Kids’ Songs

I like essentials. They help me unload excess baggage.

I used to teach the nursery class in Vacation Bible School and Children's Church. Way back when I could bend down or sit low with those little guys. Two classics I loved to lead those kids in singing. Two of my favorite songs from when I was a kid. "Jesus loves me, this I know" and "Jesus loves the little children of the world."

You can't get more basic than that. This is the Gospel – that Jesus loves me (personal) and that Jesus loves everyone, regardless of human classification (universal).

I've blogged about this before, but it comes to mind again and again. As, for example, I read about this priest, Henry Nouwen, who encourages a father to bless his own bio son in case he dies. The son has suffered some horrible accident and is not expected to live.

Bless him, Nouwen says, by which he means, "Say good things to him. Tell him that you love him and speak to him about God." The son eventually recovers, though I've no doubt the blessing is not wasted. [Michael Ford, Wounded Prophet: A Portrait of Henri J. M. Nouwen, 151]

What does it mean to bless someone? It means to speak of or to demonstrate God's great love to that person.

We classify and clarify and cull each other's faith. We, who think we understand yet have hardly begun to fathom God's love, what do we know? We barely understand it for ourselves.

A friend challenges our small group discussion with the question of whether some sins are greater than others. I squirm. Okay, I get angry. But since I am only starting to learn how to get angry instead of stuffing it (apparently this is a skill to be learned), I merely squirm loudly to the pain (no doubt) of my friends.

Why do I not like the idea that some sins are greater than others? Perhaps there are variations and degrees of sin. Not a problem if God is judge. Besides being impartial, who can argue with the Almighty? God is going to do what God is going to do.

But I don't have to put up with people acting like God. I am not a polytheist. One God is enough for me. And I like this God who loves unconditionally. Apparently God's forgiveness is conditional – if we ask for it, if we forgive others, especially if we forgive others. But God's love is at once unconditional, eternal and universal.

I get angry because I have seen where that question of whether some sins are greater than others leads. Step 1, some sins are greater than other sins. Step 2, your sins are greater than mine. Step 3, I'm in, you're out.

Ever notice, another friend points out one day, how the fewer people who practice a certain sin the more evil it is in the eyes of others? How many people commit adultery compared with how many people feel lust? Obviously more people are guilty of lusting than of committing adultery. Which sin is looked down on by the greater number of people? The sin that fewer people commit. The sin that fewer people want to excuse. Which sin does Jesus say is greater? Hmmm, if you lust after someone, he says in Matthew 5:28, you've already committed adultery. About the same, apparently.

At times I have fellowshipped with a particular group of people not readily accepted by church or society. They are misfits in our world. I've noticed something about them. They are some of the most accepting people you will ever meet. They who have been forgiven much, love much. And they are deeply in love with Jesus, even as they struggle to realize Jesus really does love them.

He does, he really does. The Bible tells me so. And it also tells me that he really, truly does love all the children of the world – red, yellow, black and white, they are all precious in his sight. Grab that double truth about God's love, let it sink deep into your gut, let it transform your life. Let it shake up the way you relate to others. All the rest is excess baggage.

Taking Census

Above my house are the West Hills of Portland, a tumbling jumble of streets and homes defying gravity, symmetry, and social classification. One thing is certain: those who live in these homes will all someday die.

I thought about that yesterday as I knocked on a string of houses that turned out to be vacant. They were filled with things and memories, but the residents had all moved out one, three or five years ago and been placed in nursing homes, their houses remaining empty until their owners die and someone holds an estate sale to sell off all their unclaimed treasures, the cash being more desirable than the goods to whoever can lay claim to the remains.

We've been to numerous estate sales in these hills, my wife and I. Crowds line up for the 9 AM opening and enter a few at a time to peruse, select and cart off whatever seems of value. If you wait till the second day, the selection is much slimmer, but the prices are cut by half.

Many of these neighborhoods were built in the late 50s through late 70s and the original buyers have never moved on. Until now, when death comes knocking at the door. And so, ever slowly and surely, the ownership of these houses has been turning over as the old generation passes and strangers move in to stake their claim.

As an official U.S. Census Enumerator, I am sworn to confidentiality over the information I gather – names, genders, ages, and ethnicity – said data having a 72-year hold before being released. Someday some odd descendent will scour the records for the facts of their long-forgotten great-grandparent, but until then only a corporate image of the area will be revealed. Demographically the West Hills are white, with a high percentage of elderly, interspersed with young families and middling singles, all of whom appear stereotypical, but must surely each be harboring unique and fascinating tales of life.

A few warmly invite me in for tea or offer me something to eat. Occasionally someone, generally age 80 or older, wants me to linger long and talk – or just listen. Most have a formally polite, business-like, get-it-over approach to the census, aware that the Founding Fathers mandated the enumeration so that our nation could function as a representative democracy. Then there are a few who seem keen on exercising their Second Amendment rights and, with real or imaginary weapon, chase me off of their tiny kingdom, intent to remain anonymous to the world beyond.

But even with these, there are generally ways to get at the rudiments of information. Neighbors who care about their neighborhoods and those who live in them. Real estate offices. Apartment complex managers. The nosy neighbors remind me of the little old ladies in China with the official red armbands, a political token identifying a cultural tradition of maternal care far more ancient than the political system itself. The managers, I sometimes have to remind them, are under law to help me in my mission of enumerating the people of the land.

In all this sleuthing, there is a consistent pattern of humanity as steady as the rain on my window this afternoon. People are born, they live, and they die. When our kids were younger, my wife and I used to take turns reading a story to them at bedtime. Sometimes, when they were extra tired or time was especially pressing, and it was my turn, I'd give them my classic three-liner of a story:

"He was born.

"He lived.

"He died."

I don't know why it was always a "he", except that perhaps the male pronoun shortened the story by three characters. The kids learned to anticipate that tale and came to understand that in these seven words was the briefest essence of life. We are born. We live. We die.

I've had this fantasy of an idea for some time now, that I could accumulate some wealth of my own and buy one of the old estates in the area, fix it up and turn it into a museum. I'd preserve the ancient trees on the tract, cultivate a diversity of flowers and fauna, and fashion benches and chairs of wood and stone. And, permit willing, I'd turn the place into a land where the poor masses who live in the valley below could bring the ashes of their departed loved ones and spread them under their favorite shrub or flower, a place to come and linger, treasuring the only thing that carries beyond the grave – memories of a life worthily lived, or not.

In the jumble of miniature kingdoms known as Portland's West Hills, mansions rise next to crumbling cottages and vie for million dollar views with gravity-defying stilted palaces. Elderly widows land-rich and cash-poor live next to young professionals debt-rich and sense-poor and share the same street with aging managers cash-rich and relationally-poor. They are Jewish and Gentile, wealthy and broke, educated and ignorant, sophisticated and common. But they are one and all headed for the grave. And their Maker, acknowledged nor not.

And to the grave, they will take nothing, absolutely nothing that can be sold in those estate sales. They spend their whole lives amassing things to separate them from their neighbors and in the end they are no different than anyone else. They cannot stop the tide of life.

These thoughts that follow me as I knock on yet another door are not depressing. They are simply a meditation, a reminder that we are not the sum of our possessions, but we are the sum of what treasures we manage to store up in heaven, where moth and rust cannot corrupt and thieves cannot break in and steal.

 

Putting “cross-cultural” back into the Gospel

I'm working feverishly (sounds good, anyway) with my editor to get my manuscript [Night Shift: Crossing the Cultural Line for the Kingdom] publish-ready. Dave Green is great to work with, even when I don't like his assignments! Right now we are rewriting chapter 1. The beginnings of books tend to be the most difficult to flesh out. We're shifting things around and adding and subtracting great lines I've written. All part of what Dave calls the Macro editing or revision process. Anyway, here is the beginning as it looks at this moment, raw and all.

***

How essential to the Gospel is cross-cultural work? Consider this. The central message of the Good News is that God in Jesus became flesh, Immanuel, "God with us." Another way to say that is that Jesus' method was incarnational, meaning he left his own culture and became a part of ours in order to communicate God's culture of love to us. Cross-cultural ministry therefore is at the heart of the message and the method of Jesus, what we call "the Good News" or the Gospel.

What is the Good News? It is the culture of light engaging the culture of night. If darkness is merely the absence of light, the culture of light has nothing to fear the encounter.

If light is metaphor for God's reign, and darkness is the absence of or that which resists the light of God, why then do Believers abandon the night? Why do they avoid or flee people groups, nations, governments, political parties, schools, businesses, neighborhoods and neighbors for the safety and security of the light, thus sealing off these parts of humanity and those human institutions in the darkest of tombs?

There are Believers who do not fear the night, for they understand that He who sends them also empowers and shields them with His Spirit. They know their mission in this life is to cross borders into territories and cultures alienated by darkness and to penetrate the curse of the night with blessing. They do so not necessarily as known superheroes, but as heroes nonetheless, often masking their daring deeds of greatness with harmless acts of goodness. They do not give in to fear, for they know that ultimately in the Kingdom of Yahweh their God, goodness will triumph over evil, blessing will push back curse, and light will surely dispel the darkness of night.

What does it take to get it done where it is not now being done? The second two "its" in this question, referring to victorious and overcoming goodness, blessing and light, is what Stephanie Ahn Mathis calls the "2GC Mandate," the Great Commission and the Two Greatest Commandments. So to put the question more directly, What does it take to fulfill the Great Commission and the Two Greatest Commandments where they are not now being fulfilled?

For thousands of years, we as Believers have been commanded to love God with all our whole beings and to love our neighbors as ourselves, by going and making disciples of all nations. We, like Jesus, are called to bring Good News to the poor, to heal people and set them free, to proclaim what the Ancients called "the Year of Jubilee." Or to put it yet another way, we are to reach the unreached, free the oppressed, and embrace this world's misfits.

Yet after all these millennia, the task of bringing God's culture of love to the unreached, oppressed and misfits remains daunting, to say the least. I do not think our mission is more difficult than it was 100 or 500 or 1,000 years ago, but there certainly is more to it – more people to reach, more needs and kinds of needs to be met, a greater variety of challenges, and so on. Every age has its own complications, and ours definitely has its share.

We as Believers are on a mission to cross cultural lines in the night. We do so by applying biblical models to our lives and work and, in so doing, we learn how to cross cultural boundaries and creatively access out-of-the-ordinary opportunities to fulfill God's mandate that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

By "night" I mean serving where our work is not as visible as what we think of in traditional Christian life and ministry. Night work means working in tough times and hard places. Night work means working where people don't know or don't understand what you are doing. Night work means going where people don't want you, serving people who don't like you, and blessing people more likely to curse you in return.

Night work isn't fun, or at least it is not easy. But night work has its own unique rewards, the best of which is knowing that you are doing something very near and dear to God's own heart. Even if no one else notices, He does.

Coming to Terms with God and Life – mostly God

I turned 55 a couple weeks ago. I like this birthday. I call it the "Double Nickel."

Life has all kinds of milestones, though I'm not sure the real pivotal points in life are at those mile markers. Pivotal points, the spots in the road where the road makes sharp turns, occur more randomly – okay, according to God's design, but they sure feel random. The problem with the "designed by God" part is that then you have to decide what to do with how you feel about those events, especially the ones overflowing with trauma and pain. Maybe the pain, too, is part of God's design. But then what do you do with the pain itself – and the incommunicable feelings that come with it? If God intended the pain, are we just supposed to accept it? Do we even have an option?

Some people think you're supposed to just stuff it, your feelings. But as someone once said, manure poops out one way or another. (Okay, he didn't use the word "manure.") It is true, though, you can't just stuff feelings. And you don't even just hand them over – they are part of who you are. What you do is channel them in the right direction – instead of bashing in some wall plaster, you get involved with helping hurting people.

I figure I've been channeling feelings into causes and mission and action for a long time. Now I'm learning that channeling is not enough. What I have to do is consciously link the pain with that action, identify one with the other. I'm angry, I'm hurt, so therefore I'm going to apply healing to someone else's hurt and anger. It is as if the pain in me becomes balm for someone else and in the process, we both get better.

Does God feel pain? Does He even feel? Scripture paints Yahweh (one of the Judeo-Christian names for God) as a God who both feels and expresses emotions. So in the same way that I believe that we have intellect because we were designed by intellect (what some people call intelligent design, though I speak to ultimate cause more than to methodology here), I also believe we have feelings and emotions because we were designed by One who feels and emotes. God doesn't just have love, Scripture says – He is love.

It's a good thing. That God feels. I don't think I could handle a God who doesn't feel my pain, whose heart doesn't break when a child is bought for sex or a man beats up his wife or when a cop pulls someone over just for being black or brown. I can handle a God who punishes the wicked, however He deems it wise to do so. But I don't think I could handle a God who punished at whim (not that I'd have any say in it). I don't even think I could handle a God who condemned people to damnation and didn't provide a way of escape from that fate. People are far too complicated – who that is good hasn't done something very wrong and who that is evil hasn't done some very good things? God better be a good judge of character. Actually He also turns out to be a lavish dispenser of grace.

Some people make a distinction between a supposedly angry God of the Old Testament and a loving Jesus of the New. But I see a God who loves some extremely disobedient people in the Old and a Jesus who gets angry at hypocrisy and injustice in the New. And besides, the Jews who have only the Old Testament for their Scriptures also understand a God who lavishes love indiscriminately as well as a God who rains down wrath on hypocrisy and injustice. As the New Testament Jesus says, he and his Father (God in heaven) are One.

So at this milestone of a birthday, what do I do with God? That for me is the easy part. I choose all over again to love God with my whole being. There aren't any better alternatives anyway, are there? And what do I do with life? I choose to obey God, which I understand from Micah 6:8 is to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God who has called me to love my neighbor as I love myself (that's from Leviticus 19:18).

Even though I'm 55, I don't have to have all the answers. And I really don't like it when people smugly think they do and don't even bother to ask what the questions are. As Evangelist Tom Skinner wrote in the '70s, "If Christ is the answer, what are the questions?" I hate it when people don't take time to listen, ponder questions and savor the process of finding answers that don't always add up in our finite brains.

I figure God doesn't need me to have all the answers either as He already has them. He just wants me to love people so they can discover Him and find healing for their pain. I'm also beginning to discover that even in just asking questions, I can help people find healing – especially when I give voice to their own questions, questions others don't want them asking, but questions that open vents in their pain and allow God's Hgood stuff to flow in.