There is a mountain we must climb just like old Moses did: meeting deadlines, greeting clients, taking care of kids.
Nursing needs of aging parents, battling the blues, facing fears when cancer flaunts a short and shrinking fuse.
Finding funds to meet the mortgage, visiting a grave, taking stock for starting over while trying to be brave.
Our current Sinai looms quite large. It beckons every day. But climbing with companions close will help us on the way.
In addition to each week’s post on this website, Greg Asimakoupoulos offers daily video devotionals on his YouTube channel. Here is a sample video. If you are interested in receiving these devotionals Monday through Friday, you can subscribe on Greg’s channel.
This week I reach a milestone. My birthday cake is entitled to seventy-two candles. But given our corporate concern for global warming, my wife will likely only light one solitary wax sentry. And that’s okay. Too many miniature flames make for too much light that in turn exposes too little hair and too many wrinkles.
Given a temporary work assignment in Switzerland, this is the first birthday in those seventy-two years in which I will celebrate outside of the United States. And truth be told, this opportunity to serve an English-speaking church in Luzern for three months is the best birthday present I could have asked for. Curiously, thirty-six years ago my wife and I found ourselves in a similar situation. I was asked to take a temporary assignment in Nome, Alaska. Taking a leave of absence from my congregation in California, I worked for a missionary radio station for a couple months.
Like my current assignment as interim pastor of the International Church of Luzern, working for KICY radio was an unforgettable opportunity to meet new people and explore new parts of God’s green earth for the very first time. And to think that our Alaskan adventure was almost exactly half my life ago! Where has the time gone? That summer assignment in Nome seems but a few short years ago. Mindboggling to be sure!
The Hebrew psalmist declares “Man is like a breath. His days are like a passing shadow.” (Psalm 144:4) St. James put it this way, “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” (James 4:14)
Like a summer day in the Pacific Northwest, 72 seems like the perfect number. Not too hot. Not too cold. It’s just about perfect. But for me it also comes with the candid realization that my days are numbered. If I live as long as my dad did, I only have ten years left. If I live to celebrate the same number of birthdays my mom had, I have just twenty years left.
Speaking of my precious little mom, when it came to birthdays and acknowledging how old she was, she had a signature saying for which she was known. “Age is just a number. And mine is unlisted!” Or like the poster I hung on the wall in my college dorm room “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Wow! Was that really fifty-four years ago? As a freshman I wanted to make every day count. And all these years later, I still do.
Birthdays are an annual occasion to give yourself permission to take stock of the speed at which time flies. In other words, they are an opportunity for “give and take.” Give heed to choices that today offers and take time to evaluate which ones you will choose. Give up trying to undo the past and take control of your future. Give God thanks for achievements you’ve accomplished thus far on life’s journey and take a break to bask in His many blessings.
I’m blown away by the goodness of a Creator who allowed me over the past seventy-two years to meet such incredible people, travel to such fascinating places, do such a variety of jobs in addition to sharing my wonderful life with my beautiful wife for forty-two years and raising three amazing daughters. But I know I am not alone. As you look back on your life to date, you no doubt have blessings too numerous to number as well.
In the only psalm that Moses ever wrote, the Prince of Egypt poignantly prays “Lord, teach us to number our days that we might gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12) It doesn’t take a math major to count our blessings and number our days. It just takes someone who recognizes the bottom line of maximizing one’s life.
These are some of the Barbie dolls Greg A’s granddaughters play with
When the Barbie movie was released, I suggested to my wife that we go. And to those who know me, it should come as no surprise that I suggested we go wearing pink. Yes, I have a couple pink shirts in my closet. Sadly, the film had left the theaters before our schedules would allow us to see Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie on the big screen. Wendy and I donned our pink attire as we watched the blockbuster hit On-Demand on our tv in the family room.
Come to think of it, watching from our family room was the perfect venue to view a fun film that triggered many memories. From the time I was a young dad I played Barbies with my three daughters in our family room. Unlike many of my fellow fathers, I had no problem sitting cross-legged on the floor giving voices to the miniature Mattel misses. I was secure enough in my masculinity to let my hair down while brushing Barbie’s with my girls. In fact, it was in that unique context that I learned a few lessons that have served me well as a pastor. Consider the following:
Trust is more easily earned while meeting another on their level. My daughters LOVED the fact that I was willing to play Barbies with them. It became OUR THING. Stooping to where they were won their hearts. When I was a rookie minister, I observed an older colleague greeting his flock at the door of the church following the service. Rather than patting a child on the head, this pastor took a knee and greeted the little lamb while looking them in the eye. What I saw deeply impressed me. I made it a habit to do the same. But I also discovered the concept of finding common ground holds true with adults as well. When we seek to find common ground with another person, we are more likely to engage them without pretense.
Using one’s imagination cultivates a sense of wonder. Pretending with my girls and creating conversations between the dolls stretched my ability to think outside the box. It gave me a platform for sharing life lessons with my offspring using foot-long plastic figures as a vehicle. It’s amazing how much you can communicate when you are indirectly speaking.
As I look at the New Testament, I see that Jesus did the same. By sharing parables, he invited his listeners to use their imaginations. Through the use of fiction, Jesus fleshed-out truth. And I have found much freedom illustrating bottom-line convictions by sharing hypothetical anecdotes off-the-top of my head.
We are never too old to play. When I first started to dress Ken and Barbie dolls, I was in my early thirties. Now that I am seventy-one, I still find myself on the floor in the family room with my two granddaughters. Just the other day while browsing at the local thrift store, I found a toy sports car with a couple dolls strapped in the front seat. Of course, I bought it for Immy and Ivy. I can imagine hours of play with my pintsize playmates. After all, I have experience making believe.
But the family room floor isn’t the only place we have fun together. There’s the backyard where we play hide-and-seek. There’s the street in front of our house where we roll tennis balls down a hill. And there’s the park next to the thrift store where we use our imaginations and energy. And when it comes to the latter, they have three-times as much as I do.
But even so, play rejuvenates us. It provides a needed distraction from daily routines that serves to reboot our “personal” computers. Play is God’s way to remind us that when all is said and done, we are His children no matter how many candles will adorn our birthday cake this year.
On a recent cruise to Alaska, my wife and I spent the better part of one day in Glacier Bay National Park near the village of Hoona. The highlight of the experience for me was photographing Margerie Glacier. This brilliant blue river of ice that flows more than twenty miles from its source in the mountains is some three hundred feet high and stretches a mile from side to side.
I was impressed by what the National Park rangers told us. Although most glaciers in Alaska are receding due to global warming, Margerie Glacier remains quite stable. In fact, it is estimated that Margerie advances about thirty feet a year.
As I pondered the cold facts, I began to reflect on how “secular warming” has impacted our culture. Secularism, by definition, derives its worldview from naturalistic observations devoid of a dependence on the Divine. As such, it overshadows the supernatural and the mystery of a God-centered cosmos. In an expanding secularistic society, the end result is an atmosphere that threatens norms historically based in a Biblically-grounded perspective.
Like most of the glaciers in Alaska, Judeo-Christian values have been noticeably receding the past couple of generations. So, too, has Biblical literacy. If you were to do a survey among elementary children in public schools today, my guess is that most would not be clueless when asked to identify Adam and Eve, David and Goliath or Jonah and the whale.
Several years ago, I was renting a video in a Blockbuster Store. (That in and of itself would indicate just how long ago it was.) Scanning the shelves, a group of high school students chatted among themselves while attempting to find a satirical comedy based on the life of Christ. As they searched for Life of Brian by Monty Python, one of the kids attempted to explain what the video was about. “It’s about the dude who was born on Christmas!” he explained. “I can’t recall his name.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This well-educated young man, schooled in one of the best school districts in America, couldn’t name the person who was born on Christmas. Furthermore, he didn’t realize that the reason we celebrate Christmas to begin with is because of the significance of Jesus’ birth.
Since that startling experience twenty years ago, church attendance across our nation has continued to decline. Local churches are closing at an unprecedented rate. In addition, the Bible is no longer assumed to be the authoritative source of supernational revelation. Scripture’s time-honored status as the unquestioned and unchanging standard for faith, doctrine and conduct has been replaced by a culture of amoral relativism.
But it’s not just changing trends in church attendance and expanded views of Biblical interpretation that sound a cause for alarm. There is a shift in society when it comes to the freedom to practice one’s desire to share their personal faith. What we used to call personal evangelism is now labeled proselytizing.
Ironically, the word evangelism means “good news.” But any attempt to try and extol the virtues of one’s faith tradition with an eye towards conversion is now viewed as bad news.
But gratefully there are those who are willing to stand their ground and not cave-in to the boiling influences of society that are melting centuries of tradition and norms. Within the Jewish and Christian communities where I live, minority voices are speaking up about values easily put down by those drumming the cadence of our current culture.
Like the Margerie Glacier, these courageous souls refuse to simply calve off and melt away. But as with that beautiful blue icefield in Glacier Bay, they are an exception to the rule. All the same, their minority voices are needed. We need to be reminded of a rich heritage that is at risk of becoming merely a historical footnote.
Greg Asimakoupoulos shares poignant memories triggered by this photo
I became a father forty years ago this year. I’ll never forget the day. My wife and I were escorted to a labor room and left alone. Standing at Wendy’s bedside, my job was to monitor the baby’s heartbeat and the frequency of contractions. Depending on the severity of the discomfort, my job was to coach my wife how to breathe relying on the techniques we’d learned in childbirth classes.
Shortly after we settled into a routine that would likely last a few hours, I noticed the baby’s heart rate declined dramatically. I was obviously concerned. When the heart rate dropped with every sequential contraction, I raced to find a nurse. Within minutes an emergency c-section was scheduled and all the lessons we’d learned for a natural childbirth went out the window. As Wendy was wheeled into surgery, I’m the one who could have used help remembering how to breathe calmly.
The procedure didn’t last all that long, but it seemed like an eternity. When the doctor presented our newborn daughter to me, he explained why the surgery was required. The umbilical cord had become wrapped around our baby’s neck and with each contraction it tightened. Had I failed to monitor the monitor, our child could have easily been stillborn.
My first day of fatherhood was my introduction to what being a dad would involve over the next number of years. There is joyful anticipation of an unknown future. There is the need for being coached on how to “breathe” when the “contractions” of daily life take your breath away. There is the realization that normal can give way to abnormal without notice. That happiness can be trumped by fear with no time to brace yourself. In the end the good outweighs the bad.
That first day of fatherhood eliminated any illusion I might have had that my daughter’s life (or mine) would be problem-free. I was reminded of that reality four years later when my wife and I dropped Kristin off at her first day of preschool. After leaving our precious firstborn in the care of a stranger, my stomach was in knots. And as we walked to our car in front of the school, I noticed someone had backed into our station wagon leaving significant damage and not leaving a note.
No, a father’s life is not without troubles. And neither are the lives of those for which he is privileged to provide and to help guide. We do ourselves a disservice by expecting what isn’t realistic. Life becomes less hard when we recognize it is (by definition) difficult. No wonder that time-honored maxim by Robert Browning is this father’s mantra. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?
But lest I end this column on a downer, the overriding emotion I felt that first day of being a dad was one of gratitude and unconditional love. I had reason to be thankful. Kristin was born without complications. She was healthy. She was beautiful. She was mine. I was a proud father who cradled that miniature human being in my arms whenever I could steal her away from my wife.
I know I’m not the first pastor who has compared the love a father has for his child to the love our Heavenly Father has for us. But the firsthand discovery of that truth was so powerful, I was convinced this insight was something unique to me. I truly do understand how much God cares for me by the depth of love I have for my kids. Nothing (underscore nothing) can separate me from them.
“Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are.” 1 John 3:1
My Rhymes and Reasons 