Tag: Bible

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Bridging the Divide

Our cinema van slowed, rolling forward to the shoreline.

Africa’s vast body of water, Lake Victoria, lay directly ahead. If we should reach our destination, Rusinga Island, we must await the ferry here at Mbita Village.

We watched the ferry approach. Soon the Toyota, bearing us two missionaries, a diesel generator, a movie projector and gospel films departed the mainland. We and our cargo floated toward the water-encircled land before us.

Throughout it all the ferry was key. We had no other way to make it there. This was it, the ferry. Just this.

A religious group in the city where I now live set a sign in front of their meeting place. The organization promotes an idea that there are many equally valid “life paths”.

The sign reads, What is the true bible for you?

To the disciple of Jesus, such a question seems odd.

To his delight, the disciple has found that the book of the ages – the Holy Bible – holds in its pages the answers to life’s biggest questions. Foundational truths addressing the deepest concerns of every culture and people through every generation are preserved in the ancient Judeo-Christian texts.

Amazingly, the Bible leads anyone who responds to its invitation to the answer of all life’s primary needs. That answer does not lie in a philosophy or a principle or a creed. Rather, in a person. Jesus.

The earnest Christ-follower stands assured that each broken individual, every fractured, upside-down society can be healed, can be put right. Truths found in scripture supply hope for every soul who lives. What is needed is opening and reading and honestly considering the Book’s words. And responding to God, to his salvation offer of ongoing abundant living with him. In surrender to Jesus.

What Bible is for me?

The disciple has looked carefully at Jesus’ life in the scriptures and says, “I like what I see in the nature of this person, Jesus. I want that. I want it more than anything I have ever wanted, more than anything I could ever want.”

Terrific! It is at this place then, we must meet our challenge. Deep waters lie before us, our complete inability on our own of getting to the place we need to go. It is like gazing across Victoria’s waters to Rusinga Island but with no ferry to get us there.

Good news.

The disciple is not left stranded, the apprentice is given means. A land of the living beckons.

©2022 Jerry Lout

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Nature Study

My engineer friend from South Asia, R.S., knows something about shapes. Long after he had, in faith, opened the door to his own god-shaped space within, R.S. was seeing his professional life thrive amidst shapes and designs. Science-research and revelation took him there.

Once a person comes to faith – trusts his life to Jesus – he starts becoming a new kind of person. In Bible language, the old has gone, the new is here!*. He begins the long journey of “growing into” a new kind of living and thinking, a new kind of “being”.

A scientist growing in Christlikeness? An engineer training in righteousness? Imagine. Scripture comfortably speaks of growing in Jesus as “training in righteousness”.*

Like an infant child who is born to thrive and grow and mature, the new Christian is to change. In most instances over time his belief in Jesus gets to be “seen”. This is the calling of every believer. So that our lives show on the outside what we confess to be true on the inside.

We know that taking thoughtful close-up looks at nature has at times led to mind-boggling scientific insights. So, my engineer/professor friend, pondering one day over the created (especially oceanic) world, caught a revelation. And promptly took his theory to the classroom.

“Whenever you think of trying out a new idea”, Dr. R.S. urged his university students, “you will want to explore what the natural world can offer you.

“Suppose, for instance, I visit the seashore. At the water’s edge, I spot a snail, one of those cone-shaped kind. The creature reminds me of a project I am on at the lab – a petroleum industry drill bit. This little creature from the world of nature may carry within its design important keys to manufacturing a more effective drill bit”.

Because R.S. had confidence in (believed in) his theory about nature’s role in research, he acted on it. He wrote of it. He lectured and demonstrated to his students that his thoughts were likely based on what is true and what is helpful and real.

If you are a Jesus-follower, you are made for formation. If simply given permission Jesus will change you and you will come to show forth his ways, his nature.

He invites, “Come. Be with me, be my apprentice”.

©2022 Jerry Lout                                                  *2 Corinthians 5:15 (NIV)

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Hungering On

We humans are different from other creatures – birds and fish, beasts making up earth’s animal kingdom. As with animals, humans do of course get hungry. We grow thirsty. We are fueled with a drive to reproduce.

And yet.

We stand much apart from the families of cows and of dogs and of giraffes.

Humans have souls. Another way of putting it is we are souls. Among the most ancient writings found in what is called “wisdom literature” – we are offered a remarkable idea. Human beings are created as “image bearers” of God.

This is a big thought. That we share important qualities found inside the nature of God himself. Though we certainly are not God, nor could we ever become God.

Ancient Bible texts make the bold claim, “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27 NLT).

For some of our readers, such an idea as this may come as a new thought. Let us look a little closer.

Assume that we are made by God for relationship with him. If so, such a condition might give rise to a certain nagging hunger within us. Such a hunger does exist. It is a kind of hunger straining within every culture and among every generation. We grapple with the yearning again and again. We are hungry creatures indeed.

For me, my hunger for God went like this.

In my most quiet and private and honest moments I sensed a “knowing” – an awareness that something was missing.

“What if the something is God” I wondered, “my designer, my maker, a someone who keeps me going?”

Opening the ancient texts (the Bible) my questions continued. . .

“What if God is the one being in all the cosmos who knows me through and through? “And suppose, furthermore, that he is perfectly wise and is the full embodiment of what we feebly call love.

“What if he has fashioned me so that he and I – along with others – may actually enter a living relationship together. Growing ever richer in peace and joy (inseparable companions of love), continuing on and on forever?”

This was, I realized, what the Bible was telling me.

My appetite grew.

(c)2022 Jerry Lout

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Rhythm

I think we all need – really need, this to navigate life.

My friend Roger continued. Bringing less frazzle, more sanity. More life. Roger, was on a roll. Not unlike a drum roll.

When I hear drum rolls or things to do with foot-tappings, knee-slappings, fingertip-rappings, I think, Cody.

Not the Cody, Wyoming of other blog posts here recalling bus rides westward, motorcycle adventure, romance.

Rather the Cody from Southeast Oklahoma – my first grandson. Is he twenty-two now – Really?

For years his hands, wrists, even shoulders have unleashed pulsating energies.

What’s that distant rat-a-tat? More than one head-scratching visitor has posed the question to my daughter – his mother. She smiles, Oh, that’s Cody out in the game room. Drumming.

Distracted family members have implored little drummer boy – Umm, Code-man, could you ease up on the finger tapping. Focusing on our card game ain’t going well.

From eighth grade he began wowing us (grandparent bragging rights are constitutionally-protected.) Ten years beating away on drum heads, cymbals, chests of drawers, kitchen counters, bathroom mirrors, pickup hoods. God be praised he drums in rhythm.

Our lives need rhythm, Roger went on. My wife and I take a ‘couch time’ break most days. Breaking for fifteen minutes from all the action swirling around us. To connect, to catch up. To be in each other’s worlds. On purpose.

Rhythms. On Purpose.

Call them practices. Call them disciplines.

Whatever we call them – practices, disciplines – thoughtful people weave them into their calendar. Stewarding ebbs and flows of on-purpose living. On purpose.

Much like ancient Jesus-followers did, like mothers and fathers of the faith did – century by century.

Like the master Jesus himself did,

“Rising a great while before day he went into a solitary place, and there prayed”.

And Paul,  “as his custom was he entered the synagogue”.  Prayer, Scripture, Church community, Service, Solitude, Rest, Labor.

I ponder such a list and an appetite stirs. I’m homesick to ebb and flow like this, in my own design.

As surely as I am made for God, I’m made for rhythms. He moves in, takes up more space in my affections. Helps me live my design.

Going to Youtube I watched several drummers – really accomplished drummers. Not all were specimens of health. So physically disabled were some they struggled to mount the drum stool. Then magic took over. How?

Their disciplines – repeated practicings – carried them to astonishing mastery. Melodious thumpings and swishings, clangings and tappings easily flow from their wrists and hands. Amazingly they have long stopped thinking their limbs into action. The body takes over. It is trained.

Such is the way of the Jesus-follower. More becoming his, in the ebb and flow of spiritual disciplines. Trusting his help, his ready strength at every step. Entering the easy yoke.

“I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”    -Jesus                                                             

                                                                                                                                               *Matthew 11, Message Bible
© 2016 Jerry Lout

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Lunar – Logic – Lord

Once I met a man who had walked on the moon. At the time I little realized how crazy rare that kind of thing was. Only 12 people have felt moon turf beneath them. Ever.

Later that day I sat entranced as this astronaut talked of his journey, not only into the cosmic world but into the Christ world.

To some this could seem odd – a believer/moon-walker? Aren’t astronauts those brilliant, super-intellect types, flying scientists whose knowledge of matter and time and space should anchor them in tangible certainties? How then could such an intangible thing as faith in an everywhere-present, unseen supreme being penetrate that world?

And yet.

There was John Glenn, the first American space-traveler to orbit earth. Following his much-later space travel as crew member on the Discovery shuttle, Astronaut Glenn reflected. “To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible. It just strengthens my faith.”

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong – first humans to set foot on the lunar surface – live in the history books of the young and in the memories of their peers.

Before stepping out of their Apollo 11 ship, Aldrin took up a Bible, a bit of sacramental bread and a silver chalice containing wine – emblems of the sacrificial body and blood of Jesus Christ. Celebrating God’s loving act to redeem humankind, the astronaut postponed his moon-walk a few moments. For what? Adoring reverence to the Almighty, to the one who, in Aldrin’s mind, poised this tide-governing ball in the spinning universe.

Frank Borman, commander of the first space crew to travel beyond earth’s orbit, looked down on his home planet from more than 200,000 miles. Borman radioed back a message, a Genesis message: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

“I had an enormous feeling”, the astronaut remarked, “that there had to be a power greater than any of us – that there was a God, that there was indeed a beginning.”

And there is Astronaut James Irwin, whose 1971 scientific expedition moon visit inspired his statement, “I felt the power of God as I’d never felt it before.”*

What is that alluring phrase voiced now and then near Christmas time?

Wise men still seek him.

***
Remember where you were when Armstrong declared “one small step. . one giant leap”? It would be fun to know. . . assuming your beginnings predate 1970!
Resource: BreakPoint.org November 5, 1998 Chuck Colson*
©2017 Jerry Lout

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Insistent

The ambitious Brit puzzled his dilemma.

“If I’m to make my case that the book this naïve teacher calls holy is simply no more than a collection of fables chock-full of contradictions, I suppose I must fetch a copy for myself.” He mulled the idea. “By Jove, I shall”.

The San Antonio College I was drawn to came with a colorful history.

Young Leonard Coote had known where he was headed. Endowed with a keen mind and an appetite for adventure, Leonard set off from his English homeland for the islands of Japan. “Seize the moment”, he was urged. “Now is the time. Japanese business markets are ripe. Go. Venture out. Your fortune awaits.”

Lured by a Liverpool firm putting roots down in the Far East, he set sail. Other young Englishmen had blazed impressive trails, making it big, finding their fortunes. But a worry nagged at Leonard.

Those who hadn’t done well, however (their numbers were not few), had got distracted by party-going and the like. Many, it was rumored, wound up sidelined, addicted, chasing cheap wine to blunt the pain of their derailed dreams.

So, resourceful Leonard devised a strategy. “I’ll find living quarters somewhere safe”, he mused, “a place with better surroundings than those poor blokes managed.” This had led him to the man with the book.

“Yes”, the missionary offered, “we can make our spare room available”, adding, “and you’re welcome to join us for mealtimes.” They agreed to a suitable pay arrangement and a handshake settled the matter.

After a short while Leonard determined to challenge the Bible teacher on his faith – engage him in argument over the Scriptures, their validity. The missionary, smiling warmly, declined. “I’m happy sharing my story and what the Bible means to me. But debate it? Argue the matter? No, I am not your person for that.” This had brought Leanord to his dilemma, and his decision.

He arrived from work one evening with his new Bible – Old Testament, New Testament – King James Version. Having added a pen and a fresh clean ledger to his arsenal, Leonard smiled. “There now, all that remains is to read through it, registering its errors as I go. We will have that discussion”, he silently vowed, “and I shall be ready.”

What he didn’t factor in was a bold, terse phrase lying within the ancient text. Weeks of methodical reading, of note-taking – launching in from Genesis 1 – eventually brought him to the phrase. It was a declaration.

Nothing could have prepared him for the moment.
©2017 Jerry Lout

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Undone

“Splendid dining”, Leonard smiled to the missionary wife. “I’m a lucky chap, finding this home for my lodging.” He nodded gratefully to the family. “I shall now get on with some things”, he offered, and stepped from the room.

Entering his own room he rolled his head slowly about and gave his body a long stretch. Moving the few steps to his simple desk, he took up the ledger that had come home with him weeks before. Squiggles on an open page revealed his latest entries – further markings attesting his focused quest. To prove the clergyman wrong, show the “holy book” up for what it was – a bundle of contradictory myths. Seated now, he reached for the Bible itself.

Fingering the book marker inside, he flipped to the last page he had visited. Over past weeks his practice had become ritual. . . Arrive home from a day’s work – down a cup of tea – tidy up a bit – join the family for dinner – retire to his room – and resume the task at hand. That is, expose the religious book for what it was. And reinforce his atheism all the further.

His daily regime with the Bible had taken Leonard through the ancient books of Law, the Histories of Old Testament Kings and the like. He had passed onward and through the Wisdom books – jotting notes the whole way. All the Prophet Isaiah’s sixty-six chapters were recently gone through, bringing the sum of his readings thus far to twenty-three entire books of the Bible. There seemed no reason to think today’s exercise would hold anything specially notable.

The book of Jeremiah the Prophet lay open before him at chapter seventeen. Leonard came to verse nine. He read slowly.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Leonard Coote – the keen-minded, self-assured man – took in the fourteen words. He read it once more. Then again.

And was undone.
©2017 Jerry Lout

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A Morning Laugh

The key slipped easily into its slot. I was downtown Nairobi, standing before a bank of metal post office boxes. The bold figures on our assigned box – shared by others of our same mission – read 30207.  Drawing out the few pieces of mail bearing the Lout name I paused at one marked with a Louisiana address. I recognized the sender though we hadn’t been in touch since I left San Antonio more than a year ago. I turned the envelope a couple times. How about this. . . What’s Ray up to these days?

Ann and I had passed through our first Nairobi, Kenya months in a seeming blur, a lot of new happening. New friends, new apartment, new culture and new car. . .New baby.

Julie Ann Lout made her squalling entry to Nairobi Hospital July 13, 1972 – a bare six weeks after our Africa landing. Our most joyous moment since Ann and I exchanged our vows.

A few weeks later I engaged another kind of new. A new language.

We found we were short on funds to cover both an insurance payment coming due and my Swahili School entrance fee. By now the language studies were underway. The money worries burdened me.

On the post-office-visit day I had awakened about 5 o’clock. Our little studio flat came with an oddly arranged self-contained kitchen, separate from the rest, making possible an inviting private space for alone-time. Before boiling some coffee water I slid a chair near me and knelt before it. And found myself questioning.

Laugh? I’m to laugh?

My questioning was reaction to a direct, uninvited impression that entered my mind some moments after I knelt. “Laugh. . . simply give your voice to laughing. . . laugh.”  To consult my feelings seemed pointless. I felt like doing any number of things. Return to bed. Bemoan our money shortfall. Worry.

The word ‘laugh’ persisted, like a gentle command. A few moments passed.

OK, here goes.

“hahaha”. “hahaha”. “hahaha”.

The sounds coming quietly off my tongue were flat, lifeless as a corpse, ricocheting the yellow-painted walls of my small enclosure.  I realized that no smile accompanied my attempted laugh. Alright.

I’ll smile. I willed my face to the posture. By now, though, I had begun sensing that God’s Spirit was likely behind this unorthodox exercise. That something special may await.

Several seconds of emotionless chuckling directed upward stretched into a minute or so. For the most part my eyes stayed open, as the practice didn’t seem entirely like prayer anyway.

What happened next, there in my early-morning space, surprised me. And revisited my thinking later in the day when reading the Louisiana-stamped letter. The impact was profound.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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Just Do It

As a foreigner in a region where locals had rarely sighted a light-skinned person , I was learning the feeling of different.

During one season of discouragement, when my best efforts to connect with the Kuria seemed frail, I knelt on the concrete floor of a back room in our house. The prayer was brief, sincere, and seems as clear today as that morning I voiced it.

 “God, please help these people know that I love them.”

In the silence an inner voice interrupted my pleadings.  While it was kind, it was also direct, firm.

“Love them. You just love them.”

Just that. Simple and sparse, like a mail-order kit arriving without instructions.

How do I do this?

Years afterward a definition of Love crossed my path.

To will the good of another. I have yet to hear a phrase that, for me, better reflects the term.

I found myself in subsequent times revisiting the Bukuria scene. Going to my knees in blue jeans and t-shirt back then at that location fifteen hours’ drive from where Stanley met Livingstone under a Mango tree. I ponder again the response to my prayer on that day. Just love them

Gauging love, measuring its impact, seems not always easy.

***

“Mwalimu”.

Pastor Mwangi calling to me (‘Teacher’) lifted his textbook as in a gesture of devotion.

“Before you came with the teachings – before bringing us these Bible courses. . .” The pastor’s voice went low.

“. . back then, when on Saturdays I would prepare a sermon for my people on Sunday, I only knew to follow a certain way. I did not know another way.

“I would pray, close my eyes and open my Bible – letting it fall open where it would.  Then, feeling the page, I let my finger go to a place there. Opening my eyes I looked at the place. The words there became my sermon scripture for Sunday.”

“It was all I knew”, he repeated. “I did not know another way.”

Pastor Mwangi concluded as if offering up a sacrament as well as a confession.

“Now I know the good way. Thank you for bringing this Bible School, this T.E.E. I feed my people now and they are helped.”

Mounting my motorcycle that afternoon, I turned toward home, warmed by a gratifying thought.

Thank you, Lord for your word, and for this means of sharing it here.

He (God) was willing the good of a tribal people hungry for truth and for him.  And was letting me have a part – growing me in a small measure to care as he cares.

Just loving them. Together.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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A Word In Season

“I keep returning to it, hon. This verse.” Ann leafed through her Bible to its grand, beloved “hymnal”, the Book of Psalms.

“ ‘I will lead you in the path that you should go, I will guide you with my eye’, Psalm 32:8”. For a while now the words keep coming back to mind.”

Days later, passing through Namanga Village with minimal drama as Africa border crossings go, I slid again into the Peugeot driver’s seat. Passing our fresh-stamped U.S. passports across to Ann, I engaged the clutch and nudged the gear lever forward. Turning to my bride of nearly twenty years, I grinned, “Well, here’s a first for me, sweetheart. I’ve never driven Tanzania’s roads.”

Tonight we would lodge at the home of friends whose surname brought a smile, given their missionary vocation. The Angels.

Granger and Beverly’s Arusha home sat a short distance from Tengeru Village and the church they pioneered and now co-led with Tanzanian Pastor Charles Nkya.

As we breezed along the scenic, well-paved highway, taking in the ever-enlarging image of fourteen-thousand-foot Mount Meru ahead, I silently reviewed bits of a sermon that had been forming. I was to preach tomorrow’s Sunday service.

Sharing scripture and illustrations, encouragements and challenges next morning I wrapped up the sermon inviting Tengeru believers to further yield their lives to God’s guidance and care. As sermons go I was pleased, thankful for his presence and aware nothing noteworthy seemed afoot. At least to my knowledge. The service dismissed. A number of folks lingered.

And up walked Zubida, a lady Elder in the church.

Zubida, small but poised – an instructor in the local college of agriculture – carried herself with quiet grace. Back when she had first opened her life to Christ, converting from Islam, her Muslim husband angrily threw her and her infant from the home. He kept the older children with him and forbade Mama Zubida to visit them. Through the deep pain, she pressed ahead in love and zeal for her Savior, keenly devoted through the years in the companionship of fellow believers and the strength found in Scripture.

Zubida’s Bible now lay open in one hand as she approached Pastor Angel. Pointing to a passage, she began.

“Pastor, this verse. . . I feel God has this scripture for our guests from Kenya. Can you share it with them?”

Granger responded with a smile, “No, Zubida. He seems to have given this to you. You share it with the Louts.”

Moving our direction humbly – her finger still planted on a Bible page – Mama Zubida rallied her voice.

“Brother and Sister, I feel that God has something in this verse for you. It came to me during the preaching today.”

I noted the reference and read the Swahili words.

I turned to Ann with a chuckle and asked pointedly, “Does this resonate in any way?”

Her face lit up as she took in the English translation,

“I will lead you in the path that you should go. I will guide you with my eye”

©2018 Jerry Lout