A Trip Back in Time

Sometimes when an opportunity presents itself, you take it though the timing may not be convenient. By the time you read today’s Musing, Jeffery and I will be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on our way to Greece to visit the ancient New Testament cities of Corinth and Athens.

This is the first you’re hearing about this? That’s ok. Brenda only found out a couple of weeks ago. Recently, I stumbled across a flash sale on Delta Airlines that offered nearly all of Europe for ridiculously low fares. How ridiculous? Like about $325 round trip from Minneapolis to Athens ridiculous. Jeffery and I both have PTO we should use before the end of the year, so we snatched up the tickets, and, well, I’ll show you the pictures when we return.

Athens

The capital city attracts visitors from all over the world to see its ruins, visit its museums, enjoy its breathtaking panorama, and taste its amazing foods. I’m sure we will experience much of that, but I am most looking forward to climbing the Acropolis, the high point of the city where the Apostle Paul debated with the philosophers and told them of their unknown god. Do you remember Luke’s account of Paul’s visit to Athens?

The city was burgeoning with idols, so many, in fact, Luke tells us Paul was angry about the vast number of Greek gods in complete dominance of the daily lives of the Athenians. Acts 17 records Paul’s daily activities on his only visit to Athens culminating in his powerful sermon on Mars Hill. When we stand where Paul stood, I intend to read his sermon aloud for Jeffery and me and anyone else standing close by to hear. It should be awesome!

Corinth

I wonder if there are any descendants in Corinth today whose ancestors were part of the first century church in the city. It’s possible, though I doubt anyone can say with certainty, that their grandparents were founding members of the church at Corinth. It’s fun to think about.

Paul planted the church around AD 50 (Acts 18) and wrote the letters to the church 3 years later. Paul’s letters to the church have been critical in keeping The Church headed in the right direction over the last 2000 years.

Most know that I think 1 Corinthians 15 is one of the greatest texts in all the New Testament if not the entire Bible. I don’t know where we’ll be when we read it together, but I get goosebumps thinking about reading it aloud in the place where it was first read. Do you recall what Paul wrote?

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?”

The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

See you when we return.

As always, thanks for reading, and I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

Here to Help with Your Christmas Gift Shopping

“I never know what to get her for Christmas.”

“He’s so hard to buy for!”

“I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t find anything right.”

What to get for the man who has everything? What to wrap for the child who likes nothing? What will show the woman you love how much you care for her? What to buy for grandparents who don’t need nor want more slippers, robes, sweaters, or neck ties? It’s stressful shopping for presents. Maybe there’s a better way. What if we looked to our God for a pattern?

Briefly, we give gifts at Christmas and throughout the year because of our gift-giving Father (2 Corinthians 9:15). He gives, so we who are made in his image give too. We follow his lead on everything, including giving gifts. His gifts are generous and appropriate. He gives only good gifts, and all his gifts are profitable to the receiver (James 1:17). Our goal when giving gifts is to bestow gifts that are profitable for the recipient. What’s a profitable gift?

Profitable gifts develop the recipient, provide resources that carry into the future, and advantage more than the beneficiary.

God gave Adam a profitable gift when he gave him a wife. God gave the people a profitable gift when he gave them manna in the wilderness. God gives parents a profitable gift (albeit one that comes with some expense) when he gives them children. God gives a church a profitable gift when he gives them a pastor. God gives a profitable gift to a church when he bestows on individual members for the benefit of the whole. And the examples go on and on.

This is only a recent thought for me, and I don’t have the idea fully developed, but I think I’m headed in the right direction and want to suggest you go this way with me.

The Sears Catalog

For example, give your 16-year-old boy a .22 rifle. Yep, you read that correctly. Give your son a firearm. He will need to develop discipline in the use and care of his gun. In the future, the gun may provide him a means to put food on his family’s table. Should he, in the future, find himself in financial need, he can sell his gun for a fair price. God forbid, but should it be necessary, he will have something to protect his family from deadly violence posed by an animal or villain. As a safety measure and if he has not received training in firearm safety, hold back the ammunition and include a course in the gift.

Or how about this, God designed females to conceive and bear children. A gift of a baby doll for young girls fosters God given maternal instincts to care and nurture others. It is beautiful to see a small girl carry, dress, rock, and cuddle her baby doll. She’s developing the skills and traits God designed her to use, traits she will have occasion to use inside and outside her home, traits she can use for the benefit of others whether or not God blesses her with children of her own.

Whatever the occasion – Christmas, birthday, high school graduation – here are more ideas to develop the recipient, provide resources that carry into the future, and advantage more than the beneficiary.

• For a wife, a household appliance that makes her tasks easier – ignore the buffoons who say a washing machine isn’t romantic. You make any chore easier for her, and she will know how much you love her.

• For your grandchildren or nephews or nieces, annual passes to a museum, zoo, park, or cultural center serve to develop their young minds and bodies.

• For grandchildren, a letter telling them something of your history from days long past. If you can include a picture from the time, with a small note on the back addressed to them, all the better.

• Art sets, a camera, and models to construct reveal interests and untapped skills.

• Tickets to orchestral events ignite desires to play musical instruments.

• For adult sons and sons-in-law, tools and supplies needed to own and maintain a home.

• For grandparents, any time shared with their grandchildren.

• A “you and your friend” experience. Friends are everything to middle school and high school kids, give a gift that has them doing something you plan and doing it with a friend.

• For children of all ages, cooking lessons, music instrument lessons, riding lessons, diving lessons, flying lessons…you get the idea.

• For your husband, an evening out with you doing whatever you plan for the two of you to do together. I’d bet he’d even pay for it!

• For your busy son and his family, a service around the house that he doesn’t have time for, has no idea how to do but would desire, for example, spring lawn fertilization.

• For his family, a pastor friend took his wife and middle school / high school kids to Hawaii. How could a pastor do that? This was the gift. There were no other gifts exchanged between spouses or toward children for two years. In addition, they did not eat out or make a quick stop at Starbucks. The gift to his family benefits all of them to the present day.

These are only a few ideas. I think with time we could create a thick catalog of gift options for every person close to us if we think in terms of profitable gift giving. Use your imagination guided by God’s pattern, and see what you come up with. I’d love to hear about them.

Before you go, let me answer the big objection, “My kids would never go for that.” I suppose that’s true. What middle school boy wants to explain to his buddy who got an Xbox download that his parents gave him tickets to the Minneapolis Orchestra? But this is where parenting comes in – teach the value of profitable gifts and the character of God who only gives profitable gifts. You can do that. I believe in you!

As always, thanks for reading, and I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

A Walmart Thanksgiving

Just like we all have bellybuttons, all of us, at times, find it necessary to shop at Walmart. Not all Walmart stores are created equal, but for the most part, what you need will be available to you even if it means dodging pajama wearing shoppers and enduring long checkout lines.

For a preacher and writer, Walmart rarely fails to deliver sermon illustrations or Musing ideas.

Days after Halloween I found myself at Walmart with Brenda walking down the candy aisle where Brenda was scooping up highly discounted Halloween candy to repurpose as the contents of the dozen or so pairs of wooden shoes that will line our stairs in anticipation of children and grandchildren arriving on Christmas Day. Filling wooden shoes with candies, coins, and trinkets is a long Dutch tradition Brenda and our children heartily embrace.

Doing time in aisle 4 at Walmart, I overheard a 9 or 10-year-old boy talking to his mom.

“Mom, why are there so many Christmas decorations and hardly any Thanksgiving decorations?

“Honey, um…well…that’s because Thanksgiving is a day. Christmas is a season.”

While all people generally should be thankful, God’s people must be characterized by thankfulness. In our Bibles, we read the calls from the apostles to be thankful, we hear the prayers and praises of thankful saints, and we witness our Lord’s thankfulness, “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth…” (Luke 10:21). We Christians know by experience over the course of our lives and in hope of the resurrection that we have so much about which to be thankful.

But what about when thankfulness just does not seem to fit the moment, when life’s circumstances are so hard that giving thanks in everything because this is the will of God for us just seems impossible (1 Thessalonians 5:18)? How is it remotely possible to give thanks in situations where nothing is going right, where everything is wrong, where there is no prospect for immediate or long-term change, and where the pain of the hour is so intense? Here Matthew Henry is helpful.

While performing his pastoral duties, Henry was attacked by robbers. They stole his possessions and left him scarred. At the end of the day, he wrote in his diary…

“Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”

I confess I have yet to arrive at Henry’s thanksgiving disposition, but I want to get here. I hope you want to get there too. May God grant that we, our children, and our church will be characterized by thankfulness.

As always, thanks for reading, and I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

When a Pastor Grieves

Pastors are people too. We laugh. We smile. We like happy times. We cry. Our faces droop. We are not exempt from tough times.

Who is the pastor to a pastor when he grieves? Who is the pastor to the pastor’s family when life hurts from loss, injury, sorrow, pain, or death? In the local church, the pastors join the first responders at the hospital, in the nursing home, at the kitchen table, and at the emergency scene, providing calm, compassion, sympathy, hope, a voice leading in prayers to God, and aid. But when the pastor or his family is the victim, who is the first responder to him and them?

• A pastor stands in his front yard watching his house burn to the ground.

• A pastor, well past the age of retirement of the other men in the church, must return to the ministry he left because his successor, feeling the pressure of the load, was unable to fulfill the role with integrity.

• A pastor discovers his wife has engaged in adultery with a colleague from another ministry. The relationship has been ongoing for years without discovery. The shame the pastor feels is more than he can bear.

• A pastor holds his weeping bride. This pregnancy lasted four months, the longest she’s carried a child, but like her previous pregnancies, this one too did not reach delivery.

• A pastor receives a phone call from the Dean of Students at his alma mater, a Christian college. They have expelled his daughter for serious infractions of the student covenant.

• A pastor must relocate his family because, try as he might, he could not overcome the internal challenges of the church he serves.

• A pastor sits at the bedside of a woman dying from brain cancer. He’s been in situations like this before, but this is different. This woman is his wife.

• A pastor receives a phone call from his mom on a random Wednesday morning. His dad collapsed on the basketball court. Though his best days are behind him, dad still enjoys the game. The EMTs are doing CPR, but it’s not looking good. He was probably gone when he hit the ground.

• A pastor weeps because his only daughter is getting divorced after a few months of an abusive marriage.

• A pastor has seen the signs for the last six months. His wife repeats stories and asks the same questions. On a few occasions, she’s wandered around the parking lot looking for her car. Twice, she could not remember how to get home. She’s not yet 60-years-old. The phone call from the doctor suggests some new treatments to slow early onset dementia.

Each example has roots in the lives of men I know. I could tell you a dozen more. Some of the stories are exactly what happened while others are pieces of true tales without details to conceal identity.

Of course, church members experience most of these situations too. When church members suffer, they are wise to call their pastor. Their pastor is God’s gift to them to shepherd them in times of trouble (Acts 20:28-29; 1 Peter 5:2-4).

When a pastor suffers whom does he call? He probably calls other pastor friends or maybe a pastor with whom he served in some kind of assistant capacity. While helpful, these men are not likely close by and cannot be physically present at the moment. Plus, those pastors have churches of their own, to which they are giving pastoral care.

So, where does a pastor in crises go when he needs pastoral care?

Some churches have a large pastoral staff, a few even have a pastor whose role is to be the pastor to the pastors. But those models are exceptions to the norm. In most scenarios, the people our Lord intends to care for a pastor and his family is the local church of which the pastor is a member. In times of trouble, the church cares for their pastor in ways he would care for them.

Paul writes this was his experience. The Philippian church met Paul’s physical needs during his suffering in Rome (Philippians 4:10-20). In other letters, Paul instructed the readers to remember their elders when times are hard (Titus 3:2-15, et al).

There are many evidences of a healthy church body. One is how the church comes to the spiritual and physical aid of its pastors when the troubles of life come their way.

I am thankful to serve a healthy church.

As always, thanks for reading, and I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

Sings, I'm in the Lord's Army. Yes, Sir!

My family has military connections, but none would call us a military family. My dad and one of my uncles served in the U.S. Army. My nephew is a sailor aboard a U.S. Navy vessel. I am sure there are others in the tree whose military duty exists, but I do not know the history.

My Uncle Jim fought in Vietnam in the late 1960s. Like so many others, he was still a teenager when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps. By God’s grace, he came home to my grandmother and to the rest of his family. According to the Department of Defense, he is one of 23 million veterans living in the United States. Later this week, our country will honor him and all those who served when we recognize Veterans Day – November 11, 2023.

God Bless America and Other Soldier Songs

Radio listeners first heard Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on Veteran’s Day 1938. Berlin wrote the song in 1918 at the end of World War I, but the song only became our patriotic hymn when Berlin changed the lyrics to the familiar lines we know today. I am pessimistic, but I do hope Americans will continue to sing “God Bless America” for generations to come.

When I was a kid in Sunday School, we sang the children’s song, “I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery. I may never fly o’r the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s Army. Yes, Sir!”

The Apostle Paul wrote, “You, therefore, must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3). There are some New Testament images that we Christians embrace. We are mostly comfortable with the idea of disciple, follower, pilgrim, and traveler. I wonder to what extent we view ourselves as soldiers in the Lord’s army. The imagery implies battles and enemies and carnage. The images out of Israel and the Gaza strip inform us how ugly war can be for all combatants. Still, the Bible expresses that we are in a struggle against evil. We will need to be good soldiers.

It’s not popular in today’s churches to sing hymns identifying the followers of Jesus as soldiers in an army. Who sings these lines?

“Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Ye soldiers of the cross”
Onward, Christan soldiers, marching as to war”

An Old Hymn for Modern Christians

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) is at the top of the list of hymn writers in the English language. He wrote more than 750 texts many of which continue today. You know him best for “Joy to the World,” “When I Survey the Wonderous Cross,” and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” I think it would do us all good to work through the lines of his soldier hymn, “Am I a Soldier of the Cross.” It’s like a Christian self-assessment tool.

Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follow’r of the Lamb?
And shall I fear to own His cause,
Or blush to speak His name?

Must I be carried to the skies
On flow’ry beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?

Are there no foes for me to face?
Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace,
To help me on to God?

Sure I must fight if I would reign;
Increase my courage, Lord;
I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain,
Supported by Thy Word.

We honor our veterans this week. We thank the Lord for them. And we are Christians. May God grant us all the good qualities of the soldiers around us as we “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12).

As always, thanks for reading, and I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.