Young Couple

I was really tired the morning after our quick but long trip. I was a bit later than normal and it was already sunny.

Earlier I thought about staying in bed even longer but I never have been much of a morning sleeper. It's like a switch for me. I am either awake or asleep or on a very brief trip to one or the other.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The Sun was bright and the sky was clear and there was no wind. Things seemed cleaner and fresher. And I was so glad to be home. Just nothing like sleeping in your own bed with your own pillow.

I was taking it pretty easy and driving even beneath the already slow speed limit. I was so enjoying the day and looking all around me and noticing things in more detail than normal. And "more" for me is not a lot I am acutely aware.

It was just before I turned the corner that I noticed the parked car and a little ways from it a young couple.

It is not unusual to see cars in that place nor people enjoying the little park like area at the entrance to our addition. It is one of the things that attracted us to the area. Photographers use it often as a setting for their commissions.

Really I don't know how old they were but the sense I have is that they were young. I think they were nearer to high school than college graduation. But it is just a feeling.

They were sitting on the ground and they were facing each other. They were very close and their bodies were entwined. Her arms were around his neck and his around hers. Their faces were hidden in each others embrace.

It was the briefest glimpse even at my slow speed and then I was past them and in seconds they were only shadows of thought in my mind.

There had been no motion I had noticed when I passed them by. I could not see expressions on either face.

But there was nothing amorous about their embrace.

Perhaps there was joy. I cannot say not.

But I think it was a sad embrace. I don't know for certain but that's my feeling. And it made me a little sad myself. As though there had been some awful misfortune that had befallen them. And each was comforting the other though the experience of this grief.

But my sadness gave way to a feeling of happiness. But it was the kind of happiness that makes you want to cry because it is so beautiful.

I think they were comforting each other. It wasn't comfort by word or deed. It was comfort by presence and touch and that amazing thing we call love.

There's a beauty to that.

When I returned a few hours later they were gone.

Message On White Board

The other day my granddaughter and her family took a little trip. Her parents planned it as a surprise for the children and swore me to secrecy.

So one day my daughter-in-law came down to meet my son at the office under some pretense or another. The kids suspected something but really didn't know what.

I think I had to leave before they did. When I arrived at the office the next morning I found this note on the white board.

I took a picture with my iPhone.

Making Sense of The Bible

The Bible makes sense to me now but that was not always the case.

That statement requires some explanation. Because it did make some sense to me even when I was a very young child but still old enough to read for myself. That is the sense that I understood most of the words I read and even understood some of the stories.

But I did not have any kind of large view of the entirety of The Bible. It seemed disjointed to me with very little continuity of thought and characters. While some of the stories were compelling, many were also terrible and downright discouraging. The teaching itself in Sunday school added to the sense of discontinuity because I never understood the context if it was even presented. The sermons I heard mostly consisted of a reading of a verse of Scripture from the Old Testament and then a verse from the New Testament followed by a speech that to me seemed disconnected from either of the passages.

The God of the Old Testament seemed angry and often petty and rather human like to me. The Jesus of the New Testament was attractive in a way but seemed to be talking about a world that was so ideal as to be impossible. And the Gospels as far as I could tell dwelt on one thing whereas the letters told an entirely different story.

Large parts of the Bible were boring to me as well. It was certainly not something I enjoyed reading for sure.

Now, though, I love to read the Bible. I find a wonderful sense of continuity from front to back. I find all sorts of new nuggets here and there on my reading journeys. That's how it seems to me when I read the Bible now: a journey or, better, an exploration of new and unknown places. Like the Starship "Enterprise" boldly going where I haven't been before.

So what changed?

In my own journey of faith there was a time when I was searching for answers about suffering. I was led to the Book of Job which I obsessively read for about a month. One day as I was nearing the end of the book once again I was reading Job 42:5-6:

"I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes."

In an instant I realized that I was like Job. I had heard about God but I did not know Him. I had not seen Him. And in that same instant as though I had been sitting in a pitch black room and someone turned on the lights I could suddenly see this entirely different reality.

It was obvious that it was not a new reality but had been there all along. It was just different to me in that I had not ever experienced it before. I call it the Kingdom of God.

Experiencing that new reality made everything different not the least of which was me. Not the outside me but the inside me. My core was changed. My personality and my body all were the same but my spirit was different and there was something new as well.

I had this voracious hunger for God's Word then. It was like being famished except I needed the Scripture and not food. And I began reading as fast as I could. I began with John. I do not know why but that's where I started. I devoured it and wanted more and more. I believed what I was reading was true. That was a huge change because before I did not. It began to make more sense but there was plenty that I still did not understand.

I began to read a lot of other books about Theology and religion. Along the way I stumbled upon a religious philosophy called "Dispensationalism." It is a rather complete Theological system of itself that I found to be fascinating and helpful.

The most helpful thing for me was the idea that God deals with humankind in dispensations or administrations and that the rules of governance from one administration to another do not overlap. An example is the garden of Eden where Adam and Eve lived. There was one rule that God gave and it was quite simple. But that administration ended with man's failure to obey God and removal from the garden. Today God deals with man in an entirely different way.

It would be just as wrong for me to expect Adam and Eve to know anything about God's dealing with man today as it would be for me to refrain from eating the fruit of a certain tree.

This rather simple concept of time and context literally changed the way I read and studied Scripture. That's when I began to glimpse the beautiful and complex continuity of thought that ran throughout the Scripture. I was amazed when I began to unravel it.

I don't want to give the idea that I have arrived at some magic place where I now know and understand everything. Quite the contrary is true in fact. The more I learn and know the more I find I do not understand.

Except for one thing which continually comes into focus more clearly all the time. That's the love of God. It is as though I first glimpsed it through a telescope while I was far away from the source. Over time I have moved ever closer to the source and that love of God that I first so faintly glimpsed is now burning ever brighter and hotter and more intense than ever I could have imagined. And yet it remains a ways off.

That's the story about how the Bible began to make sense to me.

Easter - 2009 - He Is Risen

My first text message on Easter Sunday was from my beloved wife. "He is risen!" I read. Then I replied "He is risen indeed!" Next I sent "He is risen!" text messages to my children and they both replied just as I had done earlier.

I wondered how many times that occurred that morning and then how many times that same greeting or something similar had been repeated for the last 2000 years.

It was not always something I believed and for much of life I would not have said either phrase. I wouldn't say it even to just make someone else happy. After all I was a man of integrity or so I wanted to believe about myself.

As a child I never really understood Easter. Rabbits do not lay eggs period and certainly not chocalate, candy ones. Neither do little yellow chicks.

I do not remember "peeps" either. I heard someone the other day on TV say that they had never heard of "peeps" and I figured that person and I must be in same age range.

And then there was the issue of painted, boiled eggs along with all the other candy stuff having something to do with religion and the resurrection of Jesus. It made no sense to me.

I do remember hunting Easter eggs though. I recall my mother hiding them in our tiny house and then my brother and I racing to locate them. Later I remember doing the very same thing for my children and watching with glee as they attempted to put them in their own baskets. I remember dressing up in my best finery -- often new -- for church and then gathering with other family for a meal and all to brief visit and play with cousines and aunts and uncles. The finery usually didn't fare so well from the playing.

I was 33 the year that the resurrection of Jesus finally became real to me.

When finally I understood what happened and what it meant I remember sitting in a chair in the patio room of my home and weeping uncontrollably. It was the astonishing beauty of the manifest love of God that made me weep. It was not the suffering beforehand although I finally understood a litte of that. Neither was it the joy of the resurrection itself although I did glimpse that faintly then.

It was the love of God that became real to me that day.

He is risen indeed!

Ruth

It was kind of a relief to leave Judges and read Ruth.

Judges has a few bright spots but overall it makes me sad. People are so mean to each other and mostly the leaders are shining examples of what not to do.

Ruth comes along set in the same time period. It is this well-known story of a young woman named Ruth who is loyal both to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and and to their God. The women both suffer terrible loss and are nearly at the point of starving. Then a man, Boaz, also faithful to God steps in to help and he and Ruth end up as lovers in a happy ending.

Most of the time people talk about Ruth's loyalty to and love for her mother-in-law, Naomi. Certainly I admired that part this time around myself. It is such a prominent part of the story and so beautiful and emotionally uplifting that it overshadows the tragedies and pain and deprivation.

But this time around I was struck by a couple of new things.

One thing is how hard Naomi's life has been. First she and her husband and sons leave their home because of famine and travel to Moab. There her husband dies and her sons marry and then they die. That's when she decides to go home.

When she gets home the town's people come out and say "Is this our Naomi?" She says don't call me that but call me "bitter" because God has been hard on me. Naomi means delight or pleasure or something along those lines.

Names and their meanings are important in Ruth and further emphasize the key points the narrative makes.

I thought to myself that if some of my Christian friends and acquaintances heard her say that she'd get in trouble with them pretty quickly. They'd jump right in and tell her that God doesn't cause any bad stuff and she'd better straighten up her act and not say that.

But really the more I think about it the more I think this is part of Naomi's resolute faith in God. Naomi is faithful herself. Even after what has happened to her she clings to her God even in the midst of another crisis. It is easy to think of her as being bitter after learning her history and then reading what she says about her name.

But I think it might just be that she recognizes the bitter circumstances of her life rather than being bitter. Because to me she does not seem personally bitter really. Either way though it is certainly understandable if she felt some bitterness especially so soon after her son's deaths.

Like most of us her life had not been all bad. It is easy for me to construct in my mind a happy family life in Moab. The book is short but covers quite a bit of time. Certainly she had the love of Ruth in her life. Who would not want to experience such self-sacrificing dedication and love? I wondered to myself if that single aspect was enough to keep her going at this point in her life.

A lot of us, maybe most, maybe all of us will eventually experience sadness and grief and loss to the point of wondering if we can really make it.

Another thing I thought about was how our circumstances just force us into certain courses of action. If there had been no famine then Naomi might have not left Israel. And if she hadn't gone to Moab she wouldn't have met Ruth. And if her sons and husbands had lived there might not have been a Boaz. And if there had been no Boaz then there would have been no Jesus.

I can look at my own life and see how things worked out like that for me. Yes there were painful things but those very things ended up being good things because without that past I would not have this present.

This present is the foundation of the future. That is true for everyone of course but if the future is in the Hands of God there is a certain peace that comes from knowing that and thinking back on how the past became the present.

I think there is so much more to Ruth that I could stay a while and ponder it more and think about the names and the people and the times. I think I could spend a little time alongside Ruth as she works so hard picking up the barley grains in the field. Or maybe spend a bit more time with Boaz in the gates of the town. But my schedule makes me leave it too soon.

Still it has been wonderful to linger there in the story a bit and learn more of these people.

It was equally pleasant the last time I read it and I suspect it will be again if I am blessed with another opportunity.