Do Something

 

Operation Appalachian Compassion 

Saturday, September 28th, 2024 – I woke up Saturday morning, had my coffee, did some reading, and perused the news.  I began seeing videos of the devastation that had taken place as a result of Hurricane Helene.   The images were shocking, and it rocked me to the core.  Most of what I was seeing came from the mountains in North Carolina, some were my old haunts.  I was born in North Wilkesboro, NC and I have family around that area that were cutoff as many others were because of washed out roads and bridges.  I vacationed at Cherokee as an adolescent, went to youth Camp in Whittier, learned to ski at Beech Mountain.  I have floated those rivers, hiked those trails, wandered those mountains and valleys, rivers, and streams, and they are as much a part of who I am as the branches on my family tree.  I saw houses floating down rivers or smashed at the bottom of steep slopes.  I saw the utter loss and bereavement on the face of a man who couldn’t find his wife and child.  I felt that unbelievable hopelessness creeping in.  Then I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, “Whatcha gonna do?”  I didn’t know, but I had to do something, and I had to do it quickly.

Being raised in a Pentecostal denomination, I both greatly appreciate it and am annoyed by it.  I have never fit in that organized, starched, pressed, folded, and complicated institution we call the Church today.  My religion is more St. James-y, and it is because of the 2^nd Chapter of Acts.  You believe in God? (This is me talking to myself.)  You have had a supernatural Holy Ghost experience?  That’s great!  Now whatcha gonna do?  Faith without works…  Things I have learned:  Holy Ghost experiences are experiences and not the point.  The very beginning of the Bible teaches us how it is supposed to work.  Formless, void, darkness and the Holy Ghost takes a hover (because … no feet.) Genesis 1.  Works followed and everything we see, smell, hear, touch, taste, and that 6^th one… came into being.  And of course, everything He does is good. There must be works.  You must have that experience, and then you must do something!  The point is to become an agent through which God can show up and rescue, teach, heal, chastise, protect, soothe, restore, etc., etc.  The point is to become His idea of you so you can:

1. Be who He made you to be and

2. Do cool stuff He wants you to do.

(This is how I preach to myself.  No worries, I’ll send myself an offering if it was a good sermon.)

So, feeling that I had to do something, I thought I would procure my son’s pickup truck and fill it with stuff.  Then I thought, “that might last 20 people 2 days.”  I definitely needed something else.  I know some pastor dudes, so I thought I’d give them a call and see if we couldn’t put something together.  I called pastors from two Churches of God and one Assembly of God.  They all were compelled to send texts, emails, social media posts, etc., to engage the Saints.  And they were very engaged.  Friends, family, and coworkers were also sending gifts of money to make this mission be accomplished!  I procured a truck from the Penske company, which after learning what I planned to do with it, charged less than half what other companies were charging, one of which is a company I am employed with full time!  God already had put it on the hearts of everyone else even before I saw that first video on Saturday, the 28^th of September.

There’s more.  A few weeks before, Operation Compassion, a para-Church of God ministry for emergency relief in Cleveland, TN was seeking a space that would facilitate their operations better.  They found it.  They gather, store, and deliver donations via trucks and the information they receive from boots-on-the-ground pastors and others within the areas of need.  Weeks later, on the 29^th of September, the day me and my son, Caleb arrived at Operation Compassion, the Director of Operations, Tony Clanton, informed me that they had just obtained the use of the warehouse we delivered to, and that the other one would not have been able to facilitate all the donations from all over that were coming in.  Again, God sees around the bend of the river and goes before!  We say that it is amazing, but amazing is just God being our Good Father.

On Sunday the 29^th of September, Caleb and I drove around to the churches and loaded up all the donations.  By the time we loaded items from the 2^nd church we realized we were going to be out of room in the truck for the 3^rd church and the golf courses.  So, a brother from the 2^nd church donated his vehicle, time, and fuel to take the overflow to Operation Compassion in Cleveland, TN.  Because of this we were able to load items donated to all the churches, one coffee house here in Huntsville, AL, and two golf courses.  Once folks heard what we were doing, they piled on! 

A two-hour trip turned into a four-hour trip from Huntsville, AL to Cleveland, TN because of that infamous span on I-24 at I-59 to the I-75 junction in Chattanooga.  Once we arrived and unloaded the truck, all were amazed at the amount and variety of donated items.  People can be very thoughtful.  Looking at the mound of items donated in a very short amount of time really boosted my confidence in people, and not all of them were believers or church-goers.  And, we all spoke of the grace of our Good Father and Holy Spirit moving the hearts of so many people, and different kinds of people, to help in the hour of need. 

I hesitate posting this report because I am always checked by the Word Himself telling us not to do our “good deeds” for others to see.  But I desire to relate this small thing in order to share a real-life example of how God knows what we have need of before we even ask and lines everything up to work for His glory and the relief of His children, believers or not.  This is our Creator, our God, our King!  It is an utter joy to be a part of what He does on this earth.  And I admonish you, listen to that still small voice when it speaks.  Let your faith be engaged and act upon those nudges.  God has already gone before and is waiting on us to be and to do what He has purposed-for the good of others, and for His magnificent glory!

buried

"Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies..." Tough words. Nothing, nothing good comes easy. Being saved is easy from the pilgrim perspective. Confess with your mouth and believe in your heart. The evidence is everywhere. There is nowhere that you can look without seeing the Designer's signature. "Only a fool says in his heart there is no God." There it is. But, to go beyond that, beyond the altar of forgiveness, it takes something more. What is this seed anyway? Every person is given a gift, something that is deep inside us, that dream, that fire, that passion, that when it is tapped enables us to do more, reach further, to come into a level of living that is beyond what seems natural. This gift is given to us by the Designer and it causes us to hunger for eternal things. If we begin to engage it, it brings us into the eternal realm. Once we go there, we are forever marked, changed because of it. This gift, this seed is faith.

Much has been said and written about faith. People who talk about having faith can mean confidence in their own ability and persistance to attaining some their goal. Others' ideas about faith has to do with some mysterious afterlife, some out-of-body experience that caused them to "have faith" that life on this side is more than we make of it, more than we can see. But those are only shadows, cheap imitations of the real gift that still lies deep within each individual. "Broad is the way that leads to destruction..." 

The vast majority of us never even begin to search for it. Most of us are consumed with trying to please surface demands-measuring up to family expectations, our own expectations, or just getting by and having at least a little superficial enjoyment here and there. It is so easy to go the way of the world, not questioning, not pressing for truth or reason. Its comfortable and very deceptive. But, underneath all that self-satisfied effort and "progressive" dribble, there is the real question of life and the Answer waiting to reveal Himself.

But we keep busy, running around, doing our job, providing for our families, doing some charitable giving, going on vacation, etc. We keep the most amazing, humbling, fulfilling, audacious gift buried under a mountain of musts that never really brings us to the place where we know we have done something that matters, something with roots in the eternal.

"But narrow is the gate and straight is the way that leads to eternal life..." For those few who have dared to dig down into themselves, to find the real kind of faith and to engage it, eureka! Nirvana! All that stuff and more. It takes guts to find it. But it takes more guts to use it, because once its found, it has to be buried in a different place, a place of His choosing, not ours. And to do that, we have to be willing to bury ourselves. We have to die to our dreams and allow them to be buried along with our "old selves" like a kernel of corn dropped into the ground. We have to trust in the promise that He will make it grow and bear fruit. Which will create more seed. What to do with my seed of faith? I have to bury it.

blink

She used to tell me I'd think this way, that I would be dazed and amazed about where the time went. Blink. "Prepare for the future you want, don't just let it happen," she would say, or something like that. Blink. "When do you think you'll start having kids?" Blink. "You have 2 now, trying for a girl?" Blink. Now we do not talk very much. She was right about the time thing. I can see why parents try to live vicariously through their children. But my life is not interesting enough, nor is it one of grand influence that a parent would relish boasting about. I did not prepare for my future near as well as I could have.

I was young when youth was in the throws of death, the generation after "if it feels good, do it." That was what we were all weaned on in the '80's. Our M-TV generation accelerated the boozing, sexing, and doping, and coined the motto "whatever." "If you want to dress like a woman and wear panty-hose, man, whatever." "If you dig communism, whatever." "If you want to worship the earth and say God does not exist so you feel better about your twisted lifestyle, hey, who am I to judge? Whatever."

When I had questions, I could not find the words to ask. Once I found my words, I was convinced no one cared to listen. There is the problem in communication. I think this was the epidemic of my generation, the curse. The ones who should have engaged our questions were too busy working on the cure for the epidemic of their generation. And the ones who did listen to our questions and dared to give answers were, themselves, full of questions, thus, highly unqualified to give real answers. We took their que and modified the parts of their answers we did not like. This could be how our once God-fearing nation is being reduced to a paltry piece of what it was.

Now, phew! Time sure flies. What's that, son? You need to talk?

audit 2023

Today is the last day of this year, 2023.  It is 31*F and sunny at 0710.  I am having a cup of coffee and sponging the tranquility of this morning moment.  This is my favorite time of day, I think.  Or at least I think so at this moment.  The dew is still glistening on the roofs and ground because the sun has not risen above the tree tops on the eastern horizon.  All is quiet and still, and it is good.

Christmas has come and gone for the 53^rd time in my life.  New Year’s celebrations have mostly been a bummer because, well, either too religiousy, too drunky, or too dull.  Maybe five times in my lifetime have I experienced a joyous ringing in of the new year, and been properly motivated to face the unseen challenges of it.  But I can’t remember which years or even where it was.  This time of year feels more hollow than most.  I can remember a hundred Christmas mornings.  I have no interest in remembering New Year’s nights, rehearsals for disappointment.  Yeah, that sounds a little dark, but honestly. 

I do have New Year’s traditions, processes.  But they are all inward.  There’s the yearly audit of significant events.  There’s the yearly audit of significant triumphs, and defeats.  I feel the frost of mundanity.  “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”  Did I make more money?  Did I spend too much?  What increases have I?  What increases may come?  Have I been impacted by the life of another?  Have I made an impact on the life of another?  What have I created?  What have I destroyed?  What have I hated?  What or whom have I lifted?  Have I been a better husband to my wife?  Have I been a better father, son, brother, uncle, cousin, nephew?  How many times did I put my foot in my mouth? How many times did I lie (for those interested in cold, hard truth)?  What sins have I grappled with most this year?  Where have I become unfeeling?  Whom have I, perhaps unconsciously, cut off from access to me?  Who has cut access off to me?  Why?  Remedy? 

A mountain of disappoint in myself pulverizes down.  Some audits bring a glint of satisfaction, some nausea.  It all settles down, driving, pressing, pushing.  I groan under the weight of pressure trying to crush me.  Sometimes I want it to crush me.  Every year I screw up enough to deserve to be crushed entirely, and sometimes, I wish to surrender to it. Then I remember those who are counting on me.  Whatever trespasses I have committed, (and there is always more than good deeds done), I have to maintain a certain mental and spiritual stability-for them. The only shield between my immediate family and utter chaos is me.  My sins are mine, not theirs.  I must stand and fulfill my vows, my responsibilities.  I have to.  Let the mountain try to crush me.  I’m dumb like a rock.  Where sin abounds… 

The giant orb of energy does its thing to the earth.  I’m reminded that God brings sunshine and rain to the just and the unjust alike.  The sun will come out tomorrow.  It’s a reminder to my dismal auditing that there’s another Auditor Who’s reckoning is more perfect-and His mercy and grace pierces my darkness like the rays of the sun bringing warmth and energy to sleeping earth.  The standard He uses in calculating my life is not transgressions versus good deeds as it is with humankind.  It’s the Son.  When the rays of the Son break my tree line I have to respond to His mercies (withholding deserved punishment) and accept His grace (endowing unmerited favor).

Whatever your audit turns up, the only thing that matters going into this new year is the Son arising on your situation, and you receiving the energy of His life into all the areas of your yard.  Next time you sit with a cup of coffee on your front porch surveying your lawn, maybe you will think about how God blesses because of His great love for us all, and how He sent His Son to invalidate our audits.  Just as the giant orb of energy in the sky just keeps doing it’s thing, God loves simply because that’s just the way He is.  It’s what He is.  It’s Who He is.

Happy New Year.

yourself

You have to be yourself. 

You.  Have to.  Be yourself.

You have to be.  Yourself.

You have to be yourself.  You can never authentically be anything until you understand that.  To be yourself you have to know yourself.  To know yourself, you have to try different things.  You have to strive for something.  You have to eff up.  You have to give yourself room, latitude, permission to grab something that calls to your deepest place. Try, strive, mess it all up, assess yourself with brutal honesty, and do it again differently with what you have learned from your experience.  You have to be brave to step out.  You can be careful, but sometimes you just have to throw yourself into it, really give it a full-on edge-of-insanity whirl.  “A man’s gotta know his limitations,” goes the old movie quote.  For sure that goes for women, too.  A person has to know their limits, and the only way to do that is to answer that call from your deepest place with reckless abandon.

I’m not taking what God desires for you out of this discussion.  God made us, and we’re all His original ideas from the start.  Godless folks try unnaturally to keep God out of everything, and religious folks try to unnaturally insert God into everything.  Rule of thumb:  whether or not you believe in God, just shut up about it.  I’m talking about the human experience here, not Ministry or Marxism.  Living is learning how to use the tools in your bag to bring about the most contented outcome.  Whether or not you believe it was fate, God, or a roll of the cosmic dice that gave you your respective “bag of tools” is immaterial.

To be content…  Some call it happiness.  Some call it Zen.  Nirvana was a 90’s band that sang about smelling teen spirit, I think.  Paul of Tarsus wrote, in the first century A.D., that he had learned the secret of being content in every situation.  Rich, poor, favorable, refugee status, in every situation.  I like that.  He had to learn how.  Contentedness did not fall out of the tree of over religious zealots.  It did not come with a membership to the Free Masons.  Nor did he achieve it through any religious, political, or environmental ideology.  Being content, being happy is something you have to LEARN.  It’s like ‘Getting To Know Yourself 201.’ 

I know you religious folk are hyperventilating about now because you think I am trying to remove God from an article about being yourself.  No doubt you Godless folks are flipping out because I used an illustration out of the New Testament in the Bible. Track with me here:  If I go camping, and I do every chance I get, I go for many reasons- rest, restoration, rejuvenation, natural beauty therapy, to test my skills, etc.  When I am camping I am not reciting those goals a loud to myself or the world at large.  I am not reminding myself to breathe the air, or to smell the flowers, the pine scent, or the freshness of a cool breeze rising off the water next to the trail.  I am not proclaiming my meals to the forest creatures.  Is this an absurd enough picture?  The trees are there, and were long before me.  I do not have to proclaim their glory to revel in the things of nature.  The mountains I may be hiking through have been standing tall for thousands of years, and they are there for anyone to see.  Likewise, if you are all about God and going to church, etc., then be about it and shut your mouth.  God is no less God.  Everyone who is looking will see.  If you are all about…  not God… that will be quite obvious to anyone paying attention as well.  No one has to proclaim or shout any of that.  It will be obvious.  Living is not demanding others think, believe, or act as you.  Being yourself is finding what you think about all those questions, studying a little to make it valid in your own mind and to be able to give an answer if someone asks.  It’s going through life marking down questions and making notations in your mind about what you observe, tapping knowledgeable sources, and coming to some solid conclusions within your own consciousness.  Yeah, sorry Bible-thumper folks.  I don’t mean it to sound “new age-y.”  It is what it is.

Living contentedly is a learned skill, and it is parallel to knowing yourself and being yourself.  Tragically, so many succumb to the ambush of the environment they grew up in, society, their education, etc.  A really huge enemy to living contentedly and being yourself are expectations placed on you by others and/or you.  What do you know and how do you know it?  Was it drilled into you by your parish priest?  Your hyper-expressive Pentecostal pastor?  Your parents?  Your extended family?  The company you keep?  Expectations are fine, when there is a reason for them, reasons like you have discovered your love for business, studied it, practiced it, etc., and now you expect to see positive results from pushing in that direction.  But blind, traditional, familial expectations are a total drag and usually bind rather than liberate. Find out for yourself.  Yes, you can trust the people who know and love you. But do not take their word for it.  Go find out through observation, trial, and failure.   Don’t be afraid to “eff-up find out,” as my Gen-Xers are so fond of saying.

desert

 Am I happy?  Am I sad?

In the in-between, I might be mad.

Mad as a hornet, mad as a hare.

Reinventing me, I lost that flare.

Youthful hope once broke through the pain.

But in this now can it happen again?

What I would be is what I have become.

All the parts do not equal the sum.

Behind, only memories, ahead, the drum beat.

I was purpose driven, but the years are fleet.

The light in my eyes, the sparkle, the twinkle

Grows dim with time and surrounded by wrinkles.

Never had as much as I have now.

Seems I was happier with nothing, somehow.

Nothing but a future that I grasped with both hands,

When I had the pluck and mountains of sand.

I used to know what it meant to be free.

But I lost my compass in this desert in me...

This desert in me...

The sun passes over, and the stars, and the moon

Day after step, I'll be dry again soon.

Those that follow have to see I'm a fraud.

All I can do is keep pointing to God.

I know He is true, I know He is real.

If I have nothing else I am kept by this zeal.

Let God be true and every man a liar.

In this cold world I stay warm by this fire.

Its all gone to shit on its way to hell

They know the true God but keep worshiping Baal.

There are those who resist, refuse to comply

Proclaiming the message that this world will die

To those who will not hear and stiffen their necks.

They will be dashed on the rocks, souls shipwrecked.

The cares of this world, the weeds, and the stones

Choke me down again until my heart lies prone

Until over sands in the desert, again, He sends rain.

It trickles, then gushes through this dry plain.

Flowers of hope spring up, and I see

A garden is growing in this desert in me...

This desert in me...

Isaiah 35.1-10, Luke 8.4-15

now

 Christendom is filled with stories of people who did not fit in.  Stories in the Bible of those who were exiled from their homeland or society have become examples of how God used that time in exile to prepare them for some later work or ministry.  But as I read of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, of Amos, of Timothy, even of Nicodemus, I see a pattern of God using people in the place they are in, where they do not fit in, even in exile.  As Christians we hear a lot about the "next of God," the next ministry, the next season of life, the next moving of the Holy Spirit.  Rarely, if ever, do we hear about the "now."

Moses was a high society rich boy, a prince of Egypt who, at 40 years old was exiled to what his circles would consider a wasteland, a desert.  He was out there for 40 years.  He was 80 years old when he finally got around to the "Let My People Go" thing.  What was he doing out there?  He was tending sheep, a job that was a rudimentary idea of what God was planning for him-tending the "flock" of Israel.  And we are taught, even if indirectly, that his time was of no consequence other than preparation for the "next." But what impact may he have had in the middle of his "now" in the wastelands of the Sinai Peninsula?  Might his coming to the Midianites have been a "next" kind of event for them?  Might it have even been an answer to their prayers?  Though not an Israelite people, they worshipped Yaweh.  Moses met his wife out there.  Her father was a priest unto Yaweh among those dwellers of the desert.  What followers of God would not be praying for a Godly man for their daughters?  Today we pray for revival.  Might the followers of God in the desert have been seeking the Lord for a revival of sorts, for their "next" of God?  Then this prince of Egypt shows up out of nowhere...

Forty years of exile, what we have been taught to think of as merely preparation for Moses, yet the whole time he was a blessing to them in their "next," in his "now."  What events were heralded by Moses' showing up there?  Whatever they thought or discerned of him, it was good enough for their leader to give his daughter in marriage to this stranger from the west.  It was definitely significant, impacting, purposeful, not merely a preparation for Moses.  

Growing up in an american pentecostal denomination I observed pastors who were so into the "next of God" that they moved from church to church like women trying on dresses at Bloomingdale's.  The hit 'em and move on mentality was embedded into my psyche, and looking back from 52 years old, I am not pleased with the way I allowed this wrestlessness to invade, envelope, and enforce.  I have never had a tattoo, but I feel like a wrestless chaos has been tattooed on my life.  This has been a stronghold the enemy has used to keep me pinned in a place of uselessness.  There have been many bright spots, when God was doing something thru and beyond me, that has born fruit, even many years later.  But mostly when I was in a "now" place, where God was working, not only could I not recognize it as a "wait, chill, now" season and was always obsessed with the "next," it never felt like it was enough.  I was not enough in my own eyes and it consumed my planning, relationships, even tainted my faith.

The truth is none of us are ever enough to become His idea of us.  We are not even able to dream the right dreams without Him!  But for those in Him, the fact that we are not enough has to be enough.  Our fill, our enough is in Him, in Christ.  Though we may be thought of by others as lacking, ministry partners, coworkers, perhaps even our children, even as we know emphatically that we are not enough, yet, in Him it is enough.  In Him we are enough.  Success?  Yes!  Good!  It is enough.  Failure?  It digs, it hurts, it reveals, it teaches if we let it.  Yes!  It is enough.

When we evaluate our lives, especially in the "now" season, no glitz, no glam, in the middle of the day to day and we feel that we are not enough on this plain, in our eyes, we are in His!  You feel like you should be farther along in your career, ministry, what you are experiencing right now is so far from your plan of where you should be and what you should be doing, and you can't see the "next..."  Rest in the "now."  Just keep at it, work your job, cultivate relationships, keep at your ministry, outreach, whatever it is, just keep doing it because right now is the time you are being blessing to folks, you may be in the middle of being an answer to prayer for someone right in the boring, seemingly dead-end "NOW," even if you cannot see it!  Rest in the "NOW!"  Continue in the "NOW!"

Soon you will find your feelings have changed.  You will find your definition of success has changed.  You will find that you have changed and that you have been moving in the "next" of God and did not realize it.  The "next" happens when the "now" is fulfilled.  The kicker is we think we are allowed to make that call.  Certainly, we are free to subvert what God is doing, and He will just bring us around to another "now."

People who learned the "now" of God:  Enoch, Abel, Noah, Job, Abraham, Samuel, Esther, Ruth, David, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Amos, Joseph and Mary, John the Baptist, Steven, Paul, etc.

SELAH.  It means think about it.