To Tell the Truth

If you’re old like me you remember an ancient TV game show called To Tell the Truth. (Back in the old days before reality TV we had game shows. Those were really real and people won money. Or dishwashers. Or pool tables . . . lots and lots of pool tables.)

Anyway, on TTTT, three people would line up before a panel of four people (who were supposedly famous but we weren’t sure why) and those three people would all say they were someone who had done something interesting . . . and they would all give the same name. Then the panel of sort-of-famous people would take turns questioning the contestants about who they supposedly were until they had to vote on who they thought was really the person they said they were. Then the contestants won money if they convinced the panel they were the person they really weren’t. I think the show should have been called To Tell a Lie.

I love my DVR. It works as a net to stand guard over the TV line-up and snag shows as they air through the week so that I can view them according to my own schedule. When people ask me when or on what channel a certain show airs, I’m totally blank. I just know that at some point it’ll turn up on my DVR. And I’ll sit down and catch up.

A couple of days ago I was catching up on my shows. I watched CBS’s Sunday Morning (the best show on TV these days) and saw the story of the woman who was the girl in the picture taken during the Vietnam War. She was about nine years old and photographed nude, running from a napalm explosion with burns all down her body, the clothes having been burned off her back. The photographer had taken the picture with her running toward him and then thrown down his camera to rescue her.

Jane Pauley interviewed Kim for the show, a woman now fifty-two years old. As she told her story, Kim gave her testimony to the amazing transformative power of Jesus Christ. In the depths of her pain and bitterness as a young woman, she had come across a New Testament Bible and became a Christian. It changed her heart.

I was struck at the openness with which she confessed the name of Jesus. No generalizations. No political correctness. Simply speaking the truth.

A little later I watched one of my favorite sitcoms, Black-ish. I love this show because it breaks down barriers. I know it’s not everyone’s fave, but I love it.

This week’s episode surprised me. Some white friends of the Johnsons (the African American family) invited them to their church. So the Johnson family went. They were surprised the first Sunday at how comfortable they felt; the music was fun and the sermon was lite. When their friends invited them back, they accepted. They did not find it as . . . inspiring? . . . the next week. The music was exactly the same and they wondered if the pastor was stuck on the same analogies.

So they played the “culture card.” That’s right. They told their friends that it was a culture thing . . . that they needed to be in their own culturally specific church. So their friends asked if they could come along to their church the following Sunday.

And they did. They all went to the African American church that the Johnsons usually went to only on Easter and Christmas. For the first time, they experienced “their own” church and it went on and on and on . . . over four hours!

But in wrapping up the show, the Johnsons had a discussion about the overall church experience. They compared it to buying the mattress they were lying on. They hadn’t settled on the first or second mattress they tested; they kept hunting until they found the one that worked for them. Why not do the same thing with church?

Not a spiritual breakthrough. But this? An honest and funny view of Christian church (including a satirical but honest commentary on Jewish identity in the workplace) . . . on network television?

Then I watched an episode of Ellen recorded a few weeks ago when she interviewed Trai Byers of Empire, another show that I enjoy. There in his interview, he boldly gave his Christian testimony. No mincing of words. No downplaying the truth. Honestly glorifying God in heaven for His divine work and thanking Jesus Christ for his grace.

I began to see a pattern.

Our country has a ton of problems. Practically everywhere you look, you can find something wrong that needs fixing. I won’t even start a list here because it would just be the tip of an enormous problem iceberg.

But many people are beginning to recognize the Truth and speak it out: Jesus Christ changes life. When we come to Jesus . . . when we bring him our broken selves . . . we become something—someone—different and we are never more the same.

And it is not because we just decide to be better or try harder. It is because of Jesus.

Makes me think of the Kurt Carr song . . .

Demons have to flee when I say Jesus.

Sickness has to heal when I say Jesus.

Every knee shall bow before

And every tongue proclaim

With worthy praise,

The matchless name of

Jesus!

Something happens when we call Your name . . .

Jesus!

Oh the power in Your name!

When I call upon Your name,

The very atmosphere will have to change.

We’ll be transformed,

We’ll never be the same

By the power of Your holy name . . .

Jesus!

That’s a truth worth telling.

Who Knew Finding the Library Was So Important?

“Où c'est trouve la bibliothèque?”

With apologies to French-speaking peoples everywhere if this isn’t correct, this is one of the first sentences I remember learning in French 101 in eleventh grade. Literally translated into English, it would be “Where it is found the library?” This is why we don’t waste time doing literal translations from one language into another but just try to capture the general idea . . . in this case, “Where’s the library located?”

I wondered later, why in the world was this one of the first sentences or questions we were taught to ask were we to ever find ourselves in France or French-speaking Quebec? Was the library so very important to French culture that this was somehow the hub to which we would all be gathering for activity and/or security in the event of an emergency?

And yet, forty years later, in the recesses of my mind, I still know how to ask for directions to the library in Paris. I might not understand the response, but I can ask.

And I can ask where other things are . . . “Où c'est trouve un restaurant?” (Restaurant is the same in English and French.) “Où c'est trouve un hôtel?” “Où c'est trouve la salle de bain?” (Perhaps the most important question that we should have been learning before the library directions . . .)

The one thing I will never have to ask anyone: “Où c'est trouve ma vie?” Translation: “Where is my life?”

You don't have to worry
And don't you be afraid;
Joy comes in the morning,
Troubles they don't last always.
For there's a friend named Jesus
Who will wipe your tears away,
And if your heart is broken
Just lift your hands and say,

Oh, I know that I can make it.
I know that I can stand.
No matter what may come my way,
My life is in your hands.

Sunday morning our choir sang this song by Kirk Franklin. It’s one of my very favorites. Filled with one truth after another: No worry. No fear. Joy will come. Troubles are not here to stay. Our friend is named Jesus and he will wipe our tears away and heal broken hearts. In him, we can stand and we will make it.

Monday morning, my mother called and asked me to come take her and my dad to the ER. My dad was having room spins and nausea. The doctor’s office had said to take him straight on to the hospital ER, and that’s what we did. Following an EKG, he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. Many of you are probably already familiar with this heart condition that basically happens when there is a lack of communication between the upper chambers and lower chambers of the heart. The biggest danger is blood clots, which can lead to strokes.

I thank God for my parents. If you know my parents, you thank God for them too. They are amazing people and they have continued doing awesome work for the Lord the past few years despite their advanced ages of 80 and almost-84.

Driving them to the emergency room, sitting in room number 10 with Dad, gathering there with my mother and my sister and her husband and one of my brothers and his wife, and awaiting the diagnosis and prognosis . . . all of that could have been a time filled with worry and fear and trepidation.

But it wasn’t. I sit here today thinking back over the past 30+ hours, and I don’t remember there being any fear. I remember adrenaline. I remember looking after my dear father and his needs . . . asking the nurse for a glass of water and some lunch for my dad . . . getting him something to prop up his tube-filled arm . . . asking him if he needed a blanket. But no fear.

We have a friend named Jesus. We weren’t ignorant of risks or realities or possibilities. But we were not afraid. And we still aren’t. We know where we stand and we will make it.

All the way home.

And we won’t have to ask where that is located . . . in this language or any other. We’ll just know.

My Huh Moment

Gilda Radner was the funniest woman ever on Saturday Night Live. She was in the original cast and I believe she set the standard for every woman—and every man—who has ever been on the show since.

One of her funniest characters was Judy Miller, a live-wired little Brownie who would turn her bedroom into a studio in which to host her own variety show. The frenetic pace of the show would build and build until Judy (Gilda) would eventually be slamming herself into the door of her bedroom, at which point her offstage mother would be yelling, “Judy! What’s going on in there?”

Judy would freeze in place, look around bewildered as if she had no idea what had just happened, and reply, “Nothing.”

Yesterday I had an epiphany. We often call those “aha moments,” but we don’t actually say, “Aha!” At least I don’t. What I usually say is, “Huh.” And then, “How ‘bout that.” And that’s what I did yesterday. I was driving in my car and suddenly said, “Huh.”

I’ve been carrying around a very deep pain for several weeks. It’s a problem that has hurt and troubled me for a while and the longer I’ve carried it the deeper it has drilled down into my heart. I won’t go into the details here, mostly because I don’t want you to isolate the specifics. I want you to get the point that I was carrying it around . . . and there was absolutely nothing I could do to fix it.

My “Huh” moment yesterday came when I realized that I was being Judy Miller. I was slamming myself up against a door for absolutely no reason. It was doing me no good to worry about the problem and it was doing the other person involved no good either. It wasn’t fixing the problem and, worst of all, it was robbing me of my joy.

So I thought, Huh, I can let this go. How ‘bout that. I don’t have to keep throwing myself up against a problem that I can’t fix just to keep frustrating myself and feeling swallowed up in pain. And the minute I realized that, I felt the chains around my heart break. I could practically hear them snap! And the grace of God flowed in and filled my heart with peace . . . the shalom kind of wholeness that I had been missing for weeks. And I looked around and thought, Oh my goodness, what a beautiful day! (I know that sounds corny, but I just report the truth; I don’t invent it.)

God will give us the grace and the strength to handle anything in our lives to which he has called us. But there is no grace for those things that are not ours to carry.

If you are carrying a load that is not yours . . . if you are feeling guilty for something that is not your responsibility or worrying about something for which someone else is accountable . . . turn it loose. Lay it down. It is not your burden. You can still pray about the situation and love the people unconditionally. But you are not responsible for their actions or choices.

Allow the love and the joy of the Lord to fill your heart with peace as you become the person you are called to be and live the life you were created to live. Jesus Christ has set you free and you are free indeed.

Huh. How ‘bout that.