Covenants Made Concrete

This was a momentous week in the Pilet household. Wednesday evening, Grace was asked by her boyfriend, Leif Jacobsen, to marry him. More importantly, from our perspective, she said “yes.” And now she is wearing some serious ring-finger blingage. (And, yes, he asked for our blessing first.) But I won’t go into all the details about how he asked her. That’s their story, and I’ll leave it for them to tell.

As we were doing the customary gushing over Grace’s diamond engagement ring, I started wondering about the origin of the wedding ring in general and the engagement ring specifically. Why do we give rings? Why do we give diamonds? Is it some sort of “Pebble and the Penguin” thing? What’s up? And why do most of us follow the tradition?

Discerning the origins of the wedding ring is not easy. There are, apparently, two main schools of thought concerning the matter (if we can really call a few debating geeks rivaling schools). One school of thought maintains that the modern ring is symbolic of the fetters used by barbarians to tether a bride to her captor’s home. If that is true, then today’s double ring ceremonies fittingly express the new found equality of the sexes.

The other school of though focuses on the first actual bands exchanged in a marriage ceremony. A finger ring was first used in the Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, around 2800 B.C. To the Egyptians, a circle, having no beginning or end, signified eternity – for which marriage was binding.

Rings of gold were the most highly valued by wealthy Egyptians, and later Romans. Indeed, there is evidenced that young Roman men of moderate financial means often went from broke for their future brides. Tertullian, a leader of the early Christian church, observed in the second century A.D. that “most women know nothing of gold except the single marriage ring placed on one finger.” In public, the average Roman housewife proudly wore her gold band, but at home, according to Tertullian, she “wore a ring of iron.”

One of the first mentions of a diamond wedding ring is found in a Venetian document 1503. It lists “one marrying ring having diamond” belonging to a “Mary of Modina.”

The Venetians were the first to discover that the diamond is one of the hardest, most enduring substances in nature, and that fine cutting and polishing releases its brilliance. Diamonds, set in bands of silver and gold, became popular as wedding rings among wealthy Venetians toward the close of the fifteenth century. The rarity and cost of diamonds slowed the spread of this fad, but by the seventeenth century, the diamond ring had become the most popular, sought-after statement of a European engagement.

The question of when the giving of an engagement ring became common practice has a fairly clear answer, at least within Western Europe. In A.D. 860, Pope Nicholas I decreed that an engagement ring become a required statement of nuptial intent. And for Nicholas, a ring of just any material or worth would not suffice. The engagement ring was to be of a valued metal, preferably gold, which for the husband-to-be represented a financial sacrifice.

As far as diamond engagement rings, it is easy to see how the two traditions merged, and the diamond engagement ring became the standard statement of intent.

At its most basic level, the giving and receiving of an engagement ring is a promise, a promise made visible and concrete through a sacrificial gift.

One of the great metaphors used in the Scriptures to describe the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Church is that of a husband and wife (Ephesians 5:22-33). The Church has and will have a special, spiritual relationship with Him analogous to that of a married couple. But just as Grace and Leif did not and will not enter into marriage without a process and covenant, so also Jesus and the Church did not enter into their unique relationship without a process and a covenant. Jesus came, in His first Advent, and paid the brideprice with His blood. He demonstrated His total commitment with a visible, concrete, sacrificial gift, His death on the cross. And then, following His resurrection, He ascended into heaven “to prepare a place” for His bride, promising, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” This is the great event we in the Church are now awaiting… our Lord’s Return. Yes, when He returns, He will snatch up His bride and take her to heaven for the Wedding and the Marriage Feast. So we wait for that glorious moment, with longing and joy.

Leif left yesterday to return to his teaching position in Beijing, China. In the meantime, Grace has been left with a promise, made visible in a diamond ring. She awaits his return and her new married state with longing and joy. She is already thinking about wedding dresses, and flowers, and decorations.

For me, the ring on Grace’s finger is a powerful reminder of our current relationship to Christ. We wait for Him, longing for Him with joy. And in the meantime, we live our lives in ways that will please Him, that He might find us faithful and prepared at His return.

May the diamond rings in your life can serve as concrete reminders of your relationship to Christ today.

Ashes to Ashes

One of my earliest memories involves holding hands with other preschoolers and dancing around in a circle, chanting: “Ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down!” As we shouted the last word, we threw ourselves to the ground, laughing as if we had just heard the funniest joke. It is one of those moments one looks back upon as an adult and asks, “What WAS that?” Weird. Really weird.

You know the rhyme, of course. Most school children know it, or did, until recently. I was surprised, when I looked it up this morning, however, to discover that we had misquoted it. The actual rhyme goes: “Ring-a-ring o’ roses, A pocket full of posies, A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down.”

I find it interesting that, somehow, in the course of time and through the perversions inevitable to an oral tradition, the words “a-tishoo! A-tishoo!” became “ashes, ashes.” I find it interesting, but not surprising, as the underlying realities that motivated the poem’s construction are communicated by both expressions.

This poem first appeared in print in an 1881 book, Mother Goose. By that time, it was already well-known, a part of oral tradition passed from one generation of children to the next. Its roots can be found in the Great Plague of London in 1664-65, which resulted in more than 70,000 deaths at a time when the city’s population numbered only 460,000. (Picture Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail and the call in it: “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”)

The disease, caused by the bacillus Pasteurella pestis, was transmitted to humans in crowded urban areas by rat fleas. In the rhyme, “ring o’ roses” refers to the circular rosy rash that was one of the plagues early symptoms. And the phrase “pocket full of posies” stands for the herbs people carried in their pockets, believing they offered protection against the disease. The final two lines, “A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down,” tell of the plague’s fatal sneeze, which preceded physical collapse; literally, the victim fell down dead.

Okay. So why did we all laugh like crazy as we fell down? Weird. It just doesn’t seem that funny.

Anyhow. In my memory of the Pacific Northwest’s 1960s version of this rhyme, the words were changed to “ashes.” I wonder if this occurred because the vocal similarities between the two expressions. Perhaps. “Ashes” is easier to say than “A-tishoo.” Then again, it may have been my faulty hearing and maybe the teacher (who also, for some reason, thought this was all very funny) had said “a-tishoo.” Well, regardless, it was a reasonable replacement. The sneeze and subsequent demise of the victim are aptly summarized by the word “ashes,” for, indeed, we humans are little more than ashes. From ashes we have come, and to ashes we will return.

Yesterday, according to the church calendar, was Ash Wednesday. This day marks the beginning of the forty day period called Lent that precedes Resurrection Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday began in the 8^th century and was first described by an Anglo-Saxon abbot named Aelfric (955-1020). In his Lives of the Saints, he writes, “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.”

As Aelfric observed, the pouring of ashes on one's body and dressing in sackcloth is an ancient practice meant to manifest inner repentance or mourning. It is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. What is probably the earliest occurrence is found at the very end of the book of Job. Job, having been rebuked by God, confessed, "Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). Other examples are found in 2 Samuel 13:19, Esther 4:1,3, Isaiah 61:3, Jeremiah 6:26, Ezekiel 27:30, and Daniel 9:3. In the New Testament, Jesus alluded to the practice in Matthew 11:21: "Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes."

In some churches on Ash Wednesday, Christians are invited to receive a daub of ashes on their foreheads. The pastor or minister applies the ashes in the shape of the cross on the forehead of each, while speaking the words, "For dust you are and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). This is what God spoke to Adam and Eve after they had eaten of the forbidden fruit and had fallen into sin. These words indicated to our first parents the bitterest fruit of their sin, namely death. The ashes on the forehead are meant to remind the Christian of his or her sinfulness and mortality, and, thus, his or her need to repent and get right with God before it is too late. The cross that is formed is meant to remind each Christian of the Good News, that through Jesus Christ crucified there is forgiveness for all sins, guilt, and punishment.

At Living Hope, we don’t daub ashes on foreheads, but maybe it would be wise if we did. Those ashes would serve as a testimony to us of the inner repentance and humility true followers of Jesus will manifest. A daub of ashes would not give us a better standing with God, but they would serve as a reminder that we are but made of ashes, that our lives depend on God’s grace, and that only through Jesus Christ and His cross can we find forgiveness and eternal life.

As I think about all this, maybe it is a good thing that one of my earliest memories is a vivid, kinetic reminder of my mortality and of my need for real life, a life that extends beyond the grave. After all, “Ashes, Ashes, We all fall down.”

How Do You Show Love?

Ah, Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching! Sooo romantic! Sooo beautiful… How will you observe the date? A card to a special someone? A box of chocolates?

For me, nothing sets the mood for Valentine’s Day like this sentence by Charles Panati: “The Catholic Church’s attempt to paper over a popular pagan fertility rite with the clubbing death and decapitation of one of its own martyrs is the origin of this lovers’ holiday.” What a great sentence. I love it.

Okay, lest you think there was a saint who used to bop around from nightclub to nightclub (you know, ‘clubbing’) and died dancing through a low-clearance doorway, here’s the history:

Valentine was a bishop who lived in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Claudius II (c. 270 A.D.). This emperor, Claudius, was a bit ‘off’, and at one point he issued an edict forbidding marriage. The empire was having trouble finding soldiers, so Claudius apparently decided this was caused by marriage, what with soldiers not wanting to leave their wives and kids. (Personally, I wonder if the short life expectancy had anything to do with the recruiting problems.) And Claudius forbid marriage. Bad idea.

Valentine, for his part, objected. He invited young lovers to come to him in secret, where he joined them together in marriage. Claudius, of course, found out about this “friend of lovers,” and he had the bishop brought to the palace. Claudius attempted to convert Valentine to the Roman gods, but Valentine refused and attempted, himself, to convert Claudius. It didn’t work. On February 24, 270, Valentine was clubbed (hit on the head), stoned (with rocks), and then beheaded. Ouch. He died as a result. Anyhow…

According to tradition, there is another story linked with Valentine. While he was in prison awaiting execution, he fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, Asterius. (Ah, sooo romantic!) And through his unswerving faith and love, he miraculously restored her sight. (I wonder how she felt about him after she saw him. Tradition doesn’t say.) He signed his farewell message to her “From Your Valentine,” a phrase that would live long after its author died.

Well, that buries St. Valentine, but not the holiday. The Roman Catholic Church, many years later, attempting to tone down the pagan elements of a popular holiday named Lupercus, resurrected the story of St. Valentine and superimposed his story on the holiday. The Lupercian festival, held annually in mid-February, was devoted to the god Lupercus and included a lottery to assign young women to young men for mutual entertainment. (Yep, entertainment.) This festival had been going on a long time and was extremely popular with the masses. (Gee, I wonder why?) But there were problems. The festival tended to be immoral. (Go figure.) So the church in A.D. 496, led by a stern (and some thought prudish) Pope Gelasius, outlawed the Lupercian festival.

But Gelasius was not an idiot. He knew the people loved both the festival and the games of chance. So he substituted a new tradition for the old. Into the boxes that had once held the names of available and willing single women, he placed the names of saints. Both men and women extracted slips of paper, and in the ensuing year they were expected to emulate the life of the saint whose name they had drawn. And the spiritual overseer of the entire affair? Its patron saint, of course, Valentine.

And so, with reluctance, and the sigh of many a young person, the Romans relinquished their pagan festival and replaced it with the Church’s holy day.

Okay, that’s fun and a little weird. But what can we learn from all this?

I think we can observe, first of all, that Gelasius’s intentions were good. He was attempting to influence his society for Christ by replacing the pagan practices with godly ones. We can and should applaud his attempt. Second, we can observe that he approached the matter wisely. He saw that it was unlikely folks would completely abandon a festival they had enjoyed for years. Rather, he examined that tradition and sought out the amoral elements that could be perpetuated (i.e. the games, the mid-February timing), and replaced the immoral with the moral. Third, he sought to transform a custom from a negative to a positive. He replaced the practice without merely rejecting it.

As we live our Christian lives ‘in the world, but not of it,’ we can use a similar strategy. We can observe the worldly practices of our society and seek to transform them. One way we can do this is by identifying the enjoyable amoral elements of those practices and being careful to reject the immoral without unnecessarily rejecting the amoral. And, then, if we want lasting change or influence to take root, we can seek to replace the immoral practices. Not merelyreject, but replace.

If we do these things, I suspect we will be showing both love for God and love for our neighbors, and that would be a great way to observe Valentine’s Day this year, wouldn’t it?

“Undocumented Citizens”?

If you keep up with national news, you have seen several stories in the last week about immigration and illegal aliens. This is not a new issue, of course, but it continues to fuel debate and polarize the nation. Currently, there are 11 million people living in the United States illegally.

I was listening to a discussion about this on NPR the other day. The same tired arguments were being trotted out by proponents and opponents of a “pathway to citizenship.” The same responses were being offered and the same logical fallacies were being exploited. I was starting to fade out when I heard a term I had not heard before, one that caused my jaw to drop. The term was “undocumented citizens.”

I would like to believe I have kept up with current events. I have heard the terms “undocumented workers” used to refer to “illegal aliens,” and I have observed the mainstream media’s bias away from referring to such immigrants as “illegals,” but this was the first time I had ever heard a politician on the national stage refer to them as “undocumented citizens.” What? Are you kidding me? Have we entered some sort of cognitive wonderland in which contradictory terms can be united into a new truth? Good grief.

And this is where I want to head for a few moments. All politics aside, this issue highlights something Francis Schaeffer observed many years ago as he identified a societal, psychological, and spiritual ‘line of despair’ which society had approached and crossed during the twentieth century. Ultimately it was the widespread acceptance of the possibility that a proposition “A” and a proposition “non-A” could both be true. This constituted the rejection of antipathy and the acceptance, if you will, of nonsense as sense.

The average person doesn’t live his or her life in accordance with such semantics, of course. The nuts-and-bolts of real life would not permit it. Either the spark plug fits into the engine or it doesn’t. It can’t belong in the engine and simultaneously not belong. The computer is either on or off. It is not both. No, in the real world, antithesis rules. But in the nether world of abstract reasoning, however, folks seem to believe magic happens and the impossible is possible.

And here is where I want to, as my wife says, ‘get preachy.’

This mentality seems to have penetrated the religious minds of many Americans concerning the afterlife. While the vast majority of Americans affirm a belief in the afterlife and in a heaven, they reject an absolutist statement concerning citizenship in heaven. It seems they want to believe that both documented citizens and undocumented citizens will be there. But what does the Bible say?

The Bible affirms that humans have long sought to enter into the heavenly kingdom, and it affirms that most have sought to do it in their own ways and on their own terms. And the Bible declares that this method is doomed to failure. The righteousness demanded of citizens of the kingdom is not attainable through works, it is attainable only by the grace of God through faith. The righteousness required is perfection, and this perfection is only attainable by being credited by Almighty God with the righteousness of Christ and subsequently being conformed into His image by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But won’t there be any “undocumented citizens” in the Kingdom of God?

No, the Scriptures are clear that only those whose names have been recorded in the Book of Life will enter the Kingdom of God. Those whose names have not been recorded will be sent to that place reserved for the devil and his angels. This reality is taught by Jesus, with other words, as he explains to Nicodemus the necessity of new birth in the third chapter of John. This new birth, that which coincides with the receiving of Jesus, grants one a position of a son of God, an heir of the Kingdom.

There are more Scriptures we could look at, but you get the point. When Paul speaks of “our citizenship in heaven,” he is referring to a legal standing before God, documented and realized, in the past, in the present and in the future.

Now, personally, having said all that, I don’t get overly concerned about this world’s politics. My stay here is short, and my calling is to labor on behalf of my eternal home. So, honestly, I can observe this issue concerning illegal immigration in the United States and move on. I won’t lose a lot of sleep over it. But I, we, as Christians, cannot ignore the implications of this sort of thinking on the proclamation of the Gospel. We must eschew the relativism of this age and stand firm in the absolutist truths proclaimed in the Bible. Jesus is the Way. Entrance into the Kingdom of God is dependent on a relationship with the Father through Him. Jesus must be proclaimed, heard, and received. We must stand firm in the midst of this evil generation and proclaim that there will be no ‘non-documented citizens’ in Glory. Amen?

Wisdom, Wisdom Teeth, and Wisdom from God

It is good to be skeptical about what you read on the internet.

Jonan had his wisdom teeth removed yesterday, and this prompted me to Google this question: “Why are wisdom teeth called ‘wisdom teeth’?” One of the answers came from wiki.answers.com. The answer there was: “Because by the time you get them, you are old enough and smart enough to grab pliers and rip them out yourself instead going to the dentist and giving them a ridiculous amount to do it when you have all of the tools to do so in your shed.” I think Jonan would beg to differ, considering the amount of pain he is experiencing today and the fact that two of those teeth were still in the bone and growing outward, not upward.

I found a more reasonable answer on a dentistry website. The entry there suggested the following reason: “Third molars have been referred to as ‘teeth of wisdom’ since the Seventeenth Century and simply ‘wisdom teeth’ since the Nineteenth Century. The third molars generally appear much later than other teeth, usually between the ages of 17 and 25 when a person reaches adulthood. It is generally thought among linguists that they are called wisdom teeth because they appear so late, at an age when a person matures into adulthood and is ‘wiser’ than when other teeth have erupted.”

That same article adds this interesting observation: “Lately, science has added some credence to the idea that the third molar does indeed erupt when a person is ‘wiser’. Recent research has shown the brain continues to grow and develop right on through adolescence: in fact, most researchers believe the brain does not reach full maturity until the age of 25. Perhaps, then, our ancestors weren't so far off the mark — that the eruption of “wisdom teeth” is a sign that the carefree days of childhood have given way to the responsibilities of adulthood.”

After Jonan’s surgery yesterday, I had a chance to chat with the oral surgeon for a few moments. He mentioned the importance of dealing with these third molars while one is young, and he described how difficult it can be to remove them if one waits until they appear in the thirties, forties, or fifties. This prompted me to ask him about his oldest patient, and he said the oldest person from whom he had removed a wisdom tooth was a 92-year-old woman! Wow! And yes, that prompted all sorts of other questions, but I won’t go into those here. Suffice it to say that hers was a wisdom tooth that waited until she was toothless and in her nineties before erupting above the gum-line. (And I trust that does not indicate the point in her life when her brain reached maturity.)

Well, regardless, I am not sure we would agree that the brain (always? Usually?) reaches its full maturity by the age of 25. Perhaps it does in a physiological sense, but if maturity is measured by the possession and application of wisdom, I would disagree. The possession and application of wisdom, while possible among the young (even among young children), is rarely possessed or evidenced today, even among the elderly.

That may seem a strong statement, but I base that conclusion on a few theological premsises from God’s Word. See if you agree…

First, the Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is the fear and reverence of the Lord (Proverbs 9:10). In this, I note that the existence of true wisdom is dependent upon recognizing and responding appropriately to the True, Almighty God. And that is the beginning point. It follows, therefore, that those who have failed to recognize the True God or have who refused to acknowledge Him as such (much more likely, given the arguments found in Romans one) and refuse to respond appropriately (with reverence) will not have wisdom. (No source, no river.)

Second, God the Father has spoken in these last days through His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1). It is He Who is the Light of the World (John 8:12), and those who honor Him, honor the Father (John 5:23). Those who do not honor Jesus Christ do not honor the Father who sent Him (John 5:23). In other words, according to Jesus, those who recognize His deity and ascribe to Him the appropriate reverence are doing the same for God the Father. Those who dishonor Him, dishonor the Father. And if this is true, we can conclude that true fear and reverence of God is dependent on an appropriate recognition and response to Jesus Christ. Or, to put it another way, only those who have recognized and appropriately responded to Jesus Christ are possessors of true wisdom (even in its most rudimentary form.) (A discussion concerning the development of true wisdom, through conformity to the image of Christ, is best left for another time.)

Third, Jesus said that few would find would be the ones who find and enter that narrow gate that leads to life (Matthew 7:14). And if we take His statement in context, consider the observations above, and remember Who Jesus is (the Way, the Truth, and the Life), we can conclude that the majority of humans will never come to a saving recognition of Jesus Christ. And, that, furthermore, having failed to do so, the majority will fail to possess and evidence true wisdom.

By this point in the discussion it should be clear that, to some extent, we are equivocating on the term “wisdom.” The ‘wisdom’ that the world speaks of is a different and multi-faceted nature. Would any secular writer refer to wisdom as being sourced in ‘the fear and reverence of the Lord’? I doubt it. And this highlights for us the truth behind Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

And this underscores the ultimate reality that Paul proclaims there, that wisdom is not evidenced by the development of teeth (or taking pliers and ripping them out), but that wisdom is evidenced by the recognition and reverence of Jesus Christ, “Who became for us WISDOM from God!” (1 Cor. 1:30) And that brings us to a simple follow-up question…

Does your life evidence that you have recognized and are reverencing the Lord Jesus Christ?

“And that’s the news…”

Let’s face it, there is always weird stuff in the news. With more than six billion people inhabiting this planet, it’s inevitable that something strange is going to happen to a few of them. But yesterday’s news seemed to top it.

I had finished my quiet time and was settling down to work at the computer, but before diving in, I decided to check the news. I clicked over to Fox News and saw that there was a live video feed of a rescue attempt in Portland, Oregon. I used to live there, so I clicked the link.

The feed was raw video, and there was no audio commentary, but the text beneath the video said that I was watching emergency responders working to reach a woman who had fallen between a cinderblock wall and a concrete building. As the video appeared, I saw a rectangle that had been cut out of the cinderblock wall and an EMT or fireman leaning into the hole and pulling on a woman’s hand. The hand was all I could see of the woman, that and a little bit of the flannel shirt. The EMT tugged on the woman’s wrist, and the woman grabbed the edge of the cinderblock. The knuckles of her hand whitened as she strained to get loose.

Okay, this was strangely compelling. Work would have to wait.

The EMT stopped pulling and called to the workers behind him. A moment later, someone handed him a pair of scissors. His hands and the scissors disappeared into the space between the walls and reemerged a moment later with part of the flannel shirt.

Jonan came up behind me at this point and asked what I was watching. I told him, and he asked how the woman had ended up there. Hmm, good question... We checked around and found a rather puzzling explanation. The woman had been on the roof of a two-story building and had fallen between the edge of that building and the concrete wall of an eight-story building that adjoined it. The space she had fallen into looked to be about a foot to a foot-and-a-half wide. Those were the details, but they didn’t really explain the event, did they?

The EMT took a spray bottle and squirted oil or soapy water on the woman’s arm.

I tried to understand how this could have happened. It was still early morning in Portland, so the accident must have occurred in the middle of the night. The woman had been on the roof, for some reason, and she had somehow stepped into a foot-and-a-half wide gap. Wow, that raised all kinds of other questions. Why was she on the roof? Why was she there in the middle of the night? What would someone be doing walking around a roof-edge at that time?

Once again, the woman grabbed the wall’s edge and pulled. We could see a diamond ring on her finger.

“Boy, Jonan,” I said, “Could you imagine getting to work, sitting down, starting your work, checking out this video, and then having that awful moment of, hey, I know that ring. I think that’s my wife’s ring.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That would be a bad moment. You’d probably want to get down there.” Yeah, I guess so.

The EMT stopped squirting the spray bottle and he smiled. “She must not be badly injured,” I said. We went back to watching.

The scissors returned and more of the flannel shirt came out. The skin got oilier. “Wow,” I said, “This could be really awkward for her when she does get out.” More jokes and smart comments ensued.

And then, as in a birth, the head emerged, beet-red from the strain. And then a neck, and a shoulder (with a blue shirt on it – whew, that was a relief). And then… plop, out came the woman. She stumbled to the ground, hesitated, and staggered to her feet. And then she smiled and raised a triumphant fist.

Okay, that was weird.

The second weird story appeared late in the day as questions emerged about Notre Dame college football star Manti Te’o’s relationship with his ‘girlfriend.’ I’ll try to keep my summary of the story short and as understandable as possible. It won’t be easy. The whole thing is really strange.

So, there is this guy, Manti Te’o, who plays football for Notre Dame. He had been in a ‘committed’ relationship with a girl for several years. Unfortunately, just as he was nominated to receive the Heisman Trophy, and just as his team went into the national championship, he received word that his girlfriend had died. This was not completely unexpected, as she had been languishing with leukemia for a couple of years, but it did provide a bittersweet backdrop for his football success.

What was unexpected was the revelation that this girl never existed. In the late afternoon, the story broke that Te’o had lied. He had been in a relationship for two years with an invisible girl. All right, let the jokes begin. (Oh, you, you’re so shallow, I can see right through you.) Tweets flew across the Internet, trading slams on Te’o and his pathetic love life.

Then, even weirder, a short time later the story was updated to say that Te’o had not lied, he had been duped. Somebody had set him up, and he had been the victim of a terrible hoax. He really had thought the girl existed, and he had mourned her passing and sent flowers to her grave. (Hmm, which grave?)

So, that’s tough. It raises some questions of its own, like, when this guy gets drafted into the NFL, will he face less ribbing because he was suckered rather than because he was pathetic? Ouch.

In the late evening, Jonan, Grace and I were talking about these two stories, and Grace challenged me to see whether I could find some connection or similarity and make a spiritual observation. It was an interesting challenge, and I pondered it as I fell asleep.

I awoke thinking that there is, indeed, a connection that can be drawn and a lesson learned. It has to do with the plight of the needy, our instinctive urge to establish causality and justification, and our Christian responsibility to provide love and help.

Let me see if I can explain that briefly. In both cases, a person was experiencing pain and humiliation who needed help. In the first case, the woman was trapped in a life-threatening and humiliating situation in which she was experiencing physical discomfort and psychological pain. She was uncertain whether she could be safely extricated, and she was completely unable to help herself. In the second case, Te’o was trapped in a national news-story that was painful and humiliating. He had publicly confessed a love and devotion to a fictitious woman, and now he was being paraded through the media as a liar or a fool.

In both cases, our natural instinct is to understand the why of the event. My mind, for instance, went in all directions with both stories. In the first, I imagined that the woman had been drunk and careless and had staggered into the hole, and then I imagined that she had worked late and returned to the car she parked on the roof of a garage, only to stumble as she squeezed past another car and fall into the hole. Two very different stories with two very different reasons for the mishap; both completely imaginary. In the second story, I imagined Te’o fabricating the story to gain sympathy and attention, thus the work of a psychologically needy person. And then I imagined him the victim of someone else’s sick joke, one in which the perpetrators went to great lengths to make him look a fool. And both of those stories are my own imaginations. The bottom line in both cases, at least for me, is, I don’t know why. But the mere act of thinking of possible reasons caused me to wonder this: would my attitudinal response to Te’o or the woman differ on the basis of the reason for the mishap?

In both cases, regardless of the reasons, our Christian responsibility is to extend love and help. Both individuals needed, and still need, help, encouragement and comfort. Whether Te’o’s pain is real or imaginary, it is real. Whether it is caused by his own inner needs or by the evil actions of others, he is in pain. And that pain will persist as this story follows him. The question for Christians is whether they will prove a comfort to him, recognizing that we have all encountered hardships through our designs or the designs of others and choosing to pray for him and act, as possible, to help him. Similarly, in the case of the woman trapped between the walls, the challenge for Christians is to suspend judgment and focus on providing loving care. Yes, the type of response will vary according to the reasons, but the attitude and motivation for extending that response, love, should never vary.

Ultimately, for me, this has been the reminder that these stories have brought: “Judge not, that you be not judge, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” In other words, I need to be careful not to sit back and read news stories as a judge. I must read them first as a fellow traveler in life and as a follower of Christ, as a Christian who is on a spiritual pilgrimage to glory, and as one who ought to stop and assist others along the way. News stories are worth reading if they expand my awareness of my fellow humans and their plight, if they move me to intercessory prayer and acts of compassion. But if they lead me to a critical spirit and an indifferent attitude, are they really worth reading?

What have you read in the news lately?

Waterlogged Cellphones, Conjunctivitis and Dim Lamps

“Eye boogers” is the term Andrew used to describe them, and they are as gross as they sound. The morning they crusted his eyes shut, he panicked, thinking he had gone blind. We washed them away and they fell like scales (yeah, maybe a little like Paul’s), from his eyes, and he could see! Well, sort of. “Everything’s foggy,” he said, as he peered through his swollen, red peepers.

Thus began pinkeye’s romp through the Pilet household, and a particularly virulent romp it proved. Moriah succumbed, and then Josiah, and Grace, and Jonan, and Andrew again, and then… as to one born out of due time… I did. (No, really, I thought I had avoided the infection. I know it is really contagious, but I had lasted more than a week without contracting it.) And that morning I awoke with swollen pus-filled eyes and opened them to a blurry half-lit world. No amount of blinking or rubbing helped. It all was a blur. Bugger.

This turn of events coincided with the recovery of my cellphone. Sunday evening, the church’s neighbor brought my phone to the church, explaining he had found it in the church’s driveway as the snow had started to melt. I had prepared myself, mentally, for this possibility, so I was not surprised when the screen remained blank as I powered up the phone. Water had seeped into the screen and damaged the display.

I took the phone home and put it in a bowl of uncooked rice. A couple of days in the rice helped a little, as it soaked up some of the moisture and caused the display on the outside of the phone to start working partially.

Yesterday morning, I sat at our kitchen table and struggled to clear my (treated but still recovering) vision and examine the cell phone. It was hopeless. The combination of my boogered eyes and the phone’s waterspotted display made it impossible for me to use the phone. Yep, like Andrew said, “Everything’s foggy.”

These events caused me to ponder Christ’s statement concerning the eye. He said, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.” Wow, isn’t that the truth? A week before, I opened my eyes and light flooded in. This week, I opened my eyes, and a dim stream trickled in. And, so He continues, “If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” Again, how true. How disheartening and frustrating it was to find myself robbed of this most basic sense.

But, of course, Christ was not talking ultimately about the physical body. He was talking about the eye of one’s soul. In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, it seems that He is speaking of one’s eye as that which reveals the truest desires of one’s heart. Right before His statements concerning the eye, He speaks of treasure and encourages that heavenly treasures be sought, rather than earthly treasures. And then, immediately following His statements concerning the eye, He speaks of the impossibility of serving two masters and the necessity of choosing between the two options… God and mammon. Thus, it seems that Christ’s emphasis is that the light-filled eye, the one that is a bright lamp for the soul, is the one that sees material things and temporal matters with an eternal and God-centered perspective. And this only makes sense, as we seek to emulate the One who is the True Light, the Light of the World.

So, as I sat at the kitchen table, I found myself ironically reminded by a poor cellphone display and blurry eyesight of the relative unimportance of those things. What matters most is clear spiritual vision and a perpetual focus on eternity. Perhaps this is was what Paul was driving at when he wrote, “we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

This week, I hope your physical eyesight and cellphones are doing better than mine. But, more importantly, I hope that your spiritual vision is clear and your sights are set on eternity.

Cellphones and Scripture

Nicole and I did a bit of post-Christmas shopping last Saturday and found ourselves battling a fresh layer of snow as we returned home. Night had fallen and I struggled to see through our ice encrusted windshield as I pulled into the driveway. I gave the car a little extra gas and pushed it over the potholes, past the little patch of trees, and up the side of the knoll toward the house. As I did, the headlights reflected against the side of our other car. It was stuck at a sixty degree angle in the middle of the driveway with its rear wheels encased in snow and ice. And leaning against the car was a very cold-looking Grace.

We rolled to a stop and opened our doors as Grace trudged toward us. “Dad,” she cried, “why didn’t you answer your phone? I’ve called and called.”

My phone. As soon as I heard those words, I had that strange ‘sixth-sense’ feeling that something wasn’t right. I jammed my hand into my pocket and, sure enough, the phone was gone. This led to several minutes of frantic searching until, finally, reluctantly, I accepted the awful reality… I had lost my phone. Aaaaggggghhh!

I retraced my steps, but unfortunately the afternoon had included some snow shoveling at the church, a couple of stops on ice-and-snow-filled streets, and several stops at local shops. There was too much snow and too many stops. And after pushing through several knee-high snowdrifts, I had to accept that the phone was gone. It had, most likely, slipped from my pocket into the snow and been covered. It might not be seen again until the spring thaw.

That phone was not a fancy one. It was not a smartphone, and it didn’t have a bunch of games, music and business apps on it. But it did have all my contacts and phone numbers on it. And what a loss that proved! I couldn’t remember a single number. I guess that’s what happens when you routinely choose a name from your contact list and press send.

So I didn’t have any of those numbers. I did not even know Nicole’s cellphone number. All I knew is that it was “2” on my speed-dial. Wow. That’s pathetic. And, on top of that, somewhere out there, under the snow, my phone was still doing its job, receiving and recording messages. I scheduled myself a daily appointment to call the cell and retrieve my messages.

This got me thinking about the role of communication devices in our lives, and it led me, circuitously, to consider the role of Scripture in our spiritual lives. Most of us would not consider leaving home these days without a cell phone. We carry them wherever we go and we rely on them constantly. We trust them to enable us to talk with others and to hear from them. And we do not realize the extent to which we rely on them until we are forced to go without them. But when we lose them, we feel cut off, disconnected.

The Scriptures are God’s Written Word to us, and they are the primary means the Holy Spirit uses in communicating with us. In them, we hear God’s voice, learn His character, and discern His purposes for our lives. They are an essential and divine tool of communication between Him and us.

And yet, it seems, some Christians feel comfortable leaving the Scriptures behind, literally and figuratively. How many Christians have gone through an entire week, arrived at Sunday morning and searched for their Bibles, only to discover they had left them at church the previous Sunday? Quite a few. I’ve seen many of these Bibles at churches throughout the years. But even more thought-provoking is the possibility that many Christians might be leaving behind the Scriptures in a figurative sense. How many Christians go through the week without considering the words of the Scriptures, without meditating upon the precepts of God? Some? Many?

Without wishing to belabor the metaphor, let me observe that neglecting the Scriptures during the week is like failing to answer one’s cell phone or check one’s voicemail over an extended period of time. The messages pile up, and it becomes more and more difficult to work through them and act on them. When we neglect the Scriptures we deprive ourselves from the ‘constant contact’ (hmm) with our Creator for which we were created.

As you consider this, I hope you will be reminded of the importance of daily, continual immersion in the Scriptures. I encourage you to cling to the Scriptures, even more than your cellphone. Find a way to soak in the Word of God. Read it. Meditate on it. Memorize it. Live it.

And, by the way, I do have an ulterior motive in mentioning my phone. If you have tried to reach me, and I did not answer right away, now you know why. And… if anyone happens to have an old non-smartphone lying around and are willing to let me use it, that would be awesome. J Thanks.