Tag: jesus

Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, Or Do Without

I cannot imagine my life without a small group of Christian brothers/sisters who meet together to pray, study the Bible, and just to “do life” together!  As a kid I was always in some kind of small group – a cub and boy scout troop, a sports team, or a Sunday School Class (taught amazingly by my mother in elementary school and my father in high school).

As an adult my small “accountability” groups have always grown out of the church.  At LaSalle Street Church in Chicago we called them “cell groups” and we met at one another’s house regularly.  At Christ Church of Oak Brook I was part of a five-man group which also met regularly for over 10 years.  Currently, and for the past five years, I have been part of a group made up of five couples – we call ourselves “Parents Anonymous (PA).”

Last night our PA group met and as usual I was blessed beyond words by the connection, the honesty, and the encouragement which are always present every time we meet.  One of our group, Mark, shared a 12-word poem/proverb which he called his “pioneer saying” that he learned in high school:  Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without. The rest of our group sat quietly in awe as we focused on the meaning of this poem for our own lives, and I asked him to send it to each of us.  And he did.

Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without.  Our 30th president, Calvin Coolidge, is credited by many with creating this proverb to help people create in their lives frugality and resourcefulness, especially needed during the Great Depression.  But others claim the proverb goes back to the 1700’s – we just don’t know and likely never will know who first said Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, Or Do Without!

I cannot get this poem/proverb out of my mind.  Each of the four phrases has grabbed my mind, my heart, and my soul at a very deep level.  Beyond the obvious meaning that Pres. Coolidge wanted Americans to heed, to me the poem/proverb can apply to our spiritual lives in a most profound way.  One simple example:  Jesus told us, “A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another” [John 13:34].

Our response to Jesus’ “new command” takes us through Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, Or Do Without.  “Loving others” is to be a hallmark of my life, I must show love at such a constant level that I may feel I am “using it up” and “wearing it out” – but the goal is always to “make it do” since “doing without” is NOT an option for Christ-followers.  May my friend Mark’s “pioneer saying” and Pres. Coolidge’s “proverb to the nation” bring you deeper insights as you chew on God’s written word!  Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you. 

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please email me at TheMertonPrayer@gmail.com.  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

The Man On The Middle Cross Invited Me!

Imagine this: when the thief crucified with Jesus got to the pearly gates of Heaven and was asked, “How did you come to be here?” I wonder what he might have said. Did he have a clue about justification by faith? Baptism for the remission of his sins? Regular church attendance? Inspiration of holy scriptures? Prophecy confirmations from the Hebrew Scriptures? No, to all of those.

Here is the only thing he could have said: The Man on the Middle Cross Invited Me! And clearly that answer was all he had to say! Jesus had turned to him during the torture of crucifixion when both were near death in shear physical agony, and he said, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43 NLT).

But there is a little more to this story which bears looking at for our own edification as we Christ-followers hope for a similar invitation from Jesus. Did you remember that the other criminal dying on the other side of Jesus had taunted Jesus with these words, borne, I am sure, as much out of fear of impending death as a genuine hope of a miracle rescue: “So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it” (Luke 23:39 NLT).

To me the most powerful of all conversion sermons comes next. The soon-to-be-pardoned thief said, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong” (Luke 23:40-41 NLT). Give the word “fear” its proper meaning of “respect” and the first point of this sermon is clear: This convicted criminal knew enough to respect his newly met neighbor, also condemned to death, as the incarnate presence of God.

His second sermon point is also powerful: His belief that both he and his fellow criminal “deserved to die” is always a precursor to salvation. His words constitute a true confession of sin.

In my opinion, the third point of this sermon is a true highpoint of all human encounters with Jesus recorded in scriptures: “But this man has not done anything wrong.” Whereas all we human beings have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Jesus of Nazereth, born of Mary, fully human and fully divine, is the only person ever to walk on the face of this earth without having sinned.

So, there you have it: a really convincing three-point sermon for the ages! How did you get here to heaven sir? The Man on the Middle Cross Invited Me! The coolest part of this sermon is that Jesus’ words to the believing thief on the cross are the same words He offers to us today! Do we actually believe that the same invitation is open to us, or do we water down His invitation to include all of the “works” which we need to do to earn entry into heaven? Lord, may it be so that we, with the thief on the cross, can shout with joy at heaven’s gates when asked how we got there: The Man on The Middle Cross Invited Me!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE: If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please email me at TheMertonPrayer@gmail.com. I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

Imma-Nu-El

Today, as we celebrate the birth of Christ. Yesterday. 2,000+ years ago. Tomorrow. 5,000 years from now. Three little Hebrew words give us meaning and purpose to our existence.  I am sure everyone reading this blog has long heard and used the word Immanuel with the understanding it refers to Jesus, the Son of God.  But most of you have not studied Biblical Hebrew, so you may not know that Immanuel is NOT one word.  It is three small Hebrew words which when put together create this amazing appellation for the Son of God. 

Im is the Hebrew preposition which means “with.” It looks like this – עִם.

Nu is the Hebrew pronoun which means “us.”  It looks like this – נוּ. 

El is the Hebrew proper noun for the name of God, often meaning power, strength, mighty God.  It looks like this – אֵל.

You put these three little words together – adding a double “m” is required before the pronoun “us” may be added to “with,” which also requires an extra vowel – hence, im plus nu becomes “immanu”  instead of just “imnu”.  Probably way too much information, but for any who were questioning – now you know how we got this amazing word Immanuel.

Isaiah 7:14 [NIV] says, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign:  The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

The New Testament writer Matthew tells us this – “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God with us’) Matthew 1:23 [NIV].

Chew on this for a few moments in the last hours of this Advent day known as December 25th – how often do I really, I mean really, feel that the almighty powerful God who created the universe is actually, really, “with me”?  How often do I even consider that as I go through my daily activities, Imma-Nu-El is indeed with me. 

This promise – made by God through the prophet Isaiah and then repeated centuries later by one of Jesus’ disciples the Gospel writer Matthew – is not just a Christmas Day nice thing to say and sing about. 

This promise from God gives us purpose and meaning to our existence on this planet.  May each of us think on this promise repeatedly every day of our lives. I hope to always connect this promise of Imma-Nu-El with the ending words of the Merton Prayer:  “I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you. 

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please email me at TheMertonPrayer@gmail.com.  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

How Could That Happen?

“Mr. Denny, I am calling to get your verbal consent for the surgery tomorrow for your left knee replacement?” My answer was one word: “No.” Awkward silence followed. “I don’t understand, are you not coming for surgery tomorrow?” “Yes, I am coming but my left knee was replaced in 2022! I consent to surgery on my right knee!” Apologies followed. I was not surprised but the question lingered: How Could That Happen?

Many of you will recall that after my 10-year career as parish pastor I spent 4 years working in Risk Management at a major Chicago hospital. Informed consents were regularly messed up. Fortunately, all of the mistakes were caught pre-surgery and we never had the wrong limb operated on. (Now that would be a lawsuit which I would LOVE to handle!)

The simple answer to How Could That Happen? is this: It could and does happen because we are humans and not machines! Our natural nature is to sin! Even the best human among us is a sinner who makes mistakes! Listen to how the Apostle Paul spoke about this: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 NIV).

“All” leaves no room for me to be the exception! Every single one of us is a sinner. How often, if ever, do we “mature Christians” admit that we are “sinners”? Sure, we list our sins in our prayers when we ask God to forgive us, knowing full well that He always forgives us! We even admit to being a sinner in the ‘’Lord’s Prayer”. But such admission, as honest as it can be, hardly convinces us that we have an internal quality called “sin.”

The part of this famous verse that pastors rarely focus on is “and fallen short of the glory of God.” We are human sinners and we do not contain within us “the glory of God”. Is this a big announcement? Did we not know this before we read Paul’s letter to the Romans? Because we are all sinners, we must realize that we are not God, and we can never become God.

Today’s blog is not a total bummer! The surgery on the RIGHT leg was very successful and post-op I am walking pain free now with use of a walker. And Paul’s very next words totally take the sting out of “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

Listen to Romans 3:24 — “And all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ” (NIV). Hear the same verse from the NLT: “Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins” (Romans 3:24 NLT). And this, my friends, is very good news for all of us sinners!

We are “freed from the penalty of sin” is just about the best news a sinner can ever hear. So How Could That Happen? is completely, totally, and properly, answered for us. Thank you, Lord!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE: If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please email me at TheMertonPrayer@gmail.com. I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

The Church is Confused!

Not only is the culture collapsing around us, the second point of Alistair Begg’s threefold meme of why modern Christianity is failing is this– The Church is Confused!  Do I really need to document this assertion? Just one point will suffice: A major denomination voted at their annual conference two years ago that abortion is fine and that any local, state, or federal restrictions on abortion for women and “pregnant persons” were not to be tolerated.  To me, this leaves no room for doubt – The Church is Confused!

When Jesus told the Apostle Peter that he had just handed him the “keys to the kingdom” and “upon this rock [petros, Greek for rock and Peter] I will build my church,” I hardly think he had in mind a future church deciding to allow babies to be killed in the womb!  When Yahweh told the prophet Jeremiah that he had been known by God even when Jeremiah was in his mother’s womb, surely God was not envisioning abortion of healthy children created in his image (Jeremiah 1:5).

Has the Church always been confused? If not, when and how did the Church become confused?  The first century church at Jerusalem had some serious conflicts which were overseen by James the brother of Jesus.  (See Acts 15:14-21).  The fourth century Church saw the Roman Emperor Constantine forcing his soldiers to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ, a fact which might have upset local church boards a tad!

Our 21st century church has  – drumroll please – are you ready for this?? – over 45,000 different denominations and the United States alone has over 200!  When Jesus handed the keys of the kingdom to Peter one wonders if even Jesus would be shocked to see that the Church today is not one undivided Church. To say The Church is Confused is hardly a stretch of imagination to a modern church-watcher. 

We have churches who focus more on political issues than on issues from the Bible.  We have churches who one year declare a “policy” only to change/reverse itself the very next year!   One church says sins are forgiven when one prays asking God to forgive, another church says that sins are only forgiven when one experiences baptism.  One church baptizes by sprinkling water on an infant who has no idea what is happening, another church only baptizes by immersion in water which completely covers the body.

Yes, The Church is Confused and I sincerely wonder at times what God thinks of how we have messed up his plan that the church would be “one”!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you. 

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please email me at TheMertonPrayer@gmail.com.  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

Amen!

All Catholics reading this blog will surely get a kick out of my ignorance.   For years when I approached the priest for Eucharist, after he placed the wafer in my hand and spoke the words “The body of Christ, given for you,” I always looked him square in the eyes and said, “Thank you.”   Then I moved on, consumed the host, and felt very close to the Lord and filled with the Holy Spirit.

One day at mass with my wife Miran, who is a “cradle Catholic” having been born into the faith as a child, she overheard me say, “Thank you” to the priest.  She quickly informed me that the proper response to the priest’s words “The body of Christ given for you” was to simply say Amen!

I thought my “Thank you” had been polite and appropriate.  But instead, it had caused a ripple of discomfort in the ears of any who heard.

Got me to thinking about the word Amen!  Did you know that every time you conclude a prayer with the word Amen! you are speaking both Hebrew and Greek!  The Greek word Amen! is a transliteration (letter for letter) of the Hebrew word Amen! which literally means, “Verily so, this is the truth, so it is, without a doubt” and other words/phrases connoting the assuredness and veracity of what went before the Amen!

All of which led me to chew on (pardon the pun) the phrase “This is my body given for you.”  Some priests/pastors change the words Jesus used and instead say, “This is my body broken for you.”  If you ever hear those words spoken at a Eucharist Service, I encourage you to speak privately with that person and point them to Psalm 22, the Messianic Psalm of King David, which is referred to very often by Jesus. 

Was Jesus’ body “broken” on the cross?  His side was pierced, his hands and feet were pierced, a crown of thorns cut into his scalp; but when the soldiers came to fracture his femurs as they had just done to the criminals on either side of Jesus to hasten their death, they stopped and did not fracture his femurs, since Jesus had already died.

Psalm 22 has so many amazing references to the life of Jesus as the promised Messiah (“anointed one”) I encourage you to read it very slowly.  Verse 14 says “all my bones are out of joint” – not fractured or broken, just out of joint!  And then the most amazing fact is in verse 17 which says, “I can count all my bones!”  We can assume that since God created human beings, He knew perfectly well what modern medical science has since discovered and confirmed – there are 206 bones in the human body; not 208 which would have happened if Jesus’ femurs had each been broken in half! 

When the Psalmist says, in speaking of the Messiah, “I can count all my bones”) we can read into these words “I still have only 206 bones, none of my bones were broken like the two guys on either side of me!”  So, when I am told, “this is the body of Christ which was given for you” I rejoice and say Amen!

Verily, it is so, this is the truth!  Not a single bone in my Savior’s body was broken and His entire body was given for me.  Amen! indeed!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you. 

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please use the contact tab and let me know!  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

God’s Path, Not Mine!

“So sorry, Mr. Denny, you picked a bad decade to get a seminary teaching position in Hebrew and Aramaic, there’s no openings since nobody is retiring!”  I was devastated. These were the words of my professor after I told him that I had been rejected by every place I had applied!  Four years of intense work in ancient near eastern languages at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, all for naught!  Seriously God?

I had passed all of my doctoral qualifying exams and was already researching and writing my dissertation.   I was translating a newly discovered Syriac commentary on the book of Deuteronomy, which manuscript had been found in Turkey by my professor Dr. Arthur Vööbus, who was world famous for all of his biblical manuscript discoveries.

I had even presented a scholarly paper at the Society of Biblical Literature in New York City where Old Testament scholars came up to me congratulating me on a great presentation.  Yet … why could I not locate a teaching position?  The answer:  God’s Path, Not Mine!

Doubts flooded my soul.  I took a job at a local 1100-bed Chicago hospital where my pastoral background allowed me to help angry patients/staff deal with high stress encounters, sometimes I had to physically separate patients from doctors to bring peace and resolution.  Every Friday I met with the hospital legal and risk management vice presidents to discuss the liability issues which had occurred in the prior week.   At one such meeting, one of the VP’s said, “Denny, you’re really good at this, why don’t you go to law school?”

I had two master’s degrees and had just finished four years of incredibly difficult study in northwest semitic philology, the last thing I wanted was more schooling.  I said, “No thanks” to which he said, “the hospital will pay 100% of your tuition” to which I said, “why not!”  What started was my journey down God’s Path, Not Mine!

I gave God every chance to push me off the road of becoming a lawyer!  Not really preparing for the law school admission test, not taking the courses seriously since I arrogantly viewed law school courses as unchallenging compared to my doctoral University of Chicago courses!  And when it came time after graduation to sit for the Illinois bar exam, well, I didn’t even sign up for it.  I went to the exam in hopes of a walk-on spot, and there was ONLY one such spot available. 

Weeks later I opened an envelope and learned that I had failed the Illinois bar exam.  I met  with one of the bar examiners for a review of my exam answers so I could learn how to pass it the next time.  The Illinois bar exam had two parts:  first, the multi-state multiple choice test which I had passed; and second, the essay test which I had failed by one point!  Each essay question had a perfect score of 10 points and the examiner laid my handwritten exam booklet on one side of the table in front of me while he placed a “perfect 10-point answer” for each question on the table so I could compare my answers to the perfect answers.  The perfect answers had been picked out of the 1000’s submitted for the exam.

After comparing my essay answers with a couple of the perfect answers I came upon something which blew my mind.  The handwriting on one “perfect 10-point answer” looked familiar!  My eyes flew back and forth between my answer and the perfect answer!  They were identical.    I hollered out and the examiner came into the room, “look here, this perfect answer is MY answer!”  He said, “Oh my goodness, this has never happened before!”  I asked him meekly, “Can’t you find it in your heart to give me one more point?”  He smiled, “No, but I am sure you will pass the bar exam the next time.”  Rather than give up and change direction, that encounter emboldened me, and I did indeed pass the bar exam the next time.  Confident that God wanted me to become a lawyer, today after almost 40 years of helping my clients seek justice, I savor God’s Path, Not Mine!

And The Merton Prayer has been my touchstone all of these years, since even when I “have no idea where I am going” I know that “God is ever with me.”  Even when we fail and get detoured from the path we are on, you and I both can gain great solace and comfort knowing with confidence God’s Path, Not Mine!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you. 

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please use the contact tab and let me know!  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

I Chose Forgiveness and It Kept Me Alive!

Have you heard the “Wild Bill” story from the German concentration camps in WW2?  This was new to me, and it blew my “theological socks” right off!  I heard this story from a very credible source, Dr. Robert Sears, S.J., who has been my and my wife Miran’s spiritual director for over 20 years, and he claims it is absolutely true.

A Polish family of five were imprisoned by the Nazis in a concentration camp.  The father evidently appeared healthy and so the Nazis pulled him aside for work detail while he had to stand and watch all four of his beloved family members shot to death and dumped into a mass grave!

Sit with that horrific scene for a moment and see how your spirit is dealing with it. 

When the American troops liberated all Nazi concentration camps in 1945, they spent weeks working in each camp.  At first the emaciated prisoners were scared of these “new soldiers” whose language they did not recognize and whose uniforms were different than their captors.  If you have never seen any archival footage of the liberation work you might want to google it, the historical footage abounds on the internet and is easy to find.  Here is just one link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyGQGEgTkLI

Back to “Wild Bill” who got this nickname from the American soldiers since he had a mustache and looked like Wild Bill Hickok, the famous American folk hero who lived from 1837-1876 and who had a very distinctive mustache.  Also, his Polish name had five vowels and was unpronounceable by the Americans.  Wild Bill spoke several languages, including English, so when he was asked if he was okay with being called “Wild Bill” instead of his real name, he agreed.

Wild Bill worked tirelessly with the American soldiers to help the sick and dying receive care with dignity, often putting in 16-hour days.  Unlike his fellow prisoners he was not emaciated.  He stood strong and looked as healthy as the American soldiers who quickly questioned him, “Sir, how is it that you are so healthy, and your fellow prisoners are skeletons near death?”  His answer grabs my heart.

He said that after his entire family was killed, he had a choice.  He could forgive or he could hate and seek revenge. He said repeatedly to any soldiers who asked him how he was so healthy, I Chose Forgiveness and It Kept Me Alive!  He had endured the exact same starvation diet as others, yet he did not deteriorate into a weak skeleton.  I imagine this conversation with Wild Bill: 

Me:      Why did you choose forgiveness sir?

He:       Because anger and hate would eat me up inside, and because God loves all human beings, so how can I not love everyone?

Me:      How are you so healthy when you had a starvation diet for six years?

He:       A miracle, is the only way I can answer that question.

Me:      Did you ever want to just give up and die?

He:       Never.  If I did that, then the Nazis have triumphed over me.

Me:      What message do you have for us in 2024 sir?

He:       Love everyone and forgive quickly, lest it eat you alive!

So, there you have it!  Wild Bill’s story totally confirms what Victor Frankel said in “Man’s Search for Meaning” [Beacon Press, 2006] and which I referred to on page 74 in “The Merton Prayer:  An Exercise in Authenticity” [ACTA Press, 2022].   The prisoners who asked, “why has God allowed this to happen to me” often did not survive, whereas those who asked, “what does God wish for me to learn in this awful situation” more often did survive.

So, what will it be for me and for you?  Forgiveness or vengeance? May this day mark my constant connection with Wild Bill’s I Chose Forgiveness and It Kept Me Alive!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you. 

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://www.themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please use the contact tab and let me know!  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

How Could This Happen?

Two years ago, I spoke with an 80-year-old man who started crying on the phone with me. What he shared with me he had not ever told another human being.  When he was 10 years old he was raped by an adult whom he trusted. Not just once.  Repeatedly, several times each week.  Hundreds of times. It did not stop until he was 18 and left his home.

Was I surprised by his story?  Not at all.  Over 45% of the cases I handle in my law firm involve representing victims of childhood sex assault or trafficking.  As I listened, he repeated probably 10 times in a ten-minute phone call, “How Could This Happen?”

I ask you:  how do I respond to How Could This Happen?  I listen and when given an opening say softly, “I am so sorry you endured this evil.”  His unanswered question is the question we all should be asking, and we should NOT stop asking until we have the answer.

The simple and easy and inadequate answer is this: “[the rapist] said that if I ever tell anyone he will kill me and my parents and my siblings!”  The worst was yet to come.  When this sweet man, who had served a long career in our armed forces, was only 14 years old the rapist forced him to rape the rapist’s younger sister who was only 10 years old.  The rapist watched this happen, and then he proceeded to rape each of them himself, forcing them to watch. 

If you are ill at ease having read the above four paragraphs, then you have a soul and conscience which screams out How Could This Happen?  My office motto at the bottom of my letterhead says Striving for Justice in an Imperfect World which was created by me largely in response to this and similar cases I have handled.  The rapist was dead; he had never been arrested.  Statistics from my expert witnesses indicate that this rapist likely assaulted upwards of 300+ victims over his seven decades of life.  There could be no “legal justice” for this evildoer, at least none on earth. 

Will the rapist receive justice ever?  The classic Christian scenario has this rapist knocking on heaven’s door and being ushered into hell.  If you believe the New Testament, especially the red letter words of Jesus, then you must agree that eternal punishment is awaiting this rapist if he has never repented and accepted the forgiveness that is offered through Jesus.  When I preached a sermon on hell at my local church several people approached me with this question:  “Steven, you don’t really believe that an actual hell exists do you?”  To which I replied, “Yes, I cannot read and believe the New Testament without believing that eternal punishment exists.”  Will it be a furnace burning eternally with fire?  I do not know but I love this picture of hell:  long banquet tables filled with scrumptious food, residents in hell seated across from each other tied into their chairs eternally, with forks and spoons each three feet long strapped to their arms.  Got the picture?  They starve to death since they cannot get the food into their mouths and their evil selfish spirits do not allow them to see how easy it would be for each person to feed the person across the table they are facing! 

Read Matthew 25 and see how Jesus talks about “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment” for those who see hungry people and do nothing to feed them!  How Could This Happen?  Justice delayed, but eternal justice awaits unrepentant rapists, for sure!  My clients and I get to see many unrepentant rapists led out of the courtroom and into prison.  I often say to them words from Merton’s prayer, “The Lord was with you through your pain in the past and he will never leave you to face your future perils alone.”  How Could This Happen? Because evil exists and has existed since the garden of Eden.

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you. 

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please use the contact tab and let me know!  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

It is Right and Just!

In many churches around the world millions of Christians regularly hear this challenge,  “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” which is followed by “It is Right and Just.”  Every time I say those words I stumble over “just.”  Maybe because I spend my days fighting for “justice” for my law firm’s clients and I just don’t easily connect “justice” with our giving thanks to the Lord.

So, friend, chew on this with me and see where you come out.  Nobody, I suspect, will disagree with the adage that “it is right” that we creatures give thanks to the Lord our God.  We have incredible things to thank God for:  at the top of the list is God’s loving us so much he incarnated himself into our human form and died a criminals’ death so that we might have hope for eternal life.  (John 3:16) Yes, indeed, that’s worthy of our thanks! 

But “just” implies correctness, balance, health, morality, and/or right(eousness).  So, stay with me here, how is my saying “Thank You God” any of those characteristics?  Simply put, this is the question:  How is “Thank you God” just?  What the worship leader says next gives a clue, if not the total answer.  After I declare It is Right and Just I usually hear these words:  “It is truly right and just, our duty and salvation to give you thanks.” 

There it is!  It is Right and Just because it is our duty and salvation.  “Duty” is a word which figures greatly in my work as a trial lawyer.  I tell the jury that a defendant doctor “had a duty” to order blood work and a chest x-ray when his patient comes in having coughed up blood for three weeks!  The 34-year-old man died because his doctor had failed his duty.  And the jury of his peers smacked that negligent doctor with a “Just” verdict!  That makes total sense to me. 

But “salvation”?  Ah, yes indeed, when that jury returned its verdict, my client felt that she had received “salvation” and she thanked them (and me) profusely, without hesitation!   The widow (with her 18-month-old father-less son in her arms) could not even think about leaving that courtroom without giving thanks to the jurors as they walked past.

When I contemplate the blessings in my life, they are too numerous to count! For me it is a highlight in any worship service to be challenged to give thanks to the Lord our God.  And the confirmation of that challenge always stirs my soul:  It is Right and Just!  May your efforts to properly thank God be enhanced today by grabbing onto It is Right and Just.  To do less than constantly thank the Lord our God is flat out not right and not just!

God deserves our thanks for all he has done for us. Can I get a witness?

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