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I love worship music, the kind where the singer is not just performing, but his song is his prayer, from the soul. For those who live overseas and still want their worship music, download WiTopia and you’ll be able to get the worship music you´re used to from the States

During worship in church last Sunday, the thought came to me about “freedom,” and how grateful I am that I was born in America, the freest country in the history of the world, and one that has defended other nations’ freedoms as well. But for some reason I enjoy living outside the U.S. No explanation for that, other than a pastor once singled me out, publicly, at a large Bible conference and gave me a “word” that I had a “wandering spirit.” At the time I had just lost my first wife to cancer and was single-parenting two small children, and I think it was his way of telling me that I wasn’t focused enough on the church.

Having traveled and lived in other countries for much of my life, I have found that compared to other cultures and people, Americans possess an optimism and independence that most others don’t have the privilege of knowing. The origin of these freedoms can be directly traced to the fact that America was established by committed Christian colonists, who put God into its founding documents. No other nation other than for Israel has had such a godly foundation. And it is no coincidence that even today it is these two great democracies that are at the forefront in fighting an evil that is threatening, through terror, to rob nations of their freedoms and bring them under its 7^th century, repressive control and submission.

The other reason I feel grateful for my freedom is that I am a Christian. Many religions can make promises of having peace with their god or gods and offer its adherents some sort of hope of a glorious afterlife, but no other faith can actually deliver on those promises. In studying the gods of other religions, most are distant, at best, and constantly require appeasement of some sort to mollify their anger. And though I respect others whose faith is different from my own, I respectfully disagree with anything that contradicts God’s Word.

I ask you, what god would allow himself to be completely humiliated, spat upon, have his beard plucked out, and then die a slow, torturous death?  And for what? To redeem sinful, weak, outcasts like us. Who does that? And this Man, Jesus, claimed to be God. And to put an exclamation point on it, after He was cruelly executed, over five-hundred witnesses attested to the fact that He rose from the dead, which kind of gives credibility to His claims. As someone once said, “You can debate your opinions, but you can’t dispute the facts.”

Another writer once said, “The search for happiness is largely an attempt to find a way to move from one state, the state of fear, to the other, love, and to stay there.” 1John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out all fear.” But this is the part of that scripture that really speaks to me: “For fear has to do with punishment.” Probably because of my background in legalistic religion, I’ve had to battle against feelings of being punished when things go south in my life.

It’s been a rough week. Stroke recovery we’re told is not a straight line where you gradually get better on a predictable timetable. It’s more like a squiggly line, that zags forward and zips back, just when you thought you were moving forward. Knowing this helps with the sudden drops in energy and mobility. But today was still a banner day; we got to the Caribbean waters, physically, feet in it, for the first time. We found a beach that was wheelchair accessible, the one where the ferry docks for the trips to the isle of Cozumel, which we will take soon. After all, that was our original destination.

Thank you all for your prayers and love.

 

 

I find myself as a caretaker for my wife in a wheelchair, moving at the speed of woman. Now I know why women take so much longer to get ready to go out than men—things I really didn’t want to know. And Laurie is actually low-maintenance compared to most women. For me? Put on my shorts, a shirt, and sandals and I’m out the door, but my wife, well, you married men know what that’s about. Not complaining, but I feel I’ve just solved one of the mysteries of life for men. Next, I’m tackling why men can’t find anything in their wife’s purse.

We listened to the song, “10,000 Reasons” (Bless the Lord) by Matt Redman this Sunday morning; I’m about to say something pretty sappy about it: I had goosebumps down to my heart. I warned you. I believe one of the lines speaks of praising God in heaven and goes something like, “10,000 years and then forever more.” It speaks to me of permanence. We left Portland four weeks ago with two backpacks and a suitcase full of meds for old people, like pilgrims passing through this world. Won’t it be great when our pilgrim days are over and the “forever more” begins.

Even following American politics from a distance, it’s plain to see one party is preparing for the mid-term elections with a “lights-out” surge toward naked socialism: reparations for African Americans, income handouts, guaranteed jobs, and other redistribution of wealth schemes.

I personally have had some second thoughts recently about my hardcore opposition to what I’ve seen as the “erosion of American capitalism.” Since my post-hippie days, I’ve worked hard all my life, mostly as a pastor and missionary, now defrocked, and later at a variety of low-skill jobs to make ends meet, but have little to show for it, at least on the financial side. We lost our home in the 2008 crash, but mostly because of losing my thirty-year career as a preacher, and we have never recovered financially.

Now, before you think I’m hitting you up for a “fund-me” campaign, I’m just trying to set you up for what I want to say next about socialism. Living now off my social security and a VA pension, and with my wife disabled from a stroke, the thought of a guaranteed living wage, universal health care, and other government handouts, not to mention the possibility of less pop-up advertisements on my laptop, well, it’s all very appealing. Those who are younger, skilled, and able to earn greater amounts of income, helping those on the other end of things, from where I’m sitting, that’s looking pretty good.

Until recent stories like twenty-three-month-old Alfie Evans from the U.K. surface from time to time. Alfie was born with an undiagnosed degenerative neurological condition and was living on life support. The doctors gave him no chance for recovery and chose to disconnect him from life support. So, the parents wanted him removed from the Liverpool hospital to a Vatican hospital in Rome, with the Pope’s blessing. The Italian government even made the extraordinary gesture of granting Alfie Italian citizenship, so he could freely fly to Rome. But the U.K. courts and the European Court of Human Rights denied Alfie’s parents the right to do so and instead have offered Alfie a “dignified and compassionate” death at their own hospital. After he was unhooked from support, he died just today.

So there’s the bait and switch. Socialism comes garbed as the ultimate solution to inequality, suffering, wants, and injustices of all natures. And who doesn’t want that? But with this “benevolent compassion” comes a hook: the loss of many basic personal freedoms.

If only socialism was the large-hearted, philanthropic system its promoters claim it is, but it isn’t, it’s a decoy. With the powers to supply all one’s needs, come the powers to dictate what is deemed unlawful speech and how many official genders exist. Swedish daycares are experimenting with boy toddlers wearing dresses and given dolls to play with, while girl toddlers are given G.I. Joes and toy trucks, in hope of breaking down the “unnatural stereotypes of the genders.” Are these the people we want imposing the limits on religious expression and what kind of car we can drive? Because these are the same people that denied little Alfie’s parents the right to remove their sick child to a religious environment, where they could find comfort, solace, and hope of a miracle.

William Shakespeare in King Richard III said it best in the words of his lead character:

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy, 

with odd old ends stolen out of holy writ,

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

 

This was our second Sunday at the Cornerstone church. The pastor taught on Abraham being tested, when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac on Mt. Moriah, the same mountain Jesus would be sacrificed on for our sins many years later. And just as God supplied a substitute for Isaac with a ram, Jesus was the substitute for us on the Cross.

Abraham was changed forever after his experience on Mt. Moriah. God changed the world with His Son’s sacrifice on Mt. Moriah. Abraham didn’t know much about God at this point, just that He was a good God. He didn’t know how God would intervene, but he believed God’s promise that through Isaac He would multiply Abraham’s seed as numerous as the stars in the heavens.

I’ve seen a side of God I hadn’t seen before. Going through this experience with my wife’s stroke and not knowing how financially, mentally, and spiritually we’re going to make it has changed me.

God spoke to me: “You take care of Laurie, and I’ll take care of the rest.” Anyone who knows me knows I’m not the caretaker type. I didn’t realize how selfish I was. It wasn’t so hard giving to people what I want to give them, which made me feel good about myself. But to give to someone what that person actually needs is another thing. He’s given me a deeper love for Laurie, and there’s a joy in serving her, which I know has to be from God.

Laurie says she never knew or felt how much God loves her since having the stroke. She was never able to receive God’s love before, not like this.

 

Laurie and I couldn’t find a decent place to stay so we moved on to Playa del Carmen, about an hour south by taxi from Cancun. A Craigslist post from a expat American from Georgia named Jason landed us in a budget-stretching one bedroom, ten minutes from the beach, with a rooftop pool overlooking the Caribbean Sea and the distant island of Cozumel. Sound like paradise? We needed the pool for Laurie’s physical therapy and the view of the Caribbean Sea to keep her spirits up, at least that’s what we tell ourselves.

But to keep this from sounding like your typical social media blog, which would normally contain the top five greatest hits of the week and  none of the flops, one of our laptops apparently picked up a virus and is rendered useless until we can find a tech. guy, (Joseph, where are you?). Laurie temporarily had her wheelchair stolen at Walmart, she caught the flu from a coughing doctor in ICU, hospital and physical therapy bills threaten to rob our nest egg unless we get reimbursed, even though we’re trying to trust God, we have fears around Laurie’s recovery.  We’re not super-saints by any stretch, just two older people learning daily to stay in the moment and trust the One who has never let us down, even when sometimes it appears that He has.

I’m reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who as a five-year-old Somali girl, endured compulsory female genital mutilation, and as a teenaged girl escaped marriage to a man she barely knew by fleeing her African home and obtaining asylum in Holland. She began doubting the righteousness of her religion when she first learned what the Quran meant when it said to “wage war on the unbelievers,” that it wasn’t just referring to the seventh century battles of Uhud and Badr, but that the massacre of September 11 was also fully justified by Allah and the Prophet. She said most Muslims don’t study much theology and rarely read the Quran, which is taught to them in Arabic, which few Muslims understand. So, when the people are told Islam is a religion of peace, they take it at face value from their leaders, who are deemed infallible.

I thought of how the history of Catholicism is similar in one way. For 1,000 years, commonly referred to as the “Dark Ages,” the Bible was locked away in the Latin language where only the elite could read it. As a kid growing up in a strict Catholic home, I won’t say we were discouraged from reading our Bibles, but we were told that only the priest could properly interpret it, and so, although we had a huge family Bible, complete with full-page pictures, it was never actually read, even once. So, we also just took “truth” at face value from our leaders. And since the Pope was “infallible,” you couldn’t argue with God.

In the “heavy-shepherding” Christian cult Laurie and I were a part of for thirty years, there were also some similarities to the above. Biblical “truth” was filtered through the interpretations of the esteemed leaders. I believe for the most part, they were sincere, or is that being too kind? We used to joke about being “brainwashed,” and our response was, “well, my brain needed to be washed,” which it certainly did. Our former leaders had their own brand of “infallibility,” and you would be labeled suspect if you questioned it. Case in point: During a particular teaching session, one of the top pastors taught that Samson, since he had ultimately committed suicide, had gone to hell. When someone in the congregation timidly asked how one of the “Heroes of Faith” from Hebrews 11 could end up in hell, he was met with a reddened face and an angry “stare of death.” Contradiction was as the sin of rebellion—cross that line at your own peril. The leaders ruled liked Old Testament kings.

Laurie is able to leave our apartment, go up the elevator, climb the five steps to the roof level, and get into the pool for a swim, all without her wheelchair. Of course, that means inching along in a tight hug with me, and more than once we’ve been told to get a room. She has always wanted me to take dance lessons with her, and so this may be her answer. People here have been extremely helpful—special mention to an expat named Paul from Ottawa, Canada, who always seems to be around when we need a little extra lift into the pool.

We also found another excellent church last Sunday here in Playa. Other than the twenty-three steps to the second floor, sandwiched in between four brawny men from the congregation—these men took their jobs very seriously, no one was falling on their watch, it was good, simple worship and a biblical, well-prepared teaching with good revelation—we’ve found our church home.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.