This is the first of my posts in reflection on my recent personal retreat. As an aside, I’m grateful to David James, the Arkansas Baptist Collegiate Ministry Team Leader, who effectively urged me to take a regular personal retreat each year that I served under him as a campus minister. It was a strange practice to me at first, but it’s become a cherished pilgrimage that I now seek to prioritize twice a year.

Since moving to Virginia, my family and I haven’t been east of Blacksburg except to go to the airport in Roanoke or attend a meeting in Richmond. I left last Thursday a.m. with Lynchburg in my sites for the first personal retreat in a year and a half. 2009 was just so crazy for me that I wasn’t able to schedule one.

My three days there were spent reading, writing, praying, and simply being. At times the quietness almost overwhelmed me. I am grateful for an incredibly supportive spouse who recognizes my need for solitude and for two kids who just seem to take for granted that dad needs time like this.

Bookstore melancholy

I visited a bookstore while in Lynchburg, and while there, I bumped into a familiar bookstore buddy of mine – melancholy. Typically I ran into Mr. M when I was in Mardel in Little Rock or Barnes & Noble. It was no surprise to find him there. He seems to ambush me frequently in between shelves.

As I tried to explain this to Carolyn the other night, I felt a little foolish, but after reflecting on this sense of sadness/longing that envelopes me in bookstores, I’ve reached some tentative conclusions:

• The Muzak is playing Back Street Boys, and I just haven’t realized it.
• A voodoo doctor is sticking pins in a doll of me somewhere.
• I wish I could have/run a bookstore.
• I am running face to face into my finiteness.

I tend to opt for the last one (although I really have dreamed of owning a bookstore throughout my life).

My own awareness of my great limitations is never more obvious in a bookstore. I am a reader and love to digest new material and be challenged. It’s in a bookstore that I have this sweeping realization that I will never be able to digest even the smallest portion of what’s available. I am doomed to perpetual ignorance.

Even if I had a photographic memory and started today, I would not in my lifetime be able to consume the material I want and that I’m hungry for. Even though Google has become a collective human database, it still cannot tap the innards of copyrighted material. Nor can I remember everything I read. On top of that, I can only read one thing at a time – for limited amounts of time. And so I’m left… melancholy.

The fact that I forget so much of what I’ve already read means that I have to spend a portion of my life re-membering, refreshing, reflecting and upgrading. I will never catch up. All of reading must be done in a linear fashion. I can’t read two books simultaneously.

It makes me hungry for heaven, actually.

When I am welcomed with joyful grace into eternity by my Lord Jesus, I firmly believe that the invitation of eternal blessing is matched with an invitation for eternal learning, discovery, and adventure. I’ll be able to spend a thousand years reading and then take a break with another thousand years of backpacking heaven’s equivalent of the Andes. What I’ll do next as I enjoy the glories of God’s Presence and Love is all cake.

As I bemoan my inability and finiteness, I am turned to praise the wonder and majesty of God. He is a God who created all things, knows all things, and is a Master of it all. He is not overwhelmed in Barnes & Noble. He is the Author of Life. His omniscience and immanence are stunning and beyond comprehension.

So while I can’t plug a USB cord into my neck and download (and remember) all the information I want here, it’s OK. Those surprise ambushes by Mr. M are counteracted with confident knowledge of future discoveries in the kingdom of God.

Inspired by Jeremy, I dug up an old Facebook tag. For those of you used to expecting distinguished and profound posts from me, you’ll be so disappointed… For those of you who know me, this will assure you that I am still not distinguished and profound.

1. I intercepted a note in 5th or 6th grade that the girls in our class were passing around. It had every boys’ name in our grade on a sheet of paper with comments out beside their name like “He’s soooo cute” or “Adorable.” Out beside mine was “Eeeeww. Yuch.”
2. Probably as a result of that note scarring me, I didn’t have a steady girlfriend until I was a freshman at Ouachita.
3. I got my first kiss in a closet… from my next door neighbor in Marlowe Manor in Little Rock.
4. When she moved, my high school principal moved into the same house. It was quite a mental adjustment. He had two sons, and I could never bring myself to tell Rick Dowda (until now) that I got my first kiss in his or his brother’s closet.
5. I almost got suspended from high school (along with several other journalism students) for publishing an issue of the school newspaper that contained derogatory editorials about administration decisions.
6. I went to Arkansas Governor’s School and loved it. Thoroughly enjoyed getting to defend and dialog with others about my faith in Christ.
7. While at Ouachita Baptist University, I never knew where my car was going to wind up. My “friends” had keys made, and it would wind up on the student center steps, in used car lots, etc.
8. My favorite ice cream flavor is banana.
9. I don’t like tomato-ey foods. Gives me heartburn if I eat them after 4:00 in the afternoon.
10. I used to have acid reflux really bad – even had to elevate the head of our bed – until I did the low-carb diet for 6 months. Lost 10-15 pounds, and have only had it in rare occasions since then.
11. I have “windows” in my sinuses. When I was young and into my teenage years, I would have to have my sinuses “washed out” by numbing them and having a large syringe full of warm salt water shot up my nose. Yum.
12. I was valedictorian of my high school class.
13. I have some of the greatest friends and accountability partners in the world.
14. I have a really hard time stomaching ultra-sports freaks.
15. At seminary, I got up early twice a week to drive over for classes (took me an hour to get there) and would arrive at 5:30 a.m. I joined Ben Phillips at a local bakery just south of seminary and got all my reading done there at the bakery before class.
16. Donald Duck is my favorite cartoon character.
17. I’ve been to China (twice), the Dominican Republic, Canada, Slovenia, Ukraine, Poland (twice), Maine, and Colorado on mission trips as a collegiate minister.
18. I once had my shorts jerked down to my ankles in the cafeteria line at Ouachita. I was standing in the main room with my tray in hand and had to shuffle off to the side and put down my tray in order to hastily jerk them back up. I’m pretty sure it was Mitch Bettis or Andy Dean. One doesn’t look behind you in that instant. One just acts.
19. I was part of a choreographed lip-syncing group with Mitch Bettis and Dennis Tucker at OBU. We were called “The Goobers.” We actually got requests to perform. Later, when Dennis decided his reputation was too precious to be soiled any longer with the epithet of “Goober” (though he was and I’m sure still is one in heart), Lon Vining took his spot for a last cameo of the group in the school cafeteria for a late-night talent show.
20. I drive a moped affectionately known as “The Batmoped.” That has nothing to do with being a Goober.
21. I have owned just about every video game system since the Atari 2600. Heck, before that, my dad brought home a large box one evening with two knobs on either end that connected to the TV. It was the first home entertainment “Pong” system. I rocked at that.
22. I have had a motorcycle wreck. Andy Dean was involved in that as well. Too little space here to detail.
23. I have journaled since I was in junior high.
24. I have had a large, painful butt boil before that I blogged about – to my wife’s horror.
25. I love life because of Jesus Christ.

I have a friend who left a comment that seemed to question my intelligence about the incident that took place here. I want to explain myself. To borrow from Paul Harvey, here’s the rest of the story…

Our friends, Ralph and Christy Ramsey with their daughter Hannah, came to visit us in Virginia. It was a week after our last big snow, and there was more than 16″ on the ground in some places. After they arrived on Thursday, we all were planning a great sledding extravaganza on Friday. Being from the Dallas area, it was a little surreal that they got 9″ of snow there on the day they were flying out.

Ralph and I have been great friends since Carolyn and I got married in 1992. They were a young couple at First Baptist Church Garland, Texas where I served first as a lowly youth intern and then as a lowly Singles & Young Adult Minister. After I discovered that Ralph was rather gullible, he became one of our circle of friends primary targets for practical jokes. That is, until we realized that there’s not much point in playing jokes on Ralph since he so often does it to himself.

Ralph seems to always get hurt whenever we’re up to something. If you could amputate your leg with a ballpoint pen and a feather, Ralph would manage to do it. In fact, I’m convinced that many of the inane warning labels we see on products these days are simply because of accident prone folks like Ralph. He’s also exceptionally good at putting his foot in his mouth – a talent that I love to exploit.

However, it did seem like a good idea at the time on Friday when he suggested we video our daughters and wives sledding down the hill. Then he threw in a twist. Let’s (that would be me, Sam and Ralph) lock arms at the base of the hill and play “sled chicken.”

We were sledding near Lark Lane where there was a huge, snow-packed hill, and you could achieve near Space Shuttle launch speeds coming down the hill with a mere piece of plastic under you. So Ralph set up the video camera behind us, and the three of us locked arms to face the sledding missiles.

My rationale went something like this:

• Humor Ralph and don’t shoot down one of his “ideas.”
• Take some great close ups of  the girls coming down the hill with Carolyn’s fancy Canon which she had asked me to hold.
• The odds of us getting hit were minute. Most of us were falling off the sleds before we reached the point we were standing.
• Ralph’s ideas never work.

So there we stood. I’ve included the video again for your study of the event.

There are few observations I’d like to make about the incident above now that you’ve witnessed it:

• It is impossibly difficult to tell how fast someone is going on a sled heading towards you when you are zoomed in taking pictures of them.
• The response time of pulling the camera from your eyes, calculating the proximity of a rocketing sled, telling your body which way to go to avoid impact and then moving is almost negligible.
• If you should attempt to escape injury by leaping to the right where your son and friend are pushing you into the sled’s path, you will most likely fail.
• One’s feet are not meant to occupy the same space where one’s head was previously in a 2 second span.
• A Canon D40 with zoom lens does not make an adequate cushion for your ribs but in fact can survive such an impact with no adverse affects.
• A 42 year-old man’s ribs are able to absorb a Canon D40 mass impression without breaking.
• It’s disconcerting to hear one’s daughter more concerned about the aforementioned camera than she is her father who is lying a quivering mass of wounded flesh.

Now, watch this version of the video in order for me to point out a few more observations that are only intelligible in slow motion:

• My wife’s and Christy ear-to-ear evil grins.
• How high my feet got.
• The sudden realization after I bring the camera down from my eyes that I am in trouble.
• Ralph’s bracing himself to push me into the path of the sled.
• How narrowly Sam missed being plowed over as well.

Ralph was supremely proud of himself. Heck, I would have been too. It was a flawless plan and execution. The odds of that happening are astronomical – especially with the two of us involved.

Now that you know “the rest of the story,” I hope you agree with me that I am in no way to be second-guessed for my participation in the incident. It was all a fluke. You would do the same thing if you were in my shoes. Right?

Our church was thrilled and blessed to be able to host the Glory in the Highest Concert in December. Thanks to Legacy campus ministry, we were able to use Burruss Auditorium at VT. It featured Shane & Shane, Phil Wickham and Bethany Dillon.

They were all incredible, and we were amazed at the turnout and how encouraging the response was.

Our worship leader posted the following YouTube video today of a remix he did of Phil Wickham’s song “Beautiful.” I half expected to find Cody telling knock-knock jokes or something when I clicked on the link. However, I was impressed. You watch and tell me what you think:

Just in the past six months, it’s been amazing how the Lord has knitted together an incredible team of like-minded servants in Northstar Church to not only work together for God’s glory but to deeply enjoy one another’s company.

I’m grateful for how God has worked to lead us to Virginia, and I just had to brag on Cody in particular with this post. He’s an amazingly talented, humble, fun, and reflective young man. He and his better half, LaRae just bought their first house. Carolyn and I are celebrating the implications of that purchase as being they truly sense the Lord leading them to continue their ministry among the people of Northstar and the Burgs.

We’re all very fortunate and blessed to have someone who has such talent and a teachable spirit working among us.

Each and every Sunday, the worship service at our church is conducted in a way that inspires heartfelt worship of Christ. If you’ve not had the opportunity to join us yet, I’d encourage you to do so. The preaching is just so-so… ;)

It’s a long story that I’ll supply later this week when I get to it, but without any further ado, here’s “The Fall 2010.”

The Fall – Real time from Jeff Noble on Vimeo.

And in slow motion:

The Fall 2010 from Jeff Noble on Vimeo.

Courageous Leadership

So… Bill Hybels is the founding and lead pastor of Willowcreek Church in Barrington, Illinois. His church averages 23,000 attendees on the weekends, and its the 4th largest church in the U.S. He founded the church out of a burden for reaching youth and young people back in 1975, and it’s obviously exploded under his leadership.

Hybels says that this book took him 40 years to write. I can see why. It’s crammed with simple, practical observations on leading, leading well and leading poorly. He not only identifies some key thoughts on being a leader, but he also is able to commend credible characteristics of developing other leaders.

He is both self-revealing and self-deprecating in his book. And it works. It doesn’t come across as a pastor who’s hit the big time, and simply smiles at you, urging you to have your best life now. But he comes across as a real guy. A pastor unashamed to communicate that life is hard and that sometimes even pastors need counseling.

He has 3 C’s that he looks for as he identifies and blesses a leader for ministry that are extremely helpful:
• Character
• Competence
• Chemistry
Character is essential because no matter how good (competent) someone is, if their character is not well-formed, if they’re not a person of integrity, they can tarnish and ruin a ministry and church faster than Arkansas weather changes. Chemistry is vital, Bybels says, simply because if you’re a team player, then the people on the team need to be able to relate and work well together.

Overall, I think Courageous Leadershipbelongs on the bookshelf of every Christian leader – but only after its been well read, underlined and dog-eared. Hybels is not an inspirational writer with marvelous turns of phrases like Lucado. Nor is he theologically mind-bending like a Piper. Yet, his upfront, plain-talk style gives you a sense not of a seminary professor who’s never been there, but of an ordinary guy sharing leadership principles from his arsenal of personal experience.

Snowed In Announcements

Because we cancelled church today due to snow, Cody made this great video to show.

I guess I’ve got sweet blood.

I’ve known I was an easy target for stinging creatures for a long time now. I still haven’t quite figured out why they like me. Yet because I am well aware that flying insects are truly WMDs (Wasps of Mighty Destruction), I am pretty sensitive to their presence.

That hypersensitivity is probably the reason that when I am caught unaware by one buzzing by my ear or face, I tend to lose all composure and simply run away yelling. My neighbor in Monticello witnessed this headlong flight from what looked like nothing from his side of the street one day. That red wasp chased me from the front yard to the back driveway before I lost him.

Why me?

On two different occasions in the past couple of years, they dive-bombed me from wasp nests tucked under the eaves of our carport. My neck was the target one day. My scalp received their ire on another.

I was doing absolutely nothing to them. Tossing kitchen trashbags into a green can shouldn’t provoke a wasp’s wrath. Neither should power blowing a dirty driveway. However, on both occasions, I earned a welt from wasps. Red wasps, in particular, graciously leave you with a throbbing reminder of their attack.

I had hoped our move to Virginia made peace with the pests. I assumed that whatever contract was out on me in Arkansas was nullified across state lines. Surely their sting had no jurisdiction so far from home.

Yet blood is thicker than wings, and Wednesday night at 2:00 a.m., I was stealth stung.

It’s the middle of January here. Cold. Wasps, bees, etc. – supposed to be out of commission; people should be none of their buzzness during this time of year.

Yet, the agony struck suddenly. Because of my familiarity with sting pain over the years, I grasped the reality of what happened in a nanosecond. My wife was more skeptical… and mad. You see, my revelation happened like this:

Zzzzzz… (from both sides of the bed)

Sting.

A liquidly fluid moment of me leaping from the bed, screaming, throwing back covers and landing on my feet. Yes, it was all in one smooth motion. I was quite proud of my dexterity – in spite of the pain. A dash across the room to the light switch flooded the bedroom with illumination.

Carolyn was unimpressed. Even wrathful.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!!”

“I JUST GOT STUNG!”

“No, you didn’t. The cat probably clawed you through the bedspread.”

Sure enough, there sat the dazed kitten – having been flung over the end of the bed in my liquid fluid motion referred to above.

Enter a moment of self-doubt.

Yet, the throb on my leg – and after inspection, the wound, ushered in a surge of confidence.

“NO, I WAS STUNG!”

My powers of deduction and observation now fully functional – in spite of the hour – I began to separate the bed coverings like the layers of an onion. And what did Sherlock Noble find? Between the bedspread and the electric blanket – both above the sheet – a crafty critter with a little walkie talkie whispering, “My position has been compromised. I repeat; my position has been compro… SMACK.”

Yes. Without regard to our present culture of sustainability, I slaughtered the wasp with my houseshoe. Unceremoniously, I then flushed him.

My next liquid smooth fluid motion was slipping back into bed, dragging the covers back over me, and casting a smug look of supreme stinging insect knowledge at my now-incredulous spouse.

Unfortunately, she fell asleep rather quickly – oblivous to the fact that she was supposed to lay awake in self-recriminating guilt for hours for having doubted me. It was I who lay there checking Twitter, Facebook and playing Paper Toss until my leg quit throbbing.

POSTLUDE

I was relating this tale to VT BCM Director Darrell Cook at Panera this morning when a revelation struck me about my wasp curse.

Years ago, I remember vividly one beautiful day in Little Rock watching bees buzz among the clover in our yard when a wonderfully siblingish idea came to mind. After coaxing my sister Amy outside, I then began to demonstrate my liquid fluid reflexes by showing her that “I was so fast” that I could catch a bee and throw it without harm.

I demonstrated this throw a few times so quickly that I knew she was unable to determine that it was an air bee I was throwing. Then came the challenge.

“Let’s see if you’re that fast.”

I do remember having to encourage her and with brotherly love assure her that she was, indeed, a very fast girl for her age.

After a few moments of watching them – I’m assuming getting the timing in her mind right – she bent, scooped and threw. But intermingled with her smooth motion was also a loud scream. And a look of furious awareness.

I don’t even remember her saying anything to me. She ran past me into the house, crying loudly.

I stood there uncomfortably. In doubt. I had not thought past the fun of the moment. Sounds like a great sermon, doesn’t it?

I was still standing there among the clovers when the front door opened again. Amy came out. Behind my dad.

The rest is thankfully fuzzy. I do remember him saying something like, “Did you tell your sister she could throw a bee?”

That incident, I realized this morning at Panera with painful clarity, may be the source of my wasp curse.

So… neighbors and friends… if you see me running with panic about my yard this summer from what appears to be nothing, you know now. Wasps have jurisdiction from state to state, and they know where I am.

I saw this entry over at Michael Kelly’s blog and wanted to ask you what your experiences with famous people are as well.

• Who’s the most famous person you’ve almost met?

Or…

• Who’s the most famous person you’ve met that you didn’t know was famous?

I have a famous person fetish. I don’t know why. Carolyn thinks I’m insane, but in my heart of hearts, I fear that there’s a paparazzi just dying to break out. My iPhone camera hasn’t helped things. I take shots of people who look like famous people secretly. Just last week, in Lefty’s in Blacksburg, there was a dead ringer for Mac Powell of Third Day.

I wrote a letter to Mel Gibson a few years ago asking him for an opportunity for a visit. I just wanted to pick his brain and find out what makes him tick. I just felt like I would really connect with him for some reason – in spite of the fact I’ve never produced a movie about Jesus, gotten a DWI or shown my butt in a film. It’s weird, I know. Maybe through the Twitterverse – which seems to connect random folks with each other – I’ll get that opportunity.

Just last year, I had Ryan Seacrest mention me in a tweet. Oh yes. And last week, Kurt Warner (who I hope wins the Superbowl this year if Brett Favre doesn’t) responded to one of my friends.

In a weird “six degrees of separation” experiment, Carolyn sat next to a man on the plane yesterday who noticed she was reading Mike Huckabee’s book A Simple Christmas. He told Carolyn he knew him, was friends with him, and promptly texted him that he was sitting next to a lady on a plane who was reading his book. His name for my former governor in his cell phone? President. Last night, a friend who had seen her tweet about the experience tweeted us that he and his wife had seen Janet Huckabee at the trade show they were attending in Dallas.

Other than that, Carolyn and I both went to school with the gals from Point of Grace. I bumped into Bill Clinton (literally) on the streets in NYC when I was in college with a group from the journalism department. And Sam and I failed to get Dominic Rhodes and Tony Dungy’s autograph when we saw them at Disney World two years ago. But our DR football card has pen impressions from where our pen failed to write on the card.

I did get my picture taken with Donald Duck.

Soooo…. leave a comment her with your experiences. And if you know Mel Gibson…