28 Things I Have Learned in 28 Years of Marriage

Posted on June 22, 2019 by Steve Foster

In honor of our 28th anniversary on June 22, here are 28 things that I have learned about marriage.

1. Love deepens over time. I certainly loved Liz when I married her 28 years ago but I really didn’t understand the depths of love or what it really meant to love someone. Love is only built on knowledge, commitment, and intimacy developed and experienced over time. 

2. To have a good marriage marry a good person. I wish I could take more credit for the health of my marriage but in reality I was just blessed to marry a godly woman with strong character. She has been the perfect complement for me and has made me a better man. The only credit I can take is seeking out a Christian wife with a good testimony. But the rest was a step of faith and the grace of God. 

3. Marriage doesn’t resolve your personal issues rather it exposes them. If you go into marriage thinking that your spouse will solve all your problems, fill all your voids, and meet all your deepest needs, then you will be sorely disappointed. You must bring emotional and spiritual health into the marriage, not expect emotional and spiritual health to come from the marriage. 

4. The first year of marriage is one of the toughest…and honeymoons are fairly disappointing. I can’t say that our honeymoon or our first year of marriage were “bad.” They had their fun, enjoyable moments. But, looking back, they were definitely not the “perpetual moments of bliss” that I dreamed they would be. Instead they were much more awkward, stressful, and difficult than I could have expected.

5. Marriage is hard work. Marriages that are coasting are going downhill. It takes time and effort to build a relationship and to learn how to listen well, understand your spouse’s needs, resolve conflict, forgive from the heart, and make changes in your character and habits for the benefit of your marriage.

6. Don’t go to bed angry with each other. One of the few pieces of advice that we grabbed onto early in our marriage was from Ephesians 4:26, Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. We have stuck to that piece of advice…even when it meant staying up late to have a difficult conversation…and it has kept our marriage from a lot of misunderstanding and bitterness.

7. Don’t play competitive games against your spouse. Maybe some marriages can handle this but we can’t. Our first fight was over a game of Boggle. Yes, Boggle. I questioned her score and she questioned my trust in her. Fun stuff. We are both competitive and we found it almost impossible to play against each other without it resulting in some unneeded tension. We have chosen to be on the same team as much as possible ever since.

8. Work as a team. Piggybacking on the above, we have sought to tackle things in life as a team instead of as competitors. Instead of letting an issue divide us, we have tried to use it to bring us together. A problem is either an opportunity to work together as a team or ammunition to use in a war. We have strived to choose the former. 

9. Move away from home. Okay, maybe this doesn’t work or isn’t necessary for everyone but for us it was a blessing to be away from our parents and families during the early years of our marriage. We were forced to grow together as a couple apart from the “roles” that we often play in our families. This is the “leave principle” in Genesis 2:24 and it must be done emotionally if not geographically. 

10. Avoid debt. Again, some people can’t avoid this but being free from debt in the early years of our marriage took a lot of stress off our backs. We have kept a tight lid on our finances throughout our marriage…operating from a tangible but flexible budget…and it has removed one big marital problem off the table for us. 

11. Parenting is a major stress on marriage. Our biggest fights and frustrations came after we had our first little bundle of joy. Tiredness. Different parenting approaches. Lack of free time. Responsibility. Irritableness. Unmet expectations. All of it came to a head with our first child. Thankfully we had seven years of marriage under our belt to help us work through it but it was a major stressor nonetheless. People who think that having a child will strengthen a weak marriage or correct a poor relationship are living in a fantasy world. 

12. Parenting is the greatest adventure that you will take together. Despite the stresses mentioned above, looking back, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Parenting together over the years opened up parts of our hearts that we didn’t know existed. It drew us closer together, expanded our love, and made life an adventure. Our boys turned us from a couple into a family.

13. Share email accounts, Facebook, and computers. For us this has been a simple way to avoid potential temptations and distractions in our marriage.

14. Share your spiritual life together. Go to church together, discuss Scripture together, pray together, serve together. As a pastor, many of these things would be expected but Liz and I have still had to grow in our spiritual “oneness.” It doesn’t happen automatically so find ways to stay connected spiritually and to remind yourselves that life is bigger than you and your individual wants. 

15. Avoid marital scorekeeping. Scorekeeping is a killer to marriages. “I’ve done this, this, and this…and you have only done this… thus you owe me.” We got trapped in this thinking briefly after having kids. Thankfully we recognized it and stopped it.

16. “Catch the little foxes”…and exterminate them. In the Bible’s love song, a young couple is encouraged to get rid of the “little foxes” before they ruin their vineyard (cf. Song of Songs 2:15). This is not agricultural advice but practical advice put into poetic language. Little conflicts, little irritations, little temptations easily creep into a marriage and then later destroy it. Be vigilant and wise and quickly and decisively eliminate anything that could harm your marriage.

17. Marry your best friend. Physical attraction is certainly a real element in choosing a mate but in the end it won’t make or preserve a good marriage. I found that even when we were not officially dating, Liz and I kept spending time together. Our friendship has made our marriage…and our physical attraction…that much stronger. 

18. Learn to appreciate your differences. Liz and I are very different. She is decisive, blunt, cut and dry, and loves discipline and schedules. I am more indecisive, contemplative, creative, and love a more laid back approach. She can manage many things; I prefer to focus on one thing at a time. When we were dating, we were attracted by the differences. A few years into marriage, we became aggravated by the differences. But over time, by God’s grace, we have become amused by the differences. We have learned to laugh at ourselves and the different ways we do things…and to appreciate how we both have grown by being married to someone different than ourselves. As Ruth Bell Graham once said, “If two people agree on everything, then one of them is unnecessary.”

19. Plan weekly date nights. After having kids, this is especially essential for a marriage. We have made a weekly date night a priority in our marriage. Usually we use a coupon or a gift card for dinner and then find a coffee shop to hang out in to talk about our week and take a “pulse” of our marriage and family. Our kids know that our marriage relationship with each other takes priority over over our parenting relationship to them…and they are thankful for it! It is awesome to hear them say, “Hey, aren’t y’all taking a date night soon?”  

20. Find ways to keep the romance alive. A surprise gift. An unexpected love note. A lingering kiss. A playful hint. Don’t let the creativity of the dating years turn into the familiarity of the marriage years. Enjoy the gift of marriage and plumb the depths of its joy.

21. Take note of each other’s “love language.” The love language thing can be taken overboard but it has been something that we have noted in our marriage. The best way for me to say “I love you” to Liz is to do acts of service for her–wash the dishes, pick up around the house, clean the bathrooms. For me, I need to hear words of encouragement. The funny thing is that we discovered early on that gift giving is not high on either of our lists. We both returned our first Christmas gifts to each other. Since then, we have decided to shop together for things we want and simply go out to eat together on special occasions. 

22. Sleep in a small bed. Okay, again this is just our experience but we have never owned a bed bigger than a full size. It has kept us close at night and not allowed us to retreat to our own corner of the bed in times of conflict. 

23. Go to a marriage seminar or on a marriage retreat together. No matter how good your marriage may be…or how comfortable you may think you are, there is always room to grow. We went to a marriage seminar, Created for Connection, earlier this year and it exposed some areas that we had overlooked and it made our marriage stronger. Never stop learning about each other and growing together!

24. Intimacy is built on security. I think I am finally beginning to understand Genesis 2:25, They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. It is more than just a physical thing. It is a feeling of total vulnerability with your spouse that only comes from the security of a lifelong commitment reinforced over time. Intimacy is only built on vulnerability and vulnerability only comes within security. It is awesome to experience a relationship with no barriers, hidden agendas, fears, or regrets. 

25. Marry young. I certainly recognize that this isn’t always possible…or wise. But for us, marrying at a relatively young age (22 and 20) enabled us to grow together through the early stages of adulthood. We developed our life patterns together, aligned our life direction together, faced life decisions together, and were forced to grow in responsibility and commitment sooner. 

26. Sexual purity is worth it. Remaining sexually pure as a young adult was one of the toughest challenges I have ever faced, yet looking back I am so glad that I made that commitment. Enjoying intimacy with my wife with no other thoughts of anyone else brings a closeness that I can’t imagine being any better.

27. Monogamy is worth it. I am convinced that being committed to one woman over time brings the highest sexual satisfaction. Sexual intimacy is definitely a learning process that only gets better and better over time.  

28. Marriage is a blessing from God. With divorce rates on the rise, cohabitation the norm, and redefinition the trend, marriage is on the ropes in many respects. But I have found that trusting God’s design and following God’s ways has made our marriage as strong and as satisfying as any human relationship can be. I give God the glory for His good gift of marriage. And if the intimacy keeps getting better and the love keeps growing deeper then I can’t wait for the next 28 years! 

Posted in Sex and Marriage | Leave a comment

Prayer for a Divided, Angry Nation

Posted on May 2, 2019 by Steve Foster

Today is the National Day of Prayer.

Wow, do we ever need it! Not just one day…but every day of the year.

Anyone who even watches a snippet of the news sees the symptoms of an angry, divided nation.

Political partisanship. Cultural cynicism. Hatred. Bitterness. Vilification. Violence.

It is enough to make you want to cry…or long for the past…or retreat into your own world of escape…or, unfortunately, become more angry, cynical, and divided.

The Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk, faced a similar situation. See if you can feel your own words in his words written 2600 years ago.

How long, Lord, must I call for help,
    but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
    but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
    Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
    so that justice is perverted (1:2-4).

What is the solution?

One of the key verses of the Bible emerges in the midst of Habakkuk’s struggle with the strife, conflict, and violence around him. God answers Habakkuk with a simple reminder:

Behold, as for the proud one,
His soul is not right within him;
But the righteous will live by his faith. (2:4)

In other words, in the midst of the turmoil within us and the strife around us, we have one of two responses.

1. Pride. Self-sufficiency. Self-gratification. Self-justification. Self-centeredness. Even self-pity.

2. Faith. Humility before God. Submission to God. Dependence on God. Trust in God. Intimacy with God.

Trials in this world are a given.

Our response is the variable.

And prayer is the response of faith.

Perhaps the biggest symptom of the selfish pride of our nation is our rejection, refusal, and even ridicule of prayer. Often when prayers are mentioned in response to a tragedy, the reaction is one of scorn and derision. “No one wants or needs your prayers. We want action!” (Or at least a new law that will presumably resolve all our problems with the simple stroke of a pen.)

Can prayer be a platitude of sympathy with no real meaning or intention? Absolutely.

Can prayer be a passive excuse for inaction and apathy? Certainly.

But the issue is not prayer but the misuse or misunderstanding of prayer.

Prayer is not a “genie bottle” where we recite a few rehearsed words…rub the bottle in the right way…and then…viola!…all our selfish wants and wishes are met. Prayer is pouring out our heart before God…expressing the fears, desires, and burdens deep in our soul…acknowledging our selfishness and limited perspective…and submitting to the will of God, trusting His sovereignty, goodness, and grace.

The ultimate prayer of the Bible is…”Not my will but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

Thus, a person’s or a nation’s or a culture’s inability to pray is a declaration that we simply do not need God. He is irrelevant. Unneeded. Unwanted. And it is a symptom of our inward pride and delusion. We actually think that we are in control…that we call the shots…that we have full knowledge…full perspective…full power…to solve all our problems…to reverse the world’s woes…to cure the sickness of our hearts…to even defeat death itself.

Anyone willing to look at the cosmos around them…operating quite apart from their control…and the bodily functions within them…operating quite apart from their control…should quickly dismiss such asinine arrogance for what it is.

As President Abraham Lincoln wisely observed:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. (Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day, March 30, 1863)

We need God. We need prayer. Whether we are willing to acknowledge it or not.

And not just prayer to God but also prayer for others.

Whether you agree with the President or not, you pray for him. Whether you agree with your Congressional leaders or not, you pray for them. Whether you agree with your neighbor or not, you pray for him or her.

Each person is created in the image of God and, regardless of political persuasion or cultural identity, you pray for them. You seek to bless them not curse them.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. (James 3:9-10)

Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. (1 Peter 3:8-9)

So take a moment to drop to your knees today.

Thank God for His blessings in your life.

Acknowledge that your very breath…your very being…is in His hands.

Pray for this nation.

Pray for your leaders.

Pray for your neighbors.

Even the ones that you don’t particularly like.

Especially the ones that you don’t particularly like.

And then rise up and find a way to bless the people who cross your path today.

And regardless of what happens…in your life…in this nation…or in this world…you trust the sovereignty, goodness, and grace of God.

Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.

The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills (Habakkuk 3:17-19).

Posted in Government/Politics | 1 Comment

Reflections on the End Game

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Steve Foster

I saw the Avengers: Endgame yesterday.

It is a movie that continues to shatter box office records…biggest opening weekend domestically ($350 million)…biggest opening weekend globally ($1.2 billion)…fastest movie to $1 billion in box office sales…and it is likely to be the highest grossing movie of all-time by the time all is said and done.

It is a well-done movie. A blend of humor, action, special effects, and a great story line…culminating an eleven-year saga featuring twenty-two Marvel films. I am amazed at how they wove all twenty-two movies…and multiple characters…into a coherent, climatic finale.

I have seen most of the twenty-two films.

I was a comic book reader as a kid. I had almost all of the issues of Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America…along with Archie and Richie Rich…before I knew that collecting them was a potential future financial investment. Most of mine were read to shreds and cut up for my own comic book compilations. I wish someone would have told me to put them in plastic protectors and stash them away in the attic to be unearthed at the present time.

But my childhood fascination with superhero comic books is nothing compared to the worldwide, multi-generational fascination with superhero movies today.

Our culture is practically addicted to superhero movies. And it is not just our culture. People throughout the whole world are enamored and enthralled with their stories as well.

Superhero movies have touched a nerve that resonates in the human psyche…particularly in this present age.

I wonder why.

Here are my thoughts:

1. We live in chaotic, perilous, uncertain times.

The emergence of superheroes dates back to the 1930s and 40s in America, the time of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II. As one comic book historian noted:

In the 1930s, the American Dream had become a nightmare, and I think comic books and superheroes in particular provided an escapist form of entertainment that allowed the American public to go into a fantasy world where all the ills of the world were righted by these larger-than-life heroes. (Erin Clancy, curator at the Skirball Cultural Center)

Superheroes not only offer us an entertaining form of escape from our present distresses but they also touch a deep desire in us for a leader or a “hero” who can stand for “truth and justice” and have the power to correct all that’s wrong in our lives and in our world.

2. We are drawn to great stories.

Give it to Marvel. They know how to tell a great story. (Unlike DC…which seems to hope that their endless special effects and smoldering movie stars (aka, Aquaman) can somehow suffice.) The three hours of Endgame were not overloaded with non-stop special effects, sensuality, or violence. They told a real story. They wove together various characters, various plot lines, various relationships into an emotional, humorous, somewhat believable narrative.

We are a “story people.” We love stories. We are drawn into stories. Our own lives are stories.

And superhero movies capture some of the elements that we long for in a story. The triumph of good over the evil. The strength of a hero. The excitement of adventure. The importance of family and friendships. The rescuing of what is in jeopardy. The restoring of what is lost.

3. We long for redemption.

Here is the gist of most superhero movies. Our world is in trouble. Humanity is threatened by a power or an enemy that is beyond its own capability to defeat. There are heroes among us who have special power and ability to defeat the enemy. And these heroes are willing to sacrifice everything out of a sense of “right-ness” and love to achieve victory.

Isn’t that what Endgame…the climax of the past twenty-two Marvel movies…came down to?

Thanos (a shortened form of the Greek word for “death”) has a power that is beyond collective human strength. He is unstoppable. Inevitable. Time…Soul…Reality…Power…Mind…Space…all come under his influence. He takes away all that is dear to our hearts. All that is loved.

We are helpless and hopeless. And we cannot save ourselves.

But then the superheroes step in with a super-human strength and courage to fight him…to defeat him…for the sake of restoration…even resurrection…of all that is lost.

Ultimately it takes the sacrifice of one hero to defeat Thanos (I won’t totally spoil the climax by saying who).

It takes a death to defeat Death.

Isn’t that interesting?

And looking beyond Endgame, isn’t it interesting that the stories that we love all seem to follow a similar plot line? Protagonist. Antagonist. Rising conflict. A point of desperation when all seems lost. Then a soul-satisfying, enemy-nullifying, conflict-rectifying climax that brings all things back together.

I believe that this story resonates in our hearts because it resides in our hearts.

We do live in a world that is broken. We do have an enemy that we cannot defeat. We do need Someone with a strength beyond our own to enter our world and to save it. We do need redemption…a selfless sacrifice that can rectify all that is wrong.

The best a superhero movie can offer us is a return to “normal.” The world that is saved in Endgame is still a world with immorality, violence, disasters, conflicts, and death. And, as good of a movie as it is, it still leaves us longing for more.

In the real endgame, we need a hero much greater than Iron Man or Captain Marvel.

And surprisingly…unexpectedly…marvelously…God’s Hero comes as a Lamb.

One who conquers with His own blood.

Who dies in our place.

Who rises again.

To defeat our real enemies of sin and death.

And to restore this world…not back to “normal”…but to its original.

Paradise.

No more tears…no more sorrow…no more pain…no more death.

This is the real story.

The story that we live in.

And this is ending we are longing for.

Posted in Random Thoughts | Leave a comment

The Cross Is Not a Religious Symbol

Posted on April 18, 2019 by Steve Foster

Whatever you want to say about the cross, it is not a religious symbol.

At least it wasn’t intended to be.

The cross was not designed to give us warm fuzzies about religion…or make us feel better about ourselves…or be used as a religious symbol to ward off evil…or even worn as a golden piece of jewelry.

The true nature of the cross is a skandalon (Galatians 5:11)…a scandal…an offense…a stumbling block…because it contradicts everything we think we know about religion…about God…about ourselves.

At the most fundamental level–and this can’t be emphasized too strongly–the cross is in no way “religious.” The cross is by a very long way the most irreligious object to ever find its way into the heart of faith. J. Christiaan Becker refers to it as “this most nonreligious and horrendous feature of the Gospel.” The crucifixion marks out the essential distinction between Christianity and “religion.” …The cross is “irreligious” because no human being individually or human beings collectively would have projected their hopes, wishes, longings, and needs onto a crucified man. (Fleming Rutledge)

We have sanitized the cross too much.

As a means of execution, crucifixion was designed not only to prolong physical pain and suffering as long as possible, but it was also designed to degrade and dehumanize its victims to the lowest possible degree.

It was reserved for the lowest of all humans.

It was reserved for the dregs of society.

No Roman citizen could be crucified…only slaves and those with absolutely no social standing.

It was the ultimate pronouncement for all the world to see…”This man is utterly worthless. Only worthy of scorn and derision.”

In theory, Christ could have died in another way. He came as the Lamb of God to die as our substitute. The Old Testament sacrifices were killed quickly and without undue suffering. It was their blood that provided the cleansing for one’s sin…their death that provided the substitute for one’s life.

Yet Christ chose to be crucified.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
Who, being in the form of God,
Did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
But made Himself of no reputation,
Taking the form of a bondservant,
Coming in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death,
Even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

Why?

Crucifixion represented humanity at its worst…humanity not only executing someone but rendering a judgment on their worth as a human being…not only killing them but making them suffer in every way imaginable.

Crucifixion as a means of execution in the Roman Empire had as its express purpose the elimination of the victims from consideration as members of the human race. It cannot be said too strongly: that was its function. …Crucified persons were not of the same species as either the executioners or the spectators and were therefore not only expendable but also deserving of ritualized extermination. …The specific role of the passersby was to exacerbate the dehumanization and degradation of the person who had been thus designated to be a spectacle. Crucifixion was cleverly designed–we might say diabolically designed–to be an almost theatrical enactment of the sadistic and inhumane impulses that lie within human beings. (Fleming Rutledge)

Even in the Jewish mindset, to be hung on a tree…to have one’s death displayed as an advertisement of execution…was the ultimate sign of being a cursed individual…unworthy of life…unworthy of even a proper death.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” (Galatians 3:13).

The depravity of humanity…the cruelty of degradation…the judgmental hatred of the human heart…the curse of sin…the shame of iniquity…the excruciating pain of suffering…the sting of death…were all wrapped together in the crucifixion of Christ.

The worst that sin can be is shown on the cross.

The worst that humanity can be is shown on the cross.

That is why seeing the cross as a “religious symbol” does a disservice to its true intent.

It was meant to cause revulsion not devotion.

It was meant to display a curse not a blessing.

It was meant for the lowest of all possible human beings…not even worthy of being called a human…not a hero, not a savior, not a messiah, not a king.

God, in the person of his sinless Son, put himself voluntarily and deliberately into the condition of greatest accursedness–on our behalf and in our place. This mind-crunching paradox lies at the heart of the Christian message. (Fleming Rutledge)

God entered our world and we crucified Him.

The cross is not a religious symbol. It is a declaration that we do not need God…that we do not want Him…that we want to figure out life on our own…that we love our independence too much to bow to our Creator.

And remarkably…unfathomably…God allowed Himself to be crucified by us…in order to die for us.

God took all our sin…all our curse…all our shame…all our suffering…all our death…in order to give us His righteousness…His blessing…His glory…His peace…His life.

The enormity of sin and the incomprehensibility of grace intersect at the cross.

For He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

God loved you at your worst.

God sought you when you least deserved it.

God bore all your sin.

God endured all your shame.

God suffered all your pain.

God became your curse.

God died your death.

To make you His own.

To make you new.

That is not religion…that is redemption.

And that is the message of the cross.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17b-19).

Posted in The Cross of Christ | Leave a comment

Missing the Point

Posted on April 13, 2019 by Steve Foster

Reading through John 9, I was struck again by the disciples’ question to Jesus.

Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (9:1-2)

Jesus and His disciples pass by a blind man on their way out of the temple mount. The blind man was probably begging for money from the temple goers (9:8).

Seeing the man…and realizing the difficult condition that he was in…a life of living in physical darkness and perpetually begging for money…the disciples ask one of the big theological questions of their day.

Who sinned? Him? Or his parents? What is the cause of his difficulty? Why is he in this pathetic condition? Is it his fault or is it rooted in some kind of generational sin?

The disciples ask the wrong question…and then give Jesus two wrong options for their wrong question.

They are so far off from the real issue that they don’t even realize it.

In their minds, the situation has to be the result of A or B. They couldn’t even fathom a C option. More than that, they couldn’t comprehend that the whole basis for their question was rooted in a short-sighted, human-level, black-or-white kind of perspective.

Sometimes our A or B options…which we think cover the gamut of an issue…are not only inadequate…they are in the totally wrong ballpark! It would be like showing up at a stadium and saying, “Are the Astros playing the Yankees or the Red Sox tonight?” And the lady at the ticket office saying, “Sir, you are in Toronto. At a football stadium. And the Argonauts do not play until June.”

Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him” (9:3).

Jesus blows the disciples’ categories out of the water.

The blind man’s condition has nothing to do with his personal sin or his parent’s sin. His condition was part of God’s bigger plan for his life…part of a bigger story…a story that spans from everlasting to everlasting…a story centered on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. And this guy, despite his lifelong handicap and apparent “bad fortune,” actually gets a front row seat to the story. He gets to be the man who receives sight…who is healed by Jesus…who finds eternal life…who becomes a witness through the centuries of Jesus’ power and glory.

The story is bigger than our categories.

The story is bigger than time.

The story is bigger than us.

And we simply can’t fathom it all.

If we can’t see the picture from an eternal perspective, then we really can’t see. Think about it. How can you ever properly judge whether an event is good or bad if you can’t see the far-reaching implications of it? How can you even determine if your “advice” to someone or your “act of kindness” is really beneficial to them unless you see from a long-range, eternal perspective?

What looks good from a limited human perspective may actually turn out to be eternally destructive. What looks bad from a limited human perspective may actually turn out to be be eternally beneficial.

Truth and love can only be measured on an eternal scale.

Only Someone who sees the whole story can accurately tell us what is true…what is good…who we are…what we need…why we were created…how we are to live.

Is it possible that our categories are too small?

We get caught up in political issues…is it A or B? God invites us to see from an eternal, kingdom perspective. Every political group in Jesus’ day wanted to nail Him down. Are you a radical zealot ready to overthrow the Romans? Are you a religiously conservative Pharisee? Are you a religiously liberal Sadducee? What category do You fit in? Who are You going to align with? And Jesus disappointed and angered them all.

We get caught up in theological debates…is it A or B? Calvinism or Arminianism? Charismatic or non-charismatic? Young earth or old earth? Pre-millennial or A-millennial? Important debates with theological implications. But is it possible that our options are too small? That our formulations are too humanly logical? That our perspective is too limited?

Think about it. The chair you are sitting in right now is 99.999999% empty space held together by energy…and you are spinning at a 1000 mph right now sitting on the side of a giant ball suspended on nothing…hurtling through space at 500,000 mph. You can’t “see” any of these things…you can’t “feel” them. Your perspective is skewed and off-base using your natural senses…and you don’t even realize it.

That in itself should give you pause if you think you have everything figured out.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known (1 Corinthians 13:12).

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord (Isaiah 55:8).

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! (Romans 11:33)

Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him (1 Corinthians 8:1b-3).

Jesus confronted His disciples’ limited perspective and invited them to see everything through the lens of God’s glory…to see everything from an eternal perspective…to see all of life with spiritually-open eyes that bask in the beauty and power of God’s grace in redemption.

He invites us to do the same.

This is what it means to really see.

And Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.” Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, “Are we blind also?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.” (9:39-41)

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