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By Andy, September 14, 2007 11:53 pm

This past summer my kids attended a Vacation Bible School at one of the local Lutheran churches. It was a week long VBS, and each of them really enjoyed the lessons and songs they learned that week.

Hank was fortunate, as one of his best friends from kindergarten last year was in his class. Alex is a squirt of a boy, barely taller than Hank’s shoulders, but a kid who plays hard on the playground, with quick speed in keeping up with the taller boys and a gentle heart, who helped bring out Hank’s more gentle side. Put Hank and Alex together, and you have two Asian boys who connect. Everyday in kindergarten, during snack time and recess, Hank and Alex would share their snacks; if Hank had a granola bar, he would snap it in half and give one half to Alex, who likewise would share a similar item from his snack that day. They each had each others backs, ensuring that the other would pack up their items before having to come in from recess.

It was well known throughout the class that Alex’s mom was terminally ill with cancer. Angela would come on certain mornings, delivering her boys, Alex to the kindergarten class and his older brother to his second grade class. A petite woman, she came modestly dressed, her head covered masking the effects of the chemotherapy she had endured. She always had a smile for others on the days she dropped off the boys. Her faith in Christ, in the face of her struggle, is what kept her going, she once told my wife.

I last saw her in early August, on the final night of the VBS at the Lutheran church. The kids put on a pageant to highlight the songs they had learned that night, Hank and Alex singing loudly while expressing themselves with the hand motions appropriate to the song. She and her husband sat behind us, with her husband holding their youngest boy, a three year old, asleep in his arms. We joked with them about how they had made the rounds of the local Vacation Bible Schools, as their kids had just finished attending their third one this summer. We talked church with them, inviting them to come check out our church, as they had not committed to a particular church home, and in fact were attending a church across the Bay.

Tonight was an outdoor movie night at the kids’ school - school PTO volunteers set up an outdoor screen on the playground, and a couple hundred folks, mainly school families, came in camp chairs and blankets to picnic, socialize, and watch the film. We found our friends who we were going to picnic with (with pizza and soda) and quickly got settled, while my wife spent a few minutes distributing Girl Scout registration forms to the families in Margaret’s troop. As the film’s opening credits began to roll, and the pizza quickly being eaten, I looked back for Page, who was standing in the back with a small group of other parents.

I went over to get her with the intent of encouraging her to sit down and eat, since she just finished 5 straight night shifts and had not slept much today. I lightly put my hand on her shoulder, saying, “You better come sit down - there’s only a couple of slices of pizza left.”

She turned to look at me, eyes red with tears, “Angela passed away last night.”

We walked back to our seats, shared the news with our friends, and let ourselves escape in the movie - but it was clear that Angela and her family were not far from our thoughts. We watched Hank and Margaret laugh at the silly scenes in the film, letting them enjoy their night out under the stars.

As we returned to the car after the film, Page looked at Hank and said, “You know how your friend Alex’s mom has been sick?”

“Uh huh, mom.”

“Angela died last night.”

We both carefully looked at his face. The smile on his face had disappeared, replaced with a brief look of confusion, then sadness. While he did not cry, there was a stoicism in his face that was a mask for the palpable sadness that he now had for his good friend. Before he went to bed Page asked him how he was doing.

“I was happy until you told me Angela died.”

So were we, Hank.

Angela is now with her namesake angels, her body restored to full glory as she is with Her Lord. Jesus flung open His Gates last night and welcomed His daughter home. Please pray for her family, as they will miss this daughter, wife, and mother - that they will take comfort knowing she is home.

Comments (6)

By Andy, September 10, 2007 11:45 pm

A lot has been going on lately. You’ve already seen what our lives will be like for the next 10 Saturdays, but in addition to that, my firm is entering the final month of the fiscal year, so my workload has ticked up a bit, with budgeting for the next fiscal year along with wrapping up the books on the current year.

Of course tonight was my home team’s first game of the year, as my 49ers (which don’t get a whole lot of coverage here at “The Beach”, given that I’m a baseball-first kind of guy) played the second game of the twinbill on MNF. Brutal game to watch, from an offensive execution standpoint (in fact, you could say that the 49er offense was rather offensive for 57 minutes), but the next 2:30 to nearly closeout the game was a drive that recalled some of the better 49er teams of the past 20 years. For a 49er fan who hasn’t seen much good times in recent years, it was actually fun to get upset and excited at my hometown team tonight, much like I was as a teen following the great 80s teams here.

On a totally different note, this weekend my wife and I finally had the chance to start watching one of the programs we had recorded on CNN about a month ago - the 3 part series on “God’s Warriors”, each program a 2 hour report on Judaism, Islam and Christianity. We’ve watched only the first part, on Judaism, so far (and about 20 minutes of the second on Islam), and have found the program to be highly revealing, particularly in the coverage of the City of David, the Wailing Wall, the Temple Mount, and the Dome of the Rock - the ongoing religious and political tensions that exist over that historical piece of land.

From our perspective (and shared by the Jews), there is something immensely powerful about the history of that Wall. The only remaining wall from the 2nd temple, rebuilt after the Exile, and I think about Ezra and Nehemiah, called to return to rebuild. I look at the images of the Temple Mount and imagine Christ turning over the tables of the merchants, angry at the desecration of the Temple as a “den of thieves”. So much of our spiritual history as believers resides there that I can understand the power of these ancient sites to draw us closer to God.

Or so we are led to believe.

From a human perspective, we do take great pride in our history. We cannot help but be moved at seeing the locations and sites of human history, whether located in the Middle East, Europe, Asia or America. Down the street from my house is a marker indicating that it was the site at which Spanish explorer Portola landed and began his journey up a few hillsides to discover San Francisco Bay. I’m touched by that, even though that event occurred about three hundred years ago, not a few thousand years ago. I am still amazed at the Golden Gate Bridge, which opened merely 70 years ago, just an average human lifetime.

So for someone like me to experience the land upon which Abraham, Isaac, Joshua, David, and Jesus walked would likely take those feelings up a few notches, I think. I can understand why we, as spiritual people, would feel a connection to God by traversing those lands.

Yet by doing so, would we be idolizing the sites and land themselves? Would we be possibly placing more value in the land rather than in our own relationship with Him? It would seem to be just what the Enemy would want us to do to fight over ancient sites rather than focus on our relationship with Him.

That’s really what struck me about those programs so far - there has been such a focus on the ownership of the land, as if the land and those sites were what brought people closer to God, when in reality, God cannot be contained. King Solomon says as much when he dedicates the temple in 1 Kings 8:27:

27 But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!

We seem to forget that.   Only one place can contain Him…and that’s in our heart.

Comments (2)

By Andy, August 12, 2007 10:31 pm

24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

28Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

29Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may^[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 20:24-31 (NIV)

Yesterday morning I went to Sears with the kids since we needed to buy a new clothes dryer - our old one had just gone out on us on Friday, and given its age, it wasn’t worth fixing. We were at the store about 20 minutes after it had opened, and we walked right up to a salesman, knowing exactly the model I was going to buy, having researched it over at Consumer Reports.
Ten minutes later the deal was done, and a delivery scheduled for today - time to be determined later that evening when I would receive a confirmation on time and location.

Right at 6 pm I received the call, a two hour window between 10:15 and 12:15 pm.

My church meets at 11 am.

I couldn’t obtain another time without changing the day, and frankly, I wasn’t going to take a couple of hours of vacation time to wait for the delivery of a dryer. I figured I would likely miss church.

This morning, the dryer was delivered at 10:15 am.

I made it to church (although sans family, as my wife was sleeping from a night shift last night and the kids are out of town with their grandparents). Walking up the front entryway, I saw Jim, whom I had called last night to say I wasn’t going to make it, and I said, “God must have a message for me to hear today.”

The title of the message was “Turning Question Marks into Exclamation Marks”. The message was delivered by a guest speaker, Dr. Jim Higgs, since our pastor is away on vacation. The base scripture was John 20:24-31 ( quoted above).

Using Thomas’ story in the passage above, he spoke of the doubts in our faith - how we are like Thomas, questioning the truth and unable to make the leap of faith without seeing. He listed the doubts of others in Scripture, like Abram when told he would be the father of many nations…at his advanced age and without offspring at the time he was told…or the first two chapters of Habakkuk, a litany of doubts…or Psalm 73…

Dr. Higgs went on to discuss 3 things that we can do to move from doubt to faith.

We must first identify the source of our doubts. He listed four sources…

1) The Enemy, Satan - he deceives us like he does in Genesis 3.

2) Finding ourselves in unfavorable circumstances, like Gideon in Judges 6.

3) Having unconfessed sin - 1 John 1:9.

4) Having pride.

He encouraged us to “doubt your doubts”.

Second, he said that we need to check how we’re wired. What kind of person are you? Are you an optimist? A pessimist, like Thomas in John 14:5-6?

“Negative thinkers neutralize faith.”

Finally, he encouraged us to “aspire for noble faith.” In John 20:29, Jesus says, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

The Apostle Peter reiterates this in 1 Peter 1:8 - Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

Dr. Higgs closed out by saying that this message came out as a response to his concern for a friend of his who is experiencing doubts about faith - but he couldn’t help but feel that there were folks in our congregation experiencing those very same doubts.

I would be liar if I said that I didn’t undergo doubts from time to time, doubts about what God is doing in my life, or the role He wants me to have at church.

The other evening I watched Mark Batterson’s message at Granger Community Church, in which he said that the Enemy’s two primary tactics are Guilt and Fear.

With guilt, Batterson says, “If we are focused on what we did wrong in the past, there will be no emotional or spiritual energy left to think about where God is taking us in the future.”

With fear, he says, “The Enemy backs us down, so that instead of stepping out in faith, we are defined by the things that scare us.”

“The Enemy wants to remind us of our failures.”

We need to step out in faith. And doubt our doubts.

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By Andy, March 10, 2007 5:12 am

Now if you’re feelin’ kinda low ’bout the dues you’ve been paying
Future’s coming much too slow
And you wanna run but somehow you just keep on stayin’
Can’t decide on which way to go
Yeah, yeah, yeah

I understand about indecision
But I don’t care if I get behind
People livin’ in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind.

Now you’re climbin’ to the top of the company ladder
Hope it doesn’t take too long
Can’tcha you see there’ll come a day when it won’t matter
Come a day when you’ll be gone

I understand about indecision
But I don’t care if I get behind
People livin’ in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind.

Take a look ahead, take a look ahead, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…

Now everybody’s got advice they just keep on givin’
Doesn’t mean too much to me
Lot’s of people out to make-believe they’re livin’
Can’t decide who they should be.

I understand about indecision
But I don’t care if I get behind
People livin’ in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind.

Take a look ahead, take a look ahead. Look ahead.

Tom Scholz, Boston

The word came out from New Hampshire tonight that Brad Delp, the lead singer of the classic rock band Boston, had passed away at the age of 55.

I was only 6 years old when the self-titled debut came out, so I really didn’t hear the band until high school upon the debut of their 3rd album, Third Stage, on the strength of the radio airplay of Amanda.

But it wasn’t until college that I started to listen to the band’s earlier albums, with friends who listened to 70’s arena rock. I was already a huge fan of Pink Floyd, so the transition to Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Rush, Boston and others came with relative ease.

The 1976 Boston album and its 1978 follow up, Don’t Look Back, formed the basis of the soundtrack to some houseboating trips on Shasta Lake in Northern California during my college years. With the warm springtime sun and good friends, we relaxed and danced to Brad Delp’s screaming vocals on More than a Feeling and the above song, Peace of Mind.

I didn’t realize how prescient the lyrics were at the time, as those words describe where I am in my life today. For many years, I pushed hard on the road to material success, living a life in which I competed professionally to stay ahead of the game or my peers. But as the writer of Ecclesiastes points out ad nauseum throughout that book - it is all meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

I really don’t care about getting ahead anymore, or falling behind, for that matter…because I have MY peace of mind through my faith in Christ.

Rest in peace, Brad. Thank you for being part of the soundtrack of my life.

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By Andy, December 6, 2006 6:03 am

It doesn’t take much. The voice is but a mere whisper in your ear, or a passing thought as you sit on the subway to work. In a moment of distraction your eyes move away from Him and to something - or someone - else.

You were lost in thought. Listening to the driving guitars in your headset, you silently sing along with Bono’s voice, “…one man betrayed with a kiss.” You had been in prayer, asking Him for guidance for your day, asking Him for His protection.

But the prayer is interrupted. You shift your eyes from your feet and the prayer in your mind to the distraction thrown your way. The smell of a passing woman’s perfume - the sudden bump by a fellow pedestrian on his way to work - the loud wail of an ambulance siren - shifts your focus from God to your immediate surrounding.

No…it doesn’t take much for us to be distracted with all the noise in our world.

On Sunday, our pastor spoke about temptation and the little distractions that the Enemy throws our way to take our eyes off God. All the Enemy wants is for us to put God second. That’s all, and he’ll do it by any means necessary.

As our pastor reached the climax of his message, a loud wail could be heard outside the church. Was it a child? Was it an animal? Eventhough our pastor had his microphone on, the wailing grew louder. In a message about temptation and distraction from focusing on God, there were a number of folks who were physically distracted by the noise, turning their heads towards the back of the sanctuary, while others remained focused on the pastor and God’s message.

Was the noise coincidental?

No…not when God, through the pastor, was reminding us to stay focused on Him. The Enemy attempted to drown out the voice of God - and had limited success.

It is a noisy world, full of distractions. We need to filter through the spiritual noise and find the silence and peace in God.

::

After that experience, I thought back to an early morning phone call we had received that morning. My wife answered it - discovering that it was a former congregant at the CoC congregation we attended a couple of years ago. Hearing only one side of the conversation, I could tell that:

1) This man had a falling out with the pastor, and left.

2) He had found a new church home in a neighboring town.

3) He was inviting us to join him there, knowing we’d had a similar falling out.

But he was still in his legalistic trap, believing that the only true church was the CoC, that our family was fallen, and therefore no longer Christians, because we did not belong to a CoC congregation. My wife politely told him that we were going to have to disagree on that point, wished him well, then hung up the phone.

This man is trapped in legalistic noise that continues to trap him from hearing God’s voice in his life.

The world is noisy, and the noise can just as easily come from within. Keep God first. Shut out the Enemy’s noise.

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By Andy, November 26, 2006 11:43 pm

Perhaps the single most thrilling ride created by Walt Disney’s Imagineers in Anaheim, well before the opening of Disney’s California Adventure park, is Space Mountain, an indoor roller coaster in relative dark, with twists and turns at high speeds. I remember my first trip on that ride as a young teen, thrilled by the ride, although I thought that it was rather tame compared to other coasters I had ridden at other parks, especially at Great America in Santa Clara or Magic Mountain in Valencia.

That “relative” tameness has since been replaced with an extremely high speed and significantly darker ride than what I remember after it was remodeled at the original Disneyland in Anaheim. Where there once was the glow of an orange orb in the center, there is now darkness, broken only by the tiny specks of light meant to simulate a starfield, while the roller coaster twists and turns, goes up and down sharply, through the darkness of “space”. The screams from the various riders can be heard throughout, although it does remind me of the tagline of the Alien films…in space, no one can hear you scream.

It is a substantially more thrilling ride today, and coming out of the tunnel, back into the light, you can’t help but feel exhilarated (or in the case of my daughter, terrified). Both are valid emotions coming out of the darkness of this ride, into the light of the dock.

It is much the same with our spiritual journey. So often we find ourselves riding this roller coaster, in the dark, not knowing where the twists and turns are, where the ups and downs are located. You can’t get too comfortable, because the moment you settle in, the ride takes an abrupt turn to the left, or the right, or up, or down. It is very much unsettling.

The thrill ride that is my high school Sunday School class might as well be this ride. I am rushing through in the dark, not knowing from week to week who will appear. I prepare each week for the class, but God doesn’t tell me how many kids, if at all, will appear. Today, there were 6 kids. Last week there was, effectively, none (the one who showed at 10:25 for a class ending at 10:35, quite frankly, doesn’t count). The discussion was lively; the class was engaged.

What does it mean?

It means that I am to continue on this ride for another 5 weeks, as there are 5 more chapters. The twists and turns will continue to be there, and God doesn’t want me to settle in and be too comfortable - He’s clearly challenging me, challenging my patience, challenging my creativity. I will not come out of the tunnel signaling the end of this ride until those 5 weeks are up.

Once the train stops and the safety restraint has been lifted, I can exit for a brief respite. Rest assured, He’s not going to let me on a kiddie ride through Fantasyland. Those rides will be out of service. He’s going to send me onto either another thrill ride, like Thunder Mountain, or have me ride Space Mountain again.

Buckle up.