Life Means So Much

This week has found me...
Smiling at the "finished with seminary display" constructed upon my office door
Catching up with a college student who was transparent about his spiritual journey
Consuming the firecracker bowl at Genghis Grill with two of the oddest best friends you'll ever meet
Grieving with a friend and fellow minister over the death of his wife
Spending too much time in the Greek text of Luke chapter 24 in preparation for Sunday's sermon
Holding my two daughters at 12:32 AM because of the storms outside and trying to sleep
Laughing out loud at the silly little insertions into the Library of Congress title page of David Crowders book...for the record, my love for penguins is a 7.1
Blogging to remind myself in a busy week that all is grace and gift. And tonight I will hold my wife just a little tighter and hug my girls for a little longer.

King of New Orleans

So this week finds me in New Orleans...taking my last seminary workshop ever. The class isn't great. But the quiet time I'm finding this week is. And this city itself has become an odd and unique affection for me. It's old, flithy, smells terrible, you can't make left-turns, and a dark presence hangs over this place like a musty old blanket. But it's also one of the only places in the U.S. that makes you feel like you're in a different country, the seafood is amazing if you can avoid tourist-traps, and it's in the places of greatest darkness that the light shines brightest, a metaphysical contrast that grips me more every time I'm here. As a professor once said, this place is "a hole in the buckle of the Bible belt" and its true - there's little "middle of the road" cultural Christianity here. I would rather see that anyday than experience the lukewarm french-fry (I hate lukewarm fries...) spiritual climate of Nashville, for here people are not inoculated to the true power of the gospel.

So tonight while listening to Better Than Ezra and sitting in a coffeeshop with no one to distract me other than an obnoxiously kind barista who kept striking up a conversation because she was bored as she rotated the coffee mugs, I reflected long and with great thought on the following sentence, which was the best I've read in awhile...

"The early church wrote its theology in prisons, deserts, homes, and ships. We write ours in academic institutions and brick and mortar churches. Perhaps that's part of what is wrong with the church today."

Any Given Thursday

So after a crummy past few weeks of sickness beseiging my family like a hostile rebel force, I am sitting in my office enjoying Jars of Clay's "Redemption Songs" and reflecting on one of the best and most unexpected compliments that I have received in quite some time - "What I appreciate about you is that you are in the Matrix but you are not part of it, and that's the hardest thing to do of all."

Stupid

Every now and then I get a longing to hear some "Toad the Wet Sprocket." So on my AM commute to the church I put in "Dulcinea" and the fourth track "Stupid" instantly takes me back to Tuesday nights on the campus of Greenville College, sitting in the monthly coffeehouse the guys on my dorm floor organized on the second floor of the student union. Strong coffee, music all performed by students, people lounging all over couches and the floor, telling inside jokes about pogo sticks and hairy backs...there was a fun innocence to that time and those relationships.

So my thought of the day way this...I spend a lot of time not in the present. Usually I'm thinking about the future and making plans and setting goals and doing whatever it takes. And sometimes, when I hear a certain song, or catch a certain smell or hear a voice or see a picture, I become wistful about the past. But the thing about the past is that then, too, I was always making plans for the future, dreaming of what it would be like when I would be married, have kids, working or serving in only-God-knows-where. I've spent a lot of my life chasing windmills. Not that I would trade a minute of it, because it is how I am hard-wired and who I am. But in order to not feel trapped in the race, I need to simplify. And Today I want to live this day.

"Go eat your food with gladness and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do."
- Ecclesiastes 9:7