san francisco

So I’m in San Francisco for the next few days and I am so excited.  I’ve never been here and it’s wonderful.  Also, these are the first days I’ve had off work (besides sickness) in 5 months!  So I’m pretty stoked.

Tyson met up with me as soon as I landed at the airport and we went nonstop all over the city until this evening.  I ate seafood @ Fisherman’s Wharf, hung out at Pier 39 with the infamous sea lions, saw Alcatraz from across the water, went to the top of Coit tower over looking the entire city, saw a glimpse of Golden Gate bridge through the fog, visited Chinatown, and had my first ride on a Cable Car down California Avenue.  I would say that’s a lot to do in about 5 hours!

I’m up here for a meeting that has to do with discipleship.  Several ministers have gotten together and we’re just having discussions about what it means to follow Jesus– and so far it’s been great.  I have pages of notes and we’ve only had one session. 

Anyway, just wanted to drop a line to let you know where I am.  I’ll have pictures once I get back.

Peace on earth

the Bible for those with ADD/ADHD

I had to post it because it’s too funny for you not to know about it.

morning with Bill

Well.
Life is going fast and I love it. I think that pretty much sums it up, but because there is so much that I’ve been experiencing that I would love to share, I’ll try to elaborate a little more.I don’t know where to start. Sunday I played worship downtown @ the Anchor Gaslamp, a relatively young church plant that I have become very connected with in recent months. I’ve been telling everyone in Poway about the pull I’ve felt to really get involved with this church for the next few months and everyone has been really supportive.

Before the church service Sunday, I met a man at Starbucks that is one of those people you’re so glad you get to meet. Bill was sitting right next to the table where I had placed my bible, and reading a Louis Lamour book, a black gentlemen, elderly, nicely dressed with slacks and a button-up shirt. He asked me if the book in front of me was a bible, and I said yes, and that it was big enough for both of us (I have a HUGE NIV study bible).

We started talking about God and it didn’t take long for me to know he was a believer. He was asking me questions about my calling and my relationship with Jesus, and he was really good at making me talk – which makes sense because later on in the conversation I found out he had been a lawyer for much of his life.

Bill said something that has stuck with me all week. I was telling him about my faith crisis around age 19 and dealing with big doubts and questions, and he told me about taking medical depositions from doctors. As a lawyer, he had sat down with numerous doctors asking questions. He said they all tended to acknowledged that medicine is as much an art as it is a science…. “There is more in medicine that they don’t know than what they do know, but they still practice medicine.” And it was encouraging because there is so much more to life and God that I don’t know than what I do know, but it doesn’t mean I have to stop life until I figure it out… and it doesn’t mean I have to stop communicating with God until I can fully understand him.

Bill’s wife Dana came downstairs from their meeting and they were leaving to go to church, but Bill stopped and they both prayed for me in Starbucks. It was awesome! I’m just really thankful for the people God brings into our lives that encourage us.

I have a lot more I would like to write about, but I’ll save for next post. I’ll leave you with a thought I on the way to work a few days ago:

I’ll never get to live this day again.

I don’t want to need a good reason to smile…

Oh what a perfect afternoon
I don’t know why it’s perfect, but I’ll find out.
Oh what a perfect afternoon
I couldn’t have made it better on my own

I don’t want. I don’t want. I don’t want.
I don’t want to need a good reason to smile.

Oh what a perfect sky so blue
You could cloud it up and I’d think it was perfect too.
Do you believe that we can change our stars?
Well surely we can find some beauty, surely we can find some beauty in every day.

I don’t want. I don’t want. I don’t want.
I don’t want to need a good reason to smile.

Those are lyrics from an old song that an old roomate, Benjamin del Shreve, wrote.  You should check out his myspace. 

I was sitting in the lab at work today, and I began to think of that line “I don’t want to need a good reason to smile,” and I just began smiling for no reason.  I know so many people that are wound up so tight that it seems like something amazing has to happen before they even start to grin or crack a smile.  Actually, that sounds a lot like me most of the time.  But there’s a scripture that’s been on my heart this week in Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi.  In Philippians 4:6 he says, “Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Don’t be anxious about anything.  Don’t be anxious about anything.  Sounds ridiculously impossible, eh?  Well it is if I’m trying all by myself to quit being anxious.  But whenever the bible seems to prohibit one action, it always seems to offer a better way instead… and Philippians 4:6 is no different.  The way to keep from being anxious, is to give everything to God- to put it in his hands and then not worry.  The next few verses talk about the peace that God gives us when we do this. 

So I’m just reminded this week to not be anxious about anything, but to give it over to God.  And I’m also reminded that I don’t want to be the kind of person who has to have something wonderful happen in order for me to smile.  I want to be the kind of person who realizes the inherent wonder already present in each day of life.  What a joy it is to simply be alive another day, to live this day once, because I’ll never get a chance to live 10/22/08 again. 

On a side note, several things have kept me smiling this week. 

1)  Heidi, Duff, and Raleigh got baptized Sunday!!

2)  The K2K Trip is ON, as long as I can raise money.  (Thanks Heidi for the sweet abbreviation)

3)  I randomly met a really cool believer on Sunday morning at Starbucks who talked with me about God and all sorts of stuff.  (I’ll probably write more about Bill later.)

aromatic thursdays

The other night I was reading the second letter Paul wrote to the church in Corinth and I came across this passage:

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.” 2 cor 2:14-15

When I hit the word fragrance I said, “What??! Jesus smells?” I guess it’s true though, because sometimes I’ve been standing next to someone in church praying and I’ve thought I smelled their B.O., but I guess according to Paul it was just Jesus. And other times I’ve been in church bathrooms that didn’t smell so good, but now it all makes sense.

Ok. I’m being fecetious, and I’m also an idiot, but think about it. Whenever you’ve thought of Jesus and how he interacts with us, have you ever thought of a ‘fragrance’ or an ‘aroma’?? I will have to admit, I’ve never made that connection. But I read a note in my bible about this passage, and I think it opened up some understanding.

“In Roman times, a magnificent procession would be hosted in honor of a victorious general, the highest military honor he could obtain. He would enter the city in a chariot, followed by the senate and magistrates, musicians, the spoils of his victory and the captives in chains. Sacrifices were made to Jupiter, and incense was burned by the priests. Paul undoubtedly had such a procession in mind when he wrote these words.”

When Paul says that, to God, he and his band of traveling ministers are the aroma of Christ, he’s saying that everywhere they go, people know that Christ is victorious. Everywhere Paul goes, it’s as if God is leading him in a procession– as if Jesus has won the battle, and taken over Paul’s heart, stolen his allegiance, and now Paul and his fellow ministers are on a parade through the city. They become the fragrance of victory in Christ, they become the aroma, the burning incense, that alerts every nose in the city that Jesus Christ has come to the world to defeat death and evil, to usher in the kingdom of God… and he already won!

Paul even says that to different people, the message of Christ’s victory on the cross means different things. To some it’s good news, to some it’s bad news. He says to some it is the “smell of death” but to others it is the “fragrance of life.” But regardless of how the news is received, it’s still NEWS. Paul says it’s worth sharing with people even if they completely hate the smell of it.

And I thought to myself, “I want to be the aroma of Christ.” When I meet someone I want them to know that Christ has won the battle for my heart. I want them to know that I used to live only for myself, but now I life for him who raised Jesus from the dead. I want to be the fragrance that lets people know there is hope. I want to be the scent that alerts people of good news. Wherever I go, I want to be the aroma of Christ… and I’m pretty sure they don’t sell that cologne in the mall.

cube daze

I stand up from the chair in my cubicle, its beige walls corralling me in on three sides.  The sun bursts through the window at my back, leaving my shadow on the cubicle wall in front of me.  Fuzzy-eyed and lanky, I stand sipping coffee from the same white mug I sip coffee from every weekday.  I scan the room, a maze of cubicles and computers, thinking that from a really high arial view the office area probably looks a lot like a finely circuited computer chip. 

Everything here is safe.  Everything is predictable… even the coffee machine has a 401k. 

Some mornings I function completely on auto-pilot.  My default response to any individual I see before 10:30 a.m. is a simple, “Mornin’.”  Not, “Good morning,” or , “How are you?,”… Just, “Mornin’.” Doesn’t matter if I know the person or not, they all get the same response. 

The copy machine waits for my company.

I take a look around at this office wasteland, the child of the apex of modern civilization.  Streamline, professional, stifling, grating slowly away at the souls of men and women.  Men and women who would do anything for adventure.  Men and women who think deeply to themselves that this place is eerily too safe.  Men and women who want more. 

Then I take another sip of coffee, watching my shadow on the beige cubicle wall, and sit down in front of my workstation to begin the day.

If you were you…

I’d throw it all away- if it all turned out to make me someone I don’t want to be… if I were me – I’d sell it all and get lost on a train in Europe some place, but let the “Johnny Depps” on the television have all the fun.

How much of life is spent asleep?
How much of life just working for the money?
So small the part of life we lead that no time is worth the re-telling.
Oh to live vicariously through myself.

What would you do if you were you?

Don’t hide behind my face and talk about all of the great things that you would do and that you would say if you were me.
Your heart would guide, you’d never hide your scowl or your smile. You’d be so great and passionate, spontaneous and bold in confrontation… and great with the ladies.

How much of life is spent asleep?
How much of life just working for the money?
So small the part of life we lead that no time is worth the re-telling.
Oh to live vicariously through myself.

What would you do if you were you?

-Benjamin del Shreve

the flying bernoulli

In college, I studied Chemical Engineering for two years, easily the crummiest two years of my college education, not that I have several years to choose from. Anyway, during this time I completed some extremely difficult coursework and one of the courses was Fluid Mechanics. I remember the professor was a pompous fellow, who took every occasion to brag that he could play guitar ‘just like Hendrix’ and that he drove a “purple sportscar,” i.e. a Mazda Miata. We had a test every week, and if you tried to walk into class even one second after the bell had rung ( yes, we had a bell in college because that building was called the Bell Engineering Building) the teach would take an entire letter grade off your final grade at the end of the semester. Yeah, it was that bad.

It was during this course that I spent about 6 weeks learning how to manipulate ONE equation: the Bernoulli equation. This equation was humongous, filling up an entire whiteboard. Sometimes when writing it out, I would have to rotate my paper landscape in order for it to fit… not really, but it was big.

We spent each week discussing one portion of the equation until we could put it all together and use it to solve problems. The teach (wish I could remember his name) informed us of all the important uses that could come from the Bernoulli, including the one I remember the most: He said that this equation could explain why airplanes are able to fly.

Something Pastor Rob said the other day in a sermon spurred my mind to remember this equation. But I was thinking today about how so often we find ourselves wanting to explain the world around us in terms we can understand. It is human nature. Equations and formulas are statements the try to explain the occurrences we experience in the world around us. Often we want to explain the world around us in terms that we can not only understand, but also manipulate, just like an equation. Even this is not a bad thing in some regards. But I guess where we run into difficulty is when we try to explain God, or God’s will, in terms that we can both understand and manipulate. God can’t be limited to formulas.

I wonder what would have happened if, once learning of that equation, I were to book a flight. And supposed before I boarded the airplane, I made up my mind that I would not board and would not let others board, in the interest of safety, until I could tangibly prove and explain that the plane would indeed fly, and would indeed fly safely.

And suppose before I boarded the airplane, destined to take me from Arkansas to somewhere like Hawaii, I demanded of the pilot to know the exact dimensions of the plane, the speed at which he planned on flying, the altitude, how much force the jet engines would exert, how much the plane weighed, how many bugs would hit the windshield during take off, the drag force exerted by the wings, etc… And then suppose I pulled out my trusty TI-83 and my squared graph paper notebook, holding everyone else in line behind me in the jetway, and plugged and chugged every possible number into the Bernoulli equation. The reality is I would probably either be trampled on the jet way, or escorted out of the airport by security before I could even finish writing down the equation.

Just as ridiculous as this example is the way I sometimes treat God and his will. If I don’t understand it, if it seems improbable, if it seems amazing, if I think there could be a possible chance of failure, sometimes I cop out. Sometimes we say to God, “Explain yourself first, then I’ll have faith,” or, “tell me again the plan and how you’re going to do this in my life, then we can get started.” Or, “God I want to do something about the brokenness in our world, so please explain to me how I can do something about it, and then I’ll do it.”

The life of faith seems to be something we believe more than something we understand. Biblical faith seems to be more about trust than about knowledge. The bible didn’t say that faith is the evidence of things we can see or understand. It said “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

It would seem as though God is saying to me, “You’re not going to understand it, just do it.” The reality is that many things are beyond my understanding. They are undeniable, but simultaneously inexplicable. The fact that a vehicle weighing numerous tons (airplane) can soar in the air is to most of us inexplicable-but it’s also undeniable because many of us have not only seen planes fly, we’ve also been in a plane while it was flying us from one place to the other. God is beyond my understanding. I can’t explain him, but I can’t deny him either. I’ve seen what he has done in my own life, in my own heart, in my own circumstances… and I’ve seen what he does in the lives of those who trust him.

And they spake the Word of God with boldness…

I met the poor yesterday.

Larry sat there on the grass in front of the picnic table, humming inaudible lyrics.  His guitar, blood-stained neck from cut fingers and caked in a layer of dirt, was left handed, and there was a bumpersticker on the front of the body that said “Never Lukewarm” with a scripture reference from the book of Revelation.  He was playing a 12-bar blues pattern, and the stains on the wooden neck told me that he only knew three chords.  Larry was obviously homeless, and obviously a believer.

We had invited him a few minutes earlier to our BBQ that a group does specifically for homeless people that hang out around Ocean Beach.  When we first saw him, he was sitting across the sidewalk from a man that was handing out bibles in Spanish and English to anyone who promised to read them.  He had ridden his bike, loaded with his guitar case and a back pack, just down the beach to join us a few minutes later.

At first I hadn’t noticed him until he got out the guitar and started strumming.  Then I sat down next to him in the grass and just watched.  When he got to the end of his song, which didn’t really have a verse, chorus, or refrain, I asked him what he called it.  He looked up at me facing the sun over the Pacific Ocean behind me, his right eye squinting and his left eye unable to open,  and through his uneven whiskers said, “I call that one “And they spake the word of God with boldness.” 

I have to admit I was a little shocked.  I mean, his song title was in 15th century english from the book of Acts.  Let’s just say  I didn’t expect it from Larry.  He was wearing cut-off jean shorts that showed most of his legs, which were tanned like hide from sun exposure.  He had blue eyes, or at least the right eye, a gray, unkempt beard and curly, gray hair that hung out the back of his cap.   

I asked his name. He didn’t ask mine, and after a while, Larry asked me in his raspy tone, “What has your experience been with Jesus Christ?”  I started with my Papaw’s miracle healing, and told him a little of my heritage in the Church, but after a few sentences he didn’t seem too interested.  I told him I was just trying to follow Jesus the best I can, to which he replied “How do ya know you’re doin’ that?”

“I guess just trying to do what he says to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like loving your neighbor as yourself.  Like not hitting back when you get hit.  Like going the extra mile for people.”

“I keep listenin’ to ya and I’m not hearin’ what I wanna hear,” he said.

“Jesus said the most important thing was to Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and then to love your neighbor as yourself,” I blurted out.

Before I could finish, he interrupted “Ya need to READ his word and DO it.” 

I thought to myself, “Didn’t I just say that like 3 times?”  But it was then that I realized that Larry is probably like most homeless people, very lonely.  And maybe he doesn’t need someone to listen to as much as he needs someone to talk to.  So I listened, and boy did he have things to say.

His rant was long, and at times poignant while at other times questionable.  I think it’s interesting that several homeless people I have talked to have their own critique of Christians and the church.  Larry was no different in this way.   Some of his arguments made sense and some didn’t. 

He said Christians needed to be familiar with the Word of God and obey it, instead of doing what they want and saying they have a “peace in their hearts” about whatever it is they’re doing. 

He said Christians need to not only disagree with evil, but to stand up against it.  I agree, but his example was nothing short of hilarious.  “Instead of just saying HBO is bad, they need to stand up and say ‘let’s get this evil station off the air,'” he said.  “But they won’t because some a’ them church-goers like to get a tingle outta watchin’ it.”  (Priceless)  I said, “Yep, some of them do.”  Althought I thought to myself, ‘I wish HBO was the biggest problem we had in the world.’

By the end of the rant, I asked Larry to play us another song, while everyone ate hot dogs around us, and he did.  It was the same three chords, and all the lyrics were scriptures he had memorized.  “Now to him who is able to exceedingly above all that we ask or think, be glory forever,” and so on.  A few minutes later he packed up his things and left, saying “God is good,” heading off to a bible study.  And I was left to try to make sense of the experience I just had.

About Larry.  Was he homeless on purpose?  Was it his fault? Was it somebody else’s? Do his ideas have any clout?  Are they just nuances and slogans that he uses to justify rejecting the Body? Is he a prophet? Or a loser? Or both?  Or neither? 

I don’t know.  But all I know is the experience I had.  And that being around the outcast and poor in our city is going to be better for me in the long run, whethere I agree with what they have to say or not, whether I condone their lifestyle or not… etc.

All I know is that it’s good for me to take note of how I treat the least of these.  Matthew 25:31-46

All I know is whether he knew what he was talking about or not, Larry spake the Word of God with boldness.

God does heal

My brother sent this to me recently.  Listen to it.  You will not regret it.  God is our healer.