Category: personal

I love the fact that the threads of Tapestry send me stuff to use in messages. I just received a wonderful news article from Natalie G. that I will most definitely end up using in one of the Advent Conspiracy messages. It is incredibly helpful to get these stories and thoughts from people in Tapestry because 1) it might be something good that I hadn’t heard, read, or seen, and 2) it is automatically something that I know will connect with at least one person in the room.

Of course, last time I used an illustration from Natalie someone left the church because of me using it. This was a year ago and it was a video from the Big Bang Theory (which I can’t embed because youtube and CBS apparently have some non-embedding thing going on – anyhow you can view the wonderful clip here). It was the perfect illustration for what I was talking about but the person objected to me using a video from any show with the name “the Big Bang Theory.” Ok. As one of the members of the Leadership Team says you really can’t come to Tapestry very long unless you are okay being offended every now and then. As a church we are equal opportunity offenders. I kind of like it that way.

So please send me your thoughts, illustrations, videos, and stories. I sure do appreciate them. The next 5 weeks are our annual focus on Advent Conspiracy:

• December 2 – Worship Fully
• December 9 – Send Less
• December 16 – Give More
• December 23 – Love All
• December 30 – All Year Advent

Please send your stuff.

Read this quote from “The Cost of Discipleship” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and thought of some of the comments made by those in the church concerning yesterday’s presidential election.

When a man gets angry with his brother and swears at him, when he publicly insults or slanders him, he is guilty of murder and forfeits his relation to God. He erects a barrier not only between not only between himself and his brother, but also between himself and God. He no longer has access to him: his sacrifice, worship and prayer are not acceptable in his sight. For the Christian, worship cannot be divorced from the service of the brethren, as it was with the rabbis. If we despise our brother our worship is unreal, and it forfeits every divine promise. When we come before God with hearts full of contempt and unreconciled with our neighbors, we are both individually and as a congregation, worshipping an idol. So long as we refuse to love and serve our brother and make him an object of contempt and let him harbour a grudge against me or the congregation, our worship and sacrifice will be unacceptable to God. p. 128.

I hope we start reconciling soon. It is one of the things that followers of Christ are supposed to do.

Saw this tweet from Oprah because of Pam.

I should probably explain the Pam/Oprah relationship before I do anything else. Basically, Pam is driven crazy by Oprah. She really can’t stand most of what she experiences from the Oprahverse. This tweet that Pam just sent out kind of sums up Pam’s feelings concerning the world of Oprah.

 

So someone that Pam follows on twitter retweeted an Oprah post. I could tell something was up because Pam screamed “ARGH!” I’m pretty sure Pam just unfollowed the person who retweeted this just because the person retweeted an Oprah post. Like I said Pam is driven crazy by the Oprahverse.

So here’s the tweet.

I guess Jesus would fail this Oprah test because He pretty much did exactly what she just condemned. Jesus could have protected Himself from those who wished to hurt Him but instead He went like a lamb to slaughter to sacrifice Himself for the world. I like His plan better than Oprah’s.

Right now the small group that Pam and I are a part of (which I love) is reading through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic book “The Cost of Discipleship” (which I also love). In his chapter on “Single-Minded Obedience” Bonhoeffer discusses our tendency to over-spiritualize Jesus’s statements and commands in such a way that we actually disobey the commands while thinking that we are obeying them. We take the command of Christ and think to ourselves

He obviously didn’t mean that literally. No He meant that I should live out the spirit of the statement. He just used the literal/physical example as a way for me to understand His actual meaning.

Then we disobey the command of God and actually think we are obeying Jesus. I love the example Bonhoeffer gives.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer states:

How is such absurdity possible? What has happened that the word of Jesus can be thus degraded by this trifling, and thus left open to the mockery of the world? When orders are issued in other spheres of life there is no doubt whatever of their meaning. If a father sends his child to bed, the boy knows at once what he has to do. But suppose he has picked up a smattering of pseudo-theology. In that case he would argue more or less like this: “Father tells me to go to bed, but he rally means that I am tired, and he does not want me to be tired. I can overcome tiredness just as well if I go out and play. Therefore though father tells me to go to bed, he really means: ‘Go out and play.’” If a child tried such arguments on his father or a citizen on his government, they would both meet with a kind of language they could not fail to understand — in short they would be punished. Are we to treat the commandment of Jesus differently from other orders and exchange single-minded obedience for downright disobedience? How could that be possible! (p. 81)

It seems odd to say that sometimes we over-spiritualize Jesus. After all, I believe that Jesus is 100% God & 100% human. I think you could argue that such over-spiritualization isn’t spiritual at all. It is just another face that we use for disobedience. Still I think Bonhoeffer nails it because sometimes we (read this as “I”) use the “spiritual” to avoid the literal words/meaning of Christ.

i don’t like thomas kinkade’s paintings (at least all of the ones that i have seen). i do however love this interpretation of his work. just when i thought nothing could make could make me like his style of painting someone went and painted a godzilla attack in kinkade’s style. awesome.

apparently there is a robert terrell in england who works in some type of retail store and there is a robert terrell in new york who is some how involved in hip hop music. the reason i know this is because they also apparently both have email addresses that are close to mine. i keep getting email messages that are meant for them. yesterday i received a request to change shifts with someone in england and a different request from a radio dj for 20 cds of my music. the good news is that the dj promised me that he would get my music a significant amount of air play. i’m pretty excited about my future success in hip hop. you all know how gangsta i am. even better news is that while i wait for my hip hop career to take off i will also have a steady job in england taking people’s shifts when they need a break.