When Old Becomes New

“Teach us to recognize how few our days; that we may gain a heart of wisdom." ~ Psalm 90:12

A year ago I celebrated my 100^th birthday.  Charles Strite invented the world’s first automatic pop-up toaster in 1919 that heated both sides of a slice of bread simultaneously.  I turn regular bread into delicious, hot toast; evenly crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.

A gift for you after marrying your high school sweetheart in 1949, I was a more-refined, 2-slice machine.  I recall such intimate memories of your first years together.  Every morning I gave you pleasant aromas of cinnamon toasted bread mixed with fresh-brewed coffee.

I worked harder after the little ones came along – jellied toast in the morning, sandwiches for lunch and the occasional after-school, peanut butter snack.  They seemed enamored by me, seeing my coils heat up, admiring how I mysteriously turned a slice of white bread into delightful toast, ready for butter, jam or just about any other concoction.

Things changed when you moved into a new house.

Formica countertops, wood floors and new appliances.  Mr. Coffee took my place - all in the name of progress.  I was relegated to a dark cupboard where I still heard kitchen talk but would never be a part of your lives again.

Downsizing brought yet another move.  You gave away many possessions but hung onto me for some strange reason.  A new home in another dark space.

Soon I heard the sweet voices and scampering feet of grandchildren.  They never knew me, but I remained ready if the call came for my service.

Time passed . . . silent, deserted, irrelevant.  You don’t live here anymore.

One day I awoke from oblivion when one of your daughters opened the cupboard door and removed everything.  Surprised by my presence, she carefully set me on the counter next to a stained and bruised toaster oven.  I still looked almost new in my shiny, hard chrome case.

Did she remember me?

Before I realized what was happening, I took a short ride, placed a nice granite countertop in a spacious kitchen, and plugged in to a wall socket.

Perhaps I wasn’t abandoned after all!  But was I still up to the challenge?

After removing old crumbs, buffing my chrome and firing up my coils, I made my first piece of toast in decades.  It’s good to be alive again, making gluten-free English muffins now every morning.

Like all Christians, seniors need the friendship and inspiration from other believers for their faith to be nourished.  Unfortunately, the older they get, the more difficult it is for many of them to stay involved with the local church.  You can demonstrate God’s love by providing comfort and stability in this time of change and uncertainty, and help the entire family recognize the spiritual continuum stretching back for generations.

Loving God, let us pray for those who walk more slowly now.  May each step be made lighter and their joy be greater for seeing beauty the little things that those of us hurrying by tend to miss.  Amen

Connect the Dots

“Don’t let anger gain a foothold." ~ Ephesians 4:32

Anger didn’t come close to describing Caroline’s current emotion.  It boiled deep in her gut as hot as lava; hungry for destruction.  She hoped the feeling would pass, but while it hadn't, she bolted out the door oblivious to the world around her.

It wasn’t the fear of dying that scared her - but the pain, the mutilation of her body, the loss of her youth.  Cancer – it pained her to even say the word out loud.  At 27, this should not be happening.  While her peers were getting married and having children, she’d be pumping just enough chemicals into her body to destroy the cancer and hopefully not her spirit.

Caroline had often heard people quote the Bible and say, “All things work together for good to those who love God.”  How was this working for anybody’s good?

While pondering this for the umpteenth time, Caroline flashed back to that afternoon in high school when she was similarly terribly upset.  Having been passed over for a spot on the volleyball team, she’d unloaded all her teenage angst.  “It’s not fair.  God doesn’t listen to any of my prayers.  Why me?”

“It’s just a dot,” her Mom said.

“What do you mean?”

Mom pulled out a worksheet with numbered dots all over it.  “What’s that?” Caroline asked cynically.

“It’s dot-to-dot,” Mom replied.  “What’s it a picture of?”

“I don’t know, they seem scattered over the page in no apparent shape,” said Caroline wondering what point her mother was trying to make.

“That’s how life is,” Mom began.  “God places things in our lives that seem confusing or out of order.  We often have no idea why things happen the way they do.”

“So … we’re the dots?”

“No, we’re the pencil,” her mother said, handing Caroline one.  “The pencil moves from dot to dot.  Only God sees the whole picture.”

Caroline started connecting the numbered dots.  Soon the lines came together to reveal a puppy.  Maybe now it made sense.

She’d changed jobs recently and her new employer couldn’t have been more supportive.  A recent urge to become more fit and eating healthier had resulting in her sheading nearly 25 pounds.

Her cancer was slow moving.  New treatments were highly successful in eradicating early-detected cancer.  God was there all along; He’d been preparing her for the battle.

Caroline stopped viewing all these events as blips of tragedy.  She needed to trust God to reveal the beautiful bigger picture.  All things could work together in our lives for good.

Anger is a valid reaction to adversity, but if left unchecked, it will lead to bitterness and hostility.  If you're angry with God, lay your heart open before Him.  Admit that while you don't understand all that’s happening, you trust Him to make everything work out … dot to dot.

Dear Lord, there is so much hurt and anger inside of me.  I'm tired of living this way.  I'm giving it to You to heal my hurt.  In Jesus' Name, Amen.

Ruby Ridge Redemption

“If you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive you.” ~ Matthew 6:15

If ever a person deserved to be angry, Sara Weaver had the right.

She was just 16 when her father, Randy, was struck in the shoulder by a sniper’s bullet outside their home on Ruby Ridge, a mountaintop in northern Idaho.  Her 14-year-old brother Sammy and a deputy were both killed after officers tried to serve a warrant for weapons charges in 1992.

Sara raced back to the cabin just as her mother, Vicki, was shot in the head while holding her 10-month-old sister.  Mom died in a pool of blood.

For more than a week, the surviving Weavers holed up in the cabin while hundreds of federal agents laid siege in a standoff that helped spark anti-government protests that included the Oklahoma City bombing which took 168 innocent lives.

Randy Weaver was eventually acquitted of the most serious charges.  In 1995, surviving family members won a wrongful death lawsuit against the government.

In the years after Ruby Ridge, Sara Weaver, struggled with depression and PTSD, as well as what she called a "toxic bondage" of bitterness and anger.

She admitted to being ‘broken’ until a close friend revealed her positive relationship with Jesus Christ.  Something clicked for Sara.  He began earnestly reading the Bible, where she learned that "Jesus commands us to forgive (Matt 6:15)."  She described an evolving spiritual journey in her book, "From Ruby Ridge to Freedom” released in 2012.

“I’d been a victim for almost two decades,” she confessed, “but if you don’t surrender it to God, the bitterness sucks the life from you.”

Forgiving the men who killed her mother and brother wouldn’t be easy.  “But I had to do so … as many times as it took.  I’ll never condone what they did to my family, but my faith helped me release the raging hatred the incidents retold.”

Then, during an agonizing divorce, she saw forgiveness from a different perspective.  “I realized that I’d also been a perpetrator: I’d inflicted great pain on my ex-husband.  The guilt and the shame I felt from that, was worse than the pain of being the victim.  I realized I must forgive as I had been forgiven.”

God doesn’t care if you’re a victim or the perpetrator.  He died for both.

Forgiveness makes better use of the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing open wounds.  It’s rediscovering our strengths and releases our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.

It comes more readily when we have faith in God and trust His Word.  Such conviction enables us to withstand the worst of humanity and allows us to look beyond ourselves.  Could there be someone in your life that needs your forgiveness today?

Merciful Lord, thank You for Your gift of forgiveness.  Your only Son loved me enough to come to earth and experience the worst pain imaginable so that I could be forgiven.  Help me demonstrate that kind of love today, even to those    who hurt me.  Amen

A Different Pandemic

“He’s not here; He has risen!" ~ Matthew 28:6

Times of illness and plague are not foreign to the Christ we worship.  Christians facing COVID-19 today would do well to remember how the selfless love of the early church helped spread the Gospel in a world much more hostile to Jesus' message than our world is today.

During the 3^rd century, a smallpox-like plague killed as many as 5,000 people daily in the city of Rome alone.  As it was highly contagious, victims were often thrown half-dead into the streets, where unburied corpses lay like garbage in hopes of avoiding the ‘plague of death.’

Early Roman religion did not preach care for the sick.  Yet Christianity offered a distinct contrast.  The words of Bishop Dionysus, in one the most infected areas, reflected a period of unimaginable joy for Christians.

The epidemic that seemed like the end of the world actually promoted the spread of Christianity.  The harrowing images of putrefying bodies and burning pyres of corpses influenced early Christian descriptions of hell and the afterlife.  Now that hell had become a place on earth, Christians were increasingly eager to avoid it in the afterlife.

Dionysus described the Christian community being transformed into a brigade of nurses, running toward those afflicted, “Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need; ministering to them in Christ.”

Persons briefly too weak to cope for themselves recovered instead of dying.  It’s entirely plausible that basis care (food, water and compassion) reduced mortality by as much as two-thirds.

Christian charity did not just save lives - it also spread the Gospel.  Historians have long struggled to understand how a small group of Christians after Jesus's ascension (Acts puts the numbers at several hundred followers), eventually outnumbered all other faiths in the Roman Empire.

For history to possibly repeat itself, we must adopt the same charitable spirit, though it may look entirely different in practice today.

First, respecting social distancing helps limit the spread of the COVID-19.  Christians should value the lives of others more than the comfort and social opportunities of daily life.

Second, share wisdom and hope, not panic.  The nature of God is to provide light from even the darkest places.  Listen to experts, to others in similar circumstances, and to God - pouring all information and emotion through a sieve, straining only the most necessary nuggets.

And finally, a faithful response to the coronavirus doesn’t mean that we should clamor to volunteer at overloaded hospitals.  We can communicate with the most isolated by phone and other media.  We can also financially support charitable enterprises doing God's work during this difficult time.

What the world sees is an instrument of death, we see as love and the faith behind it.

Almighty Father, as we face the unknown days ahead, let us be faithful.  Let us share the hope behind our faith, as we act in wisdom, as we serve others, and as we follow what the Spirit may want to create anew.  Amen

Beacons of Light

“Though death on the cross, He united us as one body." ~ Ephesians 2:16

The first day of spring arrived there but it didn’t feel like it.  Coronavirus was sweeping the globe with feelings of uncertainty, loneliness and even despair.  “Social Distancing” became the new norm overnight.  Schools closed, grocery store shelves lay bare of essential items, and people lucky enough to work were told to do so from home.

Nona shuffled around her cluttered apartment; her frame bent with age.  Watering can in hand, she tipped water onto already damp soil of the plants; talking to each of them kindly as if they were her children.  At her tea time she always sat near the old rotary phone just in case someone called; in case someone needed her.

With little else to do, Nona gazed out her window wondering how long the crisis would last.  It was then she noticed something that lifted her soul, animated her smile, and charmed her heart again. They’d been friends once, a lifetime ago – a teacher now for kids with special needs.

He was delivering school lunches door-to-door to hungry children stuck at home.  Watching him made her think of something Mr. Roger’s once said: “In the bad times, always look for the helpers.”

Outside on the sidewalk, Ray heard the door open to a once-familiar voice.  “Hello Ray,” she said in a caring, inviting tone.  “Stop by when you finish, I have some fresh scones and hot tea – a small gesture for your kindness.”

Create the next chapter in your own imagination.

Here’s the point.  Americans are putting their lives on the line to keep this country moving.  That includes many ordinary heroes who didn’t expect to find themselves on the front lines.

Friendly smiles from postal carriers, affable exchanges with supermarket cashiers, and glimpses from delivery people have taken on a deeper meaning today.  In addition to reminding us how much we depend on their consistent efforts, their presence gives us a much-needed, if only temporary, sense of normalcy; of humanity at its best.

Hopefully, the lessons we learn about caring for each other from a distance will last far beyond this quarantine … when we stayed home, meditated, read books, exercised, rested, and learned new ways of being still.

Maybe, we’ll listen more empathetically, pray more deeply, think differently.  And just maybe, in the absence of people living in selfish, dangerous, and callous ways, the earth will begin to heal.

And when the danger passes, we’ll join together again, grieve our losses, and make new choices, dream new images, and created new ways loving each other ... as if the polarity of our differences magically dissolved before our eyes.

Lord Jesus, death could not hold You.  Though faith, we have no doubt this crisis will pass.  But it’s our choice on whether it brings out the best or worst in us.  Use it to strengthen our faith.  Use it to free us from fear.  Use it to make us grow kinder, more giving, and more like You.  Amen

Island of the Dead

“The Priests used the blood money returned by Judas to buy a Potter’s Field." ~ Matthew 27:5-8

As the ferry chugs across the water, the island’s withered brick of abandoned 20^th century buildings came into view.  Its destination - a 120-acre site with stunning views of Long Island’s "Gold Coast."  Flocks of Canada geese patrol the island’s rich marsh grass and wild flowers.  In its prime, Hart Island had been home to a reform school, a TB hospital and an insane asylum.

Today, Hart is the final resting place for the unknowns, the discarded, and the forgotten.  Though its dead number more than the living in all but 10 U.S. cities, the graveyard remains unseen by all but the handful of convicts and guards who dig and tend its graves.

Potter's fields like Hart aren't just cemeteries for paupers and winos.  Roughly half of the Island’s dead are infants and stillborns; buried in a field reserved for babies, in shoebox-size coffins stacked five high and twenty across.

Michael is one of 28 inmates working on the island, short-timers who volunteer to ride a Rikers Prison bus to the ferry providing the only access to Hart Island each day.

The “Death Crew” is considered a plum gig, so far as Rikers options go; for 50 cents an hour they handle wooden coffins that often smell and occasionally leak.  Most welcome the change of routine and a chance to be outside.

But for Michael, the job is a blessing; an opportunity to make sure these lost souls get buried with respect.  He won’t tolerate fellow prisoners who joke or clown around.

The prisoners often know little about those they’re burying beyond their demographic data and the place where their bodies were found, scrawled on the sides of coffins (i.e. Hispanic Male, (42): found 241st Street, Inwood), and numbered to make it easier to locate and exhume them if a family comes calling (which rarely happens).

Before the coffins are lowered, one by one, from the back of a morgue truck into the hands of waiting inmates, Michael offers a brief prayer for each lost soul – always stating with the deceased’s first name.

He’d always been agnostic, but now he put all his faith in God to care for them and forgive them of any sins.  “Just because they’re poor, homeless or stillborn, doesn’t mean that we should forget them,” he promises.  “Strangers are our brothers and sisters too.”

After a final blessing, he resumes his sacred duties.

Many achieve great feats and never ask the world to see or admire them, yet instead toil day after day for others.  Instead of dining with kings, they blissfully sit with the broken, to pour love into places the privileged never witness.  It’s a pure humility to which we should all aspire.

Creator God, we ask Your presence as we honor our sisters, brothers and children.  Look over all those buried in a potter’s field, their families and friends, and those at risk of joining them.  May we acknowledge their lives and honor them.  Amen

When Life Shifts

“There’s no greater love than to lay down one’s life for others." ~ John 15:13

On April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic sailed swiftly on the frigid North Atlantic heading unwittingly into the pages of history.  Its passenger list included a Who’s Who of the rich and famous.  Less celebrated passengers included Pastor John Harper and his beloved 6-year-old daughter, Nana.

About 11:40 pm, his and the lives over 3,300 other voyagers shifted when the unsinkable ship struck an iceberg.  Harper kissed his precious little girl; telling her that she would see him again someday before placing her safely in a lifeboat.

As the ship headed for its watery grave, he didn’t wait in line for a lifeboat, nor did he start rioting.  He headed toward the crowd of desperate humanity.

“Women, children and the unsaved to the lifeboats!” he shouted, knowing that believers were prepared to die but the unsaved were not ready.  Harper pled with people to turn to Christ.  With the ship sinking, he asked the Titanic’s 8-member orchestra to play, "Nearer, my God, to Thee."

As the gargantuan ship started breaking in half, 1,528 people plunged into the dark, icy, waters below; Pastor Harper among them.  He swam frantically from person to person leading them to Jesus.  One survivor later testified that Harper gave up his life jacket to a self-proclaimed atheist saying, "Here then, you need this more than I do."

As hypothermia set in, John Harper sank beneath the icy waters to and passed into the Lord’s presence; he was 39; just one of over 1,500 who perished that chaotic night.  But the man with Harper’s life vest was saved – both spiritually and physically after being pulled from the freezing water after nearly an hour.  Later, he professed to being ‘John Harper’s last convert.’

While other people were trying to buy their way onto the lifeboats and selfishly trying to save their own lives, that servant did what he had to - sacrificing his life for others’ salvation.  Especially during these times of disruption and chaos, we Christians have an extraordinary opportunity to shift our culture’s focus from self-protection to serving others; from crisis to catalyst.

This experience has and will change us; we will be different on the other side.  But remember that one day we’ll tell our grandchildren how we lived, how we loved, how we stepped-up during this outbreak by respecting others in such a way that we won’t be ashamed to tell them the truth.  Be accountable: stop hoarding, stay home, respect social distances, pray for those safeguarding us, and help redirect social energy from anxiety and panic to love and preparation.

It’s time for a new paradigm; a fresh perspective – one based on a new hospitality, deep spiritual healing, and authentic humility.

Loving God, our refuge and strength, we seek refuge in Your presence.  Protect our public servants, health care professionals, and every one affected by COVID-19. Enlighten us with Your Word – let it be a source of hope, healing, comfort and  wisdom.  Amen