Category: The Man (Page 4 of 4)

“Get depressed?” my doctor’s assistant asked me last week.   “Sometimes,” I answered.  Were they afraid I’d commit suicide by chocolate-eating-orgy?  No, it was for the government or insurance or something.  But, yes, I do get depressed.  And sometimes the darkness just won’t lift.

I’m confessing this because I’d like you to know me better and to know why my blogging is sporadic.

I’ve had back troubles for about eight years (I’m 72).  I’ve had two open back surgeries, plus tons of tests and piles of pills.  Not long ago, doctors finally settled on a diagnosis:  primary lateral sclerosis.  It’s a chronic, incurable neurological disease that causes a slowly progressive weakness in voluntary muscle movement in the legs, arms and face. The speed and extent of the progression differs from person to person.  Along with the weakness in my legs and, to a lesser extent in my arms, is an ache in my legs, back and lately neck with changing intensity.  I need a walker to get around.  I planned to enter our county’s annual walker race recently, but it happened to fall on one of my weaker days.  Knowing I’d be lapped by a 91 year old grandmother, I stayed home.  (Just kidding.)

Almost two years ago, PLS compelled me to retire from pastoring.  I still loved what I was doing, but I was treading water (figuratively) and it wasn’t fair to the church to have 48% of a pastor.  (That percentage is quite accurate;  I did much research study.)   After 24 years at this church and 44 years in all, retirement brought a huge change-of-life for me.  I laugh, because one church member encouraged Lois (my wife) and me to take it easy and do some traveling.  The biggest trip I take these days, though, is down my driveway to the mailbox.  I haven’t been able to find a suitable postcard about it to send to my friends.

Blogging has become my means of ministry.  (I’m sure God invented the Internet for bigger reasons, but I’m thankful to be plugged in!)  However, my physical condition prevents me from writing more regularly.  I wish I could do one blog a day.  But there are times it takes me two or three days to write one. 

Depression hits when I let myself get under the weight of it all.  I lay in bed with my (mostly) sound mind thinking of all the things I can do and write.  Then I get up and my body becomes my enemy.  Of course I’ve prayed.  Many have prayed.  But God’s answer has been to give grace in my weakness instead of healing from it.  (My condition is far less harsh than Job’s, but there are days I think he and I could have gotten along quite well.  )

Of course the promise of eternal life in a new righteous creation gives me hope.  Problem is, I’m the kind of guy who prefers pictures before I go to a new place. Instead God has given only the  highly symbolic Book of Revelation word-picture.  I content myself with the new creation being “more than I can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20); however I’d still like to be in better shape in this old creation.  So I keep praying for healing, though, I have to admit, not with any great expectation.  (Please don’t tell anyone I said that.)

My wife and children and grandchildren have been great in their understanding and care.  Yet even that’s hard, since I’m used to being a doer, not a receiver.

Well, I don’t want to rain on your parade any more today.  Just wanted you to know me a bit better and to understand my blogging inconsistency.  I appreciate so much that you read what I write.  I sincerely pray daily that the Lord will use it in your life to cause you to know him better and love him more.

I appreciate your prayers for me.  And I will pray for you.  If you’d like me to pray about a specific need, just reply to a blog.  I won’t publish any prayer request you send; but I will pray.  That will be a much-appreciated expansion of my ministry at this time in my life.

Thank you for the privilege of ministering to you through my writing.  I thank God for the opportunity, and I thank him for you.  May his Word continue to teach us all, and reprove and correct us, and train us in right-living, so we may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16,17).

Grateful for His covenant love and infinite wisdom
Allan

One of the main section-titles of my blog post is “The Man”.  Not “man” as in macho; “man” as in ordinary.  From time to time I’ll write some of my story as an exhibit of God working in an ordinary life.

Sounds pretentious, no?  God at work in ordinary me?  The Bible is full of such miracles.  Remember the little boy Samuel (1 Samuel)?  How about the disciples (the Gospels)?  God—the Holy One, the Creator and Sustainer of everything, the eternal Master of all—really does reveal himself to, in and through ordinary, common, everyday people.  Perhaps the most touching example is this . . .

Little Children and Jesus.

People were bringing little children to [Jesus], for him to touch them. The disciples scolded them,  but when Jesus saw this he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.  In truth I tell you, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’  Then he embraced them, laid his hands on them and gave them his blessing (Mark 10:13-16, NJB).

When the opportunity arose, Jewish parents typically brought their children to a rabbi (teacher) for his blessing.  That seems to be the case here.  Jesus uses the occasion to teach the necessity of welcoming God’s kingdom like a little child.  My point is simpler:  Jesus welcomed little children.  He “embraced them, laid his hands on them and gave them his blessing.”

When I think of this incident, I wonder what became of those little children?  We’re never told, of course.  Did this blessing merely make mothers feel happy and peaceful?  Or did it lead years later to these children believing the Gospel and becoming Jesus-followers themselves?  Were any of these children eventually instrumental in others giving their lives to Jesus?

“Little” Me and Jesus.

I received Jesus into my life when I was ten.  The year was 1953.  The place was “the 500 room” (that’s how many seats it had) in Bethany Church, Paterson, New Jersey.   All Sunday school classes were there to hear a visiting preacher.  At the end of his little sermon he said, “Now let’s have every head bowed and every eye closed.  If you want to ask Jesus into your heart, raise your hand.”  My parents had taken me to Sunday school and church from as early as I could remember.  But I had never made a public decision to follow Jesus.  After a minute, I tentatively raised my hand.

I should have known what was coming next.  “If you raised your hand, come down to the front and we’ll pray.”  My seat (center section, second or third row) seemed like center stage.  No escape.  I had to do it.  I got up from my chair and walked to the front of the platform with about 15 or 20 other kids.   The preacher prayed, then asked us to “repeat after me” some version of “the sinner’s prayer.”

When he sent us back to our seats, I was a bit dazed.  This public thing had driven shy me out of my comfort zone.  Or, was it something more?  Did I really meet Jesus?

I can’t remember now what the following days were like.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t become some sort of little saint.  Didn’t want the Bible more than dessert.  Didn’t count the days until next Sunday like I did for Christmas.  If I had to describe those days, I’d say “same as always.”  So maybe that episode was just socialization.  Or . . . had I really met Jesus?

Three years later I was baptized in water.  I suppose I did it because it was the next step.  This step was down into the water of the baptistery (we inelegantly called it the baptism tank).  I took my position next to our pastor and looked out at the Sunday evening crowd.  I gave my testimony (brief since I had no shady past to confess).  Promised I wanted to follow Jesus.  Was put under and raised.  I’d gone in dry, came out wet.  Did anything else happen?  Since ours was a Pentecostal church, if I had burst out in “other tongues”, the congregation would have erupted in praise.  But my tongue lay silent in my mouth.  Except for feeling wet and relieved, there was no change in me.  So maybe baptism was just a church “rite of passage.”  Or . . . had Jesus been there?

Looking back six decades later. I believe God was beginning to reveal Jesus to me and in me.  Those two events weren’t just socialization or rites of passage.  Jesus was there.  My experiences, though far less dramatic, were just as real as an alcoholic or a wife-abuser turning his life over to Jesus.

Small Beginnings.

Holy moments with Jesus often come in ordinary places.  And may even outwardly seem insignificant.  Take Sunday school, for example.  You know how it goes.  You’ve got a handful of youngsters who each drank a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew for breakfast.  They can’t sit still.  Can’t stop spouting off-the-subject stuff.  Can’t stop acting silly.  When the class ends, you fall into a chair and bemoan the wasted hour.  But it probably wasn’t wasted.  Sure, you didn’t plant your whole package of seeds, but a few fell threw that Mountain Dew.  And God the Holy Spirit will use them.

So when we think of our children, we’d be wise to remember God’s work in their lives often starts small, as it did in mine.  And we’d be especially wise to remember this prophetic admonition from a different situation but applicable to ours . . .

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin . . . ” (Zechariah 4:10a)