Friday, December 20, 2013

The Gift

For the Christian all of life is a gift from God. Like a present wrapped under the tree. The pleasures of this world are at best the wrapping and the bow. Affliction will come, but this too is a gift. Like an anxious child on Christmas morning, suffering rips away the wrapping. Beside the pile of torn paper and discarded bows we open the lid and find our true treasure…Jesus.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

The New Story

Those that know me know that I do not have the most praise worthy past. In grade school my teachers were at a loss on how to deal with this unruly child. My high school years were nonexistent (save one) because I had better things to do. My teenage years were spent chasing the next high and running from the five-oh as I would have called them. When I was twenty and near death or prison (whichever came first) I had an encounter with Jesus and the entire trajectory of my life changed. That is the Cliff notes version of my “testimony”.

I have told that story many times over the years. I like pointing to the power of God and his ability to change people. I like telling that story and people seem to enjoy hearing it. It does, after all, have many of the elements of a good story. Hoodlum kid makes good, I’ve seen that movie over and over again. The older I get the better the story gets too. Hoodlum kid goes to college. Hoodlum kid gets a great job. Hoodlum kid has a wife and 11 kids. But here’s the rub. The “better” the story gets the less inclined I am to tell it.

My hesitation to tell that story started around the time I finished college. It started when I found myself tempted to tell the story like this:
“I used to be a really rotten person and then I came to Jesus and he changed everything. I went to college and he gave me a fantastic job and a wonderful wife and wonderful kids.”
I was tempted to tell the story like this, because frankly it sounds very appealing. “Come to Jesus and he will make your life wonderful”. There's only one problem wth this story, it’s a pile of shit.

That is not the Jesus I came to all those years ago. The Jesus I came to did not promise me a wonderful life. He came after my eyes had been opened to the crushing reality of my sin. After I saw that my problem was not drugs nor the crimes I committed nor the fact that I couldn’t get my lazy butt out of bed and get a job. No, it was much more serious than that. I had turned my back on my Creator. I had thumbed my nose at the one who had only ever loved me. I had walked away and I deserved nothing better than hell. And just when I was at my lowest with no hope in myself to pay the price demanded, He came. He was murdered for me, the Son of God, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to repay that. I found peace and love and freedom, but in it there was no promise of earthly delights. To the contrary, there was the certainty of earthly troubles, but the promise of a life to come.

So now I will tell a new story. A story that is better suited to this good news.

My beautiful wife was holding our four year old boy, Josiah, when his body went limp. I could see in his face that something was terribly wrong. Panic set in as I desperately tried to remember where my cell phone was so that I could call 911. Somehow (I don’t remember how) I found it. I grabbed Josiah out of my wife’s hands and laid him on the floor while she dialed for help. Awkwardly I started the CPR that I barely remembered from the training I’d had 20+ years before. I pumped Josiah’s chest as I looked into his crystal blue eyes. They were lifeless, but I held out hope that he would come back. When I gave him breathes a foul smelling vomit would spill out. My 10 year old son stood over me watching all of this in a panic. It was like a dream. My wife and my son were sobbing and I was in a daze. In the midst of that I had a moment of clarity. I looked up at my son and I said “no matter what happens right now, if God brings him back or if God takes him it will be okay, God is in control”. God did take Josiah that day.

This story is not as glamorous, but it is the truth. In the midst of pain and grief there is hope in Christ. When we find ourselves on our knees, with the sound of sobbing filling our ears and the smell of vomit filling our nostrils, Christ is there. He is no stranger to blood and spit and tears. He endured that and more. And Christian you can be sure that this is not the end of the story. Trust him, for if you have died with him, with him you shall surely live.

Inspired by:

The Reformer

A Reformer is one who sees a wall blocking out the sun. He puts his shoulder down and charges against it, over and over again. More often than not what is left is a bruised and bloodied corpse at the base of that wall. Some of the people watching the man’s efforts see them as futile. Others see in the man a fanatic, a life not to be mimicked. But a few draw inspiration from him and lower their own shoulders for the charge. And so it goes generation after generation, until the corpses are piled so high that one of the few is able to climb over that wall. Soon many follow the path that was blazed. As time passes statues are erected as a memorial to the one who first made it over the wall. All the people applaud when his name is mentioned. Many of those who applaud do so while shaking their heads at the men charging against the next wall.

A place called The Skull

“And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.” Luke 23:33, ESV.

I watched my mom deteriorate for many years and ultimately I watched her die. She was 60 when she died and she had lived a very hard life.
  
As I suspect many feel after losing a parent, I regret not having asked her more about her past. What I do know is that her parents disowned her when she was around 18 and they would never talk to her again. She had stolen something from them and that was the final straw. She would have left home sometime right in the middle of the 1960s. I obviously didn’t live through the 60s, so much of my impression of that time is probably more of a stereotype. That being said, the stories I heard about my mom’s life always seemed to fit the stereotype perfectly. I heard stories of hitchhiking across the country, a missed opportunity to go to Woodstock, and more than one story about drugs.

By the time I was old enough to remember, her more wild days were behind her. During my childhood she always had a job and her life was usually pretty uneventful. One thing did remain though, the drugs. She used marijuana almost daily and from time to time there would be harder stuff around. Then, when I was around 16, she got sick. I remember visiting her in the hospital and her telling me that the doctors said if she had waited another day to come in she likely would not have lived. She had pneumonia. Looking back I realize she tried to communicate to me just how serious it was, but I was a very selfish kid and kind of oblivious. It would be years before doctors would figure out what was causing the sickness, Hepatitis C.

Right around the time my mom was diagnosed I went through a pretty dramatic change in my own life. When I was 20 I became a Christian. One of the effects of my encounter with Jesus was a deep concern for my mom’s future. This concern led me to both talk to her about Jesus and to pray for her. Over time, by the grace of God, my mom would come to trust Him too. But still she grew sicker and sicker and I couldn’t help but ask a question. If my mom’s sins were forgiven, why was she continuing to waste away? This question seemed particularly relevant because I knew my mom’s condition was a direct result of her own lifestyle choices…her own sin. I would pray often for her to be healed and I knew Jesus could. I knew he had healed people before. In the end the answer to my question came through a story.

When Jesus was murdered, he was hung on a cross between two criminals. At first both of the criminals mocked Jesus. As they hung there dying something changed in one of the criminals. He turned to Jesus and said “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”. Jesus replied to the criminal “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise”. I had known this story for some time, but as I grappled with questions about my mom’s suffering I began to see things in this story I hadn’t before. For one, the story seemed fitting for my mom’s situation. After a lifetime of drug use and hard living she was dying a slow death. Like the criminal she too had turned to Jesus and asked him to remember her. The next thing I noticed was that in this story the criminal does NOT get delivered from his cross. How did I not seen that before? A man dying an agonizing death turns to Jesus for help and instead of calling down an army or angels to deliver him from his cross Jesus replies “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise”.  This opened up to me a profound reality. I had mistakenly thought that my mom’s experience was somehow unique when really it wasn't.

The truth is we are all dying. This becomes more obvious to me with each passing year. I am slowing decaying and I know my death is coming. In the story of Jesus’ final hours we see a profound picture of the state of the entire world. We are all hanging on a cross slowly dying. And in our midst is this man Jesus, who entered into this suffering with us. We are all criminals sentenced to death. The question is will we turn to him and ask him to remember us. If we do there is no guarantee that our suffering is over, but there is a guarantee that one day it will be.

And so it was for my mom. I was in her room during her final hours. She was unconscious and a machine was breathing for her. She was having seizures every few minutes. It was a terrible sight as I’m sure it was watching a man die of crucifixion. Like that criminal she breathed her last breath. And then….Jesus.

My Father's son.

I was four years old when my father left. I did not see him again until I was eight when I flew to Houston TX for a visit. I have very few memories of that trip, but one memory has stuck with me all these years. After a very awkward meeting at the airport my father asked me if I was hungry and where I'd like to eat. As an eight year old there was really only one answer to that question...McDonalds. As we drove back to his house I remember him pulling into a restaurant that I had never seen before called Arby's. I remember him reassuring me that I would really like it, but I remember thinking "this is definitely not McDonalds." Even at eight years old it did not escape me that after seeing his son for the first time in years my father's first act was to go to the restaurant that HE wanted. Years later my mom would tell me that Arby's was always his favorite restaurant.

I think of this memory often and I can honestly say I don't think it's out of some deep resentment for my father. Rather I think it has more to do with this scary fact: you see, I can honestly say, that as a grown man my favorite restaurant is also Arby's. It's a scary fact to me because it reminds me that in some almost mystical way, even though I've only spoken with him a handful of times since I was four, I am my father's son.

Like my father I am pulled to put my wants and desires above that of my children or any other person for that matter. At times I feel like a wagon that has gone up and down a road so many times my wheels have worn deep grooves. When I stop and look back I see those grooves stretching back for miles and miles, generations and generations. Only through some extraordinary act of strength can I jump out of those grooves, and then only for a time. I always seem to end up back where it is the most comfortable for ME. I am my father's son.

But I don't think that is the end of the story. I have other memories too. I remember sitting in a park on a summer day as a total stranger told me about a God who sent his Son and was murdered for me, and that there was nothing I could do to repay that, but all He wanted was to live with me. I remember asking that God several days later what I had to do to feel closer to Him and hearing for the first time a still small voice say "you need to know I will never do to you what your father did." I remember reading in a book that because of what Jesus did I had the right to be called a child of God. I have memories of another Father.

But the grooves remain and the question that hounds me is: who am I? Am I my father's son or am I my Father's son? Pray it is the latter.