Leaving Me...

I kept your scarf;
It was the only thing that I had left of you.

Alone, I was abandoned;
There was no console in your absence.

I wanted to come to you,
To ask you to open again your heart.

But I hurt you too deeply,
And you promised yourself never again.

So here I remain alone,
Leaving me with only your memory.

"Radical" by David Platt

"Radical" was given to me from a friend via Amazon.com.  What a gift from a friend.  I had been talking to this friend about some frustrations that I am having with my own life.  I was expressing how desperately I want my life to bring God glory but how fearful I am in stepping out, risking it all for Jesus. My friend said, "I have a book you must read."

David Platt is the pastor of the Birmingham, Alabama church, The Church at Brookhills.  Brookhills is a very large, mega church in one of the richer areas of the Birmingham metro area but Platt has encouraged his church that they are so blessed so they can be such a blessing.  The have taken what many would call drastic steps to make sure they're living radically for Christ.

"Radical" is one of those books that has rattled me, no, to better describe it this book has disturbed me greatly.  I've thought so often, arrogantly I might add, that in the area of Christian living I do okay.  But this book has the keen sense of using God's word as a mirror to show us where we fall short... no, where we fail miserably.  It is easy to get ease in Zion as the scriptures say.  The tendency to live life business as usual is just second nature to us. We become so concerned with all things earth that we give little to no attention on where are citizenship is supposed to be as Christians.  Our life given to Christ should be just that... given to Christ.  That means we are no longer our own.  We no longer follow our own will or desire.  We hold nothing back from Him. We surrender all sensibilities to live comfortably upon this cursed earth because we've been enjoined to Christ eternally.  We have stared our sins in the face, seen how we are corrupt and wicked and miserable and have seen full face the grace purchased for us through the glorious Christ.  To live as though nothing much has changed is to make a mockery of Christ's wonderful gift.

What if we lived radically?  What does radical living look like?  Christ was a radical.  He lived radically.  He was hated vehemently by the religious establishment and was killed.  If our lives aren't hated by the world, then we're living safely... not radically.  Radical living is peculiar living.  It's holy living.  Peculiar holiness will rile the comfortableness of a world violently opposed to Christ.  He calls us to live radically... radically opposed to the world's way of selfishness and giving up every worldly comfort to go and spread the gospel.

This is a wonderfully challenging book that I recommend anyone wishing to shed stagnate religion to pick up and prayferfully read.  The book is rad, dude... (okay, I couldn't help myself!).

Thank you friend for your Amazon gift...

Communion at Emerge... "On the night of His betrayal..."

Emerge is our twenty-something college and career Bible study we have on Thursday evenings.  We meet at various places in our metro area, normally McAlister's Deli, Fool Moon, Chick-Fil-A or at my home.  The group has grown so much over the last year in our common unity, so last night was our first time to share the communion meal together in our home.

It was an awesome night of hanging out and thinking about our lives and purposes for which can only be properly seen through the body and blood of Christ.

As I read the various passages where Christ shared communion, a thought occurred to me in how Paul referenced this shared meal.  He said, "On the night of His betrayal..." and it made me think: Here was Jesus with the disciples and they were sharing this most intimate holy rite.  What other communion could rival the one that Christ Himself served so symbolically moments before He'd be betrayed and actually shed the blood they were at that moment, in that meal, honoring?

The irony of how near they were to their salvation, their Savior, and yet the meal is marked by being the night of His betrayal.  In just moments after eating and drinking, Judas would slither off to the shadows to purchase his eternal fate.  In mere hours, Peter would be marked by a renunciation times three of ever having known Jesus.  The other ten would abandon Jesus in the garden at the sight of the temple guards. And even with that foreknowledge, Christ was the common-unity that brought them all together and would ultimately bring each of them together again in forgiveness.

With this in mind, I remarked to the Emerge group that we were about to share the same meal and we too are each on the eve of our own betrayals of Christ.  It may not come Thursday night or even Friday, but if given enough life (it really won't take much life sadly) upon this earth we will miserably fail Christ and in a sense abandon Him as equally as the disciples had.  Yet on that same evening... the evening of His betrayal... the evening of our own betrayal of Him... they were holding in their hands the elements that would wreck any such betrayal of lasting any longer than the deed itself.  In the body and in the blood is our own forgiveness...  And as we shared together in the communion with each other, and with Christ ever so present, we are to keep Him in rememberance until He comes... until He comes.

Great is the faithful forgiveness or our Christ and Lord despite our faithfulness to rebellion and sin! 

Marcella and the Moon...

Marcella is a duck that paints the moon each night while other ducks go to swim in the moonlit lake. She isn't well like by the other ducks as she is seen as an outsider and not like them. She paints the moon each night in succession and she notices that each evening the moon gets thinner. Finally, the moon isn't visible at all and the other ducks don't know where the moon has gone (these ducks are apparently only 28 days old). They go to find Marcella to see if she knows where the moon might perhaps be. She explains to them that they shouldn't worry because the next evening the moon would return (Marcella must be 30 days old). And just as the duck prophetess predicts, the moon does return and the ducks are all relieved... and of course live happily ever after.

"Marcella and the Moon" reminds me of what Paul discussed with the Christians that gathered at Corinth. "Can the body all be an eye," he asks? He responds to his own question: "Of course not, what an odd thing it would be."

Marcella's love was to paint. The ducks that wouldn't be friends with Marcella all loved to swim instead of paint. Once the disappearing moon dilemma was resolved due to Marcella's... uh, gifts (see where I'm going?) they invited her to swim in the lake.

Like Marcella, God has given each of us gifts or talents that benefit the group, i.e. body, as a whole. Our desire to paint the moon is His desire to equip the body for the task at hand. We often quote the text, "God will give us the desires of our hearts" as a spiritual key to get all the toys we've ever dreamed of getting. While He does desire to give us good gifts as the perfect Father, I think I can make a decent case, from Psalm 37, that those who delight themselves in the Lord will be given the desires of (or implanted into) their heart. In other words, a life God orders will have His desires at heart. It's almost like a quid pro quo relationship, yet one we cannot earn by returned favors. He delights in our heart as we delight in His heart.

Even though Marcella wasn't well received, and just because you are willing to follow God by using your gifts and talents for Him, doesn't mean you'll be well received. Your desires and talents may be weird in others' less discerning eyes, but God uses a few of us odd birds (pun intended) to benefit the whole duck group here on this universe's big moonlit lake.

So follow His calling... paint the moon. Some freaked out ducks are going to need you!

Crazy Love by Francis Chan...

I just finished reading "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan.  I'll admit openly that I was reluctant to read any of Chan's books.  I unfairly lumped him in with the Emergent crowd of too-cool-for-school, hip new pastors that I aspire to be, and being how I don't like myself too much, I figured I wouldn't like him either (read that again, but now with sarcasm - I do like myself sometimes).  This couldn't have been a more wrong appraisal of Chan.  He is now one of my heroes and, as a side note, will be at Winterfest this year in March. (Heck yeah we're going!)

"Crazy Love" for me was crazy bad, but in a good way.  As with his other book, "Forgotten God," it was terribly difficult for me to read because it points out so easily how I've become a nominal Christian (something I'm allowing God to remedy at all costs).  At one point, hours after my allotted reading time for the day, I remember stating out loud to myself "to know this and to not change is to damn my own soul."  The temptation now is to forget having read this book and seeing the light that has broken the darkness of a spirit gone to sleep.  There's nothing more easy than being spiritually benign.

I've also realized that the lukewarm people of Revelation 3 were not in fact Christian people.  It is impossible to be lukewarm and to be Christian, which Chan drills home in page after page of examples of how we too have become lukewarm.  I don't want to be God's spit! I want to bring Him the most honor and glory that can be mustered by a Spirit led life.

I really do recommend everyone read this book who is serious about loving Jesus... really loving Jesus. I've got some changing to do...

Pacifier...

My wife found her hiding behind the overstuffed olive colored chair in our living room.  The perfect cover for a four year old not wanting to be caught with her passy.  Now how she came across this passy is still not clear to us.  We’ve not had a passy in our house for nearly two years.  Annsley was a sucker (pun intended) for a pacifier.

Ever since she was able, she had a pacifier firmly in place and was to never be without it.  Pamela and I thought we’d never break her from her pacifier.  We pictured her graduating from college diploma in hand, passy in mouth, waving to her family that was trying not to be noticed to be related to the passy sucking graduate.  But through persistence and much bribery our little Annsley was broken from sucking a passy by the age of almost four.  Not bad, right?

Her dependence upon her pacifier was so much that I had to drive to Wal-Mart at eleven o’clock at night to buy a new one, and it had to match perfectly, when hers was lost; something I swore I would never do (Father, please forgive for I have sinned).  Once she had been broken of her dependence on taking a pacifier, we burned those wretches (threw them in the trash actually) in the style of spinning wheels being burned in “Sleeping Beauty.”  However, like “Sleeping Beauty,” there was one lone spinning wheel, I mean passy, that was forgotten about.  And when Annsley found the passy the other day she again didn’t want to give it up.  Her mother argued with her reminding her that she was a big girl now and didn’t need a passy any longer.  Annsley argued back that she was a big girl who needed a passy.  Her mom shot back that when her daddy got home he would be mad that she was not his big girl any more since she was sucking a passy (a low blow I thought).  But persistent, Annsley shot back that she could have it until her daddy got home.  Touché. She takes after me…

But God invented mothers and put a brain inside their heads.  “Mother” was the version 2.0 of “father” and the brain was the upgrade that we fathers didn’t get.  In a stroke of pure brilliance, my brain-headed-wife suggested that Annsley give her passy to a baby that really needs a passy.  It was a bit manipulative given the fact that we’ve been teaching our children there are kids in the world who have nothing and we need to learn to share our blessings with them.  And in the style of a slick televangelist, Pamela pleaded with Annsley shedding a tear and using the TBN tactic of “just sow your passy-seed right now and God will pour blessings of big girl stuff upon you.”  Pamela then showed Annsley pictures of all the passy starved children living in the Sudan.  At this, I suggested that Pamela stop watching TBN.  But she was able to convince Annsley to “mail” her passy to a baby girl that needed a passy. (I also then forbid Annsley to ever watch televangelists as well.  She was too susceptible to the manipulation.) So together mother and big girl found an envelope, placed the pink passy into the envelope and she helped Annsley write a letter to “Babies”.  The envelope was addressed “To Babies” and the letter said,

“Please give this passy to a baby girl who loves pink,” (her words) signed Annsley.

So mommy and big girl walked to the mailbox dropped in the letter and walked back to the house for fresh big girl cupcakes (also part of the bribe… or God’s blessings, I can’t remember which).

And do you really have to ask?  Of course when I got home from work I checked the mail, secured the contents secretly under my shirt and then placed the envelope, the letter and the pink passy in the top of our closet.  I just wanted to be sure that when my little big girl was old enough to move off to college, that she could find it in the top of our closet so she would have the passy for her college graduation day.

Scary Sister

Eye of newt, witches brew,
A ghoulish, gaggle mummy crew..
You know what scares me?

I sure do.

Nothing but my sister 
In her princess costume!