Patches? We Don’t Need No Stinking Patches!

The tenth anniversary 9/11 has come and gone (I meant to write this about a month ago), and with it has come and gone another important day in the lives of every American: opening Sunday of the NFL regular season.  And we almost had a good scandal to make the day a true American holiday.  It seems that several of the players were planning on violating the NFL’s strict uniform code.  Chicago Bears linebacker Lane Briggs had specially made gloves, shoes and other gear to wear in commemoration of 9/11 and was expecting a fine in the neighborhood of 15K.  The NFL believed that it’s official pre-game ceremonies, the commemorative ball-caps for the coaches and the little sleeve patches for the players were enough.  (The NFL eventually gave-in and allowed the players to wear their custom gear).

            It kind of reminded me of the way a lot of us wear our faith, and how we compartmentalize it.  For many Christians our faith is something between us and God.  Don’t mention it outside of church on Sunday.  Outside of that you should look like everybody else. But if you want to wear a small cross around your neck, we will authorize that.  I used to be that way.  The problem is that the enemy has worked through the media to create a public image of a Christian that looks a lot like Ned Flanders from “The Simpsons”.  That irritatingly chipper, Kumbaya singing, holy rolling Jesus freak.  And of course we’ve all met a few real life Ned’s to reinforce the image.  We hide the lamps of our faith under a bowl because we don’t want to be that person that everybody is avoiding and laughing at.  But it really doesn’t have to be like that.  I have found that I can weave my faith into the fabric of my everyday life in a way that isn’t pestering, or showy and self-righteous, or a media caricature.  It can be real, be pleasant to be around, and I can look like a perfectly normal person.  Once I figured out how to do that, and did it, I found something amazing:  I had been surrounded by people who NEEDED that.  There were people all around me who needed someone who could provide a different perspective on their problems.  Who needed to see that it was possible to stay calm in the midst of a storm and know almost without asking what the persons anchor was.  They needed someone they knew they could go to who would counsel them when they needed it without judging them or looking down on them or preaching at them.  There were even church-going people who had questions about spiritual things that they had never learned in church before.  I wasn’t a laughingstock.  I was a light.

            Putting on your faith like this is like looking into one of those abstract pictures that has an image hidden inside of it.  You know – the kind that you have to really look at for a while, look past the surface and into the depths of it?  And suddenly the image jumps out at you.  And once you’ve seen you always see it.  The first time I tried to see one of those pictures it took me forever; after the first couple I saw, I could start to see the images in other ones almost right away, without even working at it.  When you put on your faith, God will reveal to you those shadows that he needs you to bring your light too.

            My faith is not a piece of jewelry to hang around my neck, or an abbreviation to hang on my wrist, or a little patch for my sleeve.  It is a coat of many colors that covers me entirely.  It should be pants, shirt, jacket AND tie.  And maybe a great pair of shoes.

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This Baby Will Not Stop Crying

My wife and I recently had our third child and sometimes it seems like he will not stop crying.  In theory this is a simple matter, right?  A baby cries so you either change it, feed it or hold it.  But sometimes I do all those things and he still won’t stop crying.  I know what many of you reading this are thinking: “Yeah, David, that’s what babies do.  You should have been prepared for that.  Just have to patient while he grows out of it.”  And you’d be right.

The apostle Paul tells us that new believers are like infants; and sometimes it seems like they, too, never stop crying.  They come to us with bad attitudes, disrespectful language, wrong thinking, spotty attendance, misconceptions about the church and about God, and (shocked
gasp) skepticism.  Do we show them patience while they grow?

We enthusiastically welcome someone who decides to give their life to Christ.  But then, when they don’t think, talk, act or show up like we think they should, we get judgmental.  Sometimes my wife and I like to go eat at one of those nice restaurants where people don’t usually bring their kids.  A place where grown-ups can go and there are only other grown-ups so that they can sit and talk without kids fussing and crying and spilling things.   The kind of place where the host or hostess just wouldn’t know what to do if a child was brought in.  The body of Christ has many
churches that fit that description.

We can have a hard time understanding why someone doesn’t just “act like a Christian” after they’ve gotten saved.  Or why we can give them advice and they don’t take it.  How it is that you can explain something and then a week later it’s like they never heard a word you said.  Why we can help them see the mess that they’re in, how they got there, how to get out, and how to avoid getting back into it; and then two weeks later they’ve made the same dumb decision, or never left the mess in the first place.

I changed my son’s diaper once, and a few hours later – I had to change it again!  After I changed him I fed him a bottle.  Three hours later he’s screaming for more food.  I picked him up and held him until he fell asleep but a little while later he’s crying to be picked up again.  And – might I add (with a huff) – that I never once got an ounce of appreciation from him. Each time these things happen, I change him again.  I feed him again.  I hold him in my arms and comfort him again.  Because that is the kind of care a baby requires.

As he grows there will come a time when he will have to learn how to avoid a mess by using the toilet.  He’ll need to learn how to feed himself.
And he won’t need me to hold him as much (although, hopefully, still sometimes). The end result of all this is that he will someday have the patience, the maturity and a great enough capacity to love that he will be able to provide a baby with all that it needs to grow.  If we took Paul’s analogy to heart, and cared for our “baby” Christians the same way we care for our flesh and blood babies – imagine what kind of church we could have.

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How to Walk on Water

A friend of mine told me once that we sometimes find ourselves out on the water, and the only thing we know for sure about why we’re there is because the Lord called us.  This is probably the scariest thing I have ever done.  I don’t mean the writing.  I’ve put myself out there before.  Rather, it’s what this blog post represents, which is the beginning of a ministry that has been on my heart for some years now.  But it’s only been
recently that God has shown me the final pieces and said: “now”.

So this is it.  And that’s scary.  And that fear is what holds a lot of us back from stepping out of the boat and onto the turbulent waters of our
calling.  After all, what if it fails?  It’s one thing to post something that nobody reads; it’s quite another when the most important thing on our heart doesn’t work.  What then? I read a quote not to long ago that said: “attempt something so big that it is doomed to fail, unless God be in it.”

Having faith means trusting that God will do his part.  If he has called us to something, then He has called us into a partnership with Him.  We have to let go of our insecurities and believe that, as long as we are faithful stewards of our part in it, then He will be faithful to do His part, and make it successful.  When I worked for a big corporation it wasn’t my job to make sure that the company had customers wanting to buy our product so that the company was profitable.  I was simply responsible for making sure that one small piece of the operation
was completed as efficiently and accurately as possible.  The rest was up to the CEO and the marketing department.  I never worried about it.  I never went up to the executive offices and made sure everything was ok. I would have been in their way, and not doing my own job.  We have to get out of God’s way sometimes, and simply do what He has entrusted to us.

If God is behind it, then God will go before it.  Jesus would never have called Peter out of the boat if he had not been 100% sure that Peter would be just fine.  So here I am; one foot over the gunwale of my boat; the water tickling the soles of my feet.  And the voice of my Lord is calling out to
me.  So here I go.