Category: God stuff

Let Me Sow Love

I should be doing homework right now. I have to read this Ezra pound thing and write about it. I have a book I want to finish, and the other day I made a new character on Star Wars, the Old Republic I want to play more.

Right now, I can’t do any of that. I can’t think about doing any of that. I went literally from my knees to this chair in my hotel room and all I can think about is that Huffington Post thing I posted earlier about the prayer of St Francis–that ball started rolling last week when I watched this:

If you have a little over an hour to watch that video, I promise you, you will not regret it. Anyway, the shirt Nick is wearing in this video had the words “where there is hatred, let me sow love” across the chest. I hadn’t heard that before, and I wanted to know where it came from.

It’s from something called “The Prayer of St Francis,” which as the Huffpost article pointed out, was probably not written by St Francis, though he certainly lived his life in such a way he exemplified it. Before I go any further, here it is:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

So I was sitting here at this little desk in my hotel room and I was just idly looking at the Ezra Pound piece and I felt the uncontrollable compulsion to spend some time talking to God. It wasn’t really a question of whether or not I wanted to or if I had something I’d rather be doing, it was more like

nownownownownownownownownownownow…………………

So that’s what I did. At the end of that time the words of the Prayer of St Francis came to me again, and they seemed to me more valid than ever, and an aspiration each believer should hold dear:

make me an instrument of your piece.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Not the whole prayer, just those two lines.

Is that for me, God? I asked myself that as I returned to my chair and opened up this window.

How can I be an instrument?

How can I be used in the furtherance of your kingdom? I am not an apologist. I am not a pastor? I haven’t been to seminary.

I’m just a man. I’m a man that sometimes doubts, and occasionally goes for days without reading his bible. I lapse into old thought patterns and old sin patterns. I swear more than I should. I misuse my gifts.

How can I be an instrument? Don’t you have someone more qualified? Someone who knows what to say to people and what to do?

Where is there hatred that I can do anything about?

God showed me my own family. Sometimes the people I work with. Sometimes even the people I worship with. Yes, even them. Just because people go to church doesn’t mean they cease to have the same problems everyone else does, and respond to others while they’re deeply in the throes of them in a way which is often less than faithful.

How do I sow love? I love these people (love as a verb, that is). I love them in spite of their wrongs, real or perceived. I love them even if I don’t want to. I love them like God would love them.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…

Now I find myself in the position of beginning a task I am not comfortable with. It doesn’t matter that I feel there are other things I have to do. It doesn’t matter that I feel there are other things I am better or more skilled at than sharing love–sowing love–with others, others who need it most. Oswald Chambers says God cares not at all for our natural proclivities, and I think he is absolutely right. God doesn’t care what we’re good at, though he does bless us with talents. I think what Chambers is trying to say is that God doesn’t care if we think we’re good at something. He can and will still use us.

I can say I’m not good at talking to people about Christ. I can believe I’m not good at talking to people about Christ. I might not even be good at evangelizing people in the way others are.

Yet to deny that God can use me and use my story in spite of my shortcomings is to deny God himself.

Tonight I was given a glimpse of the task ahead, and it is daunting. I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know how to do it. All I can think of to do right now is to pray these words, and trust God to supply everything else.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love…

My Northern Adventure

The first couple of days here were the worst. When we landed in Fairbanks it was -30ish Fahrenheit, and it was like nothing I’ve ever felt. We were as prepared as we could be, but there’s only so much you can do when it’s that cold. It’s colder than the inside of your freezer, colder than anything you can imagine. When we got up the next morning and were getting ready to leave the hotel in Fairbanks, we found out what happens to hot coffee in -40 degree temperatures:

It freezes before it hits the ground–it turns to vapor when it hits the cold air all spread out. It was amazing.

The other thing was the air itself. It’s so cold, breathing is…different. It feels strange to breathe; the air is that cold. It didn’t quite hurt, but if you had any moisture at all in your nasal passages you could feel it freeze, and that’s a really strange sensation. You wear a face mask because of the cold, and it gets ice crystals on it because of the moisture from your breath.

After those first couple days, it wasn’t so bad, temperature-wise. I think it was easier to acclimate to cold than it was to get used to the heat when I came to Yuma. I didn’t expect that at all. The other thing I did not expect was how beautiful everything was. My Goodness, I’d never seen anything like it, and probably never will again. It reminded me of the beginning part of the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe–ice and snow everywhere. It was like being inside a snow globe, but infinitely colder. Just look at some of the things we saw. And this is only some–if you want to see more of the pictures, just look at my Facebook page.

more snowy trees 001more mountainsMountainsun

trees 2

trees 3

Trees

I also went ice fishing, and that was way more fun than I expected. I got to use a giant auger to drill holes in a frozen lake, and I even caught a few fish, all about the size of this monster here:

Ice fish

I had a moose burger, too. One of the test officers here said her sister had killed it not to long before. It was really good. Nicely seasoned, and freshly barbecued. Awesome beans, too:
moose burger

The thing I was most worried about was keeping myself together spiritually. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to get to a church, and I was right. There was nothing nearby, and I didn’t want to drive around Delta Junction looking for one when it was all icy everywhere. Plus, I get lost going to the bathroom.

At first, it was really hard to maintain my spiritual discipline. We got up pretty early, so it was difficult to read or pray or journal early in the morning (much like it is at home). And I didn’t feel much like doing any of that when we got back to the hotel, either. So I mainly didn’t do anything in the way of devotional time.

Another problem was that one of my past…problems or…addictions as a single man was to look at certain types of things on the internet. I knew I’d be here with no one to hold me accountable but my own conscience, and that’s not really enough. So I messaged quite a bit with Zeb, and he mentioned this online MMO he played as a good way to kill time. I downloaded it and it pretty much did the trick. If I’m not watching a movie or doing homework on the computer, I’m usually playing Star Wars, the Old Republic. It’s pretty fun, even if I am not particularly good at it.

Still, I was having trouble reconnecting with God–and I fully knew the problem was me. God had not gone anywhere. Then there was this one day where someone had to stay with the test item while the soldiers went back for chow, and I told them I would do it. So it was that I was all by myself at this OP where there was nothing much around at all. I had a warmup room, so I was sitting in there on this little couch when I just started to pray, and ask God to show me something so that I could know he was there even if I wasn’t talking to him at that time. I needed to know that He was still God, was still on the throne. I hate that I got to that point, but it happened.

It wasn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. So I prayed, and I listened to some worship music on my phone and then I got the sense I was supposed to go outside. It had just started snowing kind of softly, and it was about 2 degrees above zero. I looked around for a little bit and it just smacked me upside the head. God had not gone anywhere. He hadn’t moved at all. He was everywhere around me.

After that, things got better. Not perfect, because nothing is perfect. I just found a time and place where I could be alone with God for a little while when I got back from work. It wasn’t first fruits, but it was all kinds of better from what it had been.

The main struggle then was just missing these people:

Wilkins

I’m usually able to speak to Jen and the boys maybe once or twice a day. John called me this morning, as a matter of fact. Jenny said he grabs her phone and says “call daddy.”

Man, I can’t wait until next weekend. I miss them so dang much.

The thing I’ll most take away from this place isn’t the pay check, or the leftover per diem. It’s that one day at the OP when I realized that no matter where I was and no matter what was going on, God was still God, and always would be.

more mountains

There’s no way I can look at those places–or even those images of them–and think they could have been made by anything but God.

Short and Sweet

Listening to music while doing reports and this random lyric stuck in my head from Carry on Wayward Son:

Now your life’s no longer empty
Surely Heaven waits for you

I think that is what finally brought a feeling of peace to my life–that knowledge the emptiness which had been such a huge part of my life was no longer there, and Heaven will be there at the end. Jesus will be there.

I spent–no, wasted–so much of my life throwing things around and making a huge mess of my life because I wanted something to fill up the empty places, but nothing ever did.

Then God happened, and my life changed utterly.

Now my life’s no longer empty…

A Prayer

Lord, I want so badly to sleep. I’m tired enough, but my mind is whirling like a light on a police car. The baby is asleep (finally), David is asleep and Jen is sleeping behind me right now.

I’m awake, though. I want my mind to quiet down, but Galatians 2:20 is on my mind

20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

and I am aware I need to ask your forgiveness anew, because dying to myself is no easy thing, not when I have to do it every day and my instinct is to live for myself.

I need to be forgiven, though, because it’s hard to forgive.

My discipleship is weak, and it needs to be strong. Forgive me my weakness and strengthen me.

Forgive me my impatience and quick frustration and speak your peace to my heart thirsty for it.

I’m thinking of this trip coming up for work and how easy it would be to slip into old patterns of thought and sin and addiction. But the thing is,

I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ living in me

and when I remember that, things make a little more sense.

But I still need your help, God, because like I said before, dying to myself is not easy. Not when I have this many shortcomings, and I feel like the 1st Lieutenant of sinners.

Forgive me my trespasses, and deliver me from evil.

And right now, God, Lord, Most High, I really just need one simple thing. Besides forgiveness, and deliverance, and strengthened discipleship, and so many other things, please just help me to sleep.

Tomorrow, well…today now, is coming really soon and there is much to do.

Stimulus and Response

When my older boy gets in trouble, he’ll go to any and all lengths to explain why it wasn’t his fault. He will happily throw anyone under the bus in order to divert any negative attention from himself. His mom and I are in the process of trying to teach him about responsibility (and accountability, for that matter).

What I’ve been thinking about lately is that so many people these days need to learn that lesson as well. God may well be creator, sustainer, beginning and end, but we have ultimate responsibility for our lives and the decisions we make.

We choose direction in our lives by how we respond to the circumstances that occur in it, whether they are positive or negative.

Concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl says:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

I think that is so true. I would also say that how we respond affects the lives of others and not just our own.

Frankl also says

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

That is also true. The other day I told my son about something that happened at work a couple years ago that very much could have affected our future, and certainly my ability to provide for my family.

I was driving to a remote test site down a dirt road, and I was last in a group of four or five trucks. Consequently, I was eating a great deal of dust. There was no wind and the dust just hung in the air. Everyone was also going very fast, and the main group began to pull away from me.

It was then several things happened at once. I realized I couldn’t see the sides of the road. I hit some bad washboards in the surface of the road and began to fishtail. I attempted to correct, overcompensated, and veered offroad, flipping my truck over and destroying a government vehicle.

That was bad. Had I not been wearing a seat belt, it could have been much worse.

I had to go before a review board and account for what happened. I could have tried to avoid blame and responsibility by blaming all sorts of things and people, but something told me not to, and I just told the truth: I was speeding, even though I couldn’t see well. How could I deny it was my fault?

I told my son (and I firmly believe) that what saved my job was that I accepted responsibility for my actions. The stimulus was the accident. My response was to be honest, even though I knew the cost could be great.

I’ve also been trying to admit to my son when I make mistakes, and to apologize when that is what’s needed. I think one of the larger problems these days is so many people have forgotten how to do that.

Rather, people blame their circumstances for things that happen in their lives, or to excuse the things they do. They blame parents, or teachers, or friends. They blame anyone rather than say, “Yes, I did it. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

We usually do not ask for the negative things that happen in our lives. We don’t have any control over the people that do or say hurtful things, or sometimes literally do hurt us.

But between the stimulus of what happens and the response we make lies a space…

We get to choose our response. With honesty and the acceptance of personal responsibility lies growth. With blame and denial lies stagnancy.

I think that’s where we are now as a society, as a generation.

Our place in life may not be our fault, and sometimes that place truly sucks. Or it could be completely different. Maybe everything is great.

It’s how we respond to those circumstances that determines the true course of our lives.

Life can and often will be so tough. Mine was, at times. I believe what brought me through it to the place I am now is the millennia-old sacrifice of a Nazarene carpenter a world away from Arizona.

I didn’t know much about Jesus at the time I was going through certain things. Yet when he brought healing to the person I am now he also brought healing to the person I was then.

Or think about it like this:

The stimulus was God saw what the world was becoming and had become. It was a fallen and often Godless place, and it needed something to change or all would be lost.

The world needed a savior (and it still does).

God’s response was to send his son as propitiation for the world’s sin and brokenness–for its fallen nature. That response gives us freedom.

If we look at the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalves as stimulus, I wonder how we will choose to respond?

Would that affect our willingness to accept personal responsibility for our actions (and reactions)?

I believe it would.

What would happen if we admitted our wrongs, or gave thanks for our “rights?”

What would happen if we were able to say “Yes, I did it. I’m sorry, please forgive me?”

Of Baptisms and Third Row Conviction

Sometimes young people just…amaze and humble me. Now that I’m old, I can say that with absolutely no irony at all. Since joining the FCC youth ministry, I have seen a lot of what seemed like apathy from the kids I teach. I’ve seen a lot of sleepy eyes and thousand-yard stares from across the table on Sunday mornings. Consequently, I’ve allowed myself to somewhat…expect it from them.

Then, something like this morning happens, and knocks me off whatever high horse or soapbox I happen to be standing on at the time.

Jen and I were sitting down front at church this morning, and two rows in front of us were a half dozen or so of our FCC college-age kids, all in a row. It seemed like a lot of them to be all together, all at once, but it was also cool they were sitting together as a group, so I just made note of it and then proceeded to listen to Jeff as he began his sermon.

After communion and offering, Kari announced a young man would be baptized, and I saw a tall, happy-looking kid of about 19 come down the stairs and into the baptistry. Typically at our church, the person being baptized just sort of stands there, and waits for the person doing the baptism to say their part and then do the dunking. Not this kid.

He said his name (Tim), and that his friend (whose name escapes me) was going to baptize him. He had a grin on his face that probably had half the people in the sanctuary smiling. I know it did me.

He made his declaration of faith, and then his friend baptized him in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit. When Tim came out of the water he practically leapt with joy, and literally raised a fist to Heaven and said “YAY!!” I wish I would have thought to take a picture.

Never have I seen a baptism where the person being baptized showed that kind of joy. It made me remember that the things of the world I often allow to consume me–no matter how great or terrible they might seem at the time–are nothing compared to the joy that can be found in Christ.

I made it a point of going up to Tim after service to talk to him and the very first thing he did was give me a big hug. He was still smiling so huge I thought his jaw would crack. There were several people waiting to talk to him, and they all got hugs and that same smile.

What a great, amazing young man of God.

I hope some of the high school kids were in there to see the baptism. It was a beautiful thing.

What We Forget

This morning I read a headline for an article on CNN.com that made me stop and think for a few minutes. What it said was “Dad Claims Sandy Hook Shooter’s Body.”

I read the article, but what it said didn’t really matter. The title alone was sad, and terrible. Perhaps to most people–including myself–not as sad as the parents claiming the bodies of first graders. As a parent of two small boys, what those parents must feel is unfathomable.

Yet the shooter’s dad had to claim the body of a dead son as well, and in some ways it almost seems just as bad. To him it probably is. Not only does he have a dead son, who by most accounts suffered from sort of mental condition (the level or name of which remains unknown), but he also has to wonder where he fell short as a parent, as a father.

The young man who did this terrible thing was once a first grader as well. He was once an infant, and his father cradled him in his arms, as I cradled my son just last night, and you have cradled your children at some point.

So his father grieves the loss of what he remembers, while also wondering what he could’ve done to stop it, or if he, personally is to blame.

What must that be like, to realize your son perpetrated such a monstrous act?

Let me say briefly that I am not addressing gun control or any political agenda here, but we can’t blame the father for what his son did. The blame lies with the killer. The guns he took from his mother aren’t responsible–he is. Saying otherwise is like saying jetliners are responsible for 9/11.

In any case, I pray the father of the killer is able to find some peace with himself and with God. I hope we as a body of people–Americans, fathers, mothers, human beings–can take something away from this terrible lesson.

Love your kids. Teach them to respect life. If your child is ill in some way–especially mentally–educate yourself all you can about what it is that ails them.

And be there for them, no matter what it costs you. We will never know what was in the killer’s troubled mind that brought him to a place where killing people seemed like the thing he should do.

As for me, I will do my best to make sure I’m available for my kids, to be a dad at any and all costs. What I will teach them I have posted about before, so for today just let me say that as horrible as the act was the Sandy Hook killer committed, his father still lost a son, and that’s sad.

Stream of Early Morning Consciousness

You are everything I will ever need
to complete everything you are asking of me
So I lay it all down for the sake of
Your name
Here I am, God, use me, set me aflame…

It’s so interesting the times God chooses to communicate something to a person. It’s 0440 and I want to be asleep. Lord knows I should be. Yet here I lie, thinking the above song lyric.

Why now, God?

What do I have to offer that you need, or can use? I can’t even manage to sleep…my mind keeps spitting out praise lyrics, like some demented late night Wurlitzer…

you are my all in all

And I wish I could praise you with my own words, but I keep coming back to the words of others, perhaps because my words are not enough

if I had no voice, if I had no tongue, I would dance for you like the rising sun

If I could say what I really meant I would say something to thank you for pulling me from the quicksand that was my life and making a man out of me.

I would thank you for coming to me in my weakness and not my strength, and for showing me it was ok to grieve and be broken.

I would thank you for holding my patchwork heart in your hands, and loving me even when I feel like a ****up. I would thank you for the beautiful and Godly woman who sleeps behind me as I thumb type this, who makes me want to be better.

If I had more words, better words, I’d thank you for showing me my gifts, and bringing me to this smallish town and bringing people like Ken, and Paul, and Jeff, and Zeb and Alan into my life–Godly men who love you and are helping me to pull something out of myself I didn’t know existed.

If I had the words, I would thank you for your Word, and your words, that bring life, that

wake me up inside

And here’s the other thing, maybe the last thing for now. Maybe there are people I know who will read this who do not believe. They might give a little sigh of exasperation because here I go again.

Well, so what.

I may not be the best writer or speaker or teacher or husband or whatever. But I am learning, all the time, and I am realizing that

we were meant to live for so much more

I know this and feel it in my heart. My words might not properly represent you at times before others, maybe even most times. But I know what you’ve done in my life, and nothing anyone says or believes about me can change that.

So I offer you my service, such as it is.

here I am God, use me

I Wonder

Let me begin by saying I am no pastor. I am not a theologian, or apologist of any particular skill. I am just a man who believes, and I am a member of a congregation. As such, I’ve began to wonder a few things about “the church” as a collective body, not just the place I worship a couple times a week.

I wonder if sometimes we forget why we enter those doors, or why they’re even there in the first place?

I wonder if sometimes we sit in judgment on the people who walk through those doors, as if the things that bother us about them matter at all to God?

I wonder if sometimes we think so much about who signs the most checks in the offering plate we forget about the people who have no checks to sign that are right outside our doors?

I wonder if giving people what they expect from church can sometimes supersede giving Jesus what he deserves?

I wonder if we can change–as people and the body–to actually reach the people in our own backyards who are so broken and so jaded and hurt by the world they have no idea who Jesus is?

I wonder if we can ever grasp that while Jesus is the way, truth, and life, the worship methodologies we’ve grown accustomed to are not necessarily the only ones that can bring the proper measure of praise to God?

I wonder if we will ever understand the vernacular of our youth in such a way that we can acknowledge they can actually say something to God with it?

I wonder if we will realize that our preferred level of spiritual reverence is not the only one that exists?

I wonder if we can truly learn to love the sometimes unloveable?

I wonder if we can ever really be the hands and feet of Jesus if we don’t stop trying to please people and start trying to please God?

I wonder if we can remember that in a sense, we are all leaders in our respective churches?

That’s the real trick, at least it is for me. I represent the church, and not just my own church. I represent Jesus before people who have never heard the truth about him. Like it or not, I am a leader in the church. And as Northpoint Pastor Andy Stanley said, as leaders “we are not responsible for filling anyone else’s cup, we are responsible for emptying ours…”

I think if we all just focus on emptying our cups in worship and praise we will be on our way toward living in the fullness of Christ.

I wonder what would happen if we did that?

This young man here is emptying his cup…

Beautiful Hands

This morning I decided to scrap the curriculum for my Sunday school class and just kind of freestyle. The last couple of classes had been kind of rough, participation-wise and I wanted to try and figure out if I was doing something wrong, and how I could make the class and the curriculum more applicable to the students and their lives.

Additionally, Friday’s events in Connecticut had me spun out a little as well. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time getting my mind around it, or past it, or through it. I wrote a little bit about that this morning and I also knew I wanted to talk to the kids about how they felt, too. I wanted to see how they were handling it, and if they wanted to talk. The young man who committed the crime was only a few years removed from high school himself, and was closer to their age than mine.

So we talked about being a teenager. We talked about how tough it was, and how tough it could be. We talked about whether or not the church was relevant to the lives of the kids (yes and no), and what we could do to make it different. One of the students shared a considerable amount in the class about her difficulties, and the hour ended up passing pretty quickly.

I don’t know what the result was for them, but I feel like I learned a little bit more about their lives than I’d know before and had some insight into being a teen in the 21st Century.

After my class, I went to the sanctuary to wait for Jen so we could catch the 11am service–I was excited about it because I knew Jeff was going to be preaching and I wanted to be there and see how he was doing. The worship songs got me thinking as worship songs do and by the time Jeff came on to preach I was in the frame of mind where I knew if anything emotional happened I was toast.

The first place Jeff went was to talk about the shooting, and he reminded us to remember the victims, and to focus on them, rather than spending so much time finding out about the perpetrator. He talked a little bit about the heroism of the teachers and staff that morning, and finished with a prayer. By the end of it, I was teary and sat with my head down even after the prayer was finished.

I just wanted to go lie down somewhere. I had my arm across the back of Jen’s chair and I absently stroked her shoulder with the fingers of my left hand. I remember thinking I needed…something from God or I was going to have to get up and leave.

Just then I felt the soft touch of little fingers on my forearm and turned to see a beautiful little girl with Down syndrome that was maybe two. She wore a nice little Sunday dress, and her hair was fixed and very pretty. She didn’t say anything, but just stood there for a second and smiled the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.

“Hi, sweetheart,” I said, just as her father hustled her back to their seats.

He said she noticed my arms were as hairy as his. That was certainly true, but I think it was a lot more than that, at least for me.

I told him that afterward, and I’m not sure whether he got it or not, because he looked at me kind of funny. Regardless, it made me very aware that God will speak to us when we ask him to, sometimes in ways we don’t expect.

I felt his touch in that little girl’s fingertips when I needed it badly.

What a morning…