From Hear to There

Let’s start with I am not preacher, I am not a teacher, I am not good student, in fact, I can’t figure out the most basic magic tricks.  Those shells, and the little thing underneath one or all of them, I haven’t a clue.  The second you tell me to keep my eye on it, it’s gone.  

But what I am NOT is stupid.  What I am is quieter than I appear, louder than I should be and more stubborn than what is good for me.  I hear, I ignore, and then, only because of a Very Strong Right Arm on my head, I bow, and I listen. 

I was told once by someone that I “just don’t respect the process.”  He was right, I didn’t because THAT process was stupid and a waste of time.  But the process above:  Hear; Ignore; Bow and Listen, I love that process. There is something about a process that contemplates “the good of all” that makes it less of a process and more of a really narrow, grassy, cool summer path.

What prompted me to write again--I only do rarely because frankly I don’t have much that I want to hear me say--is the thinking about the process of what makes a sacrifice.  Someone said to me recently that they “have never sacrificed anything for God.”  Wow, I thought what a heathen.  What a sad lost soul.  I kind of had a "Thank you that I am not like this wretch" moment.  Right then a process began. I felt a Strong Right Arm, firmly pressing not on my neck, not gently tugging on my heart, but crushing from me the life of which I was so proud.  And a voice, loud and strong and angry.  And I knew, like I did when I was a boy, I was in trouble because I was wrong.

It was the pressure from the hand, the press with anger on my entire person, near panic, near failure, utter loss.  I had never really sacrificed anything for God either.  So in total darkness I asked, what does it look like?  That is one of my favorite questions because you can’t answer it with trite, stupid replies.  You have to describe it in words that are visible and understandable.  And they can’t be under a shell.  They can’t include, “look over here.” 

I thought about what a sacrifice really was.  Typically a lamb.  It was to be killed, bled, cut up, burned and totally eliminated.  One right after the other, death after death after death, because the “Good” could not be fully satiated.  Not yet.

So I asked myself, what makes a sacrifice.  The friend who rightly said that they “have never sacrificed…” was right.

I set out to list all of the things I have sacrificed for God. And the list is absolutely astonishing because it is identical to my friend’s.  So I knew I have to change that.  And then the press of the Strong Right Arm came down on me again.  And this time, I felt real terror. 

It is not the Sacrifice that matters; it is the One that makes the sacrifice.  And I knew in a flash, a serious flash, a blink of an eye, I neither have an appropriate sacrifice, NOR DO I WANT TO BE A SACRIFICE! 

"I heard a ROAR and I looked and I saw a Lamb standing as if slain"  A sacrifice I cannot make, a sacrifice I do not want to make, a sacrifice I do not want to be made.  And that lamb reaches out with His strong right arm and touches my head and then I hear, I bow, and I listen.  A whole new process, allowing me to make it from "Hear" to There.

What's in a name?

What a totally rewarding year.  My son got married to a fabulous, Godly woman who will help him carry on our family name.  That is HUGE!  My youngest is getting married next month to another young, Godly woman.  And my oldest boy will be married soon to a beautiful Christian woman that
is precious and makes him smile like he did when he was a boy (with real joy and a slightly diabolical bent).  On top of that, my oldest brother is alive and healing after a terrible accident.

I have an adversary in the business world that is angry at me and thinks I have really been out to get him.  It’s not true, but it is how he feels so he is fighting back.  Against nothing really, but he is fighting.  At first I was mad, then I took stock of the situation. 

What a sad situation he has.  He was abandoned by his father and mother.  He was taken in by a Sacramento Businessman and raised without rules.  He is, for all intents and purposes, an orphan.  His adoptive father threatened to sue him in court if he used his last name.  It is tragic at best and a tragedy that I can’t take part in.

My father on the other hand, provided for me, wrestled with me and loved my mother until the day he went to heaven.  I was allowed to bear his name from the day of my birth and that was a badge of honor to him.  What a life I was given.  While others are despised by family, I was made a part of one. 

I came across a letter my father typed to himself 47 years ago wherein my father states "God's blessings to me and my family is unabounding, and yet as is said of the disciples, 'they forgot the miracle of the five thousand.' It seems that we shrink in our faith as we encounter the obstacles of life. Allowing others to be our assurance." [sic]   As I read that I thought how proud I am of him and how blessed I am to have been his son, to watch as he and my mother raised us in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  No threat of loss of our name.

Then I realized that I have a more valuable name that I am allowed to bear, in part because of Mom and Dad, but more because of a great God and Father who took dead and lifeless bones and breathed life into them and called him His child.  Not based on any personal merit in the man, it was a gift.  And I can say with my father “God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart."

Our Days are Numbered

You tell me.  What are your thoughts about it?  Have you looked it up?  These are the questions and comments we would get when we had a question about anything, but mostly Scripture.  Dad loved to read, and talk about the Scripture.  Dad and Mom, never let us think lazy.  He would not offer an answer when the world was our encyclopedia.  We needed to bring something to the conversation and he would gladly discuss it, dare I say debate it?

People have only so many days to live, but what people do and think and ask during those days can live beyond them.  18,108 days ago, I was given to Jim and Dee Lewis, I am forever their son.  How they lived, how they loved has kept right on living in and through me each and every hour for 434,605 hours.  That’s ominous if you think about it, and thanks to dad and mom, I think about it a lot.  What will live on after you?  That’s what I ask myself.  What have I been doing for 434,605 hours?  As I look back, I think so many things.  I dislike myself more and more with every thought.  I wish I could hide.

After about the first 3,650 days of my life, Dad used to take us on Sundays to the local Convalescent hospital where we would sing, and laugh and feel sick and watch as people at the very end of their days would “Well up” as Dad would say.  They cried, as Mom played the piano and 5 kids sang “Why should I feel discouraged?  Why should the shadows fall?  Why should my heart feel lonely, and long for heaven, and home?  When Jesus is my portion, my constant friend is He.  His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”   They cried as dad proclaimed to them that Jesus loved, could and would save them from eternal death, if they would only reach out to Him and ask Him to forgive them.  They would forever be sons and daughters.  Probably some heard, by God’s grace, and believed.  Who knows, but Dad and Mom did the work of an evangelist in those days.  That is how they lived and loved.

365 days ago, my Dad had 2 days left on earth.  24 hours earlier he left me a message because I did not have my phone with me.  “If you have time, maybe you can call the Neurologist and check on his findings from the tests. Don’t feel like you have to, I know you’re busy.”   He had lived 27,304 days the last 40 were the most challenging.

How could it be that the events of 15,000+/- days ago, singing, and laughing and crying during that simple little church service for dead people, at the end of their lives, could mean so much more to me, than it could ever have meant to them.  By God’s great grace I can look back, on those hours that formed me because of how a man and his wife, just a man and his wife, lived and loved.  And those Sundays continued on in my life and heart and mind as will that day 363 days ago when that man and his wife read together for the last time Ephesians 4:4-7 "There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it."

Just 2 more days and my Dad would, fall on his knees, with his head bowed low and “well up” and cry out in anguish, mixed with fear, and ask what does all this mean? And then in my mind’s eye dad would feel the fingers on the strong hand of Jesus reach out and lift his chin toward His own face and Jesus would ask dad in reply, What are your thoughts about it?  Have you looked it up? 

He had, more than 18,108 days before, many times.  He is forever a son.

From each according to his ability...

It’s freezing cold and windy out there.  There is not a single cloud above me but there are dark clouds way out there at the edge of the earth and right where the Pacific Ocean ends.  It’s amazing.  The wind is blowing east off the water at about 15 MPH.  The water is crashing hard on the rocky coast and I literally love every sight and sound.


As I sat, and looked out at the water, the wind blowing in my face, freezing my brain, I started thinking about the ocean again.  Did you know there are species of sea life that can not live at 20 or 30 feet below the surface?  They have to be miles below to survive.  Still others can’t live below 30 to 50 feet below the surface for too long.   There are multiple strata of Sea life that require different things from the ocean and give different things to the ocean so that the circle of life can continue.  Each is appointed to his lot.

As I looked at the water and thought, I saw a red-tailed hawk, there are lots of them out here on the west coast, soaring in one spot.  It is alone in the sky to my view.  There is no other bird flying overhead, or on the ground, or even at this moment in the ocean.  It is all by itself in this endeavor.  It did not move an inch; it just hovered, freezing cold wind blowing in its face.  It steels itself, immovable, tipping its wings to keep the wind flowing under it keeping it aloft while tilting its tail side to side to hold it steady.  Six minutes passed and I almost forgot about the ocean.  In an instant its tail tipped and its head pointed down to the earth.  It dropped like an arrow and deeply sank its talons into the flesh of a small field mouse.  The hawk now readied itself to eat.  Then an amazing thing happened, it was not 2 seconds and in flew a large black Raven to claim some portion of the prey. It was amazing.

It struck me that here you have in the ocean so many species each living out its life, each is appointed to its place and each cannot live or thrive outside of its place.   And with this backdrop to this scene of one hawk, willing to risk everything, work hard and brave the storm and claim the prize a Black Raven watched and lay in wait to do what it does best, steal.