Watch the latest video from McGuiggan Reflections.
For the next few months, we will be exploring the book of Acts in a series titled Acts: The Gospel of the Holy Spirit. We hope you enjoy and can benefit greatly from this study. To contact Jim, feel free to email him at holywoodjk@aol.com or visit his website at: http://www.jimmcguiggan.com.
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In 1923 one of the greatest earthquake disasters in history hit Japan and reduced Tokyo and Yokohama to smoking ruins. Millions were homeless, starvation, disease and anarchy were the only things flourishing and the government and military could do nothing about it.
They knew a man who could reorganize and restructure things but he was in prison. The common people almost worshiped him but the government, the capitalists, the radical nationalists and the military people hated and feared him. He was in prison for orchestrating a vast non-violent strike in the docks and even though the workers got all that he had demanded for them he himself was thrown into prison for his leadership in the strike action. His name was Toyohiko Kagawa. They let him out of prison and he began the work of rebuilding the nation. The government offered him a huge wage and all the privileges that went with such a role but he turned it all down saying, “To work with the poor I must be poor.”
He was born in 1888, the illegitimate son of a wealthy and high-ranking politician and a geisha. The father took a liking to the child and adopted him but before the boy was five both his parents had died and although he was officially a samurai and head of nearly twenty villages he went to live with his grandmother and a stepmother. The stepmother hated him and his life was one of unrelieved misery until when he was eleven a rich uncle adopted him and planned great things for him. If his stepmother’s house was the frying pan his boarding school was the fire.
But he met and learned English from Henry Myers a Presbyterian minister. He learned more than that—he learned about Christ and Myers baptized Kagawa into Christ. Horace Shipp said, “Young Kagawa became a Christian. He did a rarer thing: he began to practice Christianity.” He was a pacifist to the core, at times he literally turned the other cheek and he insisted on giving away all his possessions and often his food. In 1904 Japan without warning attacked the Russian ships at Port Arthur and destroyed their entire Baltic fleet. Japan as a nation hailed this as a great triumph and justified it on the basis of less obvious but threatening developments in Russian foreign affairs.
At the seminary where he now attended Kagawa dared to speak against Japan’s act of war and the students would take turns to beat him up. Finally he was expelled, he fell ill (tuberculosis) and went away to die in a little fishing village. But a boat was wrecked on the coast and Kagawa worked until he was absolutely exhausted helping to rescue people. This experience made him determined to live and later his stated aim was “The salvation of 100,000 poor, the emancipation of 9,430,000 laborers and the liberation of twenty million tenant-farmers.”
He took a header into the infamous slums at Shinkawa and for nineteen years he lived in a cubicle six feet by six feet, with one side open to act as door and windows. As part of the lowest of the low, even by Shinkawa standards, he shared his living quarters and for four years he held the hand of a murderer that couldn’t sleep alone. He got a little income from a Training school and he doubled it by working as a chimney sweep and gave it away or gave away all the food and clothes it bought.
It was from one of his ceaseless stream of visitors that he contracted a fierce eye disease that moved him closer and closer to blindness.
The slum bullies robbed him with violence, burned down his shack, knocked his teeth out and challenged his faith by demanding that he give away his clothes. He did that on more than one occasion and had to wear a woman’s robe until he could replace them.
Once he was on the verge of taking on a jeering and threatening bully who was going to stop his preaching but instead he turned and ran. The crowd roared with laughter but he was back the next day in the same place preaching Christ.
It’s no surprise then that when the earthquake hit and Japan was in awful need that they let him out of prison and asked him to be Chief of Social Welfare. Once as he visited an American University two students went to hear him speak but when he was done, unimpressed one said to the other, “He didn’t have a lot to say, did he?” A woman behind them leaned over and said, “When you’re hanging on a cross you don’t need to say a lot.” He died in 1960.
Toyohiko Kagawa is one face of God’s love for the world.
Watch the latest video from McGuiggan Reflections.
For the next few months, we will be exploring the book of Acts in a series titled Acts: The Gospel of the Holy Spirit. We hope you enjoy and can benefit greatly from this study. To contact Jim, feel free to email him at holywoodjk@aol.com or visit his website at: http://www.jimmcguiggan.com.
Watch on Youtube via IFTTT
“Father I confess there is freer access to the throne of grace than there is to my desk.” Elspeth Campbell Murphy
O God, I cry in the daytime, but you hear not; and in the night season and am not silent… Psalm 22:2
The approach of psychologist and guru Carl Rogers went well for a while if for no other reason than that many people felt, “At last, someone’s listening to me.” That wasn’t Job’s experience during his sore troubles; he felt he was having a conversation with friends who simply weren’t hearing him. He says in 21:2-3, “Listen carefully to my words; let this be the consolation you give me. Bear with me while I speak and after I have spoken mock on.” People in the shadows need people who will listen to them.
Poor Job (and poor friends)—his friends were well into their hewing and hacking job. They were pouring out words, thinking they were doing Job a favor. “This is the truth, the pure word of God,” we can hear them say. “We’re offering you not only good advice but the consolations of the Almighty and you dismiss them.” Eliphaz asks in 15:11, “Are God’s consolations not enough for you, words spoken gently to you?” You only have to read how they were gutting him to see it wasn’t only Job they were deaf to; they were deaf to themselves! Righteous people can get into a nice rhythm; pious words can flow easily and pleasingly. The pleasing rhythm gives them an added sense of truth. Scriptures come effortlessly to the tongue, truth from here, there and yonder join the stream and before we know it we have a torrent of mighty truth bearing down all before it—including the sinner we came to save. “Words gently spoken to you,” we tell them. What a spellbinding sight it is to see a righteous man or woman in full pursuit of a transgressor. No warrior in a Scythian horde or in the army of Genghis Khan was ever so keen to come to grips with an enemy.
Eliphaz self-righteously offers what he calls the consolations of God and Job caustically says he’d settle for a fair hearing before they started to mock—that’d be consolation enough. At this very moment, somewhere a bullied wife, a frustrated husband, an accused child or a distraught parent is saying, “Will you just listen for once?” And the other rounds off the sentence and becomes silent and, God help us, we think that’s “listening”. God forgive me for all the times I’ve sinned in this way and hurt the hearts of those who really needed to be heard.
In fairness, we’re asking for a real gift when we ask people to listen to us and if we’ve given people reason to be angry with us that makes it even more a gift when they hear us. “Listening” is more than saying nothing while another is speaking. To listen is to enter into the part of the world they’re living in and wrestling with. “Listening” is wanting to understand not only what these people are facing but what they’re facing it with. Maybe they don’t want to be excused; maybe they don’t expect that, can’t expect it and have no right to expect it! Maybe they just want to be heard and if they get that they’ll soldier on.
Elspeth Campbell Murphy taught first graders for many years and thought that they taught her more than she taught them. In a lovely little book she wrote in 1979 (CHALKDUST) she recorded the kind of prayers she prayed depending on the circumstances and needs. One of them was a prayer for help in listening to children who were always eager to talk. She confessed it was easier to get to God’s throne than to her desk and asked God for “a heart that understands the importance of a new pair of shoes or a lost pencil.” She felt like a cheat because she rejoiced in the privilege of knowing that the Lord of the universe listened to her and she had a hard time listening to the children. It is a needed and lovely prayer that she concludes with, “and Father, thanks for listening.”
We all have to make our own confession of failure here or there and we’ll all have to be modest even in confession. We’re limited as well as limiting—only God does everything flawlessly. Surely it makes sense for us to want to grow in fairness and give to others (as much as we can) what is given to us so abundantly by God—a hearing!
When we dismiss the voice of someone as not worth hearing we’re saying something about their personhood—it isn’t just their voice we want nothing to do with at that point; we want nothing to do with them! When we give ourselves to them in a genuine listening experience, when they know it, are sure of it, they feel they and not just their words are being taken seriously. “I’m worth listening to!” is their sense of things.
I accept the fact that to truly listen to a person can be a very great gift and I accept that there are times when there are such demands on us that we might not be able to do that. Still, that doesn’t ease the pain in the heart of the person unheard. Let me tell you of a situation where both people were “losers”.
My Ethel had a network of health difficulties that included paraplegia and various re-routings of internal systems and a whole lot more. Back when she was able to travel we were going to visit our kids and grandkids in America, a trip that even at its best wiped her out and generated all kinds of fears en route. The airline assured us that everything was taken care of but after about fifteen event-filled hours we were relieved and ready to carry her on for our last plane ride. We were horrified to discover that her seat was to be in the middle of the middle block of seats and that mine was in a different row. By this time I had seen her transferred badly from the wheelchair and back, almost dropped, jolted and frightened, spoken to abrasively, bumped against aisle seats and almost thrown into two of them—all that and more. This last little issue was too much and I said so to the official at the entrance to the plane. At least if she wasn’t on an aisle we needed two seats together for there were things that needed to be attended to promptly and decisively for the comfort of all around us. He kept interrupting me, telling me there was nothing he could do, the place was overbooked, I should have checked my seat assignments before now, and more. The more he talked and the more he didn’t let me explain the angrier I became. I tried telling him again about the physical situation, about the airline assuring us…but he was shaking his head, looking this way and that and telling me he could do nothing about it. By now it wasn’t that I really expected him to do anything—I…just…wanted…to…be…heard and understood! I wanted him to know what I was feeling and how distressed she was as she sat there looking up at both of us and blaming herself for being such a problem. Even as I write this, so long after the event, I can still feel the emotional surges returning. I was distressed and wanted to be heard!
Let me ask again: God forgive me for all the times I’ve sinned in this way and hurt the hearts of those who really needed to be heard.
This poor man was under all kinds of pressure, the place was jam-packed with people anxious to board, the flight was overbooked, there were people piling up behind us while I blocked the entrance and tried (at least initially) to get him to “do something”; there were time constraints because we were running a bit late, and more! He was pressured into believing he didn’t have time to hear or understand and I was pressured into believing I had to be heard and understood. Had things been calmer, the pressures off he would have done something but I wasn’t able at that point to worry about his troubles; I had troubles of my own.
Those of us with a profound need to be heard must be given a hearing and if we can do that we should do it. If we needy can from somewhere dredge up the patience to spare a thought for the one we’re speaking to that would be a wonderful gift too. This airline official didn’t have it in him at that point to say something to me like, “Mr. McGuiggan, I’m so sorry about all this mess but right now I’m not able to deal with it, maybe…” that would have eased things. He was abrupt, abrasive even, and completely unsympathetic to our situation so I remember him in this unflattering (and perhaps uncharitable) way.
It’s all water under the bridge and in light of the horrors that are experienced in the world perhaps I shouldn’t dare even to mention it but I’m not that mature. I have to say, however, with lovers all over the world, that had I been alone and given a bad seat assignment I could have lived with it but when it so affected my Ethel it went to another dimension. I wanted to be heard not just for me—for her! For her, for pity’s sake!
The experience remains with me as a prod and a reminder that both those who need to be heard and those who need to hear can give to one another a marvelous gift. [I wrote the airline expecting a form letter in return, electronically apologizing for the mix up. What I got was a phone call and…but that’s another story.]
Now, here’s the thing, if we humans long for and often rightly expect other humans to give us a hearing wouldn’t you think that God would give us a hearing?
Throughout the book of Job we hear that plea, spoken and unspoken. “Where is he that I might speak to him?” “Why doesn’t he answer me?” A psalmist (Psalm 22) is plagued with illness that shows itself in utter fatigue, extreme weight loss and dehydration and he’s sure he’s going down into dust. He’s troubled by loss of friends and a deep sense of abandonment by God as through half-closed eyes he sees the mocking smiles of his enemies as they mutter their delight to each other. He sees the gathering of (perhaps) distant family members who are eyeing the things they’ll make a grab for when he dies and he wonders why God is so far away that he doesn’t hear his cries.
How long it took we aren’t able to tell but the psalmist finally had reason to believe that God was hearing him even when it looked least like it (22:24). The last half of the psalm expresses his delight and relief and he vows he will tell everyone he meets to believe that God doesn’t abandon righteous strugglers.
It’s so lonely to be cut off from all those people and things that make life more than “pleasant” and even if we have other means of support, enough to make life better than tolerable, there’s the ache we get when we have been cut off from those we feel make life fully worth living. What a blessed relief, a joy, it is when we get a letter or a phone call, “I’ve been meaning for months to call you and tell you…and I’m sorry it’s taken this long.” To be embraced again in ways like that, to be heard, to have your pleas acknowledged—that’s better than a holiday, better than an excess of money. You are thought worthwhile, worth bothering about and the caller/writer can’t bear another moment to pass without asking for and offering the gift of fellowship. We know better (or should) than to think that when we speak to Him “God just drops everything” and gives us his undivided attention—that faith is too cozy and runs contrary to both Scripture and life. But that he hears our every prayer, spoken and unspoken, seems to be the message of the Bible so that we’ll never truly have to speak to God as Job spoke to his friends.
This piece from my little book on JOB: LIFE ON THE ASH HEAP
I’m addressing Christians! In reading and reflecting on the Holy Bible because we want to know God better and to gain strength to more consistently seek to please and serve Him and enrich our sense of peace with Him we focus on the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, the now glorified and exalted Lord of All.
In our prayerful study we come across truths that make great demands of us and we come across texts, sections, events that we’re required to wrestle with. Jesus says we must hate our entire family if we want to be His disciples (Luke 14:25-33). He says if we won’t do that we cannot be His disciples! Three times in that section He says, “…cannot be My disciple if…”. Hate my entire family? What do we do with such texts? Knowing Jesus Christ, immediately and with complete assurance we say, “He didn’t mean that!” Yes, but it’s what He said! It’s what He said!
You don’t have a doctorate in hermeneutics to say immediately, “I know what He said but He didn’t mean we are to hate our entire family!” Knowing Jesus the first thing we do is to dismiss the impossible! Knowing Jesus Christ we know He didn’t mean what the words could be interpreted to mean just what they say. And they could be understood as promoting hatred—the words, I mean! But not if you know Jesus Christ.
I thought of using some texts to prove the words aren’t to be understood as Jesus promoting and even requiring that we must hate our entire families and friends but that would be a mistake. Understanding His words like that is so manifestly false no one who loves and admires Him needs ‘proof’. Once more, Jesus being who He was and is makes it impossible for us to believe He was promoting and required such hatred.
Having rejected the “impossible” we then move to explain what He did mean and what He did require. For He certainly required something! Three times, “You can’t be my disciple if you won’t…!” But it takes a bit more work to “explain” what He meant than it takes to “read” what He said. And sometimes we’re not able to say well what He meant. We might show how the word rendered “hate” doesn’t always mean “hate” the way we mean it. Yes, but sometimes it does mean “hate” in the way we mean “hate” . Jesus says the ‘world’ “hated” Him and will “hate” His followers (John 15.18). He uses the same word as in Luke 14.
What then? Is it lexically possible for the word “hate” in Luke14 to mean the same as it means in John 15.18? Yes it is! So, it’s possible for Jesus to be promoting and even requiring hatred? No it’s not! And how do we know it’s impossible when He is using the very same word? Because the person of Jesus makes it impossible! If Jesus Himself isn’t sufficient to bury the nonsense that He promoted that savage emotion hatred of our entire families and friends—if He isn’t enough to end the debate no verbal parallels or ‘explanations’ will work Best to shake our heads and be done with argument.
Should we not try to explain? Well of course we should; given the right circumstances and in speaking to the right people we should explain what Jesus meant. We’ll explain as best we can, hoping to say it well and so make it easier for those who need the help to understand. BUT get this, we work at ‘explaining’ because we already know that Jesus makes the hatred push impossible.
And Jesus said, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Watch the latest video from McGuiggan Reflections.
For the next few months, we will be exploring the book of Acts in a series titled Acts: The Gospel of the Holy Spirit. We hope you enjoy and can benefit greatly from this study. To contact Jim, feel free to email him at holywoodjk@aol.com or visit his website at: http://www.jimmcguiggan.com.
Watch on Youtube via IFTTT
Christian or non-Christian, in the ‘world’ we have constructed, you get hurt and then you die! The life GOD is offering is never experienced fully in this life. Hebrews 2:5-8, (but not forgetting v. 9) makes that clear. The life He offers is exemplified by and embodied in the glorified Lord Jesus. THAT’S the life that God offers and that cannot be experienced by us in this life of creaturely weakness that ends in Death. So it was with Jesus. Glory followed the anguish experienced in this phase of living. The pain experienced was the inevitable outcome of the loving God’s free choice to become human in order to make it clear that humankind was not left alone to fight against evil or to die in despair as if God had completely, utterly and finally disowned them.
If we have experienced salvation in Christ we have power (not muscle!). We haven’t yet experienced the fullness of life in the Lord Jesus but we have “passed from death to life.” (John 5:24) The power of God that raised Jesus from creaturely weakness, the same creaturely weakness we now experience, is at work in us who are blessed with a vibrant living hope that means we can’t be robbed of our coming inheritance (1 Peter 1:3-9; Ephesians 1:19-23). The power in view in these texts and in Jesus’ personal experience, is resurrection power that has brought us from death in sin to life in (His) righteousness and will raise us from biological death to glory in everlasting life and righteousness (Ephesians 2:4-7; John 6:40, 54, passim). Our life in Jesus is experienced in a ‘new world’ that is finally revealed and unfolded in an unending climax on a Day yet to come. The glorified Lord Jesus even NOW embodies that CLIMAX—in Him we see what God always meant for us and so Paul sees us re-created in the image of the Lord Jesus who becomes for Paul “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). That is more than “an interesting point.” In Jesus it is an acted-out promise and assurance from God—“this is what I have in store for you.” And while we wait, the glorified and exalted Son of Man makes Himself present in us by His Holy Spirit. The more we get to know Jesus Christ and become like like Him by the enriching and shaping of His Holy Spirit the more assured we are of the truth and faithfulness of God. The dying Christ trusted Himself to His Father (Luke 23:46; John 10:17-18; Acts 2:24-28) and was raised immortal. He that raised Jesus from the dead will resurrect all, of all the ages, to glory and immortality who are embraced in the saving work of God (Romans 8:11; Cor 15:45-54; 1 John 3:1-2).
To image Jesus Christ is to see Him choose to enter our world and take up His cross and it means we take up our cross and follow in His way. He lives before the Father that way, He goes to the Father that way, He exposes the darkness of the Darkness that way, He overthrows the satanic usurper that way, He rejects the world’s way to power as suicidal—the way to Death rather than life—and it is demonic . In following Him in this way to the degree sinners like us can, to follow Him in this way in trust means many things but it means two major things: it means we will reign with Him and it means we acknowledge Him as the supreme human among us (Romans 8:17-29; Colossians 1:18).
We reign with Him if we suffer with Him. By faith we have already conquered ‘the world’ (1 John 5:4) and one day we will in full personal experience experience the obliteration of ‘the world’ and live in a new creation. It was inevitable that God (in and as Jesus of Nazareth) would come to bring us to Himself that we might experience His glory. His suffering is our destiny. Jesus of Nazareth suffered WITH and FOR and FROM the human family so also are we called, those of us who claim Him as our Lord. 1 Peter 2;18-25; 4:12-19. If suffering comes our way and it cannot be avoided Peter calls us in the name of God to embrace it in faithfulness (4:19).
To do that, is to share Christ’s kind of suffering (1 Peter 4.12-15); suffering WITH, FROM & FOR the world. To do this is to take up our cross, a cross that’s a cross like His, and follow Him through, whatever trouble comes our way, to immortal glory, peace, adventure and happy righteousness and to His Father (John 14:1-3, 6; with 1 Peter 1:11; Matt. 16:24-26).
Watch the latest video from McGuiggan Reflections.
For the next few months, we will be exploring the book of Acts in a series titled Acts: The Gospel of the Holy Spirit. We hope you enjoy and can benefit greatly from this study. To contact Jim, feel free to email him at holywoodjk@aol.com or visit his website at: http://www.jimmcguiggan.com.
Watch on Youtube via IFTTT
My friend Kenny Chumbley from time to time writes pieces under the title: The Prairie Papers, (KLChumbley@aol.com). He invited me to write the narrative of the Children’s book The Green Children and he ramrodded the production of the book and the stage-play that was watched in several cities (one in Ireland). He also made me aware of something Tolkien said that I think you’d find interesting and moving.
You’ll remember in the screen adaptation of The Fellowship of the Rings the scenes that show Gollum in a wrestle with the other side of Gollum—something I experienced a while back when I was out for a walk and found myself literally shouting at myself in savage rebuke.
A fear-filled Sam didn’t trust Gollum and had no sympathy for him. As Kenny pointed out to me, Gollum and Frodo were both ring-bearers and both had suffered greatly as a result of it so Frodo saw Gollum from a different perspective than Sam did—Sam who was fiercely loyal to Frodo.
Frodo had compassion on the ring-tormented Smeagol who had been seduced into evil that led him to murder and the worship of the evil power of the ring and became the dangerous and wicked Gollum who now had a rope around his neck to control him; a rope that tormented him. Speaking in defense of Smeagol (now Gollum) Frodo says to Sam:
F. Why do you put him down all the time?.
S. There’s nothing left in him but lies and deceit.
F. You have no idea what it [the ring] did to him; what it’s still doing to him. I want to help him, Sam.
S. Why?
F. Because I have to believe he can come back.
S. You can’t save him Mr. Frodo.
Frodo takes the rope off his neck and Gollum is softened toward Frodo. When Gollum now warns of danger Sam, in savage distrust wants him driven off but Frodo says, “He has been true to his word.”
Gollum is thrilled with the trust expressed in him and begins to see Frodo (“the master”) in a different light.
Later Frodo speaks gently to Gollum, “Who are you?” and back comes the answer:G. Gollum, Gollum.
F. Gandalf told me that you were one of the River Folk. You are not so far from a Hobbit, once, were you?! Gandalf told me your life was a sad story.
(Gollum is sad, as if reminiscing; like a traveler far from home.)
F. Your name was Smeagol.” (Gollum slowly raises his head, eyes widening)
G. What did you call me?
F. That was your name once, wasn’t it? A long time ago!
G. My name! [as if remembering with awe] My name…(hesitating, and then with a faint smile), “Smeagol.”
Compassion, confessed brotherhood and a gentle reminder of a happy life before the complete loss of innocence, was working a marvelous change in him and he begins to act that way.
Later there are the scenes when the evil side (Gollum) begins to dialogue with the newly awakened Smeagol side that now seeks to believe in and serve “the master”.
Gollum. Wicked hobbits,
Smeagol. Not the master
G. They will cheat you, hurt you, lies…
S. The master’s my friend.
G. You don’t have any friends. No one likes you
S. (holding is ears) “Not listening, Not listening,” he shouts.
G. You’re a liar, a thief…a murderer.
S. (greatly distressed) No, go away!
G. (Scoffing) Go away?
S. I hate you; I hate you, (holds his head, anguished)
G. Where would you be without me? Gollum, Gollum; It was me, I saved us. We survived because of me..”
S. Not anymore!
G. What did you say?
S. Master looks after us now. We don’t need you.
G. What?
S. Leave now and never come back.
G. No.
S. Leave now and never come back. (again, but stronger): Leave now and never come back!
G. vanishes and Smeagol is startled and then to his better self he says,
S. We told him to go away and way he goes. (He begins to whirl and dance) shouting
SMEAGOL IS FREE!
Then as Tolkien told it, Sam misinterprets Smeagol and drives him off, back into the world of evil and torment and ultimate loss. When Tolkien finished writing that section, he confessed that he wept!
(Holy Father, somewhere down in so many of us is Gollum and Smeagol. Sometimes just by compassion and long patience Smeagol longs to emerge and be free. Many of us are able to look back on those who in the image of your Holy Son took the rope off our necks and credited us with an honest attempt at keeping ours words and called us by another name, a name we would have forgotten if they hadn’t told us of our past before our loss of innocence. Some of those we know and consciously thank you for them and there are many who treated us that way when we weren’t able to recognize it and we thank you for them too. Give us a sense of brother and sisterhood, grant us a compassionate spirit and the awareness that we are all ring-bearers. Give us Sam’s love for and loyalty to the Frodos in life and their commission but deliver us we pray from an excess of zeal for the divine purpose that would blind us to the truth that that purpose includes compassion on the ‘Smeagols’ that sometime sit alone in the darkness fighting the darker side of themselves. We so need your help here that we might be genuinely compassionate and patient as well as wise. This prayer in Jesus Christ.)
Watch the latest video from McGuiggan Reflections.
For the next few months, we will be exploring the book of Acts in a series titled Acts: The Gospel of the Holy Spirit. We hope you enjoy and can benefit greatly from this study. To contact Jim, feel free to email him at holywoodjk@aol.com or visit his website at: http://www.jimmcguiggan.com.
Watch on Youtube via IFTTT
