A Season for Few Writings

I hear it all the time - "We're so busy", "We're barely keeping up with our schedule", "We gotta take a break!", or something else very similar. A few years ago, I was pretty quick to play the arrogant judge when I heard a phrase like that, thinking that if things get that crazy for a family, they should do something to slow that train down. But, without noticing (ironically because my life is so busy), my life is suddenly pretty chaotic! Not that we're involved in anything bad for our family; it's all good stuff. School work (home education requires a lot of time and energy), full-time ministry, raising a six-month-old along with a busy toddler, and both of my oldest sons in AA baseball make a day incredibly full.

I have not been a prolific blogger by any means, but I feel like I need to give some kind of explanation why I am writing less frequently lately. The time that I would use for quiet, personal reflection seems pretty scarce these days. Yes, I'm still reading God's Word and praying, and even having weekly times of worship with my family. However, I rarely have an opportunity to write down my thoughts in a post anymore. Actually, I sometimes have a hard time putting together a coherent thought! So, out of necessity, I may not be blogging all that much for a period of time. It is my prayer that God will provide for me a time and place for consistent meditation, but until I find that place, I may be scarce!

10 Things I've Been Reminded of While My Wife is Away...

1. She is an amazing teacher.
2. I don't sleep well without her.
3. She does amazing things with my daughter's hair.
4. She is amazingly organized, especially when it comes to planning meals.
5. She does a lot of laundry.
6. She makes our house a place of solace.
7. Our family is utterly incomplete without my wife and youngest son.
8. She cares for her family, oh so deeply.
9. She needs a reprieve more often than she gets.
10. She is beautiful and always smells good.

Famine

Last weekend, our youth group participated in a "30-Hour Famine". It was a weekend where our idols were challenged, and eventually kicked over. What's more important - going to a new movie for $9 or feeding nine children for an entire day? A new pair of basketball shoes, or feeding 40 children for 3 months? The comparisons go on and on. One by one, our idols were exposed for what they were, and our lives were slowly realigned with what was important.

Please read my wife's reflections on this. I am constantly in awe of her ability to share what is important in a beautiful, personal, and poetic way.

The Death of My Firstborn...

For years, I have wondered when this day would come. My oldest son thought the same. Yesterday, on March 5th, my firstborn was put to death, raised to new life in Jesus (Romans 6). It was an overwhelmingly joyful occasion for my family, but also for the large crowd of fellow-disciples that came to witness this burial. Enjoy pictures from the day!

"Time would fail me were I to try to lay before you in order all the passages in the Holy Scriptures which relate to the efficacy of baptism or to explain the mysterious doctrine of that second birth which though it is our second, is yet our first in Christ."

Jerome, To Oceanus, 69:7 (A.D. 397)

A Great Quote on Reading...

“The venerable dead are waiting in my library to entertain me and relieve me from the nonsense of surviving mortals.”

Noted evangelist and preacher, Samuel Davies

They Are Nailed to the Cross...

My stomach was sick as I worked. My hands smelled like dirty metal, and I had a few slivers under my fingernails. Some nails were barely pushed into the surface of the wood; others deeply pierced the cross, thrusting the paper down with no hope of escape. Slowly, I labored to remove the small pieces of parchment pierced by nails from the seven-foot free-standing cross in our sanctuary. I tried to avoid it, but hastily-scrawled words in blue and black kept grabbing my attention: "Apathy", "Lust", "Lying" to name a few. By the time I finished, a large pile of paper and a plastic tub of nails were at my feet. Each piece of paper represented a person and their struggle with sin.

Was it the smell of the wood or metal that made me sick? Did my head ache because my eyes were weary of this accutely focused task? No - I felt sick and dizzy because I was more than a little bothered by this pile of paper which represented the sin of my local congregation.

A couple of Sundays ago, we were reminded that we have a problem. Romans 3:11-18 says:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

These were Paul's words to the Saints in Rome written shortly before 60 A.D., but this letter also stands as an indictment against humanity in 2009. There is nothing good, faithful, or just about us humans. Even though we pay our taxes on time, make sure to vote, give an occasional plate of cookies to our neighbors, and show up at church consistently, we are not good people. Scripture plainly tells us that humans tend toward sin not every once in a while, but constantly.

With this in mind, we approached a 7-foot-tall rugged cross during our assembly. In our hands were bits of paper holding words representing our ugliest sins. We were given a nail and then a hammer, and then those sins were literally nailed to that cross.

As a Christian, I talk about the cross a lot. I mention it in my prayers, I teach about it in classes and Bible studies, and I think about it when I take the Lord's Supper. But often, it becomes something that is simply head knowledge, and it rarely touches my heart. This exercise of nailing sins to the cross made the absurdity of salvation through Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection real for me once again.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

What a paradox! Me, the sinful person that I am, made righteous! Jesus, the righteous person that He is, made sinful! Why? "For our sake..." Simply because God is merciful. Not because I had earned this, but because of God's passion for redeeming and renewing His creation.

Carrie E. Breck understood this well when she penned the words to the old hymn, "Nailed to the Cross" in 1899.

There was One who was willing to die in my stead, that a soul so unworthy might live; And the path to the cross He was willing to tread, all the sins of my life to forgive. They are nailed to the cross! They are nailed to the cross! O how much He was willing to bear! With what anguish and loss, Jesus went to the cross! But He carried my sins with Him there.

And now, because my sins are defeated in the cross, I can live a life of freedom and gratitude for what God has done for me. Thank you for making the ugliness of sin and the beauty of the cross known to me once again.

The Internet or a Book?

"I've got some bad news", the voice said on my cell phone. I'm not going to be coming to your church anymore. "Why is that?" I attempted to say without relaying any frustration. "Because I was reading on the internet about what the Church of Christ believes, and I don't agree." I was bewildered. "Why would you look on the internet when you are a member of a Church of Christ with over 300 other members you could talk to about this?" He replied, "Well, it says it on the internet, so it's true."

Does the internet really have that kind of power?

Another conversation that took place a while back also comes to mind. I happened to come across a collection of encyclopedias that no one seemed to want and I was ecstatic. I started talking about the fact that I would love to have these for my children to use, and a friend of mine said, "Haven't you introduced your kids to Google?", as if it were the perfect culmination of research utilities.

My friend was right, though. What do I use most to answer my questions? Where do I go to find historical details about the Roman Empire? How do I find out where the nearest post office is? How do I figure out how to get from point A to point B? I simply double-click on the blue lower-case "e", and the world is at my fingertips.

Thinking about all of this, I asked my wife what we did before we had the internet. What did we do when we needed to find the answer to a question? Well, we usually had two choices: (1) Look it up in a book or (2) Call a friend that might know the answer. Both of these avenues bring knowledge in a different way than the internet does. I can recall doing a paper on what has been called "the children's crusade", which took place c. 1212. At the time that I did the research, the internet was not the way to do the work, so I spent time looking through card catalogues and through a stack of books in Stitt Library in Austin. As I hunted for the books, I can remember a slight musty smell in an area of the library that didn't see as much use. I can recall the cold, hard feel of the floor as I sat down with a few promising books to do some perusing. I remember the sound of my echoing footsteps as I walked up the stairs to the third floor where I knew that I could read virtually undisturbed. Why are all of these things so prominent in my mind? Because all of my senses were involved in that kind of research process. When I think about a more recent paper I wrote, I can't recall much of my research at all. It must be because I used the internet for much of my research.

Okay, so what's the big deal? There are two things that I see happening through all of this: (1) The overuse of the internet has placed all knowledge on equal footing. In other words, what I see on the internet, placed there by some person I don't know, is just as good as information I received from a trusted friend or loved one. In fact, the information I get from my computer is probably going to be my preference since I can get it right here and now, and I won't have to wait for my friend or loved one to return my voice mail or text message. Thus, relationships are deemed less important for information that might not even be true. (2) Doing all of my reading on the internet literally re-works the way my brain functions. An article by Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in the July/August 2008 "The Atlantic", gives a lot of attention to this. As technology advances, everything gets remade in the image of the newest, most successful forms. As the popularity of MTV grew, with its fast-paced, exciting programming, television programs had to follow suit, or they were considered too boring to watch. And as people have become accustomed to surfing the internet, catching bits of information with the click of a button, what appeal does reading through an ancient, musty tome of ink-on-paper have? The end result is that internet surfers will increasingly have a difficult time maneuvering through long prose or complicated arguements. Fewer and fewer people are reading, and those that still do are reading less well.

This post is not meant to be exhaustive on this subject. A lot of people way smarter than me have written about this at length. Check out these articles by Ken Myers (Mars Hill Audio Journal) as well: "Aliteracy and the Church", and "That's Why They Call Them Browsers".