A Prayer-a for Klaira

I watch from a distance as I head into the autumn of life to see the experiences of my sons as they approach their summer seasons. Many are similar, some correspond to experiences I had at those times but my eldest son has taken a path I'll never tread. He is now the papa of a baby girl, Klaira Reese, who breathed the pneuma of life for the first time last Saturday evening.  I noticed a text on my phone at seven pm Texas time that said they were at the hospital. The text was sent at five thirty. By seven thirty we got the call that Klaira was here and all 7 lbs. 6 oz and 22 inches of her were fine. We were relieved, ecstatic, and a little blue all at once.

We were relieved  because early in Melissa's pregnancy they were told some tests showed bad defects and deformities and were told abortion was an option. Abortion would never be an option to Matt and Melissa. The tests were wrong. Later tests didn't show any problems but there were lingering questions way back in the mind so Pam and I were greatly relieved at the good news of health. We were, as any grandparents, absolutely thrilled at her arrival. Thoughts flooded the mind faster than they could be processed. Questions about her looks, sounds, how momma was doing, how big brother was doing, did she have hair, what color was her hair (blond), did she look like Kaden and a dozen more flashed across the mind that the birth had delivered. But we were also a bit sad. When Kaden was born we were there as soon as the "come on" was sounded. Distance, health, local family availability, and other considerations mean we have to wait a bit. We wanted to catch her up in our arms and squeeze, snuggle, nuzzle, caress, kiss, and feel that sweet baby's breath on our own cheeks...but that will have to wait. Waiting is hard. There is still an element that is not  yet real about it all to us, but it will be. I guess that's kind of like the second coming in a sense.

Klaira was a bit early, by ten days or so. When she and the Lord decided it was time, she came so quickly that Melissa didn't have time to have her epidural shot so Klaira was delivered naturally. I began to wonder what other surprises Klaira might have in store. What will she like and dislike? Will she like ice cream and chocolate like her daddy? Will she enjoy photos like her mom? How will she feel about fashion or will she be tom-boy?  Will she be athletic or musical or artistic? Will she break into a smile like her big brother when he sees MiMi and Grandcos on the computer? Will she be tall or short? Will she be thin like her mom, dad,  and MiMi or pudgy like her Grandcos? Will she be stubborn, conforming, rebellious, studious, playful or serious?  The questions keep coming, time will reveal answers, and more questions no doubt in the life of Klaira. That is a big part of what life is, isn't it? We ask, we learn, we face mystery and ultimately we trust someone or something. That led me to my second prayer for Klaira after her arrival.

I was up a bit earlier than normal Sunday morning. I wasn't preaching so the sermon didn't dominate my mind from 6 AM on as it usually does. In the quietness of the morning I wanted to pray for Klaira. I turned to the Psalms for their richness of truth and beauty and storehouses of prayers to find the right expressions. I started reading and cobbled together a prayer for Klaira. Some thoughts from Psalm 90,113,121, a few others and then Psalm 139 finished the prayer. It went something like this....

O Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all our generations. You have now added another blessing in this generation. We praise you, O Lord, for the gift of Klaira and I pray that from the rising of the sun each day of her life to the place where it sets, may she always praise your Name above all. Watch over her, Lord, now and throughout her life. You do not sleep nor slumber and you know there will be days of shade and shadows in her life as well as days of sun and brightness. Keep her in your watch in all those days of darkness or light--may she feel your Presence. May she know the freedom of your mercy, the depth of your salvation, the light of your hopes for her and the joy of your love. You will search her and know her as no other can. Hem her in with your will and may her heart always be tuned to sing your praises. You created her and knit her together in Melissa's womb. When evil reports called for her ending before her beginning, your voice was heard above all. May she always hear your Voice above all others. Keep her from the vanity and selfishness so prevalent in our world. May she learn quickly that the world doesn't revolve around her but help her to let her world revolve around You. May she always know your precious thoughts toward her. May she be unable to count them any more that she could count the grains of sand by the sea. Grant her, in your timing, salvation through your Son and may her faith in Him always be strong and her love for Him be seen in deeds of mercy and service. Thank-you for the grace that makes this miracle life. May we all, grandparents, brother, family, and parents be good stewards of this joy, this gift of Klaira.          Amen

You may find me occasionally refer to Klaira as Klaira Grace. That was originally going to be her name and that stuck in my head and heart. Family will just have to roll their eyes and give me 'that look' when I call her Klaira Grace. Once you have grace in your heart, it's impossible to get it out.

Cos

That's Church to Me

Voice 1: Candle's aroma...the Lord's Prayer...reciting the Nicene Creed....that's church to me.....
Voice 2: Anthems and organs, reflective prayers and planting seeds of niceness....that's church to me....
Voice 3: Stained glass windows, the jangle of Mrs Whitt's jewelry on the piano as she played, the creak of
old wooden floors beneath my feet... that's church to me....
Voice 4: Guitars and keyboards, choruses and celebration, extemporaneous prayer, and a screen to see... that's church to me...
Voice 5: Having it all from quiet to loud, from 15th  century to last week. Why settle for less than what should be?...now that's church to me!
Voice 6: All good and well as far as it goes but without a system it works not well. Organize it, account for it, dot every "i" and cross every "t" that's what church should be for you as it is for me...
Voice 7:   Excuse me? Excuse me?
1,2,3, 4, 5, 6   Who's that? What voice is that we've never heard? Why should we listen and interrupt our words?
Voice 7: Oh, I'm Jesus and was wondering, have any of you ever asked what church is to me?

Leftovers

Rain, Titus, and VBS

Rain is a delicate subject around these parts, more so a little down south. I published a prayer for rain last week and within five days it rained. I'm not about to take credit for the recent liquid blessings any more than I'll accept blame for the blast furnace heat of previous days and coming days. However, I, we, need to be thankful and show faith in response to God's faithfulness in sending the showers and yet not insolent enough to publish a prayer for rain every time I think we need one. I'd be "rain writing" about every two weeks or so in Texas were that the case and probably disappointed most of the time.  None of us can control the weather, in fact there are a lot of  things we can't control. So we pray to the One who can and thank-Him when our prayers are answered with a "yes." And when He doesn't answer when and how we want, we ask Him for the strength, endurance, and peace then trust His grace and goodness to provide in His way and His time all it takes to live a life pleasing to Him. You and I will see more drought and we will see more rain. These and other variables we can't control will plague and bless us as we go through life. There is only One in whom there is no shadow of turning who remains the same yesterday, today and forever. In all the variables of life, trust Him.

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I am a highly organized being. I like order in the midst of disorder. I seek precision and shun chaos. Before creation began we are told in Genesis (KJV) that chaos ruled over the deep. All one has to do is look at my desk and see the penchant for order I possess. I have precisely ordered stack of books, notepads, scraps, post-its, calendars and drinking vessels at the ready. Just this past week I went looking for five different items and found three of them in quick order.  Any major league batter would kill for that kind of average. My garage is the same way. In the middle are two vehicles. In the thirty-five years of my marriage, when we have been blessed to have a garage, I have never once lost a vehicle in one. The plan is simple and direct: the vehicles go in the middle of the garage, side by side, everything else is to be piled around the interior walls of the garage. This system has worked perfectly. That's why a discovery in Titus (that's a book in the Bible for you Baylor grads) thrilled me this AM. In chapter one, verses five and six, the apostle Paul is helping Titus organize the church. It needed straightening out and some leadership put in place. Going on to read the rest of Titus it is clear Paul thinks these correctives are needed to show God's grace, say "no" to ungodliness, and do good for folks till Jesus appears. (Chapter 2:11-14) For Paul's understanding of God and His church shows a vital relationship of grace and mercy that lives itself out in holiness and service. His church world was not an either\or but a both\and when it comes to doctrine and passion; faith and works; loving devotion and service; working and waiting on Christ's return. All this took time, energy, and organization. Titus is a good book for the unloving, undisciplined, and unprincipled as well as the stuffed shirts, rules saturated, good-works-are-enough folks. In many ways it is a book of divine balance.
     
      My righteousness may look a little rumpled compared to yours, but I need your organizational skills to put my wacky ideas into working order. You may at some time need my laughter to balance a silly notion that if you looked good, behaved properly, and organized everything, all life would work out. God's grace welcomes us all and then it puts us together in such a way that balance is achieved. In some circles this is also known as peace.

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Vacation Bible School is great! Our children's minister, Kay Lea, is a great, and I mean a great VBS director. One of the great things she did was get great people to help her. The teachings are great, the rec is great, the snacks are great( no lame Kool Aid and two Hydrox cookies we got when I was a kid in VBS. no wonder kids quit church after growing up). The organization is great. The crafts are great. But the greatest things about VBS is the kids. They thrill my heart. I'm expecting a baby granddaughter in a few weeks and I've been mesmerized by little girls and the way they act, look and interact. I keep thinking: "I'm going to have one of those in my family." Wow. What will I do? I'll stare a lot at first but I'll learn. We had boys so they are a bit of a mystery to me. I can hardly wait.

One kid, a boy, of course, was looking at the pastor's portraits in the main hall of the church. He was really studying mine and even tracing the dates of my pastorship etched in the nameplate below. (Now understand that I "play" a character called Terrible Terry the Tweenager at VBS. He is kid who never grew up living between being a teen and grown up and he loves comic book super heroes. He is kinda like the comic book guy in the Simpsons without the cigarette. He also knows nothing about Jesus and VBS is teaching him). The kid turns around and sees me standing there in my terrible Terry clothes and turns and looks back at the portrait and in utter amazement declares: Terry Cosby is the PASTOR of this Church?!!!?  He expressed the sentiments of untold dozens. I love VBS kids.

Comic Book Cos

A Prayer for Rain

I've collected a few prayers through the years, most of them I highlight in books or stick in a folder somewhere and can never find. I got lucky this week and actually found one I was looking for and wanted to share it with you. I was written, I believe, sometime forty to sixty years ago. From the internal contents and the defunct magazine from which it originally came I believe it came from an era when Texas wasn't as air conditioned or as urban.  It was written by a man. There was a horrible drought in Texas in the mid 50's. I don't know if it was from then or not but it would fit. I hope it worked then and would love to see it happen now. But do notice how knowledgeable the author is with the names of God and how specifically picturesque, if not downright forward, he is in his requests. We might do well to put as much thought into our prayers. Enjoy.......

O Lord, in thy mercy, grant us rain and by that we don't mean a shower. We want to go out and watch the lightning rip across the southwest sky in hot blue forks as the fat clouds roll in on us. We want to scramble all over the house, just as the first sheets descend, frantically slamming down the windows.


O Lord of Hosts, we want to look out of the windows and watch the regiments of close-packed raindrops march diagonally down. We want to hear the gurgle of gutters under the eaves, and then the spatter of the downpour.


O God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, let it come down so hard, let the drops dance so high that the streets and sidewalks seem covered with a 6-inch fog of spatter drops, then let it just keep up for a while, and then begin to taper off and then turn rights around and get a lot worse: swishing, pounding, splattering, pouring, drenching, the thunder coming Crackity-BAM! And the lightning flashing so fast and furious that you can't tell which flash goes with which peel of thunder---so that all the women will get scared and climb on top of the beds and scream at you not to get too close to that window. And then, O jealous God, repeat the whole act about three times and in the middle of the second time we will climb the attic stairs and put a wash tub under that tiny leak in the roof which you don't usually notice in an ordinary rain. After a couple of hours, kinda taper it on down, O Lord, to a good steady rain...not a drizzle, but a business-like one that keeps on until just about dawn and the spits a few drops occasionally during the morning from a gray sky.

Texas is indeed the Promised Land, O Lord, and if it gets a break, it will flow with milk and honey, but we can't live much longer on promises. So in Thine own way and Thine own time, make up Thy mind, O Lord, and we will bow before Thy judgement and praise Thine everlasting name.
Amen  (from Farm Show Magazine)

Cos

Aroma

It had been six months since Phil had died and a year since I had moved from being their pastor when I got Rita's letter. Long distance was a bit expensive then and  Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet, so Rita wrote the last pastor she had. She missed Phil badly. "Every night I take one of his shirts from the closet and hold it when I go to bed. I haven't changed his pillowcase either. I can still smell his aftershave so I hang on. The aroma on the shirts is fading and I can't stand it. It is all I have left to hang on to."

It had been four years since our oldest son Matt had left. He'd been working and going to school and wouldn't be coming back except for weekend visits so I began to take over some of the closet and drawer space in his room. But I left an almost empty bottle of Polo Sport aftershave in one drawer. I could still get a mild whiff of it now and then. It caused me to pray to and thank the Lord and remember when Polo Sport was strong in the house.

I have the number 242 in my head. I believe it was the number of paperback books that were in Clay's closet. Some were about the Beatles, some about the Olympics, but most of them were Peanuts by Charles Shultz. You could open Clay's closet and see them. Not many clothes hung there. The shelves had books and the floor was stacked with books. He had started collecting them when we has just old enough to read. About Teenage-ville he took other interests. I would occasionally use them myself for sermon quotes from good ole' Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus and the gang. Some times, after he left for college, I'd just open his closet and breath deeply. It gave forth a musty, gluey, kinda non-sugary sweet smell. To me it was the aroma of a brown eyed boy saving quarters, going to Half Price Books on Northwest Hwy in Dallas to buy books and reading them in the back of the van or on his bed.

I remember being hit by it when I stepped out of the shower. Out the bathroom door to the left, down the hall with another left and right into nirvana in the kitchen. It was Pam baking an apple pie. The whole house had been enveloped with the scent of buttery crust, cinnamon and sugar poured over our neighbor's fresh picked apples. The pie would never greet my lips with a kiss. It was, alas for another but I was okay with that. I think I had already had the best part.

There are sights that can stop us dead in our tracks. There are people for whom we will go out of our way to feel their touch. There are sounds we are trained to listen for from voices of loved ones, the nursery, the phones, and the ubiquitous electronic devices. So ever present are these that they are easier to miss but the smells, oh, the smell will get us every time. They sneak up from behind like a prankster friend ready to jump us. Aroma's can have such a strong link to our souls that heart rates can change, blood pressure can fluctuate, and real feelings are elicited from just the memories that certain smells evoke. One man can walk into a mechanic shop and be taken back to the childhood he loved by the smell of gas and grease. Another can smell the same and grow ill thinking of the pain his father endured from working too hard, too long as the only mechanic in a busy service station.

Some aromas attract and some repel but few are totally neutral for all people. Maybe that's what Paul had in mind in II Corinthians 2:14-16: But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and to those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.

Imagine that, the fragrance of His knowledge, the aroma of Christ himself! The church is that lingering fragrance of love lost that can be regained. The church is that unmistakable aroma of Someone you love, Someone you miss, Someone you need. The church, you, are that whiff on the Wind of the Spirit that reminds and beckons the lonely, the sad, the hurting, the tired, the longing, the lost to remember where home really is.

Breathe deep, O world, and may the fragrance you find in the church, be the sweet smell of Life.

Cos

Nine Times Out of Then

I, along with most sane folks, weren't surprised when the world didn't end last Saturday around six pm. The percentage of doomsday prophets who got it right is still zero, or to put it more positively, they are batting 1.000 pct. One day the percentage will go up a little, but nine times out of then it stays the same. I'll admit to some minute disappointment. In some ways I'm ready for the Lord to get on with His new heaven and new earth format. I'm tired of people hurting. I'm tired of caner, Alzheimer's, ALS, and whatever diseases and maladies strike family and friends. I'm tired of war and rumors of war. I'm tired of praying for peace in the middle east. ( I know I'm not suppose to say that so hold the letters) I'm tired of murders, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, gambling, politics, corruption (I know-redundant), world hunger, greed, arthritis and cell phones. I'm really tired of death. But I've read Matthew 24 and 25, Revelation 19 and 20, and II Peter 3. and I know where this corrupt earth thing is headed. A part of me says, "come on Lord, it can't get much worse so just do it."

But just a part of me.

For the most part I was glad the world kept going after Saturday. It means, among other things we keep some good things going with chances for greater things. I still like the way cool air feels on fall and spring mornings. I like the sound of the golf ball hitting the bottom of the cup, though often after six or seven strokes its more relief than joy. I like the way grandson Kaden says "Mimi" and "GrandCos." (he holds the "o" and hisses the "s.") I love to see a good pick-and-roll and the smell and taste of smoked brisket. And these are minor things. In the major categories we humans already have the capabilities to end world hunger, end all manners of self inflicted heart-ache and disease from abuse and bad habits. On the medical front strides are being made to alleviate the pain and death associated with diseases that years ago their diagnoses were considered a death sentence.

But there's another reason I'm glad the world didn't end just yet. Not everyone is ready. It is just a fact and according to the Apostle Peter in II Peter 3: 9, the Lord is holding back, not being slow as it looks in coming back but being patient so people can come to repentance and not perish eternally.

One of these days the Lord will return. It will come like a thief in the night. Jesus said that no one knows the day or the hour, not angels, not the Son but only God the Father. So anyone who says it is going to happen at this time or that is being unbiblical and should be ignored. One day it will happen and what the bible teaches is readiness. We get ready by surrendering our lives by faith to the Lordship of Christ and getting busy doing justice, acts of service, kindness, and love. Peter goes on to say  in the afore mentioned chapter that "you ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming." The church is extended time to witness and share the good news that all may have eternal life in Jesus. We've got a lot of work to do, much of it hard but nearly all of it rewarding if you can keep the eternal goal in mind. I"ve got family and friends who frankly aren't ready yet. So hold off Lord, if you can.

Now excuse me, I've got a few sermon notes to write. Then I've got to make a few visits to the sick and unchurched. Then I'm going to get a brisket sandwich, go the putting green, and call Kaden on the cell phone. Look, you get ready your way, I'll get ready mine.

Cos