Pastors' Blog

A friend of mine whispered to me the other day his conviction that the eventual downfall of the American democracy will be traced to January 6, 2021, and the mob attack on Capitol Hill. My eyebrows arched, considering the bright mind and respected scholarship behind the whisper. But then everybody has an opinion these days, have you noticed?

Nevertheless, with the one-year anniversary upon us, it is prudent we pause and reflect on this New Year’s “new normal.” On the health front, the Covid-19 pandemic surges with the Omicron variant—we all know—but there is hope its surge will not reflect a sharp rise in mortality rates as well. And on the political front, there's no need to even review its landscape—we've already formed our own conclusions about all of that, irrespective of what news outlets may tell us to the contrary. But then, welcome to life in America today.

My concern for us is on the spiritual front. How is it with your soul and mine? Are we closer to the Savior this New Year than last New Year? Is the Spirit of God finding fuller access to our private lives and personal decisions, our practice behind closed doors? 

Consider this ancient prayer in the old King James Bible: “My soul followeth hard after thee” (Psalm 63:8). “I cling to you” is the same prayer in our own vernacular (NIV). But do we . . . do you . . . do I . . . follow hard after God . . . cling to Him?

A. W. Tozer, in his long-ago The Pursuit of God, reflected on the psalmist’s prayer and then made this appeal:

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality of our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain. (p17, emphasis supplied)

Did you catch that? “He waits to be wanted.” I know you want Him and so do I. But is it a “My soul followeth hard after Thee” kind of want? How hard do we really want Him?

Maybe our New Year prayer ought to be, “Lord, help me to want to want You.” As Tozer noted, “He waits to be wanted.” As Ellen White often observed, we must “be willing to be made willing.” So why not ask Christ to mentor us into a deeper wanting, a following hard after Him this New Year? “Lord, help me to want to want You.”

Given the trajectory of this nation, it is hardly rocket (let alone political) science to recognize what we once prized as a nation is slipping away and could suddenly be taken away. If ever this secular country needed God—and by that I mean the people we work with and pray for—this would be the right time to personally model to them a deeper devotion to Christ, a following hard after Him. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with such a friend of Jesus? “Lord, help me to want to want You."

Clearly, this wanting must begin with us—we can’t wait for America. So to help answer our own prayer, “Help me to want to want You,” the practice of the ancients (and of those who walk with Jesus today—and you know who they are) must become ours. Begin each day with a less hurried, and more deliberate meditating on Holy Scripture verse by verse, joined to an uninterrupted conversation with God through prayer. The books on how to do it are legion. But the prayer to go deeper is ours. 

“Lord, help me to want to want You.”

A few days ago the Wild family—Mom and Dad and their two children—living on the Western Cape of South Africa were decorating their Christmas tree, a familiar holiday ritual. With the last ornament tucked onto a lighted branch, they all stepped back (you know the drill) to admire their blinking, glittering Yuletide creation. The requisite chorus of oohs and ahhs declared a job well done!

Except that Mother noticed the two pet cats, for some strange reason, also apparently admiring the tree. “Looks like we’ve got a mouse in our branches,” she pointed at the cats. But when the family tracked the cats’ unblinking stares back to the tree, it was no mouse emerging. The collective gasp was over the writhing, protruding head, and body of a four-foot-long boomslang, the most venomous snake in South Africa. Freeze!

Father moved first, grabbing his phone, snapping some pix and texting them to an animal handler he knew. A phone call confirmed they had a deadly boomslang in their home, its venom was able to shut off blood coagulation leading to death by bleeding.

For two hours the family, hardly daring to breathe, kept vigil on the snake in the tree, as the handler raced through the countryside to their home. But when he walked in, the snake dropped from the Christmas tree to the floor, slithering toward the couch to a chorus of screams. But the snake handler's long iron prongs snatched the snake and bagged it. Confirmation—a boomslang indeed.

Apparently, the snake had entered the home, confused but unnoticed, and had sought refuge in the Christmas tree. The handler later released the snake into the wild—far, far away from the Wild’s home, you can sure.

A poisonous Christmas tree. But then, isn’t that the story of Christmas? Wasn’t the Baby of the Bethlehem manger “the Word made flesh,” sent as a divine emissary to this rebel planet, born so that He might eventually die for the salvation of the fallen race?

And didn’t the grown-up Jesus once declare that “‘as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in Him’”? (John 3:14-15).

Born in a wooden manger, dead on a wooden cross—all for what? “[He] Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes [we] are healed’” (1 Peter 2:24 NKJV, emphasis supplied). 

Hoisted like a snake on Calvary’s tree, the Savior of the world bore our poison and died for our rescue. The truth is you cannot separate the Christmas cradle from the Calvary cross—for the salvation we celebrate today was only possible by the Savior lying in the one and dying on the other. Profound mystery, relentless truth: “‘Herein is love.’ Wonder, O heavens! and be astonished, O earth!” (Desire of Ages 49). 

Four centuries ago this autumn—“. . . it was probably in late September or early October [1621], soon after [the Pilgrim’s] crop of corn, squash, beans, barley, and peas had been harvested” (Nathaniel Philbrick Mayflower 117)—the decimated band of immigrant refugees to these shores had by a breath barely survived that treacherous winter before.

The numbers speak volumes: “ . . . 45 of the original 102 colonists died during the first winter. There were 17 fatalities in February alone.  Many succumbed to the elements, malnutrition, and diseases such as scurvy. Frequently two or three died on the same day. Four entire families perished and there was only one family that didn’t lose at least one member. Of the 18 married women, 13 died. Only three of 13 children perished, probably because mothers were giving their share of food to the children” (www.weatherconcierge.com/the-pilgrims-barely-survived-a-harsh-first-wint...).

And yet crippled though they were by those losses, these fifty-two English trans-Atlantic survivors turned a subsequent bountiful summer crop into a three-day harvest feast for the fledgling band of Pilgrims and their benefactor guests, Chief Massasoit, and his ninety Wampanoag warriors. “O give thanks unto the Lord.”

(Although truth be told, there is no celebration in the Wampanoag Nation today. In fact, “for the Wampanoags and many other American Indians, the fourth Thursday in November is considered a day of mourning, not a day of celebration” (www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/04/thanksgiving-anniversary-wampa...). Once a thriving nation between 30,000 and 100,000 in eastern Massachusetts, Wampanoags today number 2,800—their homeland gone, their own numbers decimated. “O give thanks unto the Lord”?)

Four hundred years ago, of course, William Bradford had no inkling of the subsequent history. As the elected governor of these English immigrants, he declared their time of communal gratitude to be an occasion to “[gather] the fruit of our labors” and “rejoice together . . . after a more special manner” (Philbrick 117). 

Years after that first “thanksgiving,” the aged Bradford looked back to testify: “What could now sustain them [those survivors] but the spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: ‘Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in the wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity [see Deuteronomy 26:7]’” (Philbrick 46).

And “may not and ought not” the children of America today—we who come from every land to inhabit this same land—join that ancient chorus: “O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His love endures forever” (Psalm 136). 

But with that glad acclamation shall we not also resolve to be “Love on the Move” to the “strangers within our gates,” the refugees and immigrants who settle in our midst?  Of all people, shall we not extend the compassion of our Lord Jesus to the alienated, the disenfranchised, the marginalized residents of this land? “O give thanks unto the Lord.”

All of Australia is breathing a sigh of grateful relief, now that police investigators hours ago rescued a missing four-year-old girl named Cleo. Eighteen nights ago she and her family were sleeping in a tent by a remote but popular tourist site along the west coast, Quobba Blowholes. Sometime after 1:30 AM when Cleo awakened to ask for a drink of water before falling back to sleep, police concluded she was abducted, sleeping bag and all pulled through a zippered tent flap (unzipped higher than a child would have raised it).

For eighteen days the frantic family has pleaded for her return, the anxious country tracking the “massive police search” on national news. 

Then hours ago just after midnight, Wednesday (Perth time) detectives found the proverbial needle in the haystack, when they broke into a house not far from Cleo’s home. Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch told 6PR radio: “When she said ‘My name is Cleo,’ I don't think there was a dry eye in the house. I have seen seasoned detectives openly crying with relief. I am speechless which is very rare . . . this is something we all hoped in our hearts, and it has come true’” (www.cnn.com/2021/11/02/americas/australian-police-cleo-smith-intl/index.html).

The rescue of a child—the whole world shares the supreme priority such an undertaking commands.

A few hours after Cleo was found in Australia, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) here in the United States announced: “‘Together, with science leading the charge, we have taken another important step forward in our nation's fight against the virus that causes COVID-19,’ CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. ‘We know millions of parents are eager to get their children vaccinated and with this decision, we now have recommended that about 28 million children receive a COVID-19 vaccine’” (www.cbsnews.com/news/kids-covid-vaccine-cdc-recommend/). 

Now children as young as five may receive the Pfizer vaccine, to the relief of parents—as once again the rescue of a child (or in this case millions of children) rightfully occupies the center stage of adult attention.

No wonder Jesus uses the figure of “a little one” to get our attention in words often overlooked: “‘And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward’” (Matthew 10:42). While commentators suggest these “little ones” aren’t actually biological children—Frederick Dale Bruner suggests this verse means “giving even the tiniest social help to less significant Christians” (Matthew: A Commentary 1:497)—Jesus could very well be including children as young as five in calling us to show loving attention to the littlest among us.

Consider the Pioneer Sabbath Schools that faithfully open to our children (from a day old to the hoary-haired eldest among us) Sabbath after Sabbath, in spite of the pandemic still lingering across the land. Consider the masked Pioneer adults and teenagers who are staffing these Sabbath Schools simply because they care for children and love Jesus. What a compelling witness to the value of reaching one “little one” for the Savior. God bless our Pioneer children. And God abundantly rewards our Pioneer volunteers who serve up Jesus’ love for children in a simple cup of refreshing water. 

The rescue of a child—the whole world shares the supreme priority such an undertaking commands.