PreacherMike

Check out this unbelievable clip with Dr. Oliver Sacks about a musical savant — a young man who is severely autistic who is a musical genius.

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In a couple hours we’re off for Brazil. I’m speaking Sunday for the church in Itu where Antenor and Phyllis Goncalves minister. It’s an amazing congregation that is having an impact in many places.

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Wednesday night I spoke for the opening lecture at Lipscomb. Right before I spoke Randy Lowry (DLU president) presented Landon with a lifetime KOPIO award (from a Greek word that means working to the point of exhaustion). After the assembly, so many people came to tell me where they were when they first heard Landon speak. Just his few words that evening (accepting the award on behalf of outsiders, whom he’s spent his life ministering with and to) took people back in their memories.

So let me ask . . . where were you when you first heard Landon Saunders speak? What memories do you have of his preaching, radio program, or film series?

I’m still chewing on Regina Spektor’s “Laughing With.” See what you think. What do you think she’s saying about God, humor, faith, etc.?

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God
When the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one’s laughing at God
When it’s gotten real late
And their kid’s not back from the party yet

No one laughs at God
When their airplane start to uncontrollably shake
No one’s laughing at God
When they see the one they love, hand in hand with someone else
And they hope that they’re mistaken

No one laughs at God
When the cops knock on their door
And they say we got some bad news, sir
No one’s laughing at God
When there’s a famine or fire or flood

*Chorus*
But God can be funny
At a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke, or
Or when the crazies say He hates us
And they get so red in the head you think they’re ‘bout to choke
God can be funny,
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
Ha ha
Ha ha

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’ve lost all they’ve got
And they don’t know what for

No one laughs at God on the day they realize
That the last sight they’ll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one’s laughing at God when they’re saying their goodbyes
But God can be funny
At a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke, or
Or when the crazies say He hates us
And they get so red in the head you think they’re ‘bout to choke
God can be funny,
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one laughing at God in hospital
No one’s laughing at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God when they’re starving or freezing or so very
poor

No one’s laughing at God
No one’s laughing at God
No one’s laughing at God
We’re all laughing with God

Which of the following sports streaks do you think is the most impressive:

MLB: 21 games (1935 Cubs)
NFL: 21 games (2003-04 Patriots)
NBA: 33 games (1971-72 Lakers)
College basketball: 88 games (1971-74 UCLA)
College football: 47 games (1953-57 Oklahoma)

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I woke up this morning with the sounds of waves and these lyrics playing in my head:

A-B-C
It’s easy as 1-2-3
As simple as do-re-mi
A-B-C, 1-2-3
baby you and me!

This morning at 5:15, a bus full of teens and sponsors pulled out of our parking lot for a mission trip to New Orleans.

Even after four years (since THE WRECK), it’s still hard not to hold my breath.

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From N. T. Wright (on Rom. 8:28-30):

Is Paul after all a determinist, believing in a blind plan that determines everything, so that human freedom, responsibility, obedience, and love itself are after all a sham?

One can easily imagine Paul’s own reaction . . . “Certainly not!” What we have here, rather, is an expression, as in 1:1, of God’s action in setting people apart for a particular purpose, a purpose in which their cooperation, their loving response to love, their obedient response to the personal call, is itself all-important. This is not to deny the mystery of grace, the free initiative of God, and the clear divine sovereignty that is after all the major theme of this entire passage, here brought to a glorious climax. But it is to deny the common misconception, based on a two-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional understanding of how God’s actions and human actions relate to each other, that sees something done by God as something not done by humans, and vice versa.

As I’ve been transferring books from one office to the other, I haven’t built my “Ten Most Influential Books of My Life” list.

However, I was struck again by how much these books meant to me at the time I read them:

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

G. E. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (I’ve read better since, but at the time it rocked my neat little world)

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles (and almost everything he wrote before and after that)

Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet (ditto)

Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (double ditto)

I’m sure more will follow as I keep moving stuff.

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Looking forward to having this number at this year’s Zoe Conference. Not sure if the original group can be there. I’m hoping that David, Melissa, and Amy will do it. (David, you’ll have to work on your panache to perform the moves that begin about 1:58!)

Ten years ago, on June 16, 1999, tragedy struck our family again. My fun-loving, faith-filled nephew, Jantsen, died suddenly at the age of 15. There was no warning. He went to lift weights with the football team, laid down to rest, and his heart failed him.

A while back I asked my brother, Randy Cope, to reflect on these years since the death of his son. I’ve only changed the time references from “seven years ago” to “ten years ago” — though it’s interesting that the whole Ghana story has happened since then, validating again what God has taught them through this suffering.

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Ten years ago today my life changed forever.

Actually I knew that it had changed the moment the doctor came out of the emergency room and told my wife and me that our 15-year-old son had passed from this life from what we later found out was an undetected heart problem.

I had enjoyed my life up to that point – a healthy family, a good job, and a bright future – but as I stood in the hallway of Freeman Hospital there was no doubt that things would never be the same. Before I left my son’s side that day I prepared myself for a life that resembled a scorched forest after a wild fire. The hillsides filled with lush trees and the valleys filled with wildflowers would now be smoldering ashes.

As the fog lifted so did the reality of what had been lost. Each new act brought new pain – the first trip to the store, the first Sunday at church – even the first time I decided to make oatmeal and had to figure out how to make it for one person, since he and I were the only breakfast eaters in the house.

And such was my life – for a season.

Yet one day, months later, I caught myself whistling. There wasn’t much life in the tune, but it surprised me just the same. As I look back on it now I see that moment as a sign of the renewal that was to follow.

From that first sprig of life has grown not a forest, but a park. I say park because my days are not only filled with life, but an increasing measure of purpose and meaning.

Don’t get me wrong; to call my life a park is not to say that there are no weeds. Our enemy is relentless and is not even above using my grief against me to pull me down from time to time.

Yet as I look back over these last few years I see many wonderful lessons:
• God is creative and lavish in the gifts He sends to bring comfort. He brought friends I hadn’t seen in years, books, music, nature, and even complete strangers to bring healing.
• God taught me not to fear life in the valley. The valley of suffering to me was a place to be avoided at all cost. Now I see that it is strangely a place of peace. God dwells with His suffering people in the valley – in green pastures and beside quiet waters. The Bible reads completely different now that I have this perspective of suffering.
• There is nothing more beautiful than a friend that comes running to help, even when the emotional fallout is intense. Friends like Todd, Warren, Tracy, James, and Cary, who all jumped in to save us – and a brother and sister-in-law who came to sit beside us in silence and later whispered lessons they had learned, having started this journey of grief with their own daughter five years earlier.
• With a treasure of mine now in Heaven I see life much different. It is like studying a Magic Eye drawing and suddenly seeing a beautiful scene in what you once thought was simply a meaningless mess of color.
• With Jantsen on the other bank, the water that separates this life from the next is a brook, not a ragging river – one I am anxious to step over once my work here is done.

I see the work of restoration most in the life of my wife. On that day ten years ago I prepared myself to care for her through the years. I knew she would never recover.

Yet she did.

After a season of intense suffering I watched as our Lord lifted her up – not to her old self but He transformed her into a daughter who has a passion for those that suffer. This new perspective on life has led her to start a ministry that dries the tears and brings smiles to the faces of orphaned children in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, and Nicaragua. God also brought her – us – healing through our oldest daughter and our two young ones, whom we met when he led us to them half way around the world.

Some days the pain returns – not the intense “I can’t breath” pain that I remember from the early days, but a heaviness that I guess will be with me all the days of this life. Maybe, however, this heaviness is in some ways a blessing. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When a loved one dies, God comforts us enough to sustain us, but God leaves enough of the void and enough of the loneliness to help us to anticipate the reunion.”

And so it is, ten years later.

I can’t leave this reflection without thinking of a song by Stephen Curtis Chapman that helped inspire me to get up off the ground and “dive in” to what Got has in store for me:

The long awaited rains
Have fallen hard upon the thirsty ground
And carved their way to where
The wild and rushing river can be found
And like the rains
I have been carried here to where the river flows.
My heart is racing and my knees are weak
As I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back
Once my feet have left the ledge
And in the rush I hear a voice
That’s telling me it’s time to take the leap of faith…

So here I go I’m diving in, I’m going deep in over my head, I want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head, I want to go
The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive
So sink or swim, I’m diving in

There is a supernatural power
In this mighty river’s flow
It can bring the dead to life
And it can fill an empty soul
And give a heart the only thing
Worth living and worth dying for.
But we will never know the awesome power
Of the grace of God
Until we let ourselves get swept away
Into this holy flood
So if you’ll take my hand
We’ll close our eyes and count to three
And take the leap of faith
Come on let’s go
…
Lord, I thank you for bringing peace to the valley – and for what awaits us all around the next turn.

I’ve written a few times about my confidence in Rochester College. That’s been true for a long time, but it’s especially true now under the leadership of their president, Rubel Shelly, and their provost, John Barton.

Here’s just another example: you can now receive an MRE degree in missional leadership through (primarily) online courses. Mark Love — fresh out of his doctoral program in this area from Luther Seminary in St. Paul — is going to lead the program. I can’t think of anyone better for the position.

Check out their brand new website here. You can also receive more info by writing Mark at mlove@rc.edu.

Here’s the announcement:

This story is an increasingly familiar one: congregations and their leaders do everything they know to do and with greater skill, but with diminishing impact. The fact is, the world has changed, and many of our understandings of congregational leadership are built on assumptions related to a world that no longer exists. The days of “if we build it they will come” are fast vanishing. Increasingly, congregations are awakening to the fact that we are in a missionary engagement with our own culture.

This degree is for leaders of all kind: staff ministers of all stripes, elders and other lay leaders, persons anticipating a career shift involving ministry. Help us fill our first cohort. For more information, you can contact Dr. Mark Love, Director of the Resource Center for Missional Leadership at Rochester College, at mlove@rc.edu. Join us on this exciting adventure.

My sixteen-year-old son has had lots of odd jobs before now — stuff like mowing lawns and feeding other people’s animals. But this summer he has his first fulltime job: he’s part of a fence-building crew. You can tell by the sore shoulders, scratched arms, and blistered hands that his body will take a while to adjust.

But today I went with him to the bank to deposit his first paycheck. And you could see that suddenly the soreness didn’t matter. There was an actual paycheck with lots of $$ (from his 16-yr-old perspective).

I thought back to the day I became instantly wealthy. It was the end of the month in my paper route, which I took the summer before I entered 7th grade. I collected at month’s end, paid my bill to the newspaper, and counted up what was left: $45. I couldn’t believe it. Forty-five bucks. I was about the wealthiest person I knew.

I knew what to do with it: part of it went to savings, part of it went into contributions (though I had to grow in the spirit of joyful giving — it was fine when you were giving a dime off a dollar allowance, but $5? That seemed steep!), and quite a bit was left for baseball cards, movie tickets, etc.

The first paycheck is a wonderful thing.

Do you remember yours? What was that first job?

Songs, that is. I loved Budweiser songs.

It was 1967-68, and I went to bed most evenings those summers listening to Harry Caray and Jack Buck on KMOX, broadcasting the games of the St. Louis Cardinals.

My brother and I would go down to our bedroom in the basement, turn on the transistor radio, and fade off listening to those magical voices. And the Budweiser songs, of course. I’m not even sure we knew they were advertising beer. They were just the songs of the Cardinals.

Some people like to fall asleep to complete silence. Me? I’ve always liked a little noise — especially the sound of a ballgame. I think it goes back to 617 Reid Road in Neosho and the voices of Caray and Buck.

How about you? What do you remember falling asleep to? Music? TV? Radio?

Thanks, RB, for pointing me to this thoughtful essay entitled “We Get to Carry Each Other.”

I love the line: “Kris Allen Is My Kind of Christian.”

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Where is true happiness found? There are intriguing observations in “The Joy of Less.”