So, what does a guy who dresses in all black every day wear for Halloween? Let Professor Harris answer that question:
And here’s our favorite trick-or-treater on her first Halloween:
Archive for October, 2007
Friday night there was a streak of pranks in our neighborhood. One of those pranks was that someone opened our back gate, letting our dogs out.
Before I go on, let me be honest. One of our dogs I love. Moses has a bad habit of barking through the night, but he’s bright, loving, and protective. He got out and stayed in the front yard. (Actually, someone else in our neighborhood was robbed when people, the same night, went into the back yard and broke a window. So it’s possible that Moses kept them away. People don’t know that his bark — which could put the fear of God in you — is way worse than his bite. As if he’d bite.)
The other dog, the dumb one, got out and ran. And ran. And ran.
I’m very thankful that I was never accused of letting Joshua out. It’s been no secret that he’s cherished a little less by me. Maybe it all started when we got him.
I like one dog. But one day Diane and Chris came home with another dog. A black cocker. And the reason we suddenly had a second dog — without discussing it — was that my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and their three girls got a little black cocker, but didn’t want to leave his brother. My question was, “How did that become MY problem?” Why didn’t the family who didn’t want to leave the brother take the brother? (Kelly, I still have to give you credit on that one, my friend!)
But something funny happened. When he got out and was gone, all I could think about was that he was OUR dog. Our dog was gone. So I scoured the neighborhood by car and by bike. Chris took Moses on a leash to look for him. (Ok, Moses is bright. But he’s not Lassie.) Diane went around in her van. After a couple hours, I figured it was all we could do.
But that’s not what my six-year-old niece thought. She called my cell phone later in the day trying to find out all the places Josh might know. I found out later she was drawing posters — eight of them — to be put up around the neighborhood. She drew a picture on each of a little black cocker and wrote, “We are looking for a black dog.” Then she put our address on there.
Sunday morning in our assembly we had a time when people could go to the front to write prayer requests and put them in baskets. I saw my little blonde niece up there writing and I knew what name she was putting on a card. So, included in all the names that we prayed for that morning was Joshua.
Shortly after the morning assembly, someone called. They had found him.
Go figure.
Click on the ESPN link on the right column, then go about halfway down the page to where it says “Holy Trinity.” Click again and see if that isn’t the most amazing play you’ve ever seen in football. Count the laterals. I got thirteen.
There are important changes taking place in the Evangelical world, as typified by voices like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren — voices that refuse to reduce our political concerns to two or three issues. Check out this excellent piece in the NY Times.
We joined 15,000 of our closest friends last night to watch two undefeated teams, Odessa Permian (as in “Friday Night Lights”) and Abilene High, play at Shotwell Stadium. The game had been promoted in this week’s Sports Illustrated. It’s hard to describe what that experience is like. We came up on the short end of a 28-21 game, however, breaking AHS’s eight-year dominance over Mojo.
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Have you ever noticed how Matthew’s gospel blocks together the words of Jesus? If you’re reading Mark with a red-letter Bible, it’s constantly red-black-red-black-red-black. But in Matthew there are large chunks of the red. Scholars have noted that it probably isn’t accidental that there are five of those teaching sections (chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, and 23-25) — likely corresponding to the five books of the Law.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is the fulfiller of and authoritative interpreter of the Law. All things point to him, as you can tell immediately from the genealogy and from the many statements that say “and so was fulfilled.” Often, these “fulfillments” are surprising — until you understand how Matthew understands the Old Testament and Jesus.
E.g., Isaiah 7 had said that a young woman (a Hebrew word that doesn’t necessarily mean a virgin) would conceive and give birth to a son. It was a sign that applied to the people in the looming days of the 8th century. But now, Matthew says, those words find their deepest sense in the one who was born of a virgin. (He uses a Greek word that specifies that THIS young woman is a virgin.)
Similarly, when Joseph and Mary take their newborn to Egypt because of the madman Herod the Great and then return after Herod’s death, this fulfilled the words of Hosea 11:1: “out of Egypt I called my son.” But when you’re reading Hosea, it’s clear that’s a reference initially to the exodus. However, now in a deeper sense they point to Jesus, the one who fulfills all those dreams.
He came as the faithful Israelite. He was the new Moses. (Maybe it’s not an accident that Matthew moves from Egypt to water to desert to teaching — the same as you find in the story of Moses.)
Here now is the one who speaks authoritatively. Here is the one who fulfills God’s dreams for Israel. All of scripture points to him.
Check it out here and then here: what happens when university students become involved in the deeper issues of poverty.
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Rick Reilly recently wrote about the wait — the painstakingly long wait! — for Packers fans to get season tickets. That’s the only way to get in since they don’t sell single-game tickets.
The current waiting list is about 37 years. That’s right. The 47 people who just got their Green Bay Packers season tickets have been waiting since 1970.
Reilly calculates: “If you put your name on the waiting list today, you would be number 74,659. An average of 70 people give up their tickets every year, which means you’ll have your tickets by the 3074 season. Luckily you’ll still catch Brett Favre’s last year.”
What’s perhaps most amazing is that Green Bay is the 257th largest city in the U.S. “The Packers are a franchise that couldn’t be, shouldn’t be, but miraculously is. It’s not just your team, it’s your life.”
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There’s an interesting debate between Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens here.
Some of you “met” my sister-in-law, Pam, when she was on Oprah earlier this year. Now she and the woman who is helping her write a book are traveling in Cambodia. If you have time check out her travel journal. Here’s an entry:
This morning we hit the pavement running and I wasn’t sure if my old forty-five and a half year-old body was up for the day. I was sitting there thinking about how I really needed to take better care of myself and put ointment on my scaly elbows. With that thought still on my mind I looked up to see the Phnom Penh street-cleaning women hard at work—picking up the garbage with their bare hands. The Cambodian people work so hard here. There is an unlawful energy about Cambodia that I don’t remember absorbing before this trip. Everyone seems to be recklessly driving and the sex industry is so in our face.
We went to meet with Don at Agape. He runs a shelter for girls rescued from prostitution. He is really cool and was so helpful to Aimee with facts and numbers. He has been working here for two years and has several Vietnamese girls in his shelter. He is working in a Vietnamese area and said that ten-year-old little girls “expect” to be sold when they turn ten. Chinese and South Korean men are paying more for the lighter skinned girls–so the Vietnamese girls are in demand.
He told us the story of a little three-year-old who had to be examined by a pediatrician-friend who was staying with him…you get the point–there was nothing pretty about our conversation with Don this morning. It was confirmation that TAL needs to become more involved with working in Cambodia. I am going to talk to Marie tomorrow and run some ideas by her. I don’t know what all this means but I know God is laying foundation on this trip.
We went to one of the brothels that had been shut down about two years ago. It is a vacant building that looks like a storefront from the outside. But behind closed doors there were chambers that were six by six feet. There were about 14 little rooms down a long hallway. Each room had a hand-painted number on the outside of the door. Inside was a wooden slat bed and nothing else. The rooms were personally decorated with magazine pages glued to the wall, hand-drawn crosses of markers and poems. The poem tells of how men come and tell these girls they are beautiful but they know they are called “dirty girls”. One poem told of how she was so unhappy (I will try to get all the words of this poem from Don). It is the saddest thing. In fact, Aimee and I said that the prison cells at least had ventilation and these girls were truly prisoners and sex slaves of the worst kind. I think I will have nightmares of those little rooms.
Upstairs there was a room painted bright pink where the girls had to go shoot up with heroin and then be filmed for sex videos. I sat at the doorway of this room and looked at the pink paint and thought, how sad, every little girl should have a pink bedroom but not a pink sex room where she is to perform the cruelest of sex acts with men.
It is really beyond and out of control. There are white single men just combing the streets here along the river. I think Aimee and I truly can only take one more day and staying here on the river. Thank goodness we are leaving because Aimee does not hide the disgust on her face very well. I laughed at her this morning when she shot a pissed-off look to a guy flirting with the waitress. It is just dripping with disgust here.
I came home this afternoon and had to lay down because I felt the trip was catching up with me. I thought about those little rooms before I napped and it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up.
Well, I have to go. My workhorse of a writer said we must pound some things out this afternoon. She is really coming up with some neat ideas and ways of introducing each chapter. I am getting very excited about the book!
In spite of being tired and missing my family so much, I have to realize that God is not finished with me yet. I have one more day to see what all He needs to show me. Hearing the stories about little Vietnamese and Cambodian girls being tortured and robbed of their innocence is what I need to remember. I must find and keep a fighting spirit so that I might be able to do something about it. I can see Tay’s little face in so many of these stories. I see MaiLia walking the streets selling books. I see young women like KeSey dripping in sexual body language. This is not acceptable that these men are coming here and these babies are being held prisoner.
Wait until you see the pictures of this place. It is the glue to all the stories I have heard through the years.
“When God looks at our world, God weeps. God weeps because the lust for power has entrapped and corrupted the human spirit. Instead of gratitude there is resentment, instead of praise there is criticism, instead of forgiveness there is revenge, instead of healing there is wounding, instead of compassion there is competition, instead of cooperation there is violence, and instead of love there is immense fear.
“God weeps when God looks at our beautiful planet and sees thousands of maimed bodies lying on the battlefields, lonely children roaming the streets of big cities, prisoners locked behind bars and thick walls, mentally ill men and women wasting their time in the wards of large institutions, and millions of people dying from starvation and neglect. God weeps because God knows the agony and anguish we have brought upon ourselves by wanting to take our destiny in our own hands and lord it over others.”
- Henri Nouwen
You COULD be gracious and just point out my most recent picks. And I quote:
Red Sox over Indians.
Rockies over D’backs.
Red Sox over Rockies.
Take it to the bank.
Of course, I’m sure you’d prefer to point out that my earlier picks were uniformly incorrect.
At this point, still staying with the Sox.
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If you’re a podcast listener, remember to listen to Jerry Taylor’s message yesterday from Highland. It was one of the best sermons I’ve heard in a long time.
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Anyone out there remember hearing Landon Saunders’s ACU Lectures on Preaching from the mid-70s (1975, I think)? I remember “The Wilderness,” “The Wolf,” and “The Marketplace.” What were the other ones?
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Blessings on all our friends at Pepperdine and throughout S. California as they wait for the fires to die down.
Do you ever stop to think about how recently we didn’t have cell phones? (Remember the first mobile units that people carried around that were like a carry-on suitcase?) or email addresses? or Google? or even personal computers?
My AOL address is just twelve years old. Before that — well, I guess we just wrote letters.
It’s funny — the other day I was looking for a letter I’d received from the early 1990s. It’s was there in my “letters received” file for 1992.
There is no “letters received” file for 2007 — except for some cache file, perhaps.
Occasionally, I need a technology break. A time-out from accessibility. Blackberry off. Powerbook off. No internet. No cable. Just quiet. How about you?