Early Thursday morning a spark ignited into a small flame along U.S. Highway 101. The fire began only 1 ½ miles from my house in Camarillo, California. Hot winds were blowing in from the desert, and the temperature was over 90. Less than three days later, 45 square miles of terrain have burned, more than 11,000 hectares. More than 2,000 firefighters have worked in danger and exhaustion to preserve life and property.
Yet the fire was invisible from my home. Some of my family did not even know about the fire when it had burned more than 15 square miles the first day.
The fire burned away from my home. I live 1 1/2 miles north of where the fire started. The fire burned south.
Direction makes all the difference—not speed, not efficiency.
People and organizations get unnecessarily upset with themselves because they have not met their goals. They are not where they want to be. The bigger question: Are we moving in the direction that we want to go?
Other people and organizations lose their future to complacency: “Look what we’ve done! Look what we have accomplished!” Yet they do not measure their current progress. They may even miss that they have stopped moving forward.
When I taught in Chicago, I would ride the train in and out of the city. Occasionally, glancing up from my computer at the train window, I would think we were going forward when in fact the neighboring train was the only one moving. “Facts” lie if one is looking at things wrong.
Are you going in the direction that you want to go?
American pastor, Saeed Abedini, is serving 8 years in prison in Iran for his faith in God. He has internal bleeding from beatings, torture and psychological torment.
Join in praying for Pastor Abedini’s release this weekend on Persecuted Church Sunday. On April 21, 70,000 churches who follow traditional Bible readings will read about martyrs in Revelation 7:9-17. In these 70,000 churches, 20 million Christians will pray for peace and release for their persecuted brothers and sisters.
Saeed Abedini was arrested in Iran last September while he was working under the guidance of the Iranian government in launching an orphanage for Muslim children. The government arrested and then convicted him for his Christian witness from 2000-2005.
January Letter
In January he wrote to his wife: “I always wanted God to make me a godly man. I did not realize that in order to become a godly man, we need to become like steel under pressure. It is a hard process of warm and cold to make steel. This is the process of my life today. One day I am told that I will be freed and allowed to see my wife and kids on Christmas—which was a lie. And the next day I am told I will hang for my faith in Jesus. One day there are intense pains after beatings and interrogations. The next day they are nice to you and offer you candy….
“What is in us is stronger than what is in the world, and it has conquered the world.
“Pastor Saeed Abedini, in chains for our Lord Jesus Christ”
February Letter
In February he wrote to his wife again: “The conditions here get so very difficult that my eyes get blurry, my body does not have the strength to walk….
“After all of the nails they have pressed against my hands and feet, they are only waiting for one thing…for me to deny Christ. But they will never get this from me…..
“I deeply need God’s saving grace so that I can be the fragrant scent of Christ in the dark house of Evin prison….
“So, see your golden opportunities in pressures and difficulties.
“See the Shining Morning Star in the dark times of your life.”
Join in praying for Pastor Abedini and for his family in the U.S.—his wife, Nagmeh, his daughter Rebecca (6) and his son Jacob (5). Sign a petition for his release:
If you are not careful, your life might change between now and Easter. March’s Old Testament readings are leading us on a journey together into the heart of an ancient sage, Isaiah, who is both prophet and poet. Although Isaiah lived 700 years before Christ, he wrote more clearly about Jesus than anyone else in the Old Testament. His words are sometimes difficult to decipher by logic and deductive reasoning, and for many years that bothered me. I wondered if there were something wrong with Isaiah? Or much more likely, something wrong with me?
I am experimenting with a third explanation. I think that Isaiah aimed straight at our hearts. His clear prophetic vision is not expressed in the journalistic simplicity we prefer but in the sensual images of an artist.
The good news of Jesus is most clearly found in the Old Testament right here in Isaiah. Isaiah will speak past your mind and straight to your heart. We are going to camp with this prophet-poet through Easter. The promise of Easter is God’s promise for you and me: Even where there is death and despair, God will bring life and joy!
Here’s my path through the lectionary this month: • Time to Find God, Isaiah 55:1-9 — March 3 • Time for God’s Provision, Joshua 5:9-12 — March 10 • Time to Forget, Isaiah 43:16-21 — March 17 • Time to Wake Up, Isaiah 50:4–9 — March 24 • Easter Sunday — Time for a New Beginning, Isaiah 65:17-25 — March 31
In Les Misérables, follow the candlesticks to see Love triumph over Law.
Les Misérables is a tangled web of unrelenting law and unconditional love. What happens when justice and mercy collide? Law must be satisfied. Love must find reconciliation. There is no common ground between the two. If there has been wrong, law demands its due. Is this the dilemma of our relationship with God?
Les Misérables vividly paints the hopelessness of humanity as prisoners sing a dirge:
“I’ve done no wrong. Sweet Jesus, hear my prayer.
“Look down. Look down. Sweet Jesus doesn’t care….
“Look down. Look down. You’ll always be a slave.
“Look down. Look down. You’re standing in your grave.”
LAW
Justice cannot visualize freedom, as we learn from Inspector Javert’s exchange with Jean Valjean, Prisoner 24601. Inspector: “Prisoner 24601, your time is up, and your parole’s begun. Do you know what that means?” Jean Valjean: “It means I’m free.” Inspector: “No…. This badge of shame will show until you die…. You’ll starve again unless you learn the meaning of the law.”
LOVE
The shame of the ex-con’s status haunts his steps until a kind priest finds him sleeping out in the cold. In the eyes of the law, Valjean will always be Prisoner 24601. In the eyes of the priest, Valjean is “honored guest,” “friend” and “brother.”
When Valjean steals from the priest, the priest lies to the police to speak a deeper truth of love to Valjean.
In the end, Law cannot reconcile with Love. Unrelenting Law takes a life. Love, on the other hand, saves every life it can.
CANDLESTICKS
The masterful storytelling of Les Miserables is in the words and in the music…and if you watch closely, it is in the visual symbols. In the Bible, silver is used both to redeem slaves to freedom and to sell Jesus to his crucifiers. As you watch Les Miserables, follow the silver candlesticks from the hands of the priest till the very end of the story. The silver candlesticks carry Valjean to the end of his life.
Remembering Daisy Love Merrick…
Live a larger life—the life you were created for—and change the world!
Tomorrow a neighboring pastor is going to his 8-year-old daughter’s memorial service. A few days ago he dressed up like a hobbit with her to watch this amazing story. Daisy Love Merrick has finished a 3-year battle with cancer. Full of hope she drew this fabulous picture when she was 6, explaining it to her dad by saying, “This is cancer, and I’m beating it!”
Her mother sent out a note for how to dress for the memorial service: “Please join us as we celebrate the strong, kind, brave, goofy, thoughtful, amazing girl we call Daisy Love. Please wear what you feel best in: sandy feet and boardshorts, tutu and snorkel mask, or the prettiest dress in your closet. Wear black only if you must, but I’m wearing what Daisy would like most. On her last night on earth, she requested we watch The Hobbit (70’s version) and dress like hobbits.”
The Hobbit invites you to experience a broader, fuller life. The movie begins with a small humanoid known as a hobbit invited by an angelic being to leave his chains of habit and fulfill his soul’s longing for a larger life. A hobbit is half the size of a large human and has leathery, hairy feet. The contrast between the hobbit’s contained, measured existence and the wandering wizard’s invitation begins like this:
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
“It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle….”
“The Bagginses had lived in the neighborhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected…. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.”
After decades of absence, Gandalf the wizard, whom the author once described as an angelic being, returns to the hobbits’ beloved Shire in order to call on a Baggins. Gandalf declares to Bilbo Baggins, “I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging.”
Bilbo Baggins is thoroughly disinterested: “We are plain quiet folks and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them.”
Gandalf, however, is not easily turned away. “I will…send you on this adventure. Very amusing for me, very good for you—and profitable too, very likely, if you ever get over it.”
And in one night Bilbo Baggins shifts from respectability to signing a contract to become a burglar. This extraordinary document covers funeral arrangements in case of “incarceration, evisceration or incineration.”
You are created for a life that is abundant, overflowing. This is both for your fulfillment and to fulfill your critical role in the great cosmic drama. As Gandalf said to Lady Galadriel, “It’s the small things, the everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep evil at bay.”
Live a larger life—the life you were created for—and change the world!
The Impossible offers exquisite moments that reveal the human soul. If you ever cry at a movie, have some Kleenex along for The Impossible. This film follows the struggling survivors of one family in Thailand through the aftermath of the great tsunami of 2004.
Here are two poignant moments that won’t spoil the movie for you:
First, on the morning after Christmas, a giant wave stomped on the vacationing family’s hotel. The mother and oldest son are swept away in the raging waters, and when they are reunited, the mother is badly wounded and slowly bleeding to death. Struggling to find their way to help, Marie (the mother) and 12-year-old Lucas hear a child’s voice in the distance. Lucas wants to press toward safety, but Marie wants to help the child.
Marie asks, “What if it’s Simon or Thomas [your younger brothers]?”
“Simon and Thomas are dead!” Lucas shouts.
“Even if it’s the last thing we do,” Marie whispers. She lets go of logic and argues directly from her moral core.
Second, through persistence, providence and the compassion of strangers, Lucas helps his mother reach a hospital. The tsunami has produced a floodtide of patients, and Marie is sandwiched into a closet, desperately in need of medical attention.
Despite her anguish and weakness, Marie unbelievably tells her son to leave her, “Lucas, go and help people. You’re good at it.”
Twelve years old, in a strange country, in a chaotic hospital, with his mother badly wounded, Lucas asks the utterly reasonable question, “What should I do?”
“Anything!” Marie answers.
This simple response empowers Lucas to offer real help to people. He is not credentialed for anything. He has no resources to leverage. He gives himself, and he makes a difference.
The Life of Pi is an artistic masterpiece for universalism. Eastern theology is peddled as dogma: “The way of karma, the way of God.” Monotheism is gently dismissed because “Faith is a house with many rooms.”
The protagonist, Pi, attracts our sympathy from the beginning. The poor lad’s actual name, Piscene, came from ”an elegant French swimming pool [and] became a stinking English latrine,” Pissing, thanks to schoolyard bullies. His father is a harsh pragmatist while Pi is a seeking idealist.
Pi blends religions with humor when he surprises a Westerner by concluding his prayer with “Amen.”
His guest responds, “I didn’t know Hindus said Amen.”
“Catholic Hindus do,” Pi replies. “They get to feel guilty before hundreds of gods.”
Pi weaves his lovely tapestry of religious harmony. “I met Krishna first.” After his mother introduces Pi to Hinduism, he accidentally meets a Roman Catholic priest and is baptized. “I came to faith through Hinduism, and I found God’s love through Christ. God introduced himself again—this time through Islam. I found a feeling peace and serenity.”
As the trailer reveals, Pi ends up on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. As his life peels down to bare essentials, he writes in the lifeboat manual, “Words are all I have left to hang on to.” Then a storm blows away his notebook. He is left with a raw experience with divinity and shouts, “Praise be to God!”
The actor who plays Pi said in an interview that he appreciates how the movie questions illusion and reality.
At the end of Pi’s incredible journey, you are offered the opportunity to disbelieve everything he has told you when Pi asks, “Which story do you prefer?”
“As for God, you will have to make your own mind,” declares Pi the oracle.
(Quotations from the movie are based on my notes and may not be word-perfect.)
