The Gospel of Jeff

Have you ever seen Jeff Dunham? He's a ventriloquist, a good one, and, although he could improve on some of his subject matter, his ability leaves me speechless. When he pretends to argue with one of his puppets, he demonstrates his best techniques, going back and forth so fast and with such perfect but invisible voice changes, that I can never tell that the sound isn't coming directly from the puppet itself. The actions of his puppets showcase his talents perfectly. Through them, he shows how he's just so good.

In the back of my mind, though, I know that the voices, no matter how many he uses or how quickly he changes them, all belong to Jeff. My eyes and ears may try to trick me into believing otherwise, but neither Walter, nor Peanut, nor Achmed speak on their own without his influence. They don't have a choice. I do.

God wants me to rely as much on His influence as the puppets rely on Dunham. He gives me everything I need to say and do things beyond my own abilities. And when I let Him, He gets the glory for what I do. Like Dunham, the credit for God's inspiration in my poor flesh goes directly back to Him. He created me to do this.

Bring my sons and daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.--Isaiah 43:7
Serve with the strength God provides so the He will be praised through Christ Jesus. To Him be the glory and power forever.--1Peter 4:11

I have an important advantage over Dunham's puppets; God lets me decide what I'm going to say and do. When I choose His power over my own, when I step aside and say to Him, "I want what You want. I am weak. I choose not to indulge myself, to talk about myself, to achieve for my own ends. I choose to bring You glory as You show Your power to the world when my mouth, and my hands, and my feet move in Your honor."

When I do this, I reflect my God in the way He intended. He made me in His image so that when people look at me, they see Him. The ME I scramble to protect and pamper is smoke, not even supposed to exist apart from Him. Our rewards are not health or wealth or comfort or even answered prayer or heaven. Our reward is God Himself, nothing else. Nothing I do is good unless it glorifies God. Everything that glorifies God is good.

Passing Go: Do Not Take Me Back...

On these beautiful days, as summer opens increasingly wide, my mind drifts often toward Eden. When I see sweet flowers share their nectar with bees and hummingbirds. when little girls skip and giggle as they gather up daisies and crowning coneflowers, I think that no other flawless garden could have been more perfect than this one. But, of course, it could. Eden didn't admit thorns or breed aphids or harbor sad withering like mine does. On days like this, I can't help but wonder whether going back to Eden would bring the highest of pleasures.

In fact, as I learned about God and creation and what He originally intended for man, and as I meditated on Adam and Eve's life in Eden, how they walked daily with God outside the reach of pain and guilt, I began to equate that first-created life with the highest I could imagine. "Take me back there," I prayed. "Let me know You and Your sweet Spirit-breath again. Let me know daily the gentle sun and glad harmony with every other created thing."

God did not grant that prayer, though, and He never will. After sin, that future vanished forever. Instead, He has another.

Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.--Ephesians 2:4-7

God will not return us to Eden. Instead, like passing 'Go' in Monopoly, we skip past Eden entirely. He wants instead to keep us with Him, where He walks now, to the heavens rather than here on earth. Eden is closed forever; the angels He placed at its gate made that clear. He does, however, promise another future, not one of sweet garden-tending, but one of adoration, filled with glad hosannas and triumphant hallelujahs. We will walk with Him there, too, but in His own neighborhood, not our own.

So, as I pick whatever thornless and insect-free flowers I can find today, and capture for awhile their gentle gifts, I remember that they do not bring the highest of pleasures. Instead, I let them take me past their own fragile beauty to one that never fades.

Waiting in the Dark

Some people say we learn all of our lives, but if so, I wonder why we are so bad at it. As a teacher, I daily watched the learning process and constantly marveled at the way I could explain something to a student a dozen times, but on the thirteenth, for no apparent reason, he would suddenly understand. We called these light bulb moments, and I never understood how they worked. Until today.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from His roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him--the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord--and He will delight in the fear of the Lord.--Isaiah 11:1-3

What I saw operating in my students in their light bulb moments was understanding, and according to Isaiah, understanding comes from God. No wonder they never got it the first twelve times. Whatever truth I tried to explain, whether it was the formula for circumference or how to use past participles or the simplicity of faith, I had to wait for God to add His part to mine for the process to complete. The truth of the Math or English or godly principle existed whether the child knew it or not, much like the reality of a round world waited for people to abandon the flat one.

Understanding this helps take the panic out of my own lapses in understanding. God revealed Himself to men gradually in His own time after all: first He walked with Adam and Eve, talked with the patriarchs, and gave them His Word in the Old Testament, then He sent His Son to be with us in the flesh, then He sent His Spirit, the same spirit that still gives us wisdom, knowledge, understanding, counsel, and fear of Him. And just like the blank spots that Abraham and the apostles knew even though God was with them all the time, I, too, know times of empty cluelessness. But never fear.

From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us.--Acts 17:26-27

Like for the students, the Holy Spirit brings understanding and wisdom and faith and fear exactly when I need them--exactly when I, specifically, need them, and for the express purpose of bringing me nearer to Him. If I flail about a bit waiting, then the result will be worth it. Until then, I pray, "Holy Spirit, Come."

Fruit of the Cross

When most people think of vineyards, they recall lush leaves that nearly span their palm and heavy clusters of bursting grapes, dark and ready for winemaking and, indeed, in late summer and early fall, right before harvest, it does look like that. In winter, though, the vineyard looks stark and bare. Vines stand out black against the snow and the branches that held last year's harvest poke out useless in all directions.

Beginning in January or February, the orchardmen begin to prune. All the branches that grew out randomly during the previous season come off and all they leave are the main stems: one that comes up straight and true from the ground and two in either direction perpendicular from it, trained to their supports. After pruning and before new sprouts come in spring, each vine looks like a gnarled T, too much like a trained and tortured reminder of the cross that once bore up the Son of God. Acre after acre, in perfect rows, the vineyard becomes a dim graveyard, hiding behind grim promise of a vibrant new life.

Until I could witness the yearly progress of grapevines under that hands of the orchardmen who care for them, I didn't understand God's tender imagery in the gospel:

I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.--John 15:5

Until I saw them, I didn't know how wildly the vines grew every year. I didn't know how useless that wild growth became once it produces only one year's fruit. I didn't know how ruthlessly the pruner removed those random growths, the same ones he planted with his own hands. I didn't know how sad the vines would look afterward: cross after cross along hundreds of rows over dozens of acres.

The Lord is indeed the vine. He told His disciples how He would save them and gave them a vivid picture by which they could see it. His cross is the source of our nurture and our sure root. Without savage pruning, no good harvest will come. Eventually, an unpruned vine will diminish unto uselessness. Only by regularly pruning back into its perfect shape will it produce the beauty and round, full fruit for which it was created.

The wine begins with the cross.

Photo credit: Weggy Winery, Muscoda, Wisconsin, 2011

Shooting in a Strange Land

Sometimes I feel like I live and battle in a foreign land. What I see, what I hear, who I meet--I feel at odds with them as I try to measure myself and everything around me against a holy God. I shouldn't be surprised, though, considering that evil still roams to and fro on the earth. It's a matter of territory, I suppose. Both as a body of believers and as individuals, we give and take territory and, like in any battle, we have to know what we are fighting for.

My biggest problem, as always, is maintaining focus. It's like the bull's eye for which shooters aim when they practice. I have to constantly remember that hitting anything outside the exact center isn't good enough. And I have plenty of examples to remind me.

They worshiped the Lord, but they also appointed all sorts of their own people to officiate for them as priests in the shrines in the high places. They worshiped the Lord, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought.--2Kings 17:32-33

When the Israelites were captured and resettled in Samaria, they missed the target big time. Their priest, their priests, mind you, decided that the best way to accommodate their captors and appease their God at the same time was to adapt to their new environment. They wanted to fit in, to be up to date, to understand the culture. God did not agree.

Do not worship other gods. Do not forget the covenant I have made with you and do not worship other gods. Rather, worship the Lord your God; it is He who will deliver you from the hand of all your enemies''2Kings 17:37-39

God insists that I follow Him and Him only without compromise. He doesn't do this because He is a megalomaniac. He does it out of love because He knows that no other way works. Compromise leads to idolatry. Adaptation leads to despair. It happened to the Israelites and every time I give in to what God does not condone, it happens to me.

To this day, they persist in their former practices. They neither worship the Lord nor adhere to the decrees and ordinances, the laws and commands the Lord gave the descendants of Jacob, whom He called Israel.--1Kings 17:34

I have to aim for the bull's eye, even when I am captive, even when I seem nerdy, even when I am misunderstood. I have to love my captors in the process, but my aim must remain steady. I may live in a foreign land and have to fight to maintain my territory every day, but I have no real choice. It's not only a matter of winning. It's survival. If I give in to what presses in on every side, I will look smart and agreeable, but will literally be swallowed up so slowly that I won't even notice.

So, today, I fire away, aiming for the middle, and if I miss, at least I have the target clearly in view.

Lifting the Hammer

I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave His life for me.--Galatians 2:20

I can't help but wonder how many crucifixions Paul saw before he wrote this. More than dozens, probably hundreds. We see crucifixion as a metaphor, but not him. He knew well their bloody agony, their slow strangling torture. His choice of crucifixion to describe the progress of his life in Christ drew purposely on one of the most vivid images he knew.

All who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death. We were buried with Him through baptism...We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin is done away with and we should no longer be slaves to sin.--Roman 6:3-6

Paul says that baptism crucified our body, yet our physical body did not die. I think he means instead that baptism crucifies our sin, but does not kill real flesh. So I wonder, to what degree can sin die in a body that still lives? Paul explains that, too. If I can live my life by faith in the Son of God, sin can begin to die. To whatever degree I replace my own desires, motives, and actions with Yours, sin dies.

So how do I do that? I know that sin comes from within me, from outside of me through a fallen world, and through temptation from evil. The evil I leave to You through prayer. I am in charge, however, of the sin I admit into my life through my own natural flesh and through my affection for this world. Every time I settle for less, every time I blast by Your warnings, every time I grab for what I know does not last, sin leaps up, alive and kicking.

In the end, I have to do my part exactly as You did Yours. I have to grab up the hammer and nails, lay my own admitted failures down on two stout beams, and drive in the instruments of destruction. No one will do this for me, and it will hurt. I will think it impossible. I will feel like I am dying, that nothing of me will survive. And that is Your plan. I am not fit to live in me, but You are.

May I never boast but in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world--Galatians 6:14

The Skull that Sings

My son Bryan recently gave away his bone collection. This old boxful of treasures, saved carefully for almost two decades, became the precious property of another little boy in exactly the same state of messy adventure as Bryan had been when he first accumulated it. As the new owner pondered an appropriate place to display the collection, Bryan told him that its crown, a nearly perfect cow skull, must not languish. He must hang it somewhere prominent, as Bryan had, to render its full due.

Compliantly, the young man's dad hung it high on a post in their driveway, a greeting of mixed messages to postmen and visitors alike. Then something unexpected happened. An ambitious family of wrens, looking to find a hospitable home, began carrying twigs into it. Eventually, they laid eggs and hatched little wrens there. Now, feathered parents transport food in and out of the skull, flying through the gaping eye holes, an ironic picture in their juxtaposition of old death and new life.

Today, however, I realized they also provide a metaphor for God's life in us. We are as dead in sin as that old cow skull: dry and barren of useful flesh. What pulsed constructively through us died with Adam and Eve's rebellion in Eden. As a result, we rub into eventual dust like Ezekiel's dry bones. When God breathes His Spirit into us, though, He brings life back into the husk. Like the flaps and chirps of baby wrens, He brings sound and warmth into a dead place.

Now, this is not a perfect metaphor--the skull did not rise up and speak and the wrens will eventually move out and the skull will empty again. But when I imagine how a merciful Savior filled my own sad life with a song of hope, well, the skull dwellers make the perfect picture of grace.

If Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.--Romans 8:10