Last Sunday morning I mentioned in my sermon how God uses the “foolish” things of the world to shame the wise.  In the context of Genesis, I was talking specifically about God’s penchant for making great mothers of women with barren wombs (Sarah, Rebekah, et al.).  But this also works as a general principles, as the beginning of 1 Corinthians and numerous other texts and examples make clear.

As an aside, I mentioned “The Alexamanos Graffito.”  This ancient graffiti is one of the oldest depictions of the cross, and it is not a flattering depiction.  In fact, it is a piece of anti-Christian mockery in which a young man, Alexamanos, is seen worshiping before a cross on which is crucified a man with the head of a donkey.

Scribbled beneath are the words, “Alexamanos worships his God.”  The graffiti is dated to around 200 AD.  Here is a picture of the original (discovered in Rome in the mid-19th century), with a pencil or pen rubbing beneath it making things a bit clearer.

So when we talk about “the new atheism” or speak about what seems to be increasingly hostile attacks upon Christ and His people, remember that there is truly nothing new under the sun.

The world has always mocked the cross as absurd and God’s people as fools.  But may we never forget:  the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of the world, and it is through the foolishness of the cross that we are saved.

I tried to get his attention a couple of more times with no success, and then realized what had happened.  He obviously had tried to silence his phone but had somehow cut on the speaker instead.  I could hear him and the people he was talking to crystal clear, but he couldn’t hear me.

So I decided to hang up.  Just before I did, though, I hesitated and listened to what he was saying.  He was talking about a trip that he and my mom and our daughter and two of her cousins had just taken to D.C.  He described the National Cathedral:  where it was located, what it looked like, how much they enjoyed it.  I could hear the lady and her husband asking questions.  He told them about a trip that they are about to take the rest of the grandkids on in a few weeks.  Then he talked to them about what they needed in their store.

My dad is a hardware salesman.  He has been since before I was born.  For my entire life I have known that he was traveling the eastern part of South Carolina selling the countless little hardware stores that dot the state.  His is a life of travel, conversation, and sales.  I guess he’s logged more miles than any human being I’ve ever known, and he’s sold a whole lot of hardware along the way.

As I listened to him talk it occured to me that I was getting a glimpse into something I had always knownbut never really known:  what my dad does and who he is during the week.

So I listened.  I sat at my desk and listened to every single word.

I listened to my dad talk for 28.5 minutes…and he never knew I was listening.

And this is what I learned:

My dad loves his family, particularly his grandchildren.

My dad loves to laugh.

My dad is good at his job and wants to work with his customers.

My dad doesn’t use profanity.

My dad doesn’t stand around the hardware counter telling crude stories.

My dad is the same man in a hardware store in rural SC on a Wednesday afternoon that he is in church on Sunday morning at 11 a.m.

My dad has such integrity that he can cut his cell phone on and let you listen in and you won’t hear anything that will make you ashamed.

We are indeed formed by little scraps of wisdom.  And yesterday my dad gave me maybe the greatest gift he’s ever given me:  a 28.5 minute scrap of wisdom, imparted to me without him knowing it, that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

So thanks, dad.  Thanks for being who you are.

I’m proud to be your son.

Time Management

The following letter from P.H. Mell’s mother to her then fifteen-year-old son was printed in the latest issue of The Founders Journal in a tremendous article on the life and ministry of the great Baptist statesman.  It is, in my opinion, a beautiful picture of what Christian parenting looks like…a picture that desperately needs to be recovered in the Church today.

My Dear Boy:

It is high time that you and I should communicate frequently and intimately and confidentially.  If this is not to be expected by the time you have arrived at fifteen when is it to be looked for?  On one account I have more anxiety, even dread on your behalf than for any of my children.  Earnestly as I wish a son of mine to be a minister yet I tremble at the idea of educating and devoting a son to the sacred profession without previously satisfactory evidence that his own soul was right with God…My heart burns to see you in every sense of the word a true Christian…You should exercise a jealousy over yourself lest the trifles of this world should deaden your feelings about the grand questions: what are the chances of my salvation – what have I done – what must I do to be saved?…remember they that are Christ’s have crucified their affections and lusts – crucify yours.

[C. Ben Mitchell, “The Life and Labors of Patrick Hues Mell.” The Founders Journal, 76 (Spring 2009), p.17-18.]

I noticed this in Charles Lowery’s article, “His Little Girl,” from the most recent SBC Life.  May it encourage you today!

In The Whisper Test, Mary Ann Bird writes:

I grew up knowing I was different and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth and garbled speech.

When schoolmates asked, “What happened to your lip?” I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me. There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored — Mrs. Leonard by name. She was short, round, happy — a sparkling lady.

Annually we had a hearing test … Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back — things like, “The sky is blue.” or “Do you have new shoes?” I waited there for those words. God must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life, Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper:

“I wish you were my little girl.”

Wiley Drake, a former VP of the SBC, has applauded the murder of abortionist George Tiller and apparently is hoping that God will strike our President as well.  As Wade Burleson points out, Dwight McKissic is calling on the Southern Baptist Convention to censure Drake.

If any kind of resolution along these lines comes before the Convention, I will be voting for it.  Regardless, here is my censure.

Wiley Drake is, to many of us, a kind of Convention oddity:  a man who loves the microphone, loves bringing resolutions to the floor, and who, amazingly, was elected VP of the Convention.  But I can assure anybody who doesn’t know the SBC that Drake was elected because, at the time, he was seen as a funny, quirky, slightly irritating, but somewhat charming man who’s indefatigable microphone antics on the floor of the SBC over the course of many years had earned him a pat on the back.

He was not elected for his mind.  And these kinds of comments were not known (to me anyway) when he was elected.

But this is too much, and is not representative of the SBC, despite what non-SBC folks probably think (and, thanks to Drake, will continue to think).

I’m a Baptist by conviction.  I oppose abortion and think it should be made illegal.  I run in these circles.  It’s where I live and breathe.  But I have never heard anybody call for or defend the murder of an abortionist.  On the contrary, the vast majority of pro-life folks I know feel that murder is precisely the problem and not the answer.

As for praying for the death of our President, words fail.  I disagree with our President and frequently pray that God will convict him over this or that.  But what Wiley has done here is absurd and obscene.

Shame on you Wiley.  Step away from the microphone.

No, really.  It is.

This is from an article from the June 4, 1899 edition of The New York Journal.

“The lack of rain on Long Island has worried the farmers all month. On Saturday, those living at Northport formed a committee, and calling on the pastors of all the churches, asked them to pray for showers.

The clergymen did as they were requested, and in a few hours a thunderstorm came. There was a magnificent display of lightning and a heavy fall of thunderbolts.

The lightning did great damage. The house and barn of George P. Lewis (who was a member of the committee who asked the pastors to pray for a storm) was struck; the barn and its contents were wholly destroyed.

At Bay Shore, where prayers were also said for rain, William Gunther’s carriage house was struck and burned. George Tilley’s barn, at Jericho, was destroyed.

The same storm was felt at Spring Valley. Farmer Benjamin Baker was burned out of house and home. Lightning knocked him and his wife senseless.

Grace Episcopal church, at Nyack, was struck by lightning during Sunday Night’s services.

A house at Orangeburg, near Nyack, was destroyed. Several houses, barns and trees in the vicinity also suffered.”

Another apocryphal tale of interest, this time passed on by Calvin Miller in his tremendous book, Celtic Prayer:

On the island Brendan [the first Celtic sailor] meets Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus!  Judas explains that, by the mercy of Jesus, he is on the island for a brief respite from his never-ending suffering in hell:

“I am Judas, most wretched, and the greatest traitor.  I am here not on account of my own merits but because of the mysterious mercy of Jesus Christ.  For me this is not a place of torment but rather a place of respite granted me by the Savior in honor of his Resurrection.”  It was the Lord’s own day.  “It seems to me when I sit here that I am in the Garden of Delights in comparison with the agonies which I know I shall suffer this evening.  For I burn like molten lead in a crucible day and night at the heart of the mountain which you see, where Leviathan lives with his companions.  I have a respite here every Sunday from first to second vespers, from Christmas until Epiphany, from Easter until Pentecost, and on the Feast of the Purification and the Assumption of the Mother of God.  The rest of the year I am tortured in the depths of hell with Herod and Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas.  Therefore I beseech you by the Savior of the world to be kind enough to intercede for me with the Lord Jesus Christ that I may be allowed to remain here until sunset tomorrow and that the devils may not torment me, seeing your arrival here, and drag me off to the hideous destiny which I purchased with so terrible a price.”  St. Brendan replied:  “The Lord’s will be done.  You shall not be consumed by devils tonight until dawn.”

Calvin Miller, The Path of Celtic Prayer: An Ancient Way to Everyday Joy (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2007), p.76.

Here’s a little illustration from Robert Seiple’s tremendous article “From Bible Bombardment To Incarnational Evangelism: A Reflection on Christian Witness and Persecution” in the recent issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs.  It illustrates precisely the difference between genuine persecution and doing something dumb in the name of missions.

Many of my personal views on the complex intersection between evangelism and persecution were crystallized by an incident in 1998, when I was working for the U.S. State Department.  During the summer, 30 Filipino Christians were ushered off to jail for distributing Bibles in the Islamic state of Saudi Arabia.  It doesn’t require too much imagination to see how the combination of elements in this episode – Bibles, Christians, and Saudi Arabia – could have been a recipe for disaster.  Fortunately a disaster was avoided.  Working with both the U.S. Embassy and the Philippine Embassy, the State Department was able to get each of these earnest Filipino evangelists released (immediately deported, but released) before the summer was over.

Four months later I was in Saudi Arabia, and I stopped by the Philippine Embassy to thank the Ambassador for his help in the successful resolution of this incident.  “You know,” he said to me, “under Saudi Arabian law you can bring one Bible into the country in your briefcase.  These people tried to smuggle 20,000 of them into the country.  Then they claimed Saudi Arabia for Christ by the year 2000!”  I was not unfamiliar with these kinds of bold, if unrealistic, missionary campaigns, but to the Philippine Ambassador this was nothing less than bizarre.

“They were running out of time,” he went on, “and here they still had all these Bibles.  So they started to walk down the streets of Riyadh, throwing Bibles over walls, literally hitting unsuspecting Muslims on the head.  Saudi Arabia’s Muttawa (religious police) stepped in immediately, of course, and 30 of my countrymen ended up in jail.”

Now I ask you:  are these brothers and sisters to be commended for their courage or reprimanded for their foolishness?