The Good Portion

As a gardener I know firsthand how important soil is. Everything else can be just right, but if the soil is wrong my plants won’t survive, or if they do, they will never thrive. This is the fact of nature that Jesus appeals to in his Parable of the Sower: "A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold." Luke 8.5-8a It’s easy to confuse who we are in this parable. I’m always tempted to think of myself as the seed that grows or doesn’t grow. But in this parable the people are not the seed. Rather, "The seed is the word of God” (Lk. 8.11b). It is the word of God that the sower plants, and it is the word of God that is meant to grow and prosper. We are ...

In spite of her lengthy decline, I was nowhere near as prepared for my mother’s death as I thought. Only afterward did I learn that grief was not the straightforward thing I'd expected. And even though I had every reason to believe that my mother was with the Lord, I found myself grappling with the cold reality of death, not just for my mother but for everyone. When she died it was like a veil was lifted. I saw clearly for the first time the horror of what I’d only given lip-service to before: everywhere and every day some deeply beloved person is dying. Every day, everywhere someone is aching and weeping for their loss. And if the Bible is true, then not all of those people will spend their eternity with Christ in heaven. As my mother’s death brought home this tragedy, my heart began to break. "Some of us have absorbed a form of theology with all the answers. We can offer standard answers to every problem that comes along, especially if the problem is afflicting some other pe...

I’m individualistic by nature. (Aren’t we all?) Even now, after years of being a Christian, the word “submission” can make me squirm just a little. I don’t especially enjoy being under authority. I still want to do what I want to do.  In part, I’m a product of my culture. Let’s face it, submission is not what made America a nation. Though we have “authorities,” we don’t feel particularly beholden to obey them. After all, we elected them, right? They answer to us, which we take to mean that we are the authorities. Don’t tread on us. This mindset permeates every corner of our lives, even as Christians. We like to think we choose God, when in fact it is He who chooses us (Jn 15:16, Eph. 1:4). We are very good at deluding ourselves into thinking we are submitting to Christ by re-imagining Him as someone who supports our interests, a God who backs our agenda. Or maybe that’s just me. But perhaps it’s not a distinctly American trait, and perhaps it’s not just me. Peter had big plans for...

 “He that knows better how to tame a shrew,  Now let him speak: ‘tis charity to shew.” Shakespeare never set out to preach the gospel, but in The Taming of the Shrew, he did exactly that—to me anyway. I’m told the message of this play is well-hated these days. I can see why, with it’s old-fashioned views of women. But I’m not talking about women’s issues, per se, I’m talking about the Church—the Bride of Christ—the Shrew. Any person well acquainted with church history, and any Christian well acquainted with his or her own heart knows, Christ took a shrew for his bride. And like Petruchio in the play, he was under no illusions. He knew what he was getting into, but he would not be deterred. He undertook His task with wholehearted zeal and with perfect confidence in a successful outcome. “Why came I hither but to that intent?  Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?  Have I not in my time heard lions roar?  Have in not heard the sea, puft up with winds,  ...

One Saturday morning. I relaxed on my pillow and sank into my prayers with a leisurely attitude. "I should ask the Lord what to do with this rare, unstructured day," I thought. And so I began, "Lord, how would you have me use this day?" But the first word of my prayer echoed in my head "Lord . . .”   “Lord," what an odd word. Here in “the land of the free" we don’t have lords. We have employers (hopefully), but no masters. We have rights on which no one has the right to tread. Our lives are rich with options, opportunities, and the freedom to pursue them. Besides taxes, we have few mandates (and we resent even those). Do we, who doff our hats to no man, even know what it means when we address Christ as "Lord"?   I am an American and I love this country. But seventeen years ago I was re-born a Christian, a citizen of a foreign country. That kingdom is not a democracy; it’s a monarchy. Christ is its king and his word is a constant reminder tha...

I think movies, in many ways, have done us a disservice. Seeing life on the big screen, larger than life, we lose sight of both the majesty and the miniscule-ness of life as it really is. We (or is it just me?) see Jesus as a giant figure, a massive close-up, a star on a screen, forgetting that He was a man. He was as invisible as we are from the distance of a mile. He was the same size as we are, more or less, from the distance of a hug. He was a man who could easily fit through the nearest doorway. On the other side of the world thousands of years ago, invisible to us both in space and time, tiny and barely noticeable, almighty God, vaster than all the universes, took on flesh. There and then He lived. There and then He loved, and taught, and served. And there and then He died, a being so small history should have forgotten Him. So why have we not forgotten? And why would the Infinite God create a finite planet, a pale blue dot (to quote Carl Sagan), for tiny men to live as tiny imag...

On the day Jesus rose from the dead, two of his disciples took a walk to Emmaus. On the way, while they discussed the events of the prior three days, “Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Lk 24:15b-16). When this “stranger” asked what they were talking about, they related their grief and confusion. They thought Jesus would be the promised Messiah, but he had been crucified. And now some women were spreading a rumor that he had risen from the dead. At this, Jesus replied,  “‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets , he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk 24:25-27). What about you? Do you have a hard time seeing Jesus in the Old Testament? Do the New Testament’s references to the Old seem obscure? If so, the firs...

When I first became a single mom, I was terrified. I had drifted from church years prior, so I decided it was time to go back and start trying to live like a Christian. During that time I was given a book on how to train children the “Bible” way. In it were the secrets to raising children so well-trained and obedient that they would assuredly obey God and accept the gospel.  This book taught me to read all the worst motives into my children's hearts, to see all their undesirable behavior as rebellion—not incomprehension or exhaustion, not immaturity or hunger, not frustration or confusion, not inability or fear—only rebellion. Their salvation or damnation hung on my ability, by force of will and use of the rod, to train them to be perfectly obedient.  If I had actually read the Bible for myself and understood God’s character and his grace, I would have thrown that book away. Instead I let it destroy me. Though I couldn’t bring myself to implement its harsh methods, my heart wa...

 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,   that whoever believes in him should not perish  but have eternal life.”    John 3:16 Time for true confessions. When you recognized the familiar verse above, did you slow down to treasure it, or did you breeze through it to get to the article? I hope you slowed down. But if you didn’t, you’re not alone. I memorized John 3:16 when I was a little girl in Sunday school, and I’ve breezed through it ever since. Even so, it was this Sunday school doctrine of God’s love that kept the door to repentance propped open until the day I got saved at age forty. If I’d never heard that God loved the world, I would never have had the courage to run to Him with my truckload of sin and shame. Once I did, I was so overjoyed by his love and acceptance that I wanted to share it with the world. I told anyone who would listen. I made my way back to church and drank up whatever I could about the God I now loved. I learned ...

The words “spiritual warfare” mean many things to many people. But what does the Bible actually teach about it? Much of our confusion and misinformation comes from our habit of trying to understand scriptures apart from their context.  Ephesians 6 is a perfect example. If you are not carefully tracking with Paul’s train of thought throughout the letter, his call to spiritual arms at the end seems like an afterthought, disconnected from the rest of the letter. When you see it this way, you are left trying to fill in the meaning on your own. But Paul’s teaching on spiritual warfare is not an afterthought. It does not begin in chapter 6, it’s a culmination of the entire letter: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, a...

What do you think of when you hear the words “Spirit-filled”? What does a Spirit-filled church look like? Ephesians 5:18 commands us to be “filled with the Spirit,” but how do we do it, and what does it look like when we do?  In Ephesians, the apostle Paul gives us one of the Bible’s loftiest expositions of God’s purpose for the church, a plan forged before the beginning when God “chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world” and “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will . . . a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth . . .This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (1:4-5,10; 3:11). It is in this context of God’s eternal plan that we can best understand the work of the Holy Spirit in the church.  The Holy Spirit permeates Ephesians, just as he permeates every aspect of the church and the Christian ...

Like just about every other girl of my generation, I loved the Brady Bunch. I wanted to be Marsha, the oh-so-cool and beautiful older sister, or at the very least to be as cute as little Cindy, who everyone adored. Even to be Jan, the middle daughter, would be an improvement over my bony, four-eyed, gap-toothed self. The only child in my household, I envied those sibling relationships. I wanted brothers to fight with who secretly really loved me. And, of course, I wished for such parents: kind, respectful, fair, caring, young, hip, and wealthy. Ah, the Brady's! They had it all. They even had a live-in maid. No wonder they were all smiles! But there was one smile in the Brady household that puzzled me. Alice was neither young nor beautiful. She had no husband, no child, no car, and no home of her own. Sure, she had the occasional date with Sam, that non-committal butcher, but she spent every other waking moment in her maid’s uniform serving this family and smiling as if she were cle...

When I was a new Christian, many moons ago, I was unemployed and looking for work. One of the jobs I applied for during that time was a secretarial position at a church. Before they would interview me, however, I was required to take a personality test. I found the questions difficult. I was not who I once was. I was a new creature in Christ. How do I behave at parties? I had never been to one as a Christian. All I knew was that I wouldn’t behave as I had before. I answered as best I could. But I wondered if any of my answers rightly reflected the person I was becoming—the person Christ was transforming me to be? Did these Christian employers even care? I didn’t know, nor was I asked. I didn’t get the job. Here in America, personality is king. But have you ever noticed that the Bible says next to nothing about it? Solomon was wise, but was he a sparkling wit? David was a man after God’s own heart, but was he the life of the party? Job suffered intensely, but was he a depressive persona...

When I met him I was eighteen years old sitting with my mother in a television studio watching her favorite Christian program being broadcast live. I had just graduated from high school and was not sure what direction my life was going to take. I was raised Lutheran and went to Lutheran schools. For nine years I not only attended church and Sunday school, but I took all the required religion classes at school and attended chapel weekly. By the tenth grade, however, not long after my confirmation of baptism and my first communion, my mother gave up making me go to church. During my senior year, though, I accepted an invitation to a different kind of church. Their passionate worship and preaching moved me to tears. I would later learn that their teachings were false, but their enthusiasm for the Bible got me going to church and reading the Scriptures of my own free will for the first time in my life. Weeks later, with her hand pressed against the hand of an evangelist on the TV screen, m...

Imagine moving into a house without closets, without cupboards, without shelves, and without furniture. You stack up all your boxes. You sift through piles of clothes to get dressed. You move ten boxes to find the one thing you need. You empty out five more to find something else. In all your sifting the confusion spreads. As the chaos grows, you cry out in exasperation: This is no way to live!  This is no way to live at home, and it’s no way to live with God’s Word. The Bible is not disordered, but it is big. We feel overwhelmed by it. We don’t know where to start, and we don’t have the furniture we need to make sense of it all. We know there are some helpful bits here and there, but half the time we can’t find them when we go looking. Much of the rest we don’t understand at all. We don’t know what goes where, so we stick with the few things we know and work around the rest as best we can.  If you feel this way, you are not alone. This is why the Holy Spirit gives the church ...

The conspiracy against Joseph was no theory. His brothers really did hate him. They really did plot to destroy him. With Judah as the ringleader, they really did sell him into slavery and convince their father he had been killed by a wild beast. Their conspiracy was a success. Joseph was as good as dead. He was a slave, bound for Egypt.  We can only guess at his emotions: confusion, disillusionment, rage, grief. Joseph lost a lot more than his freedom; he lost his father, his little brother, everyone and everything else he’d ever known and loved, along with any illusions he might have had about the goodness of humanity. He should have been bitter. He should have been as defeated as his brothers wished him to be. Yet everywhere he went regardless of the misery of his circumstances—even as a slave with no human rights, even as a prisoner falsely accused—the dignity of his conduct inspired confidence and respect. He served his masters faithfully, with all his heart. And he prospered, ...

Jacob was a born wrestler. Literally. Much to the distress of his mother, he spent his time in the womb struggling with his brother. Despite his best efforts, he was born in second place, his hand still grasping his brother’s heel, clinging to a birthright that wasn’t his. Jacob means “takes by the heel,” an idiomatic way of saying, “he cheats” (Gen. 25:22-26). I can imagine his mother, Rebekah, thinking Awww! What a cute little cheater! But what is adorable in a baby, is not so cute in a grown man. As he grew, it became clear that Jacob was never going to win any physical battles with his swarthy older twin. But there is more than one way to wrestle. The cleverer of the two, Jacob outwitted his brother to gain the birthright and, at the urging of his mother, deceived his blind father to steal his brother’s blessing. Jacob got what he wanted, but his wrestling tore his family apart. Esau, furious over his losses, plotted to kill his brother. No match for the physical threat, Jacob fled...

Here in the Land of the Free, we don’t have a Sovereign—a king or emperor—holding the reins of power. We have a constitution and thousands upon thousands of individuals sworn to uphold it. We have a citizenry with the right to vote. We, the aggregate, are sovereign, though we, the individuals, are not, no matter how much we think we are. Every four years we are reminded of this as each of us invariably ends up less than satisfied with the government we, the aggregate, have chosen. Even in a properly functioning democracy one thing is certain: no one ever gets everything they want.  You would think we’d get used to it, but we never do. And if this makes us uncomfortable, the Bible will make us even more so. Christ is not a Republican or a Democrat. He’s not a Libertarian. He’s not even an American. His government is not a democracy; it’s a monarchy, and he is the King. One of the first things scripture does to its readers is kick them off the throne.  In the Old Testament we se...

When I finally trusted Christ, after nearly 40 years as a professing Christian, one of the first books I read was J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.  In the (1973) preface,* he describes two very different types of interest people have in Christianity: “[picture] persons sitting on the high front balcony of a Spanish house watching travelers go by on the road below. The 'balconeers' can overhear the travelers' talk and chat with them; they may comment critically on the way that the travelers walk; or they may discuss questions about the road, how it can exist at all or lead anywhere, what might be seen from different points along it, and so forth; but they are onlookers, and their problems are theoretical only. The travelers by contrast face problems which, though they have their theoretical angle, are essentially practical - problems of the 'which-way-to-go' and 'how-to-make-it' type, problems which call not merely for comprehension but for decision and action too ...

In a couple of weeks I will begin teaching a class on Ephesians for the women of my church. I’ve spent a long time preparing, and I’ve read those six chapters more times than I can count. But the more I read it, the bigger it gets, and the less capable I feel of plumbing its depths.  But it’s not just Ephesians. The whole Bible is like this. The more times I read it, the more I see it as a TARDIS. Dr. Who fans know that the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space) is a time machine. It looks like a 1960’s English police box, big enough to hold two or three people. But once you step inside, you find yourself in an impossibly huge space. In it you can access the far reaches of the galaxies—past, present and future. Step out again, and it’s still little bigger than a phone booth. Likewise, when you open the pages of scripture the universe opens to you—past, present, future, and beings more glorious than ourselves dwelling in realms that human words can only struggle to describe...