The Reason For My Paranoia

“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why his is right not to sacrifice himself….As for me , I kept silent for one further reason: because those Muscovites thronging the steps of the escalators were too few for me, too few! Here my cry would be heard by 200 or twice 200, but what about the 200 million? Vaguely, unclearly, I had a vision that someday I would cry out to the 200 million.”---Alekandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

There is one key reason for my paranoia. Of the forty books on World Magazine’s Top 40 Books of the 20th Century about half have to do with the failure of government when government exceeds its God-given authority. So it is no wonder that I have such difficulty with Obamacare or even with the new Core curriculum for schools. It doesn’t take any imagination to see America moving that direction (see The Life of Julia).

I’m currently reading “The Gulag Archipelago,” in which Solzhenitsyn describes the horrors of communism. Some years ago I read Manchester’s, The Last Lion—Alone, the biography of Winston Spencer Churchill. History is full of many that complacently follow their leaders into evil and ruin. However in any age there are only few voices willing to say that the prophets lie when they say, “Peace, peace when there is no peace.”

If you followed me around for a week, besides being bored, you would see little evidence of my anti-state, anti-union mentality. It is only inside my mind that I store up these grains for winter. I am fairly certain the storm is coming.

What of it? We are not to be paranoid. We are to be aware. We cannot all be the voice of a Solzhenitsyn. Yet we must be a voice.

“We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep with us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.”---from The Gulag Archipelago

Strong Currents Beneath

A young boy of about twelve years of age I stood on the bank of a river with my parents and commented about how easy it would be to swim to the other side. My parents adamantly informed me that although the river looked calm at the top there were strong currents moving below its surface. I was reminded of this as I took a walk through our local preserve today. Sunday Morongo valley had been hit by a flash flood. The wooden walkway through the preserve was covered with mud. Waterways alongside the walk were now deeply rutted and the ferns which grew straight and tall were gone or flattened. What power there is in moving water!


While hiking in the Grand Canyon in 2012 we were told by a volunteer that they had just fished out the bodies of two Boy Scouts that were playing near the river; a third death of an adult that tried to save them was also reported. I came across the tragic story of Kaitlin Kenney, a 21 year old Colorado woman that was an accomplished fiddler (Colorado Sate Teen Champion) and lover of the outdoors, “friends told investigators that they shared whiskey with a passing group who visited them at their campsite while kayaking. In the days leading up to her disappearance on the night of January 11, Kenney had eaten some of the hallucinogenic mushrooms that she brought with her, but their effects would have likely worn off by the time she walked away from the campfire that fateful night.” There is some doubt as to the mushrooms but an autopsy revealed a significantly high blood-alcohol level. Newspaper stories speculate that she may have got up in the night and fallen into the river.

On every internet news page I pulled up there was a picture of Miley Cyrus on the sidebar. Brant Hansen has a great blog post where he apologized to her on behalf of all adults.

Life looks safe but there can be savage undercurrents that are not initially visible. On occasion the raging waters just suck us out into their vortex. More often than not we fail to heed the warnings from parents, friends and counselors to be careful. “Guard your heart with all diligence,” says the Teacher, “for from it flow the waters of life.”

We Groan Inwardly

There are days we groan inwardly. We may understand our grey mood or it may come upon us seemingly unprovoked still “we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” It is the universal experience of all mankind.

I groan for the woman married last week who I heard say today, “You men all want to get away from your women and go drinking or to a strip joint.” I can only hope her new husband will be better than her experience so far. I ache for those old and bitter that have lost joy and those young and searching that don’t know where to find it. These are minor groanings.

Then there are the groans for those life situations that seem so unfair; the loss of a child, the loss of a mother and the questions that echo down hallways and into bedrooms that are more quiet now than they’ve ever been.

Sometimes the grief just rolls down and our hearts cry with Amos “Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.” We cry out and pray but justice doesn’t roll on in a flood or even drip in a trickle. Some days these things hit one harder than other days.

On these days I seek solace in the Word or glean from the field of others that have spent time there. I find I am most encouraged through stories and songs of those that have persevered through trials and groaning and come out singing on the other side---or are singing in the midst.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who could be against us….But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”

God's Steadfast Goodness In Parenting

It’s the thing that should have freaked me out most of all. Along with the anxiety I’ve had regarding finances, jobs, marriage, divorce, marriage again and all the rest of life thrown in I find the thing that should have caused me the most fear hasn’t. I stand on the brink of seventeen years raising my daughter and God’s been faithful each step of the way.

The stereotypical picture is that of them handing the baby to you on the hospital steps without an owners’ manual. Some at that point can point to experience---perhaps their parents did a standard job of raising them so that they have a framework. I had no framework. I had snapshots I’d gleaned; other families that did it right, sermons I’d heard and books I read after the initial hand-off. That little fragile package should have sent me into paroxysms of fear.

The daughter just announced to me that she in her first male-female relationship. Today I quake just a little. Not for fear springing from who my daughter is. No, I hesitate because of who I was. All teenage boy with no boundaries.

There are, I confess, some significant past life events where I still question outcomes and providence. Yet in the raising of my daughter God has had extensive mercy toward my feeble frame and lack of framework. It’s as if God has said, “Having proven myself in this small thing shall I not show Myself faithful in the larger things?” Life is full of things that cause me to quake but today the faithful hand of Providence bids me be still and be at peace.

Dependence, Pride and Psalm 5

Listen to what I say, LORD!

Carefully consider my complaint!
Pay attention to my cry for help,
my king and my God,
for I am praying to you!
LORD, in the morning you will hear me;
in the morning I will present my case to you and then wait expectantly for an answer.

Dependence doesn’t square neatly with my pride. One of the continual tests since getting married has been our finances. There are a number of factors affecting the money situation. I dragged my wife to a new city which means that to teach she had to establish a new network to get a job. The other is a rental property that is upside down, owned with my ex-wife and a fiscal fetter around our necks. These burdens and day-to-day living are depleting all our finances.

Life can turn on a dime. A teaching job could open up tomorrow. The house could…heck, I’ve no idea how anything good can come out of that situation. All these situations are out of my box, out of my control. So what’s to do?

King David prayed. In the morning, when he finished, he eagerly waited for an answer.

A Baptist Preacher, A Rapper And Two White Guys

What does a 60 year old Baptist preacher have in common with a Rapper and two guys that play acoustic guitar? It seems there was a time when older people like myself only listened to music that they grew up with. Travelling in a car with older folks meant stodgy old music. This would have been true for me if my daughter hadn’t encouraged me to listen to her local pop station and “embrace it.”


“I hate rap music. Rap is crap. Rap isn’t really music at all.” These are the comments I hear when I tell my peers that I like Lecrae. “Le-who,” they say. To which I say he’s a rapper. Then it begins. Funny thing is that I was exposed to Lecrae through John Pipers’ Desiring God website. His lyrics are deep; his theology spot-on.

This week Piper introduced me to Shane and Shane. They have been playing for a while but I’ve not heard of them til now. I was moved by the song, Yearn. It’s the prayer we all have. It doesn’t matter which point you are at on your spiritual journey. It’s the cry that Moses had, “If I have found favor in your sight, let me know your ways that I may know You…Show me Your glory.” It’s the common groan we share with all creation. I am dust and clay—but I want to yearn for You. Enjoy.

 

Friends, Family and Transparency

Unique access to our hearts is given to friends and family members. My cousin celebrated his 50th birthday last weekend. At the party were some relatives I’ve not spoken to since my teenage years. Upon introduction the conversation rapidly sped forward. Though we touched on the trivial there was an ebb and flow from surface to deep as we shared.


It makes me wonder. With those with whom we have connection we can skip decades and start up the conversation as if there’d never been a break. We open up our hearts with ease. It’s surprising we open up at all. We are capable of building such nice walls just as easily.

A teacher of mine (Wally Norling-see the link for more wisdom from Wally) was fond of saying that we should live transparent lives. Talk about a tension! It’s a scary world full of scary people. We want our privacy and our safe little front-yards. To cultivate openness and transparency is counter-cultural. Wait! Weren’t those early Christ followers a little counter-cultural too?

It’s a process; both becoming transparent and being transparent. Because not only does it go against the grain of society but it cuts against the self-protective skin I live in.

The End Of Vacations

There is dissonance in coming home. You have had a hundred adventures in one week. Everybody back home has been doing the same thing they always do day in and day out. People will ask about your vacation. When you begin to tell them that you saw God working or that you saw His power in Creation; a rock slide 100 feet at 500 Cubic Feet Per Second, you get a blank stare. How do you explain that this one week instead of watching television you had reserved seats for the Perseid Meteor shower?


A missionary friend related how a husband had gone to the mission field for a short-term work while his wife stayed at home. When he got home he was exuberant with emotion about experiences he’d had. To her it felt as if he’d had an affair.  Coming home feels like that.

The vacations end but the adventure continues. Whereas it’s great to see God in creation it’s deeper and more real to see Him work through difficulties in the workplace, sickness in souls or struggles with finances. Therein we get glimpses of Jesus’ heart and of those that pursue that same Spirit. These are the places where, as they say, the rubber meets the road.

So we escape the grind of life, the cell phones, the screens and screams to experience God leading beside the still waters. We soak Him in, we find Sabbath rest and allow ourselves to ‘Be still and know’ He is God. If we escaped enough we draw on the week we had while the world was living normal. From that place we are able to engage our culture and encourage them to seek, to know, to “Be still and know.”

Faces of Guatemala

Antigua, Guatemala #2