Saying Thank You (Friday Devotional)

 

O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods.

- Psalm 95:1-3

We say thank you in a lot of different ways. Sometimes a text or a call is enough, other times you might write a note and drop it in the mail. Sometimes you thank people privately, other times public recognition is expected and important. Sometimes you might even accompany your words of thanks with a token of appreciation, a gift of some kind to honor their good deeds and express your gratitude. However you go about it, we all understand the importance of saying thank you when somebody makes you a priority.

So Thanksgiving Day is as good a time as any to apply that principle to God, the one from whom all good and perfect gifts are given. On a weekend when many traditionally count their blessings, don’t forget who you are thanking, where those blessings come from.

God is the one who gives you the breath of life. He is the one who sustains you day by day. Most importantly, he is the one who sent his Son to seek and save the lost, offering redemption by his blood and new life by his resurrection. It is in him that we live and move and have our being.

So between portions of turkey this weekend, somewhere amidst the chaos of food and family and football, take a moment to actually say thank you this Thanksgiving. You can pray, you can sing, you reflect upon God’s Word, you can perform an act of service, you can give generously. There are lots of ways to say thank you—pick one and give thanks!

He With the Most Toys Loses (Friday Devotional)

 

Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

- Matthew 5:42

Sometimes my kids don’t want to share with each other. Katherine will be playing with Legos, Andrew will want to add a brick to her creation, and she’ll recoil when he tries. Or maybe she’ll be looking at a book and he’ll snatch it out of her hands, prompting instant tears.

Whenever there’s a conflict like this, especially if it escalates into hitting or crying or tattling, I’ve developed something of a catchphrase: people are more important than things. You can be annoyed at your sibling. You don’t necessarily have to share the instant they say they want a turn. But you cannot let your attachment to a toy override your responsibility to be kind to your brother or sister. People are more important than things.

That’s the sort of simple message that instinctively sounds right when an adult says it to a child—but one that makes us feel defensive when it’s pointed our direction. As adults, we have the same sort of attachment to our toys—be they cars or clothes, purses or big-screen TVs—as children do, maybe even more so. After all, I earned those things by my hard work; I deserve something nice, those things are mine.

But Jesus offers a countercultural command: give your stuff away for the sake of others. Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, he tells a rich young ruler. Woe to you who are rich now, he preaches in Luke 6, for you have already received your reward. And in his Sermon on the Mount, he simply says to give to the one who asks you to do so.

Taken literally and to their furthest extremes, such declarations compel all believers to radical vows of poverty, and so we are quick to either over-spiritualize them or wave them away entirely. But Jesus’s point is so simple even a child can understand it: people are more important than things.

Every day you have an opportunity to use what God has given you to bless someone else. You can leave a 40% tip for the overloaded waitress who never refilled your tea. You can buy lunch for the coworker who mostly keeps to himself. You can give a generous offering to your church with no strings attached. How you do it is up to you; that you do it is a divine command.

People are more important than things. How will you show that today?

The Real Thing (Friday Devotional)

 

Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.

- 1 John 3:18

When rapper Young Jeezy was preparing to take photos for the cover of an upcoming album, his creative vision was simple: he wanted shots of himself surrounded by $2 million in cash. However, he was perturbed when the prop guys started laying out the money, noticing that they were fake bills. He demanded they replace the counterfeit money with the real thing.

The prop guys understandably told him they didn’t have access to that kind of money, certainly not at a moment’s notice. Without missing a beat, Young Jeezy made a phone call and, within the hour, two unnamed men pulled up to the studio with $1.8 million in cash. After one more phone call, a friend showed up with the remaining $200,000. The fake bills were set aside and the photoshoot could begin now that they had the real thing.

When you opened this devotional, you probably didn’t expect to get a spiritual lesson from the world of hip hop. But Young Jeezy’s attitude at that photoshoot reflects a mindset that extends to all areas of life: we want authenticity. Given the choice between the counterfeit and the genuine, people will always choose the real thing. In fact, we won’t settle for less.

In Scripture, we are repeatedly called to love our neighbors. From the books of the Law to the parables of Jesus to the teachings of the epistles, that message is consistent and persistent. If there’s one thing people know about believers, it’s that God wants us to love like he does.

And 1 John 3:18 reminds us that love is not just something we preach theoretically, but something we practice authentically. It’s one thing for people to hear about God’s love, but another thing altogether for them to see it lived out, to bear witness to the transformative power of the gospel.

The world knows what hypocrisy and inauthenticity look like; they see it every day. They know the difference between counterfeit love—salesmanship disguised as kindness—and the real thing. So may God’s people love like Jesus—not just in word and speech, but in deed and truth.

October Reading Log

  

My reading schedule has been feast or famine lately. I read one of the books below in just four sittings (some long flights and train rides on a family trip helped). Another took nearly two months, with me going weeks between chapters for no reason at all. But, in spite of busyness at church, Rangers playoff games keeping me up past my bedtime, and the general ebbs and flows of life, I did get some reading done. Take a look below!

INSPIRED by Rachel Held Evans

The Bible is often described as a "handbook for life," a collection of propositions that can both explain the path to eternal salvation and help you win friends and influence people. But, as the late Rachel Held Evans reminds in Inspired, we come to know it first as a collection of stories. The Bible tells us about Noah's ark and Moses' burning bush and Daniel in the lion's den. It tells us about kings and shepherds, prophets and priests. And ultimately, it tells the story of when God's Son put on human flesh to save us.

Inspired is Evans' love letter to the book she built her life upon, the book she grew tired of seeing used and abused instead of read. Writing largely to the audience now known as "deconstructionists" (she was sort of a John the Baptist for that movement), Evans acknowledges the complexities of Scripture and decries those who have used it as an instrument of harm. But she refuses to abandon it altogether, arguing that part of faith is wrestling with the challenging parts of Scripture—neither accepting them mindlessly nor tossing the baby out with the bathwater, but instead doing the hard work of finding God in the hard-to-reach places.

This is a book full of the kinds of questions some might find sacrilegious (but not, crucially, irreverent.) Evans was not afraid to poke the bear, and you may not agree with some of the conclusions she reaches in her exploration of the Bible. But none can deny her love for the Lord or her immense talent—the writing sings throughout this book, causing you to think and to feel. The Bible is a book of stories, and Evans was a gifted storyteller.

Inspired is a warm, deep, thoughtful book worthy of your attention, and its message can be summed up best by its closing paragraph, if you'll permit me to spoil it for you: "We may wish for answers, but God rarely gives us answers. Instead, God gathers us up into soft, familiar arms and says, "Let me tell you a story."'

CROSSROADS by Jonathan Franzen

In Jonathan Franzen's best novels—namely, The Corrections and Freedom—he explores big topics through the lens of crumbling families. In Crossroads, the first book in a planned trilogy, he returns to this template in a novel that tackles depravity, grace, and redemption through the trials and tribulations of the Hildebrandts.

Russ is the restless associate pastor at the mainline church, outshined by a charismatic new youth director and considering an affair with a divorced parishioner. His wife Marion is seemingly the steady, unglamorous rock of the family, but holds within her a traumatic past. Eldest son Clem, away at college, has enlisted in the army, a decision he knows will infuriate his parents. Daughter Becky is wrapped up in a high school crush that is suddenly and inextricably tied to a spiritual awakening. And Perry is the prodigal son, an intelligent boy who is dealing drugs to middle schoolers even as he aspires to become a better person.

The ins and outs of this family—individual chapters are told from each character's perspective—reveal just how broken the collective family is, despite how they appear to be holding things together from the outside. But even as they seem to be careening toward a moral reckoning, there are little moments of grace that prevent this from being a nihilistic, depressing book. Russ is weak and selfish, but there is a moral foundation underneath his narcissism. Becky is hopelessly naïve, but the faith she finds is heartfelt.

This is a book that, as the title suggests, finds its characters at a critical moment in their individual lives and their family's. They don't always make the best decisions when they come to those moments—in fact, they rarely do. But in spite of their foibles, they find grace. There's hope there.

WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING by Haruki Murakami

I've been trying to get back into running after an extremely long layoff, so I thought I'd reread this memoir from novelist Haruki Murakami. I first read it 5 years ago; you can read that original review here.

THE MAMBA MENTALITY: HOW I PLAY by Kobe Bryant and Andrew D. Bernstein

In the final years of his career, Kobe Bryant's legacy crystalized: he was the ultimate competitor, an athlete with an unmatched work ethic and will to win. Other basketball players might have more talent, but none would ever outwork the Black Mamba. The Mamba Mentality, a post-retirement coffee table book of photos, helped to set this reputation is stone, with Bryant laying out in bite-sized paragraphs his approach to practice, teamwork, playing through pain, and more.

The photos, all taken by Andrew D. Bernstein during his time as the Los Angeles Lakers' official photographer, are exactly what you want from this kind of book. Dynamic and flashy at the rim, quiet and intimate in the locker room, Bernstein captured Kobe well, and the book offers a good contrast between the glamor of stardom and the grind of hard work. Most people buy these kinds of books for the pictures, and you get good ones here.

But this book, whose subtitle purports to explain "How I Play," is looking to be more than a photo album. In the captions that accompany the photos—some as short as a paragraph, some more like brief essays—Bryant (and, yes, this certainly sounds like it's authentically Kobe, not a ghostwriter) lays out with no nonsense how he went about his business. For hoop heads, there are some fascinating insights here, as you learn when and how Kobe practiced, how much time he spent studying film, etc. And for even the casual reader, you'll walk away compelled by Bryant's monomaniacal drive.

In short, this book helps cement Bryant's legacy as the NBA's ultimate gamer, a legacy which has only grown following his untimely, tragic death in January 2020. Jordan won more championships. Lebron won more MVPs. Wemby has more talent. But nobody worked harder than Kobe Bean Bryant.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOL. 2

More random team-ups between (mostly) Spider-Man and (mostly) C-list characters! The writing is still mediocre, the art is still forgettable, and the stories are still half-baked. So did anything change between the first 25 issues of Marvel Team-Up and the next 25?

The big shift was a move away from self-contained issues to multi-part stories stretching over 4-5 issues and, improbably, featuring multiple team-ups before each story's conclusion. Maybe it was an attempt to get more monthly readers instead of those simply curious about the guest star on any given month. Maybe they wanted to to mimic the more drawn-out storytelling in other books. Maybe the writers were just having a hard time fitting their stories in 20 pages every month. Whatever the reason, this shift does not redound to the book's credit, making an already slapdash comic feel like its creators were making things up as they went along.

As was the case from the book's inception, these issues of Marvel Team-Up are far from essential, and are indeed a half step worse than those collected in the first volume. But if you're not feeling too picky and you want to watch the reading equivalent of two toys being smashed together, this books remains dumb fun. More to come with volume 3 next month!

Our First Priority (Friday Devotional)

 

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

- Matthew 5:11

“Safety is our number one priority.”

That’s a message you’ve probably heard a million times in a million different places. School principals say it when explaining drills and security protocols. Chefs say it when talking about their restaurant’s health code score. Skydiving instructors say it an hour before letting you jump out of a perfectly good airplane. And of course, politicians say it every chance they get.

Leaders of all stripes feel obligated to assure you that, in their hands, you won’t experience any discomfort or risk. The world is a scary place, they acknowledge—but, so long as you are in their care, they will do everything they can to make it seem less frightening. Nothing is more important to them than making you feel safe.

One leader defies this pattern, though: Jesus. Not only does he not promise his followers safety, he does the opposite, predicting that in his name they will experience persecution and humiliation. While we can and should look to God for protection, it is far from assured.

Jesus, who experienced the agony of crucifixion for our salvation, wants our sights set higher than earthly comfort. Secure in the hope of the resurrection, we ought to be bold, courageous ambassadors for Christ in the world, concerned more with gospel proclamation than the risks of our obedience. We don’t have to operate out of fearful hesitancy, because we have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.

Safety is always a consideration, especially for leaders who are entrusted with the care of others. We should be responsible, not reckless. But make no mistake—for Jesus people, safety is not our first priority. The gospel is.