Christ Lutheran Vail Journal

The founder of the world-wide Scouting movement was Robert Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell was born in London and was the son of Reverend Baden Powell. Robert Baden-Powell spent 34 years as a military scout for the British army. But after his book, Aids to Scouting became a best-seller, King Edward VII suggested that Baden-Powell retire from the army and spend the rest of his life promoting the Boy Scout movement.

Soon thereafter, an international scouting training center was created in Gilwell Park. In 1921, Baden-Powell was crowned as Baron by King Edward VII. In his later years, Baden-Powell referred to himself as Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell of Gilwell. Oh how I love the British.

It was Baden-Powell who came up with the Boy Scout Motto, “be prepared”. Someone once asked Baden-Powell, “Be prepared for what?” to which he replied, “Why, for any old thing”.

Now I am all about being prepared. For example, I once went elk hunting in northern Colorado. My friend had been hunting in this canyon for years, but this was my first time. We started heading out and I decided to take a compass reading just to find out which direction we were heading. I had learned as a Boy Scout to be prepared. Well my friend and I were separated and because of the high mountains surrounding the canyon, dusk came almost miraculously quick. It was a frightening experience because in a matter of just a few minutes it was almost completely dark and I was alone in the forest. But I knew what direction we had taken and I had my compass. So I turned around and followed the opposite heading… right into camp. It’s amazing how these things work.

But what always trips me up are the unexpected things. There are situations in life that we simply cannot prepare for because we don’t know they’re coming. For example, traffic accidents, stepping on a snake in the wild, and fatherhood. Just this last week a pregnant young lady in Fullerton, California was driving home from the mall when her baby decided to arrive five weeks early. Little Mary Claire Higgins was born on her front lawn. How do you prepare for that?

I am not sure we can be prepared for everything. But we can be as prepared as possible. In spiritual matters this means getting to know God’s word and living out our Christian faith. By relying on God and His word to get through the small, incidental things in life, we are preparing for those moments when the unexpected arise. But we must never forget that Jesus is in charge of this world and He is always prepared. He knows about the unexpected things of life and He is there to help you through them.

Blessings,

The Reverend David John Patrick Hook Senior of Vail

As the nation heads toward the home stretch in electing a new president, Entertainment Weekly is helping reveal the deeper side of the two candidates.  In separate interviews both McCain and Obama were questioned about movies, television and video games.  One question, in particular, was very interesting.  The question was, “What was the first movie that made you cry?”  McCain’s answer was “Bambi” and Obama answered “Born Free”.

I don’t think I have seen “Born Free” since it was released in 1966, but I do remember it.  If you have never seen this movie, it is a story about a Kenyon game warden and his wife who adopt an orphaned lion cub.  As the cub grows the couple realizes that they cannot keep her forever.  She needs to either go to a zoo somewhere or be returned to the wild.  At the end of the movie the couple says farewell and it is very sad. 

I am not sure I would cry at this movie today.  As I get older, I find that I get emotional for different reasons.  Nevertheless, here are my top movie (and book) tear-jerkers:

1.  Star Trek Wrath of Khan – when Spock dies saving the ship.
2. Where the Red Fern Grows – When Big Dan gives his life for Billy.
3. Charlotte’s Web – When Charlotte dies and saves Wilbur’s life one last time.
4. Ordinary People – When Conrad finally deals with his past.

This topic got me wondering if there will be crying in heaven.  Scripture doesn’t say much.  What we do know is that there will be no sin, there will be deeper relationships with others and most importantly, we will be in the presence of God.  The Bible says heaven will be true joy.

But there have been many times when I have been so filled with joy that I cry.  And that feeling of joy is one of the most powerful human emotions there is.  So while heaven may not be filled tears of sadness, I believe that there will be times when we are filled with tears of joy.

You and I will be there.  Because Jesus freed us from sin.  Through Him we are born again.  I guess you could say that in heaven we’ll be “born free”. 

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook

I don’t change my oil anymore.  It’s not that I don’t know how.  It really isn’t that difficult.  You simply pull out a bolt to let the old oil drain out, dump it by your neighbor’s back fence when he isn’t looking and open four or five quarts of oil and pour it in the hole marked “OIL”.  If your neighbor is watching you like a hawk because he suspects something, you can take the oil to a qualified dealer and they will dispose of it properly.  It’s not too difficult.

But these new oil changing stations have made it enjoyable.  Not only will they change the oil, but they’ll replace the oil filter, check the air pressure, lube all the important moving parts, and give you a nice cup of coffee in a waiting room filled with auto magazines.  I look forward to it.  When I was a kid, my sister Val and I would page through magazines and pretend that we were going to get whatever was on our page – odd or even.  So now I sit in the waiting room pretending that I am going to get either the stuff on the right page or the left page.  I can’t wait for my Lamborghini.

I have actually driven a Lamborghini.  When I was in college I worked in a five-star restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona.  On some nights I was the valet.  So I was able to drive Ferrari’s, Rolls Royce’s and Porsche’s.  We rotated through valets so we would be real upset if we weren’t working valet and a great car came in.  One night Reggie Jackson came in with his Rolls Royce.  The license plate simply read “44”.  It was real smooth to drive.  All the other guys were soooo jealous.  But I digress.

I was reminded of all this because of an article I read this week about an Arab sheikh from Qatar.  He needed his oil changed and so he packed up his Lamborghini and shipped it to London.  I mean, I know some of these countries don’t have all of the conveniences of the United States but surely there is a Jiffy Lube somewhere within the Arab world.  I guess it cost him $45,000.  Man, for that money, I would have personally changed his oil AND disposed of it.  I would have even thrown in a car wash.  I could have rotated the tires.  I could have given him NEW tires. 

Actually, many religions are like this.  Once in a lifetime or periodically, one must go back to some temple or holy place.  That’s the only place where God Exists.  But for Christians, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God dwells within us.  We don’t need a pilgrimage to some foreign land to get the real deal. In a way, our gathering of the church in Vail is like the local Jiffy Lube tuning up poor sinners.  It’s not too complicated.  We drain out the old man, plug up the holes in our life and then are filled with God’s holy Word.  Service with a smile

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook

In his epic novel, Les Misérables, Victor Hugo tells the tale of Jean Valjean.  At the beginning of the story, Valjean has just been released from jail after 19 years.  The crime?  The first five years were for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving children.  The last fourteen years were for numerous attempted escapes.  After 19 years of prison he is released but is forever branded a criminal.

I was reminded of Valjean by a news account out of Naples, Florida.  But this story isn’t fiction. It’s true. On Tuesday, Laszlo Mujzer was incarcerated.  His crime?  Stealing a loaf of bread?  No, Laszlo took 52 cents from a mall fountain.  A sign on the fountain states that all coins in the fountain are donated to Habitat for Humanity.  Someone called the police who arrived on the scene and found Laszlo with only fifty two cents taken from the fountain.  They placed him into jail with a $500 bond. 

On the surface, this seems like a disproportionate action for such a small infraction of the law.  An online poll shows a majority of people agree.  On the Naples Daily News web site, an online poll showed only 14% of the people thought he should have been locked up.  The remaining people either said he shouldn’t have been locked up or they were unsure.

Now it is quite possible that there is more here than reported in the news account.  The man could have been a menace to the shoppers and the only thing the police could nab him with was the petty theft.  It’s the Al Capone scenario.  They couldn’t get Al Capone on murder so they got him on tax evasion.  I am also not blaming the police.  They had to respond to the call and check it out.  It’s their job.

What bothers me about the story, though, is that I believe that Jesus would not have called the police.  I believe Jesus would have shown more compassion.  Jesus might have healed him.  Jesus would not have thrown more salt in a wounded soul. 

It’s stories like this that make me wonder how many people in Vail are hurting like Laszlo.  How many people in Vail have a broken spirit.  Have we tried to help them?  Or are we content with simply calling in someone else to deal with it.

God did not leave us with a broken spirit.  He knew the only solution was to send Jesus into this world to pay off our debts.  Because God showed compassion on us, our jail time is eliminated altogether.  To Him be glory forever!

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook
 

Fountain of Life in Tucson has a new senior pastor.  His name is Jeffrey Skopak and we had a wonderful lunch last week.  He is from Manhattan or Long Island or somewhere in New York.  Even though he is a New Yorker, I didn’t find him too abrasive.  He also didn’t speak with that nasally New York or New Jersey accent that you hear on the Sopranos.  He seemed to be a regular guy. 

He was a bit late because he had trouble finding a cab to the Del Lago restaurant.  I guess after waiting for about two hours at Kolb and Speedway he decided to drive. 

I wonder what people think of when they move to the desert.  Just think about it.  We have the largest population of venomous creatures in the world.  We have snakes, gila monsters, scorpions and homeowner association boards.  Well, the last group isn’t exactly venomous.  They just keep writing nasty letters about my weeds.  Hey, is it my fault that my labor force has homework each night?

I wonder if people are surprised to learn that there are many kinds of cacti.  I think of the snow analogy. Eskimos have many different words for snow depending upon what kind of snow it is:  wet, dry, new, old, glacier – you name it, they have a word for it.  We just call it snow.  People from back east read about cacti but they probably don’t realize that we have saguaros, chollas, prickly pears, and barrel cacti.  And by the way, it’s cacti, not cactuses. 

It must also seem strange to see all the riverbeds and washes without any water.  Here in Tucson we don’t need grass.  Some people paint their rocks green to give that Midwestern flavor. Pastor Skopack has a greyhound dog named Penny.  He took her outside to do her duty and she took one look at the green rocks and gave him that look, “You’ve got to be kidding me”. 

We only have two seasons:  “Really nice outside” and “it’s only a dry heat”.   Pastor Skopack arrived in June so he got quite a bit of “It’s only a dry heat”.  He said other than his skin falling off, he doesn’t mind the low humidity.

Pastor Skopack also noticed other differences.  For example, selling a home in New York requires a decision by the Supreme Court.  Our theater district is a bit smaller. 

But one thing that is the same is that Jesus loves people from New York and New Jersey and Arizona.  The gospel is for all of them.  Even the very late cab drivers in east Tucson.  Where are you guys?

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook
 

There are 39 books in the Old Testament.  The New Testament contains 27.  If you have studied the Bible then you might remember this little trick.  3 x 9 = 27.  It’s a good way to remember the number of books.  When these two numbers are added together it provides the total number of books in the Bible.  66.  For those who like trivia, the total number of words is 138,020.  This calculates to about 2100 words per book on average.

On my nightstand, I have the novel, Night of the Hawk by Dale Brown I estimate that this book has about 175,000 words.  If I spend about one or two hours a night, I can read a good novel in about a week.  If it’s a good author, I can devour a novel in a day.  Some of my favorite authors are David Baldacci, Dean Koontz, Robert Ludlum, and Alistair McClain.  I love action and suspense. 

Not too many people have read the Bible all the way through like a novel. As we go through the Book of Acts, I want to read through the book once a week.  It takes about an hour.  Anyone want to take this Acts Challenge with me?

I have been thinking about the Bible lately because I am beginning to unpack some of my books.  My brother in law has just move to St. Louis to enter the seminary and I want to give him some of my text books.  I have about 50  boxes of books.  Each box probably contains about 25 books.  That means I have about 1250 books.  If I read one book a week, it would take about twenty-five years to read them all.  And trust me… few of these books read like David Baldacci.

Imagine how many books a library has.  The Concordia Seminary Library in St. Louis is contains 245,000 books.  Project Gutenburg is an online repository of electronic books that are mostly in the public domain.  This website claims to have over 100,000 books available through its online partners and affiliates.  They hope to have over one million titles available soon.  Let’s see at one book per week it would take 20,000 years to read them all.  I know what I’ll be doing in heaven.

But think about how the message of the gospel has multiplied.  First, Jesus comes to earth and walks around for three years.  His story is recorded in four gospels.  Luke adds the second book about the early church and then Paul and others write a few letters.  From this event more has been written, discussed argued and preached than any other event in history.

Yet among all the writings and theology and books, the message is simple.  It’s John 3:16. Jesus overcame death for you. 

Now that’s something to write home about.

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook

I must admit, I am not too happy about the high price of gasoline.  Living in Vail means that a round trip to the Fry’s is 17 miles.  Fortunately, this isn’t an every day event.  Soon we will have a Walgreens up the street and that will help quite a bit.  Although I am not sure if the Walgreens will sell chocolate.  This is a basic food group at the Hook house.

I have been trying to think of ways to get better gas mileage.  I have heard about people who have modified their driving techniques to get better gas mileage.  It is a technique called “Hyper-miling”.  One of the methods is to drive closely behind large semi-trucks on the freeway.  In other words, you drive so close to the vehicle in front of you that the wind vortex pulls you along.  That must be what people are doing who drive behind me on Mary Ann Cleveland Way.  They’re just trying to save the environment.  And here I was thinking evil thoughts about them for tailgaiting.  My bad.

Another technique is to drive through stop signs and not come to a complete stop.  Well, I’ve been doing that for years.  The next time I drive through a stop sign, I hope the police officer knows about hyper-miling.  It might help my defense.  I understand that the optimum speed for fuel performance is 55 to 60 miles per hour.  Is anyone up for changing the speed limit on Mary Ann Cleveland Way to 60?

Actually, I’ve been trying to convince Jennifer that a Harley Davidson gets really good gas mileage.  I’m sure none of you would mind if I came to visit in full leather.

There is actually one area where the high price of gas doesn’t have that great of an impact.  That area is in loving your neighbor.  There are people on your block that are dealing with all kinds of problems and we are called to be good neighbors.  You don’t even have to get in your car.  Maybe this fourth of July weekend you could get to know some of these people.

In heaven we won’t drive cars.  We won’t need to get anywhere that fast.  We’ll have bodies that won’t wear out and all the time in the world.  Getting there will be just as fun as the destination.  Until then we’ll have to suffer with high gas prices and crazy drivers.  

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook

In Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Mark Antony gives an eloquent speech commemorating the slain Caesar.  The soliloquy, memorized by many high school students of my generation starts with this:

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears…”

As a high school student, every time I heard this speech, I had this picture in my mind of thousands of Roman Citizens taking off their ears and tossing them up onto the stage.  I know… I’m strange.  But if you take figures of speech literally, you can come up with all sorts of unusual mental pictures.

Another example is when we say, “The White House vetoed the bill”.  Again, I picture this strange scene. The White House morphs into a large creature.  It pulls itself up out of the ground and the pillars turn to arms and legs.  It reaches in one of the windows and pulls out a large fountain pen and signs the bill. 

If you don’t know the connection, you can really be confused.  When Jennifer and I spent a summer in England we heard on the radio that “number 10” was leaving for the United States.  For the life of me I couldn’t figure out who Number 10 was.  The mental picture was of some famous soccer player with a big number 10 on his jersey.  It couldn’t possibly be a Huge 10 flying over to the US. I learned later that this was shorthand for the Prime Minister who lives at Number 10 Downing Street.  I think Number 10 was on a mission for The Crown. 

The word for church comes from the Greek word, ekklesia.  This is formed from two parts Ek = out from and Kaleo = to call.  Literally, this means “a called out assembly”.  Now sometimes this ekklesia would meet in a synagogue, a home or in the public square, but there is no mention anywhere of scripture where the church meets in a church.

You see this too is a figure of speech.  The church isn’t the building.  When we invite someone to “our church”, what we really are doing is inviting them to our building.  Except in the case of Christ Lutheran Vail, we don’t really own a building.  So people can get really confused.

No, the church isn’t the tallest building in town with the steeple.  It’s each and every person who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ.  And even when we say, “come with me Sunday to meet our church” that could be a limited view.  On Sunday morning “the church” meets in several different buildings in every nation all across the world.  It’s only a subset of the church who meets at Cienega High School. 

As we figure out the when and what and how of a future building, may we never forget that the church is different than the structure.  The world could destroy every worship facility on earth and the church would still remain.  It remains because you are the church and you carry out her mission. 

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook

While waiting in the customer lounge for my brakes to be fixed last month, I found myself staring at the April 2nd, 2007 issue of Time Magazine. There on the cover was this headline: Why We Should Teach The Bible In Public School.

The seven-page article did a pretty fair job of describing how there is a renewed interest in teaching The Bible in American classrooms.  The article stated that at first blush, this concept seems to fly in the face of the constitution.  In 1963, the Supreme Court ruling Abingdon Township School District v. Schempp removed prayer and God from the classroom. Yet it appears many parents and schools wish the Bible to be taught.  They believe “…the Bible so pervades Western culture that it’s hard to call anyone educated who hasn’t at least given thought to its key passages”.  Another University religion professor said that the climate in the United States has changed and religion has “…rushed back to the public square”.

I saw this first-hand while we lived in St. Louis.  My daughter, Kyrie, took a class, “Bible as Literature” at the local public high school.  The class didn’t advocate for religion, but did describe the Bible’s role in shaping the culture.  I went to high school in the ’80’s and we never would have dreamed of having the Bible taught in a classroom.

But apparently God is becoming popular again.  I recently attended a conference with Dan Kimball, author of “They like Jesus but not the church” as a keynote speaker.  He too described how Jesus has been resurrected in American culture. He showed a picture of Pamela Anderson and Ashton Kutcher both sporting T-shirts emblazoned with “Jesus is my Homeboy!” 

But apparently this is not all good news.  Kimble said that the Jesus this world likes is some sort of self-help Guru.  Jesus is cool, but his followers aren’t. And now we will have a whole new generation of kids who may be very Biblically-literate and yet still don’t understand the significance of Jesus’ life and death. 

I wonder if all this “God talk” may actually hinder the discussion about the true Jesus.  For Jesus isn’t a great guru or the latest fashion statement but so much more.  He is the one mediator between God and people and the only hope for all of us.

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook

In Jerusalem you can take a tour through Hezekiah’s tunnel.  It is a narrow passageway connecting the pool of Siloam with the Gihon Spring. It was constructed 700 years before Christ to allow the city to have access to water during a siege.

The most remarkable aspect of this tunnel is not in the quality of the workmanship, but in the in the way it was formed.  One crew started at the upper end and one crew started at the lower end.  Both crews slowly chiseled through the rock towards each other.  Remarkably, the two crews met in the middle.  What makes this story even more amazing is that this was centuries before the invention of survey equipment.  They could have been off side to side or up and down. 

The workers were so overjoyed with this accomplishment they erected a commemorative marker engraved with the story.  The marker, written in ancient Hebrew, is on display in a museum in Istanbul.  It is one of the oldest extant Hebrew inscriptions. 

Unfortunately, the work crews may have never seen the benefit of the tunnel.  They may have died years before it was actually used to protect the city during a siege.  Yet they built it anyway knowing someday it would protect future generations.  That’s a vision for the future!

As we plan for the future of Christ Lutheran Vail and ask for God’s guidance to lead us in the right direction, we are much like these work crews.  We know He wants us to grow His church, but we don’t want to chisel in the wrong direction.  We could go miles and miles and miles and never break through the tunnel.

But scholars are now saying that the tunnel may have been successful because of an existing fault line that was guiding the path of the workers from both ends.  As long as they followed that path, they were destined to meet in the middle.  We too have a line that will guide our way - the Holy Spirit.  When we pray for wisdom God will always grant it.  The Holy Spirit will direct our paths and guide us as we complete the tunnel.  Someday we will break through and rejoice at what God has done.

May God grant us strength for the labor ahead.

Blessings,

Pastor David Hook