10/23/83

Why do I remember that date?  It happens to be the day 30 years ago when 241 U. S. Marines died when a truck bomb struck their barracks at the airport in Beirut, Lebanon.  A tragic event, but there is also another connection with that day.  On October 23, 1983 I was with a group of Middle Eastern - mainly Lebanese - international students on a Christian retreat in New Mexico.

I was working at the Baptist Student Ministry at Texas Tech at the time and one of my responsibilities was to work with International students.  The event was big enough that the camp director came and told us. 

The news devastating to them.  They were more upset than we Americans were.  I was baffled.  When I asked one of the students to explain their reaction, he said, "After this day, there will be no more Lebanon.  Not like I know it."  It turns out he was right.  The United States and other peace keeping nations pulled out of Lebanon and the bloody civil war they were supposed to try and stop, surged out of control.  The Lebanon that has emerged is said to be nothing like the Lebanon these young men called home.

These students, Christian and Muslim, knew that everything had changed for them.  I wonder how many of them had to return home?  If they did, how many were sucked into the conflict?  How many of them died in it?

I look back on that day and see how huge a day that was for them, how little I really understood it and how poorly I was prepared to handle a crisis like that.  As I reflected on that day, I was reminded that though I can do nothing about the past, I can still pray.  Pray for those students, now grown and thirty years older - if they are still alive.  I can also pray for myself, that I will be ready to minister to people, even when I cannot fully grasp their pain or understand their plight.

We too often think of prayer as a last resort.  On that day it was - and on this day it is - the most powerful thing we can do.

for the journey...

Tim

Making Peace

In my first church, there was an incident that really put the whole church in a bad light.  It involved a funeral and a statement that someone who worked at a funeral home made about our church to the family that was grieving.  Some similar statements like this had been made before.

It was very upsetting to me and to the church so I did the right thing and confronted the person.  Though this was the right thing, I did not go about it the right way.  I spoke in anger and I was not respectful.  It caused a real rift.  Soon people were coming to me and saying things like, "I just want you to know that I am on your side."  Other comments that came my way were things said about me and the church and the problem with this person at the local Dairy Queen during morning coffee gatherings.  It kept getting bigger.

Finally, with reluctance and very little hope that this would get settled, I decided to do the right thing the right way.  I took a trusted deacon, we went to the person and I asked for his forgiveness for speaking in anger and in disrespect.  To my surprise, that settled it.  There were no more reports from the Dairy Queen and no one else telling me that they were on my side.

I have gone back to that little town several times for funerals, always working with the person that I had the problem with and there seems to be no remnant of the past still hanging around.  I have no other explanation than God does like to work when we work at reconciliation.

Several years later, I came across these steps to reconciliation from Ken Sande author of the book, The Peacemaker.  I can recommend them:

• Address everyone involved.
• Avoid "if" "but" and "maybe."
• Admit specifically what you did.
• Acknowledge the hurt.
• Accept the consequences.
• Alter your behavior.
• Ask for forgiveness.
• Allow time.

"If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."  Romans 12:18

for the journey...

Tim

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