The Pilgrim Pastor

They say pictures are worth a thousand words.  A week ago I illustrated the difficulty in growing spiritually the older we get with the fact of concrete. When it is new (young) it is soft and pliable.  You can pour it where you want it.  However, it quickly begins to harden the older it gets until finally the only way to reshape it is to destroy it and start over again. 

The wisdom of God compels us to retain pliability, that is, God’s wisdom is only able to take root in us to the extent that we remain teachable.  When we are not teachable, when we are like concrete, damage can occur within the Body of Christ as each of us asserts our own stubborn way.  When we are not pliable and teachable, we become like a hard surface.  When you fall on it or run into it… it hurts. What kind of Christian are you?  Are you teachable, moldable?  Does it hurt to run into you or fall on you?

My wonderful wife Christina came across this picture while out with our children at a park, the day after I delivered that sermon.  She took this picture which is, my friends, worth a thousand words…

Pilgrim Pastor… realizing that it is easier to remain pliable like clay than to labor in vain to mold concrete… 

Often, an unwillingness to accept change in a Church is synonymous with an unwillingness to give up control.  We are called in the local Church to mutual submission to Christ and one another, not the assertion of our wills.  We are to seek His will.  Not our own.

Pilgrim Pastor 

Every political season, I wrestle with how my faith in Christ ought to influence my political views and engagement. Should Christians get involved in politics, political issues or even vote? Will doing so entangle them in the ugliness of the world’s broken systems?

Whether it was anti-slavery, prohibition or other social movements in this country, most major social upheavals in American history were preceded or accompanied by spiritual movements and Christian revivals. In fact, it has been noted by many religious and secular historians that the Second Great Awakening probably had the single greatest impact on the anti-slavery movement.

It was Christian leaders like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Finney, and Theodore Weld who influenced the founding of anti-slavery societies and preached against the sinful wickedness of that vile institution.

Probably the biggest problem with drawing too sharp a dichotomy between Christianity and politics is that in an attempt to keep the spiritual nature of the faith intact and unencumbered with “worldly” things, relegating the role of Christ and His Church only to Sunday morning or other worship times spiritualizes the faith to a level of becoming so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good!

The realities of the Lordship of Jesus and the sovereign reign of God in the entire universe are lost when we divorce ourselves from the world’s problems.

Jesus is Lord of all things spiritual, philosophical and political. There is no part of this world where His influence is “off limits.” He is Lord of all.

What about Bible passages like James 1:27? “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”(NIV84)

I would submit to you that it is the task of Christians everywhere to do everything they can to bring passages like this to fulfillment. My burden is to see Christians caring for the widow around the corner directly by visiting, loving and helping her, as well as supporting community, religious and, yes, even governmental programs that also attend to her needs.

My wife and I have personally helped orphans, but we can’t help them all directly. If and when I am able to influence governmental programs in the area of helping those precious souls, I will do it.

Are politics potentially ugly? You bet. However, if the Devil himself brought me a care package for an orphan, I would take it from him, kick him out, and give that care package to the orphan. If political involvement is a means to helping that orphan, I will get involved.

Christian, there is nowhere that the reign of Christ does not extend, and while our primary mission is to share the love of Christ, there is no limit to the ways, spheres and extent that God calls us to do so.

Let’s get busy with both hands spreading the Gospel and the influence of the Kingdom.

(This column appeared in the Suffolk News Herald, March, 2012) 

Have you ever felt overwhelmed with commitments?  While I was online recently, conducting some unrelated research, I happened upon this little cartoon.  Now, as a former Marine it immediately caught my attention.  As a person who was at the time feeling ever so slightly overwhelmed with the to do list that I had created for myself that day, the humor of the cartoon helped to greatly ease my burden.  It reminded me of a couple of lessons that may be helpful for you in keeping a right perspective on your burdens, tasks, and work today as well.

1.      1. The task at hand is seldom as monumental as we see it. Consider the big picture.  Compared to what it took those Marines to get to the top of Iwo Jima to raise a flag, my tasks are pretty manageable.

2.      2. Interestingly enough, this little sketch is of the popular re-raising of the flag on Iwo Jima.  When I was a Marine Corps photographer, I was once privileged to hold one of the original first prints of the actual flag raising that we found in a very tattered and water damaged book of images.  The actual thing was far less interesting of an image so they staged one that was more interesting!  The real thing is often less interesting than the image we have of it.  Be practical.  Accomplish your task minus the dramatics.  When we complain too much, even to ourselves, we have a tendency to get derailed in stress, emotion, and confusion. Take a clear look at the actual task and make a plan.

3.      3. Life is full of challenges and jobs to be done.  When we finish today’s work, tomorrows will come.  Take a moment to breath and focus on what matters.  My wife and I are always fascinated at our children’s ability to demolish the cleanliness of our home.  She and I are neat people.  Well, I am very neat and she is very clean and together, prior to all the kids who have invaded my life… we were very neat and very clean people!  What matters more though?  A clean house or happy children?  While I’d like to have both, I seldom do.  Making memories is more important than making it into the bleach-clean hall of fame.  Focus on what matters.  There will always be chores and work.  Life has a lot in common with an assembly line.

Remember the words of Nobel Laureate Sir Rabindranath Tagore “God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing.”

Pilgrim Pastor… working when work needs to be done… focusing on the focus… singing God’s songs of love and laughter…  

Ambition is the greatest enemy to personal peace.  The soul that finds rest in the ambitions of God, to make His name great, will learn contentment.  The soul that seeks to make its own name great will be continually restless.  Among the keys to personal success is a “letting go” of the need to strive for it.  Work?  Yes.  Strive to gain more.  No.  "In our natural life our ambitions are our own. In the Christian life we have no aim of our own, and God’s aim looks like missing the mark because we are too shortsighted to see what he is aiming at." Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) 

Contentment comes, at least in part, through the realization that my life is happening right now.  Don’t miss out on today for the hope of tomorrow’s greater joy. “But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment.” (1 Timothy 6:6 NASB)

Pilgrim Pastor… trying not to miss the love in my hands for want of looking in them…

This is from my column which I contribute to the Suffolk News Herald. 

When we neglect our history, we become enslaved to the mistakes of the past. I am a student of all kinds of history, but none fascinates me more than the history of my own land.

Whether I am pouring over a record of American church history, driving past a Civil War monument and telling my wife one more time that “I’ve got to go read those inscriptions,” or visiting an important site in the civil rights movements, I am enthralled by the movements and shaping of a people so richly diverse.

Nearly 10 years ago, my wife and I spent a weekend in Memphis. Walking Beale Street was great, but taking in the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial was life changing.

Never before had the struggle for racial equality and the need for racial reconciliation in our land been so real to me than when I fixed my own eyes upon the still-bloodstained cement where this great preacher, leader and visionary was removed from this world.

History is more than dust-covered books. Our history is the story of us. It is the account of how we came to be who we are. Its story reverberates in us all. Martin Luther King Jr. sacrificed all of his tomorrows in order to give us a better today. He lived out his own admonition that “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

History is often about remembering the ugliness of this world, but not so that we can despair. No, its story teaches us to remember the love of those who gave us a greater tomorrow.

Dr. King once said, “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”

Love, forgiveness and hope are the greatest forces for social change, because they affect society at the level of the individual. They transform our volition, our desires. They alter our minds and influence our will.

Society’s realities are the consequence of the dreams of individuals who are willing to dream about what the future might be — what individual people could become.

King also said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

My friends, if we learn or are reminded of anything of merit this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let us be reminded that the world needs visionary leaders who are willing to transform society at the level of themselves, their families, their communities and their societies.

What dream of a better tomorrow do you have today? How much are we willing to love, and what are we willing to sacrifice to make it tomorrow’s reality?