A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

In Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus (and really to all churches), he says “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” That is the New American Standard Bible translation, and it is very accurate but not very easy to understand.

Here is the way the Bible in Basic English gives the same verse: “For by his act we were given existence in Christ Jesus to do those good works which God before made ready for us so that we might do them.”

So what does that mean? It means that PACC (our particular body of believers within the church universal) has an assignment, works that God has made ready for us, and that they are ours to do. Wow!

Many years ago I worked in a factory for a summer, and not one single day of those 90 days did I go to work wondering what I was supposed to do. The work was laid out for me, and until I pushed some big red button the work parts I was there to assemble just kept right on coming. (I could often sympathize with Lucy in the chocolate factory.)

But the church isn’t a factory and the work is not always so obvious. But it must be there, because God has prepared the work for us, and he has created us to do the work. I suppose we ought to figure out what it is and get after it!

Under the mercy,

Lewis

I think I pray. I think, I pray. I think; I pray. I think. I pray.

Somebody smarter than I am can decide on the proper punctuation.

What I want to ask in this post is ‘What does prayer look like?’

ACTS, the Lord’s Prayer, a Psalm, a song, a petition, a bed time ditty? Now I lay me down to sleep…

Is prayer one way like a podcast? Or, is it a two-way conversation with God like a blog with comments enabled?

Do I speak up, speak out, and sound off or do I quietly sit down, shut up, and listen in? Or, is it both? Neither?

I can remember many a day when I was living overseas. Unfortunately for me, I had to spend far too many of those days alone in my personal Bible study. It was bad. It was good. It was crowded in Japan, in China, in Far East Russia but I was still often alone. Like a geek at a rock concert.

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It has been encouraging to me to hear from several of you over the last few days that you have been thinking about mercy more than you had before, or in ways you hadn’t thought of it before. My hope is that as we realize we are recipients of mercy, we will also be dispensers of mercy.

The reality of too many of our lives too much of the time is that we want mercy for ourselves and judgment for others. Of course we would never say it that way, and so we fail to even see the dichotomy. Instead we say things like we want “them” to get what “they” deserve. But we don’t have to think very long or very hard to know that “we” don’t want to get what “we” deserve.

The Bible is filled with examples of both sides of this equation, and the math is both simple and hard. It is simple because God has made it clear, and it is hard because God has made it clear. It is also hard because our human minds and spirits continually interfere with our ability to grasp God’s mercy and God’s love. Tune your radio to the edge of the frequency for a station you really want to listen to and you’ll get get the picture.

One way to tune in more clearly to God’s mercy is to be a carrier of mercy. Several years ago I found a song by The Choir called Mercy Lives Here. The chorus to that song says simply:

Mercy lives here
Oh Mercy lives here
At home with the saints and the sinners
Mercy lives here

May the body of believers known as the Palo Alto Church of Christ be able to sing those words. May we be where mercy lives.

In the City and Under the Mercy,

Lewis

While WCB is reading tea leaves and wondering what God is up to regarding his employer and his family, I’m sipping tea (made from a bag, so there are no leaves to read, only a box) and wondering what God is up to — and what he wants me to be up to — on this “super Tuesday” primary voting day.

My wife and I looked over the ballots we received in the mail (like many in California, we have become “absentee ballot” voters) and wondering just where we should mark.

Ultimately we made most of our choices (wherever possible) based on the thing that was most important to us — faith.

That faith extends beyond what you might think, however. It is not just the faith of one candidate or another, it is our own faith and how that informs our lives. For instance, there is a proposition in California on this ballot that would expand the amount of electronic gambling (slot machines) allowed in the casinos owned by American Indian tribes.

My first clue that this was a bad idea was the euphemism that has been adopted by all: this betting of money is now called “gaming” instead of gambling. Take out two little letters and it is much more socially acceptable. But the results of the gambling are the same — the house always wins.

As for the candidates, their faith and how they’ve lived that out did (and will continue to) make a difference to me. I’m in favor of the separation of church and state, but not so far that the president can’t be part of the church. In fact, I want one who is a part of the church.

I’m not only voting that way, I’m praying that way, too.

In the first three verses of Ephesians 2, Paul tells the church that they were dead in their trespasses and sins and lists three causes for those failures. Many commentators divide those out as “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” and that makes a lot of sense. Too many times we fail to take the blame for giving in to our desires, and too we are quick to say “the devil made me do it” when all the devil had to do was watch.

But the part I want us to think about for a moment — because it is so amazingly dangerous — is the world. Specifically, Paul writes, those who now make up the church once “walked according to the course of this world.”

In Pilgrim’s Progress the hero, Pilgrim, and his traveling companion Faithful are walking on the path that has been laid out for them and for all who would find their way to the Celestial City (heaven). After a while the path becomes difficult and rocky, but just on the other side of a fence they can see a path that is grassy and much easier, and it appears to go in the right direction.

So they climb over the fence at a stile and resume their journey, walking and talking and simply following the path. As evening approaches they suddenly become aware that they can no longer see the way that they know to be the right way, and as they try to find the way back to the stile in the darkness they stumble and fall and realize that they will have to wait until daylight to carry on. But before daylight comes they are taken captive by Giant Despair and thrown into a dungeon at Doubting Castle. Suddenly, Pilgrim was not making much progress!

How about us? Have we ever decided to step off the path we knew to be the right way just to take an apparently easier way that was offered to us by the world? Have we ever walked according to the course of this world?

May we always stay on the right path, the path called Jesus, and keep our eyes fixed on him.

Under the mercy,

Lewis

Have you ever needed mercy?

Of course you have, because you have been guilty, as have I. Once (well, more than once, actually, but once that is important to this story) a policeman in Illinois wanted me to stop so he could chat with me. I obliged — it seemed like the right thing to do — and he gave me a written invitation to join several dozen other people on a particular day at a particular time where a friend of his was holding court.

The purpose of this court was, of course, to determine the guilt or innocence of all the invitees. Some of the people there were indeed innocent, but I was not one of them, and I knew it. That left three questions in my mind: 1. Was there _any_ excuse for my failure to keep the law? (No.) 2. How much was the fine? (More than I wanted to pay.) 3. Was there any opportunity for mercy?

Perhaps everyone who stands before a judge desires mercy, and if that is the case, imagine the mercy that will be prayed for at the judgment seat of God. Thankfully, all of those for whom Christ is Lord have both a relationship with the judge and a guarantee of mercy from the judge’s father. And that is a good thing, because just like I was back in Illinois, we are most certainly guilty.

Under the mercy,

Lewis

It’s almost always easier to discern God’s will, His direction, His hand in our daily lives AFTER the fact. That is, we can often more easily see how God worked things out for the good when we reflect back on the way things unfolded in our lives.

But what about BEFORE or DURING?

How can we see God working now, today? If things are going well, we say God is blessing us. If we perceive things to be going badly, we begin to wonder. No? Or is it just me?

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