Update

Here are a few updates on my recent posts:

Thanks to anyone who was concerned about my grandfather's health. He has actually improved tremendously over the past two weeks. Because he couldn't eat for a period and was rapidly weakening, we decided to add a PEG feeding tube in order to feed directly into his stomach through his abdomen. Scary. But he's gaining strength, is spending more time awake and talking, can sit up on his own, and is even eating some food again. All credit goes to our caring, miracle-working Father who is sovereign over even the most infinitesimal details of cellular function: electrical currents across synapses, meiotic division of cells, stimulation of steroid production. Please keep on praying for him (his name is Louis Bork).

Please continue to pray for "Sadie." I got this e-mail from one of her friends this week:
"Please join me in praying for 'Sadie' tonight. I just got off the phone with her and our sweet sister is experiencing some of her first 'flaming darts.' Since coming to Christ in faith last Sunday, she went home for a 2 week vacation. (She lives 3 hours east.) During thistime she has been reading a lot of Christian/Islam history which has filled her with doubt about her recent decision to follow Christ. She explained this doubt as 'a storm cloud in her head' and does not know if she wants to follow Christ anymore. She asked for prayer that she 'would be free in her relationship with [God].' As I pray for her the Lord reminds me that the Holy Spirit indwells her and will lead her into all truth. He is her Good Shepherd and will not lead her astray. Christ himself prayed that she would be protected from the evil one. Christ is already victor against these schemes of the enemy. Something [Clarissa] and I have been praying for since day 1 is that she would be one sown on good soil, hearing the word and understanding, bearing fruit and yielding 100, 60, or 30 fold."

Reason to rejoice

Just a day after returning from the States and having spent three weeks out of country, mentally off track and tired from jet lag, I got a refreshing "welcome back" gift on Sunday: our friend "Sadie" came to trust the Lord and become a child of God! We felt it was only going to be a matter of time, given her sincere, prayerful interest in knowing God in Jesus since we met her a few months ago.

While praying during a native worship service, she said she saw a vision of Christ, "magnificent" in light, standing within her house. Someone read to her from Revelation 1:13-16, and Sadie exclaimed, "That's what he was like!" Then she was read Revelation 3:20, where Jesus promises, "Look! Here I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends" (NLT). She likewise saw him in her house and wanted to put off his saving fellowship no longer; there in the church she prayed and received Christ. With hugs and kisses, the small congregation welcomed her into her new family. "Today starts a new life for me."

Later that sunny afternoon I met up with her, some other American friends, and two others my age who have become believers over the past year, "Hal" and "Rose," to drink tea and enjoy each other's company. It was so refreshing to sit there and talk, rejoicing over their faith in Christ--itself a gift from God--and know that the Holy Spirit is indeed active here--yes, even in a Muslim nation!--in bringing people to know the Lord.

* * *

The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name." And He said to them, "I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven." (Luke 10:17-20)

For as much joy as I have shared over Sadie's entering into Jesus' reconciliation to her Father, God reminds me to rejoice more greatly still in my own rescue and reconcilation. Wait a second--isn't that sort of selfish, the very sort of it's-all-about-me attitude God despises? Well, no, not exactly.

After wrestling with this passage for a while, I came to this understanding: God calls us to focus first of all on our own redemption above that of others in order to keep us from thinking that we are the makers and shapers of salvation, rather than the Holy Spirit. These seventy(-two) disciples of Jesus were going and doing great things, seeing all sorts of ministerial miracles happen in the power that Christ had given them in his name. Could they have become tempted to see these salvation-events as something they brought about and controlled? Perhaps. But when we acknowledge first of all that we wouldn't even be out there to tell the gospel to others if we first hadn't been saved, re-created, and filled with the Spirit of Christ who is active in our personal and community witness, we stay grounded in the fact that we're first and foremost recipients of and participants in God's salvation--not influential "movers and shakers."

So in all we may do to tell others the message of Jesus Christ, pray for God's work in others, and serve him in his kingdom, let's lift up grateful hearts to our Father, praising him that "He chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him" and that "in love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will" (Eph. 1:4, 5).

My flesh and my heart may fail

Today I went to the hospital to see my grandpa for the final time before flying back overseas. He's not well: he's more or less starving, and tomorrow they're going to put in a PEG tube in order to feed him directly through his stomach wall. Because he's not suffering from a terminal condition, but rather a (hopefully) reversible infection, we've decided as a family that this is an acceptable plan of action; we hope to build up his strength to fight his respiratory and urinary infections while gaining back some of the twenty pounds he's lost in two weeks. Otherwise, to simply prolong biological life while leaving none of his dignity and soundness would be a crime. But Opa is still sharp as a tack, praise God, and he feels no pain.

My family with Opa on his 85th birthday, February 4.
L-R: my uncle Tom, me, my mom Karen, my brother Jordan,
my grandmother Mona ("Oma"), and Opa.

What do I say to Opa, knowing that I might never see him again? I've prayed about this all week. Though he was never wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, the life of Louis H. Bork has been marked by his honesty and by a cheerful spirit determined to do good to all in his path. He has also faithfully been a part of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Bay City, MI, for all his life. As such God has put Psalm 73 on my heart repeatedly, but today was the first time I found him conscious long enough to say much to him. I memorized vv. 23-28 and spoke them to him:

Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; . . .
But for me it is good to be near God.

Eugene Peterson's The Message paraphrase renders v. 26 as "When my skin sags and my bones get brittle, GOD is rock-firm and faithful." True dat. I told Opa of Jesus' sure presence and love, that even now God is lovingly with him, holding his right hand (which I was doing at the time). Even as much as we, his family, are with him and care for him, so much more so does the One Who is Love. I kissed Opa's head and told him how happy I am to have had him as my grandfather--a man of such character and humble integrity--and that I loved him. He opened his eyes to look at me and squeezed my hand, scarcely able to force out a hoarse whisper: "I am . . . I am . . . proud [of you]." (I think this is what he said; I couldn't understand him well.) At the end of every letter and holiday card he has ever written to me, these have been his words.

I didn't cry. I never do.

In my sadness, within me I yet praise God to the uttermost that we are saved by grace, not by faith; that we are "not justified by works of the law but through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 2:16); that the faith through which we inherit the kingdom is itself a gift from our Father. Sitting next to my grandfather's hospital bed, I felt a deep peace that I had no need to bastardize this lavish grace by probing him, "Do you believe? If you believe this, the kingdom is assured." No. I rested, trusting that by speaking the gospel to him and assuring him of Jesus' faithfulness, the Holy Spirit would, using the words of the LCMS Eucharistic liturgy, "strengthen and preserve [him] unto life everlasting." If it were up to Opa in this time to muster up from within the strength to believe, I could find no comfort. But when faith itself is a blessing freely given by God (Eph. 2:8-9; Phil. 1:29), we can find peace. "GOD is rock-firm and faithful."

"Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it" (1 Thess. 5:23-24).

Human resources?

Right now I'm at home in Saginaw. While I was on vacation last weekend in Fez, Morocco, I got a call from my mother telling me that my Opa (German for "grandpa") was expected to die at any point from kidney failure and fever. (It's a long story.) After several hours of harried searching on the Internet, I found a flight and got back to Detroit the next day. Opa didn't die, but he spent a week in the ICU. He has since been moved out, but I've never seen him so weak: he sleeps almost all day, talks little, and eats even less. Some days I was spending up to eighteen hours in the hospital, taking turns with others in my family to watch over him.

All that is to say that I was home for dinner tonight, which also means a usual butting of heads with my one of my family over how to live rightly. We rarely agree.

My mom was telling about when she began teaching at an elementary school in inner-city Saginaw. The faculty were socially split between whites and blacks, but my mom refused to take sides. Another family member interjected, "That's fine. Just make sure you don't get caught with the losers." When I inquired as to what exactly he meant, he clarified that I need to make sure I hang out with the right crowd, so as not to jeopardize my career. He cited "Wally" from the Dilbert comic strip as such a "loser" to avoid.

I was immediately taken aback. What a graceless way to live! Did Jesus deem us worthy of fellowship and conducive to his own self-promotion before choosing to associate with and suffer for us? I'm pretty sure the historical record goes something like this: "While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6-8). In other words, we were helpless, worthless, even hostile nobodies.

People are not commodities to be used, to be alternately befriended or shunned on the basis of what they can do for us. And they are not problems in our way needing to be solved or else put at a distance. Until recently, businesses had "personnel" departments; now they have "human resources." Resources? Like iron ore? Sugar beets? Lumber? Everyone, even Wally--even me!, bears the image of God and is precious to him. The religious leaders snickered and scoffed at Jesus' relationships that were unfitting to his role as a rabbi. "Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!" (Luke 7:34). Likewise when Simon the Pharisee saw that Jesus allowed a promiscuous woman to bathe and anoint his feet, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner" (Luke 7:39).

Yet I often find that as quick as I am to find fault with others, something equally corrupt lies within my own heart as well. Time will tell. (To his credit, when I talked with him later in the evening, he acknowledged that God has treated us differently than he views others.)

Lord, help us to see that we are all losers, unworthy of your love. Yet you have showered it upon us and not withheld it! Forgive us! Open our eyes to our own prejudices and the ways we use others for our own means, and bring us to repentance, treating everyone as we ourselves wish to be treated: with dignity, value, and intimacy. Amen.