Words from WW Blog

“He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” (Psalm 23:3)

God has a way of orchestrating a new song even when our hearing is cluttered with noise. That’s just how He is, ready to dumbfound us with the creation of a new chapter in our stories. Sometimes that new creation is resembling of the plot twist of a suspenseful novel or a tear-jerking love story. With our nearsighted vision we miss the signs, stumbling along the path, until suddenly there is a clearing, a clear moment of revelation and discovery.

And so it was on the second of my three flights as I head back to Colorado Springs from Ohio, the plane that would take me from Charlotte to Dallas situated in Seat 20A. My boarding group was 7 out of 9, always a mystery to me since I would be plopping down in the seat by the window. An older African-American couple was already in B and C as I finally made my way down the aisle pathway. I apologized for having to make them get up so I could scoot in. They didn’t mind so we took a few moments to get ourselves settled and resettled.

It didn’t take us long to start chatting. I told the lady, the rose between two thorns if you will, to nudge me if I started snoring, and the fact that I’d arisen at 4 AM to go to Tri-State Airport in Huntington, West Virginia. It broke the ice, so to speak, and we started gabbing about life. I told her that I had flown back to Huntington to surprise my sister for her 70th birthday, and then I asked if they lived in Dallas. She replied, “No, we live in Charlotte.”

“Going to visit family in Dallas?”

“Going back for our daughter’s funeral.”

Such words came out unexpected to my hearing. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I paused, searching for the next words to say. “Was it unexpected?”

“Cancer. Three years, and then the Lord took her home.”

“Having a child go before you, that’s not how it’s suppose to be.”

“Yes, but she blessed a lot of lives and now she’s in the Lord’s hands.”

“Almost three years to the day I was on a plane back to Huntington for my dad’s last day before he passed.”

“How old was he?”

“Four months shy of 90.”

“Isn’t that something? My dad passed three last spring three months shy of his ninetieth!

“What is your daughter’s name?” She whispered her name through the veil of her face mask and I didn’t quite understand what she said so I said, “I’m sorry. What was it?”

She pointed to the front of her face mask. It had a picture of her daughter and her name. “Scooter. We called her Scooter.”

“I’ll be praying for you as you celebrate her life and grieve her loss.”

“Her life was a testimony for the Lord, and we know she is rejoicing in His glory.”

“For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” I said, quoting my favorite verse from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. We talked some more about Scooter and the memories. I found out that the lady had been a special education teacher and would be subbing for those amazing kids when she returned to Charlotte. I told her about my wife working with the same set of students and how she taught pre-school deaf kids when she got out of college. We marveled at God putting me in the seat beside her, the first and last time we would meet this side of Glory, to taught about life, death, and hope in the midst of death.

As they rose from their seats to exit the plane, I reiterated that I’d be praying for them as they gathered with Scooter’s friends and husband the next day and then escorted her remains back to Charlotte. She looked at me, grasped my hand, and said, “And may the Lord bless you!”

Sometimes God puts you in the seat next to the window not to look out, but to listen to the one sitting on your right.

My sister reached a milestone birthday yesterday. I won’t tell you which one, but it’s somewhere between 60 and 80 and it begins with a 7. I know, I know, that’s not much of a clue, but she might get upset if I told you what number it was that ends with a 0.

Her daughter planned a “card shower” for her…and let me tell you!…she may need to bake a cake for the postal carrier. It’s not often that he/she has to deliver such a stack of cards to one mailbox, so many that a giant rubber band was needed to keep them from cluttering up a city block.

So I decided to fly in from Colorado to Ohio with our card in tow and hand deliver it to her. The expression on her face was worth the trip, priceless! It’s posted on my Facebook page. The shock, the quivering hands, the realization that she hadn’t combed her hair yet that morning. The gift of surprise is the sugar in our too-often bland lives.

I love my sister, a wonderful lady who is so giving and caring of others, self-less to a tee! To bring her to tears in the rush of the surprise was emotional for me as well.

God blessed us with the gift of surprise. The gospel story, the ultimate encounter of good news, was punctuated with surprise and wonder. The birth narrative, the healings and life transformations, and the reconciliation that the cross of Christ made possible, the surprises of the Lord are beyond our calculations.

Sometimes the way He orchestrates the symphony of our lives is so peace-filled and wondrous. We simply need not worry about our hair or be in a hurry and be in the flow of His spirit.

And now this morning, some would say coincidentally but others would see the care of the Comforter, I’ll be speaking at my sister’s church. Their pastor, a wonderful man of God, called my brother-in-law yesterday as we were enjoying a birthday lunch at Outback, to say that he was ill and he needed my brother-in-law to take care of Sunday’s service. I’ve spoken at the church before and could sense that Pastor Rob would be delighted, even in his sickness, to know that I’d fill in for him. Just another example of the surprises of God. Instead of sitting in the congregation listening to Rob speak and teach on James 5, I’ll be graced with the opportunity to lead the congregation in the discovery and pondering of a miracle of Jesus.

God is good. God is gracious. God is graciously good.

Christians have always had a hard time staying Christ-centered. That is, keeping Jesus as the main thing, the central focus, what everything else revolves around. Followers of Christ so often have Christ following the other stuff, the issues that weren’t passionate about, the later trends, the church politics and the other politics. Jesus has an obstructed view from the back of the bus.

Why should it be different than the first century? Most of the letters that the Apostle Paul wrote to the emerging churches in various locations either hinted at Jesus being a side note to strongly chastised churches for losing their focus on what was to the center of their purpose. The early church, prone to be pulled in various directions, needed someone to redirect it. Like a basketball coach calling timeout to remind her team of what they were to be about, Paul had to call the fellowships together for explanations, exhortation, and out of exasperation.

There’s always been the uncomfortable rub between Christ and culture. The mission and the ministry of the church is about Christ affecting and influencing culture rather than the culture changing our view of Christ. The atonement is not changed by the tone of cultural whims and wants. The gospel is good news for all, not a select few or certain polling groups.

In a world where opinions and causes change like the wind, the gospel is a steadying constant, the anchor that holds firm as life swirls in violent ways around it. When there are a number of other things blowing around the gospel, our attention has a bit of squirrel-like behavior to it, jumping from one tree to the next and looking for the next nut. Jesus is the un-moveable object Who exemplifies our God Who is moved by our hurts, heartaches, and celebrations.

Stephen Covey said “Keep the main thing the main thing.” It’s easier said than done, but when it is done, church-wise that is, it is memorable. No, it’s transforming!

I received the COVID vaccination booster shot in about a month ago. About a day after I received the shot, the area around the injection point was sore and tender. You could have walked up to me and punched me in the right arm and I would have been fine, but simply touch that one spot on my left arm and I would have flinched, whined, and grimaced in pain. I guess you could say that I was a bit touchy about it.

The other day I was guest teaching in a class that I’ve subbed for quite a bit. I know the students and they know me. As I say, I know the suspects and the prospects. In the classroom next door to mine their was commotion, laughter, and loud conversation. It was apparent that a number of students were taking the opportunity to disrupt the classroom environment because there was a substitute teacher there. The noise was amplified because of the class I was teaching at the time who are usually on task and…get ready for it…quiet! Some of them were looking with dismay at one another as the next-door volume was resembling of an 80s boombox echoing through the walls of an apartment complex. Like the sore spot from my booster shot, it touched a nerve with me.

The instructor returned from the early morning appointment she had, to teach the rest of the day. She is an awesome teacher who doesn’t put up with such behavior. She filtered out the students who were on task from the ones who were clogging up the class and administered appropriate penalties.

But they had touched a nerve in me! Each class I had the rest of the day I talked about disrespect, taking advantage of the situation, and the need to become more mature. The interesting thing is that the day before I had put my wise saying of the day on the screen that said, “Self-control is the discipline to do what needs to be done now in order to be able to do what I want to do later.”

Perhaps getting my dander up was a ripple effect of the guilt I still carry with me about the problems i caused my substitute teachers back a few decades ago. My diatribe might be a form of penance for causing some serious grey hair production. I can still remember the disrespectful things we did to my high school Spanish teacher. They were an indication of the fallen nature of mankind.

But, on the positive, yesterday each of my classes were well-mannered. They even, I assume, learned some American History!

A few days ago the fragile nature of life came close to me. A Mercedes-Benz sedan blew through a stop sign going at least 50 as my CRV was already proceeding through the intersection. Less than two seconds separated me from being able to write these words and breathing my last.

I have replayed those moments quite often in the days since. I can see the bushes on the other side of that intersection and at the entrance to our subdivision. The blur of the speeding car coming from my right, perhaps never even being aware of how close to the edge of life he/she can come.

We sometimes take the rules of life for granted. More than that, we take life for granted…and then something interrupts it. A sickness, a virus, a fire, an accident, a mistake. Any one of them throws our plans into a rolling bundle of chaos.

We have a tendency to treat life like the electricity in our homes, just there…always…not even a part of our thoughts. When I flip the wall switch as I enter a room I just assume that the lights will turn on. Life is like that, taken for granted, assumed. Our calendars are an indication of our presumptions. Not that planning ahead is a bad thing, but rather an instrument that keeps our attention off the slippery existence of life.

Let’s be honest! Many of us were surprised that Betty White passed away, even though she was just a few weeks shy of reaching 100. We just assumed she would always be around, doing Snickers commercials and being the featured entertainment on Saturday Night Live. This life, however, has a punctuation point at the end to indicate its conclusion.

A streaking car, operating outside the traffic laws, makes a person not only think twice about crossing an intersection, but also about his life direction, his purpose, and his relationships. Does what he’s doing in his life make sense or is it nonsense?

Sometimes the careless living of someone else causes a person to do a careful evaluation of where his own life is heading.

Besides the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Baseball League, Ernie Banks played 19 seasons for the Chicago Cubs from 1953-1981. Voted the greatest Cubs player of all-time, Banks said this about loyalty:

“Loyalty and friendship, which is to me the same, created all the wealth that I’ve ever thought I’d have.”

Loyalty seems to travel great distances these days to find a place willing for it to reside. I guess it’s always been that way. After all, Adam and Eve had been planted in a great place to live a fruitful and happy existence, but the lure of a piece of forbidden fruit was too much for them to resist.

Remember back to those days when you shopped at the same stores, bought the same brands, and rooted for the same teams in the good seasons and the bad? I guess I’m showing my age when I bring up a past that included those things.

How about this? Remember when a college football team would see that playing in a bowl game at the end of a season was like the hot fudge on top of vanilla ice cream? It made all those sprints, drills, and hours of preparation worth it. Well, that’s now losing its sweetness as well.

Four Ohio State football players are opting out of playing in the Rose Bowl, rather than risking injury and hindering their pro football draft potential. The Rose Bowl! Not the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl or the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. The Rose Bowl! Speaking of the Potato Bowl, Wyoming’s quarterback who was voted MVP of the game, promptly announced he was entering the Transfer Portal to play somewhere else next year.

Like I said, loyalty is finding that there’s no room in the inn. It’s a trait that is seen by most people as being admirable until it reaches a crossroads where an easy right turn with promised power and/or riches are just up ahead.

And it’s not just with athletes who have been told their value reaches to the moon. Corporations close factories that have been the lifeblood of communities. Spouses walk away from the one they said their vows to because someone else has convinced them it can be better in their arms. Christian folk trade churches like Topps baseball cards. Someone who is thought to be the best friend disappears when the road gets bumpy.

Loyalty is what we hope for in others, but when it comes to its ramifications for us we often use the excuse “That’s different!”