What To Do When Staggered By Living

The monumentality of the events of living often leave us staggered by our inability to acknowledge that we have actually lived them.  This is why great art, architecture, songs, movies, literature, and poetry exist.  However, most of us are not artists, poets, or builders.  Might I suggest you become an altar builder.  It is quite simple, go out into the woods, pick up stones and stack them in a pile.  Now stand and look at it.  Allow yourself time to acknowledge the event in your life and then…

Well, I think any event worth marking the earth over requires one further step.  Is God?  If asked honestly and sincerely trust His answer.  Then you will want to build another altar.          

A few years ago our oldest daughter was diagnosed with cancer
and was not given great odds of surviving.  My wife moved to Knoxville
to be with her.  One day I was overwhelmed with worry and loneliness
and drove to the border of Tennessee and built this altar.  Yesterday
Betty and I went back, found it, repaired it, and once again
thanked God Is for our daughter is alive and cancer-free!!!

 

The First Visual For Your Soul Attending

Your daily first visual of the world is so critical to how you will understand the rest of your day.  It is a gift to yourself if the first prolonged gaze of your day is a natural one, a forest, a meadow, a mountain range, and that view filled with living creatures.  I awake many mornings to a river, hills, and mountains and the vastness of the southern sky and first light reveals a world filled with life going about their business of living.  Birds for all seasons, deer, fox, fish breaking the early morning glass of the river, life abounds in all shapes, colors, sizes, and variety.  And in all of this stirs the Ever Presence, His goodness manifest in a world vividly alive living in full dependence upon His kindness.  A peace that passes all understanding as I watch life unhindered by the chaos of humanity.   

Behind this scene are humans, technology, devices, and media grinding up the day of trouble searching the globe to present to us another view.  I am no fool, it is to these humans we have been called to be with, to help, and to serve.  But I have found I am so much more equipped to understand the rest of my day if I will first allow the ministry of creation to abide in me the truth of The Absolute Care of all that is.  Peace, like a river, in my case, The Great Tennessee, attendeth my soul.  

Radical, Rebellious, Revolutionary

Obviously, the world is burning with rebellious radicals, the left, the right, fighting, maiming, even killing.  I have a great urge to join the ranks, to rebel and riot, and throw off the tyrannical oppression of my enemies.  But I will not even though I am deeply moved to do so.  The reasons have nothing to do with me.  I lived for years in rebellion at the bottom of a bong, a bottle, and a brothel and to even write this truth is deeply damaging to my spirit.  But then I met the most fascinating Radical, Rebellious, Revolutionary of all time, Jesus.  His call was so profound in its simplicity; believe in Him. And the result was equally profound in its sincerity, He would help me to be kind, helpful, and generous and in that way, my life would make it easier for others to find him as well.  A great prophet of His put it this way;

‘Prepare the way for the LORD’s coming!

Clear the road for him!

The valleys will be filled,

and the mountains and hills made level.

The curves will be straightened,

and the rough places made smooth.

And then all people will see

the salvation sent from God.’

When you look out over your American landscape today ask yourself who is helping to make the way to God easier for others—they will be marked by their kindness, helpfulness, and generosity—and then join that group of radicals.  

What Then Should We Do?

“What then should we do?”*

Politicians, news, social media, and most of public opinion has placed the current political races into the most important issue of our times.  A great falsehood.  Like most Americans, I am deeply, truly deeply troubled by America but I cannot allow the world to define reality.  I need a greater authority.  One not plagued by injustice, unkindness, untruthfulness, and often evilness.  Why?  Because the second most important issue of our time and all times is; “What then should we do?”  It is an individual question that is critical that every human ask themselves every day and even several times each day.  It profoundly focuses me on this one problem, “How will Lee Benson live today or even at this moment?” because Lee Benson will one day give an account for how he lived to The Great Authority I mentioned above.  I will not have to give an account for the Democratic or Republican Parties, Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, CNN, BLM, FoxNews, Planned Parenthood, KKK, or anyone or anything else.  And what is the bar The Great Authority is measuring me against?  Well, the rules are firmly established, only two, loving Him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving my neighbor as myself.  And there is the kicker!!!  I can’t do that.  That is what’s wrong with me and every other human that has ever lived. But The Authority took care of that as well by sacrificing His Son for me individually so that through Him, He would help me to love as He requires.  Which brings me to the most important question of all times that always precedes the second one above and will be asked at the accounting; “What did you do with Jesus The Lord?”

*Luke 3:7-18

 

The Stranger I Know As Lee Benson

I never knew being a Christian was going to be what it is.  I was raised in a very Godly home with all the right things to give me notice but I never noticed.  I actually felt being a Christian meant following a bunch of rules most of which would deprive me of the real joy and meaning of life.  Nothing is more shocking to the unbeliever become believer than the life that develops in you.  It was not overnight nor was it quick but it is a prolonged becoming and the longer the journey the more intensely meaningful.  It is as if everything is made new, literally from a blade of grass to the taste of your lover.  It is the ongoing realization of reality that make tears and watermelon objects that implore you toward grateful, happy-filled, worship.  It is like hiking and mountain climbing where everything is an adventure and all things are there to discover.  But the greatest gift, the most profound discovery is love.  The abundance of love that rises up out of what you know you as, an old gnarled scoundrel, as if you have been reborn as a saint.  That always shocks me.  I know who lee is but I have no accounting for who this new man is that I am continually becoming.  That man is the greatest mystery of all—and the grace that allows me to daily discover him is something only God as God, the One and Only God, can create me to be.  It is the grace of all graces to accept by faith that Christ Jesus rebirths us into a new person and that person is daily discoverable as some marvelous stranger that I get to meet.  

Would You Die For An American?

My daughter Sarah read the book The Longest Day.  She was so moved that she urged our whole family to read it.  She continued until I finally have.  It is the story of hundreds of thousands of American, British, Canadian, and French soldiers during the 24 hours of D-Day, the WWII Allied landing at Normandy.  Every American should have to read it.  It is the story of Americans that may not ever again exist.  This gripping, sorrow filled and heroic account is so poignant in today’s climate of disdain for most of America and Americans.  The willing and often sacrificial dying for one’s country was not an idea but an actual, personal event in thousands of lives.  These soldiers lived in an America that was just as flawed as it is today but the fact still remains, they sacrificed their lives.  As I read their account I realized they were not dying for an ideal America, America was just as flawed then as it is now, they died for their fellow Americans.  Those men they were with whose duty it was to ensure that the other guy made it and in the process, their duty was successfully accomplished, hate was overthrown by love.  It was not the Americans away off in America they died for, it was an American right next to them; and by saving him, they saved us all.  When will we stop this self-loathing of other Americans and see the American right next to us worthy of loving—

“Greater love hath no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus

Which Americans do you think he was talking too or maybe a better question is, which Americans obeyed Him?

Photo from the book.

 

A New Year or Our Shag Carpet and Hillbillery AstroTurf

A new year.  That is something if it happens.  I struggle to remain conscious of time.   Even in nanoseconds, I do not create, control or are guaranteed it.  Time is the most precious gift.  Without it, we are not.  So a new year is something profound enough to move us to awestruck wonder which should cause us to do what humans do when we realize the splendid idea of being; worship.  Worship doesn’t mean going to church even though it should be a good place to do it.  Worship means an altogether giving over of one’s self to the adoration and gratefulness of someone who is worthy.  In our best day, all human efforts combined, cannot create a single second so a new year is not only a happy occasion but more like a worshipful one.  I was just texting a farmer who has COVID and he said he was walking outside.  He told me yesterday he was staying inside and walking on the carpet to exercise.  I texted back that I thought he was going to stay inside.  He responded that the carpet was boring and a walk in the green fields with his cows made him feel better.  I responded that God was having a red-letter day when he thought up grass and then created it.  If it had been left up to humans we would have made lime green shag carpet or that fake plastic grass which is our hillbillery copy of AstroTurf.  Seconds and grass should cause us to worship and a New Year…well you get the picture.  

Happy new year from our family to yours.  Baby Rosemary was just a few 
days from being born in this family picture.