The First ‘50′

I was reading a story about this guy who had been in an accident, suffered a trauma to the head and had been in a coma for many weeks. As the weeks rolled by the doctor’s prognosis looked more and more bleak. One late night while his wife was sitting next to his bed, praying, she whispered in her husband’s ear – Wake up…. I need to tell you that I Love you - and after weeks of not responding to anything - her husband turned his head in her direction. Surprised, she then went to the other side of his bed and whispered in his ear – Wake up…. I need to tell you that I Love you - With that her husband turned his head the other way to face her once again. She burst into tears, ran out to tell the doctors and to make a long story short, after many months of treatment and therapy this man is almost fully recovered and has been back home with his wife for the last 2 years.

Today is my 50th birthday and my 3rd wedding anniversary. I’m not sure what the word is for whatever is beyond emotional and professional overload but it describes my last several weeks - up to last Saturday that is. And through the mind numbing frustrations at work and my sullen meditations, last Saturday - my wife gave me a surprise birthday party which was AWESOME! Then, Sunday we took 2 of our kids to see “BuzzFest” which is an outdoor rock festival which all seemed relatively tame up until Finger11 (a band) came on and my wife and I got to see first hand what “mosh-pits”and “crowd surfing” is all about. We never did all that back at concerts I attended when I was young but then it’s best that I not bring up what else I did when I was young

So to my family and friends thank you for the wonderful gifts but most of all thank you for the gift of your time and thank you for sharing in my life. And to JT who drove several hours to be here - you probably thought you were ‘just’ attending a birthday party but what you were doing my friend was answering a prayer – mine.

“Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Eph 5:14

And so today instead of the dread that I had anticipated I find myself almost overwhelmed with gratitude for this precious life that I have been given.
- I am grateful for my many friends
- I am grateful for my sister who somehow walked away from going airborne and rolling her car 3 times at 70 miles an hour on I-10 last week.
- I am grateful for my brother who called and listened with such incredible love as I melted down for almost an hour
- I am grateful for our children who I worry about, pray for and hope for – Brian, Lance, Andy, Liza, Tyler – I love you dearly
- I am grateful for my wife who brings such light and love to my life – Happy Anniversary Baby!
- I am grateful for my mom, my dad (who is no longer here) and my God for the gift of life

Fifty years ago today this journey, this miracle, called life, began for me, last Saturday in the midst of the deafening ‘noise’, God whispered in my ear……….. Wake up…. I need to tell you that I Love you

And if you listen, just a little, God is whispering in your ear as well ……..He has something to tell you…….

Finding what you’re looking for….

I was reading something the other day on the topic of Miracles. Somewhere between early childhood and becoming adults we somehow lose our frame of reference. We start looking for burning bushes and seas being parted and the deep bass voice from the skies above. We are so busy looking at, and for, what’s missing that we miss entirely the ordinary day to day events & stuff in our lives that are evidence of the miraculous.

And as we grow up and become older and wiser, we spend more and more time looking. Looking for success - Looking for Mr/Ms Right - Looking for that next promotion and a better job - Looking for happiness - Looking to make it through until Friday - and on a rare day - Looking for God. Often we are so busy looking for “it” that we never pause long enough to let “it” find us. And when, based on the hard evidence, we become highly skeptical of things such as Miracles & Grace, we tend to go blind and miss the most obvious of things such as our own noisy mind, which is itself an extraordinary miracle of grace.

“When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ He was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”
Genesis 28:16-18

“And I was not aware” - huhhh, how could the guy miss God? And how can we? We are so busy looking for what “it” should look like that we are unable to be fully aware of “it’s” presence when “it” is already all around us. In Alice in Wonderland, when Alice came to a fork in the road and couldn’t decide which way to go, Alice asked the Cheshire cat for advice. The cat asks her what she is looking for and Alice says she doesn’t know. The cat then responds, “Then it doesn’t matter much which way you go”.

What are you looking for? When you find “it” - Will you know??

“I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, And crooked places straight.”
Isaiah 42:16

There is more to your life than you know. There is more to your story than what you have read. God sent His son to rewrite your story, to help you find what we are all looking for.

The great Abraham Joshua Heschel once said: “I did not ask for success I asked for wonder”.

I pray that you look for and find wonder, that you find what you are looking for, and that you let “it” find you.

Life, Death and the morning paper

My wife always reads the paper in the morning including the obituaries. Old, young, some with family, others with none… at some point the game will be over for us and we will make our one, last big move. This one obituary however hit me and has stuck with me ever since. It was almost the full length, top to bottom, of the paper. As I read through this with all of this man’s successes, all of his “wins”, I was struck by how much this resembled a resume or perhaps a business portfolio.

My wife and I are part of this group affectionately dubbed “The Love Machine” that is a group of primarily Christian, both men & women, all seekers, that meet weekly. While many of our weekly gatherings have been powerful this past Tuesday was extraordinary and sacred beyond words and it was Romans 12:1-5 in living, breathing, loving action. I thought of Jacob’s words: ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ ……. This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” And I was not aware of it – Yes! Now, I know how Jacob felt.

I read the other day that the mistakes we have made & the things we all wish we had not done - these can and will be tempered with time. It is instead the things we do not do, the things that fear, or our schedule stop us from doing, these are the things we will take to our death bed and for these there is little softening of the blow. It seems that if the Devil can not make us evil, he will simply make us busy. Most of us will never be evil or commit horrible crimes – no, we will instead spend our time, God’s time, leading “normal”, mediocre lives with mediocre relationships. And whether it is evil or just busy-busy-got-to-go-got-to-go either one is effective at taking me out of my life and out of any deep connection with God. Back in the early 90’s I planned to get around to people and things that matter most someday, oneday, when things settle down - things do not ever settle down, not really. Life and love and relationships, they all take time, they can not be microwaved. Each day our hearts will beat one hundred thousand times, each day we get eighty six thousand seconds to choose.

Please take a couple deep breaths….. ok……. now please turn off the cell phone just for a couple minutes. Now, imagine if you will, that you are at a funeral, most of us have attended a funeral so this should not be hard. The flowers are beautiful, the pictures in the reception area are moving, people are arriving, the family is running around frantic but this funeral, something is very different about this funeral. As you become aware of more of the people you make your way up to the casket and this…………. this is your funeral.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; (and make you busy) I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
John 10:10

One day your obituary will be written and read – what will it say?

Fences & Life

Our dog, Bear, is the self-appointed protector for our backyard or more accurately, our back fence. There is a walking path in back of our fence and we often see Bear out there often running furiously and barking, chasing the evil forces that would dare to venture too close to the fence. Except for a couple spots it is hard to see to the other side of the cedar fence and I often wonder - what is on the other side of the fence?

 

 

Someday, oneday, when I have my dream house, someday oneday, when I get that bonus; someday, oneday when I have a better car; someday, oneday when I have ‘enough’ fill_in_the_blank…. someday…. oneday…. I will know what is on the other side of the fence.

 

My wife and I went to a funeral this past Saturday. She had been admitted to the hospital earlier in the week and just days later Teresa got a call that she had died. There is nothing so absolute as death, nothing so poignant, nothing so inescapable, nothing so clarifying. As I was sitting in church at the funeral I found myself wondering how many conversations that needed to happen will now never happen; how many wounds are left behind in the hearts that remain; I thought of my father - and I began to cry. Why is it that all too often our love for someone is deepest when we see them at death’s doorstep? When I was 25 years old I had difficulty connecting myself with death but as almost abstract as death may have seemed it is, at age 25 or any other age, the most concrete of all realities. Someday we will all know what is on the other side of the ‘fence’ and, as we left the funeral on Saturday I thought - now- she knows.

 

A couple thousand years ago a man by the name of Jesus came and He said that He came from the other side of the fence. He said He came that we may have life. He said that in His Father’s house are are many rooms and that He was going back to the other side of the fence to prepare a place for us. In the grand scheme of eternity, each of our lives on this side of the fence is little more than a line in the sand between two points: date_of_birth <-> date_of_death. Everything, every moment carries with it it’s own finality and time is absolute - we can not side-step its passage, we can not create more time and we do not know when the hands of our clock will stop ticking. Abraham Lincoln once said: “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

 

“A thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance.”

John 10:10

I was reading a book in which this man quoted his 4 year old son. The trouble with life, this little 4 year old shared is - “there is no ‘rewind’ button.”

Life does not happen “tomorrow”, Life can not happen yesterday, Life happens now - today….

“This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Psalm 118:24

seeing vs SEEING

Hey honey do we have any ketchup left….. do you know if we still have any of those… ….  Anyone else recognize these conversations or is it just me?  Something happens to me when I am standing at the door of my kitchen pantry.  Somehow stuff just disappears or maybe it shape shifts or something along those lines.  My wife, however, does not suffer this same ailment and somehow has full-time radar such that nothing escapes her sight. While this phenomeon is baffling, I am beginning to suspect that this is due more to my ability (desire?) to “look” rather than my actual capacity to “see”.  
“Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven’t time - and to see takes time”
Georgia O’Keefe (Painter of among other things - Flowers)
Many of us go through life in partial blindness, with mud on our windshields and no time to stop to ‘clean’ or if the truth be told we didn’t really want to look anyway.   After Calvary, after the Resurrection, after raising people from the dead, after post-Resurrection appearances, after walking into rooms with closed doors, after he had served up Breakfast on the lake in Galilee, after all of that the Disciples then ask Christ - say Jesus, can we go ahead and get back to the main bullet point? -  I mean that was cool and all but when’s the Kingdom getting restored ‘cuz we don’t see it yet. 
“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand”
Matthew 13:13
Too often, I navigate through my got-to-have, got-to-do, got-to-go life and then I stand in pain and/or stunned silence as I wonder where that wall, that I just hit, came from - sometimes - I forget to look.  I am constantly amazed at how my kids can be bored when there are so many available ”opportunities” to not be bored if they would just look - like cleaning the house or washing dad’s car  ;-)     In John 4 there is a conversation that Jesus has with this woman in this little Samaritan town of Sychar that leaves this woman transformed.  
“Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.”
John 4:35
By the way -  did you ever notice how nobody leaves a chat with Jesus saying - gotta roll but, hey, good talk man, that was fun let’s do it again some time.  And the kicker on this exchange is that after this talk, the disciples come back and Christ has a tougher time getting through to his own discpicles than He did in completely transforming this woman’s entire life.  Apparently they never even saw this woman.  And each of us tend to look and  see differently, through our own set of tinted lenses. The tint can be our desires, our pain, our hatred, our fears, our history and that determines how and what we see.    I see anger but miss the pain, I see judgment but miss forgiveness, I see the world but miss God.  It takes courage and time to “look” - it takes Love to “See” and It is amazing what I do not see when I am not looking!  
To my children, who are such gifts from God, to my family who have loved me in ways I could have never imagined and to my precious wife who helps me “see” - I LOVE YOU.
Peace!
Andre

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