He Created the Heavens and the Earth

On a trip through New Mexico about four years ago, Michala and I decided to stop to hike the rim of a dormant volcano in the north-east corner of the state. The hike was not too strenuous due to the paved road that led to the rim, but the vistas we encountered deserved an all-day affair. We were greeted with views of four states: Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.

We could see the Sangre de Cristos in the west and the Black Hills in the east. Beneath us were the remains of the lava rivers that had shaped the landscape many years prior. We were stunned. And then, with a hushed voice, Michala whispered in my ear, “He created the heavens and the earth.” Such simple words, words we’d heard countless times, words made tremendously fresh as we realized just how big and magnificent the earth really is.

Psalm 19 rightly states that “the heavens declare the glory of God.” Creation is singing His praise as it shouts to those who will listen, “Look at Him, He is beyond worthy or all our praise. He is Beauty.”

While God’s glory is found in civilization as well, many find the undisturbed wilderness particularly revelatory. This was true of the romantic artists of the 19th century, especially those of the famed Hudson River School in upstate New York. Thomas Cole wrote of nature as giving our soul “a sweet foretaste of heaven.” And his works certainly displayed this conviction. He made detailed, sprawling landscape paintings that sought to display God’s glory by manipulating light to illuminate certain aspects of his work or to paint a cross shining through the leaves. He created a series of allegorical paintings known as the “Voyage of Life” that visually told the story of life from birth to eternity.

Another famous Hudson River School artist was Fredric Edwin Church, my personal favorite. He painted massive landscapes (his most famous “The Heart of the Andes” was five feet by ten feet). He sought to not only display what was visible in nature but what was not so visible, the great depth of God’s glory just beneath the surface. Here’s a link to his entire collection of works. May you spend a few moments to meditate upon those same words Michala whispered on the volcano top, “God created the heavens and the earth.”

He is glorious!

Giving Up Bad BBQ for Lent

As a little kid, my Dad’s office was a magical place. The walls were decorated with football memorabilia from years ago. He had a model plane of the one my grandfather flew in World War II. But perhaps what enamoured me most of all were his trophies. He had a plaque remembering his hole-in-one and a couple with pigs at the top. He was an award-winning pit-master. My dad had not only practiced the art of smoking meat and making sauce from scratch, he had been rewarded for his prowess. I was especially proud of those trophies because of where we lived: South Carolina.

Read the rest of this post at The Neighborhood Cafe

Saying Goodbye

There are few things harder in this life than saying "goodbye." My mother-in-law refuses to utter the words, instead saying "See you Saturday." This week as I left my home for the last 2 and half years in Colorado; I lost count of how many times I said those dreadful words, "goodbye."

I attempted to ease the pain by reassuring friends and family that we would see them soon, but the reality is that we are never sure what tomorrow brings. As I looked into the misty eyes of many of my closest friends I realized that I only could be saying bye right now because of their friendship. Without their sacrifice of time and care the Church @ Argenta would simply not be.

And yet, the more these people gave themselves to us, making our leaving easier, it became harder and harder to leave. With each goodbye, a sinking feeling grew within me: I may never see these people again. We all must say that final goodbye at some point.

And yet our friends are exactly what makes saying goodbye so hard but possible. It is their love that gives us the courage to face isolation.

Jesus said "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" While his death would certainly be for all mankind, his death was most pointedly for his friends.

While that final night must have been extremely painful, it was also bearable because of his friends. And even though their love seemed to falter, his did not. And it was his ultimate sacrifice that made us all his friend, that will give us the courage to finally say goodbye.

The strength of that courage lies in hope. Because Jesus has shown us that no goodbye is truly final. There is day coming that will never end, a day of homecoming. Another day to look into each other's misty eyes and say "Welcome home!" This is our hope and this is our courage.

We can with true hearts, in the midst of leaving, tell one another "see you Saturday."

Whatever is Lovely

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8 

As we approach a new year, our thoughts reflect on the old year. 2011 has been perhaps my best year yet. This week I want to follow my daughter's (and God's) example and give thanks for everything.

As you can see in the video, our daughter's prayers are basically, "Thank you for that and that and that and that and the chicken and the family and friends, the end....amen." She makes sure that she expresses her thankfulness for everything she has. While I smile at her innocence, I also grow from the example of her pure faith. We have so much to be thankful for.

So this week, I will take some time to remember the lovely that I encountered in 2011, to give thanks where it is due. And hopefully, this recollection will produce a hope in us for the future, that there will be time again to give thanks.

(You can read about my favorite books I read this year at The Neighborhood Cafe Blog)

Surprised by Joy: The Joyous Defeat

There are few things harder than to preach the funeral of a convicted murder who committed suicide. Not just that he was a criminal but that he was a father of an eight year old boy I befriended. This young boy with his father in prison latched on to me at camp and I began to find myself filling some of the hole left by an absent dad. I saw the boy come to follow Jesus. He was so full of life despite his difficult circumstances.


You can read the rest of this third post out of a four part series on joy at The Neighborhood Cafe:
http://bibleconversation.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/surprised-by-joy-the-joyous-defeat/

Surprised by Joy: The Pursuit of Happiness

The summer of 2004 found me on the journey many of my generation have found themselves on, I was trying to “find myself.” More specifically I was trying to find happiness. I had been diagnosed with depression and placed on medication. While I found some relief in my meds, the depression still placed heavy chains around me.

So in a quest to figure out why I was so sad, I spent the summer engaging in the places, people, and things that had brought me the most happiness in my short life. I built docks with my dad and brother on the coast of South Carolina, I visited my mom in the Ozarks of Arkansas, I traveled across the country following my favorite band at the time, and I spent time with my friends. Each time I would taste the once distant happiness but each time the overwhelming feeling of emptiness would return, but I kept looking.

To read the rest of this second part of a five part series, go The Neighborhood Cafe.

Relationships are Sacred

One of the buzz words populating the ears of today's church is "relationships" and its various derivatives. My own church reminds us each week that "relationships are sacred." And this is a good thing. We see throughout scriptures and our experiences that we (people) were created for community.

In the initial creation account in Genesis, God realizes that while His creation is very good, one thing is not, man is alone. In the final close of the scriptures we see the fulfillment of God's new creation: every tribe, nation, and tongue gathered together. Relationships are so sacred that the very nature of God is relational in the form of the Trinity and in His personal presence with us. Relationships are indeed sacred and good.

However, the modern church suffers from the same ailment most in out current culture does, a lack of connection. In some ways we are more connected than ever before, via email, facebook, smart phones, and on; allowing access to the whole world at our very fingertips. While technology does allow unique opportunities to connect, they pale in comparison to face-to-face relationships.

Yet even when we encounter each other face-to-face we are often more interested in (or distracted by) the person far away via our handheld device of choice. I no longer marvel at people gathered together yet all on their phones as opposed to connected to one another. The consequences of our technology are only symptoms of our totally disconnected culture. We have moved from the front porch to the back and the church has followed suite.

It is a shame that our fellowship often only entails a hand-shake during the appointed times on Sunday morning. And it is out of this shame and rekindled theology that the buzz has grown concerning relationships. The problem is that despite this renewed attention, we are still failing to really connect with one another. There are various causes behind all this, most prominently is that we are all too busy.

I remember living in Arkansas a few years back. I would go visit my grandmother Mary nearly every Saturday morning and every time I never failed to laugh and cry. Those were some of the most genuine moments I have ever shared with another human being. Those time changed me, helped to be alive again after such a long time of not being so. Yet life began to happen and eventually every Saturday turned into every once and awhile. One time, while apologizing for not being around, Grandma said, "well you're busy." Although meant with all the tenderness in the world, few words have stung me more in my life. If I'm too busy for Grandma, I'm busy with all the wrong things. And I think when we say we're too busy, we're revealing our loyalties, that we would rather feed our own needs than offer the sacrifice of quality time.

Yet despite the biblical bookends and God's triune nature, why should we make the effort?

This thing we call Christianity is so much bigger than ourselves. It is more than just a story of how Jesus saves us, it is a cosmic story of the redemption of the entire universe both seen and unseen. And somehow this new creation is being brought into this world through only one source: the church.

Everything, our lives, the earth, our relationships have been subjected to the rule of death and decay. But in the work and person of Jesus Christ, all things are being made new, not least of which is our relationships. We are being reconciled to our former enemy God through the unfailing love of Jesus and that same act of love is breaking down the walls of disconnect no matter how large they may be right now.

Too busy to get together? We are too busy not to get together. Because our relationships are not the stuff of TV sitcoms but a force so powerful angels long to look upon them. These are not shake-your-hand moments but giving our very lives away moments. And it is precisely Jesus' prayer, before his death that will set the whole world on its head, that we should be "one." And it is through that oneness, perhaps only through that oneness, that world will be changed.

Our relationships far transcend a bible study where we acquire more knowledge to ignore, but an opportunity, privilege even, to truly live, embracing the fullness of our humanity in the giving of our very lives. It is of course in the dying that we live. And it is of course in the dying of our self-centeredness that we may live, that the church may live, that the entire world may live again.

I dare not speak these words as one who has authority. I dream of right relationships but only from a distance. There are still strong walls built around me, around each of us, that only the power of the Gospel of the Jesus himself can tear-down. But that is the very beauty of the gospel, it will accomplish its purposes and these walls will come tumbling down and we will find ourselves at Grandma's on Saturday, changing the world through our laughter and tears.

What Did You Get Out of Church Today?

When Michala and I first moved out here to Denver just over two years ago, we discovered the joy of church-dating. For the uninformed, this is when you attend a handful of churches and 'try them out.' When you find the one, you commit, just like dating. And just like dating, there are awkward churches, quirky churches, very attractive churches with no depth, and if you're lucky, that perfectly imperfect place that just feels right.

Each time we visited a church we would quiz each other following the service, asking all sorts of questions to see if we both agreed in our admiration, apathy, or disgust. We would ask, "what did you get out of that?" This seems like a perfectly valid question, one that no doubt takes place every Sunday after church all over the country. What we implied in this question was how we were served: "was the preaching good?"  "Did we enjoy the music?" "Did they have child care?" These are important questions to ask, but I now see they are also misguided questions to ask.

The core around which Sunday morning gatherings are centered is worship of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. Nothing more, nothing less. This can look a number of ways, singing, praying, conversation, thanksgiving, thinking deeply, but put simply it is an act of love.

Our worship has zilch to do with "what we get" and everything to do with what we offer. This is not another opportunity to feed our egos bloated by a system of consuming that makes us insatiable. We gather to give our meager lives together to the one who gives every good gift.

The receiving of good gifts comes with our every breath, each meal, each smile, and every child. The trees and the mountains are given to us to enjoy and it is only natural that we respond with praise. This is what Sunday morning is all about. Instead of asking "what did you get?" we can ask "what did you give?"

This giving goes far beyond our finances and demands our minds, hands, and hearts, our very being. And yet this is a free sacrifice, God does not look out at our confused, hap-hazard attempts to say thanks and say, "that's it?" Instead he joins in the dance of giving and gives us the greatest gift ever, Himself.

Jesus hinted at this mystery of receiving in our giving, when he said that to find our lives, we must first die. When our weekly meetings become another opportunity to consume, we miss everything. Instead, let us have the mind of Christ who being God himself, humbled himself to execution and in the doing found himself seated at the right-hand of the Father and also found us all.

Michala and I did not settle for the "one." We did not find our home until we found a church that would not let us remain comfortable, that forced us to give of ourselves, and asked a lot of us. We were too busy loving these imperfect people and loving a perfect God together to ask if this was the 'one?" It just was. I've come to realize their is no perfect church and this forces me to stop critiquing the church and simply commit.

May we seek to be a committed people, not seeking to be filled but to be emptied. To give back our money, time, energy, minds, and hearts and to maybe find a God who gives us everything we need.

Final Thoughts on Silence

Here is my final installment of my series on Silence at The Neighborhood cafe:

http://bibleconversation.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/be-still-final-hurried-thoughts-on-silence/

I will continue to publish there every Monday.

Telluride to Come

Well, I'm back. Telluride was such a blast, I needed a vacation from my vacation. So I took two weeks off, sorry about the extended absence. I will have new posts this week detailing my trip and the discoveries and adventures that a bluegrass festival in the San Juan mountains provided, I will publish part four of "Bound to Ramble" and other random sprigs of hope. Thanks for reading!

In the mean time, enjoy part three of a series on stillness and silence I am republishing on The Neighborhood Cafe, our church's blog. You can read it here: http://bibleconversation.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/be-still-hurried-thoughts-on-silence-part-3/

Taking the Week Off

Here is part one of a five part series on Stillness. This series of blogs are an adaption of a sermon I wrote in 2009. I will not be blogging this week due to a lovely trip I am taking to Telluride, Co for some bluegrass. See ya'll next week.

http://bibleconversation.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/be-still-hurried-thoughts-on-silence/

A Tree Called Home

Check out my blog at The Neighborhood Cafe:

http://bibleconversation.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/a-tree-called-home/

Is God Safe?

Every Sunday night I meet with a bunch of losers and rejects and it is beautiful. Each week I hear stories of alcoholic fathers, failed marriages, premature family deaths, depression, suicide, abandonment, and so on. Each of us has deep wounds and have grown tired of easy answers to our tough questions. But in our woundedness we have found a safe place to land, to crash together and in this safety a desire to let others find safety amongst us has taken seed. So we wonder together what it means to be a “safe” place.


Read the rest of this blog here: http://bibleconversation.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/is-god-safe/

The Neighborhood Cafe 5/9/11

Here is my contribution to The Neighborhood Cafe, a blog written by my pastors (and now me.) This is a revised  blog that I posted here originally two years ago. Let me know what you think.

http://bibleconversation.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/the-glory-of-gods-absence/

That We Might Be One

My friend, pastor, and mentor Eugene Scott recently wrote a blog about the power of intimacy and the danger of isolation (you can read it here). In his work Eugene describes the desperate need we have for each other. I feel this most acutely now that a women who I have cherished my entire life struggles to relearn how to eat a cookie. My aunt Betty suffered a stroke recently and the consequences of that stroke have been difficult to learn of. While I am hundreds of miles from Betty, the strength of her love for me kept her presence close in some mysterious way. But now, I do not doubt her love, but she seems oddly distant. Even though we pray for her to recover and believe she is just stubborn enough to do so, there is pain in the separation from the strong woman we all once knew. When I heard the news of her struggles my response was anger, not sadness. I believed deep within that it was simply not fair for this woman to suffer but also because deep down I feared I might never see her again. She is doing better and I hope to see her soon, and that hope of connection is stronger than all my fears and anger.

As I said before we each of us have not just a desire for connection but a hunger and a thirst. Intimacy with our fellow man is not just pleasant, it is vital. Without each other, though our hearts may still beat, our souls no longer live. Jesus knew this well. Before his death he prays a long prayer in John 17 that repeats the same petition over and over: that we may be one. This oneness is core to his hope in us, to his death with us, and to his resurrection for us. While we often focus on the aspects of forgiveness and new life in Jesus' gospel, we must see that we are forgiven so we may be reconciled to God and each other and that reconciled life is indeed our new life. Jesus also showed that pure unity was central to his gospel message when he summed the entire law of holiness up into two relational commands, that righteousness is found in right relationship with God and with each other, nothing more and certainly nothing less.

Our relationships suffer most severely the consequences of death that our sin produces. In the first instance of disobedience, man runs and hides from the God he walked with everyday and covers himself up from his wife in shame. Our relationships were what defined us in the creation account, God in all his triune glory decides to make us in "our image," the shared image of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect unity with each other. And it is that perfect unity that Jesus uses in his prayer as the model for our oneness, "may they be one as we are one." The day is coming when the groom Jesus will be united with his bridegroom the church and what a celebration of union that day will be. But in the mean time, we struggle to hold on to the beautiful relationships we currently inhabit and fight to repair the broken ones. This is hard work. Never will we open ourselves to more hurt than when we make ourselves vulnerable in relationships, than when we lay aside our fig leaves of shame and dare to live life together, in pure oneness.

All this points to why it hurts so much to hear that a loved one is in pain, because if we truly love that person then their pain becomes our own,that is both the blessing and perhaps the curse of our oneness. The reality is that we are all meant to be each other's loved ones and every instance of isolation, death, and disconnect hurts us to our core even if we do not realize it. But gloriously Jesus became our loved one and on that fateful day he felt our suffering in its fullest and it killed him. But in that act he showed love was stronger than death, that relationships would always win over separation in the end and he burst forth from the divide of death to reconnect all of creation to itself and to himself. Just as he felt our suffering on the cross, we feel his joy in the resurrection. May we find our stories at the intersection of the cross, at the place of Jesus prayer for our oneness, and the birth of our reconciled lives walking anew without shame in the presence of the one we have only dreamed of until now. And that hope of connection is stronger than all our fears and anger.

 May we be one.

A New Conversation

Here's a blog I contributed to The Neighborhood Cafe.  I will be authoring the Monday blog for this site and linking them here. Thanks for reading and I look forward to further conversations.
Creation Carries a Cost, Beauty a High Price

Overflow of the Heart

As we approach Holy Week, I find myself reflective upon this season of Lent. Part of me wonders if I even tried at all to engage with Jesus as our local church has defined Lent. I at least set up a goal for myself, to study and practice the speech ethics of Jesus. To aid me in this I have been reading Eugene Peterson's book Tell it Slant, a study of Jesus' parables as he travels through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem and to the cross. In many ways, this season of Lent has mirrored that journey, as I've walked with Jesus through a foreign land. I wish that I had the same flare for the dramatic as Jesus, that I could interpret people's spiritual situations into well-crafted metaphors that people would be repeating two thousand years later, that I could set aside my agenda to be well-liked and to merely speak words that give life. Yet in my quest to see my tongue changed, I found God working on a very different part of me, my heart. Its often like this, I think, with God, we simply want to change our behaviors but He seems to care far more about who we are at our core. I found that to speak like Jesus did not mean learning smooth rhetoric but to be changed by his words.

And so as Jesus is preparing for his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem he tells a story about the life he is bringing us into. He tells of a master who entrusts ten servants with some investments, talents. When the master returns a King, he surveys how his tenants spent their talents. One especially daring servant risked his in high-stakes investments and doubled the King's returns. Another held tightly to his, afraid of losing it and is scolded by the master who subsequently takes the servant's little and gives it to the daring one. In this story Jesus is illustrating what it means to live in and move in his coming Kingdom. We are to throw caution to the wind and risk all.  He has given us tools to use and what he most desires is for us to go to work, without fear and with great hope.

So often I find myself like the last servant, keeping my talents to myself out of fear. I am so often afraid of failure that I fail to act at all, a failure in and of itself. Yet I see Jesus telling me that anything worth anything is going to take risk. He knew this keenly as he rode that donkey into the death trap that was Jerusalem. He knew what was on the line and he risked it all, even his life for his dream, for our dreams. He died and in that act of bravery he freed us all to do likewise. This season of Lent has challenged my heart at the basic level: I am coward, yet Jesus looks deep into my eyes and sees far beneath and proclaims that my name is "Courageous" and "Victorious." He bids me, and perhaps us all, to follow in his steps of daring even if it costs me my life, for the reward is doubly, even infinitely, greater.

Empty Together

I wanted to share what my dear friend  (and house-mate) Cliff had to share with our local congregation out here in Denver. I resonate with his feeling of emptiness and need for community.

I sat in front of my blank computer screen for about two hours searching myself for something of value to offer. My mind wandered about to other stresses taking place elsewhere in my life. The longer I sat, fewer ideas came to mind. What seemed to be such a simple task slowly became more and more daunting with each scattered thought. Why was it that I couldn’t find something to share with my community? Something encouraging. Something uplifting.  Something… spiritual.

I was spiritually dry. I am spiritually dry.

I remember hearing Eugene’s message on hoarding both the good and bad. That I can relate to. Sure there are things in my life taking up my time that aren’t good wholesome things, but most of what I give my time to are good things. They really are. Work, Church, my music, my friends, all quality time well spent. The simple fact is, rarely do I just sit with the Father. Rarely do I spend time sitting in the presence of God soaking him in for all he’s worth.

It was through community, through relationship that I was able to verbally process the stuff in my life and become aware of my spiritual drought. I believe it will only be through community and relationship that I heal. Growing up in the South, attending a Baptist church as all good Southerners do, I’ve never participated in Lent. This being my first Lenten season as a participant, I’m anxious to set out on this journey of rediscovering God. I wouldn’t dare begin this journey alone. Come with me?  

Thank God for friends like Cliff how do not remain silent in their struggles but through their honesty offer hope. I think many of us could sign our names to the bottom of this, filling our time with seemingly good things all the while leaving no room for the Good Thing. As I have taken a break from some of the filler this season, God has led me to a place of emptiness, a state of poverty. This is indeed a good thing; Eugen Peterson has this to say, ‎"Only when we stand emptied, stand impoverished before God can we receive what only empty hands can receive."

Abba, lead me and my brother Cliff into this abundant life in you. Lead us not only together but with all your children. Lord, make this world right, starting in my heart. Feed us, forgive us, and keep us safe. Grant us the guts to be empty and to be ok with it all. Be our God and help us to be your people. Amen