When was Jesus born?

 

I was asked that question once by an old and valued (and much missed) friend and teacher, Morrie Lord.

If I asked that today, since it's almost Christmas, it's easy to go with tradition and say December 25.

But anyone who has studied history knows that the historical Jesus was probably not born on that day we designate December 25, and probably not even in the year we designate as either 1 AD or 1 BC (most calendars do not have a year Zero).

So, when was Jesus born?

It’s one of those “trick” questions, isn’t it?

For example, I was once asked “How many stories are there in the Bible?” When I’ve asked that question, I usually get these looks from people who know there is some sort of trick answers, but can’t figure out what it might be. After all, there are 66 books that make up most of our Bibles.

But to say that means there are 66 stories discounts all the stories contained within those books. Somewhere along the way, monks or scribes or publishers decided the Bible could be more easily read if divided into chapters, and there are (by a quick search) 1,189 chapters in the Bible. Does that mean there are 1,189 stories? No, because some chapters are continuation of stories, particularly in the historical books.

Even to say each story – take the story of King David, for instance – is made up of individual stories: David as the shepherd boy; Davis slaying Goliath; David as the renegade running from King Saul; David as King …

But The answer – what might seem like the ‘trick’ answer – is that there is only one story in the Bible: the story of God. Christians believe the Bible is there to tell us about God and God’s relationship with mankind. If you should ever be asked “how many stories are there in the Bible,” you can smugly answer “One.”

That brings me back to the original question, “When was Jesus born?”

When asked, my mind went into historical overdrive. I knew the answer wasn’t December 25, 1 AD or 1 BC. That date was first made official by Pope Julius I in 350 AD, and codified, for lack of a better word, in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a reform of the Julian calendar.

I had read, somewhere along the way, of historians analyzing references to known historical events mentioned in the nativity accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, and working backward from the estimation of the start of the ministry of Jesus; of studying astrological or astronomical alignments having to do with the “star” that the Gospels say led the Wise Men to see Jesus; or even using the idea of time of the year based on when shepherds might actually in the field “keeping watch over their flock by night.”

Historical accounts of the figures mentioned in the Gospels suggest the actual date might be been between what we now would call either 6-7 AD (based on the Census account, which the non-Biblical historian Josephus describes), or between 4-6 BC, which is when Herod – another prominent figure in the Biblical story – died.

There are other theories as well, based on other historical events.

As for the actual day, there is a lot of theorizing about December 25 based primarily on the winter solstice because of its symbolic theological significance. The theory is that because the solstice is when the “short” winter days (in terms of daylight) begin to lengthen with longer hours of sunlight, which represents the Light of Christ entering the world. (The Feast of St. John is June 24^th, the point in which the length of daylight begins to lessen, a reference to John saying of the “Light of the World,” “I must decrease, that He may increase.” See the significance?)

Other scholars suggest September; still others – including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) - say the birth took place in early to mid-April.

As I tried to come up with an answer to “When was Jesus born?”, my mind was racing with thoughts of AD and BC and December and September and April.

Yet the Apostle Paul, in the book of Galatians, gives this answer: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law …”

When was Jesus born? In the fullness of time.

It’s another of those “clever” answers that some of us might call a word game, like “how many stories are there in the Bible” and “who reigns in Hell?”

The "fullness of time" - when, according to His Sovereign plan, everything was in place for Jesus to become a babe, and set in motion the events that would change the world. 

But what struck me about the question was how often I, as a human of middling intelligence, so easily get caught up in minutia. Ask me a question, and I will analyze the answer to death, taking a very literal approach to every word of query.

Yet it occurs to me that God sees a bigger picture. We see the unfolding of history on a timeline, occurring sequentially because that’s how we live. God is timeless. Even the name He gives Himself to Moses, “I AM,” is present tense, suggesting to me that God has neither past nor future and all of eternity is one big “present tense” to Him. We humans measure time; to God, it simply “is.”

Which, as we approach another New Year, brings me to another phrase I find myself repeating more frequently in these days when things around us seem more disturbing, more disruptive to old-fashioned norms, more deadly even. You often hear people shake their heads and say, “The world is falling apart.”

To which I remind myself that, as a Christian, the Bible tells me the world is not falling apart; God’s plan is coming together.

When, you ask? 

In the fullness of time.

Disconnected

                 I was at the perfectly named “UBreakIFix” store, getting the screen on my cell phone repaired. They told me it would take a couple of hours, so I naturally asked, “Can you text me when it’s ready?”

                Uh, no. They were taking my cell phone.

                “Do you have another cell phone we can text?” I was asked.

                No. I used to have two – one for personal use, one for work – but since leaving that position, I no longer carried a second cell phone. I admit carrying two cell phones made me feel rather pretentious, but it was necessary.

                In the end, they said they’d email me when the phone was ready. The only problem with that, of course, was that I generally check my email on my phone. Checking it now would require being at home, on my laptop.

                No problem. As I walked out, I actually felt kind of free. No one could get in touch with me for the next few hours. Not only was I immune to phone calls, but no texts, either. If there was a disaster waiting to befall me, it would have to wait.

It felt good ... for a minute.

                Then I remembered I had no way to let my wife – the most important person to stay in touch with – know that I wouldn’t have my cell phone for a few hours. I should have texted her before I left, but didn’t think about it. Then I began to worry. What if she needed me? What if something happened and she couldn’t get me? Would she worry that something happened to me when I didn’t respond or answer her?

                It’s not exactly earth-shaking news to realize we’re so connected to those little "mini-me" computers we start to feel untethered from the real world without one.

There was a study done at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson, Ca. called “Out of sight is not out of mind: The impact of restricting wireless mobile device use on anxiety levels among low, moderate and high users” published in the academic journal Computers in Human Behavior.

Half the students’ cell phones were taken away. The other half could keep their phones, but had to turn them off and set them out of sight. Each group was told to sit quietly during the study.

                According to the study, college students grew more anxious during the 75-minute experiment, where they were forced to sit with no distractions, even when they knew the phones would be returned. The effect was stronger on heavy and moderate users, whether their phones were in their possession or not.

                Another similar study took college students and divided them three groups and given a test. One group had their phones screen-down on their desks; the second had their phones in their pockets; the third were not allowed to have their phones at all.

Although very few students said they were distracted by their phones, the test scores followed an inverse relationship to how close the phone were to each student: on average, the closer the phone, the lower the grade.

These are just two of many such studies that show how our cell phones affect us, not just by the way we use them but by their mere presence. Even when we’re not using them, they have an effect on us because, consciously or unconsciously, we know they are there. As one writer said, we’re pulled into the orbit of our cell phones even when we can’t see them, when they aren’t even in use.

I wrote previously about sitting in a doctors’ waiting room, and how instead of the old-fashioned magazines scattered about, the room was devoid of reading material because everyone was on their phone and probably would not have looked at a hard-copy magazine anyway.

There is a verse in Romans (12:2) that Christians like to quote: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Generally, we use it to remind us not to be seduced by what we call “the world;” that is, not to get caught up in materialism or let our morality conform to what seems to be generally accepted or as an encouragement to “think” on “higher things,” the things of God.

And while true, I wonder if we shouldn’t apply it to the way we’re so addicted to our cell phones, too.

I am not a Luddite, a person opposed to new technology or ways of working. As I pointed out, I am as dependent on my cell phone as anyone. And cell phones are just tools; there is nothing inherently bad about them. Like so many other tools, they are only as good or evil as the intent – and perhaps frequency - with which we use them.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if we haven’t made the cell phone another appendage. When I see studies suggesting college students become anxious and can’t focus just because they don’t have their cell phones within easy reach, or when students actually concentrate better when the cell phone has been physically taken away from them, it makes me wonder how unwittingly our cell phones have become the controlling factor of our lives.

That’s not to say I’m suggesting we do away with our cell phones. They are wonderful tools, both for staying in touch, keeping track of family members, and finding out whatever happened to the cast of “Leave it to Beaver.” Look around your church and chances are you’ll see people reading their scripture from their cell phone rather than an old-fashioned book; you may even start your day with a devotional that comes via an app on your cell phone.

But maybe we should consider taking a cell phone Sabbath.

In the Old Testament, the command to ‘remember the Sabbath’ was not so much about going to church (they didn’t ‘go to church’ in those days) as, I believe, it was a way of God saying, “Take a day off. Trust me to take care of your field and flock for one day while you rest and recharge.” After all, even God worked six days and then, it says in Genesis, on the seventh day He rested.

When I worked for a daily newspaper, it was too easy to work every day – and I did, more than I’d like to admit. But I always tried to take a “Sabbath;” take one day and get away from work. It was never a Saturday because I was a sportswriter. Most often it was a Thursday. I know preachers who take their “day of rest” on Monday. Traditionally that day has always been what we call "Saturday," our seventh day of the week. Generally that’s still the case.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think the command is day specific, but rather about the intent – take a day and trust God to handle things while we relax and recharge or take care of other things. (After all, did the Israelites even have “Saturday”?)

Can we do that? Can I actually do that?

To be honest, probably not. But those few hours when my phone was in the shop, and I knew no one could contact me and I could not contact anyone, were like a mini-vacation.

In this technological age, I admit I’m an old man who doesn’t know how to take advantage of half (or more) of the technology readily available to me. I still have my music albums and CDs that I listen to rather than going to Spotify or downloading songs. I’m not against technological advances, but perhaps I’m the old dog who just isn't sure he wants to learn new tricks.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if by putting down my cell phone for a few hours (I don’t think I’m ready to leave it for a full day) I may not find myself, like the Israelites of old, trusting God to take care of everything and everyone else while maybe I focus more on Him.

And come to think of it, “UBreakIFix” might also be a good name for a church.

Going outside to play

 “I’m going outside to play.”

When I was a kid, that’s all we needed to say. Mom didn’t ask “where are you going” or “what are you going to do” or even “who are you going to play with.” We just said we were going “outside,” and she knew what that meant.

Essentially every day, we couldn’t wait to “go outside and play.” Sometimes we knew what we were going to do; generally, in my neighborhood, it meant we were going to play football or basketball or even some kind of baseball. Maybe we were going to play “army.”

Mostly we were just trying to get outside, away from the house, where we could be free for a few hours.

Our moms didn’t much care about the particulars. Oh, they did, but I think they knew we were only going to go so far, and generally we’d be with the same neighborhood kids every day, and above all they knew we’d “be back by dark” or “back by supper.” That’s how – especially in the summer – we kept track of time.

It was incredibly freeing.

And it taught us lessons that carried over for life.

For example, we learned how to play with others. A group of guys would gather to do whatever, and a set of unspoken boundaries were created around whatever we were playing. That road was the river of molten lava we could not cross; that tree was the giant we had to attack and bring down. Or we created variations of the games we knew, of football and baseball and basketball, that we could play in the limited space of a typical backyard or with tennis balls instead of basketballs or having “ghost runners” or calling right field “dead” – any hit to right field was an out, because we didn’t have enough guys to cover the entire outfield.

I can’t remember any prolonged discussion about these rules, they just seemed to happen and reach some level of consensus. And if you didn’t like a rule, you could argue, but eventually you either played by them or went home.

And nobody wanted to go home.

Guys would get hurt – fall out of a tree, or trip over rock or run into the garage door when driving to the basket that hung on the garage or take an especially vicious forearm by someone trying to be Jack Lambert in a backyard football game.

Did we cry and go home to mom? No.

First, we knew better than to let the other guys see us cry. And second, going home to mom meant we were no longer ‘outside;’ it was a loss of those few hours of freedom. Most of us would figure a way to keep playing with blood running down a shin or an arm we could barely lift over our shoulder rather than go home. Worst case, maybe you sat out a few minutes. But the site of the rest of the guys playing was usually enough to cause one to “rub some dirt on it” and get back to playing.

We would explore woods and hillsides and streams. We snuck around neighbors’ houses not to do anything other than simply see if we could indeed “sneak” without being caught. We were horses and wolves, we were major league pitchers and all-pro quarterbacks and big-game hunters tracking an elusive lion (who looked remarkably like the neighborhood stray cat).

And sometimes we just sat – on a wall, on a hill, on a rock, in a tree – and talked.

At home, inside, we were seven-year-old boys; outside, we were men. No – we were heroes. We won World Wars and made the West safe for settlers; we were Super Bowl and World Series' champions; we found treasures in streams and hid those treasures in the “forts” and treehouses that we built from scrap wood we picked up while roaming around.

It made us tough; it made us adaptable. We had to be brave when we didn't feel like it because the other kids didn't seem to be scared. And we learned to be resilient; if the neighbor told us to stay out of his yard, we changed the rules so that yard was no longer in play. It made us realize that sometimes you learn to get along with someone you don't like (later, we'd talk about those guys as "he's a friend of mine I didn't like very much") just to be able to keep doing what you really wanted to do. 

We learned delayed gratification. We usually had to build something - a tree house, a fort, a baseball field in the backyard - and that time spent building taught us to plan and work together, and that sense of accomplishment only made the game that much more fun for us all. 

We learned a little rain (sometimes a lot of rain) never hurt anybody, and never understood why any baseball game had to be called on account of weather. We found out drinking from a clear stream was better than from the kitchen sink and eating a little dirt didn't kill anybody (that we knew of). A can of Vienna sausage and some saltine crackers were as good a lunch as anything mom made, and we learned how to divide it up to share with the kids that didn't have any.

We also learned our limits. Some kids were just faster and stronger and the rest of us had to figure out ways to adapt and slow them down.   

We learned to weight options, the most basic of which was play or go home. 

I look around these days and sometimes wonder if we don't all need to remember how to "go outside and play."

'This time, he did not run away'

 I was listening to a great sermon by my pastor, Tim Kallem, from Acts chapter 11, where the church in Jerusalem hears of what is taking place in the city of Antioch and decides to send Barnabas, "a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith ..." Barnabas goes and sees that a great number of people are being brought to the Lord, so Barnabas goes to Tarsus "to look for Saul (Paul), and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch."

Barnabas and Saul (not yet Paul) preach and teach for a year, with a great number of people coming to faith in Christ.

Barnabas is also the man who stood up for Saul when Saul was first converted and went to Jerusalem to try to join the disciples. The disciples, aware of Saul's reputation and possibly even knowing of the events of the stoning of Stephen in which Saul participated, were afraid of Saul and did not believe he was really a disciple. In Acts 9:27 it says "But Barnabas took him (Saul) and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord ..." It was Barnabas who apparently convinced the disciples that Saul's conversion was real, and that Saul should be allowed to join.

Here is what struck me: Barnabas was very encouraging and supportive of Saul. He stood up for him when the others were afraid. Barnabas repeatedly stuck his neck out for Saul, even to the point of recognizing that he, Barnabas, was probably not the man to lead the revival in Antioch and being humble enough to go get Saul, knowing this was Saul's gift.

A tremendous example of humility.

That leads me to John Mark.

John Mark is believed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark. Mark is believed to have assisted Peter, and his Gospel is based on the preaching of Peter as well as possibly Mark's own memory (more on that in a minute). I won't go into all the reasons for Mark's authorships - you can look it up - but Mark's story, while scattered through the New Testament, is remarkable in its own right and involves Barnabas.

Mark first appears, probably, at the end of the Gospel of Mark. There is a strange verse stuck in Mark 14, the recollection of Jesus' arrest in the garden. The soldiers come, Judas betrays him, and v. 51 says "A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving the garment behind."

This young man is believed to be Mark, because this is one of those details that is so odd and firsthand sounding and has no other significance. Certainly, I've never heard a sermon preached based on v. 51. 

We know Mark was from a family that was probably well off. In Acts 12:12 it talks of Mark's mother having a house in Jerusalem that served as a meeting place for believers. Some believe that the 'last supper' was in the upper room of Mark's family home, and that Mark was a young witness to much of Jesus' life and ministry, at least the last days.

In Acts 12:25 we see "When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark."

What we know next is in Acts 13:13, where Mark leaves Paul and Barnabas, a desertion that Paul takes very hard. Paul and Barnabas go on to finish their missionary journey, but then in Acts 15 Paul wants to go back to the towns they had preached in. Barnabas wants to take Mark, but Paul refused. 

We can take this as simply a "Paul says no" but the language suggests it's a very strong disagreement. Acts says "They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left ..." to go to Syria and Cilicia.

Now get this: Here is Barnabas, whose name means "encouragement,'' who stood up for Paul and it could be argued made it possible for Paul to become the great missionary that he became, and yet whatever Mark did on that first trip is so angered Paul that he wanted nothing to do with Mark, to the point of splitting up the greatest missionary team of the early church.

This would likely have sent shock waves through the early church and made Mark something akin to Yoko Ono (the woman generally credited with breaking up the Beatles). Paul and Barnabas splitting up? It was like Tom Brady leaving the Patriots! 

And when Paul leaves with Silas, it is his journey that is "commended by the brothers'' (the other disciples), not Barnabas and Mark (who, by the way, were cousins).

Interesting that Paul would not listen to Barnabas in this matter, that whatever Mark did on that one journey so offended Paul that he would not give Mark a second chance, to the point of splitting up with a guy who had been so important to him and his ministry.

What happens to Mark? Somewhere along the way, obviously Mark and Paul make amends. Nearly 15 years later, in the letter to the Colossians, Paul writes, "My fellow prisoner Aristarchus sends his greetings, as does Mark, the cousin of Barnabas."

How did Mark get back in Paul's good graces? We don't know. We know Paul is writing from prison in Rome and Mark is with him. Paul even writes to the Colossians, "You have received instructions about him; if he comes to you, welcome him.'' (4:10).

Why would the church not welcome Mark? Maybe because he was branded as having been the disrupter of the early church, the kid who broke up the team of Paul and Barnabas. 

What we do know is that at some point Mark serves Peter, who writes in I Peter 5:13 of Mark as his "son." Scholars think Mark must have served with Peter for years, enough to absorb Peter's story enough to write one of the four Gospels. 

Yet toward the end of Paul's life, he writes in his second letter to Timothy, "Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry" (2 Timothy 4:11).

So Mark goes from fleeing the scene of Jesus' arrest (he wasn't the only one, of course) and being rejected so strongly by Paul that it causes a division between Paul and Barnabas, to Paul requesting Mark because Mark is "helpful." 

The early church historians say Mark eventually became bishop of Alexandria. He is credited with introducing Christianity to Africa. According to Coptic (Egyptian Christian) tradition, Mark in Alexandria annoyed the non-believers to the point they called him "the exterminator of the idols." We know that there was a wave of persecution that hit Alexandria, and Mark was killed. There is a tradition that people said of Mark upon his death, "This time he did not run away."

If that last statement is true, it likely means that Mark lived with the reputation of having run away - maybe from Jesus' arrest, but more likely from Paul and not being able to put up with the hardships of that first missionary journey, causing the split of Paul and Barnabas.

Mark went from being a spoiled baby who couldn't finish the trip with Paul and Barnabas to being a hero of the faith. Perhaps he was always remembered for his failure, but clearly, he overcame that and made something that lasted. After all, there are only four Gospels; Mark wrote one of them.

It may also speak volumes of Barnabas. We never hear about Barnabas again after that split in Acts, but if indeed Barnabas and Mark took a missionary journey, it's likely that Barnabas poured his life and wisdom into his young relative; mentored him. What an example for older men, to take younger men - particularly younger men who may have failed in some measure in their life - and encourage them, build them up, restore them.

Whatever we have done, whatever we have failed at, whatever we have run away from, we can look to Mark as an example that, as the saying goes, "if you're not dead, you're not done." God is not a God of second chances; he is a God of another chance. Not just second chances, but another and another and another ...

(Much of this comes from a man named Stephen Mansfield, who I had the chance to hear at a Man in the Mirror conference at Amelia Island and who talked passionately about Mark and 'second chances').

Outkicking your past

It’s a short passage in 1 Chronicles 4, and it became popular several years ago through a book called “The Prayer of Jabez.” The book comes across as awfully close to one of those “prosperity theology” prayers, the “name it and claim it” brand of religion - although I did read the book, and it has value if taken in the proper context.

But I was thinking more about this, trying to look beyond the verses the other day, and a couple things hit me.

Here is the passage: “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “I gave birth to him in pain.”  Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.”

First, here is Jabez. We don’t know much about him, yet we do.

He was more honorable than his brothers. Why is this line in there? We don’t know the names of his brothers; they aren’t named. But there was something about Jabez that the writer of Chronicles felt was important enough to mention: he was more honorable than his brothers. When the writer of this genealogy came to the name of Jabez, he remembered him for being "more honorable."

We’ll get back to that.

Then, his name: Jabez. Names meant something specific in those days, much as they have in other cultures. Native American names often had something to do with what happened on the day of their birth. “Wolf ran” or “owl perches in tree” or “running deer’’ … you get the idea. The name has to do with something that was seen as significant on the day they were born. 

If you remember your Bible stories, Isaacs’s name means “He will laugh,” reflecting the disbelief, if not outright laughing, that occurred when old Sara and Abraham were told they would have a son.

Jabez’ name reflects the amount of pain his mother experienced in childbirth. Think about that. She didn’t pick a name that reflected some hope for his future, or something of significance to the family, or a name to honor some relative. No, Jabez has to live every day of his life knowing he caused his mother an incredible amount of pain. Every time his name was called in school (if they did that back then); every time he was called to dinner; every time his friends picked him for a game of cow-tipping, he was reminded that he was literally a “pain.”

That makes me think his mother was bitter. I can hear her use his name as a way to remind him of her own suffering, of maybe even her own disappointment and somehow making him the embodiment of that disappointment.

And Jabez could have grown up living “down” to his name, to that disappointment. He could have grown up knowing life is hard, full of pain, and it would always be that way. Maybe his brothers had better names, family names, names that they could live up to. For Jabez, the bar was set pretty low.

Yet Jabez doesn’t settle. He wants something more for himself. He wants to get beyond the low expectations, the misery of his everyday existence.

He asks, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me …” He wants more than what is expected of him and, judging by the fact that his brothers are not mentioned, I’d assume he wants something more than his brothers even dreamed of.

Jabez asks for blessing, but surely realizes with that “enlarging of territory” there comes more responsibility, more work.

He ends with “… free me from pain.”

He could have been asking to be free from physical pain, or he could be asking to be free from the curse of his name: “pain.” It’s almost as if he’s asking, “free me from the burden of my past, from the ways this family attempts to keep me down.”

Too many people who are raised in bitterness and being put down live with bitterness and a sense that the world is against them. Often, they live in an emotional cowering, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the hammer to fall, for whatever disaster they know will befall them because that’s been their whole life. They can’t see that there is opportunity for something more.

Yet Jabez apparently does. Maybe he listens to the stories told around the campfires of the heroes of the nation of Israel, of Abraham and Moses and Joshua and Caleb; heroes that made him long for something better.

And God does it. Why? Apparently because Jabez was “more honorable than his brothers.” He realized, somehow, that he doesn’t have to live the way his brothers do, that he doesn’t have to be bound by the expectations others have for him, that he doesn’t have to be a source of pain.

Something in the stories he’d heard about, something that stirred within his heart made him cry out to God for something more, something greater, something beyond anything those around him could imagine. “Oh, that You would bless me…”

And he lived a life of honor that God blessed.

His brothers grew up in the same house, and no doubt heard the same stories. They had the same history, the same tribe, the same bloodline. Yet there is no record that they grabbed the vision and pursued something greater than what was expected of them.

I think we all have those things in our past that hold us back – the disappointments, the hurts, the failures. Maybe it’s not our fault; maybe we’re reminded by our families – as Jabez was – of those disappointments and low expectations.

But what we want is to rise up. To be better than our past. Or as Jabez might have said, “Bless me. Give me more responsibility. Free me from the curse of what is expected of me, the burden of the meaning of my name.”

Whatever situation we find ourselves in, we should live with honor, responding appropriately to the situations around us. We don’t wallow in self-pity or hide behind some disappointment from yesterday or from years ago.

Be more honorable than your brothers. Don’t be afraid to ask God for more, but remember to ask for the character to handle it, believe that God will give it to you despite the circumstances or situations you find yourself in.

That’s the lesson, to me, of Jabez.

Right in the middle of this passage of names and boring genealogy, it’s as if the writer came across the name “Jabez” and remembered there was something noteworthy about him, something unforgettable.

Be unforgettable.

Be honorable. 

(Much of what I do is read other people's work, then think about it and "riff" on what stuck with me. Much of this was a riff on a chapter in Stephen Mansfield's excellent book, "Mansfield's Book of Manly Men." I recommend it). 

The land, Scarlett, the land

I’m sitting on the porch, watching the sun rise over Lay Lake. Last night, it was a near-full moon reflecting on the water just beyond my back porch, and the sounds were those of frogs and the occasional squawk of a bird. It’s quiet, peaceful; I can see the stars and feel the breeze.

I’m in the country.

My mom grew up in the country - Powder Springs, Georgia, well before the time when Powder Springs joined the rest of North Georgia as part of the seemingly endless sprawl of suburb that Atlanta has become. It was rural, and she lived on a farm. My grandfather was a lumberman, but he apparently also raised crops and had a few animals; I don’t really know, because by the time I came along they’d left the farm and moved to East Point, back then a blue-collar town that was named because it was the eastern end of the Atlanta & West Point Rail Road (the western end being West Point, Ga.).

The way I remember the story (you know how family histories are) is that my mother couldn’t wait to leave the farm and move to the city and live a city lifestyle, whatever that meant to a girl in the 1930s. Honestly, I’m not sure of the timeline, but I know at some point my mother moved to Atlanta, got a job, went with a some of her girlfriends to attend the “Gone With The Wind” premier at the Lowe’s Theatre in Atlanta hoping to see Clark Gable.

Hers was always a desire to ‘better’ herself – to wear nicer clothes and eat in white-table cloth restaurants. I have a picture of her in my mind – the real one exists somewhere in a scrapbook – of her sitting at one of those restaurants, her long graceful fingers holding a cigarette, looking glamourous in a way she never would have if she’d stayed in Powder Springs.

She joined the Woman’s Auxiliary Volunteers in World War II, which was the women’s Navy (the WAVs). Her father was not happy about that, saying that was no place for a proper woman and he would disown her. Maybe “disowned’’ her is not accurate, but clearly my mom did not go in the direction he thought was appropriate.

She met my father, who was in the Navy (actually the Coast Guard), and both were stationed in Charleston, S.C. They married either within a few weeks or a few months, depending on which of my siblings tells the story. My father wanted to go back to the homestead in New Jersey where the Melicks had lived for over 200 years, but for all her desire for sophistication my mother was not going to leave the South (they’d lived, for a time, on Staten Island when my father was stationed there and apparently, she saw realized that a civilization without fried chicken, fried okra, grits and sweet tea was not a civilization she wanted to be part of).

And so, she spent the rest of her life living in the Atlanta area, working full time, putting up with her husband, and teaching her kids to read and dream and think and want a life beyond what we knew.

But when she got older, when she’d retired and all of the kids had left home, and she and my dad had spent a year in Liberia as missionaries and come back to find that her cancer had gotten worse, she often talked of wanting to go back to the farm.

There is that great line in “Gone with The Wind” when Scarlett O’Hara’s father, Gerald, admonishes her, saying “Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.”

My mom loved that movie. Certainly because of Clark Gable, but maybe because she recognized Scarlett’s desire to get off the plantation and live a life of “more,” whatever that meant. But I think the line about “that land” resonated with her as well. As she got older, mom talked often of moving to a place in the country, of finding a place to get back to the land, as if she were trying to go back to the farm.

She never did.

My wife, bless her heart, knows how that speech about “land” in Gone with The Wind resonated with me. Every time we looked at buying a house, I was always drawn to the one with the biggest yard, the most space, with “land.”

I never lived on a farm. I am smart enough to know that the reality of owning several hundred acres of pasture and/or forests requires more work than I’m inclined to give it. If I could buy a nice house in the middle of somebody else’s plantation and let them care for it while I just enjoyed the view, that would be ideal.

Yet a few years ago, we bought a place on Lay Lake, with a Wilsonville address even though it’s not really in the town limits of Wilsonville. We’re on a point, and the views from three sides of this house is of water or trees; on one side I have a neighbor, but the house was designed so that is not part of the routine view.

It’s quiet. At night, if I go out the front door, I hear the chorus of hundreds or maybe even thousands of frogs from the inlet across the street. If I go out the back and sit on the porch, I can see the moon rising and reflecting in the water, and hear the occasional screech of a bird. We have bunnies and turtles and frogs and lizards and all kinds of great birds.

It’s quiet, except for the early mornings when there is a fishing tournament and the boats are racing to their favorite spots and my end of the lake resembles the start of a Sunday race at Talladega.

I never thought I’d own a place at the lake. I never thought I’d really want a place at the lake. I always thought of myself as a “city boy.” I don’t hunt or fish or do those outdoorsy things that most of the guys of my age do. I certainly don’t farm, although I did plant and care for two blueberry bushes that produced a nice ‘crop’ of blueberries; and I don’t garden, although I did manage to keep a pretty bougainvillea alive for almost two years, until a summer storm broke it in half.

But perhaps there is that part of my mom still in me, that longs to return to the land, because maybe, as Gerald O’Hara said, it’s the only thing that lasts.

The waiting room

 I was checked in at the doctor’s office the other day – the chiropractor, really, because I’d been rear-ended by a truck on I-459 and my back was feeling it (but that’s another story for another day) – and the receptionist told me they’d get to me as quick as they could, but they were running a bit behind.

I took my seat in the waiting room.

There were no magazines.

That may not seem odd these days when everyone carries access to reading material in their pocket computers (known as cell phones), but for decades, old magazines were a staple of waiting rooms anywhere you had to wait for something – seeing a doctor, a dentist, getting new tires, even waiting for a bus. It was just courtesy, I guess; a way for businesses to help you pass the time and forget how long it was taking to get the service you were waiting to receive.

When I say “old” magazines, that’s what I mean. You’d find publications like “People” and “Popular Mechanics” and “National Geographic” and “U.S. News and World Reports” that were months, if not years, old. I never understood why, because you could look at the little label on the front and see that the doctor had a subscription, which means he must have received current editions. Maybe he took the current editions home to read first, and only brought them in when everyone in his immediate family was through with them.

I sat there the other day and watched the other people doing what people do now: look at their phones. Maybe they were reading emails, or playing games, or catching up on Facebook or twitter or Instagram, or news sites – all the stuff that I find myself doing whenever I’m in a position where I have to wait.

The thing is, when you go to your phone, you can download what you want to read, what you are familiar with.

In the old days of waiting rooms, you went through the stack of magazines – there never seemed to be one that you’d normally want to read – to try to find one that looked remotely, possibly interesting.

I actually enjoyed flipping through “People,’’ because there was always this section dedicated to paparazzi shots of supposedly famous people caught doing stuff. The thing is, invariably it would be someone “famous” that I had never heard of – some woman who because famous by being on a reality TV show who was caught coming out of a New York City workout class in sweat-stained tights and sports top, or an actor from a popular movie I knew nothing about who got caught leaving a Los Angeles nightclub at 3 a.m. with his arm around the daughter of some millionaire and an embarrassing trail of toilet paper caught on the bottom of his shoe.

Or maybe there would be a shot of a minor royalty from a Mediterranean country laying in the sun on a yacht. Or a drummer for a rock ‘n roll band trying to be inconspicuous while browsing through a used bookstore in some midwestern city.

The point is, I always learned something I didn’t know. If it was People, inevitable the next week I’d come across the name of that same “celebrity” in a dozen news stories and realize they really were famous after all. Or maybe I read about a tribe of Amazonian indigenous people whose lifestyle was being threatened by wildfires in the Brazilian jungle, or the history of some ancient kingdom in India, or an unusual combination of cheeses, combined with bits of bacon and some flavoring, to make “the perfect” macaroni and cheese.

In short, I very often learned something I did not know before. Maybe it even challenged me to want to learn more or re-think the things I had grown comfortable believing.

It further struck me how the more access to information we have, the less we really consume. It allows us to just read or watch what we want to read or watch, information brought to us by people we know we’ll agree with. Nothing is pushing us out of our comfort zone; very rarely are we confronted with a story that we read because we’re bored and there’s nothing else to read and it actually gives us something we didn’t know and maybe even raises our awareness or alters the way we think.

I mean, when is the last time you went to the search part of your cell phone and called up an old edition of Popular Mechanics or Archeology Magazine?

In the “olden days” we were limited in access to information. We had three TV networks (oh, there was a fourth: PBS, which nobody regularly watched), and two local newspapers, and maybe a magazine or two that your parents subscribed to. And you learned by talking to people about current issues or events they’d lived through or just hearing stories.

We live in an age when we have access to more information in that palm-sized device we carry with us everywhere than any time in the history of the world. But that also means we’re being lied to more than any time in the history of the world, with “fake news” and fake web sites and pictures that have been altered so well you don’t know what to believe.

We all laugh, knowingly, at the line “I read it on the internet so it must be true,” yet I’m as guilty as anyone of reading something on the internet and not challenging it to see if another source agrees or if there is a site that debunks the incredible story I just read and find hard to believe but feel I must share anyway.

The irony is, I could just as easily go on my iPhone and search for months-old versions of the magazines that used to litter every waiting room (if those publications still exist).

 But that would put the responsibility for my education back on my shoulders. And if there is one thing all my years of public education taught me, isn’t my education the government’s job?

Trick or treat

In my old neighborhood, we approached Halloween with the planning and precision of the D-Day invasion.

This was the old days, when you could get out and walk the streets of your neighborhood without your parents, because you most of the houses were owned by the parents of the kids you went to school with, and the occasional house that had old people with no kids in them either had a kindly old couple that gave out the best treats or else a spooky old man of whom we made up the most blood-curdling stories.

 As we got older and our parents let us roam further, we’d plot a course that often had us hitting multiple neighborhoods within the time-frame we were allowed to be out, and even involved cutting through the woods and across creeks to get to the “good” houses, the ones that had the reputation for just leaving candy out in baskets on the front porch in the belief that the honor system would work with a bunch of kids wearing masks.

 Masks – that was about the extent of our store-bought Halloween costumes. You could get a mask of Superman or Batman or a skeleton or a cat. Some were supposed to be scary; some were supposed to be funny; some were cute. Usually, the masks were so hot (this was October in the Deep South, where the temperature could still be in the 70s at night) and the eye-holes so misaligned you had to push the mask up on the top of your head between houses, adding additional strain to that piece of elastic that went around behind your head to keep the mask tight; a piece of elastic that invariably broke after about the hundredth push to the top of the head-pull back into place, and then you were forced to either hold the mask in place with one hand or tie the ends of the elastic around your ears in an effort to keep the illusion of identity in place.

 Beyond the mask, it was up to us or our moms to fill out the rest of the costume. Ghosts were easy, of course – you just got an old white sheet and draped it over your head so that it hung loosely down around your ankles. It could be held in place by the appropriate “Casper” mask, but boy was that hot – a sheet over your head, clamped in place by this mask-and-elastic contraption wrapped around your head. Some moms made costumes – red and blue Superman pajamas with a red towel cape, or a vest and holster if you were a cowboy, or even sticking cotton balls all over a white sweatshirt to try to resemble a sheep.

 If you played on a sports team maybe you just wore your football or baseball uniform or, if you were a girl, your cheerleading outfit but changed up the logo to a professional or college team. Part of the tradition was that when the parents answered the door, they’d exclaim “Oh, look! Superman and Casper and a Georgia Bulldog!” and act like they didn’t know who you were.

 I once decided I would go out dressed up as a “hood” – that’s what we called tough guys back then – and so wore what I thought was a convincing get-up of jeans, boots, a leather jacket, and white t-shirt. Much to my chagrin, we’d get to a house and the mom would answer the door and say, “Oh, look! Superman and Casper and a baseball player and – oh, Ray, you decided not to wear a costume this year?”

 But they still gave me the candy, which was all that mattered.

 When you got home, you emptied the sack to look at this amassed treasure, eat a few pieces, then decide to save the rest for later. The next day you compared notes on which houses gave the best candy and which ones gave out the dreaded apples and bananas (you avoided those houses the next year), and what houses you wanted to make sure you got to early the next year.

 Sometimes you hid your Halloween candy so well you forgot where it was; sometimes you would find your candy gone and your dad would swear he didn’t eat it even though you found candy wrappers in his bedroom waste basket. 

Somewhere along the way, Halloween became a holiday for single adults. Costumes got more elaborate or more risqué (otherwise prime and proper schoolteachers would dress up like hookers or sexy witches or nurses). I remember one year, after college, going to a local club on Halloween and there was this guy who was wearing a ring over his head like a halo, but he had a shower curtain hanging from it and a shower nozzle somehow strapped to the ring that actually could spray water. He was wearing a bathing suit and kept inviting these sexy witches/nurses/hookers to “take a shower with me.” 

There was no candy involved.

Then again ... 

 There were those people who told us that celebrating Halloween was an invitation for Satan to send his demons in to steal your soul. I don’t know about that. I only know a few of the kids I grew up with that I suspected of being demon-possessed, but I never made the correlation to their Casper the Friendly Ghost costume. 

Then came the time I forgot it was Halloween. I was sitting in the living room of the house I was renting with a couple other guys (this was right after college; the other guys may have been out chasing sexy witches for all I know) when the doorbell rang. I opened it, and there was a gaggle of boys, in costumes of some Japanese anime characters that I knew nothing about, who shouted the age-old greeting “Trick or treat!”

I had nothing. I was completely unprepared. I ran to the pantry and found a box of chocolate chip cookies. I came back and said, “Here, take this box of cookies. Don’t tell any other kids where you got it. I’m going to turn off the lights and pretend I’m not home.”

 Maybe that’s what they mean by “trick or treat.”

Celebrating our diversity all the way to war

We are a society that celebrates our differences.

Man-woman. Gay-straight. Progressive-conservative. Black-white.

And those are just the more obvious ones.

And that's OK. We are different. And sometimes those differences are worth celebrating. Heaven knows the world would not be a very attractive place to live if everyone was like me. There wouldn't be any electricity, because while I understand the principle of how electricity works, it would never occur to me to invent it. We wouldn't have telephones for the same reason (much less cell phones or hand-held computers).

But at the same time, there are enough people who have something in common with me that we can enjoy books, ideas, sports, faith, cowboy boots, movies, long drives (both in a car and on the golf course), music, well-turned and thought-out phrases ... you get the idea.

I have always believed that all of humanity shares the same characteristics. It's just that we share them in such wildly disparate degrees that at times if feels like we have nothing in common.

But we do.

I thought of this while I was thinking about the current state of division in this country.

"Different" has always sold well, which is why we're constantly bombarded with new styles of clothes, cars, computers, homes, TVs, music, medical care.

And in the last few decades, what we refer to as 'the media' (which is perhaps better identified as "the news business") has found that building up our differences is a successful business model. One side is going to agree with whatever position the news business takes, while the other side objects. But both sides read (or hear, or watch) for the same reason people slow down to see a wreck on the highway. Outrage sells - or creates clicks. But it's not just outrage. In the face of outrage, hearing a voice that supports my view also sells.

Thus the success, for example, of the widely divergent Fox News and MSNBC. We can't help but be drawn to a certain amount of outrage, so the viewers of one will sometimes turn over to hear the views of the other - in small doses - just to reinforce their opinion that they are right and the other side is wrong.

We often talk about having raised kids who earn participation trophies and don't really understand winning and losing, yet we get into things like politics and you see the outrage that occurs when one side loses. In the past, there didn't seem to be that much difference between Republicans and Democrats, but not any more. While there may still not be that much difference between the men and women who are elected to office representing those parties, these days it almost seems fatal to suggest maybe they have something in common, that maybe they are not that far apart in their views.

Moderation does not stir the masses or bring in donations or create movements.

So Candidate X is a lying cheating racist who is trying to keep minorities down, while Candidate Y is a lying cheating bigot who is trying to turn the country into a Soviet gulag where only the rulers have anything and the majority is left with nothing.

I have said this before and it's not original to me, but we are a people with incredibly easy access to more information than any people in the history of the world; yet at the same time we are the most lied to people in the history of the world because not all of that information is correct. However, if what we read agrees with my views, and reinforces my belief, then I keep coming back for more.

It's not that the "facts" are all that different. It's how we interpret those "facts" and make the connections between then. We get a piece of a quote from a leader and suddenly decide that one sentence defines the true character of that person. Then we get snippets of other sentences, maybe even what was meant to be a joke or a private, off-hand remark, and add it to that first sentence we heard, and because we don't like that leader anyway it all adds up to that person being a lying, cheating, bigot, whatever-phobe.

Meanwhile, there is often just as much evidence about that person to the contrary, but because it doesn't fit with what we want to believe, we don't pay attention to it.

But then we hear people on both sides say, "He could be a hero if he'd just reach out to the other side and compromise!" That always seems to come from the supporters of the party that is not in power, however; the people who conveniently forget that it takes two to compromise and as soon as one of their leaders actually seems on the verge of "giving" something to the other side, he is branded a traitor and is threatened with being voted out of office.

The question is often asked, "Why are we so divided?"

Maybe because we're so caught up celebrating our differences.

And forgetting how to appreciate the differences in others.

I think we used to spend more time on trying to find what we had in common. This country - the United States of America - is unique in that it was not formed by people who based citizenship on speaking the same language or worshiping in the same church or having the same ethnic background or being bound by geographic boundaries - the things that turned people into "people groups" since the beginning of time.

In the United States, people left behind the folks that they looked like and sounded like and worshiped like and who enjoyed the same foods and music and traditions, and decided to put all those things aside for an idea.

It had never been done before - a nation formed on an idea rather than some physical or geographical commonality. It resulted in a brand new creation of a group of people called "Americans."

Yes, people came to this country and lived with people who were like them. That's why, particularly in the Northeast or the far West, you had the Italian neighborhood or the German neighborhood or the Polish neighborhood or "Chinatown." But even with that, the longing was for the children of those immigrants to become something new: Americans. And even though they were not all equal, they believed those words that said that "all men are created equal" and they couldn't actually go on to becomes whatever they dreamed of being, perhaps their children could, or certainly their grandchildren.

I fear that one of the problems we face today is that we're hyper-focused on our differences. We're told to celebrate what makes our neighbor different than ourselves, and if we don't then we're bigots or racitss or small-minded or "deplorable." Don't get me wrong - we do need to accept people who are not like us, and welcome the traits they bring that can make us all better.

But the goal to become that one thing that is unique in all the world; to take our genetic and geographical and language and religions differences and blend them into something new, something we call being an "American."

When we have no basis for agreement upon what that means, though, then we are simply fighting with no resolution in sight.