We live in an era where those who are chosen for honor and accolades are the most skilled and gifted, the most talented and attractive, the most popular and charismatic, and the most fascinating and appealing. But it’s true that mankind has tended toward such criteria for choosing leaders or those destined for some special position down through history.

The covers of our magazines choose the rich and the famous, the beautiful and successful. TV and movies choose men and women whose figures and hairlines are often flawless. Only the very best minds receive academic scholarships and only the athletes with the strongest and most consistent performance are drafted for college and professional teams.

With God it’s a different story…

He consistently chooses the unlikely one.  

Rebekah carries within her twin sons, Esau and Jacob, and at every turn Jacob connives and cheats Esau out of his birthright and father’s blessing. He deceives his father and yet it is Jacob who is chosen to be in the line from Abraham who shows up in the lineage of Christ.

The children of Jacob (now Israel) are enslaved in Egypt and God chooses Moses whom He spared in the bulrushes to lead His people to the Promised Land. Yet Moses has a hard time speaking and needs to ask his brother Aaron to do the talking for him.

When Joshua sends the spies into the Promised Land to scout out the city of Jericho, the spies are at risk to be caught and killed, but God chooses a prostitute, Rahab, to hide them. Her choice results in her salvation when God gives Jericho into the hands of Joshua and puts her in a marriage that adds her name to the lineage of Christ.

When Israel wanted a king, Saul was chosen. He towered among many of the day and seemed a likely choice; but when He disobeyed God and chose his own way, the Lord rejected him. Whom did He choose next? He sent Samuel to the house of Jesse who was blessed with many sons who were skilled and experienced, but when He made His choice it was the youngest and least likely…David…who would be made king of Israel.

When Jesus came to earth and was starting His ministry, He called ordinary fishermen to be his disciples rather than the religious leaders of the day. He even chose a tax collector.

God honored a small man named Zacchaeus to have dinner at his house even though he was hiding up in a tree.

In the midst of preaching on a hillside to thousands of people, Jesus became concerned that people there were hungry and needed to be fed. He asked the disciples to get food. They had no food with them, but a small boy with a sack lunch provided the meal Jesus blessed and everyone was fed.

After Jesus ascended into heaven and His disciples were gathering together to follow His commission, Saul, a learned Pharisee did all he could to stop them. Then God stopped Saul on his way to persecute more new believers in Damascus and changed his life and name forever. Saul (now Paul) became the great missionary to spread the gospel to the Gentiles.

And it didn’t stop there.

From the beginning until now, God has chosen the least likely, the ordinary, the broken and the flawed, the misunderstood and maligned.

No matter who you are or what your status, no matter how you have failed Him, His love pursues you and if His love pursues you, He has chosen you.

You may well wonder at that. I certainly do, but it is Paul whom no one expected to become a believer that points to God’s reason in 2 Corinthians 4:7:

“We are like common clay jars that carry this glorious treasure within, so that the extraordinary overflow of power will be seen as God’s, not ours.”

2 Cor. 4:7 (TPT)

Choices face us every day. Sometimes even the simplest choices of whether to have chocolate or butter pecan ice cream seems to give us pause (especially if we like both). We have so many choices to make each day that we might wish we could remain neutral and not make any choice at all, but that isn’t how life is set up.

When we are a young child, a parent may choose when we get up. Even as a teen most parents have a limit of how long we can “sleep in” on the weekend. As adults we can choose to get up or not, but there is no neutral ground of “halfway up” and the choice brings a consequence for us either way.

In a world that has become increasingly polarized on nearly every issue and topic, it can be tempting to want to steer clear of all of them and find a cozy spot in the middle. That means we don’t “show our hand” on what we really believe and hope that means we stay out of the melee of both sides. But that might be what too many have already been tempted to do that has brought us to this chaotic place of polarization. We set aside deciding based on principles and values that we thought were important and would basically always be there no matter what our response. Abdicating our choice meant someone else made one and then someone else made one and little by little principles and values we believed would always basically be there no matter what we did or did not do began to disappear.

Down through history as conflicts have broken out between villages, tribes, and nations, some have attempted to stay neutral. There were reasons for that perhaps, but it meant they could not or would not decide there was a right or a wrong and it wasn’t affecting them at the time. But history also shows that most could not and did not remain neutral.

You see, inherent within evil is a desire for control and a lust for power and it is never quenched within its own boundaries and territories. It seeks more and more and as it gets more, the hunger is never satiated.

Evil slips in little by little in the hope we will not notice at the outset. It can start with a “white lie” or a “fib” that we believe protects someone or something and we choose it instead of the truth. That usually requires a more specific “lie” at some point down the line and most of us know that once that ball starts rolling there is rarely any turning back. We start deceiving more and more people and it becomes such a habit that we miss that we are also deceiving ourselves. Principles and values are long forgotten because we must keep up the image, the facade, or we and everything we have constructed with our lies will crumble around us. To not decide for what is good, right, just, and absolute truth, is a decision against them all. Even if we think or say we believe otherwise, that is what happens.

It can seem as if we can avoid making those hard decisions where we stand for what we say we know is true and right, but if we believe that it will never catch up with us, we are deceived. That is something history also shows us even if the revelation comes long after the wrong choice. The world was set up that way when God created it and us and chose to risk giving us the gift of freedom and choice. And from the outset we proved we struggled with making the right choice and that resulted in the loss of freedom.

Many of us grew up hating the subject of history when we were in school and now we live in an era where we choose to forget, ignore, or seek to rewrite it.

Our stories construct our history of choices. They give evidence of our character and our testimony. Scripture teaches there is no neutral ground. We must make a choice of good or evil, God or his enemy. There are many verses in the Bible that point to this but reading in Matthew this week points to one that is succinct:

“This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you’re not on my side, you’re the enemy; if you’re not helping, you’re making things worse.”

Matthew 12:30 (MSG)

The verse and the passage where it is found has grabbed my attention all week. Am I helping? If so, how am I doing that in my daily life and choices? Am I making things worse? What have I said or done that might result in that? Those questions sound harsh, but they have echoed in my mind and heart as I consider whether the choices I make represent the decision I made to be a believer in Christ who stands for truth above opinion, what is right versus what is convenient, what is eternal versus what only lasts for the moment.

Like it or not, history will catch up with us and reveal the truth – there is no neutral ground.

For the past several weeks I have had a sharp eye out for glimpses of Monarch butterflies. It’s one of my August to September rituals born when I was a special education classroom teacher.

Then a news segment from our local TV station put me on high alert after showing thousands of them hanging in trees on the southern shore of Lake Erie from a late summer just a few years ago. Each of the last several days, I have spotted several in the air and looked at them once again in amazement.

Another teacher and friend of mine with a biology background educated me about these specific butterflies. It was a gift I have enjoyed every year since she taught me about them.

I learned where the Monarch butterflies reproduced in the late summer, what they ate, and the long impressive flight each makes from Canada, throughout the upper Midwest, northeastern U.S., and even extending along the east coast into Florida until they reach Mexican mountainsides.

As a result of what I learned from my colleague, each September as a teacher I searched along the roadside areas for a patch of milkweed plants. It was there I hoped to find at least one plant where I discovered the female Monarch had laid her eggs, which would result in the emergence of the striking orange and black striped caterpillar.

For a number of years, I was able to locate both the distinctive striped caterpillar and a pupa and brought them into a terrarium in my classroom. The caterpillar would then eat away at milkweed leaves and stems that I asked my students to bring.

The excitement would build as the developed caterpillar stopped eating and located a perch where it would spin a stunning light turquoise pupa with small touches of gold accenting a ridge near the top. Day-by-day the students were mesmerized as they watched for two weeks until the pupa began to become translucent and then transparent revealing the colors of the Monarch. Slowly, cracks began to appear in the pupa and the butterfly began to emerge pumping body fluid into its limp wings.

Very gently, I would place my finger next to the butterfly and it would step onto my finger. Then carefully I would transfer the butterfly to the finger of a student.

The student would move slowly down the hall past open doors of curious onlookers until our whole class reached the playground where we watched and waited for our Monarch to take flight. What a moment for my students and also for me!

Several other things I shared with my students that increased their wonder included how the released butterfly would fly to Mexico even though it had never been there before and would face many dangers along the way. There the many butterflies would hang in the trees of Mexico in a semi-dormant state until early summer when they would return to their homes in the north and the cycle would repeat.

Every detail of this creature is unique. The milkweed plant it uses for food is poisonous to any other creature that eats it; but once the butterfly is created in its lovely teal pupa and emerges to fly, it will only live on the sweet nectar of flowers. The poisonous substance of the milkweed it used as nourishment, will serve as part of its protection as a butterfly since anything that seeks to eat or attack it will die from the poisonous residue

What impacts me is how much detail our Creator puts into this one butterfly species!

Should we also remember He has shown us that much care in our creation?

Before we knew Him for who He is, we too have eaten of many poisonous things, but when He transforms us as His own child He invites us to taste and see how good He is and sends us into the world (even as He sends the monarch) so we might glorify Him.

Like the butterfly, He will show us the path if we will listen and He will also use those things sent to destroy us to give testimony to His goodness and greatness.

Monarch butterflies.

What a wonder!

What a gift!

What a Creator!

That question about what we believe has come into sharp focus in recent months because the answer impacts so much more of how we face each day’s challenges. Our belief points to where we place our faith as we face each day ahead and is central to our choices, our hope, our peace, and how we live these out – and never more so than when times are difficult.

I am drawn to how Eugene Peterson describes faith in The Message:

“The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.”

Hebrews 11:1-2 (MSG)

Reading a biography on Susannah Spurgeon has reminded me of the harsh realities of another time period during which she and Charles Spurgeon lived and ministered despite their own physical pain and emotional challenges.

Charles Spurgeon gives us a glimpse of his thoughts in this quote from The Cheque Book of the Book of Faith:

“The way of life is like travelling among the Alps. Along mountain paths one is constantly exposed to the slipping of the foot. Where the way is high the head is apt to swim, and then the feet soon slide; there are spots which are smooth as glass, and others that are rough with loose stones, and in either of these a fall is hard to avoid. He who throughout life is enabled to keep himself upright and to walk without stumbling has the best reasons for gratitude. What with pitfalls and snares, weak knees, weary feet, and subtle enemies, no child of God would stand fast for an hour were it not for the faithful love which will not suffer his foot to be moved.”

Charles Spurgeon resolutely looked forward through the eyes of faith toward the future despite the challenges he faced on so many sides. He could do that because he believed steadfastly in the promises of God. That belief held him fast.

Photo by Pam Ecrement

And that place and position resonates in the lyrics written by Russell K. Carter of the old hymn “Standing on the Promises.” In the midst of the storms of life the second verse speaks clearly to where many find themselves today in their faith walk:

Standing on the promises that cannot fail, When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, By the living Word of God I shall prevail, Standing on the promises of God.

What do we believe?

The dictionary defines the word promise this way:

“A declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen”

The foundation of what we believe is found in our hearts. Though we read and study the scriptures, hear magnificent messages, see visions, or dream dreams, it will be what our heart affirms as true that settles our beliefs. And that will cause us to lean in with understanding of God’s deep and abiding love expressed in his covenant commitment between Him and his people in every place on this earth.

No biblical hero we read about led a perfect life of ease or a life without dysfunction of some kind, yet God chose them because of what they believed about Him even in the midst of failure and sometimes doubt or unbelief. In so doing, they grew in an unwavering assurance of God’s love for them no matter how many in this life might have betrayed or abandoned them, no matter what trials they might need to walk through.

“If we would but meet every affliction, be it small or great, with a brave confidence in our Lord’s mighty love to us, and an unquenchable faith in His power, our trials would either vanish altogether, or be transformed into triumphs which would bring honor to our King!”

Susannah Spurgeon in A Basket of Summer Fruit

The battle for our hearts will always be fierce, but God’s love is the fiercest of all and will prevail if we keep our focus on the Promise Keeper instead of the “news of the day” meant to strip us of hope for the future while offering little return for any loyalty we may give it.

We are called to be fierce hearted and Holley Gerth points to the goal:

“Let’s be unexpected warriors,

Love ninjas, secret agents of grace

In the kitchens and the boardrooms

and by the swings on the playground.

They’ll never see us coming.”

That is what belief in action looks like. We are his agents in the battle of the ages being fought within our hearts and in every neighborhood.

What do you believe?

Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

It’s that time of year again. Summer has a few more weeks to go but school is just around the corner. School supplies are stacked high in stores that carry them and some schools already have lists of things various grade levels will need to start the year. Some churches like ours are already collecting supplies to fill backpacks for students whose parents can’t afford to buy all that is needed. For those of us whose children are long past school age, the cost of things needed can be shocking so it’s great to help those whose budgets can’t stretch far enough.

This time of year reminds me also of the 15 years I spent as a teacher and the mixed emotions that came as the return to school neared. There was already work starting for teachers several weeks before students marched through the doors. No matter what subjects were mine to teach, I needed to prepare for each one. That always reminded me of the ones I liked the best as a student (history, geography, and English). They made sense to me and my love of them often stemmed from how a great teacher taught them. Other subjects that I was not so fond of (math and science) brought challenges because they didn’t seem to make as much sense to me and the teachers I had didn’t find ways to connect the dots for me (especially in math courses).

English could include literature but usually started with the basics of grammar so we could know how to construct a sentence that communicated to someone else. There was a reason why we needed to learn what and how nouns, pronouns, verbs, objects, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions were used and rules that needed to be mastered. It wasn’t just so we could write a sentence that was understood by someone else and then add more sentences to write paragraphs and essays but also so that we could better understand what we read in our language-based subjects.

Photo by Julia M. Cameron from Pexels

Some of you might be groaning as I bring up memories of those days. School required us to harness the mind God gave us and train it so it could help us survive and thrive in the grown-up world ahead of us. We would need more skills than bouncing, catching, or throwing a ball, riding a bike, and all the things we might prefer doing. What all that looked like for us also hinged on how much our family and culture valued education and helped us discipline ourselves to do what was required (even in subjects we hated).

Most of us if left to our own devices will choose the easiest thing and do it the easiest way. School also causes us to face the reality that life isn’t all about us as we believed from toddler years onward. (For some that doesn’t change into adulthood.)

A recent podcast nudged me to use that mindset to consider how it connects in my spiritual life. How do I read scripture and pray? Sure, there a lot of methods out there we might try and some may be more helpful to one of us than another but what about the basics?  Can they hone in on what is central in a passage?

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When I sit down to read a passage and the sentences it is comprised of, what is the subject?  The subject is always a noun (sometimes pronoun) that tells me what or who the sentence is about. Looking at that in reading scripture serves not only to clarify the meaning but also reminds me what is key or important. In my prayers, what or who is the subject?  Why even ask that question?

The podcast person triggering all these thoughts (Francis Chan) wanted to remind me that the subject is not me and usually is God and what He is doing, teaching, or encouraging me to understand. That makes clear He is central and I am not. If I keep that in mind that can alter my perception of God and aligns me as the object of what He is doing. Objects are nouns (or pronouns) also but acted upon by whatever verb fits after the subject.

After hearing that it gave me fresh eyes to understand any passage. It punctuated that love, grace, mercy, and everything started with Him and I was the object of that action. How significant that is when I look at how I worship and what I worship. This life is HIS story and He has given me a small part to play in it and that was his plan and pleasure all along. It reminds me when I am telling someone my story that if all my sentences have I as the subject I am missing the truth. 

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It isn’t that you or I don’t matter or do not have value but reminds me who gave us that value when God created us. Social media can get us out of alignment where we become the subject without much thought to consider what we say, how we say it, and how the verbs act on the object (person or thing) reading or hearing it.

If my prayers miss this truth they also miss something and focus only on me rather than Him and those other people and things I need to remember. God makes clear the two basics for all of us: love Him, and love others.

What does my conversation reflect? 

Do I make myself the subject? 

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