Pastors' Blog

I don’t know about you, but I find the internecine fighting between the children of Islam in Iraq so terribly sad. Sunnis against Shiites, Shiites against Sunnis have been the headlines these past seven days. But it’s not like Muslims have a corner on the market of intra-family killing. This aging, disintegrating planet has lived with that tragedy from “in the beginning” with Cain and Abel. And while it might assuage our consciences to point the finger at Islam, the sorrowful truth is that the American Civil War and the terrorist killings between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland are evidence enough that Christianity (or a perversion thereof) can be justly fingered as well. Of course, the crooked finger rightfully deserves to be pointed straight at someone else, someone whose hatred of the Creator King is still (after all these millennia) so intense, so insane that he derives a sadistic (satanic would be the better word) pleasure in injecting the children of the heavenly Father with his own poisonous rage. “And war broke out in Heaven . . . . but woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you ‘wild and raging with anger’” (Revelation 12:7, 12—see The Message). Jesus’ own finger-pointing truthfully declared, “An enemy has done this” (Matthew 13:28). So what’s a Father to do? Here are some not-so-simple suggestions about what you and I might do: 1) Let’s you and I resolve that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we will not let intra-family anger, hatred or even resentment spring up in our own homes, our own hearts. “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” (Ephesians 5:26) is inspired counsel for marriages, families, friendships and workplace relationships. Before the day ends, talk it out, email it out, pray it out together. 2) Let’s you and I invest some extra time on our knees, pleading with God to intervene (even while He allows and protects free choice) in the rage and killing, that the innocent might be spared and that the guilty might yet be reached. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44, 45). While Jesus’ counsel was for us, why can’t we exercise this loving and praying on behalf of others far away? 3) Let’s you and I offer ourselves to God to become peacemakers in the circles where we live, work, play. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). We may not be able to heal the whole world, but why couldn’t God’s healing peace flow through the way we speak to each other, the way we choose not to forward that angry, judgmental piece of gossip, the way we become involved in quiet shuttle-diplomacy between two estranged brothers or sisters who need the Peacemaker Himself? When children fight, what’s a Father to do? Could it be that you are what He’s wanting to do to stop it?

May I recommend a new book to you? Three or four weeks ago I was visiting with one of our guests after the worship service. He and his family from Toronto were on campus with their prospective student. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and financial advisor for the past twenty years. He told me about a book he has written and offered to send me a copy. When it arrived a week ago, I sat down and began reading. I was so intrigued I finished Tim Aka’s 2014 book, End Game Economics: Understanding the Financial Crisis through Scripture, a few days later (a Kindle version is available at amazon.com). His rather dramatic premise is that you can trace the fault lines of a predicted global economic collapse in the ancient prophecies of Scripture. That in itself may not be such a novel suggestion. What I found stunning was his collection of accumulating evidences in the economies of the world’s leading economic powers (U.S., China, Japan, the European Union) to support his conclusion that the “proverbial ‘perfect storm’ is nearing and we can track its progress by watching the developments in energy, food and water, debt, stock markets, and cost inflation. These forces are relentlessly driving towards an event horizon of economic chaos” (117). Consider, he writes, the divine warning in Habakkuk 2:6—“Will not all these take up a proverb against him [Babylon], and a taunting riddle against him, and say, ‘Woe to him who increases what is not his [debt]—how long? And to him who loads himself with many pledges [of indebtedness]?’” Everyone knows that the amassing of national and personal debt is now the most debilitating practice of both government and populace. Which is Aka’s point. We are addicted to debt and it is killing us. “The only solutions that governments around the world can offer are more debt and more money printing to pretend that all is well. . . . There is an illusion of wealth and well being, as the stock markets are ramped up every day, but there is less real economic value being created” (31). Prayerfully consider the mounting economic evidence for yourself. In 2000 the dot.com bubble of technology collapsed, and the economy plunged. In 2007 the real estate bubble collapsed, and the economy nearly melted down. And now the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (money printing) debt bubble is on the edge of collapse. Where will this one leave us? Aka compares our predicament to a low-flying airliner, running out of fuel, but with no place to land. Inexplicably the pilot shoves the throttle forward into a  steep climb, consuming precious fuel, but giving the impression that all is well, when in fact on that climb the fuel will run out. Only those with golden parachutes (the 1% of earth) will profit from that desperate climb, bailing out, leaving the hapless passengers (you and me) strapped in that crashing airliner. How then should we live, you and I? If ever Habakkuk 2:6’s indebtedness ought to be shunned, it is certainly now. In the mini-series, “How to Quantify Your Happiness,” over the next few weeks let’s share ancient wisdom that can spare us (as much as is possible here on the brink) unnecessary personal financial and spiritual collapse. God is the greatest Provider of all: “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). “The perfect storm” is ahead. But the good news is that in spite of the bad news, God promises to carry us through to the greatest news of all—the long-hoped-for return of Christ. But before the promised return comes “the perfect storm.” The point? It’s time to prepare.

The still unfolding heartache of the capsized Korean ferry Sewol with its entombed teenage passengers has gripped the world. Reports of text messages and phone calls from some of the  high school students trapped inside the overturned and slowly sinking vessel (though many of the messages are now considered hoaxes) were fresh wounds in a nation mourning the numbing deaths of so many of its promising young. The anguished wail of one of the parents should haunt us all. CNN reported: “Boat after boat, body after body from a capsized South Korean ferry came ashore Sunday morning, a solemn process interrupted by piercing cries and screams from passengers’ kin. . . . After an inspection, [the bodies] were carried along a path guarded by police—who themselves shed tears—and past even more outwardly emotional family members. These relatives cried and, in some cases, yelled loudly, clearly overtaken by the moment. Some of those shouts came from inside the identification tent. One man yelled out, ‘Wake up! Wake up, please!’” (http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/19/world/asia/south-korea-ship-sinking/index.html?iref=allsearch) The image of that father weeping over the recovered body of his child, “Wake up! Wake up, please!”—how could we ever forget it? And yet it is—perhaps not for us, but for the Father of this world—an even more stunning  and urgent reality that an entire civilization today is entombed in a morally, spiritually capsized planet that will eventually slip beneath the cold waters of death. Unless they are rescued, tens of thousands of millions, even billions, will perish. Are you among the already rescued, among those men, women and children who have the blessed fortune of having been snatched from impending spiritual death? Shall we sit on the shoreline of this sinking planet, thanking our Savior for our own salvation, bemoaning those still entrapped, but doing nothing for their rescue? How could we sleep at night were we to actually hear the anguished cries from a planet that loses two of its inhabitants to death every single second? “Wake up! Wake up, please!” The bloody tree atop Calvary is a measure of the Love that loudly rejoices over every rescued soul, but mournfully weeps over every life unresponsive, reached too late. “Wake up! Wake up, please!” While this school year now ends, the unfolding tragedy of this sinking, perishing planet does not. “Rescue the perishing; don’t hesitate to step in and help. If you say, ‘Hey, that’s none of my business,’ will that get you off the hook? Someone is watching you closely, you know—Someone not impressed with weak excuses” (Proverbs 24:11, 12 The Message). Wherever this summer journey takes us, I pray it will somehow immerse you and me in Christ’s rescue mission. Because the good news is that “Wake up! Wake up, please!” can come true, and the entrapped can wake up and be rescued while there still is time. (If you would like to be part of our “rescue mission” to south Mexico July 17—August 4, call the church office [269.471.3134] for details on how to join the team.)

It has been a month since the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared off the radar screens of air traffic control. With its 239 passengers and crew missing and presumed dead, its disappearance has become the greatest unsolved mystery in the history of flight. For the last two weeks air and naval vessels from a cadre of nations have been combing the south Indian Ocean off the western coast of Australia for any sign, any clue at all regarding the missing airliner. Satellite images of out of focus flotsam on the sea have sent search teams scrambling to confirm potential evidence. But thus far no confirmation. No physical evidence that could bring a modicum of comfort or even closure to the families of the missing. Nothing except an erratic and occasional “ping,” which, authorities say, could possibly be the underwater pulse emitted by an airliner’s black box communication recording devise. But like the satellite images, the recent spate of pings has yet to prove conclusive. And so the world waits and the families pray. As I have brooded over this unfolding story and—as is characteristic of this blog site—looked for a “connect” between the headlines and life as we live it today, it has occurred to me that in some mysterious sense the underwater pings are a metaphor of the resurrection. And by that I don’t mean that this airliner full of men, women and children, buried in the depths of the ocean, is a symbol of all the dead who await the resurrection the Bible promises at the end of time. With Easter only a few days away, that promise of hope would certainly be worthy of our reflection. But rather, could it be those intermittent pings can represent an even more stunning truth? The quiet truth that the Father of the universe, the Creator of this errant planet, itself wildly and erratically far far off its intended divine flight plan—could it be that God Himself hears what no other ear can hear—the faint, intermittent pings emitting from a billion fresh and ancient graves the world over—silent pings that mark the patches of earth and sea under which lie the remains of earth children who sought His salvation? To our broken hearts what seems so cruelly stolen from us in death is not lost to Him. Because what “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard” is seen and heard by the Christ who yet cries out, “I am the Resurrection and the Life” (John 11:25). In vain we search for the one who no longer is in our arms, whose breath we feel upon our cheeks no more—lost and gone, our sobs confess. But on this week before Easter, let every heart remember that what the ear cannot hear He can. Wild and stunning truth more glorious than before, God can hear the “ping of hope.” And our dead are not lost to Him. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.”