In the Beginning

Many months have passed since I last wrote. As I sit to write this Christmas Eve day, a strange angle to the Christmas story comes to mind.

Blame it on my pastor, Dr. Rich Liverance. He's been preaching a series on Genesis. This has been a literary, scientific, and theological lesson. Though my brain has flashbacks to high school science class as he elaborates on Periodic Table of Elements and shows the interaction of these elements, I can appreciate the gist of the laws set up in nature.

In the Beginning...

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Genesis 1:1a states: "In the beginning God created..."

As we've studied the literary writings of Genesis and other Scripture references to God creating the world and as we've analysed scientific theories for a young earth created in six days or an old earth slowly evolving to what we have today, it has become very clear that it takes faith to believe either theory.

You either believe that the conditions of the earth today have been constant for billions of years, therefore making it possible to test the existing minerals, etc. and know that they are so old. However, if the rocks, for example, were formed in conditions that would not be known unless you were there to observe, then the testing of them would not reveal an accurate age.

If you believe in the six days of creation, you have to have faith that the way God stated things was literal. In today's climate, you are a fool for believing this, as evolution is no longer consider theory.

None of this, however, matters as much as one huge theological point.

And God saw that it was Good...

Beginning on the third day, the Bible shares God's thoughts on His creative work.

10God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

God called the earth "good." He called all He was creating "good." The important fact is that God looked down on a perfect world, one without sin and without death; a world filled with new beauty never imagined outside His own imagination. Proudly He admitted that His masterpiece came to life as He declared it should.

Sure, He could have had it take millions or billions of years. If you believe that God loves the earth as much or more than He loves mankind, He may have wished to see its forming and postpone mankind. Or He may have wished to savour His creation, knowing what a mess we'd make of it.

There is room to believe in large amounts of time passing and the Creator setting it all in motion like a set of dominoes. There is room until you realise one major fact that makes it impossible.

To Be or Not To Be...

Death. Evolution must include death. You cannot have evolutionary progress without survival of the fittest. In order for a species to evolve from sludge in a pond all the way to humanity, death had to happen over and over and over for billions upon billions of years.

If this was true, then Adam and Eve truly are a myth. God either created mankind as sinners or there really is no sin. Death couldn't be a result of sin, since death came unimaginably many years before there was a man or a woman.

So, there either was no sin or God endorsed it through creation, and God called all that and death good as the world evolved.

If God endorses death and the way we've lived (think back on your history books or listen to the news) since time began, there is no need for a Saviour.

Definitely, don't concern yourself with Christmas! Celebrate the holidays and the jolly old Saint Nick. Focus on love and giving, because you're as good as you'll ever get. There is no hope for you outside yourself.

Unto Us is Born This Day...A Saviour, Messiah God

If, however, God endorses perfection and eternity, then how grieved He must have been for centuries as He called out to people, who He made with such care, molding us and placing us specially in a world where all our needs and wants could be met.

There, in the perfect world, we listened to one voice saying that maybe God wasn't telling us the whole truth. Maybe there was something better than God. We listened. We responded. We doubted. We acted. We sinned. We lost. We died—first to the ability to choose God and then through physical decay.

God did not sit idly by and let us destroy ourselves as we deserved to do.

• At just the right time, He pierced through time and placed Himself in the womb of a woman. 
• He learned our struggles with sin firsthand, yet never sinned.
• He wept at the grief of death.

He declared Himself to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, saying that unless we know Him, we would not know life again.

With one man—Adam—he brought sin in the world with his choice of one tree from which he could not eat. Believing Satan's words, he had faith that he'd have the best by this choice.

With one man, Yeshua, He brought righteousness into the world and life by one choice—following Him. By faith, we are asked to believe that this path, though painful, is better than life as we used to live.

God, promised Redeemer since the beginning of sin—He came to die that our sins might die. He came to rise from the dead, that we may die to our old life and live in Him.

This holiday isn't about gifts given, used, returned, forgotten.

This is an eternal Gift. This Gift begins in opening our hearts and ends in living for eternity. It begins with me and must be shared with you. It's a Gift that gives more and more the more it is embraced. It is THE GIFT that would be worth giving our physical lives for, because the life that comes from shedding our flesh will be never destroyed.

May you know this Gift this Christmas and in the New Year. May God grant us faith to live in this new Life the next 365 days.

I wish nothing more for you this Christmas than Yeshua.

Remembering A Kind Man

June 20th: I had a Skype chat with a Board Member of the ministry where I work. We were testing out the service before he spoke with the President and Chairman the next day. He told me of the horrible smoke in Singapore due to the fires in Indonesia. He mentioned he had had a doctor's appointment.  They said he had a couple leaky valves, but nothing for which they'd risk surgery.

He chatted for quite a while, and I had to remind myself to relax and just enjoy the conversation without worrying about work. He and his wife had tickets to fly here in about three weeks, but I rarely would have one-on-one time with him.

July 15th: Our friend had to have a triple by-pass surgery, instead of being here for the Board meeting the 16th. We found out only several days beforehand. But surgery went very well.

July 17th: Some complications started in his lungs, but nothing too alarming.

July 18th:

10:25 AM— From a co-worker: "He came out of High Dependency ward today, but his heart went into fibrillation at 6pm and his pulse rate was very high.  He was nauseous and was unable to eat and looked and felt unwell. He is back in the high dependency ward." 

5:40 PM— From his wife: "He collapsed three minutes ago. Docs have resuscitated heart but he may not make it." 

9:18 PM— From another friend: He's "with the Lord." "He didn't make it."

____________

And minus that one breath and one heartbeat, he is gone forever as we know him.

"I will go to him, but he will not return to me."

That's it. The ceasing of a normal physical "habit" of heart and lungs, and you no longer are as we have known you. You don't just resign from the Board. You disappear.

I'm new enough with death to be haunted by it. 

Tonight, I've pulled up his last emails to me. I've thought of the time I stayed in an apartment in South Africa with him and his wife and some ladies. I remembered how patient he was when twice I blew the fuse, darkening the apartment with my high voltage devices. 

Another friend reminded me of this past March of when he had spent a day driving us around—paid for all five of us to roam through some orchid gardens in Singapore, took us to a special Chinese restaurant for lunch, and wandered for hours through the Little India shops with us. Mr. Patience. 

I pulled up Skype tonight too. It was the last place I had seen his face, while I said I looked forward to seeing him and his wife in a short amount of time. 

Skype said he was just "offline."

I wonder. Is that all death is? You're still "out there," you're merely "offline" to the rest of the world. 

Jesus called it "sleeping" before He raised a good friend, who had been four days in a tomb. Although He used the term, eyewitnesses testified to seeing Him "weep" and noted how much "He loved him." He wept minutes before He brought him back to life. Why?

Truly, I leave it to the theologians and scholars to wrestle with the reasons. I stand with the people and note: "Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind keep this man from dying?" 

And with Martha I say in faith, that I believe there will be a resurrection of the dead. 

25Jesus said to her, "I AM the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?" 

We live with it. Death. 

Death has been named the "Grim Reaper." It's pictured as a figure in black waiting to steal you away in a black horse-drawn carriage. 

Innately, we understand it's an enemy. One to whom those we love and we ourselves will almost all succumb (barring Jesus appearing to call us directly to Him).

Scripture reminds us we're like "grass that the wind blows over," and we're gone. Song writers ponder our status as "dust in the wind."

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea 

All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see 

Dust in the wind 

All we are is dust in the wind  

~Paul Simon and Ivana Kindl  

So what's the point?

Life is short. We know that! It's short for me, and it's way too short for those I love.

Am I living the way I want to be remembered?  Not just at my memorial service, but if they should tell my story a hundred years from now? Is it all about me or is it of use in God's greater story?

I don't have a lot of time to invest.

Nor do you.


Goodbye, Mr. Hwang. I'll look forward to seeing you at Home. Soon.

Travelling Without Luggage

Have you ever wondered what you'd feel if you were told you have months or week's left to live?

Death is the mysterious journey. No carry-on or luggage allowed. Your favourite books must stay on the shelf. Your comfortable travel clothes won't be with to unpack. Nothing you've seen down here or called your own will go with you.

I think we often believe it's the risky things, the daring adventures that we'll look back on with satisfaction as a life well-lived. It's throwing our inhibitions to the wind and tasting all there is of life.

Yet I can't help but believe, as you are struggling for your last breath, you won't be reliving your skydiving jump or the sensual pleasures you experimented with or the money that you made through all your work. If there is last minute business you'll wish you'd done, it will be making things right with God and with those you love.

Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them"...

Remember Him—before the silver cord is severed...
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:1,6-7

Even for the Christian, dying is a strange phenomenon. We are leaving all we've known. What we know of our true Home is sketchy tales. We believe the promises that heaven will far surpass all that is here. Yet, the only true way to be ready to leave is to lay all our treasure up there.
If we've invested in the souls of family and friends, our parting is only temporary. If we've sent our treasure ahead of us, we don't leave anything of value behind.
Now is the only moment you have. 
 
Now is the time you can repent and follow God.
 
This is the time you can call someone and tell them you love them, affirm their worth and your appreciation, tell them your sorry. At their death or yours, many "big" things will seem so small in importance.
 
"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins" (James 4:17)

What is death?

Strangely enough, with the celebration of Yeshua's birth, I find myself contemplating many aspects of death. Sounds morbid maybe, but, along with taxes, isn't it one of the certainties of life?

Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, described death as the closing of a book or water freezing over. "It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore." Each one is a mystery, Dickens says, to every other. When that life has ended, the mystery is buried.

What is it in human nature that seeks to know, to understand, to solve? Even the tritest thing--an allusive fact one should know, a name--irritates one's mind until it is recalled. Might this not be a small thread in the large shroud of death? Might this unsolved mystery in a loved one be what keeps us wanting to know more, even unconsciously, and thus the feeling of loss, of being cheated when death cuts short the breath and stills the heart?

In Love Letters from Cell 92, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fiance' Maria write of the hopes they have that the Nazis will find him innocent of the conspiracy to kill Hitler, and they will at last be able to marry. Reading these letters is both beautiful and tormenting. Watching the dates of the letters progress and knowing that Bonhoeffer will die a couple days before the Allies victory, sets an eery back-drop to their love. It also poses the question--why? Why so close to victory, does he have to die? Why with all their hope in God's deliverance is he not spared...is she not spared? It's too easy to come up with answers: answers to defend God, answers that might try to comfort the grieving.

We probably all know many who grieve during this season. Memories of celebrations past always seem to make Christmas' time one of the hardest to bear loneliness and grief. Friday afternoon, I heard the cries of a co-worker on the phone, "Oh, no! No! Please, no!" then heart-wrenching sobbing. It was repeated. I have heard it before. Cries like the dry vomiting of the heart.

Even with hope, with knowledge that the one who died is in heaven, will be seen again, there is an earthly finality. The mystery is cut short. Their touch is lost. Death itself is a mystery. Our Creator's thoughts are a mystery. Maybe the greatest comfort I can give to one grieving is not words, but touch; not knowledge, but presence.

I'm trying to grasp reality: the balance of laughter beside grieving, of hope beside despair, of comfort beside helplessness; to give the hugs, to hold the hands, to say the words now before the mysteries I love close to me and open in eternity.