I was playing in the backyard with my son, and saw these two incredible butterflies. Fortunately, they stayed around long enough for me to get my camera out and snap away. I was so impressed with how some of them turned out.
Found out with a little searching that these are Agraulis vanillae more commonly known as the Gulf Fritillary.
I was reading an article yesterday in Ladies’ Home Journal (yeah, yeah, don’t ask) about the “Church of Nature.” In this article, a concerned mother saw her downcast son on a Sunday morning very upset about having to go to Church. She asked him why and he said, “I’d rather be watching our tadpoles.” Immediately she had a revelation and decided that every now and then they’d play hooky from Church and take the kids down to a nearby river to explore the “Church of Nature.”
I don’t really have much to say about the article. I’m not going to spend any time speculating on the underlying theological and philosophical commitments of the author. Instead, I want to think about the Church. Is your Church so boring for kids that they’d rather watch tadpoles? Do kids beg their parents not to come to Church?
More than anything, this reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in a little Southern Baptist Church in rural Oklahoma. As soon as I read this article, I was reminded of how we weren’t forced to make a decision between being outside and going to Church. Many times I can remember our Sunday School teachers, far wiser than many church education experts, deciding it was too beautiful to stay in our classroom. Instead, they would say it was time for a nature walk, and we’d take off down the little country road behind our church. The teacher would say something like, “When we get back we’ll talk about all the things we see that God made,” and during our trip we’d throw rocks off the bridge, catch crawdads, and play in the water.
After worship, during church dinners, we kids would barely stay inside before going out to play in the little branch running through our property. We’d catch crawdads again, try to splash each other with rocks, and build dams with rocks and pine needles. Of course, these miniature Corps of Engineer projects would often undergo forced dismantling at the request of our wiser elders after a brief lesson on erosion!
I can also remember leaving worship after a particularly vivid sermon on having the faith of a mustard seed, the kind that could move mountains. None of us had ever heard of Tom Wright, and so we didn’t “know” that this was referring to the temple mount. Instead, we’d all stand in the parking lot talking as we’d look across the road at Buffalo Mountain and marvel. Someone would inevitably say, “Wow, can you believe that if we had enough faith we could move that mountain?” We’d be astounded by God’s power, really astounded, and then go home. Who wouldn’t want to go to Church and experience that?
I’m not sure where the person who wrote that article went to church, but it sure wasn’t where I grew up. Maybe she went somewhere too sophisticated and busy talking about God’s care for the environment to really get out and love it like God does. Too bad.
According to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, there is about a 20% chance that we’re nothing more than characters in a large simulated universe ran by sentient beings of the future. This proposal is briefly explained in the New York Times article, Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch.
While this highly speculative theory is very interesting, it seems to be less imaginative than one might imagine. Think about it. To me, this seems to be a modern or post-modern example of Feuerbach’s old claim that God is simply humanity’s desire writ large – i.e. God is a projection of our desires. In this case, however, the very metaphysic of the universe is our current technology writ large. Computer simulations are a reality in our world, Bostrom seems to argue, so who’s to say we aren’t simply part of a grander more elaborate computer simulation of the future?! Is this any different than early humans believing that storms, earthquakes, etc. were gods in some way?
In the end, I think our faith can hold up to these kinds of critiques, because Jesus simply does so many things that I don’t want to do. Who wants to love or forgive their enemies? I don’t. Who wants to give up their life to save it? Not me. If my deepest desires were written large upon the universe, the God of my invention would look a whole lot different. Wouldn’t yours? So, I think there is something important about the fact that God’s difference is revealed to us by the very paradoxical claims of Christ revealed through Scripture. There is something that refutes the Feuerbachian claim in the very fact that our calling is so often conflicted with our intuition and desire. Yet at the same time, when we pursue God’s call to live in this counter-intuitive way we are given peace that surpasses understanding.
So, I guess I’m not worried that we’re simply Sims after all.
I have been on a self-imposed book buying moratorium as I wait to begin my D.Min. program. Something tells me that I’ll be buying a lot of books during my time in that program, so I should save my book money for those. However, my trips to the local libraries just aren’t enough. I guess I’m too used to ordering stuff from Amazon.com at the drop of a hat! So yesterday when I went to Tulsa to take my truck back for a recall, I stopped by Cokesbury and bought a new book: Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders by Earl Creps.
So far, I am very impressed with this book. When I read books, I often think of the kind of person who would really benefit the most from reading it. For me, this book is an excellent introduction to postmodern/emerging concepts for those conservative or evangelical clergypersons who might be suspicious of these movements, but are still passionate about reaching people influenced by postmodernity in a missional way. To be honest, this book seems to be written for an older audience. I’m pretty sure the reason this might fit those types well is related to Creps’ socio-cultural context, which I mention a bit below.
Let me offer you a few great quotes from my early reading, as I’ve found myself underlining quite a bit so far. In the first chapter, Creps talks about the need to move from a centralized model of leadership (the big, authoritarian pastor model) to a model where Christ is at the center of our lives in missional communities. Unfortunately for us, he believes this shift is often, if not always, motivated by death of our dreams and ambitions.
A missional life, then, experiences the centrality of Christ as our failures expose the illusion that we merit the center position. Failure, among other forces, reveals this illusion for what it is, crucifying it and giving us the chance to invite Christ to assume the central role in practice, instead of just in doctrine (p. 10).
He continues later in the chapter with what I believe is the biggest danger for those of us who care about reaching people for Christ in creative and culturally-sensitive ways. Emerging Church “techniques” imposed on a community can easily devolve into what he describes here,
We like to transform things technologically, thinking of ministry as an instrumentality, ourselves as the CEO, the Holy Spirit as a sort of power cell, and the church as an object we modify. In so doing, we risk creating not much more than a hipper version of irrelevance (p. 14).
He closes this chapter with a challenge that speaks to me in a way that is painfully clear,
In it all, God calls me out of the center that He alone rightfully occupies, to let go of things I treasure, to meet Him among the marginalized where He is always most at work. I will meet Him there most profoundly if the transformation of my inner life is at stake (p. 14).
I really relate to a lot of what Creps is doing in this book. He is operating out of the Assemblies of God tradition and runs the D.Min. program at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri, so I imagine he has many of the same challenges as those of us in mainline denominations who are used to doing things a certain way – especially those of us with more “conservative” theological pedigrees. No doubt he has plenty of challenges unique to his setting as well. In any case, I’m looking forward to continuing my conversation with Creps through this book, and I pray that God will continue to mold me into the missional leader I am called to be.
Do the hours of prayer confuse you? Would you know Lauds if it jumped up and bit you? Can you tell the difference between Terce and Sext? If you’re confused, then today is your lucky day. I’ve always had a hard time remembering these, but I found a really handy little chart in Scot McKnight’s terrific book Praying With the Church. Here is the summary below:
So, there you go. I hope this helps!
Some of my best children’s messages come at the last moment as I’m walking out the door, and I think, “Oh man, I need something to say to the kids this morning!!” This morning, I had an idea that went with the L.L. Bean Wind ‘N Go flashlight that I had sitting above my computer desk.
My kids had been playing with this flashlight and left it on all night long. After a long night on the shelf, the light was about as dim as it could possibly be while still being on. In a way, it looked a little like I felt! All of a sudden, I had a spark of enlightenment.
I took the flashlight to Church this morning, and showed it to the kids, asking them what was wrong. With a little direction, they correctly answered that the battery had gone dead. At that point, I showed them that it was a special kind of flashlight that we could recharge by winding the crank. As you may have guessed, I made the analogy with the way we sometimes lose our light and run out of steam and feel like we’re not connected with God (O.K. smarty-pants, I know this was over the heads of all but about three kids – children’s messages are for the adults & pastor too, you know!).
I then gave each of them a turn at the crank while I said things like, “We pray, we study the bible or listen to bible stories from our parents or grandparents, we go to Church, we sing songs,” and then I wound the thing like crazy while I said, “We listen to the sermon!” You can kind of hear the light whir pretty loudly, so this got a big laugh here from the adults.
I then pushed the on button and the thing nearly blinded the poor girl sitting in front of me! Two of the smaller kids yelled, “There’s a light!” There was a slight “Ohhh…” in the crowd, and I said, “Don’t get ahead of me now!” I then talked about how all these things we do help us be closer to God, and when we do we become lights in the world – shining out the message of God’s love. Trust me, it was much better than my sermon!
Hebrews 11:1 is a fascinating verse, but there is hardly a consensus on how it should be translated. For example:
With a little help from various commentators and a peek at the Greek, here is the rendering (because it’s darn sure not a translation) I’d like to offer: Faith is the reality of everything we’re looking forward to – the very witness of what remains unseen. Somehow, faith is the very reality of the end to which things are heading – faith itself, is the witness to what remains unseen. After my little paraphrase, I thought I’d look up Eugene Peterson’s as well. Here’s the rendering in
As I read this, it drew me to think about examples of those, like Abraham in Hebrews 11, who pressed on in spite of a lack of clarity – those who lived faithfully in spite of the dim vision we have of the unseen reality of God. Thinking as a good Methodist, John Wesley was definitely one who came to mind. I found a reference to Wesley’s perseverance here.
Problem is, I like to check stuff like this and the words they said were in Wesley’s Journal were nowhere to be found. Trust me, I checked the PDF version at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library! It is there in Spirit, but you’ve gotta do a little work. Here’s what I found (with a little editing such as adding the months, even though I didn’t track down the years):
Sunday, May 7th: I preached at St. Lawrence’s in the morning, and afterward at St. Katherine Cree’s Church. I was enabled to speak strong words at both; and was therefore the less surprised at being informed that I was not to preach any more in either of those churches.
Sunday, May 14th: I preached in the morning at St. Ann’s, Aldersgate; and in the afternoon at the Savoy Chapel, free salvation by faith in the blood of Christ. I was quickly apprised that at St. Ann’s, likewise, I am to preach no more.
Friday, May 19th: I preached at St. John’s, Wapping at three and at St. Bennett’s, Paul’s Wharf, in the evening. At these churches, likewise, I am to preach no more.
Friday, November 3rd: I preached at St. Antholin’s; Sunday, 5, in the morning, at St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate; in the afternoon, at Islington; and in the evening, to such a congregation as I never saw before, at St. Clement’s, in the Strand. As this was the first time of my preaching here, I suppose it is to be the last.
Friday, March 10.—I rode once more to Pensford at the earnest request of serious people. The place where they desired me to preach was a little green spot near the town. But I had no sooner begun than a great company of rabble, hired (as we afterwards found) for that purpose, came furiously upon us, bringing a bull, which they had been baiting, and now strove to drive in among the people. But the beast was wiser than his drivers and continually ran either on one side of us or the other, while we quietly sang praise to God and prayed for about an hour.
Then in Wesley’s 85th year of life, with a history of many successes and perhaps far more apparent failures, he writes these words near the end of his journal:
Saturday, August 22. I crossed over to Redruth and at six preached to a huge multitude, as usual, from the steps of the market house. The Word seemed to sink deep into every heart. I know not that ever I spent such a week in Cornwall before.
Sunday, August 23.–l preached there again in the morning and in the evening at the amphitheater, I suppose, for the last time. My voice cannot now command the still increasing multitude. It was supposed they were now more than five and twenty thousand.
In the end, like Abraham, Wesley didn’t see the invisible and heavenly country (Hebrews 11:16) that he desired, yet he pressed on in faith. That’s the kind of faith that is the very witness of that which remains unseen. May we all live so faithfully!
Eustace Conway is the subject of a book called The Last American Man written by Elizabeth Gilbert. Gilbert describes his life as a modern mountain man who still lives like our ancestors lived in the early frontiers of our nation. She tells about his extraordinary adventures such as walking the 2,000 mile Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia living almost exclusively off of what he could hunt and eat along the way and his legendary journey on horseback across the United States. Out of a passion for this way of life, he now operates a camp for children and adults in a 1,000 acre sanctuary he calls Turtle Island in the hills of North Carolina. One of the things he cares deeply about is trying to help people, especially grade school children, understand their connection with the natural world. At one of his speaking engagements, he asked fifty sixth graders to talk about the meaning of the word “sacred.” No one seemed to know what this meant, and so Eustace asked them to write down a list of what was valuable to them. He remembers only one out of fifty having a real idea of sacredness. After reading paper after paper filled with things like money, new cars, and telephones, one boy in the class said “life.” Eustace later wrote in his journal, “Only one small soul in the class was on the right track away from greed as a motivator, and thank goodness for him…”
Unfortunately, greed is a powerful motivator in our society. In order to understand what a powerful motivator it is, you only need to look at the number of states who sponsor lotteries as a sure-fire way to make money off of their people! If we just had a little more, then things would be better. Our advertising companies realize this and if you just watch a few commercials this afternoon, you’ll realize how much your life is lacking and how much better it would be with just a few more strategically purchased products!
Even though Jesus lived in a time with far fewer resources and considerably fewer choices of things to buy, he still faced many of the very same issues. In fact, a significant portion of Jesus message dealt with serious issues of wealth and possessions, even though at times we tend to shy away from the things he had to say. Or maybe even worse, we try to explain them away to make them easier to take! Luke’s twelfth chapter is packed with Jesus’ teaching about wealth and possessions. When we first see Jesus in this chapter, he is surrounded by a crowd of people so thick they are stepping on each other’s toes. A few moments before our passage, he had just been talking about the ways his followers could expect hardship and maybe even martyrdom if they kept following him faithfully.
So it seems totally random when a man steps out of the crowd to ask him about inheritance law! To be fair, this man wasn’t totally out of line because Jesus was a teacher – a Rabbi – and one thing Rabbis were able to do was understand the complicated legal issues surrounding the Law of Moses and apply them to everyday life. Since Mosaic Law described the ins and outs of inheritance, rabbis were often consulted on these issues. So, this stranger from the crowd simply wanted a quick ruling on a legal dispute with his brother – hopefully in his favor! But as Jesus does so often, he bypasses the question the man was asking on the surface and gets to the root of what he is really asking inside. He uses this as a teaching moment for his disciples and undoubtedly for the crowd gathered closely around. “Take care!” Jesus says, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” The common wisdom, then and now, seems to suggest that life does consist in an abundance of possessions. But Jesus reminds us that this is not the kind of script our life is supposed to have. To say it as simply as possible, there is much more to life than having lots of stuff.
And then, to take things deeper, Jesus tells parable. There was once a very wealthy man whose crops had such a good year that he couldn’t even store the harvest. So he said to himself, “I’ll tear down the barns I have, build bigger ones, and store up all my grains and goods. That’ll be perfect! I’ll say to myself, self you’re doing just fine. In fact, after you build those big new barns and fill them up with the harvest, you’ve got it made for the next several years – so sit back relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” He thought he had it made…but there was one variable he hadn’t figured into the equation… God came to him that very night with very strong words, “You fool! This is the very night you’re going to die! Now who’s going to get all of the stuff you’ll have in storage?!” Jesus then says, “That’s the way it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich in the things of God.”
Our first reaction might be to come to the guys’ defense here (or maybe it’s to defend ourselves!) We’d like to be there so we could say to Jesus, “It’s not like he’s doing anything other than simply practicing good business sense! He isn’t stealing from others, is he?!” But Jesus’ words are a clue to what he’s saying at a deeper level. The word fool is not a word that’s used lightly in Scripture – in fact it’s only used two times in the gospel of Luke – compare that to nearly 70 times in Proverbs. The foolish person is always talked about in contrast to the person who exercises the very wisdom of God. In Scripture, the word fool refers to those people who live their lives as if God does not exist. Jesus parable reminds us that we’ll never get the formula for our lives right unless God is at the very center. Jesus didn’t believe that wealth or possessions were evil in and of themselves and neither are the people who have them; Jesus simply knew that wealth and possessions offer us a great temptation to put our faith and trust in them rather than in God. That’s what was wrong with this farmer – he calculated his life without including God in the equation. Richard Foster describes the temptation this way, “…[when] we lack a Divine Center our need for security [leads] us to an insane attachment to things.” That’s why there are warnings throughout Scripture. Psalm 62:10 says, “if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.” Proverbs 11:28 reminds us that, “Those who trust in their riches will wither, but the righteous will flourish like green leaves.” There is much more to life than having lots of stuff.
A minister preached a sermon along these lines and tried to emphasize everything, including our possessions, belong to the Lord. An old farmer skeptically sat in the congregation, listening to but not agreeing with the sermon. That afternoon he invited the preacher to Sunday dinner with him and his family. After dinner they walked outside, the farmer made a point of showing the preacher around his house, barns, tool shed, and pointed to his beautifully kept farm. Then he asked the preacher half jokingly, “Pastor, I worked all my life on this land. Do you mean to tell me that it’s not my land, that it’s the Lord’s land?” The minister reflected for a moment and then quietly said to the farmer, “…ask me that same question in a hundred years.” The story is a good illustration of the old phrase, “you can’t take it with you.” Martin Luther, the great Reformer, put it this way, “I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands – that, I still possess.”
Just like that old farmer, the only things we can take with us are those things that we place in God’s hands. Our faith and trust in God, the good we do for our neighbor in the name of Christ, the devotion we have to God, the sacrifices we make for the sake of God’s Kingdom, and the time spend carefully and quietly listening to God’s Holy Spirit. These are the things are sacred, these are the things that last, these are the things that make you rich in the eyes of God.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I just noticed that August 15th will be the one year anniversary for the blog. I love my first post – it’s a copy of one of my favorite poems. Speaking of which, it’s darn hard to format a poem using WordPress. Usually, I have to use an secondary program like BlogDesk to get it to look right. That’s something to push for someday from the WordPress brass, I guess.
Maybe I’ll reflect a little more on a year of blogging on the actual day of my blogoversary. Right now, I’m procrastinating from writing a sermon. Back to work!
Well, I decided to do my Myers-Briggs test again today (avoiding work today?), and it turns out I’m still an INFP. That personality type is described as follows,
INFPs are introspective, private, creative and highly idealistic individuals that have a constant desire to be on a meaningful path. They are driven by their values and seek peace. Empathetic and compassionate, they want to help others and humanity as a whole. INFPs are imaginitive, artistic and often have a talent for language and writing. They can also be described as easygoing, selfless, guarded, adaptable, patient and loyal.
You know, this seems right. Notice, the Myers-Briggs stuff never says anything really negative. It’s kind of like a personality horoscope in some ways, don’t you think? I mean really…are there only 16 different types of people in the world!? Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed using the tool and learning about myself through it.
I did have a counselor when I first started going through the whole process for ordination say, “You do realize that there are very few INFP pastors who are in large Churches, don’t you?” It was as if he was saying I couldn’t be the kind of pastor he saw as ideal because of personality limitations. The great thing was that he then said, “In fact, the only INFP pastor I can think of is Eugene Peterson…” I nearly wept with joy to hear the connection with a pastor I really admire! I think his original statement is a little bit suspect, because we all grow to function outside of our comfort zone personality-wise. Anyway, I’m sure he’s still somewhere in Dallas defining folks’ ministerial potential by their Myers-Briggs profile.
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