Poem - "The Pregnant Pause"

Read the "AAAAHHH!!!" post (below) before you read this. It's a poem that was shared during the sermon today. The link above is I think where it comes from.

we are tempted to think
that this is out of character for you

a momentary fragility
[showing your tender side]

that once the christmas carols are finished
and the decorations are put away,
you’ll get back to power and might.

but in your completeness -
this one chance we get to see flesh and bone
put onto the theory -
this is you:
fragile,
impossibly vulnerable
and at the mercy of human response.

so, god,
are you holding your breath too
in this pregnant moment;
waiting to see if we will answer
yes
to the fragile question
of divine love,
if – because – this is all
you can do.

AHHHH!!!

As you may have discerned from the title of this post I've been pretty stressed out lately. I won't go into the details about my work except to say that I'm being expected to work a LOT more hours than I have in the past. This is in addition to some obligations I've taken on with my church and the normal problems of the Christmas Season. I think we all know what it feels like to get up in the morning and know that there isn't enough time in the day and then have that knowledge confirmed when you go to bed at night.

But I had an insight at church today that I want to share. I'll quickly sum up Jake Hendrix's sermon a bit later, but the insight that I believe God had for me was this:

There's still time to worship God.

I keep forgetting that the most important thing is not how much I get done - It's Who I'm doing it for. By worship, by the way, I don't mean just singing. I mean an attitude towards the world and its creator that allows God's Character to indwell my life. Even in the midst of 60 hour work weeks it's still possible to have this attitude. When I'm working late at work I can listen to sermons on my MP3 player. When I'm frustrated and can't get it all done I can offer up a quick prayer. It's possible to have the proper attitude of a creature before the Creator wherever I am.

The reason this is possible is because of Christ, which gets me to the message I heard today. And just in case this sounds like just another sermon please know that I was brought to tears today thinking about this. The message was on the incarnation - the doctrinal belief that God became Man in the form of Jesus. God becoming one of us so that we can become one with him. God became vulnerable to us, came as a little baby, so that he could be with us. Emmanuel, which means The God who is with us has come into the world (Matthew 1:23) And he'll be with us always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

One quick picture from the message and I'll be done. Think about the deepest, darkest, time in your life. How comforting is it to hear platitudes of "It'll all be all right"? Contrast that with the comfort of someone just Being with you throughout it. I don't know that it will "all be all right" with my job and other responsibilities. But I do know that I'm already all right with God - that he is with me throughout.

Merry Christmas

Pomegranates - I just don't get it.

How are you supposed to eat these things?
they were 2 for 1 a Safeway, so I bought two. I don't even know how to eat one.
On a side note - the buttons on my laptop for "C" "T" "H" and "V" stopped working. Anyone know how to fix that? IT was geTTing To be unworkable unTil I realized THaT THey work wHen I CapiTalize THem. Isn'T THaT funny? WHo would'Ve THougHT CapiTalizaTion Could solVe anyTHing? (No, Caps loCk doesn'T work).

Calvin and Hobbes - My Bumper Sticker Soapbox

I'm sure most of you have seen this bumper sticker somewhere - Calvin peeing on...

1. A Ford logo
2. "Ex-Girlfriend"
3. "Terrorists"

I have some thoughts on this I'd like to share.
Does it bug anyone else that this is totally out of context with who Calvin really is as a character? He's not just a nihilist who goes around peeing on things. In the comic strips whenever Calvin destroys something the destruction has some sort of creative purpose behind it.

When he digs a big hole in his parent's backyard it isn't just to mess up the grass - he's looking for dinosaurs. And when he conspires to smack Susie Derkins with a snowball it isn't out of pure hatred. He considers it a central part of his mission as a part of the Get Rid of Slimy girlS (GROSS) club. Calvin's response to the outside world is determined by what narrative he is embracing at the time. It's the same with us - grown ups just tend to pick more suitable narratives (or not).

Another problem I have with it is the general attitude it displays to the people who see it. Fine, you hate Ford, your ex-girlfriend, etc. If it's worth telling it to the world it's worth some sort of argument to explain why. I once heard a radio host say that anyone who puts a bumper sticker for ___ on one's car automatically must be highly irrational on the subject of ___. I don't know if I'd go that far, but he had a point. In order to truly engage others with your viewpoint more context is required than just "I want to pee on this". But I guess

in case of rapture this car will be un-manned

fits easier on a bumper sticker than

I interpret I Thessalonians 4:17 as Christ taking his favorite people up to heaven rather than Christ coming down to earth to assume lordship over all creation.*

Is it asking too much of the body politic to desire complete sentences, maybe even whole paragraphs from time to time?

*In "The Rapture Exposed, Barbara Rossing makes a convincing argument for the latter interpretation. She argues that the verb translated "meet" refers to a cultural practice of the inhabitants of a city meeting a visiting dignitary while he is still outside the city and escort him into the city in a triumphal entry. Apparently the only other time this exact word shows up in the Bible is when church leaders do exactly this to honor Paul in the book of Acts.

Bald is Beautiful?

I'm starting to think this was a mistake. What do you think?

Garden of Eden

You know when you are having a conversation with someone and can't think of the right thing to say? Then 10 minutes, or one day later you think of the perfect response? I've decided to start posting these, under the theory that if it was a good thing to say then, it's probably good to say now too. This is my first installment (I'm sure there will be MANY more).

When I was at work a while ago a customer mentioned reading something about a tree somewhere in Saudi Arabia. Apparently some Muslims believe this to be the tree that we originally ate from in the Garden of Eden - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For those unfamiliar with the story read it here. Muslim pilgrims sometimes go to this site to see the tree and it is surrounded by a fence so that no one eats the fruit.

One of my co-workers was raised in the church but is now agnostic. She thought this was hilarious.

"Imagine if someone were to sneak past the fence and eat one of the fruits! We'd have to do it all over again! We'd need another savior!"

I remember my real response being something along the lines of it probably not being the real tree (brilliant reasoning there). But here's what I thought of 5 minutes too late:

"I've eaten from that tree every day of my life and I'll never need another savior."

Why do I always think of these things too late? Anyway, for more please go here, especially verses 20-28.

Far, Far Away

I've been having laptop troubles lately and I may not be able to post for a while. But I listened to this song today and wanted to share the lyrics. It had been a while since I heard it and I had forgotten how it effects me. If you go to the above link you can hear the song.

"Far, Far Away" by Five Iron Frenzy

Staring at the shoreline
wishing for some hope
the weight of empty fishing
nets is more than twisted rope
And underneath stern faces
they wait with baited breath
with broken hearts from hoping
while casting out their nets
See the figure on the shore
He speaks His words like plain men sing
His hands they still have holes in them
glory to the King

chorus
Can you hear the bells are ringing far, far, away?
Can you hear the voices singing far, far, away?

And Peter was a liar
a traitor just like me
and Judas was a hypocrite
and Paul a Pharisee
When truth can be so distant
and hope evades our reach
Peter swam across the water
and found it on the beach

Isn't that an amazing story? I love the way they phrase it. "He speaks his words like plain men sing". Doesn't that just capture it perfectly? When people ask Jesus a question and he just blows their presuppositions out of the water. They ask 'Is it this, or this' and he answers 'yes' or sometimes 'neither.' It's as if he's focused on something farther away from their vision and all of their petty doctrinal concerns are so close that they're blurry.

But at the same time he's right there with us. "When truth can be so distant and hope evades our reach. Peter swam across the water and found it on the beach." He's right there - 2,000 years ago walking around with fishermen. And right now in our midst through the Holy Spirit and the Church (The Body of Christ). Isn't it amazing that this man that preached to the rejected people on the outskirts of the Roman Empire led to the church bells that ring amongst us today? I know those churchbells sometimes seem distant from the original intent of Jesus. And we as a church do depart from his will on a regular basis. But He's still IN us. He's still working out the salvation of the world through this church. He could have amped up the heavenly loudspeaker and broadcast the TRUTH to the world. But we wants to involve us in his plan. We're plan A (by the grace of God), and there is no plan B.

In Christ (literally),

Jeff

Whiskey bottles and six-year olds

I haven't had internet access lately, so I haven't posted much. I have a few minutes left of coffee-shop wireless, so I think I'll just post a cool story I heard from my Grandpa Ehli.

When he was growing up during Prohibition he would collect old bottles that he found at the side of the road. Him and his friends sold them to a local moonshiner. He’d pay a nickel per whiskey bottle or a dime if it came with a cork. They had to scrounge quite a while just to get a few, but you could buy a lot of pop with a nickel in those days. Then one day prohibition ended and there were more whiskey bottles lying around than they could carry. Unfortunately the moonshiner wouldn’t buy them anymore. But Grandpa and his friends all thought that someday someone would be buying them again. So they gathered all that they could and dug a big hole. They made a spot on top for the grain-door off of an old railcar and put that on top. Then they covered that with about 2 feet of dirt and made a map.

I sincerely hope that someday, hundreds of years from now, an archaeologist in South Dakota digs that up and gets thoroughly confused.