Small, Inglorious Things

Christians often think, "It is wonderful to be a Christian, but I am such a small person, so limited in talents-or energy or psychological strength or knowledge-that what I do is not really important." The Bible, however, has quite a different emphasis: With God there are no little people… and there are no little places….

Nowhere more than in America are Christians caught in the twentieth-century syndrome of size. Size will show success. If I am consecrated, there will necessarily be large quantities of people, dollars, etc. This is not so. Not only does God not say that size and spiritual power go together, but he even reverses this (especially in the teaching of Jesus). We all tend to emphasize big works and big places, but to think in such terms is simply to hearken back to the old, unconverted, egoist, self-centered Me.

When we’re asked to do a thing, especially in the Lord’s work, it really doesn’t matter whether the thing is “important” or not.  Our real attitude toward service is probably not measured by our performance in the big, glorious situations but rather by our steadfastness in the small, inglorious ones. So Paul said, “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Only one thing is important: to be consecrated persons in God's place for us, at each moment. Those who think of themselves as little people in little places, if committed to Christ and living under his Lordship in the whole of life, may, by God's grace, change the flow of our generation.

- Francis Schaeffer

Grief and the Art of Motorcycle Racing

     Bikers know what it means to “lean in” to the bends in the road.  If they want to turn right at a curve, they lean right.  At the same time, they countersteer by actually pushing the handlebars the opposite direction.  Lean right, but turn left.

   I have been known to do the opposite on both counts.  I intuitively tend to lean away from the curve (why would I want to be that close to the ground?), and I steer into the curve.  I even did this once with a friend’s three-wheeler.  It ended badly, but I’m happy to report the tree was fine.

   Those who learn how to “lean in” ride safely through the curves and continue on, the bike’s dirty side down and shiny side up.  Too often riders lay it down, much to the delight of thousands of people looking for entertainment on “Ridiculousness,” and much to the chagrin of the one who walks away with scars. 

    I have noticed there a many things in life in which the counterintuitive choice is the right one.  I intuitively want to lash out when I’m angry; kick the cat when it wakes me up at 2:00 in the morning last Monday; buy shiny things with credit cards; and eat whatever I want (hello, BWW!).  After all, it feels natural.  But when I do, I soon find I can’t handle the curves of life. The shiny side of my relationships, finances, and health go down in a hurry as I slide into the ditch, battered and scraped and in need of help.

    When I make the correct choice that goes against my initial response, I survive the curves.  I don’t hurt people when I’m angry; I don’t have to apologize to my wife about the whole cat incident; my credit stays good; my weight remains in the same area code.

    That’s a much better journey.  But in spite of all the positive results, counterintuitive is still hard.  It’s good, but it’s hard.

     Recently I was talking with some friends about grief.  One was grieving the death of a career and a dream: the other the death of a marriage. They approached me because they knew my father had died, and that I too was no stranger to grief.

     In the aftermath of loss, our initial, intuitive response is to lean away from the pain.  Even worse, we simultaneously steer our lives the wrong way and miss the curves.  This does not end well, as the curves in the road to grief recovery are not curves you want to miss. The ditches are deep, and very dark.

    But that’s what happens when we avoid leaning in and steering well.  In more practical terms, this involves leaning in to the depths of ourselves by thinking, talking and writing about deep emotions and poignant memories, and steering toward instead of away from God and others,

     The night may be dark, the road full of potholes, the driving conditions poor, and the turns hairpin. 

Lean in anyway. 

Somewhere down the road, grieving souls are lying in a ditch, waiting for someone who can nurse them back to health, set them back on the road of life, and teach them how to ride.

Every Song is a Sermon

"A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver."  - Proverbs 25:11


Communication is powerful.  The Bible warns about the power of our speech, suggesting we have the power to give and take away life with our words (Proverbs 18:21).  If you have ever received an insult or a poorly timed thoughtless comment,  or been brought from the depths of despair by a generous word, you know what this verse means. What we say matters, even in the things we think are just mindless amusements.


We can't escape the fact that worldviews are embedded in the arts and entertainment around us.  When the message is true and good, we walk away better people.  When the message is false and distorted, we walk away a little more broken than before whether we feel it or not.

Every song is a sermon. Every movie is a message.  Every book has a mission.

From a longer post at tcapologetics.org:

The church historically has worked itself into quite a few knots over what to do with culture.  There’s Jerusalem, and there’s Athens:  should they intersect or not?   To update Tertullian, what does Hogwarts have to do with Narnia, or LMFAO with Third Day? 

The Apostle Paul’s dove right in to Greek and Roman culture,  plundering the works of their own mid-level philosophers and using them to represent truth about the Kingdom of God.  While at the Acropolis (Acts 17), Paul quotes from a Hymn to Zeus written by the Hellenist poet Aratus (“For we are indeed His offspring”);  he also references Epimenides (“In him we live, and move, and have our being”),  who is credited with building the altar to the unknown God.

Cultural may be fallen, but cultural expressions of belief and faith can be redeemed.  We need the wisdom to “understand the times, and know what to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32).  Acts 17 also shows that while cultural apologetics will not take away the offense of the cross for everybody,  it can clear roadblocks on the way there for some.

We, the people of the Word, must be mindful of what we say, but we must also be alert to the messages we absorb.  There is power there.  We are being changed daily in one way or another.  We cannot go through life mindlessly absorbing and regurgitating the messages around us.  The solution is not to withdraw into frightened Christian cliques. We need to engage the messages and the messengers; discern what God would have us do and say as we bring redemption to a broken world; and take truth to a culture that so desperately needs to hear Christ's message of hope.

Deep Calls Unto Deep

Be prepared for the thing that crippled you to be the thing that brings the greatest glory to God.

     Ever notice how God is not content to heal people and let it go at that?  The lame man in Acts 3 did not just walk and leap after he was healed. He praised God for his healing, and as a result everyone around him was astonished.  Private experience became public ministry.  Though the Bible does not record what he did later, I suspect he told his crippled friends what happened.  They too needed hope.

     God knows the best help for the crippled comes from those who have experienced what others are going through.  We have a Savior who has experienced  our lives, who can identify with our struggles and pains.  He has called us to mirror Him to others.  He has healed us for the glory of His Kingdom, not just for our personal health.  We, too, must be prepared for God to use us to “save” those with whom we can identify. We see this principle around us all the time.

Recovery groups are headed up by people who have recovered.

Divorce Care class is often headed by people who have experienced the pain of broken families.

The best budgeting advice I’ve gotten is from people who had Ramen Noodles and water the whole way through college.

The best marriage advice comes from people whose marriage has been through the fire.

In the aftermath of my father’s death, I received the most comfort from others who were equally fatherless.

     “Deep calls unto deep,” said the writer of Psalm 42 as he was begging God to help him out of his despair. The word means literally “abyss”:  the things deepest in me call to the things deepest in you. One translation reads, “hollow howlings hang in the air.”  The deepest things in us call out for the depths of God.  Sometimes He answers by connecting the hollow “deep” within us  directly to Himself; sometimes he connects us to a “deep” within others that was once hollow as well, but has been filled by God.  

     Sheila and I had a rough start to our marriage.  We didn’t know each other; we didn’t know how to communicate; we were both selfish and immature.  But God was patient and faithful, and here we are 20 years later, by the grace of God.  When we counsel couples planning to get married, we tell them about everything we did wrong, because the things that crippled us may cripple others, and we want to do some preventative medicine by letting them hear a story of healing.  In fact, we can usually find fresh examples, and we have to tell them.  God has mended our brokenness; we must tell others that God will do that for them too.

     Recently, I walked into a room where a friend was talking to her husband on the phone.   When she hung up, she said, ”Sometimes you just have to laugh.”  I asked why, and she said, “Because otherwise you have to cry.”   Then she added without my asking, “Marriage is hard.”  And so we talked.  Deep calls unto deep.  

      My father’s death felt crippling to my emotions, to my prayer life, to my perspective on the sovereignty of God.  You know what I can do now that I couldn’t before?  I can empathize with people. I never talked with people before who had lost a loved one; I didn’t know what to do or say.  But since then I have been in situations where people have seemed to gravitate to me to discuss death.  At first I was confused: “Do I have a sign over me – ‘Talk about death with Anthony’?”  No, God was sending them my way.

     Last fall, in the food court at a mall in Grand Rapids, I met an ex-student I hadn’t seen in a while, and she mentioned that her grandfather had died.  I told her about my dad, and she asked me very tentatively, “Did you have dreams after he died?” Did I have dreams? Absolutely.  She was the first person I had talked to who also had dreams.

      And for about 10 minutes in the food court at a mall, deep called unto deep, and the healing crippled walked together for a time, grateful for a God who knows how to heal.

With a Quiver in our Voices

From John Polkinghorne, in Socrates in the City:

    "We live in a  world that is remarkably fruitful and beautiful, remarkably chilling and frightening and destructive. It is a very ambiguous sort of picture, and somehow or other, the bad things are the cost of the good things. That is not an argument you can utter without a quiver in your voice. The world is too complex and strange for that.
    A Christian understanding of God's relationship to suffering is not that God is simply a compassionate spectator looking down on the strange and bitter world that God holds in being. As a Christian, I believe that God is participating in the suffering of the world, that God is truly a fellow sufferer. The Christian God is the crucified God. That is a very deep and mysterious, though, I believe, true insight." 


     I was in Columbus, Ohio once when a massive ice storm rolled through.  The next morning, the world appeared to be covered in diamonds.  I loved it - until I had to drive.  The following morning, after a day in which the beauty of the ice brought destruction to dozens of vehicles, the Columbus Dispatch quoted one resident who said something along the lines of, "The world is so beautiful but so full of pain."
    All of creation groans, as if it remembers what it once was and once again will be.  As we wait for the day when all will be well, we embrace the moments of glory that give us such lovely glimpses of heaven in the midst of a broken world.