Category: God’s world

You haven’t seen me much on Facebook, have you? I lurk there a bit to see what I ought to know people are doing, but I won’t show you my lunch or make you jealous with pictures of my vacation. Still, I have my show-and-tells, and sometimes  a story has to be shared …

My staycation last week yielded a wonderful artefact of purposeful image-bearing in the shape and form of my authentic Westboro, barn wood and plumbing-flange shelves. (Special thanks to Dick and Viv Angelo for the raw material!) I don’t think I’m boasting here, except on God, but there’s some inventiveness going on here. Barn wood comes in the shape(s) it comes off the barn in. So, the only standard dimensions are unique ones. Plumbing flanges and nipples make the perfect mount, because they can be mixed and switched out individually to fit irregular lengths and depths.

Here’s where things spin off into theology. All this is like what God does. In the work of redemption, God takes all our irregular dimensions, and He adapts us, fits us, and repurposes us for His uses.

Reclaiming us is His Thing!

But, there’s more. Genesis 1.27-28 describes humankind’s creation in God’s image. Then, we’re told that God’s blessing carried the mandate to “be fruitful … multiply … fill the earth … subdue [the earth] … and have dominion …” Significantly, that’s basically what God had just done in the work of creation. So, our first purpose is to imitate God in His creative work. Imitating God in creation and doing good work in Christ is much of what we’re reclaimed by God to do.

Bearing God’s image in creation in imitation of God is our Thing!

Seg back to my shelves. There’s satisfaction here, because such inventiveness (the Latin root means “to discover”) involves careful planning, repurposing, adapting for new and good work, and filling (my house, in this case) with purposeful, creative design.

A woodworking craftsman could have built better shelves. But, anybody, working by faith in Christ, can connect his thing to God’s thing. And, there’s enormous satisfaction in that. It’s worth a staycation even.

How about you? What purposeful work are you doing this summer, or planning to do this fall? How does this work reflect our first purpose of bearing God’s image? How does it reflect God’s further work of reclaiming us in Christ?

Why not hit the comment link and share your thoughts for the good of everybody?

Have a great weekend. And find joy in doing His thing!

Youth baseball has ended in the Northwoods, at least for now. But before we pack the gloves and balls away in the sports tub for the year, I have a thought, and it has something to do with the pleasant month of August.

There’s a saying in baseball (at least they used in say it to me) that when you’re batting you’re supposed to “Watch the ball come in, slow.” So, you anticipate the pitch, and see it (laces and spin and all) as though it were in slow motion. It doesn’t make a world of sense, really. The ball moves just as fast as if you’re not really “seeing it,” but, somehow, getting your mind around the spinning pitch this way can turn a batter into a hitter.

August is a month of goodness. Still, it spins toward us just as fast as any other month—and maybe a little faster, what with everybody breathlessly trying to slip in an eleventh-hour vacation, while getting nervous already and trying not to think about everything rushing toward us in the fall. But, it’s a month with an opportunity.

It’s an opportunity to consider our God, the Father of all goodness. And, to “Watch it, slow” … 

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 

They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light (Psalm 36.7-9, ESV).

Do we believe, in this month of goodness, that God is really the source of all goodness? If we do, and press ourselves to see the month of August in this light, I bet we’ll each take some time to ponder a bit—to sit in that lawn chair for an extra ten minutes, to putter in the garden an extra hour, and consciously give praise and thanks to our God of goodness.

We’ll take the time to “Watch it, slow”.

It’s quiet in the chicken house, for once. And that seems strange, because each morning for the better part of a year I’ve started my morning with Pepper, the Barred Rock rooster.

Pepper was an accident, as people sometimes say. A year ago when we picked up our box of peeps at the post office, we’d hoped for all “layers”. But something was different about Pepper. As spring turned to summer and our chicks grew, Pepper found (her?)self often rejected by the other girls and would wander off alone. When Pepper didn’t lay an egg and finally threw back his head and crowed like a lonely adolescent boy, we knew we had a rooster.

Pepper had his moments. In the fall when Grandma Katie’s Yorkie dog, Penny, escaped to pursue Sabel, everybody’s favorite Red Star hen, Pepper gave chase. It was a good picture—Sabel out front, Penny close behind, Pepper in hot pursuit of the dog, and eight-year-old Henry, coming up behind with Coco, the Toy Australian Shepherd on a leash. A lap around the house, through the garden and the woodpiles and Penny caught Sabel, but couldn’t execute the kill before Pepper was there to rescue.

Pepper won points that day, but there was another day. It was the day early this spring when Pepper got proud. He lost sight of who he was, a lowly chicken, after all. His day and night (by now) crowing came to mean, we understood, that he believed he could chase anybody he chose. As Pepper grew proud he began to jump on the hands, and bodies, of those who fed him. Jack and Henry grew afraid to approach the chicken house. Amanda slipped and fell once while fending him off. Then, Pepper came after me. Carrying a load of wood, I caught sight of him coming, lost my balance while spinning to address him, and then, under the weight of the crashing wood, landed in a bed of snow and mud. I fought him off with a six-inch stump of wood that had been broken in two as I’d swung it at the dandered-up rooster. I knew right then we’d reached the point of judgment.

After that—while Pepper crowed, staking his claim to the chicken house, the yard, and everything and everybody else—he was being discussed. We’d sit at the dinner table talking about Pepper. He might have even come up in our family prayers. He appeared in to-do lists: “deal with Pepper”. The universe, and Pepper’s responsibility in it, turned out to be a lot bigger than Pepper ever accounted for.

Then, two Saturdays ago, I took Pepper to a neighbor’s farm and, well—as farmers say—”moved Pepper on”.

There’s a moral lesson in all this. In Matthew 12.36-37, Jesus says, I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned (ESV).

Those are striking words. They mean that there’s coming a day when each of us will have a conversation with God about His evaluation of our lives. In the context of Matthew 12, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day had just stamped their judgment on Jesus: “Jesus isn’t from God, not worth listening to … from Satan, even.” This they crowed out in their own little chicken house while God the Father waited at the family dinner table, taking notice.

And so it is for us. God’s evaluation of our lives will be solely about how we’ve responded to Jesus. Did we ignore Him or abuse Him, starting in our actions, moving to our casual speech, extending to our thoughts even? Romans 2.16, speaking of those who don’t even have God’s law in the Bible, indicates the scope of God’s evaluation of our lives: … their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them, on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

Every bit of our lives (actions, words, thoughts) will be used as evidence of what we’ve made of Jesus. Sobering, isn’t it? … But even that isn’t the point.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8.1)

That’s the point, and the Goods News! What redemption there isn’t for a rooster gone bad, there is for us. My actions, words and thoughts will be taken into account, but they’ll be covered by Christ’s work. And that I receive by faith. That’s the Gospel!

So, while the kids enjoy the chicken house now turned hen house, and while I wake up under my own power and listen to the morning quiet, these moments of  tranquility become their own pictures of my peace in Christ.

And that is truly a thought to wake up to!

White out!

And, just like that, the preparation of a week is buried in what, by tonight, will be several feet of Northwoods April snow.

This is a first for me. I’d thought, if ever church were snowed out, that I might be relieved to rest, to have a spare message in the hip pocket. But, I’m not. I’m disappointed! Sunday morning is the high point of the week. And, this week, we hoped to follow the momentum of last week’s baptism. This week we were looking forward to hearing Liz and Paul Bowman, here from Spain. This week, Tim and the worship team were ready; the slides were all done. Both Bryn and Lauren’s moms were here from Iowa to celebrate Lauren’s baby shower, rescheduled for the second time … White out!

But then, this morning as I was skiing the two miles down the Pine Line to check in at the building to intercept any who didn’t get the cancellation message, a line from the morning’s message crossed my mind: Look carefully then how you walk … making the best use of the time … (ESV). Or, as a looser translation might say, “taking advantage of every opportunity.”

Now, here is an opportunity, this April white out. I thought of how, just an hour before, Amanda and I had (maybe for the first time ever in our married lives) made coffee, sat in bed on a Sunday morning and talked about what God has for us in the next season of our lives. Been looking for a chance to have that conversation, haven’t we, Dearie?  I thought of other married couples at Woodland who might have benefited from the same break in the routine.

Then we arrived. (Katja and Henry came up behind on snow shoes). We weren’t alone. A couple elders and a few others joined us. We made a circle, right where all the singing and sharing and teaching would have been, and we, well, made the most of the opportunity. We let our minds run over how God is the one doing the work at Woodland. While we pressed ourselves to prepare our parts for a service that was not to happen, God spent the week preparing a snow storm, so we’d have opportunity to “take advantage of the opportunity,” to pray for our Woodland church family, to have those over-due conversations, to rest even.

God is about 10,000 things at Woodland, isn’t He? We’ll take advantage of every opportunity, but let Him do the work.

And then, this coming week, we’ll go right down into the crisis of the week (there’s always one, you know), and we’ll trust Him to draw us together on Sunday, once again and as next week’s very own work of grace.

Karen said it, said it to Amanda, who brought word back to me: “In the Northwoods, spring comes, but you have to look for it around the edges.”

Poetic, we thought, so poetic we had to pause and think about what it means. When much of the country has been in flip-flops for weeks now, we burn our woodpiles in single-digit nights and wait for the sap to thaw; so we can make our syrup, of course.

But, spring comes. What had only to be believed before can now be seen. Living things warm with the life within. Snow recedes from trunks of trees. Drips of sap tremble at the tips of the taps, and then drop—perhaps once each minute—into waiting buckets. Groves of pines now reveal their harvest of needles, dropped in a former season. The life, always there to be believed, grows to be seen.

Psalm 27 contains a favorite refrain of mine: I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living (:13, ESV)

“The land of the living.” That’s where God lives. And, the psalmist (take a look at earlier verses) had to believe that despite “evildoers” and “adversaries” God’s goodness was there, and he, the psalmist, would one day live in God’s land.

That’s a comfort, in all of life. While our lives slip from us, God’s goodness, always there, always to be believed, grows to be seen.

Where do you see God’s goodness? If you’re with us in the Northwoods, let our spring that thaws its way in from “around the edges” remind you of God’s goodness: Wait for the LORD; be strong, let your hearts take courage; wait for the LORD! (:14).

So, believe what you see, around the edges. And have a good week …

Real life conversation between two Westboro eight-year-olds—overheard by parents at older brother, Jack’s, baseball game, some weeks ago:

Dean: You’re kind of small for your age. How old are you, anyway?

Henry: Eight

Dean: Eight! You could be seven, or six … or five, even …

Henry: Uh-huh …

Dean: You need to get some veggies in that belly, like Swiss chard, or something. If you do that, you’ll grow—like—eighteen inches before I see you next. 

Not everyone can live in a place of obvious goodness, where Swiss chard comes up among eight-year-olds in ordinary playground talk. But, this year, we do live in such a place.

Goodness is abundant this time of year in the Northwoods. And, while our farms aren’t as big as our neighbors’ in the southern part of the state, ripeness too visits our fields, forests and gardens. For us, in the moment, this means the time of berry picking—strawberries, blueberries, raspberries—is just about past. Vegetable produce rolls in daily, enough to share, for sure. Apples await. Like the birds who by-pass our feeders for want of need, because of the abundance of food in the wild, we too look at our tables and say, “Wow … that all came from the garden. Praise God for this!”

That last thought reminds me of Jeremiah’s word from God, spoken over Israel in light of His judgement, but in anticipation of future salvation:

They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the LORD, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall be like a watered garden, and they shall languish no more (31.12, ESV).

Those who rest in Christ know this abundance today, in essence. All who know peace with God through Christ will join Israel in fullness at Christ’s return.

Till that day, we say, Praise God for this! And, we harvest from the fields and forests and gardens, and receive all this as a picture of God’s present and future … Goodness.