The Guiness Book of World Records – I actually had one of those once. And truthfully, I didn’t think they published them anymore. I thought it was all online. But a quick search on eBay shows that for $22.00 you can buy a 2026 version, and for $10.00 buy one from 1976. I enjoyed reading the records of the tallest person, or the fastest car, or the largest animal in that bicentennial year. Now in our sestercentennial year, I only read about records online, usually in a back-page article in the news. Yes, in the last 50 years The Guiness Book of World Records chronicles not silly records necessarily, but shall we say, “creative” records. Like recently, a 90-year-old woman by the name of Ann Crile Esselstyn got in the book for holding a dead hang position for 2 minutes and 56 seconds, hanging with her bare hands from a horizontal pipe she had hung from the ceiling in a bedroom. Speaking of nonagenarians, an Australian man just got into the book for being the oldest person to become a grandparent for the first time, at 92 years and 209 days old. For those of you who are still waiting – there’s hope!

          And for the most “creative” right now? An Arkansas woman got in the book for wearing the most T-shirts in a half-marathon. OK. “How many?” you might ask. 55. “Why?” you might ask next. Well, she says to replicate the weight she has lost running for the last 17 years. I don’t know how much those 55 T-shirts weighed, and I don’t know what the rest of the 54 white T-shirts said, but the 55^th one simply read “Colossians 3:12.”

      Colossians 3:12 reads: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” I love that! Usually, you see people putting references up like John 3:16, or some other evangelistic verse. Meredith Smith, this woman from Arkansas, chose to ask us for kindness and gentleness. I think this should be the rallying call of Americans right now. Particularly in the United States today, Christians should call one another, not other people, to be compassionate, and kind, and humble, and gentle, and patient. That verse addresses Christians. It says, “as God’s chosen people.”  That would be us.

        Now, compared to some of the violent rhetoric we hear in the national news, we can easily say we’re not doing that. But I think God would call all of us to recall the conversations we have more locally – with our family and friends, and our Christian brothers and sisters. Would others characterize our words, all our words, as compassionate and kind? That’s what the apostle Paul calls us to in that letter to the Colossians. That’s what the Lord is calling us to, as American Christians.

Let’s work on it.

Trying to think of something to get me into that record book,

Craig

Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another;
love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous. 1 Peter 3:8 (NKJB)

              My parents designed and built a very modest (there was a half-inch gap between the front door and the floor, for instance) modular home in Costa Rica. It wasn’t fancy, but it was ours, and the next-door neighbors had a boy my age who became my good friend. I loved that house. The other day my Mom had us bring out four boxes of mementos from those years, a trip down memory lane that lasted several hours.

As you entered that very drafty front door, on the right was a low bookcase filled with a growing set of National Geographic magazines, various other books (you would find the World Book collection on another bookcase), and a guestbook. I always thought it awkward to ask people to leave a register of their presence at our house back then, now, I think it was brilliant.

          I didn’t flip though that little book. I ran my finger over each name, as if that would give me some physical contact with those people. So many people. A LOT of people came through our house. College students coming for Bible study. Missionaries coming for social gatherings. Family from the US. School friends of mine coming as adults to visit. People that I haven’t thought about in 50 years. People that were precious to us then, people that have indelible marks on me now.

          The book humbled me for a couple of reasons. One is that I didn’t remember that book at all through my own adult life, and hence we don’t have one. And two, my guest list would not be as large. Well… I don’t know, but still, the pages of that book created a “cloud of witnesses” (as the apostle Paul might call them) that flooded my memories and filled the house as I recalled some of them to my Mom and brother.

          From the book of Revelation, we learn that there is a “Book of Life.”  This book is inferred from the words of Jesus who said, “rejoice because your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20b). My image of that book is directly informed by that guest book on the bookshelf by the front door of our home in Costa Rica. It’s not so much that we get to the gates of Heaven and St. Peter checks to see if God got around to writing our names in it like a guest list, but more that what St. Peter finds is my signature, my recording of my presence in the Kingdom. God invites us all to the party, but not all of us accept the invitation. (Remember the parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22?)  Some of us are too busy. Some of us RSVP but then don’t show up. I think the Book of Life is more akin to my parents’ guest book than the posted roster of those who made the final cut for the football team.

           Is your name written in the Book of Life? Mine is. I first signed it years ago, whether it was when I prayed the Sinner’s Prayer with my Dad, or when he baptized me, or when I went to camp and delighted in the proximity with the eternal. I don’t know when I first signed that book, but I know I can hardly recognize the penmanship it was so long ago.
          

Is your name in the Book?

Reminiscing,

Craig

P.S. This is NOT an announcement about signing the Connect Card. ��

“He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” Revelation 3:5 (NKJV)

      A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of taking a group from our church to Orlando. I intended the trip to provide folks from the church a glimpse of the Children’s Home, a ministry of the United Methodist Church in Florida aimed at helping at risk children. They call it Residing Hope nowadays, and they indeed have a residential program close to Orlando in Enterprise, FL. We are great supporters here at First Boca.

       Because of when the program was to start on Thursday morning, I decided that the group should go up the night before and do something in Orlando that Wednesday afternoon. Which we did. We went to the Titanic Experience.

       If you haven’t been to that exhibit, let me tell you just a tidbit about it. One wreck diving crew got the license (I don’t know who gives that permission) to dive the wreck and bring up from the Titanic whatever they could salvage. The rationale goes that the Titanic is breaking apart, and at some point, there will be nothing to salvage, so do it while you can! So anyway, one group got to pick items from the Titanic, but under the condition that they could not sell any of them. They brought thousands and thousands of items up from the depths of the ocean. All kinds of things, including pieces of the actual ship, and even things like wrapped postcards that somehow were still intact. It’s pretty incredible. The only way they can monetize their work is to put on these exhibits and to sell coal. They brought up a ton of coal. There was a large piece of coal in the Gift Shop, with a $500,000 price tag on it. Yes, a half a million dollars! Wow!

       I want to share one memory from that experience with you. They had recreated the radio room. They had set up a first-class bedroom suite. They also had recreated a dining room. And after touring all of that, you went to an upper area where music was playing. Having grown up in church, I recognized the tune. It was a hymn, played by a string ensemble. The hymn? “Nearer, my God, to Thee.”  The musicians (and they had a list of their names, none of whom were invited into the lifeboats) were asked to play “Nearer, My God, to Thee” as people were plunging into the frigid waters–and as they approached their own demise on the sinking ship.

       I felt torn between thinking it incredibly ironic and, conversely, perceiving it comforting that they played that song. Many of those people, whether they knew it or not, were getting “nearer to God” that night. That might be construed as ironic. But the first verse of that hymn says:

E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee.

I think of two things when I read that. My Mom, approaching her last days on this earth, expressed to me her gratitude for the beauty and the grace that God had surrounded her with all her life, even to the very end. I want to say, like her, that “even if it’s a horrible death that’s before me, still my song shall be one of desiring God.”  My Mom is modelling that for me. But as we celebrate Easter, my other thought is that Jesus, as he was raised on that Cross, in His final words said, “into Thy hands I commit My spirit” (I’d never noticed the Trinitarian aspect of that statement!). Jesus trusted God not to the end, put through death. Death was just one middle point in His ministry. And we are to trust, and love, and praise God not to the “end of our days,” but all through the days of this life, and into the next. That’s why Jesus died. To conquer death. And so that we could sing before it, in the midst of it, and Hallelujah!, after it, “Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.”

Closer to the Father because of the Son,

Craig

Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship
in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God
in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought
near by the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2:12,13 (NIV)