Interior Enhancements

"...Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it." Isaiah 30:15

The way I often come across a new thought is making a connection between two or more seemingly unrelated items usually within days or weeks of each other. This is also the way God seems to speak to me (correction; the way in which I hear him.  He likely speaks in all sorts of ways, but I'm not such a great listener).

Recently I made the connection of two things I observed. One was my beautiful wife in her usual early morning spot having her devotional time; bible open, and usually, children sprawled all around her. This has been a custom of hers since she was a pre-teen. Recently, I snapped a picture of her in this locale, which would usually invite her scorn.

termites had eaten the entire middle of the tree

Then several days later I was walking in our back woods with my daugther and noticed a tree that had blown down some months before during a strong wind storm.  I had sawed pieces of it off my fence, but hadn't investigated it at the point of seperation, it had previously appeared large and alive.

I discovered that termites had eaten virtually the entire core of the tree, starting at the bottom and working their way up the tree.  When a strong wind storm came the tree had no strength, though it wasn't dead, and was blown over.  This tree "looked" healthy and there was no exterior indication that it was eaten-up inside and had no inner core strength to keep it erect during the storm.

The spiritual connection I made between the two images is now obvious to you I'm sure.  That, without cultivating a strong devotional life our inner core, our soul-person within us gets eaten up, shrinks and weakens our lives.  There are too many pests that can gain entry; pride, selfishness, greed, fear, etc.

We eat several times every day to stay strong, we breath several times per minute to stay alive, how can it be that we go days or weeks without spending meaningful time in quiet reflection, bible open waiting before our Creator?  As with any relationship love is spelled "T-I-M-E".  In my wife's case, if I were asked to point to one quality or habit that aided her most in life (especially in dealing with our large crew and and a peculiar guy like me), it would be this time of santuary she holds so dear.

This was a great reminder for me to continue to focus on my inner life and reinvigorate my spiritual discipline of daily devotionals.  I did this by beginning to journal my reflections during my daily devotional time.  If you need a kick-start, here's a great devotional help I've enjoyed -- Harvest daily devotional.

Got Goals...?

A young man that has been close to our family overdosed on prescription medicine Christmas Day. He said he was depressed with life, he's had some history with depression and other mental and emotional issues. We visited him at a psychiatric hospital a couple of days later and inadvertently came during what was called "family therapy" so we served as his family. We believe he's going to be okay and are trying to be a blessing to him. While I don't intend to trivialize any part of someones important quest for mental or emotional health, there were several interesting components of the what the therapist shared that I thought was relevant for this New Year and New Decade that we've just entered. Here's a summary of what the therapist shared:

Confronting the diagnosis (problem) - According to the therapist and of course age-old wisdom, unless you clearly and unashamedly confront the negative issues that you're facing you will not begin down the path toward overcoming them.

Schedules - While our family enjoys routines, I never realized how a simply daily-life schedule is empowering for mental health. The therapist encouraged the patients to have regular sleeping and eating times, remaining as constant as possible.

Eat Right & Excercise - you are what you eat and you have eat the right foods and excercise to keep your body healthy.

Team - he talked about how life was a team sport and discussed how everyone has two sets of people in their lives - the ones that don't need to be in your life and ones who are your support system and need to be more in your life. They even talked about the power of regularly attending a church (this was not a Christian facility).

Goals - this subject got the most attention with patients being encouraged to write down very short-term and some mid-term goals. According to Wikipedia, "goal-setting ideally involves establishing specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-targeted objectives. On a personal level, the process of setting goals allows people to specify and then work towards their own objectives — most commonly financial or career-based goals. Goal-setting comprises a major component of personal development."

Granted, I only spent a couple of hours there and I am not schooled in psychology, but here's what I didn't hear..."awaken the giant within, just do it, we is bigger than me, or the power of positive thinking. Of course most of these books and ideologies have their place but they don't help a kid get over clinical depression.

What impressed me so much about the therapy is that it reminded me of what most mothers have told their kids for as long as we can remember. Get real, eat your vegetables, go play outside, get to bed, be true to your friends, get a job and get something done! It seems that acting on Mom's advice can really keep us all-around healthy.

Here's a more entertaining version of what I remember from Mom.

Love Is Verb...

"Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything"...a section of I Corinthians 13.

About once a year my kids and I catch the original version of Yours, Mine and Ours, we did again over this Thanksgiving holiday. This movie was made in the 60's with Lucy Arnez and Henry Fonda and is based on a true story of two widowers who had large families. Lucy was apparently quite powerful then, her name shows first on the credits and her own studio bought the rights to the movie. She was feeling that people needed a good family movie since at the time there was so much focus on sex in other pictures. It was this movie that paved the way for the success of the Brady Bunch.

There is one scene that for years has resonated with me and always makes a strange lump appear in my throat when it arrives. If you haven't seen it here's the set-up. Both of these parents of large families are widowed and decide to marry. They conceive a baby together and on the night of the baby's arrival Mr. Beardsley is awakened. As he hurrily prepares to take Mrs. Beardsley to the hospital to deliver the baby he finds his teenage daughters' boyfriend fist-fighting with his teenage son. Apparently the boyfriend was mocking Beardsley's daughter because she wouldn't do whatever he was wanting late that night and he was frustrated, thinking her a prude. Now enjoy the scene and his talk about what love really is...

Yours, Mine & Ours Scene...


I've often questioned myself, based on I Corinthians and the above clip, if I even loved my wife when we first got married. Since what I now understand to be real love, is nothing close what I understood 20 1/2 years ago.

What I have come to understand just a little, is; that to really love we must accept the paradox, "die to live".

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23 NIV)

"Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church - a love marked by giving, not getting". (Ephesians 5:25 The Message)

More later...

The Pain of the Reach

One of my all-time favorite epic films is Ben Hur. Charlton Heston portrays a Jewish aristocrat in the time of Jesus betrayed by his childhood friend who is now commander of the Roman military in Judea. Judah (Ben Hur) is eventually imprisoned and sent off to serve as a slave oarsman on a Roman navy ship. Judah serves for three years chained to the ships under belly rowing with a hundred other pitiful oarsman as the Romans engage in sea battles.

For years I been struck by the place that pain has in our lives. Just the sound of the word causes most of us to cringe. As a charismatic (not sure this definition works for me but its the best one I have) it gets even worse, our theology of suffering and pain has historically been weak, encumbered by the false notion that Jesus died so that we could escape all pain.

Pain means to endure physical, mental or emotional suffering. Other words such as torment, agony and anguish come to mind. The prevalent suffering of us in the west seems to be more about broken relationships, dashed hopes, troubled children, financial troubles, grief, stress, etc. The trouble with pain is that it is so immediate and typically causes everything else to come out of focus, it demands our attention. This is also why physical pain can be such a blessing to us. Think of how many people you know who initially identified a real problem or disease in their body and later had it successfully treated simply due to the ability to feel pain. In these instances pain is a gift, an early indicator that something is wrong.

Judah was feeling pain. Beyond the physical pain he endured he was seething with hatred toward his friend who had dealt with him and his family treacherously. The pain of believing that his mother and sister were now dead. His life once so filled with promise as a prosperous, respected leader now in ashes in the belly of slave ship - everyone and everything of value to him was gone. Seeing life in the moment as pain often forces us to do, his feelings were confirmed. Yet seeing life in totality, the way God views our lives, from beginning to end and on through eternity it was in no way true. Consider this, Judah's pain so very real but his perspective of it was not true.

Through his pain, God was building in Judah capacity for what only God could know was coming later - his destiny in the coliseum. Using the pain of the slave rowers strained reach, day after day, God was building previously unreachable dimensions of ability in preparation for one of Judah's finest moments, but he never would have dreamed it. If you like, catch a glimpse of Judah enduring the pain of his reach here in this video clip.


Therein lies what I'm considering, that with God in our lives, pain has purpose, yes pain can have gain. James hints towards this, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials (pain) knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience (1:2-3). Pain is God's manufacturing process. God calls us loudly to himself through our pain. And when we process our pain with him it produces patience, endurance, forgiveness, long-suffering, vision...

Nine years ago while praying I found myself suddenly blurting out something like, "Lord, I want to know the fellowship of your suffering" (Philippians 3:10), I quickly caught myself, inwardly shouting NO! Less than one month later, my sweet pregnant wife delivered our little boy Taylor Oran who had died in her womb 12 hours earlier. A knot had formed in his umbilical cord and tightened during his 38th week. Pain, lots of it. I'll leave the rest of this testimony for another time, but today we celebrate the birthday of our now eight year old son who followed, Luke.

What is God producing through the pain of your reach?

p.s. Rebecca just woke-up with this song in her mind - MercyMe - Bring The Rain, listen here ~