My Mother

Today is my day to write about my mother.  Through the first 23 years of my full-time ministry, I wrote about mother around Mother’s Day–a bulletin article, another sermon, even a poem or two.  All of that changed with my mother’s death over 15 years ago.

Now I write about my mother on Groundhog’s Day.  Not because it is Groundhog’s Day, but because it is her birthday.  She would have been 87 today.  I have reconciled myself to the fact that even if she had not been taken prematurely in an auto accident, the chances of her yet being alive today are slim.  I hope it doesn’t seem morbid that I share my heart.

Death is a part of life, life is part of death.  Some are dead while they live, other live beyond their death.  In the grand scheme of the things of men, I suppose my mother’s life does not seem terrible significant.  Significance is fleeting.  Significance is not the same as name recognition.  What seems to matter often doesn’t.  What doesn’t seem to matter does.  Mothers are always significant to someone.  Fathers less so.  That’s sad.

 My mother was a pioneer–in lots of ways.  She was my hero.  She was the only person I knew (except my grandmother and my aunts and uncles) who had moved across three states in a covered wagon.  The single-parent home she headed in the 1950s was for my sister and me security and belonging and fun.

As I reached adulthood, I tried to tell her in many ways that she mattered to me.  For several years while my family and I lived in Michigan I phoned her every Sunday morning.  I think she was proud of me–significance is a two-way street.  She taught me valuable lessons, I still have folders filled with her wit and wisdom.  I read some of those things from time to time.  Today, tell someone who is important to  you that they are.  

My Mother’s Birthday: 2/2/22

[Reposted from 2/2/22]

Today is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 100 years old today. The unique, memorable, number combination has rolled around again, 2/2/22. My mother left this temporary earthly home and went home to dwell forever with the Lord almost 30 years ago. It seems that in timeless eternal existence, she is not counting the years as we do. She is present in my heart and mind, even though she is not present physically.
I still try to live my life in a way that would make her proud. She was and is my heroine. She would be amazed, but perhaps not surprised, at the opportunities God has afforded her son. Her faith, lived out in my life, has taken me around the world to places she probably never dreamed or imagined. The goals are always the same–to share the light of the gospel of Christ and to bring glory to God.
Today I remember my mother, her influence, her strength, her faith, and her love, in the words of Paul to the Ephesians: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (3:20-21).

It All Begins with God–“With” [#1]

Beginning 2022 with the basics!  Four questions. Who is God? Who are we? What was God doing in sending Jesus? How should we respond? If we do not know who God is, we cannot know who we are. If we do not understand God’s purpose, we will fail to understand our appropriate response. The message of Scripture can be summed up in five affirmations about God. In Jesus Christ, God declares that He is with us, for us, within us, beside us, and before us. Five affirmations–five sermons!  Jesus’ coming to earth in the Incarnation continues and makes certain in new ways an Old Testament promise: “I will be with you.”

Tracing this idea through Scripture
“God with us” is an Old Testament concept: check out Abraham, Joseph, Moses, on and on… “I will be with you.”
In the New Testament, consider the promises of Matthew 1:23 and 28:20. Read about Paul’s experience in Corinth in Acts 18. Check your concordance: “I will be with you.”
What does “God with us” mean? This is not God beside us; this is not God within us. This is God with us! This is Hebrews 1-2: Jesus Christ accomplishing God’s purpose: Son of God, Son of Man, combined in Jesus.

Struggling with this idea
We struggle with this idea. We hear people say, “And then God showed up.” Where was he before he showed up? We talk about coming into God’s presence—are we not always in his presence? Where can we flee from his presence? Read Psalm 139 again. We pray, “God be with them.” Is He not always present? We struggle with God’s “where” because we do not understand his “who.” We sing songs that ask God to come near. What does that mean? Is it figurative language? What does it mean that something is a “God thing”? Perhaps we mean that God was active providentially. I cannot accept that! But let us never think that God suddenly shows up.
We struggle with this idea—God with us—because of the times it seems he is not with us. How do we explain? Why does God show himself and act in one instance and not in another? Why does it seem that God is “here” sometimes and not at other times? The idea that God is sometimes here and sometimes not leads to faith problems—the absent God, the dead God, the optional God.

Clarifying this idea
God Present in the World. We can’t really see life clearly unless we understand God’s role in the world. God is with us—even when bad things happen. “I will never leave you.” For Christians, the presence of problems does not mean the absence of God. Even with Jesus on the cross, the Bible says that his prayer was heard.
God Transcendent above the World. The transcendent God balances the present God. We do not understand—how is it possible that he is both present and transcendent at the same time? Rob Bell is helpful when he explains that one way the Hebrews described God’s action and presence was in the Hebrew word ruach. If you know Hebrew, you may immediately think spirit, breath, wind. But making this quick connection may do us a disservice. Ruach is energy, creative, surprising, surging in and through everything, holding stuff together, like a cosmic electricity, power, divine energy. This is God ever-present and ever-sustaining. Ruach is breath, it is wind, and it is spirit (although our English word spirit has a lot packed into it that the Hebrews did not have). Spirit (and Holy Spirit, a study to which we will come later this year) certainly doesn’t mean less real, or unpredictable — jumping in and out of existence, jumping from here to there.
God in the World through the Church. God with us.  What should we hear? What should we think? Jesus inhabiting hearts by faith, the coming of the Holy Spirit. The church is the fullness of God’s presence through Jesus.

Applying this idea practically
God is present in his church, present in every moment. What are we supposed to learn? “God with us” helps us answer four questions.

  • What is real? “God with us” says that there is a spiritual dimension to our existence. “God with us” transcends physical realities. We are spiritual beings—we are spiritually connected. This says something about who we are and how we should understand our existence in this world. God energizes us—he gives breath to our physical bodies.
  • Where is our focus? “God with us” raises our view above and beyond this world. We see further, we see God. This mixes the daily and the religious, the common and the uncommon. There is more to this world than what we see because of God’s penetration and participation in this world.
  • What is important? “God with us” says that what is going in our lives is supremely important. This life matters: it matters to God; there is no such thing as humdrum, everyday kind of stuff. Moses experienced it at a burning bush as he went about doing what he did every day, God always present, but one day suddenly both present and visible.
  • What is the goal? “God with us” says there is hope, things can change, things can get better.

New Every Morning

I am grateful God continually gives us opportunities to find newness and refreshment. God desires us to find in each day its newness–a day we have never seen before, a day we have never experienced before, a day that is a gift from God; a day that will bring new challenges and new opportunities. We too seldom experience such renewal–too often our days have a certain sameness and routine, even boredom.

Today I see want to see newness! The same activities–or are they? New every morning, new challenges. These are the externals–the core of the renewed life is the newness made possible by our walk with God through Christ–his presence, our communication, our shared commitments, our single purpose, the desire to do only what he wants and only that which brings him glory.