Author Archives: kelly

Being The Crowbar of Destiny

Previously, I wrote about Winston Churchill being the crowbar of destiny during the early days of World War ll.  His story is epic in scope; one man takes a stand against the powers of darkness and prevails.

While Churchill’s story is momentous, there is another figure who served as an even greater disruptor of the forces of evil. His impact was so staggering that it can only be understood as the greatest battle ever fought.

I am thinking of Jesus Christ who was and is an unlikely warrior king, at least by human standards. He was born in obscurity; he grew up in a small, out of the way village in Galilee and he surrounded himself with followers who were anything but the great men of his time. Here is how Isaiah prophetically describes the one who will come to save many:

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” (Isaiah 53:2-4)

The ruling class of Jerusalem dismissed Jesus by saying nothing good ever came out of Nazareth. At Jesus’ hour of greatest crisis, all of his disciples abandoned him. By historical standards, Jesus died a criminal’s death; he was seen by his enemies as just another troublemaker who needed to be silenced because they counted him as a problem that needed to be eliminated quickly to keep their Roman masters at bay.

The truth about Jesus is that he came to put a stake in the ground for reestablishing God’s Kingdom here on earth. His time on earth might be viewed as a beachhead with many skirmishes and battles still to come. It might even be said, when we view the patterns of history through a biblical lens, that Jesus came to enlist soldiers in this ongoing battle of good and evil. And maybe Winston Churchill, that great crowbar of destiny  was enlisted as one of those soldiers who would do his part to hold back the evil forces intent on killing and destroying.

How One Man Made a Difference

May 20, 1940. The army of the German Reich was sweeping across Northern Europe; four hundred thousand English troops were trapped on the northern coast of France; Neville Chamberlain had just resigned as Prime Minister and Winston Churchill had replaced him.

The English government was torn between fighting on against impossible odds or, perhaps more sensibly, signaling to foreign intermediaries an openness to discuss with Hitler terms of a truce.

Could Churchill, with all the odds stacked against him, make a difference? He himself describes the apparent hopelessness of the situation this way: Europe was sinking into “the abyss of a new dark age, made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science.”

If some of the leading figures in the British government had their way, including Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain, Britain would have winked at the evil they saw for the false security that their trembling hearts demanded.

Churchill saw the nature of the encroaching evil and he decided only a firm “no” was possible. He said he would prefer to die while trying to save the world from falling into a new dark age. “And I am convinced,” he said, “that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”

Facing these odds, Churchill’s decision and subsequent actions were heroic by any measure. If he had not been present at that critical moment of history; the darkness of Hitler’s malevolent empire would have, in all probability, spread to all corners of the globe.

Boris Johnson has recently written a biography of Churchill and describes these dark days of May 1940 as a crucial moment where one man changed the course of history. Here is how Johnson put it:

I don’t know whether it is right to think of history as running on train tracks, but let us think of Hitler’s story as one of those huge and unstoppable double-decker expresses that he had commissioned, howling through the night with its cargo of German settlers. Think of that locomotive, whizzing towards final victory. Then think of some kid climbing the parapet of the railway bridge and dropping the crowbar that jams the points and sends the whole enterprise for a gigantic burton-a mangled, hissing heap of metal. Winston Churchill was the crowbar of destiny. If he hadn’t been where he was, and put up resistance, that Nazi train would have carried right on. It was something of a miracle-given his previous career-that he was there at all. (The Churchill Factor p.30)

Johnson goes on to speculate about what would have happened if Churchill had not become Prime Minister in May 1940. He calls this ‘counterfactual’ history, but it is an interesting question nevertheless. It might seem fruitless to speculate about the world without Winston Churchill standing athwart history, but this particular case, the timely appearance of one man in a certain moment in human history made all the difference in the world.

Just An Average Photographer

People have praised my photography. I love taking pictures while hiking, but I am pretty sure I deserve very little credit. Almost fifteen years ago, world famous landscape photographer Ken Duncan told me, without any sense of false humility, that he was a very average photographer with a very great God. Let me tell you a brief story of my own experience that confirmed for me the truth of what Ken was saying.

In the late 1990s, I had set my sights on some of the high peaks in the west. In June 1998, I spent five days on Mt Rainer summiting the mountain on an early overcast morning. After that, I turned south to the High Sierras and Mt Whitney, the highest peak in the lower forty-eight.

IMG_2096In the summer months, Whitney is a two-day walkup, but in April, the mountain has accumulated an entire winter of snow pack, causing the summer trail to be much more difficult and time consuming. The route we chose was a more direct assault on the summit cone from a plateau called Boy Scout Lake. It took two days of climbing with heavy winter gear to reach our “base camp” beneath the one-thousand-foot head wall of the summit. Here we were surrounded on three sides by sharp, jutting peaks, but out toward the east, we had unobstructed views of the town of Lone Pine and the desert region that leads toward Death Valley.

On day three, we ascended Whitney by heading up a long, steep, snow-filled shoot to the right of the headwall. About five hundred feet below the summit, we clamped onto fixed ropes for the final push. It was a beautifully clear day, and so, before descending, we enjoyed the views of the surrounding world from the highest point in America south of Alaska.

IMG_2094I awoke the next morning just before sunrise to begin the job of packing for the descent. At this elevation the world before sunrise can be a cold, grey, and forbidding place. But when the emerging light of the rising sun hit the dormant rocks of the surrounding peaks, the rocks seemed to jump to life, catching fire in something like a joyful dance.

Just south of our tent site stood the Needles, four sculptured spires that rise up as if they had been built as part of a partially completed cathedral standing guard against the brutal natural forces attacking it.

At first, I was preoccupied with packing up, but then, I noticed how the rock walls of the spires were being transformed into luminous, serrated bulwarks set against the deep blow of the morning sky.

I immediately dropped everything, realizing that this vision would last only a fleeting moment. I found my point-and-shoot camera and took five or six frames before the light was lost forever. Ironically, the only film I had was black & white.

Untitled design (10)

After returning home, I had the film developed and was astonished to find that the pictures of the golden rock towers had captured the living quality of the rocks in just the right way at just the right moment. If I had hesitated, the light would have changed, and instead of an exceptional picture of rare mountain beauty, my camera would have rendered images of mere rock formations, impressive, but without the light and life that had caught my eye by chance. And so, to paraphrase Ken Duncan once again: I had the good fortune to be a very average photographer who recorded the work of a very great God.

A Light in the Ruins

An American friend, who lived in Ukraine as a missionary, told me an interesting story about an encounter he had with a young woman during his time there.

She was comfortable living in a godless world. Quote from Light in the RuinsThe story goes that this young woman was giving my friend a tour of the city of Odessa. As they walked from place to place, she began to open up a little and at one point she professed that she couldn’t understand how people believed in something so silly, archaic, and irrational as the existence of God. She was not belligerent; she was merely firm in the belief that her worldview was enlightened and progressive. There was no room in her world for what she considered to be an ancient and discredited myth. She was comfortable living in a godless world.

As they continued, they came to an area of town that starkly revealed the remnant ruins of the devastations of World War ll. The splintered bricks and hollowed out structures were fragments of a once populated and noisy place where families raised their children and lived normal lives. Now this area was nothing more than a wasteland where grass gripped the soil for dear life.

As they gazed on this desolate scene, my friend turned to the young woman and gently said, “Take a look at these shattered buildings. If you want to have an idea of what the world really looks like without God, here it is.” She surveyed the ashes of a city that once was thriving without uttering a word. My friend wondered whether she was linking this picture of the fruits of war with the political and intellectual effort to banish God once and for all. The woman lingered.  Asking herself the same questions many of us would be at that exact moment: Why did this happen? Why is there so much death, disease and suffering in the world? Is this a world without God?

My missionary friend told me that he believed that moment in Odessa touched the heart of this young woman. He did not preach to her, he merely allowed the surroundings to paint a contrasting picture of the fullness and abundance of a world filled with love to a world absent of everything most people consider good.

Man without God is a war zone.

Man without God is a war zone. Quote from Light in the Ruins

 

An Anatomy of Temptation

Albert Einstein (1)Choices. We face hundreds of them every day. Managing the process through learned behavior and subconscious habits, we fail to acknowledge the implications of our choices. When faced with a decision where we pause and earnestly consider each path before making a choice; that is the moment where we are most susceptible to temptation. Temptation implies that deciding on a certain course of action has the potential for disastrous outcomes. Being tempted means that you know the right way but are overpowered by a yearning to do something that strays from that path towards a dangerous place. Then there is the problem of not making a choice at all; deferring choice is still a decision. All decisions have consequences.

The anatomy of temptation and its consequences are perfectly described in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They have been told not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they chose to disregard the prohibition. What happened next?

The first response is self-consciousness and shame; Adam and Eve suddenly realize they are naked and so they cover their bodies. The second is fear; they hide when they hear God calling out to them in the garden. Then they lie when they tell God that they hid because they were naked. Finally, they begin to blame others for their actions. Adam’s response to God’s question is masterful: “The woman you put here with me-she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it” (Genesis 3:12). And not to be outdone, Eve blames the serpent for her choice.

Solomon, the son of King David, is credited as being of a man of profound wisdom. But even Solomon knew that without God’s help, he would be as susceptible as any other man to making poor choices. When God tells Solomon to request anything of Him, Solomon answers wisely: “Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong” (1Kings 3:8-9).

As Solomon demonstrates, wisdom is the ability to discern between right and wrong. The outward and inward signs can often be ambiguous. We need discernment to choose the good path, resisting temptation to go the other way. “This is what the Lord says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will have find rest for your souls’” (Jeremiah 6:16).

-The only question that remains is- What are we going to do about it-- (1)So here is a test. Take an inventory of your actions after you have permitted temptation to win. Do you feel like you want to hide? Are you experiencing shame and fear? Do you feel the need to lie to others or blame another for your actions? Maybe you knew the right thing to do from the beginning, but you were tempted to go the other way and you went. We have all experienced feelings of remorse and even despair when we have done what is wrong. The only question that remains is: What are we going to do about it?

Winter Light: Intimations of a Kinder Season to Come

IMG_0483In early February, the light of day begins to change. Without much warning, the steel gray of deep winter gives way to intimations of a kinder season ahead. Daylight lingers longer into the afternoon and the warmth of the light reflecting off the windows of distant skyscrapers battles the forbidding coldness of the moment.

And in the late afternoon, when the sky is clear, the setting sun paints the western horizon in vivid oranges and reds, hinting that the cloistered winter months will soon be a memory. It’s then when I begin to feel the draw of the hills and mountains of the countryside beyond the shores of this water bound city, even though snow and ice still covers much of the land. It’s then when I begin to dream of new adventures along the trails that I have traveled in seasons past. I have a particular love for the Appalachian Trail that crosses twelve states from Georgia  to Maine.

Web Pictures Group 2 086I am often asked why I leave the comforts of home for a less predictable environment.  I guess there are many reasons, but what I always come back to is the way the trail connects me to the mysteries of God’s universe. I may inhabit a world constructed by the hands of man and I may marvel at all its complexity and brilliance, but the city of man with its activities and diversions never seems to be enough.

The Bible gives us one explanation for this unquenchable desire to reach beyond the circumference of place and time. Solomon in Ecclesiastes says that God “placed eternity in the hearts of all men and women” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Elsewhere it says that Cain became a restless wonderer of the earth, and as such, he became an example of the seeming restlessness of people who, like ghosts, bustle to and fro in dances of endless activity. It is this desire for the eternal that is built into our human makeup, and it is the fact that we live in an impermanent world that we feel the strong, nagging need to seek places that provide the peace that comes upon us when we finally find a place that connects us to the God who brought everything into existence.

  An Unexpected Discovery on Ash Wednesday

Today, February 10, 2016, is Ash Wednesday. In New York, as I walk through Grand Central Station toward Forty-Second Street, I see many people bustling about with ashes inscribed on their foreheads – a reminder of the words from God to Adam after he and Eve had defied God’s one prohibition in the Garden of Eden:  “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19).

This is the moment history began as we know it. Adam and Eve rebelled against their creator and as a result they were expelled from the protected Garden to enter a very different world of sin and death. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the time we reflect on the condition of our soul in relationship to the One who was sent by the Father to give each of us the opportunity to be saved from our inherent sinful nature.

Ash Wednesday has a very personal meaning for me. In 1991, I was with my family on Vieques, a small island seven miles off the eastern shores of Puerto Rico. In those days, most vacationers stayed away from the pristine beaches of Vieques because the U.S. Navy used sections of the island for bombing practice. Even so, about one third of the land was populated among two towns, Isabella Segondo on the Atlantic side and Esperanza on the Caribbean.

Wild Horses_ Vieques Wild horses roamed freely and the beaches were empty. Up in the hills, vacation homes shared the land with grazing cattle and tropical wildlife. Modern times in the form of glass covered hotels and teeming populations had not yet invaded this tiny slice of paradise; I hoped that it never would.

In 1991, Ash Wednesday fell on February 13th. It was my oldest son’s 11th birthday so I had two reasons to commemorate the day. I decided it would be good if as a family we had a short church service at home before the adventures of the day took over.

Book of Prayer_ Ash WednesdayLooking through the Book of Common Prayer, I stumbled upon a section called “Daily Office Year One”. I had not seen these pages before because this section is located at the very end of the book. Within it I noticed the words “Ash Wednesday”. Little did I know, I had discovered the buried treasure I had been seeking for almost four years.

Rewind to 1987, as my company appeared to be doomed, I ducked in a church on Park Avenue in New York and said a short prayer seeking a way out of the financial trap I found myself in. I didn’t expect a reply, but a few weeks later I received a “command” to buy a Bible. This seemed to be the last thing I needed, but I was obedient to the vision and within an hour I had a beautiful new Bible. The only problem was I had no idea where to start, a problem I struggled with for a long time.

Book of Prayer_ Ash WednesdayNow, in this most unlikely Caribbean setting, surrounded by my wife, my three sons and my daughter, I discovered the path to my future. Here was a definitive starting place, Ash Wednesday, for a daily encounter with the entire Bible over a two-year period. I started following the path laid out by the Daily Service: morning and evening Psalms, an Old Testament Passage, part of a Letter, and finally a selection from one of the Gospels. Following this biblical road map allowed me to read through most of the Bible in two years. What’s more, I would get to read all the Psalms seven times a year.

This fortunate discovery took place twenty-five years ago. Since then, no matter where I was, I would read the passages for that day every day of the year. And that joyful persistence led to the writing of Getting To Know Jesus, published on January 26, 2016.

Do Not Be Afraid: The Challenges of Following Jesus Christ in a Resistant Culture

Fear can be a legitimate response to an actual danger, but often fear grows out of an overactive imagination. If you stand at the edge of a ledge with a severe drop, you should feel trepidation.  As a boy, I feared the dark and some of that fear carried into my adult years. Fear, though, can bring on the incapacity to act. Action suggests commitment. Commitment may demonstrate belief, but belief may reveal something about one’s identity that you might prefer to keep under wraps.

In the early days of my spiritual awakening, when I began to read Scripture on a daily basis, I would often take a Bible to read while on the commuter train into New York City. In those days, I was acutely aware of being in a public setting. I would discreetly keep my Bible from the view of others. It was a foolish fear, but my desire to keep my Bible hidden bespoke what was taking place then in our culture, particularly in the east where I lived. And it wasn’t just me.

Jesus Walks on Water by Ivan Aivazovsky (1888)

Jesus Walks on Water by Ivan Aivazovsky (1888)

Whether the message came from the universities, the media, business or the political culture, Christianity in the 1980s had become less respectable among the ruling classes in America. Many important leaders within mainstream denominations had found fortune and notoriety by ridiculing important tenants of the faith. One had to keep one’s faith in Christ Jesus private. Jesus was acceptable if you said nothing about Him, but otherwise He was not very welcome in polite society. The culture was listening more to the words of Jesus’ enemies.

On the other hand, much has happened in the culture since then. Social media, music, certain evangelical leaders and even movies like the Passion of the Christ have stood up against the high tide of secularism and agnosticism.

For me, it has been a long journey from fear of ridicule to a passion and commitment to the Word of God. Most recently that outward expression of my faith has come in the form of my new book, Getting To Know Jesus and the new web site GettingToKnowJesus.com

The book grew out of daily podcasts recorded with Pastor Chuck Davis that we at first called In the Footsteps of Jesus. The intention was to introduce the Jesus of the Gospels in a way that would invite people into a deeper understanding of who Jesus is and why it matters. Our conversations were unrehearsed but focused. We presented the life of Jesus in the context of the entire biblical narrative and we happily depended on the truth and beauty of the story as told by the witnesses to the events that unfolded in Galilee and Judea over two thousand years ago. These conversations continue today as the daily Getting to Know Jesus podcasts.

Jesus Walks on Water by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

The world was hostile to Jesus in His own time. His own family, His closest followers and the leaders of the ruling religious class all either abandoned or attacked Him. Even so, Jesus was not afraid because He knew the Father as the Father knew Him. While He was not afraid, Jesus was alert and vigilant and He constantly prayed to the Father. After the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Peter, who, out of fear, had denied the Lord three times, told Jesus’ followers that dangers lurked everywhere and to be on guard: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of suffering.”

Sometimes it is appropriate to experience fear. But Christians are not called to hide. Rather, as Peter counsels, be alert, be strong and be courageous because Jesus promised He would never leave us, even to the very end of time.