Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM W.W. August 10, 2011
My wife and I returned from two weeks of vacation on Monday in the Midwest. I thought I would summarize the experience.
Day 1- Left home at 6:30am to travel to DIA (Denver). Vacation started with standing in lines at airport. I thought I was at Cedar Point Amusement Park, but instead of standing in line for a roller coaster I realized I was standing in line to meet a TSA agent.
Day 2- In Michigan. Hot and humid.
Day 3- In Michigan. Hot and humid. Carol and I get reintroduced to something called a mosquito, and his friends! We become “blood relatives.”
Day 4- In Michigan. Hotter and more humid. Instinctively I start to pull off my sweater, and then I realize I’m not wearing one. It’s an invisible “humidity sweater.” Not a fan!
Day 5- In Michigan and then traveling to Ohio. Hot and humid. Humidity has decided to follow us down I-75. We stay with my “best man” and his wife. Good to see them again. He proceeds to humiliate me in ping-pong!
Day 6- In Ohio. Weather forecast calls for increasing hotness and widely uncomfortable humidity.
Day 7- In Ohio. My armpits feel like perspiration fountains. Longing for a blizzard, and I don’t mean from Dairy Queen!
Day 8- In Ohio. It’s raining! Praise the Lord! We celebrate by going to Long John Silver’s for lunch. Mistake! The rest of the day I feel like there is a fish swimming inside me.
Day 9- In Ohio and Indiana. Hot and humid, but we’re in our rental car so we are oblivious…until we stop for gas. It’s so hot that I’m afraid the fuel might ignite. Humidity lower, however. Only about 75%!
Day 10- In Illinois. Hot, humid, and considerably miserable. But on the positive, we get to be in bumper to bumper traffic!
Day 11- In Illinois. Family golf outing. Eighteen holes at a nice golf course. I notice that Carol’s cousin is sweating profusely and we haven’t even teed off yet. After teeing off I realize he just got a jump on us. Each of us (Ten of us in all!) proceeds to “sweat like a pig”, as my grandfather used to say. After my tee shot on the first hole I’m counting down how many holes are left before I can shower!
Day 12- In Illinois. Hot and humid as we trudge through our last day before flying back to Colorado. The highlight is meeting with some old college friends that evening. It rains as a sign of God’s blessing on our gathering together.
Day 13- Back to Colorado. We arrive at the airport extra early so we can get the full effect of waiting in lines again. I feel like a steer that is being led to a place I don’t really want to go to. At O’Hare the TSA agents make you feel a little bit like you are a criminal who is being processed through to a holding cell. The full body scan is a trip! And, of course, since we arrived extra early we discover that our flight is delayed. Arrive back home at 1:15am.
Day 14- Back to work and it’s hot…but it isn’t humid! Praise the Lord!

WORDS FROM W.W. July 20, 2011
I’m writing this in the midst of a week where I am serving as pastor for middle school church camp. Call me crazy! Just don’t call me Shirley!
Last night at campfire I was asking the campers what it was that God might do in each of their lives that could only be explained as being of God? I was using the story of Gideon, and how God reduced his army from 32,000 to 300, in God’s words, so that “Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her” (Judges 7:2). The campers weren’t quite getting what I was saying, despite my careful exegesis of the scripture passage, good Biblical terminology, and pastor-ly voice with deep feeling and awe whenever I said “GOD!!!!!”
Then one of our counselors felt led to share a personal story from her life that “put feet” on what I was trying to say.
Then one of the campers shared an experience of pain from her life in which she felt the love of God…then another camper shared about the recent death of her mother…then another camper shared about the struggles his dad was having…and another about the deployment of her mom…and another about a dreadful accident his brother had recently, and had just gotten the word that day that his sibling was going to make it.
It went on…and on…and on, but whereas, some adults might have been uncomfortable with all the sharing that these eleven to fourteen year olds were in the midst of, God took the point I had so futilely try to make, and he made it! In his way! In the language of twelve year olds!
He used the bond of shared pain to break down some walls of guarded emotions. The campers recognized that. They left that campfire with a deeper level of love for one another, and trust in the ways of God.
Sometimes our multitude of words inhibit the moving of the Spirit of the Lord. What we hope for, what I hoped for, is able to occur if we just get out of the way.
That’s a hard lesson for a preacher to learn because if we don’t use our voice we’re afraid we’ll lose our voice. Sometimes we need another Zechariah experience!

WORDS FROM W.W. July 5, 2011
I’ve been reading James McPherson’s extensive history of the Civil war, entitled Battle Cry For Freedom. It’s about a 900 page lap-buster that I gladly paid $7.99 to have downloaded to my e-reader.
I’ve learned an enormous amount of information about the events that led up to the Civil War. One of the issues that McPherson goes into detail about is the number of bordering states that could have gone one way or the other. They could have just as easily supported the Confederate, as they did the Union…or vice-versa. In those states there were a multitude of people who also could have gone one way or the other in terms of their allegiance. For instance, Robert E. Lee, the commanding general of the Confederacy, was troubled by the thought of having to choose for the South, because he had spent his entire military career in the U.S. Army, graduating second in his class from West Point in 1829, and serving in the army in the Mexican War. Lee spoke against secession from the Union. But when his home state of Virginia voted to secede from the Union, he had to make a decision, and he decided, through much agony that he had to stay with his family’s roots.
His story was played out in thousands of other people’s lives as well. The further away you got from the Mason-Dixon Line, the more committed the people were to one side or the other. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were like fighters in the corner of the ring pointing their fingers at New York, Massachusetts, and Michigan.
But the citizens of Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland were divided in terms of their loyalties. Thirty-five counties in Virginia voted against secession.
Whereas, numerous people’s passions were evident in support of their side, North or South, just as many people were grieved by having to choose a side.
(A side note, it is amazing to read of the number of preachers during that time that would use the Scriptures to justify their commitment to slavery.)
The tragedies of our nation’s history has made me contemplate a great deal about the struggles of our choices in today’s living. Most of life, it seems, is not lived in the “Upper North” or the “Lower South”, but rather in the borderlines in which we could go either direction.
For me it seems that much of my life emerges out of the compromises I make. Some of them I’m pulled, not with great enthusiasm mind you, towards the decisions of God; but, on the other hand, many of them take me slowly in a drift towards the convenient choices of our culture.
It may be in the borderlines of my life that I most appreciate a God who is gracious and forgiving. It’s the struggle with decisions and choices that Paul talked about in the last half of Romans 7. (“So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” Romans 7:21) It’s the decision points where I am somewhat committed, but not totally committed. To use another Biblical story, it’s the Israelites bowing down to a golden calf because they didn’t sense that the Lord God Almighty was around. They were nudged to go with the naysayers.
How often are we nudged to move away from the things of God? How much are we moved by the extending of his grace?

WORDS FROM W.W. June 16, 2011
“Framing The Future”

For Father’s Day a year ago my daughter Kecia surprised me by framing all of the photos I have had of teams I have coached in the last decade or so. She put each team photo into it’s own frame and then arranged them on one of the walls in my home study. Some of the photos are larger and require special frames. Some are situated where the vertical sides of the frame are the longer two sides, and others are just the opposite.
The frames don’t change the pictures, but they do influence one’s perspective of it. For example, one of the teams that I enjoyed coaching the most has their photo in a black frame with thin borders around it. The frame, from my view and memory, enhances the sweetness of the season that I shared with the players in that picture. One of the more difficult teams I coached has its photo centered in a solidly built frame that, for some reason, acts like a memory-eraser of the afternoons I felt like I was trying to get a team of mules to take one step forward.
The wall is about to gain a few others frames of this past year’s teams. In preparation for this I went to a store and looked at new frames to place the photos in. I was amazed at the options! A couple of them seemed to communicate serenity. Others non-verbally said “Strong” and “Loving.” I would describe a few as traditional and others as “adolescent-bound.”
The frames communicated perhaps as much as the pictures.
It occurred to me that our faith experience, or perhaps our faith experience through church, is influenced by our “frame.” What has given us a sense of comfort and peace often becomes the “frame” through which we see the view of the present and our hopes for the future.
In essence, disgruntlement or satisfaction with our church is often connected to how well we have experienced the past. It helps us understand why older generations are so passionate about singing hymns. It helps me understand why I sometimes think of youth ministry being done in a certain way…because that’s how it was done when I was in high school, and how I did it when I was a youth director. It explains why certain things are in specific places in a sanctuary, not necessarily because Scripture instructs that way. It also helps us make sense as to why one church has a weekly calendar that never changes, but other churches are more open about altering the schedule on a regular basis.
Our past experiences help frame the present and future. If someone’s experience in a traditional church was riddled with chaos and hurt, he may never be involved in an organized religious group again, or when he does become interested in a faith journey again it could very well be in a non-traditional setting that is fresh and completely different.
Sometimes people leave churches not because they were offended or angered, but because their frame needs a more familiar picture in it. Who would put a Picasso in a frame that would take the attention away from the picture? Who would put a picture of the 2011 Dallas Mavericks in a 1890 picture frame that once held the photo of my grandparents with “four greats” in front ot their names?
The Pharisees often got upset with Jesus. Their faith frame was being seen with a new photo in it, and it was just a little too much out there for them to be comfortable with.
In a culture that is very spiritual, and decreasingly church-based, there will probably be more and more conversation…and heated debate about our different frames. It’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It just is.

WORDS FROM W.W. June 7, 2011
“Jesus told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.”
(Matthew 13:24-26)

This is a story about two shrubs, small and young, bought at the store in two of those small shrub containers and carefully bedded down into the ground a few feet apart from each other. The shrubs were cared for, fed and watered, and they slowly took root. Each of them had tiny fragile leaves bursting with potential.
And then something strange happened. One of the shrubs grew at an alarmingly rapid rate, while the other shrub seemed to be barely growing in comparison. The two shrubs were pictures of contrast. How could they have been like twins from birth, who now looked like polar opposites?
As time went on the shrub that was still smaller began to display brightness of color in its appearance. It was stunning to behold. The larger shrub sprouted limbs that gave it a bad hair-day look. Each day that went by did nothing to change that appearance.
And then the oddness of the situation brought forth a solution. The larger shrub had company in it’s beginning carton, for there had also been the beginnings of a weed that was sharing the space with it. Towards the beginning of the growing the weed had given the small shrub a look of vitality, of health, and fully-lived life. But as time went on the weed had taken over the shrub, began crowding it out, drinking all of the water that came it’s direction, and expanded.
The other shrub, though small, was weed-less. It very carefully grew towards strength. After a while it stopped worrying about it’s size in comparison and focused on being what it could be. Each growing season it became steadier and more deeply rooted. It stayed on course with what it had been planted to do.
But the first shrub lost it’s direction. The weeds crowded it out to the point that it couldn’t see what it was any longer. It even came to a point where it couldn’t separate itself from the weeds. It thought the weeds were signs of it’s fruit. Everyone else, however, knew the truth, even if the shrub couldn’t see it.
Finally, a day came when the weeds began encroaching on the other shrub and it could no longer be tolerated. The weeds were pulled out of the ground. The shrub was so entangled in their existence that it was pulled up, also.
But the other shrub thrived and blossomed, and after a while, no one remembered that at one time there had been another shrub.

Author’s Note: This story, that Jesus first brings out in Matthew, was re-lived in our front yard this past year. There is still a bare spot where the weeds and shrub got pulled up, but the shrub beside it is doing well! Read into it however you want. To me it is a vivid illustration of the Christian life. Sometimes a person’s language and outward appearance fool others in the short-term. A steady walk is only noticed after it has been shown for a long, long time.