A Better Story...

"Was the juice worth the squeeze?" -The Girl Next Door

"The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than if we'd showed up at the ending an easier way. It made me think about the hard lives so many people have had, the sacrifices they've endured, and how those people will see heaven differently from those of us who have had easier lives." -Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Three weeks ago I finished the trip I've often described as my "bucket list experience." I hiked to Machu Picchu and spent a week in Peru exploring all about the Inca empire. To say that it didn't fail to meet expectations would be an understatement.

There are two ways to get to the cloud city. For the quick day tripper, one can ride a train into the city of Aguas Calientes ("Hot Springs") and then take a bus up the winding roads to the entryway. That's how most make the journey.

Or you can hike through the Andes Mountain range to get there the way the Inca would have. It's a 4 day hike that covers 43 km that rises over 6,000 ft to the heights that mimic the summits of the Rocky Mountains. Air is thin the whole way and your bones and muscles ache from the outset. To limit the impact on the trail, only 500 people are allowed to start a day, including porters and guides. That means that only about 120 travelers are allowed to get on the trail each day.

I hiked. And it was hard!

I've summited 14er's in Colorado (mountains whose peaks are above 14,000 ft), but this was something different. To climb up and down a mountain in Colorado is one thing. To do it over three different passes, one even called Dead Woman's Pass, going up and then demoralizingly down again while carrying all of your gear on your back was a slightly fuller task. Every step up was a trial, and every step down was just as straining. At the end of most days we'd drink our Peruvian tea to recover and then pass out around 7:00pm to try to recover for the next day.

But that wasn't all the trail was. It was indescribably exhilarating. You felt all at once as if your legs might fall off, while all the while knowing that what you were seeing around you couldn't be captured by cameras. There were no "so-so views." Every direction, at every point, you had to simply stand in awe at what God and the Inca had built. The mist would roll into the valley of a campground through the passes of the mountains and roll out just as majestically minutes later. Snow-capped peaks and Inca ruins cut into the sides of mountains left words unnecessary.

Ten years ago someone shared a book with me: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The cover had the spokes of a bicycle wheel up close and it had been recommended during a church service (neither of which were particularly inspiring traits). But I opened it, and what began as a slow grind became a rush of pages as I was captured by the idea of my life as a story. I wasn't living a particularly interesting one at the time. Neither was the author. So when someone suggested he hike to Machu Picchu, a girl he was trying to chase, he signed up!

Ever since, it's the trip I wanted to take. Somehow I figured it help me live a better story. It did!

I experienced something Donald did in his hike. When you come over the last pass and look down into Machu Picchu, all the aches and pains suddenly fade into the rearview. The beauty and majesty of the city sitting down below trump everything. It's a payoff of payoffs. And then you descend.

But an odd thing happens when you arrive. Your troop of 100 travelers, strangers molded into a community by nothing more than the sheer experience of challenges overcome, is swallowed by the hoards of thousands who chose the train and windy road, the easy way. And without realizing it, you realize that Machu Picchu may have the same stones and scenery for everyone there, but it's not the same city.

For them, it was a beautiful stop for pictures and memories. It was everything they'd seen on Trip Advisor and in National Geographic. For us, it was the end of a taxing and indescribable journey. It was the culmination of four days of challenges overcome and the footprints of a long-lost civilization. It was the end of a better story.

The best stories in life involve conflict and overcoming adversity. No one tells a story that's worth reading of someone who wakes up, goes about their day, prepares dinner, and goes to sleep. There's no risk. There's no suspense. It just happens. Which is why I'm so confused when I look around and see our great efforts being put into the elimination of discomfort and pain. We remove ourselves from people and ideas that make us uncomfortable. We take fewer risks for more predictable outcomes. We live inside smaller boxes with more creature comforts because comfort and our own happiness are the ultimate goals.

But pain is a remarkable teacher. I'm not suggesting God creates pain to teach us things, like some kind of cosmic bully. But when I read through scripture, I see God use people who have gone through messy business. And then I see God send those people into dangerous and unpredictable scenarios. It's as if God recognizes that the people God can use best aren't people who've put all the sides of their lives together, but rather people who've seen conflict and adversity and come battered and bruised on the other side, because the stories God's interested in telling are big, and there will be challenges on the road. But like Machu Picchu, the payoff on the other side will be more than words or cameras could ever fully capture.

I'm convinced, the more I read the Bible and the deeper I try to dive into the story God is telling in the world, that that story is not about me. It's not about me getting the big promotion or the perfect partner. It's not about my reaching salary goals or even my personal satisfaction. It's not about my needs being met at every corner. We've learned to blame others and our circumstances when we're not getting what we want. We've misappropriated God's story and superimposed God's name onto our desires. It's ironic that I've often assumed that God wanted for me exactly what I want for me. We've learned to be disappointed at God when we don't get what we want.

But in my walk through the Andes, I was reminded, as I peered out on the mountains that God had carved and my calves rang out for want of oxygen and rest, that the best stories come with bumps and bruises. They aren't easy or safe. They aren't simply about our wants. But when we arrive at the end of them, we'll know our story was deeper and richer than those who took the train. We'll know it was better.

May we be people who jump headfirst into the stories God is writing, unperturbed by the risks and challenges ahead. May we let go of our needs and desires for something even better. May we let pain teach us and failure equip us. And may we keep putting one foot in front of the other.

forever unfinished...

Gospel According to George...

"If you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea, I'll sail the world to find you" -Count on Me, Bruno Mars

"'No one, sir,' she said. 'Then neither do I condemn you,' Jesus declared. 'Go now and leave your life of sin.'" -John 8:11

I was a choir boy. No, really! growing up, I sang in a high school church youth choir of 100 every Sunday. We wore the robes and the stoles and stood in the choir loft and struggled to sing and clap at the same time with the same rhythm.

I was a choir boy.

Every summer we would take a tour with this Sunshine Choir somewhere around the country. The summer after my junior year of high school, we loaded up the buses with risers, sheet music, and enough Swedish Fish to last 2 hours of road trip and headed off to Washington D.C.

Truth be told, I don't remember much about the tour. I know we got to see a tour of the Capitol. I know we got to sing in the National Cathedral. I'm sure we visited nursing homes and the like to share the hope of Jesus. But what I remember most about that trip was our host for the last night.

You see, like other choirs, once or twice a tour we would sing in churches. When the concert was over and the customary potluck had been consumed, we'd be paired or tripled off to stay with a family in the church overnight. This was presumably to keep costs down (but looking back, how none of us was ever kidnapped or brought back the next morning with one less toe is beyond me). On the last night, after we'd sung outside of Richmond, Virginia, my friend Tyler and I were shoved off with a guy named George.

Tyler and I had done this before, so we were old pros. It would take a lot to mess with us. George succeeded with perhaps the most confusing conversation I've ever experienced.

After we'd arrived to his house and he'd confirmed that his kids and wife were all asleep, he asked if we'd like to watch a game (basketball or something). We stayed up for a bit eating pizza and watching some guys on a screen making small talk with a host who by all accounts was a great family man and churchgoer. (Disclaimer: nothing that follows did anything to dissuade me that that was true, so don't worry about what comes next.)

He turned to us at one point and asked, "Do you know why we have such an obesity problem in the is country? Taken aback, Tyler and I kind of eyed one another for a second before shrugging our shoulders as high schoolers do and kind of mumbling a simple, "Nope."

That's when he dropped the hammer. "Because not everyone is a Christian."

You've got to understand, I've heard of Christian diets and discipline. But we have an obesity problem because not everyone is a Christian?? That was a pretty bold claim, especially to two idiot sixteen year olds. But we waited for any kind of explanation.

"That's right. Look at it this way, kids don't get any exercise anymore. Why? Because parents are afraid that if they let their kids go to the park they'll get abducted or taken by child molesters. And if everyone was a Christian, there wouldn't be any child molesters, so kids would play outside, and there wouldn't be an obesity issue in America," he said with a straighter face than I'd ever encountered.

And that my friends is a theologian. Tyler and I looked at each other, not sure what to see, think, or do. Maybe we should run. Or should we argue. Or should we just sit and eat pizza and nod along. (We obviously chose the latter.)

The next morning we got back to the church, said goodbye to our host, jumped on the bus, and began telling everyone in earshot about George's "theology." (You have to understand, group messaging wasn't a thing then. We had to wait a whole eight hours to tell people things.) But in the twelve years since then, I've never forgotten that story.

I think that's because, underneath the crazy, George may actually have been onto something. No, I don't agree with just about any of his major premises, or the conclusions that followed them, but underneath them, there was a kernel of truth we often miss: that following Jesus ought to leave us different.

When people experienced Jesus in Galilee and Judea, they came with backstories and histories. They came with assumptions and goals. They came with expectations and desires for who Jesus was. And Jesus didn't live up to any of them. Typically, those expectations dissolved and those hopes were unmet. To meet Jesus meant to be changed.

To experience Jesus meant that people had to take loving our neighbors (yes, all our neighbors) sacrificially. That's hard. To experience Jesus meant that people had to begin to give generously and recklessly. That's hard. To experience Jesus meant that you went out to invite a bigger and bigger crowd of left behinds and outcasts back into the party. That's hard. To experience Jesus ultimately meant that you had to lay down your life if need be out of love for your neighbor. That's hard. To experience Jesus was to hear that your story, with its brokenness and hurt and pain and imperfections, was worthy and loved and irreplaceable. That's hard.

Even now, two thousand years later, I find myself thinking that I am living in the kiddie pool of what it means to follow Jesus. I see this deeper life, this changed life, offered to me, and I'm too terrified to take the plunge into deeper waters, but every moment I spend experiencing Jesus, I know I'm called to move.

There's a church in Ohio with a tagline that has forever messed with me. "God loves you just the way you are, and God's not done with you yet." That is the story of our God. In the incarnation and the resurrection, we see a God who is moving towards us, not waiting for us to make the first move. We see a God desperately seeking us. But that's not where it ends. Jesus doesn't let us stay where we are. There is a bigger story God is writing and inviting us into. It will involve change, and pain, and re-orienting our goals. But it will also involve transforming the world God made.

I believe, even if the world were full of Christians, there would still be pedophiles. We're all part sinner and part saint. Anyone who's decided that following Jesus isn't the worst idea knows that perfection isn't within our grasp. But I also know that those who profess to follow Jesus ought to live a little bit differently. We ought to live changed. We ought to be the people in the world who know we are loved and shine the light in every corner we encounter.

So may you not end today the way you started it. May you be transformed by the light of Jesus.

forever unfinished...

Goodbye Michael Scott...

"Be strong. Trust yourself, love yourself, and conquer your fears. Just go out there and do the things you want to do, because life just really isn't that long. There's a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn't that kind of the point?" -Pam Halpert, The Office Finale

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." -Matthew 5:4

Last night, I finished the finale of The Office. (Full disclosure: this wasn't the first time. I think it might've been the sixth or seventh time I made it through all nine seasons of Dunder Mifflin pranks, love, and mishaps.) I love this show, and every time we get to that finale party in the office, my heart wells up at the fact that the stories of all those characters is coming to a close.

I've never been particularly great with things coming to an end, whether it's the finale of a great show or something with a little more consequence. I've never left a funeral in which I didn't cry, even if I'd never met the person in the casket. I've never had a breakup that didn't crush me in some ways.

The last day of high school, I set up a hammock in the parking lot and waited as everyone filed out of our tiny parking lot to rush out in celebration. The day I moved out of my North Village apartment at Furman and turned in my key for the last time,  I had to stop on the side of the road before arriving at the new house with my new housemates to collect myself. When I had a chance to say goodbye to students and families in Fort Worth for the last time, I had to sneak away to my office to try to pull myself together.

I hate goodbyes. Why? The memories.

I'm nostalgic, and I look back at all the things that made the saying goodbye so difficult. I think about all the laughs and struggles that got me to that point, the things that cumulatively shaped me. And then I realize that, at least in that relationship, in that era, in that place, there won't be any new memories to be made. The story ends.

At the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus sat atop a hill with his disciples and began to teach them. The first thing he shared was a bit odd. He named eight groups of people who were blessed, eight groups of people who ought to be happy. But it wasn't the usual suspects. It wasn't the rich. It wasn't the powerful. It wasn't the accomplished or the married.

No, it was the poor. The meek. The merciful and the peacemakers. Not the usual suspects, especially not in Jesus' time.

But one of those eight groups has always stood out to me. Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

I've always identified with the mourners, but I've never really understood why Jesus added them to the list. Isn't mourning kind of arbitrary and weak? There's nothing particularly noble about mourning. But I think I'm starting to get it.

Mourning isn't a sign of weakness. Mourning is an act of incredible courage. Why? Think for a second: who mourns? People who have lived richly and loved deeply. The only people who mourn are the people who risked deep connection and rejection and have something significant enough to look back upon.

Those who play it safe, those who never take a risk, those who board up the walls of their lives and hearts to insulate themselves from the potential of pain never live anything that could end worth remembering. To love is risky. To take chances could end in failure. But mourning only comes when the memories made and the obstacles overcome are worth remembering and cherishing.

Mourning comes when something significant comes to an end, and we're only left with memories to look back upon without the hope for new chapters. The end of things only matters if they were worth looking back upon, and we feel empty at the impossibility of new moments to cherish.

So may we live a life worth looking back on with remembrance and tears. May we dive into risks and chances to make the world a better place. May we risk pursuing relationships with the deepest parts of us that may not pan out and may leave us disappointed, because those are the stories that are worth looking back on and celebrating and mourning.

forever unfinished...

Better...

"Where there is life, there is hope." -Cicero

"Jesus wept." -John 11:35

Two statistics have transformed my life. First, suicide is the third highest cause of death of teens in America. Second, the number is rising.

Ever since I've been able to articulate what I wanted to do with my life, I've known that I was called to student ministry. Middle and high school students simply fill my heart with joy. But it is hard work.

It's also painful work. In my time working with teenagers (my short time, in the grand scheme of it all) I've had to comfort middle and high school students who have lost dear friends to self-inflicted wounds. I've had to visit students in therapy facilities after their own attempts. I've had the honor and privilege of sharing life with students whose scars (visible and otherwise) tell a story of pain and recovery mine will never tell.

And it's getting harder. My heart is aching more by the day. We have to do better.

Suicide is not a new phenomenon. I'm not naive enough to imagine that this is a new invention of human beings in the millennial age. But something is happening. The numbers, particularly among teenagers, are not going down.

Studies upon studies are being done to try to understand this uptick and this trend. The causes are vast and no two stories are the same. Depression is often involved. Mental health is always a contributor. Broken family systems and peer networks can play a role. Loneliness and isolation are agents of pain.

But we have to do better, because we are losing a generation of teenagers whose lights will not shine on us in the future. Our world is losing the gifts, the joys, the irreplaceable beauty of stars blown out before their time. The task of ushering in a generation behind us has always been the highest obligation of our world. So again I say, we have to do better. God calls and demands us to something better!

We've got to start seeing our neighbors as family, and that starts with knowing their names. We have to remember kinship and community.

We've got to put down the screens and see people. We have to start talking and stop typing.

We've got to realize that people aren't simply this or simply that. We have to realize that they are as complicated as we are, and that that's ok.

We've got to find a purpose beyond bank accounts and opportunity. We have to claim a mission with a purpose to change and build up.

We've got to remember that being right is rarely important as being there. We have to acknowledge that right positions don't get us anywhere if we're standing in the wrong place.

We've got to learn that failure is not the enemy, but rather a tool for growing and learning. We have to encourage risks and help teach when we fall.

We've got to invest in people and not profits. We have to see the potential in others and help them unlock who they were made to be.

We've got to expect something of ourselves and others more than the passing of days. We have to see who we can become.

We've got to see ourselves as a we and not simply a me and you and us and them. We have to cultivate a shared responsibility to our world.

We've got to see that there is hope in the world. We have to remind ourselves that even in the darkest moments, there is always a glimmer of light.

And more than anything, we've got to remember love above all else. We have to re-capture the duty and gift of love, a love that is not simply fleeting and flighty, but steeped in a sacrificial responsibility to each other. We have to remember that love gives everything for another.

We're losing something every day. There are countless reasons for this loss. But the countless reasons are not a reason to give up. They are a reason to dive in. I don't know what better means just yet, but I know we've got to find a place to start. We've got to do our part to make the world into more of the kind of place God created it to be. May our tears be the catalyst to better.

forever unfinished...