Everything Will Return

Last Friday was November 1^st. For many people, that’s the day you take down the Halloween decorations and turn on the Christmas music. Some others know November 1^st as All Saints Day: a day on the Church calendar when we remember and celebrate the saints who have lived and died before us. (And when I say “saints,” I don’t just mean those with an St. before their names, but anyone who’s lived with Jesus as their Lord.)

All Saints is a chance to learn from the wisdom and examples of those believers of the past, but it’s also a chance to celebrate God’s promises for the future. One of the scripture readings for All Saints Day this year was from Revelation 21, one of my favorite passages in the Bible, when, after the dead are raised back to life in chapter 20, John glimpses a “a new heaven and a new earth” (21:1). And he hears a voice that says

See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. (21:3-4)

That’s the promise we hold on to whenever we lose a “saint” we love: one day, the dead will live again, and God will come to live with us, forever. No more death. No more tears. No more hurt.

And that future, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, includes new, eternal bodies (15:35-56). Just like the resurrected Jesus walked out of his tomb, ate broiled fish, and held out his hands to disbelieving disciples, we can expect resurrected bodies for that eternity with God and each other. After all, when with the saints in glory we at last see Jesus’s face, how could we sing with “joy through the ages” of his love for us, without lips, tongues, vocal chords, or lungs?

I recently came across a passage from the Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov that, I think, beautifully captures that All Saints hope. It’s from a letter to his mother, as she grieved the loss of Nabokov’s father:

Three years have gone–and every trifle relating to father is still as alive as ever inside me. I am so certain, my love, that we will see him again, in an unexpected but completely natural heaven, in a realm where all is radiance and delight. He will come towards us… slightly raising his shoulders as he used to do, and we will kiss the birthmark on his hand without surprise. You must live in expectation of that tender hour, my love, and never give in to the temptation of despair. Everything will return.

Everything will return—birthmarks, the way he raised his shoulders, everything.

When Christ comes again and God’s saints climb out of their graves, they’ll know each other. They’ll recognize that face, those hands, that gait. They'll know those bodies. 

For every saint, for everyone who lives with Jesus as their Lord, everything will return.

That’s the promise I’m celebrating and resting in this week.

That One More Thing

Bowing before her idols on a recent trip.
(I have no idea what she's doing here.)

My child has a fever. And the only prescription is more stuffed animals.

“Soft buddies,” she calls them. There are piles of them. Mounds. Hills. So. Many. Soft buddies. And she wants more. Every time we leave the house, she’s hoping to go shop for soft buddies. Even if we don’t leave the house, she’s pleading. Emily recently created a little monster for her out of googly eyes and a pompom. Since then, this child will hand Emily random items—a dime, a tea bag, a large stick—and ask Momma to “make me a soft buddy.” She’s only 3 ½, I know. But she’s also very, very sick.

The other day, in the car, we were discussing this. (Translation: she was asking for more soft buddies.) I said, “You know what the last thing you need is? Another soft buddy. You can’t even count how many soft buddies you have.” To which she responded, “No, I want that one more thing!”

Kids will say the quiet part out loud. They’ll say things that grown-ups feel but would never utter, because we know how whiny, greedy, sulky, or selfish it would sound. Things like, “No, I want that one more thing!”

Jesus says something in Luke that struck me the first time I noticed it, 15 or 20 years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. A man asked Christ to “tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” (12:13) Jesus’s response? “And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (12:15)

Life isn’t about how much stuff you have.

I haven’t quoted that to my daughter. (Did I mention she’s 3 ½?) But I’ll gladly quote it to myself and to you: “Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.” (NLT)

Jesus knew how much importance we will place on possessions. He knew that we’ll buy one thing and immediately start dreaming of the next one. He knew that we’ll get lost in thinking about shiny new purchases and stress over how to acquire them. He knew that we’ll make birthday lists and Christmas lists and year-round wish lists. He knew that we’ll wrack up credit card debt to keep buying and pay for storage units to keep hoarding. He knew.

That’s why he warned us not to store up treasures here on earth, because your heart follows your treasure (Matt 6:19-21).

That’s why he said beware of greed, be on your guard, life isn’t measured by how much you own, the abundance of possessions.

Because he knew that we always want that one more thing.

Before you make that next purchase, you might want to ask yourself:

• Do I need this?
• Do I even really want this, or am I just buying to scratch an itch?
• Is there a wiser way I could put this money to use?
• Might God be giving me an opportunity here to practice being content? (see 1 Tim 6:6-9)

You can listen right here:

Your Sins Are Forgiven and Forgotten

“Forgive and forget.” That’s a standard line in our culture’s morality. (It’s a standard line. I don’t know about a standard practice.)

The Bible talks an awful lot about forgiving others. You should forgive someone who sins against you 77 times (Matt 18:21-22)—in other words, stop trying to keep count! “If you do not forgive others their sins,” Jesus warns, “your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matt 6:15) We should “bear with each other and forgive one another,” Colossians says. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (3:13)

As far as I know, though, the Bible never talks about ‘forgiving and forgetting’. You could take Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13 that way: love “keeps no record of wrongs.” (13:5) To me, those words rule out resentment and grudges, but they don’t advise amnesia. You ought to remember someone’s character and let that guide how to relate to them wisely going forward, but you shouldn’t rehearse a record of wrongs and keep fanning those flames of anger.

The Bible never says you have to forgive and forget.

But the Bible does tell us that God does. The Lord is a God who forgives and forgets.

A lot of folks think of Old Testament as the part of scripture filled with harsh words of judgment, while the New Testament is all mercy, grace, and love. There are reasons people have that impression, but it’s actually the Old Testament where you see this promise most clearly.

The Old Testament already strains our sense of distance when it says that “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” (Ps 103:12) But then, it goes a step further, when the Lord promises: “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jer 31:34)

I will remember your sins no more.

Not only are our sins incomprehensibly far gone, but God forgot all about them. The Lord doesn’t see you as a disappointing daughter who’s always falling short or an infuriatingly sin-sick son. God has chosen not to remember any of that. Forgive. Forget.

I think that’s why Paul, faced with his own imperfections, could talk about “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” (Phil 3:13) There is no reason for you to dwell on your mistakes. God doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong: you might still need to take action to make things right with someone or in some situation, but you don’t need to swim in guilt and shame over who you’ve been. We all need a realistic self-awareness: you should know your weaknesses and your limits. But that ought to inform your journey of faith, not take you on a guilt trip. Forget what is behind, just like your Father remembers your sins no more. Like Maria Goff says over and over in her book, Love Lives Here: Jesus is more interested in who you’re becoming than in who you were.

So, do we need to forgive and forget with each other? Sort of. Not quite.

Will God forgive and forget with us? Every single time.

Listen to the devotional here:

Seen by Jesus

For the last few months, I’ve been leading a Wednesday night Bible study on Forgotten Women of the Bible. We’ve talked about Leah, Michal, Jehosheba, and more. There are a few women who, I don’t think I could lead an hour-long discussion about them, but I still wanted a chance to share their stories. I don’t want them to be forgotten. And so, today, I want to tell you about one of those ladies.

Hers is one of the more familiar stories out of the bunch. (We know our Gospels a lot better than we know our Old Testament!)

We meet her in Luke chapter 7. Jesus is having dinner with a Pharisee named Simon, when an unexpected visitor joins them:

And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. (7:37-38)

Simon is scandalized by what he sees, and he thinks to himself, ‘Well, if Jesus here were really a prophet, then he’d know what kind of woman this is touching him—this sinner.’ (7:39)

But he did know. Simon thought that this woman’s distance from God would repulse Jesus, but her distance from God was precisely why Jesus wanted to be with her. His mission was to seek and save the lost, not wash his hands of them and cut them loose.

Besides: to Jesus—unlike Simon—this woman wasn’t defined by her sins. She was defined by her great love. To Simon, it’s very simple: “she is a sinner.” (7:39) But Jesus isn’t content with that. He asks Simon, “Do you see this woman?” (7:44) Do you really see her? Do you see what she’s done for me? Some people may only see your past, your mistakes, your collection of scarlet letters, but Jesus sees your heart, who you’re trying to be, who you can be someday. Simon sees a woman who has sinned. Jesus sees a woman who has been forgiven much and loves much (7:47).

This nameless woman’s story reveals how Jesus looks at you and me, whenever we come to him ashamed and in the wrong—whether it’s from that one nagging vice that, try as you might, you just can’t kick, or it’s from a lifetime of self-centeredness and self-indulgence. He looks at you the way the prodigal’s father looked at him: longing for his child to be close, to be home again. To him, you’ve always been so much more than a sinner.

The late Dallas Willard described the scene in Luke 7 like this: “She had seen a goodness in him that could only be God, and it broke her heart with gratitude and love.” That’s why she shamelessly adored him with her ugly crying, messy hair, and pricy ointment. May we all find a way, today, to show Christ our gratitude and love.

You can listen right here!

Sweat the Small Stuff

There’s a great quote from St. Augustine, an influential Christian bishop from the 300s-400s, that says,

Do not shrug daily sins aside because they are small; fear them, rather, because they are many… How tiny are grains of sand! Put too much sand into a boat, it sinks. How tiny are drops of rain! They fill rivers and wash away houses, don't they? So don't just shrug these sins aside.

When I look at this or that “small” sin, it may not seem too alarming. Okay, so I voiced that criticism that I should have kept to myself. I ignored that phone call that I should have taken. (I’m sure I’ll call them back!) I fueled my resentment by reading that news article, even though I knew it would only make me mad. It happens. God will forgive me. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that my day is filled with those small sins. How long before all of those rain drops swell into a flood that does serious, lasting damage?

When I saw that quotation, it reminded me of some other words, from Catherine Sanderson, a writer and professor of psychology: “You gotta sweat the small stuff.” Sanderson’s point was that tiny, seemingly insignificant decisions and acts lead you somewhere. They set a trajectory that, once you get a little farther along, may not seem so tiny or insignificant. That affair began with an “innocent” conversation at work. That rift in the friendship began with the choice to bring last week’s argument back up. If you want to avoid trouble and hurt down the road, you’ve gotta sweat the small stuff.

And maybe that’s why Jesus said in Luke 9:23 that “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

Taking up your cross daily means sweating the small stuff. It means refusing to shrug off those tiny sins. Jesus isn’t calling his followers to carry a literal cross like his and go to their deaths—not usually, at least—but to carry a cross of daily self-denial, of setting aside my preferences, my feelings, and my desires, for the sake of loving God and loving my neighbors. In that classroom full of hyper kids. In your car at the intersection. In front of a sink full of dirty dishes at home. All day long you have opportunities to either shrug off a tiny sin and do what you want, or to take up your cross and go where Jesus is leading.

And whether I am a faithful disciple of Christ today probably isn’t going to depend on how I respond to some earth-shaking temptation or obstacle. It’ll depend on the choices I make in all of those small moments. It’ll depend on whether I pay attention to and get intentional about the small stuff.

Listen to this devotional below (read by Stuffy-Nosed Nance!):

Watching and Praying with Wesley (Not That Wesley)

Susanna Wesley

"Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful." - Colossians 4:2

If you know anything about John Wesley’s mother, Susanna, you know that she was a key influence on her children’s faith and education. Not only was she responsible for their learning for the first decade of their lives, but she continued to exchange letters with them and discuss theology well into their adult years.

One small piece of her legacy is this “Prayer of Susanna Wesley” included in The United Methodist Book of Worship:

You, O Lord, have called us to watch and pray.
Therefore, whatever may be the sin against which we pray,
make us careful to watch against it,
and so have reason to expect that our prayers will be answered.
In order to perform this duty aright,
grant us grace to preserve a sober, equal temper,
and sincerity to pray for your assistance. Amen.

I’m sure her opening line is inspired by Matthew 26:41 and Mark 14:38, when Jesus warns his sleepy disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane to “watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Resisting temptation is definitely the aim of this prayer. But this also reminds me of Colossians 4 and Paul’s call to watchful prayer. That instruction in Colossians is brief and leaves a lot unexplained, but Wesley here really unpacks this idea of being watchful.

First, she says that if you’re praying against some sin—for strength to resist temptation, for repentance when you stray from Christ’s path, for transformation of some bad habits—if you’re praying against some sin, you have to be careful to watch against it. In other words, don’t expect God to do the work for you. Pray for God’s grace, and then do your part: be alert and on your guard against that sin. Then we’ll “have reason to expect that our prayers will be answered.” Devote yourself to prayer and be watchful.

The second thing Wesley asks from God is grace to “preserve a sober, equal temper.” To me, a “sober, equal temper” (that’s 18^th century-talk) means being controlled and even-keeled in your emotional responses, not reactive or volatile. That’s essential in all of the little interactions that make up loving your neighbor. It’s something we need to watch for, and, even if that’s not your normal knee-jerk reaction, with God’s help, with grace, that kind of calm, measured disposition is possible.

She closes by requesting “sincerity to pray for your assistance.” Wesley prays that she’ll keep praying. This prayer isn’t supposed to solve her problem. It’s supposed to bring her back before the Lord, seeking assistance again. This prayer is self-perpetuating. Overcoming temptation isn’t the result of one moment’s effort or one cry for help but of an unbroken chain of prayers that have us continually watching out for sin, watching our own tendencies, and watching for God to come to our aid. Like Paul wrote, this kind of watchful prayer is something that you devote yourself to.

Are you being watchful in prayer?

Are you watching for temptation, watching your own attitudes and behaviors, and watching out for God’s grace to help you day by day?

What do you need to start watching more closely today?

You can listen to this week's devotional below:

Training Up

This Sunday we talked about the passage in Mark 9 where Jesus calls his followers to welcome children in his name. Engaging and caring for children is what serving our King looks like. (See Mark 9:37.)

There’s another reason, that I didn’t get into that morning, that our love for and ministries with children are so important. It’s simply that, a kid today is already being formed into the adult they’ll be tomorrow. That’s why Proverbs 22:6 famously says, “Train up a child in the way, and when they’re old they will not stray.” (I love that translation—it captures how proverbs are meant to be catchy.) The way Eugene Peterson put it, in his Message Bible, is “Point your kids in the right direction— when they’re old they won’t be lost.” Childhood is the most impressionable time of someone’s life, and so you want to give them the right impressions about the things that matter most.

Every adult in a child’s life is making impressions on them—aunts and uncles, family friends, grandparents, church volunteers, teachers and classroom aides. Of course, as Andy and Sandra Stanley have pointed out, the source of words determines the weight of those words, and words from a parent weigh the most. So, think about the children in your life:

1. How much do your words (and example) weigh to them?
2. How are you using those words and that example to train them and point them in the right direction?

We should be realistic about the influence we do or do not have, but we should also always be intentional about giving them the right impressions—about themselves, about other people, about money, health, their bodies, the environment, priorities, and, certainly, about faith.

I never realized until someone pointed it out, but that proverb is not just a prescription for how to guide a child: it’s also a warning. Whether you realize it or not, whether you are doing it with care or not, you are training children in the way they’re going to go. We are constantly training them in what kind of behavior is acceptable, what attitudes are normal, what activities are important or unimportant.

Every now and then I’ll hear someone say, “Practice makes perfect,” and someone else will immediately chime in, “Perfect practice makes perfect.” This is point they’re making: you can be trained badly. You can be discipled in the wrong direction. The warning of the proverb is, take care how you train a child, because whatever way you train them in, when they’re old they won’t stray from it.

No one’s going to do this perfectly. God knows I don’t. But we can all strive to do it deliberately, to give thought to the impressions we’re making with our words and examples.

Do you give thought to the words you use and example you set around children, to leave the best impressions you can? Are you intentional about interacting with kids and being a positive influence in their lives?

Remember: engaging and caring for children is what serving our King looks like.

Listen to this devotional right here: