Ugly Miracles

I think a lot of times people don’t recognize God because they think God only moves in beautiful ways. His hand can only be seen through pristine circumstances in sterile environments for most of us. We have learned this from going to churches that demonstrate God more as a surgeon that only works in complete silence and in a disinfected sanctuary. Sometimes we think God only moves in a church. Of course, that’s craziness.

I am here to tell you that some of the greatest miracles God is doing among us are just plain ugly. These confessions are of a highly caffeinated Christian that has never had the grace to be on the beautiful side of things. Born with a face made for radio and enough hair on my head to hide a small car, I have never won a trophy for GQ. The point is that God isn’t just in the beautiful things, sometimes God moves in a beautiful way in very ugly things.

Flip That House

When my wife and I were young she demanded we reproduce like jackrabbits. She wanted a house full of babies. I had seen babies and didn’t think it was such a good idea but Leanna had a vision for our home. So on vacation to Corpus Christi, we sat in the Water Street Oyster Bar discussing our options over lunch. I had fought a good fight for two years but her constant assault was wearing me down. So I pulled out a quarter and made her a deal. “If this is heads, you go off the pill today. If its tails we don’t have this conversation for a year.” Not stupid enough to agree but smart enough to win the bet she just said. “ Flip it.”

Nine months later I was in a torture session called “Lamaze Class.” Lamaze is an ancient French word that means, “You will never touch me again”. I listened while this teacher explained to us how beautiful the birthing experience was going to be. She also said that we could “coach” our wives and help her by developing a focal point. I knew she was crazy but to be honest I only heard bits and peaces. I was so distracted by the other husbands in the room. I thought, poor fools, how did you get suckered into all this? Then I would realize I was one of them. I was also distracted by the 50 or so outy belly buttons of all those pregnant women at once. It was Brewer hell.

What ever happened to the good old days when they would knock a woman out and she would wake up with a kid in her arms? The sixties and seventies are long gone. One encouraging thing I have noticed is that a lot of doctors will find any emergency reason to do a c-section and it tends to happen around 5:00 pm. This of course depends on if the patient has insurance and if it is chicken fried steak night at the doctor’s house.

One cold afternoon a few weeks later Leanna was having her c-section at 5:05 PM. They opened her up and out came the head of my oldest son. “My Goodness, he’s a twenty pounder!” I said. At birth, Benjamin had the hat size of a grown man. While they worked to clear his nostrils, I said “Hello Benjamin, welcome to Texas!” That baby boy opened his eyes and looked right at me. I had been singing and playing my guitar to his mama’s belly through the whole pregnancy and he was actually glad to see me.

With one good pull and some disturbing noises like pulling your boots out of the mud, Ben came all the way out. And to my shock, under that giant head dangled a little bity body. My first thought was that Leanna had committed adultery with the Jack in the Box man.

Over the next few moments everything went into a blur. No, I didn’t want to cut the cord. Please, I need some towels and some Armor-all for this little alien. I was seeing a side of Leanna I had never seen, the inside. Doctor, close her up. Nurse, I need an aspirin. Is all this normal? Can I lie down next to my wife?

And then as quickly as everything went blurry, everything became completely focused on the three of us. There we were, Leanna and I quietly talking to this little wonder and all three of us as close together as we could possibly be. The world went away. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.

See, not only is the beauty of God in the obviously beautiful. Sometimes God shows up in even ugly things and in that, He is just as beautiful.

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.

Psalms 50:2

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Defying Explanation

I learned a really cool word that became a big part of my vocabulary sometime in the late eighties. Paradox. A paradox is when something seems contradictory or opposing but in reality expresses a truth.

As I progress in Christian thinking, I learn to love the irony of how a paradox works. If you want to live, you’ve got to give up your life. If a guy wants to receive, he has to be an extravagant giver. The way to the throne room is through the servant’s quarters.

God loves a really good paradox. It’s one of the reasons I figure God absolutely loves the Brewer. Yes, that’s right, I am convinced that the great God of this universe loves me personally. I mean, why wouldn’t He? I am a walking paradox. I am a slob that carries around hand sanitizer because I’m a germ freak. I’m a jamming musician that preaches behind a pulpit on Sundays. I am a hillbilly from Johnson County that loves quantum theory.

There are lots of things about all of us that seem to contradict, but actually make up, our unique personalities. God loves that. He loves it when little children speak simple but profound genius. He smiles when He sees busy people slow down to help and great big guys cry over another’s hurt.

He’s like that because He always operates outside of the box. His ways are not our ways. I heard Graham Cooke say that the only time God has ever been in a box was the Arc of the Covenant, and if you touched the box, you died. God hates the box we want to put him in.

We put God in a box because we want God to be more responsible for being like us so we won’t be held responsible for being more like him. We desperately try to make God about our own agendas so we won’t have to be about His. We really want God to look like us and talk like us, and anything that doesn’t line up with who we are, can’t be God. That’s religion, and it’s really ugly.

Most portraits of God tend to fit Him into whatever culture we identify with. In a way, that’s fine because God loves our diverse cultures and how different people live and look.

In the artist’s defense, there are no scriptures describing the physical appearance of Christ because God knew we were knuckleheads. Had the Bible described Jesus as tall, there would be denominations specifically for people six foot two and above. The church in the Middle Ages would have thought it godliness to stretch people until all their joints popped out of place. Oh wait—the church did do that in the Middle Ages.

I saw a picture of Jesus at a shop in the Hong Kong airport that showed him completely Asian. Who among us hasn’t seen blond haired, blue-eyed portraits of Jesus walking across the water in his lily-white feet? We all recently heard Senator Obama’s Pastor in his ridiculous tirade on how Jesus was a poor black child that grew up under the oppression of terrible white people.

I don’t think God looks like any of us. I don’t think He thinks like us or acts like us. The pattern that Jesus showed is that God is the kindest and most thoughtful person in the universe. He loves deeply and lives passionately. Like King David, He has the heart of a warrior poet that kicks butt on the battlefield and intimately loves His bride. I think He could care less about a lot of the hang ups we church folks tend to have about people, and I think He cares a lot more about people having a true encounter with His heart towards them while they are still breathing planet Earth’s air.

He’s totally holy, yet He loves us. That’s a paradox. He’s completely sinless and separate from everything ugly, yet He thinks we’re beautiful. He hates sin and the darkness of our age, yet His goodness is towards us. That’s a paradox, and I love it.

Let me see if I can’t craft some words together that illustrate how God is oxymoronically supernatural. I’ll fill inn the blanks with contradicting terms explaining how God pulls off what nobody else can.

He is majestically humble towards us and anxiously patient with us. He is altogether separate because He climbed down into hell and slapped death in the face for all of us.

He is naturally supernatural and dangerously safe. He has made Himself the permanent substitute for our sin, and His plan is for us to be alone together with Him beyond infinity.

Mark 4:34

He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when He was alone with His own disciples, He explained everything.

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A Big Shout Out To All Our Graduates

The Party Is On!

People that are Godly and people that are thankful, observe accomplishment. We know that God loves to reward achievement because the Bible says, “He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

In the book of Genesis the Bible also says that at the end of the day, and in every stage of creation, God stopped what He was doing and said, “IT IS GOOD.” That means He celebrated the accomplishments of creation, not just at the end, but also at every stage along the way.

Even before He created people and even before He could share anything with anybody, at the end of every single phase, God stopped what He was doing, put a little party hat on, threw some confetti into the air and said “IT IS GOOD.”

In this world it is so easy to make a big deal out of bad things. It’s so easy to be upset over failure and disappointment. That’s why God wants us to make a big deal out of achievement and realization. Your graduation ceremony is mostly about celebrating the fact that you finished what you started out to do. Way to go graduates!

Old School

22 years ago I sat at my high school graduation ceremony. I sat in that seat listening to an old codger like me talk about something that I can not even begin to recall and I could not have imagined that in 20 years I would be the one giving the speeches. When it comes to remembering graduation ceremonies, there is one that I will never forget.

On one of our many missions’ trips to Mexico, we were feeding people in the trash dumps of Matomoros. It was a hot day and the lines were long. In the midst of handing out food I heard what sounded like applause and excited laughter behind me. I turned around just in time to see a beautiful little girl taking her very first steps.

That day, the same scene was being played out in comfortable air conditioned homes all across America, but there in the trash dumps of Matomoros, the great moment of triumph was every bit as exciting and worth celebrating. She might have had to learn how to walk in a filthy trash dump but make those steps she did. Everybody in line began to clap and cheer as the daddy swept up his little girl in his arms!

Crossing the Stage

In no way did it end all of that family’s problems, but still it was progress. The Lord taught me right there through a living sermon that you have to stop looking at what stinks long enough to rejoice over the achievement of forward progression. Even if those steps are little bitty. Even if there are yucky things all around us, progress should be celebrated.

Congratulations graduates on your big walk across the stage as you cross this stage of your life. We celebrate this victory and believe God for many more.

I hope to see you all on that great graduation day in the future when we meet the Lord eye to eye and hear him say,” Well done, good and faithful servants." I plan on throwing the Brewer’s Cup (or at least my hat!) way up into the air.

Contact:

The Brewer welcomes your input at FFTB@OpenDoorMinistries.org or by phone at 817-297-6911.