epic

I went on a journey once it was a backpacking journey in which I hiked 63 miles in 6 days. Yet, in reality, the journey also included the almost 500 hundred miles we drove in our cars and a sea plane ride of almost 40 minutes just to get to Isle Royale. But we couldn’t exclude from the journey the long ride home after another plane ride. Also, I spent about six months getting into shape for this trip as well. Lifting weights and walking, planning. If I thought about the previous years that I gained experience, gathered equipment and grew in desire for such an adventure. And back even further in my life, somewhere a seedling was planted that grew a desire to spend time outside. All of that time too was part of the quest.

If you would consider for a few moments with me, I would like to propose that the whole of your life so far has been a journey of moments that build upon past experiences that brings you to this very time in your life. People, places, time, all have intertwined to create your reality. You didn’t start your journey someone else did. You had no say in its creation. Beautiful or tragic, happy or miserable, everyone conceived makes a journey. Some for a few seconds, some for a hundred years. We have different start times. We have different ending places. We live in different locations around the globe. Yet we all journey through this life. Why is this concept so crucial to get a hold of? I do believe, more and more, that none of the days that we encounter, or live through, is a waste. They all have impacted us somehow on this journey.

Furthermore if I consider throughout this journey an intertwined spiritual reality, that I come to a place where I believe that the One who started my life, has a purpose for it, a reason for me being, rather than a collection of random molecules, that spiritual journey started somewhere as well.

The Bible says that this work of spiritual awakening is the job of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God at work in the world, on the people of the world, through the people of the world, everyday. Everyday the Holy Spirit guides people’s lives by tugging on hearts, providing opportunities, and life situations on an individual, personal level throughout the world, through out time. Molding people like a river forms the riverbanks sometimes with a trickle, or drought, and other times with a roar. I happened to have been given early exposure to Jesus through the Holy Spirit which led me to other experiences that chiseled some of the places that needed to be moved. I have plotted against God working in my life, which God knew that I would. I have spent time cooperating with the things God desires for me and have walked way too many miles in circles, refusing to learn in this gift of time.

I am not worried that there are people around me in my life today that could give a crap about what I am saying, that could care less about God. On one level I am ok with that. I guess that I am learning to be O.K. with that primarily because I am not responsible for your journey with God. I am but one little, barely remember able speck in your life’s trek.

I am less at ease with the idea that you many don’t care because they cannot see the big picture. I’ve been down the road a while longer than many of you and I want more for you than I had. I want to help you awaken to God’s reality sooner in your life. It’s like your floating headfirst down the river where around the bend in your life are some rough waters, some falls and rapids that will test you beyond what you can bear on your own.

You are on an epic journey called life. Enter the journey and awaken to the possibilities today!

The Sacrament Of Pain - part III “Amputation”

"If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” Matthew 5:29

Wow, Jesus, you really are out there aren’t you?

If your eye causes you to sin gouge it out…. Yikes!, in other words suffer pain here to get a grip on the depths of your sin before it’s too late. Jesus says that we should cause pain to our body to rid ourselves of the idea that sin is sweet or even tolerable. Gouge out an eye. Dig it out of your head. Rip it from its nerves rather than believe that rebellion is ok. Is Jesus saying that we should use self inflicted pain to help us to become more like him?

Yea, I think he is.

Yes, I understand that he is effectively using hyperbole and we ought not be cutting of our limbs in some ritualistic manner, yet when was the last time you or I have intentionally and voluntarily caused pain in our life so that we could embrace Christ? When was the last time we have given up a comfort just to help someone? Have chosen “less” so someone else could have “some”? Have decided to make due and not pursue the American dream so others will be somewhat relieved. Maybe instead of grabbing for the gusto we change our thinking in real and practical ways that will impact others through our small dyings.

Recently I have instructed students to get practical in the way that they follow Jesus by serving people. I used the S.N.O.T. analogy service plan. Serving should be Simple, Needed, Ordinary, Today kind of stuff. Simple things need to be done all of the time in everyone’s life. Take out the trash, clean the toilet, etc. Not only simple things, but needed things, things that make a difference in someone’s life. Ordinary is a great way to serve, you don’t have to fly to the other side of the world to go on a mission trip for goodness sakes, start in your ordinary world and start Today!

Yes that will leave a mark!

Man do I have a long way to go!

Sunset Reflection

I was given the high privilege of seeing another sunset just the other day. I will assign it the number 2106. I was on a beach in Canada playing football with some acquaintances and some friends. It was cool and a bit windy as the sun burst through the many clouds. The waves gently rolled onto the shore. It was a beautiful burnt orange and pinkish sunset, swirled with a host of other colors glimmering off of the cool October waters. I didn't pause long enough to appreciate it because we were involved in a heated man-game of foozeball and that my friends, is a glaring reflection of my life.

The Sacrament of Pain part II “The Curse”

For whatever reason hunting season brought me injury. It wasn’t any hunting accidents that caused the hurt, but for three years in a row, when my dad went up north to hunt white tail deer, I got injured. One year a couple of friends and I were chasing a classmate around the huge school yard of Angell Elementary School in Berkley, Michigan. As he ran around the outside fence I climbed it to cut him off at the pass. This was a six foot high, chain link fence that encircled the entire grounds at Angell. As I was hopping over the barrier my shoe lace became entangled in the bent-over wire at the top. I plunged to the small strip of grass between the fence and the curb, landing on my head. I don’t remember too much after seeing the speeding grass approaching my face, but I do remember the headache for the next couple of days. The doctor said that I had received a concussion from the fall. My father got the wonderful news when he called home from his week in the north woods. I never climbed that fence again.
This cycle of learning has been true through all of my life. I believe that most of humanity has a very similar learning pattern and the root of this goes way back to the beginnings.
“… the LORD God asked. "Have you eaten the fruit I commanded you not to eat?" 12"Yes," Adam admitted, "but it was the woman you gave me who brought me the fruit, and I ate it." 13Then the LORD God asked the woman, "How could you do such a thing?" "The serpent tricked me," she replied. "That's why I ate it." 14So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, you will be punished. You are singled out from all the domestic and wild animals of the whole earth to be cursed. You will grovel in the dust as long as you live, crawling along on your belly. 15From now on, you and the woman will be enemies, and your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." 16Then he said to the woman, "You will bear children with intense pain and suffering. And though your desire will be for your husband, he will be your master." 17And to Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. 18It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. 19All your life you will sweat to produce food, until your dying day. Then you will return to the ground from which you came. For you were made from dust, and to the dust you will return." Genesis 3:11b-19 NLT

In essence the creator loudly proclaims that our birth, our life, our redemption and our death will all be grown in the fertile soil of pain. Pain is part of the curse of the beginnings. Pain, real pain, is still very much a part of this veil of tears.
Yet our great God has even molded pain for our ultimate benefit. The thought that pain is a grace of God is hard to swallow. We long for relief, we consume, we numb and we insulate ourselves from the possibility of suffering. The fear of prolonged agony often warps our realty and we salve our conscience into believing that the abatement of pain at any cost is a prudent and reasonable goal. It’s as if we believe that the curse was meant to banish us from God Himself, so we fight the pain. What if the curse that came as a result of rebellion, was intended for our good? What if, in the new reality, pain is an indicator that the creator still cares for you? Further, what if the lack of pain speaks more of our condition than the searing iron of the ache? Maybe it’s people without pain that truly have been banished from the presence of our caring Father into the desert of comfort? To continue….

The Sacrament of Pain - Part I

One thing that I do remember about childhood was that I did not like "getting the belt." No one that I know of actually liked the spanking across the butt with the dreaded belt. It was because of this fear I did my best to avoid that particular form of discipline at all costs. Since I was the third child and my brother Jeff (the second oldest) was seemingly always asking for a beating, I slipped under the parental radar much of the time.
This pattern of avoidance of pain at all cost has negatively imprinted my personality. Avoidance of pain is not the goal of life. As a matter of fact I have a developing thesis that I am becoming more convinced of. That thesis is that pain should be considered a Sacrament by the church. The Sacrament of Pain. In the church of my youth a sacrament was defined as having been instituted by Christ, using visible elements (like wine, bread, water) and being a means (or portal through God’s grace in Jesus flows) of grace. Everything that I am learning about the pain that is experienced in our lives fits the description. The Sacrament of Pain.
Even further I am coming to believe that pain is holy. God understands the pain in your life and somewhat harder to grasp, allows. Even further, on occasion, He authors it himself, sent like precision guided munitions to destroy a part of our lives for the greater glory of God. Whether he caused it or not isn’t the question, the fact is that pain is God’s very effective tool.
It kinda changes my outlook on the things that I consider crappy in my life. Knowing that I need the pain that I am experiencing to make more like Jesus Christ can make it somewhat easier to swallow – somewhat. Yet most days, like a little child, I still want to avoid it. I have very stubborn areas of my life that I refuse to surrender. Areas that need the door kicked in and the immaturity rooted out like a terrorist hiding behind a human shield. The difficulty is that immaturity is a comfortable, familiar place to exist and The Sacrament of Pain is designed to destroy that familiarity and replace it with desperation. (to be continued….)

Core Power

We in the west have a power in this world that many do not have. This power can drive us and possess us. This power often causes us to do things that we would normally not do if we didn’t have it. This clout moves our society like nothing else. It is woven into the fabric of who we are. We use it as a drug, as an anti-depressant and as leverage over the masses. This influence has many names and most recognize it immediately: it is called purchase power or income beyond basic needs. Virtually all of us experience it to one degree or another. We buy, we spend, we shop, we gather. We do it for pleasure, for therapy, for acceptance and even for sex. I’m sure you can recognize this tendency in your life somewhere. I have fought (lost) this battle many times, I feel down so I buy something like a movie, ice cream, a worship CD or a book.... There we go, all better now!

The picture that I am beginning to see a little more clearly in my life is that I approach God with this perverse consumerist mentality all the time. I’m down so I “buy” a little bit of God in prayer. I’m feeling guilty so I read the Bible more. I fail and I sing a praise song or two..... There we go, all better now!

Am I just a consumer of God? Do I seek him for what he can do for me? Do I follow him because he “fixes” me? The whole mindset is corrupt to the core. I know I run to the religious store on the corner to “buy” a little of God far too often. Jesus, please take this from my life. You alone are Holy and Good and Powerful and Kind. You are not another commodity to possess in post modern America. I am so in need of you, at the foundation of who I am Lord. Help us, help me, to lay it all down everyday.

Acid Test

Ok so I took this silly little “Politics Test” online through a link from a friend’s blog site. You put in your basic information and answer 20 or 30 questions. Then, before it tells you the results, it asks you four exit questions. The final questions were on divisive subjects like abortion, gun control, capital punishment and something else, that I can’t remember. Then you wait for your “label”. This test labeled me a “Totalitarian.” The first thing that pops into my head when I read that word was Joseph Stalin. The test then lines up how you answered with famous people. I was way too close to Stalin, but in reality my axis was right on the heart of the Pope, which was cool with me, unless the Pope is a commie. Am I a commie? Wow, I guess I didn’t know! Upon further observation of the people in the picture, in the absolute middle, was the ever famous “centrist” Senator John Kerry. Ummm. Well anyway, it was so obvious to me which way the test was leaning that I literally laughed out loud.
It’s amazing to me that we as people have this insatiable need to label everyone. In five seconds we all make character judgments about people. We decide, in essence, if we are going to like them, if they are our kind of people, if they are acceptable to us. While I know we cannot possible be friends with everyone, why can’t we give people A LOT more time before applying a label? Why can’t I see everyone through the grace of the cross and not just the homogeneous? Why do we put everyone through an acid test of our own making?
Help us LORD! People deserve so much more, you thought so by sending Jesus!

Be Patient With Difficult People

Do you ever deal with difficult, even pain-in-the-booty type people? Well I hope this smashes your face like it did mine:
22 “Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right. Pursue faith and love and peace, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts. 23 Again I say, don't get involved in foolish, ignorant arguments that only start fights. 24 The Lord's servants must not quarrel but must be kind to everyone. They must be able to teach effectively and be patient with difficult people. 25 They should gently teach those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts, and they will believe the truth. 26 Then they will come to their senses and escape from the Devil's trap. For they have been held captive by him to do whatever he wants.”
2 Timothy 2:22-26 The New Living Translation