Chaplain’s Corner: CXII

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“Are People Like Hot Dogs?”

 

It’s summertime, the season for hot dogs.  There have always been two great mysteries

surrounding the quintessential American snack:  What are they really made of?

And who actually invented them?  The first mystery has become the stuff of urban

legend—as in why does one never see a stray dog sniffing around an Oscar Mayer plant?

 

The FDA assures us that our worst nightmares have not in fact come true.  “

Wieners” are generally comprised of various cuts of pork, chicken, and turkey, while

“franks” come from the beef side of the market.  There are of course numerous additives-

seasonings, coloring, sodium, fillers and are certain that you, and the like-which is why

hot dogs taste so good.

 

Americans put away more than 20 billion hot dogs a year.  That works out to something

like 70 per person.  If you’ve just done a personal tally and are certain that you couldn’t

have eaten more than a dozen so far this year, it should be dawning on you that some of

your fellow citizens are eating heroic numbers of hot dogs.  The second hot dog mystery-

the one about origins-is a vexing one for historians.  A handful of entrepreneurs claim to

have launched the wiener-and-frank revolution sometime during the past 150 years, and

each candidate has enthusiastic supporters.

 

There’s Antoine Feuchtwanger, for instance, a Bavarian immigrant who sold hot

sausages on the streets of St. Louis in 1880.  He even let customers wear a pair of gloves

so they wouldn’t burn their fingers.  But when a number of customers walked off with

the gloves, his wife suggested serving sausages in a roll.

 

Then there was the enterprising Englishman Harry Stevens.  Sometime before 1920 he

discovered baseball fans really loved eating hot sausage snacks.  He called his creations

Dachshund sandwiches.  Tad Dorgan, the cartoonist for the New York Post couldn’t spell

“dachshund”.  Therefore, he called them “hot dogs.”

This did nothing of course to suppress the rumors of canine constituents, but Stevens

loved the name nonetheless.  Hot dog carts-the 1920 version of food trucks began to

appear near American factories.  When workers hesitated to sample the “mystery meat,”

some of the cart owners dressed their friends in white medical jackets and encouraged

them to eat a hot dog every day within sight of the crowds.  If doctors eat hot dogs they

must be fine.  Right?

 

And so people gradually learned not to worry overly much about hot dog purity.

 

Unfortunately, the same thing seems to have happened with regard to the purity of

human character.  Many people are like hot dogs.  Just enjoy each other.  Do we really

have to worry about what’s inside?  That may be the spirit of our times, but it’s

impossible to overlook that every organized religion is ultimately concerned with some

kind of spiritual purity, mastery or integrity.

 

Religion generally falls into two categories:  those that preach purity as a personal

achievement, and those who preach purity as a gift that God alone can give.  The Way of

Jesus falls into Category 2.  According to Jesus, God never says, “Oh, just sin just a little

bit, and things will work out in the end.”  God asks for utter purity- and then,

incomprehensibly, treats those who trust Jesus for forgiveness as if they had lived up to

that impossible standard.

 

The only response that seems appropriate to such an arrangement is Wow.

 

Although some may even be led to say Hot Dog!

 

Faithfully,

Ron Naylor, Chaplain

 

Chaplain’s Corner: CX

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“The Elixir of Life”

 

For more than 4,000 years, on three different continents, many of the smartest people in

the world pursued a dream.  They yearned to turn ordinary junk into treasure.  It was

the dream of alchemy.  Through a combination of research, magic, and laboratory trial-

and-error, alchemists in China, India, the Middle East, and medieval Europe searched

for the mythical “philosopher’s stone”- a substance that could transmute ordinary metals

like lead into an endless supply of precious metals like silver and gold.

 

No one knew exactly what the philosopher’s stone looked like.  It was rumored to be

orange and exceedingly heavy.  When ground it was supposed to yield a fine red powder

that could dissolve in any liquid and withstand the heat of any furnace.

 

Everyone agreed that when they finally found the stone, it would prove to be the

the ultimate key to human joy.

 

The stone was also called “the elixir of life” because it would be able to heal every human

disease and grant immortality.  Common salt crystals would be transmuted into

diamonds, and (interestingly) the stone would somehow generate perfect

representations, or clones of the one who possessed it.

 

The stakes were high.  The rewards unimaginable.  Many of history’s brightest minds

devoted their best years to pursuing the Magnum Opus (“great work”) of finding the

philosopher’s stone.  Sir Isaac Newton-arguably the smartest guy who has ever lived-

spent more time researching alchemy than either physics or optics.  Sir Robert Boyle,

one of Newton’s contemporaries and widely regarded as the father of modern chemistry

was first and foremost an alchemist.

 

Note that the root Chem (a Greek word that connotes “the art of alloying metals”) is at

the heart of both chemistry and alchemy.  Contemporary scientists assure us that the

philosopher’s stone does not exist.  It never did.  There’s no magical “something” that

can change the ordinary into the extraordinary.  But of course, that claim is at the heart

of Christian spirituality.

 

The Apostle Paul insists that those who follow Jesus “are being transformed into his

image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit”

(2 Corinthians 3:18).  The Spirit slowly but surely “transmutes” our thoughts, attitudes,

and actions into those who honor God.  What might that look like?

 

You encounter some resident here at Westminster Village that has invaded your space,

seems arrogant and self-serving and maybe said things to others that put you in a bad

light.  When others speak out behind this person’s back you remember Jesus is your

Master.  Strengthened by the Spirit, you choose not to pour abuse on the person and

work toward a relationship with the person that can bring healing.

 

You flip on the TV and that politician you cannot stand is getting more national

exposure.  You can’t even hear the politician’s voice without cringing.  You choose to

pray that God will bless this person and you choose the path of love.

 

You encounter people that always seem to be on the outs-maybe it’s the hygiene or

behavior or even a race different than yours.  Rather than put up walls remember Jesus

calls us to love people the way he loves people.  And so you make an effort to get to know

these people who are different by paying attention to their needs.  We see this in Muncie

today with the immigrants from Afghanistan who have moved into our community,

We can learn much from each other and that is the Christian response.

 

For four millennia, people all over the world cherished the dream of alchemy.  Surely

some kind of exotic chemistry could be found to transform everyday junk into gold.  But

no one ever succeeded.  Except for God.

 

He is the Alchemist who can take whatever junk is in our hearts and minds and through

the grace of his Son, transform it into something eternally beautiful.

 

Faithfully

Ron Naylor, Chaplain

Chaplain’s Corner: CIX

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“If You Could Live Forever”

 

If you could live forever, would you want to?  That question was posed to Miss Alabama

in the Miss USA competition in 1984,  She replied, “I would not live forever, because we

should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live

forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.”  Heather’s

interesting answer notwithstanding, the question of immortality has troubled and

fascinated humanity since ancient times.

 

According to Greek mythology, the Goddess Eos fell in love with Tithonus, a mortal from

the city of Troy.  She pleaded with Zeus to grant him the gift of immortality.  Zeus

complied.  But Eos had neglected to specify one small detail–that Tithonus should

remain forever young.  Instead he became older and decrepit with every passing year.

 

Billions of dollars are currently being invested by major companies in longevity

research.  “Immortalists” are convinced that science will one day solve the riddles of

aging.  The majority of scientists, however, remain skeptical.

 

Like it or not, at least for the foreseeable future, every human life has an expiration

date.  We are not immortal.

 

That leaves us grappling with that other ancient question:  Is there life beyond the

grave?  Some of the smartest people in the world have come up with different answers to

that question.  The late professor Armand Nicholi Jr, taught a course at Harvard for 35

years that contrasted two of the 20th century’s most brilliant minds.  He summarized his

observations in “The Question of God:  C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God,

Love, Sex and the Meaning of Life.”

 

Nicholi’s closing chapter on the subject of death is illuminating.  Sigmund Freud, the

father of psychoanalysis and a lifelong atheist was dismayed by the fact that one day he

would die.   Birthdays were occasions of despair.  Throughout his life he fatalistically

parted company with others by saying, “Goodbye, you may never see me again.”  In

September 1939, as cancer ravaged his body, he arranged for his physician to give him

an overdose of morphine so he could exit the world on his own terms.

 

For the first half of his life, C.S. Lewis was also an atheist.  It can safely be said that his

conversion to Christianity at age 31 transformed his perspective on everything.  That

included death.  “There are better things ahead of us than anything we leave behind,”

he wrote toward the end of his life.  He actually enjoyed the process of aging.  “Autumn

is the best season,” he insisted, and saw the physical decline not as the final chapter of

his life’s story, but as a prelude to personal renewal.  The death of his wife Joy was a

shattering experience.  He acknowledged that it jolted the foundations of his faith.  But

as his own death approached a few years later, he felt both peace and anticipation.  He

calmly told his brother, “I have done all I was sent into the world to do.”

 

The news of Lewis’s death was pushed to the back pages of the world’s newspapers

because it happened on November 22, 1963, the same day JFK was assassinated.

 

Nicholi notes that Christians have always had ambivalent feelings about the end of

life.  Death and loss are clearly Plan B in God’s world–the result of things going very

wrong.  But death itself, specifically the death of God’s Son, became the very means by

which God rescued us.  We are not going to live in this world forever.  Death, however,

does not get the last word.  Therefore one of the Holy Spirit’s primary jobs is to prepare

us to face death without fear.

 

People commonly speak of passing into death as if we were fumbling into an abyss where

everything will be lost.  That was Sigmund Freud’s lifelong fear.  But it’s more accurate

from a biblical perspective to say that we go through death into something wonderful.

We leave the small corner of God’s neighborhood so we can relocate into a vast

hemisphere of divine real estate.

 

Jesus assures his followers that we are heading for a reunion like no other welcoming

party.  No wonder the Bible’s most oft-repeated command is, “Don’t be Afraid.”

 

Life can be tough.  And death can seem so deadly.  But because of the One who put death

out of commission on the cross, all shall be well at life’s end.

 

Faithfully, Ron Naylor, Chaplain

 

Chaplain’s Corner: CVII

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“The Power of the Personal”

It matters when we see someone’s face. A few years ago, Jonathan Taylor, an Israeli
Physician was conducting a fascinating experiment. With their consent, he took photos
of 300 men and women who were coming in for CT scans. He attached the photos to the
images that were submitted to radiologists. The radiologists-who knew nothing of
Turner’s plan-reported that they felt an increased sense of empathy toward these
patients, and a desire to be especially meticulous.

Author Daniel Pink points out that radiologists often sit alone. Their work of reading
X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs is incredibly important. But it can also feel impersonal.
Pink writes, “One of the measures of an outstanding radiologists is the ability to discover
“incidental findings,” physical concerns…that are incidental to the issue really under
consideration.”

The radiologists who examined the images of Turner’s 300 selected patients—the ones
whose pictures accompanied their scans–reported a remarkable number of incidental
findings.

Three months later Turner selected 81 of the scans in which an incidental health issue
had been reported. He resubmitted them to the same group of radiologists-who didn’t
know they were repeats-but this time without the pictures. The outcome was
startling. The second time 80% of the incidental findings went unreported.

Turner was quick to point out that nothing is going to replace sound scientific and
technological processes. But “the power of the personal” cannot be ignored. His
patients are human beings, not just physiological case studies.

It matters when we see someone’s face.

In Old Testament times, what did it mean to receive God’s blessing? Aaron, the high
Priest extended his hands over the people of Israel and said, “The Lord bless you and
keep you, the Lord make His face to shine on you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn
His face toward you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

The ultimate privilege of being one of God’s people was knowing that God was turning
His face in my direction–that the King of the Osmos would want to know me personally,
and consequently let me know something of Him.

In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul provides a foretaste of life in the next world.
“For now we see in a glass darkly,” he writes in I Corinthians 13:12. Glass mirrors had
not yet been invented. The only way to catch a blurry glimpse of one’s own reflection was
to gaze into the still water or a highly polished metallic surface. “But then (that is in the
next world) face to face.” On the other side of death, in other words, we shall see and be
seen as we really are–and that will somehow include the face of God.

Paul concludes, “Now, I know in part but then I will know fully just as I also have been
fully known.” Questions will be answered. Secrets will be laid bare. We will know and
be known as never before.

But what about today? What can we do right now to experience more of the
Personal? The next time you’re in a crowd or in traffic or sitting in a crowded arena,
remember that you are surrounded by real persons–individuals who have friends,
families, fears, joys and concerns. Consider pausing and offering a prayer for the
people behind those faces that you see just for a moment. And there’s something we can
always pray for someone, even if we know next to nothing about what they are facing
today.

Lord, bless this person with your peace. The Holy Spirit will fill in the rest.

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

Chaplain’s Corner: CVI

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“Grace Wins”

In 1849 a young Russian named Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested and imprisoned. He was
charged with being part of a group that read books that appeared to be critical of Czar
Nicholas I. After waiting eight months in a festering jail, Dostoevsky and his fellow
criminals were led out three days before Christmas into the night. They were horrified
to hear they had been sentenced to death. There would be no trial and no possibility of
appeal.

And no opportunity even to prepare for the last moments of life.

The men were led to stakes. A clerk recited Romans 6:23 to each prisoner, “The
wages of sin is death,” and held out a cross to be kissed. Drums rolled. The
execution squad raised their rifles. The commander lifted his sword and shouted,
“Ready…aim…”

And then at the last moment a messenger appeared, carrying word from the Czar
himself. He would mercifully commute their sentences to 10 imprisonment. They were
spared!

One of the prisoners suffered a mental breakdown from which he recovered. Another
sank to his knees and wept aloud, blessing the Czar. Dostoevsky, who wasn’t yet 30
years old, experienced what can only be described as a resurrection. One moment he
was resigned to his own tragic and meaningless death. The next moment he was alive
as never before.

Dostoevsky and his fellow prisoners were shackled and sent on a dreadful 18 day
journey to Siberia. He never received a letter from his family during this time.

All the ingredients had come together for despair. Or bitterness. Or vengeful
obsession. But somehow Dostoevsky emerged from his ordeal overwhelmed by the
sheer joy of being alive. He had virtually memorized the only book he had been allowed
to read while in prison: the New Testament.

He went on to become perhaps the greatest novelist of all time. Crime and Punishment.
The Idiot. The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov are turbulent, multi-layered
dramas exploring the meaning of life and the stark reality of suffering in a fallen world.

But they all have the same bottom line: Grace Wins.

He never got over the wonder of having one more day to experience life as God’s
child. God willing, none of us will have to face an execution squad this week. But here
is a prayer to help us realize like Dostoevsky the depths of amazing grace.

“Lord help me seize this day- this day that is a gift from you. Open my hands and my heart to receive whatever you have prepared for me. Help me rejoice in the fact that I am alive right now and that by your grace I can live for you…one day at a time. In the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, your Son. Amen.”

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

Chaplain’s Corner: CV

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“Do You Have a Third Class Ticket?

There wasn’t much glamor associated with stagecoach travel in the Old West. The
roads were dusty, miserable, and subject to radical changes of elevation. The food
was lousy. The weather inside the coach was pretty much the same as the weather
outside. The pre-shock absorber era did not allow for much sleep. There was
always the potential danger of an encounter with hostile native Americans or outlaws.

At least those riding in a nine-passenger Concord stagecoach could exercise one
option when it came to privilege and comfort. According to historian Roger M.
Dillingham, a number of travel companies offered three classes of tickets.

If you paid top dollar for a first class ticket, you were entitled to sit. No matter
what happened, no one could force you to leave your seat. If the stagecoach got
stuck in the mud or had trouble making it up a steep hill, or even from time to
time-perhaps to walk when a wheel fell off, you remained in your seat because you
had a first class ticket.

Second-class ticket holders, on the other hand were required to vacate their seats
and walk alongside the coach when it needed to negotiate a stretch of sand or a
shallow stream, or when the horses needed a break. If repairs were necessary, a
second-classer was free to stand to the side and watch while others did the work.

A third-class ticket entitled you, in sports parlance, to one of the cheap seats. You
got to sit alright-right up until there was a problem. Third-classers then had to
hop off the coach, roll up their sleeves, and help push. Or lift. Or help move the
fallen tree or loose rocks that were blocking the road. And you had to do it without
complaining.

Over the years, people have entertained some funny ideas about what it means to
follow Jesus. One of them is that Christianity is like being granted a first-class
ticket through life. Because of God’s grace, we get to sit and watch and enjoy the
view. When problems arise-well, “we have people to take care of such things.”

Jesus of course would dismiss that out of hand. For the Son of Man did not come to
be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45) There
are no entitlements in the company of those who follow the Messiah. We all hold
third-class tickets. That’s because our Master spent his life knee-deep in the
problems of the Least, the Last and the Lost. He calls us to do the same.

At present American churches aren’t renowned for cultivating a spirit of
servanthood. We still have miles to go on our trip through the Wild West of the
21st century. It’s not too late to make up your mind to be a working
passenger. When we are able here at Westminster Village we need to roll up our
sleeves and help push.

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

Chaplain’s Corner: CII

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“When Things Go Sideways”

Shortly before his 17th birthday, Craig Barnes and his brother came home from a Christian camp where they had been working for the summer. They were PK’s- pastor’s kids-and their identity had been largely been shaped by the predictable rhythms of home and ministry. All that changed when they returned to discover their parents were getting divorced. Their mother had already moved out. Their dad soon resigned from his congregation.

Then he left. Completely.

Barnes never saw his father again. He later wrote, “Maybe Dad’s sense of failure was so great that he couldn’t see his sons without anguishing over the family that was lost. Maybe leaving us was easy. We’ll never know.” His dad missed all things that are important to most fathers–graduations, weddings, career choices, grandchildren. “For a while my brother and I tried hard to find him, but in time
we learned to let him go.”

“I know about abandonment. I know you never really get over it. I know it can force changes that you think will kill you, but in fact they save your life.” That’s how Barnes launches his book, “When God Interrupts.” Despite the circumstances that upended his world while he was a teenager, he went on to become a pastor himself. Today he is President of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Every human life is marred by major interruptions. All seems well. Then something happens. Somebody betrays us. We make a stupid miscalculation. There’s an accident. There’s a health emergency. There is a major interruption in our plans.

The Christian community is the community of interrupted lives. This is a place where men and women are free to ask a very important question: “God what in the world is happening in my life? How did I end up here?”

When we experience disillusionment or abandonment, we can go one of two ways. We can either turn our hearts toward what we have lost or are still in the process of losing, or we can open our hearts wider to what has always been our one true hope, which is Jesus. More than anything else, that choice will determine the character and outcome of our lives.

Things go sideways in the lives of God’s people all the time. Joseph, Moses, Jonah, Elijah, Paul, Jeremiah, Peter, and Marry-to name a few biblical luminaries- were all heading in one direction, only to be rerouted toward new goals that opened the way for God to do great things.

But there is one part of our world that will never change. Since God has assured us, “I’ll never let you down, never walk off and leave you, we can say boldly, The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. Who or what can ever get to me?” (Hebrews 13:5-6)

By God’s grace it can become the primary way for us to learn that the One whose love we need most of all is never going to let us go.

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

 

Chaplain’s Corner: CI

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When Dr. J. Robertson McQuilkin died in 2016, he left behind a glittering ministry track record. During his 88 years he served as a Bible college faculty member and the headmaster of a Christian school. He and his wife Murial and their four children journeyed to Japan, where over the course of a dozen years he plated five new congregations. He became president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary in 1968. During his 22 years at the helm, enrollment doubled. Along the way he helped establish two local radio stations and authored 19 books.

Those were the high points of McQuilkin’s obituary.

But that is not how he is remembered.

In 1990 he made what he described as the “simplest and clearest” decision of his life. He resigned the Columbia Presidency in order to provide full-time care for Murial, who for several years had been afflicted by Alzheimer’s. For many the decision came as a shock. At the height of his influence, he was walking away from an active, productive ministry.

McQuilkin didn’t see it that way. In his resignation letter he described caring for
Muriel not as a have-to, but as a get-to.

Here’s one anecdote: “Once our flight was delayed in Atlanta, and we had to wait a couple of hours. Now that’s a challenge. Every few minutes, the same questions, the same answers and what are we doing here, when are we going home? And every few minutes we’d take a fast-paced walk down the terminal in earnest search of –what? Muriel had always been a speed walker. I had to jog to keep up with her! An attractive woman sat across from us working diligently on her computer. Once when we returned from an excursion, she said something. Without looking up from her papers, she said, “I was just asking myself, will I ever find a man to love me like that.”

It’s one thing to leave behind an impressive obituary. It’s quite another to leave behind a relational legacy-a living example of promise keeping (“in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live”)- especially in a culture that no longer expects promise-makers to be promise-keepers.

No matter what we’re facing today, and no matter what doors of opportunity seemed to have opened, we can be certain of one essential task to which God has called us.

Our call, by God’s grace, is to be there for our friends, spouses and fellow citizens.

Faithfully,

Ron Naylor
Chaplain

Chaplain’s Corner: XCVIV

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“The Aroma of Christ’s Love”

 

You never know what you might hear when the best man proposes a toast at a wedding reception.    Everything depends of course, on the relationship between the best man and the groom.  Not to mention whether he’s already had a few drinks too many.  And whether he’s comfortable as a public speaker. Guests may hear fond memories, gentle ribbing, old jokes, and stories that have never been told—and should remain untold.

 

Every now and then there are moments of raw honesty, which prompt those in attendance to hold collective breath.

 

One pastor remembers such an occasion.  The best man was the groom’s brother. He stood, turned to his brother and said, “It’s no secret to anyone here that I have never liked you.”  Now that’s an interesting way to begin a toast. “All of our lives we have fought and argued and been like oil and water.  We are very different in many ways.  But I have grown to love the person you have become since the day you met her.”  And he looked straight at the bride:  “The more you are with her, the more I am drawn to you.  The more you are with her, the more I see you the best version of yourself.”

 

As I reflected on this unusual moment, I realized it provided a profound picture of how being with Jesus has the power to change us.

 

It can’t be denied that outsiders have the grounds for believing that church people who hang out with other church people sometimes become more angry, rigid, and even hateful.  But there’s a discernible difference when people choose to spend more time with Jesus.  The more we are with Him, the more people will experience the best version of ourselves.  Hypocrites become more authentic.  Liars begin to value the truth.  Judgmental people begin to exhibit softer hearts.  Arrogant people become more approachable.

 

Author Rita Snowden remembers sitting in a café late one afternoon in Dover, England.  As she was sipping her tea, she was suddenly overwhelmed by an astonishing fragrance.  It was one of the most pleasant aromas she had ever smelled.  It was being carried by the workers from a nearby perfume factory.  They were walking home from work and their clothing was permeated by the fragrances they had been working on all day long.

 

Everywhere we go, we carry around the aroma of who we truly are and what we genuinely believe.

 

The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 2:14-15:  “But thanks to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.  For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved.”

 

May those we meet today catch a scent of something beautiful, humble, and hopeful in our lives.  And ultimately come to realize that because we’ve been with Him, we’re slowly becoming the best version of ourselves.

 

Faithfully,

Ron Naylor, Chaplain

Chaplain’s Corner: XCVIV

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“Reliance on God vs Self Reliance”

During WWII, America’s Office of Strategic Services – the precursor to the CIA – was assigned the task of devising subversive ways to help defeat Japan.  Some of the OSS’s initiatives could best be described as non- traditional.

More than two million dollars were invested in development of the “bat bomb.”  Project managers hoped to drop thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats over Japanese cities.  Each bat would be toting a small incendiary device equipped with a timer.  The bats would hopefully roost under the eaves of Japanese homes.  The designated time devices would then ignite thousands of fires.  The operation was never given final approval much to the relief of the bats.

The OSS has better luck with Operation Magic.  Teams of codebreakers worked tirelessly to monitor, intercept and translate encrypted Japanese messages.  Their success became a key component of the Allied Victory in the Pacific theater.  In April 1942, decryption efforts revealed that Japanese military planners were fixated on a place called “AF.”  That was useful information-if anyone could figure out what “AF” meant.

Possibilities included Guam, Seattle, Alaska or Midway, a tiny coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific about 1,300 miles northwest of Hawaii.  The leader of the codebreaking effort, Captain Joe Rochefort, had his money on Midway.  So he devised a trick but he needed some hard evidence.  Radio operators at Midway were instructed to send out a phony message.  The Midway dispatcher reported the island’s water supply was running low.  A few hours later, US codebreakers intercepted and translated a Japanese message that “AF” is running low on water.  Gotcha!

When Japan’s primary fleet of more than 200 vessels attacked Midway on June 4th, 1942, the American fleet was waiting in ambush.  All four Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk–a loss from which the Imperial Navy never recovered.  The Japanese believed the American’s would never be able to master the nuances of the Japanese language.  “That will never happen to us,” they said to themselves.  But it did.  Japan’s leaders failed to realize that American codebreakers had actually cracked their “unbreakable” code.

Over confidence isn’t merely a threat to nations.  Spiritual hubris is one of the great enemies of the soul.

We see other people crash and burn.  They cheat on crucial relationships, squander once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and throw away hard earned reputations because of decisions that defy common sense.  We think:  “But that will never happen to me.”  Yes it will happen to you–unless you decide to walk away from any behavior that you know is at odds with God’s intentions for your life.

Self-reliance works only some of the time.  When we decide to place our lives under God’s reliance and trust God with everything then we begin to see God is at work connecting the dot of our lives.

May God give us eyes to see how God is in the middle of our stories even as we are living them–for that is the code that brings meaning and purpose to all of life!

 

Faithfully,

Ron Naylor, Chaplain