Loose Wheels, Half a Cloak, and God's Peace

An Instrument of God's Peace:

There is no use asking, "Why?" Sometimes in this world the wheels just come off. It's one of the things that Job's "friend," Eliphaz observed, "People are born for trouble as readily as sparks fly up from a fire" (Job 5:7, NLT). People mistakenly think that little organizations don't have much trouble. I confess my lack of objectivity, but I think that per capita, little outfits have more trouble than the bigger ones. Often we have to do the same stuff as the big guys, but, by definition, we have to do it with fewer workers. At Pacific Islands University, the school where I am privileged to serve, often one person does what a whole department at a bigger institution does. Sometimes it's even worse. One person has several functions. I'm not complaining. I'm just giving the set-up for the rest of this post. This morning was one of those times:  I happened to be a place so that I could serve as a spare tire, so with minimal planning we proceeded with a prayer chapel. Early in the program I asked the question, "Why do we have chapel?" I was hoping that someone would give an answer that would be a seq-way to this thought, "It is a place where we take a few moments of refuge from our loose-wheel world to meet with God Who is in control and has promised to be with us on this tumultuous globe. My expectations and hopes were way too low. One of our teachers, a Bible Translator said, "Let me give a linguistic answer." Then he proceeded to give a version of this legend "While Martin [of Tours] was a soldier in the Roman army . . . he experienced a vision. . . . One day as he was approaching the gates of the city of Amiens, he met a scantily clad beggar. He impulsively cut his military cloak in half to share with the man. That night, Martin dreamed of Jesus wearing the half-cloak he had given away. He heard Jesus say to the angels: "Martin . . . clothed me with this robe." The half-robe became an object of veneration. Skipping over a couple of steps in the linguistic evolution, "People called the small temporary buildings erected to house the relic "capella", the word for a little cloak. Eventually, such small churches lost their association with the cloak, and all small churches began to be referred to as 'chapels'" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_of_Tours). My friend had no idea I was going to ask that question. I had no idea he would refer to this legend. But, as surely as the story portrays the human instrumentality of God reaching down into this breaking-down world to meet the need of troubled people, God reached down into our chapel and clothed us with His peace. Just as in the ancient tale, he used humans as the instruments to accomplish His work. I can look at my computer screen and the lists on my desk,not to mention the troubles that come to the door, and see the sparks flying upward. Lord, help me to look beyond and see your hand of peace. To quote Francis of Assisi, "Lord make me an Instrument of your peace." It's Something To Think About.

What's Coming?

Normally, when we get up in the morning we make coffee and open the sliding glass door on one end of our living room/kitchen and a window on the other. It is generally quite pleasant for a couple of hours. This morning is cloudy, so it's a bit cooler (less hot) than usual, and there is just the slightest breeze. Normally, I'd just enjoy the meteorological gift while I check my email and drink my coffee, but this morning the calm feels eery. Somewhere way out my sliding glass door a storm, Mangkhut, is spinning. Already it has wind speeds between 50 and 100 miles per hour. Thus far, since its birth as a tropical depression out near the Marshalls, it has followed a straight path for my front door. I'm not planning to let it in, but, really, there is little I can do. Is the peaceful morning the calm before the storm or just the peace? Mangkhut, like most "natural" phenomena, is unpredictable. It could turn north or south, or unexplainably weaken. Likewise, it could become the Typhoon by which all typhoons ever after will be measured. The only thing I really know is, I don't know. I have a big family, now. We have been, and are taking all the precautions that we should. We have more to do before Mangkhut's predicted arrival on Tuesday. When I woke early this morning, though, I was struck with the thought that I can't "do myself out of this." Really that is always true. It's just that I often don't get it. The apartment where Kathy and I live and some of our other campus buildings are constructed to withstand a Typhoon. Still, they aren't impervious to damage, major or merely nuisance. Another of our main buildings doesn't have the Typhoon Readiness Seal of Approval (Don't try to google that. I made it up.) After the fall, this world so works that everything in it is headed to chaos, "moth and rust corrupt," typhoons blow down. If Mangkhut (is Mangkhut a feminine or masculine name?) continues its, so far, relentless path to my front door, where will our little campus register on the chaos-cosmos (order) scale the day after? Again, file that in the "I don't know folder." So, *   I can't do myself to peace, and *   I can't know myself to peace, so am I just stuck in turmoil? At the point of time just before what might be the greatest cosmic turmoil before, during or after this world's history, Jesus said,   I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid. (JOHN 14:27)    The way to peace is through trusting, resting in my relationship with the One Who made the ocean, wind, and waves, and the One Who loves me and my much-expanded family more than I can know. The sun is shining now. The breeze has picked up a bit. Will it steadily increase for the next 48 hours or is it just a nice Sunday morning treat? I don't know. I do know God is good, in the storm or in the calm. I'm trusting you, Lord. Please help my unbelief.  It's Something To Think About.

Privacy in an Age of Digital Piracy

Privacy or    Piracy?

Almost every day, I get a Facebook “Friend request” from someone who is already my friend. I generally try to the let them know they have been hacked. It has happened to me. Much more serious forms of digital piracy have happened to many of you. Chris Ridgeway, in a thought-provoking Christianity Today article, asks what should the Christian—Christ-like, or God-pleasing—response to digital privacy issues be? Here is one of his many questions: “So does the Christian reject privacy? No. But in sight of our sinful default to run from God and each other, we may have to rethink it.” A takeaway I had is to focus less on keeping some things secret and more on being open with those things I should share. Don’t worry, I’m not about to post any nude selfies, though in my case such a picture would likely be more a matter of humor than prurience. Like you, I spend a good bit of time reading and sending emails, meeting friends near and far on Facebook, and plugging into good articles, like this one, that the internet makes available to me. “Whether I eat or drink, or whatever I do—including surfing the web—I am to do all to the glory of God” (paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10:31). The article is the cover of the September 2018, Christianity Today. The author is Chris Ridgeway. If you can't get at it, let me know. I can share with a friend (I'm not sure how many friends I'm allowed to have.) It's Something To Think About.

A Happy Anniversary

A Happy Anniversary:

August 12, 1972, I said "I do" and "I will" to the lovely woman who became my wife and has now become my even lovelier wife. For almost all of those forty-six years, Kathy and I have been in ministry. During the first nine months of our marriage, while I finished college, we were youth leaders at a small rural church in Northeast Pennsylvania. Then for forty-two years we worked at Covington Bible Church in a mill-town in the Alleghary Highlands of Virginia. Unexpectedly, this is now our second anniversary celebrated on Guam, where we are privileged to serve at Pacific Islands University. One way or another, everywhere we have been, not only were we doing marriage for ourselves, but we have sought to model Christian-family, and teach people how to build homes that honor God. Now, working with young adults whose culture is as far from the one we grew up in as this island is far from rural Virginia, that is harder. Still, using the truth of God's word as our guide we are giving it our best shot. While we were out on a date this evening, I asked Kathy if she ever thought she would be doing what we are doing, where we are doing it, when she said "I do." back in '72. "No." was her answer, and for my part, I agree. The fact is, not only this last turn in our road together, but every step of our journey, has been unknown to us until we got there. Which brings me to an important truth about doing marriage right. Some of you readers, for whom I performed a marriage ceremony will be surprised to hear me say this, but the fact of the matter is, there is just no way you can be prepared for marriage. I'm still a believer in premarital counseling. I'm involved in a couple of versions of it, now, in my role at PIU. Bluntly, what I mean, though, is this:   There is nothing you can do before you are married that will ensure that you have a lasting, satisfying, God-honoring, people-blessing, good-child-raising marriage. Sure, starting well with good principles will make that more likely, but the bottom line it is not so much what you did before your marriage that brings success, it is what you continue to do. On this day that I celebrate saying "I do," I am committed to keep on doing. That concept is really quite liberating because it means there is hope. You can start now. Earlier this evening Kathy looked at me with those pretty green eyes and asked, "Are you happy?" I am. It's Something To Think About.

An Atlas of the Life and Travels of Howard Merrell

Mental, Historical Cartography:

Posen, Illinois; Huntland. Tennessee;  the cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France; Sterlington, Louisianna; Roanoke. Virginia; Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia; Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania; Elora, Tennessee; a small part of Kiev Ukraine; (I don't remember the name of the community, but) -a large housing complex in Almaty, Kazakhstan; Weno, Chuuk; Harvey, Illinois; Bradley, West Virginia; Lita, Ecuador; Fredrickburg, Pennsylvania; Neuva Ocatepeque, Honduras; Elkhart, Indiana; Imperial Rome; Charlottesville, Virginia; Crescent Lake Bible Camp, near Rhinelander, Wisconsin; an area in the Black Forest region of Germany; Palau; Lawrence, Michigan; Rock Hill, North Carolina; a bit of College Station, Texas, Guam; the route Southeast to Northwest across Ohio; The area around Moody Bible Institute in Chicago; Florence, Italy; Lake Moomaw; Bryansk, Russia; Chuuk Lagoon; Israel; a bike route from Covington, Virginia to Hershey, Pennsylvania (complete with pictures of a hotel room that used to be 8 x14 but is now only 7 x 13, because of the many coats of paint); and several airports around the world. I am taking a few minutes this morning to page through the atlas in my mind. Maps, pictures, reports of traffic conditions, and notations of where to get good chicken, pizza, or sub-sandwiches are included in my one of a kind guide to getting around in this world. My mental atlas is horribly inaccurate. Some of the designations, like "Half-way Hardees," are meaningless to anybody outside my family. Some of its contents, like the memorial marker, "On this spot a drunk driver in a big Buick ran over Howard Merrell on the first day his parents let him cross the road with his bike." haven't been edited for more than sixty years. The information my book contains is utterly arbitrary. It says little to nothing about most prime tourist destinations in the regions it covers, yet it has a notation about the best hoagie shop in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania--maybe the whole world--Grace's Hoagies. On page xxx you can see a picture of the trailer where Fred wielded his butcher knife and flyswatter making his wonderful sandwiches in a place that was so dirty that I wouldn't let Kathy go in because I knew if she did she would never eat anything from there again. I didn't want to deprive her of that pleasure. "Why do you call the place 'Grace's?" I asked, referring to the sign leaned against the front of the trailer that Fred had never bothered to hang. I was hoping for a deeply Theological response. "Aaagh, it's named after my ex-wife (expletive deleted." Such is the trivia that fills the pages of The Life and Travels of Howard Merrell. The pictures fade, and the data from one location gets confused with another. The compiler of this record makes no guarantee as to accuracy. I had cause to consult my book last night as I rode from the airport to my friends' house in Koror, Palau. Kathy and I lived in Palau for four months. It was the beginning of Act Two of our life, following a very long Act One. I consulted my record because I had the distinct impression that this "feels like home." Only it isn't home. Kathy and I have started referring to "our Virginia home" and "our Guam home." But that doesn't quite cover it either. I could just as easily say, "The place in Virginia, or Guam, that's not my home." Don't get me wrong I'm not looking for sympathy. There is a certain freedom in being "homeless." An old song captures the mood of our Lord's words about laying up treasure in heaven, or the Apostle Paul's words about where to set our affection. I'm content to hang around this world as long as the Lord wants me to. I'm just trying to remember my real address. (Philippians 1:21-15 gives Paul's much more together view of this.) It's Something To Think About.

Something left when you're done

Heritage:

This morning was Friday morning on the side of the world where I live now. It's fourteen hours in the future compared to my home in Virginia. At eight this morning I was beginning a class that I teach at Pacific Islands University. We typically start our classes with prayer. So as we went to the Lord in prayer on Fridaymorning it was six in the evening, back in Virginia. Thursday at 6:00 PM my home church and several other congregations were beginning the last night of a big event for teenagers, TEENWEEK. My class was praying for TEENWEEK. More than three decades ago, Covington Bible Church started TEENWEEK. I was privileged to be instrumental in its beginning and continuation.  Some of the Teens and leaders at TEENWEEK '18   As the class and I prayed this morning, what was going on in Virginia seemed very distant. I guess that is because it is very distant, both in miles and minutes. I don't want to give the idea that I think that doing games in a mud-pit, having a half-court basketball tournament, or serving up fifty pizzas at a time is essential to the cause of Christ. It isn't, and I know that. TEENWEEK, however, is a tool that has been used by God's people and blessed by God. I feel a bit like someone who is attending his own funeral. Normally, we think about heritage as something that goes beyond a person's life. I'm privileged to be alive and see something that by God's grace I was privileged to be involved in, that still goes on. Some of the leaders in the picture above are children the teens I was privileged to work with years ago. They are doing TEENWEEK and, more importantly, taking leadership in reaching a new generation. Thank You, Lord. My advice to you is, Go do something that lasts. It's Something To Think About. To see more about TEENWEEK '18, scroll through the posts at the Covington Bible Church Facebook page.

Friends, Not the TV Show

Friendship:

I was down to the point of sniffing socks this morning. It's the last day of this trip. I look forward to heading home and being with Kathy. As I reflect on my time in Chuuk, I am struck by the power friendship. I have been able to spend time with a couple of friends who are my allies in ministry. The currency of friendship is clear between us. Each of us has his own work. There are areas of our ministries that overlap, and so an outsider could look at some of the conversations that have taken place the last few days, and say, "I understand. The work missionary number 1 is doing has this common interest with missionary number 2, so it makes perfect that he says good things about what Number 2 is doing, because if Number 2 succeeds it will help Number 1." That observation is technically correct but entirely wrong. The fact of the matter is, the three of us are friends--friends in the way that comes through in some key passages in the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs 17:17 speaks about the consistency of true friendship The ESV translation of Proverbs 18:24, brings out the distinction between those we call "friends" in the casual sense and those we can count on even when times are hard. Proverbs 27:6 points out that this is the kind of friend who will "wound" his friend rather than let them go the wrong way. In addition to spending times with these friends, I was able to make some new friends. Friendship transcends national boundaries, skin color and, though it makes it harder, even differences in language. While I was here in this little corner of the world, I was reminded about a friendship that has even survived death. Three decades after Dave's death, his friendship still feeds my soul. I am convinced that in heaven we will still be who we are. If that is so, then might it be possible that friendship, unhindered by distance, time, language, or death, will continue? It's Something To Think About.