(Big) Sister Blog

While I have taken a long and deliberate break from a Sprig of Hope, I will begin posting again here very soon. Until then, please read my newest blog Comforting Bitter Grace. It is my daddy blog, enjoy!

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

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.

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/

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

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I normally post on Thursday nights, however St. Patrick had other plans. I want to explore the question of, well, questions tomorrow night, but for now here are some of the questions Jesus asks in the Bible:


"Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"


"Who do you say that I am?"


“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” 


“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 


 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things?"


 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” 


 “Will you give me a drink?”


"Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds?"


"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"


What are some others that have challenged or encouraged you?

Hello 2011

It is that time of the year again, time to resolutely declare change in our lives: New Year's resolutions.  I was going to say that I am not one who partakes in such cliche holiday rituals, but I confess that every year, even if only internally, I dream of doing all the things that I have put off the previous years: get in shape, learn Spanish, read a hundred books, write a book, etc.  I am fascinated with change because I'm not happy with who I am.  This is not a bad fascination but I wish it would move beyond just desire and become a reality.  Just like the multitude who make resolutions, I also fail to see them through.  This bears evidence that change, real change, is rather difficult.  Yet something deep within begs us to push towards a better us.  I think this longing is God-ordained, a desire to return to a full God-image bearing state, a return to paradise. This year I am not going at this sheepishly but full-heartedly and, I hope, not alone.

There is this book called The War of Art that names the enemy of our creative process as resistance.  The author, Steven Pressfield, says that when we feel the greatest resistance to a goal, we should view this goal as the greatest thing we can do.  The greater the difficulty, the greater the reward.  Out of our struggles and sometimes even defeats, we find strength and hopefully victory. 

This blog has been such a blessing for me, fostering a love for writing, but it also serves as an area of severe resistence.  I must write, and I hope that maybe I may write something beautiful and meaningful.  You too must (and I believe will) do something great.  Find your desire and name the enemy of resistance.  My resolution is to commit to this blog, to this strange act of communication, and to you my reader.  This year I will write three blogs every week.  They will range in length, subject-matter, and depth.  I am very excited and also very scared to make this resolution public, because now I am accountable.  Will you join me and make an audacious goal for 2011; make it public and pray for strength and perseverance? 

I sure hope so.

Here we go...

Producing a blog has been something I have had a longing to pursue for quite some time now. However, being the perfectionist that I am, I have procrastinated from the fear of failure; that I might put something out with my name attached that will not be well received. And I probably will, I'm not sure if people will even read this, but I believe that I have something of value to add to the blogging world, just as anyone would. I have a perspective different from you and you have one different from me. As we begin to piece together all the unique perspectives of humanity we begin to truly know who we are and perhaps a little bit about who God is as well. Each of our stories is a mere thread in the tapestry of life and only when they are sticthed together can something beautiful occur.

I choose the title for my blog, "A Sprig of Hope" from a Frederick Buechner sermon. As only Buechner can do, he masterfully and poetically retells the story of Noah, humanizing this immenssly powerful narrative that has become nothing more than a fairy tale or a nursery rhyme. He paints Noah as the "bearded joke draped in a sheet who walks down Broadway with his sandwich-board inscribed REPENT" And yet his message is not heeded and the bearded joke witnesses the end of the world. But hope is not lost...

"Then finally, after many days, Noah sent forth a dove from the ark to see if the waters had subsided from the earth, and that evening she returned, an lo, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. Once again...the place to look, I think, is Noah's face. The dove stands there with her delicate, scarlet feet on the calluses of his upturned palm. His cheek just touches her breast so that he can feel the tiny panic of her heart. His eyes are closed, the lashes watery wet. Only what he weeps with now, the old clown, is no longer anguish, but wild and irrepressible hope. That is not the end of the story in Genesis, but maybe that is the end of it for most of us-just a little sprig of hope held up against the end of the world."

Buechner reminds us that this story is our story, we only need to open the Denver Post to realize that, left on our own, we are doomed. Yet in the face of a world covered in death, we have hope. For Noah foreshadowed the One who was to come, Jesus; the one who breaks through our hopelessness and whispers ever so gently in our ears that we can love again, it is possible and it is good.

My prayer, not just for this blog and those reading it, but for each of us God's children is that we may see the tapestry of our faith all the more clearer. That we may, somehow, learn to love. That we may look to Him who has looked on us and felt pity and that in Him we may find what it means to truly live. And as we live, we love. And against a hopeless world that we may hold up a sprig of hope.