Pastors' Blog

Chihuahua, Mexico—how else is Heaven supposed to respond to the tragic mayhem of life on this planet today? Look—if Jesus wept over the grave of Lazarus and subsequently wept over the city of Jerusalem—if tears choked his desperate cry on the cross that Friday afternoon—wouldn’t He be weeping now?

Weeping for the greedy, revenge-driven drug cartel members who in a turf battle hail of bullets cut down that band of Mormons on their way to a wedding earlier this week? Weeping for the three brave mothers and six children who perished in that withering onslaught, one slain mother able to first save her infant by throwing her to the floor of the SUV? Weeping for the courageous surviving children who hid in tall roadside grass until one of the older boys could walk thirteen miles for help?

The muffled sound of a heartbroken God weeping—our calloused hearts forget too easily, too quickly the sobbings of our Sovereign, don’t they? How could any human mind remain sane if we like He lived with every crushing headline, every devastating death, every split second of every day and night on this terrestrial home?

Jesus once taught us about our Father: “‘I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. . . . Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. . . . Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. . . . You are worth more than many sparrows’” (Matthew 10:16, 28-31).

If not a single sparrow falls to the ground without the Father of all life personally noting that tiny death, how much more does His eternal heart grieve the deaths of His earth children?

“Not a sigh is breathed, not a pain felt, not a grief pierces the soul, but the throb vibrates to the Father’s heart. . . . God is bending from His throne to hear the cry of the oppressed. . . . Satan’s hatred against God leads him to hate every object of the Saviour’s care. He seeks to mar the handiwork of God, and he delights in destroying even the dumb creatures. It is only through God’s protecting care that the birds are preserved to gladden us with their songs of joy. But He does not forget even the sparrows. ‘Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows’” (Desire of Ages 356).

So live on we must, in spite of headlines like this week. Yes, we pray for the bereaved and bereft: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” (Matthew 20:30). And for the evil perpetrators, we pray the prayer of the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

But let us also pray in response to His plea for someone, anyone to go to the rest of His children with the hope of Jesus: “Here am I. Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

Otherwise, Heaven weeps alone. And that would be the saddest story of all.

Some of you have been the recipients of a delightful little email from me asking for your money. And I am so sorry. I hope you immediately recognized that the atrocious spelling and grammar of the note evidences a crook whose short-cut to money-making obviously skipped over high school English or the ESL (English as a Second Language) classes he should have taken first.

And if you didn’t notice the grammar and spelling, I hope you quickly sensed that your pastor would never, ever send you a personal email about women in the hospital who are suffering from cancer. No kidding. Here’s the note one of you received [with my comments in brackets]:

Thanks for the quick response Richard, I’m very glad to hear from you Barbara.. [Notice the differing names—obviously someone was cutting and pasting notes as fast as he/she could and didn’t catch the separate names—also note no commas separating the names and the double periods at the end of the sentence.] I just need to get eBay gift card [grammar is his/hers/theirs] today for some women going through cancer at the hospital [what pastor alive would describe the desperate battle cancer always represents with the words “women going through cancer”!] but I can’t do that right now because of my busy schedule in a conference meeting with only access to email. [So what conference room is it that wouldn’t allow you to slip out of the room and make an important phone call? And whatever conference it is, it must be a boring meeting because I’m soliciting eBay gift cards while sitting through the deliberations.] Can you get it from any store around you possibly now? [What’s the meaning of that garbled sentence?] and I will pay you back later in cash or check. [Cash or check—sounds more like a checkout cashier than a soliciting pastor.] Let me know if you can get the card for these patients. [One card for all of them?]

God bless

Then he/she/they sign off: Dwight K. Nelson, Pioneer Memorial Church, and our address.

Oh, and the email address the hackers set up to receive your replies? nelson.pmchurch@gmail.com. Pretty clever throwing “pmchurch” (which we all recognize) into the address, hoping we won’t notice the Gmail suffix set up for the scam. Pioneer has never had a Gmail address! But how often do we all hurry through our inboxes not always catching the details of an email address?

Sad really—because as it turns out, the scam is to get you to buy those gift cards, scratch off the silver, take a picture of the exposed numerical code and send that pix to these scam artists who are able to cash in on (or sell) those cards because of the now activated (by your purchase) codes. Preying on our generosity, our compassion, and our desire to reflect the unselfish spirit of Jesus. We are guilty as charged!

That’s Paul’s point in his letter to the young Christians in Corinth: “You show that you are a letter [email] from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God” (2 Corinthians 3:3). I.e., you followers of Jesus are a recommendation email from Christ to the world. People read your email and they think it is from him. How’s that for a switch!

Only you and I are not bogus emails or sham representations to all who read us. As Desire of Ages reminds us: “Christ is sitting for His portrait in every disciple. Every one God has predestinated to be ‘conformed to the image of His Son.’ Romans 8:29. In every one Christ’s long-suffering love, His holiness, meekness, mercy, and truth are to be manifested to the world” (826).

Amazing. People look at you and think of Jesus. Joy of joys—what could be better!

I went out for my daily morning walk earlier this week. The sun wasn’t up—it was dark—and though I couldn’t see them, the clouds overhead only made the unrefreshingly warm humidity in the autumn air heavier and burdensome. I clutched my small flashing strobe light (given to me by a kind neighbor last week who caught me walking without light and insisted I receive his thoughtful gift—I gratefully did). The blinking strobe doesn’t light up much of the forested landscape—its value is its uncanny way of catching the eye of drivers hurrying to work in the dark.

But the downside of a light that doesn’t shine very far is your eyes begin to play tricks on you. And you think you see a creature racing across the road ahead (maybe a deer, or was it a tiger?). A blinking light with jumpy shadows is a recipe for uncertainty at best when you’re walking in the dark.

The darkness matched the mood of my heart. I like to pray while I walk. And that morning my heart was burdened for the church, my own and the wider national and global church. It feels like we’re stuck beneath dark clouds in heavy air, not drifting backward perhaps but certainly not making noticeable forward progress either. Having spent a few years in this parish and pulpit, my mind raced back through the many, many spiritual strategies our congregation and campus had embraced, had launched, had completed—hoping this one or that one would be the breakthrough.

I admit it’s difficult to define breakthrough anymore. After all, what constitutes a divine breakthrough in a faith community? Love and ministry to the disenfranchised, the marginalized and alienated (as in Isaiah 58)? The gospel to our neighbors and neighborhoods, our communities and cities (Matthew 28)? “Small companies of prayer” that meet faithfully to intercede for the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 4)? A body of believers who love God with all their hearts, souls and bodies—and love their neighbors as themselves (Matthew 22)?

As I walked on in the dark, the cloud ceiling began to morph from black to grey, thanks to an approaching sunrise unseen beneath the heavy clouds. So what will it take? What are you waiting for, God? How long? Questions borrowed from saints through the ages much closer to him than I. Will the promised breakthrough—what the American writer and messenger described as “such a revival of primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic times . . . the Spirit and power of God . . . poured out upon His children” (GC 464)—come true for this generation?

“Ask the Lord for rain in the season of the latter rain” (Zechariah 10:1). “‘Behold I will do a new thing. . . . I will pour water on those who are thirsty, and floods on the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit on your descendants and my blessing on your offspring’” (Isaiah 43:19/44:3). “In the last days, God says, I will pour my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters. . . . even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days’” (Acts 2:17-18).

Still deep in thought, I approached the end of my forty minutes. Less than two hundred feet ahead around the trees and curve was my home. At that moment I felt a drop. Then a second one. It was beginning to rain. I quickened my pace to get out of the rain, when a thought flashed through my mind—could it be that the breakthrough-rainfall prophets have promised and saints have prayed for through the ages—could it be that the “Big One” (the last divine rainfall) comes only when the children of God are nearly home, much closer to home than anyone realizes?

Could it be then the shadows play tricks on our eyes—“we see through a glass darkly”—so that what looks far is near, and what looks near is far? Could the same dark glass be hiding massive movements of Heaven and its visitants on earth, frenetically at work in the very strategies and prayers we conclude are ineffectual? Then maybe all is not in vain. And Heaven is much closer to us than we ever dared to imagine. Could it be?

Such are the thoughts of a man coming out of the rain.

Me? I was just glad to be home.

Nearly half of GenZers (born 1995-2006)—i.e., our thirteen to 24-year-olds today—were born after the four coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States 18 years ago today. That means they have never known a world without TSA and long security lines at the airport. They’ve never known what it was like not to have to take your shoes off and walk barefoot through an Xray scanner, not to have to limit your fluids in your carry-on bag to 3 fluid oz each, not to have to plop your laptop on a conveyor belt for high-tech Xray analysis, not to have to undergo the occasional (or frequent, depending on your ethnic background) pat-down by a sometimes friendly TSA officer. The list could go on and on.

But what happened on that glorious, sunny, blue-skied Tuesday in New York City (the Twin Towers), in Washington D.C. (the Pentagon) and outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania (the crash of Flight 93), has not only altered our travel routines. It has sadly also altered our view of Muslims and eventually all immigrants, tinging our perceptions with a lurking fear or suspicion of these strangers’ alliance with evil. That radical Islam exists who can deny? That terrorist attacks have continued unabated since 9-11 is obvious. That lone wolf anti-Muslim retaliation has subsequently shot up mosques the world over is also common knowledge. No, the world we live in today is not the world we knew on September 10, 2001. September 11 has rewritten all of our lives.

In fact, it can be argued that endemic societal fear took a massive leap forward on that Tuesday eighteen years ago. We live in a culture afraid of everything now. Oh sure, the shoot-‘em-up mass killings that have escalated in recent years no doubt contribute to our insecurity and angst. And perhaps so does the “selfie me-first” narcissism that too often turns human beings into solitary individual fortresses afraid to trust anyone outside our immediate social context. Perhaps.

It could be that our Lord himself foresaw this global paralysis, predicting it would eventually become endemic: “People will faint from terror [recognize that word?], apprehensive of what is coming on the world” (Luke 21:26). Not surprising then that GenZers now manifest the highest percentage of college entrance students ever with self-diagnosed mental health issues. You can blame the technological impact of the smartphone, but we can thank 9-11 for preparing the way.

But why such gloomy thoughts on this sunny, still blue-skied September 11 eighteen years later? Because of all people, those who call themselves “Adventists” (believers in the soon-coming of Christ) should be analyzing the rapidly-gyrating news cycle and drawing the conclusion we now live in the self-disintegrating world the ancient Scripture predicted. While the Bible doesn’t calculate a calendar date for The End, we’d be fools to ignore Jesus’ somber admonition, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matthew 24:42-44).

Jesus, our soon-coming thief? Of course not. Rather, Jesus, our soon-coming Savior, “the Savior of the world.” Which, if it doesn’t learn about him, will not only be caught unawares but will be lost. Which means that if we consider ourselves Adventists, it is ipso facto our “Adventist” mission to tell others this truth. Inviting them to worship with you is a blessed idea. Sharing with them something you’ve read that’s inspired you is another effective method. So is “loving your neighbor” into a continuing conversation about the meaning of relevant Bible truths (“the truth as it is in Jesus”). Choose what works for you.

But let’s not simply yawn our way past this eighteenth anniversary of September 11. What a waste of opportunity! In the words of Jesus, “keep watch,” “be ready” and “go.” And “I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20 Message).