Sniffing out the work of God in the world…
When you get twelve minutes, this clip with Craig Ferguson is worth watching.
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Have you ever had a moment in your life when someone looked right into your soul and spoke words of grace? Have you had someone tell you that you are a cherished child of God?
It is life-altering.
So why don’t we do this more? Why do we hold back on those words of grace? What would happen in families, friendships, and churches if we could speak those deep words of gracious affirmation?
Florida, UCLA, North Carolina, Texas A&M.
Florida, Texas A&M.
Florida.
I so want to say Texas (too young) or Arkansas (I know, I know, 13 losses). But I won’t. I certainly wouldn’t bet against Coach K.
Your picks?
Twenty-five years ago today I became a father. It remains one of the very best days of my life.
Now that child is waiting for his child to be born any day. I’m sure he and his wife are wondering if the third year of medical school is the best time to have a baby.
But the answer is YES (especially since it’s happening anyway!). She’s going to come into the hands of two very young, very-much-in-love people who will cherish her and model for her the Way of Christ.
Being Dad to Matt, Megan, and Chris has been a central joy of my life.
A friend of mine who was waiting at Cook Children’s Hospital when we arrived there with Chris a couple years ago follow the wreck observed something that he said moved him deeply. He watched as I walked in and spotted Matt, who’d flown there from Houston faster than I’d driven there from Abilene. (Only one parent was allowed on the plane. I can’t even begin to describe to you how ugly it might have gotten if I had suggested to Diane that I, rather than she, should get on the plane with Chris.) My buddy told me later that I just collapsed into Matt’s arms as he comforted me. What a wonderful thing when your grown child is also your friend.
Happy birthday, Matt. I’m so very, very proud of the man God has shaped you into over the past 25 years.
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Diane and I were standing in the Cone Chapel during Friday evening’s wedding rehearsal, looking out over the Harding campus. A recent ACU grad (DJ) who was in the wedding walked up to me and asked with a smirk on his face, “So are we all going to have to read another sappy blog about how you fell in love?”
Well, I’ll try not to go there. It was a powerful emotion, however, to look out from that vantage point and see the campus where we met, dated, and, indeed, fell in love. It’s also the spot where we often walked our two little kids during seven years of ministry at the College Church.
We have had a beautiful weekend in Arkansas. The Bradford Pears and the plum trees are just starting to explode in color. I’ve been seeing as many of them as possible with my buddy Leon in his Audi TT (top down, of course).
After four years as a Harding student . . . and three years as an M. Div. student at Harding’s graduate school . . . and seven years as the preacher of the College Church . . . we get to go back to the campus for a wedding I’m doing. Though I haven’t been invited to campus since 1991, there is still much about the school that we hold dear.
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Just read part of the interview with Newt Gingrich where he seeks to explain why it wasn’t hypocrisy for him to attack Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky while he himself was having an extramarital affair. If he can pull that off, we need to assign him the task of solving the conflicts in the Middle East.
Places I’ve never been to that I’d like to visit:
Machu Picchu
Patmos
Ephesus
Jerusalem
Base camp of Everest
Italy
Wine regions of France
Egypt
Victoria Falls
Great Barrier Reef
Bangkok
That’s a beginning of a rather long list. For now, I’ll settle with a spring break trip back to Searcy, Arkansas to perform the wedding for a young man who grew up right next door to us here in Abilene. Abilene boy marries Searcy girl whom he met in Memphis. Our worlds are colliding.
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I’m working through a manuscript by Rubel Shelly entitled (tentatively) Divorce and Remarriage: A Redemptive Theology. I think it’s going to be a helpful tool to church leaders as well as to those who find themselves in a situation they perhaps couldn’t have imagined. I’m also anxious to see the new book Remarriage After Divorce in Today’s Church: 3 Views. The three writers (including one, Craig Keener, who is one of my favorite NT scholars) stake out different understandings and then interact with one another.
From Henri Nouwen:
On Power in the midst of powerlessness:
“A theology of weakness challenges us to look at weakness not as a worldly weakness that allows us to be manipulated by the powerful in society and church, but as a total and unconditional dependence on God that opens us to be true channels of the divine power that heals the wounds of humanity and renews the face of the earth. The theology of weakness claims power, God’s power, the all-transforming power of love. . . .A theology of weakness is a theology of divine empowering. It is not a theology for weaklings but a theology for men and women who claim for themselves the power of love that frees them from fear and enables them to put their light on the lampstands and do the work of the Kingdom.”
On Joy and suffering:
“There is suffering ahead of us, immense suffering, a suffering that will continue to tempt us to think that we have chosen the wrong road and that others were more shrewd than we. But don’t be surprised by pain. Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.”
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Two very special words: “spring” and “break.” Two days and counting.
I’ve been trying not to obsess on this on my blog. BUT MY GRANDDAUGHTER COULD BE BORN ANY DAY NOW.
Last week I worked through Paul’s amazing passage on food sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10. In some ways, it seems like he could have answered the pertinent questions in just a paragraph. Can Christ-followers buy meat in the Corinthian market area that had been sacrificed at a temple and then eat it at home? And, can they, when invited, join in the meals held at the temples by those who had brought sacrifices to Apollo, Venus, or some other so-called god or goddess?
But it took three whole chapters to answer it because Paul was interested in much more than those two questions. He was interested in the kind of community commitments being formed among the Christians in Corinth.
So, he insists that love trumps knowledge. In other words, just because someone knows that the meat can be eaten with a clean conscience doesn’t settle all situations, because there were weak brothers and sisters whose consciences weren’t so sure.
He isn’t talking about people who’d be upset that their narrow understandings were being violated. He isn’t speaking about them being offended. He’s addressing a very real possibility of falling away. They had come out of paganism. They remembered well the mystery and ecstasy of those pagan temples; they could recall the thrill of the celebratory meals; they still had powerful memories of the way moral restraint was often lifted in that environment (including all the women and boys who were available as prostitutes).
One smell of that meat — meat that they thought was associated with these other gods — might lead them down a road to their old lives. The “strong Christians” (not a term used in this section, but rather found in Romans 14) might know that it isn’t a package deal; but these weaker brothers and sisters might be caught up into the whole scene of idolatry.
It’s important to know what he’s saying. And equally important to know what he isn’t saying. This passage has been used far too many times to endorse the position of the person with the most rules and the most narrow way. It has nothing to do with that (in most situations).
Here are a couple insightful comments I came across.
First, from Richard Hays, who’ll be speaking at ACU next month:
“The ’stumbling block principle’ is often erroneously invoked to place limits on the behavior of some Christians whose conduct offends other Christians with stricter behavioral standards. For example, it is argued that if drinking alcohol or dancing or dressing in certain ways might cause offense to more scrupulous church members, we are obligated to avoid such behaviors for the sake of the ‘weaker brother’s conscience.’ The effect of such reasoning is to hold the entire Christian community hostage to the standards of the most narrow-minded and legalistic members of the church. Clearly, this is not what Paul intended. He is concerned in 1 Corinthians 8 about weaker believers being ‘destroyed’ by being drawn away from the church and back into idol worship.”
And then this from N. T. Wright (of course!):
“Sometimes people from a very narrow background, full of rules and restrictions which have nothing to do with the gospel itself and everything to do with a particular social subculture, try to insist that all other good Christians should join them in their tight little world. But in a case like that the rule-bound Christians are in no danger of having their consciences damaged. They are not being ‘led astray.’ They are quite sure of their own correctness. Paul is dealing with a very different case.”
In his weekly editorial, Garrison Keillor has written about a line from an opera he and his wife watched. The line was: “Instead of happiness, heaven sends us habit.”
One of the great truths of life.
We spend our time pursuing happiness, and it seems ever elusive. It’s just beyond the next ridge.
But heaven sends us habit. Waking up. Getting the kids fed and off to school. Working. Finding a way to get dinner on the table. Saying our prayers. Hustling everyone into the car to get to church just a minute or two late. Grabbing a burger after the ballgame with friends. Quiet moments with your spouse to unpack the day. A cup of decaf or a glass of wine. A good book to read. A few moments of SportsCenter.
It isn’t exactly spectacular. But in the habit there can be great happiness. But you have to know it when you feel it.
So many people are looking for the next big thrill so they can be happy. Others have found deep, abiding joy in the midst of contentment and habit. Even with a spouse, kids, a job, and a church that aren’t perfect.