Tag Archives: life

Hands

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In the grip of Christ, we have no need.

My dad drew up my hand and placed it next to my grandfather’s, who was in the casket.  He then placed his next to mine, so that all three were in a row, saying, “You see, Sammy, where you get your hands?”  My young eyes noticed the similarities between my grandpa’s hands, my dad’s, and my own.  Each had the same wrinkly skin and stubby strength, passed on from generation to generation.  In that moment, as a little boy, I learned more than just genetics; I learned that everyone you love, will leave you, no matter how strong his hands.

Our safety in life is not found in all the trivial and temporary things that can be stripped away in a second.  Our comfort in life is not found in plans, pleasures, power, or people, for all will vanish.  If we place ourselves into their greasy hands, we will slip right out.  These things will always let you down.  People will always let you down, your possessions will always let you down, pleasures will always let you down.  None of these have hands that are fit to hold the human soul.

So what should you give yourself to and where is your solace found?  Recently, some have said that religion is not the answer.  They are quick to point out that Religion will let us down, too—that religion hurts, drops, kills.  It is graspless.

When your friends fail, when your money disappears, when your reputation is tattered, where is your comfort to be found?  Even more, when your life itself refuses to breathe again, what is your comfort in death?  What will hold you then?

It seems that we need hands that have been both to heaven and earth.  We need hands that hold the power of the cosmos and that hold the palm of the child.  We need hands that have thrust the stars into their orbits and that have thrust the heart into the human.  We need hands that have both the power to heal and the tenderness to hold.

The hands of Jesus Christ are the hands for us.  Not only did they spin the world into motion, but also they touched the oozing sores of a leper and dried the tears of a prostitute.  They wakened the universe with power and they writhed in pain from mortal nails.  His hands were both divine and dead, miraculous and mortal.

The holes in his hands are a portal through which heaven and earth touch.  And that is where he holds us.  That is our solace and comfort.  That is where we will never be shaken, the spot from which we will never be let go.  In the grip of Christ, we have no need.  In the grip of Christ, we can let go of our troubles, our idols, and our self-definitions.

What is truly, deeply, our only comfort?  Even the most non-religious person can see that our comfort is not in what we can hold onto, for our grasp is so weak and the natural course of this life rips everything out of our grip.  My solace and comfort come not from what I can hold onto, but from Whom is holding onto me.

So reads the Heidelberg Catechism, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”  The answer: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”

You belong to Jesus Christ and he will never let go of you.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.  For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.[1]

© Samuel Kee, 2012

[1] Colossians 1:15-17, ESV.

Lesson from Sodom

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What if just one righteous person were found?

Let me share with you three paragraphs that could give you great hope.  Consider an event that happened to the man that stands at the fount of three major world religions: Abraham.  In Genesis 18, Abraham risks his life by approaching God on behalf a wicked city.  Though God was going to destroy Sodom, Abraham stood before the Lord and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?  Suppose there are fifty righteous who are in it?  Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?” (23-24).  God told Abraham that for the sake of fifty, he would not destroy it.  But Abraham is not satisfied.  He proceeds to ask on behalf of 45 righteous people, then forty, thirty, twenty, and ten people.  Each time, God says that he will not destroy Sodom if that number of righteous people can be found in it.  But Abraham is doing more than just bargaining with God, he is probing into the inner workings of the Divine, discovering an immutable principle that could change your life.

Though Abraham stops asking at ten righteous people, the reader carries on the conversation in her own mind.  The reader asks herself, “What if just one righteous person were found, then would God destroy the city?”  That is the dramatic question that stands and lingers on the edge of our hearts.  What if just one righteous person existed, then would God destroy us?  Then we go to our history books, in a mad search for just one righteous person.  Have any ever existed?  Here’s how Scripture answers this question: “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:11).  As God looks at humankind, he is unable to find a single, righteous person.  This means only one thing: he has no reason not to destroy us.

Abraham learned that God is only looking for one righteous person.  You and I know that “none is righteous.”  All fall desperately short of complete goodness.  We ache at the thought that we’re so close to being saved—needing just one righteous person—but infinitely far from achieving this goal.  Nevertheless, if you read just a little further in Romans 3, you will discover a verse that will melt your heart with joy.  “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (21-22).  While humankind groped in the darkness, trembling beneath the wrath of God, God himself sent our solution into the world.  God sent the “one righteous” person that we need; his name is Jesus.  We have our righteous person and we must cling to him like a drowning man to a raft.  He is our raft and our salvation, both our present help and our eternal solution.  In Jesus Christ, you have everything that God is looking for.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Our Tree

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The tree is the portal through which we find God.

The summer after my second grade year, I fell from a tree.  No one knows how far up I was, it’s estimated that I was thirty to forty feet above the ground.  At least that’s what they tell me.  I can’t remember any of it.

Evidently, an ambulance came and picked me up, taking me to Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio; again, I’m sorry I “missed” that.  It would have been cool to see an ambulance drive through our yard.  Then I was unconscious at the hospital for a week or two, I’m not sure how long exactly.  Again, I can’t remember any of it.  I’ve seen some pictures of me in the hospital, but that’s about it.  The fall knocked the memory of this event clear out of my head.

I’m usually a very careful climber, so I’m not sure what went wrong that summer afternoon (or was it morning?).  My brother and I were playing in the woods together, as we usually did.  My guess is that a branch broke, in my zeal to get to the top.

While I don’t have a memory of “the tree,” my guess is that you do.  You remember the tree, though not the one in Northeastern, Ohio.  The tree that we all remember was in the Garden of Eden.  It’s the tree we’re aching for and, therefore, searching for.  It’s the Tree of Life, which God banned our first parents, Adam and Eve, from discovering.

The Tree of Life is in the collective memory of humankind.  It’s “home.”  It’s the place of longing, the place of dreams, the place we’re searching for, beneath and behind everything we do.  Love.  Life.  Joy.  Meaning.  Significance.  Relationship.  Eternity.  Beauty.

Unlike my tree, none of us can shake the memory of our Tree.  Though we’ve fallen from it, we desperately want to find it.  But is it still there?  In other words, can any human have the deepest desires of the heart met?

It’s curious to note that the cross of Jesus was also known as “the tree” (Galatians 3:13, 1 Peter 2:24, Acts 5:30).  Jesus died on the tree.  Jesus was broken by the curse on the tree.  The tree meant death for Jesus—but life for us.  At the same moment, it was both a place of cursing and blessing, of death and life.  The tree of the cross is the new Tree of Life, the portal through which we return to the Garden of Eden, the very Paradise of God—home.

Through the cross, we find God.  We find life.  Our longings and dreams meet their object at last.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Cut Flowers

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Life carries a little of the beauty of the Source, enough to keep us coming back.

The red flowers on our table were a welcoming bright spot against the brown wall.  They were for our neighbor, who needs some encouragement as the New Year begins.  My wife put the cut flowers in a vase until we could deliver them.  They were so beautiful, red petals surrounding a yellow center.

But I could not get over the irony of the cut flowers.  On the one hand, they were so beautiful and exemplary of life, but on the other hand, they were dead.  Yes, they would look pretty for a few days, but soon it would become obvious that they had been cut off from the life source.  The vibrant petals would fall off and the whole thing would shrivel.  It was only a matter of time.

We are surrounded by cut flowers, existing in a world of lifeless life.  Around me I see traces of life and energy, but really they are hollow.  I see beautiful forms and shapes, but they have no substance to them, no everlasting center.  The natural world around me, so ravishing and fierce, is just a shadow.  It will not last.  The accomplishments that drive me and give me a sense of worth are totally empty.  People in my life, whom I love and who love me, also will not last.  Whether people, pleasures, power, accomplishments, or beauty, everything has been cut off from its life source, and it’s now only a matter of time before every last petal falls off.

Nothing lasts.  Try giving your heart away to something of this world, and it will be broken.  Why?  Because everything dies.  Nothing here can stand the weight of a human heart, with all of its profound longings and needs.

Life carries a little of the beauty and energy of the Source, just enough to keep us coming back for more, but never enough to quench our thirst.  The Germans have a word for this intense longing, sehnsucht.  Sehnsucht is an intense form of missing something.  But what?

I love how the frustrated book of Ecclesiastes puts it, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities!  All is vanity” (1:2).  The writer goes on, “What does mankind gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (1:3).  The answer, of course, is nothing.  No matter how hard we strive, we’ll never find anything that lasts or that satisfies.  Everything is vanity or meaningless or empty.

Empty.  That is a good word to summarize the irony of the cut flower.  And it is a good word to bring to another chapter of the Bible, Isaiah 6.  Here we witness the powerful cries of the fiery beings as they encircle the throne of God.  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!”  To repeat a description twice in Hebrew meant that it was not just comparative, but superlative.  To repeat a description three times was to put it totally out of reach.  We’re to understand that God is not just superlative to us, by completely beyond us.  He is holy, holy, holy.

We’re meant to carry our cry “Vanity, vanity, vanity!” to the throne of God in order to hear the answer, “Holy, holy, holy!” for that is the cure for our search, the life-source itself.  To be holy is to have weight and substance.  “Holy” indicates the stuff that will last, everlastingly.  When we arrive at the throne of God, we arrive at the unbroken source of life, our true home, where everyone longs to return.

Until then, we strive with the leftovers here on earth.  We lay in beds of cut flowers, waiting for that day when nothing dies.

Yet the only way to make it to that day, is to make it to God himself.  And to do that, you have to have a Mediator, someone on whose merits you might travel.  Our Man for the job is Jesus Christ, who was driven out from the presence of God, that we might be driven in.  He stripped himself of his merits and left them to us, that we might have something to bring before our King.

He became a cut flower, that we might be grafted in.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

 

Smudge the Sheep

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God's fences were designed to keep us close.

There once was a sheep named Smudge.  He was just a little guy, whose brother was named Smartie.  Smudge was a very curious sheep and insisted on exploring the world outside of the fence.  So, he diligently searched the fence for an opening.  One day, he finally found one at the bottom and managed to squeeze through it.  His newfound freedom was exhilarating.  He peeked back at his brother, Smartie, who stood inside of the fence, and he felt sorry for him.  Smudge was now free to do whatever he wanted.

In all of his frolicking, Smudge soon began to get hungry.  Looking through the wire fence, he saw his brother suckling at their mother, enjoying her warm milk.  Smudge headed toward the fence, but was unable to find a gap.  The gap that he had crawled through before would not let him through from the opposite direction.  Smudge grew hungrier and hungrier as he searched for a way to get through.  Just then, however, a stray dog came growling down the dirt road where Smudge stood.  The dog lunged toward the tiny sheep, obviously seeking to tear it apart.  Smudge ran as fast as he could down the road, until he found a split rail fence whose gaps were just big enough for him to fit through.  Smudge dove through the rails, just as the dog snapped at his hind legs.

Smudge was safe, or so he thought.  Turning around, he was face to face with a large bull, who was not too pleased at the sight of this little intruder.  Once again, Smudge ran; the mighty bull followed him across the pasture.  Smudge managed to escape on the other side, but almost got hit by school bus when he crossed the road outside of the fence.

In all of the excitement and with night falling fast, Smudge got lost.  Making matters worse, a snowstorm whipped through the air, sending a sudden burst of wind and ice upon the lost sheep.  Soon, Smudge was covered with snow, as his body was unable to out-warm the freezing flakes.  It wasn’t long until Smudge collapsed on the ground and the snow piled upon him.

Later that evening, a girl named Penny happened to stumble upon the mound of snow, discovering the half-froze sheep.  With the help of her mother, she brought Smudge inside the warm house, warmed him with a blow-dryer, and helped him to revive.  She fed him warm milk and nursed him back to health.

This is my summary of a children’s story I read last night.  And I can’t help but thinking about how we like to get to the other side of God’s fence.  We look at God’s laws and think, “Life would really be much better on the other side of this fence.”  We believe that God’s rules are way too restrictive and keep us from having fun.

But life—for Smudge or for us—is not better on the other side of the fence.  The fence is not meant to keep us from having fun, but to keep us from being killed.  On the other side of God’s fence, there are forces that are capable of destroying us.

Here’s another way of looking at it: the “fence” of God’s law is not meant to keep us from fun, but it is meant to keep us close to God.  So that the more fences we crawl under, the farther from God we get.  God’s fences were designed by him to keep us close to the source of life.

His laws are less about what we do not get to do and more about whom we get to be with.  Did you get that?

If you’re trying to find a way through the fence right now, turn around and look at God.  He is your source of life and nourishment and protection and joy.  Yes, joy.  Beyond the fence is danger, not in the sense of risk, but in the sense of stupidity.  Why stray to look for outside of the fence what you can only find inside of the fence?

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Phil

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It's a miracle that you are alive today.

Recently, one of my friends was shot and killed in a drive by shooting.  His name was Phil.  I worked alongside of Phil in a local grocery store, stocking shelves at 3 or 4 in the morning.  We loved telling jokes—the kind that are only funny that early in the morning—discussing the problems with health insurance, sharing stories about our families, and complaining about the gloves we used in the frozen food section.  Phil loved showing me a picture of his little boy.  Phil loved working out, energy drinks, and Mardi gras.  He was one of the easiest going guys I know; he was 23 years old.

He was in a car when it happened, on his way to the barber shop.

Naturally, the family of this former high school honor student is outraged, and no doubt plenty of people are seeking revenge.  I, too am upset.  I would love to have another chance to talk with Phil.  But regardless of what I would say to Phil, given the chance to see him again, I think a better scenario would be to hear what Phil would have to say to me, given just one more chance.

The Hebrew Scriptures say “Teach us to number our days, so that we can gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).  The truly wise person is the one who lives with the end in view, filtering all of life’s decisions, whether big or small, through his or her own finitude.  The unwise person lives only for today, for passions and pleasures that will fade.

If God is real, then everything is tinted with eternity.  God is not just another category of life, to go alongside of “work” or “family” or “hobbies;” rather, God’s shadow eclipses everything, casting eternity on it all.

It’s a miracle that I’m alive today; it’s a miracle that you are alive today.  We’re fooling ourselves if we deny this, if we pretend that our car couldn’t be next.  Take a moment to meditate on how you want to spend your day, knowing that tomorrow is not promised.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Tragedy at Masada

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At some point in our lives, we long to be delivered from Masada.

This past week I left this update on my Facebook page: There is no life apart from God.  Today I have a story to illustrate what I was thinking.  Have you heard of the ancient story of Masada?  Masada was a fortress in ancient Israel, during the time of the Romans.  I believe that it was built by Herod the Great, to serve as a safe place for him to flea.  Later, around 70 a.d., about 1,000 Jews fled to Masada to hide from the Romans.  Even though some of the Jews tried to revolt against the Romans, those that fled realized that they did not stand a chance.

So they managed to procure the palace of Masada, which was an ideal place for them to hide out, for years, if needed.  There was plenty of water and food storage, plenty of things to do at the palace, and, most important, it was virtually impenetrable.  It was built on a cliff and there were just two paths leading up to it; these paths were very steep and precarious, however, and crawling with snakes.

After a while, the Romans learned of the new colony of Jews living in Masada.  The Jews at Masada loved their new freedom from Roman rule; though the Romans were not so fond of the idea.  So 20,000 soldiers were sent to take back the 1,000 Jews living at Masada.

It was just as hard as they thought it would be.  After some unsuccessful attempts, the Romans had to re-group and re-plan.  Even with 20,000 soldiers, they still could not manage to scale the cliffs and break into the mighty fortress.  After some thinking, they went to work on building a long dirt road up the cliff to the palace.  It was a grueling process to build such a massive dirt highway; but, it was the only way to reach the rebels.

The dirt road to Masada took the Romans seven months to complete.  Seven months.  Can you imagine what it must have been like for those living in the fortress, having to look out your window every day for seven months and see the enemy slowly and relentlessly approaching?

Nonetheless, when the Romans finally made it up to the fortress, instead of being attacked by the Jews, who had seven months to plan, they were met by nothing but silence.  Nobody stirred in Masada—there was no war cry, no weapons, no counter attack, and no army.  The Romans entered the palace only to find 1,000 bodies.  All but a few of the Jews killed themselves, according to the Jewish historian Josephus.  Men, women, and children.  All were dead.

Their “leader,” Eleazar Ben Yair, had riled them up with a stirring and no doubt cultic speech, telling them that they’d be better off dead than have to be ruled byRome.  So they chose death rather than submission.

Ironically, because they loved their freedom so much, they chose the pathway of the least amount of freedom, death.  And I can’t even begin to describe the horrible ways in which they died on that plateau in Masada.

“There’s no life apart from God.”  Many of us equate God with the Romans and our freedom with Masada.  We don’t want to submit to God, to follow his rule in our lives.  We prefer the liberty we have in the palace on the rock.  We hate the thought of having to submit to God’s ways.

Ironically, not to choose God means to embrace Masada.  There is no life apart from God.  If he doesn’t rule us, then we have no hope of life, because God is life.  Here’s where my analogy breaks down, of course, for God is not like the Romans.  God does not have a cruel or unfair reign, like the Romans did.

His kingdom brings life to all of its citizens.  To run from his rule means to exit the kingdom of life.  God’s rule keeps you on the narrow pathway to life, the road to true freedom, and the portal into happiness.  By submitting to God, you are training your soul in the ways of life.  All of the other things we submit to actually lead to death; intuitively and/or experientially, we get that.

Some of us are in bondage to so many so-called freedom givers.  The more material possessions we have, for example, the more they “have” us.  The more sexual freedom we have, the more it keeps us in its chains.  The more power we have, the more it corrupts us.  There’s just no way out of the fortress.

Scripture contains the heart cry of someone like us who is dying for a Liberator.  “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:21-24).

At some point in our lives, we long to be delivered fromMasada.

Our Liberator comes not to destroy us, but to give us life.  His dirt road was a crude Roman cross, where he himself was the bridge between heaven and hell.  He laid himself down so that we could walk free.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Your Purpose

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It all has a purpose and a passion.

I love making stuff.  When I was a child, we made all kinds of stuff.  We built tree-houses with old doors and random posts.  We built go-karts and forts.  We made-up games with poles.  We made pies with apples; and jellies with pears and grapes.  We made quilts with scraps of fabric and books with our own poems.  I painted pictures on paper, logs, canvas, walls, and even my siblings.  We made stuff with clay, yarn, old car parts, buttons, tiles, pipes, pumpkins, pots, wheels, boards, dirt, leaves, foil, mirrors, nails, bricks, sticks…just about anything our imaginations could handle.  My mom helped us to believe that we could create anything we wanted out of the stuff that we had.

Everything I created had a purpose and a passion.  I didn’t just make random stuff, but stuff that I could use for a purpose, whether for entertainment, for getting a job done, for beauty, or just to make life easier.  It all was for a reason.

It also had a passion; that is, my heart was “in” the stuff that I made.  Whatever I was creating at the moment was the “object of my affection.”  Nothing could tear me away from it and I was very defensive of it.  Don’t make fun of the thing that I made; don’t touch the thing that I made; don’t ruin the thing that I made; don’t smear it, misuse it, or misunderstand it.  Find the beauty in it.  It’s my life!  It’s not just a story, it’s my story.  It’s not just a painting, it’s my soul.  It’s not just a tree-house, it’s my world.  I am proud of it, want to show it off to you, and want you to love it, just as much as I do.  I don’t make trash!

I love making stuff; and so does God.  Re-read the last two paragraphs from the vantage point of God—the One who made you.

God has a purpose for everything that he makes, especially for you.  If you are living and breathing, then you have an intrinsic purpose that was fashioned into you by God himself.  You have a purpose and God is passionate about you.  He loves to show you off and has something in mind for you to accomplish.

Too often, we creatures put ourselves in the place of our Creator and make judgments about our lives, as if we were the Artist.  We think and say things like: I have no purpose; I am rejected; I can’t do anything right.  We take ourselves off of the Potter’s wheel and step into the shoes of the Potter.  We ascend to the throne and make verdicts about our lives that the true Judge has never made.

But we were not made to be God; we were made for God.  We were made for his purposes and for his passion.  We bring glory to him by using our uniqueness to display a quality of God that would remain hidden without us.  Just as the things I make reveal more about me, so do the things and people that God makes reveal more about him.  That is your ultimate purpose and the foundation of joy in your life.  If you’re not living for God, then you’ll never discover this source of radical joy.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

False Face

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We will continue to be restless until we are filled by him.

At the grocery store where I work we do something that many retailers do when a product is out of stock: false face.  If the ketchup is out of stock, for instance, then the product next to it is moved in its place, creating the illusion that nothing is missing.  The mustard might be moved over, so that it takes up the spot where the ketchup was supposed to be on the shelf.  To false face a missing product hides the fact that it’s missing.

Actually, it hides the “hole” on the shelf, rather than the missing product itself.  The fact that the ketchup is missing is harder to detect.  It’s covered by mustard, making the huge space behind it unnoticeable.

For those familiar with DC comics, False Face was the name of three villains in the 1960’s.  They were masters of disguise, able to mimic others in order to fool and go undetected.

But to “false face” goes beyond grocery shelves and supervillains.  I false face, too, whenever I am trying to hide something that’s missing in my life.  I grab the thing closest to me and put it out in front, hiding the emptiness behind it.  We false face behind friends, professions, hobbies, or even Hollywood.  Trying to cover up the hole, we use the mustard next to us.

We are empty on the inside, but we don’t want anyone to find out.  Our false face fools others and keeps them from noticing how hollow we are.  So we get louder, prettier, wealthier, and more powerful, all in an effort to hide.  We claw at the things of life and force them onto our shelf.

But we are more than mustard.

We were made to be filled by the real thing.  The trouble is that the more we false face, the easier it is to false face and the more lost we become.  We think that the false face is the real thing: we grow content with being empty, so long as something is plopped out in front.  Not just anything will do, nonetheless.

God created us for himself and we will continue to be restless until we are filled by him.  He is to be the product on our shelf, not these false gods that we hide behind.  False gods are idols which ultimately break our hearts, because they never make good on their promises.  They leave us empty and they break our hearts.  They abandon us just as quickly as that superficial friend does when trouble strikes.  They are not here for the long haul, nor were they meant to be.

We were meant to be filled by God.  Until we find him, we will never know who we are and what we can become: the false face will define us and we will remain empty.

© Samuel Kee, 2011