Monthly Archives: July 2013

What’s the Story?

Posted on by

I love a love story and especially enjoy hearing how husbands and wives first met. Very often a man and woman are brought together in the most unusual of ways and frequently from faraway places.

Adam and LinneaKaty and Hans

For example, our daughter Linnea (who grew up in the Chicago suburbs) met her husband Adam (from central Florida) while they were both in Youth With A Mission (in Kona, Hawaii). Son Hans (from the same Midwest suburbs) met wife Katy (from England) while they were in a YWAM training school (in New Zealand).

Brooke and Klaus

Klaus left well-populated Chicago and moved to our tiny Michigan town where he met his true love Brooke. None of these six would have met without these unusual story lines.

Nate and Meg

Nate and I met during college, though we didn’t attend the same school. My girlfriend (at Wheaton College) and his guy friend (at Northwestern University) were engaged, and the two of them brought the two of us together on a blind date. Without our friendships with those particular students, he and I would never have met. If we interviewed 1,000 married couples, no two stories would be alike.

So…. does God have a part in all this? I like to believe he puts together these complicated scenarios to cause people to meet, sometimes setting the particulars in place many years before, in order for that one meeting to take place. After all, he’s a God who cares about the details.

Gayle and Mark

One of my favorite love story meetings happened to my neighbor’s sister, but it didn’t begin with special chemistry or sparks flying. It all started when she had a brain aneurysm and lost consciousness. That’s a negative way to begin a positive story, but because of that aneurysm, Gayle had to postpone her plans for a trip to Europe with her girlfriend.

Four months later, fully recovered and feeling much better, Gayle and her friend embarked on their journey abroad. It was on that sight-seeing trip that she met her true love. There were no formal introductions, just a split-second decision to jump into the same cab in Florence, Italy. “If I hadn’t had that aneurysm,” she said, “I would never have met my husband. It’s the mystery of God.”

How much does God shape the circumstances around us? Because I’m convinced he fervently loves us, I believe it’s constant. Every time we pray, “Thy will be done,” he jumps into action, arranging and rearranging the events of our days. I believe life is more than a series of hit-and-miss occurrences, because if it was, we’d be no more than victims of chance. That doesn’t blend well with what we know of our watchful, caring, personal God. Scripture says he’s so involved with our lives that even when we’re rolling dice, he’s the one controlling where they land.

So the next time you bump into an unexpected change of plans or even an irksome interruption, pause to think that God himself might be behind it, setting up something special, just for you.

“We may throw the dice,but the Lord determines how they fall.” (Proverbs 16:33)

Explosions

Posted on by

FireworksThree days ago on the 1st, looking toward the 4th of July, Louisa and I were out walking Jack late at night. As we passed the turn toward the beach, a big explosion sounded, not like traditional fireworks, but hole-in-the-ground big. Like dynamite.

It took me back to the days when our 4 sons were young and still living at home. Like most boys, they loved motors, weapons, and fire. Closely linked with fire were fireworks, and over the years they lit more than their share. Thankfully they reached adulthood intact, but I do remember a time when they caused enough neighborhood commotion with their explosions to bring the police to our house.

Apparently not much has changed with today’s boys, and as Weezi and I walked on, a police car sped past us, headed toward the beach. No doubt as they arrived, several youngsters were rapidly on the run.

Police departments have always winked at fireworks being exploded on the 4th of July, even in states where they’re illegal. Here in Michigan the rule has been that they’re “ok” on July 3, 4, and 5, but “not ok” any other days, a nice mix of grace and law. Still, there have been those who can’t quite comply, i.e. explosions on the 1st of July and the police pursuit that resulted.

If any society is to function well, laws and penalties have to be part of it. In the Bible we see the same thing, God setting up parameters but leaving it up to us to stay within them.

The most difficult of his rules involve invisible parameters. For example, Scripture says, “Put love of God ahead of love for anything or anyone else.” We might live lives that look like that, but what’s happening on the inside? That part is a lot harder.

We think, “Well, I’m doing pretty good at the Christian life. Besides, nobody’s perfect.” That’s like setting off explosions on July 1st. Close, but not quite right. The upshot finds us outside of God’s parameters and possibly even on the run the way the beach exploders probably were. Breaking the rules is sometimes fun, but paying the consequences never is.

The good news is that God does heart checks. It matters whether or not we’re making an effort to comply with him or working to dodge his rules. He knows we can’t be perfect, but that doesn’t coax him to lower his high standards, and he hopes we’ll stretch toward them. Doing so requires his help, though, and when we ask him for it, he’s pleased to give it. It also brings us out from under the impossible pressure of trying to be perfect and puts us under God’s generous grace where he chooses to give it.

Salvation itself is the best example of this, a perfect God requiring perfection from us but willingly accepting Christ’s perfection instead of ours. This means we can run toward him and not away from him, even if we break the rules. Maybe especially then.

And that’s an explosion of grace that should bring us all running.

“All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24)

Crawling Along

Posted on by

Emerald at 8 monthsEight month old Emerald has accomplished a great deal in her short life, learning to recognize people, communicate in different ways, speak her first word (ma-ma), sit up, shake musical instruments, and eat solids. Since she’s checking off her milestones in the usual order, her next accomplishment will be crawling.

Already she does “the bridge,” a hands-and-knees crawling-lookalike, but so far it’s gone nowhere, though that’s not to say she doesn’t move. She’s perfected the belly-swivel and can do a 360 spin with excellence.

I remember when my firstborn was 8 months and was stuck in one spot just as Emerald is now. I figured he was frustrated and decided to teach him to crawl. Every day I worked with him on the carpet, moving his arms and legs in left-right crawling positions, showing him how.

Crawling!

As I continued tutoring him (which resembled a strange type of physical therapy), he’d often plop chin-first onto the rug, unable to coordinate his 4 limbs. Several weeks later, when he began to crawling for real, I beamed with pride at my young student, patting myself on the back for his success.

No one told me he would have crawled on his own, had I never worked with him. An experienced parent would have known that, and as my other 6 children came along and crawled by themselves, I learned it too. God is the One who programmed babies to crawl and later walk, wonderful gifts, but that doesn’t mean the process is easy for them. Each one has to develop persistence, working hard at it day after day, falling and failing again and again.

Our heavenly Parent does something similar with us. He saves our souls and then lets us work at becoming Christ-like. Unlike learning to crawl or walk, this isn’t a task that can be successfully checked off a list. It’s an effort that lasts a lifetime.

But just as God programs children to crawl and walk, he programs us with something, too. The 17th century philosopher Pascal called it “a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man” that can only be filled by Christ. And that’s what’s drawing us when we begin a relationship with Jesus. We find ourselves desiring to become more like him. But just as a baby struggles to crawl and walk, we must persist in our efforts to walk in righteousness. When we do, God is pleased.

Pre-crawling

As for Emerald and her non-crawling, we’ve found the solution: to encircle her with toys so that as she swivels, she always has something fun to do. One of these days, though, she’ll crawl right out of that circle…. because that’s what God programmed her to do.

“Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” (Philippians 2:12-13)