Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM W.W. April 5, 2011

The recent issues of Time have included a hefty amount of coverage about the disasters in Japan. There has been even more emphasis given to the unrest in numerous Middle Eastern countries. As we’ve watched the situation it amount of information seems to be like falling dominoes that keep tumbling into the next one, and the next one, and . . . .

Is it just a coincidence? Is it just something that happens once every thousand years or so? Surely, it doesn’t mean that Egypt’s unrest was a cause in Libya’s unrest, and Yemen’s unrest, and . . . you get the picture!

I would say “no” and “yes.”

Each nation has it’s own unique set of circumstances that have led it to the point of rebellion. Corruption, poverty, lack of hearing, rich and poor, oppression, long-held traditions, and entrenched government leaders . . . all of these ingredients have been poured into the pots of each country in varying degrees. So, in one way, what has happened in Egypt has no relation to what is happening in Syria.

BUT, in our ever-connected world, what happens one place gets communicated quickly in another. I’m “facebooking” my nephew in Baltimore about his wedding in Chicago next October—it is faster than a letter, and even a phone call. Videos of our grandson are being shown to our families in Ohio and Georgia through our daughter’s Facebook page as soon as they happen. My son and I were wondering what the student enrollment at Butler University in Indiana is, so I “googled” it, and found out that it is just under 4,200, within seconds. I was recently curious about how many times Elizabeth Taylor had been married, so I went to online to Wikipedia and found the answer in 10 seconds (8 times to seven husbands). And, I’m texting my daughter in Sioux Falls about what we’re having for dinner.

In other words, there is immediate communication, unless you’re in the middle of a tsunami. With immediate communication comes an expectancy of immediate change. So, what happens in Egypt does impact what will happen tomorrow in Jordan.

Change is changing!

The Body of Christ needs to hear that. I doubt that it will be taken as good news. We, the church, are skeptical of change. The history of the Christian church is dotted with numerous changes that have left people confused and spiritually damaged. It has left us scarred, but, hopefully, a little wiser. Sometimes change is good, and sometimes it’s just craziness lived out.

But change is changing! It has come, and is still coming; and the way it’s coming is changing. It’s more rapid, more reactive. Change is less frequently concerned with the aftermath. Sometimes it is self-centered, while at other times it is an aggressive step forward in concentrated human compassion.

We can look at the Middle East situations and easily conclude that change will be mostly be resisted and fought. Change, however, when meeting unsympathetic intolerance, in recent times has gained remarkable momentum.

I’m even envisioning a cartoon where a young child is texting his friends. His mom asks him what he is doing and he responds, “I’m texting all my friends to schedule a protest rally tonight to put pressure on you to change your decision about buying a bag of cookies at the store tomorrow.”

Change is changing. Movements, right or wrong, are created overnight.

Bottom line, I believe this will impact the church more than it ever has before, and more quickly, too. The urgency in that is that we must know what the essentials are. But, the essentials need be more clearly stated than ever before, and we also must know what the non-essentials are.

What must we hold on to? What are the beliefs that cannot be compromised away, for in compromising them we lose the foundation of our Christian faith?

And, what are the things that we’re just too stubborn to allow to be changed? By not changing those things, we will lose our ability to speak to the culture.

WORDS FROM W.W. March 30, 2011

The other night Carol and I went to a Mongolian barbecue restaurant. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s a place where you decide what you want in your stir-fry combination by adding different ingredients to a bowl. You then take the bowl to the cooks manning the grill and they cook it for you and then dump it on to a plate. The ingredients include about half a dozen kinds of meat and seafood, an assortment of veggies, and about a dozen sauces that you can choose from. In reality it’s a glorified buffet!
Mongolian barbecue is a no-risk establishment. If you don’t care for your plate full of food, you can simply shove it to the side and go fill up another bowl. If I don’t like the tofu too, bad for the restaurant!
If I want all meat and no veggies, it’s my choice!
“Mom, don’t tell me what to pick!”
When I was growing up Mom put the food on the table. It was not a buffet. A meat dish…most of the time. A vegetable. A potato item. A piece of bread or a biscuit or skillet cornbread. That was it. If you didn’t like it…it wasn’t going to be shipped to a hungry child in India. It was going to be eaten…by you! Thank God my mom and dad were both great cooks. No giant dumplings with an Alka-Seltzer chaser!
In comparing those two ways of food consumption, I often feel that Christians follow the first method in regards to their faith walk. “God, show me the way after I determine the ingredients!”
We seldom travel out of our spiritual comfort zones, because we’re not sure we’d like it very well. Better safe then sorry, even if it’s to God that we’re saying “sorry” to!
I read this quote the other day from Eugene Peterson that resonates uncomfortably in my spirit. He writes:
“Praying puts us as risk of getting involved in God’s conditions. Be slow to pray. Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want, but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests.”
Perhaps that’s why many of us shy away from prayer. It puts us at risk of not being able to make the decision about what we put on our plate. Deep down inside I think most of us know that God knows best, and we are frequently irritated by that truth. We think that if God created tofu he’s got something planned for our life plate that will result in a waste of space and time.
“Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want, but what God wants…”
That is strangely comforting. Not comfort food, just comforting.
I’m going to chew on that for a while.

WORDS FROM W.W. March 22, 2011

I was giving Carol “the silent treatment” part of the afternoon.
No, she hadn’t mistreated me, or made a comment about my bald spot. I had been to the dentist. My mouth hurt. Actually, I felt like I was one of those Star Wars characters with off-shaped heads. At any rate I spent part of the afternoon not talking.
When I did talk I sounded like one of the characters in Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert TV cartoon show a few years ago. So I tried not to talk, just to be quiet.
Interestingly enough, Carol and I went to see the movie The King’s Speech later in the afternoon. By then I could chew popcorn on the right side of the mouth. (We go to movies to eat popcorn. In other words, we have a little movie with our popcorn!)The movie was based on a king’s inability to talk. I had read some of the history that the film was based in William Manchester’s extraordinary biography of Winston Churchill entitled The Last Lion.
Here was another situation of problematic speech.
My numbed mouth and King George VI’s stammering speech were both rooted in pain. In a few hours my pain was gone, but his kept coming at him wave after wave.
Sometimes our speech towards our Creator becomes numb. We fall into pain and heartache and we don’t know what to say to The Lord Who Provides, or we mumble it in embittered tones that make God out to be the villain and bestower of harmful intentions.
There are times when our prayer lives become speechless. We have no voice, no room for even receiving comfort. We are just tight-jawed and close-minded.
Like a son and his father there is the danger of being related but distant. With God, scripture tells us that we can call him “Abba”, while he refers to even one of us as his children. But sons have a way of moving away from their fathers, and then there’s the drifting to the point of silence and meaningless conversations when they do come back together.
King George’s speech was fluid when he was angry. He could cuss and speak angrily with the most convincing orators. It was in his times of uncertainty and royal expectation that his words became like high hurdles that caused tripping and hesitancy.
For many of us we cry out to God in our anger, and he passively pass him by in our successes.
Personally, I have found that I am much better at writing down my thoughts to God than speaking them to him. I’m deeper in thought and “writer’s block” gives me pause to reflect upon what he might be saying.
I dislike getting drilled, but once in a while- a great while- it gives me cause to keep my mouth shut.

WORDS FROM W.W. March 8, 2011

I’ve noticed in numerous television shows and films I’ve viewed in recent months that when there is a conflictual conversation that is starting to develop the scene changes, or sometimes music deadens the tension on the screen. A conversation that is about to become heated just ends and the scene goes to a commercial or what someone else is doing.
It’s kind of like this:
MOM: So did you steal that twenty dollar bill that I had on the counter?
SON: (pause) What’s for dinner tonight?
MOM: Does that mean yes?
SON: (stares at his iPod) We haven’t had pork chops in a while.
MOM: (stares at son staring at iPod) I just don’t understand.
(Music starts. Scene switch to Burger King commercial.)

There is a side-tracking to safety. Depth is extremely uncomfortable! Better to focus on the dinner menu!
How often does my relationship with Jesus mirror that? When the Holy Spirit is “stirring the pot” of my life it is convenient to focus on the silverware. When I have opportunities to draw close to the presence of God and experience an intimate moment of being fully-focused on Him, there always seems to be something that has the potential to draw me away from Him.
Instead of the spiritual meat I stare at a water spot on the spoon. Instead of closeness I look off into the distance.
Quite honestly, churches are notorious for this very thing. The Body of Christ has the awesome privilege to be the residence of the presence of God, to gather together for an audience with the Holy; but we are prone to play it safe and focus on other things such as the color of the drapes, and the length, or brevity, of the worship service. There will always be something that seems more urgent than an encounter with God! It might be the type of translation that scripture is being read from, or the temperature of the room, or the noise that someone in the third row is making…there will always be something that is of a “trivial urgency” that has the potential to keep us from getting to close to the heart of God.
Such things occurred on a regular basis in the early church. Paul addresses the safe side-tracks quite often in his writings. Christians got on the nerves of other Christians. As they lived day to day in close proximity to one another they created lists of personal pet peeves- people getting all crazy in worship, sue-happy brothers in Christ, a couple of women who kept bickering with one another, losing the intimacy of the Lord’s Supper because people were unashamedly gluttons.
To focus on our relationship with Jesus is what we long for, and yet, what we most often avoid.
Do you hear the music beginning, and the scene changing? We’ve adopted the revised saying “Better safe…than soul-searching!”
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. May we seek to not play it safe, but seek first first his kingdom and his righteousness.

WORDS FROM W.W. February 28, 2011

I felt it approaching my vocals cords on Tuesday, like a “bass frog” with low expectations. On Wednesday the volume level got turned down to the point that people thought I was whispering secrets.
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday it came and went almost as often as my memory.
I lost my voice…and then I gained it back…and then I lost it again…and…you get the picture!
A preacher losing his voice is as bad as a chef losing his sense of taste, or a parent losing their sense of smell when their toddler is right beside him/her. (Let me clarify! Others can smell “it” as soon as they enter the room. I don’t want to explain it any more than that!) I can only stress a certain scriptural point so far with raised eyebrows or distorted facial expressions. After a while I just look weird. (Some would debate that point even if I still had my voice!)
Last week I was trying to make a point to Carol and I just squeaked like a baby chick. It’s embarrassing to talk to your wife and suddenly sound like Pee Wee Herman!
There are other times in life, however, when I have, and others have, lost our voices. Sometimes it happens as we’re talking, but nothing is being heard. Sometimes we lose our voice because we are beyond any more words. We’re speechless in our souls. There is a quiet frustration that evolves into silence.
I believe we all come to that point at times, resurrect from it, and then, hopefully, our voices rise again.
My recent voice experience is of the audible type, but there’s an inner voice that is prone to disappear from time to time. It’s the voice of God that gets muted by our lives, and our plans, and our meetings. It gets covered up by all our details, like layer upon layer of blankets on a bed. We didn’t mean to lose touch with His voice. It just happened.
The resurrection of Jesus tells us about death, and then the coming back to life. When Jesus died there was a thundering silence. There was a punctuated quiet!
And then just when it looked like the voice of God had been silenced there was the grinding sound of a heavy rock that was rolled away. Life came into death. The voice came back.
I think of that picture when it seems like my voice has died. It think of it when I sense the rock is being rolled back into place, and I’m looking into the tomb of my existence instead of out into the promise of the light.
My voice began to come back today. It’s a sign of the fact that we serve a God who restores and resounds in the echoes of our personal valleys. After all, God’s voice, his speech, was heard in the third verse of Genesis 1, and it continues from there. We talk about hearing the voice of God, and then at other times when God is silent it is never a good thing.
Losing my voice has made me appreciate having a voice, a leading, an inner longing to walk in the ways of God.
So, it’s coming back. My voice, that is! I’ve only had a couple of Pee Wee Herman moments today. At other times I’ve sounded more like Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Oops! I just showed my age!

WORDS FROM W.W. February 24, 2011

Last week the Girls’ Varsity basketball team that I’m assistant coach for finished their season.
“One and Twenty-Two!”
For some reason when I spell it out it doesn’t look as bad as “1-22!”
When you only have one returning varsity player who averaged more than 10 minutes a game last year (Notice I said 10 minutes, not 10 points!) you have the necessary elements of a recipe for…for…corn mush. I can’t think of anything more void of sweetness and lip-smacking potential.
People shake their heads in pity. Opposing coaches would be thinking ahead to the next game while still in the first quarter of their game against us. Officials would give us certain calls out of sympathy.
The only thing worse than 1-22 is 0-23.
What we learned, however, is that people have the opportunity to learn and grow more in the midst of adversity than in the sweet smelling trail of success. In fact, the Bible seems to have a lot of “One and Twenty-Two characters” in it. Think of Jonah. He was walking away from his potential. He was moonwalking double-time away from his calling and opportunity to make an impact. Think of Joseph. How bad does it have to get for your brothers to despise you so much they toss you into a pit? And then shortly after being sold to slave traders, ending up in prison. Joseph was “1-22” before he reached “his breakout season.”
I wouldn’t say Peter was “1-22”, but he was the type of guy who come win five in a row, and then quickly start a long losing streak. You never quite knew what kind of night Peter would have!
Our team hung together even in the midst of some lop-sided games. The players learned to support one another, to appreciate the fact that no one was jumping out of the boat in mid-stream. Two of the girls had been on the softball team that had won the league title and advanced to the state tournament. They went from that setting to being a part of a basketball team that one lost more games in one week than they did the whole season in softball. It was humbling, and yet it taught them that life is made up of some tough periods that require perseverance. It requires having some others to help you walk through the dry places.
Sometimes we appreciate people only for what they can do, not who they are. Sometimes we minimize their importance or value because they can’t do certain things.
Although I don’t wish 1-22 seasons on anyone, it has the ability to take life to a deeper level that is not based on who is most gifted.
Churches go through 1-22 seasons as well. They are times in which we re-evaluate who we are and what is important. We come through them with new understandings and renewed vision. Some things that we thought were vitally important we discover were just the trimmings.
1-22!
“One and Twenty-Two!” Since I’m a writer I prefer to spell it out.

WORDS FROM W.W. February 8, 2011

Super Bowl commercials went for $3 million for thirty seconds.
It didn’t quite fit in our church budget this year. Maybe next year!
I assumed that since most of the commercials were pretty forgettable it was due to the fact that the $3 million price tag didn’t leave much left over for creativity and production. In the past there have been a few companies that have staked their whole existence to a commercial during the Super Bowl. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with tying my future to whether a lot of people watch thirty seconds or exit for more nachos, but it’s happened.
We’re a culture that seems to always be looking for the next big thing, or even “the next bigger thing.” Just stop at a Best Buy and go to the 3-D TV display. What is better than an LED TV mounted to my wall? TV in 3-D! (Meanwhile we still have our TV that sticks about four feet out from the wall. We thought we were cool when we bought it about four years ago. Now we kind of feel like we did when we still had a turntable for our records, but everyone else had moved on.)
The next bigger thing! It happens in “church world” just as much. Very few of us are content for the peace of God, because the peace of God sometimes means residing in the same place for a while. It we’re constantly looking for the next bigger thing we’re very willing to leave the closeness of God in the present.
In Luke 9 we read the story of “the Transfiguration” where Jesus has a meeting on top of a mountain with Moses and Elijah. Three of his disciples witness this, and it must have been an amazing sight. Peter, however, wanted to move on to the next bigger thing and he suggested to Jesus that they put up three shelters- three new church additions, if you will- to mark the moment and take it to the next level. At the end of verse 33 in the NIV there is a sentence that appears in parentheses. In talking about Peter’s suggestion it reads “He did not know what he was saying.” In looking at my life, it frequently can be said, “He did not know what he was doing.”
How often do we not engage in the moment of what we’re doing now because we’re looking to make it larger than large? We’re prone to move on instead of being moved. Sometimes the next bigger thing is to be still where we are.
And besides, what would I do with an extra four feet in the room where our TV is?

WORDS FROM W.W. January 25, 2011

This winter I’ve purchased more lip balm than I have in the first 55 years of my life combined. I lather it on like a spring break college co-ed and Coppertone. Dry lips are irritating! So I give them a lot more attention than I ever did before. I guess you could call it “lip service.”
Interestingly enough, lip service is big business these days. Perhaps some of you can remember the days when you went to the store to buy “Chapstick”…not lip balm. No one said “I need to pick up some lip balm next time I’m at the store.” No, it was Chapstick. Yes, Chapstick was lip balm, but it more like lip balm was Chapstick.
Go to the store now and look for Chapstick and you’ll find it sharing space with umpteen other lip service products. We’ve become culturally-obsessed about our lips. We want them to look good, or at least feel good.
Scripture has multiple stories of people, who identified themselves as being believers in God, giving Him lip service, but having their actions tell a different story. If you read 2 Kings you’ll encounter it over and over again. A king would say something, but their actions would go against it.
I recently read a quote that Yoko Ono had put on a full-page ad in The New York Times on the anniversary of John Lennon’s death. She wrote “One day we will be able to say that we healed ourselves, and by healing ourselves, we healed the world.”
In a fallen world we will never have the ability to heal ourselves. There will be discoveries of how to prevent diseases or heal people of their physical sicknesses. There will be incredible solutions that will appear, but we will never be able to heal ourselves. The mark of our fallen nature will always have us coming up short of our destination. Jesus is the healer of nations. He’s the ointment for our dryness and heart aches.
Just as numerous Biblical characters gave him lip service, however, there is the subtle hints in the lives of many believers today that the Lamb of God is often given lip service while our lives communication faith in being self-healed. “A walk with God” becomes just one way of navigating ourselves through the journey of life. “Talking with God” becomes just one way of finding wisdom, or perhaps even just one way to vent.
A heart for God is at a different place than lip service for Jesus. Philippians 2:11 tells about lip service, but it also puts in another key element of commitment and recognition.
“…at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…” (Philippians 2:10-11)
Calloused knees are the compliment to chapped lips. They signal surrender when our rhetoric has been exhausted.

WORDS FROM W.W. January 11, 2011

Today has a lot of ones in it! It’s similar to January 1, except it has expanded to another one spot: 1-11-11. Days like this are perplexing. Some people put special emphasis on them. Others don’t, but at the same time are wondering if something strange is going to happen.
On October 10, 2010 (10-10) there were several special events and initiatives that took place. One organization (350.org) asked the questions “Where will you be on the tenth minute of the tenth hour of the tenth day of the tenth month of the tenth year?” The group then took those questions to point people to an emphasis on global climate issues and energy saving initiatives. Another group used 10-10-10 as a launch day to emphasis a cross-denominational initiative about starting healthy new churches.
I remember seeing a news story about thousands of couples getting married by Sun Yung Moon on 10-10-10.
So what might January 11 of 2011 at 11:11 hold?
The Bible does emphasize certain numbers. “7” is the number of completeness. If you read the book of Revelation you’ll see it mentioned a “number” of times. “12” indicated the number of tribes of Israel, plus the number of Jesus’ disciples. “40” has significance, “40 years in the desert”, 40 days in the wilderness”, etc.
But sometimes we like to make a certain date and time seem extra-significant because of it’s number scheme on the calendar. Using it as a launching for an environmental initiative is one thing, but using it to chart my future is another.
It reminds me of William Miller, who in 1833, first shared publicly his belief in the second coming of Christ. From his study of the scriptures, especially the book of Daniel, Miller became convinced that Jesus would return in 1843. From 1840 onward, “Millerism” ** was transformed from an obscure, regional scripture return to their towns and cities and promote the ideas of Millerism in their locales.
Based on his interpretation of Daniel 8:14 (“He said to me, ‘It will take 2,300 evenings and mornings then the sanctuary will be reconsecrated.’”), Miller determined that Jesus would return sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. When the time frame has passed the majority of the followers maintained their faith because of “the softness” of the time frame. Another man, Samuel Snow brought another interpretation to the setting and a new date of October 22, 1844 was established. Families sold their possessions and expected to be raptured into heaven.
But it didn’t happen!
Sometimes we, without malice, try to make something into something it isn’t. There is an increasing danger in an increasingly Biblical-illiterate world to believe that scripture says something that it doesn’t; or says something to support a position that has already been determined.
Signs are often seen where there are no signs. And, on the other hand, signs are missed when they are so evident. We look for some supernatural event at 11:11 on 1-11-11, but what God desires us to be about is helping the elderly woman who is struggling to carry her sacks of groceries out of the store.
We might be looking for a glow on the mountaintop, where as God might want us to lower our vision to a friend who is walking through a valley.
So, my friend, don’t squint too hard looking today. And if you don’t agree with that never fear. The ones will be expanded by one in exactly ten months: 11-11-11-11:11.

**- For a more extensive article on “Millerism”, use Wikipedia.org.

WORDS FROM W.W. December 29, 2010

Which is it that we focus on…the end of a year, or the beginning of a new year? Are we more prone to concentrate on what was or what could be?
I’ve noticed something the last few days. The past too often anchors us from sailing into new uncharted waters. Many would say that the past helps us learn what mistakes we can never make again, or, said another way, the errors of our ways help guide us in a smarter direction.
There is truth in that, but there is also regrettable truth that prevents us…hold us back…from a true walk of faith in the future.
For instance, I believe there are more people who are haunted and weighed down by their past than there are people who just blow off their past with an absence of repentance. Even though we talk about the grace of God and receiving forgiveness for our sins through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, I encounter so many Christians who can’t shake the chains of their pasts off.
We “sloganize” it in our theology with some trite sayings like “Let go and let God” and “Know God, know peace; no God, no peace.” If the darkness of my past continues to shadow my present it will also gray my future. Slogans don’t clear the slate.
Freedom to go forward only comes from trusting, truly trusting, that Jesus was not blowing smoke at us. He meant what he said. As you read the gospels there are a number of encounters that Jesus has with people who can’t experience freedom in their lives because of their pasts. Most of these conversations are witnessed by some of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, who, ironic as it sounds, won’t let the people forget their pasts.
There’s an interesting encounter that Jesus has with a blind man in John 9. The disciples of Jesus ask their leader a question: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
The question seems insensitive and head-shaking, but the question is there because the disciples had been indoctrinated with that kind of thinking. It’s what they had been taught as truth by the religious leaders before Jesus. It echoes the belief of the day that a person can’t be freed from what has been. If you read the rest of the encounter that follows the healing of this blind man (John 9:1-41) that deeply-ingrained shackled belief becomes powerfully evident.
How might the Body of Christ help cut the chains from the anchor to the past to help people look towards the future without rear view mirrors attached? I believe Jesus desires for us to be continually renewed with no regrets.
And the thing is that we will fail again, as sure as peanut butter is peanut, but he is faithful to forgive us and point us once again to a future that is full of purpose and potential.