Planting Seeds for the Next Generation

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

You may have heard of a fellow in the New Testament named Timothy. There are two letters addressed to him (1 and 2 Timothy). He was one of Paul's partners in ministry in his missionary work in the book of Acts, popping up in chapters 16-20. He was with Paul when he wrote Romans (16:21), Philippians (1:1), the Thessalonian letters (1:1 in both), and more, and the apostle sent him to preach to the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:17; 2 Cor 1:19). Paul described Timothy as like a son to him (Phil 2:22)

You may have heard of Timothy before—but have you ever heard about Lois? What about Eunice? Because, without them, you never would have heard of Timothy.

Right after the “Dear Timothy” (1:2), the letter of 2 Timothy begins like this:

I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. (2 Tim 1:3-5)

Eunice was Timothy’s mother, and Lois was his grandmother. These two women were remembered for their sincere faith, which they managed to hand down, through the generations, until it lived in Timothy, too. They are the reason why, in Acts chapter 16, when Paul firsts meets Timothy, he’s already known as a “disciple” (16:1). Timothy wasn’t a product of Paul’s mission, but he became one of the driving forces behind it—because of a couple of faithful women who raised him up in the faith.

Lately, at our Wednesday night Bible studies at Eastlawn UMC, we’ve been learning about “Forgotten Women of the Bible.” I shared about one of those forgotten women, who anointed Jesus in Nain in Luke 7, a few weeks back. Today I wanted to highlight these two women as well, because I think they remind us of something so important. To all of you moms and grandmothers out there: don’t underestimate the difference you’re making in a child’s life.

I know so many grandmothers who have faithfully carted their grandkids back and forth to church for years and so many mothers who have been doing everything they know how to try and instill an abiding faith in their kids—but they worry. They worry about the influences of friends, peers, other family members, teachers, and social media overpowering the examples and lessons they’ve given those children.

If that’s you, I get it. I’ve heard too many stories about PKs not to be concerned about what my girls will believe when they get older. At the same time: never doubt that you are having an impact. Never doubt that those conversations and Sunday mornings and gift Bibles and prayers are planting seeds that can sprout and grow throughout their lifetime.

You can’t control what that looks like or when it might happen, but you can still do your part. Paul, looking back on his ministry in Corinth, wrote, “I planted, Apollos [another Christian teacher] watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Cor 3:6) You plant. Or maybe you water. You do your part. Then you entrust your child, your grandchild, to the Lord who gives the growth.

And who knows? One day that kid might be a Timothy.

And you—you would be her Eunice. You would be his Lois.

Listen to this right here:

The Knowledge of the Lord

There are some descriptions of eternity in scripture that we know pretty well. Streets of gold and pearly gates (Rev 21:21). “In my Father’s house there are many rooms…” (John 14:2-3) “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matt 25:23)

There are some other descriptions that don’t get as much attention. They’re less vivid. They don’t capture the imagination in the same way that some others do.

Jeremiah tells of a day when

“No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. (31:34)

Similarly, Isaiah speaks of a time when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (11:9)

Those two prophetic promises remind me of another line, in Paul’s letters, when the apostle's looking ahead to the future: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Cor 13:12) The Lord knows us fully, searches our hearts and minds (Ps 7:9). And, one day, we will know the Lord fully, know the heart and mind of God.

All of these verses envision a day when we will finally, truly understand and know the Lord. That is one of the unfathomable blessings of eternal life: intimate knowledge of God.

But if all of that is in store for God’s people one day, that should tell us something about our knowledge of God here and now: it’s imperfect, incomplete—for now, we don't fully know.

Now, Jesus is a clear picture of a God who’s otherwise invisible to us. (Col 1:15) But Jesus is also a human picture, and one that we only have secondhand. There are things about God that you can’t see by looking at Christ's life in the gospels, because no book can contain everything about God and one human lifetime isn’t enough to show it all, either. I believe Jesus reveals everything that a person needs to know about God, but, still, our knowledge of God today is imperfect, incomplete. We don’t fully know. Not yet.

What am I getting at with all this?

Stay humble. Know what you don’t know.

Christians can talk about the Lord of Heaven and Earth as if we’ve got it all figured out, as if we’re authorities on the topic who’ve been dispatched to correct and deride all of the ignorant, confused thinking out there. Have a little intellectual humility. Study the scriptures. Pray. Strive to know the Lord. But don’t presume to know it all. Don’t rest on your laurels, confident in your education and enlightenment.

You and I will always be students and novices in this life, always able to learn more, to know God more deeply.

Centuries ago, a brilliant saint named Thomas experienced a revelation of God’s presence while leading a service of Holy Communion. Up to that point, Thomas had been working on his magnum opus, an enormous book of theology that students still pore over more than 700 years later. But after his experience that day, he put his pen down and closed the book. Later on, when a friend encouraged him to start writing again, Thomas said, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.”

One day, we’ll know God fully, like we’re fully known. For now, stay humble. Know what you don’t know.

You can listen to this devotional here:

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.

You can listen right here:

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!):