A Saturday Prayer

From A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Holy God, Lord most gracious,
We are in great need and you have extended your beneficent invitation:
“Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden.”
That describes us: we are overloaded with the cares of our existence.
We are creatures of need, but there is a problem . . .
What we see as our need is not the way you see it.
We see our need as more money,
we see our need as better health,
we see our need as a promotion,
as greater respect from our family,
as less anxiety—less stress—less pressure.
You see our need as prioritizing:
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
We confess that really, deep down, we don’t love you with all our hearts.
Lord, we see our sin. Forgive us.
We want to love you first and foremost.
Help us to experience the joy of love unblemished, a life lived to please God.
We pray that we will know you, whom to know is life more abundant.
We want to join with the psalmist in saying,
As the deer longs for streams of water,
So I long for you, O God.
I thirst for God, the Living God.
Amen.

Vacation Homes by Wil and Lorraine Triggs

The HGTV Dream Home Sweepstakes is closed to entries for this year.

As far as Wil knows, he and Lorraine will not be the lucky owners of this year’s giveaway, which their website describes as “a grand mountain escape packed with high-end design and located in Morrison, Colorado.”
 
He knows this because he did not enter to win.

Lorraine on the other hand, did enter, and she’s still holding out hope that we’re about to win the grand prize.
 
There were a few years when we entered the sweepstakes twice a day on two different HGTV-affiliated websites, imagining winning a home much larger than the one we lived in year-round and making that our vacation spot every year, even if we weren't wild about the home's location or design.
 
We have yet to win the dream home. All we've won so far is a lot of emails from paint, furniture, plumbing and deck companies.

This year, though, we actually did take a vacation. Before that, it was sometime before COVID that we actually had a real vacation, not long weekends or half days, but a week or more.
 
So it’s been long enough that we’ve been looking back on that trip, how we took our dog with us and spent most days writing, with breaks for coffee, sweets, ice cream, fixing the car’s dead battery, visiting a health food store to look at vitamins, going to a farmer’s market and discovering a privately run bookstore that was half used, half new, with a little of everything in it. Oh, and that Mexican restaurant that seemed like it was only for Mexicans, but yes, they would take our money if we wanted to eat there.
 
Mostly, though, in the mornings, we played with words on paper and laptops for longer than we normally allow ourselves. In the afternoon, we traded papers and read what the other had been writing. We’d talk, edit, debate, suggest and then break for dinner.
 
This might not sound like an ideal vacation to very many of you. For us, it was pretty great.
 
Being in the middle of a good time made us think about all the other good times we’d had. With the exception of our honeymoon and pre-9/11 trips to England and missions trips, our other top places to stay have been gifts of one kind or another from friends or family.
 
We have had the privilege of staying in other peoples’ homes, cabins, cottages, whatever you want to call them--friends or family who want to share life with others or bless us with a week of retreat we wouldn’t otherwise have. That probably sounds kind of terrible to those who have vacation memories on cruise ships or the top floor of luxury resorts or excursions.
 
The element of a home as a gift is something we have become familiar with, always on the receiving end of this sweet kind of sharing. Remembering these places has a beautiful sort of nostalgia because those cabins and homes and lodges come with people attached. They aren't dream homes; they're places of reality. They represent places of hope and rest and work in the best possible context—in the context of people who love us and email “The key is under the mat.” Or give us our very own key to their very own place or entrust us with their lone set of keys for a week.
 
Along with that beautiful nostalgia and reality comes a deeper longing for a lasting home, no HGTV designed home, but a reality home “whose designer and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10). It's not a grand prize, but a great and eternal gift. A home where God himself will be with us as our God, and he “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

A Doxology Psalm

Today's Musing comes out of this week's ArtSpace workshop. Participants included teenagers to those in their seventies. Thanks to each of them for their worshipful contributions to this psalm in three parts. We asked everyone to consider the Trinity through metaphor and simile. Consider these, a sampling from the evening, first draft thoughts and images of the God who loves us. 

God the Father
The beginning, always, infinity, reality, light, present.
God is like a firm rock foundation, a perfect just judge, the best friend.
God forgives our sins like a person who is in debt to the master and the master forgives him.
God the Father is like a skyscraper, shining in the sun.
Love, our Creator, Protector, Potter, the strong yet gentle One.
A house that gives us refuge and shelters us from storms.
God the Father is like a fresh-flowing stream.
The Commander, sends forth his word, hosts of heaven,
The Father is like the sun covering his children with warm light that makes the flowers burst from the earth even through snow.
He sees like an eagle and a mouse inside our hearts.
True North,
The master gardener.
Weaver of a stunning tapestry, the universal manager,
The Artist, the Playwright, the Sculptor,
Vast pillar of stone, Canopy of the sky.
 
God the Son
The calm after the storm
Like a David Austin rose, splendor in its beauty
Friend, Life Preserver, Lifeline, Mirror,
Jewel, Strength, Advocate, Defender
The storied warrior, slain in battle, comes home victorious.
A fruitful vine, like a brother
Teacher, firm yet encouraging, showing his love.
Truth, our rescuer.
Jesus is a whirlpool, pulling everything into his dominion.
The hero who rescued me, the glue that holds all things together, the road and the destination.
A desert oasis, a mighty oak, beloved one.
Jesus is like a dog; He walks with us and is always there for us. Faithful.
A protecting brother, our defense attorney, our umbrella from God’s wrath,
The bridge across the bottomless pit of sin to God the Father,
The perfect sacrifice, the creator of earth come to the ruined world; the never-sinner.
The One who hears all who call.
 
God the Holy Spirit
Healer,
Consuming fire, voice of God, like a wind, like a dove.
A whirlwind all around us.
The Holy Spirit is like the snow that blows from the church steeple, softening the deepness of night in his blanket of white.
My helper. A constant companion showing me the way.
An eternal flame, like a piercing beam of light.
Water, breath and wonder.
A rainstorm that refreshes and gives us new energy to persevere.
All-directions wind,
Uplifting breath,
Cleansing, rushing waterfall,
The wind, the white noise to which I fall asleep.
Our stronghold in seemingly empty and void places.
The Holy Spirit whispers in our heart and tells us what we need to do.
The Holy Spirit helps us to overcome the temptations of Satan, sin and this world.
Full of surprises. Intense joyl
He listens to everything we say and turns it into a song that he sings to the Father.
 
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The Theology of Grammar by Lorraine Triggs

As a child, I had a concrete grasp of a story’s viewpoint. First person – that’s me, second person is you, and third person are those other people over there. Obviously, a first-person story was more entertaining and superior to a second- or third-person story, because of its subject matter.

Fortunately, my understanding of viewpoint matured as I gained experience in writing and editing and in reading my trusty bibles—The Chicago Manual of Style and The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style. I highlight sections in the style and usage section. I memorize rules about time constructions and capitalization and hyphenation. (Including this capitalization rule from The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style: “Capitalize the word Bible except for those instances when it is used metaphorically, as in The Audubon guide is the bird lover’s bible.")

At least I think I’ve matured in my child's understanding of viewpoint, and then I open the Bible, which is no metaphorical bible, but God-breathed words that reveal the Word made flesh, not a metaphor but very God of very God.

The fourth stanza of American writer John Updike’s poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” reads:
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

Gospel writer John defines the door in John 10:9, where Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” The resurrection is not a metaphor; it really happened. Jesus is the real door; I get that.

What trips me up is the word anyone. Those third person others standing over there may enter the same door that you and I do, be saved, and go in and out and find pasture. And through my myopic first-person lens, I already have the pasture picked out for them, the grass might not be as verdant as mine, but no bother, it's still a pasture.

But I have walked through the door, and that egocentric first-person viewpoint should bother me. A lot. Jesus’ invitations to come, to go in and out and find pasture, to rise up and walk are for me, you, and the others over there. Jesus preached peace to the far off and to those who were near, and reconciled both to God, eliminating the distinctions between our human viewpoints.

After all, there is only one first-person viewpoint.

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14)

What Happens to Nate Saint? By Wil Triggs

“Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” (Matthew 13:51)
 
In Kindergarten Bible school this weekend, the kids will find out what happened to Nate Saint. I’m doing a two-week missionary story on him. Last Sunday they heard about his life growing up, his love for planes, his invention to drop cargo from large canisters on the wings of the small planes he flew. And then the tentative and cautious contacts with the Auca people. Last week’s story ends in joy, as some of the Aucas receive gifts that kids could relate to—yo-yos, balloons and other toys. Relations between the small band of missionaries and the native tribe seem to be moving forward toward friendship.
 
The children wanted to know what happened next. I think some of them think they know—the Aucas will one by one trust Jesus and the missionaries and the Aucas will live together happily ever after.
 
I know what happens next and they’re about to find out. The end of the story isn’t just that Nate Saint dies, but that afterwards people come to faith. Many others, inspired by the sacrifice of these missionaries, enter missionary service themselves. What happens next is that Nate Saint is killed.
 
I am hesitant, though, and don’t want to tell the kids about the dying part. They seemed content with the story going well. They seemed happy to hear the good stuff. What happens next is sad and scary and wrong. I want to shield them, somehow, from the hard section of the story that seems not right.
 
This is not unlike Jesus dying on the cross. It’s terrible. The disciples go into hiding. Imagine all that was going on in Peter’s mind with his betrayal and Jesus’ arrest and death, and Jesus’ words about resurrection and life running through his mind along with images of Lazarus walking out of a tomb. Peter and the other disciples didn’t reassure each other with “Sunday’s coming,” I don’t think. They had to be besides themselves in grief and shock and wondering what to do next. Death and atonement had to come before resurrection and the Spirit to overcome sin.
 
I have been a Bible school teacher for most of my adult life. I’ve seen that shielding impulse repeated in a lot of curricula through the years. We easily skip over the hard parts. Most of the time it’s not the end of the story, but somewhere in the middle where things move into the shadows.
 
Joseph sold into slavery. The famines that drove his brothers to Egypt to ask for help. Elijah running for his life after he defeated the prophets of Baal. The prophets spoke to people who wouldn’t listen. Four hundred years of silence. Simeon waiting almost his whole life for that one day. The slaughter of the innocents. The martyrdom of Stephen, which is the end of him but the beginning of the church. The apostles sharing the good news and Christ using them in amazing ways before most faced deaths like what Jesus faced.
 
Being a Christian isn’t for wimps, but oftentimes, I feel like a wimp. I am not always ready to face that hard stuff or to tell little ones about it. And there’s something there, too, about perseverance—staying true to him on Wednesday, the traditional hump day of the week, or the errands of Saturday, Sunday after church and before the real first day of the week. Our small group is reading a book where the author says his family has “Tongue-Torched Thursdays,” when their not-so-tamed tongues lash out at one another. Our lives are filled with ordinary days where not much happens. Those are the days where the rubber meets the road. Probably for most of us, today is one of those days. This is the middle of the story, too. Not much is happening and yet everything is happening.
 
The story needs to get hard to be a good story, and we are in the midst of the best story ever. We are part of it. No, we don’t hide the hard stuff. It’s difficult for us to do it justice for our kids or for ourselves. We were wandering around the wilderness with our Kindergarteners for what seems like an eternity, it was really just a few weeks—not even a year, let alone forty, with an entire generation of people dying off before they could cross the Jordan River.
 
God is more patient and long-suffering than we are in the middle our own series of stories. He’s always faithful—with us in the middle days of ordinary life and ever-present with us in the hardest days ever.
 
We look back, but we also look ahead. As we celebrate the Lord’s Table this Sunday, let’s examine ourselves and consider the cup that Jesus drank for us. Let us also look ahead to the day when we are all together celebrating at the marriage table, the end of the story as the beginning of something altogether new.

Death to Clichés by Lorraine Triggs

“What do you mean Paul Bunyan didn’t carve out the Great Lakes?” I shouted at a science show on the Smithsonian Channel we were watching the other day. “I can’t believe it. Everyone knows he did.” The show asserted some other method that had to do with time and ice. Just like everyone knows that Johnny Appleseed planted all the apple trees in America, and George Washington never told a lie.

My thoughtful husband replied, “Calm down. We all know it’s true, but the Smithsonian has its reputation to think about.”

As a child who believed in Santa long past the acceptable age, I still have that tendency to hang on to stories and myths—now morphed into clichés and truisms—as a way of explaining the unexplainable, that Paul Bunyan thing notwithstanding. Folklore can be a beautiful thing.

Christianity has its own folklore in the form of heroic truths of the past repeated so many times that we begin to think these little proverbs (not from Proverbs) are actually Christian truths. Matt Smethurst (guest speaker at the Community Sunday of the Fall Missions Festival) posted an article on The Gospel Coalition site back in 2017 titled, “5 Christian Clichés that Need to Die.” Here are Matt's top five:

• When God closes a door, he opens a window.

• You’re never more safe than when you’re in God’s will.

• Let go and let God.

• God will not give you more than you can handle.

• God helps those who help themselves.

Apparently, these clichés are experiencing a slow death. But not slow enough for Matt or for me.

Take the first cliché. I don't think God is running around closing doors and opening windows when we pray. I’d rather share “open window” answers to prayer than, sigh, no, God hasn't answered that prayer. But God hears the sighs of how long, Lord, how long, and he answers, don't be anxious. Look out that open window to the birds of the air. Seek me.

The third cliché on Matt's list is the opposite of what God wants us to do. Instead of letting go, we are to hold fast and cling to him. Run to him for refuge and hide under his wings. Trust him and do good no matter what. Perseverance is not letting go.

The second and fourth clichés go together for me. Never more safe than when you’re in God’s will? That one would be a hard sell for believers in Nigeria, North Korea, Indonesia, Somalia or Myanmar. And, sorry to disappoint, but God will give you more than you can handle. “Dear friends,” wrote The Apostle Peter, “don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you.” (1 Peter 4:12, NLT)

That last cliché? Help comes from Jesus for the utterly helpless and hopeless. Consider one Scripture passage: Romans 5:6-8. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Like legends, these Christian clichés try to explain the unexplainable whether it’s unanswered prayer or suffering or God himself. We want to be in the know, the ones in charge, but we're not. Once we stop trying to explain how we think God should work, we will be awestruck that the Lord, seated on high, looks far down on earth, and “raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” (Psalm 113:6-7) 

I once researched Johnny Appleseed for an article I wrote for a children’s magazine. The real Johnny Appleseed was a man named John Chapman, who planted apple orchards as he traveled from Pennsylvania to Indiana. He was also a businessman and missionary who helped make peace between native Americans and white settlers.

Sometimes the real person is better than the legend. And the one true God is better than all we can think or imagine or squeeze into a cliché.

From A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Almighty and everlasting God,
Who numbers the stars in order and turns darkness into light,
you have set eternity within the heart of man.
We think about eternity and trust you.
Your promises are written in our hearts . . . we believe them.
What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
And what has not entered into the heart of man . . . 
You have prepared for those who love you.
The credo of others may be,
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!
But for us of the transformed heart,
We seek a city whose builder and maker is God.

Thanks be to God . . . 
You are light to the wanderer,
joy of the pilgrim,
refuge of the brokenhearted,
deliverer of the oppressed,
strength of the perishing,
hope of the dying,
Savior of sinners.
We long to hear that voice from heaven saying,
"The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever."
Praise be unto God.

Father God, the world presses in upon us every waking hour.
We are squeezed and pulled and rudely affected by a system contrary to the way of the Cross.
Consequently, we are shocked to realize how subtly the world's approval,
language,
conduct,
attitude
seeps into our life.
Help us remember that Vanity Fair is not our home; we are just passing through.
We are soujourners. . . just a breath away from our eternal home.

Keep us unencumbered lest our goods become our gods, and our cares, cankers.

And now, Father God, give ear to each penitential prayer as we ask for forgiveness and grace.

Thank you for clean hearts and revived spirits.

This Guy by Wil Triggs

We were on a charter boat traveling all night to get to the place where we could all catch a mess load of fish. Problem was, the swells got so bad, we were going up and down, over and over, and we all started to feel really small, like this boat we were on was nothing compared with the big ocean we were in. The ocean was rolling, and it seemed that surely our boat would roll right over. The rain got really bad. You could see the sheets of it falling through the moonlight. People started to get sick, throwing up off the side of the boat, all of us. Some of us headed below deck to get out of the rain and there was this guy sleeping through the whole thing.
 
He woke up. He looked kind of annoyed (not sure with us or the weather) as he went up on deck. He looked away from the boat up at the storm and said, “Knock it off.”
 
Somehow, the water went all still and calm.
 
What? I mean, was that some kind of freak coincidence?
 
Imagine hearing about a group of people stuck in the middle of nowhere with no food. No phone service for UberEats or GrubHub. This guy with them says to sit down, so they do. After they sit, he says a prayer and opens one kid's lunchbox and starts passing food around like he has a truckload of catered sandwiches from Jason’s Deli. Everyone eats. Those sandwiches tasted like some incredible artisanal delight, more than good, the best deli ever.
 
OK, so, that’s just weird. Made up, right? Some kind of magic trick. The Amazing Kreskin or David Copperfield or David Blaine, just not on stage.
 
Did you hear the news about your neighbor or your co-worker and what happened? Her brother died. He was sick for just a few days. Or maybe it just hit him all at once. Maybe it was COVID. Maybe it was cancer. Maybe it was getting hit one too many times at a sports event. Or a heart attack just out of nowhere. Like the worst kind of defensive tackle. There was nothing the ambulance could do. He was gone. Off to the morgue they take him. People are just in shock.
 
Then this guy comes in from out of town. He looks at the corpse, the dead man, and this guy just says, “Get up.”
 
Imagine the unimaginable. Your co-worker’s brother sits up. He comes back from the dead. He is alive.
 
People are starting to get excited about this guy who seems so different from the rest of us. What he’s doing, well, it can’t all be some sleight of hand magic. I mean, there has to be something special about him, something amazing.
 
Yet, when you do at last see him, he looks, well, just like any other person, any other guy. There’s no halo, no heavenly voices, nothing crazy like that. This guy is not part of the marvel universe. He’s not bigger than us or stronger, he’s just one of us.
 
Some people want to make him president. Or more, whatever more might be. I mean, they’ve never been energized like this. They really think he needs to fix government, because if he can bring someone back from the dead and feed all those people and take care of the cataclysmic weather, he can surely take care of the border crisis and the financial debacle and the unbridled reach for power to people from the left and the right and the up and down, not to mention taxes, tsunamis, melting glaciers, corruption in government, fires, economic downturns and earthquakes and 1984-style Big Government and Pharma and, oh yeah, my sin.
 
He's wanted in another way, too; wanted like a criminal. Afghanistan’s most wanted. Post-modern Marxist classrooms. LGBTQ+ whatever. Mainland China, North Korea’s most wanted, or maybe hated would be a better word. Weird thing is, this guy doesn’t move away from it all. He runs toward the disaster, not away - he goes where he’s not wanted. He cannot leave the world and its people untouched.
 
He’s got a photographic memory. There are things and people he cannot forget. Those people, “remember me,” that’s where he is, right next to the man in jail, hanging there next to the thief, the woman beaten, the man who beat her, the shooting victim, the shooter, the homeless mental patient, the child orphaned. The wife cast out of her home, the broken mother, the desperate father, the pastor imprisoned, the prison warden, the blind man, the old man with no hope, the student denied entrance to university, the prosecutor and the defense, the crippled man on the stretcher who can’t fit through the door of the church, the lady who can’t remember her own name, the family swept away by a mudslide, the cancer patient, the hemophiliac reaching to touch his jacket or even just his shadow cast on the ground by the Mediterranean sun, a student swept out to sea in a riptide she can’t swim out of and all she can say is one word, one name, his. . .
 
We all long for a new heaven and a new earth. In the meantime, we get to make do with this guy.