January 31, 2009

It's been awhile (a long while) since I posted, but something new has happened. I had an incident at work Monday where I nearly fainted and had to be driven home from work. Actually, I had bloodwork scheduled for that afternoon at Baptist Hospital, so my driver graciously took me there, a trifle early, before taking me home.

While I was there I ran into Sherri and Charles (I called him "Edward") Willard, from waiting room days several months ago. Please keep praying for them. Sometimes Charles has very long, uncommunicative days because of his situation, and that is hard on Sherri.

I was thinking the reaction was due to my first round of post-radiation chemo, which I completed on the 18th of January, but Ed Shaw said the bloodwork was normal. I had an MRI scheduled for the 9th of February, which he moved up to this past Wednesday evening. I called him about that last night, and he told me that everything on the MRI was hunky-dory, or better. I couldn't ask for more than that.

Which leaves as our lone culprit the little item of stress, which can pile up when you are working a different route every day and splitting it four or five different ways and when the post office does not take into account the travel time needed for all the subs to travel from their routes to the part of my route they're carrying. (These are at least partially excuses, which I will critique later.) But the Post Office has been very gracious and has offered me a light duty position as a custodian until I get back on my feet.

I have another appointment with Ed this Tuesday, February 2, and Priscilla and I will ask him some questions about further treatment, as well as determine when I might go back to work.

I think ultimately all of our maladies are worship disorders, either our own or perhaps traceable all the way back to Adam and Eve, but I certainly have had time to reflect on some of mine. I am sure that at work, much of the stress lay in my inability to worship God in the circumstances rather than trusting in my own strength for the task. Since I've been home, I've noticed some others, like watching TV basketball. I turned on the Wake game today with 6 minutes to go and watched them lose, which disappointed me greatly until I remembered who made the players and the gymnasium and the ball and the uniforms and everything else I was watching. At that point, I had to repent and beg forgiveness for misplaced worship. God, of course, who is gracious above all things, willingly granted.

I've had a chance to do some reading this week from three books: "What I Think I Did," by Larry Woiwode; "Amish Grace," by three different authors, none of whose names I recall immediately, and "End of America," by Naomi Wolf, sent to me by my sister Shelley Tea in Seattle. The one that grabbed me first was "Amish Grace," a book detailing the reaction of an Old Order Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to the murder/wounding of ten young female students in a school in southern Lancaster County. (The killer also killed himself in the process.) This community takes seriously Christ's command to forgive, and they went to work right away, walking the few miles, if necessary, to the homes of the killer's wife and parents to offer condolences for their pain and loss.

The work was not that easily completed, most notably for the relatives of the girls who were attacked, and the writers point out that the Amish will be constantly needing to reforgive. But as daunting as this task was, it is still relatively easy compared to the often laborious work of forgiving fellow Amish within their church districts, a work complicated by the fact that the "culprits" have the nasty habit of continuing to live. This book probed the whole Amish process and culture of forgiveness, editorial reaction to the forgiveness, and many serious questions about the whole forgiveness/pardon/reconciliation process. And it offered an overview on the entire Amish community that would be well worth the time to read, particularly since the book is only 203 pages long .

The Woiwode book is subtitled "A Season of Survival in Two Acts," and revolves around an extremely cold winter in southwestern North Dakota and various glimpses into Woiwode's past. There is an absolutely amazing intermission section in which Woiwode talks about the influence of nature on his outlook, particularly as it relates to English poet W.H. Auden's statement that "time...worships language" and Christ as the ultimate language/revelation of God the Father, in nature and in other ways. (The Gospel of John refers to Christ as the "logos," or "word" of God.)

I've got to leave you with one quote from the book. "I feel a pressure behind and turn and there are the cottonwoods and the willows at the far end of the street, along the edge of the lake, flying the maidenhair faces of their leaves into the wind, and beyond their crowns of trembling insubstantiality, across the lake dotted with cottonwood pollen, the blue and azure plain abuts against the horizon at infinity." In this all he sees Christ.

The Naomi Wolf book has two subtitles, "Letters of Warning to a Young Patriot" and "A Citizen's Call to Action." I've read thirty-five pages so far. Wolf's thesis is that Fascist states follow the same predicatable pathway to repression, and that the Bush/Cheney administration has started us down this pathway. I am not on the same ideological page as Naomi Wolf, but Shelley has asked me to read it with an open mind and I am doing that. I did check out one internet clip where she says she would oppose Obama if he attempted to use the powers that Bush had arrogated to himself. That is certainly admirable.

I have meandered on long enough, so let me bid you all adieu. Will keep you posted, hopefully more often.

Jan. 8--Devotional

Folks, this is from a pile of devotionals I wrote a couple years ago for our men's accountability group.



GOSPEL FAITH

Habakkuk 2:4--...the righteous will live by his faith...

Hebrews 10:10 tells us we are made holy by the will of God.

This is foundational. If God hadn't chosen you to be holy, you probably woudn't be reading this, and you certainly wouldn't be comprehending it.

But let me tell you something else. He did not will your holiness in such a way as to render your own will superfluous.

At this point, I need to issue a warning. People have, quite literally, gone straight to hell trying to figure out how God's will and their own will could exist in the same universe.

When they got to hell, they may have arrived at a conclusion. Who knows. But don't bother going there to find out. Just believe they both exist and go from there.

Which is not to say that a few statements can't be made about the situation.

We observe, first of all, that our will exists because God willed it to exist. And we observe, secondly, that God has willed for our will to operate on faith--a faith that he has created, birthed in us, and is now nurturing to fruition. And--we observe that we genuinely have to choose to accept that faith.

In fact, the cardinal truth of sanctification is that the just live by their faith. Habakkuk's statement gets plenty of press in the New Testament.

This is not a life experience for most of us. Most children of God live as if they get into the kingdom by faith and then paddle upstream from there. And we've all tried it. We all keep trying it, from time to time.

But the Bible says we live by faith; that is, our actions derive from the unassailable fact that the Father loves us and has clothed us in the righteousness of Christ.

Let me give you a scenario.

Your boat has hit some rough water. As a matter of fact, it is being tossed thirty and forty feet into the air by waves you had no idea lurked on the little lake of your life. You are in pain; some situation or relationship is lacerating you; a bloody, throbbing wound in your soul is begging for novocaine.

And then you see it--the way out--the anesthetic--the one you've used so many times before, your favorite; the one that works! And you can have it--no-one will know--it's yours for the taking. And the devil fool with the consequences.

(He will, by the way.)

Friends, this is when you need faith--that God loves you, that you are whole, that no Bondo is needed on the car body of your life.

But this is also exactly where faith is hardest to find. Because all this pain that's tearing out your intestines is about some perceived deficiency in your life or soul, and gospel faith, of course, tells you that your soul is as safe and healthy in the arms of Jesus as a nursing baby. But you can't see this. The two strands of your life, actual and experiential, have diverged, and you're like a kid on roller skates with one leg careening south and the other racing insanely north.

And you might lose this battle. Because faith is better applied steering you away from the city the bordello's in than dragging you out the front door of the durned thing.

If you do lose, make up your mind to go back to faith. Remember who died to forgive you. Practice James 5:16. Figure out who you can call to keep you in the right city, or to go through the wrong one with you if that's where the path really leads.

And then again, you might not lose. Because faith, like a muscle, gets stronger every time you exercise it. And if Satan does manage to get you into a bad place, the child of God who's been around the block a few times remembers how much that last soul hit cost him.

And he remembers something else.

Gospel faith means you don't need painkillers.

1-5-09; Back to Work

Before I start in on the back to work section, let me tell you about the two preceding days. On Saturday, the 3rd, I had my heart set on cleaning out my garage. Alison had her heart set on going ice-skating at the Coliseum Annex. Priscilla (my wife) managed to talk some sense into my head, and the garage is still waiting to be cleaned. I can clean it when Alison goes off to college, if worst comes to worst, but time with one's daughter is simply not something to pass up. We had a wonderful afternoon and evening, and I am very thankful that Priscilla spoke up.

Yesterday, the 4th, we had an amazing adult Bible study from a John Piper book. The teacher ran off copies of one of the chapters, entitled "Faith in Future Grace vs. Anxiety." (Maybe now you know the title of the book, which eludes me.) John Piper related that when he was in high school he had a monstrous fear of public speaking, what he called a "horrible and humiliating disability." This was more than a little stage fright, believe me. He and his mother struggled mightily in prayer, but no breakthroughs came. Finally, John went off to Wheaton College. He knew that in order to graduate, he would have to speak in public.

The first chance came in a Spanish class. Each student was required to give a three-minute speech in Spanish. John memorized his, to eliminate the possibility of losing his place and lapsing into a "paralyzing pause," and he also stood behind a very large lectern which he could hold onto to conceal his shaking. He was obviously frightened. But somehow, he made it through.

A second opportunity came when the school chaplain asked him to lead prayer in chapel. Again terrified, John said "yes" anyway, and once more received grace. From that moment, he vowed never to turn down a speaking engagement because of fear. The rest, of course, is history.
Piper's application was simply that anxiety is lack of faith and often leads to other sins. He said that if you were driving a race car (analagous to our race of life) and someone threw mud onto your windshield, you would turn on the wipers and the windshield washer. He compares the wipers to the Word of God and the washers to the Holy Spirit. He then went on to exposit Matthew 6:25-34, where on four different occasions we are told not to be anxious.

When I went to bed that night, knowing I'd be going back to work in the morning, albeit parttime, I picked up the copy of the article, reread the Scripture passage, and prayed for the Holy Spirit to come. Nothing happened. The harder I struggled, the more fear made a fool out of me. (I know this sounds crazy, but believe me, it happened.) Finally, in desperation, I said simply "Father, I want your name to be glorified."

And then it hit me. That was exactly the same thing Jesus said in John 12:28, a passage my pastor had spoken about that morning. Jesus there was struggling with much more than I was--the huge weight of the cross loomed before him. My struggle was small by comparison, but still very real.

And it occurred to me--there was no way the old Chuck Eggerth could have produced that thought. It obviously came from the Spirit of Christ inside me. Suddenly I realized I had resources to deal with the situation.

Then another image came to me, a picture of myself at the post office with Jesus shining inside me, a light so bright people would have to know who it was . My struggle to that point had been selfish, wondering how I would look to folks who knew the Chuck Eggerth from four months ago. Now I had a reason to go back to work that didn't involve my ego. And the fears left me. I was able to relax and go to sleep.

And when I got up, I went to work. I had a couple of panicky moments, where it oppeared to me that the carriers who were assigned to finish what I didn't carry would be standing around waiting for me to get the mail ready, but I made up my mind to go one step at a time. It worked out, and I was able to finish my job.