CLASSIC CARS

Reading: Jude 3

"Earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints." - Jude 3

I love classic cars.  There is something fascinating about these road warriors.  There was a time they owned the road--providing transportation to grandmas, gangsters, doctors making house calls, families taking a Sunday drive, salesmen trying to ply their wares.  They have a uniqueness and an elegance that stands out in the box-like family vehicles, the monster trucks and sporty SUVs, and the lookalike family cars occupying the road today.  Some of them were short-lived in popularity.  They bore names that today have little meaning - but they are really neat.

Unfortunately today, you have to be very careful with these cars.  Their "age" and uniqueness put them at great risk on the high-speed highways of today. You even have to ration the amount of road miles because their parts are no longer being produced.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is very ancient.  It has a beauty in its original form that makes it even more precious today with the trendy and sometimes indistinguishable religious imitators.

Fortunately, the gospel wears well on today's highways in today's world. It is not fragile, needing protection.  It is robust, needing faithfulness.  The gospel is not intended to be kept in a warehouse as a remnant of other times.  It is intended to engage the world where the rubber meets the road.

A classic car may have been built well, but only a few people have the means and opportunity to drive it.  The gospel today is for everyone--it is durable for eternity.

(C) 2009 by Stephen L Dunn, reprinted 2010

WHEN LIFE GETS MESSY

For years we had this poster hanging in our kitchen.  My wife Dianne had retrieved it from her younger brother Sam.  On a whim we hung it next to our kitchen table.  It stayed there a long time.

I really identify with the little guy in the photo. (In fact, if you compare this photo to one of my baby pictures, the resemblance almost appears genetically ordained.) Someone once said, "Life is tough and then you die."  At times this life would be an argument for staying out of hell come eternity. This life is difficult enough.

Life gets messy.  That's a given living in a fallen world. G.K. Chesterton once spoke of God's "terrible gift of freedom."  Because God has chosen to give humankind the freedom to choose to live in a right relationship with Him and experience the blessing, or choose to be our own god and experience the consequences; that collision of sinful choices has collateral damage on believers and  unbelievers alike.  God has delivered us from the penalty of sin and enabled us with the power to overcome sin, but we still live in the presence of sin until Christ returns to establish the Kingdom in its fullness.

Life gets messy -- and will get messier until this fallen world is redeemed.

In the time until that occurs, it does me little good to constantly lament the suffering and the frustration of living for God in a world that still wants to keep Him out of sight, out of mind, and out of work.  That just makes me a whining prophet.  What I need to do is to face the presence of sin with the promise of God.

That promise is best summarized by the apostle Paul, writing to the Church of God at Rome, which knew what it was to live in the messy, destructive presence of sin.

"If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?  Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.  Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 8:31-39 New International Version.

(c) 2010 by Stephen L Dunn 

 

This post also appeared yesterday in my new blog for Christians taking the faith seriously in a fallen world called IMMEASURABLY MORE

CROSS COUNTRY RUNNER

For two years in high school I participated in one of the most demented sports ever invented – cross country running.  I was a part of a varsity team from the now defunct Mendon-Union High School. Our sport required us to run two miles in a competition with other schools. Although there were more than 20 runners on our team, only the top five to seven finishers actually provided scores for the event. The first runner across the finish line scored one point, the second one two, and so on. The winning team had the lowest combined score.

A cross country match is not run on a track in a stadium surrounded by cheering fans. It is run over a course laid out on golf courses, quiet back roads, or simply across fields – wherever two miles could be mapped out and monitored.  The finish line was where the crowd gathered, usually milling about in relative comfort while the runners labored with aching arms, churning guts, and pounding hearts to turn in the fast time. In those days something in the nine minute range usually won. I ran closer to twelve.  A cross country race was not a sprint but a mini-marathon with a mad sprint at the very end to enter the mouth of the chute that formed a finish line.
In the case of most of our time, we did not run for the love of the sport but because it was required of any of us who desired to pursue the favored sport at our high school – basketball.  Our basketball coach operated an offense filled with fast breaks, full court pressure, and all sorts of stamina demanding tactics kept up constantly for the full 32 minutes of a game. Its goal was to wear down bigger teams and taller opponents. That required a conditioning best produced by the discipline of cross country. Hence, if you wanted to be on the basketball team you were automatically on the cross country team as well.  As I said, few of us ran for the love of running.

Except for Blaine. Blaine Edwards was quiet farm boy with a wry smile and gentle demeanor that could leave him unnoticed in the world of boisterous jocks and so-called athletes.  As a basketball player, he was not one of the stars but on the cross country course he was a superstar. Blaine was one of the fastest runners in our league, and in the state.
Blaine was not surrounded by great runners, but some of us weren’t half bad.  In almost every meet, Blaine would finish first; but our next contender was probably a seven or eighth place; the bulk of the team in double digit positions.  In dual or three-way meets, if our first digit was a one we often won, especially because of Blaine’s solitary one.

Blaine knew that, too.  Despite his star status, cross country was a team sport.  So when Blaine crossed the finish line, he would quickly catch his breath and return to the top of the chute. As one of us would run down it, he would run alongside us outside the rope encouraging and cheering us all the way. Then he would return and wait for the next runner and repeat the process until all five scorers had crossed the line.  One of the few times I was that final runner, it was only Blaine’s encouragement that reinforced my waning energy and will that got me across the line to be a part of winning the prize.

One of the core values of the Christian faith is encouragement. It is the belief that we are in this life together. When one suffers all suffer. When one wins, we all win. Although we will not all win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus, we believe that we should contribute to as many achieving that prize as possible.

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” – I Thessalonians 5:11

(c) 2010 by Stephen L Dunn