On Fruits and Flakes

Which one are you?
a fruit or a flake?
Which kind of trouble
do you like to make?

For workloads and deadlines
instead of crying,
do you make silly faces
when hands are flying?

Or are you the one,
when time runs short,
who can't be found,
to give support?

Faced with issues
do you strike a pose?
for others amusement,
make up silly prose?

Or when confronted
do your eyes roam?
'cause the lights are on,
but nobodys home?

Are you the one,
after the emails are sent,
that realizes they have
no title or content?

Or do friends languish
left without knowing
if you're alive or if
your indifference is showing?

If you're a fruit
others may scoff,
but being a flake means
you've been cast off!

Bad jokes may be followed
by head shaking and sighing,
but none can forget
the odd one who keeps trying!

Go Home Again

Who do you trust? All of us have issues with it. The longer you've been around, the more rules you accumulate about who doesn't deserve it. We didn't start life so cynically. We all remember with fondness the earnest sincerity of our youth. Yet a child's trust is actually just innocence, that which has no knowledge or experience, and therefore is lacking in wisdom and direction. The original state of being trusting has been idealized as that home which has been lost to us forever. We cannot make it back on our own. We've wandered too far away and no longer remember the road which takes us back.

Trust is opening up and exposing our true selves. It means to be vulnerable. Nobody wants to give away, to just anybody, that which is sacred, and it is plainly unwise to do so. Yet Jesus said, "Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."(Matt 18:2)

Jesus, Himself, is the pivot point where we can change directions. He is that fulcrum through which change moves mountains. In Him, our skepticism and weakness are given strength enough to make the decision to trust again. In Him only is our burned out shell of innocence ressurected into new life, to be forever after called faith. We are no longer the innocent, but something better because we believe. After we make that choice to follow Him, we become the wise, because we now see clearly in His light. Now our trust is for Him.

Promises Kept

Through Christ, my heart, by trust, was freed,
Later tripped up again by need.
Everyone needs a place to start
learning how to give all their heart.
But those who start to trust in man
are burned by fire and cannot stand.
There's only One who does not sin.
Glorious Son, unlike other men.
The only one with love so deep
that never fails, His promises to keep.
But human beings, like chaff in the wind,
chasing in circles, much effort they spend
to follow things that pass away,
then wonder why in pain they stay.
By fear and denial my heart was driven,
but I'll never regret the love I've given.
Love never fails or fades away,
though innocence may die, day by day.
In Him, my trauma is turned around,
by sacrifice I am gaining ground!
For innocence lost, I won't cry twice,
because for Him, it's worth any price!
To gain the goal of greatest good
to see His kingdom advanced, I would
keep my focus on Him, to stay on track,
because, for me, He kept nothing back!
In His service, I'd venture much,
Do anything, to feel His touch!
Remember the one who keeps His promise?
In praising Him, I find my bliss!

In His Name

Leadership is a heavyweight topic. Leadership can be a harsh burden to bear when others are unappreciative of our sacrifices. Also, submitting to an authoritative superior with ‘axes to grind’ is a hardship of the severest sort. From both perspectives, it can be a ‘losing proposition’. Those committing abuses lack understanding of the fact that authority is not given for purposes of personal gain. Those that think that leadership is the power to bring about compliance by force or fear are simply wrong. Fear is not the most compelling motivator there is. Christians tend to succumb to this ‘intimidation’ mentality as often as anyone else.

Every Christian has been instructed, by Jesus, to take on the responsibility of being a leader. Christ has given us a different model of what leadership is. I’d like to borrow from one of His parables in order to flesh out a different sort of analogy for what God-given authority looks like. “…The kingdom of heaven will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey….”(Matt 25:14 & 15)

This is the parable of the talents, where the Lord has arranged for a very great price to be paid……. for us! Our moral bankruptcy has made it necessary for Him to give us credit based solely on the perfect payment record of His Son. He has lent us the very image of His Son. He has used the most valuable treasure in heaven to invest in us. What, exactly, did he purchase with so large a price? The freedom for us to love and serve Him! His ‘Institution of Highest Lending’ has purchased for us a new worldview of faith and a valuation system based on love. Since we can never actually repay this debt, He has graciously asked that we ‘pay it forward’! "Freely ye have received, freely give." (Matt 10:8) Love, service, and forgiveness rendered to others, as we can, are our only payments, done solely from gratitude.

Part of our service is to redistribute this vast wealth even further by becoming a ‘broker’ of this great salvation. We acquire more ‘assets’ for Christ by bringing others into the ‘employment’ of the ‘lending institution’ to serve His loving purposes. Our great employment directive from Christ is to be His witnesses, “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”(Acts 1: 7)

Leadership is the love and service we give, in His name, as a result of our debt of gratitude. Being a leader is being a representative, purchased by His blood, of the message of hope that He has already paid for. It is being yielded to Him. What a sweet, joy-filled debt to owe, with payments made in the currency of gladness! As for me, my most profound desire is to yield all that I am and everything I have into those scarred hands in return for a place close to Him. His love is enough!

A Moral Juxtaposition

"She spent her whole life looking out the window." This sentence could be construed as a story in itself, undeserving of further clarification. This person would not be someone worth knowing. She has nothing to offer, no beauty or charm with which she can barter for others' time. This exact sentiment is put rather poetically to music in the Beatle's song "Eleanor Rigby". "Look at all the lonely people", one of which is apparently the woman for whom the song is named. "She lives in a dream. Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for?" This profoundly sad senario, where a woman who waits so patiently for connection with her fellow human beings and dies with no one to even attend her funeral, seems to be a social and political condemnation of the relevance and effectiveness of the church in our culture. If you don't want to have a futile and pointless life and then die alone, search for meaning outside the context of a message that has no personal application. Humanity has moved on. Christianity has been left behind. Stop holding on to it's teachings and look to us instead. Such are the values and prejudices of a christless world, alienated by an insulating miasma of pride and contempt for perceived weaknesses in others. They cannot see past what seems so obvious to them. It is a superficial understanding, offering only psuedosympathy to those who don't support their self aggrandizing agenda. Could it be possible, that a teaching so generally despised as weak, could have an astronomical value unappreciated by those who refuse to see it? Could their own fear of rejection be what is driving their dismissal of those who represent the gospel?

Humanity has a poor record indeed of correctly perceiving and assessing value. The embodiment of worth, Himself, "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrow and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hid their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed Him not." (Isa 53:2&3) As our example, He came to wake us to the meanings hidden in plain sight, to the structure of purpose underlying the physical world. He provided us with some clarity of perspective on what is of eternal significance.

"God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wisdom of the wise." (1 Cor 1:27) The 'wise' philosophers of this world are the ones who truly have the futile existence, and follow a 'dead end' path. They aren't clued into what is really going on around them. Eternity is too large for their minds to grasp. Theirs is a colorless, one dimensional world.

This natural 'wisdom' has a value system diametrically opposed to Christ's. He, as the creator of the universe, sees more clearly and with total knowledge and understanding. Listen to what Christ values. He approves of the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those merciful, and those who are peacemakers. (Matt 5-10) Not exactly a list of the powerful and influential, is it? Yet these are the very ones who 'add flavor' by being "the salt of the earth" and 'color' by being "the light of the world". (Matt 5:13&14)

Which is to be preferred? The superficial or the profound? Can an illusion of self determination give satisfaction? Or is it better to open eyes to treasures of wisdom and understanding beyond price? It is an indictment of our spiritual blindness when we cannot see the shining jewel which is the person standing next to us. It is a trajedy of epic proportions when we do not feel the weight of honor bestowed upon us in any service we can perform for this earthly representative of our humble king.