No more lives torn apart /
That wars would never start /
And time would heal all hearts.

We’re in Big Bear for Christmas.  Tonight Rachel and I will sing those lyrics at my in-laws Christmas Eve service.  They are from the song Grown Up Christmas List.  Considering how much as I like to playfully harass my wife about her love for Amy Grant and only knowing songs by her from her childhood, it is kinda funny that we’re singing a song made popular by her.

A few nights ago those lyrics were swirling in my head as I tried to fall asleep.  After seeing some posts on Facebook about volatile current events, I was feeling very negative and a bit hopeless.  I thought, “Seriously? As great as this sounds, it’s ridiculous. It’s a bunch of hippy dippy junk. Everything seems to be falling apart and no one can even have civil conversations about it.  How will things ever get better?”
(PS – that’s not like me. I’m a bit of an eternal optimist.)

As I laid there and contemplated, my thoughts turned to Advent. Many of us are already saying Merry Christmas, but it’s still Advent.
Advent – a season of waiting. Anticipating.
In a long season of waiting and unrest, Israel held tightly to the hope that God would show up as he promised he would.  When much of what they could see brought despair, they could find hope, peace, joy, and love in what God promised he would one day bring.

And looking back from where we stand now we also know that restoration didn’t come as they expected.
But I’ll revisit that thought during the Christmas season.
Right now, it’s Advent.
No matter how bad things seem in the culture around us, I’m grateful that I can live in anticipation of a coming reality where God is in control and all is made right.
He showed up once bringing that reality with him.
We partner with God to bring about glimpses of that reality (on earth as it is in heaven), and look forward to experiencing the fullness of that reality someday.

Everyone would have a friend /
And right would always win /
And love would never end.

Today we anticipate and hope.
Tomorrow and in the days that follow we celebrate that love wins.
And that love never ends.
Regardless of what I see, I’m reminded that I can have hope, peace, joy, and love and sing with a sense of expectation rather than defeat because light WILL overcome the dark.

The people who walk in darkness
    will see a great light.
For those who live in a land of deep darkness,
    a light will shine.
[Isaiah 9:2]

Confession time.  I used to think I was pretty awesome.
Maybe it’s being on stage and having an audience.
Or maybe my mom just told me I was wonderful too much growing up.
At any rate, I was pretty sure I could do anything.
But then…

There is nothing like trying to start a missional church to make you feel humble.
There is nothing like marriage and realizing your shortcomings as a husband to make you feel humble.
There is nothing like trying to be a good father as your kid yells about how you don’t understand to make you feel humble. 
There is nothing like trying to accomplish DIY projects at the house to make you feel humble.
There is nothing like teaching middle schoolers to remind you how uncool and old you are…and make you feel humble.
There’s nothing like a hike in the Santa Cruz mountains through God’s incredible creation to make you feel really small and humble. 

So what I wanna know is, if pride comes before a fall, is the opposite true as well?
When you get to the point where you feel like a failure and a loser, does that mean great things are coming?
I sure hope so!

How about you?
What do you have to remind you that you aint all that and a bag of chips?
Or maybe you are.  In which case, nevermind. And you should host a seminar.

Facebook killed the blogger star.
I used to have a blog.
I guess technically I still do, but for all practical purposes…I don’t.

I’ve been pondering this lately.
And I think for myself, Facebook really has had a lot to do with that.
Sure, there are other excuses.  I’m in a season of life where I have less time.
Ok, well at least one.
But let’s be honest.  I still waste plenty of time on Facebook.

It started slowly with Twitter.
I jumped onboard, and we could all shoot out 140 characters at a time.  So much quicker to look at.
In a microwave age, that was easy to buy in to.
But there is something about Twitter that wouldn’t allow it to quite replace a blog.
I haven’t put my finger on exactly what it is that makes Facebook so much more powerful, but Twitter really is like the gateway drug to Facebook.
At least it was form me.
Maybe it’s cause on Facebook, everything is right there in one place.  The pictures.  The updates. The “likes.” I’m so glad they got rid of pokes. (They did get rid of pokes, right?)

But the truth is, you just can’t process and share in any real depth on Facebook.
I’m not sure why on that one either.
Maybe it’s that we got used to scrolling as quickly through posts as possible, so if I have to push “see more”, well, it better be really good.

But I miss my blog.
Therefore, it isn’t dead.
As Miracle Max would say, it’s mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.   Mostly dead is slightly alive.

And so I’ll attempt (again) to resurrect the blog.
I might need to mostly give up Facebook for a while to do it.
But not sure if I can do that.  So we’ll see.
Ugh, I really am a junkie.  I need help.
Blogging, not dead.
RSS feed, that’s pretty dead I think.
So at the very least, you’ll see the notifications on Facebook.  Cause that may be the only way I get any traffic.

Anyone else still blogging?
I look forward to sharing more, and communicating more.
Hope you’ll join me.
Feel free to resurrect your own blogs with me.
We can start a movement.
We can call it…blog zombies.

• Thinking of writing a fairly controversial blogpost after reading some news stories this morning.  One that may disturb friends on both sides of issues.  Not ready to open that can of worms yet, so I’ll leave it at that.
• Probably not the best post to start the New Year with…thus, a mind dump post.
• Thinking about issues makes me realize I should send some apologies to a few friends from my past.
•  Inspired  to get some blog posts up at the Missio Dei Community blog.  Need to get on that.
• Had some good ideas I want to jump on for our monthly “Spiritual Conversation” with Missio Dei Community at the end of this month.
• Need to stage some numbers in my head before Bye Bye Birdie rehearsal tonight so I can zip through em in our limited rehearsal time.
• But I have professional development for half the day.  That’s gonna fill my time.
• Speaking of, need to get my final lesson plans and materials together for my sub on Monday & Tuesday while I’m at school.
• Need to work on lesson plans for the next semester.
• Why do I have so much trouble not doing this stuff further ahead of time after all these years of trying to get better at not procrastinating.
• Maybe I should get up early more often.  Fell more motivated this morning than usual.
• Oh yeah, I got up early to make my wife breakfast before she left for work at 6am…cause it’s her birthday.

So the point at the end of that…while there’s a lot I want to get done, most of it will need to be pushed to some other time cause my priority today needs to be celebrating my amazing wife.
She is so worth celebrating and more important than just about any other task I can think of.
Last thought: I better get to work so I don’t get ANOTHER speeding ticket today.

Have a good day y’all.
And wish my wife a Happy Birthday.

Let us thank God a thousand times if in the sadness which invades us it seems to us as if we are rejected by the world.  The depression and suffering, the bitterness with which we seem sometimes to be soaked to be soaked, were the lot of Our Lord on earth.  Are we not fortunate to share them?  We should pity the happy people.  Pity those whose happiness, even though it be quite legitimate and innocent, keeps them attached to the world.  God is good that he has so despoiled us of everything, that we can draw breath only by turning our heads towards him. How great is his mercy, how divine his goodness, for he has torn everything from us in order that we may be more completely his.  So the suffererers are the happy ones through the goodness of God.  In suffering I give thanks.

May these days of Christmas festival bring you, in your suffering, I do not say consolation, but the blessing God intends for you. The child Jesus will perhaps not give you any sweetness, – he reserves that for the weak ones, – but his hand will none the less be spread to bless you in these days of Christmastide, and whether you feel it or no, he will pour abundant grace into your soul.

I mentioned in the blog that it made me think of others I knew.  Life was pretty good for me.
I couldn’t mention it at the time, but we had found out the month before about my mom’s cancer.  But she had surgery, everything looked to be gone, and she was on the way to a slow, but we hoped full recovery.
This year on the other hand, I feel like this reading is where I lived.  I changed a few of the bold lines to reflect what struck me more this year.
In the past 4 months we lost my mom, the house we were renting, and most of our kids stuff.  (Happens to be in order of importance there.)
Christmas just passed, and I gotta say, that morning was TOUGH.
Couldn’t help but think of mom quite a bit.

Don’t get me wrong.
At the same time we had a great Christmas as well.
Rachel’s parents and brother joined us in Santa Cruz and it’s ridiculous how many gifts the kids got from us all this year.  Let’s hope they forget that by next year so they don’t expect too much of a pile.

The holidays are almost over.
I just spent a few minutes looking over my blog posts from the past year and reflecting a bit.
Crazy seeing 3 houses in 1 year of posts! Lol.
More thoughts on the New Year later.

All that to say, it’s been a rough year.  One of the roughest I’ve experienced.
But God has been so faithful through it all.  Including this difficult Christmas season.
And while that reading is on the extreme end for me, it rings of lots of truth.  God really has been using the pain to pur abundant grace into my soul, and I think to force me to rely on him more.

In Caleb speak, I think lately I’ve been feeling and acting a lot like this guy lately.
Hoping as we head into 2011, I can start reflecting this guy a little more.

Ramble done.

Wow.
Had to come back and add a link to this post by Christ From Canada.
Watch the video and read the explanation of how the song came about.
Just wow.
Feel like it perfectly complements what was in my head for this post.  But much better said.
So cool.
Oh…and even cooler…that’s my friend Tifah singing!  Love it.

The first night set the tempo for the weekend.  Joe Bishop shared out of Matthew 11 and introduced the theme for the weekend, finding rest in Christ and releasing our burdens to him.
After his talk we took a few minutes to share with a couple guys one or two burdens that we are carrying through life right now.
When it was my turn, I shared that my mom had passed away about a month prior, and I kinda feel like I should be over it and moving on with life now.
But the reality is I’m still struggling.

Wait…did I really just say that?
It’s been a month…get over it?
The truth is that’s how I feel, but I would never expect someone else to feel that way if I heard them say it!

Last night I had one of those nights.  I sat on the couch and just wept with my wife.
The kind of weeping where your whole body convulses with each cry.  It’s happened 3 or 4 times since mom passed.
Just admitting that publicly is super tough for me.
I hate admitting that I cry almost as much as I hate actually doing it, both of which are more comfortable than actually being caught in the act.
Not sure how I got that way, if it’s the guy thing or what, but it is.

I realize more and more that I don’t get this whole grief thing.
I don’t know how to do it correctly.  If there even is a correctly.
I thought I’d have it wired after experiencing the loss of my father at 16.  This is completely different.
I don’t know how to allow myself to mourn and just let go, so instead I end up taking it out as frustration at my family.  Not fair at all.

Recently I started meeting monthly with a spiritual director.  We talked about all this and he encouraged me to stop thinking about doing it correctly and just let it happen.
One thing he strongly encouraged was caring for my own soul by doing some reading about grief.
He suggested some books, one that stuck out to me being A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis.
But I have a list of more important books to read.  You know, ministry books and stuff.  Besides, do I really need a book to help me grieve my mother?  OK, well, I guess it couldn’t hurt.
After doing some looking on the web this morning I decided to take him up on the suggestion and went with In Memorium by Henri Nouwen.
I really dig Nouwen, and the book is his own reflections on the loss of his own mother.
It’s going on the Kindle App on my iPod touch now.  I’ll add it to the list of books I feel the need to read right now.  But maybe I should bump it to the top.
Perhaps I’ll share some reflections as I process the book.

In the meantime, I’m bringing it to Jesus, including my questions and struggles, and doing my best to grieve well.
Just a quick, honest snapshot into the current state of my soul.  Part of it anyway.

As I was reading, I came across the following lines:

But little by little, Twitter is starting to resemble a high school
popularity contest, where people campaign for votes and can tangibly
see how liked they are by how many people follow them or respond to
what they say.

As more celebrities and important people have come to the party
(fashionably late, of course), they see their peers already have tons
of followers, so they feel they should too. There is open campaigning
to “RT this” or straight-up asking for people to help them get more
followers. Left and right, even normal users are signing up for Twitter
sites that guarantee to get you “400 new followers a day.” (Just so you
know, you can’t do this without people knowing—it sends out a tweet in
your name to everyone saying you’ve signed up.) I’ve even seen pastors
sign up for those.

Which begs the obvious question—why? This Twitter shift is adding
fuel to the MySpace/Facebook culture that places value (and for some, a
means of self-worth) in the number of followers you can accumulate,
even if 90 percent of them are incognito spambots.
[read the whole article]

Some really great points there.  I'm just not sure that it's all that different from culture before all this technology was introduced.

He mentioned that pastors he knows have signed up for services to up the number of followers they have.
He talked about the culture of placing value and self-worth in the number of followers you can accumulate.
But is this really any different from how pastors and churches have operated for the past 50 (at least…probably more like hundreds of) years?  

So many pastors I know find their self-worth in the numbers.
How many people I can get to show up on Sunday.
How many people attend an event.
How much money was in the offering plate this month.
Even if the people sitting in those seats are proverbial "incognito spambots."
And I've been just as guilty as the rest.

Perhaps this is just a greater reminder that there are much better ways to measure effectiveness than the "number of followers."
Perhaps we should look at the deeper issue of where we find our self-worth.
Perhaps social networking and technology isn't creating new problems, but simply surfacing the issues that already there.

Let's try and care less about how many people are following us.
Let's care more about the quality of what we're doing and saying.
Let's care more about the amount of transformation in ourselves and the people we journey with.
Let's find our self worth not in everyone else's measure of success, but by the trueness to our own calling.
Or better yet, in being, rather than doing.

I'm still figuring out how to do all that.
You're invited to join me.
We can't do it alone.

Now time for a triathlon spiritual analogy.  As I was running, it got me thinking about 1 Timothy 4:2, when Paul says “preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season”.  I can do the same thing at times in my spiritual life.  I dig into the word because I’m gonna be teaching on that passage soon.  I spend some extra time with Jesus cause I’ll be leading worship.  But sometimes I forget to just stay sharp and hang with Jesus because He is.  Because I’m meant to be.

In the same way that I won’t be ready to race a triathlon if I don’t continue to train, even out of season, and definitely won’t get better, I won’t be ready to meet the increasing challenges that God has for me if I don’t work to say spiritually fit as well.
So what are you doing to “be prepare?”  In season and out?

That being said, I need to get lots of Tri training in during the next couple weeks.  And just for fun, here’s another pic from Pacific Grove that I thought was kinda funny!

Is it possible to love and genuinely care about a person, even go so far as to consider someone a "friend", yet at the same time have little to no respect for that person? Or do love, friendship, and respect go hand in hand, and you cannot have one without the other?
What do you think?

These posters from The Plow are pretty profiund and really force you to think about that in an "in your face" sort of way.  Check em out:

So what do you think?  how do you really love you enemies?  I know Christ commands it, but let’s be rea.  When you see those images, how many of you are unable to muster up the love you know you’re supposed to?  How do we tangibly love our enemies?  And how do we get past the "churchy" answer of loving them even when we don’t like what they do, because Jesus loved them?  Easy to say when it’s so hypothetical, but what do you think you would ACTUALLY do if Mr. Bin Laden were sitting right in front of you?

Sorry.  Lots of questions there.  Any thought?

HT: Chris from Canada