Good story to share with your oikos.
Some twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the day I first saw Tommy. My eyes and my mind both blinked. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn't what's on your head but what's in it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped. I immediately filed Tommy under 'S' for strange, very strange.Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was, for me at times, a serious pain in the back pew.When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a slightly cynical tone, "Do you think I'll ever find God?" I decided instantly on a little shock therapy.
"No!" I said very emphatically.
"Oh," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."I let him get five steps from the classroom door, then called out,
"Tommy! I don't think you'll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!"He shrugged a little and left my class and my life.I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line: "He will find you!" At least I thought it was clever. Later I heard that Tommy had graduated, and I was duly grateful.Then a sad report came.
I heard Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted, and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy, but his eyes were bright, and his voice was firm for the first time, I believe."Tommy, I've thought about you so often. I hear you are sick," I blurted out."Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It's a matter of weeks.""Can you talk about it, Tom?" I asked."Sure, what would you like to know?" he replied."What's it like to be only twenty-four and dying?""Well, it could be worse.""Like what?""Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals; like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies in life."(I began to look through my mental file cabinet under 'S' where I had filed Tommy as strange. It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification, God sends back into my life to educate me.)"But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, "is something you said to me on the last day of class."(He remembered!)
He continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God, and you said, 'No!'which surprised me. Then you said, 'But He will find you.' I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time.(My clever line... He thought about that a lot!)"
But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that's when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven, but God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try something for a long time with great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted; fed up with trying. And then you quit.
Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable.""I thought about you and your class, and I remembered something else you had said: 'The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.'
So, I began with the hardest one, my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him."Dad.""Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper."Dad, I would like to talk with you.""Well, talk.""I mean it's really important."The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?""Dad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that." (Tom smiled at me and said it with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him.)"The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me.We talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me. " It was easier with my mother and little brother.
They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years. I was only sorry about one thing - that I had waited so long. Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to."Then, one day, I turned around and God was there! He didn't come to me when I pleaded with Him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop; 'C'mon, jump through. C'mon, I'll give You three days, three weeks.'Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour.
But the important thing is that He was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him.""Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather to open up to love.You know, the Apostle John said that.He said: 'God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.'"Tom, could I ask you a favor? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing it wouldn't be half as effective as if you were to tell them.""Ooh ... I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class." "Tom, think about it. If and when you are ready, give me a call." In a few days, Tom called, said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me.
So we scheduled a date, but he never made it. He had another appointment, far more important than the one with me and my class.Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed. He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard, or the mind of man has ever imagined.Before he died, we talked one last time. "I'm not going to make it to your class," he said."I know, Tom.""Will you tell them for me? Will you... tell the whole world for me?""I will, Tom. I'll tell them. I'll do my best."So, to all of you who have been kind enough to hear this simple statement about love, thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven - I told them, Tommy, as best I could.
-- John Powell, Professor Loyola University, Chicago
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Friday, February 17, 2006
Being Mocked: The Essence of Christ’s Work, not Muhammad’s
February 8, 2006 -- Fresh Words Edition By John Piper Permanent Link ****** ****** February 8, 2006
What we saw this past week in the Islamic demonstrations over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad was another vivid depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ, and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.
If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7). “He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).
When it actually happened it was worse than expected. “They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spit on him” (Matthew 27:28-30). His response to all this was pat ient endurance. This was the work he came to do. “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).
This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, “Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion.”
1 Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross.”
2 An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the “ignominy” of the cross. That’s the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of his mission. And for a true follower of Christ enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his followers the same: “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).
The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children. How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise. When Muhammad was portrayed in twelve cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the uproar across the Muslim world was intense and sometimes violent. Flags were burned, embassies were torched, and at least one Christian church was stoned. The cartoonists went into hiding in fear for their lives, like Salman Rushdie before them.
What does this mean? It means that a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that this religion is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make that possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God and peace with man. And it means that his followers must be willing to “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10).
*** Footnotes *** 1 Badru D. Kateregga and David W. Shenk,Islam and Christianity: A Muslim and a Christian in Dialogue(Nairobi: Usima Press, 1980), p. 141. 2 Quoted from The Muslim World in J. Dudley Woodberry, editor, Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1989), p. 164.
http://www.desiringgodstore.org/store/images/items/dgmstore/6b/ 70d01df627b05823a1b77168689b2e.gif] **** Contending_For_Our_All_(Hardcover_Book) **** New Book Release from John Piper
"When you believe that soul-saving truth (our all) is at stake in a controversy, running away is not only cowardly, but cruel. These men never ran." p. 20 Contending for Our All, the fourth book of John Piper’s The Swans Are Not Silent series, examines the lives of three giants in the history of the church – Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen.
Their battles in defense of the truth have paved the way for a deeper understanding of the character of God, the person and work of Jesus, and God’s promises contained in Scripture. To order call Desiring God at 1.888.346.4700 or order_online today.
What we saw this past week in the Islamic demonstrations over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad was another vivid depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ, and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.
If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7). “He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).
When it actually happened it was worse than expected. “They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spit on him” (Matthew 27:28-30). His response to all this was pat ient endurance. This was the work he came to do. “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).
This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, “Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion.”
1 Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross.”
2 An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the “ignominy” of the cross. That’s the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of his mission. And for a true follower of Christ enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his followers the same: “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).
The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children. How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise. When Muhammad was portrayed in twelve cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the uproar across the Muslim world was intense and sometimes violent. Flags were burned, embassies were torched, and at least one Christian church was stoned. The cartoonists went into hiding in fear for their lives, like Salman Rushdie before them.
What does this mean? It means that a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that this religion is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make that possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God and peace with man. And it means that his followers must be willing to “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10).
*** Footnotes *** 1 Badru D. Kateregga and David W. Shenk,Islam and Christianity: A Muslim and a Christian in Dialogue(Nairobi: Usima Press, 1980), p. 141. 2 Quoted from The Muslim World in J. Dudley Woodberry, editor, Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1989), p. 164.
http://www.desiringgodstore.org/store/images/items/dgmstore/6b/ 70d01df627b05823a1b77168689b2e.gif] **** Contending_For_Our_All_(Hardcover_Book) **** New Book Release from John Piper
"When you believe that soul-saving truth (our all) is at stake in a controversy, running away is not only cowardly, but cruel. These men never ran." p. 20 Contending for Our All, the fourth book of John Piper’s The Swans Are Not Silent series, examines the lives of three giants in the history of the church – Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen.
Their battles in defense of the truth have paved the way for a deeper understanding of the character of God, the person and work of Jesus, and God’s promises contained in Scripture. To order call Desiring God at 1.888.346.4700 or order_online today.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Valentine Sunnydale
on valentine 2006 Sunnydale share the stirring of chocolate and taste of the delicious work of Jane, the SL.
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