Better Than Mr. Rogers

A verse in 1 Corinthians says, “Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor” (10:24 ESV).

Can you imagine what that would look like played out in your neighborhood?  

We didn’t have to imagine.

We had Doug.

Doug was better than Mr. Rogers. He wasn’t a faraway TV star. He was our star. He always was looking out for the good of his neighbors…and that included us.

Then, on January 12th, just two sad weeks ago, Jesus called Doug home quite unexpectedly. He was only 67. Today, he has a new address, new neighbors…and a new, healthy heart (if he even needs that in Heaven).

So I’d like to share part of a tribute I wrote for his shocked and grieving family, our dear friends. I hope it gives you a glimpse into the life of a good neighbor.

We’ve a Neighbor Through the Woods

Sometimes a heartless winter gale spews ice across our woods, wreaking havoc with our graceful trees, snapping brittle power lines along our road. We shiver in the dark—no phone, no water—buried in ten quilts piled up to our eyelids. We wonder if the utility company is even aware of our plight.

But we’ve a neighbor through the woods.

It’s late at night and I’m alone, yawning. I keep the lights on as I struggle to fall asleep. Even the shows on TV are tired. Kenny’s driving, gone for days. Once again, the ghosts and goblins are dancing on my roof. I shudder and my heart pounds as I clutch the phone beneath my pillow.

Thankfully, we’ve a neighbor through the woods.

We’re rudely awakened by its unnerving and shrill screaming in the dead of night, a warning cry which disrupts the peaceful night. Our burglar alarm is blaring. Is someone breaking in? Is there a fire? Kenny grabs his trusty baseball bat. Whether we are home or whether we’re not…

We’ve a neighbor through the woods.

I rush into the kitchen, nearly late for a dentist appointment. The car is still running, ready to speed off to Bridgeton, and I need the check book. But something—a noise?—stops me in my hasty tracks. A sudden and frightening chill races down my spine. Why are the drawers and cupboards half-open? I peek into the living room and see jagged pieces of my French door frame scattered across the hardwood floor. Someone has broken into our safe and cozy home! And are they still here? Panicking, hardly able to breathe, I run.

We’ve a neighbor through the woods.

When the springtime sun is smiling, basking lazily in a sea of brilliant blue, the robins and chickadees call me outside to play. I smile too. On my back step, there’s a flat or two of lovely flowers just waiting to be planted along my sidewalk.

We’ve a neighbor through the woods.

Humming to myself, fancying myself a gourmet chef, I am concocting a new recipe for dinner. Company is on its way and I need to get this dish in the oven right now…and clumsily drop the last egg I need to finish it all up. Do I run to Anderson’s or Ternay’s and pay $5 for a dozen? Do I forget the last egg and hope for the best?

We’ve a neighbor through the woods.

I see Kenny backing his truck up the driveway, home from a tiresome day of deliveries. A half hour goes by before I hear him wiping his feet and sliding off his work books as he pushes through the back door.

We’ve a neighbor through the woods.

I don’t worry about my house when we go away for vacation.

I don’t have an operation, a serious illness, or a terrible loss without a card, a visit and a meal.

I don’t have disgusting trash cluttering the road in front of my house after the days the dump is open.

I don’t have to wonder who will send me the first Christmas card of the season. 

I don’t suffer death and bereavement alone.

I don’t celebrate joy and happy events alone.

I don’t have a birthday that I don’t have a sweet, unstamped card in my mailbox.

I don’t chase burglars by myself.

I don’t have to wonder what’s going on with an old classmate or what’s happening in our little community.

I don’t wonder who I can ask for a ride or a favor.

I don’t wrestle with who we can share our troubles with, who we can ask to pray for us.

I don’t feel afraid or isolated or forgotten.

We’ve a neighbor through the woods.

And he is a gentle, thoughtful, funny, friendly and sweet giant of a man who doesn’t know a stranger and would give anyone whatever he had.

It was always a beautiful day in OUR neighborhood, not because of Fred Rogers, but because Doug Paten lived through the woods.

So thankful we still have Alice.

We still have a selfless neighbor through the woods.

And now it’s our turn to intentionally be the same. We’ve some big shoes to fill…

But throughout the Bible, God commands us to love our neighbors, to deal honestly and uprightly with them, and to consider their needs above our own. If we’re truthful with ourselves, our hearts and heads know it’s right to be a good neighbor; we just need to do it. It is a decision we must make. We choose to invest ourselves in those God has placed around us. It can be difficult, messy, costly, exhausting—and very rewarding—to put others first. It takes being present in their lives and being willing to listen, love, encourage, and help. It’s the way Jesus lived here on earth, surrounded by people of all kinds, loving them, meeting their felt needs, offering them an eternal relationship with the Father. It’s the way He wants us to live now.

That kind of neighborly love and kindness is contagious and transforming. It could even change the world.

It changed our neighborhood.

Wouldn’t you like it to change yours?

You can be that selfless neighbor through the woods—even in the city!

—Eileen Hill

The Super Bowl and Paul

The 2020 Super Bowl opponents are now set. The first-seeded San Francisco 49ers have beaten the second-seeded Green Bay Packers for the NFC Championship, while the second-seeded Kansas City Chiefs beat the sixth-seeded Tennessee Titans for the AFC Championship.

These teams will meet in two weeks, at Rock Hard Stadium, in Miami Gardens, Florida, at Super Bowl 54, on February the 2nd.

With the NFL playoffs essentially over, but for one final game, it’s a good time to harken back to another playoff game—this one ten years ago, during the 2010 NFC Wild Card game, between the Seattle Seahawks and the Super Bowl-defending New Orleans Saints.

One play that occurred on this day forever marries one player, Marshawn Lynch, with his nickname: Beast Mode. That play is monumental for a number of reasons:

·    It has a nickname of its own (the Beast Quake).

·    It has its own Wikipedia page.

·    The resulting celebration at Qwest Field (now Century Link Field)—in Seattle, Washington—actually registered on a nearby seismograph.

·    Lynch broke nine tackles to get into the end zone.

·    The win that resulted from the play enabled the Seahawks to become the first team in NFL history with a losing record to win a playoff game and to dethrone a defending Super Bowl champion.

Wait! you say. What does this have to do with me? I’m struggling to walk this Christian walk. I don’t need to know about some NFL running back!

Watch the play, here, and I’ll get back with you. Have you seen it? Did you see what I saw?

I saw utter, absolute relentlessness. I saw a man who would let no one, no thing, get in his way as he struggled toward his goal—that of simply carrying an inflated one-pound leather ball 68 yards, over a wide white line drawn on a green field.

In that run, I saw an example of what our Christian walk ought to look like: one full of determination; one that would let no opponent get in the way; one that would throw off an opponent, if necessary, in order to accomplish that which he had set out to do.

As Christians, what have we set out to do? Oh, quite a few things. For example:

·    Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.

·    Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

·    Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God:

·     Did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but

·     Emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.

These are just a few goals that we have as Christians, according to Philippians, Chapter 2. In the following chapter, Paul talks about pressing on, as the running back had pressed on. He says:

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul, like Lynch, had a goal. In his case, it was the prize of the upward call of God.

Paul’s prize ought to be our prize, as well. We ought to be heading toward the upward call.

Our goal needs to be one that empties us of our selfish conceits and enables us to press on toward holiness. Our call enables us to fulfill the great commission and evangelize the lost.

It is the call of winning the prize of ultimately being with our Lord and Savior when once our goal is ultimately met in Him, when we shed every earthly encumbrance that might try and hold us back, even as we see Marshawn Lynch shedding would-be tacklers.

When Lynch completed his run, what did we see? We saw him surrounded by a cloud of witnesses—those who ran with him and those who had cheered him on. The writer of Hebrews says:

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

When you watch the Super Bowl, recall Lynch, recall his Beast Mode performance. With every run you watch, recall that with all the determination you may see in the runner, it’s only an example—a microcosm—of our walk with Jesus.

Our goal is to create a seismic shift in the world around us, as Lynch had done, and influence the world around us for the Gospel, for the team around us, and ultimately for our Mighty Team Captain who died for us to make this race, this personal Super Bowl run of ours, possible.

Run in such a way that lets no opponent get in the way. Fun full of determination, throwing off every opponent, pleasing your team captain at every turn.

—Kevin Hutchins

Psalm 46, Evil Is Present: Where is God?

I am so glad God led me recently to this precious gem found in the book of Psalms. During these days as our senior pastor Greg leads us through a study on the presence of evil and God, my thoughts are attentive to this theme.

Psalm 46 has a way of intercepting our location and God’s in real time while we face injustice or any form of evil. It also makes clear the invitation God has for His creation in the midst of such realities.

Where is God and, foremost, what is He up to?

God is present, and He promises to be our refuge and strength. Nothing can offer us protection and strength as God can. He is all-powerful and makes Himself available to us. And so even in the presence of evil, He will ultimately preserve us for His will.

We are given the river of His presence. The author of this chapter wants us to know that God’s presence is active, it is not stale. His presence has a movement, it can take us from point A to point B. And furthermore, it brings life in the midst of desert-like conditions. So evil can’t stop the movement of God. Never!

God is in our midst. And this is also emphasized with the phrase: “The Lord of Hosts is with us.” That means God is working in the midst of evil. Evil is real, but it does not have the last word.

The God of Jacob is our fortress. That means God has at least a witness—Jacob and his people. He has been personal in the past, and He will be personal to you today! 

So while God is present and active, He invites us to be still and to know Him. He wants to be known in a way that exalts Him above all else. This is good truth for me as my tendency is to want things now. I want to fix things quickly; I want answers on my time....but God invites me to wait and know Him in the waiting. Being still and knowing God exalted in each situation are deeply linked realities. Surely in the waiting He will reveal His presence and help.

It does not surprise me that Martin Luther, the reformer, composed in 1529 a powerful hymn based on this particular Psalm—and its message has reminded many generations that “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

—Diego Cuartas

Created to Draw Near

More than a blog, I want to present to you this week a resource that will refresh you concerning the way you relate to people and relate to God. Ed Welch, from the Christian Counseling Education Foundation (CCEF) has authored a book that can help us regain relational perspective. The book is also designed to be a parallel resource to the National Conference this year which will take place closer to our backyard—Hershey, PA! The conference sponsored by CCEF is a must attend, at least once in a lifetime, kind of event.  Click here to watch the book intro and to find out more about the National Conference.

—Diego Cuartas