I wrote this many years ago, but every word still rings true. I have many heroes in the faith, but most of them I’ve met in books. Not so with Dick and Liz.  While people were debating complementarian and egalitarian theology, these two were living and breathing gospel partnership in a way that still compels me. I love the way Dick would sit back at parties and let Liz be Liz.  I loved the twinkle in his eye as he watched her artsy self work to the room! I love this couple deeply and hope that I can point others to the glories of the gospel one tenth of the way they did!

Paul strikes me as the kind of guy who woke up in night sweats from intense dreams. I imagine that as Paul continued to change,  the subject of said supposed dreams changed as well.

I imagine him, when he was still living out of his perfectionistic and performance mentality, waking up fearing failure and exposure of weakness before the Pharisaical leaders. Then I imagine him sitting bolt upright in bed after having detailed flashbacks about his life of persecution of the Church that he grew to love and serve.

I imagine that towards the end of his life, his nightmares moved to fears of not finishing well the life that his dramatic Damascus encounter with Christ began.

While the nightmares of Paul are conjectures, it is known fact that Paul was deeply concerned with finishing well, with completing to the end the course that God had so clearly and deliberately given to him.

But I do not count my life of any value nor as precious to myself, I only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. Acts 20:24. 

Lately I have been reading 2 Timothy and fighting to read it imaginatively as the letter it was in truth: the last letter of a dying man to his protege and son in the faith.

As I read over Paul’s constant and stirring urgings to timid Timothy to take courage and steadily stay the course marked out for him as a young pastor and the one to whom Paul was passing on the kingdom baton, they came to life.

One can feel the waves of relief radiating out from this personal and poignant letter. Paul, by God’s sustaining grace, had reached the end faithfully. He had done it. His worst fears of not finishing faithfully were assuaged.

As for me, I feel that the last drops of my life are being poured out for God. The time for my departure has arrived. The glorious fight that God gave me I have fought, the course that I was set I have finished, and I have kept the faith. 2 Timothy 4:6-7 (JB Phillips translation).

While I am so thankful that Paul’s finishing well is recorded in the Canon of Scripture, I am also grateful that we have living examples of Pauls all around us, those running well to the end the course that has been marked out by them.

As I was reading 2 Timothy, I could not help but think immediately of a pair of heroes of the faith that I am privileged to know, even if only on the out skirts.

Dick and Liz Kaufman have not yet finished their race, but they have recently turned the corner into a new stretch. Our church, Redeemer Encinitas, recently declared Dick Pastor Emeritus.

On a double date with them over Christmas break, we inquired what in the world this actually meant. In a very typical Kaufman response, Liz told us through a huge grin, “I think it means something about your toes being close to the grave.”

While their toes are not as close to the grave as their joke made it sound, it was such a joy to celebrate the way they faithfully finished their official ministry course so well. In a world and a culture that love to talk big and start strong, Dick and Liz, by the grace of God and through great discipline in community, have maintained a steady pace over decades of ministry.

If you ask them questions (which you would be a fool not to do if you are ever with these treasures of experience and grace), you will likely watch as their brains run through a verifiable Roladex of stories of God’s faithfulness. Their ministry lives were not lived in ivory towers of ideas but in the mess of real life with real people.

Paul prodded Timothy to stay the steady course, “to preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.” (2 Timothy 4:2).

When I sit across from Dick and Liz or watch them from across the room, I see ordinary people who have done just that. It is an added bonus that they did so with a joy and levity that are contagious.

If you ask them the secret to their long and successful ministries, from New York to California, they would say, “You just share the gospel.” They would share stories of trial and error attempts to gather the neighborhood to hear the gospel from pot lucks to kids camps. They would probably, through peels of laughter, tell you the story of the neighbor who came to faith and then hid a gospel tract in her husband’s sandwich where he would be unable to avoid reading it.

The thing about Dick and Liz that compels me most is that they are not done. They live in a high rise apartment right in the thick of downtown San Diego and they are still looking for “open doors, “ as they say, to share the gospel with neighbors.

They are goofy and down-to-earth but maintain a gospel urgency and centrality to their lives that begs others to get on board and join them. They have taken aging and degenerative diseases in stride by the power of the gospel. They are heroes to me and the countless others who have known them or know them now.

I wish you could know Dick and Liz, but I have a feeling that you have you have a couple like them in your area who are silos of stories of God’s faithfulness through ordinary people and an extraordinary gospel message. By God’s grace, they exist, and they have a wealth of knowledge and perspective to pass on to us. They probably look like an ordinary couple or a quiet widow(er).  If you don’t someone who is finishing strong, it is well worth your intentional pursuit.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings to closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Romans 12:1-2

Here’s to knowing and emulating those who are finishing strong.

The fate of most small, plastic toys in this house is the same: first the junk drawer then the trash can. The life cycle tends to run about a week, although McDonald’s toys last about 10 minutes and Nerf bullets last about two weeks. Legos are the exception, of course. Long live the Lego!

Melissa and Doug (whomever they may be) realized that we all long for more durable delights and made a fortune creating old school wooden toys and puzzles that don’t end up in the junk drawer.

As I have been reading Thomas Brooks’ Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, the contrast between junky plastic toys and solid wooden classics has been on the forefront of my brain. Strange connection between my two favorite worlds, the world of Puritan writings and momma-land, I know.

“Where one thousand are destroyed by the worlds frowns, ten thousand  are destroyed by the worlds smiles.”

One of the devices most employed by the Enemy which Brooks dwells upon in depth is the allurement of this world. Even though Brooks’ had no idea how consumerism and a culture of comfort would grow and develop, his words speak so aptly to our culture and to my own heart.

“You may as soon fill a bag with wisdom, a chest with virtue, or a circle with a triangle, as the heart of man with anything here below. A man may have enough of the world to sink him, but he can never have enough to satisfy him.”

When I see my children fixating on collecting precious toys that quickly lose their luster, these truths are so clear to me; however, I struggle to see the idiocy of my own attempts to collect comfort and treasures on this earth. A new home, a new rug, a better school, a getaway to an exciting place: these are the equivalent to plastic, junk drawer joys when compared to the solid, durable delights that I have in union with Christ.

“The treasures of the saint are the presence of God, the favor of God, union and communion with God, the pardon of sin, the joy of the spirit, the peace of conscience, which are jewels that none can give but Christ nor none can take away but Christ.”

I long to invest my time, energy and resources on earth storing up durable delights that will last even beyond the frames of this fragile life. Cultivating my own walk with God, encouraging and enabling my children’s relationships with the Lord and one another, praying for and befriending the sheep that are not yet of Jesus’ fold, but are meant to be (John 10), these are durable delights. Yet so often, these get pushed aside by the plastic distractions of this world, lost in the shuffle of temporary toys.

I spend so much time organizing, protecting and caring for the temporary toys, that I often neglect the durable delights that are less shiny and less loudly advertised. While the durable delights of union of with Christ are expensive, they have been fully purchased for us by the very same Christ. The wooden, lasting lovelies of Christ sit gathering dust in a bin while I frantically pander to the plastic.

“Oh, let your souls dwell upon the vanity of all things here below, til your hearts be so thoroughly convinced and persuaded of the vanity of them, as to trample upon them and make them a footstool for Christ to get up and ride in a holy triumph in your hearts.” 

I love the image that Brooks paints. I can see, in my mind’s eye, a pile of the plastic, temporary toys of this life, being climbed by Christ as He becomes rightful King on the throne of my heart and desires.

Christ is THE durable delight from which all pleasures flow. He is the center of our desires and all good gifts radiate out from Him (James 1:17). May He sit on the rightful throne, as we allow the lesser, temporary joys to be His footstool!

Everything in me and around me seems to be dead against focused attention. As soon as I sit down to finally focus on the task at hand, the instant pot beeps, begging for my attention. The laundry buzzes, beckoning me to fold. As soon as I finally sit down to read me to my littlest fella or get outside to kick the soccer ball with my older fellas, I see trash cans that need to be taken out, plants that need to be watered, and a flat tire that needs to be filled.

This is not to mention the push through news notifications, the ticker on the bottom of the screen, or the constantly-changing calendars I manage. On the outside, my life is scattered, but on the inside my heart is equally scattered, pulled in different directions by competing desires. I find myself longing to pray with David in Psalm 86, “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.”

Like many of you, I often ask the Lord to give me a word or phrase at the turn of the new year. Like many of you, I also tend to forget that word or phrase after a month of living in the tyranny of the urgent.  As such, I hesitate to even pick a word, but this year I feel like the Lord picked one for me: Focus.

Many people will be talking about focus in the coming weeks: Focus on your goal, focus on caring for yourself, focus on the right priorities, focus on setting those habits. But I just want to focus period. To be focused where God has me in each moment, unified in heart rather than divided and distracted. Not feeling guilty about the twenty things I am not currently doing or the the forty other needs I should be meeting, but rather being more fully free and focused on where I actually am.

Beams of Attention

A few month back, I read an old tattered book by Keith Greene, and one little nugget contained therein planted itself in my soul. Greene likened his focused attention as a beam or spotlight, as seen below.

“It is as our attention were a powerful spotlight, the beam of which God lets us direct. We can shine the beam off into the past or future or into the eyes of the people around us in the present…I began to see that agape love rides down the beam of our attention into people’s hearts.” 

It is a challenging thought to think about agape love sliding down the beams of our attention. We live in a culture largely known for its short attention spans, and we house hearts whose attention beams tends to continually reorient around self. As such, it seems that much agape love that could be sliding from the Father of lights down the beams of our attention to a desperately needy world never arrives.

Focusing Scattered Beams

If focused attention is beam, my attention is more like a spewing geyser. When my older children are wanting to show me their latest invention, I find myself present physically but mentally-scattered. When my husband is seeking to share about his day, I find myself thinking of the remainder of the to-do list I might be able to knock out later that evening. I have found myself begging the Lord who is unified in His purposes and His affections to make me more like Him.

Rather than be utterly overwhelmed by the sheer number of women at our Church, I am asking the Lord to give me a few women upon whom I might focus my attention beam this season.

At home, I find myself scanning a yard that needs some TLC, a pile of laundry and a pathetic pantry. When I catch the beams of my attention dissipating into a spectrum of to-do lists,  I have been asking the Lord to let my beam of attention linger a little longer on the hearts in our home rather than the domestic duties.

But more than anything, I have been found myself wondering at the multi-faceted, multi-colored, constantly radiating beams of agape attention that God directs at me. That the God who created the sun and lightwaves and the spectrum of visible and invisible light would set His affection on anyone is shocking. That He would set it upon me, one who constantly fritters my attention on self and shimmery fool’s gold, is even more shocking.

The Beams of the Father
When I read through the Gospels, I see a Christ who consistently focused the beams of agape love that He received constantly on whomever was set before Him. A poor widow. A wealthy, woeful centurion. A pack of crazy kids. A crowd of hungry paupers. A suspect tax collector. Christ was able to radiate what He received by consistently relying upon the approval of His heavenly Father. More than the strange star that had indicated his birth beamed, the beams of God’s love perpetually warmed the Son.

Yet, in those painful hours on that horrible hill, the beam of favor turned away from Him. All was darkness, within and without, to the end that the beams of God’s favor might be set once again on those who would call upon Him.

The spotlight that the Son deserves has been turned upon those who look up to Him for deliverance. The children of light, those who receive the steady spotlight of the Father, are invited to focus the light they have received into the lives of those still in darkness.

May we know the fullness of the beams of His favor towards us. May the beams of our attention bring Him glory this season. Amen.

It does not surprise me that calendars don’t include “Adversity Anniversary” among their Hair Appointment and Birthday reminder stickers, as there is not much cute or marketable about remembering devastating days.

But then again, usually these days don’t need marking out. The amygdala and the soul have their own built-in reminder systems. Smells, sounds, temperatures, songs. Even the smallest things have a way of alerting us of the approach of a weighty anniversary, whether it mark the passing of a beloved family member, an exile from home, a day of sudden disaster or a dreaded diagnosis.

On these weighty days, time seems to stand still and lives are turned upside down yet again. Haunting memories are relieved, even if one has come to the other side of the trauma. Like regular aftershocks after an earthquake, anniversaries of adversity have a way of once again shaking the ground that has been slowly settling with time.

My dear friend is approaching the anniversary of a sudden sickness that left her fighting for her life. Although God graciously spared her life and miraculously brought her back from the precipice of death, she lives with daily reminders of the trauma.

She and her family have no need to mark out this day, this day and the subsequent days have marked them. Time is now measured and remembered as before the sickness and after.

Of course, they have deep gratitude for her life being spared. Yet, this first anniversary will be far from a day of celebration. Despite so many answers to the desperate prayers of so many loved ones, questions still swarm.

As I was processing their approach to this anniversary, the Lord was gracious to lead me to a book by the talented Michael Card. A Sacred Sorrow attempts to bring back the language of lament to an often overly-victorious Western Christianity. Card winsomely and beautifully makes the case that lament is a gift that will lead us to our lasting home.

“Jesus understood that lament was the only true response of faith to the brokenness and fallenness of the world. It provides the only trustworthy bridge to God across the deep seismic quaking of our lives. His life reveals that those who are truly intimate with the Father know they can pour out any hurt, disappointment, temptation, or even anger with which they struggle. Jesus’ own life is an invitation to enter through the door of lament.” 

The pathway of lament is not a popular highway; in fact it is not even a highway at all. For each person, it is a unique path through our own particular pains and problems, losses and longings. Yet, this path was trodden by our Older Brother Jesus who followed it to Golgotha, the place of the skull.

We know that the Cross and the tomb were not the end of His journey. We know that He wrestled with questions and wept in lament in the Garden of Gethsemane that one day His purchased people might weep and question no more.

Yet, the journey between the Cross and the Crown feels long.

May we help our friends grieve the days that have marked them; however, may we also be those quick to remind them and ourselves that all our days have been marked in His book, but that they have been written by a hand marked with the scars of a sacrificial love.

In a culture that thrives on optimism and victory,  may we become a people comfortable with lament. May we also have eyes fixed on the Coming Christ, who has prepared for us a city without walls and tearless days without end.

If the amount of input and information received over the centuries was compared to waves, the progression would look like the following: ripple, ripple, ripple, wave, tidal wave, tsunami. Even those who fight hard to limit technological and informational input are bombarded with a sea of often inert information and images.

Although I am not on Instagram and only watch the PBS News Hour once or twice a week, I receive enough information from emails, texts and Facebook feeds alone to overwhelm me. I know what your child is wearing, who graduated from kindergarten, and that Fidgit spinners can be lodged in throats. I also have seen images of starving children in Africa and scrolled through two years worth of political rhetoric.

Information is a powerful thing; however, when we are inundated with so much information that we begin to feel powerless and overwhelmed by the global village in which we live, it may be time to stop and think.

Neil Postman wrote an insightful book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, in the mid 1980’s to discuss the way the television was shaping culture. If what he wrote was true of the television age, it is infinitely more true of the computer age. Postman writes about the ratio of input and output regarding information, which he calls the information-action ratio.

“In both oral and typographic cultures, information derives its importance from the possibilities of action. Of course, in any communication environment, input (what one is informed about) always exceeds output (the possibilities of action based on information)….Prior to the age of telegraphy, the information-action ratio was sufficiently close so that most people had a sense of being able to control some of the contingencies in their lives. What people knew had action-value.”

He traces the beginning of the imbalance of the information/ action ratio to the invention of the telegraph.

“But the situation created by telegraphy, and then exacerbated by later technologies, made the relationship between information and action both abstract and remote. For the first time in human history, people were faced with the problem of information glut…In the information world created by telegraphy, this sense of potency was lost, precisely because the whole world became the context of our news. Everything became everyone’s business.”

If the information-action scale was set off balance by the telegraph, the internet has taken the imbalance to whole new levels.  We no longer have to walk to the local telegraph to send and receive information; we now have the equivalent of a lightning-speed telegraph in our pockets connecting us to the pockets of most of the known world.

I have been thinking deeply this week on the concept of action-value. I have tried to be cognizant of every piece of information I have willingly received to see what action-value might be assigned to it. What am I meant or able to do with this information? Does it have any direct bearing on my life? What tangible actions can I take regarding this information input?

Most of the information I have received has left me feeling, at best, amused or shocked, and at worst, overwhelmed, helpless, worried, heavy or guilty. The realization that most of the information I process is both emotional and inert makes me want to reconsider the information-action ratio in my little world.

While I do want to be and to raise global citizens concerned with the world, I find myself drawn more deeply to the local as a way to seek to restore balance to the information-action ratio.

Prayer has a real and tangible action-value. But even so, my heart can only hold so many burdens and pray diligently for so many people and causes. I have had to force myself to evaluate if there was room in my heart in that hour or moment for more information.

I have decided that I can only follow the goings-on of one situation or cause in such a way as to actually act on the information, whether by prayer or donation or investigation.

Before checking Facebook, I have stopped to ask myself the following questions: Are you in a place to do anything about you might see? If not, why are you looking?

I have also stopped to ask myself “What is the action-value of this information?” before posting something or dishing out information.

These small measures feel like cardboard shields against a tidal wave of information, yet they have helped me to add a few ounces to the action side of the information-action ratio.