Pitching a Fit, Part Two

So, if you've been with me for part one, we know that my children, myself, and you, that is all of you, came out of the womb pitching a fit. That first red, wrinkled cry was just the beginning. It didn't only signal discomfort at our first feeling of cold; that first cry announced to the world that we were important. It warned everyone within earshot that they'd better pay attention. And some did, right up to that first "NO!" Starting at that moment, we began to learn about rules.

Rules, after all, train us to behave properly. They tell us in simple language which behaviors garner praise and which bring down punishment. I do not like rules. Especially for myself. I liked them for my children all right, because they helped me manage the little darlings, but I do not much like being managed myself. I know what law is for, after all. Laws identify lawbreakers.

We also know that law is made not for the righteous, but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and the sinful, the unholy and irreligious...--1Timothy 1:9

So, laws identify sinners. And, OK, I admit that I was a sinner; I was born that way like everybody else. But You showed me Your law and now I follow it. Therefore, if I follow Your law, I am no longer a sinner. In other words, if I follow Your law, I don't really need it anymore. Those other bad boys and girls do, but not me.

How hard can it be? There are only ten laws, after all. I know not to lie or cheat. I certainly know not to murder anyone. Piece of cake. Let the bad boys and girls pitch their fit. I'm home free.

Or at least I was, until Jesus showed up:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.--John 13:34

What?

Now, I'm really pitching a fit. But there's a part three.

Pitching a Fit, Part One

I have two sons, and shortly after they were born, I noticed something about them. I needed to teach them a lot. They needed to learn to speak properly, to eat politely, to say please and thank you, to treat others with respect, and to control their tempers. They also had to learn not to write on walls with magic markers, not to hit, not to go outside in their underwear, not to spit, and not to use the shrubbery for a bathroom. One thing I never had to teach them, however, was how to misbehave. Like most children, one of the first words they learned was "NO!" Completely on their own, they pitched angry fits. Somehow, they had come already hardwired for disobedience.

I do not like this one bit. Not only because it infers a hard truth about them, but because I know it applies to me, too. Simply put, I am born believing that I am the most important person in the world. My opinions and desires rank above anyone else's. I am going to do exactly as I want to as often as I can. In fact, I want to sin. I'm good at it and have been from the beginning. My black little heart harbors thousands of ways to sin and I can hardly wait to implement them. I know better, but I can't be blamed if I yield to them. Just this once....

This only have I found: God made men upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes.--Ecclesiastes 7:29

Adam and Eve did it, and immediately made excuses for themselves. I want to do the same thing. You give laws, and I break them. In the same way that I spent years trying to train the natural disobedience out of my children, You continue to train the natural disobedience out of me. I do not like this, not only because it is a great inconvenience, but because it requires hard work.

You, however, have more...
See part two later.

Remembering to Fly

Two years ago, my husband had cancer and I had to consider what would happen if he died. As a man of both great courage and faith, he weighed death with equanimity thinking, like Paul, "to live is Christ, to die is gain," but I did not. I could release him to heaven and know that he went to joy, but I knew all to well that I would be left behind. "What about me, Lord? You may take him, but I would stay here alone. What about me?"

You said this:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father.--Matthew 10:29

Then I remembered. You, Father, have the plan for all things and exact that plan at every step. Not one thing happens that can divert it. Your plan is holy and you show me the way to walk in it. Your Son, a very part of You, is Your Word and reigns with You. Your Spirit shows me the way to follow. All three operate according to your plan, which you constantly make known, and this plan exists eternally with You, a pillar of the universe You created.

Whatever is happening around me may seem random, but You will not allow me to be destroyed unless it was Your will from the beginning. If I am lost, I am lost already. If I am Yours, I cannot be lost.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.--Jeremiah 29:11

I am safe with you.

Thought for today: How is God asking you to trust His plan for you?

Ducks

When I taught seventh grade, we had two ducks for class pets, Leonardo and Archimedes. They weren't real ducks, of course. Real animals and large numbers of thirteen-year-olds do not mix well. The ducks were made of polyester fluff and stuffed with beans, easy to care for, and small enough to sit on desks or on shoulders or to hang from the ceiling fan.

They provided low-key amusement for the students, but the ducks persistently mocked me. Education is serious business, after all. I wanted to rock students' world with wonders: the beauty of poetry, rhythm of mathematics, the nobility of history. In naming the ducks, the kids had reduced the nobility of art and numbers to balls of fuzz. I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.

I thought school to be made of nobler stuff--of reaching beyond their grasp, of dreaming big and then making those dreams happen. That part was all right, but I also thought that I could make it all happen, that I had chosen this career and could bring it to life by the force of my own vision.
But I was wrong.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last.-John 15:16

My job is not to enact my own vision, but Yours. I wanted to bring Truth and Beauty into the lives of youngsters, but that is not within my purview. Truth and Beauty belong to You and You deliver them to men. The fruit You want me to bear have arms and legs, flesh and blood. Truth and beauty are easy. They hover above this poor earth like beacons You gave to light the way. My job, whether a teacher or a plumber or a mother, is to deal with the messy parts, the people.

Now, Archimedes and Leonardo, they just sit there, wearing noble names and doing nothing, exactly the opposite of what You want for me. Any noble name I ever have, You will give. In the meantime, I must remember the beautiful, but work in the immediate. You have chosen it and it will last.

Family Business

I've often marveled at how God puts us together in families with people we would never have chosen for friends. After all, we tend to choose friends like ourselves in temperament, in belief, and in interest. When siblings don't fall into those categories, however, our relations with them become more like exercises in patience and forgiveness rather than true friendship. We sometimes love them because we have to. We will, after all, be related to them forever.

God has a family, too. When He adopted us as His children, He gave us brothers and sisters according to His choosing, not ours. Some of them we like, and others we may not, but we are related to them all forever. We are joined with each other through the Lord we all love, for better or worse.

He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with His pleasure and will to the praise of His glorious grace which He has freely given us in the one He loves.--Ephesians 1:4-6

We are all adopted children in God's family, equal before Him by virtue of our faith. The blood that joins us, the shed blood of Christ, is at least as strong a tie as shared DNA. We cannot reject one another when we have differences, but must take advantage of every opportunity to face our rough spots with honesty and overcome them.

I don't always understand my fellow siblings in God's family, but by God's grace, I love them. They, like my physically related sister and brothers, teach me to deal with dissension and criticism as well as how to enjoy agreement and affection, but they do it under the eternally binding influence of faith. I may not have to spend hereafter with everyone in my physical family, but am blessed, or stuck, with God's family forever. Thank you, Father, for the challenge of family business.

Thought for today: How do you think God's family differs from a physical family?

You Can't Go to Church, Part Two

Like many of you, I can say that I went to church yesterday. I pulled in, parked my car, and walked through a door. The building had walls and a roof and a cross up front. It had pews in which I stood, and sat, and knelt side by side with other believers. However, had the building been empty of any other person, had I been alone, I could not have gone to church. The building would have been there, but the church would have been absent.

God did not build His church with wood or stone. He built it upon the belief of man.

"But what do you say,?" He asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,"
Jesus replied,"Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church."

The word 'Peter' means rock. Jesus, in giving Simon Peter this new name, invested him with a special place in His early church, but He did it at the specific moment that Peter declared the one essential truth that binds the church even today, the declaration that Jesus was the Christ. Everyone who believes this is the church. Jesus built His church not only on Peter, but upon the power of faith.

Together, the people of the church live and breathe the Word of God. We bear the gospel with every step. When we are together, we gather the power of the Holy Spirit into one vibrant place. There is no doubt that God wants us to gather, but He doesn't much care where we do it. In fact, the more we concentrate on our buildings, the less attention we have to concentrate on Him.

So, on Sunday morning, I search out the people of God and pray shoulder to shoulder with them because of what Jesus said to Peter so long ago. I know there is power in our communion with each other and with Him.

But tonight, when we have dinner with believing friends to mark their daughter's departure for college, well, that's church, too. Christ reigns over both places and we glorify Him through both activities. Our church exists because of Him and because of each other and we delight in being together.

You Can't Go to Church, Part One

Here's the picture--it's Sunday morning. Mom and Dad are getting dressed for church, she in a sweet chintz dress and he in a blue striped tie. The children line up for approval. Mom straightens the last cowlick and wipes a smudge off a patent leather shoe and they march first into the station wagon, then through the church door. There, they sit quiet and attentive in the pew: standing to sing, and sitting to listen, and kneeling to pray, satisfying and squeaky clean. They have gone to church. They are ready for another week.

OK, so that's a dated picture. Today, the family is more likely to show up in jeans or shorts, often to join in electronically enhanced worship, but the concept remains the same. When it's Sunday, we go to church. How did we get this idea? God sees things differently:

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh cry out for the living God.--Psalm 84:1-2

Where are the pews? Where is the stained glass? Where is the choir? Instead, the psalmist paints a picture of longing, panting, yearning, not of pews standing in regimented order full of proper people who pray and sing and go home. God's church is a living thing, pulsing and full of vigor. His church is not a place, it is an entity, a phenomenon. It has blood and bone, soul and spirit.

From God's view, it is impossible to go to church. We cannot go to church any more than we can go to life. Wherever believers gather, we are in church. Whatever we do together is worship. Our Holy God does not live in a building made of human hands. His house does not have a door.

If you want to go to church, look in a mirror. If you want to find the house of God, look at the believing friends standing together with you in your photo album or on Facebook. God breathes through you every moment and His Spirit works with more power when an assembly gathers. You do not go to the church. The church, when God lives in you, goes with you.

Thought for today: What purposes do church buildings serve?