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I ran across a collection of letters last night written by famous Texas sportswriter / novelist Bud Shrake. Back in the mid ’60s Shrake, who wrote for the Dallas Times Herald and the Dallas Morning News, moved to New York to take a job with Sports Illustrated and to work on his novels and screenplays. During Shrake’s colorful career he managed to write ten novels exploring two hundred years of Texas history; several sports-related books, including Barry Switzer’s biography Bootlegger’s Boy; and five books with golf legend Harvey Penick, including the number one all time best-selling sports book in history, Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book.
Shrake died earlier this year at 77 years of age. And the current issue of Texas Monthly has compiled an edited selection of letters he wrote from New York in 1964-65 to friends back here in DFW and Austin. The letters are fascinating to me. They are of a long-gone style of writing that characterized the work of the best-ever sports writers from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. But they also reveal the guts of a guy struggling to make it. Shrake is restless in his letters. Searching. Unsure of himself, but determined to keep on.
I see myself in a letter he wrote to his ex-wife, Joyce, on April 10, 1965:
“I do not think you can show me a writer who is not insecure about his work, unless he is one of those who is merely plodding over the same weary ground; a pattern mystery story man, or historical novel writer, or perhaps a memoirist. Or perhaps a [Thomas] Mann or someone in the later years of his craft when he is not doing anything that is for him new. Do you think Mailer, for example, was insecure about “An American Dream?” Sure he was, and is. Such feeling partially accounts for the sudden eccentricities, the erratic-nesses, the gropy destruction bouts of drunken wildness, the hysteria even, of writers who are at least trying to be serious regardless of their true merit. One simply does not know for sure what is being achieved, what the gap might be between intention and result.”
Couple of observations. One, can you imagine one of the current sportswriters of a major newspaper writing this way today? Incredible, huh? Stories about Bob Lilly and Don Meredith and Stan Musial and Bob Cousey were written this way.
Two, I don’t feel exactly this way as a preacher. There haven’t been any “bouts of drunken wildness.”
But I can certainly relate to the insecurity. I can easily relate to “trying to be serious regardless of [my] true merit.” It’s the last line of the letter there, this gap “between intention and result,” that perfectly captures my thoughts and feelings about being a proclaimer of the Word of God. I never know for sure what’s really being achieved.
I never know what’s going to happen. I never know. From day to day and week to week — sometimes it’s an hourly mystery — I never know how what I’m going to say is going to be received by those who hear it. I’m acutely aware that there are 900 sermons being preached at Legacy every Sunday morning. I’m preaching one and the 899 other participants are hearing their own. There’s a huge unknown gap between intention and result.
The maddening thing is that I have no control. None. It’s all on God. He guides me all week on the words I’m going to say. He shows me by his Holy Spirit what to preach. He gives it to me during long periods of prayer and meditation and study. And then he uses those words to do with them what he wants. Totally independent of me. I’m really of very little significance in all this. He speaks to people. He touches hearts. He convicts and converts. He does things I never imagine. He causes things I never could have planned. I understand that. I get it. And that should bring me a real peace. Those things should calm me and relax me. It’s not on me. It’s all on him.
But I really don’t know what, if anything, is “being achieved.”
My security is in my God. Yeah, I know. But…
My confidence comes from God. Yeah, I know. But…
My “merit” is not mine. I don’t have any. It all belongs to God. But…
I haven’t been doing this long enough to know if it’s just me or if every preacher has these feelings of insecurity. Inferiority. Is it just a personality thing with me or are all preachers this way? How do I look at my own sinfulness and selfishness and fallenness and inclinations to evil and then presume to speak for God to a congregation of his holy children? I’m still not very good at this yet. And it frustrates me.
I take comfort from the words of Augustine. “My own way of expressing myself almost always disappoints me. I am anxious for the best possible, as I feel it in me before I start bringing it into the open in plain words; and when I see that it is less impressive than I had felt it to be, I am saddened that my tongue cannot live up to my heart.” OK, I’m in good company here. Augustine can relate.
I live in that gap between intention and result.
It’s all in God’s hands. And that’s good news. Better him than me. He’s never failed me. Those unknown results are nearly always better than my intention. Praise God! Give him the glory! It happens all the time.
But most days, that doesn’t give me the comfort or peace that I think it should.
My kids run to me all the time. They run to me when I get home from work in the afternoons. They scream from upstairs and from the living room, from the dining room table and the computer room. Wherever they are they yell, “Daddy!” And they usually come running. Wow. I love that. 
They run to me when they want to go to Sonic to get a Dr Pepper float. When they want to play, they come to me. When they want to spend the night at a friend’s house, they run to me. When they’ve learned a new trick or made a good grade, when they have a difficult question or a problem at school, my daughters come to me.
But when they get hurt…..
…they go to their mother.
When they skin their knee, they go to their mother. When they’re sick, they go to their mother. When they have a fight with a friend, when they don’t make the team, when they smash a finger in a kitchen drawer, they run to mom.
Because they know how I am. “Suck it up, girl! Let’s go! What? Are you crying? Come on! I’ve had bigger scratches on my eyelid! Walk it off! Rub some dirt on it! What’s the matter with you?”
When children are hurt they go to their mother. Physical pain. Emotional pain. When it’s deep and it’s real, they go to mom. Because mother will meet you with a Band-Aid. Mother has a hug. Mother wipes away all the tears. Mother will just hold you and kiss you and carry you. Mother always knows exactly what you need. A mother’s love is warmer. It’s more sensitive. It’s more in tune. When you’re really hurting, you need your mother.
“As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” ~Isaiah 66:13
Have you ever pictured God as a mother? God does.
When God’s people are at their lowest — the temple’s destroyed, the holy city is in ruins, they’re scattered in exile, they’re experiencing deep separation, pain, loneliness, and despair; when the only memories they have are bad and the only future they have is bleak — God says, “I will hold you and comfort you. Just like a mom. I have borne you and I will love you forever. Just like a mom.”
In Isaiah 49, God’s people say, “The Lord has forsaken me. The Lord has forgotten me.” And God replies, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
And that’s reason for joy.
“Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains!
For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion
on his afflicted ones.” ~Isaiah 49:13
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An emailed comment from a loyal reader regarding last week’s picture of the 24 elders from Revelation 4-5 casting their crowns down at the heavenly throne: “Great comments, awful picture. Old white guys as elders? Really?”
OK, that’s fair. You got me. I’ll forever stand on the biblical picture of elders being old(er) and guys. There’s no debating that. Ever. But you’re absolutely right on the absurdity of all 24 elders being white. That doesn’t hardly capture the revelation of Christ as these elders representing “every tribe and language and people and nation.” Not at all.
Sorry. Good catch.
If anyone can email me a picture or a link to a picture which represents the elders around the throne as from every color and language and nation, please do.
Peace,
Allan
“Could we with ink the ocean fill,
and were the skies of parchment made;
were every stalk on earth a quill,
and every man a scribe by trade;
to write the love of God above
would drain the ocean dry;
nor could the scroll contain the whole
though stretched from sky to sky.
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall for evermore endure
the saints and angels’ song.”
~F. M. Lehman, 1917
“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” ~John 10:27
“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” ~John 10:10
“For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life.” ~John 17:2
Eternal life comes from Christ Jesus. It’s a gift that’s represented in every facet of Jesus’ obedient revelation of the Father. Salvation is introduced in his birth, his ministry and teachings pave the way for it, and his death and resurrection ensures our participation in it.
Jesus’ gift of eternal life isn’t just a model or a standard of ethics and morals for us to follow. And it’s not just memorizing and/or practicing his teachings. Joining eternal life in Christ is becoming involved in him and his Body. It’s a close connection. It’s a deeply personal relationship.
We are not just people who follow Jesus. We are swept up and integrated into God’s mighty work of reconciling the world and redeeming creation. Salvation doesn’t just satisfy a legal requirement. Salvation frees us to participate in the eternal life of God.
It’s more than just a moment in time. It’s more than his crucifixion. It’s more than your baptism. Much more. It’s bigger and deeper. It’s infinitely more about our nature and character in relationship with God than it is about our legal standing. What Christ has done is abolish all the obstacles and empower us to be God’s children and live eternal life with him in abundance.
It’s a gift.
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Peace,
Allan
Worshiping God together on Sundays is the single most important thing that happens in the world.
Revelation 4-5 give us a heavenly vision of the eternal worship of our God, first as Creator, second as Redeemer. The vision from Christ, relayed to us by the Holy Spirit through the apostle John, paints the worship of God as proof of his sovereignty. It’s the picture of his complete power and authority. And it shows us clearly that he is God. And we are not.
Every animal. Every human. Every angel. All of creation is represented here in the throne room of God. And they’re all worshiping. They’re all present. They’re all in the presence of God. And they’re all engaged in giving praise and glory to God.
It’s us. It’s all of us. We’re all together, joining with the saints of all time, when we gather to worship on the Lord’s Day. We bow down and we get off our thrones. We jump down off our high horses and we take off our crowns of accomplishment and status and wealth and power and position and authority and we fall on our faces before the only one worthy of our praise.
When the creature worships the Creator, it’s more important than anything that ever happens in Austin or Washington D.C. The eternal worship of God is bigger than anything that ever goes on in London or Paris or Tokyo or Baghdad. What happens on Sundays is that the creation order is restored and the order of redemption is proclaimed. Worshiping God is the culmination of every thing we were intended to do and to be. Worship restores the original Garden of Eden order of creation. It’s what we were made for and meant for. It’s what we’re being restored for. It’s why we’re being saved.
We were made to be caught up, not in our selves or our preferences or our comforts or our likes and dislikes. We were created to be caught up in love and wonder and praise of the Almighty.
Peace,
Allan
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