I used to love going kneeboarding. You kneel on a board
and get pulled behind a boat, skimming across the top of the water. It’s not as
popular as waterskiing or wakeboarding, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
When I was new to it, it was really cool just to get
going and go back and forth across the wake. Then you start doing little
tricks, like 360s or riding backwards. Then you start hitting the wake a little
harder to get some air. Then you start hitting it really hard to see how far
you can jump.
After hitting the wake hard and getting a decent
amount of air, somehow I got it into my head that I wanted to pull off a barrel
roll. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know that we just didn’t have the right
setup to make this trick work, but back then I didn’t know it was impossible. I
was willing to try it as many times as I could. Each time I wanted to get just
a little closer to making it happen, but there was always a point in the
rotation past which I couldn’t go.
I tried dozens of times, but always ended up falling into the water without the board rotating around nearly enough. I even bought a video camera (when such things existed) and had someone in the boat film what was going on so I could try to learn from my mistakes. I have film somewhere of me rolling between 180 and 270 degrees over and over again. I’d land on my head or I’d land on my side, the kneeboard would go flying up into the air, and it never once worked out for me.
What none of us knew at the time is that I couldn’t
pull off the roll without mounting the rope at a higher point on the boat. The
boat’s pylon – the point where the rope I hung onto was connected to the boat –
was fine for waterskiing and even basic kneeboarding, but it simply was not
going to allow me to achieve what I wanted to do. The professionals that
successfully do these tricks use boats with elevated mounts. That way when the
kneeboarders hit the wake and make it into the air, the boat is not only
pulling them forward, but slightly upward as well. It’s not a lot, but it helps
provide just a little bit of extra hang time that makes a huge difference in
the person’s overall ability to perform tricks.
People are like that too. Each person is unique in
their own story, but there’s usually a ceiling of some kind that everyone hits.
It could be trying to find contentment, get past guilt, grant forgiveness, or
even trying to establish a ministry. Whatever it is, people need to be
connected to something higher than just the basic level. You hit your limit a
lot sooner when you’re doing it on your own, and you need that extra boost that
only comes from God.
Work diligently and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, but remember to ask God for help and to guide your steps in any effort that glorifies Him. When you work hard to complete the assignment God’s given you, He provides that little boost that makes all the difference. He may not provide it exactly when you want it or exactly how you anticipate it, but He gives it to you. It’s the thing that makes a huge difference in your overall ability to perform His work.
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This post will likely be censored or unavailable for readers in east Asia.
At the end of World War
II, many nations across the globe were exhausted, in physical and financial shambles,
and/or struggling to define their identity. One of those nations was China.
The quick version is
that in the late 1940s the two most powerful groups in China that had worked
with the United States to combat Japanese forces struggled against each other
for control of the nation. The Nationalist group, losing strength and support,
began to flee toward the ocean in order to escape the Communist group. Upon
reaching the Pacific, with the adversary not far behind, the Nationalist
leadership escaped to an island off the coast of China, an island now known as
Taiwan. The Communists went on to establish firm control over mainland China,
and vowed to someday reclaim Taiwan, which they view as a rogue Chinese
territory.
That was 70 years ago. China still intends to reclaim and annex Taiwan, by force if necessary. The Chinese Government knows, however, that if it suddenly grabs Taiwan all at once, the international outcry would be detrimental to its long-term goals, so it came up with a different plan. It’s been slowly exerting pressure on those within its sphere of influence to either support the idea that Taiwan belongs to China, or at least avoid supporting Taiwan in any way. The Chinese populace is not nearly as distracted and forgetful as we are in America, and the idea is that over time there will be so little international resistance that eventually China will reach out and pluck Taiwan for itself and the outcry will be manageable. Unfortunately for Taiwan, there’s evidence that the plan is working.
Don’t believe me? Let
me show you an example.
Not long ago Tom Cruise
introduced a trailer for his upcoming movie, Top Gun: Maverick. This is a
sequel to the original Top Gun movie that came out 34 years before the sequel.
I’ll admit, I’ve watched the trailer a few times and I’m definitely excited to see
the movie some day.
It wasn’t long after
the trailer went public that an eagle-eyed fan noticed something very peculiar.
There’s a brief shot in the trailer where Maverick (Tom Cruise’s character)
puts on an old bomber jacket that he wore in the first movie. The jacket is
full of unit patches that signify some of the assignments Maverick completed.
The fan did a side-by-side comparison of the jacket from the 1986 film and the
jacket from the sequel. He noticed that where the 1986 jacket had a large patch
containing flags from Japan and Taiwan, the 2020 movie replaced those two
portions of that patch with similarly colored ambiguous shapes.
This was not an
accident; it was quite intentional. China doesn’t get along with Japan or
Taiwan. Rather than simply write in a minor plot change that uses a different,
newer jacket, (or even avoid camera angles showing that particular patch) the
people that made this movie decided it would be best to rewrite history in
order to appease China. It would be different if China made the change itself
before allowing it to play in Chinese theaters, but here the actual patch from
the world’s first major summer blockbuster was deemed unpalatable and updated
before it was even released in America. Now the movie posters act like it never even happened,
history is erased, and the people that never saw the original won’t even know
anything happened.
Imagine…this level of
sinister manipulation by “soft power” methods is engineered by earthly minds.
If mere humans can orchestrate this type of behavior, imagine the level of
sneakiness and underhandedness that the most powerful of all angels is capable
of.
Now, before you get any
crazy ideas, no, I’m not saying that China is run by the devil. I think this
instance is an excellent illustration of one of his tactics, though. He knows
he’s headed for an epic clash that he’ll eventually lose. In the meantime
though, he hates God and us so much that his main motivation is to rob God from
receiving glory. He does it through discouraging/distracting Christians from
doing the work God calls them to do and by doing everything in his power to
prevent humans from becoming Christians. That’s it. At the end of the day,
that’s all it is.
Satan knows that a
sudden power grab is too overt and people would too easily recognize it for
what it is. With that in mind, he works a little slower, in smaller steps but
always pushing toward making the world a place where anything goes and
Christianity is labeled as too intolerant and restrictive. Think about how much
Christian influence the United States has lost over the last hundred years, or
even the last 20 years.
When you shape the
narrative, it’s much easier to control the outcome. As a Christian you can’t just
hide your head in the sand and hope things will get better; you need to engage
the culture. If someone tells you that “there are no absolutes,” you can politely
remind them that their statement is self-contradicting. If someone tells you
that “everything in life is meaningless!” you can ask whether or not they
believe their assertion has meaning.
Engage the culture.
It’s your culture, after all. Push back against ideas that run counter to what
you know God would want. It’s not easy and you might be alone, but if you don’t
do it, it won’t be long before Christians end up in a situation with the
adversary posturing to reach out and pluck this isolated refugee enclave so it
can do what it feels is best with this group of troublesome upstarts.
Little kids are a hoot,
man. Mine are all old enough to swim on their own at this point, but it’s fun
to think about when they were younger and the things they’d do at the pool.
As a dad, one of the fun
things to see is the trust your kids place in you. The pool is a place where
the trust you’ve built with your kids becomes most evident. For a kiddo that’s
3 or 4 years old and doesn’t know how to swim yet, it’s a scary thing to walk
to the edge of the pool and jump into water that might be too deep to stand in.
It’s a big deal to jump off the side of the pool into Daddy’s arms! You look at
them and you can almost see the wheels turning. It’s like they’re thinking “Daddy’s
right there, but will he catch me if I jump?”
It’s so fun to stand in
the pool, looking up at them, and say “go ahead, I’ll catch you,” and to see
them think it over. I have three kids, so I’ve seen a few different reactions.
There’s always some hesitation; sometimes it passes quickly and other times it
takes some additional coaxing for them to commit to the jump.
It’s fun to watch their
eyes, too. They look at my outstretched arms, gauging whether or not they think
they can make it. Once they decide they think they can do it, they look me in
the eyes, seeking assurance that I’m focused on them and will be there when
they need me. My next move would be to give them a non-verbal green light.
Sometimes it was a silent nod. Other times it was a big smile. With intense focus, they’d stick
out their little tongue, crouch, and take a flying leap into Daddy’s arms.
It’s a simple, but
beautiful picture. As the father to my children, I cherish that trust that
we’ve developed together. They each placed so much trust in me that each one of
them were willing to step outside their comfort zones to do something beyond
what they could do on their own. Building trust is something that’s done over
time, but can be shattered in an instant. As they each belly-flopped their way
into my arms, it was so fun to join in their celebration with exclamations, smiles,
and laughs. Almost right away they wanted to do it again, and then again. Building
further on that trust, I was able to back farther away from the edge, or move
into deeper water, and they’d be okay with making the leap because they knew.
They knew “it’s okay, he’s got me.”
Your Heavenly Father
takes pleasure in seeing you demonstrate your trust in Him, too. Nothing brings
Him a smile quite like seeing His children trust Him and leap with both feet
into the challenge He’s given to them. Like an earthly father, He coaxes the
child according to what he or she needs. Maybe it’s a silent nod, a big smile,
or in some cases, a push from behind.
Give Him an opportunity to build more trust with you. Summon up your courage and concentration, stick out your tongue, and take that flying leap. He’s got you.
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A few summers in my
teens/early 20s I drove a ski boat at a Christian conference center on the
Delaware River between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The vast majority of the
people I drove came for tubing rides, but every now and then there were people
that wanted to waterski.
If they were
experienced waterskiers, it wasn’t a problem. They knew what to do, I knew how
to drive for it, and it usually worked out pretty well.
On the other hand, it
was much more difficult when beginners gave it a shot. We had a limited
selection of ski sizes, so if the skier was small/light, they usually struggled
to get into a good starting position. Just wrestling with the skis while trying
to stay in the right “crouched” position was usually enough to get both the
skier and the driver frustrated. Add to this the fact that their teacher…me…had
never been successful at waterskiing, and it’s no surprise that I can probably
count on one hand the number of people that were able to ski for the first time
under my tutelage over the course of two or three summers. Sometimes it’s true
what they say: those that can’t do…teach.
If you want to learn
something from someone, you’d expect your instructor…regardless of what they’re
instructing…to be proficient at it, wouldn’t you? I grew up near that
conference center and since I was a kid I’d hung out by the river and heard
lots of different boat drivers describe to beginners how to get up and out of
the water on waterskis. The problem was that I didn’t have any experience doing
it myself, so it was very difficult for me to successfully translate that theoretical
knowledge into something usable for someone else.
In the Christian life we’re supposed to devote ourselves to passionately pursuing Christ. In the twelfth chapter of the book of Mark, someone asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is. He responded in verse 30 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength.” Pursue Christ with everything you’ve got, but while you’re doing it, make sure that the sources you’re learning from, getting excited by, gaining encouragement from, and using to be renewed are credible sources. Some of the enemy’s greatest weapons employ half-truths or sound like they’re religious, but are in fact more misleading and damaging than flat-out lies.
The voices you’re listening to…are they walking the walk, or only talking the talk?
I sat in the van, more
than a little worried. Remnants of a hurricane had swollen the river to a level
that wasn’t safe for recreational canoe usage, which became painfully obvious
on our last canoe run. Earlier in the afternoon another lifeguard and I had
accompanied a group of canoers on our standard trip, but one pair of boaters
somehow managed to broadside a bridge pillar. The current was so strong that it
dumped the boaters and bent the canoe around the pillar. My boss, Allen, and I were
on our way to retrieve the “shipwrecked” canoe, and I was a teenager
that was getting less and less comfortable.
Herb, the director of
the Christian conference center where I worked, was driving us upriver. The
plan was that we’d get into a single canoe, paddle over to the spot where the bent
canoe was still pinned against the bridge pillar, and break it loose. If it was
in good enough shape, one of us would transfer to it and we’d each paddle a
canoe back home. If it was too damaged for that, we’d both remain in the same
canoe and tow the damaged one behind us.
We could see the pinned
canoe from the boat ramp. I buckled my life jacket and climbed into the front
of our canoe. Allen skipped a life jacket, but had a rescue tube (one of those
big red floats that you see pool lifeguards standing around with) wedged under
his seat. We shoved off and right away got swept into the bright brown water’s
swift current.
The river moved so
quickly that we barely had to paddle. As we approached the bridge, we started
paddling backwards to slow ourselves down. We slowed down perfectly, turned so
we were parallel with the pinned canoe, and gently bumped up against it. A
perfect docking.
The problem was the current
was moving so quickly that when it crashed against the bridge pillar and the two
canoes, it pillowed up and created undercurrents that we couldn’t see or
anticipate. Even though we sat completely still in relation to the shore, the
water churned and frothed angrily beneath us as the river pounded the keel
relentlessly. Our boat shuddered, then flipped over, dumping us both upstream.
That water was flowing hard. I didn’t even have time to be
pinned against the canoe; I got dumped in and immediately got swept under the
boat. I was able to get a hand onto the side of the boat, and hung onto it with
one hand, and held the paddle in the other. I was laid out horizontally,
completely underwater, flapping in the current like a flag on a windy day.
I had no idea where
Allen was or what his status was. He had probably safely cleared everything and
was downstream by now, but maybe he had managed to hang on somehow. In the
event that he was still there somewhere, I needed to get into a position where
we could make something happen. I needed to breathe, but if I let go, not only
would I be unable to help Allen with recovering the canoe, but the attempt
would be over because he’d have to abandon the recovery effort and come after
me. Still horizontal underwater, I tried to do a chin-up so I could get my face
out of the water enough to catch a breath and maybe see where Allen was, but
the current was so strong I couldn’t do it. I think I tried again, probably
with both hands this time, but it still wasn’t working. With no choice (and not
knowing how long it would be before the river let me get to the surface), I let
go and got flung into the current, now at the whim of the river.
Honestly, when I
surfaced, I expected to see Allen downriver. When I came up though, I didn’t
see him. I turned and looked upriver, but didn’t see him there, either. I couldn’t
see him anywhere. The only place he could be was still with the canoe, somewhere
underwater.
The current pushed me
into the eddy behind the pillar, but I was about to be carried out of it. Once
I left the eddy, there would be no chance of getting back upstream. Allen was
in the process of drowning about 20 feet away from me; I swam with everything I
had, but I barely got anywhere.
While I was still
fighting to get upstream, he popped through the surface. I found out later that
the strap to the rescue tube wedged under his seat had somehow wrapped around
his leg, so even though he wasn’t hanging onto the canoe at all, the canoe was
hanging onto him. He had been dangling by his knee at the end of a strap,
batted around underwater without any way of getting air. It must’ve been his
guardian angel that shook the rescue tube loose from under his seat.
Just relieved that we
were both alive, my sense of humor returned. While we were still drifting
downstream, I asked him “well, do you want to try again?” Thankfully
he said “uh, no.” We were able to swim to shore and get out of the
water, but we were down another
canoe.
What would’ve happened
if Allen’s rescue tube hadn’t come loose? Could I have made it far enough
upstream to be able to help him at all? If it meant I would exhaust myself, what
should I have done, considering I’d probably still need a good reserve of strength
if we both needed to rely on me to get out of the jam we were still in? Thankfully,
I didn’t have the chance to think of any of this at the time. Allen bobbed to
the surface before I had time to think about it.
This event helped put
things in perspective for me. In this life, there are things you can control
and there are things you can’t. When you can’t handle it, God will take care of
it. If the only way out of a situation is via something that’s beyond you, there’s
only so much you can bring to the table, and you have to rely on Him for the
rest. Life has countless opportunities for you to bear witness to the fact that
you’re not in control as much as you like to think you are. Every day brings
new challenges, and a lot of them need God-sized help to overcome.
It’s important to remember that if God hands you an
assignment that you’re totally confident that you’ll be able to accomplish, the
task just might be too small. By all means do
it, but recognize that if it’s something you can handle on your own, there’s
not much room for God to be glorified. On the other hand, if you get to be part
of something that you could in no way have accomplished on your own, it’s
harder to take the credit for it. I give all the credit to God for shaking
Allen loose and granting us overall safety that day, and pray that recounting
this story glorifies Him further.
(Also, hypothetically,
if you ever find yourself in a similar situation with shipwrecked canoes, don’t
forget to call the local fire/rescue folks and let them know that everyone’s
safe and accounted for. Otherwise, someone will eventually report two canoes
pinned against a bridge, the rescue team will get all kinds of excited, and
then they’ll let you have an earful when they find out what actually happened
and that you didn’t fill them in.)
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This week’s posts took place at roughly this time one July. I got certified as a lifeguard very late in the summer when I was 15, so I didn’t get much experience actually working on duty that year. The next summer was different.
The Christian conference
center where I worked not only had two pools that needed lifeguards, but it
also conducted waterfront activities on the Delaware River. It had a boat that
guests could use for waterskiing and tubing, but it also did a lot of
“canoe runs.” A canoe run was where someone on staff drove guests a
few miles upriver and dropped them off with canoes, along with a lifeguard to
guide the group. This stretch of river was mostly flat, but did have a few sets
of progressively choppier or rougher rapids that helped break up the monotony.
Canoe runs usually occurred four or five days a week, many times twice a day.
As a result, the lifeguards became very familiar with the river and where they
might encounter trouble spots or submerged obstacles. They almost never went
more than a few days without being on the river, except for once each summer.
There’s a week every
summer where the organization’s program offerings change, and it does not offer
any waterfront activities. During this particular summer’s no-river-activities
week, the remnants of a hurricane blew through our area. It rained hard for a
few days that week, swelling streams and tributaries locally and for miles upstream
of us. The water level rose and the current quickened many times over as that
water made its way into the river.
For the first canoe run
of the following week, plenty of people were excited to go. Recognizing that
the river had risen substantially, an extra lifeguard went on this trip. I was
one of them. Things started out uneventfully, but we were still within sight of
the boat ramp when something very unexpected happened.
Here’s the bridge, with the supporting pillars. The one in question is the one right over this guy’s shoulder.
Soon after the put-in
point there’s a bridge that crosses the river. The bridge is built for vehicles,
so its pillars are pretty solid. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I
think the two men in one of the canoes were trying to get past one of the
columns and got surprised by how swift the current was moving. They somehow
ended up slamming broadside into the pillar. The current was so strong that the
impact dumped both people into the river and the force of the water physically
wrapped the canoe around the upstream side of the pillar.
With the current moving
so quickly, everyone else who had not
hit a bridge went flying past the site of the impact. The other lifeguard and I,
still a little stunned that someone had actually run into the only thing they
could have possibly hit, spun our canoe around and began paddling upstream as
hard as we could, but it was all we could do to not lose any further ground to
the current. Just about all of the other canoes did the same thing, but with varying
degrees of success. The two guys that got dumped in the water didn’t quite know
what to do, and were stuck in the eddy downstream of the pillar. Everyone
paddling hard was getting tired, so we had to shout to the guys to start
swimming downstream, out of the eddy, so we could reach them. They did, and we
eventually reached them and placed them in two of the remaining canoes.
This all happened
within sight of where we put the canoes into the water. We still had almost
three miles to go! I started worrying about all kinds of things. “What are
the rapids gonna look like?” “If the current’s moving this fast, is
our whole group going to be able to make land if they all arrive at our
destination at the same time?” “How do I tell my boss I lost a
canoe?”
The rest of the trip
wasn’t nearly as eventful as what I feared. The river was so high that the
rapids no longer existed, and the current moved so quickly that we made it
downstream in record time. It was a struggle at the end, but we were able to
get everyone back on land at the right spot. After counting heads and
accounting for all of the gear (minus one boat and a few paddles), it was time
to go tell the boss.
You might remember Allen from an earlier post. He’s the guy that recruited me into lifeguard training. He was in charge of all the recreational activities, and he was the guy I needed to tell. Allen’s the kind of guy that usually has the same facial expression whether he’s happy, sad, conflicted, ecstatic, flabbergasted, or thinking about a baloney sandwich.
“Dude, Al! We lost
a canoe! These guys hit one of the bridge pillars, the canoe wrapped around it,
they got dumped out, we picked ’em up and made it back, and as far as I know,
the canoe’s still there, stuck on the bridge!”
He just kind of stood
there and blinked at me, digesting what he just heard. He asked me a few
clarification questions, paused to think for a few moments, and then hit me
with:
“Well, let’s go
get it.”
Then it was my turn to
stand there and blink.
I should have protested
more, maybe making more of an attempt to convey the river’s strength. I was
fresh off the situation…I had just been there and seen the power of the
current, and how crazy high the water actually was. Allen knew the conditions
were much different from what they normally were, but he hadn’t been there to
witness the ease with which the river destroyed a canoe. At 16 years old,
though, I wasn’t confident enough to challenge my boss and say “I’ve been
there, I’ve seen it! You’ve gotta believe me!”
There’s a difference
between knowing something with your mind and having experienced that same thing
in person. If you follow Christ, He enables you to do things that you can’t do
without Him. The Bible talks about how we’re supposed to go out and tell the
world about Christ, being bold and taking steps forward when we can’t see
what’s in front of us. It talks about being strong and courageous, and it even
talks about how, if you’re faithful with a few things, you’ll be granted
authority over more resources so you can further demonstrate your faithfulness.
Yet it’s one thing to
read about and say “yeah, I know that, I’ve known that for years” and
quite another to do it. Keeping your keister parked on the couch instead of
being obedient is a loss for Christ’s kingdom. You, as a child of God, need not
fear even when seemingly impossible and daunting obstacles stand before you. If
you know that God will empower His followers to do His work, do you believe
Him? Going a step further, if you know that God has charged you to do something
overwhelming, are you stepping out in faith even when you can’t see what’s in
front of you?
Take the next step.
Step out in faith. He’s going to give you what you need to succeed in His name.
I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. You’ve gotta believe me!
I
won’t be posting on Independence Day, so I’ll do it today and then not again
until next week. Have a safe, enjoyable holiday, and happy birthday, America!
The summer after I graduated high school I worked at
a Christian conference center, where a bunch of teenagers worked on the
organization’s summer staff. One day after work there were a bunch of us just
hanging around with nothing to do. The part of the campus near the staff
quarters and the dining room had a circular decorative fountain outside of it,
but it needed repair and had been drained. All that was left inside it was
nasty rainwater with decaying leaves in it.
We had a guy on staff, Dave, who was very nimble. He
hopped from outside the fountain to the pedestal in the middle, and then hopped
out the other side, making it look easy. Well shoot, I thought that was pretty
cool, so I had to give it a try, too.
It turns out I wasn’t quite as nimble as Dave. I got
to the middle without much trouble, but I couldn’t slow down fast enough to
stay on it. Caught in that awkward spot of “should I try to stop all the way,
or keep going and hop out again?”…I ended up making a leap for the exit. The
problem was that since I had already tried to stop, this wasn’t a full-blown
attempt to reach the other side and I didn’t have enough momentum to do it.
Only the first few inches of my foot landed on the other side, and the full
weight of my body came crashing down on this part of my foot, overextending my
ankle beyond its normal range.
This resulted in a complex injury that was a
combination of a strain, sprain, and possibly even a break (I don’t remember, but
it hurt). I ended up being on crutches a lot that summer.
I had a lot of appointments with an orthopedic
doctor after that. The injury was the sort where it didn’t need a hard cast, it
just needed some immobilization, so he gave me an air cast that I could take on
and off. In one of the earlier visits that summer he told me “once you can
tolerate it, you can start putting some weight on it.” I thought that was great
news, so I grit my teeth and walked out of the office after that appointment
without using my crutches. I went slow and limped a lot, but in my mind the
doctor wouldn’t have said that if I hadn’t been making some good progress.
I’m not sure if it was stubbornness, ego, or if I
was just grossly misguided, but over the next few weeks I ditched the crutches
and got comfortable being uncomfortable (and slow). I got where I needed to go,
I just took a little longer to get there. The next time I went to the doctor,
he seemed a little perplexed why the healing wasn’t progressing as quickly as
he expected. Once he found out about my “grin and bear it” attitude, he set me
straight. I went back on crutches.
It’s amazing
how much better your injuries heal when you give them what they need.
I remember being super excited toward the end of the healing, when I was once
again off crutches. After using my bad leg more or less as a peg leg when I walked,
it felt great when I could once again use muscle in that foot to propel myself
forward, rather than only using it as something to balance on mid-stride while
I waited for my good foot to hit the ground.
It makes me think…what else in life do we do to
sabotage ourselves? By the stubborn actions we take, are we delaying the healing
of some other literal or figurative injury? Are there areas in which we should be
further along than we are at this point? By neglecting a practice of some sort,
how have we shortchanged ourselves? This could be anything from not reading
God’s word on a regular basis to harboring a grudge or bitterness to not taking
the next step to heal a wounded relationship.
Now’s the time. Set aside the ego, stop pretending it’s getting better, and pick up the crutches again. Are you really gaining anything by clinging to a “grin and bear it” attitude? Take that step you know you’re supposed to take. It’s the only way the real healing begins.
Boy, I’m a fan of those Marvel
superhero movies. I’m not nearly as big a fan as some of the people out there,
but it’s been fun to keep up with each new movie and see how the stories
unfold. My wife and I went to see the first one…Iron Man…when it first came out
in theaters in 2008 (she’s a cool wife). That was back before we had kids. Now,
11 years and over 20 movies later, the whole “Avengers” franchise came to a
head with its most recent installment, “Avengers: Endgame” this past spring.
It’s been very interesting to
observe, because while each individual movie was its own story, each one also
contributed to the telling of a larger story that was always looming in the
background. You’d probably be okay if you missed one or two of the minor
movies, but if you hadn’t seen any of them before and you just walked in and
watched the latest one, you’d be completely lost and you would have missed out
on so many of the details.
In the superhero movies, the good
guys always win, right? Well normally yes, but that’s not what happened last
year with “Avengers: Infinity War.” At the end of that movie, the team of
superheroes had been defeated soundly. Many of them were killed, and everyone
on the planet (and beyond) had to endure the consequences of the heroes’
failure. It was a far cry from the fun, upbeat “save the world” superhero movie
Marvel usually produced. When my wife and I went to see that one, we actually
heard kids in the back of the theater, crying.
After watching “Infinity War,” we
had to wait a whole year…until just a few weeks ago…to find out what happened
next. We knew they couldn’t just end the story like that; the good guys have
to win! We knew that by the end of “Endgame,” it would all be okay and the
heroes would be back on top, but we didn’t know what path the story would take
to get there. We could even make some solid guesses at a few of the major plot
points, but we had no idea how the movie would fill in all the details.
Photo courtesy of comicbook.com
My friends, though it’s a strange
comparison, this is exactly what it’s like being a Christian and serving the
God that created the universe. The Bible lets us know that things are going to
get very dark and bleak in the years ahead. Even right now, I’d say that during
this time period in history, fewer Americans than ever before value God or
attending church. Christianity is viewed as an intolerant and archaic belief
system that’s essentially just a bunch of rules about what you can and can’t
do. The influence of church in today’s society has weakened to the point where
even people within the Christian community pick and choose what they believe
from the Bible, or twist what it says in order to justify tolerating things God
hates. I just recently heard about the president of a seminary here in the
United States who does not believe in the virgin birth or that Jesus rose from
the dead. How far have we decayed that a person with this type of belief system
could be president of an institution that educates future pastors?
There’s good news though. The good
guys will win. What’s really interesting is that the church is still
God’s plan for the world. Christ redeemed the world, but it’s the church’s job
to get the word out. In order to let people know about it, God’s “Plan A” is to
use the church, and there is no “Plan B.”
Do you know what that means? This is
the exciting part…it means that even if the church as we know it completely
dies out and loses all influence over today’s culture, it will morph into
something new and more effective that reaches people with the news of how
unsaved souls can gain salvation through Christ. The book of Revelation
foretells of a revival toward the end. This means that the evolving
church…whatever it looks like at that point…won’t just do an okay job, it’ll
rock at it with God’s help.
Well that brings up an interesting
point. If the collective church is going to undergo so many changes, how will
we know what we’re supposed to do? If you’re really serious about studying the
fall of the church’s influence and the tough times ahead, it’s easy to stress
out. I find that the easiest way to not stress out about it is to simply follow
God’s prompting when you feel it. (You’ll know it when you feel it.) In Matthew
chapter 10, Jesus instructs the disciples about how to conduct themselves as
they go out and spread the message. Notice how he discourages worry here:
“18…and
you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony
to them and to the Gentiles. 19“But when they hand you over, do not worry
about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what
you are to say. 20“For it is not you who speak, but it is
the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”
It’s as if He’s saying “I have a
plan. I’m going to have you be a part of it. All you have to do is whatever I
tell you, and it’s all going to be okay.”
At this point, some people would say
“sure, but that’s for other people…pastors, missionaries, people who get paid
for it.” Nope. It’s for everyone that follows Christ, whether it’s your
occupation or not. We’ll all be given opportunities to be part of the plan, and
all we have to do is whatever task He sets before us.
The good guy wins in the end. We can
guess at some of the major plot points, but we don’t know how the details will
get filled in. There will be epic struggles, and we’ll lose some friends far
too soon. In the end though, the wrongs will be set right, the tears will be wiped
away, and we’ll all celebrate together when it’s over. Isn’t that the team you
want to work alongside and contribute to?
I don’t remember if I was 16 or 17 but I worked as a lifeguard a few of my teenaged summers. The Christian conference center where I worked was always very busy in the summer time, so when I wasn’t doing lifeguard or pool stuff, I usually had some other type of work to do.
One morning I sat in an
office near the conference center’s front desk, doing data entry for some
upcoming summer programs. I heard someone come running in the front door, and breathlessly
told the front desk attendant, Kari, that there had been an accident down on
the river. On the other side of the Delaware River, right across from us, there
was a rope swing. Apparently a pair of guys that had been paddling down the
river stopped to play around on the rope, but the rope snapped on one of them while
they were mid-swing. According to the guy who came running in, his buddy was
conscious, but couldn’t get up. Since there were some people hanging out on the
conference center’s dock, the uninjured guy saw them and paddled over to ask
for help.
Kari called an
ambulance to get them rolling, then came back to where I was. She asked if I
could just go see if there was anything I could do to help or if there was
anything I could find out.
As I ran across the street
and arrived down at the dock, the guy in the boat was just paddling away in his
boat, heading back over to his buddy. I asked the people on the dock what was going
on, and got the same info I already had. It sounded like the guy in the boat
was super panicky, and it wasn’t clear if the injured guy had a hurt ankle or a
hurt back. There were no other boats around. A canoe would have been absolutely
fantastic at that point, and the conference center’s ski boat would have been
even better, but the waterfront equipment wasn’t going to be set out for the
day for another half hour or so.
I didn’t know how long
it would be before the ambulance arrived. I looked across the river to where
the guy was still laying in the water. That was too far to swim. Well…maybe?
It was, right? I had never
tried it, but that didn’t mean it was too far. I’d been swimming laps in
the pool; in fact I swam hundreds of yards most weeks, but I never went more
than 25 yards without touching a wall. This was probably only four or five pool
lengths. The guy over there might have a broken back, and if his buddy did
anything crazy, it could have a lasting impact. Before I knew it, I ran up to
the pool and grabbed a big red rescue tube, then ran back down to the river. I
was already wearing swim trunks; I kicked off my shoes and took off my shirt. I
put the rescue tube’s strap across my chest and waded into the water to start
swimming across the river.
No big deal, right? It
was the same thing that I did in the pool. Everything went fine at first. I
swam with purpose, I was confident I could do it, and the adrenaline gave me a
boost. I had swum hundreds of laps in the pool, so I knew to lay as
horizontally in the water as possible, even though it felt unnatural, so I
could streamline my body and reduce the effort I’d need to expend.
But that was in a nice
clear pool, with goggles. There were no lines on the floor here telling me I
was going in the right direction. I had to keep picking my head up to check
where I was, where my destination was, how fast the current was taking me, and
if there were any boats coming. Picking my head up meant my body was more
slanted in the water, so I had to work harder to go the same distance. Without
goggles, the water kept getting in my eyes and I had to squint or miss half a
stroke to wipe my eyes to see again. My feet kept kicking the rescue tube or
the strap it was attached to, so I had to modify my kick. The adrenaline burned
off, and I was in the middle of the river, getting tired and starting to doubt
myself.
I ended up switching
strokes for awhile. I didn’t move very fast, but it helped me rest enough to
resume my previous stroke. After what seemed like forever, I made it to the
other side. I was glad when my feet touched land again and I was able to walk up
out of the water to find out what was going on.
It turns out the guy
hadn’t broken his back or anything quite so severe, but his leg was probably
broken. The river bank was too steep to get him up to the top, especially since
he was a bigger guy and I didn’t have any shoes. The rope swing was on the back
edge of a field. Any emergency vehicles were probably going to have a rough
time finding the dirt road that led to us. I sent the injured guy’s buddy out
to the main road to help the ambulance find us, while I stayed with busted-leg
guy.
The emergency folks
didn’t have all the information they would have liked, so they activated the
swift-water rescue team. Now, my hat’s off to volunteer paramedics and river
rescue folks, because they never know what they’re going to deal with when they
show up to a call. I have to say, though, I was a little amused when a guy in a
life jacket, wetsuit, and a helmet tossed a throw-bag (a rope with a weighted
end) near us as I sat on the shore of a gently flowing river, wearing only swim
trunks, while the water gently lapped our feet.
They got the guy out
and loaded him into the ambulance. They patched him up, and I don’t know what
happened, but I’m sure he was fine after a few weeks on crutches. Thankfully by
the time they were driving off our waterfront equipment was getting set out,
and of all people, my dad came idling up to me in the conference center’s ski boat
to give me a ride home. I was glad I didn’t have to swim back.
What a crazy story. Where
in the world am I going with this? I have three things to elaborate on:
First, no matter who
you are, daunting tasks lay before you. Whether it’s the struggle to make it
through yet another mundane day or fighting against something that threatens to
annihilate your way of life, the choice to either stand on the sidelines and
watch or step forward to get your feet wet is up to you. The road will be hard,
but things God placed in your pathway previously have helped equip you for the
journey.
Secondly, you don’t
have to have all the answers in order to be helpful. I was afraid this guy fell
off a rope swing and broke his back and that I was going to have to deal with
some crazy complicated scenario. I wasn’t an EMT, I was just a teenaged
lifeguard that was trained in CPR and first aid. I don’t think I even had a
driver’s license yet. If the guy had been in real bad shape, the only thing I
had with me was a glorified pool float. I knew more than either of those two
other guys did, though. I may not have done anything to save the day, but by
deciding to wade into the river, I kept things from getting worse. We’ve all
been there. Maybe you see something at work or at church where you know it’s
not going to end well, despite the best intentions of the people involved. If
you see something they don’t, even if you’re not the expert, consider offering
some insight that can keep things from getting worse.
Finally, when God made
you, He broke the mold. While we’re all made in His image, you’re not like
anybody else on Earth. Think about the things that come naturally to you…the
combination of talents, interests, and traits that are unique to you. We’ll
call that unique combination your X factor. In this day and age there is an
urgent need for people to make use of the X factors God gave them. There is
nobody else in the world that possesses the exact same X factor you do. You
might be thinking something like “but you don’t understand…I don’t have a
position of authority…I don’t even talk with that many people…I’m a nobody.”
Let me tell you something: the Bible is full of “nobodys” that chose to get out
of the way and let God put their X factor to good use.
Many, if not all, of us have been given opportunities…opportunities to do whatever it is that we’re best at. It’s one of the greatest gifts a person can receive: a chance to do what you were made to do. Incredibly, many of us put it off. “I’ll do it tomorrow,” or even “next week.” What kind of arrogance is it we have when we assume “the same opportunity God is giving me right now will still be there in the morning”? The only thing you have for sure is right now. If God’s been nudging you to do something, what are you waiting for? It’s time to do it right now. Call that person right now. Stop delaying and set your idea in motion right now. Get it done right now. Wade into the water…right now.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. -Philippians 4:13
My old college laptop: before wireless capability, with a battery that lasted about 20 minutes
I’m not exactly the most technologically savvy
person out there. I’d probably still have a flip phone if the one I used to
have didn’t quit working. Up until a few months ago, I had a Blackberry. I’m
not yet to the point where I’ll have to ask my kids for help adding a new
contact, but I can see that happening some day. I had to get my wife’s help emailing
these pictures from my phone to the computer.
When I was in college, the school I attended was
pretty advanced as far as how “connected” the campus was. I don’t know what the
actual ranking was, but I think it was in the “Top 100 Most-Wired Campuses in
America” or something like that. Our class was the second or third that the
school mandated purchase a specific model of laptop. All our dorm rooms, classrooms,
and hangouts had Ethernet connections. It was horrible and clunky by today’s
standards, but it was pretty cutting-edge at the time. (Anybody else remember
something called a “dongle?”)
A dongle…let’s take the most fragile piece of equipment and put it where it’s most likely to break.
Some aspects of living on a wired campus were nice,
but back when this was all very new, we had a lot of network outages. Sometimes
it was only for a short time, but every now and then they’d last for an hour or
more, and it always seemed to happen exactly when you needed connectivity the
most. One afternoon I was in my room, trying to get something done online
before my next class. The network lost connectivity, and I wasn’t able to do
whatever I was trying to do.
For whatever reason, this outage was particularly
frustrating for me. Normally I’d just do something else for awhile and check
back later to see if the network was back up. This time I figured I’d go in and
mess with my computer’s settings; I thought I’d heard some tech-smart friends
talking about getting their laptops to work during outages sometimes by
changing some of their computers’ settings, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I
don’t even remember what I did…I think I changed some ports or something in a
tab somewhere. I couldn’t figure anything out and I had to get to class, so I
left my computer running on my desk and left for class, frustrated.
When I came back about an hour later, our dorm’s
Director and the college’s head IT guy were standing at my door, about to head
in. Apparently the network started to come back up, but the settings I changed
impacted not just my laptop, but the school’s whole network. Nobody on the
college’s IT staff could bring it back up until my computer was either
disconnected from the network or the proper settings were restored. It turns
out I was an accidental cyberterrorist, and the dorm’s Director had to vouch
for me so they didn’t get security involved. “Honest, I’m not a hacker…I just don’t
know what I’m doing!” I’m pretty sure they made it so net-wide settings like
that couldn’t be changed by unauthorized personnel after that. To all the
students that came after me and didn’t have to deal with outages due to fellow
students’ actions…you’re welcome.
(Not too long after that we had a weekend where
parents came to visit. We were having lunch on Saturday with some of the
parents, along with some faculty/staff. The professor that sat with us was one
of my teachers, and he was complaining about a recent time when a student
actually took down the whole network. He wasn’t laughing at the absurdity of
it, he was actually still kind of mad about it. I’m sitting right next to the
guy, having a hard time in his class. “Oh really, THAT’S what happened? Man,
that’s a shame.”)
Sometimes you make decisions that have an impact on
what you’re doing. Sometimes you make decisions that have an impact on what other people are doing. Even worse, with
some of these latter decisions, you don’t even realize the ramifications of what you’ve done until it’s after the
fact. I crippled the ability of the whole student body to do anything online,
and I did it without even knowing it. In order to set things right, an expert
in the subject area had to step into the situation and fix it.
There will be times when you’re the goober that gums
everything up, and there’ll be times when you’re the one in a position to help make
things right. The goal is to minimize the number of times you’re in the first
category and to not take it out on the goobers too bad when you’re in the
second category.
People make mistakes, and people let you down. We’ve
all done it. Some people are extraordinarily talented at holding grudges for
even the slightest of mistakes. While it’s true that you should take notice of
trends in a person’s “mistake history,” it’s also worth thinking about giving
them another chance, especially if you’ve already kept them in the doghouse for
awhile. If it were you that messed up, wouldn’t you want another chance?
I’m thinking of getting a t-shirt that says “I was a hacker before it was cool,” but because some people know I can’t even find what I’m looking for on Netflix, I’d probably have to tell this story every time I wore it.
