Rainy days and rich coffee make my heart sing

I realized something while watching people in the mall today. Everybody is a freak. Some of us try to fit in while others don’t. Makes me feel better about myself.

I sat writing and drinking glorious coffee at Bay City Coffee and Tea for hours. Then I went to Sweet Boutique.

Here is my evaluation of the House Blend at Sweet Boutique in Bay City. It has a light texture, with a sharp, lively acidity. The bouquet is reminiscent of turpentine—a definite chemical taste, not the interesting and exciting chemical taste of a 9-volt battery, but the sickening something-is-wrong chemical taste of turpentine. Over all a good cup of Joe.

I adore my wife. She is the heart of my heart. I long for her, I strain to show her my love and feel hers returned to me in our embrace. Too often my love for her is so great she thinks I hug her too tight.

I can imagine loosing her to another man. I would be devastated. My life would feel over, betrayed and taken from me. Perhaps it is insecurity that makes me even able to imagine that tragedy.

It is easy to see why I grow uncomfortable watching plots unfold on the silver screen in which the heroes are caught up in extramarital affairs. Often that feeling is so intense that I am agitated, tense and furious. Previews for the show “Desperate Housewives” have that effect on me. I can’t believe real women are like that.

Yet that is how Israel acted toward God. What did he do to drive them away? He lavished love on them in miraculous, powerful way – a super tight embrace. I am amazed at God’s desire for intimacy. His desire for relationship pervades his judgments.

Is the honeymoon over?

After three years of marriage there is no question that the honeymoon is over. Our honeymoon was a week of adventure and leisure. Now it is only a pleasant memory. We are left to fend with life, a life of frustrating repetition, lack of adventure and sometimes the odd indication of lack of meaning. Still we have each other and love each other desperately every chance we remember it.

I fear from time to time that my honeymoon with my congregation may be over. I am nearing my first anniversary in my first pastorate. After our first vacation, I am sure that honeymoon isn't the right term for our relationship. I sense that my posture has shifted to defense and I need to learn how to adapt. There is life after the honeymoon, but it is fraught with danger.

Israel didn't make right choices after it's honeymoon with Yahweh. Their honeymoon was marked with a wilderness misadventure and the death of a generation, but still those were the good times. God was doing amazing things in their midst. He showed his power to them daily, there was no mistaking he is God. Yet they were quick to abandon him, and by the time of Jeremiah, they weren't just unfaithful, they became prostitutes and forgot their husband at home.

"They didn't ask, 'Where is the Lord.'" They didn't even look for him. They stopped recounting the stories from the honeymoon and replaced their Glory with worthlessness, a phantom, a vapor.

Honeymoon or no, I love you my Dear One. Remind me of your presence, I forget reality sometimes. Remind me, remind me.

Past haunting

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in 1943 after 40 days in prison, wrote,

I am now trying my hand at a little study on "The Feeling of Time," and experience that is presumably quite familiar to anyone undergoing pre-trial custody. One of my predecessors in the cell scribbled over the door, "In a hundred years it will all be over." That was his attempt to cope with this experience of empty time. I don't think I could fully agree, but there's a lot one could say on that subject....

As he continued to think on the mater, he wondered why say 'in a hundred years it would be all over' instead of 'until recently everything was great.'

There is, in the immutability of the past, something that offers little hope. I feel it some nights as I try to sleep. All the stupidities of yesterday, embarrassments long gone, flood back on the pallet of my dreams. Even past success is mute in those times. The past has nothing to offer.

Lord, I thank you for your hand that shaped me with those stupid, embarrassing times. I thank you that you have made me free from them. I thank you for the great times in the past as well, but they are not now. Now I look to your continued help, your love to comfort me, your stars and galaxies to enthrall me.

Jeremiah

The love of God's broken heart in this book overwhelms me. I find I cannot read it through in one sitting, I fall into tears. I turned to listening to it at chapter 11, but Alexander Scourby takes it more forcefully and wrathfully than I. At any rate it is easy to be overwhelmed by KJV English.

Consuming Fire

Our God is a consuming fire. Fire is beautiful and intriguing. I love to sit in front of a campfire and watch it flicker and lick as it simultaneously creates and destroys. Even candles steal away my attention as they turn wax into liquid and gas.

Flames can be experienced as both good and bad at the same time. I would venture that we always experience flame as good and bad. To be Christian is to live aflame.

Jesus said, "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!"

The flame burns in our hearts. It is the Holy Spirit blazing in our eyes and giving unction to our spirits. The flame is God himself consuming us, destroying our sinful selves and creating our righteous perfected souls.

The flame is also around us burning with wrath. We experience it in division and difficulty caused by the clash of our old life, passing away, turning to ash, with the life burning with passion and Presence. It is the flame of persecution experienced by 53 million martyrs. It is the flame of division driving families apart.

It is the flame of life burning on for all eternity in the heart of man. The flame of family inaugurated in the lives of those with like precious faith, Savior and Father.

Burn on!

The Undying Fire

Have Mercy on Me!

Jesus often was met with cries of "Son of David Have mercy on me!"

Do I realize how incredible it is that it is the very divinity in Christ, which makes him transcendent and worthy of awe, worship and retreating reverence, that also includes the insatiable drive for mercy?

Jesus had compassion on the leper. He could have just spoken and dismissed the leper as healed, but this time he had compassion. Pity overflowed from his bowls. And he touched the mess of a man.

Oh, Lord, have mercy on me! Thank you for your divine nature of mercy. That you want to be tender, have compassion, love and have a relationship with -- even me.

Never let me take your mercy for granted, but let me always see it through the eyes of your transcendence.

The mystery inside every man

There is within us a great mystery. A mystery so vast as to rival the universe. What is inside of us, what is this stuff we call soul, being, person, will? We can indeed rule it ourselves, with hold it from God's governance, though not his glory. We can exercize our will against his Will and do so all the time.
This kingdom that we control, when apart from him is insignificant. Atomic compared with his infinitude. Yet that will contains and controls a desire in us so great that the universe itself could fit within it--our desire to know God. In our miniscule atomic being, there is a vacuum only the Infinite God himself can fill.
Imagine our atomic selves being home to the infinite. He dwells in us, makes his home in us. His fullness inside us. How can our inner mystery contain, grapple or appreciate the Infinate and Trancendant?!

There is something manic in making people laugh

Tonight was our first performance of "The Good Doctor." Nervous as I was, I was caught up in an ecstasy when the lights came down and my character Kistunov finally goes mad, the audience continued laughing and cheering as I walked off stage. The feeling wasn't because I had done a great job, or that "they like me, they really like me," but simply that we had connected the audience and I. I was able to tickle them, coaxing joy from the inmost places. It is an intimate thing, and a great drug to me.

Lord, there is in this desire to laugh at ourselves a glue that binds us on an intimate level. I thank you for building that into us.

I want to live in rapture with you. Come laugh over me. Love me and tickle me. I need your joy as well as your depths.

Still thinking about that stewardship stuff:

Where your treasure is there your heart will be also...

Is my heart in heaven? My treasures aren't always, what about that swanky 40's smoking jacket on ebay, or that new PDA I want? How much do I long for heaven to come to earth?

"Even so come quickly Lord Jesus."

Stewardship includes our response to natural as well as personal resources.

Stewardship and the End?

I can't get my head around Luke 12.32-48. Luke places this discussion of freedom from material attachment right before Jesus' saying "(40)You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him."

What should our response to money and possessions be in light of his immanent return? Jesus tells us to free ourselves from worry, to sell our possessions giving to the poor.

Eschatology can do funny things to our stewardship. A healthy expectation for the return of Christ can inspire us to give it all away and join a commune, or ignore our stewardship of the earth, piling up a mountain of Styrofoam or going into extreme debt with no intention to pay it off. Christ will be back before it means anything.

Is there more to this juxtaposition of stewardship and expectation than not being attached to our possessions? How important is our detachment? What does this say about our practical giving within the community of faith?

These questions all strain for the light of day as I try to find the truth in this passage. Though this truth is as plain as I can see: I worry.

My own struggle to make ends meet, to provide for my precious wife and daughter and face the prospect of a baby son, often knocks me to worry--worry to the point of depression.

Lord, I know you are coming back soon, I trust you and you have always... always shown yourself faithful to me. Thank you for your tender desire to give me your kingdom! I truly feel like a helpless lamb in your flock. I cannot be the provider, I can only trust the good shepherd to feed me and mine. Thank you precious Father.