Month: December 2013

The End of Jubilee

General

At the beginning of the year, I declared 2013 to be the year of Jubilee.  From an outsider’s perspective, I could not have been more wrong in my declaration.  Without getting into all that has happened this year, I will say that this has been the most difficult year of my life ten times over.  At the top of my difficulties was discovering that I had colon cancer and having 18 inches of my colon removed.

I am a man of faith and I can honestly say that at no point during this year was my faith in God shaken.  That being said, I really believe that the word cancer is the scariest word in the English language.  No matter how you fare, there is life before cancer and there is life after cancer.

How can I possibly look back and declare this year to be a year of Jubilee?  Because in the midst of your greatest difficulties you get to see how great God is.  Through the entire process I was surrounded by a peace that can only come from God.  I was blessed with tremendous doctors and ended up seeing one of the top doctors in the country even though that wasn’t my original intent.

In May I ended up in the hospital due to bleeding.  What I learned later was that most people don’t even experience bleeding like mine with colon cancer.  Because I am young, doctors typically overlook typical symptoms of colon cancer.  And indeed this actually happened as a CT scan saw the large polyp in my colon but diagnosed it as something else.  It might have only been because I was dehydrated and lost so much blood that I passed out in the bathroom that a full colonoscopy was ordered.

The polyp that was found ended up sending me to Baltimore.  The local doctors didn’t even want to touch it.  While the polyp could have been removed by taking out a piece of my colon, one of the top doctors in the country was able to remove it as an outpatient procedure.  I didn’t spend a night in the hospital.

A week later I got a phone call saying that the polyp was cancerous.  It appeared as though the cancer was contained but there was a chance that it had spread to the lymph nodes.  The surrounding lymph nodes would need to be taken out as well.  I was referred to another doctor who would ultimately perform that surgery in less than three weeks.

My second doctor I had no less than half a dozen nurses tell me – unprompted – was the best one to have for such a procedure and they’d only go to her.  These are the kinds of things you want to hear awaiting surgery and during recovery.  In the end, I had 18 inches of my colon removed and only spent 4 days in the hospital.

My cancer was diagnosed as only stage 1 which means that I have every reason to expect a full recovery.  It had not spread beyond the polyp that was removed, I did not require any chemo or radiation treatments, and I am currently cancer free.  If I go five years without a recurrence, I’ll be considered medically cured.

Through all of this I have been reminded that God is not good; He is great!  This is not the route I would have chosen for myself by any means.  But rather than feel abandoned or forgotten by God, I know that I am blessed.  Most times colon cancer is not discovered until it has reached stage 2 or 3 when the situation is more difficult.  It’s not even typically scanned for if you’re under 50 which means that when it is found in younger people it’s even more likely to be further along.  But for some reason I happened to bleed enough to go to the hospital and despite a misdiagnosed CT scan, my cancer was still discovered – and discovered early.  Many people would consider me unlucky to have cancer in the first place.  I consider myself blessed that it was found so early.  I don’t believe in coincidences and I have every reason to believe that the Lord still has plenty of work for me to do.

Was 2013 the year of Jubilee that I had hoped for?  Absolutely not.  Cancer was only the greatest of my trials this past year but not the only one.  But at the end of 2013 I can praise God even more than before because I have seen His hand at work and His power in undeniable.

Sometimes God has to tell us like He told the apostle Paul, His grace is sufficient for us.  We don’t know what kind of ailments Paul suffered from but God told him that His grace was sufficient to deal with his problems.  I learned that lesson in a powerful way this year and it’s a message that I will be able to repeat to everyone who is enduring hardships.

Jubilee is a celebration of God’s goodness and I have certainly experienced that this year.  It’s not what I wanted but I’m sure that God didn’t make a mistake that it was what I needed.

The Real Story of Santa Claus

Christianity

While Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas time, there is another person who is just as strongly associated with Christmas.  That person, of course, is Santa Claus.  While it is wrong to emphasize Santa at the expense of Jesus, the two are not incompatible if you know the real story of Santa Claus.

To begin with, there really was a Santa Claus.  He was known as Nicholas and was declared a saint by the Catholic Church after his death.  December 6 is Saint Nicholas’ Day in the Catholic Church – just about every day is a celebration of some saint.  Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus because of the way names get translated.  Saint became Santa – just like all of those city names like Santa Fe, Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, etc.  Nicholas was shortened to Claus.  Thus Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus – both names mean the same thing.

There are lots of stories about the real Santa Claus and it is very difficult to determine what is actually real and what is legend at this point.  What is widely accepted is that Nicholas lived from 270-354 in the region that is modern day Turkey.  He was a devout Christian man who went on to become bishop of Myra.

Nicholas likely came from a wealthy family but was orphaned at a young age.  He is known for sharing his wealth with gifts to the poor.  Many of the stories associated with his gift giving are more likely tradition rather than truth but they involve placing coins in shoes left outside or tossing coins into socks that were hung by the fireplace to dry.  Another popular story involves Nicholas paying the dowries of three poor girls in order to prevent them from being forced into slavery.

After Nicholas’ death he was declared a saint and his legend grew.  Every culture seems to have its own stories about Saint Nicholas.  These were certainly embellished but the idea behind them was to promote giving to others and aiding the poor.

Our modern day Santa Claus most likely originated in 1821.  In the book Children’s Friend “Sante Claus” appears from the north with a sleigh led by flying reindeer.  It’s impossible to know the origin of this version of Santa Claus but it is a likely adaptation of numerous cultural traditions that had become associated with Saint Nicholas through the years.

In 1823 the man we know as Santa Claus became solidified.  It was then that “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was published.  We know the poem better today as “The Night Before Christmas.”  Ever since, Santa Claus has been a jolly elf with flying reindeer.

While we should be careful not to emphasize Santa Claus over the true meaning of Christmas, he can be a helpful reminder of what Christmas is about.  The real Santa Claus was a man who gave gifts and helped the poor.  He also serves as a reminder that God gave us the greatest gift of all at Christmas time.  God sent us Jesus so that our sins could be forgiven at the cross.

The end has come for Harold Camping but it’s not the end of the world

Christianity, Current Events

You might not know or remember the name Harold Camping but you probably are familiar with his work.  He was the man who had convinced many of his followers that the end of the world was coming in May 2011.  When this didn’t come about as predicted, rather than learn his lesson he stated that he misinterpreted what the rapture was but still called for the end of the world in October of 2011.  This was undoubtedly little comfort for his followers who had sold their homes and toured around in RV’s touting the end of the world.  It probably also didn’t make the people happy who had given his ministry $80 million over a five year span.

Harold Camping died at the age of 92 on December 15, 2013.  I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead but I must question whether Camping’s contributions to Christianity were undone by the embarrassment that he caused.  I never followed Camping’s teachings and even if I did, only God can judge the heart of a man.  I truly hope that he was a genuine Christian who was just misguided in a particular belief and not a man who led many astray under the guise of Christianity.

I get very frustrated when Christian leaders cause an embarrassment to Christianity.  I’m not talking about getting caught in affairs and scandals, those are bad obviously but that is different than what I’m talking about.  I get mad when Christian leaders claim to speak for God when it doesn’t appear as if God has spoken.  We have lots of revelation from the Lord, it’s called the Bible.  What the Bible declares to be sin, we should boldly proclaim to be sin.  But too many leaders take things a step further and declare things that the Bible does not say.

God does punish sin but He doesn’t always bring disaster upon cities or nations because of their sins.  Unless God has spoken directly to an individual to proclaim this as truth, they should parse their words.  Boldly speak the truth about sin but don’t make sweeping proclamations about what God is doing in response to that sin.  God will judge sin, it just might not be here on earth.

Likewise, we know that one day “the end” is coming.  I can definitively say that we are one day closer today than we were the day before.  Beyond that, we simply don’t know.  Jesus gave us signs of the end and we do see them in the world today.  However, every generation has looked around them and has seen those signs.  And perhaps this is the point – Jesus could return at any moment because the signs have always been there and always will be.

Of further embarrassment on the end of the world front though, Jesus said that no one knew the day or hour of His return – not even Him!  There is no secret Bible code that Jesus couldn’t figure out but math whizzes today can crack.  In short, I can’t think of any way to say it other than the fact that people who want to declare they know more than Jesus that they reek of arrogance and ignorance.

Unfortunately Christians sometimes adopt an “end justifies the means” mentality that does more harm than good.  In an effort to prevent sin, broad proclamations about judgment are made which may make Biblical sense but are not Biblically supported because frankly the Bible just doesn’t tell us that a hurricane today is indisputably the judgment of God for a particular sin.  It could be, but not every disaster is the judgment of God.  Jesus made that clear when He discussed the tower of Siloam killing 18 people in Luke 13:4.

Perhaps Camping’s great fault was that he was overzealous to warn people about the judgment that awaits unrepentant sinners.  I can’t claim to know what his true motivations were.  If this were it, he could be excused for wanting to get the gospel out.  But I will never excuse the methods that involve misinterpreted scripture, no matter what the intended result was.

In the end Harold Camping went to meet his maker about 2 1/2 years later than he expected.  I can only hope that the word he receives from the Lord is a “well done” to a well intentioned but misguided man and not a “depart from me, I never knew you.”

Devotions for Life

Spreading Light Ministries

devotions cover

So I wrote a book.  Actually this is my second book and technically the material has been written for some time, I just finally edited it.  This is a collection of a year’s worth of devotions in book format.  The paperback version is available for $11.99 (or less depending on Amazon sales) while the kindle version can be purchased for only $7.99.  There are two nice deals available along with the book purchase.  The first is that the book is available through Amazon Prime which means that shipping is free for members.  The second is that this book is enrolled in the kindle matchbook program.  That means if you buy a paperback (perhaps as a gift for a friend) you can download the kindle version for free.

Because the devotional book is twelve months of devotions, it is broken down into twelve themes as well.  I have compiled each theme into its own short little book as well.  You can see the entire list at devotional books.

I’m not big on self promotion but I’m rather proud of this book and if you read devotions or have a friend who does, I highly recommend checking it out.  I’m hoping that there is at least a small amount of success with this book as a I have a few more planned for the future.  Next on the docket is a second edition of my first book on evangelism.  That was actually published in 2005 and the print version is no longer available.  I plan on updating the information a bit and doing some reformatting.

One nice thing about being a pastor is that I’m rarely out of material for books.  Depending on how things go, I have material written for sermons that will be reworked and reformatted to go into books on Genesis and Exodus.  Whatever I do next, I’ll be sure to update things here to let everyone know what is going on.  And of course I’ll continue to publish more sites and articles as well.  I have a couple of Bible studies that I hope to complete before the end of the year, so I’ll be pushing to get them done to reach my goal.