Drenched, but not drowned out

Two mornings ago, while rain poured down and thunder rumbled discontentedly far away, I awakened to hear a songbird joyously trilling away in our backyard as if the sun were blazing. It sang alone.

Yesterday morning, while rain trickled down and skies were grey and pouty, the bird sang solo again.

This morning it was the same, though the clouds were reluctantly giving way to shafts of sun. This morning, a few other birds joined in.

I'm no Maya Angelou. I don't know why the caged bird sings. Or why the soaking wet songbird persists. I don't know how Paul and Silas could sing in prison at midnight. How Habakkuk could rejoice in Jehovah during famine.

I wake up grousing. I'm a grouser. I'm a Job. I'm more like Ecclesiastes: Woe is me and everyone else, too.

I wake up thinking, "Why is that dumb bird singing?"

This morning I thought I heard it chirping its answer:

"Why not? Why not? Why not?"

Mission Monday

Yesterday's annual "Mission Sunday" morning worship was a memorable experience.

Our gathering at the Lord's table was prefaced by a reading I had written as our weekly e-mail/bulletin article "HeartWorship" that prepares our members for worship:

The feet anointed for burial by a sinful woman had walked many miles, and into many places of worship.

The feet nailed to a cross had walked through Samaria to bring good news of worship in spirit and truth to another sinful woman whose concept of worship was tied to a mountain.

The nail-scarred feet His followers clung to as they worshipped Him had returned so He could remind them of His example of mission and worship. He came back to commission them to do as he had done, and -- before those feet were lifted from among them one last time -- to promise He would still be walking with them in Spirit.

For the beautiful feet of His followers bear a message of salvation and praise that is one and the same, just as prophesied many hundreds of years ago:

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" -- Isaiah 52:7

It was followed by the contemporary communion hymn, "How Beautiful."

A guest speaker, who has served in several mission outreaches in South America, told powerful stories of native Americans there begging to buy his Bible ... of a family who had given up their house as a place of worship, sleeping on mattresses in the garden shed ... of new converts glad to be threatened by Communist insurgents not to harvest their crops, because it meant they could preach full-time.

One of the bellwether (bellewe?) members of our flock - a dear lady who, along with her husband, have actively supported mission outreach there for years - responded on behalf of all of us that she sought prayers to become "more mission-minded ... more evangelistic ... more like Jesus."

A plaque was presented to the church from an independent missions training organization for our full-time support of 13 missionary families.

Our annual special missions collection that morning yielded more than $50,000.

But nothing that happened yesterday moved me as profoundly as seeing the two lidded plastic cups that happened to be on the floor of the parking garage next to my space this morning.

I recognized them, you see. They were the cups of plain milk and strawberry milk that I had prepared for my children before taking them to school last Thursday. They had been too busy chattering to drink the entire contents before we arrived.

So I had thrown the half-full cups away in a trash barrel on the way in to work, not wanting the souring milk to smell up my car after a hot day in the garage.

Sometime over the weekend while the garage was closed, someone had removed them from the trash. Someone had emptied them of their contents, leaving the lids on the cups and the straws still in the lids - a green one for Matthew and his strawberry milk; a purple one for Laura and her plain - and left them standing upright, by chance, next to the space where I usually park.

By chance?

The hungering and thirsting aren't just starved for righteousness, and they're not just in far-flung places around the globe, I've discovered.

Sometimes they hang out where I park.

When faith becomes fact

The topic my preaching minister chose for Easter Sunday was: "The Resurrection Changes Everything."

My job was to call my fellow Christians to worship with the reading of Matthew 28:1-9, the story of the women who followed Jesus - following Him to the tomb, only to find it empty.

I had to wonder, while preparing to read: What makes the resurrection real today? At what point does faith become fact?

Maybe faith becomes fact when you act.

Two weeks ago this afternoon, I pulled up at the church's parking lot to pick up my children after school - only to see my wife putting their backpacks into the trunk of her car ... and also to see a big, scruffy-looking red-haired fellow asking her for a ride across town. I pulled closer, rolled down my window and offered to help him instead.

I admit, a part of me thought "What if he's a murderer?" and then, "Well, better just me than Angi and the kids!"

But that other peculiar part of me thought "What if he's an angel?"

As we rode together, he told me he felt weird asking for help at a church but he was tyring to get his truck fixed, needed a part from across town, and was out of money and out of options. I told him not to worry about it; he'd come to the right place.

I told him about how, 20-some years ago, a big black man named Bill Johnson ran out of gas and money and options on the highway near the church while on his way home to New York City. I told him how our elders helped Bill get home and even began supporting him as a full-time missionary there, and how that church in Springfield Gardens had touched so many lives since then.

About that time, my son Matthew called me on my cell phone to make sure I was all right. My rider said, in his rather scary-sounding, desperate way, "That's a good kid. He's making sure ol' dad didn't pick up a killer."

I laughed and assured Matthew I was fine.

He wasn't a killer. He wasn't an angel, either, I'm pretty sure. He was just a guy who needed a ride.

Maybe it was a stupid thing to do, to offer a ride to this stranger. But I couldn't regret it then, or now. It was a ride that made me a little nervous, to be sure; a little excited. But for the life of me, I can't tell you that I was afraid.

Please don't read this as a boast, but rather as a confession: I don't think I have ever acted on faith like that before.

Shame on me for taking 48 years to discover first-hand that the perfect love of a resurrected Christ casts out all fear.

Because He stands near that tomb, talking to those women, as an absolutely irrefutable guarantee that life is His to give.