Little Things that Happen

Patrick O’Brien
1914-2000
It snowed in the ancient Hungarian capital today. No accumulation-- just a warning against the premature assumption of Spring.
We had another death in our wider Missionary Community last Saturday, Someone I first met in Romania during the days of Ceausescu, someone whose wedding I performed in 1989, someone agonizingly young. Partially to put off something painful, partially because I wrote about death in the last blog, I will postpone the eulogy until later. Today as a kind of defense mechanism, apropos of nothing in particular, I retreat to the trivial.
A few years ago I was reading the auto-biographical note by Philip Ryken on the Tenth Presbyterian Church Philadelphia website. James Montgomery Boice was secure enough to have a Pastor of Preaching on his staff at Tenth Pres, and he landed a great one when he recruited Philip Ryken while he was finishing up graduate work at Oxford. When Jim Boice died in 2000 he was succeeded by PR, one of the best preachers in America. In the bio Dr. Ryken registers extravagant interest in the historical novels of Patrick O’Brien—an author I’d never heard of though I learned later that the film ‘Master and Commander’ was made from one of his books. I was intrigued by the enthusiastic endorsement but not enough to do anything about it. Sometime later I discovered that a colleague in Budapest who reads and cares about the life of the mind was just as enthusiastic about the novels as Philip Ryken. I was again intrigued but, again, not enough to be goaded into action.
On February 1rst I arrived at the Budapest airport to board a flight to Moscow. The departure lounge at my gate was full so I took a seat in a deserted area next to another gate where all the passengers had just boarded. Prominent among the empty seats was a derelict volume, perhaps intentionally discarded, more likely accidentally forgotten. The flight was gone. The owner was likely gaining altitude already. But I waited a decent interval anyway before I touched the book. I wanted to satisfy my own ethical standards (regretfully never as high as, say, the Apostle Paul’s) before I exercised the old Finders Keepers prerogative - an option found nowhere in Holy Scripture. I tried not to view the acquisition as appropriating something which did not belong to me but more as providing a good home for an orphan. Oh yes, I almost forgot. I really ought to tell you the title:
Maritius Command by Patrick O’Brien the fourth of the twenty books in the Aubrey/Maturin series.
The Times of London calls O’Brien the greatest historical novelist of all time. Lavish praise that.
I’ve taken the hint.
And I’ve begun the book.
I feel guided by an unmistakable Providence.
I regard free books as a kind of sign.
Though we live in a decaying post-literary age--
Maybe I will become hopeful yet.

The Great Thing and The Greater

Garrison Keillor signs off The Writer’s Almanac by saying : “Be well, do good work, and stay in touch.” I’ve not been well. I’ve done hardly any work. And I’ve not been in touch. We were in the US for Missions Conferences Feb. 10- March 5. When I boarded the plane to return I was ill. I am still ill, and only now ready to write something.
Our itinerary on the ground didn’t go as planned. Neither Virginia nor Texas was on the schedule but I flew to Dallas and Jane joined me in the drive to Virginia. The visits were necessary because someone died. The visits were unscheduled because the deaths were unforeseen.
Rachel was a friend who entered eternity at age twenty-four. She was tall, lovely, athletic and a believer. While studying in Vienna she visited us in Budapest . Deaths like hers make people ask “Why?” while others caution: “Don’t ask why.” I don’t ask the question. Neither do I caution. Neither can I answer the question though I sometimes try. Christians don’t often know “why”; they always know “Who.” Rachel’s grandmother is named Ruth. I once told Rachel her grandmother was the greatest Christian I’d ever known. I believed that because of Ruth’s stewardship of suffering. I imagine that earlier suffering is slight compared to losing Rachel. We drove to Virginia to hug Ruth’s neck and tell her how much we love her. We found her clinging to the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Her faith is deeper than her powers of articulation, deeper than death. Such is our God; such are His servants.
A few days after Rachel went home my Professor in Dallas died. He too visited us in Budapest. Harold Hoehner was a Cambridge PhD who published the definitive work on Ephesians in his generation. No seventy-four year old needs a great reason to die. But there was no warning. He came in from a run. Exhale on earth, inhale in heaven as one of his eulogists said. Three of my Professor’s four children have been missionaries to Russia and the fourth walks with God. I envy him that more than the Cambridge doctorate (though his college was King’s!) or the Ephesians commentary.
While he lay dying Henry James said “So the great thing comes.” They were reputed to have been his last words. Death is a great thing: inevitable, inexorable, and unrelenting. But there is a greater thing. That’s why we become missionaries, to tell the world about that greater thing. For those who die without Gospel Hope death is a permanent tragedy. The Cross has rendered death a temporary inconvenience. Savage but temporary.
I like to think my friends Harold Hoehner and Rachel Menkel have met by now in a land that is fairer than day.
Met among the shining ones.
Met before the Throne.
I know that I too will meet them there one day.
I guarantee you I will.

The Two Birthdays

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born this day 200 years ago. I have lived 44 of my 58 years in five states which seceded. In the South historic memory is dogged by the shadow of Lincoln’s adamantine resolve. This is true for two reasons: 1) With the exceptions of Gettysburg and Antietam the ground war was fought on Southern soil. 2) We lost.

And it was better that we lost.

Nearly unanimous among Southerners is the conviction that we fought to preserve States’ Rights not slavery. I adopt the thesis myself. Only a small fraction of Southerners owned slaves. Sharecroppers were generously represented among my own ancestors. Our family were more in danger of becoming slaves themselves than of owning slaves.

Not that danger lay all in one direction.

It sounds callous to insist that one thing nearly as bad as being owned by another human being is to own another human being. But I do insist. We must measure comparative misfortune by considerations beyond the limit of our biological life. Once we are dead the proposition that those sinned against have the advantage over those who sin will have been validated. Those who enlist the Bible in support of slavery are theologically confused. The moral ruin visited upon the slave owner is too little commented upon. By this I mean sexual temptation. Thomas Jefferson was no anomaly. Many who were called Christians were guilty of the same offense.

Which brings me back to my contention that it was better to lose. It may be that the South would have turned toward Emancipation in time without a war. But by 1861 delay was unconscionable. Would that God had granted a Wilberforce to America. Whether ending slavery by 1865 was worth the cumulative agony of the killed, the maimed, and the bereaved only God can say.

Though my great-grandfather’s brother fell at Gettysburg I am grateful to Lincoln for more than preserving the Union, whatever his motives may have been.

For this I say Happy Birthday.

We live in a world shaped intellectually and practically by Charles Darwin. Darwin’s conclusions were part biology, part metaphysics, and part intuition. When students who are new believers ask about evolution I ask them to study two kinds of people: Real Christians who are evolutionists and real scientists who believe in Creation. Of the former there are many: In the latter category there are a few. I am neither. The word ‘Creationist’ is under assault. Soon, like the word ‘Fundamentalist’, it may be all but abandoned. Just as thoughtful Fundamentalists began to feel more comfortable calling themselves Evangelicals, so the Creationists seek shelter under the umbrella of Intelligent Design. I’m not quite ready to throw the word ‘Creationist’ overboard. One should never allow one’s ideological enemies to dictate the terms of self designation.

Though evolution within species is irrefutable, I do not believe that man is the latest product of an evolutionary process, nor do I believe that Adam had organic antecedents.

I end with something positive about Darwin. It is, after all, his 200th. By his tri-centennial I will have long moved in circles where his views are wholly discredited. So I take the opportunity while I have it.

I commend Charles Darwin for his missionary ardor and incessant labor. Darwin signed on as a ship’s naturalist on the Beagle at a time when surviving a long sea voyage was not a good bet. He remained on that ship for nearly five years (1831-1836). His findings (to my lay and non-scientific mind) were mischievously construed. But I give him this: He was passionate about discovery and declaration, and he prosecuted his task with vigor. In that he is a model for Christians.

And for that I say Happy Birthday.

Missions in the Russian Winter

I write from Kursk, Russia, eight hours south of Moscow. Kursk is the city which gave its name to the doomed submarine.
Russia overwhelms before it swallows. It is a place of vast expanses, pitiless weather, and an interminable trudging populace. It is February in the Russian winter.
Last night I visited one of the two American families in residence. It was my first trip out of doors since arriving Monday morning. This couple and their two children are five years into the experiment. They do not call themselves missionaries,but they are. Missionaries are my heroes. Little wonder that I try to imitate them. The wife is a math teacher fluent in French. The husband is a practitioner of the Ignatian exercises. I promise to tell you what that means once I learn myself.
I am accompanied by the blind genius Oleg Shevkun. He makes me a force in Russian. He spins gold from straw. Oleg is the best interpreter in Russia.His humor lights up the church. His voice graces the radio. Sadly, today he lost that voice. Our quarters are close. We make an eccentric household. Eccentricity is not an unfamiliar charge for me. Oleg is not entirely centric himself.
Oleg's voice will return tomorrow and we will begin again.
We are training pastors, women's leaders and students.
They are ravenous for God's Word and we try to help.
Vladimir Putin notwithstanding, Jesus is King over Russia.
He reigns from heaven above.
In fact Jesus is Lord over the whole universe.
How I love telling it out.
I grow old, but I am grateful.
It's cold outside.
But I don't care.

THE AMAZING STAR-BREATHER

John Updike died this week. In the past year we’ve lost Norman Mailer, William Buckley, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn as well .Frankly I don’t feel so well myself.
So I’d better write something today.
Track these four threads with me please.
1. I was born in Atlanta and grew up in a suburb .For my first 25 years I knew I’d never be able to live far away. Venturing to Dallas for Seminary stretched me no end. I felt like Ferdinand Magellan. As it turns out I haven’t lived in Georgia since 1972-- the year I finished college.
2. Through the years I heard from home-town friends about Louie Giglio, who spreads the fame of Jesus from North Atlanta.
3. Four years ago I was taking out the trash at my mother’s house in Flowery Branch, Georgia. I don’t take the trash out often so the memory is vivid. Nearby a lady I’d never seen was parting with a little trash of her own. She asked:” Are you Ronnie Stevens?” Stalling for time as I pondered my next move I recklessly admitted to the charge.
Her first name is gone from memory, but she registered her surname as Giglio. I said I was pleased to make her acquaintance, and asked if she were related to LOUIE Giglio. She confided that he was her son. Turns out my own mother had been regaling Mrs. Giglio (whose friend was a neighbor) with tales of her own missionary son. Mrs. G., a budding trivia expert in her own right, had somehow remembered my name. “How do you know Louie?” she asked. “I don’t know Louie,” I answered. “Your son is famous.”
Now that’s a line bound to make any mother feel those tiresome trash-disposal efforts are well worth the trouble. I’m sure I hoped the encounter would lead to joint ministry at some dazzling venue.
Alas it was not to be.
In fact I never saw Louie Giglio’s face or heard his voice until today
And today only on DVD.
4. Last Sunday after worship a young Hungarian put the DVD into my hand. He asked if I knew Louie Giglio. I had waited almost 5 years for that opening so I pounced immediately, “No, but I know his mother.” He told me I had to watch the presentation. Not only I, but the whole Congregation as well. Such was the lad’s fervor.
Well today I did watch. The talk is called HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD. I know the expression is dated and of suspect provenance, but the words ‘mind blowing’ are not amiss.
The title is more than justified. Louie begins with a survey of the macrocosm. Think immensity. Prominent among the projected images is the black hole at the center of the Whirlpool Galaxy perched at an angle perpendicular to our own. The image of that galaxy center is shaped like a Cross. Perhaps I should say “THE CROSS”. As he descends to the microcosm he explores the wonders of human conception, the way eyesight is conferred, the human genome and, finally, the subject of laminin –the substance which holds our cells together. Turns out the structure of laminin is also cross shaped.
The juxtaposition, shaped by a master communicator, was powerfully wrought. There was a running exposition of Psalm 33 throughout.
“By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made
And by the breath of His mouth all their hosts.”
The’ hosts’, of course, are the heavenly bodies.
He calls God THE STAR BREATHER. And when he moved in toward the Cross he declared that THE STAR BREATHER BECAME THE SIN-BEARER!
You can view an excerpt at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4
I hope you get the 40 minute segment entire.
The effort won’t disappoint.
Hands could be raised.
Tears could be shed.
And that would be entirely appropriate.
THE STAR-BREATHER IS AN AWESOME GOD.

The White House and My House

For the last five weeks an African refugee from our church has been staying in our home. His name is Stephen. It is an easy hospitality for me to extend as Jane is still in the US . It is not an unselfish hospitality. Stephen cooks and I do not. For the last five days Stephen has been glued to CNN. I can hear him downstairs clapping, laughing, shouting amen. Stephen has never visited America . He was born in Cameroon . He has not seen his wife or children for ten years. His Hungarian visa does not allow him to work. For that reason he is homeless. He has precious little to celebrate.
But he is celebrating. He is celebrating because the President of the United States had an African father. Stephen’s sense of participation and enfranchisement through Barack Obama’s presidency is profound.
I share some of Stephen’s enthusiasm. Our new President is brilliant, stylish and a soaring orator. He has a beautiful family. We’ve not had a President this winsome since Ronald Reagan. No President has inspired so much hope since Franklin Roosevelt. I doubt if even George Washington himself entered office with such a tailwind. He’ll need the momentum. Oratory won’t count for much with the likes of Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong-il.
I wish our President well. Our country wearied of the last President. Our war aims are not clear. Our economy is…well… you know. Were it not for this fresh start our country would be in near despair.
In the years I have been a Christian the Lord has blessed individuals and ministries I didn’t expect Him to bless. The Lord has blessed individuals and ministries I would not have blessed. And, candidly, He has blessed individuals and ministries I did not want Him to bless. This is so because He is wise and I am not. This is so because He is gracious and I am not. This is so because He is God.
But I do want Him to bless President Obama. The very name ‘Barack’ means ‘blessed.’ As his name is so let him be. I want that blessing because of Iraq and Afghanistan. I want that blessing because I have friends who’ve lost jobs. I want it most of all because I want African-Americans to bask in their own contribution to American achievement.
I want it for lots of reasons.
But I did not vote for Barack Obama.
And I would never vote for him.
This week he called for hope and opportunity.
This week he reached out to “gay and straight.”
In the past he has looked with favor on decriminalizing 20 million guilty who entered our country illegally.
Notably excluded from the comprehensive amnesty and good will are the only truly innocent—children yet unborn. They will be denied not only the right to live in America but the right to live at all.
They will be scorched, poisoned and dismembered in their mothers’ wombs.
Whither hope and opportunity for these?
I have heard the charges of simple-mindedness and shallowness leveled at one issue voters.
I have heard Christian opinion-makers like Jim Wallis and Donald Miller tell me there are other humanitarian issues to be considered beyond the slaughter of the unborn and the Democratic Party scores well on those.
I have Democrat friends who are godly and intelligent who tell me to get over it.
But I can’t.
And I never will.

Resolution, Reckoning and the Hidden Life

…reckon…yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:11

Many of our New Year’s resolutions will have been forgotten by now. January fuels the determination that things will be different this time. But experience is cruel. The former patterns tend to reassert themselves. .
Yet Scripture requires that we ‘reckon.’ We class reckoning and resolution as similar if not identical things. The word ‘reckon’ is from an older translation. More modern versions translate the original Greek with words like ‘consider’. Still, the older term is better.
The command to reckon is the first command in the book of Romans. Scripture never calls us to mindless activism. Truth must supply a motive for effort. And truth must be ascertained. The great Apostle establishes the foundational truth for this reckoning through five chapters and ten verses.
That truth as expounded by Paul has to do with the Death and Resurrection of the Holy One. The death of Christ is a cosmic event with personal consequences. Time, eternity, and the universe itself are all permanently changed by the death of God’s Son. By Christ’s death, death is slain, disarmed, its terror voided. Through His Resurrection our own life is elevated above an animal existence, invested with a purpose which would have been impossible had the sinless Savior disintegrated in His grave.
Resolution is like reckoning in that it expresses the intention that real change be effected. Yet there remain differences between biblical reckoning and our normal approach to resolution.
1. Resolution is usually self-regarding. Reckoning requires a concentration on Christ and His achievement.
2. Resolution is the determination that change must take place. Reckoning is the recognition that change has taken place.
3. Resolution looks mainly toward the future. Reckoning is ever conscious of the past. Two thousand years ago in Jerusalem the Son of God died to break sin’s power. The Cross is the focus of reckoning. Resolution hopes for a new reality. Reckoning flows from a new reality
4. Resolution is the attempt to attain a goal. Reckoning is the appropriation of a fact.
5. Resolution succeeds by human will. Reckoning advances by faith.
Christianity is very much an interior phenomenon. Jesus declared such when He denounced anger in addition to murder, lust in addition to adultery. God’s demand for purity in the inward life defined Jesus’ controversy with the Pharisees. If a cup is dirty on the inside it matters little if the outside is washed. Repentance, belief, joy and reckoning are all functions of an inward consciousness.
Over 30 years ago an obscure author named Miles Stanford (1914-99) wrote a spiritual life trilogy first published privately. The last of the three (after ‘The Principle of Position’ and ‘The Green Letters’) was called ‘The Reckoning that Counts.’ The little book (get it if you can) was an exposition of the Romans 6:11 theme. I regard it as a minor classic. There is a current obsession with making ministry ‘work’ through technique. Ought there not to be a prior concern with making the Christian life work –seeing that life lived out practically as prescribed by the Lord and His Apostles? When we say “lived out practically” we mean obedience: consistent, self-denying, joyous.
In the end “success” will be defined by God Himself.
When we understand that definition we can be sure it will have to do with what is happening on the inside, with what Scripture calls ‘the heart’.
Let us give ourselves to the cultivation of those interior spaces.
Let us resolve to reckon.