Holding Our Little Breath

Have you ever witnessed a young child hold their breath in defiance of their parents? Like holding your breath is going to force your mom to capitulate her demands. We’ve all done it. We demand our way, attempting to impose our will upon any (and many) given situation. We stomp and curse and plead to be heard. We are right! We deserve our “rightness” to be recognized! Listen to me, I’ve been taken advantaged of, I’ve been hurt, I’ve been dishonored and I AM RIGHT!!

I think God chuckles like many parent do under their breath, turning away suddenly to conceal their smile. Is life really about being right? Your temper is showing little boy, my distant mother’s words whisper in my memory.

Do I have to be right? Do you? Is that life’s most important purpose or are we just using it (our rightness) to cover up our insecurities? Can I be right and loving, motivated by grace? Can I be wronged and love?
Often our righteous finger quickly point out the thoughtless choices of others.

Let us grow up in love for all people, especially those who have wronged us because it defines who we’ve become so far.

Vacation Tyme

Well I had a few days off and my bride and I slipped away for a time away in the wonderful little “Bavarian” Village of Frankenmuth, MI. (See Picture) We had a good time hanging out together and eating and "fo" shopping. "Fo" because we didn’t really buy anything, unless you count a couple of Christmas presents and my Popular Science magazine. (I bought it for the “NASA’s Secret Space Plan” article.) We also managed to see a flick - “Flightplan” and it was better than I had anticipated, which always moves movies up in the rating department for me. I score all pictures on a ten point system and Flightplan gets a 7.1 “Craig Points”. Now we are home and things are “normal again,” well, today anyway.

ceNTer

We’ve made the celebration of Communion one of the centerpieces of what we do on Sunday mornings, every Sunday morning. Someone asked me this morning before our celebration time why we had made that decision, they were seemingly uncomfortable with the move. I explained that the celebration of the Eucharist was central to who we are as Christ followers and vital to spiritual formation.
For this particular assembly Peter (He's the lead Pastor) had decided that we were going to set the cross in the center of the gathering place with the chairs around it. Cool Idea. The communion elements were set on the two tables that the eight foot cross was on top of, with candles aglow all around. The invitation was given for people to come up to the cross, if they liked, during a song to reflect and pray. Dozens of people came and prayed and wept and sought God. It was very moving for me. Tears streamed down my face as one man helped a wheel chair bound man receive the meal. People were all over silently crying out for Jesus. People are crying out for love. All around the cross the wounded came and received. I was blown away. Thanks.

A Listening Funeral

There aren’t many times when we as a people will stop and really listen. No, I mean, REALLY LISTEN. Life is lived at such breakneck speeds and our ears aren’t tuned for this kind of pace. We need to slow to hear. Slow to hear from family, to hear from friends and to hear even from those we don’t like all that much. Slow especially to hear from God.

I think one of the unsurpassed ways God uses to get our attention, to slow down in life, is death.

I was in a Roman Catholic Church today for a funeral. I was encouraged by all of the ways that this particular community had for people to hear. The art on the walls, scenes in the stained glass windows, the Priest that spoke with compassion, the many symbols in the gathering time - all aided thirsty ears. I cried when the alumni from the school came forward to sing and honor their former classmate who had suddenly passed.

Funerals are such a great opportunity to be awestruck by the love of God in Jesus.

My friend and co-worker Peter said to me recently that no one wants to hear a sermon at a wedding but everyone listens at a funeral. I like the statement so much I have adopted it into my life. From now on my wedding messages are going to be happier and short! And funeral talks will speak so aching ears, that have slowed for a moment, can experience the love of Jesus, maybe for the first time.

Dreamland

I have always been a curios person. Wondering how things work has consumed many a day in my life. I loved letting my mind wander to great and glorious adventures with my newly created inventions that often saved mankind from the brink of another disaster. It’s hard work being a super smart, super strong, amazingly attractive, super hero! Every once in a while my mother rudely burst that bubble telling me that I was living in a dream world, which, by the way, I loathed hearing. But she, in her infinite wisdom was right, as moms often are and I was clueless as to where that mindset would lead me. Throughout my life I have had a difficult time moving between those two realities and that has caused a fair amount of pain for me and those around me.

On occasion, when I was very young, my two brothers and I would get invited down to my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bill’s house near Toledo, Ohio. My aunt always seemed happy and excited when we would come down greeting us with big juicy kisses on the cheek. She would let us play in there very big house that had a really cool barn out in the back with gigantic horses. There property, allowed the horses room to run, bordered up to the Maumee River where we boys discovered hours of fun along it banks.

My Uncle Bill was a cool guy he was paralyzed in World War Two and confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. I guess it was caused by shrapnel that had somehow pierced his spine. However his handicap did not keep him from enjoying life. He would drive his specially equipped Cadillac convertible at high speeds over small hills to give us boys the feeling that we were going to be thrown from the vehicle, grabbing our stomachs that had filled with butterflies, giggling and thanking God for gravity the whole time. Uncle Bill also had a six wheeled off road vehicle that could instantly turn a complete circle and go effortlessly from land to water. We had great times chasing his horses in that buggy. My Aunt, as it turns out, was a thrill seeker in her own right, because one of the reasons that we would go to Ohio was to experience the thrill of Cedar Point, which I am still hooked on to this day.

As we gathered around the table for dinner on one of our exciting visits to their house I distinctly remember easing into one of my dream modes during adult conversation. I started wondering if my Uncle Bill was faking it. Maybe the entire time he had been back from the war riding around in a wheel chair he was really just pretending. Hey, I was six or seven and I had no clue as to what that would actually mean. In my dream world, I saw people congratulating me for exposing the faker and helping their lives. I could be the hero, again!

So my plan was not to speak out against the man, but instead I would just test him. So around the table we all gathered, my parents, my brothers, Aunt Kathy, Uncle Bill and me. I positioned myself next to Uncle Bill and was laughing along with everyone else, but secretly I was on a covert mission with worldwide implications. While I was laughing with my face, my hands under the tablecloth were secretly moving closer to his wheelchair. I had obtained a pin from somewhere in the house and when the moment was ripe I reached over and stuck him in the leg. I have to say, much to my surprise, nothing happened.

It felt really weird to poke someone with a sharp object and not have them move. I had done it to my brothers before and later in my life, I made blow darts and torpedoed them into the back of a classmate’s leg. In all of those instances they had reacted completely different. I guess he wasn’t faking after all and I wasn’t going to be saving the world from anyone. Just then a surge of panic washed over me like the air on a roller coaster. What had I done? What if I had stuck my handicapped uncle in an artery, could he bleed to death? Instantly I observed myself in handcuffs, going to jail forever, or even worse; the death penalty! I told myself to stay clam as I quickly excused myself to the bathroom and flushed the evidence down the toilet, never telling anyone what I had done. Surely I had escaped the watchful eyes of my parents and I was in the clear.

At first dreamland seems significantly easier than reality. It’s warm, comfortable and to our making. We get to be the master of our universe. We get to be in control. We get whatever we want. In our mind it is perfect. The real problem is that dreamland can be a lot of things, but it can never be real. The world that we currently occupy is a soberingly real world. Maybe, in truth, dreamland is a dangerous dimension for our mind to live in, while our body clearly occupies this reality. This is a life lesson that I have had to repeat countless times, and all the while hearing the distant chorus of my mother’s tender voice about the dangers of living in dreamland.
Over thirty five years later I would like to tell my Uncle that I am sorry, but in this real world he died about fifteen years ago. I know that He died with a real pin-pricked scar in his left leg from a little boy who spent far too much time living in dreamland.

One Fine Day

The weather is beautiful and sunny. The clear water reflects the blue of the sky and the wind gently rustles the trees on the white sandy beach. The hammock that I lay in gently rocks while my right foot drags through the cool sand and grass. The book that I am reading has fallen off my chest and my hat is covering my eyes. I am barely awake. Children are laughing in the water and my wife is laying in the sun trying to coax her burn into a perfect bronze tan. Ah, summer.
Now that it’s gone, do you miss it?

How many people will pass through our lives like those long past summer days? How many times have I ignored someone or simply didn’t take an extra second to notice them, until they were gone? I cringe to think at the countless number of people that I could have, should have, loved with a smile, an open door or with a simple conversation. I ran into a young woman a few weeks ago at a local super-store. I had met her before but I couldn’t remember her name. I thought that she was someone else and I felt awkward. She was selling multi packs of toothbrushes and I wasn’t in the mood for any. With some small talk I went on my way in search of, well, I don’t even remember what was so important. What I totally missed was the purpose for that encounter and more importantly, the person in it.
Being a Monday morning quarterback is easy, isn’t it? All those things in life that we could have done differently, but didn’t are easy to change after the fact, but we can’t.

God could you afford me the grace of being more aware of people because, after all, they are the reason that Jesus came. They are the reason that Jesus suffered that gruesome hell. Yet far too often, like a warm summer breeze, they are gone before you realize and they aren’t coming back anytime soon.

A Question

Here is a question for you all: What are some of the ways that you have experienced the biggest growth in your faith?

Quote-A-Matic

Archbishop William Temple said in response to being accused of holding certain beliefs about God because of the way he was raised (as many claim to be the source of religion's continuing impact upon societies), he responded, "That is as it may be. But the fact remains that you believe I believe what I believe because of the way I was brought up, because of the way you were brought up."