LOVED AND UGLY

You've heard of the Big One for dog connoisseurs: June's legendary Westminster Dog Show (New York/established 1877), where preened, purebred pooches of all sizes are paraded with much flair. But there's also a rival competition about the same time across the nation in Petaluma (Pet-aluma—get it?), California. Started in the 1970s, this one—for considerably less-than-stellar mutts--is called the “World's Ugliest Dog.”

This year's winner was “Mr. Happy Face,” an aging Chihuahua mix rescued from an abusive situation with a hoarder. Estimated to be about 17 years old, he was given little chance of finding a new forever home. He had tumors and neurological issues, needed a diaper, could barely stand upright, and held his head (with its Mohawk-like topper) askew. But when he's happy, he reportedly sounded “like a Dodge Ram diesel truck” revving its engine.

That this dog was even adopted was a miracle. One vet, considering his age, past abuse, and disabilities, predicted he'd live only a month or few weeks. The woman who adopted him—despite all his disabilities—determined that he'd get so much love that he'd forget his old life. That was ten months before the “ugly dog” show—and now he earned his owner a $1,200 prize and an appearance on the “Today” show in New York. (Yep, not too far from the “elegant” dog competition site.)

And I thought—how much like God's lavish love described in Romans 5. Our “before Christ” might also be described as full of neglect and abuse. That's how Satan likes to fling about folks who don't know the security of faith in Christ. But God walked into the room, saw the yearning in our eyes despite the ugly trappings of sin, and paid for our release with a check on the “Bank of Calvary,” signed in His Son's blood:

But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8).

In no way do I intend to trivialize the extravagant gift of salvation through Jesus Christ by linking it to an “ugly dog” show. But I think even this secular event portrays a deeper truth: that no matter our past, no matter how much we've been knocked around, wounded, rejected, given up on—God never lets us out of His sight. To Him, we're not ugly. What the prophet Isaiah wrote of God's love for Israel is just as true for each of God's human created beings:

You are precious and honored in my sight....because I love you.. (Isaiah 43:4)

Reconciliation Day

Flowers that bloom at Easter include my favorite, daffodils,
whose trumpet shape reminds me of the verse, "The
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised" (1 Cor. 15:52).

Everybody knows about April Fool’s Day. But special interest groups have made April the month to make people aware of poetry, autism, math, humor, gardens, guitars (my son will like that!), frogs, the military child, and financial literacy. April 13 is Scrabble day, April 16, Richter scale day; and April 30, the birthday of Eeyore (of Winnie the Pooh fame). Those are all just a sampling. You could celebrate one or two “somethings” all month long.

But one “special day” marks emotional pain. April 2, “Reconciliation Day,” cuts to the core of our spiritual values and compassion. A nationally syndicated advice columnist started it about 25 years ago to encourage her readers to write a letter or call someone to mend a strained or broken relationship. Yet her “advice” is thousands of years old. Jesus said: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12 KJV, emphasis added). Or, as put in plainer language: “Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us” (NLT).

We want to have our sins forgiven. But to reach out to those who have hurt us—and don’t seem to care—that’s another matter revealing how seriously we take our faith. My pastor recently finished a powerful sermon series on the life of Joseph, with the last two messages focusing on Joseph’s forgiveness of his spiteful, reckless brothers. The sermons took me back to when applying Joseph’s story to my own life helped me forgive those who’d hurt me, and to seek forgiveness from those I’d wounded. Such actions are messy, humbling, but necessary if we’re to wear the label of “Christian.”

Wanting to study Joseph more, I checked out of our church library a study by Charles Swindoll, whose church in Fullerton., Calif., I attended in the mid-1970s. Swindoll said this of Joseph’s amazing forgiveness of the brothers who sold him into slavery, recounted in Genesis 45:

Attitude is so crucial in the life of the Christian.  We can go through the Sunday motions, we can carry out the religious exercises, we can pack a Bible under our arms, and sing the songs from memory, yet we can still hold grudges against the people who have wronged us.  In our own way—and it may even be with a little religious manipulation—we’ll get back at them.  But that is not God’s way. (Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness, Word, 1998, p. 147)

There’s no guarantee that “forgiveness” will turn things around and result in a warm and loving relationship. We live in a world of sinners, which includes each of us. But those of us who know a Savior, who reconciled us to Himself through the agony of a Good Friday cross, know we’ve been forgiven much ourselves. We cannot fully comprehend the depth of love and divine patience bound up in this, the amazing statement of Easter’s reconciliation:

But God demonstrates his own life for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 NIV)

How will you celebrate Reconciliation Day?

 

Fifty shades of yellow

 

Unseasonably warm days have brought early spring to my area.  I haven’t shoveled snow in weeks, and crocus blossoms have popped at a sunny spot in my son’s yard. Those happy little blooms always remind me of this portion of Song of Solomon:
See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. (Song of Solomon 2:11)
Especially for those who live in climates where gray winter days drag on, it’s a happy day when flowers appear again.
 

Okay, I know that “Song of Solomon” can be read at several levels, one being a sensual poem between a man and his betrothed. But rather than the reported raunchy stuff of a current “gray”-named  film (which I have not seen nor plan to see), this is the pure marital love of God’s original plan for men and women,  all the way back to Adam and Eve. On another level, this verse reminds us that temptations and hardships (“the winter”) aren’t forever. As 1 Corinthians 10:13 points out:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
God knows how much “winter” we can endure spiritually. Renewal and hope—like fifty shades of early spring flowers--can come as we walk in trust and obedience to God.

Our early spring has reminded me of another recent film, about winter, which has spawned more than its share of child-focused merchandise. This cartoon took liberties with a fairy tale about a young queen cursed with turning everything she touched into frozen deadness.  She decides to abandon her kingdom and go as far away as possible to the ultimate frozen land.  With her long white tresses, oversized eyes, and Barbie-doll figure, she seems to have everything “right.” But she reminds me of spoiled little kids who stomp off to their rooms when life doesn’t go their way, slamming the door behind them.  The real heroine of the film was her boy-crazy sister, who broke the “ice curse” with an act of sacrificial love. Yet the “ice queen” and her sister were both flawed beings and not true to real life. Real life is this:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.(Romans 5:8)
Our “sin” state left us stuck in a spiritual winter. But Jesus’ sacrificial death for our sins made it possible for us to have new spiritual life. 

Let those crocuses push through the mat of dead leaves!  In all their buttery glory, they’re the advance scouts for spring’s most magnificent event: Easter.

Castaways

We had chopped down a messy evergreen adjacent to the house that was a fire hazard because of dry needles trapped inside. Afterwards, it seemed we’d never quit filling garbage bags of the debris. On our trash pickup day, as I came out to help the truck driver cast the bags into his dump bin, I thought of several ways garbage bags can symbolize aspects of the spiritual life.

Salvation. Some people say they can’t come to God because they have too much “garbage” in their lives. They think they need to clean up their acts before they make the decision to be a Christian. Yet, as one person quipped, “You don’t clean up the house before the cleaning lady comes.” Jesus died for sinners, not perfect people: “While we were yet sinners [surrounded by sin-garbage], Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, comment added).

John Bunyan’s classic allegory Pilgrim’s Progress pictured that as the main character, Christian, carries a heavy back pack representing the burden of the knowledge of his sin. He comes to a place with a cross and empty tomb. There, the straps that bound his burden to him are broken, and the burden rolls into the empty sepulcher. But Christian isn’t suddenly catapulted to the Celestial City upon being relieved of his sin burden. He’s free of its penalizing weight, but he has a long way to go before reaching his destination. All sorts of tests come his way as his character is prepared for the beauty and holiness of that city where God lives.

Spiritual growth. Years ago I wrote a children’s story titled, “The Great Garbage Bag Lesson.” The fiction concerned two grade-school kids, who knew only kid-gossip about the other, being assigned partners for a science project on recycling. They decided to give each classmate a bag to collect personal throwaway garbage for a week. In the process of learning about recyclable waste, the two learned how their misconceptions about the other person being “unfriendly” were all wrong. The story inferred how pride, fear, anxiety, and other relationship-killers are spiritual “garbage” that keep us from enjoying the full life that God has planned for us.

The apostle Peter put it this way: “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). The word for “cast” in the original Greek is epirrhipto and it literally means “to hurl upon.” Its only other use in the New Testament is in Luke 19:35, in describing the disciples hurling garments on a donkey for Jesus to sit on as He entered Jerusalem. Peter’s saying we can hurl onto Jesus our black bags of fears and anxieties. He’s strong enough to take care of them.

Selfish refusal. In my town there’s now a homeless woman in a long black hooded coat, who keeps a handkerchief pressed to her nose. As she wanders from place to place, she carries four plastic grocery sacks stuffed with more sacks. One day, concerned about her, I approached her with a clear zipped bag of purchased, wrapped snack items. “I thought you might be hungry,” I said as I got within about ten feet. She glared and waved me away. “All these are packaged,” I added, hoping to allay her fears poison or germs. She kept shooing me, insisting she didn’t want them and claiming she was okay.

Obviously, she isn’t okay. I’m not going to get into a discussion of mental illness here. But other days, as I have watched her trudge down the street, I have thought about how God must feel when we refuse His help and clasp ever tighter to our bags of problems. How much more would He’d rather hear this, as Charles Wesley expressed it his hymn “And Can It Be?”: “My chains fell off”—and I’d paraphrase, I gave up my black bags—“my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee!”