Let Us Pray

 

 

 This is about Asher who gives me wristbands which I gave to the kids in Vietnam! This is from April 7, 2013.

Asher led us in prayer this morning but that really does not tell the story. In all my years of church services and worshiping, it was unlike any prayer in my remembrance. You see, Asher prayed in his native Hebrew language this Sunday in leading our congregation. Born and raised in Israel and a Christian for only two years, it was his first time in front of the church but not in front of our Father God. It was also the first time I've witnessed a prayer being introduced by the minister. David Yasko, our preacher for the English speaking part of our congregation, explained that he and Asher met for several hours on Thursday in preparation for his prayer. As English is his second language and he wanted his words to be perfectly accurate, they decided Asher would pray in Hebrew and the English translation would be on the screen behind him. David reminded us that Jesus admonished us to watch and pray so it would be acceptable to keep our eyes open as Asher spoke to Jehovah for all of us. And when Asher voiced his AMEN, I fought the overwhelming urge to applaud. Not because of the beauty of the words or the elegance of Asher, both of which were present, but because of a joy I felt in hearing God addressed in a language that our Savior Jesus Christ understood.

This may all seem silly to you but the fact that Hebrew is a Biblical language and I heard Asher pray using that tongue to me is simply amazing. I've had little direct contact with Jewish culture so there was a sense of awe for me. Compounding my reaction might have been that less than two weeks ago, I was part of a re-enactment of a Passover Seder hosted at our school by the family of one of our Jewish students. But I am also so touched by the careful nature in which Asher approached his obligation to all of us as he talked with our God. (And in reference to his English abilities, I would not have guessed Asher is not a native speaker.) The majority of my public prayers/lessons which are not at school are translated into Chinese during eleven months of the year and into Vietnamese during July. Sadly, I'm not nearly as cautious with what I say or how I say it as Asher was this morning. My classes have recently studied Jesus' parable of The Two Men At Prayer. We discussed how the Pharisee basically prayed about himself while never asking for anything or confessing anything, both components of what we refer to as The Lord's Prayer. On the other hand, the despised tax collector simply prayed, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus concludes with the shocking statement that the tax collector was right before the Lord, not the noted religious leader. The words we use, and the heart from which they flow, matter according to Jesus. And as Asher returned to his pew, my mind drifted to the middle verse of one of my favorite hymns:

Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer
The joy I feel, the bliss I share
Of those whose anxious spirits burn
With strong desires for thy return!
With such I hasten to the place
Where God my Savior shows His face,
And gladly take my station there,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!

It was a sweet hour of prayer for me this morning ..... and singing and listening and communing and fellow-shipping. Asher set the tone for me, for us. For the first time in my life, I wished that I could speak Hebrew and understand without relying on a screen and projected words. I would guess the Lord will settle for improvement in my prayer life in the one language I already know. One step at a time.

Applicable quote of the day:

"Prayer means that the total you is praying. Your whole being reaches out to God, and God reaches down to you."
E. Stanley Jones

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Friday Night Lights (Of The World)

 

Friday Night Lights (Of The World)

I don't know why but last evening it hit me how much I miss my favorite TV show, Friday Night Lights. Sometimes we get so caught up in fiction that we forget the real life characters in the orbits of our lives. This is from August 12, 2009. 

We were on our way back from Midland, Texas and the TCSA Conference on Saturday when we stopped for supper in Austin. Our administration lined up an all-you-can-eat buffet at Furr's Cafeteria.... and it was very good. Sometimes, the eating groups tend to break down by genders when we are together as a faculty and our table was all male and mostly coaches. At my end of the table, somehow the topic of Derek Jeter and Minka Kelly's romantic status was placed on the agenda. Most of you recognize Jeter as the shortstop for the New York Yankees. Less recognizable is Kelly who plays Lyla Garrity on NBC's Friday Night Lights, a very loose interpretation of the movie with the same name. As we debated the Jeter-Kelly affair, our talk turned to our favorite episodes and our favorite characters. Ben, Kevin, Russell, and I held an impromptu round table discussion on life in the most famous fictional high school in the Lone Star State. The new season will hopefully reveal the answers to the burning questions surrounding the Dillon Panthers.Will Tim Riggins go to college or stay and help brother Billy in their new business venture? Will Coach Eric Taylor find redemption at Dillon East after being fired from Dillon High? Can Matt Saracen enroll in art school in Chicago and leave his Alzheimer's stricken grandma to the care of others? Will Buddy Garrity's life keep imploding? Are University of Texas bound bad girl Tyra Collette and nerdy Landry Clark still an item?Who will run the ice cream joint with Smash Williams and Saracen out of the picture? Will Coach Taylor's wife, the principal at Dillon High, stay after her husband was unjustly terminated? Will quarterback prodigy J.D. McCoy have another physical altercation with his overbearing dad, resulting in another visit from CPS? You could tell we are understandably excited about the new season. Unfortunately, for those of us without cable, we will have to wait until January when FNL switches from DirecTV back to NBC. It will be an agonizing wait for me.

Friday Night Lights is still a relatively new show with only fifty episodes to its credit. Its fan base obviously extends to the Westbury Christian coaching staff....and there's nothing wrong with that. What I find ironic in my own life is how easy it is to engage in animated conversation about a television show and yet I never seem to have that same excited dialogue about the Lord. I am not sure why it is easier to find common ground in entertainment than in our walk with God. Even with other believers, we may struggle in knowing the depth of convictions or takes on the Christian life. I do know that I should be more concerned with the well-being of Ben Johnson, Kevin Bishop, and Russell Carr than I am about the Taylors, the Riggins, Smash Williams, etc. Fictional actors don't really exist and have no souls. The real life inhabitants of a Texas high school do and I don't have to wait until January for the next installment to get a pulse on where they are headed. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonished his followers to be lights of the world. Most high school football games are played in the darkness. Without the artificial lighting from which the show derives its name, the players would blindly collide with no sense of direction. Do you know how you find the football field in small towns on autumn weekends? You look for the lights. How do you think the world spots believers? That's one lesson that needs incorporating into my lesson plans on life.

Applicable quote of the day:
"The reason women don't play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public."
Phyllis Diller

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Big Red, Red Baron, And The Real World

 

Big Red, Red Baron, And The Real World

Sometimes, I get my priorities in the wrong place. With that in mind, please read the following  from 11-7-05, one of the first blogs I wrote, when I felt sorry for myself.

Yesterday was rough. The weather was beautiful in Houston but my universe collapsed. First, there was the matter of the Huskers. I grew up in Nebraska where separation of state and religion did not exist- the state religion was the University of Nebraska football team. It was easy to be a fan- we almost never lost. The first time I can remember crying was when the Big Red fell to Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl and I must have been in shock. Yesterday, the Cornhuskers' streak of 36 consecutive wins over the Kansas Jayhawks came to a screeching halt by a 40-15 tally. The message boards are already lit from Omaha to Ogalalla to Ord, mourning what seems to be the end of the world as understood in Huskerville. One of the last constants in my world has been jerked from under me. While the Huskers have recently slipped behind Oklahoma, Colorado, and K-State in the rankings of football powerhouses, at least we could count on beating Kansas. Not anymore.

If the football fiasco wasn't enough, supper also proved a calamity. For most of the week, I'm careful what I eat but on weekends, I splurge. My dinner last night? A meal only bachelors and teenage boys could truly appreciate: a Red Baron Supreme Pizza and a box of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Klondike Bars. (A contrast: the Huskers' total yards versus Kansas- 138. My total fat grams from supper-90g from pizza PLUS 6 x 18 or 108g from Klondike Bars-198. I think we see who had the better day!) Trouble was on the horizon, though. As I pulled the pizza from the oven and cut it into four equal slices, a pepperoni fell to the floor. Holding a loaded plate, I reached down to retrieve it. The pizza, 30 seconds removed from a VERY HOT oven, fell to the floor, face down, after a detour on my bare legs. I yelled, partly in pain and partly in frustration. Shaking with anger, I cleaned myself and the linoleum and sat down to my mostly crust pizza. Food doesn't taste good when you are mad.

I walk every day. Actually, I walk twice daily. When I wake up, I put in 20-30 minutes on my Tony Little Gazelle, a cross between a treadmill and a stationary bike. In the afternoon, I walk 30 minutes in the neighborhoods surrounding my apartment, always in the street looking for pennies. I was almost finished yesterday afternoon when I passed a young man on the sidewalk. I said hello and he wanted to talk. He had some sort of an altercation with his mother at a nearby barber shop. She told him to leave and she didn't want to see him anymore. She left the impression that she was calling the police over the incident which seemed very minor. He told me his name and that he lived fifteen miles away in another part of Houston. I asked him if there was somewhere he could go- he said there wasn't. He had been in the Child Protective Services system from age twelve until several months ago. He told me the woman he called his mother was not his biological mother but he had been staying with her and her two sons. I offered to help him call someone but he said there was no one to call. He said he thought his best option was go to the police but he didn't know the location of the nearest precinct. I knew there was a store-front HPD substation two blocks away. I asked if he wanted me to take him there- he did. We walked and I tried to get information out of him but it was a struggle. I did find out he was eighteen and a senior in one of the very large high schools but that was as far as it went. I spoke to the officer in charge and explained the situation. I remained while he questioned the young man. Although he did not appear to be disoriented or high, he could not tell the policeman his address or a phone number to call. The gentleman behind the desk just sighed and told him to sit down. The officer told me it was obvious the young man had some issues and they would take it from there. As I left the station and walked back to my apartment, I was shaken.

I remember when I was eighteen. A high school senior, I was having the best year of my life, in what little of life there had been. Looking forward to college, I went home each night to a loving family. That young man knows nothing of the world I existed in at his age.That young man was lost. I don't know where he would have ended up if I had not crossed his path- he was wandering aimlessly and it was getting dark. Worse than lost, though, was the feeling that he had no hope in life: no future, no joy, nothing. I can't say who is to blame. Maybe it's the parents he seems to never have known. Maybe it's the judicial system or those charged with the at-risk in our midst. Maybe the young man has had every chance in the world to make something of himself and has simply refused to do so. We have kids in our school who come from troubled backgrounds but having a small enrollment, we can give more guidance, stability, love, and most importantly, Jesus, than that young man is likely to receive. I'm not sure what else I could have done but I feel I let him down, just like others undoubtedly have. Maybe next time, I'll lean more on the Lord for wisdom. Please pray for the young man, Quentin. I'll probably never see him again but he taught me, the teacher, a valuable lesson. The value of a day is not measured by a football score or a pizza. It is gauged by the knowledge that we are loved, that we have hope, and that we have the Lord. Amen.

Applicable quote of the day:
"What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
Henry David Thoreau

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Corner Of Clean Hands And Pure Hearts

 

The Corner Of Clean Hands And Pure Hearts

The following is a look at another time, PRE-COVID, when I tried to take seriously the health of our student body. It's  from August 30, 2009. (In an unrelated bit of trivia, in the second picture, there is a girl in a white shirt holding a blue notebook. Her name is Emily and I preached her wedding!)

In previous entries, I've mentioned that I stand at the confluence of our upstairs halls at then end of the school day and say good-bye to the students. I try to call out each young person's name that I know- I'm still learning the new ones- and give high fives or slap hands. With the start of the new year, I've added a new feature: hand sanitizer. We still are semi-worried about swine flu as are schools around the world since educational institutions are seen as breeding grounds for H1N1. In response, I have taken it upon myself to declare our hallways a Swine Flu Free Zone. I simply hold out a bottle of sanitizer and the kids come by and get a few drops. Most of them choose to take advantage of the opportunity to leave school or go to an athletic practice a bit more hygienic. This may all seem silly to you but I have re-established contact with kids I no longer have in class and made contact with some students new to our school. It's funny- influenza is spread through human contact and so is Christianity. The longer I teach, the more I'm convinced my effectiveness in telling the story of Jesus is intertwined with making connections with teenagers. I'm trying to do that one drop at a time. The Scriptures link clean hands and pure hearts as vital in the search for God. We're working on the hands; we just need to find something for the heart. It would help if it comes in a bottle.

Applicable quote of the day:
"God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones."
Publilius Syrus

*Thanks to Robbie Miller for the pictures!*

God bless,

Steve (Mister Purell)

Luke 18:1

Out Of This World

 

Out Of This World

The Event! 
There are few good shows on regular TV anymore and I don't have cable or a satellite dish. This  entry, from November 23, 2010, is about one of the few shows I have liked in the last decade or so!

I'm not a big TV watcher- I don't have a cable subscription- but I do have a couple of favorite shows. On Sunday night, Dave, Sally, and I watched Undercover Boss on CBS. It was an especially good episode with the Chief Development Officer of Subway going into his own stores incognito and finding out he was incompetent at many of the most basic job skills his company requires. Back in September, I found myself drawn into a new offering on NBC, The Event. The preview/teasers intrigued me and I started watching with the first night. The best way to describe it might be like a cross between Lost and Twenty Four, two big hits which I never watched myself. The basic plot for The Event is as follows: In 1944, a vessel of aliens crashed in Alaska at the tail end of WWII. Most were captured by US forces but a number, unbeknownst to the military, escaped and submerged themselves into the human population. Their DNA is more than 99% human and they look like us. The biggest differences seem to be that they have some undefined telepathic powers and they age very slowly, so much that they appear virtually unchanged more than half a century later. Fast forward to the present where a new president discovers the TOP SECRET prison camp and after speaking with one of the aliens, decides to release the group from their confinement of close to seven decades. Mysterious forces in our culture, both governmental and non-governmental, are adamantly opposed to the release and try to derail the process, going so far as trying to kill the president and his family with a hijacked plane. The show revolves around several subplots which jump around from present to past, teasing us with bits of information which add pieces to the solving of the puzzle. WHEW! I'm exhausted just typing a short synopsis of the action! I think there is one more fall episode and NBC will air more new installments after Christmas. I admit, I'm addicted but I never thought it would happen to me. My weakness is now a matter of public record but I know admitting the addiction is the first step to recovery.

Each Monday evening, a little more is revealed but the viewer still is faced with gaps in information. One thing that we know is that the original intent of the group was to return to their own solar system/planet but this required some technology not quite available on earth. The aliens who escaped were to help speed along the process of some nuclear developments which would make the trek home possible. Several interesting details have come to light that I think are illuminating. One is that these escapees have been undetected for sixty-six years, living side-by-side with human neighbors without any suspicion that they were different or unique in any way. And last night, we learned that a large number of the aliens like it so much here on earth in human society that they want to stay here and not return to where they belong. Somewhere in that span of those sixty-six years, the allure of life on planet earth became irresistible.

Is it just me or are there some parallels between these extraterrestrials and those of us who claim to be believers? Paul reminded us in Philippians that our citizenship is in heaven but we find ourselves liking our earthly environment to the point that we are reluctant to consider the time we pull up stakes and relocate to our permanent dwelling with the Savior. And Jesus implied we would be recognized as believers by our love but if people don't make the connection between us and the Lord, we are as invisible as those aliens. Something should set us apart from the six billion other inhabitants in a positive, world altering way so we just don't seamlessly blend in. Sixty-six years: that's how long we have if we become a Christian at about age fourteen and live to the normal life expectancy of eighty. I hope I make it to eighty.......and I hope I am detected.

Applicable quote of the day:
"I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people."
Orson Scott Card

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

No Language Barrier

 

No Language Barrier

On my first trip to China in 2008, I worked with a medical team doing cleft palate surgeries for poor children in Shenyang. I was blessed to make the acquaintance of the girls above, one who is slightly older. On a subsequent trip, I stayed close to a week with YaNing (on the right),her husband, David, and their precious son, Rei. This entry was from August 15, 2008.

I met these two wonderful young ladies in China. Lucia is a precocious eleven year old who is fluent in English, learning Spanish, and preparing to take on French. She was there at the English Corner more than once when I visited the statue of Mao. I worked with her on the few Spanish phrases I am comfortable with. As I talked with others, Lucia's cousin, unbeknownst to me, was filling the straps of my backpack with flowers she picked on the square. During my last venture to this very public gathering place, I sent Lucia over to meet YaNing. Several years ago, YaNing met and subsequently married David, an American teaching English in a Chinese university. Together, YaNing and David are doing outstanding work for the group that sponsored our mission, splitting their time between Tennessee and China. As I have mentioned before, my primary impression from the trip is that English is a bridge between our two worlds. I asked my students in class yesterday if they would learn Chinese if they would make a million dollars from their mastery of that language. You know the answer they universally gave. In the same way, my perception of English is that it is the language of both business and education in a shrinking world. Therefore, it is valuable in China as an avenue of learning and commerce. The faces I saw in China were not a surprise to me. The words that came from the lips of many of these gracious people caught me off guard....and sounded suspiciously like my own. I found I possess a great treasure in the eyes of many- the ability to speak my native tongue. My prayer is that I can always use it wisely.

Applicable quote of the day:
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink."
George Orwell

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Faces

 

Faces

I am 26 days returned from Vietnam and as always, came home with pictures of children. This is about two I met in the past. It is from July 31, 2013.

I saw Ann Stone at Bible study tonight and I thanked her profusely. Ann, our congregation's accountant, takes care of the money end of my trip to Vietnam; She is irreplaceable in her advice as well as keeping up with the donations which made my mission possible. I gave her my annual gift; a framed picture of me and some little ones and a hand sewn Vietnamese cell phone purse. We caught up a little bit and talked about my coming in next week to do some housekeeping on my ledger. She's taking a week off- her daughter and son-in-law are in town! That's about the best possible reason for some vacation time! Ann kept up with me on Facebook and through the nightly update I sent out on e-mail, and as we talked, she mentioned a picture. I knew the exact one she meant. It was a little girl who lived next door to the house where Nhanh taught English until the authorities allow the use of the church building again. I tried to persuade her to look at me and so did her father- she is already good at playing hard to get! It was the best picture I took during my 23 day trip but it was a lucky shot. I just keep snapping with no sense of skill but the law of averages and the low cost of a digital camera allow me to get one right every so often. 

This little girl was at the wedding of the cousin of Phuong/Yen/Oanh/Dat and she showed up in a number of the pictures I took that day. She obviously loves the camera and is very social but what impressed me is that I don't think I have ever seen anyone with a face more perfectly symmetrical. In every shot she's in, whether by herself or in a group, her picture is perfect, and obviously not because of the expertise of my photography. It's a gift she possesses, not from anything she has done, except of course, for the willingness to smile and be confident. Like all of us, she is the product of the genetic makeup of two parents and they produced a beautiful child.

In that same Bible study I mentioned previously  our youth minister, Steve Lehman, showed a five minute clip about a young lady with an extremely rare condition which has left her in the eyes of the world very unattractive. And yet, she has used the horrific comments directed towards her appearance as motivation to rise above the pain she has endured since childhood. Both the little girls in Vietnam and the girl in the video are judged by their looks which is not what the Lord measures. Steve referenced the story of Samuel going to anoint David and he read 1 Samuel 16:7, after the prophet was sure God had selected Jesse's oldest soon, Eliab:
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
How the Lord's standard differs from the world's standard which also includes you and me. I love showing pictures of cute children in southeast Asia. This is a bad pun, but let's face it, the human side of us reacts to cuteness and beauty and it puts you where I am, which is a good thing. But the world is often ugly, too; we'd just rather focus on the pleasant. When I was teaching a Bible class with the young people in the church in Can Tho, I asked the young ladies if they would prefer the preacher to be handsome or unattractive- you know what they said. (Of course, their preacher is their cousin!) In the film presentations of the Gospels I use in my classes, Jesus is always good looking; it would bother us if He were ugly. Maybe it's a good thing there were no cameras in that day. When I was little, we used to sing the hymn, "Let The Beauty Of Jesus Be Seen In Me." The song wasn't talking about whether His face was absolutely symmetrical but about the perfection of His heart. His beauty can be transferred to me spiritually. And if it's there, you won't need a camera to see it.

Applicable quote of the day:

"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."
Confucius

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1