Interrupted...

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." -John Lennon

"Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay, and you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." -Isaiah 64:8

Today is New Year's Eve. And that means that tomorrow is a brand new year, 2017.

For lots of us, this means a fresh start and lots of new plans, a whole list of resolutions and promises for a coming new year.

When 2018 arrives I'll have met someone I love.

This will be the year I finally get in shape and run my first marathon.

This year I'm going to save money and see the world.

I'm going to be more patient and catch up with old friends.

By this time next year I'll have the job I've always dreamed of.

I'm finally going to get a puppy.

You know the list.

There are lots of things people plan for the new year. Maybe the past 12 months haven't been so great and you just need a blank slate. Or maybe the amazingness of 2016 has left you utterly excited about the prospects of what's next.

It's a time to make resolutions we know may not last until February. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

So often we create a picture for what our futures hold. We'll have this family and this job and live here and so on and so forth. And that's not a bad thing. Planning is great! It keeps us focused on what's important and where we want to go. But things never turn out exactly the way we plan them, and thank God for that.

There's a story about Jesus and a plan. As Jesus steps out of a boat, a temple leader named Jairus rushes through the crowd to pull Jesus aside. His daughter was dying, he explained, and he needed Jesus to come see about her. Well, of course, Jesus began moving through the crowd at once to follow along to Jairus' house. Until he stopped. In the middle of this impossibly important task.

You see, a woman had grabbed his robe. This wasn't remarkably uncommon, however. People would often touch the tassels of the robes of holy Jewish men with the hope that there was healing power present. But something was different this time. So Jesus stopped.

It turns out the woman had been bleeding uncontrollably for years. Nothing could help her. All she knew to do was reach out for this rabbi's tassels. And something happened. Her bleeding stopped. And so did Jesus.

He turned looking for the guilty party. I can't imagine what Jairus must've been thinking. His daughter was dying after all, and Jesus had stopped because someone (in the wall-to-wall crowd mind you) had touched him. Seconds mattered, and Jesus was wasting them. But he had to stop. Something important had happened.

Terrified, the woman came clean. She explained her situation, her desperation. And Jesus looked at her and said, "Your faith has healed you." The crowd must have been amazed. The woman must have been shocked.

But her gain was Jairus' loss. In the delay, word came that his daughter had died. One woman's life was restored while another's was ended. How could Jesus have been so rude to have backed out on his promise to come and heal her? But all was not lost.

Yes Jesus had stopped. But he knew as well as anyone that sometimes plans have to be laid aside for an inconvenient interruption. You see, interruptions don't usually lead us towards our planned destinations, but that doesn't mean they don't move us forward. Sometimes we have have to take a detour to help us know if the road before us is the right one.

I'd like to tell you about the two interruptions in the past few years that I remember like they were yesterday.

Four years ago, I met Lana. She wandered into the youth building in Fort Worth one Sunday afternoon while I was trying to take a nap before Sunday night youth. She was desperate for a ride across town to see a funeral. I was a little peeved and impatient, but decided I didn't have much of a choice.

On the way there, she explained that the funeral was for world-famous pianist Van Cliburn. Mr. Cliburn had won the world's greatest piano competition in Russia at the height of the Cold War. As a woman from Eastern Europe, this man had been a hero. She had to be there. But she was living in transitional housing and had no car, not to mention a bad back. With a round of gratitude, we got to the church and she walked out. I assumed that would be that, and my afternoon had only suffered 15 minutes of inconvenience.

The next day, I saw Lana on the sidewalk by the church. As I approached, she began to jog my way. (I think her back was the only they restraining her from a full sprint!) She wrapped me in an unannounced hug and told me all that had happened. She'd met a woman at the funeral who loved her story so much she'd invited Lana to the reception at City Hall. She cried at the eulogy but was invited to celebrate the life of a hero she'd never met.

"Thank you, my friend," she said. "You were my angel, and I will never forget this kindness."

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was running just on time to meet a girl for a dinner date. Parking across the street, I was just a few steps from the door when I heard the familiar introductions of a panhandler. For reasons I can't explain (and definitely couldn't to my date) I stopped to turn around.

"Hey man, listen, if you can help at all..." he began. Before he could finish, I held out my hand to shake his. After a little confusion, he returned the favor. "I'm Martin."

"Man, thank you for looking at me like a human being. I'm Pierce."

That stung. I can't imagine what it must be like to have everyone you meet see you as something less than a person. An obstacle. An eye sore. A burden. A nuisance. But never a brother. Never a part of the family.

We talked for a few minutes, and eventually I handed him more money than I've probably ever handed someone who asked for it. He told me his story, and whether or not any of it was true, somebody listened.

Before we departed so that I could get to my now-very-late date, I asked him one last favor. "Pierce," I asked, "would you mind helping me make a little Christmas cheer? I'm filming videos with people singing Christmas carols to spread a little Christmas joy and I'd love to have you be my partner in crime today."

Thirty seconds later we'd recorded Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and gone our separate ways, but not before one last handshake. Eventually I made it into the restaurant for what proved to be our last date.

Some days it's more important to leave our plans behind for a second if we want to hear the whimsical love God is whispering in our ears.

Back to the story of Jesus and Jairus. While Jairus must've been lost in despair, I imagine Jesus put his arm around the grieving father and whispered in his ear, "Don't worry. It's going to be ok. I just had to stop for a friend." They walked back to the house, and with the same healing the woman had experienced in the crowd, the daughter was healed.

Our plans are important. They are the compass pointing our path. And yet, when they become inflexible and unmovable, when we become so tied to our visions of our future that we can't imagine anything different, they can become the shackles on our feet that restrain us from the detours that God might be inviting us onto.

So may we make plans and dream dreams for what the horizon holds in store for us. May we live in more faithful and loving rhythms and may we orient our resolutions around God's directions for our lives. But may we also allow those plans to be thwarted by whimsy and inconvenience. May we open ourselves up to God's little interruptions, knowing that even if our plans and paths change, the Potter's hands are never done shaping his beloved clay.

forever unfinished...

Love Is...

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." -1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

"Love laid down to bring to life all that's lost inside." -Love Laid Down, Green River Ordinance

If you've ever been to a wedding, chances are you've heard 1 Corinthians 13. At least some of it.

You know the section though. It begins, "Love is patient. Love is kind..." and so on and so forth. It's a lovely and pithy few statements from one of Paul's letters to the people of Corinth. We've probably heard it so often that we've lost how incredibly profound it all is.

A couple of weeks ago I was meeting up with a few high school students to talk about a sermon on love and marriage when this particular passage came up. Don't get me wrong, I'm intimately familiar with these few verses. If I've heard them once, I've heard them one hundred and one times. They're not exactly earth-shattering nowadays.

But the other night, something about it felt fresh.

Love is hard. It's really hard. But so often we sell it short. We're surrounded by Disney princess stories and Nicholas Sparks fairy tales of romance and excitement that we've reduced love to an emotion with butterflies in our stomach and an emoji with hearts for eyes.

We've substituted an emotion for what was meant to be a verb.

I've got to confess that I am not all of the things that Paul professes love to be. I'm not always patient and I'm fairly proud. I can get really jealous and be really rude. But as I sat there with those high school guys, I started to think maybe that wasn't the point.

I started to think that maybe all of those attributes that Paul mentioned were ways of practicing love. Follow me for a second. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice being patient and not envious, we will be more about love. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice holding our tongue and putting others first, we will fall more in love. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice not bragging and telling the truth we'll experience a deeper taste of love than we ever have and that our relationships will richer and deeper than we've ever shared.

I think there's something to this, that if love really is all of these things, then as we practice living them out we will experience more and more love. I think if we're willing to practice the hard and sacrificial things that love is, our experience of love will be all the greater. We'll stop settling for some second-rate emotion because we'll have redefined that love could be.

But I think there's another side to this passage to. It doesn't just exist in a vacuum as a nice saying. It's part of a bigger letter. And right before Paul writes this, he has some other things to say about love. "If I speak in tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal," he writes. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."

There's another layer to what Paul is saying about love. Paul could do all of the right things, but if love wasn't there, they would mean nothing. Love is deeper than simple actions, no matter how kind and sincere they might be.

Let me offer a modern translation: "If I tell you the sweetest things and tell you how beautiful you are every day, but don't have love, my words are nothing more than Rebecca Black lyrics. If I leave roses on your doorstep, but don't have love, they might as well be dried up and dead. If I buy you nice things and always open the door, but don't have love, I'm not really worth your time."

Those are all nice things, don't get me wrong. I try to do most of them, in fact. But they are not love. Don't let them be confused. Love is not being sweet and doing romantic things. Love is much deeper.

When you love someone or are loved by someone, you should become more patient. They should brag a little less and not hold things over your head. You should become less jealous and they should be less proud. You should be honest and they should be slower to anger.

These traits become a litmus test for love. The more we practice the hard work of love well, the more we should experience these traits. The more we should embody these traits. Love should bring them out in us, and we should see them in brighter colors in the ones we are with.

Let me add one final note. Most of us have been surrounded by messages about what love is since the day we were born. Some of us have lived through unhealthy and abusive relationships, and we've trained ourselves to believe that that is what love looks like. We've bought into the lie that that is all we can faithfully expect. We've convinced ourselves that the love Paul talks about might be nice, but we should settle.

Love looks a lot of different ways. It wears many clothes and comes in many shapes and sizes. But it should always bear the fruit Paul describes.

So may we stop settling for half-hearted expressions of love, believing the lie that romance and sentiment and love are the same. May we allow love to transform us, drawing us towards more kindness and honesty and patience. May we learn to embody love in all of its shapes when its heart is rooted in the love that Paul describes. And may we lean into relationships that teach us more and more what love looks like.

forever unfinished...

Chick-Fil-A...

"We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same." -"Our Deepest Fear," Marianne Williamson

"I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other." -John 13:34-5

I was recently dating a girl. Now I'm not. I know, it's not the first blog that's started that way.

She's a great girl, just not the one right now. When we stopped dating, she wrote me a letter. (P.S. That's totally cool. I LOVE letters! They're a lost art.) At the end of the letter she finished, "You have always inspired me to be the best person I can be. Please continue to spread your joy with others."

Wow! There truly couldn't be a greater compliment. That meant more to me than anything. I am certainly not the world's greatest guy in a relationship. But I was so humbled. Something about the time we'd spent together had made her life a little better and given her a little wider picture of love, and now she's sending more light out into her surroundings.

And that got me thinking. Things aren't great in our world.

That's not saying anything groundbreaking. But it's not just in the midst of the election results. Clearly, if the past 11 days have shown us anything, it's that there is a lot of fear and pain in our world that has been building for a long, long time. And it's not limited to one region or one party or one gender or one race.

Institutional and relational racism remain in our world. Executives are making obscene bonuses while workers are left struggling to manage the budget day-to-day and paycheck-to-paycheck. Neighborhoods have become increasingly segregated by class, race, ideology, and status. Teen suicide rates are at an all-time high, while mental illness affects more and more each day. We've developed better relationships with things than we have with people. Leaders have misused their power and roles to lie, cheat, abuse those under their care.

We've let fear of others and fear of the unknown dictate our choices. The pain in the world is real. For some, it feels insurmountable.

But that's not how the world was meant to be.

There's a beautiful word in the Hebrew language: shalom. You know the word, even if you don't know Hebrew. It's usually translated "peace." And peace is a great thing. But it's not exactly what shalom means.

No, its meaning is MUCH deeper. Shalom is about wholeness, completeness, order. When things are in a state of shalom, they are all working together in harmony and perfect rhythm.

And that's how the Bible tells us creation started. God created and called everything "good." There was a garden, and the trees, the animals, the first two people, and God were all living in perfect harmony, in shalom. There wasn't competition. There wasn't fear. They were working together and there was perfect reliance on one another.

But that's clearly not the story we are living in today. Everything is not in shalom. But shalom should always remain the due north to which our compasses point. Followers of Jesus should recognize the deep pain of our world and our neighbors better than anyone because we have an anchoring story for what the world should be. We should never overlook it or dismiss it. It should pain our souls.

But we should also always remember that that pain is not the last part of the story. We should always be looking for the light, working to make more shalom in our midst.

One of my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen, writes in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, "Cynics seek darkness wherever they go. They point always to approaching dangers, impure motives, and hidden schemes. They call trust naive, care romantic, and forgiveness sentimental... People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness."

I think that what it means to follow Jesus is that we leave the fingerprints of light and shalom where darkness and sin have left pain and brokenness. We should be particularly tuned into the pain of our neighbors and then work to jump into the light that God is seeking to shine into the broken places in our world. The world started with shalom, and that is where God is moving it again.

The world should be better because people who love Jesus are a part of it. Our neighborhoods and our schools and our workplaces should feel the fingerprints of God's grace because we passed through them. After all, that was Jesus' charge to his friends at their last meal together. "When people see you," he told them, "they should know you are my followers because of how big you love." In other words, they should see you adding more shalom to the world.

I was in the drive-thru line with one of my students the other day after the election results had come through. They were talking about the fears they felt. They were upset at all the hate they saw in the world. And as we were ordering and getting ready to pay, we looked at each other and decided that we couldn't fix every one of the world's problems. But we were also definitely going to make the world a more shalom-y place, little by little.

So we paid for the meal of the woman behind us in line. Her check was even more than ours! HA! And as we were pulling away, we could see her smiling and waving in the rearview mirror. We'll never know anything about that woman, except that for one instant, there was more shalom in her life because two strangers wanted to leave the fingerprints of love on a fast food order.

This is a really small story, but I'm more convinced by the day that we are called to work to bring light into the world. We are called to see how deeply broken things are and to call those out those things that bring darkness and oppression. We are called to recognize the pain our neighbors feel and comfort them and work to alleviate the mechanisms that keep them in pain. We are called to see the darkness.

But we 're never called simply to point it out. We are never called to settle in it. And we're never called to let others settle their either. We are called to see it and help others recognize that there is light in our midst.

So may we see the places sin has left things out of shalom, the places where relationships and structures are broken and people aren't living the fullness of life they were designed for. And may we be people who work to bring light into that darkness. May we be the kind of people who have the audacity to believe that things can be better. May we be accused of naivety and childish dreaming for believing the world is capable of working in harmony. And may we get our hands dirty in that work of shalom.

forever unfinished...

Speak...

"...then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being." -Genesis 2:7

"Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus." -Mr. Holland's Opus

There are certain movies that bring me to tears every time. No matter how many times I see them or how prepared I am for what is coming next, my tear ducts are activated.

Mr. Holland's Opus is one of those movies.

Yesterday afternoon I laid down for a lazy afternoon on the couch and plugged in the movie in hopes of a little nap. No such luck.

In case you've never seen it, Mr. Holland's Opus chronicles the life of Glenn Holland, a high school music teacher who always dreamed of bigger things. He wanted to compose and conduct. He wanted to be famous and never imagined teaching was the route to that dream, but only an obstacle.

And yet, by the end of the movie there are 40 years worth of students who have been shaped and molded and inspired to become something more than they were. There are knuckleheads, stoners, flunkers, hopeless cases, and more. Whether it had been his life goal or not, teaching had been Mr. Holland's greatest success.

The movie closes with the school board deciding that budget restrictions necessitate the closing of the music program. All those years. All those students. All those lives changed. Done, without a glimmer of appreciation. Until he is cleaning out his office and walking out of the school for the final time.

Hearing a murmur from the auditorium, he curiously walks in to investigate, where he is met with a full room and a raucous ovation. After taking his seat, his very first student walks in to deliver a final note of appreciation.

"Rumor had it he was always working on this symphony of his," she begins. "And this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn't rich and he isn't famous, at least not outside of our little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. And he would be wrong, because I think he has achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are you symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. We are the music of your life."

We all have the capacity to be what Mr. Holland was to his students. We all have the potential to unleash the potential in others, recognizing in them what they may not recognize in themselves.

The book of Genesis begins with a story of creation. Seeing a dark and formless void, God creates the heaven and the earth. And how does God create? God speaks. "Let there be... and it was good." God speaks things into being.

In Genesis 2, the writers tell a story of creation a little different than in Genesis 1. God gets God's hands dirty in the mud forming the garden. And when the garden is done, it's time to create people. So God takes some of the dust and creates man's form. But it's not finished. Yes, it looks like a person and probably smells like a person, but there's no life in him. There's no inspiration. So God breathes into his nostrils and fills his lungs with God's breath. The same breath that spoke the world into being in Genesis 1. And the man comes alive.

We still have that same breath in our lungs. We still have the breath that can bring life out of nothing and speak hope into darkness.

Our words have the ability to tell people who they are, to recognize in them the potential they don't recognize in themselves. This isn't about self-esteem or unwarranted praise. No, this is about seeing the dust the same way God did (ready to be unleashed with possibility) and breathing into it the same life God did. This is taking the breath that sparks our imagination and our joy and sharing it with others.

Think about it. How much more do you respond to encouragement than critique? How much more do you aspire when people recognize your gifts and your possibilities instead of your limitations? How could a life be re-shaped if we were willing to tell a teenage girl of her infinite worth rather than call her a slut for choices she'd made? How could a life be transformed if we were willing to tell a young man of the immense potential he carried within him instead of drawing attention to all the times he had failed to meet expectations?

Our voices carry weight, so may we take the breath that fills our lungs with life and breathe it into our neighbors. May we animate others with the same spark of inspiration and possibility that brought life out of the dust. May we speak something into nothing, writing a new chapter in a story that felt complete. May we pass on the breath of God.

forever unfinished...

We the People...

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America." -United States Constitution

"Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect." -Romans 12:2

American democracy has been called the "great experiment." It was a novel concept at its inception: a government that would not make demands of its citizens, but rather take its cues from the will of those citizens. The government wouldn't tell the people who to be, but rather the people would dictate to the government who it should be.

I don't know how we could ever determine the success of such an experiment, but I do know that the deeper into this 2016 presidential campaign we move, the more convinced I am that this political machine that we call government has, in fact, followed where we have led it.

Over and over in the past year and a half I have heard friend after friend decry the situation we find ourselves in with such unbelievable candidates and such a comically trivial-feeling and disingenuous election season.

Unfortunately, I am not altogether convinced that this isn't in fact the environment we have cultivated for ourselves. Perhaps we bear more responsibility for the current affairs that we see on television and laptop screens than we'd ever like to admit, because it is, after all, always easier to look for blame in others.

We're more interested in headlines written in 140 characters than we are with investigating for ourselves and reading more to understand issues. We've settled for headline quotes that grab our attention and re-inforce our points, even when we know there was more that was said. We'd rather feel validated by a meme than engaged in conversation.

We've isolated on phones and failed to know our neighbors. It's true we don't care for our neighbors like we used to, but only because we don't know our neighbors. We've traded a digital connection for relational intimacy.

We have trained ourselves in the mastery of complaint and the recognition of all that is wrong in our surroundings, but have failed to cultivate the will to get our hands dirty in the work of solving problems. We've convinced ourselves that if we have torn down something--or someone--we disagree with, we have done our work in making the world a better place. But we've grown too weary and self-righteous to engage in the hard work of building solutions and a brighter future.

We've separated ourselves into communities of people who look and live the way do. These people often have the same amount of money that we do, meaning some communities have lots, while others have little. Some communities can support radically proficient public schools while others can barely afford the bare necessities.

We've divided ourselves from others who don't think like us or look like us or believe the same things we do so that we have failed to see people over and above opinions. When we've failed to know our neighbors who are different, we've allow fear and stereotypes to dictate our ideals and opinions.

We are driven by celebrity and glamour, spending our money in ways that validate multi-million dollar salaries for athletes and actresses while teachers, police officers, and veterans are left working at barely reasonable paychecks.

We scream about the loss of manufacturing jobs to overseas factories with lower wages, all the while demanding that prices continually drop at rates only sustainable through sweatshop-quality labor conditions.

We have access to more information than ever before and have become all the less efficient at discerning which is helpful and which is not.

We've become more interested in winning the argument and being right than the person on the other side of the table. This is perhaps all the easier to do when we argue with a profile or a wall or a picture and not a person. We can't see a person's face when we insult them through a keyboard.

We've built lives built on too little margin, believing the lie that the busiest and most stressed wins in the end. We've traded joy for success and leisure for accomplishment. We've bought into the lie that more always means better.

We've turned love and relationships into reality television for public consumption, convincing ourselves that scripted intimacy is the guidebook for authentic relationships. And we've bought into the lie that scripted reality TV is the real world to be emulated.

We look for what is wrong before we look for what is right. We look to blame others when the responsibility lays upon our own shoulders. We parse words and deeds to discover what we can disagree with so that the fingers never point back to us.

We're too quick to blame individuals for not taking responsibility without recognizing the systems in place that make life more challenging for some and not others, and yet we've also failed to hold individuals equally accountable for the harmful choices they might make in the midst of those systems.

Perhaps we have created the very culture we speak so angrily about. It's easy to blame Hillary and Donald and CNN and Fox News for creating this current climate. It's easy to blame technology for society's problems. It's much harder to recognize our part in creating the circumstances that would lead to this situation. I know it is for me.

However, if this is the environment we have cultivated for ourselves, I am all the more confident that we can likewise re-make it. I am all the more confident that God is not finished working in and through us. I am all the more confident that God is still the same God who transforms hearts that can go out and transform communities.

We need not settle for what is, but rather ought to strive forward, leaning into God's gentle whisper of grace and mercy. But transformation is hard when our eyes aren't open to the role we've played in creating the world around us. We've got to be honest with ourselves before we can ever let God be honest with us.

I have written all of this in the voice of we. We are in this together. I contribute to this culture in the same way that anyone else does. I participate in this system, and carry my own guilt. I also know that there is a better way. I know that the kingdom of God is not done here. We are broken vessels, imperfect in every way, and yet it is through us that God so often chooses to work. We the people.

May we be transformed by the voice of the one who calls us beloved, not for our own gain, but to transform the lives of others, to bring a glimmer of shalom into our midst. This experiment is not over.

forever unfinished...

Rejection...

"It's a dangerous business Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." -The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

"But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine." -Isaiah 43:1

When your best friend has a masters degree in sports psychology, you get used to a couple of things. First, they'll post lots of motivational pictures on Instagram and Facebook. Lots of motivational quotes.

Second, every now and again he'll call with some crazy idea for inspiration or life-improvement. This isn't a bad thing, by any means. But sometimes they are fairly out there. Two years ago was one of those times.

I got a call from Will telling me he'd just watched a Ted talk. This wasn't the first time a conversation had started this way. But I took the bait. "It's all about the art of rejection," he said. And suddenly, my ears perked up.

You see, if I'm an expert at anything, it's rejection. Well, let me rephrase, I'm an expert at receiving it. I've got a fairly healthy portfolio of failure. It keeps me humble. Needless to say, I was interested in hearing more.

Will proceeded to tell me all about this guy named Jia who had begun to experiment with rejection. 100 days of it. His thesis was simple: we don't experience everything we could because we assume we'll hear "no" before we ever ask. So he just started asking people for things. He found a neighbor who let him use the backyard to practice soccer. He found flight attendants who let him do the safety announcements. He got the people at Krispy Kreme to put 5 glazed donuts together and glaze them in the colors of the olympic rings. How cool!

So Will thought we ought to try a week of this. Being the kind of guy I am, I agreed. I started with a surefire rejection. I asked my dad to go skydiving with me. HA! It was a hard "no." But I was undaunted. The next day I had to go to Best Buy with a friend, and I decided to ask if I could drive the Geek Squad Beetle around the parking lot. Again, a flat rejection.

But then I struck gold! I went to Frankie's Bar and Grill to watch some NBA basketball after work. The best thing about Frankie's? Before 7:00 they sold personal, 1-topping pizzas for $1 with a drink order. When the waitress came to take my order, I asked for two pepperoni pizzas, with one caveat: could she ask the cooks to make a snowman with the pepperonis? She was confused, but took the request to the cooks.

12 minutes later to cooks emerged from the kitchen with their creations. They'd turned it into a competition for who could make the best snowman! They said it was the most fun they'd ever had making a pizza. How about that for risking rejection and looking silly?

I'm becoming more and more convinced that fear holds us back from so much of the life God intended us for.

My favorite question to ask people is simple: "What is your deepest fear?" It's an incredibly probing question, and fairly inappropriate for a first meeting. But it says so much about who we are.

It's probably no surprise that "do not be afraid" is the most oft repeated commandment in scripture. It's the one we need to be reminded of most! Some of us are scared of spiders or snakes. Others are terrified of confined space or public speaking.

But of course, fear often runs much deeper. Years of experience have taught us that rejection is around ever corner, so we never risk the possibility of being loved for fear of being rejected. Relationship after relationship has ended in disappointment, so at the first sign of things becoming too good we run to avoid the letdown. We're so scared at the prospect of failure that we never play our hand when the time comes, never investing the hard work for fear it will prove a waste of time.

Or scarier still, we've become so scared of change, so comfortable, that even if we can smell the scent of God's whisper calling us to a deeper, richer life, a life of consequence and meaning, we balk at leaving the environment we know for a new place.

To be quite honest, none of these are my deepest fear. Yes, I know them all too familiarly. They've left scars on my past. But no, mine is somewhat different. I'm intimately afraid of being forgotten. I'm afraid that my life is an interchangeable piece that could be filled by anyone else.

I know it's unreasonable. In my head I know it. But fear rarely stops to let the brain process with reason. It plays on our reflexes and instincts. It skips the will and moves straight to the response.

Confronting our fears demands our deepest honesty. Before we can respond to fear, we have to do the brutally and painfully honest work of acknowledging that which most frightens us. Only then do we get to break the habits and patterns that fear dictates. Only then do we get to dream of what can be and then run after it.

So may we remember that with God fear does not get to have the last word. May we come to recognize the ways in which fear has come to direct our choices and our outcomes. And may we begin to say "No more" to fear winning. May we begin to ask big, audacious questions about what God is calling us to and leave rejection out of it, for where God leads us God will not abandon us.

forever unfinished...

VIPs...

"Jesus was always too busy being faithful to worry about success. I'm not opposed to success; I just think we should accept it only if it is a by-product of our fidelity. If our primary concern is results, we will choose to work only with those who give us good ones." -Fr. Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart

"One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, 'Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!'" -Luke 14:15

I often joke that my favorite thing about Jesus is how much he eats. He is always eating with people. And what's more? When he describes the kingdom of God, he tells stories about how it's like a banquet feast more than once. Heaven is like a feast? If it's anything like a Cici's buffet or a Waffle House All Star Special, I'm interested.

Jesus's feasts aren't like most other feasts though. Big family meals look a little different around Jesus' table.

There's a great story Jesus tells about a meal that is like the Kingdom of God. A master sends out lots of invitations to his friends. So far, it sounds just like any party I've ever heard of.

But an odd thing happens. When the day of the banquet comes, no one shows up. Oh, you know, important things came up for all of them. They got better offers. (Sounds kinda like 2016 with the old, "Umm, maybe I'll be there.") So the big meal was prepared, but there was no one to enjoy the spread!

Well, apparently God is not one to let a meal go to waste. Instead of cancelling the party, the host sends his messengers out to gather anyone they can find, the drunk at the bar, the prostitute on the corner, the kinda weird dude who just lingers too long. You get the idea. And they celebrate big time! The left behinds become the VIPs.

The great thing about this story is that it's really how Jesus lived. Remember, he was always eating. Well, he ate with everyone. He ate with his disciples (who were not exactly a who's who of Judea). He ate with tax collectors (who were not exactly the most popular among... anyone). He ate with Pharisees (who were not exactly struggling for attention and arrogance). Heck, at his last meal, it appears Jesus put Judas (who wasn't exactly the #1 disciple) at the PLACE OF HONOR. He ate with everyone.

When Jesus described the Kingdom of God as a feast, it must've looked a lot like a normal Tuesday dinner for Jesus.

Every Sunday in worship I take communion. I dip the bread into the cup and experience participating in this feast of Jesus' body and blood. It connects me to the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. But I'll be honest, sometimes it's a little stale. No, not the bread. But the meal. Sometimes it feels like it should be bigger somehow.

Earlier tonight, I got a chance to experience a meal like Jesus talks about.

When you work at a church like mine, sometimes some out-of-the-ordinary things happen. We have a service that meets at a bar across from Saint Louis University for worship on Sunday nights. (Yes, you heard me right.) I go about once a month, and this week I went.

I was pretty tired and not totally invested, and the spot I'd found in the back of the patio was plenty inviting. But someone asked if I'd mind sitting towards the front. To be honest, I was sitting in the back thinking I might jet out a little early, and sitting in the front would really hurt my chances being sneaky. But apparently there was man up front who'd had one (or five) too many drinks, and in case something got out of hand, I might be able to help redirect.

Well, as the band opened I took my seat on the front row and introduced myself to my new companion for the night. The smell of alcohol was pungent. He was singing louder and sloppier than anyone else in the joint. And I started getting a little nervous for the sermon to come.

I'll admit: at first, I wasn't thrilled with my assignment. This guy was a disruption, not to mention a hinderance to my sneaking out the back.

But sit together we did. And as we sat there with Matt preaching, there wasn't a more engaged listener. (Nor was there a noisier listener.) And minute by minute I realized that Nick (not his real name) was not the simple disruption I'd pegged him for. I'd gotten so caught up in things going right that I missed the pleasure of his company at the table.

When we moved to communion, Nick was the first in line. It occurred to me that this was the closest I'd come to experiencing the feast Jesus talked about. Of course Nick was first in line! As far as I could tell, if anyone there had an invitation to the table it was him.

Nick didn't look like me. He didn't smell particularly great. I couldn't understand every word he said through the slurring. His presence wasn't the most convenient. But when the service was over, I gave Nick a big bear hug and thanked him for letting me worship with him. We walked over to the side and talked for another 15 minutes and he told me about his 7 siblings and his parents and his job and how he needed to be in church more and about how he grilled his ribs and chicken and shrimp. (And it sounded GOOD!)

I wanted to soak in every part of his story. I wanted to hear everything he had to tell me. It finally hit me that I was in the presence of an honored guest and that perhaps I was simply just another invitee. I discovered that maybe, in that moment at the table, I was seeing the Kingdom of God in its fullest in a new way with the guy the host had been waiting for.

If there's not room at our tables for everyone, I wonder if Jesus would want to join our party. If we get too caught up in doing the right things with the right kinds of people in the right ways, I wonder if our parties will always be a little bit lackluster and stale. If our meals only include people like us, I wonder if we've had this heaven thing wrong all along.

It occurs to me that most of my meals are shared with people that look and act and think like me. My tables don't look much like Jesus'. I think I've missed out on the party. Thankfully, Nick was gracious enough to save me a seat at the table tonight.

forever unfinished...

Snowflakes...

"The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him." -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"And if I have all prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." -1 Corinthians 13:2

Snowflakes are remarkable things. Each made of the same ingredients as its neighbor, they fall from the sky bringing delight to children and enchantment to all. No one snowflake is exactly like another. As water crystallizes in the freezing atmosphere, it forms in a beautiful and intricate dance, and then descends to offer us a little glimpse of comfort and wonder.

We don't stop to notice the differences when a flake lands on our tongue. Nor do we wonder why each is different as we roll the raw material of the winter's first snowman. And yet, as each snowflake descends to the ground, it tells its own unique story, even if it's just another crystallized piece of H20. And that story is always better when it's shared by millions and billions of other flakes.

People are similar, I think. We breathe the same air and pump the same blood. We're made of the same essential ingredients, and yet, we're immeasurably unique. None is quite like the other. Sure, we are similar. But no two of us are the exactly the same. We're a lot like snowflakes.

Last night, we lost 50 snowflakes. We lost 50 brothers and sisters. We lost 50 people who were just like us, and yet whose lives were totally unique from ours.

We lost 50 stories that now are left unfinished.

There is something audacious in the claim that we are all made in the image of God. Because we're all so different. How can we all be made in the image of the same God and yet all be so different?

Every day, in new ways, I'm learning how incredibly beautiful this claim is. And as it becomes more beautiful, it becomes all the more audacious, because if I am made in the image of God, and you are made in the image of God, that means that when I look at you I am seeing something of myself reflecting back. And when I look at you, I am seeing something of God looking at me. And there is something in my fiber that is tied to you, and you to me, and all of us to one another.

This is all the more audacious because it means there are no people who are less human than I. It is all the more audacious because it means there is nothing in me that makes me any more attached to God's essence than another. It is all the more audacious because it means that if I can't find the fingerprints of God in my neighbor, I haven't tried hard enough.

A few months ago, I went to a political event for a presidential candidate with whom I disagree on almost every issue. He made my blood boil and broke my heart at the same time. So I went to this event, but with one condition: I could not leave until I was capable of my brother in him. I would not leave until I was capable of loving him.

I am so deeply sorry, but I have to confess that I left and had not been able to meet my one goal. I was heartbroken by his words and the words of the crowd. My heart was heavy and as I walked through downtown back to my car, tears ran down my cheeks.

I learned the limits of the grace I was willing to offer. And it left me crying.

In light of yesterday's events, I'm reminded that I have to keep trying. Because, you see, if we can't see the image of God in our neighbors, then we have to keep looking. I have to keep looking.

We are called to love the people Jesus loved. If you're curious who Jesus loves, draw a circle as big as you possibly can on a map. Then make a promise to love all the people in that circle. I promise you'll never come across someone who doesn't fit the criteria.

50 people are dead because someone couldn't see the value of life in himself or his victims. 50 lives have been cut short, stories left without endings.

Hate comes in many different forms. Some feel justified. Others feel unprovoked. Some present aggressively. Others show up passively. Some spur online outrage. Others invoke universal praise. But hate universally comes from our failure to recognize the humanity in one another. It is brought upon by the failure to see the same image of God that is in us in our neighbors.

We are all different, in the same way that snowflakes are different: unique, and yet the same. Our smiles tell different stories and we laugh at different jokes. We talk with different accents and practice different traditions. We look different and have different customs.

And yet there, in your face, I see a part of me reflecting back. It's the part that was intricately woven by the same God who knit us both together. Forgive me for the days when I think my reflection is more important than yours.

And because of this, when I hear the news of yesterday's shooting, a part of me feels dead. It's the part that was in the 50 lives that were taken.

We lost 50 snowflakes, and they won't ever be replaced. Oh Lord, hear our prayers.

forever unfinished...

Aloha...

"Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the 'right' notes and the 'wrong' ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another." -Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

"But Ruth replied, 'Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God." -Ruth 1:16

I was meeting up with a friend a few weeks ago who was really struggling with a big decision she'd made. She'd made the pros and cons list. She'd weighed the costs. And then she'd done what seemed best to her.

And she was filled with this second guessing that she'd made the wrong decision. Ever felt that way? You were sure you'd made the right decision, and mere hours or days later, it felt like a colossal mistake.

It's human nature to second-guess the big decisions we make, I think. Were we right? "If only I'd chosen the other route, it all would've worked out." Sometimes we're prone to imagine what might have happened if we'd gone the other way.

Robert Frost wrote a poem about this one time. I'm sure you know the one. It's about two roads that diverge in a wood, and a road less traveled that he took and made all the difference. He's right. It did make all the difference. But not because it was the road less traveled. It made all the difference because it was the road he chose.

It's easy to dream about what might have happened if we'd taken the other road. What if I'd dated/married someone else? What if I had or hadn't taken that job? What if I had gone to this or that school instead? And it's easy to see how much greener the grass is on that side of the road.

But it never is. It's simply different. Every choice we make comes with a certain set of consequences and repercussions. Every decision we make sets off a chain reaction of circumstances that never would have been set into motion without our "yes" or our "no." Our lives our an interconnected web of choices and relationships, both our own and others'.

And we'll never know what might've been. Because it didn't. Sure, we can imagine, but it would never be what we'd imagined. Because the choices we actually make never turn out the ways we expect them to. You know this. You start dating someone and the deeper you get to know them the more complex they become and the more complex you become. You take a job imagining how perfect it's going to be, only to discover the boss who's a micromanager or the policies that limit your creativity and freedom.

This is why I love the Hawaiian word aloha. What a beautiful word. Perhaps it's the most complicated and simple word we've got in our arsenal. It means both "hello" and "goodbye" at the same time. Ha! How silly is that? How do you know if you're coming or going?

But I think there's something profound about the idea that "hello" and "goodbye" always go together. Every time we say hello to something, we're also saying goodbye to something. For everything we choose, we're also not choosing something else. Every time we say yes to one thing, we're saying no to other things.

Last week I said aloha to Fort Worth. It was a place I loved, with people who loved me. It had become home and it was a special place in my heart. It wasn't what I'd expected to be, but saying yes to Texas was one of the greatest choices I've ever made. But it was time to say goodbye. God was calling to something new. And that was really hard.

But the great thing about aloha is that every time we shut a door on one thing, we're saying hello to a new thing. And leaving Fort Worth meant that I was getting to say hello to a new adventure in St. Louis. And after a week, it's nothing like I expected. But it's also exactly where I'm supposed to be.

We all carry regrets. And this may sound like a silly idea, but I'm growing more and more convinced that there is no such thing as the wrong decision. There are just decisions. There are the things we say "yes" to and the things we say "no" to. The question is simply: are we making the most of the choices we are making? Are we watering the grass of the choices we've made, rather than admiring the possibilities of others' green yards?

Because here's what I know to be true. There are no circumstances, good or bad, that are beyond God's purposes to use. God's grace can penetrate through the decisions that seem to cause the most harm and God's joy can celebrate and multiply the choices that bring the most life out of death.

But that can never happen until we are willing to claim the stories we have, not the ones we imagine we could've had. We'll never recognize God in the midst of our choices until we're willing to live into them instead of regretting them. We'll never see the willingness of God to dive into our stories until we're willing to accept that they are ours and that they have guided our circumstances.

So may we learn to accept the choices we've made. May we learn to see that the road we've taken was the right one, because it's the one we chose. There is no alternative. And may we learn to slowly let go of regrets and see our lives as the lived series of alohas we have walked through. May God grant us contentment with the lives we are leading so that we can see God's fingerprints more clearly in each step and choice that we make.

forever unfinished...

Modern Romance...

"How do we figure out when to call, when to text, and when to just drop everything, stand outside someone's window, and serenade them with your favorite nineties R&B tune, perhaps 'All My Life' by K-Ci and JoJo?" -Aziz Ansari, Modern Romance

"I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need." -Philippians 4:13

Romance in the 21st century is a complicated thing. HA! Text messages, online dating sites, Tinder, first dates. How do you do romance with all of that?! Luckily, this isn't really about that. That would be too big a question, particularly for someone whose track record with modern romance is particularly unspectacular.

Nope, not today. But I did read Aziz Ansari's book Modern Romance last summer and it was fascinating. First, Aziz, if you ever accidentally stumble around to reading this blog, I think we'd be best friends. So just shoot me a message and I'll get you my digits.

Secondly, you should read this book. It's fascinating! And really well done. The whole premise is that people date differently today than they ever did. Based on sociological studies and countless interviews, they come up with a number of trends that help us understand what makes romance in the 2000's distinctive.

One of his conclusions was particularly interesting to me. Not particularly long ago, the majority of couples were made up of two people living within blocks of one another. That was your sphere of experience. You didn't know much outside your immediate surroundings, especially not well enough to try to create the foundation of a "rest-of-my-life" kind of relationship.

Your options were a little limited, and you found the person with whom you were most compatible and made the best of it. It was a simpler time. I'm jealous.

But the internet and worldwide communication have made it possible to meet people all over the world. The world is our neighborhood. Anyone could be a potential match.

It's kind of like the difference between going to a local barbecue joint and a Cheesecake Factory. At the BBQ shop, you have three options, you pick, you make a mess, and you love it! With Cheesecake Factory, the experience works a little differently.

There are hundreds of options, literally. Whatever you want, they have it. I went there on a date a little over a year ago for the first time and it was overwhelming. It took me five minutes just to find out how many pages the menu had, let alone which page had the Italian and which had the drinks. I think it was thirty minutes before I had limited my choices to five.

Eventually I settled on a selection. And settled is the perfect description, because I wasn't totally satisfied. When our food came out, it was delicious, but I looked across the table and thought, "Mmm, that would've been better." And then I looked around the restaurant and thought the same thing about 15 other plates.

My food was delicious, but it was less delicious because it wasn't something else. By saying yes to one thing, I'd said no to the entire rest of the menu.

Options have the unfortunate consequence of making everything matter a little less. Today we have more options than we've ever had. I went grocery shopping yesterday and there were SIXTEEN options for whole-wheat bread. Isn't it all the same?

But that's a silly example. Others aren't quite as trivial. I've always had a tremendous struggle with commitment, in every facet of life. When I start dating one person, I'm terrified that I may end up missing out on someone better. (P.S. I hate this feeling, and I don't think I'm alone in this unfortunately.)

Or just look at high school and college students who want to do everything. You've seen it. They sign up for every imaginable sport and activity because they love them all and so they won't miss out on anything.

But this has a dangerous underside. Either, we'll choose between options and always wonder what would've happened if we'd chosen the other. Every choice for something will also be a choice not for other things. We'll never be able to appreciate what we have because it's not the possibility of what could have been. It's the "One That Got Away" principle.

Or we'll try to do everything and do nothing well. Breadth without depth leaves us doing a lot of things with half of our hearts. Doing good will completely swallow our ability to do great.

Options have the potential to totally inhibit our ability to live life to its absolute fullest as we compare what we have with what others have or what we could have had. The more choices we have, the less chance we have to be satisfied by those options.

Two thousand years ago, for the majority of the world, the world extended just to the edge of your village or the villages your village traded with. That was your neighborhood. In the wider scope, the world consisted of the Roman Empire, and that was a big world, but few people ever experienced more than a few square miles of it.

Paul was one of those few, however. He set up churches all over the Mediterranean. In the New Testament alone we find letters to seven churches and then a few more to his disciples who he'd been forced to leave behind. He would establish communities of people that were dear to him, and then he'd depart. Not because he didn't love them, but because God was calling him to something bigger.

And I bet that killed him. How could it not? You develop deep relationships, and then move on. I imagine he longed to see his friends all the time. That's probably why, just in his letter to the Philippians, he calls them "beloved" five times in four chapters. He wants them to know how dear they are to him and how deeply he wants to see them again.

But Philippi is not where his journey is supposed to end. It would have been easy for him to resent that he was called to leave these groups of people he loved. But there was something more for him. He had accepted a long time before that saying yes to God's call might mean saying no to other things.

We make lots of choices every day. What clothes to wear? What to eat for lunch? Who to spend it with? It's possible, in the midst of all our options, to constantly wonder what would've come if we'd chosen a different path. As we focus on what we don't have or what we didn't choose, we'll always find the worst in what we have, never the best. If we get lost in the ocean of possibilities, we'll never learn to appreciate the greatness of what we already have.

So may we learn contentment. May we be satisfied by the lives we have and the choices we've made and ask God that those lives would intertwine with God's bigger story. May we learn to let go of what we don't have to fully embrace the fullness of what we do. And may we learn to give thanks in all of it.

forever unfinished...

Oh, and as for modern romance, when someone figures out how to do it well, please pass along the notes.

Slush Funds...

"For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness." -2 Corinthians 8:13-4

"I think love lays in wait for us." -Bob Goff

I don't remember when I first heard the words "slush fund."

But I do remember that when I was a kid, all the bad guys had off-shore bank accounts in Jamaica and Zurich and that's where they kept their bad money. I always wondered why you'd want to keep your money in a bank on the ocean, but eventually I discovered what "off-shore" meant.

And I knew I wanted one. It seemed exhilarating to have a stack of money that nobody knew about and that the police couldn't find out about or I'd be in big trouble! It seemed exciting.

Well, since I've gotten older and my allowance has gotten bigger (and stopped coming from good old Mom and Dad), I've started my own slush fund for purposes nobody knows about. It's exhilarating. And I'm going to let you in on the secret, because having secrets is sneaky and fun.

You ready? Here's the secret: I give it all away!

Yeah. That's right. I have this "secret amount" in my savings that I make sure to give away every year.

Now, I haven't always done this, of course. From my childhood, I hoarded all my money. Of course, when I was seven it was because I had to save to buy another pack of Pokemon cards. But nevertheless, that pattern didn't change much into my teenage years and early adulthood.

I work for the church, after all. And I still hated giving money away. I didn't give any money to the church. None. Nada.

The first inkling I got that there might be something better for my money to do was in my senior year of high school. I heard about this idea that you could sponsor a kid in Uganda. And that seemed pretty cool. I'm not sure why, but I was intrigued. So I found a guy whose birthday was near mine, and at Christmas I started sponsoring Sande in Uganda.

Nine and a half years have passed, and a lot has changed. But not Sande. Nope, we still write letters every month. But the seed that that one gift planted has grown into a full-sized tree.

You see, Jesus talks A LOT about money. More than anything else as a matter of fact. He has much to say about it. And how we use it. And I missed that for a long time, probably because the numbers on my bank statements were causing a glare in my focus every time I read his words. But eventually, after lots of God's patience, I started to see it.

Maybe there was something to this giving business. It must be important, otherwise Jesus would have talked about other, more important things, like puppies and rainbows. (Surprisingly, neither made it into the gospels!)

So little by little, I started to give away. But not alone. I had lots of friends who showed me how. It seems silly to have someone show you how to give money away, but when your hand is so trained to grasp the bills tightly, you need others to help you loosen your hold. I saw mentors and teachers giving recklessly. And I wanted to be like them.

So I made a radical change.

There's an idea in the bible of something called a tithe. It was the offering God's people would make of the first 1/10 of what they harvested. It didn't come after taxes and the bills were paid. It was the first tenth. Everything else in the budget got set after the tithe was offered.

For some reason I thought this seemed like an adventurous goal. So I started. And after two years, I've never thought about stopping. God hasn't given me more money. I haven't been blessed with more because I've given more. I'm pretty sure God doesn't want me to have an airplane. I'm pretty sure God is not a whimsical bank teller who pays out dividends when our itemized tax deductions get to a higher bracket.

But everything else in my budget has adjusted. The things in my life have gotten re-prioritized. Heck, I've added car payments and retirement contributions, and my budget hasn't gotten any tighter somehow. (And let's be clear, I'm a youth minister. If my salary can support any of this, anyone's can. Don't wait to give until you have enough. You'll never get there!)

It has focused me on the things that are important. Not perfectly. But it's helped. The more I've given, the more I've laughed. The more I've loved. The more I've grown.

But back to the slush fund, because I don't consider my tithe my slush fund. There's not much "fun" in tithing. It just kind of happens. No no, I have a separate fund for the fun!

About a year and a half ago, I took another, smaller amount and started giving it away to people and places I knew. Now, before you think I'm crazy, I didn't just start filling envelopes with cash and sending them out. That's ridiculous (but also a really interesting idea!)

No, I started going on the lookout for places to give to people who needed it. So, when local food banks send out notices asking for Thanksgiving help, I can help! And when friends are trying to raise money for mission trips or classroom projects, I can help! And when schools are starting in Uganda and selling bracelets to fundraise, I can help! And when old youth are raising money in college for their sororities, I can help!

And then I get to be a part of their stories! I have something to pray for. I have something to follow. I have pictures to look at and stories to hear. And I get the profound pleasure of helping others pursue their own whimsical stories and adventures to see what God has in store for them! I like to think of my money as the seed to others' extravagant and holy adventures. That seems like a worthwhile investment that will always pay out.

I don't say all of this to brag on myself. Oh goodness no! I have so far to go in learning about generosity. I have so far to go in letting Jesus teach me so much more about letting go. I'm such an unfinished product.

No no. I share all this to offer a little glimpse into the extravagant joy of giving. I share this to tell you that having a slush fund is just as exciting as the movies tell you it is.

So may we all learn to grow in generosity. May all of our fists loosen just a little bit. May we see our money not as our own to be stored up, but as a gift to plant seeds of grace and adventure and whimsical mischief. As as we do, may our priorities shift and our love be re-oriented towards the God who is in all things and gives all good things.

forever unfinished...

Ecosystems...

"For what? For what? No matter what you do, it will never amount to anything more than a single drop in limitless ocean?" "What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?" -Cloud Atlas

"After this the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go." -Luke 10:1

"Can I change the world?"

That was a question I heard asked in a Q&A discussion a couple of weeks ago. It was the question of a college student for the presenter. The presenter? Rainn Wilson (a.k.a. Dwight Schrute).

It's not an uncommon question these days. Everywhere we turn we see movements and people doing big things in the world and wonder, "Why can't I do that?" And we can see all of these things because of the way our world is connected. We can see every little thing going on around us and the ways that people are actively changing the world.

It's true that the world has gotten smaller. And yet, instead of getting bigger, it feels like individuals have gotten smaller too.

When we were just connected to the people right around us, it was easy to measure our impact and know we were making a difference. Sure, we knew what was going on around the world, but it was somewhere there, and we were here. Our concern was the world right around us.

But when we're connected to everyone everywhere, suddenly the world right around us feels so much less significant. We're forced to compare ourselves to the entire world. Talk about a high standard. "Can I change the world?" takes on a little bigger tone when you're talking about the whole entire world.

A year ago I was at the ordination service for a friend at Brite, and a professor of his stood up to say a few words. "Michael," he said, "you make your ecosystem better."

It was a curious phrase, as I didn't know Michael to be a planter. But the professor continued.

"That's the thing about ecosystems. They constantly adjust to their participants. They are affected by the living organisms within them. Our goal ought to be to impact our ecosystems and force our surroundings to adjust to our presence. Michael, your presence in whichever ecosystem you are in leaves it better than it was before you got there."

That'll preach.

We can't change the world until we're to change our neighborhood, our workplaces, our schools. I imagine that if we looked at the people who have most impacted the world on a global scale, we'd find in their wake a mountain of little ecosystems that had been transformed by the power of love and hospitality and forgiveness and grace.

Kindness is a habit. Love is a habit. They are not skills enacted once. They are practiced over and over and over in smaller and smaller ways to impact the people around us.

It helps me to know Jesus didn't heal every single person who was sick. He didn't go to every city in the world. He didn't feed every single person who was hungry. But he did impact his direct ecosystem. That was his call. That was his mission.

He changed the world because he changed the ecosystems around him. You see, he changed the lives of people right around him, and they went out and the love they'd experienced forced their ecosystems to adjust. And it just went out, one ripple at a time. Don't think that the ripple of your life can't change the world. Just one ripple can cause another and another. We're just called to love our ecosystem.

Go meet your neighbors. Visit some seniors in your community. Take a trip to the hospital. Share a cup of coffee with a homeless neighbor and hear their story. The world is changed as God's love ripples through our ecosystems, forcing them to shift because love is too powerful a force to be restrained and shut out.

So may you go change the world, one ripple at a time. May your ecosystem adjust to the love you bring into it. May you learn to see your ecosystem as your world. And may you see the world changed by the love of Jesus one day at a time.

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Meet Me in St. Louis...

"The Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.'" -Genesis 12:1-3

Praying is a dangerous business. When we start praying, we're inviting God to be a part of the story, and when that happens, plans can often go awry and our trajectories can shift.

Case in point: four years ago, I was all ready to move to Washington D.C. to start seminary at Wesley Theological Seminary. I was going to spend three years learning, being a youth minister, and exploring our nation's capital. It was tuition free. It was a city I loved. I was doing a program for people who were called to youth ministry. What could be better?

Well, at the time I had some awesome guys in my neighborhood who had started a small group in our living room. We talked a lot about Jesus and played a lot of Nintendo 64 (that's a prime small group experience!)

As I was talking about my plans, one of the guys asked if I'd been praying about it. "Well, no," I started. "But this thing is a slam dunk and I'm positive this is where I'm supposed to be. It's just too clear." Like a good friend, he was supportive. But he asked me to pray about it a little bit.

So later that night, after losing quite a few games of Super Smash Bros, I went out to the Furman golf course where I'd go to pray and think and watch the stars from the 13th green. And there under the stars on a perfectly clear night, I started praying.

"This feels like exactly where you're calling me. Buttttt, if this isn't right, I need you to hit me in the face with some kind of club." That was my prayer.

The next day the school called to let me know that the youth ministry program I'd been accepted into was being put off for a year. The school would do everything they could to get me as much scholarship money as they could, but it probably wouldn't be a full-ride. And they'd do everything they could to set me up in a youth job in a church, but there weren't any guarantees.

The day after that, I got an e-mail from my old youth minister about a job in Fort Worth, Texas that he thought I'd be great for.

Face. Meet club.

You see, I'd been praying another prayer as I was trying to figure out where I was going next. Anywhere but Texas, God. ANYWHERE! I was willing to answer a call to Boston. Or Vietnam. Or North Dakota. Heck, even Oklahoma. But NOT TEXAS.

Well, in the past four years, there's never been a single moment when I've regretted going out to the golf course that night. Fort Worth was exactly where I was supposed to be. These families and this place have captured my heart. God has taught me immeasurably much. In a few short weeks, I graduate with a Master of Divinity from a great school.

And that's where this new adventure into praying starts, I suppose. About a year I started asking God what lay ahead of me after graduation. Would I just stay where I was? Would I do something different at the church? Was I supposed to be somewhere else doing something different? And I just waited. Patiently some days. Other days less so.

And towards the end of the summer, I started to get a nibble of an answer. It was time for me to start leading a youth ministry of my own. I didn't know where or doing what. But I had a start.

So my prayer changed a bit. I started praying for the church whose name I didn't know yet. I started praying God would prepare them for me and me for them.

And eight months later, I've learned the name of that church: The Gathering UMC in St. Louis.

Yep, in a little more than a month I will be following a new call. To the Midwest! Who knew?? That's what happens when we start to pray. We end up being led to places we didn't even know existed. We find ourselves wrapped up in a story God is telling.

And I couldn't be more excited. When God called Abram, he was happy. He was content. He didn't want to go anywhere. And God called.

He was being asked to leave his home, everything and everybody he'd ever known. He was being asked to go somewhere whose name he didn't know. But he didn't go without promises. "I will bless you," promised the Lord. "And I will bless the world through you." That's a heck of a promise.

As I get ready for this new adventure, this new challenge, this new chapter, I hold onto that promise. When we let God into our stories, praying for the next chapter, it's entirely possible it won't be where we expect. It may be into the great unknown. But we go knowing God will be with us. And through us, the people around us will be blessed.

I am so excited about the whimsy and wonder that awaits in St. Louis. I can't wait to see what God has in store there.

And I couldn't be more anxious about leaving this place that God led four years ago. My friends. This city. This church. These teenagers and their families. They've left fingerprints of love on my heart that I'll never be able to wash off. They've been the answer to God's promise to bless when we follow God's call.

But it's time to follow a new call. May we all invite ourselves into God's whimsical and extravagant calling. May we ask where God is leading. And may we be willing to listen, even if the direction isn't anything like where we think it ought to be.

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Fools and a Hail Mary...

"I like to close my eyes, so my heart can plainly see right through the way things are clear to the way they ought be." -Stanley, Troll in Central Park

"Angus, Superman isn't brave... You don't understand. He's smart and handsome, even decent. But he's not brave. Now, you listen to me. Superman is indestructible. And you can't be brave if you're indestructible. It's people like you and your mother, people who are different, who can be crushed and know it, but they keep going out there every time." -Angus

Close football games are so exciting. Watching a two-minute drill as a team is desperately trying to tie or take a lead. The suspense for a football fan is unbelievable. Will they score? Will we hold them? Every second counts.

Occasionally, these drives won't quite get close enough. The offense will sputter. The defense will hold. And the only hope the offense has left is a hail mary throw into the end zone. The quarterback lets the receivers get as far downfield as he can and then lets it rip.

When the ball finds its way into the hands of a receiver or hits the ground, all that suspense comes to an end. The outcome is decided. The winners celebrate and the losers head to the locker room.

But we don't live at the conclusion. We don't get to see the outcome. We live in the seconds between the ball leaving the quarterback's hand and finding its destination. We live in the uncertainty of flight, not knowing who will win or how it will all shake it out.

Our lives are an audacious act of faith. Every choice, every plan, every hope is a radical risk. We can't ever know how it will end up or if we'll end up on the right side of it all. We risk our hearts. We risk our bank accounts. We risk our futures.

In the world today it's easy to be cynical. It's easy to think there's no reason to try. Bills and bills pile up around us. Corporations feel like they're taking advantage of the little guy while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Every time we open our browsers or turn on our tv's there are new stories of violence and terror. Each debate brings new insults and protests and hatred. Politicians make and break promises and lie through both sides of their mouths. We see heartbreak and homelessness and divorce and it's tempting to think, how can there be any hope in this? Why even try?

To have hope is a fool's errand. Of that I'm quite sure. It's a reckless thing, hope is. The idea that tomorrow will be brighter than today. The idea that love can somehow win. The idea that good and truth and ideals will somehow come out ahead. It's a fool's folly. After all, failure and disappointment cast an awfully long shadow. (I should know, I'm a Vanderbilt football fan!)

And yet, count me among the fools. Count me among those who haven't given in to cynicism and nihilism just yet. Count me among the company of Jefferson Smith.

A couple of days ago I saw Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the first time. I've got to say, it's one of the finer movies I've seen in a long time. Jefferson Smith is a simple, honest young man who's called in to fill the seat of a recently deceased senator. He's picked because he's young and won't ask any questions or cause any trouble for the political boss from his state who is using senators for his own corrupt gain.

Well, of course Jeff discovers what's going on and attempts to put a stop to it. But in doing so the entire machinery of the corrupt political system begins to push against him. Sure, he loses his seat temporarily. But even more heartbreaking, he starts to lose hope. He sees people who he has believed in his whole life cheat and swindle and wonders if there's any good left at all.

At one point, utterly convinced that all hope is lost, his friend Saunders finds him leaving the Lincoln Memorial, the one last shining star of possibility he can hold onto in Washington. Begging him not to leave, she reminds him that nothing came easy to men like Lincoln either. "Odds against 'em didn't stop those men," Saunders reminds Jeff. "They were fools that way. All the good that ever came into this world came from fools with faith like that."

The world can be a hopeless place at times. We can have a great job, only to be the victim of downsizing. We can tell another how we feel, only to have that affection left unreturned and rejected. We can cling to loved ones, only to have sickness and age tear them from us. We don't get to know how our lives will play out. To love is a risk. To pray is a gamble. To hope is a wager. It is to risk disappointment and failure.

We live in uncertainty, laying our best plans and never knowing whether it'll be worth smiling about when the dust settles. And yet, there is hope. The Bible is full of people with hope. And sometimes it wasn't rewarded. Its pages are full of people who live with disappointment and failure. But they maintain hope. And they find it in a god who has never abandoned them.

Just think. Have you ever been to a funeral where they read Psalm 23? You know, the one about the valley of the shadow of death and fearing no evil. We read it for people who are transitioning from life to death, that as they pass through the valley of the shadow of death, God will be with them. And yet, those words seem even more infinitely comforting to those of us on this side of the curtain. I shall fear no evil for the Lord is with me? The Lord shall lead me to green pastures and allow me to dwell in God's house forever? There's hope in that message, even if we're not in those pastures today.

Better yet, think about the disciples. They cashed in all their chips on the Jesus train. They dropped their nets and left their families. They were all in. Based on what? A promise? A guarantee? Certainly not. They trusted in little more than a faint hope and unreasonable belief that Jesus was leading towards something big, a Kingdom they couldn't understand or describe. A Kingdom defined by love and peace where you and I were equals. And where did that hope and faith lead? To a crucifixion.

All that big talk and all those miracles had just been for show. All their efforts had been for nothing. Their hope had once again been shattered and misplaced. He was just another guy with some dopes who'd been duped.

Until he wasn't. Until Easter morning, when an empty tomb gave them a reason to believe that the hope of God isn't limited by death or failure or disappointment. The hope of God extends to the deepest despair and the loneliest island. It reaches to the tombs and the tears and the mistakes. It stretches to infinity, and beyond.

Hope is risky business. It won't always be rewarded. And sometimes it can seem miles away. But to live hopeless, to believe life cannot be any better than it is today, that is truly a tragedy.

For there is always a reason to hope, even if just the faintest scent of it. The cresting of the sun's rays over the eastern horizon, painting the sky in orange and pink and purple. The twinkle in the eye of a groom watching his bride walk down the aisle with a tear in his eye. A child who writes a Christmas card to her teacher just because he is a nice guy who taught her to spell her name. The smile of parents embracing their newborn child for the first time.

But hope isn't always so easy to see for all of us. Life's disappointments can strangle it and cast shadows around it. Our struggles can stamp it out. So perhaps today it's our turn to become the reason for someone's hope. Perhaps today is our turn to shine just a glimmer of God's light into the life of a neighbor who's been beat down one too many times. Perhaps today is our time to give someone a reason to smile for the first time in years. Perhaps today we will offer the first sign of hope a person has ever experienced. Perhaps today is the reason we are here at all.

We live in the in-between, never knowing what our choices will bring. We can plan and evaluate. We can schedule and analyze. But God is far too whimsical for our plans. And life is far too interconnected and diverse to be guaranteed. Every breath we take is a risk. To hope beyond hope is a gamble. And yet, without hope, life is not life. Life is meant to be lived one hail mary after another.

So may you find a glimmer of hope today. May you allow yourself to dream and chase after the whimsy and beauty that life has to offer. May you risk jumping headfirst into the plans God is inviting you into, not knowing where they will lead or if you'll succeed. And may you become the hope in somebody's life, the fingerprint of God's love on their heart.

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Harry Potter...

Think of one word to describe God. Just one. Kinda tough, huh?

So let's try the same thing with Jesus. Just one word to capture the fullness of who Jesus was and is. It's not super easy. But hold onto those two words. We'll return to them shortly.

Have you ever read a book and then gone to see a movie version later? I'm going to take a wild guess and bet that you didn't walk out of the theater saying, "Wow, that movie was SO much better than the book!" Nobody says that. No, instead, everyone walks out saying, "That was fun (or terrible), but the book was so much better."

This happened to me when I was about 11. I remember going to see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on opening night. The place was packed, and I was giddy with excitement. You see, as a kid, Harry Potter was my entire world. I was all in. And seeing it on the silver screen was just the icing on the cake.

And two hours later I walked out of the theater thinking, "That was all wrong." They had messed up everything. The characters didn't look right. They left out crucial scenes. The magic wasn't as magical as it had been in the words J.K. Rowling wrote. The book was so much better, and they had ruined it for me.

There's a reason for this, of course. When we open the pages of a book, it's just us and the words. Our imaginations are allowed to run wild as they paint a picture with the poetry and the plot. The words tell a story and our minds start constructing images and smells and sounds. It's why books are so fun.

And then we see a movie, which is somebody else's imagination running wild with the same words and the same pages. We've constructed this whole exciting movie in our heads, and it doesn't look anything like the movie we're seeing in front of us. We're reading the same words, and the words are true, but the stories our imaginations are telling are a little bit different.

The same thing happens when we talk about a God who is bigger than our ten thousand words can completely capture. The Bible is full of people who experience the bigness of God and try to tell a number of different stories of those interactions.

It happened when the writers of the gospels tried to tell the story of Jesus. They were with him more than anyone, and yet the way each tells is story is distinctly unique. They might recount the same miracle or healing, but they tell them different ways. Or they tell about entirely different events. And the people who met Jesus would have told completely different stories about what God is like.

To Zaccheus, Jesus was the guy who opened his eyes to a new way of living.

To the blind man, Jesus was the healer who opened his eyes literally.

To the woman in the city square caught in adultery, Jesus was the first man to see her as beloved and worth any value.

To the disciples, he was a friend and rabbi.

To the crowds, he was a brilliant teacher.

And to all of us, we can't tell the story of Jesus without using the word savior.

That's a lot of different stories to tell about one person.

In the same ways, we tell different stories about the ways that God has impacted our lives. We all have a story to tell. Some communities tell a story about love. Others tell a story about justice. Others tell a story about conviction.

The same is true of the writers of the Bible. David called God "my rock and my fortress." The Israelites would have called God "the one who set us free." The writer of John's letters said "God is love." Jesus addressed God as "Daddy." For those who read Genesis, it's impossible not to call God "creator."

The world needs to hear your story of God. It'll be different than mine. It'll be different than anyone else's. But it's a beautiful story, because it's yours. Some of our stories of God's touch in our lives are stories of big blessing. Some are of despair and comfort. Some are of you BIG questions and doubts. Some are about God's judgment and power. Some are of healing. Some are of love. Some are of miracles.

No matter your story, it's a story of you and God. It's a story that can be shared with words and with hugs and with smiles and laughter and tears and uncertainties. And not only do you have a story, but so do others. And their stories are different, and we need to hear them just like others need to hear ours. Because the same God who is writing a story in my life is the same one who is writing a story in your life. And the same God who is filling our lungs with breath is the same God who is filling everyone's lungs with breath. And the same God who is sparking our imagination and touching our hearts is the same God who is sparking and touching everyone.

So remember those words you came up with at the beginning. They are different than the words other people would come up with. They are the foundations of your story. They are the expression of God's touch in your life. So may we go tell our stories, and may we keep our ears open to the stories that God is telling in the lives of our neighbors. The more stories we hear, the fuller our picture of God becomes!

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Graduation...

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ." -1 Corinthians 12:12

"We can't be copying no one else's style. We have our own style. Let me tell ya something Rasta, I didn't come up here to forget who I am and where I come from. And the best I can be is Jamaican. If we look Jamaica, walk Jamaica, talk Jamaica, and is Jamaica, then we sure as heck better bobsled Jamaica." -Sanka, Cool Runnings

Every year I get to go to a lot of high school graduations. It's such a thrill to see my teenagers ending one chapter of life and starting a new one.

But as you might imagine, after a few two-and-a-half hour ceremonies, they start to blur together and get a little long. That's not to say they are insignificant or that they aren't incredibly exciting when your students cross that stage, but all the speeches and the awards and the special honors get a little tedious sometimes.

Because of this, I've become a little bit numb to graduation speeches. After all, they're fairly consistent and repetitive. But last May, I heard one that has stuck with me.

At a private school's graduation last year, a speaker with remarkable credentials was invited to take the podium. I was interested in his many titles and honors, but figured his speech would be one of those "Go out and make us all proud" bits. I was wrong.

He opened, "It's common in speeches such as these to tell you graduates to go out and follow your passions and be whoever you want to be. That's not what I'm going to tell you. Because that is a story about just you, and nothing in life is just about you."

I was struck. My ears perked up and I nudged forward a little further in my seat to catch the rest of his address a bit more clearly.

We teach our children and our teenagers to be whatever they want to be. We teach them to break through barriers and not to let anyone tell them they can't do something they set their minds to. We teach them to be themselves and not let anyone else try to define them.

But I wonder if it's ever occurred to us that as we try to express ourselves and be the best we can be that the best life we can find is the life when we are all at our best, when we're not competing and leaving some behind, when we're thriving because others are thriving.

I think it's important that we each have unique fingerprints. Even identical twins have different fingerprints! We are not exactly like anyone else. That's not the way God made us (and thank God for that!)

We are all unique. We all have unique passions and gifts. We all have unique smiles and laughs and tears. We all have unique desires and plans. And we all have .1% unique DNA!

That's right. That means that 99.9% of us is EXACTLY like every one of our neighbors. We are made of the same ilk. All of us.

Paul has a great image for this: a body (how original!) But seriously, it's a really neat metaphor. You see, some of us are eyes. Some are toes. Some are fingernails. (For the record, I'd hate to be the belly-button.) But at the end of the day, we are all connected. We all rely on one another. Our success and our failure are tied together. If one part of the body is sick or one part of the body is struggling, it is our struggle. If one part of the body is celebrating, we all celebrate.

The world has become more isolated and individual. We fight conformity and universality. We want to be our own people. And being your own person is good! That's how God made you. But you are your best when your own person is working with others to make the very best us that we can be. Success is not its most successful if only some get to experience it. Love is not its fullest if some get left out. Celebrations are not their most extravagant if everyone isn't invited.

So may you go and find out exactly what God made you for. May you find the passions and joys and gifts that God placed in your fingerprint that bring your to life. And my you take those things that make you you and add them to the things that make him him and that make her her to make us the very most alive version of us we can be. That's what we were created for. That's when the body is healthiest. And may we never leave out the belly-button!

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