Tag: Janie B. Cheaney

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Always In Between

Do you have a “trip from hell” travel story?  Mine occurred over ten years ago, when I was trying to get from Vienna to Missouri using my status as a USAirways employee next-of-kin.  It’s too convoluted to recount in full, but it began with an accidental upgrade on the train from Vienna to Frankfort (that I didn’t pay for) and ended with me on a plane to DesMoines, which was not my destination.  (I got off before the plane left the ground.)  The forty-odd hours of delays, close or missed calls, deprivations and misunderstandings didn’t seem funny at the time.  But from that experience comes one solid piece of advice: when you are stuck in an airport for several hours because of a missed connection due to a delayed flight, find the chapel, open a Bible, and get a grip.

Chances are your place of refuge will be an inter-faith sanctuary that tries to accommodate everybody: the chapel I found in the Pittsburg airport scheduled Mass every morning, marked off a special praying area on the carpet for Muslim knees, and asked nothing of visitors but silence, so that fellow travelers could commune with their personal spiritual reality in peace.  But the deepest imprint on the chapel was left by Christians, as I discovered while paging through the prayer journal on the lectern.  Most of the entries expressed faith in Jesus Christ while sharing their burdens or giving thanks.  Reading over them was like traveling alongside for a while.

In fact, we’re always traveling alongside: these are the people crammed three abreast on Boeing jets, sharing processed air and hugging their bit of private space.  We know them, because we are them.  The prayer journal revealed their hearts:

“Thank you Father for this peaceful place and this beautiful day.”

“Lord, please show me if Michelle is the one for me . . .”

“Please pray that this last visit with my dad will be special. I love you Dad–thanks for everything.”

Amid the outcries and the gratitude, I found this fleeting prayer: “. . . and bless those who are in between where they need to be.”

It’s the cry of travelers the world over–I’m here and I need to be there.  Oh for wings like an eagle, that I could soar above all that unyielding space that stands in my way.  Or a divine bow to shoot me straight home, piercing the hours and the miles.

That’s our wish, even while acknowledging that we’ll never truly arrive.  In between–thought and deed, fact and expectation, doubt and assurance, heaven and earth–is where most of us spend our lives.

Abraham was never home.  The Israelites wandered for years, and after settling in Canaan, travel became part of worship.  Psalms 120-134 is the songbook for such journeys (and more edifying than “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.”)  Most of the teaching in the synoptic gospels takes place after Christ “set his face to go to Jerusalem”–including the story of the youth who traveled to a far country, squandered his inheritance and made his painful way back home.  Paul, that epic traveler of the New Testament, set out for Rome and found himself seriously “in between” on the island of Malta.

We know we are strangers and exiles on the earth, and our journeys from here to there are metaphors for a life lived in expectation of heaven.  Of course we tend to forget it, but on that trip I was blessed by a timely reminder.

While I was still reading the prayer journal in the airport chapel, the door opened and an airline employee entered with a guitar.  He nodded to me in the wary way of strangers, then took a seat, turned his instrument and began singing praise choruses.  After a moment I joined in on the ones I knew, and just like that, we were no longer strangers.  Soon three more employees joined us, then two other travelers.  The songs gained energy and conviction, especially “This love (joy, peace) that I have–The world didn’t give it and the world can’t take it away.”  At the end of the song service, before continuing on our separate ways, we took a moment to shake hands with special warmth.  Like the pilgrims of Psalm 84, “in whose heart are the highways to Zion”, we had passed through the Valley of Baca and found it a place of springs.  And the very place, providentially, where we needed to be.

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Bible Challenge Week 42: The Church – He’s Alive!

If the main character of the Old Testament is Yahweh, the main character of gospels is, of course, Jesus Christ.  But the  main character of the “Acts of the Apostles” is not the apostles–not even Peter and Paul.  It’s the Holy Spirit, or the third Person of the Trinity, who completes the work of salvation in the disciples of Jesus and goes on to make more disciples: “First in Jerusalem, then in Samaria, and on to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

When we last saw the handful of disciples that were left after their leader’s shocking death–about 120 of them–they were disheartened and bereft, but still together.  Two stunning events are about to occur, which will turn not only their lives upside down, but alter the history of the world.

What were they?  Click below to find out:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 42: The Church – He’s Alive!

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 41: Messiah – The Lamb of God

Next: Week 43: The Church – From Jerusalem to Samaria

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Wordcraft and Warcraft

Rasmussen Reports published a poll on June 27 that got some wide reportage: apparently, 31% of Americans believe civil war is likely within the next 5 years.  But 60% said, “Nah, don’t worry about it.”  Almost that many pointed to opposition to Donald Trump’s policies as the spark to violence.  That’s interesting—not the President’s policies themselves, but opposition to.  I do have to wonder: when does overheated rhetoric become war?

The campus free-speech battles going on now are based on a premise that speech is violence: sticks, speech, and stones break my bones.  I think it’s interesting that those more sensitive to verbal violence use the most violent words: Nazi, Fascist, bigot, racist, and much worse.  In the infamous Charles Murray incident on the Middlebury campus last year, intemperate speech did lead to violence, but it wasn’t Charles Murray’s.  He didn’t speak.  They shouted him down.

The shouters do have a point, even though they misapply it: speech can be violence.  Speech can also be love, temperance, pain, incentive, construction, inspiration, peace, and war.  Words come so easily to most of us we forget where they come from and what they can do.

Where they come from is God.  What they can do it create.

It’s no mere metaphor that Genesis 1 shows a Creator who creates by speaking.  “Let there be” introduces a host of articulations that spin off untold quadrillions of particles, elements, classes, phyla, and species.  That’s him–but for us it’s not all that different.  Words are puffs of air—sounds shaped by breath and spit that ride on invisible waves to reach someone’s ear, where tiny bones and membranes convey them to nerves and synapses.  This is a common-as-dirt example of the spiritual becoming material, as it did when “Let there be light” produced energy waves.

We see the same thing happen when Jerk! or Racist pig! or much more graphic terms produce a punch in the nose.

It’s easy to destroy with words; that’s why sins of the tongue get much more coverage in the Bible than any other kind.  James 3 is only one example; you can open up the Psalms anywhere and find

The rules take counsel together, saying . .

He will speak to them in his wrath . . .

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

Give ear to my words O Lord

You destroy those who speak lies

For there is no truth in their mouths;

They flatter with their tongues . . .

(A random selection from Psalms 1-5)

And why does Jesus say we’ll be held accountable for every word we speak?  We act as though he didn’t really mean it.  Though if anyone would mean what he says, Jesus would.

Destructive words are easy, quick, and effective.  Constructive words are not as easy or quick, but can be just as effective.  Back to the Bible:

Your sins are forgiven.  

How great is the Father’s love, that we should be called the children of God.  And so we are!  (I John 3:1)

Those who were not my people I will call “my people.” (Hosea 1:10)

He called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (I Peter 2:9)

Words create—on legal contracts, peace negotiations, architectural blueprints, declarations and speeches.  Families begin with them, cities rise on them, churches are sustained by them, peace returns with them, hope rises on them.

Words are always on our tongues to say, hurtful and helpful.  Enough of them can cause a shooting war; it’s happened before.  But enough of the right words can restore peace.

People are walking toward you every day; whether on the street or in your home or even in your head.  What words do you have for them?

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Bible Challenge 41: Messiah – The Lamb of God

It’s been a roller-coaster week.  After whining and complaining about his triumphant entry into the city, Jesus’ enemies have been trying to catch him in a verbal stumble, but he’s always a step ahead of them. They are almost in despair until an opportunity opens: unbeknownst to them, a greater enemy has entered on the scene, and the supposed Messiah now has a new struggle to face.  The greatest one of his life.

To find out who it was, and to download the free .pdf, with scripture passages, discussion/though questions, and family-centered activities click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 41: Messiah – The Lamb of God

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

Next: Week 42: The Church – He’s Alive!

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The Verbiness of God

Look at the verbs, Bible teachers say: see what God does and has done.  The first seven verses of Romans are loaded with verbiness.  When he is not the subject doing the action, he is the force acting upon the subject.  God is not only a verb, of course–he not only acts, but he is (which makes him more of a sentence).  But his continual, effective, neverending doing should prompt us to cease our own continual (less effective) doing once in a while to reflect on what’s going on around us and in us.

  • He calls (Romans 1:1, 6, 7).  If you ever heard him, if the stream-of-consciousness in your head has ever been altered by what you hear, either of or from him, he’s calling you.  You personally, with your own hangups and complications.  You heard him, not in some abstract or intellectual framework, but because he was calling you to belong to Christ.  To be a saint, meaning
  • He sets apart (vs. 1).  Paul applies the verb to himself, but to be a saint is to be set apart.  If you are in Christ, this means you!  Outwardly there may be nothing special about you.  Inwardly, you may have failed at all the goals you set for yourself.  But his aim for you still stands: whether you feel it or not, you are a saint.  You exist a little above the commonplace.  You may feel invisible, but to him you’re walking around in a beam of light.
  • He promises (vs. 2).  And a promise from him is as good as done.
  • He descends (“was descended,” vs. 2).  In those numbing genealogies in Genesis and I Chronicles he was descending, laying out the bloodlines that he would follow until he came to rest in a Galilean girl.  Until then, descending in smoke and fire, in word and command, in judgment and mercy.  Since then, descending in the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit.  Always descending, because that’s the only way to reach us.
  • He declares (vs. 4).  “These things were not done in a corner,” Paul reminded King Agrippa.  Nor are they the property of the enlightened.  The declaration is for everyone who hears it: Jesus is Lord, the way to God, the means of forgiveness.
  • He gives (vs. 5).  An implied verb, because Paul and his fellow apostles received the grace and the office to preach.  As all preachers do.  As all witnesses do.  As all of us do.
  • He brings about faith and obedience (vs. 5).  Look around you.  How many people on the street, in their cars, in the grocery store–how many do you suppose have faith in God?  Not an airy belief but a conviction that guides their decisions and choices?  How many of them would believe you, if you shared your faith with them, simply on the basis of your testimony?  None of them.  Faith happens when he brings it about, and obedience is the proof.
  • He loves (vs. 7).  Not a fond inclination or a benevolent state of mind, but a searching, busy, can’t-leave-well-enough-alone love that will not let us go.  His love wants better for us than we want for ourselves and will go–literally–to the ends of the earth to secure it.  I like the Paul puts “love” last, after all those other active verbs.  This love has muscle, backed up by everything that went before.  What more proof do we need?
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Bible Challenge Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

Jesus is still rock-star famous: that splashy entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey signals that something BIG is about to happen.  The inner circle knows it, the followers know it, the casual observers know it, and what’s more–his enemies know it.  You can almost sympathize with them, at least looking at it from their point of view.  To them it looks like the relative political stability that allows their Roman overlords to leave them in peace is about to be overturned, with serious consequences not only for them, but for the nation.  (Think of the opposition party’s response to the election of 2016 and you may get an idea of what that felt like.)  Personal animus aside (of which they had plenty), for the good of the nation, the man must be stopped.

But when the ruling class and the crowds expected Jesus to upset the political order, they were thinking way too small.  He was out to upset the cosmic order, and by Thursday night there would be no turning back.

For a one-page printable of this week’s challenge, including scripture passages to read, questions to think about, and activities for the family, click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 39: The Road to Jerusalem

Next: Week 41: The Lamb of God

 

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Bible Challenge 39: Messiah – The Road to Jerusalem

He’s a sensation.  He attracts people, not just for what he does but for what he says.  And, in some sense, what he is.  Though probably not especially handsome or prepossessing, don’t you imagine there was something about him–some literally otherworldly quality–that drew crowds?

Then, at the height of this rock-star ministry, he takes a turn.  A literal turn: Luke says, “He set his face toward Jerusalem.”  The verb indicates a very purposeful, no-looking-back journey toward a particular destination.   And for a particular reason, which he shares with his inner circle.  At least three times he tells them plainly what his purpose is, and they refuse to believe him.  His disciples, and probably everyone else, assume he’s going to claim his crown.  They’re right, in a way; they just don’t know what kind of crown it will be.

But first he has to get there.  And the Road to Jerusalem begins with the most vital question anyone can ever ask.

To find out what the question was, click below for the printable .pdf of this week’s challenge, with more questions,  scripture passages, and activities:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 39: The Road to Jerusalem

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 38: Messiah – Signs and Wonders

Next: Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

 

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Bible Challenge 38: Messiah – Signs and Wonders

One thing almost everyone knows about Jesus, if they know anything about him at all: He performed miracles.  He healed leprosy with a touch, made the blind see and the lame walk, cured every kind of disease, often with just a word–on one occasion, from a word spoken miles away.  It was word of these spectacular events, even more than word of his singular teaching, that drew “great crowds” everywhere he went.  But it may surprise you to know that the word miracle, or rather its Greek equivalent, is never used in connection with these supernatural happenings.  Instead, the word used to designate them is sign.

Our reading this week will be all in the Gospel of Mark, and if you read carefully, you’ll notice that Jesus could not possibly have healed everyone, and not all the healings were accomplished with great fanfare.  In fact, he continually told people not to tell how their blindness or lameness or illness had been cured.  These “signs” were to testify to his authority, for those who personally witnessed them.  Like the Kingdom of Heaven, they were super-powerful, yet semi-secret; motivated by compassion, but also by something else.

To see what that was, download this week’s printable challenge, with scripture passages, thought questions, key verse, and activities:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 38: Messiah – Signs and Wonders

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 37: Messiah – The Kingdom of Heaven

Next: Week 39: Messiah – The Road to Jerusalem

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Envy Is No Fun

What are you good at?  That’s where the green-eyed monster* will get you.

I used to make ice cream from a recipe and process I developed myself: a time-consuming project for special occasions.  I liked to say it was the best in the world because who could prove it wasn’t?  Many years ago I was at a picnic where someone brought a bucked of homemade ice cream.  I even remember the flavor: maple. Reader, it was not anywhere as good as mine, and that’s an honest objective judgement.  Even so, I was surprised and a bit abashed at how much I resented the praise heaped upon that unassuming tub of inferior dessert.  If only I had thought to bring my world-record peach!  I was like Mrs. Smith giving Mrs. Jones the stink eye at the county fair because of the former’s purple-ribbon-winning strawberry-rhubarb pie when Mrs. Smith’s blueberry pie clearly deserved it.

Envy.  It’s miserable.

Later, when I was more mature with serious ambitions of publishing a novel, any new fiction writer who accomplished that feat, with warm  accolades in the New York Times Book Review, was like a stab to the heart.  Especially if they were close to my own age, like Carrie Fisher.  She already had fame, fortune, cool friends—why did she have to go publish a novel and get it optioned for a movie when the world was waiting for my masterpiece?  Or, in less confident moods, how dare she be a better writer than me?  I wouldn’t have changed places with her (even without knowing what we know now), unfortunately for me at the time, the world was full of talented fiction writers.  And, even after I managed to publish a few novels, the world remained full of more popular, and more well-reviewed, and more awarded-winning novelists, and I knew some of them personally.

Envy is misery.

Now past my fiction-writing stage—probably—I still feel the old familiar twinge over Christian writers more shared, liked, and retweeted than me, especially over subjects I’ve written about.  Very silly, on a par with the county pie-judging competition.  Worse than silly, actually—it’s a clear violation of the Tenth Commandment.  I can say my bouts of envy are less much less frequent and of shorter duration.  Sanctification always has its effect, however slowly.

But it’s better to shortcut the process, and Psalm 73 (of Asaph) is just the ticket.  Old Asaph put his finger on the problem: “As for me, my feet had almost stumbled.  My steps had nearly slipped.  For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw their prosperity . . .”   I mean, look at them!  What do they know of struggle?  Maybe they won second runner-up in the Miss Radian Baby pageant but after that it was red carpet all the way.  What couldn’t I do with all their advantages?  My cheeks hurt from insincere smiles when they announced their latest award; my hearty Congrats! over their latest book deal was wrung from a heart of lead.

“But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went to the sanctuary of God . . .”  There I learned that my problem wasn’t them.  My problem was me.  They have their own issues to answer for, but “when my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant: I was like a beast before you.”

Ouch.

An actual beast can be forgiven for a narrow focus and limited perspective; not me.  When I try to squeeze my life into a self-focused cheering section, I’m like Nebuchadnezzar clawing for grubs and snails.  Nevertheless

I am continually with you [whether I feel it or not]; You hold my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me to glory.

Now, that’s perspective!

It’s also the only lasting cure for the misery of envy: recognition, repentance, worship.  Repeat, repeat, repeat, until it becomes a habit.  I’m still prodded by the green-eyed monster from time to time, but the prodding is more like peevish pokes.  Some of this improvement may be due to age—time’s running out and I have more important things to worry about.  But I also have much better things to anticipate.

_____________________________________________

*Othello, Act 3 Scene 3.  Another phrasemaking point for Shakespeare.

**Two tips: use a mixture of whole milk (custard) and heavy cream, and whip the cream to soft peaks before you add it to the custard.  And don’t skimp on the rock salt.

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Bible Challenge 37: Messiah – The Kingdom of Heaven

 

What was Messiah about?  His contemporaries thought he was all about restoring the Kingdom to Israel, in political terms, and it seems they were half right.  Because as soon as he began his ministry, he kept mentioning the “kingdom”: a phenomenon right around the corner that demanded repentance.  But too much of what he said didn’t make sense.  The kingdom was here, but it was secret.  Its essence was not exaltation, but humility.  One had to go down in order to go up.  And it seemed whenever anyone had a pointed question, he answered with a story.  What sort of kingdom was this?

And what sort of king?

For a free download of this week’s challenge, including scripture passages to read, questions to think about, and activities for the family, click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 37: Messiah – The Kingdom of Heaven

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 36: Messiah – Baptism & Temptation

Next: Week 38: Messiah – Signs & Wonders