On Jesus and Stuff

I read a lot of blogs.  Mostly through Pulse, my favorite app for iPad.  I read them to stay up to date on technology, music, arts and such, but mostly, I read them looking for inspiration.  I love having "Aha!" moments, like I did when I read this: http://www.blainehogan.com/post/1425158676/landing-planes
But lately I've noticed what feels like people saying things so for sure and certain, that I wonder what makes a person an "authority" on something.  When does someone become and expert?  Can all the Ph.D.s in the world make you an expert on Jesus?  Do we have it all figured out?  Or do we just sound like we think we do?

I'm asking myself these questions tonight: what did Jesus' type of forgiveness look like?  Was it, "I forgive you but I'm never gonna look at you again?"  Was it, "I forgive you, but I'm going to remind you of it every five minutes?" What does Jesus' grace look like?  What does his compassion look like?  I think I know what it would look and feel like, and I hope I can emulate that, but I know I often don't.  Let me not speak with such authority that I sound like I'm not still a sinner. 

I ain't no better than anyone else.  

2011 Music So Far

I don't blog or tweet every album I buy, but music feels good so far this year.  What I'm listening to right now:


Brandon Heath - Leaving Eden (The Light In Me, It's Alright, It's No Good to Be Alone)

Kristian Stanfill - Mountains Move (Lord Almighty, Day After Day, Say, Say...ok, the whole thing).

And this album is from last summer, but it has the perfect song for our Sabbath series:

Audrey Assad - The House You're Building (Restless, Run Forward)

Restless

You dwell in the songs that we are singing
Rising to the Heavens, rising to Your heart, Your heart
Our praises filling up the spaces
In between and frailty and everything You are
You are the keeper of my heart

And I'm restless, I'm restless
'Til I rest in You, 'til I rest in You
I'm restless, I'm restless
'Til I rest in You, 'til I rest in You
Oh God, I wanna rest in You

Oh, speak now for my soul is listening
Say that You have saved me, whisper in the dark
'Cause I know You're more than my salvation
Without You I am hopeless, tell me who You are
You are the keeper of my heart
You are the keeper of my heart

Still my heart hold me close
Let me hear a still small voice
Let it grow, let it rise
Into a shout, into a cry

On Trust

I was thinking today about wise words from my friend Kim.  She is a kind lady, full of grace and southern hospitality. She and I were talking before Christmas about a difficult time I was having trusting someone. I had a million reasons to never trust or believe anything this person would ever say, and Kim's advice: what if you decided to trust until your trust is broken again? Otherwise you will never break out of this cycle.

It seems so simple, and yet it shook me. I knew instantly she was right and it was a way to break out of the anger and resentment I was feeling for ever having my trust broken in the first place. I know other people who operate this way, and give the benefit of the doubt easier than I do. I'm not saying this will work for every situation of broken trust, and it does put a person at risk, but it worked in this situation and I broke out of the bondage I was feeling.

Daily Bible Reading

Which is worse?  Knowing I need to do my Bible reading for the day and just not doing it?  Or forgetting to read completely?  I forgot.  I knew it would happen eventually.  Wednesday is a long day (in a good way) but that is no excuse.  I usually do my reading for the day when I get in bed at night.  Last night I was doing some reading and writing, but turned the light out and went to sleep.  I didn't have another thought about my quiet time until this morning.  Poo.  Not only is my goal to read through the Bible in a year, I wanted to read it every day.  

Holy Spirit

I am so excited about our new series. It's on the Holy Spirit. To a friend I once exclaimed, "I love the Holy Spirit!" and it made him laugh.  But it's true.  That we have this near side of God that is literally inside of us and all around us is amazing and exciting to me. This image of the Holy Spirit being the "near side of God" comes from Calvin Miller in Loving God Up Close.  The HS makes God personal to me.  He is literally right here; my friend, my comfort, my conviction, my counselor.  

I like what Francis Chan said about understanding the HS. "The point is not to completely understand God but to worship him.  Let the very fact that you cannot know him fully lead you to praise him for his infiniteness and grandeur."  Whew.  This Holy Spirit thing can be confusing.  I love knowing I don't have to get it all.  I'm not supposed to!  There is so much of God that is mysterious and wonderful to me.  

Sunday Pastor Brent preached about the wind of the HS. The wind is the soul of nature.  I don't know that I will ever see leaves blowing or have the wind blow against me or see trees swaying and not think of the HS. Something we can't touch but we know it's there.  I love that!

Sometimes the spirit comes as a rushing wind. Sometimes a breeze. Sometimes a whisper. In the words of Pastor Brent, we should welcome the spirit on any way it wants to come. 

Its also fun and challenging to find the right songs for each week. Yesterday, we redid a Mercy Me song from 1998. Jimmy practically rewrote all the music for it because it was pretty cheesy. It turned out really well. We are having to go old school with a lot of the music to find Holy Spirit songs that the congregation will know, but there are also several new songs I have come across that will work well as specials. Excited.

I Wouldn't Call it a Bust

The first sabbath didn't last a full 24 hours, but I feel really good about the day.  I slept until 10:30, then spent the better part of the  morning and afternoon alternately snoozing and reading.  Some people are against tv on Sabbath, but I watched a lot of Expedition Wild too.  

We added a song to the worship set late in the week, and I forgot to load up the chart and mp3 so I had to run up to the church and do that.  Someone else needed something as well, which ended in me cleaning out a popcorn machine.  But I realized the spirit in which these things were done felt joyful.  That is so much better than feeling like it's "my" day and being resentful about how I spent the time God gave me.  

I think Sabbath days will be different (very) when Gavin is here.  It will be a huge blessing for us.  He loves quality time.  

Not sure how today could have gone any better.  I could bring home my laptop in the future.  Then what took 15 minutes would have only taken 1. I can think about it more in advance, plan for it.  Baby steps.

Sabbath

We met with Emily Prevost in staff meeting this week to talk about our up-coming series on Sabbath. She has a Ph.D. and I have no idea how old she is but I loved her and thought she was so cute and felt like her mom.

As she unpacked this idea (commandment) of observing the Sabbath, I began to feel a little overwhelmed. Sabbath for me should be Monday, since that is my day off.  But I realized right away that I will have six hours of school on Monday's beginning in a week. That doesn't feel very Sabbaticalish.  I'm giving 9pm Friday through 9pm Saturday a trial run.

She had lots of ideas and guidelines and suggestions for how to observe this day without it being legalistic.  I am going to try and get into the routine of it before we roll out the series.  It's going to be hard.  Sometime tomorrow I'm going to want to go get a diet coke from Sonic.  And you know what that means. Exchanging money. Which is a no-no.  The hard part is going to be making the guidelines and the conviction I will feel if I break them.

I don't have my notes with me right now, but the thing I came away with was: Sabbath doesn't just happen. We have to plan it.  I'm looking forward to figuring this out.

I like the idea of starting Sabbath with a feast (tonight I started it with a large Diet Coke).  And finding a special way to end it.  And love the idea of sharing this with Gavin.  There will be more on this.

First Day of the New Year

Was the first day of the new year supposed to be 1/11/11?  It felt like to me the year finally got started today.  I got back to work, and we started making plans for a great new series on the Holy Spirit.  I'm so excited about it!  The music is challenging, and we are stretching our minds with creative ideas...I'm thankful to be a part of such a wonderful team.

We welcomed a new staff member today, Wes Hill.  That was odd, and who knew it would be such an emotional moment in church Sunday when the church voted him in and he accepted?  We had looked for over a year to find him, and now his welcome has come and gone.  He's official, I set his email up today!

Nikki came back to work, newly married, so that is different too.  She's very happy, and all smiles.

New marriages, new staff, new series, new music.  New beginnings.  A God who makes all things new.

Snow Day 2011

Staff had lunch at the Pastor's house yesterday to welcome a new member to the team.  As I was driving out there, it was already snowing.  I don't have great tires, and we slid twice.  When I got there, I texted Amy to see if they would come get G and me (their house was close, roads not as dangerous).  So after lunch was over, she and KW picked us up.  We had a fun evening just being with them.  We really like packing up and staying with them whenever the opportunity comes along.  G & Jeb got along great, played in the snow, made videos and camped out in the den.  Good times.

I woke up grumpy today.  Short tempered.  Not sure why.  When I feel this way, my prayer is just this: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...over and over.

We are not equipped for snow in Texas.  Maybe that was why I was grumpy.  I thought it was beautiful and peaceful but messy and wet.  Our clothes aren't right for it.  Jeans get wet, and wearing wet jeans is a hell clip for me.  Our gloves aren't right for it either.  Most of them are knit.  G notices none of this, or if he does, he doesn't care.

After last February's record 11 inches of snow, I've had to tell him several times that we probably won't ever see snow like that again.  That it might not even snow at all this year.  So much for that.  Yesterday's snow was great.  Lots of it, and it lasted, and he's had two days of playing in it.  Today we put together a jigsaw puzzle, had a snowball fight and drank hot chocolate.  What started out as a grumpy day is ending very nicely.

When we were out playing this evening, it started snowing again.  Small flakes, as opposed to yesterday's giant ones...and it was so quite and peaceful.  When I think of the "Peace of Christmas" I always think of snow...when Jeff Berry was with us several weeks ago, he and Julie sang this song:

You could've come like a mighty storm

With all the strength of a hurricane

You could've come like a forest fire

With the power of heaven in Your flame

But You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below


You could've swept in like a tidal wave
Or in an ocean to ravish our hearts
You could've come through like a roaring flood
To wipe away the things we've scarred


Oh oh but You came like a winter snow
You were quiet You were soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below


Beautiful.  Maybe my favorite song of Christmas.  I'm singing it tonight.

iHomes and Reading

I got an iHome for Christmas.
For over a year now, I haven't had anything beside my bed to tell me the time. If I wanted to know what time it was I had to look at my phone. Needless to say, it wasn't often I looked at my phone in the middle of the night to check it.
But I really wanted an iHome, mainly to play music (loud), and planned on buying one after Christmas was over. Instead, a friend gave me one for Christmas. Nice gift, right? I have great friends.
Weird thing. It is driving me semi-crazy at night. I can't stop looking at it. I look at the time all night now. And I wake up A LOT. It has four brightness settings. "Not very bright," "bright," and "land your helicopter here." Then my favorite one: off. You can turn off the backlight completely. But then when it's off, I still know the clock is there, and I can't resist the urge to put it on "not very bright" so I can see the time. It's like that scene from Castaway where Tom Hanks keeps flicking his flash light off and on to look at his picture of Helen Hunt. Obsessive.
It is the same experience I have when I'm supposed to be reading a book and it sits on my nightstand mocking me. I hate being behind on reading, and when I'm trying to get through a book I carry it with me everywhere in hopes of grabbing a minute or two of solitude. I am currently reading three books: my Bible, Sun Stand Still & Loving God Up Close. I am on day six of my read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan. I'm doing great so far and six days may not sound like much, but it's good for me. I'm the worst about procrastinating, and I talk myself out of things, thinking I will do them later (or is that the definition of procrastinating?). I didn't want to write (or tweet) anything about resolutions, so I guess I made one goal this year. Only one. Read through my Bible. I'm pleasantly surprised that giving it the attention in deserves keeps my Bible from mocking me.
Our virtue for Kidstuf for the month is determination: seeing it's worth it to finish what you started. How apropos.