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You Won’t Know how Strong you are Until Being Strong is Your Only Option

I’d bet few of the people reading this have given much thought to the types of rope used in rock climbing. Climbing ropes are meant to catch somebody who’s lost their grip and taken a fall. As you might imagine, if you’re going to be betting your life on the integrity of your equipment, you don’t want to use just any old rope.

When used properly, the gear used in climbing can withstand harder shocks than your body can. The human body itself is the weak link in the system. To help the climber endure hard falls, the rope itself is designed to have some stretch to it.

As you can imagine, it’s very important that the rope’s owner/user keep track of the number and intensity of falls the rope sustains. Some falls are very easy on the rope; sometimes a climber just kind of slowly loses their balance or their grip and rolls away from the wall without actually falling. In this case the rope holds the weight of the climber, but doesn’t absorb a shock. On the other end of the spectrum, if a climber freefalls 8-10 feet before the rope starts going taut, not only is the climber going to be wincing in pain, but the rope will have used up a great deal of the stretch it’s capable of. That portion of the rope is now both less stretchy during a future fall, and it has less tensile strength and is more likely to break since the stretch is gone. After enough falls, that rope can no longer be considered safe, has to be pulled out of active use, and is retired.

In the last post we talked about succession and training your replacement. This time I’d like to focus on people that may feel like they’ve been forced into something different.

Although many times God will move you from one challenge to a larger one, there are other times He seemingly pulls you out of something and just kinda…leaves you hanging for awhile. Whether it’s ministry or some other profession, or something in your personal life, sudden changes can throw you for a loop. A job loss, a sudden injury, or maybe retirement that came sooner than expected are all examples of a situation leaving you scratching your head and saying “well, what now, God?”

In college I had a professor who taught us about how to safely set up ropes for climbing. He taught us all about knots, setting anchors, and proper care for ropes and gear; these are all technical skills needed for safely scaling or descending walls. As a part of the course he gave all us students a piece of climbing rope about a foot and a half long. He expected us to bring the ropes to class and we used these ropes to practice different knots throughout the course. He didn’t just take a new rope and chop it in pieces; it was a retired rope repurposed to be useful in a different way. Cutting up an active rope to serve this purpose would have worked, but it would have cost the overall enterprise.

If you’ve been forced into a position you wouldn’t have chosen, it’s certainly something easy to grumble about. Maybe you simply can’t perform the same way you previously could, and others that have been waiting for a shot at the role you held are getting a turn at it now. Don’t think that means you have less value. It means your value is going to be used differently. If lots of people can do the job, maybe it’s better to move into something fewer people can do, like a role benefitting from hard-won experience. Just because you can no longer do something you formerly could doesn’t mean you’re without purpose; it means your purpose has changed.

That same professor told a story about when he was younger and managed a nearby ropes course. Since the course was fairly secluded, it was inconvenient to carry ropes back and forth each time the course was going to be used, so the staff had a shed or a box near the course where they secured the ropes after being used. He arrived at the course one day to find the shed had been broken into and one of the ropes stolen. Strangely, a few days later the rope showed up again at the shed.

Not quite sure what to make of this, he knew better than to trust the rope. It had been outside of the ropes course staff’s control, and could not account for the activities that had been done with it. He later heard through the grapevine some students had “borrowed” the rope to pull a car out of a snow bank or something. If that’s true, it was probably a few guys that simply didn’t know their use of the rope would cause it to be retired. I don’t know what my professor ended up using the rope for, but there are plenty of other possibilities. Aside from cutting it up to be used for instruction, rope can also be used for hauling gear up and down a wall, lashing gear to packs, tying down equipment to keep it safe during high winds (or in the back of a vehicle), acting as a drying line for wet gear, improvising shelters out of tarps, etc. After its retirement, the same rope can be used for all of these purposes before they stop being useful.

If you find yourself in a situation where a few bozos made a snow bank-like blunder that ended up costing you, I’m sorry things went down that way. It’s understandable to be upset for a bit, but I have to ask…how long will you dwell on it? If you’ve still got plenty to offer and you’ve got the desire, what other ways can you use your knowledge and experience to benefit others?

It’s never too late to be who you might have been. –Mary Ann Evans

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Have You Thought About Training Your Replacement?

Not long ago I went to an estate sale. I don’t know that I’d ever been to one before. For those who don’t know, when someone passes away and their heirs/loved ones begin the process of emptying out the home, there’s often a lot of “I don’t need this, I don’t want this, or I have no room for this.” The heirs set aside what they want to keep, then hold an event where pretty much everything left in the home is up for sale.

It’s both very interesting, and very sad. On the one hand, you’ve got this eclectic collection of items that tells a story about the person that last lived here. “This lady obviously loved sunglasses, ravens, and hedge trimmers.” On the other hand, you see just how much clutter they lived with, and it’s a little depressing to see crowds of complete strangers coming in, picking through the departed’s belongings, and haggling over already-low prices. “Why in the world would anybody hang onto this, and why in the world wouldn’t the people putting on the sale throw it out before starting the sale?”

A few years back, I chronicled the story of how our family unexpectedly lost my wife’s dad, Lee, to some health struggles. We thought he’d made it past the most difficult part of his health challenges, but it turns out God wanted him to come home more than He wanted him to stay with us. Lee was a devout Christian, and everybody who knew him understood his faith to be an important part of who he was.

As the pastor concluded Lee’s memorial service, he issued a challenge. “Today we’re saying goodbye to a very godly man. I ask you, who here will take his place?”

Today I’d like to talk about the idea of succession.

Think for a moment about the capacity in which you serve the Lord. It could be any number of ways, and none of them need to come with a fancy title. The day will come when you no longer fill that role. My challenge for you today is to think about this: are you helping to prepare someone else to fill the vacancy you’ll one day leave behind?

In some cases you won’t be able to see the transition coming, and you may not be available to offer advice or insight during that chaotic time. In other cases you might still be around to lend your expertise. I’ve written before about how once you complete a task God’s laid before you, there’s often another, larger task waiting for you. I once heard a famous leader say “if you’re still excited about the same thing you were excited about five years ago, you’re not growing.” Part of the reason you should regularly think about training your replacement is because if you consistently demonstrate faithfulness in smaller things, you should expect God to “promote” you into something larger. It doesn’t mean you’re giving up on something; it could mean God’s used you to set up a situation for someone new, it’s time to move you into another challenge, and now it’s time to turn things over to someone else who’s stepping into a larger challenge of their own so they, too, can keep growing. What feels like closing the door on something is actually a profound opportunity for you to demonstrate leadership and expand your Christ-focused influence.

What does that type of preparation look like? The possibilities are limitless. Some of them are on the process and technical side of the house, like CEOs, family businesses, specific ministry work or leadership roles, etc. Others include volunteer roles, or maybe even roles without titles. Some examples include Sunday school teachers, mentoring someone younger in the faith than you, being the person that shovels the driveway of an elderly neighbor, brings meals to a shut in, or drives someone to a doctor’s appointment or to go grocery shopping. “Grandmother” is a title that carries a lot of weight, and being a godly influence in your grandchildren’s lives comes with an opportunity to have a lasting impact years after you’ve taken your last breath. These roles are less about technical skills than they are about willing hearts and people skills, and those attitudes need to be lived out or demonstrated to others before they can learn them.

Think of the Christian leaders in your own life and the influence they’ve had on you. They don’t need to have held an official title. You don’t need a degree or special training to offer God-honoring advice to a friend, neighbor, or co-worker. You just need to use the influence you’ve got to show others around you what Christian living, especially in difficult times, looks like.

Succession planning is a natural part of any endeavor. You can cling to something if you really want to, but are you giving careful consideration to the idea that the thing you’re refusing to let go of may suffer because of your unwillingness to let go, and you may even be preventing someone well suited for a new role from having the opportunity to grow into it? “Today we’re saying goodbye to a very godly man. I ask you, who here will take his place?”

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Consequences Come Whether or not You Know the Truth

The older I get, the tougher it is to maintain the same weight. I used to be able to eat a ridiculous amount of junk food and my metabolism would laugh and say “bring it on!” As I age, my margin of error for staying inside that desired range shrinks smaller and smaller.

I’ve been very fortunate with my overall health. These days, when I know I’m going to be involved in a particularly messy project around the house or in the yard, I’m able to pull on one of my old stained or ripped pairs of jeans I wore when I worked in construction more than 20 years ago.

I can still fit in those pants because I’m at or near the same weight I was back then. The main reason that’s true is because almost every morning I step onto the scale to get hit with the cold, hard truth. The scale doesn’t lie. On some occasions I know ahead of time it’s going to be bad. Sometimes there’s a jaw-dropping “no, that can’t be right!” Monday mornings are usually the worst. Other times there’s a mental fist pump.

The harsh reality is that the scale always speaks the truth, and even though the truth can hurt, I need to know it. Accepting what the scale’s saying has to happen before choosing what to do with the information. What the scale fails to do, though, is speak the truth in love. Christians, while it is our duty to inform others in the world about the truth of their need for the savior, we have to remember the importance of doing it with compassion and love.

Put yourself in a nonbeliever’s place. It’s not easy to hear someone tell you you’ve been living your life in a way that means you’ll miss out on Heaven. It’s even tougher to maintain an attitude open and willing enough to say “what can I do to make it right?” It’s not enough for us to proclaim “you’re a sinner, and you’re destined for Hell.” All that does is turn people off to what you’re saying. God can use any of our botched efforts, of course, but come on, have a little empathy and compassion.

Obviously, presenting the difficult truth of humanity’s shortcomings is important. Coming alongside people and letting them know not just about the bad news, but about the way out of the bad news, allows them to see the hope instead of just the stuff they don’t like thinking about. Speaking the truth in love is going to make all the difference.

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Need a Confidence Boost?

Most of my posts are somehow geared at being willing to step out in faith to accomplish tasks you think are beyond your reach, yet which God has enabled you to perform. While I absolutely believe in that idea and use it as the blog’s central theme, it’s also important to help lay the mental groundwork for meeting such challenges. If you think of my normal blog posts as a movie, think of this one as their prequel.

I’ve learned through experience that if you’re willing to take risks in just about any aspect of your life, usually one of two circumstances hold true. The first possibility is that your back is against the wall and you’ve got no real choice; the risk you’re taking is probably the best of your bad options or it’s your last resort. While I acknowledge this as a driving force behind some risky behavior, it’s not the one I want to focus on.

The second possibility is that if you’re willing to take risks, you’re secure enough in who you are that the idea of failing doesn’t paralyze you with fear. If Christ is your savior, He will call you to do things you’re not comfortable with. It’s a risk to obey. You might fail. You may look like a fool. It could cost you.

I don’t know who I’m talking to right now, but you need to hear this. If you’re a Christ-follower and feel God’s called you to some challenge requiring a lot of faith, let me remind you: you are a child of the One True King. Walk down the path with the confidence that comes along with your position. If the Lord commissioned you to pursue a specific undertaking, remember the enemy can harass you, but he cannot harm you without permission. Your idea of what success looks like might not jive with God’s take on it, but it’s part of the life your Lord called you to, so take that next step.

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Is Your Horsepower Put to Good Use, or Just Idling?

In the world of high-performance cars, horsepower plays a crucial role. Speaking generally, the greater the available horsepower, the more speed is attainable. Two of the essential components of maximizing horsepower are adequate amounts of air to facilitate combustion and adequate amounts of fuel to ignite in the combustion chamber. If either one of those components suffers a reduction, the horsepower drops.

Sometimes vehicles with a lot of horsepower are illegal to use on normal public roads. For people who own one of these cars and want to use them out on the streets, one of the options for making them “street legal” is to install a restrictor plate. This is a physical barrier that reduces the amount of air making it into the engine, leading to a loss in combustion efficiency, and causing a corresponding loss of horsepower and drop in speed. It’s kind of a shame, really.

We’ll come back to that in a minute. The world seems like it’s getting darker at a more rapid rate these days. The news media doesn’t often carry good or uplifting news that makes you think positively about humanity’s future. The demise of morality leads me to think it’s not a stretch to believe that some people alive today will still be alive when the Rapture occurs.

If this is true, I believe two things are going to happen along the way. The first is that evil will become more blatant and more prominent. Things formerly only done in secret will be accepted out in the open. A few months back (as our family was driving to church, no less), we stopped at a red light, and I saw the car in front of us had a bumper sticker that said “Satan loves me.” It was disheartening for sure, and I felt a profound sadness for the young lady driving the car and for anyone believing this lie.

The second thing I believe will happen is a more potent display of God’s power through His saints. What that looks like I don’t know, but supernatural involvement will be obvious to any witnesses who are intellectually honest with themselves. Sometimes it will mean believers doing things they shouldn’t be able to do. Other times people will show up in places without knowing why they traveled there, only to find they’re part of some unlikely series of events that unfolds to reveal God’s hand in the process. People will testify of God’s provision in their lives, either by having their material needs met in unusual ways or by receiving hope in very dark times. In some cases, likely growing in frequency, Christ-followers will be killed because of the Master they serve, but God will empower those saints to rise to the challenge placed before them.

Not a rosy picture by any stretch, I know. Yet it gives me hope to know God can and will equip those who trust Him. This brings me to the main point of this post. Though you may trust Christ as your savior, you’re the one that decides how much to limit His ability to use you for building His kingdom. Although each of us has unlimited potential to do the Lord’s work, it’s His call as to how much He wants to let each of us accomplish, so that’s out of our hands. What each of us can decide is our minimum level of willingness. Imagine if Moses had persisted in making excuses until God said “fine, I’ll send someone else.” Imagine if Billy Graham had said “no, I think I’ll avoid anything to do with public speaking, thank you.” Are you willing to accept some discomfort and unknowns for the sake of letting God use you more than He’s currently using you? I’m not just talking about being an usher at church or singing in the choir (though those are good things). I’m talking about the stuff you’re ill-equipped to do and is outside your comfort zone, yet you still feel God tugging at you and saying “this is the direction I want you to go.”

Said another way, you are your own restrictor plate when it comes to serving the Lord. You can’t guarantee high performance, but you can absolutely guarantee you don’t reach your maximum potential of using your spiritual gifts and abilities to be a productive agent of the Lord.

I’m impressed by today’s young people. It seems those in high school and college are consistently a different type of passionate for Christ. Somewhere between that age and mid-life, many of us peter out in terms of our willingness to boldly step out in faith to follow where Christ calls us to go. We get our own place to live. Some of us get married. We achieve career milestones. We have kids. These can all be good things, but somewhere along the way, many of us lose that awestruck attitude of “Christ can do anything through me,” trading it for one that’s more like “but this is probably as good as it gets.” We don’t allow God the chance to do big things on His behalf through us because we close the door on the possibility of Him doing them. We walk away from Isaiah’s attitude of “Here I am, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)

Everyone, of course, must make their own decisions about how much they’ll let God use them. From now until the time your heart stops beating, though, I’d urge you to be on the lookout for opportunities to step into roles Christ offers you. Darker days mean opportunities to shine brighter for the Lord. God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do, but someone’s eternal fate might switch from lost to found because of your willingness to be used by the Lord. Isn’t that something you’d like to be a part of?

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Beauty’s in the Eye of the Beholder, But Don’t Give His Eyes Too Much

This one’s kind of tricky because it’s easy for this post to get crass quickly. I’m talking mostly to my sisters in Christ here. I have to say right up front…the information in this post has the potential to be very helpful for others if you use it well, but you can also harm them tremendously with it. Please, please, please…use it for good. If it turns out you’ve been doing some of this stuff unknowingly, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. If you use it with bad intentions though, you’re going to have to stand before the Savior and answer for it someday.

In some way or another we’re all guilty of saying to ourselves “that’s not how I think” or “that thought never even occurred to me.” Okay, well, that might be true, but not everybody thinks (or doesn’t think) the same way as you. Believe me, this is a thing.

Have you ever just been going along, minding your own business (even trying to be on good behavior), when BAM! A thought from left field comes and completely derails you? Sometimes you know what triggered that derailment, other times it’s a mystery. Now imagine discovering you’re the one that derailed someone else in that same manner.

Unfortunately there’s no way to look at someone and accurately judge their character flaws, so you’ll have to treat the following statement as if it’s true all the time, because you just don’t know. While it’s certainly not universally true, a lot of us men are pigs. There’s not really an easy way to say this. Ladies, many of you are making your brothers in Christ stumble because of the wardrobe choices you make.

Here’s the part I’m trusting you to use good judgment with. When it comes to the female form, our piggish eyes tend to be drawn to at least one of three areas (aside from your lovely eyes, of course): chest, caboose, and legs. I know this from years of being a guy and from years of being around guys in the field of construction and in the Department of Defense. If you’re blessed in one or more of these three areas, believe me, there are lots of dudes that are very, very happy for you, even prompting some to spontaneously praise the Lord. Unfortunately, there is a very large number of men out there that struggles with lust, and the struggles that come from our sisters in Christ seem to be unnecessary.

Now some will balk and say “oh, come on, it’s nothing they don’t see everywhere.” While absolutely true, that’s the problem. If you let a guy see a little too much, it’s one more knick in the “death by a thousand paper cuts” idea. The choice of whether or not to indulge in sinful thoughts or actions ultimately lies with the individual, of course, but if you’re his sister in Christ, the way you dress shouldn’t prompt thoughts that shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t a man be safer from temptation-inducing thoughts when he’s around a fellow Christ-follower?

Now I’m not saying you need to wear a burqa or puffy clothes everywhere, not at all. Here are some things I’ve noticed, though. In church, I’ve seen dresses or tops that are a bit more low cut than they ought to be. Is that dress or are those pants a little too tight in the rear? I’ve seen dresses or miniskirts with hemlines higher than the wearer’s extended fingertips. Probably the most common “visual stumbling block” to your brothers in Christ out there now is the prevalence of leggings/workout pants. I totally understand wanting to avoid loose-fitting clothes when working out or participating in activities where you don’t want clothes flapping around, but if you’re not engaged in anything like that and you’re walking around in skin-tight pants out in public, you can see how this might be a problem for a guy who’s trying really hard not to look. Heaven help us when we go to the gym and there are attractive, fit women wearing clothes that draw attention to all three of these areas. Again, the individual man is responsible for his thoughts and actions, but he can’t always control the things that prompt certain thoughts. Imagine if you’re a recovering alcoholic and when walking down a busy sidewalk, store owners are handing out samples of booze. No, alcoholics know they need to avoid certain places, but for “lust-aholics,” church, along with environments known to be populated with a high prevalence of Christians, should be safe places to be.

If you’re already aware of this phenomenon and dress in a way that makes it easier on us, thank you. Fellas, I’ll bring you back into this now. I’d ask that you, along with your ladies, please influence your sisters, daughters, nieces, and granddaughters with these things in mind.

For the young ladies out there, your clothes go a long way in determining the type of guy you attract. Dress like you respect your body and you’ll probably attract one that treats you better over the long term. Dress like you want guys to ogle your body and you’ll attract the kind that might treat you really well in the short term, but the nice treatment probably doesn’t last real long and you’ll likely end up going through more relationships. Believe me, the quality guys will notice too, but they’ll be crowded out or intimidated by the chuckleheads licking their chops while circling you.

Now, within the context of marriage…how do I say this? Green light. Full throttle. Go to town, especially if you worked hard for it. Christians don’t need to be prudes. Have you read Song of Solomon? If you got it, flaunt it (to your one and only). Try to make the hubs say “God created woman, and he saw that it was goooooood.” Desire is a powerful thing, and marriage is the only place God intended it to be fulfilled. For both husband and wife, don’t give up and throw in the towel on your appearance after the “I do’s.” Honor, respect, and appreciate one another for the long run, in all kinds of ways.

Finally, for those out there that may be struggling to find their calling…maybe someone reading this needs to consider trying the very challenging task of designing or making new lines of very fashionable, yet perfectly appropriate clothing. It could be any type: street clothes, professional clothes, athletic apparel, you name it. Give it a shot. God will probably bless you if it’s your calling.

On a lighter note about the differences between male and female bodies…

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Only Jagger Moves Like Jagger. Try Moving Like You.

In my early Air Force days, I pursued training to become a survival instructor. The Air Force is the only branch of service where you can spend a whole military career as a Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) Specialist. The other military branches have them, but they’re only temporary assignments, something you do for a few years at most before returning to your regular job. Anyway, that’s free info; now back to my story.

The main SERE school is at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Washington. The course all SERE Specialists were required to pass only started twice a year, so folks put together a program to keep us busy and out of trouble while we were waiting around for class to start. We were together just about all the time. Every weekday we worked out in the mornings, and then afternoons varied. One day a week we’d do a full PT test in the morning and a timed 7-mile ruck march after lunch. One afternoon a week we’d have details (more or less do chores, restocking supplies, cleaning up or repairing things around our building). Once a week we’d go to a state park or something similar and go for ruck marches up and over mountains, where we’d practice our land navigation and keep our bodies accustomed to carrying heavy weight for a sustained period. There were lots of other odds and ends to keep us busy while we waited for class to start (help unpack moving vans for the families of students who had started class and were out in the field, help perform maintenance on the equipment getting used by the class ahead of us, etc.).

One of the standard activities we did was to spend time in “the back 40.” The back 40 was a section near us where we went to learn and practice some of the skills we’d need once we started class. Here we learned to sharpen and swing an axe, how to start fires with the stuff around us, how to build a shelter out of parachutes, all kinds of skills you’d need to survive in the wild. The course we wanted to pass had a high failure rate, and the instructors found that this type of orientation helped prepare students for the training, resulting in fewer washouts.

We were all part of a very physical career field, and as a result, it seemed like someone was always heading to the doctor. Although we’d all gather at a certain spot before heading out to the back 40, it became common practice for those returning from appointments to meet up with the group at a certain spot the group passed on their way to the back 40. One day we were all heading out to the back 40 when we saw a guy in the same uniform as us, wearing his ruck sack just like we were, standing motionless and waiting for us at this spot. Someone among us asked “who’s that?” We all took a look up ahead, trying to figure it out. Someone said “he stands like Jones.” A quick look around the group verified that Jones wasn’t among us, and as we got closer, it turned out that it was indeed Jones. We spent so much time together that someone in our group was able to identify someone off in the distance, who was dressed just like us and had the same haircut, simply by the way he stood.

There’s a story in the Old Testament where something similar happened. In 2 Samuel chapter 18, an aging King David was waiting for news from a battle. As he sat near the city gate, the watchman on duty announced two separate men running toward the city. While they waited eagerly for the messengers to arrive, the watchman said in verse 27 “I think the running of the first is like the running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok.” Here again is someone who’s able to identify another from far off by the individual’s kinesthetics. The way their body moves, or their posture, gives away their identity. Each of us is so different from one another that the way our bodies move gives us away, like a fingerprint.

Of all the people God could’ve chosen to live the life you’re living, He chose you. We’re unique individuals God stitched together, with no two looking, moving, or behaving exactly alike. In all that uniqueness, God prepared challenges for you in this life that you’re superbly qualified for. Other people could do it, but God chose you to do it. Embrace your uniqueness, whatever that looks like, and live the life God’s called you to live. You’re the best person for the job.

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What do Giraffes Have That Nobody Else Does?

The answer, of course, is baby giraffes. Let’s talk a little bit about Evolution.

Before we get into that, though, I’d like you to think about a traditional mousetrap. It’s a simple machine that’s been mass produced and has sold millions of units. Yet what would happen if any of the mousetrap’s components was removed? Take away the trigger, the holding bar, the spring, or anything else, and what happens? Removing any single component means the trap isn’t catching any mice.

Instead of a mousetrap, think of a complex biological machine, say, the human eye. Evolution says that simple, one-celled organisms changed over many generations and long periods of time to become highly complex living systems. If this is true, there had to be a series of pretty spectacular leaps forward to move from a single-celled organism to an organ that can sense light, then again to today’s human eye. It just doesn’t make sense. What was the immediate predecessor to the current version? What can you take away from the human eye and have it be almost as capable as the version we know today?

The theory of evolution has a problem. Animals that need to evolve fall into one of two categories: they either fail to evolve quickly enough (and thus fail to pass along genes that will enable future generations to acquire new characteristics), or they undergo massive mutational changes during a single generation (which seems very unlikely). Let’s use the giraffe as an example.

Let’s assume for a moment that Evolution is true. Imagine what giraffes looked like before they had long necks. It was more like a funky moose. For this conversation we’ll call it a stubby giraffe. Evolution claims that as food got scarce for individual stubby giraffes, they were forced to look for sustenance in areas beyond their normal reach. Let’s look at a few possibilities for what happened next.

Possibility number one: starving stubby giraffes did not consume enough calories to carry and give birth to baby stubby giraffes, so they died without birthing any healthy calves. – Unsuccessful evolution.

American, North Korean, and South Korean (left, center, right) soldiers

Possibility number two: the bodies of stubby giraffes, in the span of a single lifetime, while suffering from malnutrition, activated biological mechanisms which altered their own established DNA blueprints and triggered explosive leg and neck growth (while malnourished), enabling its survival. Malnourished bodies, however, experience stunted growth, not accelerated growth. North Korea’s people are starving and its children don’t get enough food to eat during their bodies’ crucial stages of physical development. As a result, many North Korean adults have a much smaller stature than their counterparts in other countries who had sufficient nutritional support during those stages of physical development.  – Implausible.

Possibility number three: stubby giraffes did not experience rapid alterations, but they did experience incremental amounts of extraordinary growth (growth beyond what its DNA stipulated) with each passing generation. As these “hybrid giraffes” gained the ability to reach food they hadn’t been able to access before, they consumed all the food stubby giraffes could reach, and the stubby giraffes died out. But the same problem remains: if hybrid giraffes weren’t getting enough to eat and were forced to either evolve or die, how did their starving bodies find it within themselves to boldly step outside the bounds of their DNA and add inches or feet of bones, muscle, and corresponding tissue and blood vessels? On the other hand, if they were getting enough to eat, why did they need to evolve any further, and why haven’t they shrunk since then? After all, in terms of calories and energy, extra muscle mass is expensive.  – Implausible.

There’s no logical scenario where this kind of evolution happens. Logically, people would have to buy into possibility number four: the giraffes you see today are similar (both in appearance and genetically) to the first giraffes that walked the planet. Hundreds or thousands of giraffe generations all followed the same DNA blueprint, passed that blueprint along to the next generation, which passed it to the next, and so on. Whoever designed these things established the originals along with a pretty solid process of reproducing themselves.

Did you know that a giraffe’s neck is strong enough to support the weight of a human climbing on it? Also, I got banned from the zoo today.

Here’s an example that will make you think. What if I, as a human, suddenly needed to evolve quickly enough to be able to hold my breath for 10 minutes? With practice I can increase my breath-holding capacity to over two minutes, but if I’m thrust into a situation where I need to hold my breath for 10 minutes, I’m not going to make it. That’s a Pass/Fail test, and it’s not looking good for me. What if we take a more incremental approach to this problem, though?

The Bajau people of Southeast Asia have long relied on their skills at free-diving for their livelihood and for food. They spend an extreme amount of time repeatedly holding their breath and diving below the surface to obtain food and pearls on the seafloor. This lifestyle has led to enlarged spleens among the Bajau. (The spleen plays a role in the oxygenation level of blood, among other things.) This adaptation enables divers to stay underwater longer. Here’s the interesting part though. Even non-divers among the Bajau people have enlarged spleens. This finding suggests conditioning the body has an impact on DNA, but it also means this adaptation was not the result of an “evolve or die” scenario, because death was not imminent before it occurred. Is it possible that evolution is taking place here?

I can’t find it online, but when I was in high school I was taught something I think called “Color Theory.” It helped explain the wide disparity in physical characteristics of people across the globe. I’ll run through a few examples. The Massai people of Kenya and Tanzania in eastern Africa have one of the tallest average heights in the world, at around 6 feet, 3 inches. They have tight curly hair and very dark brown (or even black) eyes. Spending many generations primarily as herders of livestock, they’ve traditionally spent long hours in the hot equatorial sun. Their height enabled them to see predators sneaking through the grass to attack members of their herd, and their dark skin, dark eyes, and tightly curled hair provided various forms of protection from the intense sun.

In Asia, the Gobi Desert straddles Mongolia and China, two of the world’s oldest and most storied cultures. The desert played a significant role in the type of genetic characteristics that manifested themselves in people that lived in the area. Being over six feet tall and having curly hair is no picnic during and after a sandstorm. The people in the region were generally much shorter, had straight, coarse hair, and had eye shapes and structures suited to providing protection for their vision. All of these characteristics made it easier to cope with the realities of living in regions with large volumes of sand blowing around.

Finally, the people of Scandinavia in northern Europe have their own unique characteristics. Living at high latitudes means the sun’s rays are not nearly as intense as other areas of the world. Weaker solar rays warrant fewer protections from the sun, so those traditionally living in this region are normally fair-skinned, have thinner (or more fine) hair, and have light-colored eyes. This makes them well suited for geography where, for months out of the year, the sun’s max intensity approximates dawn/twilight.

I share this with you to illustrate the following point. These four examples (Bajau divers, Massai, those around the Gobi Desert, and Scandinavians) all have unique adaptations for their native geography, but none of them are on their way to starting a new species. They are all unquestionably human, and they are all undoubtedly going to stay that way. They in no way represent a departure from the human race.

We are all human because God made us all in His image. We all descended from sinners and are sinners ourselves. Accordingly, we all have need of the same Savior, and that is Jesus Christ. If you’re one of His, there are plenty of other people out there who are waiting for you to share Christ with them, even if they don’t look like you. Take up the challenge to spread the good news with them.

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The Principle of Progressive Collapse

In the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. military extensively used the UH-1 Iroquois helicopter. Better known as the “Huey,” it gained widespread fame in Vietnam for its ability to carry troops in and out of battle and conduct medevac missions in hot combat zones.

Huey (foreground) and Blackhawk (background)

The venerated chopper has served its nation reliably since the 1950s, but it doesn’t have the best safety record when it has to make a hard landing. It doesn’t have many safety features to help occupants survive a crash. In the 1970s, a new helicopter came on the scene: the UH-60 Black Hawk.

Versions of the Black Hawk are still widely in use in today’s military. It’s larger, smoother, tougher, and more versatile than the Huey. It also has some safety features built in to help protect the crew from hard landings.

In 1993, U.S. Special Forces served in the African nation of Somalia to intervene in a situation where local warlords were taking advantage of a severe famine. On one particularly bloody October day, local fighters were able to shoot down a U.S. Black Hawk chopper during a military operation in the capital city of Mogadishu.

The pilot, Mike Durant, was the only survivor of the crash. The impact knocked him unconscious, but when he came to, he was surprised to find that he could no longer see over the “dashboard” of the helicopter. As it turns out, the front seats in the Black Hawk were designed to withstand a certain amount of force, after which they’d progressively collapse to the floor. This safety feature was intended to spare the seats’ occupants from absorbing all that force with their own bodies. By building the structure of the seat this way, the large amount of force that would have been transferred directly into Durant’s spine got dissipated enough to allow him to survive. The crash still broke his back, but he eventually recovered (despite being captured and held hostage) and returned to duty. The events of this operation are depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”

The front seats in a Blackhawk are designed to absorb a portion of the force in a crash landing

Nowhere in scripture are Christians promised a life free of hardship. On the contrary, we will be hated and made fun of, and our lives can quite possibly be made more difficult by announcing our religious convictions to the world. The heat will get cranked up and all will get to see what our faith is really made of.

In those times, sometimes we’ll be made to bend, but not break. Other times we’ll be broken, but not killed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that God never gives us more than we think we can bear; yes, that happens to people. The tough times I’ve been through pale in comparison to what some others have endured, but it seems like God’s purpose of the pain, the “why,” is never apparent during the pain. It also seems, however, that He designs situations in such a way that parts of you, or perhaps parts of your character, are protected while others crumple and break around you. When it’s over, the parts that He didn’t want are broken and have fallen away and the parts that are left are the parts that He still wants to be there. It may very well be that He arranged that set of circumstances specifically to refine your character or your outlook on life.

If you’re going through something really hard right now, hang in there. It won’t always be like this.

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This Is Probably the Only Time I’ll Do This

Sometimes God asks basic, or even mundane, things of you. Other times, though, He’ll challenge you to do something you might only get a chance to do a few times during your life.

Here’s a pretty unremarkable example, but I hope it helps illustrate my point. About 49 times out of 50, whenever I post something new on this blog, the post goes live on a Thursday (the exception is during the week of Thanksgiving). Today is Thursday, but this is a special Thursday.

Today is Thursday, February 29th. It’s Leap Day. It will be four years before we get another Leap Day, but it won’t be until February 29th, 2052, that Leap Day falls on Thursday again. That’s 28 years from now. At this point I’m unwilling to commit to this website for that long. (Any guest authors out there?) That means today’s post may be the only daregreatlynow.com post that ever gets posted on February 29th.

God many times moves in your heart to do “ordinary” things. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, the consistent and reliable service of committed saints is what makes many ministries possible. Volunteering in the church’s nursery, helping out an elderly neighbor after a snowstorm, or visiting with someone who finds it difficult to leave the house are all things that serve God’s kingdom by being the hands and feet of Christ. Every now and then, though, He challenges you with something extraordinary.

There are limitless possibilities, and they often tie in with your unique circumstances, means, and interests. I can’t do the things you can, you can’t do the things I can, and that’s why God put you and I exactly where we are. Whatever that big thing is, the thing that scares you even though you know God’s whispering in your ear, I just want to encourage you to press on. It could be making a very large financial donation to something God-honoring, reaching out to someone you wouldn’t ordinarily engage in a meaningful way, or filling a gap somewhere where you seem to be the only one who notices. There is literally no end to the options that are out there.

I believe that if God led you to serve in those consistent and predictable ways, you should follow through on them. But like Queen Esther, sometimes God weaves the circumstances of our lives into opportunities for us to step into water that’s over our heads and be part of something extraordinary. Don’t pass those up, because they don’t come along very often.

Yet who knows–maybe it was for a time like this that you were made queen! –Esther 4:14b (Good News Translation)