Pastor Hurst

WHO GETS THE GRACE?

Perhaps, it was from being attacked over being “a legalist” that I was awakened in the dead of night this week by a story Jesus told. The one about the Pharisee and the publican. The story of the self-righteous, glory-seeking, law-contriving, and law-enforcing Pharisee and the extorting, cheating, lying, people-ruining tax collector. People who Quixotically deem themselves lone champions of sola gratia, salvation by grace alone--I’m talking about the ones who are on a self-proclaimed crusade against perceived legalism--love Jesus' tale of the Pharisee and the Publican. I do too. But for a different reason. They think this tale is a gotcha for those they label legalists. However, it is really a gotcha for them as they try to gotcha those they accuse. You remember the story: Two men went into the Temple to pray. The Pharisee positioned himself in a conspicuous place, posed sanctimoniously, and prayed smugly with a volume that commanded the attention of all but God: “O, God, I am so grateful I am not your run-of-the-mill, sinful guy. I am unlike other people who are filthy, rotten law-breakers, like, take for instance, that low-down tax collector over there. God, I’m sure you’ve noticed those big tithes I’ve been paying. And, God, I skipped breakfast to fast before coming to pray—just in case you didn’t notice.” Meanwhile, as he pompously pontificated, the publican slumped in the shadow of the wall most distant from the Holy Place, alternately covered his bowed face in his hands and beat upon his chest in distress as he pled with God, “Please, forgive me; be merciful to me for I am a filthy, rotten sinner—what he said,” he had heard the Pharisee refer to him. Jesus, applying His story, made it clear only one of the two left the Temple right with God that day. Only one got the grace. And it wasn’t the Pharisee. The lampooners of those they label legalists rightly point out the Pharisee’s egregious mistake. He condemned himself and spotlighted his hypocritical self-righteousness by saying, “I thank God I am not like the publican.” Yet, they do not see their own hypocrisy. As they condemn the Pharisee for saying, “I thank God I am not like the publican,” they are at that moment saying, “I thank God I am not like that Pharisee.” Using Jesus’ story to attack those they have arrested, tried, and hung as legalists, they pedagogically preach, “See, salvation is all about grace. The Pharisee’s works counted for nothing. The publican was wicked and deserved no quarter, no salvation, no mercy, nothing from God. He deserved only judgment. It was the publican who got the grace, left forgiven, justified, in the saving grip of God. The Pharisee, the legalist, left condemned.” And, of course, they are correct. But some one can be right and still wrong. Those who rail against perceived legalists and shout at them, “Don’t you know that salvation is all about grace,” have nothing of the repentant publican’s attitude and everything of the pompous Pharisee’s. Again I concede that they rightly condemn the Pharisee for saying, “I thank God I am not like that publican.” But in telling the tale, ironically, they say, “I thank God I am not like that Pharisee.” Only they are. They have the same pride. These remind me of the reality we see in our culture today. None are as intolerant as those who preach tolerance. None are as racist as those who are always insisting that whites as a class are racist. None are as narrowminded as those who call conservatives narrowminded. And none as graceless as those who overweeningly proclaim it's all about grace. They show no grace to those they deem are not about grace. They assail the “legalist” as being proud and self-righteous. But in attacking their straw man of legalism, they are, in reality, boasting of their ultra knowledge, their perspicuity, their prophetic word, and their spiritual superiority. You may say, “You are judging them.” It’s not judging. It is observation. It is no different from being overwhelmed by the odor of someone leaving an Italian restaurant who has stopped you to chat and gets in your face. You cannot but note that he reeks of garlic. Whether you tell him or not. When these begin their tirade against those they erroneously call legalists, their words reek of self-assured hubris. Legalism is wrong. Salvation is by grace alone. Plus nothing. But the truth is, they are not really against legalism and for grace. They are for themselves. Trying to show their smarts, they reveal their ignorance. They do not even really know what a legalist is. This one has accused me of being a legalist. (I have gotten personal But this isn’t about the personal. It’s about a point.) Archives of thousands of sermons I have preached are publicly accessible. Records of hundreds of pages of writing too. My message is that salvation is by grace alone. (I also preach, as the NT makes clear, that grace is not alone. It brings something when it comes. Tit. 2:11-12.) What a legalist is, I’m not. Not Biblically. Not theologically. Not in practice. Not in this or any parallel universe. If you listen to these self-proclaimed only true preachers of the Gospel, their focus on grace is not really on grace at all. It is not on the God who has shown grace, nor on how we recipients are unworthy of grace. Their focus is on themselves. They have a leg up on everyone else in their grasp and understanding of salvation's being all about grace. They, in their minds, are the strongest advocates of grace. They have spotted legalism, and they are the only capable decriers of it. They get it about grace when those lowly legalists (by their labeling) don’t. If you have endured reading this far and the nascent thought is now emerging in your mind that I have been rather graceless in haranguing those who gracelessly aggrandize themselves while pretending to glorify grace, I would beg to differ. None of us deserve grace, and I have shown them far more grace than they deserve. Or would recognize. You, see hypocrites cannot be shown grace. No more than you can water artificial flowers. They are incapable of accepting it. As long as they play the part of the hypocrite. They don’t get the grace. However, I will confess to this: The Pharisee thanked God he was not like the publican. My accuser thanks God he is not like the Pharisee. And I have thanked God I am not like my accuser. Who has thanked God He is not like the Pharisee. Who has thanked God he is not like the publican. In this confession I also submit, that of the four, I pray that God gives me a heart like the publican’s. One that prays, God, have mercy on me. See, the publican is the only one in my tirade that gets the grace. And that’s what I want. Grace. ---Pastor Clifford Hurst

JESUS COULD COME BEFORE TOMORROW’S ECLIPSE

Tomorrow is the big eclipse. Many are taking it as a harbinger of the Return of Christ. They have elaborate teaching to prove it. I do not like to be a wet blanket to expectations of Christ's Coming. I just think it best that expectations be grounded in what Scripture actually says and not some elaborate extra-biblical patched-together theory. I taught on this Wednesday night in depth as it relates to the coming eclipse. I am not going to repeat that here, but just think of two realities about tomorrow’s eclipse: 1) It is a NATURAL phenomenon. Any possible eschatological references to an eclipse in Scripture, as in the Cosmological Cataclysms declared by Isaiah, Joel, Jesus, Peter, and John, are apocalyptic SUPERNATURAL phenomena. 2) The eclipse on Monday will not be seen in Israel or any of the Middle East. How does an eclipse in this hemisphere, in America, relate to end-time events tied to prophesies for Israel? The reality of what happens when we get jaded by false expectations and dashed hopes based on extra-Scriptural “theories as noted in this blog I wrote eight years ago should serve as a warning of taking the memes, podcasts, teachings, etc., that sensationalize terrestrial and/or celestial events and occurrences such as eclipses over the word of Jesus and of Scripture. That Jesus has said He could come at any time should be enough to believe Jesus could come even BEFORE the eclipse tomorrow. Something I said some years ago resurfaced out of nowhere today and kept pummeling me over and over again. At that time years ago, I had felt compelled to preach on the Second Coming of Jesus. Part of my burden for that message came from sensing within the church and within me a waning expectation for Christ’s return. My statement was, “It should be alarming to us that the closer we get to the coming of the Lord the less expectation we have for it.” I could not escape making a confirming observation even as I preached that message. In the late seventies and early eighties, as a raw and lacking beginner, I would preach on the Coming of the Lord, and there would frequently be a response of shouting or praise or a general movement towards the altar by those gripped with the need to get things right. Decades later, as I preached, there seemed only obligatory interest and barely any discernable movement. I do not fault the people. The decline was in my heart as well. The diminishing expectation for Jesus’ return had diffused across the whole of American Christianity. This observation does not deny that there were enclaves and exceptions of individuals and groups that were burning with anticipation for His coming. But as a whole…well, just take Christian music for example: If you are old enough, have you ever stopped to compare the number of songs written and popular in the 70’s and 80’s that focused on Jesus’ coming compared to how few that do so today? These July evenings remind me of the days of my youth when a highlight of an evening was to get together with friends for an ice-cold watermelon in a host’s backyard. As the light faded and the katydids grew noisy and we munched on the sweet meat of the melon, the conversation would soon turn to the coming of the Lord. We would discuss for hours about Christ’s coming, the Tribulation, the Antichrist, the Bride. Then, the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 struck. People were concerned. Would the whole keg of the Middle East explode? I remember in the public school I attended, classmates gathered in a group, and we talked about the coming end of the world and Jesus’ return. Oh, people did get carried away. The date-setters preached their heresy. The chart-makers had it all figured out; except they didn’t. The nut cases gathered followers and led them off to a communal. The faithful were built to a crescendo of expectancy by worsening world events and announcements by preachers and teachers that Jesus was about to come. Only He didn’t. And things became even worse. And worse. Believers became desensitized to any suggestion that the growing darkness and danger of our world were harbingers of Christ’s return. Too many times they had thought they were on the cusp of the Coming. Then, believers grew to expect the growing evil and to not expect Christ’s coming. Somehow when the expectancy that they were leaving this world to join Jesus in His return diminished, there was a growing acclimation to and adoption of this world in the church. That in itself further deadened any expectancy for Jesus’ Coming. However things have played out, Jesus is still coming again, and we are closer now than we’ve ever been. As the old song says, “Come, Oh, Holy Spirit, all our hopes renew.” The closer the Coming gets, may our expectancy grow stronger, not weaker. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

A NIGHTMARE ABOUT AMERICA

Other people’s dreams, I know, are boring. We like to share our own but struggle to endure making it through someone else’s narrating his. Conceding that, I want to share a dream I had around fifteen years ago. Why it has come back to me this past week, I’m not sure. It may have been the news footage of armed national guards standing in the subway tunnels of NYC. They had been called in to deal with the increasing violence there. My dream, which came in three parts, was one of those where you are awakened by it, awakened extremely troubled and shaken to the core. Sweat on the brow. Pounding heart. Here it is: Part 1: Like a newsreel that suddenly starts rolling without any introductory remarks or tease, I saw a constant barrage of missiles filling the air. It was not unlike when the prophet Joel saw the skies darken with the advance of locust armies. Only these were not bugs they were bombs. My mind’s eye was hovering above our Atlantic shoreline. From beyond the distant horizon where sea met lowering sky rained these missiles fired from a distant land. America was under attack. There was some consolation in that the missiles had been launched from such a faraway place they barely made it to our shore. A faraway place, hmmm, where could that be? Coming so far, many fell in the shallow surf or upon the beaches, however, some made it to and fell on our major port cities along the coast. That the interior of our land wasn’t reached by the barrage brought no solace. I sensed this was only the beginning. That this was just a start. That more was yet to come. There was. Much more. Part 2: Suddenly “they” were here. After a cessation of indeterminable length--but it couldn’t have been long--suddenly, without my having seen them arrive, the sea was filled with battleships, destroyers, and carriers. Then, quantumly, landing craft, in a dark line on the comparatively white sands, were beached upon the shore, up and down as far as I could see. Their ramps were down, and they were disgorging themselves of swarms of tanks, armored vehicles, and heavily armed, running men. Running inland. Into America. Part 3: That second scene abruptly ended. In the last, I saw our interior major metropolises. Armies were marching down our subdued, trafficless streets. Rank after rank. They were marching in one of those parades whose purpose is to display a nation’s military might. Like you’ve seen in a certain Far East, communist country. You know, when each troop in rank after rank is in perfect sync with every other, marching in that straight-leg style. They filled and marched along every street. Miles of them. They passed by seemingly endlessly. They were not just here, they were in control. Besides the stomp of marching feet, there was only silence. Deep silence. Except for the rustling of loose litter blowing at the edges of the streets. The oddest thing about this invasion is that there was no resistance from Americans. When the missiles were raining down. No resistance. When the beachheads were made and our shores stormed. No resistance. Then, as the marching soldiers entered our cities and began their march down their streets, no resistance. It had been too late for resistance. America was vanquished. And occupied. America was no more. All without her exerting the slightest existence. I put little value in the oracular value of my dream. But, then again, my dream does not so much predict what will one day happen as it points to what is already happening. My dream is an analogy. Perhaps, of our condition politically. But for sure familialy, religiously, educationally, and socially. No one is much concerned when an occasional ideological missile comes from some distant place, from beyond the horizon of the familiar, the customary, the expected—from another country. No one is alarmed enough to offer any resistance when there is a visible inroad made to the institutions on the fringes—the liberal universities, the polar extremes of our political parties, the large number cable/satellite stations, the you-have-to-do-a-search-to-find YouTube channel. But then, suddenly the new, the dark, the twisted, the destructive is everywhere. It’s filled our cities. And homes. And hearts. Part One: This March marks for me forty-five years in ministry. For most of them, I have noticed these incoming missiles of different ways of thinking lobbed at the church. At times, I have addressed the unorthodox theology that appeared in an occasional book, popular preacher, and new hermeneutic. I was met with, “Why do you want to teach about that. I’ve never heard of it. I’ve never heard of a church where it is taught,” and such like. Part Two: Then, there were preachers and churches everywhere within Evangelicalism that had adopted and adapted these new, corrupting teachings and practices. “Well,” I’ve heard deniers say, “those are only outliers. They were never true churches or true teachers to start with.” Really? Part Three: Then, why, are they now everywhere? They have filled our forums, denominations, institutions, and churches. And, thank God for those who do, but there has been little resistance. Not in the aggregate. This same three-part progressive advancement of forces inimical to the Christian-Judaic view has played out in society, schools, government, entertainment, media, etc. And home. And church. And as in my dream, there is not much resistance. A few try. They are quelled and squelched. Not by the enemy. But by their own. By America. I’ve insisted I give no weight to dreams. Not even to my dreams. But what is presently happening in America is no dream. It’s a nightmare. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

BLOOD AND GENTLENESS

Today we will serve communion at church, and I’ve been thinking of nuclear bombs. Or, at least, the father of nuclear bombs. Oppenheimer. Fairly recently, a much-acclaimed movie was released and widely received. It told the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos laboratory of the Manhattan Project, the story of “the father of the atomic bomb.” I just finished the book that inspired the movie. Friday, contemplating our coming Sunday communion, I was thinking of a time in Oppenheimer’s life long before he was famous. Of when he was yet a precocious but troubled student. In those days he developed few friendships, but he made a lifelong one with Isidor Rabi. Rabi was a Jew like Oppenheimer. But Rabi was raised an orthodox Jew, and Oppenheimer was raised on the opposite side of the spectrum as a rationalist, secular, non-observant one. Both were conflicted about their Jewishness. They would discuss Jewishness specifically and the topic to which that inevitably led—religion. Rabi once reflected to Oppenheimer that he found Christianity such a conundrum, such “a combination of blood and gentleness.” Oppenheimer replied that it was those very things—blood and gentleness--that attracted him to Christianity. Although I was getting drowsy reading, I came fully awake when I read that. The book offered no further context. Perhaps, Rabi in what he said, and Oppenheimer in responding to it, were not thinking of the blood of Christ. Perhaps, they meant that Christianity had produced people who were both war-aggressive and gentle. I doubt that. Or, perhaps, the blood references martyrs. I can’t tell. But what I immediately thought of was the blood of Christ. Until recently, Christianity has been known as the religion of blood. People thinking of Christianity thought of the crucifix. And the eucharist. This is what I took those two intellectuals to mean. Taking it as the blood of Christ, I thought: Here was one of the greatest geniuses of all times, one who was a master of quantum mechanics, poetry, music, and languages, one who was raised secular and humanist, and he was attracted to the Blood. Attracted, not as the charge has been falsely made of Christians, to the macabre and gore, not as the vampire-obsessed and fascinated crowd of today would think, but to the blood of the death of Christ. What an irony: This 20th-century genius thought the Blood attractive (if that is what he meant) and yet at the same time a huge segment of liberal and progressive and quickly-headed-that-direction Christianity has relegated the Blood to the primitive, provincial, and arcane. The Blood has been banished as banal. Once, protestant and evangelical churches' songs, sermons, prayers, and praises were replete with the repeated refrain of the Blood. It was not that these believers were fascinated with hemoglobic liquid. It was they realized their forgiveness, salvation, and hope of eternal life were inextricably linked to and made possible by Jesus’ sacrificial death on the Cross. Sacrifices were sacrificed by having their blood spilled. Christ was sacrificed. His blood was spilled. On the cross. For us. From the beginning Christians got this. They understood that the Cross, the Blood, was the power of God to liberate and forgive them. They were attracted to the cross, the Blood. Not all were. Even back in NT times Jews, found the Cross offensive. To them, Christ died like the worst of criminals, a death that was the curse of God. They couldn’t accept Christ as being the Messiah. Not if He’d been crucified. And what of the Greeks, the intellectuals? The Cross was just plain silly. Ludicrous. But, oh, those who have been there! Who’ve knelt at the Cross. To those who had been “washed by that blood,” the Blood was the power and wisdom of God. The Blood was wonderful, glorious, everything to them. Attractive. (“Washed in the Blood,” is a metaphor for how the penalty for their sins had been removed by Jesus’ efficacious death—when they accepted that work by faith, belief, and repentance.) Then and now, every genuine Christian understands that the Blood means something because it is what Jesus shed to die to atone for our sins, save us from hell, deliver us from death, and bring us into fellowship with God. They also understand that the Blood would be no different than any other human spilled blood, had Christ not also been God. And they understand that the Blood would be valueless had Christ not risen from the grave. But, has then been no Blood spilled, there’d be no salvation, forgiveness, or hope of eternal life. Yes, Christians are attracted to the Blood because, as Apostle Peter penned it, they have found it “precious.” (1 Peter 1:19). Precious being something esteemed, valuable, honorable, and dear. Precious because of Who spilled it, Who gave it. Precious because of the great sacrifice made in the spilling of it. Precious because of the love it’s being poured out revealed. Precious because of the reconciliation with God it brought. Precious because of its doing what nothing else could do—give forgiveness from sin and purity within. Precious because of the freedom it purchased. Precious because it was His blood, His life, and He is precious. So, forgive us if we Christians are “attracted” to the Blood. Excuse us as we sing, as we love to do, The Old Rugged Cross, and weep and wonder as we sing, … “Oh, that old rugged cross, so despised by the world, Has a wondrous attraction for me; For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above, To bear it to dark Calvary.” There is no time to speak of the other part of Rabi’s statement except to say Jesus is gentle. He is meek and lowly. And God treats us gently for Christ’s sake. For the Blood’s sake. I think I can concur. What attracts me to Christianity is “the blood and gentleness.” Of Christ. ---Pastor Clifford Hurst

WE AND THE WISENT

There is an instinctive impulse to find help on higher ground. Never do I fail to be amazed at the impulses that God has programmed into animals. Impulses that assure their survival. Let me tell you about the Wisent (pronounced, vee-zent), the European bison that’s a smaller cousin to the American Bison of our Midwest. These Wisents that roam the Caucasus Mountain range between the Black and Caspian Seas, between Europe and Asia, have a remarkable impulse. It only kicks in when things get really bad. At the height of winter in the inner valleys among the mountains where the Wisent graze, the constant accumulating snow eventually blankets the essential grasses to the point that no amount of hoof-pawing or head-sweeping can uncover them. The bison finally give up trying to dig down to their food. They just mill around or stand there. Starving. Becoming more and more emaciated. With death approaching. Then, like at the snap of invisible fingers, the whole herd is activated by the unseen impulse. They begin to move out of the valleys in a long sojourn up to mountain meadows at higher altitudes. This seems intuitively like a bad move. The snow is deeper, the wind fiercer, and the air more frigid up there. Yet, with their last remaining strength, they make what appears to be the suicidal, lemming-like trek. They arrive at their destination. They are in worse condition than they were before the climb. Now they are completely exhausted and further malnourished. They have no more reserves. They stand, heads down, as if they are conceding they’ve come to a dead end where they will end dead. Closer observing, however, brings the realization that the Wisents ARE waiting for something—and it’s not death. They do not have to wait long. Timing is everything. If they had arrived too early or too late, they would die on the mountain plateau or on the way there. But they are right on time. Shortly, a fierce, steady, hurricane-force wind from the south begins to blow. It is so powerful that in minutes it has blown the deep powdered snow off of the plateau leaving the grass below exposed. However, it is still layered with ice. But with the wind comes a low front that clears the clouds from the sky. Then, even at that height and at that temperature, the bright sun melts the ice from the steppe’s hay. The Wisents then begin to graze voraciously, mowing up the grass. They do not have long. Winter will soon return. They gorge themselves on life-saving nutrient-filled grass. Soon, the clouds and snow return reburying the field. When they do, the Wisent will have eaten enough to make the journey back to the lower pastures where they can now survive long enough for those meadows seasonally to clear as well. The impulse that drives them truly is amazing. It is more accurate than a meteorologist’s report. The developing storm is in the future and far distant from them, but the impulse activates them while the wind and front are yet miles away. They get the impulse in advance. If they didn’t, they would never make it from the lower valleys to the higher one traversing the ridges through the wind. They arrive at the exact time before the wind hits and at the exact spot where the grass will be uncovered. They are there to begin immediately to eat when the wind dies down and the grass is uncovered. And before it is reburied. The impulse indubitably saves their lives. It’s not just the Wisent to whom God’s given this impulse. It is we humans. A seeking God has put a seek in us. An impulse. And like the Wisent’s, ours generally kicks in when things get bad. When we are starved in the low fields of this world. When we are empty. When we are drained. When our environment is about to finish us off. When we are about to perish. An impulse kicks in. Making us restless where we are. Causing us to look to higher heights, upward, skyward, heavenward. We, like the Wisent, find our legs, our, rather, our hearts, moving. Climbing. Leaving behind the place of death. Reaching, calling, upward. The psalmist felt that impulse: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth (Psa 121:1-2). The help came from the One even higher than the hills. And so does the impulse to look up, climb up. It came from Him too. To follow the impulse may be difficult. We may feel too weak to climb. We may feel the opposition of the environment. We may even at the moment of our arrival at that place of prayer feel it a wasted futile endeavor. It appears we are no better off than before. Perhaps, worst off. We have left the familiar for an even more hostile place. Then, up on the heights, the wind begins to blow, the sun begins to shine, and before us is what our soul needs. We partake. We feel the strength. The life. The newness. It has been worth the upward climb. We have been saved. Rescued. God gave the impulse to the Wisent. And to us. An impulse, activated, not by barometric pressures, but by His Spirit. Yes, unlike the Wisent, we can resist and die where we stand. Or we can turn our hearts upward and seek, reach out to, and call on Him. And enter heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Thank God for that impulse. Unbeliever, unconverted, or, believer, in trouble. Either one. Do you feel the compulsion to a higher place where your soul will be helped? This impulse, by the mercy of God, both we and the Wisent have in common. An impulse that saves our lives. How should you and I respond? “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.” (Psa 27:8). --Pastor Clifford Hurst

ELEVATOR OF HAUNTED HOUSE OR STAIRS TO HOLY HEIGHTS

“Sounds like a haunted house!” I wasn’t thinking as I said it. We were on the ground floor waiting for the elevator to take us to our room on the fifth. At our hotel, the wind outside was gusting ferociously. Large doors opened up to the elevator lobby. The wind was blowing the exterior doors open and was whistling, howling, and moaning through the lobby and hallways. The elevator arrived, and we with others got in and pushed the respective numbers to our rooms’ floors. When the doors shut, the vehement wind prevailed in finding its way through the small crack between the doors. The howling, whistling, and moaning increased. As the elevator began to rise, that’s when I said, “Sounds like a haunted house!” What I had forgotten was that a mother with two small girls had gotten on with us and stood behind us. When I said what I did, one of those little girls asked her mother in a quivering, fearful voice, “Mom, is this really a haunted house?” “You scared her,” Sandra whispered in her ear. I felt bad about that for just a second. Then I felt vindicated: The elevator jerked to a stop between floors. We were stuck. One passenger anxiously pushed the call button. When a voice came over the intercom speaker, she with traces of panic in her voice reported that we were trapped in the elevator. It didn’t take long for the elevator to heat up. Nervous bodies do that. It probably didn’t take long for help to show up either, but it seemed like a long time. I was looking at the elevator’s ceiling, looking for an exit. Finally, the maintenance personnel got the elevator back to the ground floor and got the doors opened. Nobody looked for another elevator. We all looked for the stairs. The mother and her daughters joined us in the stairwell. Fortunate for the girls’ small legs, their room wasn’t too far up. Ours was on the next to the last floor. As you know, there are two flights of stairs for each floor in most commercial buildings. We had eight to climb. As we labored up the stairs, I was reminded of an observation I’d made long ago: When I visited the hospitals, I used to like to park on the top floor of the parking garages and take the stairs. One day, climbing the stairs back to my vehicle, something I had subconsciously noticed many times before coalesced into words in my mind. The stairs on the bottom floor had a lot of wear--dirt from shoes and paint worn off. The higher one traveled, the stairs were less worn, less dirty, and had less paint worn off. By the time I got to the top floor, the stairs looked almost freshly painted. The observation was simple: The higher the floor, the less traveled the stairs. Few made the climb. It was too difficult. Too far. Especially with an elevator around. In Bible times, people thought of their god as residing in a temple, or in a “garden,” or on top of a mountain. That’s where gods dwelt. And if you were going to contact them, get to them that’s where you had to go. Of course, this was a distortion of the true worship of the true God, Yahweh. But take a look at the Bible's Old Testament. God’s presence was in the Temple, in the Garden, or on the Mountain. That’s where people went to meet with Yahweh. That was the Holy Place. God on top of the Mountain? That takes a climb. Comparatively few made the climb. I’ve climbed some mountains lately. The higher up, the thinner, not only the air, but also the traffic. And the less worn the trail. The sounds of the haunted house came on the lower floor stuck in an elevator. The great view of the ocean came from the height of our room after climbing the many stairs. That is true of the high places. Whatever the effort to get there the view is so much better. Clearer. Wider. Even, spectacular. The climbing the stairs to the view from our window, the scrabbling up the trail to the panoramic vista on the mountain’s summit were so worth it. Standing on the summit of one of the Superstition Mountains I said to my wife, “You never see this if you stay on the road and don’t hike up the mountain. Few see what we are seeing.” As in the hymn we used to sing describes, I am glad there is “Higher Ground.” There is a place that transcends the filth, ugliness, chaos, calamity, clamoring, and corruption, of this world in which we live. There is a heavenly place. There is God there. If we climb until the stairs look freshly painted from lack of use. If we climb the trail to where there are fewer and fewer hikers. If we persist in prayer until we leave behind the low life. We can make the climb in the privacy of our home in devotional prayer, or in the car on the way to work, or walking in the wilderness, or, in, perhaps, the most conducive place, in worship during the gathering of God’s people, in church. And we can make it because Jesus blazed the trail before us, traveled the trail, and is the Trail, to the Holy Place, to the Presence of God, to the Heights in Him. Everybody that came out of that elevator was looking for stairs. We would not have taken the stairs had the elevator not been stuck. Analogies, like the elevator, break down in a hurry--the elevator, had it worked, would have gotten us to the same height, the same level, the same floor, as did the stairs. But, two things: We wouldn’t have appreciated getting there by elevator as we did when we finally made it climbing the stairs. Second, there is no elevator to the Holy Place. Jesus blazed a trail. He didn’t install an elevator. Just, perhaps, it will take being stuck in a haunted elevator—being in some difficult, unpleasant, unbearable perplexity--to get you to climb the less traveled stairs to the higher place in God. It will be worth the climb. --Pastor Clifford Hurst