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Midweekly
Reality Check:
Meditations on the Mountain
Out of Darkness A visual dose of a far horizon at dawn is my preferred palliative, no matter the malady. Perhaps it’s because I spent my growing season as a flatlander. The quarter section of western Illinois farmland where I grew up was so flat…when my dog ran away I saw his backside for three days…. Some of the most memorable moments of my life are far horizon views at dawn, when light overcomes the darkness and all nature shouts for its Creator, “This I have done for my glory and your joy.” One of the earliest entries in my grey matter archives is from the perspective of a John Deere Model A tractor seat, pulling a three bottom plow through some of the flattest, blackest shiniest gumbo in God’s creation, a quarter mile from the barnyard, watching the sun come up over the barn and climb the windmill. It was an early spring in the mid-50’s, before tractors had heated cabs, when the only way to stay warm in western Illinois was to put on so many clothes I could hardly walk. Another warming strategy, or at least distraction from the cold, was to sing at the top of my lungs, my courage bolstered by the knowledge that no one could hear the a cappella awfulness of it above that two-cycle two-cylinder John Deere engine. I even recall what I was singing. For the first time in my life I was smitten by a girl and I was singing from the musical, South Pacific, “I’m as corny as Kansas in August….” Indeed. Everyone knows Illinois is far cornier that Kansas or even Iowa in August. Another early image of a far horizon at dawn is from a 20-foot wooden boat, laboriously driven down the mighty mile-wide Mississippi River by a 25-horsepower Evinrude outboard motor in duck hunting season with Dad and my younger brother. Cold again. It penetrated all the layers of clothes, inducing an involuntary reciprocal motion in my lower jaw and turning my cheeks to parchment. Overhead, V's of mostly Mallards raced us down the river. A dense grey forest of denuded elms, oaks and willows huddled at the far riverbanks and on scattered islands. The eastern sky was an abstract painting of broad orange and yellow and white horizontal brush strokes on a powder blue canvas. In the stern, Dad clutched the steering arm of the outboard with an ever-present dead cigar angled out of a grinning, ruddy face. His eyes sparkled below devilish eyebrows as the frigid rushing air drove tears back toward the flapping ear tabs of his hunter's cap. I’m sure I got my love of a far horizon at dawn from my lifelong farmer/father, but, thank God, never the love of chewing on dead cigars. Calvin called nature “this most beautiful theater” (Institutes, I.xiv.20), and those slothful souls who sleep past sunrise miss so much of it. Sunsets offer their own unique beauty, and I love them too, but missing there is the sense of new beginnings, of a future filled with bright promise through the love of the Light of the World, a powerful metaphor of the gospel in my mind. A decade later another far horizon dawn, and the terror-filled night that preceded it, halfway around the world, was archived for the ages. Two of us young F-100 fighter pilots were scrambled off the alert pad post-midnight to aid a Special Forces camp under attack in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Night close air support is the scariest kind of graveyard shift work, an interactive fireworks display with maximum carnage as the objective of all parties. Flares dropped from a C-130 high overhead the beleaguered floated down under parachutes, lending an eerie illumination, as if from a giant flickering candle, to the desperate scene. The enemy was coming over the concertina wire and the first line of defensive trenches, and the margin of error was zero as we laid rolling fireballs of napalm on them. The key to our survival and accuracy was intense concentration at high airspeed, low altitude and shallow dive angle, releasing bombs at fifty feet above the ground while avoiding bullets in the face, and, not least, the ground. After twenty sweat-soaked, hyperventilating minutes of edge-of-the-envelope human performance, the perimeter was covered with the ashes of the enemy and 100 grateful Green Berets were celebrating their salvation. Cruising home at 15,000 feet, we met the sun at twelve o'clock level. The eastern horizon was a spectacular work of art, a celestial canvas of broad horizontal brush strokes of orange and yellow and red and blue on a black background. God’s light show blotted out the man-made terror of the night while residual adrenaline, a manifestation of grace, staved off exhaustion. I felt born again with the dawn and thankful beyond words for my Lord’s mercy. A few months later, perhaps the most memorable far horizon fix of all engraved itself on my brain. It was the morning I flew out of the combat zone—Tuy Hoa Air Base on the beach of South Vietnam. The dawn came up like thunder after a year and 268 combat missions in the valley of the shadow. The ground trembled as 33 F-100’s, five seconds apart, roared off the runway, across the beach, and out over the South China Sea, climbing into the rising sun. On the eastern horizon a line of towering deep purple clouds stood shoulder-to-shoulder before a brilliant orange sky that slowly turned powder blue from the top down. From somewhere on that stage, above the muffled whine of spinning turbine blades, I could hear a choir singing Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” in fortissimo: The “...Lord God Omnipotent reigneth...,” and He was bringing me home…alive. The very next morning, after a sleepless night (get-home-itis) at Andersen AFB, Guam, the island shuddered as the same 33 F-100’s idled impatiently in the staging area amid the soul-rattling roar of 3 monstrous eight-engine B-52’s taking off for the war zone at dawn, pointed at a huge orange fireball off the end of the runway. Their bomb bays were full and additional bombs hung from multiple ejector racks mounted on every available wing pylon. There’s a significant cliff at the eastern end of that runway—instant altitude for the lumbering bombers. The B-52’s sank below sight after takeoff, then slowly rose again a few miles out to sea. In the serenity section of my archives is a summer morning on that mighty Mississippi again, with the river a moving mirror, the sound of an oar thumping on the bottom of a wooden boat carrying for miles below a fog lifting to treetop height, and the horizon not so far but expanding before my eyes. We three young cousins sat out of harm’s way—flailing fish hooks—in the bow of the boat as Dad and Uncle Ed hauled in trot lines, set out the evening before, loaded with thrashing catfish who found our cheese ball-baited hooks irresistible. The night had been spent in a sleepover in Uncle Ed’s rustic hunting/fishing cabin on one of the tree-covered islands. It was a time of merriment—I can hear Dad and Uncle Ed laughing as I write these words—high adventure and male bonding for a pre-adolescent country kid. Then there is a dawn with my wife on a green finger of a flat-glass Atlantic Ocean, with the sun rising through the rigging of our sloop off Man-a-War Cay in the Bahamas, and another when the sun rose above the red and white striped lighthouse at Hope Town, Elbow Cay. We spent the rest of the day in an upwind beat to reach the harbor there. There are numerous dawns viewed from the deck of my mother-in-law’s house on Cheyenne Mountain overlooking Colorado Springs and the prairie states, probably the highest and farthest far horizon view at first light I’ve ever had with my feet on the ground. There are also some spectacular long view daybreaks in the UK, during my last tour of duty as a fighter pilot. For winter days on end the only way to see the sun and a horizon more than a few yards away was to get airborne and watch the sun rise into a blindingly blue sky from high above an endless snow white field of cloud tops. That’s when I became convinced I am photosynthetic—my heart and soul require the light of the sun, even more so the light of the Son. The thought of the outer darkness of eternal hell holds a special terror for me. The knowledge that I live in the full sunshine of Christ’s countenance, now and forever, is an inexpressible joy. This morning’s far horizon fix—about 25 miles, 9 ridgelines and countless peaks—viewed from the tranquility of my mountaintop eagle’s aerie, has a grandeur that does not diminish with familiarity. The sun rises behind me there and illumines the Blue Ridge Mountains from the top down, chasing enormous dark shadows and dark blue haze away and replacing it with dazzling cobalt. And, like a sacrament, I remember those other sunrises in my life and marvel, with undying gratitude, at my Lord’s blessings. But most importantly of all, I am overwhelmed by the remembrance that, by grace alone, this unworthy has been called out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9b)...forever!
A
Mountaintop Busman’s Holiday Last week we joined the masses making a March migration to a Christian Conference. It was, as always, a mountaintop experience. Ours was the Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s Spring Theology Conference. When we lived in Florida we attended the Liggonier Conference a number of times and were always edified, but that’s a major trip from our wilderness cathedral in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. The GPTS Conference is at least equal in quality of teaching, but with fewer celebrities, and easier on the wallet in all respects—admission fee, dining, overnight accommodations, and, for those who live in the Appalachian area, travel expenses. The crowd is also easier to handle—400 versus 6000. It was held at Woodruff Road Presbyterian (PCA) Church in suburban Greenville, SC. The sanctuary has a circular vaulted ceiling, an acoustical teepee-shaped marvel that takes the rising sound of hymn singing with gusto, concentrates it at the peak of the ceiling and redirects it back onto the worshipers so magnified in volume it feels like a scene from Revelation (chapter 4) describing the throne room of God. It was a busman’s holiday for me, but a joyful one as I could focus on the teaching and worship without being distracted by the duties I have here at Ridge Haven during such conferences. I have yet to tire of them, and look forward to the day when I can worship forever in the throne room of God. The conference theme was Worldview, and we heard some dynamic expositors expound on competing views of truth. Dr. Scott Oliphant, who holds Cornelius Van Til’s apologetics professorship at Westminster Theological Seminary, spoke on “The Reformed Worldview.” I found him as knowledgeable as Van Til and even better in communicating (at least to this laymen) just how Christ would have us defend our faith. We came home with his latest published book, The Battle Belongs to the Lord, and I’ve nearly finished it already. In the highly competitive worldview wars, the view of God’s truth that shows, by unequivocal scriptural proofs, that God micromanages his creation without turning men into robots, for his glory and the joy of his chosen, is the only comfort in life or death in this darkening world in which we live. And we are called to defend that truth by our deeds as well as our words. Prolific author, classical school administrator, world traveler, and church planter, George Grant, [Dr. Pipa GPTS President, introduced him as a “ten talent man” (Matt. 25:14-28) in reference to how much he does with his God-given gifts] spoke passionately on “Islam, Hamas, and Peculiar Providence.” Hamas is an Islamic terrorist group that won the Palestinian Authority's last general election. It’s an Arabic acronym meaning “zeal,” but Dr. Grant explained it is also an Arabic word meaning “senseless violence.” Like Old Testament names, it surely appears to characterize those who claim the name and should serve as a warning of what we face in the battle of worldviews. It is a cosmic battle, and in this listener’s opinion, it will not diminish in ferocity till Christ returns. The success of the Hamas strategy is having an impact even on the civilized western world, as rage and outrage are now in high fashion in our political circles and the main stream media. Dr. Anees Zaka, a native Egyptian graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary and founder of the Institute for Islamic Studies in Philadelphia, PA, endeared himself to the audience with his beautifully accented, passionate plea to reach out to Muslims, but with no punches pulled as to the veracity of Islamic doctrine and the challenge Christianity faces in the process. His punch line, triumphantly delivered in a basso profundo voice behind a stubby index finger pointed at my heart: …victory belongs to the Lord (Prov. 31:21). Pastor Gary Demar provided the practical application of apologetics in this postmodern world in his teaching, with a phrase that will be forever engraved on my grey matter—“press the antithesis, ” attributed to Van Til with shades of Frances Schaeffer: The way to defend God’s truth is to ask leading questions of the nonbeliever, forcing him to realize the contradictions and absurdities of a worldview without God, chief recent failures of which have been modernism (science is the way to truth), to postmodernism rising from its ashes. It’s based on perhaps the ultimate absurdity—there is no such thing as absolute truth, it’s whatever you want it to be today. Standing opposed to it all is Christ declaring absolutely, I am the…truth… (John 14:6). All other worldviews are a lie. Non-believers ridicule the family of God, but we cannot compromise on Christ and who he was and what he did. That does not mean we kill those who have not received the gift of faith (Eph. 2:8-9), nor even quit reaching out to them. Dr. John Carrick, Homeletics Professor at GPTS, profoundly pressed home that absolute truth as he leaned over the pulpit with his British accent, in his teaching entitled, “The Exclusivity of Christ.” There were more speakers, all great. These are just the thoughts still competing for my attention four days after I returned. Greenville, South Carolina, is in the Blue Ridge foothills, but as my wife and I drove back up to Ridge Haven, I felt like I was coming off the mountaintop. What a gracious God we serve!
Moving up
My Blue Ridge aerie has by necessity been relocated, and it’s better than
ever. It used to be up
in a tall pine on our three
acres of mountaintop, but I suspect someone felt he was being spied on,
because the tree, with my tree house in it, got expertly dropped with a chain I know that all things work for the good of those who love the Lord (Romans 8:28), so perhaps God was telling me 1.) I’m too old to be climbing tall pines, 2.) in spite of the propaganda I’ve been accused of passing, this Blue Ridge Beulah Land* is not heaven, nor is it walled off from the world, 3.) I need more practice in forgiveness—it’s taken me well over a year to write, with a calm Christian perspective, about what was done unto me—or 4.) all of the above. C. H. Spurgeon, who could make a biblical metaphor out of any misfortune, said, “We are all trees marked for the axe. Those who do not prepare for death are more than ordinary fools, they are mad.” Personally, in my war, I saw many men cut down in their prime, and not all were prepared. The same motivations for the tree house still apply, and no other tree matched the attributes of the ill-fated one, so this spring I built an upscale aerie, higher up the mountain and much larger, but on the ground. It comes much closer to being OSHA compliant. If I fall out of my chair, 8 inches of wood chips will cushion my very short fall. We have this wonderful wood chip clearinghouse out on Highway 64, right at the edge of civilization. Anyone who turns trees and brush into wood chips deposits them in a pile beside the road and anyone who needs woodchips helps himself. It’s a wonderful capitalist/socialist innovation, with zero marginal cost on both ends. Another advantage of my new nest is that I no longer have to run a weight and balance check if I have more than one guest—the load limit exceeds the weight of all the friends I have. And it has an even better view than my first aerie because it’s higher up and unobstructed by tree branches—about the same elevation as the top of the slain pine, but at the foot of an oak tree in a mountain laurel patch. Making a level spot is not the easiest project in this terrain without earthmoving equipment. The first 4-6 inches of the soil is a 3-D web of hair-like roots with the tensile strength of titanium, with larger roots intermingled, so digging requires an axe as well as a strong-handled shovel. God was gracious and I retained all ten toes in the excavation phase. I was blessed to find logs on the ground large enough and close enough to make a retaining wall and all they cost was an aching back. So what I have is a 6 X 10-foot semi-level space on the north side of Claypole Mountain (2900’), just over the brow of the peak, tucked out of the wind amongst the evergreen laurel. It has a 110-degree, northwest through northeast drop-dead view of my beloved Blue Ridge Mountains, accentuated by the Devil’s Court House, Black Balsam Knob (6214’) and Mt. Pisgah on the far horizon, western North Carolina’s tallest, most popular peaks and among my favorite hiking destinations. When the sun is just right there are occasional flashes of light on the horizon as it reflects off cars traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway. And sometimes, when the atmospheric conditions are perfect, I’m pretty sure I can see the golden spires of the Celestial City in the blue haze just beyond the farthest ridge. Had I not elected to splurge on $6.13 worth of weed protection fabric under the woodchips, my total investment would have been sweat, minimal blood (cat briars and dropped logs) plus zip. I think H. D. Thoreau would have been envious.
With a breathtaking blood red sunset celebrating Christ’s atonement for a
sinner like me, our first day in our new aerie ended with reverential awe
and gratitude. For over a decade midlife I lived a shamelessly
self-indulgent life in an overlarge house at water’s edge on a sub-tropical
island, a slave to extravagant toys floating at the end of the dock and a
fixed-wing turbo-charged toy parked at the airport, then God retrieved his wandering
sheep. It was not without pain, but I am grateful beyond words. Bishop * * * * Now I saw in my dream, that by this time the pilgrims were got over the Enchanted Ground, and entering into the country of Beulah, whose air was very sweet and pleasant, Isaiah 62:4-12; Song 2:10-12; the way lying directly through it, they solaced themselves there for a season. Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth, and heard the voice of the turtle [dove] in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day: wherefore this was beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and also out of the reach of Giant Despair; neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting Castle. Here they were within sight of the city they were going to; also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof; for in this land the shining ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of heaven. In this land also the contract between the Bride and the Bridegroom was renewed; yea, here, “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so doth God rejoice over them.” Here they had no want of corn and wine; **for in this place they met with abundance of what they had sought for in all their pilgrimage. Here they heard voices from out of the city, loud voices, saying, “Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh! Behold, his reward is with him!” Here all the inhabitants of the country called them “the holy People, the redeemed of the Lord, sought out,” etc. (Pilgrim’s Progress, the Tenth Stage, by John Bunyan)
Flawed Friends Never have I known such flawed friends that I love so much. I live in a Presbyterian ghetto in the mountains. I mean ghetto metaphorically as classically defined—the term has “slum” connotations today that are not found in my lexicon. Though not a slum, this place is far from the opposite extreme. I can see, usually without covetousness from my three acres of mountaintop, the opposite extreme—lavish castles on a distant mountainside, one including a private heliport. But my life is spent exclusively among people who call themselves Christians who live unostentatiously by modern American standards. My neighborhood and my officially “part-time” retirement job are in and with an agency of the Presbyterian Church in America. My excursions into the real world—“town” (population 7,500)—are limited to church whenever the door is open, and shopping when absolutely necessary. Having lived in the world around the world, having raced the rats down Wall Street, LaSalle Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, Threadneedle Street, the Champs de Elysées and the Rue de Lyon, Genève, I dearly love this lifestyle. I think I would have been a merry monk had I lived in Luther’s day…until he taught me his theology. My friends are saints, and again I want to define my terms. Easton defines saint as “One separated from the world and consecrated to God; one holy by profession and by covenant; a believer in Christ.” That defines my friends to a “T.” But…to be candid about it, I battle Aesop’s old saw, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” I have been back on the job as a Ruling Elder in my church one year now, and have of necessity dealt with the human failings hidden behind those beatific smiles in the sanctuary on Sunday morning. And I feel so inadequate to the task that I question my calling as an Elder. I have sat on corporate boards and worn the letter titles—CFO, COO, CEO—and my church and the church agency where I am employed are not run like corporations. My experience in both leads me to believe that few church or agency leaders would survive in the unforgiving, highly competitive corporate world. I confess that is my conceit. To be fair, different gifts are required, and true leaders are rare everywhere, but here is the great sanctifying lesson for me in all this: My church and the agency in which I live and work are a day by day, minute by minute testimony to God’s sovereign Lordship over his creation. He is clearly, unequivocally in charge. How else to explain the survival of these seemingly fragile institutions I love so much? Christ looked pretty fragile and powerless on the cross…and none of the original disciples God used to change the world would have passed for a corporate kingpin. So much for appearances. Perhaps my love of flawed friends has to do with the clarity of vision that comes with sanctification, with age and experience. The more I learn the more I realize I do not understand, like exactly how the Holy Spirit works within me. As J. D. Watson says (quoting an anonymous source), ‘Knowledge is the discovery of ignorance’ Or, and here is where I will forever stake my claim: God’s grace. From first to last the Bible explains how Christ is building his church with clay-footed, fallen rascals redeemed from their headlong hell-bound ways, and hell’s gates shall not prevail (Matt. 16:18). Holy Writ also commands and explains how I can love my flawed fellow saints. The most imperfect person I know is the guy I see in the mirror when I shave. If my friends knew my true arrogance, my condescending thoughts, my hyper/hypocritical judgments, my slothful ways, my lustful dreams, my egomaniacal aspirations, my uncanny ability to see their flaws around the log in my eye, they would not want me as a friend. I cannot count the times I have recalled, with self-loathing at the end of the day, or on my way home from church or a meeting, the words I wished I could take back. And sometimes my random daydreams astound even me. I wish I were better at taking the contempt that wells up in me from the old man’s polluted spring and pouring it on my own pride…. If I can be forgiven seventy times seven by a God who owes me nothing, if Christ can love such a fallen wreck enough to die for me, then by his grace I can, and do, love my friends, warts, clay feet, inadequacies and all.
What Sin Has Wrought …in
Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate pool…lay a multitude of invalids— Jayne is in her first year at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. She was a star athletic in our local high school, graduated valedictorian of her class and went to college on a basketball scholarship, then injured her back playing volleyball. In the last several months the pain of that mystifying (to the doctors) injury has grown beyond the reach of painkillers. In short order she has gone from walking with one cane to two to bedridden at age 22, forced to drop out of seminary and praying with all of us for a miracle. My friend, Jack Bennett, WW II hero, later nuclear submarine commander and Reagan staffer in Sacramento, is also bedridden in southern California. For 11 years we have emailed, often more than once a day. Just over 9 years ago God regenerated Jack’s heart. Now, at nearly 89 his eyes don’t work well enough to read his email, and his hearing comes and goes. My friends Jack and Jayne are two sweet saints, children of God with towering intellects imprisoned in languishing bodies, and my heart bleeds for them. The unbeliever’s standard reaction to such sad cases is usually, “If your God loves you, why does he do this to you?” Some children of God wonder why he puts some of his own through such trauma and not others. Both quandaries focus on the wrong issue. Sickness and deformities of all kinds, and death itself, were both introduced into God’s creation when Adam and Eve sinned. If you’re wondering, “Why such a fuss over a lousy apple,” read Genesis 3:14-24. See God’s reaction to disobeying the only restriction he put on our first parents in paradise. Or read the Son of God’s view of sin at Matthew 5:29-30. It was an earth-shattering fall! They lost paradise. All creation was corrupted. Sickness and death—physical and spiritual—ensued for Adam and Eve and all their descendents through the propagation of original sin. Clearly God hates sin, and his hate of it is as infinite as all his attributes, including his love for his chosen. From Genesis 4 through Revelation 22, the Bible explains what God the Father put his Son through to accomplish and apply redemption to fallen sinners. It’s a love story to end all love stories. In his infinite love, God the Father sent God the Son to die a horrible death on a cross as an atonement for sin. He did it because there was no other way fallen mankind could make itself perfect enough for admission into eternal life in heaven. Only the Son of God’s perfectly sinless sacrifice, credited to his chosen people, is adequate to gain admission into everlasting bliss in God’s presence. J.C. Ryle said, When we read of cases of sickness [like Jack and Jayne], we should remember how deeply we ought to hate sin! Sin was the original root and cause and fountain of every disease in the world. God did not create man to be full of aches and pains and infirmities. These things are the fruits of the Fall. There would have been no sickness if there had been no sin…. Surely if men would only look at hospitals…and think what havoc sin has made on this earth, they would never take pleasure in sin as they do. Think about this the next time you are tempted to sin. God hates, really really hates what you are tempted to do. Why would you lust after what God, whom you owe everything, calls evil? It is the measure of residual sin’s power in a born-again heart, and it takes lifelong wrestling with one’s old self, as the Apostle Paul described in Romans 7:15-25, and John Owen explained in The Mortification of Sin. And it ain’t easy, as Paul and one of Puritanism’s greatest intellects goes to great lengths to explain. In fact Owen says you can drive yourself to despair if you try to stifle personal sin without the Holy Spirit’s help. Therein lies my battle plan. When I am tempted, when I want what is sinful, when I think sinful thoughts, I plead for the Holy Spirit’s intervention. O Lord I want it even though I know it is wrong. Please don’t let me have it, don’t let me think about it. Please give me more grace to strengthen my scrawny resolve…. The Apostle Paul said, …we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). Nothing in creation happens by chance. Ryle said, “Every sickness and sorrow is the voice of God speaking to us.” Jack and Jayne know the voice of God, and are great witnesses to His grace in their suffering, and I know it is all part of God’s purpose. But there is another way it works for good: in their sanctification as well as mine. I know it is a minor thing compared to their pain, but praying for them reminds me that all their agony was caused by sin—the “fruits of the Fall” for all creation. Witnessing my friends’ suffering leads me to hate sin more, and the more I hate sin the greater the motivation for mortifying it. The more I mortify my sin, the more I glorify my Maker. I wish it were as easy as writing about it. This I know: this earthly struggle will end when Christ returns. Ryle said, “Then, and not till then, shall there be no more curse on the earth, no more suffering, no more sorrow and no more sin.” In the interim, more grace, O Lord, more grace. More grace for Jack and Jayne, more grace for me.
YoWAW VI YoWAW, Ridge Haven’s annual youth missions conference, ended thirty minutes ago and 280 kids are moving down this mountain like hot lava, on fire for God. And one rookie codger is sitting here smoldering, trying to read the sentences forming on his screen through the smoke. I’m exhausted, but what a sweet exhaustion! It’s called Youth World Awareness Weekend, the sixth one in my tenure as the RH gatekeeper and volunteer sound-room “techie.” Truly the Holy Spirit has had a standing midwinter gig at Ridge Haven for at least the last 6 years I’ve been sitting, mesmerized, witnessing His Amazing Grace through these conferences. One thing has even improved over those 6 years—the quality of what is called contemporary praise and worship music. I am personally hooked for life on the Trinity Hymnal. It’s chock full of Watts, Wesley, Newton, and Toplady classic hymns, and many others with profound theological lyrics. But, in recent years, some really great modern hymn writers, steeped in the Reformed worldview, have emerged to dominate contemporary worship music. The result has been a major movement to the faith of our fathers among youth, particularly noticeable on college campuses. Reformed University Ministries, a PCA campus ministry, and reformed Southern Baptist college ministries are reaping a bountiful harvest in the heart of enemy territory, the American college campus, and this music is getting a lot of the credit by those in the know. My personal experience from the sound room doorway at Robeson Hall this past weekend affirms that finding. Red Mountain Music, a gifted group of young musicians from Birmingham, AL, are admirably doing their part in that musical war of worldviews, to the glory of God and the edification of His young worshippers. I think Isaac, Charles, John and Augustus would be proud of them.
Perhaps for the first time in my tour of duty at Ridge Haven, two
speakers turned Robeson Hall into a roomful of statues, with no twitches,
fidgets or trips to the bathroom…for two-and-a-half days! Dr. Paul
Kooistra, long-time head of the PCA’s
Mission to the World (and
before that long-time seminary President) challenged all to prayerfully
consider a career of making the
No one is in a better position to see God at work around the globe than my brother Paul, and what he sees is a bountiful harvest of souls coming to Christ in the next 25 years that will exceed any 25-year period in the history of mankind. What encouraging news to an elder who’s faith in mankind’s future, absent God’s grace, declines at a dreadful rate with every headline! Actually there was a third spellbinding speaker that Ridge Haven got for the price of two—Mrs. Paul Kooistra. Dr. Kooistra interviewed his wife Jan, (click on Dr. Kooistra #3 audio), who has been battling a particularly virulent strain of cancer for 11 years against enormous odds. Public speaking has been a lifelong fear for her, but no one could tell as she gave her extraordinarily rare public testimony to God’s grace while exuding a peace that defied understanding. She was the most powerful witness of the weekend.
Last among equals was David McNeely, who
told a rapt audience of his
youth as a rebellious preacher’s kid, a modern day prodigal son whom God
led to repentance and an extraordinarily fruitful youth ministry at
Perimeter Church in Atlanta,
one of the PCA’s megachurches. He fit
You could not find three better mentors/role models for your teenagers. Author/seminary professor John Murray once told a class of prospective preachers that what separated a sermon from a lecture was three P’s—a passionate personal plea. Years from now, when my feeble mind has forgotten the audio portion of this mountaintop YoWAW weekend, I will still remember with profound gratitude that I heard the passionate personal pleas of three humble, gifted elect of God who know Him and have dedicated their lives to making Him known.
Sam the Man He’s a bit vertically challenged, but if you go by collar size and heart, he’s a big man. He has the hairdo and demeanor of a Marine. Early on in his post here at Ridge Haven, in our radio communications, I tried to hang the call sign “Jarhead” on him, but his associates with radios were just too naïve to know what a cool call sign that was, and it never caught on. Folks who have been around the military know that Marines, the toughest of the tough, are proud to be called “Jarheads.” Anyway, he just might end up hanging around Jarheads if the Lord leads him into one of his short list of career inclinations—military chaplain. He would have to become a Navy chaplain to hang around Jarheads, because they do not have their own chaplains and look to the Navy to fill those billets, but I’m confident he’d fit in very well. His name is Sam Brown and he’s just a kid a few years out of college, but he’s been filling some big shoes here at Ridge Haven the last 2.5 years. Mack Griffith, the Ministry Director and Army Reserve Chaplain (Colonel), got called to active duty and Sam, as his assistant in our summer camp program for the previous two years, stepped up to fill the void. He now tells us we had no idea how clueless he was in the beginning, but it didn’t show on his granite-jawed facade. That bodes well for a military future, too. Actually there is more management than ministry in the Ministry Director position, and such experience will serve Sam well, no matter where he ministers. He’s on his way to Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis in a few weeks, and I am confident my friend Bryan Chapell and his staff will whip him into superb shape for the awesome task of proclaiming God’s Word to the world.
Ridge Haven can be a lonesome place for a single soul on a long winter
night, but Sam has persevered. Now that he’s survived all this solitude, he’s gone and
A few days ago, on one of those rare snowy days on the southern slopes of the Blue Ridge, when there was just enough snow to close the office, little brother Sam and I dug out my mint-condition vintage Wal-Mart bottom-of-the-line plastic toboggan for some downhill kicks and man-to-man conversation. With snowflakes as big as goose down falling all about us in this deserted wilderness cathedral, we managed to hold all the curves on all three runs, which is no small thing without a steering wheel in the mountains. Then, amid the heavy breathing of the uphill trudge, we had some serious guy talk about being a godly husband. Sam the man is far more godly-minded and level-headed than I was at his age. It was a real blessing for this three-score-and-three-year-old husband, with two-score years of tenure with but one wife, to be reminded of what a wonderful blessing it is fall in love for life, and of the amazing grace that designed such an institution. We talked about the practical application of biblical guidelines, as if I were some kind of guru because I had survived in the institution in spite of a dozen easy reasons for why my bride should have given up on me long ago. I shared with him my not so secret weapon: GRACE. I also felt a wave of gratitude that I was past all those very tough decisions that one wrestles with in picking a mate for life. I am high on Sam the man. I’ve seen him in action. He knows from whence cometh his help. God willing, he’ll continue to make wise choices, for his career in the Lord’s vineyard and for his soul mate for life. Godspeed, little brother, and if you end up with the Jarheads, keep your head down, your eyes on the cross, and always wear the whole armor of God. And preach the Gospel, in season and out—the combat zone produces a wonderfully attentive congregation.
A Eulogy
for Rene Schmidt, Soldier of the Cross Last Thursday night, Feb. 1, 2007, my brother in Christ, Rene Schmidt, Soldier of the Cross, was honorably discharged from the battle of this life at age 89. It appeared God just stilled his great heart and his soul departed in peace. What an uncommon blessing for an uncommon saint! I know he’s never been happier, nor I for him. Without ever shirking God’s call on his life, he spoke often to me, in the five years I knew him, of his longing to be in heaven with Jesus and reunited with “my Virginia,” his beloved wife and co-heir. I have not smiled so, through so much selfish sadness, since my saintly mother joined the church triumphant eight years and two days ahead of Rene. Frances Turretin said, “The belief that we shall never die is the foundation of dying well.” Everyone who knew Rene knows he died well. And God’s man in the trenches died in the manner we would all choose if we were in control—physically active, with a mind as sharp as a bayonet point, until the night he lay down on his bed and woke up in heaven. By way of eulogy for the greatest saint I have ever personally known, I’m reposting an earlier blog about him from ‘05, rewritten with added thoughts and details from his personal testimony delivered again, in the Old Testament style, just three weeks before he died, at the Ridge Haven residents’ dinner meeting:
My friend, Rene (pronounced "Ren"), was with General Eisenhower when the above classic photograph was taken on an historic day with some of America’s finest warriors—D-Day and the 101st Airborne Division “Screaming Eagles.” He was standing near the photographer, across from his friends Billy Hayes (hatless, chin on Ike's thumb) and platoon leader Walter Strobel (tall guy in front of Ike). The picture hung on the wall of Rene’s den in his mountain home at Ridge Haven, where Rene lived as a widower with his three dogs. He remembered that moment vividly, as he did seeing Ike, standing illuminated by his car headlights half-way down the runway, saluting as the C-47’s full of paratroopers took off before dawn. Ike was there perhaps because airborne troops were expected to suffer the heaviest losses in the Normandy invasion against heavily fortified enemy troops. Advance estimates ran as high as 80% casualties for the paratroopers in the high winds and awful weather that had already delayed the invasion by a day. With the humility and expository economy of a gospel writer, Rene told of his heroics that night (a term that he would never use and would surely embarrass him) as his unit was dropped helter-skelter behind enemy lines in the chaos of nasty night weather and withering antiaircraft artillery fire. A teeth-rattling opening of his parachute and a rough landing in a tree in the dark left him with only one hand grenade and his trench knife as weapons. A German machine gunner began to perforate his parachute. Knowing it was only a matter of seconds till the gunner corrected his aim, Rene cut the risers of his chute. He had no idea how far above the ground he was, but he knew he was a dead man if he did not immediately cut himself free. He was not a Christian in those days, but with the hindsight of a now regenerated heart, he said, “God knew that all I needed was that trench knife.” He does not know how far he fell, but he was uninjured. Then he heard a movement in the dark near him. He reached for his only hand grenade and pulled the pin before it occurred to him that he might be hearing one of his fellow paratroopers. With his free hand he dug out the equivalent of a child’s metallic device that made a sound like a cricket, carried by every paratrooper that night. He bent the flat metal spring once—chirp chirp—and almost immediately got a chirp chirp in reply. (Rene kept his US Army issue cricket chirper. I played with it three weeks ago and gave myself chills.) He teamed up with the other soldier and, having lost the pin for the hand grenade in the dark and having no other options, heaved it in the direction of the machine gunner. Then he retrieved a weapon and ammo from a fellow paratrooper who had fought his last war and stole away on his mission. Rene had long ago learned resourcefulness. He had outwitted bureaucrats to overcome US government policy against first-generation German immigrants fighting on the front lines against Germany. And his ability to speech German was a great asset in a later heroic endeavor. (a) It was the Screaming Eagles’ mission to clear the canals behind the beaches at Normandy so that follow on troops could come inland more quickly by water…if the beaches could be secured, a goal that was very much in doubt for several hours on one of the most horrific killing fields in the history of warfare. Like a Michelangelo with words, he painted the scene of the massive Allied armada as it filled the English Channel all the way to the horizon at dawn, viewed from his hiding place on a rise behind the enemy dug in on Utah Beach. He remembered thinking that surely the German soldiers watching must realize this was the end for them, and certainly it was the beginning of the end for one of history’s vilest despots. Three months later Rene participated in the airborne assault on Holland and three months after that the successful defense of Bastogne. Digging through the records (because Rene would never talk about this) I learned he was awarded two Bronze Stars for his “heroic achievement in action” and the Bronze Cross from the Queen of Holland. With equal economy he spoke of his first sight of the Statue of Liberty as he and his mother sailed into New York Harbor in August, 1921, when he was a fatherless 4-year-old immigrant. He saw it again sailing out as a Private First Class with the 101st Airborne. Left unsaid was how he rose to the highest enlisted rank in the Army, an exalted position reserved for only the best of the best, the toughest soldier the world’s greatest military can produce—sergeant-major. Then, in a reverent tone, Rene explained how, in his mid-40’s, two well-dressed strangers came up the front walk of their new home one evening, just as he and Virginia were leaving to a see a movie. Rene said to his wife, “O God, don’t invite them in or we’ll never get to the movie! I knew I shouldn’t have signed that guest register at that church we attended last Sunday!” Two hours of intense conversation later (the Evangelism Explosion model) the Holy Spirit worked a miracle in their hearts. Shortly thereafter Rene and Virginia started a Bible study in their home in Ft. Lauderdale. It turned into an extraordinarily fruitful evangelistic ministry. They had to buy a bigger house with more space inside and out when the neighbors complained about the crowds and all the parked cars. For 25 years it was a golden harvest of souls for God’s kingdom, called The Greenhouse (His Tender Grapes, ISBN #0-877841-00-3, available in the Ridge Haven bookstore). By grace it helped build Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, into a megachurch, where Rene served as a Ruling Elder for many years with Dr. D. James Kennedy, Senior Pastor. Rene was also one of the founding fathers of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). As usual, the bulk of this tireless evangelist’s conversation was a heartfelt presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He never assumed anyone was a true Christian. He told me once, “There are too many near-Christians masquerading as Christians. Only God knows for sure.” Jonathan Edwards would have agreed, and so do I. The first time I heard Rene give his testimony to a men’s group, I went up afterward and gave him a bear hug, a rare thing for me and an embarrassment for him. Rene spoke for every senior Christian alive while teaching a Sunday School class at our church a while back. “I don’t understand a lot of this world today, but when it comes to the things of God, there is a clarity….” And he mutely pointed an index finger at his own head. As I now ponder his testimony to our group just three weeks ago, and his impassioned plea to pray for revival in a dark world that is growing darker and increasingly dangerous, I think that he was aware that this might be his final public witness. Like Joshua in his covenant renewal at Shechem just before he died (Josh. 24), Rene recounted the extraordinary blessings in his life and gave all the credit and glory to God, and he reminded us of God’s promises and our great commission. The microphone I had asked him to hold was mostly ineffective because, in his intense delivery, he was waving it like a conductor’s baton in 2/4 time. He didn't really need it anyway with his deep authoritarian German tone of voice. As our friend Janie observed, “he was passing the baton.”
I know I am but a single molecule of a great
cloud of witnesses grateful to God for bringing Rene Schmidt into my life.
He
O dear God, may this unworthy walk the trail Rene blazed, cross the river his way, ditch my bifocals forever in the same golden trash bin with his...and hug him again? And there may we sing your praises together, on key, on tempo, forevermore?
Endnotes
(a) CITATION FOR THE BRONZE STAR MEDAL
Private First Class Rene A. Schmidt, Parachute Infantry, while serving with the Army of the United States, distinguished himself by heroic achievement in action. On 19 September 1944 near Best, Holland, when a group of about 450 Germans succeeded in moving around the Battalion's flank, endangering the rear of the Regiment, Private First Class Schmidt and a companion voluntarily took a German officer out into an exposed coverless clearing and, in plain view of the enemy, had this officer call on his men to surrender. Private First Class Schmidt's calm assurance had a demoralizing effect on the enemy. A small group threw away their weapons and came into our lines. The remaining enemy, seeing themselves deserted, although being threatened by the one remaining officer, soon followed the first group into captivity, thus removing a serious threat to the Regiment's success. His actions were in accordance with the highest standards of the military service.
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