Recently I was thrown into a challenge I really feared, but when it was over, I realized that it was God’s blessing to help me grow up. The challenge was to accept huge risk and trust that God would enable me to overcome it. Even more, the challenge was to accept the risk and trust that whatever the outcome, it would be God’s blessing and gift.

The problem was that our sailboat’s diesel engine, the power source that get us in and out of harbors or past tricky hazards, quit working when we were in a location where there was not a diesel mechanic to be found. We were hundreds of miles from help. Our sailboat was well designed for ocean passages, but we felt unready for this kind of a passage. We had never sailed anywhere without an engine to fall back on. To set out with sails only on a journey that would take days and cover hundreds of miles was a little scary.

We took the big risk, trusting that God would not abandon us. As we plotted our course and watched the weather, we prayed for wisdom and guidance. We had to trust that God’s gift of wisdom would enable us to know the right day to set out. Otherwise we might have continued to wait indefinitely for some specific sign that it was the right time to go.

The day came. We prayed Psalm 62 together, committing ourselves to use every gift and talent God had provided, trusting he would carry us through the challenges that exceeded our abilities. We raised the sail and headed out. We sailed through wild winds and strange currents. We sailed in the moonlight and the midday sun. We changed sails in the dark of night and in torrential downpours. Before things got better they got worse, as additional systems aboard picked this time to fail. We faced and solved problems we had never faced before, and at all times, we counted on God’s promise to be with us wherever we were. We grew in faith, and we grew in skill. This big risky situation became a rich blessing. Six days later, just before sunrise, we tied up at a dock in a boat service facility with a diesel mechanic.

Some people might suggest that we should have prayed for God to provide a diesel mechanic where we were. I have no doubt that God could have done exactly that, but we did not feel led to pray that way. We asked God for wisdom, and our best understanding of his response to that prayer was to sail the boat to some place where there already was a mechanic. We had to stretch ourselves beyond our experience. We had to take beginner skills and grow them into master skills. We trusted God to guide us all the way. We did not sit back and wait for God either to deliver a mechanic to us or to teleport us to a mechanic.

Some people might say that we ought to be able to take the risk of a sailing challenge on our own without bothering God. Save him for the diagnosis of cancer or the death of a child. The Bible teaches us that God will go with us through any challenge. He calls each person to unique challenges, because he has given each person unique gifts. God wants us to mature and develop the gifts with which he endowed us at creation. In fact, my experience leads me to believe that just as parents lead their children to new challenges in order to help them grow up, the Holy Spirit calls us into risky situations that help us mature in our faith.

God is never really done with us, either. At the age of eighty Moses was called by God to do a terrifying job. Moses tried every way possible to avoid doing it, because he saw how risky it was. God overruled all his objections, and said, “I will be with you.”

After the crucifixion of Jesus, his followers met in locked rooms, fearing that they, too, would be arrested and executed. Yet, on the day Jesus ascended into heaven, he told them to get out and tell the good news to everyone. Knowing their fears, and knowing how well justified the fears were, he told them to take that risk anyway, and he promised, “I will be with you.”

Moses took the risk. The disciples took the risk. My husband and I took the risk. Each of us discovered that when our resources had run out, when we could not think of anything more to do about the problem, God was still there. He carried us through. He didn’t speak a magic word and take us out of our troubles. Rather, he walked with us through the challenges. He nudged. He tipped the balance. He showed us a new idea. He inspired a new question. He comforted us in our fears.

We aren’t all called to lead half a million people across a sea. Some of us are called to explore creation and discover God’s handiwork in faraway places. Some of us draw. Some of us sing. Some of us repair diesel engines or build computers. Each of us is unique, and each of us has potential we will never discover if we sit on our hands and wait for God to prevent all the risks. The people who jump out of helicopters to snowboard down mountains know that reaching your limit and discovering that it isn’t a limit at all is a high that is better than drugs. We don’t have to be snowboarders to experience that rush. We simply need to be faithful followers of our Lord, ready to accept the risks we encounter, trusting that he always leads us for our blessing. It is a risk well worth taking.

Jesus said that we are the salt of the earth, and he said that if salt loses its saltiness, then it is worthless. What did Jesus mean by calling his followers “salt?”

 I think he meant that we are to do what salt does.

 If I add salt to food, the flavor of the food is enhanced. The best cooks add only enough salt to bring out the flavor of the food, not so much salt that the saltiness overwhelms the flavor. Salt brings out natural flavors, much as a light reveals objects hidden by darkness.

 If we know what salt is and what it does, what does that mean for our lives in the faith? I think it means that as we go about our daily lives, we are to have an effect on the flavor of our culture.

 There is considerable evidence that we Christians have not done a very good job of flavoring our culture. One of the big lies of our day is that people love Buddhism, because it is a way of life, and they reject Christianity, because it is a system of beliefs. Jesus never suggested that his followers carry a checklist of beliefs with them and post it everywhere. While some Christians have tried to create theocracies and haul people into court for religious transgressions, Jesus did not teach us to do that. Jesus said, “If you want to be my follower, you must knock SELF off the throne of your heart, pick up the instrument of your own death and carry it with you wherever I lead you.” [my paraphrase of Luke 9:23] A system of beliefs is shaped in a theological courtroom. A way of life is shaped as we go about living selfless lives and following  Jesus. In fact, the last words of Jesus before he ascended into heaven as translated in the International Standard Version read, “as you go, disciple ….” [Matthew 28:19] In other words, “Whatever you are doing, wherever you go, keep talking about me.”

 If we are going to be the salt of the earth, then we need to be sprinkling salt around no matter where we go, no matter what we are doing. The official word for that kind of activity is “testimony.” Our testimony is often misinterpreted as a vehicle for proselytizing. If our testimony is true, then it will almost certainly attract converts, but that is not the only reason for testimony, or for being salt. We testify, because the gospel bubbles up inside and demands to be released.

 The Psalmist had the same experience we have. He said that in the presence of the wicked, he was tempted to shut up and not speak about the Lord. It didn’t work. He said, “I was silent and still; I held my peace to no avail; my distress grew worse, my heart became hot within me. While I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue.” [Psalm 39:2-3] We need to speak of our faith and to act on our faith, because it is the truth and because the truth wants out. As Thomas Long said, in Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian, “We would need to talk about God to be truthful, to be whole, for life to be full.” 

 In the book of Revelation, John, the author, depicts world history in a phantasmagoria of flaming violence. His graphic imagery shows us the importance of worship and testimony. His original audience lived in a culture that worshiped human beings and imaginary gods, all represented by exquisite statuary housed in magnificent architecture. We twentieth century Christians tend to focus on the fact that the gods were fake and to forget that they were the instruments of political power. To worship the emperor was to commit oneself publicly to his agenda. Christians were not suppressed out of any fear of their faith or their God; they were suppressed because their unwillingness to worship the emperor made them political enemies.

 It is the same today. The political fear of religious expression is a fear of the way that expression impacts behavior. Our faith is a slap in the face to legalism, political sellouts, and speech deliberately crafted to hide truth.

 We Christians must resist the temptation to shut up about our faith as a polite response to cultural fear of our faith words. We must speak truth, and we must be fearless and resolute about it. I don’t suggest that we march in the streets with placards that read “The End is Near.” Rather, I suggest that just as we would freely talk about a new baby in the family or a child about to graduate from college, we talk about what God is doing in our lives. We need to reject political correctness, which is, by the way, censorship of free speech, and speak truth. We must speak and act with honesty and commitment to our faith in order to protect our right to continue doing that.

 This assertion may sound aggressive. Maybe it is. However, it is rooted in my belief that the founders of this country had it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that liberty is a right given by God to every human. I believe that as a human being, God has granted me liberty to choose what I will believe. God gives me the freedom to be a Buddhist or a Muslim or an atheist or a Christian or any other form of religion or non-religion. I believe that God gives me the liberty to believe what I choose and to act on that belief insofar as it does not harm others, and I believe that when I tell the truth about what God means to me and what he does in my life, I am not harming anyone. I likewise believe that if a Muslim wants to observe Ramadan, he is not harming me. I don’t believe I should be prohibited from praying, and I don’t believe an atheist should be forced to pray. According to our founding documents, and according to the Constitution, we both have the right to free expression of our views.

 We Christians are in danger of trying to be so correct politically that we lose our saltiness. If we shut up and go underground and stop being visible in the culture, we will not add any flavor to society. We need to stop hiding. We need to practice our faith in full view of the world. Jesus told us never to stop talking about him. It is time for us to speak and live the truth in public. We need to sprinkle the salt of God’s truth all around. If we do that, maybe human society won’t leave such a bad taste in our mouths.

The gospel of Matthew opens with the story of Joseph’s dream in which an angel reassures him about Mary’s pregnancy, telling him that it is the fulfillment of God’s promise of the Messiah, whose name, “Emmanuel” means “God is with us.” The gospel continues with the story of Jesus’ life and work. The last words of Jesus in this gospel are, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:20] At the time when Matthew wrote, late in the first century, people who had seen Jesus in the flesh were dying off. The growing community of faith needed to be reminded that the indwelling Holy Spirit was the evidence that God truly was present with them and in them.

All these thousands of years later, we still need that reminder. When circumstances conspire to make us feel afraid and helpless, Satan tempts us to think that God has abandoned us. He makes us ask, “If God loves you, why did this terrible thing happen?” We need reassurance that the Holy Spirit is truly present and that in the person of the Holy Spirit, God never abandons us.

My husband and I recently had an experience that brought home the truth that God is always with us, even when we are not paying attention. It is important for us to remember that God’s presence with us does not negate the operation of the laws of physics or meteorology. God has promised that as long as the laws of nature work the way they are supposed to, his love is sure. We want those laws to work. However, when we become captive to them and unable to help ourselves, then it is very good to know that God is with us and that he will work for our good in amazing and wonderful ways. Above all that, whether or not the outcome is just what we hoped for, he is present with us to give us peace with the situation as it develops for good or ill.

We cruised southward one morning toward a destination about a day’s sail from our departure point. As will happen to sailors, however, along the way, we spied a little cove on the chart that looked attractive. We said to ourselves that we could go to our planned destination the next day as we turned aside to our new adventure. We studied the charts, and we studied the notes in guide books. I stood on the bow to spot hazards, and Larry was at the helm to steer to our anchorage.

As will happen sometimes, we became disoriented in the unfamiliar surroundings. Then, caught in a current and uncertain of the correct course, we ran aground. As we tried to steer off the reef, the engine stopped and refused to restart.

In the US, such a situation is annoying, but not the end of the world. Boaters unable to free themselves simply call for a tow, sigh at the cost if they don’t have insurance, and move on. In the Bahamas, the situation is much different. There is no tow service. The Bahamian rescue service is truly focused on rescue in life-and-death situations. A simple mistake that puts a boat aground is the boater’s problem. Boaters are responsible for themselves, and they are well-advised to stay out of trouble if they don’t know how to deal with it. “Knowing” that is the result of reading how to deal with the problem is not, however, the same thing as “knowing” as a result of having done it. We had read the solution, but we had never performed the solution.

On the off chance that there might be someone around who operated a tow service anyway, we made a radio call. No result. Hoping that the Bahamian rescue service could put us in touch with someone who could tow us off, we called them. They could not hear us, although later a marina manager served as a relay between us and them. Still, that communication only confirmed their commitment to rescue if lives were in danger.

Every day as we sail or motor in our adventures, I pray that we will have wisdom to use our skills and experience in whatever circumstances come our way. I always pray that we will be safe. This day was no exception, but sitting aboard our grounded vessel, not knowing how we would ever get free without an engine, I prayed that we would see a solution. We knew that the recommended course of action involved deploying an anchor in deeper water and using it to pull ourselves off the rocks, but it was going to take time to do that job, because our dinghy was deflated and wrapped up on deck. We could not possibly throw the anchor far enough to help, and we could not inflate the dinghy, deploy it in the water, attach the outboard and get the anchor out very soon. We were in a big mess.

Then we heard a call on the radio. “No Boundaries, No Boundaries. This is Duet.” When we answered the call, we learned that a couple anchored behind a nearby island had heard our radio distress call. They had the “knowing” that comes from experience with grounding, and they were on their way to help. I prayed thanks that someone was coming, even if all they did was keep us company. When they arrived, however, they wasted no time in helping us get started with the solution that would actually get us off the rocks.

I remember that when we first went aground, I began to pray, and even as the hopeless surges of fear arose in my stomach, I also felt reassured that something would work. Most of all, I felt reassured that God was with us, a sense of things that only grew more certain as Bill and Barb from S/V Duet worked side by side with us to get us off those rocks. We all worked for hours, because this was no trivial problem. The wind was blowing at more than 20 mph, a great speed for sailing, but problematic in this situation. The tidal currents at the time of our grounding complicated our problem, because they were running strongly in a direction that forced us farther onto the reef. Around noon, the tide changed, and by then we were ready to take advantage of the current, thanks to our wonderful new friends. Around 1:30 in the afternoon, we all sat down in the cockpit to rest. The boat was afloat. Two anchors held us in place against both wind and current. As our new friends departed in their dinghy, we gave thanks for their help and for our new safe location. We felt deeply blessed by the kindness of these people. The Bible tells of many situations in which angels arrive to give messages and help people, and we felt pretty sure that Bill and Barb were angels. In days to come, they followed up with radio calls to be sure we were doing well. When we overheard their response to another boat that had run aground nearby, we became convinced that they were, indeed, angels, and the crew of the other boat agreed with us.

Our situation was no longer dire, but we still did not have an engine. Because our boat is a sailboat, however, we did have the option to sail out of the anchorage if Larry were unable to repair the engine. Bill and Barb had specifically planned for that possibility when they left us anchored directly in front of the entrance to the cove. We all thought that position poised us for success if we had to sail out. When all was said and done, Larry and I gave thanks for our new friends, and we gave thanks for God’s care for us in the difficult situation. The heavy weight of fear that had seized us at the moment of grounding was lifted, and we felt genuine relief.

The next day, we were still safely at anchor, but much more uncomfortable. The weather had changed. Winds directly from the east were pushing big waves at us, and we were pummeled by the combination of the waves from the ocean and the ferocious tidal currents. We could not possibly sail out against the combined force of wind and current. Our anchors were under fearful strain, which began to produce a new problem. Our primary anchor was equipped with heavy chain all the way to its point of attachment to the boat. Our secondary, however, had only 75 feet of chain, after which the remaining rode was rope. The way we had anchored the first day put the secondary anchor in a location that gave it the primary stress on the second day, and that stress was beginning to chafe the rope rode. We scrambled to find gear to prevent the chafing, but none of our interventions was reliable for any length of time. We could not remain anchored like this, because the chafing would eventually part our rope rode, and we would lose our secondary anchor. We could not go, and we could not stay. Larry struggled with the engine problem to no avail. We prayed and watched and did what we could to alleviate the situation.

Once again, Bill from Duet stepped in to help. He saw a passing boat with huge twin outboards, and he hailed the captain with a request to help us move to a better location. After M/V Cutting Edge arrived, he helped us raise both of our anchors and then towed our boat to a location out of the current and more sheltered from wind. We felt pretty sure that he was an angel, too, and we prayed God’s blessings on him as he departed to continue his fishing trip. Again, we felt blessed and secure. Our new location was a place where we could safely remain until we either got the engine going or saw the right window to sail out, even if that were many days hence. We could not doubt for a minute that God was present with us. Once again, just when we were at the end of our abilities, God provided what we needed.

The next day was Sunday. As we prepared for our normal worship aboard, we commented to each other that we had more reason than usual to worship and praise God. So many good things had happened to us that we surely needed to give him thanks and praise more than ever. We could not focus on the bad things. They seemed trivial by comparison with our blessings. We worshiped. We prayed. We sang psalms and hymns. We celebrated God’s presence and power in our lives. We had no doubt that he was watching over us, present with us.

That afternoon, Larry went back to work on the engine. He went back to step one for analysis and trouble-shooting. He worked deliberately through all the steps, and eventually the moment came when the engine roared back to life. Again, we had something to be thankful for. The final piece of the solution was in place. We were no longer refugees looking for a way out; we were again cruisers exploring and adventuring. We shouted our thanks to God, and then we prayed together.

Throughout this experience we had the comforting presence of God in the midst of all our troubles. God did not step in and overturn the laws of nature. He did not work any magic on the boat or the engine. He did not teleport us to a diesel mechanic, or teleport a mechanic to us. He simply remained with us all the way. The solution worked out in simple steps. At each step, we felt relieved and thankful, and at each step we first thought that we ourselves would be able to manage the next step. When that proved impossible, God gave us just what we needed, no more and no sooner than we needed it. Materials managers would call it “Just in Time.” We call it God’s faithful provision and presence in our lives.

This probably won’t be the last time we go aground. People who cruise in the Bahamas take that possibility as a given. If we do ground again, we have the experience, enlightened by our angelic friends from S/V Duet, to help ourselves. We are learning a variety of skills in navigation, weather and survival. All that learning and growth is good. The best thing we have learned, however, is not about us. It is about God. We have learned that God truly is with us. He never abandons us. He gives us peace when we have no idea how we will solve or survive the next problem. This peace transcends any skill level or accomplishment we might ever have.

I have not always relied on God the way I do now. I am learning more and more every day how critical his presence is. Far from making me reckless, the confidence that he is present makes me more careful. When I am frightened, it allows me to do what my mother called, “making haste slowly,” to take my time to get all the facts and move forward with care. Knowing that God is with us, we have the peace to assess the situation and make a better decision. Knowing that God is with us, we know that he won’t abandon us if our best guess is wrong.

I am glad that Matthew recorded the story of Joseph’s dream and the explanation of the name “Emmanuel.” I’m glad that Matthew’s story of Jesus repeats that theme as Jesus’ promise to all generations. The promise and the experience of God’s presence enrich my life every day. When Satan tempts me to wonder if God cares or to ask why God let this happen, I can respond with faith nurtured by experience. Faith must, by definition, act in the absence of certainty, but my certainty about past experience builds up my faith that future experiences will only reveal more about the wonderful presence of God. I don’t know what else I will learn about prayer as we travel, but I have already learned that God is not kidding when he says, “I will not leave you or forsake you.”

July 11, 2009

Aboard No Boundaries

Delaware Bay is a wild and wonderful place, but there are few good anchorages for a sailboat. There are several designated anchorages along the route from the Atlantic to Philadelphia, but they only look welcoming to a huge boat loaded with containers. We look for more sheltered spots where wind and wave are less likely to drag us where we do not want to go.

As we cruised alongside the channel where the huge ocean-going vessels travel, we looked for place that was right for us, and we found one. Cohansey Cove was in a location we could reach by late afternoon, it had water deep enough for us to float, and it was sheltered on three sides from the wind. No place in that Bay is immune from the currents. We were unlikely to find anything better.

The big drawback to this cove is the path to get there. Cruising along the main channel of Delaware Bay, you see a huge expanse of water in every direction. You can see the land, but it is far from the channel. Without a chart to tell you, you would never guess that some of that water only barely covers the mud below the surface. At low tide, it might actually be exposed, even though it is far from land and near the channel. The navigation charts reveal the truth that it could be perilous to attempt to navigate from the channel to the shore without help. The depths vary dramatically, and there is no indicator in the water to hint where the shoals are.

Fortunately for us, we have GPS, charts and a well designed sailboat. That is a lot of help, if you trust GPS, charts drawn up by NOAA, and the sailboat in which you travel. Because we do trust those helps, we were able to plot a course that allowed us to thread our way between shoals and obstructions, none of which we could see, following a path that made a huge spiral into the cove. As we attempted to steer the course we had planned, we were impeded not only by our inability to see the change in water depth, but also by wind and strong currents which exerted their own pressures on the boat. According to the GPS as we traveled, we moved back and forth across our planned course within an increasingly narrow band. If the GPS said our course was to the right, we steered to the right, and when it reported that we had moved so far that it was now to the left, we steered left. We had to trust the people who drew the charts in the first place, because that is how we found water deep enough to be safe for us. We had to trust the GPS when it told us that we were to the right or the left of our planned course, because we had absolutely no clue from the appearance of the water to tell us if we were even close. The wind, the current and the topography were constraints we could not control, and the only way we could manage to find a safe pathway through the hazards was to trust people and technology we know little or nothing about. We could not possibly have found our way by trial and error. Trial would undoubtedly have put us aground early in the process, and that error might have resulted in our boat’s destruction, beat to pieces by wind and wave against an unyielding shoal.

The life of faith is a lot like our journey to Cohansey Cove. We know that we want to do what is right, but each of us have found ourself in situations where the right thing was not at all obvious. Whom do we trust? What do we trust? How do we find our way?

The answer of Christians for two thousand years has been consistent: We trust the Holy Spirit. We get our guidance from him, and he shows us the way to go.

Some will say that I am giving an easy answer to hard questions. The answer sounds easy and simple, maybe too simple. Some people, like Naaman who thought washing in Jordan to cure his leprosy was beneath him, don’t want an easy answer.
They would prefer a quest. However, they forget that a quest is about self; faith is about God. If we want the right answer, we don’t look to self.

The Bible is a big story that shows us what happens when people pursue quests. When the Israelites attacked Ai on their own after crushing Jericho, they were pursuing a quest. In their midst, unbelief and disobedience had undermined their faith response. They went down in miserable failure.

When Solomon turned away from God in the belief that he was wise enough already, then he went on a quest for power and prestige. In his lifetime, the kingdom of Israel crested as a kingdom of faith in God and turned to a quest for power and prestige on the international playing field. That quest went down to failure. Israel’s entire history shows us how each time a king chose the life of faith, he and the nation were blessed, and each time a king chose to make a quest, he and the nation were doomed. The answer to the questions – Whom do we trust? What do we trust? Where do we get our guidance? – really are as simple as they sound.

Simple, yes, but easy, no. When we look for guidance, we are often concerned about the most common prayer request of Christians everywhere – the prayer for peace. We all want it. We want an end to war and pestilence and economic unrest. We pray for God’s mercy and ask him to give us peace. I am not going to suggest that we stop praying these prayers, but I am going to say that God has given us peace already. Jesus gave it to the disciples the night before he was crucified. When the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us at baptism, we receive God’s peace. However, even though we have this gift, we still want to bring peace ourselves. We want projects that bring peace and treaties that bring peace and laws that bring peace. When will we learn that we cannot trust projects and treaties and laws? We can only trust God, who in Christ has shown us the way to peace.

It was a big challenge to cruise safely into Cohansey Cove. The shoals all around it make the right path hard to find. If we had doubted our GPS and each other, we would never have made it. The solution seemed very simple as long as we knew who and what we could trust. The same thing is true in life every day. We want peace, we want fulfillment, and we don’t see a clear way to the goal. When we think very hard and act on our conclusions, we often are hurt by dangers and barriers that we could not see in advance. However, if we first put our faith in God, then we know who and what to trust for our guidance. God’s guidance is more reliable than the best GPS, and if we reject that principle, then we will always wonder how to find our way.

July 2, 2009

Aboard No Boundaries

We cruised through the C&D Canal today and into Delaware Bay. It was a very interesting trip. We arrived at the canal at a time when our forward progress was impeded by the tide, but the tidal current had subsided somewhat by the time we reached the middle of the canal. When we exited the canal, we suddenly found ourselves racing to the ocean on the back of the flow of the river combined with an ebbing tidal flow, and our speed picked up dramatically. As we entered the canal, our engine was running at 1800
RPM, close to its maximum speed, and our speed over the ground as reported via our GPS was 4.1 knots. We never changed the speed of the engine, yet as we turned into the main channel of Delaware Bay, headed for the Atlantic Ocean, we were making 7.7 knots. Our speed had almost doubled, even though we were not doing anything different. Forces completely outside our control made all the difference in our rate of speed as we tried to go forward.

Have you ever had a life experience that felt like this? Have you ever put your all into a project or a goal only to see that you had to run as fast as possible just to stay even? Do you laugh when people suggest that you just need to work harder? You are already working as hard as you can, but you aren’t getting anywhere. Your engine is already running at maximum. What is really stopping you?

I have a friend who recently started a new job. After being laid off from a job she loved, she had felt completely disoriented. Three months of praying and searching resulted in no progress she could see, even though she tried as hard as possible. She worked at least as hard searching for a job as she had ever worked for her employer, yet nothing produced even a hint of a real opportunity for her. When her severance pay ended and she faced life on unemployment checks, desperation led her to take a job that seems to have no future. Still praying, still searching, she tells me she doesn’t know how to do more. Like our engine running against the tide, she is working just as hard as ever for half the payback. She yearns to turn into the channel where her energy and her circumstances will produce progress and fulfillment. Does God not hear her prayers?

Four hundred years after their arrival in Egypt, the descendants of Jacob felt just the way my friend feels. They had originally made their home in Egypt as honored guests of the pharaoh. He specified a large section of the Nile delta for them to call home. It would be naïve for us to think pharaoh’s generosity was selfless, because when he saw Joseph’s large and prosperous family, he must have wondered if they would try to lure Joseph away. Yet the fact that he wanted Joseph’s services enough to give a large section of his country to Joseph’s relatives tells us that he honored the family. They enjoyed the favor and respect of the pharaohs for many generations.

Then we read that “a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” There can be a lot of political change in four hundred years, and this circumstance is not surprising. There had no doubt been any number of kings between the time of Joseph and the time of Moses who would not have known Joseph. The problem arose when a new pharaoh looked at the land of Goshen and its population of wealthy shepherds and saw a threat. Talk about racism! For hundreds of years these people had bothered nobody, yet this new king began to worry about their loyalty to Egypt. He said, “Let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us.” When my friend was laid off from her job, she felt blindsided, and the Israelites must have felt the same way when they heard what the new king thought of them.

Of course, we don’t exactly know the timing of the arrival of the new king and the beginning of the oppression of the Hebrews. The Bible does not tell us that the new king appeared four  hundred years later. It could have been only two hundred years later, and the oppression could have escalated over the next two hundred years. We don’t need to know the whole timetable to know that the people were in misery. It doesn’t take long for cruelty and oppression to feel like four hundred years. Add to that the deliberate genocide mandated by the pharaoh, and every day might feel like four hundred years.

One of the most dramatic acts of oppression was to put the Israelites to making a daily quota of bricks, and then to remove their supply line, requiring them to produce the daily quota while providing their own supplies of straw. Just like our engine working as hard as it could against the tide, they worked harder than ever in order to stay even and not fall behind. They could not beat the goal set for them by working harder. More effort and more work only produced more demands.

What had the Israelites done wrong? Did God not hear their prayer?

One of our big problems with God’s promises is our inability to understand time as God sees it. We can’t even imagine seeing the world from God’s infinite and eternal perspective. What is four hundred years, or a month or a millennium to a God who lives in an eternal NOW? To say that sounds crass. It sounds as if God could not care less what happens to us.

Yet he would never have sent Jesus to die for us if that were true. How are we to interpret the fact that God almost never intervenes miraculously to prevent us from experiencing pain? Trouble? Defeat?

I think Jesus explained God’s view of time vividly in the story of the wheat and the tares. In that story, the servants, like you and me, thought the weeds needed to be removed right away. They could not bear to see those weeds crowding the good wheat. Besides, it felt like defeat for the enemy’s seeds to be allowed to mature along with the good crop. However, the master of the farm looked at the whole scene from a different perspective. He wanted every grain of wheat to have the opportunity to mature and bear fruit. He was willing to tolerate the presence of the competitor weeds in order to give the wheat its opportunity. Unlike the servants, he wasn’t willing to lose one grain of his good wheat.

We often think of the story as an explanation for the presence of evil in the world, and it is that. Yet it is also about time. We cry out, “How long, O Lord?” The Lord answers, “I will be with you till the end of time.” In other words, we need to understand that our viewpoint doesn’t give us the big picture.

Of course, the other truth is one that Job had to learn, too. God, who creates and sustains everything, is not accountable to us for his timing. We tend to believe that we can drub God with his promises to us and demand action. This attitude is complete self-worship. To expect that we can force God’s hand in order to get what we want is totally incompatible with the teaching of the Bible. If this is the right view of things, why have so many faithful Christians suffered so much at the hands of evil men?

Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” This is the same Jesus who said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” When we are spinning our wheels, when we are pushing hard against immoveable barriers, when we are crushed by forces of evil, it does not mean that we have been forgotten. It does not mean that we should stop praying. Quite the contrary. When things seem very challenging, even threatening, it is time to trust God more than ever. This is the time to remember that God alone sees all the way to the harvest at the end of time. God alone will know the right moment to burn up the Enemy and all the weeds he has planted. As we are crowded and threatened by the weeds forcing themselves into our path, the weeds that scarf up the riches and the power of this world, we must remember that God is with us preserving us and making us ready for that final harvest when evil will be done away with.

On a different trip through Delaware Bay, we were traveling upstream at the time of tidal ebb. This meant that our engine at 1800 RPM could only make a speed of 1.2 knots over ground. That speed is even less than the 4.1 knots we made in the C&D Canal. There are life experiences that feel that way, and if we do not trust that God is with us and still in control, such experiences will lead us to despair. The book of Revelation reminds us that when the forces of evil rage their loudest, that is the time for us to testify as the apostle Paul wrote, “For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.” [2 Timothy 1:11-12] Paul accepted the responsibility to do the work God had given him, he accepted the fact that he was resisted on every hand by evil, and he spoke his testimony of trust in God alone to bring about the accomplishments God had in mind. Our faithful testimony is part of God’s arsenal of weapons against evil in the eternal perspective. When we feel most stymied, when we sense that forces beyond our control are impeding our progress in the work the Lord has given us to do, that is the time to say, “I know that I am blessed, for I am persecuted because of the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

A lot of people are standing in line on You-Tube, Facebook and Twitter, not to mention  in the media and on the street corner, to tell all the rest of us what the world needs now. If you are inclined to listen, your head could be in a whirl. I am here to add to the confusion, but I hope to do so with clarity. In my opinion, what the world needs now is more willingness to face and deal with God’s revelation of himself in the Bible.
The ELCA feels pretty much the same way, and the  Book of Faith initiative across the country is evidence of that conviction. I am in complete sympathy with any effort to induce people to open the Bible, read it, and take it seriously. I started doing that several years ago, and it has been a major part of good changes in my life.
The truth is that the Bible is the revelation of God in human words that points us to the Word of God who created and saved us by his blood. Every person can check the truth of my statement by reading the Bible for himself. Every baptized believer, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, can read the Bible and meet God in its pages. It is a book that is rich and deep enough to excite and challenge great intellect, yet its truth is accessible by means of stories little children can enjoy, remember and learn from.
In keeping with my commitment to participate in any effort to get people to read the Bible, I am developing a series of guides for Bible study. You can find them under the “library” button at www.katherineharms.com. If you don’t have a plan and a personal discipline of Bible study, I invite you to take a look at these guides. Bible study is an important discipline of the Christian faith. Neglecting it is like refusing to provide healthful food for your body.
Here is my story. My parents took me to church without asking me to have an opinion about it, and they taught me to love the Bible. I did not, however, develop good habits of Bible study and prayer for a very long time. I tried over and over, but for one reason or another, I always fell away. However, in the year 2000, I was hired to be a software consultant traveling full-time. I would be away from home at least three nights a week, often more. I knew it would be a stress to my marriage of only five years, and I made up my mind that I wanted to do what it took to prevent my new job from building barriers in my marriage.
It was about that time that I happened upon the Daily Texts. I first found it at DailyTexts.org online, and for a while I tried to keep up with the texts that way. However, even though my career was in information technology, I am still addicted to the feel of a book in my hand. Reading the texts online simply did not meet my need for personal, dedicated time for prayer and Bible study. I ordered a copy of Daily Texts from the Mt. Carmel Ministries who publish them, and that is how I got started.
Daily Texts presents two verses each day for meditation and study. It also includes Bible reading plans for one year and two years as well as other helps for a Christian who is serious about spending time in the presence of God every day. The backbone of the book is a method for prayer based on the verses which encourages both honest self-examination under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and also serious prayer in conversation with God that results in daily life changes. I recommend this guide to anyone who is serious about starting a daily discipline of Bible study and prayer.
This method is not, of course, the only option for starting a personal quiet time. There are many, many options, and like diets, most of the methods work if you work the methods. The real trick is commitment. If you plan to stop and pray as soon as you have time, you will never have time. If you think you will start daily Bible reading as soon as the pace at work lets up, you will never start reading your Bible daily.
I started by making a commitment to use Daily Texts every day unless and until I found something else more compelling. I started very simply – I only committed to read the two verses and pray about them. That was it. It hardly took fifteen minutes. I got up every morning, drank my first cup of coffee, and then I sat down with my Bible and Daily Texts. For a couple of years that was all I did, but it created a real overflow into my daily life. I began to see the truth of the verses in the events of my days, in my relationships, all around me. Always in the past, I had let conflicts and events interfere with my faithful worship, but for some reason, this discipline took root and came to feel so important that it outweighed other things.
You might find that some other discipline works for you. That is fine. God created us unique. Snowflakes and people are examples of the truth that God does not expect us all to be alike. He doesn’t even want us all to be alike. When Jesus picked twelve men to study and work with him for the three years of his ministry, he didn’t pick twelve look-alikes. He picked twelve strong personalities that were dramatically different from each other. You are unique also. We all need God, but we may express our worship, our faith and our study in different ways. If Daily Texts does not appeal to you, then look for other ideas. The important thing is to find the method that will help you to stay close to God and get to know him better. That is what Bible study is all about: getting to know God.
Try my Bible Study Guides or try Daily Texts or just go to a bookstore and look at the devotional guides there. Make a commitment to spend just a little time alone with God every day and let him speak to you through the Bible. Nike made a fortune in the world of sports with the mantra “Just do it.” The same thing applies to personal growth through Bible study. There is no magic way that is better than any other. There is no secret method that you can only find on a mountaintop. It is the hardest thing in the world, yet it is as easy as picking up your Bible and opening it. What the world needs now is people who meet God every day in the pages of the Bible. Give it a try. Just do it. Then tell me what you think.

© 2009 Katherine Harms

Aboard No Boundaries

June 9, 2009

I use Daily Texts published by Mt. Carmel Ministries as my guide for daily devotions. I have used it since 2000. I am frequently amazed to discover that the verses selected for a given day have something quite relevant to say about my life at that moment. It happened again today.

Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually. Psalm 105:4

This verse reminds me how easy it is to lose touch with God by ignoring him. He dwells within us in the person of the Holy Spirit. He surrounds us with his love and sustains us by his grace. Yet despite God’s ongoing efforts to nourish the relationship, it is pretty easy for us to become distracted and inattentive. When Jesus said, “If anyone wants to follow me,” he did say “wants.” He did not say, “is compelled to.” God wants us to want the relationship as much as he does. In order to do our part, we must “seek his presence continually.”

As I thought about this verse, I thought about the things that have happened in my life over the past few years. Among other things, I have grown to value and seek a deeper relationship with God. I have learned to rely on his strength when my own was inadequate to the situation. I sat on the deck meditating and praying while the morning sun shone on a beautiful cove in Chesapeake Bay, and I recalled what a different scene it had been only 12 hours before.

We had arrived in this cove shortly before 6PM the evening of June 8. Although it was several hours before sunset, the sun was not to be seen at that time. To the east the sky was darkening. Clouds were roiling and thickening higher and higher as we watched. We rushed to set the anchor, hoping to complete that task successfully before the storm began. Lightning flashed in the distance. The wind picked up. A few drops were already falling by the time Larry had set the anchor and rushed back to the cockpit.

Above us the sky displayed all the portents of a dangerous storm. Its danger was confirmed by constant alarms and warnings from the National Weather Service. Mariners were advised to seek safe harbor immediately. We could see with our own eyes the bulbous underbelly of storm clouds that could spawn tornadoes. Wild cloud formations hinted at severe and frightening updrafts and downdrafts within the clouds. The weather announcer warned of torrential downpours, potential for winds up to 60mph, and even hail.

We were settled into the safest harbor available to us. With a roar the wind and rain hit us and shook us dramatically. We were completely gripped by the power of the storm.

Our anchor was set, but the bottom of the Bay in this location is silt to a very great depth. A heavy anchor and heavy chain will grip silt the best it can, but when winds exceed about 20 knots, the wind has the upper hand. We began to drag. We had been in storms before, but never before had we experienced wind that swirled and twisted like this. We were dragged one way, then another. We were pushed away from the shore where we had hoped the trees would at least slow the fury. Another boat was also anchored in the area, and it, too, was dragged wildly about. Ordinarily we would expect that all boats would be pushed in the same direction at about the same time, but in this storm, the wind was so chaotic that we found ourselves being pushed closer and closer to each other. Larry gunned our engine, which we had kept running as things developed, and we were able to force our way against the wind sufficiently to avoid collision with the other boat. Furious wind heeled the boat dramatically one way, then the other, and finally turned us around in a complete circle.

As this storm worked its will with us, I prayed. I must confess that in every storm I become fearful, but I am simultaneously in awe at the beauty in the power of the storm. I prayed for protection and safety, and I gave thanks for the chance to see this storm. Never before have we been able actually to see anything, because our other major storm experiences were at night. I could see the water writhing as the wind stirred it like a Kitchen-Aid mixer. I could see the rain pelting us. I could hear the roar of the wind and the thunder.

Why would I give thanks for something that could conceivably ground or maybe destroy our boat?

This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name: “Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.”

            Jeremiah 31:35-36

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winder, day and night, shall not cease.

            Genesis 8:22

I could give thanks for the storm, because it was  proof that the laws of nature were reliably producing phenomena as God planned. As long as the laws of nature are working, God loves me and will care for me. Paul described Christians as the true descendants of Abraham begotten of faith and reproduced in the line of promise. We are his kingdom of priests, the nation he preserves and protects. I give thanks for the evidence in nature that confirms God’s promise to me. I can seek his strength, because I can plainly see that the laws of nature are working. God’s loving hand is in the wind that “stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.” His hand is with me, too, guarding and guiding me with his love.

After more than an hour of tumult, the storm relented enough that we had some hope it was over. Larry went forward to retrieve the anchor and set it again. The wind was still blowing, although with far less ferocity. It was raining. As he pulled up the chain to retrieve the anchor, he tried to distribute it on deck to keep the right amount available when he set it again. He was barefooted, even though he wore his rain jacket and hat, and I worried about his safety. There was great danger on the heaving deck that he might entangle a foot in the chain, or catch his hand on the windlass resulting in severe injury. A sudden fierce gust might even heel the boat so dramatically that he would be thrown into the water. As he worked, I prayed that he might have the wisdom, the patience, the peace and the strength to do what must be done safely. I sought God’s strength for him and for me.

It turned out that the storm was far from spent. As Larry worked, it coiled up another hour of ferocity that again dragged us all over the cove and even grounded us temporarily. I continued to pray, alternately giving thanks for the integrity of the laws of nature, the sign of God’s love, and asking strength and safety for us and our boat, trusting his love and his promise to hear our prayers.

Everyone who asks, receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Luke ll:10

God heard my prayers. He gave me the gift of greater faith. He encouraged my appreciation of the aesthetics of the storm. He gave me wisdom to trust him and to work with Larry to do what it took to save our boat. It was scary to be completely at the mercy of the storm, yet the storm formed in the natural way weather forms. God promised that as long as the laws of nature work, he will always love us. I trusted that love, and it gave me peace. How amazing and marvelous that the very next morning, the verses presented for meditation in Daily Texts (Psalm 105:4 and Luke 11:10) spoke so directly to my experience.

I am deeply grateful for God’s revelation of himself in the Bible. I am profoundly in the debt of all the people who preserved those words that they might be in my hands when I need them. I am richly blessed by my experience daily that just as ancient people heard those words and said, “These words are for us,” I, too, can read those words and say, “These words are for me.”

June 2, 2009

All my blog posts will now have an internal date that represents the actual date I wrote them. Since We are unable to access the internet when cruising or anchored in remote places, all these posts will be made when we are in a port with wifi, and they may be bunched. Just so you know.

Contentment

Some people believe that to be contented is to be lazy. They would have us believe that contentment is the beginning of a downhill slide into something increasingly less than our best.

Paul, however, said of himself, that he had learned to be content with whatever circumstances befell him, and his life is a striking example of someone who never was satisfied to be less than his best. He wrote of his ongoing struggle in that regard, confessing that no matter how hard he tried, he always seemed to do what he wanted to avoid, never quite achieving the “best self” he wanted to be.

There seems to be a great difference between being satisfied and being content.

I was led to think about this concept as I thought about our work as stewards of God’s blessings. And I entered this train of thought as I was making a hot dish from some cabbage leaves I might have discarded only a few years ago. I embarked on finding a use for those leaves in the context of my gratitude that God continually provides for all my needs. As I offered up my thanksgiving, I began to ask myself if I am making the most of the gifts I receive.

Everyone who has watched children storm the Christmas tree on Christmas morning knows what I am talking about. Most of the gifts the children receive are direct responses to requests from the children. Some of the gifts are welcomed with bright eyes and excited shouts. However, by noon, most of the gifts are in a pile somewhere, more or less forgotten in the excitement of building a village with the boxes the gifts came in. Disappointed parents and grandparents try to refocus the children’s attention on the wonderful new gifts. They want the children to actually enjoy all the possibilities of the gifts, but the children have moved on to a new challenge.

I think God must see a lot of that kind of behavior. I thought about it first in reference to food. Those cabbage leaves, for example. When I was growing up, a lot of people had vegetable gardens, and some grew cabbages. When they invited my mother to take a cabbage or two home with her, they cut off all those tough outer leaves and discarded them. Mother even taught me that when I bought a cabbage at the store I should look for one that didn’t have a lot of outer leaves I would have to pay for but never use. Lately, the store where I shop has made a habit of leaving a lot of those leaves on the cabbage. I could hardly believe that if this was God’s  provision, I should throw it away. I searched and searched, until one day I realized that cabbage, and collards, and kale were all green, leafy vegetables. A cooking method or recipe that was good for one was probably good for all. Thus was born my recipe for hot slaw. I wanted very much to make the most of God’s gift of cabbage, and finding a way to enjoy those tough outer leaves was an expression of my gratefulness for God’s gift.

With that experience, I began to look at all my food items differently. Where formerly I had bought any number of things for a single purpose and simply discarded what I didn’t need at the time, I learned to think ahead any time I had to purchase more than I needed. Package sizes, bunches of fresh vegetables, bags, boxes and cans might all compel me to buy more of something than I needed immediately, yet I no longer wanted to put anything in the refrigerator. One sage mind in my past had defined the refrigerator as “a place to store things until it is time to throw them away.” The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to treat God’s generosity that way.

This experience led me to look at my use of “things” in the rest of my life differently. It all came back to my recognition that God provides for my needs. If I don’t have enough, whose fault is it? I began to realize that my attitude toward “things” needed an adjustment. If I thought of every “thing” as a gift from God, I wanted to treat it with respect and gratitude. I wanted it to last. I wanted to get as much value from that gift as God had put into it when he gave it to me.

Which leads to the subject of contentment. Gratefulness for gifts received leads to contentment. Recognition of the extra value hidden in those gifts, like the discovery of a way to enjoy tough, outer cabbage leaves, makes those gifts into real treasures. The level of our contentment has a lot to do with our happiness. Learning to use God’s gifts wisely, not wastefully, as good stewards of the blessings received, actually makes us feel richer, because we experience that we have all that we need, maybe even more than we need. A wise person once said that riches consist not in what we have, but rather in what we don’t want.

I finally realize that I always do have “enough,” because God always provides enough, and with God’s provision I am content.

I know a lot of people who spend a lot of their time worrying about which of God’s laws they have broken. They fret over the wording of the laws trying to figure out how to do the right thing. They really do their best, and then they see how they failed. These people are baptized children of God, and they still worry a lot about these things.
It isn’t because they don’t know that Christ died in order that they can be forgiven for their sins. They know. They are faithful Christians, trying to be ever more faithful. They love the Lord. They actually know that they cannot live up to the demands of the Law. They know, however, that the Law is God’s standard. He gave it to teach us how to live. The real problem they experience daily is that they constantly beat on themselves to obey the Law and they know even as they are beating on themselves that they never will be able to do it. It is killing them.

 How do I know so much about this situation? I used to be the same way. I believed that I had an obligation to be the most obedient law-abider in the world, because Jesus died to save me from all my sins, and it was time for me to quit doing that. I didn’t want to pile on more sins after he saved me. I really believed that God was very disgusted with me for never getting it right. I truly thought that He was waiting somewhere far away for me to finally learn how to follow His Laws, and I was pretty sure that He didn’t want to hear from me until I figured it out.

 I can’t possibly explain why I believed this pack of lies. Or why anyone else believes it. That is, I can’t explain it except for Satan. Some people try to explain Satan away as some “force” of evil, not a real person. There is no way to explain all the evil in the world without a real person behind it. Simple “forces” have no goals and do not rejoice in the destruction that follows them. Satan has one and only one goal: to make human beings reject God just as he did long ago. Satan is a person who rejoices every time we fail to do what God wants. Furthermore, he is so perverse that when we actually do something good, Satan manages to insinuate himself into our feeling and attitudes, turning any good work into self-worship. He motivates other people to praise us until we believe we really are as good as they say. Or he motivates us to mull over our good deed and focus on it and admire ourselves for finally getting something right. We believe the lie that we must obey all God’s Laws in order to be loved, and when we fail, we believe the lie that God doesn’t love us any more. When we do anything good, we believe the lie that we have earned God’s respect and deserve God’s blessing. When we don’t feel blessed, we believe that lie that we are not blessed because God is mad at us.

 Human beings believe Satan’s lie that God won’t love us if we don’t obey the Law perfectly, because we want to believe that we can earn God’s respect. Even more than that, we want to believe that if we try hard enough we actually can be perfect, like God. And that is the biggest lie of all. It is the first lie, and the worst lie, and the one that still entraps us even if, like the rich young ruler, we have kept the Law from our youth.
In the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, God had only one rule for Adam and Eve: Don’t try to be me. Each day God walked with them in the garden, and they talked with each other. They lived in a harmonious relationship. Everything Adam and Eve needed to know about life they were learning from God himself. In conversation with him, they were growing up, maturing, becoming what God had created them to be. In that conversation they fully understood that God was God and they were not.

 Satan took advantage of the innocence in which Adam and Eve lived. He appealed to their innocence and their recognition that God knew things they did not know. Satan used truth in order to create a lie. Satan succeeded in making Adam and Eve yearn to break the only rule God had given them. He encouraged them to believe that God was preventing them from being their own gods. The moment that Eve started to think she could be like God, knowing good and evil, the relationship she had with God ended; she started worshiping herself.
This is still Satan’s big lie. In a thousand, million, different ways, Satan turns our attentions toward ourselves and away from God. He tries to make us believe that the rules are what matter to God when it is actually the relationship that matters to God.
Think about a marriage. In marriage two individuals have a relationship that thrives on honesty and integrity. It doesn’t thrive on rules. The two may be very different in their behaviors and their likes and dislikes. The relationship will survive all those differences if the couple has a strong, loving relationship. However, if the couple has rules and lives in an environment of enforcement and punishment, the relationship will die. They may never divorce, but they will not have a happy marriage.

 Our relationship with God is like that. As long as we measure our relationship with God by our compliance with God’s rules, then we will not have a relationship. God doesn’t need to stop loving us for us to lose the joy of his love; we only have to start believing that he doesn’t love us any more because of our behavior. That is Satan’s big weapon; first he lies to us by telling us that if we try hard enough we can be as good as God, perfect, like God wants us to be, and when we fail, Satan says that it is really too bad, but God can’t love such disgusting sinners. It takes real faith in God to reject that lie.

 Our behavior does matter to God, and it matters to each of us, too. We are not happy and satisfied with ourselves when we do the sort of things condemned by God’s Law. The Law is intended to show us what hurts us. It isn’t intended to put up a barrier between us and God’s love. It truly is our teacher, but it isn’t the judge who can condemn us before God.
If we are not to worry about the rules, then how are we to live? The answer is that we are to live in a faithful relationship with God. We are to speak the truth to him and to ourselves. We are to drown all our failures daily in remembrance of the waters of baptism. We are to nourish our faith with the body and blood of Christ in Communion. We are to run to him with our failure and wrong-headed behavior just as we run to him with our attempt to serve and give and love. He greets us just like a father who praises what is good and rebukes with forgiveness what is bad.

 Our life with God isn’t about the rules. It is about our relationship with him through the salvation purchased at the price of the blood of Christ on the cross. We can quit counting our money and our good deeds and simply wash ourselves in the blood of the Savior. That is what it is all about.

Why did God create people? What was he thinking? People must be an endless discouragement to God. In Genesis, right before the flood, God regretted that he ever made people, yet something about Noah touched his heart. Maybe he didn’t regret making every single person. After the flood ended, God changed his mind. It is right there in the book of Genesis. I didn’t make this up. God said exactly the same thing about people after the flood as before. He said that they were completely mixed up and always doing wrong. Yet he no longer wanted to destroy them.

Noah and his family were just as prone to disappoint God as everybody else. Yet God did not strike them with lightning. He doesn’t strike anyone with lightning. He just goes on loving us.

What is the problem? Satan, of course, is the agent of evil, the embodiment of pure evil, but if people had not been created with freedom to choose what they do, Satan would be powerless. God didn’t hardwire people to do the right thing every time, and that is Satan’s opportunity. A cynic might say that God got what was coming to him, because he got the consequences of our freedom.

There are many ways in which this freedom works out in our lives. We choose to take what we want from the people who have it regardless of their wish to keep it. We lie, cheat, defraud, and hurt the people around us. We hurt people on purpose, because they have hurt us, or just because we can. However, that isn’t the only way we express our freedom.

Every human being is born with potential to do great things. Not just morally great things. We are born with talents. Michelangelo and Picasso were born to draw and paint. They could have ignored their talent or they could have done what they did – develop their talent. George Washington was born to be a leader of men. He could have sat in peace on his estate, but he chose to be a leader. The development of Picasso’s art and Washington’s leadership must have made God very happy.

The Jews believe that God loves it when people stand up and argue with God. I can see how that might be true, because I believe that God gave us minds to see choices, evaluate them, and then decide. When he sees us using our minds and our talents, I think God is pleased.

What confuses us about God is the fact that he is omnipotent at the same time that we are free. We think both things cannot be true at the same time. This paradox confuses us. Because humans believe that both things cannot possibly be true, humans choose to believe that God is limited in some way. We can clearly see that we have the freedom to choose, and we say things like, “You got yourself into this mess, and you can jolly well get yourself out of it.” On the other hand, after exercising our complete freedom to choose, when we find ourselves in messes, we pray “Help me, help me, help me,” and think God is a big failure when he doesn’t jump in and fix things.

Books have been written on this subject. I can’t best any of them. I have a single concern in bringing up this issue. I believe that God had good reasons for giving us freedom. I believe that God wants us to relate to him, and a relationship requires freedom for both parties. If we were not free to choose the relationship, then we would be slaves or robots. God rejoices in our freedom. In some ways, he relates to us the way a parent relates to a child learning to play the piano. When that child sits down at the very first recital and plays a really simple piece, the parent does not confuse that with the performance of a concerto, but the parent truly and completely rejoices in the child’s development of the gift. Years later, when the child has matured with the gift, the parent rejoices to hear a mature performance, and the parent equally rejoices that the child has found the right outlet for that talent whether it turns out to be in concert or classroom or even in composition.

God feels that way about each of us. He gifts us with the potential. He sets us down in the world with all sorts of choices before us. He works within us and around us to nurture our talents, our personalities, and our character. The unique person each of us becomes is a mix of all those opportunities shaped by our choices over and over. I think that God is extremely pleased when we become what he created us to be, and I think he is delighted and surprised in many ways, because of the unique outcome in each person.

Can God be surprised? I think so. To say so, of course, throws me into another paradox. If God knows everything at all times, how can anyone surprise him? How can it even be said that we choose anything if he knows everything already? This mental exercise is tedious. Relationship with God is not tedious. I think God is truly delighted like any parent when we grow and mature using the talents and personality with which he gifted us at conception. I choose to believe that because he does not micromanage our choices, he also does not limit his delight in our growth by saying, “I knew that all the time.”

I can’t comprehend how God is God at all. The best I can do is spend time in his presence and try to live by his guidance. I know I have made some bad choices, so I know he doesn’t prevent that. I know I have made some good choices, and I know he is pleased with them. As I grow and mature in my relationship with God, I am learning to see facets of his personality and character that I never knew before. In this growing relationship, I sense that he delights in my growth as if he didn’t know with certainty what I would do. I simply don’t worry about what he foreknows when I meet and beat a big challenge, because I am so happy. I know I don’t do it alone, and I experience God’s delight in both my choices and my growth.

I would rather relate to God as my heavenly father, the mysterious Three in One, who loves me and blesses me than try to analyze him to death. I know people who try to analyze me, too, and I don’t much like it. I do like the experience of growing in faith and developing my talents in the loving, nurturing presence and power of the Holy Spirit. I know that I was known before I was conceived, but I love being God’s kid and surprising him every once in a while as I try to become what he always wanted me to be. It isn’t all up to me, but I really do get to choose, and he really does get to rejoice when I do it right.