BC-Before Christ?

This time of year whispers premonitions, forthcoming shadows of seasons to come. It starts in parking lots. That sort of makes sense, considering that erecting seven-foot Mylar globes (festooned with appropriate props to elucidate the thought, “ornament”) is a space-intensive process in a venue that will soon be crammed with frantic frenzy-feeders, omnivores not likely appreciative of the pragmatics of preparation when it impacts THEIR steed’s stall.

Parking lots during the holidays remind me of the “canyonlands” of Western lore, those secretive coves from which the guys in the black hats take shots at you, or perhaps offer a hidden valley around the next corner… a place you go not knowing what to expect, yet wearing a robe of visceral apprehension that hopes to cry out, “Don’t hit my car,” or “Hey- I’m on my way to that parking space for which I’ve been waiting for five minutes.”

Or maybe parking lots are the metaphor of lost-ness our culture proudly displays, thinking we’ve arrived while not even beginning, a starting point for a quest to seek, nay verily, to capture that sacred object and transport said trinket back to our storehouses (perhaps stopping first at gift wrap, of course).

Or maybe it represents the chaos of chasing wind, a myopic madness that perpetuates itself into the GNP only to be later assessed as taxes for the new land-fill. Chaos that knows that something should happen, and happen quickly, and if it doesn’t happen, well you’re just…. just… not good, or something! Chaos that feels the tug of things still undone, couples it with a due date, and frames it with Precious Memories.

Chaos and lost-ness are not new to me. I remember a time of my own, a time of fear and shame, a time when I did not know if I were truly loved or just “handy” for parental-peer accolades; a time of depressive darkness that hung so thickly that I could not differentiate my despair from my childhood asthma. I remember the pumped up pressure to perform or better yet, pretend. I remember what it was to be lost amongst a crowd, not in a mall, but in a church congregation. I remember the hungering question, not unlike a boy getting socks instead of a pocketknife, “Is this it?”

Enter: the donkey. Not a stallion, not a burley mule; just the donkey of a Palestinian tradesman in the occupied territories of Israel, a scene right out of the pages of Life magazine or some other photo-journalistic record. I remember the story since childhood, how this girl got pregnant with God, and decanted Hope from the dregs of daily life. The scene was not cute; it was cruel. There were no bathrobes, just impoverished people lost in the chaos of trying to find a space… and most of them missed it. Too busy trying to find their own place to park.

I praise God for the memories of what it was like before Christ: the loneliness, the despair, the empty searching. It reminds me I don’t ever want to go back to Egypt, and it garners for me the hope for others who do not yet understand what is so Good about the news that a child was born in Bethlehem. Come Lord Jesus.

-- Jim Kelley

Everything else is a bunch of crap

I'm not sure I've experienced this fully. The idea that everything else is crap. Paul says in Phillipians 3 that "I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, for whose sake I have lost all things and consider them rubbish (Gr. dung, trash, excrement, crap) in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him..."

So this means that all accolades and accomplishments... my reputation, that is crap? This means that all pleasures that I experience...those are crap? This means that coffee, like really good coffee, that is crap? This means that my health. That is crap? Does this mean that my relationships, even the most fulfilling ones with people who I love, those are crap? All the comforts that I enjoy, a soft mattress, a really good steak and AC in the summer. All that is crap. Really?

Well…yes. I guess compared to "knowing Christ and being found in him" all that other stuff, by comparison, is a bunch of crap. It's a bunch of dung. Does this mean that compared to the satisfaction that these other things bring, knowing Christ will be more satisfying? Does this mean that these other things are, by comparison, not even moderately fulfilling? Well, then I guess I should pursue it. Maybe I should check it out.

What would it take for me to know Christ more deeply? What would it take for me to really surrender to him? Maybe I should find out, because everything thing else is a bunch of crap!

I Choose Xbox

“The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy.”

I am found out. All over my life I see my desire to be different being trumped by my complete and total inability to follow through. Nowhere is this more true than in my life with God. A quick reading of my journal reveals that I seem to come to God with the same personal frustrations over and over, the same failings and short comings, the same acute separation between who I know God wants me to be and who I actually allow myself to be. It seems that week after week, year after year, I know the areas in my life that need to be conformed and need to be molded, but I have so little patience for the change process that I refuse to engage in it.

Really though, shouldn’t everything happen now. I seem to think so. If I cannot be gratified immediately, or at the very least within a time frame of my own crafting, and usually by my own conditions, then I don’t want any part an undertaking. This is why I seem unable to lose those few stubborn pounds I want off. The work required doesn't to fit into my schedule, dieting doesn’t produce instant results, and frankly, any diet that doesn’t include a steady amount of french fries just isn’t worth it to me. Sadly, I am finding that the same is true for my spiritual life. I want God to transform me, but I am not really willing to engage in any kind of “lifestyle cramping” effort that would actually result in me becoming more of the person He created me to be and I deeply desire to be. And I am definitely not willing to give up french fries for God.

Don’t get me wrong, God does change me. He works on me, shapes me, and molds me, it is just usually against my will. I can’t help but think there is an easier way, a way where I willingly take part in developing my heart and mind. What would my life look like, and who would I be, if I didn’t expect God to work in my life like he is wielding a magic wand. Instant transformation for instant gratification, that’s my expectation. But for some reason, God has decided to actually give me a part in the change process, to let me participate in the remaking of myself. In my case it was a dangerous decision, because for some reason, given the choice to invest in becoming the person that I deep down in my heart want to be, or to play Xbox, I tend to choose Xbox.

If you love one another...

According to my good friend, Wikipedia (remember, if it's on the internet, it's gotta be true!), there was a man named Tertullian who was an early church leader. The son of a Roman soldier, he lived from 155-230 A.D. in Africa. After his conversion to Christianity sometime around 197 A.D., he wrote quite a bit to Roman leaders defending this new persecuted faith, including the following:

“We are an association bound together by our religious profession, by the unity of our way of life and the bond of our common hope…We meet together as an assembly and a society…We pray for the emperors…We gather together to read our sacred writing…With the holy words we nourish our faith…After the gathering is over the Christians go out as they had come from a school of virture. It is our care of the helpless that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another!’”

Others in that early church era who lived outside of the Christian faith noted how different the Christians were. How they were willing to stay and care for the sick as plagues decimated villages, while the doctors of the day fled for the hills. Leaders and authorities marvelled at how they cared for the poor far better than the government of the day did.

Jesus told his followers it would be this way. He told them that they would be recognized as different because of their love for one another.

Do we look that way today? Would the world recognize us as Christ-followers by how we care for each other and those outside the church? Are they curious to know what it was that gave us peace enough to make us a bit strange or alien?

I've seen this in practice specifically in relation to our little league sports ministries. I've seen the looks on faces of parents in these leagues who are astonished to learn that the team they are playing that week is one sponsored entirely by a local church...sponsored not merely with money but with time and effort and love. While I am not nearly as active in that ministry as I would like to be, I really enjoy that others get a chance to see that kind of service born out of love. Sharing what we're doing there with others is part of that ministry, I believe...and is another example of God multiplying the work we do.

Halo3 and the Greatest Weapon

About every decade I have a personal scavenger hunt; I try to find where I left my old copy of C. S. Lewis' book, The Screwtape Letters. The first time I read it was shortly after buying it during a high school discipleship group (late 70's); it was a little spooky, but mainly weird and less than relevant.

In college I read it and it was too relevant, and not weird enough, which was spooky.
As a youth pastor fresh out of seminary, Lewis' work was entertaining but theologically tenuous... I was scary!

As a middle-aged, motorscooter-riding science teacher in a laptop-required high school, married to a technophilic graphic Artist, I'm looking again for my copy... I think I'm almost mature enough to appreciate it now! Somewhere buried in a box of books, abruptly translocated with the best intentions of painting the book shelves, is my old copy of the Letters. I don't remember too many of the specifics of the dialog between the demons, Uncle Screwtape and his apprentice, Wormwood, but I do remember one particular section of Lewis' fiction-- where Wormwood is told of the greatest weapon useful in defeating God's Kingdom. Distraction.

Yesterday I escorted the Artist to several computer stores where she was looking for various gizmos to upgrade her computer and integrate her new Mac. I'm already attention-deficit, but you put me in a store of plasma screens showing "Happy Feet" or "Planet Earth", I'm doomed to a standing coma, waiting for my cellphone (set to 'stun') to jumpstart my reentry into life as I left it a few minutes (hours) ago, dialed in by the Artist, who has now cleared the register and headed toward the door.

We are so absorbed by our technologies in today's world that we become oblivious to the world around us. We roll up our tinted windows of our SUVs, plug in the IPod, crank the AC and pick up the cell phone... and that's just to back down the driveway toward some tall guy on a scooter. (smile). Distracted.

It's almost entertaining to see students feverishly "taking notes" during lecture, or perhaps entering "data" into an ExCel spreadsheet, except when I call on them, they respond as if they just got the vibrating/loud cellphone call in the plasma screen section of CompUSA... blankly blinking at me as if I just queried them in Swahili. Surely they weren't gaming or checking MySpace? Distracted.

Now for those who are adequately ruffled because of where this is going, especially in light of the title, be at ease... I will not curse your gods by name--if I did, you might show me my own hypocrisy. Instead I will invite you to join me in considering what little time we have left in a day. I will not accuse, but simply confess... I traded my quiet time with God tonight for a football game. Good night.
Jim Kelley

Numb is the New Deep

I’ve been coming to a slow realization that for quite some time now I have been practicing the discipline of numbness. I am not exactly sure when and where it started, or how it has grown to what it is now in my life, but it probably has something to do with trying to find margin in my life in a line of work where burnout is the norm (the average youth minister makes it a whopping year and a half before throwing in the towel). I think it has become much more than a misguided attempt at margin though, much more than a response to dealing with the grittiness of being invested in other people’s lives. I have begun to escape, to completely shut myself off, and I think it has something to do with missing the point in this life with God.

I don’t think I am alone in wanting to be a compassionate, caring, servant, and feeling like that is at the heart of who God is calling me to be. The problem is, compassion is tiring. And I have yet to meet a person or situation that is not deserving of compassion. So I find myself, at times, feeling like I can’t escape the life God has called me to, not even for a little rest. I think so many of us see the “there is so much to be done” side of life with God and get stressed out. There are so many people in need (really all of us), so many heart breaking situations and conditions in the world, so many places in urgent need of servants. It is all a little overwhelming. Gradually my response to all of this has been to shut down, to numb myself, to escape into the seventh consecutive airing of Sports Center, or the newest VH1 reality show.

So here is what I am learning; numbing myself, completely shutting myself off, is not providing me margin, it is providing me escape. And escape is not recharging me, but making me want to stay numbed to life with God. Somewhere I crossed a line and began to see much of life with God as an imposition on my numbness, as a stressor, and as a lot of physical and emotional work that I would rather not deal with most of the time. Could this really be what Jesus meant when he said “I have come to bring life in the full” (John 10:10). I think so many of us can see where the life Jesus brings can fill up our schedule, but I hardly consider that a full life. Life in the full seems to ring of a life full of passion, and one thing I am certain of, numbness is a killer of passion. I am not sure where I got the notion that margin includes shutting down, but I am becoming more and more convinced that it should really be about feeding passion. The thing about being passionate is that sometimes it is emotional, taxing, and draining, but at other times our passions are joyous, restful, exciting and energizing. The difficulty is being intentional with margin time so that it allows for us to dive into passions that energize us for the rest of life. Our culture seems to be creating easy access to numbness, and it can feel good in the moment, but it can be deadly to the full life God intends for us.

Confession

A poem by Santry Rush recited at the FOM on Sunday, September 2
----------------------

here in texas its the heat that affects us,

steam's a killing machine and a sunburn makes me restless,

and I'm helpless, but the bulk of it's in something else its,

more than a lack of wealth and how concrete melts that helped me crucify this false self.

it started out real small, like the first rock of the berlin wall,

like the embryonic possibility that I might not be tall,

or a walk in the mall to walk off a fat waist just in case a woman called,

it was tiny, not whiny, almost as if it wasn't even there at all.

It was there though, in the intro, that his words set up house in utero,

it was a birth of worth, that set my mind against the goldmines of planet earth,

rewind. it was also divine. my heart was signed by the pen of a pentecostal time.

and finally.

beautifully.

free. Deciphering in time for me to see,

the scientific, hieroglyphic, mystery of Christianity.

and the letters spelled L-O-V-E.

And it was trip like on a titanic ship that could never sink.

I could never think something was possible like this.

That my savior's memory was like a goldfish when it came to my sin,

he's not rememberin the times and crimes when i let him down,

how i broke his heart without a sound,

he is the salvation, flotation device everytime I drown.

There was no more, “where do I fit in.”

No more hesitation of the classification of my sin.

Because who cares. and who dares throw the word judgment in my face,

In this place of disgrace.

when it's sin that always wins the human race.

Because we are all guilty as charged in the Jesus murder case.

And I am sorry to report that I have fallen short,

in Jesus' eyes whose love is the prize.

The picture of my past is a mosaic of lies,

you could stack up like jenga all the things I've done wrong.

It looks like a holiday wish list but 10 times as long.

And contains as much sorrow as a hit country song.

That goes on and on.

and on.

and yes I confess to that physical mess,

to be worthy of a woman was the step that was next.

to shattering my heart into a million different shards,

and how I forged my trueself autograph

on my true love waits card.

And it was hardest come clean with that physical sin,

And how the american church called me a second class christian.

I'd like to explain my anger and show 'em,

But there is not enough kleenex, and that's a different poem.

But when it comes down to it, the part that's the truest,

is we all stand here broken,

all the cracks are visible and our hearts have been soaken,

in redemption and devotion,

'cuz I'm wishin' and I'm hopin'

That you will see what's so obvious to me,

That we were all on the same slave ship and we're finally free.

It was the barter for a martyr, God's son hung on a tree.

for a lost group of wretches called you and called me.

called you and called me.

Authentic

I recently read various articles regarding the previously unpublished diary excerpts of Mother Theresa. This woman who was very much the image of Christ to so many wrote: "I am told God loves me -- and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul." In one sitting, she described Jesus as "the Absent One" as she encountered such suffering.

Later, I read some commentary that seemed nearly gleeful in reporting on this and speculating on her spiritual life, or perceived lack thereof. Many were suggesting that Mother Theresa really, at the end, was not a believer. As if this might be the "Easter ossuary" or "un-empty Empty Tomb" that would finally rock Christianity. But it seems clear to me that these commentators are unfamiliar with the God we know or the set of books we call the Bible which chronicle bits of humanity's relationship with Him.

I've read and heard it said that the strongest statements of doubt about God in the midst of our troubles come from the Bible, itself.

Consider Habbakuk: "How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, 'Violence!' but you do not save." (1:2)

Consider David in Psalms: "O my God, I cry out by day but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent." (22:2)

Consider Job: "I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me." (30:20)

These voices from the Bible express doubt. They express true feelings of anguish. They're not the polished, clean voices of the "religious." They're the real cries of real people aching and hurting and calling to God for help in their real lives. And their approach is honest: "God, where are you? What about your promises? What about your redemption for this world? Where is your justice?"

It seems we serve a God who wants us to approach Him honestly and authentically in this way. There are numerous passages in the Bible where God tells His people that He's far more concerned with the honesty of their hearts than he is with the outward trappings of their religion. Just read the first chapter of Isaiah, and read how God feels about inauthentic, heartless prayer and worship. He wants you; not the religious person you might pretend to be so that you can feel as if you're finally praying "right."

At The FOM, we talk often of being "authentic." We specifically talk about that in conjuncton with our relationships with one another in community. But more than that, it is vital that we each seek God authentically. That we do not pretend to be someone we are not when we pray to Him and seek Him. And that even when He feels distant in the trials of our lives, we follow the example of this woman who continued to serve and love others amidst her own doubts; as she followed the example of the One who dared to ask, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46)

Left Behind?

"They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. What grieved them the most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship." (Acts 20:38, NIV)

What a tender moment today as we shared tears this morning at the FOM, sending yet another family "out there", and with them, a part of our hearts. What an honor to be part of what God is doing this season in West Houston and beyond, from San Antonio to Eastern Europe.
The difficulty for me is sometimes feeling like I'm missing out when we lay hands on a missionary or send off a family who have a job transfer. Perhaps it's because the book of Acts and Paul's scriptures chronicle much of the events from the vantage of those who left... what about those who stayed? We know about Silas, Barnabas and Titus, well... we've heard of them, but who in the world is Mnason?

Perhaps it's part of our human nature to make celebrities as an extension of us, or put others on pedistals--deifying them so that they become meta-human. The paradox is that many such objects of affection are horrified at their new status. Consider (Acts 14) how the people of Lystra responded to Paul and Barnabas at the healing of the local cripple... and contrast that to how Paul and Barney responded (v.14), and perhaps we get a reflection of ourselves.
The more I read the scriptures, the more I am convinced they are mainly written to us, to those left at the dock waving goodbye. Jesus commands us to "go and make disciples"; perhaps that means at work, or at school, or maybe even the local sports association... so many people in desperate need to know that Messiah Jesus loves them. Maybe it looks like an invitation to home-group or KidzPlanet... I don't know; will you join me in praying that we SEE what God is already doing in our midst?

What an adventure life can become, when we realize how important our role is right here, today. May God grant us wisdom and courage to be His ambassadors this week.
Jim K