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Saturday Song- What Did He Die For- Twila Paris

2009-07-04T13:01:00Z

I missed sharing this on Memorial Day. Today, for Independence Day, we still remember we are free because of sacrifice.

What Did He Die For- Twila Paris

He Was 21 in 1944,
He Was Hope, and He Was Courage On a Lonely Shore.
Sent There By a Mother, With Love Beyond Her Tears,
Just a Young American Who Chose to Rise Above His Fears,
And As I Watch Him Struggle Up That Hill,
Without a Thought of Turning Back.
I Cannot Help But Wonder,
What Did He Die For, When He Died For You and Me,
Made the Sacrifice So That We Could All Be Free.
I Believe That We Will the Answer Each to Heaven,
For the Way We Spend a Priceless Liberty.
Look Inside and Ask the Question,
What Did He Die For, When He Died For Me.

To the Darkest Day in A.d 33,
Came the Mercy and Compassion of Eternity,
Sent There By a Father With Love Beyond His Tears,
Blameless One the Only Son to Bear the Guilt of All These Years,
And As I Watch Him Struggle Up That Hill,
Without a Thought of Turning Back,
I Can Not Help But Wonder,
What Did He Die For, When He Died For You and Me,
Made the Sacrifice So That We Could All Be Free.
I Believe That We Will the Answer Each to Heaven,
For the Way We Spend a Priceless Liberty.
Look Inside and Ask the Question,
What Did He Die For, When He Died For Me.

He Died For Freedom,
He Died For Love,
Of All the Things We do to Pay Him Back
Could Never Be Enough.
I Can Not Help But Wonder,
What Did He Die For, When He Died For You and Me,
Made the Sacrifice So That We Could All Be Free.
I Believe That We Will the Answer Each to Heaven,
For the Way We Spend a Priceless Liberty.
Look Inside and Ask the Question,
What Did He Die For, When He Died For Me.

Check out the video here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iO1LSwfbAc

Freedom

2009-07-04T10:49:00Z

Don't have any firecrackers today, no sparklers, no bottle rockets. I could have. Last night, in the rain, I passed on by the state line shack where I've bought them in the past (they're legal in South Dakota). Maybe I'm just getting old.

But the truth is, what I'm doing right now is a far better way to celebrate "the Fourth." That I can sit down here in the semi-darkness this morning, punch keys, create sentences, and send them forth hither and yon is a striking act of independence. It can't be done these days as easily in Iran, or in China or certainly that most bizarre of places, North Korea. But here, in my basement, I can say just about anything I want, including blashphemy, vulgarity, and outright, deliberate, character-maiming falsehood.

That I can do what I'm doing is a blessing attributable, of course, to Jefferson and Franklin and the 54 other signers of the Declaration of Independence, who did so today, many years ago (you do the math). The fact is, this piece of technology in front of me has made us all more independent, more free, less restrained by corporate or media will. Today, we choose almost everything we do. And that's an absolutely beautiful thing. [Note to self: a little John Phillip Sousa would do well right here.]

I'm an avid listener of American Public Radio's Speaking of Faith, which is itself a terrific, free course in ethics, morality, faith, and world religion. Yesterday, via podcast, I heard an wonderful interview Krista Tippett did with Xavier Le Pichon, a French geo-physicist, who happens to be among those rarest of birds, a devout Christian and a world-class scientist, a man who lives in an intentionally-Christian community that puts those members of the community with mental and emotional illnesses at the heart of all their lives.

Le Pichon claims that God creates us with the potential to evolve. He is himself an evolutionist--and a devout Catholic; his argument is that we can and do learn to be better human beings by taking care of those who are not as blessed. Somewhere late in the interview he said something to this effect--what all of us require as human beings in this evolution is "an education of the heart."

An education of the heart. What a great thought. It begins at a place most Christians understand, the biblical thou-shalt of loving God with heart, soul, and mind--and the gent or lady next door just as much as we do ourselves. Le Pichon says it's actually an ethic hard-wired into us because only humans don't leave their weak somewhere behind them to die. Animals do. We don't--many of us anyway. But even though our care for the less fortunate is remarkably unusual in the animal world, it's still an attribute we've got to practice to learn, to get right.

There's some shady paradox beneath all of us this, of course, as there is beneath most truth. Today is a day to celebrate our independence, which I'm doing right now, as these odd little squiggles march up and out of nowhere across my computer screen, but it may well be that our greatest joy in life itself arises from exercising that independence by being dependent on others.

Or something like that.

Listen yourself to Le Pichon. Interesting ideas for Independence Day. [Okay, turn up "Stars and Stripes Forever."]

___________________________________

You can hear the Speaking of Faith interview at http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/fragility/

Do We still have Courtesy towards Women?

2009-07-04T08:49:06Z

Though I am going to write from an African’s perspective, yet I would like to start from the story of the very first woman, the mother of all. Eve was seen and accepted by Adam as “the bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. This gave ascent to God’s purpose of creating woman [...]

Bittersweet Refinements: XXXII-XXXIII

2009-07-04T07:25:00Z

Bittersweet Refinements is another book that I have been given to publish. If it gets to sounding an awfully lot like a broken player stuck on repeating the same old wrong song over and over again that is because it is to a fairly great extent. For most of it contains rewritten parts of the Bitter/Sweets that were published here before. Hopefully, it will get to sounding a lot better to you very soon, and for the benefit of those who do not have access to multiple versions of our Heavenly Father's Holy Bible, numbered Scripture references in the text (for example, [1]) provide links to such through Bible Gateway this time around. The same also applies to verses included in the text.

XXXII
Political Correctness

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. [Romans 13:1-7 NIV]

Needless to say, many have employed that passage to justify their desire to rule and to reign as they wanted to in the past, and it is no different today—be assured. For even in the case of those who do not openly profess such, the thought of their authority being ordained by the Lord God Almighty is most pleasing.

No, I am not here to dispute that it is indeed true. In fact, I am here to take it step or two farther. For it is written: The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases. [Proverbs 21:1 NIV]

Nonetheless, there is another thing to consider. For our Heavenly Father will sometimes give us what we want, and that is not always a good thing in regards to what is generally considered as being good in the eyes of this world[1].

Take King Saul of ancient Israel for example. For he was chosen to rule over the land in answer to the prayers of the people[2], and his wickedness before our Heavenly Father is well documented[3].

Yes, the choice appears to be clear to many. For they want to support those who openly profess to serve the One who truly does rule and reign over our nation—even in this day and age of post-modern sophistication[4], but do they truly want to bear His fruit[5]?

Therefore, let us be mindful of this in the election of our governmental leaders. For it is not just over the realm of religion that false prophets seek to reign[6].

{1}Proverbs 14:12; {2}1 Samuel 8:1-22; {3}1 Samuel 9:1-15:35; {4}Job 12:13-25; {5}Galatians 5:22; {6}Matthew 7:15-27.

Chapter XXXIII
Heal The Land

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. [2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV]

No, none of this is meant to discourage participation in the political process. For that is all part of what it means to be a good citizen in a country with a government that is meant to be of the people, by the people, and for the people—a country that was indeed established by our Heavenly Father[1].

There is, however, a proper way of doing things that goes far beyond the apparent political process. For it is written: “Remember this, fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels. Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” [Isaiah 46:8-10 NIV]

Hence, the significance of 2 Chronicles 7:14. For in spite of what has been so widely taught, this world still belongs to our Heavenly Father[2], and only He can fix what has He has allowed to be broken[3].

Therefore, let us want to truly humble ourselves before Him[4]. For it is also written: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” [Jeremiah 29:11 NIV]

No, it cannot be denied that there is much about this country that is broken, but let us keep in mind that there is more at stake than just the here and now. For a law cannot change what is in a person’s heart—not even His Law[5], and it is the condition of a person’s heart that is what our Heavenly Father is concerned with[6].

Yes, it is true that laws are meant to define what is harmful[7], and it is in that regard that laws are most certainly good[8]. For how can someone with very poor judgment know that they are driving way too fast in a particular area unless there is a speed limit clearly posted (naturally-speaking, of course)?

The question is, however, is it the safely of all concerned that is what we are truly concerned with[9]? For in far too many cases, the laws that we want enacted and enforced are more about power and control over this one and that one for this reason or that reason than anything else[10].

{1}Romans 13:1; {2}Job 41:11; {3}Job 12:14; {4}Isaiah 45:5-12; {5}Romans 8:3; {6}Ezekiel 18:31-32; {7}Romans 5:13; {8}1 Timothy 1:8-10; {9}James 2:12-13; {10}Matthew 23:23-28.

Birthdays!

2009-07-04T01:40:00Z

As I worked on what would be my next post, for some reason, which I’m sure was the Lord, a detour sign raised up and lead my thoughts to birthdays. Not only is it our country’s birthday on July 4, but it is my birthday on July 5.

My birthday, I can forget. Our country’s birthday, I cannot forget.

I thought about… celebrating our country’s birth day. I know there will be numerous blog posts for this occasion, but, as I thought back over the years, great memories came flooding back.

I thought about… when my parents were alive. They belonged to several groups of friends, but one group in particular had been friends since before World War II began. Most of the men joined some branch of the services. My dad joined the Navy and that is where he met my mother. Dad played the trombone for the Navy band and Mom was a secretary.

This group of friends always gathered for special occasions and July 4th was no exception. After several years of it being held at different homes, it finally settled on my parents to hold the celebration at their home.

This was usually a huge gathering of families with some having four generations attend. My mother loved to go all out with the decorations for the tables. Red and white checked tablecloths, blue napkins, flags, flowers…everything red, white, and blue. One of the men, whose birthday was on the 4th, always shared a large cake with me. He’s no longer with us either.

I thought about… the year this country celebrated the great bicentennial and watching on the television the awesome festivities, which included an international fleet of tall ships in New York City’s harbor and the beautiful array of fireworks over the Statue of Liberty.

A wave of patriotism and nostalgia swept over the nation. People decorated practically everything from the front doors of their homes or businesses to their mailboxes and even fire hydrants.

Flags hung everywhere or were painted on. Trains were painted in stripes of red, white, and blue. NASA painted the flag and the bicentennial symbol on the side of its vehicle assembly building.

Commercial products by the score displayed packaging of red, white, and blue. Many paid a fee to use the trademarked bicentennial star. Some the TV coverage lasted for fourteen hours. Disney went all out, even changing the theme of their nighttime parade.

I remember all the celebration but I don’t remember the stories of the pilgrims, the ones who started it all. If there were stories, they didn’t stick in my memory.

So, I thought about… the reason that the pilgrims embarked on such a dangerous journey to leave their home to settle in some strange land.

The pilgrims were a religious group who left England as they had been persecuted by the Church of England. As they were about to set sail for Holland, John Robinson, as the pastor of their church who was staying behind, preached before they left on Ezra 8:21. Ezra 8:21-22 says, “When I declared a fast while we were at the Ahava River so that we would humble ourselves before our God; and we prayed that He would give us a good journey and protect us, our children, and our goods as we traveled.” (TLB)

As they also found their religious liberty curtailed in Holland, they decided to go back to England and set out for a New England. They left Plymouth, England, on September 6, 1620, sailing for a new world of promise.

Aboard ship, they found that the sailors resented their daily prayers, hymns, and scripture reading sessions, but, in the end, the sailors admitted that the pilgrims were strong and brave.

When they disembarked and stepped on shore at Plymouth Rock, they knelt in prayer and held a prayer service. Prayer was the basis for all they had done and all they would do.

I then thought about… those prayers of the pilgrims that undergirded the foundation of this nation and brought about the reason for celebrating Independence Day.

I thought about… those precious souls who put their lives on the line for this country that we might enjoy the freedoms and privileges that we do. God bless all of you!

I thought about… the great freedom of religion this country has enjoyed through the efforts and courage of those 102 people. However, are our rights and privileges as Christians in this nation being eroded? Have prayers for this country ceased?

I thought about… praying as the first settlers did. Do we bend our knees for our country? Do we pray for our President and all who are in authority? Do we pray as Paul instructed Timothy, “Pray much for others; plead for God’s mercy upon them; give thanks for all He is going to do for them. Pray in this way for kings and all others who are in authority over us, or are in places of high responsibility, so that we can live in peace and quietness, spending our time in godly living and thinking much about the Lord” (1 Tim 2:1-2 TLB)?

My last thought… I would like to challenge all of you to give some serious thought as to the prayers you are offering, or not offering, for this country and its leaders. Is there any room for improvement? What would happen if we all became better knee-benders for the country we say we love?

Happy Birthday, USA!

~~Happy Independence Day, everyone!~~

The Best Place: The One Where You Belong

2009-07-03T19:20:00Z

I drove down main street, past the hardware store, post office and city hall, then steered west into orange sky -- toward home. The girls were buckled in, nestled in -- looking through half-open eyes out gravel-dusted windows.

Our week has been packed with parties for a 125-year-old friend.

Born in 1884, the honored guest -- and host -- is our hometown. In return for her years of raising farmers and factory workers, schoolteachers and soldiers, we gave her a party this week. There's a fancy word for it: "quasquicentennial."

We've had a car show, a luau and a lawnmower parade through town. We've cruised her streets in old Mustangs and hayracks and shiny firetrucks. We've serenaded her with a cantata and sock-hop songs. We've scooped root-beer floats and eaten pork sandwiches, which were flipped on a streetside grill by men who grew up under her grooming.

We wore prairie dresses and big-brimmed bonnets, while men scratched at bushy beards that will be gone by Monday.

This is what Iowa folks do when their towns grow old.

After all these years, you'd think the Old Girl would be tuckered out. She's showing signs of age, but on this night, she would stay awake for more. She's in the spotlight, you know, and she's dressed in flags and red petunias.

My girls and I, though, packed up and headed home past chest-high corn and rows of soybeans.

"Mommy," came the voice. "Did you know that we live in the best town in the United States, maybe even the whole world?"

"Is that so?" I responded. "What makes ours the best?"

"I don't know. ... The pool?"

"Could be," I said, careful not to bruise her hometown pride by reminding her that our pool is in serious disrepair.

She considered more reasons. "Oh, and God is in our town," she said. Then again, she figured, God is probably in every town.

"Yes, Lydia," I offered. "He probably is."

A pause ...

I looked in the rearview mirror.

"I don't know why, Mom, but it is the best," she said.

"If you don't know why ours is the best town," I asked, "how can you say it is?"

"It says so on that big sign by the church," she said.

Sign or no sign, Lydia said, it was true. She also said she'd probably feel the same way if she lived in Orange City, or Des Moines or somewhere in California. The way Lydia sees things, the best place to be ... is where she is.

We all want to feel like we belong where our feet are planted. God made us that way. Each one of us came out of our mothers' wombs screaming for someone to love us, hold us and assure us that we were a part of something bigger than ourselves.

We all long to belong. And with belonging, comes contentment. Growing up, I always imagined I'd find both in the city.

Surely, it would be easy finding companionship among millions of beating hearts. But it's here -- in a town home to no more than 900 souls -- where I found a place to belong.

Call me a hick. Call me a northwest Iowa redneck. But I have found community here:

* At the curb, watching a Fourth of July parade roll by, with candy-throwing politicians, church floats on flatbeds and high school marching bands.

* In a town with no streetlights, one bar, no grocery store, and two places to fill up with gas.

* On the bleachers of our town's only park, cheering on 40-year-olds who haven't swung a baseball bat in years.

* And under a black curve of sky, decorated with sparkling diamonds, waiting for a Fourth of July show against Heaven's jeweled backdrop.

We'll oooh, and
we'll aaaah,
and we'll fold up our lawn chairs
and all go home talking about what a great week it was,
how we ought to do this more often
and how we surely live in the finest place on Earth.

As you celebrate freedom this weekend, may you find that the best place you could possibly be ...
is right where you are.

Undercover Christianity

2009-07-03T18:55:15Z

The Life on Purpose blog asks the question, “why don’t you talk about your faith at work?”

In my personal experience, as well as interviewing hundreds of people of faith, I have found several possible reasons:

• Other so-called Christians have ruined it for us with their poor workplace ethic or hollow “God-Talk”
• Our own faith is weak and we let expletives fly or we talk poorly about customers, coworkers or managers.
• We simply don’t have the knowledge to share with confidence.

Michele, the author of the post, talks about when she “came out” and told others about her faith at work. “Many of my coworkers were shocked I was a Christian,” she recalls.

And then she wonders about the reason for that shock. Was it her behavior or perhaps a misconception about the intelligence of people of faith. For modern workplace Christians, the vast majority continue to keep their faith undercover. How can we enpower ourselves and millions of others, to live out their faith at home, at church, and at the workplace?

Read the whole post here.

Alhambra Fortress Window photo by L.L. Barkat. Post written by David Rupert.

Virtual Sacraments? I Beg To Differ.

2009-07-03T18:05:10Z

Paul S. Fiddes, who I looked at with some skepticism based on what he wrote down below, is a very smart man, David Opderbeck assures me. I trust that opinion and must confess that even though a lot of us are wicked smart, we still often write things that just don't quite add up (I am sure you can find some thinking like that on this blog). One of the necessary elements of theological or any other thinking person's inquiry is that sometimes we have to push the bounds into things that will just never make sense, a brainstorm or thinking game to stretch our minds. That being said, I feel it is important to bounce off of Fiddes resent burst of provocativeness on the Eucharist:

Summary of "Sacraments in a Virtual World"---An avatar can receive the bread and wine of the Eucharist within the logic of the virtual world and it will still be a means of grace, since God is present in a virtual world in a way that is suitable for its inhabitants. We may expect that the grace received by the avatar will be shared in some way by the person behind the avatar, because the person in our everyday world has a complex relationship with his or her persona.

An avatar, for those who don't know, is the visual representation of one's self in a virtual world. Most often these are the pictures you have in Yahoo! chat or in a game like Second Life. First, Fiddes makes an overall excellent point about the boundlessness of God, and he really pushes us to see God present everywhere, even in the virtual extensions of computing, because all computers and the Internet has a physical base to its virtualness. There is light and pixels and servers running on electricity behind every virtual world.

What is lacking in this understanding of the Eucharist, and Fiddes hints at it himself when he writes that the Eucharist performed virtually is "an extension of the church sacraments," thus separating the virtual sacrament from the physical sacrament of the Eucharist. Physicality is the key here, for the bread and wine of the Eucharist are properly a symbol of the incarnation to all of us, as it is both spiritual and physical food. Part of the problem with an understanding of virtual worlds is that they are too often equated with the spiritual or supernatural world, because they are both unseen or "other-ly" worlds, but this is dead wrong. The spiritual world we live in is extra-dimensional, in the sense that it is real but beyond us in many ways, whereas the virtual worlds of computers are simulations: extensions of our own physical world and are never "other" by any ways or means other than what Tolkien called suspended disbelief. We enter into virtual worlds like we enter into novels or movies.

The spiritual world meets the physical world in the Eucharist, and as such the physicality of the sacrament is what makes it sacramental. Just as Christ was fully man and fully God, so to is our experience of the sacraments: it is both fully divine, a gift from God, and fully physical, prepared from dust to dung to fertilizer to seed to plant to crop to harvest and then to bottle, or then for bread from harvest to millstone to flour to dough to oven to loaf. Hands touch these things, the weather and the climate touch these things. Truckers and shippers and boxers touch all these things. The Eucharist is a feast of new creation, of our salvation, and this must be always held before us as an immensely physical happening. N.T. Wright can only sound the alarm so many times that heaven is not a disembodied place but instead a real, physical New Earth and New Heavens. Going down the road of Fiddes thinking separates physicality from the sacraments and begins to blur the lines between spirituality and virtuality.

Or:

When Jesus turned water into wine in Cana he physically changed it. It was not a gnostic charade. It was not the glimmer of pixels on a monitor showing a picture of a jug transforming from watery colors to wine colors. This was the real thing. The physical happening of miracle. We must not forget the physical nature of miracles. They don't happen here. They don't happen in some far of heaven. They happen when heaven, the kingdom of God, kisses our earth. And new creation begins.

RAP - Andrew Kippley is God’s poem

2009-07-03T14:13:46Z

Marcus here. I’ve been working behind the scenes lately, but I thought I’d come out in the public again for a Random Act of Poetry. I often feel the need to explain this series of posts that we do every Friday. After all, what does poetry have to do with daily work?

A conversation with Howard Butt reminded me again this week. We were talking before lunch about several projects in his foundations, and the topic turned to poetry. (He knows I like poetry a lot.) “Your work is God’s poetry,” he explained. He’s explained that idea before in essays that talk about God and work and Christian leadership, but the beautiful simplicity of it struck me again. Then we had a great discussion of Ephesians 2:8-10.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

See, the Greek word for workmanship is poiema. Our word “poetry” is a cognate of the word poiema. This doesn’t mean all Christians need to write poetry, but it does mean that our daily work is special. Whatever we do–whether writing poems, cooking food, farming, raising kids, managing employees, or preparing to die–we are God’s workmanship, his living poems.

For me, no person this week reflects such a vision better than Andrew Kippley. He’s not technically a member of HighCallingBlogs.com, but I found him through Jennifer of Getting Down with Jesus. In a special post that includes Jennifer’s ode to Andrew and one of Andrew’s poems, Jennifer writes:

Andrew Kippley is 15 and has cancer. He’s been told there’s no more treatment options left. He could look at life one of two ways: One breath closer to dying. Or having another breath in which to live.

Andrew chooses the latter.

…No treatment options are left. Drugs could slow the progression, but Andrew didn’t want to spend his days sick. He wants to live.

He’s the sort of kid who has this quote on his Caring Bridge page: “When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life you have a thousand reasons to smile.”

At the beginning of his chemo treatments, he walked down the hall singing, “Ain’t no mountain high enough” with his IV pole in hand.

He now has a day planner to keep track of the things he wants to do, people he wants to see.

And he wants people to know that if this earthly life is “but a breath,” we ought to start living like it. He wants us to see the world “through the eyes of a dying man.”

That’s it.

This week, Andrew Kippley is the poem. He is God’s workmanship.

I encourage you to read more about Andrew’s story.

Other poems around the network this week:

Carole’s poetry: the poor
(because Dan King the Bible Dude is now taking creative submissions)
Carl’s Torching all my Idols
Cindy’s Living Waters
Jennifer’s Ring of Hope
Jennifer’s ode to Andrew Kippley
Andrew Kippley’s Through Dying Eyes
A Simple Country Girl’s Wanting Out, To Run Free
Monica’s The New Me
Joye’s Star Outside My Window
Mom2Six’s Poetry
Marcus’ Garden in Drought
Yvette’s In Memory of Freedom
Joelle’s Mowing the Labyrinth
Laura’s Rain
Megan’s Stubborn Bluebonnet
Emily’s Walk in the Woods
Ann’s Old Love
Milton’s handmade life
Claire’s a pair of crutches
LL’s “Fourth of July,” “Storm During Fireworks,” and “After Fireworks”

For next week’s prompt, see the end of LL’s Fourth of July post.

Sites To See

2009-07-03T06:24:00Z

This is the new version of FIVE FOR FRIDAY. As with the former, it is the SOLE purpose of this weekly series to call attention to sites that I think many would find most interesting—in one way or another. Please, go see for yourself.

Link: [Day Break]

Link: [Arkansas Church]

Link: [Christy DeKoning]

Link: [Another Day of Grace]

Link: [Stuff and Nonsense]

Link: [Angels On Your Shoulder]

Link: [Witchetty Art]

Link: [Arash's World]

Link: [What I Think?]

Link: [Conservative Belle]

Link: [Uncommon Photographers]

Link: [Amazing & Unbelievable Pictures]

Link: [The Midnight Writers Secret Portal]

Link: [Your Dark Passenger]

Link: [Young Women Writers]

Link: [An Electricians Notes]

Link: [Babyboomer Flashback]

Link: [Words To The Wise]

Link: [Bible Money Matters]

Link: [365 Bulgarian Adventures]

Top Entrecard Droppers For June, 2009

2009-07-02T22:55:00Z

Again, I do not have much to say. However, I am still most thankful for all who have taken the time to make an [Entrecard] drop here, and the following is a list of the top droppers last month in alphabetical order.

Link: [Beethoven Midi]

Link: [Beyond Left Field]

Link: [Comatised]

Link: [Current Events and Bible Prophecy]

Link: [Denford Magora's Zimbabwe Blog]

Link: [Frugal Healthy Choices]

Link: [Funky Town Disco Music]

Link: [Go Las Vegas Baby!]

Link: [Grampy and You]

Link: [Hello Kitty Gifts]

Link: [I Love/Hate America]

Link: [Isker's Blog]

Link: [MamaFlo's Place]

Link: [Maria Michelle's Furkids and Animal Rescue]

Link: [Momspective Reviews]

Link: [My Reflections and Impressions]

Link: [Photography by KML]

Link: [Proud Mommy]

Link: [Random Ramblings]

Link: [Scripture of The Day]

Link: [Secondary Roads]

Link: [Sound of a Soft Breath]

Link: [Split Rock Ranch]

Link: [The Ad Master]

Link: [The Way I See It]

Still Alive...

2009-07-03T00:34:00Z

Just a note to let you know I'm still alive...just having a couple of months in which I have been having trouble writing. There have been several contributing factors...too little time, various little crisis that needed my full attention, various neurosis that sapped my attention (writer-phobia, I'll explain later) and then there's that thing that happens when I've waited too long to post and there is too much to say and I don't know where to start. Please forgive me! I'll be back, I really will. I just needed a little time to get things back in order and plan ahead so that it doesn't happen again.

I'm still here! I'll be back...

Covenant Stories: Upside Down and Backwards

2009-07-02T16:57:29Z

Story #17 in the Covenant series

I’d like to leave the narrative of Covenant Baptist Church for a moment and talk about something rather odd that I’ve noticed about our church. At Covenant, everything seems to be upside down and backwards. We’re not trying to be different. We’ve never called ourselves an “alternative church.” We do things that seem right to us, but they seem to be the opposite of what most churches do.

Now before I write this, I want to state very clearly and carefully that I am NOT suggesting that any other church ought to do things the way we do them. There is certainly no shortage of “how to do church” books out there, with Dr. This or Reverend That revealing the deep, spiritual truths he has discovered that will increase your fold, or foster real intimacy, or kick-start your small group ministry, or blah blah blah in a postmodern blah.

If I wrote a book it would be called, “How to take a church from 14 families to 40 families in only 10 years of bivocational ministry.” Just kidding, though that title would be accurate. My “how to” church book would be a single index card. Written on it in pencil would be this:

Read the Bible. Pray. Talk to your church friends in long conversations over meals and coffee for years and years. Learn to love each other so that whatever you do in church gets filtered through your concern for how it will affect others in the community. Then do church in the ways that seem right to you. Let no other concern EVER surpass your desire to be right about church.

Postscript to pastors - Be prepared to find a second job.

That would be my book. It’s free. And I think I’ll put a backwards copyright on it. If you like this short book, feel free to distribute it. If by some miracle someone pays you for it, keep the money. If you want to say that you wrote it and put it in a book of your own, go ahead. Copywrong Gordon Atkinson 2009

Well, I’m glad we got that out of the way. So, back to what I was saying. It seems that everything we do at our church is the opposite of what so many others are doing.

We do not know how many members we have. You’d think we would, given that there are only around 100 people who attend regularly. We have all the names written down, so we could count the members. And we would if the need ever arose. But the only reason I can think of to count members would be to have an answer when other ministers ask me how many members we have.

When we built our church, we put it back away from the road, hidden by the trees, because the highway is loud and ugly. And we thought quiet and pretty was better for worship. Everyone, including the City Building Inspector, said we were making a huge mistake. “You want to be on the road where people can see your church.” We thought about that, but we all agreed that we’d prefer quiet and beauty for worship. If there is a right and wrong to this, and we’re wrong, then I pray the Lord will forgive his silly servants.

Many churches are concerned about locking their doors and keeping their possessions safe. And many have valuable possessions, so I think they are right to do so. We, on the other hand, having nothing much of value inside the building, hand out keys to just about everyone. If someone wants to do a wedding at our church, I give them a key, tell them to come and go as they like, and ask them to clean up when they’re done. I usually get the keys back from them eventually. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never counted the keys. It does seem that we keep having to make new ones, now that I think about it. There might be 50 or 60 people out there with keys to our church.

We do not pay for marketing. We don’t have a yellow pages ad. We don’t have a sign down the road. We don’t hand out leaflets. I want to be honest about this: We tried those things early on. It felt bad doing them. And not much happened. So we put our energy elsewhere and trust people will find us naturally, and they do. They hear about us somehow, or they find us on our website, which was designed for free by a member. Sometimes people see our sign as they drive by. Ironically, we get some people who pull into the parking lot to see if there really IS a church back there somewhere.

This next one is a little embarrassing to me because other ministers sometimes ask if we have a ministry plan. Then I feel like a slacker when I tell them we don’t. I think we wrote a mission statement (or was it a vision statement?) back in the 90s. We found it to be a pretty useless document, and now it is long forgotten. I could probably dig up a copy in the archive box if anyone wants to see it.

We have a fireplace in our worship room. There is no stage or pulpit or fancy stuff up front. After 10 years of preaching on the floor, in front of the fireplace, not more than a yard or two from one of my friends, pulpits and stages scare me. I got asked to preach in big church recently. A REALLY big church. I had a hard time because the people were so far away from me. My way of preaching really only works if you are within arms length of someone you love.

And finally this. We have no long-range planning committee. We used to do that, but when everything started turning out the opposite of what we thought, that kind of faded away. We have no idea what the future holds. We don’t know what would happen if half the church left. We don’t know how we would handle a sudden influx of 50 people. We don’t know if we will exist in 20 years. We don’t know what God wants to do with us. We do have a calendar so we can see when the next youth campout is. Sometimes the calendar is up to date. Mostly it is. We really live week to week.

Everything is backwards and upside down. Everything seems to be the opposite at our church.

After reading this, I’m pretty sure some people are going to say, “Yes, and that’s exactly why you only have about 100 people at your church.”

And they’re right, you know. There’s no doubt about it. They are absolutely right.

Gordon Atkinson

Who is the Cleverest of Them All?

2009-07-02T16:57:20Z

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the cleverest of them all?”

Why, that would be Mr. McCullough over at kata ta biblia for his Biblical Studies Carnival 43, or the Apocalypse of Eve.

If you haven’t read it yet, give it a read. It will be well worth your time.

And for such a clever rendition of the sometimes dry, formulaic roundup, kata ta biblia is now the ol’ blogroll.

Posted in Bible, Blogging Tagged: Bible, Biblioblogs, Blog, Blogging

King Beaver

2009-07-02T10:36:00Z

Among the myriad facts I never knew is this: in 1624, the very first year the Dutch were in New York, New Amsterdam's first residents sent a couple thousand beaver and otter pelts back to Holland--because that's how big beaver hats were. It's another one of those astounding facts of history that a weird European fashion--hats made from beaver felts--was the most obvious cause of European settlement in the New World. Once upon time in most of these United States, beavers were royalty.

The very first paleface explorers to the whole region--the whole great "northwest" (which includes Iowa and Minnesota) --were the frontiersman who made their living by trapping beaver and trading with the Native people who did also. All for beavers. All for furs. All for fancy hats that were so much all the rage that Europe had depleted their own supply of the rotund furry rodent. Hence, on to the New World--all because of beavers.

We watched them last week--beavers, that is--in a couple of ponds along an old railway bed now paved as biking trails. We were lucky enough to see them, lucky enough to hear one of them blast the water with the massive, scaly tail each of them is blessed with. I couldn't have made more noise if I'd cannon-balled into that murky mess myself. None of them w0uld crawl out of the water, but one of them did some Olympic swimming dance routine for us before surface diving and simply disappearing, the routine over.

Beavers are monogamous, and couples have twins annually. They live in mud huts that dot the whole region, fabricated with branches and cattails and whatever else they can pile up, but suitably equipped with underground doors. They're big--we're not talking muskrats here; beavers look like big, fat cocker spaniels. And their brown. And they're fun to watch.

We stood out there gathering horse flies and mosquitoes longer than we should have, but they deserve some attention and honor, after all. Once long ago, they were monarchs of the realm, royalty of the region. Able-bodied men--red and white--made it their calling to catch 'em.

Think of it this way--we're here in Iowa, all for the love of a hat.

Religious Liberty

2009-07-02T00:00:00Z

As our nation’s 233rd birthday is upon us I wanted to ramble about one of its founding principles—liberty. Mostly this word gets reduced to a synonym—"freedom." Or it may be reduced even further to mean "being free," i.e. without restraint.

Liberty is something more than just being free. In the political context in which it used in the Declaration of Independence, freedom means being released from arbitrary governance by another political entity, England. The separatists or Puritans left England to establish a colony where they were free from the restraint of the Church of England. Their liberty came from the elimination of religious constraint.

While exercising their religious liberty, they did not establish freedom of religion. We can just look to Roger Williams for that evidence. Williams preached religious tolerance and the right for people to pursue God in their own way, and he was exiled from the colony. Eventually, he founded a new colony based on these principles of religious liberty at Providence, Rhode Island. This colony is the birthplace of the Baptist congregation in America.

Through this principle of religious liberty grew a founding tenet of the United States of America, the separation of church and state. It grew out of an understanding of liberty that allows the individual to throw off the shackles of an oppressor to pursue God in their own way.

Religious toleration is at the heart of our country’s founding, and it is very much alive today. Despite its abuses, this tolerance makes possible a forum for dissenting voices. Fifty years ago, the voice of the atheist was crushed in the United States. Today, that voice is allowed to be heard and is openly debated in many Christian media outlets. Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have a voice in our country because the overwhelmingly Christian populace allows it. That's religious liberty.

Old Love

2009-07-02T04:00:00Z

He came bearing jam from a dead woman's hand,
found at the bottom of a freezer he was cleaning out
and when he handed it to me,
like a ruby artifact dug up from the bowels of Pompeii,
I could only think of her bones in the cemetery these two long years,
rain and snow and sun falling on silent gravestone,
and yet still she will serve us jam
and still we will thank her and lick our lips,
tasting the sweetness of love.

But it took weeks before we finally broke the jar's seal,
(who could bear to? lid with her handwriting that made me hurt),
before we popped that lid open that she had screwed tight three summers ago,
and I stared a long time before I dipped knife in,
before I took my toast to the porch,
to watch the sun rise over our patch of strawberries,
all dangled in dew, and there I ate her jam spread thin,
and think of her with cancer, still arched in morning light, picking,
her thick Dutch hands stained red with the afternoon hulling,
her wiping counters spotlessly clean, always, in evening,
line of jeweled jars dazzling in fading light... fading light.

I eat berries ripened by a long ago sun,
picked and plucked and mashed by a hand
long ago ripened and picked,

and yes, I choke out thanks,
And yes, I taste sweet love,
And yes, the jar sits still in the fridge,

No one daring to spread the last of her out.

Photos: of my mother-in-law’s jam found still at the bottom of her freezer, Dutch Opa giving it to us with a scratched explanation on a sticky note : “From Grandma yet”…. Yet.
Her flight exit was two years ago this month….

Andrew Kippley: "Through the Eyes of a Dying Man"

2009-07-02T04:00:00Z

Breathe in. ... Breathe out.

We are but a breath.
Here on purpose,
for a purpose,
from beginning to end
... to unending.
But here on Earth?
Just a breath.

Breathe.

***

All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
-- Psalm 139:16

***

Andrew Kippley is 15 and has cancer. He's been told there's no more treatment options left. He could look at life one of two ways: One breath closer to dying. Or having another breath in which to live.

Andrew chooses the latter.

Andrew was diagnosed with a neuroblastoma -- a form of infant and youth cancer -- when he was a toddler. After 10 cancer-free years, the ninth grader from Minnesota found out last month that the cancer had returned. (Andrew is the nephew of family friends.)

No treatment options are left. Drugs could slow the progression, but Andrew didn't want to spend his days sick. He wants to live.

He's the sort of kid who has this quote on his Caring Bridge page: "When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life you have a thousand reasons to smile."

At the beginning of his chemo treatments, he walked down the hall singing, "Ain't no mountain high enough" with his IV pole in hand.

He now has a day planner to keep track of the things he wants to do, people he wants to see.

And he wants people to know that if this earthly life is "but a breath," we ought to start living like it. He wants us to see the world "through the eyes of a dying man."

Andrew wrote a poem after his recent diagnosis. He has graciously given me permission to reprint it here.

I want to live and breathe like Andrew. These are his words:

Through dying eyes, it's a new world I see.
The colors are so much brighter.
The little things grow bigger day by day
And burdens grow even lighter.

As times grow shorter, you'd think I'd grow sadder
But it makes me cherish everything more.
And with each passing day, it's easier to say
Live this one like never before.

And as sadness looms, I grow in faith.
As I trust in God for safety
this situation is out of my hands.
And I know that he will guide me

At a passing glance, there's nothing to me.
but there's more than meets the eye.
I see the world in a much different view
Than the average person passing by

And I wish everyone could see the world
through the eye of a dying man
because maybe, just maybe
people would live and see the world like I can.

***

Photo credit goes to Tyler Farstead, a 16-year-old member of my church, who had the eyes to see God's beauty in this mountaintop view during a church trip.

Office supplies, love, and little glimpses of grace

2009-07-01T20:07:30Z

I wouldn’t really recommend that we all misuse office supplies (and time!) like this. But I appreciate the sentiment of loving someone with the tools of our everyday work. There is grace and love all around us, and the world can seem like a magical place again when we remember to look in the right way.

FAIL: Emergents Destroy Christian Weddings With Communion

2009-07-01T18:47:59Z

A dubious publication called the Christian Courier published an article called The "Emerging Church"-The New Face of Heresy with this spectacular showing of poor journalism, scholarship, and lack of basic thought processes:

“Emerging” churches are restructuring the worship format. The Lord’s supper is being offered in conjunction with special events, e.g., weddings. The communion memorial is not restricted to the Lord’s day; instead groups step beyond the biblical pattern and provide it on weekdays, ignoring a New Testament that is [sic] undergirded with historical truth, namely the Lord’s resurrection on Sunday.

1) Jesus had the Last Supper on a Thursday...that's historical truth for ya.

2) I didn't want to waste a lot of time researching this, but I easily found evidence that in English language traditions the sacrament of communion was included in wedding liturgy since about 1078 under the Sarum Rite.

3) And some guy named Paul wrote that "whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Whenever is a whole lot different than "on Sunday."

Christian Courier = Massive FAIL.