Of Birth and Death

The picture above is at the WTC memorial.
The rose was placed on Bruce’s birthday.
This photo honors both his birth and death. 


Today is one of those days where you can’t help but remember the exact moment when you heard the news. You know where you were, who you were with, what you were doing. I was standing in my kitchen watching the smoke billowing from the World Trade Center, a building I worked in for 11 years.
Each year brings another anniversary of a day that changed the world as we knew it, a day we commemorate the lives that were lost.
While we mourn the loss of every person who died that day, I want to particularly honor those who died because they chose to help others live.  My friend, Bruce a firefighter, was one of 411 emergency workers in New York City who died because he responded to the World Trade Center catastrophe. We don’t know exactly how many people survived due to the selfless acts of these civil servants.
Across the country, today is a somber and somewhat counter-cultural day. We tend to take notice of people’s birthdays, even have a few national holidays to remember them.  
It’s the same with Jesus. Christmas has a whole season, starting earlier and earlier each year. Good Friday and Easter barely get a weekend.  While the gospel writers are very clear on the date and time of Jesus’ death, there is no mention of the timing of His birth, and the early church didn’t celebrate His birth at all. The Bible pays much more attention to Jesus’ sacrifice and death, repeatedly instructing us to commemorate it, but there are no directives to observe or honor His birth.
At my grandfather’s funeral, the rabbi told a parable I’ll never forget. He compared life on earth to ships in a harbor. At one pier, people are rejoicing as a new ship sets sail, breaking a bottle of champagne on the bow, streamers cascading over the sides. But further down the harbor, a ship returns from a long voyage with barely any notice. In life, the rabbi said, people rejoice over the birth of a new baby, not knowing what trials and pitfalls may lie ahead, while much less attention is paid to a person whose journey has ended and has returned safely home.  
We rejoice that Bruce is safely home. We recognize and honor those who on 9/11/2001 in NYC, in Washington DC, and in a plane over Pennsylvania, followed the example of Jesus in sacrificing their lives that others might live. 

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—butGod shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Rom. 5:6-8

Thank you Bruce and all the other valiant firefighters, policemen, EMTs and those on United flight 93. May we long remember and honor your sacrifice.  

To read more about life after Bruce, please visit his wife Ann’s blog. She is a gifted writer, sharing transparently about personal loss in the midst of a national tragedy, and a docent at the 9/11 Tribute Center. Her story was recently published in Chicken Soup For The Soul: Volunteerism

How To Hear From God



In his 2nd letter to the Thessalonians, Paul encouraged the church again to stand firm in the face of persecution. He urged them to “keep a strong grip on the teaching we passed on to you both in person and by letter.” The Thessalonians heard from Paul both in person and by letter.
Supernaturally, by the Holy Spirit, we can experience the presence of God. We sense His leading. We feel His peace. We are strengthened by His power. We can hear from God in person.
We also hear from God through the Bible, His love letter to us, His children. The words in the Word are “living and active.” They are not merely ink on a page. They speak directly to our hearts in miraculous ways.
The danger is when our relationship with God is unbalanced, focused on one OR the other. 

I know some Christians who have an entirely experiential relationship with God. They rarely read the Bible. They don’t memorize Scripture. They attend Christian functions, listen to Christian radio and music, shoot off prayer requests, even serve in ministry. But they depend upon experiences alone to hear from God. Maybe a word from the pulpit or from another Christian hits a nerve. But without reading the Bible on their own, they are like a boat without an anchor. They drift along from experience to experience without any foundation. 

In the book of Acts, Luke tells us that the Bereans were considered more noble than those in Thessalonica because after they heard the word from Paul, they searched the Scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was true. The Bible calls itself our spiritual food (milk as babes, then meat), necessary to grow into mature Christians. When we speak we use words, when God speaks, He uses His Word. We need to keep a strong grip on His letters.
Then there are Christians who are scholars in the Word. They can cite verse and address and put myself and others to shame. But the danger here can be that it is just head knowledge. An old tract titled, “Missing Heaven By 18 Inches” teaches that 18 inches is the distance between our head and our heart. 

If we know all about God, but lack a heart relationship with Him, we will miss spending eternity with Him. If we store up much information in our brains, but lack love, we are just a resounding gong and will be lacking the other fruits of the Spirit – joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It’s not enough to know all about God. We need to know Him personally as a friend, husband, brother, and keep to the teaching we learn from Him.

Do you need to strengthen your knowledge of His Word or deepen your experiences with Him? Let’s talk about it. 

With all these things in mind, dear brothers and sisters, stand firm and keep a strong grip on the teaching we passed on to you both in person and by letter.  2 Thess. 2:15  



Graduation Day!

Congratulations, AJ!
You have made your Dad and I so proud in so many ways.

I love this picture that my sister took at AJ’s graduation last week. His confident cheerful swagger as he entered the graduation ceremony testifies to his confident cheerful demeanor.

Graduations are reminders of the changing seasons of our lives. While this is the end of AJ’s high school days, it is the beginning of an exciting new chapter of his life. What he learned and experienced in high school contributes to the person he will be tomorrow.
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Not surprising that I see this as a metaphor for our lives in Christ. The experiences that we have while here on earth serve to mold us into the person that God wants us to be, both here and in the hereafter. As the Apostle Paul said, “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” Our life on earth is preparation for the job that God has planned for us for eternity.
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My prayer is that you and I will face eternity with a confident cheerful swagger knowing that the best is yet to come, that we have been prepared to face the future, a future that is superior to anything that we have ever known. May we view our passage as a graduation filled with hopeful expectation.
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“For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth.” Psalm 71:5
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“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” Philippians 1:20

Susan