Living By Faith

A Devotion for Those Who Serve Our Nation

LIVING BY FAITH

I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Gal. 2:20

There are three ways we can think about our lives. We may think that as individuals we count for nothing. That is the way of pessimism, which cuts the nerve of effort and leads to weakness and despair.

We may think that we are all-important. That is the way of egotism, and leads to a distorted sense of values that prevents harmonious cooperation with other people for ends which are greater than ourselves.

Or we may think of our lives as having meaning in the purposes of God. That is the way of responsibility. It does not result in a sense of futility or self-importance, but it does take life seriously. That is the way of Christian faith.

As humans, we can stand almost anything except the fear that when we have given our best or endured the worst, after all it made no real difference what we did or who we were. Life takes on a new depth and richness when we confront all of life’s contingencies with the faith that this adventure of living counts in the purposes of God, and that we count.

O GOD, our Help in ages past, our Hopes for years to come; we who need Thy help and hope turn to Thee, who hast been the abiding Friend of all people of all times, in all places. Shine Thou within our hearts, giving us the light of knowledge of Thy glory in the face of Christ. Set our feet in the ways Thou hast chosen for us. Confirm our spirits in the faith which overcomes the world. Teach us to be Christ’s disciples, and to find in Him our life and our peace. Amen.

Morgan Phelps Noyes
Central Presbyterian Church, Montclair, N.J.

Note: This meditation is taken from Strength for Service to God and Country, edited by Norman E. Nygaard, revised edition b y Evan Hunsberger.

Strength for Service to God and Country was written after Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. Over one million copies were sold. This devotional meditation and the collection of others were written to bring guidance and strength during World War II and the Korean War.

A sailor who had this book in his possession for many years gave his copy to his fifteen year old grandson. This grandson, Evan Hunsberger, decided to honor his grandfather’s memory by revising this book as an Eagle Scout Project. The General Commission on the United Methodist Men assisted Evan in its development with fundraising for its publication. Providence House Publishers shared the same vision. Evan, a Roman Catholic, received the Good Samaritan Award.

This devotional book represents the broad spectrum of faith and was expanded with additional writings. Published in 1942, it was renewed by Norman E. Nygaard in 1969.

May we continue to live by God’s guidance in dangerous and difficult times. Strength, wisdom, and courage will help us through each and every era of change and conflict, Christ being our daily companion.

Dennis Ginoza
November 24, 2009

Rules for Life: John Wooden

RULES TO LIVE BY

1. Be true to yourself.
2. Make each day your masterpiece.
3. Help others.
4. Drink deeply from good books.
5. Make friendship a fine art.
6. Build shelter against a rainy day.
7. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings.

In his book A Game Plan For Life, coach John Wooden tells about how his father mentored him and gave him a rule for life. Upon graduation from grade school, his father, Joshua Wooden, gave him a gift of two dollars and a small card with a poem on one side and seven rules for living on the other. The rules cited above have stayed with Coach Wooden all his life.

Wooden led the UCLA basketball team to ten national championships. The rules have helped him in teaching the game to the young players. For example, when one team member scored, the player knew he was to point to another player who helped him make the basket, by passing the ball or making a block. Wooden says that this wasn’t about deflecting praise, but sharing the moment with all the team members. They work as a team.

Wooden also is a committed Christian and respected the players different faith orientations. He allowed them and encouraged them to be true to their faith, whichever way they believed. It made them better persons for life and better players on the basketball court.

A Game Plan for Life
By John Wooden and Don Yaeger
2009

The Abundance of God

The Abundance of God
November 12, 2009www.fieldingfaith.blogspot.com

Since the genesis of the world, time, nature and existence, have been teaching us that we live in an abundant world. God is our infinite source of supply. The Eden story profiles a garden with everything that is needed. God’s first gift to us is paradise. For the writers to portray such a place, they must have had a glimpse of this truth.

One quiet afternoon I sat in my office looking out. A light shower was passing through as was so common in the Hawaiian islands. The sun was shining, its rays of light dancing on the trees and brush, the trade winds adding to nature’s movement. Palolo Valley was filled with the abundance of God in beauty, harmony, and peace. My heart was filled with gratitude for God’s goodness and grace. This was a moment of being in touch and attuned with God.

When we focus ourselves on the true quality of God, it is as much what I call today, abundance. God is abundant with love, generosity, care, giving, sharing, sustaining, guiding, helping, supporting. The God of the grain fields is the same God that cared for the taro patches, the rice fields, the potato fields, the melon fields, the wheat fields, and the corn fields. The God of the Pilgrims is the same God that produced the seeds of life in Mesopotamia, Canaan, Egypt, Greece, China, India, Polynesia, England, and the Americas.

When I sat at a table four thousand miles away from home, with new friends I had made, my first Thanksgiving away from home, having had my first brush with snow, my heart was filled with gratitude. This loving Iowan family could not have known how much a simple act of kindness, moments of genuine laughter, and generous sharing would mean to me even today. In abundance we all share a kind of “Pilgrim gratitude.”

Today we stand at the edge of a new frontier. This frontier is not one of unexplored land masses. Nor is it a question of devising new seeds for agricultural production. And it is not the challenge of finding the right economic theory. It is not solving the mystery of the expansive outer space beckoning the scientific and curious. The new frontier has been, is, and still is the human heart. In our hearts we are to discover the abundance of God. In our hearts we are to find the will to share. In our hearts we are to uncover the treasure of gratitude.

May gratitude pervade our land and our world.

Unraveling the God Confusion

“Unraveling the God Confusion”
November 12, 2009

The most complicated problem after all may not be Einstein’s mathematical formula, the cause of disease, nor the issue of war. It is the God confusion.

The problem is not God, but our perception of God. There are as many perceptions as there are experiences. For the lack of substance we have built golden calves. Tribal forms dependent on nature have developed animalism. Political ambitions have molded emperors into gods. Human prejudices have shaped a God sanctioning slavery. Depth psychology has painted a god of self-projection. Science and technology have given birth to the great denial, the non-existence of God. Materialism has created a God-mix of success, wealth, and nationalism.

Christianity today stands against not only the major faiths of the world, but against itself. Denominationalism stands more for division than unity. Churches today stand as David against Goliaths of our culture—media, business, technological networks, the entertainment industry, and war machines. In part, the church’s work is in the name of God, but as much, for a piece of the pie.

Our perceptions and practices, however do not change the reality of God. While our myths, rituals, temples, priesthoods, secret societies, and theodicies are but attempts to affirm a God who is, God simply remains God.

For Christians and the world, our eyes turn to a wayward Nazarene with revolutionary teachings about God. He drew all commandments into one – LOVE. Every major faith in its true form would come to the same. He broke the mold of sin and death through forgiveness by his crucifixion. He moved beyond the bounds of time and physics with the resurrection. All powers of possibility converged in the ascension.

The irony of this God confusion still ends in the same place—perception. As much as I or any other would want to dogmatize an understanding of God, it is only as good as one’s perception can offer.

The one thing that I refuse to compromise is the existence of God and the transforming power of the Christ. These have been and are moving powers within me, my life throughout time which I have known and experienced. Until our lessons are learned, our perceptions made clear, and our lives made more loving, I will continue in my God-encounters. I wish the same for you.

Without God

Without God
Dr. Dennis Ginoza November 12, 2009

Millions are walking this earth without God. How easy that can be. One’s physical needs are so essential that we cannot see beyond them. The social conflicts, the political struggles, and the economic plights have created such turmoil, we have built walls around ourselves which are keeping us from reaching the finer level of spirit.
Plato gave us the allegory of the cave where people are chained and cannot see beyond the moving shadow cast upon a wall. Reality is distorted and what is an illusion is deemed the truth.
We have created a different world for ourselves, illusive, denial ridden, and distorted. This is the world without God. We have become like those whose limits are keeping them from seeing, sensing, and appreciating a world of beauty, truth, and divinity.
Without God, our world is characterized by limits rather than possibilities. We miss a lot. When we are not in harmony with our world which is so filled with God-energies, God-elements, and God-forces, we enter what Leslie Weatherhead calls “a state of dis-ease.” Human experience is conveying to us that living without God is creating for us a greater state of dis-ease. This state has reached a level of great personal and global concern.
Without God, we become like the blind that cannot see the sunset, the deaf that cannot hear the melody of Mozart and Handel, the violent natured who is kept from hearing the birds sing or a voice of love, the uncultured who gets nothing from the halls of great paintings, or the social cripple who fails to build bridges of lasting relationships. Our God relationship is suffering.
In the short run, it appears we can survive without God. In the long run, we see we cannot. The Christian experience simply calls us to step over a line into the light of day. The Bible speaks of “coming to oneself.” Psychology suggests “getting in touch.” Biology hints at “rebuilding onself.” Theology offers “conversion.” Philosophy explores “a new era of thought.”
It is time to step over the line and once again discover a life with God. There seems to be no other way.

Molokai, Book Review

Book Review and Comments
“Molokai” by Alan Brennert

When Rachel Kalama, a five year old girl, found a spot on her skin, “Molokai” began describing a saga of a dreadful disease that hit the Hawaiian Islands. Leprosy was a feared disease with a cure unknown. For Rachel and thousands later, Molokai unfolds the sadness and the bitterness in a life of isolation.

On the island of Molokai, on a remote peninsula known as Kalaupapa, Alan Brennert takes us back to ancient Hawaii and a life without promise, a people faced with the inevitable, death. Even more difficult was living.

Kalaupapa, a place not known to the world, juts out from a island in the Hawaiian chain. Its beauty of a tropical land, with breaking waves, blue skies, and trade winds, is kept from the world by towering cliffs. It becomes a forbidden land, a history not fully told, and not understood. Molokai opens the door to Hawaii’s history, the plight of so many, the goodness and sacrifice of dedicated nuns and amongst the stricken people themselves.

Molokai is a literary weaving of human emotions, Shakespearean in many ways, a search for normalcy where there isn’t normalcy, fact with fiction, ancient Hawaiian culture layered with cultures from other regions, and the search for peace in human turmoil.

The Author’s Perspective

Alan Brennert says that when he went to Hawaii twenty four years ago, he fell in love with the islands. He felt he was coming home. He states that nearly everything he wrote was based on fact yet this in a context of a novel. Rachel Kalama is entirely fiction, but others are actual people—Brother Dutton, Mother Marianne, Ambrose Hutchinson, Lawrence Judd, J.D. McVeigh, Doctors Oliver and Swift. Leilani is based on a medical history.

Kalaupapa

Since 1865, when Kamehameha’s “Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy,” about 8,000 people, men, women, and children, had been exiled to the peninsula. In 1969 the law was repealed. Leprosy is now termed Hansen’s disease. In 1874, a Norwegian physican, G. Armauer Hansen discovered the cause of leprosy, a bacillus (rod shaped bacterium). Hansen disease, with treatment, has been arrested and the medical colony on Kalaupapa has been closed.

To any reader who has a fascination with the history of Hawaii and its people, this is a book for you to read.

The Shack, Book Review

Books List – A Commentary

THE SHACK by William Paul Young

I must admit, I began reading the book twice and it didn’t catch my interest. I am not one who easily turn to novels to read unless they have an interesting line, a lesson for life, or brings a historical context..

For the third time, I started to read the book. So many people told me how they enjoyed the book. I was told, “After you read it, tell us what you think.” My wife, a librarian said, “You need to give it time.” Many churches were having group studies on this book so my curiosity was aroused.

The book first caught my attention when Mack’s young daughter was kidnapped. It turned into suspense, a mystery, and problem to solve. Life’s innocence was now caught in the element of evil and a theological question. Something beautiful, three children enjoying the day with dad, takes a turn. The author carefully builds the story into theological reflection, images, and internal struggles. These define life as we know it. The author creatively weaves many threads into a moving story, raising as many questions as there are answers.

So often we hear the phrase, “out of the box.” Theologically and biblically, the author develops a story, out of the box. It has orthodox premises of beliefs, but he goes beyond. This is refreshing, but for those in the box, it is disturbing. Some reviews raise the questions, is he biblically accurate? Is it theologically correct? The author moves into biblically understanding then moves out, stretching love and grace to another level. The perception of God is a surprise, curious on one hand, way out on the other. The point of the book is not to be stuck here.

The Shack, in this form, appears to me as a modern parable. It searches the inner emotions of a tragedy, seeking grace to lighten the spirit. Two options are offered, vengeance, endless resentment in tragedy and loss, or the way of forgiveness. The author captures the teaching of Jesus, not in ancient images, but in a new parable.

The author brings to this story many resources, his theological perceptions, his own struggle dealing with life and tragedy, learnings he has gained from a missionary experience and adjusting to different cultures, and new theological understandings. As he said, “I wrote this for my children;” to help them in their own faith journey. Remember, this is a novel, a tool an author can design and create as he pleases. An author is like an artist, he can move trees wherever he wants, create a picture like a Picasso or a Mona Lisa.

I found The Shack more enlightening than I first thought. It’s good reading.

November 8, 2009

The First Snow

The First Snow
Dennis Ginoza November 2, 2009


As we were traveling through Colorado, it was our hope to see the changing of the fall colors. In our hope, instead, we found green pine trees on the mountain slopes and the lower regions. The aspen had just begun to turn slightly, but not to our expectation.

Nature has its cycles, predictable, constant, and continous. This is our general sense. We also come to realize that nature has its quirks, shifts, and surprises. What we do know is that the sun rises and the sun sets. The tides rise and recede, the earth rotates on its axis and moves in its orbit around the sun, rainbows fill the sky as tiny rain drops and sun rays coincide. Nature is a beautiful thing.

So we ask, what happened to the changing of the leaves? In Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa, fall was at the threshold, but had not entered its time. It simply was late. Finally, in late October, in Iowa, the leaves began to change.

As I said earlier, nature has its quirks. The morning of October 12, 2009, when we awoke in Minneapolis, my wife went to the hotel window and she exclaimed: “It’s snowing!”

In the open field, there was a blanket of freshly fallen snow, an incredible sight, refreshing and delightful. A total surprise, we began a new day. Of course, I, born in Hawaii, living now in California, the first snow was a true joy. I hurried downstairs, got out to the fresh snow and, like a little boy, threw a bunch of snowballs.

There is always an excitement when it comes to the first snow. In my freshman year in college, in Iowa, the first night it snowed, another student and I from Hawaii went out barefoot and ran and skidded in the snow on the street. That little child in us came out to play.

One October, when I was teaching in Philadelphia, in my seventh grade math class, one of the students yelled out, “It’s snowing!” The students all got out of their seats and ran to the window. “Yeah, it’s snowing,” they called out. In such a moment, what else can you do, but just enjoy it.

My first Christmas away from home, I was visiting with my friend and his family in Ohio. The open field just back of their home was covered with fresh snow. My friend Duane said, “Let’s go out in the snow. I want you to make an angel.” I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about. I was from Maui. We grew up with sand, red dirt, and sugar cane fields. He showed me what to do. Then I laid on my back, moved my arms and made my first snow angel.

There is in all of our experiences, something new, something different, and something exciting. Riding a sea turtle, catching your first fish, riding a bike for the first time, dipping your toe in the Pacific Ocean if you’re from Kansas, or visiting Disneyland as a three year old. The first snow for one is just like that.

That evening it snowed in Minneapolis, the weather was reported, “Winter came two months early.” Fall just lingered and the leaves didn’t change like we had hope. Winter, on the other hand, came like a speeding train. This was another historic moment.

On October 19 and 20, Minnesota reported one of its earliest blizzards. The temperature dropped 50 degrees with a snowfall of fifteen inches. On October 10, 1977 2.4 inches of snow fell on Columbus Day. But that was not the earliest. On September 26, 1942, 1.7 inches fell on the Twin Cities. The St. Paul Dispatch reported even a prior snowfall: “The earliest trace was September 15, 1916.”

The most talked about snowfall was the Halloween Blizzard of 1991. A single snow storm lasted from October 31 to November 3. A record 28.4 inches fell on Minneapolis
and St. Paul.

Each day, we can get up bored, worried, and troubled. Or, we can greet the day with expectation, gratitude, and excitement, thus see the world in a new way. Life is filled with the riches of nature and experiences. The first snowfall brings to light the new, a joy, and another step in time. We remind ourselves, as we look closer at a snow flake, no two snow flakes are alike. Each is different. Such is true to each of us.

Might we begin each day knowing our own uniqueness. The first snow brings to mind this truth. Like little beads on a string it brings together a joy to behold.