Out of the Wind

March 9, 2017

This afternoon as I drove to band rehearsal, we passed a home sitting on a curve in the road. If I hadn't known what I would see, I would have missed it. As I drove by, I could see over the roof of that house Lake Erie stretched out some ten miles distant. It is a magnificent view that stirs something inside me. I love those homes sitting in just the right place to give a vista that almost takes your breath away. That's not the kind of home I live in.

Some time ago I read that generally speaking, women prefer surroundings that are closed in, whereas men like wide open spaces. The author of the article wrote about he and his wife visiting the Grand Canyon. He stood on the edge, arms open wide, exclaiming how wonderful was the scene that stretched before him. He turned around to see his wife standing some feet back, arms wrapped around herself and feeling quite uncomfortable. It is politically incorrect these days to assert that there are basic differences between men and women other than the biological; that gender is merely a social construct. It seems to me that the concept of gender fluidity is the social construct, but that's beside the point.

When Linda was trying to convince me to buy our present home, she saw the beauty of it, surrounded by a creek with an eighty foot shale embankment behind it. Across the road, the cemetery sits on another embankment. We live in a gorge, hemmed in all around.

The winds today have been ferocious. Not quite the 80 mph gusts they're having along the Lake Ontario shoreline, but still topping 50 mph. This afternoon while cleaning up winter's debris from the back yard, we watched a tree come crashing down the embankment into the creek, making quite a racket and mess on the way down while the wind at the top howled in approval. Down where we were, it was pretty calm. We could hear it, see the tree tops swaying, but calm reigned in the gorge. Tonight I'm quite thankful for this little place tucked in between two embankments. We haven't lost a single shingle. Linda is smarter than she knows.

Witchcraft

March 8, 2017

Until fairly recently, if it's not associated with Halloween, it's considered a vestige of some bygone era where superstition reigned supreme. I'm talking about witchcraft. The word conjures up images of old, bent women with scraggly hair, pointed hats and noses, stirring cauldrons of some noxious, bubbling brew or riding around on broomsticks. There is a growing segment of society however, which proudly claims the title. Spells and incantations are taken seriously from this now recognized and often accepted religion. Its adherents are unabashedly anti-Christian, but not necessarily in a proselytizing way.

There is however, a dark side to the practice, and it is wreaking devastation all across our country. In the Christian Bible, the term witchcraft  or sorcery is used sparingly, but where it surfaces, it is with an unexpected twist. It's found only in six places: 2 Chronicles 33:6, Isaiah 47:9 and 12, Galatians 5:20, Revelation 9:21, and 18:23. While there are other words translated sorcery or witchcraft, in these six verses the word is pharmakeia, the word from which is derived pharmacy. It refers to the use of drugs in the incantations and religion of the day. It is always considered evil, and in the Revelation texts it is closely tied to the demonic.

The demonic in Scripture is always associated with bondage of some sort, where the individual so tormented or seemingly possessed has relinquished control of his or her life. I can think of no better description of drug addiction than this. In the past week, our community has been rocked by three overdoses. Today county and state police have been swarming all over our village looking for a young man who escaped from custody as he was being escorted into court for allegedly making meth in his home just up the street from us. He had gotten out of nearly a year's stay in jail only two months ago.

When we hear of such things going on in other communities, it is easy to adopt a "they got what was coming to them" attitude. When it's neighbors you've known, kids you watched grow up, and when you see grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, and children grieving-all people you know-it's another story altogether. I don't understand why kids experiment with this stuff. It's not as if no one knows what it does to you. I can't imagine feeling so empty, so discouraged, so filled with hopelessness and despair that one turns to such stuff. Sadly, it often begins with prescriptions to help people deal with post-surgical pain.

That's the devil's way. He takes what is legitimate, twists and distorts it till it becomes destructive. Our hope as Christians is the message of the Gospel that Jesus Christ sets people free from their bondage through the power of the resurrection. It is however, rarely an easy deliverance. It's hard enough to rescue someone held tightly in an enemy's prison. It is harder still when the one being delivered wants to stay imprisoned. The battle is physical, social, psychological, and spiritual. I pray for the day when sorrow and sadness shall be no more and the tears shall be wiped away, and I thank God for those who labor on the front lines of this battle, and for those who have been rescued. We are assured the victory is ours, but in the meantime, I weep for those casualties of the fight.

Restoration

March 6, 2017

When my kite hit the ground, my friend John walked over and deliberately stepped on it. "That wasn't right!" I exclaimed.

"Who says?" Jack was defiant; something I hadn't before seen in my friend. I was only twelve, and had recently made a profession of faith in Christ as my Savior. I took it seriously, and knew the answer to his challenge. I went into our house, retrieved my new Bible from my room, and strode back into the front yard where Jack still stood, feet planted on my kite.

"This says!" I waved my Bible before him. He just laughed. Then he walked away.

That was more than fifty years ago, but I can still see him standing there, smirking. And I still can feel the sting of his mockery. That rebuke is as fresh today as it was then. For fifty years, the memory of that rejection has dogged every attempt I've made to share my faith. For fifty years, it was all I could do to keep from hiding my light under a bushel, as Jesus warned.

Tonight at our men's Bible study, pastor Joe led us in a discussion of rejection. He referenced John 15:18-20. "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. "If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. "Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also."

I learned something tonight. It wasn't me being rejected. It was Jesus. St. Paul told us that our glorious hope is that Christ is in us (Colossians 1:27). I didn't realize I was in a spiritual battle, and that it was Christ in me being mocked. The rejection I felt, he felt. He was there with me, receiving the rebuke in my place. I needlessly took personally something that had little to do with me at all. Tonight I have some praying to do, thanking God for being with me those years ago, absorbing the weight of the offense. I'll also ask his forgiveness for taking upon myself that which really belonged to him. And I'll thank him that after nearly fifty years, I was able to make contact with John again, and to discover how much we now have in common. When God restores the soul, he does it completely.

Socialization and Solitude

March 5, 2017

It is different for each person, but there is a balance between socialization and solitude that I believe is crucial for our well-being. After breakfast with Matt, Jeanine, and the kids, we headed to church. Sunday mornings are always filled with lots of opportunities to socialize; we greet old friends and make new ones. This morning I introduced myself to three couples whose names I didn't know, before joining my wife for the singing. If I allow the music and lyrics to perform their slow dance in my head and heart, I am always drawn into a fellowship with God and his people that speaks deeply to me. Corporate worship has a way of reaching into those dark places in our hearts with a light that illumines the soul with grace, forgiveness, and healing. It is a reality check that helps me align my life with my true self in Christ, with others, and with God. I needed that socialization this morning.

Following worship and Sunday School, Linda needed to go to our daughter Jessie's home to help her get ready for Ian and Eliza's birthday celebration this afternoon, which gave me an hour by myself. I let Emma out and watched her run. After a couple hours being cooped up in the house by herself, she gets a bit antsy, barreling down the hillside to the creek with squeals of joy. I followed, walking the edge of the property as I have done so many times before, watching the water carrying small ice floes down the creek and over the falls. There is a beauty and serenity about it all that made me stop to listen and observe. There were no divine revelations in the flow of the water; only the realization that I was seeing something significant. The water in our creek makes its way into the Conewango which meets the Allegany which flows into the Ohio, then to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Just a couple miles to the north is our former home in Cassadaga, where the creeks flow northward into Lake Erie, over Niagara Falls to Lake Ontario, then to the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean. Our back yard and the creek that dances along its edge are not particularly significant in world history, but we are part of the great North American Divide.

I walked the land in solitude, grateful for this little piece of real estate we call home, and for the realization it brings me that lives which are seemingly insignificant can indeed be part of that which is the divide between good and evil, justice and injustice, light and darkness. And today, I had the privilege of experiencing the divide between socialization and solitude that fed my soul today.

Three Tragedies

March 4, 2017

"Are you home?" the text inquired. "If you are, the kiddos and I would like to come over and hang out for awhile." We weren't home yet. The Panama girls basketball playoffs had just gone into overtime, so another four minutes went on the clock. I called Jess just before leaving the parking lot so she would know when to pack everyone up to come over. I arrived just before they pulled in; Linda drove in shortly after. It was a fun evening, talking the older two and playing with Gemma. Liza told of when she got the barf-flavored jelly bean and puked. It's some sort of game they played. I told her she needed to ask her uncle Matt about the gum he left on his desk for the kids who kept stealing it. I wouldn't give away the story, so they called him and listened to his tale.

A little later Alex stopped by to pick up her sister. She stayed and we talked for more than an hour.

In a span of four hours today, we sat with our eldest son and his family at the basketball game, entertained our daughter and her kids, and talked on the phone with son Matt. This may not sound unusual, and for us, it's not, except for one thing. The day started out with the funeral of a young man who O.D'd, leaving behind his wife, a toddler son, and a baby on the way. Tomorrow is the funeral for another young man who similarly met his fate, and Thursday was the funeral of a young woman who leaves behind a small daughter. This is Sinclairville. It's not a big metropolis, but the scourge of addiction is leaving a swath of death and destruction that is devastating our kids and their families. That I was able to talk to all three of my kids, to play with half of my grandkids, and go to sleep tonight in peace instead of grief is an extraordinary gift for which I am deeply grateful. Too many parents and grandparents no longer have that privilege.

The Empty Promise of Self-Actualization

March 2, 2017

It was in college that I first heard the phrase, "self-actualization." In this, I was probably not much different than most folks. High schoolers don't tend to even know about such things, much less, talk about them. Abraham Maslow coined the term, referring to what he considered the highest level of human needs. Over the years, it has become somewhat of a buzzword in academic and political circles, and has undergone a multitude of mutations along the way. Whatever we call it, the concept has become an unquestioned goal towards which all human activity is supposed to point. Whether it's Old Blue Eyes crooning "I did it my way," a hippie in the '60's trekking into the desert and eating hallucinogenic mushrooms in a quest to find himself, or the suburban teeny-bopper wailing "I have to be me," the broad outlines are the same: for life to be meaningful, everything centers on me.

For the Christian, this poses a problem. Life for the Christian is supposed to be centered on Jesus Christ, not oneself. I say "supposed to be" because all too often, there is little if anything to distinguish the average Christian from his or her utterly pagan, but civilized, neighbor. We've equated Christianity with being nice, forgetting that Christ died "not to make bad men good, but to make dead men live." I put that in quotes because I wasn't the one who thought it up, and don't want to have to take the flak for the sexist language. I'm just reporting like Sergeant Friday: "Just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts."

So what if, as Christians affirm, we do not become our authentic and truest selves by focusing on our desires and needs? What if we were made for more than this? The season of Lent is one time honored way we can test this out. In it, we change life's focus from self-actualization to self-denial, believing that as Jesus and St. Francis said, it is in losing our lives that we truly find them.

And if that is true, then the quest for self-actualization in reality takes us further and further from our true selves. I've been toying with a story line for this, in which each time the protagonist lies, each time he chooses self over others, each time he secretly sneaks a look at pornography or ignores the cry of the poor, he fades just a little, until one day he completely disappears. That's what sin does to us; we lose more of our authentic selves until there is nothing left but a hollow shell that looks like the persons we used to be, but are empty inside. I am grateful tonight for this season that urges me to look deeply into my soul, but also for the forgiveness, healing, and cleansing offered to all who repent and believe the Gospel.

Repent and Believe

March 1, 2017

We didn't do it when I was young. Ash Wednesday was "too Catholic" for us independent Baptists. I was a teenager before I knew what those black smudges on the foreheads of some of my friends meant, and although I learned to lead Ash Wednesday services, we did so without the imposition of the ashes, if that makes any sense. Pastor Joe changed all that. He's a strange combination; he preaches in jeans and sport shirt, but is slowly leading us in a more liturgical direction. I could never bring myself to preach in anything except a suit. The move from robe to suit was a big step for me. But I digress.

Tonight I stood silently as Matt Slaven dipped his thumb into the ashes, made the sign of the cross on my forehead and intoned the ancient words, "Repent of your sins and believe the Gospel." Those words never cease to impress me with their brevity and clarity. We are called to do both. If I repent of my sins but do not believe the Gospel, my repentance becomes a downward cycle of recollection and guilt. Apart from the Gospel, repentance can only imprison me in the realization of my sin. On the other hand, believing the Gospel apart from repentance produces a casual, lackadaisical easy-believism that fails to take seriously the depth of the breach between ourselves and God caused by our sin. The Gospel is emptied of its importance and power if we don't know how to repent.

Those two phrases are inextricably linked together. Separate them, and the Good News ceases to be good. But together, they are the power of God. If I repent, I must believe the Good News of forgiveness. Therein is my hope. If I repent and believe the Gospel, I find the forgiveness and freedom I so desperately want and need. Tonight I am thankful for those ashes, but even more for those simple words, "Jim, repent, and believe the Gospel."