Tag Archives: purpose

Eternal… Or not?

Published in Nate's Blog on June 10, 2009
Eternal… Or not?

I enjoy reading Paul Williams’ back page article in the Christian Standard.  His stuff is easily the most thought-provoking stuff in the mag.  This week’s piece included this line about the church:

“It is a long journey, this three score and ten, with its virtual plethora of opportunities. That one should be able to spend a portion of time in the employ of the only eternal institution is a privilege.”

It got me thinking about this question:  Is the church really an “eternal institution”?

Obviously it’s not eternal in the sense that it had a definite start time – the day of Pentecost.  But is it eternal in an ongoing sense?  Will it continue after the return of Jesus? Will there be a sense of “church” when what we call “history” has ended?

Certainly the fruit of the church is eternal.  But what about the institution itself?

What do you think about the church – Eternal…. Or not?

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II Kings 14:3

Published in Nate's Blog on June 9, 2009
II Kings 14:3

I finished reading the books of Kings about a month ago and meant to write this post several weeks ago, but it’s been a little hectic.  We bought a house on April 30 and it has been an exciting ride since then!  We’ve done a ton of cleanup and unpacking, minor repairs, landscape touch-up, and decoration planning.  Jenny will be doing the wallpaper teardown and re-painting in the next month or so (we hope) and at that point the house will be pretty much totally presentable!

But I digress….

Kings is an interesting book that tells the history of Israel and Judah through the lens of the various kings of the two countries.  Kings uses a basic formula for describing the reign of each king.  It begins with a chronological note specifying who was king in the other nation (either Israel or Judah) and what year of their reign the opposite king was in when the king in question began his reign.  It continues with the name of the king and their lineage – specifically their father.  Then it typically tells how many years they reigned.  Quite often the writer then gives a summary statement of each king in terms of their relationship to God before going into a kind of summary of the king’s reign, noting highlights and/or lowlights of their kingship, and closes with a summary statement of both his death and the name of the king who followed him in succession.

So a typical intro section on a king might look like this…

“In the 5th year of the reign of Nat-Han, king of Granrapid, Ben-Hamin son of Johan, king of Clin-ton began to reign.  He was 31 when he became king, and he reigned in Clin-ton for 2 years.  Ben-Hamin did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father Johan had done….”

I was struck in particular by the the descriptions of each king’s relationship to God.  The description is frequently black and white – either the king “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord (Asa, Joash, Jehoshaphat, etc.) or the king “did evil in the eyes of the Lord” (Jehoram, Ahaziah, Jehoahaz, etc.) Quite often there is a qualificative (my blog software, WordPress, suggests that “qualificative” is not a word but I don’t care, I think it is…) or a comparative statement – ie. “Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done”  (I Kings 15:11).  Or in the negative sense – “Baasha did evil in the eyes of the LORD, walking in the ways of Jereoboam and in his sin, which he had caused Israel to commit” (I Kings 15:34).

It is the qualifier that makes II Kings 14:3 so very fascinating.  Speaking of Amaziah, king of Judah, the writer says that “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not as his father David had done” (italics mine).  When I came across this statement, I had two simultaneous thoughts….

1.  What a bizarre sort of description for Amaziah.  How unfair the writer is to him!  It makes the official in me want to blow the whistle and call “foul!”  How would you like for your summary life statement to include a comparison to one of the greatest kings of Israel?  It’s just not right!  It’s not fair.

2.  What kind of man must David have been?   He must have been something very, very special.  There was something otherworldly about his life that made him stick out both to Israel and to the Lord.  There was something about the quality of his life or his love or his devotion or his character or his passion or maybe all of the above that separated him from everyone else.  And I suppose it probably still does separate us from him.  What quality of being, of existence, or perhaps of obedience is it that made David so unique?  Why aren’t there more men like him?

And a third thought comes to mind in closing – what will the summary statement of YOUR life look like?

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A Great Christian Lady

Published in Nate's Blog on April 6, 2009
A Great Christian Lady

My great-Aunt Ruth died Thursday night. She had a heart attack and passed into paradise at the ripe old age of 95.  They buried her today in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Aunt Ruth was something else. To quote my mom….”She was Grandpa Hannum’s little red-headed sister.  She looked and sounded just like him.  At one time she did a lot of speaking to ladies groups.  She taught her ladies class at church until just a few years ago, as well as Junior Church. J She drove like a maniac and had the greatest sense of humor. She was a great Christian lady with a great way with words.”

What else is a blog for, if not to be transparent? Thus, it’s “transparency time.” I remember a few years ago (when she was only 90), thinking to myself, “Aunt Ruth’s too old to be teaching junior church. The kids have to be running circles around her.   She’s got to be out of touch.” And I remember feeling ashamed afterward for even thinking that thought.

Shame on me for seeing a number, like a person’s age, and equating that with irrelevance. Shame on me for looking at white hair and seeing only the past.  Shame on me for looking at wrinkles and dentures and seeing only skin and bones.

Shame on me for being more out of touch with God and with my fellow man than my 95-year old great Aunt Ruth.  She was, in every sense of the word, a great lady.

Addendum…

I heard from someone via email re: Aunt Ruth this week, and wanted to share their memories of her also………………….

“It’s interesting that you thought Aunt Ruth would be out of touch.  I can totally see why you’d think that. But I wish you could have known her.  She was amazingly “in touch”.  I remember her just a few years ago telling us about her Junior Church lessons.  ( It is a tiny country church and she only had 5 or 6 kids, so they weren’t running wild around her.) She was currently doing a unit about SEX!  She said these kids are getting bombarded with the wrong messages at younger and younger ages, and they needed the truth now.  How’s that for “in touch”? :-)

I think I knew this, but I was reminded that she started teaching at age 18 and a couple of years ago received a plaque and reception and newspaper coverage for teaching Sunday School for 75 years!  Do the math!  That is amazing! She also was a/the pioneer of “Junior Church”.  She helped start it nationwide.  She also led the Children’s Convention at the North American for several years.  And she did the kids lessons at the Kiamichi Mission family camp……this used to be a BIG gathering.  She was in great demand as a ladies speaker.  She did teacher training things, traveling all over.

Bob Shannon, who preached her funeral, talked about her teaching the Adult Class at Oak Grove for years.  She would study all week for it and then do the whole lesson from memory on Sunday morning.  One Sunday she recited all the kings of Israel and Judah, and the # of years they reigned, totally from memory!  He was in awe!  Her grandson said that when they cleaned out her house, they found dozens of worn out Bibles—she just went through them because she used them so much.”

I wish I could have known her better.  I’ll say it again – she was a GREAT Christian lady.

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Will your life matter?

Published in Nate's Blog on March 17, 2009
Will your life matter?

“When you’re 25 years old, 35 seems so far away.  But when you’re 35 years old, 45 seems so close.”

So I said to my spouse at lunchtime today.  I brought over some of my old file folders from the house to the office last week, and I spent this morning going through them.  Some of these folders had stuff in them from my first year of ministry.  Some of them had stuff in them from my internships.  (Do you remember dot matrix printers?  I do now, yikes!)  Some of them even had stuff from my college days.  And buddy, let me tell you – that feels ancient!

I pitched 80% of it.  Maybe more.

I saved the sermons (even the bad ones), and I saved the illustrations folder, and the “encouragement” file, and the folders with contact info in them.  But the rest got pitched – the board meeting minutes, the elders’ meeting notes, the old lessons, the notes taken on hundreds of sermons, dozens of youth group meeting outlines, and much more.

I looked through a lot of them before they found their way to the round file.  It was pretty nostalgic.  When you’re throwing away stuff that you’ve worked on – stuff that you’ve poured little bits of your heart and soul and life and energy into – it can be tough.  It was tough on me today.

When you’re 36 years old, and you throw out most of the files of your life, it makes you think about what life will be like in another 10 years.  Will the work of your hands in the next 10 years be productive?  Will it be fruitful?  Will it make a difference?  Will it be significant?

Will your life matter?

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