Friday, October 19, 2018
A Fresh Start
For
a second time that Saturday before Memorial Day emergency workers scrambled to save
the life of D.B. As they loaded him into
their ambulance they could see where his face had been charred by the tailpipe
of his 1969 Ford Galaxie 500. He had been pinned under the 2,000-pound car,
after his wife accidentally ran over his chest as he lay drunk on his front
lawn begging God to take him out of this world because his life was such a
mess. The night before, D.B. had been drinking with friends and then tried to
walk home from the bar only to pass out in the middle of the road on Main
Street in Southbridge, MA. After visiting the emergency room, he was sent home
to sleep it off. Instead, he drank even more. That is how he ended up on his front
lawn in a stupor. That was the weekend that convinced him he had hit rock
bottom and that something needed to change in his life.
D.B. recalls that he was actually an
answer to his parent's prayer for a child, after they had experienced many
miscarriages and lost a full-term baby girl due to her umbilical cord being
wrapped around her neck. A few years later his brother was born, and the
doctors told his mother to never try having another child. But they prayed, and
he was born. His mother was loving and doting, and she was a praying woman. His
father was always working and when he was not working he was drinking alcohol.
Wanting to be like his father, he started drinking and smoking when he was 13 years
old and was an alcoholic by the time he was 17 years old.
After many alcohol-induced accidents
which should have taken his life and several brushes with the law which should
have put him in jail, he joined the Navy and began hanging around with people
that were addicted to alcohol. Then drugs became the norm. After being released
from active duty from the Navy, his drinking became heavier and many more
accidents ensued. One accident which should have killed D.B. involved a drunken
motorcycle race. When his front tire locked up he was catapulted down the road
at 70 miles per hour wearing only a T-shirt and dungarees. He lost a lot of
skin on that one, but he believes the prayers of his mother kept him from dying.
Then came the Memorial Day weekend
that marked the beginning of the end of his old life. Shortly after he returned
to work in Hartford while training a new employee, the trainee actually started
to train Him - using the Bible. D.B. was hungry for God at that point and
realized that this life is way too short to live it controlled by substances.
The trainee invited him to church, where he received the Holy Ghost and spoke
in tongues as the Spirit of God gave the utterance just like the Disciples and
Jesus’ mother did (see Acts 2). He was then baptized in the name of Jesus
Christ for the remission of his sins. Almost
forty years later his testimony is: “since that day I have never gotten into
another accident induced by alcohol or drugs.”
Saturday, October 13, 2018
My Lucky Friend
He lived a Huck
Finn existence, coming and going as he pleased. The rest of the kids in the
neighborhood considered him lucky. His parents didn’t nag him or set
boundaries. Every time our mothers called us in for church or dinner, we secretly
wished we had his life. He was roaming the streets late at night, going home to
eat whenever he felt like it, and experimenting with whatever he wished. How
lucky can you be?
From where I
stood, my friend lived an exotic life. Once he showed up at our house with an
owl on his arm. I mean, how many kids get to have a pet owl? Admittedly, he did
a few excessively adventurous things such as putting a water snake in his
mouth, so when he opened his mouth it would stick its head out and flash its
tongue. Of course, his unsupervised escapades led to more devious deeds, such
as tying cats’ tails together and hanging them over a clothes line to watch
them fight.
As we grew up
and entered high school our paths diverged, and I was aware that he was experimenting
with drugs and alcohol… still doing whatever he wanted, without anyone standing
in his way. It was a few years later, while away at college that someone gave
me the tragic update. My lucky friend had been shot and killed in a drug deal
gone bad. He didn’t even make it into his mid-twenties. His older sister met
the same fate shortly thereafter. Neither of them ever knew the joys of
marriage or parenthood. They never even really got to grow up.
Suppose someone
had cared enough to discipline my friend. Suppose they had loved him enough to
teach himself discipline. Having observed the end of a life without anyone to
be accountable to give me a fresh appreciation for our Heavenly Father who
loves us enough to judge us and hold us accountable.
Hebrews 12:6 declares, “For
the LORD disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his
child.” To embrace God is
to embrace His discipline. If we trust His character, we will eagerly count on
His discipline and be grateful that He loves us enough to save us from
ourselves. I was the one who was blessed and loved enough to be held
accountable. That accountability made
all the difference! Turns out my friend was not nearly as lucky as I thought.
Friday, October 05, 2018
Wonder-ful
Forty-six
eyes were glued to the presenter. Jaws dropped, and twenty-three first-graders leaned
forward, not even aware of the oohs and ahs that escaped their lips. Their
teacher breathed deeply, enjoying a rare moment of deep satisfaction. She had
finally found something that captured the imagination of every student. They were in a state of wonder, which would
hopefully stir up enough curiosity to motivate each of them to learn something
about rare, colorful lizards and how they hunt for food. It was a wonder-ful moment.
The
world is full of things people can explore in wonder. There are so many things
humans don’t know or understand about the world. We have still not explored all
of space or even all of our oceans. We still don’t know how to cure the common
cold or many other, more deadly diseases. There is much we don’t understand
about the human mind. We have yet to solve many social dilemmas. Life is
difficult for the unadventurous. It is stressful for those who feel the need to
understand or control everything. Because it is wonder-ful.
Most
of us happily engage in activities we don’t fully understand. We are involved
in relationships we don’t have very much control over. We use devices that are
so complicated we cannot fix them or figure out how they actually work. We live
in a world filled with wonder, embracing the unknown and pursuing the
unexplored. As a result, life is interesting, surprising and engaging.
Ironically,
when it comes to exploring God and the spirit world, people sometimes suddenly
demand to know and understand everything before proceeding. They often refuse
to believe anything they cannot control or at least graph and categorize. As a
result, Christians and churches sometimes feel pressured to stay in shallow
waters and avoid anything supernatural. But that was not the kind of
Christianity Jesus introduced to his followers. Jesus introduced an exciting,
miraculous, wonder-ful faith.
When
reading the Gospels and the book of Acts, it becomes obvious that Jesus and the
first century believers embraced things like the incarnation, deliverance from demons,
divine healing, the gifts of the spirit and the resurrection, as part of the
wonder-ful life of faith. The historical accounts do not record believers
asking Jesus to explain how he rose again, how he walked through walls after
resurrection, how he ate and was physically handled and then walked through
walls. They just lived in faith and
experienced the supernatural. They went on to die for a kingdom they could not fully
understand – because it was too wonder-ful.
Think
about it, if we understood it all, would it be all that special? I would rather
serve a God I do not fully understand than practice a religion made and
controlled by mere man. I am thankful for a wonder-ful God who I can trust with
all the things I can’t quite get my head around.
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