Never Walk Alone (Friday Devotional)

 

It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.

- Deuteronomy 31:8

When our oldest started kindergarten in August, there were lots of new things we had to decide. What would we pack in his lunch? What time would we wake him up every day? Who would be responsible for taking him to school? And finally, how would we drop him off?

You see, at Andrew’s school, there are two viable ways for parents to drop off their kids (*technically* you could also find a spot in the school parking lot, but only in the same way you could *technically* find a winning lottery ticket on the ground.) Option #1 is to go through the drop-off lane, where cars line up and, directed by teachers acting as traffic cops, crawl toward the front of the school. When they get to the front, their kid leaps out the passenger door and, usually after a halfhearted wave to their parent, makes their way to class. Option #2 is for parents to park in the neighborhood across the street and, aided by the crossing guard, walk their child to school.

On the second day of the semester, we asked Andrew what he wanted to do. Still intimidated by all the changes kindergarten was bringing, he quickly said he wanted us to walk him to school—he wasn’t ready to walk to the front door on his own. In the ensuing weeks and months, he’s obviously gotten more used to the whole routine, and any nervousness has long since dissipated. Nevertheless, despite our asking multiple times if he’d rather us join the drop-off lane, he’s consistently declined. He’s no longer afraid of the walk, but he still doesn’t want to do it alone.

There’s something there worth considering for the life of faith, often described in Scripture as our “walk.” In a world where individualism is extolled, where dependence is seen as weakness, where we care more about superstars who do it all than about teamwork, there can be a temptation to think that life in Christ is a solitary affair. It’s my decision to accept the calling of the Holy Spirit and follow Jesus; it’s my relationship with the Lord; it’s my life.

But while there is something to be said for the idea of a personal relationship with God, nowhere does Scripture call us to a lonely one. When we read the Bible, we are reminded that we are surrounded by “a great cloud of witnesses,” brothers and sisters who have gone before us and whom we will meet in glory. When we gather as a local church, we do so as a recognition that discipleship, worship, and fellowship are communal acts, not solitary ones. And most of all, we are comforted and encouraged by the presence of the Holy Spirit and the promise of the Lord: he is “with us always, even to the end of the age.”

Jesus does not call us to be lone rangers living lives of quiet desperation. God has given us everything we need—his Word, his Spirit, and his church—so that we will be prepared for our walk of faith and to help our brothers and sisters in theirs. So when you’re feeling overwhelmed, unequipped, and uninspired, take a page out of my son’s book: don’t walk alone.

One Way (Friday Devotional)

 

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

- James 4:1, 6-7

Almost every time I leave or return home, I use the alleyway that runs behind my house. Like most such alleys, this one has only one narrow lane, so drivers have to proceed slowly and be mindful of other cars. There is no designated direction you are ‘supposed’ to go; everybody just minds their P’s and Q’s.

Nevertheless, I have a confession to make. Every time I am going down the alley toward the main road—just a couple hundred feet, since our house is the fourth from the corner—and another car pulls into the alley from that road, I feel the stirrings of road rage. Why can’t they just turn onto the street instead of using the alley?! Why are they going that direction?! Why should I have to be the one to pull into a driveway and give them room to proceed—don’t they know this is my alley?!?

That’s how sin tends to bloom—it starts with a sense of entitlement about things you objectively know aren’t yours. Since the day Adam and Eve partook of the one thing God forbid them to touch, human beings have been shouting, “Mine!” about things to which we have no claim. Driven by a mixture of self-importance, pride, and greed, we lash out at our neighbors in the name of rights—rights which, oftentimes, are more imagined than actual.

The prescription for entitlement, according to the Bible, is grace. Just as God showed us favor we did not deserve in sending Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, the Holy Spirit gives us the grace to respond to indignities with forgiveness when our flesh demands retribution. While we are born into this world with a spirit of pride, Christ calls us to a God-given spirit of humility. Once in bondage to sin, faith in the Lord gives us deliverance from evil, freedom to a new way of life.

You’re never going to enjoy not getting your way—but in Christ, you start to see that your way is not the only way. For when the entitlement of the flesh is exchanged for the humility of the Spirit, His way is the only one that really matters.

It Means Something (Friday Devotional)

 

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

- 1 John 3:18

The author and professor Dallas Willard tells the story of a man who lost his composure and cursed in the presence of his pastor. After an embarrassed silence, the man looked sheepishly at the pastor and said, “Oh, it’s all right, pastor. I cuss a little and you pray a little, but neither one of us means anything by it.”

Hypocrisy—it’s one of the most common sins, and one of the deadliest to a believer’s witness. Those who do not know Christ nevertheless know about him; they’ve heard the stories of his grace and his love, and they recognize when one of his followers is falling short of those virtues. People can tell when, despite your professions of faith, it looks like you don’t mean anything by it.

It is with your mouth that you confess Jesus is Lord, but it is with your actions that you show the world you mean it. So in Jesus’ name, may you love not only with your words but with your works.

On Top of the World (Friday Devotional)

 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

- Isaiah 55:8-9

Last weekend, my family and a few friends made our first pilgrimage of 2022 to the State Fair of Texas. We got our Fletcher’s corny dogs, we took our obligatory selfies in front of Big Tex, and we checked out a few cool trucks (a new Ford Maverick for me, a monster truck for the kids.) But the highlight was something none of us had ever experienced before: a ride on the Texas Star.

For the uninitiated, the Texas Star is a giant blue Ferris wheel that towers more than 200 feet over Fair Park. Every October, hundreds of fair visitors hop into its cramped gondolas for a couple of cycles. What they are treated to is a drastically different view of Fair Park than the one they have on the ground—from the top of the Texas Star, you can see everything.

Scripture tells us that our perspective is as different from God’s as the view from the ground is to the top of the Texas Star. We like to think we know everything, that nothing is beyond our ability to comprehend. Our pride compels us to believe no mystery of the universe is unsolvable. But the truth is that the almighty God, who was and is and is to come, is on a completely different level than we mere mortals. His thoughts are not our thoughts, says the prophet, and neither are his ways our ways. Where we are limited, God is omnipotent.

Part of the work of humility is recognizing that all we have to work with is a ground-level view of life. For more than that, we must look to the one who can see everything.

September Reading Log

   

A poem to start this month's log:

I like books,
as I remember
Here's what I read
In September.

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- #401-416, #1-13 (vol. 2)

Not with a bang, but with a whimper, Fantastic Four ended its first unbroken run of issues at 416, having resolved virtually none of the dangling plot threads Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan had spent the previous years weaving. Turns out that, with the speculation bubble of 1990s comics suddenly about to burst, Marvel had gotten an offer too good to refuse. For one year they turned over full creative control of most of their major characters—basically everyone but Spider-Man and the X-Men—to the likes of Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and their studios, trusting the men who had become stars at Marvel a few years earlier to make their characters relevant again.

The first few issues of the new Fantastic Four, plotted and initially illustrated by Lee with scripting by Brandon Choi, live up to the promise of the year's initiative, titled "Heroes Reborn." Under Lee's creative vision, the FF are reimagined as a younger, more modern family. Their core adversaries—Doctor Doom, Mole Man, Namor—are introduced immediately, and the cosmic threat of Galactus looms in the background. Lee's pencils are sharp and stylized, reminiscent of the work he'd done on X-Men just a few years earlier.

But by the year's midpoint, the book loses steam, and it seems the creators have already mentally moved on to other things. Lee stops doing the art, then the plotting, and by the end is gone altogether. The book is overwhelmed by guest stars in what's supposed to be a brand new universe. The final issue barely even features the titular characters, as Marvel hurriedly tries to explain how the characters will return to the core Marvel Universe.

The 29 issues I read this month are basically the epitome of late-90's comics: sensationalistic, overproduced, messy, and creatively empty. There's potential there, enough to keep you entertained. But it's far from essential reading. If you find these issues in a quarter bin at a garage sale, go for it: that's about what they're worth. Otherwise, don't bother.

SMART CHURCH FINANCES: A PASTOR'S GUIDE TO BUDGETS, SPREADSHEETS, AND OTHER THINGS YOU DIDN'T LEARN IN SEMINARY by George M. Hillman, Jr. and John Reece

BUDGETING FOR A HEALTHY CHURCH: ALIGNING FINANCES WITH BIBLICAL PRIORITIES by Jamie Dunlop

Two books about church budgeting. Woohoo!

The first, Smart Church Finances, was the kind of snoozer I expected. Lots of business principles applied to a church context, lots of generalities, and not a ton of useful information for a church my size. It seemed more suited to a church plant than an established church setting, with lots of basics about setting up new budgets, squaring things with the IRS, etc. Useful for someone, but not for me.

Budgeting for a Healthy Church, on the other hand, was a surprisingly insightful and effective primer on church budgeting, offering a good mix of finance tips and theological background. Its main point was that your budget reflects your faith, and that it tells your church's story, and the book did an excellent job conveying that point from a number of different angles. Upon finishing it, I immediately loaned it to this year's budget chairman so he and I could get on the same page.

Look, books about church finances are never going to be page turners. But if you have to pick on, Budgeting for a Healthy Church is the one I'd recommend.

THE BRIDGE: THE LIFE AND RISE OF BARACK OBAMA by David Remnick

Nearly 14 years after his election as President of the United States, it's difficult to remember how swift, shocking, and historic Barack Obama's rise to power was. For virtually everyone in the country outside Chicago, Obama was totally unknown until his rousing keynote speech a the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Four years later, he was our first African-American president-elect. The work done by everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer to Barbara Jordan and Jesse Jackson culminated, at least to some degree, in Barack Obama's election to the highest office in the land.

With both terms of the Obama presidency now in the rearview mirror, the rosy picture of a post-racial America that some believed 2008 signaled feels hopelessly naïve. But while the results of the Obama presidency, particularly regarding race relations, are complicated, the man's biography remains a compelling story. And David Remnick's The Bridge, which gives Obama's biography from birth through the 2008 Election Night, is one of the best accounts of that story I've read yet.

It should be noted that Remnick's biography is both sympathetic to Obama personally and uninterested in his policy goals. Remnick, the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker magazine, is an unabashed liberal and a great admirer of Obama. While not completely uncritical, this biography is a hero narrative, not a piece of investigative journalism. But, at least based on my reading of the book, Remnick's admiration is not a partisan one; he spends no time advocating for Obama's policies. While there is an implied understanding that Obama is pursuing the "right" things for America, this book is hardly a Democratic manifesto.

The book's biggest strength winds up being its biggest flaw too: published in 2010, The Bridge is a work of journalism, not history. The upside to this is that, particularly when chronicling the 2008 campaign, Remnick provides a detailed blow-by-blow of what happened, with plenty of compelling anecdotes and juicy quotes. The downside is that the book lacks perspective, particularly in its central conceit that Obama serves as a bridge from the Civil Rights era to a brighter day in America. Had this book been written in 2020 instead of 2010, I have to think Remnick would have steered clear of that narrative.

Nevetheless, The Bridge is a well-written biography that hits the usual beats of the Obama story while filling in gaps that others left out. For those wanting to know more about the 44th president's meteoric rise, this is a great source.

THE DA VINCI CODE by Dan Brown

Having read Angels & Demons last month, it was time to turn to its controversial sequel, the subject of a middling Tom Hanks movie, hours of cable news coverage, and thousands of reactionary Bible studies. And, with all the hubbub now years in the past, I can confirm that The Da Vinci Code is just as ok-not-amazing as the first time I read it.

As with all the Robert Langdon books, this one finds Dan Brown's protagonist thrust into an international conspiracy merging the art world, ancient history, and the church. At the heart of the story is a quest for the Holy Grail, revealed to be not a chalice, but the descendant of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Hot on Langdon's trail is a menacing albino priest, a member of a self-mortifying hyper-religious sect of the Catholic Church.

The book is predictably blasphemous given that premise, but so obviously fictional—it plays veeeeery fast and loose with the biblical and historical facts—that I was unbothered by the central controversy. After all, why should we expect a secular author to be reverent about Christian doctrine?

As for the book's quality, it's about what you'd expect from a grocery store thriller—short chapters, cardboard characters, and a breakneck pace that keeps you turning the pages. I did find the plot more compelling than Angels & Demons, but the formula was essentially unchanged. I've still got two more Langdon books to go—next up is The Lost Symbol, then Inferno—so check in soon to see if Dan Brown widens his scope a little!

ESSENTIAL PUNISHER VOL. 1 by Various

Ok, let's get this out of the way: on principle, I don't like the Punisher. A guy who roams the streets of New York with an arsenal of weapons killing criminals is not a superhero, he's a serial killer. There's a reason alt-right wackos have adopted the Punisher skull as a logo.

But he exists, he's got 4 Essentials, so let's do this.

The Punisher is Frank Castle, a Vietnam war vet who returned home only to have his family murdered right in front of him in a mafia hit. Grief-stricken and enraged, Castle vowed to use the rest of his life to hunt down and "punish" (a.k.a. kill) criminals. Basically, he's Batman without the no-killing rule or any hint of campiness.

Volume 1 covers a string of guest appearances in various Spider-Man and Daredevil comics, concluding with his first 5-issue miniseries. It's interesting to watch the character evolve over that time from a fairly standard street-level supervillain to the Dirty-Harry-meets-Rambo action-noir antihero we now think of him as. Also interesting is how Marvel's willingness to show Punisher's lethality changes from his initial appearance in 1978, where he never actually fires a gun, to his 1974 miniseries, where kill shots are shown with abandon.

The highlight is undoubtedly Punisher's two-issue guest appearance in Daredevil, which comes smack dab in the middle of Frank Miller's legendary run on the title. Miller's noir-inflected art and writing style is a perfect match for Punisher, and the character would borrow that tone liberally moving forward. I hope to see more team-ups between the two characters moving forward.

All in all, this introduction to the character is a mixed bag, but an intriguing start for a character often accused of being one-note. I'll be interested to see in volume 2 how Punisher does in an ongoing title.