Happy Birthday, Jacob!

Today my son, Jacob, turns four. In case you're bad with math that means that four years ago today, Rita and I were in a hospital room, and she was (admirably and with great strength) preparing to bring our first child into the world.

It seemed like there were literally thousands of emotions that danced through my mind during those few hours that we spent in that room waiting for his arrival.

I had always thought I'd make a good father. Perhaps I was a little too confident in my own abilities, because I soon learned how difficult of a proposition that can really be. It requires great patience when you feel you have very little of it to offer. It requires an unrelenting kind of love that refuses to wilt in the face of intense conflict (if you've ever had a four year old child, you know of what I speak...). And it demands a lot of wisdom and skill that, many times, I frankly find myself lacking.

This afternoon Jacob and I went out to lunch at Friendly's for his birthday lunch (see above photo). I'd like to say it's a tradition, but since this is the first time, I'm not sure it qualifies yet. We had as advanced a conversation as possible as he munched on his grilled cheese and moved quickly to the all-important hot fudge sundae.

Jacob is four, but I feel like I've grown up a lifetime in the short years he has been part of my life. I have learned so much from him, and I can only hope that he's learning some things from me. His quiet and sensitive spirit remind me that patience and compassion are qualities that are reflective of our heavenly father. His inquisitive mind reminds me that there are some mysteries that should still take me by surprise, and that it's ok to say, "I don't know." His imagination intrigues me, helping me remember what it's like to create and dream, and inspiring me to do the same. And his energy - well, his energy reminds me that when you're passionate about something, you find the energy to pursue it.

Jacob, four years ago your arrival into my life brought such light and joy. I see them still in your face today, and I love what I see.

Happy Birthday, Jacob!

Friendship

A couple of weeks ago I wrote to a good friend of mine a short email. The text consisted mainly of a short quotation from C. S. Lewis’ book, The Four Loves.

“I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend, and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

Tomorrow I will go to help the guy I consider to be my best friend pack up a moving truck as he prepares to move from Rhode Island to Maryland. We’ll see each other again, I’m sure of it. And there’s this great blogging innovation that will allow us to keep opening windows into our souls for each other. But I can’t help but feeling, at least for the moment, that there will be something missed in the distance.

I’ve been reading a children’s book to my two kids almost every day for a week (you parents know how this goes…). It’s about a turtle named Franklin who has a bad day because his best friend is moving away. I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten teary-eyed while reading a children’s book, but it’s a pretty humbling experience. In that little kids book I was seeing the way that moving affects friendship, but was also reminded that it doesn’t destroy friendship, just reshapes it in a new way.

Our friendship has not been one of duty, nor necessity; but I can say without hesitation that it has given great value to my life in this world. Through our friendship I’ve grown as a man, a husband, a father, and a church leader. Through our friendship I’ve learned the value of character, consistency, and most of all, of having a deep and enduring passion for the work of God’s Kingdom.

Friendship may be unnecessary, but it is certainly not trivial. Its beauty derives from its rarity. God has, with this friendship, given me a rare gift. I hope that even as it changes, it will retain its beauty.

Thanks, Dale, for walking with me. And wherever the road winds from here, I trust our paths will continue to meet.

Immersion: Hatred to Love

Good Afternoon! There are three posts that follow this one that are from writings for our Sunday Evening experience we call Immersion. This month we were exploring how God transforms us in our character from people haunted by hatred, to people living for love.

The written pieces are meant to form somewhat of a journey, and are written for the purpose of reflection, so I'd encourage you to take a few moments in between to think about your own experience as it relates to what you're reading. You'll be missing out on the physical elements (each written piece had a corresponding element, see below) we used on Sunday to add to our experience, but I hope you'll be able to enjoy the experience nonetheless.

The Elements:
Hatred towards others - A broken picture frame
Hatred towards self - A cracked mirror
Hatred meets Love - The elements of communion and a scene from The Passion of the Christ
Love towards self - A mirror (whole)
Love towards others - A picture frame (whole)

Immersion: Haunted by Hatred

Hatred to Love

Towards Others

Human history is a legacy of broken relationships, of hatred settling under the surface, only to break out in moments of tension and pain. And you and I live in that legacy. Try as we might we couldn’t escape it.

We harbor the anger and bitterness deep in our own souls, hating those who have used us, betrayed us, and beaten us down. We can’t see straight, the cracks get in the way, distorting what we see. The picture is fractured, and we can’t seem to find the glue to make it whole again.

And so we rage at others, sometimes silently, sometimes violently. We hate them for the arrogance, hate them for their hurting us, even hate them for daring to be different than us. We have clever ways of disguising it, but it’s there. “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” we say, while we privately loathe them both.

And all the while we blame the hatred of humanity on those we all can deem worst – the Nazis, the racists, the engineers of genocide and destruction. But, if we are honest, we’d have to pause in the midst of the assigning of blame. We’d have to pause to wonder how we’re contributing to it. We’d have to consider whether our own hatreds of people privately held are any better than those more public examples. We’d have to wonder if we’re not all looking through broken picture frames at each other, throwing more stones, causing the glass to crack even more.

What’s that they say about those in glass houses?

Towards Self

But it can all be a very clever disguise, can’t it? Masquerading as our spite for others is often a deeper issue, it’s the way we camouflage a hotter battle that rages within our hearts – the battle of self-hatred.

There are certain things about us that are exposed only to us and God, and those ugly things that lie somewhere in our hearts haunt us whether waking or sleeping. The arrogance we are so quick to point out in others sleeps unguarded in our own hearts. The greed we condemn so freely growls hungrily from our own hearts. The lust we recognize in the wayward glance of another lurks unchecked in our own hearts. And we hate them for being there, hate ourselves for letting them stay.

Our inability to overcome weakness, our insufferable human frailty; all feed this internal engine of war, bent on our own destruction. We hate and love ourselves, and we can’t decide which will win. We’re torn because, when it comes down to it, we wonder if we aren’t deserving of the hatred of others, and the hatred of ourselves, maybe even the hatred of God.

We’re holding a broken mirror, and even our own image is distorted through its cracks. But when it’s the only image we’ve ever known, well, what can we possibly do with that?

Immersion: Hatred meets Love

Hatred Meets Love

But the self-hatred is not the worst of it yet. Secretly, silently and even without admitting it, we engage in our own personal cold war with the God who created us. We stare at him defiantly, or look away willingly, but we let him know our intent. Maybe he made us defectively, or maybe we are his royal idea of a divine comedy – a wretched experiment in humor.

If it’s even possible, we seem to resent this God, who, even when we try to follow him, somehow seems at best disinterested, and at worst, opposed. The more we shake our fists in rage in his direction, and the more cruel arrows we fire in his direction, the more compassionate his response becomes. In a very broken way, we almost want him to hate us and show it because death, damnation and judgment might be better than what we think is indifference.

Hatred would be more bearable than that agonizing love. “Love for what?” we ask. “For this pitiful, horrifying thing we call humanity? Anyone who can love this stinking pile of filth and flesh should let his love turn to anger and wash us all away in a cosmic, cleansing tidal wave.

And then maybe you see it. Perhaps for one God-forsaken moment your eyes behold a blood-drenched, mutilated creature; strips of rotten human flesh hanging laid bare by the worst of human hatred and cruelty. You see his broken body violently convulse – a captive form, stretched from end to end as his life pours out, spent like a wrung sponge.

You look away because the horror of the sight is overwhelming. You look away because you can see your own hatred on display. You can see there the rottenness of this human experiment, the blackness of a human heart wracked with hatred – and you know that it is, in part, your own.

Your eyes wish to turn. Your stomach turns within you and begs you to look away. But your heart – your heart tells you to keep looking. You heart tells you that in all of the black filth of human hatred there is a vision of divine love. Your heart betrays your eyes, and you find a beauty somehow deeper than flayed skin and broken bones.

See here this body, broken by hate bears deeper the marks of God’s perfect, painful love. See here this blood shed in violence stains the human heart with the peace of surpassing beauty. You are invited to touch, to smell, and to taste the love of God willingly extended to wash away hatred, and leave you standing like a person newly born – a person who lives to love.

You are loved, and he asks for your love to be given in return. What will you say to that?

Immersion: Living to Love

Towards Self

Standing there, like a person newly born, we understand at last that the hatred has been washed away, and in its place there has come this living, breathing love.

When you’ve seen your hatred crucify the King of Love, and you understand that it’s been done for the love of you, well, that changes things, doesn’t it? In place of the broken and distorted image, there is a proper perspective, a right way of looking at yourself.

When the King of Love, whose face was twisted and broken by hate looks lovingly back towards you, cries out for your forgiveness and stretches his punctured hand out towards you to receive you, you can see how God changes hatred to love.

Where once you longed to see a new image in the mirror, something without the fractures and cracks, you now are given the ability to see yourself made whole. Your hatred healed by the wounds of love, you stand complete.

It’s amazing, love is greater than hatred. For all of it’s power, hatred cannot create anything, it can only destroy. But love – love can create. Love has created, and it can re-create you. Go ahead, look at yourself. Love overcomes hatred, it will for you if you’ll let it.

Towards Others

Picture perfect. Sight restored. What you couldn’t see clearly in others before, you now can see. When you’ve allowed the King of Love to re-create you, you can’t long live full of hatred towards any to whom he extends his offer of love.

Sinners and saints alike receive the loving attention of your re-born eyes. When the King of Love whispers their names in your ears, your eyes water with gratitude that he could let you love them.

In place of cracked glass that prevented you from seeing your neighbor whole, you have a new frame with which to view the world. But be careful, be very careful. The glass can crack again, if you treat it carelessly. You must guard its newness well.

Do not take lightly this power you hold in your hands – the power to look with love on the unlovely, to freely offer grace where it is least deserved. Do not let yourself fall back into the trap of hatred and anger, or it will ruin you again.

“Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
~Matthew 22:37-39

The Promise of Sacrifice

Good Afternoon!

Blogging to you today from my favorite coffee shop - Java Madness, where I'm enjoying a fine cappuccino, prepared perfectly by Rachel (who also happens to make excellent music with her band, Can't Face the Falling).

I've been doing a lot of thinking and praying about this year that has recently arrived, and I have to say, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not sure why, but I have this almost palpable sense of promise to the year, and I'm excited about the possibilities that God is setting in front of me personally, and our church corporately.

I shared some of my thoughts with our church on Sunday, and I find it only a little ironic that in this year that I'm feeling so positive about, the word that keeps stirring my thinking is "sacrifice".

In the spring of last year, while musing on the future of our church, and my role in it, I came across this scripture from John, chapter 12, where Jesus shares a really powerful (and somewhat dangerous) principle. He says, "...a kernel of wheat must be planted in the soil. Unless it dies it will be alone - a single seed. But its death will produce many new kernels - a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who despise their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. All those who want to be my disciples must come and follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And if they follow me, the Father will honor them."

I've rarely had trouble applying this truth to my life (at least in theory, practice is another thing altogether). It's almost axiomatic for those of us who've been around Christianity for any length of time that we must "die to self" repeatedly in order to follow Jesus. With all of our talk of this, we'd probably all be able to admit that we've done it far less than we ought to have.

And in reality, I think we've thought less (if at all) of the application of this way of seeing ourselves in a corporate, local church sense. Perhaps the church in its local application needs to be continually in this process of dying to itself in order to really be faithful to the One we are called to represent.

I'm going to do my best this year to lead our church to reflect on what it would mean for the church to die to itself in order to be reborn in the image God wants to create for us. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to be somewhat painful, maybe a little messy, and a little fearful. But I think I've realized that if we love our life as it is right now too much, we're going to become overly attached to it (its building, its programs, its budgets and structures) and we may end up passing on something better that God has prepared for us in our efforts to hold what we have.

We've been given this seed, it's been placed in our hands. Our building, budget, and resources of all kinds have been entrusted to us. I wonder if in order to maximize our return, and really make the investment eternal, we have to sow them into the ground, let them die there, and allow God to resurrect them.

I hope to find on the other side of this process of following Jesus' example that we will find, in Jesus' words, that "the Father will honor them."