B-log

DAWG, part 2

Highlights from Psalm 146, my comments in italicized parentheses

³You can’t depend on anyone, not even a great leader. ⁴Once they die and are buried, that will be the end of all their plans.

(The nation cried out for hope and change, putting their hopes in a new leader. He may have greater days still ahead. I hope he does, for the sake of the nation. Yet my true hope, my lasting hope, is in you alone. No person in history, save for Jesus, has changed the world. He alone overcame death, and his impact is everlasting.)

God always keeps his word. ⁷He gives justice to the poor and food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free ⁸and heals blind eyes.

(You are the only hope for justice in this world. You alone are not compromised by sin or by self. Your holiness transcends everything. It defines your actions, explains your motives, embellishes all your characteristics. You have set me free from the prisons of my life. You have given me sight of eternity. You allow me to see the invisible with eyes of faith.)

My Day Alone With God…Part 1

I’m taking a day alone with God today as part of my personal preparation for our church’s upcoming GROW weekend. I’m taking a bit of a mid-day break…not from God, but from the “experiential” part of it so I can record some of my thoughts, and refer back to them.

The day really started last night as I went to bed. As I tried to relax to fall asleep, I found my thoughts keep wandering back to what I would experience. In a lot of ways, I spend most my days with God, in the sense that I recognize that everything I do is because of his power, his strength, his guidance. However, there are certainly plenty of times that I walk in to a situation “on my own.” So as I was thinking about my DAWG (I’m not in love with this acronym, but it’s quicker for the typing), I was really looking forward to it with a sense of expectancy, but also fearful/humbled about the prospect of discovering what God would have in store for me.

So morning came after a good, dreamless night of sleep (as far as I can remember). I determined to see the family off before I started my DAWG. I didn’t “pray God in” as a welcome, because I believe that he’s here with me, all the time. He’s not in my presence, I’m in his presence. So I determined that I just needed to clear away my distractions and focus on him.

I began by opening my Bible and reading some Psalms. There’s no rationale for where I began. I believe I can open my Bible to any page and find God there. So I began reading in Psalm 145. Here is some of what stood out to me (my comments/reactions in italicized parentheses):

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The Problem of Evil

(the following is a modified repost from the old blog, originally dated 08/19/2009

In the ongoing responsibilities of a minister, I deal with life and death often. In fact, it’s not unusual to address both ends of life’s continuum within the same day. Sometimes (thankfully rarely), it happens within the same family on the same day. As such, we ministers often become steeled to the loss of life even as we welcome precious new lives into the world. Even so, the reality of death is difficult to reconcile, particularly when death event is unexpected or tragic.

You see, I operate from a worldview that God is sovereign. He knows the end from the beginning. He alone knows when life will end, and under what circumstances it will come to a close. I believe that this foreknowledge is true for every person, everywhere, throughout history. And as a minister, I have the privilege of getting to see details of people’s lives that sometimes might otherwise be hidden, but that reveal an “ah!” understanding of why a person dies. For example, I might learn that a person who was by all appearances upstanding actually had a hidden life of alcoholism or addiction that explains a surprising terminal sickness or disease. When that happens, knowing these things helps bring understanding or reconciliation to the graceless event we call death.

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I don’t believe in Tiger Woods

Yesterday, husband/dad/golfer/magnate Tiger Woods offered his mea culpa for repeatedly committing adultery against his wife, Elin.

He asked for forgiveness from (and I think in this order, but I could be wrong):

• The employees at his foundation
• His business partners
• His family
• The parents of children who idolized him.

To be honest, it’s a little silly to suggest that I, or any fan, needs to forgive him. To do so also suggests that there is a relationship that has been damaged. To use the word “relationship” between him and myself would be to stretch the term tenuously thin.

The truth is, he is a professional athlete and we live in the age of where virtually every professional athlete is little more than a well-managed, messed up human being who happens to excel at sports. My son has taken down more posters from his wall in the past few years thanks to steroids, cheating, and now… sex scandals.

Tiger asked the golf fan world to “one day believe in him again.” Make no mistake, to believe in Tiger Woods is no different than believing in the Tooth Fairy. Both have lots of coin, and they’re both happy with a hole in one. Oh, and both are fictitious creations. “Tiger” is a mythical beast who dominates the golf course. His alter ego, Eldrick, is the one I hope finds restoration in his marriage and redemption from God (although I’m pessimistic about the latter given his Buddhist inclinations).

My son asked me who the best golfer was, in light of these developments. I told him, as far as golf goes, it is still Tiger. When he plays, I enjoy watching golf…and that’s saying a lot.  But when it comes to being an honorable person, I have no idea. And it doesn’t matter if you are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, if you have no integrity of character, you offer nothing to believe in.

If Tiger never golfs again, I suppose it would be sad, to some degree of sports significance. But if Eldrick fails to follow through on this proverbial tee where he finds himself with all his personal relationships, the result will be far more sad and significant. May God show him grace, bring him healing, and lead him to truth.