Tag: Christianity

Of Solar Eclipses, A Story Weaver and Sunlight

Leave a comment

On August 21, 2017, much of the world focused on the total solar eclipse. Then Hurricane Harvey happened and the eclipse was, well, eclipsed. 

I’d like to take us back to the eclipse for at least a moment. 

Did you experience the darkness of totality? Or did you see it on TV? 

It begs the question, what would life be like without the light of the sun? 

Of course, this is a reality blind people experience, in a sense, every day. However, while they don’t see the sun’s light they still feel it.

One of the greatest story weavers of the 20th century, if not of modern times as a whole, was C.S. Lewis. This quote from him is rather enlightening on the topic of the sun,

“I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[1}

Something to think about when we get up in the morning and see the sun shining. And perhaps it’s on purpose that the sun rises every twenty-four hours. After all, events seem to get eclipsed in our minds rather quickly, don’t they? 

[1} C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: Macmillan, 1980), pg. 92; quoted in W. Gary Phillips, William E. Brown and John Stonestreet, Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview, 2nd ed. (Salem, Wis.: Sheffield, 2008), pg. 114. 

Photo credit: Adobe Stock

“Step inside the Mystery” – Canary Island Song

Leave a comment

The Canary Islands are a land of mystery with their blend of cultures, breathtaking landscapes and storied past.

But Caroline has another mystery to deal with.

She has no explanation for the tragic death of her husband. After seven years, she feels she has never gotten an answer to her heartwrending why? 

That why? has worn on her soul.

Surrounded by the “women of the Canaries” and an unexpected friend, Caroline hears words that carry refreshment for her soul like the island breezes’ touch on her skin.

“Some things in life will never make sense…They float around in a swirl of mystery. I wanted God to explain all that mystery to me before I agreed to trust him. But I discovered it doesn’t work that way. He is God, and He doesn’t have to explain anything. When I understood that, then I could surrender to Christ and step inside the mystery instead of stand back and resist.”  ~Bryan Spencer, Canary Island Song by Robin Jones Gunn, (Recorded Books, 25:50-26:31)

“Step inside the mystery.” Maybe it sounds good, but I think no one would say it is easy. Come to think of it, what good things are easy? 

Have you been standing in the mystery or resisting? While I haven’t experienced anything as painful as Caroline in Canary Island Song, just like everyone else, I have mysteries to live with – mysteries like my vision issues or empty chairs. Sometimes those vision problems get in the way of things I think I want to do or the emptinesses fill up with heartaches. Sometmes it would be nice to know the why?

I guess it gets down to trust. Do we trust God – the omnipotent, ominpresent, omniscient, steadfast-love-forever God enough to let Him direct the mysteries of our lives? 

Something to ponder today. And if you’re struggling with a mystery, maybe joining Caroline on her trip to the Canary Islands will refresh your soul. 

 

Journey to Trust

Leave a comment

If Christy ever thought all the uncertainties of life would vanish after her wedding day, she finds out plenty soon that isn’t reality. 

In the second installment of Christy & Todd: The Married Years, Christy finds herself facing challenges as big (or bigger!) than those she faced during her growing up and dating years. Not only do she and Todd still need permanent work, they need a permanent home. Christy longs for the security of home. Then, just before they are supposed to leave for two very important weddings, Christy’s mom faces major health problems. In a leap of faith, Christy and Todd act to keep long-ago promises…and Christy forgets something very important for her best friend Katie’s wedding!

So it is that Christy finds herself on a journey. A journey that takes her halfway around the world. 

Yes, she stops in the Canary Islands and eventually arrives at a Kenyan retreat center, but that’s not her journey’s end. While she might wish she were on a journey to answers, that’s not the real destination either. 

No, Christy Spencer is on a different journey. A journey to trust.

Have you ever been on a journey like that? Yes? Me, too. 

As Christy wonders where in the world she and Todd will call home, she sees God provide for her friend Katie. Katie is the girl who didn’t know where to go after she graduated from college and prayed and prayed until God moved. Now as she looks forward to her wedding day, her parents are disinterested. But Christy sees that God has provided for Katie in beautiful ways with a new family who love her and a sweet spot to call home (even if cockroaches are included!)

This and many other experiences bring Christy to the point where she realizes,

“If God can give a garden cottage to Katie…I’m open to wherever He leads us. Here or Newport or someplace we haven’t even thought of yet.” [1]

Have you come to that place? 

Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe you were there once and are back on the journey. I think in some ways it’s the trip of a lifetime with rest stops and lookout points along the way. 

I think that’s how it’s going to be for Christy, too. Time (and the next book) will tell.

Until then, we can all benefit from Christy’s journey with a few helpful tips for us real-life livers.

  1. If you think your dating-and-waiting days demand strength and trust, just wait until your married days!
  2. Watching God working in others lives bolsters our own faith. What if our stories are meant to be the ones others can “read” and find encouraging? How are we doing in this? 
  3. Sometimes it takes a long time for God to give us answers to the longing of our hearts. Sometimes He gives us answers that look different from what we expect. For Christy, God eventually does provide a roof to shelter her and Todd (very unexpectedly!), but Christy first learns to practice Proverbs 3:5-6 and discovers a couple of powerful truths about where her home is.  

May we travel this journey well with Proverbs 3:5-6 as our motto. 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (ESV)

[1] Robin Jones Gunn, Home of Our Hearts, Christy & Todd: The Married Years, no. 2 (Kahului, HI: Robin’s Nest Production’s, Inc., 2014), 209. 

Seeing Grace

Leave a comment

They said, “It takes quite a guy to see the things he’s seen and to be the way he is.” 

In a way, that was true. Nobody would pay to see some of the things he’d seen – except for maybe on a movie screen with a happy ending thrown in.

They said he was the kind of guy they were glad to know – “a good guy”,

In a way, that was true. After all, he’d done okay in life if that’s what you call living honest, raising a family, leaving a legacy.

But, when it came down to brass tacks, he knew they were missing the point. It wasn’t about him being “quite a guy” or anything about him being “good”. 

It was about grace. A grace that had sought him and that he had sought. God’s grace.

But they didn’t see it.

How often do we miss the grace in our lives? Maybe we don’t see it because we don’t see it in the rocky places – we miss the cactus blooms among the wilderness. Maybe we either attribute it to something else or choose to be blind to it like the aforementioned observers. 

Instead of being like them, may we be like Lace Harper in Come Rain or Come Shine… 

“And now, all this – the wedding, the farm, everyone being together like family. A lot of times it seems like a dream, but I know what it is. It’s grace. Totally.” [1]

Yes, Lace Harper is a bride-to-be with a bouquet of joy, but that same bride-to-be is the girl who watched her mother die, stayed as far away as she could from her abusive father, struggled with the emotions of being adopted, studied to be an artist yet struggled to find a job because of “the economy”, found out that she would never have her children of her own…. Perhaps if anyone has a reason to miss grace, she does. Yet she sees dreams-come-true as other than the product of wishing on a star. She sees grace. 

Ok. So she’s a fictitious character. I’ve learned a lot from people who live only within the covers of a book, haven’t you? 

O Lord, give us eyes to see the gifts and dreams-come-true in our lives as Your work. May we not be blind. Come Rain or Come Shine, may we see grace.

[1] Come Rain or Come Shine: A Mitford Novel by Jan Karon, narrated by John McDonough (Penguin Audio, 2015) CD 2, track 4, 3:04.

I Love to Tell the Story

Leave a comment

Timeless: Thoughts on Moving Forward Well in 2016

Leave a comment

Looming uncertainty. Unwanted pain. Doubting of truths once trusted. Struggling world economies. Promised but paling world peace.  Questions tumbling around in minds unsure where to look for answers.

Does that sound familiar? Well, I think it sounds like our time, but, interestingly enough, I’m discovering all of those statements could be said about England seventy-some years ago as it entered World War II. 

Perhaps we like to think our struggles are unique to us. Some of us might even like to feel sorry for ourselves. It seems sometimes Christians (of various backgrounds) especially like to think that the “badness” of their time is the worst it’s ever been because that might mean Jesus is going to come again soon and sweep His people into heaven – and away from pain, sorrow and loss – with Him.

While I think looking forward to the return of Christ is a wonderful (and good!) thing, for anyone who has studied history there’s a problem with thinking the timing is based on present problems: Life has been downright horrible time and again. If anyone had a right to think life couldn’t get any worse, it would be the people getting bombed in London or the people living in Germany during Hitler’s reign…and many thousands throughout the centuries before them. And did the world end? Apparently not.

The upside to there having been struggles in the past is that Christians can learn from how the Church faced those challenges. Take the religious branch of the BBC during WWII for example. They faced a question not unlike the church faces today.

How can the church meet a hurting people where they are and show that Christianity is for real life including all the pain?[1]

Enter Clive Staples Lewis or C.S. Lewis or even Jack as his friends would call him.

He was a man acquainted with pain, having lost his mother at a young age and having served in WWI. He had once been a skilled skeptic of Christianity but became one of its greatest advocates. And although he was a university professor, he managed to reach the British people via the “wireless” in a way that common people could appreciate even as they managed ration cards, hid in bomb shelters, wrestled with ideologies like nationalism and Communism and heard that their loved ones were never coming home.

But it didn’t all come easy to him.

In fact, his first attempt at speaking to a group of British soldiers on Christianity was decidedly disappointing.[2]

 However, thanks to some encouragement, he didn’t give up there. And from his labors grew a modern classic called Mere Christianity.

I haven’t finished the book C.S. Lewis & Mere Christianity: The Crisis That Created a Classic yet, but I have listened to the companion radio threatre drama C.S. at War, and I think there are several tips we can all gain from the life of C.S. Lewis. 

  1. He kept learning, even from his own failures. 
  2. He had the humility to let his radio talks be edited and revised. 
  3. He sought counsel. 
  4. He genuinely cared for people. 
  5. And it was the Lord Who made his efforts successful.

Maybe if we want to move forward well in 2016 – both looking forward to Christ’s return and living well in the meantime – we need to take some time to look backward. After all, on this earth, some things could very well be timeless.  

1 1Paul McCusker, C.S. Lewis & Mere Christianity: The Crisis That Created a Classic. Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, 2014), pgs. 30-31.

2Ibid., pg. 105.

 

Empty Chairs & Full Hearts

2 Comments

If Charles Dickens and I had run into each other the other night, we might not have been on the best of terms.

I was thinking about his time-honored tale A Christmas Carol and something in it bothered me.

When Ebenezer Scrooge sees Tiny Tim’s empty chair, it’s just a dream. He can wake up and do something to keep the chair full.

It doesn’t always work that way in real life.

Thinking about yet another Christmas with yet another empty chair is hard. It’s hard even though I got to love the people who sat in those chairs and one of them is empty for an overall happy reason. I don’t claim to know what it’s like for those who have empty chairs that were suddenly made that way. 

But it still could make me not feel like getting out all the Christmas decorations. 

As I keep pondering, I’m realizing that the reality of the empty chair is one more reason to celebrate Christmas. Oh, maybe it doesn’t necessitate lots of decorations or festive flair, but it still calls for a celebration.

After all, Jesus came because of the sin-caused illness and death that rob chairs of their inhabitants. Jesus’ death-conquering life is what we celebrate at Christmas. Christmas reminds us that – for those who believe on the Lord Jesus (Acts 16:30) – someday there will be no more sickness or pain or death or tears (Revelation 21:4).

Illness won’t tear families apart. Pain won’t cause a grandparent-sized gap. Death won’t take little ones before those who love them get to hold them. Tears won’t fall – they will be wiped away by God Himself (Revelation 21:4).

And, in the meantime, Jesus is making our hearts full. 

It’s at Christmas that we may realize this the most, even if the chairs are empty. You see, each one of those empty chairs once held someone I got to love. And I got to be loved by them in sweet – and sometimes quirky – ways. Although their chairs are empty, my heart can be full. 

Even better, Jesus is in the business of filling our hearts up with His love – the only Love that lives up to all those I Corinthians 13 qualities, the only Love that lasts forever, the only Love that was made to meet all our needs and seep into all the cold corners of our hearts a little like hot cocoa seeps into us on chill winter nights.

No, the pain doesn’t all go away. That’s something for Someday. We still will (probably) need to keep Kleenex handy at times. There will still be empty chairs this Christmas. Maybe there will even be new vacancies the next.

But, by God grace, there can be full hearts. And maybe, as Jesus is making our hearts full, He will fill up those chairs, too, with new people to love. 

With all that in mind, perhaps  Charles Dickens and I – if we happened to meet – could actually wish each other a very “Merry Christmas!”

Simply Stepping Stones: What Thanksgiving Is Really About (It’s Not Just the Pilgrims)

Leave a comment

All things considered, I think you could forget the Pilgrims and still celebrate Thanksgiving this year. 

But, no, just eating a stuffed bird or watching men chase each other with a funny-shaped ball does not count as celebrating Thanksgiving. If that’s all we do, let’s be honest, please, and call it Turkey Day or even Football Day.

(Note: I don’t actually have anything against turkeys – especially when they’re on my table – or funny-shaped balls; I just would like us to call things what they are, even holidays.)

Back to Thanksgiving. 

It’s not that the Pilgrims would be all fine and jolly with you forgetting them entirely. At least William Bradford would be concerned. And with good reason. 

He understood a particular aspect of humanity: unless you’ve gone through the suffering required to reach a goal yourself, you’re apt to not value the reward nearly as much as those who did suffer. Bradford wanted the Pilgrims’ descendants to treasure what they were given, so he wrote an account of their struggles called Of Plymouth Plantation. (It’s worth cracking the cover. I believe Grandma called it “fascinating”.)

But, as far as Thanksgiving Day itself goes, I think the Pilgrims really wouldn’t mind if we happen to talk about them less. Squanto and Samoset probably wouldn’t be bothered either.

Why? Quite simply, it’s not about them.

Yes, Thanksgiving is a good time to remember our history, but it’s still not about the Pilgrims.

Then what or who is it about?

In Bradford’s own words, this group of sojourners who became known as the Pilgrims saw themselves as potentially “but stepping stones” to something – or you could say Someone – much more important than themselves. 

“Last and not least, they cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundations or at least of making some way towards it, for the propagation and advance of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of the world, even though they should be but stepping stones to others in the performance of so great a work.” [1]

Then who is Thanksgiving about?

Thanksgiving is – or is supposed to be – a day when we take time to be thankful not just to each other but really to God, the God Who sustained the Pilgrims, the God Who prepared Samoset and Squanto to help them, the God Who has been directing the stories of our lives ever before and ever since the Mayflower anchored off America’s shore, the God Who makes plants grow and created that turkey on your table. 

God really is the One the Pilgrims would want you to be thinking of and thanking this Thanksgiving, even if you forget them. After all, the Pilgrims may be simply “stepping stones”. 

“Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.  

For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”

~Psalm 100:3-5, KJV

 

1 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation: Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Settlement: 1608-1650, pg. 21.