Getting Started on the Bucket List

Not only has AARP (American Association of Retired People) been on my case to join them since I turned fifty, the Medicare Administration has gotten me in their grip, and now I receive the regular reminders I am old enough to draw my full Social Security benefits. I don’t mind the help with medical expenses, but I am not ready to retire and do nothing.

That is not to say I am not ready to leave this full time job and devote myself to other interests of a less frustrating nature. I have that proverbial bucket list containing a long list of goals I want to pursue when I have the time. One of those goals is embodied in this blog, the urge to write. At one time I sought to make this a weekly event. That has retreated into a hopefully once a month event. The writing interest also finds expression on a facebook page, a life log (for my eyes only), and in generating children’s stories and novels.

Beyond that the bucket list contains education in the form of earning another master’s degree, learning Spanish, and getting involved in a local archaeological dig. There are hospital volunteer responsibilities to assume, getting dirty with Habitat for Humanity, and becoming more involved in helping others to live better in this next part of life.

If you are not familiar with the movie, The Bucket List, I encourage you to see it before you reach retirement age. Morgan Freeman, one of my favorite all time actors, and Jack Nicholson are two terminally ill men who decide to live out the dreams on their bucket lists, things to do before they “kick the bucket”. Make up your own bucket list to avoid dropping dead from boredom the day after you retire.

All of this is to say just doing stuff to keep busy is hardly worth the effort. Watching television eighteen hours a day can keep you busy. Doing crossword or word search puzzles eighteen hours a day can keep you busy. Involving yourself in activities that will make you a better person and most of all make the people around you better people, those are activities worth putting on a bucket list.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I have another motivation. I want to make my Lord glad that he choose me to be one of his disciples. It is not the personal credit that is important; rather the knowledge I have pleased the One who has given me so much already.

As the Apostle Paul records in his letter to the church in Colossae:

Col 3:23  Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.

If your priority is to please the Lord in your work, then it makes no difference in what stage of life you may be or the difficulty of the task. The important goal is to give God the best you have. This involves not only the effort you are willing to put into the job, but also the attitude with which you do it. The world may see none of what you do or only part of it. The Lord, however, will see all of it, and he deserves your best.

Getting What I Deserve

In recent months a series of various commercials have been aired featuring lawyer representatives discussing the merits of their businesses. Each of them focused on a particular word: Deserve. If you use this law firm, you will get what you deserve. Generally the commercials were describing personal injury cases. They promised these lawyers would give their clients what they deserve.

What do these people deserve who have been injured on the job, on the highway, or just simply on the way through life? The court settlements about which we all hear are financial and in the millions of dollars. Someone is declared negligent and has to pay a huge sum of money because a court has decided the injury could have been avoided if proper care had been shown. No one chose to have the accident. No one wanted to have an accident. Everyone regrets that it happened, but the injured person deserves to have a huge cash settlement anyway.

When do we decide we ought to get what we deserve? Usually we only want what we deserve when we will benefit. We rarely want what we deserve when we were the ones in the wrong. The last thing we want to have happen is get what we deserve when we deserve to suffer a little pain. I don’t want what I deserve when a traffic officer pulls me over for doing ten miles per hour over the posted speed limit. I don’t want what I deserve when I sit on the couch and unconsciously eat an entire half gallon of ice cream.

When it comes to our relationship with God, we never want what we deserve when it comes to his judgment of our sin-filled lives. The Apostle Paul tells us about our unrighteous condition before God.

Rom 3:23 “everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence.”

Such a condition does not leave us in a good position before a holy and righteous God who will have the final word on our eternal destiny. If we got what we deserved based upon the fact God cannot and will not tolerate sin in his presence, we would have no hope.

Thankfully we serve a merciful God who has decided to spare us.

Rom 5:8 “But God has shown us how much he loves us---it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!

Rom 10:9 “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.”

We don’t get what we deserve in our relationship with God and our destiny with eternity because God sent his Son Jesus Christ to die for us.

Do we deserve to be persecuted as Christians? If you are a committed Christian living in a non Christian world, you do. Our Lord and Savior was condemned by the religious and civil authorities of his day. Because he refused to acknowledge their authority to determine man’s relationship with God, he was killed as a criminal against the state. He told his followers they should expect nothing less.

As long as followers of Christ represent a moral code that threatens the power of civil and other religious authorities, they will be persecuted. As long as Christians follow an authority beyond this world that threatens the authorities of this world, they will be persecuted. As long as Christians refuse to compromise with the patterns of this world, they can expect and even deserve to be persecuted by a world that refuses to see its own sinful condition.

Do What You Can

In this election year here in the United States, a commonly heard phrase is “Why should I vote? What difference will my one vote make in a national or even state election?” One vote among one hundred and seventy-five million can seem very small and insignificant indeed.

The Apostle Paul reminds us, however, our greatest obligation is not how we affect national or state affairs, but how we affect the lives of those we see each day.

Rom 12:9-21 Love must be completely sincere. Hate what is evil, hold on to what is good. Love one another warmly as Christians, and be eager to show respect for one another. Work hard and do not be lazy. Serve the Lord with a heart full of devotion. Let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles, and pray at all times.

       Share your belongings with your needy fellow Christians, and open your homes to strangers. Ask God to bless those who persecute you---yes, ask him to bless, not to curse. Be happy with those who are happy, weep with those who weep. Have the same concern for everyone. Do not be proud, but accept humble duties. Do not think of yourselves as wise.

      

       If someone has done you wrong, do not repay him with a wrong. Try to do what everyone considers to be good. Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody. Never take revenge, my friends, but instead let God's anger do it. For the scripture says, "I will take revenge, I will pay back, says the Lord."

       Instead, as the scripture says: "If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them a drink; for by doing this you will make them burn with shame." Do not let evil defeat you; instead, conquer evil with good.

The older I get the more importance this passage carries for me. It does not focus upon a Christian’s responsibility to change the world. Its entire focus is upon the necessity of individuals to impact in a positive way the small circle in which they live, move, and relate. Paul makes no argument for marching on the national capital. Rather he emphasizes the importance of relating to our next door neighbor with a spirit of love and redemption.

Early in my ministry I began to use this passage in pre-marital counseling. The text was written by an individual to one congregation or more, perhaps to be read by many. Yet how many relationships between husbands and wives, between neighbors, as well as between individual church members would be enriched by living out these words of encouragement.

I called them “divine nuggets of wisdom”. Each phrase could be taken as an individual statement of counsel. Each phrase touches upon an area of life important in human relationships. Of course our nation and world would be a much happier and fulfilling arena of life if, for instance, each of us sought to “do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody.” Until that day comes each of us in our own small world of relationships should seek to do the same.

We must not wait until dictators, emperors, kings, and presidents start to act live civilized human beings who do not live by the laws of fang and claw. Our actions may not change the greater world, but in our own realm of relationships, when we live by the laws of love and redemption, we can make a difference in the lives of those we touch each day.

It is not a trite phrase to believe in the strength of goodness. A not so old proverb says, “In the long run, good will always beat evil because good is better.” If we believe good is grounded in the very nature of divine love that demands obedience and simultaneously provides the grace to make that obedience possible and then the forgiveness when obedience fails, then we will be that influence that looks so small to the world but so big to those closest to us.

Checking the Foundation

A concern of every teacher is what the student is learning from what the teacher is sharing. The goal of every teacher is to lay a foundation for what must be learned or will be experienced next in the student’s life. If the foundation is not properly laid, then future struggles will occur or failure itself will occur. A solid foundation must always be laid.

Mat 7:24-27 "So then, anyone who hears these words of mine and obeys them is like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain poured down, the rivers flooded over, and the wind blew hard against that house. But it did not fall, because it was built on rock. But anyone who hears these words of mine and does not obey them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain poured down, the rivers flooded over, the wind blew hard against that house, and it fell. And what a terrible fall that was!"

Jesus was driving home a point. What you teach becomes less important if the foundation is not what it needs to be. The lessons of life must be laid out on the right foundation so they will be applicable to whatever the person may meet.

He made no distinction between the two houses. They may have been duplicates in both materials and skill of construction. The only difference was the foundation. One was of rock. The other was of sand. One was able to withstand the forces of the storm. The other could not.

Pastors must consider what kind of foundation they lay for their congregation. They must be conscious of what they teach, of what they preach. Sermons are often like those facebook posts. Once those words are out there, no amount of regret can bring them back. Trying to explain what a statement in the sermon meant two days later may not be adequate to dispel confusion or strong disagreement arising from a misunderstanding.

Even in a teaching context where there is opportunity to dialogue and delve deeper into proper understanding, the chance for misunderstanding still exists. The old proverb is still true: make sure your brain is in gear before you start your mouth.

Pastors must be just as conscious of the example they set through their own lives. Another proverb goes like this: I can’t hear what you’re saying because what you’re doing makes too much noise. Pastors are not perfect. They make mistakes. The twofold lesson is to work to limit the mistakes and be ever ready to offer the appropriate apology.

Parents also must consider what kind of foundation they are laying for their children. Future decisions the children will make will be heavily influenced by what they heard from their parents and what they saw in their parents. The foundation laid can make the difference between well-adjusted adults and confused individuals who have no basis for making decisions that will lead to satisfaction and fulfillment.

No greater foundation can a parent lay in their child than to instill in the child he or she is loved. The security that comes from knowing you are loved and accepted through that love is without price and unsurpassable in its power to prepare for a healthy future.

To love is not to condone. To love is to feel a responsibility to help the child prepare for the future, to lay the right foundation in the life of the child. This involves instilling a sense of right and wrong based upon a standard independent from the whims of society. The right foundation leads the child to make decisions based upon those absolutes grounded in the nature of God and his revelation in Jesus Christ.

As the biblical proverb recorded for us:

Prov. 22:6 – Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

The Dilemma of Promises

Tis the season to question the integrity of wanna-be leaders. The presidential race in full force here in America offers us a profound insight into the human psyche and what it is willing to say to reach its goals. Our history is rife with promises made in hopes of garnering votes only to see those promises broken in the face of reality.

A Republican presidential candidate said in his campaign, “Read my lips. No new taxes!” That may have helped get him elected, but it was a promise he had to break after he took office. The most recent comment a president probably wishes he could take back is the infamous, “If you like your current health insurance plan, you can keep it.”

Mary Poppins speaks of a promise in the movie by the same name as a “pie crust promise, easily made and easily broken.” In our politics, perhaps in life in general, we have come to see most of our promises as being merely “pie crusts”. This is not so much a mark of our world’s reality as it seems to be a mark of human character. Integrity has become a victim of social expediency.

Promises should mean something. They should inspire trust. They should reveal integrity. A promise should shape a hoped-for future that will become reality if the one making the promise is willing to pay the price to carry through. Too many promises become “pie crust” promises.

The price we pay for such frivolous use of words can be high. The loss of trust, the loss of hope, the loss of personal integrity, all should be considerations in our minds before we make these promises. Can we afford the price?

Unfortunately in politics and other areas of life, that price no longer seems so high. Our disappointment in broken promises rarely translates into action that affects the one making the promise. Maybe the attitude is “I have the power, and you do not. Get over your disappointment.” Another perspective might be “I’m not running for reelection. You can’t touch me. Too bad for you.”

Life goes on and we adjust our expectations according to the experiences we have had with people making promises. We lose faith in a person’s promise, so we make them sign a piece of paper. Because we have learned their personal promise is meaningless and paper signatures can be just as meaningless, we have lawyers, lots of lawyers. Then we make tons of jokes about lawyers who cannot be trusted.

Where does this end? It ends where it begins, with each of us as individuals. Can I be trusted? Do I inspire hope in the people to whom I make a promise? Do I have integrity which is revealed in the way I am willing keep my promises?

Can I change the world? No, but I can create a climate of trust around myself. Can I live a life that tells others a person’s promise can be trusted? Yes, that is in my power.

I can be a person of integrity whose word can be trusted. I can be a person of integrity whose promises will be kept as far as humanly possible. I can be a person who will not make promises that exist only to win the approval of others.

As Jesus said,

Mat 5:33-37 "You have also heard that people were told in the past, 'Do not break your promise, but do what you have vowed to the Lord to do.' But now I tell you: do not use any vow when you make a promise. Do not swear by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by earth, for it is the resting place for his feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not even swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black. Just say 'Yes' or 'No'---anything else you say comes from the Evil One.

Promises create a dilemma only when we cannot be trusted to pay the price to back our word.