Archive for February, 2009

Released from the Need to know!

February 27th, 2009

I have been blessed and honored in the last 6 months or so to work more and more in the Chaplaincy role. While my ultimate goal is to be a Pastor, working as a Chaplain has and is developing several attributes that are helping shape my pastoral heart.

One thing that I have found is that I can release myself from the need to know. Let me unpack what I mean a little bit.

1) I need to know you are in pain. Pain, like a tootache, is what sends us to the Dentist. In the spiritual case, it sends you to someone who can care for your soul.

2) Like a Dentist, I dont need all the details. The Dentist does not care if you cracked your filling on a lolipop, an almond, or rocks. It just does not matter. What matters to him is alleviating the pain and helping you restore your mouth to a state of normalcy. As a person in soul care our same goal should be restoration and alleviation as much pain as possible and a return to normalcy.

How often when praying with someone does the specific thing need to be spoken? Are we so faithless as to believe that the Holy Spirit is not working in the life of the saint LONG before they come to us? I have had several instances at work and at church just in the last week where I have told someone whom I know is in distress that I am praying for them.  A simple declarative statement. No details needed. I have heard from them that they appreciated knowing I was praying for them and not having to relive the whole darn thing again.

The tricky aspect is to make myself available should someone want to speak more about it. Saying a simple “I’ll pray for you” and walking on by is not appropriate. But lingering for a few seconds is. In that few seconds you will know that praying now with them is good, or they are content to know you are praying for them.

We all work or go to church or school in a world that is gossipy and more then often a little judgemental. If we as the body of Christ would work a little harder at alleviating our need to know the details in the name of “praying specifically” for a person I think we can truly impact each other to a greater degree. Prayer stimulates the activity of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows us intimately down to the sinewy details. We are just to be faithful to the call to pray for one another.

Am I terribly off base here? Please feel free to opine.

Scott McKnight

February 24th, 2009

“it is not uncommon for a fast motivated by a yearning for kingdom justice to be simultaneously motivated by grief over the absence of justice, peace, and love in the world in the here and now”

Quoted from the excellent book called Fasting by Scott McKnight page 60.

Lament

February 24th, 2009

Like a shot between the eyes these words from The Message touched me this morning. So I ask you today, what lessons in lament do we need to take? Please discuss. I read this and immediately thought of the fat cats on wall street contemplating jumping off bridges. They I realized, painfully that I am the arrogant rich. I am the sinner.

And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You’ll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you’ve piled up is judgment. All the workers you’ve exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You’ve looted the earth and lived it up. But all you’ll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. In fact, what you’ve done is condemn and murder perfectly good persons, who stand there and take it. James 5:1-6

May God poor out his richness of mercy and favor on us and may we find favor in His courts.

~Selah~

Advocacy

February 23rd, 2009

Advocacy begins at home. Time and time again sociologists, psychologists, religious leaders and others tell us that our worldview is shaped in the home. Within the economy of the home we are spiritually and intellectually shaped. I can not agree with this more, and scripture backs that idea up an exponential amount of times.

God is working in me. I am trying to “see the Calcutta in my back yard” to quote a wise and contemplative friend of mine. It started truly and deeply after the last story I shared on my blog, but it really was just a boiling up and final spilling over of God’s work, and His timing, and me.

Today I read this article on Fox News and it just brings it home for me, and I hope too many more people as well. We can no longer as God’s church sit in an isolated bubble, give our money to the missionaries and hope all goes well in places like India, Ukraine, Thailand and many other places. We need to bring these discussions into our homes. Talk to our children about what is happening, don’t scare them, but shape the reality of their worldview. How do you do this? Well, here are a few thoughts.

1) Do not raise your children to think that they are somehow privileged in the eyes of God because they are Westerners. This is HARD to do, I know this. But I believe that if we can limit the television time, read the Bible with them, and watch what they are learning in Sunday school we can do it. We must be diligent. We can not farm out our spiritual nurturing of our children to churches any more then we can safely farm out our child’s education completely to the public schools. It takes time, energy, and humility. I say this as I realize that I stink at this sometimes. I am going to work on this.

2) Fast. Spend time fasting for others. Do not fast in the typical fashion that most evangelicals think is fasting. I stop eating so as to get something from God. It probably will not work if you do it that way. Instead fast in response to sin and tragedy. Child prostitution is a tragedy; it is a sign of our moral failure as a nation. It is fasting that God listens to. Isaiah 58 6-9 states:

“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’
I am fired up and I admit it, but I want to hear God say “Here I am.” And I want my son to be able to hear that voice as well.

As I write this the movie Slum Dog Millionaire cleaned house at the Oscars. I am glad, but I wonder if the message will really make an eternal impact or difference in the mind of the west? (In the interest of full disclosure, I have not seen it yet, but plan to very soon) I do not think it will unless we as parents and followers of Christ will enter into the discussion with strength of conviction, with tenderness of heart, and the resolve of the Lion of the King of Judah.

An Observation About Love

February 21st, 2009

I have recently become reaquainted with the writings of Robert Fulghum. If you have never read the books It was on Fire when I lay down on it and All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten then you are missing out on some great wisdom, observation, and humor from a well formed mind. I grew up with my parents reading to my sister and I from time to time from these books. I came across a copy of one of the books at a library sale the other day and well…I now have my own copy.

On his website he has a great observation on love and I find it funny, and revealing. If any of you live in the Seattle area and find a older man peeping in your windows or behaving a little unusually then it is probably him. When you see him just smile and wave, say a kind hello and watch his website or his next book because he is a keen observer of life. You just might be his next subject. He is a contemplative for sure.

I have been thinking a lot about wisdom and how we as Christians look at wisdom and where and how it comes from. I am going to share more about it soon. I believe God brings people and circumstances to us at the right time. I believe Robert Fulghum is one such voice of wisdom.

Would the Real Church step Forward?

February 16th, 2009

Please don’t read this as a rant against the church, take it as a call to action, or if you read it as rantings and ravings just write me off as a mad man. I love and respect the church, I am part of one, I am in leadership in one, and I love my church, but man do we have a problem.

I normally attend church on Saturday nights. I like having a full Sabbath day rest on Sunday and it just works well when you have a youngster. This week because of Amy having another seizure we did not go Saturday night, and I went to Sunday morning service. We had a leadership meeting after service as well so I felt it necessary to attend.

My church is not far from downtown Colorado Springs. Right in the heart of the city is a well frequented Starbucks. I went there regularly before moving because it was convenient on my drive to work and the service is usually pretty quick. One thing that made going to this Starbucks tough was the amount of pan handlers outside at any given morning. They have a regular supply of willing givers headed into the offices nearby, or driving through the area to a few large employers to the north. God used those panhandlers to convict me on numerous occasions about how I live.

I stopped going to this location because I moved. But yesterday I went and was immediately shocked to see no panhandlers. Not a homeless person in site. At first I thought maybe they all were being served. Colorado Springs has a large outreach through the city to the homeless in the area. All too quickly God quickened my heart and told me why. He told me as plain as day it was because the Sunday morning church crowd that comes through does not give them anything. They have better luck elsewhere. Oouch… that stung. The more I realized and watched the crowd, the more I could see it being very true. What hurts even worse is this Starbucks is right under the shadow of two very large, very well established churches in the area. Between the two churches they probably have 15,000 worshipers a week. Does not the church realize the mission before them, and that the mission is literally in their back yard? I went to my car and cried. I have not been moved like that in awhile.

Working in a mission’s organization is a wonderful thing. I truly do enjoy the satisfaction that I am working on behalf of “the least of these” but I have been hard pressed to remember that missions is not just in the aggregate. I can think on the global scale about things like justice, compassion, mercy, forgiveness and so on. But I can not forget that mercy, justice, compassion and forgiveness start in my own back yard. It starts in how I see my neighbor, and who I define as my neighbor. God reminds us so well in the story of the Samaritan that all people are our neighbors.

The one thing that frustrates me in global missions and causes me to loose sleep is how to lead people over the hump of just thinking that God needs their money, they give it and somehow God just shows up and uses it? God does not need our resources, but he asks for them. Money is a resource, but so is our time. What would it take for me to get more involved in my own back yard in helping “the least of these” at home? This is a question that I am beginning to ponder, and quite frankly I am loosing sleep over. Then, how do I (we) motivate the church to go beyond the giving, beyond the self satisfying feeling that they tithed and that is all that God requires?

God is calling workers into the fields of the harvest. I spent my childhood in a Baptist church and watching Lottie Moon and her missionaries come through from time to time asking for support. I was given the impression, either by being told, or by omission, that God called some people into the mission’s field, and called others to fund them. I agree to a small extent. I thank God there are missionaries who go to New Guinea and have a heart for writing a bible for them. I support them. But the field is ripe there, and it is ripe here, and it is ripe in Africa, and it is ripe in Europe. None of us can be in all places at once, but each one of us who follow Jesus can be present in our circumstances and showing and sharing the love of Christ. Sometimes that is a cup of cold water for a friend, other times it is getting out of your comfort zone and giving a car to the single mother household. God calls us ALL into the mission field, and he equips us ALL for the task that is at hand. That task is being present. Present for friends, family, neighbors, strangers, and most importantly, for the Holy Spirit to show up and give you a task or a cause. My question is, will you accept?

~Selah~

Thoughts on the # key

February 11th, 2009

I am a person who thinks if something does not have a purpose, then get rid of it. Maybe I am over utilitarian in my thinking on the subject, but there are things in life that are just not necessary. The pound sign on a phone key pad is one of those things. What purpose does it serve on my phone? My Blackberry can attest to my frustrations with the key, it is almost worn down completely, and I have not even had the phone a year.

I have never asked a person for a phone number and had them give me something like #45-4#29 as a phone number. It is a useless and lifeless key. The only time I hit the key is when I am on the phone with the utility company, or I am fighting with the insurance company, or because I lost in the hell that is the “computerized customer service” for any company anymore and I need help. I think that the name of the key is aptly named, because by the time I use it I am pounding the crud out of it trying to get to someone with some intelligence to tell me why, yet again, I must pay them. I get some sick satisfaction out of pressing the key as hard and long as possible. I have had to do this a lot lately. I have health insurance, but they seem to not want to pay many of my bills timely. As you can imagine after brain surgery there are more then a few bills that the insurance man has to pay. He pays with his money, I pay with my precious time.

As I grow older, and hopefully a little wiser, I realize that my salary of time draws at the same rate as everyone else. I am given a 24 hour day in which to accomplish as much as possible and to have the greatest impact for Christ. While I hate the pound key I realize that sometimes when I am on hold and listening the droaning elevator music that could put the walking dead to sleep I begin to dream and contemplate the things of life. It is one of those rare, or not so rare at times, moments of my life where I simply must hold still and wait. I can do nothing else. To put the phone down and walk away would be to risk someone finally answering while I am away. To begin to read is to risk not multitasking well enough and missing something important. And cooking, yeah, that is another concern all together. For the health of my family, and for the sake of preserving all my fingers and toes, cooking and waiting on the phone are not valid options. So I wait, I contemplate, and maybe walk away a little wiser then I did before.

As a “self appointed contemplative” I try and look at life and the things that are in it and bring them captive to Christ and to how I live. I am not always good at this, in fact I can not say I am very good at it at all. But maybe if I did not have the pound key and I had to wait every time I had to make those calls I would be just a little wiser. I think from now on I am going to ignore the pound key and pretend it was never invented. I will get the satisfaction mentally of not having one more piece of unwanted technology, and the soul satisfation that I slowed down a little, and that maybe God used that time to speak to me in the ways that He has choosen.

~Selah~

Facebook Humor

February 3rd, 2009

I was eating an orange and watching this… I think I have orange wedged into my sinuses from laughing so much. Enjoy!

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