Crossroad with Greatness

A few years ago, I was with a leadership team as we made our way through Atlanta. We stopped at Ebenezer Baptist Church, to visit the museum of a personal hero of mine. From pastor to civil rights revolutionary, Martin Luther King, Jr. shaped the image of humanity. Sad to say, many white churches stood in his way of racial equality. But he stood strong in what he believed was right, till his dying day.

As we made our way through his museum, I stood speechless in front of a certain display. It read,

Every man must decide whether he will walk
in the light of creative altruism* or the darkness of selfishness.
This is the judgment.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is,
what are you doing for others?

In a moment of poetic justice, I realized that my snapshot photo reflected an image of myself. This forced me to look introspectively. It was almost if I stood at a crossroad with greatness. As if Martin Luther King, Jr. himself was asking me, “Chris, what are you doing for others?”

And so I extend the question to you. Will you walk in the light of altruism or the darkness of selfishness? What are you doing for others? Please comment.

And if you have a favorite MLKJ quote, feel free to share.

*Altruism: the quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others

The End and the New

I don’t anyone is as excited as I am that this year is coming to an end. Today I write on the last Sunday of 2009. The two great highlights of this year were proposing to Cait, and marrying her. Proposing started off the year, and marrying her ended it. Everything else has been a frustrating stalemate with life and career.

As this year of disappointments end, I am highly optimistic for the next. 2010 will begin with Cait and I leaving the country for a three month internship in Northwest Europe. There we will minister as husband and wife, traveling to a dozen cities, mentoring under missionaries and creating relationships in a multicultural environment.

I have little to say today, except that I celebrate this years end, and embrace whatever the new year brings in. I wish the best for you as well.

So sit with God, sit in silence, and ask what he brings you this new year.

Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

At our wedding, my dad (who was also my Best Man) read this quote from Don Miller's book Searching for God Knows What. This passage means a lot to me because this is how I feel about Cait.

You probably think I am being mushy and romantic, but the first time Moses breaks into poetry in the Bible is when Adam first meets Eve. The thing about Moses was, he was the first king of understatements. He could pack a million thoughts and emotions into just a few words. Here is what he said about what Adam thought when he met Eve:

“Bone of my bones

And flesh of my flesh.” (Genesis 2:23)

If you think about these ideas they are quite meaningful, and the bit of poetry Moses came up with truly summarizes the scene because, for the first time in his life, Adam was seeing a person who was like him, only more beautiful, and smarter in the ways of love and encouragement, and more deliberate in the ways of relationships. He must have thought to himself that she was perfect, and after a few days of talking and getting to know each other, they must have fallen deeply in love. After Adam had taken Eve to the distant mountains where they could look down on the four rivers, and after he built for her a home and showed her the waterfalls and taught her the names of all the animals, he could have gone on a long walk with God and thanked Him, and I’ll bet that was a very beautiful conversation. I’ll be Adam felt loved by God, like he was somebody God was always trying to bless and surprise with amazing experiences, and I'll bet they talked together about how beautiful Eve was and how wonderful it was that the two of them could know her, and I would imagine that Eve felt safe, loved, not used or gawked at, but appreciated and admired.

I'm MARRIED!

No official post today. Just enjoying life with my bride.

See you next week.

A Whisper of Grace

This is one of the most powerful stories I've ever read. Taken from my favorite book, What's So Amazing About Grace?.

A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. “I hate you!” she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night, she acts on a plan she has rehearsed in her mind a thousand times. She runs away.

She’s visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because the newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs and the violence in downtown Detroit, she figures that’s probably the last place her parents will ever look for her. California, maybe. . .or Florida. . .but, not Detroit.

Her second day there, she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt in her life. She was right all along, she thought – her parents were keeping her from all the fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car teaches her “a few things that men like”. Since she’s underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse, and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally, she thinks about her folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring, so provincial, she can hardly believe she grew up there.

She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline “Have you seen this child?” But, by now, she has blonde hair and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways and nobody squeals in Detroit.

After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear and it amazes her how fast the man turns mean. He growls at her and before she knows it, she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don’t pay much and all the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in, she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. “Sleeping” is the wrong word, however … a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never really relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.

One night, as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden, everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of Traverse City in May, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through rows of blossoming trees in pursuit of a tennis ball.

God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better now than I do. She’s sobbing and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world, she wants to go home.

Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with voice mail. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says “Dad, Mom, it’s me … I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well … I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.”

It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City and during that time, she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day until she could talk to them? And, even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead a long, long time ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.

Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. “Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault. It’s all mine. Can you forgive me?” She says the words over and over again, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone in years.

The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God.

When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, “Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here.” Fifteen minutes to decide the rest of her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingers and wonders if her parents (if they’re even here) will notice.

Walking tentatively into the terminal, not knowing exactly what to expect, other than to be disappointed, not one of the thousand scenes that’d played out in her mind could have prepared her for what she’d see.

There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother, to boot. They’re all wearing party hats and blowing noise-makers … and taped across the wall of the terminal is a banner that reads “Welcome Home”.

Out of the crowd, breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears puddling in her eyes and begins the speech she’s memorized. “Dad, I’m so sorry … I know …”

He interrupts her. “Hush, child. We’ve no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. There’s a feast waiting for you at home.”

Powerful, huh? Read the original story here.

Remaining Ignorant

I think it would be easier if I would have just remained ignorant. Life is easier that way.

Its harder to sleep at night knowing that there are 27 million slaves in the world.

Its harder to wake up on Sunday morning and find out that the Kentucky Wildcats pulled ahead and beat the Bulldogs after I went to bed.

Its harder to love after knowing a wound so deep.

It would be easier to remain ignorant. But that would be foolish, wouldn’t it.

And a lot of times, I feel that reading Scripture complicates life, rather than simplifies. Take the book of Job for instance. Life would be simpler had I not read the book of Job.

To surmise, Satan makes a wager with God. Satan claims that Job only worships God for what God has done for Job. God suggests otherwise. God allows Satan to strip Job of all blessings to see where Job’s worship rests.

Job suffered.

Job suffered more than I could ever imagine.

Job suffered because his faith in God mattered to God. For no other reason than it mattered to God.

He didn’t deserve to lose his children.

He had no great sin that ruined his financial enterprise.

Simply put, Job’s misery mattered to God.

It would be easier for me to allow you to remain ignorant. But that would be foolish, wouldn’t it. I want you to know that your suffering, your faith, matters to God.

My suffering matters to God.

In the end, Job is restored. God healed Job. But that wasn’t the point of the wager. God and Satan wanted to see if Job would worship God even if Job was never restored. Would you worship God if your suffering never ended? Would I?

That question hurts, doesn’t it? It hurts like a scalpel. Cutting deep. But this deep cut is for healing purposes.

What would it take to make today’s ‘No’ become tomorrow’s ‘Yes’?

Change Provided: An Afterthought

This is an afterthought of Meredith Grady's production of Change Provided. Meredith wrote, produced, and starred in her own play. My favorite part? Dr. Ellington took off his Theology Professor hat, slipped into his camo fatigues and played the part of a Vietnam vet with little grasp of reality.

Meredith's play, as I took it, underscored the importance of relationships. We all carry baggage. Although important to deal with our personal baggage, we don't have to have it all together to develop relationships.

We are broken. Insert whatever jargon or Christian-ese you want. Christian or non-Christian. Saved or un-saved. Regenerated or pre-regenerated. Broken. We are all broken.

Just in case you think otherwise, becoming a follower of Christ does not fix all of your problems. Yes, your sins are forgiven, and yes you can now have a relationship with a holy God. But no, your problems will follow you.

And thats what Meredith communicated in her play. Do not allow your brokenness to prevent you from developing relationships. Rather communicate your brokenness and allow for God and others to heal you.

Her play? I laughed, I fought back tears, my soul smiled.

And Meredith, I loved the witty title.