Author: Robert

Ok it probably isn’t. I’m sure your small group, if you are involved in one, is fine too. I’m just really loving my small group right now.

In case you don’t know what I mean when I say small group is is church talk for a group of people who get together regularly and discuss how our faith affects and interacts with our lives. We help each other follow Jesus. Some churches call them “grow groups”, or “life groups”, or “DLT – Doing Life Together”, or any number of other names that I’m not cool enough to come up with. They were called “small groups” when I first experienced one in the late 80s/early 90s and thus they are still small groups to me. I believe they are incredibly helpful and I personally encourage every believer in Jesus as Lord to have a group of people that they regularly meet with to talk about faith.

Pam and I have been a part of this group for around 10 years and while we have loved it for a long time (I’ve posted about it before here and in several other posts). We usually swap between reading through a book of the Bible (right now we are reading through 2 Samuel) and reading some devotional writing together (for example Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together“). I have loved our small group in the past but a couple of things have happened over the past 6 months that have caused me to love it all the more. They are:

• We started eating a common meal together. Not really a potluck as much as a themed meal. We pick a theme and everyone brings a part of the meal. For example, yesterday the theme was pulled pork, which Pam fixed, someone brought buns, another person brought chips, another coleslaw, etc, etc. We meet at 6 so the meal is always nice and easy so no one has to rush to make something complicated. Eating a meal together with this group is one of my favorite parts of the week.
• We have a great deal of diversity in age ad experience. From almost retired to born only a few months ago. Our kids, well except for our youngest group member, contribute to the conversation. I print out kid bulletins pertaining to the passages we are reading (we typically read 3 chapters a week from a book of the Bible to discuss) so they have something to do if they get bored, but usually they sit with us and add to the conversation about the subject.

This group of friends is fun to hangout with but they also help me to think about, know, and, more importantly, follow God better. During this Summer we have usually sat outside on our patio, eaten together, talked about scripture and faith, prayed with and for each other, and then often cooked smores together. I appreciate them so much.

I hope you have such a group. If not I hope you find one. If you are in the Point area you are welcome to join us. You may even get the Special Red Plate and therefore get to wear the small group crown that we have (yep we have a crown. It is pictured above)

SIDE NOTE – I think one of the most beautiful things in faith is a diverse group formed around nothing other than their common Lord eating together. I don’t mean friends, though that too is beautiful in a different manner, but instead people who aren’t eating together because they like each other’s company but because they love their Lord. Friends get together because they like spending time together. The Church gets together because we have a common Lord and there is something very beautiful when believers share a meal together. We grow to like each other because we realize Jesus loves the other person and we need to love the ones that Jesus loves. It is a different kind of meal.

I am presently sitting outside in our backyard listening to Sandra McCraken’s live album “Steadfast Live” and hoping that the Thermacell Lamp I just lit will start chasing away the mosquitoes quickly. Seriously, Thermacell is great – I attract mosquitoes like I’m a free steak dinner and two lamps pretty much keep our whole patio free of these stupid little creatures, even when I am around. I just reached the point in the album where she stops singing into her mic and everyone there sings the doxology. It reminded that my favorite part of gathering with the “threads” of Tapestry each week is when we sing the doxology together as our ending prayer (well that and setup – I really like setup too. It is pretty awesome and fun). I’ve written before concerning why ending the doxology is so meaningful to me.

The sound of us singing the Doxology is one of the things that I have missed with us gathering at the IDEA Center during the Summer. Though I am very thankful for the IDEA Center letting us meet there during the Summer and I will continue to support Create Portage County because it is a great organization, the acoustics in the IDEA Center aren’t as amazing for the a cappella singing of the Doxology each week. I love it when the words “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow” echo around the hardwood basketball court and mason brick walls of the gym. That floor and those walls may make hearing the rest of our gatherings pretty difficult sometimes but they make the Doxology sound amazing. “Praise God” bounces around and around on all those hard surfaces.

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.

While I sit here watching the fire burn down, enjoying the fact that the Thermacell is now working to the point that I haven’t been bitten by a mosquito in a while, and sadly not seeing any flying squirrels because I ran out of corn Thursday and apparently I am nothing more than a free meal to these cute flying rodents, I am also smiling while thinking about singing the Doxology with my friends and family. Today’s message was about Jesus being raised on the 1st day of the week, the 8th day, a new 1st day of the New Creation. If you are bored or need some good sleep producing reading material you can find the written version of the message here (typos and all). In my opinion, remembering the Doxology and living it out is a pretty good way to live out the joy and hope that are a part of the dawn of the 8th day, the 1st day of the New Creation that we will continue to live in till Jesus makes the day finally break and we live in God’s Kingdom face to face and no longer see His Kingdom through a glass darkly. When people who proclaim Jesus to be Lord live the Doxolgy we will remember the rules of the 8th day, the 1st day of the New Creation, (the Beatitudes). We will live hope instead of fear, love instead of hate, we forgive instead of judging, we welcome the other instead of despising the stranger, we welcome in our neighbor instead of turning our backs to needs both big and small, etc., etc.

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow. May it echo through my, and your, week.

I have mentioned before the Pamela thinks that I have EOG (Early Onset Grumpiness), as described in this great Portlandia sketch.

Well according to Pamela my EOG came out today.

You see the power went out at our house so we decided to go out to eat after church rather than open our refrigerator and let the cold air out. We went to Qdoba. I like Qdoba, it serves a good product, fast, in a nice environment. Unfortunately the Qdoba in Stevens Point, Wisconsin also has this type of Coke dispenser.

I HATE these Coke dispensers (I know my Midwestern friends would say “Soda dispensers” but I’m sticking with Coke for this post so you can deal with it – see my EOG is coming out) . These single spout, tons of choices dispensers drive me CRAZY! They slow everything down. Don’t give people all these choices. We can’t handle all these choices. All that happens is that someone is going to look through all the choices, be overwhelmed by it all, and then just go ahead and pick Cherry Coke. ARGH!!!!!! You wasted all that time just to get something that most normal dispensers have!!!!!! Just give us a regular multi-spout Coke dispenser with Water, Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, and throw in a surprise flavor every now and then as a treat. “Hey look this dispenser has raspberry flavored half Dr. Pepper/half Spite. That could be interesting.” See that’s fun and fast!

Breathe Robert. Breathe.

Anyhow I think I have figured out how to allow these dispensers for those foolish enough to enjoy wasting their time and still take care of us normal people. You can have one of these “too many choices, not enough spouts, and touchscreens that almost never work” dispensers at your restaurant if you have at least one other multi-spout Coke dispenser in the restaurant too. That way I can go quickly grab my regular Diet Coke while you have to wait for your preteen to try every combination possible. See this would be a win for everyone.

Qdoba you should fix this. Your burrito bowls are great and all but the drink situation is horrendous.

I love me some Stephen Colbert. I am so glad he is a brother in Christ.

You said, "'What punishments of God are not gifts?' Do you really believe that?" @andersoncooper asks, choking back tears as he and comedian Stephen Colbert discuss grief.

"Yes," Colbert replies. "It's a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering." https://t.co/IpiFk4ryiF pic.twitter.com/FfZLgLuR4L

— CNN (@CNN) August 16, 2019

As best I can determine he is paraphrasing from a letter of Tolkien’s which state:

A divine ‘punishment’ is also a divine ‘gift’ (emphasis mine), if accepted, since its object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will make ‘punishments’ (that is changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to be attained: a ‘mortal’ Man has probably (an Elf would say) a higher if unrevealed destiny than a longeval one.

Dang that is good. Also really cool to see two grown men dealing with the emotions of loss and grief (ht to Pamela on that one)

In a couple of weeks Pam and I are going to get to lead a parenting seminar for one of the companies that I chaplain. This company does a lot of training for their employees on how to improve their professional skills set and they have also begun to offer many seminars for their employees concerning aspects of life. For example, a year ago I did a seminar on relationships and marriage for any employees who were interested. We had around 40 that were. From the relationships and marriage seminar came a request for a parenting seminar and I told them that Pam might be willing to come in (I’m paying her with lunch) to help lead such a seminar. As a PhD Professor in Communicative Science & Disorders Pam is an invaluable resource on parenting. They agreed and we will be leading the seminar in a couple of weeks. I will just be there because I fit Will Roger’s definition of an expert “A man fifty miles from home with a briefcase.” Also I know a little bite about adolescents being as I was a Youth Minister for 20 years and I studied a good bit for that. But mainly I come from 50 miles away and I have a briefcase (actually it is a possible).

We haven’t map everything out yet but we are using a metaphor that Pam and I both love for parenting concerning carpentry and gardening. It comes from this Alison Gopnik’s book “The Gardener and the Carpenter” which we first learned about from this episode of Hidden Brain (a podcast I encourage you to listen to).

A brief description is that many people want to parent like being a carpenter, you have a set of plans and the end result is the product of whether or not you follow those plans accurately or whether or not the plans were accurate. In this model if your kid is “broken” (and I use that term merely for this example) then it probably means that you weren’t following the right plans or you didn’t have the correct skills to implement the correct plans. For a carpenter the end result is controllable if you have the right skills and plans. When a carpenter builds a house she chooses the materials to build the house and imposes her will on the material to achieve her desired results.

The gardener is different though, there aren’t set plans, though there are best practices. In gardening there are tons of uncontrollable factors. You can do everything right and everything still goes to pot. You can also do everything wrong and still, somehow, achieve tremendous results. Some times there is too much rain and other times not enough. Sometimes the soil is perfect and other times it has too much of one component in it. Sometimes the soil you have simply won’t grow what you were hoping for, but the gardener works with the soil he has to produce the best it can produce. Gardening means working with what you have and improvising with the environment, your circumstances, and your skills to put your garden in the best situation for the growth that fits that soil. In the end though the gardener never makes anything grow, he just encourages the growth. Gardening is like improvisational jazz.

Pam and I think parenting is more like this. You are helping kids to grow into who they are and can be, rather than imposing a set plan on them. It is a metaphor that I think works for and can give direction to lots of different situations and areas of life, not just parenting. I am looking forward to exploring this with Pam and the workers at one of the companies where I chaplain. Primarily I will be showing off my wife who is amazingly talented and one of the best gardeners I know in people’s lives. If you don’t know her you should. She’s pretty awesome.