I mispell things!
I don’t care much about any other new things of clothing except for new running shoes. Yesterday I started a new pair, since the previous model had around 500 miles on them. Best part about these? Well they are last year’s model so they were heavily discounted, and I received a $20 coupon for a marathon I ran years ago, so they were even less expensive.
Oh Yeah! New running shoes on the cheap.
Hope is more than feeling. Hope is more than experience. Hope is more than foresight. Hope is a command. Obeying it means life, survival, endurance, standing up to life until death is swallowed up in victory. Obeying it means never giving way to the forces of annihilation in resignation or rage.
Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences of God
I send out a bi-monthlish email to anyone involved in Tapestry that wants it. It is usually just little reminder of things going on in and through Tapestry. If you want it and aren’t receiving it you can subscribe here.
1st, I changed the brakes on the Sentra a few minutes ago. By far the easiest brake job I have ever done. 20 minutes total. So easy in fact that I now worry that something must be wrong. Only thing I can determined right now that is different from norm is that I used the previous brakes as an example and I placed the pad with the wear indicator on it on the outside, whereas the factory diagram shows it as the inside pad. To my knowledge this shouldn’t matter since the pads are identical other than the wear indicator and it was this way on the previous brake job.
2nd, due to an unforeseen double buying of salsa tomatoes the snack for Tapestry Church tomorrow night will be my homemade salsa. We have double what we should have. It is made for the Terrell’s so it is a little spicier than last time you “threads” had it when I made it during a sermon. It isn’t going to walk up to you and punch you in the face as it says “hi” but it might give you a nice friendly/playful slap across the face while it says “hi.” 🙂
PREFACE – every now and then I use the “set post date” feature in wordpress to complain about something or write about something that has happened to me that I don’t want to post on the actual day it happened because I don’t want anyone involved to know I am writing about our conversation or an event they were involved in. I’ll set the post to appear anywhere from a few years to a couple of days after the actual event. I won’t tell you when this conversation took place but I will say that it definitely DID NOT happen today. It probably didn’t happen in the past year. Now for the rant.
I was in a conversation today with someone who left one church to go to another. I know both churches and I am friends with the pastors of both churches. They are both wonderful human beings that I like a lot. This person said that he/she was left one church to go to another because he/she wasn’t getting deeper into God’s word at the church he/she left and wanted the depth that was at the other church.
Now let me go ahead and say that I generally have a knee jerk reaction to people saying they want to go deeper. Why? Well I love going deep in God’s word and I think people should but generally when someone says they want to go deeper into God’s word what they usually mean is they want to learn more interesting facts about scripture not that they actually want to go deeper into God’s word. Going deeper into God’s word leads to love, action, and sacrifice. It is knowledge that moves you to live more like Christ and that always involves greater risk. Look at the early disciples. The more they hung out with Christ the riskier their lives became. If your “deep” study of God’s word isn’t pushing you to serve and risk more outside of the church then I seriously doubt its depth. Going deeper involves the risk of being engulfed and consumed. After all the risk of drowning is greater in the deep part of the water. The risk of being engulfed by the waters is minimal in the shallows.
That was the problem here. I know and love this person and I know and love the pastors at both churches. I know what those churches do and preach. They are both great churches that want to help people go deep into God’s word and thereby live risky lives with God. This person wasn’t swapping churches because of a need to go deeper into God’s word. He/she was swapping for other reasons. It is just that saying you want to go deeper sounds better than those other reasons. I imagine that the person’s real reasons probably sounded a little selfish and therefore it sounded better to them to say it was actually about going deeper in God’s word.
Though I am sure He doesn’t like it, God often makes a great excuse our actions that are motivated by our own wants and desires.
“What we have to learn from them is not that the church ‘has’ a mission, but the very reverse: that the mission of Christ creates its own church. Mission does not come from the church; it is from mission and in the light of mission that the church has to be understood. The preaching of the gospel does not merely serve to instruct Christians and strengthen their faith; it always serves to call non-Christians at the same time. The whole congregation has ‘spiritual’ and charismatic gifts, not merely its ‘spiritual’ pastors. The whole congregation and every individual in it belong with all their powers and potentialities to the mission of God’s kingdom.”
Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 10.
I am in the process of interviewing with a corporate chaplaincy company to be a part time chaplain in some local businesses. I’ve gone through several interviews thus far and I am really excited about the possibility of working with this group, both for what they do and for how I believe it will help me to be a better pastor in Tapestry. Today I had the opportunity to interview alongside Pam. The company wants to make sure that the spouse has an opportunity to ask any questions he/she might have. This is really just a quick post to say that I am married to one incredible woman. Just a lot of fun being in that interview with Pamela. Hopefully I always do an adequate job of remembering how cool she is.
SIDE NOTE – a shallow but cool part of the corporate chaplain position is that part of the uniform can be a company sweater vest. I really never knew it until moving up to Wisconsin but sweater vests are the most awesome things ever.
By now there is a pretty good chance that you have seen Jamie Moore’s wonderful photos of his daughter as female heroes worthy of emulation. They are really awesome. I didn’t get into photography until late 2004ish. Thankfully at that point the boys were still interested in me taking photos. I wish I had seen or had this idea then. Yes it is important for little girls to have good roles models, that aren’t just helpless Disney princes, but it is also important for little boys to have heroes worth following that aren’t just stupid stereotypes. Really when you think about it the male Disney heroes aren’t that great either.
So if I could still take photos of Adam and Noah as role models that I hope they would learn from, who would I choose? Here are a few that I would consider.
The Four Chaplains – Unless you are or were in the military or you’ve been a chaplain then you probably haven’t heard of the Four Chaplains. You should go read about them. Why would I want my kids to learn from them? Because they took what they knew and used it in a sacrificial manner in a time of need. Let’s face it, when your ship is hit by a torpedo no one is shouting “quick, somebody get the chaplain.” I imagine that these chaplains knew very little about welding or patching the ship. They did, however, know how to bring peace into chaotic situations and they used that skill to save lives. That’s why they are remembered. Whatever my boys end up specializing in, I hope they use it in sacrificial manners.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – An amazing example of living out your faith no matter what. Bonhoeffer’s faith was so true that the Nazi’s finally thought he was such a threat that they needed to imprison him and then kill him in what they thought was a humiliating manner. I believe that the examples found in the Bible tend to show that when your faith ticks off people in power that is usually a good thing. Bonhpeffer lived out such a faith.
They are others but these are the ones that came to mind as I was wasting time waiting to go to the hospital and do my rounds as a chaplain. I’ll have to see if the boys are up for a few photos.
I used to love randomly scaring friends when I saw them in public. Actually I still love randomly scaring friends, I just haven’t had as many opportunities recently for some reason. I would see a friend when he/she didn’t see me and I would try to surprise/scare him/her. It was a lot of fun, especially ever now and then when it turned out not to be my friend, but someone who merely looked like him/her.
My personal favorite time was once when I was at Best Buy and I was sure I saw Lauren, an intern who worked with me. She didn’t see me so I snuck up behind a DVD kiosk and jumped out when she rounded the it. She screamed and threw the DVDs that she was holding. It was at that moment that I realized it wasn’t her but instead somebody that I didn’t know who merely looked like Lauren. Not cool, especially when the Best Buy employees started running toward the screaming woman, while I was trying to convince her that I was sorry and I thought she was a friend of mine who I was trying to pull a practical joke on. Thankfully they all believed me and I wasn’t tackled to the ground. Ah, good times.
Man, I miss randomly freaking people out. I hope an opportunity presents itself soon.
to encourage digestion
Noah and I have decided to take on a project to discover the best burger in Point. We’ve decided that this search will be focused on local restaurants, so no national chains.
Every now and then we both miss our favorite burger from Baton Rouge. Riverside Patty is only one of the places that make incredible burgers in Baton Rouge. Sadly I haven’t found a place in the Point area that makes a truly incredible burger. I’ve tried, without luck, to find one over the 5 years we’ve lived here. So Noah and I are just going to have to try harder.
We are going to start eating and rating burgers at various local restaurants of all levels. If they serve a burger we will eat it and rate it. Any suggestions? If you know a place that makes a really good burger please pass it on.