David Bahn – Reflections

Proverbs 10:12

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. 

1 Corinthians 13:4–6

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 

Sometimes the shortcomings, failures, bad choices and sins in our world fill the air with a stale odor. Sometimes we add to that odor: we have clearly failed to do what we ought to have done. We have done the very things we ought not to do. Then there are times when we may simply make the wrong call, when our best efforts to determine and do what is good and right yield only an apparent choice between the lessor of two evils, and we make the wrong choice. There are even times when we make the right choice and still feel the need for forgiveness from others. 

Love is a precious gift in those cases, for it not only covers over offenses, it also seeks the good, rejoices in truth, and does all that in a humble manner. Love is a breath of fresh air amidst the stale odor of arrogance, boasting, envy, and unkindness that fills the world around us. 

Whether we’ve experienced the offense of another, caused another pain or harm, or simply see the unkindness of the world around us, love is a gift worth embracing, sharing, and cultivating in our souls. For reasons no one really needs to know, this is particularly important to me today. I thank God for Jesus’ love and hope to find its redeeming presence in my goings and comings today. Maybe I’ll cross your path and we can share Christ’s love with each other.

Nehemiah 6:14-7:4

So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days. And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. Moreover, in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and Tobiah’s letters came to them. For many in Judah were bound by oath to him, because he was the son-in-law of Shecaniah the son of Arah: and his son Jehohanan had taken the daughter of Meshullam the son of Berechiah as his wife. Also they spoke of his good deeds in my presence and reported my words to him. And Tobiah sent letters to make me afraid.

Now when the wall had been built and I had set up the doors, and the gatekeepers, the singers, and the Levites had been appointed, I gave my brother Hanani and Hananiah the governor of the castle charge over Jerusalem, for he was a more faithful and God-fearing man than many. And I said to them, “Let not the gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot. And while they are still standing guard, let them shut and bar the doors. Appoint guards from among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, some at their guard posts and some in front of their own homes.” The city was wide and large, but the people within it were few, and no houses had been rebuilt.

  
As the cleanup and cleanout processes continue to unfold in Cypress, this passage came up on our St. John staff devotions. We kidded our facilities & maintenance supervisor that he had 52 days to finish the job of putting the campus back together. I’m thinking we’ll need every single one of them. 

The parallels between Nehemiah’s work of rebuilding the Jerusalem walls and our efforts to clean up following the flooding here are remarkable: distractions, opposition (not from people, but from uncooperative weather), the fact that not only the church but people and families all around us were impacted, along with the dual efforts of workers, church staff doing their jobs, volunteers helping clean up at the church and in the community, together with the “you can’t be two places (much less three or four!) at one time” realities of life, all conspire to make the tasks ever more challenging. 

There has been plenty of praise for those in the trenches of the cleanup process. The folks from Cypress Chapel – headed up by Pastor Stephen DeMik, together with Steve Saunders, St. John’s Disaster Reponse Coordinator are helping put “boots on the ground” in these efforts. Ken McCully, our Director of Operations, and Richard Hurliman, our Facilities and Maintenance Director are putting in long hours and much effort in this task. 

All we need now is time and patience as we reclaim what was lost, damaged and destroyed. We look forward to worship tomorrow, remembering God’s faithfulness, goodness, grace, and salvation, calling on him in prayer, and hearing his word. We look forward to seeing how God will shape us through this whole ordeal.

I look forward to a return to some sense of normalcy, and seeing how God will use faithful and God-fearing folks to establish and sustain good order and peaceful life among us – however many days it takes.

Isaiah 45:12 (NKJV)

[The Lord says,] “I—my hands—stretched out the heavens, and all their host I have commanded.”

Revelation 15:3

Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty!

The majestic glory of God is revealed in creation. Whether in the vastness of the starry night sky, the rugged beauty of the Texas Hill Country, the grandeur of the mountains, or the peaceful beauty of a seaside sunset, the Creator’s magnificent splendor shines forth. Better to recognize that in the good times rather than under the duress of suffering or trying to remember it in the dark night of the soul.

Job had to acknowledge this, together with his lack of understanding and his limited power, as God spoke to him in no uncertain terms: God to man. We might be reminded of this in times of disaster when the beauty of creation is marred and hidden. But God is never at a loss in his rule over creation – even a creation that waits in eager longing for the fullness of redemption to be revealed (cf. Romans 8:18-22).

The Holy Spirit moves us to express our praise to God. We see his glory, recognize his rule and reign over all things, and are amazed by his works. Greatest of all these works is that of Jesus Christ who embraced our brokenness and points us to a life of eternal abundance, hope in the face of tribulation, and an eternal acknowledgement of God’s glory.

As we continue to recover from the flooding in our campus buildings we thank God for his glory, acknowledge his works, and rejoice in his faithful love through Jesus Christ.

Zechariah 1:3

Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you.

2 Peter 3:9

The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

We are making headway on recovering from the flooding in three of our six church buildings. A great team of volunteers, staff, and professionals continue to dry out, pack up, clean up, move out, and set up for long-term temporary operations here. But the progress is slow and the unfolding reality of the job ahead is daunting. Sunday School, “Destination Discipleship” as we call it, has a dynamic curriculum with many supplies and weekly needs. We’re trying to figure out how to move, store, and use those for the next weeks.

Then there are the needs of the community! That’s where we are also beginning to focus our efforts. Some of those needs are happening in real time as members and neighbors reach out to one another for help. Some of it is happening as people begin to reach out to us for help and we put teams together to move possessions, tear out carpet, muck out water, and otherwise provide hands-on help.

This Sunday our Bible Study Communities will gather for  a special project to aid the local community and do what we can to help. Some will go out to hand out “Flood Buckets”. Others will go door to door to see if we can help. We’re trying to do two things at once: recover our facilities and operations, and help the people of the community.

In the midst of all this, we are thankful for God’s patience and kindness toward us. He desires that we come to him in repentance and faith, and embrace his promises of forgiveness, love, mercy, and salvation. We, too, need to be patient as we deal with the realities of flood recovery in the days ahead.

Psalm 100:5

For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. 

2 Corinthians 5:18

God reconciled us to himself through Christ. 

  
As we recover from the flooding here in Cypress, I am particularly thankful for God’s faithfulness and unwavering love. We had a significant encounter with water at St. John, as you can see from the photo above. We will be looking at some major clean-up projects in the next days, weeks, and maybe even months. 

In the midst of those realities, the goodness, faithfulness, and reconciling love of God is precious – more so than those who would conclude otherwise would think. Too often we connect the goodness of God and his love for us to specific events in our lives. We win the lottery, we thank God. We lose our home due to flooding, we despair of his grace. It’s as though our perception of God is dependent on our happiness, or our assessment of what is good and bad in our lives or the lives of those we love.

Take God’s goodness, faithfulness, reconciling love, and mercy as the unmoving center of our lives and we can much better deal with the up and down realities of life. This a more mature view of things – just as a child soon learns that not everything bad that happens to him is his mom or dad’s fault. It is a view of things as they are. Being centered upon reality, upon the unchanging nature of God, gives us not only a broad view of the world, but enables us to stand strong when the storms do come. 

God is good…all the time. All the time…God is good. That is most clearly revealed in Jesus’ reconciling love. For that I am thankful today; even as we clean up following the flooding.