My eyes bugged out when I came down the stairs on that particular Christmas morning. The present stood almost as tall as me, and because it was so big and so eye-catching, it just had to be the coolest present I had ever gotten or would ever get. My mind raced from one possibility to another about what it could be, and who I would call first to brag about it.
After half-heartedly opening several other gifts and encouraging my mother to hurry with hers, the time finally came to open The Present. Tearing into the wrapping paper, breathless with anticipation, eyes wide with excitement, it was . . . it was . . . it was . . .
A long-handled snow shovel. *Sigh*
Christmas seems like a good time to remember what God considers important is typically upside down from we consider important. That’s why non-Christians have such a hard time understanding concepts like love your enemies (Luke 6:27), to be great you’ve got to be a servant (Matthew 20:26), to be first you must be last (Mark 9:35), it’s more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 21:35), rejoice in suffering (Romans 5:3), and so forth.
Therefore, when God gave us all a present on the very first Christmas and sent the long-awaited Messiah and savior of the world, He was not grandiose, showy and pretentious. The King of King and Lord of Lords was born tiny and helpless into humble, simple beginnings, and rested in an animal’s feeding trough (Luke 2:7). As He grew older, Jesus “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). In other words, He was easy to overlook. I overlooked a number of other, much smaller Christmas presents to focus on the big attention-grabbing one, only to be let down.
This Christmas, remember “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). The person that embodied that gift - the most meaningful and precious gift any of us will ever receive - was so unassuming, modest, and unpretentious, many people overlooked its significance, and chose to focus on something like a big shovel instead.
December 1, 2007
November 1, 2007
The Flower
The flower stood about one foot tall, straight up on top of a slender stem. If you looked close enough, though, masking tape held the stem together, camouflaged after being colored with a green marker. The flower had my attention because it was dead, and I had killed it.
My mother loved her gardens, and spent a lot of time nurturing them. She feared for the safety of her flowers in this particular garden, located a few short steps from the garage on which my basketball hoop was mounted. Her fears were justified when one seemingly harmless shot of the basketball ricocheted off the rim and shot straight into the garden. This one flower got cut down because of a careless shot from me. One careless shot.
Rather than facing my mother’s wrath, I placed the two stem halves back together straight up and down, wrapped some masking tape around the break, and colored the yellow tape using a green marker. I secretly hoped that somehow, someway the stem would magically and instantly fuse back together. However, within half an hour, the upper part of the stem went limp, and bent at the masking tape into a perfect upside-down U, and I was busted. Man, was my mother disappointed in me because I did not do enough to control the basketball near her garden.
In the same way, we disappoint God when we do not exhibit some restraint and self-control over the words we speak to other people and about other people. Just like I damaged one of mom’s prized possessions with one careless shot of a basketball, we all damage His prized possessions – people that He put here and nurtured – with careless and idle words. The Book of Proverbs says as much about the power that we wield with the words that come out of our mouths: “The tongue has the power of life and death” (Proverbs 18:21).
And once the damage is done, it can be practically impossible to offer explanations using the same mouth that caused the hurt in the first place. The only way that I could have stopped that basketball from killing that flower was to keep the ball from entering the garden in the first place. Although it’s tough in some situations, self-control is the key, because “he who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity” (Proverbs 21:23).
Which is a lot more effective than trying to patch things up with the verbal equivalent of masking tape and colored markers.
My mother loved her gardens, and spent a lot of time nurturing them. She feared for the safety of her flowers in this particular garden, located a few short steps from the garage on which my basketball hoop was mounted. Her fears were justified when one seemingly harmless shot of the basketball ricocheted off the rim and shot straight into the garden. This one flower got cut down because of a careless shot from me. One careless shot.
Rather than facing my mother’s wrath, I placed the two stem halves back together straight up and down, wrapped some masking tape around the break, and colored the yellow tape using a green marker. I secretly hoped that somehow, someway the stem would magically and instantly fuse back together. However, within half an hour, the upper part of the stem went limp, and bent at the masking tape into a perfect upside-down U, and I was busted. Man, was my mother disappointed in me because I did not do enough to control the basketball near her garden.
In the same way, we disappoint God when we do not exhibit some restraint and self-control over the words we speak to other people and about other people. Just like I damaged one of mom’s prized possessions with one careless shot of a basketball, we all damage His prized possessions – people that He put here and nurtured – with careless and idle words. The Book of Proverbs says as much about the power that we wield with the words that come out of our mouths: “The tongue has the power of life and death” (Proverbs 18:21).
And once the damage is done, it can be practically impossible to offer explanations using the same mouth that caused the hurt in the first place. The only way that I could have stopped that basketball from killing that flower was to keep the ball from entering the garden in the first place. Although it’s tough in some situations, self-control is the key, because “he who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity” (Proverbs 21:23).
Which is a lot more effective than trying to patch things up with the verbal equivalent of masking tape and colored markers.
October 1, 2007
BIG
When viewing the awe-inspiring beauty and overwhelming size and depth of The Grand Canyon, one cannot help but be moved. Many an adjective has been wasted to try and describe the indescribable – immense, vast, magnificent, spectacular, enormous, etc. – but the adjectives are too common to explain something so unique. No matter how many ways people have tried to explain what makes The Grand Canyon so . . . , well, . . . grand, they all fall short because it must be experienced to be understood.
Not that people don’t keep trying. I was experiencing The Canyon from an overlook near the South Rim when the sound of heavy footsteps thundered up from the parking lot. A father had raced ahead of his family to the overlook, and was so overcome with emotion that when he finally caught his breath and stood face-to-face with the most majestic, most breath-takingly gorgeous panorama ever experienced, he yelled back to the family, “Holy cow!! You guys gotta see this thing!! . . . .Oh . . . . Oh, man . . . . Holy cow!! . . . . Wow . . . . Hey, hurry up, guys! . . . . Mmmmm . . . . . Wow . . . . ”
. . . which is just about how eloquent I sound when trying to describe the experience of having Jesus in my life. Unfortunately, I don’t do it often enough, and I do not verbalize it very well on the fly. I suspect that many people have the same problem. Otherwise, we would probably hear a lot more Christian equivalents for “Holy cow!!” during our everyday lives. Despite all the adjectives and descriptions, it seems tough to tell someone about just how much Jesus loves them, and expect them to grasp it after just hearing the words we speak.
Thankfully, though, we do not have to rely on words alone to get the message across. In fact, telling someone about Jesus is probably only a small part of letting them experience His love. How we live, what we talk about, what we laugh at, and how we treat people all demonstrate what we believe in so others can begin to experience Christ’s love for themselves. Only with that experience, coupled with the words we speak, will people be able “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18b).
And holy cow, is it big.
Real big.
. . . which is just about how eloquent I sound when trying to describe the experience of having Jesus in my life. Unfortunately, I don’t do it often enough, and I do not verbalize it very well on the fly. I suspect that many people have the same problem. Otherwise, we would probably hear a lot more Christian equivalents for “Holy cow!!” during our everyday lives. Despite all the adjectives and descriptions, it seems tough to tell someone about just how much Jesus loves them, and expect them to grasp it after just hearing the words we speak.
Thankfully, though, we do not have to rely on words alone to get the message across. In fact, telling someone about Jesus is probably only a small part of letting them experience His love. How we live, what we talk about, what we laugh at, and how we treat people all demonstrate what we believe in so others can begin to experience Christ’s love for themselves. Only with that experience, coupled with the words we speak, will people be able “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18b).
And holy cow, is it big.
Real big.
September 1, 2007
WEEDS
I am not obsessed with my lawn being weed-free. Honestly, I never really cared too much about weeds in the grass until we ripped out and reseeded a large chunk of our front lawn. Now, however, I am convinced that weeds are pure evil, just because of the way that they grow and multiply.
When Jesus spoke about evil spirits in Luke 11:24-26, He could have easily been describing the weeds that threatened to take over our yard. “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places looking for rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”
Once the ground on our front lawn was bare, I realized just how relentless, intrusive and prevalent the weeds were as they grew in with the grass. For example, trying to pop them out of the ground is next to useless in the long term because if you don’t get the entire root, they grow back stronger and bigger than before. Spray them with weed-killer, and chances are you’ll kill the weed along with everything else around it. Either way, a bare patch is left, which then becomes fertile ground for more weeds to move in and take over. Only something thick and hardy growing in the bare patch can keep the weeds from finding a place to establish themselves.
But of course, Jesus was speaking about spiritual weeds, not the green leafy kind. So, what kinds of weeds need to be rooted out of your life? It is not enough to just swear off the evil in our lives. Whether its drugs, alcohol, pornography, greed, or anything else that distracts and keeps us knowing more about God or spending time with Him, something needs to take its place when its gone. Otherwise, the ground within us remains fertile for the evil, or some new evil, to re-establish itself.
The only seed that is hardy and fast-growing enough to conquer our personal weeds is the Word of God (Luke 8:11). By regularly studying the Word, we prepare good soil in our hearts, where Jesus can be planted, and our relationship with Him can be nurtured so it grows and grows and grows. When we hear the Word, retain it and persevere, then we produce a crop (Luke 8:15) thick enough and hardy enough to prevent the establishment or re-emergence of evil weeds. Once that crop sprouts, there’s not a whole lot of room for other things to take root.
When Jesus spoke about evil spirits in Luke 11:24-26, He could have easily been describing the weeds that threatened to take over our yard. “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places looking for rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”
Once the ground on our front lawn was bare, I realized just how relentless, intrusive and prevalent the weeds were as they grew in with the grass. For example, trying to pop them out of the ground is next to useless in the long term because if you don’t get the entire root, they grow back stronger and bigger than before. Spray them with weed-killer, and chances are you’ll kill the weed along with everything else around it. Either way, a bare patch is left, which then becomes fertile ground for more weeds to move in and take over. Only something thick and hardy growing in the bare patch can keep the weeds from finding a place to establish themselves.
But of course, Jesus was speaking about spiritual weeds, not the green leafy kind. So, what kinds of weeds need to be rooted out of your life? It is not enough to just swear off the evil in our lives. Whether its drugs, alcohol, pornography, greed, or anything else that distracts and keeps us knowing more about God or spending time with Him, something needs to take its place when its gone. Otherwise, the ground within us remains fertile for the evil, or some new evil, to re-establish itself.
The only seed that is hardy and fast-growing enough to conquer our personal weeds is the Word of God (Luke 8:11). By regularly studying the Word, we prepare good soil in our hearts, where Jesus can be planted, and our relationship with Him can be nurtured so it grows and grows and grows. When we hear the Word, retain it and persevere, then we produce a crop (Luke 8:15) thick enough and hardy enough to prevent the establishment or re-emergence of evil weeds. Once that crop sprouts, there’s not a whole lot of room for other things to take root.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
