2009 Roundup

What a year! It was begun fighting cancer in southeast Arkansas, and it is ending with a healthy family in Virginia. We are humbled and amazed at all that has been done in and through our lives this past year.

Before I write an entry on looking forward, I wanted to look back. So I thought I’d sum up our year with 12 blog entries. Peruse them at your leisure! Happy new year!

• January: Chemo hero
• February: Spiritual centering
• March: Fun faith
• April: Rectal 2009
• May: NCourage and smallness
• June: Burned up or burned out?
• July: Increasing gratitude
• August: Sunday in Krakow
• September: Ode to Monticello
• October: An inglorious testimony
• November: The danger of marginalization
• December: Big weekend

Vote

I’d love to know which one you enjoyed the most. Vote here.

A birthday and an Eve

My best friend was born 39 years ago today.

It’s amazing to think we’ve been married for 17 years, but we’ve been friends since her freshman year in college. I was a senior when I first met her. I was working at Third Street Baptist Church in Arkadelphia, Arkansas as their youth minister.

I needed someone to help me teach the youth girls on Sunday nights for discipleship while I focused on the guys. That impulse to divide the youth group by gender was one I’ve forever thanked the Lord for.

It was then that Carolyn agreed to help me – albeit with the warning that she would “never” date me. Apparently, she suspected my motivations were less than holy.

However, I had come to know that Caro was as beautiful spiritually as she was physically, and I was grateful when she agreed to help disciple and teach those young girls at our church.

Each Sunday evening after church we would wind up at the Wendy’s in Caddo Valley, discussing where our youth were spiritually and how we could encourage them in their growth. Those long conversations inevitably would meander to laughter and to deep discussions about life, dreams, and the heart.

Over the course of months, our hearts and common vision for life connected in a way that neither of us was prepared to acknowledge. Carolyn went home (New Mexico) after that spring semester, and it was in her absence that I realized (with some friends’ help) that I was genuinely melancholy.

It’s a long story from there (you can pick it up here if you’re bored), but the “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say is that 17 years later, we are still laughing and having heart-to-hearts.

Her beauty is more alluring to me today than ever before. She has two ways of laughing – one is a charming and disarming giggle. The other is a raucous cackle that rattles the china. Her love for Christ and her simple way of serving others with hospitality, phone calls and gifts has been felt by so many. And our kids… wow. They are the direct beneficiaries of a mother who loves them without reservation.

So on this Christmas Eve, I wish my best friend a genuinely happy birthday. I love her.

Sledding in our backyard

It’s nice to have a sled run, with jumps, in our own backyard…

Random ruminations

ruminate |ˈroōməˌnāt|
verb [ intrans. ]
1 think deeply about something : we sat ruminating on the nature of existence.
2 (of a ruminant) chew the cud.

“Random Ruminations” may not necessarily be accurate because few of what you’ll see in this series will require deep thinking. However, it should make for some fun reading. I’ll be using it to post things I’ve seen and heard over a collection of days that caught my attention.

From Facebook:

Who you follow on Twitter has become “the bookshelf” of this time. Remember when you used to go to someone’s house and look at all the books they had on their bookcase so you would know what they were interested in? (Today it’s) Twitter followers. that’s where you see it now… (via Karen Erren)

From The Weather Channel App on my iPhone:

12/16/2009 -WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON FRIDAY TO 7 PM EST SATURDAY… THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BLACKSBURG HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON FRIDAY TO 7 PM EST SATURDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT. * SNOW IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND MAY BE HEAVY AT TIMES FRIDAY NIGHT AND INTO SATURDAY. * TRAVEL WILL BECOME DIFFICULT IN THE WARNED AREA. VISIBILITIES WILL BE REDUCED. * STORM TOTAL SNOW AMOUNTS AROUND A FOOT ARE EXPECTED. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS… A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL…KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT… FOOD…AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

(I also posted the above as my Facebook status and got this comment from Shane Glass:

I never understood why weather announcements are in all caps. I mean, they could be urgent, requiring you to assimilate the information as quickly as possible, yet they type in all caps, which, of course, is harder to read. OMG WATCH OUT FOR THAT TORNADO YOU WOULDVE KNOWN ABOUT IF YOU DIDNT HAVE TO READ ALL CAPS. ***

And from Twitter:

Oooow. My son just made me stab my brain through my nose. I was doing a pinky pick when he jammed my elbow. (Yes, this was my update, and it received a bunch of responses both on Twitter and Facebook where I posted it. My wife and mom were horrified.)

Word with Friends

This iPhone app is my new addiction. Basically, you can play Scrabble with folks from all over. It only allows for two-person games right now, and I’d love to see the ability to play with more, but it’s awesome.

From Flickr

Adelyn was in The Nutcracker which performed at Burruss Hall at VT last week. This is a shot of her makeup prep. It was her third straight year to be in the production (her first here in VA). Go here for more Flickr shots.

How do you spell RELEASE?

You know the Rolaids commercials about “How do you spell RELIEF?” And they respond with “R-O-L-A-I-D-S?” Well…. last night I was preaching away in our second December Nights celebration at the BCM at Virginia Tech. It was packed. We had a special worship team in from Brentwood Church in Lynchburg led by Nic Carver. The stage was set for a momentous evening.

Until I reached my conclusion…

Let me back up a little.

We’ve focused our evenings around the Advent themes. Last night was about Peace, and the message was “Peace Follows Release.” We began by allowing Linus to read Luke 2 -our focal passage:

The interesting thing about that passage is how the King James Version says “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.” Most modern translations recognize that another alternate meaning is essentially “peace on earth to whom God is pleased.” In other words, God’s peace is conditional.

The angels weren’t pronouncing world peace at all, after all.

In fact, that little baby that they announced would later pronounce “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth…” (Matthew 10.34)

Was there a discrepancy between the promise of the angels and the mission of the Messiah?

That was the theme of the message. We looked at what Scripture describes as the person who pleases God. Hebrews 11.6 says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God…”

The apostle Paul says in Romans 5.1 that since we are “justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is the person of faith that pleases God, in other words. Peace on earth is promised to those who in faith believe and love the Lord with all their hearts, minds, strength and souls. Peace on earth is not an amorphous promise. It’s succinct. It’s specific. Peace is promised, yes, but only “among those with whom he is pleased.” (ESV)

Those who release their lives to Christ find peace from Him. It is only through faith – trusting God instead of ourselves or others (or our things) that we find release.

And here’s where the Rolaids analogy comes in.

I played with the word RELEASE in my conclusion. I rarely do this, and it’s cheesy, but I used each letter to represent what we should release to Jesus.

R – Relationships. As Jesus said in the Matthew 10.34 passage, we should not allow any earthly relationship to compare to our love for Him.

E – Expectations. All ______ (anger, frustration, worry, anxiety, etc.) is the result of unmet expectations. We need to release our expectations to the Lord.

L – Lesser Loves. Anything good that demands our attention, time and effort is still a lesser love when compared to Christ. We need to recognize them for what they are – idols – if they come between us and our allegiance to the Lord.

E – Ego. Our pride and our relentless commitment to ourselves needs to be released. James 4.10 urges us to “humble ourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.”

S – Stuff. I know it’s not sophisticated or eloquent. But we all let stuff interfere with our love for God. Our possessions, our time, our checkbooks, our financial goals. We must release these in order to discover the peace that comes from God.

E – Experiences. Whether it’s past successes or failures, fantastic heights or stunning hurts, we cannot allow our experiences to define our obedience. We must release them all before the Father.

There you have it… except for the “A.” The A was “Attitude. We cannot allow a skewed perspective or negative viewpoint to hinder us from following Christ in faith. Our attitude can dramatically alter our ability to enjoy God because it reveals we cherish our emotions more than our Messiah.”

However, last night, I just missed it in my notes. Completely.

Most folks didn’t catch it (or were gentle enough to overlook it). Others were quick to assume that was the Arkansas spelling of RELEASE. And they pointed that out with great glee.

Fortunately, the Lord used it anyway. (I hope and trust.)

It’s not really important that you can spell “release” in all actuality. It’s just crucial that you can do it.

Review: The Best American Short Stories 2005 (Hint: not worth the paper)

The Best American Short Stories 2005 (The Best American Series)

Big weekend

It was one of those weekends as a leader that you anticipate/dread with equal measures of enthusiasm and uncertainty. Our church had an opportunity to host the Glory in the Highest concert tour here in Blacksburg. After deliberation and an email survey, we jumped at it.

There were more than 900 folks at the concert Friday night, and we surpassed the break-even point. While it was never a financial-only perspective for me, I knew that there might be those in our church who would look at it that way, and I was grateful that those results might assuage any concern they had.

One person told me at the concert, “Congratulations on the success of this event.” The comment was made in reference, I perceived, to the amount of people in attendance. And the comment broke my heart in a way. Success at such an event is never measured in terms of numbers and attendance. Biblically, we can only view success as to whether God was glorified and honored in the context and whether we are faithful and obedient.

Jesus Christ was clearly painted as glorious, majestic and worthy of worship and honor from the stage by the artists, and because of that, I was deeply grateful to have been a part of the event. My prayer is that folks who attended, helped and prayed for the event were encouraged to discover that life’s ultimate joy rests in an authentic love relationship with the Father.

Snowy Saturday

We awoke Saturday a.m. to a thickening layer of snow on the ground. It snowed steadily most of the day, finally clearing up around 4-ish. It was simply beautiful, and my kids leapt out of bed, dressed with no sense of grogginess, and were outside in a few moments. If only they treated school days like that…

It was surreal and beautiful. Most of the snows we experienced in Arkansas came after December. One of our church members related that this snow “really didn’t count” as a significant snow. It was more of a dusting. (It was 3-4 inches!!). Man, are we unprepared! My toes have been icicles since last week when the temps started staying stubbornly in the 20s at night. I wore two pairs of socks to our worship service last night.

I had planned to avoid the snow play. However, after helplessly watching two different fathers on our street laboriously build Frostys, I was eventually guilted into creating our own version of a frozen snow human. Sam and I pelted one another with snowballs for a while before my one hand was frozen solid (I had on a nice mitten but couldn’t find its match so on the other hand, I was wearing a cotton glove I use for subzero scooter rides).

Carolyn was out shopping for most of the day, and when I learned she was returning, I told her to look for our snow creation. When she pulled up, she said, “It’s dead.” It had fallen over. Bummer.

Finally… December Nights

Now you see why this was a “Big Weekend.” Our church moved its worship services to the evenings during the month of December. We have creatively called this “December Nights.” It’s…

a wonderful, warm and inviting December of worship and celebration of Christ’s birth! There will be NO MORNING WORSHIP SERVICES during December; instead, we’ll be meeting each Sunday at 5:00 p.m. at the BCM at VT for “December Nights.” This is a superb opportunity to invite friends, neighbors and coworkers for 1 hour of contagious joy involving worship and teaching! Come celebrate Christ with us in December!

We experimented with December Nights last year at Journey Church, and our congregation there loved the break in schedule and the ambience. This past Sunday evening was our first DN here. We met at 5:00, enjoyed some hot chocolate and cookies, and then we sent out a large group into the neighborhoods around Virginia Tech to sing Christmas carols.

They returned, frozen, but cheerful, and then we enjoyed a time of worship and teaching centered around the Advent theme of Hope. As folks exited back into the frigid night air, and we cleaned up the BCM, I was thankful for all that happened in a few days.

It was a big weekend.

Review: Crazy Love

Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

My short synopsis is: “One of those simple but powerful books that challenges comfortable “Christianity.” Can being a Christian really be “comfortable?” Peaceful perhaps. But anything but comfortable.”