no greater love

Preparing for Mike Joyce and Kaylee Brink's wedding. My first wedding to officiate! "Greater love has no man than this that he lays down his life for a friend." Why? Because there is no greater likeness to God than sacrificial love.

"Alone Together": An MIT Professor's New Book Urges Us to Unplug | Fast Company

"Alone Together": An MIT Professor's New Book Urges Us to Unplug | Fast Company

Ruth 2: Finding Refuge

We are heading in to Ruth 2 on Sunday, January 23rd. In walks a worthy character. Boaz is introduced. Who is this man? The presentation of a stalwart male into the life of two widowed females thickens the plot considerably—even in antiquity. The story is masterfully told. We are not allowed to look beyond the seemingly insurmountable difficulties, we sense the struggle and bleak unknown, but we see a ripening character in Ruth. Ruth desires to work and desires to submit to Naomi. The town sees this and admires her. In humility Ruth does not notice the attention given to her and still sees herself as “a foreigner.” More than anything Ruth is puzzled at the good favor she is receiving—“why have I found favor?” It is not that Ruth is simply good natured, she is a woman of God—“under whose wings [she] has come to seek refuge.” Boaz notices these praiseworthy qualities and uses the means God has given him to bless her. Boaz is the first stable piece in the story. He is not moving any time soon. He has land, the respect of his employees, maturity. It also appears that things are blessed around him. He is blessed, but single. How hard that must have been! No heir and no one to share his blessing with. But God had a bigger story. For both Boaz and Ruth, God is their first satisfaction and it has tremendous affect on their lives. This is the foundation that God builds a life of great blessing upon.

a frightful emphasis

"[Tomorrow is] work, work, and more work from early until late. In fact, I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." - Martin Luther

"Luther, examining his church, noted a frightful emphasis on works, but little value given faith. From this burning conviction sprang the reformation--a movement shifting balance from physical to spiritual; from works to faith. Someone aptly said, 'God requires soul worship and men give Him body worship: he asks for the heart and they present Him with their lips: He demands their thoughts and minds, and they give Him banners and vestments and candles.'"
- taken from No Easy Road by Eastman

Books: Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl

"You are spoken. I am spoken. We stand on a spoken stage. The spinning kind. The round kind. The moist kind. The kind of stage with beetles and laughter and babies and dirt and snow and fresh-cut cedar."

Nate (N.D.) Wilson has produced a book that incites worship. The kind that unites the high and low together. Those who seek hallowed churches with expensive glass or those who can only afford to breath the air, but suck it often in big gulp, using both mouth and nose, to feel the pleasure of having more than enough. Born and raised in the Palouse (Moscow, Idaho), N.D. brought me back to the land that I love with creative prose that I have never seen the likes of before. It is obvious that he has a rich sense of experience, while at the same time not devaluing the cries of the mind for helpful explanations. Since I started the book I have described the world differently: the world is the grammar of God, and the expanding universe is the overflowing chorus. His language is not only truth, but it is substance. He spoke, and it was...

fog the window and marvel

I did not marvel at the falling snow last night. To be quite honest, I was never impressed that every snow flake was a different shape, though willing to admit it is an astounding fact. I was more impressed by its unity and freedom, its disregard for fashion and bribe. Snow is no hired militia. It is a vast army that comes and goes together, reminding governments that there is One greater and delighting children everywhere. As a child I knew inherently that snow could be trusted. Anything that made the mountains its permanent home must have a beautiful soul. And how it added to the decor of the remote lodging! When I was a child the snow beckoned me to come outside and catch it up in my hand as soon as it touched the ground, throwing it up to see it fall in large edible clumps. Lick my lips to catch the remnants. Tossing, moving, fashioning pieces of impermanent art, this was a snow day! Last night I ignored the snow. I did not mind it falling. The snow soldiers quietly set up camp around my house in typical fashion. It was only visiting for a night. I didn't mind. I did not fog the window by pressing my face against it to see the army enter my yard and I did not exhaust myself in play until they melted away. I wish that I had. I wish that I still had that desire. I wish that I still heard the snow beckoning.

This Sunday we start a new sermon series on the book of Ruth. Here is the summary of the first week:

Date: Sunday, January 16, 2011
Chapter: Ruth 1
Title: Following a Strange God
Abstract: In the time that the judges ruled in Israel God moves two widowed woman back to Israel. One is a sojourner, who left hopeful and returned stricken, and a foreigner, of whom we know very little about. Why would Elimelech take his family to Moab? What would make Ruth stay with her mother-in-law? Why does Naomi appear unmoved by Ruth’s sacrificial commitment? Bitterness has not allowed Naomi to see the blessing of Ruth. It is important to not jump into the brighter points of the following chapters. This chapter is very real. It is a struggling heart trying to make sense of tragedy. Naomi does not doubt that it is God who is acting in all these affairs, she only wonders why He would do such things. Chapter 1 does not give the answer. What chapter 1 does offer is a first look at is the strong and developing character of Ruth. She has chosen the God of Israel as her God. A husband is not her hope; it is the God, whom Naomi reluctantly serves, that she follows to Bethlehem.

putting together the proverb puzzle

Jacob, Elena, and myself are working together to build a curriculum for the Oasis Center in the afternoons. The curriculum consists of teaching through the aphorisms of proverbs. I have been surprised to discover things that I should have already known. For example: Things won through difficulty will be held as a greater prize (ha! I am thinking in aphorisms now). The hearts of the youth are rebelling because they find most of what is taught or preach to them plain boring. Drugs give a high, gangs give a bond, sex gives passion. Children desperately want to feel and the church has too often given them rules instead of experiences. The book of proverbs offers a timeless teaching tool because it asks us to look back and forth between wisdom and experience and to decide which is true. Here is a little of what I have learned (borrowing some ideas from Leland Ryken's "How to Read the Bible as Literature"):

Ultimately a proverb is to cultivate a moment of epiphany. The modern story writer James Joyce once described a moment of epiphany as the point in a story where a spiritual or intellectual eye adjusts its vision to an exact focus. A proverb is just such a moment of intellectual focus. A proverb captures the clearest and most affecting moment, the point of greatest light. In the end, as foretold in the beginning, all wisdom revolves around one unifier: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All life, rightly understood, displays this to the wise person. Each proverb provides a verbal snapshot that contains particular insight that can be visualized mentally, painted on a canvas, lived; however, only fitted together can the puzzle of experiences show its greater identity.

into the new year

Every time the year changes guard it seems like we have substantial change also taking place at the Oasis. Last year it was buying the Port Orchard location (CO3 or "POCO"), the year before it was the purchase of the drive-thru, and now we are finding ourselves once again growing with the hire of a business administrator. The week between Christmas and New Years offers a brief reprieve from the blistering pace of life and work, allowing us a few days and a handful of hours to explore where God is leading in the upcoming years. And we shall follow, as the hymn says, "Lead on, O King Eternal / We follow, not with fear / For gladness breaks like morning / When'er Thy face appears." I have found my limitations to be nearer than I expected. My mind has been taxed and my capacity to love overburdened. And here I find "we can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love" (Romans 5.3-5).

"The man with a cross no longer controls his destiny; he lost control when he picked up his cross. That cross immediately became to him an all-absorbing interest, an overwhelming interference. No matter what he may desire to do, there is but one thing he can do; that is, move on toward the place of crucifixion...Let a man become enamored of eternal wisdom and set his heart to win her and takes on himself a full-time, all-engaging pursuit. Thereafter he will have room for little else. thereafter his whole life will be filled with seekings and findings, self-repudiation, tough disciplines and daily dyings as he is being crucified unto the world and the world unto him." [A.W. Tozer]

grant me this

"Whatever else Thou sendesst, oh, send this-
Not ecstacy of love or lover's kiss,
But strength to know the joy of sacrifice,
To see life deeply as with opened eyes!
Oh, grant me this, dear God,
Through tears of loss-
To know the joyous secret
Of Thy Cross."
-Ralph Spaulding Cushman

christianity: the all-transforming principle

In the midst of writing a 20-page paper of on Athanasius I found an incredible quote from Johann Eduard Eerdman's History of Philosophy, Volume 1:

“Christianity shows itself as an all-transforming principle also in the field of philosophy. For, as far as philosophy could penetrate, without receiving an impulse from this new principle, so far it has succeeded in advancing, in a way that irresistibly brings before our eyes, as we look back, the course of many a far-famed stream. For in the first period we saw what had sprung from the most various sources, gradually drawing nearer and nearer; in the second all these branches had united into a great stream flowing along in majesty; in the third it once more separated into many branches, which seem to lose themselves partly in the sands of skepticism, partly in the marsh of syncretism, but which really nevertheless contribute sustenance to the ocean of Christian philosophy.”

It is often assumed--wrongly--that Christianity is a flimsy, few-stranded religion that molds to the wearer. It is not. Jesus Christ transformed history and continues to transform the lives of those who see him still--born and crucified in real history, savior of humanity, friend of sinners. I have appreciated again Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. All men who spoke as well as they could. But their thoughts could not save the Greek city-state from the encroaching might of Rome. Rome met one mightier, but did not know it by looking at him. His kingdom was not of this world. Philosopher and monarch alike were humbled by Jesus. They put their best foot forward and were tripped by his unexpected response. They did not fall by idea or sword, but by the reality of the cross were "sorrow and love flow mingled down," where God became man and entered the world.