This is a time of year when I struggle a bit at work because it feels like my job turns in to nothing but people, especially groups of people. Now, I do understand that as an academic department chair my role is all about students, faculty, and alumni, but most of the time I spend only a part of my day with them. For me, that’s a good thing, since I am very much an introvert. I can enjoy people in small doses, and I do a fairly good job of dealing with people as required, but I desperately need alone time to rest and recharge. And at this time of the year, I find that alone time is hard to come by, as my days get filled with more conversations than usual as well as advisory board meetings, alumni events, leadership events, and other meetings with groups of people. And my evenings and weekends get invaded as well. I love commencement, but I spend the rest of the weekend trying to hide under a rock.

Of course, this is a season in my job. After commencement is over this weekend, I will have a few quiet months with very few students in my office, very few faculty in the halls, and very few meetings involving groups of people. The introvert will fully recover. However, one day as I was thinking of all of the things I wasn’t getting done during this busy people-filled season, I realized that one of the things going by the wayside a bit was my quiet time.

By quiet time, I mean two parts of my day. One is the time I spend on Bible reading and specific intercessory prayer. That has suffered some, but I’m fairly good at telling myself that I have to do my Bible reading and praying whether I feel like it or not. What suffers more is the time that spend alone with God with no specific agenda. The time to be still and know God. That time I tend to lose in the busy-ness and the crowds. I find myself forgetting to rest in God and trying to rest in books or computer games, which kind of works, but not nearly as well.

When I’m in one of these times, I find myself needing to go back to Christ’s example. We see Jesus slipping away from the crowds to be alone and pray (Matt. 14:13,23,  Mark 1:35 and Luke 9:18 are examples). I don’t know whether or not Jesus was an introvert  (I rather expect not), but I do know that as the Son of God he could handle things while here on earth that I cannot. So if he needed to get away from the crowds and spend time with God, why on earth am I trying to survive my crowds without doing the same?

The good news is that when I do take the time to step away and spend that time resting in communion with God, I cope with my crowds a lot better.

Photo by Josh Adamski on Unsplash

My husband and I like to read. A lot. He reads quite a bit faster than I do, so I often question him about whatever book he is currently reading in order to determine whether I want to read it later. However, I have learned that the answers I get to “Are you enjoying that book?” are very consistent. Occasionally I will get a “Not really,” but most of the time the answer is simply, “So far.” He will never, ever commit to liking a book while he is still reading it. After all, he doesn’t know the end of the story yet.

And the end of the story is really important, isn’t it? What if Gollum didn’t fall into the fire in the Return of the King? For that matter, the movie version of the Lord of the Rings is thematically very different from the books because it leave out the end, “The Scouring of the Shire.” What if Darcy and Elizabeth never got married? What if Poirot (or Gibbs and the rest of the NCIS gang) didn’t solve the mystery?

I started to think about the importance of the end of the story Sunday evening. My husband and I had never seen Jesus Christ Superstar and decided to watch a recording of the recent version. We knew some of the music and knew, of course, that the theology was problematic but decided it would be interesting, especially since there were some excellent singers in the cast.

As we were watching, I liked it better than I expected to. Obviously, the writer didn’t “get” who Jesus is or anything about his motivations, but much of the story was surprisingly accurate. And the whipping scene, while hard to watch in some ways, was very effective. But then we got to the end. Instead of the biblical events of darkness in the afternoon, the temple curtain ripped from top to bottom, a spear stabbed into the side, and a hastily wrapped body laid in a borrowed tomb, we had a bright light backlighting a cross with Jesus hanging on it floating off into the air and away from the audience. Cool effect, but what a horrible ending!

It reminded me of a church back in Pflugerville that always had their Easter drama on Friday and ended at the cross. When asked, they would explain that you had to come back on Sunday for the rest of the story.

It doesn’t end at the cross. Sunday was coming. And if you leave out Sunday with the empty tomb and the risen savior, you can’t possibly understand who Jesus is or why he did what he did, because the death was necessary, but it was meaningless without the resurrection.

Of course, one mistake that Christians sometimes make is to think that the empty tomb is end of the story. We forget that there’s a huge section of New Testament that is all about living in response to the cross and the empty tomb.

Then he is coming back for us. And our story doesn’t actually have an end once we accept him, because his story never ends.

One thing that sometimes makes me cringe is hearing others talk about the things they are “going to do for God.” Sometimes that phrase is just misspeaking a bit, but sometimes it is exactly what is meant. But God never actually called us to do things “for” him.

I see two sources of danger in doing things for God. The first is very simply that we humans are prone to get it wrong. A huge example of that is the Crusades, but we do the same in small ways on a regular basis. Oswald Chambers described it this way: “We show our ignorance of Him in the very way we decide to serve Him. We serve Jesus in a spirit that is not His, and hurt Him by our defense of Him” (My Utmost for His Highest). Every time we defend the Gospel in a hateful spirit, every time we denounce the sinner instead of the sin, every time we water down the gospel message in order to get people in the doors of the church, we act “for” God in a way that is not helpful and is often harmful to the cause of Christ.

Not all actions taken for Christ are actually in opposition to him, of course. The person who doesn’t particularly like young children but takes on the 4-year-old Sunday School class because somebody has to do it and genuinely does the best she can may be doing more good than harm, at least on the surface. But if that decision was a response to a human plea acted on in her own strength rather than an acceptance of spiritual heart tug acted on in full reliance on God to provide the patience, strength, and cheerfulness required, it was still the wrong decision.

1. If she wasn’t the person called to this task, she is keeping the person who was called from taking it on.
2. If this is not the task she was called for, she is either leaving the task she is called to undone or doing more than she can handle.
3. If she is acting for God in her own strength, she will eventually burn out.

God calls us to his side to walk with him. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” Ephesians 2:10 (ESV). Yes, we are to do good works, but we walk in the works that God already prepared for us, and we do it in his strength.

I think we tend to believe that God needs us, whether to defend him against unbelievers or to do the things he needs done. He doesn’t need us. He loves us. He wants us. He gives us valuable work to do with him. But he never, ever needs for a human to do something for him. That is why “the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord,
but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him,” Proverbs 15:8 (ESV). The purpose of the sacrifice was always for the good of the one making it; God never needed it.

So next time you want to do something for God, whether big or small, take a step back and make sure than you aren’t doing it for God, but that you are instead walking with him.

So it snowed this past weekend. We were away from home, visiting Indianapolis to see our niece’s volleyball tournament, but we got plenty of snow there in addition to what we found filling our driveway when we got home. The amazing thing to me is that we still have remnants of snow despite highs well above freezing every day since.

Once you push a bunch of snow into a pile, it becomes pretty hard to melt. A few years ago, we had an unusually snowy winter, and all of the snow from our local insurance giant’s corporate parking lots got piled onto one empty lot. For a while, I wondered if that pile was going to make it to July.

It is easy enough to explain why snow melts more slowly when a lot of it is clumped together, but I think that seeing such phenomena should make us think about the piles and clumps in our lives that become harder to get rid of.

When someone does us wrong, we have a choice: forgive now or hang on and pile up every little thing that person does to us until we collapse under the weight. It isn’t easy to forgive that one wrong, but every grievance we add to the pile make it harder to let go of all of the others.

When we stray down a wrong path, saying or doing something we know we should not, it’s not easy to repent and correct our course. But how much harder does it become if we repeat that wrong, even let it form a habit?

Of course, piling on isn’t always bad. Read a Bible verse once, and it won’t be easy for that verse to influence your life. Spend time in the Bible every day, reading verses that God points out over and over until they are deep in your mind and heart. and Satan will be hard-pressed to melt that influence out of your life no matter what fires he brings to bear.

What are the piles that you need to avoid building? What are the thin layers that need to have a few shovelfuls added to prevent melting?

Billy Graham died today.

Learning that on my way to work this morning didn’t make me sad. He lived a long life on earth, and I’m confident that he is rejoicing with Christ today. However, it did lead me to think a bit about evangelism and about cultural icons.

Billy Graham wasn’t perfect. He made mistakes. He acknowledged that he made mistakes. He was still mightily used by God to bring a message of revival and repentance to a nation full of what one book I am reading calls “secular Christians” and later to the world.

I tend to think of Billy Graham as an evangelist, but I believe it’s important to remember that he was more than that. His call was not only to repentance, but also to discipleship. One quote from his devotions is: “Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion. It is a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ.” He preached on such issues, not just about our need for Christ.

He also preached on subjects like racism, pointing out that the Bible has no basis for segregation, but that all are in equal need of the cross and have equal welcome there. He pointed out many of the inconsistencies of Christians when we get hung up on sins such as homosexuality and make them somehow more important than other sins such as pride and jealousy.

And yet, the man was a man, with the imperfections we all possess. So what should we learn from looking back at the life of one of the visible men of God in the past century?

I am reminded that to be “after God’s own heart” is not a description of perfection but rather of love and commitment. I believe that Billy Graham was a man after God’s own heart. But I read Psalm 51 this morning, which is a strong reminder that repentance, love of God, and commitment are the keys to that moniker, not a perfection which none of us can achieve on earth.

I’m also reminded that the key to a Christian life is that daily commitment to Christ and a focus on God. God–not a pastor, a teacher, a friend, a mentor, but God–must be the center and focus of my life. Anyone else will fall short as a role model. Jesus is the only perfect example, and other Christians are valuable role models only as they point me toward him.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:33 (ESV)

Photo by Hugues de BUYER-MIMEURE on Unsplash

The snow is melting! The temperature in Central Illinois is in the mid-forties today, and there is much rejoicing. I was in a conversation this afternoon in which someone commented on how different 40 degrees is in February as compared to October. In October, we dread such a low a temperature and dress for winter. In February, we leave our gloves off and our coats unbuttoned and talk about how delightfully warm it is. The reason for such different reactions is not hard to find: it’s all a matter of what we’re used to.

Humans have a tendency to adjust to our environments. And that’s a good thing, at least in some respects. If we didn’t adjust to the prevailing temperatures to a certain extent, humans would not fare well in many of the places where we live happily. I’m not sure I’ll ever be happy about temps in the 20s and below, but I’m glad that I adjust enough to be comfortable with temps in the 30s.

However, we often adjust to our environment in ways that are less positive. One of my flaws as a housekeeper is that I have learned to adjust to any surroundings. I can put on my mother’s eyes and see the mess and be horrified, but I’m normally adjusted to living with a level of clutter that I probably shouldn’t tolerate.

I have also found that I have adjusted to the language around me in a way that I often wish I hadn’t. In my childhood, adolescence, and really on in to my twenties, I was rarely exposed to “bad” language (cursing, taking the Lord’s name in vain, really any kind of vulgarity). As a result, I tended to be very sensitive to hearing language of that sort, often physically flinching when I heard it. It certainly never entered my mind. As an adult working on a public university campus in the 21st century, that is no longer my environment. It’s a rare day when I am not exposed to language that would once have bothered me greatly (despite having a position where people usually try to avoid using offensive language to me). As a result, I don’t react nearly as strongly to the utterances, and I do find them occasionally entering my thoughts, even though I still don’t allow them to cross my lips.

The Bible speaks to this. Proverbs has a great deal to say about who you spend your time with, encouraging us to avoid fools, those who are bitter, and those who would tempt us sexually, among other. Paul takes a more positive approach in his letter to the Philippians: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” Philippians 4:8 (ESV).

What are you adjusted to? In my job, I can’t keep those around me from using language I don’t like, but I can surround myself with friends who focus on better things. I can listen to music and read books that lift me up rather than tearing me down. What can you do?

Almost 20 years ago now, I was at the park with my two sons. They were 1 and a half and 3 and a half. We had just moved to Pflugerville, and we know no one. My husband was up in Waco at his office (about 90 miles away) and planning to spend the night up there. This is back in the day when cell phones weighed 9 pounds and were carried around in bags, so I certainly didn’t have one yet. I’d gotten through my first day of classes for my doctorate, picked up the kids from daycare, fed them, and decided that it would be nice for all of us to relax at the park that was just a very short walk away.

The kids were happily playing on the little playground, and I sat down on a bench to read and watch them.  Another somewhat older boy joined them on the playground and eventually stood up on the firetruck and started throwing rocks at the trees behind me. At this point, I started looking around for his parents, but couldn’t see them. Then one of the rocks fell short and hit the top of my head.

I knew it had hit me pretty hard because i was feeling a touch woozy, and I touched my right cheek and determined that the reason it felt wet was that I had blood running down the side of my face. So here I was, knowing my brain wasn’t working right, knowing I was bleeding a fair bit, with two little kids.

There was a soccer practice going on at the park, so I walked over to the sideline where the parents were hanging out and asked if any of them would willing to help me get my children home and contact my husband.

Picture that. You’re watching your daughter’s soccer practice and this woman walks up to the group of parents. She’s got blood running down the side of her face. And she asks you to walk her and her kids to their house.

One of those women did. She helped me get the boys back to the house. She helped me call my husband. She insisted on calling 911 and stayed until they got there. She stayed long enough that she was probably late collecting her daughter from practice. It turns out that I did have a (relatively mild) concussion.

I’ve always been grateful to that woman, and I’ve never known who she was. I was sufficiently dazed that I failed to recognize if I ever met her again, and no one has ever told me that she was the person who came to my rescue that night.

Whenever I look back and remember that night (and a couple of other incidents in my life), I always have to wonder. What would I have done had I been on that sideline? I do know what my answer should be. But is that always my response to the opportunities to help others that God brings my way?

Photo by Nina Strehl on Unsplash

I was recently reading Galatians as part of my daily Bible reading, and it brought to mind one of the songs from my childhood: They’ll Know We Are Christians. I’m confident that everyone who went to a youth group in the late 60’s or 70’s instantly has the song playing in their heads. It was right up there with Everything to Me, Pass It On, and I Wish We’d All Been Ready in popularity. Younger people might want to check out the covers by Jars of Clay or For King and Country. Although the music was very much of its time, a part of me would like to see a song like that become popular again, because it had a message the church needs reminding of regularly.

You see, the song was inspired by John 13:35, where Jesus says, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (ESV).

Love for who? I know I’m supposed to love my enemies. I know I’m supposed to love the lost and share the gospel with them. I know I’m supposed to minister to the poor and needy. And, of course, husbands are supposed to love their wives.

Too often, we miss this crucial bit. John 13:34 is even stronger: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (ESV). We’re not just supposed to love our fellow Christians; we’re supposed to love them the way Christ loved us.

Too often, we just don’t, do we? Instead, we fight to get our way in the church, whether it’s a matter of having support for the ministry we want, disagreements about music style, or even just fighting over the color of the carpet. We gossip about each other. Sometimes it’s the straightforward, “Did you hear about . . . ” version. More often, we cloak our gossip in apparent piety with overly detailed prayer requests: “Please pray for the Whites. They are are going through a hard time with their daughter . . . .” If the prayer request includes sordid details, it’s much more loving and pious to stop at the first period. God knows the details of the need, and the whole church doesn’t need to know. Yes, specific prayer is good, but we really don’t need to know everything about everybody.

This failure to love and care for our fellow Christians is sometimes a monetary one as well. While many churches do have “benevolence funds” intended to help members in need, they tend to be limited. And it’s often easier to get people to give money for missions if the money isn’t “just” going to support the missionaries.

Is it any wonder that the world doesn’t associate Christianity with love? Perhaps we all need to work on putting these verses from Galatians into more consistent practice.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. Galatians 6:9-10  (ESV)

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

Winter graduation ceremonies were held last weekend at my university. Graduation is always one of my favorite days. I love seeing excited students and meeting proud parents. I particularly like the fact that my institution encourages faculty and student interaction. Every student walks across the stage (well, halfway across the stage) and is greeted at the bottom of the stairs by the president, the provost, the dean of the college or chair of the department (depending on which one handed the student his/her diploma cover) and the faculty from the department that are attending. It makes for a great celebration.

However, there is some question about what is we’re celebrating. Certainly, graduation is an ending. For bachelor’s students, it’s the culmination of around 4 years of hard work. For many, it’s the end of formal schooling. It often marks the end of dependence on parents. For many, it marks a truer end of childhood than either the 18th or the 21st birthday. It’s the end of spending much time with the faculty students have grown close to. It’s often the end of spending much time with the friends of the college years. Close and long-lasting as those relationships often are, they frequently become long-distance relationships at graduation.

As much as graduation is an ending, college and universities don’t typically bill it that way. We hold “commencement” ceremonies. Much as we want students to look back with fondness on their years with us, we want them to look at graduation as the beginning: the beginning of true adulthood, the beginning of a career, the beginning of membership in the alumni association, the beginning of making your own money so that you can start giving back to your alma mater (a bit cynical, but true). Why? Well, we want successful alumni who do have jobs and are happy and successful and inclined to give of their time and effort and money. And people are more likely to achieve that success if they look forward.

The same thing, I believe, is true of us as Christians. We can look at that moment when we put our faith in Christ as a sort of graduation from earthly life into a life of faith in the spirit. And our success in that new life may depend a bit on which way we are looking. It’s good to remember where we came from and what we owe Christ, but we are not encouraged to dwell there. We are to be dead to our old selves and living a new life. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” II Corinthians 5:17 (ESV). “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” Philippians 3:13b-14 (ESV).

I could go on with verses along the same lines, but I think it’s more important for us to think about what it means to look forward. Most importantly, I think it means not dwelling on what we did. Yes, we want to recognize the tremendous debt we owed and were saved from, but focusing on the details and realities of our sins will not make us stronger and will not bring us joy. It’s more likely to encourage us to wallow in guilt, which is never of the Spirit. Scripture says God no longer sees our sin once he has forgiven it, seeing, instead, the righteousness of Christ, so why do we waste so much of our lives staring at it? Instead, let’s spend that time focused on the one who forgave those sins and deepening our relationship with and understanding of him.

So we had to take the cat to the vet. Not for anything special, just her annual checkup and rabies shot. However, we did not enjoy the trip, mostly because she really does not enjoy the trip. From the moment she gets in the car until we are inside the vet’s office, she emits these plaintive meows every 2-3 seconds. Now the cat really doesn’t have anything to complain about. We don’t even put her in a carrier: she is sitting in my lap, her favorite place to be (yes, that is her in the picture, under my iPad). And she likes the vet just fine. There’s no complaining while we’re in the building. However, the minute we’re back in the car, she starts up again and cries all the way home, until someone opens the car door, at which point she races to the step up into the house and waits impatiently for a human to unlock the door and let her back into her house.

Some of you may be asking, “What do your cat’s issues have to do with your blog about faith?” Well, I think her primary problem is a control issue. While she is always willing to run out of the house and explore if an open door is left unattended, she hates being in the car and being moved by something other than her own muscles. Corners are especially distressing. It doesn’t matter that where she’s going is someplace she needs to go for her health (or back to the comfort and safety of her own home). She just doesn’t want to be taken in the car.

That issue with control is a problem that I think many of us share. We may want God to tell us where to go, but we then want to get there in our own way, often under our own power. We ask God to provide, but we want to see the provision in advance. We want to know that there’s enough for tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. We really would like to control when and how we hear direction from God, sometimes. I want to know why this happened, and I want to know it now. I want to know what my next job should be and when I should move on from this one, and I want to know that now. And when we don’t have the control we want, we don’t meow plaintively, but we do often worry and fret and pray the same demanding prayer over and over.

What we need to recognize is that God doesn’t work that way. God didn’t tell Abraham where to go: “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” Genesis 12:1 (ESV). Most of us are familiar with this story, but we often don’t think through the reality of it, so let me paraphrase. “Leave the place you know and all but your closest family and start moving. At some point, we’ll get to where we’re going and I’ll tell you to stop.” Wow.

Then what about the children of Israel in the wilderness? When they complained about lack of food in Exodus 16, God sent manna and told them to collect just enough for that day (except on Friday, when they were to collect enough for the Sabbath the next day as well). He told them to eat all they collected that day and not save any, except on Fridays. Of course, some of them wanted to make sure they would have food for tomorrow and saved some, which went really well: “Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank” Exodus 16:31 (ESV).

God is not interested in giving us control over our lives, at least partly because he knows we do it badly. Instead, he wants to walk with us and provide what we truly need right now as we develop trust in him. He wants us to trust him when he takes us places and we’re afraid. He holds us close, just as I keep my poor cat in my lap, and he promises us his strength. Let’s be smarter than the cat, and trust the God who created and loves us (and is really in control even when we feel that we are).