coach – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

June 1, 2023

Element of Peace

The left footprint on display in the fresh-turned soil bore no resemblance to its counterpart. My right foot featured a really high arch while the left one lacked an arch at all. This one’s imprint carried the appearance of a flat board.

Thus, my bare feet had left a trail of odd alternating marks as I leapt to keep pace with my daddy’s longer strides across the plowed furrows.

Yes, the hardship of poliomyelitis from a prior time had left permanent marks. Yet, here I was curiously limping. . . and frolicking.

We don’t find people who are prone to relish suffering. I would certainly not be counted among them. Words like hardship or adversity or pain stir in many of us a cringe of resistance and angst.

Still, visiting the Bible’s pages we routinely find triumph mingled with trial. Pleasure and pain show up as near neighbors. Happiness keeping company with hardship.

We muse over these strangely-matched companions. Especially so in reflective seasons like Holy Week, the period of Jesus’ (and history’s) darkest hours leading to his awful crucifixion.

How perplexing seems the phrase of the New Testament writer, “looking to Jesus who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross*

Enduring flogging and a torturous public execution with its attending shame, Christ’s suffering comes to us as ‘hardship’ utterly redefined.

So, we revisit our prayer – “accepting hardship as a pathway to peace”.

The apprentice of Jesus comes to actually affirm the beauty of suffering when endured in a grace lavishly supplied. Holding the master’s image in view the disciple settles into an element of peace words fail to capture. The difference is found through the example and presence of the resurrected, sacrificial coach.

Christ’s disciples make up that unusual sampling of humans who reconcile the paradox – hardship, an indispensable part of the good life.

He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace*

March 30, 2023

Modeling

“Do as I say – not as I do.”

Come again?

The old eyebrow-raising directive is not one you will hear rolling off the tongue of a bona fide mentor or coach. Jesus came as rescuer. . . as savior. But more than this.

Jesus routinely coached and mentored and trained these he loved – his forever companions in life and service. His mission of demonstrating the love and life of God in the earth was not to end with his return to glory. And it did not.

Jesus’ approach to forming his followers has not changed.

Like any self-respecting rabbi of his day, our Lord modeled a lifestyle his disciples were to emulate. Jesus displayed, by the things he did in his very own body the things his apprentices were to demonstrate in their very own bodies.

If Jesus were to fashion his own catch- phrase in our day to convey his aims for us, something like, “Do as I say and do as I do” might fit comfortably with him.

A touching piece of music out of the past goes, “Make me more like Thee, Jesus, make me more like Thee.” Then, more recently the group Passion released a similar number, “More like You”.

How does Jesus (mentor – coach – trainer) respond when we offer such a plea to him – “make me more like you”? Can’t we see him turning our direction and calling over to us in his thoroughly compelling manner, “Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me”. Is it not time to take up his assignment, to learn of and apply whatever varied practices he sets before us. So that now as on-board apprentices, we might implement the kinds of things he prescribes. Living the Christ-life he lived.

Personally, I must confess, it has taken me a long time catching on to this.

I fail at it often.

Able trainer that he is, though, our master does not weary in his coaching. As Paul writes, “love is patient and kind”*.

November 17, 2018

A Hungering

Jesus of Nazareth invited two apprentices to walk and work with him. Then came a third. . . then another and another. Since those early days, the increase of his trainees-in-Christlikeness has carried forward until their number now spans the globe.

Jesus knew well the need of passing along insights and wisdom. But also, of modelling his rare kind of power – the power of love – brought here to earth by him from another world. He did this kind of thing at every step, this modelling and training.

As for insights and wisdom, what this master-trainer brought into view went deeper. It went past the understanding and good sense already found among people through centuries of human experience. Further, the compassion he showed left other forms of human caring shallow by comparison.

Many historians measure this Middle-eastern figure, whose name is more commonly spoken than any other in history, as the most gifted, the most brilliant human ever to live. Yet he didn’t hold his understanding to himself, wasn’t stingy with his gems. Rather, Jesus offered up to any who would take him seriously, his own qualities – wisdom and truth – which any sensible person might eagerly receive.

So, this carpenter-turned-rabbi – as a feature of his mission – recruited to himself a company of students, of learners who might grow to live as he lived. Might even, to a surprising measure, become as he was. Many of Jesus’ apprentices arrived on the scene from ordinary backgrounds. Some were well-educated, others not, some well to do, others not so much.

They would travel with him in climates both calm or stormy. They tasted samplings of popularity and favor and weathered seasons of scorn and rejection.

These disciple-apprentices dined in community. They wrapped up countless action-filled days reflecting together before an open flame at a makeshift fire pit, often at places a good way from their homes. Their minds and hearts took in what they were able of their coach’s actions and sayings. Time in each another’s presence stretched them. They quibbled. They fussed. They were in training.

When one or two of the group asked him for advice on how to pray, Jesus answered in sensible language, “Pray this way. . .”

He also modeled praying. His apprenticing meant that he would (in a manner unlike others of his day) shift readily into a conversation with the invisible God whom he knew to be among them. This would occur easily, naturally when a time or circumstance called for it, which tended to be often.

When their food supply got small, Jesus talked to them about carefree living, then, on occasion would completely surprise them, bringing forth a meal. Such actions would leave them in wonder and deeply curious as to this man’s other-worldly nature.

Never one who seemed rushed or fidgety, he chuckled easily with his apprentice-friends. And, like any skillful mentor, he corrected them without timidity, apology or fanfare.

On a given day Jesus’ corrective counsel might be directed to one or two of the apprentices or he may address a thing meant for the wider community. Regardless, corrective action was each time offered in the interest of serving both his highest good and theirs. The trainees grew to own this.

The longer they walked with him, the less they wished for the former life, their old ways of being. It began to feel as though the rabbi was growing them, little by little, to become very much like himself. This seemed a good thing. They hungered for more.