I wrote recently about the “subversive” nature of joining Jesus in advancing his Kingdom. My friend and Navigator encourager Bill Mowry, author of Ways of the Alongsider, a tool I recommend frequently, recently published an article on the occasion of his 50th anniversary of following Jesus. The story illustrates the step-by-step process that’s involved. Bill’s article is worth reading in its entirety. Here are a few snippets:

I entered college in 1968. My heroes were in the radical political left, my mission was social justice and an end to the Vietnam war, my values were shaped by the rock and roll culture, and I was in love with a girl named Peggy.

Sometime in my later high school years, I told God to “shove off.” He was irrelevant and unnecessary to my life. Little did I know that He was tracking me down.

When I moved into my freshman dorm at Bowling Green State University, I became friends with a guy who lived across the hall. We bonded over the shared dreams and frustrations of college life. However, there was a difference. Ed was a Christian.

He and Ed spent a lot of time together, including doing Bible study, which Bill participated in “just to harass his faith.” But Bill read the Gospels between his freshman and sophomore years “and was quickly impressed by Jesus. His teachings were captivating and consistent. What a surprise!“

Shortly after, he decided to commit his life to Christ:

[I] knelt beside my bed and prayed. I can’t remember what I said but I admitted my rebellion against God and welcomed His Son into my life. As one author calls it, “I was overcome by a great affection.” God tracked me down.

I soon informed Ed of my decision. After we talked, he asked a simple question that shaped my life. “Do you want to meet in the study lounge tomorrow and read the Bible together?” I said “yes” and we began meeting weekly to read the Bible together. Ed was discipling me even though I didn’t know what was happening.

That little question to read the Bible together set me on a new life course. Jesus became my hero, the Great Commission was my mission, the Bible shaped my values, and loving God became a new passion. All this started fifty years ago in October, 1969.

Bill lists five lessons that he’s reflecting on from a 50-year perspective. Here are two of them:

Lesson #2. Surrendering to God is a serendipitous journey. Serendipity means “happy surprise.” As a campus “radical,” I protested to get ROTC off campus. Then I got involved with a “para-military” Christian organization called The Navigators where most of my supervisors are ex-military! What a sense of irony our heavenly Father has. What’s another surprise? When I heard a tape recording of my voice in a high school speech class, I concluded that I would never speak in public again. I was embarrassed by my poor enunciation of words. In His grace, God gave me the gift of teaching and most of my life has been lived in front of people . . . talking! Surrendering to God is a serendipitous experience.

Lesson #3. Following Jesus is the ultimate adventure. My early life was like some of the twelve disciples — a boy from a rural community who hadn’t traveled much. Little did I know that I would be commissioned to go to the nations and to people unlike myself. Following Jesus has meant ministering to undergraduates, graduate students, professors, doctors, dentists, business leaders, and now pastors. I’ve been to places, and enjoyed friendships, that have stretched the imagination and comfort of this small-town boy. Following Jesus is the ultimate adventure.

Often we see people like Bill, effective in ministry, and we think, “I could never do that.” But Bill’s story reminds us that God is never finished with us, and we can actually experience growth and transformation, and more importantly, be part of God’s Great Adventure.

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. (Mark 4.25 – 28, ESV)

I love competence wherever I find it, and I greatly admire our first responders, the police and firefighters who help keep us safe.

The other day, a carbon monoxide detector started beeping. Assuming the batteries were defective, I replaced them. Still beeping. Two beeps every 30 seconds. While I was still trouble-shooting, June came down to the garage and said the other carbon monoxide detector was beeping. Weird. But they were installed at the same time, and the batteries in both units were old, so I replaced those batteries. Still beeping. 

June insisted I call the fire department, and they sent three guys over. One of the guys took charge of the investigation, and he noticed right away that the unit was manufactured in 2012. “It could be at the end of its life–seven years.” Sure enough, when we looked at the instructions on the faceplate (which I hadn’t looked at), which was still attached to the ceiling, it said clearly, “When the unit needs to be replaced, it will beep twice every 30 seconds.” 

So when all else fails, read ALL the instructions. And don’t be afraid to call for help. The firemen not only explained the beeping, but they also inspected for carbon monoxide, assuring us we had none. And WalMart was standing by with the replacement units. What a country! And we give thanks that the beeping started around 6p instead of in the middle of the night. 

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. (Proverbs 3.5, ESV)

Listen to good advice if you want to live well… (Proverbs 15.31, MSG)

Staying with the subject of nativity scenes, we went to the enormous Gaylord Hotel near the Denver Airport last Saturday to celebrate my birthday. Part of the festivities was an enormous ice sculpture display. We’ve never seen anything like it.

After many rooms of displays, and a story about Rudolph, we came to the last room which contained only a fantastic ice sculptured nativity scene. I wish I could show you all of it and capture it well.

Later we saw several souvenirs of the ice show, labeled, “See Ice! featuring Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I think the labels are wrong: Rudolph was just a warm-up for the main event!

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 4.4, 5, ESV)

I mentioned yesterday that we had set up our first-ever outdoor nativity scene. Very simple.

You may have seen that Pope Francis is encouraging people to display such a scene. You don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate what he said. Here are some snippets:

[The scene] is a genuine way of communicating the gospel, in a world that sometimes seems to be afraid of remembering what Christmas really is and eliminates Christian symbols, only to retain those drawn from a banal, commercial imagination.

I wish to encourage the beautiful family tradition of preparing the nativity scene in the days before Christmas, but also the custom of setting it up in the workplace, in schools, hospitals, prisons and town squares. It is my hope that this custom will never be lost and that, wherever it has fallen into disuse, it can be rediscovered and revived.

It shows God’s tender love by placing the mystery of the divine within an ordinary setting…The lowly setting of Christ’s birth summons us to follow him along the path of humility, poverty and self-denial that leads from the manger of Bethlehem to the cross.

I was encouraged while I was delivering invitations door-to-door for an upcoming neighborhood Christmas gathering: two of my neighbors commented specifically on the manger scene. “I like your display.” I responded, “It’s the message we wanted to convey.”

In short, displaying the nativity is one more way to carry on the “resistance” we’ve been discussing. Or, to use other terminology: it’s another way to create a “holy moment.”

It started when God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful. (2 Corinthians 4.6, MSG)

This is what you’re to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2.12, MSG)

And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2.12, ESV)

I always wondered, “Where was the sign?” But a baby in a feeding trough IS a sign! It’s not every day that you find a newborn baby in a stable. This had to be unique even in those days. 

It goes with the no status that I wrote about yesterday. The sign for the shepherds wasn’t the star even though our new outdoor nativity set (the first we’ve ever displayed) does have a star! The star was for the wise men who came later to a different place. The sign was just the baby himself, born in a barn(!). (That gives new meaning to the old expression, doesn’t it?)

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7.14, ESV)

I’m still thinking about the Advent imagery of a subversive operation as I wrote yesterday about the Italian resistance during World War 2. Often we want to recruit (or be recruited for) something with status and position. Jesus didn’t come with position, like someone, say, born into a royal family. And he doesn’t offer us a position either. When Paul was “advancing” it was in Judaism (see Galatians 1.14). When Jesus came, who were the first people to recognize him? All people without status:

• Shepherds
• Simeon
• Anna
• Even the magi had no status in Israel

That Jesus was coming to establish an “underground” movement is clear from the beginning. He had no status. His witnesses had no status. His early followers had no status.

The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. (Acts 4.13, NLT)

I wrote yesterday that God is at work behind the scenes, and this is no more evident than at this time of year when we celebrate Advent: the coming of Jesus into the world. One of the recurring themes of scripture is that of war: war between the forces of evil and the forces of good. It’s been going on since Genesis 3.

I recently read a compelling historical novel, Once Night Falls, on the Italian resistance in northern Italy during World War 2. It’s the story of a few people, ordinary people, doing what they could against the Nazi occupation.

• An overweight priest acted as courier for a bishop who was also part of the resistance
• A middle-aged playboy with an American car also was a courier
• A woman hid her Jewish friend in her attic and later poisoned the German soldiers she was forced to cook for. She died with them.
• A young Italian man with one good arm, killed a German operative amidst other errands he was running for the resistance. He helped his Jewish fiancé out of the country into Switzerland, while he stayed behind to fight

God has set his resistance movement in motion, a movement that defeated Satan at the cross and will ultimately defeat all evil (read Revelation: God wins!). Along the way, he recruited people for this movement. Zechariah and Elizabeth to beget John the Baptist, Mary to bear the Christ child, Joseph to protect her, and on it goes.

Someone has written:

Jesus has come to undo the consequences of evil and to establish the kingdom of God.  I know that, even though Jesus is calling the whole world, he is beckoning me in a special way to respond to that call to work for the kingdom.

How will I respond?

And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” (Luke 1.38, ESV)

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4.18 – 20, ESV)

I’m starting to read Adventures of a Computational Explorer by Stephen Wolfram, architect of Mathematica, robust software for mathematicians. This sentence in the Preface caught my eye:

But what I’ve come to realize–particularly having embraced the computational paradigm–is that the same intellectual thought processes can be applied not just to what one thinks of as science, but to pretty much anything.

It reminded me of something Dr. Terry Perciante, a chaos theory expert at Wheaton College shared a number of years ago. Terry showed us this figure, which I found out later is known as the Sierpinski Triangle:

It’s an infinitely continuing figure in which every blue triangle of any size has a hole in its center. What is interesting about this is that the figure is not produced by carefully drawing all the little triangles. It is produced by a very simple random process. God is at work behind the scenes bringing order out of chaos. Terry says that God’s sovereignty is cast against a background of turbulence.

I thought of the early church, described succinctly as:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people…And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.(Acts 2.42, 46, 47, ESV)

God added to their number! God is building the church:

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2.19 – 22, NKJV)

And the church looks like He wants it to look! The Sierpinski Triangle is composed of thousands of randomly distributed points. We never know where the next point is going to go and which point will be “next” to it later on in the process.

My point (no pun intended!) is that the triangle is not produced by copying a particular structure but by setting in motion a process. Jesus chose 12, invested in them for a few years and left. The Apostle Paul did the same.

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2, NIV)

And Paul reminded church leaders that their job is to do the same: equip the people to do the work:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, NIV)

It’s my birthday today, born on Friday, December 13, 1946. It’s my 10th birthday (after 1946) to fall on a Friday. Every day/date combination comes around four times every 28 years.

It’s amazing to me that in a society as technologically advanced as ours that 13 is considered an “unlucky” number and Friday 13th is considered an unlucky day. In China, they are afraid of the number 4. We were on an elevator in a Hong Kong hotel that had 26 floors. Well, not really. The top floor was called 26, but there was no 4th floor, no 14th floor, no 24th floor, and, for the sake of the westerners, no 13th floor!

If you think about it, Jesus and the 12 constituted a group of 13! Here’s da Vinci’s famous painting: count ‘em! 

So have a good day! I intend to.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118.24, ESV)

Glen Eyrie is the conference center of The Navigators, originally built by the founder of Colorado Springs, General William Palmer. The story of The Navigators’ making the original downpayment of $108,000 back in 1953 is an inspiration in itself. Since then the castle and grounds have blessed hundreds of thousands of people, providing a quiet sanctuary to hear the voice of God.

Recently, the local PBS station made a 26-minute video of the past and present of Glen Eyrie. Watch…and then visit us!

[Jesus] said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” (Mark 6.31, NIV)

He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul… (Psalm 23.2, 3, NKJV)