Godliness

Outside St. James Church in Shere, England, you will find a metal plaque marking the site of the cell of Christine Carpenter, Anchoress of Shere 1329.

An anchoress was a person who would withdraw from common life to dedicate themselves to God and bind themselves to the church by living the rest of their earthly life within a small cell. Much like many anchorite abodes, Christine’s small cell was attached to the church and installed with a small opening through which she would receive food, and a squint window into the church that allowed her to participate in services.

As noted on the plaque, Christine’s life as an anchoress began in 1329. She explained to the Bishop of Winchester that she wished to be removed from the world’s distractions to lead a more pious life. This request was granted following queries into Christine’s moral qualities and chastity, and she was sealed into the cell in July of the same year. As she began her lifelong vow of seclusion, a burial service was read for she was considered dead to the sinful world, the cell being her symbolic tomb.

Despite her oaths, Christine broke out of the anchorage after almost three years and attempted to rejoin society. Having broken her holy vow, Christine was threatened with ex-communication. It is perhaps this threat that led Christine to return to seclusion and isolation. By October of 1332, she had called on the Pope to pardon her sin on the condition she return to her anchorage. This she did, and there she remained for the rest of her mortal life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It may sound attractive to seal ourselves away from worldly temptations. However, God calls his people to something much more difficult: Dying to the world while still living in it (Gal. 6:14). We are to be living saints (Phil. 4:21, Eph. 4:12), in the world with all its temptations and trials, so that we become testimonies to God’s grace and salvation.

Are you a good person? There’s an easy way to tell, according to the Internet at least. It’s based on what you do with a shopping cart when you are done with it. If you put it in the designated shopping cart collection area in the parking lot, you’re good. If you leave it to drift off into parking spots, you’re bad.

The test has been discussed on Reddit and Twitter. On Reddit, a user laid out a very detailed description of the theory that essentially claims:

The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society. Objectively, the correct action to take is to put the shopping cart where it’s supposed to go. It’s not illegal to abandon the cart, so you can do that without consequence. … Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you … or fine you … you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do.

Another said:

For a date you need to take them to a restaurant and do the waiter test & then later go to the store with them & do the shopping cart test.

Finally,

The only way to truly know a person’s character, is to secretly follow them to the grocery store and watch what they do with the cart when they’re done.

You can view the Reddit thread here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God also tests our character, but instead of the shopping cart test, God uses other measures to examine us: The test of love (1 Cor. 13), the test of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), the test of Christlikeness (Rom. 8:29), the stress test (1 Pet. 1:7), and others.

The book Hinds Feet on High Places is a parable, a modern allegory similar to Pilgrim’s Progress. But instead of dealing with the overall Christian journey, it focuses on a life of fear, anxiety, and self-loathing.

The main character is named Much-Afraid. Much-Afraid is constantly harassed by her family, the Fearings. They oppress and criticize her all the time. But Much-Afraid loves the Shepherd, who wishes to take her to the High Places, a good land in the far mountains. For her journey, the Shepherd gives her two companions; two sisters named Sorrow and Suffering.

There comes a moment in Much Afraid’s journey when she is tempted to give into Pride, to listen to his temptation, and abandon her journey. But she calls to the Chief Shepherd, who comes and rescues her. He gently rebukes her that she should not have let go of the hands of Sorrow and Suffering on her journey.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Those struggling with fear and anxiety can be encouraged that God is using their sorrow and suffering as part of their journey with Christ.

Bristlecone Pines are fascinating trees that grow in the western mountain regions of the United States. Sometimes as high as two or more miles above sea level, these evergreens may live for thousands of years. The older specimens often have only one thin layer of bark on their trunks. Considering the habitat of these trees, such as rocky areas where the soil is poor and precipitation is slight, it seems almost incredible that they should live so long or even survive at all.

The environmental "adversities," however, actually contribute to their longevity. Cells that are produced as a result of these perverse conditions are densely arranged, and many resin canals are formed within the plant. Wood that is so structured continues to live for an extremely long period of time. One researcher said, "Bristlecone Pines in richer conditions grow faster, but die earlier and soon decay." The harshness of their surroundings, then, is a vital factor in making them strong and sturdy.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Throughout the history of the church, harsh conditions have caused growth and flourishing. Persecution and hardship have caused the church to rise up and conquer. As you face your challenges, try to thank God that he is with you, and will never let you go. Trust him to make you flourish.

In his documentary titled Light On Earth, David Attenborough tells of an unbelievable experience of the S.S. Lima. On January 25, 1995, as this British Merchant vessel sailed the waters of the northwestern Indian Ocean, the seas beneath them began to glow.

On a clear moonless night, while 150 miles east of the Somalian coast, a whitish glow was observed on the horizon. And after fifteen minutes of steaming the ship was completely surrounded by a sea of milky white color with a fairly uniform luminescence. It appeared as though the ship was sailing over a field of snow or gliding over the clouds.

While stories of glowing seas have been a part of maritime folklore since the 1700’s, they have never been scientifically confirmed. But a group of scientists had an ingenious idea. Using a Defense Meteorological Satellite, Dr. Stephen Haddack and his team discovered a large luminescent area. Roughly the size of Connecticut (110 miles long), the phenomenon was identified in the exact area where the captain had reported his ship that night. Marine biologists discovered that the glowing sea was caused by massive swarms of bioluminescent bacteria feeding on large populations of algae.

Imagine that for a moment. Bacteria are microscopic. But when they congregate together, these tiny creatures, that cannot even be seen by the naked eye, can suddenly radiate their light 600 miles into orbit.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There is no place our light cannot reach if together we will let it shine before a searching humanity.

Nancy Crampton-Brophy, self-published romance novelist, had been married to Daniel Brophy, culinary chef, for more than 25 years. When her husband was killed in a shooting, it shattered their local community. But in a surprising twist, police arrested her for the murder.

The arrest of Nancy Crampton-Brophy for her husband’s murder sparked a renewed scrutiny of her previous works of fiction, many of which had storylines revolving around spousal murder.

One previous essay, published on the blog “See Jane Publish” but since been taken down, was called “How to Murder Your Husband.” And in a different post on the same blog, Crampton-Brophy wrote:

My husband and I are both on our second (and final—trust me!) marriage. We vowed, prior to saying ‘I do,’ that we would not end in divorce. We did not, I should note, rule out a tragic drive-by shooting or a suspicious accident.

Local law enforcement has been especially tight-lipped about the potential motive for the killing, saying they don’t want to jeopardize an ongoing investigation.

“It’s a big shock. It’s a big shock,” Daniel Brophy’s mother, Karen Brophy, said of her daughter-in-law’s arrest. “But we’re not making any statements.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Our thoughts and words are often precursors to action. If we want to live righteously, we must think, speak, and write with righteousness in mind.

In his blog, Randy Alcorn discusses why God allows suffering in the lives of his people:

Mountain climbers could save time and energy if they reached the summit in a helicopter, but their ultimate purpose is conquest, not efficiency. Sure, they want to reach a goal, but they desire to do it by testing and deepening their character, discipline, and resolve.

God could create scientists, mathematicians, athletes, and musi­cians. He doesn’t. He creates children who take on those roles over a long process. God doesn’t make us fully Christlike the moment we’re born again. He conforms us to the image of Christ gradually: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

In our spiritual lives, as in our professional lives, and in sports and hobbies, we improve and excel by handling failure and learning from it. Only in cultivating discipline, endurance, and patience do we find satisfaction and reward. And those qualities are most devel­oped through some form of suffering.

In their book, The Way Back, Phil Cooke and Jonathan Bock ask significant questions:

Why did the Early Church succeed where we are failing? How did they transform the Western world in such a relatively short time? They did it because they did things that baffled the Romans. The Early Church didn't picket, they didn't boycott, and they didn't gripe about what was going on in their culture. They just did things that astonished the Romans. They took in their abandoned babies. They helped their sick and wounded. They restored dignity to the slaves. They were willing to die for what they believed. After a while, their actions so softened the hearts of the Romans that they wanted to know more about who these Christians were and who was the God they represented.

Without confrontation, protest, or debate, love did its work.

Milton Lichtman (also known as Jan Leighton) died at the age of eighty-seven. For over 30 years Lichtman's primary claim to fame was appearing in commercials as a famous historical figure. He lit a cigar as Fidel Castro in a commercial for lighters, sold cars as Albert Einstein for a Southern California car dealership, promoted a Minnesota savings bank as Abraham Lincoln, and touted an Arizona department store as Robert E. Lee. For one bank commercial he portrayed four different historical figures all complaining about other banks that charged for checks. He pitched cereal as Alexander Hamilton, beer as Johann Sebastian Bach, early mobile phones as Dracula, and cough syrup as Frankenstein. Among others, Babe Ruth, Gandhi, Mozart, Sherlock Holmes, Ebenezer Scrooge, John Wayne, Thomas Jefferson, and even Margaret Thatcher were in his repertoire.

Asked once how he was doing, he replied, "I'm alive and well and living in someone else's face." Guinness Book of World Records credited him as the actor who had played the most roles and had the most disguises—1,200 on TV and 1,800 more on radio. In May 1989, New York magazine published a feature story on him, calling him the "Man of a Thousand Faces."

By the end of his career, Lichtman had reportedly professionally portrayed 3,372 historic notables. The New York Times called him the "Actor Who Played Everyone." No wonder he said, "Heaven for me is to lie in bed stark naked with no costume—living in my own face and not someone else's—and luxuriate in my own skin."

Possible Preaching Angles: Identity; Identity in Christ; Self-image; Calling—Are you hiding behind a role? Are you living in your own skin? Or are you wearing a mask and pretending to be someone you are not?

There are heads growing on Tony Dighera's farm, and they're not made of lettuce. They're called "pumpkinsteins," and they look a lot like the Frankenstein creature that actor Boris Karloff made famous more than 80 years ago.

"It's so new, and it's so unique that demand has been off the charts," Dighera said. "A lot of people thought I was nuts. When I first started doing this I think every farmer in the world looked at me like I was a complete lunatic."

Dighera carefully builds a strong mold that encases the pumpkin yet permits air to reach the growing gourd inside. The pumpkin variety has to be just right. They can't be too big or they'll burst from the molds. Too small and the pumpkins won't fill the molds. Dighera still recalls the first time they squeezed that pumpkin head into the mold and it worked. Out came a re-formed (or should we say "de-formed") pumpkin that looked like Frankenstein's head.

Dighera doesn't know whether he has a thriving pumpkinstein until he removes the nuts and bolts from the mold and successfully removes the pumpkin. But don't expect pumpkinsteins to boot jack-o'-lanterns off the porch completely. They're not cheap. It costs 100 bucks to squeeze those pumpkins into a mold and reshape them into a monster.

Possible Preach Angles: Conformity; Renewing the Mind; Worldliness—What is molding your life? Don't let the world press you into its mold. The world constantly pressures the believer to conform to its image.

In 1927, the famous English poet and essayist T.S. Eliot became a Christian and was baptized and confirmed. Prior to his conversion, Eliot belonged to London's Bloomsbury Group, a small, informal association of artists and intellectuals who lived and worked in the Bloomsbury area of central London. But when news of Eliot's conversion hit the news, the Bloomsbury Group responded with shock and even disgust. The writer Virginia Woolf, the de facto leader of the group, penned the following letter to one of her peers:

I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become a [believer] in God and immortality, and he goes to church. I was shocked. A corpse would seem more credible than he is. I mean, there's something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.

Nicholas Kristof, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times wrote a column entitled, "A Little Respect for Dr. Foster." Kristof makes clear that he isn't an evangelical Christian yet he says, "But I've been truly awed by those I've seen in so many remote places, combating illiteracy and warlords, famine and disease, humbly struggling to do the Lord's work as they see it … " He focuses on "Dr. Stephen Foster, 65, a white-haired missionary surgeon who has lived in Angola for 37 years—much of that in a period when the Angolan regime was Marxist and hostile to Christians."

"We were granted visas," [Foster] said, "by the very people who would tell us publicly, 'your churches are going to disappear in 20 years,' but privately, 'you are the only ones we know willing to serve in the midst of the fire.'"

Kristof writes, "One son contracted polio; a daughter survived cerebral malaria; and the family nearly starved when the area was besieged during war and Dr. Foster insisted on sharing the family rations with 100 famished villagers."

Kristof concludes: "The next time you hear someone at a cocktail party mock evangelicals, think of Dr. Foster and those like him. These are folks who don't so much proclaim the gospel as live it. They deserve better." (Although there's probably much more proclaiming than Kristof realizes. Dr. Foster's website carries the banner: Hope for Angola through healthcare, agriculture, education, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.)

If you are willingly submitting to God, you do it right away and without delay. You don't say, "I'll start obeying God tomorrow." Delay is just one of many ways we seek to retain our autonomy and self-sovereignty. Here's how delay operates in our sex lives:

• You're flirting with a woman at work and it has become a bit sexual. You know you shouldn't be doing it, but you sit down with her again in the lunch room and tell yourself that you'll cut it off tomorrow.
• You're heart is pounding as you're surfing toward that porn site, hoping your wife doesn't wake up. You know you have no business being there, but to ease your guilt you tell yourself this is the last time.
• You're seventeen and you're in the local park at night with your girlfriend …. [You start to get involved sexually with your girlfriend.] You know that what you're doing is wrong for you and for her, but you couldn't resist one more time. You tell yourself you'll break it off with her in the next few days.
• You're living with a woman who is not your wife and you've recently committed yourself to Christ. You know you should not be sleeping with your girlfriend, but you tell yourself it will be such a hassle to separate and find separate apartments. You'll deal with it, but you can't handle it right now.
• You know you've gotten yourself hooked on a series you have no business watching. It leaves you thinking in ways that are not pure, but you tell yourself that you'll finish out the season and not watch the new season in the fall.

[When you delay you're response to God] you've eased your conscience when it actually needs to be troubled. Delay is really just disobedience in a tuxedo.

After living as a quadriplegic for 45 years, Joni Eareckson Tada reflected on the diving accident that changed her life. As a 14-year-old, Joni had embraced Jesus as her savior, but in her words she had "confused the abundant Christian life with the great American dream." Joni said:

I was a Christian and would lose weight, get good grades, get voted captain of the hockey team, go to college, marry a wonderful man who made $250,000 a year, and we'd have 2.5 children. It was me focused: What can God do for me? I almost thought that I had done God a great big favor by accepting Jesus …. [And my boyfriend and I] were doing some things together that we wrong.

In April 1967, I came home from a sordid Friday night date … and cried, "Oh God … I'm staining your reputation by saying I'm a Christian, yet doing one thing Friday night and another Sunday morning. I'm a hypocrite …. I want you to change my life … Please do something in my life that will jerk it right side up because I'm making a mess of the Christian faith in my life and I don't want that. I want to glorify you." Then I had the diving accident about three months later.

Immediately after the accident, Joni told God, "You'll never be trusted with another of my prayers." But after struggling with anguish and anger Joni said, "I prayed one short prayer that changed my life: 'Oh God, if I can't die, show me how to live.' That was probably the most powerful prayer I had ever prayed."

It's easy to blame others (and thus justify ourselves) for our disobedience. But in the following quote, Thomas Merton identifies the key reason why we fail to experience the freedom and joy Christ offers believers:

It is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily; you yourself do not know what you want. Rather than admit this [and ask for God's help], you pretend that someone else is keeping you from exercising your liberty. Who is this? It is you yourself.

In Ephesians 6:14-18, Paul writes:

Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Sadly, there are a lot of Christians who wish Paul had written the following words instead:

Lay back and relax, then, with the belt of evasion buckled loosely around your waist, with the breastplate of defensiveness in place, and with your feet fitted with the pluralism that offends no one. In addition to all this, take up the shield of grudges, with which you can hold on tightly to hurts and slights. Take the helmet of entitlement and the bludgeon of the flesh, which is the word of anger. And air what's been done to you on all occasions, with all kinds of criticisms and complaints.

John and Mary Ellen Patterson had four children. Two of the children, John Jr. and Laura, were perfectly healthy. The other two children, Elizabeth and Will were born with a genetic disorder known as cystinosis, which often leads to loss of kidney function. At 16, Elizabeth suffered kidney failure and underwent a successful transplant from an anonymous, deceased donor. (Her father, John, had wanted to donate a kidney, but testing had ruled him out.)

A short time later, John died suddenly from a massive heart attack. John Jr., 15 at the time, felt a new responsibility take shape in his life. As he watched Will go through dialysis—and having seen the great struggle his sister went through—John thought to himself, If I can change this in any way possible, I will.

When John Jr. turned 18, his opportunity came. He was tested to see if he was a transplant match for his brother Will, and he was. John Jr. told his mother at the time, "I watched you take care of Elizabeth and Will my whole life, and I always wanted to do something, and now's my chance."

The surgery was a success. Will earned a 4.0 grade point average for his second semester, despite having to play catch-up the whole year. He spends his days engaged in care-free fun with his friends. "Let's call it what it is," Mary Ellen says of John Jr.'s decision. "It was a huge sacrifice that gave his brother his life back. And I think John's life will be better because of the gift he gave."