Well, this isn’t really going to be a blog…I’m way too jetlagged to say anything very intelligent…I’m just checking in. Peri and I are sitting by the pool at the Hilton Queen of Sheba Hotel on the Red Sea in Eilat, Israel waiting for our room to get ready. We’ve been traveling for 22 hours and we’re a little bit tired, but happy. I didn’t sleep on the plane so I’ve been up for…a long time (I’m too tired to figure it out), and since it’s now 3:00 in the afternoon on Tuesday here, I need to stay up till this evening.

Traveler’s Tale: After flying all night from New York to Tel Aviv we transferred to the domestic airport to catch our flight to Eilat. At the domestic airport we were informed by Israeli security that our travel itinerary is a bit unusual (New York…Tel Aviv…Eliat…Egypt…Eliat…Tel Aviv…Athens…Tel Aviv) so they needed to give us a bit extra scrutiny. This entailed 45 minutes of questioning. No kidding. One of the problems was I couldn’t convince them that I was a pastor. How about that? They wanted some sort of clergy photo identity card. Hahaha!! As if I would have something like that. And we didn’t have anything with us…no church bulletins or brochures or anything. At one point I pulled out my well-worn, much underlined and annotated bible and tried to convince them that this had to be the bible of a pastor. Finally a phone call to our Israeli tour operator, Gadi Cohen, cleared things up. It was funny. 25 years of full-time pastoral ministry and I couldn’t convince Israeli security that I was a pastor!

Well, tomorrow morning we leave the hotel at 7:30 to cross the border into Egypt and through the Sinai desert to the Mountain of God (Mount Horeb/Sinai). I have an appointment, you know.

BZ

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.” So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. -Exodus 3:1-7

Peri and I are sitting in the lounge at Newark airport getting ready to board our all night flight to Tel Aviv. We are celebrating 25 years of fulltime ministry with a trip to Israel and Greece and an excursion into the Sinai penisula of Egypt so that we can climb Mount Sinai. Thursday is the 32nd anniversary of my salvation — when as a 15 year old boy I met Jesus in a most dramatic way. At 2:00 A.M. on that day Peri and will begin the three hour climb to the summit of Sinai. Why are we doing this? I have a word from God:

Be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself to Me there on the top of the mountain…Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the LORD. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. (Exodus 34:2 & 10)

I have made Mount Siani on November 9 a point of faith where I will meet with God.

God says to be there in the morning, so I will. That’s why we’re leaving at 2:00 AM…so we can be on the summit at sunrise.

I will again dedicate my life to serving God and prepare for the next 25 years.

This is the promise of God: That he will do a unique thing among us (Word of Life) that will be marvelous and awesome. Amen!

After we climb down from Sinai, we plan to visit St. Catherine’s Monastery where five worship services a day have been conducted without fail for nearly 1,500 years!

We will then have a few days in Greece where I am particularly interested in visiting some of the sites connected with the ministry of Paul, before returning to Tel Aviv to meet our group for our 9th tour of Israel.

I believe that over the next couple weeks I will encounter some significant moments and places in my spiritual pilgrimage.

I am preparing for 2007 and the next 25 years of ministry!

On the flight from KCI to NYC I read Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship by N.T. Wright. Some good stuff.

I’m excited about the next 17 days…and the next 25 years.

Stay on the journey.

BZ

This is too long to be a blog. So, if you like, print it out and pretend it’s something else. A log maybe.

This is my gleanings from chapter 8 of The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert Louis Wilken. This chapter deals with Augustine’s masterpiece, “The City of God“ — probably the most influential book aside from the Bible in Christian history.

This blog (log) reflects some of my thinking of late regarding the church, the state, politics and the Blessed Hope.

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The City of God can be read as a Christian response to Plato’s Republic. One might have expected Augustine to outline his ideal city, contrasting the city of God with the kind of commonwealth envisioned by Plato. But Augustine does not present a model city, a society human beings should strive to build in this world. His city of God is not an ideal but an actual city, a living community to which one belongs. In a telling phrase in one of his letters, he refers to the city of God as a city one enters, that is, a society of which one becomes a part. Though the life of the city of God is oriented toward the future, it is a social and religious fact. In the very first sentence of the City of God Augustine says that he has taken upon himself the task of “defending the glorious city of God against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of that city.”

The City of God, then, is not the defense of an idea or a set of beliefs, but rather a defense of a community that occupies space and exists in time, an ordered, purposeful gathering of human beings with a distinctive way of life. The most characteristic feature of the city of God is that it worships the one true God. Augustine never defines the city of God outright, but it is closely identified with the church. The city of God is more than the church because it includes the angels and the saints who have gone before, but there can be no talk of the city of God without the church.

His aim in the City of God is to interpret Christianity to the Romans, and with that goal in mind to explain this new community, this other city. Christ’s coming joined people in a more enduring fellowship than the institutions or associations of civil society. Hence Augustine rests his argument not on political theory but on an understanding of the nature of the community whose founder is Christ.

The Life of the Saints Is Social

Christian thinking about the city of God begins with the Bible. To introduce the theme of his book Augustine cites three passages, all from the Psalms: “Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God” (Ps. 87:3); “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God” (Ps. 48:1); and “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of our God” (Ps. 46:4). All three of these passages are speaking about Jerusalem, the ancient city of Jewish history, and the city where Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead, a place one can locate on a map. But for Augustine the phrase “city of God” in the Psalms also carried another meaning: it designated a company of men and angels who are united in their love of God. His book is about this city; yet to depict this city Augustine speaks of another city, “the city of this world,” the earthly city, the social and political community that exercises dominion over human beings. The two cities must be discussed in tandem because “in this present transitory world, they are interwoven and mingled with one another.” The citizens of the city of God are also citizens of the earthly city, and conversely, many of the citizens of the earthly city belong to the city of God.

In book 2 he cites Cicero’s De Republica, in which Cicero defines community not as just any association of human beings, but one “united in association by a common sense of law and a community of interest.” The end toward which all human life is directed is peace. “Anyone who joins me,” he says, “in an examination, however slight, of human affairs, and the human nature we all share, recognizes that just as there is no man who does not wish for joy, so there is no man who does not wish for peace.” Even when men go to war their aim is to achieve peace. All our “use of temporal things,” he writes, “is related to the enjoyment of earthly peace in the earthly city.” Peace means order within society: it presupposes law, and it requires justice. Augustine writes, “Peace without justice is not worthy even of the name of peace.”

This peace for which the city of God yearns is a “perfectly ordered and harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God, a peace of enjoying one another in God.” Notice that Augustine’s language is social, and not individualistic. He does not say “fellowship with God,” but enjoying one another in God or “mutual fellowship in God.” Augustine’s controlling metaphor for the new life that God creates is not, for example, being born again, but becoming part of a city and entering into its communal life. Augustine said, “You unite together citizens to citizens so that all are joined together not simply as a social organization but as a family.” Christianity is inescapably social.

Peace can be realized only in community and enjoyed only when all the members of the community share in that good. As always, Augustine rests his discussion on an apt scriptural text, the one found from the Psalms: “Happy is the people whose God is the Lord” (Ps. 144:15). In a thought-provoking passage late in the work he says that “when the city of God reaches the peace of God there will no longer be enmity, no longer discord, and there will be such mutual trust that the thoughts of our mind will lie open to mutual observation.”

Things Pertaining to This Life

Everything that Augustine says about the heavenly city and about the earthly city is related to peace. But peace, as Augustine understands it, can never be fully realized in this life, for the peace that human beings are able to build among themselves is always fragile, unstable, ephemeral. Accordingly, the Scriptures offer no promises concerning peace on this earth. In the Bible, peace is always a matter of hope, and the peace for which the city of God yearns can only be the work of God, not of human hands.

Christians belong to a community of hope whose end lay outside of history. As Saint Paul wrote, “It is in hope that we are saved,” and Augustine commented, “It is in hope that we are made happy.” And as he was fond of putting it, “the church is the city of God on pilgrimage and it lives on the basis of faith.”

A Just Society Serves God

Like other early Christian apologists, Augustine realized that it was not enough to make abstract appeals to transcendent reality, to the god of the philosophers, to a deity that takes no particular form in human life. For Augustine, defense of the worship of the true God could only take the form of a defense of the church, the city of God as it exists on pilgrimage.

The church is a social fact as well as an eschatological sign. It draws its citizens into a shared public life with its distinctive language, rituals, calendar, practices, institutions, architecture, art, music, in short, with its culture.

The church is not an instrument to achieve other ends than fellowship with God. It serves society by being unapologetically itself. The greatest gift the church can give society is a glimpse, however fleeting, of another city, where angels keep eternal festival before the face of God.

The City of God is a book about the church and the God of the Bible. It is only in relation to the church and its destiny that Augustine takes up questions concerning the earthly city. At the end of the City of God Augustine writes:

How great shall be that happiness, which shall be tainted with no evil, which shall lack no good, and which shall afford leisure for the praises of God, who shall be all in all! True peace shall be there, where no one shall suffer either from himself or any other. The reward of virtue shall be God Himself, who gave the virtue, together with the promise of Himself, the best and greatest of all possible promises. For what did He mean when He said, in the words of the prophet, “I shall be their God, and they shall be My people”? Did He not mean, “I shall be the source of their satisfaction; I shall be everything that men can honorably desire; life, health, food, wealth, glory, honor, peace and every blessing”? For that is the correct interpretation of the Apostle’s words, “so that God may be all in all.” God will be the goal of all our longings; and we shall see Him forever; we shall love Him without satiety; we shall praise Him without wearying. This will be the duty, the delight, the activity of all, shared by all who share the life of eternity. There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the Kingdom of which there is no end? Amen.

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Amen! Heaven is Coming!

That’s what I’ll be preaching on tonight…Heaven Is Coming.

My friend from England, Steve Parsons, has a song called Heaven Is Coming. The first part of the song goes like this…

All around the world
There’s a guilty feeling
It’s in the way we live
And everybody knows
As all creation groans
Something’s gotta give

We serve the money man
We give him all we can
But he’s got feet of clay
Well every tide will turn
And only then we learn
That temporary things get washed away

Hold on, Heaven is Coming

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Thy Kingdom come
Thy Will be done
On Earth
As it is in Heaven

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The yearning to escape the noise and smog and madness of modern life
And lose ourselves in a pristine wilderness
Is the echo of Eden resounding in our soul
The grand culmination of Christian faith and hope is
Heaven is Coming!

And our happiness lies in that hope.

Be happy.

Heaven is Coming!

BZ

The Colonel and I caught up with Bob Dylan and the Never Ending Tour Wednesday night at the Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln, Nebraska. What a great artist. A modern day Tennyson, Milton or Shakespeare. Just ask Boston University Humanities professor Christopher Ricks.

Here’s the set list with a few lines from each song…

Absolutely Sweet Marie
To live outside the law you must be honest

Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)
Senor, Senor, do you know where we’re headin’
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?

Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
Now the preacher looked so baffled when I asked him why he dressed
With twenty pounds of headlines stapled to his chest

Ballad of a Thin Man
Something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Rollin’ and Tumblin’
Let’s forgive each other darlin’, let’s go down to the greenwood glen
Let’s put our heads together now, let’s put all old matters to an end

Workingman’s Blues # 2
Now they worry and they hurry and they fuss and they fret
They waste your nights and days
Them I will forget
But you I’ll remember always

Highway 61 Revisited
God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it

‘Till I Fell In Love With You
Now I feel like I’m coming to the end of my way
But I know God is my shield and he won’t lead me astray

Desolation Row
She wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness

Tweedle Dee & Dweedle Dum
Living in the Land of Nod
Trustin’ their fate to the Hands of God

Spirit On The Water
I’m traveling by land
Traveling through the dawn of day
You’re always on my mind
I can’t stay away

Summer Days
Everybody get ready to lift up your glasses and sing
Well, I’m standin’ on the table, I’m proposing a toast to the King

Thunder On The Mountain
Thunder on the mountain rolling to the ground
Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down
Some sweet day I’ll stand beside my King
I wouldn’t betray your love or any other thing

Like A Rolling Stone
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel?

All Along The Watchtower
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

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Little known fact: Dylan wrote All Along The Watchtower after reading the prophecies of Isaiah.

Set a watchman in the watchtower
Let him declare what he sees
Then he cried, A lion, my Lord!
And look, here come a pair of horsemen
Babylon is fallen, is fallen!

~Isaiah 21

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It’s Heaven and Hell at Word of Life this weekend.

Friday Night: Heaven Is Coming

Sunday Morning: Tour of Hell

All glory and power to King Jesus!

BZ

PS

Bonus material (of little interest to most people)…

My current baker’s dozen, one hour zTunes playlist:

1. Heaven Is Coming ~ Steve Parsons (friend from England)

2. Red Morning Light ~ Kings of Leon

3. He Is Coming ~ Lamb

4. Comfort Ye My People ~ Lamb

5. Jonah’s Song ~ Druzkhi (Russian friends)

6. The Man Comes Around ~ Johnny Cash

7. Sound of Melodies ~ Leeland (coming to WOLC 3/21/07)

8. Tears of the Saints ~ Leeland

9. Angelina ~ Bob Dylan

10. Ring Them Bells ~ Bob Dylan

11. Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) ~ Bob Dylan

12. Nettie Moore ~ Bob Dylan

13. Ain’t Talkin’ ~ Bob Dylan

I just heard the song Woodstock. It made me think.

Do your remember Woodstock — the music festival on Max Yasgur’s farm in New York, August 15-18, 1969? I was only ten years old, but I remember it. Even at that young age I knew it was something important. The four day festival, which drew over half a million people, was the defining moment of the Sixties counter culture era.

A little while ago I heard the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version of Woodstock. The song was written by Joni Mitchell after she heard about Woodstock from her boyfriend, Graham Nash. Joni says she wrote the song in tears.

Woodstock
by Joni Mitchell

Well I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
Got to get back to the land
Going to try and get my soul free

We are stardust
We are golden
We are ten billion year old carbon
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel like I’m a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
And I don’t know who I am
But life is for learning

We are stardust
We are golden
We are ten billion year old carbon
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
Riding shotgun in the sky
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust
We are golden
We are caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

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I like that song. It captures a certain kind of yearning. A yearning to get back to the Garden — the Garden of Eden where we can walk with God in the cool of the day.

But it’s a song without any answers…only yearning.

We are stardust. All the elements of physical matter are formed in the “factories” of the stars. But we are more than matter, we are also children of God. And oh how we long to find Him and walk with Him again in the garden. But in the end we are caught in the devil’s bargin. That deal that went down with the devil in the garden of our fall.

Woodstock could not fulfill the hope it evoked. All Woodstock could really offer was sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. And these are nothing more than the standard paltry substitutes for what we are created for: Life in the Garden, life with God.

Most of you have heard of Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Here’s someone you’ve probably never heard of: Bob Ayala. Bob Ayala is a blind singer-songwriter whose work I’ve admired for almost thirty years. He’s not very well known and his older albums are not even available on CD (and that’s a shame). His 1978 album Wood Between The Worlds is one of my favorites (though I haven’t heard it for years…I have it on vinyl, but no turntable). On the title track, Wood Between The Worlds, Bob Ayala points people to the place where the hope of Woodstock can be realized.

Wood Between The Worlds
by Bob Ayala

Swaddled in darkness
Came forth the Light
Greater than the world
He was born in
And clay was the covering
Over the Glory
That was greater than the world
He was born in

Jesus
Jesus

Brought up by a carpenter
He took wood and some nails
And built a bridge between the worlds
And He stretched out upon it
And reached up to Heaven
On the wood between the worlds

There’s blood on the wood between the worlds
That can wash away your sin
There’s blood on the wood between the worlds
That can make your life begin

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The hope of Woodstock: To find our way back to God and the Garden.

The Wood between the Worlds: The way back to God and the Garden.

There are people all around you with the “Woodstock yearning” in their heart. They’ve got to get back to the garden.

Do you know about the wood between the worlds?
Do you know the way back to the garden?

Maybe you can help someone find their way home.

Peace,

BZ

I was asked this question last week:

God is life. God breathed life into us at the beginning. The human race became the living dead in the garden. The good news is this: God, in the form of Jesus, came back for us. Jesus came back that we might have the life of God in us. No one else is coming back — not Buddha, not Mohamed, not Confucius — no one else.

Both the atheist and the Christian are human (which is our common ground). I know Christians have to deal with failed marriages, death of a child, sickness, financial hardships, rebellious children, etc. as I assume atheists do.

What is different about the God life in Christians? It obviously doesn’t keep bad things from happening.

I’m sure I’m missing something obvious.

This was my reply (somewhat expanded for this blog):

The difference is eternal life.

Consider four levels of existence:

Rock: Existence without life.

Tree: Life without awareness.

Bird: Life with awareness.

Human: Life with awareness and aware of it.

The awareness of our awareness is the evidence and perception of the spirit.

Try this experiment: Take a moment and become aware of your surroundings. Now think about your awareness; become aware of your awareness. This second level of awareness is related to your essence as a spiritual being.

As I write this I am looking out a window. I see a large rock. It exists. I see a tree. It is alive. I see a bird. It is alive and aware of both the rock and the tree. I see all three and can take another step and see myself within this framework of existence and eventually this evokes the question of WHY? Why do I exist? Why am I aware? Why am I here?

It is the awareness of our awareness that exposes the vanity of life without a vital relationship with the source of this transcendent awareness (God). Just ask Solomon. Without a relationship with the source of meaning our existence becomes meaningless no matter how aware we are of pleasant surroundings. The only conclusion is that existence is “meaninglessness of meaninglessness, all is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

Without a relationship with the Father of Spirits (the source of both transcendent awareness and meaning), our awareness of awareness eventually becomes tormenting.

This is why awareness of awareness among atheists almost always leads to despair and depression and makes suicide look like the only rational human action. Schopenhauer and Tolstoy understood this. (Tolstoy’s A Confession is a fascinating account of how he came to salvation through a quest for meaning that led him to the brink of suicide and then finally to faith in Christ.)

So what is the difference between the God-life and the God-less life? Life! Real life, true life, abundant life, eternal life, is not good things happening on the outside (though God does bless us); rather, true life is knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. (John 17:3)

Good stuff happening can be the life of a dog. If life is simply having pleasant surroundings and being aware of these pleasant surroundings, but aware of nothing else, well…this can be the life of a dog. And we are made for a higher level of living (as evidenced by the fact that we have the capacity to be aware of our awareness).

As Blaise Pascal said, “the heart of man is a God-shaped void that nothing of this world can fill.”

The difference is that the void, the emptiness, the vanity, the meaninglessness is filled by Jesus Christ.

“And of His fullness we have all received and grace for grace.” (John 1:16)

Of course we must cultivate the inner life to become aware of this fullness. To reduce the God-life to simply good things happening to us is to reduce life to a “happy animal” level. These are the people who are content to choose the blue pill. Their reward is the ignorant bliss of a dumb beast with a full belly. But those who don’t run away from a transcendent awareness are those who choose the red pill of truth.

“You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about? It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” -Morpheus, The Matrix

“If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.” -Jesus (John 8:31-32)

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” -Jesus (John 14:6)

A rock, a tree, a dog can never be truly free because they are incapable of knowing transcendent truth.

The person who is aware of transcendent reality but has no vital relationship with the source of this transcendent reality can never be free from his despair (he can only hope to forget it from time to time).

So humans have three choices:

1. Never cultivate awareness of awareness and live as a stupid animal. Like a happy cow too dumb to ever find any meaning…but hey, at least the grass is green and tasty.

2. Cultivate awareness of awareness without finding the meaning of it all…and despair.

3. Cultivate awareness of awareness and connect with the Father of Spirits through the One who is the way, the truth and the life. This is eternal life. This is the difference.

The extent of the difference is the difference between Heaven and Hell. Although at first the difference may only be perceived as subtle, in eternity the difference becomes infinite.

BZ

Are you familiar with the concept of Divine Providence? The idea that at times God intervenes in our affairs so as to accomplish His purposes? I believe it. To put it another way: Sometimes a coincidence is a “Godincidence.”

Let me tell you a story.

This morning I woke up to a snowstorm in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I preached in Pastor Lee Cummings’ Resurrection Life Church last night and today I was traveling home. Because of the snow my plane was delayed in Kalamazoo. It’s just part of travel. So sat I sat in the “library” better known as the departure gate for three hours reading The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright.

My plane got into Chicago O’Hare more than two hours late, but because flights all over the upper Midwest were delayed, my connecting flight was still there — but scheduled to leave in ten minutes. So I did the O.J. Simpson thing (No, not that!) and ran through the airport (some of you are too young to remember those Hertz commercials). I arrived at gate K-9 (easy to remember) just as the plane was leaving. So I got on the standby list for a flight to Kansas City leaving in two hours and went and to find something to eat.

After my highly nutritious airport meal I arrived at my gate to see if I would be able to get on the flight. When I heard there were eighteen people on standby, I almost gave up and went to the hotel where I had reservations. But I decided to wait it out and see if I would make it. I sat down and went back to The Challenge of Jesus (which to be honest is a bit of challenge to read — I don’t necessarily recommend it).

Now you need to know this about me; when I focus on a book I tend to become almost totally oblivious to things around me (ask Peri). But as I was reading, I smelled India. That’s right I smelled India. I’ve been to India eleven times and India is a very aromatic country and has a certain smell. It’s a good smell, a smell I like, and I always immediately recognize it as India. I looked up from my book and noticed that a man had taken a seat next to me. The moment I looked at him this thought instantly flashed through my mind: This man is from India, he is a pastor and this is his first time to America.

BZ: Pardon me, but where are you from?

Stranger: India.

BZ: What do you do?

Stranger: I’m a pastor.

BZ: Is this your first time to America?

Stranger: Yes, I just arrived an hour ago.

BZ: Welcome to America.

I told my fellow traveler (his name is Premraj Nag) that I had been to India eleven times and would be returning in February to make it an even dozen. He asked me where I’d been in India and I told him I’d been most everywhere. I asked him where he was from. He told me he was from Orissa, his wife was from Bangalore, that he had lived for many years in Bhopal, that he had recently traveled to Delhi to get a visa and that he had flown out of Chennai. I told him I had been to all of those places and related some incidence from each one. He was quite impressed. Remember, I was the first American he had met here. There was no doubt we were meant to meet each other.

It turns out that Premraj was a good friend of Graham Staines, the Australian missionary who was martyred with his sons in Similiguda, Orissa. I told Premraj I had done a pastors conference with P.G. Vargis (and of course he knows of P.G.) in Similiguda earlier this year and that we had chosen that location precisely because it was the site of the Staines’ martyrdom. What a “Godincidence” that I would be the first person he would meet upon arriving in America!

Premraj is attending a conference in Kansas City put on by City Union Mission. I asked him what he is doing after the conference. He said he didn’t know. I asked him where he would be staying, he said he didn’t know, that he was trusting God. I told him not to worry about it, that I would take care of him until he returned to India on the 28th of October. As he was boarding the plane I gave him all the cash I had on me (I’m pretty sure he had next to nothing).

I was the last person on the standby list to make it on the plane. I saw Premraj when we landed at KCI; I helped him find where he needed to go and told him to give me a call after the conference is over. I’m sure you Word of Lifers will get to meet my new friend Premraj sometime later this month.

Providence.

Goodnight.

BZ

Born Again Christianity. It’s a terminology well known in American culture. It’s an alternative name for Evangelicalism. It emphasizes the event that launches a journey with Jesus. I’ve experienced being born again. I know exactly when it happened: November 9, 1974. I was fifteen years old (which seems so much younger than it used to). My encounter with Jesus was so profound that to this day I view my life as either before or after this event. But in giving this blog the title “Born Again Christianity” I’m not talking about the evangelical understanding of conversion, but about the mysterious fact that my Christianity seems to have been born again.

My journey of divine discovery over the past few years has given me new eyes. I see things in a new light. Instead of viewing Christianity as a formulistic program for getting into heaven, I now see Christianity for what it really is: The Kingdom of Heaven.

Unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
-Jesus (John 3:3)

My Christianity has been born again. A metamorphosis that has made my Christianity bigger, more profound, more mysterious and more beautiful.

Like this.

Feel like my soul is beginning to expand
Look into my heart and you will sort of understand
-Bob Dylan (Thunder On The Mountain)

The only time Jesus talked about being born again was during His late night conversation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a good man and an eminant teacher of the Law in the didactic method of the Pharisaic tradition. Coming from his formulistic approach in understanding God’s interaction with man, Nicodemus had a difficult time grasping what Jesus was getting at in talking about being born again. I think we often have the same difficulty. I’ll say this much, to use Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus to teach a step-by-step didactical formula for entering the Kingdom of God is to completely miss the point!

In His encounter with “Nick at Nite” Jesus says,

“Don’t be surprised at my statement that you must be born again. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it’s going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the spirit.” (John 3:7-8, New Living Translation)

The key to understanding what Jesus is saying here is often lost on English speaking readers because we fail to see that in the original language the word for wind and the word for Spirit are the exact same word! So what Jesus said is really this:

“Don’t be surprised at my statement that you must be born again. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it’s going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the wind of God.”

I love to hear the stories of how people come to Jesus. In listening to these stories I’ve noticed that in real life there isn’t much of a formula for how people enter the Kingdom, other than they have a supernatural encounter with Jesus. The truth is we don’t find salvation through a plan, but through a Person.

I like this thought about being born again:

“Being born again of the Spirit is an unmistakable work of God; it’s as mysterious as the wind, as surprising as God Himself. Being born again from above is a perennial, perpetual and eternal beginning — a freshness all the time in thinking, and in talking, and in living. It is the continual surprise of the life of God.” -Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest

Well, anyway, these are some my thoughts.

Here are ten more unrelated thoughts:

1. Fall is here — my favorite season.

2. My mind is in Israel. My body will follow next month.

3. 5767 is going to be a good year.

4. I knew the Chiefs would win yesterday. Even when they were down 14-0. I called the Ty Law interception right before it happened. I really did. Ask Philip.

5. The Pittsburg Steelers aren’t very good. The Oakland Raiders are horrible. (Yeah!)

6. I love the Leeland debut album, Sound of Melodies.

7. I think you are going to be glad I had the foresight to book Leeland to be at Word of Life on March 21.

8. This is a great verse…

Thunder on the mountain, and there’s fires on the moon
A ruckus in the alley and the Son will be here soon
Today’s the day, gonna grab my trombone and blow
Well, there’s hot stuff here and it’s everywhere I go

9. Politics are ridiculous. It’s hard to keep a straight face.

10. I should go eat a bowl of chili.

Adios,

BZ

I sought the one I love
I sought him but did not find him
I will arise now
And go about the city
In the streets and in the squares
I will seek the one I love
I sought him but did not find him
If you find my beloved
Tell him that I am lovesick

-Song of Solomon

I’m walking through streets that are dead
Walking, walking with you in my head
My feet are so tired, my brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping

Just don’t know what to do
I’d give anything to
Be with you

-Bob Dylan

To be made well with the aid of Christianity is not the difficulty;
The difficulty is in becoming sick to some purpose.

-Soren Kierkegaard

How to talk about this? How to blog it? I’m messed up. It’s embarrassing.
I’m lovesick. Being in love will make you sick. Sick and crazy.

I got a call from my friend Mac Gober.
A saved ex-outlaw biker. A tough guy. A man’s man.
He said…

I’ve got a problem. I’m in love with a man.

I said…

I know. I’ve got the same problem.

Jesus.

Lover of my soul.

And the love of my soul.

He reveals just enough of Himself so you pursue Him longing for more.
He evokes the lover’s search in our hearts.
He teases us with His fleeting presence.
He makes us say things like…

Just don’t know what to do
I’d give anything to
Be with you
I’m lovesick

If you’re not careful you’ll fall so deeply in love with Him that it will make you sick. You won’t be able to be normal when everything rational says you should be normal.

For the past three days I’ve been working long hours to get ready for our Significant Church Conference. Pastors and church leaders from around America are coming to Word of Life to learn about being a significant church. I’ve been trying to prepare good practical messages for them…I’ve really been trying. But it’s not working. Every time I sit down to prepare a practical message…it turns into a radical message. I try to put together something pragmatic…and it comes out romantic.

I’m too sick to be practical and pragmatic.

I can only be radical and romantic.

I’m lovesick.

Maybe it’s contagious.

BZ