Finely Tuned Gratitude

Some new cars these days don’t come with AM radio. Which is okay, because I don’t use it any way. But, for years, going back to my youth, AM radio was a staple. As a kid, the voice of Detroit Tigers’ broadcaster Ernie Harwell rocked me to sleep. And on frosty Michigan mornings, the local radio news brought shouts of joy with school snow-day announcements. Later, AM radio was for morning news. I remember waking up on a Tuesday in September to a report that a plane had just crashed into the Twin Towers. And no Los Angeles commuter could do without “Traffic on the 1’s” that declared sig-alerts on the 91 or the 405. 

In the past, presets and push buttons were preceded by a round dial. Remember the static you’d hear moving the red line between stations? Pinpoint accuracy was needed to match up the line exactly right to get the station of choice. One fraction of a millimeter to the left or right and clear reception morphed to something sounding like Apollo astronauts trying to connect with ground control.

 

Practically every scientist (of faith and non-faith) alike agree that our universe is fine-tuned with the same pinpoint precision needed to find your AM station. The radio dials of the cosmos are perfectly tuned to the right station in order for the universe, our galaxy, our sun, our planet and life itself to exist. Christian scientists (and no, that’s not an oxymoron) are convinced that God is the one turning the dials. Picture a control board with hundreds of dials and knobs that represent different parameters of physics. God has masterfully orchestrated those controls that allow each of us to be living on this round rock hurtling through space on its yearly lap around the sun. 

 

In his book, Is God Real?, author Lee Strobel interviewed one of the world’s leading physicists, Michael G Strauss, PhD, who recounts numerous examples of the universe’s fine tuning. Referring to the control board analogy above, Strauss says, “if any of those hundreds of dials are turned slightly to the left or right, --poof! Intelligent life becomes impossible anywhere in the universe.” 

 

It’s a mind-blowing chapter that Strobel makes easy for a non-scientist to understand. Here are a few examples of God’s fine tuning: 

 

The amount of matter in the universe – “too much matter and the universe would collapse. Too little and the stars and planets couldn’t coalesce.” 

 

The strength of the strong nuclear force – “this gives us the periodic table of elements. 

If the force were two percent stronger, there’d be no hydrogen. A five-percent decrease and we’d have no hydrogen.”

 

The ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force is fine-tuned to one part in 10 thousand trillion, trillion, trillion.

 

Our sun is the right kind of sun and Earth is in the perfect place in the right kind of galaxy for any life more complex than bacteria.

 

The many just-right parameters that allow Earth to support life – “the distance from the sun, the rotation rate, the amount of water, the tilt, gravity that lets gases like methane escape but allows oxygen to stay.” 

 

On that last note, another scientist set the number of conditions needed for life at 322. 

 

Strobel asked Strauss what God can logically be like if he is the most likely explanation for our universe and planet. He replied with an eight-fold answer: God is transcendent, immaterial, timeless, powerful, intelligent, personal, creative, and caring.

 

The chaos in the daily news might cause you to doubt the existence of a personal and caring God. But if I look away from the headlines and focus on creation around me, I can only stand in awe that the Earth is filled not with chaos, but with so much finely tuned order. 

 

Beautiful Karla and I recently hiked in Big Sur. We parked on Highway 1. Fifty yards to the west the jagged, rocky coast was battered by foamy, crashing waves. The sea was a deep, cobalt blue. Otters swam in the kelp forests and pelicans scanned the water for lunch, flying in a perfect V formation. To the east, we hiked into a densely wooded canyon along a meandering stream and through a towering redwood forest. Both unseen from the road. Drivers zoomed by on the highway totally unaware of the magical beauty of the canyon nestled a few steps away. 

 

It was some seriously finely tuned beauty.

 

In the same way as a radio and the universe have been finely tuned, I think it’s important to fine-tune our gratitude.

 

Like cars speeding by on the highway, we can tend to zip through our days focused on the chaos in our lives: the worries, the problems, and the anxieties. Slowing down to fine-tune our gratitude helps bring order to the chaos. Finding time for solitude and silence have been massively helpful to me in managing life’s pressures. These moments of quiet are essential. In the morning before the family awakes. Driving to work. A walk around the neighborhood or along the beach. 

 

During these times I try to fine-tune my gratitude. I like to pinpoint the things for which I’m thankful and then try take thanksgiving a few layers deep. I see not just the trees, but the various shades of green. Have you even been thankful for chlorophyl and photosynthesis? Not just the flowers, but the dozens of differences among them. Not just my health, but my eyes, and all the parts and inner workings going on to allow me to see the words on this screen. How about pollination, the water cycle, and the various spices that combine to make today’s stuffing, gravy, and pumpkin pie so delicious? 

 

I think they’re all gifts of God’s grace.

 

Try it yourself. Make a list of the top 10 things for which you’re thankful. Then, add five items under each 10 that are also deserving of gratitude. Pretty soon you’ll have a finely tuned list of 50 things. A flow-chart of thanksgiving. 

 

The photo above stops Thomas Merton’s quote short. It should read, “To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us – and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.”

 

Sounds like Merton, a priest and author, knew something about finely tuned gratitude.

 

Here’s hoping you do too.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words, are two pictures worth two thousand words? 

 

I’m not sure, but during my recent trip to Africa, I was fortunate enough to take a picture that, when juxtaposed with another photo might combine to be worth a few hundred thousand words.

 

One picture is an image of joy and hope. The other is of despair and pain.

 

One is flowing with beauty; the other is stagnant with mud and dirt.

 

Two boys are drinking water. One from a new clean water well. The other from a brown puddle of sludge.

 

Both were taken in Mozambique.

 

In early August, I was in the rural Mozambican village of Nhangulo along with a team from my church (that included my wife and stepson). Our American missionaries Alex and Melanie Viana accompanied us, and our Mozambican Covenant Church leaders, pastors John and Maria Jone led the way. We were there to provide a hot meal, lead a VBS with the children, and inaugurate a recently installed clean water well. After all of the above was done, including serving heaping bowls of rice and beans to approximately 800 people, we were able to take a break and sit down for our own lunch. Serving hundreds of meals to people who struggle to eat that much food in a week was emotionally powerful. But seeing the new water well brought me the most joy. A main purpose of this trip was to capture photos of the well and video interviews with local Mozambicans about the water crisis they face.

 

The ministry I help lead, Life for Mozambique, has formed a new branch of focus called Water for Mozambique. WFM has been working, and more importantly, asking God for wells in Mozambique. We have a presence in nearly 600 Mozambican communities, and it is our desire to see each one have its own well. This was my first opportunity to see a water well in action, up close, and in person. I couldn’t have been more pumped. 

 

John kicked off the well’s inauguration ceremony by talking about how our goal isn’t to just take care of spiritual needs, but to also care of physical needs. Alex encouraged the community members to receive the well as a gift from God and to pause and express thanks to Him for remembering their physical needs. I then issued a charge for the people of the community to take good care of the well and to make sure it is in fine working order for a long, long time.

 

We were relaxing after our team lunch when I noticed some community women at the well washing dishes. This was my chance for some epic photos. I got some great close ups of beautiful hands under the clean water doing an everyday task in a now easier-than-before manner. I was excited for my photos. But then, shortly after returning to our table, I saw some children at the well. 

Photo op number 2, I thought.

Click. Images of little boys and girls filling buckets and washing dishes instantly saved to my phone. I was about to turn away, when a little boy of about four, sauntered up to the spigot like an old western cowboy bellying up to a bar. We locked eyes. 

 

He placed his left hand on the horizontal pipe. He bent at the waist, still staring at me. His bright pink shower shoes wet with the dripping water. Looking down, he cupped his right hand under the faucet and then he bent over even lower to drink directly from the water well. As he drank, he smiled, and he looked up at me again.

 

And I snapped his picture.

 

It reminded me of being kid myself, drinking from the garden hose after a fun day of sports and bike riding around the neighborhood. I thought about the millions of kids, not just in Mozambique, but worldwide who don’t have that privilege. But this little boy and the hundreds of others in Nhangulo now do. I thought he’s why we’re asking God for as many water wells as possible.

 

“Thank you,” the look in his eyes said. 

 

“No, thank you,” I whispered back.

 

On the bumpy ride back to town, I reflected on the photo of the boy and instantly thought of another picture, taken months ago by Pastor John. In it, another young boy, skinny and filthy, surrounded by dirt, is squatting before an orange-brown mud hole of a liquid that’s a stretch to call water. He’s in the process of bringing a white container to his lips. His hopeless stare is fixed on the distance, not at the camera or even at John. He looks lonely and afraid.

 

It's hard to look at. 

 

I thought, no, he’s why we need God to provide as many water wells as possible. 

Two pictures. One is a call for gratitude; the other is a call to action.

 

Seeing the water well in person was monumental, but it gets even better. The well is strategically placed next to our Covenant Church in Nhangulo. And what we learned from being there is that people are coming to the church because of the water well. To me this was completely unexpected. We just wanted to bring physical water to the thirsty people of Mozambique and God is using it to bring them to the living water of Jesus. Meeting physical needs is leading to opportunities to satisfy spiritual needs.

 

The day in Ngangulo was fantastic, but it was just one highlight of our trip. Another highlight was visiting a second community called Ceramica, which is next up to receive a well. I got to stand on the ground where the well is going to sit. We served another hot lunch and took some great videos of community members talking about how hard life is without water.

 

God has continued to provide in the two months since returning from Africa. A well that was funded last year was installed in mid-August. The well for Ceramica is now funded. Another, slated for a community called Messica is also funded. And a few weeks ago, a church in Duluth, MN held a one-day fundraiser for a well to celebrate its 135^th anniversary. Not surprisingly, because we have such a good God, the church gave enough to fully fund a well. Last weekend, a donor in Texas picked up the tab on another well.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s two wells installed this year, and four more ready to break ground.

 

Lord willing, I’ll be able to visit these wells in 2027. 

 

Because I’ve got a lot of pictures to take.

 

Bringing Water to a Dry Land

The new water well in Nhangulo.

A recent New York Times article about Fine Water gave me quite a chuckle. But it might not be a laughing matter to the 700,000,000 people worldwide who don’t have access to clean water. 

According to the article, Fine Water is a new, and expensive, way to get those all-important liquid hydrogen and oxygen molecules into your bloodstream. The Fine Water scene is flowing with water tasting contests, designer water bars, home water cellars, food and water pairings, and water sommelier courses. Some examples of Fine Water include melted snow that has been filtered through Peruvian volcanic rock, deep sea water collected off the coast of South Korea, and H2O gathered in nets from a Tasmanian pine forest. I’m guessing the water I drank from the backyard hose in the hot Michigan summers isn’t winning any awards. 

Nor would the muddy, bug-infested water that many Mozambicans spend hours collecting for their daily drinking, bathing, and cooking. The ministry I help lead, Life for Mozambique (LFM), is trying to change this. It’s our dream to see 500 clean water wells built across Mozambique.

 

LFM is headquartered in the city of Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique with about 650,000 residents. U.S. cities of similar populations are Seattle, Denver, and Memphis. At first, driving out of Beira into the country isn’t much different than driving through rural America. Paved streets become dusty and bumpy dirt roads. Suburban neighborhoods give way to fields, marshlands, and forests. Suddenly it feels like you’ve landed in the middle of nowhere. But it’s not nowhere. It’s somewhere for many, many Mozambicans. Because hidden from view and dotted throughout this rural countryside are communities filled with thousands of people. 

 

Head east on I-70 from Denver and the grasslands and the prairies quickly takeover. I once drove across Nebraska. It too felt like the middle of nowhere. Use your maps app to zoom in on eastern Colorado and it’s shocking how few tiny black dots there are. But those dots are there. It’s a somewhere to many Americans. For example, a hundred miles from Denver, there’s Limon, Colorado, a black dot town of three-square miles and 1,800 people. They have a La Quinta, a bowling alley, and an IHOP. There’s a golf course and Municipal Airport too. 

 

Zoom in on the area outside of Beira and there are few black dots as well. But here’s where the similarities stop and the differences take over. While the American Great Plains are peppered with single-family farms and ranches, rural Mozambique is filled with secluded villages and communities each populated with hundreds or even thousands of families.

 

I don’t have stats to verify this but there might actually be more people living in rural villages outside of Beira than in the 500 miles along I-70 between Denver and Topeka.

 

Another difference is that entering one of these villages is like going back in time or visiting the set of Gilligan’s Island. People live in straw and grass thatched huts, cook on fires outside the front door, and walk for hours to collect water. Limon, Colorado might be rural, but I don’t think there are any residents without running water. Every room in the La Quinta has a hot shower and you can easily request a glass of water with your flapjacks at the IHOP.

 

What’s amazing is that the Mozambican Covenant Church, which is supported by Life for Mozambique, has established churches in over 570 rural communities and villages. And each of them needs a clean water well.

 

Communities like Ceramica, which is home to over 850 families that use unreliable, impure hand-dug wells while hoping for a good rainy season to top them off. Or the village of Tica that has over 2,000 families. There, women and children walk for miles to collect dirty lake water. A similar plight is felt by the 1,000 families in a village called Lemego. Same goes for the 900 families in Nhangau. The list goes on and on.

 

I'm digging this digging rig.

There’s one community that can now be crossed off of the list. It’s a big community, not far from Beira, called Nhangulo. Over 3,800 families have been given a gift. The women are no longer walking 10 hours to collect water or contending with venomous snakes while traversing through the jungle. Because in April of this year Nhangulo received a deep, professionally dug, clean water well. Thirst is being quenched. Water is flowing where it was once scarce. 

Later this year the community of Marromeu will be receiving a well. Two wells a year is a great start, but it’s not rapidly moving the needle toward the goal of 500. It’s a scary dream, but dreams don’t work unless I do. So, I’ll keep working. And praying. The Nhangulo well was funded by a single generous donor. The Marromeu well was primarily financed by a couple at a partner church. They sold off some stocks and, instead of birthday gifts, requested money for the well from friends and family. The Ceramica well will be funded by year’s end, helped by a $2,500 gift from a couple in northern California. They saw a mention of Life for Mozambique’s water well projects in a prayer calendar and inquired how to financially help out. 

 

In August I’m going to Mozambique. I’ll be able to visit Nhangulo and we’ll inaugurate its well with prayers, food, and a ceremony. Then we’ll be heading to Ceramica. What a priceless joy to meet the people who will soon receive a well. 

Each well costs about $10K to install. Multiply that by 500 and we need to raise quite a sum. Water from a deep, professionally dug well is clean and pure enough to drink without any additional treatment. It doesn’t have to be boiled or filtered through Peruvian volcanic rock. How amazing that something so vital is directly underground. It just needs to be brought to the surface. 

I doubt it will win an award at next year’s Fine Water competition, but to the people of Mozambique, it will be the best thing they’ve ever tasted.

The finished well.