Benevolence

Love’s Pure Light

Standard

StarsDarkness.

I noticed darkness more this year. The world seemed dimmer and more unfriendly. This Christmas, the most glaring effects of that darkness are the gloom hovering over the world economic situation and the lack of Christmas lights.

A couple weeks ago I noticed the dearth of Christmas lights compared with last year. People just didn’t put them up. Electrical bills are too high, I guess. Or folks suffered from the fatigue that comes when times are bad, so the lights became just another thing to do that took too much effort.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The babe in the manger outshone the star that signaled His birth. He wasn’t just a source of light, He WAS Light.

And when that tiny child became a man, He said something radical to all who love Him and honor Him as Lord:

“You are the light of the world.”

Light gives birth to lights, and those lights will send the darkness fleeing.

If the Lord would have us honor Him as did all those who came to His cradle in those first days of His birth, He would say that He has lit the flame in us with His own lifelight, now we are to be the light in the darkness.

At this blessed Christmastime, People of God, show this dark world the light.

And Maranatha.

No Good Reason

Standard

Not mine, but not too much different...Back a half a year ago or so, a small earthquake in southern Illinois radiated far enough east to successfully remove the overloaded “clothing management system” from the wall on my side of our master bedroom walk-in closet. As it took five months for me to locate the replacement wall connectors to reattach the system, and I have been too busy to deal with them once I bought them,  the system remains unattached.

This means the majority of my clothing is in plastic bins sitting on our bedroom floor.

Over time, the amount of clothing seemed to pile up, and I went from two bins to five. Annoyed that my clothing should occupy so many bins and so little drawer space, etc., I decided to consolidate.

In sorting through this clothing, the realization that I throw away just about nothing hit home. If anyone needs clothing for extras in the next Night of the Living Dead sequel, call me. I don’t know what it is about me that I have no qualms about wearing jeans that look like they were savaged by a pack of rabid wolves, but there you go. I guess when you do farmwork, any excuse for work clothes will suffice.

At least that’s what I tell myself. It’s the other clothing I can’t explain.

Truthfully, I’m not sure I can come up for a reason for the following:

2 suits

2 sportjackets

7 pairs of dress pants

8 long-sleeved dress shirts

8 long-sleeved casual shirts

11 pairs of casual pants or jeans

3 sweatpants/sweatshirt combos

3 cardigans

5 pullover sweaters

3 turtlenecks

20 T-shirts

12 pairs of short pants

9 short-sleeved Polo shirts

I could go on. I’m sure most of you could, too, if you did the same inventory.

And sure, some of my stuff has seen its better day, as in “not fit for Goodwill.” But still. I want to come up with an explanation, but I can’t except to say that even a cheapskate like me who hasn’t bought more clothing in the last two years than two pair of “Sunday go t’ meetin'” pants is still beholden to consuming.

As simply as I try to live, I still have too much stuff. And when I try to tell people I don’t really need them to buy me more stuff, they do anyway. My in-laws were concerned that our home was devoid of stuff that screams Christmas, so they asked if they could remedy the situation so that our son didn’t miss out on the atmosphere of the season. So they bought us outdoor lights and some garland. We put them up this weekend and they look nice. I very much appreciate my in-laws’ generosity.

Still, it’s more stuff.

I keep trying to find ways to give away stuff, but it never seems to work.

I lie awake at night because I realize that I may have to explain myself someday to my Creator and I’ll have no good reason for all my stuff. When I think of whose expense that stuff may have come by, I sleep even less.

Something about building even bigger barns troubles me.

Still Looking for a Gospel That Speaks to Failure

Standard

Another friend lost his job last week. He spent the last nine years in the housing biz, and we all know where that has gone. These are tough times, aren’t they?

When I think of the difficult lessons I have learned in life, whether through my own experiences or those of people I know, many of them revolve around our work lives:

The business world never forgives mistakes—ever.

It’s always about the bottom line, and almost never about the employees. (The sign of a soulless company? Its leaders refer to employees as “human capital.”)

If a man makes a bad career decision at age 18, it will more than likely haunt him for the rest of his life.

In the same way, if a man feels a call to ministry in his young adulthood, he will be hard pressed later in life if he fails in that ministry and must find his way in the regular work world.

If a man is trying to transition out of one field into another, more than ever he will find it impossible because employers can’t seem to break out of the niche mindset. In other words, once a bricklayer, always a bricklayer, and never a computer technician.

Men who lose their jobs at the most vulnerable point in their peak earning years are more likely than ever before to find themselves unable to return to the same level of pay.

Reaching for the brass ring may instead find one falling off the carousel.

This is not to say that God can’t do miracles. But the simple fact is that you don’t go to bed a video store clerk and wake up the next day as the lead on the Large Hadron Collider. And the even simpler fact is sometimes all the hard work in the world will not get you there, either.

And that’s why, especially at this time, we need a Gospel that speaks to failure.

A couple years ago at this time, I wrote a post called “We Need a Gospel That Speaks to Failure.” Take a couple minutes to read it, if you can.

You would think that we would have such a Gospel, but somehow we’ve missed it. To me, one of the oddest thing about living in a world that has seen its Savior come is that the one thing the Savior came to deliver is in such radically short supply: grace.

Recently, I said that I thought the largest unreached people group in the United States right now are those who have lost their homes to foreclosure. Here in America, what greater failure can exist than to kiss the American Dream home goodbye? Yet where is the Church on this?

Worse, where are the former homeowners? Are they in our pews or not? My guess is on the “not” side. The new breed of failure?I’m thinking that nothing hurts worse than to go down in flames in your church while everyone around looks the other way or quotes you Romans 8:28 off the motivational plaque they bought from the local Christian bookstore. Why stick around listening to sermons on Christian leadership when you were desperate for a servant in your time of need and one never showed up.

It really galled me that one of the largest sources of the pile-on afflicting those first homeowners who lost their homes at the beginning of all this was Christians. In our self-righteous ire, we blamed people for being stupid. And perhaps they were. But when is grace only for the smart people of the world?

One of the things about this financial implosion are the bystanders. Now, even people who did everything right are being wiped out. That may even be some of us. Does that make us stupid? Is the same measure of gracelessness that we doled out coming back to haunt us?

God, we need a Gospel that speaks to failure preached in our churches more than ever. Please, someone, anyone, preach it!