BudapestAlive

praying for mercy

Imagine you’re at one of your semi-regular stops. Maybe the grocery store. Or maybe for you it’s a coffee shop or bar. If you’re my wife it’s Sonic. If you’re me it’s Taqueria Mexico. Now, imagine someone you’ve met, but don’t know that well, coming up to you and asking

I’ve head about Jesus. I know he was supposedly sent by God to save the world. How can I get to heaven and have eternal life?

What would you say? How can this person have eternal life? Odds are that your answer is some variation of the following:

• Believe in Jesus
• Trust Jesus
• Ask Jesus to be your personal Lord and Savior
• Pray for forgiveness
• Repent and be baptized

How did I do? Did I guess your answer? I bet I did. My answer is in there too. But here’s the thing…that’s not how Jesus answered when this very thing happened to him.

Jesus was with a group of people, and among them were some who knew a lot about Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God of the Bible. One man in particular was an expert in the Bible (or “Law”) as it was then, the five books of Moses, the historical books like Judges, Ezra, Nehemiah, the poetical and wisdom books like Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and all the prophets, from the “big” ones like Isaiah to the “little” ones like Amos. This man really knew it all very well. It’s likely he even had a lot of it memorized.

Well, this guy is listening to Jesus talking and teaching and something about it is eating at him. He wasn’t really listening to Jesus to understand him, but rather listening to judge what Jesus was saying. He was like a lot of people in the church. He finally had enough and suddenly he stands up (something which would definitely have caused everyone to stop and listen to him). He’s going to test Jesus, to throw him a question or two in order to expose him as a fake. He couldn’t believe Jesus was a real rabbi/teacher, after all, no one ever heard of Jesus and then out of nowhere he’s teaching and healing people and the whole region is talking about him. Jesus wasn’t one of the lawyers, he didn’t run in their circles, how could he possibly be qualified to teach about Yahweh?

Everyone turns and waites for him to speak. Jesus waits too.

Teacher, what can I do to have eternal life?

Jesus, recognizing this is an important question, not just for the lawyer, but everyone listening and everyone who would one day read about it, asks the lawyer to go further.

You’re a Bible expert, what do you think it says? What do you think is the answer?

The lawyer must have laughed to himself. Is this the best retort Jesus had? In his most pious delivery the lawyer relies,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus closes the challenge by getting the lawyer to answer his own question.

Yup. You’re right. To have the eternal life you’re after just do what you said.

But the lawyer’s thirst to look great in the eyes of the people could not be slaked. He couldn’t let it go,

And who is my neighbor?

This is where we come to it. Jesus could have said, “everyone you meet”. But he didn’t. Instead, he tells a story. The story of the “good Samaritan”. The story illustrates that the lawyer’s neighbor is, in fact, all he comes in contact with. I won’t go into the details, but the story really slaps the lawyer in the face and exposes his racism, prejudice, pride, and narcissism.

Here’s the point: The story of the good Samaritan is part of the answer to “how can I inhereit eternal life?”. The answer is to love God first and love your neighbor as yourself, and loving your neighbor looks like that parable.

Jesus’ answer is very different from ours.

Jesus is not saying you can earn your way to eternal life. But he is showing that following the great commandment, including extending mercy to our neighbors, is in the mix. He doesn’t simply tell us to believe the right things. He tells us to be the right sort of people. That’s the kind of change that the gospel brings. The gospel calls us to be free, to let go of our racism, prejudice, pride, and narsicism and embrace our neighbor.

I’ve been thinking about the people in my life who are those that have been robbed, beaten, and left in the ditch. George, the guy who sells the Houston Chronicle under the bridge at 59/Hillcroft on my morning commute. The guys that are passed out in the shadows next to him. They come to us for money and we shun them. They’re drunks. They’re drug addicts. They’re young and strong enough to get a job. They could go to Star of Hope or Open Door for help. They’re choosing to be out here. Paul said if you won’t work then you don’t deserve to eat.

I tell myself all those things.

But if the most grungy, diseased one of them came to me and asked, “how can I have eternal life”, I would stop the day. I would chunk my schedule, be late to work, spend my money, and follow up with him.

I’ve been asking myself these questions

Why am I this way? What’s wrong with my heart and thinking that because they don’t come to me on my terms I won’t help them. Why would I rather justify my callousness than risk sharing in the sufferings of my Lord? Perhaps I really am ashamed of the gospel. Perhaps I really am ashamed of Christ.

So, I’m praying for mercy. Not to receive mercy, but to be merciful. I’m praying for a change in my character, to be a man marked by mercy.

Country Jam

I’m migrating from Mac back to PC as part of a job change (if you have a used MB Pro for sale please tell me) and I found a real gem (yes, that’s a subjective appraisal) buried in my files.

It’s a tune I recorded in 2004 called “Country Jam”, yet another unfinished piece. It was recorded one afternoon using a buddy’s 10 watt Marshall practice amp, playing my train wreck of an ‘81 Squier Strat, and using only a Boss DD3 delay pedal. I mic’d the amp using an SM58. Nothing but pro setup for me my friends… (that’s sarcasm for you non-musical types).

If you listen closely you’ll hear a metronome in the background. It’s the first (and only) time I’ve used one to record. The thing annoyed me to no end. I’m also playing the electric drums, so you’ll be treated to the most basic beat in history. The song is three tracks; rhythm and lead guitar, and drums. Stick with it, it gets fun towards the end.

The timing is off in places and the whole track is really a mess. But I love it. Some of my favorite music is from players and bands who didn’t have the latest and greatest and recorded in some of the “worst” conditions, but came away with really inspiring music. I’m not meaning to compare myself to them (nor am I saying that this is inspiring), just shedding some light on why I’m posting jacked up, unfinished recordings. Enjoy!

shaping arrows

I was thinking about arrows today. Not the space-age sort hunters use nowadays. Not even the makeshift ones my buddies used to shoot at squirrels and birds when we were kids. No, I was thinking about the kind used in ancient warfare, maybe 300, 400 B.C. And I was thinking about my daughters.

I tried to picture myself in the place of an ancient warrior, standing among hundreds, perhaps thousands of fellow archers as we waited for the call from our leader to release our volley. I recalled Hollywood mock-ups like those in the movies “300″ and “The Two Towers”. Though not exactly representing the 300 B.C. era, they both have scenes that stick out…an archer releases his arrow amidst thousands of others and it flies off into the world of the enemy. Once the arrow is released, the archer no longer controls it. Whether or not its effective depends mostly on how well the archer prepared it.

In rich, poetic wisdom literature, the Bible reads:

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.

Arrows. That’s the metaphor. Huh. Interesting that its not a sword. After all, swords were more accurate and typically more deadly than arrows. With a sword you can look your foe in the eye and control every move of your weapon. But no, children are not swords. They are arrows.

What happens when you raise swords? You control them. You never really send them anywhere, after all, they can’t do anything apart from your wielding them. Not so with arrows. You shape and sharpen arrows. When the day comes, you launch them out. They need your help to be released, but once sent they fly and penetrate based largely on their preparation. But the warrior is no longer wielding them.

I often think of the day, Lord willing, when my daughters will be released. I long for it and dread it all at once. I dread it because my time of intimacy with them, seeing them daily and being an integral part of their lives will be over. I will forever influence them and I pray I will have their love always. But my days of closeness are waning even now. Yet, I long for those days because I long to see them fly in the wisdom, grace, and justice of Yahweh.

There is a day of release coming for your children. Are you preparing them for it? Providing money and stuff does not prepare them. Getting them into the best Ft. Bend County schools does not prepare them. Taking them to your contextualized church does not prepare them. No, teaching them to love Jesus with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength is what prepares them. They learn it best from fathers who do the same.

Love your children by preparing them. To that end, happy father’s day.

Houston Walk

Here’s a little something I threw together a few months back. Total creation time was about 3 hours. It’s one of the many pieces I’ve got that haven’t been completed. I called it “Houston Walk”, but don’t recall why..

Providence Lost

Disclaimer: this post is very much a work/thought in process (and likely will be for life).

Ok – I’ve been wrestling with understanding God’s sovereignty over the last 18 months. Not in the sense of whether or not Yahweh is sovereign, Scripture is very clear on that one. But more so trying to understand, biblically, what that means. I think the most succinct definition is that God does what he pleases in all ways, places, and times, and answers to no one. That can make God sound capricious and arbitrary, but that’s because we typically only see power and authority abused, or abuse power and authority ourselves. But we must think of Yahweh as he reveals himself in the Bible, and not based on human experience. He’s the kind, relating, creator God who is unified in his love, wrath, mercy, and justice. So his sovereignty is a wonderful source of hope because his unstoppable ways are always both loving and just. He gets it right every time, per se, because his very nature defines what is right and good.

But here’s where I think many of out most dear preachers have unintentionally hindered the Church: in speaking of God’s sovereignty we do not talk about how his unstoppable ways play out in time and space. In other words, as we are living and dealing with all that this life brings, how do God’s sovereign decrees, plans, ways, etc. happen – how do we experience them? It’s one thing for someone who has cancer (as a good friend of mine just found out she does) to know that Yahweh is sovereign (in control and not surprised), there is great hope in that truth. BUT – when you think of a verse like Romans 8:28

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

how does he work “all things together for good, for those are called according to his purpose”?

That, I believe, is the area of Providence. I think of providence as the how of God’s sovereignty. When we are experiencing life, God is relating to us. At the same time he knows all things that happen, and that could happen. He learns nothing, his knowledge is perfect and not bound by time or space.

As we, his creatures living in his creation, are living our lives he is in relationship with us. Whether or not we follow Jesus matters. Prayer matters. Obedience and disobedience matter – BIG TIME. God responds. God alters plans. God allows us to love or hate Jesus. He is working providentially all the time, relating with us, to us. In his sovereignty, he is not a God far off, he is near, drawing all people to himself and intimately involved, especially in the lives of those who love and follow Jesus, the Lord and Savior of all who believe.

I guess what I’m getting at is that all our preaching and conversation about God’s sovereignty has swallowed up providence and left it unmentioned, untaught, and thus left many without the great comfort of understanding the nearness and intimate working of God. That is a tragedy. As critical as it is to have a biblical view of the sovereign God of the Bible, we must also have a biblical view of how he relates to us, without it, I fear we have providence lost, and much joy in Christ with it.