Murphy Law

  The last month I have been challenged to put on the big boy pants and to start taking care of myself physically.  This includes going to the dentist and getting cavities filled and getting a physical done.  After all it has been three years since my last one.  I thought I I was done for the year until I woke up Tuesday morning.  I woke up one morning this week and when I looked in the mirror after getting up my face looked a little droopy.  Then I notice breakfast was kind of hard to it and when I couldn't smile fully and after realizing I have had a headache for the last two days, things were starting to get real.  It also got my mom really concerned and she brought me into the hospital to get checked out because she thought I was having a stroke.  After the CT Scan, blood work and EKG, it turns out I developed Bells Palsy, which has a lot of the same characteristic as a stroke.  Bells Palsy is an infection of the facial nerve and I have lost some of my function in the right side of my face which makes some of the most simple things a little bit of work like eating and brushing my teeth.  To top it off, it is hard for me to talk and it feels like I just got some dental work done

  Here is the kicker in all this, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a person I work with within the last week.  I often call her Part Time Paula because she is never at work during the summer.  She likes to use here three plus weeks of vacation between May and the end of August.  I told her I like to keep one or two days of my vacation in my back pocket just in case Murphy Law stops by.  Her response was that she has seen enough of Murphy in the last ten years that it is someone else turn to visit Murphy.  It got me thinking about Murphy's Law (which is if anything could go wrong, it will go wrong) and none of these things are earth shattering but here they are.

  We got to stop blaming our mistakes, bad decisions, and the failure to plan on Murphys Law.  One might say that the failure to plan is not planning at all.  People in general have a hard time owing up to stuff when it goes wrong, and it is always someone elses fault.  If we can not blame it on an orginization or a person, we blame it on Murphy.  Murphy will show up less when we not only start owning up to are end of the deal, and making sure that we take strives into working on making it better and reconciling with the people involved, Murphy will show up a lot  less.  It is a little thing called maturing and it takes work, time and tenacity.

  Murphy Law may also come in to play because of someone else failure to plan or stupid decisions.  We need to learn how to forgive and if these things keep happening, putting in some very healthy boundaries so that their decisions may be less destructive. 

  The third idea of Murphy law is that bad things happen because we live in a broken world that is desperate need of Christ redemptive work.  There are two things that we can do here.  The first one is become cold, hard and bitter at the world.  We become cynical to anything and everything along with being distrusting of every motive.  Or we could draw closer to God and get on bored with what He has planned and use those things that were meant for harm and use them to display God glory.  God's presence and glory are already being displayed, God could even have  greater reach if we joined in what God is doing.  It is allowing God to work in us and through us to display His glory.  When this happens, Murphy's law will loosen its grip on this world

Leaving a Legacy

       There is recent study that states that the average American has six thousand dollars of credit card debt.  Now this does not include, house or car payments or student loan debts.  If all of these numbers were combined, it would be a very scary number.  Through out the Bible it shares that we can not serve two masters, because we will end up loving one and despising the other.  Money can become a master of our lives very easily and how we deal with our money is a window of how our relationship with God is going.  For those of you who know who Dave Ramsey is, he is an in your face Christian financial planner who strongly believes in living debt free without credit cards.  One of his other big things is changing your family tree and leaving a legacy being debt free.  His logic is that we are not strapped by debt and we are able to give of our time, talents and money more freely because we do not have to worry about making sure are debts are covered.

          Leaving a legacy means more than having a good name and living a good life.  Leaving a legacy means that we can not just live in the moment, but we also have to have to have the future in mind.  When we invest money, not only do we expect some sort of return on our money, but it takes time.  Different investments have different returns with different time lengths of time that the money needs to stay in there and the amount of risk that is involved.  This is the same with our relationships as well, because every time we time we properly invest in a relationship, it takes time and there is risk involved.  If we want to change our family tree and leave a lasting legacy, we have to make an investment that it not only takes time, but we might not see the results this side of heaven.  So how does mean to invest in other people. 

            Leaving a legacy means that we live life with intention.  As much fun as it is to walk through life living on a whim, at the end of the day, we don’t get much done.  I know if I don’t plan out my day, it usually becomes a waste and not much gets done in the form of progress.  If we don’t plan, we are a rudderless ship.  There are times where we need to rest and to take breaks, but taking breaks from breaks is not that healthy.  Are we seeking God to see what He has planned for our day and then doing it.  I know I feel really good when I have had a constructive day, even though I may be dog tired, it still feels good.   We have to live with intentional relationships too. 

            Another important thing that we need to do is to invest in other people.  God brings people into our lives that he wants us to invest into and to have them invest their lives into us.  The popular term for this is “doing life together”.  It is being involved in each others lives, in the highs, lows and everything else.  When we invest in others, we can not have the catch and release mentality that some people have when they are fishing.  The catch and release syndrome means that after a certain time, or certain goals are met, the relationship gets terminated.  The other person is not seen as a person, but as a project, or a vehicle to get to something bigger and better.  It means that most if not all of our relationships have purpose and a plan.  Its more than using people for what they have or what they can do, but seeing them for who they are and that is a Child of God created in His image. If we do not take time to foster our relationships in a healthy way, they will either end up going no where or drifting apart.

The third thing with leaving a legacy is that are we willing to be changed by God.  This may sound cheesy, but are we willing let God to leave a legacy in us.  If we want to see change in other people and lead help people in that change, we need to be changed ourselves.  Leaving a legacy means that we have to change ourselves.  We have to be willing to make that proper investment in God, in which it is for the long haul before we can stat properly investing in others.  When we are letting God fully invest in us and we reciprocate that, this is truly when we can start leaving a legacy with our friends, family, places of employment and our community.  I encourage all of us to live with that intention and leaving God’s legacy behind us, because our legacy will be nothing but tears, pain and self destruction. 

 

What are good friends for

  In life we friends that will be just be friends for a season.  No amount of Facebook can keep us conected after so long.  Whether its just life circumstances, or moving on in life or any other reason, we walk with each other trough a particular season in life.  Then there are the friends that we interact with because of life circumstances.  Whether it is because of work, or the our kids are on the same team or class.  There is that interaction between each other, and we know stuff about them, but it stays really superficial.  Then there are the friends that you are willing to give your right arm for.  If they needed a kidney and you had a match, you would give it to them no questions asked.  For most, those friends are few and far between.  We cherish those relationships and we work hard at keeping them.  The length of time does not necessarily mean that it is a deep relationship.  I have been in relationship for years and it has stayed and on the superficial level. Then there are the relationships that have only been for a short time and it has felt like you known each other for years.  I have a friend like that and every year I make it a point to make it to Kansas to see him and his family.  I have not only gotten to know his wife and kids, but his parents and brothers too.  Here is a picture of his two of his kids

   I have been thinking what a true friend looks like Biblical.  In Proverbs it tells us that a good friend sticks closer to us than a brother.  That is a good verse to look at, but I got thinking of the story of Jonathan and King David.  Jonathan had every right to be mad at David, because David was taking what was rightfully his.  You see, Jonathan was the son of King Saul, and this means that he was net in line to be king when Saul died.  This would be true but with Saul falling out of favor with God, God elected David to be the net king.  Instead of being mean and hateful about it, Jonathan chose to protect David even putting his own life at risk.  There were a number of occasions where Saul wanted to kill David, but Jonathan stuck his neck out to warn David.  I think there are several ways that we can look at our friendships and how we interact with them.  Especially those relationships we hold near and dear to our hearts. Because there are friends that are like family and for all intents and purposes they are family 

  Is our relationships an inward focused or an outward focused relationship.  In all honesty we have friends and are those friends that show up when we only need something.  Were only friends with them because of either what one side of the relationship can provide and the other can give.  In every relationship there is a give and take, but when that becomes the sole focus of the relationship, it will lead down a path of abuse and only seeing people for what they can do for us instead of who they are.  The flip side of that coin is that we are only friends with them because we are the only ones that can help them, or even save them.  This will often give us a savior complex and it turns people into projects.

  Another relationship status is what I would call your beer drinking buddies.  There isn't wrong with having friends to go out and have fun with.  We all need to go out and have fun and enjoy life.  Life with these friends is all about going out and having a good time.  These are nice friends to have, but they end up being shallow relationships looking for the net thrill and waiting for things to go legendary.  Living this life leads to stunted maturity because no one is there to push us to grow and to be better. 

   I could go on, but there are the fiends that we should have and need to have that push us to grow and get better.  Are we willing to live out our lives and do we encourage each other to grow.  Are we willing to walk not ahead or behind people but along side of them.  One of the cool catch phrases of our time is "doing life together"  It is more than doing life in the peaks and valley of life and just getting through them.  In our relationships, if we are not pointing each other to the cross, there is something that is drastically wrong.  The cross is what makes things equal and it also provides the agent for change.  When we push each other and ourselves to the cross, it means that we use such things as forgiveness, understanding, communication, empathy, and even confrontation when needed.  These things are not done out of personal glory or for condemnation, but to see the other person grow in Christ.  God's grace and love needs to be at the center of all we do.  To wrap things up, are we using our relationships for fun and games, self interest, or to be with each other to grow and to support each other through all of life seasons

Summer Fun

  I have been told the more you do something, the better you will get at it. So this summer, I hope to do some writing on my different adventures that I have, and I will try to include pictures. 

  Today's summer adventure comes courtesy of the Minnesota State Zoo.  It was a warm day and yet there was enough shade and breeze to make it bearable.  I went down with friends and family it was fun.  The fun part of the day was seeing the three kids run around with excitement and with awe at the different animals.  They played hard and it was fun to watch them with their childhood eyes learn, look, and see the different things at the zoo.  It will be fun to get the pictures back to see everything. 
   
  My neighbor and her grandson came along with us today and her grandson has been diagnosed with Autism (his name is Will).  From what I know of Autism is that people with that diagnosis have a hard time with quick change and new people.  Since I don't see Will that often, I would consider myself a new person in Will's world and this is a neat picture taken by his Grandma. This is probably the highlight of my day along with walking with Will and holding his hand.  It was a good reminder of knowing when to be open and trusting.  Also, life is not so much of walking ahead or behind others, but it is walking with them and sometimes even giving someone a ride when needed.

Whats in a Gift?

For those of you who are fans of the television show The Big Theory, you know that the character Sheldon Cooper is a genius with zero social skills.  The show plays up this fact in the interactions with his friends and coworkers on the show.  One episode he was blackmailed into throwing giving his roommate Leonard a surprise birthday party.  As he was contemplating what to get Leonard, he was perplexed, because the nicer the gift he would give, it would be expected that Lenard would give the equivalent price gift on a later date.  So this got me thinking, what’s a gift?  I have a gut feeling that most of us give gifts with strings attached, whether we realize it or not.  We give a gift in hoping to get something done for us in return on a later date.  Or, we use it to repay someone who has done something nice for us. 

            One of the books I have been reading by Miroslav Volf in his book Free of Charge.  Through out the book, Volf makes the argument that when we give gifts with strings attached; at best we are coming across as self absorbent people who only give gifts to get something.  These type of people tend to run people over to get what they want.  The only way they do something, is if it benefits them.  If we go to the other extreme, we are thieves, stealing what does not truly belong to us.   Our motives in giving our time, money, giftings isn’t to benefit the other person, but it is for self gain.  The only reason we give these gifts is to make ourselves look better and because we are greedy.  The other persons benefit becomes secondary to what we want or what our perceived needs are, or how it can benefit us in some way.  The benefits could be money, promotions, to cast shame on a not so delightful coworker or family member. 

            So the final question is, what is a gift and how is one suppose to give and receive one.  I know this is easier said than done, but I think the first item we need to consider is what is our motivation for giving the gift?  Is our motivation for self promotion, or scratching their back, so our back can get scratched at a later time.  Gift giving with strings attached will always s eventually lead to bad consequences. It is buying the spouse flowers so we can get out of a predicament later.  The second idea, does this gift build the other person up, or bring them down.  Does the gift help them with their relationship with God or does it take it away from God.  The third thing, is that giving good gifts and grace is the same thing.  Both gifts and grace is something that is given that the receiver does not achieve through works, but is based on the character of the one who gives those things.  God is the giver of all good and perfect gifts, and its not what we have done to earn those things, but it is who He is.  We can never earn God’s love, but He gives it because He wants to be in right relationship with us.  Now this love has boundaries for our own protection and even boundaries are a gift.  The net time you give a give a gift, is it with strings attached, or is it for the betterment of the other person and to see them grow and mature..  The gifts with no stings attached are the best gifts to give and to receive, but also the hardest to give and to receive.  Because we get nothing in return and we did nothing to earn that gift. 

Being Reconciled

            I am a fan of the television show, How I Met Your Mother, and the whole premise of the show is the story of how one of the main characters (Ted Mosbey) tells the story to his future children of how he met their mom.  One of the running themes that runs through out the show is his on again off again relationship with Robin Scherbatsky.  We know from the intro of the show that Scherbatsky is not Ted’s wife, and in the current season, Scherbatsky is engaged to Barney.  The last episode, I was it with the reality that this show has eschalogical tendencies to it.  There is the whole idea of being in the present here and now, and still having future hope.  It is something that we are waiting for, but it is not here yet. 

            As a Christian we have this future hope of God coming in and not only making all things right, but making all things new.  It could be a process of waiting for God to come set up His Kingdom whether here on earth or to take us away to paradise.  This is a cool idea, but there are two things that are troubling if we are waiting for this to happen.  The first one is that we just sit on our hands and pray that God comes quickly to kick out all the bad guys.  Secondly, we develop an escapist theology, and we hope and pray for God to come and take us out of this mess.  It is a feeling that the world isn’t anything more than a hell hole and isn’t worth saving.  But, there is good news, there is another option, and it is not the easiest option, but in the end, it is the best option and something we are commanded to do.  We are called to be priest to a broken and dark world. 

Author and theologian NT Wright gives us a third option in His book Evil and the Justice of God. 

The Church is not to be so focused on being the community of the saved, but the church is a community of those who being redeemed through the cross, are now to be a kingdom and priest to serve God and to reign on the earth

            What NT Wright is not only calling Christians on an individual basis, but the church as a whole is to stop using Christianity as fire insurance.  Our faith is more than just accepting Jesus as our Savior and trolling along in life until we die or He comes back.  What NT Wright is saying is that our salvation is a work in progress.  Before I go on, I am not saying that our salvation and God’s love is based on our works, but our works should be based on what Christ redemptive work on the cross.  The cross takes care of our past and provides hope for a future.  The cross is the power of God in not only providing salvation, but hope to a broken world. 

            Just as Christ is our intercessor before God, Christ has given us that challenge to be that to a broken world.  The Lords prayer tells us Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  God’s kingdom is providing redemption and reconciliation by and through the cross to His creation.  Not only does the power of the cross provide reconciliation with God and us, in which we are to work out in fear and trembling, but it also provides reconciliation with us and others.  As Christians, we are not to sit on the sidelines watching the world go somewhere in a hand basket waiting for God to show up.  Not only is God already in the world, but He is working in us and through us.    We have the power of the resurrected Savior, so why not use it and share it with everyone. 

            To finish up with the How I Met Your Mother theme, God gives us a future hope that He will come again and we are the Bridegroom.  All will be complete and right in the world, when Christ returns.  In the meantime, we are called to live our lives in the here and now.  In essence because we have a future hope, it should change how we live our lives today.

Whose image are we created in?

    I have come to realize something over the last few months, and as easy for me to proclaim it, it also is a hard pill to swallow.  I have realized that the various social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Blogging) has added fuel to the fire of people attacking others.  As easy as it is to go to social media and "connect" with people from various points in school, co workers and neighbors. It is even easier to take a hot button topic such as gun control or the definition of marriage and call the opposing side a bunch of bumbling idiots, while hiding behind an avatar.  There is a part of me that wonders if we have turned into a bunch of cowards, because we are willing to post information to these sites that we would dare not to say in public or to another persons face.  Then I realized that people have been cowards for centuries and the social media sites is just another way we allow ourselves to hide behind an avatar allowing ourselves to be cowards and  bumbling idiots. 

  This has gotten me thinking over ideas and here is some food for thought.  The first one is that we lack any real desire for community and connecting with others.  We all claim that we want to live in community, but when we are hiding behind avatars and not willing to go face to face with an issue, it cheapens the community.  We are more concerned with about putting out an image of how we want people to perceive us and more importantly, I think its how we want to perceive ourselves. We do not want to let the not so nice stuff of ourselves come out.  One of the things that I have realized, those things do come out and its usually not at a good time.  We want to think ourselves and the human race as good people with flaws that we have to work through.  If we just put our nose to the grindstone, and educate ourselves a little better, we can work on our own and the ills of the world and make them better.  But as we have seen thins week, with bombings in Boston and Baghdad, I am not sure self motivation will get the job done. 

  Within the Christian community, we claim that we are all created in the image of God, but we don't act like it.  We often take more enjoyment of bringing people down than bringing them back up because that takes work and in all reality, its not much different from the world.  Sarcasm tends to make us feel better by putting others down and it tends to make us feel better when we are busting chops.   Sarcasm tends to cover up where we are vulnerable by pointing out other peoples weakness.  I know there have been countless books and blogs dedicated to what it means to be created in the Image of God, and I have a gut feeling that it has a hard time sinking in.  I could go on and on about the Image of God and how we are created, but here is the shortest way I can put it right now.  It means that we love God with everything we got and Love others as ourselves.  This means seeking forgiveness from God and others who we have wronged, along with reconciliation and restitution when applicable.  It is also forgiving others for wrongs they have committed and helping to create safe boundaries for our relationships that encourage growth in relationships with God and others. Its moving from viewing ourselves fro ether second class citizens, or God's gift to humanity and making us Children of the most high God and He is the center of our lives. If God is not at the center of it. 

   My last rant is that I think we can spend more time in community and less time being bumbling idiots if we stepped away from the computer.  If we really value relationships, both with people we agree with and those we don't, we have a better chance of seeing them for who they are and who we are and that is a people in desperate need of Gods grace and mercy on a daily basis.  Its been said by Sam Hannah (a character on NCIS:LA) that Facebook is for cowards and people who don't want to put the work in for real social interaction.  So lets do the hard work and stop placing land mines on Facebook and start interacting with each other face to face. It takes viewing each other and ourselves with God's grace and how He views us, because this is the only time where we do not think to highly or lowly of ourselves or others, but as who we are.  We maybe dirty and marred by bast choices and life events, but we are still created in Gods image with His characteristics, we just need to allow God bring them back to order