Crane Kick

Mondays...

Scrambled Eggs

How you like yer eggs?

i had a big list of card titles to choose to illustrate from, some of which were obvious, some not so.  Some i down right didn't want to know what they meant in the context of two guys hurting each other's junk.  Such was this one... 

If you, unlike me, really wanna know, ask the fellas over at 1x5 Games. 

Rabbit Trail eighty-something

Can't buy me love

“17 And as he was setting out on his way, one individual ran up and knelt down before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10)

Why did God accept Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s?  It’s always bothered me.  Oh, I’ve heard explanations but none of them sufficed.  None of them truly explained it in my mind.  Both are worshiping God yet God looks with favor on Abel and Cain gets the hand.  Whassup witdat?  Can we worship God wrong?  How will I know if I’m doing it?  Seems like a pretty important question, doesn’t it?

It almost sounds like the essence of the rich young ruler’s question in the above passage from Mark.  I’m doing this, this and this, what more do I lack?  Maybe he asks because he’s read Genesis four and he wants to make sure he’s doing it right.  Maybe he has done these things and he still feels that nagging loss.  The incompleteness that creeps in at the end of a day of business in the form of a question, “I worked so hard today but what did I accomplish?  I was so good, but was I good enough?”  Maybe, what he really longed to hear was Jesus say, “Dude!  You’re golden!  God told me to tell you, good on ya, keep on keepin’ on!”

Jesus doesn’t say, “Good on ya,” partly, I’m sure, because Jesus is not Australian.  But also partly because it was not good on him and it was not good for him. 

I write a lot about what we are to do, what we Christians, we followers of Christ, we the Bride of Christ are to do.  Lately, where it concerns evangelism: who gets into the Kingdom, who inherits eternal life and who does not.  Why should we tell folk?  How should we tell folk?  If no one can come unless they are called and God gives a measure of proof to all and faith is a gift, why should we talk about Jesus at all?  And here’s the crux of what I have to say…

If you’re asking the question, “Why should we talk about Jesus?” you shouldn’t.  In fact, please don’t.  Because you don’t know him.

Why didn’t God accept Cain’s offering?  I don’t think it was because it was grain and produce.  God told the Israelites to make all kinds of grain and produce offerings.  Why did Jesus tell the rich, young ruler to give all he owned to the poor?  He didn’t tell Nicodemus or Zaccheus to impoverish themselves.  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, David, Solomon, were all actually blessed with riches.  God’s not anti-wealth.  So what’s the deal?  Why did Jesus in Luke nine tell the guys, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” “Foxes have dens and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” and “He who puts his hands to the plow and looks back is not worthy of me.”?  Why is it whenever people seem most enthusiastic about Jesus and his new movement, he says something calculated to skeeve them out and make them angry, upset or confused?  Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden?  Why did God not tell Job what it was all about?  Why do we suffer and God seems strangely silent?  Why am I asking so many questions and not giving any answers?  Why am I not going to stop?

Why wouldn’t you pay for a husband?  Why do we not knock women on the head and drag them to our caves to be our wives?  Why is it we could not be satisfied with a Stepford Wife?  Why isn’t wine better than a man?  Many jokes come to mind but the answer is only one question away…

Why isn’t God pleased with religion?

Love.

Love is a relationship.  Love is total submission to the other for the good of the other!  The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father.  God loves you and what’s best for you is to be drawn into the relationship He has within Himself!  It’s what He made you for!  It’s what you’re searching for when you acquire things, when you long for love, when you work, when you seek health!  Nothing else will satisfy.  Not even religion.  Why?  Because religion is love of the self.   Cain’s sacrifice wasn’t for God.  It wasn’t from love.  It was to get something from God.  The rich young ruler wasn’t keeping the commandments because he loved others; it was because he loved himself.  He wanted righteousness, rightness for himself.  To put God in his debt.

“Good Teacher,” he says, you who have achieved enlightenment.  Show me how to get where you are.  To make myself like the Most High!  “I am good,” is only one letter away from, “I am god!”  Spiritually, it’s the same thing. “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”   And there is only one God in heaven and earth. Why did God not accept Cain’s offering?  Why did the rich man go away sad?  Why do self-righteous people go to hell? 

Because they take the Bread of Life and the Wine of the Covenant that the Father offers them, the marriage proposal he gives to the World, the offer of eternal love, life and joy in Him, they slap them from Jesus’ outstretched, nail scarred hands and say through clenched teeth, “I don’t want pity from you!  I want to BE YOU!”  And God sadly, lets them go their way, to a place where they are god alone.  You think the world is bad now, imagine a place without any mitigating limits on people’s selfishness, without any blessings from God at all.  Total separation from everything good.  Imagine what they’ll be like when they realize how much of what they loved was a blessing from God they didn’t deserve.  Rage.  Furious, impotent, all consuming rage and despair.  Fire unquenched and worms which never die.  That’s hell.

Now imagine being drawn into the most loving relationship there ever was, ever is and ever will be.  True love.  Not transactional, not based on the worth of the loved but on the worth of the lover!  “6 For in this way God loved the world, so that he gave his one and only Son, in order that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.” (John 3)  Why won’t you perish?  Because you have Jesus!  Jesus IS LIFE!  He is bread!  He is water!  He is Love!  You can’t come to the Father except through him because he is the Way to the Father!  He’s not being exclusive!  He’s being honest!  The Father loves Jesus, Jesus is the only one who can stand in God’s presence because Jesus. Is. God!  Even the angels hide their faces from God!  But He loved us so much he came to us and died for us!  And when he took our sin, our unworthiness, our unrighteousness on himself, he gave us HIS WORTH, HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, his status as the SON OF GOD!  The best pagan is worshiping what they do not know!  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a man to enter the kingdom of God.  But Jesus!  Nothing is impossible with God.  They are trying to get to God and we know God Immanuel, God has come and is trying to get to us! 

Why would you tell someone about Jesus?  Why wouldn’t you???

Johnny Thunder

“12 There is a way that seems right to a man,


    but its end is the way to death.” (Prov 14)

John boy.  I am told John bar-Zebedee is possibly the youngest of the disciples.  He is nearly always referred to in a relationship:  “Sons of Zebedee,” “the brother of James,” as a child would.  He’s not old enough to have a reputation of his own yet.  But he’s eager to make one.  Is this initially what draws him to the excitement of following fringe rabbis?  It’s possible he first followed John the Baptist with Andy.  Then when John directs them to the Lamb of God, he upgrades.  Is it this desire for reputation, desire for greatness that leads this small town fisherman’s kid to Jesus?  Teenagers don’t walk through life, if they move at all, they run.  Odd isn’t it, they with the most time before them move like they have none?  Lace up your running shoes.  Let’s follow Johnny through Luke 9. 

Jesus sends him out with the twelve.

He helps Jesus feeds the five thousand.

He hears Pete confess Jesus is the Christ.

He hears Jesus foretell his death.

He is one of three chosen to see the Transfiguration.

He sees Jesus heal the epileptic.

He and the disciples have their Muhammed Ali moment.

He tells Jesus about them trying to stop a successful, non-disciple demon punter.

Jimbo and he ask Jesus if they can call down fire on a Samaritan village.

Along the way, he sees and hears Jesus give interviews to other disciple applicants.

This possibly sixteen years old young man, I cannot call him a boy for his own people would not unless they were trying to insult him, is one of Jesus’ “inner circle.”  He’s the elite of the elite twelve.  Only Simon, James and John are singled out for many of Jesus’ miracles and praying moments.  Quite the honor considering his age and the stature of the men around him.  Did it go to his head?  Jesus refers to the sons of Zebedee as Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder, Bene reghesh, sons of rage, sons of tumult.  Cool nickname.  If Jesus were a biker, he’d have something like seventy-two bikes in trail, a bevy of biker babes, his twelve immortals and his captains, Rock and the Sons of Thunder.  Let’s ride! 

But Jesus wasn’t a biker.  He wasn’t a son of anarchy.  He was the Son of Man, the Son of God, a shepherd, gently leading this teenager to true greatness.  A teacher who sometimes cried out, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you?”

So what was Johnny like?  This inner circle disciple captain.  This one of three men who Jesus allowed closer than any.  Brash?  Brazen?  He and his brother ask to sit on Jesus’ right and left when he comes into his kingdom.  Take that Rock!  Vengeful, power mad?  Calling down fire on a village that denies hospitality to them?  Yeah, I’d say so.  Jealous?  Denominational?  Trying to constantly one up Pete and the others.  Trying to stop a man with a successful ministry in Jesus’ name just “because he does not follow with us.”  Safe bet.  Deaf?  Obstinate?  Jesus tells him over and over what it takes to be greatest in the kingdom.  What kind of kingdom he’s setting up.  What it costs to follow him.  What “drinking his cup and being baptized with his baptism” will mean and he still doesn’t get it.  This is not some outsider atheist.  This is Jesus’ friend!  The “disciple whom Jesus loved”!  But for all his boldness, all his big talk, there’s a timidity, a shyness that might betray his tender age.  He does not try and walk on the water.  He falls uncharacteristically silent when Jesus is angry.  He is the first to the tomb but the second to enter.  He is the first to recognize Jesus from the boat after the resurrection but Pete jumps into the water alone.  Hypocritical, hyper-critical, power-hungry John. 

But Jesus…  “43 And all were astonished at the majesty of God.  But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, 44 “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” 45 But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, so that they might not perceive it.” (Luke 9)  Then Jesus dies, just as he said he would.  John is possibly the only disciple to see it.  To stand at the foot of the cross.  To see his own dreams shattered, beaten, bloody and nailed, to watch them die, horribly, painfully, oozing out one drop at a time.  There would be no kingdom.  There would be no places of honor.  He wasn’t a captain leading a revolution now.  He was a fugitive in the mop up of an insurgency.  Days later, hiding behind locked doors, a wanted man.  No longer proud.  No longer boastful.  The thunder had faded, the tumult had passed and a new day had dawned. 

But Jesus… rose.  “25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14)  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, people don’t get better, they get worse…. But Jesus!  Without grace our whims become desires and our desires, lusts.  Without grace there is no check on our selfishness.  Without grace there is no force in the universe countering entropy.  Grace is the seed.  Grace is the rain.  Grace is the sunlight.  Grace is the plow, sower, the reaper.  Without grace, dust you are and to dust you return.  But Jesus! 

Johnny does die at the cross!  John the Revelator is born!  Three gospels strive to tell us what happened in Jesus’ life.  John’s agonizes over Why!  Three gospels talk of the kingdom.  John’s hunger for the kingdom died at the cross, now he speaks of Life!  Light!  Love!  Three gospels speak of a man who was the Son of God.  John speaks of God who became a man!  The disciple who wanted a place on Jesus’ throne never again refers to himself at all.  Johnny who personified “live fast, die young,” outlives all the apostles and sees heaven personally before it’s over.  John who spoke like thunder and tumult, “47 But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side 48 and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.” (Luke 9) turns into John who says, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”  Amen Johnny, amen.

Signs and Wonders

“As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. 43 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. 44 She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. 45 And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” 46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.”” (Luke 8)

I’ve visited and attended a lot of churches in my time.  I’ve been on many a prayer list.  Online networks are awash with folk asking for prayer.  By informal survey, I could sum up probably ninety percent of those requests in one word: Healing.

I’ve never met anyone who likes being sick.  Even hypochondriacs only do it for the attention.  Our bodies live in houses and our souls live in bodies.  If we don’t like living in decrepit, broken houses infested with bugs, we don’t like something being wrong or unwelcome invaders in our bodies even more.  It hits a little too close to home, if you take my meaning.  We want health.  We dream of perfect bodies.  We long for immortality.  Disease and Death strike us as wrong as robbers breaking into our homes.

And it was no different in Jesus’ day.  The crowds thronging him were not always there to hear a good if confusing and slightly disturbing sermon.  If they were anything like us, which since they were people, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume they were, they probably preferred their physical needs met before their spiritual ones, hands down.

And Jesus obliged many of them.  My question is this: Why?

No one Jesus healed or raised from the dead is still with us so it stands to reason they all got sick again and died.  So the point was obviously not a permanent fix for our flesh.  Christ didn’t turn us into superhumans.  Likewise we can safely assume it was not a visible sign of one’s admittance into the kingdom.  We who have come later still get sick and die and accounts like the ten lepers in Luke 17 and the parable of the sower show how unbound our hearts are to our benefactor much less simple gratitude. 

Thirdly, this account of the woman with the discharge of blood (what a horrible moniker to go through history with!) completely eliminates the possibility of Jesus healing simply because he wanted to, because of his pity and sympathy.  He didn’t even know whom he had healed here.  The power of the Spirit does this without Jesus’ consent or compliance.  He’s just walkin’ ovah heah, a touch of a hem and Pow!  Power’s a’flowin’ like lightning.  Immediately, it says, immediately she knew she was healed.  Wow!  How cool is that? 

And yet, she’s dead.  Somewhere down the line, she caught something else, her body wore out or she met with an unfortunate accident and she died.  So what was it all for?  A little momentary comfort?  Is that all Jesus offers?  Is that all our salvation is good for?  A little momentary comfort?  Are we, like the atheists say, just clinging to some spiritual sweetener to ease the bitter pill of living?  Especially when all living means eventual death?  Do we come to Jesus just for temporary relief of minor aches and suffering?

Perish the thought.

“43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit.” (Luke 6)

“48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” (John 4)

“It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, 4 while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” (Heb 2)

God is testifying through the signs and wonders to whom Jesus is so we may see and believe!  What tree he is.  And what tree is he?

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’” (Rev 2)

We’ve spoken of this before but it’s worth repeating…Jesus is the Tree of Life, the Bread of Life, the Water of Life!  All who come to him in faith and humility shall have life abundant, life eternal.  He sits enthroned on the right hand of God in the sanctuary of the new Jerusalem and “through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” (Rev 22)  He is not just meant to be taken once, he is our SOURCE!  He is the Vine, we are the branches, we wither and die without a constant replenishing of Him.  Just as we wither and die if we do not eat, do not drink.  We must remain attached to Him! 

So what does this say about healing?  In Genesis 3 God says to God, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”  Is it possible Adam and Eve had been in the garden all this time and never bothered to eat the fruit which would let them live forever?  Just slipped their minds did it?  Was on their “to do” list for tomorrow maybe?  Not likely.  As the Tree of Life in Revelations shows, this is not a once and done thing, this is a constant replenishment.  There is a new fruit every month.  God has never intended us to be independent of Him.  Just as a husband is never meant to be independent of his wife.  Just as a child isn’t meant to be independent of their parents.  Just as God isn’t even independent of Himself.  Jesus and the Father are in constant communion through the Spirit, perfect love, perfect submission.  Adam and Eve were always meant to eat of the Tree of Life.  This is how they lived forever.  This is what healed their bodies.  This is what the Angel with the flaming sword divided them from after the Fall.

Jesus, the Vine, the Bread, the Water of Life, came to earth then and just touching him in faith and humility was enough to taste the fruit of the Tree again!  There is much more to say, just as Jesus had much more to show us but we aren’t ready to receive it yet.  We are so broken, so lost, so wounded, so starving, so dehydrated and we don’t even have the barest clue as to our need.  We’ve barely scratched the surface in the parable in the suffering and death of our bodies.  Everything we need is Him and He is too much to comprehend at a glance, it will take eternity to learn to love Him but for today, it is enough to crawl on the earth and touch the hem of his garment and let the healing start.

Like Watching Grass Grow

“15 As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.” (Luke 8)

When Rabbit ran out to get snacks and cream soda before the game, he paused the DVR so he wouldn’t miss the first pitch.  When Tortoise ran out to get snacks and sarsaparilla, he packed an overnight bag.  Some things move fast.  Some things…not so much.  God worked on Moses and Joshua eighty years before their hearts and the timing was right for their calling.  Samuel and Jeremiah were just kids when God came a knockin’.  Jesus spent three years training the disciples, no more than that and quite possibly less with Paul and the Holy Spirit came upon John the Baptist in the womb!  All this is to say, God’s timing is not ours.

Much of this is perception.  To an assembly line worker with little reason to hope for and less ambition to ever being much more than an assembly line worker, one day is nothing.  It’s just one more day.  To a mayfly, it’s a lifetime and life is frighteningly short.  Same twenty-four hour period, the emphasis comes from us.  Make that same assembly line worker a mother with her in-laws coming to visit for the first time tomorrow and she suddenly sympathizes with the mayfly.

Some of us have distinct, marvelous, miraculous conversions.  We can name the date.  Friends (and former friends) can say, “Yeah, they used to fill in the blank but then they found Jesus.”  Praise God, He filled in the blank with His Body and Blood!  The change felt like it happened in an instant.  God’s Spirit crashed on us like a wave!  We emerged from the water something totally new.  Now we are in the glorious Anno Domini Nostri Iesu! 

Others of us, myself included, it’s a bit murkier.  Raised in the church, I have always believed and felt myself to be a child of God.  There was no date I can point to as Before Christ.  It’s been more of a climb on a wooded mountain with stunning overlooks to show me how far God has brought me.  A fitful, uneven learning process in God’s school of Grace for a woeful student.  Some of our journeys will look like Rabbit’s with Mayfly’s sense of the shortness of time.  Some of us will plod along like Tortoise, barely sensing the distance traveled or the time passing.  We will blink and open our eyes in eternity.  Albeit we will go through times of both.

And Jesus knows this.  Heck, this is the first time I’ve read the Parable of the Sower and noticed the word “patience” at the end.  Which leads me to wonder, whose patience are we talking about here?  The soil’s or the Sower’s?

So to fruit and farmers.  Mark doesn’t include the word “patience.”  Instead, he follows the Parable of the Sower with a parable Luke does not.  “26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4)  This is not a picture of instant gratification.  Whoever the Farmer is here, Jesus or us, and I could make arguments for either so God being God, it’s probably both, he does not expect fruit the same day he drops the seed.  He knows there is much work to be done.  Much which must go right, sunlight and rain, and much which must not happen at all, pests and blight, before he will be tasting the fruit of his labor.

Now here’s the hitch in this holy harangue; “22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, *PATIENCE*, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control”.  (Gal 5)  There are not many fruits of the Spirit.  This is not gifts where you get joy and I get self-con.. (yeah, I can’t even pretend I get self-control for the sake of illustration) and I get gentleness.  The fruit of the Spirit is not myriad.  It is one.  It is a multi-vitamin.  All of these attributes are in the one fruit God is growing in the floodplain of our souls.  Now, did one stand out to you?  Maybe as you read the list, one quality leapt off the page at you?  Perhaps the fourth one?

Patience, which we need to grow the fruit, is in the fruit we are trying to grow!  Ain’t that a kick in the caboose?  We have to grow the fruit we need to have in order to grow the fruit!  Chickens and Eggs! 

All that is to say this: when life gets you down, when God feels distant, when sin feels overwhelming, when your spiritual journey is waiting at the station or worse, you just looked up and realized you are on the wrong train going the wrong direction and have been for the last forty years, when all this talk of faith showing itself in obedience brings you guilt, when you cannot bear to watch the news or sitcoms or reality shows or even turn on your teevee because of how far from God we’ve become as a nation or a world, when you don’t feel like praying and then feel guilty for not feeling like praying, when a conversation ends and you know, you KNOW you should have included Jesus in it but didn’t, when the money runs out, when you doubt your calling or even if you were called in the first place, when the devil on your shoulder doesn’t seem to have an angelic counterpart on the opposite shoulder, when you’ve given in, given out and given up, when all seems lost, when night just won’t end; remember this…

In Genesis 3 God told Adam,

“cursed is the ground because of you;


    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;


    and you shall eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your face


    you shall eat bread,


till you return to the ground,

         for out of it you were taken;”

This means all those things are to be expected.  Life is hard now.  Growing fruit is hard now for us…

But it’s just as cursed for GOD!  Did God curse the ground as a punishment?  Or was He just telling Adam what Adam’s sin had done?  For them both!  For now, God, who planted good crop in Adam and Even, had tares among His wheat.  The love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control He was growing would come with much more work now, at much greater cost to Himself!  It would cost His own Son!  For Jesus would be planted in the ground.  At the cross he would lovingly, joyfully, peacefully, patiently, kindly, goodly, faithfully, gently and in full control of himself and all the vengeful hosts of Heaven who wanted to rip us limb from limb, fall to the ground and die, be planted in the earth and three days later be taken out of it!  And from this one seed, a tree is growing, a vine is growing and spreading out branches to cover the whole Earth!  Nothing can stop Him!  Nothing can impede Him!  What He has begun, He will complete.  You are His!  He will bring you to fruition!

Just be patient.

Shine on you Crazy Diamonds

“16 “No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. 17 For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. 18 Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.”” (Luke 8)

Jesus, the smartest man who ever lived, though never at a loss for words when describing the kingdom of God, never comes out and says exactly what it is.  Exactly what it will be like.  He mixes and matches metaphors to fit the given situation.  Some of this may be so that, “‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’”  But the larger reason is probably because it is so far beyond anything we’ve ever experienced, nothing he said would even come close to conjuring up the right picture in our heads.  Don’t believe me?  Ask Ezekiel, Zechariah and John the Revelator.  Like describing light to a man born blind, we just do not have the context to know what the kingdom is.

Jesus tells us though we yet lack the understanding of what it is, we can already begin to see what it does.  Little by little, like a slowly breaking dawn or a lamp that is turned up by degrees, we see more and more.  Hidden things are made manifest, secrets are brought to light.  This is not from us.  Our wisdom.  We did not make the light; the light is given to us. 

“2 The people who walked in darkness


    have seen a great light;


those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,


    on them has light shone.” (Is 9)

“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”  (John 1)

As handy as it is to know what light is and what it does, it’s what we do with the light we’re given that is paramount!  Day has come and we must work while it is day.  Just like dawn is given to the whole world, God’s light which John tells us is the life in Jesus, is given to the whole world, it’s what we do with it, how the soil of our hearts receives it, which matters.  We have a part to play, “8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light.” (Eph 5) 

Who says the Bible is against science?  Here’s Paul, over a thousand years before Descartes, telling us how light works. In as much as it depends on us, we must respond, one way or the other.  Darkness retreats from the light, hides from the light, hides its deeds from the light.  The children of the light will reflect it and more!  And not just reflect, we take it in, like lanterns, the flame of God will burn in us and on us!  And here in Luke, Jesus promises as we take it in, more and more will be given to us!

This is why we must be the fourth soil!  “But,” the soil cries, “did I make myself?  Can I plow myself?  Can I weed myself?  I am but dirt!  God made me what I am and I am helpless against Him!”  Au contraire mon frere!  “12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Rom 8)  “5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  (1John 1)  The more light we are given, the more we see our sin, the more we are faithful to confess our visible sin, the more light he gives us, the more light he gives us, the more we see our sin…  a wheel of purification, rolling us towards paradise, rolling us towards Him!  Making us dizzy, yes, but also making us a pure and spotless bride!

But it is not just for ourselves!  Lest we forget, “14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 5)

We are given light to be light so that all may see the Light!  We serve the Light.  It is by the Light we view all things… “22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matt 6)  We will view all things through the lens, by the light of the one we serve.  The one we love!  If it is our selves, our happiness, our comfort, our security, then it will be darkness.  If however, the Light has come and set us free from our darkness and healed our eyes and we turn and love Christ then we love the Light.  And if by that light and through him we see and love the Father, then, my brothers and sisters, a new and glorious day has dawned! 

Shine on you crazy diamonds!

Let's get dirty

“4 And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, 5 “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. 6 And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. 8 And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold.” As he said these things, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Luke 8)

I’m gonna skip right over verses 1-3.  It’s not that I don’t see anything there, all scripture is God breathed.  I’m sure there’s plenty for us to consider in a short description of how Jesus traveled and with whom he traveled.  (Did the “sinner” from chapter 7 tag along?  What must it have been like when this troop of at least twenty people showed up in town?  How did the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager meet Jesus?)  It’s just, given my present season of unemployment, I don’t want anyone thinking I’m saying women should be supporting me. 

What is infinitely more useful to us here is WHY Jesus was traveling.  “8 Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.”  Luke, I’m finding, is delightfully structured.  From here to verse twenty-one, he follows one theme-the Word of God.

Jesus is sowing his seed.  Freedom for the captives!  A light to those living in darkness!  Come without money, buy bread from Him.  Humble yourselves and fall on God’s mercy and He is faithful to forgive, seventy-times seven!  All who come are welcome!  The outcasts are now Sons and Daughters!  The year of the Lord’s favor has begun!  Good News!  No more religion!  No more, what-you-have-to-do!  Now it’s what-God-has-done!

But Jesus is no fool, he’s no sparkle-eyed naïf, so sure his message is going to unilaterally change the world overnight.  He knows how his seed will be received.  Some hearts are too hard.  Too set in their ways.  Too settled into their systems.  Too packed and full to receive something so … unsettling.  Seeds sprout, they push things aside, they demand nutrients, water, resources the ground had other designs for.  It is not just the hostile atheist whose ground is too hard, anyone can be too full for Jesus.  There the seed will lay on the surface, un-embraced, unloved by the soil, where any unclean bird (demon) can come and snatch it away.

Some hearts will receive it joyfully… at first.  It’s novel!  It’s new!  It’s exciting!  We’re gonna change the world!  I’m loved!  Then the seed starts demanding those nutrients to live.  The root reaches down and touches something hard.  Some desire.  Some coping mechanism.  Some habit.  Some lust.  Some pain.  Some addiction.  Some one.  Some thing, which cannot exist with the Word and the heart has a choice to make.  Grab onto this seed, this newcomer, this disturbing revelation or hold onto the known.  Sure, it’s abusive, it’s killing me, it’s wrong, it can’t last but it’s mine.  The pain, the cold comfort I know is better than the possibly painful cure I don’t.  Unfed, unloved, the seed withers and dies.

Some hearts accept the seed just fine… as long as it’s willing to grow in the garden with the other seeds.  They are generous hearts.  All plants, all philosophies have merit.  Come Jesus, you’ll fit right in over here in the corner next to my ambitions and my other concerns.  Watch out for those thorns!  Haha, aren’t they cute when they draw blood?  The Word is in competition here.  There’s only so much water and nutrient to go around.  There’s too much shade and not enough Son.  No one weeds this garden of weeds.  The fruit growing here is not good for eating.  It blesses no one.  The Word is even very little benefit to the soil itself.  Easily forgotten amidst the competing foliage.  Tragedy, trial and suffering come and this heart is as lost as the unbeliever when the true tragedy is the Truth, Comfort, Peace and Love it craves is right there, hidden among the thorns.

Then there’s the heart Jesus is looking for.  Soft, broken, torn up by the plows of life, soaked by the rain, flooded by the river every time it overflows its banks, all of the rocks it leaned on, held onto, was sure of; all of the plants it hoped in, dreamed of, nurtured ripped out and removed.  Forgotten.  Fallow.  Empty.  Hungry! 

And the seed falls.  The seed is embraced!  The seed is fed.  Sheltered.  Loved!  Unchallenged, it grows without competition.  Everything the soil has belongs to the seed and everything the seed has belongs to the soil until there is so much fruit, the heart overflows! 

Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!

Twelve...

The Cup of What?

(idea from Dan Allender)

Take off, eh.