Kathleen

She had messy down. In fact, she was the first person I had ever met who made messy look acceptable somehow. 

It was the early 2000s, and culture hadn't really hit the "it's okay to not be okay" movement yet. Nobody was talking about messy being normal, let alone good. We were a world torn between an older generation that was quite a bit more stoic about these sorts of things, more proper, more put together...and this almost championing of dysfunction that we have now. You know, where it's kind of trendy to be a train wreck and unapologetic for it. 

At the same time, my world was torn between everything I'd always known and the things I was coming to find out. I was just starting to commit myself to Christianity, still wasn't entirely sure about this God, and was perfectly certain that my life wasn't clean enough to ever really fit in here. I was simply too dirty, simply too broken, simply too...lost. 

Enter Kathleen. 

She was one member of a traveling troupe of Christians known for their drama skits. This troupe showed up at nearly every event that my youth group attended, so I became very familiar with them very quickly. 

Kathleen's characters in their skits seemed to frequently be, well, messy. The girl with questions. The girl with a past. The girl with a story. The girl that would probably be shunned everywhere. In fact, the girl who talked about how friendless and shunned and lonely she was. 

The girl who sounded a lot like me, although I wouldn't have said it out loud. Not back then. 

But I'm thankful for her example. In a time when we weren't talking about how it was okay to not be okay, the way Kathleen portrayed her broken characters on stage made me feel like maybe there was a place for me in this Christianity after all. Maybe there was a hope for me. Maybe there was a love for me. (And shout out to Ryan and Drew, who so very often played the Jesus characters, for loving Kathleen out loud.) 

I think about this example often. I try more often even than that to copy it. It's because of a witness like this that I understand how important it is for us to be real about ourselves, about our lives, about our humanity. When we are authentic about who we are, we give others a welcome into their life, as well. When others see me living my messy, broken, weird life and I'm just real about it, they understand how real Jesus is, too. 

They understand that maybe there is a place for them after all. Maybe there is a hope. Maybe there is a love.

I want to give that gift to them...because I know what it feels like to receive it. 

Interesting how that all comes from the example of a woman who was real-ly just playing a character, isn't it? 

God Eternal

Are you looking forward to heaven? 

Most of us are.

Most of us like talking about that glorious day when pain will be no more, when creation will be restored, when we will know as we were meant to know and see as we were meant to see. We talk about that day when work will be fruitful instead of laborious, when love will be pure, when joy will be complete. 

We talk about heaven, and we talk about the experience that we're going to have there as creatures of a loving God. We talk about a New Jerusalem and streets paved with gold. We talk about a mansion with our name on it, with our address right outside on the mailbox. We talk about reuniting with loved ones long passed, with furry friends gone before, with unborn babies we never met. 

We talk about heaven, and it is glorious. Glorious. 

But we so seldom talk about the glory. 

Friends, what makes heaven so glorious is not that it is perfect. It is not that we will be perfect. It is not that we will be perfect. What makes heaven so glorious is that the Lord Himself is there. 

He will dwell with us, as He did in the garden. He will walk with us, as He always intended to. We will see Him face to face, as we did when we first opened our human eyes. The Lord will be there in all of His fullness, in all of His glory, and friends...God is better than heaven. (Psalm 148:13)

God is better than the best dreams we have of what eternity is going to be like. God is better than the most wonderful visions we have of what it will be like to walk through those pearly gates. God is better than anything that might reflect or twinkle off of those shiny streets of gold. The address on our mailbox is glorious only because we're living in God's neighborhood. 

You can walk across the street in heaven (metaphorically, of course), and borrow a cup of sugar from the Lord Himself. 

And that's better than any of the (admittedly) good visions we already have of the place. I promise. 

So does His Word. 

God as Coach

Remember when the Israelites left Egypt? In their minds, they wanted to head straight toward the Promised Land, but God knew that wasn't the best plan. He knew that if His people encountered all of those other strong nations right off the bat, they would probably lose heart, question themselves, question their God, and turn back to Egypt.

So He took them around the long way (which became the really long way) in order to build their strength and confidence. 

He started with leading them to a place where they thought that all they could see was the Egyptian army in hot pursuit. On one said, Pharoah and all of his chariots; on the other side, the massive body of water we know as the Red Sea. If ever there was a time that a people would think they would have to fight, this would be it. We can imagine Israel trying to calculate their chances, trying to figure out just how much fight they had in them...only to have God step in and show them how He fights. 

They watched their first enemies drown. 

They watched their second enemies defeated by marching in circles and shouting. 

Do you see what's happening here? God is slowly building their confidence as they start to encounter their enemies. He doesn't expect them to go out and fight some all-out major war right off the bat; He knows they don't have the heart for that. The stamina for that. The faith for that. So He builds it, slowly, over the course of the exodus and the entrance into the Promised Land. Slowly, but surely, He trains His people to fight. 

That way, when the time comes, they will not only be ready, but they'll know they are ready. 

This is the theme of Psalm 144 - Blessed be the Lord, who is my rock. He gives me strength and skill in battle.... He stands before me as a shield. He subdues people under me. It's really worth reading the whole thing. 

But the whole thing is about how God teaches us how to approach battle. How He strengthens us for the fights that are ahead. He stands with us, yes. He goes before us, yes. He follows behind us, yes. But everything God is doing in our lives is making us stronger for the thing that's coming up that we can't even see yet - physically stronger, mentally stronger, spiritually stronger. He's training our instincts to fight His way so that when the time comes, we'll not only be ready, but we'll know we're ready. 

And we'll know we're ready because we know Who is in our corner. 

Like the coach in the boxing ring, He's right there. He knows we've put in the work. He knows we've followed our training. He knows we're still going to get weary and sometimes, it might even look like we're losing. But He's got us. Because He knows that we know that He's got us and that He's made us ready for this. Even this.

God's Name

It's God's story; we are all but characters written by His divine pen. 

Remember in the Exodus when God got angry with His people? Moses pled with Him not to destroy them in the wilderness. Not because they were somehow worthy of the mercy, but because of what it would do to God's name for the nation of Israel to vanish. The whole world, Moses told the Lord, would be talking about 1) how God brought His people into the wilderness just to destroy them and 2) how He was wholly incapable of redeeming them from their wickedness. 

If God were to act the way that human behavior seems to demand, His name would not be great among the nations. It's that simple. 

So what we have is a story in which God is building His own name and reputation. A story in which He is using human beings to magnify His glory. A story in which He is using us to reveal Him so that all the world will see and hear and know the goodness of the Lord. 

How's that going? 

This is where it gets good. 

Because when you read God's story, one of the things you notice real quick is that His story is our stories. He names us by name. He tells, in depth, the stories of sinners (and a few saints), priests and prophets, kings and servants, a ragtag band of brothers. Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Simon, Andrew, James, John, Judas, Paul. Timothy has a couple of books of his own. Obscure folks like Titus and Philemon. Elijah and Elisha. Naaman. 

We could go on forever naming the names from the Bible, telling their stories. Jephthah. Gideon. Deborah. Need we go on? Even the non-religious, non-believing world knows many of these names and stories. 

And yet, the world isn't talking about Moses. The world isn't talking about Peter. The world isn't talking about John. As much as the world owes its faith to Paul's missionary journeys, the world isn't even talking about Paul. 

The world is talking about God. 

He spends His story naming names and talking about us and demonstrating His goodness through our names, and it's doing exactly what He intended it to do - making His name great (Psalm 138:2). He's given us all of these human characters to relate to, to identify with, so that through them, we might relate to and identify with Him. 

How's that going? It's going great. 

We're talking about Him, aren't we? Of all the names in all the stories in all the Bible and all the world, we're talking about exactly three: Yahweh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. 

Nailed it. 

God Alone

You've probably heard about the wonders of science and all of the things that it is capable of. Whenever someone goes into remission from cancer, when a broken bone is set, when a faulty joint is replaced, we praise advances in science for the ability to heal. When we look at communications coming online for persons in remote parts of the planet, assistive devices for the disabled, self-driving cars, we praise advances in science for making life "better." When we are able to remove plastics from the oceans, purify water, restore natural habitats, and bring species back from the brink of extinction, we praise science...again...for all that it enables us to do. 

But hear me on this: as much as we like to praise science, the truth is that there are a lot of things even about what we call "science" that we don't understand. And there are many more things that our "science" cannot explain. 

These are what we call miracles. 

And God is the only one who works miracles. (Psalm 136:4)

I have worked in medicine long enough to tell you, without hesitation, that there are things happening in the world that all of our advances in science would never get us anywhere close to. There are things happening that are a dozen steps ahead of where we are. While we're still trying to understand the problem and come up with a course of action, miracles are taking place that beat us to the punch. 

I could tell you stories even from my own journey - times when science wasn't sure what to do, but by complete "accident," stumbled upon something anyway. It looks like science did it, but science had no idea what they were doing. They were throwing molecules at the wall and hoping something sticks. 

God, on the other hand, had a plan. 

One of the most confusing narratives from all the Bible for me is back in Exodus, when Moses and Aaron are performing God's miracles for Pharaoh and his magicians are coming behind them and performing the exact same signs. Moses and Aaron turned all the water in the land to blood, then we're told the magicians did the same thing. How do you know? If all the water is already blood, where did the magicians find any water leftover to prove they could do the same thing? If the land is already covered with frogs, how do you know your magicians produced even more frogs? (And why, by the way, would that be a victory?) 

I don't understand, with the completeness and totality of God's miraculous actions, how anyone could say someone else did the same thing at the same time. 

And then, I came to live in the 21st Century. Here we are, living an Egypt life, always claiming that our "science" is responsible for the things that God has done. That our science is just as good, maybe even better. That our science is the thing that's saving us. 

Friends, we have already been saved. And as much as we sometimes hate to admit it, there are things in this world our science just will never understand. We're standing over here trying to count frogs and claiming we alone have saved some water, but the truth is, these things were already done. They are absolute miracles. 

And God is the only one who works miracles. 

Lynn

She always called me "Sunshine." 

We didn't meet, not officially, until years after my smile was gone, but still, she called me Sunshine. 

Lynn was my middle school science teacher, and we hit it off immediately. We shared many of the same interests, and she was able to put her passions to work in my heart and help me develop some of the gifts that I didn't even know that I needed at the time. Gifts like public speaking. (As an atheist child, I would never have imagined I would later use this gift in ministry.) 

In my early years, I was known for my smile. Everyone was always talking about what a happy kid I was. No one could have imagined the cares that were weighing on my shoulders. 

But by the time I met Lynn, it had been years since I had been smiling. Life had taken its toll on me, and for a dozen reasons that aren't really important to share right here, that smile had been wiped firmly off my face. 

Yet, there must have been something.... 

Almost 30 years have passed since middle school (hard to believe, I know, but here we are), and I'm in a place in my soul where I'm known for my smile again. Someone at work recently accused me of always being happy-go-lucky, always smiling, always in a good mood. I laughed a little and told her no, I'm happy-go-blessed. 

But I have that thing in my soul back. It wasn't easy. It wasn't pretty. The darkness that I know, I can't unsee, but the way that God wove my heart together is stronger than all of it. And there is at least one person in the world who never stopped seeing it, even when it was deeply buried by grief and trauma and pain and insecurity. 

Lynn. 

I never understood why she called me Sunshine. It's a strange thing, but would you know that all these years later, she still does. We occasionally have the opportunity to run into one another, and every time, without fail, I'm immediately Sunshine. I still have the little gift she gave me that one time that I merited a reward trip through the school - ice skating and lunch at Planet Hollywood. Lynn bought me a little piggy bank and on the bottom, it says, "You are my sunshine." She later gave me a pillow that says the same thing; I still have that, too. 

Somehow, in a time when no one else could see it and when the world seems to have forgotten and when I was too weighed down to even look in the mirror and see it myself, Lynn continued to see that sparkle in my soul and to call me by it. To make it part of my name even at a time when I was doing my best to be invisible. 

It's because of her that I remember to remind others of the same - of the things they can't see, but are so true about them. Of the things that God has woven into their souls, even at a time when it's not particularly manifest. Lynn is the reason I look for ways to remind others of who they really are, no matter what life is throwing at them in this season. 

Because she has so faithfully reminded me of who I am. 

A Later Savior

Like Reuben, I am sometimes too scared - too intimidated, too nervous, too proper - to stand up in the moment for what is right, especially if I seem to be on the wrong side of the prevailing winds, but I like to think I always have a plan for a later grace. 

Unfortunately, like Reuben, I often find that my later grace is too late. 

The moment has passed, the opportunity is gone, the damage is done. I'm simply too late. 

And why wouldn't I be? I am, in fact, nothing more than a limited being. 

And that's the thing, isn't it? I get all these grand plans for how I'm going to do good in the world, for how I'm going to set things right, for how I'm going to put things back together, but the truth is that all of my plans are lacking one very important thing: omniscience. I simply can't see what I can't see, and I often don't even know what it is that I'm missing until it's too late and my plan has already failed. 

There are moments in my life that I regret. Immensely. And the moments that I regret most in my life are not moments of huge, glaring personality flaws. They are not moments of evil. They are not moments in which I did unspeakably horrible things. Rather, the moments I regret most in my life are my Reuben moments - the moments when I knew the right thing to do and didn't do it. 

Because I was going to do it later, but it never happened that way. 

As I've reflected on this since reading Reuben's story anew this new year, I've realized that when I try to be a Reuben, what I'm really doing is trying to be a Jesus. I'm trying to be the savior of the situation. I'm trying to be the person who rescues someone else. I'm trying to be the one who sets all things right, puts them exactly the way they're supposed to be. I'm trying to be the hero. 

But that job is already taken. 

I'm very much a Reuben, but I'm nowhere near a Jesus, no matter how much I try to be. And it's not my job to be. Every time I try to put myself in a position for a secret grace, what I am really doing is failing to put the already-accomplished grace in its proper place. When I want to swoop in and save the day, I'm really taking someone's eyes off the Cross and what Jesus has already done. 

When I want to be the one to heal them, to set things right in their life, what I'm not doing is pointing them to the One who already has. 

Oh, I like to say that I am. I like to say that I'm doing it all in Jesus's name so that He gets the glory, but the truth is that something in me wants to be the one to reach down and pull you out of the pit so that I get the glory. So that you know that I'm the one who is coming to rescue you. Yes, down the line, there's Jesus, who motivates me plan these secret graces. 

But the truth is that if I was really doing as good of a job at representing Jesus as I want to be, then my graces wouldn't be secret. I wouldn't be a Reuben at all. I wouldn't be planning to come back later to rescue you; I'd be speaking up right here and now, asking the crowds what exactly their problem is and challenging them on their authority to throw the first stone. 

If I was really doing as good of a job at representing Jesus as I want to think that I am, I would look more like Jesus and less like Reuben. 

Sometimes, though, I'm just a Reuben. I confess that plainly. And when I confess that plainly, it convicts me. 

Lord, may I be more like Jesus. 

Reuben

Which Bible character are you? 

When we're asked this question, we usually gravitate toward some of the big names. I'm Peter, because I'm a bit impulsive but I have good intentions. Or I'm Paul because God turned my life entirely around. I'm David, fighting giants and taking names. I'm Moses, thrust into a leadership position I didn't ask for but doing my best. I'm Jeremiah, His word shut up in my bones and burning right through me. I'm John, the one whom Jesus loves. 

Anybody but Judas. Am I right? 

It's not a question I've honestly thought much about. Until, that is, this past week or so when I was reading through Genesis and it hit me: 

I'm Reuben. 

Reuben was the oldest son of Jacob. Jacob married Leah, who he didn't really love, after a trick by Laban, and because she was unfavored, the Lord opened her womb and let her have a number of children for him. The first of those children was Reuben. 

In his one really grand and memorable scene, the one in which he plays the biggest role and we see the most of his personality, Reuben is in the fields with his brothers when Joseph, the most beloved of Jacob's children, shows up. Joseph has already been telling them about all these dreams he's had where he's the best and they're...not. So the brothers decide they're going to kill him, but Reuben steps in and says, maybe let's not kill him. Maybe let's just throw him in this empty cistern and let nature take its course. 

His plan was to come back later and pull Joseph out of the empty cistern and thus, save his life. In fact, he does come back to do just that, but the boy is gone.

The boy is gone because when Reuben turned his back, when he stepped away to start scheming his grand, graceful return, the other brothers sold Joseph to a caravan of traders heading for Egypt. By the time Reuben got to the cistern, it was simply too late. No amount of grace would bring Joseph back. 

I am Reuben. 

I am the kind of person who likes to scheme grace. I'm not really that great at confrontation, so sometimes, I'll just stand by because I'm not strong enough to stand up to you and win. But in my heart, I'm secretly planning that moment when I come back later and put everything back the way it's supposed to go. When I step in and fix things. When grace wins and you'll never know it was me. And I think I'm a good person while I'm planning all of this.  

But...like Reuben, I have found in my life that I am sometimes too late. That by the time I put my plan in motion to redeem the situation, it's too late. The moment has passed. The opportunity is gone. It's not possible any more. I stood by and I went along because I didn't feel strong enough to stand up to you, and now, it's too late because no amount of secret grace in all the world will fix this. It's over. It's done with. I missed it. 

I messed it up. 

Am I the only one? Of course not. After all, the Bible tells us there was Reuben long before there was ever me. And I am him. 

But do I have to be? 

Beer Lahai Roi

When Genesis tells us where Isaac settled after the death of his father, Abraham, it doesn't tell us the significance. It just names the place. It trusts that its original reader both had a sense of the geography of the area and also had not forgotten what they had just read a few chapters before. 

But we...we are a people who are prone to think that the biblical language is a foreign language, so we skip over all the words that don't sound English. And those are place names. And the human names. And the names of God. And...the important stuff. 

Remember, part of the big promise God made to His people in the Old Testament was a promise of place. It was a promise to bring them back to Canaan, to the Promised Land, and to make them as numerous as the sands on the shores right there. It was to kick out all of the other peoples and make that place home for them. 

So when the Bible names places, those places are part of the promise. 

So it is with Beer Lahai Roi. 

Picture it: you're the promised son of a very old man to whom God made a lot of promises. You probably have spent your whole life hearing about the promises that God made to your dad, and about how you were one of them, but maybe your life isn't at a place yet where you understand what that means for you - maybe you're still young, at least comparatively; trying to establish yourself; looking for your place in the world. And then, your dad dies. You're the promise, but what happens to the promise? Where does it go from here? 

Then, you pick up your young little family and start moving...because that's what you do. You're a bit of a nomad, a shepherd kind of a person with lots of flocks and herds to care for, so moving is just par for the course. So you come to this place, and you settle, and you find out this place is the place. The one you heard about from your cousin, when things looked most desperate. You ask around a little bit to confirm, and this is really it. 

Beer Lahai Roi. 

The well of the God who sees me.

Were you headed this way on purpose? Did you even know? 

We don't know whether Isaac knew this is where he was going, whether he turned toward this place on purpose. We don't know how much of Hagar and Ishmael's connection to here that he knew. We don't know if he and Abraham had been by this well before, if his dad had told him anything about it. Maybe when he arrived, the townsfolk did. You know, the other shepherds who came to water their flocks here. 

However it ended up this way, what a place to settle at a moment in your life that feels, for most of us, most uncertain. The death of a parent is hard. The death of a parent who carried so much promise, such a heavy weight of the burden of God on him...that's got to be harder. To have heard your whole life about how much of the promise runs through you, whether you understand that or not...it's rough. What a heavy weight. 

And then, God brings you here. To this place. This place that is so deeply connected to your own story and at the same time, not so much and yet, its very name is exactly what you need. This well, this specific well, waters your parched soul more than it ever does your flocks. 

The well of the God who sees me. 

Just when you most need to be seen. 

How cool is that?

Hagar's Well

The Bible tells the story of Hagar, Abram's servant who bore him his first son - Ishmael. If you remember the story, you know that God promised Abram that he would become a father, but the promise was taking a little bit too long for Abram's human tastes, so his wife, Sarai, came up with this humanly-brilliant plan where he sleeps with her servant, Hagar, and they make that kid the kid. Certainly, that's what God had in mind, right?

So Abram sleeps with Hagar, she becomes pregnant, she has a child, they name him Ishmael, and the relational tension between Hagar and Sarai becomes so extreme that Hagar runs away. In the wilderness, God comes to speak to her (Genesis 16), and in the process of His command, there is provision in the form of a well - a source of fresh water for a parched soul on the run. 

She names the well Beer-Lahai-Roi - the well of the God who sees me. 

This is where it becomes important to pay attention to the names and places in the Bible. It's so easy, especially in the Old Testament, to read right past these things. So many names, so many places, so little memory. But this is a well that will come back later...and not too much later. 

Hagar has Ishmael, then Sarah has Isaac. (By this time, God has changed Abram and Sarai's names to Abraham and Sarah.) Isaac is the promised child. He is the one through whom God will fulfill all of the things He's said to Abraham over the course of a faithful lifetime. He is the first of the stars in the sky and the sands on the shore. Isaac is the kid. 

Sarah, always jealous, sends Hagar and Ishmael away, and they go on to create a nation of their own, which is always at odds with Isaac's nation, but has a measure of the favor of God nonetheless. Ishmael is, after all, Abraham's son, too. 

It's hard to know for sure how much of Ishmael's story Isaac knew. Ishmael was considerably older than Isaac. The dynamics between Sarah and Hagar were rough, at best (and actually, far worse than that). How much contact the cousins had is hard to know. How much Isaac knew about Hagar's wanderings, we don't know. How often they came in contact over the course of his growing up, or even his life, is a mystery to us. The Bible doesn't tell us. We would probably be safe in saying that he knew some things, but maybe not everything. 

Still, something interesting happens. 

Isaac lives his life, grows up in the Lord, walks with Abraham and learns the way of righteousness. He gets a wife, Rebekah, from his own family, marries her, and grows up to have his own kids. And, as always happens, his father, Abraham, dies. And, as was often the case in the nomadic culture of the Old Testament, after Abraham dies, Isaac picks up and keeps moving. 

And the first place the Bible tells us he settles is...

Beer-Lahai-Roi. 

James

His name was James, and I liked him immediately. 

He was the line cook at a facility that I spent some time in as a kid, a good-natured man with maybe the most genuine smile and easy-goingness I had ever met in my whole life. And he took a liking to me, too. 

Every day, I would go through the line with my tray, and we'd spend the whole time talking and chatting about the most random things. Mostly sports. We were both really into basketball. It wasn't long before he invited me to come down to the gym after lunch and shoot some baskets with him. 

I wasn't sure how the rules of the facility worked. I was new there when I first met James. It was a locked joint - it wasn't exactly the kind of place where one could freely move about. But I asked the staff if I could go down to the gym, that James had invited me, and they smiled and buzzed me out the door. 

I walked down the hall, this great big ramp, by myself and turned into the gym, where James had ditched his hair net and was dribbling a ball around and taking a few warm-up shots. He immediately passed it to me. 

And this became our routine. 

Every day, after lunch, the staff would buzz me out the door and I would walk down the hall to the gym, where James would be warming up. He'd greet me with that authentic smile, pass me the ball, and we'd start shooting around and talking about life. Unlike so many other persons in my life, there was no teasing. Not even sportsman-ish teasing. There was no trash talk. Just solid, pure, 100% encouragement and relationship.  

I treasured those hours with James. 

It didn't occur to me until much, much later in life - actually, until I started working a job with kids myself - the sacrifices James must have made for those hours. There were things to do in the kitchen - leftovers to clean up, dishes to wash, steamers to drain, stock to rotate, stuff to pull for the next meal. He had plenty to keep him busy. 

But he always made time for me anyway. 

I think about those afternoons quite a bit when I have to choose between a task and a person in front of me. Tasks...can wait. And I'm willing to work a little bit harder at my job, at the things that I do, if it means that I don't miss this moment for authentic connection and real relationship with an actual human being right in front of me. You never really know how much those little things mean to the persons on the receiving end of them. 

And if that means that I go back and spend a little more time on the tasks later, then so be it. There will always be dishes to wash. 

You'll never get that basketball court back. 

God Guards You

There have been times in my life when I could have used a protector - someone to stand between me and the bad things, or wicked persons, in this world and create a bit of a shield. Times when I have needed someone bigger than me, stronger than me, wiser than me, more patient than me. 

There have been times when I have needed someone to protect me from myself (which, by the way, is no easy task). 

And there have been times in my life when I have been able to look back and see that Someone was indeed doing this all along. 

It's hard to prove things in the negative. That is, it's extremely difficult to say that something didn't happen that was obviously going to because you can never really prove that it would have happened if that specific intervention didn't take place. One of the most powerful recent examples of this is when they started coming out with all of these estimates of how many persons would have died from Covid without the vaccination. They kept claiming how many lives were saved, how many deaths prevented, by the vaccine, but the truth is, you can't know who would have died and who wouldn't have. They still don't know why some got so sick and others didn't and some died and some didn't. Scientifically, it's just impossible to quantify something that never happened. 

But I can tell you, looking back on my life, that there are a lot of different roads I could be down right now, were it not for some kind of intervention I didn't even recognize at the time but see so beautifully in hindsight. 

And every single one of those instances is the very hand of God. For as the psalms say, the Lord guards you (121:5).

The Lord stands as your protector - getting between you and the bad things, or the wicked persons, of this world. The Lord stands as your shield. The Lord blocks off a path that's not any good for you and forces you down a better way.

The Lord protects you from yourself. Usually through things like humility and confession and grace.

He's willing to stand in the hard places and face the tough things because He's bigger than you, stronger than you, wiser than you, more patient than you. God is uniquely qualified to guard you, to wrap you in His loving arms and create a bit of a shield. A hedge of protection, if we want to use a more spiritual term. 

And He's guarding you right now. Look at what the psalm says - He guards you. Not He has guarded you or He will guard you, but He guards you. Right now. With every breath. In every day. 

Are you at a time in your life when you could use a protector? 

Rest easy, friend. You have one. 

God of Good Things

The Bible tells us to let our yes be yes and our no be no; it's as simple as that. And the reason that it is so simple is because God Himself is the Word and His yes is simply a yes and His no is simply a no, so if we're aspiring to be like our Lord (in whose image we are created), then we have to speak words with the same promise. 

And promise, they have. 

Every single Word that God has spoken has come true. What's even more important than that is that every single Word that God has spoken is good. 

God has done every good thing He has promised. (Psalm 119:65)

When I look back over my life, it's not entirely good. At least, it doesn't look that way on the surface. I've had some struggles. I've had some fights. I've made some mistakes. I...keep making mistakes. I've said some things that I regret, made some promises I haven't kept, acted in ways that were, fundamentally, not good. 

And yet, at the same time, when I look back over my life, I recognize that every good word God has spoken in my life has come to fulfillment. Or it is coming to fulfillment. Or, even if I can't see it coming to fulfillment yet, I believe it in such a way in my soul that I know that it is...whether it makes worldly sense or not. 

I look at my life and, as I said the other day, recognize that God loves me. That He is good to me. And that He really has done every good thing He promised, big and small. 

I think that's what trips us up. We talk about the promises of God, and we end up talking about the big promises of God: His Son, the Cross, the Empty Tomb, the mansion He's building us, the restoration of all things, redemption. And we sort of kind of blow past these promises because some of them are fulfilled (Christ is risen) and some, we're still waiting on, and we do this cute little poetic thing where we call it "the-already-but-not-yet" that we're living in, but God's promises are greater than the big things. 

God's promises are the little things, too. 

The little things like never leaving nor forsaking you. The little things like holding you in His hand. The little things like clothing you better than the birds of the air or the flowers of the field. The little things like making you beautiful, confident, hopeful, strong, loving. 

The little things like making you you and loving you so, so deeply. 

When you think about the promises of God in your life and the good things He's done, what do you think about? 

In what little ways has He been good to you? 

Do you know that His yes is a yes? 

God is Love

I have lived quite a life. Sometimes, I'll be telling a story from something I have experienced, and it will roll into another story, which will roll into another one, and I'll look up to see someone gape-mouthed in front of me, one eyebrow sort of cocked up, and I'll laugh and say, "Didn't you know? God loves me special much." 

I haven't thought about these experiences in quite so positive a light while I've been living most of them, but as the acute phases wear off and things start to settle into a bigger perspective, I look at my life, and I see the fingerprints of divine love all over it. 

Truth be told, the experiences I've had, the strength I now stand in, the character of my spirit, all the things that make me who I am, not a one of them is possible unless God loves me. 

The same is true for you. 

Nothing in your life is possible unless it is God who is loving you. Through the hard times and the easy ones, the good and the bad, the trials and the triumphs, all of it, God has been busy loving you. 

And Psalms confirms that I am right - He loves us (me, you) very much. Special much. (Psalm 117:2)

Sometimes, it's hard to see that in the moment. It's hard to look past the circumstances and see what's going on. It's all we can do to keep our eyes open to see the trees, let alone look for the forest. It's hard, in the dust and the ashes, to remember that God is loving us. 

But He is. 

I wish we could see it from His end, so we could always know, but the only option we have is to see it from our side. From our already-but-not-yet, waiting-and-hoping-and-trusting, longing side where the love isn't always obvious, but if we can slow down, quiet our souls a little, get away from the noise and the mess, we can feel it. Undeniably. We know it in the pits of our souls. 

God loves us special much. 

He always has. He always will. 

He always is. 

God of Miracles

Quick: name a miracle of God. 

Now, name another. 

Got a third?

If you're like most Christians, you've got a whole database of the miracles of God somewhere in your head, or maybe in your heart. Parting of the Red Sea, healing of the blind, resurrection. The Bible is literally full of stories of the miracles of God, and we have read them, heard them, sang them, play-acted them, and flannel-graphed them enough that we know them by heart. 

Now, name a miracle of God from your own life. 

Harder?

Oh, sure, we have stories of the goodness of God. The time He's been better to us than we deserve. The times when He's worked things out for us that we didn't think were possible. The times when we've been healed, restored, redeemed. 

But we wouldn't call those miracles. At least, we usually don't. Those are just stories of God being God, of Him being good, of us living by faith and reaping the benefits of what we've sowed. 

Friend, tell me - why is it a miracle for God to give sight to the blind but not a miracle for Him to give health to your body? Why is it a miracle for Him to part the Red Sea, but not a miracle for Him to make a way for you? Why is it a miracle for God to resurrect Lazarus, but not for Him to fill you with new life? 

Those stories about God, the ones we so easily remember from our own lives, those are miracles. Those are acts of God that break the natural order of things. Those are moments when God has stepped in and found us on the side of the road, the edge of the sea, the grave and done for us exactly what He did in the stories that we're so quick to call miracles...are still miracles. 

Know how I know? 

They're unforgettable. (Psalm 111:4) 

That's why they're so easy for us to recall. If we read them in someone else's story, we'd call them miracles. If we heard someone else recall them so readily, we'd call them miracles. It's just hard, I guess, because we struggle to believe we're worthy of miracles. But..we are worthy and they are miracles. 

And we'll keep telling the story of them over and over and over again. 

Delbert

Others often call me stubborn. Usually because I am just pushing through, or pushing off, something that would give them more pause in their own life. 

Like in last week's story, when Mindy broke my finger with a crowbar, and I just duct taped it together and go back to work. Where does that come from? 

The answer, at least in part, is Delbert. 

Delbert was my elementary school principal, but he was more than that. He was also a friend of the family, having grown up with my grandma's generation. So we were deeply connected before we even met. And even though we had a unique relationship, and I still count him among my friends, there is one moment that has always stood out to me. 

I doubt that Delbert knows how ridiculously often I have thought of this moment, of all the moments that we have shared. 

I was a young teenager, and they were working on relocating an old one-room schoolhouse to the grounds of my elementary school. Delbert, Herb (the head custodian), my dad, and I were primary volunteers on the project. It's where I learned to lay concrete block, at the tender age of 13. Delbert taught me. 

One morning, we were out working on the foundation for the building before we could get the actual structure moved. I was mixing concrete and laying block, and Delbert had moved on to building trusses. All of a sudden, he set his hammer down, walked over to where I was working (dad and Herb were moving materials or something, if I remember right), and told me he needed to go into the elementary building for a minute and he'd be right back. 

I acknowledged his statement and looked up in just enough time to see a blood-soaked rag wrapped around his thumb as he walked away. 

I never heard a whimper. I never heard a curse word. He had set his hammer down calmly and was walking just as calmly. But Delbert had hit his thumb with that hammer and busted it completely open. To my 13-year-old mind, it was a lot of blood. (A couple of decades later, I would bust my own thumb open with a hammer while laying some new flooring, and I can guess based on that that it was a lot of blood.) And he had just walked into the building, wrapped it in some bandages and gauze from the nurses' office just outside his own. 

Then, he came back outside, gave me a thumbs up, and without another word, went back to building trusses. 

That moment has stuck with me. It has inspired me to react to things the way that I do - as truly small things, so often, in the grand scheme of things. 

It may look like there's a lot of blood. It may be throbbing with pain. But it's not a reason to change your character, to get angry, to quit, to stop. It's a reason simply to take a breath, take care of business, and get back to it. 

I talk a lot about the things that are broken in me. They seem important to others, who can't understand why I'm so stubborn and not giving them the due that they deserve. Truth is, so many of the things that seem like a lot of blood to you are truly small things to me. Little hiccups in the grand scheme of things. I probably wouldn't talk about them at all if it were up to me. But I feel a certain sense of pressure from those who don't understand this moment in my story. This moment that has shaped the way that I respond to so very many things. I'm not being stubborn; it really is just such a small thing to me. The kind of thing you just walk in, put a bandage on, and get back to work with. 

It's one of the moments that makes me such a good chaplain, a non-anxious presence, the person you want by your side when things start to get hard. 

That moment that Delbert hit his thumb with a hammer.

God Saves

I am a person who is so thankful for second chances. But you know what I'm even more thankful for? 

Third chances. 

And fourth chances. 

And fifth chances.... 

You get the point. 

I am a person who just seems to keep messing things up, often in the same ways. I swear to myself, and even to God, that if I had an opportunity to do it all over again, I'd do things differently, but somehow, I keep ending up on a path that leads me to the same broken places. Like a bad horror movie (as depicted in a not-too-old commercial), I keep hiding behind the chainsaws when there's a running car right there to take me away. 

I'm silly that way, and I'm betting that you are, too. 

But it's more than that. Sometimes, my life gets into these seasons when there just doesn't seem to be a safe place to escape. Where there's a lion down one path and a bear down the other and if I turn around, I can see the lightning and wind coming from behind me and it seems like if I could somehow even jump high enough into the air to get around it all, there would be a swarm of bees up there, waiting.

This is the reality of living in a broken, fallen world like ours. 

I can come back from one failure, set my feet on solid ground, and find even that ground starting to move. It can be frustrating. 

What do you do in a time like this? Where do you turn? What do you put your hope in? 

In the God who saves His people. In the God who, Psalm 106 says, saves His people many times. 

That God is our God. That God is our Father who sent His Son, who sent His Spirit, so that when we face situations like these in our lives, we can know that help is not only coming; it is here. God tames the lion and slays the bear and calms the storm and dispels the bees and heals the broken places and makes new paths and offers new opportunities and saves me from this broken world and saves me from...myself. And He does so many times. Many times upon many times upon many times over. 

And He does the same for you. 

So whatever you're facing today, know that there is hope. There is grace. There is confident assurance. Because our God is a God who saves. 

Again and again and again. 

God is Wise

In the beginning, everything was formless and void, then God spoke and all things as we know them came into being. We sometimes call this an act of divine imagination - and it certainly is - but even more than that, it was an act of divine wisdom. 

One of the pastors I have enjoyed listening to for many years, a man I met while I was young in my faith, also has a keen interest in science, and it is the kind of wisdom that is present in creation that he uses frequently to discount the "scientific" (pseudo-scientific) theories of evolution and so forth. 

There is no way I will do justice to the eloquent and humorous way that he puts it when he gives these talks, so I won't even try. But the point is that the very intricate interdependencies of various species of plants and animals on earth requires that they all come about maturely at roughly the same time in history. There's no time for evolution, for the very slow processes of change, because if one doesn't fuel the other, they both die out. 

This is wisdom. It is the wisdom that runs through literally everything in God's entire creation. All of these tiny little complex things that we might not have ever really noticed but now, we cannot unsee, and there's just no way to account for them except divine wisdom. 

Accident would never have gotten us here. 

So often when we talk about the wisdom of God, this is where we point it out - in creation. Psalms even says it, "God made everything with His wisdom." (104:24)

It's easy, then, for us to get lost in birds and butterflies, storm clouds and waterfalls, the capybara and the platypus. 

But did you know that when the Bible says God made everything with His wisdom, that everything includes...you? 

It includes all the things you love about yourself and all the things you don't. It includes the way you see things that no one else does, and the things that you are blind to. It includes the little whispers that you hear that keep you on the right track, and the way your ears can somehow tune out the massive alarms going off that would keep you from danger. 

It includes the things you're trying to change about yourself this new year, and it includes that inspiration that you have to change them. Think about that for a second. God, in His wisdom, made you the kind of person who would do things you don't particularly love, but He also made you the kind of person who would be willing to do the hard work to change them. 

This is important. It means that simply accepting that we are created in the wisdom of God doesn't give us a cop-out. It doesn't let us just accept the things we don't particularly like about ourselves. It only gives us a new frame for them - so that we don't have to hate them, but we don't have to settle for them, either. Because we know that God's wisdom also makes us a person capable of change. 

And if you don't change? Okay. There's wisdom even in the way that you're broken. Did you know that? 

God made everything with His wisdom. And that includes you. And all your broken pieces. 

God is Fair

Jury duty. 

There are not a lot of us who sign up for it willingly. In fact, it's a running joke through our culture about all the ways we try to get out of having to actually sit on a jury. That's interesting, considering most of us have an opinion about nearly everything and everyone - just look at social media if you don't believe me.

But something about actually sitting on a jury and being responsible for someone else's life is a whole different story. 

We understand that there are more factors in justice than all of our posturing would allow us. It's easy to sit at home and say, "He's obviously guilty." It's a lot harder to sit in a courtroom, listen to the extenuating circumstances, hear the testimony on how something came to happen, look a broken man in the face, and know that your same judgment - guilty - bears huge consequences on his life. 

We've begun asking questions in our living rooms about the things we may not know, the details we may not be privy to as simply private citizens. Was she abused? Does he have post-traumatic stress? Is there a history of bullying? What about mental illness? 

We know that "justice," however we want to define it, is never as black-and-white as we want to think that it is. The Bible says an eye for an eye, and we often quote it on this, but it also preaches a thing called grace, and that's important, too. 

The reason most of us don't want to sit on juries, no matter what reasons we actually articulate, is that we realize we are poor arbiters of justice. There are too many shades of grey for us to wrestle with, and we'd rather be at home, where things are more black and white. (Or at least, they seem that way.)

Praise be to the Lord, then, that we are never the arbiters of final justice. Even if we were to sit on a death penalty case and condemn a man to die, it would still be God who would ultimately judge that man - just as He will ultimately judge every single one of us. 

And God...is a perfect judge. 

God is a judge who can take all things into account and weigh them properly, balancing them out on the arms of the Cross. He does not neglect our guilt, but He puts it in its proper perspective, reflects on it in its proper grace. 

We need not cry about extenuating circumstances, for God knows them all already. He knew them the moment that Eve took the fruit off the tree. He knew them when His Son sweat drops of blood in the garden. He knew them with every strike of the nails that pierced through His hands. 

God is the arbiter of perfect justice. And when He delivers His verdict, it is so true and so saturated with grace and love and goodness, that the whole earth rejoices in song and breaks out in applause (Psalm 98). 

Let the Lord judge, for He judges rightly. 

Even when this thing we call justice is not, as we would like it to be, so black and white. 

God is Right

It can be tempting when we face challenges, especially when we face the same challenges over and over, to think that there must be something wrong with God. Wasn't He supposed to deliver us from this? Or keep it from happening altogether? 

We do our best to change our lives, to do better, to grow, to break our chains and overcome our habits, and yet, like Paul, it feels like so many of us still wrestle with our thorn in the flesh. Or with someone else's thorn in the flesh - that thing that makes them treat us like we're their problem. 

It's frustrating. In a world in which we have put our faith in God, Who is so good, why must we continually open our eyes and see wickedness all around us, even in us? 

The truth is that we don't understand. We can't understand. On this side of eternity, there are things about God that simply don't make sense to our finite minds (or hearts or souls). There is an ache in this broken world that, no matter how much faith we have, we can't seem to get past. 

Such is the reality of being human in the curse. 

But what faith does is it keeps our eyes focused on what we do know, which is that God is good and He is working and things are not always as they seem. Faith is the thing that keeps us moving forward when it feels like there's a big stumbling block right in our way. Faith is the thing that keeps us believing in, even trusting in, God when things today feel an awful lot like they did yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. Faith is the thing that keeps us persevering because we know that it won't always be like this. 

If even the smallest of the promises of God is true, it won't always be like this. 

And one day, we will get to the place where we can see that. We will get to a point where our finite selves start to wrap around something infinite. We will get to the point where we finally see and know as we were created to see and know, and we will declare with all of God's people: 

The Lord is just! He is my rock! There is no evil in him! (Psalm 92:15)

Indeed, no evil at all. Nothing wicked. Nothing even wrong. 

God is simply right, in all that He does, whether that's something we can see and understand on this side of eternity or not. 

Let us trust in that and persevere until the day when we know it will all the certainty of infinity. 

Mindy

I've been thinking about Mindy lately. Mostly because my knuckle has been a little sore for a few days. 

Mindy was a young lady that I met over 20 years ago, when I was also a young lady. We were roughly the same age, but could not have been more different. I was a social outcast, kept to myself most of the time, and didn't much care about what my style might be or if I even had one. Mindy...was a beauty queen. Literally. She participated in beauty pageants and had a thriving social life and probably got voted homecoming queen, or at least on the court. (I don't know. I didn't go to Mindy's high school.) 

God brought Mindy and I together on a work crew during a summer mission trip in the early 2000s in the little town of Bucyrus, Ohio. Our youth groups had come to this work camp, where we separated into work crews with kids that came from different churches than ours and went out into the community to help homeowners and families with much-needed repairs. 

That summer, we were replacing a dilapidated porch.

I quickly became a leader in my work group, due to my background in building things and my fresh/young heart for God (I had only been a Christian for a year or so). They voted me to be our group's devotional leader, so every day around lunch, I would lead us in a reflection on the Scripture and in prayer. But they also came to me for construction expertise. 

We had braced the roof of the old porch, which was still in decent shape and we were going to try to save it, and we'd torn up the old floor boards. We were starting to set to work on the joists. Mindy, who had confessed that she wasn't really sure about all this physical labor and who wasn't shy about her participation in beauty pageants and the importance of her fingernails, came over to where I was working and said she wanted to learn how to do some of this. After all, she was here. She might as well do something. 

I handed her my crowbar, from my dusty, dirty, calloused and scarred hands (even at mid-teen-years-old), and I started to explain to her how to drive it down between a couple of the joist boards and get the right angle for prying them apart. As she put the crowbar in where I was telling her, I reached down to help adjust some things and get her set up for success, and at that just that moment, in her zeal for actually doing the work, she put all of her muscle into pulling - so much that she nearly knocked herself over. 

The index finger on my left hand got stuck somehow between all the wood and the metal and the angles that were down in there, and there was this loud POP. I looked down and saw my knuckle starting to swell almost immediately, little shades of blue and red already coming through the skin. I shook my hand a little to work out the pain and looked over at Mindy, who looked absolutely horrified. She was extremely apologetic and dropped the crowbar immediately. 

I picked it up and handed it back to her and showed her again how to do it. "But," I said, "Wait until I get my hand out of there this time," and smiled. 

While Mindy went to work on the joist, I walked over to the first aid kit and grabbed a length of tape and taped my index and middle fingers together, then went back to work. They don't do much for a broken finger anyway, so I never did see anyone about it. 

To this day, every now and then, my knuckle starts to ache pretty good. Every time it does, I shake my head a little and remember Mindy, the beauty queen who wanted to learn how to tear out a joist. 

And I remember what grace I had for her...and still have. Oh, that I would have as much grace for others in my life as I've had for Mindy. 

This aching knuckle is a reminder to me, usually when I most need it, that it's possible. By the grace that God has had on me, it's possible. 

Change

One of the most difficult things about changing your life is that others don't always seem to notice right away. Sometimes, they don't notice at all. And sometimes, even if they notice, they're not willing to let you do it. 

Like everyone, I have some folks in my life who have known me a long time. I have some folks who have known me a short time. And it seems like it's easy for all of these folks to form an opinion of who I am, what must be important to me, what my life must be like, etc. They will over-emphasize everything that confirms their opinion and completely ignore anything that doesn't.

They will never let me grow. Or change. Or heal. 

It can be really frustrating, especially if you are earnestly working to change your life in some way that is meaningful for you. You can invest yourself and put in the work and embrace the discipline and have success after success after success, a bunch of little wins that you know are adding up to something big. 

Then, you have a bad day. Then, you have a day that's not your best. Then, you have a moment that looks a little bit like your old life. 

I don't know how it happens, but those folks who aren't willing to let you grow or change or heal are always there for your not-best moments. And they always have an opinion on it. And they always feel like they have to speak that opinion. You mourn your mild setback, and they're right there to say, "Yeah, but that's just you. That's how you've always been." 

Thanks, bro. Thanks for not noticing the 17 little victories I've had between my "always been" and my "becoming."

It's frustrating. It's defeating. And...it's none of their business. 

This is the hardest one for me. I have these folks in my life (and I know who they are), and when they rear their ugly heads, there's something in me that wants to launch into an eloquent monologue, complete with graphs and bar charts and diagrams, and be like, "No, look. That's not who I always am. That's not who I am now. That's not the story of my life. Look at how my life is changing. Look at my discipline and my hard work and my little wins. They're adding up to something big." 

As heartbreaking as it is to tell you this, there are folks out there who just don't care. They're never gonna see it. It doesn't matter how good your PowerPoint presentation is or how high-res your graphics; they're not gonna get it. They have an impression of you, and they aren't here for your changes. 

Because...if you change, they have to. 

They can't relate to you the same way. They have to change their understanding not just of you, but of all kinds of dynamics and of the whole world sometimes. They have to consider possibilities that have been totally off their radar. It requires something of them to let you change. 

But that doesn't mean you can't. 

It means you go about your work quietly, the way you always intended to, and trust that one day, it will show for itself. It means you stop spending your energies trying to explain your new self because, friend, the more you try to explain who you are now, the more you look like the person you don't want to be any more. I've done it. Guilty as charged. More often than I want to admit. 

But you don't need anyone's permission to change, to grow, to heal. You don't need their affirmation to do it. If you're lucky, and most of us are, they'll come around eventually. Most persons do. After time, they'll see it. How could they not? 

Very few and far between, you'll have someone who just isn't willing, and you'll have to decide whether there's space for them in your new life or not. But overwhelmingly, they come around. Usually about the time that you stop trying to force them to come around. 

Go out there and grow. Change. Heal. Pursue the life that you want for yourself, and go out there and get it. Embrace the discipline. Take every opportunity. Celebrate every little win. Mourn the setbacks, but don't let them stop you. Do stop trying to explain yourself; it doesn't get you anywhere. 

But you're going somewhere. You've got this. 

All naysayers and narrow-visioned individuals aside.  

Motivation

Today marks the fresh start of a new year. A blank page. An empty calendar to fill up with memories - good days and bad days, victories and defeats, successes and struggles. And this puts many of us in the single-minded focus of this one thing: 

Don't mess it up.

This is our chance. This is our time. There's nothing written here yet except what we choose to write. There's nothing but what we want this to be, so here's our chance to make it. 

The question I have for you is this: what do you really want?

The most popular resolutions to make this time of year are always the same: to manage finances better, to eat healthier foods, to exercise more, to stress less, to break bad habits or addictions. Those are the top ones. Very closely related are some relational goals - better marriages, better friendships, better presence in the life of those we love. 

Those are all well and good, but they aren't really what we want. 

Underneath all of our common resolutions, underneath all of the things that we say that we want to change about our lives, are other motivations. 

You don't want to eat healthier foods because you love healthy foods and you feel like you've been neglecting them. You want to eat healthier foods because you want a healthier body. You want a healthier body because you want to be able to engage your life in ways that you can't right now. So...the motivation is the engagement. What is it that you want to engage?

You don't want to manage finances better because you are so troubled by your own wastefulness or you're outraged by inflation. You want to manage your finances better because there is an area in your life where you are feeling your poverty. What is that area? That is your motivation. What part of your life are you looking to make richer? 

You don't want to break a bad habit because you suddenly realize how terrible a thing it is. You want to break your bad habit because it is keeping you from something you want more. That something you want more is your motivation. So..what is it? What is that thing that you want more? 

So often, we focus on the things that we want to change, but we're better off putting our energies on the things that we want to achieve or obtain. We spend our time figuring out how we want to change our lives, but our greatest successes will come when we focus on what changing our lives will allow us to do that we can't do right now. 

Resolutions shouldn't be about making things better; they should be about embracing better things. I know those sound like the same thing, but they're not. That very subtle difference is actually a very big one. 

So as you look at the blank pages, the empty calendar, the fresh start - ask yourself what it is that you really want this year. Don't settle for the small steps of how you might get there, but just go for it and embrace the big picture of what it is that you want. 

What kind of life do you want to fill those pages with? 

Go out and get that.