Holy Fool

I don’t often just sit and dump my mind out here.  Mainly because, I just don’t do that period, but secondly because I often don’t want to get too touchy feely out on the internet.  It’s a bit like trying to cozy up to a bear trap (at least in my paranoid thinking) because you never know when something you have shared (or over shared) (I wonder how many parentheses are grammatically correct) will come back to bite you.

Perhaps though today I will be a bit vulnerable.

Life is hard.

I know, profound right?  “Wake me up when life isn’t hard,” is perhaps the response I would sarcastically give.

But I think they are three words that we all need to be a little bit more honest about.

When you have been hospitalized twice in a year.  That’s hard.

When you have two, or three, or more kids (and sometimes even one).  That’s hard.

When you get laid off, and either you can’t get rehired because your not qualified enough, or too qualified.  That’s hard.

When you loose a loved one, no matter how ‘good’ it is that they are at peace.  That’s hard.

When you hit 2:30 in the afternoon and you just can’t do anymore.  That’s hard.

So I want you to do something with me.  Put on your big boy (or girl) pants and repeat after me.  “Life is hard; but I am not alone.”

Next time you meet with your friends and they ask how it’s going, take a brave chance and say, “It’s been hard lately.” It may take them aback a bit, but they are going to know what you mean.  Any friend who is real with you will let you know it’s okay to say it and even might say those most comforting of words, “me too.”

So, call a spade a spade.  If it’s been a crapper of a year it’s okay to admit it.  And if you believe in God, it’s definitely okay to talk to him about it.  God’s work is healing the sick.

In closing, If I know you in any capacity, and you are interested in knowing, my life has been hard these last few months.  However, even in admitting that to you, I find the peace that comes with being honest.  It is that peace (that comes from the Lord) that I know will carry me through to the other side.

If you don’t have that assurance of peace today in your life, if it’s too hard right now, know that no matter how much you might reject even the notion of a God who deeply loves you or that you are deserving of that love, know that I firmly believe he loves you, and so do I.

For all of you who have followed this blog I want to first say thank you for doing so.  I want you to be among the first to share in my excitement in being able to publicly say that I am now a published author.

No, it's not a dense and weighty theological tome.  Rather I share a part among all of the other great author's that make up a new book from The House Studio entitled 180: Stories of People Who Changed Their Lives by Changing Their Minds.

180 is a thematic collection of over 30 essays that focus' on how in the world a group as stodgy and unbending as Christians actually go about changing their mind at a life altering level.  To borrow from the introduction:

Differences in personal preferences about music or movies (or sports teams or ice-cream flavors or computers) make great conversation over coffee, but a new band comes along and you have a new favorite. For the most part, we find it easy to change our minds about these sorts of things.  The stakes seem to get higher as the topic become more serious:

Should gays be given the right to marry?

If you oppose abortion, should you also oppose capital punishment?

Is it ever right to torture captured terrorists?

Will a devout follower of Islam go to heaven?

Regardless of how you would answer any of the above, can you imagine your views changing over time?

This book's theme embodies the heart of my last post entitled, A Personal Hermeneutic.  It's not just what do you believe, but how is it that you believe what you believe, and can that belief change over time?

As a special thanks to all of you who read my blog I have a free copy that I will be happy to send out.  All I need you to do is:

1. Write a short paragraph on something you have changed your mind about that was a big deal for you.
2. Post it as a comment to this blog post, or to the Facebook note if you are reading this on Facebook.

I will then choose the best comment via a very subjective and multi-lensed hermeneutic process and appoint a winner.

Also, please do not feel pressured to buy a copy for my sake; however feel free to support the other great authors included, like:

Karen Spears Zacharias

Mark Oestreicher - or-

Leonard Sweet

There is a lot of good that can come if we will simply open ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit.

I have launched a side-blog that is called Very Short Stories.  These are twitter length short stories and I will probably update them a bit more regularly than this blog.

So without further ado here is the first entry: The Curve

I bought a cheap LED reading light so I thought it would be fun to combing it with photobooth on my mac for some high contrast pics.

I just Brady Bunched myself!

I am currently in the basement of my home, watching a ladybug traversing the drop ceiling.  I wonder if it has any idea where it is?  Does it know the difference between inside and outside?  Does it know that it is actually upside down?  The other curious thing is that it was actually here last night, it hasn't moved even two-feet from where it was then.  What is it eating?  What is it drinking?  Is it letting out tiny ladybug poops that are so tiny that you would never see them with your naked eye?

I sound a bit like my four year old son with all of those questions.  In the end though, i think it is wonderfully marvelous that we have  been given such inquisitive minds.  If we were all satisfied with things just the way they are then there is a good chance we would not be where we are today.  Look at all of the animals of the world, only a very few ask questions of their surroundings.  Men, apes, dolphins all have shown capacity to process and ask questions of their surroundings.  It is a rare thing in nature to question what you have in front of you and to try and alter the outcome of a situation.

My friendly ladybug doesn't ask any questions, it just is.  My ape and dolphin friends ask a limited set of questions pertinent to food sources and mating but only humans question their own existence and its meaning.  We are the only creatures given the additional dimension of faith.  Faith is an interesting part of our beingness as humans.  There are those that claim to have no faith, I would argue they have placed their faith in the statement that they have no faith.  Others place their faith in themselves, in others, or in God.

Faith isn't something you are ever given more of, or have taken away.  It is rather an awareness of our own internal allegiance to this, that or the other.  Faith is a compass.  The needle of faith always points towards God, but we can manipulate the field around the magnet to get it to point this way or that.  Like my ladybug we wander the ceiling thinking it's the floor or the wall.  We think we are outside when we are really inside.  If you want your faith to point true north then you must ask God to remove the conflicting magnets that have caused you to pursue a life lived in a false direction and restore the original orientation of the compass.

I pray today that my compass should be aligned correctly, that God would strip away those false magnets that drag the compass of my faith into leading me away from God.