Alt•City

grass is grass

The grass isn't greener on the other side, but it is a different shade of green.

sting & swing

It's baseball time again.  Norfolk is hosting an exhibition game in Harbor Park today - Nationals vs. Orioles - with a sell out crowd.  The weather is going to be fine with just a bit of chill on a low breeze.  Am I going?  No.  Don't feel like getting in the middle of the crowd for a baseball game.  For me it's not worth the hassle.  Now if it was a soccer game I'd probably go.  How things change.  When I was growing up the big three (football, basketball, & baseball) were all people played or watched.  Fall meant the best athletes were wearing shoulder pads, winter they switched to converse high tops, and spring they donned batting helmets.  Even though I never really liked baseball very much I probably played it for five or six seasons.  

One thing I remember was how poorly I connected with the ball when I was hitting.  Somehow it was impossible to make that bat get into the same space with a pitched ball in such a way as to send it much further than the edge of home plate.  But when I did make it happen through some freak chance, it would sting my hands.  I'm guessing when the pitchers get older than 7th graders (when I hung up my baseball cap) they throw harder and harder.  I bet no matter how good a hitter you get to be, making a piece of wood in your hands meet an object going 90 mph still stings.  If you have a hard time getting the feel of it imagine standing on the edge of the interstate holding a broom stick out and having a car drive into it.  Sting. 

Every baseball player goes to the plate hoping they can get their hands to feel that feeling.  It's the whole point of the game.  Nothing good can happen unless there's some stinging.  When I was a kid trying to play the game I complained to the coach about it.  He probably said something profound like 'Rub some dirt on it'. I bet real players don't talk about it.  They love the game, it's part of the game, they just play.  They've moved beyond little league into a place where pleasure and fulfillment are not separate things from pain and suffering, but integral with them.  At the same time no one celebrates the pain as if it's a good thing in and of itself.  They celebrate the other side of the pain.  They celebrate it's result. 

When I quit baseball there were plenty of other sports to play.  All of them had some parallel experience to stinging hands.  There aren't any games without pain.  And sitting on the bench avoiding pain is to spend a life playing with plastic happy meal toys ending with nothing.  That is real pain.  Ending up having done nothing but attempting to create comfort for yourself.

"Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth— only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

Better to learn how to play with the sting than to quit.  Better still to come to an understanding that our God has felt the real sting for us. 

"Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians)

a reflection on 21

We don't believe time bends or stretches.  It is a stream of units connected like cars of a train, and while physicists may debate time's absolute nature, no one has yet to claim the ability to add or subtract time from our lives at will.  No process has been suggested for actually creating new amounts of time.  Time is.  But in one respect at least time does expand or contract.  It does in our perception.  A kid pulls out in front of you while you're going 50 - how long is half a second?  Get in a room with a boring teacher - how long is an hour?  Wait for the results of a blood test - how long is a week?  Late for work sitting in traffic - how fast is 15 minutes? Go on the trip of a lifetime - how fast do 10 days go by?  Have a baby - how fast are 21 years?  I've noticed there is a natural alteration of time perception we all experience, but there is also an unnatural manipulation of time some people indulge in.  My addict friends who enter a level of recovery and realize how much time they've lost often want to live in fast forward.  They do too much at one time, like starting a business, going to night school, quitting smoking, and getting married to someone who already has a few kids, all at once.  It's like they have gotten behind life somehow and feel the urge to get back to where the 'real' is.  Other people I've known are pushing the rewind button.  They want to go back to the way things used to be or they feel the need to constantly grieve over past errors.  And one more group (mostly the parents of young children) are trying to live in super slo-mo.  They don't want things to happen too fast and so they try to keep things from changing at all.  These people have kids on breast milk until they're ten and little Johnny doesn't know how to tie his shoes when he's in junior high.  "Play" is the only button that matters.  It's the only way to enjoy the story.  Otherwise you are eating up the present with your distortions.  And while God is in our past and our future, the only place we can experience Him is in the present.  Since God is the most real of reality; the souce of reality, real life can only be found where he is.  Here.  Now.  Aren't you glad the reality button is marked "play" and not "work"?  I have a 21 year old today.  I loved it when she came home with us; when she walked and talked, when she rode a bike, and when she drove a car.  I'll love it when she finds her furthest dreams and when she becomes the woman she wants to be.  But the only place we can meet is the present.  The only place we can live is in the here and now together.  We're in good company.

I fought the law

The opening line of argument taken up by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity is the existence of a universal moral law.  He uses this to drive on to his conclusions about God and ultimately Christ.  If we were to follow him to God and then turn back to the moral law what could we discover?  I mean this:  all of us are aware of the existence of morality; per Lewis this reveals an Authority existing further back and higher up which has established both right and wrong, and this authority turns out to be what we call 'good.'  Now turning from this good Authority, or good God, back to the morality or laws  He has created what can we see?  A good God who puts certain laws into the world could either be using it to do what human beings do (i.e. for the sake of controlling the world) or He could have a completely super human concept in Mind.  Personally I lean toward the second understanding of God's intent for His laws.  A God who cannot control His creation without a set of laws would be a weak God, a scared God, an uptight God.  He would, in fact, not be God at all.  And, taking a look at how the world is working, it would appear His laws are not very effective because they are constantly being broken.  No, God didn't put His laws into the world to keep it or us under control.  He put His laws into the world to express the truth of where full life lies.  His laws are not things impressed upon us; they are written into us.  All of us.  Breaking God's law isn't so much an offense against God as it is an offense against our selves.  The real offense against God is in denying the complete revelation of His law in Jesus Christ and our access to a utterly lawful life through His Holy Spirit.  God's laws are often called repressive by those who desire to create their own lives, but the truth is they keep missing life by ignoring God's expression of it through these laws.

misery index

Another person's ability to make you miserable reveals two things: their relative importance in your life (more importance = more misery), and your relative connection to authentic joy (stronger connection = more joy). If your spouse is making you miserable it could be a combination of two things. They may be too important, and you may not have a connection to authentic joy. Most marriages don't fail because one partner or the other becomes less important, at least not at first. Marriages fail because one mate has made the other the source of their joy for too long and has been consistently disappointed. Actually it is wrong then to call it "joy." Joy has a permanent quality to it. What one mate gives the other is better defined as happiness. A person may make you happy for a while. Happiness is rooted in the old English word "hap" or luck. It's where we get the word happenstance, or coincidence. As hard as it may be to accept (or maybe not if you've observed the rate of divorce), humans can make each other happy coincidentally - sometimes for years on end. But what happens when our lives stop coinciding for a week? a month? a year? We go looking for another source of happiness. Ask yourself this question: if a person had an authentic source of joy in their life, a place where they found they were valued and gave value to; if a whole group of people had that, what would their divorce rate be?

preclude is not a dirty word

Something is wrong for you only insomuch as it precludes you from real life. Evidently there are some things which hold no possibility whatsoever of producing real life in us, so God prohibits them entirely. Other things, actually most things, He only makes prohibitions upon timing and quantities taken into our lives. The explicit prohibitions are recorded in scripture and His Spirit bears witness to their validity, but the others, the majority of life, must be momentarily exposed to His Spirit which was given to lead us into all Truth and to bear witness to Jesus. Since Jesus calls Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life, we can know His Spirit will always be leading us further in and higher up to authentic life.

latent

Are you consistently late getting to work? class? appointments?  You have the same distance to travel, the same basic driving conditions, same opportunity to schedule your time, and you're still late.  And you will be the same 5-10-15 minutes late each time; you could set your watch by your own lateness.  Then you have a new job, a new school or a new office to visit.  What happens the first time you go?  If it's me, I'm early.  Well, I'm early as long as the new place isn't somewhere I think I know.  The pattern of my tardiness is related to familiarity.  When I know where I'm going I am more likely to be late than when I have doubts; it seems familiarity breeds contempt, but doubt breeds consideration.  Maybe we could all use a little more doubt and a little less familiarity in our lives; our relationships.  It could mean our timing would improve.

The things you don't notice

Yesterday driving out to Winsor to pick up my car I realized how good I felt. Then I realized I've felt pretty good for about a week. Then I realized I haven't been thinking about how I feel. A year ago I experienced a medical 'event' (still don't know what it was or is or will be), the effects of which I've been coping with ever since. A year's worth of waking up assessing various body functions, inputs, and readings. Like a pilot flying on instruments in a storm, each piece of information eagerly evaluated and compared with all other inputs to see if I was losing altitude or still flying straight and level. Things that are working properly don't usually draw our attention.

If somebody walked up to you and flexed their arm back and forth while saying 'Look how well my elbow works!', we would assume the elbow in question had been injured and was restored. Why is it we are so aware of our self? Aware of any perceived snub or unkind word. Aware of how we look in the mirror or what someone else has to say about how we look. Aware of people giving us respect or ignoring us. Tim Keller said, "We notice our self constantly because it is not working properly. Every human heart is seeking a verdict for performance but the verdict is never in because the performance is never over." (most of the thoughts herein were generated from listening to his sermon "Sickness Unto Death") There are two views of how to resolve the self problem. One view says our self is in need of a boost and all human problems come from what is called low self esteem. If we could only bring people to view themselves as noble creatures we could get them to act properly in society. People who feel good about themselves don't commit crimes, they are fair to others, they would be productive. So we should make people feel good about themselves even when there is really very little to feel good about. We can fix low self esteem by making it into high self esteem; then the self will not need so much attention. We can all judge for ourselves how this works out. The second view is the opposite. The problems we face in society arise from people who think too highly of themselves. They make demands upon other people which are unfair and since they believe they are better they don't have much time to devote to anyone else's needs. We need to be humbled. We must be lowered, then we will be just and kind and obviously not think about our self too much.

The problem we face is this: we don't know how to cure low self esteem without making it into high self esteem and we don't know how to cure high self esteem without making it into low self esteem. How can we find peace for our selves? The cross is the answer. In the cross we see both our utter sinfulness and God's absolute love for us. In the cross you find out you are not better than you thought, you are worse. You see how far from God each of us is. You see that even your lowest view of self doesn't begin to account for your true state. You thought humans were just a little 'off', just in need of a few good rules to live by, but people in general are 'pretty good.' The cross contradicts you. If all we needed were some rules to live by or an example to follow, then Jesus death is meaningless. The death of God's Son reveals the truth. We are not even close to God, our best actions don't get us close enough to make a difference. Our best actions do not tip the scale in the slightest. We are completely helpless. But the cross doesn't leave us with this low view of our selves. It says God loves us more than we love ourselves. It says God will go to any length to lift us up. It says He will not withhold anything from us. It says, in fact, we are the most important beings in God's creation. We are loved. We are high. Heavenly creatures long to look into the mystery of our salvation; our belovedness. If you stand in the shadow of the cross you will discover this: you are more sinful and broken than you ever dared believe AND you are more loved and desired than you ever dared hope. Here is the solution for the broken self. In the cross you find nothing in which you can boast of yourself and everything in which you can boast in God. You have received the verdict. You have been called 'good' even though you are not. You can stand with both confidence and humility. In the cross you can forget about yourself. So how much are you thinking about your bruised ego? Where are you going to get it fixed? What other options are there for you? What have you tried? Personally I've tried a lot of things to get over my self. All of them eventually left me in the same state this sickness did - constant assessment and comparison, continually seeking a verdict. In Christ, and I don't have a perfect record in this, but in Christ, when I'm taking my place in Him, I don't notice my self any more. What a relief.

"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Romans 8:1

The pride of penance

>Thinking you must do some penance before presenting yourself before me is a thoroughly human idea and not at all grounded in the truth. You fail, you ignore, you curse each other; then you must do something to feel worthy of being in each other's presence again. I am not a man and your offenses, failures, and curses against me have all been forgiven to such a degree that the only offense from which you cannot recover is the offense of purposefully remaining outside of my presence. Even the offense of thinking you must perform some trifling and ridiculously small "righteous" act (which is truly an awful offense when you view it in comparison with what I myself have done on your behalf to provide you access to me) is itself forgiven once you earnestly come to me again with empty hands. Have you wasted the morning in pursuit of worthless idols? A day? A week? A month? A lifetime? Come now. Your pride blinds you. A thousand years is as a day to me. Your wasted life or your wasted moment are large to you but small to me. Small is not insignificant, it is only small. I am large. My patience is large. My mercy is large. My love for you is large. You need only see this and you will lose your mourning over lost things in rejoicing over finding everything in me. Come now let us reason together; let us decide. Your short-fallings are stark to you - red as scarlet they stand out in your eyes, but I can make them disappear. I can cover them all like a blanket of new fallen snow. So let us decide now together. Would you like to receive what I have done for you? Or do you remain outside with your pride, cobbling together some popsicle stick offering you think can open doors I alone have opened with my own hands?

the old red cross

When you find yourself among a people of truthful faith telling and faithful truth telling, you have come near an authentic church. Unfortunately there are many more 'churches' in which no truth may be spoken about doubt (without doubt where can faith blossom?) and no faith to tell the truth (without courage how can truth be honored?). Instead of an old rugged cross marking passage into the buildings this kind of church inhabits, there should be a red cross on a white background - a sterile room for a santized version of the gospel.

who is getting high here?

Religion may be the opiate of the people, but education is the placebo of public officers.

value

Christ follower's recipe for a better world:  less evaluation, more obedience.  Two examples to illustrate:  first, how much information do you need about your neighbor's bad marriage and how many people do you have to 'consult' with about it before you simply and obediently pray for them?  Second, how long should you see an unmet need, determine if it is indeed a 'worthy' cause, tell 'somebody' about it, before you humbly meet that need at the direction of the Holy Spirit's internal whisperings?  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said a real Christian would speak more to God about a brother than to a brother about God, and I would add this; an authentic Christ follower will both pray and give at the leading of God more than they will talk to another Christ follower about praying or giving on behalf of God.  If the whole of those calling themselves by Jesus name praticed this we would not need to waste much time evaluating the results; it would be plain and it would be very good.

Pavlov's cats

We moved the cat's food and water dishes two feet, just around the corner of the fridge.  The cats could not see the new location from the old one in front of the pantry.  This was three weeks ago, and just within the past few days we don't have to physically move them the extra two feet to receive their sustenance.  They are so accustomed to eating and drinking at the exact same spot it seems they would starve to death as they watch us pour food into the bowl, smell it and return to the normal feeding place with empty stomachs.  Dumb animals...what can you do with them?

A few weeks ago I wrote about our 'have to's', the things we have consciously or unconsciously made a part of our internal drive mechanisms.   Conditioning is part of how that happens, and paradoxically it happens to us in our ability to accept unconditional (unconditioned) love.  We learn by experience and observation, that love and acceptance are meted out in one place:  performance.  The good grades get the smiley face sticker, the basket scored gets the applause, the "I love you" gets an "I love you, too" back.  But when we fail, when we miss, and when we ourselves are not loving, then what happens?  We need to find sustenance for our souls somewhere.  What if there was an everlasting source of love and acceptance?  What if there was always a standing ovation, even for our insignificances?  If you are a follower of Christ you have discovered there is an everlasting, unconditioned love for you.  And if not, it is awaiting your discovery.  Why do people who know Christ and those who don't look so much alike sometimes?  They hang out at the old feeding place waiting for someone to fill the dish again.  The real food is close, just out of sight.  Kind hands may pick you up and take you to the new food and water.  It is there.  All of us dumb animals need unconditioning love.

 

the first cut

The core of unconditional love is dissecting actions from identity, e.g. confronting a child caught in a lie: "You are a liar." versus "You told a lie." In the first case an action has become enmeshed with an identity, in the second the knife of unconditional love has divided the child's act from the child's identity. We are not our actions, nor are our lives the sum of our actions. In our own hearts we know this about ourselves; we are human beings not human doings. C.S. Lewis explored the line between actions and identity in Mere Christianity:

"I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things."

If we don't find unconditional love for ourselves we will not be healthy, and if we do not exercise it in our relations with others our relationships will not be healthy. The real burning questions for our race are these: where shall we go to find this love? can we produce it ourselves? can we obtain it from others? Screw the fountain of youth, who wants to go on living in a world like this forever...give me the fountain of unconditional love.

oscarification

Who is this man standing next to Clint Eastwood?  Obviously Clint is getting ready to receive another Oscar and this guy is showing it around before he gives it over to it's rightful owner.  Not really.  This is Ennio Morricone.  Never heard of him?  Unless you are a  movie music buff, probably not, but you've heard from him.  He received an honorary Academy Award for 40 plus years worth of work on film musical scores.  Eastwood presented the award to Morricone and translated his 13 minute long acceptance speech, given in his native Italian.  Thirteen minutes!  An eternity for a show known to usher the winners off stage in seconds.  Thirteen minutes!  To summarize a lifetime.  But in a time just shy of a quarter of an hour Ennio Marricone became more real to me (and I'm sure many other ignorant yet ardent movie goers) than he had ever been.  He took on a face and a name.  He  came out of the sound bites and spoke .  He was glorified.

Sound a little too high and mighty?  This is the very essence of what it means to take on glory.  It means to become significant; to have permanence and weight.  When something is glorified it moves from being ethereal to being substantial.  It always puzzled me when people would say Christians are supposed to bring glory to God.  If God isn't glory then what is?  How can I bring glory to God who is glory? When I came to think of God's glory as a matter of weighty-ness, it made much more sense.  God is real.  He is the most real.   And just as assuredly as Ennio Morricone's music existed in my world outside my knowledge of it's creator, God's creation echoes with His sound whether He is acknowledged or not.  Christ followers can ascribe to God the weight due to His work.  We do this not as if God needs a golden statue to remind Him of His accomplishments, but to reveal the fullness of life behind His music to those who think the music is all there is to life.

say how we see

“Whatever knowledge we may have it is still imperfect. How is it then that some people claim to have a full and precise knowledge of God? Where God is concerned, we cannot even say just how wrong our perception of Him is.” –Chrysostom

I can hear you

I'm good at talking about things that matter.  I'm not so good at talking about things that don't.  The problem is that my mood can define what matters in the moment.  Sometimes I do not listen well or speak well because my 'mood-matter filter' is interfering with the true value of what people are saying to me.  The only protection I have found is to be very frank in conversations.  When I am too tired to care what someone says I tell them, "could we talk about this some other time? I'm not really hearing you right now." (I've noticed this doesn't slow people down who are interested in talking but not interested in hearing - so if they keep talking after I say this I feel ok about tuning them out).  When people are saying things that don't add up or are inconsistent I stop them and ask for clarification (I've noticed many people want to talk but don't have anything to say.  When asked for clarification they often stop talking all together).  But mostly the things people are trying to say matter very much - to them.  And that should be enough.  If it's important to them and they don't mind an honest give and take conversation, attempted communication is a worthy endeavor.  Have you ever noticed what the heart of conversation is?  Conversion.  Maybe people who never listen are too fragile in their identity to allow for someone else to speak; afraid they might be converted.  As a Christ follower I should be most ready to listen to all points of view and least afraid of losing my identity in conversation.

hammered or screwed

Let's say full life was represented by a block of wood. Whatever you think that life means, whatever your picture of a fulfilling life is, just picture it as a block of wood. Assuming you want to go into this life deeper and deeper, and remain fixed in it, what would you rather be? A nail? or a screw? Nails definitely go deeper faster; just a few whacks and they're in. Screws take more time and effort to go into the wood. The difference between the two shows up after some time has elapsed and the wood has been exposed to the elements; heat, cold, rain, stress. Nails tend to back out of the wood. Screws stay in place. You can usually tell the nail people, at least they stand out in Christian circles. They're the ones who think they got whacked on the head by God and driven completely into Jesus Christ. Then life grows cold and difficult and they feel themselves coming out of the wood. So they go find another meeting where they can be whacked back into the wood again. And so on and so on the rest of their lives until they have a form of religious brain damage from getting hit in the head so much. It is much healthier and true to view ourselves as screws turning one thread at a time into full life. There is a point at which we enter the wood; for us it is the cross of Jesus. Then, one thread at a time a Christ-follower goes further in. Each thread matters; each turning moves us in the direction we desire. It is slow going sometimes. We envy those who seem to be so deep. But we remain in his hands. We don't back out. It has cost too much to come this far. We learn to wait and we learn that the next turn into real life comes when we least expect it. And..."being confident of this, that he who began a good work in [us] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Phil 1:6) The questions you need to ask yourself (Christ-follower or not) are these: What is my view of a truly fulfilling life and where did it come from? What resources do I have to enter and to remain in full life? How long will that life last?

torn up

Our house has been torn up and put back together (almost) this week.  New roof.  New windows - the old ones were close to becoming more wind screen than wind shield.  New bedroom furniture - bedroom reconfigured completely backwards of what it was.  New office in place of the old formal dinning room.  Question: how many years of NOT using a room does it take before you can make it into something useful.  Answer:  approximately 14.  The kitchen is getting overhauled too.  New sink.  New cabinets.  Lot of changes around here.  This is close to the pain of moving all together.  Things I've had perfectly in place for years are now in boxes waiting to find their new perfect place.  I'm trying to get used to sleeping in a different direction.  Because of the upheaval there are a hundred nagging little dominoe projects that keep falling into each other knocking  hours out of my days.  And the cats!  The cats will not leave us alone.  They are under foot every time you turn around.  I got up in the middle of the night to go do jury duty and stepped on both of them, haunched up right next to the bed.  This morning they're both skulking around again.  I have been getting very annoyed with them, but today I realized what's going on for them.  These two cats are indoor cats.  Neither of them has been out of this house in forever.  What to me is a minor inconvenience in part of my world, to them is a banging, shuffling, shifting world-quake.  Everything they know is moving at once.  No wonder they're a bit disoriented and clingy.  How many of us see people with 'minor' problems and have little or no compassion?  Our attitude is, "what's the big deal?  Get over it."   Sometimes you need to walk a mile in someone else's paws before you understand.

profoundly confounding

Your personal certainty in Christ is not for you – it is for Him to make use of in His kingdom purposes. All things, yes even the individual follower’s confidence in Jesus, are for Jesus and to be constantly laid out in availability for kingdom advancing purposes. Our lack of understanding this reveals the lines between things we believe we must render unto Jesus (mainly our time and possessions) vs. the things we think are our own (mainly our identities, thoughts, and emotions). All things are Christ’s, in the most comprehensive sense the word "all" can ever be used.
example:

"So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one...But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled...Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge." (Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church)

So followers of Christ have entered into the profound freedom faith in Him produces and yet we are constrained to place even that freedom at His disposal. It is confounding. We love our liberty and celebrate it, but find it has limits. Limits? On freedom? If we look at freedom as the object of our desire this will chaff us. But, if we look at a person as the object of our desire we all embrace the limitations love brings. Love for my family caused me to choose jobs which were not "upwardly mobile." Love for my wife means boundaries around other relationships. If Jesus is the object of our desire we not only rejoice in the things He gives us (freedom), we also rejoice in the use of the things He gives us to further the causes He loves - namely the redemption of all things, especially each person.

fundamental do's and don'ts

We don't read our bibles and pray to get near to God. We read our bibles and pray because we are near to God. We don't perform acts of service for our neighbors and the poor to get near to God. We perform acts of service for our neighbors and the poor because we are near to God. In Christ we are niether better nor worse if we read or prayed or gave alms today; we are not more beloved or more accepted; we are not nearer or farther. We do abide in Christ if we have once accepted his invitation to abide and have ceased from our self-salvation efforts and come by way of the cross. Today will be no different. No salvation via bible study, meditation, or sacrificial acts of mercy. See the cross again in this moment, whatever moment it is during this day; the water cooler conversation, a free minute between classes, an argument with a friend, and you will do what you should do. You will praise, pray, give, sing, reach, speak, confess, run...you will do all for the glory of the One who is glory.

snake oil

I think there are a lot of us who ran into a guy like this. He had a real smooth pitch. Well rehearsed. He answered all our questions before we asked them. He convinced us he had the cure for what ailed us. He was so insistent and so convincing we bought what he was selling: Jesus in a bottle. This product, we were told, would fix all our problems AND give us minty sweet breath each morning. It didn't work out that way. Although many people present Jesus as a product (and many unfortunately buy Him as one) He isn't. No Jesus isn't a dimestore remedy for all our problems. Not a talisman to pull out of our pockets and rub for good luck, or a bottle to pull down off the shelf and crack open when our relationships are failing. Genies come in bottles, not Masters.

what to do when no one will tell you what to do

Perhaps you found the chasm of freedom waiting for you when you graduated high school, or college. Maybe it was when you got your first real job or when the honeymoon was really over and you settled down to married life. I've met a few people who have never stared over the edge of their personal Grand Canyon and known they are free moral beings loose in the cosmos. And some people build elaborate defenses miles away from that place so they will never have to face up to it. I can't say I blame them. It is disorienting to look out over all that space; all that liberty. Breathtaking and breath-sucking at the same time. I've run away from it more than once. I've tried to make God or my wife or a friend take over my choices so I can catch my breath. But I am never at liberty to give away my liberty. We are all thrust into time and space and left to choose. If you would like to avoid this reality you have only one philosophy to choose (there's an ironic twist). You must accept biological determinism - all our actions are hard wired through our biology similar to ants in a giant colony.
Individuals can no more choose to become a writer than a worker ant could choose to become a queen ant. For the rest of us, left at liberty with our liberty we must actually decide things and move in those decisions. Even a choice to give away our choice is...a choice; life by proxy. For the believer in God there are many positions taken up: Deism says God doesn't care about our choices, Monotheism says God does, but with many differing thoughts on how he does. Christianity - the real thing, not the dimestore version many of us bought off on - has the most sacred view of freedom of all faith positions. Christ created freedom through paying for the sins of all mankind. Only because of his all-encompassing sacrifice can humans remain alive in the presence of God. A fallen race in open rebellion in plain sight of the all powerful King are not utterly destroyed, but continue to enjoy all of His blessings; air, water, food, relationships, laughter, beauty. Christ gives up his freedom for all of God's created children to have real freedom. He does not discriminate. All are living under the protection of this gift, even those who deny and reject it and ultimately lose it eternally. When a follower of Christ attempts to usurp the freedom of another human being, he or she commits a most blasphemous act. And when that same follower, fully commited to God, in the absence of known sin, refuses to move forward because "God hasn't given me any direction" he or she is not just looking in the wrong place, they are displaying a lack of faith. The will of God for mankind and the freedom of men in Christ meet in an explosive place called faith. To do only what the scriptures teach is not to live in faith, it is to live in obedience. Faith is what happens when the tracks lead up to the edge of that canyon and then stop...

"People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation." - Soren Kierkegaard

freebe

be Free be Free
Be
Be with Me
Freely be
with Me
free Be free Be
me

`eekwu'libreeum

Equilibrium (Webster's 1913 Dictionary)
\E`qui*lib"ri*um\, n.; pl. E. {Equilibriums}, L. {Equilibria}. [L. aequilibrium, fr. aequilibris in equilibrium, level; aequus equal + libra balance.]
1. Equality of weight or force; an equipoise or a state of rest produced by the mutual counteraction of two or more forces.

2. A level position; a just poise or balance in respect to an object, so that it remains firm; equipoise; as, to preserve the equilibrium of the body.

3. A balancing of the mind between motives or reasons, with consequent indecision and doubt.

sitting concrete

Some times we have to work a second job or take pain pills. Some times we have to travel for work or miss the family gathering because of another commitment. Sometimes we have to ignore the call from a friend or lose a few hours of sleep to sudy for exams. What almost all of us fail to notice is the time and place where concrete begins to set around our temporary 'have to's'. When pain relief becomes addiction, and relieving financial strain becomes obsession; when important relationships, or health or things we used to love slip off into oblivion, unable to compete in the arena of thoughtless routine. It is helpful to examine our 'have to's' regularly; to compare them against something real. For followers of Christ there are places where He poured the concrete and set the lines in ancient times. If you are not a follower of Christ you still have your absolutes. Break them out. Ask some questions. Where did they come from? Do they work? Are they true? And then, 'Are my have to's set in the wrong places?'

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (the prophet Micah)

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"
He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." (Luke's gospel)

how to recover from a knock on the head

A little girl in my house just walked head first into a door (you know how beginner walkers often have to keep an eye on their feet like beginner typists have to keep an eye on their fingers). Wham! Then the crying sputtered up like an old farm tractor starting. She stepped back a few feet from the offending door with shocked look and teary eyes. I said, "Let me see where you hurt." She cried louder. I approached her and got down on one knee. "Did you hurt yourself?" I asked. I'm a genius like that. She cried louder. I hugged her and rubbed her on top of her head. "It's ok. It's ok. All better now. You're all right." She stopped crying and toddled off toward the kitchen, head down. She just needed to hear that everything was fine. She needed to hear it on good authority. Don't we all.