Making the Father’s Face Light Up

I was reading John 15 as part of my morning devotions on Tuesday when I saw that line in verse 8 about glorification.  Jesus said, “My father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

I stumble over that word–glory, glorify, glorification.  What does that really mean?  I tend to think of glory as some kind of radiant energy, as in “the glory of the Lord” that was up there on Mount Sinai, so that when Moses came down from the mountain his face was shining.  I think about Jesus being transfigured on another mountain, so that his face began to shine like the sun.  As I was reading John 15 on Tuesday and thinking about how the things we do glorify the Father I thought, “Maybe that’s what it means: that when we bear much fruit and become Jesus’ disciples it makes the Father’s face light up.”

I loved the simplicity of that, and the mental picture it created–the face of God lit up because of something I had done.  And then I remembered how my own face had lit up when I talked with my daughter Ellie the night before on the telephone, when she told me all that she was doing and I thought about all the ways she makes me proud.  It occurred to me that my daughter had glorified me: she had made my face light up. 

I may be way off base here (I often am), but it warmed my heart to think that I could make the Father’s face light up in the same way Ellie made my face light up–simply by doing those things that please him and make him proud. 

Imagine that.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving for Truth

I came across this prayer in this morning’s devotional reading, and loved it, as I love many of William Barclay’s prayers.  Be edified.

O God, we thank you for all those in whose words and in whose writings your truth has come to us. For the historians, the psalmists and the prophets, who wrote the Old Testament; for all those who in every generation have taught and explained and expounded and preached the word of Scripture: we thank you, O God.

Grant, O God, that no false teaching may ever have any power to deceive us or to seduce us from the truth. Grant, O God, that we may never listen to any teaching which would encourage us to think sin less serious, vice more attractive, or virtue less important; grant, O God, that we may never listen to any teaching which would dethrone Jesus Christ from the topmost place; grant, O God, that we may never listen to any teaching which for its own purposes perverts the truth.

God, our Father, establish us immovably in the truth. Give us minds which can see at once the difference between the true and the false; make us able to test everything, and to hold fast to that which is good; give us such a love of truth, that no false thing may ever be able to lure us from it. So grant that all our lives we may know, and love, and live the truth, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

From: William Barclay, Prayers for the Christian Year (New York: Harper, 1965)

Making Time for Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength

From my January 1 sermon:

May I tell you about something that has been helpful to me?  Once every three months or so I try to go on a 24-hour spiritual retreat.  I just get away by myself somewhere.  In the spring and fall I often go to a state park and camp.  In the summer and winter I tend to look for something a little more climate-controlled.  I used to go to a Benedictine monastery when I was in North Carolina and loved it there, chanting with the monks in worship five or six times a day and eating with them in their refectory.  I loved the little room they gave me—my “cell”—with just a single bed, a comfortable chair, and a desk in it.  One of the first things I did then and one of the first things I tend to do on every retreat is to make out a new weekly schedule.  I just draw a grid on a piece of paper, dividing it up into the days of the week and the hours of the day.  But over on the right hand margin I write the words heart, mind, soul, and strength, and then I try to make a place for each of those things in my weekly schedule. 

In the heart category I think about the things I love, and try to make sure I have some time for those in my week: spending time with my family, going to the art museum, walking in the woods, watching a good movie.  I often use Thursday, my day off, to do those very things.  In the mind category I try to remember that if I’m not taking in something new from time to time I won’t be able to give anything out.  In years past I’ve scheduled Tuesday afternoons for reading and regularly worked through a big stack of books at a local coffee house.  In the soul category, again, if I don’t take anything in I won’t be able to give anything out.  Recently I decided to give up an hour I wasn’t using in the evening and instead use it for prayer in the morning.  It’s been hard to go to bed earlier, and hard to get up earlier, but I’m beginning to get the hang of it and I can tell that it’s making a difference.  And then in the strength category I just try to make sure that I schedule time for regular exercise, and if I can do that it also seems to affect what I eat and how much and helps me feel better overall. 

It’s been a good system for me, and it helps me focus on every aspect of my being, but if I’m going to tell you that then I also need to tell you this: that I have to make out a new schedule every time I go on a 24-hour retreat because inevitably, in three months time, my old schedule has been compromised.  For example: I may decide that I’m going to exercise at 6:30 three mornings a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  For a while everything goes like clockwork, but then someone asks me if I can come to a breakfast meeting at 7:30 at Perly’s on Friday and I think, “Well, not unless I run to Perly’s, have breakfast, and then run home.  But maybe just this once wouldn’t hurt.  It is Perly’s, after all, and I love their pancakes.”  And so I make an exception, and then another one, and then another one.  By the time I get to my next 24-hour retreat I have to start all over again, drawing new lines on a clean sheet of paper and taking back some of the precious time I’ve given away, making sure that I have what I need to nourish my heart, mind, soul, and strength.  Doing it once every three months, and not only once a year (when I’m making New Year’s resolutions), helps me stick with it.

Give it a try!

The Girl from Kissimmee

I can still remember my first real date.  It was with this girl I met at summer camp.  She had been visiting a cousin in Charleston,West Virginia, but she was from a place called Kissimmee, Florida.  The first time she said it it sounded like an invitation.  “Where are you from?” I asked, and she said, “Florida.”  “Where in Florida?” I asked, and she said, “Kissimmee,” in a way that made it sound just like “Kiss me.”

I wanted to.  I really did.  But she was so young and I was so shy I just blushed and thought, “Maybe another time.”

So, when she wrote to me the next year and said she was coming back to visit her cousin I asked her if she’d like to go out.  She said she would, which created a whole new set of challenges.  I had just gotten my driver’s license a few months before and the only car we had that was nearly nice enough to take a girl out in was this old Fiat station wagon someone had given us.  At one time it had been a nice, bright red, but years of sitting out in the sun had dulled it to a red that was almost the color of rust.  Or maybe it was rust.  Either way, I spent most of a summer day washing that car and waxing it until that rusty red paint job was shining bright.  I got out the vacuum cleaner and an extension cord and sucked up all the dirt off the floorboards, I wiped down all the interior surfaces and washed the windows, and then I took a needle and a piece of brown thread and sewed up a rip in the driver’s seat until you could hardly see it at all. 

And then I cleaned myself up and dressed in my best blue jeans and got in that car and drove all the way to Charleston—an hour away—to see that girl. 

I’m pretty sure that engine had four cylinders in it, but on the way to Charleston I became convinced that only three of them were working, and if I got above 45 miles an hour that little car vibrated so badly I thought I would lose the fillings in my teeth.  I had trouble finding that girl’s house in those days before GPS’s were invented, and when I brought her out to the car all she said was, “It sure is little.” 

That didn’t sound like a compliment. 

I took her out to dinner where we quickly discovered that we didn’t have much in common and mostly ended up staring at our plates.  I brought her back home and can’t even remember if I tried to steal a kiss before I came around to her side of the car to let her out.  It wasn’t all that I had imagined.  It wasn’t even close.  But look what that girl had done to me!  How the very thought of seeing her again had kept me working all day to turn the sow’s ear of that old Fiat station wagon into a silk purse. 

That story came to mind in this season of Advent and made me think that if I would do all that for some girl I hardly knew, how much more should I be willing to get myself shined up and ready for the coming of Christ?

Will the World End on December 21, 2012?

No.  Not according to Walter T. Witschey.

Dr. Witschey wrote to me after my recent sermon on 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 in which I mentioned that some people think the world is going to end on December 21, 2012, because that’s what the Mayan calendar “suggests.”  It was in that part of the sermon where I was talking about the Day of the Lord coming suddenly, like a thief in the night.

“That’s how it will be,” Paul says.  “That’s how it will happen.  But the only people it will catch off guard are those who are not expecting it.  They will be drunk, and snoring, and sleeping it off when the thief crawls through the window, but you will be wide-awake, sober as a schoolmarm, sitting on the front porch with your suitcases packed.  So, why should you worry about ‘when,’ and ‘where,’ and ‘how’ the End will come?  You’re ready!  You belong to the day, you belong to the light!  You don’t have to worry about a thief in the night!”  And so, Paul says, stay ready.  “Be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”  In other words, you who are Christian can protect yourselves against the anxiety of the end-times by clothing yourselves with great faith, great love, and great hope.  Those places where you are most vulnerable to attack—your heart, mind, and soul—will be shielded by that impenetrable armor.  “For God has not destined us for wrath,” Paul says, “but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And then I said:

That’s a good thing to remember, isn’t it, when Harold Camping tells us that the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011, or the Mayan calendar suggests the world will end on December 21, 2012?  What Paul is trying to tell us is that end-time prophecy is for others, not for us.  Its purpose, as Dr. Philpen has so clearly stated, is to warn those who are not ready, so that they might “get right with God now.”

And that’s where Dr. Witschey corrected me, ever so gently.  He wrote:

Dr. Somerville,

It was a pleasure to hear your sermon this morning, via Channel 8 in Farmville, Va..

There were a couple mentions of the Maya calendar, and the special calendar date in December 2012. The calendar has interested me greatly since I was ten years old.

All that you said was true, and offered with a smile…yet there is an important nuance here: although some writers claim, “the Maya calendar foretells the end of the world,” the truth, I believe, is that the Maya calendar and inscriptions, and those who make scholarly study of them, make no such claim or forecast.  Such claims (mostly in popular and self-serving forums) are based on an observation of a special date in the Maya count of days.

We write the Maya count-of-days, the ‘Long Count,’ as a five place base-20 numeral such as 12.19.18.16.1 for November 20, 2011 in the Gregorian calendar.  That calendar will, in just over a year, increment to 13.0.0.0.0 on December 21, or 23, or other nearby date (depending on how you match our two calendars.)  Neither the ancient hieroglyphic inscriptions, nor the modern Maya, nor any Maya archaeologists of standing, claim that this is the day the world ends.   Rather, the appropriate claim is that, just like Y2K in our calendar, or 100,000 miles on a car odometer, the next day is just the next day, and the beginning of a new calendar cycle. In the Maya calendar we will write it as 13.0.0.0.1 (and most likely will not need to postpone any of our appointments.)

Having picked that small nit, may I say your central message, “Be Prepared,” came through loud and clear.

With esteem, admiration, and thanks,

Walter

Walter R. T. Witschey
Maya Archaeologist
Professor of Anthropology and Science Education
Director Emeritus, Science Museum of Virginia

Thank you, Dr. Witschey.  I hope that millions of people around the world (and not only the seven who read my blog) will stand corrected.

Looking forward to 13.0.0.0.1!

Jim