Psalm 119:68 Doing Good

For some of the people I've met in the prison chapel, transformation seems nearly impossible.

Janie confessed one day that until the first time she went to prison, she had never in her young life been sure she would get to eat three meals in any one day and have a bed to sleep on at night. Born into the make-do culture of generational poverty, the only “meals” she’d ever known consisted of whatever food could be scratched together. Sleep happened wherever she happened to be when the time came. To her, the proverbial “three hots and a cot” of prison life is a luxury.

In prison she has found her niche. She's learned the institutional rules - both the official rules and the unwritten ones - and she knows how to get through her days without too many problems. She even has a circle of friends to make her life a little brighter.

Her outlook turns dismal whenever she finishes a prison sentence and is released back out onto the streets. On her best days she has difficulty seeing beyond the needs of the moment. Being out in the world only worsens her reasoning capabilities. Life on the streets offers too many choices. Before long, she shifts back into a poverty-level approach to life, crosses the wrong lines, and finds herself back inside the only place where she feels comfortable.  (Breaking the Link from Poverty to Prison, Christian Standard, December 2014)

Janie's grew up in the poverty class of America, where the "hidden rules" of every day life are different than the way most of us approach our days.

For the millions entrenched in generational poverty, "good" is a moving target. Survival trumps goodness in the real world where the only absolute virtue is making it though yet another day. Bringing your family and friends along with you might also be important, but when suffering and affliction arrive like a cyclone, personal survival wins out for many.

When people who have lost any objective sense of goodness land in prison, they'll grasp onto anything to survive. It might even be church and faith.

Teaching or counseling them can be frustrating. Basic truths fall on ears that can't even comprehend ideas like sacrificial love or humble obedience.

The only way to break through is to introduce them to God. As they come to know the heart of God and the heart of Jesus, they begin to understand.

God is good. His goodness is like nothing they've ever experienced. In fact, His goodness is so contrary to everything they've come to accept as truth, they're forced to make a choice: run from Him or run to Him. Retreat or change.

You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees. 

Psalm 119:68

That's why we teach them the Word and about how it applies in concrete ways to daily life decisions. That's what the Bible is for. Those decrees, laws, and principles help us understand the heart of God. Without the guidance of the scriptures, people like Janie are doomed to fall back into their old ways of thinking.

If you're starting to feel pity or compassion for these poor folks trapped in their warped way of life, that's great. Now look in the mirror.

Middle class people and wealthy people are just as much the victims of the society in which they live. Their sense of goodness is just as warped, but by a different set of "hidden rules". They've lived by those rules for so long, some start to equate there middle and upper class ways with godliness and faith.

It's just as hard to shake them out of their ingrained life habits as it is to change the mindset of a person in poverty.

Goodness is not found in any particular lifestyle or culture. Goodness is found in God. He is good and He does what is good. He's willing to teach you if you're willing to be taught.

Psalm 119:67 Learning Curve

I've heard it over and over again in the prison chapel.

"Getting sent to prison is the best thing that ever happened to me."

Most people who have never been inside a prison would consider that statement absurd. Surely no one would actually say such a thing.

Most of the people inside prison would agree. They hear one of their fellow inmates say this and they just shake their heads. Absurd.

But for some, it's true.

They were on a freeway to destruction. The road to perdition is paved with the freedom to follow your worst inclinations.

Prison is where that road ends. The highway patrol has chased you all over the backwoods of your life and finally pulled you over in a dark alley. There's no more freedom, nowhere else to go. Except rock bottom.

They've been brought low. They been humbled. Everything they've been relying on for life has failed them.

And they're ready to turn to God.

For many, it's a return to God. Every time I ask the question in the prison chapel, the majority raise their hands and say Yes, they went to church when they were kids. Someone, a parent, an aunt, a neighbor, a friend, invited them to church and introduced them to an ordinary volunteer Sunday School teacher who planted seeds of faith in their hearts.

And now, when they've wandered from their faith and hit bottom, those seeds sprout.

"Getting sent to prison is the best thing that ever happened to me."

They turn back to God, they praise Him, and they glory in the very idea of grace and forgiveness. Their hearts leap with the joy of promised transformation.

They're ready to listen, to learn.

I tell them, you're right. This is the best thing that ever happened to you. But it won't last.

If they don't grab hold of that joy and combine it with the training of spiritual disciplines, it won't last.

Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.

Psalm 119:67

Affliction can be the beginning of a new life, the trigger that prompts transformation, the turning point in the journey.

But only though the discipline of the Word will that transformation find its true, sustainable form. And only by talking to God about the new road you're on will the traveler maintain focus on Him.

Suffering alone will either crush a person or motivate them. Suffering + God's Word + Relationship with the Lord will transform them.

And it will be good.

When God says it's time to quit

About six weeks from now my wife Karen and I will make our last Monday evening trip to the women's prison in Vandalia.

When that day comes, not only will our involvement in that ministry come to an end, the Christian Campus House's involvement in the prison ministry will also end.

The time has come when God has said it's time to quit.

Date Night at Our Happy Place

On a Wednesday evening in the summer of 2004, Roy Weece tapped me on the shoulder after the mid-week gathering at the Christian Campus House.

"I need you to do something for me," he said. "I need you get involved in the prison ministry. We need someone who isn't a student, someone who will be around for a while."

The prison ministry was important to Roy. When the Mizzou Christian Campus House opened in the Fall of 1968, it was one of the ministries he set up as an integral component of training college students to serve the Lord.

My application to become a Volunteer in Corrections flew through the Missouri Department of Corrections bureaucracy at a pace that would never happen today. In less than a month I entered the prison for the first of what would be over 14 years of Mondays.

Four years later, with Roy gone and most of the other VICs having either moved on to other things or severely reduced their participation, I found myself all too frequently making the trip alone. That's when my wife Karen, who had frequently gone with Roy to the prison in the early 80's when she worked in the CCH office, went through the process to become a VIC. It took her seven months. That long and arduous certification process would contribute to a sharp decrease in the ability of CCH students to be involved.

For the past ten years we've traveled to Vandalia by ourselves the majority of those Monday evenings.  We'd leave as soon as I got off work and then stop for supper in Mexico. We called it "date night."

If you want to strengthen the bond between you and your spouse, I highly recommend becoming involved together in some sort of ministry, especially one that stretches both of you beyond the edges of your comfort zone. The necessities of working together, planning together, and thinking on our feet together have forged us into a cohesive team. The long drives there and back provided opportunity for many great conversations.

And together we built relationships with the women in the prison chapel. Some of them became (and remain) good friends. Some inspired us, like Carlene Borden, pictured above. They all challenged us to embrace grace and practice the love of Christ.

Karen has startled them many times by cheerfully describing that prison chapel as "our happy place."

Out Date 

Among the prisoners, the "out date" is what their all counting the days toward. One of their most common prayers is for an early out date.

Now, we're looking ahead to our out date, the last Monday in June.

We would prefer for there to be no out date. We'd love to continue on forever. I fought back tears when I called the prison chaplain to discuss a timetable for ending this ministry.

The truth is, the prison ministry no longer matches the realities of our life. We're not as young or as healthy as we once were.

If all we had to do was go to a prison here in Columbia and put in an hour with the ladies in the chapel, then arriving home after a five minute drive --  we could continue on a lot longer. There would be no long drive home past our bedtime. There would be no more exhaustion that lasts through Tuesday and sometimes beyond.

And so we can no longer take the lead in this prison ministry. We've missed way too many Mondays because we were unable to physically make it, and there was no one else to take our place.

We've had others who have helped us. Dan Gibbins' energetic love for the Lord filled the women in the chapel with joy. They loved Steve Henness, who led worship and played his own songs for them. Jeff Loftin gave them a walking, talking example of a species many of them had rarely encountered: a quiet, gentle, and genuine Christian man. When Dennis Messimer preached, they sat enraptured by his stories of places and experiences they never knew a Christian could go and do. They loved hearing Lance Tamerius preach, feeling like he was speaking to each of them personally.

But each of those VICs (Volunteers in Correction) had jobs, families, and other ministries that limited their availability for the prison ministry. As much as they contributed, it was never and could never be enough to take over the role of being the ones who could commit to always making Monday at prison their number one priority. And now we can't be the ones to do that either.

The prison ministry also no longer matches up to the missional priorities of the leadership of Christian Campus House. Lance and i discussed the future of prison ministry over lunch one day, back in March. A few days later I received this note from him in an e-mail:

After talking and praying with staff, I do not think the prison ministry is something we can invest more time in. I hate saying that but in relation to CCH, what I am paid to do and the number of students affected, I cannot justify spending such an enormous amount of time on something that relates to the CCH mission so little.

I have to agree with him. The mission of CCH is - and always has been -  ministry to the students. Because of increasing restrictions and complications piled on by the Missouri Department of Corrections, the number of students participating in the prison ministry has been dwindling.

With so many other things going on, it doesn't make sense to have one or more of the paid staff members assigned to devote every Monday evening to to what has become a peripheral part of the ministry.

I wish it were not so, but it is what it is.

God has made it clear to all of us that it's time to quite.

Missio Dei.

It is, after all, God's ministry, not ours.

This was never Roy's ministry. It wasn't the Christian Campus House's prison ministry. The ministry doesn't belong to Karen or to me or to any of the other volunteers who have participated over the years. Dan and Steve, Laura, Aaron, and Jeff. Jim and Jud and Corey and others.

It's God's ministry. All any of us have done is to say Yes when he invited us to join Him.

Yes to serving the people God has put in our path. Yes to the divine appointments and misisonal opportunities He sends our way.

And now, we say Yes when God says it's time to quit. He's made it abundantly clear to Karen and I over the past several months, to the point where the message has become almost deafening.

However, as Roy was fond of saying, there's not one word in all of scripture about anyone ever retiring from ministry.

There will be something else ahead for us. We have no idea what it will be. Throughout our 40 years following God side by side, Karen and I have never really had a clue what God was going to ask us to do next.

But there has always been a next thing. We're praying and we're keeping our eyes open for the next assignment.

There have been many tears in our eyes as God has made this decision clear to us. And there will be more to come: more tears of compassion and more adventures.

But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next. (Frederick Buechner, A Crazy, Holy Grace)

Psalm 119:65-66 Good Training for Good Judgment

A young man grew up learning about the Bible and about faith in God. When he was twelve he surrendered to the Lord and was baptized. But during his teen years he drifted away from faith and from the church.

Now, in his thirties, he and his wife have returned to church and are growing rapidly in their faith.

He texted me the other day, asking a question about a scripture passage he was reading. They generally work hard to try to understand difficult verses, but when they can't quite put it all together, they've learned to ask questions from people who have been studying longer than they have.

In the midst of our conversation, he mentioned to me that a week or so earlier a random stranger had approached him at the store and asked him a question about the nature of God.

As we talked about this experience, I assured him he had responded well and gave him some suggestions for future situations.

I also assured Him there would likely be similar encounters in the future. It's clear to me that God recognizes his faith and knowledge are developing to the point where he's ready to handle opportunities to stretch his faith in a missional way.

I went away from the conversation overjoyed, knowing God is actively working to teach this young man wisdom.

The standard definitions for wisdom include the idea of knowledge, instructed and challenged by experience, resulting in good judgment and discretion. Those are the very things David talks about in these verses:

Do good to your servant according to your word, LORD.Teach me knowledge and good judgment, for I trust your commands.

Psalm 119:65-66

Wisdom comes from learning God's Word and trusting His commands to be both relevant to daily life and reliable for guidance in the good life.

Devoting himself to increasing his knowledge of the scriptures is vital to my young friend's growth. But merely storing up facts and meditating on the ways of the Lord are not enough to produce wisdom.

He'll also need to rely on God's good will in assisting his good efforts. The Lord's divine appointments can be challenging, even frightening at times. But there's no better training ground for wisdom.

If only we trust Him.

Psalm 119:65-72 Teth

Do good to your servant according to your word, LORD.
Teach me knowledge and good judgment, for I trust your commands.
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.
You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees.
Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep your precepts with all my heart.
Their hearts are callous and unfeeling, but I delight in your law.
It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.
The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.

Psalm 119:65-72

The acrostic nature of the Psalm presents a paradox in this stanza.

David, constrained by his own poetic scheme to begin each verse with the Hebrew teth, chooses to begin many of the verses with tub or towb, meaning good or beautiful.

65 Good you did to your servant according to your word, Lord

66 Goodness of discretion and knowledge teach me, for I trust your commands.

67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.

68 Good you are, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees.

69 Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep your precepts with all my heart.

70 Their hearts are callous and unfeeling, but I delight in your law.

71 Good for me that I was afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.

72 Good to me is the law from your mouth, more precious than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.

The paradox is in the words that come between all those good feelings and good actions and good results. This stanza is not about how everything is good and great, all sunshine and rainbows for people of faith.

No, David's topic here is affliction. The kind of suffering that comes from living in a world full of people who are decidedly not good, the kind of people who treat believers badly.

And David saw that it was good.

Probably not at first. It likely took  a lifetime of affliction to learn to see it as good. I turned 61 years old this year and I've only really started embracing the goodness of suffering over the past decade or so.

The ability to see affliction the way God sees it -- that only comes through a lifetime of trusting His commands even when they seem to be failing you. It grows out of coming back from going astray, over and over again. Perspective comes from letting God soften your heart in the hardest of ways.

But there are no happy endings, because if things are happy they have not ended. Kirby died of cancer in 2008 when she was seventy-six. I survive into my eighties, writing, and oddly cheerful, although disabled and largely alone. There is only one road.

Donald Hall, Essays After Eighty

We all travel the same road, and it is rocky road. But we walk it together and we walk it with God.

And it is good.

Psalm 119:64 The Earth is Filled With Your Love

The earth is filled with your love, Lord; teach me your decrees.

Psalm 119:64

Is that true? The earth is filled with the Lord's love?

If so, then on any given day each of us should be able to list all the different ways we saw God's love.

Were you paying attention enough to do that? Was I?

At 6:00 this morning the alarm on my phone played the first low bars of Off the Ground, by The Record Company. I touched the button to silence the music and, on this morning (I'm writing this in mid-January), immediately opened the weather app.

What I saw did not energize me to roll out from under the blankets and joyfully join the day. Three degrees below zero.

And yet God, in His love, had given me another day of life. He had also granted my wife another day, evidenced by the wifely noises I heard in the house.

This is the day the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24

During the drive to work through the frigid landscape I saw God's love for His creation. The faces of my fellow travelers all showed the same shiver-shocked expression. We were all traveling through the icy evidence that God is still putting the seasons through their paces, one after the other. And unlike the previous winter, this season was providing an extended deep freeze to deliver death's verdict on the allergy-producers around us.

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Genesis 8:22

My day at work was colored with stress and unexpected distractions, more so than usual. It was also colored by an opportunity to warmly greet a new employee and offer patient assistance to a confused co-worker. God chose to fill my world with love by using me as the conduit of that love.

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. I John 4:12

God also dumped a cloud full of love on my head by sending a couple of links my way on the internet highway, first a tweet and then an e-mail bearing words to encourage and challenge me as a writer.

...for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Philippians 2:13

God's love indeed fills the earth. To see it you only need to open your eyes.

It also helps to open your eyes to read and learn and know His decrees. Those teachings were given so we wouldn't have to wonder what message God was sending through His daily acts of love. He enlightens His scriptures through His acts of love, and He provides depth and breadth to His actions through His revealed Word.

Teach me, Lord, to see the many ways you fill my days with your presence and your love.