Nothing in our lives brings us joy like small children. But they are also a challenge. Maybe that is why there are so many jokes about raising children.
"We child-proofed our home," said one comedian, "but they are still getting in."
"If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache," says another, "do what it says on the aspirin bottle: "˜TAKE TWO ASPIRIN' and "KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN."
Some of you will identify with Rita Rudner's line: "I think about having children, because time is running out. I want to have children while my parents are still young enough to take care of them."
One mother listened as her seven-year-old son explained what he'd learned in school one day. He asked his four-year-old brother, "Did you know you're made up of atoms?"
The younger boy looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "Mom! That means you're made up of Eves."
Children are wonderful. And our most important responsibility is to prepare our children to live fully, completely and joyfully as children of God.
The Apostle Paul is writing from a prison cell in Rome to his young protégé, Timothy, a pastor in Ephesus. He is giving counsel as a parent to his child. He wants his young friend to come to full maturity in Christ. And from his wise counsel you and I can find help for our lives.
In today's lesson Paul shares with Timothy some of the obstacles he has encountered and some of the lessons he has learned. Then he closes with these words: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed . . ." Basically he is urging Timothy to seek a life lived without apology. To be able to stand one day before God having lived such an exemplary life that there is nothing he will have to explain away. Nothing he will have to hide. How does a person live such a life? Paul tells us in this passage.
First of all, says St. Paul, honor your commitments. He writes to Timothy, "The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us . . ."
There are no short cuts in building a successful life, Paul is saying to Timothy--no easy paths. Life is about endurance and trust and faithfulness. It is about doing the right thing--even if the right thing isn't the easy thing.
Among the heroes of 9/11 was a young man named Todd Beamer. Beamer was on the airplane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The hijackers intended to crash the plane into the White House, until a small band of brave passengers, led by Todd Beamer, attacked them and forced the crash landing. There were no survivors, but that small band of determined passengers had protected the White House from what surely would have been a devastating blow to this country.
A few days after 9/11, Todd Beamer's widow, Lisa, appeared on the Larry King Live! show to talk about her husband's faith in Jesus and how it guided his life. At one point, she commented, ". . . he did his best to make sure he was living a life that was pleasing to God and that would help him know God better, and he acted on that all the way to the end, and I'm so proud." (1)
Life is about commitment. We began this morning talking about children. Those who are parents have commitments to their children. Those who are married have commitments to their spouses. All of us have commitments to our community and to our church. And, of course, our most important commitment is to God.
I want to read something that author and pastor Lewis Smedes once wrote. It puts the matter quite plainly. He writes, "I want to say to you that if you have a ship you will not desert, if you have people you will not forsake, if you have causes you will not abandon, then you are like God . . . When a person makes a promise, she reaches out into an unpredictable future and makes one thing predictable: she will be there even when being there costs her more than she wants to pay.
"When a person makes a promise, he stretches himself out into circumstances that no one can control and controls at least one thing: he will be there no matter what the circumstances turn out to be. With one simple word of promise, a person creates an island of certainty in a sea of uncertainty." (2)
Wow! That's both beautiful and true. Becoming the kind of person Christ desires us to become requires that we keep our commitments.
Second, says St. Paul, hang in there when the going gets tough. "If we endure," he writes to Timothy, "we will also reign with him . . ." If we endure . . . Sometimes that's a pretty big if.
All of us are familiar with a geyser named Old Faithful--America's most famous geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Did you know that a short while back Old Faithful wasn't as faithful as it used to be? At least, it was slower in meeting its commitments.
Why? It seems that a series of small earthquakes caused a gradual slowdown in the famed geyser's eruptions. The average time between eruptions grew to more than 80 minutes and sometimes as much as 100 minutes, an interval rarely seen in the past. Geologists think earthquakes sometimes shift the earth's crust enough to affect the natural underground plumbing that feeds geysers. According to experts, Old Faithful will probably regain its normal schedule of eruptions, if it hasn't already. Still, for a while, this wonderful geyser failed to meet its responsibilities. (3)
Need I say that you and I have earthquakes in our lives--earthquakes that may affect our ability or our willingness to keep our commitments? Have you ever known a person who was a committed jogger who had an accident and never regained his or her former level of performance? A small earthquake, perhaps, but an earthquake just the same.
There are many kinds of earthquakes. Here's a more substantial one. A couple had been very active in church. But then they had a child who was mentally and physically challenged. They blamed God. They refused to recognize that God was with them in their pain. They let their commitment slide because of this earthquake. We can sympathize with them completely, but their reaction to this unfortunate incident is self-defeating. They have cut themselves off from much loving support.
In her book God Knows My Heart, journalist Christine Wicker interviewed a man named Vincent Hall. Mr. Hall is known throughout Dallas, Texas for two things: he is chairman of the board of a major credit union, and he is a committed Christian. Every weekend, Mr. Hall marches through downtown Dallas intersections protesting racism and other evils in society. He knows that few businessmen of his stature are so open about their faith. He knows that he is opening himself up to the ridicule of his community. But he can't back down. And the reason he can't or won't back down is because of a particular sermon that changed his life.
Many years ago, Mr. Hall's pastor preached on three different kinds of believers: "if," "because," and "regardless."
An "if" believer follows God if he receives blessings and rewards in return. He waits to see what God will do first, then decides whether or not to respond in obedience. Jacob is a good example of an "if" believer.
A good example of a "because" believer is King David. A "because" believer follows God because God blesses and rewards him. He has seen the connection between his obedience and God's blessing, and he wants to keep it going.
But there is a third kind of believer, said this pastor. This is the "regardless" believer. A "regardless" believer loves God no matter whether he ever receives any blessings or rewards in return. Job, the man whose very name is synonymous with suffering, was a "regardless" believer. A "regardless" believer loves God in spite of his circumstances, in spite of his hardships. On the day he heard that sermon, Mr. Hall devoted himself to being a "regardless" believer for the rest of his life. (4)
St. Paul was a regardless believer. Honor your commitment, St. Paul says to Timothy. Hang in there even when things get tough. And there is one more bit of counsel that Paul gives to Timothy: Have faith in God. God is faithful even when we are not. As Paul puts it: "If we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful--for he cannot deny himself."
Isn't that interesting? St. Paul says there is one thing God cannot do. God cannot deny God's own character. God is committed to loving us, remembering us, remaining faithful to us, even if we turn our back on Him. That is how we can know that one day we will live with God in eternity. It is not because of our faithfulness, but God's.
Author Amy Tan recalls an old family story from her mother's childhood. When Tan's mother was four years old, she pulled a pot of boiling soup off the stove on to herself. The family wasn't sure she would survive her injuries. The little girl's grandmother used her own brand of "tough love" to motivate her granddaughter to hang on. She told her little granddaughter that if she died, her funeral clothes would be very plain and unremarkable because she hadn't lived long enough to merit beautiful clothes. In the culture Amy Tan's mother grew up in, the dead person was supposed to be dressed in their finest clothes. To be buried in ordinary clothes was an insult.
No one would remember a little girl who was buried in plain burial clothes, the grandmother said. Amy Tan writes that her great grandmother's harsh words "scared her mother back to life." It sounds cruel, but it worked.
Many decades later, when Tan's mother was dying, she often called out for her grandmother. She was convinced that the ghost of her grandmother had come to visit her. Tan writes, "This time I think (grandmother) was telling my mother that her funeral clothes had already been made, and not to worry, that they were fancy beyond belief." (5) I don't think it matters to most of us whether we are buried in fancy clothes or not. But we do believe that we will look good in our resurrection clothes. Because we were not made for the grave. We were made for eternal fellowship with God.
Honor your commitments, St. Paul counsels Timothy. Hang in there when the going gets tough. Have faith in God. God is faithful even when we are not. Good words for us to remember as well.
1. Interview, Larry King Live! 18 Sept. 2001. Cited by Joseph M. Stowell, The Trouble With Jesus (Chicago: Moody, 2003), p. 48.
2. Lewis Smedes, "The Power of a Promise," A Chorus of Witnesses, Long and Plantinga, eds. (Eerdmans, 1994). Cited in Leadership, Winter 2002, p. 73.
3. The Associated Press.
4. Christine Wicker. God Knows My Heart (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), p. 151.
5. "My Mother's Secrets," from The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan, excerpted in Good Housekeeping, April 2004, p. 134.