Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.

I am weary with my crying out;
my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God.

—Psalm 69:1-3

Wisdom bought through suffering only comes in hindsight. When the hand of God reaches down into the mire and plucks us up, we vow that we will remember what we just went through as if we are living it always. The time of testing came and went, but it cannot be forgotten—at least that is what we promise as we move on to better times.

Then there are occasions when our breath cannot return before the next test comes. We think we will not revisit the recent past, but then our feet are swept out from beneath us and the all-too-familiar stench of the lowlands rises up to embrace us. It’s the quicksand of a fallen world perpetually dragging us down.

Some people seem to cruise through life with the kind of problems that are resolved in the timeliness and manner usually reserved for half hour TV sitcoms. Others find life to be relentless in its harsh messages, seemingly random disasters, and outright sadistic tricks. And the eyes grow dim waiting for God.

We are a people rooted in happy endings. Christians know that happy endings come to those in Jesus who complete the race, but the race itself can be cruel; it kills everyone who runs it. Our willingness to keep running despite the mire is what separates us from the despairing. Our knowledge of the finish line—and who waits for us there—is what gives us hope.

As for me, I lack the wisdom that comes from hindsight. I don’t know why some guys have all the luck, why some enjoy a stunning amount of great breaks. Still, I know bitter people who actually spend their lives waiting for the lucky guy’s winning streak to come to an end, hoping to get a good seat to watch the mire win. I think I am not like that, but I understand how easy it is to become cynical, desiring only the worst for others so our own mire does not seem so deep.

I do not understand why life is so difficult some, many of whom absorb one hit after another for no comprehensible reason. The infertile couple who waits for years for a child, adopts one, only to bury their dream a few years later when a senseless accident takes that child away from them. Or the couple wanting to marry, only to have him sent off to war, be severely wounded, recover, then get shipped back to the States to his fiancee, whereupon she suffers an asthma attack and dies. Those tales may be generic or they may be the tales of the people in your own neighborhood, church, or workplace. Someone we know has endured something like them.

I do not have the wisdom to answer the question of why. Nor do I understand how the wicked can flourish while the righteous live in poverty. All I know is that many people have eyes that are growing dim waiting for God. For them I pray this:
Lord Jesus, you are our only hope in this world. Without you, we are less than nothing, mere dust that is blown away on the breeze. Your compassionate love is infinite in its tenderness, boundless in its strength, and capable of redeeming any person or situation. Into the lives of those trapped in the mire, Lord, we ask that your loving mercy and your strong hand reach out to them, lifting them out of their circumstance and into your redemptive embrace. Mercy, mercy, Jesus, we cry for mercy! May we all know your mercy in due time, at the right time, in the saving time—for your glory alone. Be our Rock and our Salvation, for the days are evil. Maranatha, Lord Jesus. Amen.

I stopped watching the Athens Olympics long before the end. A huge fan of the Winter Olympics, I’ve devoted slightly less attention to the Summer Games over the years. In the future, I suspect I will not be watching any of the Summer Olympics.

I dropped out of watching pro sports when the money overwhelmed the sport. I dropped out of college sports for the same reason. Now with the Olympics bestowing winning athletes with endorsements that crowd out the medals, I think this may be my last Summer Games. What is at stake is not simply being the best at what you do, but turning medals into lucrative deals.

Is it me or is everyone doped up on some chemical in these Games? How many medals have been stripped away? The Wall Street Journal did an interesting piece a few days ago noting how some of the winners in this Olympics were perpetual also-rans, sporting middling times and scores for years, only to suddenly show a burst in speed and skill in just the last few months leading up to the event they later won. In women’s weightlifting, the three top finishers showed ludicrous amounts of improvement since Sydney, numbers that should cause people to scratch their heads (or in the case of some of those competitors, their beards.) Others have noted that if one athlete on a team in a single sport is a human test tube, the coaches of that team are probably doping the rest, too; those others simply did not get caught.

Should we even go into the judging fiascos? Years ago during the Cold War, we knew their judges were ripping us off, and they knew it of ours, too. But now with so much money at stake, a couple thousandths of a point here and there translates into millions of potential dollars—or not, if you happen to be the one who irked the Malaysian judge by putting on your right shoe first while waiting for your score rather than the left one. (You just don’t know how twitchy anyone is anymore.)

No one truly worries about fairness. Does Nike hire you to shill their shoes simply because you play fair? If that were true, then there should be a knock at my door any second now. Nope, even “amateur” sports is about staking your claim in the Q-ratings so you can get your mug plastered on the side of a downtown bus. Check out the milk moustaches on Kerri Walsh and Misty May!

So I’m done.

The Bible says:

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11

Sometimes the best winds up number two. Sometimes the genius ends his life living in poverty. It’s not fair, but it is part of being human. We hate to see it, but are glad when it is not us—at least we like to think it won’t be us one day.

Truth is, we Christians must always live this side of heaven as the also-rans. Living to serve the Lord puts us in an automatic number two position. Living to serve others bumps us down even more. It is not ours to ask the Lord to sit on His left or right, but simply to do His will.

The young missionary who floats speared to death in an Ecuadorian river is not seeking fairness. The elderly man living in the ghetto who gave the best years of his life handing out food to those even poorer than himself does not ask to be justified in his actions. The minister who cleans up the remains of a teen suicide so the parents will not see the outcome will never question the fact that the media ignores his act of kindness. The woman who exists to many today only as a tarnished brass plaque beneath a stained glass window, but who taught little boys and girls about Jesus for fifty years, does not mind that her name continues to fade from church memories as the generations go on. All of them have a greater reward.

Fairness is not ours to demand.

I’ve been a Christian for almost thirty years. In that time, one of the trends in the Church in America—even in what is considered the age of the Spirit—is a diminishing of seeking the Spirit of God for direction and power in ministry. The ascendancy of “models” and “programs” has trumped the very Spirit of the Lord, and we are impoverished in the Church because of it.

There’s something perverse about praying over pre-decided programming decisions. There’s a mania in our storming ahead in ministry opportunities without acting like our Lord, who said:

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.
—John 5:19b ESV

With that verse in mind, why do so many churches fall in line with what seems to be the hot Christian fad of the month? We wonder why we get tepid results in our ministries; well, this is why.

You cannot substitute for the Spirit of God, but we certainly try. Part of this is because the Spirit is so absent in our assemblies, yet we don’t seem to notice. Have we become that mechanical, so reliant on man-powered solutions that we no longer expect to go out into the world clothed in the power from on high? I go back to this verse time and again as the standard:

When [Peter and John] were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.
—Acts 4:23-31

Pay particular attention to that last verse. When was your church assembly last shaken? Do we leave our meetings filled with the Spirit and speaking the word of God with boldness. If not, why not?

We who love the Body of Christ must start asking these kinds of questions and settle for no answers save but a return to living out the life of the Church as embodied by our 1st century brethren. If we are not ministering out of the power of the Holy Spirit, being led by Him and Him alone, then we are wasting everyone’s time when there is no time to waste.