Thoughts on Who We Are and Why We're Here

Neither Karen nor I took any photos this week, so I’ll just toss in one that Jake took. He’s never built anything or taken wood shop class in school before, but it’s one of his classes here. The school year here coincides with the calendar year, so he just got into the class for the last few weeks of the year. Nevertheless, he is deeply motivated to make good grades in all his classes because he elicited from me a promise that I would dye my hair pink and take him to the beach one day if he gets all A’s and B’s on his report card at the end of the year. Also, he’s leaning toward the idea of a career in the construction industry anyway, so he’s pretty proud of the end table he made in shop class, that he just brought home this week. It’s very nice, and for a first effort it’s brilliant.

The other picture is one from a few weeks ago, that just didn’t make it into the blog, but is representative of the kinds of meals Emmy prepares every night. This night was Chinese stir fry and lemon meringue pie – both homemade from scratch, of course.

Mainly what’s been on my mind this week, though, has been the sermon I preached this morning in our worship service. We moved here to help start a new church, and at the moment we’re just kind of preparing our own hearts before we begin looking for a sound system, a regular meeting place, and money for a proper marketing campaign for a launch service.

For me, preparing our hearts has revolved around Hebrews 11 a lot lately. That chapter is kind of the Hall of Fame of spiritual superheroes from the Bible. It talks about people who through faith “conquered kingdoms… obtained what was promised”, saw the dead raised and so forth. We want to conquer kingdoms here. We want to experience the power of God for great, glorious victories like those guys. We want a great church where lots of people experience the transforming grace of God, a place where love and joy and peace and healing and freedom and intimacy are commonplace.

But I noticed that the list of superheroes flows without a break from those who experienced victory to those who experienced only defeat, who were martyred, persecuted, tortured, destitute. And the whole list, winners and losers alike are commended in the same way, for the same faith. The faith for which they were commended was not fidelity, the faithful discharge of their duty; it was faith simply in the sense of reliance or trust. They knew unwaveringly in every circumstance that God is love and he’s on their side, and they are precious to him. It says on the basis of that faith alone, not because of whether they achieved great things, but only on the basis of their unshakable confidence in his love for them, that he “is not ashamed to be called their God.”

I learned this week that the word translated “called” means literally “surnamed”. God is so proud to be identified with us when we really know who he is, that he adopts as his own last name the fact that he is related to us. And he invites us, like the conquerors and martyrs alike, to be like him -- shameless.