Monday, February 26, 2018
589 - Savings Plan
Spirituality Column #589
February 27, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Savings Plan
By Bob Walters
“I will strengthen
you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that … men may know there is none
besides me.” –God, speaking to Isaiah (45:5-6)
What a
week.
- The
passing of Billy Graham.
- Dealing with the national tragedy
of and subsequent multi-headed civic, media, and law enforcement uproar around
the Parkland, Fla., school shooting.
- The previously level-headed and formerly
dependably logical Purdue University issuing an online writing (OWL) policy
statement to remove the descriptive “man” from its communications (as in
“businessman,” “man-made” …presumably “first baseman”).
- The congregational blessing of
hearing a truly excellent Wednesday night talk and Sunday sermon by renowned
Christian philosophy professor and apologist Dr. Gary Habermas (extensively
cited in Lee Stroebel’s best-selling book The Case for Christ).
- The private blessing of spending
a couple of hours early in the week over tea in profound conversation with my
theology and Christian life mentor Dr. George Bebawi at his home in Carmel while
he regains strength from a recent hospital stay.
- On TV, there is an actress taking
a year’s career sabbatical to help fix “democracy” (i.e. “America”). On an internet news feed, there is a photo of
a man holding a sign that says, “When Jesus comes back, we’ll kill him again.”
Wow. Talk about a selection of opportunities for deeply
reflecting on one’s faith, discerning who we trust, gauging what we really want
out of life, wondering if freedom is truly the answer, and sorting the
silliness of popular culture from the reality of God’s righteousness and the
evil of Satan’s destructiveness. Well,
it’s been one of those.
Plenty of folks are offering loud,
public, and not-always-gracious opinions on all sides of every issue – on the
news, in town halls, in Congress, in churches, on Facebook, and in tenuous
interpersonal conversations with those of opposite views.
May I interject something here about
Jesus, salvation, and hope? It’ll be
quick.
I found myself embraced in the arms
of Christ 16 years ago not because of despair, or fear, the greed of “getting a
blessing,” or a particular thirst for salvation. I was sitting in church one day only because
my teenage son had floated a question at the dinner table about why we didn’t
go to church. So we went, and what I
saw, what I felt, what I discerned in
that service was a sense of the enormous importance of God and that somehow, I
was important to Him. I had to find out
more, so I did.
In a nutshell, I learned that God’s
righteousness and humanity’s importance to His Creation are supreme; we are the
expression of His love. In our freedom,
with a push from Satan, humanity has proven to be awful at following God’s
directions. But our fracture with God is
fixed by our faith in Jesus, and our eternal salvation – in heaven in
relationship with the saint’s in God’s Kingdom – becomes a statement of God’s
glory.
There is none other like God, and
in Jesus Christ I know Him and He knows me.
This is my trust and
assurance. This is my shelter and
strength.
That is what I think about in weeks
like this. That is my savings plan.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) thanks life-long Kokomo friend and once-upon-a-time sports writing colleague Ken McManus for the “first baseman”
line.