You Smell

Sunday 2/9/20 5:44 AM

Before I left for my walk this morning I checked the weather app on my phone. There is a chance of rain today and I wanted to know if it was going to start before I could finish my walk. The app showed the first possibility of rain at 9:00, so I left for my walk. About fifteen minutes into the walk I could smell rain in the air. Sometimes you can smell the rain before it begins and I began to silently curse the app on my phone for giving me misleading information. But the smell of rain soon ceased, and it remained dry. I started to think about how one can smell the rain before it comes and I wished I could do the same thing with the movement of God in my life. It would be nice if I could use one of my senses to determine what God wants me to do, or to determine when he is about to work in or through me.

I continued walking and about ten minutes later I walked past the water feature near city hall. As I went past I could smell chlorine emanating from the cascading water. I immediately had memories of my childhood. We had friends with swimming pools when I lived in Phoenix. During the hot summer days I spent many hours at their house enjoying the refreshing water. Sometimes my friend’s parents had added chlorine to the water and, if you swam shortly after they did that, your eyes and the lining of your nose would burn. When I got out of the pool my eyes would be red and the mucus membranes of my nose irritated.

I kept walking and a few minutes later 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 came to my mind. “But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life.” I thought about the two aromas I experienced during my walk, the aroma of rain, which brings refreshment and life, and the aroma of chlorine, a poisonous gas that kills microorganisms in the water and also people and animals when exposed to larger doses.

For the rest of my walk I wondered what kind of aroma I exude to those I meet. Am I someone that brings refreshment and life to those with whom I interact or do I cause irritation or discomfort? After my walk I sat down for my regular time of meditation and reflection. The first passage of scripture assigned for my reading today was Isaiah 58:9-12, “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called the Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.” The image of a well-watered garden and a spring that never fails reminded me of the promise of rain later today. I want to be the person described by Isaiah, one who repairs and restores. The instructions for how to be that person are pretty clear. I need to strive to be one who fights to get rid of oppression and malicious talk, and to expend my energy and resources in behalf of the hungry and the oppressed.

I am always exuding an aroma. Today I have a choice in the way I live and interact with others. Will others smell the aroma that brings life, or the aroma that brings death?

A Great Day

Thursday 2/6/20 6:17 AM

I decided to go on a little longer walk this morning. When I left the house around 4:30 I purposely left my memory verses and headphones at home, and I asked God to join me on my walk. About a half mile into my walk Psalm 139:5 came to mind where it says that God hems me in, behind and before. The image I had was of God walking ahead of me and behind me and it brought me comfort and a great sense of security despite the early hour, and the darkness. I continued to walk in silence listening for God’s voice but hearing nothing. When I neared the police station my nose was running so I went inside to blow my nose. On my way to the restroom there was a homeless man sitting on the floor who looked up at me. He appeared to be a young white man, disheveled, dirty, and with eyes glazed over like someone who was either drunk or impaired by drugs. I greeted him with a good morning and he responded with an unintelligible grunt. I continued on my walk and when I got to the corner of Norwalk Boulevard and Imperial Highway, where I normally turn right, there was a young man crossing Norwalk Blvd. I turned the corner first and he was about five steps behind me. I immediately thought of God going behind me and offered a prayer of thanksgiving that he decided to join me in my walk. I normally turn south after only one block, but because I had decided to walk a little longer I continued down Imperial Highway. The young man continued behind me, matching me step for step. Just past the library the light turned red and I stopped. The young man caught up and as we waited for the light to change we started up a conversation. He spoke with a Latino accent and he told me he is a truck driver. He was walking to work and we walked together for about a mile, continuing our conversation, until he arrived at his workplace. During the course of our conversation I discovered that he works six days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, he is married, and has two sons ages 7 and 3. We also talked about how hard it is to afford to live in Southern California, especially to buy a house, hence the need for him to work such long hours. As we parted we said our goodbyes and he told me his name was Miguel. I looked further down the sidewalk and there was another man walking toward me about fifty yards away. He also appeared to be on his way to work. As he walked past I noted that he was African American and he said to me, “It is a great day.” I responded with, “It certainly is.” and continued on my walk.

I realized that God had decided to join me join me this morning in the persons of the homeless man, Miguel, and the man who reminded me it was a great day. None of those I met were men of great importance, wealth, or power. They were simply people going about their business, like the multitude of average people I see every day. The Bible reminds me that God makes his home with the fatherless, the widow, and the outcasts of society but I seldom have eyes to see him walking next to me in all the differing forms he takes upon himself. I’m too busy thinking about myself or looking for some great, supernatural experience where I can experience his presence, although those experiences are few and far between.

In his essay Simple Places, Stephen Doughty writes, “Christian community, like beauty, often presents itself in the intimate, the common, the close at hand. It comes to bud and flower in the simplest of places. Race by, and we miss it. Wait to see it in some idealized state and we pass without knowing it was there. … As Jesus’ followers, if we are to find true community with one another and with him, then we should look not just to the massive throng or dramatic moment. We should look as well to the simplest instance of one life brushing up against another. We should open ourselves to the small and intimate moments when persons draw together in their joys and in their needs. If love flows among us, even briefly, God is there – in traffic jams, in places of staggering beauty, in the realms of the darkest communal pain. If we find ourselves bound together even momentarily, God is present. We taste with our spirits the community God longs to build.”

This morning I was privileged to walk with God. When my life brushed up against the lives of the homeless man, Miguel, and the man on the way to work I got a taste of the community God wants us to experience as a society at large. It is a great day indeed.

God's Aquifer

Wednesday 12/11/19 4:47 AM

Jaci and I spent last weekend in Pacific Grove where I attended a math conference. We drove to the conference and the final miles took us through the beautiful Salinas Valley. We stopped at a rest stop where I read some of the history of the valley. Many years ago the river had water in it year-round, providing habitat for steelhead trout, salmon, beavers, and birds. During the rainy season the river would overflow its banks so that in places it was about a mile wide. This periodic flooding makes it a perfect valley for agriculture. Within the last hundred years or so increased water usage for irrigation purposes results in the river drying up during the dry season, obviously adversely affecting the salmon and steelhead trout populations since their spawning grounds can no longer be reached. There are large underground aquifers that are being tapped to irrigate the crops that are still grown in the valley. The signage at the rest area called the aquifers an underground river. It still contains a lot of water but it can’t be seen at the surface.

My devotional reading today is about hope and included Psalm 33:7, “(The Lord) gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses.” My first thought was of the underground aquifers in the Salinas Valley. At the surface things seem dry and barren but under the surface lies a huge reservoir of water that can be tapped to create life on the surface.

The past few years my life with God has been dry and barren. The circumstances of my life provided little hope for me and I felt as if my life was wasting away. Things seemed hopeless when looking around me but beneath the surface the reservoir of God’s love was waiting to be tapped. I need to be reminded that my circumstances are a poor resource for hope and joy but God’s lavish love and mercy can be tapped ignoring the surface conditions and drilling deeper.

Physical Therapy

Friday 12/6/19 6:27 AM

Yesterday I had a physical therapy appointment for my recovery from hip surgery. They gave me three new exercises to add to my list. All the new exercises, which include planks, are designed to strengthen my core. A strong core is essential for good body mechanics and takes some of the stress off one’s hips and back. The exercises I am doing now are preparing me for a good future.

My devotional theme for the week is preparing the way. Today’s readings included the ministry of John the Baptist and his explanation to the Pharisees about how he wasn’t the Messiah but was preparing the way for the Messiah. In a way he was like my physical therapist. He called the people to repentance, providing the means by which they could respond positively to the call of Jesus.

How best can I prepare the way for Jesus so, when others are around me, they will be enabled to respond positively to his call? In his book, The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen suggests the best thing I can do is to become a man of prayer. “For a man of prayer is, in the final analysis, the man who is able to recognize in others the face of the Messiah and make visible what was hidden, make touchable what was unreachable. The man of prayer is a leader precisely because through his articulation of God’s work within himself he can lead others out of confusion to clarification; through his compassion he can guide them out of the closed circuits of their in-groups to the wide world of humanity; and through his critical contemplation he can convert their convulsive destructiveness into creative work for the new world to come.”

If I am to be a good “physical therapist” pointing the way to Christ I must not neglect my own time spent with God. I need a strong core so that my walk in the world will be effective in pointing others to Jesus and lead them to a good future.

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.