Manger Seen?

My trip to Israel this year was really eye opening.  So many of the things that I had imagined about the land of the Bible were not at all like the reality.  Another pastor friend on the trip put it this way, "All these years I have pictured this place too flat."  That is a good description.  There are some flat places (like here in Texas) but, for example, in Bethlehem, there isn't a flat place to be found.  When people talk of Judah's hills, they do mean hills.

It is also a lot more rocky than I ever imagined.  Rock is everywhere.  That got me to thinking.  Now where I am going with this is not something I am saying you have to agree with, but it is something I wonder about.  Was the manger  that Jesus was placed in at his birth made of wood or was it made of stone?

Let me tell you why I wonder that.  Every where we went, my farm boy eyes were looking at the agricultural sights as well as the archaeological.  Many times they were both.  Everything I saw that had to do with agriculture of biblical times was made of stone.  Some of you may be saying, "Well of course all that remains from that time period would be stone, wood articles would not survive."  That of course is true but it is also part of my pondering too.  You want things that will last.

Our mangers here in the United States are largely made of wood, so naturally we would think mangers there and then would be too.  But I saw several  feeding troughs for animals made of stone.  I have included a picture that is something like a stone trough or manger below.  Stone lasts much longer than wood.  Stone there in Israel in general and Bethlehem in particular, is in great abundance; wood is much harder to come by.  A stone trough or manger would be much harder to turn over and when animals are feeding - things do get moved around in larger animal's eagerness and competitiveness for food.  So I wonder, was it wood or was it stone?  If I were there in that day feeding animals, I would have at least given stone a try.  We know for sure that Solomon's horses where fed in stone troughs, archaeologists have found them.  Could that have worked in Bethlehem too?

Of course it does not make one bit of difference whether it was stone or wood.  The fact is that Jesus was born and Mary and Joseph placed him in a manger. That was the sign the angels told the shepherds to look for and they found him.  If it was made of stone, then think of this,the first thing Jesus' body was laid in at birth was stone.  We know the last thing Jesus' body was laid in after this death was stone - a tomb.  From each, he rose in glory and in victory as it was  purposed by God for that time in his life  He may have started his life at rock bottom.  It surely appeared that his life ended at rock bottom, but there was more to the story.  There always is when it comes to Jesus.

May you and your family have a Blessed and Merry Christmas.

For the journey...

Tim

12-21-2012

If you are reading this, then the world did not end - not yet at least.  Yes, this is the day the Mayan caledar pointed to as the possible end of time, but obviously we go on.  Experts on all this tell us that the Mayans, who began counting time on August 11, 3,114 B.C., divided time up into 144,000 day periods.  Today is the end of the 13th such period and there was a stone tablet discovered in the 1960's that predicted that one of the Mayan gods, Quetzalcoatl, would come to earth and time would be no more.  He appears to have missed his appointment.

Do you remember all the fears about Y2K and the year 2000?  I can still recall vividly that I had some people set up a meeting with me to question why we were not making preparations as a church - such as storing food and fuel.  Y2K was a big let down too to those who were expecting the end.  It seems we, Mayans or Baptists, are not good at predicting the end.  Jesus said we would not be.

This week, the odometer on my truck hit 111,111.1 miles.  I watched for that moment, it came and went and  nothing happened.  It seemed significant to me but no one on the road I was driving seemed to notice.  We mark time like my odometer, we can count how far we have come but we do not know how long we have left.  We know that time, like my truck, will some day come to an end, but we can never be sure when.  The only thing we can know is who will bring it to an end.

Which brings me back to the Mayans.  Why did they start counting time on August 11, 3114 B. C?  We started counting our time when Jesus was born.  We can count how far we have come since Jesus was born but not how long until he returns.  We can also recount many of the acts of his love but we cannot count how much more love he will show us. We can know that he will keep loving us.  His love can transform how we look at time.  We know that he came to earth out of love and we can know that he will return to earth for those he loves, living and dead.  When we begin to see the unmeasureable scope of his love, it makes this day and any day, even the day he comes back again, less scary.  What is 12-21-2012?  It is another day to measure how far we have come by his love.

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."  Ephesians 3:17-19

For the journey...

Tim

Unspeakable Joy

...though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:  1 Peter 1:8 KJV

I saw that "unspeakable," unexplainable joy just after Christmas in 1981.  I was on a mission trip with a group of fellow college students in Matamoros, Mexico.  We were helping to build a church - spiritually and physically.  All of us had a part of the day that we worked on constructing a church building in a poor colonia on the edge of Matamoros; then we spent another part of the day surveying the spiritual interest in that colonia with a few Spanish phrases we were taught.

My team of three came up to a house and greeted the woman outside, she warmly welcomed us into her little home where  we met her grown daughter and her very sick grandchild.  She wanted us to pray for her grandchild but first the daughter told us her story.  I could gleam a word or two to get the gist of what she was saying and she would help  us out with an English phrase or two that she knew.

They were all Christians.  The child was given very little hope of living much longer.  The child and his mother had just moved there because the husband could not handle his child's illness and had left them.  It was a very sad story but all the time this young mother told us this, there was this incredible expression of joy on her  face, even through her tears.  She kept looking up as she spoke, her large brown eyes seemed to point to a higher place that that little, poor home.   I will never forget it.  We choked out a few prayers between us over the sick child, each of us taking turns as someone who had been praying got choked up.  We said our goodbyes and left information about the new church and took their names and the address for the colonia pastor.

We got out in the street, dried our eyes and talked about what we had just experienced - joy, in the middle of one of the saddest things I had ever seen.  Everyone on that team remarked about how we had just seen something we had never seen before.  There was such an expression of joy on her face even through her tears and even in her circumstances.

That evening our team tried to share what we had experienced during our mission team share time.  None of us could get through it without crying.  I am sure no one else really understood what we had seen but it did not change the fact that we had seen it.  It really was an "inexpressible" joy.

All of us would like to have that kind of joy.  None of us want the kind of circumstances that family was going through.  But perhaps that is where joy -this kind of joy that Peter was talking about - can best be seen and known, in places where it would not seem possible.

Sunday, we will look at the joy that is possible where ever we are, no matter what we are going through because it comes from Jesus.  Pray for me as we seek to understand this unspeakable joy.

For the journey...

Tim

Plumber's Peace

Note:  To more fully appreciate this post you may want to read the post from 7/28/2011 "I am Not a Plumber"

We had more plumbing adventures at our house last week, our kitchen sink faucet pretty much came undone.  Some important looking piece of gasket fell out of it and it would not shut off.  I was able to get it somewhat back together so that I could turn the water off but the whole thing left me feeling pretty uncomfortable.  The faucet had the look and I got the feeling, this could fall apart again at any time. 

Adding to my anxiety, it was Friday and after some phone calls I found there was no help available until the next week.  So I gave my family faucet first aid instructions of how to handle the handle very carefully and how to go under the sink to the cut offs in case we had a complete faucet failure. 

We made it through the weekend and decided we needed to replace our chipped and dented sink if we were going to replace the faucet so we got our new supplies and waited for the plumbers.  They came right on time and spent a couple of hours replacing faucet and sink.

I watched them work for a while and I was amazed.  There were no bent or leaking pipes, no skinned knuckles, no hopeless looks of frustration - all of the things that usually accompany my plumbing efforts.  There was just skilled work by a couple of guys who have done this before.

In an odd way, it was peaceful.  They fixed my faucet and sink quietly and efficiently and then left.  Everything was back in working order, even better than it had been before and all my anxiety was gone.  It can be funny how the experience of peace comes to us.  I was in over my head, called and waited on someone who could help.  They came and did their job and it brought me peace.

That is not unlike how peace comes from Jesus.  When we are in over our heads and we call on him, he comes and brings peace with his presence - for even bigger things than broken faucets.  He works peace into our lives by being able to fix broken things.  We are going to look at his peace this Sunday in Advent.  Do you have any "faucet fears" in your life?  I know someone you can call.

For the journey...

Tim

Growing Up in Hope

I grew up in Hope- literally.  I spent all my childhood in Hope, Texas.  But as I turned another year older last week and reflected on that this week, there is even a more real sense that I was conceived, born and grew up in hope.

I had an older brother who died as an infant.  He did not reach his first birthday.  I never knew much about him because when I would ask about him, it would make my parents cry.  As I look back on my life as an adult, I have found it somewhat amazing that I am here.  My parents already had two healthy daughters when my brother died.  They were no longer a young couple.  It sure could have been understandable and easier for them to say, 'We have two healthy girls, let's not try this again,' but they did.  And 53 years ago I was born - in hope, because of hope, out of hope and grew up in Hope.

My parents were not wild eyed optimists but I now have a great appreciation for the hope they somehow found - that was in someway given - that makes it possible for me to be here today and write these words.  God must have given them a hope that came out of losing a son.

We will look at hope this Sunday (not Hope, Texas) but the hope that God can give even in our losses - the hope also found in the Christmas story.  It may be that we discover that the greatest hope we can have is the hope that God gives; his hope that he puts into us when we face a situation where we have lost all of ours.

For the journey...
Tim

Five Minutes of Thankfulness

Today is the one of the busiest travel days of the year.  I have already seen some of the results on Facebook.  A friend posted that "Every crazy person in Texas is traveling (the road she was on).  Just shoot me now."

I remember traveling I-35 on this day years ago when we were in seminary in Ft. Worth and headed south for home and Thanksgiving.  We sat in stop and go traffic for hours north of Waco.  We thought there must be a bad accident because all the southbound lanes were diverted onto the feeder road.  It turned out to be there was a patch of broken concrete about 10 feet across in one of the southbound lanes.  It cost us and thousands of others, hours in drive time.

It's funny how many things can happen on Thanksgiving weekend to cause us not to be thankful.  I once heard the insight that the fruit of the Spirit are all grown in circumstances that could produce just the opposite.  In other words, love is more likely grown in place where it is difficult to love.  The same is true of the rest of the fruit - joy, peace, patience and the rest.

I know that thankfulness is not one of the fruit of the Spirit but it too can be grown in the situations that could cause us to become ungrateful and grumbling.  Are you going to let something rob you of your gratitude this weekend?  Why not try this experiment with me.  Can you give God five straight minutes of gratitude?  Can we just pray and thank God for five minutes without a request or intercession - just thanks?  Would you try that with me this weekend?  You can even do it while stuck in traffic.  Let's see what difference it makes.

For the journey...

Tim

Looking Back, Lessons Learned

I asked people to share what they had learned from praying for our country for 40 days.  Here are some of the comments I have received back about what God is teaching us:

 I feel Prayer is the only thing that will heal our country.  We Christians MUST stay in Prayer.  – V.

Praying for our country and its leaders over the last 40 days has made me less cynical towards people and decisions I don't like being made. It has driven me to pray more often for those who need God as their foundation. Why should I expect people to make decisions that don't line up with Scripture when they don't give heed to Scripture or the God I love and serve? They need Him first! God can and does work around their blindness to do His will but I want to be a person who cares for those I find tough to love (ex: someone who thinks differently than me) instead of only those who are like-minded. I see no way our country will be unified without God's people standing for what God says and praying for those who don't, without giving breath to hateful and sarcastic remarks.   - L.

I feel that we as a country have been more united in praying regardless of the outcome.  I believe that a spiritual turnaround will not happen without true repentance.  I believe that we as a country need to pray for true repentance and not tolerance.  – E.

 Conviction: to pray daily for President Obama, Michelle, and their daughters as I pray for my own family.  – K.

As we have prayed for our country and leaders, we were reminded of the many times God intervened for Israel but only when they repented. We began to realize it is not easy to repent as a Nation. As individuals, we need to encourage people to turn to God and to depend upon HIM not our feelings.  – M&J

While praying for our nation during the past 40 days, I was often confronted with the thought of what happens if my candidate doesn't win.  And then I received some amazing blessings through His word.  Old verses I have read many times like Eph 3:11-14, Phil 4:1-7, John 14:27 and Col 3:15 opened a new truth for me.  This truth is that no matter how much I may want the peace of this world, it cannot and will not ever give me the eternal peace of God.  World and human peace can never exist in conflict and there will always be conflict.  However God's peace is given to me as a free gift through the blood of Christ.   His peace exists in all times, good and bad, in fear and trouble.  I learned that if I will let the peace of God rule my heart by allowing the word of God to dwell in me, then this election is no longer a worry for me.   I choose to live in God's peace and not depend on this world for my peace. – G.Forty days of prayer for our country--we need to continue it for the next 325 days.  The USA prayer from Max Lucado really touched my heart.  I will continue to use it each day I pray but with the last line revised.

 My version:

Unite us!

Strengthen us!

Anoint our now appointed president, abundantly!

 Thanks for all the memory verses. We do know who really reigns!!

 My God reigns, my God reigns!!

- M.

Thanks to all of you who responded,  We do need to continue to pray for our country.  Our country needs it.  We need it.

For the Journey...

Tim