students of jesus

The kingdom of God has at least five gateways right here and now. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch are daily evidence of the Creator’s kindness and creativity. He floods our senses with his joyful presence, but we have trained ourselves to ignore his always-speaking voice.

Try this: take a moment to re-discover how the goodness of God reaches us. Allow yourself one minute per sense to record how God reaches you. Then share some of your list with us all. Here’s mine:

Sight: The million Kentucky greens, goldfinch yellow and bluebird blue, the hazel eyes of the woman I love, every sunset and the occasional sunrise, double rainbows all the way (“What does it mean?”), and the angels at the very edge of my vision.

Sound: The timbre of my wife’s voice, my children’s laughter, woodpeckers about their morning’s work, the breeze among the trees. Earbuds!—OMG, earbuds! They are a category unto itself: U2, Adele, Mary J Blige, Bach and Bruckner, Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriel’s Oboe, and lately, Sara Bareilles.

Taste: French toast, coffee, bacon (see also “smell”), Coca-Cola, butter melting on the biscuit, the salt of the sea and the salt of my sweat, the way hot peppers delay their attack until after you’ve committed yourself all the way.

Smell: Bacon! Firewood—stacked and waiting, the fireplace where our family gathers, the leather of my baseball glove, Starbucks, that moment as you begin to peel a banana, and my granddaughter’s hair just after bath time.

Touch: Hot showers, a subtle breeze, my lover’s kiss, the chill of ice, the drowsy warmth before I sleep, the way I run my fingertips across the back of my couch whenever I walk through the living room, and petting the dog who fits so neatly on my lap.

What will your list look like? Each sensation is an invitation to praise him anew. All these and ten thousand more: call them evolutionary adaptations if you must, I will call them gateways to his goodness.

On the same day John F. Kennedy’s assassination shocked the world, Clive Staples Lewis quietly slipped out life's back door and proceeded farther up and farther into Aslan’s country. In fact, November 22^nd 2013 is the fiftieth anniversary of the deaths of three significant 20^th Century men: JFK, Lewis, and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). If there were a waiting room somewhere in the afterlife, it would have been a fascinating place that day.

Among these 30 Thankful Days I hope you will permit me an appreciation of C.S. Lewis, my first mentor in following Jesus.

I had been a high-school evangelical for three years when someone handed me a collection of Lewis’ essays, God in the Dock. They changed my life. He's more than the Narnia movie guy: if you have never read C.S. Lewis, you have missed one of God’s great gifts to the church in the last hundred years. God in the Dock was the most formative work of Lewis for me because it captured my heart and my attention. From the Dock I went on to discover the reality of the spiritual realm in The Screwtape Letters, the foolishness of valuing ideas merely because they seem new (The Abolition of Man), and yes, the delight of an extended story of other worlds where Jesus is also on the move. Forty-plus years later, Lewis is my constant companion.

Lewis taught me both the delight and the challenge of following Jesus. He was the Father’s emissary in the process of renewing my mind, and he is still my conversational partner and brother in Christ. The facts of his life are remarkable: losing his mother at an early age, a distant but decent father, the horrors of trench warfare in World War I, an alcoholic brother, an mysterious woman who became something of a shackle in his life, and the unexpected joy of finding Christian love late in his life. And then there's the whole international-fame and selling 50-million books thing. For all of his intellect and fame, he experienced many of the same problems we all face.

The trusted voice of Lewis lingers in my memory as fresh as morning coffee, and from my perch in the Kentucky countryside I’m still on the lookout for a fawn, with an umbrella, carrying parcels.

There’s a unique genius required to celebrate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It is a marvel of the modern world; we should stand in amazement. The bounty of the nation lies before you at a cost of 28 cents. Georgia peanuts. California grapes. Kansas-wheat-turned-flour. To assemble a PB&J from scratch and you would have to drive 5,000 miles.

Pity the fool who cannot see the goodness of God between two slices of bread.

There’s an old joke in religious circles where a guy goes to the grocery store and buys a week’s worth of food. He brings it home and says grace over it all before putting it in the pantry. That way he doesn’t have to waste time thanking God before every meal. He is closer to the kingdom than you might expect. Why not thank God for the food as you wheel the grocery cart to your car? Or, as you unload the bounty of a dozen plastic bags why not praise him for each trip back-and-forth between the car and your kitchen? Our grocery list is a modern hymnal, but we grouse over finding room in the frig. In the words of Louis CK, “Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy.”

The great philosophers tell us we must examine our life. Very well—why not start with the wonder of humble groceries? If the unexamined life is not worth living, the unthankful life misses the point. G.K. Chesterton reminds us to start simply: “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” Because readers of Students of Jesus are an advanced group, we can start with three ingredients at once. Peanut butter. Jelly. Bread.

The past two Wednesdays I’ve recommend that rarest of genres, Thanksgiving-themed movies. Today I proudly pay homage to the finest of the bunch.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: John Hughes’ 1987 tale of two misfits trying to get home for Thanksgiving still fits like a pair of bedroom slippers. Steve Martin plays Neil Page, an uptight businessman thrown by outrageous fortune into the care of the eternally traveling salesman, Dell Griffith, played by John Candy. The most unlikely pair of fellow travelers and bunkmates, the two men bond in ways both manly and true. It’s true there’s one scene where Steve Martin drops the F-bomb at least a dozen times in a two-minute span—but I’m not going to lie to you—I even loved that scene. Beyond the comedy is a yearning for home, and we discover something about the bonds of family along the way. The final scene of the film not only welcomes both of them to the banqueting table, but us as well.

The Creator did some pretty good work back in Genesis. His work was so good he took a day off just to admire it all, its goodness and fullness.

It’s difficult to admire—or give thanks for—something when we are so busy with the next thing. Contentment gives us the perspective we need, contentment leads to thanks-giving. Each of us needs to find a thankful perch and look upon what God has done. That’s one reason the first settlers chose the fall: after harvest, before hard winter, and before everything had to be cured, salted or dried out. Their timing is instructive.

There’s a moment when mere fruitfulness turns to ripened sweetness. It’s the savor of the task complete, the taste of a harvest safe in the barn. We give thanks when we breathe in the fragrance, and exhale gratitude.

Ask Yourself: Do I set aside time at the end of a task to enjoy the whole?

Live Into It: Graham Cooke offers some excellent advice: "Wherever you are right now, listen to the sound of Heaven and be at peace. Be at rest, and let God’s peace come. Let His peace come, and let the weariness of your life be washed away."