The Stronger Base

A decision is made with the brain. A commitment is made with the heart. Therefore, a commitment is much deeper and more binding than a decision.

- Nido Qubein

My Challenge

I expect to pass through this life but once. If, therefore there can be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do for any fellow being let me do it now...as I shall not pass this way again.

- William Penn

It is time...

Every now and then, somewhere, some place, sometime, you are going to have to plant your feet, stand firm, and make a point about who you are and what you believe in. When that time comes, Pat, you simply have to do it.

- Lee Riley (father of Pat Riley, NBA coach)

Being Creative With Troublesome Ancestry

You are working on your family genealogy and for sake of example, let's say that your great-great uncle, Remus Starr, a fellow lacking in character, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889.
A cousin has supplied you with the only known photograph of Remus, showing him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture are the words:
"Remus Starr: Horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison, 1885. Escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged, 1889."
Pretty grim situation, right? But let's revise things a bit. We simply crop the picture, scan in an enlarged image and edit it with image processing software so that all that is seen is a head shot.
Next, we rewrite the text:
"Remus Starr was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad.
Beginning in 1885, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honour when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed."

source unknown

Asking 'Why' in the Wake of Parents' Divorce

Tullian Tchividjian tells the following story about trying to deal with the pain of his parent's unexpected divorce:
I remember going to see [the Christian counselor] Larry Crabb, who was [a colleague of] my father. "How's your mum and dad doing?" Larry asked.
"Larry, I don't know what to do. Seriously. I feel like my whole world has been turned upside down. I don't get this. It's excruciating."
Larry said something remarkable. He could see that I was trapped in the prison of Why, banging my head against the bars. He said,
Tullian, listen to me: The "why" is none of your concern. This is not your burden to fix or figure out. You are not responsible for your parents' relationship or their reputation, or even your own reputation. Those are in God's hands, and his ways are his, not ours. When it comes to God's will, the sooner you can get out of the conjecture business, the better. If you don't go to your grave confused, you don't go to your grave trusting. Painful as it is, this situation gives you an opportunity to show them grace, to love them in their brokenness in a new way. Which is precisely what Jesus has done for you and continues to do for you.
Larry preached the Gospel to me that day, and it made all the difference.

Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin (David C. Cook, 2012), pp. 122-123; See also the sermon series "The Gospel of Suffering—part one" and "The Gospel of Suffering—part two"

Anger

I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world

- Mahatma Gandhi

Life

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Into his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

- Emily Dickinson, from "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson" (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company)

Missionary's Efforts Bear Fruit 150 Years Later

The American missionary Adoniram Judson arrived in Burma, or Myanmar, in 1812, and died there thirty-eight years later in 1850. During that time, he suffered much for the cause of the gospel. He was imprisoned, tortured, and kept in shackles. After the death of his first wife, Ann, to whom he was devoted, for several months he was so depressed that he sat daily beside her tomb. Three years later, he wrote: God is to me the Great Unknown. I believe in him, but I cannot find him.
But Adoniram's faith sustained him, and he threw himself into the tasks to which he believed God had called him. He worked feverishly on his translation of the Bible. The New Testament had now been printed, and he finished the Old Testament in early 1834.
Statistics are unclear, but there were only somewhere between twelve and twenty-five professing Christians in the country when he died, and there were not churches to speak of.
At the 150th anniversary of the translation of the Bible into the Burmese language, Paul Borthwick was addressing a group that was celebrating Judson's work. Just before he got up to speak, he noticed in small print on the first page the words: "Translated by Rev. A. Judson." So Borthwick turned to his interpreter, a Burmese man named Matthew Hia Win, and asked him, "Matthew, what do you know of this man?" Matthew began to weep as he said,

We know him—we know how he loved the Burmese people, how he suffered for the gospel because of us, out of love for us. He died a pauper, but left the Bible for us. When he died, there were few believers, but today there are over 600,000 of us, and every single one of us traces our spiritual heritage to one man: the Rev. Adoniram Judson.

But Adoniram Judson never saw it! And that will be the case for some of us. We may be called to invest our lives in ministries for which we do not see much immediate fruit, trusting that the God of all grace who oversees our work will ensure that our labour is not in vain.

Adapted from Julia Cameron, editor, Christ Our Reconciler (InterVarsity Press, 2012), pp. 200-201

Billy Graham Practices Unceasing Prayer

In 1982, the Today show in New York City scheduled an interview with Reverend Billy Graham. When he arrived at the studio, one of the program's producers informed Graham's assistant that a private room had been set aside for the reverend for prayer before the broadcast. The assistant thanked the producer for the thoughtful gesture, but told him that Mr. Graham would not need the room. The producer was a bit shocked that a world-famous Christian leader would not wish to pray before being interviewed on live national television.
Graham's assistant responded, "Mr. Graham started praying when he got up this morning, he prayed while eating breakfast, he prayed on the way over in the car, and he'll probably be praying all the way through the interview."

Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley, The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham (Zondervan, 2005)

Mistakes

To some people, I am kind of a Merlin who takes lots of crazy chances, but rarely makes mistakes. I've made some bad ones, but fortunately, the successes have come along fast enough to cover up the mistakes. When you go to bat as many times as I do, you're bound to get a good average

- Walt Disney

Fragility

Anything can happen to anybody. In the last movie I did, "Above Suspicion," I played a paraplegic. I went to a rehab centre and I worked with the people there so I could simulate being a paraplegic. And every day I would get in my car and drive away and go, "Thank God that's not me." I remember the smugness of that, as if I were privileged in a way. And seven months later, I was in this condition. The point is, we are all one great big family, and any one of us can get hurt at any moment...We should never walk by somebody who's in a wheelchair and be afraid of them or think of them as a stranger. It could be us - in fact, it is us.

- Christopher Reeve

Attitude

I play to win even when common sense should tell me that I no longer have a chance. Even when I have been playing at my worst, or when all the breaks have been going against me, I approach each new day, each new hole, as a glorious opportunity to get going again.

- Arnold Palmer

Musician Gregg Allman Can't Forgive Himself

In his 2012 memoir titled My Cross to Bear, Gregg Allman, the lead singer for the Allman Brothers Band, recounts the regret he still carries about his brother's sudden death. For most of their lives, the two brothers were best friends. Duane, who was a year older than Gregg, called him "baybrah," a contraction of "baby brother." After the tragic murder of their father, the two brothers stuck together, attending military school and then learning to play the guitar. But Duane was especially gifted. In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine voted him the second-best guitarist of all time, after only Jimi Hendrix. Gregg wrote, "We were like Lewis and Clark, man—we were musical adventurers, explorers. We were one for all and all for one."
But in 1971, all of that unraveled when the two brothers had a nasty argument. Gregg explains that he'd given Duane money to buy drugs. When Duane failed to deliver the drugs, Gregg stormed into his brother's house, stealing the drugs and then lying to his brother about it. Shortly after their quarrel, Duane died in a motorcycle accident.
To this day, Greg Allman can't forget the incident or find forgiveness. Allman said,
The last thing I ever said to my brother was a lie …. I have thought of that lie every day of my life, and I just keep recrucifying myself for it. I know that's not what he would want—well, not for long anyway …. But the thing is, I never got the chance to tell him the truth.

Dwight Garner, Sex, Drugs and Southern Rock, in Success and Excess," The New York Times (27 May 2012);

Gregg Allman, My Cross to Bear (William Morrow, 2012), pp. 192-193

NFL Star Junior Seau Searched for Peace

Junior Seau was well-known as a passionate, fist-pumping, emotional leader and superstar for the NFL's San Diego Chargers. In his 13-year pro football career, Seau made the Pro Bowl 12 times. He was also selected to the NFL 1990s All-Decade Team. Sadly, on May 2, 2012, at the age of 43, Seau took his own life.
Seau's death in northern San Diego County stunned the community who adored him for his service and outgoing personality. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, his former teammate and friend, Rodney Harrison, explains that in Seau's last days he was desperately searching for peace. Harrison said:
He would tell me that the only time he truly felt at peace was when he was with his children or in the surf. He would say, "When I'm on those waves, it's the greatest feeling. I have no worries, no stress, no problems. I just forget about everything." Junior was always searching for peace.

Jim Trotter, "Why?" Sports Illustrated (14 May 2012)

Chuck Colson: God Used My Greatest Defeat

The great paradox [of my life] is that every time I walk into a prison and see the faces of men or women who have been transformed by the power of the living God, I realise that the thing God has chosen to use in my life … is none of the successes, achievements, degrees, awards, honours, or cases I won before the Supreme Court. That's not what God's using in my life. What God is using in my life to touch the lives of literally thousands of other people is the fact that I was a convict and went to prison. That was my great defeat, the only thing in my life I didn't succeed in.

Chuck Colson, Sermon "The Gravy Train Gospel"

78-year-old Christian Leader Renews His Commitment to Christ

Soon after the publication of John Stott's 1971 revised edition of Basic Christianity, he received a letter that read:
Dear John,
Thank you for writing Basic Christianity. It led me to make a new commitment of my life to Christ. I am old now—nearly 78—but not too old to make a new beginning.
I rejoice in all the grand work you are doing.
Yours sincerely,
Leslie Weatherhead
Leslie Weatherhead was one of the most respected and influential Christian leaders in the United Kingdom. Thousands heard him preach at City Temple, his books were read widely, he pioneered in the field of pastoral counseling, and he was president of the Methodist Conference. Yet at 78-years-old he was not too proud or too worn out to make a fresh commitment of his life.

Adapted from Roger Steer, Basic Christian (IVP Books, 2010), p. 153

Woman Idolizes Her Parents' Approval

In his book Counterfeit Gods, Timothy Keller writes, "Idols generate false beliefs such as 'If I cannot achieve X, then my life won't be valid' or, 'Since I have lost or failed at Y, now I can never be happy or forgiven.'" Then he illustrates this point with the following illustration:

A young woman named Mary was an accomplished musician who once attended my church. For many years she had battled mental illness and had checked in and out of psychiatric institutions. She gave me permission as her pastor to speak to her therapist …. "Mary virtually worships her parents' approval of her," her counsellor told me, "and they always wanted her to be a world-class artist. She is quite good, but she's never reached the top of her profession, and she cannot live with the idea that she has disappointed her parents."

Medications helped to manage her depression, but they could not get to the root of it. Her problem was a false belief, driven by an idol. She told herself, "If I cannot be a well-known violinist, I have let down my parents, and my life is a failure." She was distressed and guilty enough to die. When Mary began to believe the gospel, that she was saved by grace, not by musicianship, and that, "though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord shall take me in" (Psalm 27:10), she began to get relief from her idolatrous need for her parents' approval. In time her depression and anxiety began to lift, and she was able to re-enter her life and musical career.

 

Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (Dutton, 2009), pp. 148-149

Leaving Peace Ledge

A new home awaits us . . . by Gordon MacDonald
We are moving. Not very far, mind you. It's only a 14-mile move that will bring us closer to the city of Concord, New Hampshire, and into a more manageable living space. Reasons? The pursuit of a down-sized lifestyle, less home maintenance, and shorter driving distances to church, shopping, and (most of all) good friends.
The home we are leaving (we've called it Peace Ledge) has been ours for almost 35 years. Originally, it was built as a getaway place where my wife, Gail, and I might find quietness to pursue a more vigorous spiritual life and for me to do my weekly sermon study. All of my books have been written at Peace Ledge in a writing space that measures eight by eight feet. Ten years ago, when I resigned from institutional leadership, we enlarged this home and made it our permanent residence. Now it is about to pass into the hands of new owners.
In 1978 I took a three-month leave of absence from my church and participated in the building of the home at Peace Ledge. I was there when the foundation was poured (black fly season). I was there during the framing sequence of the construction. And I was there during the days when the finish carpenters and the tradesmen did the moulding, the wiring, and the plumbing. I sweated out the drilling of the well (300 feet down) and the building of the septic system (no small thing to do up in the woods).
I know every nook and cranny of this house we are leaving. I can guide you to every bent nail, every joint not perfectly mitred, every tiny stain in the plaster where a mid-winter ice-dam caused a temporary leak in the ceiling.
Peace Ledge has been the place where we have experienced our highest "highs" in life and our lowest "lows." Our family has gathered at the dining table in the great room for every Thanksgiving in the last 33 years. We have celebrated every Christmas there. When life fell apart for Gail and me 25 years ago, we ran to Peace Ledge and found it to be a place where we could hear God speak graciously into our lives and help us to put things back together again.
Over the years, many men and women whose names are equated with Christian leadership around the world have come to Peace Ledge to visit. Some of them arrived in total exhaustion, spiritually drained, in marital trouble. Others came while in the midst of great life-changing decisions or while struggling with faith-threatening thoughts. Many came just to relax, to try out one of my kayaks on a New England river, or merely to walk in the woods. (I have loved guiding some people to a place not far from Peace Ledge where the pathway divides. I've asked them to stop and listen. Then I step a few feet away and begin to quote Robert Frost: "Two roads diverged in a yellowed wood … and" … (then its familiar ending) "I took the road less-traveled by … and that has made all the difference."
Peace Ledge was once a farm where draft horses were bred and trained. The topsoil barely covered the rock ledge (6 inches down), and so its 18th and 19th century farmers could barely scratch out a living. Their only crop was pasture grass. What was once clear-cut land in the 19th century has all returned to timber (a 100-year growth). Stone walls lace the acreage, and you occasionally stumble across rusting farm implements that were abandoned more than a century ago.
One family—the Findleys—owned the farm for almost 100 years. Town records show that on several occasions they were delinquent in their taxes and the farm was put up for public auction. But for reasons unexplained, the Findleys always managed to hold on to the land. Old timers in our area refer to Peace Ledge as the Findley place (which makes me wonder if new old-timers will someday refer to Peace Ledge as the MacDonald place).
Here and there in the forest are small, annually maintained grave yards that mark the final resting place of early New England farming families. It is not uncommon to find the graves of a man and his two or three wives. Nearby: the graves of children. People were much more accustomed to death in those days.
Perhaps it is my imagination, but I have found Peace Ledge to be, well, a place of peace. It has always seemed to me that when I drove on to the property, I entered something like a spiritual enclosure—a place of tranquility and restoration. Perhaps I sound a bit over the top when I say that I have never left the house at Peace Ledge without thanking God one more time that he has allowed Gail and me to live there. Even in the midst of the worst New England blizzards when the power went out (we've had several this year), I have never lost my love for this place.
As the son of a pastor, I had no notion whatsoever of "home." I grew up in houses owned by churches and was constantly reminded that our "home" belonged to someone else. We were not free to paint our own choice of colours nor alter the property without approval from some Board of Trustees. Moving from place to place, congregation to congregation, left me with an unformed view of both "place" and "friendship."
Peace Ledge ended all that. It became home in every sense of the word. At Peace Ledge, I began to appreciate the words of another of Frost's poems (and I paraphrase): "Home is the place where they have to take you in …"
When it comes time in a few weeks for us to leave Peace Ledge, I imagine that Gail and I will walk through the empty house and try to remember one special thing that happened in each room. Perhaps, we'll recall tucking our two children into their beds at night, the games and puzzles that challenged us in the family room, the groups of younger men and women we've mentored in the great room, the things we learned in our personal study spaces, the many nights we drifted off to sleep entwined in each other's arms in the master bedroom.
There will be tears when we make that last room-by-room tour. And there will be prayers of gratitude.
Then I imagine that the tears will turn to anticipation as we drive to our new condo. Even now—weeks before the move—Gail is thinking about where she'll put various pieces of our furniture. She already knows where the family pictures will hang, what color the bathroom will be, what "discardables" will end up at the Salvation Army thrift store. And me? All I want to know is what my new study space will be like.
Perhaps this anticipated day of moving is not unlike getting ready for the ultimate day when we move to Heaven. I am listening to the new swirling debate on heaven and hell and take note that most of the voices are those of younger generation people. Wait until they reach my age and the stunning awareness that Heaven, and whatever hell is, are just over the horizon (and there's no detour). Eternity is not a doctrinal construct to me. It is an emerging reality. Like so many of my friends before me, I am headed into it in the not-too-distant future.
I take Jesus' comment, "I go to prepare a place for you," seriously. Of course I am tempted to want to ask, "Lord, how many square feet? Is there a basement? AC? Hard water or soft? How about taxes? Bookshelves?" I hope that when that ultimate "moving day" comes, it will parallel the more immediate one I'm anticipating right now. Packing up, shedding the unnecessary and unneedful, gathering grateful memories, and anticipating the new place down the road. As I said at the beginning, this move is about simplifying and being closer to our friends. That final move will be about eternal discovery and being with Jesus and his friends.

Overconfident Naval Officer Loses His Way in the Fog

During a 1923 training exercise, a naval destroyer called the USS Delphy led a flotilla of seven vessels down the California coast. The USS Delphy was captained by Lieutenant Commander Donald T. Hunter, an experienced navigator and instructor at the Naval Academy. Without warning, about half way on their training mission, a thick blanket of fog descended on the ships. In the midst of the fog (Hunter claimed it looked like "pea soup"), Hunter couldn't get an accurate evaluation of his location. Contrary to Hunter's calculations, the lead ship was headed right into Devil's Jaw, a scant two miles off the California coast. But that didn't stop Hunter from ploughing ahead. That is not surprising, for Hunter was known for his self-confident decisiveness and what others called his "magic infallibility" to guide his ship.
Traveling at 20 knots, suddenly the USS Delphy smashed broadside into the rocky Point Arguello shoreline. The force of the massive collision of welded steel and jagged rock split the hull of the USS Delphy in half. One by one, the other destroyers followed the Delphy's lead and smashed into the rocks. Twenty-two naval men died. The accident resulted in the loss of all seven ships. It still stands as one of the worst peacetime naval disasters in history.

Sources: Robert McKenna, The Dictionary of Nautical Literacy (McGraw Hill, 2003), p. 97;

Charles Lockwood & Hans Christian Adamson, Tragedy at Honda (Naval Institute Press, 1986), pp. 29-49

John Stott Discovers God's Power in His Weakness

John Stott shares the following story from 1958 when he was leading a university outreach in Sydney, Australia. The day before the final meeting, Stott received word that his father had passed away. In addition to his grief, Stott was also starting to lose his voice. Here's how Stott describes the final day of the outreach:

It was already late afternoon within a few hours of the final meeting of the mission, so I didn't feel I could back away at that time. I went to the great hall and asked a few students to gather round me. I asked one of them to read … "My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness," (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). A student read these verses and then I asked them to lay hands on me and … pray that those verses might be true in my own experience.

When time came for me to give my address, I preached on the [broad and narrow ways from Matthew 7]. I had to get within half an inch of the microphone, and I croaked the gospel like a raven. I couldn't exert my personality. I couldn't move. I couldn't use any inflections in my voice. I croaked the gospel in monotone. Then when the time came to give the invitation, there was an immediate response, larger than any other meeting during the mission, as students came flocking forward …

I've been back to Australia about ten times since 1958, and on every occasion somebody has come up to me and said, "Do you remember that final meeting in the university in the great hall?" "I jolly well do," I reply. "Well," they say, "I was converted that night."

Stott concludes, "The Holy Spirit takes our human words, spoken in great weakness and frailty, and he carries them home with power to the mind, the heart, the conscience, and the will of the hearers in such a way that they see and believe."

Michael P. Knowles, editor, The Folly of Preaching (Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 137-138