Freckles

Yet another detail I wouldn't have thought to include if I were in charge of creating the universe

I love when this happens

With "this" in the above meaning "when your friend Sarah convinces you to substitute carob for chocolate, then you learn that carob is Biblical."

Don't believe me? Check out wikipedia:

[Carob] is probably also mentioned in the New Testament, in which Matthew 3:4 reports that John the Baptist subsisted on "locusts and wild honey"; the Greek word translated "locusts" may refer to carob pods, rather than to grasshoppers.

Giddyup!

Equal rights to verbs

My roommate Zac just went downstairs "to study." As he's not in school or studying for any school admissions exam, I was a bit perplexed. For what else do you study?

Then he said he was studying the Bible. "I would have used the verb 'read'," I told him.

Then we both realized that wasn't fair to the verb "study." Why does it have to be confined to school stuff?

So yeah, we think you should be able to talk about studying the Bible. Or a particular drink recipe. Or fantasy football statistics. Or the history of Batman's sometimes tenuous relationship with Nightwing. Or...whatever.

How would Jesus deal with canvassers every day?

That's what I want to know

I also say "munce" instead of "months"

When I was a kid, I figured I'd go to Heaven as long as I got through life without cursing 100 times or more.

What I never counted on was an inability to properly pronounce words with "sk" in them,
An overwhelming ability to pronounce "sk" words as "ss" onces,
And that "asked" would be one of those words I say 78 times daily.

So here's hoping I was wrong with that >100 curses = eternal life hunch.

What asthma has taught me

Sometimes I think my whole life was ruined by growing up with an inhaler. I mean this not because the inhaler is representative of asthma, asthma has made me weaker, etc, but because the inhaler works so darn well. Two puffs of medicine and my breathing problems are gone. It’s an instant fix.

Problem is, I’ve been using an inhaler since I was eight and somewhere along the lines I think I expect all results to be so instant. All medication should work that fast, I should be able to prepare for a marathon in a third of the time it takes everyone else and why do I have to keep waiting for this job promotion?

Plus, what takes my prayers so long to work? Will they ever work? Can’t God just snap his fingers and make things happen? What is taking so long?

Look, it’s hardly news that Christians can be impatient. We’re not immune to that problem (or any earthly problem, for that matter). But as I’ve written before (and I will doubtlessly write again), we need to think of things in God’s time. He’s the God of patience, who wants everyone to come to repentance. We just need to remember it happens on his time, not ours…which is a good thing. Sometimes the result of prayer is immediately obvious. Other times it takes a while. Thing is, as impatient as I can be for things to happen right now, I think it’s cooler when it takes a while. Like, I’m praying for growth in a certain facet of life and as I’m seemingly not growing at all, He is building me up. How awesome is that??? Like, I’m sitting at my desk not feeling any growth, but I know He’s working on me. Man, I love that.

All of which is a long way of saying:
1. I need to be more patient;
2. When I’m not patient, I need to remind myself that God is working on it; and
3. I needn’t worry about the result…He has a much better idea of how to do things than I do (smiley face)

I just need to know

Let's say you're seated in the middle of the row.
Let's say you wish to get up to take communion.
Let's say you wait until the second song to do this.
Let's say the two girls next to you are thick in eyes closed, exalted arms raised worship...

What's the procedure here? Are you supposed to tap them on the shoulder, break their meditation and ask to be let out? Slide by them without touching? Hop down two rows -- not an easy task -- so as to avoid disturbing them?

These are the things I wonder about.

Confession time

When I took flights as a kid, I used to look out the window thinking I'd be able to see Heaven somewhere in the clouds

God and the canines

Sometime during the boring drudgery of Mr. Marinell's high school English class, I taught myself to be dyslexic. Most people try to avoid this learning disability; I sought it out. True story. Hey, I've never been accused of being conventional.

I sat in the back of the classroom reading words from right to left (note: this is why I excel in the Cranium "GNILLEPS" category). Most of the results were fairly unproductive. For every "TARA is 'A RAT' spelled backwards" revelation, there were a hundred "INSTANT is 'TNATSNI' " types.

Every once in a while I'd read something interesting. DENNIS is SINNED. EVIL is LIVE. And, most importantly, DOG is GOD.

For a long time I thought of the dog-God parallel this way:
My dog loves me. He's never, ever sad or indifferent towards me. All I feel from him is love.

Now I'm trying to learn more from Dog = God:
Anyone who's ever seen me drive knows I'm not a patient person. It applies to other walks of life as well. Why is this taking so long? don't you want to get there faster? Why is Aspect X of my life taking so long to develop?

But now I'm trying to think of it in God's time. To Him, the time I have to wait for a job promotion is no time at all. Three more years to get my PhD after graduate school? Also not a long period of time (though it sounds like a small eternity to me).

So how can an impatient, I-want-results-and-I-want-them-now person like myself come to grips with God's time? I can think of my dog. See, to him (or any animal), time is moving faster than it is for us. We've all heard it: one human year is seven dog years. You know that feeling when you return from work and your dog treats you like he hasn't seen you in years? And you can't understand why he's so excited, because it's not like it's been that long? That's with a seven to one ratio. Now imagine God's ratio with us: eternity to one. Here's hoping that thought can (mind) (mind) me of God's timing.

I wonder if the Rose Garden was in 2 Samuel somewhere

You know that feeling when you were a little kid and your school was on the local news? I think I found the church equivalent. There, I was, innocently reading Judges 4, when I stumbled upon verse 6:

She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Napthali and said to him, "The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: 'Go, take with you ten thousand men of Napthali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor.'

If you don't think I said "Mount Tabor" aloud while exaltedly lifting my arms over my head, you don't know me very well.

Mystery Question of Life

When an atheist's sneeze is followed with "God Bless You," does that bother them? Always wondered that.

Mystery question of (after)life

When you sneeze in Heaven, do people bother saying "God Bless You"? Or is it a bit redundant by that point?

"Turned right to it"

Remember how your teachers in grade school used to make you "open up your textbook to page 87"? And remember how much of a thrill it was when the fates aligned with your fingers and you "turned right to it"? And how you then needed to tell everyone in earshot?

I think the adult version of this is when the pastor tells you to turn to a certain Bible chapter and it happens to be the one you're reading. Like, at last night's Ash Wednesday service, the reading was from Deuteronomy 8...which I happened to have gone through on Tuesday. Giddyup! I wanted to leap up from my seat in the second pew, turn to the rest of the congregation, and say "hey, I'm reading that!"

It seemed kind of out of place with the whole Ash Wednesday thing, though.

Awkward things that happen at church

• Person next to you has eyes closed, you want to get by to take communion
• You drop the body of Christ in the wine glass. What are you supposed to do in that situation? Always wondered about that.
• Person next to you tries to lift up his/her arms to Christ, but hits you instead
• You spot a person who pretended to put money in the offering
• Singing the wrong words. Funny on any occasion, but even better when people are saying things like “lion and the clam”

Happy New Year!

Please don't let anything happen to her

(Note: This is kinda long but I promise it eventually relates to the gospel.)

Talk to me for long enough and you're sure to hear about my toeing-the-line-between-healthy-and-unhealthy crush on Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles. Beautiful voice, perfect dressy/thrift storey style combination, always seems like she's both sincere and having fun, wonderful stage presence...She even plays the tambourine (how cool is that?). She had me the first time she said "ah" (I). I'm like a PG version of those early 90s black and white Denis Leary commercials on MTV where he would obsess about Cindy Crawford. And you know what? I'm fine with that.

What I'm not fine with is where I fear her career is headed. This girl is about to be wicked famous (not always a good thing). First there was the duet with Bon Jovi. Then the tour with Kenny Chesney. Suddenly they're receiving a standing ovation at this year's Country Music Awards, culminating in the CMA for Best Duet (an award Brooks and Dunn had won six years in a row). Now JN is being picked up in the non-country world, where publications like the Boston Globe are lauding her as being "poised for breakout stardom."

In short, we're only about six months away from google searches where half the results for her name bring back sites called "Jennifer Nettles is hottttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!" Sigh.

Have you ever loved someone you've never met? Where there's just something about him or her that speaks to you, that makes you think you could be friends? But the problem is that we're not friends. There's no advice I can give her, nothing I can do to keep her away from the lures of stardom and power. All I can do is sit here and hope that nothing happens to her.

It strikes me that this has to be similar to how parents must feel about children --
Please don't let anything happen to them.
Please let them stay innocent.

On a deeper level, it must be how God feels about us, at least to some degree. We're His children, people He loves, people for whom He desires the very best. He doesn't want anything to happen to us.

Somewhere along the way, we screw it up. We stop believing in His plans for us, we try to go our own way, we squander our lives on things we can't take with us to the grave. We grow proud in our own spirituality and lead others away from their faith. It's not always pretty.

Yet in spite of our selfishness, He extends us the offer: simply accept Jesus as our savior, and all will be forgiven. When I think of passages like the parable of the Prodigal Son, it warms my heart, makes me eternally grateful and filled with hope for others. Even when something does "happen" to us, we can find salvation in the Lord. We are saved.

I know it's cliche to write words like this but that doesn't make them any less true. It is so freaking awesome to feel that love. That's the most important thing of all. After all, if God is for us, who can be against us?

What I could have sworn I heard someone say the other day when they were actually saying "Amen"

"Hey man."

Seemed like a weird way to end a prayer.

Confession

When I'm taking communion, I try to take as big a piece of the body of Christ as possible.

Does that make me a bad Christian?

I'm kind of a big deal

If you go to the Imago Dei website right now -- I'll even make it easy for you. Click here -- you'll see your fearless leader under the "A Deeper Look" section. Oh yeah.

Life according to Kenny Chesney lyrics

My man Kenny Chesney (who even three months ago I would have derided but who I'm now comfortable calling my man) sings this song "Beer in Mexico" that's been fairly constant in my head over the past couple months. The idea is that Chesney is at this crossroads of his life (he even says as much...actually those are his exact same words) and is trying to figure out where to go next. He's too old to be wild and free but too young to be over the hill. He's asking all these questions before feeling overwhelmed (my interpretation) and saying "screw it, I'm going to sit on the beach, have a beer and worry about this tomorrow."

Anyway, the song builds to a point where Chesney asks "Should I settle down and get married or stay single and stay free?" I'm not sure if I'd ever admit it, but I've totally felt these lyrics before. Marriage = social death. No more friends, no more staying up late. Buying houses, having to spend like $200 on things like blinds and shower curtains. Dinner parties. Pot luck. Shopping. Talking about my day. Was it a good day today or a bad day today? Well what kind of day was it?

Staying single = freedom. Doing what I want. Spending money on me. Eating foods I like, never devoting more than 11 minutes to preparing a meal. Coming home and watching four straight episodes of Prison Break not because I think it's a great show, but just because I can. Emailing for hours. Reading blogs. Occasional loneliness but it's certainly offset by the freedom.

Um...what has become very obvious to me (and which is even more obvious on e-paper) is that "freedom" isn't so much being free as it is being self-centered. Me me me. I can't get outside of myself. Yikes.

This is not to say that marriage is the answer to avoiding self-centeredness. As I learned (or at least heard a sermon about) long ago, marriage is not the answer to all of life's ills. Instead, I need to focus on drawing closer to God. True freedom lies in giving my life to Him, not in being able to play video games whenever I want. What I'm doing is not good enough.

Giddyup

So here we are. It's true.

I begin a lot of sentences with "so" these days. I'm not sure when this whole disproportionate pattern began. When I studied abroad nine years ago -- that was nine years ago! -- I was all about "well" as a sentence starter. I remember sitting around a Tasmanian hostel with some buddies and noticing that they, too, had begun their journals with "well" as in "Well, this is it", or "Well, I'm 30,000 feet up" or "Well I sure wish the guy next to me had packed some deodorant." Sometime in the last decade, I cut the length of that transient word from four letters to two. Score one for minimalism.

Anyway, this is post #1 of hopefully many for the Northwest Home Community at Imago Dei Community Church in Portland, Oregon. Yes, there are churches in Portland and yes, we occasionally try to broadcast our beliefs to the outside world. We're like AM jazz stations in that way.

The purpose of this blog is to allow community members to express themselves on paper (or e-paper) anyway. While many of us live in a world of talk talk talk, there are others of us who function better through reflection. This is not to say that people are either mute and writery or loud but allergic to the keyboard. It's just meant to say that this is a blog for HC members and they can do with it as they please. So there.