So, of all times to wake early, it would be when I have to rise at 3 am to get to the airport for the do-over-leave-for-the-mission-trip day. Oh well, I can sleep on the plane (I hope). If all goes as re-planned, I’ll be in Ft. Myers with this trip until July 7. If you’re interested in the progress, you can follow us at Free to Serve.
Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. [Luke 15:23b,24 NIV]
From the AP via WBIR-TV:
When [Jody Hawkins] learned that [her son Brennen] was alive and OK, she says it was something she couldn’t comprehend.
From CNN.com’s interview with rescuer Forrest Nunley:
PHILLIPS: Did you embrace him? Did he embrace you?
NUNLEY: Oh, yes. Yes. He is a skinny little guy when I hugged him. …
But it was a real special, real spiritual experience for me to find him like that. …
The rescue of Brennen Hawkins of Bountiful, Utah – a cub scout who was lost in the wilderness for 4 days, reportedly afraid of being snatched away by those who combed the area looking for him – has been called a ‘modern day miracle’ by many. As they reported it – and I wish there was video online of the moment I saw – Fox News anchor Shepard Smith and reporter Alicia Acuna were excited and emotional… for a moment they lost that professional veneer and were just happy, amazed humans ready to join in the celebration. I’m a mom, my son is a scout… for a moment the reporters, the search & rescue people, the family & friends, and all of us watching could celebrate together. It was precious, it was breathless, it was real, and it was good for a change! Brennen realized he was lost, overcame his fear, stepped out of hiding, trusted his rescuer, and was found!
It is painful to me as a mother to think about my children being lost… it’s the stuff of which nightmares are made. Too often, especially of late, children are lost and not found, or found dead – their innocence and life violently stolen away. It breaks my heart to think that my children would need me and be unable to get to me, or me to them.
How much more painful is it to God to think about his lost children? So many of his beloved ones wander lost, captured or hiding in sin – wealth, lust, self-reliance, control, pride, and myriad idols. God’s love is undiminished by ‘lostness’… in fact, I believe he longs for each of his children to find and be found by him with intensity that far surpasses that of even an earthly parent’s frenetic desire to find a lost child before it is too late. And, like Toby and Jody Hawkins’ complete joy and astonishment at finding Brennen not only alive, but well, overflowed to all who heard the news, God’s joy is complete at each person’s return to relationship with him and overflows from his heart through all eternity. God our Father rejoices when we recognize we are lost, step out of hiding, and trust Jesus, our true Rescuer.
” ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ ” [Luke 15:31,32 NIV]
Dave Walker at CartoonChurch.com brings the lighter side of all the seriousness that accompanies the Nottingham meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. I needed that!
[Thanks to TitusOneNine for pointing it out; Kendall has been valiantly live blogging the proceedings and has links to lots of other coverage for those following the Anglican drama.]
See Walkers cartoon blog post on the AAC here.
It is truly sad when something seems broken beyond repair, yet claims to be working still. I’ve read my denomination’s asked for theological defense of the actions of GC2003 [called To Set Our Hope on Christ, online here]. What it is: Repetition of that of which they are convinced. What it is not: Anything like a theological defense.
I have to admit, it is difficult to find grace in the undoing of something historically God’s… but then, as my friend Eric reminded me yesterday, there is precident for that in Genesis 6:
The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD
was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with
pain. So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from
the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground,
and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.” But Noah found
favor in the eyes of the LORD.
I don’t know that God is ready to wipe the whole slate clean, especially since He promised not to, and sent Jesus to reconcile us to Him once and for all… but I wouldn’t put it past the Almighty to clear away a particularly messy lot and start building the church anew.
From the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Presidential address to the Anglican Consultative Council-13, June 20, 2005:
The debate over sexuality is a story that can be told more than one way. One story is this. The churches of the ‘North’ are tired and confused, losing evangelistic energy. For a variety of reasons, they have been trying to reclaim their credibility by accepting and seeking to domesticate the moral values of their culture, even though this is a culture that is practically defined by the rejection of the living God. A history of over-intellectual approaches to the Bible and the communication of the faith has led to a disregard of the Bible’s call to transformation. The revolt against the plain meaning of Scripture’s condemnation of same-sex activity is a symptom of this general malaise.Another story is this. The churches of the North have been made aware of how much their life and work has been sustained in the past by insensitive and oppressive social patterns, with the Bible being used to justify great evils. Whether they like it or not, they inhabit a world where authority is regarded with much suspicion; it has to earn respect. In recent decades there has been a huge change in the general understanding of sexual activity. Can the gospel be heard in such a world if it seems to cling to ways of understanding sexuality that have no correspondence to what the most apparently responsible people in our culture believe? It is not enough, some have said, to stick to the words of the Bible; we have to go deeper and ask about the logic and direction of the Bible as a whole. And when we do that, we may find that it is not so impossible to reach a position that can be taken seriously in contemporary culture.
Two stories, and so for some we have a problem of the Church accepting a set of false premises, a wrong and unbiblical picture of human nature; for others a problem of communicating with human beings where they actually are, in terms they can grasp. Many issues are involved here, not only the presenting question about homosexuality. Perhaps the most difficult is how we make a moral assessment of modern culture in the developed world. And for many of us this is complicated. Modernity has brought great goods; yet in vital respects it has promoted a picture of humanity that is deeply flawed – individualistic, obsessed with rights and claims and uninterested in bonds of obligation or the need for sacrifice for the good of others: precisely the world that has produced our current nightmare of international injustice. So the question is how far the concern for reaching an understanding with the world about sexual ethics is based on uncritical acceptance of the values of a culture like this.
Or, maybe I’ve been living on the amusement park teacups, but wow am I grateful someone stopped the ride to let me off!
I just spent the first 14 days of June fighting the most frustrating situation that I think a person like me can face! I somehow came in contact with a nasty virus that most people are immune to from childhood (but not me, aren’t I special?), which not only made me “sick” but allowed me the special honor of having a full blown case of vertigo. Kind of ironic for a U2 fan, eh? But seriously, it isn’t funny… in fact it nearly drove me insane — after the worst of the initial flu-like symptoms subsided — to feel absolutely fine while perfectly horizontal and staring at the ceiling only to be launched into the sensation of having been stuck on the teacups for years if I sat up. The fact that this followed about a month of just not feeling well overall didn’t help either.
I lay on my couch, or my bed, with absolutely no distraction from looking at the ceiling or the top half of the walls. Have I mentioned that I don’t hold still well?? TV was useless because there was no distraction whatsoever to be found in the Michael Jackson trial coverage, the search for Natalee Holloway, or much of anything else emanating from “the box.” I was tortured by, ironically (hello, hello, that song again), the arrival of my copy of Bono: In Conversation because I couldn’t sit up to read… no daily time in the Word… no spiritual reading… nada! Even the computer was absolutetly out of bounds, simply having the monitor in my line of sight made my head explode – no email, no forum/blog reading or posting… ARRRGGGHH! My post on June 13 was a trial run that went, well, let’s say not so well for me personally.
But, I did learn some things… some pretty important ones, at that.
Boy, am I hard-headed. This isn’t the first time that God has been forced to use physical illness to get my undivded attention (stories for another day). I hope it’s the last… but I wouldn’t count on it!
Vicky is a shy 10th grader who recently told me that she’d been sensing a call to full time vocational ministry. Over the years, she’s shared some pieces she’d written – poetry about faith, essays and such – and I’ve always been touched by her depth of faith and expression. Lately, she’s started writing sermons “for fun”… not too many people, and far fewer teenagers, have that hobby. I asked if I could read the sermons, and was pleasantly astonished at their simplicity, their boldness, and their orthodox clarity. I invited her to preach at our upcoming youth sunday, and when she sent me the draft sermon, I said “don’t change a word.” I sat in my living room in tears.
When I was too ill to even sit up on the day before “youth sunday” I told our pastor with confidence that with a simple introduction, Vicky could handle it. He was skeptical, so I read him the sermon… she preached with only this intro: Here is a sermon from a disciple who clearly understands her material… she gets it.
Here is the sermon, original formatting and all:
Romans 4:18 says “Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be.” But to have hope against hope can be a difficult task. And it can be especially difficult if your heart is in bondage. Hate, pain, and distrust can bring your heart down. You fill your heart with burdens and say that God is not there. But did you invite him to come in? We so often blame God when things go wrong. But we must ask ourselves if we had asked God to help us out. For that is what happens when we try to do things by ourselves. We tend to mess up. Everyone asks someone for help, you just have to ask yourself if you are asking the right person. For nothing can keep God from entering your heart except yourself. God has a key to your heart; he is just waiting for an invitation. Blockades of hate can not stop Him John 15:18 says ”If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.” so Jesus really does know what it feels like to be hated by the world; but He always loves you no matter what. Your pain can not slow Him Job 3:14-16 says “But the Lord will be a refuge for his people” so the only way to get past your pain is to put your hope in God. Your guilt can not throw Him off track as Romans 4:23 says “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.” you see all have sinned and God forgives all. If you ask Him to enter he will come running. Not stopping for doubt, not slowing for shame, He comes running key in hand ready to enter. He breaks ordinary blockades, He overcomes any obstacle, and He comes ready. He will use His key to enter if you are too weak to answer the door. He is just sitting by the phone waiting for your call. Matthew 7:7 says “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” And once He enters He will not leave until you ask. But once He enters you will not want Him to leave. So what is holding Him back? You are. His love is so great it can overcome anything. But His love is so great that He let’s you choose. How many of us do that? We tend to want it our own way. If you look through history you will see that most rulers love control, they love power, and they try to make things their own way. But God is not a ruler He is a Father. He doesn’t love control or power, He loves you. And it breaks His heart to see His children leave Him. It hurts Him to see a child lost to sin. He doesn’t love it when people leave Him; He loves to see people receive Him. And you can not receive someone if you can not choose them. What kind of love could you possibly have that is forced? Our God loves us and loves to be with us. And He loves when we love to be with Him as well. So receive Him into your heart and ask Him to break the bonds. Let me just finish off with a poem by Mary E. Herrington called God Knows and Understands.
God Knows and Understands
Sometimes we feel so weary
As we go from day to day,
We wonder if we’ll make it,
Will we ever find our way.But yet we keep on trudging
Down, what seems an endless road
And soon we hear God whisper,
“Take my hand I’ll share thy load.”And then all the many things
That we thought we could not do
Are soon so far behind us
As God helped to see us through.It really is amazing
How the Lord doth understand
When we are weak and weary
And we reach to take His hand.For He, too, knew of temptation,
Loneliness and deep despair,
Remember?…in the garden
When he knelt alone in prayer.He is God of mercy
Thus filled with unending love,
Waiting to help His children,
Watching from heaven above.
– Mary E. Herrington
Yeah, she gets it. Just when I needed to know anew that this was all worth it, that it wasn’t futile… she gets it. Thanks, Abba… thanks.
