Beneath The Dirty Hood

Genesis 3:1

How to have the world beat a path to your door

He's old-fashioned.  Or maybe timeless.  He wrote about God's Post Office; today he might have referred to email (or blogs).  From The Best of Vance Havner (out of print):

The post-office is not a source, it is only a medium.  It does not create potent messages, it only relays them from the creator to you.  You and I are human post-offices.  We are daily giving out messages of some sort to the world.  They do not come from us, but through us; we do not create, we convey.  And they come either from hell or heaven.

Men study how to make their lives more interesting.  Take a lesson from the post-office.  It is interesting, not because of itself, but because of what it passes on to men.  The world will make a beaten path to your door if you bring them news from heaven.  What letters go through the window of your life?  Letters of truth and hope, to cheer and console?  Or do you hand out dirty trash, worthless drivel, selfish commercial circulars, black-edged missives of misery?

How thrilling the plainest life can be when it becomes a function in God's great system and not a selfish enterprise.  The tiniest post-office can bear a letter that may wreck or bless a nation.  And the simplest life can relay blessings that may rock a continent toward God.

If your are a believer, you are God's postmaster in the little nook where you live.  Keep the office clean, but do not make that more important than delivering the messages.  Men will soon learn to gather at the window and will bring you, in return, letters of their own to pass on to others.

"Which religion is established..."

"...by a monument of the 10 Commandments?  None."  says Melinda Penner about today's Supreme Court decision.  She says they got it wrong:

If the Ten Commandments represents an establishment of religion, my question is: Which religion is established? "Religion" as used in the Constitution means a specific denomination or doctrine, such as Roman Catholic or Presbyterian. Several religions, at least, ascribe to the Old Testament and the Torah that include the Ten Commandments. A non-exhaustive list: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah Witness. If several religions can be identified with the Ten Commandments, then no one religion is being established.

And...

encouragement of religion in public life isn't the same as establishing a religion.

For a really thorough, insightful and loooooong explanation & perspective of the role of the 10 Commandments in American history and law, get yourself a cup of coffee, go here, scroll down thru the legal stuff, and be fascinated.  David Barton summarizes:

The fact that some may not agree with all of the commandments...does not mean it should be prohibited from display any more than does the fact that not everyone agrees with all of the protections in the Bill of Rights requires that the Bill of Rights should not be displayed-or that because not everyone agrees with what the American flag represents requires the flag should not be displayed.

To prohibit the display...simply because the first four commandments are more religious in nature than are the other six is like permitting the display of George Washington’s “Farewell Address” or Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech or the “Mayflower Compact” only if each document is displayed without its religious portions. In a display of any of the aforementioned works, it is not the advocation of religion that is occurring but rather the recognition of a significant historical contribution made to America that also happens to include religion.

Ever ask, "why is everything going wrong in my life?"

(A man I trust once told me that the bigger the view you take, the better perspective you’ll have….)

WHEN THINGS went bad all those years ago, everything was ruined or killed or cursed.  It was like an invisible Tsunami that hit everything, only you couldn’t see the wave and all the damage wasn’t immediately obvious.  But it changed everything.  We all died because from then on our spirits were separated from God (life without God is death, but if you’ve never had life you wouldn’t know the difference; like a phone with no service, it’s there, but it’s dead, disconnected).  The human body began dying (no, it didn’t drop dead right away; we get to experience guaranteed progressive wasting away, and then die!).  And the whole earth fell down and was cursed and started decaying (things rust and go to seed and degenerate and spoil and get messy if we don’t maintain them).  What a mess.  Death, death, death.  You know how when the ‘fridge or the TV goes out you calculate is it better to fix it or replace it?  This is so bad God doesn’t even try to fix it.  There’s no repairing what’s ruined.  There is replacement.  So when I trust what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross, I get a new Spirit.  Then after I die I’ll get a new body.  And in the end the whole earth will be made new.

IT SEEMS God's way of fixing and improving is to let the old be dead, and to bring in the new.  Sometimes He seems to want the old to realize it’s dead, and give up trying to be alive, before He brings in the new.  So to prove that it’s dead, He lets bad things happen to the old’s efforts to stay alive.  It might happen in a marriage or family relationship, or at work, or with money, or maybe health, or with feelings and emotions.  It might not be that there’s anything wrong with those things, or that He wants to get rid of them; it’s what they’re being used for: a substitute for God.  So they get messy and frustrating, to prove they can’t really replace what God wants to be for us.  He might use a thing we need and that He wants to give us, as a thermometer to show us our temperature with Him.  If we’re bullheaded, it can take a long time.  Sometimes it can take a long time even when we’re not bullheaded. 

IT’S EXCITING to replace the old car with a new one.  But, if you’re the old car and they take a sledgehammer to you so that you feel and experience death and the need to be replaced, and you’re starving for relief, that might not seem exciting.  But, really it is, because the birth of a new trust in something trustable is way more exciting than a patch on something old just to keep it running.  Maybe this is a little like that. 

How to fly

1.  Get into a comfortable place.

2.  Stay there so long you don't notice you're wallowing in your own mess.

3.  Believe that all you see is all there is (there's no such thing as 'sky').

4.  When the cost of staying in the nest surpasses the cost of flying, you'll fly.

Know any little trees...?

...in unlikely places, producing lots and lots of pinecones? (HT Wizard Academy)

Perfect evening

A long slow dinner with friends on the patio…finding out about the ‘best place nobody knows about’ to watch fireworks on the 4th…calm, cool air and a sunset that takes forever…the swallows on the porch that still haven’t left the nest…an almost full moon…a 5–year old in his underwear in the backyard at dusk catching lightning bugs…laughing with my brother on the phone and making plans to spend a few precious hours together tomorrow…that little camisole thing she wears in bed when she’s reading her Francine Rivers novel before she goes to sleep…and this.

But it's been made up for in so many ways

This makes me wish for something I (and probably most people) never had.

What my Father's Day gift was wrapped in

When they were 10 and 7 they had me fill out a little questionnaire on tissue paper.  I tried to be funny.  They decorated it and wrapped my gift with it.  We all forgot about it.  The paper was saved.  And found.  Today, twenty-one years later, I got another gift wrapped in the same paper.

What I learned about being a dad...

…from these three sentences:  I should have a goal for them and it needs to be a big one; how about living a life worthy of God?  A human life on earth, worthy of the Almighty Holy Loving Merciful Creator Judge of the universe!  That big enough?  And then, I shouldn’t just have the goal, I should actually encourage and urge them, even plead with them, to live that kind of life.  But, I’m not allowed to keep my distance and disconnect my words from my own living.  I have to be an example of that life so they can see what it looks like; so they know it’s possible; and so they know this must be important—Dad’s doing it, too.  Blameless.  Upright.  Pure.  Honest.  “So Jesus became real to the kids thru dad, and walked and lived with them.”