm As Tears", so named from a poem written by Lewis. The song and the poem are below, and if you are wired like I am, you will find the combination sublime. So hit play and read away!

Love's As Warm As Tears

Love's as warm as tears, love is tears:

Pressure within the brain,

Tension at the throat,

Deluge, weeks of rain,

Haystacks afloat,

Featureless seas between

Hedges, where once was green.

Love's as fierce as fire, love is fire:

All sorts - infernal heat

Clinkered with greed and pride,

Lyric desire, sharp-sweet,

Laughing, even when denied,

And that empyreal flame

Whence all loves came.

Love's as fresh as spring, love is spring:

Bird-song hung in the air,

Cool smells in a wood,

Whispering "Dare! Dare!"

To sap, to blood,

Telling "Ease, safety, rest,

Are good; not best."

Love's as hard as nails, love is nails:

Blunt, thick, hammered through

The medial nerves of One

Who, having made us, knew

The thing he had done,

Seeing (with all that is)

Our cross, and His.

Shun Professionalism

"We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry . . . professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness, there is no professional tenderheartedness. There is no professional panting after God." ~ John Piper

This quote resonates with me today as I consider my life in the context of ministry. When I take a few quiet moments to think about how I spend my days working in "ministry", as I did last night, I really wonder how much of what I do is what I ought to be doing. What exactly does the calling of a pastor entail biblically in a modern setting?

This kind of reflection drives me to consider several things, and here they are in no particular order:

~My commitment to solid, Scriptural teaching and practice must be paramount. I dare not waste any time I have in front of teenagers or children. Oh yeah, adults too, I guess. Biblically, this is the essence of the Biblical pastor - teaching truth, preparing others for service. Here is where I begin to cogitate on the subtle differences between shepherding and leading.

~Am I really meant to spend so much time dealing with difficult people about apparently meaningless issues? I don't suppose anyone is immune to this, but the lion's share of it seems to happen in the Church (forgive me if I am cynical . . .)

~What is the real impact on my family of being in the ministry? I have always been very careful with my priorities, but I wonder if I could give my sons even more of myself if I worked a job that I could leave at the office everyday. I am not one easily stressed, but I know that ministry can be stressful, and not just for the minister, but also his family.

~God has called me to ministry for a season, my family for a lifetime, and Himself for eternity. I think my decisions should be based on this hierarchy.

So, there you have it. A few things bouncing around in my cranium. I love what Jesus has done for me. May He give me an outlet to share this in whatever setting or vocation I find myself.

Love That Will Not Let Me Go

To think of God's faithfulness through all my years is overwhelming. The number of dark and lonely roads I've chosen to travel is astonishing, yet He has always been there at the end to set me aright once again. Then, to realize that His faithfulness toward me began not at my birth, but at the creation of the world, is beyond comprehension. Yet that is the very thing that Scripture teaches.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will..." Ephesians 1:3-5

"Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139

Is this the kind of love that will ever let me go? This a relentless love, of which only the smallest part can be understood by men! This is the great love of immeasureable height, depth, width and length that surpasses knowledge!

The bottom line is that if He had not pursued me, I would never have known His salvation, and without Him upholding me, I will never endure to the end.

Take a few minutes and listen to "Love That Will Not Let Me Go" by Steve Camp:

T.S. Eliot and Self-Importance

"Half the harm done in this world is due to people that want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them, or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." ~from T.S. Eliot's "The Cocktail Party"I, as well as you, have known many folks who fall into this category. I myself have tiptoed in and out of this territory from time to time. There are, however, those who seem to exist there and it must be a strange place to live. To observe them is somewhat entertaining, certainly puzzling, and to experience them firsthand is often frustrating. They confound, they drain, they mystify. They serve as a warning to the rest of us who sometimes feel the need to toot our own horn, lest we hire a band to follow us around tooting many horns and singing our own praises.

:) I vent, therefore I am.

I am, therefore I pray almost daily that God would keep me from giving in to the monster of pride that still lurks somewhere within.

Dream Ride

Last night I dreamed I was riding my motorcycle. There are three reasons why. First, yesterday was quite warm around around here and there were a lot of riders out on the highway. Second, my Buell sits in the garage right now without a drive belt, and I want so badly to get it fixed, but since it's not full-on riding season yet, I'm paying bills with that money. Third, it's one of the best things to dream about? I mean, it's like when I dream I'm speaking in French, only I'm really good at it, or playing my guitar and I make up some really cool song. Last night I was riding and the wind was in my face and all was good in dreamland!

For the true Christian, faith will someday be made sight and everything we thought we ever wanted or ever dreamed about will be superseded by a reality that just blows us away.

Tough

About ninety years ago this little fella was enjoying a fine summer day playing Indians. No doubt he imagined himself a heroic young brave. This little "Indian" grew up to become my grandfather.

My maternal grandfather George Becker Hesse was a tough guy. Not a bar-room brawling kind of tough guy, but a sun-ripened, wind-weathered, hard-working, farming-life kind of tough guy.

One of my favorite memories of him involves a fishing trip to a local farm pond. Grandpa had just caught a largemouth bass and was removing the red and white Midge Oreno plug from its mouth when the fish did some gymnastics and drove the point of one of the treble hooks straight down into the meat of one of grandpa's fingers. I wasn't too far away, and grandpa calmly asked me to come over and help him out. He held the still hooked fish with his unhooked hand, and asked me to pull the deeply inserted hook out of his finger. "Just pull it out," he said.

Easier said than done. I grabbed the treble hook, which was buried well past the barb, and began to wriggle and twist and yank until the thing came out. Not a peep out of grandpa. As a young boy, I was amazed. Grandpa's hero status definitely went up another couple notches that day.

It's easy to remember grandpa running a tractor or spading up a manure pile to find grubs for fishing. I recall his dark farmer's tan on his strong, sinewy arms and his huge appetite. He was generally fairly quiet, but he loved to laugh.

As grandpa's years drew to a close and Parkinson's disease gradually tightened its grip on him, he never once complained, nor was there any hint of him feeling sorry for himself. He passed peacefully in his sleep one January night.

I hope I can learn to face life the way grandpa did: with strength and resolution and peace. I hope I can learn to practice the patient endurance that God grants those who trust in Him. There's something heroic about calmly accepting what life brings and dealing with circumstances not as if they are threatening storm clouds overhead, but as water passing under the bridge.

Her

There is no one like her. She really is my best friend. We fight, we make up. We disagree, we laugh. We get frustrated, we love. We struggle with the budget, we raise our boys and we would hate to live life without each other.

Sometimes I think back to when we were just kids. I was fascinated by her even then. As we grew older, I would often think about how dreamy it would be if one day she could be my wife. Nowadays, I catch myself thinking what a stinking lucky guy I am. I have married the girl of my dreams and she still is the girl of my dreams. I never knew how much it was possible to love a person. Having kids has only added another dimension to that crazy kind of love.

And you know, the love we share has only been strengthened and deepened by the difficult times we've weathered together. My wife and I, we got a groovy kind of love. [Thank you, Phil Collins ;) ] God has been so good to us, in bringing us together and keeping us together. Marriage is work, but it's wonderful work.

Fantastic Opportunities

Paul the Apostle lived a rough life. And the thing of it was, he chose it (well, theologically speaking, the doctrine of election teaches that God chose him for it...but I digress). No doubt what he had before his conversion was a relative life of ease, as he was a powerful and influential member of the Jewish religious community. After conversion, all that became "skybala", or street filth, filled with as much value as a dirty diaper.

He left "everything" behind to gain EVERYTHING. After encountering Christ, Paul faced rejection from his former peers, and lived out the remainder of his life facing the constant threat of harm, hunger, cold and crushing circumstances. Later on in his life, after a perilous journey across the Mediterranean on a prison ship and a shipwreck, Paul arrived in Rome where he was a prisoner. Luke recorded the fantastic opportunities that came to Paul as a result of the perilous road he traveled:

"For two full years he lived there in Rome . . . receiving all who came to him . . . [and] with great confidence and with no hindrance, he proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about Jesus." Acts 28:30-31

A normal person might have thought, as they saw the scars on their body from stones thrown at them in hatred and felt their stiff, achy joints from many years of hard travelling, "what have I gotten myself into?" But I'm certain that Paul, even after so many years, wept with joy because of the grace God showed to him and the way God had used him to spread the Good News of Christ through so many fantastic opportunities.

Winter Growth

Winter can be beautiful and harsh. I wouldn't like to live without winter.

Our lives have seasons. Winter there is definitely harsh, but it does not come without beauty. The hardest times in life open up beautiful opportunities for growth, wisdom and stronger faith. Sometimes all we have as we cringe before the numbing cold is the promise of the warmth that waits within the plan of God.