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God’s Order

June 28, 2024

“When a trumpet blast is sounded, the tribes camping on the east are to set out. At the sounding of a second blast, the camps on the south are to set out. The blast will be the signal for setting out.” (Numbers 10:5-6)

My oldest daughter is an organizational guru. In her growing-up years, when we’d plan a vacation, she’d pack a month ahead of time. And then she’d unpack and repack! She’d arrange her clothing in just the right order. Businesses should have hired her to straighten out their messes, but she was only twelve. Now, she has the most organized third-grade classroom in the universe.

I am not that way. Perhaps that’s why I’m so amazed by her. I’m awed by order and structure. Yes, I suppose I have hints of it in my writing. I admire a student who organizes her thoughts in a clear and orderly manner, and the words flow.

I’ve just recently made my way through the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Numbers. One thing I’ve taken from those books is the order of God. For the Israelites, everything had an order to it. Their laws created order. Reading Leviticus can become tedious and repetitious, but it sets in place the system and structure for the people to follow. The Deceiver longs for chaos and confusion, but God desires understanding and consistency.

For instance, the order in which Israel’s twelve tribes marched is spelled out. Everyone had their place, their position. Responsibilities (Today, we call them job descriptions) were spelled out. Numbers 18 gives the duties for priests and Levites, as well as what offerings should go for their support.

Leviticus goes into detail about cleanliness. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and God desired order and structure in what the people were to do to get back to being clean. For example, if there was a skin rash, it needed to be taken care of. If there was sin, certain sacrifices were required. Sin upset the orderliness of God’s creation.

That order is apparent in the New Testament as well. The Corinthian church had issues in their worship gatherings (1 Corinthians 14), and Paul outlines what is needed to bring order into the midst of what had become chaotic. There was even an organizational structure in the first church that was created to care for widows and orphans, of which there were many. Even God’s concept of sabbath rest has an order and structure to it. Our bodies are wonderfully made in a way that rest (body, mind, and spirit) is an ingredient in a healthy recipe for life. Every sabbath day is a day of recovery and renewal. Not a day every so often, but regularly.

In our culture, chaos is a word that is increasingly used to refer to world situations, family relationships, the weather, and airports the day before Thanksgiving. Chaos is not a pleasant word when we use it in a sentence or a life situation.

On the other hand, many people don’t see the purpose in doing things in order or believe that God has an order for how things should be done. Order…sometimes it sounds so outdated, yet it looks so good in the rearview mirror after we have progressed into the land of troubles.

When we stray or mistrust the plans of God, we open the doors to misery.

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Stumbling In His Hands

June 25, 2024

“The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.” (Psalm 37:23-24)

As my basketball-playing days disappear into the rearview horizon, I’ve taken up walking more while listening to music or podcasts. In fact, I walked to Starbucks this morning carrying my backpack like I’m a middle school kid off to school. All I need to complete that picture from yesteryear is my Popeye lunchbox.

Last night, as I was out for a short walk around our neighborhood, it occurred to me that my eyes were surveying the sidewalk in front of me for cracks, pine cones, and stones that might cause me to stumble and fall. I’ve sprained my ankle many times over the years, but at the age of seventy, I have a growing concern about my hips and knees and how a misstep could create a situation that would take a few months to recover from.

It seems that stumbling seventy-year-olds are common. As I stepped off the curb yesterday, I remembered these verses in Psalm 37. The picture of the Lord not letting me fall revealed how loving and caring our God is. I may watch out for pine cones and stones as I’m out for a walk, but the Lord I trust will be close to me as I daily walk with Him. In fact, He promises to be so near me that, as I teeter on the edge of disaster, He will not let me fall.

When shadows conceal the clarity of the way, the One who brings light to dark places gives me peace of mind. Even though I can’t see what lies ahead, he can and upholds me. The Message paraphrase says God “has a grip” on my hand. That reminds me of walks with each of my grandkids in their beginning steps. The unsteadiness of each short stride was evident to anyone watching, but each of them also had an unwavering trust in the one whose hand they grasped.

I thank God that He’s unwavering in His love for me and His watching over and out for me.

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Winning Halfway

June 22, 2024

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” (James 1:5)

I received an email from Starbucks yesterday, informing me that I was a winner in their Summer Sweepstakes Contest. The grand prize was a trip for two to Costa Rica. That would be awesome! I’ve wanted to visit there.

However, when I opened the email, I discovered that “my prize” was fifty percent off one of their drinks, called a Refresher. Wait a minute! Half-off? That means I would be giving them more money in order to receive my prize. I wonder if the prize was a one-way ticket to Costa Rica, but the winner would have to get themselves back home again?

I’ve had those scam emails before that tell me I’ve won anything from a chainsaw to an air fryer to a tool set. I’ve suave enough to not open those. No one ever called me a brainiac, but I ain’t no “dumb attack” either. And this WAS from Starbucks, the Starbucks that offers half-off drinks on most days between noon and 6 P.M.

It seems that winning halfway also means losing halfway. Even more than a half-free Starbucks drink, our culture has a way of giving us half the story, to focus on the beginning and not the end, to show the happy faces of the new car buyers without hinting at the reverse side of the excessive car payment that the sellers will expect even when the vehicle is in for a major repair.

Wisdom sees the carrot dangling before the trap and considers the costs. Wisdom sees the long-range consequences hiding behind the short-term thrill. Wisdom sees the tears of misery in the background of the thirst for money.

Now, I realize winning half a Starbucks drink is not on the same grief level as a lottery ticket buyer who goes hogwild at the 7-11 because he sees the image of Shangri-La attached to the jackpot amount. However, the concept is the same. Half-free in order to cost you something.

Last night, wisdom took a nap as I was looking at a book on Amazon. It was only a few dollars…okay, ten! Ten is only a few more than a few. So I hit the order button. After all, I have Amazon Prime and free shipping. Immediately upon ordering the book that is just a few more than a few, Amazon informed me that other shoppers who bought the same book also ordered the following. Pictures of four other books showed up, so I ordered one of them. By the time I had exited out of Amazon, my “few more than a few” book had become $38.95. Don’t tell Carol, although she usually reads my blog so I need to work on my pitiful look of repentance. I’m trying to think of a way I can blame it on wisdom napping on me, but…okay, I had a dumb attack!

I think of the sins of the flesh that Paul lists in Galatians 5 and most of them are actions that seemed right at the time or brought satisfaction for a moment, but consequences later on. Half free and half unbelievably costly.

My life story has been peppered with costly seasoning, like procrastinating doing classwork when I was in college and paying the cost of an abysmal GPA, or eating two Big Macs and suffering the indigestion a couple of hours later, or placing the plastic down on the counter too much in a short amount of time and then paying the high interest rate on the remaining balance our checking account said we couldn’t pay.

I’ve been suckered into lunging for the dangling carrot many times. However, I’m thankful that wisdom has shown itself more and more as my life has slowed down. (Yes, I know! There was that Amazon thing last night! I admit, I’m like a kid in a candy store when I click on Amazon.)

I think I’ll try this on the baristas at my local Starbucks. I think I’ll tell whoever is making the drinks to put only the free part in the glass and leave the rest empty.

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Wrong Emoticon

June 20, 2024

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry…” (James 1:19)

In my advancing years, I have done a good amount of writing. My Words From WW blog is closing in on 1,500 posts. Sometimes they’re serious, sometimes ludicrous, but most of the time I try to take a life situation and draw a spiritual teaching or pondering from it.

Sometimes, it’s evident that the reader either didn’t get the point or didn’t read the whole blog. Maybe he got bored, or maybe she got distracted, but the reader still made some kind of comment or gave me one of those emoticons. Perhaps I was the one at fault and wrote poorly enough to cause confusion.

I’ve had a couple of occasions where I’ve read a Facebook post or a text and wanted to give a reply. One time, I skimmed the post, and when the “emoticons” appeared, I hurriedly hit the “Wow” to indicate how amazing the news or the accomplishment was. The only problem was that I punched the wrong emoticon. Instead of the “Wow!”, I hit the “Haha” laughing uncontrollably emoticon. Think how small you would feel if your friend was sharing about the serious six-hour-long surgical procedure he was about to undergo, and you replied by hitting the “Haha” emoticon. He’s about to go under the knife and you send him a face that is laughing uncontrollably.

Oops!

One of the issues with communication is our rush to get through it. After all, there are a ton of Facebook posts that we need to respond to: Sylvia got a new aquarium, Bobby posted a video of him lifting weights, Gladys is going to the zoo, and Troy got his braces off. So many people to give some kind of reply to, so we head an emoticon in their direction. In a time where there is more information shared and ways to share, we listen less. There’s an emphasis these days on over-communicating, while at the same time we “under hear.”

Jesus had a few conversations that weren’t heard or understood. Some of the most religious folk already had decided they didn’t like what he was saying— even before he said it. The disciples often had side conversations, trying to figure out what Jesus meant. And then there were the parables that would have had Goober and Gomer scratching their heads. Sometimes, we hear with our ears but not our heads or hearts. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit speaks to us, but we’ve already determined what the leading is. How might the gospel stories be told differently if the disciples had listened for the deeper meaning? How might the problems in the Corinthian church have been solved if the ones who were always talking, always complaining, had waited for the Spirit to speak?

With social media today, James’s words need to seep into our laptops and cell phones. Honestly, his words are more important in those arenas than face-to-face dialogue because most of our communication is not done in person. Being slow to speak and quick to listen would eliminate most conflicts a typical person faces. It would assuredly lessen the caseload of professional counselors and attorneys.

Pondering James’s words, it seems that more listening and less speaking would also slow down the rise of anger and calm the rage that seems to erupt as rapidly as forest fires.

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The New La-teen Language

June 13, 2024

Recently, my wife and I spent eleven days with our three oldest grandkids (Ages: 9, 13, 16). A few months ago, we had done the same “residency” with our two youngest grandkids. One of them had just turned four, and the other was a few weeks away from his second birthday. One of the similarities between the older three and the younger two was that they all said words we couldn’t understand.

At least for the two pre-schoolers, it was because their pronunciation skills hadn’t developed yet, as well as the amount of words that were a part of their vocabulary. With enough effort and patience (and finger-pointing), Carol and I usually were able to figure out what they were saying.

Not so much with the older three, especially the two teenagers. They kept throwing their new words and phrases at us that we weren’t hip enough to understand. (“Hip enough”, that’s an expression from my cool days!) Instead of Latin, I called it “La-teen”, a new dialect that has an invisible age-restrictive fence around it peppered with signs that say, “KEEP OUT, OLD PEOPLE!”

My granddaughter kept saying, “Sigma”, and she’d ask me, “Granddad, are you the sigma?” I was familiar with the Sigma Chi fraternity back in college at Miami of Ohio University. They were an exclusive fraternity known for their snootiness and preppy-looking dress attire. Other than that and the academic distinction of “Sigma Cum Laude”, I was unfamiliar with other definitions of the word.

According to Google, “sigma” means “best”, but the way my granddaughter was using it told me that Google hadn’t caught up to the new emerging uses for it. Just when I thought I had a handle on it, a new wart appeared that brought me back to my frequently-visited satte of confusion.

As our time progressed with the three, other words kept being thrown at me, like verbal snowballs at a defenseless child (with grey hair). I became “the op”. Did I ever “rizz” when I was growing up? Did I have a “bestie?” “What did you think of that song, Granddad? Was that a “bop?”

And then when I’d tell them it was time to get off their technology devices and come back to the real world, I’d get something like, “Why do asking me that, bruh?”

A video was “dead”, which meant the opposite…or should I say “the op?”

“La-teen” is not as difficult as learning Hebrew, which I attempted back in my seminary days, although Henry David Thoreau once said, “It’s too late to be studying Hebrew; it’s more important to understand…the slang of today.”

Jesus had a knack for speaking the language of the day to the people He taught and conversed with. In an agricultural society, He frequently used visuals such as seeds, plows, and sheep to communicate spiritual truth. He connected with a largely illiterate population with pictures that spoke to them. I guess my granddaughter might say, “He was the sigma sigma, even though He was the Op of what most people expected.”

Okay, she wouldn’t say it like that. She’d probably insert a few more “La-Teen” terms in there to confuse me further. It would be her sigma paraphrase of the Word of God.

However, it does make me wonder how she now refers to Jesus’s “Great Commission.” Is there another way of saying, as Jesus did, “Go and make disciples…”

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The Scarcity of Story

June 6, 2024

 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:45)

My wife and I just finished eleven days watching over our three oldest grandkids, two of whom have entered that stage called “teenagerism” and the other nine. Today, we’re feeling our age and the fact that a couple of generations removed from them has produced a vast canyon of differences.

In our younger days, my brother, sister, and I would sit around watching the stories of Lassie, Leave It To Beaver, Batman, and Johnny Quest. Each episode was self-contained unless it was a two-parter. We’d see the situation or problem, the tensions and drama that resulted from the problem, and the solution or climax. In our eleven days with the grandkids, they rarely watched a TV show like that. They feasted their eyes on YouTube videos that featured squealy-sounding young people and lame dialogue. But most of all, there was an absence of plot.

Anyone these days with a camera, even just a cell phone, can put a video together and post it on YouTube, Facebook, or one of the social media outlets. Thus, there is a plethora of short videos that have the same ability as Miller Moths to make their way inside a family room of a home. Almost all of them, however, had an absence of plot or, as I’d like to define it, “story.”

Like the glue we used to put our airplane models together in the past, “story” is the bonding substance that holds past, present, and future life together. It helps us make sense of why, when, where, and how. It gives us the context, the history, the reasons for our pain and our joy. If there isn’t a story, life can be trivialized into meaningless fluff.

Jesus used “story” to teach about spiritual truth and the mysteries of God’s ways. We remember the concepts of the stories of “the pearl of great price,” “the prodigal son,” and “the widow’s mite” teach us. His stories focus on themes such as God’s grace, His love, caring for our neighbor and who that might be, and sacrificial giving.

When a culture loses its sense of story, it becomes adrift, anchorless, and simply exists. It can be fooled into believing that the world’s nonsense is the essence of life. This leads to nowhere but a desert of wandering through life.

I recognize that I am a relic from a different time, prone to enjoying stories from Mayberry, the mysteries of Agatha Christie, and C. J. Box’s adventures of Joe Pickett. I need stories. They are the lens through which I view life.

Going back to those old model airplanes, my older brother had several of them on his bedroom dresser. One day, I decided to see if they could fly. I’d launch them into the air and discovered that none of them could stay in the air before they came crashing back to the floor. When each of the planes crashed, they shattered. The impact negated the adhesive glue, and nothing was left to hold them together.

I find it interesting that I can remember that story from sixty-plus years ago to illustrate the damage that can result from the loss of story.

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