Give us a King

In the biblical story of Samuel, we read the narrative of a nation’s descent from prosperity and peace into poverty and war.  Israel declined as men did what was “right in their own eyes”.  Samuel was a prophet, and his messages from God led the people.  But the sons of Samuel went unrestrained.  Church became a business.  Lust and greed reigned.  Samuel’s sons stole the people’s sacrifices and fornicated at the door of the church.  People of all tribes felt the defilement, and lost heart.  They drifted away.  The people did not want God.  Give us a king!  A king should be tall, dark, and handsome.  They wanted a rock star.  We the people are willing to relinquish our freedoms to a king who is like us, only better.  We won’t need God.  The king will solve our problems.  The government will take care of our problems.  No more moral rules.  Give us a king, though tyranny will result.  God can give what we demand, though He foreknows the painful consequences.  The people of Israel wanted a king, and they got Saul.  Tall, handsome, and shivering with fear on the day of his coronation.  Saul quickly fell from serving God into trying to please the people, taking opinion polls.  Ultimately, he was destroyed by enemies from abroad.  His people perished, and wickedness prevailed.  Saul’s life spiralled down through paranoia, murderous rage, and cowardice.  As Saul was falling, God raised up the greatest king of Israel.  God raised up a man after His own heart.  It took years to make the transition.  King David was God’s idea of a leader:  devoted to God, humble, courageous, a hard-working warrior.  Imperfect, but with a heart to repent.  It matters what is hidden in the heart of any man who would be king.  There is no separation between public life and private morality.  Immorality never remains private.  Let us not chose a tyrant.  Lord, anoint Your man and raise him to the pinnacle of political power in our nation.

Dancing at last

MBH entered into the presence of the Lord last night.  I smile at the thought of her.  It is a mystery to weep and rejoice at the same time, but it is so when a saint of the Lord crosses the finish line.  Her flawless face is glowing in the reflected glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.  She now resides in light so brilliant our earthly eyes could not endure it.   I strain to glimpse heaven, but it is beyond me, and I will have to wait.  She has arrived, and all is complete.  She is seeing with her eyes what she believed for so many years.  She is free of pain, grief, and disappointment, beyond weary time.  She ran her race, enduring to the end.  She crossed the finish line, and vanished from our sight.  Long ago, she was a beautiful, tense grownup, somehow walking in shadow.  We played quietly when she had a headache.  She lay in a dark room, and the entire house seemed dim.  After many years, I saw her at a crowded Christian meeting.  She stood beaming with happiness.  Light shone from her countenance.  Frankly, I stared at her.  She was at least 30 years older, but more beautiful than I remembered.  When our eyes met, she included me in her joy.  She never told me exactly how she came to commit her life to the Lord, but her testimony was literally written on her face, indelible in my memory.  From a tense, dim existence to joy unspeakable and full of glory.  She encouraged me and many others as she lived graciously, with love, patience, and kindness.  On she ran, through cancer and old age, until she won the race.  Now, she is fully herself, ready to dance.

Table of Blessing

Jesus’ disciples were real people, with smelly feet and strong feelings.  They got tired, irritable, anxious, and jealous. By the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, they had laughed, wept, despaired, and been reborn.  Eventually, each faithful disciple learned to suffer, work, and love more deeply than he ever dreamed.  Jesus selected His disciples individually, and each said yes.  He taught them for three years, with daily examples of patience, love, and self-discipline.  He talked to them intimately, preparing them, and eventually sharing truth that most could not believe.  Jesus showed them abundant life.  After times of profound communion with His Father, Jesus walked on water, cast out raging demons, and raised the dead.  Jesus confounded the religiously self-righteous, but healed the plain folks with words of love, hope, and promise.  Bread and fish multiplied in His hands when He blessed it.  The disciples were always astounded.  They never really adjusted to the supernatural, until afterward.  Each disciple got used to having Jesus, and each wanted Him for himself.  I understand.  I have grown to love Jesus since I said yes to Him.  But I like it when it is just Him and me.  Worship.  Reading His Words and really listening.  Last weekend, I found myself at a table of His disciples.  We did not know each other before our structured gathering.  We could have been on the shore in Galilee, but actually it was in Cumberland County.  Loud laughter, wrinkled noses, sideways glances, weary smiles.  A group of disciples, all wanting Jesus, but not necessarily each other.  It was a challenge to love one another.  We began to try.  Lots of side bar rebellion, but He was at work lovingly, patiently, quietly.  By the third day, we had agreed to love each other as well as Jesus.  I feel like a fallow field, having been newly plowed and broken open.  I have been sown with blessings.  By God’s grace, may a harvest follow.

Death, where is thy sting?

My older brother would have been 65 years old today. He died at age 47, cut short by cancer that grew in dark places. I grieved when we lost him, and watched others fall into deep mourning. My mother spoke less afterward. My sister-in-law sank low, and my nephew retreated into the deep places of his soul. In the months afterward, I wept, fretted, and blamed God. How could You let this happen? Living in anger toward God was intolerable. By His grace, I chose to draw closer, and not retreat from Him. That choice saved my spiritual life. Today, I look at life differently. Death is not the end of anyone’s story. I expect to taste death, for a moment. Like my brother, I will die, or more precisely, my body will die. Whereas my brother fought a few hard months, it may take years before my aging body gives out and the Lord calls my spirit to Himself. For the dying Hamlet, “The rest is silence”. I certainly hope Shakespeare knew more than he created in Hamlet. As a Christian, I know to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Ugly death will clutch a lifeless body, but cannot have the eternal part of me. When I leave my body, when and however it happens, I will join the ceaseless thundering praise of the Lord who saved me and made the way of escape from death. My brother will be there smiling, next to our mother and father. We will know each other, all healthy and joyful, open and loving. My brother is fully known, as he could not be on earth. He deeply comprehends our father, as we never did in this life. He knows our mother, and finally understands her. We will be free and yet joyfully bonded together.  My family members are not merely waiting for me. They are living as they never lived, loving and being loved as they were made to love, belonging to our eternal family. Death, where is thy sting?

Abortion is murder

The NC House of Representatives debated a bill about pre-abortion procedures. Supporters want an expectant mother to consider the facts before she aborts.  Require her to undergo ultrasound and counselling to help comprehend what she is doing before she aborts the baby.  “Pro-choice” legislators launched ferocious opposition with eloquent pleas for compassion.  They criticized the cost of the required procedure and “government mandated” tests and invasion of privacy by an ultrasound device.   They decried the embarrassment of it all.  Quick, don’t think.  Just get the abortion, and everything is fixed.  No pro-abortionist mentioned the most vulnerable interested party, or mentioned her rights.  Their rhetoric flew high above her tiny, vulnerable body.  The mother will suffer, yes, but the child will die. Abortions are fatal.  Pro-abortionists deny this bloody reality, as logically they must.  Their tongues and brains are dark and benumbed, and yet they speak of light and truth.  They cannot yet hear the Truth standing above this debate.  They repeat the terrible lies told to my generation.  There is no baby until we say so.  There is no baby unless we want it to be a baby.  Below an unflinching Heaven, they verbally shake their fists into the face of God.  We will kill our children if we want to.  We will not bend our knees to You. We will live our way.  Rebellion causes dark and miserable pain.  Sealed in with a thick coat of denial, this pain begins it work of death to the soul.  My generation accepted the numbing lies and taught our daughters:  the baby is “tissue” and the abortion is a procedure “before there is a baby”.  Our culture drifts in this murky stagnation of death.  Fearful young women enter abortion clinics, benumbed, carrying lambs to the slaughter.  They stagger out, with the guilt and misery sealed into their empty wombs.  Pro-abortionists would leave them oblivious to the truth of abortion until it is too late.

Loss

I have committed to give away my Spode china. For a southern woman, this is big. Loss and joy at the same time. Didn’t know this would happen. My wonderful senior nephew has become engaged to a southern lady. Nothing pleases me more than to give her lovely things.  Yet the loss is real.  I have spent much of my life avoiding loss, or over-compensating myself for any loss whatsoever.  Perhaps this is why I have so much china, silver, and other southern stuff.  I was afraid of the pain. Today, I chose to accept the pain as well as the love.  How does this work, Lord?  Now come thoughts of losses greater than mine.  People losing jobs.  Legislators losing programs they worked to create.  My pastor, weeping openly as his first-born daughter leaves for college.  God knows all about loss, actually wrote the Book on it.  It is paradoxical He owns everything, and yet has lost so much.  How much more than anyone has God felt pain and loss and love? He loves all of His children, yet so many reject Him and die. Daily losses. God killed animals in Eden for skins to cover the sin of naked and miserable Adam and Eve.  By His own hand, God lost innocent animals He loved.  He lost the good earth He had created.  When the sin of man became intolerable, He covered His globe with water, and killed every animal and every person, except the few saved within the ark. What loss God has willingly suffered because of us.  He created us, knowing the pain we would inflict upon Him.  The greatest loss was when He turned away His face from Jesus, loving and losing Him to death (for three terrible days).  Pain and loss and triumphant love.

Unspoken Truth

During the NC Senate budget debate, the minority party criticized cuts to education.  They praised NC’s public educational institutions, and reacted in pain to budget cuts.  The majority party had the votes, and cautiously declined to say more than was necessary to pass the budget.  This truth was left unspoken:  North Carolina’s educational system is a bloated disgrace.  We have poured millions of taxpayer dollars into our public educational system, with diminishing returns.  With an army of administrators, counselors, and highly trained teachers, high schools produce “graduates” who cannot read, fill out a job application, or balance a checkbook.  Advocates demand money, but offer no retreat from failed policies.  Did you know Christian missionaries ran the first schools in North Carolina?  In colonial times, people learned to read using the Bible.  North Carolina’s first public schools opened in 1840, and taught reading, writing, and arithmetic.  North Carolina’s Constitution states in Article IX:  “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools, libraries, and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”  Fifty years ago, we separated religion and morality from knowledge.  Children have paid a terrible price for our mistake.  After a couple of generations of degradation, where are we?  Many children are unwilling to obey instructions or submit to the discipline required for learning.  Juveniles lash out against a culture that has failed to give them what they need: religion, morality, and knowledge.  The failure of our educational system cannot be resolved apart from a change in direction.  We have created social welfare programs, juvenile justice programs, and countless other patches to handle the symptoms of our moral failure.  We persist in treating only the symptoms.  The truth is, we need ”religion, morality, and knowledge”.  Where do we start?  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).   We start with God.   We can meet Him in the Bible.  ”Train up a child in the way in which he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). We have not trained up our children in the way they should go.  Fifty years ago, we decided we knew better than God how to educate our children.  The truth is we were wrong.  One definition of “repent” is to turn around and change direction.  Repent, North Carolina.

Glad Rags

Women are talking behind my back at my work place. They mock my clothing (and probably my weight). I wear business skirt suits, starched shirts, and silk ties. “Dress for success” it was called when I started practicing law. Apparently, I am now passe, dated, frumpy, and hopelessly old fashioned. I am pleasantly surprised at my response. I don’t care. In my adolescence, I cared desperately what the other girls thought of me, if they noticed me, and most of all, what they said behind my back. I lived in Greenville, NC, and there were lots of girls my age. There were the impossibly beautiful and well groomed girls, the poor girls who were invisible, and then the rest of us in the middle. I cared terribly. I wore Weejuns, and schemed to get as many Villager outfits as possible. I felt desolate if the in-crowd arrived at the junior high school all wearing their burgandy Villager sweaters.  I never knew in advance what to wear, so I could never win that game.  The acceptance game drove some girls into depression, and others into over-achievement. One girl determined to make the cheerleading team to “get in”.   She practiced all year, and made the high school cheerleading squad. Yet, she never quite fit.  Popularity was her god.   All else was sacrificed at its altar.  Aching for acceptance, I worshipped from afar, feeling hopeless and ashamed that I cared so much.  The deep need was burgeoning, the need for love and acceptance.  But for a few good friends, I would not have survived the pain.  Me the grownup learned to hide the need, but never satisfied it.  I lived in pain, but dressed well.  Only when I met Him, was my soul satisfied.  Now, I don’t worry about what everyone is wearing.

Suicide

My heart hurts. A business acquaintance has committed suicide.  None of the published reports say so, but I felt the darkness before the inevitable undercurrent of gossip reached me.  I knew her professionally. I liked her. One couldn’t help but like her. She was intelligent, gifted, eager for love, lonely, and afraid.  We smiled and spoke last week.  In the gloomy aftermath of reading her obituary, I want so much to save her.  I yearn to believe, as some may, that we can, in the midst of this survivor pain and guilt, pray her out of the consequences of this desperate choice. I pray her sins be remitted.  The Bible says I can do this.  But the Bible does not promise she (or any of us) will escape the eternal consequences of  our actions based on someone else’s faith and relationship with God.  The Lord has provided a way for us to enter eternity in safety and blessing, but it is a narrow path.  Jesus, already God, became man to pay the penalty for sin (my sin, her sin, our sins) .  Jesus came to earth, lived without sin, and died in my place, paying the penalty for my sin.  The Great Exchange.  I have confidence in this transaction.  The evidence of the truth of this reality is overwhelming to me.  My eternity will be wonderful, because of what Jesus did for me.  I have a personal relationship with the Lord, and for this I am profoundly grateful.  He is the Good Shepherd who came out into the darkness and rescued me.  I want Him to do this for her, but third-party faith has its limits.  At the end of her earthly life, as throughout her life, Jesus is the only hope.  There is no second chance, no reincarnation, no alternate way.  Death is exit-only, with no returns or refunds.  She has entered eternity by its one-way gate.  I can only pray as I consider what she has found there.

High Hopes

As a lobbyist, I give civics lessons.  I introduce clients to the state legislature.  I speak truth, but not the whole truth. Don’t want to discourage them.  First, I describe the political process as it should be, as we desire it to be. I avoid reports of petty disputes over offices and other indicia of power.  Starting with a tenth grade civics overview of the three branches of government, I focus on the legislature.  Further, I embellish the lesson with descriptions of  Senators and Representatives, their life stories, their interests, their foibles.  Only then, do I detail the actual process, with all its potential for disappointment for the hopeful citizen.  When the NC General Assembly convenes on 1/26/11, Republicans will preside, holding majorities in both chambers.  North Carolinians have not witnessed a Republican-ruled Senate in more than 100 years. In Raleigh, newly elected legislators arrive with small boxes and high hopes.  Retiring and defeated legislators linger.  Bigger the offices, the longer they take to move out.  Many packing boxes.  Apparently, lots of shredding to do.  There are messages, typed in huge font, taped on desks and wall hangings: “DO NOT MOVE”.  Not sure what this means, except they own or think they own the items, and want the control as long as possible.  The new steely eyed victors don’t see the pictures.  Don’t care about offices, except the temporary inconvenience of no desks, no phones, no email addresses.  The young staffers are like race horses, being edged into the starting block, twitching with excitement.  The bell will sound, and the gates will open.  There will be a thunder of hooves, and clouds of dust.  But my folks won’t feel the adrenalin, won’t hear the noise.  My clients’ hopes are the true, honest constant in this biennial process.  They hope for lower taxes if possible, but certainly more for their money.  They hope for less burdensome government.  Working longer for less, they sense our grim economic outlook.  They don’t look to Raleigh for salvation.  But, they hope the 2011 legislature is alive with brave souls.  They hope for wise decisions, restraint, and righteousness in government.  North Carolinians may not use these words exactly, but they have high hopes indeed.