Basketball

So I joined a YMCA basketball league. Game two was tonight. We lost. I knew it was time to sit down when I caught the ball and heard an opposing player say, Just let him shoot. Apparently the best defensive strategy was to allow me to buy into the mindset that if I kept shooting eventually they would start to fall. Didn't really ever happen. So sad. This is what years of playing basketball has come down to. Oh well. Still good to get out and run a bit.

Easter reflections

My hope is that you had a great Easter, celebrating the reality of the resurrection.  Of all the things that happened on Sunday morning, while gathered as the body for worship, one thing in particular stood out.  After the sermon, while we were responding in worship through song and communion, I happened to see this elderly man a few rows up from me.  It was one of those moments where my participation in worship was increased through seeing someone else worship the risen Lord!  This man, who was probably in his 80's, had such expectancy and joy.  His hands were trembling as they were lifted out in worship.  His entire body was caught up in worship.  Though his body was old and frail, he had such strength and vitality.  There was just this longing in his entire being.  He was so excited.  In that moment, I could see the power of the resurrection...not just something we get when we die, but eternal life we get even now!  This man, who is probably closer to the end of his life than most who were there, seemed to have more life than I often do.  The empty tomb wasn't just something he believed cognitively, but something that he was experiencing right there in the gym of the YMCA.  This is the beauty and wonder of the gospel...it infuses both this life and the life to come with ultimate meaning and satisfaction. 

Along these lines, I read this quote by N.T. Wright (as quoted in The Reason for God)...it poses a great challenge for those of us who have experienced the power of the resurrection in our own lives...

The message of the resurrection is that this world matters!  That the injustices and pains of this present world must now be addressed with the news that healing, justice, and love have won...If Easter means Jesus Christ is only raised in a spiritual sense--then it is only about me, and finding a new dimension in my personal spiritual life.  But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes good news for the whole world--news which warms our hearts precisely because it isn't just about warming our hearts.  Easter means that in a world where injustice, violence and degradation are endemic, God is not prepared to tolerate such things--and that we will work and plan, with all the energy of God, to implement victory of Jesus over them all.  Take away Easter and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring problems of the material world.  Take it away and Freud was probably right to say Christianity is wish-fulfillment.  Take it away and Nietzsche probably was right to say it was for wimps.

Joel gets his Chipotle on

Dad date goes to the movies

Making O.J.

Bath time

A Stepford God

If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God?  In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.  For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship.  Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives?  The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands.  A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will?  If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you?  You won't!  You'll have a Stepford God!A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.  Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.  So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God.  It is the precondition for it.

--Tim Keller :: The Reason For God :: Chapter Seven...dealing with the objection You Can't Take the Bible Literally

Such a good insight.  The picking and choosing of certain aspects of the Bible comes off as so "enlightened" in our culture, but it is really defeating.  You lose the relationship with God in the process.  You are left with yourself as the ultimate authority...which means you're pretty much left talking to yourself...which pretty much makes you go crazy.  That last statement could come off as "funny" or perhaps "rude", but I think it is true.  Those who have tried to bend and twist the Scriptures to say what they want drive themselves to misery.  They become very disintegrated.  We were never meant to live this way.  The Gospel leads us to true wholeness because it leads us to look outside of ourselves.

Where has Caesar gone?

Philippians 2:9-11 :: Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

We were working through Philippians 2:5-11 last night in our Bible study.  Though we didn't get time to talk about this, I love these last verses, in particular the phrase Jesus Christ is Lord.  In the day and time that Paul was penning these words this was an absolutely loaded statement, full of great political implications.  The declared phrase of the day, that was commonplace, was Caesar is Lord.  Yet, writing from a dark, dank prison, Paul declares that somebody else is on the throne and one day every knee will bow.  How foolish this must have sounded to those who heard these first Christians declare their allegiance to Jesus.  The people of that day couldn't have imagined anyone ever being more powerful than Caesar.  Funny thing though...couple thousand years later nobody is talking about Caesar, but they are talking about Jesus.  Sure there are plenty of things that compete for "lordship" in our day and time--we've replaced Caesar with countless other "lords", but at the end of the day, at the end of the age, those too will fade.  The only true LORD will be revealed and His name is Jesus.  Jesus Christ is Lord.  What if that statement became as radically subversive in our day and context as it was back then?  We'd have some Kingdom breaking in. 

Madison Arrives

At 2:23 am Baby Madison King entered this world!  We are so excited for Brian and Kirsten.  Perhaps equally excited are Sydnie and Mackinley about having a cousin! 

Madison King photo album will be off to the right momentarily.

Awaiting baby Madison

Well it is now 1:10am on Friday morning. We are still here at the hospital waiting for Brian and Kirsten's little girl to be born. Hopefully we wil have a more exciting update soon.

Good conversation :: A recap

Setting :: I'm in my new office when Sydnie knocks on the door.

Sydnie :: "Dad can I come in?"

Me :: "Sure. Whatcha need?" Sydnie is now climbing up into my reading chair.

Sydnie :: "I want to talk."

Me :: "Oh yeah.  What about?"

Sydnie :: "Dad, I want to talk about Jesus.  Jesus died on the cross for our sins."

Me :: Heart melting. 

Got daughers? Perhaps this could be helpful...

Got daughters?  Perhaps we should require this when boys start coming around the house wanting to take out our little girls?  Who's with me?  Enjoy.

While mom was out

Seeing through everything

Just another fantastic quote from C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man...

But you cannot go on "explaining away" for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away.  You cannot go on "seeing through" things for ever.  The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.  It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque.  How if you saw through the garden too?...a wholly transparent world is an invisible world.  To "see through" all things is the same as not to see.

LOST, metaphors and the Big Story

For the past 2 seasons, Heather and I have been faithful LOST watchers.  We ran through the first two seasons on DVD and then have been watching ever since.  One of the things that has captivated me, besides the "mysteries" of the island, are the flashbacks of the various characters.  Each one is examined and helps to explain why they are the way they are.  Though not everything is known, it certainly affords some insight into their personalities, decisions, behavior, etc.  However, if you are a faithful watcher, then you know that this season has taken a turn.  Rather than focus on the past, we are now afforded "fast-forwards" as we glimpse the main characters in the future.  In some ways this raises more questions, but it is all done (at least I hope, otherwise this is all just a colossal waste of time) to explain where they are currently.  Hmmm...so you have to know their past and their future in order to understand the present.  So in my mind I'm thinking I've heard that somewhere before...

This is the Big Story (the Gospel) that God has written.  Like any good story we have to know our past.  We have to understand, particularly, the first 3 chapters of Genesis.  Here we learn about how God originally intended for the world (including us) to be.  Then it all get wrecked.  It splinters.  It starts spinning out of control as sin enters in Genesis 3.  As Christians, we have a framework for rightly understanding our past, which helps explain why things are the way they are in the world.  However, like LOST (or LOST, like God's story), we have to know the future.  The past is not enough to make sense of our present.  We have to understand the promised end we see, particularly in Revelation 21.  Sure, we'll have more questions after reading this, but the point is not to answer all of our questions.  The point is more about giving us hope and assurance that God will one day finish his restoration project that he begun through the work of his son, Jesus.  So as we understand the trajectory of where things are heading, while being tuned into our past, this will fuse our day to day existence with ultimate meaning and significance. 

But unlike a group of people who want nothing more than to get off the island, we will get to stay as Jesus comes back to make his home with us and restores everything.

So maybe Locke's on to something :)  Sorry, shouldn't try and carry the metaphor too far. 

Peace.