Service Project for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

I’m sure I know what some of you may say. Have I sold-out (in all meanings of the word)?

Maybe I have. I’d like to provide a thoughtful response to that question, but I know what it sounds like. It always sounds like the answer is yes.

Next time, I’ll be more involved to help out the logistics. We had some minor issues that complicated certain aspects. Why will I help? Because the Fire Department wanted to do this project before he knew the church I attend wanted to do anything. Point is, someone was going to do this project and for the sake of my children, I’m glad it was us. My family does a lot of deaf and hard of hearing awareness projects and those are wonderful. However, I really want my son to be a part of something where he is a participant, not a beneficiary. When he met the Fire Chief and climbed on a real firetruck, it was a beautiful moment indeed.

Next time the free smoke alarm project will be bigger and we will be coordinating with other churches in the city. I look forward to that. Again, there are enough things we as a family do with the larger fellowship of believers that I want the children to see that we do the same thing at our church, too. They both love church very much and I really want them to see that, when we choose to serve, no one fights for ownership. Instead people come together for the common good of others.

More important than my personal ramblings, people were helped. It’s dry this winter and there are lots of fires just in January alone. The dusting of snow today doesn’t help very much, but the hope that loss of life is minimized does help. Until another four months pass, that’s all the news that’s fit to type.

I’d like to think that it is a function of being an eternal optimist. Beautiful as that thought is, though, the issue is simply that I am lazy.

So, I thought a while before I titled something Starting Over because I find that I post something like it about every 10 months.

Still, there is something outside of me that is motivating the change this time: my son. He has really latched on to the idea that the food panty in our little church needs to feed other children. He consistently wants to bring food to it, despite what I might consider a lack of money.

On Sunday, he brought a box of pasta. This wasn’t the 98 cent box, but the stuff he likes – the comparatively pricey multi-colored, vegetable based pasta. At the store, he chose penne pasta for the pantry because that is his favorite.

This week, we are going to the store to bring about $30 groceries to the food pantry, partly due to his eager request. He has a list of things that are ‘missing’ that he plans to find at our local grocer.

I used to think about the Bible stories we read every morning and wonder if he understood what he read. Now, I wonder in the other direction. Today, he asked me to forgive him for having a hard heart.

A bit of context, we don’t say I’m Sorry much in our house. For things that are not purely an accident, we say do you forgive me for fill-in-the-specific-offense-here? I was expecting to hear Do you forgive me for disobeying you? When I heard him mention his own hard heart, I realized that he heard a lot more of the midweek last week than I thought. Family midweeks aren’t usually like that, but it was a surreal night for a lot of us.

Back to the point, I’m starting over again.

This time, I’m putting away my projects of teaching another adult class, work on the library and some of the Sunday Night service plans. My son wants to build a food pantry, so that is what we are going to do.

Together.

Not only did I drop some rss feeds, but I erased any record in my history or favorites of even more sites that I frequented, but didn’t have RSS feeds. A sampling of sites dropped includes:

The Thinklings
DisciplesToday.org
The ICC Discussion Forum
Several church websites of various denominations
Rob Bell

I thought that a vast majority would come from within my own denomination, but it seems to be more widespread than that. So far, the only criteria I have is the site had a lot of things that hurt my heart in bad ways.

What that means is that I want to follow someone that hurts my heart in the right ways. Something stirs my heart to change or reconsider (Matthew 18:3). Something hits my heart and gives me an opportunity to take a sober estimate of some aspect of my walk with God (1 Thessalonians 5:8, NAS). Something just rings true that is sad (Ecclesiastes 7:3).

It’s no mystery to anyone that knows me that various Church of Christ sites hurt my heart in bad ways. No sense in detailing it too much, suffice it to say that I get deeply angry/sad many times reading certain sites. I think the last straw for me came from a thread on the ICC discussion forum about vocabulary. After I posted a few peculiarities that I remembered, the thread author posted a comprehensive list of suggestions.

Seeing the list of my stilted vocabulary that I used in what I thought was spiritual speech just made me cry. Some items represented words I used to hurt others. A few represented things I saw used against others as weapons instead of encouragement. I don’t say this against the thread author in any way – it’s the memories I have that hurt, not the list itself.

Broadening out from that, I saw more hurtful words on other sites as well. Tone is hard to convey in a written medium, but some of the things said in the name of “speaking the unvarnished truth” was just an excuse for being mean.

God is not mean. Mean is not the same as jealous. Rebukes are not mean. There was a time when I would call someone a rank heretic of a psuedo-calvinist stripe, but I hope that I have put those childish things behind me. The point is, that there is enough meanness in the world and I have decided that I do not want to willingly partake in any more mean in the name of God.

It’s fair at this point to mention that I also got rid of other sites that seem to prey on fear in the name of news. It may surprise you to learn that I tend to get news from Al-Jazeera, Reuters, and one of the local stations in town. Yes, I even dropped the BBC, but that may have more to do with Dr. Who than news.

I’m not better than anyone. I’ve done the same thing multiple times on this site. It’s just that I really cannot intentionally pierce my own soul anymore. My son does not care about Douglas Jacoby being banned from certain churches or repeated calls for a spiritual enforcement mechanism. My daughter is not outraged that Linsday Lohan is not in jail. My daughter could also care less about Rick Warren or Harold Camping or Bart Ehrman. Neither of my children wrestle with the concept of convincing avowed atheists of the logical supremacy of the concept of middle knowledge.

My son, upon hearing about earthquakes in Japan, went to his toy workbench and built a machine to make toys for children in Japan that lost their homes. If the water level rise much more, he and my daughter will probably want to help stack sandbags along the Missouri River.

When Jesus said that we had to change and become more like children, I think this is what he meant. For me, I have spent too much time damaging myself for no good reason. I’ve become indifferent to the suffering of those around me and to the needs of my family wrestling over matters of no import.

Proverbs 4:23 says Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Today and everyday, I want to choose life.

I’ll be in NC for half of May.

I have no hidden agenda. This is not a trap. I simply do not understand this. What do you think it means?

http://www.disciplestoday.org/content/view/2762/46

How We Got the Bible is what I called the class at first. Since then, however, we’ve talked about all kinds of things. One odd example concerns why I held up Mark 8:24 signs at sporting events when I was in college. Outside of some the the stranger elements, we have also covered topics about how to share the gospel with others, the study of other religions (like Islam, Sikhism, LDS), English translations of the Bible, and what does it mean when two documents have a 3% textual variance between them.

I’d like to think that it was somewhat educational – I admitted up front that some of the material I was presenting was over-simplified. The reason was that we were going to cover a lot of ground in 10 weeks. Still, I’d really thing the material is fair and something of value to others.

To that end, I hope to post about our classes and share them with everyone. If I had to give the class a title, I would have to go with How We Got Here from There. Each class, “There” changed from the beginning of time, the birth of John the Baptist, the first English Bible or our individual conversions. “Here”, however, stayed the same. It is always today. Starting with the beginning of time, how did we get the Old Testament we have today. Starting from 1991 (my conversion), how did I get to what I believe and practice today?

I gave out a ‘cheat’ word that was the correct answer for just about every question. That will come next time.

Christmas came the next day, there was joy in the house.
I got a new game and my wife got a blouse.
The children were happy but were never quite sure
Of the mogrified thing that was sprawled on the floor.
The misshapen lump was just full of surprises,
It had five shiny wheels, each of them different sizes.
And seats for two kids faced in opp’site directions,
A flag on the kickstand and a missing midsection.
Over its circumference stuck rolls of duct tape,
The kids were so grateful, they just stood mouths a-gape.
Fueled by my coffee and lack of good sense,
I thought I was clever to avoid high expense.
Fathers take heed of the price that was paid
Don’t be a cheapskate, buy the presents pre-made!

I’m grateful to have a warm home full of love,
My family and friends are each gifts from above.
I hope you are cheered by my fictional plight,
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Interesting time learning about the prophets last week. Hope to write about it soon.

I am sick today and have been for about three days. My wife has taken the kids and largely left me alone in the basement to recover. I say three days, that’s how long I’ve been completely out of it and in bed. I’ve been on autopilot for about three weeks now. I get that way sometimes because of the sleep apnea.

After the children fell asleep last night, my wife shared with me the story of our son and his adventures throughout the day. There was a trip to Michael’s (the craft store) where he say lots of stickers and other cool things. He was eager to get all kinds of things. Then there was the trip next door to a huge bookstore. He saw lots of books he wanted. I also learned that they have the mother-of-all wooden train set-ups for children to play with. Both of my children spent a lot of time playing with the trains. After purchasing a few books, they all loaded up to visit a friend’s house. My wife had some Hands and Voices business to attend to, but my son knew their son from preschool. There was a bit of time playing before heading over to Whole Foods. At Whole Foods, they got a small treat and headed home. Once home, I watched a Bob the Builder video with both of them before getting ready for bed.

Being sick, I didn’t notice the oddity until my wife mentioned it to me: He wore a bee costume the entire time.

It’s one thing to look different in a crowd – my son is used to that because of his ear tags and hearing aid. Wearing a bee costume made him stand apart even more. (That and when he wears it, his hearing aid has to sit on his temple instead of behind his ear – otherwise the feedback is audible at a 30 foot range.)

Add to this my son’s obvious enthusiasm about bees. He loved bees. He sang songs all day long about how bees make honey. He sang about his love of honey in tea. He sang about how bees get nectar from flowers. He sang about his beautiful black and yellow stripes. He sang about all the virtues of being a bee.

According to my wife, he got some rather odd looks at the bookstore. I’m sure that she got a few as well. Personally, I would have wanted to don a bee costume myself and join him.

In thinking about it, I know the source of this expression is not rooted in how he sees himself. In other words, my first impression was that he figured that since he looks different anyway, he might as well look *very* different. My son is self-conscious about his hearing loss, but that is not the source of wearing the bee costume. No, he simply loves bees and is not bashful about it. He has no concern about *your* reaction to bees, but it would be nice if you sand a bee song with him. Nothing on earth will diminish his love for bees – in fact, he slept in the costume last night. If he had wanted, I would have let him wear it to church today.

I want to have the same enthusiasm my son has. Not just about books or games or football, but about God. It’s more than being grateful and reprogramming my mind to look to God’s blessings and promises instead of the world. I understand that aspect of being transformed by a renewing of the mind. What I’m looking for is less deliberate. In addition to that, I would like to simply enjoy God. I want to have the songs. I want the attitude that says ‘join me if you like — or not.’

Unlike a lot of folks I know, I don’t think I’ve ever had it. I have a lot of issues that deal with my time in the ICoC (past and present), but this is not one I can attribute to it. Even after my conversion, I was happy and I enjoyed my faith, but I didn’t have the songs and I certainly didn’t have the attitude. This is a different heart, one I’ve never had in my walk with God.

I’ve prayed a lot about wanting something different. I’ve prayed a lot about going back to the things I did before because there doesn’t appear to be a different goal to strive for. I mean, I know that there is a better way to be a Christian than doing and being what I was from 1991 – 2001.

Now, I think I know what it looks like.