CHOPPING WOOD

I used Daddy’s ax today. Mama wanted a small tree cut down. “Trash tree,” she called it.  I went to the shed and chose the old wood-handled ax over the fiberglass one.  The wood was worn where Daddy’s hands once held it.  As my hands slid down the smooth handle I couldn’t help but let a little sigh escape.

It’s been a while since I chopped wood. My first swing landed in the ground at the base of the tree and dirt kicked back into my face.  Blowing off the lens of my glasses, I suddenly remembered Daddy saying, “Focus your eyes on the place you want to cut and watch that spot while you swing, son.”  Whack!  Dead center.  “Thanks, Dad,” I laughed to myself.

Daddy loved to cut wood. In his later years that was about all that seemed to bring him joy.  Mid-morning he would head out to the field, chainsaw and ax in hand, and stay out most of the day. Come winter, he would have cords of wood stacked to the sky. Once the temperature dipped into the 60's, he would have a roaring, and I mean ROARING, fire in the fire place.  If you walked in the front door on one of those mornings, you’d be hit in the face with a wave of heat that would singe your nose hairs.  “Whoa, Dad! It’s only 69 degrees!” “Yeah, it’s kind of chilly. Don’t that fire feel good?” he’d reply in his best St. Helena Parish accent.

I took another swing at that trash tree, and mid-swing I could hear Daddy saying, “Relax your wrists, boy! You’re gonna break a bone! Let the weight of the ax head do the work!”  I chopped away, eyes focused and wrists relaxed, sweat dripping off the tip of my nose, keenly aware of the wood-chopping legacy my dad left me.

The day Daddy's heart gave out, we were gathered around his bed in the ICU room: my sisters and their husbands, my nieces, my wife and daughters, and me. Mama had already said her goodbyes privately. We gave the nurse the OK to turn his ventilator off, and it got quiet while we held hands and wiped tears and watched his body sag. It was horrible. It was sweet. It was life.

But he kept shallowly breathing. The nurse said this wasn't unusual. The seconds seemed like hours as we half-heartedly tried to sing Amazing Grace like you read about in a Guideposts story. It fell flat; I guess we're just not one of those types of families. His breaths were getting shallower as one of my sisters said, "It's ok, Daddy, you can let go. Melissa Jo is waiting for you." Melissa Jo is our baby sister that died as a newborn in the late 1950’s.

More minutes dragged by.  I made myself walk up to the head of the bed, and leaned over to whisper to him : "Dad, I bet heaven's full of trees and God's just waiting on you to chop some of them down. He's probably got the best, sharpest ax ready and waiting for you. We're all ok. You go ahead and go see Grandmama and Granddaddy and Aunt Sybil and Uncle Pokey and Melissa Jo. Now go chop some wood." I squeezed his shoulder and stepped away from the bed, and he took one more breath, then....nothing. He was gone. "He always listened to you, Deloy," one sister teased softly through her tears.

It was horrible.

It was sweet.

It was life.

As I chopped down that trash tree with Daddy's old ax, I couldn’t get his passing out of my mind. I felt his presence all around me:  I felt it in the way I swung the ax, in the way I wore my cap crookedly on my head, in the manner I wiped the sweat from my forehead. The ghosts of his arms shadowed my arms with each chop; his hands merged with mine on the wooden handle of that sacred old ax.

I finished, drenched with sweat and tears, and plodded back to the shed to put the ax away.  “I’ll talk to you next time, Dad,” I whispered as I leaned the ax in the dusty, cobwebbed corner.  That was our commonality now, our kinship flowing through the wood of an ax handle.  And that makes sense to me. After all, chopping wood was the last thing I ever talked to him about.

I SAW GOD AT WALMART

(I wrote this quite a few months ago after I'd been laid off and the only work I could find was as an "Inventory Specialist"...stocker...at Walmart. Fortunately a wonderful career opportunity opened itself to me since this time and I've kissed the shelves of Walmart good-bye.)

I work at Walmart. And I saw God there today.

 I helped an elderly gray-haired man load his shopping cart with a heavy box of laundry detergent. "This is the best detergent there is," he exclaimed, and went on to explain that he washes his wive's soiled nightgowns with this particular brand. "She gets confused, you see," he said. "But I don't mind. I told her I'd take care of her to the end, and that's what I'm gonna do."  Off he shuffled to the next aisle.

 

God is love. I saw God at Walmart today.

 I watched a burly middle-aged man pushing his mother in a wheelchair.  He had full-arm tattoos and a stringy beard and wore a dirty baseball cap. She was having trouble reading the labels of two kinds of juices. "Here, Mom," he said gently. "I'll read that to you, then you can decide." She sighed and handed them over to him. He knelt down beside her and carefully read the labels to her.

 "Look after orphans and widows," the Good Book says. I saw God at Walmart right there on the juice aisle.

 Assigned to the pet food aisles, I was in the middle of stocking shelves when a little boy with skin the color of a Hershey bar and a smile as wide as a jumbo pack of paper towels ran up to me. "Mister, I can help you with those boxes!" he exclaimed as his mother walked up the aisle toward him.

 "Well, buddy, I'm supposed to do this myself. It's my job," I told him.

 "But you have too many things to put up. I don't mind, I can help," he pleaded.

 The momma shrugged her shoulders and smiled, explaining the little boy's uncle was teaching him that helping others was like helping Jesus. How do you say no to that? "Here ya go, man. Put that bag of cat food right there." He practically danced to the shelf as he helped me stock. Two or three minutes later momma told her boy it was time to finish shopping. He grabbed her hand and skipped down the aisle, throwing a quick wave my way as they turned the corner.

 A wise king once said, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." I saw God at Walmart in that little boy, and silently thanked Him for the boy's uncle.

 Yep, I see God at Walmart. But to be honest, seeing God doesn't always make things better. The whole experience of a professional 50-year-old man working on the very bottom rung at the lowest pay scale of a retail giant's career ladder has been humbling, humiliating, eye-opening, exasperating, mind-numbing, faith-building, backbreaking, sweaty, character-building.  It's rarely fun. It's rarely fulfilling. I try to avoid friends and acquaintances from the community when I'm on the clock dressed in my blue and khaki. I once saw a man on the cereal aisle I'd counseled several times. He avoided my greeting and snickered as he turned away. I made my way to the bathroom and smacked the wall in anger and embarrassment. I've never been a very prideful person. Stubborn, yes, but not necessarily prideful. But I guess the walls of my heart have a little pride graffitied on them that needs scrubbing off.

 I sense God might have a hand in purging my pride at Walmart.

 The education of the spirit is sometimes the most valuable diploma one can earn. At Walmart the eyes of my heart have been opened to truths I should have already been aware of. I've learned that every employee of that big box store has a story. From the single mom who lives in the projects and hasn't missed her shift in over ten years to the young man who rides his bike ten miles every day to work instead of hanging out on the streets; from the elderly gentleman who can barely shuffle his way to clean the restrooms to the college girl who works double shifts on the weekends to pay for college; each a story, an important story, in God's eyes. These stories should be important to me also.

 So while I hope and beg and plead that this temporary place of employment comes to an end soon, I must give credit to the wilderness God has me wondering in. Here I've learned. Here my pride has been dealt with. And here I've seen God.

 At Walmart, of all places.

 What's your Walmart? What is the place in your life that doesn't make sense? I dare you to look for God there. I challenge you to be open to some internal scrubbing while you're there. I beg you to see the stories in those around you there.

SOO-OO COW!

On many small dairy farms at milk time cows are trained to come in from the pasture with a signal.  It may be a truck horn honking.  It could be the clanging of buckets together accompanied by loud whistles. It could be someone yelling, "Soo-OO cow! Soo-OO cow! Come on!"  On the Chapman farm, we opted for the latter, sometimes with the addition of the truck horn.  And man, those cows would magically appear over the hilltop, walking, then trotting, to the gate.  They knew a meal of sweetened grain waited for them in the barn.

We would open the gate and guide the cows across the road to the lot where we would let them into the barn a few at a time.  Most of those cows went across the road through the lot gate without any problem.  But occasionally there would be a rogue cow who decided to bless us with an attitude and make a break for it.  Depending on who was monitoring the road, the language and tone could be quite entertaining as we would scramble after the belligerent bovine.

Dad:  "Git back in there!  GIT! You %#$# cow!"

The Sisters:  "Aw shoot!  Come on, you stupid cow!"

Mom:  (clapping hands) "Soo-OO cow!  SOO COW!"

Me:  (throwing rocks) "Mama! Daddy!  Heeelp!!"

Somehow, they rarely got away.  We would herd them back into the crowd where they would run into the lot, settle down, and wait their turn to get their grain snack and be milked.

Every one of us Believers has taken a run for it at one time or another (and some of us multiple times!).  We sometimes feel a need to experience the other side.  We often consciously step outside of what we know to be grace-filled and right, sometimes for great lengths of time.  Just like the cow who, even though she knew from experience that a trough of grain awaited her, decided to turn the other way, we get side-tracked and turn away from our relationship with Christ.

But you know what?  He doesn't leave us.  He chases us down.  He puts circumstance and events in our path that remind us He's still there.  He puts other Believers on our heels.  His Spirit prompts the synapsis of our brain to remember His goodness.  You see, the One who extended such grace to rescue us for eternity will not turn aside and forget us.

And here's the even better part:  we will come back to Him and confess and seek His forgiveness and He'll say, "What are you talking about?"  That's right.  "What sin?"

As far as the east is to the west...grace.  Grace.  He calls us to follow, to come back to Him.

Soo-OO cow and amen!
_____________________

"So He told them this parable : 'What man among you who has 100 sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the 99 in the open field and go after the lost one until he finds it ?' " (Luke 15:3-4)

"As far as the east is from the west , so far has He removed our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:12)

A TESTIMONY

I was raised in an a fundamental conservative home. I don't say that as condemnation nor with any judgement, just fact.  Dad was a cigarette-smoking, simple dairy farmer with a temper; mom was a country wife whose unspoken motto was, "Always do the right thing." We never missed church stuff.  We went to everything, because that was "the right thing to do."  And I'm glad we did!  Those hours upon hours of church attendance gifted me with a good grasp of theology, a great group of friends through my teenage years, and was the backbone of my becoming a Believer.

I learned a lot about what was expected of me, of what a committed Christian should do and how they should behave, what they should and shouldn't say or watch or listen to.  I learned to be afraid of hell and to care enough about others that they wouldn't go to hell.  But what I didn't learn was the Truth.

Sure, what I learned was truth-with-a-little-"t", but I didn't learn Truth-with-a-capital-"T".  In reflecting back on my religious influences, I am sure that my pastors preached about Truth (capital "T").  I can't think of anything they ever said from the pulpit or in a Bible class that would make me believe otherwise.  However, I was surrounded by laypeople who taught Sunday School and Bible studies and by example that truth-with-a-little-"t" was what following God was all about:

"Did you hear about Sally?  She wasn't raised that way, she should know better."  "I can't believe what Tommy is doing.  What a terrible example to others."  "Tsk, tsk, why weren't you at revival last night?  You know God wants you to be there."  "If they really loved God, they wouldn't act that way!"  "You're not singing in Youth Choir?  What a shame!  God gave you that talent for a reason."  These type of comments would usually be followed by a look over the rim of glasses with a surely-you-know-better scowl.

I had a dirty little secret during those influential years:  I didn't always do the right thing!  Sometimes I intentionally did the wrong thing!  Yes, even though at 11 years old I walked down the aisle to profess my faith in Christ, I still didn't seem to be able to live a life of truth (little "t").  I hated that dirty little secret.  I was ashamed that everyone around me seemed to be able to talk and live those perfect Christian lives, and yet I couldn't (and didn't always want to).  I was afraid that someone would call me out on my unChristlikeness.  I was ashamed that I couldn't always (and didn't always want to) live out those "Christian" values.

Life continued, I grew up, and even though I worked and served in areas of Christian service, my little secret of not always living in truth (little "t") could still dominate my mind.  It would sometimes create such depression that I could barely take it.  Sin is sin, so it didn't matter what I was struggling with, big or little, I was ashamed of my imperfections...my sinfulness...my failures...my weaknesses.

It didn't help that I was now in a career that was performance-based.  Being a worship leader, a music minister, is all about performance:  putting on an excellent set of music that everyone likes and appreciates.  I would work my tail off to make sure that every i was dotted and every t was crossed.  Whenever a volunteer would do less than perfect, I risked being called on the carpet.  So I would work myself to death making sure that everything was as prepared and ready as possible.  I would pre-set the sound board for the sound people.  I would make the PowerPoint as easy and prepared as possible for the computer people.  I would give every musician new music two weeks in advance with detailed notes on each page so we could spend rehearsal time perfecting things, not going over repeats and such.  I would beg and plead with people to be faithful to choir and orchestra so that the music didn't suffer.  "God deserves our excellence!"

Now I need to say this:  I believe God deserves our best.  I believe He deserves excellence.  And I often told people in the music ministries of the churches I served in that very thing.  But that wasn't really what it was all about.  At the end of the day, it was about my being good enough.  If I received criticism, if I was given a negative comment, if my voice wasn't strong, if I made a mistake, if a volunteer didn't show up, I

would be crushed.  I would come home and go straight to the bed for hours. I would be discouraged for days.

You see, I lived for the little-"t"-truth:  being good, doing the right thing, striving for perfection, being obedient.  If I couldn't attain that in my personal life, then surely I should do that in my professional life.  And if that didn't happen in my professional life....oh, what a failure!

Somewhere along the way it became too much.  As a counselor, I know that people who are faced with impossible tasks often just give up.  I was at the point of giving up.  I was in a dysfunctional church environment, my discontent and discouragement was affecting my marriage, and I was simply burned out with life.

After seeking wisdom from Godly counselors and people we trusted, my wife and I decided it was time to get out of "ministry" for my sake and for the sake of my family.  There was no back up plan, there was no ulterior motive, there was no career plan:  it was simply survival.

So I quit church.

For a couple of months we lived off of my retirement.  Krisa went from part-time to full-time work.  I lost my identity.  After 20 plus years of a career in ministry, I was no longer a servant of God.  I was no longer the preacher boy my wife married.  I cried a lot.  I was lonely beyond imagination.  On one hand I felt free as a bird, released from the cage of Christian vocation expectation.  But on the other hand I was without identity.  When your life has been based living for the little "t" truth and suddenly you pull back from that, who are you?

The beginning of my understanding of capital "T" Truth...Jesus' Truth...began one day in the counselor's office.  He showed me Galatians 4:4-5:  "...God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons."

He asked, "How do you get to have the full rights of being one of God's chosen?"

Always afraid of giving the wrong answer, I timidly asked, "Um, by being redeemed?"

"Ha! Yes, but once you are redeemed, how do you get it?" he replied.

"He gives it to you?" I ventured.

"But what do you do?"

"Receive?"

"Receive!  You do nothing but receive.  You don't behave a certain way, you don't live a particular way, you RECEIVE.  It is GIVEN to you. You are one of His because He gives you that right.  Not because you are perfect, not because you don't sin.  You simply 'be'.  Christ did the doing for you.  You will never be 'good enough' on your own...but Christ's GRACE is good enough for you!"

And that was the beginning of my new life in the Truth.  Something clicked.  Old Covenant and New Covenant began to make sense.  In the next few months I began to see that living under GRACE was the Truth.   The little "t" truth was done away with after Christ's capital "T" Truth came to be.  Living under the law, by the law, in the law didn't work because no one could do it.  No one could always do the right thing.  No one always wanted to do the right thing.  And the Old Covenant proved that.  So God gave us a New Covenant of GRACE through Christ, where our relationship with Him was all that mattered, not "doing the right thing."  And all that "God deserves excellence" stuff I used to talk about?  He just wants a relationship with me.  That's the priority.  That is what's excellent in His sight.

I am on a journey.  So many things in Scripture now make sense as I read them in this new Grace light.  I'm learning that sitting at the feet of Jesus is far better than doing for Jesus.  I'm learning that many teach a life in Christ is all about doing and behaving and looking good, when it should be all about being. I'm learning that when I live in Grace I'm not concerned about policing other people's behaviors.

And one other thing I've learned?  That I don't know much.  "There is more that I don't understand than what I understand," Pastor Frank Friedman says.  But I've learned the most important thing:  the Truth.  And I am now on the journey to explore and understand Truth in ways I've never imaged.

This journey makes a whole lot more sense.

IMPERFECT

Today I am grateful. My life is not perfect. My marriage is not perfect. My family is not perfect. My house and cars are not perfect. My finances are FAR from perfect. My job is not perfect. My church is not perfect. My friends are not perfect. Yet I am grateful for each one of these, for even in their imperfections they are much more than I deserve; in their imperfections I see the grace of God; in the midst of imperfection I can glimpse the horizon of future perfection in Him. Today, I encourage you, my friends near and far, to look for the goodness and grace in the imperfections of your life.

God, You are good and Your mercies endure forever. Amen.

TOP TEN THINGS ABOUT THE BIBLE...

I recently read an article where the writer asked theologian and professor Peter Enns to list the top ten things he wished people knew about the Bible. Mind you, Dr. Enns is not afraid to think outside of the box; he constantly challenges Believers to "rethink biblical Christianity."  His list resonates with me. So below is this list copied directly from the article published Oct. 6, 2014 from www.faithstreet.com:

1. The Bible doesn’t answer all — or even most — of our questions.

Many of our questions, even some of the more pressing questions we face daily, aren’t answered in the Bible. The Christian Bible isn’t an answer book but a story of how Jesus answers for us the biggest question of all: what God is like.

2. The Bible isn’t like God’s version of Apple’s “Terms and Conditions” agreement.

The Bible doesn’t lay out before us God’s terms and conditions, where failure to adhere to one clause in the middle of page 87 will cause a breach of contract and banishment from God’s graces. The Bible is more like a grand narrative that reorders our imaginations and holds out for us an alternate way of seeing reality — with God at the heart of it rather than ourselves.

3. The Bible isn’t a sourcebook for fighting culture wars.

The Bible isn’t a club we use to gain political power or a way of forcing secular culture to obey our rules. America is not God’s country and the Bible isn’t its constitution. Stop it.

4. The Bible doesn’t guarantee “success in life.”

Don’t listen to those T.V. preachers. The Bible isn’t a step-by-step guide to success, as if buried there are deep secrets for being happy, healthy, and rich. It is a book that shows what dying to self and surrendering to God are about. The Bible crushes our egos.

5. The Bible is open to multiple interpretations, not just one meaning.

The Bible is ancient and obscure, and its stories are “gapped” and flexible, which allows—even demands—readers to interpret the Bible legitimately in various ways. This is exactly what has been happening among Jews and Christians for over 2,000 years.

6. The Bible invites debate.

An extremely important lesson for Christians to learn from Judaism is that the Bible invites debate. In fact, it can’t avoid it, given how open it is to multiple interpretations. Winning Bible feuds with others, getting to the right answer, isn’t the end goal. The back-and forth with the Bible, and with God, is where deeper faith is found.

7. The Bible doesn’t “record” history objectively but interprets it.

The biblical writers didn’t try to get history “right” in the same sense an author of an academic textbook does. Instead, they interpreted the past in their place and time, for their own communities, to answer their own questions of faith. That’s why the Bible contains two very different “histories” of Israel and the four Gospels that recount Jesus’ life differently.

8. The Bible was written by Jews (and at least one Gentile in the New Testament) in ancient times.

This may sound too obvious to say, but it’s not. The biblical writers were ancient writers expressing their faith in God using the vocabulary and concepts of their ancient cultures. When we transpose our language and concepts onto biblical writers, even if we are trying to understand the Bible, we will actually distort it.

9. The Bible isn’t the center of the Christian faith.

Some form of the Bible has always been a part of the life of the church, but the Bible isn’t the center of our faith. God is — or, for Christians, what God has done in and through Jesus. The Bible doesn’t draw attention to itself, but to God.

10. The Bible doesn’t give us permission to speak for God.

At least not without a lot of wisdom and humility behind it. Knowing the Bible is vital for Christian growth, but it can also become intoxicating. We don’t always see as clearly as we might think, and what we learn of God in the Bible should always be first and foremost directed inward rather than aimed at others.

WHEN SHE WALKS THE DOG

A little ditty about life and my wife.