Hope & Fraility

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  John 1:14

Have you ever wondered, REALLY wondered, how dicey that decision was?  Forget for a moment the whole omnipotent, omniscient aspect of God.  Forget that in his sovereignity all of his plans will work out ever how he originally planned it.  For reasons only God truly understands (and he graciously empowers us to see dimly), he choose to send his only son and his only son agreed to cast off all of his divinity, power, etc. and take on human flesh.

He did not take on the flesh of a grown man, fit and strong to defend himself.  He started all the way back to square 1, or should I say cell 1.  He took on the risk of surviving real live human pregnancy and child birth.  He took on the risk of his parents not being able to defend him or escape with him when Herod ordered all the male babies to be executed.  And yet the angels sang of good news of great joy at the birth of a savior.  This baby was the hope of all creation.

Christmas is the beginning of a season of hope.  The celebration of Christ's birth was moved to December to celebrate the lengthening of the day, when the sun's growing power obliterates winter.  We sing songs about snow before Christmas but almost never AFTER Christmas because hope has come.  In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Narnians lament that it is always winter but never Christmas.

So, can we place our hope in such frail a plan?  It's kinda easy to do, on this side of history.  We know the ending.  The baby grows up and after having lived a perfect life becomes a perfect sacrifice, giving us the hope of the forgiveness of our sins.  After dying a cruel death, he rose from the grave giving us the hope of eternal life.  And it all began in the fraility of divinely initiated human conception, a full term pregnancy, and natural childbirth.

In this season of hope, our lives, dreams, and problems are frail in comparison to even the slightest aspect of God.  Even our faith is tenuous and frail because it is just as easy to choose to unbelieve as it is to believe.  And yet we've seen that God can use the weakest of human frailities to accomplish his plan.  I wonder what he wants to do with yours and mine?

(Not) Just another Thursday

Today is the day that all my colleagues have been waiting for - the last day before Spring Break! Spring Break is always an important time for public school teachers. February and March are usually long stretches where there are no holidays or workdays. The kids are tired of school and wishing it would end. Eventually we tachers all get tired of fighting the battle and we begin to long for break to arrive. Hope and excitement are in the air today because we all know that tomorrow begins Spring Break - 1 week away from school to recharge and hopefully come back to finish strong.

Today is an special day for more important reasons. It's Maundy Thursday. Tonight is the night that Jesus celebrated his last Passover with the Disciples. It's the night that Judas betrayed him with a kiss and the guards arrested him.  It began the countdown of the final stages of his earthly ministry - his crucifixion and death that paid for our sins and his resurrection that gives us the promise of eternal life.  There is hope and excitement in the air because we are on the backside of the resurrection event.  We can say with assurance that no matter how bad it gets, we can hold onto the promise of eternal life in heaven.

What a great day this is gonna be . . . 

"I Fish, Therefore I Lie"

So said a bumper sticker I saw at the pier today. I'm in the middle of a long weekend at the beach with the family. Today while playing in the surf with the boys, I watched the people along the pier standing there, many just waving their rods up and down continuously, like the apprentice in a blacksmith's shop stoking the fire with the bellows. While on the pier, I watched these same fisherman just stand there, keeping their rods in motion, engaging in conversation and almost oblivious to their repetitive motion. I wonder if they do that in their sleep?

I thought of myself the day before. I had spent the day fishing on the pier, only to come back to the camper with an empty cooler. What makes a person stand there all day, holding onto a stick with a piece of string tied to the end and hanging it in the water? As I grew increasingly frustrated with the empty cooler and contemplated when I would call it quits for the day, something would keep me going. I would get a bite. I would reel in my line only to catch a croaker that was too small, a pinfish, a baby shark, or some other ugly thing that no one could identify. As long as I caught one of these with enough frequency, I would keep going, hoping the next one would be a keeper. Or maybe the guy next to me would reel in a keeper and encourage me to keep trying.

There are a lot of lessons we can draw from this fish story. I might go on to say that we do some pretty stupid things sometimes and think we're having great fun. Or we could talk about how if a thousand people do a stupid thing it's still a stupid thing. Perhaps this is a great time to talk about doing nothing that's work related and taking a regular sabbath.

I'm thinking it's a great opportunity to talk about the hope that keeps us going when nothing else can. It does not matter how bad things might seem or be, there is always hope for those of us on a faith journey with Jesus Christ as our Savior. In his letter to the Romans, Paul tells us a lot about hope and how it keeps us going in tough times. Later Paul tells us that not only does this hope not disappoint us and keep us going, but it's a hope that promises a better life where we share in the glory of God. In fact, God is a God of hope and wants to fill us with it on this journey.

No matter what's happening in your life, there is always hope. And that's no fish story.