11/23/17
Hey Dana
It’s Thanksgiving Day and we’re in
Wisconsin at Carol’s son’s house. All of Carol’s family is here (except for one
grandson serving in the Marines and deployed to the Asia Pacific region.), or
on the way, for Thanksgiving dinner—four generations: Carol, children,
grandchildren, and now great grandchild.
Their home is a very cute, Cape Cod
like house, but it’s not built for 19 people, 4 dogs, and 1 cat. There are at
least 11 vehicles in the large parking area with licenses from California to Pennsylvania and states in-between. It’s
just what people think about when they think of family coming home for the
holidays. Lynda has already made, from
scratch, a cherry pie with latticed top, a pumpkin pie, and an apple kuchen. The
dinner today will be a combination of vegan and traditional, as well as gluten
free and non gluten free (with two chickens and a brisket rather than turkey).
You would like Jim and Lynda. They
are back-to-the-land sort of people—growing much of their own food, including
fruit and vegetables, chickens (Australorp breed) which lay brown eggs, and
white geese. She also puts up jellies and jams. They live out in the country on
thirty plus acres, with very few neighbors. And on Thanksgiving night, on
television, we watched one of Jim’s favorite shows, on the History Channel,
“Forged in Fire,” about bladesmiths who compete making edged weapons for a
$10,000.00 prize.
I really admire Lynda that she can
accommodate this many people with three or four different food tracks (vegan,
non-dairy, regular, and I don’t know what all else), the dogs, and four
generations and friends all swarming throughout her home without going bonkers.
She’s got a dinner menu, in addition to a veggie tray, five kinds of cheese
(this is Wisconsin), three dips, multicolored cherry tomatoes, multiple vegan
and gluten free and regular chips and crackers.
Last night, Wednesday, after the
first wave of families arrived, some of us watched the movie “Wonder Woman.”
This movie received almost, universally, positive reviews. One of my young
grandchildren stayed up to watch it. She had a number of questions about the
movie (especially when it got into the World War I scenes and the finale scene
between Wonder Woman, and the English Lord who had been masquerading as Ares,
the god of war). It is a classic good vs evil movie where good triumphs in the
end, but only after a bone crunching fight to the death. (I used to read the DC
Comic Wonder Woman, along with the Flash,
Green Lantern, and others of this genre
comics as a kid. I guess they have now
evolved into the Justice League of America.)
Wonder Woman, after believing that
love can be victorious and that good wins, is confronted with the horrors of
war and how both civilians and soldiers suffer and die. She discards her
civilian clothes, and then, in her Wonder Woman “uniform” charges across the
battlefield which starts a rout against the Germans, and then she almost
single-handedly takes a Belgium town held by the Germans, and finally at a
German munitions factory, fights Ares (really the devil personified) to a final
victory of good over evil.
My young granddaughter was asking
questions about the war, why people are not only bad, but want to see evil prevail, and finally, when after an
Armageddon-type fight, good finally
prevails. I said to her about the Wonder Woman victory, this will be how God
and Jesus will finally prevail at the end.
So at the dining room table amongst all
this familial, holiday chaos, I started to read Revival by Martyn
Lloyd-Jones. In Chapter 13, “Prayer and
Revival,” I was reading how in the history of revivals, according to
Lloyd-Jones, God often uses one man or a small group to help bring, or be the
conduit for the Holy Spirit, revival. He writes about Luther, Wycliffe, John
Huss, Jeremiah Lanphier, James McQuilken or Humphrey Jones (see page 163).
Specifically, writing about Luther, he says,
And it so
burdened him that he was led to do something about it (my comment—feel
the Holy Spirit’s burden to begin praying, and then they actually pray). Just one man, and through that one man,
God sent that mighty movement into the Church.
I must confess that this is taking
me back to our recent private communication about our blog, repetition of
subjects, and continuing or stopping. As a former, professional writer, I am
geared to publication and quantity readership, i.e. numbers, as well as
quality, or value.. In the critique group to which I belonged, I was the only
person who regularly wrote for secular publications, rather than writing for just God, as most of the Christian
writers said they were doing. So I have been frustrated by the small number of
our readership.
So that is why when further down on
page 163, Lloyd-Jones continues his thought on the importance of one man, one
person, to be used by God to Bring revival, I was convicted. He wrote
I dare not pass
lightly over a point like this because somebody reading this book (or this
blog), whom I do not know, may be the
person that God is going to use. And that sort of thing can only happen in the
Christian Church....The world looks to the leaders and the great people, but
God, as the Apostle Paul say in 1 Corinthians is constantly confounding the
wise by taking hold of the foolish. He ‘brings to nought the things that are’, by
using the things that are not. It may be anybody. There are no rules about this
matter.
So this is why what Lloyd-Jones wrote
is so scolding. He challenges the Church (and me) to look past the world’s view
of what and who is important. The world looks to the handsome, the well-known,
the popular, the important, the famous, the successful, the bottom line. God
doesn’t. This is a hard concept for me to grasp. But Lloyd-Jones is very
direct, straight forward, in his attitude.
11/27/17
Hey
Dana
I’m back in PA after an “easy” 12
hour drive from Chicagoland. Easy in comparison to the grueling 13 plus hour
drive in rain storms and low visibility, on the way out.
A buddy, a very committed Christian,
stopped by the house today. I had to take time off to get some things done
after being out of town for a week. I hadn’t seen him in about a month. We were
sharing on numerous topics, many of them dealing with the church. He and his
family several years ago went through a very trying time at his former church. He
has since attended several churches in this region, and is now looking intently
at why he has been so committed to regular church attendance in the past.
He and his family have begun to attend more on-line services than put up with
“the hour and fifteen legalized format church” of today. During our conversation, he made this distressing,
yet almost humorous, statement, “I am an American Christian attempting to recover
from American Christianity.”
Your
friend
John
