A Short Trip to Arrogance

             Through a driving rain in the late spring of 1977, I walked, then ran, a number of blocks from the train station in center city Philadelphia. I was a disgusted and soaked 28-year-old dressed in my best suit from J.C. Penny’s. I was headed to a committee meeting to which I had been appointed by the Trustees of a college. We were to conduct a search for the college's next president . The meeting was held in the prestigious Union League – a private club for the movers and shakers of the Philadelphia area. I got to the grand entrance of the Union League with hair dripping (yes I had hair then!), and any self-confidence I might have had washed away in the storm. Entering the Union League I was feeling very much out of place surrounded by accents of marble and dark walnut wood, quiet classical music, and the scents of fresh cut flowers mixed with the smell of brass and wood polishes. I was greeted by a man in a black formal suit with long tails, who, I felt, looked at me with raised eyebrows as he asked my name. I gave my name and he checked a list. He indicated that my meeting was in such and such a dining room, but perhaps I might wish to freshen up. This I surmised was a polite way of saying to me, “You look a mess, try and clean up a bit before you go any further into the Union League.”

                He directed me to a doorway and I walked into another room and was greeted by another man in a formal suit and long tails who asked to take my drenched coat. “I’ll attend to this sir,” he said, “the facilities are this way.” He handed me a white fluffy towel as I entered a room with more marble, walnut wood, and banks of mirrors. I dried my hair, sopped up the shirt, and tried to dry my paints. As I left the room the man finished blow drying my coat and asked if I would like some fragrances. I turned around and looked at a table filled with deodorants, colognes, and aftershaves – reminding me of a men's cosmetic counter in an upscale department store. After a few quirts of fragrances, I headed down the long hallway lighted by numerous chandeliers.

                The room was filled with a very long walnut table surrounded by crimson upholstered armed chairs filled with white haired men talking and laughing with one another. I was one of the last to enter the meeting room. The remaining seat at the table was beside the candidate being interviewed – an internationally recognized author, educator, and speaker. Sheepishly I sat down hoping my damp pants would not leave a mark on the upholstered chair. A pair of arms appeared around me and a white linen napkin was being placed in my lap by a man in a black suit and long tails. From the other side a man of similar dress opened a menu before me and asked me my beverage selection. “Water is fine,” I replied, as I tried to inconspicuously hide behind the rather large leather menu. Lovely menu, but no prices! A knot in my stomach suddenly developed. I recall thinking, “What’s the cheapest thing on this menu?”

                As the evening went on I began to enjoy the attention of those who were serving me at the table. Subtly I began to think how great I was. Here I was dining at the Union League. I had been chosen to be among the group of esteemed men to select the next president of the college that I had just graduated from six years earlier. I was sitting beside and talking with an internationally respected and well known speaker and author. Additionally I was being waited on literally hand and foot. 

                I really began to bask in being served like this. "Sir," I said to our server with an air of importance, "May I have some more water before our meeting begins?" I comfortably settled back in my upholstered chair and waited for the meeting to begin. It did not take long for a soggy out of place young man to begin to think more highly of himself than he ought to, did it? The trip to arrogance is a short one indeed.

Turning Over a New Leaf

Each year millions of people in the USA make New Year’s resolutions. In fact they are so popular that U.S. government's official web portal, USA.gov, has decided to get involved – surprise, surprise. They are giving advice on ten resolutions that are supposedly popular every year. They posted, “Here’s information that can help you achieve your goals in 2015.” The ten goals they selected were: lose weight; volunteer to help others; quit smoking; get a better education; get a better job; save money; get fit; eat healthy food; manage stress; manage debt; take a trip; reduce, reuse, and recycle; and drink less alcohol. It is rather hard for me to take advice from an agency that struggles and fails on a regular basis to achieve their stated goals and campaign promises. Perhaps it is easier to give advice to others rather than maintain discipline in areas that are our own personal responsibility.

     According to the University of Scranton and the Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45% of Americans usually make New Year’s resolutions, 17% do so infrequently, and 38% absolutely never make them. Perhaps the fact that only 8% of those who make resolutions actually succeed in achieving them puts a wet blanket on the idea of a New Year’s resolution. However, there is an upside to making a resolution. According to the same study, “People who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions.” That doesn’t make sense to me. If I do not make a resolution in the first place, how would I even know whether or not I did or did not achieve a goal!   

     I have turned over so many “new leaves” at this time of the year that I could probably “foliate” a good size forest. The problem as I see it is that instead of turning over new leaves on the same old tree or plant, I would have a better chance of making significant and lasting change if I were a new species altogether! I guess you could say new leaves on a poison ivy vine are still going to produce the plant’s oil to which many are allergic and cause an itchy rash. To use a totally different analogy, putting a pretty ribbon on a pig still leaves one with a pig and does not produce a pretty little girl!

     Yet, we expend lots of effort and invest large sums of money hoping that somehow we can act differently without becoming a different individual. The Bible addresses this with a question in Jeremiah 13:23, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” The gist of the prophet’s words is in essence unless our nature is changed it is unlikely we will be changed. Change that is lasting comes from the inside out not the outside in.

     Does this mean we are hopelessly doomed to a life of failure being bound by the nature with which we have been born? No. In fact another prophet, Ezekiel, talks about how real and lasting change can come about through God’s intervention. Speaking to a nation on a path to destruction because of their rebellion against God’s laws, he issues a statement of hope indicating that God can change them. He reveals that this involves a process whereby the very nature of the nation’s sinful rebellion is changed by God working in its heart – from the inside out. Ezekiel put it this way, “I (God) will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:25-27). In order for people to make lasting change they need more than resolutions. They need a life transformation where they can now see and live life differently. This is the way God works – from the inside out.

     A New Testament writer, Paul, was a person whom God had transformed. He testified before King Agrippa in Acts 26:1-23 of the change of nature that occurred in him. Earlier in a letter he wrote to a church explaining that this process involved more than a resolution; it involved a transformation. He wrote, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Jesus also spoke of the need for transformation to a religious leader, Nicodemus, saying he needed a new nature and thus had to be “born again,” or “born from above” (John 3:3,6,7). Too often we conclude that outward adjustments will generate permanent change. At best it is like a “coat of paint” being applied to a wooden board; it lasts for a while but will need touched up in the future. What is needed is a different kind of siding that eliminates the need for paint and future touch ups.

     Perhaps you have decided to turn over a new leaf in the coming year. I do not want to discourage you from that resolution. In fact, the scale in my bathroom indicates that a change needs to be made by me before I can no longer look down and see the scale! I simply want to encourage you to consider a change that will be more than an external, temporary adjustment to life. Consider a change that will have even larger benefits and eternal consequences. Those are changes that God can make in you if you allow Him to work in your life. Remember, we need transformation more than resolutions.     

The Impossible Becoming Possible

On a recent fall vacation with my daughter and her family, we were reminiscing about how much our grandchildren had grown and changed. In the course of the conversation, we recalled when our granddaughter, Meg, was about three. A babysitter asked my daughter if Meg’s vision had ever been checked. Regular physicals by the pediatrician had not noted any vision problems so my daughter assumed Meg’s eyesight was OK. However, the babysitter noticed Meg put her head close to books when they were reading. My daughter had also noticed that occasionally Meg would bump into things or trip and fall. To put our daughter’s mind at ease, Meg was taken to an optometrist for an eye exam. The report was startling. The doctor discovered that Meg was almost legally blind. Evidently since birth she had been compensating for her poor vision with her other senses. A prescription for glasses, that seemed to be as thick as the bottom of soda bottles, vastly improved her limited vision. She had a vision of life as she saw it without realizing it was a distorted view. Now she proudly wears a stylish pair of glasses and enjoys seeing things that she previously had never clearly seen.

     As our conversation continued it became apparent Meg was uneasy about us talking about her former vision problem. She shyly and quietly said, “I didn’t know that I didn’t see.” Assuring her that we were not making fun of her, we told her she had nothing of which to be ashamed. We were sorry her vision problem had not been noticed earlier and corrected.

     That event prodded me to think about my spiritual vision. Do I have distorted spiritual perspectives and am I unaware of my situation? Perhaps I am so used to having a spiritually distorted vision that I assume that the distortions are reality. It is only when one’s spiritual vision is corrected that one realizes how inept perspectives have been. There have been times I thought I knew how God operates only to discover that “His ways are not our ways” (Isaiah 55:8-9). I may be so convinced that God must work according to certain human procedures and constraints that I do not see how God might work in a situation I have deemed impossible.

     When I read the Christmas story in Luke, I see how a person’s spiritual vision may be distorted. Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would have a baby (1:31-33). Her response was, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (1:34). Distorted spiritual vision caused her to look at the news she received and conclude, “That’s impossible!” Focusing upon her current condition would not allow her to accept the announcement she heard. The vision she had only allowed her to see life through natural processes not by supernatural intervention.   

     God graciously corrected her vision by giving her the “lens” of divine revelation. God revealed Himself as one who could intervene in life, control processes, and produce His desired results (1:35-36). The angel assured her, “For nothing is impossible with God” (1:37). In that instant God was saying, “You need to see life differently than you have ever seen it before.”

     What did she do with this new vision? She accepted life as God saw it, not as she saw it. This allowed her to submit her life to God as a willing servant. No longer did she see things as unimaginable or as impossible. She now saw life through the unlimited perspective of a God who could do all things in any way He saw fit. Such a vision eliminates the barriers of conventional wisdom, expands the dimensions of probabilities, and explodes the myth that God does not intervene in His world. With her expanded and corrected vision, is it any wonder her perplexity was turned to praise (1:46-55)! Joseph, who was pledged to Mary, needed his vision adjusted too. He received a revelation that God was working in an unimaginable way in his betrothed so that a Savior could be born “to save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:20-21). God was providing for humanity’s greatest need in a way that people would conclude was impossible. Joseph, however, was now seeing life in a new way. Thus he also obediently submitted his life to fulfill God unimaginable plan (1:24-25).  

     Certainly in all of our lives there are times we think a situation in life is impossible. Personally our financial situation may look bleak. Perhaps we have received a disturbing medical prognosis that shrouds us in anxiety. Maybe a relationship is in crisis and it appears like things are hopeless. Nationally and internationally the news may be depressing and the hope for peace and security seems elusive. In all likelihood you could suggest many other scenarios that one might label “impossible.” Perhaps these occasions require that our vision be adjusted so that we look at life beyond the natural and consider God may have a supernatural plan in mind.

     In these moments we need to recall the message given to Mary that cleared her distorted vision, “Nothing is impossible with God.” The message of Christmas is that God intervenes in His way, in His time, and in unimaginable and impossible ways. God is not limited by the conventional, the practical, the normal, or the way things are traditionally done. He steps into a messy world marred by sin and provides deliverance according to His sovereignly designed plan. Our response must be like Mary and Joseph. Once their vision was adjusted to see their situation the way God did they yielded to His plan for their lives. Faith in what God can do allows us to see the impossible as possible.    

Leadership Characteristics of the Past Needed for Present Challenges

Recently PBS aired the series “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History” which chronicled the lives of three significant political influencers of the early 20th century, Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Response to Ken Burns' series was impressive. For PBS it was their largest viewing audience for the past several decades following the popular series "The Civil War" and "Lewis & Clark." According to the Nielsen rating each two-hour segment had an average of 9.2 million viewers and an impressive 11.7 million on the first night. Why such a popular series? I wonder if at least a portion of the success was related to a longing for a time where America’s national leaders reflected a different character and spirit than what is portrayed by current leadership. Joseph Palermo concludes that placing the Roosevelts beside the current political scene reveals, “The utter failure of our current ‘leaders’ is glaring by comparison.”
     The Roosevelt dynasty was by no means perfect. They made plenty of mistakes, failed in numerous endeavors, and had many detractors. Yet, many people in our current population long for leadership like the Roosevelts, one that is not ruled by political handlers and correctness, and bereft of courage to assume personal responsibility for decisions and actions taken. Courageous, compassionate, collaborative, and well-conceived decisions seem to be something we perceive in leadership of the misty past, not something we observe in the chaotic present. Many in our country perceive there is a leadership paralysis that is causing the nation to flounder in its responses to the worldwide challenges that seem to surface daily. Could the popularity to the Roosevelt series reflect a desire for a new norm in our political leadership that would be more reflective of a distant past rather than the disastrous responses of the current status quo? 
     One of the Roosevelts that impressed me was Theodore. He was a complex character wrapped in a cloak of both macho activism and pensive spiritual reflection. He was the man who would lead a military charge involving hand to hand combat and in the next moment send men into military action challenging them with a spiritual insight. This was illustrated in 1917, as American troops prepared to leave for the battlefields of France and Belgium in the First World War. Former President Theodore Roosevelt was asked by the New York Bible Society to write a message that would be inscribed in the pocket New Testaments that each of the soldiers would be given. He called his comments the “Micah Mandate” based upon Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” 
     He concluded his inscription with these words, “Remember: the most perfect machinery of government will not keep us as a nation from destruction if there is not within us a soul. No abounding of material prosperity shall avail us if our spiritual senses atrophy. The foes of our own household will surely prevail against us unless there be in our people an inner life which finds its outward expression in a morality like unto that preached by the seers and prophets of God when the grandeur that was Greece and the glory that was Rome still lay in the future.” George Grant concluded Theodore Roosevelt’s words, “called for a three-fold demonstration of moral and practical balance: a stringent commitment to justice, a tangible concern for mercy, and a reverent humility before the Almighty.” 
     Some might argue that our current political environment and cultural perspectives would not allow for such statements. As an objection they would raise the politically correct interpretation of the “establishment of religion” clause of the Constitution to prohibit any such biblical language. Perhaps, however, what the people of our nation want is a leader like a Theodore Roosevelt, whose courageous character is concerned more that there is a soul in our nation than that the words he speaks are cloaked in political correctness. Political leadership in our day seems to carefully wordsmith speeches and statements to make them politically correct and in the process make them devoid of moral impact. 
     We have just elected political leaders for a term of service. Let’s now pray for them as commanded in Scripture (see 1 Timothy 2:1-2). There are numerous things for which we might pray like wisdom, integrity, humility, a heart for justice, etc. Perhaps we could also pray that they might be like former President Theodore Roosevelt and have a concern for the soul of the nation. Pray we have a nation of leaders filled with courage, compassion, and conviction. Such leaders are needed for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Seasons of Life

This is “fair season.” I usually make the rounds of the local fairs ostensibly to look at the varied displays of livestock, agricultural related items, homemade crafts, various culinary entries, and art works. I also like to see people I have not seen for a while. Fairs strike me as having something like a reunion atmosphere to them. My wife believes my attendance at fairs is really connected to the various food stands. She suggests I eat my way through the fairs. I confess I usually skip dinner on the day we visit the fair, unless I decide to eat something healthy to offset the unhealthy choices I make. There is something about the smell of fried food wafting in the fall breezes that completely nullifies my dietary common sense. I am waiting for some creative genius to deep-fry an Oreo stuffed Twinkie and serve it in a bowl smothered with hot fudge, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry. My cholesterol count just went up as that picture formed in my mind!

            Fair time always reminds me that the season will soon be changing. In my opinion, the best weather for a fair is a sunny day, but not too warm so that you are comfortable wearing a light jacket. I have one light jacket with over-sized pockets that I like to wear to the fairs. The pockets are especially handy for collecting the free giveaways from the display tables. I get enough pens and note pads at the fair to carry me over to the next year’s fair season. The candy at the tables never gets to the pockets. Either my grandchildren kidnap the confectioneries I pick up, or the sweet treats act as an appetizer until I get away from the display tables and over to the “fair-food” stands!

            The cool ting of the air at the fair is for me a pleasant harbinger of things to come. I prefer the cold of winter over the heat of summer. My body’s thermostat is the exact opposite of my wife’s. Therefore, soon we will be having a tug-of-war over the thermostat governing our home’s heating system. She looks at 68 degrees as a starting point when heating the house. I consider 68 degrees the setting for the furnace to shut down providing the perfect temperature to sit around in a tee-shirt and shorts. She needs a quilt to generate heat in the house. I have my own padding that I carry with me all the time and it is somehow connected to the consumption of “fair food!”

            The Bible talks about the seasons. One reference to seasons deals with temperature and the changes of seed-time and harvest (Genesis 8:22).  Scripture also address other seasons through which our lives pass (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). In the 1960’s the rock group the Byrds released the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” The lyrics were almost verbatim from this passage in Ecclesiastes. In fact, the author Peter Seeger donated 45% of his royalties to a humanitarian cause realizing he only contributed 6 words and the music to the biblical words! The song became an international hit in 1965 as it captured the way the 60’s generation viewed life – a cyclical unending process.

            Since life passes through many seasons, it would be wise for us to ask, "What is the God-given purpose in this season of life?" Too often we live unevaluated lives. We just sort of meander from one day to the next without answering the essential questions of life: Where did I come from? Why am I here? And where am I going?  Seasons will come and they will go. The issue to reflect upon is, “Why am I here right now? What is my purpose?”  The Bible speaks to this issue. Life is to be lived with meaning which ultimately glorifies God. If life is not lived from that divine perspective we might conclude like Solomon, who wrote the words of Ecclesiastes, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping after wind” (1:14). He concluded if all we have to gauge life by is what happens on earth i.e. “under the sun” – then life’s seasons don’t have much purpose. However, seeing life from “above the sun” – i.e. God’s perspective – gives meaning to life’s seasons here on earth “under the sun.”

            Some people feel that their goal in life is simply to make a point, share their perspective and have people buy into their opinion and agenda. Andy Stanley presents another alternate and says we are here not to make a point but to make a difference. I would add to his insight, “a positive difference." All attitudes and actions make some kind of difference – some more impactful than others.  We want to do more than make a difference. After all, Adolph Hitler made a difference – a destructive one. The difference he made was related to hatred, egomania, oppression, and a host of other influences. To make a positive difference we need to be under a positive influence. I would suggest we only make a positive difference when we come under the positive influence of Our Creator.  His influence enables us to fulfill God's purposes for us and His plan for our lives. This purpose and plan for our life is revealed in the Bible.

            On one occasion Jesus was asked by a religious leader, “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?” We might say he wanted to know what Jesus thought was the most important thing to focus on in the seasons of life. Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-39). Here Jesus connects one’s life to relating properly to God above and people below. When we are in right relationship to God and are seeking to please and honor Him, it will enable us to be able to fulfill God’s plan and purposes on earth as we relate to others. This combination allows a person to make a positive difference. Such attitudes and actions are good in every season of life.

            It is still fair season. Let me see… which fair do we attend next week? So many fairs, so little time!