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Ok, three favorite sites to tell you about.

Stuff Christians Like
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/

Cake Wrecks: When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks: misinterpreting bad punctuation since 2005
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

Jeremiah 17:19-27 - So God is ticked that the Sabbath is being ignored. Understandable. He did take the time, after all, to engrave it in two sets of stones. I keep running into more and more about Sabbath rest. I’m reading a book now, in fact, called The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan. This is the second of Buchanan’s books I’ve read, the first of which was Your God is Too Safe. Both books are amazing. He’s a tremendous writer and storyteller, and can get his point across so smoothly that he could be cursing your mother and you’d be relaxed about it. In other words, he speaks and writes well enough not to offend, but to challenge the deepest parts of your heart to arise, be better, relate to God. One of my favorite parts:

“I used to think the spiritual life was mostly about finding and using our gifts for God’s glory - my utmost for his highest. More and more, I think it is not this, not first, not most. At root, the spiritual life consists in choosing the way of littleness. I become less so that Jesus might become greater. Its essense is No - No to ourselves, our impulses and cravings, our acts of self-promotion and self-vindication, our use of power for its own sake. It calls us to deny ourselves possessions, rights, conquests that we’re tempted to claim just because we can. It is growing, day by day, into the same attitude that Christ had, and by exactly the same means: emptying ourselves, giving ourselves. It is refusing to grasp what we think is owed us and instead embracing what we think is beneath us.”

Today is our tenth anniversary. That seems to be a big deal, nowadays, and even if I wasn’t I tend to make things like this a big deal. Kristi is out for a day of pampering (she’s opening envelopes along the way that tell her where to go next. Elizabeth is driving her). She’s taking time at the spa, then getting her hair done, then nails, then getting ice cream, and she had lunch at Chili’s.

At 6pm tonight everyone reading this is invited to a party at our house (which she doesn’t know about yet so don’t call and tell her ANYTHING about the day). The party is nothing fancy - just come and go whenever you want. Simply bring a snack or dessert, drinks are provided. I tried to email everyone I could think of ahead of time but my lack of email addresses, lack of memory, the fact that I had to keep all this secret, and the fact that this whole thing is about Plan C from the original (which is all cool), I know I’ve missed a lot of you unintentionally.

But come on out tonight if you can! Call me or email if you need directions.

Noah asked when we would be going hiking. I told him in a week or two.

Noah: Can we take camping bacon?
Brian: What the?
Noah: You know. It’s like ham. We take it when we camp out or hike.
Brian: (long pause) You mean beef jerky?
Noah: Yes.
Brian/Noah: (laughing)
Brian: I hereby declare that beef jerky shall be renamed “camping bacon.”

Elijah, on the other hand, is still simply difficult to understand as he continues to speak like a 2 year old. Want to know how he says “I love you”?

“Ef you.”

Nice.

The last one from Noah. He was riding his bike in the street when a car came around the corner. Kristi told him to watch out, that the car was approaching and he could not ride in the middle of the road.

Noah: It’s a good thing I got out of the road ’cause if that car had hit me I would have gone up to see God. And I don’t want to see God that way. I want to stay here and see God when he comes down on a white horse.

Yes!

Zephaniah 3:14-17 - Amazing passage. That God would take delight in me is amazing in itself. But that he has also taken away sin AND turned back enemies…he is the great protector.

Jeremiah 5:30-31 - I sometimes wondered why people listened to the false prophets instead of the true ones. “I am a false prophet! But my prophecies are much more interesting and carry a PG rating!” they would say. The people were duped. Confused. It’s the same today. I get worked up over something someone does, only to find out they didn’t actually do it the way I had figured in my own mind. “Oh. Well, then,” I think. Jumping to conclusions. Like the true prophets, I should take what I know to be true about God and apply that before my own misunderstanding or perception at the time. I know God to be faithful, kind and strong. So in those moments where it seems like God is unfaithful, unkind and weak - I know that’s only my perception, what I think is going on at the time. Stay with what you know is true.

Jeremiah 9:23-24 - Cool.

Yes, Band of Brothers is almost cliche nowadays, but it’s such a good description.

Every year a group of us gets together for an overnight trip to a cabin, to go rafting, whatever. We’ve known each other for more than 10 years and depend on each other for prayer, advice, and spiritual counsel. I so look forward to this one trip. We head out tomorrow to cook out, stay up late playing a goofy Star Trek game, sleep in, go hike and swim, and then come home. All the while we talk about God, what he’s doing in our lives, how we can pray for each other (there and later on) - it’s a vital part of my life. Through the year we have a few guy’s nights. One every month or every other month, usually. I depend on those, as well. God’s given them to us for a reason, and I think we have all begun to see why: we can’t do this alone.

I love hearing something like this and to be reminded that God is at work everywhere. He doesn’t abide by my perceptions or schedule. I am to abide by his.

Kristi went to see Poison in concert a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I work at a church and my wife played hookie to go to a concert (I encouraged her to go, by the way…I’m just that awesome of a husband :). While a lot of us were in our cozy church building, another local pastor (Pete Wilson) was at the concert…to meet with guitarist C.C. Deville, a new Christian.

It’s an awesome story. You can go to Pete Wilson’s blog to see a video and read the story. C.C. is doing his best to be Jesus where he is - on stage. Good work Pete, and good work C.C.

The last two weeks have been reading Isaiah (it’s a long book). It reads, in some places, like the Lord of the Rings. Or, should I say, the Lord of the Rings reads like Isaiah.

Isaiah 60:1-14. Some days this poetry is wonderful to read. Others it is painful to read. I have to gain an appreciation for this poetic prophecy. I know there is so much more to it that what I see on the surface.

Clarification before I type further: if you don’t like your gray hair, that’s cool. Color it. Your choice, and I’m not saying you’re wrong to do it. Now…

I hate “Just For Men” hair color commercials. The message? You’re not fully a man if you have gray hair. The most recent one was a single dad whose daughters tell him he could, essentially, get any girl he wanted if he would only color his hair. I think the commercial ends with him and an attractive woman having dinner or something, his hair now free from the binding of grayness that held back his manliness, his personality, his libido. Good thing he colored his hair. He might have ended up with the Throw Mama From the Train lady.

On the Just For Men website their tagline is “Stay in the game.” Nice. And former Dallas Cowboy Emmitt Smith is a celebrity spokesman. All-time leading rusher, Dancing With the Stars champ, Super Bowl rings…good thing he colored his beard or he wouldn’t be able to do anything.

I recently finished reading Walking With God by John Eldredge. It’s more of a diary of spiritual growth than anything. But like all good books, it spurs thought in many directions. Now the thought turns to my fear and loathing. No, I’m not on some acid trip like Hunter Thompson. Just a little introspection. It seems I may have fallen prey to one of the things I most despise.

I’m talking about calculating my response so that my answers sound like (fill in any politician’s name here) on the campaign trail promising “hope” and “change” when all he/she is really saying is nothing at all. I’m probably being too hard on myself. I simply see danger in that kind of response and I don’t want to play into it.

Honesty is something I value. “Ego nunquam pronunciari mendacium! Sed ego sum homo indomitus,” said William Wallace in Braveheart. “I never tell lies. But I am a savage.” I am always as honest as I can be. So what I’m talking about with this fear and loathing is not lying. It’s a softening of the truth. And I hate it. I think we are much better served with honesty forthright. Kindness, too. The honesty does not have to be vicious. It does not have to draw unnecessary blood (to paraphrase Paul Coughlin). But honesty, nonetheless.

I’ve caught myself answering questions occasionally with reservation. I didn’t like this when I didn’t work for a church and now find myself on the “other side” giving those same kind of answers (there should be no other side). Fear cloaked as wisdom tells me to say as little as possible while sounding like I’m saying a lot (it helps to repeat oneself often during these answer sessions). Fear, in fact, tells me to stop typing RIGHT NOW. Seriously. The overwhelming spirit of fear tells me to stop.

For those that have a clue what I’m talking about, I will continue to do my best to be forthright in all I say. It may not be what you want to hear, it may not be how you want to hear it (remember that when you ask me something). But it will be the full truth.

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