Joy to the World?

Joy to the world in the midst of a political mess. 

I have developed a practice with Facebook that has a way of increasing my joy. I regularly and ruthlessly dump political posts that appear on my Facebook feed; usually I like what's left a whole lot better. So when Mark Galli's CT opinion piece calling for the removal of President Trump and Franklin Graham's response to that editorial both showed up, it was almost like hitting a home run being able to delete them both; twice the joy in half the time!

In fairness I need to say that I respect both men. And I would not deny that there is a place for godly prophetic input into the political dialog of the day. But the reminder that neither Galli nor Graham has quite found that place is a reminder that we still live in an imperfect world. Neither I nor my Facebook friends have found that place either, and the attempts can sometimes have an unintended effect. The fact, for example, that both Galli and Graham should seek to support their contrasting convictions by referring to the heritage of Billy Graham is at least mildly amusing.

Lots of my friends from every part of the political spectrum find social media an appropriate vehicle for their political views. That I choose to dump their posts does not diminish our friendship; in fact it might even protect it. I think I'd rather focus instead on that which unites us.

In this advent season I find myself glad that Jesus came as a baby and not as a politician. I have tried in vain to imagine Jesus using Facebook to try to inject his kingdom into the strange and strained political environment of his day. Perhaps you can wrap your head around that; I, however, can't.

So once again I'm collecting Christmas cards and dumping political posts, and finding joy in both disciplines. If that seems strange to you, perhaps you ought to try it. Go ahead; start with this post; I won’t be offended. You might just enjoy dumping it enough to have a merrier Christmas! 
😀

Miracles

We began the Christmas celebration a bit early this year with a trip last week to one of our favorite get-away locations.  Chemainus is a little town on Vancouver Island with murals on the sides of many of the buildings depicting various aspects of the town’s history.  It’s a fascinating collection that you can read about here.  But it wasn’t the murals that drew us there this time.

The town’s other claim to fame is an excellent live community theater, and the current offering is Miracle on 34th Street.  It was the play that drew us there this time. So there we were, eight days before Thanksgiving, sitting with a couple of hundred other people to enjoy a Christmas play. It was a well done presentation, good enough to convince us that there would be more Chemainus Theater Festival adventures in our future. And it was a play that left me thinking.

There is a line from Miracle on 34th Street that has been rolling around in my head for the past week: “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” It’s not exactly a biblical definition of faith, but it’s not a bad one, either. And it comes close to the description in Hebrews 11: the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Encountering genuine faith can be a surprisingly rare thing, even, strangely enough, among people who call themselves believers. Life does not train us to believe when common sense tells us not to. And common sense, while compelling, turns out to be not all that common either. And so we end up desiring to be more sensible instead of more trusting. It is a strange trade-off in which we are the ultimate losers, and both faith and miracles get lost because we cannot see or dare not hope.

I’m glad we started Christmas before Thanksgiving this year. It seems fitting to me that one should approach both holidays thinking about both faith and miracles. I am thankful for the blessings that I have experienced and seen. But I need to be thankful as well for the miracles I have not yet seen. God invites me to hope, and this year as Thanksgiving gently leads the way towards Christmas, I choose to have faith enough to thank God for both the miracles that are and the miracles that are on the way.

The Lion

Valerie and I returned last week from a delightful trip. Twice previously we had planned a trip to celebrate the hoped-for end of what would become a two year transitional pastor journey; both of those trips, while thoroughly enjoyable, turned out to be premature. So having finally completed the interim in July, we decided it would be a good time to enjoy a repositioning cruise from Vancouver, BC, to San Diego, California. It turned out to be great timing for a west coast cruise, beautiful and very smooth, complete with near perfect weather and migrating whales.

Some cruises are all about the destination; others are all about the journey. While both the journey and destination were great, this cruise seemed to be all about the people we encountered along the way. Some of those were planned encounters - cousins in Vancouver, my brother and his wife who met us in Santa Barbara, missionary friends who met up with us in San Diego. Others were unplanned serendipitous blessings, like Lisa, QuickShuttle's only female driver, or Leocer, who just might be Holland America's most congenial server and who brightened and blessed our day every time we saw him.

Trish Hanson was one of those serendipitous encounters. Trish is an artisan and outspoken Christian that we met on the dock in Astoria. Several artisans had booths set up, ready to entice folks leaving and returning to the ship with a wide variety of things, some beautiful and others of questionable value. (Like vegan shortbread, two words that my Scottish heart firmly believes should never appear on the same label.) But it was Trish’s booth that most captivated us with her collection of laser-crafted wood images with a message. And this lion was our personal favorite.

She calls it “The Lion of Judah,” and if you get close enough, you'll discover it consists of a two word phrase repeated 365 times: Fear not. Her art, she says, is part of her healing, and clearly there was a story - or perhaps multiple stories - behind the intricate design and careful creation of this lion. The personal pain of her past had found expression not in chaos or anger but in beauty and faith.

We really hadn’t planned to buy stuff in Astoria, but the Lion of Judah now hangs on our living room wall. I sit in my chair, and like Aslan in Narnia, the Lion looks at me inviting me to trust, and reminding me every day to fear not. 

50 Years

Fifty years ago - September 12, 1969. I was in my 20s and anything was possible; after all, we’d landed a man on the moon a couple of months earlier. It was my wedding day, and Joan and I were embarking on a marvelous journey called marriage together. It was a great day, though not without its unexpected surprises (like a flat tire late at night on the way to the airport).

Over the years I’ve wondered from time to time what it would be like to celebrate my golden wedding anniversary. I’ve attended a number of celebrations of other people’s golden anniversaries; some of them have been wonderfully joyful, some deeply meaningful, and a few others were, quite frankly, utterly terrible. So I’ve occasionally pondered what my own might look like. Those wonderings, of course, didn’t include the unexpected and painful reality that one of us might not live that long.

We made it three-fourths of the way to our golden wedding anniversary before the Lord called Joan home. It was a very good marriage, and she has helped to shape the person I am today. She didn’t expect to be a pastor’s wife, but she filled that role well. She was my best friend and a superb mom to our two kids; love was deep. When she died with a rare blood cancer in our 39th year of marriage, I resigned myself to learning to be single again; I figured my marriage days were over and there would be no 50th celebration.

I was wrong. (It’s not the first time that’s happened.) God brought Valerie into my life, and once again I find myself joyfully married to my best friend. Who could have guessed that a gracious God would let me live this adventure twice?  I’m pretty sure we won’t live long enough to celebrate 50 years (Valerie says we’d better not!) so we count the months instead. This month we celebrated our 88th anniversary.

Valerie suggested - insisted? - that I celebrate this golden anniversary. I confess it seemed a bit weird to me that wife #2 would suggest celebrating marriage #1, but those of you who know are aware that God has gifted me again with a gracious wife. So we’ll be north of the border celebrating this golden wedding anniversary in ways I might not have imagined. It won’t be the kind of celebration where we share each other’s embarrassing moments from the last fifty years. And if you’re waiting for the invitation, there will be no party. But there will be a quiet and grateful awareness of the immeasurably deep grace of a loving God who has designed and given this great gift called marriage, and who for the last fifty years has blessed me beyond measure as He has been teaching me what it means.

New Joy

The newest joy in our clan arrived on Saturday morning.  Weighing in at six pounds eleven ounces and twenty inches long, Nova Joy Melchor Brewer made her appearance September 7 just before four a.m.  She is a blessing, and Mommy, Daddy, and big brother (that’s Suzanne, Andrés, and Mateo) are doing just fine.  (So, by the way, is grandpa.)

In one way or another, I can bear witness to the miracle of birth from the perspective of three generations.  I have been (and am) a grandpa, a dad, and a brother.  And I think I can say with some authority that birth is easiest on us grandparents.

The roots of the word Nova are Latin; it means new.  Nova Joy - New Joy.  Little Nova Joy, may the good Lord enable you to live up to your name as you bring new fresh joy to all who know you.

Beware of the Pews

A couple of years ago in the midst of a recarpeting project, the church I was serving at the time considered whether or not to replace their pews as well, since they would have to be moved anyway. Pews or chairs? Personally I like the flexibility of chairs, preferably big comfortable padded ones, but they decided to keep the pews.

I was reminded of that decision last Sunday when we walked into a church we’ve visited to be greeted by pews that had been roped off with caution tape.  And I don’t mean just a few pews.  With the exception of the first two rows, the two largest sections of pews - roughly 2/3 of the seating capacity - were blocked, leaving a thankfully thin Labor Day Weekend congregation to gather in the two remaining narrower sections on the far left and right sides of the sanctuary.

This is interesting, the pastor in me thought.  Perhaps it’s a sermon illustration and we’re going to be separating the sheep from the goats. I secretly hoped I was sitting on the sheep side. I’ve been around long enough to know that pastors are not above doing strange things to get the attention of a congregation.  I remembered the experience of my son enhancing worship by rigging a vacuum-cleaner-powered cannon in the balcony to shoot confetti over a congregation while they were singing “Lord Reign in Me,” undoubtedly infusing that worship song with new meaning for the surprised congregation.

Could it be a visual illustration of a church split? No; it turned out to be nothing that creative or dramatic. The physical set up had nothing to do with serrmon content or enhanced worship but was simply evidence of an in-progress pew renewal project. It was a necessary distraction. I felt for the pastor whose congregation had been forced to the fringes with a vast emptiness in between. In typical and I suppose predictable evangelical fashion, those available front pews had been almost universally ignored — including by me.  It was as though the pastor were in a boat in the middle of a river trying to preach to the folks gathered on both banks. And it was a pretty wide river.

In retrospect, I’d have been wiser to accept the invitation of the guy who tried to seat us up front. There the caution tape wouldn’t have distracted me every time I moved my eyes. I know: It shouldn’t have been a distraction. But it was, and confessing that is a confession of my own weakness.

The joy of worship is found in the presence of Christ, and that can happen in an ornate sanctuary or by the side of a river, either real or metaphorical. When He is at the center, worship will happen. I almost missed the important message for me inscribed over and over on those yards of yellow tape: Caution. Beware of the pews. Don’t let them - or anything else - get in the way of worship.

The Transitional Journey

After a very lengthy absence, the blog has reappeared, and it is a fair question to ask where it has been.  It is not that I quit discovering joy two and a half years ago; on the contrary, these months have been filled with joy.  What happened is that life intervened.

 

Two and a half years ago I was invited to consider becoming the transitional pastor of a local church.  After serving the church for almost four decades, my friend Pastor Nick was retiring.  I couldn't fault him for the decision; I'd been retired for ten years, and I liked retirement.  I liked it so much that there was a part of me that considered running as far and fast as I could in the other direction.  God, however, had other plans, and I'm glad he did.  It’s still true that God saves the best for those who leave the choice to him.

 

So for two years I have had the joy of shepherding a congregation through the adventure of a pastoral transition. It turns out that that takes time.  It also turns out that no matter how fervently I may pray, God is not going to make the sun stand still in order to accommodate what I might want to do.  For years I've carried around business cards inscribed with this sentence: I have all the time I need to do all God wants me to do.  For the last couple of years, writing blog posts hasn't fit in that category.  But the writer in me is not yet dead, and now that I have been blessed with a second retirement, perhaps it will fit once again.  After all, I still have all the time I need to do all God wants me to do.

Last month I had the joy of passing the shepherding baton to FTPC's new pastor, a gifted young man who is God's choice for the future.  And I get to re-retire.  It has been a two year adventure, filled with both joys and lessons that have been many, varied, and deep.  Among them is the clear reminder that God seldom leads in straight lines, and it’s wise to turn when He does.  It’s been a fun couple of years, and I’ve had a blast!  But I’m glad Pastor Aaron is on board.  It turns out that I still like retirement, and I’m looking forward to rediscovering those joys as well.