Archive for May, 2010
On Vacation
Sorry, no posts this week. My family will be in Grand Teton National Park (Jackson, Wy) looking at marvelous things.
Art (creating anything really) and the Gospel
I’ve been reading Steven King’s autobiography “On Writing.” I’ve never actually read one of his books but I do love reading what other writers have to say about life and art.
“I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all. I’m not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.”
Creating art and telling stories is the way in which the message of hope and redemption is passed from one person to the next, from one generation to the next. Whether you are well-known or barely-known never hesitate to create.
The Gospel then Behavior
Many people are saying the same thing. The same thing Luther said. The same thing Paul said. Tim Keller says it here in the below vid. For us, as Christians, to live in the gospel as to receive righteousness, not strivings as to earn it. And the righteousness we receive, and not earn, does something in us. It changes us.
RSS readers jump to the site for the vid.
”Guatemala Trip
We were in Guatemala last week, building homes, giving away shoes, holding some services, mainly looking for ways to tell people the good news of Jesus. We love to meet their physical needs as a means to tell them who can meet the much deeper needs in their lives. (RSS readers jump to the site for the pics)
My wife, Kristy, took this great shot:
Kristy with one of the widows we built a house for:
A few of us in front of the house we built:
The Lord seemed to be speaking three lessons to me:
1. People can be content and joyful with nothing because things were never meant to bring contentment or joy.
2. “We can see their faces but not their hearts.” My Guatemalan friend, Pastor Luis, said this.
3. Jesus is our treasure.
I thought about the parable about the guy who found a treasure hidden in a field. He sold all he had to buy that field, that he might have the treasure. The treasure isn’t health or things, those things will pass away. The treasure is God himself.
You Can’t Earn His Favor
Martin Luther, not the king, the reformer, lived in the early 1500′s. At the time the Christian church (only the Catholic church at the time) was abusing their power, communicating lies, telling people to earn the favor of God, literally having them buy forgiveness from the church. Then Luther, and then also the people, actually read the Holy Scriptures for themselves.
“All those who do not in all their works…trust in God’s favor, grace and good-will, but rather seek His favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep the (First) Commandment, and practice real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other Commandments. If we doubt or do not believe that God is gracious and pleased with us, or if we presumptuously expect to please Him through our works, then all (our compliance with the law ) is pure deception, outwardly honoring God, but inwardly setting up self as a false (savior)… – Martin Luther, Treatise on Good Works
I don’t think I can write anything better.
Think Christians, Think
I’m in Guatemala this week, building homes and handing out shoes with a group from my church. So, this week I won’t post any long detailed incredibly insightful (ok, maybe I’m going overboard) posts. I’ll simply post a few interesting quotes I’ve read over the past couple weeks, following with a bit of reflection.
“Most Christians would rather die than think – in fact, they do.” – Bertrand Russell
Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Meaning, it’s easy to get caught in the current of life and miss life. It’s easy not to think, to let the blab of television, radio, and this blog, all fill your mind. Stop, turn it off, all of it, and think. Examine your life, and you’ll find places where life ceases to exist. Only then can you begin to allow the grace and wisdom of God to fill those places and create a new bloom.
What If…
Most of my “what if’s” are centered around myself, my comfort, my pleasure, my security, or my success.
What if I won the lottery?
What if I wrote a New York Times Bestseller?
What if I got a raise and could move into a bigger house?
But what if all those “what if’s” only kept me absorped in myself and a step away from the joy I’m really after? What if my “what if’s” were replaced with the right what if’s?
What if I was kind to someone today?
What if I listened to someone today?
What if I gave something away today?
These are not easy questions but behind them I think we will find life.
The Courage to Think
The other day I read 50% of American adults will never read a book in their adult life. TV will fill that void. Facebook will. But nothing challenges the mind like books, forcing us to imagine the places the words speak of, pushing us to wrestle with issues and new thoughts. I believe without the reading of books there will be a vacuum of thought in our culture. The few people who do think, and who create the web and television content, will dictate what people believe.
Allyson Lewis, author of the time management book “The Seven Minutes Difference,” writes, “Reality is most people don’t think; they only rearrange their prejudices. Real thinking can be disruptive to the status quo and require a great deal of courage.”
I want to be courageous. At least I think I do. And I take courage in that, for I am thinking.
Lie #23: Jesus is always nice.
[extended entry]
In John 2 Jesus walked into the temple and found things far from what they should’ve been. People were selling sheep and cattle and exchanging money. People were turning profit in God’s house. This was supposed to be a place of reverence not a place to grow individual worldly provision and wealth. It was a temple not a mall. The holy had become marketable. And Jesus didn’t like it. The merchants sat behind the tables they carefully arranged earlier that morning just as they had many mornings before that. To them the table was their means of living, so you can imagine their feelings when Jesus made a whip and in a craze he cleared the temple scattering coins, turning tables, and running the people and animals out. He yelled at them about the perversion of their livelihoods and ruined a day of earnings. And he didn’t apologize afterwards.
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A Conversation About Priorities
Josie can now have little conversations. We are working on her understanding of God as the Creator of life, and just as importantly his nature of love. So I ask her all the time, “Josie, who made you?”
She gets focused, a serious look on her face, a sweet voice, “God.”
“And what is God?”
“ove.” (She doesn’t say her L’s well.)
“That’s right, God is love, and he loves you always, no matter what.”
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