Dave Burchett's Blog, page 21

Jesus Will Meet You There

Being in community with others means you share in their joys and their sorrows. Sometimes the sorrows come in tsunami waves and all you can do is care, pray, and be present. Good and decent people deal with financial, emotional, and physical suffering all around us and it is easy to lose heart. The news seems to be only tragedy and heartbreaking sadness. What can be redeemed of all of this suffering? A song called “The Hurt and the Healer” by MercyMe resonated when I first heard it but now that same song touches my heart even more. The lyrics ask the question we all struggle with. Why?The question that is never far awayThe healing doesn’t come from the explainedJesus please don’t let this go in vain I can’t explain why things happen. Sometimes it is sin. Sometimes it is simply life. I have learned in my years of following Jesus that He does not let suffering go in vain. I have seen over

One Of The Worst Days Ever

There is much written about Good Friday. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross is incomprehensible to my puny human intellect. There is much written about Easter Sunday. Christians around the world rejoice and proclaim that “He is risen!”. But there is not nearly as much written about one of the saddest and most confusing days in history. The Saturday between the Friday horror of Jesus on the Cross and the Sunday mystery of the resurrection. Some churches do observe Holy Saturday but it was never a tradition in my faith upbringing. I have been thinking about what that day must have been like for those who dropped everything to follow Jesus. How crushing those events had to be. I imagine the fear they felt that they would also be killed. And for what? On Saturday they feared they had given their careers and their very souls for a false hope. I think in particular of Peter. I identify

Surviving the Storms of Life

Real growth in relationships, faith, and maturity usually doesn’t just happen. It is so simple to blame circumstances or others for our mistakes. Rationalizations for wrong behaviors are frighteningly easy.  “Officer, I didn’t mean to speed and break the law. I was just going with the flow of traffic.” Think about that. My defense is that everybody else is breaking the law. Therefore, I am innocent.  Since the Garden if Eden the automatic answer to sin and shortcomings is that it is someone else’s fault. That may be true at times. But that thinking will never result in becoming like Jesus. So I have to be intentional about confronting my own heart. Change is hard. Sharing my need to change with others is even harder.  Several years ago I took the risk to trust three men with everything about me. We call ourselves the Redwood Brothers based on a unique characteristic of California’s redwood trees. A redwood alone in a

Hope Springs Eternal

For thirty-seven years I spent Baseball’s Opening Day as a television director for Texas Rangers broadcasts. It still seems a bit odd to witness this day from a rocking chair at the old director’s home. I feel like I am just behind Lou Gehrig as the “luckiest man on the face of the earth” to have been able to do that for so many years. No matter what your vantage point might be there is no more special day in sports than Opening Day in baseball. It is an annual rite of Spring to post this article on the magic of Opening Day. The base lines painstakingly and perfectly defined by a grounds crew that is committed to perfection on this day. Red, white, and blue bunting give the ball park a festive World Series look. The players bounce around like little boys. They seem a little extra grateful that they are paid to play a kid’s game. The hot

Everywhere I Go…

My book Waking Up Slowly is based on a beautiful Psalm of David. Psalm 139 is one of the most inspiring writings in Scripture. We don’t know when David wrote this stirring account of God’s indescribable attributes. Some believe he wrote it as a shepherd while gazing at the stars and the enormity of the heavens. Some feel he wrote it when he became king over Israel. As a more experienced human being myself (that is PC for old) it certainly feels like David had to have lived a little more life in order to write such a majestic dialog with God. But the truth is we just don’t know. David made three observations about the greatness of God. God knows everything about us. God is everywhere we are. God ordains everything about you. I think and do a lot of things that I would prefer to keep in Las Vegas mode. But David is saying the idea of a

What Are My Priorities?

I have been doing this church thing for a lot of years. I have sung hundreds of songs over the five decades or so that I have been a follower of Jesus. Some songs have great meaning to me. Some lyrics moved me to deep worship of God. Some times I really meant what I was singing. Other times I was singing through the motions while thinking about lunch and when the kick off was going to happen. Sometimes a song would make me really squirm.  One song in that category was recorded by the legendary George Beverly Shea in 1932.  The words were from a poem written by Mrs.Rhea Miller in 1922. Shea recalled the moment. At the age of twenty-three, I was living at home with my parents, continuing to work at Mutual Life Insurance and studying voice. Going to the piano one Sunday morning, I found a poem waiting for me there. I recognized my mother’s handwriting. She

The Hope of Spring

Yesterday was the first day of spring and the weather in North Texas was beautiful. We did not have a brutal winter but we did have a deep freeze and ice storm that took it’s toll on our plants. As I walked Miss Maggie in the late afternoon I stopped to look at one of our trees. There were tiny buds beginning to appear on the branches. These green buds sprouted in defiance of winters brutal assault. I stopped and meditated on the miracle of life emerging out of barrenness. I thought of the words of philosopher Bernard Williams. “The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.” I love that. Is there anything more hopeful than watching the beauty of budding leaves and blooming flowers turning the melancholy of a bleak winter into a wondrous palette of invigorating colors? Every spring is a reminder that God will bring beauty from darkness and life from death. 

The Lessons of Team Unity

It looked shaky for a bit but we learned this week that baseball will be back. I love the joy of spring training. I love the hope of Opening Day. On that day every team is undefeated and united by the common goal of winning. Perhaps the church can learn a thing or two that winning baseball teams understand. The first thing that winning teams understand is that every teammate brings strengths and weaknesses to the team. A great team celebrates the strengths of each player and works together to offset the weaknesses. I pondered this as I was reading about the career of Joe Gordon. In 1942 Gordon led the American League in strikeouts. He made more errors that year than any other second baseman. He hit into more double plays than anyone in the league. By dwelling on those stats we could surmise that the New York Yankees were looking for a new second baseman for the following year. But there was

Kindness Truly is Contagious

The apostle Paul laid out the challenge for followers of Jesus in his letter to the church in Ephesus: Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32) I used to be impressed by talent and prestige. Now I find that I am more impressed by kindness. Billy Graham observed how we all—especially children—benefit from a little kindness: “Often the only thing a child can remember about an adult in later years, when he or she is grown, is whether or not that person was kind.” Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the sadness and problems around me. Sometimes I think it is a hopeless world we live in. But I can do something. I can be kind. Edward Everett Hale once said, “I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do.”

What Can You Do Right Now to Make a Difference?

I believe that God uses difficult circumstances to grow us in our faith. The lengthy pandemic has given us lots of opportunities to reevaluate priorities in our relationship with God and others. The frightening uncertainty on the world stage has also given followers of Jesus a chance to show how faith makes a difference in crisis. The results have been mixed.  I used to get angry and judgemental when those who identify as Christians didn’t live up to their title. Now I mainly feel sad at missed opportunities to show how Jesus makes a difference when we trust Him during trials. Christians should have a message of hope during this confusing and anxious season. Jesus followers should be demonstrating that trusting God gives peace and hope in dark times. A song by Thomas Rhett neatly summed up how Christians can be different in a good way. We are called to show a different path and a better way.  In a world