Coffee, Anyone?

I rush here and there. Gotta practice violin another hour. I’m behind on my business bookwork. My bedroom hasn’t been cleaned since…well, I won’t admit how long it has been.

My sisters suggest coffee together. Not one more thing for my schedule! Can I afford the time?

In Family Driven Faith, Voddie Baucham challenges families to cut back on their commitments, including sports and ministry events. He insists on scheduling family time.

If we don’t plan that family vacation, the summer will come and go and we will wonder what happened. If we don’t put that piano recital on the calendar, something else will fill the space. And if we don’t carve out time to disciple our children, it simply will not get done.

Dr. Baucham scored extra points with me for mentioning piano recitals, but he also steps on my toes. It’s time to schedule that coffee date.

Do I Fit in Here?

“She has white hair,” Mom said, describing a lady at church.

My sisters and I rolled our eyes. “Everyone at church has white hair.”

Since then, we have been blessed with two babies at church. Now we have the cane brigade, the bottle brigade and a few of us oddballs in between. Where are the young people? Why have we lost most of the twenty- and thirty-somethings?

Church leaders voice various opinions. We need a contemporary service. Drums and guitar will bring in young people. The sermon must be short and practical – none of this deep theological stuff. Have more social events. Start a singles group.

Others are more academic. Teach teens how to defend their faith. Give them proof for a literal six-day creation as taught in Genesis. Show them evidence for the existence of God and the truth of the Bible.

I love discussing those topics, but that’s not the answer.

I just finished reading a book that came closer to the truth than anything else I have read. The book is Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham Jr. The answer is at home. The church cannot impart faith in one hour a week. God gave us families for a reason.

In my up-coming posts, I’ll discuss some of Voddie Baucham’s excellent ideas. I’ll share some of the things I question in his book. I invite feedback from you. If you’ve ever felt disillusioned with church (haven’t we all?), tell me why. Honesty is the first step in our search for truth.

Existential Hugs

It’s always special when one of my favorite authors quotes one of my other favorite authors, and I can count on Ravi Zacharias to quote C.S. Lewis regularly.

In a recent message, Ravi Zacharias told how C.S. Lewis was torn between pantheism and Christianity. He did not want Christianity to be true. If Christianity is true, there is a God whom we must obey, and that’s not convenient. But our desires do not determine truth.

Then Ravi inserted a seemingly unrelated story about wounded veterans getting prosthetic limbs. Two of them were interviewed for television. They said, “The best part about getting this now is that I can get a hug again.”

“You see,” Ravi explained “God has designed you and me for existential hugs. A temple will never embrace you. A ceremony will never give you a hug. But when you come to know Jesus Christ…” (and here’s that famous C.S. Lewis quote) ”…you don’t come to a place, you come to a Person.”

Have you had your hug today?

Mahler, Resurrection and Easter

My mind wandered in church this morning. Is that a sin on Easter? I pondered the music for our next orchestra concert – Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.


Music draws us into the emotions of life – joy, sorrow, questions, confusion. Mahler described the first movement of his symphony:

"We stand by the coffin of a person well loved. His whole life, his struggles, his passions, his sufferings and his accomplishments on earth once more for the last time pass before us… 'What next? What is life and what is death? Why did you live? Why did you suffer?… Do our life and death have a meaning?'"

I admire Mahler for facing these deep questions of life, but I also question his answers. At the end of the symphony, the earth cracks open. The dead rise. They tremble "as the Eternal Judge approaches…

"What happens now is far from expected: …All is quiet and blissful. Lo and behold: there is no judgment, no sinners, no just men, no great and small; there is no punishment and no reward. A feeling of overwhelming love fills us with blissful knowledge and illuminates our existence."

Is this possible? Can there be love without judgment? Before my mind's eye appear victims of the Holocaust, people killed in Stalin’s purge, those annihilated through genocide. I see people hurt by the church, murdered in the Inquisition, violated by priests. They gaze on the face of God. They plead for justice. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

Yes, He will do right. God will not brush evil aside. There can be no love without judgment. But then I see the Cross. God poured out His wrath on wickedness, and He Himself paid the price "...that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26 NKJV).

Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Emmanuel

Ever get that irresistible urge to argue with the person on the television or the author of a book? If only they could hear the good points we make!

That’s how I felt while reading the Bible yesterday. Don’t worry. I’m not arguing with God. I was reading the very un-Christmassy story of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2.

Nebuchadnezzar ordered his magicians and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed the night before. I bet they wanted to argue with him, and argue they did.

They declared, “There is not a man on earth who can tell the king’s matter; therefore no king, lord, or ruler has ever asked such things of any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean. It is a difficult thing that the king requests, and there is no other who can tell it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh” (Daniel 2:10-11 NKJV).

Oh, really? That’s where I want to shout, “There is a God who dwells with men!” His name is Emmanuel, God with us.

Are you hurting this Christmas season? Are you lonely? Is life not turning out the way you dreamed? Take comfort in the true meaning of Christmas – God is with us. We are never alone.

All for Good

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28

Can good come from the bad in my life? Will I ever see it? Will I ever know?

The 1960s saw much bad in our nation. Discrimination, riots, injustice. One African-American boy was not allowed on the school bus with whites. His parents complained, and school officials relented. But the white children did not relent. They beat up the poor boy who only wanted to ride the bus. After that, a policeman had to escort him to school.

Report of this incident spread all the way to a newspaper in the Soviet Union. Soviet citizens ridiculed our nation for its cruelty.

But the boy’s story helped one person. A little Soviet girl named Natasha was beat up on the way home from school. Not because of her skin color, but because of her faith. Her parents were Christians.

Natasha’s grandmother decided something had to be done. She cut the article about the American boy out of the newspaper and took it to school the next day.

“I will not permit such humiliations against Natasha to continue.” she said. “...Just look at this article! Do you realize that the discrimination experienced by a child from a Christian family in a Soviet school is quite similar to the discrimination against blacks in the United States? Unless I hear from you today that you guarantee Natasha’s safety at school, I will be forced to demand that a policeman accompany her to school, just like that black boy in America.”

The black boy in America probably never learned the results of his suffering, but a little girl had peace from persecution for a time all because of his story in a newspaper half-way around the world. I wonder what God is doing with my story today.

To learn more about Natasha, read Children of the Storm: The Autobiography of Natasha Vins.

Flags Flying

Washington D.C. smoldered. Dr. William Beanes was captured. The British moved on to Baltimore. But Francis Scott Key did not give up.

Together with Col. John S. Skinner, he sailed after the British fleet. If they could get there on time – if they could negotiate the prisoner’s release – Don’t let the good doctor hang!

The men accomplished their mission, but the British would not let them go until after the Battle of Baltimore. They peered through the darkness. Bombs blasted. Rockets whizzed through the air. Fort McHenry had not surrendered.

But then silence. Was this defeat? The sun’s rays peeked over the horizon. A flag flapped in the wind. Its stars and stripes spoke triumph to the weary men.

We, too, are in a battle. Satan and his minions attack everyday. Many are watching. Will we stand? Will we fall? How will they know?

An old Sunday School song says it all: “Joy is the flag flown high from the castle of my heart when the King is in residence there.” God promises us a joy that the world cannot understand. In the midst of trials and tribulations, the joy in our eyes says, “Satan has not won. God is on the throne.”

May I ever fly that flag!