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Chapter-a-Day

Some Things Take Time

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Some Things Take Time (CaD 2 Sam 5) – Wayfarer

David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years.
2 Samuel 5:4 (NIV)

When I was a boy I spent entire class periods in elementary school learning how to use the library. If I was interested in a subject or had a question that needed answering I would have to wait until the day of the week our class would visit the school library. I would look up the subject in a large set of drawers that housed small index cards arranged by the Dewey Decimal System. It gave me a number that corresponded to the numbers on the spines of books arranged on the shelf and from there I could find all the books on the subject that interested me. Then, all I had to do was scour the books on the shelf to find what I was looking for.

By the time I was a teenager, there was a set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias on the bookshelf in our home. My mom acquired the entire set of encyclopedias, volume by volume, over a period of time using S&H “Green Stamps” she got at the Hy-Vee grocery store. What a time saver. Now, if I wanted the answer to a question I could go to our basement family room and look it up in the encyclopedia.

When I was in my twenties I purchased my first computer. It was an IBM PS1 with a 3.5-inch “floppy” disc drive and no internal hard drive. I eventually purchased a 300-megabyte hard drive for just over $300 and installed it myself. With that computer, I got on the internet for the first time through a phone line that dialed up the connection, but anyone trying to call me at home would get an intermittent tone called a “busy signal” telling them that I was using the phone line at the moment.

By the time I was thirty, I was able to access almost any information I wanted on the internet from home. No going to the library. No looking it up in a book. Simply dial into the internet (which by then I could do AND still use the home phone line AT THE SAME TIME! Genius!) and type in what I’m looking for.

On the way to the lake, this past Wednesday night Wendy and I saw a gorgeous rainbow. “Why are rainbows arched?” we mused. Wendy simply picked up her phone, which is connected to the internet at all times, and asked the question. Everything you could possibly want to know about the subject was available to us instantly on our cell phones as we sat in our car speeding down Highway 63 in rural Missouri.

Along this life journey, I’ve observed that we are becoming increasingly impatient people. I have enjoyed the blessings of rapidly advancing and evolving technology that delivers results and instant gratification, but scarcely have I slowed down long enough to consider the impact that it’s having on me. According to Samuel Merrit University, at the very least, technology is having these five impacts on humanity:

  • We have decreased attention spans.
  • We are more easily distracted.
  • We can more easily multitask.
  • We have grown addicted to digital technology.
  • Our in-person social interactions have been impaired.

David was anointed king as a boy. Chapter-by-chapter we’ve followed his journey across some twenty years from being a young hero over Goliath to developing into a warrior to spending years as an outlaw on the run, to becoming a mercenary for hire against his own people, to becoming the leader of his tribe. He didn’t realize the fruition of his anointing until he was 30.

Some things take time, and I am increasingly conditioned to believe that everything should happen for me immediately and upon demand. I know I’m at risk of sounding like I’m having a Grumpy Old Man moment, but I’m really not. I enjoy the blessings of technology as much as everyone else. At the same time, I wonder what it is doing to me, how it is changing me, and when I should be concerned. One of the fruits of God’s Spirit is patience. David had to learn it in his long trek to the throne. I have had to learn it (often the hard way) in relationships and life and art and business.

Today, I’m reminding myself to embrace patience. Some things take time in order to work out for the best, and I want God’s best for me, no matter how long it takes.

A Note to Readers
I’m taking a blogging sabbatical and will be re-publishing my chapter-a-day thoughts on David’s continued story in 2 Samuel while I’m take a little time off in order to focus on a few other priorities. Thanks for reading.
Today’s post was originally published in May 2014.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Good for the Soul

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Good for the Soul (CaD 1 Sam 16) – Wayfarer

“Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.”
1 Samuel 16:16 (NIV)

I have mentioned before the three questions that I regularly ask myself when I’m trying to gain my bearings on this life journey:

  • Where have I been?
  • Where am I at?
  • Where am I going?

The question “Where have I been?” tends to take me down two trails of thought. One is to think about how life itself has changed from an external perspective. Daily life, work, politics, culture, technology, and the like. The other is to think about how I have personally and internally changed over time.

Today’s chapter is pivotal in the larger story that the author of 1 Samuel is telling. It’s like that episode in a good drama series when you realize all the characters and circumstances are lining up for a major conflict, and you can’t wait to get to the next episode to see how it all plays out.

Having rejected Saul as King, God sends Samuel to the “little town of Bethlehem” (Yep, the same town where Jesus was born), to the home of a man named Jesse. Samuel has Jesse bring out all of his sons, one by one, to determine which of them God has chosen to be anointed as King. Jesse parades all seven of his older sons, but not one of them is the right one. Seven is a fascinating number because it’s the number of completion. It’s almost like saying that Jesse showed Samuel the complete package of sons he considered worthy or capable of being chosen by God, completely dismissing his youngest son, David. God, however, chooses what the world dismisses. David is called for and anointed King.

Now we have the rejected King Saul, still on the throne and slowly descending into madness. We also have God’s anointed King: David, a shepherd boy from a podunk town in the region of Judah. Saul’s attendants suggest to him that music would be soothing for his tortured soul when he descends into one of his fits. One attendant remembers this kid, David, who was a pretty good musician. So Saul calls for David, enjoys his playing, and brings David into his service as minstrel and armor-bearer.

The plot thickens. This is a set-up for a major conflict. Shakespeare himself could not have framed this storyline any better.

What struck me as I read this chapter was the fact that music was recommended as a remedy for Saul’s mental, emotional, and spiritual funk. This got me thinking about how music has increasingly become a constant in Wendy’s and my daily lives. Looking back at my earlier years, the television was always on. I was a news radio and sports radio junkie. I put the morning news on first thing in the morning. I had it playing in the background all day, and I went to bed watching the 10:00 news before falling asleep to whichever late-night talk show happened to be my favorite at the time.

Today, Wendy and I almost never watch the news, but music is almost always playing in the background. Gregorian chants and classical choral music accompany my quiet time each morning. Some of our favorite worship music accompanies our morning routine and often continues softly in the background of the kitchen through the rest of our day. I might have some oldies playing as I get shaved, showered, and dressed. Some of my favorite classic southern rock is the staple when I’m working in the garage or on house projects. When I’m working in my office during the day, it’s usually some kind of soothing spa playlist or some baroque classical. We have playlists to accompany drinks and/or dinner when we have friends or loved ones over. Music accompanies our daily life.

In the quiet this morning, I’ve come to the conclusion that my habits changed with the rise of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle. Headlines turning mole-hills of news into mountains of crisis, talking heads screaming at each other, news anchors waxing repetitiously saying the same things over and over again, it all added levels of stress, anxiety, and fear that drained Life out of me. Music, on the other hand, is medication for my soul. It soothes, inspires, brings joy, sparks memories, and prompts me to spontaneously hum and sing.

In a few minutes, I’ll head downstairs for my blueberry-spinach smoothie and a fresh cup o’ joe. Wendy and I will peruse the news online to stay abreast of what’s going on in the world, and we’ll share our thoughts and opinions with one another. We will then choose to shut our tablets, put the news away, and enter the tasks of our day, accompanied by music.

Even the ancients knew that music was good for the soul.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Mob Justice

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Mob Justice (CaD Matt 27) – Wayfarer

But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.
Matthew 27:20 (NIV)

Wendy and I are creatures of habit. We typically begin each day perusing the news on our iPads as we drink our blueberry spinach smoothies (mine sweet, hers sour) and drink coffee. Quite often we remind one another of a truth that one of her favorite professors at Central College branded into her brain: “You only see what the camera wants you to see.”

News media loves to cover crowds of protestors and mobs rioting, especially if there’s destruction or violence. “If it bleeds it leads” as they say. However, even mobs and protestors can be created for visual, social, and political effects.

Most of us never think about it, but it is no secret that mobs can be bought. The BBC did a story about man in Pakistan who does it for a living. “Gathering a mob – what’s so difficult about that?” he says. “One phone call and a hundred people will come, they can throw stones till nothing is left and if that doesn’t work, it costs very little to buy 10 litres of petrol and set things on fire.” And according to the L.A. Times there’s even a firm in Beverly Hills which will organize a protest for you, though I’m guessing it might cost you a little more than in Pakistan. We’re talking Beverly Hills, after all. There’s also an interesting article in Cracked providing a first-person account of a professional protestor.

For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of the final week of Jesus’ life is the contrast of the crowd shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” on Sunday, and the crowd shouting “Crucify him!” on Friday morning. The longer I’ve studied the text, the more convinced I am that the mob shouting for Jesus’ execution was no accident.

The chief priests and elders had already broken a number of their own laws by the early morning hours that they brought Jesus to the Roman Governor, Pilate. Hebrew jurisprudence held that you couldn’t arrest anyone in the dark of night, nor could you have a trial at night. The verdict was already decided by the time they held the third session of their kangaroo court as dawn was breaking because it was required that you could only sentence someone to death in the light of day.

The religious power brokers were in a hurry to get the deed done. Friday at dusk was not only the beginning of their precious weekly Sabbath, but it was also Passover week. The rushed, clandestine mockery of justice was necessary to have Jesus hanging on a cross as quickly as possible and to ensure it was a done deal before the Passover crowds who’d been singing Jesus’ praises had finished their breakfast and made their way to the Temple. These were powerful, wealthy, and politically connected men who were running the Temple racket. They would have left nothing to chance. They’d already drummed up false witnesses in the middle of the night to testify against. Jesus. It’s likely they knew how to make a small investment of shekels to hire a mob to ensure Pilate perceived that executing Jesus was the politically shrewd call.

In the quiet this morning, I think about our daily breakfast conversations and perusal of the news. One of the things I’ve observed since the dawn of the internet is how quickly things can trend before any facts are known. Not only do we “see only what the camera wants us to see” but increasingly I realize that algorithms ensure “I only see what I want to see.” People are accused, tried, convicted, and executed in the internet court of public opinion in no time at all. Never have I found Jesus’ instruction to His disciples so apt when He sent them out into the world by themselves: “Be shrewd as a serpent, gentle as a dove.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Words of Life or Death

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The tongue has the power of life and death…
Proverbs 18:21 (NIV)

I once knew a person who was educated, bright, and quite capable. For a short period of time, we were companions on a stretch of the journey. On occasion, we experienced the normal stresses of life, and I observed that this person could get inordinately out-of-sorts. I could watch anxiety and insecurity take over their entire person. In acute moments, they would blurt: “I’M NOT STUPID!”

The thing was, not once when this blurt made its exclamatory appearance did anyone ever hint that our friend was stupid. In fact, no one I knew in our circle would have even thought such a thing. Whenever it happened it was an awkward, inappropriate moment.

I quickly suspected that somewhere in this person’s impressionable childhood years there was a parent, and older sibling, or an adult of significant influence who had repeatedly, in a derogatory fashion, told them they were stupid. Now, the words played in their head like a tape recording on a ceaseless loop.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of leading various groups of people through creativity workshops and classes. One of the key parts of the class is to identify the negative messages in our heads that create resistance to our creative urges. Almost always, these “blurts” are messages planted in our brains when we were young.

  • “You’re stupid.”
  • “You’ll never amount to anything.”
  • “You’re ugly.”
  • “Why do you waste your time with that shit?”
  • “I wish you were dead.”

I’ve heard so many stories along the way. In some cases, the words were truly evil, and were said with evil intent from a twisted soul. More often, I believe the harmful words were uttered in a moment of parental stress and the adult had no earthly idea that their momentary anger just planted a seed in the soul of a child that would bear rotten fruit in years of self-deprecation and insecurity.

“The tongue has the power of life and death,” says the Sage in today’s chapter.

Never in the history of the world have we, as human beings, had instant access to so many words and voices. Never in the history of the world have we, as human beings, had the ability to broadcast our words from the palm of our hand to the entire world. Never in the history of the world have we, as human beings, had such power, with our words, to be an agent of life or death.

In the quiet this morning I find myself thinking about my words. I’m thinking about the words I speak to others. I’m thinking about the words I write and broadcast. I’m thinking about the words and voices I allow, by choice or apathy, to enter my head and heart.

Immediately, God’s ancient words come to mind:

“This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life…”

(By the way, you’re not stupid.)

Featured photo by Larah McElroy via Flickr

Chapter-a-Day

The Prophet and the Sower

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the sower full

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord!'”
Ezekiel 13:1-2 (NIV)

I do not believe that we who live in a post-enlightenment age can possibly fathom the religious climate of Ezekiel’s day. A person living in Jerusalem in that day would be familiar with various temples and religious centers catering to a giant web of Canaanite deities. A person living in the time of Ezekiel would be very familiar with mediums, prophets, fortune tellers, and soothsayers. It was a central part of daily life and the economy in the ancient world.

As I read of the prophetic performances God asked Ezekiel and his contemporaries to produce, it is easy to think that they stood out like sore thumbs. However, when I stop to consider the loud cacophony of prophets who catered to popular gods like Baal, Asherah, Dagon, Molech, Lotan, and Chemosh on the streets of Jerusalem, I wonder if Ezekiel’s prophetic performance art caused any more of a stir than a man dressed like Barney the dinosaur would cause in Times Square today.

In today’s chapter God tells Ezekiel to prophesy against false prophets and those sons and daughters of Israel who were profiting from telling people what they wanted to hear and who appear to have mixed themselves and their faith with the practice of other religions. The question I ask myself is whether Ezekiel’s voice could even be heard above the din of the idolatrous crowd.

Today, I find myself mulling over how our culture (even in out post-enlightenment age) both parallels and contrasts the religious atmosphere of Ezekiel’s day. The internet has raised, to unprecedented levels, the cacophony of voices saying anything and everything to anyone and everyone. I am very aware that the voice of my squeaky little posts are lost in the din of information, advertisement, entertainment, opinion, and conjecture. Did Ezekiel feel the same way?

This morning I’m reminded of Van Gogh’s many drawings and paintings of the sower. The sower does not always know where his seed may fall, nor how they might take root, grow, or bear fruit. The sowers job is to cast his seed into the field. The prophets job is to sow his message into the din of contemporary voices.

Chapter-a-Day

Some Things Take Time

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English: Sample catalog card in the card catal...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years.
2 Samuel 5:4 (NIV)

When I was a boy I spent entire class periods of elementary school learning how to use the library. If I was interested in a subject or had a question that needed answering I would have to wait until the day of the week our class would visit the school library. I would look up the subject in a large set of drawers that housed small index cards arranged by the Dewey Decimal System. It gave me a number that corresponded to the numbers on the spines of books arranged on the shelf and from there I could find all the books on the subject that interested me. Then, all I had to do was scour the books on the shelf to find what I was looking for.

By the time I was a teenager there was a set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias on the book shelf in our home. My mom acquired the entire set of encyclopedias, volume by volume, over a period of time using S&H “Green Stamps” she got at the Hy-Vee grocery store. What a time saver. Now, if I wanted the answer to a question I could go to our basement family room and look it up in the encyclopedia.

When I was in my twenties I purchased my first computer. It was an IBM PS1 with a 3.5 inch “floppy” disc drive and no internal hard drive. I eventually purchased a 300 megabyte hard drive for just over $300 and installed it myself. With that computer I got on the internet for the first time through a phone line that dialed-up the connection, but anyone trying to call me at home would get an intermittent tone called a “busy signal” telling them that I was using the phone line at the moment.

By the time I was thirty, I was able to access almost any information I wanted on the internet from home. No going to the library. No looking it up in a book. Simply dial-in to the internet (which by then I could do AND still use the home phone line AT THE SAME TIME! Genius!) and type in what you’re looking for.

On the way to the lake this past Wednesday night Wendy and I saw a gorgeous rainbow. “Why are rainbows arched?” we mused. Wendy simply picked up her phone, which is connected to the internet at all times, and asked the question. Everything you could possibly want to know about the subject was available to us instantly on our cell phone as we sat in our car speeding down Highway 63 in rural Missouri.

Face it. We are becoming an increasingly impatient people. I think we have enjoyed the blessings of rapidly advancing and evolving technology which deliver results and instant gratification, but scarcely have we realized the impact that it’s having on us.

David was anointed king as a boy. Chapter-by-chapter we’ve followed his journey across some twenty years from being a young hero over Goliath, to developing into a warrior, to spending years as an outlaw on the run, to becoming a mercenary for hire against his own people, to becoming the leader of his tribe. He didn’t realize the fruition of his anointing until he was 30.

Some things take time, and we are being increasingly conditioned to believe that everything should happen for us immediately and upon demand. I know I’m at risk for sounding like a stodgy old man grieving the good old days, but I’m really not. I enjoy the blessings of technology as much as everyone else. At the same time, I wonder what it is doing to me, how it is changing me, and when I should be concerned. One of the fruits of God’s Spirit is patience. David had to learn it in his long trek to the throne. I have had to learn it (often the hard way) in relationships and life and art and business.

Today, I’m reminding myself to be patient. Some things take time in order to work out for the best, and I want God’s best for me, no matter how long it takes.

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Chapter-a-Day

Rebuilding Babel

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The Netherlands (Flanders)
The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chapter-a-Day Genesis 11

“Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! Genesis 11:6 (NLT)

Over the past ten years I have come to be more and more intrigued by the story of the Tower of Babel presented in today’s chapter. I believe that the story is more relevant today than ever and I believe it’s important for us to connect the dots. For those who’ve never read the story (and haven’t read all of today’s chapter), the Cliff Notes version goes like this: All of the people spoke one language. They began to advance quickly as they learned how to make bricks and construct cities. Using their advancing technology they made a tower which would “reach to the sky” and “make them famous.” God, not happy with how quickly human kind was advancing and concerned about human pride, responded with the verse I’ve quoted above. God scattered the people across the globe and confused their languages.

I believe the story of human history is the story of our slow return to Babel. From being scattered and our languages confused, we have slowly reached out, explored, conquered, mapped, and increased our knowledge, technology and communication. In the past few decades we have once again become people of one language: the language of the internet. As we become one people and one language technology is advancing at unheard of levels. How ironic that last week I attended a professional conference last week in which the technology of Speech Analytics (e.g. computers translate and analyze mass quantities of recorded customer interactions and place a dizzying amount of information at your fingertips) was presented to those in attendance as the emerging solution that will revolutionize the way we all do business. The name of the particular product that was presented: Contact Babel complete with a logo of a little stair-step tower

I submit that our generation has begun to rebuild the Tower of Babel using Cat-5 cable, fiber optics, micro processors, satellite streams and DNA strands. We hear whispers in the press and on the web of doing what previously would be thought impossible. Not only can we cure disease with genetics but we can also order genetically designed children ala carte. The internet is tearing down international boundaries and making it impossible for governments to control information (it’s no wonder the U.N. wants to bring the internet under its control). We are hearing more and more about becoming a one world economy without a physical currency. And, all along the way I watch and listen as God becomes more and more irrelevant, passé, and obsolete to a popular culture hell-bent to embrace its own self-deification.

Then I sit at my desk in the wee hours of the morning and ask myself where this is all leading. Don’t worry, we’ll get back to the book of Revelation at some point. In the meantime, hold on tight. I think we’re in for a bumpy ride.

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Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Acts 1

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source: Michael M Kenny via Flickr

Jesus replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know.” Acts 1:7 (NLT)

One of the more difficult aspects of going through a divorce is the struggle to know when to speak, and when to be silent, with your children. This is especially true when they are teenagers. Seven years ago, as I walked that painful stretch of my own journey, I found two easy temptations with regard to talking to my girls.

First, I discovered the temptation to say too much because the breakdown of the marriage is affecting them so acutely and I wanted desperately want to provide some reason, understanding, and context. Second, I recognized the subtle, self-centered temptation within myself to want the girls to take, or at least to understand, my side of the story. What teenagers, in their stalwart belief that they are both fully mature and completely omniscient, fail to understand is that information without context, knowledge, wisdom, and discernment can become both a burden and a curse. It is said that ignorance is bliss, and sometimes that is true. Sometimes it is the very least appropriate for the situation. 

As children, we often feel that we have a need to know things. We will even go so far as to think that we have a right to know certain things. We live in a culture steeped in First Amendment rights and the Freedom of Information Act coupled with an almost instantaneous access to any piece of arcane trivial information you could desire. People even publicly post the most mundane and salacious facts about themselves on Facebook and Twitter. Television programming projects an endless hunt for the most juicy, private personal gossip about celebrities 24/7/365. It is no wonder that we feel so entitled to know so much about so many.

I found it interesting in today’s chapter that Jesus deflected some of his followers’ questions. Father God knows things we don’t know. He holds certain things close to the vest, and as His children we are all on a need-to-know basis. For some children, this seems terribly unfair, unjust and spurs fits of childish rage and rebellion. Personally, I find comfort in the fact that He’s got it under control and I can trust Him with that. Someday, when I’m ready and it’s appropriate, He’ll perhaps share some things with me. Perhaps by that time it won’t really matter. Until then, I can let it go and experience the freedom that comes from not having to know certain things.