about Granny

My grandmother died today. She was 102 years old. She wasn’t eating very much these last few months and she wouldn’t take her medication, and once around Christmas, when the caretakers came in to get her dressed and give her pills, she tried to bite them. For some time now she had a hard time remembering her family, and her quality of life was waning terribly, especially on those who cared for her. Apparently she died of old age, can you believe that? I think she was ready to be called up yonder, and made a choice to go. Good for you Granny!

Her death today got me thinking about her life. 102 years of life. That’s almost biblical.

She was … that’s sad to write. She was a beautiful and distant old woman to me. She is my adopted grandmother because my dad was courageous and loving enough to adopt me as he fell in love with my mother and married her. I know my grandmother loved me, and there was always this distinct southern air that I wasn’t blood. From elementary school through High School, she was the person who consistently spoke about her faith and about God and Jesus. Every time she would come over to our house she would sit down at the piano and play at least 500 times, “Take my cup Lord, fill it up, and make me whole.” Every one in my family, when we hear that old familiar tune, are taken back to our living room, watching an old woman with emotion and passion pounding out that tune; all of us blushing with embarrassment at her faith and reckless regard for decency and orderly worship on the appropriate day of the week. She could worship anytime, anywhere, and we can recite every verse to that song.

She gave me a bible my freshman year in high school, with tears in her eyes, and a longing that I would be baptized in her lifetime … baptized the Baptist way, full immersion. I was baptized a Methodist, and sprinkled with water as an infant. She just didn’t think that was right, and I am sure she wasn’t confident that I would end up in Glory. So, she longed for the day when I would give my heart to Christ and come to the cleansing water of the Lord’s love for me, and get dunked.

She had a toy poodle named Ginger while we were growing up. After her beloved husband died, that little dog became her best ever friend. One night, after one of our weekly dinners, I was asked to drive Granny home. She had just had her brakes fixed, and I didn’t know it. So, with Ginger in her lap, and her crock pot of beans between her feet (they were always so salty), I pressed a little too hard on the brakes and Ginger ended up in the beans. Granny was pretty upset, I got the giggles, and she prayed hard for my soul.

One summer, when I was trying desperately to be the next Jimmy Buffet in college, she bravely came to my first gig at a bar. She was dressed like she was going to church, and disconcertingly proud amidst a room full of sinners. After the first two songs, she slowly slipped into a mess of embarrassment as I made a fool of myself and was asked to leave the bar forever. She never said a word against me.

She was a distant woman to me and we rarely spoke. Her townhome was adorned with gaudy gold cherubs, and hundreds of pieces of china she had painted with pictures of fruit. I am told she made a huge impact as a bible teacher and church pianist and vocalist. I am happy for the people she touched. They are happy-sad today. Every Christmas card or birthday card she had a penchant for underlining words that were important for us to hear. It was funny and strange for me to read cards with underlined words. It made me feel like she was pinching my cheek from far away. She wrote in a bible she purchased for me on my birthday, with beautiful penmanship:

"January 19, ‘78

To Tommy, my beloved grandson, who is rapidly growing into such a fine young gentleman. If you study this Book, and obey it’s Author, your life will be beautiful and a blessing indeed-
You are so dear to me, Tom, and I pray for you daily.
With deep affection,
Your Grandmother Helen
These verses have shaped and influenced my own life more than any others since I
became a Christian when I was twelve years old. Read them and believe them!"

Rom. 8:28, Math 6:33, Phil 4:19, Psa 34:7, Psalm 91:11, Psalm 37:4

May her teaching and encouragement be a blessing to you. As a Presbyterian pastor it appears providential that I am a preacher and a teacher given what she wrote and how she cared enough to pray for me every day. She knew something I couldn't see. When you get a chance, let your grand children know they are beloved, and pray for them. It feels good even after all these years.

Thanks Granny. May the Christ you love carry you home. Hope the music is a delight, and even though I’m not going to get dunked, I’ll see you later.

Thinking of you,

Tom

about days

As we pulled up to a red light, with my sons in the car helping me with church errands gathering items for our monthly mission to feed the homeless in Las Vegas, the car in front of us had a white bumper sticker with large red lettering; it read, “LIFE SUCKS.” In Las Vegas there are countless moments as a parent chauffer where you shudder at the thought of what your children will read or see while driving to church, a friend's house, or shopping. This particular sighting did not cause me to say our prophetic cry, "Look away." My heart simply began to race as I watched our youngest mouth the words to the bumper sticker, look thoughtful, and then ask, “Dad, what does 'Life Sucks' mean?”

"For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed." Psalm 139:13-16

Lord, what will we continue to become? Are the days you have formed for us always full of change and wonder? What is in a day formed by you?

The days formed by God create powerful change. The weight and pressure of every day create moments of transformation, especially as we choose God’s good and perfect will. As we choose to do God’s will, the bible becomes a gift of God’s ideas and plan for our lives helping us to continue following God. Following God pulls us through the days formed for us in the strength of God’s will, often dragging us into a world fighting against God’s perfect desire of love. When we choose to go outside of God’s boundaries of grace in the daylight hours, we run into the weight of the world fighting against God’s formative existence. Sometimes, as we live within God’s grace, life manages to create its own will of confusion and destruction tearing at the day God created for us. With daytime being created in God’s perfect will, and with the struggles of sin so prevalent, it is deep wisdom calling us to follow God in the midst of life.

When people choose to not live in love, we crash against a day formed in unconditional love, grace, and forgiveness, given in the selflessness of God. The struggle of life is between our choices and God’s formed days. The great effort is to keep within God’s grace, no matter the choices of the world against God. Giving into God’s will against the pressures of the day; giving into the weight of change evident with every day’s problems and opportunities and struggles and celebrations as they are interpreted in God’s will of love; giving into every day created by God, transforms and shapes us.

We are challenged in our faith and shaken to our core with tragedies completely opposite to your will (the death of a child, the announcement of disease, tsunami’s or hurricane’s destruction, lines of hungry and homeless at food shelters, abusiveness in a home, etc…). These evils we did not choose, these the world chose against God, and we are trampled in the midst of these choices. The choice to follow God becomes a choice of anguish and distress and we are scarred. Are these the days you formed for us; days of great pain and suffering, tragedies and sorrow supporting imperfection and sin while we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God? Are these days one lament after another crying out a liturgy of “life sucks?”

For those of us who struggle, we have a God who promises created days long before we were born, and those days are perfectly laid within the foundation of God’s love for the world. The choices nestled within this created day in God’s perfect will become a struggle in formation as we follow God’s son; a struggle for new life and new humanity in the Christ. The world in sin only sees itself and its only action becomes what it can take from an other. Our struggle is against powers and principalities that are against God’s perfect will, while we live to glorify God and do God’s will. Life is what is happening as we follow God; eternal life carries the scars of this life’s choices radiating God’s glory of being good and faithful servants. The imperfect world enclosed in a perfect will, the infinite attached to the finite, create moments of empowered struggles where we are shaped and formed into God’s likeness. These days have been created so God may be glorified and God’s perfect will can be experienced. The world is then transformed under the pressure of God’s grace; a relentless transforming grace no matter what the world chooses.

I told my sons, “You know where were going this afternoon, right? To feed the homeless. Well, for some of them life isn’t going so well and this bumper sticker talks about how difficult life can be. It's also a reminder that we need to help people, and show them life is also full of love.” They said, “Cool.”

Just a thought,

Pastor Tom

about a blue Kentucky moon

“Ever had fried bologna preacher boy,” said the greasy long haired cook in the kitchen of the mission camp in Bowling Green, Kentucky. “Nope, but I’ll try it as long as you all eat it with me,” I said smiling. They sliced the bologna off the slab, fried it up, and we walked outside with our paper plates stacked with slices of this strange after dinner treat. The moon was bright and appeared so close that if you threw a piece of the bologna at the moon it would stick. Two slices into our stack, Roy showed up out of the shadows of the back woods of this town whose high school had been transformed into a missionary village. He walked to us slowly dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and black southern bow tie. He had an Abe Lincoln beard, salt and pepper hair, and was smoking a pipe like a chimney. He stood 6’ 5” tall with every movement deliberate and slow. His words were careful, speaking thoughtfully with his Appalachian accent and smile. He looked into our faces and with a profound sincerity with his deep brown eyes and a somber tone he said, “Children of the Lord, doin’ God’s work will be repaid a hundred fold for their labors when the Kingdom comes. Ya’ll got any bologna to share?”

Most of the time Roy spent his afternoons on the steps of the Dairy Queen. He was easy to spot and was a colorful treasure of the community. Roy had past, like most folks do, and his past had been played out in public like reality television. He used to be the town’s most influential preacher and had a growing church. Then he fell from grace, took to drinking and gambling, and lost his family, church, and part of himself. Roy wasn’t really homeless, but he didn’t have a place he called home, and the only clothing I saw him wear was his preacher’s uniform. He moved from apartment to apartment helping anyone at any time. After eating a couple of slices, he peered out at the moon, and said to me, “Preacher boy, that is blue Kentucky moon, and there ‘aint nothin’ like it in the whole wide world. You remember that when you’re ministrin’ to other folks … just love ‘em where they’re at with what they got.” Fifteen years later I’m still trying to figure out what the moon and ministry had to do with each other; and it all seemed to make sense on the porch eating fried bologna. Roy began telling us about a family, the Weiler family, who lived on top of a hill overlooking the valley in an old gutted school bus they had backed into a hole. Roy’s heart was visibly broken by their plight, and he offered to help them with electricity if we would help clean the place up a bit and make it more “like a home.” We all agreed to help, and I asked if we could find them an apartment. Roy simply pointed to the moon and shook his head side to side with a face that said, “Did you hear me earlier?”

Roy’s directions were hard to follow. He didn’t use street names or mapping terms like North and South. His directions, like many people in this town, were historical and handed down through an oral tradition. “Just go down three streets and turn right, then head up to old Charlie’s place and turn left, then after three dirt turns on your right, go left for about a ½ a mile.” After searching for almost three hours we found the Weiler’s house; if you could call it a house. The side door of the bus, was the front door to their “mobile” home and when you walked in, the drivers area had been turned into the kitchen with a wood burning stove. There was an eating area in the center of this bus with a card table and four small children’s chairs with a lace table cloth covering it. There were bunk beds for the boys on the left side of the bus and most of the windows had been replaced with aluminum siding. On the right side of the bus hung the kid’s clothes on a laundry line and changing area with a plywood divider so the boys could have some privacy. The back housed the master bedroom with a double bed, a dresser with a mirror, and a shower curtain dividing the bedroom from the rest of their home. What struck us so comically, in the midst of this tragic poverty, was an old ceiling fan that Mr. Weiler had hooked up to the bus battery. He was proud of the fan and he showed us how it worked three times while we were there. You had to sit down when it was on or it would take your hair off. Their gracious hospitality captivated me as they offered us a place at their table sharing some potato chips. Mrs. Weiler said they did not get a lot of visitors, and they were “happy to have us.” They said times were hard, and “We all’s doin’ just fine, and with hauling water two times a day, we can can keep the clothes clean and everyone fed and warshed." We sat together at their table for a long time. I asked if we could help shore up the bus and try to get some electricity for a refrigerator, or for the fan. They were happy with our offer and Mr. Weiler cautioned, “Aint no way to git ‘ lectricity up here.”

We left with a mission that afternoon to help them, and back at the Dairy Queen, we shared what we had learned with Roy. He smiled and said, “Y’all bring lunch tomorrow and the refrigerator, I’ll bring the eelectricitee and juice up that bus.” The next day we found a fridge, packed a lunch for the family, as well as purchasing groceries. When we came upon the bus there was a truck from an air conditioning company parked out front. Roy and this young man were standing together with Roy puffing on his pipe. The boy looked nervous. When we got out, Roy nodded to the young man who said in one breath, “I fixed up the battery that ‘ol fan was on and cleaned it out so it wouldn’t short any more. I wanted to hook up the fan for them, but Mr. Weiler got all mad seein’ he’s all proud of what he’d done. I’ve put in some outlets and left some extension cords and duct tape.” Roy filled in the rest of the story with a huge smile as the boy drove away. “This youngin’s father owed me some money, and the deal we made is that the Weiler’s are gonna’ git eelectricitee on account of a generous donation by his company.”

We stayed with the Weilers until the sun set, getting the fridge leveled and playing with the boys. We talked about politics and Jesus. We gave Roy a ride back to town and offered a room for him with us at the mission camp. He was grateful. We thanked him for his help and he pointed to the moon, now coming up, and said, “Thank the Lord, boys, thank the Lord.” We talked well into the night about salvation, hope, fear, and stumbling in our faith. He never looked at me. He always looked into the sky, waiting for me to ask another question. I did. He loved Kentucky and he loved God. His heart broke for the Weilers and all of the other families who were left with nothing when the coal mines shut down. He felt it was his mission to care for the people as he could. When it was time for bed, he pointed again to the moon in the midnight sky and said, “Preacher boy, remember, that is blue Kentucky moon, and there ‘aint nothin’ like it in the whole wide world. You keep ministrin’ to other folks … just love ‘em where they’re at with what they got.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “God did not give him to me as a brother for me to dominate and control, but in order that I might find above him the creator.” (Life Together, 1954, HarperSanfrancisco, pg. 93) Paul, one of the writers of the Christian bible, says, "If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others." (Philippians 2) It was good to find God above Roy and the Weilers, and I hope they found God above us.

Just a Thought,

Pastor Tom

about vision

Coffee percolating. Morning light pushing through the dark. I celebrate the quiet of the morning. I enjoy prayers when it is still and beautiful as the sun rises turning the sky purple, pink, and then blue. Morning shadows are unique as they creep across the desert and stir the animals from a starry night’s rest. I enjoy breakfast meetings. God works on me at breakfast meetings. Perhaps it is the good company. The ambiance of the restaurant and the smell of coffee, bacon, toast, and hash browns, set a place of hospitality inviting good conversation. This particular teaching moment happened at two different breakfast meetings at two different restaurants, IHOP and Marie Calendars. As I sat with these two leaders at different times of the week, men who I consider to have a passion for Christ’s church, both asked me in their own way, “What is your vision (passion) for this church, you’re the guy that is shepherding (spiritual guide for) this congregation, so where do you see this church going?” This is a question many pastors are accustomed to, and on these mornings, these men queried with a concerned intensity speaking to their love for the congregation.

“With Christ as the head of our church,” I responded, “the pastor and the session pray and discern what they reason and hope to be God’s vision for SPC. My particular vision of where I see God’s hand directing us, is simply inspired by the New Testament understanding that the church is a ‘sent people’ into the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Explaining that every aspect of our lives can inspired by this metaphor, I asked, “What will it take for you to see yourself being sent to work every day, or sent to school, or sent on a vacation, or sent to the grocery store, or sent to Starbucks, or sent anywhere everyday by God with the gospel of Jesus Christ?” They nodded their heads in understanding. So I continued, “When a pastor and the congregation understand the church as being sent by God, with each of us in particular sent by God, the pastor must do everything he or she can to encourage, enable, empower, and equip missionaries with the spiritual tools, biblical truths, and cultural awareness for the mission field.”

Pastors and officers have several choices to guide and lead the congregation in this particular spiritual understanding of being the church. Some say discipleship is our best response, some say evangelism is our best response, and some argue that worship is our best response; some have said just get to the property. A good “reformed and always reforming” leadership puts God first and understands all three are absolutely critical in the life of any church, and it is why the original steering committee and I struggled with who God is calling SPC to be, and how we would be sent to Las Vegas and the world. So, worship, discipleship, and evangelism were built in as our core values as part of our mission to accomplish our vision.

My particular desire and vision is to see every member of SPC as a missionary sent into every aspect of your life with God’s love. The heart of what I preach and teach for this particular NCD is to encourage God’s hospitality as a joyful response to being missional. Hospitality, for SPC, is God’s place of growth (spiritually and numerically) for us, and a liberating power of reconciliation in Las Vegas. Our “assurance of things hoped for, and conviction of things not seen” as an NCD whose priorities are (based on the session’s prayer and discernment): church membership growth, to help create God’s growing vibrant campus, to offer meaningful worship experiences, to celebrate fellowship, engage youth in ministry, to offer community outreach events, sharing in holistic discipleship, and to get the word out that SPC is a welcoming home, is to practice being a welcoming people of God for the world … and to be encouraged that it is God who has invited SPC into the Las Vegas Valley with the good news of God’s love. My humble voice in leadership as a missional pastor of SPC is to celebrate, guide, and help the session and the congregation toward this magnificent vision through preaching the Word, teaching the faith, and loving the people.

I have been blessed with an illuminating passage as a light for my path as your pastor, and I pray your journeys in ministry and life will discover this miracle of morning light, “Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4

Just a thought,

Pastor Tom