Happy 100th birthday to a what?

Several times a day, graffiti-marked trains rumble through the middle of my town, carrying farm produce and high-tech goods like cars. For hundreds of feet, the tracks edge our nearly-two-mile-long nature preserves walking trail. For most of that length, a grassy greenbelt separates rails from trail. They almost merge, however, near a hundred-year-old landmark. The date 1912 is still visible at the top of one cement culvert set under the tracks. A couple times during our walks, we were startled by deer bounding up the steep sides next to the culvert on their way to the grassy part of the wildlife area.

A hundred years this year! It’s hard to think back to life in 1912. Nine years earlier the Wright Brothers celebrated a wobbly “flight” of 120 feet in their great invention, the “airplane.” In 1912 several wars were going on (no surprise), notably one in the Balkans. Women were campaigning for the right to vote. Henry Ford was sketching plans for automobile assembly lines. The electric refrigerator was a year away from the market. It would sell for $900—about $14,000 in today’s money. Some Victrolas (wind-up phonographs) cost as much, limiting their market to the wealthy. The average person earned $1,033 a year. Gas was seven cents a gallon. Oh, and a new car cost about $941.

Thinking about history comes naturally as one year ends and another begins. So does thinking about the future—and how much time we have left to live on this earth. Believe it or not, in 1991 a New York inventor received patent 5,031,161 for a “life expectancy timepiece.” His “watch” tells people how much time they probably have left in this world. It’s based on actuarial tables like those used by insurance companies to guess at life expectancy based on age, health, and lifestyle factors (smoking, drinking, stress). He remarked that his watch “is to make people realize how precious time is, that each day is just here and you can’t get it back.”

I don’t know anything about this man’s faith walk, but he seems to echo the wise words of a man who lived to be 120, about a third longer than most folks. His name was Moses and in the only chapter in Psalms attributed to him, he puts out the facts about how short life really is. From him we have these words of timeless counsel: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

In our lifespan, we may support a lot of emotional loads (as opposed to the weight bearing of the 1912 culvert). We may be a place of shelter or transition for family or friends (recalling the culvert’s role with deer). But maybe the better analogy from it is this: are we supporting the things that really matter for eternity? For which we will give account to God?

That Perfect Gift

I just got back from buying unsliced french bread and bandages at the grocery store (no, the purchases weren't related). To be more truthful, I just escaped mayhem at our shopping center, dodging between preoccupied, frustrated people in the last hours of Christmas eve. Craziness! Soon...we'll be past the advertisements that urge us to keep buying. Earlier today when I logged on to my computer, the "home page" of my internet server boasted, "It's not too late to find the perfect gift." I had no interest in going to the link, but the phrase was pregnant with meaning (and that's pun intended).

After reading the internet's teaser headline, I thought of another "perfect gift" that someone opened before it was too late. I write of it in my devotional, Heaven,The Greatest Home Makeover. In our small town daily newspaper, survivors can buy space for detailed obituaries about someone who died. Some spend lots of money listing memberships, honors, and survivors, right down to their favorite dog. But one day I read a special one in which the family shared its admiration for the deceased person's amazing, self-taught mechanical how-to. Then they added (and for me, this was the best part!) that two weeks before his death (from diabetes complications, as I recall), he "received Christ as his Lord and Savior and was baptized along with his son. God had been patient, waiting all these years for the Spirit to move in his heart, time and again returning him from death's door."

We won't always have chance after chance after chance to receive God's gift of eternal life through Jesus. I think about that a lot when the holidays come and, for one thing, traffic fatalities related to drinking rise. (For those who don't know, my family was almost killed by a drinking driver in 1997.)

If you're reading this and haven't yet received God's gift, why wait? If you've been praying for years for a loved one to make that decision, don't quit. George Mueller prayed for decadesfor two of his friends to come to Christ. By the time he was buried, both made that life-changing decision.

The internet headline, despite its materialistic intentions, is spiritually right. It's not too late to find the just-right gift. It's been waiting for you all along. The perfect gift is a Person, not a package: "Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift" (2 Cor. 9:15).

P.S. The photo is of decorations on our Christmas tree. Next to the cross is a note telling of our treasured gift this year: a donation on our behalf to an organization that helps the poor and hungry.

Fullness of time

The term “fullness of time” came to mind as I admired the amaryllis blooming in brilliant orange quadruplets this morning on our kitchen table. Three weeks ago, it looked like a withered turnip. After weeks of winter fog and cold, we’re enjoying the display.

It’s appropriate that these fast-growing bulbs are popular for indoor blooming during Christmas. At the time of Jesus’ birth, the world was socked in by centuries of hopelessness. The long-ago prophecies of Someone to change that seemed to diminish with each turn of the seasons. Then it came—not as people thought, in the form of a warrior-king born in a palace, but in a baby born to a teenager in desperate poverty far from home.

Here’s the phrase in scripture: “But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4). Every one of scripture’s prophecies was fulfilled with Christ. By one person’s estimate, using just 48 prophecies, the mathematical probability of all of them being fulfilled in one person is 10 to the 57th power. That’s 10 with 57 zeroes after it.

As the buy-buy-buy ads spill out of your newspaper or prance across your television screen, remember that they’ve got it all wrong. Christmas is not about indulging one another, but marveling that God indulged us with the greatest gift of all, a way to be reconciled to Him forever.

And maybe that’s another reason the amaryllis bloom has a trumpet shape, as a special reminder of the eternal view: “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).If the birth of Jesus can overrule a probability of one in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,-000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—let’s celebrate, the Christ-coming past and the Christ-return-future!

Page stains

When the basket of bananas on our table got past their prime, I faced a decision: banana bread, or banana bread? Pulling out my baking supplies, I got out my favorite recipe book and turned to the page with a tried-and-true recipe. In fact, it bears permanent pureed banana and canola oil stains. Dump in this, stir in that--soon the loaf was in the oven.

My “food-autographed” cookbook reminded me of a story I once heard about some parents who had an out-of-town emergency and had to leave their kids with a trusted sitter—one old enough to cook and run the household.When they returned, the kids raved about how their sitter cooked all their favorite foods.The mother took the sitter aside and asked, “How did you know what were their favorite foods?”

“I just looked through your cookbook,” the sitter said. “I cooked whatever was on the pages with a lots splatters and stains.”

Sometimes when I go to a memorial service, the minister will hold up the Bible that belonged to the person who died. What a joy when they can say, “So-and-so really loved God’s Word. If you looked through their Bible, it’s full of underlining, stars, notes, and even family names by verses.”

As a youngster, I had this mistaken idea that writing in one’s Bible was akin to sacrilege. After all, wasn’t it the “holy” Bible? Then, as a young adult, I came under the influence of godly older women who cherished their well-used, well-marked Bibles. That took care of the silly notion that it was a sin to mark up one’s Bible! Now, in a few places, the thin pages of my Bible probably suggest some wet stuff falling. Sometimes I’ll find myself so gripped by a passage that my eyes “sweat” (as one friend puts it). But those wrinkled dots on a page are reminders that God is real and that He takes notes of those tears. My deepest emotions (even the wet ones) matter to Him. Sometimes there may be no solution to my concerns on this side of eternity. Sometimes, there is--as the Israelites discovered in the seemingly impossible dream of returning to their homeland after the Babylonian captivity: “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy” (Psalm 126:5).

Splatters and stains in your Bible? They’re a good thing, a reminder that the Bible is tried and true.

The Test of the Scary Black Notes

I read The Great Church Christmas Orchestra Recruitment Letter and said, “I can do this.” When the music arrived, I said, “Can I really do this?” To understand my reaction, you need to know that I play the violin “somewhat.” On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a squawky beginner and 10 fairly proficient, I consider myself about a 2.7. The number usually suffers when I’m handed music parts that have notes so high I’m almost scratching my chin, or that include 32nd notes in seven flats played at warp speed. And that’s what happened. Admittedly, 95% of the music was at my skill level. But it was the 5% at the musical prodigy level that made me wonder if I even qualified for my preferred perch of last chair, second violin.

To be honest, that’s been my story ever since I picked up a violin in seventh grade. I despaired of sounding any better than a cat in heat. The other way to get better was to try and try—and keep practicing. By the time I was a high school senior, I sat as first chair of the high school orchestra. Then I toted my violin to college and discovered the bar for excellence was raised by students with years of private lessons behind them. Again, the only option was to keep trying and practicing. And I did get better. Then came non-music jobs, marriage, motherhood and a host of other commitments, and my violin took a long nap in its case. My skills went downhill.

But the other day as I practiced those jet-travel (high & fast)sections of the program music, I realized that’s a picture of how God “grows” us into the people of faith and trust that He planned for us to be. Whatever the means—be it a challenging job, stretching college course, or a difficult relationship—we have two choices. We can bail out, fearing failure, or push on, trusting God to get us through it and develop our character in the process.

Robert McGee addresses this in his book The Search for Significance. The thrust of the book is helping people identify negative outlooks and habits and replace them with a Biblically-based foundation of God’s view of them. One of the common false beliefs he discusses is this: “I am what I am; I cannot change. I am hopeless.” Such a perspective is typical of those who feel they’ll never be successful in life, who blame their failures on being undisciplined, who can’t trust God, who say “That’s just the way I am,” and who claim they just can’t overcome a particular sin.

Such negative attitudes crash right up against this truth--to borrow from the famed “Four Spiritual Laws,” that God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives, one connected to new life in Jesus Christ. Trusting Him is not mere "fire insurance" (to avoid hell), but a remodeling process. To bring the analogy back to music practice, moving forward with God’s program is a learning and re-training process. It’s loosening up unyielding thought patterns (and, with violin, my age-stiffened fingers).

I won’t claim to now play the pieces perfectly, but I’ll give it my best effort come performance time. I’ll remember God’s promise of help: “I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). And I’m counting on His right hand helping my struggling left hand with all those busy notes! After all, the main purpose of this is to bring praise to Jesus, and His coming to earth as a baby to be our Savior.

Upon this rock

They’re called “cairns” from a Scottish word for heaps of stones used for landmarks or memorials. I live tens of thousands of miles away from Scotland, but last spring some wag in our area started heaping cairns from roadside rocks. When you’re used to seeing the typical debris of cans, papers, plastic bottles and the occasional remains of a deceased tire—well, they added entertainment to highway travel. Rocks are not normally conducive to stacking, so I wondered if some super-glue was sandwiched between the stones to help them endure the air whapped off passing cars. I never stopped to find out.

I thought of the cairns again upon hearing that evangelist Billy Graham, now 93, was hospitalized with pneumonia. Even through frail from aging and Parkinson’s disease, the man who has preached in 185 nations had just finished his 30th book, Nearing Home: Life, Faith and Finishing Well. His message and presence have unmistakably marked our world for Christ. Presidents and other world leaders have confided in him. Yet he would consider himself just another old rock in the stack. Those he influenced would be stacked on top of him.

And below him? We could go down a lot of rocks, but I’ve always been moved by the part dating to the mid-1800s. A young man from Boston named Edward Kimball decided to teach a Sunday school class to influence teenagers for Christ. One of them, who worked in his uncle’s shoe store, was quite a handful, prone to profanity and anger. Through Kimball’s influence, that teenager eventually chose to become a Christian. His name was Dwight Moody, and his name became better known as he began holding evangelistic meetings. Moody’s meetings, and personal counseling with Moody, helped a student named J. Wilbur Chapman be certain of his salvation. Chapman became a friend and co-worker with Moody.

A baseball player named Billy Sunday came into the picture, converted at street corner meetings and for a brief time an assistant for Chapman’s meetings. Sunday began holding his own evangelistic meetings and started a men’s prayer and fellowship group in Charlotte, N.C.. In 1934, the group invited an evangelist named Mordecai Ham to preach at meetings. A gangly young man named Billy Graham went forward one night to receive Christ. So did another young man, to make a deeper commitment to Christ. His name was Grady Wilson. Their names would eventually be linked as evangelists known throughout the world.

The bottom rock of Graham's story wasn’t even Ed Kimball. Someone had led Kimball to faith in Christ. That person had someone else lead him or her, and...and.... The Bible tells us about the true bottom rock. While others were having heated discussions about who Jesus Christ really was—human or divine, Peter pounded his faith-stake in the ground by declaring, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Of this rock-solid declaration, Jesus replied, “On this rock I will build my church” (v. 18).

Not a flimsy cairn pile, vulnerable to the weather. A solid rock. Unmovable.