Author: danefowlkes

Grace sees and refuses to blink. For one woman, grace happened as she knelt in the dirt before the feet of Jesus. More from shame than humility, her collapse was less intention than reflex. Not far away, angry stares inflicted greater pain than the threat of the rocks hefted in ruthless hands; it was not so much their vocabulary that wounded in that awful moment, it was the omission of human dignity. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but inhumanity will destroy me.This was certainly not the first time. Passed from one man to the other, she had never been held as sacred, only held in the process of being used. She’d grown accustomed to the shame, but refused to be comfortable with it. That’s when she heard of this healing teacher. Not just a teacher who healed, a man who restored even as he inspired; someone who returned all that had been taken. She fought back her fears and anxious tears. Would this be simply the newest version of something too good to be true? She had heard those lines before, the promises of love behind lying eyes. Or could this man be different? Was the healing teacher actually sent from God? Was it possible that he was God himself? She cast herself before him, not so much because she had nothing to lose, but that she was willing to gamble on this one chance to win. Her life had been a succession of losses: losing choices, losing relationships, losing moments; a life lost in quicksand of regret. So she rolled the dice on one opportunity to be real, her one chance to be herself rather than the object that others had recreated in their own image and for their own pleasure.

No one knows for sure what Jesus stooped to write in the dirt on that awful awesome day. Many speculate he scrawled a litany of sins that the accusers were forced to recognize as their own. Others propose that Jesus used a finger to indent Scripture in the sand. Perhaps he did something entirely different, something more meaningful to her than anyone could have imagined — he wrote her name, and in so doing, he restored her heart. 

Grace is as much responsibility as it is a privilege. The moment I focus only on what the cross means to me, is the selfsame instant I lose sight of my role in God’s redemptive plan. Every recipient of grace is expected to extend grace to others. We may not be adept at verbalizing the gospel, but there is one thing each of us can do for the outcast. The cross and empty tomb remove all doubt that every individual is of eternal worth to God; they also demand selfless compassion. Regardless of cause and effect, the one gift we hold at the ready for every human being is to ascribe worth, to acknowledge human value through eye contact or the spoken word, to call someone by name. Before we can convince anyone else that they matter, we must first convince ourselves. When we do, we are qualified and commissioned to herald hope to all we meet. Being Jesus in an anonymous world, more often than not, is to say with our eyes “I see you,” and communicate by extending our hands, “you matter to God and to me.”

“And now brothers I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?”~Frederick Buechner (The Magnificent Defeat)

Thirty eight years ago, my best friend and I embarked on an epic journey. Fresh out of high school and sporting my own set of wheels, I somehow convinced my friend’s naïve parents to trust him into my care for a road trip from Port Arthur to Mississippi and back. My ace in the hole was that our destination was a church camp and that the purpose of this extended soirée was spiritual growth. They consented and we departed. Oh, the feeling of youthful independence, conquering asphalt in a rust red tank officially identified as a ’65 Ford Galaxy, heating pork and beans for dinner at roadside parks, and singing off key at the top of our lungs to music blasting from state-of-the-art 8-track.

Dark-thirty in some obscure-to-me portion of Mississippi with radio blaring to stay awake behind the wheel, we navigated a blind curve without noticing an unlighted Rail Road crossing warning. Neither of us saw the sign in the dark because we were too busy talking to pay attention, so we emerged from the bend just as a train approached the intersection from the west. The train’s horn roared, I stomped the accelerator, and somehow we crossed the tracks just ahead of the train, feeling its draft as we plunged past. Stunned into silence, I pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road to allow time to collect what remained of our nerves and talk about what just almost happened. As we debriefed, we were convinced that God had rescued us from ourselves and decided that it was as good a time as any to prepare to die. We hastily scribbled a note to the effect that if anyone found us dead, they were to rest assured that we knew the Lord and that we wished the same for them. To cap it all off, we laid awake long enough that night to commit to memory what has become my life verse–Galatians 2:20. For the first time in my life, I had a glimpse of the truth that no one is ready to live unless they’ve tasted death in themselves. 

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, KJV)

“We say we long for intimacy with God and others, and yet we structure our lives so that this becomes impossible. One might think we are avoiding intimacy, that maybe we really like our finely managed lives just the way they are.” ~ Mark Galli

“In the developing world there is an epidemic of poverty, in the West an epidemic of loneliness.” ~ Mother Teresa

Today is known by a variety of names: “Maundy Thursday” (Church of England), “Holy Thursday” (Catholic and Methodist), “Covenant Thursday” (Coptic), “Great and Holy Thursday” (Eastern Orthodox), and “Thursday of Mysteries” (Syriac Orthodox).  If I were to give today another name, it would be “Communion Thursday.”

On this day in Holy Week, Jesus led his disciples in the Last Supper, a meal many traditions call “Communion”, but our Lord extended communion beyond this event.  He prayed fervently for his disciples and all of us as well (John 17).  Then he retreated to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he told Peter, James and John, “Remain here, and watch with me” (Matthew 26:38).  On this day the Son of God knew how desperately he needed to be with his Father, and wanted to be with his friends. 

I picked up the game in earnest later in life than I would have if I could start over knowing what I do now. In that way, golf is not unlike a great many things in retrospect– I would choose Boy Scouts over Little League, slide rule over girls, and God’s will over my own ego. I don’t remember exactly when or where I first saw the game played, but think it was at the old Port Groves Golf Course affectionately known by locals as “the Pea Patch.” A few old men hit the course each morning and spent the rest of the day in the makeshift clubhouse playing poker and drinking beer. We termed it a pea patch because it more resembled a garden or abandoned field than it did a place to play the royal game. Greens varied little from fairways and fairways were only slightly better mown than the San Augustine growing wildly in “the rough.” The only elevation on the course came from the slight rise on the edge of the bar ditch creating the course’s border next to Monroe Street in The Groves. 

My father bought a starter set of Northwestern clubs for me and another for himself at Christmas. We played our first round a few days later, and it was so cold that our bargain balls cracked and a few even shattered when struck. I survived the arctic eighteen and started playing regularly at the old Pleasure Island course owned by the City of Port Arthur, playing with my best friend after school and every spare minute when we could escape. He was good; I wasn’t, but loved every minute on the course and couldn’t get enough. In fact, the only time I was ever summoned to the principal’s office was for skipping last period my senior year of high school in order to go play golf. I purchased a new set of clubs from J. C. Penney after graduation, stowed them in my ample trunk and set off for college in my ’65 Ford Galaxy. Golf was my less-than-magnificent obsession– I played frequently and watched golf on weekends. I wasn’t any good, but didn’t know enough or have the money to take lessons in order to improve. Eventually, I laid aside the clubs and the game I loved, and endured life without golf.

I didn’t swing a club for twenty years, until a friend convinced me to pick it up the game again a year ago. This go around I took lessons and am playing better than ever before, but the real difference is mental. My caddy these days is grace. I strive to improve, but what I want most is to enjoy the moments strung together on the driving range or golf course. I’ve relieved myself of the awful burden of perfection and embrace the joy of standing on manicured greens and strolling down pristine fairways, surrounded by reminders that God is good. Better yet, my wife–a decent player and even better companion–often accompanies me, adding to the glory of it all. I’m working steadily to improve my game, but mostly I am allowing myself to enjoy it. 

Can I enjoy the game of golf even though I’m not any good at it? Is it possible to love Jesus even though I stumble repeatedly over being salt and light? Allow me to frame it differently: What if discipleship is less about performance, and more about passion? What if Christ-following is more about desire than technical skill? What if the desired end result is not what I am able to produce, but who I become along the way? What if communing this moment with Jesus is the grandest preparation for eternity. Relationship trumps everything; joyful are those who revel in the Person of Jesus Christ and allow themselves the pleasure of his Presence.

“It’s hard to believe that Jesus is the Solid Rock when the world you’ve lived your whole life in has cracked beneath you into a thousand pieces. You can’t tell if everything is still half-broken or if it’s half-repaired, and hope is a scary concept when life has been full of false starts and crushing disappointments.”

~Addie Zierman

The setting was typical and familiar–a small church on a quiet street in an urban neighborhood, family members assembled along with friends of the deceased as well as the decedent’s family, and a sampling of ministers that know by heart the ins and outs of just such moments in time. Most gathered to remember a long life well lived. I joined them in order to honor a friend who was also the son of the woman that had passed. Somewhere in the mix of singing and testifying and Scripture reading came the prayer for comfort by one of the clergy present, evidently chosen for the task because he had known the woman for many years. He spoke as much to the family as he did to God, but he said a curious thing in the portion of his prayer addressed to the Father: “If you drop something and break it, you meant to break it, because you can surely drop it without breaking it.”

Broken on purpose or broken for a purpose, we are all damaged goods; the critical decision of life surrounds who we allow to put us back together and according to what pattern. It is good to think about our own raggedness, not just in broad strokes that we are accustomed to doing on the rare occasion when something rattles us about ourselves, but in exhausting detail like an archeologist dusting off and tagging ancient artifacts rescued from a dig. Like detecting dirt hiding in folds of skin that are prominent but no longer useful, we approach our task of remembering so that we may relinquish all our broken pieces, not in the effort to become a different person but to morph back into the individual we were created to be in the first place. Brokenness is a gift. Fermentation is a process of quiet turmoil; chaos appears to rule in-between the crushing and leavening, but the outcome when guided by a master vintner can be beautiful. This is especially difficult for those (like myself) who abhor chaos, preferring sameness, routine, predictability. I actually apologize frequently to my wife for being so boring. She smiles, assures me I’m not, and I go on being dull–Jan Karon’s Father Tim in real life. The joy of living is in risking confession, acknowledging in honest detail the cracks in our pots and then allowing the Potter to recast us into what he had in mind to begin with.

“Live every day as if it were going to be your last; for one day you’re sure to be right.”~ Harry Harbord Morant

A not-so-funny thing happened on my way to work. The morning began with promise; I awoke early and was already well prepared for an important luncheon appointment set to take place later that day. I was rested, my mind seemed sharp, and, on top of everything else, I was having a good hair day. Those only come around once every month or two, so I’ve learned to make the most of them when they do. As I headed down the hall to breakfast, I felt at my best, ready to take on the world. 

My sweet wife prepared breakfast for me as she frequently does, so I sat down to a plate of oat grain toast with butter and a glass of orange juice. We held hands, offered thanks to God, and with my mind on what lay ahead, I hastily took a bite of toast. It was in that moment my day took a wicked turn. As I swallowed, I could tell something wasn’t quite right, so I quietly stood, walked to the kitchen door, and stepped outside into the grassy space between our house and carport. I began to cough without a great sense of urgency, thinking to easily rid myself of the errant piece of bread, but the more I struggled to get it up, the deeper it seemed to lodge in my windpipe. Swallowing is not as simple as it seems. The act of swallowing involves more than 30 different muscles in and around the throat that spring into action in less than one second. First, you have to chew food down to a size you know you can swallow, and then your tongue pushes it into the back of the throat, where it has two “pipe” options: the esophagus and the trachea. When somebody feels like something went down the wrong pipe, it usually means that it went into his or her trachea. Panic seized as I realized midst my gagging that I could not breathe. Perhaps I had crudely stumbled on the origin of the phrase “he’s toast.” Having served a number of years as a missionary in Africa and India, enduring more than my share of life threatening events, all I could think of at that moment was that I was strangling on toast, for God’s sake. 

After an embarrassing ordeal, the small particles of bread finally gave way, and I was able once again to breathe. My dignity having gone the way of the toast, I walked back inside, apologized to my wife for the commotion, gathered what I needed for my appointment, and exited stage left. I climbed into my SUV and drove down our lane and onto Flat Rock Road, angry at myself and more than a little shaken by the ordeal. I turned on the radio for distraction, but the lyrics I heard next brought me to tears: 

“Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down; here I am to say that you’re my God…”  

To be completely honest, I wept. “They (tears) are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next” (Buechner). I had been confronted by the fragile nature of this life, remembering before it was too late that God is all that really matters, and that worship is as much preparation for dying as it is a way of living. What I do is important, but in the end, the value of my life will be measured not by how much I’ve done, but by how well I have loved Him. Every breath is an invitation to love. I am not merely spending time in these common moments of adoration; I am investing in eternity.

“Ash Wednesday is full of joy…The source of all sorrow is the illusion that of ourselves we are anything but dust.” ~Thomas Merton

What good are ashes? Peculiar at best is this imposition of mealy black crosses on foreheads in the name of penitence. Taken at face value (pun intended), this may be one of the oddest expressions of Christianity extant, ranking up there with white smoke signaling another pontiff elected. Again I ask, what good are ashes in a world that condones war, winks at poverty, denies slavery, allows ignorance, and fosters fear? It would seem that we have more important matters with which to occupy our churches, but Lenten ashes have stood the test of time because of their powerful visual contrast to our culture’s obsession with more, more of everything, more of anything. Ashes remind that brokenness is the prerequisite to anything of spiritual value. I turn to Christ during Lent because I remember what it’s like to be me. In brokenness I find healing and in grieving I am qualified to rejoice. Pablo Neruda, that magnificent poet of Chile in the twentieth century, wrote: “Let us uncork all our bottled up happiness.” On Ash Wednesday we begin to remember where we put it. Happiness is hiding behind each splintered relationship, crouching just there in distended shadows of the towering twins regret and remorse. As we identify the origins of our pain and contemplate the consequences of our rebellion against the Grace-maker, forgiveness comes in waves. Small consolations followed by expanding relief and, ultimately, a crescendo of restoration.

Great wisdom from my favorite contemporary author…

English-speaking tourists abroad are inclined to believe that if only they speak English loudly and distinctly and slowly enough, the natives will know what’s being said even though they don’t understand a single word of the language.

Preachers often make the same mistake. They believe that if only they speak the ancient verities loudly and distinctly and slowly enough, their congregations will understand them.

Unfortunately, the only language people really understand is their own language, and unless preachers are prepared to translate the ancient verities into it, they might as well save their breath.

~ Frederick Buechner, originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

The voice on the other end of the conversation asked innocently, “Where are you?” My flight had just landed in Waco, and I was en route to home following an extended business trip out of state. I gave our ETA, and our daughter proceeded to explain her question. She told us that our grandson was waiting for us at the entrance to the private lane that leads to our home, and described my namesake (Joshua Dane) as both adorable and pathetic. Josh and I enjoy a special connection, and evidently, he had gone to great lengths in preparing for my homecoming, preparation that included crafting and decorating a cardboard box to herald my return. 

We learned that Josh had taken two discarded cardboard boxes and combined them into one larger one in order to create what he called a ‘golf box.’ He then decorated it in his own, shall we say, “unique” handwriting. As he carried it down the long lane, the box collapsed. He was close to meltdown as his mother helped him frantically tape it back together, then watched him drag it behind him down the caliche path as fast as his legs would allow. When we arrived, Josh proudly displayed his creation, complete with emergency tape reinforcements. Josh had worked feverishly to make the box be just so, but never lost sight of his goal–namely, me. 

Beware the danger of pitting holiness versus Him. “We are apt to make sanctification the end-all of our preaching. Paul alludes to personal experience by way of illustration, never as the end of the matter” (Oswald Chambers). Pursue Christ. When He shines a spotlight on something that needs correcting, respond to Him. Always to Him. When He nudges you into course correction, follow Him. Never lose Him in the serving or when attempting to follow His ways. Helen Keller said, “Blindness separates people from things,” but when giving undue attention to personal performance, we lose sight of and separate ourselves from Who matters most. “In the life overflowing in service for others we find God’s deep fountain spilling over the spring to find outlet in rivers of living water that bless and save the world around us” (A. B. Simpson). The whole beautiful ordeal reminds that what matters most in the end is not our beautiful box, but our embrace that speaks of reckless love. The more we make of Christ, the more we resemble Him in the process.  

 

“Come thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.”

I’m seated in a white wooden rocker early Saturday morning, gently rocking back and forth to the rhythm of the grand piano held captive by a white haired artist recalling classic movie themes a mere twenty feet away. By all appearance and sound, one would think I’m easing into Saturday from a relaxed rural setting; instead, I’m sitting on the edge of a congested walkway between the ‘B’ and ‘C’ concourses of Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. The music and motion are both so pleasant that I could slide naturally into a pre-flight nap if not for the cell phone chatter, arguing children, and irregular clacking of someone’s broken wheel as they tug their carry on behind them like a hay wagon. I could install the earphones I keep strategically poised in a front pocket of my own carry on for moments just like this, but ignoring the cacophony would mean missing the live music that beckons from the periphery opposite the chaos in between.

Spiritual formation is nothing more, but certainly nothing less, than doggedly filtering out distraction. God speaks without my asking; my role is distinguishing His voice from the competing clatter. Such filtering is a cumulative effort. Recognizing Him now, requires a heart that is already bent toward Him like a heavily surrounded hardwood strains toward the sun. I foster the leaning through Scripture reading and scriptural meditation, encountering Creator in creation, and when representing Him to the hollow eyed ‘least of these.’ His melody is discernible above the base line of circumstance, but voice recognition requires familiarity. Relationship changes everything.

“I will give it to your descendants. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” Deu 34:4

The sandal’s leather sole slipped, and for an agonizing moment he feared his climb would end in rough descent back down the steep grade. In response, his staff, carved years ago from an ashur tree, bit hard between two large rocks, enabling the other sandal to find purchase on the mountain’s demanding surface. Age was not the culprit; in fact, at one hundred and twenty years old he could still outlast most of the younger men when it came to grueling treks through uninhabitable wilderness. He had proven as much over the past forty odd years. It was the anticipation of what lay ahead that pushed him upward at a pace that strained muscle and sinew to the breaking point. There was no time to waste. If this was to be the end, he intended to make the most of it. The others did not know, else they would have attempted to dissuade him from the climb and convince him that he had heard wrongly. Perhaps he had misunderstood. After all he had done, it couldn’t end this way. He had to admit the disappointment threatened to squeeze every last ounce of joy from his heart like the boulders he had seen crush everything in their path during a rockslide. 

He paused and fought to regain his breath against the drain of ascent and altitude; it was then that he realized he had reached his goal. Atop Pisgah, the horizon spread before him in panoramic fashion–from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho. He could see all the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean. Then he heard a familiar voice speak. At times it had sounded to him like the cataracts of the Nile; in other moments he strained to recognize it, not unlike a child pausing and leaning into the wind to detect a parent’s distant call. “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” A lesser man would have cowered and pleaded, but he was prepared for just such a time as this. In the place of resignation, he found resolve; instead of fear, he knew rest. The quest would not end with him; he had equipped a younger and more gifted man to lead in his stead.

There is a sense in which each of us sees but never crosses over. We cannot finish what we start, others must do it for us. Each of us is expected to entrust our stories into those we leave behind, those who will imitate us, follow us, exceed us.

“Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him.” Deu 34:9

There was nothing magical about this transference. It was not mystical or supernatural. Joshua was filled with wisdom exactly because Moses had poured into him all that he had learned from the school of hard knocks and all he had received by means of divine revelation. The aged prophet knew that eventually his end would come, and the future of God’s people hung on what he left behind. The future of our people hangs on what we leave behind.

“We belong to a generation that wants to see the results of our work. We want to be productive and see with our own eyes what we have made. But that is not the way of God’s Kingdom. Often our witness for God does not lead to tangible results. Jesus himself died as a failure on a cross. There was no success there to be proud of. Still, the fruitfulness of Jesus’ life is beyond any human measure. As faithful witnesses of Jesus we have to trust that our lives too will be fruitful, even though we cannot see their fruit. The fruit of our lives may be visible only to those who live after us” (Henri Nouwen).