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God Bless Jerry Humble

March 11, 2013 / / 0 Comments

I missed out on Jerry Humble. I missed out big time. I didn’t know Jerry hardly at all. I’ve heard a lot about her, especially over the past several months and weeks. But I didn’t know her, certainly not like most of the people here at Central. When we moved here a year and a half ago, Jerry was already to the point where conversations with her were difficult. I had a couple of meaningful visits with her then, but she wouldn’t remember them a week later. And, so, yeah, I really feel like I missed out.

I do know her husband, Bill Humble. I know Bill pretty well. And because of what I know about Bill, I always thought, “He must have a really wonderful wife.” And I’m right about that.

I do know her daughter, Becky Liles. I know Becky pretty well. And because of what I know about Becky, I always thought, “She must have had a really spectacular mom.” And I’m right about that.

I’ve watched most of Jerry’s family and closest friends, especially over the past several months and weeks. I’ve seen the way you took care of Jerry. I’ve seen your great dedication and commitment to her. I’ve seen the love you have for her. And I’m thinking, “She must really be something.” And I’m right about that.

We were all together around Jerry’s bed Thursday night and I was asked to read Proverbs 31. Honestly, I thought, that’s probably a good idea. OK, yeah, a woman of noble character, it makes sense. I really wanted to read Psalm 139, which Becky suggested later. I really, really wanted to read from Isaiah 46, which I managed to squeeze in later. But, yeah, Proverbs 31, why not?

And I started reading. With Bill. And Becky and Ted. And Jan. And Amanda. A few others. With all the ones who know Jerry best and love Jerry most.

“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.”

And as I read, I was moved.

“She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls. She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks.”

I was moved by the reactions and the responses  from those in the room to the faithful words of Scripture that so perfectly described this faithful woman of God. It was indescribably special.

“She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet. Her husband is respected at the city gate where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. She is clothed with strength and dignity; she speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.”

I felt like this passage was connecting everybody in the room to Jerry, through God, and to one another. We were united by these faithful words to Jerry and to God and to one another. God was doing something really extraordinary in the reading of his Word. It was sacred. It was holy.

“Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all. Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”

When I finished reading, I felt like I knew Jerry Humble. I knew her. This is Jerry. To everybody who knows her, Jerry truly reflected the glory of God. Jerry revealed God to all her family and friends. She showed them God. And I felt like on Thursday night, our God had turned the tables. God revealed Jerry to me. Through Holy Scripture, God showed me Jerry. And now I know her.

Jerry was a good woman. Everybody who knew her will testify to that. We thank God today for the lessons in kindness and generosity he taught us through Jerry. We thank God today for the way he revealed himself to us through Jerry’s sacrificial nature, her forever giving nature. We thank God for showing us through Jerry how to be strong in the face of sickness, how to persevere when things become difficult, how to keep going when things get tough. Oh, yeah, she was a good woman. We’d all be hard pressed to think of anyone as good as Jerry.

But, praise God, Jerry didn’t put her faith in her own goodness. She did not trust in her own good deeds or exemplary life. Jerry Humble put her faith in God. She put her trust in God. So for Jerry, and for us, death has no sting. Death has no victory. In fact, death is actually swallowed up in the victory of our God in Christ.

“In that day we will say, ‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation!'” ~Isaiah 25:9

May our gracious God bless Jerry’s sweet family with his merciful comfort and peace. May he grant them joy and strength. And may we be forever grateful for the divine gift of knowing this beautiful daughter of heaven.

Peace,

Allan

A Powerful Weapon Against Satan

March 8, 2013 / / 0 Comments

“You ought to forgive and comfort him so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him… in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” ~2 Corinthians 2:7-11

The situation in the Corinthian church was critical: a sorrowful, repentant brother and a congregation reluctant to forgive and restore. The apostle Paul knows that Satan will attempt to use this circumstance against the Kingdom of God. The devil is hell-bent on destroying the mutual forgiveness and acceptance that is supposed to characterize the people of God. We, the Church, are the evidence — we’re the banner, the big flashing billboard, the huge neon sign — we’re the proof, the testimony of God’s redeeming work in Christ and the unity created by the Holy Spirit. Forgiving and restoring this brother, reaffirming their love for this brother, would prove to the whole world that Jesus really is who he says he is and he really is changing people.

Well, Satan can’t let that happen. So the devil does what he does best. He tempts the congregation to bear a grudge. To judge. He tempts us to pride. And arrogance.

“That guy can’t just say ‘I’m sorry’ and expect you to roll over and act like nothing happened. You’ve got to stand up here. You need to teach this guy a lesson. This guy needs to prove himself first. He’s not equal to you. Yeah, you’ve got some sin in your life; but you’ve never done what this guy did!”

Do you hear Satan?

“I suppose maybe you can forgive him; but that doesn’t mean you have to talk to him. OK, go ahead and forgive him; but that doesn’t mean he might not need to find another church.”

You ever heard that in your ear before? Or in your heart? That’s the devil talking, it’s not God’s Holy Spirit.

More than anything, in this situation, Satan wants the sorrowful brother or sister to be overwhelmed. The devil wants the outcast to feel empty and useless and all alone. So the devil does what he does best. He accuses. And he lies.

“These people will never understand you. They can’t relate to you. Nobody in that church has ever done what you’ve done. Everybody’s got friends here except for you. You’ll never be accepted. You’ll never get connected. You’re always going to be alone.”

Do you hear Satan?

“They say they forgive you, they say they love you. But you’re the only one who knows the truth: You can’t even forgive yourself. You can’t even really love yourself. These things you’ve done, those things that have happened to you, that deal you’re going through right now, nobody in the Church can help you with that.”

You ever heard that in your ear before? In your heart? That’s not God’s Spirit talking, it’s the devil.

God’s Spirit says forgive. Comfort. Reaffirm your love.

Satan cannot outwit us, the devil has no power over us as long as we’re ministering in these ways with one another and in the world. Forgive. Comfort. Reaffirm your love.

Naming and exposing sin is not at the core of what it means to live for the glory of God. Finger-pointing is not the Gospel. Witch-hunting is not the Gospel. Shaming the outcast or ostracizing the wrongdoer is not ministry. Those are all Satan’s tools and methods.

Forgiving sin! That’s Gospel! Forgiving sin! That’s Christian ministry done in the name and the manner of Jesus! Forgiving!

Scripture doesn’t tell us to grab a mop and a bucket and work harder to scrub the sin away from our lives and the lives of our neighbors and friends. And God doesn’t automatically remove all sin from our lives at baptism like exterminating roaches or amputating a diseased limb. Sin is not dealt with by more laws and rules. It’s not handled by isolation and shame. The Holy Creator deals with our sin by forgiving us!

And that’s how we deal with it, too.

Forgiveness isn’t going soft. It’s not wimpy or sissy to forgive. It’s not an apathetic or ineffective shrug of the shoulders. Forgiveness is hard-edged, hard-core, bad-to-the-bone Gospel! Forgiveness is the white-hot flame of resurrection love forged in the fiery furnace of the cross! Forgiveness doesn’t ignore the sin. And forgiveness doesn’t avoid the pain. Forgiveness deals with the problem head on. And it opens the door to healing. It clears the path for Holy Spirit transformation. Forgiveness is powerful. It’s a mighty and miraculous wonder that comes straight from heaven. And it’s a nuclear arsenal of unstoppable might against the devil and his schemes.

Peace,

Allan

Do We Have a History?

March 4, 2013 / / 2 Comments

“Every renewal of the church, every great age in its history, has been grounded on a renewed reading of history.” ~Justo Gonzalez

You know the familiar quotes and the wisdom behind them: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it; Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves so that we can better face the future.

We’re taking the advice to heart with our current Sunday morning adult Bible class series here at Central. Our curiculum is based on Gary Holloway and Doug Foster’s book “Renewing God’s People: A Concise History of Churches of Christ.” With this book as our guide, we’re considering our past, contemplating its relationship to Scripture, and having conversation about the paths ahead. The hope is that we can raise our “historical spiritual consciousness” by gaining a better understanding of how our faith and our churches have been shaped by inside and outside forces we may have never even considered.

In doing so, our aim is to collectively come to a better understanding of the vision and the call that resulted in the beginning of the American Restoration Movement, of which Churches of Christ are a part. They had a dream, right? There’s a reason Stone and Campbell and those founding fathers left their churches to begin our movement, right? Well, what in the world was it? What was so compelling that they left their own faith traditions and family stories?

Secondly, we want to see just where, why, and how we drifted so far away from that initial dream. What happened? What were the influences that got us off track? What role did culture play? History? The American Revolution? The Civil War?

Next, we need to determine if those original dreams and vision were right. Were those ideals on which our movement was founded faithful to the Gospel and to God’s mission for his Church? And, if so, how do we recover the best parts of those ideals for Central today? How do we reclaim the best parts of the Restoration heritage in our local context and setting, time and place?

We started yesterday by discussing the things that make the Churches of Christ different from the rest. What sets us apart? What makes us unique? The response from our class — a diverse group of people who range in age from late 20s to late 70s, some CofC lifers and a couple of people who were just baptized two months ago — was fairly typical. We ran down the list pretty fast: acappella worship, weekly communion, autonomous congregations led by a plurality of elders, believer’s baptism by full immersion, limited role for women, and a high regard for the authority of the Bible and personal knowledge of the Scriptures. After that came the slogans: Speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent; We do Bible things in Bible ways and call Bible things by Bible names; etc., And then came a little honesty: Somebody mentioned that we’re perceived as thinking we’re the only ones going to heaven, and one of our brand new Christians confessed rather sheepishly that her mom had always told her the Church of Christ was a cult.

For the most part, these distinctives are dearly held by those of us in the Churches of Christ. For a lot of us, these are red flag issues. It’s emotional. Just mention a buzz word or a key phrase related to any one of these things around most of us and you’ll receive an impassioned plea touting the merits of such a practice or belief. Or a fight.

What we learn when we look at church history is that those things are not that unique to us. We didn’t come up with this stuff. It was all handed down to us by the Christians who went before. Martin Luther is the one who pushed for the authority of Scripture alone. John Calvin is the one who caused us to pay more attention to the sovereignty of God. The “anabaptists” of that same era were persecuted and mercilessly killed for their move to believer’s baptism by full immersion. John Knox and the Presbyterians pushed for the autonomy of local congregations led by a plurality of presbyters, or elders.

Any of that sound familiar?

Would it surprise you to learn that a whole mess of these faithful Christians came to America in the 18th century from Germany and Switzerland and Geneva and England and Scotland and brought their peculiar Christian beliefs and practices with them? And that Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell were among them?

We can find traces of us, Churches of Christ, in almost every strand of Christianity. They are our spiritual ancestors, too. They faithfully did the best with what they had at the time and diligently moved the Gospel story forward. We are not the first Christians. Or the only Christians. And we won’t be the last.

Our God is faithful; and very, very good.

Peace,

Allan

Stuck Truck

February 27, 2013 / / 1 Comment

I picked Greg up at about 1:00 yesterday so we could both come up here to the church building for a few hours and get some work done. The main roads between Greg’s house and mine — Bell, 45th, Hillside — were, for the most part, cleared. But the residential streets were all still very tricky. A near-record 19-inches of snow doesn’t just go away in a couple of hours, even in the sunshine and temperatures in the upper 30s. I slowed down to a crawl in the middle of his street so he could jump in as I went by and, dodging stranded vehicles among ten-foot walls of plowed snow, we made it to the church parking lot in pretty good shape.

It was on the way out of the church parking where we got in trouble.

For a couple of guys in a really big truck with a bunch of snow around, a three-foot drift in front of the office doors looked really inviting.  But we weren’t totally certain the truck could make it through. So we eyed the smaller 18-inch drift in the circle drive. Yes, we can get through that.

And we almost did.

We “high-centered” it, according to the terminology used in the warnings I had received from Scott and John Todd as the blizzard approached Sunday night. I was only about six inches away from getting through. But I was stuck. While Greg dug around the church flower beds for some garden mulch and sticks to put under the tires for traction, Mark came out of his office with a shovel. And we dug out. Mark and Greg were laughing; I was upset I couldn’t make it all the way through the snow drift. But now we were running late to pick Whitney up from work. So Greg got in and — good gravy!!! — I proceeded to back right into another snow drift not ten feet away from where we were! Mark hadn’t even walked back to his car to lock up the shovel. This second drift wasn’t even twelve inches, I don’t think. But we were stuck. Again.

This time, while I dug out, Greg snapped a few pictures on his cell phone. And the one you see here wound up on the home page of our church website last night under the heading “Breaking News” and the caption “Our preacher from Dallas took his chances with the snow… Anybody have a shovel?”

I saw it early this morning. Nice, Hannah.

The parking lots are still a mess here, the east side of our building is still packed in ice, and 15th Street isn’t good. So we’re cancelling Bible classes and Wacky Wednesday and our youth group Huddles and Muddles for tonight. Everything should be scraped clean and dry for Sunday morning. But just in case, I’m packing a shovel in the back of my truck.

Peace,

Allan

Nineteen Inches!

February 25, 2013 / / 1 Comment

(The opening paragraph with all the meteorological details is for my dad because… well, because he’d be extremely disappointed if I didn’t. Of course, mom, you’ll have to print this off and hand it to him.)

It’s official! The National Weather service measured an even nineteen inches of snow at the airport today, falling just three-tenths of an inch shy of the all-time record for snow in Amarillo during a 24-hour period which was set way back in 1934. While achieving close-but-no-cigar status on that all-time mark, today’s snow dump did set a couple of other records worth noting. It breaks the all-time February 25th record of ten inches and the all-time record for any day in February, twelve inches set back in 1893. If you want some real perspective on the grand scale of all this, consider that the Donut Stop was closed today. First time in nearly forty years. So, yeah, this doesn’t happen all the time up here. Not even close. What we’re enjoying here is downright rare and even historic.

The snow stopped at about 2:00 this afternoon and the winds died down from the 50-55 mph range (a top gust of 75 mph was observed at the airport! That’s for you, too, dad.) to about 15-20 mph and the clouds actually cleared out enough for the sun to shine through for a couple of hours. Carley and I did venture back out in the mess to do a little more exploring and tackle a couple of building projects while the other three girls in the house drank hot chocolate and watched “Lord of the Rings.” (Help me.)

Carley and I buried each other in the snow, made snow angels with disproportionately small heads in the four-foot drifts in the alley, shoveled the front walk and half of the back drive, surveyed wind damage at a couple of spots in our fence, visited with neighbor Joe and his precious little girl as they cleared their driveway, and talked for a while with neighbor Warner and his little dog, Charlie, as they braved the elements for a much needed walk. As for the building projects, we attempted to dig a long tunnel under the massive drifts in front of the house (failed), build a snowman (failed), build a snow flamingo with a super long neck (failed), and construct a very sophisticated igloo / fort (jury’s still out on the fort; it got dark before we finished). Valerie did venture out once this afternoon to collect enough snow to make some delicious snow ice cream. It was treacherous for her as Carley and I bombed her with snowballs as she scrambled back to the door. The ice cream is excellent!

I’ve spent a good deal of the in-between time today reading a new book, Lombardi and Landry. It’s written by Ernie Palladino, a long time beat writer for the New York Giants back in the 50s with the Journal News. The whole book tracks the beginnings of the Hall of Fame careers of Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi, when they both worked together on the Giants’ staff of head coach Jim Lee Howell. Can you imagine that? Lombardi running the offense and Landry in charge of the defense. It was said at the time that Howell was just in charge of blowing up the footballs during those championship years. It’s a fairly decent read so far, all of it written from the Giants’ perspective and, in my view, a little Lombardi heavy. I was surprised to read Palladino giving Landry credit for suggesting the Giants move Kyle Rote from halfback to flanker and changing Sam Huff from an offensive lineman to the first true middle linebacker in football history. Of course, the rest is history with those two legendary players. But I’ve never heard Landry credited with those obviously important decisions. I read Huff’s autobiography a couple of years ago, and I don’t remember reading anything about that. Anyway, it’s an OK book. I’m almost halfway through it. I’m up to the 1956 championship season, Frank Gifford’s breakout year.

School has already been cancelled for tomorrow. Again. It’s supposed to get down to nine-degrees tonight with wind chills below zero. So, no alarm clocks! Maybe we’ll finish the fort tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be OK after lunch to try to get out on the road, see a movie or something. Maybe I’ll just throw another few logs on the fireplace and keep reading.

Peace,

Allan

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