Things You're Not Supposed to Find in Your Office

This slithered past my desk this morning. It was about 2 ft long and sat nicely in the box until I returned him to his woody environs.

Lessons from Children

Some lessons I've learned from children as of late:

On limits & longing
Hudson: *from out of sight, noises of straining to reach something* "Daddy, I can't reach it."
Me: "What can't you reach Hudson?"
Hudson: *more emphatic* "I CAN'T REACH IT DADDY!"
Me: "What son?"
Hudson: "The sky daddy, I can't reach the sky."

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on grace
Background: I'm performing a wedding of two divorced people. Both went through hell in their previous marriages, and now God has brought them together. The woman has a 3 year old daughter. As part of their ceremony, the man made a promise to the little girl. Holding hands in a new family circle, the following interchange took place:

Man (looking at the little girl): "I promise to care for you, love you, provide for you, etc"
Little girl: Looks up adoringly
Me: *thoughts* She won't remember any of this. In fact, she doesn't even understand what he is saying to her. And furthermore, she didn't do anything to deserve these kinds of promises and doesn't have the capability to even receive them.

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on joy and anticipation
Background: On vacation staying with one of my close friends. He has a six year old son.

Me (to the 6 year and my 2 1/2 year old): "Boys. Tomorrow, would you like to go swimming at the pool?" (the city they live in just built perhaps the greatest public pool I've ever seen.)
Boys (in ecstatic, jubilant unison): "YEEEAAHHHH!!!"
The six year old (at the top of his voice): "I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS DAY TO BE OVER!"

This speaks for itself...

Richmond's Sordid Past

At the height of slavery in colonial America, Richmond, VA was THE crossroads for slave trading. The warehouses sitting next to the James River where they were unloaded as "cargo" are today renovated high-dollar lofts. And in 1860, Virginia had more slaves than any other state in the Union. For Virginia's culpability in perpetuating this evil, the VA State Assembly recently issued a formal apology stating their "profound regret."

As a physical step of amends, three identical Reconciliation Statues were commissioned and erected; One here in downtown Richmond, one in Liverpool, England (where many of the slaving ships originated) and one in Benin, West Africa (where many Africans were wrongfully enslaved). The other day I met a friend for lunch just a few blocks from the statue and took some photos of it. It is a sign of the Kingdom!

Virtue Deconstructed

I came across this quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great Jewish thinker.  It is rattling me.

"Greek philosophy began in a world without God. It could not accept the (mythical) gods or the example of their conduct. Plato had to break with the gods and ask: What is good? Thus the problem of values was born. And it was the idea of values that took the place of God. Plato lets Socrates ask: What is good? But Moses' question was: What does God require of thee?"

 

 

 

Tragedy at VT - what to do about evil?

On Monday we hosted the funeral for one of the victim's of the Virginia Tech tragedy on Monday. His family belonged to a church here in the area. Their sanctuary wasn't large enough, so they asked for our help. It was a moving ceremony as 900+ packed the house to honor this promising young man. I'm looking at the program from the funeral and his winsome smile is looking back at me.

There really aren't words for a tragedy of this magnitude, or any magnitude for that matter. So here are some random thoughts on evil in general and this evil in particular.

• "Evil", as Scott Peck's child noticed, "is live spelled backwards." The essence of evil in any form? Taking life. See Scott Peck's chilling work on the psychology of evil: People of the Lie.
• Cho emerged to fit the profile of all the other shooters. Loner, ostracized, unresolved junk from the past. This only shows the dark side of our being made in God's image: Without good relationships, society suffers. Community benefits society.
• John Donne was right: "No man is an island. If one part of Europe falls into the sea, the rest is affected." There are no "isolated", "private" acts. That's an illusion perpetrated by radical individualism and an illusion we all too readily buy.
• Whether or not we suffer is not the issue. A life skill is that we must learn to suffer better. Christians as a rule don't know how to suffer and grieve, which is ironic given that the majority of literature in the Old Testament was written in and to a context of suffering. (And never mind that our savior suffered and told us we would too).
• God is not responsible for suffering. If God were, we would be puppets in some divine play (and I know some think this is so). We are free moral agents--able to choose. This is a reflection of being made in the image of God.
• Tears are the price of love. If we love, we hurt. The two aren't separable.
• We are "but a mist that appears for a while then vanishes" as James, Jesus' brother reminds us.

Big Things Can Be Scary

On my birthday Hudson and I headed to Lacy Auto Parts at the invitation of our friend David Lacy.

He purchased a 1970's era fire truck and invited us to go for a ride before his customer came and picked it up.

Hudson loves fire trucks.

So we set off. We pulled up and Hudson almost jumped out his skin to get to the Fire Truck. I put him on it and he crawled around and generally got excited. I put him in the drivers seat, took some pictures, got in alongside him, honked the horn, cranked the siren (one of the old crank up kind).

And he started to get scared.

So David's son Graham fired up the truck. He got even more scared. He was tucked in next to me and I could feel him clinging to me internally. As we rounded the first corner, his fear gave way to screams and tears of terror. So we backed up, turned it off, and got out to cries of "I'm scarewed daddy, I scarewed!"

That's when it hit me: big things can be scary.

As a leader I know that "big" is "supposed" to be what I am aiming at. But big things can be scary. They look great from a distance, sound great when playing with small models, feel fine when we pull up to them. But get in, turn the engine on and start moving...and things can get scary. I'm still chewing on that.

We Theology

I've been thinking about spiritual growth and how we measure it.

As Americans/Westerners everything is about the individual. Almost all of our efforts in churches are geared toward the individual. The very few matrices/assessments I've seen for spiritual growth are generally geared toward the individual--asking how "you" can grow and measuring how "you" have grown.

Perhaps that is the influence of Descartes (of "I think, therefore I am" fame), but I don't think it is in rhythm with the New Testament and OT, lest I engage in some sort of super-sessionism.

The controlling metaphor, it could be argued, in the NT for Christians is "the body of Christ." Now as I understand it, when my lungs go someplace, my liver usually goes along for the trip. For instance, I am currently in Tulsa, OK wrapping up a wedding. None of my body parts decided to pre-emptively stay home in Richmond. All of me went along.

If that is the case, and it is what Paul was meaning when he used that metaphor, then shouldn't spiritual growth be measured by how WE are growing rather then simply how I am growing?

If I read my Bible, love more, serve more, etc. but we don't all take steps forward, then is spiritual growth in NT terms actually happening? Or I am just on a personal growth plan that essentially says "to hell with everyone else" but has been unwittingly endorsed by the current system of Christianity? Maybe Moses understood this when he told God if his people were going to be cut off, then cut him off too. (See the tail-end of the story in Exodus 32:30-33.) This just doesn't make sense in our individualistic "make-sure-you-yourself-know-where-you-will-spend-eternity" ethos.

New Name

I changed the name of the blog to be more in line with what I want God to do both in me and through me.

For me, it's a title of hope. For all the places the people around me, the world and me are mis-formed, mal-formed and de-formed, I understand the Gospel to be the message that we can all be re-formed.

The Church Needs Toyota

The Big Three auto makers are closing plants, laying off workers and losing billions of dollars. But not Toyota. Why?
One of the differences is the Big Three's ethos of change. It's discontinuous. A change is a big deal, gets a power-point and publicity splashes across the company.

But not Toyota. Changing the process continually is simply part of the way they see the world. A 1% change by the end of the month (all the time) is de rigeur rather than shooting for 15% by the end of the quarter. And not only that, problems are expected and talked about. "Problems first" is one of their mottos.

What if the church was the same way? We are a lot like the Big Three. We grab the latest model, program fad and make a big splash. What if we went for continuos improvement and tweaking? "How can we do that a little better" instead of "what program, tool, idea will change everything?"

Check out the article from Fast Company.