DayBreaks for the Week of 5/06/24 – Love, Hate, and Those Without Faces

From the DayBreaks archive, 2015:

The humorist Will Rogers told us that he never met a man he didn’t like. In the musical that celebrated Rogers’ life, there is a song by that title and in that song, Rogers admits that one man “put him to the test,” but never pushed him finally to the point where his ability to like evaporated. I don’t know what your response is to Rogers’ disclosure, but I am led to think he was — to utilize an overworked phrase — “in denial.” Come now, can any of us stand and say that we have, without exception, always liked every single person with whom we have ever come into contact? I appreciated the honesty of a well-seasoned cleric who confessed: “There are some people to whom I couldn’t warm even if I were cremated with them!” 

Let’s get this on the table before we go a step further. Christian men and women are not called to like everyone. The old camp song is titled “They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love,” and not, “They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Likes and Dislikes.” If there are folks to whom you do not warm, know please that you are not in violation of any Christian norm.

We are not called to like, but we are called — and this is the burden of our text — to love: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” says Jesus. 

On Tuesday, I sat across the table from a co-worker whose niece was killed in the terrorist attack on the university in Kenya that was in the news recently.  It took them several days to identify all the bodies – and for a while, they were in suspense about what had happened to her as she was “missing.”  What you probably didn’t read in the news stories was that the attackers purposely shot people in the face so they would be unrecognizable, but her body was finally identified by fingerprints.  I asked him how he can not hate the people who did this horrible deed.  His response humbled me: “What good would it do for me to hate them?  Would that bring her back?  The only answer to the problem is to love them.”

Love, as it is defined by our faith, is both a revered panacea and an underemployed practice. To say that the answer to the world’s problems is for people to love each other more is both right and banal at the same time. It sounds wonderful and grand. Who would argue with the contention? But when you are eyeball to eyeball with another person — especially one who is cantankerous, obnoxious, difficult, who may be holding a gun (literally) to your head, who is unlovely, and seemingly unlovable — it is anything but an easy task. There will be more than a few times when we say with Jeremiah 9:2 – O that I had in the desert a traveler’s lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! 

Frederick Buechner has observed: “In the Christian sense, love is not primarily an emotion, but an act of will.”  What does that say to you about your understanding of love?

PRAYER: Lord, you have taught me today about what love means and how little hate accomplishes through the words of my friend.  Let me learn to love as you do and as you want me to! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 4/15/24 – The Cuddle Bunny Gospel

Psalm 34:11 – Come, my children, and listen to me, and I will teach you to fear the LORD. Twenty-first-century America is truly a consumer society.  And what is the goal of life if you believe you are descended from monkeys and that the grave will be your final destiny?  To feel good while you can.  To grab the gusto.  To live life without limits.  To live with no fear.  To try everything at least once, and if it feels good, to do it again until it no longer satisfies and then find something else.  After all, you wouldn’t want to lay on your death bed wishing that you’d tried just that one more thing, would you?  Just missing out on one single thing could spell the difference between feeling like your life was complete and fulfilled or not.  What a terrible way to live! The real danger comes when the church starts to take its cues from the world around us, instead of the other way around.  When the church accommodates to a feel-good goal and it centers its existence on programs and activities to the expense of the truth, the church is, as Chuck Colson put it, “…in danger of trivializing the holy.” Russell Kirk said: “He who admits no fear of God is really a post-Christian man; for at the heart of Judaism and Christianity lies a holy dread.”  How are you doing in your own family about teaching your children to fear the Lord, as David said he would do?  How is your church doing?  Or do you only present the feel-good, warm-and-fuzzy cuddle-bunny gospel?  God is not to be trifled with.  He never was and never will be that kind of God.  When we only teach and preach a gospel that makes us feel good, that takes away any fear of God’s discipline on us as His children, we are in serious trouble.  Hebrews 12:6 (NLT) says: For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes those he accepts as his children.  If God loves you, He WILL discipline you when you step out of His pathway.  He doesn’t do it to be capricious, but because He loves you.  And while it may not be pleasant, we can always know He has our best at heart. PRAYER: It is good to have a Father like You who loves us enough to discipline us when we need it.  Thank You for Your gentleness! In Jesus’ name, Amen. Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 2/25/24 – The Lone Ranger Christian

I’ve heard it and I’m sure you’ve heard it, too: “You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian.”  Someone from our church shared this fairly typical example: “I remember asking a guy (a professed Christian) where he went to church, and he told me he had church every Sunday on the first tee of a golf course.  For him, church was about being in nature and it was him and God.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with being out in nature, but if you look at the Bible, Christianity is not just about me and God, it’s about us and God.  That is, it’s about relationship with God, but it’s also about a relationship one to another.

“Maybe you’re not being constantly tempted with a drink or to take pills…However, maybe you do have this lone ranger mentality that says, “I don’t need people…I don’t need church…I can do it on my own. 

“All I can say from many years serving in ministry and working with people, if you try to ‘battle’ sin on your own, you’re ‘toast.’”

Can someone be a Christian without going to church?  I suppose it is possible.  After all, someone in solitary confinement may not be able to go to church, but they could still be a Christian.  That kind of situation, however, is the exception, not the rule. 

Bottom line: I need you.  And, as hard as it may be to believe, you need me, too.  That’s how God planned it.  And He’s wiser than we are. 

Let’s not go to the tee next Sunday morning, or into the woods as a matter of practice on a Sunday.  We can do better than that!  There was only one Lone Ranger…and he had nothing to do with Christianity.

Perhaps if we do our part, our churches will be better able to fulfill this command and more people will find being in church irresistible: Romans 12:10 (KJV) – Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another…

PRAYER: Keep us from foolishness and foolish ideas that we don’t need the fellowship, accountability, and encouragement that only the church can provide!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 1/15/24: Preaching Where You Walk

One day St. Francis of Assisi, invited a young monk to join him on a trip into town to preach. The young monk was so honored to get such an invitation from St. Francis that he quickly accepted. All day long he and St. Francis walked through the streets and byways, alleys and suburbs, and they rubbed shoulders with hundreds of people.

At the end of the day, the two headed back home, however, not even once had St. Francis addressed a crowd, nor had he talked to anyone about the gospel. The young monk was greatly disappointed, and he said to St. Francis, “I thought we were going into town to preach?” St. Francis responded, “My son, we have preached. We were preaching while we were walking. We were seen by many and our behavior was closely watched. It is of no use to walk anywhere to preach unless we preach everywhere as we walk!”

It’s no secret that we, both as individuals and the church, have forgotten what it means to preach the gospel, what it means to bring to others the good news, what it means to evangelize. Evangelism has become a dirty word in many churches, and if it isn’t outright dismissed altogether, then it is relegated as a task for only those who have been ordained, or for those who are professional speakers, who make a living giving their testimonials and asking for altar calls, or for those who are missionaries overseas. The idea of witnessing quite frankly terrifies most Christians.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder: which is easier – telling someone else about what Jesus has done for us, or living like Him? Of course, if we aren’t living like Him, then no matter what we might “tell” others, it won’t matter a bit if we aren’t seen to be living like the One we proclaim.

Today, my friends, you can preach where you walk and where you work. Will you do it? That’s the question of the week!

PRAYER: Let us be bearers of Your name and message today both in how we live and what we say! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 11/20/23: What Evil Can’t Touch

1 Cor. 1:25 (NLT)  – This “foolish” plan of God is far wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is far stronger than the greatest of human strength.

1 Cor. 1:27 (NLT)  – Instead, God deliberately chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose those who are powerless to shame those who are powerful.

The mystery of the cross is mind-numbing.  That the life of a single Nazarene carpenter should have affected the world the way it has defies logic.  Yes, some think he was a good man, a great teacher, a wise prophet perhaps, and they put him in the same classification as Buddha, Mohammed or Moses, in an attempt to say, “See, he’s like they were.”  But they’re wrong.  Those folks are still in their tombs.  Jesus isn’t.

But the power of God is a fascinating thing.  There are two kinds of power – right-handed power which is direct and is clearly visible as power, and what Martin Luther referred to as “left-handed power”.  Left-handed power may not even be seen and recognized as power to those who aren’t looking closely.  It was a marvelous mix of both right-handed and left-handed power that was on display in the life of Jesus Christ, but it is largely the left-handed power that puzzles us, but which also truly changed the world in a way that we still struggle to understand.

In his book, Parables of the Kingdom, Robert Farrar Capon wrote about this left-handed power: “Left-handed power, in other words, is precisely paradoxical power: power that looks for all the world like weakness, intervention that seems indistinguishable from nonintervention.  More than that, it is guaranteed to stop no determined evildoers whatsoever.  It might, of course, touch and soften their hearts.  But then again, it might not.  It certainly didn’t for Jesus; and if you decide to use it, you should be quite clear that it probably won’t for you, either.  The only thing it does ensure is that you will not  – even after your chin has been bashed in – have made the mistake of closing any interpersonal doors from your side.

“…when you come to think of it, it is power – so much power, in fact, that it is the only thing in the world that evil can’t touch.  God in Christ died forgiving.  With the dead body of Jesus, he wedged open the door between Himself and the world and said, ‘There!  Just try and get me to take that back!’”

Straight-line, or right-handed power, may be exercised by those who attempt to make converts to a religion by the edge of the sword.  And while the numbers of their followers may grow, they’ve not really made converts in the heart.  Therein lies the great mystery of Christ: through his left-handed power that looked for to all the world as total weakness and lunacy, hearts have been changed.  People have been reborn.  Pasts have been washed away.  It is a mystery that takes place in the heart – where for a long time only God can see it growing.  But the martyrs died with songs on their lips and glory in their hearts while their souls were far from the touch of evil.  May we know his left-handed power in all its fullness today!

PRAYER: Lord, if not for your great victory, we are all defeated! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 9/03/23 – Wearing the Name

Then he went to Tarsus to search for Saul, and when he found him he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught large numbers. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. – Acts 11:25-26

Prior to being called “Christians”, followers of Christ were simply known as believers, followers, saints, or disciples. Those are all apt terms for those who believe in Christ, but all that changed in the town of Syrian Antioch.

It’s easy to miss the significance of names sometimes. In years past, names had meaning. Today few people name their children something because they like what the name means.

Alexander the Great had conquered nearly the entire known world by the time he we 26 years of age. He was known for his military genius and his great courage and bravery.

At one point, Alexander was informed that there was another man in his army who was a coward. The great general ordered that the man be brought to him. Shaking before Alexander the Great, Alexander asked him what his name was. The man answered, “Alexander.”

“You have the same name as me?”

“Yes,” the man muttered.

“Then be brave and courageous – or change your name.”

Have you ever wondered what Jesus thinks of those who wear his name? How many of us, I wonder, would he counsel much the same way as Alexander counseled his soldier? Would he look at me – or you – and tell us to be brave or to change our name from Christian to something else?

Harry A. Ironside was a famous preacher in the first half of this century. Once, when on a mission trip overseas to a foreign country, some people began calling him, Yesuian. Perplexed and not understanding their language, he asked someone what they were saying. The answer was awesome: Yesuian, he was told, mean “the Jesus man.”

Wouldn’t it be awesome if everyone who sees you or I could call us “the Jesus man” or “Jesus woman”!

Will you take up Jesus’ challenge – the same challenge that Alexander gave his soldier – either act courageously or change your name? Make it your goal today that whoever sees you today, whoever hears you today, whoever encounters you today would be able to say that you are a Yesuian?

PRAYER: Let us never be ashamed to be called by your name. Let us always make you proud of us and make you proud that we carry the same name as you! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 8/20/23 – The Lure of the Easy Way

There is a story about a young man, eager to make it to the top, who went to a well-known millionaire businessman and asked him the first reason for his success. The businessman answered without hesitation, “Hard work.” After a lengthy pause, the young man asked, “What is the SECOND reason?”

Matthew 16:21-25 (NLT) From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead. But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!” Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.” Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”

Today, I want to think about the lure of the easy way. Jesus and His disciples were at Caesarea Philippi. Their ministry to this point had been a stunning success. Crowds pressed in on them everywhere they went. People eagerly reached out to touch this attractive young teacher from Nazareth. The disciples themselves were caught up in the excitement of it all. Jesus asked them, “Who do you say I am?” and Simon Peter answered enthusiastically, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” It was one of the most dramatic moments in the disciples’ pilgrimage with Jesus.

Then Jesus abruptly changed the subject. He began to tell them that the crowds would soon turn against Him; He would be crucified, on the third day he would be raised. The disciples didn’t know what to make of all this. Simon Peter took Jesus aside: “Forbid it, Lord, that these things should happen to you.” Jesus’ response to Simon Peter is as harsh as any words in the New Testament: Get behind me, Satan! You are not on the side of God but of man.

Perhaps Jesus called Simon Peter ‘Satan’ because of Jesus’ experience in the wilderness immediately after His baptism by John. In today’s parlance, it was there that Satan revealed to Jesus the way to “make a million dollars in three easy steps”: turn stones to bread, leap off the pinnacle of the temple, and “Bow down and worship me!” I see Satan not as a red-caped figure with a pitchfork but dressed in a $1000 suit and offering in a glib and polished tongue instant success, instant glamour, instant gratification. We can see Satan almost anywhere today. Jesus encountered him this time in Simon Peter: Forbid it, Lord, that you should have to suffer and die.

If there is any doubt that Jesus is resisting the lure of the easy way, listen to the words that follow: If any man would be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

What way are you pursuing in your life?  How can you change today?

PRAYER: Jesus, I know that I almost always seek the easy way, and that the easy way is very seldom Your way.  May I be more like You! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 8/07/23: Triumph Comes Disguised

John 11:50 (NIV) – You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.

John 19:30 (NIV) – When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Sometimes it is hard to recognize a victory when it stares you right straight in the face.  It is often much easier to see defeat than to recognize victory. 

Such was the case with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  When he was killed, it wasn’t clear what would happen to the civil rights movement.  Would it hold together or fall apart?  Would violence flare up and consume the country? 

At his funeral service, many people spoke out about Dr. King, but the most moving of them all was James Bevel.  He got up to the podium, heavy and stern-faced, and in a voice that grew and rose like a hurricane wind coming ashore, he said, “There is a false rumor going around that our leader is dead.  Our leader is not dead.  Martin Luther King is not our leader.”  He paused and let the words sink in, shocking as they were, for a funeral service for the slain leader.  Some wondered if he was using the moment to try to garner support for himself as the next leader, but then he went on:

“Our leader is the Man who led Moses out of Israel.  Our leader is the Man who went with Daniel into the lion’s den!  Our leader is the man who walked out of the grave on Easter morning.  Our leader neither sleeps nor slumbers.  He cannot be put in jail.  He has never lost a war yet.  Our leader is still on the case.  Our leader is not dead.  One of His children died.  We will not stop because of that.”

Powerful stuff.  He realized what many there perhaps had not realized: triumph is often disguised as failure.  As an end.  A conclusion.  When in reality it may just be the beginning of something new and better than we could possibly dream of.

In Jesus’ case, the leaders wanted him dead in order to protect the nation.  They feared what Rome might do because of the furor that Jesus’ stirred up with his preaching and teaching – that his followers may get out of hand and a disaster would result.  So they killed him.  It looked like a disaster, but it was a victory.  It looked like the end, but it was the beginning.

Our leader is not dead.  You may be facing what looks to be a defeat in your life.  Give it to God.  Let Him make it into a victory in His own way.  Our leader is not dead.  He will not leave you abandoned or broken.  Triumph, like joy, comes in the morning!

PRAYER: When we tend to withdraw from the struggle and fear failure, remind us, Lord, that You are our Leader and that You will never be vanquished!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 7/16/23 – The Wheat and the Weeds

Matthew 13:24-30 (NLT) – Here is another story Jesus told: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away. When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew. “The farmer’s workers went to him and said, ‘Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds! Where did they come from?’ “‘An enemy has done this!’ the farmer exclaimed. “‘Should we pull out the weeds?’ they asked. “‘No,’ he replied, ‘you’ll uproot the wheat if you do. Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn.’”

Why is it that we are so judgmental, seemingly so eager to pass judgment and classify people one way or another?  There is perhaps no group of people who are more prone to do this than Christians – and that is tragic.  We seem to often be of the persuasion that it is our job to decipher who is “in” and who is “out”.  We may think it is our duty to protect the rest of the world from evil, to point it out, to call a spade a spade.  We seem to believe that we’ve been given special insight to discern what is wheat and what is a weed – to use the metaphor of the parable. 

You know them: people who continually want to cull the field, who feel called upon to make decisions and proclamations about others on the basis of certain beliefs … behaviors … even baptism. A Christian who had a wife that was into tracing family geneaologies traced her family back over 500 years.  In doing so, she learned she had a relative who was burned at the stake in Switzerland. Why? Because he had the wrong understanding of baptism, that’s why. They weeded him out. Then they burned him up.

I must say that I don’t always even know whether I am a weed or wheat. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.“

Every human being….that includes my own heart.  Who knows?  Perhaps I am the weed in someone else’s garden – maybe yours. 

If this parable teaches us anything it surely must include that it is not our job to sort the weeds and the wheat.  Jesus will one day sort them out himself and his advice to us to not to try to do that job for him.  Let them grow together, he said, until the harvest.  Then, and only then will the only One who is qualified to separate the weeds and the wheat will do what only He can do.

PRAYER: Forgive us our judgmental spirits, Lord!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple, ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for the Week of 7/09/23: You Will Never Know

Mark 4:8-9 (NLT) Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!”  Then he said, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”

One of William Barclay’s friends tells the story of a church where he worshipped that had a lonely old man, named Thomas, among the parishioners. Thomas was so old that he’d outlived all his friends and hardly anyone really knew him or paid him much mind. When old Thomas died, Barclay’s friend was concerned that no one would show up for the funeral so he decided to go just so that there would be someone who would follow the mortal remains of the old man to his final resting place.
The day of the funeral was miserable – even by English standards, and as it turned out, there was no one except this one man who bothered to show up. The service concluded and when the hearse reached the cemetery, a soldier stood waiting at the gate. The man deduced that the soldier was an officer, but there were no insignia nor rank badges on his wet raincoat. Still, the soldier came to the grave side for the ceremony and when it was over, he stepped forward and before the open grave swept his hand to a salute that was worthy of a king. The friend walked away with this soldier, and as they walked, the wind blew the soldier’s raincoat open to reveal the shoulder badges of a brigadier general.
The general said, “You will perhaps be wondering what I am doing here. Years ago, Thomas was my Sunday School teacher; I was a wild lad and a sore trial to him. He never knew what he did for me, but I owe everything I am or will be to old Thomas, and today I had to come to salute him at the end.” Thomas had no idea what he had done for this man.
The simple fact is this: no preacher or teacher, no friend who shares the good news or who lives it out in front of others ever does know what becomes of the seed that has been sown. We don’t have to know.  Our desire to know would only feed our pride and ego.  Perhaps that’s why God doesn’t let us know.  Our job is simply to keep sowing the seed, leaving the rest to God and trusting that God can see, water and nourish that seed for His glory, not for ours. We can with confidence leave the rest to God. And that is good news for all us tenant farmers who are planting seeds in the soil He created.

PRAYER: Father, produce a harvest for Your glory through our meager and paltry efforts, and help us to never, ever stop spreading the good news!! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple, ><}}}”>