Cpt. Bud's Devotionals, 8-2-15: "A Walk-On Role in God's Big Picture"

When the power went out during an electrical storm, with no lights to see our Hungry Hungry Hippos tournament, some friends and I resorted to playing a spirited game of Which Historical Figure Would You Most Like To Punch in the Face?. The usual answers arose: Josef Stalin, Hirohito, John Wilkes Booth, Caligula, Jimmy Fallon, etc. But one friend's answer - Adam and Eve - made me think. My friend reasoned he'd backhand them both for messing up humankind by their disobedience to God. But I was hesitant about that answer.
Adam and Eve didn't need a bash in the face to remind them they'd erred; they were banished from a paradise as decay and death entered the world. But that wasn't my only reason for not punching Adam and Eve in the face. Of course, if sin had never entered the world by their actions, we'd never know death, illness, injustice, grief, loss. But - and maybe I'm just too accustomed to a world that sucks - how boring would the history of life on this planet be?
This may stem partly from the fact that the only world any of us knows is a hard world, but, what triumph would we know? What victory? How would we shed tears of joy in gripping God's hand to overcome an addiction? How would we see the beauty of any choice to do right, a choice great or small? And above all, we wouldn't know the greatest story ever told of good versus evil - the agonizing, beautiful, harrowing, joyous true story of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice upon the cross, His triumphant defeat of death and sin.
I don't like the way the world is, but I consider it more than just a silver lining that we all have walk-on parts in that epic story.
OHMS,
Cpt. Bud Sturguess

"Then Job answered the LORD and said:
"I know that You can do everything,
and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.
You asked, 'Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?'
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
Listen, please, and let me speak;
You said, 'I will question you, and you shall answer Me.'
I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees You.
Therefore I abhor myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.""
-Job 42:1-6

Cpt. Bud's Devotionals, 7-26-15: "Earthquakes n' Lightnin'"

When it comes to "the end times," many in the Church fall into two unsettling camps: those who shy away from it, and those who have a fixation on it. There are those who focus on a future of hope, but pixelate any of the gut-wrenching sorrow of the Christian life, and those who, in their focus on "fire and brimstone," forget the chance to proclaim the love and invitation of Jesus before He returns.
As with many prophecies in the Bible, sometimes I let my comfort in the sureness of these things turn to apathy. For example, I know from Scripture that our efforts to bring peace to the Middle East, or to the entire world, will never work. So, I often forget my responsibility to pray for those in war-torn countries, I forget the need for humanitarian relief, and most of all, the need for people everywhere to know Jesus.
Also, I believe the environmental effects of global warming, climate change, and pollution to be part of the "beginning of sorrows" of which Jesus preached, as well as the first three "trumpets" described in Revelation (destruction and bitterness of vegetation and bodies of water). So, believing that it's an unstoppable part of prophecy, I often forget that I still have a responsibility to do what I can for my environment. Believing these troubles to be part of Jesus' prophecy doesn't relieve me of my personal responsibilities - Jesus also prophesied that "the love of many will grow cold," but that certainly doesn't give me license to abandon love.
As for the end times, I hope not to fall into the latter group who preach only "the end," and as a result,

scare many people away from the Gospel. But, I also don't want to let my belief in these prophecies, and the comfort of that faith, lead me away from reminding people that Christ is coming back soon.
We often say, "It's been two thousand years since He left - even if He came back today, it wouldn't be 'soon'" (2 Peter 3:3-4). But, the unsaved and unbelieving who see His return will feel that His coming indeed came much too soon, and bitter tears will be shed (Revelation 1:7). That breaks my heart. It should break every believer's heart - not to hopelessness, but to motivation, to the desire to see the unsaved know Him who formed them, who died for them, who loves them.
OHMS,
Cpt. Bud Sturguess
"Therefore I will wail and howl,
I will go stripped and naked;
I will make a wailing like the jackals
and a mourning like the ostriches"
-Micah 1:8

Cpt. Bud's Devotionals, 7-19-15: "High People in Low Places"

Courtesy National Geographic

During the turbulent period of the kings of Israel and Judah, there rose an idolatrous practice in which worshipers of false gods would perform their rituals almost exclusively on altars built on mountains and hills (often called "the high places" in the Bible). They did this in the belief that being at a higher place made one physically closer to their god.

In contrast to the true God, however, it is at our lowest that we can worship Him fully and embrace His promises with joy; when we are humbled, when we are defeated, when we are persecuted and downtrodden, when we cry out amidst the cries and screams of terror in this world that we need His strength to help us back to our feet, out of the deepest, darkest places of the human heart and imagination. We are grateful to have a Christ who is with us not just in any geographical height or depth, but who loves us and strengthens us in lows, valleys, ditches, and trenches that are physical, emotional, spiritual.

OHMS,

Cpt. Bud Sturguess

"Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." -Romans 8:37-39

Cpt. Bud's Devotionals, 7-12-15: "Zephyrinus Blues"

Though not Catholic, my parents considered naming me Zephyrinus, who was bishop of Rome from A.D. 199-217. My mother was moved by his suffering and persistence in battling many heresies that were growing within the Church, specifically the "adoptionism" heresy. But, my parents settled on Bud, as St. Bud of Macedonia was known for his hygiene.

This led me to read about Zephyrinus, and his devotion to keeping the Gospel from the mire and manipulation of men. His experience is a testament to the fact that anyone who proclaims the truth of Christ will not have an easy time of it. After all, if everyone likes what you're preaching, you're probably not preaching the truth. Jesus never promises us cushy lives as His disciples - He promises the opposite. I thank God that He does not shelter us from the hard facts of life.

The Bible tells us we are Christ's "ambassadors," quite an important office. Like Zephyrinus, who himself had a high office but didn't resign to complacency concerning the Gospel, so should we, in our undeserved but awesome job as heralds of Christ, always expect and embrace suffering, and trust God to mold it into a testament to the beautiful truth we proclaim.
OHMS,
Cpt. Bud Sturguess

PS Though he did not die a martyr's death, Zephyrinus was for a long time listed in the Catholic canon of martyrs (and is still acknowledged by some), for the spiritual and emotional anguish he endured in combating heresy. The word "martyr" means "witness." And though not all of us in Christ's flock will be literally put to death for our belief in Him, if we suffer with the same meekness and faith as Zephyrinus, we are witnesses indeed, and provide a stirring testimony for the God who gives us such strength.

"Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us." -Hebrews 11:36-40

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." -Winston Churchill

My Vietnam Mom

Today marks forty years since the fall of Saigon and the "official" end of the Vietnam War, and I'm glad to have had a mother who openly talked about it. We were taught nothing about it in school; the most it was mentioned was in a junior high science class, when our teacher described why soldiers in Vietnam were careful to take such good care of their feet (we were learning about fungus).
But in a way I'm glad my school didn't bother to teach us about the Vietnam War - my mother brought to life this ominous thing that would have been dull history otherwise.
I heard what her friends and family went through, both in Vietnam, and when they came back. Men who were spat on and called "baby killers," her cousin, Bob Wayne Ford whose helicopter went down in Cambodia, her uncle Glen Oliver Lane who was declared missing in action, but was later proven to be alive, unable to return to the States presumably due to the mental effects of all he did and saw in Southeast Asia.
Because of her, I had a deeper desire to know the motives behind heroes and villains like Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, William Westmoreland, Michael Davis O'Donnell, John McCain, Ernest Medina, Michael Bernhardt, and Jane Fonda
I understood what songs like "Fortunate Son" and "Born in the USA" really meant. I understood the weight of movies like Hamburger Hill and Good Morning, Vietnam.
Because of my mother, I understood a little more about this thing I didn't have to care about. It could have been distant history, despite ending only eleven years before I was born, but my mother carried a certain sorrow from her generation that others forgot when they founded Microsoft or became yuppies on Wall Street.
Because of her, I know it's important.

"You have left too much of yourself in this land for it not to be yours. I, too, will always be yours, for you have left too much of yourself with me for it to be otherwise." -Nicholas Proffitt

Bud's "Easter" Sermon: God, or Jesus?

Note: I don't like to call Easter by that name, because it was named after a false god by certain Christians with anti-Semitic intents who wanted to distance themselves from the Jews and Passover. Then again, I still call Thursday "Thursday," despite its being named for Thor, and I still call Mars "Mars," and so on, yet God in His rich mercy does not hold it against me. Not withstanding, I prefer "Resurrection Sunday." Anyway...

Whether intentionally or not, we often perceive God and Jesus as not only two different Characters of history and creation, but two different Gods. We see God (the Father) as the angry One who grants wishes, and Jesus (the Son) as the nice One who did nice things and commanded us to do likewise.
The problem is not that we prefer One over the Other, but that we go to One depending on our specific needs. When we cry out for vengeance and justice, for wrath to come upon those who do wrong, we pray to the One we call "God." When we want to remember and teach kindness and love, we cite the One we call "Jesus."
But what is often missing in our perception of the Creator is the fact that the Two cannot be separated. The same God who destroyed Pharaoh's army, who rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, who struck many a wicked man with blindness and leprosy, became flesh and bone, grew inside and exited a womb - a Son. God, the Son. The feet of the Almighty wore sandals, were covered in dust and sweat, and were cleansed with the tears of the same kind of sinner on whom He had executed wrath at Sodom.
This was not two different Gods, but a different covenant the one God made with His creations. But this New Covenant, sealed by His blood on a cross, was not a "plan B" - He told us from the beginning, from the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, and through His prophet Moses, that for years man would strive under Law and punishment, but a time would come when He would do away with the rigorous and fearful tastes of this Law, and open our hearts and eyes to the love and mercy with which it was written, so that the Law would taste sweet as honeycomb.
The angry invisible God cannot be set apart as a different Being than the meek and gentle Jesus. It was after all this precious Lamb of Nazareth who, on a cross, became the very object of the wrath of that distant, gloomy, stormy God, so that we would now see Him as He is and always truly was - present, close, abundant in love and the desire to know we who consider Him so baffling, so far away.

John 8:37-58

Flags of Defeat

Last month, the Dallas Cowboys lost a controversial game to the Green Bay Packers, eliminating them from the playoffs. Later in the same day, I was in the grocery store and saw several people doing their casual Sunday shopping, wearing Cowboys jerseys. Being a Buccaneers fan, I'm quite used to this feeling and frankly don't have this problem anymore because I've grown used to their chronic losing, but I felt bad for those Cowboys fans. I thought to myself that, with the rabidness that football brings out in people, being seen in public in a Romo jersey after a stunning defeat must hurt one's pride.

But it goes beyond those things. "I had a brother at Khe Sanh, fightin' off the Viet Cong - they're still there, he's all gone." When the communists stormed the US embassy in Saigon, effectively ending the twenty-year-long Vietnam War, it must have cut deep to the heart of a Vietnamese soldier, who'd fought for his own freedom, to see the flag of the Republic of South Vietnam become an obsolete novelty, some collectors item as far as the communists were concerned.

When thinking of South Africa, the aged and dying members of the former apartheid government, that "angry race of fallen kings," must feel the same when they see the flag that was flown before right prevailed, before Mandela was freed, before hope shed a color.

But today, thinking of the twenty-one Egyptian Christians slain by ISIS, I don't feel that way. I don't have the embarrassment of the sports jersey, the bitter tears of freedom crushed, or the trace of regret of the power I once had. I only feel victory, that which was given to believers through the cross on which our Christ suffered and died. I take comfort in the fact that suffering is a part of following Christ with boldness, with solidarity. "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ," (2 Corinthians 1:5), and "rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy" (1 Peter 4:13).

I know that with every saint's life taken because of his or her faith in Jesus Christ, the Gospel is only spoken by those who hate, and proven true by those who kill. I know that with every scathing criticism of the Christian, every cold and apathetic remark like "what about the crusades?", Christ's prophecy is illuminated, His foretelling that we who desire to follow Him will me mocked, spat upon, and worse.

Thank God for the testimonies to Jesus Christ, stamped in history even by those who despised Him and His church! Tacitus, one of the most revered historians of ancient times, in recording the events after the great fire of Rome, wrote, "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular."
In spitting on the church of Jesus, though his aim was to smear Nero, of whom Tacitus was no admirer, this historian of old verifies and testifies what is confirmed in the Gospels. I thank the Lord for using this instrument. Likewise, second century Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata wrote, as part of an acerbic sendup of Christianity, "The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day—the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. … You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains their contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property."
Thank God for these harsh words aimed at His disciples! For without them, there would be slightly less indisputable historical validity of the Christian claims. These scathing words are not to our shame or disgrace - they are for God's glory. Peter writes, "If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified" (1 Peter 4:14).

And I know that though the Christian dies, the cross he or she bears does not become a symbol of defeat, because “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25-26).
Jesus took the very instrument of His execution, and turned it into the symbol of His victory, the victory we share in Him. What was once an ugly and ominous symbol of capital punishment is now the symbol of salvation, of God's love for the world, and for eternal life.