I say millions of words everyday.
Hillary Clinton, on her excuse as to why she changed her story about her trip to Bosnia.
Monthly Archive for March, 2008
If your best friend was raped and beaten to death, no matter what good came out of it, would you ever want to see a video of it ever again?
I wrote that down after church the other day. I was there with my 7 and 5 year old sons, that are old enough to be pretty aware of things, and there was a video of Jesus’ beating and crucifixion on the screens. I know that for many it was a time of meditation, and considering, but I couldn’t watch it, and I really didn’t want my boys to, either.
After church my wife and I were talking about it. She said that she was glad that some people were there got to see that, b/c they might not know what all happened, and they wouldn’t take the time to read it. I can see validity in that. I know that I had my share of Good Friday services where people described in great detail all of the things Jesus went through. I saw the passion and wept and wept and wept and still haven’t been the same since. I know that I grew a lot from experiencing those things.
But now, I’m at a point where I just can’t watch that stuff. I can’t watch it b/c it seems a little too much like we’ve given in to the gory entertainment industry where we like to see what we don’t really like to see. It seems a little too much like the law of diminishing returns has happened to us on the horror of what happened to Jesus. We heard about it, and that was horrible, but it wore off. We saw abstract pictures of it, and it was horrible, and we felt horrible, but then it wore off. The next thing we need to see has to be more horrible, or it won’t have the same effect, and so on and so forth until I’m covering my children’s eyes at church and closing my own eyes. I’m listening to the music to make it’s abrupt change from somber and dramatic to happy and loud. (If I did look at the screens, I wouldn’t be able to make a transition so fast anyway)
The other reason why I can’t watch is b/c I know that Jesus went through all of that b/c I deserved it, but now that He did it for me I won’t have to…the flip side of that is that the people that don’t recognize Him and put their faith onto Him will get what they deserve themselves instead of trading with Him. When I see that, I see what is going to happen to my friends that reject Him. I’m not sure which one is more disturbing or heartbreaking-looking back at what happened to my best friend, or looking ahead at what is going to happen to friends I have now that refuse to put their hand on the lamb to transfer their sin. (God’s been talking about it since before Leviticus 4.24)
Do you see why I can’t watch these videos?
Let’s focus on that guy. I know Him and He’s really great. A long time ago, simply eating some bread told everyone that He died and rose again. He’s awesome and great and doesn’t need a lot of drama to reveal Himself.
I’d like to go back to those days. I shouldn’t have to show you a bunch of blood and raw flesh on a whip to try to prove that Jesus suffered, died, was buried, and rose again, just have dinner with me and you’ll see.
I love it:
““Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.”
(Matt 27:65-66 NIV)
Go and make it as secure as you know how. Do your best. Give it your best shot. The KJV is fun too:
“So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.”
(Matt 27:66 KJVS)
Set your watch. How long will it take Jesus to bust out?
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick BOOM. Easter
Man, I don’t think I’ve read a book that has forced me to re-think and repent from the way I’ve done ministry more than this book. You should go buy it from the local bookstore right now.
“Perhaps the greatest poverty of all is having nothing of value to offer the community. I want to believe that no one in my community is that poor.”
from Ch. 7, in the context of destroying people’s dignity by giving free handouts.
Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor, by Robert D. Lupton
You might have thought you could buy anything at the Home Depot. The other day, I bought Google. (and a 50 pack of rubber gloves)
I’ve been thinking about notions of serving a lot lately. Like how I thought that we should buy an empty lot downtown and put in a basketball court for kids to play at.
“We don’t need any basketball courts” one pastor of a downtown church said, “Nobody plays basketball anymore, they’re all inside their houses playing video games!”
I missed the mark on that one! I had no idea all these poor kids had video games. I know that one person’s opinion may be off, that maybe if there were a court dozens of kids would come out and play, but it just shows that I didn’t know what the hood’s needs were.
Now we’re moving down there, and I’m seeing how easy it is to insulate and seal up a house and fix the enormous heating bill (Our high bill was $575, and that seems low compared to other ones I hear about).
But would it be a service to go in with a bunch of my friends from out of town and insulate some homes? How much better would it be if I could get some people to pay for the labor, and then get the insulation donated, and then pay some neighborhood boys to help me do the work? What if there were a little band of high school or Jr. High guys that knew all about sealing up a home and cutting energy bills? That would be cool. They might not get a job in the future doing that, but the might just learn how to do hard work and find a practical way to let Jesus really serve through them.
Which brings me back to serving. Doing helpful tasks is not necessarily serving. If it were, then Martha would have been esteemed and Mary rebuked for sitting around at Jesus’ feet. When we take a crew somewhere, and they charge in and do a bunch of work and then leave, is that the kind of serving Jesus wished for? I’m not sure about that. In my own case, I have received help and given help in the blitzkrieg style, and I know in a lot of ways it helped me (when I was the recipient) and it helped the people (when I was the giver) but I get a feeling there is a better way to serve. I think there is a deeper, longer lasting way of serving a person rather than building them an outhouse or mowing their yard.
Yesterday I saw a neighbor boy driving around his yard on his riding lawnmower. The blade wasn’t engaged, it was just a poor man’s four-wheeler. I wonder if I would have given him 10 bucks and sent him to mow somebody’s yard…
I just talked to a man in our neighborhood that said a millionaire used to live in our house and had a custom built cedar closet for all of her furs with an air conditioning system that was ages old and a servant girl that lived in the house in the back.
<<3/11/2008>> Yesterday while filling cracks with Great Stuff I found the weird electrical outlet for her old AC unit. Pretty cool.
Ancient Hebrew wisdom describes four levels of charity. The highest level is to provide a job for one in need without his knowledge that you provided it. The next, lower level is to provide work that the needy one knows you provided. The third level is to give an anonymous gift to meet an immediate need. The lowest level of charity, to be avoided if at all possible, is to give a person a gift with his full knowledge that you are the donor.
-p. 26, Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life, by Robert D. Lupton
Last night I was at Rural King buying some Great Stuff expandable foam sealer. They had a sale that was 20% one item and I considered trying to talk them into giving me that off of one CASE of Great Stuff. Then I remembered my wife’s words about the basement.
“You can’t overclean that basement. Do whatever you have to.”
So I bought a sand blaster. Yep. I now own a sandblasting machine. I figured it would come in handy in stripping the paint off the chimneys, the foundation, cleaning the mold out of the basement, and maybe even (hopefully not for us, but maybe for helping out someone else) graffiti removal. I look at this stuff, and I think, “what in the world are we getting into?!”
