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What About The Prayer of Jabez??

1 Chronicles 4:9-10 9 Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “I gave birth to him in pain.” 10 Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.

I have always found this Jabez passage (2 verses in the middle of chapters and chapters of genealogies in the 1st book of the Chronicles) to be a little selfish and short-sighted. To me, it sounded like, “give me more money and stuff.” God agreed and granted his request, which only added to my confusion. 

This passage is one of the birthplaces of the prosperity gospel (along with the incomplete reading of Jeremiah 29:11 that is so popular.) The prosperity gospel is NOT The Gospel. It is, instead, the polar opposite of The Gospel.

So, how & why is this prayer of Jabez and its Divine affirmation here at all?

That was my question. It sounds different to me now.

Jabez is “honorable” (the adjective also translates as distinguished, significant, valuable)… and named after the worst part of his life: his painful birth. He had been given a negative brand, and lived an upright life, worthy of his God. (As much as a human being can be worthy – maybe a better word is ‘pleasing’ to his God.)

Honorable, or distinguished, implies a good/great reputation. People may have looked at him with respect. Maybe they wanted to model their lives after him. A pillar of society, in many ways. 

This is all before his prayer. His is a life of service, obedience & worship, ostensibly without regard for reward. His comfortability was not the end he was seeking with his life, his life lived for God was the end, in itself. He seems to have followed God, and then (perhaps incidentally) offered his prayer. 

He asked for 3 things: 1. To be blessed. 2. To have his territory (or borders) enlarged (or his lands extended). And 3. To be kept free from harm and pain (or trouble). 

He asked for blessing. This is a righteous blessing from a humble heart. We can, and should, all ask for blessing, for ourselves and others.

The next 2 are my problems, or have been, beginning with “free from trouble or pain.” First, we have all prayed that, right? It’s a very human prayer: keep me safe and sound, why is this so hard?, open doors, grease the wheels of what I want and how I want to live. Only the fact that he received a YES makes this noteworthy, and that is not his fault at all. It is no reflection of him. It IS a comment on the grace of God to say YES and give it to him.

The only special thing about Jabez is that he believed in God. He believed on His love, goodness & authority so much, that he would ask his Father for a gift only He could give. Jabez was not the answer to his own prayer, he was not powerful enough, he was not the center of this world. The Creator, his Sustainer, his Father, was. 

Now, the last and most concerning. 

“Enlarge my borders/territory, extend my lands.”  On the surface, this can be seen as a child wanting “more, more, more.” So, it has to be asked, more of what? What is the land for? Or, what does the land represent?

To make this a bit more personal, what/where are our borders?

Land, or borders, refer to our sphere of influence, places where we live, where we make, set, and carry out the rules.

[It is possible that he simply desired more land for the increase in net worth, but based on what we already know, that doesn’t seem likely. More plausible is the desire for wider lands to devote to God, more people living lives of purpose and obedience, like his. How do you define wealth?)

Is this a different society, a new context, essentially a rephrase of apostles Paul & Peter’s exhortations that we are an example to the world around us? We increase our circles so that a bigger section of people can, and will, live honorable, distinguished, significant lives under the authority, grace, and love of our Creator. This, I think, is the opportunity where God says YES to Jabez. 

If this were simply an ask for $1,000,000 and an easy, comfortable life, maybe the answer would have been different, and it wouldn’t be written in the holy Scriptures.

[Of course, maybe it would have. Ultimately, God’s ways are unfathomable to us. The only right answer here, at the end of the study, is to say, “Your will, not mine.” We do not discard the items or passages we don’t like or understand. We submit to His will and keep knocking.]

This is important, vital, for us because, as The Church, we have been so conditioned to cower from any hint of pride. Jabez’s prayer has that hint, and our prayers for extended borders certainly do. BUT maybe this passage tells us that His followers, His Bride, are exactly the kind of people who should be asking for, and receiving, bigger, wider lands. We might not get the answer Jabez got, but maybe he didn’t, either, the first thousand times he asked. 

If we build our lives as walking, talking, “honorable” temples of gratitude to Him, under His authority and will, then we are free-er and free-er to ask away! [Again, just a reminder about helmets… Our behavior doesn’t ‘make’ God love us, or accept us, He already does. We can ask, seek, and knock. The point is, as we offer our lives to Him, begin to live for Him, with the guidance of the Spirit living in us, our desires begin to reflect His. That’s what makes me guess that Jabez didn’t just want a bazillion dollars to “build new barns” to store all of it. We don’t know why he wanted extended territories, but we can be fairly certain that he didn’t intend them as geographical altars to himself.]

This passage is an invitation to honestly present all of our petitions to him (no matter how small, personal, and seemingly insignificant they are) and allow Him to do what He will…with them…and with us.    

Opportunities

I am an excitable sort of man, running hot and cold. Like with most things, it’s both the best and worst thing about me. Over the years, I have learned to, first, reluctantly accept this characteristic, then drop the ‘reluctantly,’ and finally mostly loving those parts of me, even when they hurt or causs a great deal of tension or misunderstanding between us. Yesterday, even I was a little surprised how high my emotions were running.

I’m not sure I should have been surprised.

What I see all around us is division and incivility. Battle lines have been drawn, and, as Gandalf commands the Balrog in The Fellowship of The Ring, “You shall Not Pass” over these lines. Nuance and complex, complicated positions have been thrown out with manners, we point fingers, call names, and race to see who can dehumanize the other first. [I started to write, “Outside of the church it’s even worse.” I thought it was a clever twist, a way to shine a light on our own behavior, as we all assumed the characteristics were, of course, about them. But I realized I wasn’t clever, I was just wrong. It’s not worse outside of the church.]

In this environment, I can’t help but feel the crushing disappointment of our (as yet) squandered opportunity. In the Scriptures, the followers of God are commanded to be “set apart,” to think, look, and act differently. Different from who we were, but also different from the rest of the culture. We’re called to carry packs 2 miles, wash each other’s feet, and love our enemies. These examples are shocking behaviors, totally counter to the rest of the culture. They will know us by our love, right? But I’m more and more convinced they won’t know us at all.

Of course, I don’t agree with everybody. As a matter of fact, we might passionately disagree. I have strong, big opinions, principles, positions that I hold. Do you remember all of those conversations we had about the concept of “weight?” Not our bodies on bathroom scales, but the weight of priority. Essentially, we will surely reach a place where we have to choose between things, and the only criteria is the value we place on those things. Will I (1) rest on the Sabbath OR (2) rescue my donkey, which has fallen in a hole? Will I (1) stay up late tonight, sleep in tomorrow OR (2) go to bed so I can get to the gym early tomorrow morning? Do I (1) save my money OR (2) go out with my friends? And on and on, a million times a day.

So, let’s say you & I don’t agree. We could fight out loud, shake our fingers/fists, stop talking to each other, you stop coming to the Bridge (or wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you sit next to), and you can tell your other friends that I’m dumb, uneducated, and heartless. I’ll tell my other friends the same thing about you. That’s 1, and it’s the preferred method of our current situation. Corporately, we’ve decided it’s a good path. We like it.

Or.

We could ask each other why we think what we do, and actually listen to each other (because we love each other), we can try to understand (we don’t even have to change our minds, just hear the other), continue to sit next to each other in front of the cross (because we love Jesus, and because we love each other), worship together (because we love each other), we won’t tell our other friends anything nasty about the other (because we are choosing to continue to love each other). That’s the 2nd.

I think if we choose the 2nd, cats and dogs living together under God, it would be so wildly new and radical, we would stand out like neon lights in a field of total darkness. We would draw others, like mosquitoes, who would seek our light, and then, we would point them to the only light we know, the source of the light we’ve seen & experienced, the only light that could bring something so new and wonderful, which is Jesus, who can (AND WILL) breath neon light into everybody. It’s a gigantic opportunity to change the story, to cut new paths. We can go a different direction, but it’s still the same old roads. We desperately need new roads.

Messy?

So, what I’m thinking, after several weeks of relational discord and the nagging sense that “things are not as they should be,” is that I might not agree any longer. Maybe things are exactly as they should be.

First, of course they aren’t. We have been made for eternity, made by a loving God for shalom in paradise, walking with Him, filled by Him. We are living in times bathed in tears, our own and everybody else’s. There’s war, hate, and on and on and on, we are covered by a general blanket of anxiety, rage, suffering, and unworthiness. The idea of sin simply means “missing the mark,” which implies that there is a mark, this is not it, and as long as we are missing it, everything cannot be “exactly as they should be.”

However. We have a trinitarian God, 3 in 1 – this God expresses Himself/Themselves in perfect community, a divine dance, selflessly giving and receiving, Each pointing to the Other; Father, Son, And Spirit. One of the most interesting implications of this wildly unfathomable Trinity is that, being made in His image, we are made to be in relationship. This is clear in the Garden, before the fall, when the man alone was called, “not good.” Eden is not Eden without relationship, without others.

But, then, given that fact, what do we do with the fact that other people are awful? We think that we could really follow Jesus, really give ourselves to Him, truly offer all of our mind, body, and soul to Him, without the mess of our neighbors. (We all know loving our enemies is almost impossible, it’s hard enough to love those who live in the same house!!!) It would be easier for you to maintain pure thoughts without my dumb jokes and bad decisions, wouldn’t it? (Imagine how hard it is to live with me.) If politics is just the science of the way we organize ourselves in a society, the absence of people would mean we have no need to organize a society… wouldn’t it be much more reasonable to be peaceful, patient, and disciplined without politicians? And we could all breathe like monks if there weren’t any other cars/drivers on the roads, right?

When the refrain of a social life is “messy,” it rings like a lament. Messy, messy, messy. Like milk spilled on the floor, out of order, disruption. But the more I see & experience of God, the more I see that a life without brothers & sisters or enemies or politics or getting cut off on the road, or even my dumb jokes, isn’t following Jesus at all. It’s just another way we “miss the mark.” [A full life is marked by periods of intentional solitude, rest, and communion with God – but a life built on solitude is absolutely contrary to this amazing creation. It’s not good to be alone.]

Withdrawal isn’t an option. We are made to be a blessing to a world in pain, even as we are a part of that world in pain. We are made to be agents of healing, even as we are sometimes the ones inflicting the wounds. This is all part of the human experience. Jesus asks us to be peacemakers, this implies that we will be living in a world that is not at peace. And sometimes, we are the ones who upset the shalom. All of this is true.

And if being human is inherently messy… If all of our relationships, even the best of them, are messy, at times… Maybe it’s ice to start looking at the mess not as something to be eliminated, but to see it as what it is, life. A full, beautiful, present life IS messy. It has always been. Maybe it was always supposed to be. Maybe it’s the primary vehicle for our sanctification. Or to put it another way, how do we learn patience if not for those who test our patience? How do we learn the loveliness of difference if not for the different?

Yes, we are awful. And yes, we are the greatest. One day, this creation will be totally redeemed, no more tears, hate, or pain, but until then, instead of trying in futility to rid our yards of grass and dirt, maybe we could just lay down and roll around?

Fresh Eyes

Everybody needs a fresh word, sometimes.

Here are some of the lyrics from a song, “Fresh Eyes,” written and performed by Andy Grammer: I got these fresh eyes, never seen you before like this. My God, you’re beautiful. It’s like the first time when we opened the door, ‘Fore we got used to usual…So suddenly, I’m in love with a stranger. I can’t believe that she’s mine. Now all I see is you with fresh eyes, fresh eyes…

There isn’t really any subtlety here, as far as I can tell. He wrote this to his wife. How deep does the phrase “before we got used to usual” cut? We all can point to the things that, once, changed our lives, and now are just…ordinary. I can remember driving to the Angel’s apartment at college to pick her up for our first date, wondering what I’d do about the birds (much larger than butterflies) in my stomach, scared if I’d have to pull the car over to throw up. It’s now 25+ years later, I no longer drive to see her, I see her every day – she’s the first one I see in the morning, the last at night. I kissed her goodnight when I’d drop her off, when we were dating, now I kiss her goodbye at her car door in the morning, and hello at the front door after work, and every other time I can. Like Andy, I can’t believe she’s mine. She’s out of my league, but that’s her problem. When it comes to her, I am grateful to have never lost my fresh eyes.

So, this song is about our wives, but it’s also about everything else. I have these orange flowers next to the pond just outside of my back door that are so beautiful, they could probably knock you down, and I almost never go outside to see them, or even stop to notice them when I bring the groceries inside. They are “usual.” There is a song called “Brooklyn Bridge,” by Alex do Leo (the hook is “come on, won’t you kiss me on the Brooklyn Bridge,” and it’s consistently surprising anything could sound that good) that is absolutely perfect. I’ve heard it 5,000 times and can hear it anytime I want, and rarely do, anymore. It is usual. I could list many more. I wonder how many “usual” things are in our lives, “usual” simply because we forgot how extraordinary they actually are.

And what about the stories of our lives? We can forget how beautiful we are, how talented and full of promise we are. We get trapped in rote cycles of behavior, thinking/believing, and lose our hope & imagination. These lives (overwhelming gifts from a Loving God) become obstacles to be endured, instead of experienced with breathless joy and wonder. Why is that? When did we get so used to usual???

Last Sunday, I was sitting in the front pew at the Bridge before anyone else arrived, reflecting on what we’re building in our community. Do we ever forget? And treat it like it’s an obligation or “have-to?” Like it’s the usual that we’ve gotten used to?

Flowers, songs on the radio, church services, family meals, laughter, phone calls, basketball games…these explosions of the divine are everyday miracles, certainly not the mindless routines we so often take for granted. Just because we’ve held that hand for so long doesn’t make it any less awesome than the first time. If we’re totally honest, it really makes it more awesome.

Sometimes we need fresh words to see the truth of our reality, of our promise, of our story. And sometimes we need to speak those words, bringing new worlds into focus. And to speak them, we need to see them. We need fresh eyes. This may seem daunting, but if we learn anything from the resurrection and the redemption/renewal of all things, it’s that nothing is ever just ‘what it is,’ dead bones can live again, and everything can be new again. Then, “all we see” will be Jesus, the Gospel, you, me, us, them, all of this, with fresh eyes.

The Homework

Sunday morning was especially life-giving for me. We asked a million questions, and those sorts of messages are always my favorites. The idea that we will actually spend any time during the week to consider them is so hopeful, because it’s there, in the search & discovery, that our lives begin to take the shape they might become. The very best a church service can do is to send us into His presence. In the study, prayer, application, wrestling, praise, pain, relationship, and on and on through the beauty of The Church and the local church, there is the invitation into Who He is and who we are, in Him.

The verse in Titus that prompted the homework was this one: “To the pure, all things are pure,” and it’s opposite: to the impure, every one can be the vehicle for impurity. Vehicles like food, career, money, sex, desire, ambition, progress, study, knowledge can drive us to His feet, in worship and community, or down wide, smooth paths to the sad, lonely altars we’ve built to ourselves. Into His arms, or into temples for religions created for just 1, the high priest and only congregant is the same person: me. We drive these vehicles, they go where we steer them.

Where are we driving? That’s the choice before us. And like those road trips that require recalculation, u-turns, and backtracking over wrong turns, our lives are constantly asking for evaluation. Is this where we want to be? Is the destination still the same for us, or have we changed our minds and decided to go somewhere new? And my favorite question: NOW WHAT???

How do we chart a new course for these vehicles of ours? The simple truth is the same as most everything. We connect to Him. We ask, seek, knock. We hold His hand and follow where He leads. Yes, simple, but not at all easy. We’ll have to stop some things, start others. But it all starts with The Ask. Where have we allowed our vehicle to be driven by another, who might not have our best interests in mind, who wants to drive as fast as possible toward & into an inevitable crash?

So, we ask, and when we receive our answer, then there’s that next decision to make. Will we take the wheel back and give it to Him, so we can turn around, because as we do that, these things (food, career, etc) are recalibrated to see their inherent purity, and become, again, holy. We eat with purpose, with gratitude, and not mindlessly shovel down as much as we can while we’re driving to the next box to check. We work with character and integrity in beautiful service instead of to stack dollar bills, building bigger barns to store our ever-growing mountains of what some marketer has convinced us is the new solution for what ails us. When we ask, we get tingles and goose-bumps. That is possibility that we feel. We can take this world back, give it to the One Who made it, and us. All questions have the same answer, ultimately: Love. And in those 4 letters, there is eternity.

But it all starts with a question, on a Tuesday morning in February.

The Honesty of Authentic Presence

10ish years ago, my sister and I had a fight on the Ocean City boardwalk. I don’t have any idea what we were arguing about now, but it made everyone uncomfortable and the rest of the family all wished they were somewhere else. Or probably that we were somewhere else.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, but last night, my youngest son had his last high school basketball game. I’m not going to go into details about that game, (or any other game, for that matter), or my feelings for/about him. But this is the sort of event that can make a man like me very sensitive, mushy even, for quite a while.

Studies show that human beings generally recognize 3 emotions: happy, sad, and mad. Of course, this isn’t anywhere close to enough, and it’s not that we don’t feel different emotions, we just lack the vocabulary to accurately communicate those emotions. Last night was bittersweet. I was proud, disappointed, joyful, overwhelmed. I was happy, sad, and mad, at different times. Sometimes at the same time. It would have taken 1,000 hands to hold everything I was feeling.

Several times during Sunday morning’s sermon, I realized & acknowledged (in my head) my tone and my turbulent spirit. As I taught about the second chapter of Titus, I realized how much of these moments were colored by this game, this program, church dynamics, politics, relationships, how I slept, what I ate, even what shoes I was wearing. Everything comes to the party, and it should, because everything matters.

Our services begin with a silent prayer, where we come as we are, bringing what we carry, to the feet of Jesus. It is embarrassingly misguided to pretend that we can come any other way, as if we are blank slates unaffected by the world around us. The prodigal son’s words to His Father land differently after you have children. The story of Israel is different from opposite sides of empire.

And I think that’s an absolutely intentional requirement of a life of faith. One of the most important observations I learned in seminary that totally changed my life is the honesty in every word of the Scriptures. Whether it’s in Lamentations, Habakkuk, Psalms, Titus, or any other book, God doesn’t want our sacrifices if they aren’t real. He has no use for fake plastic hypocrisy. He doesn’t want our pretense and our loud, grandiose assemblies if He doesn’t have our hearts.

He has mine. And so do you. Sunday morning, you get my awe, my reverence for the God Who rescued me, my study, prayer, interpretation, faith, AND my broken, confused, euphoric, sometimes wildly contradictory spirit. My careful conclusions and my dumb jokes. My cold, broken hallelujah.

Last night, I was disgusted at the basketball program while I wept for the people in it. I never want the season to end, and I’m so happy it’s over. I think there are lots of things that Jesus needs to transform in me, and I know He loves me in a way none of us can fathom, as I am. I get so many things wrong, and I am forgiven. I don’t want to stay this me, but I really like this me. Last summer, I told the baseball players I coached that I was finished, and I was relieved & thrilled to be done, and so sorry I thought I might crumble.

Being fully present, authentically ourselves, in true relationship with Our Creator and each other means all of this.

I chose a picture for this post. It’s last week’s senior night. I’m happy and sad, proud, hopeful, and he might be holding me up because I love him so much I might die. What it is, really, is a picture of gratitude. God gave us each other. And to stand next to for all of it, this God gave me the Angel.

I told you about Ocean City because, while everybody else wished to be somewhere else, I didn’t (and I bet my sister didn’t, either.) To be as close as we are requires us to bring everything we are to this amazing party. I’d love to go back to that night, when my boys were 5 and 7, and it was summer and the ground wasn’t covered with ice, but I don’t need to, I was there, then, fighting with my sister, loving every moment of this beautiful life I have been given. And if I could/would go back, I wouldn’t have been there last night, and I wouldn’t have missed that for the world.

Update

Good morning!

We ARE going to have church this morning, at the Bridge, at 10:30am. 

If you decide to be there, please be very careful. We are deciding to have church in person, but if you have concerns about the roads or any of the conditions, we will Livestream on YouTube, as usual.

Love. Peace. 

A Few Important Items

Good morning everyone!

It looks like the weather may present another problem, possibly for the next 2 Sundays. Anytime this becomes an issue, we will make a decision by 9am on Sunday morning. I send an email, post to the website and to Facebook. (I also try to send texts, as well, but I can’t promise those.) So, please check in at 9am on Sunday morning, And as always, don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly (not a ‘reply all’ please) with any questions. 

If we decide to cancel in-person service, I will check in, connect, & give the message online at 10:30am. We would livestream on YouTube, just like every other week. Just go to YouTube, search Bridge Faith Community, subscribe, and watch from anywhere. In addition, the messages then post to that channel and are there forever and ever, so you can watch anytime.

Tuesday looks like a problem, too, so Open Door next week will be on Zoomat 7pm.

I don’t remember being affected by this many weather events for the last few years, but this seems to be the year for disruption. That makes it especially important to make an extra effort to stay connected. Reach out to others, check on your neighbors and the rest of your tribe. Please don’t just stay home, isolated. And, as always, we can’t  take for granted the gift of meeting together, so let’s be grateful for this awesome community we are building together.

Having said all of that, I really hope I see you all Sunday morning!!

Have a great week, and be safe!

Love. Peace.

The Value of Things

In the 2nd chapter of Titus, the word sober-minded was used, and that doesn’t sound like too great of a catch phrase. No one is probably getting a “sober-minded” tattoo, or using it on their dating profile. We don’t throw it around easily in conversation, it seems like an adjective that was used often in the late 1800’s, and not much since. See? The Bible is hopelessly outdated, right?

But the term, as it was written, suggests a person that “knows the value of things,” and as I look around, live and breathe, I can’t think of a characteristic that is more necessary and less common.

Have you ever reached out to someone about something that is heavy, that is taking a toll on your heart, that is painful or wildly significant, that we aren’t meant to carry alone? It’s an unbearably vulnerable space, and we wait. Then, the person, obviously uncomfortable, makes a joke. Or answers their phone. Or changes the subject. Your authenticity is discarded and disrespected. That person, who made you so sorry you reached at all out and especially sorry you reached out to him/her, has no idea of the value of things.

Not only do they not know the value of the circumstance you entrusted to them, but they do not know the value of your open heart, not do they know the value of a human being. This last one is, sadly, the real loss. We treat each other as disposable, as means to ends, as items to be used, for what they can bring to us, instead of recognizing who they are for no other reason than who they are. We are, to each other, too often, tools.

We have things to do and boxes to check. We have been sold the idea that our productivity is more important than our relationships. We have lost the value of things.

When I see people show up to weddings in t-shirts (a more and more common occurrence), I always shake my head. I speak to my boys of “time and place,” and now I know that I actually mean, “sober-minded.” A wedding is different than a ball game is different than bedtime. When we go to the gym and go through the motions, we have forgotten how extraordinary it is that we have been made in such a fantastic way that we are able to do these amazing things with our bodies. Instead of worship, it is a torturous obligation. When we kiss our wives or hold another’s hand without thinking, as simply routine, we have missed the value of this shocking intimacy. What could be more wonderful than the soft, slow, unhurried kiss of your beloved? Or more loving and trusting than another person offering their hand to you, searching for care and closeness?

Right. We’re, of course, talking about Genesis 28:16, “Surely God was in this place, and I was unaware.” When we lose the value of things, we are consistently unaware.

Last night, we drove an hour to what is likely to be the very last away high school basketball game for my youngest son. Do you know how many away games we’ve traveled to? A lot. Do you know how many times they were a nuisance? If that answer is equal to or greater than 1, we were ignorant of the value of things.

I think the concept of “ordinary” is the language of a culture that does not know the value of things. Maybe Paul’s letter to Titus is exactly what we need. Maybe we need more “sober-minded” tattoos, so we can all remember kisses and away games, remember to be grateful, so we can remember to stay present and wake up to our lives and the overflowing blessings all around us.

Super Soldier Serum

The site prompt is, “What would you do if you won the lottery?” And that makes me think of a line from the Marvel TV show The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. There’s a guy who is supposed to be the new Captain America, and he’s debating about whether or not he should take a super soldier serum (which sounds silly to write here, but it is a superhero show), and his buddy, Lamar, tells him, “power just makes you more of what you are.” That applies to money, too, obviously. I don’t necessarily ascribe to the theory that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The full quote (from Lord Acton, the 13th Marquess of Groppoli – full disclosure, I don’t have any idea what a Marquess is or what/where/who Groppoli is, but I love that I could use it in real life) is, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.” Power does tend to corrupt, but I can’t go with ‘absolute/always’ of the rest. But again, speaking of words, I’m using “superadd” immediately and often.

And this makes me think of Sunday morning, and our discussion on character and judgment. We could talk forever about these 2 topics, right?

Character is the x-factor that disproves the 13th Marquess of Groppoli, and reinforces Lamar’s comments. If a man has the kind of character traits Paul is listing to Titus, maybe that’s exactly the kind of person who should have power, who would use it in service, to help, to build, to defend, to give, to love. Maybe that’s exactly the kind of person who should take a super soldier serum.

But what if we don’t have that kind of character? You know I wanted to add, “…kind of character now, today?” That’s why judgment is so linked in my mind to character. Christ makes us new, so this very moment is the perfect opportunity to begin to superadd this kind of integrity.

Judgment is making decisions about someone’s essence. For instance, to use our terms from the message, when that boy/girl that behaves violently, full of bitterness, with anger, rage and hatred, he/she IS, in the deepest parts of themselves, that kind of person, and worse, will always be that kind of person. We lock them in a box they can never escape. When Jesus says, “Do not judge,” I think He means to open that box. Whether they climb out of the box built from their own actions, or not, is up to them and Jesus Christ, certainly not me. I can hope & pray they do. And maybe that box involves the consequences of those actions or our boundaries. But we no longer hold the key to another’s cell.

And then Jesus brilliantly turns our spotlight into a mirror. “Take the plank out of your own eye.” So, we no longer have the key to another’s cell, but we do have the key to our own. We can leave. We can start anew, and write a beautiful new story. We can allow and encourage others to do the same. We can become the people who can take the super soldier serum or win the lottery and use it to bless everyone, everywhere.