Think of the Difference You'd Make to the One Who Needs it

(This is the second post on the life of Chester Tyra. Also see the other posts: The Man Who Never Had a Bad Day, My Name is Daniel, and I Was His Best Friend Too, FUN, and What Made Him Who He Was.) It wasn't by accident that Chester became the kind of man who, at the end of his 86 years of life, could genuinely say- as he always had- that he had never had a bad day. No, it was a lifetime of choices about how he thought, what he did with his time and resources, and how he interacted with others that all added up to make him able to see the profound good in every day he lived, regardless of what the circumstances said on the surface.

As I've become determined to end up having more of the kind of attitude he had when I come into my 80's, I've thought about those habits Chester had that added up to make him who he was, and the first one that came to mind was his generosity.

Not many Sundays went by when I was a child that I wasn’t sitting at Chester's side in his pew about halfway back on the right side of the sanctuary at our church, and if I was there at his side, Chester would always give me two things: a Jolly Rancher to put in my mouth and money to put in the offering plate. I’m sure that over the years he spent a small fortune on Jolly Ranchers, simply because of how much he enjoyed giving them out to kids. And I’m also sure that those dollars he gave me to put in the offering weren’t the only ones that he gave away for the good of others.

One of my favorite examples of his quickness to give to others was when I brought a friend home from college. I was off at school in Kentucky and I made a good friend named Paul, who to that point in his life had hardly been out of the bluegrass state and was making his first visit to Texas with me. I took him to meet Chester, and Paul mentioned to him that one of his goals for his time in Texas was to get a cowboy hat. When he said that, Chester got up from his chair, went into his closet and came back with one of his own for Paul to try on. It fit, and Chester just gave it to him. It ended up that Paul loved that hat so much that he will forever be the only person in our college yearbook who had his picture taken wearing a cowboy hat- Chester’s cowboy hat.

It's likely that the majority of people who ever knew Chester have some story of his giving which few others know about, and it's been fun to hear some of those stories even decades after they happened. For example, his wife recently mentioned that years ago Chester had a young man working with him on one of his oil rigs. Chester found out about the young guy’s desire to go to college. Rather than just wishing him luck and getting back to work, Chester told the boy, “I’ll put you through school.” Then he did.

He didn’t flaunt his generosity, so I’ll stop the stories of them here, and I only include them to illustrate how generosity was a habit for him, something that was ingrained in him deeply enough that it wasn’t at all difficult for him to give for the good of others.

Some of the moments with Chester that I’ll always cherish the most were in these last few years, after I moved back to Midland, when even though his health was declining, it gave me more chances than I’d had ever had before to just sit with him and hear stories of his life. One story from his childhood helped me to understand where his generosity came from:

He said that as a boy he was walking to town with his father one day. His father always kept a dollar bill folded up in his shirt pocket. As they were walking, a man came up to them saying that he was hungry and needed help and didn’t have any money to buy food, so the elder Mr. Tyra took the dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to the man.

As they kept walking, Chester said that he asked his father why he did that since it was the only dollar they had with them, and his father told him that the man asked for help, and he could help, so he gave the dollar.

Later in the day, as they made their walk back home, they walked past a saloon and saw the man they’d given the dollar to inside the saloon drinking. Chester said that he got angry and pointed the man out to his Dad. His father’s response was, “That’s okay, son. If you give a dollar to a hundred people, ninety-nine of them might go do something like that. But think of the difference you’d make to the one who really needed it.”

We often try to make ourselves into generous people, then we just revert back to being as we always were. But with people like Chester, to whom it was more natural to be generous than to be stingy, he never had to grit his teeth and make himself give to others while he really wanted to keep things for himself. No, his generosity began with a story like this that was deeply ingrained in him, then that story shaped his own habits throughout his life so that by the time I came along, giving to others was so deeply ingrained in him that it was simply part of him.

What's a story that has shaped the generosity of someone you've known?

The Man Who Never Had a Bad Day

(This is the first post about the life of Chester Tyra. Also see the others: Think of the Difference You'd Make to the One Who Needs it, My Name is Daniel, and I Was His Best Friend Too, FUN, and What Made Him Who He Was.) This afternoon I will be speaking at the funeral of Chester Tyra, whom I loved dearly. He was a remarkable man in a lot of ways, but foremost among them was his unshakable optimism.

I remember going to visit him in the hospital one day a couple of years ago. Even though he had trouble breathing over the last several years and fought a long hard fight with his health, that day he was just like he always was in the hospital: somehow making everyone's day around him better. Laying there in his hospital bed, he told me something I also heard him say a dozen other times: "I've never had a bad day in my life. I wake up every day, look out the window, and am sure that today is going to be a good day."

I left Chester's room that day and also visited a man in the hospital who was from my church, but whom I didn't know. He was about the same age as Chester (in his 80's), but was in better condition physically although it was hard to tell from the long list of complaints he started relaying to me from the moment I entered the door. He told me how terribly this was going, and how awful that was, while at the same time waiting to be discharged from the hospital because he was well! Finally, his daughter said to him, "Dad, things could be a lot worse." He replied, "Well, I sure don't know how!"

I wanted to tell him to take his Chester Tyra medicine and be quiet for a while, but thankfully I didn't.

I left the hospital that day realizing that neither of those men became like that overnight, but it was a lifetime of choices about how they thought, what they did, how they used their time and resources, and how they treated people that led one to say that he'd never had a bad day (even though I knew him well enough to know he'd had his share of bad things happen to him) and the other to only be able to see bad things around him regardless of how much good was present.

Then I realized that I am already in the process of becoming like one of them or the other. Assuming I make it into my 80's, with the way I live my life right now, how will I naturally end up at that age? How will you? And what do we do (in the midst of this world that has way too many tsunamis and child molesters) to cultivate an awareness of how utterly good today and every day really is?

Wesley's Sermon 14: The Repentance of Believers

[This is part of the Getting to Know John series on John Wesley's Sermons. Click here to see the other posts.] Apparently in Wesley's day there were a lot of Christians who believed that once a person repented of their sin and came to faith in Christ, that their sin was completely wiped out and they would not ever need to repent again. Brother John provides a pretty convincing argument otherwise, pointing out a pretty thorough list of things that still rear their ugly heads even after we're assured that we are God's children; pride, self-will, idolatry, love of the world, desire to be praised by people, jealousy, envy, lust, selfishness, and helplessness are just some of the things he uses to make his point.

Then, after this long list of remaining effects of our sin and pointing out how utterly powerless we are to do anything about them, he makes that case that God can rid our lives of them, God wants to do so, and God wants to do it right now. 

I really like Paul Chilcote's closing paragraph in his prayer based on this sermon in [amazon_link id="0835809501" target="_blank" ]Praying in the Wesleyan Spirit[/amazon_link]:

When you accepted me as a part of your family through Christ, I felt as though I was born again. The change in my life was amazing. But I need to experience your life-changing love over and over again in order to grow into the fulness of your love. Amen.

Download and read my ePub file of the original text of the sermon by clicking here.

Or, just check out my outline of the sermon.

And a great Wesleyan hymn to go along with it:

Depth of Mercy Charles Wesley, 1740

Depth of mercy! Can there be mercy still reserved for me? Can my God his wrath forbear, me, the chief of sinners, spare?

I have long withstood his grace, long provoked him to his face, would not hearken to his calls, grieved him by a thousand falls.

I my Master have denied, I afresh have crucified, oft profaned his hallowed name, put him to an open shame.

There for me the Savior stands, shows his wounds and spreads his hands. God is love! I know, I feel; Jesus weeps and loves me still.

Now incline me to repent, let me now my sins lament, now my foul revolt deplore, weep, believe, and sin no more.

Getting to Know John

Theology scholar Paul Chilcote says that he's always believed that if people would read John Wesley's sermons, many lives would be changed, and I'm convinced that he's right. I've been a Methodist my entire life, but it was when I had a theology class where I finally had to John Wesley's sermons that my admiration for him and confidence in the reliability of my faith heritage began to increase dramatically. Therefore, in an effort to continue to get to know Mr. Wesley better myself and hopefully help some other people to do so, I'm beginning a series of posts on his sermons. The problem is that sermons in England in the 18th century don't have much in common with sermons today. There are absolutely no jokes. They're long. And the overwhelming consensus is that they're not very entertaining. (They're seriously boring unless you happen to enjoy reading old boring stuff, then they're great!) But the guidance contained in them is so good that we need to find some ways to get past these obstacles.

Chilcote has done a great job of this in his book, [amazon_link id="0835809501" target="_blank" ]Praying in the Wesleyan Spirit[/amazon_link], which takes each of Wesley's Standard Sermons and turns them into short prayers. This book is a great way to get better acquainted with what he believed and taught.

I also thought I'd throw my own hat in the ring and make my own attempt at making his sermons more accessible to us today. Wesley had many sermons, but 52 of them were designated the Standard Sermons, which served as the doctrinal standards for the early Methodists and continue to provide the basis for United Methodist theology today (well, at least they're supposed to). Since there are 52 of these, it's easy to work with one each week of the year, and because this is the 14th week of the year, I'll begin the series this week in the following post with Sermon 14: The Repentance of Believers.

Wesley's sermons are more like logical arguments than we're used to in sermons today. A positive aspect of that is that it makes them really easy to outline. (He usually says the points he's going to make in an introduction, then writes the rest of the sermon with numbered paragraphs.) So while I find it difficult to just sit and read through one of his sermons, if I can find the point of each numbered paragraph, I can really get into them.

So... here's what I'll do with each sermon:

  • I'll create and post an ePub file of the original sermon, which can be read in iBooks on iPhones, iPads, iPods, and maybe iSomeOtherStuff... and a host of other e-reading devices.
  • Since Wesley's sermons lend themselves so easily to being outlined, I'll post my own outline of the sermon in the blog post. If you're not up for reading the entire thing on the ePub file, the outline will help you get his point.
  • I'll also (hopefully) post a Wesleyan hymn whose text applies to the sermon.

And here are the sermons that are posted so far:

Relaunched

Since this is something of a relaunch for the SalvationLife blog, here in its speedy new Wordpress home, I'm pulling a link out of the archives of the first blog post I made: Get the Hell Out of... Us. Because of the controversy around Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins, the word "hell" is getting a lot of attention in Christian circles today, and I just figure as long as people are probably searching the internet for it right now, I might as well throw it into my own blog a few more times. What the h...

I haven't read Love Wins yet, but from reviews theologians I trust (like Scot McKnight), I can gather that part of Bell's point is the same point I tried to make in Get the Hell Out of... Us, which is to note that as much as people in churches have tended to talk about who gets in to heaven and who doesn't, Jesus spent very little time on the subject. His message was much more focused on how we can change our direction and enter into his Father's kingdom today.

How to Never Reach Retirement (and why that's a good thing)

[This is one of the posts telling a story from the life of my Dad. Click here to see the others.] When my Dad turned 65, I remember asking him, "So, are you going to retire?" I knew what was coming, but he said it even better than I was hoping.

"Retire? I can't think of anything I want to do less than retire."

I had no doubt something like that would be his answer, not only because I knew him well, but because I knew retirement wasn't anywhere in his genes. I watched his father work until he died at age 84, and that was the norm for him.  "I guess I can't think of anyone in my family who ever retired," he said.

We get bombarded with advertisements telling us that we're not saving enough for retirement, and I'm enough of a student of Dave Ramsey to know that habits like saving money in retirement accounts, living on less than we make, and not depending on the government to provide for us in our later years are essential to our own well being and that of our families and society. But those things usually aren't the point of the ads. Rather, they seem to want to send us into a panic so that we'll work longer hours, invest more money in their firm, and be able to retire at an early age to... do what?

Rather than following the ads' advice to work like the dickens now so that I'll be able to quit working early and finally enjoy my life, I'd greatly prefer to take my Dad's approach: Find a lifestyle now which I love, and of which my work is a natural part, so that what I do now and what I dream of doing as doing whatever I want are the exact same thing.