Hoe to the End of the Row and Then Some…

My step-father, Lawrence, was not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination, but he excelled at one key virtue: Endurance.  He simply would not quit.

When Lawrence was growing up during the Great Depression, children did not play, they worked.  I heard old-timers tell about the whole Prescott family hoeing strawberries.  In the age before herbicides, a hoe was the primary tool of weed control.  Lawrence, his brothers Barney and Bedford, and his father would each take a row and a hoe, and attack the weeds.  When each finished his row, they would turn and start down the next row.

Pat Conroy once said Charleston heat felt like you were trying to dog-paddle across a hot tub.  Pat Conroy never hoed strawberries in Florida.  Legend has it that my Uncle Kelly and Herman Collins were hoeing one day when Herman threw down his hoe and declared, “Kelly, there’s a revival at the Baptist Church tonight.  I believe I’m going to surrender to preach, because preaching has got to be easier than this.”  I don’t know if that story is true, but you get the idea.

The old-timers said they would see Lawrence’s dad at the far end of a row.  Barney, the oldest, would be about half-way down his row.  Bedford, the youngest boy, would be leaning on his hoe, taking a breather.  Lawrence would have already made the turn and started back down the next row.  A boy of no more than ten years-old, he could out-hoe all comers.

I experienced Lawrence’s endurance first hand.  He believed in starting early and working until you couldn’t see anymore.  If we were working cows, he would say, “I believe we can get this last bunch done before dark.”  Many a time we wound up working in the dark, using flashlights to see what we were doing.  All of us would be dead tired – except Lawrence.

Heaven help you if something got lost.  Lawrence believed in searching until something was found.  I remember a piece of a tractor fell off in a hundred-acre pasture (Yes, pieces of tractors fall off.  The Buckhorn Ranch tractors shed parts like a duck sheds water).  We rode up and down that hundred acres in the truck, got out and walked, until we found it. 

Lawrence loved Florida Gator football.  We had season tickets and Lawrence believed in getting his money’s worth.  In the 70’s, Gator football could be right tedious.  No matter how bad we were getting trounced, Lawrence would stay until the bitter end.

I’ll admit his endurance drove me crazy when I was young.  It wasn’t until my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease that I realized how important endurance really is. Alzheimer’s robs a person of life inch by inch.  As my mother began to slip away, Lawrence endured.  “For better or worse, in sickness and in health” were not just words, but rows to hoe.  Lawrence made sure my mother was cared for to the end of his life.

I’m not sure any relationship survives without endurance.  Endurance is not blindly doing a task; it is carrying a load with the sure knowledge that this is a task that must be accomplished.  In our world of instant gratification, endurance is in short-supply.  It’s easier to go buy a new part than search for an old one.  It’s easier to quit early and leave work till the next day than to work in the dark.  It’s easier to end a friendship than to work through the tensions. 

In my line of work, I see people quit on God because their relationship with him gets too hard.  They pray and don’t get what they want.  Someone in leadership disappoints them.  Life gets busy.  People stop engaging God.  The relationship grows stale. What strikes me is people understand they need to love a spouse for better or worse, but they think their relationship with God should just be for better.

Jesus did not quit on you.  He endured misunderstanding, abuse, exclusion and death on the cross he didn’t deserve.  He hoed to the end of the row and then some.

Give God the same endurance he gave you.  When your relationship with him isn’t all you want it to be, hoe to the end of the row, make the turn, hoe some more.  You’ll find God waiting for you.

Church is Family When…

Church is family when a wife is sitting by herself in a crowded waiting room.  Her husband is having serious surgery 180 miles from home.  A familiar voice calls her name.  It belongs to a member of her small group from church, who made the drive just to sit with her through the nerve-wracking moments.

Church is family when that man who had surgery and his wife get back home and find their yard mowed.  It turns out someone from church came by and mowed it for them.

Church is family when a young couple, far from home, needs someone to keep the kids so they can have simple evening out on the town.  A kind grandmother from church volunteers to keep their precious treasures and refuses to be paid because she remembers what is was like when she was young, far from home, and had no money.

Church is family when two men stay after a church meeting just talking over the bed of a pickup truck.  One is talking out his troubles at work.  The other man is listening, not really offering advice, just nodding, understanding, just being there.

Church is family when that family that hasn’t been to church in two years shows back up one Sunday. No one says, “’Bout time you came back to church.”  Instead, there are smiles, handshakes, and “Good to see you this morning” is spoken to them over and over.

Church is family when information is shared in a group that could easily turn into gossip, but instead the small group decides this information is a call to prayer.

Church is family when gathered for a covered dish dinner.  Everyone shares what they have.  All cooks are not created equal, but all desserts are consumed.

Church is family when a group of church folks make sure a child is picked up from school each day.  The parents can’t because the Mom works and the Dad has a brain tumor.  No one from the church misses their day because it’s a small worry they can take off this family’s plate.

Church is family when a group of women get together and decide to give a baby shower for a pregnant teenager.  They know she’s already endured shame; they want to smother her with grace.

Church is family when an older couple, whose children live across the country, are invited to join another family for Christmas dinner.  It’s the first time in many years they’ve had the thrill of watching presents opened on Christmas morning.

Church is family when a pastor shows up to pray with a couple who were just awarded permanent custody of their foster child.  Everyone is rejoicing and thanking God and the pastor wants to be part of the joy.

Church is family when two retired nurses sit in a teepee during Vacation Bible School to hand out Bandaids to children young enough to be their great-grandchildren.  They’re there because they love the noise of children running through the building.  “It makes the place alive,” they say.

Church is family when after church, one church members backs into another church member’s car.  The backer profusely apologizes and the backee smiles and says, “Don’t worry.  I’ve got insurance. It’s all okay.”

Church is family when a group realizes one member won’t have much of a Christmas for their kids. They gather a bunch of cash together and slide the envelope under the front door of that family.  The Mom thinks the money must have been brought by a angel.  In a way, it was.

Church is family when an older man puts his hand on the shoulder of young man just beginning his career and says, “Young man, I just want you to know I believe you have what it takes.”  In the tough days ahead, that young man remembers those words over and over.

Everyone of these stories is true.  I’ve seen them.  When church is family, it’s at its best.  These are not the kind of stories that make the front page of the paper, or go viral.  But they are the kinds of stories that change the world. 

Church is family when we do one simple thing: Love one another as Jesus loved us.  That simple. 

The Church that Didn’t Need Money

Once upon a time, there was a church that didn’t need money.  It happened like this:

A group of men gathered under the old oak tree that sheltered the little church.  One of them, Earl, spat on the ground and then offered his judgment: “I’m tired of the preacher preaching on money all the time.  That’s all he talks about!  Seems to me like he ought to talk about the Bible a little more and money a little less.”

“That’s right,” said Calvin.  “Why he just preached on tithing… when was it?  Back in November?   I reckon if he didn’t live so high on the hog, running the air conditioner in the parsonage all the time, he wouldn’t be so money hungry.”

“Now fellows, it takes money to run a church.  A church is like a business you know,” said Doyle.  “What we’ve got to do is figure out a way to cut expenses.”

“Why don’t we start with the preacher?” asked Ray.  “We cut his salary and we could save – what do we pay him? Twenty-five thousand?  Man, that’s pretty good wages for only working two hours a week!”  Every man laughed at that tired joke.

“Who’ll we get to preach?” inquired Doyle.

“Who says we need a sermon?  We could just gather up on Sunday, sing a few songs, make the announcements, have someone read a devotion, and have a closing prayer.  We’d get out early for change.  Might even beat the Methodists to the Cracker Barrel,” said Earl.

“You know, we could cut out Sunday night church, too.  It’s nothing but a bunch of old women and kids that come anyway.  You know what the light bill must be for Sunday nights?  I’ll bet you it costs a hundred bucks to run them big overhead lights in the sanctuary.  All we’re doing is making the electric-coop rich.”  All the men nodded at Calvin’s wisdom about the high cost of running the lights.

“You know I bet we could cut out a lot of things,” said Ray.  “Why do we keep sending money to missionaries.  Everybody in the world can watch TV now.  There ain’t no need to send somebody over there.  If folks want to find about Jesus, all they have to do is watch TV.  And we don’t need to send the kids to camp.  If parents today would take a belt to their hind ends like I did with my young’uns, they wouldn’t need no camp.  Let the parents teach ‘em at home.  That’s what my Daddy always said.”

“During Vacation Bible School, all I heard was the women gripe and complain,” offered Calvin.  We could cancel that and save a bunch of money.”

Silent Fred had been listening the whole time, but he finally spoke up: “We ought to stop buying those Sunday School books.  I’ve been telling people for years all we need is Bible.  If we stopped buying all those fancy video courses we could save enough to fix that leak in the roof.”

The talk went on for another hour or so and the men laid out their plan: Fire the preacher, cut out Sunday night church, cut out ministries to children and youth, stop sending money to missionaries, and stop buying church studies.  The way those men figured, the church could operate on about 20% of the current budget.

Over the objections of some folks (especially the preacher), they put their plan into action.  At first, it seemed like everything was the same, except for no Sunday night church.  Attendance was down a little bit, but the bank account was growing.  It didn’t take them long to cut out the devotional reading on Sunday, but everyone seemed happy that church was only lasting thirty minutes.   A couple of families with young children left, but the men figured they didn’t give much anyway. 

Then a couple of more families left.  The men couldn’t understand why.  Calvin went to talk to one of them and was told the church felt like it was dying.  He reported this to his friends under the oak tree and they all agreed that family was a bad influence anyway.

In about a year, the church was down to Earl and his wife, Calvin and his wife, Ray (whose wife quite coming to church with him and went to a church in town) and Fred (he had never married).  Doyle and his family had stopped attending; they weren’t going anywhere.  The men still talked under the old oak tree, but they assured themselves that everything was fine; the church had all the money it needed.

One year later, a realtor hammered down a sign in front of the church:  For Sale.  Zoned Commercial. 

If a church doesn’t want to do ministry, it doesn’t need money at all.

Time to Stop Thinking…

Thelma was one of those women who never missed church.  Every time the doors were open – in those days, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night – she was there.  Thelma was about eighty, I suppose, retired from lifetime standing on her feet in a school lunchroom where she scooped out Turkey Tetrazzini and other assorted lunchroom gourmet entrees.  Thelma was quiet, never saying much, except for her worry about her husband Frank.

Frank never attended church.  Never, not even on Christmas and Easter.  He was a couple of years older than Thelma, and had retired twice:  first from General Electric where he assembled refrigerators for forty years; the second time from Churchill Downs, where he was the night watchman.  Frank fought in the Pacific Theater in World War II; thieves didn’t scare him much.

While Thelma attended church faithfully for fifty years, Frank stayed home, reading the Sunday paper, puttering around in his yard, waiting until Thelma got home so they could have a simple lunch of soup and crackers.

Though Thelma was shy, she summoned the courage to insist every new pastor come and witness to Frank.  If you are not familiar with the idea of witnessing, you share with another person what Jesus did for you and invite them to follow Jesus for themselves.  Before me, ten pastors made the trek down Camden Avenue on mission to convert Frank. He would listen politely, thank the pastor for sharing, and then say, “I’ll think about it.”  Frank thought about following Jesus through Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. 

You may not be familiar with the idea of “Revival.”  Revivals were a time for a guest preacher to come and preach powerful messages (usually ones he had tried out at home first) to motivate the lost to come and follow Jesus.  Thelma invited every revival speaker to make the visit to her home in hopes that he would succeed where her own pastor had failed.

Frank’s health began to fail and the little house, likes it occupants, showed a slow decline.  By the time I arrived to pastor the church down the street, Frank, Thelma, and the house all had seen better days.

Thelma was not there my first Sunday, but she was there my second Sunday.  She lingered after the service, and made her now familiar request to the eleventh pastor to hike down the street and attempt to convince her husband to follow Jesus.  Dutifully, I went that week, and found Frank to be a fascinating man.  He told stories of staying up all night, waiting for the enemy to charge his foxhole with a ‘Banzai’ cry, of catching a thief sneaking around the barns of the eventual winner of the Kentucky Derby, of growing up in the mountains of Kentucky to an impoverished farmer turned coal-miner.  We didn’t get to following Jesus that day.  Given Frank’s health, I didn’t know how many more chances I would get, so I proposed to return soon. 

I made the trip to Frank and Thelma’s a half-a-dozen times, each time looking for me chance to share with him the great story of God’s love.  I suppose after listening to all the preachers and guest evangelists, Frank knew how to steer the conversation away from spiritual matters.

Frank took a turn for the worse and Thelma stopped coming to church.  Frank had to have someone with him all the time now.  Thelma’s world collapsed to size of their tiny lot and her telephone.  I visited Frank again, finding him weakened, and this time shared Jesus as plainly as I knew how.  Well-worn words came out of Frank’s mouth, “I’ll think about it.”  I told him, “Frank, I respect that, but I think you are running out of time.”  He grinned at me, and said, “Soon, preacher, I’ll decide soon.

One day my phone rang.  It was Thelma.  The visiting nurse had been by and said Frank would probably pass away in the next three days.  Through her tears, she begged me to come one last time.

When I got there, Frank was in bed, Thelma by his side.  I asked her if I could speak to him alone.  I said, “Frank, the nurse said you will not be here much longer.  Frank, you’re out of time.  Do you want to follow Jesus?” 

This time was not like all other times.  Frank looked at me with old faded blue eyes, and said, “Yes Pastor, I want to follow Jesus.”  I invited Frank to pray a prayer telling that to God.  In soft tones, he rasped out a prayer confessing his sins and committing his life to Jesus.  After he said “Amen” he looked at me and said, “I want to be baptized.”

How do you baptize a bed-bound man?  Frank could not leave his bed.  My tribe, the Baptists, believe in total immersion.  I wasn’t sure how we’d pull that off.

I asked God to give me a pass on total immersion (I sure he did; after all, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans, and Anglicans all sprinkle).  Thelma came back in the room with a bowl of water.  I traced a cross on Frank’s head while reciting these words: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  Frank’s eyes never left me.  He smiled, and said, “Thank you preacher.”

Frank died the next day.  According to Thelma, his last words were, “I got baptized, didn’t I honey.” 

Doubters will say Frank just wanted to get into heaven.  Maybe so.  But after thinking about it for so long, Frank finally took his first steps toward Jesus.  They were enough.  I feel confident that Jesus welcomes even those who wait until the very last minute.  I’ll bet on that day Jesus said to Frank, “I’m glad you quit thinking, and you did it.”

Maybe it’s time for you to stop thinking and do something too.

Church Is …

As far back as I can remember, I knew God wanted me to be a preacher. “Preacher” was synonymous with “Pastor,” but we were never that formal at Route 1, Zolfo Springs, FL.  I knew what I was supposed to be, but I did not know where. 

We lived in suburban Lemon Grove (urban Lemon Grove had Graham’s Store; suburban Lemon Grove meant you could not see another house from your porch).  We attended church seven miles away in Popash, a country crossroads that used to have a school, but now just had a church and a country store that kept going out of business.  I’m not sure why, but in my five-year-old mind, I decided Lemon Grove needed a church. 

I knew Popash needed a church, because there were apparently a lot of sinners there.  The preacher at New Hope Church talked about them constantly.  Sinners apparently stayed home from church on Sunday nights watching “Bonanza,” went to dances, drove up to the County Line (it would be years before I understood “The County Line” did not refer to a political boundary but a liquor store), and snuck over to the theater in Sebring to watch non-wholesome, non-Disney movies. 

I didn’t understand all that the preacher at New Hope talked about, but I was aware of sin in Lemon Grove.  My brother Steve was the source of most the sin I knew about.  In reality, he was simply performing “big brother” duty.  But he was mean to me, bossing me around, telling me I was adopted, and generally being annoying.  Having a church in Lemon Grove meant I could preach to my brother and label his sins for all the world to condemn. 

We owned a piece of land on the dirt road that met our house.  It was covered with palmettos, tall pines, and blackjack oaks.  I decided that was the perfect place to build my church. 

I announced this to my mother, my sister, and my brother.  I left out the part about being able to preach hell and fire (“damnation” sounded too much like a cuss word and I was afraid I’d get my mouth washed out with soap).  They smiled indulgently.  My mother said something like “You’d better start gathering bricks now.”

At age five, I started collecting bricks.  There were always a few to be uncovered down at the barn.  Once, I took one from my Aunt Mildred’s flower bed.  I got a whipping and was told never to take something that didn’t belong to me.  Bricks were harder to come by in those days.

I wasn’t sure how many bricks I needed; I could only count to a hundred.  One day I tried to count the bricks on the building at New Hope and I ran out of numbers before I ran out of bricks.  Building my own church was going to be a lot harder than I thought.

Of course, I never built my own church building.  But for years, we referred to that twenty acres as “the land where Clay is going to build his church.”  Even when I went off to college, the land was still uncleared.  Finally, economic reality set in.  Pop cleared the land and set an orange grove there (any old-timer will tell you blackjack oaks and palmettos make for a fine orange grove). 

Somewhere along the way a different idea began to take hold in my soul.  Church wasn’t a building.  I learned church was people.  You could have a church without a building, but you couldn’t have a church without people. 

Then I learned that definition was incomplete as well.  Church wasn’t just a group of people.  Church was supposed to be a group of people gathered to do something for Jesus.  Church is a movement.

I’ve sat in meeting after meeting and heard people say, “Church is a business.”  Wrong.  Businesses exist to serve owners.  Churches exist to change the world with Good News.  If a church doesn’t make Jesus its focus, it loses its power.  It becomes an institution, centered on maintaining the building and keeping everyone happy.

About a hundred churches close each week in North America.  My hunch is somewhere along the way, folks forgot church is a movement.  Church is a group of people who share the adventure of following Jesus and telling the Good News of God’s love as they follow him.  The building is just a tool to help the movement.

How do you make sure your church is a movement?  It starts with you.  Do you want the church to focus on you?  Or do you want the church to focus on Jesus?  Your answer either makes the church a pile of bricks and sticks, or makes it a movement that has the power to change the world.  Your choice.

Suffering for Jesus …

In college, my friend Jon Roebuck was selected to be a semester missionary in Hawaii.  Specifically, he was to serve on the island of Oahu, on Waikiki Beach - which prompted all of us to accuse him of suffering for Jesus on the sands of Waikiki.  It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.

I never got to suffer for Jesus in Hawaii.  God sent me instead to places like Wauchula, Finchville, Louisville, and Sumter – not exactly places of glamor and exotic intrigue.  I suffered through a few church business meetings, but on the whole, my suffering has been pretty light.  Most of my time in these places has been air-conditioning and indoor plumbing.

To tell the truth, I never liked suffering that much.  I do know people who believe you have to be miserable to follow Jesus, and they are.  They are so convinced of the necessity of suffering that they try to make you suffer as well.  Usually five minutes of conversation with these folks fills your quota of suffering for the month.

I try not to whine to our Heavenly Father, but sometimes I do want to complain.  Why did my trailer have a flat tire on a hot day in July?  Why did my friend get called to pastor that big church and not me?  Why can a skinny man eat a gallon of ice cream and not gain a pound, but if I smell a potato chip, I add five pounds?    

There is a large group of Christians who believe they are suffering persecution for our faith in this country.  I’m not too sure about that.  After all, we are still able to gather freely to worship and to pray.  Starbucks eliminating “Merry Christmas” from our coffee cups is not suffering.  Maybe Jesus followers don’t get their way politically as much as we used to, but Jesus is probably okay with that.   He never put much stock in political power anyway.

American Jesus followers are not very good at suffering.  People have told me they will no longer attend our church unless: a) We start singing songs they like; b) I follow their ideas about what church should be like; c) We accept doctrine taught by the famous TV Evangelist of their choice; or d) All of the above.  Once, we had thunderstorms move through on a Sunday morning and I was called by an irate church member who wanted to know why we were having church when the weather was so bad.  However, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and earthquakes couldn’t keep her away from a Clemson ballgame. 

I read these words not too long ago: “But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed (1 Peter 3:14a).”  There is a blessing in suffering for what is right.  I look at a verse like that and I wonder if my faith is strong enough to suffer for what is right.

It was not that long ago that churches in the South actually voted on whether or not to admit African-Americans to worship services.  More often than not, the vote was no.  There were always people, however, who stood up for what was right and voted “yes.”  They suffered.  They lost friends.  Family members would not speak to them.  Pastors lost their jobs.  People left organized Christianity with the bitter taste of hypocrisy in their mouths.

I know a man who was offered a shady business deal involving a bribe to a government official.  He turned it down.  He believed Jesus meant it when he said: “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’.  Anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” He suffered financially.  A competitor got the job and made a ton of money and nearly ran my relative out of business.  Honesty often carries the price tag of suffering.

There are people in this world who do suffer for their faith.  Ask a Christian in Muslim culture if they suffer.  Ask the Christian business man in India who is shut out of government permits if he suffers.  Ask the woman who heard a missionary talk about Jesus and believed, and then her husband killed her – oops, you can’t ask her, because she died for her faith.  I have a feeling none of these people were worried about the music at church or what TV preacher to believe.  Their faith was precious to them.

Have the courage to do right.  Even if you suffer, there is a blessing.  The blessing is more than a clear conscience.  The blessing is hearing your Heavenly Father say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Heart and Head …

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to hear Ravi Zacharias speak.  A brilliant man, he has lectured all over the world in places like Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard, making the logical case for Christian faith.

A young man in the audience asked the question, “How do I know Jesus instead of simply know about him?”  A very profound question, which strikes at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus.  Knowledge about Jesus is not the same as knowing Jesus.

Dr. Zacharias gave an insightful response, urging the young man to read the scriptures, pray, and read biographies of great followers of Jesus.  Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “The longest journey for thought is the journey from the head to the heart.”  Profound.

Your heart is where you make decisions.  Most decisions come down to either yes or no.  Yes, I will pursue a relationship; no, I will not pursue a relationship.  This is where our thoughts come into play.  If I think you are my friend, I seek you out.  If I think you are my enemy, I keep my distance.  If we think God is for us, we seek him.  If we think God wants to rob us of joy, we avoid him.

I’ve met some people in my time who knew the Bible well, but never let God into their heart, into their decision making.  They could quote “Love your enemies” but they never did.  When you let God into your heart, into your decision making, God has a habit of presenting you with decisions you just as soon avoid.  You begin to receive whispers from the Spirit: “See that lady over there struggling with that big box?  Go help her.” “But Lord,” you protest, “I have a big meeting in fifteen minutes, and I can’t be late.” If God stays in your head, it’s easy to justify any behavior you want.  Besides, the same God who whispers to you to go help someone also knows about the big meeting coming up.

When God starts knocking around in your heart, you get convicted, a good old-fashioned word that means God brings something to your attention that requires action.  It might be a sin pattern you need to discard.  It might be God calling you to love somebody you don’t really want to love.

My hero, Will Campbell, was praised by liberals when he fought for civil rights.  The same liberals condemned him when visited the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in prison.  Will’s response was that Jesus told him to visit folks in prison, not on the basis of their politics. Having Jesus in your heart will mess up your neat box of ideology. 

Hanging on the wall in my office is quote from an old country preacher, Sam Durrance.  Sam was a distant relative and close neighbor to my family.  He did not speak at Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard, but in places like Popash, Ft. Green, and Mt. Pisgah.  Sam did not have what you call a formal education, but he did complete eighth grade at the Lemon Grove School.

Before my cousin Tiny went off to study for the ministry, Sam pulled him aside and told him, “Keep the Lord in your heart, and not in your head, and you will do alright.  Now if you don’t, you’d be better off if someone knocked you in the head and threw you under a bunch of palmettos, because you won’t be no good to nobody.”  That’s the quote that hangs on my wall.

Sam’s home spun wisdom and Dr. Zacharias’ words of counsel are really the same.  Funny how a scholar and a country preacher can find the same truth.  What you think is important. Having a relationship with Jesus that changes how you live – that’s eternal.

My Country Gift to Me …

There are people in the world who never have a choice in their leader.  A military strong man or his son dictates what is right and what is wrong.  All of them, every single one in history, has gotten rich (or at least comfortable) by exploiting the people they govern.  Our country is different.  We have the gift of voting for our leaders.  Sure, we don’t like our choices sometimes.  At election time people say their choice is the lesser of two evils.  Voting for the lesser of two evils still beats having no choice at all.

Even in some highly developed countries, you have no choice about religion.  You are not free to worship the god you choose.  You are forced to bow in prayer with all your peers or pay taxes to support a place of worship.  It was two early Baptists who wrote to Thomas Jefferson about the need to have a free exercise of religion.  They remembered the religious wars of Europe and wanted no part of bloody battles in Jesus’ name.  We tend to forget that the Christian God, embodied in Jesus, refused to force anyone to follow him.  He invited people to follow; he did not force their allegiance.  Freedom to believe or believe differently or disbelieve – these are gifts.

I have visited countries where television, radio, and newspapers were under government control.  Whenever that happens, truth is the first causality.  What I heard and read told a story that everything was perfect, everything was under control.   Nothing is ever that perfect.  Freedom of the Press means commentators, editors, and bloggers can get a lot wrong.  But it also means there is a freedom to tell the truth.  Truth sets you free; lies keep you captive.

There is a lot of debate in our country about gun control.  Do people abuse the Second Amendment?  Yes, they do.  Do people abuse most of the freedoms granted us in our Constitution and Bill of Rights? Yes, they do.  I know the ultimate answer to gun violence is changing people’s hearts.  Frankly, I think Second Amendment advocates ought to be fervent witnesses for the gospel.  But I have also been in countries where owning a gun is illegal.  This is a bit like saying “Guns are powerful.  Therefore, guns are bad.”  Maybe it’s better to say with great power comes great responsibility.  The power of owning a gun should not be a casual thing.  The freedom to own a gun carries hefty responsibility.

I’m not naïve, I know our justice system is not pure.  Nothing invented by man is pure.  For all its faults, however, I can not think of any system on earth that’s better.  We sometimes belittle criminal rights.  But I’m glad I have the right to have an attorney present during questioning.  If I can’t make myself understood to my own wife at times, there’s a pretty good chance I would mess up talking to a police officer.  There are countries where you can be arrested, thrown in jail, and kept there until you die.  No trial means no hope.  Your rights before the bar of justice are a gift.

Maybe the freedom we most take for granted is limited government.  The Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The negative legacy of this amendment was the use of “states rights” to justify discrimination and deny civil rights.  But the positive legacy of this amendment is this: our government has to live within boundaries.  We do not live in an oppressive state like North Korea, where the government has the right to tell you who to marry, where to live, what to do for a living, what you should value, and who you must worship.  I grew up with folks who would say they didn’t like “the guv’ment messing in our bidness.”  We have no idea what it is like to live in a thought-controlled state.

I believe we have been given these gifts for a divine reason.  We live in a nation that enjoys the greatest freedoms ever given to people.  These gifts of freedom must be protected and respected.  Part of caring for these gifts means we will not use our freedom to rob other people of their freedoms.  Like all good gifts, we must know the true value of our freedoms.  Their value is not just based on men and women who fought and died for these freedoms.  Their value is based on their uniqueness.  They are God’s special gift to the United States of America.

In Mrs. Turnipseed’s kindergarten class we started every morning with the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”   As best I remember, the first words of the song sounded to my five-year-old ears like “My Country Gift to Me.”  I was correct in my understanding, if flawed in my singing.  Our country, our freedom is a gift.  Tell God “Thank you.”  Be wise stewards of your freedom.  Respect how other people use their freedoms.  Pass these freedom gifts onto your children and grandchildren. 

Remember the gift of freedom, the gift of this country is not automatic.  Like any gift, if you don’t take care of it, it breaks.  Broken freedom creates a terrible place to live.

It Breaks My Heart …

I have spent the afternoon in my study with my heart breaking.  I really can’t explain why.  There is a book God leads me to re-read every year or so, call Forty Acres and A Goat.  It’s written by one of my heroes, Will Campbell, a Baptist preacher of the South.  I think it ought to be required reading for everyone born in the South (or the North for that matter). 

I’m not sure why my heart breaks when I read this book.  I think God uses it to open up closed spaces of my soul, to remind me there are things worth crying over when I slow down long enough to think about them.

It breaks my heart when I see folks hating on each other.  I’ve seen the hate on the streets, in the aisles at Wal-Mart, at church business meetings, even on the tongues of people I love when they talk about the new people who moved in next door.  I don’t know why we have to hate people who are different than us.  But I’ve seen people sing “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love,” turn, and cuss about people who have different skin tones, different orientations, different religions.  One of the clearest things Jesus said was “Love your enemies.”  I’m pretty sure that means loving people who are different than us.  You don’t have to compromise truth to love.  You just have to love.  Sometimes, I don’t know what breaks my heart more: seeing the hurt of the people being hated on, or seeing the shriveled soul of the people doing the hating.

It breaks my heart when I talk to soldiers and airmen who weep in my arms and ask, “How can God forgive me?  I’ve done terrible things.”  I’ve known some good men who obeyed orders and were never told about the pain they would have to live with.  War is complicated.  But trying to explain all the complications to a man who thinks God can’t forgive him isn’t easy.  I try to tell the story of David, the man after God’s own heart.  The blood of battle had spattered on his soul too.  God forgave him.  I want so badly for these men to know God’s love is greater than war.

When I think about people dying alone it breaks my heart.  It’s an old country notion, but I think you ought to have folks with you when you die.  It still hurts me that my mother was alone when she died.  I was holding the hand of my mother-in-law at 2:15 am when the line on the monitor went flat.  It was one of the most sacred moments of my life.  I wonder sometimes why churches (including my own) don’t have ministries that involve holding hands with the dying. 

I am ashamed to admit it, but I’ve cried over dead dogs.  I come from ranch people; dying animals is a part of life.  The first thing you learn growing up on a ranch is never name the cows.  They will be your supper one day.  But still, I’ve grown attached to dogs.  I cried when I was five and my first dog, Mo, was run over by a car.  I cried when I dug the grave of the first dog Gina and I got.  I’ve cried over most of our dogs since.  It seems like all a good dog wants to do is rest his head on your knee and wag his tail when you come home.  I’ve never had a mean dog, not one.  I know some dogs are mean, but it seems those are the ones owned by mean people. 

Sometimes, I go up to one of the tallest buildings in our town and look out the windows.  I think about all the people in the houses I see, so many of whom who don’t know Jesus.  It breaks my heart.  I think about how much different their lives would be if they could have even a taste of God’s grace, God’s power, and God’s hope.  I think about marriages that would heal.  I think about children who wouldn’t have to hide when their parents get mean to each other.  I think about people who tried church and instead got a big dose of religion.  In case you don’t know the difference, church is supposed to be a place a grace.  Religion is a list of rules.  My heart hurts for people who don’t know Jesus.

Whenever I do a funeral for a parent who left behind young children, it’s all I can do not to cry.  My soul weeps for those children.  Their pain, their bewilderment, their lost looks brush against my own wounds of being the child of a father who died too young.  You would think that decades would have healed that wound, but it’s still tender.  I so badly want to stop the service, pull those children aside, and tell them, “This is going to hurt for a long time.  Whenever it hurts, take your pain to your Heavenly Father.”  But most of the time, they are too disoriented to hear anything, simply nodding at the repeated phrase “I’m so sorry…”  I hurt for them.

Sometimes, when it’s quiet in the evening, sitting on my porch, I think about how I try to insulate my soul.  I don’t come from a family of feelers.  We’re of the tribe that says if life gets too painful, fry something.  You’ll feel better.  Unfortunately, you’ll also get fatter and feel worse about yourself.  When I think about how much effort I put into not feeling, it breaks my heart that my heart doesn’t break more often.  I think that if I was any kind of Jesus follower at all, my heart would break over the same things that break God’s heart.  But that can feel like too much.  It’s so much easier to zone out or check out.  And that breaks my heart too.

I think it’s a good thing to take time to weep, even if you don’t know why you are weeping.  Tears are God’s way of reminding you you have feelings.  There is deep sadness in this world and some of it will fall on you.  It’s also a reminder that there is some hurt that words can’t fix.  You just have to feel.

Maybe it is in those moments, when we finally let ourselves feel the sadness, the hurt, the grief, the unfairness, the loneliness, we can finally be open enough to feel something else.  Maybe tears are God’s pry bar, so he can pour some grace – some amazing, life-giving, life-changing grace – over your soul.  Before the peace can come, there has to be grace.

Swept Off My Feet …

Baptists believe in water.  When it comes to baptizing, we don’t mess around with a few sprinkles.  We put people under until they bubble.  We want them to feel just a moment of panic, so they can appreciate resurrection.

I do admit there are times I envy my sprinkling brothers and sisters in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Anglican circles.  Like the time I baptized a fellow who was six foot seven in a baptistry that was six foot six inches long.  I “clunked” his head into the wall.  Later, I asked him how he felt.  He said he felt like he’d finally gotten some sense knocked into him.  The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Then there was the time I baptized a husband and wife.  They wanted to be baptized together.  I explained I could only do one at a time.  They settled for being in the baptistry at the same time. 

You may not remember this from physics class, but a solid object placed into water displaces the water in equal measure to the size of the object.  Being pretty solid, I displace a fair amount of water.  The candidates also displace water.  Small children and petite adults are not a problem.  In the case of this husband and wife, however, I was baptizing Goliath and his wife.  He was about six feet, four inches and outweighed me by 50 pounds.  She was six feet, one inch, and pregnant with twins.  When I baptized them, it was like sitting in the splash zone at Sea World.  The baptistry overflowed and everyone on the first three rows got soaked.  After the service, one little boy excitedly asked if we could do the same thing next Sunday.

On this particular Sunday, I baptized three people – a brother and a sister, and a young woman.  Seeing people go under the water and bringing them out again is my favorite thing to do in ministry.  It signifies that a person has given their life to Jesus and they are willing to tell everyone what he has done for them.

When I baptize, I wear a pair of waders under my robe.  This is so I can quickly get out of the baptistry and get ready for the next service.  I had gotten all three candidates properly dunked, exited the baptistry, shucked off my robe, and unfastened my wader suspenders.  Now came the tricky part.  When you go into the water wearing waders, the water presses all the air out.  Your legs and torso are vacuum sealed.  This pair of waders was little harder to get off than the old pair, so I learned to ask for help.

We had a new volunteer helping that day, a young man who worked out regularly.  On his bulging bicep, there was a tattoo that read “Killer.”  I figured he was the guy to help me out.  I leaned against the wall and extended my leg.  “How about a hand?” I asked.

This strong young man grabbed my wader boot and tugged.  I was trying to pull my leg up and out while he pulled the waders in the opposite direction.  Nothing happened.  We tried again.  This time, the boot slipped out of his hands.

You could see Killer’s frustration.  Here he was, trying to help his pastor and he was looking like a weakling.  A weakling with big biceps and a tattoo, but still a weakling.

I extended my leg once more.  He grabbed it, and like the cowboys holding onto a rope when bull-riding, he got a firm grip and had a far-away look.  He really put his back into it.  He pulled hard.

Have you ever had that moment when you know disaster is about to happen, but you can’t do a thing about it?  I felt my planted foot, the one I was resting my weight on, start to slide on the slick tile. My fingers instantly dug for something to hold onto, but I was clawing drywall.  I slide down the wall about two inches and then my foot, the one that was supposed to hold my weight, went airborne.  Since my other foot was being pulled on by Samson, there was suddenly nothing but thin air between my bottom and the hard tile floor.

It was a classic cartoon moment.  My feet went one way, and I went another.  I could feel my spine draw up like an accordion.  My helper, he of great strength, was still holding onto my wader boot.  I am sorry to say, the ground shook right after my impact, not from my weight making an impact, but from the deep belly laughs of other volunteers and a certain minister (who may get marked down in his next evaluation based on his low empathy for his fallen pastor). 

After the laughs were stifled, I was asked if I was hurt.  I replied as any man would: “Of course not,” even though I had lost four inches of height.  A chair was produced, and I sat down.  A few more tugs and the waders were completely off, and I limped away from the baptistry.

Maybe when Jesus changes your life, you should be swept off your feet.  Maybe taking the signs of faith is to be dramatic.  Maybe laughter should accompany baptism, because God’s love is a gift of joy.

And maybe, just maybe, God lets preachers fall flat on their butt to keep them humble.  Maybe even to bring them up a little short. 

If anyone finds the four inches I lost, please return them to me.  I now have several shirts and pants that no longer fit.

God and War …

I meet people from time to time who tell me, “I don’t believe in a God who tells people to go to war.”  I get this is a tough idea to grasp.  A God who loves people and died to save them is hard to pair with a God who commands military action.

Throughout history, Jesus followers have not helped.  The Crusades were fought in the name of God, but with special attention to plunder.  They forgot about “Thou shalt not steal.”   People have gone to war in God’s name without ever checking it out with him.  This is not surprising.  People in my world do all kinds of things in God’s name and I am pretty sure God turns up his nose at what they do.  Just because God’s name is attached doesn’t mean God approves.

But what about all those bloody commands God gives in the Old Testament, like when he told the people of Israel to wipe out whole cities and regions?

This is the 75th anniversary of D-Day.  Imagine history being different.  Imagine our leaders thinking, “We’d like to attack Hitler, but some civilians might die in the process.  We’d like to invade France, but young men on both sides, who had nothing to do with the real issues of this war, will die.  We’ve heard rumors of the wholesale slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, and “undesirables,” but do we really want to have our sons die to save people we don’t know?” 

It is dangerous to mix wishes and realities.  We all wish evil would die and wither, but it doesn’t.  Evil is only eliminated by power.  That’s it.  Evil will twist truth into lies, it will manipulate, it will dominate.  Evil is always cruel and selfish.  Evil has a sense of entitlement, believing it deserves a special status.  Only power can confront evil with reality and defeat it.

Hitler’s Third Reich was evil.  Period.  He was not the first national leader to be possessed by evil, and he will not be the last.  You can add to that list Herod the Great, Nero, Saddam Hussein, Robespierre, Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Attila the Hun, Pol Pot, Stalin and more.  When a nation gives control to someone who is evil, there is a consequence.  Sometimes the consequence is war, when power must be exerted to crush evil that has flowered in a nation.

When God told his people to conquer cities and regions, these were not cities of nice people.  The worship of Molech, the god of war, was rampant among these nations.  Molech required a sacrifice of first-born sons as payment to keep war away.  In these nations, sex was defied.  You went to a temple shrine to have sex with a temple prostitute to ensure the fertility of your crops and your livestock.  Society was ruthless and violent, favoring the powerful.  These cultures had reached a stage where God said, “No more.”  He chose his people as his instrument of punishment.

Did God do this during D-Day, during World War II?  Evidence suggests he did.  Instead of finishing off England, Hitler turned to invade Russia in 1941, which led to his eventual defeat.  In 1942, at the Battle of Midway, three American aircraft carriers, one barely operational, defeated four Japanese carriers.  The D-Day soldiers who landed at Normandy were out-numbered three to four by the dug-in Germans.  When you read the history of World War II, see if you can trace the hand of God.  You’ll be surprised.

Do nations go to war thinking God is on their side when he isn’t?  Absolutely. During the American Civil War, both sides believed God was fighting for their cause.  Abraham Lincoln pointed out in his masterful Second Inaugural Address that both north and south read the same Bible and prayed to the same God for victory. Lincoln aptly observed, however, that “The Almighty has His own purposes.” 

Does God lead nations to fight wars against evil?  Yes.  But before a nation goes to war, it needs to ask God for clarity and assurance that it is doing his will.  This is part of the reason Paul tells us to pray for our leaders.   Heavy is their responsibility.  They will be judged – Republican and Democrat – for decisions made about conflict and war, lives sacrificed and lost.

We should pray for those who protect our country.  They will be asked to risk their lives and make split-second decisions that will result in life and death.  Pray for grace, for no human being will get this right one-hundred percent of the time. 

Remember that evil has ultimately met its match in Jesus Christ.  We do not often think of his death on a cross as a battle, but it was the greatest divine encounter with evil in history.  Satan, as evil always does, thought he had Jesus right where he wanted him – on a cross, dying.  Jesus, with the power of his purity and love, absorbed all the evil the world produced and produces, and conquered it. 

We live in the backwash of evil’s defeat.  There’s still plenty out there.  But Jesus fought the battle. The war is won.  Jesus is the ultimate victor.

Good to Great …

I was in the office of one of my mentors, Dr. Chuck Bugg, pouring out my frustrations.  Eighteen months earlier, I’d crossed the stage and received a piece of paper that announced to the world I was a Doctor of Philosophy (take two verses of Hebrew and call me in the morning).  My peers had gone on to pastor First Baptist Churches in county seat towns across the South, or were professors in colleges.  A couple leapfrogged teaching at college and were teaching at the seminary where we had so recently been students.  I was still in my church in Louisville.  It was a good church with good people in a bad location.  God was working, but we were handicapped by having a thousand-seat sanctuary and only thirty parking spaces.  Another mentor, my cousin Tiny Durrance, told me Jesus himself couldn’t grow the church without more parking. 

When I finished my degree, trusted friends began to send my name to churches throughout the South who were looking for pastors.  I had clear picture in my mind of what church God wanted me to serve.  It would be a First Baptist Church in a county seat town, a town big enough to have a Chik-Fil-A (essential food for ministry).  The church would be red-brick, have white columns, and the tallest steeple in town.  I would preach good messages, visit the sick, stay a few years, and move up to a larger church – the typical pastor career path.  If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

I got interviews.  And I got rejections.  Some Pastor Search Committees were kind.  They would write and say you were their second choice.  I wonder if they sent that letter to everyone.  Some Committees would interview you and never contact you again, leaving you to twist in limbo. 

I did get offers.  One came from a church in a small town.  After interviewing me, the committee agreed to call me, but split on a side issue.  I’ll never forget the conversation I had with the chairman: “Half the committee has quit, including myself, but we still want you to be our pastor.” I’m not the most spiritually perceptive person, but even I could read God’s will in that situation.  I told them “No.” 

I prayed about other offers.  I didn’t sense God leading me towards those churches.

After eighteen months, I was frustrated.  Depressed.  My life was not going according to my plans.  I found my way to Dr. Bugg’s office, because unlike many of my professors, he had been a successful pastor.  The churches he served grew.  A gifted communicator, he also had a caring heart.  I told him about the search, the rejections, how they hurt.  It seemed to me that the churches I wanted to pastor didn’t want me, and the churches that wanted me, I really didn’t want to serve.  It wasn’t a very spiritual response.

After sharing my journey and my pain, I wound up my lament by telling Dr. Bugg, “I just want to pastor a great church.”

I will never forget his words: “Clay, maybe God wants you to pastor a good church and turn it into a great church.” 

I was startled.  That wasn’t the plan.  I wanted great now.

When I walked away from Dr. Bugg’s office that day, I realized how childish I had been.  My heart found a new level of surrender, summarized by the words of an old hymn, “Wherever He Leads, I’ll Go.”

A few months later I was contacted by Alice Drive Baptist Church in Sumter.  I’d never heard of Sumter, never heard of the church.  The first thing I noticed in the letter was the address; Alice Drive Baptist Church was not on Alice Drive, but on Miller Road.  How strange.  We set up a time to meet, and the day after Christmas in 1993, I got my first look at Sumter and the church. 

The building was not red brick, but a weird brown, gray, and purple.  There was a short steeple, but no white columns.  The church was doing solid ministry, nothing flashy.  The people on the team impressed me:  they sensed God had something more in store for them as a church and were looking for a pastor who could lead them in that direction.  The meeting went well.  I got in my car and started driving back to Gaffney, where my in-laws lived.

Back at my in-laws, I couldn’t sleep.  My mind wrestled.  This was a good church, no doubt, but it wasn’t a great church.  Dr. Bugg’s words came back to me.  “Clay, maybe God wants you to take a good church and work to make it a great one.”  After an hour or so of wrestling all this through with God, I remember praying, “Okay God.  If you want me to go to Sumter to the church with the strange name, I’ll go.” 

As things unfolded, the Pastor Committee invited me to come and preach a “trial sermon.”  They took a vote and I was elected as the new pastor.

Now its twenty-five years later.  Sumter is home.  It’s hard to know if God thinks Alice Drive is a “great” church, but there is no denying God has done things with this body of believers that only he can do.  People decided to follow Jesus.  Families were strengthened.  People accepted calls to ministry.  We changed locations (but didn’t change the name – long story).  We grew – five times our original size.  I made lots of dumb mistakes and didn’t get fired – a miracle.

I’ve learned so much about God and about myself here, more lessons than I can count.  Maybe one of the best lessons is what Dr. Bugg tried to teach me in a musty Norton Hall office, twenty-six years ago:  Whatever God gives you – a church, a career, a gift, a family, a relationship – take what is good and strive to make it great.  With God’s help, miracles do happen.

When I Was Seventeen…

Ol’ Blue Eyes sang, “When I was seventeen, it was a very good year…”

It really was. 

When I was seventeen, I had a steady girlfriend.  We never fought.  What do seventeen year-olds have to fight about?  I thought love was simple then.  Love at seventeen swells your heart.   It was only later I learned that true love is much deeper than deciding which movie to watch (note to millennials: In those days you had to go to a theater to watch a movie).    True love is about wanting something for someone more than you want something for yourself.  Maybe you don’t learn that lesson until you have committed to love someone for better or worse.  Worse will come.  That’s when real love shows up.

When I was seventeen, I knew everything there was to know.  I considered myself smarter than my parents, who didn’t even know how to use a CB radio (CB radio’s were cell phones before cellphones).  It is only now I realize how brilliant my parents were.  They gave room to make mistakes, but not so much room I would harm anyone.  My Mom and Dad gave me a safety net I didn’t even know was there.  If I had five minutes with them again, I would tell them how much I appreciate them and how sorry I am for ever thinking they were dumb.

When I was seventeen, I already knew what it was to be world champion.  Our high school band won championships in national and international competitions.  When you are the best in the world at something, you get cocky.  You think you are the best at everything.  Except you’re not.  My illusions about being the greatest got popped my first week of college.  I met people who were better than me at everything: they could sing, play the guitar, and speak three languages all at the same time.  A guy who became my best friend had his own business in high school and made about as much money as my father.  Another friend had entered the same speech contest I had entered and won at the national level, while I capped out at the local level.   I quickly learned the world was not impressed with yesterday’s victories.

When I was seventeen, I had already preached my first sermons.  In my tradition, you started young.  I was the only licensed minister in my graduating class of 800.  That made me oddly unique.  I went to a Baptist college where I was one of 200 religion majors.  One freshman was already on staff at a church as a youth minister.  I had only preached when the pastor was out of town or needed a replacement he didn’t have to pay.  I learned there were a lot of people God planned to use.  I could see them as rivals or teammates.  I wish I could say I learned that people in ministry are teammates long ago, but the truth is, I still struggle.  I have to remember that God has a role for me, not a spotlight for me to occupy.

When I was seventeen, my parents gave me a ten-year-old Mercedes Benz.  It wasn’t as great as it sounds.  It was a four-cylinder diesel that could climb slight inclines at an astonishing 20 miles per hour.  It was not air-conditioned.  I lived in Florida – can anyone see a problem there?  When I took the car to Alabama to college, I found out Alabama had mountains, which my Mercedes climbed at 10 miles per hour.  Alabama in the summer turned out to be just as hot as Florida, without a sea-breeze.  In the winter, the diesel would freeze and gum up the fuel filter and my car would have sit in the parking lot until it could be towed in and worked on.  It isn’t cheap to work on a Mercedes.  I learned the status of owning a Mercedes Benz was not as good as having a Chevrolet that actually runs and has A/C.

When I was seventeen, I had God figured out.  If I accepted Jesus as my savior, I would go to heaven.  That was the core of my faith.  It wasn’t until much later I began to learn God did not want just to go to heaven; God wanted a relationship with me.  He wanted to love me and for me love him.  I’ve followed Jesus for long time now, and I’m still working on loving God the way he deserves.

Solomon, the wisest man ever, said, “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, for the chaotic days are coming.”  The most important thing for a seventeen-year-old to have is an anchor.  The best place to anchor your life is in the harbor of God’s love.  No matter how old you are, that’s sound advice.

In the Dark, Alone and Scared…

I had just been called as pastor of Finchville Baptist Church in Finchville, Kentucky.  Finchville was thirty minutes outside of Louisville, a crossroads with a few houses, a store, a post office, and a church.  Plus, a parsonage.

To those of you unfamiliar with the idea of a parsonage, it is sometimes called a pastorium (a place where crazy pastors live) or a manse (a fancy Presbyterian name).  The idea behind it was good.  The church would provide the pastor a place to live so he could be close to his flock.  The downside, however, was the pastor had to get church approval to paint a wall in his house.  If a there was a problem with the plumbing, he couldn’t call the plumber himself; he had to call the chairman of the Building and grounds committee, who inevitably would call his brother-in-law’s  cousin, who once watched a plumber fix something. 

When I was called as pastor of that church, I was still single. I scrapped together some money to buy furniture: a mattress, a love seat and a couch.  Who needs a kitchen table when you are dining alone?  I borrowed some furniture from a friend going overseas for two years to occupy space until finances permitted more. I moved in the first weekend of October.

That first night laying in my new bed, amid the chirping of the crickets, I heard an odd whirring noise.  Faint at first, it seemed to grow louder.  The noise continued for about two minutes, then there was a loud “click.”

I couldn’t figure out what it was.  The noise seemed to be inside the house, but I wasn’t sure.  Then the whirring noise started up again.  Maybe it was my imagination, but it sounded even louder this time, like it was growing closer.

I don’t know why my mind retrieved stories of alien beings landing on earth.  I remembered stories people told about strange sounds, unidentified flying objects, of bright lights around their homes, of strange beings from outer space trying to get them.  Didn’t most of those stories happen in rural settings?  Weren’t there several stories of close encounters of the third kind happening in Kentucky?

I went down the check list: Rural Kentucky – check.  Strange sounds – check.  No bright lights – yet.  Suddenly my bedroom was filled with bright light.  The aliens were landing!  They were coming to take me!  Who knows what unspeakable horrors they were about to inflict up my person!  Should I run?  Should I hide? Should I share the plan of salvation with them?

It took a minute for my brain to connect the bright lights with the sound of a diesel engine and crunching gravel.  A semi had made a wrong turn and was turning around in the parking lot of the church next door.  I thanked God the aliens were not landing.

The truck rumbled off.  The whirring noise resumed.  It seemed to be coming from the basement.  Maybe the aliens used the semi as cover to drop off a scouting party. Maybe they were checking to see if I would be a tender meal.  I wanted to shout, “I’m filled with gristle!  You don’t want me!  I’m too fatty and will make your cholesterol level jump!”

“Take it like a man,” I thought.  If I had to go, I would go down fighting.  I got out of bed and found my racquetball racquet.  I slowly opened the basement door and began to creep down the stairs.  Halfway down, I heard the whirring noise begin again.  Then I remembered every horror movie has a scene were the unsuspecting victim creeps down the basement stairs.  I decided to go off script and scamper down the stairs.  I ran across the cold concrete toward the basement corner where the whirring noise was coming from.  Surprise, I decided, was my best friend.  I rounded the corner and lashed out with my racquetball racquet and began to beat the alien to death.

There were no screams from the dehumidifier that had been clicking off and on.  Some thoughtful member of the Building and Grounds Committee had placed it there to keep the humidity out of the basement – and probably to test the new pastor’s nerves.

Its funny where your fears will take you.  Reality is never quite as bad as your fears lead you to believe.  Contrary to most movies and books, its not a good idea to face your fears alone.  You need a friend to help you stay in touch with reality. 

Sometimes, you need to be with a friend you know can handle any danger that comes your way.  That’s exactly the message when David says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.  Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”  When you walk with Jesus, no matter what sounds you hear in the deep darkness, Jesus says, “I got you.  I’m bigger than whatever your fear can imagine.  I will knock all threatening evil out of your life.” 

Even aliens.

Only One Hero Here…

The Bible is brutally honest about the characters it portrays.  That’s one reason I trust it.

 The first man, Adam, is no hero.  He goes along with his wife and breaks the one law (one!) God gave him.  He has to move out of the garden of Eden to the equivalent of a single-wide trailer.  Days of delight are gone, replaced by days of sweat.  He can’t keep the kids from fighting; one of them kills the other.  Sure, he lives to a ripe old age, but let’s face it – he screws up everything for the rest of us.

 Noah starts off pretty good, building the ark and riding out the storm.  But he doesn’t do very well starting over.  He gets wasted one night and one of his boys sees him passed out and naked (or neekid as we say in the South).  Through his hangover he winds up cursing his grandson, which made family reunions a little tough.

 Abraham follows God’s call to leave home, but when things get tough, he throws his wife Sarah under the bus, telling her to go into Pharaoh’s house and be one of his concubines to save his skin.  God gets him out of that jam.  Later on, when all the fertility treatments haven’t worked, Sarah tells him to sleep with the cleaning lady and they’ll adopt the baby.  When Abraham is 99, God shows up and tells him the long-promised baby is coming.  Abraham’s response is to laugh in God’s face and tell him it’s impossible, because he’s old now and Sarah’s womb is way past its prime.  Abraham’s faith is like Swiss Cheese – there’s a lot of holes.

 When you dealt with Abraham’s grandson Jacob, you needed to keep your hand on your wallet.  He was always looking for the advantage, willing to cut any corner needed so he would come out on top.  The trickster wound up being tricked himself when he went to take a wife.  He thought he was getting a drop-dead gorgeous wife in Rachel, but woke up the day after his wedding with a huge hangover and a wife so ugly she made your eyes water.  It turned out Leah, though hard on the eyes, couldn’t turn around without getting pregnant, while Rachel couldn’t have a baby to save her life.  In classic neglected wife fashion, Rachel told Jacob to give her a baby or she would die (nag, nag, nag).  Jacob found one thing he couldn’t trick his way out of, so he finally prayed and Rachel had her baby.  They named him Joseph and spoiled him rotten.  Jacob’s boys didn’t get along the favorite, sold their brother Joseph into slavery, then told old Dad he was killed by a wild animal.  Jacob spent years grieving his favorite son, only to find out God was at work in the whole thing.  He would have to go live in Egypt for a while, however, and that set the stage for all kinds of trouble later on.

 Moses appears about four hundred years later and was such a cute baby he got adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter.  Palace life wasn’t so bad, except he never quite fit in.  He wasn’t really an Egyptian, not really a Hebrew.  He tried to right a wrong and wound up committing a murder.  He had to get out town fast and found himself on the backside of nowhere.  He wound up marrying a farmer’s daughter and was free labor to his father-in-law for forty years.  Then God told him to go back to Egypt.  Protesting he wasn’t any good at political action movements, God told him to go anyway, he’d take care of Pharaoh for Moses.  God did work the whole thing out, but Moses got stuck with a group of complainers that made a Baptist business meeting look like a convention of Positive Thinkers.  Moses got so mad at them he lost his cool and did his own special brand of sin, which cost him a trip to the Promised Land.

 I could go on, but you get the idea.  David was a man after God’s own heart, but he was also a man after Bathsheba’s body, which was a problem since she was married to someone else.  A few whispered commands and that little problem was taken care of, but it set off an unrest in David’s palace that lasted until the day he died.  His son Solomon was supposedly the wisest person who ever lived, but he wasn’t so smart about women and money.  If trying to love two women is like a ball and chain, Solomon was shackled up pretty good with his 600 wives and 300 concubines.  When he wanted to do a new building project he’d raise taxes again, or conscript more folks for forced labor.  Before he was cold in the tomb, his kingdom was broken in two.

 The New Testament folks were no better.  Peter was always putting his foot in his mouth.  James and John were always arguing about who was the greatest.  Thomas made Eeyore look like Joel Osteen.  Everyone thought Matthew was a traitor.  Simon was always arguing politics.  Judas lived pretty well on what he stole from their bank account.

 Even Paul was no saint.  He jailed a bunch of Jesus followers before he saw the light.  Even then, he had a pretty sharp pen if you crossed him.  He even had trouble getting along with Barnabbas, who got along with everyone. 

 There is only one hero in the Bible and that’s Jesus.  This is the guy who could wipe out the Avengers with a side glance, but he lays down his power to die on a cross, to pay the penalty for the sins of all the folks listed above, and everyone else in the world.  Death couldn’t hold him, however, and he came out of the tomb.  There wasn’t any stirring sound-track, just an empty tomb, some passed out temple guards, and some bewildered women.  God can be very understated.

 The mistake most of us make is trying to be the hero of our own story.  Nobody in the Bible does a good job of it; what makes you think you can?  The one hero in Bible, Jesus, offers you a life where you don’t have to be heroic; you just have to follow. 

 Following is a lot easier than leaping tall buildings in a single bound.  Try it.

Cheap Faith, Expensive Faith…

I was at a gathering of people who had lot of wealth.  Where and when is not important. Let me simply say that it would incorrect to speak about a Lexus in the parking lot; there were Lexi in the parking lot.  Women were dressed to nines; the men were thin.  Everyone looked perfect.  I felt out of place.

Most of the people in the gathering professed faith in Jesus.  They belonged to churches and attended when they could.  The conversation at the gathering made references to Jesus, to God’s blessings, and to the sorry state of the government.  

Jesus once said it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  I get the analogy.  When you live in luxury it is hard to be humble.  Sometimes, in my cynicism, I wonder if the ultra-rich would still follow Jesus if said, “Go, sell your Lexus, give the money to the poor, and come and follow me.” 

It’s fun to be self-righteous.  It’s also dangerous.  Nothing attracts the attention of the God like the piety of a person who condemns someone else’s externals without first examining the forest of sin in his or her own life.  In that moment of spiritual pride, a thought from God entered my heart: “So Clay, if I ask you to give up your truck with heated leather seats and give the money to the poor, would you?”

Ouch.  The voice of God in my soul can bring troubling conviction.  If I am not walking with Jesus, I can begin to think I deserve all God lets me enjoy.  This is the temptation of blessing: believing God owes me something because I have been so good.

If you live this way, believe you deserve the blessings of God, Jesus said you will lose something.  You might gain the whole world, but you will lose your soul.  I don’t think Jesus was thinking just of heaven and hell when he said this; he meant you would lose yourself.  Think about it: have you ever heard a story about a person who made it big in their career and made a wreck of their home?  Or maybe they made a wreck of their lives with an addiction?  The track record of human beings staying healthy while successful is not good.

Caroline Mahendran was teaching children in the Sunday School of Zion Church on Easter Sunday.  If you have never taught children in Sunday School, you have no appreciation of the peace of heaven.  One of the tried and true methods of holding children’s attention is asking them a question that requires a mass response.  Simple “yes” or “no” questions are usually the best.

Since it was Easter, Caroline taught the children about the Cross of Jesus and the Resurrection of Jesus.  She spoke about Jesus’ great sacrifice for us and how he deserved our total loyalty.  She asked the class of twenty-four if they would die for Jesus, “Yes!” they shouted.

Fifteen minutes later, as these children were in the sanctuary, waiting for Easter worship services to begin, a suicide bomber entered, detonated his bomb, killing himself and twenty-eight other people.  Twelve of the dead were children, the same children who declared moments earlier they would die for Jesus.  Zion Church is in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, where almost 300 people died in Easter Sunday bombings.

Arasaratnam Verl lost his only child, V. Jackson.  His oldest sister was also killed.  His younger sisters and his brother-in-law are in critical condition.  I can’t imagine what this man feels.  He is not counting his blessings.  His faith is under faith.  In the face of loss, he will face the toughest test, to believe God is still good while his heart hurts.  “Love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you” is not a quaint notion for him. 

When I read this story, I was brought low.  How can I claim any spiritual maturity when there are people who must live with this kind of threat?  How can I judge anyone when my faith has never faced this kind of test?  All my complaints about the difficulty of life seem trivial compared to the faith that is required to believe when a father sees the blood of his child spilled on the floor of the sanctuary.

King David once said, “I will not give God an offering that costs me nothing.”  Every kind of faith, Christian or not, will face this kind of test.  The test will be simple, though the circumstances seldom are.  The test is this: Is my faith cheap, an imitation of the real thing, a faith that breaks under pressure?  Or is my faith expensive, willing to sacrifice, willing to believe in the face of pain, present in times of trouble? 

Cheap faith or expensive faith.  Which faith do you have?

The Frog…

One Easter, some friends with small children came over to the house.  While the adults talked, the kids ran around the back yard and stuck their feet in the pool.   

Believe it or not, kids do not need something with electrons to entertain themselves.  They found a frog.  Pools and frogs go together.

The frog was scooped out of the water and carefully examined.  One little girl hugged it tight against her chest, like you hug a baby doll.  Never, however, have I seen a baby doll’s eyes bug out like the frog’s. 

Her elder brother snatched the frog away from her and said, “Let’s see if we can make it hop.”  They sat the frog down on the ground.  The frog wobbled a little bit, a little dizzy from all the human interaction.  They poked the frog with a twig, and he would hop.  If you want to see an example of human depravity, watch preschoolers make a frog hop.  Drunk with power, they made the frog jump around the patio for about ten minutes.  At this point, I began to think the frog was in need of post traumatic stress counseling. 

Frogs, of course, know the feeling of being airborne when they hop.  A couple of the older kids began to wonder if frogs could fly.  One of the smallest girls snatched the frog away from her brother, and threw it up in the air.  I think she wanted the frog to sprout wings. 

Frogs do not sprout wings.  They do land, however, with a sickening thud because little girls do not always have the best eye to hand coordination.

Two of the older boys decided to play catch.  With the frog.  They started under-handed, but quickly moved to overhanded pitching.  I’m no expert on frog body language, but as the frog passed by me for the eleventh time, his facial expression was a cry for help.

After a few more minutes of play, the frog was set on the concrete where he lay silently.  One of the children said, “I think he’s dead.”  I couldn’t blame him.  Amongst eight little hands, dying was the preferred option. 

What do you do with a dead frog?  One of the children said, with some enthusiasm in his voice, “Let’s bury him!”   Since I was the only pastor present, they ran to me with their request: “Pastor Clay, will you do a funeral for the frog?”

Funeral for a frog:

               Processional – “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog”

Scripture – Exodus 8:6 – “So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt and frogs came up and covered the land.”

               Remarks – “He was a Prince of a Guy until He Croaked”

                              1.  He overcame his tadpole ways

                              2.  He lifted up his song every evening

                              3.  Sure he had warts, but don’t we all

                              4.  It was always tempting to pull his leg and fry it

               Postlude – “It Ain’t Easy Being Green”

Just as I was getting up to get the shovel and conduct my first frog funeral, the frog, having momentarily been left alone, gave a mighty leap off the concrete.  Four quick hops and he made it into the flower bed and safety. 

The children cried because they had been denied a frog funeral.  I am sure the frog made his way to whatever constitutes an emergency room in the frog world.  I can imagine explaining his experience to the doctors (frogtors?) and his family: “I was minding my own business when the devil got ahold of me.  He squeezed me, made do his devil’s dance, and then, I flew through the air without hoping!  I was left for dead, but I stayed still until they were distracted and I hopped to safety.”

When I think about that afternoon, I think about the church.  Not just my church, but every church where Jesus is preached and God’s work is done.   You can squeeze the church, abuse the church, try to make the church do a few tricks.  You can even take delight in planning the church’s funeral.  Just when you think the church is dead, God breathes some life into her and she keeps hopping.  The church may be ugly, but kissed with the grace of Jesus, she is a princess, a bride.  The church is a frog kissed with grace of God, warts and all.

Before you give up on the frog that is the church, you might want to check yourself for warts.  I’ll bet you have a few.  That means you will fit right in at church.

Notre Dame, Good Friday, and Easter…

When I was fourteen our High School Band, the Largo Band of Gold, went to Europe to compete in the World Music Festival (we won two gold medals with distinction). After the competition, we toured continental Europe.  Our first stop was Paris.

Nothing in my Southern boyhood prepared me for Paris.  The first thing that caught my eye were the billboards with nude female models.  I knew I was not supposed to lust, but no Sunday School lesson prepared me for that.  We went to the Louvre.  I saw the Mona Lisa but more amazing to me were whole rooms covered with one work of art.  The artist painted the walls and the ceilings.  I’d never seen anything like it.

We played a concert underneath the Eiffel Tower and then went up to see the city in all it’s splendor.  I did get lost on the Paris subway, where a kindly stranger speaking Portuguese responded to my ninth grade Spanish enough to get back to the hotel.

But it was Notre Dame I remembered most.  At fourteen, I already knew I was supposed to be a pastor, a “preacher” in our Southern Baptist lingo.  I had seen my share of churches, of course, but nothing in Wauchula, Okeechobee, Kissimmee, or Largo prepared me for Notre Dame. 

Rural Baptists had a distrust of Catholics, probably because there weren’t very many of them in our neck of the woods.  Then again, we didn’t even trust Methodists because they didn’t have church on Sunday night (heathens!).  Seeing the Cathedral of Notre Dame on the schedule made me apprehensive.  Would I have to become Catholic to enter?  Would they kidnap me and force me to be a priest instead of a preacher?  Would I have to kiss a statue of the Pope?  I had been warned about false prophets in many sermons, but I had no instructions about entering a strange house of worship.

The tour bus rounded the corner, and I saw Notre Dame up close.  My eyes drifted up, my breathing stopped.  I had never seen anything so massive.  We walked off the bus and made our way to the cathedral.  It loomed larger and larger; I felt smaller and smaller.  Only much later in life would I learn this was intentional.  A cathedral was supposed to make you realize the grandeur of God and make you aware of your own smallness in the world.

Since my offshoot of the Protestant Reformation has a distant kinship to the Puritans, our sanctuaries (this was before we called them “worship centers”) are plain.  At Notre Dame, there was not one inch of undecorated space.  The entrances, the outside walls, and the interior were covered with carvings.  The stain glass sparkled colors throughout the interior.  I couldn’t read Latin, but I recognized enough to know some of the stories being told.  I saw Jesus crucified and resurrected in the stone and in the glass.  It began to slowly dawn on me that the people who built this worshipped the same Jesus I did.

It was not until I was in the middle of the cathedral that someone said, “Look behind you.”  Then I saw the famous South Rose Window.  It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, more amazing than the billboards.  I was held in a spell of awe.  In the vast cavern of the cathedral, I had a sense of something holy, someone bigger than myself.  In that moment, a fourteen-year-old Southern Baptist boy felt the beauty of God.

Like you, I saw the picture of the Notre Dame Cathedral burning this week. Memories poured out of the deep corners of my brain.  I could feel once more the majesty of the moment from forty decades earlier.  My first thought was “I pray the windows can be saved.”

I’m not someone who thinks God caused the fire in the Cathedral.  God is much bigger than any building, no matter how beautiful.  I do believe, however, that God invites me to look at the news and find where he is at work.  There are more signs of the gospel in the world than you or I can see.

I saw the picture the next day, the picture of a beam of light shining into Notre Dame, showing the altar, showing the bright bronze cross still in place.  That picture is the story of Good Friday and of Easter.  It is the story of an evil world doing its best to burn down the work of God.  It is the story of the fire of my sin, which burns within, causing me to do that which I know I should not do.  It is the story of grace, the grace that rains down upon the fires of sin, grace inexhaustible, extinguishing the penalty and power of my sin.  It is the story of resurrection, that nothing – not the power of the darkness, nor the fires of sin, nor the pitiful human efforts to make God small – nothing can take away God love for me.  Grace is a beautiful thing.

This is the story of Good Friday and of Easter – the light has come into the world and nothing can put it out. 

I hear they saved the South Window, the window that so long ago gifted me with a holy moment.  It is just another sign of the gospel, that God can save anything, anyone.  Even you.  Even me. 

A Wonderful World?

Louie Armstrong sang: 

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world…

Unless, of course, you live in a war zone where tanks are running over the trees and the red roses are destroyed by incoming bombs and missiles.  It doesn’t take human beings very long to destroy the signs of beauty in the world.

Louie croons on:

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world…

Unless, of course, the skies of blue you see are because you are homeless, and you have no roof over your head.  Then I’m not so worried about how beautiful the sky is, but where am I going to spend the night?  The dark, sacred night can be frightening when you are on the streets.  There are people out there who want to hurt you; some people out there are crazy enough to want to kill you.

Louie sings:

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you…

Unless, of course, the colors of the rainbow mean you have just experienced another rainstorm and your farm, or ranch, or orange groves are so flooded you can’t make a crop.  Then you are not really thinking about the rainbow; you are wondering if you will survive.  And sorry, Louie, but have you seen some people’s faces? They are like a rainbow because the corners of their mouths are always turned down in a frown.  I’ve known some people who shake my hand and say, “How do you do?” who are not saying “I love you.” Instead, they are saying, “I want to sell you something you don’t need.”

Louie’s final verse:

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Unless, of course, Louie, that baby woke you up at 3:00 am throwing up and crying.  Then I’m not thinking about watching them grow and how much they’ll know; I’m praying I can get the doctor on call and I’m praying its nothing major.

You might think I’m in a really bad mood as I write this.  Truly, I’m not.  Nor am I down on positive thinking.  We can use all the positive thinking on the planet we can get.  Nor am I saying Jesus followers are members of the “Ain’t it awful” club.  We, above all people, have reason to hope.  We are the Easter people and our Lord is the one who triumphed over death. 

Why, then, deconstruct such an optimistic, hopeful song with such a pessimistic outlook?  Lately God has been impressing on me that just because my life is going well doesn’t mean everyone’s life is going well.  God loves every person on this planet right now.  Things are terrific for some of them.  Things are okay for a lot of them.  For most of the people on the planet, however, life is a drudge.  To quote the great theologian, Elvis, they are caught in a trap, and they can’t walk out.  They are caught in traps of poverty, war, disease, depression, anxiety, and despair.  Pointing to trees, flowers, blue skies, smiles, and babies does not make the trap go away.

It’s not a wonderful world, not yet.  This is why Jesus not only died to forgive our sins and rose again, but why he promised he would return.  Christians debate the how, what, and when of his return, but that’s not the main point of his return.

When Jesus returns, the world will be judged.  That judgement will not be just about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.  It will God coming to establish his Kingdom on this earth, where his values and his way of life will rule.  Those of us who follow Jesus will participate in that amazing re-creation.  Those who don’t want to participate?  Well, God makes a place for them that is hot and unpleasant.  The second coming of Jesus means the earth will return back to what it was created to be. 

Then, and only then, will it truly be, a wonderful world – the world of the Kingdom of God.

Be Prepared…

A long, long time ago, there was a different version of “The Bachelor.”   

A father decided it was time for his son to be married.  Unlike most parents, he had not arranged a marriage for his son when he was a toddler.  The father was just enough of a romantic that he wanted his son to have the opportunity to fall in love.  He wanted his son to have a choice.

Certain conventions, however, had to be observed.  The bride would be selected from the family’s ancestral home.  Ten of the most attractive unmarried girls would be presented to his son, the future groom, and he would pick one to marry.

Word was sent to the old hometown.  Entertainment options were limited in those days, so the whole town was excited to see how this story would unfold.  The parents of the unmarried women were excited, for the father was rich and could be expected to pay a large dowry – perhaps as much as 30 or 40 cows!  The unmarried women were excited, because they knew all the eligible men in town – and had known them for years.  The idea of a new man in town, from a rich family, was like a dream come true.

There were ten unmarried women total and they began their preparations.  New clothes were sown.  Expensive perfume, some costing a year’s wages, was purchased.  Tips on how to be attractive were whispered among the women.  Advice was given by mothers and fathers, grandmothers, aunts, and cousins. 

A new message came: expect the groom-to-be to arrive on the evening of the next new moon. He would make his selection that night.  There would be an elaborate banquet.  Negotiations on dowry would follow and the wedding would held as soon as possible.

Once it was known the groom-to-be would arrive at night, every family realized the lighting was critical.  Some of the women used small lamps, so their less attractive features could be hidden in the shadows.  A few families gambled on their daughter’s charms and bought larger lamps so beautiful faces could be seen.

The day of the new moon arrived and the whole town seemed to spruce up for the arrival of the groom.  The ten unmarried women spent the day bathing, dressing, rearranging their hair, getting last minute advice from their Moms and Dads, and trying to remain calm.  In the late afternoon, the women gathered up their beauty paraphernalia and their lamps and made their way to the town square. 

People milled around waiting for the town watchman to cry, “Here comes the groom.”  With no moon, the stars sparkled like diamonds.  In the darkness, lanterns were burning, but as time went on, people let the lanterns die out, saving their extra fuel for the wedding banquet.

Nine o’clock came and went.  By ten-thirty, everyone was yawning.  A few people gave up and went home to bed.  People were laying on the grass of the town square, catching a few winks.  One by one, the ten unmarried women dozed off.

It was midnight when the watchman finally cried out, “The groom is here!  Everybody up!  The groom is here.”

Everyone startled awake.  The ten unmarried women grabbed their lanterns to light them, so they could see their last-minute beauty adjustments.  Five of the unmarried women had packed some extra oil, just in case.  Five of the unmarried women only brought the oil in the lamps.

The five unmarried women without oil said to the five unmarried women with oil, “Give us some oil!  We don’t have enough to relight our lamps.”  The five unmarried women with oil replied, “No way.  If we give you some, we won’t have enough! Get your own oil!”  They might have added, “We want the groom-to-be to see us!  You are on your own!”

The five unmarried women without oil groaned.  They knew this meant they would have to go to the oil dealer’s house, wake him up, plead for him to get them some more oil, pay extra, and hope they could make it back in time for the groom-to-be to pick them.  Off they scurried.

Before they could make it back, however, the groom did arrive.  The crowd gave him a great cheer.  He looked at the unmarried women, grinned, and said, “This is going to be a hard decision!  Come on, let’s go in to the banquet.  I’m starved and I want to eat something as I make my decision.”  In they went.

Five minutes after the door to the banquet room was closed, the five unmarried women came back with their extra oil.  They banged on the door: “Let us in!”  The groom-to-be was closest to the door.  He went over and hollered back, “Who are you?”  The reply came, “We are unmarried women who want to be in the contest!  We want to marry you!”  The groom-to-be looked at the crowd, rolled his eyes, and said, “I don’t think so!  I didn’t see you when I arrived.”

The five unmarried women went away, devastated.  Of the other group, one was picked to be the bride.  The other four were depressed at not being chosen, but at least, they told themselves, they had a chance.

Jesus told a story a lot like this one.  You might say the story sounds unfair.  But Jesus told us the uncomfortable truth we all want to deny but we all know is true: Some opportunities are really once in a lifetime.  So be prepared.  Be prepared for Jesus to come and work in your life.  Be prepared for his coming.  Be prepared for the opportunities God gives you.  No one knows when the opportunities will come.  We only know they will come.  Are you prepared?