HIKING, WITH A GUN (Part 1) ~ 9/21/11

The morning was cool, with a rising fog that flanked the foothills of The Trinity Alps with an aura of mystery and the hint of Fall. It was a spectacular dawn.  I took up the rear in a procession of four, accompanied in my hunt by a friend and his sons on a trail not one of us had previously hiked. It was the morning before opening day and adventure was in the air.

The trail was wide and well groomed, and followed the raucous flow of a creek called ‘Swift,’ which, over the years, had cut a deep gash through flecked walls of cold stone. Our destination was a meadow just short of what turned out to be one of the most popular tourist destination in the Alps—Granite Lake. The lake sat in a cleft of stone, a dew drop in a rock navel, perched calm at an elevation of about 6,500 feet where it birthed its own creek from a 300ft. waterfall. This bleeding flow then shattered to bits on the boulders of a jagged basin and slowed its pace to a crawl before making its way through the hard pack and grass tufts of Gibson Meadow, far below. It was there, in the shadow of Granite and God, that we made our first camp.

The sun set slowly over Gibson Peak, so slowly it gave me time for a dip in the creek after scouting my morning stand. The waters were still and clear, four deep by ten feet wide, and, plunging suddenly, I immersed myself in the shocking cold wet. I sputtered a bit as I came out, surprised at the sting, and as I did, glanced to my left in time to see a small tree frog leap from the thick willow brush and into the water with a splash. Apparently I’d inspired him. I wondered idly if he was sputtering somewhere too.

Changing into a fresh set of clothes, I wandered through the lush meadow grass to a flat rock bathed in sunset and took a nap, hat pulled down over my eyes. I woke to a rising moon and the onset of a mountain chill that sent me jogging back to camp. There wasn’t much talk that night around our awkward meals and eccentric rituals; tomorrow was on our minds, and the luck it might hold. We dreamed each one of triumph and glory, meat and horns and the legends we hoped to embody by our deeds. As usual, the best dreams were the most elusive ones, and sleep conceded defeat to an unsettled delirium. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not adrenaline or testosterone that fuels the die-hard hunter. No; whether awake or asleep, the drug of the hunter is hope, and in these parts, we’re all heavy users.

TO NUMBER OUR DAYS ~ 9/9/11

I was privileged to share the gospel with a 92yr-old woman today. We sat together on a porch painted black and shadowed by wind-teased oaks. Geese played nearby in a man-made pond stocked with bluegill, bass and fat brown catfish, and all the bucks I’d been looking for all season lay sleeping in the lawn under low trees heavy with apples and shade. We sat together on a porch painted black and the woman said, “The days just seem to fly by faster and faster,” and it made me think of the words of Moses in Psalm 90, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”  What does it mean to ‘number our days?’

Author Sandra Felton tells the story of a man who, based on his best guess at how many days he could expect to live, filled a jar with marbles, one for each week he had left. The man would remove a marble from his jar and carry it around in his pocket all week long. Then, each Sunday, he would remove the marble from his pocket and give it to a child at church. In this way, he metered out the days and weeks of his life, one marble at a time.

Maybe you find this just a little bit grim. But for this man, each marble served as a concrete, visual reminder of something the rest of us work very hard to forget—that we are not long for this world. That like milk or a green leaf in Autumn, we have an expiration date in the land of the living. There’s a principle in money management that says money, for many of us, is like water in our hands, and if we don’t keep track of where we spend it, we’ll be forever asking where it went. So, too, with life. “The days just seem to fly by faster and faster,” she said, moving to a chair more fully in shade, which had shifted since we’d first sat down.

The words of Moses here are a prayer, a prayer “that God would teach us to number our days, as if the present one was the last; for we cannot boast of tomorrow,” says John Gill in his exposition of Psalm 90. “We know not but this day, or night, our souls may be required of us.” To ‘number our days’ is to live in the awareness that our sunrises and sunsets will not go on forever; it is to live each day as our last, because the tricky thing about death is… we don’t know God’s schedule. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Why does numbering our days get us ‘a heart of wisdom?’ Do you know, when a person pauses to number his days, there’s a door opens up a bit wider in the heart towards the things of God…

The preceding verse in Psalm 90 says this—

“Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” There’re several different Hebrew words translated “fear” in our English Bible, but they don’t all convey identical meaning. In the case of the word ‘fear’ in this passage from Psalm 90, the word is yir'âh. Where other Hebrew words for ‘fear,’ and ‘the fear of God’ have to do with dread or abject terror, the word yir’ah conveys the meaning of admitting your vulnerable smallness in the presence of God’s overpowering vastness,  similar to what you would feel if you stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looked out. The word here means a recognition of and submission to the all-encompassing authority of God.

This verse, then, is very clear: God’s wrath towards people at the end of days is ‘according to’ their recognition of and submission to His authority. And do you know that when a person pauses to number their days, facing his or her mortality, there’s a door opens up a bit wider in the heart towards submission to the things of God— and the choice to submit to Him is ‘getting a heart of wisdom.’ “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10, Psalms 111:10, Proverbs 1:7, Job 28:28, etc.).

So what does “the fear of the LORD” look like for us, today? What is a true “God-fearing” man or woman? It is a man or woman who submits their life to Jesus. Jesus, through whom all things were created (Colossians 1:16), Jesus, God in the flesh (John 1:1-5,14), Jesus, the perfect man who took our sin (2 Corinthians 5:21), Jesus, the innocent man who took our punishment (1 Peter 3:18), Jesus, who rose again to life (Acts 2:29-32), Jesus, who personified salvation (John 3:16), Jesus, who claimed all the authority of God in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18), JESUS—and this is His gospel. Have you submitted your life to Jesus? When you do, it’s a healthy fear that purges the abject terror of God’s wrath, because “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

Whether or not you’ve ‘numbered your days,’ your days are numbered, and most of us won’t be blessed with as many todays to ‘get a heart of wisdom’ as the woman I spoke with on the porch painted black. Take it from someone who knows— ‘the days will just fly by faster and faster.’ So to you, I repeat the appeal of St. Paul in the New Testament book of 2 Corinthians, chapters 5,6—“We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he (God) made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him (Jesus) we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

I was privileged to share the gospel with a 92yr-old woman today. We sat together on a porch painted black and shadowed by wind-teased oaks. When I’d finished explaining what Jesus did for her, and that salvation required submitting to Christ through belief, I looked at her and asked, “What do you think about what I’ve just told you?”

‘I believe this!” she said with feeling, and eternity unfolded before her, even as the shadows forever fled.


Surrounded By Grace,
Josh

EPIC HUNTING RAP

Sometimes, there are just days when you sit up and say, "Well, why not?" Last Friday was such a day. Why not make a music video? About hunting? A rap music video about hunting? I mean, come on... why not? And so we did. 'Cause that is how we roll.

A DAY & A LIFETIME ~ 8/22/11

There’s an old and well-known Chinese proverb adopted by the Peace Corps that says, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” And this is the work of the Church. We believe in feeding the man. The whole man. Not just ‘Man as soul,’ but Man as he is portrayed in the Bible, as a body-soul fusion that cannot be dissected into separate parts. This means we believe in social work. We believe in soup kitchens and in homeless shelters. We believe in recovery programs and halfway houses. We believe in jail ministry and digging wells and food drives and Christmas boxes in Africa. We, the Church, believe in social work. Not because it is a clever tool to manipulate people into exposing their souls, but because we believe you cannot truly love a person’s soul without also caring for their body. Because the two are inseparable.

So the question will be asked, “Why are you doing this charity work or that social work? Are you trying to convert them?” What are we to answer? We are to answer with the truth: ‘Yes.’ Yes, we want to convert them. Yes, we want to save them. Yes, we want to lead them to the freedom they were created to enjoy. We want them to be rescued from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved son. Because otherwise… if our goal is not to change the man but only his circumstance, what does all our social work ultimately accomplish…? It feeds the man for a day. And that just won't do. Because we believe you cannot truly love a person’s body without also caring for their soul. Because the two are inseparable.

Lesslie Newbigin, a Church of Scotland scholar, bishop and missionary to India,

wrote that,

Even the works of Jesus were not self-interpreting. They needed the words in which he proclaimed the reality and the character of the reign of God. Much more do our faltering and ambiguous deeds need interpreting. One of the decisive experiences of my own life was a long vacation spent during my student days as part of a team of workers among the unemployed miners of one of the South Wales mining districts. The members of the group with which I worked were deeply convinced that they must confine themselves to social work, and that anything in the way of religious activity or preaching must be completely avoided. I was not at that time a Christian. But I could not fail to see that our social work was not meeting the deepest needs of these men and women who had rotted in unemployment for more than a decade. They needed more than food and games and education. They needed hope. They needed something to love and long for at a time when the world seemed to have no use for them. Our social work programmes alone could not communicate that: it needed the word, the word about Jesus and his Cross. It was in that situation that the death of Jesus first became a reality to me.

We, the Church, believe in feeding the man. The whole man. We do not believe in treating Man as a disembodied soul, but neither do we believe in treating Man as simply a machine of flesh, needing nothing but regular tune-ups and oil changes to function well. We believe in doing more than feeding the man for a day. We believe in teaching the man something. We believe in sharing a message with the man, a hope, a shout from the courts of heaven, a song from the lips of angels, a Gospel from the One who has gone ahead and forged a way to a freedom that will actually change the man, and not just his circumstance. And what is this Gospel? What is this 'good tidings of great joy that shall be to all people...?' “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-6)

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This is the work of the Church. We believe in feeding the man. The whole man. Not just ‘Man as soul,’ but Man as he is portrayed in the Bible, as a body-soul fusion that cannot be dissected into separate parts. This means we strive always to feed the man for a day—his daily needs are real, and important, and vital. But it also means we never forget also to feed him for a lifetime. And by ‘feed him,’ I mean preach the Gospel, and by ‘for a lifetime,’ I mean… for the sake of his eternity.

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh

THE TRUEST JOYS ~ 8/14/11

There’s a sadness to reunions, the good ones, the ones you actually look forward to. It’s a predictable sadness, a welcome sadness even, because the truest joys are known only by the deepest contrasts. The shadow proves the sunshine. There’s a sadness to reunions, and it is the ache of fixed sepia memories, reexamined in the fading light of short-lived todays. We recycle the past and look to the future, but we struggle to master these fleeting todays. They’re slippery things, filled with the clutter of our tangled timelines and a tide of fickle feelings. The past is predictable and the future is not, but the present is where we’re left to work out what it all means. And sometimes, when what you’re working out is the best of times with the best of friends, there just aren’t enough of these precious todays to string along together.

There’s a sadness to reunions, the good ones, the ones you actually look forward to, and if we were honest with ourselves instead of nostalgia’s willing accomplices, we’d admit up front we knew some form of the sadness was inevitable.  But we lie to ourselves. Because sometimes it’s just the shove we need to enjoy the gift of a today spent sharing the past, as fleeting as it may be. ‘It’s better to have loved and lost,’ as they say, ‘than to never have loved at all.’ I don’t know that anyone makes that kind of ‘better’ their goal in the dealings of love. No one goes intentionally looking for pain. But we do search for joy, deep joy, and for the things that matter and last, and what we soon discover in this search is that these very things are impossible to know without the risk of pain. When it comes to reunions, the good ones, the ones you actually look forward to, the intersection of the predictable past and the passing present means lots of smiles, lots of laughs, lots of joy, and then… sadness. That yesterday is history. That today is quickly gone. And that tomorrow just seems so far away.

My reunion is over, and I ache in a way tonight that I have not hurt in many years. Some will not understand this and think me strange, or perhaps oversensitive. Some will laugh and shake their heads. Some will quietly think I am too stuck in memory, and others may admit it’s the very reason they did not come at all. But for all the pain now, I'm glad I came. The reward was worth the cost. The joy was worth the heartache. And I, for one, will come again.

Thanks for memories, Class of ’96. I love you guys.

Sincerely,

Josh 

THE TRUST OF A CHILD ~ 6/20/11

The trust of a child is remarkable.
I took my two older boys to Redding today. It was hot. So, as any good American parent would do, we headed for the nearest air conditioned facility with free entertainment. In our case, it was the mall, domain of the tweens. I was terrified.


I parked near the closest entrance to the kids play area and we headed in, sons, pulling me forward reluctantly. A man with black lipstick opened the door for us. 'See,' I thought, 'it's what's inside that counts.' My oldest son wanted to know why that girl looked so manly. "Nathan," I said, "it's what's inside that counts."


The kids play area was remarkably quiet compared to 'normal.' Only a small handful of exhausted moms leaned heavily against the cushioned walls for moral support. Not for the first time did the words 'padded room' float uneasily through my brain. After helping the boys take off their shoes, I joined the exhausted moms.


The trust of a child is remarkable, but the trust of a child towards other children is nothing less than stunning. Total strangers, when children, could be lifelong friends. 
No ego.
No fear.
No pretense.
No prejudice.
Everyone's included.
Everyone's smiled at.
Everyone's important.
Everyone's accepted.


For about an hour, I watched my boys interact, play, plan and laugh with a dozen other little strangers with near perfect ease. It was a bit convicting to watch. Something about these young kids was just... so different... from so many adults. I don't know that I'm putting my finger on it exactly, but I think it has something to do with trusting the best in another person before assuming anything else. 'See,' I thought, 'it's what's inside that counts.'


Dear God, change me on the inside and make me like a child towards You and towards others. I know I need the wisdom of Christ, but give me also the trust of a child.
Amen.

FRIGHTFULLY BRAVE ~ 6/15/11

The porch light winked through the wind-tossed boughs of a creaking white cedar. “You’ll wish for this place once you’ve left it,” the night whispered, and I nodded a silent assent. In Ezekiel chapter three the prophet ate a bittersweet scroll, and as the sun dimmed fast over the north valley floor, I drank in a sweet Summer evening.

It had been a full day, and rich, but now I stole more, having ducked from the noise of the crowded house in search of reflection and quiet. We’d made the journey again, my family and I, down the serpentine mountain in two separate vehicles, churning and burping and false-starting our way eastward from the cool to the heat with a reunion on our hearts. My brother-in-law was back on a two-week leave before returning to Iraq, “Fourteen days,” he told me, “from when the wheels touch the ground.” It didn’t seem very fair. Then again, neither did bullets.

My wife had gone on before with two of the children in our air-conditioned car. Nathan, my oldest, kept me company in the passenger seat of the infamous old Ford, which will be celebrated when sold, but mostly mourned, and probably only by me. The windows all down was great ‘til it wasn’t, and the west-listing sun burnt what fun there was left clean out of my 6yr.-old passenger. He sat there sweltering in a pool of his own sweat. “I wish I’d gone with Mom,” he said tragically.

We arrived late in Willows to a ragtag tangle of family and friends in a park on the outskirts of town. There, fruitless mulberry trees formed a vaulted canopy that diffused the late afternoon heat into sporadic sunbeam swords, thrusting their way through and downwards towards the soft belly of earth where we sat sprawled on lawn chairs, laughing. Many had traveled hours to come— it was worth it, worth seeing each other, each other’s maturing children, each other’s maturing idiosyncrasies. I watched my warrior brother-in-law push a swing set to the limit with his three high school buddies, saw them goad each other towards nausea on a vintage green merry-go-round and enjoyed their arm wrestling on a concrete picnic bench. He was a kid again that day, free for a moment from the weight of his country, and honor, and of the responsibility for life he wears like a flak jacket every moment he’s ‘over there.’ It was good to see him laugh. He’d become so frightfully brave.

I remembered the camping trip, how many years was it now—?— on the coast with my in-laws, in tents. The warrior was a boy then, just a kid climbing trees. I had been by the fire, reading, when I heard his sharp yelp from behind me. Turning, I saw him, the boy warrior, slumping in the crook of a tree, knife in hand. He dropped the knife as I ran, and I saw a small cut on his hand. There wasn’t much blood, but enough to bring fear, and he asked me to help him get down. It was a small thing, to lift him, to set him down, to brush him off and steady him there. He was fine in minutes. But it floors me that this is that boy. There’s a comfort in knowing such change is possible in a man, such maturity.

But that day it was good just to see him laugh; he’d become so frightfully brave.

The crickets thrummed loud but the bull-frogs struck back, and the air was alive with the battle. A wax moon rose bright and early, urging corn-rows to stand up and the sun to lay down. The light all around was a hopeful blue. It was quiet out there by the fields, and spacious. Greedily, I drank it in. “You’ll wish for this place once you’ve left it,” the night whispered, and I nodded a silent assent. Laughter came suddenly from the warmth of the house, and light, and the cry of a baby. And when silence returned it seemed darker, but calm and I heard a flag snapping in the breeze.