Loss

You never know how someone's sudden death will hit you emotionally. I was leaving Matt Hawley's church service (Miami Valley Bible Church) this morning when he asked me if I had heard about Lou. I said, "Oh, you mean Lou from Shorewood?" He said, "Yeah, he had a heart attack (yesterday) and died." He then showed me the text he received at one a.m. this morning.

Lou, as I learned, was on a vacation in Tanzania, Africa, with his wife and children, including son-in-law. The night before their planned safari expedition, he said to his wife in bed, "I think I'm having a heart attack."

Myself, I've known Lou, who (to the best of my knowledge) was half Jewish and half Italian, since the early '90s when he was still single!

Maybe it was the fact that he was in Africa that reminded me about this NPR radio quote I never forgot from at least 15 years ago. It was an African woman familiar with American ways who said, and I remember her words were translated into English, and I am somewhat paraphrasing, "Things are so vastly different in America. People have the luxury of mourning for their dead loved ones."

I personally have had the luxury of mourning for a whole month now over the loss of a very special 66-year-old woman in my life who, although I didn't hang out with her much or even have phone conversations with her ever, her sudden death shocked me and left a void in my world. I just had counted her always being in my psyche as alive and well and caring about me. She knew I was a Christian but she never gave me a "clear testimony of faith."

*****

Here's a sermon outtake:

We know we enjoy this positional oneness, but how is that channeled in our literal relationships one with each other? The doctrine is given to the Body of Christ for the proper maintenance of this body life we share; this vital union we enjoy.

It's interesting that it all begins with a way of thinking. Understand that practical unity does not happen spontaneously, or without willful deliberate effort, says Alex Kurz.

We can't enjoy it naturally if we're not careful. It just doesn't happen. Like anything else in life, you know, the laws of thermodynamics. If you aren't maintaining, caring, working at it . . . by nature, division and dysfunction is actually the natural outcome.

Things don't get better over time; things get worse over time. Take an automobile or any piece of machinery. Take your physical body. If you don't care for it, if you aren't intervening, it's going to naturally break down.

These truths are intended to bring health and functional vitality to all of the individual members. I want to stress again, this doesn't just happen when we all sit in the same room. Unity is the result of deliberately applying specific doctrines and there's a lot of information the Apostle Paul stresses here.

It all starts with the thinking process. Practical unity has everything to do with the way we're thinking, not only about ourselves, but just as importantly, our thinking about the other members of the body.

Romans 12: [2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

[3] For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
[4] For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: [5] So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

I want you to notice something very carefully. When Paul exhorts the Romans (by default the rest of us, the church the Body of Christ) we're supposed to be renewing our mind. The exhortation is we have to change the way we're thinking; we have to displace our old patterns and habits of thinking with the new.

The first area Paul addresses in relationship to our renewed way of thinking is verse 3. From there onward he tells us what is "that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

When Paul talks about the will of God, he doesn't leave us to tread in a vacuum; we don't have to make up what is 'that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.' Paul's going to TELL us what it is.

Notice he begins verse 3, "For I say." He's going to tell us what he's talking about. You see how Paul's appealing to the renewed mind here?

By nature we have a tendency to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. That results in crippling division. That's what Paul's talking about in I Corinthians 12. How can any body part suggest, "You're not as valuable or as important'?"