... and look where that got me!

Just some goofy stuff for today:

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film.

He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.

I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.

Bumper Sticker: Honk if you love peace and quiet.

My fave: Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?

Nothing is foolproof to the sufficiently talented fool.

I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.

and... my teenage daughter's favorite bumper sticker sighting here in Colorado: "I march to my own accordian".

... about living out Jesus' message in my life.

OK, I've been doing a lot reading lately in my preparation for lessons on the Sermon on the Mount. Most everything has been, at the least, helpful. Some things I have read bothered me, in a this-is-not-what-Jesus-is-saying-is-it? sort of way, and still other material was incredibly transformational for me. Some of this stuff that I have read may be too late to imcorporate into this round of lessons from the Master. Somehow I have a feeling this won't be the last that my congregation hears from me on the Kingdom of Heaven. I want to share some more from Rick McKinley's This Beautiful Mess in a section entitled "Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom" (he is a bit negative here but his point is made - sorry for the length):

"When I compared the vision for life in the kingdom that Jesus put forth in the Gospels with the experience I had at church as a new Christian, I noticed a discrepancy. Jesus' fresh perspectives on money, suffering, justice, love had been refashioned into a tidy way of life for those who did their best to convey that they no longer needed much of what he had to say.

At eighteen, I sensed the problem without quite being able to say it. In all the tidiness, the wonder of the gospel of Jesus seemed to be disappearing. As a new convert, I was alive in that wonder. It was changing my life. But lookoing around, I realized that most of Jesus' followers lived pretty much like everyone else - except we hoped for heaven. The Christian life began to look like one long waiting game of Bible studies and boring parties. If I was lucky, a bus would hit me and I'd go straight to heaven. Until then the kingdom life I was reading about in the Gospels would have to wait.

I felt disappointed - like I had entered into C.S. Lewis's wardrobe, full of anticipation, but instead of standing in a magical place with fawns and witches and every kind of possibility, I had somehow managed to walk through the wardrobe and into a dentist's office. People sat around reading magazines and asking me to calm down, to be quiet, to take a seat. They said it very nicely, of course, like you would in a dentist's office. The place was clean, with polite smiles everywhere, sterile smells, and bad Muzak. What are you supposed to do in a waiting room except try to kill time? I did a lot of that. I killed time in college groups. In church. In Bible college. I even killed time as a pastor.

But leaning back in my chair one day I realized that the walls of a waiting room were actually papr-thin. Behind the veil of Western evangelicalism existed an untamed, revolutionary reality. The world on the other side of the wardrobe did exist, I realized. You just have to tear down the fake walls first, kill the fake music, and let yourself go crashing with newborn, wide-eyed anticipation out into the world.

And there it is all around you. The kingdom of God.

What would happen if we recaptured appropriate wonder at the present reality of the kingdom? What if we could see it and could collaborate with the Spirit as it breaks into our world? What if we discovered the simple miracle of participating with God in his kingdom and practicing the presence of it all around us?

Practicing the presence of the kingdom changes how we see the world, our neighbors, and ourselves. It changes the way we use money, understand children, and play in creation. It causes us to stop and listen, see, touch, taste, and feel. The kingdom is found in justice breaking in all around us, in the beauty in the midst of the mess.

The kingdom also calls us to to be signposts along the road of life, pointing to the reality of heaven and our King. It calls us to hold that sign up among those who suffer. The kingdom shows up, and we stand in the midst of their suffering with them and declare that they are loved.

That kind of signpost, showing up all over the place.

This is the kind of articulation I have been looking for to explain the kingdom. Something not safe. Something not comfortable. I only hope I can break through those walls myself. As Mike Cope calls it, we are "The church that has left the building".

... about turning around ...

Here's a great excerpt from a book I'm reading by Rick McKinley called This Beautiful Mess:

"To repent means to turn around, to stop what you are doing and do the opposite. To repent means that even though you used to assume one thing was true, you know it's all wrong - all wrong - and you will now believe and act upon something totally different. Repent is a good, strong word, full of hope and new beginnings. In the context of Jesus' kingdom, repent is an invitation to another world, another life, a way of being that was supposed to be all along and can be now.

To repent is to say to God: "I'm blind. I don't see, but I want to. Please show me your heart in everything."

Good thoughts from a good book so far. He also wrote Jesus in the Margins, another good one.

... OK, I'm committed to blogging more often now....

Thanks to a friend that blogs every day, I am re-committing myself to blogging "more often". You can quote me on that. I was up to blogging 5-6 days a week. I have trouble blogging on Sundays... hmmm... wonder why. I'll try to do better (OK, Simba?).

Here's some random stuff for now:

- Do we really know how far a compliment will go for someone? I was reminded this week of something I said to someone almost ten years ago. They still remembered the positive words and it affected them and helped them change some bad habits. I forgot. Now I will remember to be more generous with my compliments.

- My two older kids are sports nuts. My wife blames me. Can I help it if they want to watch SportsCenter in the morning before school? Can I help it if my oldest daughter has the Michigan fight song as her ringtone? I guess I can help it. I'm the one that encouraged it. It's fun, though. I get to attend all of their games, cheer them on... I love it (And the wife is getting into it too).

- The only people Jesus came down hard on in scripture, it was the religious insiders, the ones who should know better. He gave them very little wiggle room or slack. He expected more. He was compassionate, loving, and merciful to the outsiders, the marginal folk, the ones no one wanted to hang around. Do we do that? Sometimes I get the impression that we have it the other way around. People that differ from us in their lifestyle, their life choices, their moral choices - we stay away (we may throw a legislation against them, but that is another post)entirely), we even move away. I see Jesus moving TOWARD these people.

Lord, help me to move toward the marginalized, the poor, the outcasts... help me to do as you did... Help me to be merciful, compassionate, loving...

... about why people are so lonely?

(This painting is called "Sheltering Tree" by Rosalyn Jacobs)

Well, after only a few posts during October (I didn't realize there were so few, sorry), I have decided to get back into the daily blogging habit. Here's a topic to start the month out with:

According to a 2004 study recently published in American Sociological Review, one in four Americans has no close friends in whom to confide matters of personal importance. Coleridge said that friendship was like a sheltering tree. In our lifetime I guess it might be more like a sheltering tree in the high plains (hey, it's where I live): not many find them. Chuck Swindoll in his book about David wrote some powerful things about friendship. He explained that David needed some people to rely on when his family and his kingdom were falling apart. They were like those sheltering trees. They were friends that were in it for the long haul. Swindoll went on to say that:

- Friends are not optional; they’re essential
- Friends are not automatic; they must be cultivated

- Friends are not neutral; they impact our lives

- Friendships come in varying degrees, some of whom play more significant roles in our life than others.

I am thankful for the friends I have had for the long haul. You know who you are.

Friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble.
(Proverbs 17:17)

Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.
(Proverbs 18:24)