Worth the 2-minute read: An Interview with Bono.

New York World-Telegram and The Sun (staff photographer). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

“In the final analysis the church has a purpose,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and then went on to share from Isaiah 61:1-2 before the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. It was June 5, 1966. The sermon he gave, titled “Guidelines for a Constructive Church,” is a beautiful call to Christ’s church to remember its purpose and call in this world. If you have time on this holiday, I hope you’ll take time to submit yourself to the message of Dr. King. May we be the church God has set us apart to be.

Guidelines for a Constructive Church

A house built for Florida makes my feet cold on the morning our city breaks its low-temperature record. It’s not that it hasn’t been colder than 21 degrees Fahrenheit here before, but it’s not been that cold on the 8^th of December.  I don’t remember having this much trouble warming up, not when I spent hours playing in snow as a kid in the northeast and not in the ‘burbs of Chicago when I would walk the 13 blocks back to the college dorm in minus-zero wind chills after finishing the night shift. But then in both of those cases, my life involved a whole lot more physical activity, and I came home to rooms outfitted with storm windows and steam heat from oil burning boilers. Generally speaking, homes were winterized. But this is Florida, and I live in a house built in 1939. If there’s such a thing in the insulation industry as a negative “R” value, I think this house has one. It just wasn’t designed for winter. Read the rest of this entry »

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But restless is the day.

It wants to get it right.

He is bread enough.

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The stress of my lists are badgering me, and as I talked with a friend this morning, I realized I’m not the only one battling what seems like an ache leading into the season of Advent. We can be a busy and weary crowd come December. I thought of those two things, busyness and weariness, juxtaposed with Advent, a season in which we Christians focus on the gift of a Savior. There is always something to distract me from this, my lists included, and I resent having to fight to focus on Advent this time of year. It makes me ache inside.

Then I read an article by Rob Bell, published by Relevant Magazine, and I was encouraged by his perspective. I found myself suddenly thankful that the busyness and weariness aren’t unlike the scene in Bethlehem at Christ’s advent. Those things that I feel distract me could be the very things that help me receive the gift– the promise that Christ’s advent will fill our aches and deepest longings.

If you have time, the article is worth the read.

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/23640-why-advent

My first grader proudly handed me this card after school yesterday:

Thanksgiving Card

Happy thanksgiving! I am thankful for
my mom she maks diner.
I am thankful for my hous becus
it ceeps us safe. I am thaynkfull for
my sisters becus thay like too play with me.
I am thankfull for my dog
she is vereree sweet.
I am thankfull for my Dad Beecus
he maks munee for are famlee at werc.

I too am thankful for my son and also for my husband, dawturs, frends, hous and werc! For any and all of these things, we are vereee blessed. Happy Thanksgiving, frends.

Like dirty laundry airing in the front yard, the brightly lettered truck advertised our Problem from the driveway. It was a heavy traffic time of day for our neighborhood, people coming home from work, walking dogs, stopping to gape at the goings-on of our house. Maybe a giant rat exterminator truck isn’t as bad as a termite tent when it comes to neighborhood spectacles, but it stopped traffic on our street. Truck and crew spent two hours diagnosing, removing and preventing the incursion of critters. Saws ripped, nail guns blasted and men crawled under the house and up ladders. Better traps were laid with better bait. The exterminator’s website says, “It’s a dirty job, and we love to do it!” I pulled out my checkbook and paid them for their dirty work. Read the rest of this entry »

Car line at my kids’ elementary school is like a slowly moving convoy of parked cars. It stalls and creeps forward on a two-lane road that widens only for a single, left turn lane. That lone turn lane happens to be where the crossing guard works his magic of shuttling distracted children safely across the street and intermittently blocking the progression of traffic. If you venture car line, which means you retrieve your child from school by car, you are both willing to exercise patience (as it takes on average 20 minutes to get through) and willing to be a part of a massive traffic blockade. Through-traffic that unwittingly chooses this wrong road at this wrong time of day gets stuck behind you. It has no clue that yours is an idle lane terminating in a slow parade of semi-parked cars swallowing up students whose age, backpacks and lunch sacks make them extremely inefficient at loading. For the through-traffic, it takes some time to figure out what’s happening, and by the time a motorist does, his only option is to use that single left turn lane as escape. No sooner has he committed to his escape route than the sentinel of the street, that safety-vested crossing guard, waves his resolute, red stop sign and blocks the car’s path to initiate yet another slow crossing of encumbered students, parents and gear. Every day I see the pattern repeat. Read the rest of this entry »

Sara Zarr is an acclaimed author, three-time finalist for the Utah Book Award and recently a contributor to Image Journal’s online blog. The following post hit the internet last Wednesday and touched me in a deep-down, good place. So I pass it on to you; and though you may not struggle to push yourself out of the writer’s nest, you may (like me) need the occasional encouragement to take a leap of faith and set your mind to the small, quotidian tasks that insure your leap actually gets you off the cliff:

http://imagejournal.org/page/blog/the-work-awaits

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

-Paul the Apostle (according to Philippians 2:5-8)

I’ve never been comfortable with the phrase accept Jesus as your personal savior. It smacks of narcissism, conjuring in my weird imagination cartoons of God as a kind of trophy or idol. I picture a small, squat talisman whose belly is rubbed for good luck or a tickle-me-personal-savior-god you might find on the shelf of your favorite toy seller. The phrase smells of consumer marketing. Step right down and get your very own personal savior today. Act now! For a limited time, you too can have a personal Jesus! Is he a product we’re selling? A new philosophy? Some form of iconic personal deliverance? Or is there something far less appealing behind the shiny bottle of snake oil? Something the marketing experts might want to cover up? Jesus-as-personal-savior seems to me a remarkable contrast to the call of Jesus who asks us not to “accept” him but, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “bids us … come and die.” From the personal savior angle, death to self must be a part of the fine print. Read the rest of this entry »