Pastors' Blog

I realize that the times call for a bit of creativity now and then—but this creative? In a Black Friday mad dash for an Xbox video game console on sale, a woman at a Los Angeles Wal-Mart last week neutralized her competition (twenty other shoppers) racing for that same electronic toy. She did it with resolve and a nifty little can of pepper spray. Blinded all twenty of them. And hands down (and eyes shut), she won! Merry Christmas, children. But hers was hardly an isolated instance of Christmas shopping aggression. Commenting on the rash of "shopping related violence [rolling] in this week from Los Angeles to New York," the Associated Press reported (in classic understatement) that "experts say a volatile mix of desperate retailers and cutthroat marketing has hyped the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales to increasingly frenzied levels." Do you think! "With stores opening earlier, bargain-obsessed shoppers often are sleep-deprived and short-tempered. . . . Add in the online-coupon phenomenon, which feeds the psychological hunger for finding impossible bargains, and you've got a recipe for trouble, said Theresa Williams, a marketing professor at Indiana University" (South Bend Tribune 11-27-11). Though probably not enough trouble to convince businesses (and shoppers) to back off. According to the National Retail Federation, American shoppers last weekend spent an all-time high of $52.4 billion--up 16% from the same weekend the year before. And Cyber Monday online sales were $1.25 billion, 33% higher than last year. Did somebody say "economic recession?" Not wanting to be the Grinch that stole Christmas or sound like Dave Ramsey, but I wonder aloud: How much of these sales were credit card purchases to be paid off sometime in the New Year? All because everyone else is doing it? So what would happen if we turned counter-cultural for Christmas? What if we shifted the paradigm, and instead of focusing on how profusely we can give to those we know and love best, we instead began to ask how sacrificially we might give to those we know the least? Like the record number of Americans in the latest census (49.1 million) now considered poor. Don't know anybody that poor? They live 12 miles up the road from us in the inner city of Benton Harbor. Some live right here in university housing. So what if you adopted a family in need (up there or here)? Our Neighbor to Neighbor community service center in town (269-471-7411) has a list of needy families (up there and here)--why not call and ask how you might help one of those families? For the second year now, our church staff is choosing not to exchange gifts at our Christmas party, but rather combine all of our cash gifts for one of those needy families. We're no heroes. But it's proof enough that the paradigm can be shifted. Collectively, personally, simply. All it takes is for someone in your family to make the suggestion. (Which by the way isn't a moratorium on a gift or two for our own loved ones--just a shifting of focus to the more needy we don't even know.) "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich" (II Corinthians 8:9). No shopping madness (or blindness) on that starry night. Just the quiet emptying of Heaven's treasury for the poorest of the poor--you and me. Since we have received so freely, shall we not then freely give?

The sirens wailed by as I was out jogging early Tuesday morning. From their sounds, it appeared that not only our Oronoko-Berrien Springs volunteer fire department was responding, but units from nearby towns as well. Only later did I learn of the deadly fire that engulfed an apartment building not far from campus. Eye witnesses spoke to John Paul, an WSBT-TV reporter who wrote up an account for the South Bend Tribune (11-16-11). Rhodel Kabah, a resident of the apartment complex, told him, "I kept hearing shattering glass and screams." A neighbor, Quigley Morris, described standing outside the raging inferno: "The most difficult thing I've ever done in my life was to stand and listen to the mother cry and know there's a kid in there." The three-year-old child was trapped in an upstairs bedroom. The parents tried to coax her to the bedroom window, but she was too frightened. "When they told me a kid was in there, I said we have to do something," Morris went on. "[But] when we tried to go through the door, it was impossible. The smoke was in our faces." Firefighters later recovered the child's body. The child's father was airlifted to a burn unit in Kalamazoo, where he is recovering from extensive burns and broken feet from his second-story jump. Berrien Springs Oronoko Township fire chief Bruce Stover later observed that the fire simply grew and spread too rapidly, preventing any possible rescue of the trapped three-year-old. "We couldn't go in," he said. "We wanted to go in, but we couldn't go in; there was nothing we could [do] to search for the child."  And so our community mourns with the grieving family. "We couldn't go in." Because the truth is, sometimes it is simply too late - too late to save the entrapped, too late to "rescue the perishing." In a civilization whose flash points and hot spots could engulf an entire region or even the world in a matter of days, the fate of seven billion really is a big deal, isn't it? How many of earth's children are even cognizant of the smoldering danger that could at any moment explode into an inferno? What shall we do for them? What if we had known a way to save that little girl this week - what if we could have rescued her but chose not to? How would her parents respond? Desire of Ages minces no words: "How would a father and mother feel, did they know that their child . . . had been passed by, and left to perish, by those who might have saved it? Would they not be terribly grieved, wildly indignant? Would they not denounce those murderers with wrath hot as their tears, intense as their love?" (825). And could you blame them? Now comes the zinger: "The sufferings of every man are the sufferings of God's child, and those who reach out no helping hand to their perishing fellow beings provoke His righteous anger" (ibid). The very strong point? We cannot stand by and do nothing. Because the people we study with, work with, live with, play with, and neighbor with belong to our Father, they are our family, too. We must go in after them. After all, Christ did for us - irrespective of the infinitely high cost he had to pay. We must go in after them. For Jesus' line seems all the more apropos as the holidays approach, "Freely you have received; freely give" (Matthew 10:8). Milton Agay, police chief for our village and township, told the reporter: "You wish you could do more, but what can anyone say? You just feel heartbroken for the family and for the loss of a life." Well put, Chief. So let us go in now before it's too late.

Let me be quick to paraphrase the words of Amos, “I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet” (see Amos 7:14). Truth is, living in the 24/7 news cycle of these tumultuous times, it doesn’t require mega-doses of prescience to make the following prediction here in this Fourth Watch blog. The unraveling this week of the much-heralded (last week) “resolution” to the European Union’s intractable Greece crisis has given new meaning to the “tragedy-comedy” genres of theater the ancient Greeks gave to the world. Greek prime minister George Papandreou announced on Monday a national referendum next year to decide whether Greece would accept last week’s eleventh hour  EU bail-out offer. European leaders were stunned. One Irish commentator (perhaps reflecting Ireland’s own precarious financial survival) observed: “The date of that [referendum] vote is as unclear as any intricate political calculations behind Prime Minister Papandreou’s decision to call it, or even whether he informed the Franco-German neo-axis powers before announcing it. Nor is it obvious what the precise implications for Europe might be, other than perfectly hideous. Chaotic hardly seems an adequate adjective. The Greeks have unleashed pandemonium, and if there is any hope remaining in Pandora’s box this time around, you’d want the Hubble Telescope to locate it.” (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/this-is-no-return-to-ancient-greek-democracy-16071942.html#ixzz1cYe9vpXV) In all fairness, the EU-Greece drama is matched only by our own government’s political theater played out in Washington’s “tragic comedy” efforts to stanch America’s financial hemorrhaging. Truth is—the entire world teeters on the razor edge of economic collapse. And that is the Fourth Watch prediction of this blog—that the “new normal” for our national and global economy will be accelerating uncertainty that will terminate in irreversible  ruin, the collapse of our civilization. I.e., the second law of thermodynamics will prove true economically—we will move from a state of equilibrium to an irreversible state of entropy and collapse. But such a prediction is hardly rocket science. So why make it? Because I fear for my church. I fear that the indomitable pluck and inbred optimism of the American spirit will temper our apocalyptic awareness and shackle our Adventist sensitivities. I fear that like the five foolish virgins of Jesus’ parable we will drowsily murmur that there is surely more time that must pass before our “second advent” hopes need awaken. I fear the following prediction: “Transgression has almost reached its limit. Confusion fills the world, and a great terror is soon to come upon human beings. The end is very near. We who know the truth should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise [read “sudden”]. . . . Are we as a people asleep? Oh, if the young men and young women in our institutions [read “Andrews University”] . . . could only discern the signs of the times, what a change would be seen in them!” (8T 28, emphasis supplied) Then what shall we do? The soon-coming Christ makes this invitation: “‘Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me’” (Revelation 3:20 NRSV). Now is the most opportune time we have left to “share a meal as friends” (NLT) with our Savior. Now is the only time we have left to make a personal friendship with God our highest priority. (How? Click here and I’ll share the answer with you) Put it off, and like the EU and Greece, I fear it will become the “tragic comedy” of too little, too late.

“Here’s a Fourth Watch story for you,” emailed one of the readers of this blog. And I agree. Early Sunday morning, June 25, 2006, Corporal Gilad Shalit, a nineteen year old soldier with the Israel Defense Forces, was kidnapped by Hamas militants on the Israeli side of its border with Gaza. Abducted back into Gaza, Corporal Shalit became the rallying cry of a nation caught between two clashing ideals: never negotiate with terrorists versus never abandon one of your own. Hamas refused International Red Cross requests to visit Shalit on grounds that it would reveal the captured soldier’s whereabouts. Over the five years of his captivity “Free Shalit” rallies across Israel increased pressure on the Israeli government to achieve his release. The news this week that Hamas had agreed to return Corporal Shalit was met with jubilation by Israelis . . . until the negotiated terms of the release were reported. And suddenly the country was divided. How much is one Israeli soldier worth? 1027 convicted Palestinian prisoners? Listen to one Israeli family’s reaction: “Embittered father Zeev Rapp, 66, sat at home and watched the television in disgust. In 1992, Amrin [one of the released Palestinian prisoners] stabbed Rapp’s daughter Helena, 15, in the heart as she was on her way to school. Now, he was . . . walking free with other smiling prisoners, flashing victory signs and kissing the ground. ‘We feel as though our daughter has been murdered all over again’” (South Bend Tribune 10-19-11). And Shalit? Egyptian television released the first images of the now freed corporal, “pale, gaunt . . . in a dark baseball cap, exiting a car in Egypt, which mediated the handover” (ibid). Ecstasy for his family, mourning for another. How much is one Israeli soldier worth? So how much is one sinner worth—Israeli, Palestinian, American, Afghan, Chinese, Sudanese, Mexican, Indian? How many earth children would God be willing to pardon and release for the exchange of His own Son? I realize the metaphor shifts and collapses the moment we introduce Calvary. But you do have to wonder, don’t you, the prisoner exchange that effected our salvation and release? The psalmist struggled over the dilemma: “No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them—the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough” (Psalm 49:7, 8 NIV). How true. How could any of us possibly provide the ransom for just one sinner even in a thousand lifetimes? And yet the stunning announcement of the Good News is that God found the ransom for this rebel race within His own circle, within Himself. “And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6 NKJV). That’s not 1027 to one. Nor is it 7 billion to one. It’s every human being in the history of this planet to One—“‘The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many’” (Mark 10:45). Very many! Because God has been into prisoner exchanges for a long time, hasn’t He? Take that Friday morning the rabble clamored for a murderer in exchange for the Innocent—and got Barabbas instead of Jesus of Nazareth. But whether it’s one for One, or billions for One, the numbers really don’t matter, do they? Love’s radical prisoner exchange is beyond comprehension.