Broken

As I stood with my dear friend, Jason, beside the casket of his wife a couple of weeks ago… my heart was filled with almost unbearable sorrow for him and his family.  As a minister, I have had the privilege to walk with a lot of families through the difficult time of a loss of a loved one… but I cannot remember one that has come close to the grief of that moment.  Not only is he a dear friend, but his wife, Evette, has been as well.  For my wife she was about as close to a family member as you can get without actually sharing the same DNA.  Evette was 32.  She and Jason have been married just over 10 years.  They have three beautiful children, two girls and a boy.  She practically grew up in my brother-in-law’s home… alongside his girls, Jenny and Tara.  Jason preaches for the church in Pegram, TN where he has been for a long time.  He went there to be their youth minister when we were still in college.  In these last almost fifteen years he has served as Family Minister, Worship Minister and is now their Preaching Minister.  They love him and he loves that church! 

As we stood there beside the casket, near the pulpit where he regularly brings a word from the Lord… I desperately searched for a word… ANY word, but particularly a word from the Lord.  I don’t think I ever came up with one.  All I could do was wrap my arms around him and promise to pray.

I wish I understood such things.  I wish I had something wise and spiritual to offer.  I didn’t.  And even as I have reflected on it these last few weeks, I’m not sure I’ve got anything better now.  It still doesn’t make sense.  Life can be so unfair.  It can be so fleeting.  And it just stinks sometimes!

My text for this Sunday is Genesis 4… some of the first happenings after the fall.  The story actually makes more sense to me now than it ever has.  After the appearance of sin on the scene in chapter 3, the story of Adam and Eve takes a backseat to the soap opera that their family becomes.  One of their precious sons is cut down in the prime of his life, before he ever even gets a chance in this life… by his own brother.  Cain, apparently jealous that God loved Abel more, lures him out into a field and viciously slaughters him.  Imagine the grief of Adam and Eve… knowing that this is what the result of their “wanting to be like God” has brought upon the world.  As a result of the brokenness of this world death is the new reality.  Even Abel’s name says it all.  It means literally “vapor” and is the same word Solomon uses in Ecclesiastes to talk about life being as a “vapor.”

But there is still hope in this story and if you look closely towards the end of chapter 4 you find it.  Read it this week and see if you see the same thing I do… hope amidst a fallen and broken world.

Two Trees

Every now and then while I'm preaching I get the feeling that I've just lost some folks.  I got that feeling Sunday as I started out with a joke... not always a good idea!  It seems God came to Adam and seeing that he was lonely and downcast offered to make for him a woman.  This woman would be the most beautiful thing in the garden.  She would be witty and intelligent, warm and friendly, and always by his side... never condescending, or nagging, or hateful or flippant with him.  "Wow," said Adam.  "That's liable to cost an arm and a leg!"  God agreed that it would to which Adam replied, "Well.. what can I get for just a rib?"  Badda bum!

The joke worked... with some people.  Some actually laughed out loud (men not sitting with their wives.)  Some chuckled lightly  (not right to laugh in church).  There were some men who pretended not to think it was funny because their wives were sitting right next to them poking them in the side with their gentle elbows.  I guess it was the women mostly who were shaking their heads and wishing for a preacher who would just preach Bible.  But I couldn't help it.  I've always been amused by the story of creation in Genesis 2.  Nobody can tell me that God doesn't have a sense of humor!  He creates man... gives him a job to do (work & care for the garden) and then he creates woman to be his 'helper'.  And they are so vastly different.  Then God tells them to live together in unity... in fact to 'cling to' one another and make more.  There's a lot of humor there.  I had fun reveling in the story last week, partly because the story this week is so tragic.  Chapter three is not nearly as much fun as chapter two.  In episode three sin enters in to the camp... and things are never the same.  The love and harmony that existed in chapter two is shattered.  The peace is broken.  The relationships that the first man and woman had with God and with one another are twisted, distorted, perverted.  That's why they hid and that's why they went looking for clothes the minute their eyes were opened.  Its a sad tale... tragic and horrible.  But, that's our text for this Sunday... Genesis 3.  We'll begin by asking the question, "Why?.... why did God put TWO trees in the garden?"  More specifically, why did he put that one tree there and then tell us not to eat of it.  Didn't he know that would only make it more enticing?  Read it again this week and then comment... tell me what you think.  Why TWO trees?

In the beginning... EDEN

We are continuing our study through the opening chapters of Genesis on Sunday morning and I am again blown away by the honesty and frankness of the Bible.  I have heard it said that it is usually the teacher who learns the most from the lessons he or she presents.  That has certainly been the case here!  The camera angle shifts from the ‘big picture’ of creation depicted in chapter one to the more personal account of Adam and Eve in chapter two.  I am struck by several things.  Let me encourage you to explore this chapter this week.  Of all the creation there was one thing that God said was not good.  That struck me as odd, because in the account in chapter one God makes a special point at the end of each day to say, “It is good.”  What could God have created that could have failed on this point, I wonder?  But then, I understand.  “It is not good for man to be alone,” he says in vs. 18.

To remedy this “problem” God sets about the task of creating woman and goes on to establish for us the grounds which will become the marriage relationship in vs. 24 and following.  But back up with me just a moment.  What is at the heart of verse 18?  Man wasn’t complete until God made for him a friend.  This sounds like such a simple thing and yet it is really quite profound.  Man (and woman for that matter) was created from the very beginning with the innate need for friendship… for relationship with others.  You would think that would be a fairly simple thing and yet it can be so difficult.

It seems to me to be especially ironic in our day and time that people have such a difficult time with relationships.  We live in a world where the ability for people to connect is easier than ever before… and yet there are so many who continue to live “alone” without personal relationships of a substantial nature.  Why is this?  We have technologies today which are designed to connect people.  From the old-fashioned telephone and the increasingly dated “e-mail” to the more tech-savvy text messenging and Facebooking… the opportunities to connect with people are like never before!  Why, then, would anybody be lonely?  Yet that is what so many of the statistics are telling us today.  The overwhelming need for people in the 21^st century is relationships!  This shouldn’t surprise us.  Genesis 2 tells us that God hard-wired us this way.

There is much to explore in this great chapter and I am sure that we won’t exhaust its riches this Sunday… but let me encourage you to seek out people this week to connect with.  Look for those who don’t have the relationships in the body of Christ to draw support from.  Seek them out.  Encourage them.  Befriend them.  And, as you have opportunity, tell them about your relationship with the Lord… the ultimate need that each of us have!

In the beginning... Creation and Genesis 1

If you grew up going to Sunday School then I’ll bet you can remember like me making little decorative mobiles describing the creation that Moses describes in Genesis 1. What a wonderful and jaw-dropping account of an all-powerful God speaking the universe into existence! It is absolutely incredible to imagine God creating from nothing everything in our universe. From the Milky Way to the Grand Canyon… from Pluto to Petersburg… God said it and there it was. Wow. Pause for just a minute and think about that.

Folks through the ages have picked apart this glorious account of creation… arguing over whether or not the days are to be understood as literal twenty four hour periods, or as a more figurative term to describe a longer, extended period of time. Scientists have quibbled over the description of the animals and the order of the creation. I wonder what other book has been so widely scrutinized? I think they miss the point. I think the key to understanding what Moses was trying to get across to the Hebrews as they prepared to enter in to the land of Promise is found in verses 27-30 of Gen. 1. Remember, Moses was trying to remind them of who they were and where they had come from. In vs. 27 Moses reminds them that they were created in the image of God. That isn’t said about ANY other creature. Mankind and mankind alone was created to be the image-bearer of God in this marvelous creation. What does that mean? Did they look like God in some physical resemblance? No, God is spirit. Rather, mankind is described as the image-bearer of God in that the stewardship of the creation was entrusted into his care. Look again at verses 28 and following, “Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” God created the animals and asked us to look after them. Then in vs. 29, “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it….” He created the trees and the plants and then told us to tend to them. In other words… He gave us a job!

What was Moses trying to convey to the people he had given so much of his life for? “Remember, you are made in the image of God… God has a purpose for your life and one of those purposes is to take care of what He has given you… the planet, the animals, the trees, the plants… the whole Earth!” No small responsibility, wouldn’t you say? Is God’s word to us the same as it was to them? Uhhhhmmmmmm…..