Humility is not a concept often used or demonstrated these days. We live in a culture that is full of showboating, you know, that excessive and often annoying behavior done after someone has “done something good” that is intended to bring attention to the person doing the showboating. The term “showboating” is derived from the theatrical performances produced on riverboats on the Mississippi River in the late 19th century. These riverboats became known as showboats and the verb “to showboat” comes from that origin.  

Just turn on the television and watch any sporting event. You will not have to watch too long before you see a player make a good play and after the play is over that player “showboats,” as if to say, look at me, look what I’ve done!

Sometimes showboating even becomes a craze. From 1988 to 1991 fullback Elbert “Ickey” Woods played for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals. When he scored a touchdown, he performed a celebration that became famously known as the “Ickey Shuffle.” Woods would shuffle his feet to the right while holding the football out to the right, do the same moves to the left, then do three hops to the right, all before spiking the ball into the ground. This showboating led the NFL to create a rule against “Excessive Celebration” which is enforced as a penalty against that team. While Ickey Woods has not played professional football for more than twenty years, his famous end zone dance lives on. Click here to watch a one-minute video highlighting the NFL’s most famous dancer.

Jesus describes an incident of showboating in Luke 18:9-14. In this parable, two men, a Pharisee and a tax collector, went to the temple to pray. The Pharisee thanked God that he was not a sinner like the other people, especially that lowly tax collector. Maybe even this religious leader did his own version of the “Ickey Shuffle” as he exalted himself (arrogance, spiritual pride). The tax collector, on the other hand, would not even look up toward heaven as he beat his breast and cried out, “God have mercy on me, a sinner” (v.13).

What Jesus said next caught everyone off guard. He said that the tax collector is the one made right before God, not the Pharisee. He concludes this parable by saying, “I tell you this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (v. 14).

We find this warning in James 4:13-16 – “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

And Solomon, in pushing back against boasting, said this – “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips” (Proverbs 27:2).

Celebrate your accomplishments in a way that brings honor and glory to God and not in a way that says, “look at me.” And as many football coaches have told their team, “When you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.”

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This is a post-election revised edition of a writing from earlier this year. I trust it to be needed by us all.  

Okay, here we are. The morning after. Do you feel exhausted, empty, drained? Physical exhaustion. Mental exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion. Social exhaustion. 24 hours a day news exhaustion. The current climate in our country certainly is nothing short of chaos, absurd, frightening, divisive, and I could add any number of more adjectives, all of which lead us to exhaustion.  

In my opinion, one of the toughest things in our crowded, loud, and chaotic world, is to create enough space and silence to find genuine rest and calm. Whether or not chaos finds us, or we create our own chaos, its effects all around us seep deep into our souls. Even when we are away from constant noise, our heart, mind, and souls are not really quieted. Even when we are at rest, our heart, mind, and souls are not restful. Even when we put our heads on the pillow to sleep, we don’t really sleep well, which then brings on even more fatigue.

This constant clutter in our heart, mind, soul also makes it difficult to hear God’s “still, small voice”. But if we are to follow Jesus in a serious life-changing way, we must find regular time to be quiet and listen. There are many voices competing for our attention and loyalty, and most often God is not the loudest of those voices.

While God is always by our side offering advice, He is not like The Great Gazoo in the old animated TV series, The Flintstones; that tiny green floating scientist who came to help Fred and Barney, but usually created more trouble than help.  

Building the discipline of hearing God, waiting on God, resting in His presence, requires work. It begins with a desire to carve out space. It always requires giving up something, desiring to turn off the noise and find stillness (Psalm 37:7), find quietness (Zephaniah 3:17), find intimacy (James 4:8), find rest (Matthew 11:28-30).

The 23rd Psalm begins with these words – “The LORD is my shepherd; I have everything I need. He lets me rest in fields of green grass and leads me to quiet pools of fresh water. He gives me new strength” (vv.1-3a GNT).

Timothy Leary, the Harvard clinical psychologist, and of hippie fame, encouraged young people in the Sixties to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” While his countercultural phrase encouraged the usage of psychedelic drugs to find true consciousness, and that’s certainly not my advice, I do think that if we “turn on” a sensitivity to God and His presence, if we “tune in” by listening, and if we regularly “drop out” of the noise around us, we will “find” God and be better able to hear, and be changed by, His “still, small voice.”

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10).

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him” (Psalm 62:5).

“Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone astray” (Job 6:24).

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalm 131:2).

“I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me” (Proverbs 8:17).

Do you desperately desire peace and calm, stillness and rest? Where are you looking for the cure for your exhaustion?   

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Do you find yourself running after one thing and then another, always looking for the proverbial carousel’s brass ring, which offers you some sort of prize, temporary peace, temporary contentment? Let’s be honest, we all tend to look for peace and contentment in a variety of places, many of which if they provide any satisfaction at all, it is only fleeting. What do we do when the satisfaction is gone? Likely get back on the carousel ride and hope to grab the brass ring again.

God offers a calming peace to those who trust in Him. It is not a brass ring kind of peace; you know, grab it, rejoice in it for a few moments, then give it back to the ride operator.

Instead, He offers a peace that flows like a river. Picture a continually flowing river that brings a perpetual source of nutrients, abundance, and freshness to the land around it. Now let’s read Isaiah 66:12 – “For this is what the LORD says: I will make peace flow to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flood; you will nurse and be carried on her hip and bounced on her lap.”  

NOTE: Isaiah 66 is a chapter about rejoicing in Gods ultimate victory. It is the book’s final chapter and in order to get the context of v.12, I encourage you to take time to read all 24 verses. Click here to read Isaiah 66 in its entirety.  

I believe some background for v.12 is found in Isaiah 8:5-10 and 9:6-7.

In 8:6-7, the prophet pictures Assyria, the cruelest enemy Israel (Northern Kingdom) and Judah (Southern Kingdom) ever faced, flooding the entire kingdom, the Euphrates River deluging the land. Then in v.8, the metaphor seemingly changes from an overpowering river (rebellion) to some sort of bird in the sky. However, I don’t think the prophet was implying another predator. Instead, how about the outspread wings belonging to the Lord and despite repeated rebellion, He continues to offer protection.

Prophetic language is often hard to understand. Let me attempt to offer my understanding. These verses are a prophecy from the Lord to Isaiah. The Assyrians will destroy Judah, but the people of Judah should not live in fear. Why no fear? Verse 10 give the answer – because God is with us. The actual Hebrew text reads – for with us God (is). The preposition with us is the Hebrew word im, from which we get `im-mā-nū, which in English is Immanuel. And if you think ahead to Christmas, we know Jesus is named Immanuel, God with us.

Isaiah 9:6-7 – The promise of increasing peace because of the Messiah’s never-ending rule and reign. These are the familiar words we often read at Christmas.

And then in 66:12, the picture shifts to the overflowing river of God’s protection providing peace and prosperity.

As a rebuke of stubborn Israel, and a warning to you and me today, we find these words in Isaiah 48:18 – “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea.”

I see the takeaway as this – trusting the Lord and obeying His commands offers you and me God’s enduring peace and nurturing! Look at 66:12 again: “For this is what the LORD says: I will make peace flow to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flood; you will nurse and be carried on her hip and bounced on her lap.”  

Thankfully, God’s faithfulness to His children is never-ending, despite our continuing rebellion (our sinful nature). Will you right now, even if you do not feel worthy of it, accept, and embrace the “peace that flows like a river” offered by a God who cares for you? Will you also dedicate your life to following God, worshipping Him and not the endless gods, the brass rings, offered by the world.

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We live in a country greatly divided. We seem to not agree with one another on anything. In fact, these days we do not even agree to disagree. We name call. We belittle. We demean. We build ourselves up by tearing others down.

We are just days away from what will likely be a very contentious election. The idea of a free and fair election is already being called into question. Some candidates have made it known that they will contest the results, even before the ballots are counted and finalized. My suspicion is that those candidates only intend to question the idea of a free and fair election if do not win. I am all for recounts if recounts are warranted. But to be questioning the validity of an election before the votes are counted seems ludicrous to me. Just my opinion.

Now allow me to share a thought. What if in this volatile and polarized divide in which we find ourselves, we, every one of us, strived to build a bridge to the “other side.” The “other side” being those people or groups of people who do not look, act, or believe the way we look, act, and believe. In its simplest terms, what is a bridge? It is nothing more than a structure built over a divide that allows people to cross from one side to the other, in both directions.

What if we strived for unity with one another. You say, “No, no, no, I will never think or act or believe like them!” That is not what I am asking for. The idea of “No, no, no, I will never think or act or believe like them” is not unity. That is uniformity. God did not create mankind to be uniform. He did not make us all the same. We are all unique (Psalm 139:13-14). But He does ask us to be unified (1 Peter 3:8).

Uniformity is the state of being uniform in views, beliefs, standards, etc. In uniformity there is no allowance or tolerance for differences. I do not think uniformity is possible nor do I advocate for it. Uniformity seeks to eliminate any and all differences, desiring to create sameness. I do not know about you, but sameness sounds boring to me.     

Unity, on the other hand, is the harmony between different groups; the ability to coexist peacefully and respectfully. Unity treats others with respect, tolerating differences. And tolerating is different from understanding.

Unity is messy. It takes work. The apostle Paul penned these words, found in Ephesians 4:3 – “Make every effort to keep unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” King David wrote this – “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity” (Psalm 133:1). In his parting words to his disciples, and I believe to us today, Jesus prayed for his followers to be “brought to complete unity” (John 17:20-23).

In context, all the “unity” verses I have referenced in this writing are given to those of us who are Jesus-followers; the Church universal. But, folks, I see no reason why striving to be or become unified cannot be a Humanity universal narrative. It will take work. It will require give and take. It will require acceptance. It will require humility. It will require tolerance over understanding. It will require quieting our voice and listening.

Borrowing from John Lennon, I offer us this thought – “Imagine all the people living life in peace. You, you may say I’m a dreamer, But I’m not the only one. I hope someday you will join us. And the world will be as one” (“Imagine”). There are some very troublesome lyrics in that song, but the call to be as one (unity) is loud and clear.

So, what if, and this is my challenge to all of us, in this great divide in which we live, each one of us takes a step to build a bridge to the “other side.” What if we strive to turn greatly divided into not greatly united!

Let’s be known as a country, a very diverse group of people, who value unity (oneness) over uniformity (conformity)! Just imagine what that will look like! Let’s go build a bridge!    

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I am sure you have a song that when you hear it, you get transported to some other place and time. Every time I hear “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens, I immediately go back to that first kiss with my then girlfriend, now wife.

You are probably familiar with the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” Whenever I hear it, or sing it, it takes me to a place for which I have no words. The hymn is based upon the poem “O Store Gud” (O Great God) written by the Swedish pastor Carl Gustav Boberg in 1885. As he walked home from church one afternoon, a violent thunderstorm raged around him. Thunder clapped. Lightning flashed. Strong winds swept over the meadows. The rains came down.

By the time Boberg got home, the storm had subsided; a peaceful calm had settled in. Out his window he heard birds chirping, church bells ringing, and as he gazed out at the lake, not a single ripple stirred its water. It was this contrast between violent and calm that inspired him to write the poem.

Eventually the poem was translated first into German and then into Russian before becoming a hymn. In 1949, the British missionary Stuart K. Hine translated the hymn from Russian into English and added several verses, making it the hymn we know today. You know how the hymn begins, “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.” And knowing the back story helps verse two make sense, “When through the woods and forest glades I wander, And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees, When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur, And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze.”

There might be no better description of God’s love for us than these lyrics from the hymn, “And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce to take it in, That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin.”

And maybe no better response to that love than these words, “Then sings my soul, My Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, How great Thou art.”

David penned these words as he began his last psalm – “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (145:1-3). Click here to read Psalm 145 in its entirety. I believe this is the only psalm that self-identifies as a song of praise (Hebrew: tehillah).

Thank you, Father for sending Your Son to take away our sins, how great You are!!!  

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Do you ever wake up in the morning feeling like you were in a wrestling match during the night? You lay in bed all night tossing and turning, worrying about the stuff of life. You wake up feeling more tired than when you went to bed. We all face challenges in life, and whether it is financial, physical, relational, vocational, medical, or emotional, not one of us is exempt from the bumps and bruises in life. Sometimes those bumps and bruises only cause a minor sore spot, other times the broken bone is sticking out of your leg.

Many times, both in the little skin bruises and the major bone breaks, we find ourselves in stress overload, and in the darkness of night, those dark nights of your soul, the issues often seem worse. Have you ever felt like that? Or maybe you feel as if you simply cannot get away from your hurts and pains, or worries and fears, and there is no place to rest your weary and worn-down body and soul. Usually walking on a deserted beach while listening to the ocean’s sounds calms your spirit. Or, maybe, sitting quietly on your porch brings some peace. It could be that you close your eyes and dream somewhere over the rainbow; a place where trouble melts like lemon drops.

But, right now, none of those are of any help. The deserted beach seems gloomier than at other times. The porch is eerily silent, leaving your mind to spiral deeper into despair. Somehow, the rainbow has vanished and all you see are storm clouds. Even as you pull yourself into bed, the darkness of your dark room even seems darker.

You are not alone in experiencing those dark nights of your soul. God strengthened Jesus in his “dark night” at Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46). He restored Elijah’s hope during his dark night of loneliness on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:1-18).

And when Habakkuk wrestled with despair as he wondered why God seemingly was allowing the crimes of Judah to go unpunished, almost defiantly demanding an answer from God (Habakkuk 1:1 – 2:1), he receives assurance that God had a plan (vv. 2:2-3) on how He would deal with those who are unfaithful (vv. 2:4-20).

In the first sixteen verses of chapter 3, as Habakkuk cries out his dark night of the soul to end (vv. 1-3), God finally lays out His plan (4-16). And yet in the midst of Habakkuk’s continuing to wrestle with despair, the book ends with his expression of confidence in the Sovereign and Almighty God (17-19).      

First, let me say that I am in no way diminishing any struggles you might be facing, whether they be big or small. Now let me also say that we have a God who is both interested in your bumps and bruises AND who can also care for those bumps and bruises. He is a both/and God!  

So, I ask you – Are you stressed, worried or burdened? If that is you, then today, and every day, wherever you are, whatever you are facing, Jesus invites you to a place of rest. A place that is immeasurably better than any other place, real or imagined. We find these comforting and inviting words in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” He goes on in verse 29 to promise us that we will “find rest for our souls” when we come to Him.

That “come to me” is not a one-time offer. It is an offer with no expiration date and one that allows you to use it over and over again. Jesus meets you in the darkest nights of your soul!  

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