Passing Through

I never thought I was that kind of person…

The kind of person that needed to learn how to appreciate things. I’ve always tried to be purposefully thankful for everything. Or so I thought.

But the last week has reminded me of what is truly treasured.

It started with being in my hometown, a place I have only visited for the last 16 years. Yet with each visit, the yearning to be near it increases. Last week I was able to live there for a week and go for several bicycle rides around town – something I used to do all the time when I was growing up. One of the great things about Fair Lawn is that you can get to different parts of it quickly and easily on a bike. And so I did. I rode from over by St. Anne’s to Memorial Pool, where I spent nearly every summer day growing up. And I was able to watch my own children play in the pool where we used to play as kids. I rode over to my prayer hill in Radburn (the slope in “B” park between Tot Lot and the school) where I have heard God so many times and where I asked Jenny to marry me. I rode over to my childhood friend Scott’s house and talked about books and his trip to Costa Rica. And I rode by dozens of other people’s homes and other landmarks. And I also got to have a burger on the Dutch House deck, my favorite cookie from the bakery, a couple of Entenmann’s crumb cakes, dinner at Davia, a visit to The College of New Jersey/Trenton State College, and wonderful visits with family and friends.

All the while thinking about how grateful I was for those people, places and moments and the opportunity to visit them again. And how I have missed it all – a lot.

And then there was Dave’s funeral service. Which among other things, reminded me of how as we go on in life, some of the best people we have known and loved are already at our real home – heaven. That place where all tears will be wiped away, where there is no more pain, death or suffering, no more diseases like ALS. That place that can only be reached by faith.

All of it has stirred an aching and a yearning to be home. Home is and could be again Fair Lawn, but ultimately is heaven.

As Paul wrote to the believers in Philippi, who were struggling with oppression and persecution, and needed hope, “But our citizenship is in heaven, Philippians 3:20.” He was reminding them that despite their present circumstances, their true citizenship was not under Roman control but of Christ’s eternal and forever kingdom. And that being mindful of that could help them look beyond the troubled present. Given our circumstances now of the economy and all the stress and pressures, it speaks comfort and hope to us too.

As you know, we can get so focused on this world as if it is permanent. The people, things – we have and want to have, it is very easy to get so attached to it all. And yet, it is only temporary. If you think about it, most of our misery comes from being overly attached to this world and its things – when it and they don’t belong to us.

As Carrie Underwood has poetically expressed in her song Temporary Home, “This is my temporary home, It’s not where I belong. Windows and rooms that I’m passin’ through. This is just a stop, on the way to where I’m going…because I know this is my temporary home.” How much would our perspectives and lives be different if we had a “temporary” yet faith-based outlook on our lives.

And speaking of passing through, nearly five years ago, God whispered to me at the prayer hill, “You’re going to Michigan.” I never imagined leaving New Jersey but we were faithful and went. And I think there were many times when I was so focused on the “mission” that I didn’t remember who I was and from where I come. And now with that mission nearly complete, and God having whispered a few months ago, “You’re going home,” we are quite curious as to how God will make it happen and what it means.

Because in the end, home – on earth or in heaven is about belonging. And whether it is Fair Lawn or TCNJ/TSC or old, dear family and friends or thinking of heaven, I know now very well what it is like to treasure and yearn for those places and people to whom and where we belong.

Because for better or worse, as humans, we often have to lose or be separated from those things which we love in order to truly desire and treasure them. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is essentially about exile and restoration with God on cosmic and personal levels.

It’s also a little bit like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz who talks about cherishing what she has and explains to Auntie Em, “But it was a real place (Oz) and some of it wasn’t very nice, but most of it was beautiful. All the while I kept telling people that I wanted to go home. And they sent me home.” Whether it is Oz or earth, we are just passing through.

I never thought I was one of those people that needed to learn this – but I was, and I have; and I will probably have to learn it again sometime…

Amen.

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Who Knows?

Maybe it’s because I have reached my limit. Maybe you have too.

 

Maybe it’s because I can still vividly remember walking in the 1978 Memorial Day Parade in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, holding an American Flag alongside my Dad and his ambulance corps and feeling so proud of my nation.

 

Maybe it’s because we seem to be on a downward spiral and it seems less and less likely that we can turn around.

 

Maybe it’s because I believe a nation has a kind of soul and our nation’s soul is wounded and ill.

 

Maybe it’s because I have a daughter of a similar age.

 

But I can’t help but be so disturbed by the thought and reality of that little girl’s body found in the garbage dump after having gone missing recently.

 

Kids are supposed to be alive and walking home safely in their neighborhoods. Little girls should be swinging on the swing in the back singing Taylor Swift songs and writing and illustrating books with stick figures and backward letters.

 

But not for Somer Thompson, whose body was, as her father described, “discarded like a piece of trash.”  

 

I know this is not the first time it has happened…and it won’t be the last.

 

But it is a very startling metaphor – a young, innocent girl killed and dumped in the garbage. It screams of a people and a nation that do not value life. And we have known this for a while. It’s just a little more visible today.  

 

How can we say that we value life when we worship nearly everything else but the Author of Life? In God We Trust?

 

It’s more like – In…money, violence, sports, alcohol and drugs, possessions, sex, appearances, video games and ourselves…We Trust. You don’t need to be a person of faith to see where this has brought us and where it is going to lead.

 

The apathy doesn’t help either. Our apathy helps us drift off slowly, painlessly as we have watched our nation’s soul and many of the things of real substance disintegrate.

 

After hearing a message of warning from one of God’s prophets, a people of long ago began fasting. The king of those people was also moved by the message and said, “Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways, and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish (Jonah 3).”

 

And God’s response to those people? “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened (Jonah 3).”

 

What does God see when He looks upon America’s soul? What does God think of Somer Thompson’s body in a Georgia garbage dump?

 

Yet, God does see and respond to repentance and turning our hearts to Him. The people of Nineveh, which I mentioned above, did so, and God relented. He is after all, a God of second chances.

 

I know this is not a typical Living Water. I would have preferred to write something else. But I had to be obedient. As much as I love to talk about grace, it doesn’t take away from how much sin and evil still offend God.

 

And I am no king, but I couldn’t be silent today about how I see sin and evil corrupting our nation and how we have to turn from it – soon.

 

Let everyone in our nation call urgently on God and let us give up our evil ways and violence.

 

Who knows?

 

Amen.

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The Way Back

Hosea 6:1-2

The Way Back  

“Come, let us return to the Lord. For he has torn, that he may heal us. He has stricken, and he will build us up. After two days, he will revive us; on the third day, he will raise us up, that we may live before him.” Hosea 6:1-2 (RSV)

 

The truth is that we all have some “prodigal” in us. It is easy to think of the prodigal son (Luke 15) as a person who needed a lesson and thankfully comes back. But if we are honest about most of our faith journeys, it is a process of going away and returning to the Lord. We spend seasons on the mountaintop only to have everything fall through. We find ourselves in the wilderness, at the end of our rope, finally crawling onto the edges of a promised land. Some of us have lost years, decades even. And then, without any warning, our hearts once again, begin to yearn for God or something about him. As the band Pearl Jam sings in their song “Thumbing My Way (Back to Heaven)” – “No matter how cold the winter, there’s a springtime ahead; I’m thumbing my way back to heaven.”

 

But we have to ask the questions, “Why the wilderness, why the lost years?”

 

The above verses in particular are about how that yearning sometimes comes back. Hosea, as you know was a prophet asking God’s people to wake up to the distance between them and God. “Come, let us return to the Lord (1).”

 

But then the prophet offers what will seem to some as a strange explanation. “For he (the Lord) has torn, that he may heal us.” Why do we have to be torn, so that God can heal us? Why can’t we just stay un-torn or whole? And you know what I am going to say. That we don’t start off whole to begin with. Sins like pride, lust, and others are ever present in our lives. It is the human, fallen condition. If that isn’t bad enough, our denial only makes it worse. When sin leads us to believe that we don’t need God or don’t need to follow his ways, is as they say, insult to injury.

 

And because we believe that God is always purposeful, these words from Hosea cut deeply. “For he has torn (allowing our sins and their consequences), that he may heal (come to understand our need for Him) us. How often have we felt torn, physically, mentally and spiritually? But more importantly, how often have we felt torn and then seen it as God actually trying to heal us or draw us closer? I guess it is easier to blame God for bad circumstances and just be angry. But oh what we miss when we leave it at that. Because the awful truth is that God has to tear us to get us to see that we completely need him for salvation and living. For most of us, without the tearing and wildernesses, we wouldn’t acknowledge the need for a savior.

 

Admittedly, it took many years for me to learn this to the point where I really believe it. And I do. Part of my job is not so much to give answers, but to give sight based on the Word. And more often than not, I find myself with brothers and sisters helping them to see what God is doing in their lives. And this is the principle at work many, many times. And I can say it with hope because of my own tearing experiences.

 

And there is hope in this passage, much hope! “He has stricken, and he will build us up. After two days he will revive us, on the third day, he will raise us up, that we may live before him.” You see as humans, we often look at the torn and stricken and say, “why?” instead of saying “Amen!” to the healing, building up, reviving, and raising up so that we may live parts.

 

By the way, have you caught the echoes of Jesus in these two verses? Our dear savior was torn so that we can be healed; Jesus was stricken for our sins and was built up. Built up when? On the third day he was raised up and because of that we live before God. But remember, Jesus had to be torn and had to die for us to live eternally – it was the only way. And therefore is it also the rhythm for our daily living – tearing down and then building up; dying to our sins and then finding new life in Christ.

 

I know you are torn and stricken. I wish I could take it all away. But even if I could, I would be interrupting what God is trying to do in your life. And that is – trying to get us to return to him; not just to church, although that might be one way; but leading our hearts back to him. Leading us to turn our hearts home to him again. So whether it is the first time you need to come back or the twentieth, as the verse said, “Come let us return to the Lord.”

 

And you know there is nothing like coming home. Whether it is after a long day, or after months or years. A couple of times a year I return home to New Jersey, and it starts with seeing the familiar signs and sights along Route 80 all the way until I enter my hometown Fair Lawn and arrive at my brother’s house – seeing family and friends – those blessed reunions. There is nothing like returning to a place and people where you are known and loved. Just walking up to the door, that first smile or hug, can make the journey all worth it. That is what it is like to return to the Lord.

 

And as the song says, “No matter how cold the winter, there’s a springtime ahead; I’m thumbing my way back to heaven.”

 

I am right beside you walking and praying – we can come home to Him after all.

 

Amen.

  

Discussion Questions

1. What is your gut or first reaction to hearing that God tears us (even though for a purpose)?
2. When you think of tearing times in your life (maybe even right now) what does this passage say to you?
3. Can you think of some times when you felt revived after being in the wilderness? What were they like? Does God get the credit for that too?

4.   Would you like to return to the Lord but don’t know how? Please call or email me, I would love to help.

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