thanks

A brief thought for today... This weekend we are doing something a bit different for our service - we will be singing, reflecting and meditating through the 22nd Psalm. It is an opportunity to enter the places the Psalmist takes us as well as the places Jesus Himself went through as this is a Messianic Psalm.  I was considering that this is not a Psalm we would usually use on a Thanksgiving weekend as so much of the text reflects pain, loneliness and difficulty.

 As I was preparing I was struck with two personal  insights. 1) I am never as forthright as the Psalmist in speaking out my hurts and questions and longings, rather I keep them to myself or even worse, I ignore them all together. 2) My praises are never as intentional as I see here. For me - praise and thanksgiving come from some experience or insight or feeling. In this passage there is a decision to give thanks, a decision to give praise. In one place, right after he describes the coming of enemies upon himself, he says "In the midst of the assembly I will praise You!"

In the end - perhaps this is the best weekend to acknowledge our hard times, enter those dark places of hurt, acknowledge our feeling that the Lord is distant.... and then - Give thanks and praise. As we think of Psalm 22 - it is about His sacrifice for us and even as we take communion - the Eucharist - we are reminded that it means "thanksgiving!"

BBQ

Back towards the end of October I had the opportunity to spend some time in solitude and silence out in the middle of the desert just north of Benson, Arizona. God has a way of getting my sttention in those kinds of settings - perhaps that is both a strength of my personality - finding communion and insight all alone with God. It is also a great weakness - the tendancy to go alone and to miss stepping into deepening community.

So the Lord got my attention today at church - our "community Sunday" when we open up the microphone to share how God has been at work. Ther is nothing like the gathering we had today - we lifted up out voices singing, we were packed out shoulder to shoulder, and the testimonies from so many people just kept going! As we all noted - most every sharing involved God's work in lives through other people - it brought me back to the truth of one of our values - "we cannot live out the Christian life without one another!" And even better - when we finally closed our time taking the bread and cup together - we just continued what was already happening outside with a great BBQ. As I looked over all the groups sitting on the lawn, new people finding a place, piles of little kids running all over.... I thought, this delights the Lord!

While in the desert I spent a bit of time in the story of Zaccheus and I was reminded of it today. Here is a man wanting to see Jesus - and He does! And it ends with a story of redemption and new life and closes with a meal! We experienced Jesus today through His very real presence, through one another, through hearing stories of redeemed lives and a meal! So to all of you - THANK YOU!

dark

At the Vineyard we are putting in a new sound board and a couple new projection devices that require new cables and some wiring. In order to pull the new cables from the sound booth to the stage at the front of the church it was necessary to get under our stage. Yesterday we cut a 1 foot by 1 foot access in our storage closet and discovered space under the stage with about 9 1/2 inches of clearance. Somebody needed to get in there and crawl the 10 plus feet to the other side of the stage. Enter the skinny guy! Well I worked my way in feet first and begin a very uncomfortable "slide" under the stage. I had a headlamp but because i couldn't lift my head I was unable to look ahead to where I was going. As I crunched 20 year old dead cockroaches under my back I kept wondering if some angry animal might be looking at my feet boxing him in to a corner. Not only that but my legs kept catching on various braces and once, when attempting to roll over I became a bit stuck!

Proverbs 4:12 says this of those who follow the ways of wisdom, "when you walk (or crawl) your steps will not be impeded; and if you run, you will not stumble." Life can be difficult enough, it is hard to imagine moving through the events and experiences of our day without the Lord making a way, without Him first going before us to clear away the hindrances that we could never overcome on our own.

Today - it turns out - we needed to run an electrical wire and again it required a trip under the stage. This time I arrived equipped with a strong utility light. As I dragged the light along, the entire under stage area was lit up. No animals, nothing unexpected and the whole journey - which still was not very easy - had a very different feel to it.

Proverbs 4:18 says that "the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day, but the way of the wicked is like darkness; they do not know over what they stumble." I love the picture of darkness slowly, little by little, giving way to the light and the light gets brighter and brighter as the Lord leads us forward. Where does that light come from? I believe it comes through the Spirit, through God's Word as we feast on it, through one another as we encourage each other along, and through our offerings of worship. ( I am reminded of Paul singing in a jail cell) Because we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ we can count on Him to light our way.

study

So we have now held 2 Saturday services in addition to our regular Sunday morning gatherings with many more ahead. I have joked several times that if i don't get the message right when I teach on Saturday, I always have another chance to get it right on Sunday.

"Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth." 
2 Tim. 2:15

I was in AWANA all through elementary school - I know that verse! But knowing is not enough. Last week I was challenged on a couple of ooccasions about my schedule, what things get the best of my time, following through and being faithful in my primary tasks. One area of not giving enough time - of not following through, has to do with letting the Word work its way into my heart before sharing what I have studied. In my teaching, when Saturday evening rolls around is not the time to begin letting it sink in - that needs to happen way before then.

This past Sunday as I listened and sang during our musical worship time - the same songs as Saturday - they gripped me in a more significant way, they got into my heart in ways that had not occurred the evening before. Sometimes - perhaps at all times - we need to visit songs and scriptures over and over - then they impact and then we can share from a good place. It takes more time, a bit more work, discipline in time and scheduling and in study - but that is the calling for us all if we are to accurately handle the word of truth.

Study - wait - meditate - study - discuss - wait .... get a good grasp on the Word and let the Word get a good grasp on us - then share it!

growing

My son is 13 years old and can be quite animated - something i am usually not. Early this morning he called me at work shouting on the phone in expressions of joy, triumph, celebration - absolute, unbridled shouts of praise and victory. The news - he is now 72 inches tall - yes, 6 feet. Growing is always on his mind, constantly measuring and checking even as he eats us out of house and home! Of course all this rapid, wild growth - which shows no signs of slowing down - comes with wide ranging emotions, tiredness, shoes that never fit and everything else you get with an adolescent..... BUT - it is filled with fun, refreshment, wonder,  uncertainty, newness, the unexpected ... it is the picture of LIFE.

I have been considering how easy it is to let that way of living slip away, to get buried in stuff and the passing of time. In reading the Gospels and Acts - it is like watching my son grow - so much going on - yes, the young believers make mistakes but God is on the move and they are chasing after Him. When we jump to the book of Revelation we see some pictures of a church that has lost much of that - Jesus calls them to stir up their love afresh!

Does the church need faithful, grounded, steady people slowly plodding along - absolutely - and a good thing too since that is probably me. But we also need those who are like my son - noticing each fresh move of the spirit, seeing opportunities for new growth, full of ideas and the desire to make them come alive, on the edge a bit sometimes but for all the right reasons. What does it mean to be a church - a body - it means to be alive, growing, changing, discovering, - and all the while we are looking to Jesus - the Chief Shepherd, our center - who calls us on.

household

"... so we, who are many, are one body in Christ ..." Romans 12:5

"So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of god's household..." Ephesians 2:19

Thanks to my church family for a morning of gathered worship and our "communion project" that keeps reminding  me of how good it is to be in "God's household".

empty

I officially said goodbye to my daughter whom I had driven to Michigan to go to school and then began the 2000 plus miles long drive back to Tucson. I started crying somewhere in New Mexico. It always takes me awhile before I look eye to eye with how I feel - but I do get there. I am uncertain as to what moved me at that point - there were many things bundled up with my emotions about letting my daughter go ... saying goodbye to my brothers and their families after a great weekend, saying bye to my mom who was sitting in her room at an assisted care apartment, perhaps it was the deaths of two very significant and much loved men this week both of whom I will greatly miss. It could have been how much I was missing my wife and my other two kids back in Tucson. Truth is, I was thinking over all these things and as I did so i drove mile after mile  - it all looked so desolate and empty. I drove through southwest Kansas which seemed  to go forever and then cut across the Oklahoma panhandle, across the corner of Texas and then i took a 2 lane road from one corner of new Mexico to the other.... empty.

Empty - I suppose that is the word that best describes how I felt - I was thankful for where my daughter was going to school and my time there only reinforced my sense that she had chosen well - but without her there is an empty place. Apart from my family on both sides of the country there was an empty place. So I cried.

As I cried I remembered that Jesus had emptied Himself (Phil. 2) and that he had put aside glory, heaven, even His rights - He chose to be separated from the glories of heaven and eventually even separated from the father as He hung on the cross - He emptied Himself so that I could be full. Eph. 1 tells us that we  - the body of Christ - are the "fullness of Him who fills all in all."

Thank you Lord for all the wonderful gifts of events and experiences and people that fill my life and thank you for the reassuring reminder that when those things are absent - you still fill me!