Category: personal

I’m going to paraphrase Jesus a little here.

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “There was a refugee with his family running away from a dangerous situation in a neighboring country. He ran with his family to the country that proudly displayed a great monument of liberty with the following cast within it:”

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

“So he ran to this country of liberty in hopes of saving his family and was detained at the border.”

“While he was detained there a pastor walked by the detention center, but closed his eyes and hummed out loud so as not to see or hear anything from the center. The pastor blamed the other side of the political landscape and walked by, and the man and his family were left in the detention center.”

“Then a once great Evangelical leader toured the facility were he was detained. The Evangelical leader thought to himself and sent to his newsletter subscribers “These people are different from us and will destroy our culture. They probably have lots of criminals. They will take us down so we can’t help them.” Then the once great Evangelical leader walked by and the man and his family were left in the detention center. “

“Then a person with no power and no prestige saw the man and his family in the detention center. She went up to him and said “I’ll get beds for you and your family. I’ll help you make a new life that is safe from the danger that you have faced. I know you want to be able to work and fend for yourself so I will help you do that. You might not be able to stay here because our immigration system has been messed up for awhile now, but I will make sure that the enforcement of our law doesn’t put you in jail or use your children as leverage against you merely for you trying to apply for refugee status.” Then she contacted her representatives, and gave to charities that would help, took action herself, and remembered the man and his family”

And Jesus said to the man “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man detained at the border?”

The man seeking to justify himself replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Obviously Jesus didn’t tell the parable of the Good Samaritan this way – If He had told this parable about immigration the “Samaritan”, or in my case the woman with no power or prestige, would have been someone that Americans seemto despise, rather than just someone without power or prestige. For example, in some circles, someone from Iran. Also Jesus would have told the story with much braver actions by our heroine. I can be whimpy in my writing. Jesus isn’t.

Anyhow the reason I paraphrased the story above is because I hear and read many people who profess Christ as Lord responding to immigrants and refugees seeking asylum by worrying about their own status. What will the immigrants and refugees do to “our” country and “our” culture? What will immigrants and refugees do to “our” resources? What will they do to our crime rate, etc. etc? After all we think we are the subjects of our own story and therefore why wouldn’t we be concerned about how immigration affects us.

But if you profess Jesus as Lord then you are saying that ultimately we are not the subjects of our own lives. If we profess that Jesus is Lord then we are saying that the story of our lives is actually all about God. HE IS THE SUBJECT, we are merely objects that point to His greatness, mercy, and love within our stories. Therefore, the way we respond to events HAS TO BE about what best tells the story of God as the Hero of the story. The way we treat refugees and immigrants (two very different groups) speaks of the God we proclaim to be King. We can disagree (and probably should) on how to handle things politically and how to change the system (just talk to an immigration attorney and you will hear that the system has needed to be changed for a long time, regardless of what party is in control, if you need one follow my friend and college roommate Scott Hicks, he’s wonderful), but we can’t allow those political disagreements to lead us to treat the individuals who are refugees and immigrants in a manner that doesn’t glorify God because the story of our lives is about Him, not us, not our country. If you don’t profess Jesus as your Lord this doesn’t apply to you, but for those of us who do we gave up the right to focus on how something affects us.

He is the Subject of the story. Our part is to be examples of how wonderful and gracious He is. That’s why we have to be good neighbors, our actions reflects upon the Subject of the story. So go and do likewise.

Yesterday at Tapestry I spoke about the upside-down values of the Kingdom of God. When I got home Pam told me she was surprised that I had talked about the example of Stephen Scott, a Senior Vanderbilt baseball player. I didn’t mention the story because I had not heard it. As usual Pam was better informed that I was. Here’s a photo of why Stephen Scott would have been a good example for the upside-down values we talked about yesterday.

An hour after winning a national title in his last collegiate game….@Stephen_Scott7 stayed & picked up every piece of trash in our dugout.

No one asked him to, & he didn’t see me sneak this picture.

He just did what was right.

Leaders Eat Last until the end.@VandyBoys pic.twitter.com/VD56M0Qupd

— Brooks Webb (@BrooksW44) June 28, 2019

That’s a different set of values in action. You won the NCAA National Championship an hour ago and then you clean the dugout. Those are bizarro values in action.

The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. Luke 22:25b-26

The reason I titled this post “Remembering an Upside-Down Example” is because of a friend of mine for whom English is her second language. When talking with this friend if you say something that she wants to agree with with she will say “I remember” instead of saying “yes”. I LOVE WHEN SHE SAYS “I REMEMBER”.

The reason is that I know tons of people that will verbally ascent to something. Saying “yes” is just affirmation, but remembering implies action. When we remember the milk it means we purchased the milk that we were supposed to, not that we just thought of milk. When we remember our friends we bring them into whatever present moment we are experiencing. When we remember the bizzaro values of Jesus it means that we serve, we forgive, we love our enemy, etc. , etc. We don’t just ascent to the fact that Jesus’s kingdom has different values, we live out those values. We remember and remembering involves action.

Stephen Scott just lived out a good example of upside-down values. Now I need to remember that Christ’s kingdom involves such values. I must remember.

Noah has a new-to-him car and thus it is now time to let Sasha, the venerable 2001 Saturn L200, roam to other parts of the world and bring joy and frustration to others. So I posted her on Facebook Marketplace last night and Craigsllist late this morning.

Within 10 minutes I started getting text messages from scammers on Craigslist. Thus far I been contacted by 5 scammers (4 “I’ll text you and then you email me at this non-craigslist email”, and 1 “hey buy this VIN check from a fake company and I might buy your car”). If the deal is too good to be true it probably is. If they will pay you a good bit extra for the trouble of shipping it to them, it is probably a scam. If they want you to send them a VIN check through a company you’ve never heard of, it is probably a scam. If they text you but then want to continue the conversation via an email address not associated with a Craigslist account, it is probably a scam. Basically be careful out their folks.

I remember a good friend of mine being scammed by the shipping/courier scam after asking me if I thought it was legit. I had not heard of the shipping scam at that time and therefore couldn’t warn them to avoid it. So they cashed the check and sent the “shipping” money to the supposed courier only to discover 6 weeks later that the check buying the puppy and paying for the expense of shipping was a fake. This was two decades ago and I still feel guilt over not knowing to warn them. Be careful out their folks.

Anyhow here’s the add. If you know someone who is interested let me know. I’ll work favorably with friends of friends.

Sasha (the car’s name) is an old cruddy, yet wonderful Saturn L200. She was a great car for both my boys but it is time for her to go to someone else.

The Good:
*She is open to a name change
*The speakers on the passenger side work
*Her insurance will be cheap
*She runs and just seems to keep running
*Her tires are in good shape
*She doesn’t burn oil, which is amazing for a Saturn 4 cylinder
*She has two sets of keys
*She has a spiffy UW-Eau Claire Blugold sticker on her bumper
*She has a crack in her back light trim that looks like South America is South America had been stretched a little width-wise.

The Bad:
*She has the typical early 2000s Saturn gas pump leak – it affects the mileage and you can smell it outside.
*Her rear suspension is noisy. Rides fine but it is noisy when you push on the rear.
*The air bag light has been on since I got her 9 years ago. Supposedly it is just the light but I don’t know that for sure because I never had it checked out. 
*Someone in a parking lot at UW-Eau Claire decided to customize her by keying the Driver’s Side of the car.
*The carpets are in bad shape from salt and a heater core leak that was fixed last year.
*The Cruise Control shorts out and blows the fuse if you push the “Resume” key. It works fine if you don’t press “Resume”.

$900 OBO.

I kept hearing about Blooom on a few financial podcasts that I listen to (particularly “Stacking Benjamins which is one of my two favorite – the other being Clark Howard who I love – seriously Clark Howard is the best, if you aren’t listening to him you should, like right now, stop reading this and listen to Clark) so I thought I would try it out. I really like what they have recommended with my retirement account and the fact that it automatically re-balances my funds 4 times a year is wonderful. Anyhow if you go here and try it out you get a deal and I get a referral Amazon credit of $10 It is a win-win.

https://mbsy.co/w2ntm

Blooom is a roboadvisor that manages your employer based 401k. They look at your funds and within your 401k provider balances your funds to to match your financial goals and comfort with risk while looking for the lowest cost funds within your 401k provider. A human advisor would take a percentage of your fund total. Blooom is a set fee.

Thus far I really like Blooom.

Adam just introduced me to the Instagram account PreacherNSneakers which is basically just an account of the price of certain celebrity preachers’ (I can’t believe this is a category now) shoes and their various other clothes.

In Steve Martin’s classic movie “The Jerk” there is this great scene where Steve Martin’s character proclaims again and again how he doesn’t need anything. Well sort of.

When I see the photos and price tags attached on PreachersNSneakers I have a hard time not imagining these preachers singing a “Jerk” paraphrased version of anyone of a number of worship songs that basically say “this world has nothing for me”. I’ll mention “This World” by Caedmon’s Call because I believe it is one of the better ones.

Anyhow the paraphrase I hear in my mind when i see these photos goes something like this.

This world has nothing for me … except THIS.

I’m going to brag about a family accomplishment that took place today.

One of the things that has been very important to Pam and me has been for our boys to be able to go to college, if they wanted to, without accruing a huge amount of debt. I am not opposed to debt, I think Dave Ramsey goes a little wacko with his anti-debt thing (I’m honestly not a big Ramsey fan – he’s great for getting out of debt but I think much of his other advice is suspect). I am however opposed to bad debt. Good debt helps you accomplish good goals and therefore has reasonable debt ceilings. Bad debt burdens you and keeps you from being able to do what you want and feel called to do because you have to make a serious student loan payment each month. So it was important to us that our boys education be done in a manner that they were enabled to do whatever they felt called to do. If they felt called to work in job that didn’t pay much it would be much easier to do so if they weren’t burdened with a large student loan. So the whole family made sacrifices to make sure that they were both freed from large student loans as a result of their undergraduate degrees.

When I say the whole family I mean the whole family. Both boys were a part of this. They both worked hard to cover their own expenses and earn scholarships. Adam worked in the woods of Minnesota to earn scholarships from the Conservation Corps and Noah worked as a Resident Adviser to get free room and board. Both boys also understood that they needed to pick a good regional school for this to work. I know they both would have enjoyed going to flagship universities. We told them that we would pay for a good regional school and anything beyond that was on them, though we hoped they would choose to not have any debt. They both earned wonderful degrees from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. They made wise choices and that made this possible.

Pam and I also have made choices that helped to accomplish this and sometimes we have also just been lucky. We both worked hard for the extra income to pay for tuition but we also got lucky with opportunities occurring when they did. For example, Pam worked as much as possible during the Summer semesters at UWSP and took up opportunities that provided extra income that enabled us to pay towards the boys’ school. She has worked extra committees and completed non-necessary projects to help us achieve this goal. In addition, my job with Corporate Chaplains of America popped up at a time when I was looking for some extra income to cover college expenses. A notice concerning it appeared on a friend’s Facebook page right when I was looking. Turns out that I love being a chaplain as much as I love being a pastor. I work hard at chaplaining and pastoring but I didn’t control seeing that Facebook Ad. That was luck. and the privilege of knowing people who would post such ads. I was just able to take advantage of the circumstances that occurred. The reason I say this is because while Pam and I have worked hard to make sure that the boys’ school has been paid for. We earned extra income and cut many unnecessary expenses. Still I also recognize that it hasn’t been all by our work and effort. Others, often, don’t have such opportunities. Much has happened for us because of God’s blessing and some has occurred because of some of the privileges that I have had that others have not had. We didn’t get here just by our hard work.

I need to say that our circumstances now are quite different than they were in the past. For most of our marriage and for most of the boy’s lives we have been a family with one primary income and, at best, a small side income, and often no side income, from the other spouse. This was a purposeful choice on our part. We went through many years of living paycheck to paycheck and not paying certain bills at certain times because our cash reserves couldn’t handle the payment. We had the opportunity to make this choice, while others don’t. I am thankful for that opportunity and I recognize that it was a gift. In addition much of our professional time was spent with the primary income being a traditionally low paying job. Televangelists, and some mega-church senior pastors, might make it look otherwise but ministerial positions aren’t typically high paying positions. The same is true with Pam’s position. She could leave her professorial position and receive a pay raise instantly. Income has never been our primary motivator. Still our circumstances over the past 5 years have been vastly different from our circumstances in the past, and that made paying for school possible. We made choices to put ourselves in as good of a situation as possible but we were also lucky that the extra income came at the right time and that we didn’t have catastrophe’s happen at the wrong time. Once again what we did with our choices mattered, but we were also blessed and privileged.

So why do I write about this today? Even tough Noah walked in his graduation two weeks ago he still has one class he needs to finish. He will finish it next Friday and be officially finished with his undergraduate degree. Today Pam and I paid for that class and therefore both boys will have graduated with their Bachelor of Science degrees without a bit of debt.

This is seriously one of the prouder moments of my life. I am so proud of our family. All four of us working together made this possible. I also recognized that so much of this has been freely gifted to us.