I read this in a book a while back and then again recently and it spoke to me in different ways then and now:

“The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and of his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he doesn’t believe them or doesn’t want them or just doesn’t give a damn? In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen. Henry Ward Beecher cheats on his wife, his God, himself, but manages to keep bringing the Gospel to life for people anyway, maybe even for himself. Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. All together they are the truth” (Frederick Buechner).

I suppose that’s why I’ve always loved good comedies, tragedies, and most of all, fairy tales.

Sometimes I think I like change. Until it happens to me.

The problem isn’t the change itself, but that it usually comes out of nowhere with little to no warning. Plus, it rarely looks like what you expected.

A job that I thought was secure ended Friday. Since then I have had moments of serene God-given peace. I’ve also had the rare moments when I was smiling on the outside but inside I was petrified to the point that I no longer had a need to go to the bathroom. If you catch my meaning.

I’d like to say my faith was more consistent, but it’s not. I’d also like to say that the normal believer’s faith never wavers, but that’d be a lie, too.

It’s not my firm grip on God that keeps me saved and secure, but His strong grip on me. I’m finding out what believers through the ages have also found to be true: I need Jesus just as much in the good times as on those horrible, no-good, very bad days.

And it’s not like Jesus promised that life would be easy. Or that everything would always turn out hunky-dory and peachy-keeny. Only that He’d be with us, no matter what.

That’s good news. It will always be good news.

I posted a quote from Madame Guyon on Facebook 5 years ago on this date. Here is the full hymn:

“I love my God, but with no love of mine,
For I have none to give;
I love Thee, Lord, but all the love is Thine,
For by Thy life I live:
I am as nothing, and rejoice to be
Emptied, and lost, and swallow’d up in Thee.

“Thou, Lord, alone art all Thy children need,
And there is none beside:
From Thee the streams of blessedness proceed,
In Thee the blest abide:
Fountain of life,
And all-abounding grace,
Our Source, our Centre, and our Dwelling-place”

Maybe you had a job you really liked. Maybe you thought you’d be there for a long, long time. Maybe you’d even put a little bit of your security, your identity, and your peace of mind into that job.

Then one day, you get the dreaded call or meeting. You’ve been let go. Downsized.

Or maybe you had a great relationship. You thought he or she would always be there, always be around. Then one day that person’s gone for good.

It’s hard to keep hoping when it seems your hopes keep getting dashed to pieces. But still it’s better than having no hope at all.

God says, “Put your hope in me and you will never be disappointed. My hope isn’t a pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking kind of hope, but a certainty so sure that it’s as good as done.”

That’s what we all need to remember in those days when hope seems hardest to find. If your hope is in your employment or marital status or your children, you will be disappointed. Devastated.

But if your hope is in the living God, you will never be disappointed or put to shame. You will see your hope realized.

I love the line from Shawshank Redemption. It sums up what I’m trying to say nicely: “Remember . . . hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

I remember a song by Steven Curtis Chapman called The Great Adventure. It was all about how the life of faith is the greatest of adventures and how following Jesus will often lead us into the unknown. I agree.

Life itself is a grand adventure if you know where to look and what to look for. You have to choose to look for the best and seek joy in everything. That’s when you see God’s hand in everything.

I still think that the only expectations that won’t be ultimately disappointed (whether in things or people) are the ones where we expect God will show up and do something amazing.

Even the best of us break our promises and will let other people down. We’re only human, and fallen humans at that.

I can speak from experience that God is the only one who has never let me down. And maybe Lucy my cat. Of course, I set the bar low for her.

I know I have failed at least once in all my relationships, especially in my relationship with God. But God has never and will never fail me.

Like my friend always says, I’m living the dream. Even if that dream doesn’t always look like I want it to. Or even if that dream feels like an episode of Twin Peaks.

Life is still good, God is still great, and I am still blessed.

I went to McKay’s after work because I needed to indulge my inner multimedia nerd. It worked.

One of my finds was an Elvis Presley box set that has sentimental value to me. That’s because it’s the same one that my grandfather bought for my grandmother for Christmas roughly 34 years ago.

Of course, there were no CDs in 1980. I’m almost positive of that. So my grandfather bought the 8-album (also known as LPs or records) set where mine was a 4-CD set.

I had very fond memories of my grandmother showing me that gift because she was so proud of it, especially after my grandfather had passed.

On the way home, I was listening to John Lee Hooker and thinking how proud my uncles would be to know how much I’ve broadened my musical horizons. At times like these, I miss them most but I also see the legacy of a love for music that they left me.

Life is bittersweet. Very rarely will you have pure happiness or pure sadness. Usually, happiness is tinged with a bit of sadness or visa versa. So choose to focus on the happy while acknowledging the sadness.

It won’t always be like that.

My life group ended up having a semi-unplanned game night tonight instead of the usual Bible study.

We played a dice game called Farkle with unusual rules that I’m still not entirely convinced weren’t made up as we went along. The deal is you get points for certain rolls or certain combinations. Rolling a 1 gets you 100, rolling a 5 gets you fifty . . . you get the idea.

The catch is that you have to have a round of 1,000 points to get on the board. Needless to say, I was the last to get points.

In fact, for most of the game, I gallantly held my own in 4th place (out of 4 people). Toward the end, I had a more respectable score, but still looked likely to finish last.

On my very last roll, I started off decently enough. I got another roll. That went even better. By the end, I had won. I went from worst to first in one turn. And I’m still not completely sure how I did it.

I suppose my takeaway is to keep playing no matter what the score is. Don’t give up. As the great theologian Don Henley sang, “Everything can change in a New York minute.”

Don’t forget this. God is the best at making impossible into possible. As I heard a pastor say more than once, what seems impossible to you and me isn’t even remotely difficult for God.

Just remember that on this Autumn Thursday evening.

I found out that an old TV show that I like is making a comeback of sorts. And by old. I mean somewhere in the vicinity of 1990-91.

I completely missed out back then, but thanks to the wonderful worlds of DVD and Netflix, I managed to watch all 30 episodes. Spoiler alert: the last episode ended on an unresolved cliffhanger. So far, I haven’t watched the follow-up prequel movie yet. But I plan to.

So the show will come back on Showtime somewhere around 2016. So I read in an article on the internet. And you know they can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true.

That got me thinking. What else have I been waiting on for a long time? What have you been waiting on for a long time.

There’s a verse in the Bible that says that God’s promises might seem to be slow in taking effect, but God is good on His word. These promises are as good as done.

I think that might change a few of my prayers. It might change my outlook a little. Or a lot.

It’s raining quite hard outside. The last time I checked, it was rather windy as well. On a side note, this little blog will be ever so more enjoyable if you read it with a British accent.

I don’t mind storms. At least I don’t mind them as long as I’m somewhere safe where I can observe the effects of the storm without actually being outside in the middle of it. And especially not driving in it.

People around here (yours truly excluded) can’t drive in perfectly sunny and windless weather, much less in stormy conditions.

I fall back on an old illustration I heard and have used once. Experiencing the fear of God is like being able to witness the might and majesty of a storm while being safe from the dangers of it.

God is not just a stronger, bigger, faster, better version of me. He is totally other. And He deserves honor and respect.

That’s what it really means to fear God. Not so much a shaking in your boots kind of being afraid, but a reverent awe and a solemn gladness.

I suppose I’d better get back to reading my Tolkien. And maybe a spot of tea would just do so very nicely.