HotWired!**

Photo Credit Outdoor Discovery

 When in high school, a church friend and I were excited to go water skiing one Summer afternoon after we got off work. He had a real job… helping run a bearing business. I had the morning shift as a lifeguard at the local pool. We quickly drove the 45 minute drive to the lake, maybe a little quicker than the posted speed limit… at that age, we did everything as quickly as we could to make sure we got every last drop out of our days. People used to say we were either out on the lake running wide open or tied to the dock… asleep, there was no in between. We got to his Dad’s boat slip, threw our skis, vests, and rope into the boat and I started untying from the dock. Then he said, “oh man! I forgot the keys!”  He said, “no skiing today, it will be dark before we get back home and come back up here.” I said, “Hang on! Do you have a screwdriver?”  I had never hotwired a boat, but had watched McGuiver and thought, “how hard can this be?”   He found a screwdriver, turned on the blower to get any flammable gasses out of the engine compartment,  and I went to look under the driving console.  I touched some wires with the screwdriver and a lot of sparks flew out, tried some other wires and more sparks, but then the engine started.  We were in business! We skied hard until dusk, never turning the boat off, and we idled into the dock in the dark. We were quite proud of ourselves until we arrived at his house to see his dad standing in the door with the boat keys in his hand, laughing at us. He said, “you guys didn’t get to ski, did you?” To which we replied, “Sure we did, Bill hotwired your boat.” This, as you might imagine, was not the right answer. He was not happy with us at all. As a matter of fact, he grounded us from using his boat for several days. We were thinking, “how resourceful we are to make this happen.” He was thinking, “they ruined my boat.” 

As Jesus was talking to the crowds about his cousin, John the Baptist, who had been imprisoned, He highlighted his extraordinary ministry as a prophet. Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest man to ever live. John was a rough and tumble prophet who told it like it was, and didn’t pull any punches. He said what he was going to say, regardless of how it landed. John the Baptist carried a heavy mantle to further God’s Kingdom.  Jesus says, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it” (Matthew 11:12) However, Jesus also told the crowds there is an easier and better way.  He told them, ““Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”(Matthew 11:28–30)  Sometimes we can try to force our lives to give us what we feel we need or deserve. We can force our faith on ourselves and others. We say, “life is only what you make it.”  We hotwire it, jumpstart it, and fake it ‘til we make it, but Jesus says, simply connect your life to me and you no longer have to go around kicking down doors and hotwiring boats to find what faith and life are really about. Jesus says, “I’m gentle and humble in heart.” There is an easiness to our faith life when we connect with Jesus.  When Simon Peter connected with the fact that Jesus was, “the Christ, the Son of the Living God,”  Jesus told him, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”(Matthew 16:19) We gotta quit trying so hard to hotwire life and faith and remember that Jesus not only holds the keys and He gives them to us to share with others. Real life is more about connection with Jesus than a forceful determination to make our faith happen.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

A Visitation!**

 Back when churches did Tuesday night visitation to meet the people who had come as guests on the Sunday before, sometimes those doorstep visits seemed to make a difference in the lives of our guests, but sometimes the visits could seem ineffective and even annoying to those we visited. Some people would not come to the door, pretending not to be home, even though I could hear them telling other family members to be quiet until I went away. One particular Tuesday night, I had collected a handful of names and addresses to go visit.  I went to several homes and no one was home. I had one more visitation card in my stack, but I was already late trying to get home and tell my kids “goodnight” and this house was another 30 minutes from where I was and another 45 back to my house. So, I started to head home, so I could join Anita in the bedtime routine of  reading, rocking, tucking-in, and praying with our 4 preschoolers.  I decided I would visit this couple the next Tuesday. However, I got this overwhelming feeling that I needed to go to this particular house that night. I tried to ignore it and then began arguing in my head with God that I needed to go home. God, of course won the argument, and compelled me to go.  So, I turned around to go to this house that would add another hour plus to my evening.  I would have to trust that God would give Anita grace, once again, to put all four kids to bed by herself. When I got to the last visitation, the house was huge, but it was dark. I was miffed… thinking that I came all the way out here to visit an empty house. I said a prayer and walked to the door to ring the doorbell; it was worth a try, maybe they were in another part of the house. When I  did, lights came on and a young couple came to the door with a somewhat surprised look on their faces. I told them who I was and they invited me in. There were large, dark, empty rooms sparsely decorated. We found some chairs and sat down.  They explained they had planned to sell the house, so there wasn’t much furniture left. They also explained that they had visited the church on Sunday in a last ditch hope to save their marriage. They said, “we just prayed at dinner tonight, that if God didn’t show us something, we would be filing for an amicable divorce tomorrow.” I was able to talk with them and tell them I believed the solution was a real and vital relationship with Jesus Christ. They both were saved that night! A few weeks later, they were baptized and invited their friends to come watch. Their friends, who had noticed a dramatic difference in their marriage and lives, became curious, came to church with them and were saved too. All in all about a dozen people began to follow Christ. Wow! And to think that I almost didn’t go that night! I know God didn’t need me to go to their house that night. He would have accomplished His will in their lives in any way He wanted, but He invited me to join Him in that work and what a blessing it was.  

The apostle Paul was telling the leaders of the church at Ephesus about how God had urged him to keep going even when it meant sacrifices on his part. He told them, “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” (Acts 20:22–24) My being late getting home that night was definitely worth it. God chose to use me to lead that couple to hear and receive the Gospel. My being inconvenienced one night seems silly compared to the hardship, beatings and prison Paul endured. I’m humbled that God had compelled me to join Him and testify to the Good News of His grace.  If you feel compelled by God to do something, don’t miss it. God is including us in His plan to save people, their marriages, their lives, their friends!   

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all! 

Are You In Over Your Head?**

 My father and I had been at our houseboat doing some work on it. It was a very hot day, so several people had come to the shore at the state park swimming area about 500 yards from where our houseboat was moored just in front of Norris Dam. You could hear lots of laughing and squealing of kids as their voices echoed over the water and bounced off the dam concrete. At one point the squealing turned to screaming and then yells for help. We stopped our work and listened to see if this was just kids' playful joking or actual screams for help, but after a few minutes of it we jumped in the bass boat and motored through the “no wake” zone toward the shore. It took us several minutes to navigate around the other boats toward the buoys that marked the swim area. At some point the yelling stopped. We arrived in time to see the body of a man with blue jeans, blue face, and no shirt laying motionless on the shore. Everyone had left but a few people who had pulled him out of the water.  This man had ridden his motorcycle to the lake and decided to take a swim in his jeans. Apparently, he didn’t realize how steeply the shore dropped off to deep water and was in over his head before he knew it. He was unable to turn around and to get back to the shore. Despite the attempts of others to get to him and bring him back, he had already drowned.  Knowing there was nothing we could do, we turned the boat around and let the officials do their work.  My father, who was a physician, had seen people who had expired before during his medical training in the Emergency Room and Med School, but this was a first experience for me as a young teen, aside from those bodies in the funeral home who had been carefully made up and prepared for a half-open casket and public viewing.  I had lots of questions about what happens to the body when someone drowns.  My father answered all my questions from a medical viewpoint. Then as I quietly processed the incident on the way back to the houseboat and the car ride back home, I wondered about this man’s soul. Was he ready to leave this earth? Did he have a relationship with Jesus? Was he in heaven now? Or somewhere else, i.e. hell?  

Israel had rebelled against God and had followed the occult gods of the land.  Because God loved His people, He wanted them to repent, but they were in way over their heads and unable to give up their connection to the evil ways of foreign gods. So, God allowed them to be defeated and taken into captivity. Jeremiah the eccentric prophet, had warned Israel to repent and turn around, head back toward God.  The leaders did not like what Jeremiah had to say against them and at one point threw him into a cistern full of mud, but God had him rescued and pulled out (Jer. 38). Jeremiah never quit trusting God.  In one of his writings Jeremiah says, “... the waters closed over my head, and I thought I was about to be cut off. I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit. You heard my plea: “Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.” You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.” O Lord, you took up my case; you redeemed my life.”(Lamentations 3:53b–58 NIV) God still hears our cries for help. No matter how deep in the pit of sin and rebellion, or hopeless despair we are, God hears our cries when we call out to Him. The apostle Paul says, “for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”(Romans 10:13 NIV) We are all in over our heads. We cannot save ourselves from sin and death, but God made a way through Jesus to be rescued from the pit of hell. He loves us and wants us to spend eternity with Him and has made a way for us to graciously be saved, but it is our choice whether we call out for a relationship with Jesus to be rescued from the evil that has us overwhelmed. 

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all! 

A Seat At The Table!**

 A seat at the table. My paternal grandmother was a widow, she had been since her 40’s. A child of the Great Depression, she was very shrewd with her money, she saved everything… used aluminum foil, small pieces of string, rubber bands, ketchup and pads of butter from a restaurant, and anything else of any perceived value. Interestingly, in spite of her frugality, she was very generous with those she loved. She lived very humbly, except for her car, she loved a Cadillac. Arthritis had crippled her, she walked very slowly and with great pain. Though knee replacement had become an option in her lifetime, she never felt comfortable with spending that kind of money on herself. My family saw her at least once a week. My cousins stayed with her every day after school. She was a smart and curious woman. Her curiosity about people could come off as unkind, or at least insensitive. For example, she once asked a very tall check out clerk at the grocery if she was standing on a box. Mother Mac was not a cook and didn’t have a large place to host people, but she loved good food and her family.  Nearly every Sunday after church, she invited my family and my cousins’ family to lunch. One of her favorite places was called Pero’s Restaurant owned and operated by the Peroulas family. It had delicious Greek and Italian food. It was like my big fat Greek lunch, only we were Irish, Scottish, and some Jewish mixed in. They put two tables together to accommodate the 9 of us who enjoyed the crackers with butter before the meal, a great salad, and the veal parmigiana was the best in town. She had a sweet tooth, so we always enjoyed dessert, besides it came with the meal (another great value). We all laughed and teased each other a lot (teasing was one of our love languages). We always left there full of good food, good memories and good times together. This was Mother Mac’s way of taking care of her own and keeping her family together.  Later, we all appreciated her intentionality in making this a family tradition, though at the time we may not have recognized it. It helped establish our identity and sense of belonging. If you belonged to Mother Mac you ate lunch together on Sundays.  Sunday lunch with Mother Mac was the place we wanted to be, she even welcomed our friends and significant others as we grew older. She used her resources for something important to her, her family. Because of her smart investments, and great generosity, she also helped two generations in her family go to college.  Unfortunately, her digestive tract was so compromised by all the aspirin she had to take for arthritic pain, she had to have part of it removed and it eventually took her life. 

God’s people had lost their sense of identity as His people. They had forgotten that they belonged to Yaweh. They had run after other gods that provided no real help or provision. Their gods were not capable of the loving covenant connection that Yaweh provided them. Spiritually, they were bankrupt. Isaiah reminded them as he prophesied of a coming Messiah, that belonging to God means that He loves and provides for those who are His and He has a place for them at the table.  “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!   Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David.” (Isaiah 55:1–3 NIV)  Jesus himself speaks of the kingdom of God as a banquet prepared for all who will come (Matt. 22).  If we belong to Him, if we are one of His, if we identify as His, if we are connected to Him, we have a seat at the table. 

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!