Horribly Belated Update

OK, so I am not sure anyone will ever even see this since anyone remotely interested in what might be on my blog has probably given up on me ever writing again and for that I apologize. I have a couple of good reasons, between being back in Illinois for Christmas, having friends in town since then and of course having forgotten my blog username and passowrd for a couple weeks. Regardless, I do have an update on my life as well as that of the church (Roots CC) here in Boulder.

I am still working part-time at Old Navy and while still struggling to make ends meet financially, I still feel that it has been the right decision to stay there. I hope that substitute teaching and/or tutoring on the side will soon allow me to live in the black once again. The friendships I have made there, however, more than make up for the finance-induced headaches I suffer from occassionally. I have an unmistakable excitement and feeling of anticipation for this year in Boulder.

The church is doing very well. We have now been "open" for over six months and have just split off into a third cell group. We are currently still meeting on Sundays in a local elementary school in the downtown area that, while lacking the aesthetic pleasures of most sanctuaries, gives us everything we need at a very low cost. We are very committed as a church to growing organically and not advertising at all. We have no signs, no big events, no "outreach programs," etc. Basically, we believe that wherever a believer of Jesus goes, so does He, and He will bring people to Himself through our obedience to love all of our neighbors.

One great development in this has been that our first "ad" ever will not be of our doing. Because of the work that many in our church have done with the Boulder Homeless Shelter, cleaning up a local park, helping remodel parts of an elementary school and working with a low-income/elderly/disabled apartment complex, the local newspaper (the Daily Camera) has interviewed our pastor (Ramin) and is running a short story on our upstart church in a couple of weeks. I have to say that this has strengthened our resolve in simply being the people of God instead of being a large showy production.

We are just starting our series on spiritual formation this month on Sundays as well as in our cell groups on Wednesdays and many in the church are planning on heading to Uganda this summer to work with an orphanage there with the organization New Hope Uganda. A lot is happening, and we can only hope and pray we simply follow the lead of the One Whom we serve.

Jesus in my Living Room

I actually wrote this not too long after moving out to Colorado this last March. I will try and write an update on how everything is out here soon but for now I hope you enjoy this. It's really long but hopefully somewhat enjoyable. It's called "Living Room."


Here I sit this morning as I have so many before this, staring out the window of a coffee shop, sipping my medium coffee. You might know it as a “grande” coffee. I still live in the world of small, medium and large. I am very proud that I have thus far been able to resist the use of this new turn-of-the-century vocabulary of tall, grande, and venti. I am all for multiculturalism and advancement but I see this new terminology as less of an improvement and more of a way to make me sound like a yuppie idiot. I may be a yuppie idiot but people should find that out by experience not by the way I order my coffee. So for now I will stick with small, medium and large until Webster’s tells me otherwise.

Size and choice of beverage aside, today is quite different from the scores of other mornings I have spent staring out the windows of crowded caffeinated-beverage shops. For today the scenery I stare at explodes with brick streets, a quaint downtown scene and pine trees off-set by a background of sprawling mountains. Quite a unique scene for a 23 year-old kid whose entire life has been spent in the Midwest, the last six years in Indiana. Today I sit in Boulder, Colorado, my new home. I have only been here for 5 days so I still do a violent double-take every morning when I first see the mountains just a few miles to the west. It’s kind of like when I first bought a cell phone and would set it to vibrate. For the first few weeks I nearly fell out of my chair about a dozen times. A local man tried to tell me that what we see here are merely the foothills to the Rockies and not really mountains, but I gently informed him that to anyone who has ever spent a significant amount of time in Indiana and/or driven through Kansas, these are mountains.

What makes this morning unique is not simply this newness of the setting, as exciting as it is. The real issue at hand is the newness of the endeavor, the reason for the move, the call that causes one to uproot from a nice life in the thick of the relatively well-known to move to a mysterious new place and partake of a weird new way of life. I can tell you that it takes more than mountains and sunshine to propel that kind of change, at least it does for me. This move is not a move for the sake of a fresh start, a new job, or a change of scenery. At the risk of sounding hippie-like and postmodern, I moved to find more of Jesus. Now, of course there isn’t more of Jesus in Boulder than in Indiana, but the issue really isn’t one of location. It’s one of motivation. Or to put it more theologically, it’s an issue of obedience.

While rare, there have been clear-cut times in my life when I knew what the right thing was and this time it had less to do with Colorado and more to do with community. You see, I didn’t move out to Boulder alone but with 13 friends of mine. Well, to be more accurate, 13 friends, 1 child, 3 dogs and my fish (I’m not very close to him but he survived the two-day drive out here in a Tupperware container so he deserves a good home and a great deal of respect.). Funny thing is, I only knew two of these people when I decided to move out here with them. Let’s not forget, the issue really wasn’t the move, it was obedience. And so this morning as I sit in this yuppie-laden shop in Boulder, I can confidently say that I am if nothing else being locationally obedient. My spell-check says locationally isn’t really a word but I’m okay with that.

What has set my mind in motion this morning is that my call is not one of being simply locationally obedient, but totally obedient. This quest of absolute, radical obedience has forced me to ponder what it means to really live life and live in community with Jesus and people. This is especially pertinent this morning because the 19 of us (animals and child included) haven’t simply moved but have been sent out of Indiana by our church to, in the simplest explanation, transplant the lives we have with Jesus and each other out here. The big picture? We’re here to expand the Kingdom of God and reach people with the Name of Jesus. What do I tell people who ask me? We’re here to plant a church.

And that brings me to the question that this morning has left me feeling, well, pretty stupid. I must humbly admit that as I ran through my head what we were here to do, I have no idea how to go about this incarnational work of loving people in the Name of Jesus. I mean really loving them, not just saying I love them and doing the things that will make some of them think I love them. By the way, my spell-check also thinks that incarnational is not a word but I’m pretty sure it is, so feel free to use locationally because I think spell-check is wrong. But the point is that I have pretty much completely rearranged my life to be a part of this church plant and love people and I have come to the conclusion that I have no real grasp of what that means. Well, I know what I mean when I say it. I think when I tell someone I love them, I more accurately mean “I like the way you make me feel and/or what you do for me.” And I’m pretty sure that’s not love. In fact, I was reading the Bible today, and it turns out that I am correct: That really isn’t love.

I try to read my Bible every day because in general I think it’s smarter than I am and can lead me to real life, but the problem is that more often than not I live as if I’m smarter than it is. Luckily, I’m pretty sure today I actually believe the Bible is smarter. So if what I have been doing for the last 23 years of my life isn’t love, I have to ask the question ‘What is love?’ Well, here’s what the Apostle Paul says, who I am also pretty sure is smarter than I am. Love is ALWAYS patient, ALWAYS kind, ALWAYS rejoicing in truth, ALWAYS protecting, ALWAYS trusting, ALWAYS hoping and ALWAYS persevering. And it is NEVER envious, NEVER boastful, NEVER proud, NEVER rude, NEVER self-seeking, NEVER easily angered, NEVER petty, NEVER vengeful and NEVER loving of evil.

And if that’s true, and if I’m reading this correctly, than I do just about the opposite of loving someone. If I were to place myself on that NEVER and ALWAYS scale, it would be pretty accurate to say that I am SOMETIMES all of those things. To be honest, I really use loving someone as a way of loving myself. So I might be worse off than just SOMETIMES. That’s pretty jacked up. It’s kind of like when I was a kid and at Christmas, I used to buy people presents that they really wouldn’t like but I could use. When I got older did that side of me go away or finally understand how to love people? No. I think I just got more clever at hiding it. Do I give people gifts because I know it will make them happy or because I know they will like me more because I gave it to them? Do I help people because they need help or because they will think I am more sacrificial and that I’m a better person than I really am? When the day is done and I get to the bare truth behind my motivation, it really isn’t love (A.K.A. obedience) but self-preservation and self-love (A.K.A. rebellion and pride).

So pretty much, to take a quick stab at this at the risk of over-simplifying, love means I chuck this preoccupation with me out the window and breathe every breath I get for the One Whom I love and obey His call to love all those He entrusts to my care. And of course by “love” here I do not mean my messed-up idea of love but the real one with the NEVER’s and the ALWAYS’s. But if that’s the call then who are those people that He has called me to love and how in the world do I do that? I’ll be honest, I know myself well enough to know that that kind of love isn’t coming from me and I don’t know if there’s anything I can do about that. I’m pretty stuck.

The more I try to walk this Jesus-path, the more questions like this come up, especially as I question the long-held religious ideas and traditions laid before me by the modern American church. But these questions are almost all, at least the big ones, the same questions that the first century Jews asked Jesus or later would ask Paul in the early church. Thankfully, in this case, there was a pesky Swanson-like Jew running around who asked pretty much this same question to Jesus. Here’s what happened:

One day Jesus was teaching people what the Kingdom of God really was in between casting out demons and healing lepers. Just your average day for the Son of God. Well, the really religious people of the day (the Pharisees) thought He was kind of crazy and what was worse, the people were believing what Jesus was teaching. Wacky ideas like God loving them unconditionally and that the Kingdom of God was at hand and that they didn’t have to kiss the sandals of the pious people in white robes. If thoughts like this got out think of what could happen. People would be free from the bondage of a religious system and they wouldn’t have to give all their money to religious leaders. There goes the Pharisees’ popularity and money. This was certainly unacceptable. I mean, please, Jesus was from Nazareth, and nothing good came out of there anyway. So no way was a Nazarene going to tear down what they had spent so long building up. Oh yeah, and they were doing this all for God, I almost forgot.

Being a child of popular culture, I equate a lot of Scriptural truth to movies and the Pharisees here make me think of my favorite movie, “Hoosiers.” You see in “Hoosiers” there’s this small town in Indiana in the 1950’s that lives and dies by its basketball team. I can relate. Well, the head coach dies and the principal hires this new coach, Norman Dale, who the townspeople don’t know and therefore are suspicious of. Anyone who has ever moved to a small town knows what this is like.

So Norman is a pretty determined and hard-nosed guy and he comes in guns blazing and has his own ideas of how the team should be run. When you watch the movie, you have a sneaking suspicion that he knows the right way for the team and later find out that he does because they end up winning, it’s really quite thrilling. I highly recommend watching it. Anyway, the first day he walks into practice and one of the townspeople is already running it. Norman, in a less-than-diplomatic way says he’s going to run things his way (the right way). The townie loves this basketball team and in predictable small town fashion, takes offense to Coach Big-City-Not-From-Around-Here trying to change his team with all these new-fangled ideas. The guy’s response is classic. He says, “Mister, there are two kinds of crazy. The first one gets drunk, strips down naked and goes out in the snow and howls at the moon. The second one does the same thing in your living room. First one doesn’t really matter. The second one you’re kind of forced to deal with.”

I think that’s the way the Pharisees viewed Jesus. They had a good thing going and things worked in their town for their benefit and they didn’t like this new guy coming in with all His crazy new ideas, especially since His ideas made them look and sound stupid. They thought He was a heretic and crazy but, like the townie in “Hoosiers” and like me, it only bothered them when He brought His Life into their living rooms. And despite our modern view of the warm-and-fuzzy Jesus, He, like Norman Dale, was never afraid to take Himself into their living room and shake things up a bit. Seriously, at one point he pretty much calls them Satan and evil and flips over the tables they were doing business on. Now that’s a Jesus I can get on board with.
So here we have Jesus teaching people what Life truly is and healing them and really “making all things new” and then you’ve got your whiny preacher boys who hate that He’s taken their thunder so they start coming up with ways to tear Him down. Remember, He came into their living room so they had to do something with Him: either accept Him as the Son of God, or get rid of Him as a heretic. Because they loved themselves way too much, self-preservation mode kicked in, and they chose door number 2.

Well, this day that Jesus is teaching, one of these Pharisees, we’ll call him Pharisee Phil, gets the idea to test Jesus with a smart theological question to make Him look like a fool. So he asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

It’s kind of funny that that’s the question Phil asks to trick Jesus and try to tear Him down, because if asked sincerely, that’s the greatest question he could ask of the Son of God. Not surprisingly, Jesus’ answer is amazing. He flips it around on Phil and asks him what the Law says. Pharisee Phil, being a scholar of the Law, says that it’s to love God with everything he has and love his neighbor as himself. Cha-ching. Correct answer. So does Phil leave and then go do that? Nope. He does what I do. He tries to justify his question so Jesus doesn’t show him up and asks question number two, one of the questions that haunts me today.
“And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus’ answer to this question is beautiful, and one of the most important for us to understand today. In His usual Son-of-God style, when Phil was looking for a fastball, Jesus throws him a change-up. Instead of just an answer, He tells a story. And not just any story, but for my money, it’s the greatest story ever told.

Jesus tells him that one time there was this guy walking from Jerusalem to Jericho. We’ll say his name is Rob. I’ve always wondered why Rob’s going to Jericho, but we never really get an answer. I like to think he was going down there to check out the remnants of the walls that fell hundreds of years before this when Joshua chanted them down and God gave the Israelites the Promised Land. Probably not, but it doesn’t really matter. While Rob is on his way to Jericho, he gets jumped by some ghetto thugs. They beat him up, take everything he has, even his clothes, and leave him to die on the side of the road. I was robbed once. It wasn’t anything like this though. I was working at a gas station and the guy pretty much just took the money and left. He didn’t beat me up or anything, but it was pretty freaky so I feel like I can empathize with the feeling of helplessness. We’ve all been there. But here’s Rob, who didn’t do anything wrong, and he goes from one second planning on seeing the wall remnants to the next minute laying on the roadside dying without anyone to help.

About this time, another man comes walking down the road. This man, Priestly Pete, comes upon the scene and sees Rob in desperate need of help. He starts to go over to help but then he remembers something. He’s a priest. According to the Law, a priest can’t go near a dead body and from his angle, he can’t really tell if the guy is alive or not. Can’t really take a chance. Cleanliness in the Temple was kind of a big deal. Pete shrugs his shoulders, mumbles something like “If it weren’t for my religious duties I could’ve helped the poor guy,” and keeps walking, making sure he doesn’t make himself unclean by going too close. After all, Pete has sacrifices and burnt offerings to take care of.

A little while later, Larry, who is a Levite who worked in the Temple but wasn’t quite a priest, was walking down the road. He sees Rob and is pretty horrified. Larry realizes that he has to do something or Rob will die. He starts to run toward Rob to see if he’s okay but stops immediately. Wait! He can’t go over there. Rob might be dead. You see, Larry is on his way to work … in the Temple, and like Pete before him, he can’t work in the Temple if he touches a dead body and becomes unclean. You know, I’m starting to think that first century Palestine would be a lot safer place if everyone didn’t work in the Temple. But off Larry goes on his merry, religious way to spread incense and prepare sacrifices to God, the thought of the Rob dying on the street passing further from his consciousness with every blissfully pious step.
This whole time, meanwhile, Rob’s been losing a lot of blood and it’s not looking good.

Apparently our only hope for Rob is if somebody who isn’t so godly comes along and actually has a chance to help out. Enter Sammy the Samaritan. Sammy’s on his way to Jericho to … well … to be honest no one really cares where Sammy’s going because Sammy is a Samaritan and no one cares what Samaritans do. Long story short, back in the day when Israel first broke into two tribes, the Northern tribe got taken over by another race of people (the Babylonians) who treated them like slaves, raped their women and over the course of a few generations left the whole tribe with half Jewish descent and half Babylonian descent. Pretty sad story. Fast-forward to our story, the Jews in the first century thought the Samaritans were totally ungodly and didn’t want to have anything to do with them because they were “half-breeds” and had slightly different beliefs. So Sammy comes upon Rob, who is Jewish by the way, and he is appalled by what he sees. He quickly runs over to Rob, and not having to go to the Temple, checks to see if he’s still alive. Thankfully Rob is barely hanging on. So Sammy throws Rob on his donkey, takes him to a hotel, and cleans him up. He leaves some money with the innkeeper, tells him to do whatever it takes to make sure Rob is okay, and says he would come back later and pay him for whatever extra it cost to heal Rob. What a guy! I think I’d like to have a cup of coffee with Sammy if I ever met him. I’m not so sure about Pete and Larry. To be honest, I don’t think they would have any time for me.

Well, when Jesus finishes his story, Phil has this mouth-open, eyes-bugging look on his face. He looks around at his religious buddies as if to ask “Did he really just say what I think he said?” Problem is they had all deserted him at this point hiding behind walls and tables, pretending like they weren’t listening because they didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus. As far they were concerned He could just go ahead and have the living room, because He was way too smart for them. It reminds me of the time I tried to impress a girl by talking about theology only to quickly realize she not only disagreed with me but knew about eight times more about it than I did. I tried to backpedal a lot but it really didn’t work. She didn’t talk to me much after that.

The thing is, though, that Phil was bugging not just because Jesus was so smart, but because, like I said earlier, He threw him the change-up when Phil was looking fastball. Caught him totally off-guard. You see, in the story, after Jesus mentioned that the priest and Levite went past without helping, Phil and his pals were all expecting the next guy who really did help to be a Pharisee like them, or at least a regular Jew. They were expecting a compliment. They thought Jesus was finally coming around to their way of thinking. Finally, He was going to play to their egos. Then not only does Jesus not say a Pharisee helps out but He goes completely nuts and says it was a Samaritan. A Samaritan! The hero of the story was a Samaritan! It would be like today if your pastor were to tell a story like this in church on Sunday and the hero was a Buddhist, Muslim, or even a Jew. In some circles, the pastor would be fired if the hero of the story was simply from another denomination of Christianity. Maybe pastors should talk like that more often. I mean, really, are we the only ones who help people? Do we really have a monopoly on the good deeds market? Ask your average guy on the street. He’ll tell you exactly how good Christians are. I suggest you wear a helmet if you do.

Now, let’s keep in mind that this whole spiel Jesus is going with here is an answer to the question, “And who is my neighbor?” or “And who is it that I’m supposed to love?”
So Jesus wraps up His story by asking, “Who was a neighbor to Rob?”
Phil wipes the drool from his face and in the head-down mumble of a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar, answers, “The one who had mercy on him.” He couldn’t even say the word Samaritan, he was so stunned!

Jesus finishes him off with His summation that brings this thing all the way home to my mountain-surrounded yuppie shop today. “Go and do likewise.”

“Go and do likewise,” He says. Jesus telling Phil and me and you to go and do likewise is kind of like me telling my fish to get a job and pitch in for rent. No offense to you but after seeing what Jesus had to say I think we’re dealing with a human race problem and not just a problem for me and Phil. I mean seriously, if we tie in what Paul was saying with the ALWAYS’s and the NEVER’s with Jesus’s “Go and do likewise,” I sit here like a 3 year-old whose Dad just gave him the keys to the car and told him to pick up milk. It just brings up part two of my question: If our neighbor is whoever we treat with lavish (or real) love, then how do I go about being a Sammy who stops everything he’s doing to love on other people when all I want to do is what I want to do and that’s to love me and have other people love me? That was a really long run-on sentence, but I think it was necessary.

Jesus’ story tells us about who we are supposed to love. It’s those people He has put into our care. If I’m reading this story correctly, Jesus says my neighbor is whoever I treat with lavish (or real) love. So amidst the catch-22 of “your neighbor is who you treat like a neighbor,” I am almost forced to make the jump that it’s everyone I meet.

Now the objection here is obvious. I am but one person. I can in no way show THAT kind of love to EVERYONE. I understand the point, but I disagree. There is a truth there that I cannot pour my life out in hundreds of directions in the same way that I would toward a spouse, child or dear friend. That’s not the call. I think a look back at what Jesus has to say, however, will reveal a truth that I would rather explain away than truly grasp.

If I were to grasp His truth about love, or more accurately, if this Truth were to grasp me, everything changes. More bluntly put, I’m dead. It’s over. That me that loves only me I was talking about earlier? He cannot exist in the world of love Jesus presides over. I must love everyone as much as I love me now. To put some Christianese handles on it, my sinful nature (the self-loving, self-preserving core of me) has to die if I am to be a part of the Kingdom of God (become a Sammy that people want to have coffee with). Think about it. How can I possibly even notice a Rob dying on the side of the road if I only want to get to the Temple to feel religious? Even if I do notice him, if I love myself and want to gratify my own desires, I am not interested enough to drop everything I am doing and spend a lot of time and money getting dirty and bloody helping a dying man live. Isn’t it good enough that I noticed him and felt bad for him? I’ll pray for him. That way God can send someone to help him. I mean, I have things to do. We have a church to get started here!

See what I mean? Paul puts it best: I have to die to myself. Otherwise how could I ever give enough to really love people? Did you notice in the story how Sammy never asks Rob for anything in return? I would have. I haven’t completed the only real work of being a child of God, and that’s killing me. If I could do that, I would be free to love everyone. The great thing about the Bible is it talks about that, too. When Paul is writing to the Roman church he talks about “putting to death the misdeeds of the body.” That’s this.

Here’s the cool and terrifying part. You know who is really doing the killing of those wicked acts and thoughts? It’s not me. Me I have some control over. It’s Him. It’s the One Who spoke the Heavens into being, made the most powerful king in the world eat grass and howl at the moon to prove His point, and killed death by breathing life into the decaying, crucified body of Christ (Probably even after it had started to stink). It’s a comforting thought in the sense that He most certainly has the power to kill that which is killing me, but it also terrifies me to the core.

Here’s what I mean. A few months ago, one of the worst natural disasters since the Flood happened. A huge earthquake rocked the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Thailand and Indonesia. This created huge waves hundreds of feet high that destroyed entire cities all along the eastern coast of Asia. Tens of thousands of people died instantly, millions more lost their homes and everything they had ever known. Well, that huge disaster that left all 6 billion people on Earth helpless to do anything against it? He could have stopped it. He’s the One Who originally created those very oceans and He placed those trillions of gallons of water exactly where He wanted them and He did it all by simply saying two sentences. Seriously, two. And after He said those sentences, that’s simply the way it was. They are completely obedient to Him, no questions asked.

This is the One Who is killing that self-preservationist Me. This is the One Who lives inside of all who believe in Him. This is the One Who has invaded my living room. This is the One Who not only calls you and me to “Go and do likewise” but gives us the trillion-gallons-of-water-tsunami-like power to do it. And He’s deadly serious about it. He gave up His very Son to accomplish it.

My job in all this? Get out of the way, let Him do His thing and enjoy the ride. ALWAYS.

So as I sit here pondering what this means, drinking my medium coffee, I can see a homeless man sitting on a bench just outside my little, safe yuppie world. He looks like he’s been sitting there for awhile, maybe a few years. He looks dirty. He probably stinks. I wonder if anyone has ever taken Jesus into his living room. He doesn’t even have a living room. Heck, he doesn’t even have a sandwich. He’s holding a sign that reads:

IM HOMELESS.
IM DISABLED.
I DO NOT DRINK
GOD BLESS.

Seems like the kind of guy I’d like to have coffee with. Maybe even get him that sandwich. Maybe I should start there.

Ramblings on a prayer life

I have come to realize that while it is ever-changing, my view of the role of prayer in my life is always wrong. It’s like science. I have a degree in science, I used to teach middle school science, I love science. So please do not misinterpret what I am about to say. I am not a religious whacko who thinks that all science is wrong and evil and all religion is right. But the truth is that everything that we believe to be true and what we label as “scientific laws” are wrong. All of them. Not that science is bad or that we should stop practicing science. I think science is very wonderful and useful. It has given us all sorts of life-saving medicines and life-altering inventions like cars, planes, better houses, better detection of natural disasters, etc. Truly, billions of lives have been either saved or made better because of science. But that is not my point here. My point is that all science is at its core wrong and always has been. It’s actually not my point at all in reality. It was Thomas Kuhn’s point back in the late 1960’s when he wrote “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” and is responsible for the pervasiveness of the new age movement and today’s mystical philosophies. I highly recommend that you read it. It will change your view of the world.

Right now I am in great risk of losing anyone’s interest who starting reading this because they thought it was about prayer. I promise it is, just stay with me. You see, Kuhn argued in his book by showing the history of science that science always has pervasive theories of the day that everyone holds to like grim death (today’s would be gravity, e=mc2, etc.). The problem is, however, that in all the history of science, no theory, or law has ever held up to the test of time. Someone has always found a new theory that replaces the old one and everyone jumps ship to the new idea that solved all the problems of the old one that no one had ever noticed before. The best example of that is Newton and Einstein. Back in Newton’s day, the theory of how force and energy worked was that of Copernicus with a little Kepler on the side. Everyone bought into all they said until Newton had the infamous apple hit his head, and came up with his theories. One of his theories was that the force of an object equaled its mass times its acceleration. After extensive testing time and time again, everything about that theory made sense and after awhile, everyone latched onto this, called it Newton’s law and said it was irrefutable. And everything in the world of science and force and gravity was happy with its constructed box of Newton’s equation for about 200 years. Then came Albert Einstein.

Back in the early twentieth century, Einstein, who by the way was a wonderful God-fearing man like Newton, began to discover that there were some discrepancies in Newton’s equation. Einstein realized that at the microscopic, unable-to-detect-with-the-naked-eye level, F=ma is slightly off. I am going to oversimplify here because my point is not to prove this to you or explain the science behind it, and I must humbly admit that I do not know the nuances of all this science. So bear with me. Because of new technology and new scientific discoveries, Einstein, in his genius, was able to discover the amazing speed of light that had to be factored into all of this talk of mass, because mass is actually dependent upon energy. All of a sudden, two centuries of scientific thought were thrown on their head, and at the highest levels, the theories of Newton were cherished, enshrined and left on the bookshelf like the dusty human anatomy books that sit on mine as more of a decoration and an artifact than anything actually useful. Now I know what some of you are thinking. Don’t scientists still use Newton’s theory? Like me, you were probably taught in middle school, high school and even college about Newton’s theories and applied them to various experiments to prove that they work. To prove that force does equal mass times acceleration. And for all intents and purposes in this life for any of us who live outside of the science hall at MIT, it does. But in the reality of the unspeakably complex world that the Most High God created with the mere sound of His voice, Newton’s theories were wrong. They really don’t work. Just like Aristotle’s, Kepler’s, Copernicus’s, and all the others’ before him. And some day, some young genius will prove that Einstein was essentially wrong. This is just the way science works, has always worked, and will always work.

Now from here I could ramble on and on about how Kuhn was right and how this proves there is a God, yada, yada, yada. I’ll leave that to those who know better than I and get back to my original point that just like Aristotle, Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, and Newton were wrong and someday we will all realize (or our children will) that Einstein was wrong, I am always wrong about prayer. The longer I walk this road with God, the more, by His grace, I am allowed to learn as He teaches me how to pray. My view of prayer evolves and at every turn I realize how before all new revelations He shows me, I was “wrong” about prayer. My view of it was off. So I go along my merry way believing I am now “right” about prayer until my next revelelation from God’s Word proves me “wrong.” But maybe, just maybe, rightness isn’t the goal. You see, Newton was at the core of his theories wrong, but other brilliant men and women were able to use the threads of truth in them to produce such wondrous inventions as the automobile and airplane and skyscraper. And all of our lives are now better for it. In fact, because of the grace of God in his life, he was able to praise God all the more because of the new truths he had unveiled.

In that same way, God has used my view of prayer, as wrong as it is, to show Himself to me and by His grace move in my life and continue to show me more of the depth of Who He is and this reality that He has created. The key is not to finally unlock what it means to “truly pray” and write the award-winning book and sell T-shirts and journals and workbooks about it. The “key” is, like in science, to never believe that I have “arrived.” Where is arrival ever found in the Bible? Show me one apostle who writes that yes they have attained what they so desperately were striving for. Paul certainly never did. Set up against the standard of Truth, our view of prayer or life or salvation or anything will always be inaccurate because neither you or I are God. We are fallen people, a vapor in the timeline of His creation. I, as a finite, fallen creature can never truly understand the ways of God, especially through prayer. There is no if-then reality to it, no logical step-by-step conclusiveness to communion with God. It is one of the greatest mysteries.

So does that mean that as I sit here at my desk trying to wrap my head around what my prayer life should look like, I should just stop and go watch TV? No. Even though scientists like Newton and Einstein knew they would never know truly how all things in the universe work at their very core, they gave their whole lives to the discovery of more and more truth so that they could get as close as possible to the Truth, by the grace of God. And likewise, we, like the disciples before us, should constantly ask Jesus, “How then should we pray?” and He, by His wondrous grace, continues to show us His glory so that “we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, Who is the Spirit.” Prayer is not a formula, a code or a password. It is a wonderful relationship of submission and love to the One Who gave His life for us, that we might forsake all things to seek His face … through prayer. And so, my view of prayer will always be changing and hopefully, by the grace of God, it will be changing to get as close to the Truth as possible so that I may give my life to get as close to Him Who is the Truth as possible. Praise be to the grace of God for the dignity and life of that pursuit. It truly is all we have.

Louisiana Part II

Once we reached Baton Rouge, we met our contact and were met with gratitude from the few PRC staff that were there preparing for the new work site in Baton Rouge. Almost immediately, we all left the makeshift PRC office and headed to the church we would be staying at for who knew how long. That night we met the sixty Nebraska charismatics we would share the next week with. They were from an Assembly of God church in Bellevue, a suburb of Omaha. Twenty of the church members were young men and women from their Master’s Commission and the other forty simply adults who jumped at the opportunity to serve. Immediately apparent was the absolute joy of this group as well as their charismatic style the likes I hadn’t seen since my year at a Pentecostal church in college. Also apparent was the shocking little tolerance I have for chipper morning people, regardless of how sweet or Godly.

We settled in at the very modern church sanctuary now littered with cots across its floor. Late in the evening a small contingent of four from the Lafayette MC showed up, weary and not so eager to having been placed in the beginning of a new serving endeavor. I couldn’t blame them, for their eyes, bodies and vocal chords told a story of ones who had given all and had very little left to see another hurricane and another shelter. Also, the rest of their team was miles away in Mandeville, enjoying the much needed rest that these young leaders had to forego at the call to lead. It did my heart good, however, to see these four, Gabe, Lindsay, Carrie and Donna. They embraced Mandy and I like long lost family even though only 72 hours united us. Clearly, a merciful God and an unmerciful world quickly transforms respect to love and love to family, however temporary it is. The six of us would cling to each other in a deep way throughout the rest of our time in Baton Rouge. That night, I laid out my sleeping bag in an area of the sanctuary that mere hours before had been a center of a chorus of worship and mere hours later would prove to be the center of a chorus of snores. As I lay awake that night, pondering the irony, I offered praise to God for a church willing to get dirty and exchange Sunday morning pews for Thursday night cots.

The largest makeshift shelter in Baton Rouge was set up in the River Center. Normally the home of the local semi-pro hockey team and a convention center, once again, a sports arena gave way to become a safe house. The River Center, however close in use and proximity to the Cajundome, may as well have been in a different country. While the Cajundome had just as many desperate people and housed as many heart-wrenching stories, its feel, look, and organization deserved high praise in light of the River Center. You see, by the time we arrived at the Cajundome, the PRC had established itself as a credible organization and had become a well-oiled machine able to organize many servants quickly to fill in the gaps the Red Cross was unable to handle. Laundry was done for all residents, all floors were mopped daily, a distribution center was established to get clothes to needy families quickly and the Red Cross had extra hands at their disposal to prepare for more families arriving daily. But at the River Center, PRC had not had the opportunity to even start serving. We were starting a new ministry. The sixty of us, under the leadership of Donna, Gabe, Lindsay and Carrie, were charged with the task of earning the respect of the Red Cross and the people of the River Center through our work, service, professionalism and attitude. And there was plenty of work to do. When we arrived the first morning, trash cans were overflowing from lack of maintenance and general sanitation was far from a level that the health department found acceptable.

Even the mood of the center was more tense and ominous. While the Cajundome had armed national guardsmen scattered around, the soldiers at the Cajundome all carried M-16’s as a show of intimidation, an obvious backlash to the atrocities of the Superdome. The sight of armed soldiers with semi-automatic weapons became eerily normal over the coming days. Also, serving alongside the Red Cross were over 100 scientology volunteer ministers. Their yellow shirts made for an interesting clash against the orange blazon on each of us. Most of all, the tense mood came from the storm clouds beginning to pour down rain all around us. That first day, our main task was actually to move hundreds of residents from the arena floor to the second floor of the convention center along with all of the beds and possessions. The fear was that Rita would come through and either flood the sunken floor, take the roof off, or both. Probably all of the 2000 of us there that day spent a good deal of time glancing out the windows, especially at the Mississippi River just yards away. It wasn’t long before the lockdown order came and we were forced to leave by mid-afternoon so the center could brace itself for the wrath to come. We drove the few miles back to the church in pouring rain to wait out Rita for the night and return to serve the shelter again the next day, assuming the River would not flood and the arena floor would stay dry.

Now the rest of the night went quite differently for me than Mandy. She displayed a more normal and probably appropriate response to an oncoming Cat 4 hurricane that engulfed our location in red on all weather maps. She called friends and family and fought to keep from worrying the whole night through, thoroughly convinced part of the church would be gone by morning. I, on the other hand, played mud football. Correction. I played hurricane football with twenty Nebraskans. The church we stayed at had a school and also a nice football field with outdoor lights and the field just happened to have been soaked with about a half inch of rain from the course of the day. With the wind picking up greatly, the torrential downpour and tornado warnings, really it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And we ran with it. After three hours of sliding and tackling under the lights, we took showers under the downspouts of the gutters. I can honestly say it was one of the greatest things I have ever done in my life and a night I will never forget. For the next few hours, our family of six stayed up, played cards and watched the news as the rest of the church tried to sleep through the storm outside.

Mandy recalls being sure that the roof was going to tear off as she laid in bed and truly the grace of God allowed her to fall asleep and stay asleep through the night. I laid down in my sleeping bag not long after the eye touched land and listened to the storm rage outside. The church swayed under the impact of the wind and the ceiling tiles popped throughout the night as Rita swung through the city of Baton Rouge. One woman in the morning told of her fear as the church shook and her impulse to wake everyone up and get them out of the sanctuary before the roof tore off. But when morning came, and the storm outside tempered to a bad rainstorm, the church stood relatively unscathed, and we once again donned our orange shirts and went back to work, many in our group much less nervous than any of the days previous.

The rest of our time in Baton Rouge was very similar to Lafayette. We served however we could and slowly over those days we saw the attitude of the Red Cross change toward us. We became less like unskilled volunteers and more of a very useful organization, capable of really getting things done. All simply because of a heartbeat to serve and get dirty, regardless if that meant eight hours of caring for screaming children or eight hours of cleaning toilets. Both were necessary, both were noticed by volunteers and residents alike, and both showed the heart of our risen Savior better than a hundred sermons.

The hurricane caused our trip to extend some and so I called in to work back in Colorado and told them I would be two days late. So we stayed through Sunday and into Monday. But leaving early Monday afternoon proved very difficult. Not only were we leaving some who had become family but leaving a people who still needed to be served. The children I played with that week still needed to be played with the next week, the people we fed would need food again, the laundry we cleaned would need to be cleaned again and so on and so on. And so my body left Baton Rouge and then Lafayette that day but my heart lagged many days behind. Part of it will probably never leave. As we swung back to Our Savior’s Church to say goodbye to the leaders we hadn’t seen since Rita, I drove toward Texas confident of at least one thing. God was mobilizing His people and He certainly had the right ones there to shoulder the burden placed upon them. The desperate people of the gulf coast were met with Jesus in the form He has taken for 2000 years. Katrina destroyed a people and the evil and the carnage she caused dared the Church to rise. I can say from first-hand experience, arise She did with arms open to heal the broken-hearted. And it was a beautiful site to behold.

Truly the grace of God kept us safe and healthy while we were in Louisiana for almost immediately after entering Texas my throat burned raw and my head exploded into a fever as we drove toward Dallas. While I struggled to drive through a sickness that within an hour made mere swallowing a great chore, Mandy was struck with all the emotion of the images and smells and people left behind, the emotions repressed for a long week out of pure necessity. She could no longer hold it all in. So that night when we arrived in Plano, at Aaron’s parents’ house again, we were a sniveling, broken-down mess met with the servants’ hearts of the Lipmans. During the next days’ drive we swung by Lubbock to see a good friend from college and enjoy some real Texas barbeque and then drove the rest of the day to Boulder. The odometer on the Mazda, so graciously loaned to us by the Stroesslers, read 3,002 as we hit Boulder at midnight and I crawled into bed fifteen minutes later, less than seven hours away from work the next morning. As the sign in front of Our Savior’s Church read as we drove away, “Back to work after Rita.” Back to work, but not quite back to normal. But I think that’s a good thing.

I promise to write more reflections from the trip later, but that’s the gist of what happened. Thank you all for your patience as all of this has been quite a load to swallow and try to digest while life in Boulder continued full-speed ahead as it does only in the mountain kingdom.

Louisiana Part I

I apologize to all who have been wanting to hear the details of my trip with Mandy down to Louisiana to help out with the carnage left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I also apologize to anyone who has checked this blog in the last month waiting to hear about the trip or anything else. It is my hope to post over the coming weeks many reflections from Louisiana and Boulder but I beg for patience as I am not very good at keeping to schedules. But at least for now, here is the first part of the story of our trip to Louisiana …

When Hurricane Katrina first hit, or I should say, when I first saw the images so common to us now of a submerged New Orleans and thousands upon thousands of desperate people, I responded like most Americans, resolute to help out in whatever way possible. My natural tendency has always been to go, wherever, whenever, however. To be a part, to do my part. This time, however, I was determined to temper my foolhardy tendencies and resign myself to wait and pray. Then the door opened.

I have a friend from college, Tim Kirkpatrick, who has been in Lafayette, Louisiana for the last three years working with an amazing church (Our Savior’s Church) there under the guidance of Pastor Jacob Aranza. They are an instrumental hub for Pastor’s Resource Council (PRC) and its work in the rebuilding and relief work throughout the state. I sent him a text message to check on the situation because the disaster made calling in to cell phones nearly impossible. At midnight the next night I was hearing the words “Yeah we need help. I heard you might be able to come.” Through my contact with him, I learned there was a need for volunteers and promptly scheduled ten days off from work.

Due to the short notice of the trip, the only person who was able to go with was my good friend Mandy. So haphazardly and through very little communication, I faxed down our information, and got no response for days. With no affirmation from the PRC or Our Savior’s Church, we left on Sunday, September 18 for Louisiana having no idea what we would be doing or seeing or even if we were accepted to go down. After staying with the very gracious parents of Aaron Lipman in Plano, TX our first night, we made our way to the bayou country of Louisiana and it didn’t take long for us to realize the grace and love of the people of Our Savior’s Church. The morning we left Texas, we heard briefly of the news of a small hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean but thought little of it.

Our first night there, the ministry students at the church were having their first day not focused on relief work since the hurricane hit three weeks ago. The need for more workers screamed from their heartbreaking stories, tired eyes and overworked bodies. But joy surpassed and illuminated the night of softball and swimming. They have at Our Savior’s Church a Master’s Commission, which is a ministry training school that takes two years to complete. These students we were watching blow off the steam from weeks of hard service arrived at the school the day after Katrina hit. While students in other Master’s Commission programs throughout the country were going through orientation, these young ministers were taking Jesus to the poorest of the poor through blood, sweat and tears, sixteen hours at a time.

One student I had the honor of traveling with most of my time there was Gabe Smith. He was in his first year at MC and was from Gulfport, Mississippi. He left for Lafayette the day after Katrina hit, his home all but gone and drove the 150 mile trek straight through ground zero. Three days of driving, including one night in his car and two hours in line for gas, found him arriving in Lafayette, ready to turn right around and serve those caught in a storm that touched him all too personally. By the time Mandy and I arrived on the scene, God had birthed in Gabe a leadership worthy of this crisis.

Late that night, Mandy and I sat down with Don Norman, a leader at the church and PRC, for our “training” and to get information about what PRC does and what they wanted from us. It was that night I began to realize the magnitude of the work God had placed in the hearts of these young men and women and how the heartbeat of our church in the self-proclaimed “mountain kingdom” of Boulder, Colorado, pounded perfectly in sync with this bayou-based community that lived in the muck and mire of a heartbroken people who had suddenly lost everything and needed them desperately.

They sent us with a group of ministry students from Fort Myers, FL to work at the Cajundome. The Cajundome is where UL-Lafayette plays basketball and has a convention center attached. All of it was converted to a relief shelter after the hurricane and when we walked in to work that Tuesday, there were still over 1,800 people who had called that home for the last three weeks and many of them with no idea how many more days, weeks or months there were to come.
We spent those first two days there and supposed we would probably be there for the rest of our time. We were both furiously busy and actually I barely saw Mandy while we were there. Everyone in the dorms at Our Savior’s Church would wake by 6 am, be at prayer by 6:30 and on the road for our various work assignments by 7:30. In those two nights we wouldn’t leave the dome until after 10 pm. They were long days but every hour was well worth our time down there. I did everything there from setting up cots to distributing clothing to doing laundry for the displaced families to simply talking with people or playing with kids running throughout the buildings, many of whose parents I didn’t see the whole time there. The sight of walking into enormous rooms full of cots, people and meager possessions became eerily normal over those 48 hours. Occasionally the reality of the situation would creep in and would have to be immediately ushered out. Too much time dwelling on the plight of those staying at the dome left you incapacitated and useless. The last thing needed there was another solemn face. Even now the picture of the convention center floor covered with cot after cot dimly lit with stale fluorescent light still flashes to my mind. An image I will probably never forget.

The next day, we were told we would have the opportunity to go with many of the leaders of PRC to see the destruction that once was the city of Gulfport, Mississippi. Gulfport was so destroyed by the hurricane that even then, 3 weeks later, nobody was allowed to enter and the national guard was there with security and razor wire to uphold that order. Nobody, that is, except those in the PRC. PRC had received so much favor with local, state and national governments that they were allowed into every closed off city and parish to plan their vision for the reconstruction of the cities of southeast Louisiana. Wanting us to get the full view of what happened to their fair state, the leadership allowed us to ride with. We were in the car waiting to take off for Gulfport when word came that the small hurricane had not only become very large and lethal but had turned north over the course of the night and was headed almost straight for where we were staying in Lafayette.

So the order was made that everyone staying at the church was going to evacuate, most to a church north of New Orleans, in Mandeville. Mandy and I waited for hours in the Louisiana heat and humidity waiting for word of where they wanted us to go. When we walked into the leadership office to discuss our options, someone mentioned Baton Rouge. In Baton Rouge, there was a relief center that PRC was just planning on serving at and so within five minutes we decided to brave a heavier blow from Hurricane Rita, and were on our way to find a man we had never met, to serve in a city we had never been to, to experience first-hand a natural disaster we had never encountered. I was simply thankful for the opportunity to continue serving despite the second onslaught headed to the region.

So we left with all of our possessions for Baton Rouge on Thursday afternoon, with Rita scheduled to hit land late the next night. And if we had wondered how Louisiana would react to the thought of another Cat 5, the drive to Baton Rouge told the story of a state not willing to deal with whatever the light rain and gray clouds above us were foreshadowing. A quick trip to Albertson’s turned into a half hour wait in line and a fifty mile drive to Baton Rouge turned into a four hour bumper-to-bumper evacuation. Yet more chilling still were the blue signs haphazardly dotting the highway that read “Hurricane Evacuation Route” and the sparse west-bound traffic dominated by military vehicles laden with water, blankets, food, national guardsmen, and general aid. Military helicopters periodically thundered overhead as we trudged slowly over miles of swamp land.

Boulder.

This blog is indeed regrettable

Due to my passionate belief that way too many people think way too many other people need to read way too much about their life, I have until this point been firmly against the idea of blogging. But as with the popularization of the cell phone, my life circumstances dictated that my stalwart protest be ended. Because so many people live so far from me, I have found emailing to be a difficult way to keep in touch and a blog to be the easiest way of communicating openly about my life, the life of our church and all that God is doing in Boulder, Colorado and beyond. It is my hope that I will keep this updated regularly, but anyone who knows me at all knows that this would be a miracle to make Benny Hinn blush. But, He who raised Christ from the dead can do immeasurably more things ... here's hoping.