So it all came to an end last night, 6 years of fantastic story that centered on an island that, well, we still don't have any idea of what it really was. Bu there was a smoke monster that, well, we really don't have any idea of what he was either.  Of course, the Others, who, um, we still don't know who they were. At least all the major questions were answered...no, not even that!  But you know what< I find myself oddly satisfied in the show's finale, and if I haven't had all my questions answered, I still have had an awfully good time with this story and its characters.  I admit it, I'm a Lostie.

So before we get too far away from the aura of the last 2 1/2 hours, I wanted to get some of my thoughts and feelings out before I forget them.  I went back this morning and watched the end again so i could hear everything that was said and I think I've got a pretty good handle on what went down...no really, I do!  I'll get to that in a minute.  I think I cried more the second time watching it then the first.  That's just the way I am!

Now we need to be careful drawing too much philosophically or theologically out of the show.  Did you see that church at the end had symbols for all the world's major religions? So it wasn't going to give us a purely Christian worldview, and didn't, but there were some very interesting pictures of redemption (do you ever think you'd actually like Ben by the end?), spiritual warfare (Jacob vs his unnamed brother, the MIB), and just the existence of a spiritual realm. But there was one picture that I really thought was cool.

We've been talking at Oasis about John 3:16 lately and this week we're going to deal with the "...will not perish but have eternal life" part of it, and I think the writers gave us a terrific glimpse of what that might be like for us (if, that is, you can set aside whatever that sideways flash universe was exactly supposed to be.) Several times throughout the finale we saw characters 'awaken' to their past life on the island with each other.  In each instance it was a time of reconciliation, or joy, of reconnection with people whom they loved.  Each time I smiled, cried and cheered. We liked it so much that we were urging the ones who hadn't yet reconnected (like Jack) to hurry up and get there! I think there's going to be a lot of that kind of relational joy in eternity for us as followers of Jesus.  Ann always says that relationships are eternal, they're the thing that will last, that we can take with us into eternity. Paul would seem to agree when he says "Now these three remain [or are eternal]: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love." We look forward to a day where everything that has ever led to brokenness or separation in our relationships will be gone.  Where we will be perfectly reconciled.  I don't know if there will be a meeting like the LOST people had in the church, but I do believe we will love and be loved there.  Reunited. In relationship. Filled with joy and love for each other.  I thought they pictured that really well last night.  I caught myself smiling along with them, wanting that kind of connection.

Yes, I cried, I'm man enough to admit it.

I think that's the biggest thing I'm taking out of the show. So you want to know my take on what went down?  If you go back to the end and listen to Christian, he says that Jack is dead.  He says there is no 'now, no time, where they are, and that some have arrived before him and others many years after.  And he says that the place, the sideways flashes of life, was a place they corporately created where they would all meet up at the right time.  So everything on the island happened in reality (they did not die in the plane crash!) and possibly the man in black had to be defeated in order for them to be able to get to that ending.  When they were all finally dead (Kate, Sawyer and Claire leave to live for possibly many years, as does Hurley. Maybe Ben hasn't died yet.) then they all arrive in the sideways time in order to be reconnected and "move on." 

And that's the way it happened...or not!

So I can't shake this lurking feeling that I'm in trouble.  I've been taking a look at the phrases from John 3:16 on Sunday mornings and this past week was on "God's Whoever Policy" (any resemblance to Max Lucado's book John 3:16, The Words of Hope is purely...well, it's because I'm blatantly stealing him blind.) and I ran across this story in Philip Yancey's book What's So Amazing About Grace (I am an equal opportunity plagarist--hey, all creativity and no plagiarism makes for dull preaching--I stole that from Charles Spurgeon!) that I thought really illustrated the point well. The gist of it was "We're all bastards, but God loves us anyway." No one has said anything, and I hope I didn't offend anyone, but aside from being able to say the word 'bastard' at church on Sunday morning, I really like the truth communicated by that phrase.  (It was almost as much fun as my Christmas message a couple of years back called, "The Day God Opened a Can of Whoopass."  I hope my Mom isn't reading this.)

I've got a friend right now who needs to know that we're all bastards but God loves us anyway.  He's having an awful time with an addiction, and feels pretty worthless and ashamed. I'm pretty certain he doesn't see anyway that God would love him right now, how could He when he keeps failing like this? I want him to know that what Yancey says about grace is true: as a child of God there's nothing you can do to make God love you any more than he already does, and there's nothing you can do to make him love you any less.  His love and acceptance of us is not based on who we are or what we do, even though we're bastards. It's while we're still sinners that Christ dies for us. We struggle like Paul: The things I want to do are the things I can't do, and the things I don't want to do are the very things I find myself doing! Who will deliver me from this body of death? The answer? God has, through the work of Jesus.  Start with God's love and don't give up hope.

We don't like the word bastard, it's kind of ugly. but more than just being crude, I probably find it offensive more because I don't think I spiritually am one!  Truth be told, I probably think that I deserved to have Jesus die for me, that I was a pretty good candidate for salvation.  I'm no bastard! He says indignantly!  But the minute I think that, the minute that I look at someone else as worse of a sinner, that I'm not as bad as them, I make it about something other than grace. Some have got to get to the point that they believe God loves them in spite of what they do or have done.  I probably have to get to the point where I believe I was bad enough for Jesus to die for.  To be overwhelmed by his grace.

Isn't that what we all need?  My friend needs to be overwhelmed by God's love and grace.  So do each of us. Because if we start there, with the truth that God loves us, and don't allow anything to chisel that away, then I can face anything with confidence.  Even being a bastard.  Had to say it one more time! I'm such a rebel.

If you were at Oasis yesterday, you heard me tell this story so you could probably stop reading now if you wanted to...but who knows, maybe there's something else really surprising in here that you didn't hear yesterday, you never know.

I just got back from a trip to Florida. People tell me I'm really tan now, although, truth be told, it's just a farmer's tan. No one needs to see me with my shirt off.  But I went down there for two reasons: a church planter's conference in Orlando for the first week and then some much needed alone time with Ann over on the east coast.  Those were the reasons I went, God had some others reasons for me to be there...as always.

There were 2000 or so church planters at the conference, lots of major speakers. It always jazzes me to be with guys like that who share a common heart for reaching lost people for Jesus. The final speaker was a guy by the name of Francis Chan, pastor of a church in the Simi Valley of California that he planted there and is now enormous...not that that makes him any more or less important than anyone else.  But he was talking about how he resigned from his church just that past Sunday, headed for service in the inner city of LA, and that his heart was just to hear from God "I am well pleased with you. Well done." Well, that just resonates with me, because that's what I have always desired from God, t hear him say "I am well pleased with you."  And not later when I die, I've wanted to hear that now, mostly because I'm never sure whether he's really pleased with me or not (I'm not sure where that insecurity comes from, but boy is it ever strong.) So when Ann showed up after the conference on Thursday I was telling her about Chan's message and she knows how I've longed to hear that, I was like "you'll never guess what Francis Chan talked about," and she was like, "Wow, pretty relevant to you, huh?" and I was like....well, you get the  picture.  So he dredged all this stuff up in me again.

Well, we went from there to Sarasota to spend a couple of days with friends down there, and then headed over to the east coast to a condo there right on the inter-coastal waterway, just several miles from the beach...you know how I feel about the beach. So Sunday evening we head over to the beach to walk, it's close to sunset, and all of the parks that you can access the beach from say that they lock their gates at sunset, all except Ambersand Park which has a gate but no sign saying that it closed then.  So I pulled in, we walked for a while down the beach, came back just as it was getting dark...and our car was locked in the park. Big chain and padlock on the gate.  And we're miles away from where we're staying.  Long story short (too late) the people who lived next door pulled up as we were trying to determine what to do and invited us in so we could try to get someone to unlock the gate.  While we're talking Ann mentions to Tuck and Cathy that I'm a pastor (she doesn't ant them to think we're casing the joint so we can come back and rob them, but I'm pretty sure some people would rather have thieves than a pastor sitting in their living room!) and he's thrilled, gets his Bible out and asks us about our church.  So I'm telling him all about how wonderful you all are and what  good thing God has going here and instead of saying any number of things that he could have said (That sounds nice...isn't that cool....you must be lying...) Tuck says this: "Oh, God is pleased with you." 

Those very words.

And I looked at Ann and said, "Did you hear what he said?" 

A couple of days later I'm reflecting on this encounter and ask Ann what it is about me that makes it so hard to accept that that was from God and not just a coincidence.  Why do I have such a hard time believing God loves me or is pleased with me? We go to lunch, and just to put the exclamation point on it all, Tuck and Cathy are at the same restaurant we go to. So I relate all of this story to them and Cathy says "Listen, that's prophetic.  Tuck is a prophet, that's from God for you."  (She also graciously pays for our lunch, that's the kind of people these two are.)

Well, needless to say I've been chewing on that a lot now.  I'm amazed at how God orchestrates these things.  I've got more to share about some of the things I heard at the conference, but this was the coolest thing from the time away.