Graduate 77: Advent

The holiday shopping season ‘formally’ opened at 4:00 AM last Friday. In the weeks preceding that, lights appeared on a few houses. Decorations went up in some major chain stores before Halloween. With each passing year, the season seems to start earlier and grow ever longer. Yet, strangely, it remains, by far, the most stressful time of the year—one of great dis-content as more and more effort and energy is poured into meeting (or exceeding) expectations of all that this season is supposed to be.

With all the work and toil that go into making Christmas ‘merry’, it stands out as a supreme irony that the whole point of the season centers just on what people, by their best effort and energy, could not accomplish. Did you ever stop to think about why Christmas is merry? It’s not merry because of anything we do; it’s not merry because we make it merry. It’s merry because the very thing that we could not do was done for us. That is what we celebrate—that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on human flesh in order to save us from our sins. He brought with Him the hope and promise of new life—abundant life. He was, in very form and essence, God, and opened the way for us to know and be with God, our heavenly Father, Creator, and King.

This weekend marks the beginning of the Advent season—the first season of the church calendar. Over the next twenty-five days, the Church looks forward to and celebrates that first coming of Jesus Christ. If you grew up in the church, you may have participated in Advent readings during this time—a Scripture passage for each day of the four weeks leading up to Christmas day.

If you’ve never done it before, or haven’t yet given thought to it for this year, I am going to (try to) set up a series of posts following a reading cycle known as “Jesse Tree”. (We'll see what my schedule allows.) For several years, when I was little, my family read through this series each December. Each post will include the Scripture reference for that day’s reading and some reflection/comments of mine. If you don’t have a Bible available to you, you can look up the passages at www.biblegateway.com.

Most of the readings will be drawn from the Old Testament, moving chronologically from creation to the birth of Christ. Though Jesus’ incarnation was a singular and unparalleled event, it was not without precedent. From the very beginning of time and throughout history, God has been doing for people what they could not do for themselves. Despite humanity’s disobedience, rebellion, and wickedness God has reached out in love and mercy to receive all who will come to Him. We will see some of the ways in which His plan of redemption unfolds over time to culminate in the life and ministry and sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

My hope is that you would receive and experience and know the blessings of Jesus Christ—remembering that you cannot reach them by any amount of effort or energy on your part. Rather, they have been made present and freely available to you. The whole point of the season lies in this—that we could not reach God in heaven, so He came down to us.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Graduate 76: Trinity and Self-Consciousness

So I'm working on this paper about self-consciousness, and around mid-day, Monday, the following occurs to me.

It is one of the enduring problems of philosophy that we seem quite unable to grasp our selves by direct observation or even introspection. The British Empiricist, David Hume (1711-1776), wrote one of the most well-known passages on the point:

There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity.... For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.... But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment.

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), bk. 1, part IV, sec. 6, pp. 251-253

--

We might illustrate the problem with a simple picture. Imagine your self as a point on a piece of paper. Imagine a number of rays that originate that point--representing thoughts, perceptions, and the other ways in which we grasp objects outside of us, be they physical objects, mental objects, abstract ideas, etc. Given this diagram, it would seem the easiest thing in the world to direct one of those perceptual rays back at the object from which it originates, in order to apprehend the source. But this is just what we seem quite unable to do. We seem not to be able to grasp, as an object of our perceptions, that very source of our perceptions, which leaves us quite ignorant of one of the most important parts of us--namely, our self.

There are philosophers who will object to this picture of human beings and selves and the mechanisms of perception, but it is a very well-established picture nonetheless. And it occurred to me that this condition must have something to do with our natural finitude and contingency. And that thought, in turn, caused me to turn to think about the only infinite and necessary being that I know of--God.

Now wouldn't it seem silly if God was plagued by this same blind-spot that faces us human beings? Wouldn't we think it a problem to assert that the most perfect being could not reach, apprehend, or grasp this fundamental and most essential part of his own nature?

And then it hit me--God CAN grasp this fundamental and most essential part of His own nature because God is TRINITY! When the Father looks to the Son, He beholds the fullness of deity in the Son. Likewise when the Son looks to the Father and when they look to the Holy Spirit and he looks back, they each behold the fullness of deity in the other. This plurality within the God-head allows God to apprehend His own being fully and completely. There are no blind-spots for Him as there are for us human beings.

Now I won't be so bold as to suggest that Hume was the first person to observe this human inability to grasp the self. Certainly people before him made similar observations, although his work was quite significant as a critique of the mainstream of philosophy up to that point. But just think, twenty-one hundred years before Hume lived, Moses wrote of the plurality that exists within the God-head, in the first chapters of Genesis.

Like I said, philosophy is divided on the nature of the self, and I don't pretend to understand the Trinity, but the sublime simplicity of this connection between the two was so striking that it lifted my Spirits for the rest of the afternoon.

(Actually, I'm pretty sure it was a bit like Eugene Melstner after he re-calibrated his barometer yielding a five-percent increase in the reading of the relative humidity.)

Doctrine is not boring. (Here's hearkening back to my last blog-entry.) The deeper you go into it, the more you discover, the more you want to praise God for His glory and majesty and greatness and goodness.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Graduate 75: Labels (also Doctrine and Lukewarmness)

Recent reflections have led me back to a question that was raised earlier this summer in a discussion I had with Aaron on the topic of labels.

Actually, at this point, given how long it's taken me to write this, those reflections aren't very recent any more. Oh well, here goes.

--

The labeling and categorizing of things into groups is a very natural function of human beings. [Heidegger might have described it as a certain kind of Being that is constitutive for Dasein (i.e. human beings).] Indeed, it is an integral part of how we navigate the world, that we are able to identify common features in various objects and delimit sets of things according to the attributes that all the members share in common and/or possess exclusively. We categorize and label based on subject, author, color, shape, size, speed, height, brightness, weight, age, gender, race, culture, family-history, character, attitude, religion, beliefs, phenotype, smell, income-level, profession, genus, period, historical era, geological strata, and a whole host of other factors.

But what I am interested in right now is religious labels and in this blog entry I will focus on the label, "Christian". I have noticed, especially in interactions with young (teen/twenties) people, a reticence to self-identify with any particular religious group. Many Christians try to avoid that particular term to describe their religious-identity. They may call themselves "a Jesus-follower" or use some other expression or way of speaking to describe "who" or "what" they are.

There are several reasons for doing this. One is that the word, "Christian," sometimes carries negative associations or connotations. Some feel that if just replacing the word "Christian" with another locution can effectively remove a stumbling block from some person's road to receiving the gospel, we should by all means do so. And that seems right up to a point (although I wonder how effective it really is); but we must not move too quickly to that solution. After all, is it just because of the Crusades (11th, 12th, and 13th Centuries) and Inquisition (15th Century) that Christianity has a "bad name"? I would sooner see us rehabilitate the label than discard it for another that will, in time, also become tarnished, just to be discarded for still another.

Another reason is that the basic meaning of "Christian" is not always clear; Christianity today is divided in so many ways. All manner of people self-identify as "Christian," many of whom teach things and live in ways that are clearly contrary to all Biblical revelation and church tradition. Mightn't we consider discarding the label on the grounds that it just is not effective at delimiting who does and does not belong to the faith? What does it mean to be a Christian? Is every person who self-identifies as a Christian, really a Christian? And if not, then what is the point of the label? What about people who wouldn't call themselves "Christian" but have an active relationship with Jesus Christ? Are they Christian nonetheless?

As I lay out these preliminary questions, I find myself breaking into a metaphorical (or is that 'metaphysical'?) cold sweat. This is all sounding very-heavily philosophy-of-language-ish and I can't say that I'm enthusiastic about stepping out into that particular swampy morass. Fortunately, I think we can develop some helpful points without delving into the depths of language.** So let's dive in.

--

One of the most common ways of identifying who belongs to the group of people known as "Christians" is doctrine.

In its surveys, the Barna Research Group defines "Born again Christians" as "people who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and who also indicated they believe that when they die they will go to Heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior." " 'Evangelicals' meet the born again criteria (described above) plus seven other conditions. Those include saying their faith is very important in their life today; believing they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; believing that Satan exists; believing that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; asserting that the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today." (Barna Update, March 27, 2006)

Now if I were having a discussion of this topic with philosophy-people, the natural question that would arise at this point might look something like this: Are the conditions listed above either necessary or sufficient to delimit the class of people we would normally want to call Christian? Put another way, Do we believe that that list is adequate for the purpose of identifying who is a "Born again Christian" or an 'Evangelical', or should the list be expanded or should some items be removed? For instance, there's nothing on that list about the deity of Christ, the doctrine of the virgin birth, or the Trinity. Would we be willing to call a person a "Born again Christian" if they denied the deity of Christ? Would we be willing to call a person an Evangelical who did not believe in the Trinity? Are we comfortable with the idea that a person could deny all of the seven 'Evangelical'-points and still be counted as a "Born again Christian"? Or consider the child who has accepted Jesus Christ as her savior but may not be able to articulate clearly and succinctly the nature of her commitment--are we going to assert definitively that she is not a Christian?

It is worries of just this sort that cause some people to reject altogether such methods for determining who is and is not Christian. Some go so far as to assert the complete irrelevance of doctrine. After all, just because a person (through simple confusion or ignorance) puts the check-mark in the wrong box on the survey--is that any reason to conclude that they do not have a real relationship with Jesus? But this reaction errs in a couple of ways. In the first place, it fails to recognize the proper role and function of such surveys. And in the second, it fails to take seriously the inherent limitations that the method must impose on the data derived therefrom. What people who make these mistakes don't seem to realize--in other words--is that surveys like those conducted by the Barna Group are not intended to definitively determine who is and who is not a Christian. Be assured that there will be no doctrine exam for entering heaven and the Barna Group knows that.

But to be fair, it is not just critics of this method who tend to misconstrue it. There are well-meaning pastors and teachers who will take results from a survey like this and build a sermon series around it--the implicit goal being to educate people so that they get the right answers on the survey. These well-meaning people also make the mistake of thinking that the survey results, in a sense, constitute one's Christianity.

--

How should we approach such surveys? What is their relationship to the question of who is and isn't a "Christian" and to the use and proper application of that label? At the root of such surveys is, I think, a very natural kind of intuition. Human beings are highly complex creatures, but also highly structured. If one were to try and grasp everything that is going on inside a human being at any given moment, one would certainly be overwhelmed by the mass of activity that confronted one. Fortunately, we don't have to grasp everything that is going on in a person in order to have a useful handle on him or her. A doctor doesn't need to check the status and activity of every white-blood cell in your body in order to determine whether you are sick or not; he just takes your temperature. Your mother (or wife) doesn't need to know every thought that is running through your head in order to discern whether you are angry; she just looks at your face. And, it is thought, one doesn't need to know every facet of a person's life in order to know whether he or she is a Christian or not; one need only look for certain key markers. The diagnostician's task is to find the tell-tale signs that indicate the presence of something deeper--the "tips of the ice-berg" that evince the presence of a massive crystal-structure.

"But," one might ask, "why use doctrinal points as the pertinent 'markers'?" to which my initial reply might be, "Why not?" Actually, I have a better answer than that. (At least I hope so.) Again, I appeal to what I take to be a natural kind of intuition. If I claimed to be a close friend of President Bush but, when you asked me to describe him, gave you all sorts of incorrect facts about him, you would doubt my claim to really know him. If I claimed to be a chemist and told you that the chemical composition of water is H(2)-S-O(4), you would doubt my claim about my vocation. And if I claimed to be a Christian but could tell you nothing true about Jesus, who He was, when He lived, and what He did--or about any number of other areas that are significant for the Christian faith--you could legitimately doubt that I was, in fact, a Christian.

Are there other 'markers' one might consider? Certainly. Probably one has already thought of Jesus' own words in John 13:35--"By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." And doesn't that lay it out clearly? Love is the key. Those who are particularly adamantly opposed to doctrine's central place (or what they suppose to be its central place) may turn to just such passages as this. They may also turn to 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul writes, "If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge... but do not have love, I am nothing," and to 1 Corinthians 8, where it is written, "Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies." Surely, they will say, the church has been misguided to emphasize doctrine so heavily and to make it the most important marker of the Christian life. After all, haven't there been many throughout history who have known their doctrine to the letter and yet failed to walk as true Christians? The pharisees immediately come to mind.

But this is to misunderstand another important point. Must we choose between knowledge and love? between truth and grace? between doctrinal correctness and a compassionate heart? If we cannot envision these two in harmony; if we cannot see that they are integrally-connected and inter-dependent; if we cannot see that they find their ultimate source in one and the same Living Word, then we are indeed blind. [And certainly this is the blindness of our culture. In a world that is growing more postmodern and less patient with anything like serious thinking... but that's a cultural critique that will need more substantiating elsewhere.] What is really at the heart of this, it seems to me, is that we have lost sight of how important doctrine really is for our lives.

Doctrine--another category of knowledge--is what enables us to navigate the world. Moral truths, spiritual truths, are as important for getting around the world as scientific and other more 'practical' truths. I won't delve too deeply in to the point here. After all, this is a blog entry about labels and not doctrine. But I can personally attest to the significant transformation that comes with a growing understanding of doctrine. What is the connection between doctrine and love? There are many different kinds of love, and variations of love, and degrees of love, and motives for love, and... well, you get the idea. Now to which of these was Jesus referring when he said, "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another"? Will simply any love do? Will simply anything that today's world calls 'love' do? Certainly not. Knowledge must be a part of love. That's a very rough and short way of putting it--but, again, this entry is already too long.

--

Our topic, in case you've forgotten, is labels and what defines and delimits the scope of a label. What delimits the scope of the label, "Christian"? Doctrine, by itself, won't do. Neither will love, by itself. What about the two together? That won't quite cut it either. Christianity isn't just about knowing the right things and doing the right things. Christianity is a relationship. At its heart is a commitment to follow Jesus Christ as a disciple. Certainly this will involve growing in knowledge and taking up certain practices, but only as part of that life of discipleship. These are some of the marks of a disciple, but notice that no easy formula will capture who is "in" and who is "out". Some people who are at the beginning stages of that journey of discipleship will certainly not have all the characteristics of those who have been on it for fifty years. The beginning chemist, carpenter, or writer will make many mistakes that an experienced professional would not. Thankfully a beginning musician is not disqualified from being such for getting her scales wrong in her first weeks and months.

But does this really leave us completely in the dark about who is and is not seeking to follow Christ? Here is where experience plays a critical part. Only through experience do we truly come to recognize the fruits that mark the presence of the Spirit in a person's life. Doctrine and theory divorced from these will only get us so far--about as far as a theory-of-wood-cutting course will get us apart from an actual wood shop. Sometimes the signs will be as obvious as doctrinal aberration. Sometimes they will be far more subtle. But we must be careful to keep in mind not to fall into either of two extremes.

First, we must guard against an undue inclusivism. To modern ears, this may strike as an oxymoron; is it ever possible to unduly inclusive--to open the doors of the Kingdom too widely? Indeed, it is, and the members of the Church must clearly understand that they do no one any good by making him think that he is following Jesus Christ when he is not. How is it possible to do that? Again, we can begin by thinking about doctrine. Some Christians seem to think that the only thing that is necessary to get into heaven is that you know all the right doctrines. That might seem hard to some at first, but, in fact, it's much easier than surrendering one's life to the lordship of Jesus Christ, which is the true cost of discipleship. But since doctrinal correctness does seem to some to be too hard and heavy a burden, some churches lighten the conditions even more. In order to make their message more appealing to the public--in order to welcome still more people into the fold--they lighten and soften the gospel still more. All Christianity amounts to is attending church regularly and being a generally good person. In fact, you don't even have to attend church regularly, and you only have to appear to be a good person--just so long as you don't damage the reputation of the church. And so many people walk around with the label, "Christian," who have no real interest in following Jesus Christ; and the truth is, people can tell.

But what is the harm, in this, one may ask. As long as they are being pretty good people, what is the harm in their being included in the community of 'Christ'? The harm lies in the delusion in which they persist, because there will come a day when all pretense is stripped away and we will all stand before the real and risen and living Lord Jesus Christ. And He will not know them, and they will not know Him. Many will stand at the gates of heaven, look inside, see what it is all about, and say, "This is not what my Christianity was about. This is not what I signed on for. This is not what I'm interested in." And they will turn away. So often it is in the name of love that we mold the church to conform to the culture; but by coating the truth in an attractive lie, we deny people the opportunity to face and come to grips with the true and living Jesus while there is still time for them to turn. (Surely this is the wisdom behind 1 Corinthians 5 and 1 Timothy 1.)

--

This is the grave danger that faces those who have grown up in the Church. I myself was raised in the church, born to Christian parents, saved at the age of four; and perhaps the greatest danger facing me and those like me, which is also one of our greatest blessings, is that we are partially insulated from the real hardship of living in the world as part of the world. We have no memory of what it was like, as Paul describes it, "[when] you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." We have not had the experience of reaching the end of our rope, of hearing the call of Christ from the depths and darkness of our own brokenness. We have been raised to act well, to know doctrine, to attend church regularly, and do not know what it is really like to live without those things and without God in the world. And it is easy to settle for a pretty-good Christian life and too easy to ignore the genuine call of Christ.

If we reject that call and take our Christianity to extend only as far as our visible actions and do not abide in the Spirit, then we are left defenseless and doubly-vulnerable to the wiles of the world. Having never faced the bitter consequences that attend the ways of the world, it is even easier for its attractive and alluring qualities to ensnare us. The carnal, lukewarm life, which is no Life at all thus takes hold of us, so that even many of us may one day approach the gates of heaven and look upon a Christ that we don't recognize, that we never followed, and that we have no interest in pursuing.

How do we remedy this? One of the first and most useful steps, is to take seriously how imperfect we really are. This might sound like a mockish charade to those who are unfamiliar with the Christian life or who have never taken seriously their own brokenness; and I am not recommending that one invent or conjure artificial notions of one's own wickedness. I really don't think one needs to. If I sit down and think about it, I'll come quite naturally and readily to the conclusion that I am broken; that I am incompetent in so many ways; that I fail regularly to be even minimally charitable with those around me; that it is God's grace alone that has saved me from the consequences of my own stupidity and wickedness over and over again. In fact, if I am quite honest with myself, I'll realize just how hard I work to hide the fact that I am broken in this way. The one and only hope that I have is captured in the words of John Newton: " 'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home."

Having realized that it is God's grace and mercy, alone, that has kept us safe thus far, will we not all the more readily throw ourselves upon that very same amazing grace for the future? That is the second step--to abide and walk and follow in the way that God has laid out for us. The life of following Christ is the life of discipleship, is the true 'Christian' life.

And so this brings us back to the main line of our discussion.

--

We must be clear that it does no one any good to be deceived into thinking that they are following Christ when they are not. If, in order to be inclusive, we loosen our doctrine and convictions, then we cut ourselves off from reality and the ability to bring real solutions to the real problems of people's lives. This is the first dangerous extreme involved in delimiting what it means to be a 'Christian'.

The other dangerous extreme is to make the conditions too strict. Here, the main worry is with an undue lack of charity. Earlier we observed that we will find disciples at every stage of development and growth. We must be able and willing to teach and rebuke and correct--but always in love. Experience and sensitivity to the Spirit are absolutely indispensable for this kind of work.

--

The last point I would like to raise has to do with the proper use of labels. Label-making, as a natural human activity, gives us a quick and convenient way to partition the world. Partitioning the world is important. It's important to keep bleach and ammonia-based cleaners separate. It's important to know whether today is Wednesday or Saturday. It's important to know whether that plant belongs to the family Actinidiaceae or Anacardiaceae. And it's important to know where people stand, broadly, in their relationship with Jesus Christ. But important for what? That is the key question. After all, if you're not mixing cleaners or are on vacation this entire week or are nowhere near a botanical garden, certain ways of partitioning the world may not be especially relevant. And just because a specimen belongs to one family doesn't necessarily mean that you'll treat it differently from another.

Among human beings we find both many similarities and many differences. For instance, we are all, alike, created in the image of God. It is on that basis that we are to respect one another and receive certain fundamental rights. Differences of religion or denomination do not negate those. But difference of religion or denomination may have significant practical consequences in other areas.

I have noted in previous blog entries the importance of taking seriously differences and the practical implications of those differences. Our modern culture does not do a very good job of that. Dallas Willard has pointed out that nobody in America wants to be tolerated--because 'toleration' means that I think you're wrong. We don't want to have to deal with people who think we're wrong; we just want to be right. And so that virtue is thrown out the window. We don't know how to act in light of our many differences and commonalities without becoming nasty about it. If you don't approve of my personal beliefs, that is often construed as a personal attack as opposed to simply disapproving of my personal beliefs. Can you see the difference? And labels get caught up in this mess; labels become tools for marking people as the enemy as opposed to marking people simply as belonging to a certain group. Can you see the difference?

We know we will have matured as a Christian culture, not when we are free of denominations, but when we are divided into denominations, informed about our denominations, committed to our denominations, and still willing to work together across denominations to accomplish God's call. Denominations are the difference but the call of the gospel is the same. We should share in common what we have in common and treat as different what is truly different. Can you see the difference?

--

That last bit, in particular, was pretty vague. I don't have a set formula for how to work across denominational lines. But I'm pretty sure that our solution lies nowhere in the direction of denominational sloppiness (just like our solution does not lie in the direction of doctrinal sloppiness). Again, it may be hard to see how strict denominationalism and doctrinal-correctness can be compatible with a sharing, loving community, but I think that's the blindness of our culture.

So what have I said, amidst rabbit-trails and side-reflections? Labels play a useful and essential, but limited, role in our world. Ignorance and uncharity lead to twisted and misconstrued labels. Knowledge and true love are the solution to those problems. Pseudo-knowledge and worldly-love will only make things worse.

--

Alright, that's more than enough for now. No one reads these anyway, right? So there's no point in me apologizing for my ramblings. Ha! This is good practice and edifying for me.

**...and I'm actually skeptical of how much useful work would be accomplished by such an excursion.

God bless,

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Graduate 74: A Season of Thanksgiving

Some weeks back, my friend Michael visited me on a Thursday evening. We had dinner together and spent a couple hours talking about life and philosophy. (Pretty much the recipe for a perfect evening.) Ten minutes after he left, I realized that I had left one of my textbooks in his car. I needed that textbook for the next days class. It was already late in the evening so I would have to drive out early the next morning (sometime before rush-hour traffic) in order to pick it up from him at his home in Corona.

At first, I was (I think) understandably frustrated with myself and with the situation--the inconvenience to Michael and myself, the hassle of rising extra early, the worry about meeting up with him successfully.

But then I began to think about all the good things that I had that made possible just this kind of inconvenience. If I didn't have a friend like Michael--a close friend who I know cares about me, with whom I can talk about all sorts of things, a brother in Christ with whom I can pray--certainly I wouldn't be in this situation. If I wasn't taking classes at UC Riverside--if I hadn't been admitted to a doctoral program, with fellowships and stipends adequate to my needs--I wouldn't be in this situation. If I didn't have a car there wouldn't even be a question about the possibility of my driving out to Corona that next morning.

And would I ever think of giving up my friendship with Michael, my educational situation, and my car, just in order to avoid the inconvenience of driving out to Corona early one morning? There are people in this world wanting for the resources to be able to make such a trip as a necessary part of their lives. I am able to make the trip as a matter of convenience.

Isn't it funny that we have the luxury of living such crazy, complicated lives. That's right--the luxury. Probably the majority of people in the world are focusing on whether they can get food for the next day. I get to worry about how quickly I can pay off student-loans. Don't get me wrong; paying off student-loans is a big deal. But to fret and worry about it? It's in those rare moments of lucidity that that strikes me as just silly.

--

Lord God, thank you for the luxury of being able to worry about student loan payments and philosophy essays and reading assignments and working out schedules for visiting friends. Thank you for that.

Now help me to knock it off. :-)

--

If God provides for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, won't he provide for your and my needs? If he's taken care of food and clothing and shelter--all the necessary stuff--, do we really need to worry about all the un-necessary stuff?

Lord God, you have given me so much. Family and friends, food and shelter, transportation, money, education, skills. Help me not to lose sight of that.

And help me to be generous with what you've given me. Help me to not hold it close but to give freely of what you have freely given to me. Let gratitude bear fruit in joyful giving and sharing, in this and every season of thanksgiving.

--

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.