Riddles We Don't Understand ...

How do we process feelings we do not understand?  Or worse feelings we do not enjoy?  Sometimes the greatest riddle we face is not what intellectually stumps us, but what emotionally does.  For example, let’s say your son or daughter steals a sandwich you prepared for lunch one day without asking.  They have wronged you.  But they are family.  The wrong hardly registers for you, and the love you hold for them quickly drowns out, the minor crime of stealing a day’s lunch you probably could care less about.  So forgiveness is instant.  The incident forgotten.  Probably laughed about in a funny story in years to come if it is even remembered at all.  Our kids do plenty of things we are not too crazy about, and there are far more important things than a missing lunch to occupy the worry part of our brains.  But an incident like that one will hardly register.  So it is hard for you to feel too bad, or conflicted about it.  In a case like that a simple quick apology removes any possible worry and life goes on.  I would call that getting over it.  I would call that an example of true forgiveness.

But now alter the situation just a little bit.  Replace your son or daughter with a co-worker at your place of employment.  And instead of this being a one time near accidental event, make it one that happens without any acknowledgement and from time to time.  In effect, there is an office thief.  Not someone who would have the courage to ask you for food or for help, but someone who instead takes whatever they want, no matter how clearly it is labeled, and makes no apology seeking first above all to never be caught.  Now instead of family, you face someone who is nowhere near as close to you.  Now instead of one lunch you may have been victim to losing several.  Now instead of someone who has accidentally wronged you, you have someone who knows they did, and has not cared, that is, until they are caught doing it.  Is your forgiveness still as instant?  Is it still as complete?  Is this still a funny story you tell in the future to come, or has it lost all ability to be humorous as the one who hurts you cares very little that they did hurt you and likely only wants to avoid any painful consequences.  As Christians we are bound to still offer forgiveness.  But as humans how we feel about this slightly altered scenario might be quite a bit different.  At the end of the day we may still get over it, get past it.  But there is a certain part of us that would not mind seeing a little “justice” doled out with the forgiveness we offer.  A little just retribution, not severe mind you, as this was not a severe crime, but at least some form of cosmic karma, to the perpetrator who seems to care less about what they did.

Aren’t Christians supposed to be free from the need to pursue justice when forgiveness is our calling card.  Especially in light of the forgiveness we are shown by God when we sin in much the same manner.  Then let us examine the most severe case of something like this.  What happens when again the perpetrator is not family, but the crime is one that cannot be undone, and robs you of something you can never have again.  Perhaps they have taken the life of someone you love, or the fidelity of someone who vowed never to lose that to another.  Lives lost cannot be replaced.  Vows broken will always be broken.  And how the perpetrator feels about committing these crimes may be as sorry as the child who once stole your sandwich, or as callous as the office thief who tries to do it regularly.  Again as Christians we are bound to offer forgiveness.  But as humans, our pain drives us to want justice all the more.  So we rationalize our forgiveness in a case like this.  We can “forgive” but not “forget”.  We can try to move on, but with a hole in our hearts that can never be undone.  New lives albeit damaged lives.

And comes the riddle of emotional quandaries our hearts are unable to solve.  I have wronged a great many people over the course of my life.  And to an incident, and a person, I regret each one.  I carry a burden inside myself that no one else can see, of a sorrow for causing the pain I know I have caused.  If I could undo any one of these actions, or all of them, I would choose to undo them.  But that repentance comes only from Jesus who teaches me to not only want repentance, but to feel it, to understand that my evil causes pain like ripples in a quiet pond where a large stone is dropped.  At the time I may have chosen to be blind to my crimes, but in retrospect I feel them all keenly.  And there have been a great many people who have wronged me over my life.  But again in retrospect none of what they did to me matters, or is remembered as important, save two.  Two brothers who took from me, and more importantly from ones I deeply love, that which cannot be replaced or undone.  They have always remained incalcitrant.  And despite best efforts, my forgiveness has always been nested in feelings of a desire for retribution, sometimes as bad as an ultimate retribution.  And it would seem my Christianity stumbles in this regard.

I know I am supposed to get past it, like every other wrong or slight I cannot so much as remember or even think about in detail anymore.  But this pain is not isolated to me.  It infects those I love and I am victim of it, but also made to watch the suffering it causes in my closest circle.  Ripples of someone else’s stone thrown carelessly and by intent into the quiet pool of my life.  And so I have vacillated between trying hard to offer a real forgiveness, and trying harder not to take an ill-conceived vengeance of my own.  As if any amends I could force might make any difference at all; short making it all worse.  But God says vengeance belongs to Him.  I am content with that.  But must take my heart to Him, to lose the desire to see Him find vengeance on those who have caused so much pain in my world.  And in all of this I find it is not the intellectual mysteries or riddles of the world that confound me and plague me.  It is and has always been the emotional ones.  Then to see something I do not know how to even describe.

This week I learned that both brothers who I have contended in my heart with for so long have fallen to covid 19.  One is dead, after suffering for a very long time.  The other is in critical condition, also have suffered for a very long time, and his prognosis is the same as his brother.  And what is my first thought?  I should not speak it.  I should not think it.  The one is gone, my next hurtle is to not only forgive, but to learn to become neighbors in the kingdom of heaven no matter our past.  But that he is gone, I find myself not regretting.  And I know it is wrong.  The other is still not lost to the power of prayer.  But do I have the courage to offer a prayer for his recovery?  His crimes against my family are not the kind of crimes that limit themselves to only a singular victim, they tend to spread like cancer in the darkness across a wide number of families like mine.  If we pray him back, do we open pandora’s box of pain on other families for the remainder of his life on this world?  I have spent so long trying to forgive.  But now God offers me the chance to not only forgive, but to put aside my judgment, my fears, and be the Christian I am meant to be.  To trust God with his redemption, even if I am never made privy to it.

A riddle of my heart I cannot solve, or even understand.  But as always, my wife helps me through this quagmire and offers her own example of what to pray; not just for his physical recovery, but for his redemptive one, no matter his incalcitrance to this point in time.  And I find myself following her lead.  And I find myself entrusting my heart and my feelings to Jesus, asking not to solve the riddle of how I think or feel, or should feel.  Only that Jesus might alter my heart into the heart He wishes to make within me.  An altered heart, will find a better way to love, a more Christlike way to forgive, and a supreme interest in the redemption of those who wronged me, not in their torture, or death.  I should long for their company in heaven, not consign them to the fate I deserve in this life or the next.  And only Jesus can solve that riddle of how I feel, or think, or how I should feel.

It is when we think we know it all that God reminds us, we do not.  It is when we think we have perfect control of our feelings, that God reminds us our feelings should never be relied upon for anything.  For our minds are as dirty as our hearts and consequently our souls are.  And there is only One Jesus who offers to clean both mind and heart, and renew the soul within us.  So should I ever come to believe that I know it all, even in the confines of a single doctrine of my faith, I will have fallen into error.  For only Jesus knows it all.  Only Jesus truly understands all Truth.  I catch only mere glimpses of that Truth from time to time when I am not forcing my eyes shut, pretending all riddles are subject to my failing intellect that never knew it all in the first place.  Perhaps there are some riddles I am not meant to understand, because I meant to rely on Jesus and nothing about me to get past them.

Luke records Jesus offering a riddle to the proud members of the Sanhedrin trying to trap Jesus in a trick question.  Jesus simply uses their own traditions and incorrect beliefs to create a riddle none of them would be able to solve.  At least, not without discarding the error of their beliefs, and coming to see Jesus for what He truly is, their Messiah and ours.  Luke picks up this snippet at the end of the 20^th chapter of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  It begins in verse 41 saying … “And he said unto them, How say they that Christ is David's son? [verse 42] And David himself saith in the book of Psalms, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, [verse 43] Till I make thine enemies thy footstool. [verse 44] David therefore calleth him Lord, how is he then his son?”  It was Jewish tradition that fathers would earn more respectable titles than sons.  And it was well known that the Messiah would be of the bloodline of David.  So the quandary Jesus proposes is that Christ was alive before David, and yet alive in the bloodline of David at the same time.  The Christ then, was the Son of God, not just a mortal Messiah, or mortal prophet as the people liked to see Him.  For He existed both before David and after him.

The leaders had no way to reconcile this without admitting that their understanding was not as complete as they thought.  And by the way, that Jesus may well be both the Messiah and the Son of God.  But it was not just the minds of these leaders that were in error.  Their hearts were as well.  Jesus continues with a warning about where their think had led them.  Luke picks back up in verse 45 saying … “Then in the audience of all the people he said unto his disciples, [verse 46] Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts; [verse 47] Which devour widows' houses, and for a shew make long prayers: the same shall receive greater damnation.”  A pride in thinking they knew everything there was to know about scripture, had not increased their love for others.  It had nearly extinguished it.  Along with the conscience a true believer should have been haunted by if nothing else.  For these leaders had come to devour the homes of widow.  To take these homes, cast the widow out on to the street, and think nothing of her fate, or her condition.  If she died, she died.  That was nothing to them.

And I find my first responses may be no better than they.  I hear of the news of a brother who wronged me dying of covid and my ugly first unfiltered thought was “good”.  In that instant it was me who did not think of the widow he leaves behind, or the children who have just lost a father.  I only think of the threat he once posed to me, the pain he caused that cannot be undone, and that now somehow “justice” has finally been served.  And in that instant I am as wrong as the scribes in the days of Christ.  I repent of my first thought.  And I offer sincere prayers for the family.  I am ashamed of my reaction, and must now add it to the list of burdens I carry.  And while I know Jesus has forgiven me my entire list, I also know the pain I have caused can no more be undone than the pain this poor soul caused me.  This is not the vengeance of God.  Covid is not His instrument of judgment upon the wicked.  It is only a pestilence that both righteous and wicked suffer from alike.  The one difference, those who seek Jesus find Him.  Those who refuse to seek Jesus, do not.

If there is to be a vengeance of God it must come at the end of all things on those who refused to forsake evil for the re-creation Jesus would have made of them.  But while there is life there is hope.  And I must trust my own salvation to Jesus to complete, as the events of this week have taught me, it is not complete as yet.  The leaders of the Sanhedrin could not solve the riddle Jesus posed because they clung to errant thoughts they were unwilling to let go of.  Are we any better?  Do you find yourself stumped by the riddles of scripture, or a set of feeling you know in your heart you should not have?  There is only one solution to either situation.  Seek Jesus, allow Him to change how you think, how you love, perhaps even who you love.  And your mind and heart will become one with His, focused above all else on the redemption of the lost, not the punishing of them.  Think about it.  Even the warning Jesus made above was not offered as a final condemnation, but instead as a warning, of what happens when we refuse to yield and refuse to see.

Some riddles I am content to not know the answers to.  For example, how on earth will Jesus ever save someone in such need as me?  But I am also content to trust that despite my inability to figure out how Jesus will ever save me, Jesus will save me, because He knows how, and I intend to let Him.  Perhaps the riddles of your life are just as easily solved as that.  Give Jesus a try and see.

 

Limited Time Offers ...

 

Going once, going twice, sold.  If you are a prospective buyer at auction, those words can deeply infect your thinking.  You make a bid for something.  Before those words are uttered anyone else could choose to outbid you.  Even as they are being spoken someone else could choose to once again up the bid for the item in question.  But those words act as a warning, that if you really want what is up for bid at auction you must take action, or lose it forever to whoever it was sold to.  Merchants understand this concept and attempt to employ it in advertising of regular items all the time, through the use of “limited time” offers.  Effectively they are sales of items we may all be familiar with, but if we want to acquire them at a reduced price, we must take action and secure them before the sale goes away.  Then it is right back to the regular price, which the sale offer has just proven, is unnecessarily high.  So where it comes to the mind and words of God, are there not some limited time offers there as well?

Imagine the folks in the time of Noah.  It took Noah 120 years to build that ark.  And he preached salvation to the curious onlookers even as they made fun of him for building a boat nowhere near water, in a time that had never before seen rain.  The dew watered the earth.  They had no need of rain from the sky.  And so to hear Noah speak of a flood was against common sense.  Yet, they also had 120 years to change their minds and enter that ark.  When the time finally expired, Noah went inside.  But he did not go in alone, his wife went with him.  Further his sons went in, along with their wives.  8 people in a boat meant to house quite a few more, in a time when the flood may never have even come if the world back then had repented of its evil and chose to live another way.  But the world chose not to repent.  And only 8 folks were saved accepting the offer of God.  As it was back then, so would it be right now, as we face the end of all things.

But there are also some things of God that are not meant to be limited time offers.  They are fundamental and given no expiration date by God Himself.  Marriage, Procreation, and the Sabbath were meant to be 3 of those fundamental ideas from the mind of our God.  Man did not invent them God did.  It was God who looked at us and decided we were not meant to be alone.  That a man needed a wife, and she would need him. That they should literally be of one flesh, and through the union of becoming one flesh, become fruitful and multiply.  There were no time limits set aside for this.  God did not say it should only happen once every “x” number of years for example.  He offered it to us as often as we wish to employ it.  And His Sabbath was of a similar nature, existing before sin, and meant to be eternal, as our God is eternal.  The Sabbath has no expiration date in mind, and why should it?  Our creation is a thing that is meant to be eternal, our communion with our God eternal, our reconciliation to Him eternal.  So without God saying He has had enough, and without even a reason to do.  These things were meant to be eternal, that is not just relevant in this life, but in the next one as well.  Think of it, if we had never sinned, all of these institutions would have continued on without interruption forever as God intended.

While the offer of our salvation may only be here for us for a little while; at least while we live we can choose to embrace it.  Our marriages and the celebration of His Sabbath were meant to start here and have no end in the next life.  Which means – we are doing it wrong.  At least our marriage vows most fundamental tenant is stating it wrong.  It is not meant to be “until death do us part”.  That clause is present because of sin, and meant to allow the living to start over not bound to the dead.  But like the idea of divorce, it exists because of sin, not because it was supposed to be a happy “out” clause of any marriage we just got tired of.  Yes the sins driving divorce include adultery, but they also include abuse, and a litany of others as well.  It does not have to be a particular sin alone that drives divorce, but at a minimum it requires selfishness to see it implemented, perhaps not on your own part, but at least on one partner’s part.  And yet, even in marriage there can be repentance, forgiveness, and re-creation.  I wonder what would happen if we removed that clause from our vows and our thinking.  What if there was not meant to be divorce at all, nor a reset with someone else just because one partner dies.  What if we were meant to be as Adam and Eve, married forevermore.  Because in truth, this is what I believe was truly meant to be for us all.  We just choose not to think about it this way.  Even those who accept the idea of an eternal Sabbath, choose to abandon the idea of an eternal marriage.  And why?  Because of what Jesus said during a trick question?

Luke records the incident in his 20^th chapter of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  But be careful to note, this was not a speech Jesus was making about life in the next world.  It was an answer to a trick question, posed by those who did not even believe in a next world.  How many of those folks still live and walk among us?  The incident picks up in verse 27 saying … “Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him,”  The folks posing this question still considered themselves part of the Jewish faith, even though they differed on perhaps the most fundamental doctrine of all time.  They threw out the idea of an afterlife entirely.  It was not that you just slept until a resurrection when all would be put right.  It was that you slept forever, and you became nothing more than a memory.  Gone meant gone forever to them.  This was a far cry different than the Pharisees and an endless source of debate between the two of them.  Yet both factions were represented in the Sanhedrin, and neither could seem to change the mind of the other.  To any modern Christian, it is easy for us to see how the Pharisees were right on this, and the Sadducees were wrong.  But we have the light of Jesus to prove it out.  They refused that light.

The false premised question was then posed as Luke continues in verse 28 saying … “Saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man's brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. [verse 29] There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died without children. [verse 30] And the second took her to wife, and he died childless. [verse 31] And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also: and they left no children, and died. [verse 32] Last of all the woman died also. [verse 33] Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife.”  So they laid out a scenario where one woman was married to seven different brothers while on earth, and now that all 8 folks were raised up in the next world whose wife would she be?  But before we attempt to resolve this dilemma we must break down their question a little for there is a ton of wrong in it, before it even begins.

Let us start by what drove the policy Moses handed out in the first place.  Chauvinism.  Or perhaps even better stated, good old fashioned greed.  You see women were not allowed to own property back in the “good” old days.  Property was only allowed to pass from father to son.  Daughters had to be married, or live at home with dad and mom till they died.  And a wife’s worst fear, was to lose a husband, without first having a son that the family wealth could be passed down to.  To become a widow, was to become homeless.  It meant you would become instantly poor, with no place to call home.  And many a poor widow died of starvation, or exposure to the elements.  NONE of this was what God intended or wanted for a woman, any woman.  ALL of this was driven by men who believed they were authorized by God to drive it.  They were dead wrong.  Unfortunately, it was the women who usually wound up dead, not the men.  So what to do? 

We must now engage in lesser sin, to cover up our greater sin.  We will “add” the recent widow to the wife collection of the next older brother in line in the family.  In fact marrying the widow will become his responsibility and should he fail to marry her, and attempt to give her a son to resolve the passing of family wealth to, the next older brother could be killed for avoiding his responsibility.  If he already had a wife, too bad, he is getting another one.  Better to have forced multiple marriages, than to have a widow dying of starvation and exposure.  Of course NONE of this would be needed, if we simply let women carry the rights to own property.  She could have maintained the family wealth on her own.  And all of this requirement would have become moot.  But greed prevented that.  So now a system of marriage corruption must be invented to cover for greed and prevent avoidable murder.

This was the marriage scenario the Sadducees laid out.  They were careful to avoid the divorce scenario entirely.  These were all “legitimate” marriages having only occurred after the death of a partner.  Even without the tradition of remarriage to a brother, the widow could have chosen a random new husband as widows still do in our day and time.  Should they lose that partner to death, they may still choose again.  And so on, and so on, leading to a very similar scenario – only worse this time, for each of these modern day marriages could have been done for love.  Now upon waking up in the resurrection, the heart of the modern widow may be split in a love for several former husbands who may each be looking to spend eternity with the wife they thought only to be theirs.  But here is where eternity begins to reset.  It seems even the Sadducees had the notion that marriage was intended to be forever.  “If” there was an afterlife, then the marriage bond was meant to continue in it.  They at least built that idea into their trick question.

Jesus responds in verse 34 saying … “And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: [verse 35] But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:”  The phrase “marry and are given in marriage” has a few significant meanings.  It implies we treat marriage casually.  It implies we choose to marry and with equal choice choose to get divorced as though we have the right to do both, as often as we choose.  Or we remarry upon the death of a partner, staying true to the older vows of limiting marriage “until death do we part”.  In either case our ideas of marriage are transient at best, convenient at worst.  Jesus says in “that” world this is not the practice.  “Neither marry, nor are given in marriage”.  By the way “given” in marriage implies daughters do not have much of a choice.  Which is in itself another less ideal idea.  If we are to be bound eternally, we should freely choose to be bound eternally, not given to it, by the choice of someone else.  But back to marry and are given in marriage; how we do it here, is NOT how it is done in a world where eternal really means something.  Notice the next words of Jesus.

Jesus continues in verse 36 saying … “Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.”  Jesus immediately follows up the last concept with the next one where death is no longer an “out” for marriage as death is no longer a reality for anyone.  For we will live forever as the angels do, and have.  The children of the resurrection will not take marriage the same we do, as something casual that can be undone on a whim.  Bonds made there are bonds made to last.  Soul mates are truly soul mates.  So what happens to the women with seven former husbands?  Or to the modern woman or man who has married after a partner dies? 

It would seem that sin has left us a lot of clean up that God will have to do.  First I believe this happens by trusting God above all else with our hearts.  When we reach a place where we trust God this much, we give God license to clean up our mess.  To remove love for one we are not meant to eternally be with.  And to channel our love to one we were meant to eternally be with.  This can only happen though if we trust God enough to let Him be in charge of our love life.  And anyone in that Kingdom will do just that.  I believe our God will clean up the mess we have made with our hearts due to sin and errant choices.  I believe he will lead each one to where he or she should have been, or is destined to be with, in His Kingdom according to His will, which our will be overjoyed at.  Former loves become old friends we love no differently than everyone else.  And eternal spouses become uniquely loved that everyone else respects and never interferes with.  In this alone can perfect harmony be achieved with no jealousy, and no pain.

I believe however, for those of us rare folks who have only ever known one wife or one husband, for those who even after the death of a partner remain steadfast to the hope of that partner returned in the resurrection; that this faith and commitment will be honored by God in that Kingdom that is yet to come.  For it does not make any sense to undo a commitment freely given, that actually embraces the idea of eternal both in this world and in the next.  God will clean up what He must.  But God can also reaffirm and honor a marriage that endures as He planned for them to endure.  Imagine Adam and Eve raised to be in the next kingdom, do you truly envision Jesus saying, well time is up.  Your marriage was a limited time offer and for the rest of eternity, you are going to be celibate.  That makes no sense.  They were meant to be together, literally created to be together, considered incomplete until they were together, and told never to part from each other.  What part of that sounds temporary?  What part of that implies a limited time offer?  Its not.  It is eternal the way God intended marriage, not the way we have messed marriage up in the countless ways sin has figured out how to mess marriage up.  Adam will forever be the husband of Eve.  And I imagine for all those who honored marriage forever, the same will be true.  The rest can be cleaned up by God as recovery from our sin requires Him to do.

Now some parse this passage to separate “marry” from “given in marriage” as if Jesus was speaking about 2 entirely different things.  In that light they presume Jesus does not want us to divorce, but He does not want us to marry either.  In this world or the next.  That would of course destroy the concept of marriage that Jesus Himself created all the way back in Genesis before sin ever entered this world.  These folks who believe this use the follow on phrase equal to angels to believe that since angels do not marry, we don’t need to either.  Really?  How do you know what angels live like?  Have you had extensive conversations with them?  I have not.  I do know there are a variety of types of angels, some have 2 wings, some 4 and some 6.  I have no idea if there are male or female angels.  And I have no idea if marriage is a concept they embrace and understand and who am I to judge that.  But take the angel equality phrase out of it for a minute and come back to the practical side of Jesus saying anyone saved needs to be single.  First that does not agree with anything found anywhere else in scripture.  And it was offered during a trick question from folks with screwed up beliefs across marriage, widows, divorce, and life after death.  And guess what life after death was the main reason Jesus was here in the first place.  To offer that to us through His own sacrifice.

So Jesus continues to now address the much bigger problem the Sadducees continue to embrace, their incorrect doctrine about hope in the world to come.  Jesus picks back up in verse 37 saying … “Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. [verse 38] For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. [verse 39] Then certain of the scribes answering said, Master, thou hast well said. [verse 40] And after that they durst not ask him any question at all.”  These men had tried to use the edict of Moses to care for widows as a trap to snare Jesus in.  Now Jesus would turn our attention back to the same Moses and point out the obvious, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were meant to live again and live forever.  God is after all not the God of the dead, but of the living.  So on the greater point of life after death, here is Jesus affirming there will be such a thing.  Jesus is here to live and die for us, for just such a purpose.  To restore us back to how it was before sin ever entered this world.  We may have a limited time, to accept this gift or reject it.  But the life He offers is limited in no way shape or form.

There are those who say that procreation was meant for humanity to replace the number of angels who fell with Satan, and then quit multiplying as it were.  Really?  Is that what God said?  Seems to me God told Abraham his descendants would number like the stars or grains of sand on a beach.  Perhaps not just a metaphor.  Perhaps a real number.  And have you counted the galaxies lately?  Imagine the number of stars within each galaxy.  Now I cannot tell you what that number is, particularly if expanded to include the concept of a multiverse.  But even within the context of this universe alone, that number has more zeros in it, than the population of earth has ever had at any time, or in aggregate since our creation.  And sadly we know, not every person who has ever lived, has embraced the gift of salvation our God offers.  So there is a LONG way to go to come anywhere near that number.  And have you considered the idea that even with ALL the residents of heaven at the perfect age, even with all married which not all may choose to be, and even with all of those married couples churning out new children every 9 months, it would take an infinite amount of time to populate an infinite universe.  And time is something we have in abundance.  No need to rush anything.  We may alternatively choose to raise a family every 100 years, or every 1000, or every million.  Time again will be nothing to us.  At that rate, the multiplication would again take forever, and forever we have.

What is certain, is that Jesus is trying to restore us to the creation He intended.  In that marriage, procreation, and the Sabbath will endure forever and ever – and will no longer be marred by sin in any way shape or form.  “Limited time” will become a concept so foreign to us, it will lose all meaning and disappear from the lexicon of human experience entirely.  What God creates and establishes is meant to endure forever.

 

Emails to get You Fired ...

Privacy is a myth.  Electronic privacy a long expired dinosaur.  What you put out there in “the ether” of the internet, whether via text, or email, or social media platform remains “out there” forever.  You can’t take it back.  You can’t really delete anything.  Best you can do is apologize for it.  But a meager apology is sometimes not enough to undo damage that can affect your career, or your livelihood.  Your words, your thoughts, and the motives they sometimes clearly reveal, remain unhidden from the entirety of mankind – and frankly this is rarely a good thing.  Now most folks understand this, at least where it comes to stuff you put on social media platforms, but they take exception where it comes to emails or direct messaging.  And if you can keep from accidentally including the entire company in your addressing of an email note, you can seem to keep it limited to just “someone” to read, not everybody.  While you talk about “business” topics you might remain safe.  But just ask any “former” executive whose emails have been subpoenaed what private truly means.  Or ask some poor jilted lover whose correspondence has now been made public by the other party, what private really means.

And lest you think Uncle Sam is not an avid reader of every note you ever send … think again.  Whether they keep it or not is a question on how big, big data really is.  But whether they read it, and potentially flag it, is just not in question.  If you do nothing but write love notes to your mom, you can bet those notes were read and discarded.  But if you read or write notes between suspect financial organizations, drug dealers, or folks on the watch lists for whatever reason – your notes become flagged, your accounts become flagged and you will also join the watch lists forever.  And this is where having the crazy uncle does not do you any favors either.  Because when crazy uncle Bud decides to make posts that would make a rational person cringe, your familial relationship with that uncle earns you the unwanted attention of the government as well, even though through no fault of your own.

And beyond criminal threats, or threats of violence, any kind of threat to the economy is treated just as seriously.  In our banking industry we are required to take continuing education certifications every single year on our responsibilities to prevent financial crimes of many kinds.  Education is the first step to prevention.  But if some other crazy uncle gets caught up in a scheme to rob banks, or print fake currency, everybody in the family will get flagged on watch lists that last forever.  The simple logic is that whatever a family member may do or say, may not truly be an independent action, but might be an action that is shared among other family members.  Not so with me, probably the fact the my dad was a policemen for 3 decades, my family knows I would turn them in 😊.  Does not stop the love from me, but I tend to have a zero tolerance for crime, or for that matter for crazy.  But that does not change how your family thinks, or speaks.  And unfortunately, I do have a few crazy uncles, that I wish posted differently, or had lived differently while they had the chance.

The breadcrumbs of what you say then, can follow you forever.  For us, imagining that every word we ever said, in addition to what we may have written down, is an ever more terrifying prospect.  But not so for Jesus.  In contrast to you or I, every word Jesus ever said was truth, and love.  Every word, intended to find a spot of redemption in your soul, to lure you back to the throne of God.  Not so you could kiss the feet of God, but so that He could stand you up and kiss your cheek and hold you close to Him.  God does not need our worship, He needs to be able to share His love with you, up close and personal.  It is for His love’s sake, that He wants to save you, even though that means having to forgive your choices, and bare the pain of your rejection so often repeated.  Still He comes for you.  And so Jesus even while being plotted against by the leadership of His own church, still uttered every word in an attempt to save the very men bent on killing Him.

But to kill Jesus, those men had to discredit Him first.  So they kept track of every word Jesus ever said, looking for the chance to trip Him up.  Kind of like a stalker in our world, looking for the chance to pounce on you when they catch you in a lie, or indecent remark, or sin they can publicly exploit.  Except that with men, this kind of stalking works, because we fall and embrace sin.  With Jesus, He never did.  Imagine how utterly frustrating that must have been for those bent on killing Him.  To find, that even after time, and watching Him everywhere, that He says nothing to condemn Him over.  Imagine looking for hate and finding only love.  It was killing them.  It was frustrating them.  It was turning the lot of them into a group of crazy uncles.  So they had to escalate the situation.  They had to start setting verbal traps that there was no good answer out of, so they could by intention trip Him up.

Luke records one of these incidents starting in chapter 20 of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  It picks up in verse 19 saying … “And the chief priests and the scribes the same hour sought to lay hands on him; and they feared the people: for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them. [verse 20] And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.”  These men were not only interested in discrediting Jesus in front of the people.  They were trying to find any reason at all to turn Him over to the governor of Roman authority.  It is irony that these same priests and leaders considered tax collectors to be the ultimate sinners because they took money from the Jewish people and turned it over to Rome.  Yet here they were ready to turn over innocent blood to Rome to have it murdered.  Beyond that, not only innocent blood, but the very blood of God.  How much worse than that is blood over money.  Yet they considered themselves pure, and the tax collector as untouchable.

Luke continues in verse 21 saying … “And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly: [verse 22] Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?”  First the flattery to loosen Him up.  It works on other priests, why not on Him.  Then the question that will either kill Him in the hearts of the people, or kill Him on a cross of Rome.  Do we give money to Caesar or not.  They were just certain this question was so clever it could not be answered without killing Him some way or another.  Luke continues in verse 23 saying … “But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? [verse 24] Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's. [verse 25] And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.”  Here is their irony on display.  They value money more than life.  They are trying to use the hatred of the people in paying taxes to kill Jesus if He stays true to the idea of obeying the government in charge.

But Jesus does more than that.  Jesus shows the true value of money, and of things that belong to God.  We are not to obey the government ahead of, or over God.  But it is God that should hold our hearts, our love, and our devotion.  And in so doing that, we still give the government what it asks for in taxes, even if that is all we have, or what we think is unfair.  And that answer beat them.  Luke picks up in verse 26 saying … “And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace.”  They were beaten and could do nothing more than marvel at the beauty of His Truth.  But what is it that Luke wants His friend to know about this gospel passage?  Is it just that Jesus was more clever than the most clever conspiracy ever launched?  I doubt it.

I think the greater lesson was to teach us all, that our words should leave a bread crumb trail back to the throne of Grace.  If they do not, we speak in error, or our words require apology. Just like in social media platforms once you say something hateful it remains in the ether, and in the heart of one impacted by them.  You cannot pull those words back into your mouth and down your throat, having never uttered them.  You said them.  You may have even meant them.  And you caused pain by them.  But what you can do is to apologize for them.  Not just to say you are sorry, but to feel the pain you have caused and truly be sorry for them.  You can look to Jesus to learn how to keep from uttering more words just like them ever again.  To not only be sorry for what you might have done, but to avoid any kind of recurrence ever again.  To love differently, to love so much, than you could not even conceive of saying such things, because in truth you do not feel such horrible things again.  Temper is not an excuse.  And even when people are not looking to hold something against you, when you speak in anger and hate, you leave others hurt in the wake of those words.  And sometimes that wake cannot be undone.

Send a hasty email note to your boss, or perhaps his boss, and rant and rave about how stupid management is, and how doomed this program or project is, and see what happens next.  Your only “out” there is to claim you were off your meds.  But send that same note to a co-worker who you thought a friend, but in truth was always ever looking to get you in trouble, and they will forward your “private” sentiments on to management, and the off the meds excuse just does not work.  You get fired for what you said.  You get fired for what you shared.  The trick then is not to just say those things, the real trick is to find a way to think differently about those things.  To find peace, and solution ideas in Jesus.  So that when you speak, it is in kindness, patience, and love to make things better.  You can assume everything you say is public never private.  But don’t just be on guard against some enemy trying to use what you say, instead be inspirational in what you say as you ground even your sentiments in Jesus Christ.  After all only Jesus beats the impossible.  And there must certainly be a lot impossible in the situations you face.  Start by changing how you feel, how you think, and who you rely on for answers that might improve everything you encounter.  It is so much easier to live that way.

 

Renters from Hell ...

Not sure how many of you may share an experience of having rented out a place you own to someone else.  But perhaps you coordinated renting out a room, or sub-letting your place, or just being an AirBnB host of some sort.  Maybe you just allowed someone to come stay at your home for a vacation, or a visit, where no money exchanged hands.  But in any of these cases, there is at minimum an unwritten rule, that your guest, or rather your tenant will preserve your home or place in the same reasonable manner in which they found it.  Most of us don’t ask our tenants or guests to go paint the house while they are staying with us, or clean out the gutters, or perform any other myriad of tasks on the “honey-do” list we have in our minds.  But while we may not expect them to paint the walls, we also do not expect them to allow their cats to pee on the walls either.  Cat pee is particularly pungent and when it gets deep seated in the drywall, it wont ever come out, or at least the smell won’t. 

And how does one allow cats to pee on the walls you may ask?  My answer is I am uncertain.  In my cat owning experience they have only ever peed on the floors when they choose to misbehave, or on the beds when they intend to make a real stink of it.  But my wife and I once rented out our home for several years while we traveled to other states across the country to pursue careers and opportunities we could not get living in central Florida at the time.  We knew the tenant.  We made a bargain we thought was fair.  We would charge only exactly what our mortgage and taxes cost were (no profit), and since we had a 30 year fixed loan on the home, we agreed to never raise that initial rent the entire length of time we rented out our home.  In exchange we expected for our home to be reasonably maintained, or repaired of minor things that come up so we did not have to worry about coordinating these repair events from out of state where our access would be highly limited at best.

Flash forward 7 years from the start of that bargain.  We are back in central Florida again, as all the opportunities elsewhere have come to an end, and the costs to live elsewhere are just too high.  We plan to move back into our home, and ask our tenant to move out for us with plenty of notice.  But what we discover is that a direct move back into the house is just not possible without a nearly full construction job to repair all the accumulated damage that was done while we were away.  We had been true to our part of the bargain, never once raising the under priced rent a dime over the whole 7 years.  But what we found was pet pee on the dry wall, chewed up baseboards, carpets, and flooring.  And most of all a stench so engrained in the walls they would have to be completely replaced to rid the house of the smell.  All the flooring would have to be redone.  And at this point, we might as well, convert the garage into another bedroom for our growing daughter at the time. So began a major home interior renovation we did not intend to carry out.

You might think to yourself, who on earth did you entrust your home to, that would allow it to become this damaged?  You might think, this had to be a stranger most likely, or at least a person you thought was friend who obviously did not value the friendship.  It was neither.  It was a sister of my wife.  A sister who never thanked us for the financial benefit of rental stability, nor apologized from the embarrassment of having allowed our home to become so trashed.  But she was and obviously still is, family.  We have long since forgiven her, whether she seeks it or not.  We hold her no ill will, and have not for many years, it has been now more than 20 years since the forced interior remodel.  But to be clear, a simple paint job was no where near enough to gloss over the damage done to our home back then, damage that our own family allowed to accumulate over time, without shame, without apology, and without even acknowledgement.

This was a financial surprise for us, as owners of the home.  But this experience we had is not isolated to only financial ventures.  It happens in the church as well.  Ask yourself, what happens when the leadership entrusted with God’s church turns the proverbial cats loose to pee on the walls without consequence or regret?  The damage done to our Lord’s church is never so great, as when it is committed by those entrusted to be its stewards, or it’s leaders.  The Catholic church still suffers almost to the point of no repair for how it handled the priesthood being engaged in child molestation without consequence.  I am not Catholic, but my sympathies would always be aligned with victims of that horror, than with the supposed leadership who seemed to systemically permit it.  Cats peeing on walls with owners having no interest in changing anything, not the cats, not the drywall, and not the behavior.  Just looking away and saying have at it.  We will hold our noses.  And it has taken an interior remodel to finally start making things better over there.

But the Catholic church is not the only one to suffer from damage done by the stewards entrusted with the leadership of God’s church.  Long ago, the one True religion, founded by God himself high in a mountain called Sinai with 10 commandments given to Moses, followed by the first 5 books of the Bible, came to a point in its journey, where the spiritual leaders of that church reasoned it was better to kill Jesus, the Son of God, than to relinquish one ounce of doctrinal control over the people.  This crime would be far worse than permitting renegade cats, or even abusing children, it would be the killing of Christ Himself.  And for nothing more than a lack of love, and a desire to stay in power.  True doctrine could never have rationalized anyone’s cold blooded murder, let alone the Son of God.  But this course was set already in the minds of the leadership long before it would be carried out by Jewish and Roman hands.  Could there be any way to prevent it, any way to change hearts and minds, before it was carried forward.  Jesus was here to die, so there was no way to avoid that outcome.  But He did not need to be killed by His own church, that was an option His church alone would choose.  And if you ask me, we still betray Him this way today in our own world, in our own pews, as we choose to seat self in the center of our salvation.

Luke gives us an insight into the attempts of Jesus to foretell and hopefully give pause to the spiritual leaders of his day, from their nefarious purposes.  Luke picks up his account in chapter 20 beginning in verse 9 it says … “Then began he to speak to the people this parable; A certain man planted a vineyard, and let it forth to husbandmen, and went into a far country for a long time. [verse 10] And at the season he sent a servant to the husbandmen, that they should give him of the fruit of the vineyard: but the husbandmen beat him, and sent him away empty.”  Several things to note about this story (and it was a parable, not a translation of literal events, even though the parallels would be uncanny) – The vineyard or the church in this case was never “given” to men entrusted with it, it was only ever “loaned” to them, or placed in their care for a specific purpose and a specific time.  These men were not the new owners, they were merely tenants.  At an appointed time (by the real owner I might add), servants were sent to collect the harvest from the church, but instead of finding harvest, they were turned back empty handed.  How often is this remarkably true still today in the church of our Lord.  We have no harvest, for we permit no real change in our hearts to occur.

Luke picks back up in verse 11 saying … “And again he sent another servant: and they beat him also, and entreated him shamefully, and sent him away empty. [verse 12] And again he sent a third: and they wounded him also, and cast him out.”  And in this repetition of events, Jesus describes the history of the Jewish faith, where servant and prophet sent to them with messages of love and redemption from God Himself, were turned away again and again, some tortured and beaten or worse for daring to interrupt the power structure with calls back to love again.  These tenants had unknowingly become the tenants from hell.  No one ever sees that coming in themselves.  They are quick to see it in others, but always seem to forget to see it in their own mirrors.  And yet to have a tenant from hell, you need exactly this set of circumstances and willful blindness.

Luke continues in verse 13 saying … “Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son: it may be they will reverence him when they see him. [verse 14] But when the husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours. [verse 15] So they cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do unto them?”  And here is where the love of our God is truly on display, even after our rejection of His love, He STILL sends His only Son into our midst to show us what love looks like, knowing full well every other servant that preceded him was killed by men just like these.  And knowing further it would be these same men Jesus was here to save, stewards of His church, that would join their ancestry and choose to kill the very Son of God in a vain attempt to keep control.  What destiny can be left to us when such is our continued choice as leaders entrusted to keep God’s church?

Luke concludes picking back up in verse 16 saying … “He shall come and destroy these husbandmen, and shall give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid.  [verse 17] And he beheld them, and said, What is this then that is written, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?  [verse 18] Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.”  The very men listening to this story, the very same tenants from hell and oblivious to their own condition, hear the parable and utter the phrase “God forbid” or rather, we would wish this never happens to us, the punishment most of all.  But these same men have already concluded in their hearts to kill Jesus who speaks to them now.  They have already rejected Jesus as the Messiah, and much more importantly, as their own personal Messiah.  And so they plan even then to kill Him.

But Jesus offers them scripture to consider to hopefully change their minds, and their planning.  He reminds them of a building analogy where builders rejected a stone, that in spite of this initial rejection, becomes the very cornerstone against which this entire building is constructed upon.  When we fall upon the Rock, we are broken.  Our hearts are broken on the anvil of God’s love, the stone we allow to accumulate within us is shattered by it.  And then we become someone new, someone remade, by the so great love of Jesus Christ.  It is our submission in falling that begins this process, Jesus end to end, sees that it is completed in us.  But when we refuse Jesus, when we refuse salvation, the only destiny left to us, is to be crushed completely by the weight of our own actions and our own guilt, leaving no savior standing in our stead between us and God, only our naked deeds and impure motives unable to stand in His presence without being completed crushed by the weight of what we have done, and if allowed, what we would continue to do.

People are quick to make excuses for bad pet behavior.  They had to have been sick, or scared, or in some other condition that drove them to do something as heinous as pee on the drywall, or do worse on the bed.  After all the pet cannot be evil can they?  But regardless of the motives of simple creatures, the cleaning up after them is choice we make or we don’t.  We could choose to be the completely embarrassed house guest horrified by these kinds of actions, and set about to immediately cleaning them up to reduce the damage as much as possible.  It is no excuse.  It does not undo the damage.  But it tries to minimize the damage to the extent that is possible.  You will note we are still talking about the damage of our pets do, those entrusted to our care through choice and circumstance, those we claim are a part of our family we love deeply.  Or we can ignore the renegade nature of cats bent on marking the world, your home included, and allow that behavior to become so repetitive that it would seep into even the rocks or foundation over time,  Never lifting a finger to fix it.  Thinking we did not do it ourselves, or do it on purpose, so cleaning it up must be somebody else’s responsibility.  Becoming tenants from hell, without a single glance in the mirror.

I can testify what the costs are for errant pet behavior allowed to accumulate over time without a second thought.  Jesus can testify what it looks like when the leaders He entrusts with His church refuse to love, and seek only power over what does not belong to them.  That kind of behavior pulls the crucifixion of Jesus out of purely Roman hands, and places it long before into the hearts, minds, will, and hands of those same entrusted leaders of His church.  Are we there right along side those errant leaders even today?  Do we still reject the notion of being saved by Jesus alone, choosing instead to “help” God in this regard.  Choosing instead to take care of some sin that plagues us, instead of realizing to be truly saved from it, will require Jesus to do all the work of seeing us saved from it, and allowing Him to do so.  For can there ever be any kind of harvest without allowing Jesus to make one in us?  Stop making excuses, and let Him clean you up, and pull the “hell” out of your tenant title as it sits today.