november 2013 stuff

our latest prayer letter

some stuff from us

hi guys...

hello from the two of me.

how am i today?  like so many days, divided.  weak and strong, up and down, gelatinous and solid.
i fear i will use up the grace of God, that he will grow tired of dealing with me, become exasperated with me and choose to spend his time and efforts elsewhere.
i am also holy and blameless in his sight, chosen before the creation of the world, before i had even come to be, or committed my first sin.
my perfection predates my perversion.
and he delights in me.  it is his pleasure; it is his will.
but the basis of all this does not rest in me, in my promises, my proclivities, my pasts or my present. it rests solely on the grace of God, thru the shed blood of Christ, who loved me, and died for me while i was helpless and weak and rebellious and an enemy...and still unborn. 
how am i today?  hmmmm...thankful.  sitting squarely and securely in the cross-hairs of his grace, his intentional, relentless, measureless, and incomprehensible grace. 

kid’s art and righteousness

i was wandering around the foyer of our church the other afternoon awaiting the start of an event when i ran across a sketch book that had been left there by some child.  i started flipping thru out of idle curiosity…a few things struck me, for one, the randomness of the pages that were used.  it was hit and miss, here and there, do a drawing,  skip 20 pages and then do another drawing. 

i found this one

windmills with windows, doors, propellers…

…grass…

…birds…

…sky with clouds on parade…

…sheep with smiling faces!

all this started me thinking: of course, these scratchings are symbols for what the child was trying to communicate…there are recognizable shapes, details, colors…all conspiring to help the viewer make the metaphor work. 

but the real things themselves are of course so much more complex.  windmills, sheep and birds are three dimensional; they have volume and are much bigger than what is represented here.   blue sky is the result, not of color coming from a tube of blue wax, but the result of complex interactions of air and space and light and particles and distances.  grass and clouds and well, everything, is vast in its complexity. and these exist in time…there is movement and sound: sheep graze and bleat, wind sweeps across grass to make it wave and turn the windmills props, clouds drift along, . …none of this can a static drawing capture.   

the parent recognizes all of this; there are limits to bi-dimensionality.  there is no criticism of the fact that all this is representational, no chiding for inaccuracies.  instead the parent lavishes praise on his child for the wonderful drawing and then puts it proudly on the refrigerator for the world to see. 

i got to wondering if my attempts at righteousness are like that: awkward, two-dimensional, imperfect, less-than-fully-articulated stabbings on the canvas of the universe.  the real thing is so much more complex, as my heavenly Father knows.  real righteousness involves elements and dimensions i can scarcely imagine; true goodness, true justice, absolute and perfect love, absolute perfect sacrifice, unhindered by time and space…my efforts are like those of a child, hampered by immaturity and physical limitation that produce, at best, sign posts pointing in the direction of the real thing.  yet my heavenly father accepts them for what they are, not because my efforts at righteousness are even remotely close to matching the real thing…but simply because it is his nature to lavish his love on me. let me rest in that...and continue to draw. 

embrace the porcupine

there are things in life that are just painful.  some things land on you by surprise, out of the blue.  some things you see afar off;  you cannot escape them, you know they will hurt, they will poke holes in you,  you have no choice about them…yet somehow you must accept them, believing that over and above it all, God is good, that all things work together for good for those that love him, who are called according to his purpose. 

such is life.  such is my life…at least a portion of it at this particular season. 

over the past 2 years or so, it seems like for the first time in my life i’m experiencing what it’s like to be plugged into the body of Christ in a significant way, to have deep connections with brothers around me, connections fostered and encouraged by the fact that, again, almost for the first time in my adult life, we're not going anywhere anytime soon…we are rooted here…a precious thing.  and so, i’ve been learning how to make brothers and how to have brothers.  and now i must learn how to relinquish one of these. 

a week ago today i drove with my good friend mike to help him move to a new home in CO.  he feels God’s call on his life is not here, but there.  i had dreaded his departure for way more than a year…sensing its relentless, inevitable, merciless and penetrating approach.  but i could not just watch him drive away.  so i accompanied him on one of the best and one of the hardest trips of my life.  

it’s now a done deal.  and in CO is a huge part of me.  the hole left inside is enormous. i have pre-grieved this for a long time now.  it hurts now.  more will come.

i had seen this coming at me, and i could do nothing about it.   this is now his life and his future; i must embrace this as my future as well.  i am supremely grateful for the time our paths converged.  maybe they will again intertwine in a more than casual way.  in the meantime, somehow i must discover the presence of God in the middle of it all.

a letter of thanks

2011 in review

open thanks to close friends

funny how one simple thing will trigger a torrent of thoughts.  i am in my living room this morning working thru one of the prayer exercises from the devotional prayer book mike recommended to me back in august when i was in guatemala.  in spite of it being fairly new, the binding is broken.  this is in stark contrast to my bible laying there next to it.  of course my bible is much older, but it has been rebound.  it was THIS that unleashed the flood. 

my bible is rebound because of you all.  a little over a year ago, when james was still among us, you presented me with a monetary gift for christmas, part of which went towards that rebinding.  but i distinctly remember telling you all when you gave me the check that YOU were the real gift.  the monetary contribution was worth far less than the company of men that sacrificed towards that end.  and as i sit here, i cannot help but think about, and thank God for, the incalculable contribution you have made to my life over this past year. 

you have been a crucible for working out my sanctification in fear and trembling and deep pain.  because of you, i have a realization and understanding, like never before, of the value of brotherhood – we have been for each other conduits for the receiving and giving of tangible grace: emergency prayers, texts, phone calls, contacts – fleeting and prolonged –  both face-to-face and skype-to-skype – to help each other in the midst of both short-lived and protracted crises…sometimes we have stood firm…sometimes we have not.  we have shared laughs, and tears – of joy, sorrow, cleansing and burden.  and we have shared prayers for life, in both holy and mundane matters.

our interactions have built me up, challenged me and torn at my soul.  i am a different man because of you.  and it seems fitting, this last day of this year, as i thank God for you, to let you in on the details of my thanks. 

funny…when i refer to us publically as a group i usually use some term like “the thursday morning breakfast guys” – a handle that’s far too long for convenience.  but in my address book groups, you are simply “SOS”…universally known as a cry of distress, but which for me has also come to stand for “Sanctify Our Souls”. 

so with profound gratitude for your life, your friendship, your brotherhood, your love, your prayers, your intercessions, your affections, your tears, your rebukes, your pokings and proddings, your leading me to the cross, your helping me stand when i cannot do so on my own, for invading my life and permanently affecting the course of each and every day, in the name of Christ our savior and master, i give thanks.

a prayer letter from rick and melanie
sent a few days ago. 

a post from satyagiri, igatpuri, india

28 June 2011.  the end of a long day.  sitting upstairs overlooking the atrium – the sound of the wind and the flapping of the windmill, the rain falling into the courtyard below, the gray clouds fly by overhead. calm, peaceful, contemplative – me with ps 139.

this, and the walk out back to the stations of the cross calm my heart, and take my mind to a different place than it’s been so often in the past few weeks.  i’m grateful to find tranquility in the midst of a place and time i desperately wanted to avoid.  God is good.  God is at work in me.

james

i said goodbye to a good friend yesterday...a guy from a small accountability group.  he’s been a weekly presence in my life for about 3 years now. he graduated with his degree from seminary and now he’s moving away. 

i always thought he was a good guy.  he IS a good  guy. 

and i’m a better man for having known him.

i’ve watched him grow in his faith; in his openness to other guys. we’ve intervened in each other’s lives at critical moments.  we’ve shed tears for each other. 

i cried when i hugged him goodbye; he cried back.  sunday turned notably dreary.

i thank God for letting our the paths of our lives coincide for the time they did. 

and yet, cursed be graduations.

cursed be moves. 

i will miss him.

may God hold you firmly in his gracious, merciful and relentless grip, my friend.

other pleasures

the pleasure of the sun on my skin

the pleasure of hard work and satisfaction of a job well done on the art show

the pleasure of being in the company of good friends

the pleasure of talking with a trusted friend on the phone and having my soul and spirit encouraged and fed

the pleasure of hunger being staved

the pleasure of eating leftover breakfast casserole, and the pleasure of remembering the brothers i enjoyed it with the first time

the pleasure of a hand on my shoulder during prayer

the pleasure of singing worship songs...loudly...very loudly

the pleasure of affirmation that my words penetrated someone’s soul and encouraged them

the pleasure of the warm and loving embrace of my wife

all very real. all very good. no shame.

a reflection on Isaiah 61-62

a friend once said to me “everywhere i go, i go too, and that ruins everything”. i am like this man; i tend not to like my own company.   

for whatever reason, i have always had a poor self image.  i struggle with many things, many sins, but it usually boils down to a struggle with just who i am, my very DNA, and who and how God has made me.  my default emotional position is “I may be a child of God, but he has only acquiesced to let me in to his family…he reluctantly allows me to be here…he graciously tolerates my presence…but when it all comes down to it, i’m peripheral, and he doesn’t really like me like you’d like a good friend. 

this is, of course, heresy…but like i said, this is my default emotional position…left unchecked, i’ll always return to this place. 

enter the grace ev free sermon on Isaiah 61-62:

“He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted…to comfort all who mourn, …to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  …

“You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.  No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate.  But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah, for the Lord will take delight in you and your land will be married. … as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”

that the Lord God Almighty King of the Universe would actually delight in me…with all my stuff?  i will never outgrow my need to hear this.

when i cry out to God and ask “why have you made me this way?” it’s like the answer is “so you can show the world that my delight can be even in people like you.”

and now with a constant flow of input from people who keep my spirit in check, i’m growing, slowly changing, from being consumed with how bad i am, to being overwhelmed with how GOOD HE is. 

so hear this, you who are in any way like me; let this sink down into the marrow of your bones and educate your conscience: his delight is in me…and his delight is in you.

an old journal entry

i happened upon a journal of mine yesterday.  as i read some of the entries there was a flood of emotions that attended memories of events long gone.   among those entries was the following:

 ___________________

2-Sep-01

i was washing pots tonite. so much crud baked onto the bottom of the skillet. stuff that wasn't cleaned off the first time.  and so repeated use over the fire hardened the thin veneer of oil and grease into a coating that wouldn't simply rinse off.  the metal scrubby: hard, sharp edges, scouring powder, lots of effort…and time. repeated circular motions over the same spot…and some, only some of it would come off.  apparently forever amen a part of the pan. is it?  would more time, more effort, more scrubbing and more sheer desire to restore the pan to its pristine, new condition yield its desired effect?  maybe. but there's the spot on the wooden handle, forever blackened because it got too close to the fire.  no amount of scrubbing will take that away.  if the pan had feelings, the scrubbing would hurt, as layer after layer was slowly ground away…good surface is affected by the cleaning of the dirty part. 

at times it seems my life is like that skillet.  layer upon layer of crud, sins never fully dealt with, baked to a hard coating, marring the appearance and making any cleaning now a much more involved process…sigh.  it all depends on the owner of the pot…do you want me clean?  yes.  grind me down, clean me off…make me shine.  restore me.

 ___________________

a friend was present when i read this; he watched as old memories stirred, and grief rose, borne on the wings of failures from long ago.  in his wisdom and in his discernment he reminded me of who i am in Christ, that i am a work in process, and that there is growth and change in me that others can see, even if i sometimes cannot.  i thank God for that man, for his encouragement that transforms sorrow into peace, and for others like him who help me see that the prayer IS being answered; the Owner of this pot IS at work, scrubbing, grinding, polishing, relentless in his determination to restore and renew.   one day...yes, one day...

reunions and reflections on tarnish

i’m on my way back home from dallas…the final foray into processing my mom’s estate is over.  it has been 6 months since her death; time to clean up the house and get it ready to put on the market. 

so much stuff to sift and sort…there’s the usual paperwork, of course.  lots of clutter to rummage thru and toss.  and then there’s those reunions with things that evoke poignant memories: the cheap aluminum sugar bowl i remember seeing on the table breakfast-after-breakfast from my earliest days in that house; christmas records i used to listen to as i watched the colored lights reflecting off the gaudy aluminum christmas tree…yeah, we had one of those…it was painfully smaller than the one the what’s-their-names down the street had.

there have also been some surprises, like finding a copy of the Dallas Times Herald dated Nov 22, 1963; the hand-made guest book my parents had at their wedding – all those years i’d been snooping thru their drawers and closets and i’d never run across that!   and baby clothes my mom had saved along with a note thanking God for the joy her children had given her.  that one was particularly hard.

i rediscovered artwork i hadn’t seen since high school, and as i looked at it, people, places and circumstances that attended its creation bubbled back to the surface of my consciousness.   it was the catalyst for a thought: i’d “abandoned” lots of stuff at my mom’s over the years, but as long as my mom’s house remained my mom’s house, this was a place where my orphaned possessions could nevertheless “live”.  there was the gracious side-effect that i could come back periodically, reconnect with my roots, stir the pots of memories and let them simmer on the back burner of my mind.  and this i have done for the past 3 decades.

but this time it was different.  clearly most of this art work was too big to take back, and even if we could, there’d be no place in our home where we could absorb it.  and so the reality dawns that now is truly the time when the-fate-of-X is finally decided; sheep and goats, wheat and tares, good fish-bad fish.  i now must choose to never see some things again, to close the door to potential future reunions and intentionally relinquish chunks of my life into the arms of a different era.  sigh. 

the house is now empty; carpets have been ripped up; the spider webs are off the walls; the rusty old revolving clothes line has been officially put in the trash.  but a few things have survived the cut. 

among the things i brought back with me were some silver serving utensils, gifts to my parents for their 25^th wedding anniversary from some now-forgotten, unrecoverable giver.

smudges, brown and black spots, an ugly film covering the entire surface, such that i could barely detect my own reflection on the back of the spoon.  not a very good likeness of me, but a fairly accurate picture of the way i sometimes reflect God:  a hazy, confused image on what should be a smooth, polished surface.

the tarnish may obscure the reflection, but interestingly it’s the presence of the tarnish that announces the identity of the underlying metal.  stainless steel maintains its luster… and is worth considerably less.  so naturally, when i paw thru the kitchen cabinets and come across the cutlery, it’s the dirty filmy “ugly” pieces ones i pick out to save because they are more valuable.

there are probably ways to keep silver from tarnishing…i think you can wrap it up in zip lock bags and keep it away from the air.  i suppose there may be value in suffocating your silverware if its primary purpose is for display.  but if it’s going to be used, it will get dirty.   just like us…when God puts us in contact with life, he runs the risk that we will come away smudged and dark and dingy.   fortunately tarnish can be polished off.  but it takes special cleaners.  and work.   and in my case, blood.  and sweat.  and tears.

i’m glad it can be removed, being the tarnish bearer that i am.  i know there will be a day when my luster will be restored like new…and it will be that way forever.

till that day the firm, mighty, and merciful hand of God will continue to scrub and polish me with the precious blood of Christ. 

“fine, thank you. and you?”

it’s no profound observation that the "how are you?" question is often not really a request for an update on someone’s status. for that we have facebook and twitter, where every fleeting thought, however trivial, can be presented to the world as “breaking news”. as a language guy, i accept the fact that “how are you?” functions largely as verbiage that greases the social machinery. and so "fine" is an acceptable answer; contact with another has been made, their presence has been acknowledged, even if only in cursory fashion.

well, yeah, i’m a linguist, but i’m also one of those the-glass-is-half-empty people. so it’s no wonder that i’ve come to believe that “fine” is really just superficial, and that a truly “authentic” answer to “how are you?” consists of something more along the lines of:

"do you really want to know?"

"hmmmm…could be better."

“don’t ask!”

the desire for “authenticity” results in me adopting a “Saint Eyore” persona and perpetually presenting myself as being “under the pile” of life. left unchecked, my own particular brand of “breaking news” can be a real downer.

so i was thinking about this yesterday and came to a realization:

i surrendered to Jesus on 23 sep 1971. today it will be 14068 days since that event.
14068 sunrises; 14068 mornings that his mercies have been new.

14068 days with their own arrays of anxieties that i’ve worried over; 14068 days of worries that God has taken care of and been faithful to me in.

14068 days, not one of which has passed without either sweet, bland or bitter awareness and acknowledgement of God’s presence with me; 14068 days in which God has never dismissed me.

14068 days of exposure to his Word thru book or sermon or memory or gracious face of his family.

during each of these 14068 days i've sinned against God and man at least 7 times; and in each of these 14068 days i've received forgiveness for those sins 7 times over and then some.

the transitory up-and-mostly-down blips of my emotional condition pale in comparison to God’s goodness to me over the long haul. as much as i might like to believe it, i’m really NOT in the cross-hairs of life. quite the contrary.

so then, “how am i?” hmmm…now that i think about it, very fine, thank you. and you?

relevance theory and lingering effects

not long ago when we were returning to CA on a flight from dallas, i had occasion to observe a rather surly flight attendant who could have been the “poster child for relevance theory” in that she said nothing more than was absolutely necessary to point her audience in the direction of her intended meaning. i had already noticed a couple of things: her curt manner, and how she narrowed her eyes and stretched the corners of her mouth into a smile-like configuration…the result was not unlike the picture of a possum i saw when i was in elementary school perusing an encyclopedia article on “rodents”.

anyway, the beverage service was about to start, and with service cart in tow towards the designated starting position at the front of “coach”, she backed up the aisle, casting cold glances behind her, announcing to the passengers “arms and legs…arms and legs…arms and legs…” obviously a warning to her audience to keep their extremities out of the aisle, as she would be only too happy to collide with them if they didn’t. (i, fortunately, was sitting by the window, so i was out of target range.) then the “service” started; she came back pushing her cart down the aisle stating “something to drink” without the slightest hint of question intonation in the vicinity. now circumstance and experience normally sanction a passenger’s ready assumption that such an utterance constitutes an “offer”, and therefore s/he could justifiably supply implied information along the lines of:

[would you like] something to drink[?] 
or  
[can i offer you] something to drink [?].

of course on this particular occasion, i felt they could also be equally justified by filling it in as:

[you’re lucky if i give you] something to drink[!]

she eventually came to our row and a “something to drink” was directed first at me…

me:             “I’ll have a diet coke.”

Flight Attendant: [blink]

[eyes move in melanie’s direction]

melanie:      “Do you have cranberry juice?”

FA:              [single nod]

…then to “arms and legs” sitting by the aisle.

A & L:        “Orange juice.”

FA: [take plastic cup, scoop ice, open can, pour, extend hand in direction of window]

                  “diet”

[take second cup, more ice, another can, pour, extend hand towards middle seat]

                  “cran”

[repeat process, relinquish 3^rd cup]

                  “orange”

[push cart forward while directing withering look at next row of obstacles to inflight contentment]

sigh.  you never know the effect you may unintentionally have on someone. outside of our being a nameless collection of faces with irritating requests, just like those she sees every other day, she will likely have no particularly salient memory of the passengers she “served” that day. she will certainly not remember me, the diet coke in 16A. melanie and i, however, will remember her for a looooong time.

a view from 35000 ft

a friend requested that i post this letter. okay, larry, here you go.

the end of October, 2009.
Peru, Nepal, my mom’s severely declining health, computer theft …sigh. As we go through life there are times when it seems that lots of life goes through us instead, and at an alarming rate…five months in the blink of an eye. As I write this, I feel as though I am treading water in a turbulent sea of organizational chaos, whipped into a frenzy by all the above…sort of my own personal “hurricane Rick”. I’m looking for the eye in the storm.

The view out of an airplane window gives you perspective you will never have while on the ground: you can see the OTHER side of the clouds, for example, and you can apprehend vast expanses of earth at a glance. And from that vantage point you can also see major landmarks and the relationships between them in a particularly clear way without getting sidetracked by the million and one details that grab your eye while earthbound. I’ve had lots of opportunities to look out of airplane windows in the past 5 months and it’s left me reflecting on life from the 35000-ft-view rather than from the 5’9” perspective normally afforded me. The temptation here is to fill pages with details, but that, as interesting as it may be, could also easily obscure the much more significant big picture.

Peru: Melanie and I worked there for 26 years, raising a family and joining together with the Wanca Quechuas to produce all kinds of literature in their language and ultimately the New Testament, a historical first. With experience comes responsibility, and since that time we’ve made ourselves available to consult, teach and train those who are already, or hope to be someday, involved in Bible translation, be they here at Biola University or elsewhere. It’s made us both mobile and global. So over the summer we returned to Peru for 4 weeks and then spent 2 more in Nepal trying to tweak translators’ perspectives on how to compile dictionaries, and draft the book of Philemon, and understand the relationship between communication and translation. I will forever be impressed with those I met, some of whom have suffered for their faith in ways I will likely never know, and all without having scripture in their language. Amazing. And humbling.

But we had no sooner landed in Nepal than we got an urgent message telling me to call my brother in Dallas. You never want to get messages like that, and especially when you’re 12 time zones away. Seems my 90 year-old mom had suffered congestive heart failure and had been admitted to the hospital. She was now stable and in good care, and, thanks to Skype, we could talk to her every day. But our stay in Nepal had this as its backdrop. We got back to California after 44 hours of takeoffs and landings, and after teaching the first two days of the new school year here at the University, I hopped on yet another plane to Dallas to see mom – now in a nursing home – and to support my brother and his family in this situation in whatever way I could. It was on the way back from Dallas to Los Angeles that my laptop was stolen…not misplaced, not picked up by accident…stolen. The details of how it happened are peripheral.

There is something deeply chilling when you realize that your entire professional Bible translation and linguistic life for the past quarter century has just been taken from you, along with financial records, passwords to online financial accounts, correspondence, address lists, pictures of trips you will never repeat, intensely personal reflections, books, the IPod, the thumb drive, and, oh yes, even the backup hard drive…all conveniently present in the same back pack. First panic, then a mad dash for baggage claim in the dim hope you’ll see the person who has it; hope fades. Then frustration, anger and helplessness, as neither the airline nor the airport police seem capable, or even willing to do much about it. Then driving home amidst wracking sobs, paralyzed by the fear of certain identity theft…and loss…the incalculable, irretrievable loss…sigh…and sigh. “How in the midst of this can there be any good, but if there is, O God, show it to me.” And a long, restless night full of “Why did I…?” “...if I only hadn’t…” and “What if they …?” and punctuated by getting up to cancel more accounts and change more passwords.

And then I saw myself all too clearly, naked in a desert before God, with nothing; accomplishments, gone; dictionary work, gone; all the consulting and teaching I’d just done in Peru and Nepal, gone; lesson plans for tomorrow, gone, every means through which I might accrue some value for myself, gone. Then came the good I’d asked for: the single, poignant, defining moment…the pristine re-recognition that I am not my work, that my value is not in what I do, in what I offer to God in terms of talents, or as a linguist/translator/consultant with years of experience, or as a teacher with well-crafted lesson plans…but that my value is now and always has been only that I am an intentional target of God’s grace, and nothing more; and that apart from that, I am no different from the guy who took my laptop; and that because of that I can say with all honesty, “Have mercy on him as you have had mercy on me.”

And in the midst of all this, I realized that this was very likely the back-door answer to some glibly uttered prayer somewhere in the past: “Help me know you better” or “Get my attention”. When you pray for God’s work in your life, you are really praying for an end-result, not the path that takes you there. So if the result I ask for is consonant with God’s purposes in me, then he is justified in molding me and pressing me into it regardless of the means. It was an encouragement, albeit a severe one, to realize that God had not abandoned me and was still answering my prayers for my good.

I am not the only one to suffer loss; there are some that suffer losses much greater, like those who were affected by the wildfires I watched from the window on that flight, where all their treasures literally went up in smoke; and I, like they, still pick through the rubble and chaos, retrieving whatever is salvageable. And almost daily for the last 6 weeks, the realization of yet of another missing piece. I’m sure some of the wildfire victims suffer alone…very alone. But I do not, for I have walked through this accompanied by the people of God, who have loved me and encouraged me, and even supplied me with equipment to replace what I lost. This shows me that they – and you – are my true treasure. The computer was just a box and the stuff in it were ultimately just tools. And however painful it may be to lose them, the work of God was not in that box; rather, the real work of God is the extent to which I foster the image of Christ in those around me; and that, no one can steal.

Forgive the accutely personal and solemn tenor of these lines. I realize this has not been our typical communiqué, laced with home-improvement challenges or the stuff our kids are up to. Rest assured, we are still home-improvement-challenged and our kids are up to plenty. Melanie will probably want to write the next one. But I felt that this time a view from the other side of the clouds would more accurately reflect the present landscape of our lives. Who knows? It might also provide some food for thought and prayer as you seek to know Him better. It might also encourage you to back up your computer…off site…in a place far, far away.
...
Pummeled by the grace of God. Rick

arequipa shadows

the sun seems to do things to arequipa i've not seen anywhere else. maybe i just haven't been enough places...

bread

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times
…
He will stand and shepherd his flock
in the strength of the LORD,
in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
will reach to the ends of the earth.
And he will be their peace. (Mic 5.2ff )


Bethlehem: "house of bread". Bread: simple, common everyday food. Bread to fill your stomach when you are hungry; bread to give you strength when you are weak. Bread permeated with yeast, and yeast the symbol of sin. And in the house of bread, would be born the Bread from heaven itself. The Messiah who would fill our hungry souls and strengthen our spirits when we have no strength. But this only because he would take on all our sin; a stable-born king who left his riches and became poor for our sakes, so that we through his poverty might become rich.

Bread for life; yeast for sin and death. Richest of Kings born stable-poor. Sinful man loved by him who knew no sin. He dies; we live.

inn-n-out

Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem only to find that the one place that lodged travelers was full. People must have been there from all over because of this census. No room anywhere. And Mary’s labor had started. Bad timing any way you look at it. So they were given a corner in a stable. Open to the world. Dirty straw instead of a bed. The annoying intrusion of animals. Far away from home. No family or friends to help. Something was surely wrong somewhere. How could the King of the Universe be born in a stable? The Messiah – the long awaited Deliverer, the One promised throughout the ages by the prophets, has only a feed trough for a crib?! Didn’t God himself send an angel to announce his coming? But not this way. THIS is hardly the kind of birth that should attend royalty. It makes no sense.

But then throughout history God so often did things that boggled the mind. Didn’t he back Moses and his people up against the sea with no way of escape when the Egyptian army came in to annihilate them? Quite a poor battle plan. But then he did something else totally unexpected: he opened the sea and led his people across dry land. And when Gideon had 10,000 troops at his disposal to attack the Midianites, didn’t God tell him to send all but 300 away? Bad strategy. But with those 300 God delivered the Midianites into his hand. And here in this very town hundreds of years earlier, didn’t God choose a shepherd boy to be King over the nation, one not even the prophet Samuel would have picked? And yet this was one whose heart beat for God and from his line would come One whose kingdom would never end.

So much that just doesn’t fit our expectations. But then our God is a God of paradoxes. His ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. It’s THAT – the difference – that sets the stage for our amazement and awe at what he does. That the King should be born in a stable? Yes, on second thought, this too might bear the fingerprints of God.