“Make Me to Know Thy Ways, O Lord”

Read Psalm 25:1-5

Trial and error is a poor strategy for learning how to live. The way of faith is illuminated with precedents and examples (“thy ways, O Lord”) that can save us both the embarrassment of being foolish and the pain of making mistakes.

PRAYER: O God, even as Abraham “went out, not knowing where he was to go” and arrived at the land of promise by your guidance, so I would make my way believing in your promises and guided by your commandments, looking to Jesus, the “pioneer and perfecter” of my faith. Amen.

(Hebrews 11:8; 12:2)

by Eugene Peterson, “A Year with the Psalms” p. 32

I have a friend whose name is Tho. (Say “Tom” without the “m” syllable.) Tho is from Vietnam during the infamous war in the 70s. When he was young, Tho promised God that he would become a doctor for the poor.

Tho’s Dad was the General in southern Vietnam and when the United States troops left rhe General was captured by his communist enemy as a spy. Many, many years later the United States worked out a deal to allow Tho and his family to United States. The Chi family accepted the appeasing kindness of the U.S. government and on the fly landed in Tennessee. At the airport Tho and his family were welcomed by a Catholic church group who offered pizza and English tutoring. Tho by this time was arriving in his middle age years and while attending the Christian church he remembered his promise to God. Tho fiercely pursued his higher education in pre-med. At the same time he was instructed in the English language. His faith-filled passionate studies allowed him to graduate at the top of his class. The hard work kept a door of hope open so his chance of medical school education might happen. The risk paid off. He was accepted to osteopathic school of medicine.

Everyone knows that medical school is extremely competitive and some of the most difficult studying takes place. And that’s for a first-language English speaking American citizen. The scales of success weighed heavy against Tho. He obviously needed help. God!?!? Where are You!?!? It was the Christian medical students and staff who sacrificed their time and energies on this little Vietnamese man. Christian students in his class shared their precious notes from class, unlike the others who hoarded their wealth for personal gain. And the Christians were maybe a bit foolish allowing others to maybe out-perform them because of their sharing of notes. The closer to the top a med student is the chances of a better job and pay would be offered. Thos Christian professors allowed Tho extra time to slowly interpret the language of each question. Tho knew the answers because he studied harder than anyone I have ever seen. I know because I saw and met him performing his inhumane feats at Barnes and Noble. I befriended Tho at one of the lowest periods of my life. I was married, lost our first child to a miscarriage, and was working taking in barely over minimum wage as a bookseller. I sold Tho his medical books. I noticed this awkward speaking, short muscular Vietnamese man who studied inside the big box store when the doors opened and was nearly kicked out t at close. Over time Tho and I became good freinds. I was enlightened on Tho’s story and found out tastefully that his grandma cooked at a high-class restaurant in Saigon and taught Tho everything he knows. Tho fed new life into my malnourished and depressed physical body. Tho had faith and hope amongst his injust suffering which allowed me not only to get off my bad self, but to be encouraged in my own walk with God that all will be well in the end.

As a sign of friendship Tho gave me a children’s story book written in the Vietnamese language. I know about maybe ten words in Vietnamese so I had Tho translate a story for me aloud. It was about a Father who had a rich inheritance to give his three sons. One day he came up with a plan of how he would give the riches to them. “If one of you can break this entire bundle of chop sticks. Then I will give you all of the inheritance. Let us begin with the oldest son. So the oldest son, bigger and stronger and wiser than his other two brother came proudly over to his father and tried instantly with his big muscles to snap the bundle. He grunted and snorted and scream but could not break a single chopstick. The next brother in line still chuckling at his older brothers expense timidly took hold of the bundle. He whimpered and whined but still the chopsticks remained in tact. Last the youngest brother who by now was realizing this was no laughing matter, he could be the richest man alive if, only if he could—but he couldn’t. The father all the while watching his sons shook his head in dismay. “My Sons” he said in Vietnamese, “Watch.” And he separated the bundle into single chopsticks easily breaking each one by one. “You see, boys.” He said, “If you stick together as a family you are unbreakable, but if you separate you can easily be broken. Be a family together and enjoy all the riches I have for you.”

The greatest example of being a human being, Jesus, talked more about money than any other subject in the entire Gospel. “You can either serve God or money.” is how he is remembered in the canonized Bible saying it. And just to get it straight, Paul wrote to young Timothy, “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” Now I have realized that money in and of itself is not evil. Money basically is a contract between two or more parties, some piece of paper representing some set amount of worth. Which leads me to my first question: Who gives worth to people, places, and things anyhow?

“You will be like gods…” was the original temptation and sin, and we human beings love to manage good and evil very much so… and look where it’s gotten us today in our society of fear and technological safety precautions. Wendell Berry, farmer and author, wrote an apocalyptic article in Harpers magazine recently. In it he wrote, “To recover from our disease of limitlessness, we will have to give up the idea that we have a right to be godlike animals, that we are potentially omniscient and omnipotent, ready to discover “the secret of the universe.” We will have to start over, with a different and much older premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the necessity, of limits. We must learn again to ask how we can make the most of what we are, what we have, what we have been given.”

My boss at work states in every other sentence, “Bottom line, bro” and his bottom line apparently is money. More! More! More! But money making is only a means not an end. So what is the end purpose of man and the gift of the natural world around us? I am beginning to believe it is to love, to serve God and others. Whatever that may mean for each finite creature do it and be satisfied: shovel dirt, drive a truck, work out that math problem, mow the lawn, etc. “He who has been faithful with little will be faithful with much.” And would we honestly want it any other way? What good is knowledge and power if one has no wisdom in using the good gift from God?

Money talks. No doubt. As does blonde hair, big boobs, a skinny waist, and a round bottom. But any sane person knows if the Barbie is a mere lifeless doll, it is not love as it was designed, it is lust. It is the pervert who ruins a good gift of sex. Money too is pornographic. Lust as Frederick Buechner defines “is the desire for salt from someone who is dying of thirst.” “For those who reject heaven, hell is everywhere, and thus is limitless. For them, even the thought of heaven is hell.” warns Wendell Berry in his ‘Faustian Economics Hell hath no limits’ article.

Jesus tries to help us out on this side of eternity by asking, “What profits a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?”

What is the end of man? To merely work and make more money? Obviously not. My faith resonates with Frederick Buechner: it is gratitude and enjoyment. G.K. Chesterton pitied an atheist for he realized they had no one to thank for the good gifts of life: food, sex, friendship, hobbies, nature, etc. etc. etc.

There is a bumper sticker slogan driving around on the back of cars, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

Again, last question, I swear, “Wins what?”

(Watch the love of money acted out in recent films: There will be Blood and No Country for Old Men.)

Art is faith. Faith “is the promise of things hoped for, the certainty of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1) God, the Artist, the Giver of life creates faithfully in the milieu of us all. (1 Tim. 6:13) And all of us have a critic in every family don’t we? The art critic in my family once said to me, “Good art shows life as it is, not how the artist wishes to draw it.”

I have thought long and hard about what was proposed that day. And as hard as it is for me to say it, there is a lot of truth to what was said. Life around me does seem like Shakespeare play, or Dostoevsky novel. Most of the story seems very chaotic for me. And I have a strong intuition that I do not understand why everything happens since I myself am I character within the Big Story [History.] There is a bigger big picture than the next Hollywood blockbuster. Within the finite systems of the art of life around us, or to use the analogy, God’s canvas we see God drawing on is planet earth. God is an artist, or more appropriately God is the Artist. The Creator uses finite structures like all artists do. God uses human beings, lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), planets, solar systems, and so much, much more. As human artist we use canvas’, colored pencils, paints, etc. The Artist’s talent extends to a realm far beyond our understanding. It is a wonder, a mystery, abstract at times. My questioning of chaos and order rings true. God somehow paints new stars into being everyday. God pencils in a newborn baby girl (My daughter Ellen Noel was born June 19th, 2008.) God pulls out a new canvas as another solar system is created! (“Ten years ago we thought there were two galaxies for each of us alive. Lately, since we loosed the Hubble Space Telescope, we have revised our figures. There are nine galaxies for each of us.” wrote Annie Dillard in ‘For the Time Being’) God the novelist creates yet another Cinderella man story, or the Lion King takes back the land in Africa (see movie ‘Ghost in the Darkness’) Jesus the short story writer told parables with apparent underlying morals. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “We are God’s ‘poiema’” We are God’s poems. So Jesus is even a poet/ don’t you know it.

God, the Great Artist transcends our art. Isaiah called our righteous works, “filthy rags.”(Is. 64:6) Filthy rags?!?! Beethoven deaf creating by audible memory symphonies, the blind poet John Milton re-creating the world he once saw and the world he re-imagined, Vincent Van Gogh going insane finding paint-stroke sanity via slapping into two-dimensions the three-dimensional boredom of man, on and on I could go about the great artists of time and history. They whisper rumors of another world. They reveal humanity and what it is to be human, good, evil, and life itself. The author of two of my favorite stories, ‘The Green Mile’ and ‘Shawshank Redemption’ wrote, “Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” The man was Stephen King, and I agree with him. Filthy rags…?

God creates something from nothing! God is transcendent. Human artists ought be thankful for the supplier of all good things, materially and spiritually. We humans see biased, tainted, and dimly. God knows in full, pure and clear. My faith is in the God who began his work here long ago and described it as “very good.” (Gen 1:31) We have tainted the work, but in every end Redemption comes, as the Artist promises “to make all things new.”(Rev. 22: 6) Very good!! Come Lord Jesus, Come.

I have tried to change my persona of being a city boy to a want-a-be mountain man. (Thank God I can grow some facial hair which helps I am told with the rugged look I so desire.)

Well a few years ago my wife graciously accepted the idea to honeymoon in the Grand Tetons. We planned a trip to not only see the jagged Wyoming rocks, but to grasp and seize the cold stacked stone. During our vacation we wisely hired a climbing guide to train and lead us sadistically up to summit the Grand Teton. We practiced with him many climbing and roping techniques. He also discussed strategy and route options. (What a honeymoon, huh?) There was a certain statement I remember him emphasizing to us over and over again, “At the top of the mountain you are only half-way there. You are not finished. More climbers,” his voice grew louder and sterner, “die on the way down than they do on then way up.”

“But why” I asked.

“Because I believe they think the worst is over. And in all honesty it is. The physical activity of fighting gravity is reversed. Going down is physically easier and not as exciting. And it is in this relaxed, confident thickening atmosphere that climber sometimes becomes unfocused and careless. Therefore they losing their precious flea like hold to the mountain and fall off.” I finished this dangerous conversation with an, “Oh.”

And “Oh” there are stories about Jesus in the Bible that I know I brush over time and time again without giving it much thought or time of day. I easily allow myself to create my own “reality” of what Jesus was like. For example I will explore the mount of transfiguration story. Historically when I attended Sunday school I loved this story! Incredible! And I believed it happened without a second thought. Yet in my wise old age of twenty-six years of living on this planet, hearing now this same story I immediately label it new age-ish and incredibly hard to believe this incident actually occurred. But that is how it is told in the Gospel as Peter, James, and John followed Jesus atop the mountain. These guys honest to God believed they saw heroes of the Faith, glowing, transformed by I have to guess by the power of the living God, YWH. Jesus, Elijah, and Moses were shown in their immortal glory!!! Maybe can I guess their heavenly bodies?

In the Star Wars trilogies the dead Jedi knights come back to Luke Skywalker to direct and encourage him in his fight against the Dark Side. Obviously the scene was not shot in Hollywood but seen on a mountain and recorded in Israel. What kind of drugs were these guys on? (See my cynicism? And I can’t seem to help it. Please forgive me I am being vulnerable by sharing my what-could-be irreligious thoughts aloud.)

And I doubt it because seeing dead people of faith on top of a mountain has never happened to me. In fact I have never knowingly in my life seen Jesus. I have read about him sure, but that is it as far as I know. And for me mountaintop and mystical experiences that I have had seems to have little effect on strengthening my long-term faith in the God of Jesus Christ. In fact it is the valleys, the falls, the “slough of despondency”, or to steal an Alcoholic Anonymous term “hitting rock bottom” that has allowed me to realize what a “bare, forked animal” I am. I had only look up and hire the Guide, safety rope included hold me to this day from falling farther than I ought to my death. Yes, of course, there is a mountain. There is a mountain. There is a mountain.

Yet even still I find it rather impossible to have mere faith the size of a pebble. God help me. But in those Vertigo moments I tug on the safety rope of faith, finding sanity, purity, and wildness that is beyond my little piece of the mountain. I do have faith even as I doubt. I find comfort in the resurrected and pierced Comforter’s words to his doubting disciple Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

I was given a mountaineer quote book boosting my mountain man status up a bit. Inside the pages G.K. Chesterton wrote, “One sees great things from the valleys; only small things from the top.” So I still shake my head in disbelief that I made it back alive, transformed from the real mountains upon mountains that We have ascended and descended together…

In physicist Blaise Pascal’s proverbial book titled Pensees he writes, “Christianity is strange.” In my opinion this is a rather awkward and puzzling way of describing the Way he professes to follow.

So what I am trying to say? Well I believe Blaise Pascal was a devout Christian. He offers a unique persepective grasping known physical laws and livng professed Christian disciplines. I would definitely say it made him a bit strange and as that cliché saying goes, “it takes one to know one.” And I see it sure does as this scientist played part in his own Jesus-following experiment personally testing out this physical/spiritual mystery.

Jesus, the man who jump-started Christianity by being Christ and all, was no stranger to being strange. As a Holy Man, he hung out with all the wrong people: tax collectors, wine bibbers, outcasts, lepers, demon-possessed, the blind, the lame, the poor, the sinners, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera… If I may test out my own physical/ spiritual theory for a moment, it was as if Jesus was following some kind of paradoxical mathematical formula or law. For wherever the social outcast was, (you know, the low man on the totem pole), there Jesus was sticking up for the rejected under-dog. To top it off, Jesus publicly professed that He revealed who God perfectly was and is and always will be… or as Philip Yancey poetically describes this wonder of physics, this awesome formula, “Grace like water flows to the lowest points of gravity.” And so it seems physically and spiritually, God defies social gravitational forces and laws of physics. Christ makes the supposed weak strong, God-graced, and of course, strange.

“The things I hate most [about my life] are the things God uses most every day in ministry.”

This is a rough quote from Beth Moore that I jotted down during Bible study last night. She was talking about wrestling at times with her own past, and the many things it contains that she is ashamed of. She mentioned her abusive childhood coupled with her own sinful choices that took her into a life in the pit. She then talked about how she has prayed that God will reminder her of those experiences when she is ministering to people. This allows her to connect with them in a way that at times others can. She said that we often will show the amount of grace that we understand God to have shown us. This means that those who understand and are humbled by the lavish amount of grace God has shown them are more likely to extend grace to others.

I know as a counselor, I face this reality daily. I see so much of myself in others, especially when they are hurting. Much of my compassion comes from the grace I feel on my own life, and I realize that just like Beth, God tends to use parts of my life I regret the most to help me minister to others who are broken and hurting.

When we are contemplating our life of faith — where do we stand with our own past and the grace we show others? Have we accepted our past (no matter how stained it is) and are we readily and openly available to show grace towards others (no matter how stained their past or present is)?

I realized no one blogged last week, which makes me think this week is open, too. I’ll do my best to post something daily… but as some of you who have tried blogging might know, it’s harder to remember than you’d think!

Here goes: Yesterday morning I got up and decided to do my bible study for the day before church. Beth Moore suggested in her book to us ladies that we all spend some time “on our face” (literally) before we do our study each day. She talks about how our posture can really affect our heart and our communication with God — and how being face down on the ground can really humble us into the right spirit. I’ve found this to be true, and have enjoyed the practice of literally reminding myself of my position before God. I’ve made it a practice to have some personal worship time while on the ground, and yesterday, while I was face down, one song kept popping in my head. The only problem was that I couldn’t remember all the words or the tune… It was one of those moments where you know that you know the song, but you cannot get other tunes out of your head. So all I could sing was “I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.” I tried looking in an nlcf songbook that was nearby, but nothing could jog my memory.

Frustrated, I got up and did my study. An hour later, I stood in church and Isaac started playing during the first worship set, and I heard it. He began to play the song! “You alone are Father, and You alone are Good… You alone are Savior, and You alone are God.” That was it!!! I started tearing up I was so moved, because I felt like God was saying, “I know you heart — here is your song.” I had such a worshipful moment while singing…and it was definitely a boost to my faith. And I felt more alive in my faith while singing than I have in a while…it was like God literally breathed life into me.

What a reminder of the fact that all we have to do is try in our faith, and God will not only meet us there, but take us further.