Which Lens Will You Use This Thanksgiving and Going Forward?

Living a life of gratitude does not come easily for me ... even though I seemingly write about it every year at Thanksgiving.  It is those other 364 days of the year that seem to define me.  And yet I know and very much want to do better.


We all know we should count our blessings, but all too often it is just so much easier to count our miseries.  Somehow, that just seems to come much more naturally.  And miseries seem to capture my thoughts and interrupt my days so much more readily than blessings [and maybe yours as well].  Just tonight as I was hoping to escape for an hour or two to "write my annual Thanksgiving devotional for tomorrow's big dinner gathering" our two basin kitchen sink holding our 27 lb. turkey surrounded by gallons of water as it thaws collapsed as the adhesive bonding it to our granite countertop failed spilling countless gallons of water under the bar, onto the floor flowing both toward the kitchen table as well as the center island.  So instead of having more time to ponder my blessings I had an all new and fresh reason to grumble.  So many days of the year seem to go just like this.  But then I realized once again that counting my miseries really just shrinks my soul, and in the end I end up more miserable than when I began.

So how does one begin to "count their blessings" really?  It can certainly seem like an arduous task at first ... more an act of taxing obedience rather than an overflow of joy, but in the end, it seems to open up space in my heart.  When I choose to focus on what I have been given, rather than linger over what I am missing, I feel happier, more content, and less agitated.  And when I choose to face my miseries directly and find blessings in them [like I actually have a nice kitchen with TWO sinks and a ultra-large bird to feast on tomorrow ... when so many just a few miles to the west of us are literally living in tents because all their earthly possessions were actually blown away a mere six weeks ago] well ... something miraculous happens.  I view all of life a bit differently.  I begin to see my circumstances through a lens of faith.  And I am able to declare with confidence that, even in the worst of circumstances, God is still good and there is much to be thankful for.

A Pilgrim's Perspective

For years [until I started writing this blog] I pictured the first Thanksgiving as the Pilgrims' joyful celebration of a bountiful harvest, sharing with the indigenous people God's abundant provision in a fertile new land.  But celebrating that first Thanksgiving was a veritable act of faith and sober worship, not a natural response to prosperity and abundance.

In the fall of 1620, the Mayflower set sail for Virginia with 102 passengers on board.  On December 16, they landed in Massachusetts, far north of their intended destination, just as winter was setting in. This northern climate was much harsher than Virginia's, and the settlers were unprepared for the cold season ahead.  Winter brought bitter temperatures and rampant sickness.   Shelter was rudimentary at best.  Food was scarce.  People lay dying all around.

That winter, all but three families dug graves in the hard, frozen New England soil to bury a husband, wife or child.  By the spring of 1621, half of the Pilgrims had died from disease, exposure or starvation.  Virtually no one was untouched by tragedy.

And yet in the midst of these monumental losses, the Pilgrims chose to give thanks.  They saw in Scripture that the Israelites had thanked God in all their circumstances.  Even before provision and deliverance came, the Israelites were instructed to give thanks.  King Jehoshaphat saw the power of thanksgiving as the Israelites' enemies were routed before their eyes while they were praising God [see 2 Chronicles 20].  And the words they used were similar to the beautiful refrain that runs through so many Psalms, "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!" [Psalm 118:1].

The Pilgrims and Israelites chose to be grateful for what they had, rather than to focus on all they had lost.  They had to look for blessings.  Actively and deliberately.  Their thanksgiving was not based on pleasant circumstances, but rather on the understanding that God was to be thanked in both prosperity and adversity.  Their gratitude was not a "positive thinking" facade, but a deep and steadfast trust that God was guiding all their circumstances, even when life was beyond difficult.  Viewing their lives through a lens of gratitude changed their perspective.

I have found that viewing life through a lens of gratitude can change my perspective on just about everything.  Yet it always comes down to a choice of which lens I will use today ... or even multiple times throughout the day.

I think we all know someone who excels in the art of photography.  I think of the old Christmas Ideals magazines I used to look through repeatedly each holiday season ... somehow those fabulous photos truly captured the "ideal" of Christmas for me as a young boy.  Or how about those amazing photographers at Life magazine back in the day?  They seemed to so precisely capture the essence of life back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.  Or even the famous black and white photographer Ansel Adams who so fabulously brought the essence of the American west to life in the simplest but most profound pictures of just a tree or a stream or a mountain or a range of mountains.  He had a gift.  But even closer to home my daughters Alli and especially Ariel have a similar gifting.  They see things that I would never notice or maybe it would be even more accurate to say that they "see things in things that I would never notice."  We can all drive by an old, faded barn and see a dilapidated building in need of paint [or in my case of even needing to be torn down], but they may see a beautifully weathered structure with great character, focusing on unique angles and lines, finding intricate details that don't even register with me.  They have a unique gift to look past the obvious and relish the small things.  One of the most amazing cases in point for this was shortly before Ariel went off to college at FSU and moved into her dorm room we were driving down Bronough Street and Ariel screamed out "stop the car!"  She had seen an almost finished up Saturday yard sale with a beat up, scarred old literal "ice box" in the yard.  And she started pleading with me to buy it for her.  Of course I implored "What on earth for?  How can you possibly need an old ice box taking up space in your cramped  dorm room?"  Because I saw literally a banged up nearly 100 year old "ice box" that many years ago had served to keep things cool.  "But now we have electricity Ariel ... even in Dorman" [her old dorm long since razed to the ground].  "I've already bought you a mini-refrigerator."  Yet, she saw it as a BOOKCASE and so it was for many years and it even followed her into her first, second and maybe even third apartment as a young married woman!  She could see things I could not ... mostly because of what she chose to focus her lens on.

In the same way, how we view our own lives depends mostly on what we choose to focus on.  From some angles they can look like complete messes.  But from other vantages, they can be perfectly beautiful.  Our perspectives truly depend on where we focus our lenses.

Fifteen and a half years ago in the middle of the construction of this house [on June 22, 2003 to be exact] I accidentally pulled 1320 pounds of drywall over onto my left lower leg essentially crushing it.  The pain was both immediate and unbelievably intense ... by far, the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life.  It literally felt as if my foot had been ripped from my leg, which it turned out is actually what had happened once the drywall could be lifted off my leg by the firemen and paramedics.  But between the constant pain of this would come incredible paroxysms of burning pain that I could only describe as if a six inch diameter steel rod had been heated up to 2000 degrees and then jammed up through my heel into my ankle and finally up through my lower leg to just below my knee in a recurring manner lasting between 5 and 15 seconds and occurring roughly every 1 to 2 minutes.

Eventually before I could be transported to the hospital, after I had been "hog-tied" to the backboard, the paramedics had to "set" my foot which was six inches away from my lower leg and facing backwards.  The agony of that moment was indescribable and afterwards, at best, my foot was still 30 degrees out of proper alignment.  God had my full attention now.  It is sad that it took this for God to be able to speak to me about my need for brokenness.  Up until that moment it had been a theological concept that I was very intrigued by but one that I wasn't completely willing to choose for myself.  Ultimately, God chose it for me and I was and still am in many ways so much the better for it.  Little did I know then that as I wrote the story of my miracle week of brokenness that He would end up using that story to provide divine healings from terminal breast cancer, drug addictions, other cancers, lives on the skids, etc. ... the story was shared at the Southern Baptist National Convention that summer, was published in our university's alumni magazine, etc.  I received e-mails literally from all over the world describing the myriad ways that God had used that story to change the lives of people from Australia to Europe and literally from all fifty states.  What seemed like a shipwreck of my life that could very easily and in reality in all probability should have cost me my foot and ankle led many to Christ, myself included, in ways I could have never imagined.  The sacrifice of that "light and momentary affliction" as Paul called it in 2 Corinthians 4:17 "prepares for us an eternal weight of glory" that far outweighs what we may have suffered for his sake.

Or consider five years later in the spring of 2008 coinciding exactly with the weekend when I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, selected for elder in my church [Four Oaks Community Church] that I experienced the sudden onset of perilous and malignant hypertension [blood pressures running in the 220/120 mm Hg range], intensely severe and crushing daily migraine headaches, the sudden paralysis of my left sixth cranial nerve resulting in drastic double vision when looking to my left [not to mention my eyes looking all "googly-eyed" as Janna called it for the next 6-9 months], the complete and permanent disappearance of my thyroid gland [to the point that the ultrasonographer looking for it asked if I had had it removed ... there was, of course, no surgical scar on my neck].  This all coincided with a Bible study I was leading for my community group through the book of Philippians and we had just finished my very favorite passage in Scripture ... chapter 3 vv. 7-14 which would become overtly real and personal to me over the next nine months, and in fact, became the very namesake for this blog [v. 14] nine years ago.

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ -- the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Ultimately, God restored my vision slowly over three months after the diplopia had persisted unabated for six full months.  My blood pressure came under control with the aid of three ongoing medications.  My thyroid gland never returned and I require chronic full daily thyroid supplementation.  Thankfully after nine hours in two different MRI machines over the course of two weeks no dreadful cause of my left sixth nerve palsy was ever found ... as the "six syndromes of the sixth cranial nerve" are all harrowing and all but one is fatal and MS [multiple sclerosis] can itself be fatal in some cases.  No explainable medical cause was found for any of this.  My neuro-ophthalmologist and my neurosurgeon both favored an autoimmune cause [though every test of autoimmunity known to medicine was negative] while I attributed it to demonic activity corresponding to my ascension to the eldership [they said it couldn't be that "because there is no such thing as that" ... I told them it took more faith to believe their autoimmune theory than it did my demonic theory].  All I know is that I have never felt closer to Christ than during the times when I've "shared in the fellowship of his sufferings" and it is only at those times that I have felt the closest to his resurrection power.

So as I reflect back on the path that my life has taken over the past fifteen years, I know that I would have never chosen to take this path myself, and from certain angles, my life has at times looked very bleak.  In fact, one of my community group members remarked as he watched my struggles with headaches and double vision that he didn't think that it was worth it.  He could not have been more wrong!  From the angles that I have chosen to view my life, I see it as beautiful.  I have seen God use me in incredibly powerful ways that I could have never done and would not have done on my own.  He has blessed me with an incredibly wonderful and faithful wife of almost 36 years; four fabulous and brilliant children who all love and serve God; three amazing sons-in-law who also love and serve God ... one full-time vocationally!  I have been blessed with SIX amazing grandchildren with two more on the way.  I have a son who is pursuing medicine vocationally and a son-in-law who has chosen to do the same.  I like to think that they have chosen to follow in my footsteps [whether they have or not is beside the point in my mind].  Two of my daughters chose nursing to be their vocation. So from a family where the healing arts are just about completely foreign comes a team of healers!  God has been so incredibly faithful and good.  I am excited about the future which looks incredibly bright, though none of us knows for certain what exactly it holds.  What we do know though, is that if we are in Christ then we know the One who holds it and for that assurance we can all be thankful.

Whatever Happened to Thanksgiving?

When you think of Thanksgiving Day what images come to mind?  If you are like most Americans your mind immediately races to visions of a large stuffed turkey dinner, cranberries, candied yams, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and the family gathering together to consume the feast and then spending the day watching a menagerie of events parading across the big screen television beginning with Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade through the streets of New York City followed by the Detroit Lions and then the Dallas Cowboys playing football and then after that perhaps concluding with a third NFL game at night or even an NBA game or two.  Or even in the past year or two Black Friday crowding in on Thanksgiving Day itself resulting in an evening and late night of Christmas shopping.

How in the world did we ever get to here?  Isn't this the same day of Thanksgiving as proclaimed by Governor William Bradford back in the Fall of 1621 celebrating a bounteous harvest following that first long, bleak and deadly New England winter where half the pilgrims in the colony had perished?  And isn't this the same holiday instituted by none other than Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to be celebrated annually on the fourth Thursday in November?  Clearly the pilgrims of Plymouth colony had given God credit for all they had including their very survival.  Bradford so much as stated so when he decreed "Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of God have all the praise."

Though not specifically mentioned in the Bible, Thanksgiving is different that most other national holidays.  In fact, many nations celebrate their own unique harvest festivals, history shows Thanksgiving Day as practiced in North America to be unique.  The originators of this day focused upon giving thanks for an abundant harvest which was sorely needed for their own very survival.  Being centered on giving thanks to the Creator is a major distinction in origin that separates Thanksgiving Day from holidays tainted with pagan origins, such as Easter, Valentine's Day, Halloween and even Christmas.

 Holidays as recorded in Scripture include Jesus Christ being present at a Jewish celebration called the "Feast of Dedication" [John 10:22] which was a yearly anniversary of the purification of the Temple at Jerusalem [in about 165 BC] after it was desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes.  This was not a day of riotous parties or celebrations but rather a national holiday commemorating a respectable and solemn event.  This account clearly shows that Jesus Himself was with the Jews as they gave thanks to God on this special day.

In the book of Esther, we read that through the inspiration of God, Mordecai and Esther established the "Feast of Purim."  This day was a yearly commemoration of the Jews overcoming persecution from Haman, the prime minister of King Ahasuerus.  Notice Mordecai's and Esther's proclamation, confirming the keeping of this day:  "These days should be remembered and observed in every generation by every family, and in every province and in every city.  And these days of Purim should never cease to be celebrated by the Jews, nor should the memory of them die out among their descendants.  So Esther the queen, daughter of Abihail, along with Mordecai the Jew, wrote with full authority to confirm this second letter concerning Purim" [9:28-29].

Note, however, that these days were not to be observed with the same degree of honor and reverence as God's Holy Days, which represent specific parts of His Master Plan of salvation.  Rather, these celebrations were simply for remembering important national events.

So how then is Thanksgiving different?  Although not directly mentioned in Scripture, Thanksgiving Day is a holiday specifically based on biblical principles and commands.  It was to be a day to spend with family and friends, both honoring and thanking God for the bountiful blessings that He provides.

King David wrote in the Psalms, "Let us come before Him with thanksgiving, and extol Him with music and song [95:2].  "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name" [100:4].  And, "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever ... Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for men, for He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with with good things" [107:1, 8-9].

The Apostle Paul wrote, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God" [Phil. 4:6].  He also said, "Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" [Eph. 5:20].  These great servants of God gave thanks regularly and recorded their examples for us to follow today.  Thanksgiving should be done routinely.  In fact, God even commands that we do so.

In the Old Testament, God's people were required to sacrifice animals and offer them as burnt offerings to Him.  These sacrifices took place in conjunction with repentance for sins, and asking for God's forgiveness.  Yet God did not require these sacrifices because it pleased Him.  Rather it was done as a picture of the ultimate sacrifice that was yet to come -- that of Jesus Christ, the very Lamb of God [John 1:29].  At Christ's death, the ritualistic practices that were part of the Old Covenant were done away with forever.  Christ's sacrifice and shed blood had truly washed away humanity's penalty for sins -- death.

But still today God requires the offering of a certain kind of sacrifice.  The psalmist states, "I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the Lord" [116:17], and, "Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?  Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High" [50:13-14].  These verses clearly demonstrate that God has no need of "the flesh of bulls or the blood of goats."  Instead, He wants our hearts!

David understood this, and even appointed to certain Levite priests the specific duty of thanking and praising God:  "He appointed some of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord, to make petition, to give thanks, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel" [1 Chron. 16:4].  In chapter 23 of 1 Chronicles the Levites' duties were further explained and in verse 30 they were told "to stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord.  They were do the same in the evening."

It is no different today really.  God still wants -- and expects -- from us these same sacrifices of thanksgiving through our actions and prayers.  Paul furthers this thought when he wrote "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" [1 Thess. 5:16-18].  Yet to be effective, our thanksgiving must be both spontaneous and from the heart, rather than an expression of routine formality!

One of the best examples of this comes from ancient biblical history when the pagan King Nebuchadnezzar finally came to his senses after roaming the earth as a mad animal for seven years eating the grass of the countryside.  Near the end of his life he gave a sobering and insightful account of God's power, "Then I honored and glorified Him who lives forever.  His dominion is an eternal dominion; His kingdom endures from generation to generation.  All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.  He does as He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth.  No one can hold back His hand or say to Him: 'What have you done?'" [Dan. 4:34-35].

I am sure the pilgrims never imagined in their wildest dreams that America would ever become the global superpower that it is today.  For more than a century the United States has been at the forefront of economic prosperity, medical science, technology, food production, sanitation, architecture and space exploration and myriad of other areas as well.  Our citizens enjoy freedoms that most of the rest of the world can only dream about.  We allow individuals and families to emigrate from other countries to enjoy these liberties as well.  We are usually the first country, if not the only one, to support other nations and peoples when calamity strikes and need abounds.  And for the better part of a century the income and standard of living in America has exceeded virtually that of the entire world.  Yet are Americans grateful?  Are their hearts overflowing with thankfulness?  We both know the answer to these questions!

Moses spoke to this problem in the heart of his people Israel back in the desert when he issued this grave warning:  "Be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" [Deut. 6:12].  He understood the hearts of men and warned the people that when they receive much, it is in our nature to become arrogant and ungrateful, and worse yet to forget the source of their blessings ... Almighty God.  Even Jesus, Himself, spoke to this when he admonished his disciples that "from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked" [Luke 12:48].

And so in America ... a country who has celebrated Thanksgiving every year without fail since 1863 ... the practice of giving thanks -- as the pilgrims did and originally intended -- has all but disappeared in 2016 and truthfully for many years preceding this one.

It was none other than John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts in 1630, who said, "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.  The eyes of all the people are upon us.  So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world..."  These are strong words ... but they accurately portray the condition of our nation today do they not?

Thanksgiving is meant to be a daily attitude of the heart ... but for at least one day ... this day ... let us make it the attitude of our hearts.  Be sure to give heartfelt thanks to God today both individually and collectively as a family and as the family of God.  Thank Him for the way He has showered His love upon you and yours ... take time to fervently praise Him and look for someone in need and show him or her that God loves them as well.  Only then can you in good conscience turn on the television or peruse the Black Friday ads.

Truth Seekers -- The Highest Aim of What is Really Science

This is the last of my ski trip ponderings ... and it goes to the core of just what is science really?  It's hard to know anymore with all the politicization that has characterized science on both sides of the liberal/conservative divide.  It's almost like no one really wants to know what is true anymore ... they just want their side to win the day.  And that is just sad.  Pathetic really.  Yet deep down, many of us still really want to know how the universe works in its myriads of functions.

Over time I have found that most of what gets in the way of my seeing the universe as it really is comes from me.  Excitement, pride, preconceptions of what the universe should look like all get in my way, but the most common block is fear.  Fear that I won't measure up, fear that I can't get the answer to open questions, fear that I will let others down, fear that I will shrink in the eyes of others and in my own esteem -- all of these can sit in between me and understanding.  And I don't think I am alone in this.

When I scribbled "hold onto the doubt" on my statics exams back at OSU I was encouraging myself to breathe and let go of the fear so that I could sit beside the open question and really understand it.  In a state of calm and with quiet contemplation, I could best answer the academic questions.  It turns out that the same is true for real problems of life, health, innovation, and even leadership and personnel management.

Human curiosity is a powerful thing.  It is, in fact, our curiosity that we need to engage and our fear that we need to hold at bay, or better yet release, if we are going to find what we are looking for.  It is as if there are two forms of decision making in life:  fear-based and curiosity-based.  In fear-based decision making, we find ourselves wanting the answer as fast as possible.  We don't really pay attention to, or care, what the answer is -- we just want something, because the open question makes us anxious and fearful.  In curiosity-based decision making, we use one of the core traits of our species to pull apart, examine and wade into open questions.  In my experience, this type of decision making yields much better solutions.

When you have groups of people working on a common problem then you must find a way for ideas to win rather than people, so it becomes a jousting contest between competing truths rather than competing egos or hierarchies.  You really need to learn to like the people you're working with for this to happen ... and I've found that looking for a least one attribute that you can admire in everyone you work with can facilitate this.  And I've come to the point in life that I want to genuinely like the people I spend my days with, if for no other reason than it makes life more enjoyable ... especially when you routinely work 11-12 hour days.

In the same way, my frustration with someone doesn't have to be with him or her fundamentally as a person.  We can try to limit our frustration to just his or her behavior, because getting to the hard truths of life requires that people show affection and respect for one another at the same time they feel at ease showing complete disrespect for ideas that just aren't going to cut it.  After all, we are social animals, and our brains work better in an environment where we are committed to one another and enjoy one another's company.  That is the only environment in which it is safe enough for the small voice of real truth in each of us to clash with one another fearlessly and energetically.

The key to searching for the truth is to hold passionately to your beliefs while simultaneously not feeling entrenched in your position, to be able to let go of the need to defend it in order to save face.  It's almost a Buddhist thing, where you're not necessarily free of ego and status, but you are able to sit with them and maintain some objective separation.  It's about letting ideas win, not people.  It's about finding what is right, not being right.

And, ironically, it has more to do with problem definition than it really does with problem solving.  Holding on to the doubt means listening to the problem until the deepest truth presents itself.  But that, of course, raises the question:  How do you know when you've gotten down to the deepest truth?   This is especially true in medicine, where we may have fifteen channels of measurement data giving us hard facts about any given patient but there might be five thousand other channels of data that we could possibly measure if we just knew how or perceived the need.

Before the Iraq War, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously spoke of the different bins into which states of knowledge can be cast.  The hard facts are what he called the known knowns.  We have plenty of these in medicine:  temperature, heart rate, weight, respirations, blood pressure, blood chemistries and blood gases, etc.  There are known unknowns, the things we know we don't know, like the calorie count of that burger I ate for lunch or the minute by minute fluctuations in renal glomerular filtration.  The other two bins get more tricky.  There is the bin of unknown knowns, which Rumsfeld has used to refer to things that you think you know but you do not.  This is what I like to consider self-delusion.  A cautious and honest mind might be lucky to largely avoid unknown knowns through self-questioning and asking others to set their eyes on your work.  The final set, and perhaps the most important, is the unknown unknowns, the things you don't even know that you don't know.  Intuition, which taps lightly into the irrational and, I believe, integrates a larger set of the rational than is available to our conscious mind, is a way of bringing in the unknown unknowns and of creating a broader model.  Sometimes it can't be integrated at a conscious level.  It appears to us as a "feeling."

Most of applied science is explicit -- it's all about the math, the physics or the biochemistry -- but there is also the "inner voice" of scientific judgment, your confidence in what you know to be true.  Then there's your Spidey sense, the confidence in your gut that you learn to trust beyond your horizon of hard data.  It is based on the data you have, but is also encompasses confident extrapolations.  As such, Spidey sense is the essential counterbalance to the rational minimalists who deconstruct and analyze every argument into its elements and miss the intuitive altogether.  It is the part of our awareness that is reaching out to get a grip on the unknown unknowns.

Our screwups today are most frequently errors of omission.  Science has been pretty good at discarding the fictions we once used -- the four humors, the music of the spheres -- to fill in the physical laws we didn't understand.  So when we settle for self-delusion these days, it is usually because we have stopped short in our search for truth seeking and have accepted a subset of the universe as our model as being the whole universe.  In medicine we might omit a test because we didn't think it was that important ... too small to matter.  More frequently, we omit a test or an analysis from our workup plan to save either time or money or both because we think we can get by without it.  These are willful omissions, and although they can sometimes wreak havoc, they are never as truly dangerous as the unconscious omissions, the failures of imagination, the true unknown unknowns that have not been considered.  For we do not ever debate the things we have failed to recognize as being important.

So the take home lesson I think, if there is one, is that no one's scientific judgment is foolproof.  I believe in a determinant universe, one that (a) exists and (b) is ordered by laws that cannot be changed at will.  The search for truth about such a universe invariably involves building a model of all that we know, which is an adjacent or surrogate universe.

A careful balance needs to be struck between our confidence in the parts of the universe that we know and our suspicion of the universe that we don't know.  Drawing on Rumsfeldian parlance once again -- your known knowns, your known unknowns and your unknown unknowns, on "unk-unks" -- I think the art of applied science or even being successful in business or life, for that matter, lies in how one finds the unk-unks and makes them "kn-unks," and how one respects the possibility for more to be found ... or never discovered.

In my experience, the older and/or wiser one gets, the better one is at judging the unk-unks, sensing them, getting a feel for how vast they may or may not be given the issue at hand, and somehow managing them.  This is all done, of course, without actual conscious, explicit description of or an actual counting of them, since doing so would immediately thrust them into the kn-unk category.  I have known many very smart people who tend to underestimate the unk-unks.  They are aware of their intelligence, and their model of the universe is one in which intelligence will always prevail.

Consider the next big expedition to Mars ... the rover used to collect core samples of the Martian  surface will subsequently launch them into low Mars orbit where they will be retrieved by another unmanned spacecraft and returned to earth.  One of the main challenges of this mission will be keeping all of the equipment very, very clean, so that when it is brought back into our world and is unsealed, we don't find Earth-born bacteria or other life forms that we put there and conclude, wrongly, that Mars is alive.

When you look closely at the super clean spacecraft being assembled in a special clean room  at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA by technicians in head-to-toe white "bunny suits," you still find all sorts of microorganisms hanging out, waiting for a ride.  So the challenge is big enough without the fact that biologists and physicists don't speak the same language.  For biologists, microbiotic life is everywhere and very hard [if not impossible] to track.  For physicists, microbes are just like any other particles bouncing and being blown through the air, and we should be able to track their motions.  Bridging the gap requires that everyone recognize that each school is relying on a model of the universe that is NOT the universe per se.  It is only when we recognize that our "truth" is only a model, and when we let our models compete with other models, that we get anywhere.

We humans are an innately curious species.  Born through hips too narrow to pass a skull large enough to hold a fully formed human brain, we are born half-baked.  Compared with those of other animals, very few of our behaviors are hardwired.  We don't inherit genetic instructions for nest building, for instance, or for migrating south when the sun hits a certain angle in the sky.  We come into this world programmed with very few instructions, save for one paramount piece of code:  be curious.

Following that one command, each of us begins to construct his or her own understanding of the universe.  I see it in my ten month old granddaughter and I see it in my colleagues nearing retirement.  We all share the instinct, and we can all relate to it, which gives our curiosity-driven need to explore the added beauty that no one has to be forced to do it.  People don't necessarily have to be incentivized with stock options and mega-salaries for curiosity-driven creativity to occur.  The only essential is a work environment that is structured to encourage our innate drive to wonder, question and explore.  Just as each of us built our understanding of the world during childhood, given the chance, everyone will follow the lure of their own curiosity and their own desire for mastery throughout their working lives.

"To Bull" or "To Cow" ... That is the Question

As I mentioned in yesterday's post I have been reminiscing over my academic career ... both as a student [undergraduate and graduate] as well as faculty for the past nearly fifteen years.  And it is from this context that I'd like to approach the above subject.  We've all met these people ... both the cows and the bulls.

But I remember one such "bull" especially well.  He was my first medical student reporting for Doctoring I practicum in my office in August 2001.  His name was not Rick [but I will call him that just to be nice].  Not Rick had a lot going for him back in those days [he still does from what I understand].  Not Rick had been accepted into the inaugural medical school class at Florida State University's brand new College of Medicine the preceding spring and had just finished the Summer Semester mastering Gross Anatomy a week or two before and been cloaked in his short white lab coat common to most medical students.

Now at that time the FSU College of Medicine was quite the talk of both the City of Tallahassee as well as the State of Florida and was basically the brainchild of a powerful state senator, John Thrasher, who just so happens to now be President of the University.  It was born with a rather unique mission among medical colleges ... one that would not be a clone of so many other medical colleges across the country ... which produce sub-specialists in droves.  No, it would be a "community-based" medical school ... one which would start with 30 students in its charter class but quickly build to 120 students per year.  It would not be centered in a large university teaching hospital but students in their third and fourth years would be divided among regional campuses scattered across the state of Florida [in Orlando, Pensacola, Sarasota, Daytona Beach, Fort Pierce, Tallahassee and even more rural places like Marianna and Thomasville, GA].  It's mission was to produce primary care physicians and geriatric physicians to care for those in Florida who seemed have the hardest time finding a physician.

So how exactly did Not Rick get accepted into the FSU College of Medicine Charter Class?  I was all too eager to hear his story.  It turns out that Not Rick had no desire to ever become a primary care physician nor a geriatrician either.  His life's goal was to become a medical researcher at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.  A worthy goal I'm sure, but one that in no way fit the mission of the school.  So now I become very much intrigued as to how he was able to hide this career aspiration from the Admissions Committee of the FSU COM.  It turns out that he wasn't at all.  In fact, just the opposite occurred, as he told them straightaway at his interview of his exact career plans.  And he was still accepted anyway.  At this point, I seriously wondered just what kind of medical school faculty I had agreed to join in the first place.  Were we really just going to be spinning our wheels?  After all, there had not been a new medical school opened in the United States for just over twenty years at that point in time, and now I was wondering if the FSU College was really going to be any different from all the other cookie cutter schools out there.

And that is when I soon came face to face with Not Rick's gift of bull.  Now it is not expected that a first year medical student would have much game clinically.  Heck, I didn't even see my very first patient in medical school until I was nearly a month into my second year.  So the bar to meet was pretty low, but Not Rick always had to try to clear the bar by several hundred feet it would seem.  Week after week he came to clinic on Wednesday afternoon and saw patients first with me and then on his own, but I don't think I ever heard him say "I don't know" for nearly a semester before we had our first "Come to Jesus" meeting.  Mostly I was just incredulous at the beginning because he could talk a very good game and he often even fooled my nurses at that time with his imagined competence but what he didn't know was that I knew he almost never knew what he was talking about.  For awhile I wondered how long he would try to play the ruse and bluff his way by.  After two to three months I began to realize that he would never know what he didn't know if I didn't step in and burst his bubble.  So much for my hope to be basically a cheerleader for my first medial student.  And he kept reminding me of an essay I had heard about during my English Composition 1013 class at Oklahoma State University back in the Spring of 1979.

Written by a Harvard teaching assistant, it told the story of an undergraduate student with too much time on his hands who followed one of his friends into an exam and took the test just for fun.  On the essay portion, the test crasher got an A; his friend, who was actually enrolled in the course and had done all the reading, got a C.

The difference was that the friend, who had all the facts, didn't do much with them.  Whereas the test crasher, who had no facts other than the few suggested in the way the question was posed, spun out an amazing exploration of what he assumed the issues to be.

The teaching assistant telling the story came up with two verbs to identify the different approaches.  The first was "to cow," which boiled down to presenting facts as a substitute for understanding.  The second was "to bull," which is to present evidence of an understanding of form, context, and frames of reference in order to suggest a nonexistent familiarity with the facts.  Cow is data without a model, theory or connections.  Bull is a model with no data to support it.

You cannot bull your way through life, and you certainly cannot bull your way through the medical sciences, engineering or any of the other hard sciences ... maybe that works in philosophy and the social sciences, but I doubt it works even there.  But the converse is true as well ... you cannot cow through it either.  Essentially the "cows" are the facts that link us to the observable universe and the "bulls" are the connections between the facts, the causal relationships between the observations.  The bulls are our models of the universe -- they are what we use to predict as-yet-unobserved cows.

I have come realize that, in the business of restoring and preserving the health of humanity, most of our problems arise from a lack of bull.  Rarely do we lose people because we lack facts or because a specific fact was wrong.  We lose people because we did not appreciate the links or connections between the facts.

Constantly striving to find and understand those connections is the prime motive for science, but it is also critical for any other practical enterprise, including any business.  It is not enough to log and tabulate the observables; it is essential to develop an actionable understanding of the underlying causes of the observables.

All of which somehow brings us back to Not Rick.  I did have to confront him on not having to "know it all" and especially not in his first year.  In fact, I let him know that it is actually much more important to "know what it is that he doesn't know" than it is to "know what it is that he knows."  I wish I could say that was the only conversation like that I had to have with him that year, but it wasn't. It kept coming back up.  Bulls are like that I think.  But they also are the ones who ultimately shape our world ... if they can find the right balance.  As for Not Rick, I think he turned out okay.  He graduated with that Charter Class on time in May 2005 and ended up with a fellowship at the NIH where I believe he still works to this day.

Holding on to the Doubt

It is vacation time for me this week ... my one week each year to read, relax, engage in fun recreational activities [as much as skiing on a knee that needs replacement can be ... yes, this time it's the "other" knee ... and, yes, surgery is scheduled for April 20] and most of all take some time for thinking and introspection.  How did I end up here?  Where am I going?  What is it going to take to finish the race?  What adjustments are necessary?  Where am I failing?  And what might I actually be doing well?  It somehow always seems to go back to my days at both Oklahoma State University as a budding engineer who just about walked away from college and life in the sciences after three semesters and my calling to Christ beginning a semester into my freshman year and culminating in His calling on my life into a career in the medical sciences and a transfer to Oral Roberts University eighteen months later.

What was really happening there on a cosmic, eternal scale?  Is it even presumptuous to even go there?  What makes one successful in the applied sciences?  How much does the search for truth really even matter anyway?  Can truth even ever really be known?  And, if so, then how?  Those are my thoughts ... at least for this week.  Next week, sadly, it will likely be back to managing the chaos.

But not this week ... this week I am reflecting on a few specifics of my life in academics ... both as an undergraduate student still trying to "figure this science thing out" and then nearly fifteen years ago as first year medical school professor at Florida State University College of Medicine teaching my first ever medical student in his and their first ever medical school class.  Did any of us even know what we were doing back then?

I remember nearly throwing in the towel on my college experience after a nearly disastrous fall semester in my sophomore year.  I had to drop my Physics II class at mid-term because I had a "D" and I ended up making a C+ in my Thermodynamics class ostensibly because of a calculator malfunction during my final exam ... I was totally sunk at that point having to do all these crazy calculations longhand which was almost impossible, but the truth of the matter is that I never really had a clue as to what was really happening in that class, and the fact that I even had a low B entering the final exam was equal parts a miracle of God and lots of homework help from my dad.  Differential Equations wasn't much better though I made a solid B in that class, but from the point in the semester that we reached LaPlace transformations I was totally lost and praying for partial credit on every question.  Thankfully that was near the end of the course.  I still have no idea how to do those problems to this day.  So that Christmas holiday season was a time of deep soul-searching for me.  Why was I even matriculating in college anyway?  Was it just what came next?  What it just what was expected?  What would I do if I didn't go back?  Where was God in all this anyway?  It still never really occurred to me to seek His plan for my life, but more like I had to figure this out for myself anyway.  But ultimately, I did feel like I needed to go back ... if for no other reason than to see what I could do if I really ever took my classes seriously.  This just going to class but not studying until the night before the exam was not going to cut it anymore.  That much was certain.  But I had lingering doubts, despite what so many people had told me over so many years, that I was destined to succeed if I'd only put all my heart into it.  So if for no other reason than that I felt like I had to go back and see if they were right.

And go back I did.  I enrolled in 20 credit hours that semester ... 16 hours that were what was next on the engineering platform PLUS the 4 hour Physics II class that I had felt compelled to drop to preserve what was left of my GPA [3.50] at that point ... so this would be the test.  And behind the scenes I now see that hand of God all through it.  Though, to be truthful, I was more into MTXE ... the logo painted on the sidelines of my adopted hometown basketball team [Wichita State Shockers] after our family moved to tiny little Clearwater ... a Wichita suburb ... six months before.  MTXE was short for "Mental Toughness Extra Effort" and became my mantra to get through my medical school and residency years.  Later I would come to realize that it was always a lot more about God's grace than it ever was about MTXE on my part.  That semester would become the high point of my undergraduate academic career as I made my first 4.0 semester since second grade that spring.  Yes, I made an A in that Physics class I had previously dropped but that wasn't the class that changed my trajectory.  That would be the engineering weed out class known as Statics and Strength of Materials [as it was typically taken BEFORE Thermodynamics and also before Dynamics.  This was the class known to send nearly 50% of budding engineers back to their academic advisors to seek help in selecting a new major.  And it was in that class that I made a perfect score for the entire semester including the final exam!  A total shocker and a total game changer.  My confidence began to soar following that semester and I was ready for what God ultimately had for me which really had nothing to do with engineering after all.  But he had to get me to this point and then He called me to both a richer life in Him and one in serving His people often in their moments of greatest need.

But what I learned during that Statics class is something that I carry with me to this day and that is what I call "Holding on to the Doubt" ... this began with me staring at the blank space beneath each problem on my Statics exams.  This was the kind of staring that often provoked such anxiety that it often caused students to rush into an ill-considered answer.  But jumping too soon into solution space might cause me to miss some key element of the problem being posed or to answer a conceptually adjacent question [I did this all the time in Thermodynamics].  Not this time.

 I resolved that the solution for my anxiety while staring at the unanswered question was to remain calm in the presence of the openness, to not close off the inquiry too soon and thus run at full speed into a solution that might not take the whole truth of the problem into account.  Holding on to the doubt meant listening to all that the problem had to say and not making assumptions, and committing to a plan of action based on them, until the deepest truth presented itself.  It was a philosophy that would serve me well in my last semester at OSU, through all of my Biology education at ORU and my subsequent medical training and in the thirty years that have followed.  Often that semester I would end up with one of those "I see what you did there" smirks on my face when revelation would set in.  That still often happens ... just hopefully without the smirk.

Holding on to the doubt is a big deal, and it is not always easy, but it has to happen, and it has to happen on many levels.  Not only does HOTTD make us better thinkers ourselves but it also is indispensable in making a good thinking team/organization.  Developing something new and novel is a nonlinear process and being a part of that process can be anxiety provoking because we may not know exactly where this is going and we may not be certain that we are really going to find a solution that works or meets our needs.  The temptation to short-circuit the process can be strong.  But it is only by HOTTD that we can allow ourselves to fully understand the problem we are trying to solve and to fully develop the best solution.

More about the Introduction to Doctoring Class I at FSU COM with the charter class to follow ... I haven't forgotten ... this has just gotten longer than I expected.

The One Who Truly Gives Thanks

Thanksgiving at it's root, it's core, it's source, is a deeply theological act.  As a matter of fact, thankfulness is a theology in microcosm, as it shows what we truly believe about God, ourselves and the world we experience.  As I wrote last November, Thanksgiving presupposes that one gives thanks to someone or to some thing/being.  So then just how does an atheist or an agnostic observe Thanksgiving?  Beyond having gratitude to other people who maybe directly or even indirectly contributed to his life, how does he reconcile the blessings that cannot be ascribed to any human entity, such as the universe we live in, to the gift of life itself, among many others.  I reflected further on just how one could be truly thankful without being thankful to someone.  If human life was just a happy accident as the evolutionist would postulate, then how does thankfulness work within that worldview?

Nevertheless, all through this month of November, we have been barraged on social media with friends' lists of things for which they are thankful.  And for good reason, there is much to be thankful for:  our lives, our health, our families, our jobs and so much more.  Gratitude and thanksgiving are things that both Christians and non-believers alike encourage.  Even the popular press and media this month speak of ways that we can be more thankful.  So the questions I ponder are:  What differentiates the gratitude of the believer from that of the non-believer?  Or is there even a difference?  And can it be more than just a passing fad that we observe each year during the month of November?

These are the thoughts that have percolated through my mind for the past few weeks.  And my conclusion follows the Parable of the Sower that Jesus expressed in both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke ... like seeds that fall on poor soil, gratitude just won't take root and produce in just any soil.  No, gratitude and thankfulness only grow in the soil of humility.

THE ONE WHO GAVE THANKS

And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."  When he saw them he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests."  And as they went they were cleansed.  Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.  Now he was a Samaritan.  Then Jesus answered, "Were not ten cleansed?   Where are the nine?  Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?  And he said to him, "Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well." [which could be more accurately translated as "your faith has saved you."]  Luke 17:12-19

In his commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Kent Hughes related the story this way:  On the outskirts of an unnamed village on the borderlands of Samaria and Galilee, ten leprous men stood before Jesus in various stages of decay, their clothing torn in perpetual mourning, their skeletal heads uncovered, their lips unveiled as they warned others, "Unclean, unclean!"

They looked as though they had climbed out of their graves.  But they were living, sensitive human beings, feeling souls living in the nether world of society's fringe while they physically rotted away.  So from a safe distance they shouted the traditional plea, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"  They were both loud and persistent.  "Have mercy on us!"  "Master have mercy!"  "Have mercy please!"

Once Jesus saw them, he immediately responded.  However, this time there was no touch as he had previously given to a leper.  Neither was there the pronouncement, "Be clean!" [Luke 5:13].  He simply told them, leprous as they were, "Go show yourselves to the priests."  The command was to do what a cured leper would do, following the regulations stipulated in Leviticus 14, which required examination by a priest.  If they were found to be cured, they would joyfully then complete an eight-day ceremony and then be reunited with their families.

Jesus' command required faith, and we can surmise that not all of the lepers were of the same mind.  No ten people would be.  Some were convinced they should go to the priest immediately.  Others demurred.  After all, it was a long way to the temple.  If Jesus could heal them, why did he not just do it?  What fools they would be if they tried to see a priest but still were leprous.  On the other hand, they had everything to gain and very little to lose.  The consensus was to give it a try.  So they set off at their stumbling lepers' pace.

"And as they went, they were cleansed."  It was a mass healing!  There were no mirrors to reflect the dramatic change, but they saw it in each other instantly.  From cadaverous faces reemerged ears, noses, eyebrows, lashes, hairlines.  Feet -- toeless, ulcerated stubs -- were suddenly whole, bursting shrunken sandals.  Knobby appendages grew fingers.  Barnacled skin become soft and supple.  It was like ten new-births.  The dust of a wild celebration quickly began in the bright sunlight of northern Israel nearly 2,000 years ago.

Among those ten lepers was a Samaritan.  Normally Jews did "not associate with Samaritans" [John 4:9]. and likewise Samaritans with Jews, but these men had been united by their common misery -- nine Jews and one Samaritan in a suffering community.  And when the healing occurred, the Samaritan was seized with "an irresistible emotion of gratitude" and, captive to this spontaneous gratitude, put off going to the temple to rush back to Jesus.  The ceremonial clean bill of health could wait.  His spiritual obligation overrode his ceremonial need.  So the Samaritan and the Jews parted company.  The thankful Samaritan knew he had two to thank -- God and Jesus; he just did not know that the two were one.

First he said thank you to God:  "One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice."  Earlier he had loudly pled for healing, and now he was loud with his praise.  According to Hughes, the Greek for "loud voice" is recognizable to the English ear, for it is the two words from which we get megaphone, here reversed phones megales.  He was mega-voiced in his praise to God.

Then he thanked Jesus:  "He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him -- and he was a Samaritan.  He literally "fell upon his face" at Jesus feet.  At the very least, he recognized Jesus as an agent of God.  More likely, he realized that Jesus was king.  The Samaritans were well-acquainted with the messianic Scriptures, and this man saw Jesus in that light.  He returned to Jesus with a heart giving glory to God and thanks to Jesus as he recognized God's power in him.

Jesus asked three closely coordinated questions, all freighted with amazement:  "Were not all ten cleansed?  Where are the other nine?  Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"  The questions were not rhetorical.  The human Jesus [who had placed his omniscience at his Father's discretion] expected all ten to return, glorifying God, and then to receive the ultimate blessing he had prepared for them.  Jesus was disappointed.

But evidently the other nine lepers were so caught up in their newfound wholeness that it did not occur to them to return to Jesus.  This is understandable on one level.  After all, Jesus did tell them to show themselves to the priests.  Of course they were thankful.  How could they be otherwise?  And they were deeply happy.  And they were eager to get back into everyday life.

Can we not sympathize with their not returning to Jesus?  Yet there is a deadly problem here -- God was not at the center of their gratitude.  Only the foreigner, the Samaritan, gave praise to God.  The other nine were so earthbound, so like the shrewd manager and the rich man of the preceding parables, that they missed the spiritual dimension altogether.  Vague gratitude to divinity was not an adequate response to what had happened.  Christ wanted their hearts!  By failing to glorify God and return to that thank Jesus, they missed the greatest possible moment of their existence.

So what was the fundamental difference between the Samaritan and the other nine?  Perhaps the Samaritan knew more than the other nine that he did not deserve Jesus' healing.  He knew well his standing before the Jews and knew that Jesus could have just healed the other nine and left him out of it.  In humility, the healed leper returned to give Jesus praise and thanksgiving.  Jesus responded, "Your faith has made you well."  Not only was he healed on the outside but his soul had found healing and salvation as well.

The difference between a believer's words of thanksgiving and that of a non-believer is that the believer directs his thanks to God, his Maker.  When a non-believer makes a gratitude list, it is not about the the things that God has done for him that he is thankful for.  Rather, it is more of a "these are the things in my life that I am happy about" kind of list.  In thinking about the good things he has in his life, he feels a boost of happiness.

Like the Samaritan leper, a believer's gratitude comes from a humble heart that acknowledges we are but dust.  God created us and breathed in us the breath of life.  He sustains us each day.  We are completely dependent upon him and can do nothing apart from him [John 15:5].  Everything we have is a gift of his grace.  As Peter said in Acts, "nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he, himself, gives to all mankind life and breath and everything" [Acts 17:25].

A humble heart knows its position before the God of the universe and bows in reverence, awe, wonder and gratitude.  Such a heart knows that it is unworthy and undeserving of God's grace.  In reference to this story of the ten lepers our worshipful response -- or lack thereof -- reflects the depth of our understanding of God's mercy and goodness.  The first and greatest response to the gospel of grace is thankful worship.  When we know the holiness of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God and the rich grace of God, we realize how amazing it is that we are able to stand in his presence at all, let alone receive his gift of salvation.

Yet it is in this fertile soil of humility that thanksgiving grows and thrives.  Any other soil that denies God's holiness, wisdom, power and sovereignty will only speak words of thanksgiving, but without deep roots it will not thrive or last.  Like the nine other lepers, it will gladly take the good gifts God bestows but won't truly honor and thank him for who he is and what he has done.

In the soil of humility, thanksgiving grows even in the darkest of nights and in the fiercest of climates where suffering and trials bear down hard.  This is why Paul could say that we are to give thanks in all circumstances [1 Thess. 5:18].  This then is where much of the world's efforts at thanksgiving and gratitude break down.  It is easy to give thanks when the harvest is plentiful. But to continue to give thanks in the midst of trial reveals the type of soil in which that thanksgiving resides.  The soil of humility will produce thanksgiving in all seasons -- in sunshine and rain, in plenty or in want.

So this Thanksgiving, let us evaluate the soil of our hearts.  Is our gratitude something we will move on from and forget come December 1st?  Or is it the natural outflow of a heart that knows that everything it has comes from God's grace?  Like the Samaritan leper, are we wonderstruck and amazed that God would extend his kindness toward us, or do we take his good gifts without ever acknowledging the hand that provided it?

Do we really know just how much we have been given?

And let us pray for God's grace to till the soil of our hearts, nourish them with his Spirit and water them with the same water he offered to the Samaritan woman -- the only water that can satisfy the thirst of our souls.

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.