#GivingTuesday

My email inbox was flooded this morning with requests from every non-profit organization that has my digital address.  I was overwhelmed as by so many preschoolers crying in loud voices "ME!"  Some even promised "Change lives forever!" and even "Double your gift!"  So many opportunities popped up to benefit others, right on the tail of Black Friday and Cyber Monday when I even saw an advertisement proclaiming in big letters, "Gift yourself."

As I just finished reading Jesus Among Secular Gods by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale, it was intriguing to me that in our secular culture of survival of the fittest there is still honor in providing for those less fortunate.  And even among those who deny God, benevolence is still highly regarded.

And where does that inexplicable sense of compassion and highest regard for self-sacrifice come from?  Not from evolutionary philosophy.

The Biblical worldview is seamlessly woven with giving and generosity and the dignity of every person, evident from cover to cover in the Scriptures, evident from transformed life to transformed life.  Giving is not a designated day, but a daily response.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast;  it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way;  it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice at wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  (1 Corinthians 13. 4-7)

God calls us to be generous, but not just financially, not just to give in the form of a check to an organization, but how to live.  A very different worldview emerges, not based on performance but on grace itself.

There are those who seek to increase gratitude by looking everyday for the gifts that we have been granted.  Indeed, we are surrounded.  But what if we also sought out daily opportunities to bless others, how to love our neighbors -- those all around us -- as we have been loved.  Those little divine appointments with those on our path are not so insignificant at all. 

...remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20. 35)   That is not just an action, but a heart condition.  Our way of seeing the world is attached to our hearts.

God is love.  We are able to love because He first loved us. (1 John 4. 19)

It is the way God intended this world to operate.

...blessed is he
        who is generous to the poor.

                       Proverbs 14. 21

On a lot of different levels.

A daily practice, a daily Presence

Sometimes a swell of thankfulness rises up for the good we see and hear and feel all around us. But in the tough times, the hard circumstances, the tears, it is the patterns of daily gratefulness that emerge from within that hold us fast even when, even when. 

Thanksgiving is not an event, but a daily abiding in the LORD, impervious to how, in our own eyes, we judge what is good and what is not.

Because as we sing in church: 

God is good all the time,

All the time God is good.

Even beyond recognition or understanding or before the redeeming comes into focus.

Learning to be thankful FOR the daily blessings of God enables us to be grateful IN, when we see no explanation and cannot possibly understand.

Gratefulness is a pattern of seeing life differently, a pattern of seeing God in all things and trusting Him in it.  

Even in the hard stuff.

I have rested this year in the mercies of God, in times His strength beyond what I have ever known.

O give thanks to the LORD,

       for He is good;

for His steadfast love

        endures forever.

                Psalm 113. 1

Happy Thanksgiving, my friend.

Just on the other side

In 2011, at just 28 years old, Jennifer Pharr Davis attempted both the absurd and ridiculous.  She set out that summer to establish the fastest record time for men and women hiking the 2,180 mile Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine.

As noble as that sounded, shortly into her epic hike, incredibly averaging about 47 miles a day, reality set in.  She was exhausted, cold, wet, and suffered painful shin splints.  She crept along until the next road crossing where her husband Brew met her with supplies.  "I'm done," she said.

"That's fine," he said.  "Just not right now.  If you still want to quit by the next road crossing tomorrow, I'll take you home.  But you can't quit now."

So she kept on hiking, knowing that in the matter of several hours, the pain would be over, and she could go home.

But something happened in those succeeding hours.  She felt just a little teeny bit better.  Just enough to keep going another day.  And then another.

Her story was not over yet.  She completed the entire trail in 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes, a record unsurpassed for the next four years.

One step and then another.

Last weekend, I ran a familiar trail in the woods that starts with a five mile ascent that always seems to go on f.o.r.e.v.e.r.  It was fiercely cold.  It was all uphill.  And yes, it was hard, each gravel crunching step, each winding turn in the road followed yet by another.  "Just get to the other side of this bend," I convinced myself.

Even though I didn't quite know where I was, I knew it was not a random journey.  As in any responding to the Lord, I was not just going somewhere, but God is going somewhere with this.  Even the really hard stuff does not lay beyond His redeeming.  There is another side to this.

We've all been there on one road or another.

Despair will get you nowhere fast.
       Or I can choose to trust Him.
                                  Even in this.
And pretty much throughout the entire Bible,
cover to cover,
God tells His people,
                      "Don't quit now."

O LORD,
show me Your path,
Your way through.

God is
going somewhere with this.

And as I came around what I was hoping the final bend in that steep rutted road, dusty and dreary, suddenly spectacular beauty surrounded me, the sunlight streaming through the woods like the glory of God, and golden leaves were intricately imprinted on a sacred sky of deepest blue.

If I had quit and turned around, I would have missed the awe.


For Your steadfast love is great above the heavens;
Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
                                   Psalm 108. 4


It took that momentary affliction of running uphill for me
to not just acknowledge God,
or even believe,
         but to know Him more.

Somehow,
    the hard stuff always leads to that.
God redeems the impossible
     in ways we never expect.

The view is not just at the top,
      not just on the good days
when the breeze is warm and favorable,
          but when I want to quit.

...let us run with endurance
       the race that is set before us,
       looking to Jesus....

                         Hebrews 12. 1-2

Even on the uphills,
following God
    even in what

    may make no sense at all,

                    to us,

God is going someplace

                     with this.

Even in this mess,

even in this seeming failure,

even in the bleakest wilderness,

                 God is.

Your story is not over yet.