Game Over?

Basketball is a fast paced sport that is at its most exciting when it is highly competitive, when two evenly matched teams go after each other relentlessly in a closely matched contest.  Leads are changed frequently, scores are tied multiple times in such a game, and the outcome remains unknown until the last second, when a team loses or wins on a last-second missed shot or buzzer-beater.  The game is a bit less compelling, on the other hand, when one team soundly outplays its opponent, so that the outcome of the game is essentially determined several minutes before the final buzzer.  Chick Hearn, the late great radio announcer of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, when seeing that one team had an insurmountable lead, would often calmly announce, "This game is in the refrigerator, the door is closed, the lights are out, the eggs are getting cold, the butter's getting hard, and the Jell-O's getting jigglin."

In other words, it's basically "game over".

Such was the sentiment when Jesus was nailed on the cross.  When Jesus first appeared on the scene as an adult, Satan challenged him repeatedly, "If you are the son of God..." and tempted him to turn stones into bread, to leap off a high place, and to bow before Satan.  In each occasion, Jesus countered with words of Scripture, and held his ground until Satan left him, and angels came and ministered to him.  (Matthew 4:1-11)  For the next three years, he healed the sick, raised the dead, fed the hungry, and expelled demons.  Jesus seemed to be building a comfortable lead over Satan until the final hours of his earthly existence, when the situation took a dramatic turn.  

Instead of Satan tempting Jesus to turn stones into bread to fill his hunger, he tasted bitterness at Golgotha,

"they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it."  (Matthew 27:34)

Instead of Satan tempting Jesus to leap off a high place and be saved by angels, he was mocked and scorned as he lay hanging on the cross,

And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself!  If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross."  So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself.  He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.  He trusts in God, let God deliver him now, if he desires him.  For he said, 'I am the Son of God.'"  (Matthew 27:39-43)

Instead of Jesus being tempted to bow before Satan, he was jeered as the soldiers bowed before him,

And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand.  And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!"  And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head."  (Matthew 27:28-30)

Satan pressed on as Jesus gasped his final breaths on that fateful Friday afternoon.  Would darkness reign?  Was this "game" in the refrigerator?

Jesus' final words..."It is finished"  (John 19:30)

It was not over.  Jesus finished, or accomplished his purpose on earth.  He died for us and paid the penalty for our sins.  Sunday was coming, Jesus would rise again, and death was defeated.  Salvation has come.

It was no contest.

Game over.

Deep Roots

"Wow, look at those palm trees...how tall do you think they are?  80 feet?  Maybe 100 feet or more?"

Those trees had been around for years, but being in Southern California, palm trees don't necessarily get as much of our attention, since they are everywhere.  They certainly didn't seem to impress the rest of my family as we passed by them on the way back home from church one beautiful, clear Sunday afternoon.

"Those?  Oh."  My wife responded sleepily, then closed her eyes.

"Mmmph..."  My kids were nearly as enthusiastic in the back seat about these towering giants.

"Yeah, aren't they huge?  I was just thinking, it'd be a very bad thing if one of those trees ever falls over.  Imaging all the damage it can cause."

The problem with having a lot of tall trees is that they sometimes will fall, and occasionally in bunches.  A major windstorm in late 2011 put the normally inconspicuous Temple City, CA, for several days on national television as unusually fierce winds knocked down about 500 trees in the city and caused about 10 million dollars in damage.  Some of the power lines toppled likewise, and we were without electrical power for 5 days.

"Glenn, you're wrong."  Suddenly my wife woke up.  The opportunity to correct me must have energized her.  "I guess you don't know that palm trees have very deep roots, and they don't fall like other trees.  Did you realize that not a single palm tree fell during the windstorm?"

I couldn't verify the facts while driving, but I knew that my wife was correct.  She is, after all, the gardener and landscape expert in our family, and being a member of the local CERT (Community Emergency Response Team), she would have much more first-hand information when it comes to disaster information and readiness.  Indeed, the palm tree is characterized by the presence of both a network of shallow, fibrous roots, as well as a very deep anchoring root, whose purpose is to prevent the palm from toppling.  Palms sway and bend in the wind, but they don't break.

Just as deep, anchoring roots keep palm trees standing during windstorms, a deep-rooted and deep-anchored faith will keep our lives from collapse when severe trials and difficulties arise in our lives.  Job was described as being the wealthiest man in the world, but because his faith was in God and not in his great wealth, he was able to weather the loss of all his possessions, all his children, his health, and the respect of his wife and friends, until God not only restored his possessions, family and reputation, but provided him abundantly more than before.

Our roots also need to be in Christ and in applying his words:

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.  (Colossians 2:6-7)

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.  (Matthew 7:24-25)

May we be deeply rooted and stand in times of adversity, like the mighty palm tree during storms.

It's a good thing that there aren't any coconut trees in the neighborhood.  Flying coconuts can be a problem....

Blinking Red Lights

The day was off to an uneventful start.  I woke up, ran around the neighborhood for exercise, ate breakfast, drank coffee, showered, dressed, and ushered my two teenagers into the car at 7 a.m. for their 8-minute ride to school.  I didn't really have to be at the office until 8:30 a.m., so there was plenty of time to drive to work.  The traffic, however, was unusually busy that day, and the city's main thoroughfare was flooded with a sea of red brake lights from the cars in front of me.  I strained my neck to discern the situation down the road, and saw that the traffic signal half a mile ahead was blinking red, indicating a malfunction.  I tried to look for a detour, but none was available.  I glanced to my side, and saw a Los Angeles County Sheriff patrol car also mired in the same traffic.

This was going to take a while.

The half-mile trek to the intersection with the malfunctioned traffic signal took over half an hour, enough time to listen to all the late breaking news on the radio, along with reports on the weather, stock markets, and details on every single professional football and basketball game over the weekend.  I did manage to make it to work on time, but barely.  It would have been nice if the police officer in the patrol vehicle beside me was out there directing traffic rather than being stuck in it himself.

Traffic signal malfunctions are thankfully quite rare during my daily drives to work, but a single malfunction at the wrong place and wrong time (this one happened to be at a major intersection in front of a high school during rush hour) could spell total chaos.  It is easy to complain about getting stuck behind a red light at the intersection under normal traffic conditions, and give little thought to how intricate and vital traffic control is in the city until it fails.  In the same way, we also take for granted the intricate order and physical laws of the universe, and occasionally even fantasize of worlds where some of these laws could be tinkered with in time travel machines, anti-gravity footwear and the like.  Fortunately, God is sovereign over the universe and all creation.  The Bible begins with the declaration that God is responsible for everything that has ever existed:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Genesis 1:1

Creation responds by declaring God's glory:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  Psalm 19:1

We can be confident that there will be no "malfunction" in our universe as long as God sustains it.  All existence will cease in a moment if He does not.

Tastes of Homeland

"Uh, Glenn, I bet those noodles must be very good.  Just look at the line of people over there!"

My friend Willis and I marveled at the crowd in front of the noodle stand as we strolled along a popular shopping area in Taipei, Taiwan.  I happened to be in Taipei for a conference, and made it a priority to visit Willis, his wife Jocelyn, and daughter Phoebe on my first day there.  Jocelyn and Phoebe were going to meet us later in the evening, and Willis suggested that we first scout out the area for good places to eat.  Willis was clearly drawn in by the smell of boiled pig intestines, vinegar, lard-fried shallots and pungent ground white peppercorns that saturated the crowded standing-room only area (i.e., the street - there was no chair in sight).  The stuff was not for the faint of stomach, but for someone like me who spent his formative years in Taiwan, this was supposed to be food heaven.

Unfortunately, I was a bit weak in the gut, having recently endured a 15-hour flight from Los Angeles, a midnight hotel check-in and an 8-hour jet lag.  Moments later I stood with Willis and his family as they happily slurped down gloppy, heavily seasoned bowls of thin rice noodle soup with pig intestines while I slowly consumed my own bowl of the concoction, trying my best to hide my nausea and bloating.  The trip to Taiwan wasn't quite off to a good start.

It took a couple more days before my innards became well adjusted to being in Taiwan, and once that happened I was on a gustatory mission to make up for lost time.  I ate everywhere - in food courts underneath train stations and department stores, at roadside stands, and in night markets.  I ran two hours every morning to burn off some calories so that I could eat some more.  Pig intestines?  Bring it on.  I was hungering for good old hometown cuisine, and there wasn't a lot of time.

The following Sunday morning I joined Willis, Jocelyn and a few other friends for worship at a local church in Taipei.  As the service began, a pastor led us in prayer for the service, the worship leaders, the speaker, the message, and for our hearts to be receptive to God's word.  The worship leader and musicians led us in several songs of praise to God.  The pastor then led the congregation in responsive reading of the Bible verses for the day, and the senior pastor gave an expository sermon from the book of Hebrews.  As I participated in the service, I was awash in joy and gratitude, and a hint of tears appeared in my eyes.  The week of eating, running, meeting with friends and relatives, attending the conference, and shopping for friends and family back home left me with little time to spend with God, and by the end of the week I was spiritually parched and starving.  For those of us who claim to worship God and call on Jesus as both Lord and Savior, time spent at a worship service should be like having a taste of home cooking, since our citizenship is in heaven.  We hunger and thirst for that which only God can satisfy.

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.  (Psalm 42:1)

After the service, my friends and I met at Willis and Jocelyn's apartment, where we eagerly engulfed a mountain of food purchased from the various street vendors we encountered on the way back from church.  The feasting continued.

Opening Cacophony

The banquet hall at the Taipei International Conference Center was nearly full with several hundred delegates who arrived for the opening ceremony of an international medical conference.  The official name of the conference was "The 4th World Congress of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition", but it's unlikely that anyone in attendance could actually remember all that.  I milled around stiffly around the food tables, not quite feeling comfortable in my striped dress shirt, tie and brand new slacks that I just bought.  I rarely paid as much attention to my clothes unless someone is getting married or buried, but as I scanned the room, I noticed that all the men from the Taiwanese contingent wore dark business suits, and the Taiwanese women also were seriously attired as if they were having job interviews.  The Japanese delegates also looked quite sharp, though their business suits showed a bit more variety.  Most Europeans and North Americans dressed a bit less formally, and not everyone wore a jacket.  The most casual appearing ones were from Latin American nations, with some of the men wearing open collared shirts and blue jeans, while their female delegates were either dressed to party or to go shopping.  Only a few came from Africa, but they represented their nations well in ethnic garb.  It was quite an inhomogeneous crowd, with all sorts of sizes, faces, personalities, interests, origins, and attire.

And languages.

As I walked around the crowded hall, I heard conversations in Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Scandinavian languages, African languages, and a smattering of English with various regional accents representing the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia.  The sights and sounds brought to memory the description of the "great multitude" that the apostle John wrote in the book of Revelation:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,  (Revelation 7:9)

The opening ceremony started with official words of welcome from the conference organizer, followed by the presidents of each of the participating medical societies.  I did my best to demonstrate respect to these prominent leaders in medicine by listening to their carefully chosen words, but I could not help but hear something else...I heard conversations in Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and tongues representing all tribes and nations.  No one was really listening.  The conversations throughout the room would continue until the reception got under way, when mouths would then be used for eating instead.

Clearly, the comparison between the doctors at a banquet hall and "a great multitude...standing before the throne and before the Lamb" turns out to be very poor indeed.  How wonderful and contrasting is the sight and sound of that great multitude before the Lamb, for while they are each diverse and unique in innumerable ways, they are yet united in the purpose of giving God all the glory, and cried out to God in "one" voice - intelligible, beautiful, and harmonious.

and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”  (Revelation 7:10)

Gods Without Godliness

"So, tell me what this Peter Jackson thing is about."

I was trying to start a conversation with my daughter while driving her home from a school event.  I knew that she was reading this Rick Riordan novel where the plot involved some teenagers and Greek mythology.

"What?"  My daughter seemed totally clueless about where I was heading.

"You know, that novel that recently became a movie, about these kids trying to save the world from these crazy Greek gods, or something like that..."

"Oh, you mean Percy Jackson!"  Oops.  Peter Jackson is the movie director who did the Lord of the Rings films.  I was close.

"Yeah, like, at the beginning of the story, Zeus lost his lightning bolt, and like, he thought that Poseidon stole it from him, because, like, Zeus and Poseidon did not like each other, and, like, like..."

I had been trying to get my daughter to stop saying "like" every time she's trying to tell a story, but it looked like it was like not working.

"So, you're saying that Zeus is a god, but he can't even find his own lightning bolt?  Sounds like someone I know who couldn't find her flute yesterday..."

"Dad, stop it!  So, anyways, Percy Jackson and these other teenagers were, like, demigods, but they didn't know about it until..."

"Demigods?  So you're saying that these Greek gods were having sex with humans and got young ladies pregnant?  So these Greek gods can actually lose things, not get along with each other, not know everything, and act like a bunch of dirty old men?  The story sounds like a soap opera to me."

My daughter ignored my religious rant, and continued on with how these half-humans ended up being trained at Camp Half-Blood, somewhere in New York, and how the story somehow ended with the lightning bolt eventually being returned back to Zeus.  Unfortunately, she, like, lost me pretty quickly, as my mind wandered and wondered about just how human-like these Greek gods are.  Am I glad that they're not actually running the universe!

Come to think of it, deities that are conceived by humans throughout history are mostly like these characters who supposedly live on Mount Olympus.  They are typically morally deficient, limited in knowledge, limited in power, and/or limited by the dimensions of time and space.  Such are the products of human conception.  It is therefore of little wonder that our self-existent, all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipresent, eternal, righteous, and good God started the Ten Commandments with the directive,

"You shall have no other gods before me."  Exodus 20:3

A Child's Perspective

Kids say the darndest things.  I remember when my son was four years old, he brightly exclaimed one day while playing in the yard,

"Daddy, when I am really old, like when I'm a teenager, I want to...."

Whoa.  Hold it right there, buddy.  Did he say that teenagers are old?  I guess to a child who's barely in preschool, anyone who has been around three or four times as long has to be pretty ancient.  This conversation was going to get interesting.

"So, you think that teenagers are really old, huh?"

"Yes."

"So, how old do you think teenagers are?"

"Five."

Well, this new math was getting pretty complicated.  To my four year old son, teenagers are old, and teenagers are five years old.  It was too profound for adults to understand.  I suspected that this had something to do with his learning at the Montessori preschool, because my son was inexplicably speaking with a Sri Lankan accent.  His preschool teachers were from Sri Lanka.  I had to pursue this just a little further.

"Do you think that Daddy is old too?"

"Yes."

"Even older than a teenager?"

"Yes.  You're really, really old."

"How old do you think Daddy is?"

"Six."

Somehow I knew he was going to say that.  I couldn't resist asking him one more question...

"How old do you think Mommy is?"

"[bleep]"

Unfortunately, I can't quote what he said without my wife's permission.  Suffice to say that he knew how to recite a few numbers in ascending order.

It turned out that my son was not the only child with such a contracted perspective on time.  I asked another four-year-old girl a similar question, and she thought that her mother was five.

As created, finite beings, our perspective is also limited when we ponder things that are beyond our earthly experience.  When we consider our infinite God's character and promises, it is impossible for us to fully understand the enormity of scale compared to what we can see, hear, feel and think.  When God promised Abraham, then childless, that he would be the father of many nations, He likened the number of his descendants to the stars in the sky or the sands on the seashore, if he could count them.  Abraham believed, but did he truly appreciate the magnitude of the promise?

Likewise, when describing God's character, the psalmist wrote,

Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
your judgments are like the great deep;
man and beast you save, O LORD.
(Psalm 36:5-6)

The highest heavens, the tallest clouds, the mightiest mountains and the deepest oceans are not sufficient to characterize our infinite God.  Our best efforts to picture Him are not much less contracted in perspective than those of a four year old child.  May we glorify God by truly being in awe of Him.