Monthly Archives: June 2013

Being Authentic

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Birgitta, Emerald, and I took an interesting road trip last weekend resulting in the car odometer gaining 1236 miles. Leaving Michigan, we headed west through Illinois, across the Mississippi River, and into Iowa to Birgitta’s old college. After depositing her and Emerald to visit friends there, I continued west to connect with friends I hadn’t seen in 10 years.

Beautiful farms

Driving through landscape reputed to be the richest farmland in the whole world, my journey ended at the home of Becky and Fred, a couple Nate and I met in the 1970’s when we began raising children together. Eventually they moved back to Fred’s childhood home and farm, where he and his brother have been successfully raising cattle (2500 at a time) and farming thousands of acres to feed them, for 36 years.

Cattle

As we toured the farm from the comfort of an air-conditioned mini-van, I asked endless questions and occasionally got out to get up close and personal with farm residents. The cattle have pretty faces and come in all colors: black, brown, gold, red, beige, white and multicolored. Several of the stock pens, though, held only black. “How come?” I said.

One of many

“Those are Black Angus,” Fred said, “certified to have Angus in their blood lines. They bring a higher price, and their meat is marbled to taste better.”

As we drove past a cattle chute he explained how the cattle march one after another through the chute into the livestock truck that hauls them to the packing house. But before they can morph into prime rib and hamburger, each has to be recorded, the Angus a different price than the rest.

Fred and Becky

 

I loved my farm tour, and our time ran out before my questions did. Later, while diving east to pick up Birgitta and Emerald, I thought about those Angus cattle. It would be easy to look at any of the cattle and say, “Oh, there’s an Angus,” but of course that wouldn’t always be accurate.

The Bible says something similar. One person might be an authentic Christian and another a “hypocrite” (Jesus’ word). They might look and sound the same but as Jesus said about the imposters, “Their hearts are far from me.”

So how do we tell who’s who? The Bible says, “Test them. If they acknowledge Jesus as fully man and fully God, they’re bona fide believers. If they’re promoting a different philosophy, they’re counterfeits.” (1 John 4:1-6)

Just as the Angus and non-Angus get sorted at the packing house, God will one day sort the rest of us, too. And when he does, I want to be sure I really am who I think I am.

Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’ ” (Mark 7:6-7)

Zzzzz

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Eeeeee'sDespite my habit of blogging late at night, I usually don’t fall asleep on the job. Usually. The other night, however, my head dropped and I was gone, fingers resting on the keyboard. Twelve pages of eee’s later, I awoke and laughed at the result of my black-out, glad no one had seen me.

Today on the news I heard the story of a fellow keyboard-sleeper. A bank employee in Germany had arrived at work short on sleep, but his listless condition didn’t keep him from having an exciting day. While making a routine bank transfer of 64.40 Euros ($82.89 in US dollars), he fell asleep mid-transfer with a finger resting on the 2-key. As his brain was in zzzz-mode, his computer made a transfer of $222,222,222.22.

That was one expensive nap. His bogus transaction (which slipped past his wide-awake supervisor) cost his boss his job and the mess that resulted ended up in court.

All of us need to stay alert through our days and years. If we don’t, the consequences will be far more serious than multiple computer screens of letters and numbers. It’s no surprise Scripture details examples of when and why to stay alert. Here are 10 of them:

  • so we won’t be seduced by money
  • so we’ll identify God’s answers to our prayers
  • so we won’t use our tongues in hurtful ways
  • so we’ll make wise choices when they come to us
  • so we’ll recognize temptation when it hits
  • so our hearts won’t become dulled by the world
  • so we won’t allow bitterness to take root
  • so we’ll recognize Satan when he gets too close to us
  • so we’ll notice how God is moving in our lives
  • so we’ll be ready when Jesus returns to get us

Our lives will look quite different if we swap watchfulness for dozing, and the scriptural David is an example of this. He made all kinds of senseless decisions without being alert to the consequences and had to back-peddle later on. But in a passage from 2 Samuel, he explains his new resolve to stay alert and do things right, from that point on:

“God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I cleaned up my act, he gave me a fresh start. Indeed, I’ve kept alert to God’s ways; I haven’t taken God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works, I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I’m watching my step. God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.” (22:21-25, The Message)

Eeee's

The good news is that any of us can follow David’s lead by making up our minds to stay alert…. which even includes time in front of a computer screen.

“Make sure you stay alert. Keep close watch over yourselves. Don’t forget anything of what you’ve seen. Don’t let your heart wander off. Stay vigilant as long as you live.” (Deuteronomy 4:9, The Message)

Eye-Rolling

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Garage shelvesI remember the days when one or more of my children would say, “Where is my such-and-such?” I might answer with something like, “Try the basement.” (Or garage, or yard.) But like clockwork they’d quickly return saying, “Nope. Not there.”

Knowing it was, I’d send them back again, maybe with another clue. “Look about chest-high. I think I saw it there.”

But more often than not, they’d reappear. “Un-uh. Still not there.”

So I’d roll my eyes, march to the spot where the item was, put my hand right on it and say, “See? Exactly where I said it was.”

“Oh….” he/she would say. “I was looking for a box, but it was in a bag.” Or, “I was looking on the floor, but was on a shelf.” In other words, “It’s not my fault.”

Sometimes I act the same toward God. I ask a question, and he answers by giving me helpful information, like where to find peace or maybe security, or courage. But rather than carefully following his instructions I say, “Doing that doesn’t seem like it’ll bring peace.” Or, “Relying on that won’t make me feel secure.” Or, “Just believing words can’t give me courage.”

Surely God must roll his eyes. “Look where I’m telling you to find it, and you’ll find it.”

With my kids, the problem was they didn’t really want to look. Instead they wanted me to stop what I was doing, lead them to the item they were pretending to look for, and hand it directly to them. Watching this happen repeatedly produced plenty of frustration in me, exactly as it must for God when I become that same immature child.

So how can these seek-and-find scenarios be improved? What’s missing? First and foremost, a listening ear. When parents tell their children where to find something, the kids aren’t really listening to the details. They’re hoping for a quick fix, a way to get what they want without putting forth personal effort. Sadly, I’m the same way.

When I’m seeking self-control, for example, or love, or patience, God describes how to find them, but his directions usually include action at my end, and that’s both disappointing and discouraging in the moment. I want it right away and without effort. When it isn’t forthcoming, I run back to him and whine. “Nope. I don’t have it! It’s not there!”

He tells me again (and maybe again) what I must do to secure what I’m wanting, but I don’t succeed unless I “look” where he points and move in that direction. I know the Lord views us as his children, a privileged place to be. But on this issue, I want to act less like a child and more like the mature believer he hopes I will someday become.

“If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” (Proverbs 18:13)