Kethuvim

I hate it. I hate flying. It may be "the only way to travel," but I'd rather have a car, or a hovercraft...I've always wanted to ride on a hovercraft. And forget that crap about, "It's the safest way to travel." If I get in a car crash, my chances of survival are pretty great, but if I get into a plane crash at 37,000 feet, I'm done. So spare me the psycho-babble about how safe air travel really is.

Anyway, I just looked at the plane I'll be throwing up in from Indianapolis to Miami, and it's actually not a plane, it's a Cracker-Jack box with wings. Not to mention that all 21 of us are carrying at least 100 pounds worth of luggage on board. Can this stinkin' thing even get off the ground with that kind of weight.

Did anyone ever watch the A-Team? You know how they always had to trick B.A. into flying and then they would club him over the head with a wine-bottle like a defenseless Harbor Seal? That's going to be me.

I don't actually throw up on planes, I just sweat profusely and my hands get all clammy and I sit and pray, "God, keep this plane in the air. God, keep this plane in the air. God, keep this..." Come to think of it, flying may be the best thing for my prayer life.

I don't get it, I'm not usually this bad about flying. It's never been my favorite thing to do, but I've never been this aprehensive about it either. Maybe it's because I have a kid now, who knows? Maybe it's because I only fly about once every four or five years, so I'm not used to it. Maybe it's because I over-think this kind of crap. I don't know, all I know is that June 10th can't be over soon enough.

1. I watched a show on the history channel about Hippies the other day. If you take away the massive amounts of drugs and promiscuous sex, a lot of their ideas were, at their foundation, strangely Christ-like. But, unlike Christians, their music was actually good.

2. Where has the book, "Les Miserables" been my whole life?

3. I got two bumper stickers the other day that now hang in my office. The first one says, "Jesus called, he wants his religion back" and the other one says, "If going to church makes you a Christian, does going to the garage make you a car?" Brilliant.

4. I wonder if they'll invent tele-porters before June 10, so that I don't have to fly to Haiti? I think our flight from Indy to Miami is on like a tiny chicken-freighter or something.

5. Speaking of Haiti...um it's hot. I looked at the Weather Channel website and at 10:00 am this morning, the heat index was 104. I will have no skin left when I return. I talked to a lady from my church that's been there before, in February she got a sunburn through her clothes. Sounds like a great place for a pasty white kid huh?

6. So...gas prices...fun huh? At least our government cares about it right? Is anyone else investigating the idea of buying a Vespa Scooter?

7. My kid threw up his whole dinner the other night, and then some. It looked like a bile-soaked grocery store exploded in our living room. My wife and I looked at each other and said, "So...what do we do?" We decided to burn the house down and start all over, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

8. I have to go to the bathroom, I'll be back in a few. Ok, I'm back. I feel much better.

9. Hey, we crowned a new American Idol last night. Can you hear that? It sounds like a new career already floating away in the breeze.

10. I've really been questioning my ministry recently. I don't know why. I sometimes feel like a dismal failure at what I do. I was up at 4:00 this morning because I couldn't stop thinking about this. Does these thoughts happen in other career fields, or is ministry exclusive in this one?

Here are the latest statistics/character taits/ummm...whatever else I feel like writing about my 10 month old.

Height: Somewhere in the 31" range. This means that we can officially have nothing laying on tables, chairs, shelves, etc. Also, it means that I've already contacted the NBA to let them know that the number 1 pick in the 20__ draft is already a done deal, this kid is huge.

Weight: 21-ish lbs. He's long, lean, and faster than I am.

# of teeth: 5. His two top teeth in the middle have a gap in between them, which makes him look like Spongebob when he smiles his big cheesy grin.

Walking?: He just took his first steps on Saturday night. He's up to a record of 5 steps before he falls flat on his face and cries.

Still cute: Umm...of course. Pretty much the cutest baby on the planet. I'm biased, I know. One of the high school girls in my youth group had this to say, "He's like 'magazine cover' type cute." I told her that if she would just wait another 17 years or so, she could have a "magazine cute" husband.

Favorite food: Toast with butter, ravioli, carrots, grass clippings, dried leaves, my leg, anything he can get his hands on. This kid will literally eat anything. Here's a mock conversation that would illustrate this kid's appetite.
Me: "Eat this Ezra, it's a cow sphincter."
Him: (insert Spongebob-esque grin) "Dadadadadada." (Fist goes into mouth ingesting said sphincter, followed by a grimace, followed by him smacking the table which is his way of saying, "MORE!")

Still pooping his pants?: Can you hear me gagging through your computer screen?

That's about it. I love this kid. This morning I asked him if he would just stay this size and not turn into a teenager. He just grinned. There was a hint of, "You just wait" in that grin.

On behalf of all Christians worldwide who are not former child stars and actually have a functional brain, I would like to apologize to the world for the whole Nightline debacle last week.

And, if by some odd chance, Kirk Cameron reads this post, I have something to say to him too. Um, Kirk...stop speaking on my behalf. You don't represent me. You may be a brother in Christ, but stop acting like you're God's new warrior and that all of us think like you do. You can't prove the existence of God. I'm sorry to tell you that, but you can't. If we could prove it inconclusively, we wouldn't need faith. Stop accosting people on the street in the name of Jesus. Stop going on national television and making idiots of us all. Go to church, do your thing, serve people as Jesus would, and keep to yourself. Thanks.

"Mama always said, 'God is mysterious.'" - Forrest Gump

I believe this to be true. But what does it mean? It means that God works in different ways at different times. We like to try and fit God into a nice and neat box, but he's just too stinkin' big to cram into our measly little boxes. Jesus compares the Holy Spirit to the wind, saying that it blows where it wills. You can't catch it, you can only live in it and, at times, allow it to guide you. If God is mysterious, then that means that he isn't going to work in the ways that we feel he should. He isn't going to answer our prayers in the niec and neat way that he would. If he did, he wouldn't be mysterious, he would be predictable (and miserably boring). Sometimes God acts in giant ways where it is pretty obvious that he is working. However, more often than not, his ways are more subtle, his actions more hidden. Most of the time, when God is changing us, the change acts like a fine wine, subtley evolving and growing in us until it reaches its full potential.

I'm reading a book right now called Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott. She speaks a great deal about God has changed her over the years, but it has been slow and frustrating. It's been a series of strikes and gutters, ups and downs. She says this:

"That's me, trying to make any progress at all with family, in work, relationships, self-image: scootch, scootch, stall; scootch, stall, catastrophic reversal; bog, bog, scootch. I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark.
I suppose that if you were snatched out of the mess, you'd miss the lesson; the lesson is the slog. I grew up thinking the lessons should be more like the von Trapp children: more marionettes, more dirndls and harmonies. But no: it's slog, bog, scootch."

Exactly. Every major form of spirituality acknowledges that any change (if it be worthwhile change) comes slowly and not without great effort. I hate that though. I live in the age where anything I want, I can get with the click of a mouse. It just seems that our mysterious Father's computer runs more like a 1985 Apple, instead of a brand new Mac. It also seems that he's ok with that, I guess it's time that I start being ok with it too.

I saw a picture on CNN.com this morning of the devastation in Greensburg, Kansas. If you know nothing about the story, an F5 tornado (read: ridiculously large tornado 1.5 miles wide) directly hit a small town in Kansas, completely destroying it. The picture was of a guy standing in a ruined church building. There was only one wall left standing and on the wall was a picture of Jesus, still hung perfectly straight that the wind didn't touch.

Totally creeped me out. I know this kind of a situation leads to all sorts of questions about where God was and all of that. Frankly, I don't have the answers and I'm ok with that. However, looking at that picture, it was almost like in some mystical way, Jesus was saying, "I'm still here. Despite what it might look like, I'm still here, and I'm still in love with every person in this town." I don't know why God doesn't stop stuff like that from happening, maybe the miracle in the whole thing was that there weren't hundreds of people killed, who knows. I do know that the Bible makes it very clear that where there is suffering, there is a Savior. There is a Savior who suffered through life in many different ways. There is a Savior that is close to the suffering, offering hope, love, and a sense of peace through the crap. It took a picture in a ruined shell of a church to remind me of that.

On my way to work this morning, I was careening down the highway at a "please don't give me a ticket" type speed, when I noticed a small box turtle crossing the road. I saw it in time to swerve, so I missed it. However, I was thinking about the fact that the turtle didn't have a snowball's chance in the seventh circle of hell of making it to the other side of the road. It's a fairly busy highway, and I watched as this thing crept across the road, with semis and Honda Civics whizzing by it at breakneck speeds.

My journey with God feels like that sometimes. It seems like I'm trying to make it to the other side of the road, but I can't go any faster than a crawl. Meanwhile, there are a million things trying to derail and destroy me. Sometimes these things miss, but other times, they seem to hit their mark. At times I just want to tuck inside my shell until everything blows over, but for some reason I can't. I keep hearing God's still small voice encouraging me to continue. So I go on, all the while asking this still small voice, "Um, can't you just give me a little help and remove the stinking obstacles, make the road a little less busy so that I can make it to the other side?" To which the Voice responds, "Um, you know that if it was easy, it wouldn't make it worthwhile when you arrived at your destination, so no, I won't remove the obstacles."

As I continue across the seemingly endless road, what I find is that I was getting more help than I realized. We're all getting more help than we realize.

I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness, mainly how much I suck at it sometimes. The Church should be full of the most forgiving people on the planet, and, unfortunately, it seems to be the opposite in a lot of respects. The thing about forgiving other people is that, when we refuse to forgive someone, it doesn't hurt the other person, it hurts us. Forgiveness (in a manner of speaking) is a completely selfish act. It has to be, because forgiveness is more about us than it is about the person who wronged us. When we refuse to forgive, we become bitter, which ultimately leads to our destruction.

Writer Anne Lamott puts it this way, "In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poision and then waiting for the rat to die." I think that says it all. If someone wrongs me, it isn't the other person that suffers, it is I who suffers when bitterness eats my lunch. So who has wronged you? We all have wounds, and unless we clean them out by forgiving the person who wounded us, we'll become infected by it and ultimately die from the poison.

I don't know if you've seen the video of the Virginia Tech killer yet, but if you haven't, be ready for it to chill your blood. I watched it on cnn.com today and it almost made me sick to watch it. On top of that, I couldn't help but be filled with sadness at this young man who threw his life away.

As I watched, I couldn't help but want to reach out to the guy and tell him that it didn't have to be this way. I wanted to tell him that, although people can be jerks, killing them isn't the answer. I wanted to tell him that the only way to truly conquer the evils he had endured in his life wasn't to lash out with more evil, but to destroy it with love. I wanted to tell him that you can never conquer evil with evil.

I also couldn't help but think about the rest of his life. Every killer has a story, no one wakes up one morning and starts shooting. The thoughts that ultimately ate him alive and cost the lives of 33 people started a long time ago. Was he picked on as a kid? Did his parents hate him? What injustices in his life led to the hatred? Don't get me wrong, I don't blame society for what happened, the only one to really blame is the shooter, I just can't help but wonder if he had ever seen what real love looked like.

As we mourn the deaths of the innocent, may we never forget about the guilty as well and see if maybe we can't prevent another incident like this one by showing the love of Jesus to everyone we come in contact with. Real love, transforming love; the type of love that melts away bitterness and builds joy in its place.

Recently, Joshua Bell, one of the world's best violin players, was commissioned by the Washington Post to play his violin in a busy subway station in D.C. during rush hour and see what happened. This article in the Post tells the story. Read it here.

Incidentally, the article is long, but is honestly the best piece of writing I've ever encountered in a newspaper. This article says a lot about our culture. It truly made me want to cry.

When Ezra gets excited, he makes this noise when he inhales. It's a hard sound to describe. As you can tell by the subject of this post, it sounds like a squeal, but I'm not sure that this word does it justice. It sounds like a devastating hybrid of this:

and this:

Apparently somewhere in the storied histories of my family and my wife's family, a ringwraith mated with a velociraptor, which mucked of the gene pool in such a way as to produce this:

Seeing as how yesterday was Easter, I've been thinking a great deal about resurrection. I spent most of my life as a Christian talking about the Resurrection of Jesus in purely historical, and then future, fact. In other words, all I focused on was that the Resurrection happened some 2000 odd years ago to a man named Jesus, and then it would happen again to those who were faithful in the "Last Days." So what happened as a natural by-product of this was that I didn't really believe that the Resurrection of Jesus had any real impact on me as I live today. However, I'm starting to see that the Resurrection, far from being just an historical event, is really more about today than it was about 2000 years ago.

I can look back at my life and see that it is a series of resurrections. I can see times in my life where I felt dead inside, and yet God, in his love and mercy, brought life to a dead place inside of me. When I read the Bible now, I see that we serve a God who, if nothing else, delights in bringing life to dead places, and beauty from ugliness. He loves to take a pile of ashes and make them beautiful once more (incidentally, this plays out in his created nature; look at what's happened near Mt. St. Helens, the land s being resurrected from ashes). He loves to take a pile of dry bones (look at the book of Ezekiel) and make them live again. He longs to bring this world back to Eden and make it right and beautiful once more. In this light, the Resurrection of Jesus becomes incredibly real for this time and place. He longs for his people to bring beauty to this earth through a series of resurrections.

What he really desires is for his people to be involved in a universe-wide movement back to Eden. This means that we should find the poorest of the poor, and help them resurrect their lives, aided by the power of God. This means that we are to find single moms who are trying to get by, and help them to resurrect their lives. This means that we are to be good stewards of God's creation, and we should care about environmental issues. The list goes on and on.

I thank God that the grave could not hold Jesus, and I thank God that he longs to bring that same life to other dead places, places in you, and places in me.

Man, have you ever had one of those days? You know, the type of day where one thing gets to you and eats at you. The thing may not even be a big deal in the big scheme of life, but for some reason, it just gnaws at you. If you haven't guessed, I'm having one of those days. I need a hug.

I'm going to be gone for a few days, so I thought I would give an update, as well as some really adorable pictures of the boy.

But we got him on this one:

So here are some things I've been mulling over as of late:

1. Why haven't I bought every Sigur Ros album ever made?
2. Why can't Christians put out anything remotely as talented as a Sigur Ros album?
3. Why are Christians ready to accept death-bed confessions of faith, but refuse to accept a homosexual who is truly seeking God?
4. Why has homosexuality become the taboo sin for Christians? Could it be becuase Christians feel threatened by homosexuals, as if they're going to "catch gay" if they go to church with them?
5. Why can I not keep my 8 month old full? I mean seriously, he isn't that big, where is all the food going?
6. I've been doing Weight Watchers for 2 weeks now, ummm...why do I seem to be getting fatter?
7. Why is it that the more I learn about Jesus, the less I know about him? And why does that make me love him even more?
8. Why can't I get into a Lynyrd Skynyrd album like I used to? Why do I just find their music now oddly annoying?
9. Is there a better Jazz musician than John Coltrane?
10. At what point do you stop calling them "love handles" and call them "giant fat bags."

These are the things floating around in the ole' duders head these days. What can I say, I think I need counseling.

I was flipping through channels again this morning while I was feeding my boy (anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time knows where this is going) and I came across the same "Bible study" program that I spoke of last week. This morning they should have titled the program, "Same crap, different people." This time it was three ladies sitting around the table and they were speaking about demons. I guess when you have nothing to say about Jesus, you have to talk about something right?

They were all bantering back and forth naming all sorts different demons that seem to exist when one of the ladies says, "...and what about financial," to which one of the other ones says, "That's right, there's a spirit of poverty." By spirit, of course, she meant demon. I did a quick keyword search on BibleGateway.com for "spirit of poverty" and this is what it yielded:

Sorry. No results found for "spirit of poverty" in Keyword Search. Idiot.

Ok, so I added the "idiot" thing at the end, but you get the idea. This idea that some devious little demon lurks in your mind and makes you poor not only isn't biblical, it's completely ridiculous. What this leads to is the idea that, "I'm having financial problems, ok, I'll just rebuke that demon in the name of Jesus and, 'Voila!' everything is cool." I always believed that some people were poor because of bad choices, some because of injustice, and some just because they didn't have a chance to be anything but poor, but now I can add another reason...those darned demons. Maybe if I rebuke those demons tonight, Visa and Mastercard will go out of business thus eliminating my debt once and for all. Start praying and rebuking people.

I was flipping through channels this morning before work and came across a TV preacher. I know, I do this too much, and I need to stop. Everytime I see one of them, it makes me embarrassed to be called a Christian. Anyway, this guy was sitting around a table with his three adult children (who, incidentally, look and talk just like him), "studying" the Bible. By studying, I mean the three kids were sitting there listening to their father makes stuff up as he went and then throwing a vague and obscure Bible passage in for good measure. The whole scene was a bit creepy, but I digress.

He was talking about blessings and how when we speak them, God answers and blesses us. By blessing, he was, of course, speaking of monetary and health blessings. The statement that made me almost spit my eggs and hot sauce all over the lving room was this, "The power is in speaking the blessing. When we speak it, Jesus is obligated to make it happen, that's his job." WWHHHHAAAATTTT!!!!! Where did that come from? Since when is Jesus obligated to do anything we tell him to do? I wasn't aware that that's how the relationship works. Because God knows that when you love someone, you immediately start demanding that they fulfill your requests, right?

I'm not sure that we want to get into a game where we start using a phrase like "Jesus is obligated" and "it's his job." Maybe we should leave Jesus' job description up to God.

I just ordered a Sigur Ros album. They may be the best band to ever come out of Iceland. Of course, what competition do they have in that category? Oh yeah, Bjork is from Iceland...so like I was saying, they're certainly the best band to ever come out of Iceland. They're a partly-instrumental, ethereal type-music band (Good Lord, I am an amazing music critic). I listened to a couple of their CDs this past weekend with a friend and I was blown away. Here a few reasons that you should stop reading this now and go buy a Sigur Ros album:

1. My blog sucks and at this point you want to do anything but read it.
2. You're a follower by nature and you would indeed walk off a cliff if someone told you to.
3. Sigur Ros invented their own language called "Hopelandic," and they sing a number of songs on their albums in this made-up language (at this point, you should be saying, "Wow, that's pretty impressive, I'm going to go and buy their entire catalogue.")
4. The guitarist sometimes plays his guitar with a violin bow.
5. You think that I'm so freaking cool that you can't help but buy anything I tell you to.

Do you need any more reasons than that? My friend told me that he was talking to a friend of his while listenign to Sigur Ros and his friend said, "I think this is what death must sound like" (he, of course, meant that as a compliment). So, in conclusion, listen to Sigur Ros and it will make you want to die. No wait...I meant to say that if you listen to Sigur Ros, it will kill you. No wait...never mind. I ordered it from Amazon and opted for the free super-saver shipping, which means that I will receive my CD sometime between this Thursday and November 2009. Now go and purchase their CDs you lemmings!

Update because you care: It shipped yesterday afternoon.

I have a confession to make...I watched some of the Oscars (and by "some" I mean like 30 minutes on and off). It seems that this year the environment took center stage, what with Al Gore's documentary on Global Warming gaining so much attention. Let me state that I have no problem with environmentalism. I don't take the traditonal Christian view of the environment of, "Hey, let's destroy it, because Jesus is going to come back anyway." In fact, I'm trying to take some steps in my own life to be a bit more conscious. However, I get tired of celebrities talking a good game and then living something so seemingly different than what they profess. I find it interesting that Christians get accused of being hypocrites constantly, yet other groups of people don't.

I watched as celebrity after celebrity pranced on stage and mentioned something about the Oscar's being "green" this year (I found it odd that they never seemed to define in what way the show was "green"), and about how we should be more responsible. All of these comments gained applause from their peers. Did no one else happen to notice that pretty much everyone arrived in a giant limo? Are those eco-friendly now, did I miss the memo? I'm guessing a limo gets roughly the same gas mileage as a Sherman tank, so how can they justify it?

I read in the book of 2 Timothy (which, incidentally, comes right after 1 Timothy) the other day a passage that I can't get out of my head. Paul is writing a letter to a disciple of his named Timothy, hence the name of the book, and he lists off characteristics of people in what Paul calls "the last days" (by the way, I do think it's possible that Paul was speaking of something other than the second coming of Jesus when he used that phrase). Here are the characteristics of these people:
Lovers of themselves
Lovers of money
Boastful
Proud
Abusive
Disobedient to their parents
Ungrateful
Unholy
Without love
Unforgiving
Slanderous
Without self-control
Brutal
No lovers of the good
Rash
Conceited
Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

Paul then says that these people have "a form of godliness, but deny its power." Then it clicked with me, holy crap he's talking about the Church! Then I started thinking, this list characterizes many of the aspects that I see in the American Church. Paul's final phrase keeps haunting me, "having a form of godliness, but denying its power." This phrase leads to many questions in my mind. Does this mean that the believers Paul speaks of to Timothy say all the right things, they know the doctrine, but when it comes down to it, they look nothing like Jesus? Have you ever met anyone like that? Am I like that? What is the power of true godliness? What does it look like? Do I look like Jesus (not literally, I'm much fatter than he would have been) to those around me? If I don't, what can I change in my life to make sure that I do?

Paul says in the book of Galatians, "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." To my brothers and sisters in the American Church, please listen to the words of our comrade Paul. It doesn't matter what you verbally agree to. It doesn't matter what you say you believe. All that matters is whether you put in to action what you say you believe to be true. The measuring stick is love, the measuring stick is Jesus, how do you compare? How do
I compare?