Christ-follower – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

March 7, 2024March 6, 2024

Timely Provision

“Jerry, you will need a Faculty Advisor”.

I had begun ticking whatever boxes needed ticking, in the effort to comply with university protocol for registering a viable campus student organization. The entity we would formalize, it was decided, would bear the label, International Student Ministries.

As things evolved in our quest for birthing, by God’s grace, a vital spiritual presence among female and male students from across the world, a professor’s name emerged on our radar. What if our faculty-advisor-to-be were right this moment moving from classroom to lab over in ‘Keplinger’ – the facility housing the College of Engineering?

Jerry McCoy, a bona fide son of the Sooner State, had grown up in the shadow of the University of Tulsa where his father had taught before him. With a keen aptitude for the sciences, Jerry then studied at TU, and afterwards taking up an assignment as Professor of Physics.

Beyond the credentials and his status as an admired faculty member, Professor McCoy carried sure marks on and off campus of a devoted Christ-follower.

The day Jerry accepted the invitation to advisership marked one of ISM’s best moments!

A serendipitous sidebar played out in time, giving rise to smiles in the Lout/McCoy households. Jerry and Jerry in the service of a common ministry. . . Spouses Anne and Ann, each happy mothers of an ‘Amy’. . . both Amys working concurrently as coffee house baristas!

Occasional catch-up times between Professor McCoy and I affirmed our regard for student ministry, while deepening our friendship in a long obedience in the same direction*.

May 25, 2023May 24, 2023

Tending Soil

“Take my life and let it be ever, only, all for Thee”, pleads the hymn writer. The cry pulses with yearning, hunger. He hungers to be fully owned by One who is wiser and more capable in the great undertaking. Of fashioning the apprentice to a pure reflection of Jesus. Ever only all for Thee.

Every young farm kid knows the sensation of freshly-plowed earth, of feeling its cool softness at the entry of an eager pair of bare feet. What delight – shoeless and sockless – toes and heel pushing themselves into rich soil on an early Summer day.

For me, the simple action sparked a magic “yippee!” moment. Following the plow blade’s piercing work, the Alfalfa field got nicely smoothed out by a clunky tractor-drawn implement called a harrow. If, in these steps of sowing-prep the soil itself could speak, it might have bellowed out a loud objection, “Stop this, Stop, OK?!”

Hardship.

“Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace”.

As a Christ-follower, I might generally offer up those first couple of Serenity Prayer lines with little complaint. The last seven words? Not so much.

Another barefoot memory I relish is a little self-imposed goal set while trailing my daddy across fresh-turned soil. While it falls short of Olympic Trial standards, my goal was marked by two firm rules. (1) Keep up with my daddy’s long strides and, (2) With every leap forward, plant my small foot at the center of his large boot print. Succeeding at the two goals – for even a short while – left me a little goofy and giddy.

While human life can and does reflect seasons of enjoying each moment at a time, we are creatures of paradox. Up seems down. Down seems up. Healthy growth for the believer in doing life well calls for episodes of hardship.

These seasons come our way unavoidable, inescapable. And, in some cases, fiercely painful. Yet, in Christ, there is held before us a bedrock assurance. Goodness and flourishing will meet the pilgrim in good time. If not now, at the other side.

March 23, 2023March 22, 2023

Serenity Road

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.

The phrase follows those widely-read first lines of the Serenity Prayer, “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

That ‘living one day at a time’ thing lies, I think, at the heart of apprenticeship to Jesus. His disciples are common people who have chosen to set their day-by-day lives before him first thing every day. This is their aim and their practice. On some days the aim is not achieved. But the attentive Christ-follower has discovered that living in step with Jesus is the best possible thing one could ever do. Such a community of believers are not detoured by the occasional misstep. They routinely make peace with their own humanity and pick up the one-day-at-a-time rhythm at the sun’s fresh rising of the next day.

Heading into each morning in conscious companionship with Christ may seem like a small thing. It is not.

A truckload of mornings through the years found me emerging from sleep in a fog (sometimes caffeine helps there). But also at times a wave of anxiety or even panic has met me as I’ve contemplated what lay ahead in the coming hours. Not the ideal prescription for an unstressed life like that which Jesus prescribes. Indeed, that ‘easy yoke’ he invites his disciples to can often seem a distant and elusive dream. Can we ponder for a minute a scenario C.S. Lewis paints for us. Does anything resonate? Do we sense an invitation?

“It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”

If you yearn for the coming-in-out-of-the-wind kind of living, take heart. You and I can find encouragement and hope through a simple first step. By taking a thoughtful look at how Jesus likely got out of bed each day.