Tag Archives: Race

Chapter-a-Day

Run

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Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Hebrews 12:1 (NIV)

I was never much of a runner. I tried cross-country in high school but only made it half a season. Later, friends talked me into giving running another chance. I did… but the passion never ignited. I like variety when it comes to exercise—different movements, different forms of exertion that trip my trigger.

Still, those handful of forays into running, and the many friends who’ve kept at it with lifelong devotion, taught me a few things.

I was in high school when my hardcore cross-country friends trained for their first marathon. I don’t recall any of them making it to the finish line. What I do remember is how they compared notes afterward—each one describing the exact point on the course where they ‘hit the wall.’

It was the first time I’d heard the phrase. It’s that moment when physical exhaustion breaks the mind. The brain can’t will the body to push through the pain. The finish line—the very thing that motivated their months of training—suddenly seems meaningless. The wall isn’t only physical. It’s mental. Even spiritual.

The author of Hebrews is writing to an audience of believers in the middle of a grueling real-life marathon. Thus far they have been socially ostracized by friends, family, and community. They have been publicly insulted and persecuted. Their homes and possessions have been confiscated. They have watched fellow believers imprisoned, beaten, stoned, and executed. Then came exile. They fled everything familiar to find refuge.

They are at risk of hitting the wall. The author knows it. It is the primary purpose of his entire letter, and it crescendos in today’s chapter. As I meditated on the text in the quiet this morning, I found four key movements in this climactic passage.

Remember

Yesterday’s post/podcast was all about those individuals in the Great Story who already ran their earthly race—men and women who stumbled, suffered, persevered. Today the author tells us to remember them. To let their lives whisper courage into our weariness. They ran with faith and perseverance. Today’s chapter begins with the author telling us to remember this cloud of witnesses. The Greek word is martyrōn from which we get the word martyr.

They suffered as you are.
They kept the faith.
They finished their earthly race.
They are right here. Living examples. Cheering you on.

Race

The author then lays down the metaphor for this entire capstone chapter. The race set before us. This life is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, just like the ones our cloud of witnesses endured. They weren’t perfect—they were beautifully, stubbornly human. They had their weaknesses and flaws. What they did have, was faith.

Fix your eyes on Jesus. It isn’t merely gazing at Jesus—it’s deliberately refusing every distraction, like a transfixed lover choosing to gaze on one face in a crowded room.

Consider all Jesus endured for us. The garden, the sweating of blood, the tears, the trials, the scourging, the mocking, the crown of thorns, the bloodied walk to Calvary, the nails, the cross.

Don’t think for a second that you can’t do this.

Run.

Rigor

The author then moves into discussing the rigor required of anyone in this race. Suffering produced endurance and perseverance. There is progress in the pain. The discipline a parent instills in a child is not easy in the moment, but it’s good and necessary. In the same way, the discipline called upon to gut-it-out in life’s most difficult seasons is never easy. But it is also good and necessary.

It pushes me to shake off the weight of bitterness and hatred.
It forces me to dig deeper to tap into the spiritual resources I need.
It tests my faith and develops my endurance.
It develops levels of maturity within that I can’t get any other way.
It teaches me how to lean into hope.
It leads to depths of joy found only on the other side of suffering.

Reception

The author then describes the finish line with an interesting contrast. He begins by looking back at Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus when Moses climbed the mountain and God met him there to deliver the Law. Fire, thunder, smoke, fear, and trembling.

That was the beginning of the Law that the author has stated has been completed and is obsolete. Old things pass away. New things come.

He then points us to a new mountain. It’s an eternal and heavenly Mount Zion and the New Jerusalem John describes in Revelation 21. This mountain is an unimaginable finish-line reception. Angels and celebration—movement, music, and unspeakable joy.

There will be shaking and there will be fire, because “Our God is a consuming fire,” but it’s not like the former. Not a fire meant to burn me up, but to burn away everything that keeps me from being who I truly am.

Tom—pure gold, refined through the flame.
Tom—unshakable, when the shaking ends.
Tom—welcomed on Zion’s festival-drenched mountain.

And so, once again I set out into another day of the race. This race doesn’t belong to the swift, but to those who keep running.

Press on, my friend.
Press on.

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

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These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

My Desire

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“Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
Matthew 24:12-13 (NIV)

One of the spiritual lessons that I’ve learned along my earthly journey is to be aware of synergies between different things in my life and meditations. I begin each weekday reading a chapter and sharing my thoughts in this post/podcast, but my trek through the Great Story does not end here. I listen to and read other sources of study and meditation. I study as part of preparation for messages I’ve been tasked to give. Usually it’s like striking down a separate path of thought. Sometimes, those roads converge, and it’s then that I have learned to pay heed.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts/podcasts that I’ve been listening to a series of podcasts by the Bible Project on the metaphor of mountains throughout the Great Story. One of the most impactful for me was an episode about the prophet Elijah. Elijah had a great spiritual victory on Mount Carmel, but despite the miraculous and big-screen worthy triumph he inexplicably sank into suicidal depression. He flees to Mount Sinai where he gives up, hands in his resignation, and God accepts it.

Elijah did not finish well.

Nevertheless, the prophet Malachi prophesied that Elijah would return. Jesus stated clearly that John the Baptist was that Elijah. Just this past Sunday I gave a message in which John sends his disciples to Jesus to ask if He is really the Messiah or if he should expect someone else. John was languishing in Herod’s prison. It was not what he expected, and it prompted a crisis of faith. Jesus cryptically tells John to expect no such miraculous deliverance, then adds: “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

John did not finish well.

Just last week I celebrated my 59th birthday. That mean’s I’ve entered my 60th lap around the sun. And, that has me thinking about what’s out there on the horizon.

In today’s chapter, Jesus has left the Temple and His showdown with the power brokers of that earthly religious kingdom. He and His disciples camp out on the Mount of Olives just outside of Jerusalem (More synergy. There’s that theme of mountains cropping up!). Jesus is talking about the end times. As I read all the prophetic words that create so many questions, I decided to focus in on what can’t be questioned. I paid heed to the things Jesus demanded of His disciples in light of the events He prophesied. I found three (and there’s that number three again).

Don’t be alarmed. (vs. 6)
Don’t let your love grow cold; Stand firm to the end. (vss. 12-13)
Keep watch. Be ready. (vs. 42, 44)

In the quiet this morning, I find myself simply feeling the desire to spiritually end this earthly journey well and meditating on that desire. I don’t know the number of my days. I could have 31 years (or 14,976 days) left on this earthly journey and make it to 100. Nevertheless, there are certainly fewer days ahead than there are behind (today is day 21,558). The world I observe around me is not the same place I remember from my youth. I can already see how easy to fall into cynicism, criticism, negativity, and despair. I witness it in others. But, I have yet to see what Jesus described as “distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.” And, the fruit of the Spirit includes the attributes of joy, peace, patience, and faithfulness.

So I enter this another day of the journey determined to practicing the things I need to do to keep cultivating and bearing the fruit of God’s Spirit to the end. Not being alarmed, not letting my live grow cold, and being ready for the end. The end of my days, or the end of the age, whichever comes first.

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

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!

Chapter-a-Day

“All People”

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"All People" (CaD John 12) – Wayfarer

Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.”
John 12:20-21 (NIV)

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
John 12:35 (NIV)

I recently read an interview with a social scientist in the Wall Street Journal who has spent his academic career studying the blending of people groups within a culture. With the current cultural conversation around prejudice and racism, he raised some interesting facts that no one is talking about. Leading up-to World War two, ethnic groups in America kept to themselves. Italian, Irish, Dutch, German, and the like congregated together in neighborhoods and/or small towns. Prejudice and conflict between ethnicities was strong. Even in my small town of Pella, Iowa there once was a time when a neighborhood on the south side, known as “South Pella” was predominantly Irish amidst our town of Dutch immigrants.

Then after the war, in which different ethnicities fought together side-by-side and gained respect for one another, people began to intermarry. Ethnic prejudice is relatively non-existent today compared to what it was. The “melting pot” blended ethnicities. Now, the scholar says, the number of bi-racial couples has been rising steadily for decades. Some 20% of our population no longer fit into the categories of White, Black, Hispanic, or Native American because they are the offspring of bi-racial couples for which we have no applicable choices on the census form. With each subsequent generation the number of mixed race individuals will grow. Races, he believes, will melt together just as ethnicities have done. It’s already happening, though no one is talking about it.

A modern reader can scarcely understand how racial, gender, and religious prejudice were a way of life in Jesus day. One of the things that made Jesus a “radical” in the eyes of the religious leaders was His intentional crossing of every social boundary. Jesus crossed both ethnic and gender lines when he spoke to the Samaritan woman. He then taught and performed miracles in Samaria at a time when good Jews typically went out of their way to travel around Samaria because the hatred between Jews and Samaritans ran so deep. Jesus’ ministry among the Samaritans threatened the orthodox ethnic prejudice that was part of the culture of the day. Jesus healed a Roman Centurion’s son when Roman were the hated, occupying enemy. Jesus touched lepers. Jesus partied with tax collectors and unrighteous sinners that any good, religious Jew would self-righteously avoid.

In today’s chapter, John slips in an interesting fact. It’s the last week of Jesus’ earthly life, a group of Greeks ask Jesus for an audience. Greeks were another racial group that good Jews avoided since they regarded them as dirty and inferior. Jesus, however, welcomed them, though John does not share any of the conversation He had with them. The fact that Jesus welcomed them is important to John’s first century readers because the number one conflict in the early Jesus Movement was the long-standing prejudice between Jews and non-Jewish Greek “gentiles.” John was addressing those who might say, “Jesus never hung out with Greek gentiles, so why should we?”

John is also connecting the welcoming of the Greeks to something Jesus says later in the chapter: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” In drawing “all people,” Jesus boldly sets forth His mission to bring love, salvation, and redemption to anyone who believes regardless of DNA, gender, skin color, ethnicity, social status, economic status, family of origin, tragic mistakes or messed up life.

The Greek word that John uses for “lifted up” is hypsoō which has multiple definitions. It means literally “lifted up” (as on the cross) and also means “exalted” (as in resurrected and glorified). How fascinating that “exaltation” comes through suffering, just as Jesus said in today’s chapter: “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

In the quiet this morning, I’m feeling both inspired and challenged. I’m inspired by Jesus’ example, and His mission. John would also write the book of Revelation in which he is given a glimpse of eternity. He describes people “of every tribe and people and language and nation” gathered together to “exalt” the glorified Christ.

Or, as U2 describe it:

I believe in the Kingdom come,
when all the colors bleed into One.

At the same time, I am challenged to reclaim Jesus’ example of crossing any and every social boundary, excluding no one in channeling God’s love, and to exhort fellow believers in my circles of influence to do the same…until, together, all colors cross into a new reality and bleed into One.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Of Voices & Family

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Of Voices and Family (CaD Ps 117) – Wayfarer

Praise the Lord, all you nations;
    extol him, all you peoples.
Psalm 117:1 (NIV)

Wendy and I read a fascinating interview in the last week of an expert in race and culture. In the loud cacophony of voices lecturing about race and culture with stark in-group and out-group labels and distinctions, this academic stands as a proverbial “voice in the wilderness.” He has been studying trends for 50 years and pointed out facts that no one else is talking about or acknowledging.

The number of bi-racial and bi-cultural couples getting married and having children has increased significantly in the last 50 years and continues to rise. Both Wendy’s and my family are classic examples. Between our siblings, nieces, nephews, their spouses and children, we have the following races and cultures represented in just two generations: Dutch-American, Anglo-American, African-American, Korean-American, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Mexican.

In other words, the simple, binary labels on the census list are increasingly obsolete. For this, I am increasingly joyful.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 117, is most known for being the answer to trivial pursuit questions. As just two verses long, it is the shortest psalm and the shortest chapter in the Bible. (If anyone is starting this chapter-a-day journey with me today, you’re getting off to an easy start. Just a warning, the longest psalm is just two chapters away, so you might want to get a head-start! 🙂

In its brief content, however, this ancient Hebrew song of praise has a significant purpose in the Great Story. This short song, traditionally sung each year as part of the Hebrew Passover, calls all nations and all peoples to worship and praise. This fits in context with the calling of Abraham, father of the Hebrew people when God promises Abraham that through his descendants all nations and peoples will be blessed.

If we fast forward to the Jesus story, we find Jesus breaking down the racial and cultural walls that His tribe had erected to keep those they considered spiritual and racial riff-raff out. Jesus followers went even further to take the message of Jesus to the Greek, African, and Roman worlds and beyond. This created upheaval and conflict among Jesus followers of strictly Hebrew descent. It was Paul (who called himself “a Hebrew of Hebrews”) who used today’s “trivial” psalm when writing to the followers of Jesus in Rome to argue that from the very beginning the Great Story has been about all nations, all races, all cultures, and all peoples.

When John was given a glimpse of heaven’s throne room, this is what he saw and heard:

And when [the Lamb who had been slain] had taken [the scroll], the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
    and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
    and with your blood you purchased for God
    persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:8-10 (NIV) emphasis added

In the quiet this morning, I am reminded of texting our daughters of Suzanna’s engagement to Chino in Mexico a couple of years ago. The response to the news was, “Yay for more beautiful brown babies in the family!” (by the way, the first of those arrives this summer and we can’t wait to meet our newest nephew).

Along my life journey, I have observed that we humans like to reduce very complex questions into simple binary boxes and choices. As a follower of Jesus, I found that the journey seemingly began that way. I could choose to follow, or not (though my theologian friends will be happy to turn that into a very complex question for you). After that, things get exponentially personal and complex. Just yesterday, I gave a message among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers and I made the same argument about the season of Lent. Religious institutions want to make things top-down prescriptive when Jesus was always about things being intimately and spiritually bottom-up personal.

I find myself this morning meditating on the contrast between the voices of culture and the experiences of family. There are such complex questions we face today of race, gender, and culture. I don’t want to diminish or dismiss them. At the same time, I find myself encouraged by a profound truth simply stated in today’s chapter.

Praise the Lord, all you nations;
    extol him, all you peoples.

Chapter-a-Day, Wayfarer Podcast

“Jesus People Very Nice”

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“Jesus People Very Nice” (CaD Ex 23) – Wayfarer

You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Exodus 23:9 (NIV)

My Vander Well family in America is here because of one ancestor, Walter Vander Well (born Wouter van der Wel) who came to the States from South Holland and settled in northwest Iowa in the 1880s. He was part of multiple waves of Dutch immigrants who settled across Michigan and Iowa, founding rural towns like the one Wendy and I call home today. Five generations later there’s a small army of Walter’s descendants spread across the continent from Michigan to Iowa, Canada, and all the way to the west coast.

Immigration is a fascinating thing. Wendy and I were privileged to see a play at London’s National Theatre back in 2009. It was called England People Very Nice by Richard Bean. The setting of the play is a poor tenement building in London and a neighborhood pub. It humorously chronicles the multiple waves of immigrants to flood into Britain over time from French, to Irish, to Jewish, and Bangladeshi. Each wave lands in the low-rent tenement building and raises the ire of the locals in the pub. The previous wave who was hated by the locals, now find themselves being the locals hating the next wave of immigrants. It continues to stir conversation for Wendy and me in light of the immigration issues of our day.

I have observed this same pattern in the experience of my Dutch ancestors who initially struggled to acclimate to life in America. The Dutch huddled together in small communities and clung to their Dutch neighbors, language, and way of life. This often fueled local resentment towards them. My grandparents were both the first generation born in the States and they both spoke Dutch fluently. They refused to teach my father and his brother because of prejudice against the Germanic sounding language during World War II. Our little town, both steeped in its Dutch heritage and proud of its successful American experience, is now sometimes criticized (a la England People Very Nice) of being closed to aliens moving in.

In today’s chapter, God continues to provide the ancient Hebrews with specific rules for life. God repeats the rule mentioned in yesterday’s chapter about treating foreigners living among them with deference. Fascinating that it’s mentioned twice in such proximity to one another in the text. It leads me to wonder if the repetition speaks to the importance God places on it, or the knowledge that it will a tough one to obey given human nature. I personally conclude that it’s a case of “both, and.”

As I mulled this over in the quiet this morning I couldn’t help but think, once again, beyond the letter of the law in the text, to the Spirit of the law to which Jesus pointed time and time again. Far from being obedient to the command, Jesus’ people separated themselves from the aliens living among them. They treated foreigners and those of mixed-race, like the Samaritan people, as inferior. They created systemic social and religious barriers much like the ones we are addressing in our own culture today.

When Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, when He spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and when He commanded His followers to take His message to Samaria, He was addressing systemic racial prejudice. Jesus was pointing His own people back to the heart of God that motivated the law repeated twice in yesterday’s chapter and today’s. He was, essentially, pointing to His own law of love: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Isn’t that what God says in the text? “You’ve been an alien in a foreign land. You know what it’s like. You’ve been the victim of prejudice and hate. So treat the aliens living among you with loving-kindness the way you wished you’d been treated in Egypt.”

Jesus’ followers did just that and “turned the world upside-down.“

I’m reminded this morning that Jesus was not about adherence to textual rules. Jesus was about following God’s Spirit to speak, act, and relate to others in accordance with God’s heart. As a follower of Jesus, I’m called to do just that in my own world and my own culture. That’s what I want to do. That’s who I want to be, increasingly, this day and each day of this earthly journey.

Of course, that requires me to act differently than human nature has led people to behave in ancient Judea, in London tenement houses, and in Dutch-settlements in America, along with almost every other people group on the earth. May I speak and behave in such a way, with anyone with whom I interact, regardless of what they look like or where they are from, that it would be said of me: “Jesus’ people very nice.”

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

Chapter-a-Day

Inclusivity

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For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.
Titus 2:11 (NIV)

While in Israel I attended Shabat services at the National Synagogue. It was a fascinating experience for me. Prior to the service I watched outside the main entrance as men kissed their wives and children before separating. As an adult male I was allowed to enter and sit on the main floor. Women and children were not allowed in that section. I found it curious how many women just waited in the lobby for their husbands, seemingly uninterested in the service.

One of the things that marked the early followers of Jesus was an inclusivity that stood in stark contrast to the Jewish culture out of which it sprang. The Jewish cultural of that day was a hierarchical system in which gender, education, and socio-economic status separated people into clearly defined strata of those who were blessed and acceptable to God and those to whom, they believed, God looked down His divine nose.

Jesus blew all of that up. He spoke to women publicly and women were among his most devout followers. In fact, evidence suggests that Jesus’ ministry was largely bankrolled by wealthy women. Jesus’ closest disciples were relatively poor and uneducated yokels from outside the ranks of worldly power. Jesus healed Romans, women, and social outcasts. Despite the intense internal conflict it created, Jesus’ early followers did not discriminate in their gatherings and worship. Women, men, Jews, Greeks, and Romans all worshiped together. Everyone sat together at the table to partake in the “love feast” which culminated in sharing the bread and the cup of Communion. Even slaves and their masters were seated at the Lord’s table as equals in the eyes of God. I can scarcely imagine what a mind bending, social paradigm shift this must have been.

In today’s chapter, Paul urges the young leader Titus to devote himself to his teaching to older men, younger men, older women, younger women, and slaves. Even the fact that Titus is expected to minister to each group of individual in their respective spiritual needs was a radical departure from the norm.

Today I’m wrestling in thought and spirit with the ways our human institutions, across history, always drift back towards exclusivity. Race, nationality, gender, age, education, occupation, and socio-economic standing are among the demarkation points from which society and the institutional church, and we as members thereof, exclude others. As I enter my second half-century on this earthly journey, my desire is that my life be increasingly marked by the inclusivity that marked Jesus’ example and teaching. I want my words and actions to exemplify love, patience, peace, kindness, and gentleness with all.

chapter a day banner 2015Featured image of First United Methodist Church (Shreveport, Louisiana) Love Feast as covered in this Shreveport Times article.

Chapter-a-Day

A Work in Progress

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…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6 (NIV)

Last night was our community theatre’s annual meeting and potluck picnic. It was a gorgeous Iowa evening, and we had the best turnout we’ve ever had with over 50 people attending. At the end of the evening, I gave my final report as President of our group providing a recap of the previous fiscal year. I’m stepping down after a decade in the position. Wendy and two other long-term board members are stepping down, as well. There’s a whole crop of new faces on the leadership team.

I will admit that I had bittersweet feelings about the whole affair last night. I have loved doing the job and I leave the position knowing that I have not accomplished all that I set out to do. I’ve come to realize, however, that unlike the marathon that is our life journey, positions of organizational leadership are actually legs in a relay race. Your job is to run your leg well and then pass the baton off so that the next runner is in a stronger position to win than you were when you got the baton. If you run too long and refuse to pass the baton, then you eventually lose momentum and the entire team suffers.

Both people and organizations are works in progress, as today’s chapter so aptly reminds us. I have a far greater appreciation for this fact today than I did  when I was younger. Works in progress still have rough edges to hone, opportunities to improve, potential to reach, and depths to mine. If I am going to accept this truth about myself (and it for my own good, and the good of the whole, that I must accept this truth about myself) then I must also accept this truth in others. It is a step towards wisdom, forgiveness and grace.

I’m excited about the new leadership team of our community theatre. I’m excited to see what new thoughts, ideas, and directions they bring. I’m excited to focus my energies in different ways. I may have passed the baton of leadership, but I have not left the team. There are other ways to contribute, other events in which to compete, and other opportunities to lift the team. Because we’re all works in progress, we need each other.

featured photo by funnyglowingsmurf  via Flickr

Chapter-a-Day

In Sight of the Journey’s End

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homestretchI have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
2 Timothy 4:7 (NIV)

For Paul, who languished in a Roman dungeon and put the finishing touches on his letter to Timothy, the proverbial handwriting was on the wall. Emporer Nero was a couple of years into his rather successful pogrom to blame followers of Jesus for the Great Fire of Rome and exterminate as many of them as he could as gruesomly as he could. There would be no pardon for Paul this time.

For roughly thirty years Paul, who had begun as a persecutor of Jesus followers himself, had been arguably the greatest champion of Jesus’ message. The twelve disciples, Jesus’ twelve closest followers, initially stuck close to home and spent much of their time sharing Jesus’ message with their fellow Jews. It was Paul who became the unlikely game changer by focusing his efforts on carrying Jesus’ message of salvation with non-Jewish Gentiles far away from Jerusalem. The road had not been easy. In his letter to Jesus’ followers in the city of Corinth, Paul briefly related just how harrowing his own road had been:

I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.

In today’s chapter, we hear a very different tone. Paul knows that he is in the homestretch of his Earthly journey. He can see the finish line. He is not giving into despair. In fact, his tone is confident. He is not giving up and limping home. In fact, he is still dishing out orders for Timothy to bring his scrolls and parchments so he can continue to work until the end. But, Paul is reflective. He looks back at his life and confidently makes three strong statements:

I have fought the good fight.
I have finished the race.
I have kept the faith.

No one knows, for the most part, exactly when their own earthly journey will end. Lord willing, I am still only at the half-way point of my own journey (even though I realize this morning that I have followed Jesus about as long as Paul had when he was martyred). It will take me twice as long to accomplish less than a ten thousandth of what Paul did. A humbling thought.

Nevertheless, today I am encouraged and motivated by Paul’s words. I have a long way to go, but when that day comes that I sense the finish line approaching I hope that my heart will confidently whisper Paul’s words to Timothy: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

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Chapter-a-Day

Strong Through the Home Stretch

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English: 2007 Dublin City Marathon (Ireland) 中...
English: 2007 Dublin City Marathon (Ireland) 中文: 2007年爱尔兰都柏林城马拉松 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chapter-a-Day Genesis 17

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” Genesis 17:17 (NIV)

When I was a young man, I memorized and clung to this line from Paul’s letter to his young protege Timothy:

Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.

I figured that if God had given me spiritual gifts like everyone else, then I was totally going to use those gifts and be of service. I wanted to make a difference. I tried to instill that same spirit in my daughters in their youth, and continue to get jazzed when I see young people with a passion for God actively living out their faith.

Today, I’m at a different place in the journey. If averages and genetics hold sway, you could say that I’m still in mid-life. Nevertheless, I can’t deny the fact that I’m likely on the downhill side. Instead of not letting others think less of me because I’m young, I sometimes feel the need not to let others think less of me because I’m old. As technology advances at breakneck speeds, I wonder if the gulf between generations is expanding and making it easier for in the back stretch and making the final turn to feel irrelevant and lost.

I think that it’s awesome that God made such a huge play in Abram’s life right when Abram was turning 100 and Sarai was in her nineties. God willing, I want the last half of my life to be more productive than the first. I want to live with purpose and witness God doing big things in and through my life when I’m old. I don’t want to stagger and limp to the finish. God grant that I finish strong. I want to be kicking it in to a full sprint when I hit the home stretch and find myself heading for the tape.

You go, Abe.

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Chapter-a-Day Psalm 37

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Put your hope in the Lord.
    Travel steadily along his path.
Psalm 37:34 (NLT)

There was a poster that hung in my room when I was a teenager. It pictured a long country highway that went up and down rolling hills as far as the eye could see in a blistering summer sun. In the foreground was a runner. The caption read “The race is not to the swift, but for those who keep running.” It was a riff off my favorite theme from Aesop’s fables: “Slow and steady wins the race.”

That poster is long gone along with all the other stuff you could find in my room when I was a teen including my devo glasses, pencil thin neck ties, my LP album collection, and my walkman stereo cassette recorder and crumbling foam headphones. The truth of the statement on that poster, however, stands the test of time. It is just as true as when David penned it 3,000 years ago and when Aesop penned the Tortoise and the Hare some 400 years later. Technology is changing our world so rapidly that the world has likely seen more change in the 30 years since I’ve been a teenager than it did in the centuries between David and Aesop, perhaps even more than the millennia that separates you and me from the both of them.

Living in a world of such rapid change, we need to cling to Truth more than ever before.

The world has changed. The road has taken me to amazing highs and through deep valleys. I’ve been weary. I’ve been injured. I’ve stumbled and I’ve fallen. I am, however, still plodding along step-by-step. Despite the extreme changes and conditions I experience in my outside circumstances my faith quietly glows as a reactor in my spirit pushing me on. My heart is fixed on the Hope before me.

Step-by-step I enter this, another day. It is my 16,911th day in the race. Talk about a marathon.

Slow and steady.

Keep running.