We are living in a time of transformation as significant as the Renaissance or Industrial Revolution.  One in eight who married in the America last year met online.  More text messages will be sent and received today than the planet’s population.  In 25 years, the cell phone attached to my belt will fit in a blood cell.  If MySpace were a country, it would be the fourth-largest nation on earth.

But human nature doesn’t change.  The Bible is still relevant because we still face the same temptations and feel the same fears and cherish the same hopes as Abraham and David and Peter.  We still need God and we still need each other.

Just before signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin warned his fellow delegates, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”  Standing before the Lincoln Memorial 47 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a day when “we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”  Nelson Mandela told his suffering people, “I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent.”

The night before he died, Jesus prayed for all who would trust in him “that all of them would be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.  May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21).  When we love each other, the world will know that we are Jesus’ disciples (John 13:35).

Our love for each other is our witness.  That’s a fact my grandfather would understand.

Credit: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters

When are meatballs, chicken and rice a feast?  When they’re the first hot meal you’ve eaten in three weeks.  Today’s BBC website tells us that Chilean miners trapped underground since August 5 had been eating only glucose tablets and high-protein milk.  Yesterday the hot food was piped through a tube to the 33 men who are trapped 2,300 feet below the surface.

Mining is a staple of the Chilean economy, producing generations of men as hardened as the rocks they work.  When a cave-in trapped the men three weeks ago, authorities assumed all were lost.  Engineers found them 17 days later, all alive and unharmed.  “We are fine in the refuge, the 33,” their first note to the surface read.

A rescue shaft will take three to four months to complete.  In the meantime, the trapped miners have organized themselves into groups of three to watch after each other.  They have created a makeshift altar where they can share worship services.  When food is dropped to them through a four-inch hole four times a day, none eats until all have enough to eat.  As their rescue hole is cleared, the men will need to remove 3,000 to 4,000 tons of rock; they are already organizing themselves into shifts to do the work 24 hours a day.  They know that the only way to survive their ordeal is to face it together.

The night he would be betrayed and forsaken by his closest friends, Jesus washed their feet.  This was a task so menial no Jew could be forced to do it.  He washed the sweaty, dirty feet of the man who would hand him over to his enemies and the man who would deny him and the men who would abandon him.  With this instruction: “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:15).  And this assurance: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (v. 35).

Self-sufficiency is spiritual suicide.  Western culture embraces the self-made hero, turning faith into a means to our advancement.  The ancient Greeks placed sacrifices on the altars of their gods so they would bless their crops.  We go to church on Sunday so God will bless us on Monday.  “You can do it, we can help” is not just a slogan used by Home Depot to attract customers—it is the promise made by market driven churches to their self-reliant consumers every Sunday.

But there is only one King in the Kingdom; the rest of us are his subjects and children.  We are the family of God, sisters and brothers who need our fellow miners in the dark.  When we wash each others’ feet, we find God’s love in ours.

Jesus measures success not by your title but by your towel.  How dirty is yours?

Photo by Luke X Martin via Flickr

Is Glenn Beck “the most potent political force in American life today,” as ABC’s Rick Klein describes him?  Was last Saturday’s Restoring Honor rally on the National Mall a political event or a religious assembly?  How many came?  (Estimates range from 65,000 to 650,000.)  What does the event mean today?

Yesterday Mr. Beck launched his next enterprise, www.theblaze.com.  He describes his news and commentary website as “a place that helps me make sense of the world I see.”  Advocates are excited; critics are less complimentary, as you might guess.

My interest this morning is not in Mr. Beck’s political views or popularity, a topic which would be inappropriate for a daily devotional.  Rather, it is in the religious fervor which seemed present at the Washington rally he hosted.

There is a genuine spiritual awakening sweeping the nations in our time.  Last year, South Korea sent more missionaries into the world than America did.  A million Cubans have become Christians in the last ten years.  More Muslims are converting to Christianity than ever before in Islamic history, many after seeing visions and dreams of Jesus.  Some believe that as many as 100,000 people come to Christ every day in the People’s Republic of China.

David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia documents 82,000 new believers every day, but only 6,000 are in Western Europe and North America, combined.  In Great Britain today, four times as many Muslims go to mosque on Friday as Christians go to church on Sunday.  Atheism is a rising epidemic across the Continent.

Meanwhile, the number of atheists and agnostics in America has quadrupled over the last 20 years.  The fastest-growing religious demographic in our country comprises those who claim to have “no religion.”  There is a growing hunger in our culture, a sense that things aren’t right, that something significant is missing.  We desperately need to join the spiritual awakening circling the globe.

One response is The Greater Cause, an event which seeks to renew the Church for the sake of the nation.  Anne Graham Lotz and I will speak on September 10-11 in Pilgrim Chapel at Dallas Baptist University, seeking to lead those who join us in a significant time of spiritual renewal.  You can register to join us or visit our website after the event for recordings.

Jesus is calling us to be his witnesses where we live and to the ends of the earth, but we must have the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the purpose of our Lord (Acts 1:8).  I have already prayed today for a great spiritual and moral awakening to empower God’s people and sweep our nation.  Will you join me?

Fortunately, I had already read today’s installment of Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest.  This spiritual genius reminded me: “The full flood of my life is not in bodily health, not in external happenings, not in seeing God’s work succeed, but in the perfect understanding of God, and in the communion with Him that Jesus Himself had. The first thing that will hinder this joy is the captious irritation of thinking out circumstances. The cares of this world, said Jesus, will choke God’s word. Before we know where we are, we are caught up in the shows of things. All that God has done for us is the mere threshold; He wants to get us to the place where we will be His witnesses and proclaim Who Jesus is.

“Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. Be a center for Jesus Christ to pour living water through. Stop being self-conscious, stop being a sanctified prig, and live the life hid with Christ. The life that is rightly related to God is as natural as breathing wherever it goes. The lives that have been of most blessing to you are those who were unconscious of it.”

So I’ll  define success today as staying close to Jesus, and trust him to use me as he wishes.  He came to give us “life to the full” (John 10:10)–let’s settle for nothing less.  As Jim Elliott, the martyred missionary, testified: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

On a lighter side of the same theme, CNN tells us that a chimpanzee escaped from his exhibit in Oklahoma yesterday.  He was found walking along in the dry moat which separated his habitat from visitors, oblivious to the commotion he created.  Zoo workers finally coaxed him back to safety, so “now everyone is where they’re supposed to be,” a spokesperson assures us.

One more item in this morning’s “lost and found” box: American Idol executive producer Nigel Lythgoe is blaming Simon Cowell for Ellen DeGeneres’s exit from the show.  He claims that she was “constantly apologizing and overwhelmed, I think, by Simon.”  What he doesn’t explain is why she left the show when Mr. Cowell had already announced his departure.  Relationships are seldom subject to logic, I suppose.

Jesus told three stories in Luke 15 which seem appropriate to today’s theme.  In the first, a shepherd lost a sheep, so he left 99 others and searched until he found it.  In the second, a woman lost a coin, so she swept out her entire house until she found it.

In the third, a father lost a son.  So he let him leave with a third of the estate for a distant country where he “squandered his wealth in wild living” (v. 13).  He wasted everything his father had worked so hard to earn.  In desperation, this Jewish boy got a job feeding pigs.  In further desperation, he wanted to eat what they were fed.  All this time, what was his father doing?  He didn’t hunt for his lost son as the shepherd did his lost sheep or the woman her lost coin.

He waited at home for that moment when his son “came to his senses” (v. 17) and chose to come back.  Then he “ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (v. 20).  He put a robe over his tattered clothes and a ring on his slop-stained finger and sandals on his filthy feet.  Then he threw a party, for “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (v. 24).

If this father had dragged his son home before he wanted to return, his prodigal would have fled the next day.  Unlike a dead body in the Canadian Rockies or a chimpanzee in a zoo, people have free will.  They can make choices which help or hurt others and themselves.  All the while, our Father honors the freedom he has given us, waiting for that moment when we choose to come back to his will and purpose for us.  If we do, no matter where we’ve been or what we’ve done, he is ready to welcome us and rejoice in us and use us again.

How close to home is your soul this morning?

photo by Ted Jackson/The Times Picayune

I am writing this morning from Shreveport, Louisiana, where I have been privileged to lead a spiritual renewal weekend.  It was sobering to be in this state yesterday on the fifth anniversary of Katrina.  As you know, the hurricane was the costliest natural disaster in American history.

At least 1,836 people died when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005.  Economic losses are estimated at $125 billion; 80% of New Orleans was flooded.  Many neighborhoods remain desolate and abandoned.  Many schools continue to meet in trailers.  While three quarters of the pre-Katrina population has returned, more than 100,000 have left New Orleans for good.  Then came the oil spill this summer, adding more economic misery for those who live on the Gulf Coast.

Numerous ceremonies were held yesterday to commemorate the victims of Katrina.  Gregory Aymond, Achbishop of New Orleans, led one service.  He told the congregation, “Where was God five years ago on this day?  Here, weeping with us, and trying to console us in the midst of a natural tragedy.”  The archbishop was right.

My favorite verse in the Bible is also the shortest verse in Scripture: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).  This one statement signifies what is unique about Christianity.  Zeus did not weep for the Greeks from his throne high atop Mt. Olympus.  Muslims do not believe that Allah weeps for people; Hindus do not view their numerous gods as crying with our pain; Buddhists do not picture a personal god who grieves as we grieve.

But the Son of God, the One who created everything that is and holds it together this moment (Colossians 1:16-17), weeps with us.  He cried with Mary and Martha at the grave of their dead brother.  He wept over the people of Jerusalem as he grieved their unbelief and sin.  He holds us in his hand this moment (John 10:28), so that everything which hurts us must first hurt him.

Wherever you are in pain this morning, know that the King of Kings hurts with you.  He reads your mind, knows your thoughts, and feels what you feel.  Whatever your Katrina might be, he is with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20).  And when you weep, he weeps.

Now he calls us to share his compassion with those who need to feel his love in ours.  He told us, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

Fulton Sheen (died 1979) was a Roman Catholic Archibishop and one of America’s best-known religious personalities.  He imagined this statement from our Lord: “Show me your hands.  Do they have scars from giving?  Show me your feet.  Are they wounded in service?  Show me your heart.  Have you left a place for divine love?”

Who today will see the tears of Jesus in yours?

courtesy of user:Eapender at en.wikipedia.org

I was hiking around White Rock Lake in Dallas last Friday morning when I came upon something I’m still trying to understand.  There were the requisite joggers half my age who passed me like Ferraris racing a Model-T.  Some people were walking their dogs while other dogs were walking their people.  Bike riders whizzed by; a man was setting out in his sailboat, waiting for a gust of wind on an uncharacteristically calm day.

Then came a man standing astride a contraption I’d never seen.  I looked it up when I got home–he was riding what appeared to be a Segway PT, a two-wheel motorized personal transportation (hence the PT) machine.  They’re used most commonly by police, military personnel, and people with walking disabilities.  The machine wasn’t what surprised me–it was the way its owner was riding it.  He was dressed just like the other runners and bike-riders I’d seen–form-fitting cut-away top, athletic shorts, wraparound sunglasses and running shoes.  He looked like he was engaged in a full workout, except he wasn’t doing any of the work.  All he had to do was stand there while the machine churning and whirring beneath him carried him down the road.

Like all the runners, hikers and bike riders out with us last Friday morning, he could say that he circled the nine-mile lake.  He did, but he didn’t.  I thought of the Russian folk tale about a flea sitting on the nose of the ox at the end of the day, proclaiming to the village, “We’ve been plowing.”  And I wondered how many times I thought I did something God really did through me.

Human words can’t change human hearts.  Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain (Psalm 127:1).  If these words help you in any significant way, it won’t be because I wrote them but because God used them.  “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6).

Here’s the good news: if we’ll just hang on, he’ll take us where we need to go today.

courtesy of Anastasia Shesterinina

I hope you’ve finished your breakfast before reading this: a Sri Lankan maid complained about her workload, so her Saudi employers hammered 24 nails into her hands, legs and forehead.  She has undergone surgery to remove the nails; authorities are deciding how to respond.

Continuing our theme: a Polish man living in Germany was shot in the head five years ago but didn’t know it.  According to Reuters, the man went to doctors last Friday to have what he thought was a cyst removed.  How did the bullet get there?  The man was at a New Year’s party in 2004 or 2005, he says, where he received a blow to the head but forgot about it because he had been “very drunk.”  Police theorize that someone shot a gun into the air to celebrate the New Year, and doctors just found the bullet.

Getting in on our morbid conversation, Time reports today on the man who wants us to love jellyfish.  Fernando Boero is a zoology professor in Italy and the brains behind JellyWatch, an attempt to mobilize beachgoers to report jellyfish sightings.  His goal is to map their movements so we can understand them better.  I am not volunteering—every time I’ve been stung by a jellyfish, it found me before I ever saw it.

All of this makes me wonder what problems I don’t know about.  There aren’t any jellyfish lurking in Dallas; it’s unlikely that anyone will shoot me today without my knowledge or drive nails into my body.  But I’ll be driving on the LBJ Freeway shortly, which people in Dallas equate with swimming in jellyfish-infested waters.  Then I’ll hike around White Rock Lake, which is not the wisest way to experience August in our city.  Who knows what terrors await me later in the day?

Dave Barry was only half-kidding when he said, “If you asked me to name the three scariest threats facing the human race, I would give the same answer that most people would: nuclear war, global warming and Windows.”  You may have heard about the fellow who was told that 90% of all car accidents happen within three miles of home, so he moved.

Safety is guaranteed nowhere in the Bible, but security is.  Believers are in Jesus’ hand, and he assured us that “no one can snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28).  Anything that comes to us today must first come through him.  Our Lord promised us peace, not prosperity: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27).

Is your heart troubled this morning?

Here’s his statement: “Prayer is the highest activity of mind and spirit.  True activity is never rightly measured by noise or motion.  The flower or tree, on a quiet summer’s day, when nothing seems to be happening, is busy in the highest degree.  It is opening itself to the unseen forces of its environment, having commerce with the sky in the form of sunlight, air, and rain, and is thus fulfilling its destiny.  That, for Jesus, was the secret of sustained life and power, that opening of his soul to the unseen force of his environment—God.  It is for man the secret of the sustained life of the spirit.

“There can be no fulfillment without a lonely place.  Lacking it, life lacks the dimension of height.  And that is precisely the case in multitudes of lives.  The very physical conditions of existence seem often enough to make solitude impossible.  A woman put it picturesquely to her pastor: ‘You tell us that Jesus said to enter into your closet and close the door.  In our apartment there are no closets and there are no doors.’  Life has become so public and gregarious.  It is hard to shut our doors against the insistent intrusions of the outside world, of the radio, and of all the other constant invaders of the lonely place.

“We must make a lonely place.  Nothing that enriches and empowers life ever just ‘happens.’  It is made.  Jesus never ‘happened’ to find himself alone.  He went out to put a stout fence around some corner of time and space.  The crowded life which never does that has no means of renewal, of cleansing, of fortification.”

Halford E. Luccock, Exposition on the Gospel According to St. Mark, The Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1951) 7:665.

Thoughts?