Our family has been reading Show Them Jesus, by Jack Klumpenhower. His main theme is that we should tie our biblical teaching – Sunday School, Bible reading, etc – back to Jesus and what he has done for us. Our children should know that God forgives our sins and provides redemption AND that there is nothing we can do to be worthy of that grace.

The day after we discussed this penetrating statement – “We shouldn’t build self-esteem. We should build Christ-esteem” (p152) – I had an application moment with our seven year old granddaughter. We were reading word cards, an activity she dreads (I just noticed that ‘reads’ is contained in ‘dreads’ ). After puzzling over the word ‘something’ for several seconds, a light came on, she figured it out, and a big grin appeared on a mostly frowny face.

I paused and prayed aloud, “Dear Jesus, thank you for putting that word into Molly’s head so she could know it and say it. You are the one who teaches us, Lord. Please keep it up and help her remember more of these words.” Then I explained to her that it was Jesus who put the thought in her head and exclaimed what a great gift that was. Molly understood part of it. “Yes,” she said proudly, “God popped it right out of my head.” I repeated my version several times, but she was not understanding the difference in prepositions.

So, we still have work to do. It was great that God has gotten credit, but there is a subtle distinction between God putting the word or thought in our head versus God popping the thought out. The first gives credit for planting the thought in the first place. The second assumes we already had the thought and God was just helping it come forth. It may not be a valid measurement, but seems to point toward a lack of appreciation for God’s grace.

This teaching moment reminded me that I am not the one who turns those lights on – it is the Holy Spirit. So I can do what another book our family read – A Praying Life, by Paul Miller – suggests. Pray. Pray for God to work in Molly’s heart and head and bring more true light about himself.

Vacation Bible School (VBS) wrapped up last week at church. I didn’t attend this year but I do recall a specific event at the South Webster Presbyterian Church VBS, where my siblings and I participated as children. We had become Presbyterians because the Baptist church was too far away to walk after Mom broke her ankle.

In any case, some lady pulled me aside in the parking lot during the kickball game and kindly corrected me for yelling at the other kids who couldn’t play so well. I don’t know who the lady was but remember her soft words pointing out that I had skills that others didn’t; it was my responsibility to use those skills well; and I should not make the other kids feel bad.

She may have said something about helping the other kids, but I don’t remember that part. The gospel may have been taught, but I don’t remember that either. I suspect there were good snacks, probably home-made cookies and lemonade. I can’t name any of the kids I was yelling at. But I do remember the first time I recall someone helpfully telling me not to be a jerk.

Thank you, unknown lady.

Last week we played Ultimate Frisbee in a fierce wind that was pushed ahead of a giant storm. The storm was coming south and had poured enough rain and lightning strikes in the Traverse City to knock the power out at our friends’ parents’ house. Some of the crowd were worried about the possibility of nasty precipitation and kept a wary eye on the clouds. Fortunately the rain held off until our stopping time = dark.

Wind does strange things to Frisbees in flight. Up, down, all around; short throws blow overhead or crash to the ground; longer throws end up in the street or the neighboring fields. Several times a teammate well behind the intended target would catch the errant disk.

We made a concession right at the beginning of the match – we played East-West rather than the traditional longer North-South because the wind from the North would cause trouble equally to both teams.

The wackiest play I recall was a five foot throw from Richie to me. I was standing in the end zone with no defenders around and a simple toss would score a goal. The wind caught the thing just as Richie let it go and smashed it right to the ground at my feet. I sort of tried to dive for it but mostly just doubled over and fell down in laughter; it was too crazy to believe. Fortunately all the young guys were quick to help me up off the ground; no injuries this time!

Dr. Sinclair Ferguson describes two thoughts in his book , In Christ Alone, that I resonated with immediately. Both are related to the systematic design of all that God has done.

The first is the need to gather input from well-trusted scholars, in addition to studying the scripture for myself. Dr. Ferguson talks of identifying scholars to study and realizing, “As I studied Romans, wrestling with some of its great truths, struggling with some of it tough passages, it became clear that countless feet had walked this way before.” Greater insights are available from greater minds than mine!

The second quote is a comment on the Word but is also about the overall grandeur of its contents. The context is how it every part fits together; the gospel truth of the exchange of Christ’s righteousness for our unrighteousness is

(a) consistent with the justice of God,

(b) consistent with all the teaching of the Old Testament, and

(c) possible only because of God; we contribute nothing.

The quote: “The sheer genius of the divine strategy is simply breathtaking.” Awesome.

I’ve often agreed with my friend’s assessment that “I am not afraid of dying so much as the steps it will take to get there.” Most of us have seen relatives or friends lose abilities and skills as they age, and some have tended to parents or partners with dementia, cancer, and any number of worrisome diseases.

What awaits as I get older? There are lots of possibilities: bad knees, loss of balance, nursing homes, wasting away, and worst of all, inability to throw a Frisbee. I appreciate my daughter’s friend Sarah’s approach to such anxieties – “I have enough problems today; those are all Future Sarah’s problems!”

Back in the day when I first was diagnosed with Guillian-Barre syndrome, the doctors described the likely progression of the paralysis: “This is an ascending paralysis so you will lose muscle control in your legs first, then your torso and arms and face. If the paralysis hits your diaphragm, we will put you on a ventilator, and if it reaches your heart, a pacemaker.”

I did not want to go on a ventilator. The idea of not being able to breathe is major scary; don’t talk to me about drowning – Yech! For several days in the hospital, I clung to the hope of getting better before getting ventilated. But then the soup got me.

I choked on a noodle at lunchtime and started coughing, The coughing turned to wheezing, then gasping, then fighting for breath. Diane called the nurses, who called the doctors, who set in motion the dreaded ventilation. The room was cleared and they started a temporary hand-operated bag process. Then everyone stood around for several minutes – something was preventing further action. It turned out they were waiting for the pharmacy guy to bring the cocaine, administered to widen the nasal passage and allow insertion of the tube for the ventilator. (This is the part of the story that listeners appreciate the most – they made me snort cocaine.)

Once the ventilator was attached to that nasal tube, it was doing all the work. But I couldn’t believe it and kept working at breathing and gasping for breath. I have been told that many people explained to me that I could relax, but without any success. I suspect that I would have said, “YOU relax, I’m fighting for breathe here.” But on a ventilator, you can’t talk; evidently I was in no mood to listen, either.

Finally they gave me some additional drug to knock me out. I woke up with the machine doing my breathing, and it kept me alive for the next week. As I began to improve, they “weaned” me from the machine by adjusting the amount of effort I would have to apply to make the machine kick in. I played with it, seeing how little I could do to make it work (not much entertainment in the Intensive Care Unit).

My summary of the ventilator story is worry, worry, worry, then fight it, fight it, fight it. Then the event occurs, you relax and wake up in a much better state. The thing I feared ahead of time was not so bad in hind sight; I could even play games with it. I suspect that failing with age is similar; I may fear it now, but it won’t last too long and heaven awaits.

I certainly have come to appreciate God’s sovereignty and providential care more. Since “not a hair will fall from my head without the will of my Father in Heaven,” I know that I will stay alive until God stops my heart. So I’m in good hands, and hope not to worry and fight but rather relax and arrive in a much better state.

Last year, we made a trip to a huge outdoor Chicago-Land art fair, where ScrapIron was acquired.  He is a bit rough and loony but is always ready to play out in the back yard. This year, we found a studious, colorful younger brother named Skillet.

 

 

 

Some would say Skillet is a bit of a bookworm, but only because he wears glasses, is holding a book, and is curvy like a worm.  We put him in front of the big hydrangea plant, not realizing that in a ground level photo, he appears to have a nice white wig. He doesn’t seem to mind such distractions; that book has captured his interest ever since we found him.

You are welcome to come by and greet Scrapiron and Skillet.

In the summer of ’72, my friend T.G. and I decided to ride our bikes from East Lansing to Battle Creek because he wanted to visit a camera store and purchase a new camera.  This is the same T.G. whose year long, very dirty, graduate research project involved trapping gasses at the top of Lansing’s tallest power plant chimneys.  He also had an M&M addiction and would regularly offer quotes like “It’s great to buy M&M’s at convenience stores because I love to get ripped off!”

We set off one Friday evening, cruising down Mount Hope as far west as we could and then angling south to Charlotte, stopping in the late evening at the local Dairy Queen.  This is the famous shar-LOT of central Michigan, not the more famous SHAR-lot in North Carolina.  As we talked with the workers and fellow soft serve connoisseurs  someone mentioned we could go a few blocks east and get on the new highway. The NEW highway?

It turned out that I-69 was under construction and soon to be open in their neighborhood.  The initial leg connected Lansing and I-96 to Marshall at I-94.  Since then, I-69 has extended south past Fort Wayne to Indianapolis, and east through Flint to Port Huron.  It is one of the few interstates that has a north-south part AND an east-west part.  And my brother in Bloomington, Indiana says they are hoping to extend it south to his town and beyond.

But on that night, all we found was a completed roadway with no traffic. What a ride! Fifteen miles of smooth concrete with no competition (except  for the police car that seemed to be doing a speed test on his vehicle and was surprised to find us on the road).  Even in the dark, it is easy to find your way on an interstate.

The pavement ended at Ainger Road, so we camped for the night.  The next morning we had to walk our bikes up the sandy ramp and found our way from there into Battle Creek.  I never found out how far north the unopened road extended at that time; T.G. and I rode home through Jackson to visit Diane, so we missed the opportunity of a return trip.  That Friday night was a once in a lifetime event!

Recently I cleaned the windshield on our vehicle while filling it with fuel; it brought to mind my summer job as a gas station attendant in Lansing.  It was located on Kalamazoo street, between Cedar and Larch, right where the Wendy’s restaurant is now.

This was after my sophomore year at MSU, and I stayed in town to attend the Summer Training Program run by University Reformed Church.  College students would work during the day (or late at night) and attend a variety of classes and training sessions in the evenings and on the weekends. Interestingly, a similar ministry has been in place the last several years, but all the students are in Petoskey and it is now a Project rather than a Program.

Joe and I both landed daytime jobs at this Gulf gas station, along with another fellow who worked the night shift.  Joe was attending Michigan Tech, but transferred to MSU after that summer.  He became a good friend and was in the wedding party when Diane and I were married – he was one of the ones who ALMOST fainted.

I learned a few things from our enthusiastic boss Dave, who was manager for several stations around town.  The station did not provide any maintenance work so our lessons were mainly about providing good service when pumping the petrol. “When cleaning a windshield, wipe the squeegee off after every pass over the glass.” “Don’t open a radiator cap until it has cooled off.”  “Be ready to change the price because you have to move quick when all the other stations make a switch.” And Dave had an interesting habit of calling everyone Sweetcakes.  This was briefly very funny when the night guy thought he was saying Suitcase.

There were two kinds of gas, regular and ethyl.  Most cars used regular (or reg-lah, as the boss called it).  As I recall, the price per gallon ranged from nineteen to forty-one cents.  Most people paid cash, although a few had credit cards.  No computers yet. Credit purchases were recorded with the sliding mechanical bar that copied the embossed parts of the card to a two-part form; the cash register was electrical but not too smart. At the end of the shift (and when the price changed) you needed to note the number of gallons delivered, calculate the amount of money you should have (including receipts for  wide range of car-related novelties sold) and then hope to come close with the amount of money on hand.

During the slow times Joe and I played a marvelous game:  we each had magic gun fingers and would shoot at each other with imaginary bullets from our magic guns.  The noises were very authentic – pow, bang, ping, and the occasional KA-Pow.  The best part was evading the other guy’s shot.  Twisting, darting, convoluting; no bullet was quick enough to land and no one was hurt.  “Missed!”   That was the fun part of the job.  The hard parts were the con artist, the robbery, and the burns from the exploding radiator, but those are stories for another day.

Contrapositives are sort of like calculus – you don’t use them much in the everyday activities of grocery shopping, taking care of babies, or cutting the grass. Engineers and logicians might use them in their work, but not your regular office worker, manager or even electricians.

So I was thrilled last week to have contrapositives show up in a sermon!  What are they, you say?  A term used in logic, it is a powerful tool to make an argument. The two logical statements below are contrapositives:

If A, then B.

If not B, then not A.

Contrapositive statements are either both true or both false; they are logically equivalent.

The series of sermons on 1 John are about evidences or signposts – assurances of salvation.  These are not causes, but results or indicators.  Several if-then statements are contained in chapter 5, verses 1-5:

If you believe that Jesus is the Christ, then you have been born of God.

If you love the Father, then you love whoever has been born of God.

If you love God and obey his commandments, then you love the children of God.

If you are born of God, then you have overcome the world.

If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then you have overcome the world.

Sometimes the contrapositive is easier to discern than the original:

If you are NOT born of God, then you do NOT believe that Jesus is the Christ.

If you are NOT born of God, then you do NOT love the Father.

If you do NOT love the children of God, then you do NOT love God or obey his commandments.

If you have NOT overcome the world, then you are NOT born of God.

If you have NOT overcome the world, then you do NOT believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

The sermon application was a refutation of the partly true statement that “No one ever really loves God or really loves his neighbor.”  The truth is that no one can love God or his neighbor perfectly.  But verse 3 of 1 John 5 says that these commandments of God are not burdensome, so they must be doable in some sense.  There must be room for a sanctifying, growing, overcoming-the-world love for God and neighbors that serves as a signpost / indicator of growth in belief and love for Jesus.

I was couch-stuck last Tuesday and watched three network television shows in a row:  NICS, NCIS New Orleans, and Person of Interest.  It is near the end of the season, so the stories are building to a climax; all have cliff-hanger episodes to encourage us to watch next fall.  The shows are well written and deal with criminal activity; this week the good guys were suffering loses against well-organized, well-funded enemies.  The list of evil bad guys was long:  terrorists; murderers; power hungry politicians and businessmen; smugglers and drug lords.  A common theme in the three shows was an amorphous group meticulously planning the destruction of a city, a nation, or the world.

Near the end of the evening I realized I was really getting paranoid.  When and where will the attack come on me and my family, friends, and neighbors?  Who is out there trying to steal my identity, destroy our culture, and crush my church?  How can we escape the coming wrath?

Fortunately, I remembered a great Pat Quinn sermon presented recently from Isaiah 43, simply titled, Four Reasons Not to Fear.  His summary line from David Powlison is comforting:  “We have good reasons to be afraid, let’s not kid ourselves.  But, we have better reasons not to be afraid.”  The four reasons: God has redeemed you; You are God’s witnesses and servants; God is doing a new and glorious thing in you; God will blot out your transgressions.

The good news is not just that Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from our sins and then rose from the dead to prove his claims were valid, although that is indeed a great comfort.  God’s plan includes work for his believers to do, and He will continue to do new and glorious things for those who believe in him.  He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4.4). No matter what unknown (or known) forces are plotting my destruction, I know someone who is bigger, better, and has more resources.