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Half-Free

January 17, 2018

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                          January 17, 2018

                                             

We are drawn to the word free! After all, we live in the land of the free and the brave. Free sells!

Last week’s mail brought a couple of “FREE” offers. I intentionally wrote the word in capital letters there because that’s how it was displayed in the advertisement. “FREE” draws a person’s attention like the smell of your next door neighbor’s barbecuing. I looked closer at the ad for the restaurant. I could go there and get a free breakfast, lunch, or dinner…here it comes…with the purchase of another meal and two drinks.

Wouldn’t that make the free meal half-free? Or, wouldn’t it mean that I’d be getting two meals for a little bit more than half-price ( knowing what they charge for a soda!)?

We love free! Half-off still dips into our wallet. It still costs us something! If we approached a marriage proposal by saying “I’m half in love with you” or “I want to be married to you half the time” the results, hopefully, would be an end to the relationship before the wedding vows were half-said in front of a crowded church sanctuary.

Free is a word that must be untangled from the grasp of an addendum.

Some might say that being a follower of Jesus is like that; that the person who is witnessing for Jesus talks about being freed from sin, but then talks about what it means to be a follower of Christ. It’s that tension between the understanding that Jesus died on the cross to set me free, and then being told that accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior means that I’ll do this and that.

In the days of the New Testament there was the division between those who were free and those who were enslaved. Paul refers to that cultural condition quite often in his epistle writings. Those who read his letters understood the separation, and even though they were slaves to masters they were drawn to the principle that freedom could be experienced in a spiritual sense.

What if the gospel only set us half-free? What if it unchained us in some ways, but failed to unburden us in others?

And from another perspective, are there those who see themselves as followers of Christ but have allowed his sacrifice to only set them half-free?

Half-free is half-hearted.

Categories: Bible, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Jesus, love, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized
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Editing My Life

January 12, 2018

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                      January 12, 2018

                                             

Ed and Diana Stucky are great friends. Simply awesome people, humble and caring, empathetic and honest. In recent months they’ve been editing the book that I’ve written. Diana looks for better flow of sentences, corrects my punctuation, suggests ideas for how to develop characters and the plot. Ed reads the story, looking for flow and consistency. Being the adult curriculum editor at Cook Communications, he’s pretty darned good at it.

And these are two friends that I’ve been blessed with!

I’m now writing the sequel, even though I have no idea whether the first book…and those after…will ever be published. And Diana continues to check my work and help me chart the journey of the story ahead.

I’ve had a multiple of “redo’s” in this experience, taking a conversation that was written and rewriting it to make a stronger point. The redo’s are usually the result of conversations with E&D that cause me to rethink and backtrack for another go at it.

If the book ever gets published it will be because of two great editors who have made it a better read, a story that keeps the attention of the reader and even, in a couple of places, brings them to tears.

I was thinking about that this week in terms of my life. How would I like my life to be edited? Where would I like a few “redo’s” to happen?  In what conversations would I choose to change a few words?

I’m sure everyone thinks about it! We look at our screw-ups and wish we could turn the clock back for another go at it. We dream of our lives having a DVR button that we could use to replay a moment…and replay a moment…and replay a moment…until we get it perfect. Think of the movie Groundhog Day!

When one of the basketball teams I coach loses a game I replay certain situations as I lay in bed that night. I think of what should have been, a horrendous call by one of the officials, missed free throws and layups, and I edit the game in my mind to bring about a different end result.

If I could edit my life I could look a lot better in the eyes of those who know me, massively awesome!

But such a redo would diminish the thoughtlessness of our words and cruelty of our actions. In other words, when I screw up it is usually because I made a personal choice to follow my own selfish desires irregardless of the impact it has had on others. When I choose a direction that is not in line with what God hopes it is the revealer of the waywardness of my heart. To be able to edit my life would make me look better than I am.

Like Ed and Diana have been for my writing, God volunteers to be the editor of our lives. His grace and forgiveness in reality are his formula for a redo. When I cringe over a decision I have made he offers grace and forgiveness that tells me I can give it another try. Jesus’ death on the cross was the sign of God’s commitment to forget what was and love us in the redo’s. Paul wrote these words in his letter to the Romans: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:8)

He edits out the errors through his Son’s atoning sacrifice. Amen!

Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, coaching, Death, Faith, Grace, Jesus, love, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
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The Perfect Bracket

March 14, 2014

WORDS FROM W.W.                                              March 14, 2014

March Madness is almost to the halfway point. State high school finals in many states are this weekend. College conference tournaments get finalized on Sunday.

And then the fun begins! Brackets for the NCAA tournament get announced late Sunday afternoon…and people will begin to fill in their bracket predictions.

Tough choices have to be made. Do you go with Gonzaga to reach the Sweet Sixteen? Will Mercer have a storybook ending to it’s banner season? Is Wichita State legit?

People have been just as successful in predicting winners in the NCAA by the cuteness of their school mascot as by the team’s RPI rating.

The ESPN Bracket Challenge has not had a single perfect bracket submitted in sixteen years. Thirty million brackets have been submitted in that time.

Perfect = Zero!

This year Warren Buffett and Quicken Loans have teamed up to offer $1,000,000,000 to anyone who submits a perfect bracket. That’s one billion in case I didn’t put enough zeroes in there.

The generous benefactors are pretty confident. The odds of someone turning in a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.

The odds are you don’t even know what to call that number. I didn’t. But, in case you need to know, it’s “quintillion.”

So confident that no one can be perfect that Quicken will not be rushed in moving money to a special account.

It ain’t happening!

Such a situation gives me a new appreciation for “perfection.” Perfection is a dream…a Disney movie outcome! It is so easy to pronounce, yet impossible to achieve.

This may be the first time that Jesus gets connected to Bracketology. The impossibility of perfection was trumped by Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us “God made him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus not only did the impossible, he was the impossible. He had no sin…he was perfect!

Caution point! This does not mean that if you seek Jesus guidance in predicting the winner of Coastal Carolina-Creighton game that he is going to impart a fresh revelation to you.

What the perfection of Jesus does mean is that he took your imperfections upon himself…he atoned for your errors…and made you perfect in God’s sight.

Spiritually you have beat the nine plus quintillion odds.

Buffett won’t be sending you a check with a one and nine zeroes, but…after all, you can’t take it with you!

P.S. #1 Sign that God isn’t that interested in the NCAA tournament outcome: Louisville won it last year!

#2 Sign: Michigan was the other team in the championship game. I think God was interested as long as Wichita State was still playing. Thus, the interest of God might have returned. WSU is 34-0!

Categories: Bible, Christianity, Faith, Humor, Jesus, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
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