Just a few moments ago, I was working on some materials for a class I’m planning to teach this summer on eschatology … thinking about how the resurrection of Jesus guarantees our own … about how that incorruptible body might be different from the corruptible … and reading John 20:19-20:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

… and I wondered how He got through those doors (or passed through a wall) with a resurrected body that Dr. Luke (24:39) says had “flesh and bones …”

“Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

… when the thought suddenly hit me: Maybe because Jesus was more real than a wall or a door.

A wall or a door – to Him – is only as “real” as smoke or fog seems to us. Insubstantial. Impermanent. Inconsequential. Walk right through it.

Remember how Paul said it in II Corinthians 4:18 – 5:3:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Tent vs. mansion. Naked vs. clothed. Temporary vs. eternal. Seen vs. unseen.

Unreal vs. real.

Or maybe I just read too much C.S. Lewis.

(Is it possible to read too much C.S. Lewis?)

More wonderful faith cannot be
than the fact that God believes in me …
His plan is to reach
everyone that I teach
and the fact is, there is no “Plan B!”

It’s not a potion to cure colds. It’s a choice of the way to catch flies. According to the old saying, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

I’ve encountered a church here in my hometown that studied last summer the question of homosexuality, a topic I only touched on lightly in a recent blog post. Since I was off work all day yesterday with a migraine that wouldn’t let me think, work, or focus my eyes easily, I listened to the entire series of messages.

After my vision improved, I posted the links to them last night on Brandon Scott Thomas‘s blog, where a discussion with several folks – including a couple of gay Christians – took place in the Comments recently.

How can I say “gay Christians”? The same way I can say “divorced Christians” or “stumbling Christians” or “greedy Christians” or “exclusionary Christians.” I don’t mean it as a label, just a descriptor. We have in common a belief in Christ. We have different temptations.

The series followed by Little Rock Church – which has a “Church of Christ” heritage – was called “Full of Grace and Truth: A Christ-Like Response to Homosexuality.” Most are MP3s you can listen to; the last one is a page listing/linked to resources:

• Part 1: Attitude Adjustment
• Interlude: Parable of the Good Samaritan Revisited
• Part 2: What the Bible Says and Doesn’t Say About Homosexuality
• Part 3: Building Bridges to Homosexual Friends and Relatives
• Interlude: Story Changing Grace
• Part 4: A Christ-Like Response (Panel Discussion)
• List of Resources

I’d encourage you to listen to the messages in the order presented, and be blessed. I really appreciate the candor and spirit with which this church looked into the matter, with plenty of grace but without playing fast and loose with the truth.

They’ve chosen honey, because they want to catch more (souls, not flies). But the whole of the message is not sweet. As the saying implies, there are some that can be caught with vinegar. So there is a taste of it in these messages, because homosexuality is sin.

Just a taste for a person crucified by the perpendicular beams of his/her passion for Christ and attraction to the same sex.

Just enough.

You get all kinds of comments on an open blog – and this one is. Today I received this comment to an archived post:

“I think you misunderstand the Scriptures, the Restoration Movement, and the Church of Christ.”

That was almost all it said.

Not specific, to be sure. But gentle, tempered by the words “I think” and “misunderstand.” Just the kind of rebuke I would want to receive, and rebuke is a scriptural concept too frequently abused and infrequently done well.

I would have to agree that I often do not understand the Scriptures, the Restoration Movement, or the Church of Christ.

I don’t claim to have answers – possible answers, maybe – but I have a lot of questions.

I respect mystery as a key aspect of God’s nature, and therefore His Word.

I think everyone should study and come up with his/her own answers and possible answers, because the struggle with some issues is sometimes more important than the answers we perceive.

My initial reaction has been tempered by a recent post by fellow blogger David U. Though I share the skepticism of another fellow blogger, Fred Peatross, that “that blogs will ever become a link/connection to those Jesus misses most”, my commenter is making an honest effort at it.

I know, because the rest of the comment I received from him yesterday was a name, and a URL to a blog. In fairness to the points of view expressed there – whether I agree with all of them as crucial items in a relationship with God through Christ is immaterial – I’d like to post a link to it:

http://clearcutbiblestudies.blogspot.com/

It may help someone passing through this blog to come up with answers that draw him or her to Christ – or closer to Him – and I am all for that!

The last one, I promise. If you missed the first and second ones, no big deal.

This one comes from movie # VI: The Undiscovered Country. The fans are ahead of me, already anticipating that the moment takes place in Cap’n Spock’s quarters as he and fellow (mostly) Vulcan Lt. Valeris discuss the very impressionistic-looking painting hanging there: The Expulsion from Eden. It’s Spock’s reminder to himself that “All things end.” (Which is sort of appropriate, since this is the last film to feature the original cast.)

But the moment comes a few lines later:

Spock: “History is replete with turning points, Lieutenant. We must have faith.”

Valeris: “Faith?” (Well, this would be an unusual concept to the all-logical Vulcan mind.)

Spock (apparently paraphrasing Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata): “That the universe will unfold as it should.”

Valeris: “But is that logical? Surely we must ….?”

Spock (apparently quoting his human mother, who once expressed being “sick to death” of logic): “Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris – not the end.”

Okay, that’s pretty close to Proverbs 1:7. Sort of. The fear of the Lord is logical. Right?

But my real question is whether we can, in a faith as profound as Ehrmann’s (or the legendary Spock’s), believe that the universe will unfold as it should.

I believe in prophecy. I believe that Old Testament prophecy proved true in the New Testament. I believe that New Testament prophecy proves to be true as well. I believe that it says, in very few words of summary, that the universe unfolds as it should.

God wins. Satan loses.

Our faith in that truth – though tested by accident, natural disaster, crime, war, evil, even political assassination of presidents or prime ministers – will not be in vain.

That’s logical too. Isn’t it?

Visit Val’s blog today, read When The Music Fades and be blessed.

Just the insight of “the first ten kisses” would have been enough to enrich your whole day.

There’s enough there, in the fading moments of his sister’s life, to bless all of yours.

A couple of nights ago while not sleeping late into the night, I had this odd idea to start a New Wineskins BLOG here on Blogger.com/Blogspot.com and turn it over to Greg Taylor, the online magazine’s managing editor. Little did I know that he’d been wanting to do one for a long time.

After a good night’s sleep (so I could handle HTML coding again), I put one together, and Greg seems really excited about it. He wants to use it to post some free-access articles so that non-subscribers will be able to get a taste for the good stuff behind the firewall.

There is some really good stuff there.

And it will be a place where folks can comment on articles they’ve read in both areas, hopefully.

I think he’ll be inviting the other NW editors, publisher, and several other writers to be authors on the site and I’ll stick around as a co-administrator to help tweak that Blogspot template as needed.

I pray that the good Lord will bless it, and bless many through it.

“We do not ask that they give up their opinions, for they can hold their opinions as private property; we only ask that they not impose their opinions upon others as tests of fellowship.” – Alexander Campbell, from his article in the Millennial Harbinger, 1830, p. 145.

Folks who really know me and who read this blog must be wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. If they’ve read my posts The One Where I Lose Friends, The One Where I Lose More Friends, and The One Where I Just Lose, they know that my life makes me practically a poster child for opposing abortion and gay marriage.

In college, I contracted epidydimitis, a kind of mumps gone south, which later led to a small, non-spreading cancerous tumor of the Lance Armstrong kind. In short, I could no longer father children with my own genes; adoption was my only option; and abortion really cuts down on the number of babies that are available to adopt.

My first wife left and, from all accounts I’ve been able to gather, lived with her girlfriend.

There is no reason for me to favor abortion for the sake of convenience or gay relationships made conveniently legal. And, to speak very plainly, I don’t.

But as a divorced person, I have also experienced being on the outside. I’ve shouldered my share of guilt. I’ve gone through the agony of trying to find a church home at a time, in the mid 1980’s, when it was still a little tricky for a divorced person to do so.

I was very blessed to find one.

At the same time, I found myself at that church yesterday morning with the shoe on the other foot: my lovely and loving wife and two beautiful adopted children on the pew beside me. I had just listened to a sermon explaining Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s planned Covenant Marriage event planned for Valentine’s Day and I was blissfully singing “God Give Us Christian Homes” when my eye caught a young, black single mom and her two kids a few pews in front of me. A lump caught in my throat. How did she feel about me singing about homes with a God-given father?

I could sing no more.

Then there was a verse about a godly mother’s “queenly quest” and all I could think about was a friend sitting a few rows over whose marriage is coming apart at the seams.

Then there was the verse about children, and I remembered how I felt when I found out I could not father my “own.”

It was never the intention of the song, I don’t believe, to pray just for the Dan Quayle vision of only perfect families. But suddenly that prayer-song went hollow and cheap for me.

And I thought about years before hearing a sermon condemning abortion – without making any distinction between the simply convenient and the medically-advised; without closing on a note of forgiveness or redemption or freedom from guilt – and wondering what the effect would have been on yet another friend who had endured an abortion because her fetus had become cancerous.

I don’t have a clever way to end this post. No witty way to express what I feel. No wrap-it-up conclusion or solution or prayer. Sorry.

Today I just hurt. For some of my friends who are hurting. For others I don’t even know. For the person that I forget I once was … and the one I too often become.

This post is the contents of an e-mail received yesterday afternoon by the wife of a lieutentant colonel in Baghdad and a brother in Christ. The title above is his. This note is an answer to prayers, many of them. (Note: “IED” refers to “Improvised Explosive Devices.”)

Today I got to witness first hand a new democracy take its first steps. My day started early … acutely (actually?) my day started about 4 days ago because we have been going non-stop since then, hence no updates lately. I was up at 5am and my head was pounding and my sinuses were killing me. I was up and out with my team by 5:30am … I had to get at least one cup of coffee in me before I left. The day started slow and we had some small arms fire, 8 rockets shot at us, and we found one IED. The small arms fire and the rockets missed us. The IED was another matter, but we called our bomb guys and they took care of it with their bomb robot. Which, by the way, is their third robot. The first two died in the line of duty. The polls opened at 7am and that when things got interesting.

The press showed up in droves. It would have been impossible to swing a dead cat and not hit a reporter in our area of operation today. I met Campbell Brown from NBC. She was likeable, but you could tell she did not want to be in Baghdad. She was very jumpy and looked a nervous. I guess we were that way when we first got here too but you get used to the shooting. Later, when we were dealing with the IED, a guy from PBS filmed the whole episode and told me that he was shooting a documentary for PBS. He had the camera in my face for about a half an hour while we got set to blow the IED. It is a little weird trying to get rid of a roadside bomb when guy has a camera in your face. I finally got him to leave me alone when I told him we were going to blow the bomb in place. Since the bomb was on a bridge there was no where to hide so I put him behind my armored hummer and he stayed put. We blew the IED and the PBS guy left.

We had very tight security on the polling sites and all around our area of operation. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers were at every polling site defending them. I have been planning for about 8 days for this mission and it was the largest we have done to date. Infantry, armor, attack helicopters, engineers…. you name it, we had it. The Iraqi government shut down all traffic in the country so the streets were deserted. At about 10am the streets were packed with large crowds of people walking to the polls. We were on edge waiting for more attacks that never came. By about 3pm we could start to let our hair down and talk to the people. The site was amazing.

We dismounted from our vehicles and were instantly mobbed by about 200 kids. The kids were all over the place playing in the streets while their parents voted. The kids walked with us for about 2 miles while we were talking to the adults. I have never seen anything like it. People everywhere wanted to talk to us and thank us. This is what it must have been like when the Allies liberated Paris. Iraqis of all ages wanted to shake our hands and thank us for allowing them to vote. The kids were proud to tell us that their parents voted. Adult after adult wanted to thanks us for making this day happen. When the Iraqis voted they dipped their fingers in indelible purple ink so that polling officials could tell who had already voted. When we walked the streets the Iraqis would hold their purple finger up in the air as a mark of pride. They were very proud of their purple finger. The Iraqis statements to us were all the same; “Thank you for your sacrifices for the Iraqi people”, “Thank you for making this day possible” “The United States is the true democracy in the world and is the country that makes freedom possible”, “God blessed the Iraqi people and the United States this day”, “We have never known a day like this under Saddam”, “This day is like a great feast, a wonderful holiday”. I shook more hands today then I have ever in my life. If you missed a hand they would follow for a mile to get a chance to shake and say thanks. It was nothing like we expected or have ever seen. The Iraqi people were strong and brave today. The Iraqis stoic to danger, faced fear, and went out and voted. Then after they voted the Iraqis stayed on the streets to celebrate by singing dancing and trying to shake the hand of any American that they could find.

Even though today was a great day for Iraq, the Iraqis took their lumps. There were 6 car bombs in Iraq today, 2 of them in Baghdad. One I believe did more for Iraqi moral then any other event I that I have ever witnessed here. A suicide car bomber drove up to a polling site, which was not to far from us, and blew up. The bomb did not kill anybody but the bomber himself. After the bomb went off the Iraqi voters calmly walked out of the polling site and spit on the remains of the suicide bomber. The polling site stayed open and the voting continued. That incident ran all day long on Iraqi TV. It was a beautiful act of defiance for the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people stood up for themselves today and stuck a purple finger in the enemy’s eye.

Later in the day I thought about our sacrifices that we have made. I wondered if the three men that my unit has sent home in flag draped coffins was worth what I saw today. I am still not sure if that is the case, but when a grown Iraqi man thank me with tears running down his face it made me feel better about what we have accomplished.

Addendum:

Much later that night we had two Kiowa attack Helicopters working for us. One of our sister battalions was in contact and needed help. We diverted the helicopters to the other battalion and watched. A unit of the other battalion was under attack by 15 insurgents. The enemy was trying to flee on foot in the open. That was a mistake. The Kiowas launched 10 rockets and hammered the enemy. The pilots report after they attacked was two words, “Target Destroyed”!

— Scott

Please continue to pray for Scott, all the troops, and all of the good people of Iraq. If it’s God’s will and the U.S. armed forces permit, Scott’s schedule will rotate him back home in March.