daily java

Daily Java:
My close friends detest me. Those I loved have turned against me. (Job 19:19)
It was 1997, a rough year for me. of course, it seems several of them have been rough. But I suppose this was more strange than rough, an odd year.

I had gone through a thirty day fast in the month of April toward National Day of Prayer on May 1. Then I had been normal (or as normal as you can be after coming off a thirty day fast). Then my gall bladder blew up. I had surgery and it went badly. I don’t know if the gall bladder attack was worse than they thought or if the doctor was a butcher. Probably a combination of both.

The doctor gave me a laproscopy and I wasn’t a candidate for it and it hurt me badly. It took almost a month before I was back to normal.

Between the fast and the recovery from the gall bladder attack and surgery, I lost 80 pounds. I was smaller than I have been in decades.

We were friends with some people who lived outside of town in a commune. They and the circle of people around them were some of our closest friends. This circle included an old cop and his wife and a musician for the Catholic Church and a minister for the Disciples of Christ, along with some other ministers and such. We got together with all or some of them a lot.

We met a lot for prayer during this time and talked about a lot of things. I shared words of the Lord with them and they with me. We were friends.

We had a church plant in a storefront in Odessa, MO, that also had a coffeehouse on Saturday nights. A lot of these people were coffeehouse friends and we even had the Coffeehouse Band for a while. It was great fun.

Then it turned.

I introduced many of my coffeehouse friends to the commune friends and they began to get together. For some reason this caused the coffeehouse friends to drift away from us.

One day I was at the commune’s restaurant. This was quite a large undertaking as they viewed much of their ministry with feeding people. We had the commune pastor’s father with us along with a missionary from Africa. The father and I had talked and seemed to get along well.

The pastor’s father was talking about ministry and suddenly he told me that everybody in town was laughing at me, and that my ministry was worthless. I sat stunned by this sudden and unexpected turn. Then the missionary began to address me about something, I forget exactly what, but it went along the same line. I stood there listening and realized that I had to leave. I took my jacket and started to leave. It surprised everyone that I was leaving and the missionary said, “Wait.” I said no, that I had to go and I left.

I was stunned by this turn by my friends. The commune was used to this. Somebody would do something they didn’t like or thought was wrong and they would castigate them publicly and they would take it, it was part of their community. But why me?

Over the next week, several of my friends came to me in tears over this, wondering themselves both why it had happened and why they allowed it to happen.

But over the course of several weeks they had moved away from me into the circle of this commune and it hurt. It was almost as if this commune had told them that they could their friend or mine and they decided to go with them. I never knew and I never found out.

But these former friends were in tears over their own participation. But it seemed too late.

We went from a circle of friends to virtually no friends in a month. And I never figured out why.

It has been 15 years and tonight I remembered it like it was yesterday. The betrayal and public humiliation was too much to bear and it still hurts.

It was not long before I found out that another friend had been lying to me and the church died.

Fifteen years ago. Tonight it seemed like last month.

why do we attract people that want to hurt us?

O God, don’t stay away.
    My God, please hurry to help me.
Bring disgrace and destruction on my accusers.
    Humiliate and shame those who want to harm me.
But I will keep on hoping for your help;
    I will praise you more and more.
(Psalm 71:12-14)

It seems like sometimes people come out of the woodwork to do us harm. We are enjoying our lives and someone will come and be our friends for a while and suddenly turn on us and do us harm.

And the question is why?

Why did they decided to become a friend in the first place and why they decided to turn on us in the second. Why go to all that bother for people who basically are not that important in the grand scheme of things?

It gets old after a while. It also makes you wary of people who want to be your friend.

I am a Pollyanna type of person. I tend to trust people and believe them. it is a stupid trait of mine but it is real. So that makes me an even bigger target of people who want to hurt us.

But I cannot for the life of me figure out why. It has gone on our entire lives. Someone will come and invest themselves in our ministry, then for some reason turn. They will profess friendship and then do something to hurt us.

And I just do not understand why. I am not that kind of person. But I seem to attract that kind of people. It has been so ever since I began ministry and it was far worse since I came into the Pentecostal church.

That was a bad idea, and another whole story in itself.

But why do we attract people like this? I just cannot figure it out.

judas had thought of betrayal often enough

When Judas had eaten the bread, Satan entered into him. Then Jesus told him, “Hurry and do what you’re going to do.”  (John 13:27)

Judas had thought of betrayal often enough that sooner or later he would investigate it seriously.

The price (the thirty pieces of silver) was not nearly enough to justify the action yet when it came down to action, Judas chose wrong.

Was it because his mind was so full of imagined rewards and outcomes? Or because he felt he had debased himself so far that he might as well go through with it?

As Jesus had said, the thought was the same as the action.

Maybe Judas felt himself trapped and couldn’t figure out how to get out of the trap.

Maybe he figured that having gone as far has he had gone, Jesus wouldn’t really accept him back.

(written in 1987)

daily java

Daily Java:

But even as Jesus said this, a crowd approached, led by Judas, one of the twelve disciples. Judas walked over to Jesus to greet him with a kiss. But Jesus said, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:47-49)

What an exquisite pain, to be betrayed by a gesture of affection.

To give a kiss on the beard was a sign of respect and affection given by a man to his mentor. It was really no big thing, just kind of like a quick hug or a handshake.

But it became a sign of betrayal. When we think of betrayal in the Bible, we usually think of Judas. When we think of gestures of betrayal, we think of the kiss he gave Jesus.

Judas’ legacy was betrayal and to ruin, at least in our minds, the kiss one gave as respect. When I think of the kiss, I always see pain and death following.

When I see my son, I usually hug him and give him a kiss on his neck while I am doing it. When you pick up your child or grandchild, you usually kiss them, maybe on the cheek. When you are with your wife, you usually kiss her.

But to use it as a mark of identification of one who is to die. To kiss your wife to show someone who she was so they could hurt her. To kiss your children to show the police who they are.

And Jesus’ comment, with a kiss? I think Jesus was surprised that it was this way. he knew Judas was coming back, but to betray him with a kiss, the very thing he had used when they were friends, the mark of respect he had given Jesus?

How it hurts when someone uses something that is familiar with which to turn on you.

I knew a man who came over to talk a lot. One day he said he wanted to come over and talk to me. He had done it a lot of times.

But this time, he came in all smiles, shook my hand, I gave him a cup of coffee. And then he launched into a diatribe about something that someone had told me and began to attack my whole character.

I was stunned. I could understand his concern – although it was based on someone else’s fantasy – but to use the same expressions to get me to come down to the church, and to drink my coffee while he was doing it, was truly shocking.

It wasn’t the last time something like that happened. And for someone to use an expression that was familiar to the both of you, and to accept your hospitality while planning it, that is disgusting.

Before Judas came, he sat with Jesus and had supper. He probably laughed (as well as he could) with the other guys at a joke, maybe participated in a toast, bowed his head at the prayer – all that. And all the while he was planning for the time when he could leave and get the money to betray Jesus.

One of the times that I cried was over a friend who betrayed me, stole from me, lied to me. He was one that I considered one of my best friends.

And it happens. It happened to Jesus and it happened to me and it happens to a lot of people.

It will continue to happen, too, until we all go to be with God in glory.

And any time you accept anyone’s hospitality, drink someone’s coffee and eat someone’s food while you are planning to do wrong to them, you are put in the same shoes as Judas. You are pretty sorry.

Jesus suffered for it and came through it. Judas suffered for it and died.

I would rather be like Jesus.

betrayal

I just watched a movie on Jesus: Jesus the Mini Series. It was the movie that was on TV in 1999 or so. It was in general a very good representation of Jesus.

He is portrayed as a real person in this movie, rather than someone who was almost too holy to walk around.

But a couple of things came out at me.

The main thing was when Judas betrayed Jesus. Jesus knew he was going to, but the way Judas did it surprised Jesus. Judas and the Romans came up, Jesus came out to meet them, but then Judas kissed him.

Startled, Jesus said, a kiss? Judas realized the enormity of the betrayal at that moment.

It was a movie, and really, even though it was inaccurate in points was a good one.

But that picture of betrayal was almost too much for me.

I have been betrayed by “friends”. People who ate at my table and drank my coffee and smiled at me and claimed friendship, who were all the while planning on turning on me.

I never figured out why. I am not that important a person. But people have always come out to the woodwork to first claim friendship and then hurt me.

I do not know why and probably never will. Why is it that I seem to attract that kind of person. Why can I not attract someone who is genuine. I have a always tried to be genuine and transparent.

But people around me that try to get close to me aren’t.

It makes me and my sweet wife suspicious of people, or at least holding them at arm’s length.

As I said, I am not that important. The church for which I minister is not that large, nor do I make enough money for people to want to take. I just never figured it out.

But when he was hanging on the cross, he said, Father forgive them, for the do not understand what they are doing.

And they didn’t. they thought they were doing the will of the Lord and having church as usual.

Actually they were trying to hurt me and my family.

I try to forgive, and it is hard. It has already happened to a point here in Lincoln, but I refuse to be bitter. The Lord was not, and while I am not anywhere near what he is, at the same time, I try to be like him.

And I try to forgive.