My Life is in His Hands

 

Living through the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 has been an exasperating experience for all of us. We have seen a little of everything: the painful grief of those who have lost loved ones, the struggle of families to deal with the loss of a salary, the continually changing rules from government, but the worst of all is the eminent fear of death. For some, this fear has been overwhelming.

Every human has an innate fear of death because it is universal. The pandemic, especially with the constant media attention and the unwanted change it has brought to our daily lives, has increased the fear of death for most people; most surprising, however, that includes Christians.

This is the one distinctive that Christians should not lose even amid a world-wide pandemic because our life is in God’s hands. Solomon said that “no man knows when his hour will come” (Eccl 9:12). From the media barrage each day, we are led to believe that politicians and medical experts know, but words are often no more than the “shouts of a ruler of fools” (Eccl 9:17). We are told one thing and then another until we are fear-driven instead of Spirit-led.

The prophet Isaiah described the believer whose life is in God’s hands “The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever” (Isa 32:17). This fruit of peace is rarely seen in 2020. It is a peace that comes from knowing your life is in God’s hands—not the politicians’ and not even the scientists’. This believer has a quiet confidence in God that inspires those around him.

When Jacob’s time to pull up his tent and move to Egypt came, he was fearful. Jacob was reluctant to leave the promised land and anxious about entering Egypt. On the journey, God assured Jacob that He would be with him, so he did not have to be afraid. God also told him not to be worried about dying. Of course, death would come as it does for everyone, but his son Joseph would be there with him when it happened, and he would close his eyes. (Gen 46:3-4).

Jacob had long battled with a fear of death, but he learned he did not have to be afraid of dying. Joseph would be at his side for his peaceful home-going. God gently comforted Jacob and helped him not to fear death. We are bombarded by the fear of death every day, but God does not want us to give in to panic or fear death because our life is in his hands. When it is our time, we can face it unafraid and look forward to spending eternity with Jesus and seeing our loved ones who have preceded us in death. We are people of hope and not hopelessness! I pray that hope will characterize the way we live our daily lives! The next time you feel fearful, say to yourself, “My life is in God’s hands!”

 

Less, not More

 

We are witnessing people who condemn racism with racist language. We are seeing people reject oppression with oppressive behavior. The Black Lives Matter movement has set itself up as the great arbiter of truth. When they call someone or something racist, we are all supposed to believe it. Never mind that their words and language are entirely repugnant and racist. Antifa and the BLM movement is nothing but a vehicle to overthrow millions of Americans’ freedoms. BLM promises us that the solution to our racist past is a new form of government with them in charge. They claim we need more government control. NO, thank you!

The most shocking racism in the world is oppressive government control. That is what socialism is.  A prime example of oppression was the construction of the Pruitt-Igoe buildings in 1954 here in St. Louis, thirty-three eleven-story buildings built on fifty-seven acres located just two miles from the Arch. This was possible because of the 1949 Housing Act passed under the Truman administration. This act gave the government the right of eminent domain, where the government exercises a strong arm of taking private property for public use. The Eisenhower administration funneled money to the city of St. Louis for their construction. Amity Shlaes says, “No urban renewal construction, captured more of the ambition and failings of government intervention in housing than that in St. Louis. Thousands of people lost their homes as entire neighborhoods were obliterated.[i] The government’s thirty-three concrete towers, each with elevators that stopped on every other floor, comprised the dream to cure poverty as this project was repeated in many other cities.

This new dream cure became a dream crusher as it displaced families first by moving them from their homes and then allowing only one parent—the mother and children to move into the towers. Tens of thousands of families lost a father. If they came for a secret visit, the family had to lie, but most fathers simply moved away and didn’t return. The project was run like something out of Stalin’s Russia, no fathers allowed, no television, no phone. Social workers policed the apartments for conformity. Who could have imagined a rationale for such stupid rules? Very quickly, the project descended into crime-ridden, dangerous places to live. The decay was evident. Even Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in the 1960s couldn’t save Pruitt-Ignore. By 1976 Pruitt-Igoe had all been torn down. About thirty of the fifty-seven acres are still barren today.

Someone who saw the travesty of what was happening was John Shocklee, a priest who began to buy up dilapidated houses and rehab them for families. Seeing Shocklee’s success, Pulaski Bank and other individuals and businesses joined him in standing up to government racism. Shocklee’s work occurred in the shadow of Pruitt-Igoe, as he helped blacks own their homes despite the overwhelming presence of a massive Federal/City government that could care less.

We hear that racism is rampant, and the whites of this country must pay. I submit to you that racism has always been present, but the biggest racists have been the government policies. The Pruitt-Igoe project was an anti-family racist policy that prohibited fathers from being with their own families. We need laws and policies that support the family, encourage private ownership, and create private businesses and jobs. We need less government, not more. The less government we have, the more we thrive. Less government means we embrace freedom and our fellowman’s needs the way John Shocklee did when he built homes for people booted out by their own government.

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[i] Shlaes, Amity. Great Society (pp. 238-241). Harper. Kindle Edition.

The Power of Acceptance

   

When was the last time you said something or did something and realized you were imitating your mother or father? We learn so many good things from our parents like our work ethic, how to manage money, and so on. However, we also learn some not so good things from our parents.

Family patterns are real, and many of them are incredibly dysfunctional. We absorb so much from our family origin without even realizing it. The patterns perpetuate dysfunction in the family and future families. The way a family communicates or doesn’t communicate, how they deal with conflict, how they interact and show respect or the lack of it informs how we will be in future relationships.

Jacob’s favoritism toward his wife, Rachel, and her two sons hurt his family and created dysfunction. Despite that flaw, Jacob made great strides in his character growth, but he never entirely grew out of this weakness. However, his sons learned to accept this flaw in their father. They gradually grew to see it as how he was. Their acceptance of their father’s dysfunction brought them together. The son’s acceptance of their father brought them closer to their father. We don’t have to be perfect to have families that love each other; we just have to learn to accept each other and make the changes we can.

It helps us all to admit that we are all dysfunctional in some way or another. What counts is whether or not we are trying to work on our weaknesses. When family members recognize that another member is trying, they accept them with their dysfunction. Acceptance brings transformation to the relationship.

We all want to be acknowledged and need acceptance. When we receive acceptance from those who know us best, something positive happens within us. Acceptance has the power to help us move forward and overcome our dysfunction. Of course, not all together, but we can make progress.

I have long considered that my greatest accomplishment in life is not my academic achievements or my ministerial accomplishments but my family. Nothing adds more meaning to my life than knowing that my marriage to the woman who loves me still endures. Nothing stimulates me more than knowing that my children and grandchildren respect me and follow me.

 

 

A Fatal Attraction

 

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that we are all making choices every day, and those choices are making us better or worse. We are changing “either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself.”[i]  No one person makes all the choices correctly. The point is whether we are trying to make good choices and what do we do when we realize we have made a wrong choice. Do we correct it? Making choices based on the principles of God’s Word transforms us into people of the light, as does the wrong choices into people of darkness.

Take, for example, the sin of envy; it is an acceptable sin to many today. I have had conversations with people who will declare they don’t think it’s right that the rich have so much and they have so little. It is one of the forces driving socialism. However, no context justifies envy. Cornelius Plantinga describes the difference between covetousness and envy:

Envy is a nastier sin than mere covetousness. What an envier wants is not, first of all, what another has; what an envier wants is for another not to have. To envy is to resent somebody else’s good so much that one is tempted to destroy it. The coveter has empty hands and wants to fill them with somebody else’s goods. The envier has empty hands, and therefore wants to empty the hands of the envied. Envy, moreover, carries overtones of personal resentment: an envier resents not only somebody else’s blessing but also the one who has been blessed.[ii]

There are numerous examples of envy in the scriptures, and it is always ugly. Cain not only wanted what Able had; he wanted his brother dead. Even when offered a second chance by God, Cain chooses the inevitable consequences of envy, and that is to attack the envied. Take, for example, the envy of Saul. Saul was king and David, his servant, so it makes no sense for Saul to want what David has. This is the insanity of envy. It blinds you to what you have and makes you resentful of the other.

Envy was what drove Joseph’s brothers to their horrific deed of selling their brother into slavery. They cared nothing about owning Joseph’s beautiful coat. They tore it into pieces. What the brothers resented was Joseph having the coat. They resented him and what the coat represented. That was why they stripped him naked and beat him, and tossed him in a pit to die.

Why write about envy? Because it is rearing its ugly head in so many places. Do you want to know the greatest antidote for envy? It is gratitude! Learning to be grateful for what you have and who you are keep envy out of your life. Let’s make choices that make us more like Christ!

 

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[i] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Macmillan Publishing, New York, 1952), p. 86-87.[ii] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 162.