Tag: Lord

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They come to most people who’ve lived life awhile. Periods we label roller-coaster seasons.With jet lag and the landscapes of Africa behind us Ann and I pondered how life might look going forward. Her mother’s passing from this world was surely nearing as leukemia would bring its final assault. My father’s homegoing, too, drew closer in by the day.
Meanwhile, the peal of wedding bells lay immediately ahead.

My wife, smiling broadly, yielded a sigh of happy relief. The wedding gown project for her firstborn had come together well. How beautiful Julie was as she took my arm at the head of the church’s center aisle.
“Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” Darrell Stinnett – the groom’s father and officiating minister – smiled my direction. The two weeks since landing at Will Rogers International had raced by. In mere minutes I would enter a long-established fraternity – father of a bride.

Returning to Okmulgee, the land of my upbringing, I resumed my vigil at Dad’s bedside. His breathing grew more labored. One late morning I stepped outdoors and took in the surroundings of the old home place. My son’s voice came from the front porch, “Dad, can you come?”
Slipping in to pay a visit at his grandfather’s bedside, Scott was quick to witness the change. It was September 1, 1992, exactly a month short of his 80th birthday. Grandpa was gone.

Crossing life’s final divide – the temporal to the hereafter – Dad had run his course. And finished well.
“To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”.*
© 2023 Jerry Lout                                                       *2 Corinthians 5:8

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Near

What is it to know God – to know Jesus?

Turning the question around, what is it to be known by Jesus?  The answer does seem to matter.

Perhaps you, like myself, have puzzled over a phrase Jesus offered up once,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’  And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’*

I never knew you.

It seems we are in need of catching the nature of our Lord’s heart. God in Christ became one of us. He shared in our raw flesh and blood humanity. Jesus (remarkably and wonderfully) yearns for closeness to his fellow humans. Yes, God in the flesh longs to be closely known to us, stating even on occasion, “I no longer call you servants, but friends”*.  Jesus doesn’t stop here.

He also – and it is here we can miss a key point – yearns to know us. In this sense ‘knowing’ speaks of closeness. This is not a knowing about factual details of what we creatures are comprised of. Jesus does not see us as machines. We are not devices like a ipad or smart phone held by him.

With our laptops we flip open the lid, press a key here, another there. Presto, the operating system fires up. What sensible person would ever liken such a sterile, mechanical process to a warm, interactive relationship? We know better. We carry feelings, wishes, passions, hopes within our bones.

Our devices are things in our possession that we control and manipulate – hopefully for worthy uses. Creator God on the other hand, in relating to we his image-bearers, is after relationship. Heart and soul, mind and strength. All our being.

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart”.*

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life”.*

God is Spirit and so are we. He seeks worshippers, wonderfully so – living creations akin to himself. Yes, out of all his handiwork we are the unique ones into whom he has breathed life (How do we ever get our heads around this!)

Biblical worshippers are those who happily and with eager hearts, engage their Lord in mutual companionship and love.

(c)2023 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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Death Valley

There in the African Savannah where acacia trees with their flat-topped enchanting forms dot the landscape, an adolescent boy, a humble cattle-tender, was cornered by thieving attackers. He made a futile attempt to seek refuge among his father’s herd of semi-nourished cows – the bounty his attackers pursued. Horrifying moments raced like short distance sprinters toward the finish tape until the boy was seized and beaten to death by these neighboring tribal warriors.

Once I heard the news, words like heartless and senseless quickly sprang to my young missionary mind.

In the worldview of the tribesmen who had slain the boy for his father’s cows, there was nothing senseless about their deed. For generations nomadic lore had dictated that all cattle were created by God as a gift for their people. Any means to retrieve what was rightfully theirs was deemed acceptable. The “retrieving of cattle” was, to them in fact, a kind of calling.

Pastor Nashon had first been alerted of his young brother’s death by the high-pitched wailing of nearby village women. Afterwards, through grapevine media common to rural Africa, word of the tragedy reached our mission station several miles to the west.

Mounting my orange and aging Suzuki dirt-bike, I ran my helmet strap through the cinch ring, securing it snugly beneath my chin. Pastor Nashon needed a friend nearby – even a recent friend whose culture and land were radically different from his own. I hoped to somehow be such a friend.

Mindful of an involuntary tensing of my eyebrows I tried to push back my growing sense of inadequacy. Comforting loved ones who’ve experience the quiet and expected demise of, say, an aged and dear family member can be daunting enough. But this defied categories.

What shall I say an hour from now once my piki-piki is brought to a dusty halt and I enter the humble, thatch-roofed hut? How do I myself process such news, much less console the grieving young pastor whose brother’s life had so recently been brutally taken?

***

“Bwana asifiwe.” Nashon, only barely my junior gave a warm smile as he offered the Swahili greeting, “the Lord be praised”. Though a common greeting among believers, the words seemed specially poignant (maybe less than fitting? I thought).

I quietly entered the dirt-floor hut which was poised on a high ridge along the Great Rift Valley. I took the seat my young host offered. My senses caught the flavor of steaming, charcoal-heated chai, its vapors loitering above the fresh-washed mug now extended my way.

What followed altered my world forever.

©2017 Jerry Lout
Photo by Dave Butler http://bit.ly/2pQV0TF

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A Pivotal Place

Connecting the two words Train and Track evokes images. Linked-up railway cars snaking over a mountain pass or across a sun-beaten desert or through a city’s colorless industrial park.

I was born the fourth child of Clyde Baxter Lout, whose own entry into the world in 1912 followed another birthday by just five years – that of his native Oklahoma – into Statehood.

While both of them, Clyde and Oklahoma, were in their youth assaulted by merciless dust storms and drought, it was only Clyde who could escape the brutal territory, at least for a time. He gathered the few clothing items he could take along to bum his way westward and headed for the nearest rail yard. To one train track, then to another, and another. With each morning’s sunrise to his back he pressed on, riding the rails to a place near Berkeley.

Yet, as he would come to find, that same pair of ‘T’ words, train. . . track, would impact Clyde’s life in a very different kind of way. His gaze was to shift, from squinting along railway lines by the mile to engaging a vision of life itself. He would elect to think deeply, to ponder, to purpose, and – with some help from “the good Lord above” – to even prosper.

Clyde was poor, very poor. With some sort of actual training and a few sensible means to mark out his progress, the young Okie figured he might break past the survival mindset (a condition pretty much defining his whole life) and arrive at an improved state of being.

Certainly, any advancement would beat hoeing cotton at 50 cents a week. But he wouldn’t want that as his grand aim, to merely get out of poverty. He took hold of a notion, teasing him from somewhere inside or outside himself, that he could aim for something loftier than bare survival. Still, he knew that dreaming alone would not get him there. He would have to do some things, two things especially.

Clyde must train. Clyde must stay on track.

Train and Track. In union together, like bonded friends, the two curious elements could make all the difference, helping propel the orphan-boy-turned-adult beyond a life of scarcity and into one of plenty. To material well-being indeed, but maybe to an abundance far greater, a life of riches not measured in coin.

Clyde’s future lay before him. He must choose.

So must we.

©2018 Jerry Lout