"Most Likely to Succeed"

I got a real kick out of this line in the front page article of our local paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

“More and more environmentalists and scientists talk about the planet as a complex system, one that human beings must aggressively monitor, manage and sometimes re-engineer.”

I don’t know about the whole “re-engineer” idea, but the “manage” part sure sounds familiar:

Then God said, ”Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So  God created humans in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Genesis 1:26 – 28

That term, “rule,” sounds a little harsh, unless we remember what God means by that.

Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise autority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.”

Luke 22:25 – 26

Several years ago we planned to take a family trip to China to visit friends, so had to get new passports for our kids. However, after turning the house upside down several times we could not find the kids’ birth certificates. Before I got around to getting new copies, we decided that then was not the best time to go, so scrapped the idea of updating the passports.

Fast forward a couple of years, and listen to my daughter whine at me about how her good friend at school goes to Mexico over spring break, and why can’t she go to another country for vacation? I explained that to go out of the country she would need a new passport. “Then get me one,” was her reply. So a month or so ago I promised her that I would go get new copies of her and her brother’s birth certificates so that we could get updated passports. I told her that I didn’t think we would go to Mexico anytime soon, but could go to Canada. She thought that would be fine.

So as not to be chastised when I picked her up after school, I dutifully made my way from school to the county courthouse. On the way to the courthouse, I passed by another  location of a restaurant that my husband and I had just tried several weeks before, and had loved! I thought of friends who  lived in the area that we hadn’t seen in awhile, and decided that I would invite them to meet us at that restaurant for lunch.

I got the birth certificates, drove home and immediately got onto my email to send an invite to our friends. They were available, which brings us to today (well, technically yesterday, since it is now past midnight).

While enjoying lunch together, my husband, who is an electrical engineer by training, shared how God had helped him fix an electrical problem with the neighbor’s car earlier in the week. Our friend’s perked up, “Really? We have a possible electrical problem with our car that we were told may be very expensive to fix, so were just praying about how we could deal with it. Would you come and look at our car?”

Since we had nothing planned for the afternoon, no problem. So my husband worked on the car with the guy, while I sat inside chatting with the gal. Somehow she and I got on the subject of me being a retired technical writer, so she asked if I would be willing to read their newsletter and edit it. Well, ok. I enjoy doing that, so she went and got it.

Several hours later, with the car running, the newsletter edited and a lot of fun conversation along the way, it was time for my husband and I to go. We had a houseful of friends coming over for a Christmas party this evening. As we were heading out, the guy mentioned that he would like to get the newsletter into a great looking format. I have no skill in that area (as you may have noticed from my near-total reliance on the formatting ability of the WordPress team) but I have a friend, we’ll call him M, who is quite talented in graphic design who was going to be at the Christmas party tonight!

The guy was thrilled with that possiblity. After asking M’s wife if he actually had time to work on such a project, and getting her ok to talk to him about it, I approached him. M was thrilled to use his skills to help the guy and in turn to network with the guy, as they both are in similar lines of work – bringing the Gospel to people both here in the US and around the world.

I’m thinking angels took those first birth certificates!

It took me awhile to pray about what all took place several weeks ago. I am so thankful that Osama was finally found. Go, Americans! I wished that he had not been shot. But the reality that he would be put to death for his crimes after a fair trial were very high, so I can understand the human logic involved. From a purely human standpoint, he definitely got what he deserved. From a purely Christiam standpoint, I wished that he could have been reached by the gospel. I realize that would have been a long shot, and I can hear many of you yelling, “What, why would you want him in heaven?!” But wouldn’t it have been cool to get a heartfelt, “I’m really sorry!” from him? Anyway, none of that is to be, and I am glad that he was finally found and is unable to help destroy more people.

I am not Catholic – but my mother and my husband were both raised Catholic, so I have a deep appreciation for the Catholic church, as two of the most important  people in my life have their earliest Christian roots there.

I grew up in a conservative United Methodist  Church that was hit by the charismatic wave in the mid-70s. I attended Evangelical Free, Covenant and non-denominational protestant churches in college. I then ended up in a charismatic Lutheran church after college. Was married and dedicated our first child in a Southern Baptist Church, and am now a member at the charismatic Lutheran Church.

Through this somewhat ecumenical background, I have gained deep appreciation for the solid non-negotiables of the Christian faith, and have learned to not worry about many of the issues that we as humans make such a big deal about, simply because we are not smart enough to know better. If I listed some of those things, I am sure that I would start a firestorm, as some things that I see as non-negotiable, others would think trifling, and vice versa. So I will refrain from that at this time.

Our church just installed a new senior pastor this past weekend. The previous head pastor had retired, so it is nice that this was just a natural thing, not because of some scandal or other. Anyway, our new head pastor really wants us to be willing to work with other churches as a truly united body of Christ. Even as I write this I can feel my body tensing some, becoming defensive, as I have always feared being ecumenical, because of the worry that it would mean that all truths would be watered down into something that does not save any of us at all.

As one way to show unity, our pastor invited us Lutherans to attend a service with Catholics and listen to the Pope’s preacher, who is in town for a Catholic conference this week. Being a conservative Christian, I have always aprreciated the messages of the popes. I am glad that they are still “old-fashioned” in their moral stances. I thought it might be interesting to hear who the pope listens to for inspiration and encouragement. And I wanted to support our new pastor. So I gladly decided to attend.

On the way into the meeting today, I could sense my defences going up. I used to be a very open person, spiritually. But after getting mixed up with some less safe, at least in my estimation, groups in my younger years, I have learned to be a bit more discerning, not just walking into every group that calls themselves Christian and expecting everything to be theologically safe.

Well, I must say that I was more blessed than I had ever expected to be. What an amazing man of God is Rev. Cantalamessa. What makes him  so amazing is his humble, simple following after Jesus. He did not try to wow us with his intellect. He did not try to rouse us with boisterous cries or guilt us into action by tugging on our emotions. He simply told us his faith journey.

He told us how God called him when he was a boy. How he had questions he had to overcome. How he had to give up control of his life, and everything he had already attained. It was beautiful to hear such a plain, simple story of God’s power working through someone when they are willing. He had not been looking for such a position. But there he is, and I thank God that he was here this morning to encourage us to move forward in courage and serve God. I pray continued blessing on him and his ministry as he teaches all of us in all denominations of the love and power of our amazing triune God.

My husband was telling me yesterday about a class he is taking at work on how to bring about change in the workplace. The book he is reading for the class talks about the fact that people make decisions based on emotions more than they realize, and that this fact needs to be accounted for when encouraging co-workers to make changes.

The author of the book talked about how a group of professionals thought they were making rational decisions about their work, but the author didn’t think they really were. I could see the authors point a bit, but wasn’t so sure that the author didn’t jump to his own conclusions to satisfy his need for data. There were other examples presented in the book that clearly sounded like people were acting on emotion, but I was not so sure about this one.

This got me thinking about what is rational? In the western world we have come to define “rational” as coming up with decisions based on careful weighing of data that we can receive empirically. However, before God was kicked out of the picture several centuries ago, rational thought was considered to be decisions based on the careful weighing of what it was thought that God would want.

Which is truly more rational? To make good decisions you need to have as much true information as possible. None of knows what is really true about any situation, except for God.

In current western thinking it was not rational for Joshua to march around the city of Jericho once for 6 days, then 7 times on the 7th day. But it worked. Why, because he made his decisions based on all truth about the situation – he talked to the Guy who knew all.

If we all chose true rationality, which is the one thing that is supposed to set us apart from the rest of the creatures of this world, just think what a wonderful place this would be, and how great our lives would be.

Hmmmm, can anyone say, “Heaven”?…