-- Post From My iPhone

I Have Relocated

Sorry, you can now find me here!

Come check me out and leave a comment! Hope to see ya!

DOWN SIZING!

After being at desk for almost 2 years, I decided to get rid of it! I wanted something small, and something that wouldn't collect clutter. Well after asking around, I decided to join my friend Joe Johns, in purchasing an Air Desk. I am really enjoying and it really opened up my office space!

HELL IN THE HALLWAYS

A few years ago, I heard Joseph Garlington say, "when God closes one door He opens another, but it's hell in the hallways!". The hallway is the in the in between state, the halfway point in our journey! This describes my experience of Great Lent this year. I recognize that in Christ I am complete, but I still must allow Christ to be "complete" in me. St. Paul wrote to the community of the faithful in Galatia, “I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you”(Galatians 4:19 NKJV). This is in fact the original call of humanity, to be the Image and Likeness of God. All of us despite where we are in life, are made in the Image of God. However, through sin, pain, hurt and other things we have become unlike God. Lent is a "season" of community repentance, it is an awakening. As we move towards Pascha (Easter Sunday), Lent represents a hallway of sorts, an in between place. It helps us to recognize that I am not, in order that we may become. It is the Journey of the Prodigal Son from a far country back to his father's house. At the Prodigals lowest point of being inhumane, he contemplates on eating pig slop, but at that point he has an awakening, he comes to himself! In a moment of self-reflection he realizes it just makes plain sense to go home. This lent I have had many painful awakenings about where I am in life, and by God's grace I'm on my way home!

"See, I Am Making All Things New."

Happy New Year! We made it to 2009, and every New Year we are overwhelmed with the optimistic promises and vows made by us all. " I am going to exercise this year", " This year I promise to eat healthier!" "This year I will kiss my debt goodbye!". Of course all these promises are made with the best of intentions, and many do follow through on their commitments. However, what's really new about this year? With the boom in technology and the increase of information, human beings are pretty much the same. We still have wars, crime, divorce, the killing of babies, and we all battle with the deadly disease of selfishness. Of course goodness is seeping through the cracks of our broken world all the time. I have chosen to place my hope in Jesus the "Christ", the Savior of the Cosmos! In the midst of a broken world and fast cracking world, His words ring vibrantly in my soul " See, I am making all things new." (Rev. 21:5).

It is this hope of a real living God-Man who came into time as a part of His creation to transform time as well as to renew His creation! Just as it was revealed in the story of The Creation in Genesis, He is once again at work in the midst of chaos. Just as in the story of the Exodus he is once again at work to liberate all of creation from bondage. He experienced our brokenness and our fallenness so that he might mend us as well as lift us up! It is my hope that this New Year will be filled with renewal for the People of God that we might work with our God to Make All Things New. Happy New Year!

Taking Advantage of Advent

Rhythm, music would be meaningless without it, rhyming would be off and time would cease to tick. Our world is full of Rhythm...evening and morning, winter, spring, summer and autumn. We even have our own rhythmic rituals. As I have been challenged to grow and be intentional regarding my own spiritual formation, I have come to discover one of the many jewels in the treasury of the Church, the christian calendar. In my own protestant tradition we saw the christian calendar as another meaningless ritual and a bunch of fraudulent holidays. However, as I have sought to live my life rooted in God's narrative, I have come to recognize the genius in the rhythm of the christian calendar. It not only proclaims the gospel story, but it calls out to us to learn, remember, celebrate, and live within it.

Currently we are in the season of Advent, which means arrival or coming. It is when the people of God look back with expectancy to the day when the eternal Son entered into the temporal world, and it also when we look forward with anticipation to His coming again to restore justice, to make everything right!

So far my wife and I have been diving fully into the season as well as retelling and reliving the story with our younglings ( and we got four of em!). It has been quite the journey, we gravitate between the poles of "c'mon guys don't you get it" and "wow I think they actually got it". Sounds like a familiar story huh. Anyways I hope you find your hearts brimming with Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love as you to relive and retell His Story.....our story.

Completed "The Jesus Creed"

"The Jesus Creed" by Dr. Scot McKnight proved to be a great read all the way through! It was one of those interactive reads where you are forced to pause, reflect, examine, repent, and then act. In Chapter 21, "Surrendering In Jesus", Dr. McKnight wrote, "Surrendering ourselves to love God is not giving up things for God so much as giving ourselves to God." In another post I previously stated that I was using "The Jesus Creed" as sort of a road map on my Lenten my Lenten journey. The aforementioned quote proved to be a rest stop, a place to camp out a bit and repent. During lent we think of things to give up, which is not a bad practice, but the call is to give up ourselves. It was a good reminder of God's claim upon my life, the whole of my life. The whole of my life includes my time, resources, decisions, family, rights, and I'm sure you get the point. It is the call to a very old word known as devotion, it is the consecration of ones' self to God. After all That is the Jesus Creed, To love God with our entire self, and to love others as our self! Check it out for yourself!