Who are the best of us?

We seem to have this strong bent to compete and compare ourselves with others with a hope to be “the best” in whatever area we are setting that goal. That push is not new but appears to have gained momentum in each decade as we seek to push the limits higher and higher to attain “the best”. But how do we determine what that is? Records of achievement are routinely broken.

The goal of “the best” connotes success to most of us. And we admire success in all its forms. We flock to stadiums and arenas to watch the “best” teams compete against one another. We are willing to pay the highest ticket price for the musician we deem “the best” and we will travel great distances to see them perform. We choose leaders in every area of life and often we choose them because of their history of success, and we believe they will correspondingly be “the best”. We are drawn to the tallest, brightest, and most attractive people and sometimes attribute things to them that may not even be true because of those traits we determine to be “the best”.

We may give a standing ovation to the person graduating at the top of his or her class, but not notice the parents who sacrificed their own dreams and worked multiple jobs (some menial) and long hours to provide this person with all the necessary skills and abilities to harness their natural talent to arrive at this accomplishment. They don’t show up on a stage or receive the applause, but when they don’t then I think we miss “the best” of us.

We watch the baker as he or she pulls the perfectly shaped loaves of bread from the oven. We take in the scent of the warm bread as it is set before us and our mouths water as we prepare to take our first bite of it with “the best” olive oil to dip it in or the richest creamy butter we can find. What we have seen and smelled doesn’t disappoint our expectations and we declare to the baker that it is simply “the best” we have ever tasted and the baker “the best” in town. It might be, but how can the baker be “the best” without considering the farmer who tilled the soil, chose the very best seed, watched over the fields with care knowing that he could not control the weather to assure he would glean a great crop. The farmer’s days would be long and hard and the price for a bushel of grain would vary from day to day and be comparatively small for the fancy bread at a high- end bakery on a big city street. Would the farmer ever receive such acclaim?

That favorite story from the Old Testament of the giant and the boy with only a sling and some small stones. Yes, the Goliath story where this giant was considered unbeatable and “the best” warrior. He was so good that no one would risk fighting him. Then a boy not old enough to be a solider arrives with lunch for his brothers and is shocked that all the warriors on the battlefield are trembling. He steps up and offers to take on the giant and in the epic scene fells the giant with the sling and small stones he carried with him all the time. Who was “the best”?

There is another story some of you know about a big crowd out on a hillside to hear the greatest preaching and teaching ever. He was so outstanding they all followed him to this hillside without a thought to bring anything to eat. But there is this one boy who happened to bring a small lunch of five loaves and two fish. When the great teacher, Jesus, tells his disciples to feed all these people they have no idea how to manage that with no available food nearby. When they tell Jesus about the boy with the small lunch you might know what happens next. He blesses that small lunch, and it is multiplied to feed the 5,000 on the hill. This boy in the story doesn’t get his name mentioned, but I think he would qualify as one of “the best.”

As I listened to stories of heroism that happened on September 11, 2001, when the United States was attacked by terrorists using planes as weapons to fly into buildings of significance that represented power and success, I was impacted especially by one story. A young man who had grown up with a desire to help people and to be an EMT was working as a delivery boy for a law firm in New York City. He was a month away from entering the EMT training that had been his passion. When the planes flew into the towers, he was nearby making a delivery and immediately jumped in to help in any and all ways that he could. The law firm called for him to come back to work, but he chose instead to offer all the help he could with what skills he had and a heart willing to give his all. His efforts would be captured in photos in news reports, but he would not be a name you would hear of even though he would lose his life trying to save others.

The best of us will often not be names we would recognize as famous. They will not make the most money, but often less than others. They may never earn the highest degrees or get the trophies we all admire. Most will not consider themselves to be special or unique, but they will all have two qualities that stand out. They will seek to serve others and be willing to sacrifice for what they believe in as a calling to help in that service. In these two qualities they will demonstrate nobility of character that exceeds those whom we watch and applaud at sporting events and in concert halls. They will exceed those who make more money and are lauded as the most attractive.

They will know themselves well enough to know their strengths while also acknowledging their weaknesses. Because of that they will be less likely to fall prey to pride and more likely to go about life with humility as a hallmark of their character as well.

One day I think these unnamed persons will receive the applause of heaven because they chose to serve and sacrifice even as Christ did to give all who would receive Him life with Him forever.

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Stories. They’ve been around since the beginning of time. What started as those passed down orally and inscribed on the rocky walls of caves and carved into totem poles then were put into parchments and eventually books. But by then we were such story lovers that we wanted them to have visual components and movies started to flicker on screens and eventually became “talkies.” Now stories come to us in more forms than our earliest ancestors could have imagined.

Most of us love a good story and we never tire of hearing our favorites. Despite all the ways we can enjoy a story, we never tire of those etched in our memories shared by our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. We pass them along generation after generation just as those ancient ancestors did.

It can be easy to forget we are all caught up in the greatest story anyone could ever create authored by God himself. That story is not just told in Genesis to Revelation in the Bible but is a living breathing ongoing tale. We are a part of it because God created us in his image, a living breathing representation of Him. Not unlike most good stories, there is a villain as well.

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God created angels in that great story and one of them was jealous and wanted to be like God and sought to disrupt the story and allow him to be the main character. That lust for power and position became evil that despised God and the life He created in all its forms. Little wonder because we are created in God’s image that he would want to disrupt our part in the story. Our very existence represents the One he despises. He hates existence.

We see in the Bible stories of old all his tactics replayed page after page. They include murder in all forms, slavery of any he can conquer, disruption of relationship, abuse and more in the hope of robbing God of those things pointing to Him. He is skilled at lying and deceiving and we see that too. When he succeeds, humankind become pawns in his schemes. Those play out throughout history to the present moment. He uses the smallest thing to stir up doubt that God is, God loves us and can be defeated. He used those ploys with Jesus who never succumbed and defeated his tactic of death eternally on the cross.

It could sound pretty gruesome. Often it is. THE enemy and villain, serpent of all, Lucifer, wants to be light but only can cause darkness and fog to try to discourage us so we lose our way and miss the One who is light that no darkness can hide if we put our trust and faith in the One who is for us. We have only to call out to Him and we discover He is there in whatever battle we face.

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Because we are finite we need Him and we struggle with needing someone outside of us. We like our independence, doing things our preferred way, and that can get us into trouble because it plays right into the enemy’s plot. As an angel, he believed he had no need of God so it should not surprise us when that quality shows up in us. When it does we can take a detour in the unfolding story just as so many others we read about. That gift of choice that God gave us can be a gift we don’t use very well at times. There is so much we don’t know despite all we know (or think we do).

The time we are living in (no matter where in the world we are) is growing darker and foggier. It’s a time of great deception with smoke and mirrors to try to disrupt us in every and any way possible and we can be tempted to believe there is no hope, no good news anywhere. If we look or listen to today’s headlines we will be prone to believe we have no hope in any way. We may not hear it from our neighbors or friends who listen to and see the same things unfold on the nightly news. The stories of local crimes and atrocities and those on the scale of cultures and countries against one another can defeat us.

Never before has it been more crucial for us to know the greatest story and how it ends. Too often the images found in the Bible are ones we don’t understand. They are describing things beyond our comprehension but don’t lose track of the main thing, the one thing.

If you ever saw the 1991 American Western comedy City Slickers, you may recall actor, Billy Crystal, conversing with Jack Palance, the weathered trail guide on a cattle drive with city folks. In one iconic scene after another Palance reminds Crystal he needs to find the one thing. Crystal puzzles over that until the end of the movie when he reveals he has once again found his smile.

The one thing we need to discover is how the story ends if we believe in Him and Christ lives in us. He is returning for us to take us out of this battle torn world. He loves us and every other prophecy in the Bible has come to pass. The signs that the time of his return is drawing closer are everywhere and should cause us not to fear but to look up to the sky and Him in whom our hope finds a sure foundation.

Until He does don’t let the villain of the story rob, steal, distort, or kill the role you are called to play as salt and light in an ever-darkening world. It’s not untrue many will try to steal our identity but the ads miss the real identity that is the thief’s target. God has the copyright on this story!

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Everything for the day is planned out and we are on our way, but then the flight gets canceled, and we are stuck again. Somehow, we keep thinking we can harness and manage time only to discover that time is not easily tamed by any of us. It aligns with a different metronome than ours and we are reminded once again that “we all live unexpected lives” as Matthew Kelly writes in Life is Messy.

From the time we are born we have a love/hate relationship with time. We love it when we are not waiting, on a vacation enjoying a favorite spot, or seeing a long-sought goal achieved. But we hate it when we need to wait, are caught up in the fast-paced grind of daily life, or recognizing we have far less of it than we had thought. We often are caught between wanting more and wishing it away.

Many who participated in scouts, or other such organizations were taught to always “be prepared”. What does that look like living in a world that is filled with the unexpected? Prepared for what?

Time.

It is a gift given from our Creator to somehow help us navigate through life with day and night, light and dark. Our conflict with time can tempt us to wish it away far too quickly. We want it to hurry up, slow down, or stop. In the process we forget that we each have a limited amount of it and don’t really know how much that is. That discovery doesn’t usually soak in until we are into adulthood unless some unexpected tragedy strikes us and reveals time seems to have cheated us of someone or something we thought we would enjoy for a much longer time. In that moment we may think it is something that only happens to us, but everyone faces a hard battle (sometimes many) at some point in his or her life.

Be prepared.

Tragedies remind us to be prepared or better prepared.

Some of us were going about life and enjoying the space shuttle lift off again. We had seen them before and yet they still grabbed our attention. We were anticipating the process as the space agency announced each moment but then something we did not expect happened, something we were not prepared for, and the space shuttle Challenger exploded on live television coverage. There had been other tragedies as mankind sought to explore space beyond the realm of earth, but we thought we had sorted those all out until that day. Most of us can recall exactly where we were when this tragedy happened. (I was watching on TV with my students in my classroom.)

Those of us in the United States who are a little older remember exactly where we were the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. (I was on the campus of the university where I was attending classes.) We were stunned as it also happened on live TV. Weren’t assassinations something that happened in the past? Then others happened before we could fathom this one – Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy among them.

Images in tragedies haunt us. Anniversaries of those tragedies are noted and reviewed as we grieve the losses and hope for them to never happen again.

Most of you (no matter where in the world you may have been) still recall where you were at 8:46AM on September 11, 2001, when a plane crashed into the first tower in New York City. That was beyond our imagination, but evil was not done yet and a second plane would crash into the second tower minutes later and a third plane slammed into the Pentagon 40 minutes later. The fourth plane used in the attacks on the United States would never reach its destination as passengers (aware of the other events) sought to charge the cockpit and prevent the plane from being used as a weapon.

Those directly caught up in these tragedies were starting a day with other plans and places to be. Those of us watching had our day upended differently as well. How can any of us be prepared for something like this? We know evil has always been on the earth, but now we watch it unfold live on TV or other devices and it sears into our memories in unforgettable images. What did we do on those days?

We checked on everyone near and dear to us to see if they were okay and where they were. We were reminded that life is precious as well as uncertain. And many of us went to our places of worship to pray, seek comfort, and look to the only source we knew to turn to. We knew we needed One bigger than any man or woman. This was too much for us to handle on our own. Time stopped and interrupted those of us not directly involved.

But these are not the only tragedies that have hit us unexpectedly. Many personal ones have broken our hearts or shattered our dreams as well. Some known only to us. How could we prepare for those? They were unexpected.

We must come to grips with the knowledge that life is tenacious and fragile and we should not ever take it for granted. Each moment we are alive whether in good times or bad, we have cause to be thankful. We should make every moment count, not by scheduling every moment full of things to do but by loving well, forgiving more quickly, and not taking any interaction with someone else for granted.

And when the fog surrounds us and the darkness in the world deepens, we should remember we were warned life on the earth would become more and more as it is now. We were warned so we would not despair, but rather to look up with hope to the One who gave us the warning and be prepared for His return. He is and has always been the only One to handle such heavy weights and understands how to defeat evil.

Fog. If you have ever needed to drive in fog you are aware of how stressful and disorienting everything is. Even if it is a road that you know, you may be uncertain of exactly where you are. The things you usually see as guides are hidden and you can become confused and doubt where you are on the road.

I have driven long enough to have experienced this more than once, but one incident stands out above the rest even though it happened quite a few years ago. At the time I was living at home while doing student teaching in our local school district but needed to drive to my university campus one night a week for a course that was related to the student teaching. It was a trek of more than 40 miles that took me a good 50 minutes when the weather was good, and construction was not happening.

On this particular night the issue that faced me was fog and it worsened on my way home in the dark that night. I knew the road well and was driving slowly with lights on dimmer beams as I had been taught, but the closer I got to home the denser the fog became until I could no longer be sure of where I was on the road or what was on either side of the pavement. I chose to do something risky and stopped and got out of the car for a moment to ascertain the center line and where the road’s edge was. Then got back to the business of creeping along until I finally made it safely home wrenched with a stressed mind and body from the tension of the trip.

There are technically different types of fog and meteorologists can tell us all about how it forms and the conditions that bring it about, but they cannot prevent it and we need to deal with it and sometimes navigate through it. It can cause us (like me) to doubt where I am or if I can even get to my destination. Those are real tangible realities we face, but there are other types of fog that can occur as well. Warriors will tell you there is often a fog that settles over a battlefield from smoke that has filled the air and sky from the weapons firing constantly or gases deployed as weapons. It can be difficult to be certain whether you can identify a person as a fellow soldier or an enemy in such times. It can result in either firing or failing to fire your weapon despite your training. You doubt yourself and hesitate. Life can be that way when we are not in the midst of a weather event or a physical battlefield as well. You can become lost even in a place you were sure you knew the terrain.

As darkness grows upon the earth we long for truth and the brightness of the day to navigate but the fog descending with the darkness disorients us and can result in doubt even before fear moves in. Many things come into play. One is that truth is obscured by the scene that the enemy seeks to set before us with words that once sounded good or right but we learn they were not and merely a script meant to deceive us and discourage our hearts from staying on the path we thought we knew. Voices come from every direction both outside of us and within our heads and doubt grows a bit more. We no longer are sure of who we can believe because some we have trusted betrayed our trust. This “fog” appears to be happening on big and small stages around us. It nudges us to trust anyone who seems to know the way.

“If Truth is taken away from us, then Right and Wrong are taken from us as well. If we don’t know Right and Wrong, then we can’t, we won’t control ourselves, but will look to someone else to bring order through brute force and raw power. We will be controlled by a tyrant, and we will no longer be free.”

Frank Peretti

Frank Peretti’s words offer wise counsel. They also remind us of key things we need to navigate the foggy darkness. First, we must immerse ourselves in the truth. That doesn’t come from any source other than the One who is truth. The more we immerse ourselves in what He has told us and the guidance He has offered, the less likely we will be to believe lies and half-truths that stalk us. Those things are meant to deceive us and increase doubt. Too often we have been lazier than we ought to be and counted on others outside of us to provide that truth and remind us of Him. We all need others, but it can never imply we are not to take responsibility to be sure the truth is planted deeply within us. Jesus shows us a perfect example when He was tempted in the wilderness and the enemy quoted scripture in partial and inaccurate context.

Secondly, we must not miss that the desire for someone to show the way is part of the human nature that the enemy would seek to exploit. He wants us to trust in man more than God so that he can deceive us with a man pretending to be God. That truth is something we dare not miss. As everything becomes more chaotic, the longing for someone to save us increases. That causes some to seek Truth and others to seek anyone who “appears” to know a way out of the mess. We must not be deceived.

“Keep a cool head. Stay alert. The Devil is poised to pounce and would like nothing better than to catch you napping. Keep your guard up. You’re not the only ones plunged into these hard times. It’s the same with Christians all over the world. So, keep a firm grip on the faith. The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does.”

1 Peter 5:8 (MSG)

“The depth of a person’s character is not measured by his or her physical strength, but by the depth of his or her nobility.”

Frank Peretti

New York Times bestselling author Lisa Wingate released her newest novel a few months ago and I was eager to open its pages since she is a favorite author and great storyteller. I finally jumped into it last week after finishing other reading. (If you follow my blog you know I read a wide variety of things and always like to have a good novel in the mix.)

Shelterwood is set in the beautiful state of Oklahoma shortly after it had become a state. Pioneers were flocking into the area for its diverse landscape, mineral riches, and hope for a better life as a farmer or rancher. In the mix were men eager to capitalize on the state’s unexplored riches who were willing to do anything to gain an advantage. Indian tribal lands were carved out and disputed. Underhanded deals were made by men lusting for power in the new state and the pioneer women and their children often got lost in the wrangling many times. It was a hard life.

The story begins in 1990 when Valerie Boren-Odell, a widowed single mother, arrives in Talihina, as a park ranger for the Horsethief Trail National Park. She hoped her experience in other locations like Yosemite National Park would serve her well but she soon discovers the team here is not accustomed to a woman ranger and an outsider. She hopes for the best but finds a job she has loved becomes a challenge with the testy atmosphere as she grieves the death of her husband and tries to help her son, Charlie, 8, adjust to a new life.

As Val traverses the park and begins to get familiar with the trails and regular folks and programs, she happens upon a cave with the bones of three young children that catches her up in a quest to discover who they are and how they got there and when.

As the thread of this story goes on, Lisa Wingate takes the reader back to the same area in 1909 where we meet three little girls living in an attic room of a house where a stepfather lives with her mother who is addicted to drugs and unaware of the abusive condition her daughter and two other part Indian orphan girls are enduring. Hazel, Nessa, and Olive are doing the best they can to survive the wiles of stepfather Tesco Peele. When Hazel, the oldest, runs away, Olive (Ollie) know it’s not going to be safe for her and Nessa to stay there.

They decide to set off on their own when Tesco is away using an old calico pony that had been Olive’s dad’s.  Olive has plans to live off the land and get to the cabin in Winding Stair Mountains where she had lived with her mother and dad. This trek will be fraught with danger and risks beyond what Olive could have guessed. It opens the read to the true story of the condition of many such children and orphans during that time trying to escape workhouses and all manner of abuse by those who wanted to use them for their own gain.

The girls will be just one step ahead of the stepfather chasing to find them and law enforcement seeking them when they are begging and sometimes stealing food and scraps along the way to try to sustain them. The bond between the two girls deepens in their effort to survive.

As only Lisa Wingate can do, the reader sinks into the two parallel stories of 1909 and 1990 introducing you to politics, land grabs, and a variety of unsavory characters. Page by page the reader is left wondering who will survive and how they will manage that and little by little, Wingate brings the threads of the two stories together in a dramatic climax that will fill in all the unexpected connection between 1909 and 1990.

If you love a good novel that gives nothing away until the parallel stories have ripened to just the perfect path, this novel will not disappoint you and keep you guessing through much of it until the end. It’s an excellent work of historical fiction opening your eyes to the plight of unwanted orphans, illegal guardians, and the untold stories of life in Oklahoma in 1909.