What Family's For (Friday Devotional)

 

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

- Hebrews 10:24-25

This week, my house has been quieter than usual. Lindsey left Tuesday morning for a girls’ trip with some friends and family, leaving me and the two big kids to stay behind and go about our normal weeks. For four days (she gets back late tonight), all the typical household responsibilities—cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring the kids around, etc.—that we normally split between the two of us were all on me.

The good news: the walls didn’t come tumbling down. The children got three meals a day, nobody had to go to the hospital, and nothing’s actively on fire. I can, it turns out, handle things by myself for a week.

But I was reminded of something: I don’t want to. I’m blessed with a wonderful spouse who shoulders her share of the load—and often more than her share. She lets me employ my strengths and she shores up my weaknesses; she’s my safety net when I fall down and my biggest encourager when I rise up. I don’t have to fly solo because I’ve got an amazing copilot.

Following God, like managing a household, can be done for a while singlehandedly—but it doesn’t have to be done that way. The Lord didn’t call one disciple to carry out his mission, he sent twelve apostles. We’re not meant to be a multitude of Christians all going our own individual directions, but to be one church.

When God saved you, he didn’t just give you salvation, he also gave you a family—brothers and sisters with whom you get to laugh, cry, play, argue, and rejoice. They are part of your story, and you are part of theirs. So as you walk with the Lord, don’t do it alone—that’s what family’s for.

The Glory of the Son (Friday Devotional)

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

- James 1:17

On any given day, our nation is a fractured place. Where we once rallied around universal principles, we are now divided along party lines. Where we once shared communal dinner tables, now we eat alone and on the go. Where we all used to watch the same TV shows and then talk about them the next day around the water cooler, now we are so inundated with content that no one can keep up.

But for four minutes on Monday, everybody was doing the same thing.

On any given day, we are obsessed with efficiency and productivity and ambition. We define ourselves by what we do for a living, placing an outsized value on our jobs. Success is our ultimate goal and work is where we find meaning.

But for four minutes on Monday, lawyers and teachers and gas station attendants alike left their posts for something bigger.

On any given day, we are a cynical, skeptical people. We’re quick to contextualize things that seem incredible, lessening their immediate impact. We’re hard to impress, and reluctant to admit amazement. Being cool means staying at a remove and never being overtaken with emotion.

But for four minutes on Monday, we were awestruck.

The total solar eclipse, a momentary celestial phenomenon, was enough to change our ingrained habits and overcome our natural inclinations, if only for an afternoon. It provoked the kind of unabashed wonder normally reserved for children, leaving us all enthralled in its wake. God’s creation left an unmistakable impression.

But then, of course, it was over. Darkness gave way to light, we threw our eclipse glasses away, and we went back to who we were before.

The lesson? Creation is amazing, but it’s merely a shadow of the Creator. Its glory pales in comparison to His. If you want to know real change, lasting power, eternal glory, you won’t find it in the stars—you’ll only find it in the Son.

A New Season (Friday Devotional)

 

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

- Acts 2:17

On Sunday afternoon, my family traded our Easter outfits for baseball jerseys and headed to Arlington to watch the Texas Rangers take on the Chicago Cubs in the third game of the young season. This was a particularly special opening weekend for Rangers fans—last year, after more than 50 years of mostly futility, Texas won its first World Series trophy. So the start of this season was full of signs of the times, from gold-lined jerseys to new murals in the concourse to the giant World Series Champions banner hanging by the scoreboard.

As we walked from the parking lot toward the stadium, I was struck by the different ways my family would be experiencing the game and all its accompanying celebrations. For my dad, who has been a fan since the Washington Senators moved to Arlington when he was 12, this was the culmination of a lifetime of fandom, decades’ worth of exultation and disappointment. He’d been there for Toby Harrah and Bump Wills, for Juan Gonzalez and Pudge Rodriguez, and now for Corey Seager and Adolis García.  He’d endured the same casual small talk with other fans—“what they need is more pitching”—year after year. He’d seen it all.

But for my 4-month-old son Isaac, none of that means a thing. He has literally never lived in a world where the Rangers aren’t champions. The air-conditioned Globe Life Field isn’t “the new ballpark” to him, it’s just “the ballpark.” Nolan Ryan might as well be Babe Ruth to him, because as far as he’s concerned, both are ancient history.

And yet, on Sunday—for the first but not the last time—they both enjoyed an afternoon at the ballpark. One had the context of history, the other saw everything with fresh eyes. One had the wariness of familiarity, the other the unbridled joy of innocence. Their experiences were obviously different, but they both had fun.

On the Day of Pentecost, when God poured out his Holy Spirit upon the church, one thing that was promised was that the empowerment to come wouldn’t be reserved for one age group. Wisdom wasn’t going to be reserved for the old, nor was envisioning the future solely the prerogative of the young. “Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams,” promised the prophet Joel.

Different generations have different things to offer, diverse strengths and experiences and outlooks. But everybody—from the smallest child to the most senior adult—has something to offer the kingdom, some way to serve. Nobody is too young or too old to contribute.

If something as ultimately trivial as baseball can be appreciated by all ages, then surely the same can be true for the gospel. So whether this Easter was your first or your 75^th, make this is a season to remember!

March Reading Log

March brought spring break and with it, my first reading slump of the year. For nearly 2 weeks this month I just couldn't bring myself to read more than a few pages a day...not the fault of the books necessarily, just general laziness and fatigue. But I rallied late in the month (this log is good at giving me motivation to finish books), and I wound up finishing 5 books in March. Take a look!

THE SOUL OF AMERICA by Jon Meacham

No matter where you stand politically, chances are you're worried. We had four years of Donald Trump as president, we're in the middle of four years of Joe Biden as president, the next four years we're going to get one of the two of them all over again, and nobody seems particularly happy about it. People are anxious, angry, and afraid.

The tumultuousness of the last few years has led to a lot of talk about what it really means to be an American, about which characteristics can progress and evolve over time and which values must endure through all the ebbs and flows. In The Soul of America, author and historian Jon Meacham looks to American history for answers, pinpointing specific times in our past when the "soul" of the nation has been endangered by forces without and within and examining how we made it through.

In each chapter of the book, Meacham chooses an era of American history—from Reconstruction to the Great Depression to the Civil Rights Movement—and lays out how and why the nation's character was tested. Sometimes there's a scapegoat to point to (the Ku Klux Klan, for example), but more often, the threat arises organically, the natural byproduct of a diverse nation built on an idea instead of along ethnic lines.

And the solution, frustratingly, doesn't always come in one bold moment or courtesy of one heroic figure. Leaders matter, to be sure—in every chapter, at least one figure emerges to call the nation back to its better angels—but the fever only breaks when the American people are ready.

Nevertheless, again and again Meacham describes how we have been tugged away from the precipice by a commitment to the American ideal of liberty and justice for all. For the anxious, this book offers the hope of history—not a promise that we will do the right thing now, but at least the reassurance that what we face is not a new fight.

One disclaimer: this book was published in 2018 and is pretty transparently—especially in the foreword and afterward—making the case that Donald Trump is the kind of existential threat to America that the chapters of this book describe. Given that the 2024 presidential election is going to feature Trump again, that means your level of appreciation for the book will almost certainly depend on which candidate is getting your vote. Don't say I didn't warn you.

DESERT SOLITAIRE by Edward Abbey

One of the joys of visiting America's national parks is the opportunity for true solitude. Miles away from the nearest human being, much less any semblance of civilization, one is able to think, to get perspective, and to appreciate the simple things in life. In the National Parks, modernity's distractions are set aside for something more primal and beautiful.

Desert Solitaire is writer Edward Abbey's account of his time spent in Arches National Park (a national monument at the time of his stay; it was later upgraded). Living in a small trailer and working several days a week as a ranger, the rest of his time is his own, leaving him free to wander and explore the wonders of the Utah desert.

The book does two things well. The first is to serve as the preeminent nature book for the Southwest, a Walden for the region. With his descriptions of the flora and fauna and his clear affection for the area, Abbey is a compelling tour guide who makes you want to strap on a backpack and head westward in search of both the peace and the adventure that the desert brings.

The second is periodic polemics against modernity, specifically urban and suburban development. Most readers, I suspect, will not share his extreme views of conservation—in one section he argues, without irony, for the abolition of drivable roads in our national parks—but his passion is compelling and his writing entertaining. These are the kinds of views to which it's valuable to be exposed, even if you can't get on board with what he's saying.

I read Desert Solitaire after our spring break trip to Big Bend, where it was available in every visitor's center I saw in that park. Not sure how Abbey would feel about that—I suspect he would find those centers, which are 90% gift shops, appalling—but I'm glad I gave it a read.

BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is on the short list of greatest authors of the last 50 years, perhaps at the very top. With books like The Road, All the Pretty Horses, and No Country for Old Men, he established a reputation for bleak, violent, yet beautiful prose, often in a Western setting. Blood Meridian is generally considered his finest and most difficult work.

Telling the story of a frontier teenager, "the kid," who joins up with a band of scalp hunters making their way along the Texas-Mexico border, the book is an anti-Western in the mold of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, shattering the romantic notions given to us by Hollywood with its relentless violence, nihilistic characters, and bleak outlook. The kid's time with the gang exposes him to all the worst mankind has to offer as he is on both the giving and receiving ends of profound terror.

I admired Blood Meridian more than I enjoyed it. McCarthy's writing style is objectively brilliant, written in a cadence that recalls both Moby Dick and the Bible. Yet this neo-biblical style, with its matter-of-factness, lack of detail, and avoidance of dialogue, requires a lot of concentration. If you let your eyes glide over a paragraph without truly reading it, you can get lost quickly.

What's more, the relentless violence—this book is absolutely soaked in blood—is more off-putting than I expected it to be. I'm far from squeamish, but even I was surprised by how gruesome the book could be in parts. In making the West seem like a savage, primal place instead of a romantic one, McCarthy is entirely successful—after 100 pages, the West he portrays is a place where no one would want to live.

For serious readers, Blood Meridian is an important contribution to American literature and one worthy of your time, but be warned that it's not an easy read. It took me the whole month to get through its 350 pages, and even that may have been too fast to fully appreciate it. But if you're willing to take your time, McCarthy will reward you.

STREAMS OF LIVING WATER by Richard Foster

There isn't one way to be a Christian. There are certain beliefs you must hold and certain commands you must obey, to be sure, but the apostle Paul and Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther and Billy Graham are far from spiritual clones of each other. So what are the normative paths of discipleship?

In Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster lays out what he calls the six great traditions of Christian faith—the contemplative, holiness, charismatic, social justice, evangelical, and incarnational traditions—to show the different routes faithful people have taken over the generations. Part religious biography, part exegesis, each chapter examines the life of a saint from church history and then another from the Bible before arriving at conclusions about that particular tradition, including the pros and cons of each approach.

As you might expect, the final conclusion is that no one way is perfect or even superior to the others—God gives us different spiritual gifts for a reason! But each of these streams is worthy of study, reflection, and application for the faithful believer.

One more thing: the appendices make for a great reference material. Appendix 1 looks at critical turning points in church history, with Appendix 2 offering one paragraph biographies of notable religious figures and movements throughout church history. An invaluable resource for those wanting bite-sized morsels of church history.

THE ETERNALS: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION by Jack Kirby

In 1970, Jack "the King" Kirby, the co-creator of most of what we now call the Marvel Universe, did the unthinkable and jumped ship to make his mark at DC Comics. In 5 years there, he created what many fans consider his magnum opus, an entire modern mythology known as the Fourth World, including New Gods, Mister Miracle, and The Forever People. The series were bombastic, epic, and utterly imaginative, full of overwhelming dynamism.

They also didn't sell well. So in 1976, Kirby returned home to Marvel and was given a chance for a do-over. The result was The Eternals, a book with seeds of greatness but whose weaknesses signaled Kirby's career had reached its twilight phase.

First the good: this book, like the Fourth World books, is bursting with energy, especially the early issues. At age 51, Kirby still had a million ideas, and he was throwing them all on the page. In the first issue he introduces three races of immortal beings: the Eternals, their enemies the Deviants, and the immense, mysterious space gods Marvel would later name the Celestials. The Celestials are easily the most compelling of the three, looming throughout the series as an imminent force of judgment upon humanity.

Which brings us to the problem: the titular Eternals just aren't that interesting (and neither, for that matter, are the Deviants.) None, with the slight exception of the mischievous Sersi, are imbued with much personality, and after 19 issues I'm still not entirely clear what their powers are. Furthermore, there are so many that's it's hard to keep track (a problem the MCU's ill-fated movie adaptation suffered from too.)

But the biggest problem is one that Kirby faced at DC as well, though it's worse here: he's not a good writer. In his prime, Kirby's gorgeous art was paired with the voice of Stan Lee, and that partnership was the Lennon-McCartney of comics. Here, with Kirby doing it all, everything from pacing to dialogue to characterization is woefully inadequate. The ideas are there, but it's a slapdash mess instead of a cohesive story.

The 19 issues of The Eternals are pure, unbridled imagination, for better and for worse. There was enough for there for Marvel Studios to make a movie out of it...and it was flawed enough that the movie was soundly rejected by moviegoers. Both make sense to me after reading the source material. For Kirby fans and comics historians, this book is a must-read—but for casual readers just wanting a good time, there are at least 50 Kirby books I'd give you before this one.

Jesus the Savior (Friday Devotional)

It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” And with him they crucified two rebels, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

- Mark 15:25-32

Everyone at Golgotha had heard the stories by this time. Five thousand fed with just a few loaves and fish. Demons driven out with an authoritative word. Paralyzed men walking, sick women made well, a dead girl brought back to life.

These stories had inspired so many to welcome Jesus to Jerusalem just a few days earlier the way they would greet a conquering king. Shouting their hosannas and waving their palm branches, the people eagerly awaited a new manifestation of Jesus’ power. Their victory was at hand, their oppression at its end, their salvation assured.

But as the week dragged on, Jesus didn’t work the kinds of wonders the Galileans went on and on about. He threw the money changers out of the temple, and he lambasted the religious officials for their hypocrisy, but he didn’t say a word against the occupying Romans. Worst of all, when his preaching did get political, it wasn’t to raise an army or inspire a revolution—it was to predict Jerusalem’s destruction.

So when the religious officials predictably had enough, the people joined them in condemning Jesus. He hadn’t wielded his power properly, he hadn’t fought the right enemies, he hadn’t met their expectations. He hadn’t saved them.

So now the Romans would do what they did best. With brute force, they would make an example of Jesus, showing what happened to anyone who dared oppose the empire. Jesus, this failed messiah, would see what happened to all would-be saviors.

Repeatedly—voices dripping with sarcasm, but perhaps also with a lingering trace of hope—they called upon Jesus to save himself from his fate. Come down from the cross if you can, they shouted. Call down your angels, they jeered. But, silently bearing the agony of their rejection, their taunts, and their sins, Jesus refused to save himself.

Instead, by his death, he did what they’d demanded all along: he saved them. The Lamb of God was slain for the sins of the world. The righteous one died for the ungodly. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the punishment that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.

Like the people so long ago, we still long to be saved, and we still want it to be on our terms. We expect a new routine or a new job or a new city or a new election to be the cure-all, to fix what ails us. But the truth is that salvation has already come—it is finished—and not through any manner we’d have conceived. Through his own suffering, Jesus brought about our salvation.

He didn’t save himself. He saved you instead.

Too Loud (Friday Devotional)

For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, made in the likeness of God. 

- James 3:7-9

One of the realities of having three children 8 and under is that Lindsey and I periodically have to deal with tantrums. Yesterday was just such a time—our daughter was tired and hungry, she wasn’t getting her way, and she was making her displeasure known.

At one point in the back-and-forth, Lindsey told her she needed to stop yelling. Katherine protested that she wasn’t yelling—she was mad, but not screaming at the top of her lungs.

“You may not have been yelling as loudly as you can,” I responded, “but you definitely raised your voice. You were much louder than you needed to be.”

You’ve probably heard the old idiom, “actions speak louder than words,” a phrase that dates back to the 17^th century. It means that your deeds are more powerful than your words, that people pay more attention to what you do than what you say.

But especially in an age of mass communication, your words can still speak pretty loudly. That’s why the Bible talks about the importance of taming your tongue, a.k.a. watching your words. The same mouth that can bless people can also curse them, and the same voice that can lift people up can also tear them down.

What you say is a direct reflection on your walk with the Lord, just like what you do. And just as your witness for Jesus is affected by your actions, it is also colored by the things you say—whether in person or online, in public or in private, with a stranger or a friend.

Do actions still speak louder than words? Who can say. But this much is true: if you don’t tame your tongue, your words can wind up being a lot louder than they need to be.

The Most Beautiful Creation (Friday Devotional)

 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.

- Psalm 8:3-5

On Wednesday evening, Lindsey and I loaded the kids into the car at 8:00 PM—bedtime on a normal night—to see some stars. The next morning we’d be ending our brief vacation at Big Bend National Park, and before we headed back to the suburbs, we wanted to see a night sky unpolluted by artificial light. They say you can see more than 2,000 stars with the naked eye on a clear night in Big Bend—the stars really are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas!

Staring up at the cosmic canvas of black dappled with white, thinking about how every one of those specks represented a celestial body millions of miles away, I admired the splendor set before me. But if I’m being honest, the stars were not the most beautiful thing I saw that night. What took my breath away was not the vastness of the universe, but the sight of my kids, decked out in their pajamas, poking their heads through the sunroof while Taylor Swift’s “Never Grow Up” played in the background. For though the universe inspired awe, it was my kids that filled my heart with love.

In the eighth psalm, David similarly reflects on the glory of creation, awed by both its immensity and its intricacies. But rather than making him feel small and insignificant, the universe’s majesty actually elevates his view of his humanity—for, in a cosmos as big as ours, God cares exponentially more about people than he does about stars.

The Bible tells us that God created the universe day by day—the heavens and the earth, then the sky, then the sea and the earth, then the sun and the moon, then the plants, then the animals. But when, on the sixth day, he created people, he did something new—he created us in his own image, endowing us with purpose and power and responsibility. After each of the first five days, he said that what he had made was good. But on the sixth day, after he made people, he said his creation was very good.

It’s easier for us to admire mountains and oceans and stars than our fellow human beings. Nature never lets you down; its majesty is always readily apparent. But what I realized on Wednesday night, what David realized thousands of years ago, is worth remembering today: as wondrous as the natural world is, you—and your neighbors—are the ones who fill God’s heart with love.