God Provides For Those Who Cry Out for Help

            4 The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, 

                  “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the Lord. 

                   But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves.”

                         ² Elisha replied to her, “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in

                   your house?” “Your servant has nothing there at all,” she said, “except a 

                   small jar of olive oil.”

                       ³ Elisha said, “Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don’t 

                   ask for just a few. ⁴ Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your

                   sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side.”

                       ⁵ She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought 

                  the jars to her and she kept pouring. ⁶ When all the jars were full, she 

                  said to her son, “Bring me another one.”  But he replied, “There is not a 

                  jar left.” Then the oil stopped flowing.

                       ⁷ She went and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil and 

                 pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left.”

New International Version (NIV)

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The miracle performed by the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 4:1-7 involved meeting the financial needs of a widow who's husband had formerly worked as a prophet with Elisha.  I was reminded of this passage, during the COVID-19 pandemic, by a friend of ours who wrote her own devotional about this.  Summarizing the passage:

• She realized she was in a desperate situation.  The creditors were on their way to seize her sons and to make them slaves because with her husband's passing she had no income.
• She reached out for help from a godly man, a man she trusted.
• The prophet Elisha asks her two questions that sound a lot like the questions Jesus asked of people who came to him, requesting help:
• "How can I help you?"
• "Tell me what do you have in your house?" 
• The widow offers what she has, a small jar of oil.
• She obeys the prophet when he says to go around to your neighbors and ask them for empty jars, and don't ask for just a few.
• He also instructs her to then close the door of her house and pour the oil she have into the empty jars.
• The empty jars are all filled, there is enough oil to sell to pay all the debts owed and to provide income for her and her children to live on. 

The circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic are creating all sorts of hardships: economic; physical; emotional; and spiritual health.  This passage provides a model for us to follow, as we feel the world closing in on us, like it was for the widow.  Express our needs to God and to the godly people we trust.  Listen to the questions God is asking of us.  He invites us to ask for His help, and He asks us what we have available for Him to use.  Even what we think is not much can be used by God and multiplied.  Those who are close to us can be a part of the miracle God will perform.  Elisha commands the widow to close the door to her house, thus only those committed to obeying Elisha's instructions get to observe the miracle.  Lastly, God's provision is anything but meager.  He fills every jar the widow and her children can find.  

So if we cry out to God during these times, and remember the times in the past when God has met our needs and reflect on stories like this from the Bible, we'll find that God can abundantly provide for us.

Earth Day and Environmental Ethics

The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, when I was a high school sophomore.  I remember little about that school day.  What I've not forgotten is the impact Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) https://genius.com/Marvin-gaye-mercy-mercy-me-the-ecology-lyrics which came out in the fall of 1971, had on me.  It caused me to question how did we end up making such poor decisions on the environment, when we were supposed to be the stewards of our world?  Over the years, many pop-music groups from the Beachboys to REM have spoken to environmental issues.  My immature thinking was refined to some extent during my college years through the environmental courses I took at Clarkson University, but what's been most formational in refining and maturing a deeper and more realistic environmental ethic has been my career as a water resources and environmental engineer and my Christian faith. Through the many projects and programs I've worked on and led, I've learned to seek engineering solutions that result in the least environmental harm. Finding engineering solutions that meet more than bare minimal environmental standards takes a fine degree of thoughtfulness.The place where engineering meets the natural environment is complex and quite interconnected.  Through my Christian faith and reading of the Bible, the context for my learned environmental ethic is one that's consistent with the deeper reality of my relationship with the Creator and creation. My environmental ethic has also been nurtured through the writings of Holmes Rolston III in Philosophy Gone Wild and other books, and to some extent by other thoughtful writers. 

I've spent my 40 year career working at the intersection of engineering and the environment. I am perplexed to see the environment focused on in a way that's out of sync with deeper realities of the environment and ourselves.  Some of my favorite quotes from Holmes Rolston III get to the core of what I feel is a realistic and sensible Christian environmental ethic.  These include:

• Nature is intrinsically valuable, but nature is not a moral sphere.
• I am more convinced than ever that nature is grace, that nature is value-laden. This life-abundant Earth is a wonderland.
• No sooner did I discover that nature is grace, than I found we were treating it disgracefully.
• It is not simply what a society does to its slaves, women, blacks, handicapped children, or future generations, but what it does to its flora, fauna, species and landscapes that reveals the character of that society.

So while a Christian environmental ethic explains that it's wrong to have a utilitarian view of the environment, it's also wrong to make an idol of it.  I cannot have a utilitarian view of the environment if I understand it to be value-laden, grace filled, and life-abundant.  These characteristics are consistent with both God's nature, the Gospels and the New Testament.   But it misses the mark to elevate the environment to a place where it becomes a moral sphere, or a religion.  And if we're going to hold to a high view of the environment, it's hypocritical to hold to a disgraceful view of any person or group, who are also created by God and in His image.  In 21st century America, our culture's environmental thinking and ethics have come sadly off the rails.  

Stories for Troubling Times

I've had the occasion of reading several short stories from Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories.  Many of these stories have a theme that involves people who are dealing with having their world rocked by one or more circumstances.  As the stories unfold we learn of the characters' struggles.  As they struggle with their circumstances we gain insights about what anchors them, that is what they put their faith and hopes in.  As we enter into their lives, we begin to ask ourselves the question "What do we put our faith and hopes in?"  This past week, since we were going to Florida on a vacation, I again checked out this book of short stories, which I had not finished, not knowing whether I would have occasion to read any more of them on the trip.  I ended up reading The Displaced Person while returning on a choppy, 2-1/2 hour boat ride from Dry Tortugas to Key West, FL, figuring that reading would keep my mind off the uncomfortable journey.  So while I was being physically jostled, with some feelings of uncertainty and displacement, I entered the fictional lives of Mr. Guizac; Mr. and Mrs. Shortly, Mrs. McIntyre; and Father Flynn, the principal characters in the story.

Cliff Notes https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/o/oconnors-short-stories/summary-and-analysis/the-displaced-person provides a detailed character analysis of the short story.

Dove Foundation Movie Review (https://dove.org/review/10940-the-displaced-person/ provides an excellent family film summary and recommendation of the 2007 release of the movie on DVD.

The story is set in Georgia during the late 1940's where a Polish refugee (Mr. Guizac) is relocated by Father Flynn to work on Mrs. McIntyre's farm.  The industrious and clever Mr. Guizac, who is the obvious displaced person, becomes a threat to the other farm workers who begin to plot his downfall, until fate unexpectedly takes over.  The Displaced Person speaks to the fear of the unknown and how people react to things they don't understand.  By the time we come to the end of the story we find that all the main characters, save Father Flynn, either become displaced from this world or from their comfort zones.   

Within less than a week (March 6 - 13, 2020), we in the United States have seen our personal worlds rocked in one way or another either by COVID-19 or by the responses of our government leaders, businesses, and institutions.  Our stocks and 401(k)'s have plummeted in value, our businesses have needed to implement immediate and significant measures to help reduce the spread of the virus and to protect the company's financial health, our planned large group events have been shuddered, and we are all updating our calendars.  Today was Friday and after a particularly long and stressful week my work colleagues were reacting all over the place: 

• One was upset because they were "ordered to go home" because they had been showing signs of some virus and it would be healthful for them and us;
•  A group of them left work early and invited me to join them as they headed downstairs to the bar for drinks to try and put a happy spin on the week;
• Another magnified a tiny issue into a huge deal; and
• A client spoke of a colleague of theirs who was in misery due to MLBs suspending of Spring Training.

In all this we who venture to walk by faith in Christ can hang onto Romans 14:7-9 (So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.), Romans 8:37 ( No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.), and the many other promises of the God who provides.   

Martin Luther King's Connection to an Evangelist and Mahatma Gahandi

This book is a remembrance of the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi, written by the Christian evangelist E. Stanley Jones, was the author's first hand reflection on the nonviolent yet confrontational campaigns of Gandhi and the connections between Gandhi's strategies and the teachings of Jesus.  The book, published in 1948, was a failure in terms of sales, and considered by Jones himself as his least successful book.  A few years later a graduate of Crozier Divinity School in Rochester, New York, who had moved on to attend grad school at Boston University, came upon this book in the university library. That student was Martin Luther King.  He was deeply moved by the book and he wrote in the margin of the book "This is It!  This is the way to achieve freedom for the negro in North America." You can still see King's marginal notation in the Martin Luther King Library in Atlanta. Prior to leaving Boston University for Sweden to receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, the university held a convocation in his honor.  There he met Jones's daughter and said to her "E. Stanley Jones was a very important person for me, for it was his book on Mahatma Gandhi that triggered my used of Gandhi's method of nonviolence as a weapon for our own people's freedom in the United States."  Although King had studied Gandhi's method of nonviolence for years, it was not until he read Jones's treatment of Gandhi's did he see the connection to the civil rights movement in the United States.  What appeared to be one of E. Stanley Jones's greatest failures turned out to be something greatly used by God to bring about change for good in the world.  Jones's faithfulness to follow a suggestion by the Methodist Publishing House to write a book on his remembrances of Mahatma Gandhi over time brought about good on God's earth.

Similarly, our acts of faith in the hands of God, will bear fruit, probably not immediately and possibly not in our lifetime, but God is not constrained by place and time.  So respond to God's word to you, both his written word and the Holy Spirit, and know that he will in His time bring forth fruit. 

(This blog post was entirely summarized from the forward of Victorious Living a daily devotional written by E. Stanley Jones and most recently published by Abingdon Press in 2015.)

Thy Kingdom Come on Earth - I

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven."

(Matthew 6:9-10)

I participated in a discussion on Friday night with a colleague at a social gathering concerning how do we, the people of God, reach outside the comfortable church worlds we live in to those who are needy in this world.  Although he comes from a Catholic tradition and I a Protestant tradition, we both agreed that this is vital.  As we talked on, I realized that Corinne and I have helped a couple of needy women who have entered our circle in the last 10 years.  In both cases, I honestly felt that our financial, emotional and spiritual support made a difference in their lives. And I know that they both feel God's love for them.

At the worship service we attended today, the person leading the prayer time prayed the unusual prayer "Lord, help us to ponder the question "How do we make the invisible kingdom visible on earth?" So during this coming week one of my general prayers will be to seek opportunities to make God's invisible kingdom visible on earth.

Squeezed between these two events, we spent a good deal of Saturday remembering the life of Don Bergmann, the founder of Bergmann, at a memorial service and also reconnecting with his children and meeting their grandchildren at a reception that followed.  Remembering Don's life and my interactions with him and how they almost always lifted my spirits, was an uplifting kingdom-like experience.  I remembered when Don had his first surgery for some brain disorder, I gathered some of by colleagues together and we prayed together for Don in one of our conference rooms. He came through the surgery well and was back to work before long.  

So, I will have a full week of work this week, where there will be some opportunities to share in and experience the making of God's kingdom visible to those on earth.  Will my heart be prepared?  Will my spiritual eyesight be keen?  Will I be willing to take the necessary risks to be an avenue for kingdom of God coming into the world this week? 

Remembering Don Bergmann

I must have been one of several people hired twice by Don Bergmann.  First for Erdman & Anthony, and then for Bergmann Associates.   Even before he first hired me, he had worked for several years with my father who also worked for Erdman & Anthony.  They carpooled weekdays to work at Erdman & Anthony.  Even while I was in high school and then when I was in my college years, Don would be either checking in with me on what I was doing, and I recall at one point him visiting me and my father at our home.  My parents and Don and Barbara lived in Chili probably less than a mile apart.  Don’s interest in me and what I was doing in my younger years made a big and positive impression on me.

When I completed my engineering studies at Clarkson in 1977, the employment market was still pretty dismal, but I had offers from Erdmann & Anthony and with Harza Engineering Company.  Although the allure of joining an international water resources engineering company was pretty strong, so was Don’s enthusiasm, so I joined Erdmann & Anthony, which at the time was in a pretty strong growth mode and had some good projects going on.

One of Don’s many firsts was somehow winning a section of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor Improvement Project, this between Harold Yard and New Rochelle, NY. One day he calls me over and spends about 30 minutes orienting me to the track realignment work that was needed to increase the travel speeds on the corridor.  We didn't have a track engineer, but I was about to become one.  He gave me a very brief explanation of spiral curve geometry (which I knew nothing about) and pointed me to the highway designers if I needed to find out more.  If he had any inclination that I was clueless, he sure didn’t show it. So here I was at 24 or 25 years of age, in charge of realigning 17 miles of track (some on bridge and some on viaduct) with dozens of spiral curves to improve the operating speed, and hardly knowing where to begin.  But it was those kind of experiences with Don that formed how I would approach other projects that I started work on that I knew little about.  One day we were on site, walking the track alignment, which took us to the viaduct that includes the iconic Hell Gate Arch Bridge over the East River.  Don, being a structural engineer, was particularly interested the bridge, so we entered one of the west towers, climbed up the staircase inside tower, and opened the door that was just above the top chord of the arch.  I am scared to death of heights but each of us walked out onto the upper chord a short distance while the other of us took a photo.  Walking out into that uncomfortable spot was what working for Don Bergmann was like.  Once I got over the fears, challenging myself became a way of life for me. 

Don was one of those unique people who went against the typical grain.  For most people “seeing is believing”.  For Don, and those he inspired, “believing is seeing”.  He constantly put me and others in those places that were uncomfortable for us, but with enthusiasm and inspiration alone, helped us to believe in ourselves.  I've seen first hand a rewarding and joyous career because I learned from Don to believe in myself.

Joy to the World and What it Means

No more let sins and sorrows grow.  Nor thorns infest the ground:

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found,

far as the curse is found.

These words were written by Isaac Watts, the famous English hymn writer and composed by George Frederick Handel.  The first two stanzas lead us into joyful, thankful worship.  This third stanza speaks to the purpose of the Savior's coming.  It takes us back to the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve's disobedience separated them and us from all the blessings of fellowship with God.  It speaks of the growth of sins and sorrows.  The thorns infesting the ground must be speaking of how man's work would be made more difficult because of Adam and Eve's sin.  So our world both then and today, apart from the Savior's coming, is afflicted with the growth of sins and sorrows, and our work is made more difficult by sin's grip.  Even nature is engulfed in sin's grip.  This certainly describes the world we live in today.  Sin's curse is spread thick over all humanity and even of nature.  Although the great work of tracking down and destroying the curse actually ends at the cross, the Savior's coming begins at Bethlehem, where Jesus is born into the world.

The Savior's coming changes the game.  He comes to make his blessings flow in no limited fashion but to everywhere the curse is found.  The blessings that come with the Savior's birth are meant to chase down and overtake the sins and sorrows of this world in as powerful a manner as those sins and sorrows were first released into this world.  So the questions for me are will I believe that the blessings of God's coming are big enough to replace the evidences of the curse in my own life, and the lives of all the people I know no matter what the evidences of that curse are in their lives?