Tell anxiety to “Get back in your hole!”

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A friend once wrote a book titled “Down with Anxiety.”  The contents were excellent and the suggestions were helpful, but I teased him that the title was a real downer!

Scripture has two primary texts dealing with anxiety, that I know of.  Doubtless there are many others, but these two have meant a great deal to me, personally…..

First, the lesser known of the two…

“Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you” (Psalm 116:7).

That’s self-talk.  And it comes highly recommended.

The Psalmist knows about anxiety.  He is saying: “Get back down there, anxiety!  Go back to bed!  Quit worrying!  You’ve been blessed far more than you deserve.  So, how about being strong and stopping this needless worrying.”

Anxiety, they say, is worry in search of a reason. Or perhaps, fear in search of a cause.

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Things pastors do not know

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As a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, faithful pastor, you know a great many things.  “We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren” (I John 3:14).  “We know love” (3:16). “We know that we are of the truth” (3:19). “We know that He abides in us” (3:24).

But there is so much we do not know.  Here is a partial list….

1) You do not know what people in your congregation are going through.

You know some of what several are experiencing. But even with those closest to you, so much of their personal lives is hidden from all but God.

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My one question to the Ashley Madison registrants

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“What things were gain to me, those I have counted loss for Christ…. all things loss…. count them as rubbish….” (Philippians 3:7-8)

Rubbish may not be the best translation of skybala, a word found only this one time in the New Testament.  Various scholars make it “refuse, rubbish, leavings, and dung.”

Dung. Get it?  Our culture has stronger names for this. (Someone asked Bess Truman about Harry’s use of the word manure.  “Can’t you get him to say something instead of ‘manure’?”  She said, “You don’t know how long it took me to get him to say ‘manure’!”)

Skybala is manure. Dung. Human refuse. Okay….

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A grief symposium

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“You need to lead a grief symposium,” she said. “So many people need encouragement.”

That was a new thought, in some ways.  And one for which I was unprepared.

I promised to pray about it and give it some thought.

I know so little about grief.  It doesn’t seem like too long ago when I was thinking death seemed to have skipped our family altogether. My parents were living into their mid-90s and all my siblings were alive and well, into our 60s and beyond.  And then, maybe I spoke too soon….

Our youngest brother Charlie died in ’06, our Dad in ’07, and Mom in ’12.  Our brother Glenn went to Heaven after that, followed by my brother Ron’s only grandson Micah, in his mid-20s.  And then my wife of 52+ years died in January of this year.

The hits just keep on coming.

As a veteran pastor, I know a great deal about funerals. And, having cared for hurting families over these decades, I thought I knew a lot about grief. I did, but it was all from the outside. I was an observer, a reporter, never a participant.

These days I’m learning about grief from the inside.

So far, the main thing I’ve learned is I don’t much like it.  Grief accompanies bad things in our lives.  Grief saps the joy out of our days and robs us of sleep at night.  It takes away our appetite and dampens our enthusiasm for the activities that used to fill the spaces in our lives.

Grief is an erratic guest in my house.  Some days he does not show up at all, and then suddenly with no warning, descends in full force and causes the tears to flow.  HIs visitations are triggered by the oddest of prompts, everything from an old photograph to a forgotten note in a file to something written in the margin of the Bible.  Sometimes grief’s presence is like a dark cloud over the house and at other times a jab with a pointed stick.

A symposium, says the dictionary, derives from the Greek and originally meant a drinking party (sym meaning ‘together’ and the rest of the word being a cousin to our potion).

“Can you drink of the cup from which I will drink?” our Lord asked His disciples (Mark 10:38).  He had in mind suffering, whereas they wanted something less bitter.

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How God works. (Hint: It’s different from our ways.)

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“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).

“When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)

On the farm, after we killed the hog, someone had to make cracklings, known otherwise as “cooking the lard.”  (They were never pronounced “cracklings;” the ‘g’ was always dropped.)

A fire was built under a black iron pot into which cut-up portions of the less-desirable fatty hog meat was thrown.  As a worker stood by stirring, the contents boiled and bubbled and gradually released the lard, leaving behind a crisp rind (called the cracklin’), sometimes carrying a streak of lean.  The lard went into gallon containers for household cooking throughout the year. Cracklins became snack-foods for relaxing times, and can be bought commercially even today.

Similarly, the messages I have preached over a half-century have been boiled down to their essence. (No greasy rinds left, however!)  Mostly, the result–that is, the gist of my preaching these days–ends up looking something like this….

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Never on automatic: The test of a champion

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Itzhak Perlman is a champion violinist.  Disabled by polio in early childhood, he gets around on a scooter or with hand walkers and is arguably the world’s greatest violin virtuoso.

Hear him once and you are a fan for life.

In USA Today for Wednesday September 2, 2015, Perlman said, “If you are a golfer, you have to be reliable.  But you cannot do that as a musician.  The challenge, as I tell my students, is not how you play something the first time.  What about the 10th, or the 50th, or the 150th?  Am I going to play something the way I did last time? Maybe yes, maybe no, but the point is never to go on automatic.”

We preachers know about going on automatic.  It’s what actors call “phoning it in.”

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Looking back and assessing your ministry

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“Remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears…. I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel…. I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’….” (Acts 20:31-35)

I wonder how it would be to stand before a group of elders and tell them of the 13+ years I served the Lord at the First Baptist Church of Kenner, or the 3+ years before that at the Church in Charlotte. Or the 12+ years prior to that at the Church in Columbus, Mississippi.

Could I get it right?  Would I be prone to brag or exaggerate? Or to omit and gloss over?

This Spring, I returned to Greenville, Mississippi, where we pastored Emmanuel Baptist Church as our first congregation after seminary.  We had never spent any time in Mississippi prior to this and knew absolutely nothing about life in the Delta, particularly in the late 1960s when racial unrest was at its height.  Greenville lies only a few miles west of the birthplace of the (white) Citizens Council.

We served in Greenville from November 1967 through December of 1970.  Three years and two months.  Not long by most standards. But looking back and reminiscing, I am amazed at all the things that took place in that brief time. Consider….

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For better or for worse: The power of a spouse

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My friend Lydia was helping her 6-year-old daughter out of her Sunday clothes.

“Honey,” she said, “Did anyone tell you how pretty you look in your new dress?”

Little Holly said, “No. They thought it. They just forgot to tell me.”

I love the self-esteem that answer reveals.  Such parents–Terry and Lydia Martin of Columbus, Mississippi, my friends for over 40 years–surely did something right with this child.

Our task is to convey a healthy esteem not only to our children but to our spouses, our husband, our wife.

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A cloud over my head all week

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The popular comic strip “L’il Abner” used to feature a character who lived under a constant, tiny storm cloud.  It followed him around wherever he went, maybe 12 inches above his head, always pouring rain down upon him. (The character’s name was an unpronounceable “Btfsplk.”  When asked, cartoonist Al Capp said “It’s a rude sound.”  Maybe what’s called a raspberry or Bronx cheer. Google Btfsplk and see the cartoon.)

I’ve felt like Joe Btfsplk all this week.

Analyzing that me-sized stormcloud–“why am I feeling so sad?”–I can identify several forces that are raining on my parade, if you will.

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