Keep Christ out of Christmas! Please!

I am starting a new movement to keep Christ out of Christmas.

Why?

Jesus is much more than "the reason for season". God, as he rightly claims to be, cannot be worshiped on only one day.

I will fight to keep Jesus out Christmas in my house, and ask him to be the reason for the other 364 days of the year.

Hear me; I LOVE CHRISTMAS! I love all of it! But...

Will you join me, all of you who each year get upset that decorations are going up "too early" and that the holiday has become "too commercialized"?

What if we lived what we claimed on Christmas for the rest of the year?

Would we send out cards to our friends in June reminding them that the Messiah has come for them?

Would be buy a gift for a friend and attach a note saying "Christ gave his life for me, this is just a reminder of the free gift he has to offer?"

Would we sings glad tiding of great joy everyday of our lives?

Would be pass our candy canes and teach people that we are washed clean of all our sins by the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ?

Would be make it a priority in our lives that those who live in darkness, who have not been told of this Lovely-always-and-forever-never-stopping-loving God exists?

Would weep and sing Silent Night alone in our bedrooms, holding a candle, proclaiming that indeed the world can sleep in peace, for the Savior has come!

I will not allow my Lord and Savior to have prominence one day. My God is far to big for that.

He has charged us to storm the very gates of hell and release the captives.

He did not come to do battle with toy companies, the music industry and Hollywood.

He came to do battle with Satan, and reclaim his beloved children.

I refuse to keep Christ in Christmas (only). I will place him at the forefront everyday of my life.

Join me?

powerball tricks

Luke 19:11-27 

The Story About Investment

While he had their attention, and because they were getting close to Jerusalem by this time and expectation was building that God’s kingdom would appear any minute, he told this story:

“There was once a man descended from a royal house who needed to make a long trip back to headquarters to get authorization for his rule and then return. But first he called ten servants together, gave them each a sum of money, and instructed them, ‘Operate with this until I return.’
“But the citizens there hated him. So they sent a commission with a signed petition to oppose his rule: ‘We don’t want this man to rule us.’
“When he came back bringing the authorization of his rule, he called those ten servants to whom he had given the money to find out how they had done.
“The first said, ‘Master, I doubled your money.’
“He said, ‘Good servant! Great work! Because you’ve been trustworthy in this small job, I’m making you governor of ten towns.’
“The second said, ‘Master, I made a fifty percent profit on your money.’
“He said, ‘I’m putting you in charge of five towns.’
“The next servant said, ‘Master, here’s your money safe and sound. I kept it hidden in the cellar. To tell you the truth, I was a little afraid. I know you have high standards and hate sloppiness, and don’t suffer fools gladly.’
“He said, ‘You’re right that I don’t suffer fools gladly—and you’ve acted the fool! Why didn’t you at least invest the money in securities so I would have gotten a little interest on it?’

 

“Then he said to those standing there, ‘Take the money from him and give it to the servant who doubled my stake.’
“They said, ‘But Master, he already has double . . .’
“He said, ‘That’s what I mean: Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of. Play it safe and end up holding the bag.
“‘As for these enemies of mine who petitioned against my rule, clear them out of here. I don’t want to see their faces around here again.’”

If you could really change the world by "giving away a lot of the winnings" you're wrong...we've given more than a percentage of 500,000,000 to charity. Is it any different?

The only thing that can change the world is your life and devotion to God and his creation.

Everything else is a really great illusion

God loves short people...

I have  confession;
I lied and deceived the government.  Years ago, while renewing my drivers license, I stated that I was 5'7" while in fact I am 5'5".

I wanted to be be taller, if just for four years.

There, I feel better...no, it still cracks me up!

But I have come to embrace and love being short for many reasons.

I don't have a "Napolian Complex".
It has never bothered me rock climbing because I have an enormous reach with my arms.
I always find my size pants because the majority of the free world does not wear them.

...and I have to stand on my tippy toes to see the person read the Gospel in church.

Yep, I do. Why?

I want to see the person who is speaking about Jesus. To me hearing the stories of him are no different that seeing him...he is real, he is alive, he is speaking to me.

Once I even stood on the back pew to see over all the heads.

We stand on our toes to watch a game or a parade.

We'll stand on our toes to kiss our beloved, to look out or into a window...

I stand on my toes to hear of my King. 

Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way—he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by.

When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?”

Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.”
Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”

Luke 19

Friends, Jesus promised he will be back...are you gonna just stand their flatfooted? 

This King wants to eat with us, live in not only our homes but our bodies!  He knows we were crooks, liars, addicts, craving lust, cheats, self-righteous and still he wants to be with us!

Come down from there, join us short people...he came for you too.

what a follower of Christ looks like in slow-motion

http://gizmodo.com/5963508/watching-a-cheetah-run-in-slow-motion-is-still-pretty-damn-fast

Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. 

He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! 

The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.

Romans 4:20-25

Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. 

 Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! 

Hebrews 12:2

snake oil is getting tastier

"Ask rain from the Lord
    in the season of the spring rain,
from the Lord who makes the storm clouds,
    and he will give them showers of rain,
    to everyone the vegetation in the field.
 

For the household gods utter nonsense,
    and the diviners see lies;
they tell false dreams
    and give empty consolation.
Therefore the people wander like sheep;
    they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd."

Zacharia 10:1-2

Time was you could spot a snake-oil salesman a mile away. They came riding into town with a wagon full of elixirs, a slick line or two, and a really quick tongue. 

In hind sight we, at this stage in time, laugh at all of the suckers who were taken. How could they be so stupid? 

We are just as duped. We  run to the first shiny wagon with the smooth voice that pulls into town on our TV's, computers, and MP3s. 

The hawkers are no longer poor. They are millionaires. 

They are no longer carry a bamboo cane and wear a bowler hat. They are well dressed. 

They no longer strangers. We have made them cultural icons.

Like little kids who in the heat of summer we salivate, beg, cry and run to the first truck we see offering a what all adults know is no good. 

They tell us things that make our heart race, our desires full, our lusts fulfilled. They help us find our happy place. So we pull out the cork and drink to the dregs...but

Like a one night stand the next day our lives are still our lives and the world hasn't really changed...

If we are headed to a bright new day where is the rain? Where are the crops? 

Where is the universal joy? Where is the care for the widow, the orphan? 

Why do we kill our babies and our old for the sake of "convenience " or the others out of hate?

If you are running after the cart. Please stop, just for a moment, and consider drinking from Living Water. That's one of the names given to Jesus. He's also called the Balm of Gilead, and the Bread of Life. 

Why do we have to keep trying new oils, new ways, new plans? Because they all fail. Period. 

Don't get duped. You'll be called stupid. 

That's OK.

You will healed...and some are even cured!

resident alien day16-17. Gaga, ducks and Gideon

Being a resident alien brings a sense of living in a state of near-constant tension. It is not debilitating but can be empowering. It burns in the eyes of those who's scales have dropped.

The tension is often spoken visually. Right and wrong, pain and glory...

Deep within the heart of a person who is pressing into the love of God is a voice that often finds difficulty expressing itself.

It shifted me this morning...and God began to speak.

It started oddly enough with an image I had seen of a building explosion last night on the news. It turned to be a large strip club and emergency workers were saying it was an act of God that it exploded at 5:30pm...after the daycare center right next to it had closed for the day. No children were hurt...

Really?

Sex was plied day in and day out right next to the center. Both were open side-by-side day-by-day.

While parents were dropping off children in one building to learn and thrive the children of other parents were being used for sexual gain and exploitation.

I wonder if any kid asked about the signs on the building next door, or if the parents ever thought about what they were doing, or if the zoning board felt it odd, or the city who made money off of sex...

Sick and enraged I found myself guilty of not doing anything. I had given up my sense of power. I had denied God in my life...

Who is powerful in this age?

Forbes just told us that Lady Gaga wields more power than the Queen of England.

So I prayed..and God led me to the Duck Farmer.

He refused to sell his property. He alone stood up.

He looks very odd...his move is in the middle of the highway now. It will be a dangerous place to live when the highway is opened. How will he get out? How will be sleep? Will his house get hit?

The duck framer reminded me of the power I yield.

I am a mighty warrior of God, just like Gideon (see Judges 6). I refuse to live in a wine press while invaders steal my children and take my land.

We all are stirred when we see a single person standing in the way of evil.

Aren't we called to do the same?

resident alien day 15; Thanksgiving Day Prayer

A Sabbath Song

What a beautiful thing, God, to give thanks,
    to sing an anthem to you, the High God!
To announce your love each daybreak,
    sing your faithful presence all through the night,
Accompanied by dulcimer and harp,
    the full-bodied music of strings.

Psalm 92:1-3 

For the record my family and I never try to put forth any pretenses.  

We do not claim to be "holier that thou". 

We admit our failures to others. 

"I am sorry" is a common phrase in our house. 

Yet...

We do boast. 

But we boast in the Lord. 

We have seen great joys, and great sorrows. 

We have birthed, and we have buried. 

We have had plenty, and we have had little. 

But in it and through it all, God is;

supremely lovely 

supremely good

supremely able

supremely merciful

simply supreme

And so it is that God has taught and helped us through our friends to sing the songs of the resident alien. 

Today I am thankful for more than I could ever list. 

I am simply thankful that I am alive. Period. 

When I was an enemy of God 

and a tormentor of his followers, 

God did not let me go down to the grave. 

Beloved, here is a true and trustworthy saying....

God is Supreme. 

resident alien day 14: aliens have no assuptions

Living life  as a resident alien, one who belongs to God and not the world, requires us to be  inflexible in dedication but flexible in implementation.

We live by God assumptions, not our own. We assume certain truths and model our lives around them; 

We are assume and are inflexible our in Biblical and Creedal beliefs. We stand on the truths of faith as handed down. We are inflexible in our  belief that the human sin-condition is still the same, and that Jesus was the one atoning sacrifice for all time.

We assume that apart from Christ, we are helpless to save ourselves.

These truths will not change. God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

We assume we are to be flexible in how these truths are applied to the world. Changes in social structure, technology, and media tell us that how we deliver and proclaim God's grace needs to be adaptive. To often our programs and agenda's become our idols. We are called to daily die to our agenda and desires and be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Anything less than this James, the brother of Jesus, calls satanic.

Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. 

Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. It’s the furthest thing from wisdom—it’s animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.

Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor. James 3:13-18

Yesterday God exposed my assumptions, and His. 

I left my house at 7:30am assuming an easy drive to a warehouse in New Jersey to deliver items we had collected and to be home around 2pm in time to go to my daughters Thanksgiving pageant. 

We were sidetracked all day because trucks cannot drive on the parkways
We delivered our items to the basement food pantry in a church
I missed my daughters show 
I pulled in just before 10pm. 

We assumed an agenda. God assumed we would be faithful.

Our little band of alien misfits finally arrived at our destination only to have the chief of police look into your truck and announce they were not taking any of the items we had collected.  We prayed, and our contact made some phone calls and we ended up in at his church. He is a deacon at a Catholic church with 1,200 members and here we were, a little band from a church of 60, part of a denomination that had split many years ago from Rome. 

We stocked their empty pantry shelves with diapers and cleaning supplies that folks who need help cannot buy with food stamps.  John, the Franciscan Friar who runs the pantry could not stop talking about how thrilled the families would be to see all of the diapers and wipes we had brought.  A husband and wife had just "happened" to stop at the pantry to see if they had enough stock to open tomorrow. While we were there a woman who attends the church just "happened" to stop by with a number of bags of food that she could not donate anywhere else because of so many donations coming in from around the tri-state area.

We piled up bag after bag of clothes, mostly new, into another room. Such a spirit of joy came upon us that folks sat on top of them for pictures.What at first looked like a problem in the back of the truck had become a source of comfort.

Before we left the deacon wanted to show us his church. It was immense. I felt dwarfed. I told him of our church, of how we have been meeting in homes, parking lots, schools, senior centers, other churches and schools. I told him we were part of the new Anglican movement, and that his Pope had been blessing us and supporting us. It was a holy moment for me.

As we stood on the sidewalk preparing to leave I asked the deacon to please pray for us for our trip back home. He showered a blessing on us, thanking God for us and our work. Invoking protection and love to cover us and proceed us. It was a unification of a fractured Bride...and the unity came about due to a hurricane named Sandy.

I turned to load up and it finally struck me. We had ended up at a church named "Assumption".
Indeed, this is how God assumed it would be.

brocalli

resident alien day 13; alien babies and gay marriage

I have alien children.

They have neither green heads nor big eyes. They were not found in a desert in Nevada. They do not try to phone home.

They are living in America as resident aliens. They were "born" as such, as are all people who are baptized into the Christian Faith regardless of denomination; Baptist, Church of God in Christ, Anglican, Catholic, Episcopal.

Those who are baptized as adults have an advantage in that they have a voice to claim their true citizenship, but those who are baptized as infants are no less aliens. They have been given to God, just as Hannah had done:

"Every year this man went from his hometown up to Shiloh to worship and offer a sacrifice to God-of-the-Angel-Armies. Eli and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, served as the priests of God there. When Elkanah sacrificed, he passed helpings from the sacrificial meal around to his wife Peninnah and all her children, but he always gave an especially generous helping to Hannah because he loved her so much, and because God had not given her children. But her rival wife taunted her cruelly, rubbing it in and never letting her forget that God had not given her children. This went on year after year. Every time she went to the sanctuary of God she could expect to be taunted. Hannah was reduced to tears and had no appetite.

Her husband Elkanah said, “Oh, Hannah, why are you crying? Why aren’t you eating? And why are you so upset? Am I not of more worth to you than ten sons?”
So Hannah ate. Then she pulled herself together, slipped away quietly, and entered the sanctuary. The priest Eli was on duty at the entrance to God’s Temple in the customary seat. Crushed in soul, Hannah prayed to God and cried and cried—inconsolably. Then she made a vow:

Oh, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
If you’ll take a good, hard look at my pain,
If you’ll quit neglecting me and go into action for me
By giving me a son,
I’ll give him completely, unreservedly to you.
I’ll set him apart for a life of holy discipline."

Our infant-baptized-God-gifts are to be raised up in the ways of God until they can claim by the gift of faith through the power of the Holy Spirit that they are His. These little ones are no less residents of a foreign land than we are. 

Yesterday my littlest alien-baby spent the day with me collecting food, clothes, cleaning supplies and money for victims of Hurricane Sandy.  It did not matter what color they were, what their home country was, nor their sexual orientation. My alien babies know that God causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on everyone and that national disasters affect us all because the world is broken due to sin. 

On the way home from a lovely dinner last night, my oldest alien-baby who just started kindergarten pipes up from a way-past-bedtime back seat; 

"hey dad, can girls marry girls and boys marry boys?" 

I took a breath, prayed, and my wife and I each had that look. 

My emotions were not caught up in "us and them" , "right or wrong", or any sense of frustration. 

I was flooded with the sense that here, in the back seat of my wife's Honda CRV, after driving home from someones house who is on the forefront of battling human slavery in Connecticut, after my youngest daughter nearly passed out in her lunch since she was so tired after running back and forth to two trucks loading up material aid for total strangers, after we had spent a day as a family, each of us loving the least, and past over in our town and nation, I was about to drop a bomb on my little kid...

The world is going to tell you that you are wrong

The world is going to tell you that you are hateful

The world is going to call you all sorts of names

You, little child, will be persecuted

God gave me great love in that moment; for my daughter and for the world. 

"Why do you ask honey?

Oh, "....." told me in kindergarten today that boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls

Oh, and why did he tell this to you? Who told him? 

His dad did...

Olivia, sometimes the world does things and says things that we understand aren't right in the eyes of God. Sometimes we get called names and get excluded from things. 

We understand that God made men and women for each other and that men should marry women only. The laws of our state say that this isn't true. I know it's confusing, but we are to follow God. Hey bud, if your friends tell you things that you know aren't right, just say, we feel differently and love them. God's people have to follow God's rules.

Remember how much God loved Nineveh, and how Jonah was really upset with them? God wanted Nineveh to stop, but he told Jonah to love them anyway. And hey, great job asking dad about something that confused you. You can always ask me, all the time. "

So I looked at my wife, and she winked at me. 

If you read this and you disagree, please have the respect for my kid I have for yours, and for you. 

It breaks my heart that my kid who has such a big loving heart for everyone is going to be harassed, confused, and told she is phobic, hateful, and a slew of other things when all she does is love God and everyone around her...

I guess I shouldn't worry so bad. She is a veteran of persecution. She is only five.

She was told God was fake and she was stupid for believing in him way back when she was three. That's when we first taught her to love those who hate you, just as Jesus did.

resident alien day 12...living on the edge

It's been a couple of days since I was last able to sit write. It has been very busy indeed.

This past Saturday I was at our annual meeting for the Anglican Church of North America. We were impressed upon to live life on the edge, not so much expressively as positionally.

As resident aliens we are called to live on the fringes of society. Do we?

Take a look at your contact list in your phone. Are you pouring into the lives of folks who look as different from you as East is from West?

The Messiah spent his time with those on the edges of society; women, children, prostitutes, terminally ill, mentally ill, dead. Do we?

When was the last time you sat down and talked with a prostitute sharing the love of Jesus?

When was the last time you sent an email out to your friend who shunned by her family?

When was the last time other than a holiday or when your church planned the event that you sat down with a homeless person to share a meal and conversation?

Why do we have such an aversion to the edges? We crave them in brownies, but not in our churches?

Why?

Resolve this day to live on the edge for the love of God.

Levi gave a large dinner at his home for Jesus. Everybody was there, tax men and other disreputable characters as guests at the dinner. The Pharisees and their religion scholars came to his disciples greatly offended. “What is he doing eating and drinking with crooks and ‘sinners’?”

Jesus heard about it and spoke up, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting outsiders, not insiders—an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out.”

resident alien day 9...meeting Princess Meg after Sandy

Resident Aliens go places they never expect to go, like Freeport, Long Island after hurricane Sandy. It was a 3 hour drive from my house to an area I had never stopped at before, but had driven by many times to and from the East End of Long Island years ago. I met Meg the Alien.

I spent the day there working on Margret's house. Meg is a 72 year old Jamaican whose friends call her "Meg". She told me she was named after Princess Margarette so I called her "your highness" all day. I had come more prepared to talk to folks than work since I've been through times in my life of desperation. I started to swing my hammer and Her Highness would walk past me always busy, offering me food and drink.

When the flood came the canals across the street brought three feet of water into her house. Most of her personal items downstairs had to be thrown out. What she had left from downstairs had been piled up in one road. We spent the day removing the lower four feet of drywall and insulation on every wall of the lower floor then spraying the mold that had begun to grow.  We pulled up the flooring as well, every square foot, and hauled it out to the front curb for all the world to see...waiting for the bucket loaders and the dump trucks dispatched by the city to haul every ones memories to a mass grave.

But Her Highness kept smiling all day long...and singing. When it was time to break for lunch the group gathered and sang a Methodist Hymn as a blessing and thanks giving. Her Highness sang the loudest, praising God and thanking him for everything. While we ate I asked her about the water;

"Well" she said in thick accent,

"In the beginning God made the earth and the water separate, and we been taking away from the water and making into land for a long time. God just wanted to make it water again."

When you run into an alien you just know it. One of two things happen; they bless you or you think they are freaks. 

I was blessed by a Princess Alien named Meg.

Oh, how could we ever sing God’s song

    in this wasteland?
 

If I ever forget you, Jerusalem,
    let my fingers wither and fall off like leaves.
 

Let my tongue swell and turn black
    if I fail to remember you,
 

If I fail, O dear Jerusalem,
    to honor you as my greatest.

Psalm 137-4-6

resident alien day 8...drive through dinners

My friend dropped this bomb one day in an ethics class in seminary;

"our theological condition drives our ethical imperative"

In real-person-speak this says;

"you are saved now lived saved"

Last night my wife and I picked our kids up after a parent-teacher conference for Olivia. The teacher asked me to bless her room (which I did), we grabbed Subway and they ate in the back of the car and were the youngest visitors ever to a Watertown Zoning and Planning meeting.

We met two couples from our church, our landlord (who has still not charged us rent for 5 months) and our friend who is the Methodist Pastor in town.

We asked if we could have a special condition change in zoning, one women on the committee who knows of our work well really supported up, and they encouraged us to proceed next month with a petition. When our landlord came clean on record and said he had been allowing us to try out the space rent-free for the past five months I heard "I wish I didn't hear that"...and laughter so I pipped up "I"ll grant you absolution which I did. After that others asked too, which I did.

We left the meeting and gathered for prayer outside the meeting room doors, held hands (with our landlord and Methodist Pastor friend) and thanked God.

My kids drove home and watching Charlie Brown Thanksgiving...being reminded that many died and risked their lives to give us freedom to worship God, and that He was the author and protector of our faith.

Now as I type, I am struck that last night we were continuing the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Story, and they were continuing the story of Mary and Joesph fleeing to Egypt, and they were continuing the story of.....all resident aliens

It's 4:30 am and I have drive to Long Island to help out victims of Hurricane Sandy.

I don't like here. 

resident alien day 8...auto pilot faith and salvation

I've gotten to that point, and I pray you have too that my lips part with the words "open my lips oh, Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise"

I have developed the routine when my feet do not hit the floor until I ask God to; 

1)create in me a clean heart

2)fill me with his Holy Spirit

3)  restore the joy of the day I understood I had been transferred from death to life for all of eternity. 

My first thought as I enter in a state of semiconscious is "thank you" for the breath in lungs...

This has happened because I have put effort into my participation with the work of God in my life. 

Can anyone say this is bad? You cannot! This is happening without me being able to stop it. 

I have entered the zone of the resident alien. 

Of course during the day I still have to obey the rules of my homeland and this is not easy. The rules and the perks of this place seem pretty good. We are not tempted with things we don't crave. That is the basic idea behind a temptation. 

So we train, and train, and train. And fill, and fill, and fill. And thank God for doing what we could not do ourselves, obtain our salvation apart from Christ. 

Auto pilot faith  is not the evil thing this Post-Reformation world makes it out to be! It helps us focus when the world tempts us with dual-citizenship. It helps keep our eyes on the nationality line of our true passport. 

They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. 

But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. 

You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.

Day 7...death, chidlren and flying fish

I've got two kids and we've gone through a number of Goldfish. The first time one of them died I was frantic.

I'm a dad.

The last thing a dad ever wants to see is the heart of his little girl in shards, especially over something he can't control.

The fish died while she was in school so I wrapped him (?) in a paper towel, dutifully scoured the house for a box and placed him in the fridge...them promptly sent a text to my wife if she somehow came across it.

I spent that day contemplating death, resurrection, God's care over creation, childhood grief and age-appropriate theology. Yes, all over a Goldfish.

My story-behind-the-story is three-fold;

1) When I was confronted by the reality of death as a child my parents were not prepared to offer the Hope we have in Christ.

2) Furthermore I witness first-hand the helplessness of watching my wife's heart break when I had to confront her (as she was coming out of anesthesia)  with the gut-wrenching reality that our son had died in childbirth.

3) I am a resident alien, and a follower of the only Death-Destroying God. 

Yes, a Goldfish brought on a wave of memory. I live in a foreign land where things die.

In my homeland, things live forever.

"I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.” The Enthroned continued, “Look! I’m making everything new. Write it all down—each word dependable and accurate.”

 Revelation 21:4

The Resurrection is not a placebo for people who have experienced death and trauma.

It is a documented fact (with many witness outside of the Bible). It is proof par-excellence of God's control over death, and as such, over all of creation.

Last night as my wife and I sat on our kids' beds reading our nightly Bible story, singing  love songs to Jesus, and offering prayers for ourselves and others,  our youngest blurts out;

"I hope yellow (her fish) dies soon so he can go to heaven!"

This kid is a resident alien.

NB
I have come to understand that we all, who have suffered great loss live with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It comes from living here. I have full awareness of this all, and I have been given deep, deep healing of memory. I still grieve, but not like those without Hope. My wife and I have even been given visions of our son, Samuel, in the glory of God. If you suffer, message me, I know of some great resources.

resident alien day 6: Jesus is a foodie

Then he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”

That triggered a response from one of the guests: “How fortunate the one who gets to eat dinner in God’s kingdom!”

Jesus followed up. “Yes. For there was once a man who threw a great dinner party and invited many. When it was time for dinner, he sent out his servant to the invited guests, saying, ‘Come on in; the food’s on the table.’
“Then they all began to beg off, one after another making excuses....The first said, ‘I bought a piece of property and need to look it over. Send my regrets.’
“Another said, ‘I just bought five teams of oxen, and I really need to check them out. Send my regrets.’
“And yet another said, ‘I just got married and need to get home to my wife.’
“The servant went back and told the master what had happened. He was outraged and told the servant, ‘Quickly, get out into the city streets and alleys. Collect all who look like they need a square meal, all the misfits and homeless and wretched you can lay your hands on, and bring them here.’
“The servant reported back, ‘Master, I did what you commanded—and there’s still room.’
“The master said, ‘Then go to the country roads. Whoever you find, drag them in. I want my house full! Let me tell you, not one of those originally invited is going to get so much as a bite at my dinner party.’”

 Luke 14:12-24 (The Message)

We have been issued the greatest invitation to the ultimate feast. And the guests have sent back a "will not attend" for reasons that seem good but in proportion pale miserably. 

We have been invited by the Creator of the cow, the duck, sage, salt and everything else. The penultimate foodie, Jesus, offers us a ticket to a dinner party worth more than we could ever pay and most say "not thanks". We trade a feast for garbage.

As resident aliens we are ones who have heard the invitation and have come to the banquet.  But there are still seats to fill. Fill them. Fill them with the people we have been asked to go to; the desperately marginalized of our world, the ones who are homeless, wretched and missfits.

Are our churches filled with these... or is it a...

 a banquet hall for the broken,

  or a dinner party for the content? 

Today pray, "Lord, you have filled my table with the best of things, and still better is to come.  Lord, please point me to those whom you wish to invite to the Feast. Let me get over myself and my fears so that others may get to you." Amen

resident alien day5; broken and poured out

If we are to live as aliens, our desire must not be for the things around us, but for the will of the Father. What is his desire?

Ultimately it is making all things new. C.S. Lewis calls this "making death work backwards"

To keep your desire not on the shiny things of this life pray this simple prayer;
"Lord, break my heart for that which breaks yours"

Resident Alien Day3: holy dress-up

"So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. 
 And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. 
Never be without it. "

 Colossians 3:112-13 (The Message) 

I mess-upper. Period. 

You mess-upper too. Period. 

When you wake up in the morning this is a good thing to remember you are mess-upper. After I say thank you I pray a number of prayers before I leave my bed. 

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..."

This is the prayer for the mess-uppers. It is a prayer of forgiveness. It is a balm for the sin-sick-hurt soul. It releases the poisons of un-forgiveness and self-righteousness.  Only those who mess up and have people mess up on them should pray this. 

Some mornings we want to hide from God and stay under the covers so we do not have face what we have done or what others have done to us. If we only woke up after a perfect day no one would ever be able to leave their beds. 

The only way we can live as resident aliens is if we embrace and flesh-out the forgiveness God has offered us. This is not a call to be a holy-door mat. God calls us into account with him and each other. We are asked to keep it in proportion to the forgiveness we have been granted in Christ.  

"God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
    his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
    How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
    He’s all I’ve got left."

Lamentations 3:22-24 (The Message)

Arise Oh, Sleeper! You have been forgiven...dress-up in holy love 

resident alien day 3: johhny get your compass

At one point in my life I studied for my state watercraft license through a program. It was both intensive and extensive for a kid my age but what stuck in my mind were all the stories my instructor shared of his sailboat's keel being caught in lobster pot markers and "TV makes dead cows".

TV makes dead cows was a mnemonic device I thought up to help me remember how to adjust my compass on my chart. There is a formula you follow and a few numbers you plug is so that you literally don't go "off the chart". TVMD was stuck in my head and even now, thirty years later I can recall it.

TV = "true compass reading"

Makes = magnetic reading

Dead = deviation

Cows = compass

Proper orientation is vitally important when living as a resident alien and a follower of Jesus, but most of us neglect it as the first priority of the day. If you start to sail before you calculate your compass and orient your chart you may think you are going the right direction but in reality you are not. You maybe only a couple of degrees off "true", but over time that slight angle will increase until you are way off the mark. How often does this happen in our day?

So, how are we to orient your internal compass as we live here?

One great tip we have developed in our church is to keep up with the daily readings from our lectionary. These are a collection of scripture readings from the psalms, Old Testament, New Testament, and a Gospel reading. They rotate yearly and are collected so that your read and understand the great themes (characteristics of God) and the meta-narrative (over-arching story of God's redemptive work in history) of the Bible. The readings are spread across the whole Bible so that we can adjust using all of the characteristics of God. Too often people read only the Gospels or the New Testament when come to faith. This has the effect of only using the magnetic readings and neglecting the deviations. We see a piece of the direction but not the whole chart.

Here are some tips to use this great tool (the lectionary readings) to keep you on track as a resident alien;

1) Read before you even take your shower. Yes, I understand some are not "morning people" but even if you get just a few verses in your mind it will keep you from drifting.  Just like sailing, adjust yourself before your journey. If you get them inside you in the morning you can chew on them all day.

2) Stick with it. If you miss a day, as with all spiritual disciplines, just jump right back in. If you wander off course it is best to stop and readjust.

3) Develop a method to help. We send out the readings each morning via an email. It hits our inbox before 6am! You can print these up, bookmark them, whatever. If you have the chart in your possession you will use it.

Orientation is important. If you don't know where you are starting from you can't get anywhere.

Resident Alien Day 2: focus

Years ago I heard this story:
A man went to hear a famous evangelist preaching on revival. He loved the Lord and had a passion for the world to hear  the message of salvation and mercy through Jesus Christ. 

After the service he ran up to the preacher,  and with a renewed passion he explained:

"That was amazing! I'm with you! What must we do to bring revival!"

The evangelist looked at the man and said "it's simple, go back home, draw a circle in the dirt and stand in the circle. Then pray in earnest "Lord, I pray that you would send revival to everyone standing inside this circle"

If we are to live like resident aliens, as missionaries in this land doing the work we are called to do while we await upon the day the Lord shall return we need revival in ourselves. This can happen if we keep these things in mind;

1) We need God as desperately as our next breath, and that next breath was provided by Him. Tell this to yourself every day.

2) We are the first mission field we are called to work with, at least that is what Jesus tells us

A Simple Guide for Behavior

“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.

 It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. 

Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Matthew 7:3-6 (Message Translation)

3) See # 1 

If we are to act as  salt, light, living water,  and the fragrance of life we need to make sure we are salt, light, living water and the fragrance of life before we try and be it. We can only be those things by God's grace through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I took this to heart in seminary and found a way to keep myself in proper order. I didn't have dirt in my back yard.

My wife and I had a small foot stool we used in our kitchen. I was afraid in school, honestly afraid that I would become jaded and sour to the church and her work in the world. I fell prey to all of the jokes I heard as a young evangelical, calling seminary "cemetery" and believing that my faith and zeal for Jesus would die there.

We were "required" to attend Morning Prayer Service each day we were on campus but I didn't want that to become regimented in my faith.  I took my little step stool and underneath I wrote; "Lord, please send revival to everyone who sits on this stool, I beg".

I would wake up early, make a french press, get my Bible and guitar and then sip, pray, read and sing long songs to my King before I went to chapel I asked God to fill me to overflowing with the remembrance of who his is and what he did for me. I prayed for personal revival daily. He honored that.

 I am no longer in seminary and I since traveled ten's of thousands of miles proclaiming the Good News of the love and mercy of Jesus Christ. I have preached in Cathedrals, under tarps and on the side of the highway.

I still have that stool in my kitchen ten years later.

I still weep the same tears I wept when I first learned of His love and mercy for me.

I am a resident alien, longing for home.

just passing through; missional living for a year

As long as I’m alive in this body, there is good work for me to do. If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I’d choose. Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here. So I plan to be around awhile, companion to you as your growth and joy in this life of trusting God continues. You can start looking forward to a great reunion when I come visit you again. We’ll be praising Christ, enjoying each other.
Meanwhile, live in such a way that you are a credit to the Message of Christ. 

Beloved, 
I would like to invite you on a journey with me; focusing ourselves for one entire year on living out our true citizenship. 365 days of intentionally understanding that we are resident aliens here.

What would that look like to you? How do we live in the world but not be changed by it?  How do we become light, salt, living water, fragrance of life? 

This is not a magic formula, it is a lifestyle modeled after God as revealed in the Old and New Testaments.

Where do we start? 

First light.... Before there was anything, God was. Before a flower bloomed, an atom split, a cell divided, He was. Before a Seraph's wing brushed the wind, before the water pooled in the seas, before light came from dark, He was.  We did nothing to create anything. We can at best use what he has given us for good.

This has not changed. 

How do we live missionally at first light? Be thankful. 

Before our feet hit the floor, when our minds first sense that we are alive. Say thank you. It can be that simple. It acknowledges the fact that we did nothing while to slept to keep yourself safe or alive. We did not tell yourselves to breath or pump blood. We did not tell the sun to burn or the earth to spin. We did not ask gravity to continue. We simply laid still, or if you sleep like me, thrashed like a wounded fish. And viola, we awoke again!

What is our response to this great miracle we have been given? How do we respond as an alien in this world to the simple fact we woke up?

 Say "Thank you Lord" Amen.