Chris Howlett

Pasta, Forgiveness, and Second Chances

“I believe in the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of ignorance.” – Adlai E. Stevenson

Three American college students studying in Italy decided to do their own cooking one day. They purchased pasta from the local market, took it home, and commenced cooking. I’m not sure how long the young women had been in Italy, but it couldn’t have been long because they'd obviously never witnessed the proper pasta process. In their attempt at culinary excellence, they prepared the pasta sans water.

A fire ensued and spread, damaging the kitchen before being dowsed. The Italian newspaper, La Nazione, published a story about the students’ misadventure and, of course, most of the online comments were of the negative variety.

However, the story attracted the attention of restauranteur Fabio Picchi, who offered the students a four-hour cooking lesson that concluded with lunch with his chefs at his restaurant in Florence.

Aren’t you glad your most embarrassing foibles weren’t published in the paper? Even if they were, we can look to redemption through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who loves us even when others find us repulsive. Jesus is always ready to take us by the hand and show us a better way.

Virtue Signaling in Light of Lent

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us.” – C.S. Lewis

Virtue signaling is a thing. It’s a major form of communication on social media, especially Twitter. In our age of high anxiety, where every action and statement is intensely scrutinized by the political correctness police, virtue signaling has become a way of indicating that one is in the “high moral ground camp.” Most virtue signaling is empty. It’s just signaling. The virtue signaler tries to demonstrate they’re on the good side of the political or social debate and that their opponents are bad and ought to be outcast. They’ll take no substantive action to right a wrong or bring healing and hope to the world, other than their signaling, “Look at me! I’m one of the good guys!”

Ash Wednesday brings us back to earth. It can help me see that I’m not one of the good guys. I’m broken like the rest of humanity. My brokenness may express itself in ways that differ from your brokenness, but we’re all broken. We’re like Humpty Dumpty. We’ve fallen and we can’t get up.

Lent, this season of self-examination, is a good time to reflect on the futility of our own efforts to make ourselves appear good. We want to be good so that we can be worthy of God’s love. It doesn’t work that way. We’re not good. We don’t have to be good for God to love us. Like C.S. Lewis said, God can make us good, he can transform us, not based on anything good in us, but based on the goodness of his love.

Jesus came into the world, not to condemn the world, like the Twitter virtue signalers. Instead, Jesus came to save the world by taking the concrete actions of love and sacrifice on behalf of you and me. To receive his love is to admit that I’m not virtuous, but desperately in need of his grace. This Lenten season, reflect on how you need the grace of God and place your life into the loving embrace of Jesus.

A Solid Foundation?

“Without a solid foundation, you’ll have trouble creating anything of value.” – Erika Oppenheimer

The Millennium Tower in San Francisco is the tallest residential building in San Francisco. The luxury condominium high-rise was opened in 2009 to residents. It’s a 58-story, 645-foot-tall skyscraper. And, it’s leaning. Not only is it leaning, it’s sinking. Engineers determined in 2016 the building had sunk by sixteen inches and was leaning two inches at the base and six inches at the top of the tower. The problem is the foundation. The concrete slab foundation is built on top of 60-90-foot deep pilings embedded in dense sand. Some buildings in the area use a similar system, while other developers chose to place their pilings 200-feet-deep into bedrock. The Millennium Tower developer blames the problem on a building project next door, but the sinking had begun well before that project was started. Tenants and the city of San Francisco are suing the developers. It’s a mess and it’s going to be a bigger mess in the future because the cost to fix the problem may very well be more than the liability insurance held by the owners of the building.

Jesus said, “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash” (Matt. 7:24-27 NLT). Jesus wants us to prosper and enjoy a fulfilling life and he knows we can have that life if we build it on the rock of his truth rather than the shifting sands of cultural norms and expectations. Trust in his teaching as the bedrock on which you must build your life and you’ll never look back with regret.

Make It a Great Week,

Pastor Chris

Epiphany-inspired New Year's Resolution

Epiphany celebrates the visitation of the Magi to Jesus in Bethlehem. January 6 has been set aside for this commemoration for over 1,600 years. The significance of Epiphany is in the name, which means manifestation or appearance. Classically it was used for the appearance of the sun at dawn. In the Church it indicates the manifestation of the Messiah to the Gentiles, inaugurating the Mission of God to offer salvation to the whole of humanity.

The Magi, wise men from the East, were drawn to Bethlehem to worship the King of Israel. The Heavenly Father led them to worship the Son. This is the inspiration for a good New Year’s Resolution. Jesus Christ humbled himself and appeared to us in a way we can understand and experience. He took on human flesh in order to redeem fallen human beings and offer salvation. What’s our response? Like the Magi, we worship. We worship Jesus because he is God, because he deserves worship, because he is worthy of our praise. We don’t worship in order to receive something from God, we worship because we have received something from God, in response to his generous outpouring of grace.

Because God is so good, because he revealed his love to us through Jesus his Son, because he has drawn us to Christ by the Spirit, let’s resolve to worship him regularly, throughout the week in prayer and thanksgiving, and on the Lord’s Day, as we gather to worship the One who is truly worthy of glory and praise.

Resolutions are Hard

“People need revelation, and then they need resolution.” – Damian Lewis

Are resolutions worth making? 

Online grocer FreshDirect reports¹ that lots of their customers fall short of keeping resolutions. Customers’ liquor and wine consumption picks up by forty percent in February. At the same time, juice-cleanse sales drop by twenty-five percent. They report that sales of ice cream and desserts grow by fifteen percent and pizza is consumed at a thirty-five percent higher rate in February. What’s the deal with February? A study by Foursquare, which is an app that tracks businesses and places where people check-in, found that February marks an increase in visits to fast-food establishments and an abandoning of trips to gyms.

Resolutions are hard. They often aren’t kept. But, are they worth making?

I come down on the resolutions are worth making side of this debate. A resolution is a special type of goal. Goals are good. Without goals we tend to drift through life, randomly responding to the circumstances. With goals, we get in the driver’s seat. We make proactive decisions to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. Goals based on healthy and life-promoting values help us make the world a better place.

That’s really the key. We need to ask ourselves why we are making a particular resolution. Is it grounded in true north principles or on a passing feeling? If it’s a good goal, break it down into smaller bits so you can celebrate little wins on the way to the big win.

So, go ahead, make some resolutions. Base them on healthy, godly, deeply held beliefs and values, then pursue them daily. When February comes, do a check-in with yourself, pick up the slack, and keep moving forward.

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¹"Online grocer finds New Year's Resolutions last about a month" in The New York Post, 2-21-2016

Re•forming Church: Scripture Alone

“The difference between us and the papists is that they do not think that the church can be 'the pillar of the truth' unless she presides over the word of God. We, on the other hand, assert that it is because she reverently subjects herself to the word of God that the truth is preserved by her and passed on to others by her hands.” ― John Calvin

October 31, 2017 is the 500^th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. In honor of that anniversary I offer these devotional thoughts on “Scripture Alone.”

The idea that Scripture is primary, not church tradition or church teaching or church authority, is the idea that drove Martin Luther and the subsequent Protestant Reformation. Authority lies in the Bible itself, which is God’s Word. Scripture guides decisions we make about how we experience salvation, how to live a life of discipleship, and how we serve God’s purposes of instituting his Kingship in this world so his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

This is a good time to reflect on how I am allowing Scripture to speak into my life. The psalmist wrote, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105 KJV). Prior to the Reformation the only way God’s Word informed the life of an ordinary person was for that person to hear about it from a priest. With the Reformation, the Bible was translated into the languages people could actually read and the number of people who could read grew exponentially as Reformers founded schools to educate the masses. Today, the Bible remains a worldwide number-one best seller and is available anywhere over the internet. We’re blessed with the availability of the Word of God, but are we taking advantage? Is dust gathering on our bibles? How are we utilizing the incredible resources at our fingertips?

Take time every day to read the Bible. It’s God’s primary means of communicating his will for our lives. Without direction from God, lives drift off course and miss the blessing and happiness God intends as we partner with him in his mission.

 

Distracted?

Photo by Andrew Kow on Unsplash

“By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination.” – Christopher Columbus

A man riding a scooter in the southwest Chinese city of Beihai had a rude awakening last month. He was traveling along, minding his own business, some would say a little too closely, because he was staring at his phone while driving. A few minutes before he crossed a particular intersection, a sinkhole opened up in the middle of the street. Because he was distracted by his phone the man drove the scooter right into the fresh gaping pit. Thankfully, he wasn’t hurt and climbed out under his own power. I’m not sure about his scooter and phone.

The Apostle Paul advises us to “keep alert” at the end of his famous teaching about the full armor of God (Eph. 6). He encourages us to focus our attention through prayer and perseverance. The world offers far too many distractions, and though a sinkhole may not be looming in front of us, the enemy employs a myriad of strategies to keep us from fulfilling our purpose and potential. He sets traps that will trip us up if we’re not careful. We need to pay close attention to God’s loving leadership.

Distracted driving is dangerous. So is distracted discipleship. Let’s stay focussed and keep our eyes on Jesus.

What Are You Trusting?

Photo - U.S. Coast Guard

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” – Corrie Ten Boom

The Coast Guard Station in Juneau, Alaska, picked up a 32-year-old man in Gastineau Channel on June 7, 2017. He was attempting to cross the channel in an inflatable homemade watercraft that was being held together with duct tape. Unfortunately, it wasn’t held together very well because he was taking on water and would have sunk had help not arrived. When the Coast Guard reached the sinking boat they rescued him and his dog, then took them to the safety of dry land.

This man didn’t have a life jacket on board, yet he trusted this flimsy craft with his life and the life of his dog! Is there anything in our lives on which we rely to give us health, happiness, and meaning, that might be unfit for the high seas of life? Are we putting our hope in things that don’t have the capacity to deliver?

There’s a ship that will never sink. You can entrust your life, your hopes, your dreams, your security and safety in this Captain. “I will say to the LORD, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust’” (Psalm 92:1 ESV). Place your heart in the hands of God, he will give your life hope, health, happiness, and meaning.

Team

“Teamwork is less me and more we.” – Anonymous

In June, Ryan Joseph “Scooter” Gennett became the seventeenth player in major league baseball history to notch four home runs in a single game. His other at-bat was a single, for a five-for-five outing with ten RBIs. Pretty impressive stuff. Who’d a-thunk it?

Gennett is twenty-seven years old, 5’10” tall and weighs 185 pounds.  The Cincinnati Reds picked him up in March after the Brewers put him on waivers. The most homers he’s ever hit in a single season is fourteen. He’s bounced from team to team, up from the minors, back down to the minors, and back up to the majors again. He’s a journeyman.

When asked about his stunning accomplishment, Gennett credited his teammates and coaches. He said, “My teammates were awesome the whole time, letting me know exactly what I needed to do.” He acknowledged Reds hitting coach, Don Long, for fine tuning his swing. Certainly, Gennett deserves some of the credit! His perseverance in the league, alone, is something to be commended. But, when the time came for him to excel, he pointed to those around him for their support and encouragement.

Teammates, friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, fellow Christ-followers. We all need others in order to do our best in whatever endeavor we pursue. The church is designed to be a family of missionary servants, a group of people working together to accomplish the mission of God in the power of the Spirit of God. None of us are loners. We need each other. In what ways are you depending on others? How are others depending on you?

Do You Need a Vacation?

“Vacations are necessities, not luxuries.” – Linda Bloom

Bernard Lagat knows a lot about long-distance running. He is a four-time Olympian. He owns seven American records, ranging from the 1,500 to the 5,000 meters. In the 2012 London Olympics he finished fourth in the 5,000 meters.

Even in the midst of his rigorous training schedule, every fall Lagat does something completely foreign to most elite runners: he takes a five-week break. He tosses his running shoes in the closet and eats pretty much anything he wants. He also coaches his son's soccer team. Peter Thompson, a longtime track and field official and coach, claims that Lagat's approach is unique. Thompson said, "In the U.S., runners are very obsessive about not letting go of training." But Lagat stands by his need for sustained rest. Lagat said that every athlete is different, but his schedule has been very effective. "My runs are very hard," he said. "Everything I do is hard …. [But] the body is tired. You're not a machine. Rest is a good thing."

Indeed, rest is a good thing. It’s summertime and many of us are gearing up for vacations. Some will travel far and see great sights. Some will take a staycation. All of us need a break from the routine and real rest. God designed us to rest. The first full day of humanity’s existence was a day of rest. Rest helps the body and mind repair itself and enables us to work with renewed energy and focus. When we rest we can reconnect with God and rediscover what’s most important about life. This summer, if you take a vacation, I hope you’ll remember not to take a vacation from God and enjoy resting in his grace. Rest is a good thing.