If You Love Happy Endings …

I spent some time in court last Tuesday afternoon. No, I wasn’t on trial for anything. I was there to watch the next chapter in a story that I’ve been watching for seven years now. But I get ahead of myself.

It all started when a mother called the church to see if we could help with Christmas presents for her seven-year-old son Gunnar. The family's names were then given to one of our Sunday School classes. Two ladies in the class, Sally and Terry, were assigned to purchase and deliver presents for those two boys. Little did Sally and Terry know what they were getting into when they stopped by the house to drop off the presents! God had bigger things in mind. In fact, though unbeknownst to Sally and Terry, God was shaping an answer to a little boy’s prayer. And it wasn’t a prayer for nice presents or a new bike for Christmas. Gunnar had been asking God to rescue him from the situation in which he lived. I won’t go into the problems in their home, but suffice it to say they were serious and dangerous: two parents who loved their kids in their own way but with some serious issues. They were way over their head in trying to take care of a child.

So Sally and Terry dropped off the presents and Gunnar took more than the presents they carried in their arms; he stole the ladies’ hearts. They were drawn to Gunnar; Gunnar was drawn to them. And they knew this would not be their last visit with this family. So instead of turning a blind eye or writing off that family’s troubles as just tough luck for a little boy, Sally and Terry began to work with the family. The family even added another boy not long after—a little bundle of joy named Freddy. Amid many frustrations, Sally and Terry didn’t give up. They continued to try to help this family be a family. But it was a losing battle. And what began as an effort to help parents take care of their own children eventually became legal guardianship of those boys for Sally and Terry.

Sally is a college president. Terry is an administrator in a local public school. Sally has never married. Terry has already raised two kids of her own. Now, as longtime friends well into their 50s, they share a home, and they invited Gunnar and Freddy to live in their home and be their boys for awhile. The court agreed to legal guardianship, and Gunnar and Freddy moved in. Did I tell you that this answered a second prayer Gunnar had prayed: that he and Freddy get to move in with Sally and Terry?

Finally placed in soil with the right nutrients, Gunnar and Freddy began to blossom. Our church family watched this unfold before our eyes. We watched shy, insecure children become more confident, more open, more social, and less anxious. Hillary Clinton wrote a book in which she said it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a church too, and a number of folks in the church stepped up to help Sally and Terry love and care for those boys. Mandy became the A-#1 babysitter, and R.L. and Diana provided a lot of care for the boys too (Sally and Terry have busy careers and lives). Dr. Lance took those boys fishing whenever he could. Our children’s and youth pastors reached out in a variety of ways. Sunday School teachers helped. It was a group effort. A good counselor and a kind attorney played their roles in this drama too. But it’s always been Sally and Terry on the frontlines. In spite of the emotional and physical weariness that comes from trying to raise two young boys (young enough to be their grandchildren), in spite of the extra emotional baggage those boys carry, and in spite of the demands of challenging occupations, Sally and Terry invested their lives and their time and their resources in those boys. They did it gladly. And in doing so, they rescued two boys from God-knows-what. Gunnar’s prayers were answered.

The rescue effort took a new turn on Tuesday. Gunnar and Freddy were officially adopted by another family. Sally and Terry were very careful about the process, but God opened the door to a Christian family that has raised some kids of their own and was ready to raise some more. After months of checking it out and giving the boys and the family plenty of time to see if this was right, they all determined it was. God was in it. God was for it. And God was going to get it done. And it’s a pretty sweet deal for Gunnar and Freddy. They get to live in the country. They have a horse to ride and woods to explore and play in. And best of all, they have new parents with the maturity to love them and guide them and provide for them. Add to their new family a couple of grandmothers named Sally and Terry, and God couldn't have been kinder to Gunnar and Freddy. The boys have even decided that they wanted to take their new family's name. Every kid should have it so good. And I'll admit it: even though I’m not as close to those boys as are several others, I got a little misty-eyed at court watching God pour out all this grace on those boys. I found myself praying He would do as much for so many other children who are in the same boat. As you can imagine, Sally and Terry were pretty emotional too. And they should be. They literally saved those boys lives in so many ways. And they did it when they didn’t have to, when nobody would have expected them to, and when some of the people who watched this unfold must have thought those two ladies were nuts to take on such a challenge. After the proceedings were over, I hugged Sally, and whispered these words the Lord gave me to say to her: “And God said, ‘I’m proud of my daughter Sally.’” And He’s proud of his daughter Terry too. A party followed in the jury room—and I'm pretty sure heaven threw a party as well. What can I say? I’m a sucker for happy endings.

That’s probably a good place to stop, but there’s one more thing I want to tell you about this story. Around three years ago, Gunnar trusted Jesus as His Savior and Lord. God had answered Gunnar’s prayer that he and Freddy be saved from their dangerous home. And now God answered Gunnar's prayer for the salvation of his soul. In obedience to Jesus, Gunnar followed his commitment to Jesus with baptism. I’ll never forget it. It meant so much to him and to everyone who had played a role in Gunnar’s story. It was emotional for a lot of us.

And at the end of the service when I was giving him his baptism certificate and Bible, I reminded him that while he no longer lived with his birth family, adoption is a beautiful thing because that’s the only way any of us can become a child of God. The apostle Paul put it this way: “God predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” (Eph. 1:5).

Then, God prompted me to tell him a Fred Craddock story that came to mind. Craddock writes that while eating dinner at a small restaurant in the Smoky Mountains, he and his wife were engaged in conversation by an old man. The old man asked them lots of questions about where they lived and what they did. When Craddock told the man that he was a minister in the Christian church, the old man said that he owed a great deal to a minister of a Christian church, and he pulled up a chair to tell his story.

The old man said that he grew up in those Tennessee mountains. His mother was not married and everybody in town knew it. He was what people called an illegitimate child, though most used the more degrading and derogatory term. The old man said, “In those days that was a shame, and I was ashamed.” He felt the stares and the glares of people everywhere he went. He heard the whispers when he entered a room, heard people trying to guess who his father might be. Needless to say, he tended to stay to himself and really didn’t have any friends.

In his early teens he started to attend the Laurel Springs Christian Church. He was attracted to the minister, a man with a chiseled face, a heavy beard, and a deep voice. “I waited until sermon time to enter the church,” he said, “and I hurried out as soon as it was over, fearing that someone would stop me and say, ‘What’s a boy like you doing in a church?’”

One Sunday as he was trying to hurry out, he got trapped in a line of people. That’s when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was the minister. “He turned me around," said the old man, "so we were face to face. He studied me for a moment. I knew what he was doing: he was trying to figure out who my father might be.” A moment later the preacher said, “Well, boy, you’re a child of …” and he paused there. “I knew what was coming,” said the old man. “I knew I would have my feelings hurt and I would never come back to that church again.” And then the preacher finished his sentence: “Boy, you’re a child of God. I see a striking resemblance, boy.” Then, the preacher swatted him on the bottom and said, “Now, you go claim your inheritance.” The old man concluded his story by saying, “I left that building a different person. In fact, that was really the beginning of my life.”

Craddock was so moved by the story he had to ask the old man, “What’s your name?” The man said, “Ben Hooper.” And that’s when Craddock recalled his own father once telling him about how the people of Tennessee had twice elected as governor an illegitimate named Ben Hooper.

I told that story to Gunnar and I could tell the same story to his brother Freddy. Why? Because I see a striking resemblance of their Heavenly Father in both of them. And with a Father like God, who knows how He might bless and use their lives in years to come. You should have seen God use Gunnar’s life and testimony at a camp our church hosted last summer for at-risk kids. Everybody saw the resemblance of Gunnar’s Father in him at that camp. Anyway, that’s a bit of the rest of the story—a story yet to unfold in it fullest. Makes me think of something else the apostle Paul had to say, "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6). I guess God loves happy endings too.

Please Find Something Else to Talk About

A couple of weeks ago, Dayna and I went to see a movie. I’m cheap, so we try to make the afternoon matinee and save a couple of bucks. You know who else likes afternoon matinees: a good many of our older population. In Hot Springs we have a lot that demographic. In fact, I’m rapidly becoming that demographic.

Anyway, we took our seats near the back on the aisle. There was an older couple sitting just across the aisle from us. And just after we sat down, another older couple slowly made their way down the aisle past us. They were moving gingerly because the man, walking with a slight limp, was trying to balance a couple of cokes in his hands while hugging a huge bucket of popcorn to his chelly (that’s what you call that part of the body when you can’t tell where the chest stops and the belly begins). He was a big ol’ boy for sure. I was fearful that either a coke or the popcorn was about to say hello to the floor, but he made it. He scooted sideways past the aisle seat, then wiggled down into the next one. Score! The dude made it, and he wasn’t in that seat two seconds before he had a handful of popcorn on the way to his mouth. I liked him immediately because here was a man after my own heart, a man who understands that movies are more about the popcorn than anything else.

His wife followed behind leaning on a cane. She was rather rotund herself, wide at the hip, and more or less dragging a leg. She got to her seat, turned slightly toward Dayna and me, found the arm of the seat behind her to catch her balance, tried to hang her cane on the seat in front of her, then made a quick twist to her left and semi-collapsed into the seat. The seat held. She let out a sigh of what I thought was relief but soon discovered it was one of anguish. All was not well. Poor thing couldn’t settle. So she grabbed the top of the seat in front of her, pulled herself up, and announced to anyone within earshot that all that wiggling to sit down twisted up her pants, and she had to get them straightened out. She proceeded to grab the back of her pants with one hand, the front of her pants with the other, and give them a firm jerk to the right. Now, all was well.

But the old man seated behind her just couldn’t resist asking her about her ailments. He saw the cane. He watched how hard it was for her to walk and sit down and get up. So before she sat back down, he popped the question: “Something wrong with your leg?” It was at this point that I leaned over to Dayna and said, “You watch, he’s not interested in her leg. I bet he just wants to tell her about his own ailments.” And I nailed it. No sooner did she start to talk about the hematoma in her calf that made it so hard to blah, blah, blah, blah, then he started rattling on about his two knee replacements blah, blah, blah, blah. He didn’t even wait for her to finish her sentence. I’m not sure either one heard a word of what the other said; they appeared to be happy just to talk about their own aches and pains. And two other people in the picture seemed to be happy as well: the wife of double knee replacement and the husband of hematoma. I think they were happy that their spouse had found somebody else besides them to jabber on and on with about their sufferings. Oh, and I was happy too, because I leaned over to Dayna and whispered, “I just got an idea for my blog.”

Why is it that some folks feel such a need to discuss all their ailments? I work out a lot. I stay in good shape, but I get dinged up now and then, and I’ll admit that when I do I like to tell people what’s hurting. Why is that? Am I trying to explain why I’m moving slower than usual? Am I wanting sympathy? Am I really saying that I can’t believe this is happening to me and by talking it out sort of come to grips with it? I don’t know. Maybe a little bit of all of that. People don’t suffer in silence very well. Most want to talk about it: especially their physical sufferings.

Being a pastor, I hear lots of this stuff. That’s okay. I want to know what’s going on in the lives of my church family. I want to know how they hurt so I can pray for them more specifically. But I weary of the ouch by ouch description that some seem so compelled to share. Listen to too much of that and it will suck the life right out of you. That’s why I sometimes find myself saying to them, “Please find something else to talk about. If you don’t, people will start to identify you with your ailments. They’ll want to hide when they see you coming because you wear them out.” Some folks learn; some folks don’t. I remember visiting a cancer patient at the hospital who was suffering so much from her cancer that even morphine couldn't knock it out. And though she didn’t say it, I think she suffered most by having to listen to another visitor in the room chronicle the history and migrations of his various and sundry back pains. (The pain he was causing the patient and me was located just below the back.) I didn’t say it to him, but I should have: “Please find something else to talk about it. Seriously. The patient has suffered enough." I walked out of that hospital room worn out.

But you know what’s uplifting? It’s a visit like I had just today in the hospital with an older lady who suffered a terrible fall, peeled most of the skin off her arm, some off her face, and has the skin on both knees stapled together. I asked her what happened. She told me. She was brief and too the point, because that’s not what she really wanted to talk about. She wanted to talk about her blessings. She wanted to talk about God’s watch-care and providence in her life. She wanted to talk about some good news concerning a daughter battling cancer. We prayed over these things and for her return to health. And as I was leaving she smiled and said, “This too shall pass.” I walked out of that hospital room energized, humbled, and grateful that God would put such a saint in life. And a Scripture came to mind: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are preparing for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor. 6:16-17).

If we live long enough, we’ll all experience our share of ailments. It's okay to talk about them. It's even healthy to talk about them to some extent, but keep it short, okay. Don't pitch a tent and live there. Move the conversation along. Find something else to talk about: the ballgame, the weather, gas prices, your hobbies, your dreams, your family, or maybe even your blessings. Not only will you find yourself lifted up and encouraged, you might find you have a few more listeners too.

Another Season in the Books

Ten years ago our church family decided to build a Family Life Center (which is church code for gym). We didn’t build it so we could pamper ourselves. We built it because we wanted to bring Upward Basketball to our city. And we just finished up our tenth season this past weekend.

It’s a big deal. Upward Basketball is a program for children designed to give them a quality basketball experience while opening doors for sharing the gospel. Coaches share a devotion with their team at every practice. During halftime of every game, someone shares a testimony or a brief talk about Jesus with the kids’ families who’ve come to watch the games. And at the end of the season we have a big celebration in which we get to share the gospel with the children and their families. Upward allows us to share the love of Christ with hundreds of people every week for about seven weeks. So Upward is an open door for the gospel.

But it’s also an open door for the kids who might not find a place in any other league in town. We have some good players every year—kids who would be stars in anybody’s league—but we also have a number of kids, some even with disabilities that we find a place for and a coach for and a team for. We had a nearly blind kid for a few seasons. We’ve had kids with autism and seizure-risks and even some brain damage. We get to love on them and their families, and they get to play as much as anybody else. Then, in the post-game meeting they get a star to put on their shirt for something they did in the game to help their team.

It’s a lot of fun. For the first few seasons I coached a team. And while I love to play basketball, I’m not much of a coach. Except for one 5th and 6th grade girls team, my teams never were much good. We don’t keep an official score in Upward for the younger kids, but most coaches keep score anyway. And the score of most of my games was Other Team: Too Much – My Team: Not Enough. But we always had a good time.

One of my favorite teams was a group of 1st and 2nd grade boys. I had twins on that team who were absolutely clueless about basketball and were there not because they wanted to be but because their dad was making them play. I remember giving the team a pep talk before a game, trying to get the boys ready and focused. One of the twins raised his hand. “Yes,” I thought to myself, “he’s finally getting into it.” And he asked, “Will it be dark when we get through?” (It was 8:00 in the morning.) “Focus,” I said. And about that time his brother raised his hand with a question: “Do your legs sweat in those pants?” Well, needless to say, we weren’t focused. At one practice I was really trying to get those boys to pay attention and to give some effort so I bent down to look them right in the eye and make my point. No sooner did I straighten up then one of the boys started waving his hand in front of his nose signaling that I must have had some serious bad breath going on. Upward is a lot fun.

In the last few seasons, I traded in my coach’s hat for a referee’s whistle. We get a little cat-calling from parents and coaches who don’t like what we call or what we don’t call, but we don’t get much of that in Upward. And when I ref, I get a front row seat to see some really neat stuff happen on the court—which brings me to my highlight for the 2011 season. It happened Friday night with the 5th-7th grade boys. There’s a kid named Ty on one of the teams. He’s a fifth-grader and a little feller—the smallest kid on the court. He’s played Upward for the last few seasons, but he’s got some issues that keep him from really grasping this whole basketball thing. But he loves to play. He’s a joy to watch. And nobody has a better time on a Friday night than Ty.

In between periods on Friday, his coach told us refs that they were going to try to get Ty a shot at the goal. The kid rarely got the ball all season long, but we really try to see that every kid gets to make a basket before the season is over, and his coach wanted Ty to score. They’d tried before and it had yet to happen. This was the last game so it was now or never. His tall teammate, a good player, worked hard to get Ty the ball in a position close to the goal where Ty could shoot it. His defender backed off of him to give him a chance. Ty’s so small he can’t get it to that 10-foot goal goal by shooting the ball from his shoulders or his head. So he had to do a granny shot—a two-handed, underhand toss up at the basket. He got about three shots close in. He hit the rim a couple of times. And with every try the crowd would hold their breath and then groan at the miss. Time was running out. Somehow Ty ended up with the ball outside the three-point line (which is around 20 feet from the goal). People were yelling, “Shoot!!” but he was too far from the goal to even get it close, right? Wrong. The kid pulled that ball down between his legs, threw his whole body into the shot, let her fly, and … swish! A little string music. Nothing but net. And a three-pointer no less—one of only four that I remember being made all season long. You should have heard the crowd—family and friends of both teams rising to their feet to cheer. And you should have seen Ty running and jumping down the court with both arms raised in triumph, kids giving him high-fives. For a fleeting moment, time stood still, and Ty was “the man.” In the words of ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale, it was “Awesome, baby!!” And I wouldn’t be surprised if Ty remembers that moment for the rest of his life.

That’s my basketball highlight for Upward 2011. But there are always other highlights of a different nature: kids encouraged and loved whether they are star athletes or whether they trip over the free throw line; families blessed by the way their kids are treated; people mustering up the faith and courage to get out of their shell and share a testimony about Jesus at halftime of a game; and some folks—kids and adults—discovering the life that only Jesus can offer. That’s what Upward is all about. That’s why we built the gym … uh, I mean Family Life Center. And that’s why so many dedicated volunteers pray, coach, ref, work possession arrows, serve concessions, set up, clean up, and organize that whole wonderful thing.

Not long after Ty made his big play, the father of a player on the other team said to me, “God made that shot.” And he’s right: God did make that shot. But it’s not the only shot God made this season in Upward. And most of them had nothing to do with a ball and a rim and a net.

Of Presidents and Pastors: Harry Truman and Leadership

One of my favorite biographies of all time is David McCullough’s Truman: the life story of President Harry S. Truman. I read that shortly after it was released, in part, because I’ve always enjoyed history and biographies and presidential stuff. I had a special interest in Truman because at the time I was living in the Kansas City area. Truman lived most of his life in that area—Independence, Missouri, in particular. I’ve visited his library a couple of times. I’ve seen his house near downtown Independence. I was very familiar with many of the places Truman once walked and campaigned and worked. It was a great read.

But I have to admit one of the things that struck me most in my reading was the way that being a president and being a pastor share some of the same burdens. I’m not saying that being a pastor is as difficult as being the president. I don’t have to worry about terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the economy, and trying to get stuff done with a group of people, half of whom, want to see me run out of office at the next election. (Well, maybe that last one does apply to pastors from time to time.) Pastoral work is not as difficult, the burdens not as heavy, the consequences of my decisions and actions not usually so far reaching. Still, reading Truman showed me there are some similarities. Let me highlight four.

Here’s the first. In November, 1947, Harry Truman wrote his sister and told her that no man in his right mind would ever wish to be President if he knew what it entailed. What he wrote about the presidency often rings true with the pastorate. Listen to what he wrote her: "Aside from the impossible administrative burden, he has to take all sorts of abuse from liars and demagogues … The people can never understand why the President does not use his supposedly great power to make 'em behave. Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." Sometimes the pastorate feels like that. While the church at its best shows herself to be the bride and the body of Christ, she can also be a royal pain in the rump. Someone once said that being in the church is sometimes like being in Noah's Ark: “If it weren't for the storm without, we could never stand the smell within.” And yet that is the outpost to which pastors are called—the church in all its beauty and mystery, its ugliness and pettiness, its divine and human elements. And sometimes pastors feel like no man in his right mind would ever wish to be the pastor of a local church if he knew what it entailed. That’s the first similarity.

Here’s the second. Harry Truman earned the nickname “Give ‘em hell” Harry. When asked why people called him that, Truman said, “I never gave anybody hell. I just told them the truth, and they thought it was hell.” Sounds like a lot of preaching a pastor has to do. It’s a pastor’s task to speak the truth whether people like it or not, whether it’s popular or not, whether it’s gets him a raise in his salary or a boot out the door. So that’s the second similarity.

Here's a third. In writing to Harry Truman about the Kennedy White House, Dean Acheson penned these words about their preoccupation with image: “This is a terrible weakness.  It makes one look at oneself instead of at the problem.  How will I look fielding this hot line drive to short stop?  This is a good way to miss the ball altogether.”  Pastors who are so overly concerned about what others think of them that they try to project an image rather than be true to who they truly are can stand this reminder: be yourself and focus on issues rather than appearances.

Now here’s the fourth. One of the issues that fell into Truman’s presidential lap was the random, senseless violence and blatantly unfair treatment against blacks. In trying to deal with the issue Truman was fighting strong opposition from the South, and even fighting his own prejudices. But he came to this conclusion, as written to one of his critics: "I can't approve of such goings on and I shall never approve of it, as long as I am here … I am going to try to remedy it and if that ends up in my failure to be reelected, that failure will be in a good cause." It’s been unusual in any age of politics for a politician to put principle ahead of popularity. We pastors could learn to do the same thing. Of course, like presidents, pastors are wise to pick their fights. If a pastor’s going to die trying to take a hill, it better be a hill worth dying on. But that element of courage is as important in pastoral work as it is in a president’s work. And the underlying integrity of such courage seems to be crucial to a pastor’s overall character.

So there you have it. There are other similarities, like Truman’s “The Buck Stops Here” placard on his desk; his wife’s distaste for, discomfort in, and dislike for being a president’s wife; following a popular president who had just been elected to his fourth term and then died in office; and Truman’s refusal to believe he was ever anything other than a common man. Those things also speak to the pastoral life. But I’ll save those things for another day.

I don’t know much about Truman’s religious faith. I do know he was thought to be a Baptist, and he did attend First Baptist Church in Independence now and then (it was only a block from his home). Apparently, his language could be a little salty. But if you don’t think a pastor’s language can be a little salty too, you’ve never played golf with one. Still, whether Truman was a committed Christian or not I’ve learned a lot from him. So on this President’s Day, I’m thankful for all our presidents. But today I’m thankful most of all for President Harry S. Truman who taught me how to be a better pastor.

You Have St. Valentine to Thank for This

Happy Valentine’s Day! Did you know that this day has its roots in the legend of an early Christian leader? In fact, two Valentines are mentioned in the early martyrologies as having feast days in their honor on February 14. One was a Roman priest and the other a bishop of Interamna. Both appear to have been buried along the Flaminian Way, so it’s quite possible, as many speculate, that these two were the same man.

According to tradition, Valentine ministered during the reign of Emperor Claudius II in the third century. He was imprisoned, beaten, and beheaded on February 14, c. 270. As a friend of mine posted on Facebook today, they don’t tell you that on the Valentine cards. And why would they? What’s more romantic: a red heart on a card or a bloody head in a basket?

So, with all that blood and gore, how did Valentine get associated with a day of love and romance? According to the legend, Valentine undercut an edict of Emperor Claudius. The emperor wanted to recruit more soldiers for his army, so he tried to weaken family ties by forbidding marriage. But Valentine ignored the order and secretly married couples in the underground church. Once the government got wind of these activities, Valentine was arrested and tossed in the slammer. This part of the tradition is probably true.

The next part sounds a little fishy to me. Apparently, while in jail Valentine became friends with the jailer’s daughter, and being bored out of his mind as he languished in a dank dungeon, he amused himself by cutting shapes in paper and writing notes to her. His last note arrived on the morning of his death and ended with the words, “Your Valentine.” (It’s a nice story, but it just doesn’t ring true to me. There's wasn't an Office Depot on every corner, you know, and I don't think Roman guards would be supplying sharp objects to their prisoners.)

Anyway, by 496, February 14 was named in Valentine’s honor. Christianity was now a “legal” religion in the empire and many pagan festivals were baptized and christianized. Valentine’s Day christianized the pagan festival of Lupercalia, which was a celebration of love and fertility in which young men put the names of girls in a box, drew them out, and celebrated lovemaking. Valentine’s Day sort of cleaned that up and encouraged more innocent expressions of affection like notes and gifts.

So there you have it. That's the rest of the story concerning Valentine’s Day—that annual celebration of romantic love. I think it’s safe to say that women like Valentine’s Day a lot more than men do. Women tend to be a little better at romantic expressions than men are. And some men are just plain pathetic when it comes to this kind of thing. I’ve even known guys who broke up with their girlfriends before Valentine’s Day so they wouldn’t have to make a fuss and spend a lot of money on the big day, only to try to hook back up with them a week or two later. Real smooth, guys.

And as if that’s not bad enough, I know husbands who, day in and day out, don't treat their wives much better than that. But since breaking up a marriage is much more complicated than breaking up a courtship, husbands are kind of stuck. And if a husband doesn’t do something for his wife on Valentine’s Day, well, what’s that saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn”? So at the very least, Valentine’s Day serves as motivation for the lazy, inattentive husband to do something nice for his wife: buy her a card, send her some flowers, give her a gift, wine and dine her for a change. I guess it’s a good thing to have a day to motivate a husband to express his love for his wife. And I suppose most wives would say it’s better than nothing. But it seems to me that if it takes a day on a calendar to make a husband act like he loves his wife, then that marriage is adrift in ways a Hallmark valentine, a dozen roses, and a candlelight dinner won’t fix.

(Sources for this post: Dictionary of Christian Biography, Michael Walsh, ed., and On This Day in Christian History by Robert Morgan.)

On Snow

I’ve got a few friends from up north who like to blog. In light of all the snow that’s been dumped on those poor Yankees this winter, they’ve all felt compelled to write a blog about snow. I’ve enjoyed their blogs. They comment on how pretty it all is. They write of childhood experiences in the snow, of warm memories of sledding and skating and building snowmen with their family and friends. They quote Bible verses, they write philosophically of how God may just use this snow to slow us down a bit and remind us that we’re not in control, and that if it does that, the snow can be spiritually liberating. They all acknowledge that the white stuff gets tiring for sure, but the larger lessons to be learned from the inconvenience of snow are worth the trouble that comes with it. Noble stuff.

I guess I could write a similar blog on snow. Like my Yankee friends, I have lots of great childhood memories of snow as well. But the sledding and snow football days of childhood have been replaced by shoveling and by taking my life in my hands driving on treacherous roads that wouldn’t recognize a snow plow if they saw one. Maybe I’ll quote a Bible verse here: “When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man I put away childish things” (1 Cor. 13:11). So, all that said, here’s my blog on snow:

I hate it. I’m sick of it. I want it to go away. The end.

Now That's What I Call an Offering!

On four Sundays in January I preached a series of sermons entitled Money Matters. We talked about God’s ownership of all things, the wisdom of living within our means, the importance of the tithe, and God’s promise to meet a giver’s needs. Though I preach on money issues once or twice a year, I haven’t attempted a series on money in eight years. And let’s face it: the church already has a bad enough rep in the world for being just one more money-grubbing organization. So I didn’t know what to expect. Would attendance hold up or would folks decide to miss church for that overdue visit to grandma or take that winter vacation to some warmer climate (where nobody is talking about money)? Well, much to my delight, attendance was excellent. And the sermons stirred conversations among people everywhere from Sunday School classes to gatherings of friends in other venues, not to mention record interest in our spring sessions of Financial Peace University. God was obviously up to something.

And I’m glad He was. Over thirty years of experience have taught me that when Christ takes lordship over our finances, He begins to take more and more ground in our hearts. Financial obedience nurtures a deeper dependence on and trust in God; it deepens gratitude; it reshuffles one’s priorities; it strikes a blow against the materialistic-consumer spirit that so dominates American culture and our own hearts; and it moves us from being takers to becoming givers. Giving God and His kingdom priority in your finances can be one of the most spiritually liberating things you ever do.

Anyway, we finished the series on January 30, but as a conclusion and a challenge to apply these truths to our lives, we declared Sunday, February 6, as Prove-the-Tithe Day. Well, our folks proved the tithe, all right. Our normal first Sunday offering is usually in the neighborhood of $50,000, but yesterday our people gave over $81,000. Somebody was proving the tithe—several somebodies. And while it was a praise-stirring, gratifying thing to see this offering, that’s not the best thing I experienced about Prove-the-Tithe Day.

That experience occurred between our first worship service and Sunday School. I went down to the preschool area to retrieve a protein bar I asked my wife to bring for me (since I forgot to bring it myself). In the hallway, I crossed paths with Chris and Misty, a young couple in our church family who have a couple of kids, Kennedy and Bo. Kennedy is six-years-old, and Chris showed me her offering envelope. Chris often helps take up the offering in the worship, so Kennedy is pretty well acquainted with offering envelopes, and she had filled out her own for this Sunday. It was really something. It’s an envelope identical to the one in the picture above. The one in the picture is blank, but Kennedy’s was not. In the “budget offering” box she wrote her name, “Kennedy.” In the other giving boxes, she wrote, “daddy” and “mommy.” In the name and address lines she put: “I love Jesus” and “I love God.”

That really struck a chord with me. And my first thought was, “Kennedy gets it. She really gets it.” Offerings are not so much the heart of the matter as they are a matter of the heart. And Kennedy’s heart was in the right place. She had no money to give (she’s only six); yet she gave something far better and something more fundamental. She offered herself. If God doesn’t own our hearts, then are financial gifts are little more than dues to be paid or some sort of spiritual taxation. When God owns our hearts, our financial gifts become a pleasing sacrifice to Him. The best and first offering we make is ourselves: “Lord, here I am. Lord, I give myself to you. Lord, I’m yours.” It sounds sort of like Paul’s word to the Romans, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies to God as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.” I remember reading about the offering time in a worship service at another church. A young man in the congregation, new to Christ and the church, knew nothing about such things and had no money in his pockets at the time. So when the offering plate passed by him, he did a most unusual thing: he set it on the floor and stepped right into it. Like Kennedy, that young man intuitively grasped the deeper dimensions of our tithes and offerings to God: "My offering is me." Because when God has me, he has my time, my talents, my treasure—He has it all.

When Kennedy put her pencil to her offering envelope, I doubt she understood the theological import of what she did. I'm not sure one of our money-counters would have known what to do with that envelope either, except maybe to smile and consider it kind of a cute, childlike thing to do. But God saw the import of it, and so did I. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the envelopes our money-counters tallied up on our Prove-the-Tithe Day were marked with four-figure gifts—good and needed gifts to be sure. But this I know: no gift on Sunday was any more precious to God than Kennedy’s gift of herself.

I guess it's not just from the mouths of babes we can learn a thing or two; we can learn a little something from their pencils too.