2025 Lenten Devotional - Conflicted

CONFLICTED How to Win at Tug-of-War

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©2025 by Dr. John McKellar and Dr. Todd Renner

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Introduction to Lent LENT

From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have held with great reverence the forty days of Lent. An annual invitation to a time of reflection, Lent is a season for selfexamination and for penitence. It is a season of honest evaluation as we confess who we are… and who we are yet to be. These forty days ask us to go on a journey; they invite us to travel through the darkness of Calvary’s pain that we might celebrate the joy and love of Easter morning in new light and in new life.

To do this, though, we must prepare ourselves. Lent, then, is a time for prayer and fasting. It is a time for silence and for the studying of God’s holy word. It is a time when we are asked to take seriously the call of the spiritual disciplines. More, though, it is a time for us to be mindful, a time for us to be soulful… a time for us to be honest about what keeps us from following the way of Jesus Christ.

THIS YEAR

An Introduction to This Year’s Series…

For this, our fifteenth devotional, we felt led to do something new. This Lent, we will be examining some of the great characters of the Bible and their inner struggles to answer the call of God. They were real-life people who were having real-life experiences of God: experiences that stretched them and scared them and shook their worlds apart. They were challenged, grown, and given dreams that would turn their lives upside-down – and their world along with them. And always, there was an inner conflict, a divine tug-of-war between this new vision of God and their old ways of thinking.

It was out of their struggles, though, that the faith was advanced. It is out of our struggles that we, too, grow in our faithfulness. Let’s be clear: this study is not a history lesson. Instead, it is a way of our clarifying the calls God still gives to those who will follow. As followers of Jesus, we should use these days of Lent well: as a time to deepen our faith, as a time to see God more clearly in the ordinary rhythms of life, and as a time to answer the call of Isaiah: “Then I heard the voice of the

Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’” (Isaiah 6:8)

And though our format may be different, our purpose is still the same: it is to elicit a response. It is for us to be inspired, to be challenged, and to be changed. Our purpose, hope, and prayer is that all our hearts will be “strangely warmed” as we reflect upon the Bible’s truth and respond to the Savior’s call to fight the good fight of faith!

Dr. John McKellar | Dr. Todd Renner

The Priestly Blessing

“Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want.”

– Galatians 5:16-17

Week One: How to Win at Tug-of-War

How to Win at Tug-of-War

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do –this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

– Romans 7:15-20

Day One | March 5

ONE

Flesh v. Spirit

(Ash Wednesday)

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

– Thomas Paine

Growing up in the rural South, I was what was known as a “stocky” kid – not big, not round, just solid. I was thick, and every coach wanted me for his team. There was only one problem with that, though: the fact that I was unathletic. I was clumsy and lumbering and uncoordinated. I was better at spelling bees and science fairs than I was at anything involving sports. And as a kid growing up in the rural South, that was hard… particularly on Field Day. Every year, towards the end of the spring term, our school had Field Day: a day where there were

no classes, no lessons or exams; it was a day dedicated solely to sports. There were races and dashes and the dreaded climbing of the rope. And, by the end of the day, everyone was wearing their ribbons. The winners wore blue. Second and third got red and green. Everyone else wore nothing but defeat… and I was used to it – until the very last competition of the day: tug-of-war.

It was the only team for which I was picked first, and I was the anchor. Standing at the back of the rope, gripping it with all my eleven-year-old stocky might, we struggled with our peers on the other side. Our team would advance a little, and then their team would advance a little. It was a constant game of give-and-take under the late-afternoon Florida sun. But with aching hands and throbbing heart, I wasn’t letting go. I wanted my ribbon, and I wanted it to be blue. Back and forth, to and fro, the match went on and on and on until, at last, the other side began to tire, and we started gaining ground. Little by little, and then all at once, we yanked them across the line. The battle was over… and we’d won.

And as I think about that moment here decades later, I am struck by the profound truth of its lesson. Every day is Field Day. Every day is tug-of-war. The Apostle Paul makes this point in a stunning way in the Book of Romans: the good we want to

do, we don’t do; but the very thing we don’t want to do, that’s what we do (Romans 7:14-15). It’s the tugof-war between the flesh and the Spirit, between what we want and what God demands. Every day is tug-of-war. Every day there are moments of decision, conflicted moments that require us to choose, questions that require us to answer. Who are we playing for? What are we playing for? Are we playing for the world’s glory –with all its gold and silver and ribbons of blue… or are we playing for God’s?

This is the invitation and the holy call of Lent: to confront the hard questions (and, maybe, the even harder answers). It is to prepare ourselves for the glory of Jesus’ resurrection by sharing in the agony of his crucifixion. It is to prepare ourselves for the ever-present spiritual fight, for the daily grind of faithful obedience by getting rid of all the lies: the lies we tell others, the lies we tell God, and the lies we tell ourselves. It’s the tug-of-war – the critical heave between living for this life or living for the next. And though I’ve long lost that fifth-grade blue ribbon, its lesson still remains. Maybe that, in the end, is the real victory.

Day Two | March 6

TWO

Constructive Conflict

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.”

– George Bernard Shaw

The inner tug-of-war between competing values is part of what it means to be human. We struggle with our shortcomings, flaws, and questions as we face God’s call to do great things. We struggle with trying to please God; but at the same time, trying to please the people around us. Both dogs are barking at us constantly,

demanding to be fed. Which dog do we feed the most?

The journey of Lent reminds us that the struggle is good for us. It is a constructive step along the pathway for growth – the place where our values and priorities are sharpened. There is an old legend about fishermen who tried to keep their fish tasting fresh. When caught, they put them into a tank to keep them alive. They quickly discovered a problem, after a little thrashing around, the fish became tired, dull, and lost their fresh-fish taste. The fishing industry faced an impending crisis: how to keep the fish tasting fresh until they could be brought to market? They discovered a simple solution. To keep the fish tasting fresh, they still put the fish in the tanks but also added a small shark. The fish were challenged and kept constantly on the move. The challenge they faced kept them alive and fresh!

That is what our inner tug-of-war does for us. It keeps us alive and fresh. It requires us to be honest and confront uncomfortable emotions and thoughts rather than suppressing them.

That is why we should use these forty days of Lent well. This season invites us to engage in self-reflection. There are many Lenten practices that can help us do this: journaling, meditation, and conversation with wise friends. The by-product

of this reflection can help us see the need to change some things in our lives. This may require redefining goals, altering relationships, or adopting healthier coping skills.

As we grow closer in our walk with Jesus, we should expect these inner tug of war struggles to continue. They are the battle between our new values and our old; our new way of living, versus ingrained habits that are hard to break. While these may be challenging, they are the pathway God uses to grow us. We need to embrace the struggle during Lent.

Day Three | March 7

THREE

Battle Scars

“Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.”

– Henri Nouwen

When Henry VIII annulled his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Ann Bolin, she was crushed and devastated. Her life was greatly impacted. She lived in exile, no longer the queen. As she reflected on her changed circumstances she had some

searing insights: She said, “I have learned to live with joy and celebration. I have learned to live with heartache and sorrow. I choose sorrow. Happy days I am busy and frivolous. On my sorrowful days, I see God. I notice. I experience life fully all around me.”

She reminds us that our battle scars are an invitation to a deeper life. In fact, our battle scars become the source of our ministry to others. In times of trouble, we don’t need to hide from our pain but instead, learn to embrace it. To know that these trials will lead us to a deeper, more beautiful way to live life. Rather than being angry and shaking our fists at our circumstances, praying, “Wake up God, where are you?,” we need to pray, “Lord, wake me up so that I can experience all that You have for me.”

All of my life, I have seen this is true. My failures, struggles, heartaches, defeats, and tragedies have opened the door to ministry to others. People who suffer will be drawn to us. Our battle scars will encourage others to cope with their wounds. When we encounter wounded people, we don’t need the words to explain their pain. We don’t have answers to their problems. What we have to offer are our battle scars. We listen. We pray. We cry. We hug. We offer hope that God enables us to walk on with our scars.

The Apostle Paul said, “I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body” (Galatians 6:17). He was thinking about all the scourgings, stonings, beatings, and cruel insults he had endured to spread the gospel. We can almost see Paul as an old man in his final days, writing to Christians from that Roman prison cell. He was an old man now with a gaunt, wrinkled face, a bent figure, trembling hands and all the wounds his ministry had wrought. And yet from those battle scars flowed words of hope and encouragement that have sustained the church through the centuries. In spite of his suffering, Paul affirmed: “The Master stood by me and helped me spread the Message loud and clear to those who had never heard it. I was snatched from the jaws of the lion! God’s looking after me, keeping me safe in the kingdom of heaven. All praise to him, praise forever! Oh, yes!” (2 Timothy 4:17-18, The Message)

Day Four | March 8

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

He was just heading home from the market. Maybe he was thinking about his family or his work or what he was going to have for supper that evening. He was simply minding his own business… until his business changed. Walking through Tiananmen Square that early July afternoon, he saw the tanks rolling in. After weeks of protests, the Chinese government had decided to put an end to the students’ dissents. And this unknown man had a choice: to keep on walking or to act.

The annals of history forever recorded his choice.

It’s an image burned into the memory of the world, an iconic snapshot of time. One man confronting a tank. One man stopping an army. One man taking a stand. It was – it is – heroic.

And we still don’t know his name. He’s been called the Tank Man. He’s been called the Unknown Protester. But the name I like best is the Unknown Rebel. It was one man against one of the world’s greatest powers. And, against all odds, he won.

Every conflict has winners and losers. It has its rebels and its saints. And in every conflict there are heroes, too – those with the grit and persistence and fortitude simply to endure, to hang on when common sense says to let go. And it’s no different in fighting the good fight of faith.

Heroic faith is that trust that endures, that withstands the fiery arrows of the spiritual battles of daily living for Christ because following Jesus will take us to some pretty scary places – perhaps not in front of tanks and guns, but to the even darker places of fear and shame and temptation. In those places, where our heads are tugging us one direction and our souls are tugging us another, we have to remember what victory really looks like.

The cross looked like defeat. Jesus was dead, and all the forces of wickedness rejoiced.

…but …

It wasn’t the end. Death didn’t get to win. Sin didn’t get to triumph. The cross was merely one crucial, horrible step towards victory – towards eternal, transcendent victory. And it reminds us that our failures are not final. They don’t get to define us… unless we let them.

No, the heroes of the faith rarely wear capes. Instead, they wear scars and wounds and the agelines of a ragged but tested faith. They wear the tattered clothes of the prophet and the threadbare shoes of the missionary. They wear the criticism of the world and the marks of the cross: scars on their hands and feet and side and brow. And, in the eyes of the Lord, they are beautiful – and victorious! And though no statue will be built in their honor, and no parade will be held in their name, all the angels of heaven sing at their faithful service to the Lord.

Let us be clear, though: There will be times when, despite our most earnest intentions and regardless of our most prayerful plans, we will get “it” wrong. We will discern a situation poorly. We will choose an unartful turn of phrase. There will be times when, in our best efforts to be earnestly faithful, we will completely miss the point. We will

fight, and we will fail. And in those moments, we cast ourselves upon the abundant mercy of God, asking Him to be understanding, trusting that He knows our hearts. And that is heroic, too: to pick ourselves up from defeat – wiser, stronger – and to commit ourselves once more to the everlasting, ever-loving work of the Kingdom, to look beyond all these earthbound distractions, beyond all our self-entangled ugliness to begin to see the hazy silhouette of Christ staring back at us from within.

Week Two: Jacob: A Scoundrel’s Conflict

Jacob: A Scoundrel’s Conflict

“Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel, limping because of his hip.”

– Genesis 32:24-31

Day Five | March 10

The Birthright :: Opportunism

“I think everyone is an opportunist if they have an opportunity.”

– Katharine Hepburn

It was a Christmastime tradition: playing Monopoly at Grandma’s house. Splayed out on her old whiskey barrel table, the board was set with green houses and red hotels, with every property purchased. And that year, I got to be the banker. Now, Grandma was ruthless – not in life, just in games. She wasn’t of the “let the grandkids win to encourage them” school of thought; she was of the “this is an opportunity to teach them about the rigors of life” school. And she was certainly teaching us a lesson: Boardwalk and Park Place,

each with a hotel. There was no way to beat her… not without cheating, at least.

That’s when it happened: she caught me (the banker) helping myself to the till. I’d never seen her so mad. “If that’s the way you’re gonna’ play,” she stammered, “I’m not playing with you!” And with that, she abruptly left the table and went to bed. In the morning, I apologized – mostly because I’d gotten caught and also because my Dad told me that I had to. But that experience taught me an invaluable lesson: just because you can doesn’t mean that you ought.

It’s a lesson that Jacob learned the hard way. In Genesis 25, we’re told the story of Jacob taking his brother Esau’s birthright. Coming in from a hunt, Esau is famished. An impetuous, unreflective, livein-the-moment sort of fellow, Esau declares before his brother that he’s about to die of hunger. And Jacob sees his moment; he seizes his opportunity. He pounces. He takes advantage of his own flesh and blood, selling him a pot of beans for his double-stake in their inheritance. It was a moment, an opportunistic choice that would drive a wedge between them for decades.

And with each new day, we are presented with the same. Every day, we have opportunities to help ourselves or to help others. We can serve ourselves or we can serve God. When put like that,

it seems like an easy choice to make; but when faced with the opportunistic temptation to fudge a little here or to scrimp a little there (especially if no one will ever know), the dilemma gets a little harder and the conflict gets a little realer.

But there are no victimless “fudges,” and there are no innocent “scrimps.” In the all-seeing eyes of our Lord, every opportunity missed is an opportunity squandered. And in seeking to serve ourselves, we miss the most incredible opportunity of all: the opportunity to serve our Savior.

Day Six | March 11

The Blessing :: Dishonesty

“You’ll never get mixed up if you simply tell the truth. Then you don’t have to remember what you have said, and you never forget what you have said.”

– Sam Rayburn

One of the enduring lessons of high school that shaped my value system happened in August 1974. It was the beginning of my senior year, and I was at Louisiana Boys State in Baton Rouge. I will never forget the morning we all were ushered into a big assembly room where we heard President Richard Nixon resign the presidency. I remember being stunned in that moment. This result was not caused by the Watergate break-in or the fumbling actions of aides

during a re-election campaign. No, it was about the cover-up and repeated lies. It was about a loss of trust.

We get that same sense of shock to our value system when we read Genesis 27. We see the next patriarch of Israel receive his blessing from his father Isaac. Jacob jumps into the position of his brother. With lies, deceit, and the complicity and cover-up of his mother, Rebekah, Jacob presents himself as someone he’s not. We read that Isaac was old and losing his eyesight; so, mother and son take advantage of the situation. Rebekah whips up Isaac’s favorite recipe for stew, and Jacob pretends to have cooked it. He puts on goat skins and smelly clothes, so as to have the feel and “aroma” of Esau, the hunter. And when Isaac senses something amiss, he urges his son to lean close and asks him, “Are you really Esau?” Jacob misses the last moment to come clean, and he blatantly lies to his father… and then, receives the blessing.

We will never know the tug-of-war going on in his soul. Do you tell the truth, or do you lie to receive the power, wealth, and control that come from the blessing? Beyond this one moment, though, we know Jacob’s lie plants sin and disfunction in his family system that passes on through the centuries.

But this tug-of-war of honesty or blessing is ever before us. A fictional character was in a tough spot and chose to tell the truth. Those around him said, “Why didn’t you lie to save your skin? Your honesty just made things worse.” His answer was very profound: “I’m not going to swear an oath I can’t uphold. When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. Then there are no more answers, only better and better lies.”

One of our key values needs to be honesty. Two of the Ten Commandments deal with honesty. At the heart of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).

In our families, will we tell the truth? Will this be a value we pass on to our children and grandchildren? In our business dealings, will we keep our word, even if it costs us financially? In our relationships, will we own our responsibility for our mistakes and learn those important words of honesty, “I was wrong” and “I am sorry”?

When we find ourselves in Jacob’s shoes, with the tug-of-war between honesty and blessing raging, may we pray the prayer written by Allen Stockdale: “Dear Lord, look into my mouth and see what a cruel thing my tongue is. It seeks to

ruin good reputations, it lies when crowded into a corner, it boasts to satisfy vanity, it runs on and on when silence would be golden. It does not report matters correctly. It has made trouble for me and my relatives, friends and coworkers. Dear Lord, if You can adjust my tongue to truth and gentleness, love and fairness; You will perform a miracle of compassion in the area where I live, move, and have my being.”

Day Seven | March 12

At Bethel :: Awareness

“The most holy and important practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God – that is, every moment to take great pleasure that God is with you.”

– Brother Lawrence

There is a place deep in the soul of every person who has ever gone to church camp.

It’s called by many different names, but the experiences we had there are very much the same. For me, that place was called Vesper Point. It was the place of our morning devotions and our evening-time prayers; but, mostly, it was the sacred site for our closing worship. Around a bonfire casting off smoke and sparks, decisions were made, and lives were changed. Many of us came

to Jesus there. Others of us rededicated ourselves to his way. Regardless of the name, this one fact was undeniably true: God was there. In a palpable – almost tangible – sort of way, the power and presence of the Lord became real.

I wish that I could live with that constant sort of awareness. I wish that I could go through my every day (and my every tug-of-war) with that firm, unshakeable sense. But the life of faith is not meant for the mountaintops. Sure, we need those moments, but we can’t live there… for there is work to be done in the valleys.

Incredibly, it was in one of those valleys where Jacob first encountered God. It was there – in a pit of fear and flight – that this great patriarch of our faith, that this great trickster and raggamuffin saint became aware of the presence of the Divine. Running for his life from the murderous threats of his brother, Jacob finally slept. Conscripting a stone to be his pillow, he closed his eyes, and he dreamt. He dreamt of a ladder reaching into the heavens, a ladder with angels ascending and descending from here to there and there to here, and when he woke, he was stunned. “Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it,” he says (Genesis 28:16). Filled with awe and reverence and wonder, he called that place Bethel – the House of God.

As Christ-followers, we are called to live in the House of God. In fact, we are called to be the House of God – people through whom others experience the grace and love and mercy of the Lord. We are called to offer comfort in the midst of distress and light in the midst of darkness. We are called from the mountaintops into the valleys of despair.

But what about those times when we forget?

What about those times when we, like Jacob, are unaware. Surely. Surely, the Lord is in your place – wherever your place may be right now. In the darkness, He’s there. In storm, He’s there. In the doctor’s office and nursing home and jail. Surely. Surely God is there – closer than your next breath. Let us never allow the presence of difficulty make us doubt the presence of the Divine! For that holy ground has nothing to do with our mood or situation or circumstances. God is present whether we’re happy or not. He is present whether we’re aware of Him or not.

The call of Lent – and, more, the call of faith – is to become more and more aware of Him, though. It is to fight all the distractions and tug-ofwar delusions within us to focus on experiencing God. It is to fight the good fight of faith every day, knowing that we do not fight alone. It is to lean into his power and strength and provision, knowing

that He cares for us as a shepherd cares for his sheep. It is to hope and to love and to feel Him in the secret places and in the holy places so that we might proclaim Him in the marketplaces. It is to see in every place, a ladder and in every stone, a bed – calling us to rest and to remember the sure promises of our God!

Day Eight | March 13

With Laban :: Empathy

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

– Henry David Thoreau

After Jacob fled into the desert to escape his brother’s wrath, he was still conflicted. Even after he’d experienced the miracle of Bethel, the tug of selfishness was still deeply planted. Yes, he had connived and been deceitful… but for a good reason (he told himself): to get what he deserved.

But then, on the happiest day of his life, he learned a valuable lesson, a lesson that would

change his perspective forever. He had fallen in love. He had worked seven years for Laban, his soon-to-be father-in-law, to earn his dowry. But he was so in love that the Scriptures tell us those seven years went by like just a few days. Finally, his service was completed, and the wedding scheduled. He was in a hurry to begin his new life; and in the dimly lit rush of a late-night party, his father-in-law double crossed him. He switched brides on him. Under heavy veils, he did not realize that he had not married his beloved, beautiful Rachel, but her older sister, Leah – a woman, we’re told, with weak eyes. All of Jacob’s sins came home to him. Opportunism. Lying. Manipulation. And as the dawn broke, when he realized what had happened, he was outraged with his father-in-law. He protests, “What have you done to me? I served you for Rachel. Why have you deceived me?”

In that moment, he got it. He understood what he had done to his brother, Esau. He understood the consequences of his actions. The deceiver learned what it felt like to be deceived. And it changed him. That moment taught him empathy. Empathy is the ability to stand in another’s shoes, the ability to see the world through their eyes. It is to fight our inner conflict and turmoil to see (and to seek) what is best for another.

Later, it is this empathy for Esau that will guide their reunion and reconciliation. Marshall Rosenberg commented on their reunion: “Empathy, I would say is presence. Pure presence to what is alive in a person at this moment, bringing nothing in from the past. The more you know a person, the harder empathy is. The more you have studied psychology, the harder empathy really is. Because you can bring no thinking in from the past. In empathy, you don’t speak at all. You speak with the eyes. You speak with the body. If you say any words at all, it’s because you are not sure you are with the person. You may say some words. But the words are not empathy. Empathy is when the other person feels the connection to what’s alive in you.”

A father was playing with his young son one afternoon. They were tussling playfully on their front lawn when the dad accidentally hit the young boy in the face with his elbow. It was a sharp blow full to his son’s face. The little boy was stunned by the impact of the elbow. It hurt... and he was just about to burst into tears. But then, he looked into his father’s eyes and instead of anger or hostility, he saw there his father’s sympathy and concern; he saw there his father’s love and compassion. Then, instead of exploding into tears, the little boy suddenly burst into laughter. What he saw in his father’s eyes made all the difference!

What do people see in our eyes? So many times in life there are no words to be said. There are situations we can’t fix. What we do is show up, listen, and try to feel what they are feeling. That is the lesson we need to learn from Jacob.

Day Nine | March 14

With Leah & Rachel :: Caught in the Middle

“There’s something that’s not right or not perfect or not the way we had hoped or dreamed that it was going to be. But God promises that He will use everything and every moment to ultimately take us to a new Heaven and a new Earth. For now, we’re stuck in the middle.”

– Louie Giglio

In Genesis, Chapter 30, we get the picture of terrible family dysfunction. Jacob’s two wives are in deep conflict. Their maids are taking sides and joining in. And Jacob is caught in the middle of this awful scene. He is caught in a game of tug-of-war that he did not choose.

His wife, Leah, was jealous of his love for Rachel, even though she is prolific in bearing children. She was thinking, “If only I had my sister’s beauty and the love of my husband, then I would be happy.” Rachel, on the other hand, was humiliated that she cannot seem to conceive. She was thinking, “If only I had sons like my sister, then I would be happy,” Tension, jealousy, and quarreling rule the day… until, finally, Jacob erupts. He lashes out at Rachel: “Am I in the place of God? I have no idea why your sister can have children and you cannot. Don’t blame me!”

It’s a picture of the conflict that too many people face. The ideal of how life should be versus the reality of situation: that life isn’t fair, that we face problems we didn’t create… and we don’t want to be there. Jacob, Rachel, and Leah all feel that way.

But how about us? How do we work through those moments when we are stuck in the middle? We start by being careful of how we speak. The gritty honesty of the Bible shares it all: This family is lashing out at each other. But in times like that, there are three things we must always ask ourselves before we say anything: Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said by me? Does this need to be said by me, now?

Then we need to not avoid the problem. This family will stay stuck in the middle by avoidance. They will get their maids to bear children for them (which only compounds the problem). They fight proxy wars and silent skirmishes. Sometimes, we simply need to address the injustice that we face and find ways to talk about it. When we avoid dealing with our conflicts, we can just back away from others and internalize all the things that make us mad; and, in the end, we can become even more and more frustrated and bitter. This takes a sour toll on everyone.

We also need to realize what we can and can’t do. I am not sure that Jacob expressed his frustration properly. But his honesty was important. He couldn’t fix the problem. He couldn’t comprehend fully the ways of God. But he could speak the truth (in love).

In these stuck-in-the-middle places, we need to practice empathy and try to understand what the other person is feeling. Try to communicate in a way that de-escalates rather than inflames. Try to express our confidence that God is still going to lead us through this tough time.

There is an old legend about the monk who found a precious stone, a priceless jewel. A short time later the monk met a traveler, who said he was hungry and asked the monk for some food.

When the monk opened the bag, the traveler saw the precious stone and asked the monk if he could have it. Amazingly, the monk gave the stranger the stone. The traveler departed quickly overjoyed with his new possession. However, a few days later, he came back, searching for the monk. He returned the stone and made a request; please give me something more valuable, more precious than this stone. Please give me that which enabled you to give me this stone!

That should be our prayer during these days of Lent: that we will find the most precious Gift of all – Jesus’ love that leads to a desire for peace and reconciliation; that leads to the healing of all the broken places of life. Pray that we can help folks stuck in the middle get unstuck, and have the courage to take risks to build a community of love, respect and true Christlikeness!

Day Ten | March 15

At Peniel :: Fighting with God

“I asked God to move my mountain, and He gave me a shovel.”

– Zig Ziglar

Ihad the shades pulled together making the hospital room dark. The massive air conditioners were churning outside, but the air in that room seemed so very stale – I could almost taste it. And as I laid down on the bed, I tried to occupy myself, but the questions kept coming: How could this have happened? Where was my God?

I had just been with the family of a nine-year-old girl who had been hit by a car. She had been out riding her bike, doing what nine-year-old girls are

supposed to be doing, when tragedy struck. She was losing blood, and nothing could be done. I was there when the doctors told her parents that she was dying. And I was there as she breathed her last gasping breaths.

There, of course, was nothing to say to the family that could make sense of the senseless, but I found myself not wanting to say anything… because I didn’t know who God was anymore. If God was the God I thought He was, this wouldn’t have happened. If God was the God I thought He was, this wouldn’t be. And the anger began to seethe inside me.

When all the formalities of death were taken care of and I finally went home, I was distant, aloof, irritable. Everything within me yelled to the heavens. And as the family began to mourn the loss of their daughter, I began mourning the loss of my God.

As one who’d been brought up in the church, it was a terrifying and discombobulating thing to live unmoored from God. And it was never that I stopped believing that God existed. It was, as C.S. Lewis shares, that I began to think horrible things about God – that He was distant and cold and uncaring.

And I wrestled. Conflicted about the most important part of who I was (and who I am), I fought

with God through those terrible dark nights of the soul. And I don’t think that I’m alone. In fact, I reckon that most of us have had moments of wrestling like that: wrestling with who God is and what God does (or doesn’t do), wrestling with who we are and who we aren’t and who we’re supposed to be. We know what it is to wrestle. And so did Jacob.

On his fateful return to Canaan (Genesis 31-32), Jacob hears that Esau is coming to meet him… and that he was bringing an army in his wake. Afraid, Jacob (being Jacob) devises a plan. He separates all his property: all his sheep, all his oxen, all his servants and wives and concubines and kids. He separates them, and he sends the animals ahead to appease his brother.

But the night before he crosses over himself, he rests. He sleeps a fitful sleep; and, again, God appears – this time as an unknown adversary. In the middle of the night, Jacob is grabbed. Not knowing who has set upon him, Jacob fights back. It is a conflict that rages through the night. Tired. Exhausted. Scared. Jacob keeps swinging. He keeps wrestling with this one we know to be the Lord. But as the sun began to rise, Jacob’s opponent touches his hip, throwing it out of socket… crippled, Jacob refused to give in. He refused to give up.

And there is a remarkable truth that emerges from this story: God could have stopped the fight at any moment. God could’ve touched Jacob’s hip earlier or He could’ve snapped his fingers or He could’ve done a million other things to win, but He let the struggle continue. Why? Because God knew that Jacob needed to struggle. Because God knew that there are some things that are only learned in the struggle. Because God knew that the struggle changes us. That was my story. And it was Jacob’s story too. That moment at Peniel (literally, that moment in the “Presence of God”) changed him. That moment changed his walk – crippling grace always does. That moment changed his name –God called him Israel. It changed him… but a little piece of the old him always remained – that tug-ofwar in his soul. It’s his story… and it’s our story, too. It’s the story of all of us who wrestle with the Lord. We are changed, but a little piece of the old us still remains. We are Jacob. And we are Israel. We are the Sinners. And we are the Saints. We are Rebels; but, in Christ, we are the Redeemed. So, to those of us who are wrestling right now: keep wrestling. The dawn has not yet broken. Keep wrestling and expect to be changed. Keep wrestling: Wrestle in the faith and wrestle for the faith. Keep wrestling… but learn Jacob’s lesson well: Just don’t let go of God!

Week Three:

David: A Leader’s Conflict

David: A Leader’s Conflict

“Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!’” – 2 Samuel 12:7

Day Eleven | March 17

ELEVEN

Facing Goliath :: Fear

“A

ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”

– G.T. Shedd

“Go check on the boys,” the voice said. I didn’t know where it’d come from. I didn’t know what it meant. All I knew was that I was scared. Terrified. I had awakened in the middle of the night – sweaty, panting, the acrid taste of fear in my mouth. And that disembodied, raspy voice was the only thing I heard: “Go check on the boys” – they were just kids at the time, sleeping on the other side of the house. Surrounded by the darkness, I froze. I didn’t want to leave the bed. I didn’t want to go. But

greater than my fear of going was the fear of not going, the fear of what might be happening to my sons. So I went. And I won’t portray my venture through the house as anything brave or bold or heroic: I ran, praying all the way. I prayed for courage. I prayed for safety. I prayed for salvation from the dark. And when I got to the boys’ rooms, I found that they were fine. It’d all been just a dream, a nightmare… but, in that moment, it was more real than most waking thoughts.

Fear. Alarm. Worst case scenarios. They seem to be everywhere these days. Just read the papers or watch the news. Even when life isn’t so stark, we find things to worry about. It’s like that moment several years ago when a newswoman was doing a live, on-the-scene report from another hurricaneravaged city. The flooding was so bad that she had to do her broadcast from a canoe, but the illusion was derailed when two men walked through her shot. It was then that we saw that the water was really only ankle-deep. In a world like that, in an age of fearmongering and anxiety, when we find it easier to visualize worst case scenarios rather than to hope and work for the best, how do we stay strong?

It is, unfortunately, a necessary question because, for all of us, there will be challenges and problems. Faith is no guarantee that life will

be smooth-sailing… it only guarantees a worthwhile destination. We – all of us – will have those moments, those seasons when we’ll want to give up and quit, when we’ll want to escape. Life will get hard, and we’ll feel stuck: we’ll lose jobs and hope and loved ones. Our bosses will make us question if we’ve done our jobs right… and our kids will make us question if we’ve done anything right. Things will conspire and get in the way. And the giant’s shadow looms. That was David’s story. He was just a boy, sent from shepherding the sheep to check on his brothers at the battlefront. The Philistine army was attacking, and their hero was on the prowl: Goliath. A giant of a man – over seven feet tall, the size of his stature was only dwarfed by the size of his ego. And as David approached the conflict, he had to confront his own, as well. He had heard Goliath’s defiant words. He’d heard him ridicule and deride and mock the Lord. He knew something had to be done… but by who?

Surely, the warriors of Israel’s army would act. Surely, they would intervene. But for weeks, they’d only sat and cowered. With fear tugging one way and faith tugging the other, David stepped forward to volunteer. A boy leading men. A shepherd besting soldiers. He confronted the giant – not just the giant named Goliath, but the giant called fear.

We know those tugs, too. Fear about what we know, and fear about what we don’t; fear about what we think might happen… or what might not. We live surrounded by the giant’s shadows… but shadows are just proof of the light. That’s why one commentator said this: “No one should be afraid of a shadow, for a shadow cannot stop a saint’s path forward – not even for a moment. The shadow of a dog cannot bite; the shadow of a sword cannot kill; the shadow of death cannot destroy us. Let us not, therefore, be afraid. `I will fear no evil.’” And it’s interesting because that’s exactly what causes shadows: shadows form when something comes in between us and the Light. They emerge as we allow obstacles and hindrances to get in the way. So, how do we thrive in this twilight-lit age between life and life eternal? How do we flourish when we’re swimming in ankle-deep waters or when they’re up to our necks? We trust the sure promises of God – the promises of God’s power and provision and presence…even in – especially in – life’s shadows.

We love something more than we fear anything: David loved Israel, and he loved the Lord. That gave him the gumption to face the giant. I loved my boys more than I feared the dark. We have to love something before we’ll do anything. But, at some point, we do have to do

something. Fear wants to paralyze us. It wants us to be afraid to act or to hope or to confront the boogie men that go bump in the night.

Yet, that’s the way giants fall. That’s the way the mountains move: one rock at a time. But we must be willing to risk it. To risk the giants. To risk the lions’ dens and fiery furnaces – all the dangers of a life of real faith. You see, in following Jesus, danger isn’t optional… but fear is.

Day Twelve | March 18

Facing Saul :: Envy

“Pride, envy, avarice – these are the sparks that have set on fire the hearts of all men.”

– Dante Alighieri

Afew years ago, a preacher friend of mine officiated a wedding at a local church.

Now, it’s a big church, a beautiful church. It’s a church with an amazing ministry, with strong programs… and an even stronger endowment. It’s one of those churches that simply smells of success: the sanctuary is gorgeous, and the organ rumbles your bones. And when he came home, my friend joked with me that he had “pipe organ envy.”

You see, for as much as we can want anything, we can envy anything, too. We can envy other’s houses and cars and boats. We can envy their titles and trophies and vacations and wealth. If we can want it, we can envy it.

But there’s a line that separates the two. It’s a thin, dangerous line… but it’s a line, nonetheless. Wanting is simply about desire, but envy takes a step across. Envy begins to feel entitled. It tells us that if he has it, we deserve it, too. It tells us that if she enjoys it, we’ve earned the right to enjoy it, too. Desire wants, but envy acts.

We see that conflict in David’s story, too. Having slain the giant Goliath, David’s fame spread throughout the land. “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands,” the people sang (1 Samuel 18:7). And Saul had slain his thousands. He was a mighty warrior, a valiant fighter. He’d had success everywhere he went. He was a hero. But all those victories, all those successes shrank as David’s popularity grew.

Saul became blinded by envy. He couldn’t see that he was still regarded as a hero. He couldn’t see that he was still the king. He let the triflings of what he didn’t have blind him to the tonnage of what he did have. And it led to conflict – not just to the inner conflict of a fomented soul, but to the outer murderous conflict of a discontented sovereign.

Envy makes us do some pretty godless things. And it makes us want some pretty godless stuff.  For all my years in ministry, it’s interesting: I have never heard anyone envy something “up” –something noble and faith-filled and true.  I’ve only ever heard folks envy something “down.” I’ve never heard anyone envy another person’s devotional life. I’ve never heard anyone envy another person’s prayer life. I’ve never heard anyone envy another person’s faith-sharing or meal-sharing or hopesharing. We respect things like that. We admire them. We’re inspired by them. But we don’t envy them – not to the point that we’d do anything to have them, too.

Envy only works “down.” It only destroys; it never builds. And, in the end, it will always leave us empty – counting another person’s blessings instead of our own.

Day Thirteen | March 19

THIRTEEN

Seeing Bathsheba :: Temptation

“As the most dangerous winds may enter at little openings, so the devil never enters more dangerously than by little unobserved incidents, which seem to be nothing, yet insensibly open the heart to great temptations.”

– John Wesley

Aman was taking his Lenten practices seriously. One morning, he began his day with a prayer: “Dear Lord, so far today I’m doing alright. I’ve not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or selfindulgent. I’ve not whined, complained, cursed, or eaten any chocolate. I have charged nothing on my credit card. But in a minute, I will be getting out of bed and I think then I’ll really need your help.”

That is our story. Not just during Lent, but the tug-of-war of temptation marks our entire journey of faith. The Greek word for temptation literally means “to put to the test” or “to go through.”

For every good intention, there is a test to see if it is real.

In Scripture, every spiritual high moment is followed by the push-back of temptation.

We see that in the life of King David. It was spring and the time for the king to lead his troops in battle. But David did not go. He sent his troops on under the leadership of a trusted lieutenant and remained behind, lounging around the ease of the palace. One night, he was walking around on his roof and spied a beautiful woman bathing. Temptation reared its ugly head, and he failed the test. The results were severe: adultery, unwanted pregnancy, murder, lying, deceit, cover-ups. And yet, the results of battling through these consequences will come out in a depth of soul and understanding of his total reliance on God.

The very temptation we dread compels us to have a new understanding of our weakness and drives us to our knees.

We pray the most when we know we need it the most. If there was no temptation, no fierce pressure from the evil one, then perhaps we might all just lounge around at the palace.

Martin Luther claimed that his temptations were his ‘Masters of Divinity’ which taught him more about faith than all his formal training as a priest. And we see it in David, too. Out of his struggle, David would write one of the deepest, most profound Psalms:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgement. Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”

– Psalm 51:1-10

Day Fourteen | March 20

FOURTEEN

Hearing Nathan :: Conviction

“We

have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to

the fact or to the guilt of a sin.”

– C.S. Lewis

Iwill never forget a moment that happened to me in fourth grade. I was at my grandparent’s house in Gilliam, Louisiana, and all the adults wanted to go check something out on the farm. My brother Bob and I were entrusted with keeping my new cousin Billy, who was just a few months old. My aunt and uncle had just gotten a brandnew car. I can still see this car in my mind: a shiny green Ford Galaxy. I had been washing the car, and

the job was finished. The baby had fallen asleep and all was well. That is when I had the bright idea that the car needed to be vacuumed. The only problem was the electric outlet was in another part of the yard. So I thought, let me just drive the car to the outlet. I do not know how this happened; but in driving in the yard, I hit a tree and put a big old dent in the right front fender. I was horrified. I knew I was going to be in trouble. I was driving without permission. I had wrecked a brand-new car. I thought they will never forgive me. They will never let me drive. I paced in the yard waiting for them to get back. And when they did, I ran to the car and burst out in tears. I tried to talk but nothing would come out. My aunt immediately said, “What’s wrong with the baby?” I said, “Nothing is wrong with the baby… it’s the car.” I was shocked in their response: I was expecting anger and recrimination, instead I got grace and understanding. I learned a powerful lesson that day about guilt. Guilt is when we know we have done something wrong. We have taken what is not ours or wounded someone. We carry the burden of feeling that our life is out of balance with the debt that we owe. Conviction goes beyond guilt. We know that we have sinned in our wrongdoing. But then we face the tug-of-war of knowing the darkness of our sin in contrast with the beauty and perfection of

God’s holiness. When we are under conviction, we fervently desire to make things right. We want to pay our debts to the person we have wronged, but we also want to be right with God. We want to be restored and given a second chance.

We see this moment in the life of King David. When his sins with Bathsheba came to light in a very public way, he had a choice. He could have continued to lie and deny. He could have banished the prophet Nathan from the royal palace.

Instead, David shows the power of conviction. He stands up publicly and says, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13).

Nathan offers God’s forgiveness, but David must bear the consequences of his sin. As he deals with the pain he faces, he also draws closer to God. His worship is more intense; his devotion has a new depth; he is literally a person touched by grace.

We need those moments of restoration. In the aftermath of my denting my aunt and uncle’s car, whenever I saw it, I was convicted of my wrong. I was reminded of mercy that forgives our debt that we can never repay. It was also a very happy day for me when they sold that car. Out of that experience, I was drawn closer to the Savior who paid my debt on the cross. Grace was no longer an abstract concept, but my story. We don’t need

to run or hide from our moments of conviction, but instead fully embrace them. Like David, they will make real our understanding of God’s love.

Day Fifteen | March 21

Fleeing Absalom :: Trust

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

– Corrie Ten Boom

Atelevision program preceding the 1988 Winter Olympics featured blind skiers being trained for slalom skiing. Paired with sighted skiers, the blind skiers were taught on the flats how to make right and left turns. When that was mastered, they were taken to the slalom slope, where their sighted partners skied beside them shouting, “Left!” and “Right!” As they obeyed the commands, they were able to negotiate the course and cross the finish line, depending solely on the sighted skiers’ words. It was, either, complete trust or utter catastrophe.

Such is the life of faith. We are, ironically, blind to the fact that we are blind, that we cannot see as God sees, that we do not know as God knows. As such, we go through life careening from one disaster to the next – unaware that, all the while, God is shouting, “Left!” and “Right!” And even if we hear the voice of heaven or feel the tug of angels, we do not trust it. It can’t be validated or quantified or proven, so we trust in our abilities and in our own limited wisdom. We trust in the only person who has never let us down: ourselves. But is that really the case? Do we really have that perfect a record of success: of right decisions and perfectly chosen words? Can we really trust ourselves? And the better question is, should we trust ourselves? For Golgotha tells us a different story. It tells us that we have every capacity to get things wrong: to betray Mercy, to crucify Perfection, to run and hide when Hope is lost. It tells us that we would rather choose a Savior of our own making than to trust in heaven’s Perfect Lamb. Golgotha stands in perpetual witness that our trust is to be placed elsewhere – in One who sees and loves even us.

And, by the Spirit, David knew that, too. Betrayed by his own son and driven from the city that bore his name, David trusted in God. Fleeing from the rebellious Absalom (whose

name, ironically, means “Father of Peace”), David regarded his son’s deception as simply another opportunity for the Lord to provide: “If I find favor in the Lord’s eyes, He will bring me back and let me see his dwelling place again,” he declared (2 Samuel 15:25). In one of the darkest moments of his life, David trusted in the Light. Now, admittedly, trust is terribly difficult to hold onto; more than that, it’s terrifying because it means that we open ourselves to the possibility of pain. And tugged by the war of our own wounds and scars, by friends’ betrayals and life’s disappointments, it makes sense for us to shut down and to draw in; but that’s not living. That’s surviving. And we are called to more. We are created for more. We exist to be in that relationship with God (and with each other) built upon trust: trust that moves beyond the puniness of knowledge to the flourishing of faith, trust that takes years to forge and a lifetime to strengthen, trust that the One who leads us is sure to bring us home again.

Day Sixteen | March 22

SIXTEEN

Mourning Jonathan :: Grief

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

– Anne Lamott

We are going to find ourselves in terrible situations. Life will overwhelm us like a giant tsunami. In spite of our best intentions, we are going to make mistakes or outside events will overtake us. In these, moments

we find ourselves in a fix. In North Louisiana they say we are “between a rock and a hard place.” We face the ultimate emotional tug-of-war: our life that is, versus the ideal of how we wish it were.

We made commitments based on financial projections, but the investments have not paid off. We miscalculated the economic trends, or we’ve lost our job.

Our company was swallowed up in a merger and we came out on the short end.

We planned well for retirement (we thought), but we never imagined the stock market would have a correction and prices would continue to rise.

We thought our marriage would last forever. But it didn’t.

The untimely death of a loved one has left us not only broken-hearted and grief-stricken, but anxiously insecure. And we don’t know how we can go on.

King David faced such a moment. He had just gotten word that his best friend, Jonathan, had been killed in battle. He carefully quizzed the returning soldiers for the details of his death, and then he allowed his grief to overflow. He responded with a surge of raw emotion: tearing his clothes and mourning and fasting for his loss. He then wrote a profound lament to give voice to his

feelings. David did two powerful things that teach us how to grieve: He embraced his pain, and he turned to his God.

The great people of faith have recognized their deficiencies and their reliance upon God. The evangelist, Charles Finney, once kept a huge crowd waiting for more than an hour before going to the platform. When someone finally sought him out to tell him he needed to come to the platform and speak, he heard the voice of Finney crying out behind a closed door: “Lord, I will not go out there unless You go with me.”

Once we know that God is with us, we stand still and allow ourselves to lament. One of our problems is that we want to act too quickly. When we’re in a bind, we look frantically for our nearest way out, and many times, we act foolishly. We do things we shouldn’t do. We take advice that we shouldn’t take. We spend our energy trying to escape. We need to be still and wait a while.

That’s one of the most difficult challenges in life. Most of us are wired to act. We don’t want to wait. But in waiting, we gain perspective. In waiting, we find solutions that we never imagined. In waiting, we discover what David knew:

“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff –they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”

– Psalm 23

Week Four:

Mary: A Mother’s Conflict

Mary: A Mother’s Conflict

“On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’”

– John 2:1-5

Day Seventeen | March 24

SEVENTEEN

The Annunciation :: Humility

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

– Ernest Hemingway

Itook my first job in ministry when I was nineteen years old. I served as a part-time youth pastor in Waco; but when I took the job, I didn’t know that “part-time” in the church world meant about forty-five hours a week. Needless to say, I was completely unprepared for what was going to be asked of me. And after about eighteen months there, the pastor pulled me in for one of those lifechanging meetings that you don’t really appreciate until much later. The pastor told me that I needed

to step up my game and put in more hours; otherwise, I needed to quit. The, then, twentyyear-old me – filled with my own vain indignation –didn’t take too kindly to that news; so I went home, and I fired off an embarrassingly pompous letter of resignation. I ran across it on my computer a few years ago…and it gutted me. I was embarrassed by my arrogance and pride and youthful self-conceit because that same pastor would, two years later, hire me back: a little wiser, a little meeker, a little more open to listening and learning. Humility is a difficult lesson to learn because it tells us things we don’t want to hear – namely, that the world does not revolve around us. It tells us that life is about more than our personal satisfaction and happiness. It tells us that hard work doesn’t always pay off and that cheaters sometimes win. It’s a difficult lesson to learn because it asks us to bow when we’d rather rise and to keep silent when we’re aching to speak. In short, humility asks us to be like Jesus. Stepping into the world He created, the King of Kings was born not in a gilded palace but in a borrowed stable. And after his cruel death, his pierced body was laid not behind walls of marble but behind the stone of a borrowed tomb. His first companions were lowly shepherds and his last, a struggling group of outcasts and sinners. This is

our Savior. This is our Lord, our Example, our King. And the world might look upon his accomplishments, upon his career trajectory, with scorn. The world might say that He didn’t accomplish anything. He died without a family, without a home, without even so much as a place to be buried… but we know better. We know more than to judge Jesus’ life and his worth by what He amassed and by who He knew. We know better than to think that Jesus was a failure. In fact, we claim that He is our Model for success. Why, then, do we live so differently? Why do we work and worry so incessantly? Why do we want to live a life that is so markedly different than our Lord’s – one that we acclaim to be an outward success? Could it be that we want others to think that we’ve “made it,” that we’ve arrived, that we’ve accomplished something with our lives? Or could it be that we want to believe that about ourselves? In the waking hours of the night, though, when we’re alone with only our thoughts and dreams and fears, we know this about ourselves: we know that we’re one mistake away from failure, one misspoken word away from heartbreak. We know we’re only one misstep away from being exposed as the frauds we know ourselves to be. In the silence, the conflict shouts. So, to compensate for our fear and our frailty, too often we garner all of

our strength to play the “game” one more time. We’ll fake the answers and pretend to be who-weknow-we’re-not one more time… and we waste our lives away one proud game, one arrogant day at a time – never realizing that the success that we’re looking for is within the fear, itself. For it is that willingness to be exposed for who we really are that is the heart of humility. It is that desire to be real that marks the way of God.

And no one in the Bible (other than Jesus) demonstrates such purity of heart and openness of soul more than Mary. A young woman, unmarried, from the outskirts of nowhere: Mary offered herself up to be used by the Lord. And it was scandalous.

Oh, how the rumors would fly. Oh, how the townsfolk would jeer. But she knew something they didn’t…

She knew that her condition was all a gift of God. She had heard Gabriel’s words. She had heard his promise of provision. She had heard his charge to be fearless. She had heard him call her “favored” (Luke 1:26-33). But what was it that set her apart? What made her so special? Perhaps it was precisely because she didn’t think herself to be so. It was her thinking herself unworthy that made her worthy. It was her thinking herself unremarkable that made her remarkable. It was

her feeling the tug of her humanity that made her God’s choice to be the mother of divinity. Such is the way of Christ: It is to deny ourselves, to pick up our cross, and to follow. But it is not a path to be taken by the faint-hearted or weakwilled, for it is a way of suffering and sacrifice. It is the way of surrender: the surrender of our goals and our priorities and all that we think we’ve earned – for the way of the Gospel is not one of upward mobility but one always of down: down to the lowly, down to the least and the lost and the lonely. For humility will do what pride will not: It bows, it kneels, it admits when it’s wrong and follows where it’s led. It stoops, reaching out to those who’ve fallen on their faces, for it is only there that we meet the God who picks us back up.

Day Eighteen | March 25

EIGHTEEN

Birth & Presentation :: Wonder

“And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, Whose forms are bending low, Who toil along the climbing way With painful steps and slow, Look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing.

O rest beside the weary road, And hear the angels sing!”

– Edmund Sears

One of our great church traditions is the kicking off of the Advent season with our Christmas Festival. It is a time of great fun for the family— inflatable games, a petting zoo, train rides, snow sledding, carnival food— as well as a look at our beautiful Christmas decorations around the campus. But the highlight is the live nativity portrayed by our children and youth.

We relive the beloved story of Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem and watch the shepherds and wise men come to witness the child. And after the final presentation, with fireworks, we dramatically portray the wonder of Luke 2: 13-14: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’”

During the fireworks there are “Ooooohs and Aaaaaahs.” Audible gasps and applause. There is a concentrated expression of joy that can only be described with one word: Wonder. Wonder is a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

Wonder is what every witness to Jesus’ birth experienced. Particularly Mary. Her life had been turned upside down by the angel’s visit. Wedding plans shelved. Her mind had to stretch to grasp giving birth to God’s son. She was perplexed by that which she could not fully comprehend. But she pondered what was happening, and her heart was filled with wonder. Wonder would see her through Jesus’ early days. A rushed visit to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath.

Wonder would see her return home to people who could never understand a virgin’s birth. Wonder would help her endure raised eyebrows, gossip, and pointed fingers.

The wonder of seeing Jesus grow up would be her constant source of joy and delight. We need to recapture that sense of wonder that keeps us alive and tuned into God’s miracles that take place all around us. We need to slow down from our rapid paces and notice. We don’t have to travel around the world to experience wonder. It is right in front of us every day when we learn to see. Like Mary, we need to learn how to ponder. We do that by:

Savoring Nature. Just look up and see the night sky or listen to the sounds of a babbling creek. Take a walk and feel the breeze across our face or watch the cloud formations for five minutes. Simply lose ourselves in the wonder of God’s creation.

Creating Margin. We need unstructured, unhurried time to savor the miracles of life. We need to wonder more. We need to play and laugh more.

Treasuring Creativity. Notice a piece of art that stirs the awe within us. Savor the majesty of a beautiful piece of music that touches our souls. Marvel at a beautiful poem or the Golden Gate bridge.

Being Mindful. That is what Mary teaches us. In ordinary life, she witnessed the miracle of Jesus growing up. She saw his first step and listened to his first attempts at reading the Law. We can be tuned into life around us. When we notice, we allow the peace within us to rise. During Lent, we need to battle the tug-of-war between the busy, non-stop culture in which we live, and the beautiful wonder of living in harmony with the Kingdom of God. And may we learn from Mary how to follow her Son.

Day Nineteen | March 26

Losing Jesus :: Distractedness

“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us of our miseries; and yet it is, itself, the greatest of our miseries.”

– Blaise Pascal

Every year at a local resort, a thousand tons of ice are brought in for a festive Christmastime display. Constructed entirely from ice, the displays are incredible to behold. There are scenes from movies and from cartoons; and, at the last, a wondrous display of the nativity. Carved from pure, clear ice, the frozen creche glows with radiant, dazzling light.

But midway through the exhibition, there’s an ice slide for kids. And though the nativity was (of

course) my favorite room, the year we took the boys, the slide was (of course) theirs. We spent nearly an hour letting them go up and down in the freezing cold. Luckily, the company that produces the show gives each visitor a parka – the exact same parka. And the identical coats would not have been a problem for us, had we not lost Ford. He was four.

And he was precocious.

And he really liked that slide.

So, without my wife or me knowing, he double backed on us. I thought Keri had an eye on him, and she thought the same of me. Panic set in the moment we realized he was gone… and all those identical coats didn’t help us in our search.

We’ve all had moments like that… even Mary. She and Joseph and Jesus had been to Jerusalem for the Passover. Jesus was twelve, and his parents were distracted. Setting off for Nazareth, lost in all their discussions and distractions and plans, they traveled an entire day before they realized that their Son was missing. Going straightway back to the city, it took another three days of searching before finally finding Him “in [his] Father’s house” (Luke 2:41-52).

And there is something quaintly comforting in knowing that we are not the only parents to lose track of our child. Mary lost hers, too.

But she lost track of the Savior of the world. … and I wonder how often I do the same. How often do I lose track of Jesus?

Facing a war of ten thousand tugs, battered by the constant, unceasing pressure to deliver, we live in a world rife with distractions. There is so much that demands our attention, and they’re good things. It’s not that we’re trifling away our time with meager pursuits. No, we’re involved with charities and with schools. We’re trying to advance our careers and our families. They’re all good things, but I wonder how often the good distracts us from the great.

We’ve let the little things become big things... and, as such, we’ve let the big things grow little. We’ve let the big things: the things of God, the things of holiness, the things of righteousness grow little. We’ve let justice and joy and kindness and grace grow little – and all because we’ve gotten distracted from God... or, maybe, it is that we’ve just let God grow little.

This season, Lent, calls us back to Jerusalem. It tells us to seek and to search for the Lord. We know where He is, and we know how to find Him. It’s simply ours to go – all we who’ve lost track of Jesus.

Day Twenty | March 27

Wedding at Cana :: Certainty

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do.”

– Lewis Carroll

Istruggled with answering a call to ministry for seven years. I chased a lot of dreams and ambitions fighting that call. I struggled with the uncertainty and with doubts about the process of ordination. Finally, I surrendered to what I heard God saying to me. When I told my family what I had been going through, my mother’s response surprised me. She said, “I’ve known you were going to be a pastor since you were a little boy.” In shock, I looked at her and said, “I wish you had told me!”

We are blessed when we have people in our lives who can see what we cannot – people with insight and wisdom about God’s direction, people who have the certainty of the right thing to do. We are wise when we learn to listen and trust those people.

We see that with Mary and Jesus in one of Jesus’ most stunning miracles.

Having just called his disciples, Jesus was invited to a wedding, so He brought them along with Him. This family was obviously close because Mary was also there. Weddings were a big deal in their culture. This family would have saved money for years for this big celebration. But a problem arose: they ran out of wine. This seems trivial to us, but in their culture this would be shocking. It would be an act of great shame that would have humiliated the host. So Mary went and reported the problem to Jesus. Jesus answered her, “Mama, don’t get me involved in this… the time has not yet come for miracles.”

But Mary had great insight… and also great faith. She went to the servants and then pointed Jesus out and said, “Do whatever He tells you to do.” Jesus probably sighed, but He trusted his mother’s discernment. He told the servants to fill the jars with water and then, to report to the master of the banquet. On tasting the contents of the jars,

the master was stunned. He tasted expensive, exquisite wine beyond this family’s means. John would go on to this moment: “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11).

Mary knew. Jesus was still considering the timing of his ministry. He knew the fickle nature of people, that would demand more and more once his miracles began. But his mother knew that it was time.

Poet Wendell Berry has a short story called “The Wild Birds.” In it, one of the characters says: “The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows and who don’t.” People with the certainty of our connection to each other and to God are the ones who guide our way.

In fact, many scholars have concluded that you cannot fully understand John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, until you understand his mother, Susanna. She was so instrumental in his life that she inevitably affected the movement and its direction. Wesley trusted her insight and her wisdom.

During Lent, we focus on how we live the faith. Do we have trusted friends, advisors, and family

members who have the gift of insight? Do we listen and trust them when we face uncertainty? Do we understand the value of these wise mentors?

When the will of Henry J. Heinz was read, it contained the following statement:

“Looking forward to the time when my earthly career will end, I desire to set forth at the very beginning of this will, as the most important item in it, a confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior. I also desire to bear witness to the fact that throughout my life, in which there were unusual joys and sorrows, I have been wonderfully sustained by my faith in God through Jesus Christ. This legacy was left me by my consecrated mother, a woman of strong faith, and to it I attribute any success I have attained.”

Day TwentyOne | March 28

TWNTYONE

Mary at the Door :: Letting Go

“Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man.”

– G.K. Chesterton

Jesus’ teaching had turned a corner…and there was no going back. He was calling out the Pharisees… publicly. He was healing on the Sabbath… publicly. He was touching the untouchable and doing the unthinkable. And He was doing it all publicly.

And the people couldn’t get enough.

For He taught as One with authority, and not as their teachers of the Law. He lived and He loved and He served with grace – tending to the lowly and eating with the lost. He was saying what He

had come to say, and He was doing what He had come to do. It was Salvation’s plan for the world. And Mary simply stood there. On the edges of the crowd. At the threshold of the door.

This mother who’d held her Savior in her arms now had to give him to the world. She had to let go. … and letting go is hard.

In fact, it’s harder than holding on.

We know it to be true from our own personal experiences: the tug on our hearts dropping our kids off at kindergarten for the very first time or, at college, saying goodbye for the very last. We are not used to standing by. We’re not wired for letting go. But, in life as in faith, that is what is commanded.

Speak to any educator, and they’ll tell you that there is an interesting new trend in families these days. Long gone are the days of the “helicopter parent.” Today, the new phenomena are called “bulldozer parents” – moms and dads who clear the path for their child. It’s not enough now for a parent simply to hover and brood and wait; today, researchers are finding that parents are actively pushing all obstacles aside to ensure that their kid is the best. They’re not letting go.

And I get it: we want the best for our kids (no matter their age) … but sometimes what’s best

for them is for them to learn how to deal with the repercussions of their own decisions. Sometimes what’s best for our kids is for them to learn the lessons that only come from failure… no excuses, no exceptions.

Mary didn’t dote. And God doesn’t dote. He is near. Certainly. Always. But He does not dote. He does not guarantee a painless, strugglefree life. Faith is no shield from woe. Unfortunately, many have lost their faith because they swallowed the poison of that lie – gulping it down because of the sweetness of its taste. No, if this season teaches us anything, it is that the true life of faith is one of pain and sacrifice and drudgery. It is a life marked by the ostracism of holiness and the ridicule of grace – always seen from the bottom and never from the top. Faith is a life lived for others and never for oneself. It is a life lived for God and never the other way around. God is neither a helicopter nor a bulldozer. If anything, our God is a tiller: turning up the fertile soil of our souls that the seed of his Gospel might grow the wholesome fruit of good and selfless works in us.

Day TwentyTwo |

March 29

TWENTYTWO

Mary at the Cross :: Presence

“We convince by our presence.”

– Walt Whitman

The most haunting moment at the cross is the emotional exchange between Jesus and his mother. All the strong leaders among the disciples had run. They were hunkered down in fear, wondering what was next. At the cross was Jesus’ mother, Mary, two other women named Mary, and the youngest disciple, John.  Jesus looked down and saw His mother’s broken heart and spoke tenderly to her, “Woman, here is

your son.” He, then, looked at young John and said, “Here is your mother” (John 19:26-27).

Mary knew. She had witnessed the scheming of the Pharisees. She had heard Jesus warn repeatedly about the cross. Her mind had to be flooded with memories of Bethlehem, when she first kissed her baby boy. And the love she felt then, she felt now; knowing that soon her Baby Boy would walk where angels tread.

In that hour, she gave Him the greatest gift she had: her presence. We need to learn in the tugof-war of grief, between great love and breaking hearts, that our presence is the best gift we can give.

We need to show up and be present with people who are hurting. A woman who had suffered great loss made an insightful comment: “Do something. Say something. A quick phone call, a note, a text. If you don’t know what to say, say that. Just let the person know that you are thinking about them. It’s hard enough losing someone you love, but the silence from everyone else is very isolating and lonely.”

We also need to be present after the initial wave of support has passed. As time moves on, the initial outpouring of support often diminishes, but the grieving process continues. Staying connected, offering support, or simply checking in can make a

significant difference during this extended period of grief and is so important to someone who is hurting.

Mary’s presence at the cross reminded Jesus: You are not alone in this. God is with You. I am with You. And, together, we will cross over to the other side. That is the message that presence always conveys.

During World War I, a chaplain in the French army used the 23rd Psalm to encourage soldiers before battle. He would urge them to repeat the opening words of the Psalm using their fingers: Little Finger: The Ring Finger: Lord Middle Finger: Is Index Finger: My Thumb: Shepherd

The chaplain urged them to memorize this, and to repeat the words whenever they were afraid and needed strength. He also placed special emphasis on the message of the index finger: My. He reminded the soldiers that God is a personal shepherd with a personal mission: to get them through the valley and to get them home. The chaplain’s words impacted one young man. After a battle he was found dead, but when they examined his body, they noticed that his right hand was clutching the index finger of his left hand. He

died with a prayer on his heart, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

At the darkest hour, in the darkest time, that is the message that Mary was sending to her Son.

Week Five:

Peter: A Betrayer’s Conflict

Peter: A Betrayer’s Conflict

“Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’”

– Matthew 14:28-31

Day TwentyThree | March 31

The Call :: Priorities

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

– Stephen Covey

When opportunities come our way, how do we respond? Do we think, “this is interesting, but it’s really not the right time to consider.” “I would like to do that, but…” – and we fill in the blank with our excuses. The disturbing reality of following Jesus is that the call is rarely clear or convenient. We can find ourselves living our faith in theory. We have a whole lot of things we want to do, things we think are important, and

one day we will get around to it. We face the tugof-war of good intentions versus what we actually do. There is actually much Texas folk wisdom that speak to this struggle:

• He writes checks he can’t cash.

• The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

• Big hat, no cattle.

• He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.

• Just because a chicken has wings doesn’t mean it can fly.

• You can put your boots in the oven, but that doesn’t make them biscuits.

It is this inner conflict of good intentions versus outer actions that Peter faced at work one day.

Jesus had been baptized by John the Baptist and then disappeared into the wilderness. People who longed for the Messiah heard about this event and wondered, “What’s going to happen next?” With their questions and conversations going on, Jesus showed up on the seashore where Peter and his brother Andrew were fishing. They were casting their nets into the Sea of Galilee; and Jesus said, “Come follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

Notice Peter’s response. He didn’t say, “Jesus, come tell me a little more about what that means.”

Or “Let me finish the day’s fishing and take an

inventory of my assets to see if I can afford to take off work.” Or “Let me go check with my wife and see if it’s convenient with our schedule.”

No, Matthew 4:20 says, “At once they left their nets and followed him.”

At once. Immediately. Invitations to respond to a call don’t last forever. There is always an expiration date on an opportunity. During Lent, we pray for the Lord to nudge us; to call us to be more faithful in following. We pray for priorities that are right and holy and true. We may get a nudge to finally attend that Bible Study or go on that mission project or sing in the choir or find a ministry in which to serve. How do we handle those nudges? We need to remember how a call works:

• It is rarely convenient.

• We never feel qualified.

• Usually, we are nervous or scared to move out of our comfort zones.

But we learn from Peter that Jesus does not use the ones who are good enough or most qualified, but the ones who are willing. How do we respond to our calls that constantly come? Will it be said of us, “At once they left their nets and followed Him.”?

Day TwentyFour |

TWENTYFOUR

April 1

Walking on Water :: Ambition

“When ambition ends, happiness begins.”

– Thomas Merton

He sat in the boat, dripping wet – his head in his hands and his heart in his throat. There was nothing to say. He had failed… but not at first. At first, he was doing it. He was actually walking on water. He was doing the very thing his Master was doing. And it wasn’t the only miracle he’d been a part of that day. He had just seen thousands fed from two small fish and five loaves of bread. He had seen the Lord’s power at work, and he trusted Him.

“Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water,” he’d shouted through the storm.

“Come,” Jesus had said.

It was a noble ambition, a worthy goal: to do the thing Jesus was doing. It was brave, and it was bold. Gutsy.

But all too soon, Peter’s focus shifted. Rather than looking at the Lord, he began looking at himself. He began looking at the waves and the water and the wind. He began looking at all that stood against him, at the impossibility of it all. And he began to sink.

He took his eyes off Jesus. … and he began to sink.

But here’s what I love about Peter: he doesn’t swim back to the boat. Peter doesn’t try to save himself. Instead, he calls out to the Lord: “Save me!” And “immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him” (Matthew 14:31).

Immediately. The same powerful hands that had flung the stars in place, the same loving hands that would be pierced to save us all, reached down to save this one.

What was it that led Peter out of that boat, though? What compelled him to ask Jesus to allow him to come? Was it faith? Courage? Ambition? Pride? From my own out-of-the-boat exploits, it was probably a conflicted amalgam of them all.

He wanted to follow Jesus. He wanted to do something big… but, being Peter, he wanted others to see it, too.

Let’s not be fooled (especially on April Fool’s Day). In faith, we have to get out of the boat. We have to leave the safe confines of predictable Christianity to follow Jesus into the unknown – out on the waters, against the wind and the waves. That should be our hope, our prayer, our ambition, our call.

But something happens when our ambition takes its eyes off Christ. It sinks. For such ambition runs arbitrary to the Gospel message. Lent entices us to return: to return to the simplicity of faith, to return to the confession of soul, to return to the purity of mind. For it is only us – we who’ve been touched and encouraged by the power of Calvary – who know that our honest, water-logged failures don’t get to define us. It’s only the courageous saints who dare fall, straining for righteousness, who know the comfort of the One who stoops to pick us up. Our mistakes are a certainty; but so, too, are the grace and forgiveness the repentant soul discovers in the hands of the Lord.

Day TwentyFive | April 2

Get Thee Behind Me :: Pride

“None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves.”

– Charles Spurgeon

All of Galilee was abuzz over Jesus’ ministry. People were talking about the teaching, the miracles, and the lives changed. As He was traveling with the disciples, He asked them: “Who do people say that I am?” And they repeated what they had overheard. The people are saying you are John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or another prophet. They kept walking and then Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter

immediately jumped in. He responded, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Peter was the first to articulate what they were all thinking. And what happened next had to be one of the high-water marks of Peter’s life. Peter is the strong leader. He is outspoken and tempestuous. He may be wrong, but he is never in doubt. Jesus recognized his insight and responded with this incredible recognition and commission: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16: 17-19).

After these words, we can almost see Peter. His chest is swelling, and his lip is protruding. He is thinking, “Give me some water to walk on now! I won’t need any help this time!”

Peter is the picture of puffed-up swollen pride.

And what followed is the conflicted nature of believing our own press clippings. Jesus continued to teach and warn them about the cross that was ahead. And Peter, full of bravado, jumps in and says, “Never Lord. We will not let that happen

to you.” Jesus follows up Peter’s recognition with a stern rebuke: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things”(Matthew 16:23).

From rock to stumbling block. Peter learned again the lesson we must learn over and over again: to not take ourselves and our opinions too seriously. We, mortals, who live “seeing in a mirror dimly” must:

• Keep our eyes on Jesus.

• Listen to Jesus.

• Trust in Jesus.

Morton Kelsey wrote a book entitled Resurrection where he reiterates the lesson of Peter: “When we have all we need; when we are in power and in health; when we are admired and happy, we have a tendency to think we attained that position by our own efforts and that we are not vulnerable to evil. When we have no God, we often believe that we are gods. It is very difficult to be God and have a saving God at the same time. Jesus is trying to tell us that to be open to the infinite love and power and mercy of God, we must realize that we need Him. The contented and selfsufficient often forget this.”

Day TwentySix | April 3

Denials :: Regret

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

– Winston Churchill

Iwill confess something here that I’ve only ever told my wife and Pastor John. Years ago, I went whitewater rafting with some buddies. It was supposed to be a six-hour adventure down some of the most technical rapids in the country… and I was exhilarated. I had been looking forward to the trip for months; and when it finally arrived, it didn’t disappoint. The water was high. The rapids

were fast. It was everything I wanted it to be. But I couldn’t enjoy it.

You see, earlier in the day, before even getting into the raft, our guide had asked us to introduce ourselves: to share our name, where we lived, and what we did for a living. And that was where my problem began. I had balked. Before even getting into the raft, I’d sunk. I told everyone that I was a writer (I mean, I do a lot of writing… so it wasn’t an outright lie – at least, that’s what I tried to tell myself). And it wasn’t that I was (or am) ashamed to be a pastor. It was simply that I assumed absolute strangers wouldn’t want to be in a boat for six hours with a preacher. People change when they learn you’re a preacher: they tighten up and clinch and become less and less themselves. And I didn’t want to be a kill-joy. So I fudged.

I ensured them six hours of adventure. And I ensured myself six hours (and twenty years) of conviction.

To this day, I regret that decision. I regret not sharing my faith. I regret not standing up. I regret not allowing them the opportunity to see that preachers know how to have fun, too. And all because I had denied the Lord.

I wonder if that’s how Peter felt. Three times he was given the opportunity to take a stand. Three times he was asked about

Jesus. And three times he denied Him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he rejected. Now, we have to give Peter this: at least he was there. All the other disciples had turned and run away in the garden. At least Peter followed Jesus to the high priest’s courtyard. He was there. He was close… but maybe that made it even crueler.

In fact, Luke records that, with Peter’s third denial, the rooster crowed. And “the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:61-62).

Failure.

Spiritual failure. Ultimate failure.

To look deeply into the eyes of One he’d just betrayed. To see his hurt and his pain… and his merciful, disappointed understanding. The rooster’s crow was a wake-up call. Conviction tugging one way. Cowardice tugging another. Peter woke from his fearful stupor to the reality of what he’d just done.

And we’re all in the same boat.

We, excuse-makers and buck-passers, are all in the same boat. We have regrets and disappointments: disappointments with others…

but mostly with ourselves. And we feel the Spirit calling. We feel his gentle tug towards home. That’s conviction. It’s God trying to make right all that we’ve let go wrong. It’s God not giving up on us –even when we’re tempted (like Peter) to give up on ourselves. For regret does not empty yesterday of its sorrows; it merely deprives today of its joys. But conviction wants to use it.

Conviction wants to use our faults and our failures to teach us. To make us better. To make us more like Christ. It is the way of sanctification. And it’s all about our choices: our day-in, day-out decisions about who we want to be and about Who we want to serve. When our flesh wants payback, faith demands grace. When our flesh screams Now, faith whispers Wait. When our flesh seeks convenience and utility and haste, faith suggests endurance and prudence and trust. In this battle in – and for – our souls, let us be led by the words of the Psalmist: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7).

Day TwentySeven | April 4

Do You Love Me :: Redemption

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.”

– Soren Kierkegaard

Aformer bishop of ours was a fan of the phrase “Moral Therapeutic Deism.” He ran across it somewhere in a book he was reading, but it’s a fascinating (and tragically real) phenomenon: that too many Christians are moral therapeutic Deists. Yes, we believe that God exists (Deism), that we’re supposed to do good (that’s the

Moral part), and that it’s all supposed to make us feel good... like Christianity is just some mass form of therapy.

And that is problematic. If our faith does nothing more than make us better versions of ourselves, then we’ve missed the point because it’s supposed to make us more like Jesus. In fact, a faith that’s built solely upon good deeds and warm fuzzies denies Jesus his rightful place on the throne of our lives. It denies Him his rightful rule and lordship over our goals and priorities and decisions. And if our faith is like that, then it’s just another distraction from our mission of following Christ.

And Peter had followed Him… up until he didn’t. Faced with the reality of his denials, Peter quit. Seeing his Master crucified, he left. And when the Gospel of John picks up his story, Peter is back home again. Peter is fishing again. Peter had left the ministry behind to go back to what was known and typical and safe. He had even left behind his name. At the end of John’s gospel, Jesus calls Peter, Simon (John 21:15).

Like Jacob generations before, Peter felt the tug. As Jacob always fought Israel, now Simon was fighting Peter. It is the inner conflict we all know: the person of faith fighting fear, wanting to follow but prone to falling.

And we hear Jesus’ word too: Do you love me? “Yes, Lord,” we answer, “we love you!”

Three times, the Lord would ask. And three times, Simon would answer. But there’s a truth hidden in the Greek. More than just a three-fold redemption of his betrayal, this was a discipleship moment.

Jesus asks: “Simon, do you love me?” Do you agape me? Do you love me unconditionally? Are you head-over-heels, no-holds-barred in love with me? “Yes, Lord,” Peter responds. Then Jesus asked again: “Simon, do you agape me?” “Yes, Lord!” But then, Jesus asked a third time: “Peter, do you really phileo me” ... do you really only love me because of what I can do for you? Are there limits? And Peter was struck: “Yes, Lord, you know all things: I phileo you.”

But here’s the twist: nothing changes – even with this honest confession – Lord, my love for You isn’t where it needs to be – Jesus’ job for Peter never changed: feed my sheep. Do your part. I still have a plan for you... and I still agape you.

Jesus redeems his failure. And as we go on to read, Peter does get there; he gets it in time… and maybe it’s because of this moment. Maybe it’s because of what happened on this morning by the lakeshore that Peter would go on to be one of the greatest leaders the Church would ever know, that

he’d find that agape love for God and offer his life for the sake of the Gospel!

Peter learned what we need to learn: that we are not our failure, that we are not our shame. We are not defined by our worst moments because we can be defined by Christ’s best. But we have to get real. We have to face all that we’ve done…and all that we’ve left undone. We have to confess what we’ve said and all we’ve left unsaid. We have to own our doubts and our struggles and our sin. For seeking to forget only makes our exile longer. The secret of redemption lies in remembrance: remembering what we’ve done… and what’s been done for us.

And no watered-down, weak-kneed faith compels that sort of sober, trusting honesty. It is only a faith rooted in Golgotha, it is only a faith sturdied by the cross that allows us to sing: “Redeemed!

How I love to proclaim it! Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb!”

Day TwentyEight | April 5

Cornelius :: Prejudice & Purpose

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

– William James

One of the iconic moments of the 1980’s happened on June 12, 1987, in Berlin.

President Ronald Regan delivered an address at the Brandenburg Gate that has become commonly known by a key phrase from the middle of the speech: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The impact of this speech inside the Kremlin became widely known only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

That phrase, “Tear down this wall,” has always been one of the clarion calls of Christianity. Jesus came tearing down walls that divided people.

He encountered people considered outsiders by the religious elite of His day: the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the tax collectors and sinners. It was his insistence on tearing down the walls that divided people that set the stage for His great commission; his final instruction to his followers was to “go into all the world and make disciples of all people.”

Peter learned that lesson in a vivid way, in a way that paved the path for the early church to tear down the walls that divided them, for the early Christians didn’t know what to do with Gentiles who did not practice the Jewish dietary laws. In the midst of that debate, Peter had a graphic dream where he saw all the foods he had been taught not to eat, all the “creepy, crawly, things.” And he was repulsed. But a voice told him to eat.

He bowed up in disgust. He indignantly replied, “Heaven forbid! By no means will I do this. I will not profane myself by doing this.” The voice responded to him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

You talk about conflicted. Peter was challenged with a tug-of-war between what he had always been taught and a new way of seeing faith. But

Peter was stubborn. He fought this new insight with all of his might. In fact, he had to be told three times (a common theme in his life). As he processed this dream, though, he was summoned to the house of Cornelius the Gentile to share the Good News of Jesus. And he went.

Peter pushed against his preconceived ideas. He challenged his prejudice toward Gentiles. He worked through his conflicts and would be instrumental in launching Christianity on its worldchanging mission… but it had to begin with a personal change.

Peter teaches us one of the enduring lessons of following Jesus: We are all students. God is forever pushing against the boundaries of what we know – and what we think we know. Jesus said, “You can’t put new wine in old wineskins.” The Holy Spirit is ever stretching and expanding us; and if we are brittle and unchangeable, we can’t grow with the Spirit. And it’s here where Lent begs us to ask: What walls do we need to tear down?

Week Six:

Paul: A Convert’s Conflict

Paul: A Convert’s Conflict

“Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’”

– Acts 9:1-5

Day TwentyNine | April 7

The Stoning of Stephen :: Self-Righteousness

“The

self-righteous have their fig leaves so tightly bound that they have forgotten the seeping wounds beneath the foliage.”

– Mark Lowry

The Book of Acts records one of the most pivotal moments in the history of the early church: the stoning of Stephen. Stephen was a remarkably able preacher; filled with the Holy Spirit, he was doing incredible ministry. The Jewish Supreme Court had tried to end this fledgling movement by crucifying Jesus. But his followers claimed that He was alive and kept doing even

more and more dramatic ministry in His name. In frustration, the Court brought Stephen before them to intimidate him and stop his preaching. There he preached one of the most profound sermons in the history of the church (found in Acts 7). He recounted the history of Israel and summarized it by indicting the religious elite judging him. He said, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.’”

Unmoved by his words, they respond to this message in rage. They were furious. They were indignant. And they rushed Stephen as they gnashed their teeth at him. They then took him out and stoned him to death. One of the young Jewish leaders present at the execution was a young man named Saul. As he witnessed that dramatic scene, he experienced that tug-of-war in his soul: He was zealous to follow the Law. And when he studied Jesus’ file it was filled with breaches to the Sanhedrin’s teaching: He seemingly made light of the Sabbath law. He hung out with tax collectors

and sinners. In their black-and-white world, if Jesus was right then they were wrong.

Saul approved of the leaders’ rage and their sentence of death… but, at the same time, he saw something in Stephen’s death that rattled him. A calm. A confidence in God. A light shining forth from heaven. And as Stephen died, he heard words that further shook him, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

In time, this mental tug-of-war would lead to his own conversion. Saul, who would become Paul after his conversion, struggled mightily to make sense of the conflict between his zeal of the Law and the love and mercy that Jesus taught. People who were down and out, were shunned by the religious folk in their day. They were drawn to Jesus. He talked to them and broke bread with them. He hung out and laughed with them. And the religious elite couldn’t stand that.

Here is the challenge of our day. To those outside the faith, Christians can seem more like Pharisees than they do like Jesus. One college student made this comment, “Christians like to hear themselves talk. They are arrogant about their beliefs, but they never bother figuring out what other people actually think. They don’t seem to be very compassionate, especially when they feel strongly about something.”

Saul changed when he became Paul. He learned that we will never win a person to faith unless they see our genuine love and concern for them. People want to see the love of Jesus in us, the way that Paul saw it in Stephen. That moment planted a seed that changed his life. This Lent, will we plant that seed of love that will impact others? St. Francis of Assisi got to the heart of this: “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching... as for me, I desire this privilege from the Lord, that never may I have any privilege from man, except to do reverence to all, and to convert the world by obedience to the Holy Rule rather by example, than by word.”

Day Thirty | April 8

THIRTY

The Damascus Road :: Surrender

“All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live.”

– Judson Van DeVenter, “I Surrender All”

“For some time, I had struggled between developing my talents in the field of art and going into full-time evangelistic work,” Judson Van DeVenter shared in an interview once. “At last, the pivotal hour of my life came; and I surrendered all. A new day was ushered into my life. I became an evangelist and discovered down deep in my soul a talent hitherto unknown to me. God had hidden a song in my heart; and touching a tender chord, He caused me to sing.”

Born in a Methodist home, Van DeVenter would pen the words to the beloved hymn “I Surrender

All” – a song that has become the unofficial soundtrack to millions of decisions for Christ. In fact, I can’t count the number of times that I walked an aisle, responding to the Spirit’s lead, accompanied only by his words. And I know I’m not alone: his song would also go on to deeply inspire another young evangelist named Billy Graham. But why do his words touch us so? Why do his lyrics stir us and challenge us and move us to kneel at altars and prayer rails? Maybe it is that his song captured the sentiment our souls aren’t artful enough to express: our deepest longings to be connected to the Lord.

That was Paul’s story, too… he just didn’t know it. Leaving from Jerusalem, Saul (who would come to be called Paul) was on another murderous mission. Acts 9 tells us that he was being sent to Damascus to arrest and condemn those following this man named Jesus. Powerful. Connected. Brilliant. Respected. Saul was the envy of his peers – rising through the Pharisees’ ranks with deft promise and skill. And it was just another day – protecting the traditions handed down from Moses, defending the faith as best he knew how, doing what he’d been taught was right and good and true. It was a day like any other.

Then the Light struck.

And the Voice boomed.

Calling Saul by name, the Lord confronted him: “Why are you persecuting me?” Why are you doing what you’re doing? Why do you believe what you believe? All your teachings and all your rules: they’re getting in the way… and so is your sight –it’s all blinding you to the Truth.

And with that, Saul was stricken blind. For three days, he couldn’t see. For three days, he drinks no water. For three days, he eats no bread. For three days, in the blinding darkness of sightlessness, he sits and he waits. We’re told only that he has a vision: his soul sees a man named Ananias come to heal him on a street called Straight.

Three days.

God does big things in three days.

Jonah is rerouted.

Esther is emboldened.

Death is defeated!

And it only took three days.

For Saul, those three days changed everything. On a mission to destroy the faith, he found faith. Determined to capture Christians, he met the Christ. And when Ananias arrived, he found a different man: humbled, broken, surrendered.

For surely, Saul had to have been conflicted: who he once was versus who he was coming to be; everything he once believed and every way he saw

the world… and, now, blindness had changed his sight. Surely, those three days saw his spirit tugged in war.

As the scales fell from his eyes, he left it all behind. All the fame. All the glory. All the connections and power and might. He surrendered it all: all that he was – and all that he ever wanted to be – to this One who called him by name. God still calls.

There must come a time in all our lives –whether it be three days, three years, or three decades – when we finally, totally abandon it all for the sake of Jesus Christ. There must come a time – our own blinding Damascus Road – when we make up our minds to let down our guard and let Jesus have his way in every area of our lives. For middling surrender is no surrender at all. For too many play the part of the faithful servant, donning the mask of the obliging Christian who attends church every weekend. But real obedience is not just obedience on the outside. It is, more importantly, obedience on the inside. It is us surrendering all our wants and what’s and why’s. It is us laying all our plans and all our intentions at the foot of the cross – not in begrudging obeisance, but in joyful obedience to our Lord… that we may, in His presence, daily live!

Day ThirtyOne | April 9

In Philippi :: Obedience

– St. Teresa of Avila THIRTYONE

“I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible.”

When I was about seven years old, my dad took my brother and me to the O’Connell Center on the campus of the University of Florida. He didn’t tell us what we were doing, just that we were going to see a show. It ended up that we went to see the Harlem Globetrotters play, and it was awesome: their tricks, their jokes – it was all so much fun. And, of course, the Globetrotters won. They always won, and the Washington Generals always lost. Back then, I didn’t know it was all

a script. But years ago, I ran across something fascinating: Back in January of 1971, it seems by some fluke, the Generals actually won. The Globetrotters had been going about their typical antics and had grown distracted from the score. And in the final seconds of the game, in a last-ditch effort to win, the Globetrotter’s buzzer-beating shot bounced off the rim... and they lost by one point.

The Generals weren’t expected to win. They weren’t supposed to win. Their job was to lose. And, in faith, ours is, too.

“Those who want to save their life will lose it,” Jesus said, “but those who lose their lives for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25). To lose ourselves in Christ – it is the call of the Gospel. It is to deny ourselves (not just during Lent), to pick up our cross, and to follow our Lord. It is the way of unswerving obedience.

Throughout his ministry, we see that in Paul. Beaten. Flogged. Shipwrecked. Stoned. Paul knew hunger, and he knew thirst. He’d had it all, and he’d given it all away. Paul knew the way of obedience: that its course never sidestepped hardship, that there was never a detour around pain. And we get a glimpse of how he fought the tugging temptation to balk: he worshipped.

The Book of Acts tells us that the Spirit was moving in a powerful way in the city of Philippi.

Paul and Silas were preaching and teaching and working miracles in Jesus’ name. But where there is progress for the Kingdom, there will always be pushback. The local businessmen, threatened by the Gospel’s message, accused Paul of troublemaking and treason. Without trial, Paul and Silas were beaten and brutalized and thrown into jail.

Rather than giving up, though – rather than complaining or whining or looking to place blame –Paul and Silas “sang songs and hymns at midnight” (Acts 16:25).

In the darkest corner of prison…

In the darkest hour of night…

In the darkest moment of living…

They trusted and hoped and prayed and sang. It’s that faithful, selfless, unflagging, unwavering obedience to which the true life of faith calls us. That is the price of discipleship: laying down whatever is in our hands and picking up a cross. Every moment of every day, we must choose the harder path; we must choose the more rugged road.

And the world will not understand. It’s incapable of understanding. And it will mock us and heckle us; it will try its best to distract us –to lure us away from climbing Golgotha’s hill. It’s a tempting offer, to be sure. Avoid the

pain. Avoid the ugliness. Take the easy way: forgiveness without repentance, conversion without confession, discipleship without discipline. It’s seductive, yes; but it’s all a lie. There is no shortcut to this all-consuming, all-fulfilling life with God. It is only forged in the fiercest refining fires of self-examination and confession: our confessing, both our sinfulness and God’s faithfulness. That’s how disciples are made: by obedience, by losing ourselves in Jesus… and finding ourselves there, too. For inasmuch as grace is free, it costs us everything.

Day ThirtyTwo | April 10

THIRTYTWO

With Barnabas :: Parting with Peace

“The

only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

– Alan Watts

An amazing moment happened at President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in January. He had chosen a political rival, a person he had defeated for the White House in 1976, Gerald Ford, to deliver the eulogy. Since President Carter outlived President Ford, Ford’s son, Steven, read the words his dad had written to fulfill the promise he made to his friend. Listen to a portion of his remarks from that day:

“By fate of a brief season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals, but for the many wonderful years that followed, friendship bonded us as no two presidents since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. According to a map, it’s a long way between Grand Rapids, Michigan and Plains, Georgia. But distances have a way of vanishing when measured in values rather than miles, and it was because of our shared values that Jimmy and I respected each other as adversaries even before we cherished one another as dear friends. Now this is not to say that Jimmy never got under my skin, but has there ever been a group of politicians that didn’t do that to one another? During our 1976 contest, Jimmy knew my political vulnerabilities, and he successfully pointed them out. Now I didn’t like it, but little could I know that the outcome of that 1976 election would bring about one of my deepest and most enduring friendships.

In the summer of 1981, the two of us found ourselves together again, this time aboard Air Force One bound for the funeral of the great peacemaker, Anwar Sadat. There’s an old line to the effect that two presidents in a room is one too many.

Frankly, I wondered how awkward that long flight might be to Cairo, and it was a long flight; but the return trip was not nearly long enough, for it was somewhere over the Atlantic that Jimmy and I forged a friendship that transcended politics. We immediately decided to exercise one of the privileges of a former president, forgetting that either one of us had ever said any harsh words about the other one in the heat of battle.”

When I heard those words, I thought of two of the heroes of the early church: Paul and Barnabas. They were organizing their second missionary journey, and Barnabas wanted to bring along his cousin, John Mark. The only problem was that Mark had dropped out of the first journey. Paul was serious-minded; he thought, “We don’t have time to coddle this young man.” Barnabas, on the other hand, was known as the “Son of Encouragement” who believed in second chances. They debated the issue and couldn’t agree. More than that, the Scriptures tell us that they had a sharp disagreement – so severe that they parted company. Barnabas and John Mark sailed off to Cyprus, and Paul and Silas traveled on to Syria and Cilicia. For years, this awkward split between two great leaders of the faith hung over the early church.

Until finally, later in life, they reconciled. There is nothing more beautiful and hopeful than when old rivals can make up. When we can transcend our differences and forgive harsh words spoken in the heat of battle, we offer a witness of how Christians should live and love. When we can move on from our slights and even laugh at ourselves, we offer a witness of hope to the greater community.

There is a famous statute known as Christ of the Andes, that stands on the border between Argentina and Chile. It represents the pledge between the two countries to live in peace. Shortly after the statute was erected, the Chileans took offense. They began to protest that the statute had its back turned toward Chile. When tempers were at their highest, a newspaper writer saved the day. He wrote an editorial that not only diffused the anger of Chileans; but actually made them laugh. The writer simply wrote; “The people of Argentina need more watching over than the people of Chile.”

Can we make peace? Can we resolve old wounds? Can we laugh at ourselves over moments when we have dug in our heels? Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Day ThirtyThree | April 11

In the Storm :: No Escape Clause

– The Breton Fisherman’s Prayer THIRTYTHREE

“Oh

God, thy sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.”

You can set your watches to it: on the very first Wednesday of every month – at precisely 1 p.m. – the City of Southlake tests its tornado sirens. From my office at the church, I can hear the klaxon’s cry: the whirring, droning tone of impending doom. Every month, right on schedule, I hear them preparing for disaster. But it’s all just a test.

… because that’s the thing about life’s disasters: they never come on schedule. The storms strike without warning, and the winds gale, and our little boats seems dwarfed by the waves. Call them addiction or anxiety. Call them guilt or grief. Call them disease or doubt or debt or divorce. Our storms have countless names.

The Apostle Paul knew the ravages of storms, too. Just like Jesus, Paul had been framed and arrested in Jerusalem; and after standing trial before the regional governor in Caesarea, he appealed his case to the emperor in Rome. Appealing to Rome was one thing but getting him there was another. After three ports, in the end, Paul’s keepers commandeered a cargo ship on Crete to take him to the capital city. Not long into their journey, though, the weather changed.

And it wasn’t just a storm… it was the perfect storm: a Nor’easter. The wind howled. The rain poured. And the cold, violent waves battered the ship. It went on for days, for weeks. And they did everything they knew to do: They lowered the sails, and they sailed into the heart of the storm in a cargo ship not built to take that sort of beating. Tossed to and fro, panic began to set in: They stopped eating… and they stopped hoping.

On the fourteenth day (as Acts 27 recounts), the outlook grew even dimmer. The ship had run into

the shallows; it was bound to be smashed against the rocks. Thinking only of survival, the soldiers lowered the lifeboats into the churning sea below and were about to set sail when Paul stopped them. The only way to be saved from the storm, he said, was to go through it together. Through it. Together.

Those are two powerful truths. Storms are inevitable… and so, too, is our will to survive. But Paul’s counsel then is good counsel now: we have to cut loose the lifeboats (Acts 27:32), for there is no “escape clause” in faith. There is no “easy out.” The only way to the other side of the storm is through. There is no going around it. There is no going the other way. There is only through… together.

The physical, emotional, spiritual storms that blow up in our homes and lives and families and jobs: Truth tells us that the only way to the other side of the storm is to go through them. Loss. Anger. Doubt. Grief. Guilt. Shame. The only way to find the peace on the other side is to dare to venture in, to dare to confront them, to risk the raging seas to find the freedom that awaits on the other side.

We have to commit. We have to believe. We have to fight the lurking temptation to bail. Is it

scary? Absolutely… but it’s not brave if we’re not scared. And there is courage in numbers, knowing that we don’t have to dare the thunderbolts alone.

Cutting loose the flimsy lifeboats of life means that we’re all in the same boat… and, in faith, we know that Jesus is in the boat with us.

Day ThirtyFour | April 12

THIRTYFOUR

In Rome :: Steadfastness

“Be

like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”

– Marcus Aurelius

The Apostle Paul was a man of action. He loved to travel and organize. He loved to meet new people and share the Gospel with new cultures. But he faced the greatest conflict of his life in his final two years. He wanted to go to Spain, to take the Gospel westward; instead, he ended up in a prison cell in Rome. This was not his plan, nor his heart’s desire. And yet some of

his finest ministry took place during this detour he didn’t want. He trained the Christian leaders who would carry on when he was gone. He reconciled old grievances. He wrote some of his most profound letters that have blessed the Church through the ages: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.

So often, we do not get to travel the road that we planned. How do we handle those times? How do we handle that tug-of-war: the pride that wants to quit when we don’t get what we wanted versus the call to be faithful wherever we are?

Michael Jordan is considered one of the great basketball players of all time, an athlete who transformed the game. He told the story of how he was cut from his varsity high school team when he was a sophomore. He said of that moment, “I was growing so much at the time that my ability did not match up to my height so I was kind of clumsy.” And yet in his disappointment, he did not quit. He became determined to keep working and developing his skills. Out of that letdown, he found a great sense of focus and determination. After he retired, he looked at the lessons he learned. He said, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions, I have been entrusted to take the gamewinning shot… and I missed. I have failed over and

over and over again in my life. And that’s precisely why I succeed.”

That is the lesson that Paul learned from that prison in Rome. Our greatest disappointments can lead to our greatest achievements, if we refuse to quit. That is why Paul said to live in this spirit: “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).

Week

Seven:

Holy Week: The Great Conflict

Holy Week: The Great Conflict

“When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” ’ They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside

in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.”

– Mark 11:1-11

Day ThirtyFive | April 14

THIRTYFIVE

The Crowd :: Who We Want v. Who He Is

“If the end brings me out all right, what’s said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Holy Week begins with a parade. It is an event that we re-tell and re-enact every year to highlight this most important week in Jesus’ life. Recorded in all four gospels, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is often introduced with the adjective “triumphal.” It is an exceptional welcome given to Jesus by the crowd. The emotion evokes the World Series parade a few years ago when the Rangers finally won the title. The disciples had to

be on top of the world. They were thinking, “This isn’t going to end so bad! No more of this cross business!” Jesus is at the height of his popularity. All along in the Gospels, Jesus had tried to delay this moment. He would tell them “Don’t tell the crowd about this miracle.” He commanded the demons not to tell the people that he was the Son of God. Jesus knew the dangers of popularity. He knew that the people who were shouting “Hosanna” were wanting an earthly king. He knew they wanted to overthrow the Romans and restore the Davidic monarchy. They were longing for the good old days of Solomon and world-wide respect.

Jesus knew that his Kingdom was not the kind of kingdom they were looking for; how quickly “hosanna” could turn to “crucify.” Jesus knew that this crowd that received him with singing and dancing and the waving of palms would be the same crowd that would later be so easily persuaded to cry for his blood – waving their fists, while demanding that Pilate release the murderer Barabbas instead. Many of these same people would look away as our Lord staggered through the streets of Jerusalem under the weight of his cross or, worse, join in the mockery and jeering.

Jesus knew the fickleness of human nature. And so, He looked out at the city and the people that He loved… and He wept. He shared his

deepest feelings with the crowd, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19: 42).

Holy Week begins with a question for us: Where are we going to be standing on Friday? It begs us to acknowledge the tug-of-war between the Messiah we want and the Messiah Jesus is. It asks us to be frank about our inner conflicts. Are we going to remain faithful to Jesus and huddle with the few faithful disciples, with broken hearts, standing under the cross? Or are we going to be among the fickle crowd, mocking the Lord from a distance or gone into hiding?

Holy Week demands our honesty:

• Do we welcome the Lord in good times and bad?

• Is our faith conditional? Do we worship, pray, give, and serve only when the Lord meets our agendas?

• Is our faith merely fire insurance? Do we forget about Jesus when it becomes inconvenient or unpopular to be his disciple?

• Is the “way of peace” hidden from our eyes? Instead of being seduced by the fickle nature of popularity, may we live in the spirit of the old hymn:

“Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Hold o’er my being absolute sway. Fill with thy Spirit till all shall see Christ only, always, living in me!”

Day ThirtySix | April 15

THIRTYSIX

The Pharisees :: Religion v. Relationship

“Let

your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”

– G.K. Chesterton

Several years ago, two teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida, were enjoying Senior Skip Day at the beach when they found themselves stranded in the ocean. They got caught in the currents and were taken out to sea when they realized that they might not make it back to shore. Weak and tired from fighting the waves for hours, they were two miles offshore when the two seventeen-year-olds started to pray, crying out to God for help.

“I cried out,” one of the boys told reporters, “If you really do have a plan for us, like, come on. Just bring something!” Praying and crying and barely staying afloat, they held onto each other as their legs started to cramp. And just in the nick of time, a boat pulled up. The captain said that, over all the wind and waves, over the rumble of the engines, he thought he’d heard a desperate scream. Exhausted and near the end, the boys told him that they’d called out to God for help. That’s precisely when he’d shown up. And this is the best part of the story: the boat’s name was Amen. It’s a great story… and maybe even a better picture of what we too often see faith being: a lifeline. It’s us using God and the things of God – prayer and worship and the Bible – to get our needs met… and the good Lord knows I’ve been guilty of doing that, too. But what we have to come to realize is that faith – real faith – is about us meeting God’s needs. It’s about us meeting God’s expectations. And it’s about us meeting others’ needs and each other’s needs, too.

Real faith is a deep, abiding relationship with the Lord. Convicted of our sins and convinced of our need, faith is us coming to the Savior with hands and hearts that are open – grasping for the only One who can redeem us and restore us. It is the life-giving, life-changing commerce between

our guilt and heaven’s grace. And there’s nothing we can do to earn it. We can only receive it… and grow in it.

And a relationship like that goes deeper and wider and higher and longer than mere religion ever could. Remember, it was a group of selfcertain religious experts who crucified the Savior.  That was the Pharisees’ great sin. Their sin was pride. Their sin was idolatrous certainty. Their sin was believing that righteousness could be attained by following the rules. It can’t. Righteousness is only found by following Jesus – by nurturing an ever-deepening relationship with Him that consumes us: mind, body, and soul. Anything less than that is the mere tug-of-war game-playing that inevitably leads to the disenchantment of spiritual poverty.

And just like every relationship, faith demands time and attention and care. Being a disciple, a student, an apprentice of Jesus means that we learn from Him, that we approach life the way He did: being open to the miracles of every day because faith isn’t mastered in a classroom, and it isn’t about doctrines that we master. Instead, faith is about a life that we live: one lived feebly and imperfectly. It’s about living and learning and doing and trying; It’s about failing and falling and then getting back up. For it’s not wisdom that never

makes a mistake; It’s wisdom that never makes the same mistake.

In fact, to live in this relationship, to live as a student of the Master allows us to admit that we don’t know it all. Like John Wooden quipped, “It’s what we learn after we ‘know it all’ that counts.” And if we are to err, let it be in daring greatly. Let our fall come from reaching for the stars, not in playing it safe with comfortable, easily reached dreams. Let the world call us naïve. Let them curse us as mad. Let them say of our collapse that it was epic and heroic and one-of-a-kind. Nothing less would suit dreamers (and doers) in the Kingdom of God. Amen.

THIRTYSEVEN

Day ThirtySeven | April 16

Judas v. Jesus :: Betrayal

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

– Thomas Edison

One of the haunting tragedies of Holy Week is the relationship between Jesus and Judas. As events hurdle on towards the cross, we see Jesus pleading, almost begging, Judas to wake up and recognize the hardness of his heart. And we see Judas becoming more dug-in with his agenda. Frustrated. Expectations not met. Maybe even trying to force Jesus’ hand to be the Messiah Judas wanted him to be.

Historically, we know very little about Judas. But in the Gospel accounts, he is always the outcast that doesn’t fit in with the other disciples. Scholars believe that he belonged to the Sicarii, the most radical Jewish group, some of whom were violent subversives. In the listing of Apostles he is always listed last. He was their treasurer, but he was suspected of stealing from their funds.

Of all the disciples, Judas most struggled to receive the message of the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. He could not leave his nationalist views of overthrowing Rome. He was frustrated that Jesus did not seize the momentum of Palm Sunday and start the anticipated revolt. Judas could not let go of his desire of earthly kingdoms. Judas could also not understand grace. In John 12, he criticized Jesus for wasting money in in allowing Mary to anoint his feel with expensive oil. “What a waste, what extravagance!” he was thinking. But Jesus defended Mary’s act of love that day; and, again, He tried to reach Judas with the message of the Kingdom.

Judas just could not get it… until it was too late. After betraying Jesus with the cruel intimacy of a kiss, Judas fully expected the others to start fighting. He expected that act to be the spark that would start the revolt. But Jesus commanded them to put away their swords. Jesus went voluntarily

with his captors; knowing full well that the divine drama had begun. Like all the others, Judas ran away and cowered with his thoughts. His betrayal. His selling Jesus out for silver. And when he realized what he had done, he felt crushing remorse. Matthew reports the scene: “When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’ But they said, ‘What is that to us? See to it yourself.’ Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:3-5).

The tragedy of this moment is that Judas had done nothing the other eleven disciples had not done. They all had agendas. They all struggled to grasp the idea of the Kingdom. They all cowered and fled and denied the Lord. They all were left with their shame and grief. The only difference between Judas and the others is that he gave up. He quit. He couldn’t get that God’s grace could also redeem and restore him.

The question of this day is this: Are we aware of our conflicted natures and recognize that there is a little bit of Judas in each one of us? Are we aware of that tug-of-war raging within us, the urge that has a hard time letting go of our agendas? Do we

have a hard time accepting grace for ourselves?

At the Last Supper, when Jesus announced that one of the disciples would betray him. The other eleven don’t point out Judas and say, “It’s him!”

“We knew this thief was up to no good!” No, they all ask the question: “Is it I?” They knew their doubts and fears and shortcomings all too well. Do we?

This awful moment is not the end of the story, though. Redemption will come. Forgiveness will come. Restoration will come. But they had to wait. They had to endure their shame. They had to withstand their embarrassment – determined not to quit and to go on. Will we learn from the other disciples and fight the Judas within?

Day ThirtyEight | April 17

THIRTYEIGHT

The Garden :: My Will v. Thy Will

(Maundy Thursday)

“…nevertheless...” – Jesus

It was a borrowed room. And this One who had been born in a borrowed stable, who’d ridden a borrowed donkey, and who’d soon be buried in a borrowed tomb stood. They had eaten their meal. They had talked. And they had laughed. And, by candlelight, they had basked in the presence of the One who created light. His closest friends were there, sharing food and sharing life. Even the one who would betray

him was there. Judas, with silver glinting in hand, leaned in and dipped his bread in the borrowed bowl that Jesus also used. They were close. Side by side they sat. And I wonder if their hands ever touched. I wonder if, in the midst of that holy supper, the sinful hands of the betrayer ever brushed against the Sacred, against those hands that would soon be pierced by cruelly forged iron. Jesus knew his plans. Jesus knew his heart. Still, though, he stood.

The selfless love of the Savior would soon be displayed before all the world; but there, in that borrowed space and borrowed time, He knelt and showed it only to them – to those with whom He’d traveled and served and healed. He knew that they, like us, needed something: a memory, an experience, a touch. And taking off his robe, He tied a borrowed towel around him and gave them the only thing that was actually his to give: He gave them his heart. He gave them an example. Washing their feet, Jesus gave them the picture of what faith truly is: stooping and loving and serving. Later, they would steal away. With stomachs full and feet damp, they went to the gnarled trees of Gethsemane. There, in the shadows of Jerusalem’s craggy walls our Lord would pray. Conflicted, Christ is, in this singular moment, at his most human and most divine. His borrowed humanity, already

wincing from the thoughts of what would come, cried out, “God, I don’t want to do this!” But his divinity could not leave it there, “… nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.”

Never since the first moment of creation –when explosive light shattered the darkness – had the tug been so violent or the war so intense. Never had the conflict been so real… and we know it, too: the inner and constant battle between what we want and what God wills.

Rarely do we recognize that this life – all of it – is simply on loan. It’s all borrowed. Maybe it’s that incessant lie of ownership, maybe it’s that relentless illusion of power that keeps us from real fulfillment, from real connection, and from real life. We’re dissatisfied. We’re frustrated. We’re empty – joyless and sad and lonely… so we try to fix it. One more diet. One more pill. One more try: a new house, a new job, a new girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse. But try as we may, nothing ever works. And, like the Apostle Paul, we cry out: “Who can save me from this mess?!”

Jesus.

Only Jesus.

Trusting Him. Following Him. Loving Him. Listening to Him and kneeling beside Him –praying the same prayer He prayed: “Father, not my will, but Thine be done.”

Day ThirtyNine | April 18

THIRTYNINE

The Cross :: Good v. Evil (Good Friday)

“If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.”

– Jean Cocteau

Choices.

Every day we make about 35,000 of them. Big choices. Small choices. But none of them inconsequential choices – for they all determine who (and Whose) we’ll be.

… and the conflict wages within.

Over thirty thousand times a day, we are confronted with moments of decision: moments for faithful obedience or opportunities to stray,

chances to live for God or chances to live for ourselves. They are the crossroads. They are the battlelines drawn in every human heart in the everraging, never-changing war between good and evil.

That was the landscape of Good Friday. It was a day of choices.

The Priests chose to connive.

Pilate chose to concede. The crowd chose a convict. And Christ chose a cross. Beaten. Bruised. Bloodied. Our Lord heard the crowd cry out, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Give us the rebel. Give us the murderer. Give us what we want and not Who we need!

And with that, Love was led away to die. They stretched out his broken body upon the cross; and with the deftness of a master, the soldiers drove spikes into sacred flesh. With cold precision, the soldiers went about their duties –never knowing that this Man that hung above them was the very Son of God, the Savior of the world. And on that hill, suspended between the earth He came to save and the God to whom He was returning, Jesus bore the sins of the world. He chose.

He chose to take upon Himself its sin and its shame. He chose to take upon Himself its

brokenness and its backwardness and its bile. He chose you, and He chose me – with all our faults and failures and falls. He chose us.

And with only thieves to attend him, Jesus cried out… and it was finished. The earth quaked, and the sun went black. Perfection had died. Hope was dead. Love was crucified. And evil thought it had won.

…but …

It wasn’t those torturous spikes that kept him on that cross. It was his love for us. It was his choice: his great concern for you and me. It was our sins and brokenness and wantonness that drove those nails into holy palms. It was our jealousy and pride and ambition that slammed a thorny crown onto his sacred brow. Yet, in the midst of all the pain, Christ died that we might find hope. He died that we might find peace. He died that we might finally find Life… that we might finally choose Him!

Day Forty | April 19

FORTY

The Tomb :: Light v. Dark (Holy Saturday)

“It is eerily terrifying that there is no sound when a heart breaks. Car accidents end with a bang, falling ends with a thud, even writing makes the scratching sound of pencil against paper. But the sound of a heart breaking is completely silent. Almost as though no one, not even the universe itself could create a sound for such devastation. Almost as though silence is the only way the universe could pay its respect to the sound of a heart falling apart.”

– Nikita Gill

The day between the horror of Good Friday and the joy of the resurrection is known as Holy Saturday. That empty day on our calendars between two high holy days means the

same thing to us that it did for Jesus’ followers. Hurriedly they had buried his body before the Sabbath began. Then they went home to rest. And to grieve. Sure, they remembered Jesus had said something about rising on the third day. But after those agonizing hours, his presence seemed a lifetime removed. In their hearts, the story was over. As they waited, Jesus’ body rested on a stone ledge in the dark.

His followers lingered, wondering what was next.

A pastor reflected on Holy Saturday after visiting the Garden tomb in Jerusalem. He wrote, “That was where Jesus spent Holy Saturday: in a dark hole in the ground, doing absolutely nothing. It was the Sabbath, after all. His friends had worked hard to make sure he was laid to rest before the sun went down. Then they went home to rest too, because that was what they did on Saturdays. Once it was clear that there was nothing they could do to secure their own lives or the lives of those they loved, they rested in the presence of the Maker of All Life and waited to see what would happen next. Though Christians speak of ‘witnesses to the resurrection,’ there were no witnesses. Everyone who saw Jesus alive again saw Him after. As many years as I have been listening to Easter sermons, I have never

heard anyone talk about that part. Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. Whatever happened to Jesus between Saturday and Sunday, it happened in the dark, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air. It happened where no one but Him understood what happened.”

That is the lesson of Holy Saturday. Between the great dramas of life, there is almost always a time of emptiness and waiting. A time of silence with nothing to do. A time where we are left with our thoughts and no other sounds to cover them. If we are willing to rest this Sabbath, our sorrow can be stirred with a hope that there is more to come. If we will allow ourselves to go back to that dark place where our eyes cannot see and our ears hear only our hearts, then in the stillness we can come close to Christ.

There, in that quiet cave, we can wait to see how the Maker of All Life will choose to come to us in the dark.