The Gospel According to a Mother's Lap

 When I was a young boy laying my head on my mom's lap was comforting.  There was many a Sunday when I was little that I laid down in the pew during service while my mother softly scratched my back.

Now I have kids and when they are needing comfort they run to their own mother to sit on her lap or be held as she stands.  Our fairly recently weaned toddler loves to play in the same room as her mom.  She is especially content when Mom is on the floor near her as she plays.

God is not our mother, but rather He is our Heavenly Father.  Yet, the best of motherhood displays and reflects His goodness.  We are made, male and female, in God's image (Genesis 1:28) and it is in the best of motherhood and fatherhood, the best of masculinity and femininity, that God is most clearly displayed.  

"O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore." Psalm 131

How many of us get worked up thinking about things that are far beyond our control! 

For example: I am, and we are, in the last many years especially, overly concerned with politics.  I fully believe that being an informed and engaged citizen is imperative for a functioning democratic republic.  I cherish and will help defend the right to speak out and protest and/or vocally support a cause.  That said, too many of us give our peace away when we have very little control over something.  The number of us that lose patience and sleep and nerves sweating every detail in our overly political culture is extremely high.

It's not just politics either.  It's a host of things like health, our kid's athletic performance, the forecast for the upcoming picnic... the list goes on and on.  We occupy ourselves with things that are simply out of our control.

King David said that he won't play that game and he wrote a song to help others avoid it, too.

Instead of arrogantly looking constantly at the big, bad issues all around us we are to calm and quiet our souls.  We are to be like a toddler who is just so calm and content because of the presence of her loving mother.  We are to be like I was with my head on my mom's lap while her fingers gently scratched my back until I fell into a peaceful semi-consciousness.

Your soul isn't made to constantly rue over the affairs of the world.  It isn't able to fixate on all the things out of your control.  Your mental health can't take it.  Our minds and souls are breaking in this day and age of constant alarm bells because we just can't take it.  So, don't.  Rather, hope in the LORD.  Hope in God.

Hope looks like calm.  One who hopes can rest his soul.  In fact, Jesus commands us to trust in the goodness of our Heavenly Father instead of dwelling in nervous anxiety (Matthew 5:25-34).

Our God is good.  Do you believe that?  

He is our good, good Father and He has all the best qualities of our wonderful mothers perfectly.  Therefore we trust Him.  We go on with our business and our playing without fear and anxiety because we know God is in this place and our minds and souls are quieted and calmed.  

Trust in God like a good father or mother today.

Righteous Ripples

 There are few metaphors more cliché than that of pond ripples.  The rock that makes a small splash yet produces wide roaming ripples is a super common analogy.  Yet, it's the analogy that I want to use.

Let me begin by asking what kind of family you were born into.  Would you consider it more Leave it to Beaver or Married... With Children?  Was it like Bluey or the Simpsons?

None of us get to choose the family we were born into.  We're simply born into a family and that family either functions or doesn't function well.  That family is a church-going family or it isn't.  That family is either loving and safe or hostile and cold.  Yet, what a massive impact a family has upon a child.  What a massive impact a childhood has on the adult life.  And all of this is simply good or bad luck from the perspective of we humans.

That brings me to a wisdom psalm, Psalm 112.  In this 10 verse song on wisdom we see an amazing truth about families.

"Praise the LORD!
Blessed is the man who fears the LORD,
who greatly delights in His commandments!
His offspring will be mighty in the land;
the generation of the upright will be blessed." Psalm 112:1-2

We see from this brief passage a wonderful rule of wisdom.  Note this is not a wonderful, stone-cold guarantee of wisdom, but a glorious rule of wisdom:

Righteousness ripples.

The man who fears the Great I Am affects his descendants.  The person that loves the ways of God blesses those downstream of him.  Righteousness ripples.

I have seen this in my own life.  Every other year we do a Ray reunion.  It has struck me every, single time how blessed I am and why I am so blessed.  It occurs to me that many of our righteous habits were inherited, not created.  Part of the reunion at the cabin is a family church service.  We sing, pray and one of us preaches.  We tell of the blessings of God and we pray for each other.  And every single, time that we've done that I am struck by how abnormal the practice is.  Generations gather together bound by common blood and the common blood of Christ.  And much of that is because of who my Grandpa Ray was.  

I love my other side of the family but we don't do this.  There's much divorce and brokenness in the family tree and a peaceful reunion every two years just sadly isn't in the card.  Part of the reason the Rays do what we do is because Thomas W. Ray loved Jesus with all his heart, mind, soul and strength and because he loved Margie A Renschen Ray until the day he died and they raised five children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.  

Righteousness ripples.

So, what do you want to see ripple from you?  On both sides of my family I have a legacy of faith passed down to me. On one side I saw ripples of divorce and on the other ripples of lasting love.  I looked at that and said I want to keep many of the ripples going and I want to start other ripples and I want to stop the ripple of divorce and create the opposite.  

Maybe you're like our son Jamari who had a much tougher past and more destructive ripples headed his way.  He, thank God, I'm proud to say is dedicating his life to make a new splash and give the generations following him a legacy worth passing on.  If that's your story, then I applaud you and encourage you to send out some righteous ripples.

See, our obedience to the Word of God and our passion and love for Jesus and His ways is about so much more than us.  Chaos and calamity send out shock waves of trauma and sin (Exodus 20:5) but righteousness also ripples. 

Live with wisdom and make a splash with your life that sends out righteous ripples for generations and generations to be blessed today.

Are You a Student or a Proof-Reader?

 Is the Bible infallible and inerrant or is it fallible and at times errant?

I recently read a piece arguing that the Bible was fallible just as Jesus in His humanity was  fallible.  That got a reaction out of me and very likely will get a reaction out of you.  

So called "conservative" Christians and so called "progressive" Christians debate on a great many things and this is one of them.  When it comes to the labels "Progressive" and "Conservative", whether it be in theology, morality, politics or whatever the word following the label may be, it is important to think about what is being conserved or toward what are we progressing.  There are a great many things I want to progress toward and a great many things I am glad those before me progressed toward.  There are a great many things I want to conserve and a great many things I am glad were conserved for me.

When it comes to the issue of Biblical inerrancy what is being conserved?  When it comes to the notion of a fallible Bible what is one progressing toward?

Let me start by saying that some in the "conservative" wing of this debate can at times miss the ball.  In the name of conservatism there are some, mostly not a thoughtful bunch, that would ignore that sentences are in paragraphs, paragraphs are in sections, sections are in books with a genre and a point trying to be made, and the book is in the cannon of Scripture.  Some in this camp will say, "It says what it says" without bothering to actually discover what is being said.  It may be uneducated or simply lazy reading.

That said, the conservative approach to this, the one that says that in the original language and manuscripts the Bible is without fault and is the very Words of God as penned by a human author inspired by the Holy Spirit, is worth conserving.

The question that sticks with me is this: Am I a student or a proof-reader when I come to my Bible?

When one reads the Bible are they over the Word or under the Word? Do I come to the Bible to seek and understand what it says and what it means or do I come to decide whether or not I think it to be right?  

This is no new concept.  Martin Luther in the Large Catechism said, "I and my neighbor and, in short, all people may err or deceive.  But God's Word cannot err."  This is no new concept.  500 years ago Luther and all the reformers stood on this as fact and it has been conserved to this day.

If we leave Biblical inerrancy and infallibility toward what are we progressing?

Well, if all come to the Bible to decide what in it we find to be true and what in it we find to be false then we come to the Bible as a god and not a disciple (which means learner).  If we come to our Bible in this way then we get what the book of Judges (21:25b) said caused great darkness, "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." 

But you say that this is an overreaction.  Everyone won't do what is right in their own eyes.  And here lies much of the issue: You would have everyone do what it right in your eyes.  You would be a god or at least have your tribe be the gods.

I encourage you to think this through.  I encourage you to take the Bible for what it is and what it claims to be (2 Timothy 3:16): inerrant and infallible.  Resist the urge to eat the forbidden fruit and claim to be like God knowing good from evil and instead to take the bread mentioned in Deuteronomy 8:3 and Matthew 4:4 and be sustained by it and to put yourself under it today. 

Good Fathering Hurts

 I was a father of little kids before I became the instant father of a teen.  My wife and I had not really even considered what it might look like to parent a teen because we had many years before our naturally born children would be teens and in our plans fostering a teen wasn't something we were going to do.

Well, God changed our plans on an August day and I instantly became the father of a 14 year-old.

I made a lot of mistakes.  A lot.  One of the biggest mistake we made was the mistake of trying to parent him like we parented our little kids.  We had rules and we fought to enforce them.  We banged our heads against the wall trying to make him do what we knew was best for him.  

Well, it didn't work well.

He would leave our home after five months and we had time to reflect on what we did.  Long story short, he came back to live with us about a year later and we once again became parents of a teenager.  I was once again the father of someone who needed to become a man in short order.  We had to change our strategy.

Our first strategy was to make a list of rules and have him sign a contract to follow it in order to live with us like he had requested.  We sat with him and explained the fairly simple expectations we had for him.  We wanted him to choose like a man.  We wanted him to be a participant in the process.  

We were sure this strategy would work well.  

Well, it didn't.  

He broke the rules he promised to follow.  For example, he stayed up later than the covenant that he signed said he would.  It was so late that we couldn't enforce it without exhausting ourselves and becoming ineffective in our work as parents and employees.  We were frustrated that simple and even liberal rules weren't being followed as he promised to do if he wanted to live with us.

We needed a different strategy and we decided upon natural consequences. 

Stay up too late: Be tired at work and school.  Show up late for school: Fail.  Not come down for supper: Be hungry.

We decided that to parent a boy into a man we would let him get hurt.  We would, in effect, let him find out that the stove will burn.  We let the natural order of the universe as designed by God do the work of punishing for us.

While this may sound like lazy parenting let me tell you that it was hard.  It was hard to lead a horse to water only to watch him leave thirsty.  It wasn't easy to watch failure happen.  It hurts your heart to watch foolishness harm your child.

Psalm 81 tells us that God uses this same strategy with His children and that He feels this pain, too.

"Hear, O my people, while I admonish you!
There shall be no strange god among you;
you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
I am the LORD your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

But my people did not listen to my voice;
Israel would not submit to me.
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
to follow their own counsels.
Oh, that my people would listen to me,
that Israel would walk in my ways!
I would soon subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes.
Those who hate the LORD would cringe toward Him,
and their fate would last forever.
But He would feed you with the finest of the wheat,
and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you." Psalm 81:8-16

Israel had made a covenant with God.  They had done it enthusiastically.  They had promised to follow God's righteous and wise ways and they were well aware of the consequences.  

When they strayed from their promises God warned and warned and warned until He left them to natural consequences.  

The people of Israel experienced pain and suffering.  A lot more pain and suffering than getting an F or being tired at work.  This hurt their Heavenly Father.  See all the times in the above verses that He exhales His grief.  "O Israel" "Oh, that my people would listen to me".  

God is a good father.  He hates when we hurt, especially when we hurt from stupidity and foolishness.  He would have us be blessed, but He will leave us to natural consequences even though it pains His heart.

God is our good, good father, but He isn't in the business of raising forever toddlers.  He wants us to experience blessing but He's raising us into maturity.  He wants us to mature into righteous men and women and He will let natural consequences help us become that.

Our son I wrote about earlier has grown into a great young man.  It hurt my heart, but I am glad that natural consequences played a role in maturing him.  

God's statutes are for our good and for our blessing.  Follow them.  Don't be stubborn.  But when you are and discomfort arises please remember that even that is love and that God's heart is pained and longing for you to repent today.

Not Just There but VERY There

 Are you going through something right now?  

Maybe it's political stress.  Perhaps a health crisis. Economic stress weighing you down and causing you worry?  Or, what may be even worse, your children are going through something hard that you can't fix.  

What is stealing your sleep?  What is robbing your joy?  What's gobbling up your headspace?  What is it that is threatening you?

Is the earth underneath you shaking?  Do you feel like your life is on the edge of a cliff in a mudslide?  Do you feel like you're in a wave pool or sea and timing every wave wrong so that whenever you need a breath you get dowsed instead?

If your world is all as it should be, then good for you.  You can stop reading or you can save this for a future need, but this post is for those who are in a bind.  This, based on Psalm 46, is for those of us who need help.

Look at Psalm 46 and be encouraged:

"God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble." Psalm 46:1

I love this verse.  I have been reading through the psalms this year and 19 days ago I read this and it has stuck with me and I am glad for this.

Do you need help?  God is your help!

God is our refuge.  He is the tank we can be safe in as we go through the battles of life.  He is the brick house, not a house of straw or sticks.  He is our strength.  When I am weak, He is strong.

And my favorite part: God is a very present help in trouble.

When you are going through the junk of life and need help He isn't just there He is VERY there.  Are you in trouble and need help?  God is not just with you, He is very with you.  He's not just with you; He is there to help.  Help isn't on the way; help is very there!

The ESV is what I quoted above.  The NASB says God is a, "very ready help." The NIV says He is an, "ever present help."  Put these together and this is God: He is very there, very ready and, in fact, He was always there even before you shouted for help.

Why do I harp on God being VERY present?  Too often I pray to God like I talk to an imaginary friend.  I must take this verse to heart and believe it to be true and act accordingly.  God isn't an idea, He is my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  He actually, honestly, truthfully and very much is with me and you in our trouble.

So, what do we do in light of this truth?  

"Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling." Psalm 46:2-3

God is our tank in the battle, so we roll forward unafraid. God is our strength, so we don't act as though impotent but we act in light of the omnipotent power source we possess.  God is very much with us in the trouble, so we just ain't afraid.  

When we understand verse 1 we can live verse 2.  This isn't just poetry.  This isn't just a song.  This is really, truly who our God is.  He is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Go back to that thing that you said was bothering you, was tormenting you, was threatening you, was snatching your sleep.  It. Is. Real.  But so, and even more so, is your God and Savior.  Meditate on that truth.  

Let's turn now to the end and let it be our benediction and prayer:

"'Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!'
The LORD of host is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress." Psalm 46:10-11

The sons of Korah, the writers of this song, leave us with two reminders and so will I. 

1) The God of angel armies is with us.

2) The God who loves cheating scoundrels like Jacob is our protection.

And the final word of the psalm is Selah.  Selah is a Hebrew musical term that likely means rest or pause.  So, selah.  Know this beautiful truth, meditate on it and then rest in it. Rest.  Lean into this wonderful truth about your very there God and relax today.

Can You Pursue Humility?

 I don't think anyone has an easy time being humble. Certainly some have this virtue and necessary quality come easier, but I would doubt it comes easy to anyone.

That said, I think about my struggle for humility and feel stuck.  

One of the desires in my soul is to be known and to be known for the right things.  My reputation is something I protect and I don't think that it's wrong. Proverbs 22:1a says, "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches..."  

Plus, as a radio broadcaster my position is public.  Sometimes the job is called "Radio Personality".  My job is to be heard and known.  I somehow have to humbly think everyone should listen to me and then work to make that happen.

Can you see my plight?  I want humility and at the same time my soul wants to be known as humble.  Is that desire even humble? Can you relate even if your job isn't to hope more people tune in to listen to you today than yesterday?

What a confusing thing.  I guess what I'm trying to wonder is: Can one aspire to humility and, if so, how?

"Humility is so shy.  If you begin talking about it, it leaves." -Tim Keller

Humility is a mysterious thing to pursue.  This is especially true when it feels that humility runs further away when you focus on her.  And if she isn't running she begins to feel less like you and more foreign to all you are.  And can you even know she's been attained if you do indeed catch her?

"... smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble', and almost immediately pride... pride at his own humility... will appear.  If he awakens to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt... and so on, through as many stages as you please." -C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters chapter 14.

The cycle exists in my life.  The moment I see humility in my life she magically is replaced by her ugly and unwanted houseguest of an opposite, Pride.  

"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Romans 7:24

Perhaps, pastor Rick Warren was right when he synthesized Lewis' Screwtape Letter on humility into a favorite sentence of mine: "Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less."  Perhaps, thinking about humility is good but thinking of my humility is wrong.  Maybe the way to pursue humility is to only pursue it in the person of Christ. 

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself taking the form of a servant..." Philippians 2:3-7a

See, this humility is only mine In Christ Jesus.  Looking for it on its own is a chasing after the wind.  And even though I see and know this truth getting and displaying humility is still a struggle.  

Perhaps my strategy of should be less one of chasing humility and more of evicting Pride so her more beautiful opposite, Humility, can shine in that strange, unassuming beauty that is hers and hers alone.

"And He said to them, 'This kind (of demon) cannot be driven out by anything but prayer." Mark 9:29

I in the fourteen years of writing in this blog have tried to end with some sort of a charge toward you, the reader, to do today.  Though I'm betting your desire for humility and struggle for her feels a lot like mine, I won't end with a charge but a request for a favor.  Pray for me to have humility and pray that God will be gentle in helping me evict pride today.

2024's 5 Star Books

 My resolution for 2024 was to read more books.  Outside of the books I read with my kids (Roald Dahl classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Narnia series, Harry Potter series were awesome to read with them), I read 25 non-fiction books and 1 slightly-fiction book.

I don't know what reading resolution I will give myself in 2025 or whether I will repeat this one, but I did really enjoy my 2024 in books.  Some of the books were quick reads, some were slow chewing, some were absolutely wonderful and a couple were hardly worth my time.

I didn't do a book report on each by any means but I did do a rudimentary rating system.  Any book that is a 5 Star is a tome worth recommending.  Below are my 5 Star books and links to find them and my extremely brief note on each.

The Screwtape Letters -Everyone should read this

The Holiness of God - Great read to realign your affections to God's holiness

The Heart of Christ -Tough read, but soaked in lovely truths

The Anxious Generation -A must read for parents and educators

A Praying Life -Makes me want to pray

Leadership is an Art -I wish every boss would read it as it portrays an organization of worth

100 Portraits of Christ -Tremendous devotional book

Gay Girl, Good God -Great memoir of God's goodness

Life Together -A read for all who would gather and all who would lead

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction -It made me love the Psalms of Assent

Every Good Endeavor -Would be a wonderful book for a work discussion

The books above are my 5 Star.  These are the best-of-the-best and my favorites of the year.  If you're interested in the others and are looking for a book recommendation, let me know.  It's been a fun year of reading.  

I wish you a Happy New Year and perhaps a great day of reading today.