Author: danefowlkes

Who would have guessed that a billboard in Waco, Texas, and a life and death decision in Colorado would be related? The sign at Waco Drive and Lake Air declares: “Despite the circumstances, Mary and Joseph chose life.” I saw the billboard on the same day I read the headline: “Mom dies during childbirth to save ‘miracle’ baby’s life.” Both messages refer to women who wore their faith on their sleeve, defying appearances and the odds.

Karisa Bugal of Aurora, Colorado, was in a hospital delivery room on November 3, excited to welcome her son, Declan, into the world. It was then that tragedy struck. Karisa learned that she had an extremely rare condition called amniotic fluid embolism. The condition happens when protective fluid around the baby escapes into the rest of the mother’s body, which leads to a breakdown of her organs. Running out of time, she was faced with a choice: allow doctors to perform surgery that would save her own life while endangering Declan, or have them perform a cesarean that would save Declan’s life but likely end her own. She chose the latter. Her physician reported that Karisa was physically able to ask only one question after surgery: “How big is he?” She later passed away. Karisa was set to celebrate her eighth wedding anniversary with husband Wes two days later, closely followed by her thirty fifth birthday. Wes said he doesn’t yet know how he will tell the story to their newborn son and his older sister, but he’ll find a way when the time is right.

Mary’s story of courageous obedience demands to be told as well. Go tell it on the mountain, stand up and shout it to the four winds, bend over and beat it out on talking drums, use whatever means available, just find a way to broadcast the news. Mary chose life.

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.”(‭Matthew‬ ‭1‬:‭18‬, KJV)

“Then said Mary unto the angel, ‘How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? ‘ And the angel answered and said unto her, ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible.’ And Mary said, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.’ And the angel departed from her. ” (‭Luke‬ ‭1‬:‭34-38‬, KJV)

Red Oaks on the sunrise side of our house are losing their struggle against a stiff north wind, the elms having given up the fight a few weeks ago. Kimberly Queens are nestled warmly in the greenhouse next to Foxtail and Bird’s Nest Ferns, grape vines, and roses, gladly taking refuge from freezing temperatures. Tree fatigue is everywhere; leaves fall like amber, orange and purple snow. My least favorite tree makes the biggest soiree of it, and to this day I can’t imagine why the Creator dreamed up Sweet Gums, replete with prickly balls that somehow always find their way beneath my feet. Fall foliage is its one almost-redeeming attribute.

There is something oddly warming about this chilly transition. Leaves die but do not call attention to the dying. Autumn brushes them beautiful before winter robs everything of pigment, leaving me with hope for the same before my own demise. The time is too fast approaching when color will fade in more than my hair and I become brittle and broken; until then allow me the splendor of this moment. Permit me the realization of wishes, the scratching off of bucket lists, the jubilance of self-expression, the consolation of completion. Color my own transition to winter beautiful, not for the sake of attracting admirers but for the fame of God’s renown. Dylan Thomas misunderstood seasons: go gentle into that good night, and never rage against the dying of the light. Ours is to reflect to the end the grace that makes each moment a beginning.

“It is a fierce game I have joined because it is being played anyway, a game of both skill and chance, played against an unseen adversary–the conditions of time–in which the payoffs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment, might as well come to me as anyone else. I stake the time I’m grateful to have, the energies I’m glad to direct. (Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”)

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;” (‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3‬:‭1-3‬, KJV)

Speaking to a group of graduate students this week, I shared what I consider to be one of the most important statements in Scripture: “David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them” (Psalm 78:70-72, NIV). God develops individuals over a lifetime, and these verses form the foundation for making the most of that lifelong process: The key to effective personal formation is balance. According to what we read in Psalm 78, David was a great leader because he maintained balance between personhood (“integrity of heart”) and performance (“skillful hands”). To tip the scales too much in either direction is to court disaster.

Life is a perpetual balancing act. Granted, that is a rather broad generalization, but one based on the evidence of Scripture and the narrow perspective of personal observation and experience: A daughter balancing on the precipice of her senior year in high school. Another inching her way into adulthood with every choice made and bill paid. Still another daughter adjusting to an expanding household that now includes a two-year-old foster son. A new friend struggling to forge a life with family outside of a jail cell. A seriously aging parent perched precariously between sanity and senility. It’s as if each of us tiptoe along a tightrope, securely in place and upright as long as we give as much attention to who we are as we do to what we do. Introspection is the necessary companion to performance; likewise, wise meditation always leads to effective action. Don’t permit paralysis, but never neglect growth of your own character perched atop the high wire.

“Therefore, with humility, set aside all moral filth and the growth of wickedness, and welcome the word planted deep inside you—the very word that is able to save you. You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do. If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.” (James 1:21-27 CEB).

What if it truly is a “Black Friday” for you or someone you love? What do you do when it seems impossible to have any hope under present circumstances? The story of George Matheson may help. Matheson was born to privilege. At the University of Glasgow he graduated first in classics, logic, and philosophy. Then, in his twentieth year of life, he became totally blind, but followed God’s call to ministry anyway. Though unable to see anything but darkness, Matheson pastored some of Scotland’s finest and largest churches, wrote books of theology that are still read and cited today, was theologian to Queen Victoria, received numerous honorary doctorates, filled the most prestigious lectureships in the land, and was a fellow of the Royal Society.

This prayer by George Matheson may help you move beyond Black Friday: “My God, I have never thanked thee for my thorn. I have thanked thee a thousand times for my roses, but never once for my thorn. Teach me the glory of my cross, teach me the value of my thorn. Show me that I have climbed to thee by the path of my pain. Show me that my tears have made my rainbows.”

Thorns protecting roses, tears producing rainbows; perhaps I should rethink my problems. As Annie Dillard observes, “You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is required.”

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” (‭Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭28-31‬, KJV)

“He tried to name which of the deadly seven (sins) might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.” I could swap stories of regret ’til the cows come home, but what good would that do? Unless you were born today, each of us has a past to move beyond, but sadly some of us work our way back to the pain all too often. If I’m not careful, I return routinely to be scorched by my past, self-inflicting the hurt of remembering, like my memory of the man who died hating me.

We had been friends, spending more than a few hours together in his jon boat fishing for largemouth in the stump heavy waters of Toledo Bend; beyond that, I was his pastor. Everything changed when a certain church dispute left me standing on principle but losing a friend. I wouldn’t budge and Encil couldn’t forgive, so he simply left. He would drive his wife to church in an old faded green Dodge pickup, drop her off to sing in the choir, and return to collect Mozelle each Sunday when the service ended. Eventually I moved on, as young pastors are want to do, and lost track of them. Encil never forgot me. A couple of years later I learned that he had been hospitalized for a terminal condition, and decided to go and see him. Perhaps we could bury the hatchet, or at least dull its edge. The moment is imprinted in my memory like a sepia negative. I entered the room and saw Encil lying in bed, facing forward toward a small elevated television screen. His wife was seated between the bed and door, and upon recognizing me she stood and approached. As I began to speak softly to her, he turned in bed and faced the wall away from me. Mozelle said she thought it best for me to leave. I did, and learned a short time later that he had passed. Encil died hating me, and I’ve spent the past thirty years contemplating how I would rewrite the ending if I could.

Regret is the enemy of peace. Arthur Miller writes, “Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets,” but he is wrong. Regret may be inevitable, yet it need not be the last word. Healing is available to every intrepid heart. It takes courage to own up to one’s past and take responsibility for it, then to embrace God’s forgiveness and extend the same to others. Expressing gratitude for God and every other person you can think of is no mere psychological ploy; genuine thankfulness is not tricking myself or God into granting peace. Gratitude today heals my hurt from yesterday and qualifies me for joy tomorrow. Thanksgiving is the shortest road to healing.

“For godly grief and the pain God is permitted to direct, produce a repentance that leads and contributes to salvation and deliverance from evil, and it never brings regret; but worldly grief (the hopeless sorrow that is characteristic of the pagan world) is deadly [breeding and ending in death].” (2 Corinthians‬ ‭7‬:‭10‬, Amplified)

What if God is uninterested in my happiness but eternally committed to my Christlikeness? The place of personal happiness is a current topic of hot debate in the aftermath of some comments by a high profile personality (should I say “celebrity”?) in Houston recently. Yesterday’s headline from the Houston Chronicle: “Christians berate Victoria Osteen’s ‘cheap Christianity.'” The article goes on to say that Lakewood church’s Victoria Osteen is at the center of a social media storm after daring to suggest that people should “obey” God because it will make them happy. Standing beside her husband Joel, Mrs. Osteen says, “Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy.” If that doesn’t get your attention, her next comment should. “When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy.” In response to the controversy swirling around her comments, Mrs. Osteen issued a statement Friday saying she stood by what she said and accused critics of being “ridiculous.”

I’ll never forget sitting with wide- eyed naïveté in missionary orientation more than twenty years ago, subconsciously convinced of my own invincibility and God’s commitment to my indestructibility. I’ll also always remember the jarring opening statement by one of the orientation speakers. Maurice Graham, Southern Baptist missionary to Kuwait, was one of several Americans held hostage during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990. His release came on December 9, the day Southern Baptists had been asked to pray specifically for Graham’s release. He stood before all of us wet-behind-the-ears would-be missionaries and said, “God is not concerned about your personal comfort. He is committed to His glory.” He went on to describe his terrible ordeal in detail, and for the first time that I can remember, the world shifted slightly away from me as its axis. I have wrestled with Graham’s statement many times since then, and each time my center moves a little more in a God’s direction.

Scripture is full of reassurances that God knows us, loves us, and desires for each of us an abundant life (John 10:10), but is this abundance tied to our own happiness, or is it much more connected to joy? Happiness is a momentary emotion based on an ever-shifting set of circumstances. Joy is an enduring character trait forged on the unchanging standard of the Incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ. Joy consists of the grand abundance of facing every circumstance with the character of Christ. “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks” (Phillips Brooks). I believe Maurice Graham got it right, and only hope that I have the strength of character necessary to embrace abundance over against the tempting self-serving lure of transient happiness.

“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9, NIV)

Majimboism is a noun familiar to all residents of East Africa, a Swahili term that officially depicts a system that was intended to protect local rights, especially those connected to land. In the extreme, majimboism is code for certain areas of the country to be reserved for specific ethnic groups, fueling the kind of ethnic cleansing that has swept across the savannas and highlands of eastern Africa for years. It has become a household word that means simply tribalism, although there’s nothing simple about the way it’s played out. From one end of the spectrum to the other, political stalemate to genocide, much of the unrest in Africa may be laid at its root, and when the root is laid bare, such thinking reveals an obvious pattern: I choose the worst in my people over the best about anyone else, simply because they’re ‘my people.’

I have always expected more from the land of the free and home of the brave. “I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth” (John Adams). Use whatever word you like from whatever language you prefer, the result is the same. Life viewed through the lens of any color, distorts reality and prejudices decision-making.

Many years ago–38 to be exact– I made a commitment to God and myself with mostly good intentions (I’m unwilling to claim that I’m immune from a selfish motivation here and there). I called that decisive moment “surrendering to God’s call to the ministry” and received profuse affirmation from my faith community and family. Again I’ll say that my motives were mostly pure and that I was using vocabulary that was common to the teaching of my church. All these years later I understand the fallacy of much of what I expressed that day and believed in the years that followed.

First, the idea of “surrendering” carries with it the twin acts of forsaking and relinquishing. In my 16 year-old mind, I was turning my back on everything I enjoyed and was good at in order to drag through life the horrible burden of serving Christ. Somehow my ministerial penance would merit God’s favor. Tragically, no one corrected my thinking and helped me understand that God created each of us for a high purpose and that our living out that purpose includes using every God-granted gift and ability for his glory and kingdom advance, while enjoying the adventure of doing so. Instead of surrender, it was more akin to a grand blip on the EKG of discipleship. The Creator intends fulfillment, not rejection.

Second, my scope of understanding “calling” was much too sterile. Somehow I had reached that tender age believing that a divine call was hoarded by those who served visibly in churches as pastors or in foreign lands as missionaries. Certainly only church leaders of the highest profile were the ones carrying out the “high calling.” No one helped me understand the threefold aspect of call as presented clearly in Scripture: every believer is called to salvation, every believer is called to Christlikeness, and every believer is called to ministry–to live out a vocation–doing whatever they do with a strong sense of divine directive. I succumbed to what I now call the “heresy of the definite article.” I was mistaken in accepting and attempting to practice pastoral ministry as “the” ministry in the church. Such a mentality leads to anemic churches and burned out pastors. A superman complex may produce adrenaline highs, but the end result is a low ebb of ministry and even lower trough of longterm spiritual impotence. Rather than relying on what one minister can do, God intends every believer to minister according to their various spiritual gifts. Frank Tillapaugh was correct many years ago when he called this interpretation “unleashing the church.”

I am older now and, I hope, not only wiser but better understanding of what God was doing in my life 38 years ago and what he continues to do today. Yes, I was-am-and will be “called” by God to live out a divine purpose. And so are you. So is each of us that follow Christ as Lord.

Every day matters. Our daily challenge is to choose what matters most. To be completely honest, that choice has changed for me over the years. I’ve often wrestled with the inclination to lose sight of the value of this moment while straining to predict the next and strategize accordingly. What I’m learning as I enter my senior years is that if we knew what tomorrow held, we’d never realize the potential of today. Grace is now and grace is here; grace is always present tense.

An author that I’m just now getting to know has something helpful to say about this present tense narrative of grace: “To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life” (Barbara Brown Taylor).

As long as my focus strays to the later, I’m slightly less inclined to relish this instant. I need deliverance from frenetic obsession with what is to come, and to embrace instead the breathing and feeling and thinking and seeing and knowing– right now. “Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it” (Taylor). There is grace to be had in abundance when I allow myself to detect the weight of God in the mundane and ordinary.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:25-34, NIV)

Today is not our wedding anniversary or my wife’s birthday, but I want to pay tribute to the most inspiring woman I’ve ever known. My wife’s name is Jo, but she should have been named Eve, as I’m convinced that she would have done a much better job as mother of all living things. She exudes femininity adorned by Parisian flair of a French manicure, but just as striking is her undeniable green thumb. Quietly she goes about her business of improving everything she touches– plants, animals and human beings. I’ve watched over the past eight years as she has turned a barren plot of ground in Bosqueville into a bonafide bird sanctuary, deer habitat, and breeding ground for miscellaneous wild creatures, not to mention a sanctuary for more domestic breeds. Jo is the female alter ego of St. Francis, whose statuesque likeness adorns some choice shade just outside our screened-in back porch, a constant reminder that devotion and animal husbandry are compatible here.

Jo’s specialty is rescuing things. Some time back she found an injured nighthawk and kept it alive while imploring me to track down an aviary specialist she had heard lived in our area. Just last month she rescued a young Painted Bunting that she found stunned on the side of the blacktop on her way to work. For several days she attempted to feed and water the beautiful bird from the safety of our greenhouse, and I witnessed her gentle grief when she found it lifeless several mornings later. Her concern over the plight of the few deer in our region prompted us to buy a deer feeder to place behind our house, requiring frequent trips to the feed-store for apple flavored corn. I’ve held her in my arms while she cried over painful choices necessitated by a diseased cat and aging rescued dog. She even worries over feuding hummingbirds and arranges multiple feeders to minimize the dueling. No living creature is outside the scope of her redemptive spirit.

I will never know how this blessing fell to me to have her choose to wear my ring and take my name. I see God’s grace in her eyes every morning, and gladly number myself among those whom she has rescued. Her name will likely never appear in lights, adorn a building, or command the attention of heads of state, but Jo faithfully plants her love into whatever willing soil lies at hand.

“And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.” (Julian of Norwich)

“Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.” (Proverbs 31:25-31, KJV)