NEXT CHAPTER PLEASE

Our life is like a book with chapters. If we’ve written many chapters already, we may look back and feel as if we were different persons in each of those chapters. In a sense we were; as we matured, we assumed different roles in the various chapters (seasons) of our life.

We’re always told not to read the final chapter of a book to see how it turned out, but to wait and be surprised. The Mother of Jesus was unique, however, because God gave her a prophetic peek through old Simeon at the Presentation of baby Jesus in the temple. He revealed one of the later chapters of her life that would pierce her heart. You and I aren’t privy to such a revelation; perhaps it is best that we are spared that glimpse. Either we would be too eager to reach the happy ending of our life story—or drag our feet if we knew in advance about some trial that is to come.

If you are a bookworm like I am, you too may like to inhale books. As a writer, I guess I think in chapters. I love to read all kinds of books, especially biographies and dramatic New York Times bestsellers, if they are clean. If I have any addiction, it is that I pig out when I read a book—once started, I overeat it. I swallow it whole, gobble it up almost at one sitting. I’m compelled to read it to the finish. Let the world go by; nothing else will get done. And I insist on having another good book waiting in the wings to start reading right away.

Oh, then I feel guilty for not redeeming the time, and I decide to pray and fast from such pleasure reading for long periods—like during Lent. Yes, I can do it with God’s help, for awhile. But if I so much as yield to the temptation and leaf through another novel that has been lying there just beckoning to me, I’m hooked again! Like an alcoholic, I can’t take just one sip; I can’t take a ten minute reading snack. I’m off again on my long pleasure cruise. So much for confession.

My original point is that our lives are like the chapters in a book, a biography. You start with the front matter, the background stuff that launches you, like the Acknowledgments, Foreword, and Introduction, maybe a Preface. God has already predetermined the setting, chosen your DNA, and the circumstances where the drama will take place. He ordained the plot and the characters who will interact with you in life. It’s going to be a real page-turner, for sure!

Each chapter is separate and chronologically progressive. No single chapter is the whole book; the plot keeps unfolding, so don’t get bent out of shape how things are portrayed in a particular chapter, like the one you are living in right now. God is at work developing the whole exciting adventure story of your life. Don’t despair half way through. Just hang in there…everything will pass. The kids who are in diapers now will walk down the aisle in cap and gown and later in wedding apparel. The stuff you worry about which you don’t think you can possibly live through, you may not even remember when you’re living in the next chapter.

You can probably anticipate a generous basketful of serendipity times and events and adventures that will contribute to the fulfilling of your dreams. And a ton of ordinary days and events. The trivial stuff and humdrum routines are said to be the building blocks to develop your holiness. Mary surely must have had many joyful but ordinary homespun times with Joseph and her son Jesus as He was growing up; not all things they said and did would have been earth-shaking and serious. Since life is made up of so many commonplace daily doings, enjoy each chapter in the now and treasure the beloved characters who are living it with you. In your life book some characters will come and others will go. Keep offering up all things joyful and painful to God and accept His big plan for your life story. Live fully in the present chapter until God turns the page to the next chapter.

There are times in life when you may think you have surely reached the last chapter and God must be getting ready to close your book. Don’t be so sure! As I approached my eightieth year, I thought I had written the final chapter in my literally about-to-be-published autobiography. What more could God possibly have left for me to experience in life? Little did I know that not one but several more incredible chapters (and another book or two or more) were about to unfold. I was right on the verge of what I consider the greatest faith paradigm change of my life—I became a Catholic Christian after a lifetime as a Protestant evangelical missionary, teacher, writer, and broadcaster.

Let's always be eager for God’s breathtaking, fantastic surprises in your next chapter! As a Christian of any age, no matter how many or how few chapters you have lived through, or how many different roles you have played, you can look forward to a grand Epilogue, a fitting climax, even after God writes the last chapter in your earthly life story—it will be Eternity in the Presence of the Blessed Trinity! As they say, “The best is yet to come!” So celebrate each chapter as a gift from God!

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CONVERSATIONS WITH JEFFREY #20

THE NEW TESTAMENT

“OK, I understand that the first and thickest part of the Bible is the Old Testament, all about what happened from when God made the world until Jesus was born. Now let’s talk about the New Testament, Grandma--you promised. I’m looking at your big Bible now—there are four books in the beginning of the second part.”

“Those are called the four Gospels, the stories about Jesus’ life and the things he taught about God. The word gospel means ‘good news.’ You know what a biography is, right? And the difference between that and an autobiography?”

“Yes. If Jesus wrote it himself, it would be an autobiography. Like the book you wrote about your life, Grandma. But why are there four gospels? Are they all different?”

“Think about it this way, Jeffrey: If four people each wrote a story about the life of one of your teachers at school—for instance her mother, her sister, her husband, and her daughter—they would all be true but they wouldn’t be the same. Each would know her in a different way, under different circumstances and at different times. They would write certain things that they thought were important about her.”

“Who wrote these Jesus stories? Did they all know Jesus personally?”

“Matthew was a follower of Jesus and knew him during the last three years of his life; John also was a follower, a disciple, as they were called. The word means ‘student.’ Mark was the youngest writer, and he may or may not have known Jesus, but he was a student of Peter, who was one of the closest companions of Jesus. Luke never met Jesus and possibly didn’t live where all these events took place. He was not Jewish like the other three writers, so he had to do a lot of firsthand research and interview people who knew Jesus well, probably including Jesus’ mother Mary. They each wrote biographies of Jesus for different readers so they picked different details to emphasize.”

“Did Jesus have the Old Testament to read? What language was it written in?”

“People didn’t have books with covers and pages inside like we have. You probably learned in school about papyrus scrolls on which history and records were written. Jesus learned the Jewish Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, in the Hebrew language in the schools for Jewish boys taught by a Rabbi. He was like a Jewish priest. Jewish people worshiped God in places called Synagogues where the copies of the Scriptures were kept to be read out loud. No one would have a personal copy of the scrolls. The printing press was not invented until….”

“Wait! I know about that from school! Gutenberg invented the first printing press for movable type in 1440 in Germany.”

“You got that right! The New Testament books were not put together until more than 300 years after Jesus died. When it was joined to the Old Testament, the two were called the Bible. Because it was meant to be read aloud in Christian worship, people normally listened to the Bible. There weren’t many copies of the scrolls. For centuries scrolls were copied by hand onto other scrolls in monasteries. Even after presses were invented and some Bibles printed, most people couldn’t read or write.”

“Why not, Grandma? Weren’t people smart enough to learn back then?”

“Only the rich class of people could afford to go to school in those early centuries. Without public education common people didn’t have a chance for an education. Nevertheless, common people were intelligent and very clever in their daily life and work. Institutions connected with the Church were the main places to receive an education. Many did become highly educated, in fact, were brilliant and gifted in their knowledge and understanding of the world, science, astronomy, and math. Anyway, the first books to be printed were so expensive no ordinary folks could afford them.”

“Hold on. Since you said it was so long after Jesus lived before the New Testament was put together, how did people learn about Jesus during all those years?”

“After Jesus resurrection, before He went to heaven, He told His disciples (now they are called ‘apostles’ because they were sent on a mission) to go everywhere in the world and tell everyone the Good News that He died for them. And that if they believed in Him, were truly sorry for their sins, and were baptized, that their sins could be forgiven and they could go to heaven.”

“Did they really do it, Grandma, without having any tech stuff like radio, television, Internet, or printed books—or cars or planes to take them anywhere?”

“They did that faithfully by preaching—by the words they spoke—and mostly walking or by long, dangerous voyages by ship. Before long the Good News of the Gospel spread not only all over the land where Jesus lived but throughout the Roman Empire and beyond.”

“How could just a few apostles do all that by themselves?”

“They couldn’t—but they taught everything they knew about Jesus and His teachings to other faithful Christians—who then taught other people, and the Good News traveled everywhere.”

“What are those other books in the New Testament beside the four Gospels?”

“The book of Acts tells us the history of how the Gospel spread and how the early churches were started. Because of the distance and lack of communication, the Apostles couldn’t keep visiting all the new believers in person. Some Apostles wrote letters to the churches they founded in other cities and countries to encourage the new Christians, settle problems, and tell them what the true teaching of Jesus was on certain questions that came up. Their letters, like the four Gospels, were meant to be read aloud when the Christians got together for worship. Some of the most important letters to the new churches were written by the Apostle Paul.”

“I thought there were only twelve Apostles. Who was Paul?”

“He was a highly educated Jewish leader who didn’t know Jesus or believe in Him. After Jesus went to heaven, Paul tried to drag the new Christians into prison or kill them to stop the spread of Jesus’ teaching. By a miracle Jesus appeared in a vision to Paul and told him He had chosen him to preach the Gospel to the non-Jewish people. Paul stopped killing the Christians and became a follower of Jesus and one of the greatest Apostles.”

“What’s that last book in the New Testament called ‘The Revelation’ ? Is it another letter?”

“It is a very different kind of book, full of symbols and visions. Actually it is Jesus’ revelation or explanation to John, an Apostle of Jesus, given to him during his old age. Jesus reveals what is going to happen to all creation in the future. Jesus will come back again at the end of the world and create a new heaven and earth. It is called a book of prophecy, telling us what is coming. Jesus tells John to write it so that Christians in all the ages to come will know that Jesus will defeat all evil in the end and establish the marvelous Kingdom of God. It’s a celebration of Jesus’ victory.”

“Whew! I think it will take forever to learn all about what Jesus has to teach us!”

“God doesn’t expect us to learn it all at once, Jeffrey. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit who came to live in us when we were baptized would help us to understand the truth—one step at a time. And Jesus gave us our Church to teach us. We have lots of help!”

#END

THE GOD OF MORE THAN ENOUGH

God is an “over-blesser”! Whatever the Lord does is lavish, generous, “exceedingly, abundantly above all we can ask or even think.” (Eph. 3:20) Unimaginable blessings are stored up, prepared by God for me from before the foundation of the world. They are not meager or skimpy. We don’t have to beg God for a blessing. They are pressed down, shaken together, and running over just waiting for me to receive them, to simply ask for them. (1 Cor. 2:9; James 4:2) God outdoes Himself in giving me far more than I need. He has an unparalleled record of faithfulness in providing for the needs of His own people. Case histories abound throughout the Scriptures.

In Mark chapter eight, Jesus took seven loaves of bread and fed 4,000 people. Seven large baskets full of leftovers were collected. He had previously taken five loaves and fed 5,000, and the disciples gathered twelve baskets full of leftovers. What do you suppose they did with them?

We know one thing they didn’t do. They didn’t take any with them. Immediately after the seven leftover loaves miracle the disciples were crossing the sea in a boat. Let the record show, “They had forgotten to take bread; and did not have more than one loaf in the boat with them.” What were they thinking? Wouldn’t you have expected them to take at least a few leftovers with them? Or how about none at all? Didn’t they believe that Jesus could miraculously feed their small group in view of what He had just done?

Jesus was aware of their anxiety, and He reproved them, “Why do you discuss your lack of bread? Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart?” He went over the details of the two above miracles of multiplication in case they had missed the point. One loaf would have been more than enough.

If necessary, Jesus could have added peanut butter and jelly to the bread that He was able to multiply. He could cause fish to jump into the boat at His command and prepare them on a charcoal grill as He later would do after His resurrection. He could have “prepared a table before them” providing salad, vegetables, and a desert if He wanted to.

Let’s not fault the disciples too much. With the history of God’s faithfulness in my own life, can’t I trust Him to be incredibly generous to abundantly satisfy my physical, material, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual needs beyond all I can ask or think according to His riches in Glory? (Phil. 4:19) All I need to do is ask for them, thank Him that the supply is on the way, confidently expect it, and receive it with joy and gratitude when it arrives in His perfect time.

I should ask largely, and God will give me largely. With those bountiful, overflowing leftovers, more than enough for my own needs, I will not waste them, but share them generously with others in need.

#END

WHO IS IN MY ORBIT?

Don’t you answer the phone when it rings?

Don’t you go to the door and open it when someone knocks?

You wouldn’t simply ignore a friend or a stranger when he asks you a question.

I have come to believe that when anyone comes into my orbit on a given day, God has sent him or her. What do I mean by my “orbit”? A secondary meaning, beside the primary one concerning circulating planets, is “the usual course of a person’s life or range of activities.” It relates to “circum-” whatever becomes a part of my circumstances or circulates around me; a happening that has something to do with me. It may be a person, an impression, or a reminder of someone that enters my circle of thought.

If it is person who enters my orbit today in some manner, I take it that God intends for me to pray for him immediately, even simply lifting my heart to God, and asking whether or not He has something for me to say to encourage or help him. (I must be sensitive; sometimes God impresses me that prayer is enough.)

On the other hand, perhaps a person may have come into my life to bring a word from God to me to encourage me, correct me, challenge me, or inspire or guide me. I try to be open and welcome that word through the one He has sent.

So I ask our Heavenly Father every single morning to intimately schedule my day for me, to bring into my life that day everything and only, whatever and whomever He wills. I should not consider anything, therefore, as an interruption to fret about or resist changes to my well-laid plans. Such disruptions are not accidental or are any events that happen incidental. They are my opportunities and God's appointments ordained for my good and for His glory.

I pray for God to filter out time-wasters and those who will sap my energy through trivial talk or petty matters. For this I need discernment. We must be careful to “be about our Father’s business” as Jesus stated it.

Lord, keep my eyes and heart open, and my ears tuned so I can fulfill Jesus’ words, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Today and every day is a fresh day to love God and walk with Him and serve Him in our specific orbit. His surprises and serendipities may be waiting right around the corner with your next e-mail, phone call, or knock on the door.

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DELIGHT YOURSELF

I love to say the word “delight.” It even sounds delicious; you can almost taste it. The dictionary meaning is: “a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment, or satisfaction; to be greatly pleased, charmed, enraptured.”

The Psalmist declares in 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” How can we do that?

To delight yourself in the Lord is to desire and enjoy the nearness of His presence and the truth and righteousness of His Word. (Job.22:26; 27:10; Is. 58:14). Those who delight themselves in the Lord receive what they yearn for, wish for, and long for in their very heart of hearts.

There must be some conditions, of course. We must desire in accordance with God’s will (John 15:7). The secret of receiving what we desire is remaining in and abiding in Christ. The closer we live to Christ through meditation on and study of who He is and what He has said in Scripture, the more our prayers will be in line with the nature and words of Christ, and thus the more effectual our prayers will be.

It is a serious thing to pray in Jesus’ Name; we are invoking, as it were, His power of attorney by the use of His name. It is a legal transaction that involves at least several things: Praying in harmony with His person, character and will; praying with faith in Him, His ability, willingness, and authority, and with the desire to glorify both the Father and the Son. Praying in the Name of Jesus, therefore, means that Jesus will answer any prayer that He would have prayed Himself. There is no limit to the power of prayer when addressed to Jesus or the Father in faith according to His desire.

Why could God risk making such a lavish and all-encompassing promise? Because when we delight ourselves in God and His will, God Himself places the very desires within our hearts that He wants to fulfill. (Phil. 2:13) And it all comes about not through hard work and laborious pleading with God, but simply by enjoying Him!

How generous is our loving heavenly Father!

# END

CONVERSATIONS WITH JEFFREY # 17

A MYSTERY—NOT MAGIC

“Grandma, I wish I could receive the bread and wine at Mass like you do.”

“You will after you go to the classes and become Confirmed someday. It’s a very wonderful and serious thing to do.”

“But I can still line up and go up front to the priest with you and cross my arms in front of me. It’s so cool when the priest touches my head and blesses me. It reminds me of my baptism day.”

“Even though you can’t receive the Eucharist now, you are already a Catholic because of your baptism.”

“That’s a strange word. What’s the Eucharist?

“That means the bread and the wine. It comes from a Greek word meaning ‘thanksgiving.’ We are thankful to God for sending His Son Jesus to the people of the world so that whoever believes in Him and what He did for us when He died on the cross, can live forever with Him in heaven.”

“What I’d like to know is does the wine taste like blood and the little round white piece of something taste like a piece of body?”

“Before I explain that, let’s back up a bit, Jeffrey. Would you like to know a whole bunch of new words?”

“I’m always up for new words so I can use them in our Scrabble game!”

“We’ll start with some short ones and then throw a really long one at you, ok? Mass is what Catholics call our worship gathering and all that goes on there. It’s not the same as what your friend Jon calls their ‘service’ at the Baptist church where his family goes.”

“Yeah, I know it’s different because Jon says they sing a lot of songs with the words on a big screen, and then their pastor talks a long time about some verses in the Bible. Everyone brings his Bible to church and looks up in it what the pastor is preaching about. He said they have the bread and grape juice only once a month, and the juice is in tiny glasses, and they serve little squares of soft bread. Jon’s parents let him to take it too since he already asked Jesus to come into his heart.”

“OK, Jeffrey, here come more new words. The host is what the bread is called, and it comes in the form of a white, unleavened, pure wheat wafer. Real wine, not grape juice, is offered in a large silver or gold cup called a chalice.”

“Whoa. What’s ‘unleavened’ mean?”

“That means no salt or yeast or baking powder in it to make it rise like regular bread or biscuits. It is only wheat flour and water. The priest is doing all these things at the altar, which is the big table with the fancy tablecloth at the front of the church. After the host is consecrated and blessed by the priest, it becomes the body and blood of Jesus, and….”

“Stop again, Grandma. What do you mean consecrated and how does the priest do that?”

“He prays a special prayer and makes the sign of the cross over the elements, which is what we call the host and the wine. He asks God to change them into the body and blood of Jesus. Here comes the longest word: When that happens, it is called transubstantiation, the big word which means ‘change in its substance.’ After the bread is consecrated, it is holy and is called ‘The Blessed Sacrament.’”

“Then it’s like magic? The bread and wine don’t look or taste like they did before?”

“No, not magic. That’s not what happens. Those elements do become the real body and blood of Jesus Christ. Catholics believe in The Real Presence, that Jesus is really there. The elements are not just symbols, like Jon’s church believes. Catholics believe exactly what Jesus said in the Bible in the gospel of John chapter 6. Jesus even gave his disciples the very words to say and what to do in Luke chapter 22 just before he died.”

“Let me get this straight, Grandma. The wine and the host are changed but they aren’t changed—but they are changed?”

“I’ll try to explain it a little more. Do you know what ‘matter’ is?”

“I think so. It’s stuff—like what everything is made of. I think we learned in science that it is something that occupies space. Something not invisible.”

“That’s good, Jeffrey. Now you have to think really, really deep on this—are you ready? All matter has two aspects: its substance and its appearance. The substance is what the thing is "deep down inside," so to speak. Its appearance is what we can observe with our five senses. The priest is given authority by the Catholic Church to consecrate the bread and wine. After he does, their appearance remains exactly the same, but their substance changes. The "breadness" and "wineness" disappear and in their places are Christ's body and blood.”

“Grandma, does that mean that the elements are really changed, but we don’t see any change? Could a high-powered microscope tell any difference?”

“A change does take place but not even a microscope can see it. And the answer is No to the question you first asked me, whether they taste like flesh and blood. The taste doesn’t change. Although the consecrated bread is no longer bread, when you swallow it, it acts in your body as though it were still ordinary bread. For instance, if someone is allergic to wheat-based food, he may have a reaction to it. If you were to drink lots of consecrated wine, you would get drunk. If someone with a cold or flu virus leaves germs on the chalice, someone might become ill. Bacteria and viruses are not transubstantiated.”

“What happens to the leftovers? Are they un-consecrated and go back to being plain bread and wine?”

“They remain consecrated and are very holy and precious. That’s why we must be so careful not to drop any crumbs or spill any wine. The priest puts the rest of the host that is not distributed during the Eucharist in an enclosed, locked, beautiful box-like receptacle called the Tabernacle which is usually located behind or to the side of the altar.”

“What does the priest do with it?”

“The Eucharist is taken to people who can’t come to Mass, like Catholics who are shut-in or those in the hospital or nursing homes. One of the consecrated wafers is displayed reverently in our Adoration Chapel for people to come there and pray and be with Jesus. We’ll talk about that sometime too, Jeffrey.”

Whew! What a lot to learn! I’m not sure I understand it all yet, but I know it’s not magic. It’s another one of those mysteries, but a really big one this time!”

#END

CONVERSATIONS WITH JEFFREY # 16

WHAT’S THE BIBLE ALL ABOUT?

“Grandma, why doesn’t my Bible, the one with gold-edged pages, look like your Bible? Yours is big and thick with really thin pages. Mine is easy reading. Yours has complicated words.”

“The Bible Storybook I gave you on your baptism day is not really a word-for-word Bible. It has many stories retold from the Bible with pictures that an artist imagined in his mind would go with the stories. Mine is a copy of the real Bible with the words translated into English from the earliest manuscripts in which it was written.”

“Is that a real picture of God in the first story about Adam and Eve in my Storybook? The man with gray hair and a long beard in a white gown sort of floating out of the sky?”

“No. God isn’t a man so he doesn’t look like a person. God is a spirit and no one has ever seen him so no one can take his picture. But that doesn’t mean God isn’t real. God is the most real thing in the whole universe.”

“Who created him?”

“No one. God always was and always will be. That’s what we mean when we say God is eternal. He existed before anything else and created everything that is anywhere.”

“You said that the Bible is God’s word. How did he write it? What language did he use?”

“The Bible is the Word of God in human words. Some of it was written in Hebrew, some in Aramaic, and Greek. It was written by dozens of people over more than a thousand years. It is like a whole library of books, but it is also one book, with one Author—God—telling one story about how God revealed himself to mankind.”

“Did God dictate the words in the Bible to the human authors?”

“No, Jeffrey, God made use of their individual skills and styles and literary techniques and inspired them to put God’s thoughts into human words. God acted in the people and through them to reveal all that he wanted people to know.”

“I guess not all the stories in your big Bible are in my Storybook.”

“You’re right. The writer who selected the stories picked some important events and characters to show the whole plan God had from the beginning of the world to save people on the earth so they could be with him in heaven forever. Part of the Bible is about what happened in that certain part of the world in the thousands of years before Jesus was born. The last part is about Jesus and how God worked miracles and healings through him and how he was put to death by the people who wouldn’t accept him as God’s son.”

“In what part of the world did all those things in the Bible take place?”

“Some of the ancient countries way back then had different names like Persia or Babylon which are modern day Iran and Iraq, but some still have the same like Israel and Egypt and Lebanon. The Bible events took place in the countries of the Near East and North Africa and Northward to Italy, Greece, and parts of what is now Europe. Of course this was long before America was discovered.”

“You said God explained his plan to save the world to ‘God’s people’. Who were ‘God’s people’?”

“God picked out one ethnic culture, the Jewish people, to show his plan of salvation in the beginning and keep them separate from some of the wicked countries around them. But with the coming of Jesus, his plan included all the peoples of the world, which was God’s original intention from the time he created mankind. Jesus gave his life so that all the world’s people could be offered salvation and the forgiveness of sins.”

“In the front of my Bible Storybook it says the stories are divided up into Old Testament and New Testament. What does “testament” mean?”

“That’s an old English word that means “covenant” or a solemn agreement between families, groups of people, or nations. The way the word is used here means an agreement between God and his people at certain stages of their learning.”

“What’s the Old Testament mostly about?”

“There are four main divisions: THE LAW tells about the beginnings of everything and the Ten Commandments and rules for life and worship in those ancient times; HISTORY tells about the Jewish people and their wars and conquests and kingdoms; the WISDOM books are moral instructions and personal virtues; PROPHECY is a record of God’s judgment on those who do wrong and his promised blessings on those who follow God’s ways.”

“Whew! That is a lot to remember! Can we wait and learn what’s in the New Testament next time? I’d like to know how anybody figured out what, out of all the many other things people wrote, should be put in the Bible….”

“Yes, let’s wait. You can’t learn everything all in one day, Jeffrey. The New Testament is really exciting about the life of Jesus and the story of the beginning of the Church.”

# END