Archive for December, 2009

A New Way of Looking at My Life (Quotes)

Deb picked up a copy of Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years for me a few weeks ago.  I saved it for our trip to Florida, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

In the book, Donald discusses the components of a good story, and talks about “rewriting” his life to make it into a better story.  The book came at a good time, as I’m re-evaluating my life right now through a lot of introspection and a program called Focus of a Warrior.  While reading it on the flight south last week, this quote stood out:

Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.  We think God is unjust, rather than just a master storyteller.

To take this further, we could imagine God as a director and play write.  Instead of a script, he is giving cues, general directions and our motivations.  As actors on the world stage, we are learning the story as we’re performing it.  Most of us focus on what our character is doing, and some of us are straining to listen to the Director’s cues.  A very few bother to look around, and discern the Director’s instructions by what is happening in our scene, or throughout the whole play.

When someone we love is removed from the stage, the pain we feel is real, since we don’t know the rest of the story.  However, even though we don’t know the rest of the story, we do know the end of the story.  Like all the best epics, the bad guys are ultimately vanquished, and the good guys live happily ever after.  Any other ending just feels wrong.

At the end of the story, those who had major roles and bit parts will know how relevant or irrelevant they were.  In really good stories, the characters and lines that seemed insignificant will be revealed to be the crux of a much bigger story.  It’s not how much stage-time someone has, or how loudly (or badly) the lines were given.  Instead, it’s the Writer/Director that determines their importance.

And, at some point, I will join the fellow actors who were in my scenes for a curtain call.  All of us who listened to the director and took His cues will stand reunited in the lights and bow.  We hope to hear the audience of One give us a standing ovation, shouting “Bravo!”

Then comes the cast party…

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Christmas 2009 (Fun Stuff, Pictures)

This year, by God’s grace, we get to have a blue Christmas.

We have been blessed to enjoy a few days in the Ft. Myers, FL area.  The weather has been good (at least, a whole lot better than the weather in MN).  We have enjoyed the beaches in Ft. Myers, Sanibel and Captiva.  We have eaten way too much, and all the other things one does on vacation.

This was at The Bubble Room in Captiva.  The food was great, but the decor was incredible.

This was at The Bubble Room in Captiva. The food was great, but the decor was incredible.

In short, this has been about as good as life reasonably gets.  We have been working to enjoy where we are now, and not think about what we will be doing in the future.  That’s a change from how I have been living over the past few months.  I have been focused on the future so much, that I feel like I’ve been missing out on the present.  I’ve been praying lately that God would help me to be thankful for each day, and to see it as a gift.  It might sound like cheating, but I can finally say that He’s done it.  I have been thankful for each of the past few days.

I have never seen as many shells as there were on the beach at Lover's Key.

I have never seen as many shells as there were on the beach at Lover's Key.

All-in-all, both Deb and I would rather have a “normal” Christmas, with a little boy tearing through giftwrapping like a tornado through a trailer park.*  However, that wasn’t in God’s plan.  We had been concerned about the horrible emptiness that would have greeted us tomorrow morning.  Now, we get to celebrate a “blue Christmas”–blue water, blue skies.  And dolphins, for cryin’ at night!  We have dolphins swimming and feeding outside our patio!

(Cue Elvis)

Thank you…Thank you very much…

We stopped on our way back from Sanibel just to get pictures of this sunset.

We stopped on our way back from Sanibel just to get pictures of this sunset.

*My apologies to anyone who lives in a trailer park.  They are fine places.  It was just the first metaphor that came to mind.

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The Cure for Thirst (Announcements, Temporal Echoes of the Eternal, Doing Something)

February 19, 2010 marks the one year anniversary of the passing of our son, Ian, from an inoperable brain tumor (DIPG). For more information on Ian’s story, visit his Caring Bridge site.

Sometimes a child gets sick and there’s no cure this side of heaven.  Thankfully, other times sickness can be cured or better yet, prevented.

Did you know a child dies every 15 seconds due to water-related illnesses?  Our hearts break for the parents of those children.     Especially because those deaths are very preventable.  Clean water, sanitation and hygiene can cut a community’s child death rate in half.  We want to ease needless suffering caused by unsafe water supplies.  Also, we want to help prevent other parents from experiencing what we have gone through.  Would you please help us?

World Vision brings the love of Christ to children and families in nearly 100 countries to meet their basic physical & spiritual needs. With the partnership of people like you and me, they are making a real & lasting difference for millions of people.  That’s why we wholeheartedly support them.

When you donate to the Clean Water Fund, your gift will help save children from suffering or dying; you will literally change lives for generations.

Please join with us by giving a gift that will bring life-altering help, and most importantly,  hope.

In Ian’s memory, we desire to raise enough money to drill a traditional well for a needy community.  The well your gift provides will be capable of supplying more than 600 gallons of safe water a day for drinking, bathing, irrigating crops, and watering livestock for years.

The cost of a Traditional Well is $2,600, but the impact that it will have on people, people whom God loves and cherishes, will be immense.  More importantly, it will show them in a very real sense that Jesus loves them, and will provide a way for the gospel to be shared.

Thank you for joining us in this life-giving effort!  If you would like to help, here are some ways:

  • Download a brochure, print a few copies out, and hand them out to people you think would be interested in helping.  There are two pages, and they are intended to be printed double-sided.
  • Include a link to our FirstGiving page on your blog, FaceBook page or Twitter feed.
  • Most importantly: pray.  Pray that God would use this opportunity change the land of a village and heal their hearts, in his ongoing mission to bring people back into His arms.

There is a bumper sticker that I see every so often.  It says “God bless the whole world–no exceptions.”  It used to irritate me, as if I had some corner on the market of blessings.  I’ve come to realize that God does want to bless the whole world, no exceptions.  His plan is to do it through people, like you, like me.

There is no “plan B”.

Let’s start digging.

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New Album from The Choir (Dim Memories of a Geezer)

Every so often, I check up on bands that I used to follow ardently.  I was glad to see that The Choir is still putting out albums; in fact, there are videos of them working on a new one on their website.   The band isn’t their full-time gig anymore, so an album from them is a treasured occurrence now.

If you get a moment and you have a history with Steve and Derri, then check out TheChoir.net to see what they’ve been up to.

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Thoughts about Genesis 8 (Crawling Through Scripture)

When the rain is falling, and the water is rising, it’s easy to imagine that God has forgotten me.  I’m sure that Noah felt that, too.  In between feeding the animals, cleaning up after the animals and pacing the decks of his new little world, I like to imagine Noah staring out the window.  I know I heard the LORD.  He told me to build this thing.  He said that He would use it to protect us.  But now everything that I’ve ever known, except my family, is gone.  I look out these windows, and I see nothing.  But water.  Lots and lots of water.  At least the fish are happy…

And there was probably a little part of him that wanted to be gone as well.  Weeks of wrestling with doubt started to take its toll.  Every day, Noah would have had to look into his family’s eyes, wondering what they thought of him.  Obviously, they trusted him.  He was the father of the family, who acted as a high priest for them, interceding before the Most High God.  But Noah could start to see the questions in their eyes: Will this stop?  And when?

God was merciful, and provided signs that He was going to keep His promise.  He knew that Noah and his family were merely human, and would need reminders.  Noah first sent out a raven (which God would declare in Leviticus to be an unclean bird), and the wretched creature left.  Noah then sent out a dove, which returned.  In a way, that was God’s message: I’m still with you.  A week later, the dove was sent out on another reconnaissance mission, and brought back an olive leaf.  Olive trees don’t grow at high elevations, so the waters had receded below the tops of the mountains.  The olive branch has since been a sign of peace, and in a way, this was God’s method of telling Noah and his family My wrath has been satisfied; I’m at peace with creation.  This gave mankind hope and secure knowledge that God had a future for them.  He has given us a sign of His deep desire for peace with man, in the form of Jesus.

As a quick aside, olive trees, and the oil produced from them figure prominently in Hebrew culture.  It was a staple of their food, and as such, God used it to speak His messages to Israel time and time again:

  • They burned olive oil in their lamps (light)
  • It was used for anointing (blessing)
  • In Zechariah 4:3, God provides Zechariah with a vision of two olive trees, representing the priestly and royal offices.  Christ is our priest and king, and we are declared priests and kings
  • In Romans 11, we are described as a wild olive shoot, grafted onto the olive tree that is the Hebrew people
  • Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives (Luke 24:50), and will return there as well (Zechariah 14:3-4)

The third time the dove was sent out, it didn’t return.  God still hadn’t abandoned them, but instead was saying that it would soon be time to leave the ark, and He was preparing their place.  While Noah’s family would have to stay in it a little longer, the ark was not their permanent home.  Thousands of years later, Jesus would leave this world, and go to prepare a place for us.  We have His promise that this world, in its fallen state, is not our permanent home.

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Thoughts on Genesis 6-7 (Strolling Through Scripture)

By the way…you know that schedule I put up about a week and a half ago? The one that stated I would be in Job by now? Yeah, well, forget the timetable. I will still be following the scripture order, but I’m not going to be able to keep up that pace. Anyway…on with the insightful commentary.

I’m finding that it would be way too easy to breeze through stories like this, assuming that since I’ve heard it since childhood, that there would be nothing new to learn. I’m glad that, instead, I’m taking my time. I’ve got a nice, new Bible that is getting marked up with new notes, pointing out things that the Holy Spirit is showing me. Unless I’m mistaken, I believe that Jewish scholars called these things “loose threads”. They are phrases or passages that, when you read them, something tells you “dig here.”

If you look in verses 6-7, it says:

The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth–men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air–for I am grieved that I have made them.”

These are not the emotions and words of a holy and righteous deity that is upset that mankind started a party and won’t call it quits. This is not a God who is offended. Rather, this is a creator who loves his creation, and is heartbroken that they have chosen to reject Him, and as a result they are suffering.  In previous posts, I’ve mentioned the choice that God continually and repeatedly gives mankind: Choose Him and life, or reject Him, and at the same time, choose death. If you picture that choice as a fork in a road, then mankind is now several miles down the road with no signs of turning around. At this point, God destroying the world is a mercy. If he allowed mankind to further descend into its own sinfullness, and further corrupt creation, a truly unmerciful God would leave them (us) to their (our) own devices; or, to put it another way, He would let us lie in the bed that we had made. At some point in the life of a person who has repeated rejected God, repentance is no longer an option. The same sun that softens one heart only hardens another.

However, in His wisdom and in another facet of His grace, God selects Noah and Noah’s family to live. The Bible states that Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. This does not mean that Noah is sinless, obviously. However, it does mean that Noah wanted to follow God, and had allowed his heart to bow to God’s will. And, as the patriarch and high priest for his family, Noah had taught his wife, children and daughters-in-law to obey God. Noah didn’t content for the rest of humanity, like Abraham does in Genesis 18. (Anybody have any thoughts on why?). Instead, Noah obeyed and built the ark as God had instructed.

As Noah and his family entered the ark, they chose life and bore witness to the rest of humanity of their dedication to the LORD. Unfortunately for the rest of the population, it was the last witness they would see. God protected his servants by shutting up the ark. Was it shut from the inside, the outside, or both?

Picture this: tectonic plates moved in a way that had not happened before or since. Out of the ground came not the gentle irrigation described in the garden of Eden (see Gen. 2:6), but gigantic torrents of water. Following that, the first rains ever recorded fell on the earth. I’m sure that, for at least a little while, Noah’s neighbors pounded on the ark, alternately demanding and pleading to be allowed in. Based on the description of the populace, I’m also sure that there were those who wanted nothing more than to kill Noah and his family out of spite and a feeling of vengence. God’s purpose in saving humanity would not be thwarted, and the door stayed shut.

Also, the people pounding on the door were Noah’s friends and family. These were people with whom they had lived and traded. Listening to the screaming, there must have been someone on the ark who thought about opening the door, just to let one or two more inside. Once again, God had made his decision, and it would stand. The door would not open.

I’ve heard it explained that repentence is a gift. We are not guaranteed an opportunity to contemplate whether to ask for forgiveness for our sins. God, in His grace, has given us to this point to choose Him and the wonderful life He offers. I need to remember that in light of how I tend my own heart. Choosing death is just as often a sin of neglect, rather than an intentional act.

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