Tag: Quotes

Don’t Weary, Be Hoping

A devotion for all who are weary, who still strive to love, care and serve as the hands and heart of Jesus; and a message for our YMCA Childcare Services leaders who show up morning and afternoon to build character and a hoping spirit in our young school-age students.

First: thank you.

Thanks for your servant-leadership to our students and their families each morning and afternoon.

To all who invest in the spirit, mind and body of our school-age children and youth: thank you.

The following is a morning devotion written for our YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne Childcare Services Staff to start off their half-day training event.

May it be an encouragement for all who care for and serve children in our schools; even though it is a bleak winter and everyone feels stretched too far – don’t weary, be hoping.

This morning as I read through the Hebrew Scriptures and the prophet Isaiah (40:27:31) – and as I reflected on the challenging situations of our childcare leaders, Bobby McFerrin and his catchy tune got stuck in my head: Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

I wondered what it would be like to mash the two lyrics together: Don’t Weary, Be Hoping.

What do you think?

For me it grounded the chirpy sweet song in the promises of The LORD, the everlasting God, Creator of the Heavens and the Earth – who sees you in your weariness, sees you caring for children, sees you striving to do good, and reminds us: the weary who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.

Now that the song is stuck in your head, and as you read slowly through the poetic promise of God, if you were going to be vulnerable for a moment: what’s been making you weary?

And what would it look like for you to trust the Lord with it, to turn the complaint into hopeful expectation?

As one who cares for children, even when you’re weary, the words of Jesus can be a comfort and inspiration, helping you transform that complaint into a hopeful expectation.

And in particular his perspective on the young ones in our midst (the ones who can make us weary and cause much complaining):

Jesus has a unique take on being with children: we ought to become more like them.

Taking Jesus’ instructions to heart, for you: in their best moments, what is it about the children in your care that you want to imitate more?

As leaders we can’t escape from the complaints people make about us, and we’ll always be tempted to complain about others; but: what would we tell kids in our care if they were complaining a little too much?

As leaders, our work is about influence and responsibility, sacrifice and perseverance; but it’s also about love, joy, peace, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness – and it’s this fruit of the Spirit that we can learn from the little children.

When you reflect on the love, joy and peace that Jesus brings to the little children in his care – and that can include you – how might that begin to transform the weariness you carry in your spirit, mind and body?

Thank you for loving, caring and serving the children and youth in your midst, thank you for your leadership and influence, your sacrifices and perseverance – especially in these wearisome times.

Thank you for being there for them, for showing up, for your humility and vulnerability, your listening ear and playful spirit; and may the Lord continually renew your strength, all you who remember: don’t weary, be hoping.

Apply today for YMCA Child Care Services before-after school: www.fwymca.org/jobs

Revolutionary Christianity in the USA: Jacques Ellul and the YMCA – ways to be faithful amidst the chaos…

“The Christian can never regard himself as being on the winning side, nor can he look on with pleasure while everyone else goes to perdition; should he do so, he would be lacking in the Spirit of Christ, and by that very fact he would cease to be a Christian”

Looking back now, reflecting on the infamy of January 6, 2021, like many American citizens I find the times to be disturbing – and asking myself: what are better ways for Christians to participate in politics (as it really is in America) and engage in public service (health, education, justice, arts, etc.) in a way that is faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ but not duped by political/economic ideologies which are marked by insidious violence and justifying the means (usually in a downward, mimetic, rivalrous, spiral)?

Is there a role for virtue and character?

Common bonds of solidarity and neighborliness?

Sacrificial love and healing truth?

Taking the high road and defusing antagonisms?

What does it look like to humbly imitate Christ in this politically toxic era?

And how does the “C” in the YMCA grow healthier and stronger amidst these contentious and all too often embarrassing public actions by Christians in the public square?

Rather than go mute or get louder, who can be a helpful guide for Christians in the YMCA who want to authentically live out their faith publicly as caring servant-leaders for all?

This book by Jacques Ellul – The Presence of the Kingdom – is a modern classic; it was forged in the fires of oppression in World War 2 by one who participated in the French Resistance, an atheist who converted to Christ, a brilliant lawyer and small-town pastor and activist, there is much that Ellul can teach YMCA leaders on ways to put their faith into practice amidst turbulent times.

The following comments and quotes are adapted from a post I originally published on a personal blog in February 2013; I find that it still rings true almost a decade later…

“In focusing more and more on what Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God, there is some new imagination required for what that would look like in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Especially when being a pastor in a community results in potential political activity.

I am disillusioned with our political reality in the USA, disappointed in how popular Christianity has aligned itself with politics in order to protect their assets, their power, their position, and their rights.

There is within me an instinctive repulsion to pastors and politics; there has to be a better alternative to posturing and press statements?

How to think about being a pastor and involved in politics without ending up as a pawn or a populist?

In these days of searching and listening, I turn again to Jacques Ellul.

I found the following paragraphs from The Presence of the Kingdom to be immensely challenging and provoking to me as I seek confirmation of God’s leading in my life’s work.

My interests and skills and calling have lead me into social and political issues; in my vocation as a pastor, as a Christian leader, there is some inner questioning whether this direction is appropriate.

In seeking some kind of justification or spiritual foundation for what I sense to be right, knowing there is no utopia, Ellul is most helpful – what I quote below from him has been formative for me, challenging, and hopeful:

Jacques Ellul (b. January 6, 1912 / d. May 19, 1994)

“The Christian can never regard himself as being on the winning side, nor can he look on with pleasure while everyone else goes to perdition; should he do so, he would be lacking in the Spirit of Christ, and by that very fact he would cease to be a Christian.

Bound up with the lives of other men (be economic and sociological laws, and also by the will of God), he cannot accept the view that they will always remain in their anguish and their disorder, victims of tyranny and overwork, buoyed up only by a hope which seems unfounded.

Thus he must plunge into social and political problems in order to have an influence on the world, not in the hope of making a paradise, but simply in order to make it tolerable – not in order to diminish the opposition between this world and the Kingdom of God, but simply in order to modify the opposition between the disorder of this world and the order of preservation that God wills for it – not in order to ‘bring in’ the Kingdom of God, but in order that the gospel may be proclaimed, that all men may really hear the good news of salvation, through the death and resurrection of Christ.

Thus there are three directions in which the Christian ought to action the world:

First – starting from the point at which God has revealed to him the truth about the human person, he must try to discover the social and political conditions in which this person can live and develop in accordance with God’s order.

Second – this person will develop within a certain framework which God has ordained for him.

This is the order of preservation, without which man lacks his true setting.

Man is not absolutely free in this sphere, any more than he is free in the physical or biological domain.

There are certain limits which he cannot overstep without danger to the society to which he belongs.

Thus the Christian must work, in order that the will of God may be incarnated in actual institutions and organisms.

Third – this order of preservation will have meaning only if it is directed towards the proclamation of salvation.

Therefore, social and political institutions need to be ‘open’: that is, they must not claim to be all, or absolutes.

Thus they must be constituted in such a way that they do not prevent man from hearing the Word of God.

The Christian must be ceaselessly on the watch – intelligent and alert – to see that this ‘order’ is preserved.

But, in doing so, he will find that he is confronted by two possible errors.

The one error consists in believing that by constant progress in this order we shall attain the Kingdom of God.

It is enough to remind ourselves of the Book of Revelation, or of Matthew 24, to condemn this attitude.

The other error arises out of the conviction that by achieving certain reforms we shall have reached this order which God wills.

In reality all solutions – all economic, political, and other achievements – are temporary.

At no moment can the Christian believe either in their perfection or in their permanence.

They are always vitiated by the sin which infects them, by the setting in which they take place.

Thus the Christian is constantly obliged to reiterate the claims of God, to reestablish this God-willed order, in presence of an order that constantly tends towards disorder.

In consequence of the claims which God is always making on the world the Christian finds himself, by that very fact, involved in a state of permanent revolution.

Even when the institutions, the laws, the reforms which he has advocated have been achieved, even if society is reorganized according to his suggestions, he still has to be in opposition, he still must require more, for the claim of God is as infinite as His forgiveness.

Thus the Christian is called to question unceasingly all that man calls progress, discovery, facts, established results, reality, etc.

He can never be satisfied with all this human labor, transcended, or replaced by something else.

In his judgment he is guided by the Holy Spirit – he is making an essentially revolutionary act.

If the Christian is not being revolutionary, then in some way or another he has been unfaithful to his calling in the world.”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, pgs 35-37

Which quote sticks with you as illuminating or provocative or hopeful?

What insight does it provide to you on how Christian’s can engage publicly – as people of faith – while leading and serving amidst the tumult?

Love Abides: Matt’s Death Day 20 Years Later…

“As you grieve and mourn the deaths in your life, may you learn to abide in love. We may not get to choose our death day, but we do get to choose to abide in love all the days we have left. That’s what I’m choosing to learn to do on Matt’s day.”

[I originally wrote this post in 2014, and have republished it here with some slight adaptions. It’s all still true for me…and may you be encouraged by it, to abide in love – for what marvelous strength it has to reconcile and heal!]

December 30th is Matt’s Day in our home.

He died on this day at age 23 in 2001.

He was killed by a drunk driver speeding down the wrong way on I69 between I469 and the Dupont South exit in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Matt was home on leave from the Army base Fort Bliss in El Paso Texas where he served as a cook.

Matt at Quartermaster graduation at Fort Lee, Virginia (2001)

We think of him almost every time we drive past that spot. Which is often.

Over the many years we’ve done a variety of things on this day to remember him.

Today I wore his old Montreal Canadiens NHL jersey. And listened to Rusted Root, Weezer, Wallflowers, and DMB in his honor.

I also make a point to sit and reflect about life and death, love and forgiveness, meaning and hope.

I’ve not always handled well the tragic death of my little brother Matt. Or Ben, who died in 1994; or my Dad who succumbed to brain cancer in 2012.

Matt and our little brother Ben (1993)

Thoughts of his death can easily fuel morose musings of the meaninglessness of life, even for me as a life-long Christian and pastor.

The writings of Kierkegaard have been an essential friend and guide in the many years since the deaths of Ben and Matt, my Dad, my Uncle Lynn, my cousin Lon, my father in law Jim, and now my brother in law Jamil.

You’d think that death ends the love brothers have for each other.

But St. Paul writes that “love abides.”

What does that mean for those that protest death and grieve the dead?

Kierkegaard writes words that kindle hope for a love that abides, in this life and the next:

The one who truly loves never falls away from love.

He can never reach the breaking point.

Yet, is it always possible to prevent a break in a relationship between two persons, especially when the other has given up?

One would certainly not think so. Is not one of the two enough to break the relationship?

In a certain sense it is so.

But if the lover is determined to not fall away from love, he can prevent the break, he can perform this miracle; for if he perseveres, a total break can never really come to be.

By abiding, the one who loves transcends the power of the past.

He transforms the break into a possible new relationship, a future possibility.

The lover who abides belongs to the future, to the eternal.

From the angle of the future, the break is not really a break, but rather a possibility.

But the powers of the eternal are needed for this.

The lover must abide in love, otherwise the heartache of the past still has the power to keep alive the break.

from Works Of Love, by Kierkegaard

It is too easy to let hate and bitterness rule my heart in response to the senseless death of my brother.

It’s been hard work to make sense of his tragedy and let love reign over it.

There were regrets I had about our relationship.

I wanted to be a better big brother.

I should have been there for him more. More present and interested in him.

I was busy launching my own life, getting married, finishing up school, starting a church.

I was there for some of his big moments. But not for any of the little ones.

It’s been difficult to figure out what kind of future I can have with my dead brother when the years preceding his death were seeds for regret after his funeral.

Again, Kierkegaard helpfully writes:

The whole thing depends upon how the relationship is regarded, and the lover – he abides.

Can anyone determine how long a silence must be in order to say, now there is no more conversation?

Put the past out of the way; drown it in the forgiveness of the eternal by abiding in love.

Then the end is the beginning and there is no break!

But the one who loves abides. “I will abide,” he says. “Therefore we are still on the path of life together.”

And is this not so? What marvelous strength love has!

The most powerful word that has ever been said, God’s creative word, is: “Be.”

But the most powerful word any human being has ever said is, “I abide.”

Reconciled to himself and to his conscience, the one who loves goes without defense into the most dangerous battle.

He only says: “I abide.” But he will conquer, conquer by his abiding.

There is no misunderstanding that cannot be conquered by his abiding, no hate that can ultimately hold up to his abiding – in eternity if not sooner.

If time cannot, at least the eternal shall wrench away the other’s hate.

Yes, the eternal will open his eyes for love.

In this way love never fails – it abides.

from Works Of Love, by Kierkegaard

May these Christ-centered words of Kierkegaard impart a fresh perspective on the breaches of love in your life.

As you grieve and mourn the deaths in your life, may you learn to abide in love, in imitation of Jesus.

Death will come for us all.

We may not get to choose our death day, but we do get to choose to abide in love all the days we have left.

That’s what I’m choosing to learn to do on Matt’s day.

Love abides.

Matt, 2000

[I originally wrote this post in 2014, and have republished it here with some slight adaptions. It’s all still true for me…and may you be encouraged to abide in love – for what marvelous strength it has to reconcile and heal!]