My Home

Revelation 21.18, 22.1-2 (ESV)
The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

On the North shore of Long Island, near the town of Riverhead, there is a place that has maintained a hold on my heart for most of my life. For hundreds of years, until several years ago, a plot of land and beach had been owned by one of my ancestors. My grandmother helped her father build a small bungalow at the top of a cliff overlooking the Sound, then it was passed to my aunt and uncle, and they expanded the home considerably. I spent at least a week staying there every summer since before I could remember. Nearby, "the farm" was my grandmother's birthplace, not to mention the generations preceding her. The time spent in this place was wonderful not just because of the family members I got to know, the lazy vacation days, and the adventures fishing, water skiing, and sailing.

Especially after my family moved during middle school, I became aware that this area, called Penny's Landing, felt more like home than any other spot on the planet. When I occasionally return, I am reminded that the farmers, mechanics, and local folks are somehow connected to me as family or as family friends. I loved knowing that there was a place where I had firm roots of love and genetics. It was comforting.

But, several years ago, a divorce resulted in the loss of both the farm and the land on the Sound from our family. The "bungalow" on the cliff was sold because the property taxes and upkeep were impossible to pay after the split. I passed through the stages of grief -- disbelief, anger, pleading, acceptance... but sometimes when I saw photographs of the place, I would have to fight a sting of tears and a pang of longing for this taproot had been cut from me and from our family.

Earlier this summer, I saw one of these pictures and felt the pang again. The scene was beautiful, and I wanted to reach out to smell the wild roses growing at the top of the cliff, see the pines swaying in a light breeze, hear the soft, quick footfalls of the waves on the pebbly beach, and watch the ships sail past in far-off slow motion. I began telling a friend about how special that place was to me, but then God gently opened my eyes to see my Home in a way I had not seen it before.

I knew that since I had been ransomed from my dead slavery to rebellion against God, my ultimate destination was Heaven. I could even have spoken to you of the importance of my citizenship in Kingdom of Heaven. But I will always remember the clear impression that God gave to me as I was immersed in the photograph. My Home is not on this earth, no matter how many centuries I can trace my ancestry in a particular spot. Yes, that place may be beautiful and special, and it is good to have such a place. But one day, all of it will fade into oblivion and cease to be, but I will be Home. My hope in this life is not tied to the fate of a few acres of land, because even the largest, most solid rock on that North shore beach -- which had been used as a landmark for landing parties in the Revolutionary War and uncounted others before -- even that rock that has stood the test of time will not stand the test of eternity.

Now, whenever I think of Long Island, its beaches, potato farms, and tightly knit families, I am reminded that the connection I have to that place is only a dim shadow of the way that I am being inexorably drawn to the Heavenly city described in the Bible. There, the River of Life will flow, watering trees that bear life-giving fruit. I will walk the streets that I cannot even imagine fully. The Bible can only describe them as gold that is so pure as to be transparent.

Why does it matter that Heaven, not Penny's Landing, is my home? For one thing, my true home is secure. No amount of war, hate, greed, or pain can take it away. I can live the life I am called to live here on Earth, depending on God for the wisdom and strength to bring him glory, and not worrying about my future. My true home is also a home with room and incomparable joy for more people than I can imagine. I want to be a part of seeing more people trust in Jesus' sacrifice for our sins, so that we can all enjoy the indescribable reward that he has earned us -- living in perfected and ever-increasing fellowship with him.

As a man once bound for judgement and a spiritual death beyond imagining, I am and should be increasingly thankful for the free gift of life that you, my God, have bestowed on me! Teach me, guide me, and discipline me in this life so that I will increasingly live a life that points toward your amazing grace that has made me your own son.

Jesus, Einstein, and Paul

Luke 6.20-21 (ESV)
And he [Jesus] lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said:
"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God
"Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
"Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh."

This is how Jesus began his first sermon recorded in Luke's Gospel. He says elsewhere that he has come to help the sick rather than those who are well, and that he will preach the gospel to the poor while the rich will find it almost impossible to enter Heaven.

He presents me, and all of us, with a challenge. Will I rely on my own abilities to provide material stability and meaning to my life? Or will I recognize that all my riches are utterly worthless? I had always been told as a child how humble and kind and good and smart I was. The trouble was, I bought it! Instead of helping, the thought that I was good all on my own kept me from putting my complete trust in Jesus' saving work for me until my Junior year of high school. I have come to see that most of what people saw as my goodness was only my own pride that sought their approval above the approval of God. God's blessing, as Jesus said in his sermon, comes to those who are poor and hungry and who weep over their own brokenness.

So I can identify with Albert Einstein who wrote in a newly publicized letter, "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses." He was half right! God helps and is real to those who are weak, not those who depend on their own abilities. What a barrier Einstein faced in his intelligence! His amazing abilities unfortunately gave him a grounds to dismiss his desperate need for reconciliation to God.

On the other hand, I love the example of the apostle Paul. He penned many of the letters that are now part of the New Testament of the Bible. He had been intelligent, ambitious, and well respected among those opposed to Jesus and his disciples. But Jesus grabbed him and turned him around (you can read the story, including his name change from Saul, of in Acts 9). In his letter to the church in Philippi, Paul recounted all the things he had going for him, then made the most remarkable statement, "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ." (Philippians 3.7)

I thank God that he has enabled me to follow Paul's example rather than Einstein's by capturing me with the grace earned for me by Jesus' death and resurrection. And I pray he will do the same for you.

Following my Father

My son is almost 1 year old, and he often mimics what my wife and I do. Sometimes, this is good, or just adorable. But sometimes I do things I would not want him to mimic. I was reminded on Sunday of my heavenly Father's perfect actions and how I should be sure to follow his lead, not depending on my own strength or following other teachers. . .

Luke 6.35
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

This was the core of the passage my pastor taught from this Sunday. (The whole passage was Luke 6.17-49.) This message left me reeling from a change in perspective that God brought to me through it. Earlier in the passage, Jesus says, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. . . But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation." (Luke 6.20, 24) At the beginning of the message, I was feeling quite rich in my own righteousness. I read the Bible every day, I pray, I even write a blog about God's words and work. But I am spiritually poor. I have nothing good of my own to bring to God, and I can't even satisfy my own needs with my own work.

I am not doing fine when I see the commands in this passage and try to fulfill them myself. That foolishly building my house on sand (Luke 6.49). But I am "blessed" and counted as a "son of the most high" when I recognize my abject poverty and allow it to drive me to depend on God's grace. Then, the things I do are out of imitation of the God who loves me and does good to me even when I rebel against his loving actions. I will treat others they way I ought to, with the sacrificial love of Jesus. And the house that rises is not a shack that washes away in the rain, but a strong shelter built on the foundation of Jesus' work. He perfectly did all that he preached in this passage, and when I accept his righteousness in trade for my own spiritual poverty, I am rich and well fed and filled with joy greater than any that I could ever obtain for myself!

Thank you, God, for again revealing my poverty and causing me to mourn my brokenness and hunger for your wholeness. Please keep reminding me that only you can bring me riches, nourishment, and joy that have no equal.

The Price of the Priceless Treasure

Matthew 13.44-46
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it." (ESV)

One way to read these two analogies made by Jesus is to suppose that, like these two men, Christians are somehow privy to secret information, which we are to keep from others while we make personal sacrifices to buy our way into God's favor. But nothing could be further from the truth!

It is so easy to live as though my actions will control God's opinion of me, or earn me a place in heaven, or can make me more or less qualified for God's help in this life. People will say, "God helps those who help themselves," and sometimes I live as though it were true! When push comes to shove, I tend to retreat into my own world where my education, intelligence, and physical ability are enough to meet the demands on me. I somehow think that if I am strong enough, I can honor God. Or, more honestly, I think that I am better of bringing myself honor by working harder.

Instead, God has been good to remind me of the example of Paul when he wrote to the church in Philippi (Philippians 3.7-8): "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." What Paul and the two men Jesus spoke of have in common is that when they saw the incredible value of Christ, they saw everything else they had (money, possessions, ability, self-righteousness) as utterly worthless in comparison! The men did not sell everything they had to earn the great treasures they had found. They sold all they had because it did not matter any more.

God, please kill the pride in me that holds on to "my abilities" as something valuable. Teach me instead to lean only on your grace and on your work that reconciles me to you and makes all other things I have and pursue look as worthless as they truly are!

My opened eyes and ears

Matthew 13.16-17
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. (ESV)

How often and easily I forget how blessed I am! The words Jesus spoke to his disciples was in response to their question why he taught using parables -- allegories whose meaning was so obscured to human minds that even Jesus' closest disciples had to ask for explanation. Jesus used the question to show the disciples that they were recipients of God's undeserved favor. Unlike so many contemporaries and ancestors, they saw Jesus, the promised Savior who had been foretold for thousands of years! They even understood Jesus' teaching and were able to apply it, but only because God had acted on them to open the spiritual eyes and ears they had willfully shut!

Today, I was having a renewed struggle with myself, reflexively and angrily defending my ability (pretty near perfect, I'd say!) in the face of criticism. I am nowhere near perfect. Only my God and Savior can claim that. But when I am facing a challenge, my human nature wants to rise up with pride in my accomplishments. Of course, when that fails, that same pride is broken and I feel crushed.

What foolishness! When I read God's word like the passage above, I am at once laid low in utter humility and lifted up by confidence in the God who did not leave me in my self-sufficient, prideful rejection of him. My God became like me, but he succeeded in all the ways I have failed. Then he took on himself the death that was the penalty for my rebellion and credited his perfection to my account!

Lord Jesus, by your Spirit, help me to live in your life, not the dead ways from which you have rescued me. Remind me again and again of your perfection that you earned for me and my rottenness from which you ransomed me. Teach me to love others and accept humbly their criticism, because I know I am guilty of far worse than anything they can accuse me of, and because I know that in my weakness your strength shines more brightly.

Marva's life

Philippians 1.20-21
I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (NIV)

Marva is whole and well again today, but not the way we had hoped and prayed for the last 10 years she lived with cancer. My temptation is to be disappointed that God did not act to heal her body -- I imagine how thankful we would have been, how amazed the doctors would have been, and wonder what could God have been thinking?!

But for Marva, to live was Christ. She bore her suffering and pain without complaining, because she was constantly reminded that that her strength did not come from her body but from the Spirit of God living in her. She knew that the worst disease she would ever face had already been cured. In his death on the cross, Jesus broke the hold that sin had on her. And in his resurrection from death, Jesus showed that the cure was complete and permanent.

Marva did not die yesterday. She died to sin and to this world the day she became a Christian, trusting in Jesus Christ's death on her behalf. Yesterday, when the doctors pronounced her dead, Marva became truly alive for all eternity at her Savior's side, to love and worship him without pain and without ceasing.

My Lord and my God, be exalted in my body whether by life or by death, as you have exalted yourself in Marva's life on Earth and her entry to eternal life with you!

Carry me!

Romans 8.10-11
But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (ESV)

I am so thankful for the words that pointed me freshly to the truth in Scriptures like this one. I was driving to work, alive to all outward appearances, when I realized I was listening to my theme song:

Carry me!
I'm just a dead man
lying on the carpet
can't find a heart beat.
Make me breathe!
I wanna be a new man
tired of the old one
off with the old plan

That morning I had been feeling especially dead -- mentally, physically, and spiritually -- until I found myself singing along with the chorus, tears in my eyes. I pray that God will continue to send me (and you!) encouragement like this. It still seems strange to me that being reminded of my inability to do anything good should be anything but depressing. I guess it's all just a part of the topsy-turvy (to our human eyes) Kingdom Jesus preached about.

The world (OK, American can-do culture) tels me I can do anything I want to, that I just need to find my inner strength, that my attitude is everything. The trouble is that even if they're pretty much right, I still wouldn't be able to do anything worthwhile on my own, outside of the precious grace Jesus Christ has bought and secured for my by his death and resurrection! So, I'm so glad that I am frequently reminded of my total inadequacy. It drives me to God, who alone can bring good out of my life that he created, purchased, and rightfully owns.

So, Lord my God, carry me! Make me breathe! You are the only One who can sustain the new man who you have planted in the old man's body.



Dead Man, by Jars of Clay, is on their Good Monsters album.