Book Review - For the Tough Times by Max Lucado

For the Tough Times, by Max Lucado
ISBN 9780849921445

At about 80 pages, Max Lucado's "For the Tough Times" is an easy afternoon read. Not a great fan of Lucado's contagious brand of faith-based optimism, I approached this book with a bit of trepidation. Was this going to be another sticky-sweet tome telling me to trust in God and all will be OK? Well, the answer is Yes and No. The small format book (fits perfectly in a cargo pocket) is woven with the popular themes of newfound faith and the ever-present optimism in God's love for his children. However, hidden inside are a few gems. Central to Lucado's message is that our day-to-day troubles pale in comparison to the challenges of the martyrs who went before us, and they also are small and insignificant in light of God's larger plan for his children and His Kingdom. The reminder that it's really not "about us" was useful and helps us build bridges over the troubled waters that we often encounter in our lives.

The chapters, entitled Where is God?; God's Great Love; Eyes on the Father; Good Triumphant; The Bitter Taste of Revenge; In the Silence, God Speaks; In the Storm, We Pray; and From God's Perspective build a recurring theme of God's unending love for us, his children and his hopes and dreams for us. Lucado uses clever analogies of real life situations we might encounter along with well-matched references to scripture to reinforce his message of Hope. Several of the scriptural references are to the paraphrased Message Bible, which can be a bit off-putting to those more accustomed to a more traditional translation of scripture, but other references to KJV and NIV translations are more familiar.

The book ends with "Do it Again, Lord - A Prayer for Troubled Times." This prayer, adapted from another originally written for the post-9/11 America Prays prayer vigil, evokes an image of our Lord more akin to a hip and friendly cartoon Jesus than a glorious savior seated on the throne of heaven, but the message is clear - faith in God at all times (not just the tough times) will carry us through the fires. That said, maybe the book should be re-named - but if it brings seekers to peace and love during their darkest hours, the name should remain.

What's Wrong? I'll tell you what's wrong . . .

Christmas is over and things are slowly returning to the routine. My thoughts turn to priorities for the year, missed opportunities, making progress toward long-term objectives. So I look back at the gifts we've seen pass through the house this year.

The kids got mostly useful things, and spent their gift cards on useless plastic junk. But we happily remain holdouts in the great war of the Wii. The link below caught my eye as an interesting vignette on where our society is going and how fast it's going there.

Watch and weep! http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/when-marketing.html

Have a Peaceful and Wonderful 2009

Christmas

Well, I looked up my (by "my", I mean the one of which I am officially a member) local United Methodist Church's website and found something shocking today. This year's Christmas Services all occur on Christmas Eve. Not a one of them on Christmas Day. Why?? Because Christmas is unlucky enough to fall on a Thursday this year!
And to top it all off, only one of them even features Communion!

Here's the Schedule . . .

Christmas Eve Worship

Traditional Worship

4, 6, 8, and 10:30 p.m.

Communion at 10:30 p.m.

Family Celebration Worship

2, 4, and 6 p.m.

Just what have we become? The last time I checked, the United Methodist Church, founded by John Wesley, was a sacramental church (of sorts) , holding Holy Baptism and Holy Communion as sacraments reserved to ordained elders. I have long been frustrated by the marginalization of Holy Communion in the United Methodist Church, as the rise of "contemporary worship" and the relegation of "traditional worship" to something practiced by stuffy old folks has seemed to have gained momentum of late.

So just for kicks, I surfed over to the local Catholic Church website ( one which I have visited on occasion in the past) and found this . . .

Christmas Schedule

Christmas Eve

4:00 pm - Children's Mass
4:10 pm - Overflow Mass in Parish Hall
6:00 pm - Mass
6:10 pm - Mass in Parish Hall
8:00 pm - Mass
11:00 pm - Choral Concert
Midnight - Mass

Christmas Day

9:00 am - Mass
11:00 pm - Mass in Spanish

Note: The Blessed Sacrament will be reposed at 8:30 am on
Christmas Eve.
Adoration will begin again on Monday after the 9:00 am Mass.

You can probably bet that they'll be "serving Holy Communion" at each and every one of those masses!

I have observed that most Protestant congregations do a better job of celebrating Christmas than they do of observing Easter and the related observances at the beginning and end of Lent. But I guess that only applies when Christmas falls on Sunday!

Sheesh!

May God's Peace be on all this Christmas!

Return

My return to a life of faith took many years. It was actually my lovely wife who dragged me kicking and screaming to the Methodist Center at college a few times that started the process. The lack of ceremony and informal approach to worship actually appealed to me and was intriguing, to say the least. However, the interest was short-lived and I never attended regularly.

We would be married in the Methodist Church eventually, and had our children baptised there as well (yes, as infants).

One day, my wife asked me what I thought about people who clung to religion and faith and I said that they were weak and needed religion as a crutch. I remember speaking those words today, because they represent a turning point in my faith journey. I immediately began to feel like what I said could not be correct, could not be right. The words were like a stake through my heart. I began to wonder and hunger for a deeper understanding of God and of faith. And I began to dig.

Later on, we did begin to attend church regularly and I joined a men's small group Bible study. This experience changed my life. I bought Bibles and read books and memorized scripture. I had an insatiable thirst for all things related to faith and religion. I carried my Bible with me whenever I traveled. I learned to lean on God for guidance and strength. The "hogback" experience I have written about before occurred during this time frame.

I volunteered at our church and made my way into the committee structure as the chairman of the Long Range Visioning Committee. For those who are not familiar, the United Methodist Church is built around a congregational structure, where each church is chartered by an annual conference and each church is its own nonprofit corporation, owning assets, taking in giving, and incurring liabilities and expenses on its own account. The organization is controlled by a partnership between conference-appointed clergy and a congregation-elected Board, along with various committees. I later became the Administrative Board chairman and served in this role for several years.

Throughout these days, I grew into a committed Christian. The little spark left inside of me years earlier had ignited a fire that burned hot. I had returned to the faith.

Hogbacks

A hogback is a homoclinal ridge composed of steeply tilted strata of rock protruding from the surrounding area. The name comes from the ridge resembling the ridge between the shoulders of a hog.

I rediscovered God on a hogback in the northwest suburbs of Denver, Colorado in 2002. Work assignments had brought me to the mile-high city and a need for the release of exercise had driven me out trail running before sunup before the start of my busy day. I don't know why I ended up on the top of a hill with a 360 degree view all around. I could see for miles and miles (and miles and miles and miles). Oh Yeah!

To the North, I could see the lights of Boulder
Due East, I looked down on the City of Denver
To the South, more hills and eventually Colorado Springs
And to the West, more hogbacks and the snow-covered peaks of the Rockies beyond

For what it's worth, and for anyone else who might want to visit this place, my location was at or about at the following coordinates:
39°42'22.57"N
105°10'41.56"W

I stood there on top of this hill for a while, amazed that I had hauled my butt up this enormous hill (I've since mapped it as a 900+ foot vertical elevation change) in the dim predawn light, huffing and puffing because I was unaccustomed to the thin air at over 6,800 feet. Then I sat for a while on a small rock. I watched the cars go by like little toys. I saw a house fire in the valley below as smoke changed colors, fire trucks responded, and the flames were extinguished. I watched people leave their homes and go to work. I looked over at the next ridge a half mile away and watched deer, skunks, and other animals going about their day. Airplanes crossed the sky making their approach into DIA to the northeast.

And it was at that moment that an overwhelming sense of God's presence came over me. I physically felt warmth and love in an inexplicable physical sensation.

I told God how awesome and great and amazing he is. I praised his name.

I asked forgiveness for all my sins, for the sins of commission and of omission, of disobedience, of sloth. I went through the commandments one at a time and asked forgiveness for each instance I thought I had violated one by my actions or my inaction.

I thanked him for the beauty of all his creation, for a loving family, for a challenging and meaningful job that took me to places like this and allowed me to be here at that exact moment. I thanked him for all I had in the world. I thanked him for the wind, the sunrise, the sky, the stars, the birds, and everything I could see.

I asked him for strength and guidance and wisdom. I asked that he continue to shine his lamp on the narrow path and the small gate that one must humbly kneel to pass through that I might better see it. I sought his intercession in the lives of others who were apart from him. I asked that he bring peace to those whose lives I was bringing disruption upon and asked that he guide my actions for that day. I asked for patience to withstand the trials and tribulations of some very difficult people and very tough circumstances (we were in the middle of a corporate merger at the time).

Yes, I followed the old A-C-T-S prayer rubric and I prayed for 30 minutes. I prayed the Our Father, and the Hail Mary, and any other formal prayer I could recall. I think I even said grace (as in "Bless us, O Lord, for these, thy gifts . . .) once!

It was the culmination of many years of searching in darkness. I had been going through the motions of attending church, getting involved in Bible Study, being active in the congregation, and reading my Bible daily. I had opened my heart to the Lord's grace and he tracked me down right where I stood. I had found my way home to the Lord. And I had found him on the top of a hogback in Lakewood, Colorado.

I returned to that hilltop every day that I could during my 20-30 trips to Denver. Even on the day that I finally toured the Coors brewery at 10AM, I found the time to run up the hill in the evening to spend time with the Lord.

to be continued . . .

Lost!

No, not the popular TV show. And, No, I can't really draw any parallels to it, because I have never found time in my life to actually watch the popular TV show Lost!

But I do have a "Lost!" story of my own to tell. From somewhere during high school through the time I got married, I was lost. My ship (plane, bus, train, whatever) had ended up far away from those I loved and who loved me. I chose a college that was 1,000 miles away from my childhood home because I wanted to be as far away from home as was possible and economically practical.

My Plan (listen for God's laughter now) was to be an engineer. I was going to build airplanes and spacecraft and do great things - for myself. I no longer had need for church, for God, for people to be close to, and I did not need to be needed. I professed myself an athiest. I belittled those who clung to religion and scoffed at their silliness and reliance upon blind faith.

I had come from an upper middle-class part of southern Connecticut, bedroom community to New York City, and home to a large number of Italian and other European, mostly Catholic, immigrant families. If you've read any of my previous chapters, you know about the formation of my faith foundation (or, more specifically, the lack thereof).

College in Atlanta was a blast. In 1983, the state of Georgia started raising the legal drinking age, and since I started college when I was 17, my friends and I played hopscotch with the laws for several years. Frat parties, off-campus bars, chosen friends, assigned dormitory roommates, and my selected extracurricular activities all only served to feed the hunger (and thirst - mostly thirst, come to think of it) and lust that comprised my bad habits. I am now convinced that these days, which seemed until recently, pointless and without purpose, framed my mind and soul for the man I was to become later on. For little did I know, God had planted a very special seed in my heart right smack in the middle of all of this chaos and confusion, and I was fortunate enough to realize it and to keep it.

I believe I visited the Catholic Student Union once during my college days, was dragged kicking and screaming to the Campus Wesley Foundation by a Methodist girlfriend (hint: you'll hear more on her later on) and may have darkened the door of the Baptist center once. Suffice it to say that I had no exposure to evangelical baptists during my childhood and so the whole Baptist, bible thumping, ceiling scratching, praise and worship, Campus Crusade for Christ thing really freaked me out. To make things worse, I am not a social animal. I much prefer the solitude and alone-ness of my own company to that of a large group of strangers. I am as good at "working a room" as a tall inconspicuous floor lamp.

My freshman year was the darkest, my sophomore year somewhat brighter, my 2nd sophomore year about the same, my junior year was OK and full of changes (see Methodist girlfriend reference above), my year-off hiatus was a struggle, and my senior year as a married undergraduate student marked the beginning of my recovery.

I refused to acknowledge God's role in my life. But then, something happened that I did not expect - and I didn't even realize it at the time.

The story continues . . .

You guys are all good singers, right?

Last Saturday, as part of my retreat at the Monastery, I gathered with 20-30 others in the parlor of the guest house to chant the mid-day prayers. As it relates to the Divine Office, the mid-day devotion was likely a combination of the hours of Terce, Sext, and None.

Fr. James came over from the cloister to join us. He broke the ice by starting off with "Now, you guys are all good singers, right?" and told a story of another retreat where a participant claimed to have a wonderful chanting voice and knew the liturgy inside and out. Turned out that they were absolutely awful and it took all his patience and that of the other retreatants to get through the Psalms without being less than charitable towards him.

Doing the Work of God (That is, praying the Divine office, or selected portions of it) has been a discipline I have tried to practice faithfully over the past several years. I have read the Psalms in the morning, at mid-day, and in the evening. And to be truthful, the practice had begun to become a bit dry to me. I missed days at a time, occasionally weeks at a time. I needed to see the true beauty of the practice as prayed by the monks in the Abbey Church in order to sharpen my appreciation for it and understanding of it.

I have discussed the Divine Office with a Methodist minister friend of mine who truly has an appreciation for the practice and a clear perception of its origin. Most Protestants, however, find the repetitive nature of the Office to be a very Catholic practice, and one that has little place in their lives. To that, I would offer one response: IT'S THE PSALMS! (for crying out loud!)
Last time I checked, the Psalms were included in both the Catholic and Protestant canons in largely the same fashion. For Sola Scriptura-ists, I would think that the devotion to reading the Psalmody would be an admirable and pleasing practice. Maybe I'm just naive. That said, I have met a few others who agree with me.

My personal devotion to the Divine Office has now taken on a new meaning. Having shared in the slow methodical pace of the monastic chant (barely accompanied by a humble organ), I have found new beauty and meaning in the words. Having to slowly annunciate each pair of lines, truly makes one actually read the words and breathe in their meaning. My previous approach to simply reading the lines bears no resemblance to this new approach to chanting the lines to myself in near silence. (Bear in mind that I normally chant Matins and Lauds while sitting at my desk at work with the door closed) I think perhaps that while reading travels directly from the lips to the mind, the act of singing, even singing silently, takes a turn through ones heart first. And that, my friends, makes all the difference.

+ Peace! +