On the Unbelievability of the Christian Message

 

The other night I was thinking about how unbelievable—incredible—ridiculously impossible the Christian message is. 

It’s preposterous. 

Am I imagining all this?

 

How could any rational person fall for the idea of a good God creating a good world, then creating human beings, and then giving them the freedom to choose whether or not to listen to Him when He tells them how they should live in that world? 

 

Preposterous that a good God would give the persons He created the ability to destroy themselves and others and the good world around them. That he would allow them to be selfish, greedy and so dangerously careless as to refuse to choose to live by the owner’s manual He gave them?

 

And speaking of the Bible, that’s another ridiculous idea: that He would write a book, over a period of roughly 1500 years, using the minds and fingers of at least 40 of the very human creatures who messed things up in the first place—a book full of information about Himself, and about us. 

 

And that He would expect us to believe that stories in that book, translated into thousands of different languages, survived over the last 2000 years, intact, because they contain wisdom that has proved to be relevant in every culture since the beginning of time. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations

 

And even more incredible that, after all has fallen apart, over and over again, down through the centuries, He has devised some plan that would rescue even the worst of us from the destruction around us—would forgive us and restore all things to their original state for us, and then give us a chance to live “happily ever after” when our lives on earth are finished. 

 

No one could have made this stuff up.

 

But, when I think about it, lots of things I see around me are just as incredible. 

 

Ridiculously impossible. 

 

Impossible that my body, when I was a baby, contained the building blocks of three other human beings who would be created and fully formed, one at a time, over the next 36 years of my life, and that their bodies contained eight other human beings who would also be born and grow up and grow old like me.

 

And I’m just getting started:

 

Not just MY body, but an elephant's body, a goat's body, a whale's body, my cat's body--this is incredibly mind-boggling.

 

All the great wonders of the world, created by God and by the humans He created, and all the wonders of the universe—all incredible, unbelievable, impossible,

and yet they exist. 

Unless I am imagining all this?

For All the Grads: What Life is About!

Looking for help as you step out into the scary new world?

Here's a Grandma's advice:

 

Wow! 

So many places!

Directions to go!

Which path should you follow?

How do you know?

 

You could go south, or go north, east or west.

How can you be sure which direction is best?

South could be sending you too far away.

North might lead someplace you don’t want to stay.

East might go nowhere and west be too tough.

How do you pick when you don’t know enough?

 

Your head's in a whirl!

There are too many ways!

Yet you have to decide how to plan for your days.

It's too big a problem. You're not fit to choose.

It's too big a decision. There’s too much to lose!

 

But, wait. Here's the answer: You don't need to know.

There's Someone else planning which way you should go.

Someone Who’s smarter—Who’s been there before.

And His plans for your path will give you much more

Than anything you could dream up on your own.

You just need to relax. You’re not in this alone.

 

If you reach out your hand He will take it and fly

To a future much bigger than you’d think to try.

Much better than those in your wildest of dreams!

More awesome than any direction now seems.

 

He'll go flying right past all your questions and fears,

With His love in your heart and His song in your ears.

When you come to the end you will laugh, and you'll rest.

For you'll know then, for certain, you've chosen the best.

See, the best is a Person, not a place or a plan.

And the way there is clear when you’re holding His hand.

 

 

Wow!

So many blessings He has up ahead.

Just rest in His hands, and relax, and be led.

Your life will not always be easy or fun,

But it will be good when it’s all said and done.

 

Just remember, whatever life offers to you

If you wonder which option to choose to pursue

Here’s a very big hint that will give you a clue:

It’s not “what” you know that matters. It’s “Who.”

Dedicated to the Church Bells in Ukraine Tonight

I was deeply moved by the response to the tribute I wrote about my mother on Facebook today on International Women’s Day.  Some of my friends said they’d like more of the story of my mother’s time in Shanghai after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, so I looked up some notes I had written about her for my cousin, who was compiling some family records a few years ago.

I edited my notes, added some more details, and am posting here for anyone who would appreciate a little personal insight into this bit of history from 80 years ago. 

 

Mary Smiley sailed from Seattle to China in August in 1940. She taught English to Chinese children in Shanghai for a little over a year with a small mission organization called The Faith Fellowship.

In December, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and soon afterwards moved into China. The Japanese occupied Shanghai and ex-pat missionaries were cut off from their sponsors in the States.  For many months contact was lost.  Mary spent most of her time, with her colleagues, trying to find food from various sources including the Red Cross.

Though food was scarce, and they suffered from malnutrition, there was relative freedom to move around the city, no sign of conflict, and little contact with the Japanese. She said they were relieved in many ways when, On February 25th, 1943, they were arrested and placed in a concentration camp near Shanghai. The scarcity of food had become a serious problem. 

The prison camp she was in was one of the better ones. It was probably full of ex-pats, not soldiers, so there was no overt mistreatment. Psychological torture was a problem. They would be told to pack their things because they were going home the next day, and then the order would be rescinded.  And, though the food was more plentiful, it wasn’t a total solution to their problems. In the camp, prisoners were given chores. The older people, who were not fit for hard manual labor, were given the chore of picking the bugs and worms out of the rice they would all eat for supper. But these seniors also had poor eyesight. So the prisoners got a little extra protein with their carbs. When she eventually returned to the States Mary brought home one very long tapeworm as a souvenir.

Ten months after her imprisonment she was released.  She was exchanged for a Japanese prisoner-of-war and returned to the U.S. on the second repatriation voyage of the Swedish ship, The Gripsholm.

The exchange was made somewhere in the South China Sea. The Gripsholm, a luxury oceanliner that had been seconded for prisoner transfers during the war, pulled up alongside the Japanese ship, fore to aft. Mary and her colleagues walked across a gangplank onto the ship at one end, while the exchanged Japanese prisoners walked across to their ship at the other end

While researching for this blog post I found the attached newspaper articles, some of the many my mother’s parents clipped and saved during the time she was in China. I couldn’t help but think about the similarities between what was happening in China at that time—at the very beginning of WWII in the Pacific—and what is happening in Ukraine right now: the same dangers to civilians, and the same determination of strong-minded people to remain and carry on in the midst of it all.

 

I hope and pray that history is not repeating itself now in 2022. But if it is, there is still hope. We human beings have survived many attempts to annihilate ourselves.

We have survived. Not by ourselves. I’m pretty sure we’ve had a little help from above. And today the Christian church in China is thriving. Underground. Persecuted. Martyred. But stronger than ever. It’s surviving in Ukraine too. And God is at work, making sure that the humans He loves are not successful at yet another attempt at self-destruction.

We can be sure that the words of this old Christmas carol still ring true. The bells in the steeples of churches in Ukraine are a testimony to that truth. They peal along with the air raid sirens:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

One day.