GRANITE CITY

(I will add some photos to this post when I can.)

Aberdeen.

It's a place name that meant something to me from my earliest childhood, long before I first stepped foot on the campus of Aberdeen University as a college junior the fall of 1988. 

My father's roots were in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It is where my family drove in the summertime for a visit to my grandparents. 

The warm feelings and familiarity with the name "Aberdeen" undoubtedly played a role in making Scotland first choice among the study abroad options available to me.

(My shyness and lack of foreign language study outside of high school Latin and a year of faltering French at Wabash had already limited my choices to English-speaking countries.) 

It was a strange sensation to be back in Aberdeen for the first time in 36 years. The campus of the University of Aberdeen, like the rest of the city, is constructed of stone - primarily granite - so there is much that has not changed. 

And that aids in my recollections of my year in Scotland.

I can remember the names and faces of a few friends I made through Bible studies on campus. I can vaguely picture one professor as well as the arrogant Englishman who was the campus liaison for all of the American students. I recall trips to the corner grocery store to buy cookies and weekly calls home from the pay phones in a dark hallway just off my dorm's lobby. I vaguely remember taking a bus into the heart of the city on Sunday mornings and then walking up long, wide steps to attend a church with two friends from the Shetland Islands. 

I was thinking of all these things last night as Melissa and I walked through the center of campus. 

Unfortunately, even surrounded by the granite, my memory failed to resurrect most details of my daily life in Aberdeen those 9 months. They have been lost.  

This might sound strange, but I have long hoped that one of the blessings of the afterlife will be the restoration of our memories to perfection. 

I think it would be fascinating to look back over each stage of my life to see what words, thoughts, and events shaped me into the person I am. 

For the next 24 hours, I know I will be chewing on this mystery: who was I before coming to Aberdeen, Scotland and how did the Granite City shape me? 

P.S. In one of those sad ironies of life, my brother Ryan called on Monday to say that our Uncle Spencer had passed away. He was a sweet, loving, and all-around good-natured man. I am saddened to not be able to travel to South Dakota for his funeral. My 3 brothers will all be pallbearers and Spencer will be buried Monday ... in a cemetery in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

I HAVE ARRIVED

Here's what I was thinking as our plane touched down in Edinburgh, Scotland this morning at 10:30 local time (5:30 am Indiana time!):

I have truly arrived. 

And that's because it occurred to me that if anyone had told 21-year-old me back in 1989, the last time I was in Scotland, that I would return 36 years later with my beautiful and talented wife to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary ...

That she and I would have 4 incredible children - 2 handsome boys and 2 gorgeous girls ...

That my oldest son would be proudly serving as an officer in the Army ...

That my oldest daughter would be a successful interior designer living in Myrtle Beach ...

That my second son would be using his college degree in computer science to help program drones ...

That my youngest daughter would be getting ready to study art at Indiana University ...

That I would own a house in Columbus, Indiana packed full of memories ...

That I had made a varied "career" out of ministry, from LeMars, Iowa to Pensacola, Florida to Cap Haitien, Haiti to Accra, Ghana ... 

That I currently had two jobs that I truly loved and felt God's calling on ...

And that I would be working on a doctorate degree ...

If you had told me all this, I would have said:

1) I don't believe you,

And 2) What is a drone?

And 3) If all that IS true, I am glad to hear that I will achieve success beyond my wildest dreams.

(And, by the way, if you furthermore told me that I and my beautiful wife wouldn't be anywhere near to what most Americans call financial security ... 

I would have said:

1) I'm not surprised

And 2) Who cares?)

PEAK EXISTENCE

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."

So said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I think he nailed it.

And I think this is why Jesus' announcement of the arrival of the Kingdom of God is such good news. I think, deep down inside, we all want to be useful. 

And to be useful to God Himself, the King of Kings? Well, there's no higher aspiration for a human being. 

Maybe Jesus was saying something profound when He said that it is better to give than to receive. 

Like ... it's better for our psyche, our self-image, our soul, to live like God, giving ourselves away. 

When we are useful, we are leaning into the very purpose for which we were created. 

And THAT is peak existence.

TIME ON THE DECK WITH SAMUEL

This isn't really a post. It's an explanation of why I didn't post tonight.

With Melissa and Sarah in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for a dance competition this week, Samuel and I have been the only ones around the house. He was fighting a nasty head cold earlier this week and I have been trying to get ahead on some of my work tasks so that I won't have to work over our time in Scotland next week.

So we haven't really spent any time together this week. Heck, we really haven't just hung out since he returned home in May.

I was planning to work some more after dinner tonight, but then I grilled some hamburgers and Samuel suggested that we watch something while we ate. He wanted to introduce me to a show he thought was funny.

One episode turned into two. Then we started talking about music.

I recently switched my phone from a Samsung to iPhone and he's been eager to show me all the new capabilities at my fingertips.

Anyway, I found an old Scottish band called Runrig I was introduced to 35 years ago. We sat out on the back deck and listened to some Runrig on Apple Music and then I remembered another Scottish band I hadn't thought about in decades, The Battlefield Band, and I took Samuel down my memory lane with some of their songs, playing through his Bluetooth speaker.

We talked about how technology has changed so much - for better or worse. How my parents used to watch The Lawrence Welk Show religiously each week. (You can find hundreds of episodes now on YouTube!) How we had CBS, NBC, and ABC and people actually gathered around their TVs to watch their favorite shows. And how, if you missed it, you had to wait months for the reruns to air over the summer. 

During lulls in the conversation, we listened to the music and took turns throwing the dog's rubber bone toward the yard for her to fetch.

It was a truly pleasant evening together and worth every minute of whatever work I might have to make up tomorrow! 

FREE WILL?

I wasted some time this evening arguing with a Calvinist in the comment section of a YouTube video. 

Upon seeing I was a non-Calvinist, he asked this:

"I want to ask a genuine question, do you pray for the non believers? If you do, why? In your world view God can not violate the mighty will of man? This is a genuine question."

I have heard Calvinist say things like this - that indicate they believe their theological opponents hold that man's free will is of such a nature that it cannot ever be overridden by God. I don't know why they believe this. 

It would be a complete non sequitur to say, "Man has free will, therefore God is incapable of ever imposing His own will upon human beings." 

So I wrote back:

Excellent question. I'm glad you asked it because maybe I can clear up a common misunderstanding. Just because we say that man has free will it does not follow that we believe God can never "violate" man's free will. Why would it? 

I don't know if you have children or not but I think of it in terms of a father with his children. The father is both free and "sovereign" while the kids have free will but are not sovereign. 

The father is not micromanaging the kids' every move. They have plenty of choice as to what they play and how they spend their time. The father can say, "It's time to clean up" and the kids can even then decide to disobey. But the father is in charge and is the final authority. So when he says, "If you don't clean up, there will be consequences", the kids need to be prepared to suffer the consequences of their actions or inactions.

Of course, the father is also at liberty to bring unexpected blessings into the lives of his children: "Hey, kids, we're going to the amusement park tomorrow!"

When I pray for non-believers, I pray that God will put people and events and ideas into the pathway of that person that will wake him or her up to God's reality and goodness. God reaches people in a million different ways, so I don't presume to dictate the means in my prayers as if I would be better equipped to reach that person than their Creator is. 

What does the Calvinist pray for the non-believer? And why?

WE ARE YOUNG!

Melissa, Sarah, Samuel, and I joined some friends last night to enjoy some of the local fireworks from the roof of their house. 

Some of the best seats in the city.

As we were waiting for the show to start, I was doing the math in my head and realized that next year will be the 250th birthday of the nation. 

And then I felt old because I remember the bicentennial! I was 8.

And while I suddenly felt old, it also reminded me that our nation is quite young! Afterall, I've been alive for over a fifth of our history since the founding and I'm not exactly an old-timer myself. 

When I visited Scotland in 1988, one of the first moments that made a huge impression on me was walking into my first castle and looking at an ornate wooden bed with a little plaque nearby claiming the piece of furniture was over 400 years old! 

These days, a lot of people are talking like America's best days are behind her, but we are so, so young still. 

Who knows what some national maturity might bring?

Happy Independence Day!

THE GOSPEL IS BIGGER

We have reduced the gospel to "even though you are a sinner, Jesus died for you, and if you ask Him into your heart, you will be granted entrance to heaven when you die".

And it's so firmly ingrained in the church's mindset, that even the scholars with doctorates don't question it.

But the New Testament presents a much bigger gospel: God's Kingdom has been reestablished on earth, Jesus is the saving King, and He will one day return to earth to fully actualize His authority as King.

The first time the word "gospel" is used in the New Testament is at the advent of Jesus' earthly ministry:

(Mat 4:23) And Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

"The gospel of the kingdom"! This is His message 3 years before His death.

And then look at Luke 9:

1 And Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. 3 And he said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. 4 And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. 5 And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town shake off the dust from your feet has a testimony against them.” 6 And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.

Here again, the gospel is clearly equated with Jesus' proclamation that the kingdom of God had arrived.

And, considering the disciples would later be completely caught off guard by Jesus' death and resurrection, they obviously were not proclaiming the same message that we today call "the gospel"!