Tag: truth

Timeless: Thoughts on Moving Forward Well in 2016

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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.

 

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

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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.