A Surprising Prayer

Just been doing some reading this afternoon in Destiny of the Republic, a book about the assassination of President James Garfield (half the blog readership is saying, “Wow, you really are a dork,”; one quarter is saying, “Wow, that actually sounds kinda cool,”; and one quarter is saying, “Garfield was assassinated? Betcha dollars to donuts that Odie was behind it.”). In the background, I had the preliminaries to the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race on.

As I read, I heard something that forced me to put my book down. Darrell Waltrip was giving an invocation (i.e., prayer). I was blown away as they panned across the crowds. Tens of thousands of people standing quietly, respectfully, hats off, eyes closed, as the Lord’s blessing was asked upon a sporting event. When Waltrip finished, a bagpipe quartet launched into an emotional Amazing Grace. As I watched, two thoughts kept going through my mind: “This is so cool!” and “This is on national TV?”

 

The opening ceremonies were concluded by a 21-gun salute followed by Taps, an excellent rendition of the National Anthem by a Blowfishless Hootie, and an awe-inspiring flyover by a B-52. Truly, one of the greatest intros to a sporting event that I’ve seen in quite a while.

I’m not sure why this all caught me so off-guard. I guess I’ve simply realized how sad it is that I should be this surprised over a prayer on TV. It just seems so non-televisiony – like it’s violating some law governing the separation between Church and Tube. Church belongs to God; television (except for the obligatory Sunday morning services and the very rare TBN show that does not worship the twin gods, Clairol and Maybelline) belongs to the other guy.

I’m old enough to remember the Billy Graham Crusades on TV (not that I really appreciated them interrupting my latest update on the happenings in the Cunningham family). I also remember the Waltons praying over their meals, something I have a hard time picturing the Kardashians or the Griffins doing. I know that it’s possible to have non-buffoon, non-bigotted, loving, caring Christians portrayed on the little screen.

 

Now, before I start sounding too much like a bitter, curmudgeonly old man (“Yeah, back in my day we only had three stations and they all showed the Jerry Lewis Telethon straight through the entire Labor Day weekend…and we liked it!” [said in bitter, curmudgeonly old man voice]), I realize that times have changed, that culture has changed, and that the Christian gray area has greatly expanded. I guess I’d just like to give an internet fist bump to NASCAR and Fox for reminding the nation that this is Sunday, that God still matters, and that people do still pray.

Oh, gotta go. Fox is showing a promo for their awesome new dating show “Take Me Out” where 30 ladies get to choose between various eligible bachelors. Looks fascinating. Wonder who’s giving their invocation?

Stop All This Living!

Been spending a little time this morning reading through stories on the Congressional Medal of Honor Society website (http://www.cmohs.org/) in preparation for Sunday. Talk about highs and lows of emotion. The stories of complete sacrifice by these men (and one woman – Dr. Mary Walker from the Battles of Bull Run, Chickamauga, and Atlanta) read like scenes from the best war-thriller novels – storming bunkers, jumping on grenades, carrying out wounded comrades, charging lines.

What’s different about these stories, however, is that right in the middle of reading about a soldier running ahead despite being mortally wounded, reality hits. These aren’t characters in a novel. These are real people. This really happened. Because of this man’s sacrifice, many actual families would have a chance to see their loved ones again. Because of this man’s sacrifice, his actual family wouldn’t.

I am so soft – so comfortable. Here are these men who sacrificed their own lives to help save someone else’s life. Yet here I am struggling with the willpower to get myself off the couch in order to go across my quiet, suburban street to help save someone’s soul.

Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than to lay down their life for a friend.” Now, unless I’m way off base on my eschatological interpretations, I’m figuring that the chances are remote that I’ll ever be called on to do this (besides that, I’m much too old for the military to want me, and, with the Great Red Menace gone the way of month-old borscht, my dreams of becoming one of the Wolverines are out the window, too). So, if I’m not going to be called on to physically lay down my life for another, how else can I lay it down?

I am so soft – so comfortable. Yet Christ calls me to something more. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” I’m doing way too much living. How can I lay down my life? By laying down my ease, laying down my comfort, laying down my hobbies, laying down my time, laying down my remote.

I don’t typically like to write this heavy, but this is where my study today has left me. Thinking. Mulling. Wondering just what all I need to change, so that along with Paul I can stop doing all this living and, finally, really start doing some living.

God in a Box

A good buddy of mine came over to fix my sprinklers yesterday. A couple weeks ago, when I had turned my outside water back on, things started happening that were not necessarily supposed to be happening. The fact that there was a problem was quite apparent; what that problem was, however, was far beyond where my limited expertise in sprinklerology could take me. So, Mick came over, quickly diagnosed it as a dual problem – stuck valve and bad sprinkler head – and said, “Let me go to my truck and get my plumbing box.”

Now, to someone like me who has a/one/uno box (sparsely populated with various orphaned sockets, a random assortment of screwdrivers, a hammer, and a long spool of heavy gauge wire which must have spontaneously generated in that dark, murky environ since I can think of no situation in which I would have actually purchased, let alone used, such an item), the fact that Mick has a box specific just to plumbing issues causes a bit of envy and no small amount of awe. You got a problem? Mick’s got just the box to fix it!

That put me in mind of a story I read a few days ago out of 1 Samuel 4. The Israelites and the Philistines were tussling again. A battle took place at Ebenezer, and the Israelites got the wood taken to them. After licking their wounds, they realize they’re faced with a situation – how do they defeat a Philistine army that is bigger, stronger, and better armed than they are.

Then, somebody spoke up, “Uh…don’t we have a box for that?”

And they did. They had the God-box – that fancy little Ark of the Covenant thing that pretty much just sat around Shiloh gathering dust while the Israelites did the hand-jive with Baal and Ashtoreth. Next thing you know, the Israelite army is lined up again ready to go – their God of Surpassing Crateness leading the way, attended by Eli the High Priest’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas (two guys who could give Charlie Sheen a lesson or two on “Winning”).

You’ve probably figured out the rest. Armies meet, Israel crumbles like a bunch of broccoli, the ark is captured, Hophni and Phinehas are killed (and all God’s people said…), and Eli, upon hearing the news of the captured ark, dies in such a way so as to have every teacher in every school in every nation crying out, “See, I told you so!”

Now, jumping 3,000 years forward, it’s easy for us to say, “Silly Israelites, you should know you can’t put God in a box.” However, I think I’ll hold off a minute before I condescendingly pat them on their theologically ignorant little heads and send them on their way. Because as I do a 20/20 hindsight over my life, I’m a bit ashamed to see how many boxes I’ve tried to stuff God into.

My most recent attempts centered on the comfortable staff position I had at my previous church and my steadily growing retirement nest egg. As long as I had those two things, I was confident I could weather most storms that came my way. Then God took away my first little box, which ultimately resulted in my second little box doing a disappearing act. It took me losing everything before I could finally realize that my everything was really nothing. God wasn’t in those boxes. And if that’s what I was counting on for my peace and security, my hope was empty.

We all walk around with our little deity cartons. They may be in the shape of our wallet, our job, our retirement, our marriage, our kids, our church, our friends, our education – anything that we put our trust in other than God Himself. Problem is every one of these things can let us down or be taken from us, just ask Job (who lost everything but at least kept his wife and friends, which is somewhat akin to saying that Katniss Everdeen lost everything but at least kept President Coin and the leadership of District 13 [yeah, we’ll score that one Culturally Relevant Steve – 1 / Middle-Aged, Sore-Jointed, Bifocal-Wearing Father Who’s Still Mourning Steve Perry’s Departure From Journey Steve – 0]).

In Psalm 20:7, David writes, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” And when we put our trust in the true God – not the God we try to stuff in our little boxes – we know we are in safe hands that will never let us down.

Antideservation

The Riley Covington blog vocabulary word for today is “antideservation”. And, while the word itself is fairly new (say, about two hours old), the concepts are as ancient as the Giza pyramids and as rich as the fertile soil of the Black Earth Region of Central Russia (thanks, Wikipedia, for that one).

The term itself was born out of a meditation today on grace. I’ve always heard the definition of grace as the receiving of that which you do not deserve. While that’s a great first step in defining the concept, I don’t think it goes far enough. The reason being that it starts us all on a neutral playing field.

So, here’s Ned. He’s never done anything really bad. Yet, he’s also never done anything really good. He’s just neutral, middle of the road, neither der nor die, just das. Thus, if Neutral Ned were given something really cool, like an iPod or a zebra, it would be an act of grace. He didn’t earn it, didn’t deserve it, it was just a nice little out-of-the-blue gift.

But we don’t start in the middle of the road. Instead of Neutral Neds, we’re all Bad Barts. We’re rebellious, nasty, sinful. Not only have we not earned the good things; we deserve the bad things.

Now, I know many of you long-time church-going people all have your hands waving up in the air. And if I were to pick one of you…say, Marsha…Marsha would say, “But that’s where mercy comes in. You know, mercy – the not receiving of what we do deserve.”

After complimenting Marsha for her well-stated point and her fashion-forward mauve, tie-waist blouse, I would respond, “Yeah, but…but mercy is the withholding of punishment. That’s not what I’m getting at either.”

Grace is not just the receiving of that which we don’t deserve, it’s the receiving of the exact opposite of what we deserve – what we anti-deserve. Now, I recognize that I may be nuancing this finer than a Paulie Cicero garlic clove, and I agree that “grace” and “mercy” are beautifully appropriate terms (and somewhere the Holy Spirit is saying with a sigh of relief, “Hey, Guys, good news! Steve likes our words!”). I just don’t want to miss the insane depth to which grace reaches.

I deserve punishment. I deserve separation. I deserve hell. Yet, God, through His amazing grace, gives me the complete opposite – forgiveness, adoption, heaven. I praise you, Lord, for your grace, your mercy, and your wonderfully precious gift of antideservation.

The Smear

Regret.

What a depressing word. Images of pains caused, words thrown, feelings neglected, people rejected…Seems they all coalesce into a question that screams in my head, “What the heck was I thinking?”

God has blessed me with an incredibly weak memory. So, when I look back three decades to my late teens and into my early twenties, most of it is just a blur – a smeared tapestry of incidents that have lost their individual definition and just left an overall portrait of stupidity and self-centeredness. It’s like trying to look at one of those Disney Photomosaic puzzles without my reading glasses. I still see the complete picture, but the detailed cells are beyond my eyes’ capabilities.

However, while I can’t make out the specific brush strokes, the picture itself is still enough to make me want to dive for the remote to the Blessed Distractor. Because, if I dwell on my past too long, my stomach starts to turn. I want to track down Mark Ruby and say, “Dude, I have no clue what I was doing.” I want to get a message to Ed Aaron on the other side of eternity and say, “You know…I don’t even know…” I want to find my supervisor at WestAir, Mark or Mike or Ted or something, and say, “As much as I claimed to represent Christ, I really didn’t. Please don’t judge Christians based on me.”

I came across this passage a few weeks ago in my morning reading:

Psalm 25:6-7 ~ Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD. (NLT)

God could remember our past with digital IMAX 3D clarity. Yet, He chooses not to. Instead, He smears the painting – takes off the readers – and lets the details blend into a new picture; a work of art that doesn’t look at all like our past. Instead of the harsh, angry grays and blacks of our sin and rebellion, He sees the radiant palette of His love – beautiful, pure, holy, perfect.

While we live in the world of “What the heck was I thinking?”, God never has to ask that question. He knew all along what He was thinking and what He was doing when He chose you and when He chose me – a choice that, despite our propensity to sin and failure, despite our own guilt and shame over our past, He will always look back on with no second-thoughts, with no what-ifs…and with absolutely no regrets.

A Little Sumpin' Sumpin'

This morning, my dad and I were coming home together from a meeting. It was trash day, and everybody on the left side of the street had their full cans out with all the assorted oversized items surrounding the bottoms – branches, bags of clippings, empty cases of Corona, a stack of bed pillows (there’s got to be a story behind those, although I’m not sure I want to know what it is). However, on the right side, all the cans standing on the curb were empty.

When we eased around the next curve, we were forced to dodge a big, green Waste Management truck just before the driver hopped back in. As we passed, my dad did an interesting thing – he waved to the trash man (I didn’t even know we citizens were allowed to do that). Common courtesy in most Western states dictates that when someone waves to you, you wave back, and the trash man didn’t disappoint.

I didn’t think too much of that curious little incident until we pulled up to my folks’ house. All down the long, winding street empty trashcans were scattered along the curbs – while a majority of them were upright, all of them were askew to one extent or another. My parents’ curb, however, was empty. I was about to hit my dad with some smack about missing another trash day, when I noticed their two cans up the driveway next to the garage, standing straight, nicely aligned – and I could have sworn they’d been polished.

My dad, knowing exactly what the question was that I was trying to form, said, “Your mom and I thank the trash man each Christmas, tell him what a good job he’s doing…and slip him a couple $20s.”

Brilliant! What a great lesson to remember, whether it’s in the workplace, the church, or in our families. People want appreciation. People want recognition. And, most people don’t mind if you slip them a little sumpin’ sumpin’ (not saying it needs to be cash, but it is amazing how a $5 Starbucks card can brighten someone's day).

Although, I just got through preaching a sermon on how those things shouldn’t be the primary motivators for the work we do or the service we give, the fact remains that they still count. And, if leaders neglect the Appreciation/Recognition/Sumpin’ Sumpin’ (I had thought of turning that into an acronym, but I’m afraid it would come too close to offending our British readers), our people may still do the job, but maybe not as well…and probably not with a smile on their faces.

So, today, think of someone who gives you some help – could be your husband, your wife, your kiddo, your employee, your trash man – someone who could use a boost. Then, find a way to give them some Appreciation/Recognition/Sumpin’ Sumpin’. A little love goes a long way…