Can a Human Soul Truly Declare ... Jesus is Better?

You may have heard the modern worship anthem Jesus is Better by Austin Stone Worship in which Aaron Ivey, the lead worshiper, boldly declares "Glory!  Glory!  We have no other king but Jesus Lord of All!  Raise the anthem, our loudest praises ring ... We crown Him Lord of All!"  The song relates all the benefits we have as a result of the gospel and it's redemption of our souls then ends with a series of comparisons beginning with "In all my sorrows, Jesus is better ... make my heart believe" before proceeding to "in every victory, Jesus is better ... make my heart believe" and then on to "more than any comfort, Jesus is better ... make my heart believe" then rising to a crescendo with "more than all riches, Jesus is better ... make my heart believe" finally then climaxing with "our souls declaring ... Jesus is better ... make my heart believe!  Our song eternal ... Jesus is better ... MAKE MY HEART BELIEVE!"  It is truly both a beautiful yet a haunting song ... a large group of people pouring out their very hearts before their eternal king while at the same time imploring their divided hearts to believe the very words they are singing at the very moment they are singing it.  How can this even be possible?  Can the human heart really be that fickle?  Sadly yes!  And much more so.

The reasons for this paradox vary, but the chief reason is the self-idolatry in our hearts.  Left to our own affections we will always prefer lesser satisfactions to the satisfaction of Christ, because the lesser ones appeal to the god of self -- a ravenous, insatiable, fickle idol indeed -- while true satisfaction in Christ requires that we assassinate that god.  Most of us will never know what it means for the joy of the Lord to be our strength until we've had our endemic idolatry pulled out from underneath us and all our other crutches kicked away.  For many of us, Jesus won't be our absolute treasure until we are all out of other options.

God wants us broken so that any power in us can be undeniably attributed to Him.  If self-reliance could reliably and ultimately contribute to our success and fulfillment then God's glory would be diminished having to share precious space with our lesser glory.  But we are not glorious, even in our self-made victories.  The apostle Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10:  But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

God has made us frail, breakable, so that He will get the glory, so that the fame of our fortunes will belong to Him.  But look at the promises Paul also makes on God's behalf ... in all this affliction we are promised to be kept secure.  Perplexed, but not despairing.  Persecuted, but not forsaken.  Struck down, but not destroyed.  Even if we die, we will live.  What a gospel this is!  The believer cannot be stopped, even if you were to kill him.

Yet we are prone to doubt.  The cynic in us wonders why God's glory requires our brokenness.  Yet God knows our hearts ... far better than we do ourselves actually.  He knows the sin in us; deceiving us into trusting ourselves and doubting Him.  He also knows that refinement requires fire.  He actually designed it that way.  And God does not deal in our brokenness to keep us lowly and ineffective.  He does it for our own joy, knowing that our hearts will never find the heights of happiness it seeks in anything other than the glory of God.  He does it so that we may be conformed to the image of Christ, who Himself became conformed to the image of broken, frail humanity.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it, Jesus tells us [Matthew 16:25].  Brokenness makes us more like our crucified Savior, and if we share in the suffering of our Savior, we will share in his resurrection and glorification as well [Roman 8:17 and Philippians 3:10-11].  Seemingly, God must raze us before He raises us.

Yet when our heavenly Father looks upon the broken messes that are our lives, He doesn't snicker or even sigh.  He just ministers to us a sweeter comfort than any temporary or worldly comfort than we'd sought before.  We are told by the psalmist, The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise [Psalm 51:17].  God doesn't despise us in our brokenness; He comforts us in it.  The greater the brokenness, the greater our impulse to trust Him.  The greater the trust in Him, the greater the joy of our salvation.  So, then, the further to the end of ourselves we go, the more of Christ we will enjoy.

What then does it mean to find Christ at the end of ourselves?  Just as the prodigal son "came to himself" [Luke 15:17], it means coming to your spiritual senses, realizing the void inside and inability to help yourself, and then confessing these realities in an act of repentant trust in God.  When our idols come crashing down upon us, we give up the artifice of self-reliance and open up to the wonders of what Jared Wilson calls "gospel wakefulness."  The way to this blessed state of affairs is always brokenness, always the despair of self.  To honestly proclaim the greatness of Christ requires honestly confessing the bankruptcy of our own souls.

As Jesus began His earthly ministry, He read from the scrolls of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.

In Luke 4:18 Jesus applied this prophecy to Himself, in effect announcing that the year of the Lord's favor begins in and through Himself.  This is why Jesus, and John the Baptist before him, preached the kingdom was not some far-off event one could study in charts and diagrams but was actually an event breaking into human history in those very days!

And as He began this announcement, He unfurled the great proclamation of the kingdom that we call the Sermon on the Mount, which itself began with a preamble of sorts, which we call the Beatitudes, which leads off with a promise:  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven [Matthew 5:3].  This paradoxical announcement of the kingdom tells us that, surprisingly, it is not for the rich, the powerful or the well-connected but rather for those who are spiritually poor.  Jesus would later say that it is not the healthy who need a doctor but rather the sick [Matthew 9:12].  The underlying truth of the human condition, in reality, is that we are all spiritually poor/sick, it is just that few of us ever actually "see" the depth of our depravity and need.  And who goes to the doctor if he thinks he is well?  As a result then, even the true perception of our spiritual condition ends up being a gift from God Himself.

Thus shockingly and maybe even painfully, we must admit that our steps into the kingdom requires us to embrace both God's sovereignty and our own personal spiritual poverty all at the same time.  And the extent of our joy upon entering the kingdom is typically proportional to extent to which we actually feel our own poorness of spirit.  We can either acknowledge both sincerely and intellectually, "I am a sinner and so I need the Lord's forgiveness," or we can cry out from the depths of our very souls, "God have mercy upon me, a sinner!" as the tax collector did in Luke 18:13.  The atoning work of Christ will cover all degrees of what is genuine faith, but Wilson says "the actual joy of 'gospel wakefulness' requires a depth of felt brokenness in which the phrase 'poor in spirit' makes much more sense than intellectual sense."

And the blessing the poor in spirit actually receive is nothing less than the very kingdom of heaven itself, with all the abundant life and eternal riches it holds.  The kingdom itself is a treasure, which is often hidden from our spiritual senses while we are seeking earthly satisfactions everywhere else, but once it has been dug up and discovered in the rocky soil of our sin and suffering, we will with great joy sell all we have to claim it.  We finally become like the singers of the song Jesus is Better, which could literally be the anthem of those whose souls have become truly gospel-aware, and we begin to behold the glorious vision of the gospel of God's grace and we start to see the soul-stirring inheritance that is ours in Christ.  When we have felt deeply the spiritual poverty of self-rule, we begin to be prepared for the riches of the King, which are immeasurable, unsearchable, glorious and full.

Beyond Just Thankful to Real Thanksgiving ... This Season and Beyond

Thanksgiving may be the last truly "religious" holiday that is still, dare I say widely, celebrated for its true meaning in our country.  While our post-Christian, post-modern culture has all but divorced the Incarnation from Christmas and the Resurrection from Easter, this last holdout holiday is still hanging on ... but just barely, really.  With the Macy's and other Thanksgiving Day parades on TV in the morning to the NFL games [now up to three in number] sequenced just about back to back to back in the afternoon and evening to the Black Friday sales actually now encroaching on the very Thanksgiving Day itself, it's future is just about as grim as the two holidays that have already succumbed to the culture over the past forty to fifty years.  But that doesn't mean that it should go down without a fight.  And not the kind of fight most people would expect to wage.  No ... this is a fight that begins in our hearts and ends on our knees ... with bands of our dearest friends and families encircled around us.  This is the true battle for Thanksgiving.

Our culture may be ceding a small amount of ground here and some might even say that gratitude is making a bit of a comeback with secular academics and self-help gurus publishing both papers and books on the psychological benefits of thankfulness.  Even the New York Times referred to Thanksgiving as "the most psychologically correct holiday of the year" back in 2011.  Even Oprah, America's high priestess of secularism, keeps a gratitude journal and recommends the practice, saying that thankfulness "changes your personal vibration."  As a result, many Americans are getting on board, trying to stop their complaining and start counting their blessings ... at least for one day of the year.

I think we can all agree that gratitude is healthy.  It is largely undeniable that cultivating a mindset of "wanting what you have" -- what my grandparent's generation would have called "contentment" -- will greatly enhance one's life and even increase one's level of happiness.  And beyond that, it is an excellent antidote to the insatiable materialism that infects so many of us.  But mere contentment, an appreciation for the things that one has, is not enough.  Because while gratitude is certainly a good place to start, feeling thankful is not quite the same thing as true thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving differs from gratitude in one major respect:  it requires an object for our thanks.  There must be a Giver to whom we actually give thanks, and whom we acknowledge as the source of our gifts.  Unless we can bring ourselves to offer true thanksgiving to the Giver of our blessings, our gratitude, contentment and even happiness rests on unsettled ground.

Let's be totally honest about life for a few minutes.  Yes, it is full of blessings, breathtakingly so at times.  Yet most of us fail to see the beauty that surrounds us most of the time.  Just going outside two weeks ago to gaze at the grandeur of the full moon ... how many of us did that?  Or were we just too busy?  When was the last time we put our cell phones down and turned off Facebook or our e-mail accounts to just hold and peer into the eyes of one our children or grandchildren?  Or when was the last time we appreciated what a lavish gift our sense of taste was as we sipped our morning coffee?  These are among the myriad of gifts and joys that are just glimpses of God's abundant goodness to us that are everywhere, if we would just take time to stop and look.  Life is truly beautiful.

Yet as we have seen in Tallahassee over the past week, life can also be terribly tragic.  This same creation that God definitively declared as "good," He later declared cursed; and that goodness and that curse have been at war with one another since on the battleground of our daily lives.  Like the three FSU students shot in the Strozier Library last week or the Leon County Sheriff's Deputy gunned down on Saturday trying to help what he thought were victims of a house fire, very few of  us will escape this life without some deep sorrow to wrench our gut or break our hearts.

I am not speaking of life's petty annoyances like seemingly missing every traffic light between my home and my office on a daily basis, or the frustrations inherent in using a clunky electronic medical record or even being called by the airline and having our vacation flight cancelled the day before we were to depart for a much awaited Christmas holiday at the ski resort.  I am referring to the fact the people we love, like my third daughter Ariel, nearly being torn from our lives in an auto accident on the turnpike in Orlando last weekend.  Or friends learning almost out of the blue that they have cancer and won't recover.  Even the glories of nature can be transformed into irresistible terror when a tornado drops out of the sky or an earthquake suddenly rumbles or even a tsunami rages.  But even those of us who manage to avoid life's major calamities will see our children grow up and eventually leave us.  Our bodies grow old and break down.  Eventually, every single item on our "list of blessings" will be stripped away from us.  And even though we understand that this is the "natural order of things," there remains an accompanying sadness that all the positive thinking in the world cannot quite erase.

There can really only be one reason for this.  We were meant to live forever.  That was God's original design for humanity when he put us in the garden oh so many millennia ago.  And even now, after so many generations of living under the curse that sin brought upon us, we still long for immortality.  It is far too simple to just say that "death is a natural part of life, and that we should just count our blessings and be grateful for the time we have on this earth."  We can do that but it won't stop our souls from craving the eternal.  We somehow inherently know that something is very wrong about death ... that it was never meant to be the natural ending of things.

And that is where thanksgiving ... good old-fashioned, Christian Thanksgiving ... can truly help us.  While gratitude based on temporal things will eventually fail us, Thanksgiving, as originally established by our Pilgrim forefathers, is an act of communion with the eternal God.  And as such, it serves to anchor us to something that will last forever.

God's very Word declares that His love is from everlasting to everlasting.  It is the one thing that we can never lose.  "'Though the mountains be shaken and the hills removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace removed,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you" [Isaiah 54:10].  The story only gets better with the new covenant when God sent His very Son to live, die and then rise again for us, breaking the curse of sin and restoring our hope of eternal life.  Now we can look at the beauties and joys of life not simply as blessings that we will eventually lose, but rather as glimpses of the joy and beauty which through the power of Christ can never truly be taken from us.  And we can offer thanks, turning our gaze from the gift itself to its very Giver.

And this is what that small, bedraggled band of Puritans understood on the first American Thanksgiving nearly 400 years ago.  They certainly were no strangers to sorrow.  Persecuted for their faith and driven from their native country, they had survived a hellish sea voyage only to arrive in New England just in time for a brutal winter.  Governor William Bradford described what followed:  "In two or three months' time half of their company died, partly owing to the severity of the winter ... and the want of houses and other comforts; partly to scurvy and other diseases, which their long voyage and their incommodious quarters had brought upon them.  Of all the hundred odd persons, scarcely fifty remained, and sometimes two or three persons died in a single day."

Yet just three months later, this is how survivor Edward Winslow described the celebration that we know as the First Thanksgiving:  "... for three days we entertained and feasted ... And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want."

It is true that the residents of Plymouth Plantation were rejoicing in a good harvest.  But if that had been their primary source of joy, it would have been a poor recompense for the immense suffering they had just been through ... not to mention all that was yet to come.  They knew full well that material blessings can be fleeting.  "So uncertain are the mutable things of this unstable world!" Bradford later wrote.  "And yet men set their hearts upon them, though they daily see their vanity."

No, the thing that sustained these men and women was not the harvest itself.  Rather, it was the unchanging, never-ending goodness of God, of which the harvest was just one small manifestation.  So this Thanksgiving let us give thanks for the blessings that fill our daily lives:  a wife, our children, the spouses of our children, our grandchildren, a home, health, freedom and the let us also recognize that each day that we have these things is an undeserved gift.  But beyond all of this, we can and should thank God for the one thing we can never lose:  Himself, His love and the salvation for which His Son the Christ paid the ultimate price.  And we look forward to that day, which is surely coming, when His goodness will fully overcome the curse, and every tear will be wiped away from every eye.

A State of Grace

The Engagement of Ariel and Andrew

 Good evening to each of you our dear friends and family.  Thank you so much for joining us in this joyous celebration of both the love of Ariel for Andrew and Andrew for Ariel, which so beautifully demonstrates the love of Christ for us His bride, a love so over the top that He sacrificed himself for us even while we were still very far away from Him.  I also want to thank each of you for the Godly influence that you have been to either Ariel or Andrew, or if you are so fortunate, to the both of them.  It does seem that God has chosen "community" to be a very significant influence for the sake of the gospel in the lives of His people, and I love how each of you have helped mold both of them into such wonderful portraits of their Savior.

It wasn't even a year ago when I was last standing here in front of many of you after having given away my second daughter, Alli, in marriage to Chris, my second son-in-law.  And now here we are again.  I have been asked not just a few times to expound on the myriad effects of having now hosted three weddings in the span of just of just three and a half years.  All I could think to say was, "we have got to stop taking all of you out to dinner like this!"  Okay ... not really ... well, on second thought ... at least maybe!  I will admit that it seems to get a bit easier each time.

The Leaves Are ON This Tree ... Lychgate Park, site of the proposal

What God has shown me over the ensuing twelve months since Alli's and Chris' wedding is that while my life and ministry may have already passed it's zenith, those of my kids are just beginning to hit their strides ... and that is actually a gracing to me as well as to Janna.  We, of all parents, have been both incredibly fortunate and blessed by the paths our kids have chosen for their lives and by the life mates each of our girls have chosen, or perhaps more accurately stated, been graced with by God.  And did I mention grandbabies!?!  WOW!!!  So many of you had raved about what an incredible blessing becoming grandparents would be ... and though I didn't really doubt it as your testimonies were so incontrovertible in both number and power ... I just couldn't really conceive it, as I was just too overly focused on the undeniable reality of aging that it accurately reflected, and just could not see how that could be so easily overwhelmed by it's sheer joy, legacy and even eternal magnitude.  But, of course, you my friends were so incredibly right about that.  And thankfully, we are only just getting started in that regard.

Surprised by his love

Which brings me to the story of Ariel and Andrew.  Did I mention that Andrew had the audacity to ask me to breakfast the day after Alli's and Chris' wedding last July to request her hand in marriage?  Talk about hitting a guy when he's down!  Anyway, I digress.

My pondering over Ariel and Andrew centers on the question as to whether there has ever been a couple so mild mannered ... dare I say meek, and yet who were so filled with zeal for both Christ and his kingdom?  For Ariel it has pretty much just always been who she was.  Erik and Karen might say the same about Andrew.  My earliest memories of Ariel are as a bespectacled, freckle-faced girl with two piggly tails in her hair, who was a happy-go-lucky girl who very much loved being with her daddy ... no matter what I happened to be doing at the time ... but she also was one who very much looked forward to and loved sharing Saturday morning breakfasts with dad or any such outing back in our Aloha days.  She also

My freckly-faced happy-go-lucky girl turns 7 years old!

has always had the incredible gift of being completely content being with whatever friend she happened to be with at the time.  And that child would feel that satisfaction from Ariel that there was literally no one else on the planet that she would rather be with at the time.  That gifting has carried forward twenty years and she still has it.  It's no wonder that Ariel has always had such an incredibly large cadre of friends.  She has literally lived out the old proverb "if you want a friend, be a friend."  It just comes naturally to her.

My piggly-tailed girls ... Ariel so just wanted to be one of the sisters!

First Hawaiian Christmas!

And on top of that she has always had a Godward heart from the earliest of years.  In fact, I can't really remember when her heart wasn't focused on God and pleasing Him.  It certainly helps that she has always had such great examples in both her sisters and her mother to follow.  And speaking of her sisters, more than either of the other two, Ariel has just loved and cherished being counted as "one of the sisters" as if there were no higher honor in life.  And she would be equally disappointed to ever be excluded from what she considered a sister activity if one was happening.  But more than her sisters, she has always seemed to have an overly keen sensitivity to issues of social justice, from her advocacy against the children soldiers of Joseph Kony in Uganda raising both awareness of the problem and finances to fight it during her high school days at Chiles to her involvement with the Passion movement more recently to end the sex trafficking of children and young women ... the slavery of our time.

I can also remember buying several pairs
of very overpriced, shoddy Toms shoes
during her high school and early college days so that both Ariel AND some underprivileged African village child could wear them.  It seems that Ariel has just always been drawn to the cause of the orphan and the defenseless.  I also recall that the same has been said of our God.

Then came her Florida State University days ... she wasn't there a week when she showed up that next Sunday morning at

My Baby Love

Four Oaks Church with an entourage of fellow freshman kids that filled an entire row in our church sanctuary!  And these are long rows mind you!  The next year she followed it up by filling two entire rows!  Which she also did the first Sunday of her junior and senior years as well.  This is a microcosm of her life ... a life she lives for God's glory and renown ... it's just who she is.  It would figure that she'd meet the love of her life on the mission field.  Yes, she met Andrew in Miami Beach on a CRU Summer Project.  You see, the gospel is also the passion of Andrew's life.  So it was just one of those things that had to be.  They again spent last summer on mission literally behind enemy lines on the college campuses of Paris, France as Christ's ambassadors.  Talk about an overwhelming challenge!  And yet God graced them with a few souls, I recall one in particular ... a Japanese national girl named Yukiyo on a French campus whom Ariel met with many times and who gave her life to Jesus during Ariel's last week in Paris.  And on top of that both she and Andrew had many opportunities to literally sow seeds of life into the souls of hundreds of young adults.

And I also recall Jennifer's story ... a young girl who

Spectacles!

could not seemingly escape the FSU CRU team on campus ... it seems that everywhere she turned during her four years at FSU, there would be another girl from CRU, be it Adrienne Butz at the beginning and often during her freshman year and that was "coincidentally" coupled with seemingly tag team run-ins with another female CRU leader, Katie Perdue.   Then during her sophomore year it was Kimberly Chin who seemingly was always crossing her path and just when she thought she was safely hidden away in the College of Nursing during her junior and senior years she ran into that dynamo known as Ariel.  After about 15 months of questioning Ariel, Jennifer finally realized that her condition was hopeless, God had her totally surrounded and there really was no running from the Holy Spirit.  Ultimately, she committed her life to Christ last fall.  And she, Kimberly, and Adrienne are all with us tonight witnessing this union.

These are likely just small previews of the life God is calling them to.  To know Andrew is to know what Ariel sees in him.  He and Ariel are so much alike in the things that bring out their passions.  They are both people people, relationship focused and gospel centered.  Andrew is so much so that he started a Destino ministry at UF last year ... for those who don't know ... Destino is the division of CRU that focuses on the Hispanic community.  I don't believe a chapter had ever graced the UF campus until last fall ... but there is one there now and from afar [at least this far away] it seems to have been pretty successful with a growing attendance week after week and month after month and testimonies of lives changed and touched by the power of Christ's gospel.

Ariel [and I still think my daughter Ashley] were both born to be pastors' wives.  It is just in their nature.  Are you listening Matt????  And now after hearing Chris speak last night, I am not so sure all my daughters won’t end up being pastors’ wives.  So to marry a guy who's heart is set on becoming both a pastor and a church planter ... especially one who hopes to take the good news to a people group that has never heard it... is all the more appealing to Ariel.  Even though it makes her dad's heart sink a bit to think that his "Baby Love" and her babies could easily end up on the other side of the world from where we are standing now ... you know the upside down side.  To that Ariel just says, "pack your bags and come

join us!"

The Proposal

As I pondered the Scriptures in preparation for writing this toast I considered the question of what verse or biblical attribute do both Ariel and Andrew most bring to my mind?  I made it no further than Jesus' third beatitude:

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Matthew 5:5

Consider with me this picture:
It was nearly 2,000 years ago when two men faced each other on the pavement before the governor's palace. One was Jesus Christ, the meekest man who had ever lived. The other was Pontius Pilate, a man of extraordinary pride. Jesus appeared as the epitome of weakness, a poor Jew caught in the inexorable tides of Roman history, frail and impotent, a man destined to soon be extirpated from the face of the earth. Pilate, on the other hand, was the very personification of Roman power. The tides of history were on his side, and as a part of Rome, he was an heir to all of the known world.

The two figures are actually on opposite ends of a tragic paradox. Jesus Christ, the prisoner, was the free man. He was in absolute control.  Jesus, the meek, would inherit not only the earth but the entire universe. Whereas, Pilate, the governor, was the prisoner of his own pride and sin. He could not control even his own soul, and as such, he ultimately had no inheritance.

Jesus not only taught the paradox "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth" -- He actually lived it. He, in fact, was the master of the paradox. His teaching was typically salted with shining contrasts like: "the Last shall be first; Giving is receiving; Dying is living; Losing is finding; Least is greatest; Poor is rich; Weakness is strength; Serving is ruling." For Christ, paradoxes were an especially effective way of enabling people to see essential spiritual truths.

The beauty of a paradox is that it grabs our attention because it falls on our ears with an elevating dissonance. In the case of Matthew 5:5, it would seem far truer to say "Blessed are the proud, the strong, the intimidating, for they will inherit the earth." But Jesus is teaching survival not of the fittest but of the meekest! And immediately we wonder, "how in the world are the meek going to inherit anything?" Does Jesus not know that life does not work that way? Just look at those who occupy the White House, the Capitol, the executive suites of Wall Street or Fifth Avenue -- the strong, the self-sufficient, the overbearing, the more than capable, the aggressive, the ambitious. The world seemingly belongs to such as those. So it would seem that the last thing the average man would want to be known for is meekness. It would seem that Jesus has made a great mistake, but of course, He hasn't. Indeed, the third Beatitude provides an infallible law of life and a remarkable power for living and dying.

So to begin, what does "Blessed are the meek" mean? Or more specifically, what does the word "meek" -- or as many translations render it, "gentle" -- mean? It may be helpful to begin with what it does NOT mean. Understand first that meekness is not weakness. It does not denote cowardice or spinelessness or timidity or a willingness to have peace at any cost. Neither does it suggest indecisiveness, wishy-washiness, or a lack of confidence. Meekness does not imply shyness or a withdrawn personality. And it cannot be reduced down to mere niceness.

First look at the ring!

In classical Greek, the word was used to describe tame animals, soothing medicine, a mild word and a gentle breeze. William Barclay described it as a word "with a caress in it." Meekness/gentleness also implies self-control. So much so that Barclay went on to describe it as literally "strength under control." The meek person is strong! He is gentle, meek, and mild; but he is in control and he is as strong as steel.

Jesus said of Himself, "I am gentle and humble in heart" [Matthew 11:29]. As the incarnation of meekness, He displayed it in two distinct ways, both of which showed His power. In respect to His own person, He practiced neither retaliation nor vindictiveness. When He was mocked and spat upon, He answered nothing, for He trusted His Father. When confronted by Pilate, He kept silent. When His friends betrayed Him and fled, He uttered no reproach. When Peter denied Him, Jesus restored him to both fellowship and service. When Judas came and kissed him in Gethsemane, Jesus called him "friend." And Jesus meant it. He was never insincere. Even in the throes of death, He pleaded, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" [Luke 23:34]. Yet in all of this, Jesus, meek and mild, was in control. He radiated power.

On the other hand, when it came to matters of faith and the welfare of others, Jesus was a lion. He rebuked the Pharisees' hardness of heart when He healed the man's withered hand on the Sabbath [Matthew 12:9-45]. He was angered when His disciples tried to prevent little children from coming to Him [Mark 10:13-16]. He made a whip and drove the moneychangers from the Temple [John 2:14-17]. He called Peter "Satan" after the outspoken fisherman tried to deter Him from His heavenly mission [Matthew 16: 21-23]. All of this came from the very same Jesus, the incarnation of gentleness.

To put it all together is to paint an amazing picture and one that is so clearly seen in both the lives and ministries of Ariel and Andrew.  The one who is meek has a gentle spirit because he trusts God. Indeed, there is even a caress about his or her presence. At the same time, the meek person possesses immense strength and self-control, which he or she exhibits in extending love rather than retaliation against those who do him or her evil. But he stands up fearlessly in defense of others or of the truth as the occasion demands.

The reward for meekness is nothing short of amazing: "They will inherit the earth."

And Ariel ... you and Andrew and perhaps even your children and your children's children may receive a generational blessing from your faithfulness in this.  And in that, your mother and I are very well pleased ... as is your Heavenly Father.  And it is in this ... my finally realized state of grace ... that I marvel at all that God has done first in your lives, then in our lives and lastly in the lives of all of you gathered here to celebrate this occasion.  It is truly a glorious tapestry that He weaves! To Ariel and Andrew I raise my glass!  Cheers!  Congratulations!  All of God's manifold blessings to you both and to all the Axsoms that may follow!  Amen!

So much love!

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!