Category: Articles and Devotionals

Pity the poor rich man” said most men… never. 

Except Jesus.  Always the One to discomfort the comfortable and comfort the discomforted, Jesus offers perspective where there often is none.  Mark 10:23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

In the parallel account in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus has been discussing eternal life with a rich young ruler and what it takes to be saved. Jesus says, Luke 18:20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'” 21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” [the rich young ruler] said. 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved? 27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”

Looking beyond the surface of what mankind often values, Jesus answers “Why Do the Rich Have Such a Hard Time?” Because money can’t buy the impossible.

Taking matters into one’s own hands, providing for oneself and storing up what one thinks he needs to survive is what happened to Pi. In the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using during Lent 2018,

“Pi goes through the supplies listed in his survival guide, matching supplies to the pile of booty he’s just retrieved from the lifeboat.  93 cans of water…Suddenly, the glowing silhouette of a huge creature wrapped in phosphorescent plankton – a HUMPBACK WHALE – streaks to the surface nearby, …the animal slips back into the ocean, creating a wave that sends the raft swirling across the water’s surface,… Pi’s neatly-stacked water cans and biscuits tumble over the side of the raft and into the ocean…The whale disappears into the night, leaving Pi open-mouthed and shaken.  PI (V.O.) “Of course, I brought all the biscuits and water on the raft with me to keep them safe. Idiot.”

Food for thought:  

• What characteristics of the rich make it hard for them to be saved? 
• In this life, the rich always inspire a great deal of envy.  Why is that not the reaction Jesus had? 
• Where is your treasure stored? 

Join me tomorrow for Why Do You Doubt?

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Do you ever wish God would just show you the storyboard?  That organizing visual which identifies what’s going to happen and the timing so you could just follow along?  Like Cliff Notes that you could study in advance to keep track of the plot unfolding. 

The truth is I often read the plot of a movie I’m planning to see before I watch it (usually to know if there are places I’ll have to cover my eyes due to the Braveheart-Saving-Private-Ryan-Effect which resulted from having made the mistake of watching those back-to-back on one frigid February Saturday.  Oh, and from taking movie advice from some men I know whose own impassive reaction to violence left them only proclaiming the movies “excellent.”  Without mansplaining, excellence and violence are equal but separate features.  I didn’t see the whole picture at the time since my eyes were covered through much.)

Even the disciples must have wondered,

Why Can’t We See the Whole Picture?”  With Jesus’ answer being the equivalent of “Because it’s not time yet.” 

When Jesus walked the earth, He didn’t know and when He was asked, He said Matthew 24:36 “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

***

But you know what?  We know enough to watch it unfold and to understand.  The disciples knew enough to follow Jesus, even if not enough to predict the Cross of Christ.  Had they known Jesus was going to be crucified, would they have just gotten in the way?  If we knew exactly when Jesus was returning, would we grow complacent in our everyday, set our alarm clocks and rebel right down to the wire? 

Sometimes we just need to accept that we don’t have the whole picture. 1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known.  Someday we will know fully and I look forward to that day.

Food for thought:

• Why do we want to know the full story?  What do we think would change by knowing it? 
• In the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using for our Lent 2018 devotional series, Pi offers this closing monologue:  “You know, I’ve left so much behind. My family, the zoo, Anandi, India-I suppose in the end the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking the moment to say goodbye. I was never able to thank my father for all I learned from him, to tell him that without his lessons I would never have survived…And I know he’s a tiger, but I wish I’d said: ‘It’s over. We’ve survived. Thank you for saving my life. I love you, Richard Parker.  You will always be with me. May God be with you.’ 
• What do you think of that?  Would knowing the full story keep us from having regrets or would our regrets be even greater because we had the opportunity to know? 

Join me tomorrow for “Why Do the Rich Have Such a Hard Time?”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

People can be really impatient, rushing headlong into bad decisions, even ones made to achieve what seems good on the surface.  The wise person knows that other people cannot be a means to an end.  Jesus as an earthly king with a food-multiplying ministry? People tried to do that, but anyone used as a means to an end is just a tool in the hands of a mob.  Jesus is bigger than that.

John 6:14 After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” 15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

Impatience, rushing to the end without the necessary preparation, was every bit as wrong-headed in Jesus’ day as it is in ours. 

Why Not a King Now? Because God had a perfect Kingdom in mind achieved with a cross for a throne and a crown made of thorns.

***

In the long view, things of this earth will someday disappear, however what is eternal, by definition, will not.  It lasts forever.  What is earthly will die and decay.  What is spiritual and heavenly will be released from bonds of clay and rise. 

Short-term satisfaction is no substitute for long-term preservation.

In the movie Life of Pi which we’ve been using for Pi and Chi, Asking and Answering Questions Why for Lent 2018, just when Pi thinks he and Richard Parker (the Bengal tiger) are going to die, his lifeboat lands on an island filled with meerkats and lush greenery.  Ponds of clear water.  Enough to sustain life for both Pi and Richard Parker.  Then, night falls and reveals the illusion of life corrected by the death of night. 

• ADULT PI: Don’t you see, the island was carnivorous.
• WRITER:  Carnivorous? Like… a Venus flytrap?
• ADULT PI: Yes, the whole island-the plants, the water in those pools, the very ground itself…Years ago, some poor fellow just like me must have found himself stranded on that island…. And like me he thought he might stay there forever…I saw how my life would end if I stayed on that island. Alone and forgotten. I had to go back to the world, or die trying.

Food for thought:

• Pi found enough food for himself and Richard Parker in the daytime to stockpile in the boat to continue the journey to the end.  In what ways, looking back over your life, can you see that God provided what you needed at the time to persevere? 
• God can calm the storm or calm the person; change the circumstances or change the individual; and He can reveal what is temporary to achieve what is eternal.  What is our role? 
• Knowing the difference between what is temporary and what is eternal is the subject of much of the Letter to the Hebrews.  In chapter 7 Jesus is considered a King-Priest in the “order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 7:11-25) with a forever status.  Why would Jesus fulfill that description?  
• Particularly in Hebrews 9 and 10, the contrast between earthly and heavenly could not be more striking (Hebrews 9:23-28) verse 24 “For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.”
• How can the illusion of perfection in earthly life lead us to making bad decisions?  The people of Jesus’ day wanted to make him an earthly king by force.  How did it look right to them?  But how would that have been a bad decision?   

Join me tomorrow for Why Can’t We See the Whole Picture? 

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Death is no friend.  To anyone.  Even with terminal illness, death is still an enemy in the eternal scope.  It comes for the young and the old.  It can even disguise itself, cloaked with compassion.  Our loved one “is out of pain now,” we say.  Love and life will somehow live on in memories.  But a generation or two down the line, that made-for-TV afterlife ends and all we’re left with is what seductive Death says in the movie, The Book Thief,

“Here is a small fact: You are going to die. I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.”

At this point on our Lenten calendar, Jesus knows what’s going on.  He’ll be entering Jerusalem and going to His death.  A painful crucifixion.  Undeserved.  The Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday will set the events in motion.  Jesus knows it.  He’s heading into mortal combat against the enemy to beat all enemies: Death.

Why is Death Such an Enemy?  Because God is the Giver of life and death hates God.

Food for thought:

• We’re told in Scripture 1 Corinthians 15:26 “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Why is it the last enemy?
• We can have hope because someday death will meet its end and bully us no more.  Revelation 20:14 “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.”  How is death presently a bully?
• God never wanted death.  We brought it on ourselves and God alone can make it right.  How did Jesus do it? 
• Revelation 21:4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”  How does tweaking the old order not change death in the same way that defeating it through born-again Christianity, and the New Heaven and New Earth can?
• In the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using to launch Why questions in our Lent 2018 devotional series, the Bengal tiger “Richard Parker lies in the stern of the boat, severely emaciated, his coat dull, his eyes clouded. Shivering, Pi uses the last of his strength to drag himself over to the tiger. The animal’s body is curled, his tail flat. Some of his fur has fallen away from his shoulders and haunches. He’s a skeleton in an oversized bag of fur. Pi reaches out to place a hand on the tiger. He gently touches him on one spot. PI: “We’re dying, Richard Parker. I’m sorry.” Pi sits and places the tiger’s head on his lap. “Amma, Appa, Ravi – I’m happy I’m going to see you soon. (Pause) Can you feel the rain? (Richard Parker raises his head slightly; his tail twitches.) God, thank you for giving me my life. I’m ready now.”  How does only Christianity offer hope in death?

Join me tomorrow for Why Not a King Now?

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Matthew 5:43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

===

Devotionals for Lent 2018, Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One) continue tomorrow in which we’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” and discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
• A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• .Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

It’s often said that what’s in a man gets revealed when he is squeezed under pressure.  What’s truly in a man comes out.  Why is that? 

Why Does Pressure Reveal the Inner Man?  Because it forces what’s inside the heart to the surface. 

***

In the Life of Pi, the movie we’ve been using to launch our Lenten devotional series, Pi ends up on a raft with Richard Parker the Bengal tiger who brings out who Pi is beneath the surface.  The pressures and stresses of survival 227 days alone on a raft.  Attempting to tame the predator within the boat. 

Towards the end of the movie, as Pi recounts his story to investigators who are wanting to know why the Japanese cargo ship sank in the Pacific. His story of survival with Richard Parker the tiger still doesn’t answer why the ship sink.  Why did he alone survive?  All the animals–the zebra, the orangutan, the rat, and hyena–it’s all too unreal. So, they ask him to tell them a believable story, one without all the animals.  Pi says, “I told him another story. ‘Four of us survived…'” and he recounts the four: the injured sailor called the happy Buddhist, Pi’s mother, a ruthless cook, and himself.  After the cook kills the sailor and Pi’s mother, Pi recalls watching his mother’s dead body being thrown to the sharks and his resultant encounter with the cook, “The next day I killed him. He didn’t even fight back. He knew he had gone too far, even by his standards. He’d left the knife out on the bench. And I did to him what he did to the sailor. He was such an evil man, but worse still, he brought the evil out in me…I have to live with that. I was alone in a lifeboat, drifting across the Pacific Ocean. And I survived.” 

The inner man, in a quest for self and survival, is capable of all kinds of evil. 

It all begins in the heart. 

Jesus talks about it, saying, Mark 7: 21 “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’”

Food for thought:

• Read Jeremiah 17:7 “But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. 8 He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” 9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 10 “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”  How does pressure reveal both good and bad in people? 
• Matthew 12:34 reminds us that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”  Have you ever had the experience of saying something you wish you hadn’t and wondered where that came from?  What is the best response when that happens? 
• In the final scene of the movie Life of Pi, the writer to whom he’s sharing his story connects the stories and concludes Pi was the predatory Richard Parker.  Is there any part of your character hiding beneath the surface you’d find helpful to address with God who has already searched your heart and knows about?

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Who knows what happens in the nanosecond before the brain waves cease?  Does Jesus make a final appeal, offering one last opportunity before an eternity in hell?  Yes, but it’s still an invitation to come, to follow Him, and a choice we have.  It’s not like grabbing the hand of the toddler melting down and demanding, “Enough!  You’re coming with me, buddy!”

God wants all men to be saved, right?  (1 Timothy 2:4) 

Why Won’t God Just Make Me Believe? Well, because faith is a matter of the heart, not works, and not history, even for the chosen people.  And each man follows his heart. 

Heaven wouldn’t be heaven with those who are there completely against their will.  They’d soon resent being there with those whose hearts chose to follow.

***

In the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using for our Lent 2018 devotional series, faith is presented as an issue of the heart.

• Mother:  He’s young, Santosh – he’s still finding his way.
• Father:  And how can he find his way if he does not choose a path? (To Pi) Listen: instead of leaping from one religion to the next, why not start with reason? In a few hundred years, science has taken us farther in understanding the universe than religion has in ten thousand.
• Mother: That is true. Your father is right. Science can teach us more about what’s out there-(With a hand to her heart:) but not what is in here. Art, music, literature they all spring from our faith.

Science.  Hmmmm.  Stephen Hawking.  Brilliant physicist.  Crumpled and confined to a wheelchair.  Communicating his genius thoughts through voice assistance.  He relied on science. Who knows if he died as the atheist he once asserted? I grieve for him and for his family.  If Jesus made one last appeal, would Hawking have said, “My Lord and my God! I was wrong! Forgive me!”  Or would he have said, “No thank you?” The Independent UK offers this insight

Professor Hawking has long been a critic of ideas of the afterlife or an all-powerful god. He said it was natural to believe in the divine before we understand science – but that science had now provided a better explanation.”  

I hope he rethought that answer.  To be so brilliant and so clueless…and leading others to cluelessness is a tragedy far worse than an earthly lifetime of disability.

Food for thought: 

• Why might science not provide the ultimate answer? What is the key to having a heart of faith?
• The Apostle Paul spoke of grief at the hardening of his brethren, the Israelites, so the Gentiles could be grafted in as children of faith.  He grieved yet he fully believed that the Israel of faith would arise, having their faith rekindled.  Read Romans 9. In it, Paul asserts this about the seeming rejection of the chosen people, “32 Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.” 33 As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”  How are historical entitlements and science stumbling blocks to faith?

Join me tomorrow for Why Does Pressure Reveal the Inner Man? 

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

If we can’t earn our salvation by our good works, frankly, why bother doing them?  Why not just eat, drink, and be merry?  Let Jesus be your insurance plan and open your Bible now and then to remind yourself that it’s God’s gift to you as you go on with your life?  Seems simple enough.

But then one day, something happens, and you ask yourself about meaning in life, about merit and things larger than yourself.  In our Lent 2018 devotional series Pi and Chi, asking 40 questions why, Pi speaks as a voice-over,

The world had lost some of its enchantment. School was a bore – nothing but facts, fractions and French. Words and patterns that went on and on. I grew restless, searching for something that would bring meaning into my life.”

Pi’s something was a girlfriend.  But I’ve been thinking about deeper meaning and merit, and I’ve been struck by one (now two) celebrity deaths.  There is the death of the Reverend Billy Graham who reached many millions of people with the Gospel.  I find myself feeling rather jealous on a visible merit basis.  He preached worldwide to millions of people.  I blog and deal with my hometown’s sewers.  On a merit-basis alone, I know I don’t measure up, like I’m eternally insignificant.  But hope rises as I think about Edward Kimball and the truth of the saying, 

You can count the number of apples on a tree and the number of seeds in an apple, but you can’t count the number of apples in a seed. 

***

Had Edward Kimball not found meaning in his life by teaching the Gospel in Sunday school, who might have preached to the millions way down the line?  Merit is a funny thing–visible and hidden–it’s earthly but for the Christian, it’s eternal.

Then as I rewrite portions of my messages for you each day, I learned this morning that Stephen Hawking, renowned physicist and intellectual died.  He dismissed a need for God and asserted that “conventional afterlife is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark.” In the end, his children praised him saying, “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.” True, he beat the odds of his diagnosis and was a respected intellectual, but that’s not the same as the person living on.  Fairy tale or sad reality: you can’t take it with you and living on for many years isn’t the same as eternity.   

But then there’s Billy Graham whose work carried on until his death and now what he said earlier makes us smile, “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.” And I’m certain an obscure Edward Kimball was there in the huge crowd in heaven to greet him even as Graham’s earthly work and legacy live on.

Why Does God Ignore Merit?  He doesn’t.  Merit is both rewarded and multiplied by God like a seed.  Given only in service to this world, any merit just doesn’t seem to have the same significance, does it?

Food for thought: 

• Compare and contrast the legacy and hope in the juxtaposed deaths of Graham and Hawking.  Read Mark 8:36 “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”  How does merit belong to the earth in a different way than its meaning in the hands of God? 
• Read John 12:24 “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”  How does God reward self-sacrifice and multiply merit? 
• Do you ever feel like you’re insignificant?  How does God’s multiplication and reward of merit help you to persevere in doing good (Galatians 6:9)?

Join me tomorrow for Why Won’t God Just Make Me Believe? 

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Salvation is not a do-it-yourself program because—even back when it was found only in the mind of God—saving mankind was always a “Did-it-Himself” program.

If there’s one distinguishing feature of Christianity in contrast to all the other world religions, it’s this fact: we cannot earn salvation.  We must accept it as a gift of God’s grace.

Whether it’s our piling up good works as philanthropy, doing acts of purging the world of infidels, climbing through levels to inner peace, offering appeasements to placate the angry gods, or even atheism which says it’s a do-it-yourself program of “life stinks and then you die” before becoming food for worms…all of these involve human effort.  And each person thinking he’s saving himself, primarily looking out for number 1, yet completely unable to save anyone whether self or others. 

The idea of receiving salvation as a gift of grace through faith is a uniquely Christian idea. 

Ephesians 2:3 Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions … 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith– and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

***

In all other religions, men reach up for their god.  In Christianity, God reached down and gave us the gift of Jesus and salvation through His sacrifice for our sins on the Cross.  Note, however, this was not some gruesome, nasty act of Father God killing his kid, but Jesus—fully God Himself—willingly, lovingly, graciously coming as One sent…not to live…but to die.  To intentionally die because it can never be a do-it-yourself program no matter how hard we try.

For further thought:

• At the risk of offending my friends who are Mormon, believing that Jesus was a mere man who was exalted to godhood, this is different than Jesus coming from the Father, His already being fully God.  How does God make that truth clear in the Did-it-Himself program of Christ’s perfect sacrifice? Read Hebrews 10:1-18 for insight.  
• Is 99% perfect good enough or does it take 100% to be holy? 
• On this side of heaven can man alone ever be 100% holy?  What made Jesus holy and 100% perfect?

Join me tomorrow for “Why Does God Ignore Merit?” 

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For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

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Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

In the Life of Pi that we’ve been using to dig into the Scriptures to answer 40 questions “Why?” Pi responds to his father’s claim that believing in all things is like believing in nothing by saying he wants to be baptized as a Christian.

In case we might be tempted to cheer along with all the angels at the salvation of one who was lost, Pi later on is still crediting Lord Vishnu for providing fish and saving him.  For the boy Pi, Jesus was an add-on, not a sole occupant of a heart of worship.

This whole idea of exclusivity and exceptionalism has gotten a bad rap in modern culture.  It has morphed into a holier-than-thou-ism which says

I’m better than you.” 

It’s a total misunderstanding.  It’s not that at all.  It’s “I’m a sinner completely unable to save myself.  But I follow Christ who can save me.” 

Let’s say you accidently drank poison.  You didn’t know it at first, but when the symptoms began to show, you and a bunch of other people took notice that unless help arrived, it was going to kill you.  Paramedics immediately show up on the scene and want to administer the only known antidote.  You say that you don’t like the exclusive claims of antidote.  You’d rather try positive thinking and suggestions you found on an Internet search.  Most people would think that’s stupid with a capital S.  “Take the antidote, you fool!” would be chanted by everyone watching.

There is one (and only one) antidote to sin’s death sentence: Jesus. 

***

1 Timothy 2: 3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all men.

The only question that remains is whether you’re willing to accept the antidote or want to keep looking on the Internet for ways to try.

Food for thought:

• Are you like Pi with Jesus as an add-on to your collection of gods? 
• Or are you willing to look beyond culture’s mislabeling of exclusivity as a problem rather than as a known solution? 
• Should Christians feel guilty about telling other people about Jesus as the cure? 
• In what ways do we value knowing a sure solution in other areas of life and welcome hearing them?  Do others get offended when we offer “life hacks” or solutions that work?

Join me tomorrow for “Why Couldn’t We Do It?” and a discussion of DIY salvation programs offered by all other religions.

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.