This is pretty cool. It’s the Dynamic Einstein Image Generator.
Well, that explains everything. Now, what happens as the time until the next release of Bloo approaches infinity?
[Hat Tip: Jessica’s Well]
Well, this explains everything
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Not meant for goodbye
In the midst of
Dream and fantasy
Halfway there
But He always fills my cup
And He lifts me up
Oh how He lifts me up!
Goodbye
Goodbye
Walk away
It’s time to say
Goodbye
– Plankeye, Goodbye
And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship.
– Acts 20:36-38 (ESV)
Thus did the Apostle Paul bid farewell to the elders at Ephesus.
How many times in our lives has a similar scene played out? There is something unnatural and wrenching about goodbye. We fret about how to say the word, what to do “when it comes down to the end”. Goodbyes are uncomfortable and awkward. They involve a letting go of something we care about. Letting go is also unnatural for us humans.
Why is it this way? I wonder. I was talking about this tonight with my friend Brad, who is moving to Seattle in three days. I believe that the word “goodbye” was invented at Genesis 3:7. In other words, “goodbye” is a product of the fall, a curse of our fallen nature.
We were not meant for goodbye. But when we fell we died, and every goodbye is, in a sense, another memory of that separation from what we were meant to be, another reminder of the marring of the wholeness we were created for.
But among Christian brothers and sisters every goodbye is temporal, and our separation a mere nanosecond when logged against the annals and eons of eternity. We will see someday that we were never truly separated.
And one day we will laugh with joy together in the presence of our King
. . . and we will never say goodbye again.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
– Revelation 21:1-4 (ESV)
Agnus Dei
A couple of years ago over at Thinklings, Jared hosted a Thinklings Writing dealio where each of the original seven wrote something to be published on the blog. In response to this invite I wrote a short story called Agnus Dei, based loosely on a church drama written by my friend David Arcos which I had seen years earlier.
In all the server angst Thinklings underwent this year I lost track of the “writings” section of the blog. But I was reminded of this short story when I got reconnected with David this past week, after not having had much contact for years. He’s a great, Godly guy and a great friend (and let’s hear three cheers for Google!)
I retrieved the html for this one off of one of our past servers and have redeployed it to our site.
A snippet of it is below:
The smell hung heavier in the air as he walked slowly up to the nearest pole. It was roughly-hewn. Could have used some smoothing, he thought to himself. Father and I could smooth this wood. He examined the pole, unconsciously mimicking the practiced carpenter’s eye of his father. He noticed that there were dark streaks running down the pock-marked wood of the pole. A fly was feeding on one of the streaks a few inches from his eye. He shooed the fly away as he noticed some large, rusty nails lying in the dusty ground near his feet.
He reached out to touch the pole. At its touch a tingle ran down his spine and a brightness appeared around the periphery of his vision. He could almost hear the wings rustling around him. He knew something big was about to happen, something he hadn’t seen before. He laid his palm flat on the pole and closed his eyes. And in that moment he was overwhelmed. He felt the presence of his unseen friends.
You can read the whole thing here: .
Perfect Peace
You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.Isaiah 26:3 (ESV)
Yes. Peace.
That’s something I need right now.
Every day has its trouble. Nothing truly bad is happening. But there are stresses and pressures and risks and frustrations that assault every day. Some days more than others.
And here’s this promise, written to people who would be unable to comprehend the comparative luxury and security I live in. God promises peace; perfect peace to the one whose mind is stayed on Him. Peace, which is often so elusive, is to be found through setting our minds on the One who is the Prince of peace. It seems too easy.
I don’t understand it.
But then again, I’m not supposed to.
Colossians 3:16
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
– Colossians 3:16 (ESV)
Have you ever noticed that a lot of the “3:16” verses in the New Testament are amazing?
What I picture when I read this verse is the foundation of a healthy, balanced church. Notice the ingredients:
1. The words of Jesus, who is the Word of God, dwelling in us richly. What a great choice of words: to “dwell” means to “live and make one’s home in”. This is not a call for us to merely learn the Bible. It goes far beyond that. It is aking those sacred words in, letting them dwell in us, a living influence and governor over our thoughts, actions and words. And the words of Christ are not to just live a poor, shabby existence in our lives. No, they are to dwell in us richly; putting down deep roots, taking up the best rooms in our spiritual “house”.
2. Members of the body teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Each member of the Body of Christ is commanded and empowered to build up those around them. To “admonish” means to “reprove gently but earnestly”. “Reprove” means “to find fault with”. There is a corrective principle in the church that is to be put in action, gently but earnestly, and with wisdom. If done right, this is a beautiful thing. If done right, it is God’s grace lived out among brothers and sisters who are not content to let eachother fail.
3. Rejoicing and worshipping in song together. We are to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, thanking God for all He’s done. When the voice of the church is lifted up in spirit and in truth, there is nothing like it. As an aside, churches are splitting these days in their wars over worship. I’m no theologian, but it appears to me that God grants us freedom here to sing psalms (and what a treasure-trove the psalms are), hymns (for those who love the great songs of the faith) and spiritual songs (which can include almost anything God-honoring, including praise choruses and modern worship). I don’t see any way to lose here, provided attributes 1 and 2, above, are put in practice.
Picture a Body living all three of these! And let us begin being that Body in our world.
Happy Birthday Jared!
My friend Jared is without a doubt one of the coolest and most intriguing people I’ve ever met. And today is his birthday; he turns the big 3-0 today!
The first time I saw Jared was when he was a junior in high school. Jill and I were walking into the atrium of our current church for the very first time. We had moved to H-town from San Antonio and had left a wonderful church there where we had worked in the youth group. So I had my eyes peeled for the students at this new church, as I had a hankerin’ to get involved (it actually took me two years to finally get involved but that’s another (long) story). Anyway, I saw this kid holding court in a throng of students. I could tell he was a leader. For some reason I always remembered that, and this was months before I actually met him.
Two years later we became friends on a long van-ride back from camp in Colorado, and it’s been a friendship that has blessed me and changed me more than I can express. To be honest, I think Jared’s influence is why I blog. You see, a few years passed and Jared moved to Nashville and he invited me to begin conversing with other young guys of like mind – the Thinklings – over email. That experience expanded my horizons greatly.
And out of all that, a blog was birthed, and the rest is history.
Jared posts on his birthday today, and included in the post is a list of the things he can’t do anymore (from Esquire’s Things a Man Should Never Do Past 30)
Coin my own nickname.
Use a wallet fastened with Velcro.
Rank my friends in order of best, second best, and so on.
Ask a policeman, “You ever shoot anybody with that thing?”
Tap on the glass.
Shout out a response to “Are you ready to rock?”
Name pets after Middle Earth characters.
Jokingly flash gang signs while posing for wedding photos.
Give “shout-outs.”
See any movie with elves, mutants, wookies, or other non-human characters on opening night.*
Wear Disney-themed neckties.
Air drum.**
Eat Oreo cookies in stages.
Call “shotgun” before getting in a car.
Dispute someone else’s call of shotgun.
Have any furniture that involves cinder blocks
Say “two points” every time I throw something in the trash.
Say goodbye to anyone by tapping my chest and even so much as whispering “Peace out.”Life just got a whole lot less fun.
* That’s b.s.
** Drat!
One thing I’m sure Jared will do now that he’s past 30 is get his novel published.
Happy birthday, Bro. I love you.
The real Corn-King
I think it’s time for a little Lewis*. Here he offers insight into the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand:
Once in the desert Satan had tempted Him to make bread from stones: He refused the suggestion. ‘The Son does nothing except what He sees the Father do’; perhaps one may without boldness surmise that the direct change from stone to bread appeared to the Son to be not quite in the hereditary style. Little bread into much bread is quite a different matter. Every year God makes a little corn into much corn: the seed is sown and there is an increase. And men say, according to their several fashions, ‘It is the laws of Nature’, or ‘It is Ceres, it is Adonis, it is the Corn-King.’ But the laws of Nature are only a pattern: nothing will come of them unless they can, so to speak, take over the universe as a going concern. And as for Adonis, no man can tell us where he died or when he rose again. Here, at the feeding of the five thousand, is He whom we have ignorantly worshipped: the real Corn-King who will die once and rise once at Jerusalem during the term of office of Pontius Pilate.
– C.S. Lewis, The Business of Heaven, a portion of the reading for April 13th
* of course, I think it’s always time for a little Lewis. It’s scary how quotable that man is.
“Let us go to him outside the camp . . . “
For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.
– Hebrews 13:11-14
This is a “hard passage” that I heard in church recently.
It wasn’t quoted as a hard passage, but I took it as one. I can write posts all day long, but, I wonder, can I live what this passage is asking me to live?
Here the writer of Hebrews connects the Old Testament practice of animal sacrifice — something that to our sanitized and safety-netted minds would appear monstrous if we could see it occurring — with Jesus’ death on Calvary. Jesus suffered “outside the gate” in order to save us.
Jesus deserves my utmost devotion and worship and love. How can I not love a God who was willing to suffer outside the gate for me? Most of us, at one time or another, have felt outcast. Some of us have been outcasts all our lives. And we are all surrounded by outcasts. In fact, some of us are in the business of doing the out-casting.
Outcasts: they wait outside the gate, while the rest of the world laughs and experiences love and wealth and fun and joy. They press their faces against the windows as we eat and drink and are merry. They suffer outside the gate in their loneliness and pain. The beautiful people and well-integrated never notice them or even think about them.
And into their midst steps Jesus, the One who always had time for them, who touched them with healing in spite of their infections and loved them in their ugliness and ministered to them and forgave them in their sin. He was the only one who honored them in spite of their lowly status in the culture.
And he, finally, went “outside the gate” for them and died for them, died for all of us. For whether you’ve ever been an outcast or not, we are all outcasts from the Kingdom of God without Christ. The scripture isn’t kidding when it says that without Christ we are dead men in our sin.
But thanks be to God that he was willing to become flesh and dwell among us, and to suffer and die for dead men, outside the gate where the outcasts live.
“Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.”
What to do while waiting
In my previous post I talked about waiting on God. However, I realize that I may be presenting an incomplete picture. We do often wait on God, but we are not to be idle while we wait.
A common source of angst for Christians is the question “what is God’s will for my life?” This query, prayed fervently and often desperately, spins continuously in the minds of many. This is not necessarily a bad thing; we are to seek God and His ways and His will, so we should certainly care what that might be! But I’ve seen (and lived) the paralysis of that question. The lie that creeps in: “I’m waiting on God’s will for my life. I don’t want to screw anything up, so I’ll do nothing until I’m absolutely sure it’s God’s will.”
Aside from some obvious problems with the unnecessary clause “for my life”, it took me awhile to realize that this attitude is a thousand miles from anything resembling faith. Trust me, I’ve been there. I have often laughed inwardly at the fact that pretty much everything big God has done in my life is something I backed into. I simply wasn’t looking for it to happen the way it did – how could I have foreseen what God would do? I’m just not that smart. So why spend all my useful days in useless puzzle-work? God has called me to live, to run the race, and to focus on Him.
Someone wise once made this point: too many of us, as we walk along life’s path, expect to find GOD’S WILL wrapped up like a present, complete with our name on the tag. But, really, the path is God’s will.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus . . .
– Hebrews 12:1-2a (ESV)
Notice that Paul is not encouraging us to carefully sit idly by as we wait for detailed instructions from our Coach (the instructions that we have, in fact, demanded as a condition of our running). No, the command is far more straightforward: lay aside our sin and distractions and run like crazy toward Jesus.
So beware the wait if it’s really just a vacation from motion. For God will not, generally, lay out the plan for you all at once. At least He’s never done so for me. But that’s no excuse for standing still. There’s a reason the Christian life is compared to a race. We are to be running, and running to win.
So what do you do while you are waiting on God? Learn His ways, seek His face, learn to listen to His voice. And do whatever it is that He has put before you. You never know; the next seemingly uninspiring or uninteresting task or ministry that presents itself may be a gateway into a life you never dreamed of. One of my favorite quotes is by a secular author, but it carries with it a profound spiritual truth:
– P. J. O’Rourke
We all want to lead epic lives, but sometimes in that quest we miss that one life that just brushed past us that desperately needs some love and an encouraging word. As we pray for God’s mighty rain of revival to sweep us away we miss the fact that someone near us needs a cup of cold water. We want to love the whole earth and give ourselves to some mighty work, but we don’t love our neighbor (or even know his name). For it’s through the small things that come to us step by step on this path that God leads us toward the epic.
“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
– Luke 16:10 (ESV)
As you run, in obedience to the commands of God that you know well through reading HIs word, your motion and training will help prevent the other great sin we fall into: being so careful “waiting for God’s will” that even when He lays it out straight for us we’re too afraid to move.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him . . .
– Genesis 12:1-4a (ESV)
Because often times the next step God has for us may not be explained in as much detail as we would like. But as we grow more in love with Him and learn to hear His voice we’ll learn to obey even the steps that don’t make sense. So that when the command comes we, like Abraham, will simply go as the Lord has told us . . . because the Lord is really ahead of us, blazing the trail.
So while you and I are waiting to fly, we must continuously learn to run.
John 10:27
Waiting to fly
I read something today that reminded me that so many of us spend a lot of our time “between” things. We are waiting — we’re ready to move on in life but circumstances and developments and just plain time haven’t progressed far enough for us to get moving. So we wait.
I remember specific times in the past when I was in life’s waiting room. I spent most of that time fretting about the thousand and one things that might end up going wrong and thwarting the plans I had for that future I was waiting for or, more commonly, fretting at myself for not having plans! I felt impatience and urgency at a time when patience was called for and urgency was premature. It is tough to wait. The cloud of the looming future follows you around and can darken even the brightest day and insert a depressing solemnity into the wonder and fun that is life.
It is during times of waiting that I often begged God to show me what He was doing. Now, having lived a while longer, I can look back and realize that what He was doing was preparing me and others for the plans He had. I regret that I didn’t enjoy those times more. I didn’t like waiting, especially because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I wanted the musical score of my life to hit a climax right then, not realizing that I was on measure 8 and the master Conductor was even then preparing to swell the music, through various movements of beauty and awe, sadness and joy (and much that was to my ear mundane) toward His soaring and majestic triumph in measure 86! Everything has to be kept in time and working together, even if I want the tempo to snap it up a bit.
Thank God I’m not directing the orchestra.
Yes, He is perfectly capable.
To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name,
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not one is missing.– Isaiah 40:25-26 (ESV)
With eyes downcast we wonder if God’s even there. He asks us simply to look up. The more we learn about our universe, the work of His hands, the more we bow in awe. The starry host of heaven is his creation, and every one of these trillions He has called by name. ”The heavens declare the glory of God” – yes they do, in all their mindblowing beauty and in the way our brains crumble at the attempted comprehension of the vast distances, forces, beauty and raw power of the controlled nuclear explosions we call stars and all the infinitesimal and (to me) bizarre quantum particles that make up this extraordinary place we call home.
He calls them all by name. But what of you? Does He know you?
Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.– Isaiah 40:27-28 (ESV)
Yes, he does. And He knows you throughout eternity, from the foundation of the world. He’s not tired of you, and you don’t confuse Him. He “gets” you. If you are His, you are His beloved child and of far more value than the stars.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.– Isaiah 40:29-31 (ESV)
And when your patience is thin and your strength is gone you can call on Him. He will teach you the joy of waiting, of being renewed, of walking, of running. . .
. . . and of flying!