Must be Christmas....

There are cookies and "haystacks" and bags of sugary popcorn and tubs of chex mix and my hand is constantly reaching for something then going straight to my mouth. Christmas must be close by.
My house looks like a jungle of bright red, pink, white and green....a poinsetta wilderness; Christmas has got to be near.
The space in our closet is filled with wrapping paper and very poorly hidden gifts and I can't walk through our bedroom without stumbling over something shiny. Yep, it is almost here.
There is a cabbage in the frig and chicken wings waiting for sauce and a fifty five gallon drum of sour cream in the drive way...Christmas eve is two days away.....
There are more cars in the driveway and packages on the porch.....
There are last minute desperate dashs to the store.....
All Christmas music radio is beginning to sound a lot like.....well.....
It is almost here! That silent, holy night when everything is ready, it is too late for one more thing to get done, and we finally rest and smile at Jesus.

My wish for all of you is this: Wonderful times with your familes, safe travel if you are on the roads, special moments alone with God, a gift you give that is loved by the receiver, a gift you receive that is very special and through it all the ability to love, forgive and be blessed. Merry Christmas!

Snow is nice for Christmas but....

I like snow for Christmas, but I have to admit that I also really like 60 degree weather this time of year. The last few days I have been able to run without putting on all the extra weather gear and it just feels better. Usually I run around our neighborhood but since the weather has been so nice I have run on a paved trail that was once a couple of railroad lines that the city converted into a walking/running/biking trail that will take you just about every direction you would want to go. Some places it follows a little creek, in other places it weaves through town and heading north from downtown it ends up out in the prairie in the middle of cornfields. I run acoustically, "unplugged". I do not want to carry a little box of music with me. Part of the joy for me is to hear nature while I see it....the wind blowing as the sun sets, a hawk screeching, doves calling, a dog barking somewhere.
It always seems like I can run easier when I am not dodging cars and avoiding people on the sidewalk and turning it into a "work-out". When I can just get lost in my surroundings my feet seem to barely hit the pavement and before I know it the miles slide by. It really is a joy. So today I am thankful for nice trails and nice days in December and good shoes.

Are You Ready for Christmas?

Christmas is almost here and the question is usually "Are you ready for Christmas?" In other words, have we got our shopping done, presents wrapped, tree up, food cooked, cards sent, plans made and parties scheduled? All really wonderful things that make this time special.

I love Christmas.I love presents, both getting and giving them. I love lights on houses, especially against the snow. It makes me feel like a kid. I love eating Christmas stuff. I love being around family and having days off. I like getting up early and making coffee on Christmas morning. I like the glimmer of hope Christmas and a new year brings.

Are you ready for Christmas? Looking at Jesus and his birth and what that means to me I would have to say yes....yes I am. His birth means forgiveness. It means reconciliation. It is a gift of life and Spirit and hope and belief and the value of every human birth. Jesus was born for one great purpose: To bring us to God and God to us.

I am so pitiful in my sin and weakness that it takes a child to save me. Before he could die as a man on a wooden cross for my sin he had to be born in a wooden manger. The innocent child looking up at the face of his Mother is the innocent man who would look down from the cross into those same eyes thirty three years later.

If Christmas means forgiveness and salvation I am ready for it. I am ready in March, in July in September....

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which is my sin though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run,
And do them still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin by which I won
Others to sin? and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by thyself that at my death thy sun
Shall shine as it shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, thou hast done.
I have no more.

A Hymn to God the Father- John Donne.

Gray or Grey?

I want to go running but I am waiting for the sun to return from wherever it went sometime last month, or was it September? The forecast said partly cloudy today which is supposed to mean also partly sunny, but so far.... Anyway, running in this grayness isn't very inspiring, which makes it harder to motivate myself to put on the shoes and go.

Did you know "gray" is also spelled "grey," if you are British?

I am not British, so I will spell it gray. There are other words that I could use to describe this muck but I am tired of hearing myself whine about it...so I will try a little poetry...

Today is gray
like yesterday
and the day
(dare I say)
before that day
not a ray
came out to play
and so I pray
Grey, gray
please go away
and stay out of my hair, too.

I need to work on the ending.

Class Reunion

It was like being in a time machine. This past weekend I went to my thirty year high school class reunion. About 15 of my classmates showed up, which was just about half of my class. We were the class of 1976, a bunch of farm kids that knew very little about life beyond the Ozark hills. Most of the kids I graduated with I also started first grade with. After being with them for twelve years little did I know that moving the tassle truly would mean moving on. Except for my best friend that I went to college with, I never saw any of them again until last Saturday night. Five of us went to college, a few of us moved away and the rest stayed closed to home. Most quit raising hell and started raising kids.

It was very strange to talk about retirement with an old friend when the last conversation I had had with him was about what his plans were now that high school was finally over.

One friend had died of cancer. One had lost his wife in an accident at home. Two had fried their brains on drugs. The wildest and most rebellious girl in class now worked for the Secret Service. The class nerd had his own computer company (duh!) and the one who loved his pickup now loved his big rig. My best friend is a Psycholigist (I would like to take credit for getting him started) and I still haven't quite figured out what I am. No, I know what I am I am just not sure about what I do most days.

I wasn't prepared for my fourth grade girlfriend to show me pictures of her grandkids.

We ended up at Applebees, watching the Cards win game one and telling old stories of what excellent, peaceable students we had all been. We asked about the ones who didn't come and why they probably didn't. I was reminded of how poor most of us were, some of the kids in my class actually lived in homes with dirt floors and it was great to hear that they had managed to do well despite the odds. And it was also good to be together and not care at all about the former distinctions that in high school seemed so important. Time washes us like a stream, cleansing us while muddying us at the same time.

I drove home around midnight on an old familiar road. It was rainy and my headlights caused the fall foilage to gleam red and yellow like a blur of neon. A nice buck crossed the road ahead, clearing the fence with that wonderful, effortless grace that always amazes me. I put in the Eagles and cranked up "Take it Easy" and then "Take it to the Limit". I realized that somewhere between the two we, the class of '76, had found our way.

Heavenlies....

We are blessed in Christ in the "Heavenlies". We are seated with Christ in the Heavenlies....Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil in the "heavenlies". (Your translation might say heavenly realms or places). Paul ends Ephesians the way he starts...in these heavenlies. The place of our struggle is the place of our blessings and safety.

I feel so earthbound. Gravity pulls me down and keeps my face in the dirt. In Ephesians Paul keeps trying to tell me who I am in Christ and where I am in Christ but I most often choose to live like a hunchback with my nose two inches off the ground.

One day Ephesians 4:4-7 will be what I fully believe and the lies will no longer worm their way through my thinking. That is my hope...."His great love with which he loved us."

Can it really be true?

Disconnected Ramblings on Stuff

The Cardinals are in and they have won the first game against the Padres. So, I think they will win because a Cardinal always beats a Padre.

Leaves are changing and the weather here has multiple personalities. I went running this afternoon and it was almost 90 degrees. By the time I finished it was only 60 degrees. That really doesn't tell you anything except that I am possibly a very slow runner or a very fast runner that headed straight north.

I like to hunt deer and turkey. I have hunted since I was old enough to follow my Dad around in the woods and scare everything away by fidgeting unceasingly. I used to bow hunt but haven't regained enough flexibility or strength in my shoulder since surgery to start again. There is one of the biggest bucks I have ever seen less than a half a mile from my house. I see him all the time when I take my Son to soccer practice or go to Wal-Mart. He lives in town and likes to lay in the grass strip between the bean fields and hedgerows and watch the cars go by. It is ironic really that I have walked hundreds of miles through brush and woods and froze my whitetail off on many a frosty morning sitting in a tree stand and now this monster buck lives in my neighborhood. I wonder if he works at State Farm?

I am studying Ephesians. It is incredible. I don't understand the first chapter. What I do get out of it is sometimes hard to believe or grasp. It doesn't help that the first chapter is basically one long rambling sentence. Paul literally got carried away, but the concepts are incredible. I have never been good at "planning" good gifts....but every gift we get from God is meticulously planned out from before the foundation of the world. What kind of love goes into that kind of detail? SIT DOWN AND READ THE WHOLE LETTER IN ONE SETTING SOME TIME. I want you to be encouraged by it, as I have been this week. Underline every time you see the phrase "heavenly places". Tell me what you think about that and what it means for us in the here and now.

I just realized that Project Runway is on. Think I will pick up that hunting bow after all.

Out at Home

I am trying to tell myself it doesn’t matter. After leading the National League Central Division for most of the season the Cardinals have lost six in a row and are losing in the bottom of the ninth tonight against San Diego. They began the last week of the season up by 6 games and in Cubesque (?) fashion are about to lose 7 in a row while the Astros, a tiny dot in the rear view mirror just days ago have won the last 7 games and have pulled almost even with us.

I think they need my help. I am going to call Pujols or Edmonds or Rolen or anyone who will pick up the phone and offer them some advice and encouragement. Maybe tell them that I am praying for them and stuff. I might send them the Purpose Driven Line Drive or Wild Pitch at Heart or some other motivational book to remind them that we were all created to play baseball and we only find our true selves when we finally slide safely into home. Sure, there are some out there that claim football is the true religion but the faithful know better. After all, football is violent and dangerous and baseball is unfathomable and mysterious…just ask the Cubs. Besides, Genesis 1:1 starts with God creating the world in “the big inning” and the rest is all statistics. So, what is needed here is for the Cardinals to simply return to the “old base paths” and get rid of those free agents of change and start playing Brock and Gibson and Musial again and maybe even find Ozzie out there. That’s when Cardinal baseball was winning the nation.

Well, they lost again, why isn’t Larussa answering his cell phone?

Talking with a Grape Man.

The view was pretty good really. I was sitting on the deck of a client’s house overlooking what is known here as the Mackinaw river valley. We were talking business but I was distracted, not just by the miles and miles of corn and bean fields that lay before me but by the pungent, sweet smell of freshly pressed grape juice that filled the vat directly below me. I was at a vineyard and winery and at that moment financial planning felt trivial compared to looking at rows of grapevines with all their eternal implications. I just kept seeing Jesus walking among those vines with a glass of wine in his hand, laughing and saying: “Come down here and let me teach you some things about vines and grapes that will make your head spin more than anything they got bottled in there!”

Eventually, we got past the work part and I began asking our gracious host some questions about growing grapes. Here is some of what I learned….

The juice from every variety of grape is always clear. It gets color from how long the juice is in contact with the skins of the grape while fermenting. Wine that has a blush color like a Rose’ means that the juice had contact with the skins for a short time. The dark red wines means the skins of the grapes were with the juice for a long time.

Grapes are still picked by hand, cut off the vine using scissors or a knife and it takes a lot of work to get a vat full. Cutting your fingers is expected.

Birds like grapes too, especially the smaller varieties-of grapes not birds. Some vines are covered to be protected against the birds.

If you would like to have a vineyard in the future you should plant it now.

Grapes do better under stress, like drought.

Wine isn’t instant.

Vines must be pruned after every season. Radically pruned. Cut back to where they look like dead sticks, with just a little bit remaining. Grapes only come from new growth. In other words, you can have a beautiful looking vineyard, with rows of thick vines and leaves and not have fruit, because grapes only come from fresh, new growth!

A few acres of grapes can make a lot of wine.

Wine tasting can be very fun.

You have to love grapes and vines a lot to do the amount of work it takes to have a vineyard.

If you need to see a real miracle to help your faith right now, go look at a cluster of grapes, preferably at a vineyard and not a supermarket.

Jesus can teach more about real security holding a vine in his hand than all the financial planners in the world put together.

If you are reading this, I am glad and I hope it has made you want to read John 15.

My Brother.

Summer has shrunk down to a few days left before its unofficial close, Labor Day. I have been trying to figure out how to do my job so my thoughts have been very much off blogging. If I had the time or motivation I would have dedicated a few lines to my tomatoes. We put in a few plants and cared for them and have been blessed abundantly by the results. How does black dirt, green plants, blue skies and clear water result in a bright red object that God in his mysterious wisdom would foreknow and elect to be the perfect compliment to toast, lettuce, mayo and slices of salty bacon that thank goodness the Apostles under inspiration would declare no longer to be considered unclean? And, yes I have been exposed to way to much Calvinism lately.
I do want to write a little bit about my brother, since he turned fifty last week on August 23. Some of you who know me might be shocked to even know I have a brother, since I rarely mention him or even think of him. He lives in California. Some who have seen him say he looks like me, which always disturbs me since he is completely, severely, mentally and physically retarded. He has never known us, spoken one intellegible word to us, or communicated to anyone in any way. He is mostly blind, has cerebal palsy, has twisted and useless limbs and spends his days either in bed or a wheelchair. He is totally dependent on medical care and technology. If the people didn't show up for work one day in the home where he lives he would not survive. He was not expected to live to be a teenager and now he has gray whiskers.

I saw him two years ago. I went with my sister who lives out there and goes to see him about once a month and always cries. She is my oldest sister and remembers him being born and coming home and the quietness and sadness. She remembers my Mom trying to care for him but he began to cry and never stopped. My folks tried for two years to manage but his needs grew as he did. Then, he left and I came along, an ill-advised replacement and answer to prayer.

I spent some time with him. I really looked at him and touched him, because for the first time in my life I wasn't afraid of him. I looked at where his skull had been crushed by the Doctor who had lingered over a few too many martini's before he responded to the call that one of his patients was in labor. He didn't know Danny's umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck either I guess. That might explain why he wouldn't come out.

I wheeled his chair out to the aviary so he could listen to the birds and feel the southern California sun on his face. Initially disturbed, his frantic arms settled over his face and he ground his teeth and maybe smiled. He did seem to grow calm and actually enjoy the sounds. My sister said he likes it there so she brings him out there and talks to him. I wonder about their conversations, what she has said to him over the years. She has been a wonderful big sister.

I talked to him too. I think he is alot like Jesus. He is sinless, but he bears all the evidence of sin. He is innocent, but he suffers because sin entered the world and somwhere down the line bit him too. He is completely dependent....like Jesus was on the Father. He loves simple things, like birds and sunshine and the soothing tones of his family. He does not deserve to live his days like he does, but he never complains. And he is like "one from whom men hide their face." And like Jesus, he will have a glorified body that will run for the first time in fields of heavenly splendor.

I do look like him, much of the time. My twisted, gnarled uncontrollable manners are well hidden though. What if God really doesn't distinquish between the outside and the inside? What if how we really look to him is how the inside really looks? Most of the time Danny would look alot better than me. What the ravages of sin have laid on him in a visible way are merely hidden in me by deceptive techniques well honed by practice along the way.

So I want to be more like him, my big brother. The one I thought I never had, at least in some meaningful way. I am not sure why he is here. I don't understand tomatoes. I don't understand vegetables, human or otherwise. I don't really understand Calvinism. I can explain it but still don't get it. But I know God is soveriegn, eternal and full of grace and love. My brother Danny told me.

A River Runs Through Me....

Most of my family left for the Ozarks today, leaving me and my Son, Carden at home feeling sorry for ourselves because we have to work. They are going down to meet relatives and float the Niangua River. I miss being with them, but I am glad they are getting to go.

I miss the river. I miss it's smell, it's colors, it's movement, it's peace. I want to lay on my back in a canoe and watch the tops of sycamore trees glide by as I drift downstream. I want the cold, spring water to steal my breath. I want to jump off a bluff. I want to play tag with a craw-daddy. I want to look at herons and hawks. I want a snake to jump start my heart. I want to find the perfect flat rock and make it tap dance across the water. I want to be born again. I miss the river.

Someone wise said: You never step in the same river twice. That is true. That can be good or bad I guess, depending on where you are in life. Life, like a river, keeps on going. It is easier to go with the current than constantly fight it, that is for sure. Maybe that is why God made rivers, to teach us something about Himself and what it means to live in the flow of His Spirit.

So, I am missing the river tonight, but in my heart I am in it, drifting along with the current, following the warm light of the moon reflecting off the dark water. I wonder if it is missing me?

Things I Still See When I Close My Eyes

Things I still see when I close my eyes:

Cascading streams of reds and purples falling to dark green fields and
skinny legs running from flashing strobes and
a wagon full of alfalfa rolling to the barn and
sweat dripping on my shoes and
stupid grins and open hymnals and
tears dripping on I Corinthians 13 and
a wiser young preacher trembling out the words and
baptized ribs smoking over charcoal and
dirty plates stained with blackberry juice and
faces fresh and smooth and
faces wearing days and
eyes full of good byes and
a road that leads to home and
another holy day gone through us.

Empathy, For a Moment

Last night, watching Edmonds overrunning third base and getting tagged out, seeing a routine fly ball missed in the outfield, watching an outfielder throw the ball to the wrong base, seeing a lead dwindle away and saying to myself, "Here we go again," I suddenly realized, so this is what it feels like to be a Cubs fan!

Finally, I understood.

I am glad it didn't last.

What do you think?

"Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." -Isaiah 55:7

Where do thoughts come from? I am always amazed by the way the brain works (or sometimes doesn't work). How does something suddenly pop in our head-a memory of something, an idea, or a sudden decision or insight? Where does that impulse come from? Is it just an electrical surge from the chemicals of our brain? A thought...something we ponder, a flash of a past event, a grief, a happiness, a hope, a funny stream of words in our brain that makes our body reacte in laughter.....? How does that happen? And are all our thoughts, the thousands that come in our brain every day, all ours? Do thoughts come from somewhere outside ourselves?
I do know that our thoughts can lead us astray, but how? I do know we can think right things or wrong things. And I know we can choose to some degree what we think about, otherwise we could never "repent," literally "change our mind." Isaiah goes on to say, speaking for the Lord: "My thoughts are not your thoughts...." that his thoughts are much, much higher than ours, higher than the heavens above the earth.
Yet Paul says we can have the mind of Christ...we can think like Jesus!
I am not sure about how all this happens, someone probably has thought it through and has a good theory....but how?
I am glad though, that my thoughts do not have to control me, that I can forsake them and think like Jesus.....some of the time. I can also think like the devil if I want to...or maybe they are his thoughts he is bombarding me with.
Sharing our thoughts can be good or bad also. Sometimes it is uplifting and encouraging and helpful and other times it can be just passing on the bad thoughts and infecting someone else.
What do you think?

Rider on the Storm

I was on the south end of town when the storm hit yesterday afternoon. It was small as far as storms go, I could see it's edges on both the north and south. But it packed a real punch of wind and hail and rain for a short time. I am always drawn out to storms instead of wanting to run from them. They just seem alive and awesome and full of sound and color and power. I can see why the prophets described God as riding on the storm. What kind of clouds do you think Jesus will return on? I see him surfing in on a wall cloud.....

Bel and Nebo

Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low;
their idols are borne by beasts of burden.
The images that are carried about are burdensome,
a burden for the weary.
They stoop and bow down together;
unable to rescue the burden,
they themselves go off into captivity.

Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since you were conceived,
and have carried since your birth.
Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

Isaiah 46:1-4

I should have asked more questions and been more honest in my religion. I didn't comprehend that true faith is the gift of God, conceived and delivered by him. How much time was spent carrying around the burden of my own fashioned gods. I worked hard to make him presentable and shiny, attractive to the masses so that I would be successful in ministry. And I remember the weariness of all that, trying to keep myself and others happy and interested, trying to create an experience of God that would bring them all back.
The real test is this: Am I being carried by God, or is he being carried by me?

"Come to me, all you who labor and are weary......"

shouts and whispers

"But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.

Isaiah 1:5-6.

Questions

"....And here is the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is hell."
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.

Getting Started! (Well almost).

I have finished my training for my new job as a financial Rep. I feel like I have been drinking from a fire hose for the past three weeks. There is so much to learn. Honestly, even though I had alot of business classes in college, I found most of it to be confusing and boring. This time though I am pretty fascinated by it all, and really wish I had paid more attention earlier.

This job will challenge me to be all the things that I am not normally good at it. I have to be very disciplined (yea I know, some of you are laughing already), organized and tuned in to the real world instead of LaLa land. I am thankful that not only do my mentor's know my weaknesses in these areas but they are committed to challenging me and providing solutions. There are so many things I have to change but I am committed to the process.

One thing I heard over the training period that really impacted me was when one of the instructors said: "You have to create an environment that won't allow you to fail." I have thought alot about that statement in view of my personal history and realize more than ever how essential that is. In the business world it involves creating excellent habits, surrounding yourself with people who are positive and challenging, not trying to do it alone but seeking advice when you need it, giving yourself totally to your work when you are there then closing the book on the day and giving yourself to your family and friends. Does any of this sound applicable to any other areas of our lives? I have prayed that God would help me to change my life and now I find myself in a situation where I must change to succeed and provide for my family. I failed God, my family and many good, loving people. I wasn't destined for failure, but I created the environment in which it could happen. With the help of God, family and friends I will be about the business of building life back on a rock foundation.

So why am I home blogging instead of working? I got sick last night and feel "mostly dead" all over today. Hopefully, whatever this is will soon run it's course and I can start Monday. I saw this phrase yesterday not knowing it would be useful today since all my plans were shot: "Turn Frustration into Fascination." So today, I will try to do what I can to learn something from this and take a step forward.

Moms and Stuff.

I am in my favorite local coffee shop this morning. It is Sunday, Mother's day. Colleen has gone with friends to St. Louis to enjoy a play, Brandon and Micah are both back from college, Carden had Prom last night and Shane was in Chicago for soccer yesterday. I am sure they are still sound asleep and it is nice to have them all back under one roof. Brandon will leave this week for an intership in Quincy, Illinois and Micah will be here this summer working for a veterinarian. I still can't believe I have two in college, much less one beginning his senior year. God blessed me with wonderful kids and I will never take that for granted again.
I have been training for a new job the past two weeks. Training has taken me out of town and I will be gone again for another week. It is a career change that I am very thankful to have the opportunity to do, and I feel great about the company. I believe what they stand for is excellent and how they do business is exceptional. I am surrounded by some wonderful people and I am being challenged on every level. I believe this career will help me become a better person and will be one in which I can still be involved in helping people. Some of you out there who will be reading this blog have already helped and encouraged me, and I am deeply grateful and thankful for your friendship.

There are times I feel very sad that this is a career change. It means the end of ministry as a vocation for me. It is ironic in a way, now that I feel so passionate about Jesus and his gospel on such a personal, heart level I feel more compelled to talk about him than ever before. I think I finally know him in a way that I never have before and I just feel so comfortable telling people about his grace. And I know that this is the way it is to be. I am thankful, after the last year to have a job and a family, that healing continues, that God still performs miracles and that his love reaches so far and deep and wide and that he will take care of all things in his way. Now I want to learn how to be a tentmaker and bless other people in the course of making a living. Most of you are way ahead of me here, so any advice is welcome.

Today is Mother's day. My Mom prayed that I would be a preacher, (is still praying for that!). I am thankful for her and her influence in my life, for the faith she shares with my Father. I still love walking out on their front porch and seeing them sitting there with their old King James Bibles open reading their daily Bible readings. We differ on a lot of issues but I honor their love for God and his Word. The first Scripture I memorized as a young boy was taught me by Mom, 2 Timothy 2:15, and it still comes to memory in the KJV.

My children have been blessed also with a wonderful Mother. Colleen has held our family together through all the storms and is still the one who always completely listens to everything that is going on in their lives. She is why we are a family today and has always sacrificed for her children. She has also taught them about following Jesus in real ways and real life instead of some of the mumbo-jumbo theoretical ways of her husband. They are good kids because of their Mom, and I love and appreciate her more than ever for that.

So to all you Moms out there who weary yourselves for the sake of your kids...who are way underpaid for doing the most important work on earth....who through your own pain deliver precious life to this world...Thank you.