This summer I cleared away years of brush in my sister’s backyard. It was good physical work and there were many lessons I learned about myself and God. From this time I want to share with you a special moment that encouraged me.
The yard is large and forested and gently slopes toward a dry creek bed. After cutting my way to the very back, working along the bank, I encountered a thriving underground yellow jacket nest in the side of the hill, which concerned me. I have heard stories of adults and children being severely injured and killed by the wasps as a result of ground vibrations unnerving the colony. I was working with a garden rake and a heavy cutter mattock razing everything above- and belowground.
Being slightly perfectionist with my work, the nest complicated things. I wanted the entire hill cleared just like the rest I had done. I got close and took a long look: the wasps busily entered and exited the burrow at several openings paying me little attention.
Later, still tinkering around the nest, I sensed that I had crossed the line and provoked them. Their behavior changed and a few started flying at me, pelleting my clothing. I was in work gear, so I knew I couldn’t be stung. But one wily little feller surprised me, managing to get beneath my glove and sting me on the bottom of my wrist. It was my fault, although he had to die for it.
I had spent too much time on the nest. Since it was near quitting time, I let the sting be the last word on the matter. I’d deal with it the next day.
I went out the next morning and immediately checked the nest. To my astonishment, an animal had come along sometime in the interim and bored out the entire colony! Nothing was left of it. A few wasps would come around looking for it, but there was only a hole there now.
I couldn’t believe it. I had no doubt that it was a gift from the Lord. He knew how concerned I was about it and providentially sent that animal along to do its natural thing to help me out.
It is little things like this that reassure me of the Lord’s great care for us and regard to answer before we’ve called for help.
“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
*Portion of an exegetical paper I wrote on the topic.*
The parable of the vineyard workers in Matthew 20:1-16 is part of Matthew’s gospel of the kingdom. Matthew is the only writer who tells the story, which places its composition around A.D. 63 and for the benefit of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. The details of the parable would have been very familiar to Jesus’s audience. Brad Young offers a sitz im leben perspective (on-scene contextualization):
The setting assumes the difficult economic conditions of first-century Israel. Many day laborers are standing in the market hoping to be hired for a day job. The original audience could readily identify with these workers and their real-life situation…Day laborers were on the bottom end of the economic structure. They received minimal wages for sporadic work. As the primary wage earners, they had to support their families by the odd jobs they could acquire for day service. During the time of harvest, the situation improved as landowners needed additional day laborers to harvest the crops on time.
One noticeable aspect of this parable is that at its outset the householder, not his steward, works from early morning to late evening to acquire laborers. This would have been an immediate signal to the listening crowd that their normal worldview was about to be challenged.
The parable can be divided into three acts: Act One, the hirelings (vs. 1-7); Act Two, the payments (vs. 8-11); and Act Three, the dialogue between the owner and the grumbling workers (vs. 11-15).
It is obvious that the parable involves economic details. The only condition imposed on the workers is proper work for a day’s wage. This was the denarius, a silver coin that meant a usual day’s pay. The parable, however, should not be used to imply any message about economic arrangements in society, a proposition not obvious in the illustration.
Moreover, the owner’s pay arrangement is simply impossible in the developed world and modern economy. Business leaders and workers would spurn the idea.
A Hard Pill to Swallow
The workers are recruited throughout the day and are finally called in to be paid. This is where the parable does what it is characteristically known for, which is setting up listeners for a surprise. The owner starts by paying the laborers who have worked the least amount of time first—and they receive just as much as those who have toiled all day in the heat.
The first-comers are begrudged. When confronted the owner explains that he had kept his word and had also decided to be gracious to those who had come later. Donahue says:
“If the reader too quickly identifies the owner as God and is unwilling to experience the same feelings as those who worked all day, the challenge of the parable loses its force. Hardly any parable in the Gospels seems to upset the basic structure of an orderly society as does this one…The constant complaint in our society about welfare is proof that popular morality operates according to the principle of ‘equal work for equal pay.'”
The laborers who had been fortunate enough to receive work in the morning should have rejoiced at the generosity of the owner.
Still, one significant limitation of the parable needs to be pointed out. Those who labored all day earn their day’s wage by their work; but Jesus did not believe that anyone earns a place in the kingdom by his or her work. It should be understood that parabolic language should not be pressed too far.
God’s Undeserved Favor
What is the message of the parable? It is first a parable of the kingdom by which Jesus illustrates the incredible grace of God. It drives a wedge between two ways of thinking about Christian life and one’s relationship with God.
The first mindset centers on human goodness and the ability to earn one’s way into the kingdom. But a problem arises here because distinctions are easily and often made between those whose length of service and fervor for the kingdom are exemplary and those who have less to show. The simple standards of justice and the ranking of time and effort determine degrees of worth.
The second way of thinking ventures much deeper into the gospel to show us that God’s way with us makes no distinctions between us. Each of us are accepted and loved by him, and we are saved not due to any efforts we make but purely as a result of his grace. It is that “God loves us not because we are lovable, but because God is loving in a radical way.”
This is the gospel. Borsch says, “We either ‘take what belongs to us and go’—a way of living that cuts us off from true fellowship with God and others—or we receive from God what he has graciously chosen to give.”
Credits: Borsch, Frederick Houk. Many Things In Parables: Extravagant Story of New Community. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988./Donahue, John R. The Gospel in Parable. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988/Young, Brad H. Jesus The Jewish Theologian. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1995
The Holy Spirit awakens sinner’s hearts to God, but he employs the righteous in bringing them to Christ. It would be easy to say God needs none of us and can save those who choose him independent of us—then sit back and do nothing. Yes, he could but he has obligated himself to need our help, to use sheep to produce new sheep.
And then I wonder… Is it possible for me to cause an awakened soul to reject God—and before you discard the notion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic, The Cost of Discipleship, warns us about the danger of offering “cheap grace” to sinners that converts them but strands them inside salvation’s gate without suggestion of further discipleship.
If the quality of our teaching and preaching can inhibit spiritual growth, could it not also be possible that we or our presentation of Christ turn some away from Jesus except the Holy Spirit rescues them? Conceivably yes and it’s a sobering thought. We possess a grave responsibility laboring with God for the lost, and it should cause us to examine our lives, beliefs, and spiritual competence.
Jude on Evangelism
The final verses of Jude convey some remarkably rich and practical wisdom about how to approach the lost: “And you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives” (vs. 22-23, NLT).
According to Jude, a one-size-fits-all evangelistic approach doesn’t work, and he’s right. Many of us grew up in the “fire and brimstone” days and in either-you’re-in-or-you’re-out folds. And I’m not knocking these people and this heritage because, well, it’s still holiness or hell.
But I also understand that times have drastically evolved. Speaking the “unchanging gospel to an ever-changing world” is different from what it was just twenty years ago, and it’s something we really need to think about more deeply, especially as it relates to our methods, involvement, creativity, and content.
Seekers and Scorners
Jude shows us three types of people we will encounter in evangelism. The first are those with doubts or whose faith wavers. I’ll call them seekers, although they may or may not be in search of God. These people will hear the gospel without resistance and may be searching for spiritual significance. They sometimes have weighty questions about life, personal significance, spirituality, and philosophy, which deserve to be heard and answered well.
Jude explains that we should be gentle and patient with this kind. In fact, some may need coaxing out of timidity and to be loved or shown truth and led away from false teaching. They are not yet entrenched in doctrine or vices that would cause them to fight the gospel or regard the church with disdain. Show these individuals compassion.
The second type of people, whom I’ll call scorners, is the opposite. Their sinful hearts are proud and resistant to the gospel, perhaps antagonistic. The patience and wooing that characterize converting the seeker is impossible with the scorner. Jude explains that this kind must be rescued from their own ignorance.
Although we must never frighten people into a decision for God (and certainly no genuine decision), scorners must be warned and shown how their sin and defiance offends the Lord. They have no clue that they are walking off a precipice into hell and must be mercifully yanked away from destruction…snatched from the fire.
Keep Yourself Untainted
The third type of people I will call the shameless. The implication from Jude is that these folk have lived in an unrestrained, or licentious, way. Jude’s instruction is to again show mercy, but he includes a warning to the laborer about the extent of the mission with these individuals. It should not involve one’s enticement to or participation in a person’s sin or with that person. We should genuinely love one while hating the ravaging effects of their sin, yet we must never cross the line and defile ourselves.
It is easiest to minister to people with whom we once associated because we understand their lifestyle and can access them. But ministry to our old friends and acquaintances is prohibited if it provokes the slightest temptation.
“Becoming all things to all people” has become cliché these days; however, we must also be careful for our own souls. Satan is devious and Christians can be taken advantage of by him. Yet we should not deceive ourselves and think we’re resistant to old habits when we’re not.
We would do well to heed Jude’s advice. Honestly, his counsel is basic and the least we must do to prove any acumen with the gospel. We can only better assist the Holy Spirit given the many tactics working to stop people’s salvation.
A news report covered locals polled on their thoughts about all-Christmas music radio schedules started early in November. Most people felt that it was simply too soon for Christmas music and would appreciate it more following Thanksgiving. I found myself agreeing, already having my two favorite stations jingling all the way before Halloween costumes were packed away good. But my opinion has changed.
Maybe we don’t have to reject Christmas music because thankfulness is too difficult a theme for us capitalists to convert—and since Thanksgiving presents none of the flare and seasonal accoutrement Christmas does. Perhaps we have been blinded by the overwhelming commercialism of Christmas and do not notice that we love about Thanksgiving the same things we enjoy about Christmas yet don’t celebrate but for a day.
The Power of a Wish
When I consider these conjoined holidays, something like a domino effect occurs in my thoughts. I think of a wish, in all its magical wonder and good fortune, with the power to cram a tike’s toy list as well as a heart hoping for a soldier’s return. A wish tends toward indulgence, of heart and mind, and sets the imagination free to run—How nice it would be to have snow. How cool it will be to see auntie. How healing reconciliation could be.
Every now and then a catharsis of unrestrained delight, if only wishful thinking, becomes essential to well-being. Sweets are so commonly a way we tangibly make this point. Whether it is the pumpkin pie we overeat at Thanksgiving or the simple proof that we often make our most uninhibited wishes over ornately beautiful cakes, we cannot get around the deeper fact that we crave a certain kind of significance and playfulness that measures in more spiritually appeasing ways than the dollars we earn and the possessions we accumulate.
Snow. Family. Friends. Food. Fun. Laughter. ‘Tis the season to go crazy wishing upon every star to be found because it is the only one in which we feel it safe enough to indulge the guiltless pleasures that do the most for us, which is humanize us. And opposite any religious significance we choose or do not choose to draw from the season, it is the spirit of this time that enthusiastically lends itself to being repeated any other time of the year.
Until There’s Thanksgiving Music…
Thus, we get lighthearted when Christmas music plays because it encapsulates everything we cherish about both Thanksgiving and Christmas. It open-handedly offers us those missing spiritual elements we’ve longed for all year and wrests us free from the grind of making lives for ourselves to simply enjoying those lives for once.
Christmas music is a gladdening music that sadly gets squeezed into a corner of the year. I get why people spurn its play in November, but to dissociate the themes in the music from Thanksgiving may be a false dichotomy because thankfulness is the touchstone of both holidays.
So that’s why I’m already listening. I can’t help myself.
“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” (Lam. 3:21-22)
One of my favorite websites is YouTube. I love that I can have an array of clips and video, movies and documentaries, or my favorite TV commercials at my fingertips, not to mention all the other quackish, non-essential stuff that can be eye-opening.
Oh yeah, it’s free, too.
I’m still a young guy but not so young that I don’t remember TV in black-n-white with just a few channels and it being a rap when the national anthem played after the late evening news. So secondary viewing by computer is pretty neat to me.
Sometimes I wish I had the facility of displaying my dreams on a player format like YouTube. We shouldn’t think it too strange these days since science is already producing mind-controlled devices; how much more would it take to display our thoughts? I have the wildest and most fantastical dreams sometimes, the kind so exciting that I get peeved if I should wake too soon!
When I start thinking this way, I begin wondering if in Heaven God will give us the opportunity to view certain parts of salvation history; and more than having my dreams on display, I think it would be a most awesome thing if we could see God’s agency for us individually. I’m talking about the drama of angels and demons, God’s meticulous planning for us, how our prayers worked, miracles we never knew of…the whole shebang. Now that would be something worth every second beholding!
Calling It to Mind
Right now, however, we have to be satisfied with our human minds for recalling the Lord’s faithfulness, which makes deliberate recollection an act of our will. We must remind ourselves not simply that God is good, but also that he has already been good to us in countless direct ways.
The Bible, in so many places, especially the Old Testament, commands us to remember the Lord’s goodness: “Remember His wonderful deeds which He has done, His marvels and the judgments from His mouth” (1 Chron. 16:12). Peter understood the importance of recall, electing to continue reminding his hearers about the truth of scripture, although he was assured that they already understood it (2 Peter 1:12-12). It’s worth noting how remembering God’s faithfulness benefits us.
It reminds us of God’s ability. It’s what is meant when we speak of God being magnified—let him be greater than anything concerning us. Our perspective will change when we understand that all Heaven is backing us.
It causes us to understand God’s affection for us.He is for us, never against us. Whenever there is a question in my mind on this point, I ask myself aloud, “Can God do it? (Yes.) Will God do it? (Probably.) Will he do it for you? (I believe so.)” God desires our maturity and success.
It builds our faith. Who can reflect on God’s past dealing in their life and not feel that their next battle is good-as-won? It was this that prompted David to write, “For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall” (Ps. 18:29). It won’t make the waiting any easier, but it will retard depressive vices and place God above one’s feelings.
A Way of Life
Recollection is easily enjoined with many of the spiritual habits—solitude, meditation, journaling, fellowship, contemplation, centering. Also, if there is a certain atmosphere that bridges you to God, like a cathedral or beach, by all means go there. Nature lifts my soul to God, so prayer at my favorite park works well for me. Some people may discover this habit easier done in the fellowship of Christian friends; others might find the quiet of the early morning best while lying in bed.
The Lord has done marvelous things for you. It may not look that way in areas of your life right now. But instead of escaping in your mind to bygone days when things were good, retreat to those times when you knew beyond all doubt that the Lord acted on your behalf. Consider those victories that astonished you and all who knew your story. Your heart will quickly brighten again.
Faith is never common sense. This is where we sometimes get mixed-up. We can think we’re demonstrating faith for things that, with time and brainpower, we can figure out. You know: God, I trust you for money for…when we know a check is coming and auntie told us to simply call if we ever needed help.
If we can figure it out, it’s probably not faith.
Now before you stand me down, I’m fully aware that faith is necessary to sustain every part of our lives, including our general well-being. Faith is not a “crisis-only” apparatus, although some people view it that way. Our very awareness of God comes through faith and by it we are born anew.
Yet Jesus spends a great deal of time drilling faith lessons into the disciples. I’m talking about faith to trust when situations are beyond all hope. And usually when the teacher keeps talking about a certain thing, it means the subject is important and will be seen again.
A Simple Command
Hebrews 11:1 is the Bible’s hallmark denotation on faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (NASB). God thought it really important that we were clear about this. An incident with Jesus in Luke 17 richly explains faith and this great verse.
Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem from the Galilee region and encountered a band of lepers. This is indeed the story of the ten that were healed with one returning to say thanks, but I only care to deal with the first half of the story. These lepers would have been calling aloud to all passersby; it was required by law due to their contagious disease, which had separated them from society.
But when they knew that Jesus was present, they cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” There is no indication that Jesus drew near to these folk or talked in-depth with them, although we cannot know; instead, he gives them a simple command: “Go show yourselves to the priests.”
They would need to present themselves before the priest, as detailed in Leviticus 14, whenever they could prove that their leprosy was cured and to be restored back into society. We are told nothing more of the initial encounter.
The Ease of Faith
Common sense folk have tantrums at moments like this one. They’re like Thomas for whom seeing was believing. What do you mean, “Go show yourselves to the priests?” You’ve gotta do something and make this better! It’s why we want your help. But they miss the point of what they’ve implied.
Admittedly, Jesus’s command is a glaring lesson on faith, and reading it makes things go off inside me—just like this passage: “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water. And He said, ‘Come!’” (*mind explodes*) You see, faith is an invitation into the supernatural that truly matters when situations are dire: God, I trust you for money because I lost my job—and now it’s the local food pantry and possible foreclosure.
Shockingly, what God requires at these times is our full confidence in him and for us to rest and accept the reality of our petitions granted—and what a chore that presents to us and all our striving. But that is the only posture of faith.
And this makes all the difference between two people on the same pew because one is trusting God for mere results while the other is just trusting God. Those who rely on God must “believe that He is”—or acknowledge more than his existence but the deeper aspect of it, that he is good and merciful such that it compels them to draw near to him.
John expresses this clearly: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15).
Faith is about more than getting God’s stuff; it’s about getting to know God.
What the Lepers Teach
Jesus gives them a command that doesn’t make any common sense, but options don’t matter when you’re desperate (unless you have leprosy and your name is Naaman, remember him?) They probably knew Jesus was a twinge eccentric, and a 60-plus mile hike down to Jerusalem would be putting full trust in him.
But something happened and, from the sense of the text, it wasn’t long after they met Jesus: “And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back…” These ten trusted Jesus so much that his words alone were enough evidence of their cure. It is the same quality of faith the centurion demonstrates (Matt. 8) at which Jesus himself marvels.
We cannot know if any of the lepers bore lingering doubts or if the miracle occurred for them individually as they each decided to truly believe. Certainly they had already tried various unhelpful remedies, so it couldn’t have hurt to do what Jesus commanded, which reminds me of another set of lepers, the four in 2 Kings 7, who also got it right: “Why sit we here until we die?”
And when our situations have walled us in and circumstances are blackest bleak, we too will cry out to Jesus and he’ll offer us a similar challenge. The only question we must then assess will be how well we trust him.
“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues.” ~ Cicero
A thankful person appreciates another for a benefit shown to them: a gift, a kind gesture, a selfless act. Thanksgiving is clearly the hallmark holiday to demonstrate and reflect on this virtue. Thankfulness, or gratitude, is largely associated with religion, although some people steer clear of deep spiritual beliefs. Christians honor God for his providence, and the American holiday began grounded in a tradition of thankfulness to God.
Moreover, thankfulness is humanizing to the heart. How often do we get caught up in the rigmarole of life trying to make things happen, trying to make something of ourselves, only to lose feeling and connectedness with all that should make sense and wholesomely gratify us. Gratitude, sharp as a knife, cuts through all the fluff and excess and allows us to notice just how substantive and appreciable are the basic elements of our lives.
Morning by Morning
But more than this, I think our aspiration in continuing to recognize Thanksgiving is indeed to connect spiritually with a higher essence or God from whom we might derive our well-being. Certainly Christians celebrate the goodness and faithfulness of God. How marvelous is that first stanza of the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not,
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.
The verse celebrates a theological attribute of God: his constancy. You may know it by the term immutability; it means that the attributes of God’s nature and disposition are unchanging toward us. And surely beyond all the things we could think to be thankful for, we appreciate him foremost for being the very ground on which we stand.
Thank Goodness?
Gratitude is personal and requires another person. I cannot be thankful to my car…for making the long trip or not conking out. Instead, I can be thankful (to one) for my car. Further, no one gets to hold gratitude in their hearts; it must be demonstrated…released. The first line above states this—“A thankful person appreciates another for some benefit shown to them.” There is transaction; orientation is present and always toward the other. Thankfulness, by its very nature, acknowledges the aid of someone and maybe even one’s dependence on them.
My conjecture is that most people get it right. In the spiritual way, even non-Christians will gladly acknowledge God’s goodness and activity in their lives, although they don’t serve him. They’ll give props to the “Big Guy” or thank “the Man upstairs.” People of other theistic religions thank their gods just the same.
But I wonder about some.
Could I ever be grateful to the universe? Does that even make sense? Or worse, to oneself or humanity, in a spiritually essential way? I think everyone has an innate, spiritual need to show gratitude, but many have lost their bearings. The human soul derives no transcendent significance, potential, or aid from an empty space or a fallen humanity; instead, it is sourced in God himself.
Sorry—the universe and pantheistic determinism is not God; that’s foolishness. And the rest of us should readily admit that our rascal selves are a poor excuse for God!
But David gets it right when he declares of Jehovah, “Be thankful unto him, and bless his name” (Ps. 100:4). Our ultimate gratitude should always find its way back to God.
Speak Well of Him
I think the Thanksgiving season lends us Christians real help sharing our faith. Everyone experiences some good in their lives. The holiday makes it easier for us to talk about the good (and tough) things and appreciate the faithfulness of God.
Be mindful of what God has done in your life during your interactions this season—and beyond it because gratitude never ends. Just maybe God will use your testimony and perspectives to light a fire in someone’s heart.
Consider this for a moment: the eternal God gives lasting gifts. You may think, Yeah, I know that, but really take in the implications.
I’m a stickler for quality. I don’t mind paying more if I am certain the item will last for years to come. That’s not having ‘expensive taste’ or ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, in my opinion. It’s actually saving me money and the hassle of replacing goods. I too like lasting things.
And what God gives you and me are eternal possessions, inasmuch as they belong to him, the Eternal One. God’s gifts proceed from his own good nature, just as light and warmth proceed from the sun. Without the sun we earthlings couldn’t survive; Jesus says the same: “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). All love, mercy, and virtue shine upon us from the glorious God—he being as much the gift as its expression.
God’s Greatest Gift to Us
One gift so many people, including Christians, take for granted is our humanity. I think folk miss out on quality life by either disrespecting their humanity or by not dignifying it and giving it proper expression. Many Christians hold a distorted or wrong anthropology and don’t understand that we were created as humans to eternally exist as humans glorifying God with our humanity. My goodness—Jesus represents us now in Heaven with a human body. I cannot imagine that he lived a crummy earthly life.
I don’t dispute the fact of sin and the depravity of the soul as a present reality. Still, although sin marred the creation, it never effaced the glory of God in it. The angels in Isaiah’s vision cried, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3).
Free Yourself
In Christ we have restored freedom to be as human as possible in this life. Let that sink in: free to enjoy life. Jesus modeled a perfect humanity. I think that if we studied his words and life and the deep implications, we could free ourselves from rote and weighty behavior patterns that suck life out of us rather than give us life. We would see that there are far fewer restrictions on our lives pertaining to what it takes to please the Lord and just to experience genuine happiness.
Some people regard the Bible like a big red stop sign: “You can’t do that! You’ll be punished! God is angry!” But it was after I studied portions of the Old Testament prophets (yes) that I discovered just how loving God is and that all his words to us are a “Go!” rather than a no.
I wonder if we unnecessarily tie ourselves in knots sometimes.
Thus, we are free to celebrate and explore our passions, to embrace one another, to develop the virtues within, to enhance our talents, to soak in nature and art, to wonder and draw near to God by it—more gifts he gives.
In Yet a Little While…
Is this not the most fitting way to honor the God who bestows these good and lasting things? And how inseparable they are from our very human nature! It is how we process our existence…humanity is our existence. We are not angels or spirits nor were we intended to be. Instead, God has deemed it that we praise him best as humans; and I will accomplish that by being the best human I can be.
So I honor God and this great gift he’s given me by unpacking all the treasure he’s placed within me. I do it by cherishing others and building lasting relationships. I do it by fighting sin and storing up spiritual wealth. I do it by clarifying his will in my life. I do it by having uninhibited fun. And I do it by gleaning from every experience because I know my growth will continue in the life to come.
I cannot wait to see myself in resurrection with perfect form, within and without. You know, we’ll spend time in Heaven but we’ll return with our King, arrayed in immortal bodies, to a gloriously new earth. I believe that.
What excites me is that the gifts, talents, and virtues—that ‘spiritual wealth’—we amass now…things we love and that God has given us to perfect: they hold much value for that time, although we cannot fathom how. I surmise that this present life is just too important and too short to squander.
Every gift from God should ultimately become a gift back to him. Vibrant, godly, authentic humanity is our best worship.
Okay, this isn’t the Oscars (or The Mask), but it is a nice recognition from a true pal. My buddy Stephen from the blog Faith Comes from Hearing recently nominated me for a Liebster Award, an internet-based blog award. I’ve always felt that the real honor of my blog is that anyone would read it at all and take what I say to heart. But real friendship is a plus, and folk expressing the love you offer back to you is special.
So thanks, Stephen. Although I cannot nominate him, you should really check out his blog. It’s a real shot in the arm of spiritual vaccine!
What Is Liebster?
Well that’s a good question because there’s nothing official about it. It’s purely an internet award, probably originating in Germany. (The German word liebste means “darling.”) It has generally been offered to great up-and-coming blogs with fewer than 3,000 followers, which has since dropped to 200—go figure. It seems that the purpose of the award is merely social and to attract new readership.
The rules have commonly been:
Accepting the award by posting the logo on your site, thanking and linking back to your nominator. One doesn’t have to participate, but what does it hurt?
Explaining the rules of the award
Answering a set of questions asked of you by your nominator
Nominating 5-10 blogs you wish to recognize, notifying them by commenting on their site and…
Interviewing your nominees with a set of 10 questions
Wadda Ya Know?
Since Stephen didn’t list a set of questions for me to answer, I will respond to the same ones his nominator asked of him.
What are you most passionate about? My faith. I grew up in church and with a deep reverence for God. I want to please the Lord, and I sincerely desire his ministry through my life.
What is your heart’s desire? To be a truly influential pastor one day. I don’t equate that with fame and modern-day tactics often witnessed. Instead, I hope to speak life-changing words that cause people to know Jesus, his great love and astounding glory.
Who is the most influential person in your life? My mother. My father passed away when I was four years-old. My mom had five children, ages 17 to 3, and she never remarried. Yet she kept our home running smoothly. We never lacked and always knew we were loved. She kept us in church and was a tough disciplinarian. She genuinely enjoyed us and still does.
What are two items on your bucket list? I have a moderate-size bucket list right now. One is to adopt a child. I’m nowhere near marriage or children, and I’d love my own kids. But there’s something special about remembering less-fortunate children and desiring them. It is the ultimate gift. The other is to surprise folk in grocery stores by purchasing their groceries.
How do you best handle heated situations? I’m a really coolheaded person, so it takes much (or the right button) to get me angry. I think skillful conversation is how I diffuse situations.
What is your favorite scripture? How has it helped you on your life’s journey? Joshua 1:8: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” (ESV). It keeps the Word of God a priority in my life. If I’ll build my life on the Word, I cannot go wrong.
What do you think are the three qualities of building and maintaining quality friendships? Acceptance, open communication, and fellowship.
What was your most memorable moment in life? There are many things I could say, but the most memorable for me remains my six wonderful years at Oral Roberts University…great friendships, personal growth, and experiences.
What is your favorite book or author and why? I’ve read very many books; it’s difficult to pick a favorite. But I do love the (Christian) writings of C.S. Lewis and Frederick Buechner. A non-Christian standout is Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, a Pulitzer-winning, geo-historical explanation for the rise of civilization. And let’s not forget the pertinent food works of Michael Pollan.
If you could go anywhere in the world—no attention to cost—where would it be and why? Well I’ve taken my dream trip (France) and I’ve lived in Japan. I’d love to see New Zealand or Iceland next. I’m pretty adventurous.
The Nominees: Paying It Forward
Well I’d like to present five sites that I read regularly; I hope that you’ll check them out, too. In no order, I nominate these blogs for a Liebster Award:
Nominees, thanks for all the inspiration, hope, and hilarity you give me. I hope you’ll accept the award and any additional traffic it brings you. Here are the questions I’d like for you to answer:
What does writing do for you?
What writer feeds your soul? Why?
What is the most fabulous excursion you’ve taken?
What post of yours means the most to you? Why?
What about you will be most instrumental in God’s eternal plan for you, whatever that may be?
What makes you cry?
If your writing were discovered a thousand years from now, what would people learn about you, today’s world, and your interests?
Talk about meeting your favorite Bible character (not Jesus).
Describe your writing process for something that moves you deeply.
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A 'Mike' for Christ 