Since it's my birthday and my whole family is spread out all over the country on different trips, I am waxing nostalgic today. The last song I listed was a terrible memory - this song was a good one. When I was 10 years old, the World's Fair came to New Orleans. It was 1984 and the whole region was excited about it. Sometime that summer, my family went down to New Orleans for the day (we lived about 45 miles away at the time). This was a really big deal because my family hardly ever went anywhere. My father was disabled and had been since I was 8 years old. He had a really bad back, had several surgeries, and was in constant pain. So, the fact that he was taking us down there was a real sacrifice for him, but I must say, a real joy for me. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. I was the kid who had a map of Disney World up on my wall and I used to stare at it for long periods of time imagining myself riding Dumbo or going through "It's a Small World." Pitiful, I know, but I used to sit and dream about going places - anyplace - and this was a little trip that would only stoke those desires.
So, we got to the World's Fair and I was blown away by the different exhibits. Every country you could imagine had an exhibit. China was probably my favorite. I remember eating Chinese food and it being pretty good although my Dad was quick to tell us that it wasn't as good as The House of Lee that he used to eat at when he was a kid. People were there from all over the world (the World's Fair was a pretty big deal back then - 25 years ago) and the international flavor was amazing to me. We rode some rides and that was fun, but my favorite part was the exhibit halls. Since I never really went anywhere, the idea of foreign countries, travel, and experiencing different cultures captured my imagination.
At the end of the evening of what turned out to be an absolutely awesome day, I could see that my Dad was in a lot of pain. He had pushed himself all day and at this point, he was sweating, with dark circles under his eyes. Every step that he took caused him to grimace and it was clear that it was time to go home. I felt really bad for him, but I was also so thankful for the sacrifice that he made to take us. I knew that he would be in bed for several days, but it meant the world to me that he would put himself through that for us. As we were leaving, the Lionel Richie song, "All Night Long" started playing over the loudspeakers. It had an international feel to it and it made me think of travel to far away lands where people danced through the night. From that day on, whenever I hear that song, I think about a magical day when a 10 year old got to see the world. I also think about my father who loved us enough to sacrifice himself for us. For a kid who rarely got to go anywhere, the song sounded like freedom and it was something that I desperately wanted. "One day," I thought, "I'm going to go to all of these places."
Anyway, here's the song. This is the version from the 1984 Summer Olympics closing ceremonies in Los Angeles about a month after we went to the World's Fair.
I turn 35 tomorrow, July 13. In honor of my birthday, I'm going to post a few songs over the next 24 hours from my childhood that I either loved or hated - but they all marked a significant event in my life growing up. The first song is one that I HATED. It is Peter Cetera's "Glory of Love" from Karate Kid II, I think. I was 12 years old. I had a crush on a girl named Gayle. She had long black hair and dark eyes. She was really cute in a Winnie Cooper sort of way. But, this other guy in my class who we'll just call "Backstabber" won her over by writing out the lyrics to "Glory of Love" and giving it to her in a note, as though he was going to be her Ralph Macchio. So, he shows me the note at a football game and says that he's going to give it to her. He told me that girls loved stuff like that. We were supposed to be friends or something, I guess. I didn't say anything. I tried to play it cool in my jean jacket with the sleeves rolled up and the collar popped. But, deep inside I was fuming. He won the girl, by the way, and it's all because of that irresistible Peter Cetera and his "Glory of Love." Whatever. I'm over it.
I've hated that song ever since. It reminds me of 12 year old heartbreak, which is the worst kind. I thought I was unstoppable in my jean jacket. But, I couldn't handle Cetera lyrics written on notebook paper and folded up real small. I'd learned my lesson, though. You can't fight Cetera.
Last night, I couldn't get to sleep. My mind was racing. Finally, I drifted off, but not before I ran through a dozen different subjects. I've been told by friends that I have adult ADD. Maybe so. It would explain a lot. Normally, I write essays for this blog because it is really rewarding for me to lock in on one topic and explore it and I use it as a teaching platform for my church. Today, I'll take you on a random tour of what I'm thinking about in classic, stream-of-consciousness form. Each of these thoughts could be a blogpost all their own and they have been building up in my head. So, I think I'll clean out my brain a little so that I can think more clearly and start over.
I'm going back to India at the end of next month. Around midnight last night, I called Thom Wolf in India and talked with him for awhile. It was almost noon there. He was my professor and intellectual mentor in school back when I lived in San Francisco and he lives in New Delhi. We will go north to the Himalayas and do our normal thing with the ministries there, and then possibly travel with him for a couple of days to the south of India to meet some people doing very interesting things.
I am working through Paul's letter to the Philippians right now in my Bible study and my preaching. I am also writing essays to go along with each topic. Philippians is a great letter to address the "God as a means to an end" syndrome that plagues contemporary Christianity. I am thinking of releasing the essays after I am through with this. It has been really interesting. Today, I am working on one called "Chains" about how Paul volunteered to put himself in less than ideal situations so that the gospel would be spread to others through his life and suffering. Check out Philippians 1:7-14. Am I willing to do the same?
"According to some estimates, Christians in developed Western countries now represent only 37 percent of believers worldwide. As I travel and also read chruch history, I have observed a pattern, a strange historical phenomenon of God 'moving' geographically from place to place: from the Middle East to Europe to North America to the developing world. My theory is this: God goes where He's wanted." ~ Philip Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places.
I ran across a fascinating article today on urban development in post-Katrina New Orleans on Newgeography.com by Andres Duany. Duany, of Cuban descent, says that "New Orleans is not among the most haphazard, poorest or misgoverned American cities, but rather the most organized, wealthiest, cleanest, and competently governed of the Caribbean cities." He says that New Orleans is not really an American city at all. Rather, it is a Caribbean city. Jimmy Buffett, after Katrina hit, said that the northern Gulf of Mexico is actually the northern part of the Caribbean, not the Southern part of the U.S. I agree. Being from there, it is different that the rest of the country, and I love it. Totally different way of thinking, worldview, and lifestyle. Maybe this is why Baptists have had so much trouble reaching the Gulf Coast? Hmmm.
My two favorite songs on my ipod right now are "Rocket Man" by Angie Aparo and "A Change is Gonna Come" by Ben Sollee. They are both cover songs, but the music and vocals are really intriguing. If you haven't heard either of these guys, check them out. Here's a live version of "Rocket Man." I think about this when I am travelling too much.
And, Ben Sollee on the cello. Yes, the cello. This is amazing.
This week marks the 3 year anniversary of us finding a lump on Caelan's chest that was a cancerous tumor. It has been a hard three years, but I praise God everyday for His faithfulness. Last night, Erika told me that the little 3 year old girl that my family has been praying for since we saw her at Caelan's last scans died last week. Her name was Cassie. My heart was broken over that. Maybe that is why I keep singing "A Change is Gonna Come." Ben Sollee, covering Sam Cooke, says he doesn't know what's beyond the sky. I do, and more and more each day I pray that God's Kingdom come.
"As heretical as it sounds today, it is probably worth telling Americans that you don't need Jesus to have better families, finances, health, or even morality. Coming to the cross means repentance - not adding Jesus as a supporting character for an otherwise decent script but throwing away the script in order to be written into God's drama. It is death and resurrection, not coaching and makovers." Michael Horton, Christless Christianity.
Baseball season is about to start. I really don't like baseball. Too slow for my taste. During the dead of summer, it is almost like there are no sports going on. I'm just waiting for football. Although, our church has formed THREE softball teams with about 50 players and they'll be playing mostly on Monday nights, so I am glad for the fact that a lot of people from our church will be hanging out together and building relationships. Being blind in my right eye caused me to never play baseball because I have no depth perception, so maybe that is why I don't like it. I do plan to play summer league basketball, though.
The groundbreaking for our church's new building is April 5, right before we have a huge neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt. We've been reaching a lot of teenagers in our community lately, and God really moved in their lives at a youth retreat that we had this past weekend. Several came to Christ and many more opened their hearts to Jesus. We have also started tutoring, GED classes, and are helping with job placement. God is doing some amazing things. The building is just a tool to help us with this, and it should be finished by October. I'll be very happy.
I keep watching Jon & Kate plus Eight. I don't know why. Erika keeps asking why I stop there when we are watching TV and I have the remote and I told her that I really can't believe how mean Kate is to Jon and I can't fathom how they manage eight kids like that. Wow. It's like a car wreck. I have four kids of my own. Do I really need to watch someone else's stress? Strangely, I'm drawn to it. That, and Clean House, which is about people who live in an unfathomable mess. I guess that it is cathartic to see other people's stress and mess instead of my own. Normally, these shows come on right after we put the kids to bed. Hmmm.
I turned in my taxes yesterday and I'm trying to get some insurance stuff taken care of. It's a pain and seems to be taking forever. Car tags have to be paid on Monday and I'm doing a TV interview tomorrow for a local religious broadcasting station about our work in India. I lump all of that together because it all feels about the same to me - stuff I have to do that I don't like doing. I'm not just trying to be humble about the TV thing either. I HATE stuff like that. Communication should be two-way and interactive with feedback, not captured on a television for people to pick over and misinterpret as they wish. Maybe I'm just insecure.
Books I'm reading right now (they happen to all be "Christian" books, which is not good - I need to vary things up a bit and learn from some other disciplines):
Finding God in Unexpected Places by Philip Yancey - picked it up in the airport last week. Yancey writes essays about where he sees God working in the world. Excellent.
Christless Christianity by Michael Horton - states that the American church has given itself over to an alternative gospel that he calls, therapuetic moralistic deism.
No Place for Truth - Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology by David Wells. This came out about 15 years ago, but it was recommended to me by a friend of mine. It is pretty dense, but a good read. Makes some of the same claims as Horton, but from a historical perspective.
My church is always heavy on my mind and my heart. I graduated from seminary over 9 years ago. I've been the lead pastor of our church for 3 1/2 years. I'm realizing more and more each day that I am not smart enough, talented enough, entertaining enough, or gifted enough to do what needs to be done, no matter how many books I read. God has to work through me. I need Him. I carry the weight of people's struggles pretty intensely. I greatly desire for people to walk with the Lord and to glorify Him and I want our church to hunger after Christ with their whole lives and to reach people who do not know Jesus. But, I am really having to pray about this and release it to the Lord. I can't make anyone do anything. I am completely powerless to make anything happen. God has to do it. I have always known that intellectually. I am learning that emotionally and spiritually and it isn't easy, believe it or not.
Ashtyn has started soccer.
I have great kids and an amazing wife who listens to me go on and on about everything that I am thinking about. She is really patient and she always gives me great feedback. I do not deserve her, and I'm not just saying that because it is what I am expected to say. She's really something. She texted me two days ago and said that we should go on the mission trip with the youth group this summer. I told her that I agreed. Not many mother's of four kids would do that.
My city, Montgomery, just elected a new mayor in a special election a couple of weeks ago. In his election night interview, he said that he hoped that he would "rule" well. Rule #1 in American politics: Never tell the people that you plan to "rule" them. It doesn't sit well in a democracy. Then, he said that he was pushing the inauguration back a week because he was taking his family to the beach. Rule #2: When we are in a severe recession, don't tell the people that just elected you that you would begin to rule, er, serve them, but first, you have to go to the beach. Go to the beach in a few months AFTER you have worked for them for a little while. Wow.
Look, a BUTTERFLY!!!! Sorry, had to get that out. Does anyone ever feel that way? Random as can be.
I've lost 10 pounds in the past two weeks and I don't know how. I guess that I haven't been eating as much. Duh. Stress? Busyness? I don't know, but I'll take it. I could stand to lose a lot more.
Well, that's about it. Not really, but I figure that no one is still reading at this point, so I might as well stop. Believe it or not, engaging in an exercise in complete randomness actually made me feel better. So, I leave you with a picture of my kids that I really love.
God is good, by the way. And, He's always working in every thing. Big, little, important, mundane. God is always at work.
I heard this song a few years ago and I have loved it ever since. It ran on CMT for a while and comes from a "secular" artist. Mindy Smith is actually a Christian and the daughter of a minister. This is a haunting song that fully captures what we should be doing at all times. We should be consistently "coming to Jesus." I have another post in the works in my Divine Conspiracy series. Hopefully tomorrow we'll start looking at chapter 4 on the Beatitudes. Let this be a musical preview of what I'll be writing about. Enjoy.
Erika and I were playing some music tonight and she pointed me to this Rich Mullins song from years ago that I had never heard before. It was actually written by Scottish singer, Dougie MacLean. We ended up singing it and it spoke true to what we are feeling and to what God is doing in our lives. Do we really trust Him? Do we believe that He is good, even when our common assurances seem to be fading? Can we give Him everything? The song is called Ready For the Storm:
The waves crash in the tide rolls out It's an angry sea but there is no doubt That the lighthouse will keep shining out To warn a lonely sailor And the lightning strikes And the wind cuts cold Through the sailor's bones Through the sailor's soul 'Til there's nothing left that he can hold Except a rolling ocean
Oh I am ready for the storm Yes sir ready I am ready for the storm I'm ready for the storm
Oh give me mercy for my dreams 'Cause every confrontation seems to tell me What it really means To be this lonely sailor And when the sky begins to clear The sun it melts away my fear And I shed a silent weary tear For those who mean to love me
Oh I am ready for the storm Yes sir ready I am ready for the storm I'm ready for the storm
The distance it is no real friend And time will take its time And you will find that in the end It brings you me This lonely sailor And when You take me by the hand And You love me, Lord, You love me And I should have realized I had no reasons to be frightened
Oh I am ready for the storm Yes sir ready I am ready for the storm
Am I ready? In Christ alone.
Someone put together a slide show to Rich Mullins' version of this song. The music is hauntingly beautiful.
I plan to return to India this fall (October) with another small team to do some training in holistic ministry and to try and help with some clean water projects in villages up in the Himalayas. We are also going to start a business through microlending that would enable abused women from a ministry to gain a livelihood and also be able to be a witness for Christ. When you are dealing directly with the work overseas and are dealing with trustworthy people (our contacts go back for 30 years), it is amazing how far a little bit can go. We plan to have a missions dinner/fundraiser at the end of August and I had an idea to frame and mat some of the pictures that I have taken from my travels and auction them off to raise money to put in clean water tanks and support orphans in the children's home we are working with. I thought I'd preview some of the pictures here and ask which ones you thought might be best. This set is from Paris and also from India. I did some pretty heavy editing to some of them. Tell me which ones you like best and it will probably influence me to frame that one. I'll provide more sets for scrutiny later.
When I think about Texas, where I am going next week for the SBC, this song always comes to mind. Stevie Ray Vaughan was simply one of the greatest musicians of our time. I don't know if there will be a Texas Flood or not, but I wanted to join in with all the fun of posting YouTube clips on blogs and this one seemed to capture the mood the best. I know it's the blues and all, but I can't help but be a little happy when I hear SRV play the guitar. Can we at least agree that he knew what he was doing?
Apparently, American Idol contestant, Chris Sligh, is experiencing criticism for being a Christian who is trying to make it in the entertainment business - FROM CHRISTIANS!!! Read the article HERE. This pretty well illustrates my last post. Maybe he is a really strong Christian who does not want to spend his life in a Christian bubble. Maybe he wants to affect the world around him and be "salt and light." Anyway, read the article and tell me what you think. I think that the guy is pretty cool and he is my favorite contestant (I seriously don't watch the show or know any of the other contestants, but I happened to watch it the night that he interviewed in Birmingham - he was really funny).
"We've found different ways of expressing it, and recognized the power of the media to manipulate such signs. Maybe we just have to sort of draw our fish in the sand. It's there for people who are interested. It shouldn't be there for people who aren't." -- Bono on faith, quoted in "U2 at the End of the World"
I thought this article from Kim Lawton for PBSwas interesting about Bono from U2. Andrew Jonesturned me on to it. While I do not believe that his theology or his lifestyle is completely consistent with God's Word, and I would not tell other believers to emulate his lifestyle, he is having a huge impact on the world today with his focus on the AIDS epidemic and global poverty. It is heartening to me that he is doing this from a Biblical perspective and is motivated by Jesus' example. While we might not say, "Follow Bono as he follows Christ" in everything, we might have a lot to learn from an imperfect man who is being faithful in many ways. He'll also be speaking at Willow Creek's Leadership Summit in 2006.Bono was also Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 2005 and their song, "Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own" won Song of the Year for the Grammy's the other night.
If you listen to U2's music and hear their story, it could just be that the biggest band on the planet is trying to draw people to the Lord in their own way. Maybe Bono is someone that we should really all be praying for, that more and more each day he would know the Lord and learn to walk with Him. Here is another of their early songs that comes from Psalm 40 as performed in a concert in Germany:
"40" (live from Germany)
Sing this with me, this is "40"
I waited patiently for the Lord He inclined and heard my cry He lift me up out of the pit Out of the miry clay
I will sing, sing a new song I will sing, sing a new song
How long to sing this song How long to sing this song How long, how long, how long How long to sing this song
He set my feet upon a rock And made my footsteps firm Many will see, many will see and hear
I will sing, sing a new song I will sing, sing a new song
Sing it How long to sing this song How long to sing this song How long, how long, how long How long to sing this song
Thank you, goodnight
This is just one of many U2 songs that have Biblical references. For others, take a look here.
"We've found different ways of expressing it, and recognized the power of the media to manipulate such signs. Maybe we just have to sort of draw our fish in the sand. It's there for people who are interested. It shouldn't be there for people who aren't." -- Bono on faith, quoted in "U2 at the End of the World" 
