not my will, but Yours.

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

The Parable of the Lost Coin

“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

The Parable of the Lost Son

Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

-Luke 15

“Do not be afraid,” Samuel replied. “You have done all this evil; yet do not turn away from the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless. For the sake of his great name the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own. As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you. And I will teach you the way that is good and right. But be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you.” -1 Samuel 12:20-24

The point is not to completely understand God but to worship Him. Let the very fact that you cannot know Him fully lead you to praise Him for His infiniteness and grandeur. -Francis Chan, Forgotten God

Every year, students’ lives follow the same circular pattern - classes for a few months sprinkled with sweet little days off, a healthy couple of weeks off for the holidays, another few months of school work, then the all too glorious months of summertime.

Hallelujah.

It splits into four pretty distinct parts like that. And we’ve been doing this year after year for almost our entire lives. But we’re always, always surprised by how quickly they go by.

So take the end of the school year for example. The last couple of weeks you can hardly stay seated at the excitement of MONTHS off classes. I’ve seen school hallways turn to dangerous anarchy from sheer excitement. And once it’s there, you can breathe with sweet relief. And then we get into a routine at home, whether that’s working 9-5 or it’s working 2 hour shifts on Saturdays or it’s pretending you’re going to be productive right after this marathon of Seinfeld is over. But the best part about summer is that every day can hold new possibilities - all your free time can hold whatever you choose, and you have about 90 days worth of it. And if you’re anything like me, you even get to a point where you miss school a little bit. Not necessarily the work, but maybe the people or the sense of purpose. Or maybe you don’t.

But isn’t it incredible how on that last day in late August or early September, you look back and you think, “Did the whole summer really just go by?”

And then we think, “Did freshman year really just go by?”

And then we think, “Did high school really just go by?”

When we’re there, going day by day, assignment by assignment, episode by episode of Seinfeld, it’s real and full and time is tangible. But we lose our sense of what time means very quickly. And every year we are surprised by how time works, like we haven’t been following it’s rules for our entire existence.

For example, as Christians (or Jews) you hear a lot about the 40 years Israel spent wandering the desert. But we don’t really feel that. We’re so far gone, so far past that - that “40” is just a number. The book of numbers could tell us how Israel spent a billiondy gajillion years in the desert and we wouldn’t blink an eye. Except for the use of “a billiondy gajillion”.

So in Numbers 33, our author tries to make us get it. Here is Numbers 33:10-21:

¹⁰ They left Elim and camped by the Red Sea.

¹¹ They left the Red Sea and camped in the Desert of Sin.

¹² They left the Desert of Sin and camped at Dophkah.

¹³ They left Dophkah and camped at Alush.

¹⁴ They left Alush and camped at Rephidim, where there was no water for the people to drink.

¹⁵ They left Rephidim and camped in the Desert of Sinai.

¹⁶ They left the Desert of Sinai and camped at Kibroth Hattaavah.

¹⁷ They left Kibroth Hattaavah and camped at Hazeroth.

¹⁸ They left Hazeroth and camped at Rithmah.

¹⁹ They left Rithmah and camped at Rimmon Perez.

²⁰ They left Rimmon Perez and camped at Libnah.

²¹ They left Libnah and camped at Rissah.

Honestly, it’s kind of terrible to read. This list actually continues from Numbers 33:3   all the way to verse 49. I get two verses into that and need a nap.

But do you see what’s happening?

At each of these places, the Israelites moved in, set up camp, set up their tents and their altars and their families. Then they lived there for days or weeks or maybe months. They ate and talked and worshiped and played and bathed and lived. At Kibroth Hattavah they did all these things. Then they packed them all up again and left. Then went to Hazeroth. And unpacked. And stayed. And packed. And left.

This was real for them. This wasn’t a story that could be skimmed through or skipped, it wasn’t a number like 40. This was their day to day lives. For 40 years. It must have felt like forever. And don’t forget that they are in a desert. Again, don’t be numb to it. They walked through the sand, the sun beat on their backs, they trudged along looking for the promised land with dry mouths and salty skin. For 40 years.

But in the midst of that long, drawn out terror they experienced some of the biggest miracles in the bible. God rained down food on them. It says they woke up to the bread (mana) sitting on the ground like the morning dew. And when they worried of having no water, twice God used Moses to bring forth water from a rock. A rock. And it says that every day God showed himself to them in a pillar of cloud and at night a pillar of fire so that they would always know where to go. A PILLAR OF FIRE.

But in the middle of that, in the middle of their years and years and years in the desert, they missed it. They complained about the bread and got used to the fire pillars said they wished they were back in Egypt, back in slavery.

It took me a while to see it, but we’re Israel. Me and you. We are God’s people. And there are sometimes (or plenty of times) when I feel like I am struggling. We’re egged on by promises of God’s ultimate plan, of a light at the end of the tunnel. But those come from the outside, where my struggle is a number and a list. From in here, it’s real. It hurts. It beats down on our backs as we do our best to put one foot in front of the other.

But God is with us the whole time. That’s the bible in a nutshell - God has been with us all along. I can promise you if you take a look back, and look hard, you’ll see that he’s sustaining you. He’s sustaining me. He’s raining bread on us like rain, he’s giving us water from the driest of rocks. We just sometimes have to really look to see it.

And in the end, the Israelites make it. They get to the promised land. But not all of them. Not most of them. They become impatient and turn their backs on Him who has been nothing but faithful. And so they don’t make it, not even Moses himself, because they could not manage to find it in themselves to trust even the God of the Universe in such dire circumstances.

So what does that mean? First, it shows he’s the only way out. Yeah sure, if they picked a straight line and kept walking, they would get out of that desert. But they wouldn’t end up where God promised they would. They may have even ended up somewhere worse than the desert.

Second, we have to, have to, be patient. Have you been in your desert for 40 years? Maybe not. But let this story be a testimony to God’s faithfulness. If he could be faithful to a group of Israelites who complained and cursed him and sought other gods and asked for better miracle food, if he could be faithful to them for 40 years, he will be faithful to you.

He will give you the energy you need, each and every morning, as plentiful as the dew on the ground. He will sustain you and show you life, even from the ugliest and most unlikely of places. And he will always, in some strange way or another, point you toward the promised land.

You just have to follow him.

To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

-Jude 24-25

“In the passage where the New Testament says that every one must work, it gives as a reason ‘in order that he may have something to give to those in need.’ Charity - giving to the poor - is an essential part of Christian morality: in the frightening parable of the sheep and the goats it seems to be the point on which everything turns. Some people nowadays say that charity outght to be unnecessary and that instead of giving to the poor we ought to be producing a society in which there were not poor to give to. They may be quite right in saying that we ought to produce that kind of society. But if anyone thinks that, as a consequence, you can stop giving in the meantime, then he has parted company with all Christian morality. I do not believe on can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably give away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do an cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. I am speaking now of ‘charities’ in the common way. Particular cases of distress among your own relatives, friends, neighbours or employees, which God, as it were, forces upon your notice, may demand much more: even to the crippling and endangering of your own position. For many of us the great obstacle to charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for more money, but in our fear - fear of insecurity. This must often be recognised as a temptation. Sometimes our pride also hinders our charity; we are tempted to spend more than we ought on the showy forms of generosity (tipping, hospitality) and less than we ought on those who really need our help.”

- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.

invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

⁵ Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. ⁶ Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

-Colossians 4:5-6

As a Christian, you’re always in danger of getting bombarded with hard questions. Always.

What’s your view on gay marriage? What’s your view on abortion? What do Christians think about this?

Like you or I are the ultimate knowledge and authority on putting those things into a Christian context.

What can be more dangerous, though, than someone asking us (who are afraid we might not know the answers), is someone asking somebody who is sure that they do know all the answers. It’s dangerous because nobody knows all the answers.

My favorite verse in the Bible is James 1:22 which says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” Our faith is inseparably tied with action.

But can reading the Bible really deceive you?

Unfortunately, the answer is a super obvious in-your-face yes. Jesus was at constant odds with the teachers of the law. In case you don’t know, this isn’t the law of land as much as the law of the Torah - the law of the Old Testament. In Jesus’ day, there obviously wasn’t a New Testament, so this was all the scripture they had to go on. And these teachers of the law were men who knew it front and back and held that standard harshly. Nobody knew it like they did, and they were quick to tell others about how far they fell short.

But Jesus, time and time again, made sure to tell them that they fall just as short.

We could never, not even with hundreds of years of trying, nail every point of the law. We just can’t. And that’s why Jesus came and did that on our behalf.

Trying to get it all perfectly will drive you insane. You can know the Bible front-to-back, you can be able to find and reference verses at the drop of a hat, you can have the whole freakin thing memorized - but that doesn’t always mean you know God. You could do all of this and miss Him.

You could, in all your effort to know scripture - to follow the rules, to know the answers - walk right past the God of the universe.

The first time I read this passage from Colossians, it was a little confusing. “Let you conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

That ending doesn’t make sense. If I let my conversation be full of grace, isn’t it so  that others can know Christ? So I can teach others the answers?

What Paul is saying is that we have to love the other. We have to show grace to the outsider. That our scripture knowledge has to move us into action, otherwise it is just deceiving us. That Christ is not a math equation we can sit and ponder and explain away. What Paul is saying is that when we let the love of Christ flow through us in our interactions with others, then we have the answers. So, in other words, love is the answer.

We have a choice as we walk through our days, intersecting with the lives of others. We can try to know, and with our heads try to explain who and what Christ is in hopes of making someone else wrap their mind around Him - something we don’t fully understand ourselves. Or we can simply love, letting God work through us, so that in our actions others can learn who He is.

And we can teach ourselves in the process.

 ¹ Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³ For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, who is your^[a] life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

 ⁵ Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. ⁶ Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.^[b] 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. ⁸ But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. ⁹ Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices ¹⁰ and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. ¹¹ Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

 ¹² Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. ¹³ Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

 ¹⁵ Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. ¹⁶ Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. ¹⁷ And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.