PARTICIPANTS IN MOMENTS OF GLORY

I’ve been wondering, what are great moments of glory in human history?  There are so many.  The Bible is full of amazing moments.  So is millenia of history. So, I wrote a few down. My short list is not absolute nor is it definitive, and beyond question.  It's just what quickly comes to mind.


Here they are, moments of glory when I would love to have been present (and active) as a participant-observer:

• With Moses on the other shore - (helping the last Israelite across the Red Sea).
• With the shepherds and the angelic choir (singing with them "Glory in the Highest") on  the first Christmas night.
• With Mary and Jesus at the empty tomb that first Easter morning.
• With Abraham Lincoln (holding his hat) during his Gettysburg address.
•  With US Marines (planting the flag with them) on Iwo Jima.
• With William Booth - when he first wrote the words “The Salvation Army.”
• With Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall (whispering, “Tell them about your dream”).

Those were all wonderful moments of glory in human history.  They were also great moments that legitimately we can say, “Glory to God.”  They are moments when the essence of God’s wisdom, strength, and love for the world were made manifest. Looking back at such moments occasions inspiration and hope in the future.  Each of those glorious moments arose out of times of difficulty, struggle, and seemingly insurmountable challenges.  That’s how God’s glory works.  In moments when doubt and discouragement may prevail, God reaches down to lift us up and give us strength and wisdom we did not know was possible. In these moments we participate in his providence and grace.

The hope we have going forward is that those moments are not reserved for history.  With God there’s always more.  There will be more moments of inevitable struggle and frightful challenge, but glory to God, his promises are sure.  He is steadfast and faithful.  He draws us into those moments as he did Moses, Lincoln, Booth, and MLK. In those moments of God’s faithful intervention, we have the assurance in our spirit that we are more than observing his glorious grace.  We sense that God is letting us participate in his divine nature.

Through these he has given us his very great and precious

promises, so that through them you may

participate in the divine nature.

2 Peter 1:4

GREAT HEARTS DISCUSS MORE THAN IDEAS

Eleanor Roosevelt is known for having said, “Great minds discuss ideas.  Average minds discuss events.  Small minds discuss people.”  Her comment rings true.  A little later this month (August 26-29), The Salvation Army Swoneky Division (Southwest Ohio and Northeast Kentucky) will hold back-to-back events:  A Holiness Conference and a family camp.  Both will be a gathering of many minds likely to discuss ideas, events, and people.  What’s different about these gatherings of Christians, mostly Salvationists, is that at all three levels of discussions will not be solely a matter of great, average, or small minds, but also of their hearts.  This will make many conversations qualitatively different depending on the state of people’s hearts.

Without considering a person’s heart, the quote stands on its own.  However, great hearts discuss more than ideas.  The conversation of even small minds may be noble if the hearts are pure.  The conversation may be lofty and admirable if they have the best interest of others in mind.  When the pure in heart discuss the needs of others with concern and compassion the discussion rises to a whole other level.  Great hearts may carry on great conversations at any level.

When it comes to talking about great ideas like God’s grace and holiness, it is hard not to talk about all three in the same conversation.  Holiness and purity of heart are powerful ideas that are marked by special events in people’s lives.  There you have it, all three in one.   Such events are God’s handiwork in the heart of believers who open their hearts to the deeper, cleansing by the Holy Spirit through a sanctifying event of faith by God’s grace.  When a life is transformed into the likeness of Christ, it brings joy to the heart, thanks to God, and becomes the topic of heart-felt conversation by others.

St. Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus (3:19) these words:  “I pray that you may . . . know this love(the love of Christ) that surpasses knowledge . . .”  In other words, we are to go beyond knowing and discussing ideas with only our minds.  Our discussions must surpass ideas by engaging the heart.  What’s most laudable may be discussions that emanate from a pure heart at any level.  In the words of John Wesley’s favorite Bible verse, “ The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.” (Galatians 5:6).

THE PURE IN HEART

Jesus declared in his sermon on the mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)  As a child growing-up in the faith context of The Salvation Army, I learned a chorus that I still remember the tune.  At times, throughout the day, it comes to me as an enduring gift from God.  It goes like this:

Give me a heart like thine.  

Give me heart a like thine.

  By thy wonderful power, 

  By thy grace every hour,

   Give me a heart like thine.

Samuel Logan Brengle, in his classic work Helps to Holiness, his chapter entitled "The heart of Jesus" unpacks what the song writer likely meant when he penned the chorus above.  Jesus has a pure heart, a heart of pure, holy love.  Purity of heart is God’s essence, his nature, his character.  When the Bible says “God is love” it means not any kind of love, but holy love that characterizes the purity of his heart.  Brengle underscores Jesus having a loving heart, a humble heart, and a gentle heart.  He goes on to say, “It is just this kind of heart he wants us to have.”  But it is not just a heart that only teaches love, but lives out the purity of heart as love in action.

Martin Luther King grasped an understanding of purity of heart in action when he powerfully wrote, Strength to Love (1964) especially chapter four about the love of Jesus in action.  Citing Christs’s words on the cross, “Father forgive them . . . (Luke 23:34), King highlights the “marvelous expression of Jesus’ ability to match words with action.”  The words of our Lord’s teaching came from the purity of his heart, but he was not merely a good teacher or philosopher with a pure heart.  He was and is Savior and Lord who out of the purity of his heart bled and died on our behalf on the cross.  He acted on our behalf , and still does in the sending of the Holy Spirit.  He acted on our behalf and still does in his advocacy with God the Father for our forgiveness and salvation.  Today he acts on our behalf even now to restore us to his likeness in purity of heart.

Dr. Steve Seamand's, professor of Christian doctrine at Asbury Seminary, in his book entitled Holiness of Heart and Life (1990), writes “God’s holiness is manifest in his absolute purity.  God calls us to be pure.  Through his Spirit he can make us pure.  If we are willing, God can cleanse us from all our impurities and will cause us to follow him wholeheartedly (Ezekial 36:25-27).  Then he asks, “Will we hear his call to purity?  Will we receive his grace which can make us and keep us pure?  Will we be holy as God is holy?”

There is the useful life and the holy example that flow

from a pure heart, which will not only speak in favour

of God and holiness while you live, but shall go on influencing

the world long after you have passed on to your reward.

                 - William Booth, Purity of Heart (1902) -

IT'S THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

We become the company we keep.  It can be our glory or our demise.  The people with whom we spend time can bring health and healing.  And yet some people’s toxicity can be like the slow workings of arsenic poisoning spirit, soul, and body.  The company we seek for friendship and fellowship makes all the difference.  It is a matter of healthy or toxic exposures and encounters.

As this year winds to an end and a new year is upon us, the world is keeping a close eye on the Ebola epidemic in Africa. The preventive measures put in place with the help of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control are designed to prevent exposure to active cases of the disease.  The exposures to insidious infectious diseases, especially those with no counter measures of antibiotics and/or antidotes, occasion tragic encounters with death.  Those whose bodies are weak and vulnerable, children and the elderly, are the most at risk.  The disease explodes into an epidemic through social contact with those already infected.  In short, it’s driven by the company people keep, the social exposures and encounters of daily life.

For two years, 1980 & ‘81, I served in an adjunct faculty position at the University of Hawaii while at the same time Chief Administrator of an array of mental health, drug, and alcohol recovery programs.  In the eight programs operated by The Salvation Army on the Island of Oahu, it was the Womens' Way residential program that worked exceptionally well with addicted women and their children to restore them physically, socially, and spiritually to health and wellbeing.  Womens' Way diverted women from the criminal justice system into treatment permitting them to bring their children with them. A woman's stay in the  program was only temporary lasting nine to twelve months.  It was artificial in not being the reality in which they would live for the remainder of their lives.   Eventually the women had to enter back into the real world.  But there would be variations on their real world going foreward depending on the company they chose to keep.  

A major principle of the program was to help the women and their kids eventually become established in a healthy, positive social and spiritual context that would continue the process of healing and lead to complete restoration.  This included avoiding the old life, the old neighborhood, and old toxic friends.  It meant helping them keep company with those who are healthy, loving, kind, generous, and affirming rather than others who were like social/spiritual Ebola, toxic, exploitive, and dangerous .  The company they were to keep going forward would make all the difference.  It would ensure the glory of recovery and restoration or their recidivism, exploitation, and demise.

At the heart of the program was introducing the women and their children to Christian faith communities.  We knew that there were grace filled, Bible believing fellowships on Oahu  who would embrace them, love them, and give the support that would strengthen them in their faith.  The social/spiritual milieu of a church family would help them discover Jesus and accept his loving embrace.  It would nurture and strengthen their faith and help them see the esteem that God has for them.  The company they would keep in such a faith community and the glory of God revealed in their love would be their glory as well.  The women and children who recovered from the trash bins of life would discover the love of Christ in the presence of His company.  His company today is their glory.  It's all about the company they keep!

"Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness
and all life will be added to you."  Matthew 6:33