Chips and Morsels

Tuesday 11/26/19 3:45 AM

It’s the week of Thanksgiving and, coincidentally, also my birthday week. Thoughts of cramming potatoes, gravy, turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, and birthday cake down my throat with family and friends invade my brain. The airwaves and internet remind me of deals that are to be made on Black Friday and Cyber Monday so I can accumulate more and more and more and better and better and better and more and more and more and better and better and better.

Thanksgiving is later this year you know. There are less than three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we need to start our consuming and amassing of gifts even earlier this year. Get those decorations up! Time’s a wasting!

My devotional theme this week is Christ the King. Surely a king would enjoy the sumptuous feast and beautiful things that will be consumed and purchased this week. Kings are measured by their opulent lifestyle and their profligacy: the bigger, the more extravagant, the gaudier the better. What king would turn down an opportunity to feast and flaunt his wealth at a time like this?

Then I turned the page of my devotional book and read this poem by James Russell Lowell.

His Throne Is with the Outcast

I followed where they led,

And in a hovel rude,

With naught to fence the weather from his head

The King I sought for meekly stood;

A naked hungry child

Clung round his gracious knee,

And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled

To bless the smile that set him free;

New miracles I saw his presence do,

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor,

The gathered chips into a woodpile grew

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store.

I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek.

His throne is with the outcast and the meek.

My previous thoughts were arrested, arraigned, tried, and convicted.

Why am I so easily held captive by the desires that never satisfy? Why am I always looking for more, and better, unsatisfied with what I have?

But then the gracious King reminded me that I am the naked child, hungry for love, who has found a knee on which to cling. I am the slave, hunted by cravings that will never satisfy, who has been freed from bondage by a loving smile of forgiveness. Gathered chips are the fuel for the flame he uses to warm my cold heart at a fire stoked from his growing woodpile. Broken morsels are the food he uses to nourish me at a bountiful table stocked from his goodly store.

Lord, keep me from being lured by the glitz and the glamour so prevalent during this time of the year as I celebrate your goodness to me. Give me your compassionate heart and your forgiving grace as I interact with those around me. Use the meager chips and morsels of my life to somehow provide hope, love, and justice for those abandoned by our society but loved by you, the outcast and the meek.

Love God, Love the World

Monday 11/18/19 6:08 AM

I know many Christians who long for the end of the world. They are discouraged by our dysfunctional world and long for Christ’s return, when evil will be punished and things will be set right. I long for the day when things will be set right too but an excerpt from In the Christian Spirit, by Louis Evely, that I read this morning gives a different viewpoint. He writes, “To believe in God is to believe in the salvation of the world. The paradox of our time is that those who believe in God do not believe in the salvation of the world, and those who believe in the future of the world do not believe in God. … To love God is to love the world. To love God passionately is to love the world passionately. To hope in God is to hope for the salvation of the world. … God seeks among us sons and daughters who resemble him enough, who love the world enough that he could send them into the world to save it.”

Most people recognize that things are not the way they should be in our world today. It seems that many who are the most concerned about righting social injustice, protecting fragile ecosystems, curbing global warming, etc., are atheists. At the same time many Christians do very little or even oppose those seeking solutions to the world’s ills, and instead long for Christ’s return, when he will solve all the world’s problems. Evely seems to argue that if Christians truly loved God they would also love the world and do all within their power to protect and redeem it. Christians should be on the forefront of the fight, leading the way, rather than belittling those who are concerned and attempting to do something about it, or hindering their efforts.

It’s no wonder people are not attracted to the modern church and perceive it as those who hate the world and the people within it. The people of God need to adopt Christ’s attitude of putting others’ needs before their own, seeking the good of others before seeking what is good for themselves, and sacrificing their resources and using their influence for the benefit of others. Those attitudes and actions align with God’s attitude and action and would do more to effect changes in society and within the hearts of those who do not believe in God.

My Heart Song

Tuesday 11/5/19 5:36 AM

I am reading Psalm 19 each day this week. It begins with the familiar words about the heavens declaring the glory of God and the skies proclaiming his handiwork. Yesterday I was watching a couple of the physics videos from my sabbatical project and one of them talked about the working of the human heart. I still don’t understand everything about it but, from what I do understand, it is made of cells where the interior electrical charge is 80 millivolts less than the outer charge, creating an electric field. There are pacemaker cells at the top of the atria that receive a signal and ions move through the cell wall to make the interior 20 millivolts more than the exterior of the cell. As this charge moves through the cell it contracts and the charge continues to move through the remainder of the heart cells from the top to the bottom. When it reaches the bottom, the ions move back through the cell wall so the interior charge is again 80 millivolts less than the outer charge, causing the cells to relax again. The movement of this charge then goes upward through the heart returning it to its original state and then awaits the next signal from the pacemaker cells. That moving electrical charge is what is measured in an electrocardiogram. This process happens within approximately one second, causing a heartbeat of approximately sixty times per minute. If the pacemaker cells fail to send their signal for more than four seconds the person loses consciousness and if they remain unconscious for more than four minutes there can be permanent brain damage. The heart muscle cells are a pump that operates continuously throughout the lifespan of the person. The heavens aren’t the only thing declaring the glory of God. In my opinion, the interior workings of cells and the coordinated workings of groups of cells in the heart, the eye, the ear, the lungs, and so on, declare it even louder.