it's been a while...

Today I finished an application for a 9 month program in Africa through an organization called Adventures in Missions (AIM). For four years it seems like Africa has been in the back of my mind - a destination with unknown departure dates, no specific country, just an idea and a call.

It has gotten old telling people about these ideas without any clear plan of making them happen, even now it's strange to tell people my plans for next year without being sure of anything. I guess now is the time to put some meat on those bones?

http://www.adventures.org/a/trips/level3/1880.htm

are we really that different?

Are we really that different? Are we really the body of Christ? Or are we still of the world, conditioned to speak in Christian jargon, trained to pretend and cover. Are we just talented pretenders, or is the presence of - the life of - Christ bursting within us? I for one cannot tell the difference between a Christian Superbowl party and a frat party - outside of the list of things that we avoid, and that does nothing for me. Sometimes I can't even tell the difference between a campus ministry meeting and a frat meeting, any other meeting really. It is terrible. It leaves me restless. There are people hurting. There are people on the verge of "I just need God" and we are so smug in our "fellowship."

All of this talk could go on for hours - but what do we do? How do we start moving in a way that The only hope I can find is in the one-on-one. Honesty lives there. That is where I see the body taking on its identity. But surely we cannot settle for the hand having an occasional moment of honesty with the eye - while any time the rest of the body comes together there is shallow chaos.

In that chaos:
-we begin to appreciate eachother for the wrong reasons
-we get comfortable with cheap, casual comfort completely outside of the gospel
-we forget our aim and purpose
-we forget who we are instead

But surely god takes pleasure in His children coming together! Surely he does - but while we settle for cheap fellowship and cheap grace - what of the Father's work are we neglecting. If I am comfortable with those things. If life seems so easy and comfortable - I must not be dying to myself - and if I have stopped dying to mysefl I must have stopped following Christ some time before.

Jesus' first and last words to Peter: "Follow me." The first time Jesus was calling Peter from his nets to follow him - the second was when the Risen Christ found him "back again at his old trade." We end up at our old trades again - with that lie stuck in our heads - "Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolatoins of forgiveness. " Ah, that lie is the most crippling one we own - because it neuters the gospel. It lets bastards remain bastards only to feel better. It waters down the gospel that brings the fatherless to the Father and makes broken people to look more like the father - it washes sinners until they are the very presence of God on Earth. We cannot permit that lie to take root in our life or even whisper in our ear.

We must know the gospel. We must need the gospel. We must live, breathe, and become the gospel. Demonstrating it for others - but never losing sight of our own need for it. The gospel and grace of God costs us our life - and must continue to cost the same price day by day. We cannot take up grace without discipleship and I fear that is what I/we have done.

From Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship:
"The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a SUnday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. Grace as the data for our calculatoins means cheap grace, but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace. It is terrifying to realize what use can be made of a genuine evangelical doctrine. In both cases we have the identical formula - 'justification by faith alone.' Yet the misuse of the formula leads to the complete destruction of its very essence."


"The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, that the call is inseparble from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves."

God do not let us cling to cheap grace and leave the following of Christ to legalists, etc. And for the sake of grace do not let us justify the world and condemn those who honestly seek you. May we remember and turn to the narrow way. We are far from you and "hardened in our disobedience from our prostituting grace.

God give me the right head, and grace, the costly kind, with the sharp edge and the redeeming live, to deal with all of this. I will follow. Teach me how.

On My Knees

Yesterday suicide bombs went off in Amman, Jordan. Three hotels. Over 50 people dead at this point. Al-Quaida is claiming responsibility. I don't know what to think of the world anymore. I love Jordan. I love Jordanian people. I would give my life for a kid that lives in that city. A kid who lives up a street that feeds out in front of the Radisson hotel. The one they keep showing on the news.

Jordan is a peaceful place. Jordan is a beautiful place. The people of Jordan are unbelievable. This isn't just another bombing in the Middle East. None of them are. There's people, and lives, and loves. I don't want my friend growing up afraid of the world. He was one of the few people I've ever met to really believe in trust and love. He made me believe in it. As broken as the world is, fear is a liar. And if that liar gets his hands on my friend, I would very much like to tell him the truth again.

It really gets to me - all this footage of Amman on the news, all these thoughts of my friend. It really makes me sad. I'm sick of all of this war. I'm sick of people justifying it. Muslims, Christians, Americans. Patriotism makes my stomach turn, all this freedom talk just doesn't seem to hold water. Neither does this Al-Quaida business:

"Let all know that we have struck only after becoming confident that they are centers for launching war on Islam and support the crusaders' presence in Iraq and the Arab peninsula and the presence of the Jews on the land of Palestine."

Everyone thinks they're right. Everyone's an expert. Thickskulled creatures we are. God, soften our skulls and our ego with grace. Let us look to you and see you bringing redemption. God we need redemption.

Fall on Your Knees

"To adore is to recognize the whole of the object and the nothingness of the adorer. Adoration is nonentity swooning away and gladly expiring in the presence of infinity." PERE SERTILLANGES

Tonight a few things floor me. For one, the quote above. At first it seemed clever and right, but as an hour wore on it became true and alive. I really have nothing to say about it. Just let it take root in your mind for a while and eventually it'll show up in your heart and blow your mind.

I stumbled across the quote as I was thumbing through my bookshelf, just looking for something to carry with me while I ran a few miles tonight. That one stuck a little but I kept looking, and in the end it was another thought that blew my mind and made that quote come alive. I was drawn to Hebrews, and then came Hebrews 1...

"Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs."

I took a Sharpie and scribbled "radiance of the glory of God" "heir of all things" "through whom also he created the world" on one side of my right hand, "exact imprint of his nature" "upholds the universe by the word of his power" on the other, and I started running. It didn't take long just trying to wrap my head around Christ being the "radiance of the glory of God" before adoration kicked in and I was gladly expiring in the presence of infinity.

In the end, I guess to glorify God means for whatever we're doing to resemble the person of Christ, who is the radiance of God's glory. And the person of Christ is not found only at the cross, the whole world was created through him, he entered the world to die and provide a means for redemption and salvation, and sits beside the father now waiting for all things to be gathered up in him, shining (through him) with the radiance of God's glory, and presented to God.

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. - Romans 11:36

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. - Ephesians 1:11

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. - Colossians 1:17

When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. - 1 Corinthians 15:28

There is so much shit hitting the fan all around. There is so much tragedy around us. There is so much brokenness inside of us. It is good to know that he is "upholding the universe by the word of his power." That truth is something to hang on to.

Kaddish

There is a Jewish prayer, the Mourner's Prayer, said for eleven months after a loved one dies and on the anniversary of that death every year. This prayer is woven through Elie Wiesel's novel "Night." The book is a sort of memoir in which Wiesel recounts his days as a fifteen year old boy in a concentration camp. So we watch this young Jewish boy wrestling with questions of God, and we find this mourner's prayer, The Kaddish, recited over and over as death is taking hold of thousands of people every day in terrible ways.

So I got curious. I wanted to dig into this prayer because the bits and pieces that I read did not seem to fit into a picture of mourning, and that excited me. So here's an English translation of this prayer, meant for the most devastating moments of life, reserved for the times when those closest to us (parents, brothers, sisters, lifelong friends) meet up with death:

Glorified and sanctified be God's great name
throughout the world which He has created
according to His will.
May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,
and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon;
and say, Amen.

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.

Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted,
extolled and honored, adored and lauded
be the name of the Holy One,
blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns,
praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world;
and say, Amen.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us
and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

He who creates peace in His celestial heights,
may He create peace for us and for all Israel;
and say, Amen.

In these times where peace gets shaken and things are taken away, this prayer seeks the Kingdom of God and seeks peace from the only place peace can be guaranteed. There is this refocusing that takes place as the prayer goes on, training to soul to look up, and to remind us that there is something bigger.

There are rigid, orthodox rituals that surround the prayer nowadays, but I want to believe there was a time when it was simply said in response to death. Loved one dies...on your knees... O my God is great! Praise His name!

My God, there is beauty in that.

That's huge.

May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, in you and in the broken places where find yourself everyday.