All Are Welcome (Friday Devotional)

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.

- Hebrews 13:2

It was a normal Monday morning at the Petco in Atascocita, Texas. People came in to buy cat food. People shopped for dog toys. People inquired about the next available day for pet adoptions.

And then, all of a sudden, everyone’s eyes shifted to the front of the store. That’s because local rancher Vincent Browning—in the ultimate test of the store’s “ALL LEASHED PETS ARE WELCOME” sign—came walking through the front doors with his giant African Watusi steer, Oliver…on a leash, naturally.

And, to the credit of the store, the prank was a hit. Employees, according to Browning, “welcomed Oliver with open arms.” Shoppers took selfies with him. Everyone from cashiers to the store’s manager stepped up to pet him. By the time Browning (and Oliver) left the store, there could be no doubt—as advertised, all leashed pets truly were welcome.

The story, for all the laughs it engendered then and now, is also a wakeup call about Christian hospitality. People of faith are quick to say that they love everyone, that all are welcome in their home, in their neighborhood, and especially in their church. But too often, when someone who doesn’t fit the mold shows up to put that love to the test, they are met with looks, questions, and judgments that others don’t receive.

The Bible tells us that Christians are called neither to harsh condemnation nor to blind tolerance, but to holy hospitality, showing the sacrificial love of Christ to strangers no matter where they come from or what they believe. It is by doing so that the genuineness of our love is put to the test, that people can see whether our attitude is shaped by the cross of Christ or the whims of the world.

A Petco in Atascocita passed the test of hospitality, welcoming the strangest of visitors with affection and kindness. In Jesus’ name, may you do the same.

Shaped Like Jesus (Friday Devotional)

 

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.

- Romans 8:29

It should come as a surprise to no one that you can buy some crazy stuff on eBay. You want a Bob Ross Chia Pet? For $15, you can get one now. How about a popcorn scented stuffed panda? Only $25, maybe cheaper if you make a decent offer.

Yes, eBay is home to some bizarre stuff, but there is one particular market which stands alone: Cheetos. More specifically, Cheetos in unusual shapes. There’s the Cheeto shaped like a ray gun that’s going right now for $175. The mushroom cloud-shaped Cheeto on sale for $215. And who could forget the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto shaped like Mother Theresa holding a baby that actually sold for $1,400?

It boggles the mind that people would spend that kind of money on something that came from a 75-cent bag. But I will admit—there’s quite a resemblance between those Cheetos and the things they purport to look like!

The Bible describes Christian discipleship as a process by which we are “conformed to the image” of Jesus, reshaped so that we look more like Him. While we each have unique personalities, gifts, and ideas, we are all striving to live in such a way that people see less of us and more of Jesus—as John the Baptist once put it, we must decrease and the Lord must increase.

So reflect for a moment on what you spend your days thinking about, how you spend your time, what you say and do. You are clay—or maybe a Cheeto—ready to be formed. What is your life shaped like?

What You Need (Friday Devotional)

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

- Philippians 2:4

While we waited for our food at a restaurant a few nights ago, my son Andrew started to get frustrated with his mother. Bored with the wait, he had invited her to play tic-tac-toe on his kids’ menu. He went into the first game with that special confidence reserved for 5-year-olds who’ve just learned a new game, but after a few minutes he was as baffled as he was annoyed. Despite his persistent attempts to get three X’s in a row, the best he could manage was a tie.

After being repeatedly stymied, he finally asked what he was doing wrong, why he couldn’t beat her. Lindsey gently pointed out to him that all his focus was on the offensive part of the game—getting three X’s in a row—and that he was ignoring where she was putting her O’s. “You’re focusing on what you need instead of what I need,” she said.

That’s a trap we all fall into, in areas of life far more consequential than tic-tac-toe. As a fallen creature, your default is to think of your own needs first, to place yourself at the center of every thought, decision, and story. Selfishness is at the root of the sinful human condition.

But having been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, we are redeemed from that condition and called to something higher. Instead of looking only to our own interests, we are called in Christ to look to the interests of others, to place the needs of our neighbors even above our own. With Jesus as our example and the Spirit as our guide, we are commanded to give when our greed says to take, to serve when our pride says to control, and to sacrifice when our vanity says to rule.

It is an ever-present temptation to isolate your desires from those of others, to always put yourself first. But just like in tic-tac-toe, you’re not going to win any spiritual victories without looking to the needs of others. In Jesus’ name, see who you can help today.

It's Time (Friday Devotional)

 

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

- Galatians 6:9

Every morning lately, I’ve awakened to a tough task. After months of sloth, I’m trying to get back into a routine of going for an early morning run to start the day—waking up, putting my shoes on, and getting out the door before 5:00 AM.

Unfortunately, I’m not off to a great start; I’m making excuses more often than I’m breaking a sweat. A few mornings I’ve lazily moseyed around the house until deciding it’s too late to run. More often, I’ve said it’s too early—I’ll go later, I say, and then later never comes. I just can’t seem to find the right time to do what needs to be done.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “The time is always right to do what is right”—and make no mistake, he was talking about matters far weightier than whether to exercise in the morning. Despite his sage wisdom, we often find excuses for why our principles need to be put on standby, why the needs of the moment justify immoral means. Sometimes doing good seems like something reserved for children’s books, a high ideal that just doesn’t work in the real world.

But long before Dr. King, the apostle Paul was commanding followers of Jesus to be do-gooders in any and all circumstances, at any and all times. Drawing upon both the words and the deeds of Christ, Paul encourages us to never grow tired of doing the right thing, to never be so burdened by the demands of righteousness that we abandon it. Instead he calls us to find our courage in the cross of Christ, to recognize that even when the way is narrow, it leads to the Lord.

The time is always right to do what’s right—so never let life’s complexities or the world’s excuses stand in the way of doing what God has called you to do.

August Reading Log

  

These intros are basically always the same, right? "I did some reading this month, not as much as I'd have liked, blah blah blah." What do you say we skip it this month? Here's what I read!

2 Articles I Like This Month

"Before Uvalde, a Year of 'Protecting Children' in Texas" by Christopher Hooks, Texas Monthly. 12 minutes.

Over the last year, Texas' top politicians have spent their time banning library books, decrying COVID mandates, and targeting transgender children, all in the name of protecting innocent children. And then, when 19 children were murdered in their Uvalde classroom, those same politicians shrugged their shoulders. Just the cost of doing business in America in 2022.

"Book Bans Are a Symbol of Our Communal Poverty" by Joshua Whitfield, The Dallas Morning News. 4 minutes.

The roiling debate in our state and our country over book banning in school districts is ultimately not really about free speech or moral standards, argues columnist Joshua Whitfield. It's about our distrust of authority, our societal fear of those curating our information.

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- #371-400

The mid-to-late-1990s are considered by virtually all comics fans to be the period in which the industry ran off the rails, fueled by a massive boom of speculators convinced the latest issue of Spider-Man's adventures was going to be worth a million bucks someday. It was an era of holographic covers, crossover events, and soap operatic shenanigans designed to get you to buy next month's issue—or better yet, 10 copies of next month's issue.

Sadly, the World's Greatest Comics Magazine was not immune to the times, and these thirty issues signal the beginning of the end of 400+ issues of unbroken storytelling, which would come crashing down in 1997 (check in next month to see what I'm talking about.) After a promising start, the team of writer (and, for 7 years, Marvel's Editor-in-Chief) Tom DeFalco and artist Paul Ryan overwhelmed readers with too many characters, too much time travel, and too much spectacle, all leading to a 400th issue that lands with a thud.

Was it the introduction of Nathaniel Richards, Mister Fantastic's sinister time-traveling father? The convoluted time travel story with the oh-so-1990s title "Nobody Gets Alive"? The aging up of Franklin through (you guessed it) a trip forward in time? The transparently temporary 'deaths' of Reed and Doctor Doom? The 'look how grim and gritty we are' scarring of the Thing's face in a brawl with Wolverine?

All of this and more. 1994 marks the beginning of a period when this didn't really feel like the FF of old anymore, more like an X-Men knockoff. And who knows, maybe that sold well in its time. But as we'll see next month, eventually somebody was bound to figure out they weren't reading something precious—just fool's gold.

COMEBACK CHURCHES: HOW 300 CHURCHES TURNED AROUND AND YOURS CAN TOO by Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson

At least every other month, I try to read a book about church growth. By now you’re probably as familiar with my criticisms of the genre as I am of its tropes. Church growth books are too often focused on megachurches even though the overwhelming majority of American churches have fewer than 200 members. Church growth books tend to read more like customer service manuals than spiritual guides. Church growth books oversimplify what works and what doesn’t, to the exclusion of a local church’s context. Nevertheless, I keep reading these books because there’s still gold in them hills, and I’m determined to dig it out. And, to the credit of Comeback Churches, it’s one of the better offerings in the genre.

While many of the principles that authors Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson espouse in this book are no different from what you’ll read elsewhere, they have the benefit of actual research—a survey of 300 churches of various sizes—to draw from. Indeed, my favorite part of the book was the stories and direct quotes from some of these churches’ pastors. What all had in common was that they were declining or plateaued churches which made some changes and saw growth—they were examples of the titular ‘comeback church.’

What did it take for these churches to grow? Prayer, leadership, focusing on the little things, all the usual stuff. I confess, after all the church growth books I’ve read from folks like Thom Rainer and others, I could write some of these chapters myself at this point. Nevertheless, Stetzer and Dodson do a good job telling the stories of these comeback churches and synthesizing what worked for them.

This book is not a game-changer; there’s nothing particularly earth-shattering here. But sometimes the best way to learn is by repetition, and Stetzer and Dodson do an effective job reminding pastors what it takes to move their church from good to great. The how-to instructions are pretty clear at this point—all that’s left is the application.

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA by John Steinbeck

One of the great American storytelling genres is the road trip memoir. One of the great American authors is John Steinbeck. Put it together and you get Travels with Charley in Search of America, which turns out, unsurprisingly to be a great book.

One of Steinbeck’s final contributions to the American canon, it tells the story of his trek across the country, accompanied only by his poodle, the titular Charley. Making his way from the Northeast to the Pacific Northwest, down to California, through Texas and the South, and then back home, Steinbeck encounters all manners of American-ness, from friendly strangers to natural beauty to the kind of casual racism that makes modern readers blanche.

What permeates the book is a palpable sadness, perhaps fueled by his isolation, as he makes his way through the country. As Steinbeck barrels down the interstate, stops at diners, and even visits old friends in San Francisco, the reader gets the sense that he is watching the country he loves drift away. It’s not so much a nostalgia for a past golden age—some of the modern wonders he sees amaze him—but a recognition that things are changing, and that as much as the nation is gaining things, it is losing some of its innocent too. Modernity, in Steinbeck’s telling, is a tradeoff—what you gain in convenience and connectedness you lose in distinctiveness.

For those interested in seeing America through the eyes of a writer, you can hardly do better than Travels with Charley in Search of America, which ably mixes hopeful love with mournful memory. Strap in with Steinbeck and, unlike Charley, keep your eyes open—who knows what you’ll see.

ESSENTIAL SAVAGE SHE-HULK VOL. 1 by David Anthony Kraft, Mike Vosberg, et al.

For reasons that, honestly, I can’t explain, I was pretty excited when Marvel’s latest TV show, She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law started airing a few weeks ago. Maybe it was the bombardment of advertising on social media, maybe it was the episode length (I demand more 22 minute shows!), maybe it was because She-Hulk was once a replacement member of the Fantastic Four. I don’t know. I just know I watched the premiere hours after it went up on Disney+, enthusiastic to find out what was in store.

The result? It was…fine. Not terrible. Not great. Just kind of…meh.

I suppose that in that respect it’s living up to its original source material, the 25 issue Savage She-Hulk which is collected in this Essential volume. Unlike later series by John Byrne in the 1980s and Dan Slott in the early 2000s, this Bronze Age comic lacks the joie de vivre a solo title needs to stand out. This She-Hulk’s enemies are…the L.A. mob. Yawn. Her supporting characters are her sheriff father, a recycled loser named Richard Rory who’d originally shown up in Man-Thing, and a would-be boyfriend with a nickname I’ve already forgotten. And as for her famous cousin with the anger problem, don’t expect to see him after the first issue.

The long and short of it is that this is a prime example of an I.P. in search of a character, a spin-off with no reason for being other than the chance to cash in on the popularity of the ‘real’ series. With second-tier writing and art and little story direction, there’s just not much reason for Savage She-Hulk to exist. Which is why, after 25 issues, it didn’t, with Shulkie making her way over to New York to join the Avengers and finally acquire a personality.

 Years later, Jen would get another chance at her own title, with John Byrne at the helm of her fourth wall-breaking action-drama series. That’s a series I’d love to read sometime. But as for Savage She-Hulk, it’s as middling as they come.

No Expiration Date (Friday Devotional)

 

For all people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word that was preached to you.

- 1 Peter 1:25

When I go digging through the fridge or the pantry and find something I’d forgotten was there, I immediately look for the expiration date. The last thing I want to do is take a swig of sour milk or bite into moldy bread. All food goes bad eventually.

All food, that is, except honey. So long as it’s left sealed, honey’s natural properties allow it to remain edible not just for weeks, but for years. In fact, archaeologists have found pots filled with honey in Egyptians tombs dating back thousands of years—and it’s still good to eat! Honey, unlike other foods, has no expiration date.

In our world, most things are more like milk than honey, eventually susceptible to the ravages of time. All you have to do is look at a magazine from 50 years ago to see how much the world changes over the years, how outdated even the most permanent-seeming things become after a little while.

But God’s Word has no expiration date. Changing times may color how we read the Bible, but the Word remains the same for us as it was for Peter and Paul. Our task is never to read Scripture through the lens of culture, but vice versa—for it is by casting the light of eternity on the whims of today that we are able to discern what is ultimately true.

Beneath the Surface (Friday Devotional)

 

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

- Leviticus 19:18

Mount Everest is not the tallest mountain on earth.

Does that come as a surprise to you? It did to me when I first heard it. After all, most of us have had that piece of trivia memorized since grade school, right along with the cheetah being the fastest land animal and the Nile being the longest river. But it’s true: Mauna Kea, an inactive volcano in Hawaii—not Mount Everest, the crown jewel of the Himalayas—is the largest mountain in the world.

…at least, from a certain point of view. If you were to place Everest side by side with Mauna Kea, you would undoubtedly assume the former reigned supreme; the Hawaiian giant only rises to about half Everest’s height. The trick is to look underground—while Mauna Kea only rises to 13,802 feet above sea level, another 20,000+ feet is buried below. From base to peak, Mauna Kea edges out Everest—you just have to look beneath the surface.

Sometimes the same principle applies when dealing with people. There are probably a few people in your life you barely tolerate, people who manage to rub you the wrong way seemingly every time you interact with them. For the life of you, you can’t figure out why they say the things they say or do the things they do. What is wrong with them???

But the truth is, people aren’t often purely malevolent; there is almost always something beneath the surface guiding their actions. Maybe it’s pain in their past which is shaping their present, maybe it’s a motive you aren’t aware of, maybe it’s some other missing piece of a puzzle you haven’t yet put together. The point is, you don’t know what’s going on beyond what you can see.

Do any of these things excuse bad behavior? No; sin is sin, whatever the rationalization behind it. But part of what it means to love your neighbor is to give them some benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the worst. It means responding to others with humility, trusting that you may have more to learn. And ultimately, it means reaching for forgiveness and reconciliation instead of vengeance and resentment.

There’s always more going on beneath the surface, and if you love like Jesus, you’ll do your best to find it before jumping to conclusions. After all, wouldn’t you want your neighbor to love you that way?