FACEBOOK CHRISTMAS 2020

This year, Facebook chose to go fully literal on the opening two words of the carol Silent Night. There was nothing of the worldwide celebration worthy of mention. Hannukah got a half dozen backgrounds for posts featuring dreidels or menorahs, but nothing of Immanuel’s birth popped up behind the rainbow box that had, I assume, nothing to do with Noah and the flood. Oh, if you dug deep you could find some banners and such of generic quality. Like so many businesses today, the glory of this annual celebration has been just…absent.

And that is as it should be. It is not Mr. Zuckerberg’s job to tell the story. Perhaps we should be glad that the hypocrisy of clueless merchants pretending to participate in such a day with hopes of cashing in on it has pretty much ceased. December landscapes that were once awash with bright colors and words proclaiming hope, peace, and goodwill toward men are now painted over with Soviet gray nothingness. And it is left for us real believers to proclaim the message. My 12 Quotes of Christmas was an attempt to splash the good news of the incarnation across your Facebook pages. Hope it got you thinking about the Savior of the world’s first visit as the God-Man. Under the brilliant light of the star and amidst the shouts of angels, that Christ of Christmas was mistaken for just another Jewish infant. Three decades later, He would be mistaken for a troublemaker finally dispatched by a fittingly cruel death on a cross. And three days after that, the resurrected Jesus would be momentarily mistaken as a cemetery groundskeeper. The next time He comes, mark it well, there will be no mistaking who He is.

WHAT STANDS THE TEST OF TIME?

There is something startling and therapeutic and spiritually significant about closing the estate of someone who’s died. The deceased always manages to leave behind a bunch of stuff. Sometimes family members and others fight over who gets next dibs on the chore of dragging some item through life. Grandfather’s grandfather’s clock must be passed along. Or sold at auction. Often there’s a pile of money to sort out. A few times acting as executor, I’ve written checks in one sitting totally far more than my accumulated net worth. And then there’s the collection of odds and ends nobody wants. Photos of people no one can identify that were once precious to the departed one. A box filled with mementos of trips taken, diplomas earned, and awards won. Curios that caught the fancy of the one who wrote the will. Letters packed with memories and well wishes, capturing emotions that strangers cannot grasp. (I suppose there will be far fewer handwritten letters in future estates.) James 1:10 counsels the rich to boast in his humiliation. Like the flowering grass, he will pass away. James pushes us to set our hearts and minds and energies on that which stands the test of time.

WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME

 I never watched the old TV show Cheers, but I was always attracted to the theme song. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. As an 11-year-old kid, I worked at a grocery store next to Harmony Bar. The building was owned by my boss, so I ended up doing some chores on the property. My dad took me there once. I didn't witness a lot of harmony in the darkness of that sad room.

The pandemic has reminded me of the gift Open Door Bible Church is. We had to meet online for several weeks in the early spring of 2020. It was a novelty. Got to interact on Zoom with some past members and missionaries in distant places and see the faces of local people I was already missing. But it was clearly missing the dynamic of genuine, face-to-face fellowship. After 39 years, maybe I had begun to take the gift of our fellowship too much for granted. When Jimmy Leonard was alive, he called us "The Best Kept Secret in Memphis."

Our tagline, A Common People with an Uncommon Love,  has been illustrated in fresh ways over the past two weeks. Exhibit A was the Baby Dedication of Kesler Jones. And yesterday came Exhibit B, the 70th Wedding Anniversary Celebration of Frank and Virginia Buck. Kesler's legacy stretches my memory of God's goodness back nearly four decades. Kesler's great grandparents' surname became his given name a year ago. And a whole series of good memories are crowded into that moniker. The Bucks legacy merged into our own a good number of years ago. Our world largely ignores the treasure living among them. What could be learned from the stories of old people? Frank told me of visiting his elderly grandfather at Christmas back in the 1930s. I did the math and observed that his grandpa had been alive during the Civil War. Turns out, Gramps lied about his age and joined the Union Army! Frank himself, is a Navy veteran of World War 2 and the Korean War. The Bucks have lived faithfully and well, and we get to enjoy their godly joy on a regular basis. But they are also a treasure trove of eyewitness history. Ken Burns could learn at their feet.

I'm thankful for my salvation. And I am thankful for the community of fellow believers I'm blessed to be a part of.

Gary

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO 2020 VISION?

For all the hype back in January about it being a year for clarity and focus, 2020 has turned our best-laid plans into a blur of uncertainties and cancelations. From gathering with friends to our daily work, from finances to graduations, from health concerns to travel plans to sporting events to shortages of items we’ve always taken for granted, who among us has not encountered massive disruptions over the past five months? 

There’s a story in 2 Kings 6 that can guide our praying in the midst of the global pandemic. Things aren’t going too well for Ben Hadad II, King of Syria. Israel is no match for his massive armies. Still, somehow, they keep getting the upper hand, anticipating his every move, predicting his troop movements, second-guessing his attack plans. He suspects a traitor in his camp, but a servant tells the king of a prophet named Elisha who is informing the Hebrews of “the words that you speak in your bedroom.” Comically, Ben Hadad sends a huge army with soldiers and horses and chariots to capture the man. They invade at night, lest this little bald-headed prophet should somehow prevail. When Elisha’s young servant goes out early the next morning to collect the Dothan Daily News from the end of the driveway, he is terrified to see a multitude of armed soldiers surrounding the city. The servant cries out to Elisha that the two of them are seriously outnumbered, but the old man responds: “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” The servant must have thought poor Elisha’s eyes were going out on him and his mind was not far behind. The prophet prays that the Lord would “open his eyes that he may see.” And in that moment the younger man catches a glimpse of things normally unseen by earthly eyes. Beyond the Syrian army, the mountain is filled with multiplied angelic forces and chariots of fire.

There are moments when God pulls back the curtain to bring perspective and hope and confidence. Let’s pray that God will allow us to see something of the greater picture. He works in ways we miss unless our spiritual eyes are opened to see beyond the pandemic. 

Gary

Lessons From Wuhan: Recalculating As We Emerge From Coronaville

There’s nothing so disconcerting as driving down the highway listening to a favorite song, only to have the Siri lady w/ the uppity-sounding British accent disrupt with: RECALCULATING! What she REALLY means is: “You are an idiot! You weren’t paying attention, & now you’ve gone off on a wrong path.” I have been thinking a lot this past week about the idea that our God often uses disruption to get our attention. When we are going off track (or perhaps we’re just stuck & not going anyplace in particular), our disrupting God awakens us, challenges us, jolts us out of our lethargy with a cosmic dope slap, sometimes of epic proportion. COVID-19 has upset our collective apple cart beyond anything we could have ever foreseen. What lessons will you take with you as we finally see Coronaville disappear in the rearview mirror? Time to recalculate the direction you are heading. We’ll talk about it more when we are back in the Book of James on Sunday morning.

Lessons from Wuhan -- Remember That Easter We All Met Online? -- April 12, 2020

One night as Easter approached during my senior year at Mizzou, Sam stormed into my room and got right in my face. He was a Jewish kid who was pretty tired of hearing about Jesus from the growing number of guys on our floor who had come to faith. Some of them had “One Way” posters on their walls with an index finger pointing up. Not Sam. He had a poster that read: “No Way” …with a different finger displayed. So there we stood, nose to nose. No social distancing. And he angrily asked, “Do you believe the Jews killed Christ?” He and his family had been branded Christ-killers more than a few times. Ever have that assurance that the Holy Spirit was whispering in your ear? I quietly responded: “Yes, Sam. The Jews back then killed Jesus. And the Romans killed Jesus. And, if I had been there, Sam, I would have killed Jesus, too.” His accusing finger was still in the air, ready to poke me in the chest. But he was disarmed. He murmured: “That’s a good answer.” And then he walked out of my room.

John Stott put it this way: “Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.” The sacred symbol of our faith is the cross, an instrument of torture and death. That would be quite unexpected except that we’ve had a few thousand years to process the irony of it becoming our reminder of deliverance from sin and the joy of sins forgiven and the only path to life everlasting. Let us remember, as we celebrate so uncharacteristically this Easter, that our sins made it necessary for Jesus to become our Perfect Sacrifice. Some of our cherished traditions will have to be put aside this year. Instead of the new life sprouting across our city, we are assaulted with daily box scores of deaths in various parts of our planet. Such things need to push us closer to the foot of the cross, forcing us to look beyond the trappings of the season to the heart of it—Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Newness of life purchased by His blood.

Lessons from Wuhan -- Triumphal? -- April 5, 2020

 We are going to be looking at The Triumphal Entry in John 12 when we gather on Zoom this Sunday. Traditions of this season will be set aside this time as we “shelter in place.” Seemed a good idea to depart from the Epistle of James for a few weeks in order to focus on why we celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter. I took some time yesterday to explain the meaning of Palm Sunday to a friend from another country. Can you imagine waking up in Tunisia during Ramadan later this month and trying to figure out what everyone was doing? And not doing? And why? A number of years ago, I got stranded in a Tokyo airport for what I thought would be a brief layover. All flights out were full, and I was doing standby. Turns out, it was a big three-day weekend there. Evidently, Japanese people like to go to Bangkok at such times. I still have no idea what the holiday was even called.

No time of year should provide more reasons for hope and joy and peace of mind during these days of forced seclusion than Holy Week. I found it impossible to explain THIS Sunday to my friend without also explaining NEXT Sunday. He’s heard it from me before, but he appreciated getting the historical context and insight into a culture not easily understood. Let’s draw near during the coming week, worshipping our risen Lord in a fresh, simple way. And let’s tell somebody about it.

Gary