Trip to Wichita Thoughts

1) For kids a plane ride is like a forced time-out... For hours.

2) Rains and floods!

3) We're gonna do a wedding reception every other week. 

4) U2. The Joshua Tree. Vinyl. Awesome.

5) Flying busses in the sky.

6) eat. Eat. EAT!

7) Tiger the lion

8) Seeing friends and family!

9) Did I mention we ate a lot?

10) Bangs! For the wife, I didn't get bangs. Bangs would be weird on a guy. Real weird.

11) We sat down in row 16 on the plane, which would've been fine, but we were in row 19... So we changed to row 18, which also would've been fine, but we were in row 19. Yes, we've flown all over the world multiple times but can't get our row right.

12) "... When I look at that God, the God of Abraham, I feel I'm near a real god, not the sort of dignified, businesslike, Rotary Club God we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. Abraham's God could blow a man to bits, give and then take a child, ask for everything from a person, and then want more. I want to know that God." B. Manning.

13) The Ragamuffin Gospel. Read it.

This God of the Mundane

I finally got my copy of The God of the Mundane in the mail on Friday. Theoretically I should be done reading its 73 pages by now – but I’m not. There’s too much to it. To read this tiny book quickly would be to miss the point.

I remember a time in my life when I would read at least three books a week, and we’re talking 200-300 page puppies. Then came the first short little book that took my life wrapped it around a tree and sent it in another direction, Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

This book now, this God of the Mundane book, is compiling thoughts, conversations, and personel wrestles that have been warring in my soul for some 18 months and making them spoken, no, making them written - which is more solid than the fleeting fluttering words of the mouth. And others are reading these words too.

My dad and I have a saying about good books, that their introductions are usually worth the price of the book - that's the case here.

Here’s a snippet,

“So many pastors today, famous and otherwise, are asking young people and everyone else if they are willing to give it all and go overseas as a missionary. It’s not a bad question to ask. There is no question in my mind that this question needs to be out there. But they – or someone – also needs to ask, ‘Are you willing to be numbered among the nameless believers in history who lived in obscurity? Do you have the courage to be forgotten by everyone but God and the heavenly host? Are you willing to be found only by God as faithful right where you are? Are you willing to have no one write a book about you and what you did in the name of Christ? Are you willing to live and believe – in stark contrast to the world around you – there is a God of the Mundane?’”

Rich Mullins is playing the background; I made cookie dough tonight; and there is a God of this mundane moment where I’m just another broken hearted kid aiming at loving that God of the mundane and extraordinary with all this little heart can bare. So I’ll go read Lord of the Rings and pray for my future family because God is here.

Pastoral Resignation

This morning I read a letter to the church I worked at and help start over the past three years. In that letter I announced my resignation from being a pastor. It was and has been a difficult time for me to process through much of the weight, emotions, frustrations, and worries that have come with and been a part of this decision – a decision that has been developing over the past six months.

In short it is time for me to rest.To remember the gospel which for the past six years of my life has been either a semi-professional or professional job for me. But the gospel isn’t a professional calling. No, it’s so much more and less than that. It’s more because it’s what doctors and lawyers and bankers and moms and dads and college students and grad students and nurses alike cling to for hope and joy and peace. And it’s less because it’s the simplicity of child like faith and awe; because its burden is easy and yoke is light; because it’s the symphony of grace and mercy. The gospel isn’t some ware to be pervade or sold; it is the treasure in the field for which we sell all out of joy.

Many sleepless nights and desperate cries to the darkness (and my steering wheel) have filled my life these past months. Talks with family, friends, a counselor, my doctor, and the elders as well as the impressing leading of God have brought me to this grueling decision. It hurts to – for this next season - lay down the pastoral role. Do I still feel a deep and abiding calling? No, I feel a deep and abiding passion for proclaiming the gospel. Callings are good, they give a sense of direction, but it’d be better put to feel a burning passion for the gospel rather than a call for ministry. While a call to vocational ministry is desired, before any of that who-haw can be true there must be a love for the gospel of grace of which I am a partaker and chiefly in need of. That though my sins be great, my God is greater. That while my treachery runs deep, His love runs deeper. That in the midst of loss Jesus is my comforter.

            Thus I am no longer a pastor at a church.

Friday's Thoughts

1) It's nice to have a game plan.

2) Really want to see Cloud Atlas (perhaps tonight?).

3) WSU president Dr. John Bardo taught my class last night. It was stupid cool. We got out early.

4) My family is the best.

5) Had a chat with my advisor on Wednesday, she laid out some handy things for next semester.

6) Went to jail yesterday - they let me leave like 45mins later.

7) Sometimes, sooner or later, you just got to ask for help.

8) "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

9) Found a CD of bagpip hymns. Talk about inspiring and soul music and good - allatthesametime.

10) There is but one thing to do when one doesn't know where to go or what to say - it is to drop to kneel and let the groaning of one's inward being (that being one truly is) come forth. For in that moment words are not enough and would merely cheapen the depth of the brokenness one feels. To let, as it were, God, though knowing all, see in one's groans the pains of sin, the depravity of the world, and the utter reality of it all which is now seen itself within the unveiled eyes of the one who groans. It is to confer with the almighty in a way, which is nearest to how it was in the garden - that is to say it is a deeper understanding of what the Other in the relationship sees and knows.

Yet it does not end there, for while one is capable of seeing and knowing - in part - the sin which besets one's soul God has not left him there. Though at the point of rock bottom, though unable to stand because of the shattering effects of the fall, though the groans communicate revilement and the understanding of just damnation, though one feels like anything else in all of creation should seperate one from the love Christ Jesus, He - the One from the cool of the garden, the One from the firey bush, the One from the cross, the One who indwells us says, while picking us up from our stupor,

"Who shall seperate you from my love? Shall tribulation? No. Shall distress? No. Shall persecution? No. Shall famine? No. Shall nakedness? No. Shall danger? No. Shall sword? No. No, in all these things you are more than a conqueror in me, because I love you. Be sure of this: neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate you from my love. Nothing."

The Re-arrange

Things, it seems, have been re-prioritized in my life over the last couple months.

I would’ve told you I was perfectly content with life a few months ago, saying things like, “When God does... but I’m not going to go searching for…” Working hard and sleeping harder, time with family and with friends all of it seemed just dandy.

Then things changed.

Something out of left field came streaming across the seemingly beautiful horizon of my contentedness, which contrasted deeply against the normal and shook the stupor from my eyes and the apathetic content from my bones. That blazing ball of light, which stunned me and scared me, awake, it seems.

Here’s my point in writing the above, and it is a simple point: God is in control.

Yes, that is all. There’s no need to relay any overly flowery words with eloquence and syntax of old, just to point to a small and solid fact, God is in control and we are not.

In contentedness he reigns and in the re-arrange he’s ruling. Classes, family, friends, the future, the past, the now, the all-of-life it’s his.

Which ought to be freeing thing rather than a binding thing. Something to give us a bounce to our step and nearly care-free demeanor, because we know that God is in control and we are living in what he knows is best for us. 

(Wichita Eagle file photo)

Sitting at Death's Door

There’s a chair, it’s a big soft one, sitting in the corner of the coffee shop. It’s inhabited by all kinds of folks throughout a day. Youngsters reveling with friends, older men reading the paper, a man receiving news of a relative’s death.

He’d probably just been to the hospital or nursing home, saying his final goodbye. Coming here to get away and, ‘work,’ which was really just an excuse to not be in the room at the same time as Death.

He’d probably met Death before in some dark alley a world away or in an open street fighting a war for someone else’s freedom explaining his reticence to be around it when it came knocking this close. Trying to forget the final gasps, trying to loose himself in something, anything else.

His phone rang, sounding like a funeral march in his ears. He answered. It was done. They were gone. There was nothing left for him to do but to marvel at the sun that shown on his back and feel the heat of the day, the warmth of life.

The same call had been made before, the call of death.

But instead of being made with a phone it was made with nails and a spear. The thud of the hammer and the thrust of the spear spilled and spelled certain seemingly unalterable death for its victim.

The family wept. The friends sat in their chairs and stared in unbelievable disbelief at some unfocused distant point.

But soon they would know what the man in the chair at the coffee shop knew death isn’t a vault anymore, it’s a revolving door. The one they wept for would shatter the vault’s door leaving alive and free to reign.

The Worst Christmas

"O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer

Our spirits by Thine advent here

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

And death's dark shadows put to flight."

Christmas time! What with all the trees, lights, gifts, family and friends is always an exciting time of year. As a kid dreaming of what might be in those boxes under the tree you helped mom and dad decorate. Bundling up like Eskimos to go to school. Sipping apple cider with a favorite book in your hand.

The dark mornings and the darker evenings, the cold nights and the freezing car rides (or at least until the heater gets going), singing the music of this time of year.

The music. It's always extremely interesting to me, I used to not like it, but now - after reading Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia - this music draws me to remember the moments leading up to the enemies demise.

The deep breath before the plunge of battle. When warriors courageously died for what would come if the evil one fell. When sword and shield were shattered and rattled in pursuit of freedom.

It’s right to see this time of year in this light. For from the beginning of time the prophecies, the promises, and the people of God yearned for the coming deliverer. One who would cause the stronghold of the enemy to shiver in fear, to quake at their final abolishment and defeat.

All the great stories take their bow to this idea, this theme:

“I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.” (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)

Christmas is the worst thing that ever happened to the devil, thank God.

Thankful Gratitude

I’m usually opposed to writing about trending topics, but this Thanksgiving I’m making exception cause writing about being thankful makes me more thankful.

So here they are (order has nothing to do here) some things I’m thankful for:

1. The new/focused job. I went from Elder to Deacon, From Community Pastor to Communication/Connection Pastor, and I’m stoked about this. Someday there’ll be a series of posts chronicling the exact reasons for this change.

2. Family. If you’ve met my family you know why I’m thankful for them, their odd, quirky and deeply in love with Jesus. Plus they all speak fluent sarcasm (well… my sister may not, but she’s becoming, “culturally relevant.”)

3. Literature. Dracula > me (I couldn’t do it, too scary for my lil self. And reading scury stuff before bed was not a good idea) The Three Musketeers = Amazing (so far).

4) Writing. Having a blog is dang therapeutic for me.

5) Scripture. Without it there is no message, there is nothing to proclaim. For in it we know of Jesus and his Gospel.

6) Music. Yes, Taylor Swift is a favorite of mine. Her words get to me. And she is seems to be a rather classy woman.

7) Words. Without them I have nothing to say, nothing to write and no way of relaying my deepest passions. Shoot, I couldn’t even say ‘hello.’ Which means I should watch how I use words.

8) Friends. Who listen and care. Who stand beside me and proclaim truth with me.

There was a thought recently, one, which has continued to reoccur in my mind. In this thought I am an old man sitting near a fire recounting the life I’ve lived. Thinking back and being able to say, ‘I’ve done that.’ Not from a proud perspective, but from a humbled view. To be unworthy of the capability of doing what was done.

But, I suppose, the catch should be this: in our thankfulness and in our doings there should be little obligation but much gratitude. For none of this is deserved. Because God rains down mercy, for now.

A List for Monday

1) I want to watch/read ALL The Lord of the Rings again (really, mostly this is an all-the-time feeling).

2) Twilight fans: watch this he has better reasons for not liking it than me.

3) "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes the only God?" John 5:44

4) As a single dude, I think being a loving father and loving one (1) woman for all of life is a thousand times more noble & honorable than gun fights, sword fights & church leading.

5) Thanksgiving! I will spend most of my days off reading this scary book... I have to read it when the sun is up.

6) I was bored half way through the latest Transformer movie. Like real bored.

7) New location for Journey the Way was *ahem* Saweet!

8) Literature is, for me, a gift of God to my over active mind.

9) I now have curtains at my house & if I do say so myself, they look wonderful. (I also steamed them to get the wrinkles out, does that make me odd?)

10) Coffee + pumkiny goodies with cream cheese iceing = heavenly.

Fight to Love

“Fight the good fight of faith.” Paul said it; I use it at the end of e-mails, Facebook messages and letters. But what does it mean? Sure it means, fight the good fight of faith, but more than that simplistic definition what does it mean for our lives? Let me tell you how I think.

I like to romanticize things, it’s a way of coping, I suppose. You see, if I think about something in terms of a story than I am much more apt to be appreciative of them, it or whatever. So when I read, “Fight the good fight of faith,” my instant thought is, “God knows how to talk to my brain – Duh.”

Look at it like this, rather than the monotony of the drudge of simplistic life see it as war. Well, really, believers should be seeing every moment as a war.

In each corner of our lives we are struggling against an enemy who is very much apart of us. We cannot escape his ruse, for a part of us wants his ruse to win. Striving to push back the fall but failing all the while.

Fight the good fight of faith doesn’t mean strive to live perfectly. It means fight to believe. Fight to see Jesus as sufficient. Fight to see this life as war. Fight to see this war as won but not yet over. Fight to love your family. Fight to cherish your friends. Fight to see a sip of coffee as worship. Fight to believe.

All of everyday of each moment of our lives will be – as Christians – a battle to see any of this Jesus stuff as wonderful. Sure we believe it, but we simultaneously don’t. So to see this life, this belief as easy, is quite frankly, to not know Christ. For why else would it be called a fight if it was really a cake-walk?