daily java

Daily Java:

They offer superficial treatments
    for my people’s mortal wound.
They give assurances of peace
    when there is no peace.
12 Are they ashamed of these disgusting actions?
    Not at all—they don’t even know how to blush!
Therefore, they will lie among the slaughtered.
    They will be brought down when I punish them,
    says the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:11-12)

I was having a good discussion on Facebook yesterday with someone. The subject was a dress Ella Fitzgerald was wearing (almost wearing). She was falling out of it. I made some light comments about how she kept the top on. Being a rather large woman, she could barely, it seemed, keep her top on.

My online friend commented that she was not a large-breasted woman and I said I was married to one who had good sense in dressing.

Another young woman came on and told me that I had no business in telling women how they were to dress and that all it did was show how mean and judgmental and intolerant I was. I had no place in this discussion because she didn’t like what I said.

I wrote back a small comment, it would not have been bad, but I realized that there was nothing I could have said that she would have listened to. She was a fool. I was casting pearls before swine.

So I erased my comment and marked her comment as spam. No more was needed. Anything else would have been gasoline on her little fire and I like my online friend too much.

Yet it has bothered me. I have always been the kind of person that can be told something great and wonderful by 999 people, then have the 1000th person say something negative and dwell on that last comment. I don’t know why I am like that but I am. And I hate that self-punishing side of my personality.

I told Ella about it and she told me I was making too much of it.

In some ways her comment was a reaction to the things that have been going on lately in my own life. I have found that a lot of people think highly of me and they have been very gracious to me in my cancer sufferings.

But this was something else. It was a finger leveled at me telling me that I had said something she didn’t like so I was in the wrong. It was the same kind of comment that has sent our young women in America going into the toilet culturally and has even led to the military debacle of women in combat. The attitude she displayed was what had killed much of our culture.

The country is having troubles and instead of addressing them, people who speak up are driven off the stage with the cries of mean and self-righteous, judgmental  and intolerant.

And as long as those cries dominate the national conversation, we will sink as a nation.

I had a dream in the first part of the night in which a friend of mine, one I had considered a Timothy of sorts had done kind of the same thing. As it turned out, I did not agree with him in a subject and in everything being black and white. In the dream, I said some things that he thought were wrong and he strongly condemned me, even to the point of condemning a white suit he as wearing. I had planned on showing him my convoluted reasoning, we would laugh and drink some more coffee. Instead, I told him strongly what the wrong he had done was (allowing for no other viewpoint than his even in a fun debate) and left, then waking up.

Even though I do not know this young woman, it hurts me that someone, on the basis of a single perceived word, would condemn me as being mean, judgmental and intolerant and to tell me that I had no right expressing my personal opinion.

As long as that attitude is prevalent, and it is in much of the country today – all you have to do is read the news sites to know that – our country is doomed.

Yes, this was a silly little woman, empowered by the school system, by society elevating her “uniqueness”, by the fact that white men were rarely ever right, and that, in the rotten dregs of the 1960’s philosophy “do your own thing,” that she can do what she wants and no one can tell her different.

I hurt for her although she probably hates me.

May God bless her and keep her, may he cause the face of his knowledge to shine upon her and give her peace. She certainly has none now.

daily java

Daily Java:

And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles. (Galatians 2:6-8)

I just read a comment by someone in which they didn’t like seeker friendly gospel messages. I got to thinking about it. Is a gospel message that is seeker friendly really a bad thing in and of itself? Is it so bad to have a gospel message that is concerned with how people perceive it?

Sometime people get to seeing the gospel as a separate entity, something divorced from culture or anything else. And they see a seeker friendly gospel as being one that is automatically watered down because of the simple fact that it is concerned with how people perceive it.

What is a seeker friendly, or a seeker sensitive gospel message? And is it necessarily wrong? Is there something wrong with tailoring your gospel message and presentation so that people will receive it?

The gospel message is a simple one: Jesus died so that we could have our sins forgiven and come back to God. That is it. It is a simple pronouncement of the love and grace of God.

But how do you deliver it? And is the delivery important?

In times past it was delivered differently than today. When I was a child, door-to-door Bible studies with charts were big. People sat in their living rooms and listened to a delivery and many times accepted.

Door-to-door studies are gone now. People hate it when you come to their doors. So we do it differently.

In times past, there were two and three week gospel meetings and revivals that people attended every night. They listened and in the climax of the last few days, they accepted it. Nobody wants to go to those anymore and they are gone.

There were invitation songs, sung in a strong heart felt way to get people to realize their need, there were thundering presentations to try to scare people in coming to Jesus. None of these things, for the most part, are used today. We see some left-over variations, but in general, no.

That, it seems to me, is where the seeker-sensitive part comes in. People do not relate to certain things as they did, so we go to different methods of proclaiming that ancient gospel. And if they work, no matter how odd they may be perceived by some, they are good. To paraphrase the apostle Paul, it does not really matter how the gospel is preached. What matters is that it is preached and that people hear it and respond.

The objection to it may come from the fact that sometimes it gets a bit watered down in the presentation. But I think that much of the objection is from the simple fact that it is not like what we remember. We object because it is not the old-time gospel preaching we liked, but that quite frankly, we would hate having to listen to. Bombastic preaching gets old after a while.

Presenting the gospel in dance, in music, in drama – in anything is good as long as the gospel is presented. To insist on one style over all others is to go counter to Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 9:22 where he said: When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.

All do not receive it the same, some even have absolutely no spiritual context with which to receive. They do not even now how to do so. They are approached  totally differently than those who know a little or even know a lot and have turned away.

The point is to seek and to find. As long as the gospel message remains pure, it does not matter how it is presented.

daly java

Daily Java:

For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)

For years I worried about whether or not I was worshiping the right way. Was I singing right, in the right manner, using the right method, singing the right songs even in the right key. It consumed me and it consumed those I was in fellowship with.

It consumed our thoughts constantly. What if we were singing wrong. We were worshiping God and trying our best but we were doing it wrong. We would be singing and when we got through, God would say, “I wanted it another way. The way you were doing it was sinful.”

And it would be frightening. If we sang the wrong way without knowing it, what if we prayed the wrong way, or preached the wrong way, or took the Lord’s Supper the wrong way. Even if we used the wrong translation of the Bible or thought the wrong way. Our whole life would be based on fear. What if we were wrong?

What if we were wrong and God was mad at us instead of liking what we did? Our worship was bad, our singing, our praying, our thoughts even.

Instead of standing and basking in the grace and love of God, we were sinning. We were wrong and didn’t even know it.

What would we do? One thing is we would get frantic, afraid of doing the wrong thing even by accident.

What kind of god would that be? It couldn’t be a loving, grace-filled god because he was demanding and harsh on those who couldn’t read his mind to know what he wanted, or who were not smart enough in the original Greek and the Hebrew languages of the Bible to be able to decipher the proper format of things.

This god would be a god who would have to be appeased, that would have to be constantly checked to make sure he wasn’t mad. And he would be capricious enough that you would never be sure.

Is this the god you worship? One you live in constant fear of?

Jesus said that God is a Spirit, so those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Which means what? He is some vague, amorphous being that we have to cast about , looking for something that makes him happy?

Or does it mean that he operates on a different plane than we do? Is he a god who exists only to make everybody worried every time he is around? Or is he something greater?

Could it be that he looks deeper than the stuff we do and looks instead at the heart within us? Could it be that he looks at our motives and our reasons for doing things? And if he does, does he recognize that we do not always get everything right? That sometimes we worship with gladness of heart, but may do it in a weird way?

That would be a God, not a god, a little capricious being that gets mad at the drop of a hat when we don’t do things exactly like he may want. Or even maybe just the way we think he wants.

It could be that he doesn’t care how we do it. That would be radical. What if he just likes it however it is done? If our spirits are right, if our hearts are good, if we are just doing it out of our hearts, then he likes it.

It surely would remove the fear. And what is more, the truth would come.

daily java

Daily Java: 

At the foot of the mountain, a large crowd was waiting for them. A man came and knelt before Jesus and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. So I brought him to your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.” Jesus said, “You faithless and corrupt people! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Then Jesus rebuked the demon in the boy, and it left him. From that moment the boy was well. Afterward the disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that demon?”“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible. But this kind of demon won’t leave except by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:14-21)

Jesus answered rather sharply to his apostles, roughly aknolwedging their failure in an almost ugly way. Why?

It is a good question and one without a whole lot of an answer. On the one hand, he had tried and tried to teach them the power of faith and their own power through faith over disease and sickness. On the other hand, they could not seem to grasp it. It was not that they couldn’t do it, it was they couldn’t seem to makee that leap to the supernatural.

But was it their fault. Could Jesus really have expected a group of men after only a year or so in service at the level they were serving, to truly understand? Or was he asking too much.

I don’t know. I do know that Jesus was not omnipotent. As a human, he had limitations that God the Father had set on him to enable him to live in a finite body. He didn’t know some things. He didn’t know the time when he would come again, for instance. And if this was withheld, other things had to be also.

So why would he look at the apostles who were really trying to make themselves worthy of him and say this? It had to have hurt. It seems insensitive and I suppose it was to a point.

Jesus could be very insensitive at times. Some of the label he applied to the religious leaders were strong and rather abrasive and you know they had to have hurt, especially in front of people whom they felt respected them.

I guess it may have just been human weakness and tiredness. Jesus was constantly on the go, doing things, helping people. After a while it would get to feeling that everybody just wanted something. They would give nothing and just wanted things.

At that point, Jesus just kind of snaps.

If that is so, it puts a different spin on the idea of sinlessness. It says that even though Jesus was sinless and perfect, at the same time, he was not necessarily perfect in all his actions. There were times when he said things he may have regretted and maybe wished he hadn’t. First of all if he could have that kind of reaction, maybe there is hope for us. And second it puts a different picture on how much is expected of us by the Heavenly Father.

Yes, God wants us to be perfect, but at the same time,his idea of perfection and ours is different. We stand trying desperately trying to be nice and sweet all the time and Jesus wasn’t always nice and sweet. Sometimes he was blunt in his expectations to his followers, blunt to the point of rudeness.

If that is the case, we do not lose our Christianity and Christ-likeness as easily as we think we do sometimes. Nobody was more “Christ-like” than Jesus and he said stuff he probably regretted.

Through his words alone, sometimes Jesus gave us hope.

daily java

Daily Java:

Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? (Ecclesiastes 4:11)

There is a real joy in sleeping with your wife for a long time. And that joy is beyond anything sexual. It is the joy of being with another person in a long-term relationship.

In fact, there may even be a time when the sexual relationship may have to go. Illness, failing health, age – something may be in the way. But the sleeping together continues.

There are several things that come from sleeping together for a long time that are very good.

One is just the simple fact that someone is there at night with you. You are not alone. You reach your foot over, or you reach out to touch or you just hear someone else breathing – and you know that you are not alone. For all its freedoms and lack of restrictions, there is a loneliness in bachelorhood. Married people go a lot of adjustment sleeping with someone else, but after a while they learn the rhythms, the noises, the breathing – all things that come from close association with other people while they are asleep.

And that is the way God intended it. Two people learn to adjust and to fall into this association. The association for the most part is spent by yourself, asleep. But it is also spent asleep with someone else, who is also asleep.

The second is safety. My wife woke me one night to tell me that something was burning. If it had been left to me, I would have burned up, the way I sleep. It helps during sickness as the other is aware of what is going on with you and whether or not you need help.

The third is warmth. There is a lot of shared warmth under a blanket when two people are there. That is good on strong winter nights. And you notice when your wife is gone because the bed is that much colder.

The fourth is kind of like the first, but it is companionship. Lying at night holding hands, she lies on your arm and you talk. The talking you do is that of old friends and is different than the talking you do in the daytime. It is intimate and a time in which you talk about dreams and sorrows, wishes and disappointments, things that are hard to talk about in the cold light of day. You laugh together, cry together, think together. You move in a rhythm that is possible in no other way.

You know each other well, you have seen each other in literally every fact of life and it comes to a time when there is little to surprise you about the other. And you are comfortable in this relationship.

You love this woman and she loves you. And you lie in bed in the most natural, unartificial way it is possible to be in. Your hearts are open to each as much as your bodies. And you drift off to sleep in the knowledge that neither of you would do anything to hurt the other, that when it comes down to it, you would each die for the other.

To reduce sleeping with each other to just the one night stand of sex is to demean it by making it artificial and shallow. There is a depth of human experience in sharing the common sleeping robe, lying together under the stars, sleeping a bedroom in a mobile home, sleeping in a mansion.

The sleeping experience is not necessarily all sexual, but it is deep and rich and strong. You commit yourself to sleeping with one person and you do it for years and years, until it becomes more natural than sleeping by yourself. By yourself, you have lost something. With each other,  you are complete, natural, in place.

You are together. And that is where you belong.

daily java

Daily Java:

Then he added, “Every teacher of religious law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a homeowner who brings from his storeroom new gems of truth as well as old.” (Matthew 13:52)

Experience counts, no matter what the experience may be. And sometimes even though the experience may be far from the kingdom, it will still count in your life and in your teaching of the Kingdom of God and its grace.

Those Jesus was talking to were teachers of the law. They were very very studied men, men of depth and wisdom. They had devoted their lives to the study of the Torah, the law, and were well-versed in it.

The only problem was that they were studying what was essentially a dead disccipline. Jesus had come to set up something new. The old was passing away and the new – the Kingdom of God – was coming in.

On top of all this, their study of the Torah included all of the traditions and regulations that accompanied it. By the time Jesus came along, they had the Torah for more than 1300 years. So it made sense that it had been magnified by interpretations and everything else imaginable. And a lot of these things carried the same weight as the Torah itself. To them, the traditions were important.

But Jesus said that the problem was they had weighed the Torah, with its message of love and forgiveness, down under all these man-made traditions. That made a lot of them mad.

But if they began to think about it, like some of the teachers did when listening to Jesus, they realized that there was something greater than just studying the law. They realized that it was only if the law became part of you and entered your heart that anything good could be accomplished.

Of course, the law was too big to be internalized. There was too much of it. And in their minds, the law and the traditions had become enmeshed to a point that they had trouble figuring out which was which.

Jesus came along with what he called the heart of the law, the point of it all: loving God and loving others (Matthew 22). That could easily be internalized. And if you took that core into your heart, all the rest would be taken care of. It would follow automatically.

If you loved God, you would not worship idols, or do anything else to hurt God. If  you took that core into yourself, you would not do anything to hurt others. You wouldn’t lie, or steal or covet or anything that would damage your relationship with God or with you neighbor.

Not only that, but Jesus expanded the idea of your “neighbor” into that of the community of mankind, not just the guy next door. Who do I do good to? Everybody. Not just people on my block, or my neighborhood, or my town or state or country, but everybody. Even those people who dress funny in Africa.

And those teachers who were full of the knowledge and wisdom of the glory of God were able to take that logical next step of faith: accepting Jesus as the fulfillment of all that they had studied all their lives. When they did that, they were able to take all that knowledge and distill it into their lives and into their hearts. They were also able to help teach it to others in a way that was full and rich and ripe with maturity.

They were not wasted in all that knowledge; they were valuable. Sure, much of it was in the wrong direction, but with Jesus in their hearts and the grace of God in their lives, they were able to use it – all that knowledge – to his glory.

They brought the new gems of truth into their storehouses as well as the old. What a blessing all those teachers of the law who had found Jesus and made that logical next step were to the early church!

To have this man who had been so big in Judaism and the Hebrew law to come in and say, I have something new to tell you. And people heard him expound on all those things that were so relevant to their walk of faith in Jesus.

I had a lot of education in a denomination that in many ways was far from the grace of God, one that was very works-oriented. For a while that depressed me. What good was it?

Then I found the core. After I had taken that natural next step, went to that symbolic next level, it all fit in. All that education was good, it was all useful, because it had immersed me in the written word of God. And I am able to use that flawed education to teach people more perfectly the way of truth. After all, I learned of the Bible and God will always use that study and, if you allow him to do so, level it out to his glory.

It was the same with Apollos in Acts 18. He was well-versed in the law and in the prophets and was a dynamic speaker bringing many into Jesus. But he did not know of his grace or of the continual second chance we have in Jesus. Aquila and Priscilla taught him that new perspective and he was even better at teaching. He was even more dynamic and forceful. And the people who listened to him benefited greatly.

New gems as well as old. What a great and God-blessed combination.

daily java

Daily Java: 

For everything there is a season,a time for every activity under heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Several things have happened this past week. Some are things of relief, some are things that I am just glad to get over with.

One thing I was glad to get over with was that my wife finally bought a purse. To a husband, the subject of your wife’s purse is one that is kind of double-sided. She searches and searches, and can never find the right one.

Looking for a purse for your wife, or rather standing around while she looks for a purse is horrible. If you try to help, you are reminded that you are not carrying the purse. She is. Which is true. It would be a cold day in South Texas in July that I would carry a purse.

But we looked everywhere. The malls, WalMart, Target, all the discount department stores, street corner vendors, everywhere. And I found out some terrible things.

One was that most purses are ugly, multi-colored things and can be the size of a automobile trunk. Another is that purses are expensive. Some people pay up to four and five hundred dollars for a purse! I was aghast.

Ella looked and looked and finally found what she wanted, but in another couple of years, she will have to do it again. After all, the purse will wear out. And I will again traipse around after her scooter like some big, stupid looking lummox, offering whatever suggestion is demanded of me.

The other was better, if you could say that curing cancer is better than looking for a purse. Next Tuesday I begin my chemo-therapy in Wichita at the VA. It will be a four hour process, but the best thing about it is that it will have begun. Waiting is a terrible thing.

And it is interesting at the number of people in this church who have gone through chemo-therapy. They are eager to help and give me aid and just minister to the minister. For that I am grateful. Longton church has made room in their lives for a physically damaged minister and I am thankful for the gift God has given me.

Some churches would have terminated the relationship because of the time involved. But it seems that Longton has embraced it. Thank you, Lord.

My van had a problem this week but fortunately it is not as bad as I initially thought. And of course, I have lost tons of weight. 60 pounds to be exact. Since I now eat tiny little portions of food, I suppose I will continue, but that is an upside to the downside of the cancer.

And the cancer will not get us down. To paraphrase the three Hebrew men in Daniel 3, God will deliver me. And even if he does not deliver me, I still will not turn from him. He is my God and I will ever serve him.

God continues to bless and watch over us here and we thank him.

God bless you and keep you in his glorious name.

daily java

Daily Java:

So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. (Ephesians 5:15-17)

I have always been the kind of guy who liked to be in control, who preferred to be in charge.

It isn’t that I minded taking instruction, or even that it bothered me to be under someone. But if I had my druthers, I would prefer to be in charge. And I especially hate being in a position that causes me to need someone else to help me. It is a helpless feeling I detest.

It is just that I have liked to be able to do things myself. If it was broken, I liked to work on it until I could get it fixed. I recognized that there were things I could do nothing about. If the car was broken, there was generally nothing I could do about that. That was usually out of my league.

Electrical things too. I could fix electrical things only to a point. I know the basics of electrical  knowledge, but only that.  If I came to an stopping point, I had to stop and either get someone else to do it, or just live with the problem.

But I hate living with broken things. Of course, most of the fixing was more of the jerry rig variety. I fixed it but it may not have been the right way. However, it worked.

But I could almost always figure out how to make something work. And if it was borken, I could fix it.

But then things come along that you cannot fix. No matter how hard you may want to, you cannot fix them.

When Ella got MS, there was nothing I could do to help her. With my daughter, she had some problems and there was nothing I could do. I was helpless.

Then comes the ultimate broken thing. I contracted cancer. And I have to have someone else be in charge and help me. I am helpless. If I want to live, and I do, someone else has to take me by the hand and lead me somewhere. I have no control, other than the fact that I could refuse and die.

I hate it. But there are options.

One is that I can rage. I know people who do, that when they discover they have cancer, they get mad and destroy things, they curse and rant and rave. They blame God and the universe and everything else. And in so doing, they show their helplessness strongly. They think they look tragic and sad, looking for sympathy, but they look foolish.

Another is that I can sink into self-pity. I can look tragic and sad, I can cry a lot, I can go about with  black clothing and my hair uncombed and all. Again, I think I look tragic but I don’t. I look foolish when I do this.

The other is that I can accept it. It is not that I want it. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I can recognize that I have no control over it and I can try to make the best of it.

How do you make the best of cancer? A strange question. There is nothing good about cancer. Nothing. There is no beauty, no glory, no majesty. It is ugly and destructive. It is bringing something bad and evil into an otherwise good life filled with the glory of God.

How can I bring something good out of something so bad?

The apostle Paul says this in the passage above. He says to be careful how you are living, not foolishly. When you rage against the storm, when you live a life of anger, you have missed the point of life in Jesus.

In Romans 8:28, again the apostle Paul says And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. The way to make the most of every opportunity, as he said in Ephesians 5, is to recognize what good can come from your trials, your problems.

There is no glory in raging, there is no glory in overwhelming sadness. Of course, there is no glory in cancer either, but glory comes from it, or rather from the way you deal with it.

There is first of all a recognition of the fact that your life is not all that is important in this world. Paramount in this world is the glory of God and his will for you.

While he didn’t send that cancer, nor cause it to happen, he did cause you to happen. And he gave you his grace and his glory to use in showing others his grace and glory. When you accept what has happened and when you give him glory in your life, when the glory of God is seen as greater even then what has happened to you, then you show his power.

He has power over life. It is the kind of power that says, even though I die, I will not despair. And it is the power that says that Jesus is in control. As Jesus himself said: I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. (John 11:26-17)

I cannot be in charge of my life right now, so I gladly give it over to him. It is kind of like the old saying about making lemonade when life gives you lemons. Cancer is the lemons; Jesus is the lemonade.

I cannot fix this, but he can fix me. And I praise him.

cancer pictures

Here are pictures of the cancer from a couple of weeks ago. They were taken in the office by my camera.

daily java

Daily Java: 

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him. Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” When Jesus heard this, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.” Then he added, “Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’ For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” (Matthew 9:9-13)

A friend of mine was new to an area and had taken a church to pastor. Everything was going well and the church was enjoying moderate growth when the unthinkable happened. He invited the wrong people to church.

This was a racist area and he invited a black family to church and a large contingent went ballistic. It eventually caused him to leave and the church to close.

That’s the problem with church growth. It doesn’t always go the way you want it to go. You want young couples to come so your church can be more dynamic, but they bring their children with them and they are noisy. You want to do more community outreach but when you do, the people you reach out to begin to come to church. They are poor and street people and it jars with what you think your church should be. An area changes its cultural makeup. Hispanic people begin to come and that, again, jars with your picture of church.

Many a huge church in Houston, my home town where the Churches of Christ were massive, died when they refused to accept people from their own neighborhoods. Many of the members had themselves moved to the suburbs, yet they wanted to keep their church as an upper class church. The people in the neighborhood ruined that picture.

The apostles were happy with the makeup of Jesus’ followers. They were all of a type. Working men, or at least studious men, men like themselves, men they could understand and who they enjoyed (or at least tolerated) being around.

Matthew the tax collector changed that dynamic. The vast majority of the Jews considered tax collectors to be the worst of all creation. First of all, they worked for the Romans, an occupying force which ruled with an iron hand. Second, they worked on a commission basis. They had to raise a certain amount of money, anything over that they kept for themselves. So the potential for corruption was great.

Third, since they worked for the Romans, they tended to adopt Roman, or Gentile, customs in  dress and eating. They were not as careful to keep the dietary restrictions of the Jews, nor did they do a lot of the small things the Jewish religious leaders demanded of the Jews.

When Jesus called Matthew, it baffled the rest of the apostles. How could he do this? How could he ruin a perfectly good bunch of people by bringing in the wrong people. Matthew does not fit in with us. He is too different. Philosophically, culturally, in every way he was too different. They considered him sinful and therefore so should Jesus. The Jesus they followed was supposed to think like they did, like who they did, hold the same political views they did.

The only problem was that he didn’t. He followed his own course, he was more in tune with God’s agenda.

In other words, they were racist, sexist, culturally biased, full of their own inflated self-importance - just like everybody else. And Jesus was there to do the will of the Father who sent him.

As he told those who complained: the ones who are sick need a doctor. The ones who are well do not. And then he adds an oblique comment. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners. The Great Physician will do no good to anyone who will not acknowledge him as Lord. Only after we have realized that we are sick can Jesus truly touch our hearts.

The apostles were wrong and some of them had trouble with that the rest of their lives. Some of them stayed with the Jews. Some left. But the ones who left did so only after a lot of teaching by the Holy Spirit and a lot of pain.

The churches who refuse to learn die long protracted deaths. Yet they sadly remain convinced of their cultural superiority. Until the day the doors close, they are convinced that if they could just get the right people to come back they could return to their former glory.

But they never do. After they die, someone from the neighborhood starts a church in their facilities and it grows.

How much easier would it have been to have had that attitude from the beginning, the attitude of service and bringing the gospel to those in their neighborhoods.

This cancer has had some strong effects on my life

He has sent fire from heaven that burns in my bones. He has placed a trap in my path and turned me back. He has left me devastated, racked with sickness all day long. (Lamentations 1:13)

This cancer has had some strong effects on my life, some of which I would never have guessed.

First is an odd effect: my eyes have gained a haunting look to them. Ella says it is disconcerting. She has that same look at time and she tells me that people in severe pain gain it. I have been in a lot of pain since this whole thing began. It seems that the temporary fix the doctor put in – the stent to hold my esophagus open – has hurt more than the other. It has been a considerable amount of pain, more than I ever dreamed of having. and I suppose it shows in my eyes.

I don’t particularly like that, but it is too bad. My eyes have always been a bit on the intense side. I was always able to stare people down because of it. But now they look like some kind of Old Testament prophet, especially with my hair longer and gray. She says I have to learn to set my face in a smile. Since she has done a good job herself with her own pain, she knows what she is talking about. Never had to control my eyes before.

Second is my weight loss. Since I couldn’t eat at all for a while and only sparingly now, I have lost a lot of weight. All of my clothing fit differently now than before. Most of them are too big and I had to give them away. Otehrs are just right. Some of them are older clothing that I have kept around hoping one day I could fit them again. And now they do. However, my suit is almost too big and I haven’t hardly worn it. It has always been too small.

This is part of the third thing too. My bones are becoming more and more prominent. It is odd to feel them. If it were not for the fact that my stomach seems to be distended and bloated, I would be gaunt looking. My stomach is not particularly big, but it has something going on inside it that makes it swell just a bit. I need to work out, which I plan on doing after I get all the stuff underweigh for the chemo-therapy. This is a great town for walking so that is what I will do.

Fourth is general fatigue. I am so tired all the time. The pain leaches your strength nad makes it hard to do what you need to do.

Along with that is the fact that I sleep a lot. Again, the easiest way to deal with pain is to sleep. Couple that with the sleepiness that  comes with the drugs I have to take and I take them in mega-quantities and I am always a little looped.

I guess I am just going to have to live with it. If I had known cancer was such a hassle, I would never have gotten it.

daily java

Daily Java:

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. (Proverbs 5:18)

Didn’t the Lord make you one with your wife? In body and spirit you are his. And what does he want? Godly children from your union. So guard your heart; remain loyal to the wife of your youth. (Malachi 2:15)

There was a wedding renewal in WalMart about noon today. There was a quite a crowd. The bride wore white with a veil. The groom, a big, stupid looking guy wore a tailored back vested suit with a white shirt and black tie. The maid of honor wore purple, the best man wore gray. The minister wore a brown suit. Society coverage was nil, but the cake was great. The couple is still married 42 years later.

Today was a little different. The groom looked a bit haggard, wearing sweatpants and a fleece shirt. The bride wore denim pants and a black sweatshirt. There was no The ceremony at maid of honor or best man. The ceremony at WalMart today at noon was noticed by no one except the two people who, after 42 years, are still in love, and the Father above saw it too and smiled.

The ceremony was occasioned by the loss of old wedding rings. Ella had enough prongs on her diamond solitaire loose or missing as to be afraid to wear it. I have lost so much weight that my ring fell off in the car.

Ella had been talking about getting a new ring for the past two years in white gold. We have gone so much to silver in our jewelry that the gold really doesn’t match too much anymore. We had just about decided to so something soon, but the ring she wanted was going to cost a lot, so we have been economically slowed.

But when my ring fell off, we knew we needed to do something. WalMart had a simple silver ring for a great price. And it came in a plethora of sizes. Since I am an 11 and she is a 7, that was a plus.

Today, we found the same style of ring in both our sizes and bought it. The lady asked if we wanted to wear them out or take them in a box. We decided to wear them.

After I had paid for them, we stepped away from the counter. I placed her ring on her finger and told her that I would love her forever. She placed mine on my hand and told me the same.

And hand in hand, me on foot and her in her scooter, with our new matching wedding rings, we moved off into the rest of the store.

But for a moment, we were the only people in the world and the light seemed to glow especially strongly around us.

No one noticed. No trumpets blared nor people doing that rhythmic clapping that I hate in restaurants. Nobody sang or made a speech. We didn’t go to Flagship Hotel in Galveston for a honeymoon. But we confirmed and affirmed that which has stood for 42 years: our undying love for each other.

For a moment, we were the center of the universe, standing before the throne of the Lord God Almighty, professing once again that age old promise: til death do us part. I will love her until I die and she wil love me until she dies.

We are ours. We are Us. Beside our marriage is nothing else. There is no axe capable of cleaving it, no desire greater than the one we have to hold each other strong and close, no blonde nor chiseled abs attractive enough to break it. Because after all, our love for each other is not only fueled by our own love for each other, but also our love for God and his for us.

Maybe another wedding renewal in 2055, our 84th? I will be 105 and she will be a youthful 103. We will probably need new rings by then. Maybe we can jet into WalMart in our flying car and buy some new rings.

Maybe not. But I will still love her and she me. That I know.

daily java

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. (Matthew 23:1-3)

Someone wrote tonight to me and said: “I really enjoy watching you and Ella in your walk together. I never managed to do this. I am glad you are able to and do it well. Love and Not be afraid to show it.”

Ella and I have been married for 42 years tomorrow morning at 10:00. At that time I pledged my troth to her, told her I loved her and intended to do so forever. And she promised me the same.

And what is amazing is that forty-two years later, here we are, still loving each other and still together.

It was not always easy. We had problems and at one time they were serious. But when it came down to it, we had made a decision to be together. And we still are.

But what difference does it make to stay together? What difference does it make to the world that two people in the middle of nowhere in Kansas decide not to get divorced, that two people stay together and keep faithful to each other.

For one thing there are two more families that have seen that up close and personal: our children. Even so, our daughter had problems with her first marriage, not of her making. And it fractured. But her second one is going well. She sees the commitment as life-long.

Our son is still married after eleven years and has a child. He saw the model and is trying to model his life after that same paradigm.

And others see it too. As a minister, one of the important things I do is to model the Christian life in front of my church. How can I teach things to other people that I cannot seem to get straight in my own life? I want them to see my life as a reflection of what God wants. I cannot do that as effectively with a broken marriage.

When I did jail ministry, the inmates were amazed to see someone whose life had not been fractured again and again. They were amazed at long-term love.

That is a lot of it there. I want others to see what God had in mind for life. We love each other and remain faithful. We are hospitable. We are loving. We are merciful. We are giving. Or at least we try to be. We don’t always make the grade but at the same time, we try.

The old adage, “I’d rather see a sermon as hear one any day” is true. Any idiot can tell a bunch of people things. That was what Jesus was talking about in the passage above,

The Pharisees and teachers of the Law (those whose job it was to tell the people what God wanted) lived lives at great variance with what God wanted. Jesus said that you need to listen to them but not pay attention to what they did. They were, Jesus said, overt hypocrites, trying to tell people what to do without doing it themselves. They felt themselves above the law because they were teachers.

They said what God wanted them to say and felt quite superior in doing it. But they either refused or were incapable of doing what God said.

I want people to see me and recognize that I live like I want them to live. I love them enough and I love God enough to try to do what is right.

And even though those things are right and give pleasure in obedience, at the same time, there is joy in living with someone for decades. You know all about them and they know all about you and yet they still love you and you them.

Of course, in our case, that is not that hard for me. My wife is good and sweet and loving. She loves me with an unabashed love and always has. She gave herself to me on our wedding night and our bond has been strong and pure and good.

Of course, she has had problems in that I was an ongoing project that took quite a few years to get anywhere near working good.

But I have always loved her and always will. I loved her the minute I saw her and have never ceased. I told her when we got married it was for sickness and health and we both meant it. Now she is sick and I take care of her. With my cancer, I know she will be with me.

We are our support group and our mutual expression of love.

And tomorrow, 42 years ago, our journey together began. What a ride! What a life! What a woman!

Marriage is more than a good sex life. After all, people get old and tired, stuff falls that you would rather stay up, energies flag. But love, on the other hand, continues. Love grows.

And our love has grown. And it will continue. I love her.

daily java

Daily Java: 

At least I can take comfort in this: Despite the pain, I have not denied the words of the Holy One. (Job 6:10)

Now there was a real man. So many things had happened to Job and his wife that it is hard to believe. Yet he kept his faith.

Mrs Job didn’t know what to do. All she could see was her life lying in shambles and the man she loved in pain. And all for no apparent reason.

When the first round of tragedies happened – the loss of his children and all of his property and wealth – he said the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Then the second round hit. He lost his health and his wife saw a broken man sitting at the town dump scraping his sore with a piece of pottery. Yet still he said: Despite the pain, I have not denied the words of the Holy One.

Her response? Curse God and die. You would be better of than you are now for sure.

But Job said no. He did not deserve these things, that he knew that for sure.  And he told the Lord that in no uncertain terms. Yet they continued to come. And what is more, the Lord never told him why. He never told him that when it came down to it, it was just a bet between the Lord and satan over whether or not Job would deny God under duress.

But he didn’t, even though he was unaware of the bet. He remained strong and faithful even when stupid things were happening to him.

There was no real purpose to what happened to Job. At least not to Job’s perspective. In fact rarely is there a good purpose to tragedy. And God doesn’t send tragedy. He allows it to happen, which is different, and he uses it to his glory and to our own glory, too.

Furthermore there is sometimes no reason for these things happening. If Job had been bad, like his “friends” claimed him to secretly be, then you could understand it. But he was a godly man, one who worshiped God unabashedly.

The point of the Book of Job is that when things happen to the child of God that seem to have no good reason to happen, the child of God stays firm and strong.

I worship a mighty God. He could take away my cancer with the wave of his hand. He could heal Ella’s thrombocydepenia (blood platelet disease) in a minute. But he hasn’t. Instead he lets us suffer.

And I do not like it, not one bit. He never says I have to. I have to accept it because, Quite frankly, what can I do about it? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. I cannot change it.

But I worship God even when the hits keep on coming. And I serve him even when I believe – and rightly – that life is not fair.

Change us, O Lord. Heal us. At least heal this wonderful woman who has spent her life in simple worship to you. She is too good to suffer like this. But I praise his name anyway. He is my God.

daily java

Daily Java:

I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. (Philippians 3:12-14)

It is the New Year tomorrow night. The old year with all its sorrows and difficulties and all its joys and successes is gone. Bad things and good things are gone, not to be recalled except in memory.

Was it a lousy year? Then it is time now that you can work to make it better. It was not your fault that it was so bad? Maybe not, but you can do something to make it better.

Was it a great year? Maybe so, but the absolutely true thing is that you cannot live on your past successes. Sooner or later you have to do something else. High school reunions are filled with old jocks who do nothing but recall past glories, but have not done anything lately.

Even the apostle Paul said that anything he had done before was gone and he had to move forward. He looks instead of backward, he looks forward. What can he do this year? What great things will be accomplished this year? It is the end that really matters, not the stuff you do between.

Yes, those things are good and important. But when people see you, they do not see the past successes nor the past failures. They see you and what you are doing right this minute.

And I have learned this past couple of weeks that there is no real guarantee of a future. You may not make it past this year. And as you stand before God, what do you want to come to him with? A bunch of excuses? Or successes?

God does not save us according to the good things we have done. That is works salvation and the Bible never commends that. On the other hand, do I want to show up before God with nothing but excuses. “Well, you know, God, I meant to do good stuff, but this kept happening and those people didn't like me and I got sick and on and on.”

Instead, we press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize. We move on from where we are and go to a better place. We become good workers, faithful stewards. We become better at our language, at our actions, at things that really matter.

When we do that, we move on, and we press on and we accomplish something great in God.

With his grace we can. Move with him this year.

Happy New Year from brother John and sister Ella.