Blog 7: Opportunity in Chaos.

Holy cow and such. It's been way too long. I have all kinds of excuses as to why I haven't posted in over a month, but all of them are just that. Excuses.

I tried to make another excuse today. I'm sick. Nasty little cold. But no! Not today. Today I will push through it and prevail! Onward and victory and other cheesy words and phrases.

The word for today is "hardship." Actually, that might technically be two words. But the word could just as easily be "trials", "personal atrocity"(again, two words), or anything else that more or less means the same thing.

Why do bring this up? Well, mostly because it came up alot over the last month or so in the conversations I've had with other people. It got me thinking, and as we all know, that rarely ends well.
But it does, however, provide me with nifty blog material. Soo...

Woohoo.

Now, we have all experienced some sort of hardship or bad moment or what have you at some point in our lives. Some worse than others, or course. This theme comes up alot in my line of work. However, what got me thinking about it was a youth Sabbath school I sat in on about a month ago. I trade off teaching it with a lady who is there every week. I have to rotate my time since I have three churches all grasping for my attention.

Oh the joys of "popularity".

Gag.

However, since I happened to be late that day, she went ahead and taught and I sat and pretended to be one of the little monkies instead of the head monkey.

And she did a fine job.

Huh, that was anti-climactic, wasn't it?

Oh yes, my point. I forgot.

The lesson was on hardship and it's purpose. And she did a great job of going through the lesson and regurgitating all it's pre-written points and reciting all the christian cliche on how troubles and trials are just tests that refine our faith.

I am sure any of you who have ever even heard of a bible have heard all that stuff before. And there is scriptural reason for those responses. However, they never really get expanded on, and rarely ever get made practical and relevant and real to us in any way. They just remain some abstract idea that some how we are suppose to just be happy with.

I don't think that was ever the intention. We humans like to create our own problems.

But I digress.

So the lady recited all the lesson goodies and gave all the cliche(albeit vaguely accurate) responses. But then she stopped and looked at me. And she said, "I know this, I've heard all before. But honestly, I just don't get it. I don't understand how this is suppose to work. Hardship just makes me sad and angry and bitter. I just don't know if I understand this. I have a hard time with this idea."

I'm paraphrasing, of course. It's been over a month, and my brain doesn't remember that far back very well.
But her question was honest. Her feeling was genuine. And her need was real and palpable.

All of us either have, or will, experience something in our lives that will alter the way we see everything. And if it doesn't, it probably should. But taking that experience and trying to trivialize it with general comments like, "it's for your own good" or "it will make you a better person" just frustrates us instead of helping us. Those ideas may have some truth to them. But very few things in life are ever that straightforward or clear cut.
I would like to suggest two things in regard to this concept. And I think the realities there in are more or less accurate regardless of one believes in the guidance of God or not.

The first one is very simple. Not everything that happens to us actually has anything to do with us.

This gives christians more problems than any other group. Especially North American christians. We are very egocentric. Everything is about us or me. And when you combine that with the idea that God is love and that He is always working for my good, we can easily forget that God also works for other peoples good as well.
For example. You are driving down the road and as you cross an intersection, some drunk guy runs a redlight and completely annihilates you from the side. Later as you are laying in a hospital bed, broken and bleeding, you are wondering why this happened to you. What did I do to deserve this? Why did God make/allow this to happen? Why didn't He protect me?

All of those are very natural questions, but they all assume a premise that is quite possibly false. The false assumptions is that the accident had anything to do with you at all.

Maybe it did. But it didn't have to. There are 6.9ish billion people wandering around this planet and to think that everything that happens has anything to do with me is a bit selfish and egocentric. How many people were involved with that accident? You, the other driver, a plethera of witnesses and maybe collateral damage victims. A handful of police and paramedics. Nurses and doctors at the hospital. Not to mention your family and friends and the other drivers family and friends.

How many is that?

Alot.

But of all those people, the accident was meant to be a lesson for you? Just because you were at the center?
Maybe.

But concider this, and I will use a very poor analogy to demonstrate. If you are in the center of a mob of people and you have a gun, and you start pulling the trigger, who is going to impacted the most? You, the one at the center holding the gun? Or the people around you who are eating the bullets?

What that very bad analogy shows is that just because you are in the middle of the situations doesn't mean that it's about you or that it only affects you. Or that it even effects you the most.

One thing I've found in dealing with dying people and the funerals that follow is that it's almost always harder for the people live than the one who is dying. Sure, it's happening to the dying person, but it is much harder on the non-dying people. In many ways, they much more to deal with. The dying person has one thing. He/she is will soon be dead. Those who have to live on have that and much more.

Who says the benefit or silver lining of an experience has anything to do with the one in the middle of any given issue?

Which leads to the second point I'd like to make here.

Much has been said about how hard times can some how make us better people. Alot of it I think is stuff we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night. Some of it is true. Some of it is not.

Within the christian community, we always look for some higher meaning in everything. I'm not saying that is bad. I will say that we should refer to point one I made earlier.

But also, I would like to suggest a concrete and relevant truth about the nature of hardship vs status quo.
To be clear. No one wants hardship. Not me, not anyone. I would almost never choose it over easy living. And I don't think anyone wants us to.

But when hardship does come, and it will, here is a reality to consider.

Every day we go through our lives. We have a nice little routine. We get up. Use the bathroom. Brush our teeth. Eat breakfast. Shower. Go to work. Come home. Eat dinner. Go to bed.

Or some other variation on that. You get the idea. We have this routine that we go through every day. And most of the time it's pretty static. It doesn't really change much. Sure there is vacation, or a sick day, or the weekend, but most of the time our lives are pretty ordered.

And that's ok. However, on an intellectual level, it restrains us. We know what is coming. We know what to expect. Our world is pretty contained and smallish, and there is no need to reason beyond it. Why come up with a different way of doing things if the way we are doing it works just fine? We get fed, we get paid, we are more or less content. Why fix what isn't broken, right?

The only problem there, is that while we move along just fine, we don't really get a chance to grow much. Not intellectually, not emotionally, not experientually.

Until something comes along to shake things up, that is. Something like a good old fashion hardship. Something breaks down our routine. Reveals the flaw in our perception of everything. Shows us that the way we do things does not actually work all the time. And when this happens, we are suddenly forced to look for a way to get through the problem and triumph.

The hardship forces us to think differently than we normally do. Our routine doesn't hold all the answers anymore. Or at least, the hardship revealed issues that we never bothered to consider.

And then, once we have finally broken through that trial and found our way out of the shambles, we have new perspective on things. Our life was changed. The parameters of our life have been altered and the borders of the box that we normally think in have been shattered, or at least been pushed outward.

What hardship does for us is that it forces us to think differently and to consider possibilities and directions that we would never have normally considered.

Let me give you are real life example. One not so catastrophic.

I used to be an artist/designer. I would sit and paint or design on whatever project I was working on. I would always go into it with a plan of attack. I knew more or less what I was wanting to accomplish, and I had an idea of how I was going to get there. I have my own techniques for doing my art and my own concept of how design should work and what it should look like. Every artist does. That is how we know what a mistake is.

Then you make a mistake. A wrong brush stroke. A wrong font size. A wrong color. And suddenly you are scrambling to figure out how to fix this mistake, especially if it's something that isn't easily fixed. So I would look and look and stare and think. Then I would stop, get up and step back. Just walk away. Then I would come back and look at it again. It would be at that point I would notice something.

I would notice that my mistake didn't look half bad. Not only that, as I would look at it, I would realize that the mistake looked better than what I had intended. And not only that, I would start to see ways to not only incorporate the mistake but I would see new directions in which to take the piece that would never have even considered if I had not made the mistake.

The mistake took me in a direction that my normal ideas about art and design would not have taken me.
You know how often that happened to me? Almost every time I made a mistake. So, alot.

We are creatures of habit. We almost never try to think of things in new ways unless we are forced to. And, unfortunately, hardship is one way of forcing us to think in new ways. It's not the only way, or course. But it's a pretty effective one.

And whether we think that the things that happen to us are random, or whether they are guided, makes no difference. Either way, we are still faced with an opportunity to see things differently and alter the way we look at everything.

Carpe Diem. Sieze the day. Like most phrases it has become cliche. But like most cliches, they become that way because there is an element of wisdom to them.

We are presented with opportunities for growth and expansion every day. We just need to be able to recognize them and grab hold and then let those opportunities take us to a place we hadn't considered before.

Live long and prosper.

Blog 6: Nothing in a Name.

Hey and stuff.

Do you know what one of my favorite shows on tv is? Notice how I didn't say it was the best show on tv. Because really, there are better.

Eli Stone. Yep, that's what I said. Eli stone.

It's about a lawyer who gets a brain aneurism who starts hallucinating. It turns out his hallucinations are actually visions, and he has to follow them to help people.

I'm guessing right now that there are a couple of you thinking, "Well sure. You are a pastor, you would like that crap."

You would be wrong. I couldn't stand Touched By An Angel. I hated Seventh Heaven. I pretty much don't like any of those shows because they generally just suck. I'm more of a Battlestar Galactica kind of guy. Or Scrubs.

I really like Family Guy.

I don't usually like those because they are so ridiculously unrealistic that it's just laughable. They aren't even remotely believable.

Now, I'm not saying that Eli Stone is the epitome of believablility. But it brings up a concept that hits a defining point about God interacting with people.

This guy, Eli, isn't a christian. He didn't even think he believed in God. No surprise there. That makes for interesting writing. He's a greedy lawyer. And he's a very good greedy lawyer.

But now, he starts seeing that there is a pattern to his hallucinations. And he thinks that to ignore them would be ridiculous. And he starts helping people. It destroys his life. His mentor/boss now hates him. His engagement falls apart. He winds up alienating almost everyone in his life. But he keeps doing it because it's right. He's finally doing the right thing, and how can he not help these people when it's clear he's the only one who can, because he's the one put in their path?

The reason why I like this show is because, despite it's hollywood slant, it's frightenling accurate. All throughout the bible, God did exactly what is happening in the show.

In the show, the writers didn't set Eli up to be some good christian man who gladly takes on the role. Eli is the guy who wishes it would all go away so he can get his life back.

Us Christians have a very high opinion of ourselves. We look at our storied history. Our traditions and doctrines. We have built our lives around our orthodoxy. It is all in all to us.

Unfortunately, we forget the other part of our history. The part where whenever God really needed something done, He would often have to choose someone else to do the work, because His "faithful" were too busy either focusing on their beliefs and reveling in their namesake.

If we look at our spiritual ancestors, the Jews, the people of Israel, we see that we are just like them. They were so caught up in their name, their heritage, that they couldn't even see God when he stood among them. So, He took the message to other people who would listen.

I think one historical tidbit that gets ignored is a very telling one. Whether you are Jewish or Christian, we still look at God's chosen people, the Jews as an example. The people who had the rules and followed them. Well, followed them sometimes.

Except, Israel was called Israel because Jacob was renamed. But we know that. And really, Jacob wasn't that great of a guy. He was a liar and a cheater.

But go back to his Grandfather. Abraham. Abraham was from Ur. Ur is in Babylon. That made Abraham a Babylonian. So really, the Jews were Babylonians of a different path. This puts alot of history into perspective when you consider how much Israel despised the Babylonians. Especially after they conquered Israel. Which happened because God couldn't get Israel to clean up their act. When they wouldn't listen to His chosen righteous, God brought in someone who wasn't righteous. Someone who ultimately did what they were told, even though they weren't part of the "flock."

Like Eli Stone. Like Abraham, who's family, and likely even him, were polytheists. Like Ruth, chosen among idolaters to be in the line of Jesus. Like Rahab the pagan prostitute who was David's ancestor, and therefore Jesus ancestor. Like Paul, who was actually running around killing christians. Like Balam, who was a pagan prophet, and even though he wasn't an overly righteous man, knew that he could only do what God asked, nothing more, nothing less.

All the flawed and screwed up people. All the people who didn't carry the fancy title of Christian or pure Jew. God picked them to do some of his most important work because he couldn't count on the ones he already had.

Being a "christian" means nothing. Being a servant of others means everything. Just carrying around the title gets one nothing. The name is empty. It's the actions that matter. Not the rules, or the standards. Not the beliefs or the doctrines. But the service to the people around us. Yes, the bible says we must believe. But the James also said that even the devil believes in Jesus. Just saying that one believes and is there far part of the club means nothing. James said, "You say you have faith, and are a christian? Fine. But I'll show you that I am by my actions."

James understood that words mean nothing. It's not a works thing. It's a love thing. He said in that same letter that the only religion that God cares about is this: caring for orphans and widows and the needy.

That's not just a powerful statement, but it's a very telling and condemning statement. God only cares about helping people. This is the religion that matters. Therefore, any religion or belief system that does not produce, promote, teach or have at it's core and every other part this type of religion, is False.

Just believing the "right" thing, or having the "right" name, or being part of the "right" church, denomination, "religion" or group, means nothing. There is no power or meaning in it.

If we actually believe in God, then the thing that should matter most, the thing that should be the focus of everything we are, is the service of others that comes from our compassion for others which is the evidence of our love of God.
I believe that it is the missunderstanding of this point that has done the most damage to "religion" everywhere. This is why Christianity fails. This is why people don't like some christians. It's because many people recognize that most Christians spend all their time guarding the club, and no time actually living the love they profess to have.

And I believe that it is because of this, that God tends to find some poor shmuck who isn't inside the club, who hasn't bound himself up in the club mindset, to go and get things done.

God is no respector of persons, races, religions, sexes or creeds. There is only one thing God respects. The person who is willing to act out of love.

Anything else is usually just self serving. And if we as humans have little use for a self serving individual, why would we think that God would?

Choose to be selfless. Be the type of person that so many others claim to be.
Talk is cheap.

As a wise Jedi named Yoda once said, "Do, or do not."

Forget the names and titles and catagories. Just go and do.

Period.

Interlude: An added link.

Today is a day that will go down in... memory? Infamy? Colostomy?

Hmm.

The proper vocabulary seems to elude me...

At any rate, today I have added my very first blog link, oddly enough, linking me to another blog.

His name is Jeff. His blog is Pack Light. Check it out. Also check out his other blogs which are listed on the Pack Light site. To the right. (i'm not sure if I should stop there or keep going..."and we can fight, into the night, and it's tight...in your line of sight... and...")

As it turns out, I'm not a poet, and I won't be ending my day job anytime soon.

However, Jeff is a brilliant guy who coveres a broad range of subjects from the religious to the socially active to the political to the environmental. But most importantly, he is unswervingly loyal to Jesus.

So, whether or not you decide that you agree with his perspectives, he always does offer interesting perspectives to think about. Check it out.

Oh, and just incase you don't see the link to the right under "Other People Who Say Stuff", I'll put it here as well.

http://www.packlight.blogspot.com/

Alright folks, try not to burst into flame accidently, and have a great day.

Blog 5: Cultural Diversity = More Than 2 Ways To Skin A Cat.

OK, so last time I mentioned something about going to Puerto Rico in January. It turns out that I wasn't telling a fib. We were there.

And, our timing was good as well. We left Illinois right when the really bad wave of freezing death passed through town. Unfortunately, we came back again. We went from 90+ degrees on the beach in the morning, to 9 degrees in Chicago.

Unpleasant.

Besides the nice weather, we had a good time. I put this trip into two parts. The first half and the second half. The second half was a little more fun. We spent time at the beach, went to San Juan, visited El Moro and ate fish with the head still attached. Admittedly, that last one was a little gross, but the fish was tasty.

The first half was fine, but most of the time was spent at the Alumni weekend for Antilian College(Antilian University, now I think.) Nirma's parents graduated from there so we went to all the programs with them. Nirma's sister and husband came along as well. The programs were fine, but since I don't really speak spanish that well I mostly just sat there and people watched which brings us to the point of this blog.

During all this people watching that I noticed some things. Puerto Rico is a different place. With a different culture and people.

Yes, I know, you already knew that. Stay with me though.

While in many ways Puerto Rico is highly influenced by American culture, in most ways it's still distinctly different.

And, again, you say "duh."

They have McDonald's and Taco Bell. Mercedes Benz. All of the same conveniences exist there.

Except that at Taco Bell you can get french fries and at McDonald's you can get a burrito.

But that isn't what I'm talking about. The peopel all have jobs and are always on their cell phones, just like here. And yet, it's foreign. Completely foreign.

The pace is slower. But traffic is faster.

And the clothing style is different. Completely modern, but with it's own flare. Especially for the women. Everything is tighter and more revealing. So much so that you could immediately tell who was from there and who wasn't. Most "christians" wouldn't approve.

I won't lie. I didn't mind so much. I'm a guy with all the guy genetics. Sue me. And I rarely get uptight about such things.

But as I said, most "christians" wouldn't approve.

And there is the rub. Most christians in America wouldn't approve. But down there? No one seemed to care or even notice. That's just the way it is. No one thinks wrongly of it. It is just normal. Even in church. Even in the Adventist church.

(gasp!)

So, ya, funny story. We are sitting in Church. And everyone is piling in and everyone is friendly and everyone is dressed like, apparently, everyone dresses. I didn't care. But coming from Cornbread, Illinois, I noticed. And the church service shockingly normal. Almost painfully normal.

And as they called the children forward for a childrens story, they played a cute little cartoon up on the projector screen that contained a friendly train conductor calling all his child friends to get on board and come along for a wonderful journey. And all the friendly animals were their to greet them and they all sang songs together and, well, it was everything a kid could want to see as they are coming up front. It was great. Perfectly normal. If I had been a kid, I'd have been loving it. It was a little cheesy, but hey, when your 5 you don't notice cheese. Unless you're eating it.

So I never even thought twice about that cartoon.

Apparently, to of the locally stylish college girls came in and sat down behind Nirma's sister.

Right now, all the guys reading this just perked up. Shame on you.

Anyway, they sit down. And as this cartoon starts playing, these girls who wouldn't pass too many dress code standards here in the states, are horrified that such an inappropriate cartoon would be played in church. How could we let our standards fall so far?

So, if I understand them correctly, it's ok to dress like spring break in Daytona, but happy Jesus cartoons are bad.

This brings us to a little thing called culture.

If I walk into a church in Puerto Rico and start causing grief because they aren't doing things according to an American standard, who has the issue... them, or me?

Let me add another word to culture.

Context.

Everyone who picks up a bible and reads it interprets what it says. How we interpret it is largely dictated by how we were programmed from birth. This is also known as our Cultural Context. Everything we were ever taught, experienced, saw, heard, etc., it all forces us to think according to a specific set of perameters. And for some reason, we seem to think that everyone else was programmed according to those exact same perameters.

Well, except in Africa where there are tribes. But that's a different culture.

Oh... wait...

Except for certain middle east areas where women are seen as property. But that's a different culture.

Oh... umm...

Except for parts of America that is not surrounded by corn, but instead surrounded by skyscapers or neon lights or... or...

And once you start down that road one eventually asks, "So which culture is correct?"

Unfortuanately, that's the wrong question. Since there are no perfect people, there are probably no perfect cultures.

In Europe, they condemn America for how much violence we have on TV. Yet, they often have blatent sex and nudity all over their regular programming. There, violence is bad, but sex is good.

In America, believe it or not, we are all prudes. Even our TV. But we have no problem killing people ten at a time in horrible bloody ways. Apparently here, violence is good and sex is bad.

And while there is probably a third option that is more correct than either, the point is we are all shaped by these forces and we use them to interrept everything we see and do.

So, were the college girls out of line and crazy? Or was I the one who didn't understand what was going on?

We get ourselves into trouble when we start believing that everyone must conform with our own standard. When ever I say that I always get one person who says, "That's why we have the Christian standard."

Right. And which christian standard would that be? The American one? The European one? The Puerto Rican one?

It's different in every country. For that matter, it's different in every state. Go to church in Michigan and then go to church in California. As a matter of fact, take a Californian and put him/her in a Michigan church for day, and take a Michigander and put him/her in a Californian church for a day and see who has the heart attack first.

Illinois, being in the midwest is more on the "conservative" side. Not as much as Michigan, but not nearly as "liberal" as California. And I hear it all the time from people when this discussion comes up how those Californians are just letting Satan in on all sides. Californians, by contrast would consider all these midwesterners "legalists."

Clearly they can't both be right.

Or maybe that's the point. Maybe they are both right, because of the fact that they are both wrong.

There is no perfect culture. We are all screwed up. Everyone is just trying to figure it out. So when I, caucasian male American who doesn't know right from wrong, walk into a Hispanic church in on a Hispanic island full of Hispanic people who also don't know right from wrong... at what point do I presume to be the bearer of proper standards, of proper context for them?

This is why we have so much friction in christianity today in America and everywhere. So many christians worry about that which is on the outside, but the truth is we are doing more damage to ourselves than that of what anyone else is doing to us. Too busy are we trying to decide questions of "me vs. you", instead of focusing on "what did God ask me to do today, right now, right here?" Because the answer to THAT question is different for every single person in existance. And to subject someone else to a plan that God designed for me and not them is much like taking a fish out of water and trying to force it to breath air. It wasn't designed to, it wasn't meant to, and trying to make it do so will kill it.

And so it is with serving God. Being a Christian. Figuring out how to live that life. When we take a person and try to force them into a mold that wasn't shaped for them, we destroy them. Ask any random ex-christian why they left, and this will be at the core of that reason. Some person, or group of persons, treated them selfishly and without love by forcing them into a mold not made for them. Never bothering to find out what God was doing with them. Never bothering to find out what they actually needed and instead just assuming that what the person needed was what they needed.

We don't like to tolerate difference or diversity because if someone else acts differently than me, thats ok, therefore I must not be ok. I must be wrong. And we so hate being wrong. Therefore we are right and they are wrong.
And so the wheel turns and wars begin and people die.

Once we can accept that we don't have it all figured out, then we can accept that no one else does either. Understanding that scripture was written in a culture 2,000 years dead means we understand that interpreting through our own culture is a bad idea. Not that culture is bad. Just that our culture does not contain absolute truth. Only a version of truth. Good in some areas, not so good in others. Just like every other culture on the planet.

God gave us just enough information to find Jesus, gave us a couple warnings, but left out alot of everything knowing full well that we were just going to screw it up anyway.

He gave us leeway. He knows we don't have it all figured out, and He doesn't expect us to figure it all out. Therefore we shouldn't assume that we have. Or that we will.

Despite my overly curious nature, I find that very freeing. And I like freedom.

God bless America.

I mean, Puerto Rico.

Um... right.

Post 4: The Pursuit.

Happy New Year!!

Umm. It seems I missed the train on that one. Sorry.

So, ya. Life got busy and such. I hope everyone had a great holiday season. And New Year beginning. And. And.

Nirma and I went to Puerto Rico in January. It was a good time. Actually, I could write an entire blog on the experience. Something about diversity and cultural difference and how it needs to impact our thinking. Maybe I will do that. But not today.

We arrived back to our house on a Thursday afternoon from Puerto Rico. That left me with less than 24 hours, including sleep time, to write 2 sermons, have an elder's meeting, finalize and reherse a special joint communion service between a couple of the local churches of which I was hosting and in charge of, and return the myriad of messages that had accumlated while I was gone. It was a bit of a whirlwind.

However, I was ready for the next week of work and grateful for a full week to get my next sermon written.

Depending on how one works and thinks, the process of putting together a sermon will vary. My process goes a little like this. I pray alot. I want God to write my sermon for me. I read until something starts to formulate in my mind. Once the idea gets rolling, I go take a shower. Yes, that is correct. I shower. For some reason, I think so much better in the shower. Plus, my office is in the basement, and it gets really cold in my basement, so a warm shower is a nice break. Then I come back and start to write. Now, mind you, this takes most of a week. The formulating of ideas, and then running and coalescing thoughts in my head can take a couple days. The bulk of sermon writing happens in ones head, not on paper. At least it does for me. Usually by thursday night or early friday, it's all done and printed. And by done and printed I mean that I have an outline from which I will preach from. I don't use a manuscript. I like the flexability of an ouline. Plus, it requires me to have a better grip on my subject matter than having a manuscript in front of me.

Anyway. I share that so I can share this. Monday comes around and I can't seem to pull anything together in my head. But that's not entirely unusual. Sometimes it takes a couple days to find a direction.

But when Thursday rolled around and I had nothing, not a single idea to run with, I was getting a little concerned. Friday came, and I had nothing. It was friday afternoon and, while I wasn't exactly panicking, I was a bit worried. No one wants to walk up to the pulpit and start there sermon like this, "Today, our sermon will be taken from this magazine I found on the sidewalk... let me see... ah yes, it says here that Honda will be releasing not one, but three new motorcycles this year. And this is much like how Jesus, um, decided that all of the... easter bunnies, yes, that's it, Easter Bunnies, should be made from chocolate for all eternity. May His Glorious name be praised. Amen."

I'm pretty sure they have had people committed for less than that.

Well, I was sitting my chair trying to figure out what was wrong. Why was my mind blank? Why couldn't I come up with a single new thought? It was at that point that a disturbing thought entered my mind.

I realized I had nothing more to say. When part of what you do is based around the concept of conveying information to people in order to help/teach/encourage/admonish/etc., and you suddenly realize you have nothing more to say... well, you can see the problem that creates.

I was going over in my head all the different concepts and ideas and I realized that I had said everything I knew how to say about them. Many of them I had hit more than once from different angles and I didn't know how to make it different. I didn't know how else to say it, and even more, I wasn't sure it was going to make any difference even if I did.

Now, if you were paying attention to my dissertation on how I write sermons, you will realize one glaring problem. I was upset because I had nothing to say, and yet, the whole purpose of doing what I do is to convey what God wants said. I was focusing on me and not on God.

One thing sermon writing has done for me is to answer my own questions about things. I still have unanswered questions about many things, but I've answered most of the ones that had caused me problems. For me sermon writing is not only highly educational, but also in many ways cathartic. It allows me to work out theological quandaries but also to pass on what I've learned to those around me. I'm not saying I'm always right, but it has brought be a measure of peace.

And there were two other parts to my distrubed conclusion. One, I was feeling like maybe I'd hit a block and become so overconfident in my "knowledge" that I had rendered myself unteachable. Which is bad and is also self diluted cause I really know better. The essense of learning is that, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. Secondly, I had grown increasingly frustrated that my people weren't "getting it." Week after week, day after day, I try to get them moving in a direction, and consistantly meet failure. Or at least it often seems that way. As if progress depends on my definition of it.

All these things I know better than to fall into, and yet, there I was. I wasn't burnt out, but I think I was at the very least ignoring my own teaching. Perhaps headed toward burnout.

It was at that moment, I remembered something I had read from Rob Bell. He had a very similar situation happen to him, except for the opposite reasons. So I went back and read.

He describes a moment he had before going up front to preach one day. Rob Bell is the pastor of Mars Hill church in... Michigan? Yes. Let's go with Michigan. It is a hugely successful church with thousands of attending members. So here he is, postor boy for young successful pastors, and he is hiding in a back room with his car keys in his hands, five minutes before he walks up to preach, ready to sneak and walk away from it all. And his reason?

"I realized I had nothing else to say."

A small lesson there is, success and failure have nothing to do with satisfaction, happiness and burnout.

But even though our situations were vastly different, I discovered that our causes had a similar source. He describes talking to a councelor. During this visit the councelor tells him, "Rob, I know what your problem is."

"It's sin."

Rob had one of those "say what?" moments.

But the councelors response was one of the more profound things I have heard in a long time.

"Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God wants you to be. Anything else in your life is sin and you must repent of it."

Now, I think we can all agree that is a bit over generalized and over simplified. But the underlying point is no less true. And for those of you who may not put much stock in God, the point is still a valid one and I'll say it differently.

Your job is the relentless pursuit of who you are suppose to be, and anything else is a waste of time.

It's mostly the first half of that, that I like. "The relentless pursuit of who God wants you to be."

For Rob, the problem was that he was trying to be what everyone else wanted him to be. Superpastor. Everywhere, all the time, fitting the mold to make everyone happy.

And I found, as I thought about it, that even though I protest so much at being just another typical pastor, in many ways I had been just reacting. Making decisions based on everyone around me. But not based on me at all. I don't mean that in a selfish way. It's good to be selfless. But one can't ignore ones self. You can't ignore your instincts. Your better judgement. Your own personal needs. Otherwise you just collapse.

Your pursuit of whatever you pursue just becomes hollow. You become hollow.

And you find that you have nothing left to say.

After all that, I had a sermon to write. And I wrote in less than 2 hours. Every successful preaching and sermon giving teacher will tell you that 2 hours is about 10 hours too short at the minimum to write a good sermon. And usually they are correct.

I went in to church the next day. Instead of a typical biblical sermon, I told three stories. One of a guy from Union College named Mike Needles. Another of Solomon. And the third of Rob.
Solomons is short and simple. Read Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:17 if you want to see the words. The short of it is this. Solomon was trying to find the meaning of his existance. And he searched everywhere, tried everything whether good or bad, and succeeded in every endeavor. But at every point he found it meaningless. He kept finding himself unworthy of the great king who had come before him, his father David. Over and again it was meaningless.

Like chasing after the wind. And he hated it all.

But at the very end of the book he finds the one thing that actually mattered. Fear God and keep his command.

Solomon was looking for meaning every where. But he neglected the one place that actually mattered. God wanted him to be something, to fill a role, and he was fighting it. Trying to be wise, but ignoring wisdom.

Just like Rob was looking to everyone else to find his purpose.

The story of Mike is the success story. The short of it is that we were all together at a function and someone broke into his car and ripped him off and trashed it. But he didn't get mad. He remembered that he had been no different at one point in his life, he remember where he had come from, and now knew who he was to be. He figured he had it coming, but more than that, he knew who we was suppose to be and understood that one day those kids who did that to him would figure it out. Maybe.

I've never forgotten that day.

Now, the point of the sermon when I tied it all up had to do with people who had junk in their past, but unlike Mike had never come to terms with it. They can't let the memory of it go even if the problem is no longer there.

People who, like Solomon are trying to find meaning everywhere in everything, only to find it hollow and empty and to have taken them somewhere they didn't want to go.

Or like Rob, trying to please everyone, and keep pushing through. Putting on the mask, sucking it up, and going forward until one day you have nothing left to give. And everything falls apart.
That was the jist of my sermon. But here is the part that amazed me.

Before I got the sermon, before I had really talked to anyone, we had the portion of the service where people can tell what they are thankful for, or give a request for prayer. What amazed me was that out of the 10 or so people who spoke up, every single one of them asked for help because they were feeling that they had were reaching this point of running out of steam. Not sure if they could keep going or keep it up.

I was totally oblivious to any of these things. Some pastor I am. But the point that this made to me was that I was trying to figure out what I needed to tell these people, what they needed to be hearing, and the reality was, what they needed to hear had nothing to do with my ability to discern it.

Why I thought I had nothing to say, God took my nothing and used it anyway. I wrote that sermon because of me. I didn't write it for them. At least, I didn't know I was writing for them. It turned out to be one of my top 3 sermons of all time. Not because it was good, but because it was relevant.
This may all seem a little scattered in scope so I'll bring this back around to the purpose. Which is actually two fold.

One. Never think that what you are doing is irrelevant. That you aren't making an impact. That you have nothing left to offer. You do. You ALWAYS do, even if you don't realize it.

Two. Our job in life is to be who God wants us to be. Who we are meant to be. Define that as you will. Not what anybody else wants us to be. Everyone has this stuff in their past that controls their thinking and decision making. It holds us back. We are still trying live according to someone elses mindset. Which would be ok if we were, in fact, them. But we aren't. And this we have to deal with and kill it. Not ignore or run away from it. We can't run from it. It just finds us again. There is a saying that says, "Where ever you go, there you are." Our problems follow us because we are the problem.

We, as individuals, must deal with our personal histories, external expectations, and start being who we are suppose to be.

Everything else in our lives hinges upon us figuring that out.

Good luck and God speed.

Post 3: Meaning Beyond The Con

31,536,000 seconds. 525,600 minutes. 8760 hours. 365 days. 12 months.

These numbers all have one thing in common. They all equal the same thing.

1 year.

One year ago today, two days before Thanksgiving, my doctor called me with the results of my regular follow-up exams and told me that I had cancer. Again.

Two days before Thanksgiving.

We were already packing up to head out for the big family get together. We had been looking forward to getting away, and suddenly we weren't feeling to much like going. We had lost the desire to be a part of it, and we didn't want to ruin it for everyone else.

But we decided to go anyway. We decided not to say anything till after we got back from Thanksgiving. We would go. We would force a smile when it was time to smile, laugh when it seemed everyone else was laughing, and eat the food even though it we really weren't all that interested in eating. We didn't want bring everyone down so we just put on our best show and went through the motions. We just acted normal.

"Hey Tony, you've been staring at that cookie for 5 minutes and it's starting to creep me out. You ok?"

"What?!? Who said I was dying?!?... I mean, I like cookies. No cancer here."

Gag.

Ya, it went well.

Now, go ahead and ask me if I was feeling overly thankful. The answer is decidedly "no."
Fast forward to yesterday.

We are sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the results of my latest post-chemo tests. I started thinking back over this last year. Trying to smile through Thanksgiving. Going through all the tests with all the tubes and needles poked and inserted into various and unpleasant places. The surgery to put in my access port for chemo. The anticipation of the hell that was to come. Praying to God the day before chemo that I would wake up from the nightmare to find that it just a big dream or mistake. Going in the next for my first treatment and realizing it wasn't a dream and it wasn't a mistake. The next four months nausia, vomiting, head aches, weakness, chills, loss of hair, anemia, blood infusions, pain, erratic emotions and the realization that it was all much worse than anything I had anticipated. The unpleasant surgery to remove my access port. The recovery. And now I was there waiting to find out if history was going to go in circles for me.

Fortunately, it wasn't to be. My CT scans were as they should be and my blood tests were frighteningly close to normal. My doctor said, "It seems like you might have to suffer through till old age kills you after all."

Fair enough.

Now, it's two days before Thanksgiving again and I'm ready to go. I can smile and laugh and eat some great food... and I won't have to pretend too much.

Now, ask me if I am feeling overly thankful. The answer is "hell ya."

Now ask me why.

Is it because I have no cancer currently? Is it because I don't have 4 more months of chemo-torture looming ahead? Is it because in two days I'll get to put up with some of my crazier family? (maybe, maybe, and probably not)

Maybe it's because not have to die soon.

Maybe.

Do you know what a "shell game" is? I'm sure you all do. It is a game where a person hides a small object like small ball, or pebble, or pea under one of three cups, and then shuffles them around in order to confuse a player, then get them to place a bet as to which cup it is under. It was originally played with thimbles and a pea, then later walnut shells(hence the name "shell game") and a pea.

They show you the pea, put it under a cup, shuffle it around trying to confuse you, then stop and ask you to bet and choose a cup. They tell you that you have a one and three chance in choosing the correct cup. They are very good at shuffling the cups quickly so that they can mess you up. They usually let you choose correctly once or twice to suck you in. Then they make it hard for you, until you start losing.

It seems easy enough, though. If you just pay close enough attention, you should be able to follow the pea or ball because there are only three places the ball can be. Cup 1, 2 or 3.

And there in lies the illusion. The con man gets you to buy into to the parameters of the game as if they are actually true. The player knows that the con man is being tricky with the cups. They expect it. They expect the con man to switch up the cups or shift the ball from one cup to the next. But what the player doesn't realize is that it is an illusion with in an illusion.

The ball isn't under any of the cups. The player is given a false set of choices and then made to believe that they are the real ones. They are convinced they have three choice. Cup 1, 2, or 3. But really the ball is in the con mans hand the whole time.

Most of you probably knew that already. But have you ever stopped and looked around at your life to see just how often we believe that the set of options around us are really the only choices we have to choose from?

We habitually buy in to the parameters put in front of us and rarely try to see around them. I doubt any of you would ever fall for the shell game. And yet we do it every day.

Back to me being thankful.

Do you know why I'm thankful? Or maybe I should say, what I'm most thankful for? Because, yes, I am thankful that I don't have chemo anymore. I'm really thankful I don't have cancer anymore. I'm glad I'm not actively dying. I'm super glad I had my wife with me the whole time. She's awsome. But none of those things helped me accept the reality of this last year. None of those things had meaning beyond themself. (except for my wife, but that is another topic.)

I made this myspace(refer to first blog) page BECAUSE I had cancer. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have done it. I didn't feel like I had the time. But I had it, so I did. You are reading this blog BECAUSE I went through hell. And most importantly, I got back in touch with alot of people I had forgotten I cared about and had missed for a very long time BECAUSE my life was jeapardized by illness.
I'm thankful for my cancer because I'm thankful for all of you. Surviving is great. But having something more to show for it, to have made it worth not giving up, this brings meaning.

It brings thankfulness.

Don't let life convince you that your options are small and meaningless. Don't let yourself be convinced that the bad situation you are in is out of your control or without meaning. That the only options you have are "bad" and "worse" because what you see in front of you is often just an illusion.

It's just a shell game.

It's a false and flawed premise. There is more going on than what you see.

Look for it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Post 2: Vacations Save Lives

I was sitting in prayer meeting the other day when it happened. I realized I really really need to take a vacation.

It happened like this.

I have three churches, which means I have three prayer meetings a week. The format for each is the same, but each church is very different. But that doesn't matter for this story.

I start prayer meeting, oddly, with prayer. I ask everyone for things they want to have prayer about. They can be needs, or praises, or thanks... whatever. I write them down to keep track of them, and then we can keep the list going from week to week.

Once we have a list for the evening, then everyone will say a short prayer for the things on our list.
After that is done, which can take anywhere from 30-45 minutes, we will have a bible discussion. A topic or bible passage/chapter will be decided on, then we will read and discuss. It's great because then it's not just me lecturing. Instead we are all learning from each other.

Anyway. We were doing the prayer request portion and it was getting to the point where no one had anything more to add. So I made the last call for requests.

Now, when I make the last call for requests, I give it a few seconds just to make sure no one has anything else to add. I don't want to cut anyone short. Prayer is the most important part of anything anyone can do in their service and relationship with God. I truly believe that will all of my being.
So, when no one spoke up, I let them know we were going to pray, Set down my list and started praying.

I got three words into it, when one lady... you know, the one who apparently is never allowed to talk anywhere else on the planet?, cause she never stops talking? ever?... that lady interupts me three or four words into the prayer and says that she has something else to add to the list. So, I stopped, she expounded about her request, as usual, and then I made another last call for requests. After no response, I start prayer, get about 3 or 4 words in, and again, she says she has another request.

Now, I'm thinking that this is a bit rude, but hey, it's prayer and if someone has something important to share, then it would be wrong to not let her bring before God publically. So I stop and let her give her request.

You are probably thinking that is pretty funny. But would you believe that she did that 2 more times after that before we finally got the prayer going?

I couldn't believe it. I was just sitting there dumbfounded. The last time she interrupted the prayer I yelled at her to shut up already and then I reached across the table and slammed her head right through it.

Ok, that is decidely not true.

However, I wanted to tell her to shut up. But instead I said something else and the tone with which I said it was probably just as bad. When was finished I looked her right in the eyes and said, "Is that all?"

She said, "I think so."

I said, "Are you sure?"

She said, "Yes."

I let my stare linger for a second, then I started prayer.

And it was at that precise moment, that I realized I really really needed a vacation.
I didn't show it outwordly so much, but inside, I was furious. This lady never shuts up unless she gets interrupted. Otherwise, you wait for her to breath, then jump in. And I had just had enough of it.
I've never come that close to losing it with a church member. Even her. She is actually an extremely sweet lady. She doesn't get to talk to people much, and she is always cheery. She didn't deserve my anger.

And I knew it. Even as I was seething inside, I knew it. What was making me mad wasn't her talking. It was the fact that she was slowing me up and I wanted to get it over with already and get home.

And that is WHY I needed the vacation.

When suddenly the very thing you are called to do is an inconvenient annoyance, then something is clearly wrong. I have dealt with people are much more rude and much more annoying, and I've never even hardly so much as blinked at it. But that day I just didn't have it in me.

I was forced to ask why.

This week while I was writing my sermon, I got the answer. You know what's great about working for God? Even as I am trying to teach and help others, God is teaching me even more. It's amazing.

It's humbling.

The answer. It revolves around two words.

"Healing" and "Wings".

There is a story in the book of Matthew about a woman who had a bleeding disorder for twelve years and knowing that she probably wouldn't be able to talk to Jesus, decided that if she could just touch the edge of his cloak, she would be healed.

She did. And, she was.

Let me give you two more words. "Tsitsit" and "Kanaph".

Tsitsit is Hebrew for "fringe or tassel". Kanaph is Hebrew for "corner, edge or wing."

You see, all Jewish men were to where a cloak or covering with tassles on it's wings. The edges of these cloaks were called wings because when a Jewish man prayed, they were to put this cloak, or prayer shawl, over their head, lift their arms up and pray. And when they did, the shawl hung off their arms like wings. So they prayer shawl had tassles on it's wings because God told them to make that way back in the book of Numbers, during the time of Moses.

By now you are wondering what the point is, and will I ever get there? Fair enough.

Jesus, being a law biding Jewish Rabbi would have been wearing one of these. This is important, because in the book of Malachi, the prophet Malachi made a prediction that the Messiah(son of righteousness) would come. And when he did, he would have "healing in his wings." The word for wings there is the same word used for the wings of the shawl. The prophecy of Malachi became a story and legend that the Jews remembered.

So now we fast forward to this bleeding woman. She knows that this man Jesus claims to be the Messiah. And she knows that the prophet Malachi said that the messiah would have healing in his wings. Therefore, if this is true, then all she needs to do is touch the edge of his prayer shawl, his "wings", and she will be healed.

And she was. She showed that she truly believed that this man was the fulfillment of Malachi's prophecy. Many others did, also, because it is mentioned in both Matthew and Mark that many people would come and touch the tassles on his wings and be healed or made whole.
And it's at this point where God taught me something. I had already read about the tassles and the wings and the prophecy of Malachi. But as I was reading these texts in Greek and Hebrew, I saw something I did not expect to see.

In Mark, where I just said that people would come and touch his wings and be healed, the word used there for "healed" is the greek word "sozo."

There is only one problem. The word "sozo" really doesn't mean "healed." It actually means "saved." Literally saved.

The definitions of the word are "saved, salvation, kept from destruction, preserved." It didn't make sense to me. Then I realized that Mark was telling us that everyone who touched Jesus "wings" were saved. They had salvation. They weren't just healed physically, they were healed mind, body and soul. Every fiber of their being was effected.

Jesus told the bleeding woman to go in peace. The Hebrew word for peace is Shalom. But Shalom doesn't just mean the absence of conflict. It means "to be covered in the goodness of God. To be covered with his wholeness and completeness." He told her to go in the completeness of God. He told her that she was now changed mind, body and soul.

Because the Messiah has healing in his wings.

The Messiah has salvation in his wings. To be healed by Jesus is to be saved.

I gave that to my people as part of my sermon. But that sermon was actually for me.

As I mentioned in the last blog, it's been a long year for me. And what I keep forgetting is that, I'm still healing. And I don't mean just physically. Everything I am has been altered. And I'm still adjusting. And I'm still changing. I was saved from death.

And I'm still being saved.

And that is just my story. It's easy to know better. But knowing something isn't the same as believing something. People will go through things in their lives, and when they come through the other side of it, they will think they have finally finished, or that they have arrived.

But it's never true. And I fell into that trap. I was feeling fantastic. My mind was working better. I was feeling like things were getting to be as they should again. And then I realized they weren't.
I was so focused on healing physically, I forgot to deal with the rest of me that needed to heal. And as it turns out, the physical wounds are the easiest to deal with.

True healing is a total, holistic experience. And apparently, I'm much farther from being whole than I thought. But as long as I understand that, it's ok. Because my healing is in Jesus hands.

And Jesus has salvation in his wings.

What kind of healing are you looking for?