The Sign Post

William Barclay tells of an old man who, as he lay near death, was obviously troubled. When asked what was disturbing him, he replied, "One day when I was young I was playing with some other boys at a crossroads. We reversed a sign post so that its arms were pointing in the wrong direction, and I've never ceased to wonder how many people were sent in the wrong direction by what we did."

Dying Well

We will all die one day. That is one of the few things we can be sure of. But will we die well? That is less certain. Dying well means dying for others, making our lives fruitful for those we leave behind. The big question, therefore, is not "What can I still do in the years I have left to live?" but "How can I prepare myself for my death so that my life can continue to bear fruit in the generations that will follow me?"
Jesus died well because through dying he sent his Spirit of Love to his friends, who with that Holy Spirit could live better lives. Can we also send the Spirit of Love to our friends when we leave them? Or are we too worried about what we can still do? Dying can become our greatest gift if we prepare ourselves to die well.

- Henri Nouwen

Ask for God

"But seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." (Matthew 6:33 NKJV)

For the first two or three years after my conversion, I used to ask for specific things. Now I ask for God. Supposing there is a tree full of fruits - you will have to go and buy or beg the fruits from the owner of the tree. Every day you would have to go for one or two fruits. But if you can make the tree your own property, then all the fruits will be your own. In the same way, if God is your own, then all things in Heaven and on earth will be your own, because He is your Father and is everything to you; otherwise you will have to go and ask like a beggar for certain things. When they are used up, you will have to ask again. So ask not for gifts but for the Giver of Gifts: not for life but for the Giver of Life - then life and the things needed for life will be added unto you

- Sadhu Sundar Singh

Repentance

Repentance is turning from our own way to God's way. The evidences that we are going our own way are manifested in religious, moral, material, or social spheres. We must repent specifically of these sins, for until repentance gets down to the specifics, it is not repentance. But our basic sin is that we choose our own way rather than God's. When we repent we say to God that we hand over to Him the reins of our lives. We do what He wants us to do, not what we want to do

- Ajith Fernando in "The Christian's Attitude Toward World Religions"

Saved Thruogh Faith

"God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love which He loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing; it is a gift from God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast." (Ephesians 2:4-9)

Into the depth of our predicament the word is spoken from on high: "By grace you have been saved!" To be saved does not just mean to be a little encouraged, a little comforted, a little relieved. It means to be pulled out like a log from a burning fire. You have been saved! We are not told: you may be saved sometimes, or a little bit. No, you have been saved, totally and for all times. You? Yes, we! Not just any other people, more pious and better than we are, no, we, each one of us.

- Karl Barth

Jesus To The Rescue

"Then [Jesus] got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded..." (Mark 6:51)

Sometimes we are, as it were, in the middle of the lake and the storm breaks, usually from a quarter we don't expect, and we are doubtful whether the little boat is going to stand it. We feel helpless, making no progress and are inclined to say: "I have gone to bits; I have no help, no support. This cannot be a spiritual life." We begin to lose our grip. The boat is very cranky and unstable, the waves very threatening and steep, the sky darkening. We are in utter wretchedness and discouragement.
It was like that when He got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. Then the situation was transformed by His presence. One way or another, life brings every awakening Christian soul this experience. When we recognize and reflect on it - for it may come in a way that seems very simple - it fills us with awe and grateful love. God in Christ intervenes between us and the storm that threatens to overwhelm us. His power is brought into action just where our action fails. He comes to the rescue of those caught in the toils of circumstance...
Certainly life is not made soft for Christians but it is, in the last resort, safe. The universe is safe for souls.

- Evelyn Underhill in "The Soul's Delight"

Unanswerable Questions

When I lay these questions before God, I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand."
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.

- C. S. Lewis in "A Grief Observed",

Sweeping Anger Away

A Nigerian woman who is a physician at a great teaching hospital in the United States came out of the crowd today to say something kind about the lecture I had just given. She introduced herself using an American name. "What's your African name?" I asked. She immediately gave it to me, several syllables long with a musical sound to it. "What does the name mean?" I wondered.
She answered, "It means 'Child who takes the anger away'."
When I inquired as to why she would have been given this name, she said, "My parents had been forbidden by their parents to marry. But they loved each other so much that they defied the family opinions and married anyway. For several years they were ostracized from both their families. Then my mother became pregnant with me. And when the grandparents held me in their arms for the first time, the walls of hostility came down. I became the one who swept the anger away. And that's the name my mother and father gave me."
It occurred to me that her name would be a suitable one for Jesus. He certainly knew how to sweep anger away.
I guess I would also like to be known as a person who sweeps anger away. Being a reconciler is pretty worthwhile personal mission. I recall Garrison Keillor once reflecting on the church of his youth: "We had a surplus of scholars and a deficit of peacemakers." That ratio needs to be reworked. - Gordon MacDonald

Heartbroken Availability

I once heard a wise priest say, in a meditation on gratitude, that we should be especially grateful for whatever breaks our hearts. Reflecting on God's promise to write "upon" our hearts rather than "within" them, he suggested that our own hearts are so hard that all God can do is write upon the surface (Jeremiah 31:33). It is only when our hearts break, that they break open: then the Word of God can enter deeply, like a seed in a harrowed field

- Deborah Smith Douglas in "Wounded and Healed"

A Revolutionary Book

Are you ready for a revolution?…
The power of Christianity is in the nature of the God we serve - yet most Christians barely understand God's true identity. Those who are still wondering if He's the God they're looking for know even less.
Fortunately, God does not keep His identity a cosmic secret. He doesn't play hide-and-seek, where the clues to His presence and nature are hidden behind distant planets or kept locked away in esoteric riddles. God announced Himself with an exclamation mark by proclaiming His nature in a type of autobiography, a book called the Bible. When we read His book and contemplate it over a period of time, we'll get an amazingly clear picture of who God really is - and our own lives will be set up for the most dramatic revolution we could ever imagine.

- Bill Hybels in "The God You're Looking For"

Benedicere

May your home always be too
small to hold all your friends.

May your heart remain ever supple,
fearless in the face of threat,
jubilant in the grip of grace.

May your hands remain open,
caressing, never clinched,
save to pound the doors
of all who barter justice
to the highest bidder.

May your heroes be earthy,
dusty-shoed and rumpled,
hallowed but unhaloed,
guiding you through seasons
of tremor and travail, apprenticed
to the godly art of giggling
amid haggard news and
portentous circumstance.

May your hankering be
in rhythm with heaven's,
whose covenant vows a dusty
intersection with our own:
when creation's hope and history rhyme.

May hosannas lilt from your lungs:
God is not done;
God is not yet done.

All flesh, I am told, will behold;
will surely behold.

(New Year's Day 2005)

by Ken Sehested

Listen, Then Obey

Attentiveness to God's Word and will is the ground from which all fruitful service in God's name grows. The resoundingly clear priority of the spiritual life is to listen first; then to obey what we hear

- Rev. Marjorie Thompson

Being An Embarrassment

Let each of us judge ourselves, making sure that, insofar as possible, we live out our convictions with as much consistency, honesty, and intelligence as possible. And let none of us be condescending or judgmental toward those who are trying to do the same, even when they seem a bit foolish in our eyes. Let each of us be as wise as serpents as we judge ourselves, and as gentle as doves when it comes to judging others. Once more, what some of us might deem foolish or embarrassing may, in reality, be profoundly effective. It's one thing to be an embarrassment to God as we follow Jesus; it's something else entirely to be an embarrassment for God. Let us pray for the courage to be willing to be embarrassed for God

- Tony Campolo in "Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God"

Sharing Community

When I think of community, I think of a group of people who want to know me as well as I know myself - people who challenge my thinking, help me grow, and love me unconditionally. Community like that is incredibly freeing.
When Jesus encountered the woman at the well in John 4, He told her all about herself. At first, she was caught off guard and uneasy. But she soon went back to her town and told everyone to come and meet the man who knew all about her.
As believers, we have a great opportunity to use community to reach others with the gospel. As we participate in community, people on the outside see that and want to be part of it. I encourage you to find community and to share that community with others.

- Toben and Joanne Heim in "Great Expectations"

Mapping God's Faithfulness

We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing God's will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance.

- Eugene Peterson in "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction"

An Irish Friendship Wish

May there always be work for your hands to do;
May your purse always hold a coin or two;
May the sun always shine on your windowpane;
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;
May the hand of a friend always be near you;
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

Rejecting Jesus

It's one thing for the world to reject Jesus because the people in secular society consider the Gospel to be ridiculous. It is quite another thing for the world to reject the Gospel because Christians are an embarrassment to God. The Bible warns us against conducting ourselves so that people end up rejecting Jesus, not because of who He is but because of the stupid things we do and say.

- Tony Campolo in "Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God"

Brimming With Affection

Those who are filled with an earthly love are ever thinking of the object of their attachment, their heart brims with affection for it, their mouth is full of its praises... Just so, those who love God are never weary of thinking about Him, living for Him, yearning for Him, and talking to Him.

- Francis De Sales in "An Introduction to the Devout Life" (1608)

The Grace Of Humour

As Christians, we are people of the resurrection, therefore we are people who love to laugh, who believe that laughter is a wonderfully life-giving, defiant act full of the grace of God. Easter is that which enables us to keep going, even in our moral failures, even when being a servant of the Word is difficult. Those who have kept at the Christian ministry longer than I will confirm the essential virtue of humour... The ability to laugh at life's incongruities, to take God seriously but not ourselves, to embrace the strangeness of [other] people instead of strangling them to death with our bare hands - this is great grace... Humor is the grace to put our problems in perspective,... to be reminded that Jesus really did need to save us, seeing as we have so little means to save ourselves. Humor is just a glimpse, on a human scale, of the way God looks upon us from God's unfathomable grace. By the resurrection, the gospel is enabled to be comedy and not tragedy.

- U. M. Bishop William Willimon

Where Are Your Eyes Focused?

Some years ago a sociologist accompanied a group of mountain climbers on an expedition. Among other things, he observed a distinct correlation between cloud cover and contentment. When there was no cloud cover and the peak was in view, the climbers were energetic and cooperative. When the gray clouds eclipsed the view of the mountaintop, though, the climbers were sullen and selfish.
The same thing happens to us. As long as our eyes are on God's majesty there is a bounce in our step. But let our eyes focus on the dirt beneath us and we will grumble about every rock and crevice we have to cross. For this reason Paul urged, "Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to the things going on around Christ - that's where the action is. See things from His perspective."

- Max Lucado in "Let the Journey Begin"

The Cost Of Obedience: Pocket Change, Or All We Own?

How much has your faith cost you lately? For most of us, the cost at Easter is the price of a few chocolate bunnies for the kids, or the bill for a new Easter outfit.
But during Lent, and particularly today, Good Friday, as we reflect on the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we would do well to consider how much faith is costing our fellow Christians around the world - especially in Africa.
In Sudan, a holy war has been raging for nearly twenty years between the Muslim north and the Christian south. So how high is the price of obedience? Very high indeed. In Sudan, the cost of faithfulness is freedom. Among the battle tactics the North employs is kidnapping Christians and selling them into slavery.
The cost of faithfulness is family. A year ago, government planes bombed a church-run grade school in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. More than a dozen children - who were just beginning their English lessons -- were killed, along with their teacher.
The cost of faithfulness is dignity: Kidnapped women and children are often gang-raped by government soldiers, and forced into concubinage. When their clothing wears out, they must endure the shame of nakedness.
The cost of faithfulness is hunger: The government destroys crops and keeps international famine relief from reaching southern Sudan.
The cost of faithfulness is health: Children weak from hunger succumb to disease - diseases for which no medicines are available.
The cost of faithfulness is also the loss of home: Christians are being driven off their lands by a government greedy to gets its hands on the oil that lies beneath.
And the cost of faithfulness is often life itself: Two million Sudanese Christians have already been killed - starved or slaughtered for refusing to convert to Islam.
We can't say Jesus didn't warn us: He promised that the cost of faithfulness might be everything we have.
Here in the West, most of us pay pocket change: Following Christ means we may lose a job, or we may have to endure the likes of Ted Turner calling us names. In Sudan and elsewhere, Christians pay a much higher price: Freedom, family, and life itself.
...
The people of Sudan know the high cost of obedience - - but they also know the joy. An American who recently traveled to Sudan with an anti-slavery group spoke to a young girl who had just been redeemed out of years of slavery. The American asked: "Now that you're free, what are you going to do?" The young girl replied: "I want to see my father - and I want to go to church."
For most folks, Easter is a time to stuff the shopping cart full of goodies, hide the Easter eggs for the kids, don your Easter bonnet - and then grumble if the sermon goes too long. Well, I suggest you and I instead stop, take stock of our blessings, and think especially of those this day around the world who are suffering for their faith, particularly the persecuted church in Sudan.
And as we think about them, it will give new meaning to the Cross, and the event we commemorate this very day.

- "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson"

Radical, Risk-Taking Faith

Faith is the belief that God is real and that God is good. Faith is not a mystical experience or a midnight vision or a voice in the forest... it is a choice to believe that the One who made it all hasn't left it all and that He still sends light into shadows and responds to gestures of faith.
Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. Faith is the belief that God will do what is right. God is always near and always available. Just waiting for your touch. So let Him know. Demonstrate your devotion: Write a letter. Ask forgiveness. Confess. Be baptized. Feed a hungry person. Pray. Teach. Go.
Do something that reveals your faith. For faith with no effort is no faith at all. God will respond. He has never rejected a genuine gesture of faith. Never.
God honors radical, risk-taking faith. When arks are built, lives are saved. When soldiers march, Jerichos tumble. When staffs are raised, seas still open. When a lunch is shared, thousands are fed. And when a garment is touched - whether by the hand of an anemic woman in Galilee or by the prayers of a beggar in Bangladesh - Jesus stops. So make your choice, announce your faith to God, and demonstrate your devotion.

- Max Lucado in "The Gift for All People"

Perfume from the Titanic

Service Is a Sweet-Smelling Sacrifice by Eric Reed
Deep-sea divers recently recovered a leather case containing 40 small vials of perfume oil from the wreck of the Titanic. The little bottles, which probably would have been sold in New York as the ingredients for cologne, belonged to a businessman from Manchester, England. When they pulled the case from the water, the fragrance of the oils filled the air, after almost a century.
"To smell something that smells the same as it did on the Titanic before it went down is simply incredible," said Graham Jessop, an expert in the retrieval of such artefacts.
My wife would say that must be good perfume. A dab lasts a long time.
One time a woman slipped into the dining room after dinner, carrying a small flask. She broke it open and poured it on the head of the honoured guest. The room was filled with the smell of very expensive perfume. "What a waste," some of the guests said. "We could have sold that and helped the poor." It cost almost a year's pay.
The man she anointed cut their complaints short. "She's done a beautiful thing. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."
And so it has. Because of her love for Jesus, the woman risked rebuke from the crowd and gave the very best she had, from motives as pure as the oil she offered. But even now, two thousand years later, her sacrifice is remembered, to her credit. Her sacrifice smells as sweet now as it did then. And that is simply incredible.
But in God's economy, it's the incredible things that count most, the things that are hardest to understand and to believe. Even today, Jesus calls us to give our best -- our best service, our best offering, sometimes our last dollar. In the back-to-school season, when our plans are fresh and programs are cranking up again, we may sometimes wonder if it's really worth it. Does anyone really know or care how much church leaders sacrifice in God's service?
God does.
And our service is a sweet-smelling sacrifice to him. It will always be remembered.
"Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Small Efforts Have Big Impact

I was asked to conduct the funeral for a man who had helped develop the famous Boeing 747 aircraft. After the service, I spoke with the widow and commented on how remarkable it was that her late husband had helped build that marvelous machine. She said, "The truth is, he worked on one little switchbox smaller than a loaf of bread. That's all he worked on for 15 years. But when that 747 lifted off the ground for the first time, it was the happiest day of his life."
He worked on one small switchbox for more than a decade. Yet the huge plane couldn't have lifted off without this man's contribution. Often we see only our seemingly small efforts and feel we aren't very important. But when the great Kingdom of God "lifts off," we'll be thrilled to find out that all of our efforts were essential.

- M. Craig Barnes, Pastor of National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C.

I Am Sending You

There is a story of a man who looked up at the heavens and said, "Dear God, there is so much pain and anguish in Your world; why don't You send help?" And God answered, "I did send help - I sent My Son and they crucified Him. Now I am sending you in the power of My Spirit to make a difference and to ease the pain and anguish you encounter."

Hurricanes Show the Natural Hand of God

The onslaught of hurricanes, marching one after the other in the fall of 2004, prompted many people to think more about God. It is safe to say that there were countless prayers for God to temper the might of the storms. Others realized they were seeing the power of God through nature. Kevin Harless, 32, who was sightseeing in Panama City Beach, Florida, was more of a theologian than he may have realized. He said, "You want to see the natural hand of God firsthand, but you don't realize how strong it is."

Jay Reeves, "Hurricane Ivan Storms Ashore," AP (Sep 16, 2004)

Trusting God When Miracles Don't Come

In "Holding On to Hope", a book about the life and death of her daughter named Hope, Nancy Guthrie writes:
We had Hope for 199 days. We loved her. We enjoyed her richly and shared her with everyone we could. We held her during seizures. Then we let her go.
The day after we buried Hope, my husband said to me, "You know, I think we expected our faith to make this hurt less, but it doesn't." Our faith gave us an incredible amount of strength and encouragement while we had Hope, and we were comforted by the knowledge that she is in heaven. Our faith keeps us from being swallowed by despair.
But I don't think it makes our loss hurt any less.
Early on in my journey, I said to God, "Okay, if I have to go through this, then give me everything. Teach me everything you want to teach me through this. Don't let this incredible pain be wasted in my life!"
God ... allows good and bad into our lives and we can trust Him with both.... Trusting God when the miracle does not come, when the urgent prayer gets no answer, when there is only darkness -- this is the kind of faith God values most of all....
I believe that the purpose of Hope's short life, and my life, was and is to glorify God

- Nancy Guthrie in "Holding On to Hope"

Waiting for God

Waiting is not a very popular attitude. In fact, most people consider waiting a waste of time. Perhaps this is because the culture in which we live is basically saying, "Get going! Do something! Show you are able to make a difference! Don't just sit there and wait!" For many people, waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go. And people do not like such a place. They want to get out of it by doing something.
In our particular historical situation, waiting is even more difficult because we are so fearful. One of the most pervasive emotions in the atmosphere around us is fear. People are afraid - afraid of inner feelings, afraid of other people, and also afraid of the future. And fearful people have a hard time waiting.

- Henri Nouwen

A Benediction

Go forth into the streets of this world. Go with the memory of an hour when you have refreshed your souls in the presence of God and his people. Go with the intention to be faithful to Jesus by carrying his love to your family, your friends, and all others in need whom you meet along the way. Go with courage, with a resolve not to sin, and—finally—go with the exciting reminder that at any moment Jesus may come again. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I say to you…farewell."

written by Gordon McDonald

Human Relations

Abraham Lincoln, truly one of America's greatest presidents, had a rather unique approach in trying a case when he was a practicing attorney. He went to great lengths to learn everything he could about what the attorney for the "other side" would say... Then, in his arguments, Lincoln would do a superb job of presenting the case from his opponent's side of the table... On occasion, the attorney for the other side would make the observation that Lincoln had presented the opposition's case better than he could have. Perhaps you wonder why he took such an approach. First, he wanted to be fair. Second, he wanted to win the case if he believed his client was right. Needless to say, Lincoln then presented his own side with more fervor, facts, and reasons why his side was the right side. By using this procedure, Lincoln completely robbed the opposition of anything to say and built his own case in a stronger manner... He also wove in more humor and homespun stories when he presented his case. Most people, including jurors, like and trust those who give them cause to smile and who bring homespun logic to the table. What Lincoln did was simple. He practiced great human relations and used his abundant common sense. He wanted right to prevail and when he presented his case, as a general rule, the right side did win.

by Zig Ziglar