Huff Expressions

Jane's Birthday Coming Up February 1

2012-01-22T19:24:00.000-08:00

So, a picture of Jane (see more here) as I send a note to ask for words of love and memories as she comes up on a milestone birthday. I decided to send to all of our FB friends. (So... if you get this but don't even know Jane, sorry. She's a great gal and the loss is yours, but don't feel beholden to make up memories... :) )

I would appreciate any connections you can add as there are folks who know and love her who I will not connect with. For example, I'd greatly appreciate any of the Mt. Carmel girls spreading the word. She loved having you in our home and I'd love to share your thoughts with her.

It will be a trick to keep this secret, but this blog is rarely seen. So you can leave your comments here. FB messages are fine, too -- I may just have to keep her off of it somehow for awhile so I can keep them a surprise!

This is just part of celebrating the big Five-0 by putting together expressions of love from the many who have known her across the years. A few words, a memory, whatever you can find time for in the midst of everything else -- much appreciated!!

Trying to get it together before next Sunday. Thank you!

Randy

Time...

2011-11-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

...stolen for a few minutes of written reflection, little figures that represent sounds which, when put together, comprise ideas of one kind or other. Communication. Always takes time. so much of it I avoid if I can because, well because life is taxing. It is. and so we love people, all people, but self-absorption is always at the door because of the demands of life.

Enter Jesus who said, it seems, "Give yourself away." Even, "Give what you do not have." I have seen this bear out truthfully, and I have seen the painful results of its denial.

Where does this brief spot in time for a reflective meandering end? With this: Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and I find amazing, deep joy (very real, mind you in the demands of life!) in knowing he gives purpose and meaning, truth and beauty, and...redemption!! And...it is an amazing journey -- truly amazing -- to look, look hard, listen 'loudly' in the pursuit of knowing who this amazing man is. Jesus, son of man, Son of God, my Lord and Savior, my friend, my big brother. Anything good, as Dr. Herron used to say, is from him. The 'stuff' of my life is all me. But I ain't looking there. I am looking to, and loving, Jesus. With a happy smile on my face. (Can't you see it in all these figures that represent sound that....)

So happy I ever surrendered my life to Him!

Words that cannot be spoken...

2011-11-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

There are words that cannot be spoken because they are not words, only dim awarenesses, inarticulate because life is just that way. Do you know everything? A silly question. And yet, and yet, the path of knowing God will press us through the highest trials. I do not say I am there, though this is relative to be sure. My trials might be child's play to you,and yours to me.

As someone said recently, the yearning for perfection and permanence is written into our being and so we long for...we are desperate to know perfection, completion, wholeness. And the whisper of this broken world almost sounds like a taunt: “not yet”. Not yet?! Let it be over then, let me know heaven, “come Lord Jesus!” Is this not the deepest and truest angst that makes us cry out, reach up beyond our grasp, knowing there must be a heaven or there is no point after all?!

But I must believe this is no taunt but plain reality. God is our Father and he guides us along a good path, always to something better. And lest we get too fond of this broken world, He does not shield us from all of its pain.

I realized this recently as I prayed while driving down the road. In the midst of a multitude of blessings I still yearn for something more. This yearning is written in and we are all prone to satisfy it in a myriad of misguided ways. But when we make God our pursuit...that is the answer! Seek anything less than God – take your pick of anything this world offers, even the truly goods things – seek them as the highest good and they will rot in your mouth. “Fear God and keep His commandments”, love Him with all of your life and your life will become rightly ordered and the temporary afflictions, whatever they be, will take there rightful place as lesser than the ultimate prize of knowing God.

This I believe and I reaffirm it today as the yearning of my life. God is working, not as fast as I wish, but that is the universal human story! God is good always, always faithful and true and beautiful and joyful and just and kind. And I call Him my Father. Help me, Lord, to walk in your good way!

Grandma Hoerner Sandwich

2011-09-14T20:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight I made a Grandma Hoerner sandwich. Ever had one of those? You may have had one kind of like it, but not one exactly like it! I made a regular “PBJ” tonight to put in my lunch for tomorrow. Well, to be truthful, there was no “J” in this PBJ because I opted for apple butter and...the bread was frozen so no worries about it getting too soggy while sitting in the fridge until morning, but I digress. It was a Grandma Hoerner sandwich because I remember her putting real butter on the bread before the peanut butter.

Yes, regular ol' butter.

So I took the aforementioned slices carved from a frozen loaf, applied normal butter, then peanut butter, and the rest. Some of the Aunts and Uncles do not remember the real butter, but I certainly do. It gave those sandwiches a funny taste, one I wasn't especially fond of. But I was fond of my Grandma...very fond, so I always took that sandwich and ate it with gusto.

And as I make a Grandma Hoerner sandwich every now and then, I remember this special woman who went to a better world in 2005. She was strong and resolute, joyful and loving, (too) hardworking, musical, practical, prayerful. She loved God and she loved her eight kids and she loved her husband for the 67 years God gave them together. And so when something as simple as butter on a sandwich reminds me of her, I get very tender about it.

I hope you have ways of remembering the great people in your life. When we remember them it makes us want to be better, to follow the path they lived so well. That's what I will pray tomorrow as I enjoy my sandwich on lunch break, asking for love and joy and determination and...longevity so I can strive to be a blessing to my family like she was.

And I wonder, what small thing might you and I do that, because touched with love and care and service and a sound life, makes a lifetime difference in someone who looks up to us? My Grandma made a lifetime difference in me, not least through the memories that come when I eat a simple Grandma Hoerner sandwich. There's nothing quite like it...because, to me, there was no one quite like her.

Grandpa, My Hero

2010-11-22T23:48:00.000-08:00

Grandpa, My Hero

Grandpa will always be my hero. I can’t tell you all the reasons why – I can’t. But I will try.

He is someone I want to be: qualities of hard work, children, farm, honesty, love, determination; serving his country at great sacrifice, going to college and entering the ministry with a young family, returning to roots to live and care and work hard and honest for a lifetime.

It is hard to grasp, this hero thing. If I were to say this to him he would have sort of laughed and mumbled something about life and failures…or more likely, if I told him he was my hero he would have responded silently, moving on as soon as he could.

There was a quiet love in this man. I of course never talked to him about marriage and his love for Grandma. But I have a feeling, a sneaking suspicion – a pretty sure conviction – that they loved each other with passion and tenderness. And their love grew and grew, learning to bear faults and failures with grace and truth and kindness. They loved each other with intensity and that love gave them 8 children and so many grandchildren and greats. It was really there, I think – imperceptible almost – this amazing, foundational, real love. He would have been pained at his failings in showing love, but he loved nonetheless. I want to be like him. He will always be a hero to me.

He was a hero from the time I saw him running past the bleachers to play in a stars and stiffs game at MWC. He would have been about 50. He got in there and mixed it up with those young guys and this wide-eyed 5 year-old loved every minute.

He was a hero from the time he let me into the mix of uncles doing Thanksgiving woodcutting. I was eager to help – too eager I am sure – but he let me help and I loved it so much. You just can’t know how much I loved it. I loved my Grandpa – he will always be my hero.

He will always be a hero for the way I used to hear him in the mornings, in and out, doing chores while Grandma fixed breakfast. I would roll over and go back to sleep and when I woke up he was gone, hard at work on some project somewhere.

He will always be my hero for the breakfasts Jane and I had with him and Grandma in later years. So much love and interest, and the timeless habit of reading from a devotional book when we were done eating. That voice will always be in my mind, kind of deep and gentle, going somewhere but not in a hurry, interested in hearing and sharing the things of God. Grandpa will always be my hero because he really worked at this thing of loving God in the midst of all that life demands. He seemed to feel his shortcomings painfully but he always got up and kept going.

And go he did. Who could stop this man? Grandma couldn’t, it seems. Of course, amazing woman that she was, I’m sure she kept him going and…if she wanted him to stop, really wanted him to, I bet he stopped on a dime and did her bidding, with love and gladness.

But…he seemed pretty hard to stop! I always loved and laughed at his determination to work beyond what other folks call retirement. I think he was going on 90 before he really retired. When he visited our home in 2004 I was doing a roof job on the campus where we lived. At 86 or so he insisted on getting up on the roof with me – in dress shoes. He had forgotten his work shoes but he wasn’t going to miss the action. He stood at the peak and just sort of took it in as I worked for awhile. Kind of a mystery going on in those eyes, the insatiable longing to be busy, to get things done, the yearning for and loving of life that makes him a hero to all of us.

Grandpa was a real man, a hero for a thousand reasons. Rugged and sacrificial WWII service, hard work in whatever it took to raise a family, love and determined devotion to God that expressed itself in countless ways, a family heritage that, to me, is rich beyond words.

This is my Grandpa, my hero. I want to be like him, I really do, and I will always count my self incredibly blessed that Glenn Hoerner was my Grandpa.

Of Words and Wonder -- an October Musing

2010-10-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

Ever notice how the most valuable things in life, the most sacred and meaningful, are the hardest to talk about? It is almost like you are afraid that if you talk about it you will destroy it. The moment is too precious to ruin with words. The smile, the priceless hug, the return home of a long-lost child, a God encounter, a wedding, simple heart-songs, a gentle -- or passionate -- kiss. And how easily we do destroy things with words. Can't simple enjoyment and simple observation just be stored in memory and savored in the moment? No, we have to talk about it or type about it or take a picture or a video. Life is nothing if we don't apply technology or analysis, we think, but in the process we nearly destroy it.

Don't believe me? How many photos or video-hours sit on hard drives, never to be seen again. So often in the process of recording the moment for the future, the present joy is trudged upon, unsavored, sullied.

The ancients had it better. Even sports had it better before instant re-something. Life is most real when it is lived and left alone. The journey is not to be re-lived somehow; all efforts to do so are artificial, cheapening the real thing. Modern obsession with having has applied to time so that we morsel the moment to death, blanching taste and depleting value.

Such with a son and son going together across the street after long estrangement. No way to describe it or analyze it, unless I am the best poet. They do have that right, the best poets, a right earned through LONG times of silent observation and tortuous struggle with life and meaning and words. They can convey precious moments in words ripe with treasured life. The rest of us are far better to enjoy, savor, and live with life real before our eyes, seeing enough to know there must be something Good behind, underneath and above all this wonder. Leave off the video, the photo, the words – its time for simple rocking-chair rest, quiet sunsets filling the eyes and heart, simple words with family and friends, a game of kick-the-can if you wish; it's time for all that to be loved and enjoyed as so much more than the pseudo-gift of technology which promises more but leaves us more empty.

So I try to say in words what we all know in our bones. Analysis can help but often kills. TV entrenches inaction and fills the mind with...something. The vast bulk of photos has its allure in the suggestion that life is captured on paper, or worse, on a flickering screen. Life is something else – lived in the moment, lived on behalf of others, knowing only now really exists, investing in people not images, basking in the joys of life as they come, unpreserved, real, painful and poignant, but never really captured.

Did I just type all that on the internet? Technology is a mix of good with bad, that's for sure but I'm shutting this thing down and talking a nap. That's what the next moment is for. And it is good, I know it!

A Memory of a Great Man

2010-10-19T01:18:00.001-07:00

Kenneth Bryant

From a distance I knew him, far enough away in age and miles that I lay awake tonight wondering if I could/should say anything at all. How did I know this man? I didn't, not really. And yet I did in what is, to me, sacred memory. And I knew him in knowing some of his children. And that is how I remember him first. So many children that I'm afraid to name them, fearing I will miss one. There was Becky, the eldest and her he-man husband, Ron, both of whom loved me early as a young man, setting a good example of a godly life. Then there was Mark, the cowboy – well all the guys were cowboys in a way. Mark and Steve were the older brothers. Then came Liz and Mary, Nathan and Sarah, and that little guy running around under foot, Micah. I might have missed one but I think that is it.

As I say, I'm just a distant observer but on this day of remembering the man, the father of this clan, I keep seeing a lot in my memory. I remember his eyes. Kenneth Bryant had this ever-present way in his expression, nearly impossible to describe. It was not a twinkle though it had merriness to it. It is like he knew this secret and it gave constant energy and joy to his life. It was nothing he lorded over others. In fact it seems like it was the secret that kept him going in service to everyone else. A pleasant truth, reflecting a well never running dry, a life really lived in ways and from sources the rest of us puzzled over before going our lesser ways.

My most fixed memory of Kenneth Bryant, his wonderful wife and fun family, is seeing them arrive at church camp grounds in Wichita, Kansas. The grounds were always hot and dusty and when the Bryant clan arrived there was an old car kicking up a plume of dust, pulling a trailer, and a pickup with a topper following, I guess. I only remember that they weren't driving anything fancy! But it had to be more than one vehicle to handle all of those kids. And they set up camp in and outside their cabin over there in the SW corner of the grounds. Nothing too romantic on those dusty grounds, mind you, but if there was time to tell it all you would know why I consider those memories sacred.

Around the Bryant cabin I was introduced to a lasso, messing around after and between services to learn something about lassoing someone's little brother or related mischief. There was some real coyboyin' goin' on in that family as I knew for sure when I went with Steve in '82 to visit Mark on the backside of nowhere in Arizona. Having grown up in western Kansas I knew big spaces, but NE Arizona redefined it for me. Steve and I drove for a long time – maybe an hour or more – no markings, no stores, nothing but....nothing. And then in the middle of all that we found Mark with a trailer and truck and horse, doing his job in service to a rancher who, honest, had cattle out there somewhere. We took Mark's truck and left him with a car as I recall so we could return to Kansas where church camp was getting started again in one of those hot, dusty, happy Augusts.

And so when we met the Bryants, starting in 1978 in that happy place in Wichita, it was always with all those kids and somewhere around was Mrs. Bryant -- always smiling in my memory -- and Mr. Bryant. Of course they loved God and you knew it, and they loved Him with service and love and just being in a way that made you almost forget they were there. As Micah told me, “Dad wasn't on any big councils or big important stuff like that, but he lived Jesus in a way like no one else I ever knew.”

As I grew older I didn't see them as much. One of the last times was in Miltonvale in 1989 or so. Whatever year it was, they had lost Steven in the past year. One of the pastors motioned toward Mr. Bryant and said, “There is a man of God, just buried a son, carrying on in faithfulness and truth and love.” I looked across at Mr. Bryant and knew, in my youthful unknowing, that there was a mysterious truth to this and a sustaining enabling in his life.

As I say, I knew him from a distance, but I could not shake his memory as I lay awake tonight. He died sometime on Monday, leaving eight children and their families, a heritage that is really priceless. I confess I remember him as being very poor – seemed like they had so little. But as the saying goes, the most important things in life are not things, and the Bryants had that in abundance. A real, simple, living faith in a God who was good, faithful, loving, steady, honest, always there. That was Kenneth Bryant, I think, living faithfully so that we saw in him the Jesus he loved and trusted. And so now that he is gone from us his example helps us to believe that we, too, can walk that life of faith, if faint by comparison, and someday rejoin him in heaven. I think that makes sense; I think that is real. And I believe it all the more because of the life and love of this good man I knew from a distance, Kenneth Bryant.

A Sunday Morning Prayer

2010-10-10T05:50:00.001-07:00

Lord, do I know how to pray? Are these thoughts just me talking to me? I hope not. Enough of that in the paths of life. And so I say again, Lord, I believe in you. I believe you are there, that you care, that you hear me. I am comforted this morning to believe that years from now I will look back and know that you led and loved and cared in a thousand ways I could not see at the time. As you led my great-great-grandparents from New York to Kansas and helped them help in founding a school dedicated to your love and glory, so in your loving-kindness you show grace and favor in my life today. Some of this I can see, Lord. I rejoice to believe that most of the grandeur of your work in this world is yet unseen. And so goes the life of faith -- believing you are at work when we cannot see it.

Is this melancholy? I do not think so, Lord. I look to you as all of your children do and I give happy praise for the life you have given and the simple joys of living in this majestic world. I give you praise for the wondrous gift of friendship, for the awe of family life and love, for the created wonder you gave. I know that in that created world there is an infinite (to us) world of beauty and blessing. How much more so in the world of relations and work and care you have planned for what we call eternity!

But as we say, there are no words, only wonder. One of your greater children gave us this reminder: "A comprehended God is not God." And countless others of your children have left us prayers that far surpass..... But what is that, self-worrying when I am trying, trying, to pray and humble myself before you on a Sunday morning?

I love you, Lord, though faltering and, well, embarrassingly human. I cannot but believe you love me even in this fallen humanness, and that you are working in countless unseen ways to redeem me and all of your Creation. Do I understand? I think I hear you laughing. Can I trust you? Can you handle my life and my eternal destiny and even the daily tasks and cares? Can I trust you with all of that?
I think I can, and with your help I do.

This is a prayer O Lord, a drawing near to you, asking you to draw near to me, knowing you care, knowing you are there, happy to know your love for me -- even me -- is intense and personal.

Someday we will know as we are known. And we will know in that personal, loving, hugging way that is so intertwined with what we call "head-knowledge" as to make the distinction sound silly. Enough of that inner talking, though -- I look to you O Lord and join my voice to millions of others who love and worship you today. I believe in you -- faltering and all that. I believe in you and humbly thank you for your daily care and love.

A Prayer Reflecting on God...and Prayer

2010-10-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

Footnote to All Prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow

When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,

And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart

Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.

Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme

Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,

And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address

The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless

Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert

Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;

And all men are idolators, crying unheard

To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense.
Lord, in thy great Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

~ from CS Lewis

News from the Huff Family

2010-07-05T05:01:00.000-07:00

We have been out of touch with so many of you across these months; others have been in touch, praying with us as we considered the Lord's direction for the days to come. Thank you for your prayers and friendship.

We are indeed planning to move -- this week! - going to Roanoke, VA, where we will serve with Parkway Christian Academy. Jane will serve as Administrative Secretary and I will serve as Dean of Student Affairs. We believe this is the Lord's provision for this season of our lives and we earnestly covet your prayers during this transition time.

Our love for the students and staff we will leave behind at KMBC is very deep. These have been good years, blessed to serve in a wonderful ministry of God's planting. Our lives are forever enriched by the people and students we have known here and we want to stay in touch. Their love for us during these days has been a great encouragement.

Our new contact information is posted on our FB info. page. We would love to hear from you and better yet, see you!

As we go to a new home we pray the prayer of Moses: "Lord, YOU have been our home through all generations"; and, "May the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us and may he establish the work of our hands!" (Ps. 90)

Thank you for your friendship and prayers.

Love from all of us:
Randy and Jane, Lawrence and Elliot

Meditations on a Sunday Morning

2010-05-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

How often do we speak with nothing to say? How often do we speak when quiet is a superior course?

Do I have anything to say? I often speak on paper or to my patient wife or friends so that I can work out a better understanding of something. Are those idle words? I don't think so. Not always.

Today is quiet and rest, a welcome and God-ordained respite for Jane and me. We want to hear Him; we need to hear Him. His word is life, His presence restores the soul.

Nothing more than that today. Only to speak gladness for the goodness of God that has been with us everyday. "He has been bountiful" -- so said the Psalmist in varied ways and places. And the right path is to give happy praise to Him all of our days, walking in peace with others, diligent in the tasks before us, resting on days like today; listening, silent, joyful.

Lawrence Huff, KCSAA All-Star, East Region

2010-04-04T21:18:00.000-07:00

Well the NCAA is on and UK is out and all that, but in our house the most fun this season has been watching Lawrence play basketball for Mt. Carmel High School. Their league, KY Christian Schools Athletic Assoc., allows younger students to play on High School teams. So, although Lawrence is in the 8th grade, he was able to play in most of the games and we enjoyed watching him in most of them.
At the State Tournament in Lexington they narrowly lost their first game, consigning them to the Consolation bracket. They played hard and won one game in that bracket. When the awards were given after the tournament, Lawrence was awarded Honorable Mention for the All Star Team from our region. This meant he could suit up for the East-West game.
Turned out he got to play for over half of the game! He scored 7 points, one a three-pointer, and he played with energy and skill. The competition was stiff with lots of big guys (there was a dunk or two that day). Lawrence's team came from 10 down to take the lead part way through the 3rd quarter but then faded and lost by 6 points or so.
Of course we are happy and proud and wanted to share a picture or two with the world!

Dr. Robert Whitaker: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

2010-03-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

This week I've done a lot of thinking about what it means to live a good life, even a great one. I remember the zeal of youth when I was going to be perfect. When I related that once a student responded: “How's that workin' for ya?” And, of course, the 'perfect' thing went by the way long ago.

And yet, we all want to get it right. And pretending right doesn't exist or defining it down only deadens our spirit, makes us less human.

This has been on my mind because this week Jane and I lost someone in our life who, with his wife, JoeAnn, really did seem to get it right, enriching our spirits, leading the way. Dr. Robert Whitaker, past President of Hobe Sound Bible College, died on Monday morning and I am one of thousands, I think, who feel like we have lost a point of reference. I've been asking: “How did that happen. What did he do to become that for so many?” Just now I remember one of the reasons.

Eugene Petersen wrote a book titled “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction”, a wondeful path through Psalms with lessons on living an effective and true Christian life. In the fall of 2006 I was thrilled to be able to share with Dr. Whitaker's congregation that to me, Dr. Whitaker is one whose life had profound effectiveness because his was indeed “a long obedience in the same direction.”

Dr. and Mrs. Whitaker have three outstanding sons. Years ago I asked one of them how his folks were doing. They had been serving faithfully in one ministry for 30 years and one son said the obvious: “How might you feel if you'd been in the same place for 30 years?” Nothing negative, but real life understanding. Staying the course is grueling and there are a thousand and more good reasons to find other pastures. Dr. and Mrs. Whitaker stayed the course – a long obedience – and that is one reason so many gathered in Louisville this week to remember him.

Of course it goes beyond sheer endurance to a love that exuded from their lives. They loved Jesus, they loved each other, they loved the work God called them to do, and they loved the people that they served across all those years of ministry. The love was real, unassuming, winsome; the kind of love that filled the family room on a regular basis with sons' friends who wanted to know something of the goodness and fun of that home. This kind of love sweetened the long days and years of faithful service.

I am so deeply disappointed at Dr. Whitaker's passing -- selfishly of course. I just took him for granted. This point of reference who meant far more to me than I knew is now gone. Quite often I would face something really heavy or perplexing and think, “I wish I could ask Dr. Whitaker how he would handle this.” Too seldom did I call. Just four weeks ago I could have sat at lunch with him. But because of busyness and the typical 'don't want to bother him' I never pursued it. So wrong. He would have loved it because his simple long obedience meant that he would take time for me and think nothing of it.

So, like so many friends we were with at the funeral I am asking how I can live out the investment he made so unpretentiously. How can I pass on the blessing? Could I be like him as he was like Christ? I have realized that that is exactly what I want to do – his life had that effect. For one, we can't worry about rising to his stature. As Bobby said in his excellent sermon, “A humble person doesn't think about himself at all.” Self-consciousness and pulse-checking are no path to take if I want to be a great man like Dr. Whitaker.

And then I remember that Dr. Whitaker did this over a lifetime, and few ever rise to his stature even then. It is enough to do the basics and so I come back to that line again and I pray for grace: “Lord, I want my life to be a long obedience in the same direction.” That describes Dr. Whitaker. I pray that someday it will describe me, too.

2010-03-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

"...a nothing of eternity, and an eternity of nothing..."

Ran across this from Pascal -- had never seen it before. So true and cuts to the heart of Jesus' command to not worry and Paul's "do not set affections" on this world and James' "life is a vapor". How could it be that we have things so backwards? The Fall did more than we can imagine. As Peter Kreeft has it, "We read the Times when we need to read the eternities." Pascal says it so well:

"Our imagination so powerfully magnifies time, by continual reflections upon it,
and so diminishes eternity for want of reflection,
that we make a nothing of eternity, and an eternity of nothing;
and so vigorous and deeply rooted is this propensity, that the utmost efforts of our reason cannot extirpate it."

Ashes

2010-02-25T06:19:00.000-08:00

For what do the redeemed repent? I do not know such questions now.

There is a young man near me in the airport and I see black on his forehead, like a tatoo. Tatoo? On the forehead? So I look again, and again, until I see, and remember. It is Ash Wednesday. Catholics! Well...not really. We all, we who worship Jesus, remember the Cross as central, and the loss of Ash Wednesday in church streams like my own is a loss indeed. I look at the young man's forehead, remember Lent, and decide, painfully.... Painfully? What is pain when we are remembering the Cross of our Lord?

So I wander slowly to my gate, time to spare, and see a sign: "Chapel." That's what I need. A place to be quiet and pray. I exit the elevator to see standing room only, service in progress. Catholics again! Black on their foreheads. The Priest, bowl of black ash in hand, is coming to those standing outside, blackened thumb extended. Do I? I step forward and he gives me the mark, the reminder.

I feel the weight of emotion. The tears want to come. A form, a symbol. The suffering of Christ intersects my world and my spirit. Do I know what ashes mean? Time to suffer, to repent, certainly to deny the flesh that Mardi Gras is and represents. "All have sinned." For what do the redeemed repent? I do not know such questions now. I feel the mark and ask the Lord to help me share His suffering, step away from my own world, kneel at His feet, and live again.

Loss of a Friend

2010-02-11T02:16:00.000-08:00

The hammer in the chest – it hits again, and you wonder if you are safe. Buildings crumble, lives break, people suffer and youth disappears into brokenness. I hold my wife close and we ask each other if everything is OK. Are we in it for the long haul? Does our family matter? Can we see the big picture well enough to look above and past those people and allurements that could destroy us?

Friends – dear friends – lost their marriage. Somehow. Emerging from the silence of recent years we see two where once was one. We see another on the arm. We remember that life is frail, that the best fall, and we cannot speak. Does this mean we are vulnerable? Indeed it gives us that reminder.

So I hold Jane close and we do something old-fashioned and sentimental, but right. We say “I love you” again. We ask if the other is OK. She says she “ain't letting me go, so there”. I tell her "I'm not leaving, no matter what". We cry inside for our friends and the world. We ask God to keep making us one, to save us from the curse of sin which would destroy us.

It is a hammer in the chest and the pain will not leave. A friend's marriage is broken and we will always cry for the lost truth and joy and family.

Super Bowl and Family: Which XL's

2010-02-04T16:34:00.000-08:00

A re-post for the fun-of-it

Fall in Ulysses, Kansas, in 1973 meant football season and something called Punt, Pass, & Kick. I signed up as an 8-year-old with no idea what I was doing. I came home with a 2nd place trophy. I still have that trophy, along with wonderful memories of practicing with dad and winning again in later years. That was boyish love of dad, fun, and sport. Thirty-some years later, with two boys of my own and another Super Bowl on the way, I’m trying to figure out what this is all about.

Does anyone ask, really, what sport means? To be sure, it means a newspaper section, a multi-billion dollar industry, hundreds of ‘cathedrals’ for the faithful, and non-stop television coverage. That we can observe. But why do we give so much endless talk and conjecture and analysis and wagering - to a game? Rather than watch the Super Bowl, I’m thinking we should ask what it all means.

While we are asking that question, one thing is certain: we love the game. And yet, we know in our gut that, in the big picture, it is worthless — over in a few hours, forgotten in a week. Who really remembers anything about last year’s big game beyond the halftime fiasco – or was that the year before? It is over, forgotten, consigned to nada-land.

The solution? Well, for one, we attach ridiculous numbers from the first century. Thus we have, drum roll please, “Super Bowl XLIV.” Or (who knows?) it could be “XXXXIV” or maybe "IVL" if one is texting. But, come on. By the time most of us figure out the Roman numerals, we don’t care anymore. Roman numerals go on old books and old statues and old buildings. They are meant to dignify something that really matters. Putting them on a game is just, well, silly. Besides, what will they do when they get to number XLIX (49), or LXXXIII (88), or, simply, C (100)? Pass out the Latin grammars! On second thought, does anyone really think the Super Bowl will be around for C?

It is interesting to note, however, ancient human realities in the game, truth as clear as life but forbidden in polite discussion. On the field we have huge warriors, prepped in every way, testosterone flowing at impossible levels, engaged in all-out war. On the sidelines women cheer them on, displaying their own persons, figuratively and otherwise, offending political correctness and decency while delighting those who don’t care for either.

Of course, it goes beyond the cheerleaders to the stands and millions of living rooms. We have a war and we have those for whom the war is waged. Finally, in this we see fixed boundaries; something speaking of order, or even of meaning. Games mimic life. Could they be telling us that there is meaning after all? Games may yield a clue to the answers for life. It is more likely that they make it easier to ignore the answers we are loathe to embrace. In any event, box seats and box scores offer meager soul food.

So, can we learn anything else from this sports frenzy? If we learn from stodgy critics like me, we may shoot the critic. But can we at least ask where this sports-inebriation will lead us? What happens when a football game becomes the pinnacle of the year, when even churches cancel their services to watch?

What happens is precisely this: we put enormous price tags on things of dubious lasting value. And when you spend your best money on the worst goods, you have a problem. Games mean little in the grand scheme of life; people and families mean everything. We give inordinate capital in time, money, and moral energy to sport, leaving little for what really matters. This fact is in the very grammar that surrounds the game. Anyone ever heard of “football widows”? A game so easily takes on more value than the most important relationships. Something is wrong with that big screen picture.

So, will I watch the Super Bowl? Hardly. My house is blessed by the absence of television and, sadly, I will be gone anyway. But if I were home, I would play a table game with my family. Does that make me the perfect family man? Forget it; none of us cover all the bases as we’d like. Perfect or no, however, it’s high time we traded in Super Bowl hype for some good ole Punt, Pass & Kick. That was small town, dad and son, commercial-free, real grass - and I went home when I was done. Those are the values that matter. That is what deserves all the hype. Super Bowls will die – in 3 days this one will be all but forgotten. Homes, however, are forever. It is time to change some price tags.

Comments:

Dale Hoerner Says:
February 5th, 2006 at 9:18 am e
Hear, hear. As a fan, I must admit that every year I question the price paid to watch football. I tinker with it, try for bargains, or sometimes just spend all I have. More and more I think I’ll just save the “money” and spend it elsewhere. But there are things that happen with sports that are good - even for the spectators as you hinted above, “game mimics life.” Unfortunately, I don’t think we often pay out the thinking required to gain the value here - at least not the spectators. You will here coaches speak, I believe rightly, about the life lessons learned by participants. (And surely some of these lessons are improperly taught!) Then there was the school-age Broncos fan in PA who received some lessons in “persecution”. (From the media’s coverage I doubt anyone learned anything there.)

Wish you could be home to enjoy your table game.

Thanks for the thought.

We Gotta Play Hoops Some More

2010-02-01T14:15:00.000-08:00

My son, Lawrence, loves to play basketball. We used to play 2-3 times a month or so. We’d play ’round the world (with me spotting him an extra chance each time), "21", 3-point shoot out, "horse", whatever. Tonight I laid down with him for a few minutes as he fell asleep and I said, "We’ve got to play hoops some more. It has been too long since we’ve played."

And it has.

Where does time go? The expression is as old as…time. Yesterday Lawrence learned to ride his bike, and the day before that we ran around the house, a 3-year old hooping it up trying to catch daddy. Two days before that we were impossibly happy with the joy of a new born. Where went the days when we built the tree house together? Where went his first day of school? His first sleepover? His first field day? What of that mystical day when Jane watched him swinging in the park and realized her little boy was growing up? He was six.

How many times did he ask, "Can we play rassle, Dad? Please?" — and I didn’t have time? How many times did he want to play horsey or monopoly or dominoes and I didn’t have time. What do I have time for?

I remember carrying Lawrence to bed one night in ‘01. I was thinking about taking an extra Seminary class in the summer, a grueling, time-consuming endeavor. Lawrence was five and I knew (barely) that he wouldn’t stay that way. As I carried him to his bed, late in the night, I had an ‘aha’ moment, one of those times where realization blazes into your being. I said, "My boy is 5, I don’t need that class, this summer is about staying connected with my growing boy." He was, I didn’t and, in some measure, it was.

Here is the mystery, the angst, the longing that is tied up in what we call the passing of time. And I wonder sometimes if we can ever do ‘enough’ with our children. What is the answer? As says Reb Tevye, "We know the problem, Lord. Show us the cure."

The height of folly would be to offer simple answers, and yet remembering some basics may help, so I am going to give it a try.

1. Our time is in God’s hands. What does that mean? For starters, I think it means that there is enough time in everyday to do the will of God.
2. But much more, I think, it means living at peace with and before the One who made us. The tyranny of the urgent, as the famous essay puts it, is just that. Being earnest and efficient and all that is well and good. But as Eisenhower (or someone) said, "The urgent is seldom important and the important is seldom urgent."
3. I think this last means that if we don’t know what really matters we will never handle our time well. And so what matters? Offending a child, Jesus said, is so grievous that the offending one is worthy of death. How much worse if the offender is the parent.
4. A bit harsh in this context? Maybe. I am just trying to find perspective. What matters? My work? Yes. My marriage? Absolutely. My relationship with the Lord? Paramount.
5. Marriage and home should be valiantly protected because in them the greatest possible value is created: new living souls, children to be loved and cherished and moulded and prepared for this life. That matters, too.
6. God has given Jane and me two precious sons. If I don’t figure out how to give them adequate time, I am missing what matters in a major way.

This can be discouraging, but it doesn’t have to end there. It is a musing with which I think all parents will find something in common. As my Mother has said, "The best way to raise children is on your knees." And while I’m doing some praying, I’m also going to return to the thing that got this started. I’m gonna go play some hoops with my son. Not much else matters.

JenLo Says:
January 28th, 2007 at 11:51 pm e
How timely. Our pastor preached this morning asking us whether we are driven by the world or led by God. He made the point that Jesus often felt the pressure of the needs of the world around Him but he was never driven by that pressure, but was always listening to and led by the Father.
Mary Ellen Says:
January 29th, 2007 at 2:52 am e
OK, this blog gave me goosebumps!!! I think about this almost daily, it just goes so fast. After celebrating a fourth birthday this weekend with child #3 I find myself thinking about it even more…only one more year until he’s school age and then it seems that childhood goes even faster. I so enjoy the baby/toddler years and yet they are so fleeting. A great reminder, reading this blog, to make sure spending time with our kids is a priority! In my opinon it is not quality over quanity but to do them both as priorities in our lives.
Randy Says:
January 29th, 2007 at 5:05 am e
Thank you, Jen and Mary for chiming in. Hearing God above the pressures and letting Him shape our priorities — that does say it just right, I think. And I do think the quality/quantity debate is so difficult and perhaps misleading. Kids need both and parents need the wisdom and self-sacrifice to give it appropriately.
Mother Says:
January 30th, 2007 at 1:01 am e
One criterion could be this: “What will my child remember about their childhood 20 years from now.
Dale Says:
January 30th, 2007 at 12:59 pm e
This is very challenging - and now that I am officially an “empty-nester” I have had some time to think about it. When my girls were young I thought I was doing very well but sometime in there I lost track and suddenly they were teenagers and it was much more difficult to just “shoot some hoops”. And still today, even though they call several times a week, it is the same issue of what is important and am I giving to them what they need?

Glendah, your question, “What will my child remember…?” I am thinking about our family reunions and all the fun we have remembering. Do you realize that nearly all of those stories are about each other and not Mom and Dad? But think how different the stories would be if we had not felt so safe and secure in their constancy and faithfulness to each other? Leads us back to the oft stated, “The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
Mother Says:
January 31st, 2007 at 1:49 am e
Well stated, Dale. Security is one very important component in child rearing and probably one not realized until adulthood.
Doug Thompson Says:
February 4th, 2007 at 12:25 am e
I’m going to quit reading your blog, Randy and go “wrassle” with my boys… Thanks, for putting somethings in perspective!

Apologist’s Evening Prayer

2010-02-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

C. S. Lewis, by any standard, was a master in the field of apologetics. The prayer below reflects not only his extraordinary writing gifts, but also a humbling humility. Hope you are touched by it as I always am.

The Apologist’s Evening Prayer

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seem to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity, Thou who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O Thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and needle’s eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

Comments:

Dale Hoerner Says:
January 6th, 2006 at 9:48 am e
That is amazing, and it really pulls me up short. Even when we think we have something to say, it’s not about me.
Randy Says:
January 6th, 2006 at 9:50 am e
Well said, Dale.

Happy Birthday, Jane!

2010-02-01T05:20:00.000-08:00

Jane is...Happy Years! She is known as Janie by High School friends. Her mother named her Lana Jane. I am blessed to know her as my wife.

For the fun of it on this happy day I am sharing a picture or two of this great gal, lady, mother, friend, profound blessing to so many, not least, happily, ME!

MaybeSomethingNew

2010-01-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

My blogging efforts, hampered by time, hubris, and life as it is, may resume here -- we'll see. Technical issues (my techno-obtuseness, really!) with the other site and the free availability of blog sites like this make it sensible to switch over. So I hope to re-post stuff from the old site that seems worth it, and let the rest die the death of 1,000 google iterations.

Many thanks to Kevin Survance and Steve Acre of Codex who made the WP huffexpress site possible. Steve graciously endured the craziness of all those comments bogging the server capacity (one article had 62,000 spam comments!). When I earn those huge royalties I'll be sure to kick some back toward Codex!

I'll try to get used to this new site and type in what is on my mind from time to time. Blogging is fun -- I've really enjoyed it. Just the challenge we all face and one wonders how the time can be justified. Trying to just 'fit things in' has its real life limits.

So with a smile and a grin (are they the same thing), I'm launching this little thing here and will see where it goes.

Larry L. Huff

2010-01-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

My Dad would be 70 Today

(Nov. 7, 2010)

Today my Dad would be 70. He died in 1993, having just turned 54.

I miss my Dad – so hard to believe he has been gone so long. Today as I hurt for our friend, Tom McCall, who just lost his own Dad, I feel the deep inner pain, the sense of loss that just will not go away. Death is so final, and efforts to write about it always seem futile.

I remember my Dad as one who worked hard and gave his best along the years of life. He and my Mom had seven children, losing their first at the age of 3 months. Dad was a woodsman all of his life, proving the adage that you ‘can take the man out of the woods but you can’t take the woods out of the man’. Even when we lived on the plains of southwest Kansas he did a little bit of tree work. Later, in North Central Kansas, he found a happy niche as a local tree surgeon, felling trees around town on his days off, hauling the firewood home to heat our big house on the edge of town.

Of course Dad’s real job was as a Highway Patrolman and he served Kansans in this capacity for 23 years. I always enjoyed seeing him in uniform and hearing him check in on the radio: “334 Garden City” or “334 Salina” as the case may be. I’ll never forget his early morning return from a tragic wreck in which three had perished. I was up at about 5:00 AM or so and as he came by my room he just held up three fingers, sober and dutiful.

He was 43 at the time, younger than me as I write today. As I pass these years I often wonder, “What were those years like for my Dad? Did he have the same feelings I have now? Who was he really? Can I understand him now that I am passing through life as he did?” Maybe I can. I know this. For years now I’ve found myself asking, “How did Dad handle this?” And I try to answer so I can get a good idea for how I should handle whatever it is. Always I remember a man who loved me and showed it by steady faithfulness. After I moved out and started my own home he really worked to keep channels open. He loved my wife, Jane, and by word and example supported our marriage.

This summer we visited my Dad’s boyhood home in Emily, Minnesota, and spent most of a week with his seven wonderful siblings and their families. Wow! Once again I was reminded of one of my Dad’s best qualities, exhibited so well in the Huff clan of the North. He knew how to love – love in a way that was real; no airs, no ‘delusions of grandeur’ as he liked to say, no mean spiritedness about people. I didn’t always understand this kind of love, being a more emotional type, and in my teenage years I was annoying enough (and beyond “annoying”) to make for some real difficulty. But in it all he was steady and true, living a life of trust and dependence on God. His life and guidance, along with my Mom, of course, took me on a path in which I often encountered the living God. And much to my Dad’s joy, one day I surrendered my life to Jesus and He has made all the difference.

Those are my thoughts today on my Dad’s 70th birthday. I so wish he were still with us. How I would love to talk about life with him, making amends, listening, listening, listening. For now I just want to be more like him, which will be less than he wanted, but as much as I can hope for. And I say that with a happy smile. Larry Huff was a good man and today I gladly honor him as my Dad.

C.S. Lewis' "Abolition of Man"

2010-01-29T13:04:00.000-08:00

On C. S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man (re-posted)

“Certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”

(C. S. Lewis in Abolition of Man)

My college roommate, the esteemed and Rev. Jim Reed, occasionally chided me along lines like this: “Randy, you are far too black and white in your thinking – there is far more gray than you are willing to allow.” Being, well, “black and white in my thinking” I didn’t like to hear that. Life tosses us around and we discover some things and hopefully grow in wisdom and now, some 20 years later I know there is alot of gray, rightly understood. But I still maintain an outlook weighted to the “black and white”. One of my apologetics for doing so is this: the world is lost in gray thinking. We scarcely believe any boundaries exist at all, much less boundaries that we could know or to which we would be – perish the thought – accountable.

All this comes to mind as I am reading the first chapter in C. S. Lewis’ excellent book Abolition of Man – a book that has proved prophetic over these last several decades. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed Abolition as number 2 in the list of top 50 books of the 20^th century. And for good reason. Lewis makes the case that — (while college beginners may not have a clue about where real lines should be drawn) — the influence of gray glasses that would invade everything does nothing less than push us toward demise, toward a loss of knowing there is anything really human, toward a denial that immutable and universal values exist. (I should say before continuing that my friend Jim is unusually bright and probably sees better everything I will try to say. I just found it fun to reflect on our ‘deeply enlightening’ conversations from year’s past. )

The point of Lewis’ first chapter is this: we establish all value statements from within. Whatever we feel about something, that is what it is, so that the estimation of a thing’s value can have as many grades as half the number of human eyes (or ears) in existence. This, he says, so far from valuing sentiment or emotion, is to leave it utterly untrained, master instead of pupil. Instead, Lewis says, the feelings are to be trained to appreciate what is good, to value what is valuable and shun what is worthy of being shunned. Foreign concepts, those, to much of the modern mind.

I am blessed to work with this book every year in a class I teach here at KMBC, and it is always a fun challenge. But the most helpful section, the one that fired my imagination for this post, is best given in a few excerpts, as follows: (all quotes from the 2001 HarperCollins ed.)

“All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.”

“St. Augustine defines virtue as…the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it.”

“Aristotle said that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.” (16)

This is all to say that “certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” (18)

“I myself do not enjoy the society of small children. [But because I believe in objective value on the matter] I recognize this as a defect in myself.” (19)

If you know Abolition, you remember the famous lines at the end of the first chapter. He says we have made value subject to the emotions rather than vis a` vis, thus giving emotions nothing objective to guide them. And so we give persons no intrinsic basis to rise to ideas of goodness that previous generations knew were essential to being truly human. In Lewis’ words, “we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible….In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” (26)

Lewis’ point, as I understand it, is a picture of the modern problem. Values are subject to each person, with the highest possible value being what we call tolerance. And the ‘objective’ value of tolerance has not more basis to it than that which we assign it – it has not the force of universal, innate law behind it because there is no such thing. Rather, it is enforced by a legal fiction with no objective basis in reality.

This is all reflected in a troubling interaction I observed on an online forum. On the assumption that values are always developing, a person refused to deny that sometime hence – say 2000 years from now – rape may indeed be deemed good. Since goodness is subject to us, those in power will decide what good is and the terms good and evil will have no grounding in immutable reality. Lewis says that is exactly where we are headed when we deny objective values — and he was right.

ANSELM'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

2010-01-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

I enjoy this, especially to see if someone may take time to join in. I like to read it for itself, not go to the experts, and try to figure it out. My synopsis is at the bottom. IMO, he says it well and convincingly in his own last paragraph. Anyone want to wade in? (If the (ua) and (ra) stuff distracts you, just ignore it. It helped me to see the different pieces.)

ANSELM'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

The argument is given below in it's original form (translated by Jonathan Barnes).

Therefore, Lord, who grant understanding to faith, grant me that, in so far as you know it beneficial, I understand that you are as we believe and you are that which we believe. Now we believe that you are something than which nothing greater can be imagined.

Then is there no such nature, since the fool has said in his heart: God is not? But certainly this same fool, when he hears this very thing that I am saying - something than which nothing greater can be imagined - understands what he hears; and what he understands is in his understanding, even if he does not understand that it is. For it is one thing for a thing to be in the understanding and another to understand that a thing is.

For when a painter imagines beforehand what he is going to make, he has in his understanding what he has not yet made but he does not yet understand that it is. But when he has already painted it, he both has in his understanding what he has already painted and understands that it is.
Therefore even the fool is bound to agree that there is at least in the understanding something than which nothing greater can be imagined, because when he hears this he understands it, and whatever is understood is in the understanding.

And certainly that than which a greater cannot be imagined cannot be in the understanding alone (ua). For if it is at least in the understanding alone (ua), it can be imagined to be in reality too (ra), which is greater. Therefore if that than which a greater cannot be imagined is in the understanding alone(ua), that very thing than which a greater cannot be imagined (ua)is something than which a greater can be imagined (ua). But certainly this cannot be. There exists, therefore, beyond doubt something than which a greater cannot be imagined, both in the understanding and in reality.

[Here's my non-expert take: The psychological reality (ua) is superseded by the ontological possibility (ra), and both cannot exist only in the mind and both be true at the same time, b/c they would contradict one another. Therefore, if the first (ua) is true in the mind – and we do know that indeed it is – then (ra) must exist outside of the mind.]

Since the argument cannot stand if the greatest conceivable being exists only in the mind, then that being must also exist outside of the mind. That final conclusion does not seem to follow, b/c of the simple truth that all kinds of things may be conceived of in the mind but we know do not exist in reality.

However, the nature of this being – greater than can be imagined – is the key. If that being is God, and if we know he can be imagined to exist; and if we know we can not imagine him to exist and at the same time know him to exist only in our minds (because that would have two contradictory realities 'existing in our minds at the same time) then it follows that he EITHER exists only in our minds as an imaginary being or he exists in reality. But he cannot exist ONLY in our minds as an imaginary being if we believe he exists also as a real being. That would mean the second concept invalidate the first b/c both cannot be greater. But we are dealing with mental concept and a belief in the actual reality of that mental concept. Just b/c holding them both in the mind is impossible does not mean that the second necessarily exists in reality.

Because of that, I'm not sure the argument is conclusive.

August Morning in Kentucky

2009-08-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

August Morning in Kentucky

May I share a Kentucky morning with you? It is Saturday, mid-August and I am quiet on our patio swing praying and thinking, trying to see and hear what matters. The cattle just across the way –mothers, calves, and the Bull – move toward the barn, quiet as well. In a far off meadow the neighbor’s cows are likewise grazing. The hills beyond them fold down into a long valley, the ridges like large fingers of two hands coming together, disappearing down into the clouds of mist rising slowly. A distant cloud shifts and for a few minutes the rising sun peaks through and brightens the mist, promising to eventually burn it away and bring on the day. But for now, a heavier fog is drifting in and the cool air says there is still time for quiet and meditation.

One always wonders if it is right to interrupt this kind of reverie. The world so bombards us with the artificial, it is hard to see the real. Closer to my swing I see a plastic bag of compost, a hose caddy – accouterments of the garden growing with various states of ease just a few yards away. Closer to me are tools and discarded boards left from an unfinished patio project, waiting to be put away later in the morning – sawhorses, a shovel, a broom, buckets of nails. The neighbors on both sides keep the hummingbirds busy with four different feeders and these overgrown bees buzz me now and then. My coffee cup, now empty, tells me to get more. I notice a cobweb in a chair arm and wonder at the countless spiders and their countless webs in myriad places. And then I wonder about this crazy business of modern technology which means I try to express my mind through keys on a quietly humming plastic box.

Are you still there? This is a Kentucky morning. The sun is peeking through on that meadow again, though the mist that had been only in the valleys is blended in with a general fog all around. Near the river here where we live the morning fog is a given, a soft blanket on the day that always rises as you get things underway. Our oldest sons steps outside for a moment. “Dad.”

“Huh?” I reply, sort of lost in my thoughts. “Would you fix me a pancake?” Jane is a fabulous cook; I am not. However, I can make a pancake pretty well and so I tell him of course I will, I just need a few more minutes of quiet.

The peeking sun is gone again. What am I saying to you after all? Well, as I prayed this morning, “Lord, are we to imagine this life is of no value – just a barren passing through? What is all this beauty? What are all of these joys – and pains? Without question they point to you if we can see at all.”

A year ago I was praying for our friend Neil, diagnosed with a vicious cancer that had already invaded his liver and left him little hope. I was joining others in praying for his healing – something God can do with a glance, a thought, a touch, while we are helpless completely. Neil died in November, leaving a wife and two beautiful, recently married, daughters. He was in his mid-fifties. Was he eager for heaven? No doubt – this world is indeed a valley of tears, a broken place as our 24/7 news wearily reminds us. Was he eager for life here? Without question – two daughters, hoped for grandchildren, precious wife and home and life’s work. But with so much pain and tears, can Creation be good?

I am thinking I hear an echo from Eden that says, “It is good. All that God made is good.” And I believe again that though we dare not love the world and lose our soul, in loving God we are saved and we can then rightly love the world he has made. The trees matter — they are his. The singing birds are expressions of his unbounded creativity. The rising mist had its birth in his mind from all eternity. And while these things are child’s play to Him, for us they should be cause for unspeaking wonder. The cooing doves in the distance, a cow mooing just now, our neighbor’s dog barking to the world, the growing garden nearby. Can I ever be still long enough to see the amazing good of God in the world He has made? Do I really have to write about it even? No, and yes.

In writing about it my understanding improves. And as we love God with our minds — which he also made — we come closer to Him whom to know is life in the fullest sense — eternal life. So we can say together:

Thank you, Lord, for the world you have made and the life you have given. Please help us know what it means, always looking to you, the Author of it all and the Finisher as well. Until that great day, Oh Yes! (Amen!)

That helps me a lot on a Kentucky morning. Helps me know what matters, helps me more rightly love the God who made this beautiful world, and helps me be ready for whatever else the day may bring.

On Raising Kids

2009-08-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

How do you…

…raise kids?

I dunno — never done it.

Why are you doing it now?

Because we have two sons and we love them.

Doing it without experience?

Yep.

Strange.

Yep.

Having children is as real and life-intrinsic as breathing. It challenges everything about you, requires more than you ever dreamed, and teaches you a thousand lessons about yourself. It pays back far more, too, but that is for later, further out there than we can see. Good thing we don’t really know all that is involved or we might not want the job! For that matter, we don’t ask for it exactly, it seems, but life urges us on to give back what we have received and so for most of us, we receive the amazing gift of children and realize they are very much worth wanting and having.

And I am out of words except for this effort to muse about what it all means. We are raising our boys on our knees. And we are engaging in their life where they are. We are modeling and demanding discipline, albeit imperfectly, and we are meting out discipline, again, imperfectly.

And this "imperfect" business goes without saying, but perhaps we need to say it to help us remember that we have limits. Of course we are imperfect. But we strive and pray and engage and seek counsel and press on. We read about and witness parents and children who seem to do it all right and we say, "Well, we’re still working at this thing." We feel all that is at stake and the pressure mounts. We remember that countless folks have done well in this thing and we take hope. And we smile with pride at the progress our boys make and remember that God knows us and them and we are in His care. We remember they are not us and we make this enormous stretch of trying to see the world as they do. And we pray some more, and some more…and some more.

So I’ve never raised kids and I don’t have much to say on it. When I finally might have a thing or two clear in my head about it, my boys will be out on their own, hopefully trying their hand at this parenting business. I hope our example will be a guiding light and, as my Dad told me, that they will do better in every respect than I did.

And here I find another hopeful place. I loved my Dad. He was a good man and a good father who patiently bore all that is involved with raising a son like me. He wanted me to do better than he did, but that’s too tall an order. I just hope I can be like him. Did his son turn out perfectly? Not exactly! And neither will my sons. But, if they can love the Lord, pursue wisdom, and trust in Jesus for salvation, then I can rest. Not there yet — still on the stretch. But with memories of my own Dad along the way, I’m believing we can win this thing.

That’s 2 cents in the too occasional blog. I welcome your feedback and insight over at our FB (RandyandJane Huff) or email: rhuffATkmbcDOTedu. (This blog is currently in ailment mode but will have the comment feature fixed soon and be in better shape.)

Ode to Nothing

2009-06-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

Ode to Nothing

I sat down and did nothing. Oh, my fingers moved on the keys and "mouse" [since when do we like mice so well?!]. I "talked" to a friend using this funny medium. I read some news which interested me and disappeared — or rather, lodged in my mind, useless, cluttering.

I did nothing I say, joining countless others in the revery of staring at screens, interacting with…. Interacting with…what?

I do not know this mystery. Are we losing our minds and our eyes and our relationships, all the while more "connected" than ever? What do we do when we surf or FB or chat or…. Are we doing nothing? Why could doing nothing be so interesting and alluring?

Uncle Dale says I ask questons with no answers. Wish I were more candid. All I know is that long hours can be wasted and it really is interesting to do what I am doing now — writing for an audience out there somewhere. If I am doing nothing then why are they reading this? This nothing.

Maybe it is not nothing after all. Maybe, instead, it has value, this internet world; it just has to be metered and weighed and tamed and properly utilized for meaningful ends. Otherwise we do become extensions of the laptop and the net, minds disorganized and short-term b/c google is always at the ready; minds separate — with technology the friendly traitor — from that which makes them healthy and quick and self-reliant.

Anyone else feel almost clean and free when the net is unavailable for awhile?

Better minds can do more with this meandering. I just know I don’t want to do nothing. And the internet is good at leading us into the nothing trap.

So, that’s my "ode to nothing". Got anything to add?

Jane's Great Nephew!

2009-05-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

Jane’s [Great] Nephew Visits

Yes, Jane is a Great Aunt, and has been for nearly 20 years. Of course before that she was already a great Aunt. And before that I thought she was just great everything, and still do. (Jane is the 9th of eleven children so her oldest niece is near her age. Lots of relatives in a family that size!)

This week one of her great nephews visited — Jarod. He is one of the sweetest, delightful, fun-to-be-around little guys. He adores his cousin Elliot, calling him "King Elliot" and "Master E". When he watched him play Little League he cheered like the devoted fan he is.

He leaves tomorrow and we will miss him and look forward to the next visit. The pictures above are from a fishing outing we took at one of our favorite ponds in the area (as well as a shot of a visit to the playground after Little League earlier in the day.) We forgot the camera (ugh) but brought his catch home with us so all the world could see Jarod’s first fish! Way to go, little man!

Jane's Mother: A Tribute

2009-05-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

Jane’s Mother — A Tribute

Yesterday, a time of memories and reminders….

Memories of a little mother not more than 5′3”, one not well known at all or of great accomplishments in the world’s eyes. She was not one to try to impress with words or deeds. Her life was one of hardships, struggles and pain but her living was one of grit, endurance and great love: Love for her Lord, love for others. Just simple, quiet, unassuming love.

So many things flood my mind as I think of her: a Bible full of verses underlined with dates penciled in, her sweet voice singing throughout the house, hearing her praying long into the night, a guitar that lies cold where once she could play up a storm, her cooking which was enjoyed by so many – all that and so much more.

This dear little mother gave me something far more than material wealth. She helped me to see the deep joy in the small things of life, in the simple everyday giving, loving and serving. She went on to be with Jesus this time last year. How I miss her but I am reminded of how blessed I am to have her as my mother and what an even more wonderful blessing is that I have the joy and privilege of being a mother to two precious boys! What wonderful gifts!

I hope I can be the mother to them that my mom was to me.

Might Need to be Said

2009-05-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

Might Need to be Said

Does anyone dare say it? Surely many are, or have. Polite conversation disallows controversy, dissension, difficult questions, and we all value conversation that is polite. But someone needs to say it, I think, so I am going to try.

A foundation for healthy sexuality is to treasure it, keep it sacrosanct, keep it at home. Married couples treasure it by sharing it with one another only. Singles treasure it by saving it until marriage and as E. Stanley Jones put it, letting it feed a flame that nobly pursues other ends. Beautiful, old-fashioned chastity, so far from devaluing sexuality, actually gives sexuality its proper due by keeping it exclusively for one’s spouse. In a word, sex belongs at home.

When sex is bandied about in a thousand expressions, it becomes cheap – supply reducing value and sabotaging the human spirit in the process. The anti-prudes who say, “I’m not ashamed to talk about it, etc.” are embarrassing themselves. Of course sex is not to be ashamed of. Who thought that?! But it belongs at home so go on and shut yo’ mouth! But I digress.

Sharing sex far and wide gives basis to all kinds of dysfunction. Nothing is more dysfunctional – and heart-breaking — than a broken home and nothing breaks a home like adultery, aka, taking sex beyond the home where it belongs. Making sex a commodity for sales appeal has fed countless damaged relationships because, again, sex is shared outside the home and the confines of marriage.

When sexuality is treated in this way, all boundaries begin to fall. If a woman can pose provocatively for a camera, why not disrobe? Why not? If sex appeal can be exploited for money – well who’s prude enough to stand in the way? But when the "old-fashioned" boundaries fall, we lose basis for any boundaries. And so, eventually, we have the contra nature practice of male on male sex which deviates from the beauty of sexuality and healthy human experience.

This is hard. Someone can say it far better. Some have I am sure. But here goes.

Miss California undermines her stand against homosexual marriage when she reveals virtually all of her body on stage. Spreading sexuality for all to see cheapens it and makes one ask where boundaries are. Where indeed? The recent unfortunate picture is clearly sexually provocative. And yet she defends it by saying she is a model and that is what models do, all the while saying she is a Christian model.

This can’t be about a list of rules only, though good rules come to bear on the question. But in trying to understand this thing, I am jerked back to Harry Blamires’ thunderous claim: “There is no Christian mind!” He meant we do not connect theology to practice. And while I happily identify with a section of the Christian world that strongly emphasizes modesty of dress, I don’t think you have to be near-Amish to scratch your head a little at the incongruity of the Miss California business. Can she think the world takes her seriously? Can she really believe that a Christian understanding of sex says nothing about sharing the view of one’s body in this way? The Christian mind is missing – no one is thinking well, or so it surely seems.

I end these thoughts with the beautiful comments in Sunday School by a dear elder lady, dressed in typical modest fashion. “This dear lady probably grew up on the West Coast, which is the left coast,” she said sweetly. “Dressing this way probably never occurs to her as an issue. I am praying for her. God can help her along as He helps us all along.”

Wow, what an attitude, and I hope I share it. But at the same time we must try to understand the issues, in the fear of God, “considering ourselves lest we also be tempted.” Sex belongs at home,and sexuality is to be closely guarded as to not cheapen it, but treasure it. When we parade it on stage, we undermine the beauty and treasure of it, and contribute to various brokenesses, of which homosexual marriage is only one. Miss California undermines sexuality and sex by parading it as she does, and in the process participates in the morass of morals that gives us the backwardness of homosexual marriage.

Comments:

Anonymous Says:
May 7th, 2009 at 9:56 am e
Bravo!! My husband and I have talked about this very thing. Because sex is our secret, it is so much more exciting! They just don’t get it, do they?
Anonymous Says:
May 7th, 2009 at 10:07 am e
It appears that you are discussing two topics: 1. Should there be sex outside of marriage and 2. What is appropriate clothing to wear in public?
I believe most (not all) Christians and non-Christians alike would agree that sex should as you put it “stay in the home”. I would however say that talking about sex in appropriate situations would not be “embarrasing”.
However, making the mental leap from “old-fashioned” boundaries changing with the endstate being homosexuality may be a jump to far. Just pointing out that prostitution is our oldest profession and homosexuality, although not as visible, has been around from the beginning as well.

You mention typical modest fashion. I am not sure the “holiness” movements definition of modest fashion is “typical” even among the different sects. The amish folk that you reference would consider even the most conservative of the holiness movement to be immodest in their dress.

I recently spent 3 years in Europe where families go to the local “bathhouse” to enjoy the plethora of hot and cold tubs, saunas, etc all while wearing nothing but their “birthday suits”. This is normal for them and to wear clothing while there would garner attention and mark you as a tourist. Oddly enough, the rates of teenage pregnancies, sexual assaults, and rapes are all lower than here in the US.

I happened to be in Hobe Sound last weekend and to my surprise, there were boys playing basketball with short sleeve shirts. I recall having to wear socks to cover my elbows during my 10 years of schooling there. I also noted that my parents had a Television aka “devil’s box”.
Following your logic that Ms California’s modeling will lead to homosexual marriages, I would expect that the next time I go to Hobe Sound, the boys will be wearing tank tops or possible going shirtless and that my parents will be watching X-rated movies on their “devils boxes”. Hopefully at least the second one doesn’t happen.

Just one guys thoughts here.
Anonymous Says:
May 7th, 2009 at 10:08 am e
The last comments were from Phil Weaver. Hate when people are “anonymous”.
Randy Says:
May 7th, 2009 at 10:23 am e
Thanks, Phil — probably my settings make it easiest to log in as anonymous.

I think I understand your point. I do not intend to say that Miss California’s virtual disrobing in public somehow [following my logic] “leads to homosexual marriage”, anymore than I would allow that other things you mention lead directly in that way. Instead, I meant to suggest that disrobing in public participates in the same kind of confusion about sexual values from which homosexual marriage and so many other sexual problems come, not least the tragedy of abortion. Both modesty and adultery, for example, are issues that deal with sex and so, I was trying to suggest, there is an interconnection.

By “old-fashioned” I am trying to suggest not time-conditioned — perhaps bad choice of words. I mean old-fashioned in the sense that we all know in our bones that parading sexuality is not really good for human society because it undermines the family. That’s all. The Hobe Sound references, etc. do not seem relevant to what I meant to say, so I was no doubt confusing some things. The soundest truths are indeed the most “old-fashioned” because they stand the test of time.

As to Europe, etc., in my opinion your argument could be close to a bit of cultural relativism. Just because public nudity is considered OK somewhere does not mean it is, indeed, good or right. I am not meaning to speak as “holiness movement” here at all. Rather, trying to tie into what would seem to be right within general Christian understanding. As to the connection to sexual pathology, that is interesting, but I would not yet yield my conclusions without a closer look at the data.

Sorry “typical” was a sticking point. I just meant “imagine a sort of modestly dressed elder woman”.

Good to hear from you, Phil. Lots of good memories, and I think alot of your folks. Socks on the elbows?! LOL I want my understanding to be helped and your comments have helped. Thanks.
Anonymous Says:
May 7th, 2009 at 10:29 am e
It seems the view bandied about by church goers is “Polite Conversation” allows everyone their opinion and protects me from taking a stand. This not only smacks of Politics but a road that has led to much apathy. The eyes don’t need to look very far to see much of todays moral decline just may have begun with a polite conversation at church.
Anonymous Says:
May 7th, 2009 at 10:46 am e
Thank you, Mr. Huff! I appreciate your bravery in writing this! ~Ruthanne Willard

Musings...On Worship

2009-05-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm. That’s my version of a muse. Can I give it content? Again, hmmmm. I’ll do this: I’ll attempt to place into words what I am struggling to understand, and in the process help myself along, in that "writing makes a more exact man" or something like that ala Francis Bacon who, if he didn’t say that, probably thought it. Was that sentence long enough?

I am thinking about worship and music, two topics I must deal with this week. On the music matter I continue to make a modest stab at understanding the role of music in life and how we can properly give it its due. I get to listen to students talk it out in an informal debate pattern on Wednesday. I always come away knowing that music matters, that it matters more than we realize, that knowing what is good in music is a distant relative to loving the source of all goodness, and that my time is best spent in this latter, superior pursuit. And yet we try to understand the gift of music as best we can.

And so to this "superior pursuit" which could rightly be called worship. I have often thought that Jesus’ highest command was our best basis for understanding worship: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength [everything you are]." And the second "like unto it", to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Surely this is the beginning and end, a grid with which to understand being and doing, a pattern for life.

Working from there, I am pondering this matter that everyone worships — everyone has a god. As Christians, we must examine our hearts and worship only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the triune God of the Bible, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God, as Jesus said, is seeking those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.

There are things and persons of secondary value in life, and we rightly give due honor there. We love and honor our parents; we obey Paul’s injunction to give honor where honor is due. But we reserve worship — total devotion, highest praise, unquestioning obedience — for that which is highest, beyond, beyond which nothing greater can be conceived. In this sense, worship gives basis for the highest life but it can also drag us into the depths. How? Because we become like that which we worship, as various biblical texts bear out.

Worship assigns supreme value. What is supreme? Sport? Life? Money? Education? [Any] other person? Self? Vocation? Pleasure?

Can any of that be of supreme? How could it possibly, ever be supreme?! It passes! "Death and taxes" we say. Well, all of the above is subject to death. It passes! And yet it is all too easy to make temporal things/persons an object of supreme value in one’s life.

On the other hand, to believe in a Creator — good, infinite, personal, self-giving, just; to believe in this God and to worship Him as supreme — that is our reasonable service of worship. It draws us out of the dregs to which fallen humanity inevitably goes. It lifts us toward the highest possible calling and makes sense of "our reach exceeding our grasp".

And so this is the sense in which I recall the late, inimitable Albert Barr when he challenged us to "hook your wagon to a star". Surpass the dogged foe of your soul. Worship! Look up to the One who made you. Worship! Infinite, beautiful beyond understanding, gracious in a mind-boggling way. Look up to Him, and bow down. This God alone is worthy of worship and we never become who we are intended to be until we properly order our lives by putting God first and fulfilling that most reasonable service — worship.

Comments:

dalekh Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 8:49 am e
A favorite topic, Randy, and becoming a central part of life. That it is becoming is encouraging. That is enough today.

God bless, Dale.
Randy Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 10:25 am e
Thanks for coming by, Dale, and sorry I accidentally deleted your comment on the previous post. Ugh! I did read your thoughts on the beauty of quiet and fineness and goodness in worship and how it can/should draw us higher and heavenward. always appreciate your thoughts.
Blessings,
Randy
Anonymous Says:
May 7th, 2009 at 9:13 pm e
“everyone worships — everyone has a god.”

I am concerned about your definition of worship. In one place you say it is “total devotion, highest praise, unquestioning obedience.” I don’t think you said anything about what worship is primarily - participation. Worship does not take place if it originates in us, even if the act is a response to what we know about God. I know you know these things but I will continue to be a pit bull about the necessity of speaking of worship, not as a response, but as a participation.

Having drilled that point, I’d like to say something about worship as participation (reception and offering) as it relates to idolatry.

Might the prohibition against worshiping idols be connected to the fact that worship involves as much receiving (actually more) as it does giving? Worship is participation in the life of the Trinity and depends on our inclusion via the Incarnation. When we worship, we are receiving from God. Worship enables all of life to be lived, that is, to be a man fully alive, which is the glory of God, to paraphrase St. Irenaeus.

Therefore, if one worships an idol, then that one does not receive anything, because idols cannot see, hear, speak, act. An idol is not really real or truly true. An idol does not exist independently from the worshiper. Is it going to far to say that idolatry is staring into the abyss and attempting to invest it with meaning? “When you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back at you” (Nietzsche). Staring into nothingness is the way to confusion, frustration and, finally, insanity.

When one worships in the Logos, the only true rationality and logic, then one is enabled to think true thoughts. It is possible for revelation to be received. When one worships an idol, that is, something invested with meaning by himself, then circular reasoning incurs within a closed system. There is no connection with something outside the worshiper. The result is the stifling of life - a frustrated ability to meaningfully observe, ask questions, come to conclusions, know metaphysical truth, apply scientific knowledge.
Anonymous Says:
May 7th, 2009 at 9:14 pm e
Randy,

That was me.

Jason K

PS I’m pretty sure you already knew that.
Randy Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 2:16 pm e
Thanks, Jason — I need to ponder this. Much to chew on. good to hear from you. Will get back.
Randy
Randy Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 10:44 pm e
Hey, again, Jason, and long time no see — too long. Glad we can be in touch in cyberspace.
Well, “worship as [primarily] participation”. To be honest, I have given very little direct thought to this, and I can see why [having forgot this was your emphasis] you would see a very functional, non-relational understanding here. And, I think you are right — which could mean I am wrong. Ouch!

I do indeed think very much of worship as response, and the idea of participating in the life of God is not first in my mind when I think of worship. That said, when I had the privilege of presenting some thoughts on this in chapel last week I said some things along that line, things like: When we worship we, as Peter has it, partake of the divine nature; and, worshiping lifts us upward, heavenward, restoring us, making us whole. I can’t understand it that way without being relational about it.

However, the business about everyone worshiping along with your comments about idols does seem to dig a hole for me, in that if worship must indeed be relational and the god ‘worshiped’ is not relational, then worship is not taking place — it is form with no reality. Hmmmmmmm. And again, Hmmmmmmmm.

I can’t seem to get away from the idea of supreme devotion — that certainly is what we usually mean by the word, as in “he worships the ground she walks on”. I think all reality is necessarily relational and so worship — true worship — simply does not exist unless it is part of relationship. But is it not a beginning to say that when we worship the Living God we are thereby at the most sane relationship to Him — participating in His life by walking in accord with the way He has made the world, aligning our lives and acting in a way that acknowledges Him, etc? This at least relates to Him rightly, though I do not think of it as participating in His life except in the sense that we are walking in step with Reality — which is to say in step with God, who is personal, etc, etc.

So have I talked my way around to it?

Please do be a pit bull about it and show me the door…..to better understanding. BTW, remember when I used the QB analogy in talking about the Trinity? I was summarily maligned for the paltry effort. Maybe this will do better!

Listening! (in a participatory way!)
Randy Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 1:00 pm e
Hi Dale — I did it again — deleted your comment. Ughhh! I’ll get this thing moderated better in the future,…maybe! Appreciate your thoughts on all of this, and will see if Jason makes it back to dive in again!
Anonymous Says:
May 13th, 2009 at 1:42 pm e
shame on you for deleting dale.

i am working on some comments but internet access is spotty.

Life, Talent, and What Matters

2009-04-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

Life, Talent and what Matters

Well, since it has been a week or two since the Susan Boyle phenom hit the web and the world, I guess it is time to throw my two cents into the vast ocean of commentary. After dissing "American Idol" on this site — and still holding a derogatory view of said program — it is interesting, at minimum, to consider the similar show from Great Britain.

With well over 100 million hits on the web video, I assume most with web access have at least seen something on the story . If you have not, it is about a woman who wowed the crowd amazingly on the show "Britain’s Got Talent ." I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said, but I’ll toss out brief thoughts anyway for the joy and invigoration of thoughtful interaction.

The performance was amazing. Everything went right. The performance could not have been more opposite from the expectation. The shock on the judges’ faces was worth the whole thing. And to describe Susan’s surpassing poise and lack of self-consciousness — uncommon is an understatement. It was a remarkable scene, beyond scripting, beyond stage glitz and glamour.

The lyrics of the song played into the drama perfectly. And the music was so fitting and beautiful. The sight of a so-called "nobody" performing so amazingly was indeed a wake up call on many levels.

We can bash our culture’s preoccupation with appearance — certainly justified. We can bash our culture’s preoccupation with performance and the rough treatment given to those who do not measure up. There is the entire artificial reality which TV creates and the transforming dynamo it has on anything or anyone on either side of the camera.

But in this we came as close to cutting through all of that as we could, and the irony - the incongruity — of it is what transfixed us all.

As I said, nothing to add, but I think self-reflection is in order. How often have I seen folks and immediately judged them on appearance? Such an outlook almost seems unavoidable in the human experience. How does serving Jesus change this outlook? Knowing his love for us in spite of our sin — that is surely key. Appearance is facade — window dressing but misleading. Jesus deals with the person, from the inside out. And when we know how he looked beyond our fault and met our need, then we know something ironic happened, something incongruous.

But surely there is more. What of the woman’s simple, modest self-assuredness — built, I think, on this remarkable lack of self-consciousness. Could you and I aspire to such a quality? Self-consciousness is so often thinly disguised selfishness. Susan, apparently, was beyond that, doing what she thought she could do, ignoring the crowd of nay-sayers, etc.

So the bump and grind was a bit, well…dumb. Is there room to see human frailty there as well? The myth and mirage of misconstrued perfectionism makes us press too hard a standard on others. What ridiculous things have we done in public or private? A plenty, all around.

Well, I am out of time. The above is free, but it’s worth it. Love to all, with wishes for more blogging time. And for the record, I watched the recording several times; I know the theme of the song is not all Christian, but if you take the setting in Les Mis it is understandable; I think the whole thing has an extraordinary power that will very rarely, if ever, be repeated. What think ye?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008

2008-08-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008

"One word of truth will outweigh the whole world"

So once said Alexander Solzhenitsyn , Russian dissident, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, exhile to US for 16 years, hero in his native Russia. He is perhaps most well known for The Gulag Archipelago, his account of the Soviet prison system in which he lived for many years. While I am not a Solzhenitsyn scholar, of course, I am in the ranks of a great many who find him an inspiration and modern prophet.

I read some of his Oak and Calf, a sort of literary bio. Among the more remarkable accounts therein is his record of how he preserved his writing during the years when his work was forbidden. He literally memorized — if my memory serves — entire books. He also would write in tiny print and save the rolled MS in cannisters which were then buried.

I often wished I had taken time to travel to his American home in Vermont in the ’80’s though it’s doubtful I could have met him. And, of course, he had his detractors in recent years — you can find a dissenting view here.

But on any account his life is remarkable: from a young soldier on the front lines in WWII to political prisoner to father (one of his sons is Ignat Solzhenitsyn, conductor and composer in Philadephia) to dissident author, Nobel laureate, exhile, a Soviet non-person, modern prophet, American resident, returning hero to his beloved homeland in 1994.

He seemd like the aged sage that would always be here — and so he is for some time to come if we will have the sense to remember the kind of thundering and wise things he said. I have excerpted below some of his statements from the famous speech he gave at Harvard on June 8, 1978 . It was not what Harvard wanted to hear, but they, and we, need to take to heart what he said.

I was sad to hear of his passing. Ironically I have been reading his novel Cancer Ward not knowing he had died. My friend, Steve Blakemore, posted about his death on his excellent Third Millenium faith email which you can join here . He quoted from Solzhenistsyn’s 1978 Harvard Speech and I enjoyed re-looking at it. I hope you will have time to savor — and receive a helpful jolt — from the comments excerpted below.

It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. Mere freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones. . .

We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.

After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die.

It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline.

People also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.

Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.

Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: we cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West…. There are no other criteria.

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil…was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror.

I have spent all my life under a communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed….[However, yours is the opposite error, so I would say],whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses.

Little League

2008-08-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

Little League

Little League happened this year in our family and it was alot of fun.

Elliot, our 7-year old played in "Mighty Mites", a coach-pitch league for 6-8 year-olds, both girls and boys. He really improved, especially enjoying hitting. He gave the coach fits though b/c he always missed on the first two swings but would, finally, whack it on the 3rd swing! He played various positions in the field, falling in love with the catching position, eventually, except in his league there is no "hind-catcher" as they call the fielder behind home plate in these parts. So he had to content himself with coming to Lawrence’s practice and suiting up in the gear. Elliot played hard and had alot of fun and, as always, made alot of friends. It was always fun to watch them run all around the bases after a game and slide into home base just-for-the-fun-of-it. His team, the "White Sox", came in 2nd place. The first place team — get this — was so good they turned several double plays.

Lawrence, our 12-year old, played in regular Little League for 9-12 year olds. This was his first year — news flash to all moms and dads out there: don’t let the years sneak past you like we did — but he got in there and played and learned very well. In their first regular game he pitched and in one game he had over 9 strikeouts. Our favorite was when he had the bases loaded, 2 outs, full count…….and he threw a strike right past the batter to retire the side! He also played short stop and second.

Unlike my league growing up, this league allowed lead-offs with 70 foot bases (instead of 60). This made for an interesting — and frustrating year. A good runner who walked, for example, could literally keep running past 1st, relying on fielder error until he came in at 3rd base.This didn’t happen all the time of course, but the lead off option really gave far too many steals and it was a rule adaption that this dad had a beef with.

Lawrence’s team, the "Rockies" played well but had to forfeit several games due to players not showing up. Nonetheless, Lawrence was selected for All-Stars and we enjoyed seeing him play in two tournaments, pitching several innings, finishing out the year very well.

Jane and I enjoyed participating though the many trips to town for practices and games took alot of time and…expensive gas! But it was worth it! We were glad to see Elliot and Lawrence get involved and learn. And we were glad to get better acquainted with the community and especially appreciated the hard work and love of the boys’ coaches, Coach Jeff (Elliot) and Coach Mack (Lawrence). We’re glad we did it and look forward to another year.

Lawrence and Turkey Season

2008-06-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

Well, there is much to tell, as anyone raising a family can vouch. And I’ve been needing to tell this story for some time now.

We know two men here who are avid outdoorsmen. One was Lawrence’s basketball coach and the other is a KMBC college student from Michigan. Kentucky has a "Youth Hunt" day one weekend before the main season opens and these men wanted to take Lawrence out for his first hunt. Sounded great and he was excited so we let him go, of course.

Up at 4:30 AM, Lawrence wasn’t so sure. But together we got ready: me to take him down campus, he to go up to the "mines" — a large old strip-mined area where many local hunters take game.

After meeting the ‘hunting guides’, I went back home and back to bed.

About 8:30 (Saturday morming) we were awakened by Elliot exclaiming, "O my word!" We had forgotten what was happening, so hurried to the front door and there was Lawrence with the guys, proudly displaying his turkey with its 9 1/2 " beard. If I can ever figure out how to decrease the size of the video from 350 MB to less than 100, I will post it on here. Short of that, the brief story is as follows.

This was Lawrence’s first hunt ever and he had never even shot anything larger than a BB gun. They were in a blind, wearing full camo, calling the turkeys in with the help of a couple of decoys. They were almost ready to relocate when they saw a turkey off in the distance making its way their direction. As it neared and saw the decoys, it hurried closer. Ean, on Lawrence’s right, kept saying, "Take him. Get him!" Brad, on his left, kept saying, "Take your time, take your time!"

Lawrence was in the middle with a 12-gauge propped on a barrel support, wondering what to do. Then the turkey moved into such an angle that Lawrence couldn’t keep aim within the tight quarters of the blind unless he switched hands, so that he was holding the gun with his right hand, pulling the trigger with his left. And on top of that he had to figure out which guide to listen to!

Finally the turkey was within ten yards and Lawrence pulled the trigger. Boom! He hit the turket solid and clean. Ean and Brad were so excited they could barely contain themselves. Lawrence, in his low-key way, was delighted as well. Ean helped us — well, OK, he did almost all of it — clean and prep the turkey and we enjoyed it the next day.

Thanks so much to Ean and Brad for taking Lawrence on this first hunt. Maybe dear ol’ Dad will get in the loop next time and let Lawrence show him how it is done. Congratulations Lawrence!

PS If you know how to reduce the file, or how to load it up so that YouTube reduces it, etc. — let me know. The video really is fun to watch, and shows the turkey in ‘full strut’. In fact if you send me $2 (plus $100 S&H) I’ll send you a copy.

Comments:

Mary Ellen Huff Says:
June 19th, 2008 at 2:37 pm e
Look on your computer under programs and see if it has a program called “Windows Movie Maker” - I didn’t even know I had it until a tech told me that it comes with Windows.

If you do, it’s very easy to use and you can shorten the video and then resave it your computer and upload it to youtube. It walks you through it all and with a little tinkering you can figure it out, you can add text, etc. If you do have it and can’t figure it out then call me and I’ll walk you through it. I’d love to see that video - way to go Lawrence!!!
Randy Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 9:32 am e
Thanks, Mary. We’ll try that. Slow blogging these days but good to hear from you.

Where the Roses Never Fade

2008-05-11T22:48:00.000-07:00

Jane’s mother passed away this morning at about 9:00.
She slipped away peacefully, beautifully, as Jane sang to her about roses that never fade.

Mom was a rose — beautiful, enduring, inspiring, fragrant, growing. She made life better for all who knew her.

She knew little more than to serve and to pray and to seek the Lord and His way of truth and wholeness.

Because of that, she was a flower – a rose – that brightened and colored our lives.

The centerpiece on the family table.

That she was and so much more.

And now she is in that land we all long for – a land where roses, and all things, never fade again.

Heaven is sweeter for her passing.

We would so appreciate your prayers for Jane and all of her family during these days.

Mom reading to our son Lawrence.

Where the Roses Never Fade

I am going to a city,
Where the streets with gold are laid;
Where the tree of life is blooming,
And the roses never fade.

Here they bloom but for a season,
Soon their beauty is decayed;
I am going to a city,
Where the roses never fade.

Loved ones gone to be with Jesus,
In their robes of white arrayed;
Now are waiting for my coming,
Where the roses never fade.

Here they bloom but for a season,
Soon their beauty is decayed;
I am going to a city,
Where the roses never fade.

Comments:

Mary Ellen Huff Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 12:51 pm e
I think that’s the first time I’ve seen an older picture of her - Jane looks sooo much like her! What a lovely looking lady.

I am so sorry for your loss as a family, and especially for Jane. Please give her a big hug for us. I know her Mom was incredibly proud of the wife and Mother Jane is, and the kind of person she is in every way. I am doubly sorry her Mom passed away on Mother’s Day. Even though she knows her Mom is in heaven I’m sure that from now on Mother’s Day will be bitter sweet.

When is the funeral?
Randy Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 1:08 pm e
Thank you so much, Mary.
The funeral is Thursday, May 15.
Anita Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 2:27 pm e
Please pass on my condolences to Jane and family. I’ve been through this recently and will keep her in my prayers.
Steve, Rebecca & Family Says:
May 17th, 2008 at 1:31 am e
We are so very sorry for your loss!! We will be remembering you all, Leisa, and the rest of the family to our loving Father!
Jane Says:
May 21st, 2008 at 2:17 pm e
Dear Family and Friends,
Thank you so very much for all the cards, flowers, calls and prayers during this time. I am so glad that I got to stay with mother in the hospice section of the hospital - technically it isn’t called that but it is much like one. There are no words to describe our days together…I was given a precious gift of time, service and in some sense, too, releasing mother to Jesus as she took her last breath, knowing that her next breath was in a land beyond our understanding. Heaven will surely be worth it all!
Love to all,
Jane

Timesof Life

2008-05-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

Jane’s Mom with Lawrence. She has been a great,
loving Grandma and wonderful mother-in-law.

Mom with her own Mother and my Bride on our wedding day.

Early last Tuesday morning we received a call, one of those calls we know will come sooner or later yet we can never seem ready for them. Jane’s mother had suffered a severe stroke and was taken by ambulance to an ER near her home in Indianapolis. Jane left right away for the four hour drive to be with her.

Later Tuesday she was able to see Mom and spend some time with her. The stroke had been devastating, she was not responding, things did not look good. At age 83, having suffered nearly six years with the effects of a previous stroke, the doctors gave the sober news we didn’t want to hear. Mom’s body was beginning to shut down.

Jane and her siblings have been saying good bye. Mom raised eleven children, lost one, loved and worked like a humble champion and will be remembered with a forever love in the heart of each of her children. She will always be with us in memories of her cooking, her prayers, and her gentle, compassionate care.

These are times of life that remind us to consider what matters, hold our loved ones closer, set our hearts more toward heaven.

And these are times of life when we ask for your prayers. The Lord is with the family, sustaining and giving a beautiful and gentle grace. We do ask for your continued prayers as we say goodbye to a mother, a mother-in-law, and Grandma.

Comments:

Jay Says:
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm e
You’ve got ‘em. We love you guys!
Dale Says:
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 am e
Our love to you. God’s grace and peace be yours in full measure.

Dale and Deb
Jason Miller Says:
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm e
Love and prayers from our family to yours.
Stephen Says:
May 4th, 2008 at 10:22 pm e
Randy, praying for God’s comfort for you and your family (2 Cor. 1:5)
Randy Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 5:48 am e
Thank you Jay, Dale, Jason and Stephen for you interest and prayers. We have been very aware of God’s comfort and enabling through these days. Jane’s mom is in hospice within the hospital and not expected to be with us much longer. Jane is still there with the family and we are very grateful she can be.
We appreciate your continued prayers.
Chris Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 12:10 am e
Hey, we are praying for you and the family… God Bless!

Chris and Hsin

Time, Children, Wisdom

2008-04-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

What is this impossible mystery? My oldest son, who only yesterday was small in my hands, newborn, a gift beyond measure;
my son who laughed and played and collected sticks and toys;
my son who was six last night….

I see him now, stretched out on the couch, soon to be as tall as me, size 10 shoes, age 12, becoming a young man. All parents share the painful joy of time passing and children growing. Yesterday I said (inside) "He will always be my little boy", and smiled quietly at those who told me how fast he’d grow. Now he grows beyond my grasp and I try to see what it means. It is real, that is enough; can’t be changed — ’nuff again. But how do we deal with it, understand it well enough to have meaningful wisdom about it? Rather obvious questions, those; any obvious answers?

I yearn for perspective, the wisdom to do the things now that I will wish I had done.
Perspective to know God causes all things to grow, and that holding things — or children — in our grasp only ruins them.
Wisdom to face the challenge of knowing he will become what he sees in me.
Fear to drive me to my knees, knowing that is the best place to raise children.
Joy and courage to know this is an age-old journey which we over-think to our peril.
Wisdom to revel in the day-by-day joys that parents can embrace with gladness.
Faith to live with confidence the kind of life I pray he will emulate and surpass.

Parenting is a great gift from God to help us on our journey. It helps us live outside of ourselves — a great human need, that. And it teaches us something of the love God has for us. And there is more to be queried and said, but it is enough to know this thing is bigger than us, and yet within our grasp as we seek the Lord with all of our hearts, knowing He does not scold us for asking wisdom, walking in what He gives. What a most happy thing — to be drawn to the Lord by this most central mystery of life: passing time, growing children, desperate need for wisdom.

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously
and without reproach, and it will be given to him. (James 1:5, NASB)

This dad is asking, glad for a good, loving, and giving Father in heaven.

Comments:

tim Says:
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:51 pm e
thanks Randy, for a needed reminder to ask the One who is wise especially when it comes to learning and loving our children.
Mother Says:
April 25th, 2008 at 11:59 pm e
You are on the right track, Randy. Time with them is probably one of the most important. Love, Mother
Jarod Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 pm e
Good thoughts, especially for this young dad. Just about made me cry to consider that little boy fussing in the next room because he doesn’t want to go to sleep will be throwing baseballs and growing out of his clothes before I can blink. But I appreciated your words, even if they did bring a bit of sadness. ) Makes me want to go give him a hug. )

Job: GKC Weighs In

2008-04-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

So I spend little time these days reading or blogging. But tonight I took an hour of refreshing to read and think and do this writing. You may find the GKC piece on Job here. And read my thoughts on a few excerpts here….

"…once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue, their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. Men will leave off the heavy task of making good men successful."

Job’s ‘comforters’, and a great deal of normal human thinking, want to connect virtue with the good life in a way that suggests a bad life — suffering in various expressions — indicates lack of virtue. One of the lessons of Job is that such a connection cannot — must not — be made. For Job was of the best of men, yet suffered greatly. Which leads to the next excerpt with a most powerful thought regarding Jesus.

"Job is not told that his misfortunes were due to his sins or a part of any plan for his improvement. But in the prologue we see Job tormented not because he was the worst of men, but because he was the best…. Here is the very darkest and strangest of the paradoxes; and it is by all human testimony the most reassuring. I need not suggest what high and strange history awaited this paradox of the best man in the worst fortune. I need not say that in the freest and most philosophical sense there is one Old Testament figure who is truly a type; or say what is prefigured in the wounds of Job."

This has a curious effect of making me want to worship and love Jesus as the one who is indeed the best of all men, and yet suffered most cruelly, unjustly, and willingly. Surely there is here, as Peter Kreeft figuratively puts it, the "tears of God"; an identity with our suffering, a knowing that it goes with this broken world, a joy that suffering does not mark one as bad, and a hope that suffering is not final. Too much said, for another lesson of Job is to be quiet and let God talk.

Lord, let us hear you and learn from you. Please. You alone have the words of eternal life.

Carroll Dale Comfort: 1913-2007

2007-12-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

Carroll Dale Comfort – a man I wrote about a few posts ago – passed away last week . He was 94.

I always knew him as “Brother” Comfort because he was one of the older ones in our church. And I “knew” him before I knew him. He was there at Heber Church near Miltonvale, Kansas, when my Dad was pastor. In the misty memory of those years the faithfulness of his family was a real blessing, though unrealized by me. We moved away in 1970 – he helped us load the truck no doubt. And while we lived 8 hours away I would now and then hear my parents speak of the “Comforts”. It was a funny name to me – about as funny as “Huff” is to others, I suppose.

In 1979 our family moved back to Miltonvale and attended Heber Church again – now in a new location. The church had a small Christian school that changed our life much for the better. And Bro. Comfort was still there with his wife who had recently recovered from a bout with cancer. Two of his grandchildren were with me in school and I sometimes went to different parts of his farm to hunt, fish, or camp out.

Bro. Comfort blessed my life in little ways he could not have known. One time I heard how he used to play catch with his boys on the farm…on Sunday afternoon. I was told that with farm work so demanding there was too little time for play. But he knew what it meant that “the Sabbath was made for man” and so he took that Sunday time to relax with his sons, Marlan and Myron, both of whom blessed my life directly in the years to follow. That story never left my mind – helping me know what matters.

The farm – “the homeplace” as it was called – really was, to me, that idyllic farm setting you may think of from the ‘good ol’ days. Nothing fancy, that is true, but all the necessaries for life to happen. There was a real, functioning windmill that still pumped water; a warm and homey house where love and happiness thrived during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s as children were raised; a barn for what barns are for; plenty of old cars, trucks and machinery to mess around in; an alfalfa field or two; a creek running through the land with timber and lots of room to get out and remember what life is about. My first winter home from college my dad and I went to his land to cut firewood for our pastor. It was cold, it was work, it was right.

Bro. Comfort knew about life and his passing reminds me how much there is to gain from someone his age. He could remember WWI and days when horse and buggy were nearly as common as cars and trucks. He married during the depression when air travel was rare and a moon landing was an idea for crazies. He labored during WWII, raised a family while raising crops and livestock, lived a strong and simple faith, loved his church and his family, carried on for years of faithfulness as his children raised families of their own, and lost his wife after 66 years of marriage.

How I wish I could have lived closer and taken an hour here and there to listen to Bro. Comfort. And now as I listen to the unsung message of his life I hear several reminders:

Life happens, and it happens before you know it – 94 years was here and now gone.
Family matters and will be its own reward.
Steady faithfulness surpasses the lure of temporary and easier life detours.
God is faithful and will sustain you and be your friend as you walk with Him.
Heaven is real and is worth living for.

Thank you, Bro. Comfort, for loving me and caring for me as a young kid and a growing up man. We are all saddened by your passing, but the life you lived gives us help to step into the path you made and carry on. I want to be as faithful as you were, and some day hear the “well done” that even now rings in your ears.

Plain and Simple

2007-11-29T13:33:00.000-08:00

Plain and Simple

"Deeper bonds meant creating obligations," she said.
"I longed for a group whose members needed and made demands on each other."

Do we know what it means to be plain and simple? I don’t think I do, but I think I can appreciate the idea, and I want to learn.

I picked up a book by that title recently and it has given me much to think on. Sue Bender, the author, was captured with an Amish quilt in 1967. Mrs. Bender — artist, married with children, holding graduate degrees from no less than Harvard and Berkeley — could not escape a virtual presence in the plain nine-patch patterns. They spoke, she said, with a "silence — a silence like thunder". And they had a mysterious quality that illustrated and spoke to the incredible balance of life between "tension and harmony".

The book artfully tells of Mrs. Bender’s visits to Amish homes. On two separate occasions she lived with normal Amish families for a span of weeks. She speaks of the simple life they lead, hemmed carefully with unbending rules, hard work oriented around home and land, the unspoken constant: "do not seek to be special", and, of course, community.

I cannot do justice to the book — I am not sufficiently plain and simple to allow enough time for that task. But one comment on this matter of community really spoke to me. Mrs. Bender, musing on the wonderful sense of Amish community, said,

"My friends and I had been taught to value independence, not to impose on each other. If we needed our house painted, we hired a painter; if we needed a cup of sugar, we drove to the market."

Too true in most of our lives, I suppose, and the internet world, ironically, disconnects us all the more, moving us all the further from real human interaction in so many cases.

The Amish know about community, though, says Mrs. Bender:

"Deeper bonds meant creating obligations," she said.
"I longed for a group whose members needed and made demands on each other."

I am thinking this idea is quite rare in most communities, and of course the Amish are not perfect at it. But maybe we could learn from them.

To whom are you willing to be obligated for the sake of community?
By whom am I willing to be served for the sake of community?

Mutual obligations are necessary if there are to be deeper bonds.

Something to think on.

Comments:

tim Says:
November 29th, 2007 at 3:08 am e
thanks
axegrinder Says:
November 29th, 2007 at 7:52 pm e
“To whom are you willing to be obligated for the sake of community?
“By whom am I willing to be served for the sake of community?”

Stated another way:

Upon whom am I willing to impose?

That may, in the end, be the hardest part of these lifestyle alterations for us to embrace. Is it possible we all want to be the magnanimous benefactor, while none of us want to be the hat-in-hand pauper? Interdependence is fine as long as I’m the one helping, rather than the one receiving assistance.
Stephen Says:
November 29th, 2007 at 10:28 pm e
Great questions.

SeniorSaints' Comforting Words

2007-11-18T23:06:00.000-08:00

For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
I Jn. 3:20 KJV

These words, embedded in the first letter of John, are assuring words of comfort from a senior saint, John himself. But they also came as words of help to me as a young Christian from one of those gift-from-God senior saints that every church needs.

Carroll Comfort was a pillar in the church when I was born, father of two boys and a girl that he and his wife raised on an idyllic country farm near Miltonvale, Kansas. When I was in high school my family moved back to that community and re-entered the congregation of which he remained a pillar.

As a young Christian my testimonies in church expressed lack of assurance, or undue concern for my security in the Lord’s care. Bro. Comfort once pulled me aside after a Sunday night service. He could barely hear then and he had a slight quaver to the pitch of his voice. But love came through everything, a concern for others built layer by layer across the years.

"Sometimes we are not real sure about things but we need to trust in God", he said. "There’s a verse in the Bible — I think in first John — that says ‘even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts’."

With a firm and kind handshake he sealed the message home so that I remember it better than most sermons.

I look at that reminder — and the verse itself — as true-to-life advice for growing, and established, Christians. God only knows infinitely more than we do. And while we do not ourselves need that infinite knowledge to be saved, we do need Him to be saved. Years later I learned in a convincing way that self-knowledge can be quite deceiving and must be complemented by those with whom we live in community. Bro. Comfort was saying that he had some confidence in me and that, more importantly, God knew my heart and was well able to handle this thing of assurance and getting me into heaven.

Bro. Comfort is still living, though almost as feeble as a man can get. I wish I were closer to him as he finishes his days in this life. His wisdom is born of work and love and trusting God — and I believe that, just has he encouraged me all those years ago, someday soon he will meet His beloved Savior, the One who knows all things and is well able to help him make the crossing. And I want to love, work and trust in such a way that, with my hand in the firm and kind hand of Jesus, I will meet Carroll Comfort in heaven someday.

Comments:

Stephen Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 3:43 pm e
Well said! The power of a well-timed word of encouragement, especially when grounded in scripture, is worth celebrating.

Hope you have a great Thanksgiving.
Dale Says:
November 22nd, 2007 at 3:27 pm e
Thanks for sharing this, Randy. This verse has been a great help and comfort to me. How very much we have to be thankful for. And how great is our God, Who, knowing us provided all that we need in Jesus.

Lawrence is Twelve

2007-11-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

We had a big occasion last week, as birthdays are wont to be

Of course one’s very birth-day is the biggest occasion of all, which is why we celebrate all of the ones to follow, or should. But, that is another matter.

Last Friday, October 26th, Lawrence turned twelve. The day always seemed far distant, too much to think about, and there was always plenty of time to do this and that before he started to grow up. Truth is, only yesterday I was eager for him to get out of his crib so we could play together and ‘rassle and stuff. Now he is so big I think twice before taking him on, though I can still win with ease, of course.

For Lawrence’s 12th we decided to think in terms of rite of passage, knowing how easily lacking this kind of thing is in our culture and even in the church. As Lawrence said, "Current sensibilities are not given to weighting creative symbols with value which transcends the rational while being served by it. Properly conceived, those symbols feed the imagination and the subconscious understanding with life-forming expressions of truth and goodness, enabling the human person to gain richness and true-to-life awareness as he or she encounters the passing of time and life." Yep, that is what he said, or something like that.

If he didn’t, he should of, because that is what we were trying to do. Becoming a man does not happen in one day, but we decided to mark this birthday as an entry into the journey into manhood. And we are very grateful for all those who helped us work toward this in various ways. A highlight was a book of letters Jane put together artfully, with pictures to go with letters sent in from various loved ones and friends. Thanks to all of you who wrote letters of love and appreciation and counsel. An extra-special letter came from Lawrence’s Great-Grandpa — my Mom’s Dad. Grandpa is 89 this year, going strong, a blessing and an inspiration. His letter, and the rest of them, mean a great deal. Lawrence will treasure them and already does.

We also gave several gifts that had varying degrees of symbolism. One gift was a flag flown over the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., in honor of Lawrence’s birthday. It was affordable and meaningful, and we talked about a man’s part in loving and serving his country. Later this month we plan a camping outing during which we can further the discussion and finish some of the symbols.

Making the evening solid and memorable was the presence of several men and a few sons from our community. We billed this as a guy thing, a simple testimony by presence to the goodness and strength of manliness. Lawrence felt awkward at first, as I certainly would have, but he warmed up to it soon enough.

Perhaps the most remarkable gift of the evening was the presence of our neighbor, Dr. Wilfred Fisher. Dr. Fisher is 93. He still drives — fast, drinks Mountain Dew, and knows how to love and appreciate young people. Good thing, that, because everyone else is "young people" compared to him. His wife is 92 and they just celebrated 70 years together. They have served at KMBC for 68 of those years. Remarkable people.

After we had cake and gave gifts, I asked Dr. Fisher to pray a prayer of blessing over Lawrence. And pray he did. We can’t thank the Lord enough for the influence of men like him and the others — we know they are vital in fulfilling our desire to raise sons who love the Lord with all of their hearts.

Well, that is news from the Huff front. We are grateful for today, knowing the next years will go faster yet, still believing there is a way to see clearly and walk in wisdom and peace, knowing that with our hand in His we can trust Him to guide us in that way, even when we may not see it or be aware we are there. I have to believe that, because parenting is bigger than me. And yet it is as old as time. So…that leaves me resting, trusting, reaching beyond my grasp, finding Jesus there.

Comments:

Jane Says:
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:02 pm e
What an appropriate event for Lawrence. It was a special time for him as well as his daddy….to have a loving father who really wants to help him make the journey!
May Lawrence pass on to his children someday the love for family, commitment to God, right living, and service to his fellow men that his father lives before him now.

The song below by Mark Harris was perfect for the beginning of the scrapbook I made for Lawrence. It expresses our prayer for his life.

Mark Harris - Find Your Wings
From the album The Line Between The Two

It’s only for a moment you are mine to hold
The plans that heaven has for you
Will all too soon unfold
So many different prayers I’ll pray
For all that you might do
But most of all I’ll want to know
You’re walking in the truth
And If I never told you
I want you to know
As I watch you grow

Chorus:
I pray that God would fill your heart with dreams
And that faith gives you the courage
To dare to do great things
I’m here for you whatever this life brings
So let my love give you roots
And help you find your wings

May passion be the wind
That leads you through your days
And may conviction keep you strong
Guide you on your way
May there be many moments
That make your life so sweet
Oh, but more than memories

Chorus:

It’s not living if you don’t reach for the sky
I’ll have tears as you take off
But I’ll cheer as you fly

Happy Birthday, Lawrence. We know you’re going to fly!
Love Mom

Twelve Acorns

2007-10-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

“Mom,” Elliot said, “they grow up to be big and strong trees!”

[After 18 wonderful years of marriage I understand what it means to refer to my "better half". Today my better half, Jane, took some time to reflect on an encounter with our youngest son.]

I was given something today that is more precious than all the material wealth in this world! I was given a hand full of acorns!

Elliot came running in the house after school and with much excitement said, “Hey, Mom, I have something very special for you.” With the energy of a seven-year old he tore into his book bag and with a big smile handed me a zip lock bag. “We went to the outdoor classroom today and I collected these just for you!” I looked into the bag and there they were — 10 beautiful, chocolate-colored acorns so perfectly made. I poured them out into my hands. “Mom,” Elliot said, “they grow up to be big and strong trees!” As I held them in my hands and looked into the innocent eyes of my child — a moment frozen in time — somewhere in the back of my mind I heard, “Jane, they grow up to be big and strong!”

I have been given the gift of two precious boys; to feed, water and nuture them so “they will grow up to be big and strong.” What a challenge especially when I know my faults and my failures; but oh, what hope and encouragement for me to know that God can take my faults and my failures. He can take me…and remake, reshape day by day.

Yes, I hold these precious treasures in my hands for a short time and all too soon they are big and strong.

I looked into Elliot’s eyes with joy and said, “Yes, you’re right, son — they grow up to be big and strong!”

Comments:

Jay Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:54 pm e
Thanks for sharing this. What a precious lesson.
Amy Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:38 pm e
Jane,
I read this the other day and have been meaning to respond. This was absolutely beautiful–simple and yet profound.
Randy Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:03 pm e
Jay,
They sure grow up too fast. We so enjoy watching little Caleb and Emily growing up — they’ll be big and strong someday, too, along with number three!
Jane
Randy Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:13 pm e
Amy,
So nice to hear from you. I think of you and those three boys and smile at the pictures you share. Elliot was really drawn to Samuel when we met in Louisville — they really got along well. We got to be with the Whitakers two Sundays ago, which was a real blessing. Just being around them is a real encouragement to us.
Thanks for stopping by, and Happy Birthday (belated).
Jane

Loving God

2007-10-10T23:13:00.000-07:00

If I say too much on this you will know I am far astray. Enough to mention that reading some of Augustine lately has jolted and fed my understanding in ways rare to me. I’ll hope to come back to it more, without going astray, but for now I’ll mention this:

"It is not loving Thee enough to love anything out of Thee, which we do not love for Thee." ~ Augustine, Confessions

The book is dealing with Augustine’s treatment of nature and the beauty therein, all of which I have tried to understand and rightly value. So far from demeaning nature, Augustine says nature is all from God’s hand and it is only with that in mind that we are able to rightly appreciate it.

In other words, if we love God’s gifts more than we love God Himself, we have things profoundly backwards, fundamentally disordered. Which is another way of describing sin and even idolatry. Elsewhere Augustine suggests that sin is anything that places a lesser good — like nature — in the place of the only ultimate good — God Himself.

Jesus says it best, of course: "See ye first…" and then, "The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your ‘very’." And so, when we place anything at all in a higher place, we radically disorder our lives, with the effects seen little by little. However, when we keep God in His true and rightful place as Giver of all, Source of all, Ruler of all — then our lives correspond to what is real and the effects of this sure foundation will work themselves out little by little.

Lord, I do not want to love anything in my life more than you. There seems to be a mystery here in which I am to love you only and then I am able to receive from your hand more loves than I can imagine. Is this true?
I believe it is and I want to know it, and live it.
Amen

Pleasures and Life and Creation

2007-10-02T23:18:00.000-07:00

"But Dad, I just don’t want you to have to spend alot." And then the kicker, "Life’s not all about pleasure you know."

One of life’s parables says the child becomes the parent — in time. And so tonight, my soon-to-be-twelve year old sped the clock way forward and offered a childhood observation: "Life isn’t all about pleasure you know, Dad."

Hmmm. We had been playing hoops (I won) and talking about what we would do for his big 12th birthday upcoming. Among other things, we have said he can choose something he really wants to do and he and I will do it together — a father/son time as he begins this journey into manhood. He had mentioned an idea to include a UK Wildcats game in whatever we do. But…he is worried about cost. I said, "Look Lawrence, don’t worry about that. This is something special for a special birthday. You let Mom and Dad worry about that."

"But Dad, I just don’t want you to have to spend alot." And then the kicker, "Life’s not all about pleasure you know."

I smiled outside and in, pleased that we could talk this way, glad he is trying to have a thoughtful outlook. We were leaving the gym by then and so I said, "Let’s think about that Lawrence. Of course life is not all about pleasure. But look at all of the beauty around us." We were nearing the end of a gorgeous fall day. The sun was beginning to set, highlighting hillside and trees, and there was beauty in abundance.

"Look at those flowers, Lawrence. The color is for our enjoyment, not to accomplish some task or project. And even if we do not enjoy the beauty, it is still there. God lavishes beauty on the world. Look at that tree — a simple evergreen. We can enjoy its beauty, or ignore it — God put it there just the same for us to enjoy. God has given all of these good things to us and he wants us to enjoy them, just as your parents love to give good things to you and we want you to enjoy them."

And so, life is not only about pleasure, but there is enough to go around and then some. Yes, the problem of suffering intersects this discussion real fast, but it seems true that while the world is broken by sin, enough grandeur and beauty — glory — remain to let us know a little about the Creator.

Some would remind me that God made the world for His own pleasure, not ours. While this is surely true, it does no damage to that understanding to say He also expects us to draw tremendous joy and help from the natural world. And in fact, if He made it for His own pleasure, that means the immense pleasures we draw from creation are like "leftovers", a side benefit of being alive.

But the point is this: the pleasure is all around us. It is not everything — that is true; and yet, it is so written in to this world that if we miss it we do so because our eyes are closed, our ears shut, and our mind darkened. Lawrence had a good point, but it was not the whole story. Here’s praying he will keep learning to love God and rejoice in the pleasures He has given to us.

"Lord, help me to revel in the simple pleasures which you have lavished on your creation. And in them may I see a loving Father who loves to give good gifts. Amen"

Comments:

Jay Says:
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:54 pm e
Praise God for the lessons taking place that go down this two-way street. This is an inspiring post. I pray for teaching/learning opportunities like the one you have described except with my own children. Thanks for sharing.
Laura Hinton Says:
October 5th, 2007 at 6:30 pm e
aw, that was very nice. Thanks for the thoughts. You’ll have to let us know what Lawrence ends up choosing to do for his birthday
Matt Says:
October 11th, 2007 at 6:59 am e
Good thoughts Randy! I used to feel almost violated when I was told that I was created for God’s pleasure, as though I was only a means, an accessory to something, or Someone else. I would then feel ashamed that I could be scandalized by God doing what He wills. But as I have grown older I have come to understand that I was then intuiting the truth of my own being, indeed the truth of God. He is not like me. The more I learn of God, the more I realize that His chiefest pleasure is surely in giving, and most especially in Self-giving. The implications of that are clear; if I am reading Revelation correctly, we are not the means to God’s pleasure, rather the objects of His pleasure. If we were the means to His pleasure, His blessedness would be in some way dependent upon us. The fact that we are ends of His pleasure means that “out of His fullness we receive grace upon grace” and God’s Sovereignty is revealed precisely in that.

Lawrence Wins Poster Contest

2007-09-26T23:21:00.000-07:00

Our oldest son, Lawrence, enjoys drawing and has entered a local poster contest for the last four years. This contest is sponsored by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and Lawrence has won at some level each year, earning cash awards and certificates. This year he won at local, state, and…Nationals!

Needless to say, we are proud and happy and he is enjoying the check — his total awards equaled something like $140. I think he is looking for some more paying work!

Comments:

Mary Ellen Says:
September 26th, 2007 at 12:55 pm e
Congratulations to Lawrence! He did a great job on the poster and I can see why he won! That is amazing the prize money is that high, and drawing posters is a lot easier than delivering papers and/or mowing lawns. “-)
Greg Johnson Says:
September 26th, 2007 at 10:13 pm e
Congratulations to Lawerence! It makes you feel so good when you win after all the hard work you put in!
Ron Huff Says:
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:09 pm e
Good job buddy. Stick with it! You could be the next Da Vinci!

You heard it here first.

One More Journey

2007-09-24T23:28:00.000-07:00

"Only one more journey to go, I reckon," he said, pointing up.

This summer we visited Jane’s step-dad and let our sons catch up with Grandpa and his teasing about their as-yet-to-be-seen girlfriends. He treated us to some great meals and we were grateful to see him again. Dad drove trucks for most of his life, logging some 3 million miles. He still enjoys traveling and knows how to do it. Last Spring at age 84 he drove 900 miles by himself. But now he thinks his traveling days are over.

I hope not. I’ll always have a feel for the open road that blends wander with wonder. If I were in the 3 wise men’s entourage I would have gone just to go. “Star – what star? Just go!” For me and Dad, traveling is spice in life, so when I hear him talk of no more traveling I know something is up.

What’s up is that Dad has a long journey he’d like to make – some eleven hundred miles to see his great-great granddaughter and pose for a 5 generation photo. He has the will to travel and plenty of experience. But with a painful back condition and slowly declining health he thinks his traveling days may be over. “Only one more journey to go, I reckon”, he said, pointing up.

He never looked his age before but now he does, hair fully whitened, slight stoop, cane ever-present. And as he said this I thought about heaven and what it must be like to know that is our next destination. And now I remember Browning’s line on heaven — something about reaching beyond our grasp.

We’ve reached for so many good things, traveled a million miles or three, dreamed and planned and wished, loved and lost and loved some more, cried and grieved and suffered, and now we come to the end and realize there is only one thing left for which to reach. Our reach has exceeded our grasp all our lives – nothing we gained and held lasted. The miles flew past us, never our own. The people and places dissolved into memories, seeming no more real than our beckoning dreams. And now we finally know that anything worth having must be on the other side. The final journey is all we have left. If it does not fill the insatiable longing of our life, nothing ever will. The quest will have been pointless.

So, is there a heaven for which we reach, something to answer this impossible yearning that cries in our bones? How can we know we are not longing for a mirage, reaching for an object forever beyond our grasp? Well, if we require absolute certainty then we need a different world. But in this world, faith is necessary to knowing. And as to the question of heaven the words of Jesus are a place to start — and finish: “I go to prepare a place for you.”

Jesus is universally recognized as a good teacher so it follows that what he said is worth hearing. He claims his followers will eventually join him in another world. Was Jesus wrong, or talking careless hope talk? I don’t think so. He also claimed to be God, not something very many people do. And the ones that do claim deity seldom get labeled as good teachers.

We could consider Jesus’ teaching on the hereafter as being actually true, or we could decide he was terribly wrong or simply lying, neither good alternatives when we revere him as a wise teacher. I believe he was right. And since I don’t know for certain anything about the hereafter, I’m with every one else in the human race – I have to trust.

Trust? Yes, with at least two options. We can trust that there is nothing or that there is something. I’m trusting that there is something, that my yearning will be answered, that Jesus meant what he said. That he really is the Son of God and that he therefore can be trusted with everything. This gives me reasonable hope.

And so I still see my father-in-law pointing up: “One more trip to go,” he said. And I think he is ready, weary of this world. He lost a wife to cancer, a son to Vietnam. His parents and all his siblings but one are gone. He knows pain and suffering across the gamut and He knows the One who owned that suffering on the Cross. He is ready to go but his reach still exceeds his grasp, so there is only one thing left to do.

When the time comes – and I hope for our sake it is years hence; when the time comes Dad will once again reach beyond his grasp and find the everlasting hand of his Maker, ready to take him out of this valley of tears into a place that exceeds his reach as light years in space. It will be a brilliant sun compared to the glimmer of the longing he lived with. And when he arrives at last he will know his reaching has finally found a grasp worth keeping — one that will keep him. Else, what is a heaven for?

Comments:

Matt Says:
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:18 am e

Great Randy! I like it. And I trust you are right.

Roger Patterson Says:
September 24th, 2007 at 1:55 am e

Thanks Randy. That brought a tear to think of what it will be like to be at that point (like your dad) of our earthly experience. I’ve known pain, minuscule by comparison, but have that expectant hope of that last journey.
Btw, I’m a long time listener but first time caller. Keep up the writing, it blesses a lot of folk.

Randy Says:
September 27th, 2007 at 2:58 am e

Thanks for stopping in, Roger, and for your encouraging word. Appreciate you telling me you’ve read along. Hard to know what connections we make in cyberspace.
And yes, my expectant hope grows little by little, too. I want to be ready, and I want to go.
Good to hear from you!

One More Journey

2007-09-24T23:23:00.000-07:00

"Only one more journey to go, I reckon," he said, pointing up.

Comments:

Matt Says:
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:18 am e

Great Randy! I like it. And I trust you are right.

Roger Patterson Says:
September 24th, 2007 at 1:55 am e

Randy Says:
September 27th, 2007 at 2:58 am e

The Long View of Life

2007-09-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

It is wonderful to be refreshed in mind and spirit by words of others, etched in time by the gift of print. The lines below from Reinhold Niebuhr give an opening to Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization . Cahill’s book, by-the-way, is an unusually good read if you want a helpful historical overview that touches the fall of the Roman empire, deals with the transition into the medieval era, and shows how the literature of the classical tradition — and thus civilization itself — was saved by the work of obscure monks on a little-known island. I’m browsing through it for a second time — well worth it.

Niebuhr’s quote is worth sharing for its own sake, so I do so now and hope you find it thought-provokingly true.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

Comments:

Matt Says:
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:44 am e
I love that quote; I think Chesterton would approve. Cahill has done the world a favor by writing that book. It is a wonderful antidote to the revisionist history we meet at every turn. I found it to be good apologetic material as well. The Church, rather than bringing on the advent of, and holding the world in the Dark Ages, saving the world from darkness by its love of wisdom for God’s sake. I find it ironic that all the seminal thinkers of the modern “enlightened” age were educated by the Church.