Good, Better, Best

 

Every Christmas and New Year is a time of cheer, love, traditions, hot cocoa, and conversations with family and friends around the fireplace. It is a time of celebration, to celebrate the joyous birth of Jesus Christ, while also ringing in the New Year with Dick Clark. It truly is one of the most magical holidays of the year.

However, each year around this same time, amidst the swirling frenzy of shopping and binging on Christmas cookies or whatever else co-workers concoct for the daily office Christmas celebration, it a time of deep reflection for me. I survey my own past year to see what the heck I have done with my life and whether it is still in line with my hopes, dreams, and expectations. As I reflect upon the year, I also quiet my emotion and soul and allow God to take my mind down winding paths and thoughts of the heart. It is more a combination of thought, prayer, talking to myself and God, but not saying any actual verbal words, and more like allowing the heart to sink deep into myself, thinking and listening in a very abandoned sort of way.

Each year I realize at some point during this process that at no particular moment was I ever alone in this world. I see how God worked out the clanging sounds of days and weeks gone wrong with the grace of an orchestra conductor. And how things that made me feel like “This is really it. This is the end of….” God worked out the good in ways that I did not expect and or think could happen.

In the midst of this same realization, I also am aware how much I fell short of “doing” the things that I felt I should have done this year to justify God’s goodness and affection toward me. And I will fall short again in 2012. Without a doubt. I try to be good to bring out his goodness. Thankfully His love is not subservient to my shortcomings.

The fact is, God’s goodness towards me and you is just unjustifiable. He is good because HE is good. That’s all there is to it. HE is GOOD and that is why He does GOOD things. Might I also mention that He did a real good thing many centuries ago by becoming flesh one night and going through hell to be closer to us? And that’s why we celebrate Christmas, good friends, and a fresh 365 days. We are given the fresh start of a New Year like a freshly baked cookie — just waiting for us to taste and see that it is really good.

Here’s to a New Year. To a good God. To a Father that celebrates with us the gift of the past and the hope of the future.

You Might be a Cultural Christian if…..

1. Somewhere in your house you have a 5 x 5 plaque, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” hung for all to see.

2. You only tithe or give when the Pastor gives his tithing and/or offering speech.

3. You read your Word mostly when things are not going your way.

4. You say phrases like “Read your Word”, “Joy of the Lord”, “How is your Walk going?” etc.

5. You try to drop hot Christian words like “Blessed” or “Prayer” when talking to strangers to test whether or not they are Christians too.

6. You do the Christian side hug. (Thank you Jon Acuff for this one)

7. Your automatic reaction to anyone’s misfortune is “I’ll be praying for you,” when you know, and they know, you won’t pray one word.

8. You make a point to cheerfully smile at strangers or other Christians to make sure they know you have the “Joy of the Lord” upon you.

9. When in doubt, you choose Republican.

10. Most of your friends are Cultural Christians, too.

What is a Cultural Christian?

I got to thinking about being a cultural Christian just last week as I was talking to a stranger who told me they were a cultural Catholic. “What does that mean?” I thought to myself. And then I began thinking about all the ways that I, too, have become more of a cultural Christian as well: someone who follows the traditions and quirks of Christianity as a substitute for the real relationship.

Sometimes I know that I lack the power of God in my life when I am not changing or allowing myself to be transformed or made new everyday, and instead I just keep doing the same old “Christian” things hoping that it will somehow change me or my situation. When saying “I’ll pray for you” becomes more important than actually doing it. When the show of Christianity becomes more important than the real work going on backstage.

It’s all the trappings of Christianity without the power or life of God breathed into it. To me that’s what really being a Cultural Christian is about. The power of God is His ability to create something from nothing or to take evil and turn it too good or to raise something that was dead and make it new. Certain areas of my life lack that power most times. And I can’t make up for it with my Christian T-shirt that says “Prays Well With Others.”.

Which Reality is Real?

“Reality” can be a slap in the face, a splash of cold water, a wake up call that sounds like your alarm come 6:30 am – something you want to smack to make go away.

Some people like to say you need a dose of reality, but really what reality are we talking about?

REALITY? REALLY?

The Bible says in Jeremiah 29:11 (an often-quoted verse) “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Gosh. That’s a lot of promise. Especially for a 20-something who hasn’t got it all quite figured out yet, and perhaps living a reality that isn’t exactly what we thought it would be.

Thankfully, God is all about reality. His reality, which he says is to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you “hope and a future”. As an adult in transition it is often hard to believe these words. It sounds more like a wish list, or some little carrot a hiring manager throws out at you, like the phrase “upward mobility,” to get you to sign the dotted line to the worst job you can possibly ever dream of.

Interesting enough, the context in which God spoke these words, were to a battered and captive people called the Israelites in the midst of a 70-year captivity to a foreign country. Talk about a bad deal. And still in the midst of this captivity, God had the audacity to tell them, “I have plans to prosper you, and not to harm you.”

Sometimes our reality feels like there is no way out. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.

The reality of the now, feels like it will be inescapable later.

ONE OF THOSE FRIENDS

Do you ever hang out with one of those strange, confused people who never seem phased by their current situation? They lost their job, dog, and favorite pair of sunglasses all in the same week and yet they still have an actual smile on their face ? An authentic-I’m going to be fine-look. 

This strange, weird person’s reality seems different than what is currently happening in their life. Their hope is not based on external problems, but on something internal, something permanent, something based more in the future than what’s currently going on in the present.

My guess is that they’re holding on to a DIFFERENT reality. God’s reality. The promise that says, “yes, your dog died, you lost your job, and your favorite TV show that you normally watch to drown out the problems of the world, was cancelled. But even if you can’t see the light at the end of the dark and lonely tunnel, your Father can. And he can’t wait to show you how crazy he is about you. He can’t wait to reveal that EVEN THIS reality, will somehow turn into good.”

WHAT IS YOUR REALITY?

So maybe the current situation you’re in really isn’t the dose of reality you need. Maybe you need to take a huge spoonful of a truer reality based on the dreams and vision inside of you. Maybe where you are headed is more important than where you are at. Maybe it’s simply a choice each of us makes.  Which reality is more real?

____

I have a really hard time seeing past the present reality to what I feel is my future. Anyone feel the same?

Article written by Paul and Naomi Angone

Why We Need to Climb the Hills

 

Picture by Rantes via Creative Commons

 

I strap on my old tennis shoes. The ones that used to be as white as Jesus Christ’s Sunday School robe, but now are dingy, torn, and stained – shoes that smell like meat that’s been left out of the refrigerator too long.

These shoes have one purpose now – to hike, for hike-sakes. To get away and stand on top of at least one peak, since life’s mountains have felt a tad unscalable.

One afternoon my shoes decided to go further, longer, and higher than before, passing all the previous spots that had been full of well, this is far enough. In two hours, I ended on a higher peak, a nameless spot that turned my usual magnifying glass view to that of a blimp.

I stood proud on my peak, looking over sprawling Los Angeles and the sporadic pockets of green where someone forgot to build houses and highways.

Looking to the right across a small valley, I saw another hill – one I’d never seen before but now was clearly visible, slightly higher and more rugged. A hill without the three-foot wide path to the top like the one I’d just courageously scaled.

I could see the winding snake of blazed dirt of those who had climbed the other hill before. The next time I come, I thought, I’ll climb that hill.

So that’s what I did. The new climb wasn’t as straight-forward. It took more sweat, strain, and improvisation. But the view – even better. The peak – a greater victory.

Then the same thing happened. I looked across the next valley, to the next mountain and again from this new perspective I could see the path to the top. “Next time I’ll climb that mountain.”

So I came back. Found my way to the next hill. Climbed. Sweat. Stood at a higher peak. Looked across. Saw another mountain with a better view. This happened five successive times. Each mountain I climbed, giving me the view I needed to climb the next. Each peak giving me the confidence that I could make it to the next.

Next Time I’ll Climb That Mountain…

How true that is of life. As I climb through this life wanting to tackle Everest, where I can stake my Paul Angone Did It! flag, leaving a mark as far as my view. I’ll only be able to see how to climb Everest, if I first start with the hills.

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”
– Sir Edmund Hillary

Each challenge, each climb, each step is putting me one closer to the perspective I need. Each hill will give me the view and strategy to tackle the next. I’m learning something new about the world and myself with each step up each hill.

Whatever hill stands in front of you right now, it has a purpose. Keep climbing and I promise you’ll be amazed by the view.

What My Six-Month-Old Baby Taught Me About Jesus

 

Six months ago almost to the date, I wrote: Let it be noted today that my life has forever changed.

The reason? I had just watched my wife give birth to our first child — six pounds eleven ounces carrying such a weight as to completely smash my world.  Everything, every word that I once was so sure about, falling apart as I gazed at the true meaning behind life’s profundities.

The biggest change? My understanding of how much God really loved me. Because I tasted the love for the first time that a father has for a child. And that love ruined me. God’s love was more theoretical and theological before that day. Now it’s actual. No more questioning how much a father truly loves a child, because now I am that dad.

TODAY’S DRAMATIC CHANGE

However, six months later, let it be noted that my life has forever changed again.

The reason? Today is the first day our little baby girl has ever been sick. She has an infection, which is clogging her nose, making her cough, and creating so much mucus that her one strategy for removal has been to throw up. A strategy she has turned to repeatedly.

As I’ve watch our little six-month-old girl experience what it means to be sick for the very first time, nothing has ever wrenched my emotions so completely. Her sickness breaking my heart into pieces as I look at that red nose and eyes that won’t stop watering, as they stare at me and ask, “Daddy, why aren’t you stopping this?”

Oh my love how I wish I could. What a completely helpless feeling to watch your little child in so much pain. As I held her in my arms and walked her around outside to try and help her forget, I didn’t even realize what I’d been whispering in her ear with so much certainty that it was coming from a place beyond my mind. I kept saying over and over again, “My little girl, Daddy would gladly take on your sickness for you if he could.” Over and over and over I repeated this to her – maybe if I said it enough times somehow I could make it true.

And it was at that moment that I stopped, looked at her and finally understood another word that I never had before. Sacrifice. It was not idle words of comfort that I was trying to ease her pain with. No, I realized at that moment how willing and ready I’d be to take on any sickness, pain, or heartache for her if it meant she didn’t have to.

Sure it’s just a nose infection now, but the resolution of that fact will never change. As she grows older, no matter how many times she rolls her eyes at me, breaks curfew, or storms out of a room –  if a car was going to hit her and the only way to save her was to step in the way, sixteen times out of ten, I would do it. Because giving up my life to save hers would not even be a sacrifice. It would be automatic. A choice that is more reflex than deliberation. My love for her would have no other way.

JESUS’ CHOICE

Just as I understood God’s love the day I held my little girl for the first time, I now finally understand Jesus’ sacrifice. His love for us would have no other way, because no other choice would do.

To ease our pain and suffering with his own was the only choice his love would make. It is a love that transforms sacrifice.  God’s love is fierce like a hurricane — his sacrifice is the same. A sacrifice so consuming that there is no escape.

To be a replacement for my daughter would be a choice I’d take a million times out of ten. Thank you, God, that I have that choice because of yours.

Why God’s Love is Our Truest Vocation

Picture by the very talented mother of five, Amanda Tipton

God’s love is so simple, yet so radical that it is nearly impossible to comprehend.

God is love, and God’s love must be the first step and focal point of who we are. God’s love is not logical by our standards. It is unconditional. It’s not based out of our merit, but out of his. We must base our identity on who we truly are; a child deeply loved by a magnificent Father who is the author of love itself. We must start with love to give ourselves the necessary permission to go anywhere else. If God’s love is not the root of our identity, then our identity will have no base.

How long have I known about God and yet failed to recognize him as he daily passes by? How long have I failed to hear the whisper or feel the touch of his unconditional love? To truly know God, his love must be deeply felt; a knowing as deep into the heart as it is the head. A knowing that changes you for good. A knowing of God’s love that transforms who we are.

Accepting ourselves as dearly loved children gives us permission to struggle through the process of self-discovery, which will aid us in our search for true calling. We must see ourselves as Christ see us. This is the only starting point, worth starting.

Who Are We?

Our identity cannot be found in a list of accomplishments. Because if our love for self is based on accolades, then what will happen when all the voices of praise have fallen silent? What will happen when the path to our calling becomes incredibly difficult? Perseverance will be utterly necessary if we are to walk down the path of our true vocation. If our false self is leading us, we will be lost by first nightfall.

God wants us to know him. God desires for me and you to just spend intimate time with him, connecting in personal conversation as we would with a good friend or spouse. God loves who you are. Yet how often do we neglect the relationship? How many times have I missed the profound simplicity of a life spent in conversation with God because I was consumed with my seven-step-spiritual plans or daily agendas?

To know God and to be known by God is foundational and is something I have missed almost my entire life, like continually missing the train and then wondering why I never make it home.

God’s Love is Our Vocation

So, “what do you do?” It’s our conversation starter—our flint. We hope it sparks a picture of this person. What job is the real you? A tough answer when your job, or lack of job, is any thing but. But is this even the right question? We should not be asking each other what we do, as if a quick title sums us up. No, it is who we are that trumps all. Our identity in his love is our true, all-consuming, vocation.

Our identity is not a job.

Our identity is His love.

The Millennial Generations’ Destiny Drive-Thru

I am a part of the Millennial Generation.

If you’re confused with who or what the Millennial Generation even is, The Millennial Generation aka Gen Y aka Gen Next aka Net Generation aka Echo Boomers aka We’re So Cool and Ambiguous We Need Five Different Generational Titles (I wonder why this is confusing?) was born somewhere between the mid-70′s or early 80′s (again depending on what scholar you read) all the way until 2000.

Millennials are typically categorized by being the dream-big, sky’s-the-limit, creative, driven, I-can-do-anything generation.

I like these attributes. I think it will propel us to make an important impact in this world.

But we are also proud members of the entitled, get-it-now, instant gratification, I-can’t-wait-ten-seconds, Nextflix, Ipad, ITunes, Facebook, streaming, instant-everything, give-it-to-me-NOW generation.

At 28 years old I realize how embedded I was (and still am) in the idea that the red carpet would precede all my steps. After college, I thought I’d just pull up to the Destiny Drive-Thru and place my order, “Yes, I’d like a medium fry, burger with no onions, chocolate shake, and the exact purpose and plans for the next sixty years of my life. Thanks.”

“What? Did you say that would take ten minutes? What kind of operation you guys running here?!!”

I felt entitled to so much, and expected so little time and struggle to get there.

So after college when the big wasn’t happening, I became depressed and confused. I became angry at God for apparently abandoning me, when I was completely ready and willing to do those big things.

Where was the Jeremiah 29:11 of the big plans God had promised me? I was supposed to be changing the world, so why was I doing accounting in a cubicle, serving coffee, selling insurance, (insert your job you never thought you would be doing here: ________).

PARADIGM SHIFT

But after years of frustration and feeling like somehow God had let me down, I understand now that God in his infinite grace did not allow the big to happen when I demanded it. If I would’ve received the glamorous, big life I dreamed of it would’ve been like putting a semi-truck on my shoulders. I would’ve been crushed.

Because the time, effort, struggle, frustration — these are not just punishments or failures. No, this is a part of the preparation. Just like an Olympic athlete puts in years of training to be ready when their time comes, so must I learn that without the hard work there will be no accomplishment. We can’t be strengthened if there is no resistance. The higher the obstacles, the bigger the party on the other side.

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” (Zechariah 4:10).

Now looking back at these last couple years after college, how I wish I would have heeded these words. If I could have taken this to heart, really understood just this one piece of advice, the “meaningless” could’ve been wrought with such meaning.

Real Life Conversations: College, Transitions, and Delicious Ambiguity

College and the transition out can be a difficult one – a thousand questions, resumes, and loans due becomes a pressure cooker that can turn even the pinkest of college grads into something burnt. I know, as I experienced what felt like years roasting on the burning coals of the “real world.”

Below is a real, honest back-and-forth between a college senior and myself as we sort through college, transitions, and delicious ambiguity.

THE COLLEGE SENIOR

Paul,

College is an interesting place. The social pressures here are crazy. Every social action is under a microscope, or so it seems.

I have wonderful, amazingly beautiful, and fun roommates. I have lovely classes. I am blessed to be numbered in the top 5 % of the world’s population. The Lord has given me life, hope, talent, and creativity. He has given me Love.

And yet, sometimes things are not so simple as I transition to leave what I have called home for the last four years. I just feel like I have a million questions, fears, and doubts. Most of all, I have been feeling lonely. And slowly, I am realizing that maybe that is what the Lord wants of me right now, to sit in the rhythm of loneliness. He, after all, probably has felt lonelier than any of us ever could.

Things are good, and weird, and life is just that.

Thanks for listening as I sort this out.

ME – THE TWENTYSOMETHING

Sara,

I wish I could have expressed my thoughts with this kind of clarity as a senior in college. As I neared the collegiate finish line four years ago, I also began seriously wrestling with those HUGE doubts, fears, and questions of where am I going, where is God and how is he involved in this life?

And while those questions aren’t easy, they are GOOD. God will meet you in this place of difficult questioning. He’s not your Aunt Edna, blushing and changing the subject when the conversation turns the slightest bit uncomfortable. God’s not as easily offended as we make him out to be. So ask away just make sure you keep your ears open to hear what he has to say– even if it’s something you didn’t quite expect.

THE VOID OF LONELINESS

This place of questioning can and will be a very lonely place. Sometimes painfully, undeniably, unrelentingly so. But you’re right, there’s something of strange importance that takes place in us when we are stripped of all the things that used to keep us company.

But don’t allow loneliness to become isolation. Don’t pull your head inside your shell thinking only you can protect yourself. That’s a mistake I made for far too long.

No, invite a friend or two over for dinner. Talk, laugh once or twice – even if it’s forced, and before the meal is served you might just notice they’re chewing on the same questions you are. And at that moment of honest conversation, you will see light in the dark and dusty corners.

DELICIOUS AMBIGUITY

“Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity…” – Gilda Radner

So here you are, in this time of certain uncertainty, this season of delicious ambiguity. As the water rushes over your head and as you feel this might just be the time you actually drown, let me be the first to assure you that you won’t. No, in the end you will find a better way to breathe.

Paul

The Bible 10K

What is a Bible 10K? Great question. I asked the same thing when my good friend Sam proposed the idea to a group of us college friends.

Really, a Bible 10K? I pictured us in short shorts, holding water bottles and the ten extra pounds we’d gained post-college, chugging up a windy road with Bibles in our hands, shouting verses at spectators when we weren’t gasping for oxygen. I began to think of excuses why I couldn’t make it.

Fortunately, however, our friend was not talking about an evangelistic race of drive-by “versings.” No, what he had in mind was completely different, yet probably even a tad more unusual. It wouldn’t involve any running, but it would take a different kind of endurance that would take all of us to the edge of what we thought possible.

THE BIBLE 10K

So what did our friend Sam have in mind? Well it would us driving hours, taking flights, doing whatever it took to make it to a cabin  up near Big Bear in California by Friday night. Then a group of ten crazy men would wake up at 7:00 am on Saturday, grab a quick  bite to eat, say a prayer, open our Bibles to Matthew, and commence reading the entire New Testament out loud, as a group, in one day. Let the Bible 10K begin.

BIBLE 10K RULES

Rule One: Reading Rotation

We set a rotation with only one person reading out loud at a time. Once that person read a few chapters he would stop and the next guy in the rotation would grab the “Bible-Baton” and start reading.

Rule Two: No Talking

The only words we would hear all day would come from the Bible.   The rest of us listening would only talk in raised highbrows and scribbled notes.

Rule Three: Bible Time

We wrote up a schedule for the day using chapters of the Bible as our time. All clocks and watches were dispatched. Lunch after John.   Walk to the park after Acts (yes we did walk to the park, down neighborhood streets huddled around one guy carrying the Bible reading out loud, while others tossed a football back and forth. Yes  we did receive many a weird look from those passing by. Yes we completely understood why).

THE DAY

Now I know this all sounds quite a crazy way to spend a Saturday.  It was.

Or even worse – a cabin, no talking, and no watches might seem like a fail-proof recipe for Starting a Cult 101. We weren’t.

No, we were a group of friends, raised in the church our whole   lives, graduated from a Christian college, and desired to really experience the Bible again. Sure we came because any excuse to be with good friends is one worth taking. But I think we all came in hopes of something more. We all wanted to have the Bible touch our hearts again.

The day obviously started off a whole lot of Gospel. Hours and hours of Gospel. You look at charts your whole Christian life on how the Gospels differ. You hear sermons, you take classes on Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection. But it was a different kind of experience to just sit and stay with him for hours. To listen to stories and teachings without trying to apply it to a three-part sermon or dissecting it to better understand the hermeneutics of the passage. No, we just sat and listened.  We felt the emotion of what Jesus was saying. I sat and pictured my friends as Peter, James, and John hearing it for the first time. It was probably the closest I’ll ever get to experiencing what it was like to be one of his disciples.

After the Gospels we parked for a while in Acts, then jumped back  in the “Bible-Car” for the long, steady, drive of Paul. It was like taking that stretch of road from Colorado to Chicago. Flat and seemingly unending, with lots of notable rest stops along the way.  But as we read letter after letter that Paul wrote or dictated I think for the first time I really understood what Paul meant when he talked about running the race well, dying to self, or enduring the cross. Paul was sarcastic at times, frustrated, angry but in the end I could feel the absolute passion this man possessed about the person of Jesus. So intensely that he just couldn’t stomach the thought of people that he loved not experiencing Jesus’ love for themselves.

As the day turned to night and the words started to run together, you could tell some of us were beginning to lose our endurance and others our consciousness. Nudging the guy next to you to wake up became a common occurrence, myself needing an elbow in the ribs once or twice. But as we neared the finish line of Revelation in what was our best guess somewhere between 9:30 – 11:00 pm real time, an excitement filled the room. We had actually sat with the word the entire day.

So what do you do to top off an entire day of the Bible? You get in a hot tub with a glass of wine (well not all of us because we couldn’t fit). And for the first time the entire day, as we began the last words we all joined together and yelled “He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.”

We cheered and rose our glasses, toasting the Bible and the race we’d just run together. It was an image and a feeling, I’ll never soon forget.

THE WORD

We are a sound-bite culture. A quick fix, buy this product, change the channel, on-demand society. And much of that carries over into our Christianity as well. We take one or two verses and apply them as Band-Aids on wounds that they seem to best fit. We apply principles and theories and theologies — and all of that is well and good.

But before the Bible was a product or a study it was letters and stories. It was communicated around the campfire or read at the town square. It was heard with amazement. It was told and experienced in community. People didn’t have their one-day devotionals. They had the life of Jesus and they had each other.

So what do you think – Bible 10K? Maybe you’re already visualizing the worried looks on your friends’ faces as you try to persuade them on the idea.  Heck, maybe it’s an idea worth pursuing. Or maybe just gather your family together and read a chapter or a book out loud and see what happens. Our lives are set on 75-mph cruise control. What happens when we just take time to slow down, pull the car over, sit, and listen?

I can’t wait for Bible10K2.

Please God, I Hope This is Not a “Christian” Blog

 

I cringe at the thought of this being a “Christian” blog. Sure I’m a Christian – whatever that really means nowadays. The title of Christian is laced with so much baggage, preconceptions, politics, joys, pains, gag-reflexes—you name it—I’d rather not even use the term lest you lump me in with your definition of the word, good or bad.

So labeling something as a Christian blog can only be an insult in my book. Once that happens I have this looming fear it will somehow become dogmatic – I will only be able to write in Bible verses, I have to stop being creative, sarcastic, and funny and will have to tell every one God Bless You when responding to comments. (I guess I have my pre-conceptions of what Christian means as well).

I was thinking through all this when I came across another blogger who also worried about coming out of the “Christian Closet,” so to say, to announce that she and her husband were a starting a church. So I wrote her this comment and in the end realized maybe – just maybe, a “Christian” blog is not such a thing.

_____

Dorie,
I just stumbled upon your blog for the first time today and wanted to thank you for your vulnerability, wit and eloquence. I resonated with your “Christian” disclaimer and have often lamented in the same ways as a writer, a blogger, and especially as a…gasp…Christian, who doesn’t really want to be labeled as one in this small space that is my own and yet also the world’s.

It’s funny the way we use this word “Christian”. I don’t even know what it means any more, if I ever did. But I have this sneaking suspicion that those who are the really “Good Christians” are sometimes the really bad, and the “Bad Christians” somehow end up looking more like Jesus, which I guess really makes them actually quite good.

We try to make this being a Christian thing into a list of the do’s and don’ts lest you be sent to hell and yet it doesn’t seem as… one, two, three… as it did in Sunday School. There are no boxes to check off. No things we can do to earn what has already been freely given.

So I thank you for announcing that you are starting a church and I’ll throw one heavenward for you because as I know you’ll need all you can get. As a pastor’s kid who watched both my parents live “Church” for 10 years, I know that road is filled with many joys and many heartaches.

But I am constantly being reminded that “Church” is about people, not a building, offering, 10:00 AM-with-two-uplifting-songs-to-kick-it-off, thing. Church is the Body of Christ, which in non-Christianese means it’s the you, me, people in your living room, and all those dark, smelly, secrets that need beams of light and a Jesus-Scented Air Freshner. (I imagine that scent being kind of a sweaty-sandal, mixed with red grapes).

So here’s to you and your Christian blog – and I say that not as an insult. To me a Christian blog is humbly and vulnerably allowing the person of Jesus to shine through your words without even needing to write one single verse. And to that, I say maybe a Christian blog is not that bad after all.

Love Like a Hurricane

Let it be noted today that my life has forever changed. Toes, fingers, hair, hiccups, and yes even poop, all carry a weighty significance to it that I have never experienced before. In an exhilarating, terrifyingly, momentous moment in time, six pounds eleven ounces came into my life and forever smashed any and all misconceptions about the way things are, and forever more will be. Everyone always tells you that life will never be the same and you smile and say “I know” without any idea how completely this cliché phrase wrapped in diapers will rock your world.

She is my wife’s and my first, if you couldn’t already tell from the surprise in my voice that a little baby could change you so much. But two days and five hours of sleep later, Webster’s Dictionary seems to have gone up in flames as simple words now have completely new definitions.

PRAYER – something so holy and pious before, done in respect and esteem to the Lord, became something entirely different at 4:00 am when all I could see was blood and all I could hear was “heart rate dropping” and “umbilical cord wrapped around neck”. Prayer became a violent shout for help – a plea of desperation and expectation, not just for God to listen but for God to show up and act ASAP.

BEAUTIFUL – a word used for front covers of magazines was anything but air brushed as that first sign of baby became my truest definition of the word. The huddled, shivering, and crying mess covered in embryonic residue made the supermodel on a magazine cover look like a 1st grade crayon painting.

LOVE – the word most transformed of them all. How anemic was my understanding of love just three days before.
First, what it means to love my wife. Standing with her in what felt like the most helpless position of all time, offering nothing else but my hand and reminders to breathe, wishing nothing more than to ease her pain, the roots of my love for her moved deeper and further into the ground than I ever could have imagined. As a young couple dating years ago, professing our love in romantic bliss we had no idea what that word truly meant. I caught a glimpse of it that night.

Then my love for this little girl. The intensity of this love became very clear to me when I found myself standing over her, holding myself back from escorting the nurse out of the room who had the audacity to prick her with a needle and make her cry. Like a Grizzly bear standing over his cub, anything, I mean anything that wants to harm her is going to have go through me first.

Then another definition of love changed as I drove home from the hospital, John Mark McMillan’s “How He Loves” echoing through my speakers, bringing with it a flood of tears. The same song that I had listened to hours before as we drove to the hospital, now overwhelmed me with how profound and fierce God’s love is for me. Feeling the impact of being a father for the first time I caught a glimpse of what it must be like for him. His love is not mere poetry. It is a hurricane.

So I write this for many reasons a changed man. Join me and swim out into the fierceness and depth of God’s love and let the waves overtake you. They have me – and my life will never be the same.

Experiencing a Good Winter

A good winter? Is there such a thing? Like only experiencing “pressure” when you go to the dentist, a good winter seems quite the oxymoron. “Yes there was a tad bit of pressure when you injected that needle in my gums. Thanks for the heads up.”

Winter is harsh, unending, and unmerciful – at least in most places. As I sit in 80 degree California weather, not so much. But I remember well the Colorado mornings during adolescence, desperately attempting to scrape ice off my front windshield before my lungs shattered like the ice I was trying unsuccessfully to remove. Every breathe feeling like tiny icicle daggers were lodging themselves in the back of my throat. Oh yes I remember those winter mornings well, and I would not describe them as good.

Spring is the life of the party with flowers blossoming, birds chirping and grass growing. Winter is the season specifically designed to kill everything. What a Debbie-Downer. So how can winter actually be good?

A GOOD WINTER? BON IVER

Bon Iver is a music group, originally headed by one guy named Justin Vernon. In 2007 Bon Iver busted onto the music scene out of nowhere – literally. No band, no label, no record deal, just Justin singing his heart out in a cabin in the middle of Wisconsin.

The story of how Justin found himself at this place started with brokenness – his band broke up, his girlfriend Emma broke up with him, which broke him, as that kind of breaking usually does. Then his body officially broke, as he contracted mono.

So Justin left; left town, left his band, his friends, left the spot at the park he and Emma used to go, their pasta dish they shared every Tuesday – just left, pain and questions why – his only luggage. That and his guitar.

He went to a Wisconsin cabin in the dead of winter for three months and put all his questions into nine tracks of brutal beauty, offering it to her, For Emma, Forever Ago. Calling the experience and himself, Bon Iver, which is a slight variation for the French phrase, Good Winter.

“I…went up there because I didn’t know where else to go and I knew that I wanted to be alone and I knew that I wanted to be where it was cold.” – Justin Vernon

 

TRANSFORMATIVE WINTER

If there is no winter there is no spring, as death has to precede life. We know this. But it does not make the bitter cold any more enjoyable. As I listen to Justin sing over and over in the video below… What might have been lost, what might have been lost, someday my pain, someday my pain, I have to admit I can’t help but get a little teary-eyed.

My tears are for him, for the pain that breathed those words. My tears are for my own winter years ago when a love relationship I had was breaking up and I was breaking. A love relationship not with Emma, but with God.

I wrote for three years my own 160 page song of sorts that I titled To Be Determined.  Every answer felt pending, every truth out of reach. I was immersed in indefinable’s, hoping each word typed would bring definition. To be Determined. For God, Peace Forever Ago.

“Winter clears the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each more clearly, to see the very ground of our being.”  – Parker Palmer

But in my winter, pain birthed truth.

Questions, wisdom.

Loneliness, with an understanding of how real God’s love is as He met me on those bitter cold nights with a warm blanket.

I wrote, praying each word would bring life. And without fanfare, the frozen ground once only filled with decay, sprouted new green shoots, flowers forming in places that would’ve been unimaginable just months before. Winter became spring.

So if you’re sitting in what feels like an unending winter right now, know that God can turn a harsh winter into a beautiful spring.

The Miserable Ones

Do you hang out with any murderers? How about someone who just ordered somebody to be killed, but didn’t actually pull the trigger?

Any of them running around in your crowd? Coming over for dinner? Babysitting the kids?

Have you ever spent time with a hooker? (No, not in that way). How about someone who’s done 10 years for embezzling? Homeless person? Thief?

Yeah, I don’t hang out with any of these kinds of people either. No sir. Why would I? They wouldn’t be a good influence on me and my wife, and they’d make my reputation less than reputable.

I only want to really spend time with those people who are going to encourage and motivate me. I want my network to be a web of people geared at making me look better. I don’t want to take life advice from a murderer. That doesn’t seem too radical, does it?

BIBLICAL TRASH

Maybe you’re like me. Maybe your friends are strategically picked like a politician gearing up to run for senator. But those murderers, adulterers, embezzlers, homeless and prostitutes – isn’t it weird to think we wouldn’t have really hung out with many people from the Bible?

Let’s see no murderers – that means I couldn’t have gone out to coffee with Moses.

David ordered a murder, so couldn’t grab a bite with him either.

The Apostle Paul was a gang leader, watching over people get brutally killed with rocks, so probably wouldn’t invite him over for a game of cards.

Solomon, what like 200 wives?

Mary Magadelene, a woman who was known by more than one.

Elijah ordered about 450 people to be mowed down.

Yeah, I don’t think these people would have made it past their background check.

Now, I’m not saying we need to go downtown to see if Freddy the Butcher will be our buddy. But for those of us who call ourselves Christians, it’s interesting that our pillars of faith would have never even made it through our front door. For those who say they have a faith in Christ, it’s interesting to see how little we emulate his relationships.

Christ hung out with the lowest of the low, the untouchables, the dredges of society just barely above the rats that roamed the back alleys.

Attending church on Sunday filled with a room full of the successful, the shiny, and the happy, we fervently pray for the low just as Christ did (Just as long as we don’t have to personalize any of our prayers and actually associate with any of those people. I shutter at the thought).

MERCY AND FORGIVENESS

I was eighteen when I first read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. You probably know the beginning of the story. Jean Valjean is a criminal just released from prison,with nowhere to go, a bishop lets him, not only in for dinner, but a free bed for the night. And you see it coming a mile away when Jean Valjean steals the Bishop’s silver and busts out the back door like the bandit he is, never to return.

Well that is until the next morning when Jean Valjean is dragged by the local police back to the scene of the crime.

Facing the Bishop, the man who gave him not only food and a place to sleep, but respect, love, and the first reminder in years that he was more man than animal, Jean Valjean awaits the condemnation and damnation that surely awaits. But with redemption at its best, the Bishop lets him go scot free. And gives him the two silver candlesticks as well!

Before Jean Valjean can leave, the Bishop whispers to him. “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good.”

You would have to read the rest of the book to see what Jean Valjean does with his freedom, but know this; he saves many other lives along the way.

So let us all, myself definitely included, remember the miserable ones this year. Before we turn our heads to the suffering world refusing to offer any of our time, resources, or energy to ease it, let us think of the Bishop whose completely unmerited mercy saved the life of a man who would then go on to save many others.

Let us remember that we are the miserable ones as well. No matter how much makeup we put on or the suit jacket that goes around our shoulders, we have all been given the same gift of redemption. Let us pass it on.

“Some men are only virtuous enough to forget that they are sinners without being wretched enough to remember how much they need the mercy of God.” — Thomas Merton

 

 

Thanksgiving When You Don’t Feel Thankful

 

Thanksgiving is here once again. You sure wouldn’t know it with all the Christmas décor being hoisted up and I’ll be Home for Christmas crooning from the radio. Where are the songs preparing our hearts, minds, souls, and stomachs for the Thanksgiving spirit? We just haphazardly stumble into this day without any soundtrack, which doesn’t give us, the dead turkey, or the Pilgrims, due justice.

I think we need Thanksgiving carols. Maybe that would help all of us become more thankful when we sometimes don’t feel thankful at all.

THANK THIS!

We all know Holidays can be tough. While there’s obviously many reasons why this could be, I often wonder if it’s this nagging feeling of not living up the expectations of what that holiday is supposed to be. You know – love and Italian restaurants on Valentine’s. Nostalgia, presents, and Baby Jesus on Christmas morning. So full of turkey and thanks on November 26^th that you have to loosen your belt two notches as you fall into a blissful, grateful, fatty sleep.

So when you’re strolling on Eharmony on Valentine’s night with Sleepless in Seattle in the background or you feel like this year the turkey is coming after you, the standard Holiday lines of giving thanks couldn’t seem further from the truth.

MY CHRISTIAN COUNSELOR STINT

I remember all too well the Thanksgiving I knew I needed help. Anxiety was as thick as grandma’s brown gravy and I was slowly sinking under. So to a Christian counselor I crawled. After my problem-laden appeal for help, the counselor just smiled and said, “Well Paul, I think God’s trying to teach you what it means to be content in all circumstances. What is God trying to teach you here….”

I became short of breath as my airways officially clogged with gravy. There I was years ago sitting across from a counselor because I’d finally come to grips that my problems were up to professional status and she starts strapping on a Bible-Verse Band-Aid of Be content in all circumstances. She might have just started singing Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so… That will be $100 please, oh, oh, oh.

The problem with her advice was that I knew there was so much in my life that I needed to change. Did I really need to learn to be content in circumstances I knew I needed to leave?

FRUSTRATED? GOOD

I asked another church-going woman about all the frustration that I was feeling, expecting her to respond with a pray more, God is teaching you, yada…yada…yada

Instead she replied, “Good! I’m glad you’re so frustrated.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah sometimes God will allow you to become so dang frustrated, that you actually have to do something about it. If you were just content with where you’re at, then I’d be worried about you.”

It was a slap in the face with a side of relief.

BE CONTENT THAT YOU’RE FRUSTRATED?

Maybe we’re confusing being content in all circumstances with being content with all circumstances. I don’t think God wants us to stay in a terrible situation whether it’s a job, relationship, or place because he wants us to learn to be content with being miserable. Sure he wants you to find peace, joy, and love in that which is difficult. Sure, I still think that the ability to honestly give thanks when everything feels so contrary to it is a powerful medication.

But I also don’t think God wants us to remain in a miserable situation forever under the guise of fatherly learning.

So if you’re frustrated right now, maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s the cattle prod to move you to the destiny he wants you to walk in. Maybe it’s God’s appeal to you to make some serious changes. Maybe God’s just waiting there with open arms to wrap you in a warm towel the second you turn the other way.

So if it seems like giving thanks is the last thing you can do right now maybe it’s the signpost that change is needed. Instead of thanking him while sitting on the conveyer belt towards the fire, maybe he wants us to praise him while we jump off.

Maybe in this Thanksgiving season we’re actually frustrated for a Thank-God reason.

(Awesome. I think I have the first line of my Thanksgiving carol).

What Will You Do When You Grow Up?

A football player. A fire fighter. A ballerina, doctor, politician, lawyer, or President of the USA.

We all had our answer, to the question, concerning some far off world. Where all our dreams and talents converged into the rest of our amazing adult lives.

When I was a kid and my Aunt asked me about Future Adult Paul, I confidently told her I was going to play professional baseball. For the Colorado Rockies. But I was a bit of a realist even then. So I had a Plan B. If baseball didn’t work out, I told her I planned on winning the lottery. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

What was so funny?

Then college comes and goes and you realize. You start figuring the odds. You see how many people want the same dream. How many people can dance more gracefully, swing the bat better, solve the problem quicker. Your childhood dreams become just that, no longer space for them is this adult world.

Your Aunt asks again.

This time at your college graduation party.

You don’t know what to tell her.

“So what do you do?” It’s our conversation starter. Our flint. We hope it sparks a picture of this person. What job is you? A tough answer when your job, or lack of job, is anything but.

We are a culture of doers. Of accomplishers — of titles — of my car is faster than yours. My Facebook profile shines and sparkles with more gold medals and blue ribbons — and you should go ahead and commence feeling jealous.

Go ahead.

What do you do? Is this even the right question? Is our calling on this earth just about what we do? Or is it more? Is what we do as important as who we are?

“Maybe instead of asking what will you do, we should be asking what are we going to be when we grow up? Not what are we going to do, what profession are we going to follow or keep on following, what niche are we going to occupy in the order of things. But are we going to be – inside ourselves and among ourselves?” Fredrick Buechner

We are obsessed with doing. What about our being? Apart from any label, any name tag you might slap across your chest. In whatever space you occupy, when you’re doing nothing worth bragging, who will you be?

Huh, good question.

Anyone else have a disparity between what you thought you’d be doing and what you are? Thoughts?

I Love Jesus but I Drink a Little

When I heard an 88-year-old woman named Gladys Hardy on The Ellen DeGeneres Show say, “I love Jesus but I drink a little,” the rest for me was TV/biblical history.

Now you can buy an I Love Jesus but I Drink a Little t-shirt or even sport the I Love Jesus but I Drink a Little beer cozy, just like the disciples had at the last supper.

When Zondervan comes out with the I Love Jesus but I Drink a Little NIV Study Bible, I’m putting it atop my Christmas list.

Thank you Gladys for being you.

PASTOR, WHATCHUSAY?!

I wish some others who love Jesus were as funny and honest as Gladys Hardy. Have you ever gone to church and just wished that the pastor would just shock everybody with an amazingly true statement? “Thank you choir for leading that heartfelt version of Amazing Grace. Now if you’d all open your Bibles and join with me in a sermon I’ve titled I Don’t Understand 3/4th’s of the Bible Either!

Or if the pastor stood up in front of the crowd, “Hey everyone, I know you don’t want to be here. God knows, God really knows, that I don’t want to be here either. So how ’bout you guys just give your offering checks now and we’ll end this thing 50 minutes early? C’mon who’s with me?! I got a football in my trunk. How about a game of touch football in the park?! Come on everyone. Follow me! I call quarterback.”

THE TWILIGHT ZONE

Sometimes when I step into church I feel like I’ve entered some-sort of problem-free-parallel universe where everyone’s so hyped up on coffee, Winchell Donuts, and Jesus that there’s not a cloud, drop of rain, or speck of pollution in the sky.

But the first step outside in this breath-taking/stealing Los Angeles air, I’m going to be quickly reminded of the poisonous haze covering me. So is ignorance really bliss or should we actually be talking about all the problems that make up this “pollution” that surrounds us and then figure out ways to let Christ clean the air?

I mean we all have problems, don’t we? None of the church-goers, the pastor definitely included, are immune to them? If we are problem-free, why are we going to church in the first place? Why waste our time if we all share a collective perfection?

So maybe at church, we should talk about, you know, what’s really going in our lives. Maybe we should just let our hair down a little and get our hands a little dirty with the truth. I think so many Christians, especially those in my generation (today’s twentysomethings) are sick of the sleek, contrived production that is church. The marketed/branded/strategically planned church-spectacle (amazing video), that if the Spirit actually decided to show up he’d be quickly removed by the head ushers for not fitting into the church’s new, hip, branding statement.

WHY CHURCH?

And we wonder why twentysomethings like me are struggling to attend church. A study by The Barna Group (2006) revealed that “Despite strong levels of spiritual activity during the teen years, most twentysomethings disengage from active participation in the Christian faith during their young adult years—and often beyond that.” Obviously there are lots of reasons why this might be, but I’d argue one of the big ones is this longing for something real.

The study also showed that “Interestingly, there was one area in which the spiritual activities of twentysomethings outpaced their predecessors: visiting faith-related websites.” Why online communities like Free From Gravity and Plain Truth Ministries are so important and life-giving. Because they are honest.

Heck, I don’t know about you, but I’d love to walk into a church and have the guy at the door say, “Welcome to New Faith Church. We all love Jesus and we all drink a little. Come right in.”

Any body else think these kind of, I-wish-someone-would-just-say-it-like-it-is, thoughts at church? Or is it just me?

Man Vs Wild

His name is Bear Grylls. That’s right, Grizzly-Bear, “Throw-the-Steaks-on-the” Grylls. If his name were Man Manlison, he wouldn’t be manlier.

Bear Grylls started in the British special forces, climbed Mt. Everest at 23 years old (after he broke his back in three places), circumnavigated the United Kingdom on a jet ski and survives the harshest environments imaginable in the television show, Man Vs. Wild. If you haven’t seen this show on the Discovery Channel, your heart has a giant Bear-shaped-hole aching to be filled.

In the most memorable of episodes, Bear is in the desert and comes up to a pile of elephant dung. Bear then explains that elephant dung contains water. Bear is in the sweltering desert and quite thirsty. Bear picks up the elephant dung and hovers it over his mouth…No, please Bear. Don’t do it! Borrow some water from the camera guy…Nooo!!!

THE DESERT

I feel like Bear Grylls most days. Not in manliness. (No one’s calling me Panther). No, I feel like I got dropped off in the desert, but my camera crew forgot about me. The desert for me has been unemployment, a lack of purpose, a shortage of any real tangible success I can hold on to. Opportunities galore seemingly up for grabs, and yet, my hands stuck in pockets full of super glue.

The one dream I tried the hardest to turn into a desert-oasis, having a non-fiction manuscript published titled, Are You My Life?: Searching for Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job. The book — sorry I mean the manuscript, is my frank, funny, and authentic story of faith, identity, and purpose. I specify manuscript because book means you’ve made it — manuscript means, keep dreaming. If someone’s reading your book, they bought it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. If someone’s reading your manuscript, they’ve just stolen your computer from your coffee shop seat when you went to relieve yourself, and while waiting for the pawnshop owner, the hoodlum perused the first page.

For months and months and months my manuscript made it to the hands of many different publishers. And for months and months I prayed my phone would ring with a congratulations from someone else other than a timeshare salesman in regards to a prize I could claim, “If you’ll just come down and hear a short presentation.”

Unfortunately, he was the only one.

So why me and why the desert? Well maybe the answer’s in the Bible. Crazy, I know.

DESERT-REDEMPTION

Throughout the arc of the Bible countless people are forced to the desert. Not just metaphorically as people like me like to complain, but literally in the burning sand and vultures waiting for you to become well-done.

It started with Adam and Eve – the starkest of all desert experiences as paradise must of played in their dreams every night. Then there was Abraham, David, even Jesus was “led by the Spirit” to spend forty days and forty nights alone in the desert. Jesus, the original Bear Grylls?

Then of course there’s Moses and the entire Jewish population in their little jaunt through the wasteland. But Moses just didn’t spend forty years in the desert, he spent eighty! Before leading the Israelites he spent forty years prior with the Midians in “a dry and arid place,” similar to the desert he’d lead his people through. As Os Hillman writes,

The desert was a place of preparation for one of the greatest assignments given to one man. Did you hear what I just said? Yes, the desert was the place of preparation. Moses was battle-trained in the same environment he would spend another forty years to bring a stubborn and willful people out of slavery.

What kind of assignment is God preparing you for? Does He have you in the desert of preparation? Learn well the lessons you are there to learn. You may find you are called   to be a deliverer, just like Moses.

This gives me solace and hope as I feel forgotten, sweaty and unable to swallow. Maybe God’s not punishing us desert-dwellers, he’s preparing? Maybe God’s purpose for you — like Moses, can only be forged in the difficult, in the dire. There’s something significant that happens to us when we are void of what we depended on.  As Dallas Willard writes,

All great works are prepared in the desert, including redemption of the world. The precursors, the followers, the Master himself, all obeyed or have to obey one and the same law. Prophetic, Apostles, preachers, martyrs, pioneers of knowledge, inspired artist  in every art, ordinary men and the Man-God, all pay tribute to loneliness, to the life of  silence, to the night.”

No water, no food, and no shade, it’s easy to die in the desert. No doubt about it. When we’re eyeing a heaping pile of elephant poop to stay alive, it puts things in perspective. But if we can trust God to keep us alive in the desert, in the most unlivable, I think we can trust Him to keep us alive anywhere.

“Behold I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth…I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19

Are You Good With What You’re Good At?

Is it okay to know we’re good at what we’re good at?

Are we all so bent on self-improvement that we forget about the parts that are already improved? I know I do. But if we are going to be truly honest with ourselves we must put both our weaknesses under the microscope, as well as our strengths.

Well, where do I excel the most? Am I utilizing these strengths at work? At home?

As I began to wrestle with these questions, I realized I knew less about what I was good at than where I was lousy. Weird, right? You would think knowing what you are talented at and then building upon those talents would be as simple and straightforward as a chef baking a pie. But how many of us must give ourselves permission to be truly talented at something? We spend so much time focusing on and trying to bring that “D” up in math, we hardly think about the “A” in English.

Growing up in a Christian subculture where there is much more emphasis placed on being sufficiently cloaked in humility, it is still hard for me to give myself this kind of permission. I think many Christians, myself included, immerse ourselves in a false-humility where we feel like we should never feel too good about ourselves, lest we be judged.

But why don’t we extend credit to ourselves where credit is due, then take time to build on those talents? It is in those places where we already feel the most apt that we will actually approve upon the most and be able to make the biggest contributions. It is also in those places where our actions will make us feel the most alive. Instead of consistently beating ourselves up for where we fall short, what if we consistently built upon a strong foundation lying right in front of us.

“Building on your strengths isn’t necessarily about ego. It is about responsibility” (Marcus Buckingham).

God has made me very specifically with distinct strengths and talents. Therefore, by failing to build on what he has given am I not then failing to worship him by best utilizing his design?

Only by operating out of authentic personal being will I be able to offer sustaining, nourishing substance to others, as well as myself. God created me for a reason, so why do I keep trying to downplay what that reason is?

So what are your strengths? Be honest with yourself – the bad as well as the good. What do you say?

Or do you think am I completely off here?

Who’s Calling? Vocation and Calling in a Changing World

What is calling? What is vocation? Both are such broad terms they fill an entire canvas with faint beige – I know it’s there, but I can’t really see it.

I struggled out of college trying to find my “calling” and my life’s vocation, a search that kept ending in frustration and dead-ends. It seemed my calling was a box full of odd-shaped puzzle pieces and frankly, I highly dislike puzzles. They’re up there with a blister on the back of your heel as you walk in dress shoes.

So when my calling seemed to be this complex concoction of pieces with none of them fitting together and no picture on the box to go by, the frustration set in. So like all puzzles, my calling stayed in the back of the hall closet never to be seen again.

I thought God had big plans for my life, so why couldn’t I even find answers in the small? I thought my calling would take me around the world, so why was I getting lost trying to even find my home?

CALLING AND VOCATION DEFINED

But over the course of this last year, now four years since I walked that college graduation stage, I’m realizing how true the words are that “vocation does not come from willfulness, it comes from listening” (Parker Palmer). Vocation does not come from forceful action, but from understanding what the everyday details of our lives are whispering. Calling comes from a deep understanding of who I am and who God is – and finding permanence in both those truths.

Vocation is so much larger than a job, more complex than a title, more intrinsic than a name that someone else gives us. Calling is not based on a job; it is based on our deeply rooted identity. To live our vocation is to live an intrinsic calling that transcends circumstance and status.

We must reorient our ideas that calling is only met through a specific activity or role in this world. Our calling will include roles and activities, yes, but it is so much greater, fuller, and richer. Calling and vocation are your entire life, not just a portion of it. Calling is not just one big thing that we have to force together; it’s a million small pieces masterfully woven together.

Fulfilling our calling does not need to be grandiose to be worth meeting. It does not need to be saving millions of lives to be worthy of our efforts. It does not need to be met in one specific, rigid way. The best-served vocation is simply where “your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meets” (Buechner). A simple definition, yet so complex.

To begin down the path of vocation we must begin by asking the right questions of ourselves, to discover the right answers. We must tell ourselves the truth of who we are, and who we are not.

MY LIFE’S CALLING

Therefore here’s my calling. To be a man who lives with passion from his passion, inhaling God’s breath to breathe into others through my words, my writing, my leadership, my influence, my time, my resources, my prayers, and my whole being.

In whatever job, no matter how mundane or grandiose, in whatever niche I occupy on this Earth, this is my calling.

What’s your calling?

Any ideas?

Paradox of Paradise

Paradise seems pretty straight-forward. I mean, its paradise. What’s so paradoxical about that?

As I walked through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, nothing seemed paradoxical at all. If you’ve never been, go ahead and take the rest of the week off. Your boss will understand.

The grandeur of the place is almost overwhelming: the trees, scents, waterfalls, and landscape all seemingly imported from another world. As I walked through paths like a child discovering colors, I could not imagine a much more heavenly place.

…That was, until I went to the restroom.

Ripe and blossoming with stench, it was like Dodgers Stadium had made a deal and traded one of its restrooms to Golden Gate Park for a couple palm trees. Why is that the most beautiful places sometimes have the most disgusting bathrooms?

Taken back by the sharp contrast, I ran out of the bathroom and hurried to the nearest flowerbed to fill my senses again with all that is good.

As I looked down, I was surprised by another paradox.

Surrounded by serenity, apparently immorality still existed.  Accidentally wander off with one of these plants and have a S.W.A.T team busting down your front door at 3 A.M.

WHAT A PARADOX

As I continued walking through the park, I began thinking of all the paradoxes in my own life; of all those beautiful moments that somehow turned ugly. The relationships I was so sure about, only to end in tears in the front seat of a car. The opportunities that I was confident were tele-porting me into my destiny, only to run smack into a brick wall. Can you relate?

But then I started thinking about the opposite. If filth can exist amongst such beauty, then the flip-side must also be true — beauty must also be found in the ugly. In those moments that seem so dark and dingy, there must be glimmers of light. In the bleak, hope still lives. In the trash heaps, flowers must grow. Grace and mercy thrive where there first was pain.

Beauty and filth hardly exist void of the other. There is beauty all around us. And there is ugliness. There is healing. And there is pain. Manure is poured around and then a beautiful garden grows. Death and life can be seen in the same plant, on the same day. Which one we really see then, maybe is up to us?

And I think; we need to see both. In this paradox of paradise that we call Earth, we can’t hide our eyes from either. Because both the beauty and the ugly are real, and both have something to teach us. Each side declares something about redemption, in their own way. The dirty bathrooms and the blossoming flowers.

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”  ~ Fredrick Buechner

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What do you think of this paradox of paradise?