FLASH BANG WHIZ POP WHOOSH SHNAZZLE DAZZLE

As part-and-parcel with my position as a youth director at my church I am now the proud steward of my very own box! You know, the box. As in, "Just put it in my box and I'll get to it later", or "Oh look, a memo in my box." THE box. I never realized till just now that somehow I've managed to go my whole life without a box. How did I ever survive such an injustice?

*play trippy time-warp music*

Childhood:
At this stage my only interaction with mail looked something like this.

- Mom: Jonathan, can you run out and grab the mail?
- Jonathan: O.K.

Basically, I handled mail, I didn't receive mail.

Adolescence and Teen years:
Repeat the above scenario but occasionally throw in a random credit card advertisement. These, while meaningless and not applicable to my lack of adulthood, made me feel like I was almost there.

Adulthood (at college):
Now I get more credit card applications, bank statements that remind me how little money I have, and catalogs in which to spend the money I don't have. And I didn't even ask for the catalogs. They just say, current resident - as if I don't have an identity or interests of my own! (A special thanks to Eastbay and Lands End and CosmoGirl) The only highlight of the last few years has been getting other people's mail on accident and then having to give it back to the campus mail people.

*play trippy time-warp music back to the present*

Nope. Now I have a real job and get real mail in my box :) Real mail. Except that every piece of mail that has slipped into my box hasn't had my name on it. It has been addressed to  "Youth Director", or "Youth Pastor". (Apparently they didn't get the memo that in the PCA you have to be ordained to be a pastor, and I am not.)

All this to say, I get a lot of mail addressed to whoever is doing what I do, and I sometimes get mail and think, "if this organization knew anything about me or this church or denomination or the type of kids in our youth group there is no way they'd send me this."

Case In Point:
I received letter the other day from an organization that will remain nameless. (it's not that I want them to remain nameless, but I already threw the letter away and I'd have to dig through coffee grounds and banana peels to get it back.)

It was a letter on one side and a color picture and info on the back, all espousing the greatness of this team's evangelistic powers. Included in the troupe is one (1) outstanding illusionist, one (1) professional skateboarder, one (1) BMX Stunt Team, and two (2) rock bands. (If there was a pastor somewhere in the mix, he didn't stand out. I guess he just didn't have enough pieces of flair.) All this and more, center stage and in full technicolor, at the unbelievably low low price of fifteen thousand dollars!!! (yes, count out your pennies, break the pig. $15,000. Or 1,875 Spanish doubloons for the 18th Century pirates among us.)

I mean, seriously. Did the ESV make a bad batch with a few glaring misprints? Or was this just part of the Message Remix?

I don't know about you, but I would be very timid about evangelism if Romans 1:16 read something like this: "For I am not ashamed of entertaining people, for pageantry is the power of man for salvation to everyone who is dazzled, awed, and has their autograph book ready."

No. Jesus died a gruesome death. He humbly took on himself the torturous agony of the cross. He extinguished his life so that we might be resurrected from the dead. He took our sin and declared us righteous. He took our filth. He died our death. He severed his perfect unity with God the Father so that we might be adopted as sons and heirs with himself, the risen Christ. All for the glory of God. We did not and still don't deserve it. His grace is just that great.

I went to a few of these extravaganzas when I was in high school and I remember there being some kids who said their lives changed as a result. To this I humbly admit that God works in mysterious ways and is somehow able to make his still, small voice heard, even in the midst of razzle dazzle bang whiz pop. I can't claim to know who these people are who put on these events. I'll never know their hearts. I'll never know how effective their ministry is. But I'll also never know how effective my own ministry is either. It's all in God's hands. And for that I'm thankful.

Hopefully, when all the speakers and bandstands and microphones are packed up that group is able to say that the word was preached, God was made great, that our sin and depravity we not rationalized or played down or excused, that Christ was faithfully represented, and that the gospel was given out to all who would receive it. Hopefully, that can be said of all of us.

The news that doesn't make the headlines

Although I am tempted to adopt the mindset of Chicken Little following the recent advancement of Obama-care, a second and more insidious threat looms on the horizon. It pertains to a battle that started between students and their administrators (my favorite) about five years ago and has steadily worked its way through the lower courts and has now arrived on the steps of the hallowed halls of the U.S. Supreme Court itself. The best part, in my opinion, is that the students picked the fight!

Problems began "when leaders of the CLS (Christian Legal Society) chapter at Hastings (College of Law) asserted the national policy of the organization, which states: “In view of the clear dictates of Scripture, unrepentant participation in and advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle is inconsistent with an affirmation of the Statement of Faith.”

As I read that portion of Al Mohler's blog I was stunned for a few reasons:

1) As a student at Moody Bible Institute I regularly forget that God is at work in more places than my little school. He is present and powerful in the lives of his people all around the earth - Christian schools do not hold a monopoly on the God of the universe. 

2) These students are not ignorant. They know their God, they know their bibles, they know their faith. A nominally Christian student group would never push for that kind of language in their statement of faith, nor would they have the endurance to fight it for five years and take it to the U.S. Supreme Court. These men and women have more courage and tenacity than some pastors I know. 

3) This will not end quietly. Not every case that goes before the supreme court is foreseeable as precedent maker, but the outcome of this case will answer many many questions that have been a long time coming (also attended to by Al Mohler) : Are Christian organizations to be allowed to remain Christian, or must they all morph into secularized associations?

Must the Christian Legal Society surrender its biblical convictions in order to remain a recognized campus organization? Does religious liberty now stop at the law school door? Can Christian organizations remain Christian in an age of ideological “tolerance?”

Read Mohler's post. Pray for the students. 

Also, check out the CLS Purpose Statement, Statement of Faith. They deserve our thanks.

Floating White Stuff

Nothing ruins the arrival of spring like a crotchety snow hag shaking her dandruff collection over the earth in a series of guerilla raids. It's like she hasn't gotten the memo! True, some days - if you didn't know better - are fairly indistinguishable from fall. But over the last week my fiance and I have been excitedly marking the growth of the tulip stalks in the sidewalk planters of our neighborhood, and though it han't broken the seventy degree mark yet (the forecast says next Wednesday) the air has definitely changed.

Granted, I wouldn't normally be yakking about the snow hag except that as I crawled into bed I noticed that the parking lot within view of my window was a lighter color than usual, and some of the lines in the lot were a little blurry, too. Why? Hag dandruff. Little sheets of it. Everywhere. 

For the record, I love snow. I love playing in it, throwing it, hiking and rolling and snowboarding in it. I even like eating it (well, the fresh stuff). BUT. When it interrups the triumphal entry of spring and threatens my tulips, it immediately is demonized to the status of "hag dandruff". I mean, dang it. The Twins are in Spring Training, not "the last vestige of winter" training. Ugh.. and now I've lost sleep to a snow hag...

So. Floating white stuff. Please make your exit. Do not bow. Do not make a curtain call. Do not peak. You'll get your cue in eight months. 

-----

I wrote that at three in the morning. I may have been hallucinating about the snow. But I sure thought it was real at the time...

Thank you, Jim. You're an inspiration to us all.

Sometimes realizations are more like revelations - a simple linking of ideas and thoughts that become a tidal wave of understanding. Maybe tidal wave is a little dramatic. Just a normal biggish wave, you know, the type you have to brace for and might knock you over. I'm kind of glad those moments don't happen more often, actually. In the time it takes to recover from one moment, another is upon you. This thought is actually the grand-child of one those moments a few weeks ago. It happened something like this (as prompted by Jim):

Jim (from the office): "I feel like there's a chance for me to start over. And if I fall back into the same kinds of things I used to do... then, what am I doing?"

Back to Me:

Everyday I want to feel like there's a chance for me to start over. But what if it's all just a fantastic deception? As soon as I set out to change I immediately feel the weight of my past. It's there and I can't get rid of it. I am a product of my past - I am what has happened to me, what I have done, and how I have chosen to respond to it all. And there is no time for internal non-time. There is no stillness or rest in the forward motion of time, no moment when I can examine my heart.

What I mean by that is this. The grand narratives of literature and film have capitalized on a ludicrously odd superpowers or technological marvels that somehow freeze time for everyone except the one casting the spell. The spellcaster remains unharmed and is able to mold the frozen reality around him, add items, remove items, remove himself, whatever. For those moments he is able to change the scene permanently. The problem is that as cool as it is to freeze time, the spellcaster can never freeze who he is while at the same time touching up his emotional scars, adding and removing aspects of his personality, or changing his very nature. At no point in time am I able to freeze the world, freeze myself, enter into a deep think and rummage through my soul till I determine what can stay and what needs to go and what add-ons would be convenient right about now.

And so, at this season of life I feel like there's a chance to start over. And yet, like those waves of realization/revelation, as soon as I notice something about myself that needs resurrection I'm confronted with another, and another. There is no time to fix myself. And to top it all off, the clock has never stopped ticking. If I stop to reflect, I'll fumble the present that I'm in. Then it all gets super complicated as current reflections on current and past events impact current and future events in ways I won't understand until I reflect on them too. Inevitably, by staring into the swirling chaos long enough my present becomes as chaotic as my past.

I am overwhelmed by the unstoppable hands of time. I am humbled by the simple largeness of the moon's revolutions around us and our revolutions around the sun. I am so small. And yet, in my personal universe, every action counts. My cosmic confusion about the nature of being aside, I have to walk through life believing I can change. Otherwise, what hope is there?

P.S.
~ I rarely blog, but I do try to record my musings in a doc called "Thoughts and Questions" on my mac. I wrote this ditty a few months ago and was stunned today by it's relevance to my current situation. Yes - I am my own prophet of doom! So please, be stunned as I am, and if you require prophetic services leave a creative comment and I my curiosity might be piqued.

[for all my Christian friends (especially Moody's): yes, I know I can't really change without the Holy Spirit and that attempting to change is futile if not initiated by the God through the Gospel of grace. Please consider this post more of a reflection on the difficulty of change, not a prescription or model. Not that you would anyways...]

(Insert Jeopardy Soundtrack Here)

I am constantly waiting for something. Actually, I am constantly waiting for many things. If I had to compile a list of things I'm waiting for, it would either use a handful of rain forests or use all my available free space in my gmail account. Either way, it's rather boggling to think of everything that is perpetually loading, in transit, being shipped, being confirmed, in process, on the way, cooking, baking, growing, maturing, developing, responding, changing, charging, streaming, downloading, uploading, returning, (basically a lot of verbs), drying, resting, etc.

So, what am I waiting for right now? Sleep to come. I'll figure everything else out later.

The Ties That Bind

Today a friend brought me an iPhone with a story about how a co-worker found it and had given it to him but he couldn't accept it unless he knew he had exhausted all efforts to contact the lost owner. Enter Google, center stage, with a spotlight.

So we plugged it in and sure enough it tried to sync with my mac. While attempting to do so the name of the iPhone appeared in iTunes and iPhoto and we went straight to Google. Well, some dude with the same name who lived in Chicago had a myspace page so we messaged him and two hours later we got a message back. Sure enough, it was the dude. End scene, curtain drops, Google takes a bow and accepts the oscar for best actor, Mac receives the oscar for best supporting actor. Everyone's happy.

What a world we live in. So many stinkin' people (7 billion to be precise) and thanks to Mac, Google, and Myspace we located the owner in about... a minute and a half, give or take.

So what's the take away? I don't know. The rascal in the Care Bear PJ's is in bed already, how should I know what the take away is. All I know is that insomnia is too regularly a part of my life, that I try to pretend doesn't exist, and as a result I'm typing this story at 4 in the morning.

Oh, apparently, from how I titled this post before I started typing it, the take away is that we're all bound together by our technology. We're in love with robots. Maybe it's because they allow a technological narcissism the Greeks could never have imagined when they invented the story of Narcissus and the pool. I feel gross now. I need to go cleanse my soul and turn my eyeballs around from looking inside to looking outside.

Old Acquaintances Renewed

If anyone reads this, get help. No, not for me, silly. For yourself. Really, you read this? You check a blog that only has three entries? Three entries from nearly a year ago? Well, I appreciate your faithfulness anyways.

Back on topic, no, I was not abducted by aliens for the last ten months. Nor was I a part of a secret military program designing super soldier serum (that was a shout out to you P.G.). No. I was simply too overwhelmed with life to even think about updating my immense cyber-following with the roller-coaster rides of school, family, girls, work, ministry, literature, technology, art, music, and all the other adventures I seem to have.

Today I inaugurate a belated New Year's Resolution. I will blog more frequently - and not only when I feel tickled by profound thoughts I can neither fathom or communicate. I will blog. I will not become a blogger because now, with every keystroke, I declare that I AM A BLOGGER.

It says so in the title of the blog site anyways. (www.blogger.com)

So. For my very first non-profound blog topic I give you the least advertised but most significant holiday between July 10 and July 12 of every year - 7/11's Birthday Party on July 11 of every calendar year. 7/11, being the wonderful people they are, don't want a birthday present, in fact, they want to give away party favors! Flowing freely with frothy foamy substance, 7/11 gives away Slurpies like no body's business - no bodies business, except 7/11's that is.

For those of you who just stumbled out of Free-Birthday-Slurpy ignorance, there is a chair in the corner where you can put your head between your knees, breathe deep, close your eyes, and try to forgive yourself for all the birthdays you missed.

Anyways, I'm sure there's a spiritual analogy somewhere in all this that's just squirming in it's Care Bear footy-pajamas trying to get some attention from dad, but this time I'm not going to entertain the lil' rascal. I just want to put this date on your calendar for next year, and the next, and the next.

Happy Slurpday 7/11