Waiting on an Angel

I have been burning a rut in my IPOD listening to Ben Harper's "Waiting on an Angel" because of the gift Linds gave me for Christmas. She gave me a framed poem that read,
"Dad, a son's first hero and a daughter's first love."

So I am waiting until August for my Angel.

Passion

Here is a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery that has been in my head for a while,

"If you want to build a ship, you must first create a hunger for the sea."

Do our churches, let me restate that, Do I have a passion for being a good ship builder or for being in the water?

Larry

I took Kitesurfing lessons with Larry (thats him in the pic) about six months ago, but haven’t seen him since then until yesterday. I was shocked to see him walk into my gym yesterday and after a nice talked we went our separate ways. I went to the treadmill and he went to speak with the gym’s owner about a job. Ironically, we ran into each other later that day. I asked how his talk went with the gym’s owner.

“Dude, (surfer vernacular) it was good, but we talked more about life and spirituality. Hey, he said that you were a pastor, right?” Larry said.

“Yeah, I am”

“I think its cool that you don’t introduce yourself as Pastor Luke. I get put off when people introduce themselves that way.”

This lead into a great discussion about God that ranged from the God’s name in Hebrew to the Trinity to the inspiration/infallibility of scripture and an invitation to continue this talk at lunch after the holidays.

When we trust that God is the evangelist and we are just joining him I believe our lives will be more fruitful than when we manipulate conversations.

Warrick Dunn

Warrick Dunn has been a National Champion at Florida State, a first round draft pick, and a Pro Bowler, but nothing is as impressive as what he has done off of the football field. Dunn was honored as the 2004 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year, an award named after the legendary Chicago Bears Hall of Fame running back who died in 1999. This is the highest honor bestowed upon an NFL player for his outstanding community service and on-field performance. A big reason for Dunn receiving this reward has been his work helping single mothers through the Warrick Dunn Foundation. In 1997 as a rookie out of Florida State, Dunn made down payments on four homes for single mother. Since then Dunn has helped single mothers become first-time homeowners by making the down payments on new, fully-furnished homes. As of May 2007, Dunn's foundation has assisted 69 single mothers and 139 children and dependents in Atlanta, Tampa and Baton Rouge.
The foundation was inspired by Betty Smothers his own single mother. In 1993 Betty Smothers, a Baton Rouge police officer was shot by Kevan Brumfield during a bank robbery. Smothers passed away before she ever would own her own home. A few weeks ago, Dunn was sitting in a room at the State Prison in Angola, La., staring death-row inmate Kevan Brumfield in the eyes, Dunn was a stiff-arm away from the vigilante justice he must have thought about since his mom was killed. Dunn was asked by an ESPN reporter how he sat in the room with the man who killed his mother. Dunn gave a one-word answer, “God.”

Living in the Moment

Mario Puzo, the writer of The Godfather, was upset to hear that his director, Francis Ford Coppola, said that he was glad to have directed The Godfather because now he could finally do the type of movies he really wanted to do. Puzo’s anger displayed a bit of duplicity because he had been quoted saying that he only wrote the Godfather because he needed to make money. Ironically, once both of these artists had the ability to do the type of art they wanted to do they never sniffed anywhere near the success they had with this unwanted story. I think there is a life lesson here. We probably should learn to appreciate the moment we are in because it could be crowning moment of our life even if we don’t like what we are doing.

Mortality

Saturday evening one of my workout partners had some friends over to watch the Mayweather-Hatton boxing match. Despite my lack of interest in boxing, I attended to get to spend sometime with friends. The constant references to me as “Rev” or “Pastor” drew attention from the host’s non-gym friends. After going through the typical conversation “So you aren't the youth pastor, but the Senior Pastor? You like get up and preach on Sunday mornings?” One guy started to share his spiritual journey with me.
“My wife and I lost our twenty year old son three months ago. We stopped attending church and our Bible class after his death. We didn’t receive any contact from anyone in our Bible class or church until a month later when a one lady stopped by to tearfully share her apologizes for not stopping by sooner.” He went on to say, “My wife is more emotional than me, but we cannot imagine going back there with those people. That’s why we are looking for a new church.”
Suffering with a couple who lost their son brings us to a sense of our own mortality that many of us don’t want to get in the ring with. The mortality of our twenty year old son’s and daughter’s is something we don’t want to get face to face with. Many of us, like their tearful friend, just don’t know what to say. Words do little justice to their plight, but it seems this couple was not looking for words to make their world right. They knew their friends were sorry. They knew their friends had no words that would bring him back. It seems that they just wanted someone to be sorry with them, someone to suffer with them.

Categories

According to some literary scholars, one book shifted American cinema and literature away from the simplistic categories of the good hero vs. evil villain. Up until 1969 when Mario Puza’s Godfather was published, the typical story in American Cinema was the Western, which always had a clear-cut right and wrong character. The Untouchables had been written, but it depicted the mobsters and gangsters as completely evil. Puza instead shows the complexities of the gangster. The Godfather, Don Vito Corleone, does clearly awful things, but he also helps many helpless people. He brings justice to the unpunished thugs who beat up an innocent Italian girl. He saves the poor single mother from being homeless. The Don is a “bad guy” who isn’t all bad. The Godfather makes us rethink our simplistic categories of good and evil. He makes us wrestle with the complexities of imperfect people. Reality will not let us clearly define people as categorically good or bad. Ironically, our relatively new phenomenon of reality TV is quite antiquated because it tends to clearly define people as good or bad. To no ones surprise its not really that real. No people in life are all bad. And no people in life are all good. Scripture seems to witness to the same reality of flawed heroes and sympathetic villains. People are all imperfect characters some just seem to be closer to being heroes and other closer to being villains.

Commitment

A lengthy meeting detained me at church until late in the night. More importantly it detained many men who volunteered to be there who also had to get up for work the next day. One leaned over to me at one point in the meeting and said that he had to wake up in five hours for work. Another man had to drive five hours that night to catch a flight in the morning because the next day he was flying to DC to have dinner with the president of the United States. The commitment of these men to the work of the Church reminds me that something substantial occurs here.

___________________

Speaking of commitment, some misguided people like to point to the New York Yankees as the Evil Empire because of their proclivity for spending exorbitant amounts of money on their franchise. Most recently the attempted trade for Johan Santana of the Twins exemplifies their fiscal excess. The Twins don't want to spend 20-25 million a year on their star pitcher who will be a free agent next year and so they are trying to trade him for young, cheap prospects before they lose him. Ironically the owner of the Twins has more money than the Yankees' owner, but he doesn't want to spend it on his franchise. So who really is an evil owner? The one who is committed to working inside the current rules to give his fans the best team possible or the one who will not spend the money to put a winner on the field for his fans? The way I see it, Steinbrenner would be the leader who would stay until midnight or would at least pay people to stay until midnight because of his commitment.

Joseph

The Joseph story, clearly different from other stories in Genesis in its cohesiveness and understanding of God, speaks to me. It’s a story about power and faith, family conflict, and the hiddenness of God. Hear these words from Walter Brueggemann about the Joseph story in Genesis.

“The story hints and implies. Only very late does it make anything explicit... At one extreme, one is tempted to say too much, to echo the old stories about a rescuing God who intrudes to make all things right. But this narrative addresses people who know too much and will not accept such a raw confession. At the other extreme, one is tempted to claim too little. Then one may urge a humanism which believes in a God who ‘has no hands but ours’ to do the work. The narrative works its subtle way between a primitivism, which believes too easily and a humanism, which is embarrassed about faith. Like the narrator, the interpreter must speak about a transcendence which is quite concrete.”

Retirement

My mother-in-law teaches high school with the sister of Exxon’s president and CEO. The looming reality of four dollar a gallon gas might be bad for most families, but not every family. She was speaking with her brother about her Texas teacher’s retirement plan. As she explained the financial benefits which would support her until the end of her life, she was interrupted by her CEO brother saying “Don’t worry about it…You are going to be ok.” I think that would be a bit of an understatement. At least my truck’s beverage consumption problem is helping a nice high school teacher.