Pastors' Blog

Thornton Wilder in his The Bridge of San Luis Rey wrote: “Some say that to the gods we are like flies idly swatted by boys on a summer day. Others say that not a hair falls from our head without the will of the Heavenly Father.” But for too many the jury is still out—with the margin between life and death growing thinner with each passing day. And therein lies the mission of Hope Trending. But first this story.

Twenty-two year old law graduate Sam Hemming was riding with her boyfriend on the busy M-6 motorway in England a few weeks ago when suddenly his car flipped over, smashing Sam’s head through the windshield, sheering off an ear, breaking her neck, and leaving Sam brain dead with “no hope of recovery.” Airlifted to a hospital, Sam underwent six hours of emergency surgery and was placed in a medically-induced coma.

Nineteen days later doctors indicated Sam was brain dead and counseled the family “to prepare for the worst and to switch off her life-support machine.” The family gathered about Sam’s bed with their tearful farewells. The life support was turned off, when suddenly Carol, Sam’s mother, screamed. Everyone froze. Carol pointed at Sam’s big toe—it was wiggling. The medical team immediately reactivated life support, keeping Sam in an induced coma. Days later Sam was given a tracheotomy, and “when her life-support machine was turned off again, she was able to breathe on her own” (www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3814394/Student-22-left-coma-horror-car-crash-saved-wiggled-toe-moments-doctors-turn-life-support-machine.html).

Remarkably eight weeks later she was declared well enough to return home. And today, despite brain damage, Sam has learned how to walk and talk again. (Click on to the above link for pictures of Sam before and after—all with smiles!)

The moral of Sam’s story—don’t pull the plug too soon. Because “where there is breath, there is hope” (and sometimes hope even when there is no breath at all, as with Sam). Even for a society as utterly confused about God as Thornton Wilder described. Hope. 

And who better, may I humbly ask, to point the nation and world to hope than this faith community with hope embedded in the name we call ourselves, “Adventists”—people who joyfully embrace the hope of Jesus Christ and His soon return?

One week from last evening Hope Trending begins its quest to connect the hopeless as well as hope-seekers with the greatest Hope of all. Here are some bullet points (courtesy Rodlie Ortiz) to lock into our seven-day countdown:

•    New resources are available at hopetrending.org/resources for Watch Party hosts (including the custom invite flyer). Click the link that says “Public Flyer (Add an address).” With this resource, a group can click on the white box towards the bottom and customize the address and time of their gathering.

•    You can host a Watch Party in your living room, but don’t forget you can also host an online Watch Party. If you have friends that live outside of your local area, invite them to attend an online Watch Party. Inviting them couldn’t be easier. Go to hopetrending.org and click Watch Live. Find a time that is convenient for your friend and then click the invite button. There are experiences across 11 different time zones, so it’s easy to find a convenient time. Additionally, people will be given opportunities to make decisions online, right from the comfort of their computer or mobile device

•    Want to know a way you can reach hundreds of your friends at the same time? In addition to being able to view Hope Trending on the website, you will also be able to view it at the Hope Trending Facebook page. So here’s a two-fold challenge: (1) go to Facebook.com/hopetrending and like the official Facebook page; (2) when the program actually starts, share the video feed from the Hope Trending Facebook page to your own page. By doing that, you’ll instantly be sharing the program with hundreds or even thousands of your friends. There could potentially be tens of thousands of people seeing the program through Facebook.

•    And whatever else you do for the next seven days and the nine days afterwards, please pray for Hope Trending and the people God will lead to this event. We’re all well aware that in the end it won’t be the technology or the panel or the host or the speaker that will make the difference—in the end it will be, “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD” (Zechariah 4:6). Hope after all has always been His mission.

And on a personal note, thank you for your prayers for me. Paul’s appeal is mine, too: “Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador. . . . Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should” (Ephesians 6:19-20).

The popular legend of Nero, the decadent emperor of Rome, fiddling while the imperial city burned in July, 64 AD is just that—a legend. First, the fiddle didn’t exist until the 11th century AD. Secondly, Nero was 35 miles away at his villa in Antium when the fire broke out. He did rush back to the city to begin relief efforts, but some of the citizenry accused him of igniting the conflagration. (For more details www.history.com/news/ask-history/did-nero-really-fiddle-while-rome-burned.) Nevertheless today’s vernacular still speaks of “fiddling while Rome burns”—i.e., acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary while the world around you falls apart.

I don’t suppose anybody could accuse us of fiddling while our own nation burns, could they? But then again, consider this potpourri of stories just this week:

•    Kaiser Family Foundation/CNN poll results on Tuesday announce “84% of white working class say government does not represent their views” (https://mobile.twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/778392163856056320).

•    In the September 2016 issue of Imprimis Frank Buckley (law professor George Mason University) contends America is now, in contradistinction to its past, “the story of class struggles”—dominated by “a New Class of lawyers, academics, trust-fund babies, and media types—a group that wields undue influence in both political parties and dominates our culture. . . . America has become an aristocracy” (p 4-5, Vol 45, Num 9).

•    Unarmed, 40 year old black man, Terrance Crutcher, with his hands up was shot last week and killed by Tulsa, Oklahoma police, when his car broke down in the middle of the street—one more blue on black video gone viral this summer [after writing this blog Charlotte erupted in violence overnight over a fatal police shooting on Tuesday].

•    Some NFL players, as a protest to mounting racial tensions and inequities in this nation, are now kneeling or remaining seated during the playing of the national anthem.

•    A naturalized American Muslim from Afghanistan is apprehended and charged this week with planting and exploding a series of bombs in the greater New York region over the weekend.

•    Two candidates share disapproval ratings near record highs for a presidential election—but where else can the nation turn?—evidence enough that the day after the election this nation will be critically divided—racially, economically, socially, politically, religiously, morally, et al.

“Fiddling while Rome burns”—acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary, while the world around us falls apart. Would that be true of you, of me, too?

In 3 weeks Hope Trending: A Crash Course on How to Live without Fear will go live to the nation and world on October 14 at 8 PM ET. For 9 evenings (livestreamed at www.hopetrending.org and simulcast live on HOPE-TV) a relationally appealing picture of a loving God will be presented to a nation whose hope and help lie far from the corridors of aristocracy, politics and division. Don’t the citizens and neighbors we do know, the friends and colleagues we do have, the people down the hall or down the street—don’t they deserve to know Him, too?

For over a year now we’ve been talking and praying about a new, innovative way to connect Christ with people we know. Now that Hope Trending is 3 weeks away—wouldn’t this be the right time to extend His invitation? So, forget the fiddle—let’s grab our faith—and make an invitation that could change a life forever. Our own.

The world’s heart has been broken over a video clip gone viral two weeks ago. Who can forget the picture of that five-year-old Syrian boy, pulled from the rubble of an Aleppo building, the victim of yet another lethal bomb in the war-torn city. Stunned and mute, the boy is seated on an orange jump seat in the back of an ambulance, the side of his head gashed by some projectile. While the video rolls, the young child stares back with blank expression, bewildered into silence. Not even a sob. Silence. What was he thinking in that moment of sheer terror? His chubby hand reaches up to his mane of hair, piled high now on his head, soaked in his own blood. The boy begins to rub his temple where the wound is coagulating. And as he rubs, his hand is soon stained red. Silence. Staring out the open gate of the vehicle, he keeps rubbing (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/haunting-video-bewildered-syrian-b...).

What does five-year-old Omran Daqneesh have to do with you and me on this holiday weekend in this country surprisingly still at relative peace? (The “the boy in the ambulance,” as he is now remembered, survived, as did his parents and three siblings.) I wonder to myself if he is not a symbol of an entire civilization. A dazed world with a billion heartaches and as many broken lives, staring blankly into the lens of eternity, not knowing, and too wounded to even care, who is on the other side of that glass eye that stares back.

The narratives across the earth are a billion times different, but the story tragically the same: forces beyond our control locked in a mortal battle for this race, this very human race. We know the enemy and his dark heart. The insanity that rules his mind we know all too well.

But do we know the Father of the race? Do we share His shattered heart?

Jesus once asked: “‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. . . . You are worth more than many sparrows’” (Matthew 10:29-30). “‘Your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish’” (Matthew 18:14). “‘No, the Father himself loves you’” (John 16:27). “‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’” (John 3:16).

“Not a sigh is breathed, not a pain felt, not a grief pierces the soul, but the throb vibrates to the Father’s heart. . . . [I]t is in this speck of a world, in the souls that He gave His only-begotten Son to save, that His interest and the interest of all heaven is centered. God is bending from His throne to hear the cry of the oppressed. To every sincere prayer He answers, ‘Here am I.’ He uplifts the distressed and downtrodden. In all our afflictions He is afflicted. In every temptation and every trial the angel of His presence is near to deliver” (Desire of Ages 356).

Into the world of Omran Daqneesh we must hurry to bring the urgently Good News of this Father of Jesus who is our Father, too. And Omran’s Father. And the fiercely loving Father of this very human race. Time is running out for Aleppo, Syria, the United States, the world. If we don’t go now, will we ever go?

Hope Trending is six weeks away. Like no other previous effort to communicate the Good News of our God, Hope Trending will plunge through the wide open door of the Internet, and through social media connect with thousands of this civilization. Not only through digital communities, but through the warm, friendly environ of your Watch Party, hundreds and thousands of Watch Parties. The stunned, blank face of that little Syrian angel is an impassioned appeal to those who know the Good News to share the Good News. While there is still time.

Which is why this is the right time for you to prayerfully assemble your Watch Party for Hope Trending—isn’t it? (For more information: hopetrending.org.)

Has the blogosphere always been this awash in conspiracy theories? I was reading a European writer the other day who commented (and perhaps for good reason) that Americans as a people seem to have a predilection for conspiracy theories—those wild suppositions claiming sinister powers are manipulating current events, the populace, politics, the markets, medical science (you choose), all for a nefarious end. For example, one blogger suggested  one of the presidential candidates is suffering from a secret malady that will cut short their candidacy and offered a YouTube link as proof. I clicked the link, and sure enough a score of sites with video footage to “prove” the malady. Really? Not to be outdone, a popular blog posed the suggestion this week the President is quietly preparing for an emergency suspension of the Constitution this fall so he might serve an indefinite and unconstitutional “third term.” Really?

Consider for a moment what this glut of information/misinformation streaming from the internet every nanosecond creates: (1) an attitude of suspicion and disbelief toward any internet-driven information; (2) an oversaturation that numbs the mind to what in fact may be critical and necessary information; (3) a skepticism toward all authority; (4) a subtle, increasing diversion from life’s most essential realities and truths; (5) the inability to even discern what is true; (6) an incapacity to respond in the event of a genuine crisis or emergency; and (7) a cynical rejection of any conspiracy theory at all.

Because as it turns out, the Bible unapologetically champions a single conspiracy, not as imaginary theory but as life-and-death truth. This week my summer worship reading through Ephesians ended with its stunning finale: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:10-12). There they are—cosmic sinister powers manipulating humanity, government, nature, economies, politics, entertainment, the very stuff of our existence on this planet. To what end? “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), “filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short”(Revelation 12:12).

But here’s a stunning rejoinder and promise: “[We] are to contend with supernatural forces, but [we] are assured of supernatural help. All the intelligences of heaven are in this army. And more than angels are in the ranks. The Holy Spirit, the representative of the Captain of the Lord’s host, comes down to direct the battle. Our infirmities may be many, our sins and mistakes grievous; but the grace of God is for all who seek it with contrition. The power of Omnipotence is enlisted in behalf of those who trust in God” (Desire of Ages 352).

What a picture of God in the midst of this cosmic battle! Grace for our litany of “sins and mistakes” grievous and many. Around the clock help and protection from the adversary. “The power of Omnipotence” for every child of God who wants Him. And all of it poured out on this campus through the mighty Holy Spirit, Jesus’ divine boots on the ground for this university this new year. There has never been a more optimistic time to trust the Savior. Let the conspiracy theorists have their day—in Christ the future is no theory—it’s a promise. Absolutely secure.