God Still Calls some of His people to new places! by Linden Malki

Reading about the call of God to Abraham's family made me aware that I have seen that happen in my own family. My grandmother's uncle, father, and another uncle and their families were banished from Sweden for preaching outside of the state church, and came to America over 150 years ago. My dad's father was kicked out by his father for joining one of the underground Baptist churches in Sweden, and came to Minnesota, married my grandmother and moved to the Seattle area.  My dad was offered a job promotion to move to Spokane, met my mom at church, and that's where I grew up. 

And then it happened to me. I had finished college, was turned down for a graduate fellowship I had applied for.  My dad's missionary brother was retiring from a Christian college in Taiwan, was planning to come home the long way around and spending some time in the Middle East with a missionary son and then going on to Sweden.  He invited Dad and I to join them in Beirut and travel with them through the Holy Land and then on to Sweden. Dad was retired, I was at loose ends, my mom had died five years earlier.

Dad and I took a Dutch freighter to Beirut, and on that boat was a Lebanese man with his mom, who was taking him back to the "old country" to find a wife. He had been living in California for about eight years at the time. His family was historic Christian; his father had grown up in a missionary school in Turkey, and he had a missionary brother who knew my missionary cousin in Lebanon. My aunt and uncle went on to Sweden, while Dad and I stayed in Beirut; dad's health was failing and he passed away that summer. I wound up getting married there. (Yes, Dad was happy about it, he told the family that he'd never met a man that he thought would take better care of me.) We spent the rest of the summer there, including more time in Jordan, which then included Jerusalem and the West Bank. When we came back to San Bernardino where John had been living, I discovered that the associate pastor of the church John was already attending had been the pastor of the church in Spokane I had grown up in, was one of Dad's best friends, had gone to college with Dad's sister, and had introduced my parents. God pulled a lot of strings to get me here, with a new family, a new church, and a business that was just what I actually could do well. God moved my great-grandparents from Sweden to Minnesota; my grandparents to Seattle, my parents to Spokane,  and then me to San Bernardino and a new life.

We Need Each Other! by Linden Malki

God, creating living creatures, from the smallest single-cell creature to human beings, made them to multiply—to become colonies or organisms or herds or families, and communities, tribes and nations. In the early days of God reaching out to mankind, we see Him encouraging the people to learn from Him how best to live together in harmony. Our history is a continuing saga of people gathering and warring, cooperating and attacking, loving, hating, and barely tolerating each other. We see this in the political world today, where people find others they can agree with and identify others that they don't trust. Even those who believe in God have their differences in what this means—some people develop their image of God in a very exclusive and specific belief, others are willing to tolerate almost everyone, and everything between. We even see God Himself in different ways, even though the one common factor is that He is unique—but even the uniqueness is defined differently.

I have had two experiences recently that illustrate our need for community. On January first, a person was found deceased in a house fire south of Winchester in Riverside County, who appears to have been my kids' cousin. The house belongs to my husband's sister, and her son had lived there and managed a weekend swap meet on Winchester Road. He was one of 35 living cousins, of whom 29 were at the memorial service last Saturday, some of whom had come from long distances to be with the family. My husband's family are from Lebanon, and there were folks there whom I hadn't seen in some years, including cousins and inlaws and extended family connections. While the occasion was unwelcome, I have learned that the opportunity to connect with relatives and friends is of great value.

The other is the Friday evening fellowship event last night. It was a good opportunity to see people that normally attend different services on Sundays, and also people who may not have ever been to a service here or anywhere. The church historically has always been called to gather in the Name of Jesus, whether in large cathedrals, underground meeting places, villages and cities from small to large, homes and storefronts and chapels, to share and teach and encourage each other in the life we have chosen.

Father Knows Best--by Linden Malki

We know the story--a rich young man comes to Jesus and asks  “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The first thing Jesus asks is that this man knows and keeps the Commandments--which he does. But when Jesus, who knows more about us than we know ourselves, tells this man that he needs to sell everything and give it to the poor, and follow Him, this man realizes that he wants his stuff more than he wants Life. It's easy to know what to do, but doing it is a whole different proposition. The world is full of people that will tell you what you should do, but the only One who truly knows what you were created to do is the Creator Himself.  In this story, we need to notice two things: it says that Jesus loved him, and He gave the young man the option of following or not. He didn't pressure him, He didn't chase after him. He let him follow his own path, even at the cost of his soul. This is one reason that the world is in the shape that is in: God respects our decisions, even at the cost of the consequences.

Our world  encourages us to want "stuff", often at the cost of the true things in life. This may be material stuff, or ego-stroking stuff, or laziness, or stuff that tastes and feels "good" at the time but leaves a bad taste or worse. We can open our eyes and look past the superficial stuff and see what the long-run results are; and it may not always be obvious. Jesus' disciples asked what they could expect from their faithfulness, and at first it looked like trouble and opposition and hardship, and persecution. Yes, Jesus tells them, you have given up much to follow Me, but rewards will be My rewards in serving in this life and the unimaginable joys of the next. And they did see it all--all but John, from what we know, died to this world, as they had offered their lives, and are remembered and appreciated for what we can learn from them.

We live in a world that sees "freedom" as meaning that we ought to be able to do whatever we "want",  but the question is what do we think we want and why?  Too many people have put themselves first, without understanding that we are not necessarily the best judge of good and evil, practical and impractical, logical and illogical, and don't look beyond today. Even "smart" people are not smart about everything, and  may not see other people's knowledge as useful. We need to learn how to evaluate what we think and what we are told; and the best judge is the One that has always offered wisdom when we sincerely ask and want true answers. It may not be easy, but it is worth it.

The Lamp for our feet. the Light for our path--by Linden Malki

We do not know what is going to happen in the next minute, much less next year., except that we don't know. One  example of the world we live in is that even the experts on weather know that their best predictions are still subject to change without notice. The Psalmist tells us that we are given light on our pathway, but not for as far ahead as we would like. We are never prepared for what lies around the next bend of the road; that's why accidents happen.  One of the biggest problems in the development of "self-driving cars" is that even the best of the current versions can't predict the difference between stationary objects and moving objects.  We are created for a world that is always changing, in a universe constantly in motion, and every day we wake up (if we wake up; even that is not guaranteed) to weather that may or may not be what was predicted, traffic that may or may not be what it was like yesterday, and things that we may or may not be prepared for and may or may not want to deal with.  Even if we are a hermit that lives in the woods we do not know what is going to facing us when we go out the door--or even might drop through the roof.

There are ways we can be somewhat prepared, but we still realize that worrying about things that may happen is usually a waste of time and energy. I recall when my kids were little, people would ask if I wasn't worried about dealing with the world they were facing, and my answer was that the only thing I really know is that whatever it is, it will be different that what I expect, so it does no good to worry. Yes, we do have to do our best in preparing for what we think we can expect, but always be ready for dealing with both the expected and unexpected.

We do have one advantage over many of the people we deal with every day: if we know God, we can be ready to expect some things that are worth looking for: we do know that He has ultimate control over what goes on, even though we don't always like it, but in the long run we are in His hands. He does take care of us in big ways and small things, and in the long run the one thing we can look forward to is an eternity in His care.

The Spreading Message--by Linden Malki

In the story of God's movements in the history of humanity, we find His moving in at least two major ways in the lives of people. We need to realize and remember that He created us, but also that He gave us the choice, beginning with the earliest records of our history, of listening and obeying His Word, or insisting on our own independence and free will. There have always been those who have listened and accepted a relationship with Him, and those who have rejected and ignored Him. He also told those who did know Him to pass on what they had learned to others outside of their immediate culture--which didn't happen effectively until the followers of Jesus were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. Our ancestors are largely descendants of those early converts and refugees.

The spread of the Good News also happened in the other direction--to the East. The earliest known records of the Christian message spreading toward Asia is a movement known as the Nestorians, followers of a Christian bishop who broke away from the main church about 500AD and who spread across Asia as far as China around 800-1000AD, and then faded away. There were Catholic missionaries by the 1500's. The first Protestant missions followed through the 1800's and 1900's until World War II.  They were just beginning to come back in the late 1940's when the Communist takeover drove them out. My father's brother and sister-in-law were among the missionaries who had gone to China in the 1920's and helped establish churches and schools. My uncle had spent part of the war as a translator for US Army intelligence, as he read and wrote Mandarin Chinese. They went back to western China in 1946, and when the Communists moved into the area and found a former US Army intelligence officer there, they imprisoned him for almost five years. A few years later they went back to Taiwan where he was the Dean of a Christian college for another five years. There were those who looked at the story of China missions and saw it as a failure, with the Communists trying to elimnate the churches of China. However, the amazing thing is that the church didn't die out; in fact, despite the church buildings being seized by the government and used for warehouses and factories, the churches went underground and met in homes and wherever they could, and grew. After Mao was gone, many of the churches were allowed to reopen and got their buildings back, and although it is still not totally approved, there are churches which have government permits to meet, and others which are still meeting without permission..  Estimates of the number of Christians in China today range from about 30 million known church members and possibly up to 67 million total, and there are predictions that China could become one of the world's largest churches in another 20-30 years--totally self-supporting.  Yes, it was worth it!

Living with a Spiritual Dimension-by Linden Malki

There are several different ways we can live our lives.  One is to live a purely single-dimensional life; with no interest or concern with anything outside of what is obvious and completely self-centered. Anything that cannot be seen, touched, or comprehended with basic physical senses is not real and not worth the attention. We live in a world with a lot of people like this. Whatever they don't understand isn't important; this can even extend to the point of not caring about anything or anybody that doesn't do anything for them. This can also extend to intellectuals who insist that only what they can prove or imagine is real, and those who judge everyone by their own image. They also often want someone or something outside of themselves to make them "happy."

There are people who know that there is a good chance that there is something beyond the obvious, but have a tendency to want whatever it is to follow their own desires. If they believe in something outside of themselves, they usually think that it can be manipulated for their own benefit. Whatever "God" they believe in, they are trying to control by following all the rules and saying all the right things, and feel they are entitled to get what they want. They often talk about "love" and helpfulness, but it's on their own terms.  Some of them become angry if their expectations are not met on their terms.

The best example we have of a God who cares about us and wants the best for us is the God of the Bible. The first thing we notice is that God does communicate with people, but from His own space. The entire Bible lists examples of His interaction with His creatures--us!  We read that "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things...".(Hebrews 1:1-2) but we are not supposed to live life on our own knowledge and strength, but that " I can do all things [i]through Him who strengthens me. "(Philippians 4:13).  We are created to live in a multi-level universe; that there is something that we cannot imagine  that has been prepared for those who commit themselves to a relationship with God.  If we admit our own inability to live up to His plan, and turn our struggles over to Him, amazing things can happen.  He can remove the weaknesses, sins, and temptations of this world--I have seen this happen in my own life.

Jesus is the breakthrough of God into our lives--from His birth, His baptism, the times His disciples--and His enemies--saw God connect with His human self, and then His death, Resurrection, and return to His Father. This is Life that is above and beyond the basic world that too many people think is all there is. 

Presents and Presence--by Linden Malki

Why do we give presents at Christmas? It's something that we've all grown up with, and a good part of our economy is tied up with this custom. Everywhere we go, we see decorations and posters and billboards; and the special music is everywhere--some of it religious in theme, and some of it isn't, but it all has a "holiday" message that saturates our culture for a month, and then it all gets packed up and put away for the next 11 months. We all know people who really get into the flavor--they literally totally redecorate their house inside and out, from the lights on the roof to the decorations on the lawn; one of my friends warned me, as we were invited to a Christmas event, that "Christmas threw up at her house." I've had friends, and even people I barely know, beg to borrow money so their family can "have a Christmas", and they can go overboard buying more stuff they don't need or appreciate.

Yes, there are good things about celebrating Christmas--it is a reminder each year that God sent His Son to live as one of us for a short time, and teach us Who God really is, and how to live a life in a relationship with Him. If we learn the lessons that He came to teach, and catch a short glimpse of His Glory, and His love, this can be eternally important to us. If we use this reminder in His name, and show His love and generousity, this can be one of the most important times of the year. I find it interesting that we can go overboard in remembrance of His coming, and yet in a few months, almost let the truly important event of His life go almost unrecognized, But then, babies are sweet and cute and easy to deal with; and an execution and then a Resurrection are supremely important but not "fun".

Even the emphasis on giving has a place--if we remember the lessons that we are offered. The response of "wise men" from outside the Jewish culture that had become ingrown and legalistic, who were given a notice that came from a God who reaches out to all people, is a wake-up call for us. Even the stories of followers like a man called to His service, four hundred years later and hundreds of miles away, who demonstrated with his life that we need to be open to the needs of each other and willing to meet them without wanting personal credit or glory, caught the imagination of a many people in many even farther away places, and Nicholas, bishop of Myra, is still an example of how to give--in recognition of need and in the Name of Jesus, without personal credit or return. Even the distorted and exaggerated stories of St Nicholas, remembered as Santa Claus, remind us that giving is an important part of life in God's world, and it is truly more blessed give than to receive.