Afflicted, Perplexed, Persecuted & Struck Down

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.  We are afflicted on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed.  We always carry around in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal body.  So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. ... 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 affliction is achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."  
2 Corinthians 4:7-12, 16-18

What an incredible three weeks have transpired ... and yet the battle has just begun.  Yet God in His grace is giving us a very brief respite.  Many of you know our dear family friends, Tom and Alison Argersinger and the amazing path they have walked over these past six years since she was first diagnosed with a most unusual cancer, endometrial stromal sarcoma, in April 2006.  Have I said yet just how very much I hate sarcomas?!?  At the time, she was one of only 300 cases in recorded history [this cancer was not even a known diagnosis when I was in medical school in the mid-80s ... so all those cases pre-dating the mid-1990s were likely just misdiagnosed].  Suffice it to say, in any case, it is still an incredibly rare cancer.  She presented with stage 4 disease with involvement of the entire pelvis and abdomen including a very large metastatic lesion involving her cecum and distal ileum.  It took over nine hours of a painstakingly laborious and tedious cytoreduction [debulking] procedure which also involved a radical hysterectomy as well as a resection of the cecum and terminal ileum [beginning of the colon/large intestine and the last part of the small intestine] by Dr. Linda S. Morgan, an amazing gynecological oncologist at Shands Hospital at the University of Florida followed by six years of careful surveillance and ongoing suppressive hormone therapy [Megace] to get Alison to this point.  Thankfully until now, her cancer was "low grade."  But six years ago the future could not have seemed any more bleak.  The faithful prayers of so many of her friends and of our church, Four Oaks Community Church, played no small part in her amazing recovery.  In fact, I have to date never witnessed such a powerful and prayerful send-off as occurred the night before she and Tom drove down to Gainesville, Florida for the above-mentioned surgical procedure.  And she has experienced a most wonderful six years in remission.

That all changed when she presented to our clinic on Tuesday May 1 [as I was in-flight to a sports medicine conference in Phoenix, Arizona] with symptoms of profound anemia [hemoglobin was 7.8 g/dl ... or minus 5 units of blood] such as shortness of breath which was quite pronounced with minimal exercise, fatigue, rapid heart rate, lightheadedness and paleness.  Thanks to the wonders of modern computer technology [VPN], I was able to initiate and manage her medical evaluation despite being almost an entire continent away.  It came to a conclusion on my first day back in the office, Tuesday May 8 when she had a repeat CT scan of her abdomen and pelvis that showed a large 6 cm mass on her proximal jejunum [second part of the small intestine].  I saw her and Tom at the end of my clinic day ... nearly 6 PM to review the results with her and then sent her over to see my most trusted surgical confidant, Dr. Jeff Crooms, who also stayed late to consult with her.  It was 6:30 PM when she got to his office.  Subsequently, she was scheduled for surgery this past Monday May 14 due to him being out of town from May 9-12.

We were able to gather most of the elders of our church and their wives at our home last Sunday night to anoint Alison with oil and pray the fervent prayer of faith over her [see James 5:14] which proved to be both a very powerful and spiritually encouraging time for Tom, Alison and the rest of us.  Then this past Monday morning she arrived at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital for the surgery.  Her preoperative lab work had already revealed that she had lost another unit of blood [Hgb now down to 6.7 g/dl] and as a result she was transfused with 2 units of packed red bloods in the preoperative holding area.

It was not until about 3:30 PM that the surgery was able to commence due to unforeseen complexities in the cases ahead of her [it ended up being that kind of day for Dr. Crooms who did not finish his last case ... there were two more following Alison's ... until approximately 11:00 PM].  Imagine Alison's surprise when he rounded on her at 11:00 PM and had not yet left the hospital.  Did I mention what an incredibly tireless and selfless guy he is ... I truthfully have never known a harder worker and have never found such an incredible combination of wisdom, skill, indefatigability, compassion and humility in another surgeon in my nearly 30 years of training and practice.  He created a pneumoperitoneum [inflated her abdomen and pelvis with carbon dioxide gas] and inserted the laparoscope only to quickly find an extensive carcinomatosis [hundreds and even maybe thousands of small 1-3 mm tumors] in her abdomen and pelvis and then ultimately converted the procedure to an open exploratory laparotomy with resection of the involved portion of the jejunum along with its omentum and the carcinomatotic tumors in that section of small intestine.  Due to his great skill, he was able to perform a direct end-to-end anastomosis [connection] of the two cut ends of jejunum and there was no more than 100 cc of further blood loss and her hemoglobin the following morning was up to 8.5 g/dl.  Then it was just a waiting game for the pathology report to come in ... well, along with Alison needing to get off oxygen, intravenous patient-controlled anesthesia, intravenous fluids, ambulation, regaining control of her bladder and having her intestines reboot from top to bottom and her being able to eat again ... just the "small stuff" you know!  She did beautifully across the board on each measure; so much so that she was discharged to home on Friday morning May 18.  But all that week her hospital room became increasingly filled with gorgeous flowers with an incredible aroma ... by Wednesday night you could literally smell the aromatic bouquet from the nurses' station next door if Alison's door was open and the fragrance only intensified as the days passed.  I think this may have been a metaphorical fulfillment of Tom's verse and prayer from her Sunday night anointing and intercession where he quoted 2 Corinthians 2:14-16:  "But thanks be to God, who always leads in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.  For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life."

On Friday afternoon things began to get significantly more dicey.  I spoke at length with Dr. Morgan immediately after her preliminary pathology report became available and related all the relevant details of Alison's case to her.  Of course, like the rest of us here in Tallahassee, Linda was sorely disappointed to learn of the recent chain of events listed above and noted that we are likely now in a completely different treatment scenario [could be the understatement of the year].  After two conversations juxtaposed between two conversations with her TMH pathologist, Dr. Chris Price, Dr. Morgan scheduled Alison for a consultation appointment in Gainesville this coming Friday, May 25.

About that pathology report:  her pathology came back again as an endometrial stromal sarcoma, however the cancer is now high grade.  Amazingly, the intestinal lumen was nearly completely obstructed by the tumor yet she showed no symptoms of this ... at least not yet.  It appears that God graced Alison with the symptoms of anemia that she presented with and allowed an expedited workup to quickly diagnose her and get her to the operating room.  This prevented her from presenting instead with a small bowel obstruction which is incredibly painful, very dangerous and requires emergency surgery and most likely would result in a jejunostomy with its accompanying ostomy bag.  In fact, several of the slides actually showed a complete obstruction so those emergent symptoms were imminent ... likely just a day or two away.  How's that for awesome timing?  God is never late.

This, however, is where it gets complicated.  There is currently a dispute between Dr. Morgan [who is neither a pathologist nor has she seen the microscopic slides] and Dr. Chris Price the pathologist at TMH who is in charge of her case here] and I have spoken with both of them twice now.  The cancer is still estrogen receptor positive [a good thing] but Dr. Price did not have progesterone receptor testing done.  Dr. Morgan needs that and I was able to have Dr. Price order it.  Those results should be back on Monday May 21.  If both receptors remain positive there may be an option of just substituting the more modern hormone blocker Arimidex [a nonsteroidal aromatase inhibitor which basically inhibits estrogen formation in the body and is now used in place of tamoxifen, for those familiar with tamoxifen, in breast cancer patients] lieu of the Megace she currently takes … essentially trading more hot flashes for less appetite stimulation … virtually a lateral move and relatively easy-pezy.

The big dispute is in regards to all those small little carcinomatosis tumors.  Dr. Price did not mention those in his pathology report but I specifically asked about them … there were several in the section of small intestine sent to the lab.  When asked, he said they were also high grade.  If this is true it is a gravely more serious situation.  Dr. Morgan disputes this as she doesn’t see how it can be possible that she would have thousands [though in this case several] of these mutate simultaneously to high grade and yet only one of them has grown large …. which totally makes sense to me.  The tripwire here is that these may be early metastatic high grade tumors [from the large jejunal cancer].  Surely her entire abdomen/pelvis aren’t filled with these though.  However, it only takes one to be high grade to change the "game" [or at least one still left in her abdomen … and there is no way possible to go get them all].

So we need a bit of divine wisdom here … a word of knowledge or equivalent would be nice and I believe in order.  I plan to speak to Dr. Price again on Monday and ask that he specifically re-examine the slides of those small lesions and make absolutely sure he thinks they are high grade.  Perhaps even have him send the slides with Alison down to Shands to get their pathologists’ opinion and I may even ask that they be sent to the AFIP [Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, DC] for their opinion … it is absolutely that critical we get this right.

Should she be high grade all the way then she will likely need to be entered into a sarcoma chemotherapy treatment protocol either at Shands Hospital in Gainesville or H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, and that, too, will require a bit of discernment as to which one to select or that she be an appropriate candidate for.  These are notoriously very difficult to endure with marginal success rates from my memory.  Did I mention yet just how much I hate sarcomas?!?  Yet I may soon be learning more than I ever wanted to know about sarcoma therapy. 

And as all the above events unfolded over the past three weeks I kept finding myself questioning God as to why He is allowing this to occur?  Haven't the Argersingers' already suffered enough?  Where could He possibly find a more faithful family to Jesus and His kingdom [which is likely exactly why they are subjected to such frequent attack and affliction].  And amazingly it seems always to be so for those of us in the West.  I can't help but keep being drawn back to Tom's and my experience in Cameroon, West Africa in 2003 where suffering was so much a part of their daily existence that it never seemed to catch them off-guard or surprise them.  It was as if they lived literally expecting to suffer.  And it was this very expectation that we both found so remarkable.  It is almost never so in America where we are almost always caught off-guard when affliction comes.  I think this is generally the default human position.  So much so that the Apostle Peter found it necessary to remind his followers in 1 Peter 4:12, 13 to "not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed."

The problem of human suffering goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden after the Fall and has plagued mankind since.  Even Jesus promised that we would face suffering and persecution in this world before he ascended ... and no less than He was victimized by unjust suffering and persecution.  Why now should it be any different for us?  Is the servant above his master?  And throughout history God has used the suffering of His people to effect His purposes and to glorify Himself ... from Job to Christ to now.  The truth of it is, that affluence likely glorifies God much less than suffering ever will.  Basically the entire treatise of 1 Peter is a manual on suffering ... which is the nature of living for God in a dark and depraved culture.

First, Peter tells us not to be surprised by suffering then James goes one step further exhorting us to "Consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds, because we know that the testing of our faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that we may be mature and complete not lacking anything." [1:2-4].  Again this is likely something we must be frequently reminded of because it is also counter to our human nature.  Paul chimes in [Romans 5:3-5] "we rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us..."  Even our pastor Erik Braun last Sunday noted that "our suffering is NOT a chink in our armor ... it is actually the strongest part of our armor."  He even went so far as to remind us that our present and abiding comfort is NOT something that will last.  None of us gets out of here alive and unscathed.  Hmmm.

Why is this so?  I go back to the scripture in the banner of this posting ... we are clay jars!  Now, clay jars were the throwaway containers of the ancient world.  So their lifespans were generally a few years at most.  They were used to store and transport water and olive oil and wine and grain and even family treasures.  Earthenware jars were an anonymous part of everyday living as they were used for cooking and eating and drinking and even storing leftovers.  Every old world archaeological excavation site contains their remains, called ostraca, from the Greek word for pottery.  No one took note of clay jars any more than we would of a pizza box.  They were simply there for convenience.  It was no great tragedy when such vessels were broken.  They were cheap and easily replaced.

As such, jars of clay provided Paul with a penetrating metaphor for his and his followers' humanity.  Indeed Adam was formed out of the dust of the ground, and to dust he returned [Genesis 2:7; 3:19].  As clay jars we are all frail, weak, transitory mortals.  This understood, Paul's famous declaration pulses with meaning:  "But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us" [v. 7].  This "treasure" is the illuminating power ... described in the preceding verse as "the light" of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" ... that God provides with the full creation power with which He spoke things into existence.  This "treasure," this creational, transforming gospel power, has been committed to insignificant, fragile followers of Christ ... men and women who, like Paul, are all clay pots.

The reason for this, of course, is so there will be no mistake about where the power comes from -- "to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."  This is not a casual admission.  This is Christian realism.  We are never powerful in ourselves but are only vessels in which God's power is exhibited.  It is only as we embrace our weakness that God fills us with His power so that it is His power that is manifested through us.  We do not become powerful.  We remain weak.  We do not grow in power.  We grow in weakness.  We go from weakness to weakness, which allows us to remain vessels of His power -- ever weak and yet ever strong.

Then in verses 8 and 9 Paul gives us four parallel paradoxes that all illustrate his experience of the clay pot axiom in his own life -- namely that weakness invites strength.  These paradoxes are almost autobiographical of his constant experience.  At the same time, they touch on the biography of each of us who are committed Christian disciples.  Each of these paradoxes ascend in both intensity of weakness but also its counter in power.

First, "we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed" [v. 8a],  The earthen vessel of Paul's life was "afflicted" in the radical sense of pressured, which is best represented by the word squeezed.  He had many such experiences in his life of ministry but each time his pressured weakness was met with God's power and he was "not crushed."

Second, he was "perplexed but not driven to despair" [v. 8b].  R. Kent Hughes notes that in Greek these words form a rhyming word play [aporoumenoi ... exaporoumenoi] as the second word intensifies the first.  Various attempts have been made to capture the word play in English -- "at a loss, but not at a loss [Tasker], "in despondency, yet not in despair" [Plummer], "confused but not confounded" [Hughes].  Some think Dr. Tenney said it best when he said "bewildered but not befuddled."

Third, Paul was "persecuted, but not forsaken" [v. 9a].  Paul knew what it was like to be persecuted [literally, "pursued" or "hunted down"], but he was never forsaken by God, as the Old Testament background of this word indicates.  God cannot forsake His chosen vessels.  Even when Jesus prophetically cried out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" [Psalm 22:1; Mark 15:34], He knew that He would not be abandoned to the grave.  And more, God will not forsake any of His people, for they are redeemed by the blood of His Son.  Paul was absolutely confident of God's abiding presence regardless of how or where he was hounded and hunted.

Fourth, the intensity of the paradoxes peaks in the final expression, "struck down, but not destroyed" [v. 9b].  As used here, "struck down" means as by a weapon -- we might use the word "whacked".  But Paul was not destroyed.  Rather he was quickly back up on his feet.  We know of one of these events in Lystra where he was hunted down and ritually stoned.  Then his body was dragged outside the city to rot.  But to the astonishment of his followers, Paul's eyes re-opened and he popped up and led them back into Lystra [Acts 14:19, 20].

Again, "we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that surpassing power belongs to God and not to us" [v. 7].  It wasn't that Paul in each case reached down into his own soul, sucked it up, and became THE MAN.  It was never his strength.  It was God's. Paul's weakness was the occasion for God's power.  Paul remained an earthen pot, and a cracked pot at that:) as his crumbling flesh allowed the power of God to shine so brightly.

Finally, Paul deepens his point by instructing the Corinthian church that his experience of power through weakness was, in effect, like that of Jesus in His death [weakness] and His resurrection [power].  He summed up his paradoxical experiences with a radically Christ-focused statement:  "always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies" [v. 10].  To understand this we must note very carefully that the word rendered "death" here refers more to the process of dying rather than to the final state of death.  It was more like Paul carried about in his body the dying of Jesus as he lived out his missionary calling.  Paul concluded his letter to the Galatian church by saying, "From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus" [6:17].  Indeed, Jesus by virtue of His solidarity with Paul intimately knew those sufferings.  In fact, Jesus could have said to Paul's persecutors, "Why are you persecuting Me?" just as He had once said to Saul [Paul] on the Damascus road [Acts 9:4].

Though bearing in his body the killing of Jesus was part of Paul's experience of ministering the new covenant, it was not an end in itself.  We who serve Jesus share in His dying "so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies" [v. 10b].  This refers both to the here and now and to the life hereafter.  Those who observed Paul saw the life of Christ in the amazing power that was displayed through Paul's weakness as he was not crushed and not driven to despair and not forsaken nor destroyed.  In the same way, the life of Christ is manifested in the lives of those who truly follow Him just as Alison and Tom have done for decades.  And ultimately, these realities will be manifested in all their full-blown glory in our final deliverance from mortality in the great resurrection of the dead.

To further emphasize these great truths, Paul repeats himself again in stronger terms:  "For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh" [v. 11].  Hughes notes that this is the same language used to describe Jesus being handed over to His enemies for crucifixion [Mark 9:31; 10:33].  We can take great comfort knowing then that the sufferings of those who follow Christ are not haphazard or random but are, instead, part of the divine plan for the spread of His gospel.  It remains God's will that His frail jars of clay be used to show that the surpassing power belongs ultimately and only to God Himself.

And it is in this eternal and universal truth that Alison, Tom, our school community [Community Christian] and our church [Four Oaks] can take ultimate solace and refuge.  Alison's health situation [and for that matter, the cancer diagnosis our dear friend Debora Passetti just received] did not take God by surprise nor are they beyond His control.  Instead, it is in these very sufferings that we are both most weak [sharing the fellowship of Christ's sufferings] and most strong [sharing the amazing power of His resurrection] as Paul so beautifully described in Philippians 3:10.

I have no idea how Alison's situation will turn out in the end, but I do know that I am quite fond of this particular clay pot and will do anything and everything in my power to make it go well for her and to see her physically restored to health ... but alas, I am just another clay pot as well.  Ultimately, Alison future rests solely in God's hands and we can rest in the knowledge that there is NO doubt He will use her illness to advance His kingdom and that just as He promised in Romans 8:28, He will cause it to work together for both her good and His glory.  And in that we all have great hope!

Author's Note [May 24]:  I sent the first draft of this blog [everything preceding this point] to Tom and Alison by e-mail on Sunday May 20 and asked that they read through it and give me their blessing on publishing it since it is the most deeply personal of subjects [literally their lives] and while they were supportive of the content they asked that its publication be delayed until at least after their consultation with Dr. Linda S. Morgan tomorrow morning [May 25].  I have honored their request and will not publish until I receive their permission and blessing.

And it's off to Shands GYN Oncology they go tomorrow.  I wonder what it must be like to be in Alison's and Tom's shoes tonight and especially tomorrow morning.  In many ways, it seems to me to be like an innocent defendant the night prior to learning the jury's verdict the following morning with the sentencing to follow immediately.  And have no doubt, Alison is innocent and, in fact, in very many ways the perfect patient.  But we have an advocate, one the writer of Hebrews describes as a "a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God ... who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, one who has been tempted in every way, just as we have but yet without sin."  One who was truly perfect in every way, and yet who stood in front of Pilate and the Sanhedrin and received both a scourging and a death sentence that He surely didn't deserve.  And yet it was because of history's greatest injustice that any of us here have any hope of true and lasting glory.  So whatever God has planned for Tom and Alison no one can say that He treated His only Son any better ... at least not in this temporal world.  Of course on the other side, Paul tells us in Philippians 2 that God "has exalted Him [Jesus] to the highest place and gave Him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

These remain the timeless and eternal truths of the ages.  Men may rise and men may fall but God remains ruler of them all.  And yet He loves us perfectly and unconditionally despite the fallen state He finds us in.  He works tirelessly to perfect us for His son our groom.  And He works to spread His kingdom in the hearts of men choosing incredibly to use us, simple jars of clay that we be.  And despite the throw away nature of such shards of pottery, God has chosen to place in each of us His very image.  And that is and always has been our lasting glory.  He loves His creation and He loves the Argersingers especially.  And He will work together for good His perfect plan in their lives.  We can all count on that.

So what have I learned since last Sunday?  A new pathologist has entered the picture [I don't even know for sure whatever became of Dr. Chris Price except that as of Monday he was "unavailable" for a few days].  Dr. Chuck Manning filled in nicely and seemed eager to get to the "truth" of her case [as much as it can be available for finite man to understand the "truth."]  The progesterone receptor testing ultimately came back positive and for that we were all thankful.  So neither of those [estrogen receptor or progesterone receptor] have changed since 2006.  That, however, was the simple task.

What about the all important grade of the cancer ... especially the small carcinomatosis tumors that her treatment plan will ultimately hinge on?  This is where it gets tenuous in my mind.  Dr. Manning felt that there was a distinct decrease in the aggressiveness of these tumors compared to the large jejunal cancer.  There were fewer mitotic figures per high powered field, smaller overall cell size, decreased cellularity, fewer visible nucleoli, less "spindly" spindle cells [this may be more my word than his] ... but there remained no doubt that it was a still a sarcoma though.  I get the feeling that if there were such a classification as "intermediate" grade that is the one that he would select.  But when push came to shove he felt that it was more "low" grade than it was "high" grade.  So that I think leads us to a cautiously optimistic outlook pending tomorrow's appointment.  I asked that he have her pathology slides sent to Shands in advance of Alison's consultation tomorrow so that they may be reviewed by both Dr. Morgan and their best sarcoma pathologist and left the door open for referral to the AFIP as a final court of appeal so to speak.  It just seems so critically important to precisely establish the grading since it will be our taking off point and to make as few assumptions as we possibly can make prior to developing her proposed treatment course.

As for me, her case is now out of my hands [in reality, was it ever really in "my" hands?  No not really ... it has always ultimately been in His hands] ... and like the rest of my friends, all I can now do is pray.  Which, perhaps, has always been the most powerful thing in my and your armamentariums.   Sadly, I still too often forget this ... but Alison's case has repeatedly served as a frequent reminder and I have found myself praying more frequently throughout the day over the past three weeks since I returned from Phoenix.  Pretty much every time her face crossed my mind.  And that has been a lot!  And that's a good thing.  I know for sure that now is certainly not the time to grow weary in our intercessory prayer life.  And so I'll stop for now and pray again.

Friday Evening 6:00 PM:  I have just spoken with my dear sweet friend, Alison, and the news she bears is good.  Dr. Morgan was mostly upbeat and the take away question for Alison was "do you have 4 or 5 more of these surgeries in you?!?"  How great is that!?!  Translation ... she feels that Alison is most likely still "low grade" and wonders if this large tumor is really "high grade" itself since the high grade cancers generally are at least progesterone receptor negative.  Six years ago Alison had a significantly larger such cancer in the cecum and terminal ileum than this "puny" 6 cm mass in the jejunum so perhaps she is going to be a candidate for the "easy-pezy" Arimidex therapy after all.  Dr. Morgan wants her to remain on the Megace for another month and then perhaps switch over ... this to avoid the increased risk of clotting associated with Arimidex [especially freshly post-op].  In the meantime, she is planning to have Alison's slides over-read by the AFIP [I believe] for a third opinion as well as have the Shands Pathology Department render their own opinion.  But her "gut" [and she trusts her gut a lot ... as I do mine ... I just have no other experience with this cancer so my gut is a blank] tells her this is still a low grade sarcoma [remember she has seen this before ... and not many can say that].  So we are going with this opinion ... at least until we have significant evidence pointing in the other direction.  I believe Alison will restart the followup surveillance CT carousel again in three months ... but we are all rejoicing here in Tallahassee ... this is a ride we know and one that will, God-willing, allow Alison to meet her grandchildren while still here on terra firma!  And hopefully allow Tom and Alison to celebrate their 30th anniversary somewhere glorious and not in an hospital chemotherapy infusion center!  Thank you Jesus!

Grace in Disguise

Josh Hughes leading a night  where God's grace was "center stage" ... Good Friday Service at Four Oaks Church 4.6.12

What is it that so often keeps us from recognizing the grace of God in our lives?  Could it be that we are looking for a different kind of grace?  All too often when we find ourselves in the middle of great difficulty we both long and plead for the grace of relief.  Yet in many of these same circumstances God may be bestowing upon us the grace of rescuing us from ourselves.  We want the trial to end because we don't like the pain we are experiencing, yet God may want the trial to remain in our lives until it has completed the work He sent it to do.  We tend not to rejoice in our sufferings like Paul did in Romans 5 because we much more prefer a life of comfort than the character that a God-sent difficulty can produce.  Still, God loves us too much to relent.  He didn't shed the blood of His one and only Son to leave us to ourselves.  He didn't reveal His truth to us only to have us lost and confused in the middle of our own stories.  No, we have been and are being rescued by an activist Redeemer.  He does not get discouraged; He does not get tired; and He never gets distracted.  He is intensely focusing on finishing what He has started in us.  So if it is heat that we need, He will not provide relief until the trial's redemptive heat has done its designed work.


It is very important in the darkness of our trials to recognize the grace of God.  If our definition of grace is too narrow, and if what we expect that grace to offer is too limited, we may be crying out for grace at the very time it is being showered on us.  It is quite possible to be the focus of divine love and rescue while at the very same time be interpreting what is happening in our lives in a completely different way.  Perhaps the cross is the quintessential example of this.  If we had been there on the day when the Romans & the Jews tortured and killed our Messiah, we would probably have interpreted this as the ultimate defeat, just as His disciples and His own mother did.  It would have been very difficult to gaze up at Christ hanging on the cross between two thieves and see it as a wonderful moment that would produce such great gain for those close to Him ... not to mention the tens of millions who would subsequently believe.  No, we would likely see Him hanging there, seemingly unable to help Himself, and we would most likely think that it was a horrible failure of all that was good, true and beautiful.  We would have left Golgotha's hill with the deepest of sick feelings in the pits of our stomachs, and we would have woken up the next day not really able to believe that we had just watched Jesus, the Promised One, die.  And almost certainly, we would have been confused, perplexed and not have had any idea of what to think or do next.

Yet we now know that the cross was not a defeat.  No, it was actually the victory of ALL victories.  Probably no one said it better than Paul in Colossians 2:15 "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."  No, the cross was NOT a moment of defeat that was later turned into a victory.  The cross was NOT a failure that was overturned by the resurrection.  Paul makes that point quite clearly.  This moment, which on its surface looked so much like a defeat, was actually history's greatest moment of triumph!  The Promised One, the Hope of Israel, was NOT taking the failure-inducing death blows of the enemy.  No, this was the Messiah's moment of greatest power.  For the cross was the very place where He showed the world just what He alone was able to do.  No man or power or principality was taking His life from Him.  No one was snatching victory out of His hand.  No one was undoing all of the gracious good that He had done.  No one was robbing His followers of their lives and futures.  He was on the cross because that is EXACTLY where He both wanted and chose to be.  He hung in torture because He KNEW that was precisely what was needed if there was ever going to be any hope for those who would believe in Him.  No, He did not hang there in defeat.  He hung, instead, in triumph.  That afternoon on Golgotha's hill was NOT a demonstration of the power of the enemies of Christ.  Paul declares exactly the opposite.  Christ was making a public spectacle of their lack of power and control.  They threw everything they had at Him, but in the end, they were simply unable to keep Him from providing redemption for His people.  With all of their twisted justice and angry violence, they could NOT stop Him.

The cross publicly mocked their powerlessness.   Jesus hung there because He chose to, His Father wanted Him to and He, Himself, wanted to.  He showed divine love and control as He willingly submitted to ridicule, shame and torture, because He knew what He had come to do, and nothing was going to get in His way or stop Him.  What looked so very much like a crushing defeat was, in fact, an unadulterated triumph.  Things are not always as they seem.

And for us as well, it is quite possible, at the moment of their unfolding, for God's processes of grace to look like the enemy's actions of triumph.  The loss of a job, the breakup of a relationship, the struggle with sickness, the death of a dream, the presence of financial hardship, or the failure of an accomplishment can all look like evil has triumphed over good.  And if we are only looking for the grace of relief and expecting it to produce the fruit of release, we will tend to credit the enemy with far too much power and tend to think of our Lord as being much too distant and weak.  This is why a "things are not always as they seem" perspective on grace is so important for us to understand.

What we need to do instead is to let the goal of grace define our expectation of what the process of grace will look like.  If we are able to do this then we will be much better at recognizing the grace of God as it operates in, around and through us.  Paul's words to Titus are helpful for us in this regard in chapter 2 verses 11-14.  There Paul tells Titus that the goal of God's grace is, "a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good."  We will never be able to consistently recognize the grace of God in our lives, let alone understand our struggles, without this goal serving as our interpretive lens, as all that God is doing in our lives has this one goal in view.  His grace has been given so that He will have a people that are in every way eager to do what He says is good.  It is both a subtle and a subversive grace.  It is designed to once and for all destroy the culture of self-absorption that so easily seduces and controls us all and is tailored to produce a counterculture of zeal for divine good.  It is a grace that often takes us to places that we would have never desired to go and produces in us what we never could have achieved for ourselves.  It is a grace that will finally take our eyes off our agendas for ourselves and put them, instead, where they were designed to focus in the beginning -- on God's kingdom and His glory.  It is only when we forsake all the other "goods" that would control us and live under the control of the zeal to be good in His eyes, that our lives truly become happy and most satisfying.  Why?  Because we are finally living like we were designed to live.

Yes, a people who are eager to do what is good is grace's ultimate goal, but what is the process?  Paul says that the process is purification [a.k.a. sanctification].  Our hearts are corrupted by other goals.  We are not pure in heart.  We tend to give our hearts to whatever appears to offer us comfort, identity, pleasure, meaning, success or station [all things which we are meant to find only in God].  Yet God's goal is to produce in us a singleness of heart.  And He tends to do this by demonstrating to us that nothing outside of Him can ever satisfy.  So, He will allow our dreams to die, or success to ruin us, or our friends prove to be unfaithful, or our bodies to fail us, or our good efforts to be shown to not be so good after all.  All of this is often very painful to go through, but it is NEVER random pain.  It becomes the painful grace of purification, and therefore, a very good thing to go through.  Remember that "things are not always what they seem" in the view of grace.  Many of us just need to correct our vision so that we can clearly see that ours is a story of grace as well.

Who Are You?

We are always living out of some sense of identity ... as people it is what we do.  The way we answer the eternal question "who am I?" will have incredible influence over all that we say and do.  It is not surprising that identity issues come to the forefront of our lives in adolescence [I think this is one of the major reasons Jesus identified so much with children and encouraged us to become like them ... children are probably the most secure of all people in their identities ... they of all people I know seem to best know who they are and are the most comfortable with it].  What is more surprising, however, is that nearly all of us continue to struggle with our identities throughout the rest of our lives to one degree or another.  The struggles of mid-life are in many ways are return to adolescence in that they are primarily struggles with identity.  When we begin to understand this, we will have come a long way in finding our way out of that dense fog.

Think about how much of the drama of the biblical story is ultimately tied to identity.  There is a real way in which the fall of Adam and Eve was about forgetting [or rejecting] who they really were.  They were creatures of God who attempted to take on a whole new identity.  Much of the drama of the Old Testament centers on whether or not the nation of Israel would live inside their identities as the children of God.  Or would they be wooed by other identities and end up worshiping the idols of the surrounding nations?  In the same way, the drama of the later New Testament is primarily about whether the church of Jesus Christ would understand what it meant to be "in Christ," in the middle of a world that exalts many other identities.

The biblical story is essentially a story of identity given, identity lost and identity restored.  God wants us to know who we are and to live out the practical implications of the identities He has given to us in Him.  This why Scripture is constantly telling us who we are.  As sinners we tend to suffer from identity amnesia to one degree or another.  In 2 Peter 1:8-9, Peter essentially couples "blind unfruitfulness" with this issue of identity saying in so many words, "Your lives are unproductive because you have forgotten who you are."  The reality is that this identity amnesia in the body of Christ can almost paralyze the church and thus becomes one of the principal tools employed by our enemy against us.  And both sadly and amazingly, he has been doing this since the Garden.

The problem with identity amnesia is that if not quickly recognized it eventually gives way to something much more dangerous:  identity replacement.  If we forget who we truly are, our true identities will ultimately fail to shape our response to the people and situations that we encounter in this life and we will ultimately fill that identity void with something else.  Our "made to worship and serve the Creator" identity first given to us in the Garden gives way to the "I can be like God" identity of the serpent's deception.  No one ever lives without an identity.  The problem though is that we often aren't even aware of our identities at any given time and identity migration in our hearts can happen ever so subtly that it often goes unnoticed.  It is not like one day we wake up and say to ourselves, "You know, I am tired of the identity that I've been carrying around all these years.  I think today I will trade it in for a newer, better, cooler identity."  No, our identities get replaced more at the amnesia level than the conscious level.  We almost never see it happening.

The more people I see in my journey who have lost their way in life the more I am convinced that it almost always comes down to the fundamental issue of identity.  One of my nurses is currently going through this in her life right now ... she just separated from her husband three weeks ago at the culmination of a three year walk into the darkness.  This was accompanied by a two year diet and fitness program coupled with a profound weight loss and a couple of cosmetic surgeries as the physical appearance idol was resurrected.  And yet I have never seen her more miserable.  On top of this,  I just counseled a 45 year-old woman two days ago who feels "defrauded" after she moved to Tallahassee thirty months ago to marry a man [both are believers] who is more of a roommate to her now.  He is totally unsympathetic to her needs as a wife and companion and is instead focused solely on the needs of his three psychologically hurting daughters following his divorce from their mother who four years ago ran off with another man and moved to Texas.  They almost never see their mother any more.  Sadly, his new marriage is about to careen off a cliff and he doesn't [won't is probably the more correct word] even see it coming.  And worst of all, his girls are about to be devastated a second time.  He doesn't know who he is.  He is still living in a previous identity ... one that will never be again.

Mid-life crisis is clearly and inextricably connected to identity demise and identity replacement.  We have been seduced by false identities that will always fail us, and when they do, it feels like we have lost ourselves.  We may have thought that we knew who we were but then in a flash it all becomes completely foggy.  And suddenly we are flying by instruments.  Only those who are secure in their identity in Christ will be able to navigate this successfully.  Their faith becomes their instrument of "seeing."  Visual flight rules no longer apply.  Disorientation and vertigo are the rule.  Our senses can no longer be trusted.  Those who insist on flying by what they feel almost always fly right into the ground.  This goes all the way back to the Garden with Adam and Eve, the wandering Israelites in the wilderness, the Israelite army wilting in the face of Goliath's taunts and the Philistine army [David, however, was secure in his identity as a child of God and was singlehandedly able to win the day] and even the Apostle Peter in Galatia as he deserted the Gentile believers when James arrived on the scene, because he was afraid of what the Jewish believers would think about his open fellowship with these "uncircumcised believers."  Yes, ours is a history of identity, identity lost and hopefully identity restored.

Who Would Worship a Golden Calf? Ummm ... Us! Conclusion

As we continue to ponder "The Great Idolatry in the Desert" as described in Exodus 32 we must not forget where those recently released slaves had gotten all their gold.  It came from Egypt ... yes, that same Egypt that had held them captive for over 400 years.  As God was slaying the firstborn sons of Egypt, He told the children of Israel to ask for silver and gold from their captors.  Now perhaps you are thinking, "If I were an Egyptian and these very slaves had caused me so much misery over the past few months, the very last thing I would do is GIVE them my valuables to take with them!"  Well, that's what I would have been thinking ... but maybe that's just me.  Exodus 11:3, however, explains that God made the Egyptians favorably disposed to their soon-to-be liberated slaves.  The gold they took with them into the wilderness was thus directly imparted to them by the hand of God.  So consider with me carefully just what this means .... the very valuable metals that were meant to visibly testify to God's covenantal commitment were then used to build the very idol that was to serve as a replacement to the One who had provided the treasure to them in the first place!

This is an incredibly important spiritual concept not to be missed.  We all use the things that God has provided to build our own personal golden calves ... there I said it.  In mid-life, we are faced with this fact again and again .... the very things that God has provided to us so generously for our welfare we end up using to functionally replace Him.  Those very things that were supposed to serve as functional reminders of His faithful presence in our lives end up becoming replacement glories that woo us away from Him.  For example, He provided us with the gold of friendship, and we came to crave the acceptance of people more than the love of God.  He provided us with the gold of marriage and family, but marital bliss became more important to us than pleasing Him.  He provided us with the gold of work, and we let this means of provision become the very thing that controlled us [or at least some of us :)].  He gave us the gold of material ease, and we began to live more for things than we did for Him.  Much of the bitter harvest of mid-life is both directly attached to the fact and proportional to the amount that we have failed to keep things in their rightful places.

Lastly, but also related to this, is the fact that God is jealous for our worship and will do whatever it takes to get it.  This is often hard to accept [especially for the post-modern mind], but three thousand people died because of the construction and worship of that golden calf.  There are at least two ways to think about this.  One would be to see this as sure proof that God is not loving, merciful or kind.  The other way is more biblical.  If God really loved Israel, there was no way that He could accept their giving the love that belonged to Him to an inanimate object!  Wouldn't you agree that true love is always appropriately jealous???  What if I sat down on the love seat in my man cave [and don't ask what kind of man cave has a love seat in it?  I have to let Janna think it is at least somewhat her room too.] with Janna and whispered into her ear that she was one of many women that I loved very much?  What do you think she would do?  Well if you know Janna then watch out.  Sparks are bound to fly.  And that is true for all of us ... if the woman [or in the reverse case, the man] had any love for their husband [or wife] at all, she [he] would be both jealous and outraged.  The only way this wouldn't be true is if she had no real love for me at all.  In similar manner, God finds Israel's idolatry just as unacceptable.  It cannot fit within His plan.  It has no place in the kind of relationship that He has covenanted with us as His people.

There is also something else very important here.  God is willing to sacrifice what is important to us in order to reclaim our hearts.  God loved Israel so much that He was willing to lose 3,000 Israelites in order to turn the hearts of the whole nation back to Him.  And this is always the ONE thing God is unwilling to share ... OUR HEARTS!  So He will use everything at His disposal to reclaim our affection, adoration and worship.  And God's reclamation actions can often be devastating while still being sure signs of the depth and faithfulness of His love.  He will not stop fighting for our hearts.  He will not share us with another.  He will battle to be the center of our personal universes until we are with Him in eternity.

Much of our losses in this life, and especially the losses that tend to take our breaths away, have to do with the jealousy of God's love.  He is willing to have our dreams crumble, our plans fail, and our hopes erode in order to win back the love of our hearts.  He could not truly love us and allow our jobs, homes, friends, spouses, children, or position in life replace Him.  His love is just this beautifully intolerant.  He is willing to be severe in order not to lose us [those of you who remember by "accident" in July 2003 may know a little of which I speak ... those who don't may consider reading my blog entitled "My Miracle of Brokenness" posted on August 21, 2011 [funny I should mention this tonight as I just gave that story out to one of my patients today who had never heard that story, and its probably been two years since I last shared it at the office, and then I mention in my blog tonight].  And then I shared with her the tip of the iceberg of all I knew God did through that whole ordeal [I will never know the full extent of just who all was reached with it on this side of glory but 100,000 people worldwide is a conservative number I think].  Yes, our God is willing to do drastic things in order to free us from slavery to things that were never meant to rule us.  We must not permit the losses of mid-life to allow us to question His presence and love.  They actually prove the opposite.  God has been battling for our hearts for years and will continue to do so, even if it means taking away the things that have become overly precious to us.

So we must ask God to reveal to us our golden calves.  Perhaps we should figuratively watch a "video" of our lives for the next week and see just what it is that we are living for.   One of the saddest things I know of is to see people going through their crises, be it at mid-life or other times, and yet failing to learn their lessons.  It is just too sad when God is battling for our hearts for years and yet we still fight to hang on to our idols.  We must each ask ourselves this series of questions on almost a weekly or even a daily basis.  Are we aware of our calf-construction tendencies?  Are we learning our lessons?  Are we fighting for our golden calves while God is fighting for our hearts?  What in our lives right now tends to too easily get out of their rightful places?  Are we still melting down our silver and gold because we don't know what God is doing in our lives and we feel we just can't wait any longer?

It is very liberating when we finally realize that we are all born with the propensity to worship and serve the creation more than the Creator, and our early life experiences often simply establish the tracks on which our idolatry will run.  It can all be so very humbling yet also very liberating to realize that our greatest problems in life lie inside us rather than outside us.  And finally, it is both very encouraging and liberating to realize that Jesus has come so that we may no longer live for ourselves but instead be freed to live for Him [2 Corinthians 2:14-15].

Who Would Worship a Golden Calf? Ummm ... Us! Part 3

When we read Exodus 32, it is incomprehensible to believe that the children of Israel, having just seen the most awesome display of God's power, could attribute that power to a statue that they had just finished making with their own hands, yet that is exactly what they did.  Perhaps it is the speed and brazenness of the idolatry that shocks us, but we should not be so easily shocked.  We do it all the time.  We attribute our financial well-being to the economy or to our skill in the market, our happiness to our marriage and family, our health to our wise eating and exercise habits, our spirituality to a good church, and our safety to our security system and the safety features of our vehicles.  As believers, however, we should question this apparent logic.  We know that there are many people who are smarter investors than we are who have lost their shirts, especially in this economy.  We know of many people who have taken care of their bodies, only to be stricken with some grave disease such as the various cancers or neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimers, Parkinsons and ALS.  We know of a number of people who have made wiser choices regarding their personal security only to end up a freak accident or perhaps were in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 or even the father of one of Ashley's friends from Chiles/UNF who was killed in a motor vehicle accident on Orange Avenue on Saturday afternoon or perhaps the family of three who were crushed to death in their car 9 days ago at North Monroe and Tennessee Street; the examples are literally endless.

So what is really the problem here?  Does the physical absence of God tempt us to give credit to tangible things for providing us what ultimately only the Lord can give?  He is Lord over our finances, our health, our happiness, our safety and our spirituality.  And yes, we are called to make good and/or wise choices, even as the Israelites were called to do certain things during their exodus from Egypt.  But they could not, by doing all of those very things, actually deliver themselves.  And this is true of us as well.  God calls us to make responsible, godly choices, but unless God is bestowing His gracious favor and sovereign protection on us, we will not be okay.

This is especially germane for mid-life.  Because mid-life tends to be a time for assessing our past, we tend to do a lot of giving credit and assigning blame.  This is where we tend to get ourselves in trouble, because we tend to make assessments that take ourselves off the hook [blame] and forget God's constant care altogether [credit].  One of the most important things that we must do is to look for the hand of God in our lives!  We need to make an accounting of His presence, protection, provision, wisdom, guidance and grace.

There is something terribly wrong when we can look at our lives and not see God's fingerprints all over it!  There is something deeply idolatrous about crediting the creation with what only our loving, wise and sovereign Lord is able to do.  Yes, we live in a fallen world.  And yes, we've all had difficulties and disappointments along the way.  And no, things haven't always turned out exactly as we had planned, but when we look back, we see God's hand again and again, and we should be thankful.

In Exodus 32, we also see that God's people grew tired of waiting on their ambassador, Moses, to return.  In their minds, they felt he had been gone far too long so something untoward must have happened to him.  Thus, if God is not on site, delivering what we want when we want it, our confidence in Him begins to flag and we are prone to give our hearts to something else.  One of the hardest things for us to do as sinners is to wait.  We have far too little tolerance for delayed gratification, so when we ask God for things, we handily include our schedule for delivery in our requests.  Yet God has a completely different sense of timing than we do.  Who could have imagined that there would be thousands of years between the Fall and the Cross?  Who would have thought that world would have to wait so long for Abraham's promised seed?  Who could have imagined that God would have allowed His chosen nation to be subjugated to slavery for 420 years?  Who would have thought that these "last days" that Peter and Paul spoke of would still be continuing now 2,000 years later.  Still God has a perfect sense of timing.  His moment is always the right moment.  He never gets "off-schedule" or gets things out of sequence.  Yet the wait typically confuses us, because we reason that if the thing is a good thing, then a loving God would deliver it to us with haste.

So we, like the children of Israel at the foot of Mt. Sinai, begin to give ourselves to other things.  So though it may not be as brazen as the overt idolatry at the base of the mountain while God, in His love, was dispensing His Law, but rather a subtle migration of affection.  In ways that we likely don't even realize, we give up on God and give our hearts to things that we can see, hear, touch, taste, measure and quantify.  These things tend to become our "Plan B" messiahs.  We ask them to give us things that only God is able to give such as meaning and purpose, a sense of identity, hope and security, contentment and peace.  We hope that houses, cars, careers, experiences and people will satisfy our hearts.  We tend to look to those things to give us life or at least life to our lives.  We grow tired of waiting on God, so we drive to the mall hoping that it will be able to deliver.

And the grief of mid-life is not simply that we collect things to regret, that we fear getting old, or that we mourn the demise of our dreams or worse yet the actualization of our dreams that failed to deliver what we thought they promised.  Yes, ultimately, we mourn the fact that mid-life exposes our idols' fundamental inability to deliver.  Think about it:  The idol that Israel said would lead and guide them was made of metal and formed by human hands.  It had no mind, emotion, power or life.  It had no ability to do anything but divert the worship of those who made it.  It was bound to disappoint.  So it always is with created things.  They can never fill the void in our hearts; only God can do that.

Lastly, we all tend to blame our idolatry on others.  Look at the "logic" behind Israel's idolatry.  The people would say, "Moses and God disappeared and we didn't know if they were coming back, so we made this calf to lead us and make us feel secure.  If Moses had not been gone so long, none of this would have happened."  Or consider what Aaron said about his complicity and even leadership in this horrendous event, "I gotta tell you Moses, these are pretty evil people, and it didn't take them long to turn their backs on you.  I was a minority of one, so what was I supposed to do?"  Aaron even tried to shift the blame from himself onto the fire saying essentially, "Moses, it was the strangest thing.  I've never seen anything like it before.  I put this gold into the fire, and not only did it melt, but WHAM-O, out came this perfectly formed calf.  Now isn't that amazing?!?" 

There is a great temptation in mid-life to blame the idols that God is exposing in our lives on the people and things around us as well.  Those of us who've worked far too many hours in our lives [and I am certainly guilty of this] and whose careers tend to be our idols will justify all that time away from home by saying "no one understands the sacrifices required to pursue a career in medicine, its not like I created the system."  Others who work long hours may say "outsiders just don't understand how much it costs to raise four children and support a wife in this economy.  There never seemed to be enough money, so it took an ultimate commitment on my part to elevate my career so that I could make more.  After all, God called me to be a good provider for my family, didn't He?"  Or the wife, who was excessively controlled by the beauty of her home may say, "I know it seems like it took too much of my time and energy, and maybe I was a bit too attached to things, but I just wanted to create an environment that our kids would be proud to call home and that they would want to bring their friends to our house.  That way I would always know where they were and who they were playing with."  Or the dad who spent far too many of his parenting years angry because his heart was controlled by a drive for respect may say, "Yeah, I know that I may have been a bit too hard-nosed as a father, but kids need to learn to respect their elders.  There is far too little of that going around these days.  I didn't want my kids leaving home without learning to respect and live under authority."

What do these people all have in common?  Yes, they are all making assessments of their lives and yes, they each are having to face deficiencies in the legacies they have left behind, but none of them has really admitted that their legacy is directly tied to the desires/idols that rules their hearts.  In fact, each of them has shifted the blame for their idolatry on to something or someone else.

To be continued ...

Who Would Worship a Golden Calf? Ummm ... Us! Part 2

If we open our Bibles with humble hands, we will find ourselves on every page.  We would have grumbled about the fairly tasteless manna in the wilderness.  We would have questioned Moses' leadership when pinned against the Red Sea.  We would have been attracted to the culture and idolatry of the nations of Palestine.  We most likely would have failed to recognize that Jesus really was the Messiah.  We share identity with the people of Scripture, and because of this, there is really no struggle in our lives that the Bible fails to address in some way.

And the truth of the matter is that, like the children of Israel, we are all constantly worshiping something.  This is the radical epicenter of the anthropology of Scripture.  When we finally grasp this fact, we will no longer live in a bifurcated world of the spiritual and the secular.  Scripture tells us that we are all worshipers.  We are always in the pursuit of something and in the service of something to provide us with meaning, purpose and joy.  If God isn't the central reason for doing all that we do, then something in the creation will be.  It is an insight that is inescapable and profound.  Every moment in life is spiritual.  Every thing we do is theological.  There is never a moment -- never a word, action or reaction -- that is not somehow shaped by whatever has claimed the allegiance of our hearts.  There is never a split second that our hearts are not claimed by something.  There is always some desire that rules us.

If we watch closely, we will see that all the stories in the Bible are ultimately about worship.  The Fall is a drama of worship, and it is followed by a long string of worship dramas; that is, people allowing their hearts to be kidnapped by the creation and making disastrous choices as a result.  Underneath the struggles of mid-life are dramas of worship as well.  The crises of mid-life are not just about the surface issues of aging, regret, and lost dreams.  These things alone would be fairly easy to deal with, but in reality, the real drama of mid-life takes place in our hearts.  What we worship will make a huge difference in how we deal with the issues that almost everyone faces during the mid-life years.  To the degree that our hearts have been captured by something in creation, even if we have yet to realize it, mid-life will be extremely difficult for us ... because it is these very things in creation that tend to slip through our fingers in the mid-life years.  If we have looked to these things for life, they will start to fail us as we navigate the rocky shores known as mid-life.

Another critical tendency we have as people is to substitute the physical for the spiritual.  As we see so powerfully illustrated in Exodus 32, it is very difficult to follow a god that we cannot see, hear or touch.  Notice that when Moses, who functioned as the visible representative of God, was gone longer than the people of Israel thought he should be, they immediately turned to making a visible god that they could worship.  Perhaps this migration takes place more often and in many more ways than we think.  In subtle ways, mid-life reveals that we have replaced spiritual hope with physical hope.  We too often have staked our well-being on things that we can see, hear, touch and quantify.  When these things fail us or fade away, it often feels like life is leaving us as well.

If we pay attention, we will see this spiritual-to-physical shift all around us.  Commitment to spiritual health gives way to a focus on physical health.  Desire for physical riches replaces a gratitude for spiritual riches.  Thankfulness for acceptance by God gives way to an anxious pursuit of approval from people.  Physical food gets our attention more than spiritual sustenance.  Spiritual character has trouble competing with physical appearance.  Daily spiritual gifts from God's hands go unnoticed as we count our physical possessions.  God's presence gets taken for granted while we gush over human love.  Our identity in Christ tends to get less attention than our physical location and position does.  The shift is everywhere around us, and it becomes a huge issue in mid-life.  In mid-life we tend to assess the return on the investments that we have made.  It is then that we get hit with the fact that we have invested our well-being in things that decay, can be stolen or fade with age.  I seem to recall that Jesus had something rather profound to say about this in his Sermon on the Mount:

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal."  Matthew 6:19-20

To be continued ...

Who Would Worship a Golden Calf? Ummm ... Us! Part 1

If we can remember one of the great movies of our childhood, The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses, and visualize the idolatrous orgy that occurred at the base of Mt. Sinai while Moses was receiving the Law from God up on the mountain then we can have a mental picture of how the Lord views idolatry.  It is so easy for us to say on this side of Sinai that we would never do such a thing but, in truth, we do it every day.  I hope to share a little of what the Lord has shown me about the insidious idols of my [& likely our] heart/s in the next few blog posts.  But as we jump in let's go all the way back out into the Sinai wilderness because when we consider it fully it will literally take our breaths away.

Imagine a nation who had just witnessed firsthand the delivery from over four centuries of slavery by the mighty hand of God who in the process plundered the Egyptian nation, decimated their military and displayed his power and splendor for all to see.  For the first time in 420 years Israel was free.  God was their governor, protector and provider.  Before long they would be in the land that had been promised them so long before.  It almost feels like the end of a great novel ... we can almost hear the movie building up to its crescendo as the Red Sea collapses on Pharaoh's chariots ... the people of God have survived ... the covenant promises will all come true ... the promised seed has been preserved.  God in His glory actually dwells with His people!  And in so doing, He leads His people to the base of Mt. Sinai.  Here He would reinforce His covenant and reveal the covenantal obligations that His people must keep.  Of all the nations on earth, only Israel is given the Law because only Israel is God's treasured possession.  This Law expresses not only His authority but also His love and mercy.

Then the unthinkable happens!  Moses is up on the mountain receiving the Law from the very hand of God, and the people get impatient [sound familiar yet?].  They gather around Aaron and say, "Come make us gods who will go before us.  As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him" [Exodus 32:1].  Let this sink in for a moment or two.  These people had just experienced the most unbelievable display of divine power in history.  God had sent plaques on Egypt that not only proved His power but also mocked the power of Pharaoh's gods and literally brought Egypt to its knees.  The clear message of the plaques was not only that these were God's people and He could lead them wherever He wanted, but also more fundamentally that there is one God and His name is I AM.  God had once and for all demonstrated that the gods of the Egyptians were no gods at all.

How could the Israelites possibly consider, even for a moment, worshiping anything other than this majestic Lord?  In their impatience, they press Aaron to provide something concrete and visible for them to worship.  What they say next about these man-made gods is difficult to fit into our post-modern brains.  They want gods "to go before" them.  This phrase is not so much about the gods' location in respect to the children of Israel, but more an idiom denoting rule.  To "go before" is to lead, guide, direct and protect.  Essentially the Israelites were asking Aaron to make idols to rule them in a way that God had covenantally promised to do and had actually done as He rescued them from Egypt.

It is important to realize that Israel was asking for something more than a ceremonial idol.  They were asking for something that would replace the Almighty as the one who would provide them with identity, security, well-being and purpose.  Understanding this makes this request all the more heinous and grievous.   They were asking Aaron to provide something that would take the place in their lives that only God was meant to occupy.  It is so outrageous that it is almost impossible to fathom.  But there are still more shocking things to come.

Aaron, who had been handpicked by God and who was a first-hand witness to the glory of God that accompanied Moses' challenge of Pharaoh, does what the Israelites request without hesitation, protest or warning.  Immediately he begins collecting the gold needed to construct the god replacement that the people demanded.  What mental and theological machinations must have gone through Aaron's mind that he would be comfortable and willing to participate in such an abomination?  I can't even imagine.  The issue here was not just his willingness to be an accomplice to such an outrageous idolatry, but also a direct desecration of his God-appointed office of leadership.  Not surprisingly, Aaron had no trouble collecting enough gold to make the calf.  God had provided plenty of gold when He allowed the Israelites to plunder Egypt as they were making their escape.  Think about it, the very provision that God had given them for their journey was now being used to construct the thing that would function as His replacement.  And still it gets even worse.

Aaron collected the gold, melted it down and then used his tools to form it into something that looked like a calf.  And just when we think that we've been shocked as much as we possibly could be, something happened that shocks us even more.  After Aaron finished his idolatrous craft, the people began to chant and it is the content of their chant that blows our mind all the more.  As they dance around the calf they say, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."  Not only are they placing their future identity and security in the hands of the idol; they are also creating a revisionist history that attributes to this lifeless beast the glories of their recent redemption.  Consider fully what is happening here.  Moses' absence runs longer than the people expected, so they replace God with a thing and call it both the lord of their future and the redeemer of their past.  Instead of celebrating what only God by His love, mercy and power could have done, they give credit to the creation of their own hands.

One would think that when Aaron heard the chant he would have been shocked into the realization of just what it is that he has done.  Not so much.  Rather than being horrified at the scene, he declared the next day to be a holy day, a festival of sacrifice and celebration to the new "Lord."  Early the next morning the people made sacrifices to their newly minted "Lord," and then went on to have a wild orgy!  Now Moses finally comes back on to the scene and when he surveys it all, he naturally concludes that Aaron must have had his life threatened to have participated in such a horrendous act.  But he would be wrong.  Moses basically says, "Aaron, what in the world did these people do to you that you would lead them into such horrific sin?"  Aaron then tries to deflect the blame saying, "You know how evil these people are?  They thought you were gone, and they wanted gods to go before them, so I collected their gold jewelry.  Then Moses the most amazing thing happened.  I just threw the gold into the fire, and lo and behold, out came this calf!"  It's hard to imagine Aaron actually trying to connive his way out this but he did [how like us].  Not only did Aaron take the lead role in Israel's treason but then he totally denied complicity in it.

So what does all this have to do with us ... stay tuned.  We are sadly a lot more like Aaron and the children of Israel than we have ever given ourselves credit for:(