Why on earth do you do this to your body? I got up early and was at the beach by 7:15 with my surfboard and wetsuit hoping for a good time of surfing. I took one look at my normal surfing spot and went back to my car and went to another spot where my friend has a house on the beach I can park at. 

 

Surf looked OK so I put on my wetsuit, boots and was out awaiting the first wave around 7:45. It was in the upper 50s, the sun was peeking in and out of the clouds and the water is somehow still only 59 degrees, which for us living in Florida is just plain cold.

 

There was only one other guy out about 100 yards away so there was no problem catching any wave I wanted. So I surfed for an hour and a half when I hear a very loud “Good morning” from Ted, my friend with the house. We surfed for a little bit and realized the waves were done for the morning and caught one in. Ted was only out for about 20 minutes but he doesn’t have boots so when he started walking across the sand he said, “I can’t feel my feet.” No surprise to me.

 

My friend has an outside shower with HOT water so I jumped under that, ran it into my wetsuit for about 5 minutes and felt like my body might start working again in regular movements instead of jerking around like an earthworm that has been unearthed. I pulled off my wetsuit, got in my car with the heater on full blast and got home in about 20 minutes. I ripped the board off the roof of my car, grabbed my wetsuit and put my stuff away as fast as I could and got inside.

 

Now that there was no car heater blowing on me so I started to shake again so I got in my own shower and ran the HOT water for about 10 minutes and almost felt normal. Jackie was doing her Zoom Bible study with the ladies and saw me and I could tell by her look I must be blue or something. I finally quit shaking after putting on jeans and a flannel shirt and by now it’s in the low 60s outside so it isn’t that cold.

 

So why do such crazy things at the age of 71? There’s only one reason: Fun. Tons of fun that has thrilled me for 57 years in spite of cold, hurting knees, back, shoulders and neck. I do this every time there are waves worth paddling out to ride on. Perhaps I’m nuts. But what a happy nut I am!

 

You know what I learned today surfing? A movie I saw many years ago named Chariots of Fire that told the story of Eric Liddel, an Olympic runner back in the early 1900s and there is one line in that movie that has influenced my life to this day. When asked why he runs so much he said, “When I run I feel God’s pleasure.”  When I surf I feel that same thing. And this morning God showed me a few things about surfing that blessed me.

Going right on a warm day

By the way, when I say, “God said to me,” or “God showed me,” what it really means is this is what I perceived as His thoughts to me this morning.

 

When you catch a wave you can turn your board left or you can turn it right. I surf with my right foot forward so when I turn left I’m facing the wave and I can see what’s going to probably happen to me in the next couple of seconds. But I turn my board as the wave allows because sometimes the waves in Florida give you an open way going left and at other times that way is closed by the wave breaking so you go the other way, away from the breaking part.  When I go right I’m at the point in life where having my back to the wave pretty much leaves me clueless about what is going to happen because I simply can’t crank my neck and head around to look over my shoulder anymore—pain wins sometimes. So while I’m paddling to catch the wave I look both ways and go the open way.

 

Going left of a warm day

Psalm 23 says, “God leads us on paths of righteousness.” Sometimes the path goes left and sometimes it goes right. Sometimes you can see what’s coming and at other times you are clueless but you know God is love and His ways are always leading us to better places so you go as He leads the way. And the way always leads us to Jesus. If it doesn’t, turn back and go the other way. You can do that surfing, too. I often take off going left, facing the wave and as I go along there are times when I outrun the wave and get off on the shoulder where things slow down so I simply plant my back foot and turn the board 180 degrees and head back to that part where the wave is breaking. The breaking part can end your ride quickly, but it’s the place where there is the most energy and you can generate more speed when you are near that part of the wave. So I’ll head back for a brief moment and then turn the board 180 degrees again and speed away.

 

Following God’s path is kind of like that, too. There are times when we take off and get really comfortable and one day realize we aren’t going like we once were. That’s when it’s time to bring the board around and get back to where the energy is flowing and get in there with it. That energy is the life we find in Christ when we sit down long enough to be still, to listen, to wait for His direction and encouragement through the Scriptures and then driving your foot down and making the 180-degree turn you need to make to get back to the place of power.

 

Thank God, that's not me!

If you surf enough waves sooner or later you are going to wipe out because every wave is different and there are multitudes of opportunities to fall off. Sometimes it's as simple as diving off, going under water and letting the board fly away from you, come up, pull it back by the leash and paddle back out. But sometimes you don’t have the chance to dive and you just go head over heels and if you can imagine getting your surfboard and jumping into the washing machine and turning it on and then getting thrashed all over the place you will have an idea of what a bad wipeout is like. I’ve gone around so many times that I’ve swam to the bottom thinking I was going up. There are times when the board has hit me in the head, broke a tooth off, went to the hospital to get 26 stitches to seal up where my friend’s board flew into me and hit my leg fin first. I’ve bounced off reefs, and I don’t know how many times man-of-war tentacles have wrapped around me and I have even been chased out of the water by 2 killer whales. Fun, tons of fun.

 

Here’s what’s relevant about that. There will be times when you feel like you are in that washing machine or you are being chased by killer whales and at the same time doing God’s will to the very best of your ability. What’s up with that?” you probably ask our loving Father in heaven. Simple, no one is exempt from the effect of what sin has done to our world. We all get to suffer. We all get to be misunderstood. We all get to be hurt by our best friend. We all get to be rejected. We all get to be unhappy. It’s life so get used to it, but at the same time give thanks to God because He is your loving Father in heaven and He does care about you and He does love, accept and forgive you and He does have a way of somehow making the biggest mess into a gourmet meal. Might not eat it today. Maybe not tomorrow, but our Lord Jesus has a good plan for each of us who call out to Him. He is an ever-present help in our time of need and that time will come.

 

So that was my day so far. I love my life and I love how God has decorated it with goodness and mercy following behind me, His Holy Spirit going in front of me and His grace abounding to Jackie and I every moment of every day. We live and have our being in Him. Hope you do, too.  

 

Play in the Gray

Right. Wrong. Black. White. True. False. All of those words represent two opposites. At least they used to. Nowadays words seem to mean whatever you want them to mean regardless (notice I didn’t say “irregardless”) of what the Dictionary tells us. How do you define "marriage?"

When you mix black and white together you get gray. Gray is a shade that isn’t black or white. It’s just a mix that changes the appearance of what you see. The absolute of black and white are lost when you mix them together. 

When absolutes are lost you are doomed to be lost wandering around in gray areas that don’t define reality as it is. For example, should a man and woman have sex with one another and they aren’t married, that used to be called “sin.” Today, it’s just “having fun”and it doesn’t really mean anything. Pornography was once thought of as exploiting women and degrading their worth but today it’s just another way to make money. To quote others, "Besides, what we called porn 20 years ago is on TV now so what does it matter? Times change so right and wrong has to change, too. Absolutes are a thing of the past." Tell that to gravity.

We are being bombarded by our country’s leaders with this idea that gray is where to play because there are no absolutes in gray and you can do whatever you think is right. As a side note, they also know that as long as they are in power and encourage you to do whatever feels true to you, they make all the money. Yes, they will pay you $15 an hour as long as it makes them a hundred times that much. And when it comes time to pay the bill for trillions of debt, you should learn Mandarin now and be prepared for a new lifestyle. Our leaders? They will pay someone off and continue to live in their mansions. If you disagree and are someone who believes in absolutes, like Christians, Moslems and such, you are likely to be ostracized, put down, deemed mentally challenged or just sick. 

I believe in absolutes. And, I believe, the rejection of absolutes is what is causing America to sink like a ship with a small hole below the waterline. It takes a while, but once the water comes above the deck, there’s no way to make a repair--the boat is going down. I've been in one that did that. We have the opportunity to patch the hole today and even tomorrow. But how long we have before the water floods over the deck and we go down--I don’t know. I would encourage everyone who may read this to buy a life jacket today.

I’ve read parts of the Quran, Buddhist teachings, Hindu teachings, Sikh teachings and all of them have some absolutes worth giving heed to. But the one Absolute that I have read a whole lot of times is the Bible and it’s the real deal. If you want to quit playing in the gray and find the correct way, ask Jesus to come into your life and read and absorb what He teaches in the New Testament. Those absolutes will give you life now and eternal life later on when you check out of earth time.

How do you patch a hole below the waterline? Not easily. Before the election that would see our political leaders being elected and booted out, Jackie and I prayed for God’s will to be done in our soon-coming future. Now that the future is here and the election is over, sort of, we still pray for God’s will to be done. It’s our hope that God will once again raise this nation up to be a blessing to all the others, to be a source of light. Today, that light is growing dimmer. The decline of Christianity in the U.S. is steady and frightening. When a nation turns its back on God...bad stuff happens. We can turn that around by praying, embracing the absolutes that Jesus taught and by sharing His light with others. Are you with us? I hope so.

Do You Mind?

 I didn’t do it, but I’m not sure what it was I didn’t do. I woke up this morning in that hazy twilight zone of having deep thoughts and wonderment.  When I was fully awake, I realized I couldn’t remember what I had thought and the implications of them. But here’s a bit of what did go racing through my mind that I recall, which in the opinion of my wife is kind of strange, but she loves me.

We humans are strange in how we arrive at conclusions. For example, our water is polluted and getting more polluted all the time, though we seem to be trying to clean it up. Our air, too, is quite bad. I will never forget the first time I flew into Los Angeles, coming down from way up in the crystal blue sky to a brownish orange sludge that was called “air.” It has gotten better but still we are making a mess of the air. Then we decide we need more concrete so we clear the forests and put in high rises that cast shadows on the bare ground and obstruct our view of the mountains and oceans.

We drink the water and get sick. We breathe the air and get sick. We clear the forests and there’s ugly all around us from their death. Then some genius accuses God for all this happening and wants to know what He’s going to do about it. Fortunately for us, God is very patient and very kind and simply points at the Cross where His son bled and died for OUR sin and asks, “What more do you want from me?” And of course we pull out our list and say, “I just want… .” And there’s your answer why the world is in the mess it’s in. As long as we "just want" our agenda to be done, things will just continue to grow worse.

Psalm 27:4  says this...

 

One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek:

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

To behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple.

That’s one thing to put on my “just want” list. When our “just want” list compliments the purpose of God, good things happen. What kind of things? How about peace?  Wouldn’t you like to have more of that? Then there’s also the joy of knowing that what I’m doing pleases God since He is the one who inspired king David to write down what he learned (often the hard way).  

When you meditate on the words of the Bible and allow them to run through your mind you will find that you become more mindful of the Lord’s presence, that God is with you. It is He who puts the Holy Spirit in us so that we can be led on paths of righteousness so that we can walk with the knowledge that God is with us. We will live our lives better because who wants to hurt the God who loves us so deeply and perfectly? Being “mindful” is something our most ancient Christian brothers and sisters pursued and something that should be on your to-do list today.

How about this for an example of having God with you. I volunteer for the Billy Graham Organization and I answer email questions. One told me, “I am having trouble with lust and I look at a little porn.” I told him that the porn was food for his lust and to try this: Next time you sit down to watch porn, ask Jesus to look at the pictures with you and ask Him how He likes them. Can you imagine? 

So why do we want to meditate on God? Why do we want to see His beauty? Why do we want to know He is always with us and loves us. Here’s some reasons from Isaiah 33 and an especially wonderful promise:

15  The one who lives righteously

and speaks rightly,

who refuses gain from extortion,

whose hand never takes a bribe,

who stops his ears from listening to murderous plots

and shuts his eyes to avoid endorsing evil

16  will dwell on the heights;

his refuge will be the rocky fortresses,

his food provided, his water assured.

17  Your eyes will see the King in His beauty;

you will see a vast land.

Do you see what I see in those verses? Do you love the promise in vs 17? Do you see that the “just want” list is far inferior than simply wanting God? Our Lord Jesus is seated in heaven on a heavenly throne that defies my ability to comprehend its beauty from my earthly perspective. But one day I will be in that “vast land” where the beauty of the Lord is the standard to which everything is created and exists, and in that beauty I will see with my own eyes the God who loves me right now and awaits my arrival and walks with me every step I take on the way home. I don’t want to spoil that by “just want” nonsense.

I can’t remember the other “deep” thoughts, but evidently they weren’t that important anyway.