Unplanned Giving (Friday Devotional)

“Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

- Philippians 2:4

We are now officially in what has been called “the season of giving,” with Christmas less than a month away. From now until December 25^th, mall parking lots will be full of shoppers’ cars, Amazon.com will be America’s homepage, and TV commercials will be collages of green and red—all because this is the month when we earnestly seek out the best possible gifts for our family members and friends. Yet for all of the attention we pay to giving presents, sometimes the stress of the season precludes us from giving much else.

Give a Saturday morning to serve at a homeless shelter? Wish I could, but I set this day aside to decorate the house. Give a love offering for the needy? Nope, I’ve already blown my budget on presents. Give a free night of babysitting to the overworked single mom down the street? Sorry, but I’ve got my own family to take care of. Too often the activities and obligations that come with the “season of giving” make us miss chances to help those who could use our gifts most of all.

Philippians 2:4 reminds us that as Christians, we are called to look first not to our own interests, but to the interests of others. Ironically, it is especially at Christmastime that we can lose sight of this message, so overwhelmed are we by the next present to buy, the next recital to attend. Yet much of Jesus’ ministry to the poor and the sick came “on the way”, as he was headed to a previously scheduled engagement—it’s an example we would do well to follow as we celebrate his birth.

This Christmas season, as your calendar fills up and your stress level rises, let me encourage you to make room for some unplanned giving. Open your heart and give of yourself to someone who is not expecting anything from you and will not give anything in return. After all, nothing says Christmas like an unexpected, unwarranted gift to someone who hasn’t earned it—sounds a lot like grace to me.

Taking the Leap (Friday Devotional)

“For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

- 2 Timothy 1:7

I’ve never had much of a desire to go skydiving. That old cliché about seeing no reason to jump out of a perfectly good airplane perfectly describes my feelings—the most excitement I ever need to experience at that elevation is a little turbulence. But while I’ve never jumped out of a plane, I have a pretty good idea what it takes to be a skydiver.

First you need to find an eligible drop zone where skydiving is allowed, along with a pilot and a plane to get you in the air. You need to take a lesson from a professional instructor on what to do once you’re in the plane. If you’re smart, you’ll read up on skydiving, whether from books, magazine articles, or testimonials. You need a parachute, obviously. And finally, once you’re in the plane, thousands of feet above the ground, you have to jump. For all the preparation that comes before, all the studying and the instruction and the excitement, it’s that final step that makes you a skydiver—until you jump, you’re just like everybody else.

The way of Jesus is a little bit like that. There’s plenty of learning to be done, a host of Bible verses you can memorize, sermons you can hear, books you can read—but until you’re willing to step out and put what you’ve learned into action, until you’re ready to jump, you’re just like everybody else. And “just like everybody else” is not what God calls you to be.

God calls you to not only believe in Jesus, but to follow him; He calls you to take up your cross and be willing to suffer even unto death for your faith, just as Jesus suffered unto death for you. And faced with such a terrifying challenge, God does not give you “a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

To follow the way of Jesus means being courageous even in the face of uncertainty, because the way of Jesus is full of risks. When you evangelize to a friend, you take the risk that she will reject your message. When you give aid to a poor man, you take the risk that he will waste what you give him. When you show compassion to the guilty, you take the risk that the encounter will damage your reputation. Following Jesus means loving God and loving people even when it’s scary, even when it’s risky, because the way of Jesus is the way of the cross: giving of yourself so that others might know God’s love.

It’s not hard to believe in Jesus, because his message is appealing. It’s not hard to learn about him either, because his life and his gospel are interesting. But following Jesus is hard, because his way calls you to love sacrificially, to give when your instincts say to take. It can be difficult and it can be dangerous, but if you strive to be a follower of Jesus, you can’t love only when it’s comfortable. When you’re tempted to keep your faith strictly where it’s safe, may God give you the courage to jump.

More Than False Hope (Friday Devotional)

“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”

- Hebrews 10:23

It’s present every time somebody buys a lottery ticket. Politicians frequently traffic in it, especially during election years. And for every sports team that spent the previous season in the cellar, it’s an intoxicating motivator when the new year begins. In so many areas of life, false hope is a powerful thing.

False hope refers to the distortion of true, reasonable hope. While hope has a foundation in realistic expectation, false hope deals in blind faith, where evidence is neither needed nor particularly desired. Hope can lead to victory, but false hope only breeds disappointment.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is firmly grounded in hope—hope that the cross redeems all who believe in its power, hope that Christ will come again, hope in the resurrection and in life everlasting. Believers cling to these promises from God especially in hard times, when the burdens of life are oppressive and the world seems governed more by chaos and sin than by a sovereign, loving God. But for all the assurance that the Holy Spirit provides, for all the ways creation testifies to God’s glory, and for all the proof that Scripture offers, ultimately the confession that Jesus is Lord is an article of faith—built upon “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). The gospel is not proved by what you can observe, but by hope.

But it is not a false hope. You can hold fast to the confession, you can believe without feeling foolish, because God is faithful. You can trust God to keep His ultimate promises because He keeps His daily promises, because His mercies are new every morning. Even when you waver, He remains steadfast; even when you are weak, He is strong. The promise of the gospel is ultimately proved not by anything you bring to the table, but by the faithfulness of the promiser.

In those moments when you are plagued by doubt and when you have far more questions than answers, may the faithfulness of God serve as an encouragement. Faith, even faith that falters, is powerful when you know who to place it in—so long as God is true, your hope in Him is never false.

Proofreading (Friday Devotional)

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

 - Psalm 139:23-24

 I still remember the strange feeling of nervousness I had as I handed my dad the paper. I had spent all semester reading and researching for it. I had written and turned in three different rough drafts. I had followed all the directions my teacher had given me and now, finally, had nearly finished the big sophomore research paper. All that was left was to have a friend or family member proofread it.

 For most students, that meant having Mom or Older Brother scan it quickly and say, “Looks good to me.” But I knew I wouldn’t be getting off that easy, because my dad was a professional writer and editor. By having Dad proofread my paper, I was going to learn just how good or bad it really was. He would be able to point out misspellings I didn’t notice, to rearrange sentence structures in ways that sounded better, to tell me both where my writing was succeeding and where it was failing. If I wanted my paper to be rubber-stamped, I could have given it to a friend—by giving it to Dad, I knew some flaws might get exposed, but that I’d also wind up with a better essay at the end.

 The prayer in Psalm 139 is for a similar proofreading, but of the soul—search me, know my heart, test me, know my thoughts; these are the petitions made to the Lord. The psalmist opens himself up to God and allows for the idea that there might be a “wicked way” in him, that as much as he strives for obedience, he may have faltered at some point. He is not only willing to have his faithfulness examined, he requests it, because in doing so he trusts that God will lead him where he needs to go.

 It is easy to keep yourself closed off from accountability, to assume you’re doing the right things and avoid any suggestion that you’re not. Yet one of the marks of a faithful believer is the desire to grow closer to God instead of keeping a comfortable distance from Him. Spiritual intimacy comes when you are willing to be vulnerable, to be corrected, and to be led by the Holy Spirit.  So may your prayer be like the psalmist’s, full of courage and faithfulness, not fearing the watchfulness of God, but welcoming some proofreading from the author and perfecter of your faith.

Shades of 2011

Let me tell you a story: A team built on aggressive baserunning and timely hitting shocked the baseball world by busting into the playoffs for the first time in many years. Led by a manager whose old-school mentality was alternately maddening and lovable, a solid if unspectacular pitching staff, and a stellar bullpen, the team advanced further than anyone expected they would, culminating in an improbable trip to the World Series, where they were swatted down by Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, and the San Francisco Giants. The fans, most of whom would admit they had just been happy to be there, nevertheless longed for a trip back, for a second chance at glory. But the star pitcher left in free agency and the odds seemed long. Some analysts speculated the team might not even make the playoffs again. Yet when the American League Championship trophy was awarded, it was to a group of familiar faces…looking even stronger than the previous year, they were back in the World Series, ready to take care of unfinished business.

As a fan of that team, the 2011 Texas Rangers, you can see why I’m happy for the Kansas City Royals today.

The last time I was so invested in a non-Rangers World Series outcome was 2001, when the Arizona Diamondbacks walked off in Game 7 against a dynastic New York Yankees team (and even then, my glee at the result had a lot more to do with my jealousy-hatred of the Yankees than any love for an Arizona franchise younger than I was.) This year, Kansas City was the team I was rooting for to win it all the moment the Rangers were eliminated—more than the long-suffering Cubs, more than the traditionally hard-luck Mets, and certainly more than the Blue Jays, who had taken down my team in one of the weirdest games of all time. The Royals just seemed like, after coming so close last year, they deserved it.

They had gone through the gauntlet of another 162-game season, this time not as the hunters of “better” teams, but as the hunted. They had advanced through the playoff rounds one by one yet again, this time not as the plucky underdogs but as the defending A.L. champions. And this time, entering the World Series against an N.L. team with a flashier history than theirs, there were a lot more people predicting that they had a chance. Shades of 2011.

I wanted the Royals to win because they reminded me so much of my favorite Rangers team. Their speed, their youth, their heart-stopping tendency to play possum for 6 innings and erupt for dramatic comebacks in the final innings—it all felt so familiar. They got a football town to pay attention, not just for a few weeks but for a whole season; they got their stadium rocking with individual player chants that needed no prompting—every time the “Moooooose” cheer would begin for Mike Moustakas I could hear the thundering “NA-PO-LI” chant echo in my memory.

I’m happy for Kansas City because they now have what I wanted for my team 4 years ago. The 2011 Rangers endured what some baseball people have called the greatest World Series of all time—and I’m sure if you root for one of the other 29 teams in the majors, there’s a fair case for that designation. But for me that World Series was not great; it contained the darkest sports moments I have ever experienced and will ever experience…seriously, I know I’m only 26, but nothing could possibly be worse than Game 6. Nothing.

I’m happy for the Royals fans, for a town that loves its team. I spent a few days in Kansas City last year, and I had a wonderful time. Great music, incredible barbecue, easy to get around, nice people, easygoing vibe. I’m glad that city’s getting a championship parade, and I know the streets will be full hours before it starts and after it ends. The Royals and their fans deserve the ecstasy they’re feeling today.

I hope they know it doesn’t always end this way…even when it seems like it should. In sports, the good guys don’t always win. But I’m glad that, at least this time, they did. Way to go, Royals, sincerely. Just don’t get comfortable…I hear there are a few ballplayers in Arlington still looking to finish a job 5 years in the making.

I Don't Want To Talk About Race. I Want to Listen.

If there’s one thing social media has taught me, it’s that talking about race is almost entirely useless. Blood pressures rise, feelings are hurt, sweeping generalizations are made, and in the end nothing is accomplished—the exchange ends not because a consensus has been reached, but because its participants are too exhausted to continue. The declaration that is made each time a new video emerges—that is time for all of us to have “a national conversation about race”—ignores the simple reality that we don’t know how to talk about race.

If I choose to enter into a conversation about race, I do so from the perspective of a blond-haired, blue-eyed, white, straight, middle class, Christian, married, college educated, employed adult—the perspective of someone for whom oppression is purely academic. I can only imagine what it might feel like to be discriminated against by society, because that is not part of my experience. I can learn about it, I can hear others talk about it, but I cannot know it. It’s not part of my sociological DNA, and to claim otherwise is to be blind, arrogant, or both.

So when an unarmed black man dies at the hands of a white police officer—as in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Walter Scott and others—my first question about the victim is, “What did he do wrong?” I have been raised to believe that police officers are here to serve and protect the public, that they keep us safe from the bad guys, that if the police are looking for you then you must have done something wrong. So if an unarmed black man is killed at the hands of a white cop under ambiguous circumstances, then he must have been doing something illegal or threatening. Policemen are the good guys, so if an officer is standing over a black body with a smoking gun, then that dead man must have been a bad guy.

Obviously each of these stories is complicated and unique, and obviously my opinion can shift away from that immediate reaction as the details of each incident come out. But make no mistake, that instant, visceral reaction matters. The moment another police video goes viral, my background and the biases that come with it have already determined who gets the benefit of the doubt. I cannot read these stories or see these videos neutrally, just as you cannot. However implicit, each of us understands race based on the way we have experienced its effects in our own lives.

And so we don’t know how to talk about race with one another. We are so tied to our own understandings that are we are unwilling to hear another vantage point for more than a few seconds. The truth is, we don’t want to have a real conversation, a dialogue, about race—we want to explain why we’re right and they’re wrong, and for them to sit down and shut up while we explain it. Talking about race isn’t getting anything done because we have too big an appetite for our own words and no stomach for those of another.

But, as I alluded to in my introductory blog post, sometimes reading and writing can do what talking cannot. This week I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, “Between the World and Me”, a cross between a memoir and a manifesto on race in America, written as a letter to Coates’ 14-year old son. The book is not an optimistic one; there is no attempt to find redemption in African-Americans’ painful struggle for equality in this country, nor is there much of a nod to progress in that direction. Coates’ outlook is bleak, arguing that the American Dream was built upon the domination of “black bodies” (a term he returns to throughout the book) and that in order for America to change, it must not only acknowledge its past and present sins, but fundamentally reform its Dream.

Coates’ writing is provocative, brilliant, beautiful, and heartbreaking. Certain passages made me angry, others made me sad. Sometimes I nodded along with his points, other times I found myself wanting to argue with him mid-sentence, to accuse him of oversimplifying something so complex. But all I could do was keep reading, keep immersing myself in his perspective, keep learning from the experience of his life and the lessons it has taught him. And in doing so, in letting him tell his full story without interruption, I was able to grasp some things I never heard in the back-and-forth of a Facebook debate, whether because they hadn’t been said or (more likely) because I wasn’t listening.

When I played my music loudly in the car at 16, it meant I was a teenager—when Coates’ son does so, it means he’s a thug with no respect. When I’m asked if I need help in a store, I can say no thank you without eyes following me around the premises—Coates does not share that privilege. When I’m pulled over by a cop, my worst fear is that I’ll be given a speeding ticket—Coates’ worst fear is that the wrong word from him will make his wife a widow and his son an orphan.

Is Coates’ perspective fair to white America, to the establishment, to the police? I don’t know. But I’m not sure it matters. What matters is hearing him before responding, letting him tell his whole story—his fears, his hopes, his ideas—instead of dismissing him out of hand. He has a perspective that is different from mine, probably different from yours, and that perspective deserves a voice at the table, a chance to speak without being shouted down.

Reading “Between the World and Me” stretched me, because it forced me to enter a world I do not know and to inhabit a life that is not my own. It made me do what great writing should—it made me empathize with someone who is not like me. And by listening to his feelings and his arguments, his stories and his conclusions, an unspoken connection formed between writer and reader, black man and white man. I do not know his world as he does…but I know it better than I did before. And in that there is progress.

Perhaps we do not need conversations about race, with their myriad interruptions and misunderstandings. Perhaps we need to do less debating, where the prize is not consensus, but the last word. Maybe the secret is not better explaining your perspective—maybe it is hearing someone else’s.

The Forever in the Photos (Friday Devotional)

“For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.”

- Psalm 100:5

At any family gathering, a consistent source of fun is the photo album. Old pictures spark stories and even elicit tears, but the most common reaction they provoke is laughter—at the clothes you wore 15 years ago, at the hairstyles your mom’s bridesmaids had on her wedding day, at the way your grandparents’ house was decorated 60 years ago. The older the photos, the more struck you tend to be by how much has changed since then. Looking at some of these old pictures, it can seem like they were taken on a whole different world than the one you know today.

But when the people in those photographs start to tell their stories, you quickly realize that, for all the surface-level differences between 2015 and 1995 (or 1965 or 1925), much remains the same today. Whether wearing parachute pants or cargo shorts, parents still cram kids and luggage into vans so they can experience the wonder of the Grand Canyon together. Whether they put them in brown paper bags or insulated lunch boxes, moms still put post-it notes saying “I love you” on their kids’ sandwich bags. Whether the house was a log cabin built by your great-grandfather or a suburban condo that your realtor landed at a good price, it is still the love of family that makes a house a home. As much as the details change, the important parts of life endure for generations.

In the same way, much of the way God works in your life seems to change over time. When you’re a child, God is found in the exciting stories of the Bible, where He helps people like Moses and David and Samson win thrilling victories over impossible odds. As you get older, you learn that God wants you to know Him not just as a character in a bunch of stories, but as the one who loved you enough to send His Son for you. Faith becomes about more than memory verses and moves to a personal relationship between you and Christ. By the time you’ve reached adulthood and maturity (which don't necessarily happen simultaneously), your picture of God is a more complicated one—He is there in your victories and your defeats, when you laugh with joy and when you sob with grief.

Like the details in those old photographs, your mental picture of God and your understanding of His role in your life changes as the years go by. But the psalmist reminds us that while some things look different to you as you mature, the important things endure—“The Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness for all generations.” No matter how you change over time, no matter how mighty your triumphs or how miserable your losses, God’s goodness and faithfulness and love endure through it all, just as they have for the generations before you and the generations that will follow you.

Especially when goodness and mercy seem like distant memories, when you’ve fallen and feel like there is no one to help you up, you can draw encouragement from the promise of God’s unchanging love. As different as life looks when circumstances shift, God remains the same today as yesterday, still regarding you as His precious child. When God’s faithfulness seem like a memory from a long-gone past, resigned to faded photographs, take a second look—some things never change.