Aspens

Fresh from some time in the autumn glory of Colorado, here are seven things I have learned about Aspen trees:
-They grow up in groves sharing a common root system.
-Aspens only grow at high altitudes.
-Because they grow up from roots, they are the first trees back after a forest fire.
-Even though they grow back quicker they allow other trees to grow up among them.
-Aspen root systems keep on regenerating new shoots even if the the older trees die.
-Aspen bark on the south side of the tree will leave a white residue on you if you rub up agains it.
-Aspen trees are a thing of beauty, especially in the fall.

Now why would I tell you all this?  Well I like aspen trees, obviously, but there are some things that we as a church should seek to immulate.
-Christians grow best in "groves" where we share a common "root system" - the church.
-The church can only grow in a place of right "altitude" - a climate of righteousness.
-The church is equipped to survive the disasters that come and grow back stronger after them.
-The church should enable others to grow back after the "fires" of life.
-When you rub up against Christians, it should rub off on you.
-The church should be a thing of beauty in the world - in any season.

I'm glad to be a part of a church that is a lot like an aspen grove.  Let's keep growing into what we were created to be and into what God is making us.

for the journey...

Tim

Reunion

I got to speak last Saturday at a Baptist Student Ministry Reunion back at my Alma mater in College Station.  The crowd was a mixture of older and younger Aggies.  It brought back a lot of memories, very good memories, of things God did while I was there and encouragement at what God is doing now.

I mentioned to that group I would be baptizing a young woman from China the next day back at Northside.  It brought back to my mind the first encounter I had ever had from a person from another country - another Asian student at A&M when I was a student there.  He had questions about Jesus and I tried to answer them.  I felt ill equipped - concepts and truths I knew suddenly became fuzzy as I tried to explain them in non-church terms that an international student could understand.

When I was talking to Effie, the Chinese student I baptized, my mind went back to that first Asian student.  I felt much better equipped to talk to Effie last week than I did years ago to that first Asian student.  It is amazing how God prepares us for things yet to come.  Why would God give me numerous encounters with international students during my BSM days, both as a student and as a staff member?  He knew what was ahead.  He had a plan.  I was clueless.

I mentioned to the reunion at the A&M BSM how that ministry is an equipping place.  I had no idea when I was a student there that I would some day be a pastor - a pastor in Victoria with a Chinese congregation within our church.  I would never have dreamed that I would be here and someday baptize students from China.  (I think the total is now eight).

God does have a plan. God does prepare us for the future, often in ways we are unaware of because we don't know the future he is planning.  Perhaps today, he prepared you or he prepared me for his plan through some new, awkward moment where we felt ill equipped. 

As the Lord told Jeremiah, "I know the plans I have for you..."  Plans for you and for me and for people we have yet to meet.

I will be out this Sunday but when I return in a week I will be preaching on God's plan for everyone, a single event that will touch everyone in history.  Like I said, he has a plan.

For the journey...

Tim

All Things New

I spent a good part of last week with my wife and the ladies she works with at Perpetual Help Home at the Christian Community Development Association Conference in New Orleans.  Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) is an organization of ministries that seek to help the disadvantaged by giving a hand up not a hand out. 

Most of the over one thousand attendants were young Millennial generation Christians who are passionate about Jesus and ready to change the world.  They don't always look or dress like your average Christian conference attendees.  I saw more dreadlocks and piercings than at any other gathering of believers of which I have been a part.  They were from all over the country and some from other countries. They are incredibly ethnically diverse.

I heard a business man from China tell how he was using his new found wealth from a successful business venture to support mission work around the world.  Imagine that - the Chinese are now sending out money for missions.  I heard former Perpetual resident Sara Waters tell her story of restoration from addiction.  I think everyone there for that session cried.  I heard some amazing stories of what God is doing in some pretty hopeless situations.

It was an incredibly renewing experience.  It gives an old Baby Boomer like me a deep hope for the future to see all these young, creative, energetic Christians so eager and earnest to bring the hope of Jesus to people in ways and through ministries I would never have dreamed up.

On top of all that, I found New Orleans cleaner and more restored than I imagined it would be.  I will be honest, the only other time I was in New Orleans in 1990, I was not impressed.  This time despite my hesitancy, I found myself appreciating all the things I could tell had been done since Katrina.  The city has been renewed.

I also have to be honest that it still has its seedy side.  A walk down a portion of Bourbon Street before noon one day still caused me to have a hard time of knowing where to look. Every direction I turned I thought, "OH, can't look there."  I think Bourbon Street is worse, not better.  It did not flood in Katrina.  What would it look like now if it had?  I don't know.

I do know I came home with an awe of God's renewing power in people through generations, of His ability to change people's lives and  of His ability to change a community in ruin.  He really can "make all things new."  Even me.  Even you.

For the journey...

Tim

Ariel Castro and Paul

This week shocking news came from an Ohio prison cell that Ariel Castro, the man who had imprisoned and abused three young women in his home for ten years, hanged himself after one month of jail.  On the day news came out, I read this quote about Roman jails written in Christian History by John McRay:

Roman imprisonment was preceded by being stripped naked and then flogged—a humiliating, painful, and bloody ordeal. The bleeding wounds went untreated as prisoners sat in painful leg or wrist chains. Mutilated, bloodstained clothing was not replaced, even in the cold of winter.

Most cells were dark, especially the inner cells of a prison, like the one Paul and Silas inhabited in Philippi. Unbearable cold, lack of water, cramped quarters, and sickening stench from few toilets made sleeping difficult and waking hours miserable. Because of the miserable conditions, many prisoners begged for a speedy death. Others simply committed suicide.

That last line made me think of Castro and my thoughts then went back to Paul.  In that awful place, Paul and Silas were singing hymns at midnight (Acts 16).  Paul went from beaten, bleeding, powerless prisoner to saving a jailer's life in just a few minutes in the aftermath of an earthquake.  The jailer was saved from suicide and began to follow Christ.  When he writes back to the church in his letter to the Philippians, there is no gloom or darkness, but joy and love.  God had redeemed that entire situation.

Now back to Ariel Castro, he and Paul, when he was called Saul, were both guilty of imprisoning people.  Both men were people who wanted to control other people.  Castro caused the death of perhaps several unborn children in the women he held prisoner.  Saul helped cause the death of Stephen.  Saul and Castro have some things in common.  But when Castro went to jail he took his own life.  When Saul, now knowing Jesus and being called Paul, went to jail he saved a man from taking his own life and helped him find eternal life.  The two men stand in contrast to a life lived in the flesh and a life lived in the Spirit.

Everyday you and I make decisions about following the flesh or following the Spirit.  Those decisions cause us to have an impact on others and they cause us to become who we are deep down inside.  We are becoming someone who takes life or someone who, even in their darkest moments, gives life.  This week, which one have you been more like?

For the journey...

Tim

Labor Days

Last week as I returned to the town of my first church to do a funeral, I was reminded of a story that a member there told me.  Vernie, the church member, was in Houston visiting a granddaughter in a hospital in the Medical Center.  She had been severely injured in an accident.  After a long, anxious day Vernie and some of the family were driving out of the parking garage to go home for a little rest. 

This was back in the day when there was an actual person in a booth that you paid as you exited the garage.  The attendant was an older African American man with a pleasant disposition.  Vernie told me these details of what this man did because they made such a deep impression on him.  After receiving Vernie's ticket and cash payment the attendant looked behind Vernie, there was not another car in sight.  The attendant held on to Vernie's change and asked, "How are your loved ones this evening?"  Vernie briefly told his story and the attendant listened and asked questions about his granddaughter, including her name and condition.  Then he asked, "Would it be OK if I said a word of prayer for her and for all of you."  Of course, Vernie agreed. 

After the prayer, which brought Vernie and his family to tears, the attendant asked if Vernie had a relationship with Jesus and Vernie said yes, they were all Christians.  Then the attendant handed him his change, shook his hand and told them he would be praying for all of them.

It made a deep impression on Vernie and on me.  I cannot imagine a job with less potential in being a witness for Christ than a parking lot attended, sitting in a booth in the middle of the night.  Yet here, this man found a way to turn it into a ministry.  Vernie also told me that his granddaughter was being treated by the some of the best doctors in the country, but no one made them feel better in that hospital than the parking lot attendant.

I am sure that man was replaced by a machine in that parking lot.  But where ever he his now, I know a man with that kind of dedication has found a way to make his job a ministry.  Our challenge this Labor Day weekend, is to "go and do likewise."

For the journey...

Tim

Back to School

That date that is most anticipated and most dreaded is upon us - the first day of school.  I don't know of a lot of inspiring first day of school stories or quotes.  There is a not a lot that I can tell people academically but I can tell you of George Danzig.  He was a senior at Stanford University during the dark days of the Depression.  Everyone knew that graduation then meant the unemployment line except there was an outside chance that George could make the head of his class and qualify for a teaching job at Stanford.  He would have to make a perfect score on his mathematics final so he studied hard, so hard in fact that he lost track of time and arrived at the final exam late.

George took his seat and began to work on the eight problems on his paper.  Then he turned to two problems written on the blackboard.  Try as he might, he could not solve them.  As he turned in his exam he asked if he might have a couple of days to keep working on those two problems on the board.  His professor looked surprised and then surprised George by giving him permission.

George went back to his room and began to pound away at those two equations.  After many hours he found a solution for one but he could not solve the other.  Dejected, he left his work at his professor's office convinced he had no hope for a job.

The next morning, his professor awakened George from sleep excitedly telling him he had made mathematics history.  Being late to the exam, George had not heard why those two problems were on the board.  His professor explained that he put them up there because those where two classic problems that even Einstein had said he could not solve.  Danzig, had not heard that explanation or that they were unsolvable and he had actually solved one of them.  The next day, that same professor gave George a teaching job at Stanford where he taught until he retired.

Sometimes it is best not to know what you cannot do. We need to be careful what we call impossible. Let me remind you of the last line of last week's message, "Everything is possible for the one who believes."  Mark 9:23

For the journey...

Tim

Keeping On

Gid Prather was a Deacon and a Sunday School teacher in my first church.  When I started there, he had already taught elementary children in Sunday School longer than I had been alive.  Gid did not start teaching until he was in his forties - after his own children had grown past the class he taught.  I knew that was rare and unusual.  It was also rare and unusual for anyone to do what he did in teaching children well into his eighties.

Gid had his share of trials.  He and his wife lost a child because of a mistake a doctor made as their infant son was being born.  He raised two daughters, then lost a grandson who died in his arms after and accidental shooting on a hunting trip.  He grieved those boys all his life but he kept on loving and teaching children.

After seeing his perseverance, I wanted to know how he did it, so I asked him what was the secret of teaching children in Sunday School for over forty years and not giving up?  He thought about it - he had seen a lot of other teachers come and go.  After a good pause he said, "I don't know.  I just love them..."  He went on to talk about how he prepared each week and prayed for the kids.  He told me the secret even if he said he did not know.  It was in that phrase, "I just love them..."

The secret to keeping on in anything in the Christian life, especially the things that can wear us out, like teaching children for forty years, is love.  Paul wrote, "Love never fails."  That phrase means it never runs out of resources.  When we learn to love, we learn to last.

I hope you will join me this Sunday as we begin a new sermon series with another phrase from Paul, "Let us not grow weary in doing good..."  Paul had a few ideas on keeping on.  Let's come to learn how to do just that.

For the journey....

Tim