You have seen the options that complete the sentence above: …in kindergarten, from fishing, from a jigsaw puzzle, etc. I want to add my own twist on this
Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from a hundred dollar bill.
Actually, I walked right by it on Friday afternoon. You would think being in Orlando, Florida that someone would have taken more care of their one hundred dollar bill.
But I learned something about life that one brief encounter on the sidewalk. When my eyes saw the bill I was enticed (actually physically jerked) to stoop down and pick it up. After all, being at the mall and finding a one hundred dollar bill…who could ask for more! In a brief flash I felt greed and covetousness surge through my veins. It was all about claiming the bill for myself. After all, finders keepers, losers weepers! Right?
Hold on! Wait! Something was wrong. Upon closer inspection I noticed the color was wrong. The green was too dark. It looked pretty good otherwise. Guess what…it was a counterfeit, a poorly made one at that. It was hard to tell how it was made or reproduced. But there it was…a counterfeit reject lying on the sidewalk fooling no one but me for about five seconds.
In those five seconds I learned more about myself than I had known in a long time. What if it had been real? What would I have done with it?
The covetous, greedy corners of the human heart are exposed in a flash of a moment. Everything I needed to know about myself I learned from a one hundred dollar bill. I learned that I am too materialistic. I learned that I think about my good fortune at the expense of others too much. I learned that the world is too much with me.
Authenticity…needed not just for the one hundred dollar bill to be properly spent, but more importantly for my heart to stay focused on the will of God. A counterfeit bill has an uncanny way of exposing a counterfeit heart! God help each of us to be authentic in our daily walk with the Lord so that something as simple as a one hundred dollar bill (counterfeit, mind you!) will not undo us and render us a fake!
In Christian love, Curtis
Monday, February 25, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Being Someone's Angel
Don’s cold and dirty hands grasped the gas pump handle. He was “down on his luck” he would later recall. He needed gas to get work. His world had just come unglued, pulled apart by the opposite forces at work in a messy divorce. No longer did he have the luxury of his kids being around. No longer did he have the luxury of home with all of its cozy furnishings. The settlement had taken care of that nicely.
With the tank full, Don hung the gas pump handle back in place and reached for his wallet. It was gone. No way to pay for the tank full of gas. How much more could happen and how much lower could a person get? Just at that moment, while feeling totally at a loss at what to do, a stranger at the next pump handed him a twenty dollar bill and drove off.
This was an epiphany for Don. At least from two perspectives: his view of how God provides and how angels work. He told me years after this happened that it was a turning point in his life. He realized that God truly provides. He also realized that angels work in small, quiet ways with no fanfare. Since that time he has looked for small ways to be a messenger from God to others.
That is what an angel is…being someone’s answer to a prayer. But in order to be someone’s angel we have to develop the desire to help others in need, the eyes to see others in need, the ears to hear the cries for help and the hands to respond to others in need.
Desire…eyes…ears…hands. Simple requirements for such powerful results. We have to have the passion to meet the world’s needs. This is at the heart of the good news… we are God’s answer to someone’s desparate prayer. No earning of wings. No miraculous hat tricks. No flying over the continents or dodging speeding bullets. Just a twenty dollar bill in his name. A moment transformed and a life changed.
Are we ready to be someone’s angel?
In Christian love, Curtis
With the tank full, Don hung the gas pump handle back in place and reached for his wallet. It was gone. No way to pay for the tank full of gas. How much more could happen and how much lower could a person get? Just at that moment, while feeling totally at a loss at what to do, a stranger at the next pump handed him a twenty dollar bill and drove off.
This was an epiphany for Don. At least from two perspectives: his view of how God provides and how angels work. He told me years after this happened that it was a turning point in his life. He realized that God truly provides. He also realized that angels work in small, quiet ways with no fanfare. Since that time he has looked for small ways to be a messenger from God to others.
That is what an angel is…being someone’s answer to a prayer. But in order to be someone’s angel we have to develop the desire to help others in need, the eyes to see others in need, the ears to hear the cries for help and the hands to respond to others in need.
Desire…eyes…ears…hands. Simple requirements for such powerful results. We have to have the passion to meet the world’s needs. This is at the heart of the good news… we are God’s answer to someone’s desparate prayer. No earning of wings. No miraculous hat tricks. No flying over the continents or dodging speeding bullets. Just a twenty dollar bill in his name. A moment transformed and a life changed.
Are we ready to be someone’s angel?
In Christian love, Curtis
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Silence of Death--Shoulder on Shoulder
“I just want to hold my baby!” she sobbed, rocking her self slowly back and forth, with legs tucked under her at the top of the stairs. Seven month-old Chase had just breathed his last moments before. Now the anguish of a young mother pierced the silence of the nascent morning air.
The crib was tucked in the corner of the front living room. A cute little bumper pad encircled the inside. Little toys and cute little stuffed animals and a pulled back blanket occupied the space. It was a silent space. A space that for seven months was reserved for Chase. It defined his world and shaped his identity. Now that space was no longer sacred. At least not in a present sacredness. Now only a past sacredness, the kind of thing where you realize that something important once was going on here at this place, on this spot. But no longer.
Sobs and tears and questions split the silence. It is odd how the silence of death awakens within the human heart questions that have been silenced for a long time. Why did this happen? Only silence I can provide. Was I not a good enough mother? Only comforting silence and reassurance is what I can provide. I tried to be the best father to my children. And this is what I get. What did I do wrong? Again, silence is the best response. The silence of death can only be met with the ministry of presence.
If death is separation, then ministry is presence. Words and reality seem to be separated. The only way to re-unite the unthinkable with the unspeakable is to just be. Be in the presence of silence and pain offering the mediated presence of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
This is only the second time in my life I have had to respond to a family who has experienced SIDS. With all of the medical advances the last fifty years, this still stumps the medical community. I had just touched Chase’s little chubby cheeks Sunday morning. He looked so rosy and healthy and he was resting in his mother’s arms so peacefully. Who would have thought at that moment that in lest than twenty-four hours his little life would ebb away and the silence of eternity would steal his crib.
The silence of death forces us to be silent with our lips and be very careful what we say. Words can be silent barbs that pierce to the farthest depths of the heart and tranquilize it to feeling again. Even words that are spoken with the intent to help. We have all heard it before: he is in a better place. You can have another son. God took him because he needed him more.
As we walked up the wooden steps to the front door of that clapboard country house, perched on the side of the hill, it seemed eerily quiet. The coroner, the EMS and the detective had all just left. Chase’s little body was being whisked away for an official autopsy. The father’s anguish could not bear to let go of the lifeless body. How can they take away my baby? As we went inside I had the eerie feeling that time had stopped. After trying to listen to the grandmother and make sense of her words between heaving sobs, I accidently brushed my leg against one of the little toys sitting on the floor. I was horrified as music began playing. I frantically was able to get it to stop. It seemed so inappropriate. How could music from one of Chase’s toys bring any comfort? It only punctuated the silent pain and heavy grief occupying the living room.
There were three cane-back chairs arranged by the crib. It looked as if all three (mother, father and grandmother) has just been sitting there around the bassinette, touching and caressing the wicker around the outside, fingering the cloth bumper pad, folding the blanket and numerous other meaningless motions all trying to figure out the oppressive silence crushing their very chest.
“Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).
This is the heart of Christian hospitality. This is experiencing a life “for the sake of others.” And Sunday here at Highland View we saw a vivid example of such support. The entire congregation came forward to hug, cry and support Cameron and Priscilla. Their pain became ours.
Weeping is the soul’s overflow of anguish. The cup of inner self can no longer hold it in. The emotional overload is a burden too heavy to carry.
I remember years ago a wise gentleman once told me if you do not weep on the outside, you will weep on the inside and drown in your own tears.
Weeping is a cleansing of the soul. The dark corners of fear, confusion and chaos are wiped clean. The fresh breeze of the holy is allowed to flow through.
Weeping binds hearts together. Tragedy and crisis are the crimson threads used to weave God’s name in our cloth of innocence. Perhaps we weep not for just our tangible losses, but also for something we cannot put our finger on, but that which draws us together: things will never be the same again.
This conundrum of life is bathed in tears of helplessness and hopelessness. But our God is a weeping God, and comforts our hearts. It is only then that we can comfort one another.
In Christian love, Curtis
The crib was tucked in the corner of the front living room. A cute little bumper pad encircled the inside. Little toys and cute little stuffed animals and a pulled back blanket occupied the space. It was a silent space. A space that for seven months was reserved for Chase. It defined his world and shaped his identity. Now that space was no longer sacred. At least not in a present sacredness. Now only a past sacredness, the kind of thing where you realize that something important once was going on here at this place, on this spot. But no longer.
Sobs and tears and questions split the silence. It is odd how the silence of death awakens within the human heart questions that have been silenced for a long time. Why did this happen? Only silence I can provide. Was I not a good enough mother? Only comforting silence and reassurance is what I can provide. I tried to be the best father to my children. And this is what I get. What did I do wrong? Again, silence is the best response. The silence of death can only be met with the ministry of presence.
If death is separation, then ministry is presence. Words and reality seem to be separated. The only way to re-unite the unthinkable with the unspeakable is to just be. Be in the presence of silence and pain offering the mediated presence of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
This is only the second time in my life I have had to respond to a family who has experienced SIDS. With all of the medical advances the last fifty years, this still stumps the medical community. I had just touched Chase’s little chubby cheeks Sunday morning. He looked so rosy and healthy and he was resting in his mother’s arms so peacefully. Who would have thought at that moment that in lest than twenty-four hours his little life would ebb away and the silence of eternity would steal his crib.
The silence of death forces us to be silent with our lips and be very careful what we say. Words can be silent barbs that pierce to the farthest depths of the heart and tranquilize it to feeling again. Even words that are spoken with the intent to help. We have all heard it before: he is in a better place. You can have another son. God took him because he needed him more.
As we walked up the wooden steps to the front door of that clapboard country house, perched on the side of the hill, it seemed eerily quiet. The coroner, the EMS and the detective had all just left. Chase’s little body was being whisked away for an official autopsy. The father’s anguish could not bear to let go of the lifeless body. How can they take away my baby? As we went inside I had the eerie feeling that time had stopped. After trying to listen to the grandmother and make sense of her words between heaving sobs, I accidently brushed my leg against one of the little toys sitting on the floor. I was horrified as music began playing. I frantically was able to get it to stop. It seemed so inappropriate. How could music from one of Chase’s toys bring any comfort? It only punctuated the silent pain and heavy grief occupying the living room.
There were three cane-back chairs arranged by the crib. It looked as if all three (mother, father and grandmother) has just been sitting there around the bassinette, touching and caressing the wicker around the outside, fingering the cloth bumper pad, folding the blanket and numerous other meaningless motions all trying to figure out the oppressive silence crushing their very chest.
“Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).
This is the heart of Christian hospitality. This is experiencing a life “for the sake of others.” And Sunday here at Highland View we saw a vivid example of such support. The entire congregation came forward to hug, cry and support Cameron and Priscilla. Their pain became ours.
Weeping is the soul’s overflow of anguish. The cup of inner self can no longer hold it in. The emotional overload is a burden too heavy to carry.
I remember years ago a wise gentleman once told me if you do not weep on the outside, you will weep on the inside and drown in your own tears.
Weeping is a cleansing of the soul. The dark corners of fear, confusion and chaos are wiped clean. The fresh breeze of the holy is allowed to flow through.
Weeping binds hearts together. Tragedy and crisis are the crimson threads used to weave God’s name in our cloth of innocence. Perhaps we weep not for just our tangible losses, but also for something we cannot put our finger on, but that which draws us together: things will never be the same again.
This conundrum of life is bathed in tears of helplessness and hopelessness. But our God is a weeping God, and comforts our hearts. It is only then that we can comfort one another.
In Christian love, Curtis
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