Looking to the One who's always calm

Last weekend's 2009 Masters tournament certainly provided an exciting fourth round. And I know that even if I could golf, there's just no way I could've handled the pressure of it all! The crowds intently watching a player's every move, the huge purse of prize-money at stake, the consequences of one slightly wrong move in every swing of a club. How do those guys do it?

Then I think of how much sports mirrors life. The goals we shoot for, the pressures we face, the persistence required, the mistakes we can make, the ways we respond to those mistakes -- it's all part of life in far more significant ways than in a mere game of golf! And anybody who knows me knows that routine pressures can sometimes cause me to lose my composure in ways that make me look no better at life than at golf!

And though I do believe there must be many lessons about life that we can learn from golf, I'll leave it to those who know the game to explain them to you. I simply want to share an old newspaper article written about Mike Weir after he won the 2003 Masters. Here's a excerpt from the article...

"Yesterday [fourth round], Weir found himself suddenly in the lead after the third hole, when Maggert suffered a two-stroke penalty for having his ball bounce back from the lip of the bunker and hit him in the shoulder. Maggert made a triple bogey and Weir led by two.
"As the round progressed, however, Mattiace caught fire and passed Weir on the back nine, leading the Canadian by as much as two shots. Weir, however, held his nerve and focused on his own business, making important birdies at the 13th and 15th holes.
"His support group, as it turned out, lent a big hand. In the gallery were his wife, Bricia, his brother Jim and his father, Rich.
“'My dad is such a calm guy, an even-keeled guy,' Weir said. 'I was actually thinking about that today when I was walking around. I saw him out there and I think that calmed me down.'”

Now there's a sports metaphor I can apply to my life. There's always stuff going on in life that causes me stress. There's plenty I can get worked up about, and plenty of it is pretty serious in nature. How am I supposed to combat that?

Keep my eyes on God my Father, that's how. I can see in the Bible that He's not stressed. He's calm and in control, and He's working out His eternal plans. To see Him with the eyes of my spirit, calmly seated and ruling from His heavenly throne, ought to calm me down and give me peace in every situation.

King David, who needed God's help in many tough spots, said, "My eyes are continually toward the Lord, for He will pluck my feet out of the net" (Psalm 25:15). "For my eyes are toward You, O God, the Lord; in You I take refuge; do not leave me defenseless" (Psalm 141:8).

So to adapt what Mike Weir said to fit the context of our lives: "I saw God out there and I know that calmed me down." He's always there. Not just in the galleries, but in life's fairways where the action is. And He wants us to look to Him to find the hope and strength and reassurance we need in every challenge we face.

© 2009 by Ken Peters

No-Nonsense Christianity!

When he was sixty years old, John Steinbeck set out to re-explore America. He was accompanied by Charley, his French poodle, and he traveled in a truck camper named after Don Quixote’s horse, Rocinante. He then wrote about his trip in the book, Travels with Charley, in Search of America (1962).

The following is a superbly -- and hilariously -- written excerpt from that book about a trip to church one Sunday morning.

Sunday morning, in a Vermont town, my last day in New England, I shaved, dressed in a suit, polished my shoes, whited my sepulcher, and looked for a church to attend. Several I eliminated for reasons I do not now remember, but on seeing a John Knox church I drove into a side street and parked Rocinante out of sight, gave Charley his instructions about watching the truck, and took my way with dignity to a church of blindingly white ship lap. I took my seat in the rear of the spotless, polished place of worship. The prayers were to the point, directing the attention of the Almighty to certain weaknesses and undivine tendencies I know to be mine and could only suppose were shared by others gathered there.

The service did my heart and I hope my soul some good. It had been long since I had heard such an approach. It is our practice now, at least in the large cities, to find from our psychiatric priesthood that our sins aren’t really sins at all but accidents that are set in motion by forces beyond our control. There was no such nonsense in this church. The minister, a man of iron with tool-steel eyes and a delivery like a pneumatic drill, opened up with prayer and reassured us that we were a pretty sorry lot. And he was right. We didn't amount to much to start with, and due to our own tawdry efforts we had been slipping ever since. Then, having softened us up, he went into a glorious sermon, a fire-and-brimstone sermon. Having proved that we, or perhaps only I, were no damn good, he painted with cool certainty what was likely to happen to us if we didn't make some basic reorganizations for which he didn't hold out much hope. He spoke of hell as an expert, not the mush-mush hell of these soft days, but a well-stoked, white-hot hell served by technicians of the first order. This reverend brought it to a point where we could understand it, a good hard coal fire, plenty of draft, and a squad of open-hearth devils who put their hearts into their work, and their work was me. I began to feel good all over. For some years now God has been a pal to us, practicing togetherness, and that causes the same emptiness a father does playing softball with his son. But this Vermont God cared enough about me to go to a lot of trouble kicking the hell out of me. He put my sins in a new perspective. Whereas they had been small and mean and nasty and best forgotten, this minister gave them some size and bloom and dignity. I hadn't been thinking very well of myself for some years, but if my sins had this dimension there was some pride left. I wasn't a naughty child but a first rate sinner, and I was going to catch it.

I felt so revived in spirit that I put five dollars in the plate, and afterward, in front of the church, shook hands warmly with the minister and as many of the congregation as I could. It gave me a lovely sense of evil-doing that lasted clear through till Tuesday. I even considered beating Charley to give him some satisfaction too, because Charley is only a little less sinful than I am. All across the country I went to church on Sundays, a different denomination every week, but nowhere did I find the quality of that Vermont preacher. He forged a religion designed to last, not predigested obsolescence.

© 2009 by Ken Peters

He hears every prayer

This may seem extremely shallow to most people who read it -- or simple at the very least -- but I'm afraid it's a reminder about prayer that I really need once in a while. I don't know if you can relate but I've had times when I'm praying for something for the millionth time (it seems), and I wonder if I'm talking to myself as God attends to prayers He's more interested in hearing. Or times when my prayers feel so weak and wobbly that they barely make it past my lips and I wonder if God deems them earnest enough to turn His ear my way. Or times amidst busy, noisy days when I throw a desperate prayer upward in a time of crisis, hoping it will be heard amidst the many other voices crying out to God. It's at times like those that Psalm 65 offers me great hope.

Psalm 65:2 is addressed to "You who hear prayer". That feels like a declaration that I need to hear once in a while: God hears me when I pray. Prayer can sometimes feel like a ball being thrown up to a hand that seems higher than the height we're capable of throwing. The ball goes up, but sadly arches back to the ground long before it comes close to the Great Glove we're aiming for. But Psalm 65 tells me that the God who has the strength to establish the mountains and to still the seas (verses 6-7) will stretch His hand down to catch such prayers! He hears the prayers we desperately heave upward.

But what's more encouraging is that God not only catches our prayers, but He catches us! Psalm 65:4 suggests that even though we may feel like we're all alone in our times of prayer, the God we're praying to draws us close to Himself to dwell with Him so that we will be "satisfied with the goodness of [His] house, the holiness of [His] temple!" And just to make sure we don't think that our many mistakes will exclude us from such hopes, verse 3 assures us that "when iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions." That's something I can be sure of because of what Jesus did for me on the cross!

Such promises should revive any prayer life! Especially with the further promise of verse 5 that says, "By awesome deeds You answer us with Your righteousness". God hears and God answers. But while it's good to be reminded that God can do awesome deeds to answer my prayers, I need to remember that He answers according to His righteousness rather than my preferences. If I can trust Him in that, I'll have less trouble believing that He hears every prayer I utter -- and have an easier time accepting however and whenever He chooses to answer.

Some other helps I've found regarding prayer in the Psalms:
Start in an attitude of thanksgiving! (Psalm 95:1-2; 100:4)
Confess my sin to Him! (Psalm 32:5; 66:18)
Seek God persistently! (Psalm 86:3-5; 105:4)
Don't let a sense of inadequacy hinder me! (Psalm 34:6; 86:1)

© 2009 by Ken Peters

A Creed for Postmodern Times

Having dug into Steve Turner's poetry for my previous posting, I couldn't help but to continue reading. And I happened upon a great poem that seems more relevant in the postmodern milieu of 2009 than it might have felt nearly 30 years ago when he actually wrote it.

I'm quite certain that many people in Canada today don't know the original meaning of the "stat holiday" they'll be enjoying this weekend. And among those who do realize that Easter is about celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, many arbitrarily reject the credibility of that historical claim based on their personal feelings and perspectives about God, and with minimal awareness of any supporting arguments for Biblical claims. In essence, people don't want to think about it. As Steve Turner says in the poem I posted yesterday, they're simply happy with chocolate bunnies and chicks. Don't bring up that uncomfortable talk of nails and blood. Don't bother them with historical documentation and logical conclusions.

In other words, "Don't trouble me with facts when I've already made up my mind."

That sort of approach to facts and to truth is not as modern as many critics of postmodernity might suggest, and it's well illustrated by this poem (from 1980) also by Steve Turner...

Creed

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy's OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.

We believe that there's something in horoscopes,
UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven hell God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We belive in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds.

© 2009 by Ken Peters

A poem for the holiday weekend

A favourite poet of mine is a rather modern dude who used to freelance for Rolling Stone magazine in the 70's and who co-authored a book about U2 in the 80's. His name is Steve Turner. His poems have a freestyle sort of feel to them as he often mixes his British wit with cutting satire. Many of his poems also offer a refreshing perspective on many familiar spiritual themes.

As Easter approaches, I'm reminded of a poem Steve Turner wrote about Easter that feels appropriate for our times.

It's called,
Christmas is really for the Children

Christmas is really
for the children.
Especially for children
who like animals, stables,
stars and babies wrapped
in swaddling clothes.
Then there are wise men,
kings in fine robes,
humble shepherds and a
hint of rich perfume.

Easter is not really
for the children
unless accompanied by
a cream filled egg.
It has whips, blood, nails,
a spear and allegations
of body snatching.
It involves politics, God
and the sins of the world.
It is not good for people
of a nervous disposition.
They would do better to
think on rabbits, chickens
and the first snowdrop
of spring.

Or they'd do better to
wait for a re-run of
Christmas without asking
too many questions about
what Jesus did when he grew up
or whether there's any connection.

© 2009 by Ken Peters

He's still the Expected One (church bulletin cover)

The people of Israel had waited hundreds of years for a promised Messiah -- for a Saviour -- and when Jesus entered Jerusalem in Matthew 21:7-11, the people were stirred with excitement and hope that this wonderful teacher and miracle worker might actually be the One they had been expecting for so long. Yet I suspect that for some, it may have been difficult to believe that God's promises were finally coming to pass. After all, even the most certain can sometimes find their expectations are shaken.

John the Baptist was a man who clearly knew who Jesus was. When he saw Jesus coming to be baptized by him, he said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!" (John 1:29). But in Matthew 11:3, we find John in prison, sending word to Jesus in order to ask, "Are You the Expected One [or literally, the Coming One], or shall we look for someone else?" John had sufficient understanding to be sure of who Jesus was, and yet discouragement had caused him to doubt. And in his inquiry to Jesus, he used a unique name for Jesus: the Expected One or the Coming One. What a descriptive name!

As Jesus entered Jerusalem on that historic day so long ago, so many must have been hoping that "the Expected One" had finally come! And I believe that this is a hope Jesus would still want us to have today no matter what might cause us to doubt.

I don't simply mean in the sense of His promised second coming. I mean that I think Jesus wants to be known as the Expected One or the Coming One in reference to our everyday lives. He wants us to see Him as the Expected One in the everyday challenges we all face. I don't think He ever wants us to stop expecting visitations, interventions or revelations. After all, He's still the Expected One, isn't He?

But the key to maintaining this conviction is contained in what Jesus says in reply to John the Baptist. He says, "People are getting healed, the dead are being raised and the poor are hearing the Gospel, but blessed is he who doesn't take offense at Me." In other words, trust Me to be the Expected One, but be sure to hold your expectations loosely. Jesus may come, but then not do as I expected. That seems to be what John was struggling with: Why hadn't Jesus delivered the people from their Roman oppressors?

I can somewhat relate to John's struggle when I consider prayers that haven't been answered and words from the Lord that have not yet been fulfilled. But such challenges must never become challengers to who we know Jesus to be. And none of those struggles should prevent us from rejoicing in Jesus as the Expected One and the Coming One in every situation we face!

© 2009 by Ken Peters

Issues of Existence

Spring break is upon us and the kids are home from school for a week. And since I'm able to take some time off from work, I've been wondering what we'll do. It's a great opportunity for some family time, and yet I know how easy it'll be for each of us to get lost in our own pursuits.

I can see it now... I'm in the dining room grinding my teeth as I do the taxes, Fiona is curled up on the couch in the living room enjoying a good book, Nick is in the family room intently focused on some game on the kids' computer, Amy's down in my office texting someone on Facebook, and Becky hasn't appeared yet -- she's still in her room sleeping.

And as I thought about how we could be sure to spend some quality time together as a family, I wondered about the many choices we each make that revolve around our own personal lives. I could also see in my own life that so much of my life revolves around me: my interests and my appetites; my need for rest and my desire for fun; my diversions and my collections. I could go on and on. Sure, I'd like to believe that as a Christian, I aim to base my choices in life on what God wants me to do, but I wonder what percentage of both my pursuits and my possessions are more about me than about God.

I recently read how plainly Paul puts things when he says, "for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we exist" (1 Corinthians 8:6). Paul couldn't get more basic in his focus here -- these are simple issues of existence. We exist for the Father and we exist through Jesus. So this means that without the Lordship of Jesus, I wouldn't even have another heartbeat nor take another breath. I can't exist without Him and His all-encompassing Lordship. And without my heavenly Father, I'd have absolutely no eternally meaningful purpose to live for. I exist for what He sovereignly determines to be my purpose on this earth, and I'm to seek Him to discover it.

The thought that this leaves me with is that my life ought to revolve much more around the supreme God of all things than it does. If the truth is that I only exist through God and for God, then I have to ask how much of what I presently pursue and possess reflects that kind of God-centeredness? I want to begin examining my life with this in mind -- each choice, each purchase, each challenge -- is this why God gave me breath? Is this what I exist to spend my time at? And as I ask such foundational questions about my very existence on any given day, I hope that an ever-increasing percentage of my life will be focused on the awesome God who gave me life.

And I trust that what I do with spring break will reflect that!

© 2009 by Ken Peters

A love for desert places

In the film Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence is asked by a reporter why he loves the desert so much. Lawrence simply replied, "Because it's clean."

Having lived in a desert for a year, I understand that reply. There's a purity found in a place where the arid heat is so intense that no bacteria can thrive and where the push and pull of societal ills are as minimal as a desert's population.

But I'm not one to romanticize the desert. I had too many bad days there for that. As the real T.E. Lawrence wrote in the initial lines of his masterpiece, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, "Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars." In other words, the desert may be clean, but it has a way of humbling those who enter it (as a couple of my own writings from the desert illustrate).

But though I'm no desert romantic, I do feel an attraction to desert places. My favourite quote regarding the desert is that of Geoffrey Moorhouse from his book The Fearful Void. He set out to cross the Sahara from west to east by camel and by foot, and the following description has always struck me as both a beautiful portrait as well as an insightful observation...

"Next day dawned cold and clear, and a new world lay endlessly ahead. ...we were confronted with a passage across what looked like an eternal plain. Its dimensions were only emphasized by the presence, low on distant horizons, of isolated peaks and tabletops of rock. These made for confident navigation, for they were marked on the chart, but their greatest effect was to provide such scale to the entire panorama as to reduce two men and four camels to their proper proportions in this towering and barren universe. We were insects creeping forward to a rim of the world that might never be reached, across pure and unbounded space in which we had no hope at all of encountering anything else that lived and could offer comfort by its presence. It was appalling; but, at the same time, it was exciting, with a spellbinding quality that penetrated even the dulling of the senses that it imposed.

"For over three months I had laboured across the Sahara, and there had been few moments when I had experienced the magnetism of the desert to which so many men before me had succumbed. But now, in its utmost desolation, I began at last to understand its attraction. It was the awful scale of the thing, the suggestion of virginity, the fusion of pure elements from the heavens above and the earth beneath which were untrammeled and untouched by anything contrived by man."


© 2009 by Ken Peters

How God knows what's in my heart (church bulletin cover)

What would God do if He wanted to know what was in my heart? Stories in the Bible indicate that He'd likely test me by sending a few challenges my way. Deuteronomy 8:2 days that God led His children for 40 years in a wilderness in order to humble them, "testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not."

That doesn't always look very nice. Deuteronomy 8:3 says that God let His people hunger. In other words, these tests weren't mild experiences. Sometimes I've come down a little hard on the Israelites for their bad attitudes and harsh words toward Moses when they wanted food or water. But would I have handled it any better?

Take Numbers 20:2-10 for example. It starts by saying, "Now there was no water for the congregation." What if God used me as a leader to lead you (along with 2-3 million other people) to where the ground was parched and you couldn't find any water for your children or yourselves (not to mention the many livestock the Israelites had)? Would you take kindly to that? The Israelites "assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron" and they quarreled with them. They wished themselves dead (20:3) and called the place they'd been led to an "evil place" compared to Egypt (20:5). This wasn't because they had no ice in their iced tea, or because they had to wear mitts and toques for an extra couple weeks of winter. It looks as though it was because their situation must have felt truly desperate.

And yet Moses called them "rebels" (20:10). Rebels because they didn't believe God no matter what the circumstances. Rebels because they complained about their hardships rather than praying for help. And rebels because they thought their old captivity was better than God's way out. So now we know what was in the hearts of the children of Israel. Does that leave me any closer to knowing what's in mine?

I have to wonder how much God tests me in similar ways, and how much God actually allows challenges in my life to become truly extreme simply to see what's in my heart, and whether I'll keep His commandments or not. If we look back at Deuteronomy 8, we can see where this is all meant to lead: It was the Lord who "led you through the great and terrifying wilderness... where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna... that He might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end" (8:15-16).

What are you going through? Is it a test? May I suggest that all of life is meant to test what's in our hearts, and that amidst both the everyday challenges and the experiences of God's faithfulness, God's desire is to do us good! And the good that He does for us will include a growing humility in our hearts as we look to Him and give Him glory in all that we go through and for all that we receive from His hand.

© 2009 by Ken Peters

Pithometer / pith’-ō-mē-tər / (n) : an instrument for assessing pithy remarks. Today’s remark: “We’re human beings, not human doings!”

I’ve heard it said – and I think I’ve said it myself – that we are human beings, not human doings. That little phrase is usually mentioned when someone feels they’re experiencing a sense of drivenness in their activities and tasks. Among Christians, it’s a cry from those who feel they’ve lost their sense of rest in God – as though they’re only finding joy in what they do for Him rather than from who they are in Christ.

I have absolutely no difficulty understanding what it’s like to get caught up in the momentum of busyness as though I were mistakenly measuring my significance by what I do. As a Christian, I’ve made the futile mistake of trying to do stuff in an effort to better be in Christ. But the Bible clearly indicates that there’s a proper order for such things. We’re to be in Christ so that we can then do what He calls us to! But I’m still uneasy with addressing such struggles by saying, “We’re human beings, not human doings.”

I think that’s because, rather than setting an order to things, this pithy remark forces me to choose between two valid aspects of the Christian life. Not only that, but it complicates my choice by using terminology that makes the latter option sound ridiculous. Of course I’m not a “human doing.” But rejecting that label then suggests a rejection of, or at the very least, a minimization of the idea of doing.

Doing, though, is an essential part of the Christian life. Without doing, we can’t even call ourselves Christians! Jesus asked, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46). Jesus later said, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21). Jesus is big on believing in who He is and on knowing Him in a personal way. But He is also not afraid to demand obedience of those who say they know Him.

Other writers of the New Testament obviously felt the same. In writing to the church in Thessalonica, Paul said, “And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command” (2 Thessalonians 3:4). Notice Paul didn’t say, “…that you are being and will be...” It’s not that Paul didn’t care about them being in Christ. In the very next sentence, Paul directs his readers to the “steadfastness of Christ” because he knew that it was only by being in Jesus that they would have the strength to obey. But Paul also knew that if who they were in Christ wasn’t expressed by their actions – by doing – then who they claimed to be in Christ wouldn’t be genuine. James warns us to: “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).

So let’s dispense with the unnecessary polarization of two vital virtues that are actually meant to go together, in the right order, rather than pitted against each other. As Paul said: “So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved [start with being], put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience [continue with doing]” (Colossians 3:12).

See what I’ve previously written on being.

See what I’ve previously written on doing.

© 2009 by Ken Peters