Gingerly speaking

A series inspired by sights of Kauai.
Gingerbread men—have you savored that scent lately? This being Christmas, no doubt you have.  Believe it or not, this flower, which looks festive enough to hang on a Christmas tree, is ginger!  Like hydrangea, red ginger puts out floral “bracts” at the end of stems.  The actual flower is a tiny bloom that emerges at the tip. So prized was this plant in early Polynesian history that leis of red ginger were worn by royalty for important occasions.

Well, today, I can think of a royal Person, who enjoyed the worship of angels in Heaven, yet visited earth in the form of a helpless baby. His true birthday, believed to be sometime in early spring, was officially “affixed” to December 25 at the end of the Third Century. That time of year already had pagan festivals honoring Saturn (the Roman god of agriculture) and Mithra (Persian god of light). Church officials apparently thought a same-time Christmas holiday would help non-believers accept Christianity as the empire’s official religion.

Before that, the significant Christian celebrations were Epiphany (Jan. 6) for the Magi worshiping the baby Jesus, and Easter (Passover time), for Jesus’ resurrection. Long ago, token gifts to one another celebrated the Magi’s gift-giving to the star-heralded baby. Those wealthy, foreign visitors didn’t know it, but the gold, frankincense and myrrh they left could be sold to finance the little family’s flight to safety in Egypt. The original idea of gift-giving didn’t come with furious shopping and debt.

As for ginger and Christmas, I think the idea of ginger leis is right on target. While we ought to be giving all to Jesus, He gave all to us, including the designation of a “royal priesthood.”  When I first read this verse in 1 Peter 2:9, I had to stop and think about what all of it means for me.  What we think we’re giving to Jesus, we might as well be offering dirty rocks wrapped in old newspapers. God sees His children this way:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

It’s more than I can imagine, more than I deserve. But God, the greatest Giver, has abundant red ginger leis to drape around the necks of His children. The only requirement is to accept His offer of salvation through His son, and live out one’s connection to Jesus:

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1 Peter 2:12)

 The day God visits us? It could be tomorrow!

Never say never

Part of a continuing series inspired by sights of Kauai.
Feral chickens run all over the Hawaiian island of Kauai, in part because their natural enemy, the mongoose, was never introduced onto this island.  Go in a tourist shop, and you’ll find chicken-themed souvenirs right next to the shell beads and Hawaiian shirts.

For me, the birds prompted remembrance of that sad, cool night a panicked man tried to keep near his spiritual leader. The man had once vowed he’d never deny a connection to his leader.  But his leader, wise beyond this world, predicted, “Before the rooster crows twice, you’ll deny me three times.”

 

The unthinkable happened:  the wise, gentle leader was arrested by thugs.  The man crept behind them as they took his leader to an official’s house.  The night was chilly, and someone had lit a fire. Cold, probably trembling with fear, he slunk near the fire to warm up

A servant girl—not a well-armed thug—noticed him and said, “This man was with the arrested man.” The man shot back, “I don’t know him.”

A little later, someone echoed her hunch, “You also are one of this man’s followers.”

“I am not!” the man insisted.

 

About an hour later, someone else voiced suspicions: “Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.” The man declared, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just then, a rooster began crowing, and the man remembered his boast. His arrested leader, a captive of ruffians and perturbed religious officials, turned and looked at the man. It was more than the follower could bear.

The man, named Peter, left the scene, heaving with bitter tears. Peter had failed his Savior, broken his boast, revealed the flaws of his character. Like any of us.Peter learned his bitter lesson well. Two letters he wrote after he rose to become a leader in the new sect of “The Way” (later called Christianity), are full of practical ways to follow Christ. I wonder if Peter was thinking of his rooster-announced failures when he wrote:

In this [living hope in Jesus Christ, vv.3-5] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7) 

Will we ever face the test of the rooster’s crow? When opportunity comes to share about our faith, will we shrink back? Or use innocent idioms? 

At the Oregon junior college shootings in October, the random victims were asked to state their religion.  Those who said “Christian” got a killing bullet.  I may never face that extreme test. But every day brings tests to act and speak as someone not ashamed of Jesus Christ.

Spout and moan

A continuing series inspired by sights in Kauai.
Volcanoes were the contractors for the Hawaiian chain, all now dormant except for those on the “big island” of Hawaii, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Those of Kauai’s volcanic history include Mount Waialeale (elevation 5,080 feet), one of the world’s rainiest spots with an annual precipitation of 460 inches. The beaches continue to witness to the island’s volcanic origins, and one tourist spot is “Spouting Horn” on the southeast shore. Surf channels through a natural lava tube, releasing a spout of water with a big hiss and moan. Depending on tides, the “blow” can go as high as fifty feet.
 

Watching it reminded me of the Bible’s do’s and do-not’s regarding “overflows.” Like the “Spouting Horn” we have blow-holes that originate in our hearts. In two Gospels (Matthew 12:34-37 and Luke 6:45) Jesus observed that we speak and “do” out of the overflow of our hearts. Good people speak and do good things, evil people, evil things. On judgment day it will be rehearsed.  We’re doomed—apart from the blood of Christ covering our confessed sin (1 John 1:9).

But there are hopeful, even joyful, teachings about “overflows”:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.  All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 4:14-15)

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. (1 Thessalonians 2:12)

 Hope, thanksgiving, and love—they won’t come “moaning out” like “Spouting Horn”!

Big trees, bigger choice

Continuing a series inspired by sights of Kauai, which we visited on a trip gifted to us.
They’re sometimes called “trees on steroids,” the huge Moreton Bay Fig trees that grow seven times faster in Kauai than in their native Australia.  This tree, growing near the hotel where we stayed, is a youngster next to ones featured in the south-shore Allerton-McBryde botanical gardens. One, called the “Jurassic Tree,” was featured in the dinosaur movie “Jurassic Park,” whose filming began on Kauai in 1992. In the story’s plot, dinosaur eggs were found at its base, and from there ensued the high-drama conflict with wild mega-beasts. I never saw the film, but its theme song (which I heard in an Olympic figure skating competition about that time) was scary enough for me.

Tourists today can find the fictional “egg nest spot” amidst the Jurassic Tree’s huge buttressing roots, many as tall as a person.  These trees can grow to 200 feet high, have evergreen leaves, and impair growth of other trees around them.

Learning that reminded me of two similar passages about trees, one in Psalm 1 and the other in Jeremiah 17. Both tell of trees planted by a water source, unbothered by heat, reliably producing fruit. The analogy is to a believer, grounded in God’s Word, sustained by scripture, and producing spiritual fruit.  Then both swing to the negative:

“Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.”  (Psalm 1:4)

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

Right now, two trees grow, as it were, in life’s garden. One is good, bountiful, beneficial, made up of Christians who believe they are called to serve their Lord through service to others.  Then there is an unruly tree that strangles anything around it. As Matthew Henry said long ago in his classic commentary:

The heart, the conscience of man, in his corrupt and fallen state, is deceitful above all things. It calls evil good, and good evil; and cries peace to those to whom it does not belong. Herein the heart is desperately wicked; it is deadly, it is desperate.

Calling “evil good, and good evil”—is nothing new? But it’s not a terminal condition. . Those who’ve lived apart from God can turn to Christ. So turning, Henry wrote, gives them “new desires, new pleasures, hopes, fears, sorrows, companions, and employments. [Their] thoughts, words, and actions are changed. [They] enter on a new state, and bear a new character.” 

Psalm 1 ends with the fate of those who reject God:  “perish.” I consider that destination more horrific than an imaginary monster story filmed in Kauai.