Finding Christ at Christmas ... A Challenge Worth Taking

The calm before the storm on Christmas Morn 2012

Is it just me?  Or do you, too, have trouble fulfilling those great intentions we always make that first Sunday in Advent ... you know, the ones where we promise ourselves that we will make this "the best Christmas ever."  I mean, really, how many "best Christmases ever" can one have in this lifetime???  It's a rhetorical question I know ... but do I really know this?!?  Because if I did then I would realize that the answer is ONE!  And for me, that would likely have occurred on my wedding day/night/day after ... December 24-25, 1982.  So why the quest each and every year to exceed all the preceding now 51 Christmases of my life?  I am not sure I even want to know the answer to that question ... it is most likely rooted in pride, which has forever been my besetting sin.

But I am fairly certain that there is no amazing present that I can receive or trip that I can take that will result in "the best Christmas ever."  Not that this has kept me from trying both of those approaches in the past.  I remember a couple of amazing ski trips that we have taken as a family to both Telluride, CO and, most recently [in 2010], to Steamboat, CO.  I even remember the Christmas Eve sermon preached in the First Presbyterian Church of Telluride as being probably the most polytheistic sermon I'd ever heard.  This, however, was followed by the glorious spectacle of the entire Telluride ski patrol skiing down Telluride Mountain carrying flaming torches in each hand ... an awesome sight to behold.  And that was followed by a $300 family dinner downtown that was memorable only for its price tag.  No wonder we always stay in condos, shop the grocery stores and cook in the room.  But not when you're going for the "best Christmas ever!"

And what about the Christmas trip we took with Janna's parents to the Garden Isle of Kaua'i back in 1993?  We had given the island more than a year to recover from the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Iniki back in September 1992 [a mere 10 days before we moved to the Aloha State].  As gorgeous as that trip was, it didn't result in lasting satisfaction to the soul.  And, in fact, we still saw evidence of the hurricane's destructive power just about everywhere ... from the piles of debris [I don't think I have ever seen a larger mountain of mattresses anywhere at any time] to the now free-roaming chickens all over the island.  And it is my understanding that they STILL have free roam of the island.  Sometimes in life, you just can't go back and close the barn door.  Literally.

The only "present" not unwrapped!

And really, what do any of these things have to do with Christmas anyway?  Beside the fact that Christmas is one of the few times during my year that I purposely block time away from work and focus on spending it with my family.  But even in doing so, I always find it very difficult not to get sucked into the vortex of the myriad of distractions and tasks scattered like a dense minefield in front of me.  And this is especially true when we stay home for Christmas.  We seemingly always have more than our share of entertaining to do, plus we now have a burgeoning family of four kids, two sons-in-law with another in the wings and now a grandson on the way.  This on top of a large extended/blended family of siblings and their children ... and two sets of parents with one surviving step-grandmother.  As an aside, perhaps I should just think "What would Grandma Threadgill do?"  And then just do that.  I am not sure she has ever suffered this problem.  And then there is always this pre-Christmas dilemma of our wedding anniversary arriving every Christmas Eve.  It has too often been given short-shrift in the carousel of holiday events ... especially back in the day when we'd be up till 3:00 or 4:00 AM building several of those "some assembly required" projects. 

Now this is neither the first Christmas nor will it be the last that I have purposed to find Jesus in.  As a matter of fact, it has become a rather common occurrence.  And I do think that there have been occasional breakthroughs on that front from time to time.  The most recent of these breakthroughs occurred in December 2009 when I published my blog post entitled "The Great Leap Down -- The Story of Christmas."  That was my first Christmas on Facebook and happened a month after my kids insisted I get a blog page because I was blowing up everyone's News Feed.  In fact, I am not so sure that their News Feeds have ever been the same.

Anyway, all the preceding is written as a backdrop to the question of the day "Where can we find Jesus this Christmas?"  The obvious answer would first be to look in the manger.  But I immediately recall a news story I ran across just ten days ago that cited an occurrence in Birmingham, England where the Baby Jesus in their local market nativity set had been stolen and replaced with a garden gnome statue.  The City Council was not amused and ordered that the nativity set be boarded up until Jesus could be found.  And it is my understanding that it remains boarded up today.  The local paper even went so far as to quip that "there was gnome room in the inn" for Jesus.

This got me to thinking that Jesus just might be missing from our Christmases as well.  What if the local authorities here insisted that my Christmas season remain boarded up until Jesus was found?  Where would I go looking for Him?  Well, it might be wise to follow the footsteps of those whom we know from history had actually found Him.  Remember those shepherds "living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night?"  "An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them."  Yes, the very same ones who were "terrified."  They were told "Do not be afraid.  I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.  This will be a sign to you:  You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger."  Then suddenly the heavens opened up revealing the entirety of the heavenly host appearing with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests."

No sooner than the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds decided to do what?  Abandon their flocks?   That was the one thing shepherds NEVER did!  And yet the Scriptures record no real debate regarding this seeming dereliction of their duty ... it was as if they all came to an instantaneously unanimous decision to "Go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."  An angelic visitation tends to have that effect on people ... even the most responsible people, like shepherds in that day.  Or perhaps even doctors of my day?  But sadly, I haven't seen a single angel this Christmas season and I certainly haven't seen the sky split by a great multitude of the heavenly host.  So why go?  And even if I went, where would I go?  After all, they were given pretty specific directions and a sign to look for.  And I have been given neither.

Weren't there others who came searching for Jesus?  Oh yes, the Magi.  Wise men from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?  We saw his star in the east and have come to worship Him."  This greatly troubled King Herod who called the Magi secretly and learned from them the exact time the star had appeared and then sent them to Bethlehem telling them to make a careful search for him that he may too "go and worship him."  After going their own way, they again saw the star they had seen in the east and followed it "until it stopped over the very place where the child was."  Matthew records the Magi's emotional reaction as being "overjoyed" when they once again saw the star.  And when they arrived at "the house, they saw the child with His mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped Him.  Then they presented Him with gifts of gold, and of incense and of myrrh."  Hence the tradition of Christmas gifts goes all the way back to the Magi.  But why do we give them to each other?  Could it be because Jesus is just too hard to find?

Well, I thought if I were looking for a married person, assuming he was happily married [and I do realize that can be a big assumption these days; but we are talking about Jesus after all] then the first person I would want to talk to would be his spouse, which is, in this case, his bride.  Who is the bride of Christ?   Ostensibly the Church.  Wait, that is you and me, isn't it?!?  So moving past the obvious circularity of this argument to the Church corporately, what about finding Christ in our Church gatherings?  That would seem like an obvious place to start our search ... begin where He was last sighted.  That, too, carries with it certain assumptions that may or may not be true, and may also be specific church dependent.  What we find in far too many places is a dispassionate, dysfunctional bride.  Church attendance and participation is on the decline.  In just the past twenty years, church attendance has declined over 10% in the United States, and at any given church event here in America, an average of just 47% of the church congregation will attend.  Moreover, in the just completed 2012 presidential election, fully 20% of the electorate claimed to have no religious affiliation at all [the so-called "nones"] and that was up from 16% just four years previously.  Yes, gathering with other believers to celebrate our union with Christ is getting to be a bit of an afterthought, something to be checked off after we are done working, playing and shopping.  Our relationship to our groom has moved down the priority list.  And this is not by His choice mind you.  In most instances, His input hasn't even been sought at all.

It, however, wasn't always this way.  The early church met daily, "in the temple courts and from house to house."  And just as the shepherds came eagerly to Bethlehem that first night to see when Jesus entered our world, so, too, did the early church eagerly seek to see what was happening in the lives of those whom the Spirit of Jesus had recently entered.  The Church, as the bride of Christ, greeted Him regularly and passionately.  As a groom I know that is how I would like to be greeted each day as I come home from work.  But as with most marriages, this type of greeting sadly soon goes into decline.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men...

So how do we practically put Christ back into Christmas?  In my mind, it comes down to what we in our family call "God sightings."  Where is it that we have seen the Lord show up lately in our lives or in the lives of people around us?  What is it that we or they were doing when this happened?  We then make a conscious effort to replicate that or at least to get involved in what God was doing the last time He was seen.  Too often, we prefer to tell Jesus what it is that we'll be doing and then invite Him to join us there.  That may work from time to time, but I submit to you that those times are more the exception than they are the rule.  So as another Christmas draws nigh, I am actively looking backward over the past six months to see where it is that I have seen Christ working in both my life and in the lives of those He has sent across my path.

Alison

Last May, one of our family's dearest friends and one of my longest standing patients, Alison, suffered a devastating recurrence of her stage 4 endometrial stromal sarcoma as she had a large metastatic lesion grow around her proximal jejunum which caused severe internal bleeding and very nearly a complete small bowel obstruction.  This after nearly six years of almost "remission" [while not exactly "no evidence of disease" but essentially stand-off disease without any measurable progression].  Even more alarming was the seeming change in the cancer's histologic grade from the favorable "low grade" classification to the more ominous "high grade" category.  No one I have spoken to yet knows exactly what this means in Alison's case, and we now have a fourth opinion pending from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX next month.  We are not so sure they will know any more than Dr. Linda Morgan, her Shands gynecological oncologist, does.  Both the Shands Sarcoma group and the Moffitt Cancer Center Sarcoma group declined to offer an opinion.  Perhaps only God really knows for sure given the extreme rarity of this tumor cell type.  We are all rejoicing with her, however, following the results of her six month post-operative surveillance CT scans done last month that showed no evidence of tumor recurrence or of further metastatic disease.  We are all learning greatly from both Alison and another dear Four Oaks Church friend, Debora, just what it means to live one day at a time and to rejoice for each Christmas celebrated.

Debora

Debora is battling stage 4 breast cancer with liver metastases simultaneously with Alison, as she fights onward with hers.  And we continue to see how our amazing God changes lives one person at a time, seemingly more through the struggles we go through in this life than He does through our various "successes."  Debora's testimony was very powerfully shared with our entire church congregation via a video production during both services on December 23 and was also the focal point of Pastor Scott Stake's sermon on suffering while waiting in the middle for Christ's second Advent.  I don't think there was a dry eye in the sanctuary.  Still, she counts it all joy and wouldn't change a thing, as she has seen her two sons and the girlfriend [now wife] of her youngest son come to Christ through it.  And they are certainly only the first-fruits of the souls Christ will save through Debora's valiant struggle.

Alli & Chris ... let them eat cake!

Andrew & Ariel; Ashley & Matt ... headed out for a day at Dog Island

Engaged!

I marvel also as I watch the way Christ has operated in the lives of my kids.  All three of the girls have selected Godly men to become their husbands.  And it was a special blessing to watch my daughter Alli marry the love of her life, Chris, this past July in a service officiated by divine appointment by the pastor of City Church, Dean Inserra.  Selecting the pastor to both perform the wedding ceremony and conduct the premarital counseling sessions had been one of the few sticking points about the wedding as Chris really wanted his pastor, Dean, to officiate while I was partial to my and my family's pastor, Erik.  Ultimately, at our second meeting concerning this issue, which we held during Alli's Spring Break home from Caracas, VZ, I relented and let them use Dean after finding compelling Chris' argument that they as a couple would be submitted to Dean and the leadership at City Church and not Erik and the pastors and elders at Four Oaks once they were married and Alli was no longer attending Four Oaks.  I was also impressed with the way Chris yielded the final decision to me after making his final plea.  And then suddenly just seven weeks prior to the wedding and just a week or two before Alli would arrive home from Venezuela for good, Erik resigned his position with Four Oaks and we began an ongoing search for a new pastor.  This is a search that continues to this date ... but one that we hope will soon be over.  How great was it for Alli and Chris to have their premarital counseling and ceremony performed by the man who currently pastors them!  I am so glad that I got out of the way

Four Oaks Candlelight Christmas Eve Service 2011

That brings me to another recent God-sighting ... the amazing transformational process taking place in our body at Four Oaks.  God seemed to be saying that this time without a senior pastor would be much more than just a time of transition.  He would take this opportunity to reveal to each of us in leadership the extent of our continuing spiritual blindness despite each of us having "received the light."  We are just beginning to comprehend the deceitfulness of our remaining sin and the blinding effect it has on our personal spiritual vision.  While we tend to see very clearly and with great specificity the sin of others, we tend to be mostly blind to our own.  And the most dangerous aspect of this already dangerous condition is that spiritually blind people tend to be blind to their own blindness.  As a result, God has set up the body of Christ to function as an instrument of vision in our lives, so that we can know ourselves with a depth and an accuracy that would otherwise be impossible if left on our own.

Matt receiving the Swift Creek Teacher of the Year Award

And while I was on the subject of my girls and their husbands and husband-to-be, I would be remiss to not mention my son-in-law Matt Rousseau's selection three weeks ago as the Teacher of the Year at Swift Creek Middle School for the academic year 2012-13.  This is quite an honor for one so young as Matt [just beginning his third year in the classroom] and yet not surprising to any who know him.  There has likely never been a teacher more passionate about his calling than young Matthew nor one more gifted as a communicator.  Combine that with Matt's gregarious, outgoing personality, his heart for youth and his love for God and you have an unbeatable combination that makes for a very highly effective teacher.  God is honored every time Matthew walks, dashes or even leaps into his classroom, and it shouldn't be too surprising to see God honor him with this award as well.

Prayer send-off for Brian & Lois in our living room

We were honored late this summer to help send out a couple of dear friends, Brian and Lois, to Nepal on a long-term mission to the displaced Tibetan Buddhist people group living there.  This was the culmination of a calling that Brian received while taking an exploratory short term mission trip to Oaxaca, Mexico not so coincidentally with Janna and Ariel back in July 2007.  It was during this trip that God spoke to Brian's heart about long-term Christian service using his considerable engineering skills to help the indigenous peoples of Tibet whether residing in Tibet [now China] or across the border in Nepal.  As a result, God asked Brian to forgo the prestigious Ph.D. program in engineering at Florida State University that he had just been admitted to and give it all up for the cause of Christ, both on the opposite side of the globe and at an elevation quite different from our current sea level.  The ensuing five years were remarkable for the Lord providing Brian with the perfect helpmate for him ... a lovely, sweet, capable and also very adventuresome young woman named Lois.  And just like God, he allowed them to meet each other in one of our Four Oaks Church Fellowship groups ... sadly, just not OUR fellowship group [that would have made a great story even better ... well, at least in my mind].  Lois, too, had long felt the call on her life for overseas missions ... she just needed God to clear up all of the details.  In addition to providing spouses for each other, God allowed them ample time to develop a prayer and financial support network, take a couple of extended trips to Nepal to make some of the connections that would be necessary for survival there as well as to get a foretaste of where they would be living for the foreseeable future and then even an extended period of time learning some of the more modern concepts of low impact, high yield, high country agriculture at a commune-like farm near Aspen, CO last year.  And then long before we were ready to bid them farewell, they were off to Katmandu, Nepal learning the language and customs of the people there and taking a few forays/treks into the high country to get acquainted with some of the peoples they hope to begin planting churches among in the not too distant future.  I am just reminded of them this Christmas season being so far from "home" and yet home with Christ who, Himself, was no stranger to sacrifice having spent the world's first "Christmas" very far from the comforts of home [heaven] while sleeping in a feeding trough out in a borrowed barn.  You can't help but see Jesus when you see ones like Brian and Lois, so willing to sacrifice their own comfort so that others may know the one eternal and essential truth of the universe.

Missionaries have long been my heroes and I have two more such "sightings" this fall.  The first are our dear friends Chad and Tiffany, who came home in September on furlough from their mission in northern Cameroon to primarily the Fulani people group [Muslim] there.  Chad is an engineer who like Brian is a McGyver type guy ... can-do all the way no matter the circumstances.  His is a life devoted to making the lives of those much less fortunate than us better by employing relatively simple bits of technology in ingenious ways such as water filtration systems among others.  Water is the overarching feature of his ministry and he shows in very tangible ways why Christ so often referred to water in his metaphors.  There is probably no other single thing that can transform the health and life-expectancy of a remote village than reliable access to ample supplies of clean drinking water.  Fortunately, Chad is a master at finding ways to provide this life-giving resource to people ... whether it be via the laborious "hand-drilling" of a well or to employing a little machine help to start the fresh flow of water.  Last year a couple in our church donated a night's use of their skating rink to raise money to provide a Cameroonian village with a newly drilled fresh water well.  And not only did we raise enough money to fund a well but there were also enough funds to allow Chad to buy a mechanical well digging apparatus of his own rather than having to lease one every time he needed to drill a well.  Talk about an eternal investment in the Kingdom of God ... that night proved to be one ... while at the same time being a heck of a lot of fun as well.  I will never forget the sight of Pete Butler skating around in an electric suit seemingly right out of an Elton John music video!  Sometimes even a night of frivolity can result in the Kingdom moving forward a step or two, and yet there is no shortage of simultaneous sacrifice going on as well.

While we were celebrating a Housewarming Party just a few weeks ago for Chad and Tiffany we ran into another hero couple of ours, Terrill and Amber who had just returned home on furlough from northern Uganda where they minister to a very primitive tribe of people known as the Ik.  Terrill serves as a Wycliffe Bible translator to this remote people group and in four short [or maybe not so short ... depending on the eye of the beholder] years they have moved into community with this mostly nomadic people group, begun to learn their language, have developed their alphabet and have compiled a dictionary of several thousand words in the Ik tongue.  This hopefully will ultimately culminate with the New Testament and selected other sections of Scripture being translated into Ik and with a literacy program teaching the Ik to read and write in their own language.  And we also pray that it results in many coming to know the living Christ who cares enough not only to die for their souls but also to send ones as lovely at Terrill and Amber half way around the world to labor in their midst and to live out the gospel in front of their eyes.  Both Amber and Tiffany are trained nurses, yet out in the far flung reaches of rural Uganda and Cameroon, they operate at basically the level of nurse practitioners, and that more by need than by design.  And while we were celebrating their new home with them, we couldn't help but see the gleam of Jesus in Tiffany's eyes when she told us that not only was she expecting a sibling for little Chloe next summer but that there would be TWO!

Still smiling after 30 years of marriage!

I have also seen Jesus in the life of my wife Janna and in our marriage of now thirty years plus one day.  While it has become exceedingly rare for couples to spend a lifetime married to the ones they first exchanged vows with, our God is still a God who keeps covenant and has since the promise he made to Adam and Eve in the Garden regarding the offspring of her womb as being the one who would crush the serpent's head, which Christ did nearly 2000 years ago on Calvary's hill.  He is also the same God who kept covenant with Abraham and Moses and continues to keep covenant with men today.  And despite the mores of today's culture, He still expects no less from us.  How fortunate was I to marry a woman who anchors her life around honoring God's Word and keeping His commandments?!?  It was no one other than Jesus who did the same Himself, perfectly I might add, and then claimed that this was how we were to demonstrate our love for Him ... by keeping His commandments, which were in case you've forgotten summarized as "love the Lord your God with all your heart,  with all your soul and with all your mind.  And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself."   She serves her role of encouraging me to more closely walk with Christ in a beautiful way and demonstrates His unconditional love for me and others with her quick heart of forgiveness for the many times I fail.

Curtis is typically the first one to arrive at our pre-game tailgate party ...

Lastly, I want to speak of a homeless man named Curtis that God sent across our path last August at the first Seminole home football game using of all platforms ... our tailgate party.  This, I think maybe more than anything else this year, showed me just how resourceful our God can be and how unpredictable He can be about how, when and where He will show up.

Clemson v. FSU tailgate party

Curtis is a 50 year old homeless man whose life has had far more than his share of pain and heartache.  He is a veteran of the United States Army and served our country in both the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters I believe.  His pain, however, began long before he first experienced the atrocities of war.  He grew up not too far from Tallahassee down in the coastal community of Apalachicola.  Born just two days prior to Janna, he on August 9, 1962 and Janna a couple of days later, their upbringings could not have been more different.  While both came from lower middle class families, Janna was blessed with a family having a very strong Christian heritage going back at least to the fourth generation.  Curtis has only known a life of both physical and sexual abuse that began when he was a young boy and continued into adolescence.  This produced in him a harvest of mental illness manifested primarily by severe post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, attention deficit disorder and a chronic mood disorder that is currently characterized as bipolar.  He requires a significant amount of medication to function and still life is a chronic struggle.  But somewhere deep inside his soul, Curtis knew that God had not forgotten him and that God did still somehow have a plan for him ... if he could only find it.

FSU Cru ... our tailgate party fixtures

So after being kicked around the country from one VA health clinic to another following his discharge from the Army, somehow Curtis ended up in Tallahassee.  This after being denied entry into a trade school program and its accompanying housing benefits in upstate New York because someone there misinterpreted something he said as him "being suicidal."  And once again, what little progress Curtis had made while in New York had come to naught and he was thrown into a different system to try again to make something of his life.  Nevermind that Curtis was not assigned to a physician or a psychiatrist when he was sent to Tallahassee ... he would just have to figure those things out once he arrived.  And, of course, he had no where to start.  And so it was that God sent Curtis to our tailgate party that hot Saturday afternoon on September 1, when the Florida State Seminoles kicked off their 2012 season against the Murray State Racers.  This, too, was our first Saturday in our new upgraded tailgate lot [Lot 8] now no longer having Dick Howser Stadium [baseball] separating us [we were previously in Lot 11] from the shadow of Doak S. Campbell Stadium immediately to our west.  The increased cost associated with the upgrade [which also was required to purchase seven season tickets, an increase from our previous level of four season tickets the prior three years] was something that had been a source of irritation to Janna.  God graciously relieved her of this irritation once Curtis came into our lives as we would likely have never met him out in Lot 11.

Our weekly sacrifice to the football gods:)  Please let FSU win!

Chris had asked Janna if she would let his brother Brian use her game ticket that day, as he had come down from Atlanta to spend the weekend with Chris and Alli.  Janna was only too happy to oblige, as she doesn't care so much about the games as she does about the people she loves who attend the games.  So following the conclusion of the tailgate party, our band of seven traipsed into the stadium to watch the game in sweltering 95 degree heat.  Janna stayed out at our tailgate site and watched the game via our satellite TV hookup, graded papers, did some teacher planning and other such things that teachers do when they have time to kill.  A short while later, Curtis appeared and seemed intrigued by the game and being able to watch it outside with just a satellite dish.  He asked if he could stay and watch and Janna said yes, but after a while when he didn't leave, she awkwardly invited him under our canopy to watch in the shade and while sitting down.  She also offered him a soft drink and a late lunch which he also quickly accepted.  They struck up a conversation which Janna purposely turned toward Christ and Curtis was only too happy to follow.  It turns out that this is just what he had both been craving and asking the Lord for all along ... that God would lead him to believers who could point him in the right direction and help him make the needed connections that would result in positive change in his life.  He just didn't even know where to start.  And neither did we.

The family that parties together ... stays together!

And so it was on that fateful Saturday before Labor Day, neither Janna, nor Curtis nor even I knew the first thing about how Curtis could qualify for the generous GI bill programs that are now available to Gulf War veterans.  What Curtis did know though was, despite the fact that he did graduate from Apalachicola High School back in 1980, he could not pass the math portion of the TABE exam, all of which he was required to pass before being qualified for admission not only to Tallahassee Community College but even to Lively Technical Center which is his current school of choice.  The gulf between him and his goal of securing his GI benefits seemed far too wide to bridge and almost too wide to fathom.  Yet our God is a resourceful God.  Unbeknownst to me, God was about to begin working through another couple from our church, Paul and Jeanie Diemer, who head up the local Frenchtown Breakfast in the Park for the indigent and primarily homeless and hopeless people in Tallahassee most of whom stay in or around either the Shelter a block to two to the east or at the Haven of Rest, which is the Christian homeless mission that Curtis is residing at presently.  Curtis took an instant liking to them too and got to know them on Saturday mornings over breakfast while getting to know our family and friends on Saturday afternoons before football.  Who said that God doesn't work in mysterious ways?

Thanksgiving 2012

After dinner it was a time to reflect on our blessings.

Curtis was also faithfully attending the Renaissance Center, a block diagonal to the Haven by day using the free internet service there to further understand his options as well as the tutoring opportunities afforded him there.  Janna's dad as the former director of adult education in Wakulla County had a couple of connections that he suggested and ultimately we secured the services of a tutor who could help Curtis master the math portion of the TABE.  As I got to know Curtis better, I learned that while he had been a lifelong fan of the Seminoles, not only had he never actually seen a college football game in person, but that he had never even set foot inside Doak S. Campbell Stadium.  Well, we certainly needed God to make that situation turn around for Curtis this fall, and He did just that on October 27 when I was able to take Curtis to sit beside me for the FSU v. Duke game at Doak.  Curtis had eyes full of wonder throughout the entirety of the game and it proved to be one of the most wonderful days of his life [and yes, thankfully, the 'Noles did win the game convincingly].  One final grafting of Curtis into our family occurred on Thanksgiving Day when we invited Curtis to spend the day with us [our friends and extended family].  There was not a dry eye in the house when I shared Curtis' story with the fifteen or so folks gathered there and how God uses suffering in our lives to mold us into the kind of people he wants us to be ... even the severe things that somehow the Apostle Paul was able to describe as "light and momentary troubles" when viewed in comparison with our eternal reward in glory [see my blog post dated November 22, 2012 if interested].

The newest student at Lively Technical Center

Andrew and I went out to the Haven nearly two weeks ago to serve at their annual pre-Christmas breakfast in the park only to find Curtis missing.  It turned out that he had been hospitalized two days previously and was until noon the following day for another panic attack and that his doctors were still struggling to find the right combination of medication for him. Moreover, he may even need another admission in the next week or two to fine tune things.  But I am happy to report that I did go out to the Haven last Friday after work to give Curtis both a bit of encouragement and our family's Christmas gift; and he had a gift for me ... see the adjacent picture.  Yes it is true!  Curtis had passed the TABE exam and had been granted admission to Lively Technical Center effective in January.  He now qualifies for two years of paid housing, a monthly stipend to live on and free tuition books and fees!  He joyously told me that he was number five on the housing list and should be in a home of his own in January or possibly February at the latest.  And so it is that the kingdom of God marches on ... one changed life at a time!

Finding Joy in the Journey

Those of us who are parents can easily recall the days when we took the family vacations or even just extended trips in the family car.  About half way there [when it was just as far to turn around and go back as it was to keep going forward] we would often think to ourselves ...WHAT WAS I THINKING TO ATTEMPT SUCH A TRIP?!?  What was originally meant to be a joyous time of togetherness had suddenly turned into _________.  You fill in the blank ... I’ll just call it ... THEOLOGY LAB.

When I was a kid our family seldom attempted such trips ... that had long been a pet peeve of mine ... everyone else’s families took family vacations, but not mine ... now I just wonder if my dad wasn’t that much wiser than most.  When we were very little kids and living in Amarillo, TX we belonged to a flying club ... much like boat clubs of today, except with planes.  We did travel pretty far and wide in those days ... I just don’t remember much of it.  What I do remember is how Dad kept order in the plane ... if either Sheryl or I would get “out of control,” Dad would simply turn the plane upside down and instantly terror set in and we became either mute [me] or hysterical [Sheryl].  And order was quickly restored.  Eventually even the threat of inverted flying was enough to silence the plane.  Sadly, I have yet to find the car-equivalent condition when hauling our large family around ... whether it be out to Oklahoma or up to Maine or even Minnesota.

Yes, a day with a car full of kids will teach us a lot about God.  And that analogy I think holds when it comes to our spiritual journeys.  God is, even now, transporting us from our home here on earth to His in heaven.  And just like our long trips in the car, some of life’s stormiest hours occur when the passengers and the Driver disagree on the destination ... or at least the best way to get there.

A journey is a journey, whether the destination be the Thanksgiving table or the heavenly one.  Both demand patience, a good sense of direction [or at least an accurate GPS device], and a driver who knows the end of the trip is worth the hassles involved in getting there.  As I consider what all we encountered say on our trip to and from Minnesota to Tallahassee via Chicago by Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama then home via my old hometown of Keokuk, Iowa and St. Louis, Missouri, I now realize that our old Ford Expedition had become basically a classroom.  We were doing what God had done for centuries; encouraging travelers who would rather rest and play than ride.

Some similarities that I noted in the journeys:

In order to reach the destination, we have to say no to some requests.

Can you imagine the outcome if we  as parents honored each request each of our children made during a trip?  We would inch our bloated bellies from one ice cream store to the next.  Our priority would be popcorn, candy and boiled peanuts and our itinerary would read like a fast food menu.  Go to the chocolate malt and make a right.  Head north until you find the Chili Cheeseburger.  Stay north for 1,300 calories then bear right at the Pizza Hut.  When you see the two-for-one Froyo, take the Alka-Seltzer Turnpike east for five Circle K stores ...

Can you imagine the chaos if we as parents indulged every indulgence?  Now can you imagine the chaos if God indulged each of ours?  Sadly, NO is a necessary word to take on such trips.  Destination has to reign over Dairy Queen sundaes.

For God has not destined us to the terrors of judgment, but to the full attainment of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.  1 Thessalonians 5:9

Note God’s destiny for our lives ... SALVATION.  God’s overarching desire is that we reach that destiny.  His itinerary includes stops that encourage us on our journey.  He frowns on stops that deter us.  When His sovereign plan and our earthly plans collide, a decision must be made.  Who is ultimately in charge of this journey?  If God must choose between our earthly satisfaction and our heavenly salvation, which do you hope He chooses?  Yeah, me too!

When I am in the driver’s seat as the father of my children, I remember that I am in charge.  But when I am in the passenger’s seat as a child of my Father, I forget that He’s in charge.  I forget that God is more concerned with my destiny than my belly [though my belly is pretty ample these days].  And I complain when He says no.

The requests our children made on that long road to and from northern Minnesota weren’t evil.  They weren’t unfair.  They weren’t rebellious.  In fact, we did stop many times along the way, including for a protracted time in Minneapolis and probably stayed too long at the Mall of America.  But most of the requests were unnecessary.  My kids might argue the fact because to them another frozen yogurt is indispensable to their happiness.  I know otherwise, however, and say no.

A forty-five year-old adult might also argue the fact.  From my standpoint, moving to  Colorado or perhaps back to Hawaii was indispensable to my happiness.  God knew otherwise and said no.

A forty-eight year old woman may decide to hang up the red pen and call it a teaching career.  For her having more time to spend at home and with friends and family might exactly be what she needed to be happy.  Her Father, who is more concerned that she arrive at His City than on the couch, says “Wait a few miles.  There is a better option down the road.”  “Wait!” she protests.  “How long do I have to wait?”

Which takes us to the second similarity between the two journeys.

Children have no concept of minutes or miles.

“We will be there in three hours,” I said.  “How long is three hours?” Ariel would pipe in.  How do you explain time to a child who can’t tell time anyway?

“Well it is about as long as three Sesame Street shows.” I ventured.  The kids groan in   unison.  “Three Sesame Street shows?  That’s forever!”  And to them, it is.  And to us, it seems that way too. 

"He who lives forever” [Is. 57:15] has placed himself at the head of a band of pilgrims who mutter, “How long, O Lord?  How long?” [Ps. 74:10; 89:46].

How long must I endure this sickness?  How long must I endure this spouse?  How long must I endure these measly paychecks?  Do we really want God to answer?  He could answer in terms of the here and now with time increments that we know.  "Two more years on the illness."  "The rest of your life in the marriage."  Ten more years in the low paying job." 

But He seldom does that.  He usually opts to measure the here and now against the there and then.  And when we compare this life to that life, this life isn't that long.

"Our days on earth are like a shadow."  1 Chronicles 29:15

"Each man's life is but a breath."  Psalm 39:5

“You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."  James 4:14

"As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower in the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more."  Psalm 103:15, 16

"It is a short journey," I offer to the kids.  "We're almost there."  I know.  I have been this way before.  I have driven this road.  I have covered this territory.  For me, it is no challenge.  Ah, but for the kids, it is eternal.

So I try another approach.  "Just think how good it will be," I depict.  "That mall is so large, it has an amusement park inside it.  One with a roller coaster even.  And our friends live right on a lake.  So you can swim anytime you want.  And they even have a boat."

But they still groan.  And that takes us to the third similarity.

Children cannot appropriately envision the reward.

For me, two days on the road is a small price to pay to see the sights of Chicago and Minneapolis.  I don't mind the drive because I know the reward.  I had three decades of such trips under my belt.  As I drive, I can almost hear Tom’s and Kion's voices.  Feel the spray of the water on my face as we ride in the boat.  I can endure the journey because I know the destiny.   My kids didn't really comprehend the destiny.  After all, they were very young.  Kids easily forget and it was more abstract than real to them as they had never been to a mall with an amusement park inside it.  Besides, the road was strange and  once it got dark they couldn't even see where we were going.  It was my job as their father to guide them.  I try to help them see what they can't really see.  I remind them of the roller coaster.  I tell them the mall is so big that it has three Gap stores.  There is even a cereal store.  And it seems to work.  Their grumbling decreases as their vision grows -- as their destiny unfolds.

Perhaps that is how the apostle Paul stayed motivated.  He had a sharp vision of the reward.

"Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  2 Corinthians 4:16-18

It is not easy to get four kids under twelve to see a city they can't see.  But it is necessary.  One line in this passage in 2 Corinthians always gives me pause, "our light and momentary troubles."  I would not have referred to them as such if I were the apostle Paul.  Hear what he called light and momentary and I think you'll agree:  imprisoned; beaten with a whip five times at 39 lashes each; faced death; beaten with rods three times; stoned once; shipwrecked three times; stranded in the open sea; left homeless; in constant danger; hungry and thirsty.  2 Corinthians 11:23-27

Long and trying ordeals maybe.  Arduous and deadly difficulties, okay.  But light and momentary troubles?  Really?!?  How could Paul describe a life of trials with that phrase?  He tells us.  He could see an eternal weight of glory that far outweighed them all.

Can I speak candidly for a bit?  For some in this room, the journey has been long.  Actually very long, dark and quite stormy.  In no way do I want to minimize what you have gone through.  For both Curtis and Cathy parts are almost indescribably painful ... except that they keep bubbling back up to the surface.  And it is easy to grow weary.  It can be hard to find the City in the midst of the storms.  The desire to pull over to the side of the road and get out can be enticing.  You want to go on, but some days the road just seems too long.  Let me encourage you with one final parallel in your life's journey and the one I have been describing to Minnesota.

It is worth it. 

Once we arrived, no spoke of the long trip to get here.  No one mentioned the requests I didn't honor.  No nor grumbled about my foot being on the accelerator when their hearts were focused on banana splits.  No one complained about the late hour of arrival.  That is what Paul means.  God never said the journey would be easy and, in fact, none other than Jesus basically promised it would not be.  But he did say the arrival would be worthwhile.

Remember this:  God may not do what you want, but He will do what is right ... and best.  He is the Father of forward motion.  Trust Him.  He will get you home.  And the trials of the trip will be lost in the joys of the feast.

The Election of a Lifetime -- My View From 50,000 Feet

 
This probably the best perspective on this "the most important election of our lifetimes" election that I've read this year. The sun will come up on November 7 no matter who wins on November 6 [or even if we don't have a winner declared the evening of November 6 or in the early morning hours of November 7] because it is not the Democrats or the Republicans who are ultimately in control of our country and especially not our world.

50,000 Feet Looking Down

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  November 2nd, 2012 at 10:36 PM  |  159

RESIZE: AAA

I believe Mitt Romney will win on election day. I’m somewhat stunned to be writing that as I never really thought he could win until about the moment Clint Eastwood trotted out on stage at the Republican National Convention with that empty chair. Even now I waver by the hour, but if forced to predict, I think Romney wins Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Wisconsin, and even Ohio. I put the Electoral College at 285 to 253. Ask me tomorrow, though, and I could decide otherwise. I cast my absentee ballot last week and voted for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
I write the rest of this now because if Romney loses, it will be viewed as “Erickson is trying to talk them off the ledge” and if Romney wins it will be viewed as “Erickson is rubbing salt in wounds.” Neither is true, which is why this must come before the election and not after.

I get the enormity of what is at stake in the election. I get it. I really do. I get the passion. I get the excitement. But, and maybe I’m just too worn out, I don’t get the anger, worry, and dread on either side. I have friends upset with me for not getting it and for not sharing it. “Don’t you know what is at stake?” they demand.

Don’t you know what is not at stake?

People on the left are convinced if Mitt Romney wins blacks will be put in chains out in cotton fields and uteruses will be locked up.

People on the right are convinced if Barack Obama wins the stars and stripes will come down, the red banner of communism will go up, and this American experiment will be promptly concluded.

My world view is pretty simple. I think this world is destined to go to hell in a hand basket by design. I think things are supposed to go to pot. So if Barack Obama wins, I won’t be upset. If Mitt Romney wins, I won’t be running through the streets cheering. I think, either way, it is all part of the design. The world is going down hill. Barack Obama re-elected just gets us down the slippery slope faster in my view. For others, it is Mitt Romney who does.

God is sovereign and He is in charge and He will return. That is my hope and my ever present expectation.

We often get so wrapped up in the view of things at ground level, we forget to look at the world from 50,000 feet. In the historic, grand scheme of things, this too will end.

Don’t confuse me with a fatalist and don’t confuse me with someone who does not really care about the future of our nation. I think we are the last best hope of mankind on this planet. But my destiny is not tied to this planet. While I am here, however, I have convictions that are greater than either candidate and either party and I fight more for a cause than a candidate. I expect, regardless of who is in the White House, I’ll find myself at odds with them, though more so with Obama than Romney.
When I wake up on Wednesday morning, I’m still going to have my wife. I’m still going to have my kids. I’m still going to have my family. And I’m still going to have my God. So will you.
Some of you, on both sides, are convinced that the end of the world is nigh. It is. But not quite yet and no one really knows when.

What I do know for sure is that I’m headed home to eternity and this world is temporary. So while I like politics and have my side and want it to win, I’m not going to be partying in the street if my side does win and I’m not going to think the end of the world is upon us if my side loses.

You should not either.

Too many of my friends have gotten so focused on the outcome and are so convinced the country as they know it is over if the other side wins that they are joyless to be around right now. They are full of dread and worry and fear. They’ve lost their sense of humor. They cannot laugh at themselves, their side, or much of anything. They are mad at others, myself included, for not being as worked up as they are. The frenzy has become a purity test, not the conviction.

God is sovereign. And whether you are for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, set your sights on God, not November 6th, and be happy. In four years, we really will do this all over again whether right now you think so or not. There is no permanence except in Heaven.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

— Hebrews 11:13-16 (ESV)

Now go vote! The future of the nation is at stake!!!!

The Father of the Bride's Wedding Blessing & Toast

Good evening!  I want to wish a great evening to each of you our friends and family and the friends and family of our son-in-law Chris … I hope to meet all of you tonight.

Who ever knows what to say when you are asked to toast the bride and groom?  It’s even a bit more daunting when you are expected to toast the bride and groom … and its most daunting to be asked to do it at the wedding reception rather than the rehearsal dinner like I did for my eldest daughter Ashley.  I was also asked by Alli to keep my remarks brief ... sadly, she knows me all to well.  I was reminded early on after Chris proposed and Alli accepted that there really are only three things expected from the father of the bride ... who knows what they are?  Yes!  To pay up, show up and shut up.  I think I’ve managed to do all three respectably well, at least to this point ... certainly better with this wedding than the last.  But alas, I’ve held my tongue for long as I can.

Only 2.5 years have elapsed since my daughter Ashley married her middle school sweetheart Matt Rousseau.  Seems so short but then again not when I look back on all that has transpired in that time.  Alli graduated from college … served two years as a missionary teacher to two classes of precious kindergarteners in Caracas, VZ.  She met, dated and now ended up marrying Chris.  Ariel moved from being a lowly university freshman in pre-nursing to the verge of commencing her last year of clinical nursing at FSU and has served on summer mission teams to both Miami last summer and in Paris concluding just a few weeks ago.  She’s gone from wide-eyed freshman to a significant leader in the Cru community at FSU.  And my youngest, the homeboy Andrew, will be starting his senior year at Chiles next month and entering college in just 12 months.  I turned 50 years old four months after Ashley married, was told just prior to her wedding that I needed a knee replacement [not that I have had that surgical procedure yet … because I was too young, well at least in my own mind]; lost about half my hair; have to take a handful of pills every morning for conditions as varied as high blood pressure to the disappearance of my thyroid gland [still a medical mystery] and the aforementioned osteoarthritis.  I’ve gone from fitting into this tux to not even being close to getting it on again to it fitting again … just barely … and that probably depends on how one defines the word “fit.”  We’ve done the Dave Ramsey thing and gotten out of debt other than that crazy house I built.  We’ve replaced our pool’s spillover spa … twice!  Which is typical of real life … not everything that happens is “good” at least as we’d like to define “good.”  And yet, nothing happens in our lives that is not ultimately chosen for us by our Heavenly Father.

I remember the angst my soul went through as my fiftieth birthday approached two years ago [those who read my blog may remember that as well].  Somehow Janna doesn’t seem afflicted by these kinds of thoughts as she approaches a particular birthday ending in zero [or is at least rumored to be approaching one].  She’s just lucky I guess … or perhaps more secure in just where she fits in the cosmos a.k.a. in God’s eternal plan.  I would probably do well to emulate her more.  But as we enter the twilight of our lives it is hard not to begin shifting our focus to legacy. 

Those of you who know me know that I love the fall [almost as much as I do the spring] but I dislike autumn.  I love the finally moderating temperatures of the fall and am always happy when the suffocating heat and humidity of north Florida summers are finally in the rear-view mirror.  It is also finally football season, which I dearly love and long for, and the time for Saturday tailgate parties where our family and friends gather for a meal and fellowship before we head into Doak S. Campbell Stadium to watch the Seminoles hopefully triumph on the gridiron.


Autumn, however, is a very different thing.  Autumn is a time of harvest, a time where we realize that we cannot go back and do it all over again.  It seems with each passing year that I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with autumn.  It is almost like I want to stomp out into my yard and glue the leaves back onto the five massive live oak trees that adorn our property along with the dozen or so dogwoods.


Midlife is essentially a time of harvest.  The leaves are off the tree and there is no putting them back.  The world will not spin backwards on its axis and there is no turning back the clock.  It's no wonder I love the spring so much.  The weather is finally warmer after a long cold winter and the world is set for a fresh start.  In our part of the country, the Bradford pears and dogwoods bud and then are covered with blossoms.  Shortly afterward the azaleas explode with color lasting almost a month.  It is a truly glorious six to eight weeks here when the gloom of winter yields to the grandeur of spring.  And it changes our psyches.  We begin to imagine the possibilities of our lives and everything suddenly seems possible.  Not so with autumn.  Autumn is the time when each of us in very important ways reaps what we have sown.


For most of our youth and early adult lives we have lived wondering just how it will all turn out.  We spend countless days, months and even years planting, watering and weeding.  We were looking forward.  We envisioned the harvest but it was cloudy, unclear and even uncertain.  But we kept working and refused to give up hope.  This is the very position that Alli and Chris as well as Ashley and Matt find themselves in presently. And now all of the sudden we find ourselves spending more time looking backward than we do forward.  It can be both disorienting and uncomfortable at first.  When we've spent so much time planting, it almost seems weird and unnatural to harvest, but we have no choice really.


Yet for me this has also been a time of thankful reminiscence; but the fact is that none our children, no matter how spiritually inclined, have turned out just like we either imagined or dreamed.  They make choices that we wouldn't make [even though so far they've all made better choices than I did at their respective ages (I am sure this is largely attributable to their mother) ... let's just hope this continues].  And I am still waiting for my first child to apply to medical school.  They all share my faith but they don't share all my values.  However, as time goes by, they seem to be coming around in that regard too.  I finally have a house full of football-loving Seminoles [two degrees from the University of North Florida notwithstanding].  They also tend to become more candid about my weaknesses and failures and how they are determined to avoid them.  So it is hard to look back at my life as a parent and even as a husband and be singularly thankful, because looking back honestly will include remembering many moments of weakness and sin.


No, we weren't always the parents or spouses that we wanted to be.  Yes, we were dedicated to raising our kids to know and love God and we were always looking for ways to do that more effectively.  We sought to make God's presence obvious in the lives of our kids and we talked much and often about the Gospel.  We regularly shared our “highs, lows & devos” at the dinner table, which will likely be a memory our kids take with them as they start their own families.  We endeavored to be faithful in correction, instruction and discipline.  But in all of this there was one glaring and huge problem:  we did it all as sinners.  There were so many times that our sin got in the way of our parenting or even in relating to each other as husband and wife and father and mother.  In midlife, these are the moments we tend to remember.  Too often we were in the way of what God was doing rather than being a part of it.  But now, there is little we can do about it.  


My youngest child, Andrew, has a mere 12 months left before he heads off to college.  His oldest sister, Ashley, is married, involved in a nursing career and is now pregnant with our first grandchild.  There is probably little more that can bring legacy to the forefront of one’s thinking than finding out you are going to be a grandparent for the first time.  I’ll never forget a statement my pastor Erik Braun made in a sermon this past year ... he said there are five things that you do in life and number 5 happened to be meeting your grandkids ... GULP!  That’s on the not too distant horizon for Janna & me. If nothing else makes you realize that you are truly in the late autumn or early winter of life, becoming a grandfather will do it.  


I will never forget when my middle daughter, Alli came home over her Christmas break during her senior year at UNF and we talked about her post-graduation job plans … typical dad thing to do AND she uttered the words that immediately strike fear into a daddy’s heart.  She said that she was strongly considering serving overseas in Africa as a missionary teacher.  I was floored and my initial reaction was to tell her in my most logical and argumentative eloquence just why that would be a very bad idea.  Maybe later, but surely not now.  She had no experience, no money, was not established, had no prospective husband though she did have a boyfriend.  I could go on a long tangent here about how Alli ALWAYS seemed to have a boyfriend … they just never seemed to last very long as she could seemingly quickly rule them out as marriage material.  Now being the good dad that I at least thought I was, I tried to quench a lot of these relationships before they could really get started … in the name of protecting the hearts of the young men of North FloridaJ  Not that it seemed to make much of a difference to Alli.  Alli is so very much like me in so many ways ... there’s seldom any winning an argument with Alli about anything ... and in our case it is almost like me arguing with myself. Anyway, I thought she had long since dropped the idea of being a missionary teacher until just a few days prior to Valentine’s weekend in 2010 when she informed Janna and me that she planned to drive to Southaven, MS [just south of Memphis, TN] for the annual NICS conference and be interviewed for overseas teaching positions.  Janna agreed to go with her to discuss the possibilities with her but then God sent a very rare snowstorm deep into the Southeast U.S. [all the way to Dothan & the Florida panhandle] the Thursday/Friday she would travel.  Suddenly I was being pressed to go as I am the only one in our family with much experience and proficiency with driving in snow.  There you go … being from the Midwest sometimes comes in handy … again, this may depend on how one defines “handy.”  However, it was during our two days at NICS headquarters that God showed Janna and me that His hand was all over this and that He had specifically chosen Alli to serve him in Caracas.  How could I not let her go?  And I began to more fully realize in the most tangible of ways that my kids were not my own, but they were His and He was calling the loan on this one.  Why couldn’t He just call her to get married like He did with Ashley?  That was hard enough.  But to let her go all by herself to what was at the time the fifth most dangerous city in the world only to become the most dangerous city in the world within four months of her arrival … wasn’t that asking too much?  Still, we had no choice … God had made His choice.


And then I now recall just a few weeks ago as I sat in our family room full of so many people that I know and love and that had faithfully sponsored Alli both prayerfully and financially over these past two years and watched and listened to her relate all the amazing ways God showed up in her classroom, in her school and in her relationships with both faculty and locals that she developed while there.  Hearing her relate the stories of leading two young kindergarteners to Christ [one being from a Muslim family & then praying with little Sharin every day for the salvation of her parents until the school year ended] and discipling high school girls and influencing university students … remembering the week I spent in her classroom loving on her first class of twelve and watching the love, respect and almost reverence they had for her made we weep uncontrollably and my mind was flooded with my thoughts of how I would never have chosen this for her, and yet I had NEVER been more proud of Alli than I was just four weeks ago.


Ariel is a senior in the nursing program at Florida State University and has a steady boyfriend, who is a Gator [this again gets to point of our kids making choices that we wouldn't necessarily make or having different values than we have:)].  And yet Andrew Axsom is here today … the son of a pastor and fellow servant with Ariel on her two Cru missions.  How cool is it to possibly meet your future life companion while serving Christ on the mission field?!?  Yes, the leaves have just about all fallen off the trees.


Midlife is a reflective time.  In our youth, even though we have not reached our goals, we tell ourselves that we have plenty of time left.  But the more of life that we have in the rearview mirror, the more our dreams give way to reflection, and before long we are spending much more time looking backward than looking forward.  We become regular spectators of the people that once were, rather than who is.  And sadly, we don't always like what we see.  The person on the screen of our memories struggles much more than we ever wanted to struggle.  We wish we could go back and do things the right way, if only we could do it a second time.  We wish we could have wiser eyes, more perceiving ears, clearer minds, softer tongues and more tender hearts.  But there is no going back.  And still somehow God is glorified!


Alli and Chris have a very unique relationship … at least from my vantage point.  They are both prophetic in their ministry gifting.  This has been a significant cause of alarm to both Janna and me.  Yet somehow they make it work.  Another God thing.  So different is Alli from Ashley … goes all the way back to the nursery even.  I remember the nursery nurse first telling us the evening following her birth of what an amazing set of lungs our new baby girl had.  [I could tell the story of how I bought my first, and so far only, boat on the afternoon of her birth because she came so quickly and easily that I could keep the test drive appointment that I had scheduled the day before.  That purchase knocked a lot more than just a few leaves to the ground from our family tree … it knocked huge branches to the ground and nearly killed our legacy when it was not much more than a sapling]. 
Janna got to learn a lot about graciousness through that whole situation as probably our young kids did as well.  I know I learned some very painful financial lessons through paying what Dave Ramsey calls “stupid tax.”  And God made sure that I learned that lesson over and over as He wouldn’t let me bail and sell.  Because like a doofus I put the down payment on a credit card and so was immediately underwater on the boat only to find that neither of our vehicles could actually pull a boat.  So more debt to buy a Chevy Blazer and suddenly this young intern just turning resident physician had pretty much spent more than his monthly raise would cover and he still had a house payment he could barely afford … and I began to realize why I was the only resident at the hospital who actually “owned” his own house … using the term “owned” quite loosely here.  More like I was owned by a house, boat and car.  And yet God faithfully sustained us throughout those stressful residency years … it’s bad enough to work 100+ hours/week but to be in financial bondage despite working like a slave … neither my finest hours nor much fun.


But back to our scheduled Alli story … remember that little baby girl with the huge pipes for lungs?  Yes, that turned out to be nurse speak for “run for the hills” and “man do I ever feel sorry for you.”  Another critical piece of information that they failed to teach me in medical school.  No, Alli never took a pacifier then, later, now and probably never will.  She also would not take a bottle … as an aside none of my kids would take a bottle [I guess they knew a good thing when they tasted it and wouldn’t take a cheap substitute in its place].  Nevermind that I had a limitless free supply of formula from the pharmaceutical companies … story of my life in a nutshell.


Yes God would use Alli to teach me many lessons in life.  Why oh why couldn’t she be like her angel sister Ashley?  Turns out Ashley was the world’s easiest baby … not that we realized it at the time … to the contrary, we thought we were God’s gift to parenting having read and mastered How to Really Love Your Child while pregnant with Ashley.  All it took to have blissful children was keeping their emotional tanks full … well, the writer failed to give us a plan for the child with a gaping hole in her emotional tank … and Alli must have had a hole the size of Texas in hers!  She would scream these bloodcurdling cries and could not be consoled.  And suddenly as well as repeatedly, we became the couple that received these death stares from people around us at restaurants, malls, the beach, where ever ….  Somehow we had suddenly become those parents that don’t really love their children.  And we learned mercy and grace for others from Alli over and over again!


Speaking of spiritual giftings … Alli has always had a strong prophetic bent.  She like her other two sisters came to Christ in repentance and submitted her life to Him at a very early age … I think four … and like Ashley, she had the privilege of being baptized in the Pacific Ocean while living in Hawai’i.  But unlike Ashley she never seemed to have much patience with her supposedly Christian friends who were not living lives faithful to their calling.  She would basically tell them that whenever they were ready to straighten up and fly right … to live a life worthy of their Savior she would again be their friend … but until then, don’t bother her.  Ashley, on the other hand, tended to give grace to a fault and believe the best in others until long after any reasonable basis for it was over.  It made for some interesting family dynamics.  And, ever the prophet, Alli had a parental hypocrisy meter that was exquisitely sensitive AND she was seldom too shy to share her perception with us.  This is where I think she is almost too alike with Chris … they will both need God’s supernatural grace as they grow together but it can make for an awesome testimony at the end. 
Alli had the misfortune of growing up in the shadow of the “perfect” child … her sister Ashley ... and she struggled for most of her elementary school years to find a way out of Ashley’s oversized shadow.  Seemingly everything Ashley touched turned to gold and her grades were exceptional.  Alli did well, but never seemed to match Ashley’s accomplishments despite working at least as hard if not harder.  We were still living in Hawai’i when Janna and I first realized that Alli suffered from ADHD.  There were several conversations about medicating her … something Janna was emphatically against … oh, and by the way, we never told her any of this.  It wasn’t till halfway through her junior year at UNF when she was neck deep in her education curriculum that Alli had the epiphany that she herself had a diagnosis.  She called me at home and related her latest discovery to which I answered simply yes.  She obviously thought I failed to get it and so she repeated that she “had ADHD ... you know attention problems” and again I said, “I know Alli.”  One last time she most emphatically declared “No dad, I am talking about Attention Deficit Disorder ... you know when you have problems focusing.”  One last time, I told her I knew that.  Then there was silence.  Finally after a long pause the indignant, prophetic Alli spoke up with questions of consternation as to “why didn’t you help me?”  It was then that I reminded her that she graduated from Chiles High School with honors and with a weighted GPA over 4.0 and would soon graduate from UNF summa cum laude.  She then almost cried out, “but Dad it was so hard.”  To which I told her that it was good for her to have undergone the struggle.  In many ways, her ability to overcome her lack of focus ... something we perceived as we watched her learning to read while hanging upside down from the back of our couch in our Hawaiian townhouse was like a butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis, ever transformed and made stronger by the struggle.  I reminded her that we never held her up to the same academic expectations that we have had for her three siblings because we could see how hard she worked, how very creative she was and the discipline in her life ... the 1 or 2 Bs she would bring home on her report card were good enough for us.  But I also let her know then that we had kept a safety net under her at all times and that we would have never let her fail. We would have had her treated should the struggle have been too much for her. 


This and her wonderful, athletic soccer skills helped make Alli into the terrific young woman she is today.   God gifted Alli athletically and when she stumbled onto this discovery, her life was forever changed for the positive as she moved out of her sister’s shadow never to return.  Soccer allowed her to make a whole new set of friends … friends that didn’t even know of Ashley, and Alli quickly became a leader for most and a Godly influence for all.  For some reason God chose to shorten Alli’s promising soccer career with two devastating knee injuries during her sophomore and junior years at Chiles … which only seemed to motivate her more determinedly to recover.  In retrospect, now it is much easier to see God’s hand in shaping Alli’s spirit to do the kinds of things He has called her to do such as venture out to meet a challenge like serving Him in Venezuela.


As Alli and Chris stand here tonight having made lifelong vows before both God and man, I think its fitting for me to close by encouraging them both as well as all of you with some of the words I shared with Alli the night before she flew to Caracas alone that very first time.


For Jesus, wisdom wasn't just downloaded from heaven. When He became a man, He didn't cheat. He gained wisdom through the same process that we are invited to employ. He knew what to say because morning by morning He opened His ears and heart and became a student. The wisdom of God comes to those who walk with God. And the path is neither easy nor safe. It is difficult to think of Jesus as having to gain wisdom. We tend to think of Jesus as always complete in every way. To see this clearly, we only need to remember that Jesus came into this world as a baby. He had to learn everything from scratch -- how to eat, how to walk, how to speak, how to read, how to live -- just as we do.


No one journeys the path to wisdom without significant obstacles and hardship. We will all face the temptation to rebel or perhaps draw back, yet if we hold fast, we will find the light of day. Remember that God loves to entrust even more to those of us who are faithful with what we have.
Faithfulness keeps our character from going bad. While the small things do not seem so very important in the moment, they have incredible ramifications over the long haul. It is not usually the great challenges that cause successful leaders to fail, it is often carelessness in the small things. There are countless examples in recent history alone from the Oval Office where the President of the United States is alone with an intern, on down to the televangelist caught fleecing the flock or visiting houses of ill repute, and finally all the way down to the business on the corner where the controller is embezzling funds. The 24 hour cable news cycle is replete with such examples. When it comes to character the details really do matter. In our quest for honor, we really do have to sweat the small stuff. Great leaders in a very real way come out of nowhere. We must never underestimate the weightiness of small matters.


Those of us who have had the privilege of living as a citizen in this country have, in many ways, lived in an unreal world. Our ordinary experience would appropriately be described as surreal by most of the 7 billion people who live on our planet. Though most of us have lived out “the American Dream” it has also been accompanied by a bit of delusion. Most of us have begun to feel that life comes with certain guarantees. We have even created a false theology that validates our false sense of security. Peace and prosperity have become expectations … and many have been dumbstruck over the last four years in America to see that this isn’t always the case. Concepts such as sacrifice and suffering were left to describe only those who were living outside the blessings of God.


We live in an era of peace and stability though even the edges of that have become progressively more frayed … recalling the two wars in which we are now engaged and the brutal attacks of 9/11 that precipitated them. But even still, we hire others to fight for us so that we can largely be left unaffected. I think this has led us to come to wrong conclusions regarding what the human spirit needs. You would think that what we need is certainty; the promise that everything is going to be all right; the guarantee that we’ll be safe. While I, like everyone else, would love to know that this is the life that God would choose to give my family and me, the security that we often seek is not necessary to living life to the fullest. And sometimes it can actually be the great deterrent to seizing our divine moments.


In I Samuel 14 we read about Jonathan moving with God in a situation where his father, King Saul and his army were paralyzed by fear in a standoff with the Philistine army. Jonathan was certain about some things, and at the same time he was able to operate in the realm of uncertainty. He called out to his armor-bearer and said, “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf.” You’ve gotta love that. In today’s vernacular he basically said, “Let’s go pick a fight. Maybe God will help.” Jonathan understood that not everything was guaranteed, that you don’t wait till all the money is in the bank. There are some things that you can know and some things that you will not know. He went on to say, “Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.”


He had such a clear perspective on reality. What he knew for certain was that God was powerful enough to get the job done; that it didn’t matter if was two of them against a thousand Philistines. His father’s apprehension to go to war with six hundred soldiers but only two weapons—that’s right, two swords—was reasonable, but not enough to excuse neglecting the purpose of God. And so if it were only Jonathan and his armor-bearer and only Jonathan with a sword, he would still move in line with God’s mission for them.


Some time before, God had spoken through Samuel his prophet to the whole house of Israel, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him only, and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines” [1 Sam. 7:3].


God had promised Israel deliverance from the oppressive hand of the Philistines, and the way He would do it was by raising up an army of men who would trust in God and go to war against them. Jonathan was clear about one thing: he knew for certain that nothing could stop the Lord from saving, and God could use a lot of people or only a few people. The odds are irrelevant to God.
Jonathan had an unwavering confidence in God’s capacity. He had absolute trust in God’s character. He seemed resolute about whether God could be trusted. That was all settled for him. His focus was not, What is God’s will for my life? but How can I give my life to fulfill God’s will? He had no certainty concerning his personal well being. That he was moving in line with God’s purpose was the only certainty that he needed. He understood that to move with God is to accept a life full of uncertainties.
 
Imagine that you are Jonathan’s armor-bearer. He wakes you up from a deep sleep, and he tells you to follow him through a series of cliffs for the purpose of engaging the Philistines in battle. And in his invitation he explains that his best hope is that God might help them out. If I were the armor-bearer, I’d be inclined to say, “Wake me up when you know for sure.” Isn’t that what most of us would have done? Then we’d go back to sleep in the shade of the pomegranate tree, willing to set out once everything was certain.


Our wealth and abundance of human resources have positioned us to accept a paradigm that provision precedes vision. This has been the foundation of our building a no-risk faith. This is a tragedy because part of the adventure is the discovery that vision always precedes provision. It may seem like a stretch to many, but it is always right to do what’s right, even if it turns out wrong.  And it is in this area that I think Alli and Chris are both particularly gifted and called.  Theirs is a radical faith!


Jesus did the right thing when He left Gethsemane where He struggled to embrace the Father’s will and began a journey that would lead Him to the Cross. The consequence to Him was severe. Our response to His coming was to crucify Him. We should not be surprised, then, that a lifelong journey with God might bring us suffering and hardship. If the Cross teaches us anything, it teaches us that sometimes God comes through AFTER we’ve been killed!


But if we [and when I say we I mean all of us, but I especially mean Chris and Alli] are going to seize divine moments, we must accept the reality that we have no control over many things. We have no control over when we die or even how we die. We must instead take responsibility for what we do have control over – how we choose to live.


Jonathan wasn’t choosing to die, but he was choosing how he would live. He left the consequence of his actions in the hands of God. He chose to do something that he knew was right. Again, God was doing something in history, and Jonathan gave his life to it. This realm of uncertainty is also the place of miracles. Sometimes the miracle is wrapped around the person we become, the courage and nobility expressed through a life well lived.


When you move with God, He always shows up. It’s just difficult to predict what He will do or how He will do it. If you wait for guarantees, the only thing that will be guaranteed is that you will miss endless divine opportunities – that you can know for certain.


Lastly, I want to tell each of you along with Chris and to remind Alli of the very last thing I told her the night before she left … the difference between Jonathan and us is though Jonathan had no idea whether or not God would act on his behalf, in that particular engagement, he knew who God was. He knew if he would seek God, he would live, even though he died in the trying.  It is ironic then, that we run to God to keep us safe, when it is He who calls us to a dangerous faith. He will shake loose everything in which we place our trust outside of Himself and teach us how to thrive in a future that is unknown. There is only One who is certain; everything else exists in the realm of uncertainty. To place our trust in anything other than God is nothing less than superstition.
Consider the story of Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego ... they were contemporaries of Daniel and they, too, had been selected to serve as advisors to King Nebuchadnezzar.  Though they served him well, they infuriated the king when they refused to bow down to the god he had crafted.  The king gave them the ultimatum to either bow before his idol or be thrown into a blazing furnace.  All three of them chose the fire, saying “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.  If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.  But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” [Daniel 3:16-18].
Like Jonathan, the three men knew who God was, and they were confident of what God could do.  They also knew they didn’t know if He would save them.  They understood the uncertainty, but their course of action would be the same in either case.  We are told the furnace was then heated seven times hotter.  Nebuchadnezzar’s strongest soldiers tied the three and then prepared to throw them into the furnace.  The fire was so hot it consumed the king’s soldiers when they opened the door.  Then Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego fell through the door and into the fire.


That was one door I am sure they wished that God had closed rather than opened in their lives.  I cannot imagine that they did not long for God to take them a different way.  What must have seemed to them as their final moment would become their greatest moment.  They were not consumed by the fire, but instead, they were met by a fourth man in the midst of it.  It was Jesus who met them there!  They went to a place they could never go alone and live.  God took them on an adventure where not even a king dared journey.  When the king invited them to return, they stepped out of the fire.  Though they were now out of danger ... they were more dangerous than ever!!!
And this is my prayer for you two, my dear prophets of God!  You both know who God is to the very core of your souls.  Be dangerous to the enemy’s kingdom for the sake of Christ and His Gospel.  Seek the One who is certain and who delights in being found, every day of your lives.  And great will be your eternal reward.  


Chris ... it is with both joy and tears that I give you this day the very best I have.  Ever since that fateful day near the end of June in 1988 when our Heavenly Father placed sweet baby Alli into my care to guard and to raise, to nurture and to love, to pray for and to instruct, to discipline and to lead in the ways of God, I have endeavored to be faithful to that calling.  There have been innumerable instances where I have failed [and where you will too] ... but in those times God’s grace has always been sufficient to cover them.  We have had much joy and many tears together ... some successes and some failures but now 24 years later I present to you my daughter, Alli, who knows who God is and knows who she is and who eagerly seeks to learn who she can be in Him.  Today I transfer her spiritual covering to you, man of God, to love and to nurture, to guard and to serve, and to care for her soul and her life, even above your very own.  For that is the calling of God on your life this day. Our God is a God of covenants kept throughout the entirety of human history, from Abraham all the way to this day.  He calls both you and Alli to keep the covenant that you sealed today before both God and man until you are both in His presence in glory ... and exceedingly great will be your reward on that day.  Chris, today I call you my son; and Alli, you will forever be my daughter.  May our God be greatly glorified in your new life together.
Prayer of blessing for them both.


And finally a toast to Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Pope ... may their lives together be filled with both joy and grace as well as the satisfaction that comes at the end when King Jesus says “well done, my good and faithful servants!”