The billy goat next door

Grandad had a small house he rented. I remember the bright red paint that gave off a certain sweet smell in the hot sun. I remember the screened-in porch, a barrier from the bugs that beat on the fabric, looking for a way to get near our bright lights.But the real job was the neighbor’s yard. It was a cornucopia of boyhood wonders.  My brother and I would swing on the apricot trees, play hide-and-seek in the garden and touch the farm equipment.

But the most fun was the resident billy goat – Sam. The best thing about Sam was being able to feed him almost anything. We tried the tin can, just to see if he would. He put it in his mouth, sucked whatever he could off the inside, and then spit it out. We gave him dirty carrots, candy bar wrappers and milk cartons, all of which he curiously chewed, but didn't always swallow.

Image via WikipediaThere was no stopping Sam.

Sam was prone to wander, never really happy to stick around where he could be found. He didn’t care what the owner said. He just looked at him with his sideways slitted eyes, cocked his head, and did his own thing.

He did nothing as far as I could tell except get into trouble and do his own thing. He was a bully and fighter at times, but certainly had no commitment to the betterment of the property.

Sam had all the responsibility of a house cat and none of the cuddly charm.

I know some people like Sam. They have no ties to the community. They have an appetite for destruction, but somehow escape consequence. They butt heads and bully the flock.

I have some billy goat tendencies of my own. While my hygiene is better, I tend to pick a fight when a kind word would do.  I strut my grounds with little regard for others.  I consume entertainment that I know has no eternal value.

How about you? Know any billy goat Christians? Comment here.

Zombies, a cautionary tale

We all have things in our past that we would rather forget.

The ugly.
The dirty.
The shameful.
The painful.

Things we thought buried, sunken in the earth’s core. Rotting. Decaying. Forgotten.

Then, like zombies rising from the dead, they come back at the oddest of times. An old relationship returns with the barbs ready to pierce. A wound healed begins to ooze again. Words spoken that evoke bitter memories.

They rise from the past. Mumbling, moaning, they step into our living rooms with dirty grave clothes. They desperately want to come back into the land of the living.

There is a stench about these zombies. There is no life in them. And yet, I am strangely drawn. They remind me of another day. They remind of my dreams, now broken. They speak to my hidden hopes. They tease me with aspirations lost.

“Even when we were dead in our trespasses,” says the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2, we have been “made us alive together with Christ.”

I don’t need the things that represent yesterday. I have been made alive. I have a future. I have tomorrow. It’s time once and for all to put those zombies in the rear-view mirror.

Comment?

Thanks to Chris Little sermon, Rescue 911, for inspiration and Marcy Earley for the photo.Also to Marcus Goodyear, for redeeming zombies everywhere..Also check out the High Calling Post by Ryan Mecham, "Fighting the Zombies"

U-turns permitted. Here's one story you need to read.

Image via Wikipedia

This is not a post about sports. This is a story about redemption. This is  for every person who thinks there's no hope.

The Texas Rangers are going to the World Series to play the San Francisco Giants. Let the record stand that I’m rooting for the Giants.  But it's hard not to cheer for Josh Hamilton, the Rangers amazingly talented outfielder. Read on.

Josh had the world ahead of him as a high-school senior. Picked no. 1 in the 1999 draft by Tampa Bay, it was a dream come true for the teenager. The Devil Rays believed he was such a complete package that they dubbed him the “future of the franchise.” He could pitch – clocked at 96 miles an hour - but most of the baseball world salivated even more over his offensive skills.He could do it all. But "pride goes before the fall," and fell he did.

His $3.9 million signing bonus fueled a dangerous lifestyle that would send his childhood hopes and dreams spiraling away. Who knows what happened. It could have been bad friends or just poor choices -- but he began to use drugs – and then abuse them – and before long he was addicted to crack cocaine. He not only lost his swing – he lost his job. He was kicked out of baseball.

He says that he was “a man with no soul."


For three years he didn’t pick up a bat, a ball or a glove. For many kids, that’s the end of the story. It just turns into the final chapter of a story we hear all too often – broken relationships, legal trouble and sickness eventually followed by a tragic death. But this story is entirely different. In 2005, God got ahold of this broken young man and brought Josh back on the team.

He found his Savior, thanks to the tough love of his grandmother and the strong witness of Raleigh homebuilder Michael Dean Chadwick, who himself battled drug addiction. Chadwick told Josh, “either die or get well.”

And getting well-centered around Jesus, Josh eventually began to play ball and found his skills again. The Reds took a chance and signed him and before long, he was in their outfield. In his first month in the big leagues, he took Rookie of the month awards. He has been a multi-year All star, the ALCS MVP and  leader on the Rangers' team. 

And when the Rangers clinched, they didn't celebrate with champagne. Out of honor for their recovering slugger, they popped the bubbly on ginger ale.

Today, he is honest about his past. And he is bold about his Savior. "I haven't gotten tired of telling this story yet," Hamilton said to the Dallas News. "It's my obligation – no, it's my privilege – to tell it."

This Red Letter Believer is a Christian who not only talks about is faith, but he clings to it and lives it.

Josh, may your home runs be many and your walk be pure.

Care to comment?

Related articles

• Texas Rangers CF Josh Hamilton voted as ALCS MVP
• Get Religion talks about how the media deals with Hamilton's story

We don't have a "right" to happiness, but a life well-lived will get us there

Today, Bonnie Gray over at Faith Barista  posed this   

question for her ongoing blogging jam on faith: How does your faith connect to your happiness?

I must confess that I have aversion to the term, "pursuit of happiness" and I bristle when people use it to justify their behavior.

Happiness, although thrown into the Bill of Rights by Thomas Jefferson, is not really a Christian imperative. We act like it is – using it as an excuse to leave a spouse, to buy unnecessary possessions,or to gorge ourselves at the buffet line of life.

I am a happy person – and I consider my outlook to be positive. It's my faith that sets the table for happiness. But to pursue happiness creates all kinds of ugly situations. Read Malcom Muggeridge’s thoughts on this:

"Of all the different purposes set before mankind, the most disastrous is surely "the pursuit of happiness," slipped into the American Declaration of Independence along with "life and liberty" as an unalienable right, almost accidentally, at the last moment. Happiness is like a young deer, fleet and beautiful. Hunt him, and he becomes a poor frantic quarry; after the kill, a piece of stinking flesh."

The pursuit of happiness has morphed into the pursuit of money. Recently, Princeton researchers issued a report that the magic ‘elixer’ of compensation was $75,000. Earn less than that, and you’re not happy. Earn more than that, and you have the potential to be a happier person.

This is why we see people doing ugly things to get promoted, to get ahead. That’s why the meanest and ugliest rats win the race. That’s why we have corruption and greed and shenanigans going on in business.

Jesus calls us to a different kind of pursuit -- joy.

Joy is found not in pampering our soul, but pleasing our Creator. God isn’t impressed with our money, with our titles, with our fame. He looks at our heart, at our character, at our souls. The pursuit of happiness is trumped by the quest for joy.

What do you think about happiness? Is it a right? What do you do to "get happy?" What part does money play into your happiness? I'm really interested in your comments.

Read Bonnie Gray's Post here, "The Terrible letters we read - Why Faith is the choice for happiness".

“Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.”

What do we laugh at?

If you know me only by the words on this page, you might think I'm a somber man, writing these weighty tomes. Looking back at the hundreds of posts in this blog, I sometimes gasp at the tone. That's one serious dude!

But spend a half an hour with me and you'll see that I'm a joker, maybe even a jester at time. 

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I'm a lover of laughter.


Much to my mother's chagrin, who hoped for something much better out of her eldest son, I was voted the class clown by the George Whittell High School Class of 1980. And I've never quit.

When I'm in a tough spot, a light joke helps lighten the mood. When things are tense at work, they look to me to find the levity.

For the most part, it works.

Laughter is a universal langauge. Go to a foreign country, where words cannot be understood, but a smile and a belly-chortle can break down any barrier. Laughter is rare when you are alone. It's a community activity that builds relationships.

But what I laugh at is a reflection of the soul. What I laugh at is a reflection of my character.When I laugh at a quip or a witty retort, it's good for the soul. But when I laugh at someone's else expense or their shortcomings, at a sexual innundo or a crude observation, it digs away at my heart.

The snide, rude and the obsene have no place in my life. And when I do laugh at those things, I never really feel good about it. I cannot love the dark side of a world where I don't belong.

Because Satan has misused what God intended for good, we tend to overreact with legalism. “Be sober and grave" we preach with all Scriptual authority.

But that's not what God intended. After all, "A merry heart is good Medicine"

He gave us the ability to let it loose. He gave us mirth and joy and fun.
Somehow I think that Heaven will a place of great laughter.


What do you laugh at? What do you see others laughing at? Comment here...or else!

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• A big mystery: Why do we laugh? (msnbc.msn.com)

The four words I don't want to hear -- "I never knew you"

He spent the dawn’s early light walking, thinking, wondering. 

He wondered why this particular message had to be so hard, so grievous. It had been months since he had stood behind a pulpit. Why couldn't he have preached on something easier? Like love. Or faith. Or heaven. 

But he knew today, if he would be faithful to what was on his heart, there would be no stories about lions and lambs, lying down in sweet bliss. There would be no parables about little children tugging at Jesus’ robe or girls filling their lamps with oil. This sermon wouldn’t be about gifts or fruits or thinking missionaly.

The small group instinctively knew it too. The weight of the message dripped like water on stones with every phrase.

“I must confess something,” this preacher, real and live said, the small group hanging on, “I admit that I’m afraid to meet Jesus. I don’t always understand His ways. I don’t fully comprehend His words.”

I thought to myself that I too am at times, afraid of His truth, His holiness, even His touch. The son of man, the son of God, is an enigma. I kind of like simple and this causes my thinking to be rearranged. He makes me uncomfortable."

“But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it,” the preacher said.

I can appreciate that. Can’t let everyone one. There has to be some criteria, right?

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven,” the speaker continued, his eyes narrowing through his round glasses.

I like Jesus’ answers about eternity, money and relationships. I like what he has to say about authority, work and caring for the poor. I appreciate his answers about evil, heaven and hell. But this ....

The preacher spoke each word of the passage slowly, almost painfully knowing the impact. “Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?'

This probes my conscious, stirs my soul, and shakes my presumptions. Could this be me?

The preacher read the passage about, uncertain that we would even receive it. “Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me.”

 But what about my church attendance and my tithes? I have hundreds of writings, 1,000’s of readers. People actually like me! They tell me I am a good man, that I’m a blessing. I talked about you to my friends. I studied you. What about all of that Christian stuff? Doesn't any of it count?

“I never knew you.”  These are the four words I don't want hear. 

So I'm thinking I need to have a little less doing, and a little more knowing.

Any ideas on how to get God to know me? I welcome your comments here.




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I don't have time for what really counts

My life is filled with time management tools. I have a cell phone, a Blackberry, a watch and a computer that all help to remind me of the steady march of time. And wouldn't you know it? I'm still late for things.

But the ultimate time nag is that internal clock. While it doesn't ask for a minute-by-minute accounting of my time, it is a constant reminder of “coulda, shoulda, woulda." People I should spend time with. Projects I should undertake. Eternal investments I should make.

Anne Lang Bundy wrote a wonderful post about the elaborate, almost mysterious world of divine time management.

“Time is too brief to appreciate the good. Time is too crowded to accomplish the better. Time is too protracted to touch the best.”

We strive for the best things in life, but often sacrifice them for the expedient. She writes about the agony over waiting, “which brings me to despise the time which is both too short and too long.” Read I Traffic in Hope.

The message of expectation, wonder and faith resounds among the other 1,100 bloggers who comprise the High Calling network.

Read other bloggers that I highlighted today at the  new and improved, High Calling Network, where we have everyday conversations about work, life and God.

Feel free to Comment here. And I'm always looking for other great posts to highlight.

He won't give up on me, so how can I give up on you?

Francis Thompson was a brilliant man. Born to successful parents, he first studied for the 
priesthood then later earned a medical degree. His mind was engaging and captivating. He could write the most beautiful verse that touched on hearts


He was also an opium addict.


Despite his privilege, his education and his ticket to wealth, his addiction forced him to the streets and he took to selling matches and newspapers for a living. He lived in filth and destitution. He was on the run from God.


His most famous work, The Hound of Heaven, tells the story:

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him...”

Thompson was haunted by the story of Jacob. Exodus tells the story of a dream that Jacob had one night, of a ladder perched between heaven and earth with God Himself at the top of the ladder. When Jacob awoke from the dream he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

He doesn't give up on me
God shows up in places we don’t expect him, places we weren’t even aware. He beckons. He calls us by name. His pursuit never quits.
Thompson eventually turned to Jesus and found a sweet surrender.


Rise, clasp My hand, and come ! Halts by me that footfall. Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly ? Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest ! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me."


We are a society of quitters. Estranged parents, abandoned spouses, and spurned friends all can testify. And I myself have added to the suffering, turning aside those who were hurting, disobedient or just confused.


We have all kinds of terms in this society to justify turning people away. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." "God helps those who help themselves," and "The ball is in his court," "I deserve to be happy," and other such nonsense. Will any of those arguments hold up when we come face to face with Him?


God didn’t give up on me. What gives me the right to give up on them? 


Care to comment?  


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Why do we keep secrets?

If you don't read Ann Voskamp's a Holy Experience, you should. If you only have time to read one blog, then quit reading this one and read hers.

I'm serious.

This home-schooling mother of six and Canadian farmer's wife taps into the longings of our soul unlike few other writers. She serves with me as an editor in the High Calling network and has a book coming out this next year ( One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are)

Everything she writes is moving, but this one really hit hard.
Guest blogging at inCourage, she tells the riveting story of her mother's mental disease and how she soldiered on as a nine-year old girl, never telling a single soul.

When the walls of my heart cracked, I leaked out slow, in the dark, in my pillow, in my begging prayers. I never told my best friend, Melanie Vermeer, where my Mama had gone. I never stopped pressing the lips tight. In her ward room in the city, my Mama sat in shadows and wrestled the demons, and secrets of what her own father had done to her in a long ago dark.

She tells the story of secrets, of shame and solitude.

Tight lips can suffocate till life lies limp, and secrets can smother and leave you for dead. Mama was living proof that keeping secrets keeps you sick. Or maybe her and I were both the dying proof of it. I grow up. I keep my secrets tight and my secrets keep me tight.

But secrets withheld never keep us safe. Instead, they begin to devour us from the inside out.

We all thought the secrets would save us… but they slowly slay us.I know the terror of telling the truth. But for me, after my Mama’s childhood, after mine, I am far more scared of the secrets. Because it’s keeping secrets that keep us from being real. From being fully alive.

I recently wrote a story about Frank Warren's Post Secret effort. (Warning if you click. Some of the secrets are salacious and might be offensive.)
Warren has several best selling books and a website that has had more than 350 million hits. He encourages people to mail him their deepest, darkest secrets. It's a place for people to reveal their souls.


Secrets. Photo by Ann Voskamp, by permission



I wondered, why would someone do this for all the world to see? Is it the same reason people call Dr. Laura to tell her that they are secretly in love with their boss, or can't shake a drug addiction or feel hopeless.

Is it because a secret is never really meant to be hidden?

With the breakdown of family, a destruction of real community, and withering church attendance, we have no outlet for honestly. We prop our lives up, like old-West facades.

The secrets stay bottled up. They can't be held. They must be freed.
Ann writes, "The only way to be real … is to reveal."

Do you keep secrets? What kinds of secrets keep us from moving ahead? Who do you tell your secrets to? Comment here.  

Suffering from Shiny Object Syndrome?

I suffer from shiny object syndrome (SOS).

I once fell down a flight of stairs because I was fidgeting with a tight buttonhole on my shirt and missed a step.

And then there was the time I backed into a street light because I was looking at gleaming new car that was parked next to me.

The Internet is a great place for Shiny objects. I click here. And then a blue click here appears. "Oh, pretty!"
And then before you know it, I'm so far off course, I don't know how I got there. It’s a surfer’s nightmare. Floating way out in the ocean, when all I wanted was to catch that little wave.

I lose my way on projects at work and home, SOS kicking in full gear, while I fuss away at something else. Great books lie by bedside, a bookmark collecting dust after just a few chapters because I found a “better” read.

My spiritual life has been littered by SOS. There was a day when I fixated on the end-times. Larry Norman sang, “I Wish we’d all been Ready” and Hal Lindsay preached about the Late Great Planet Earth. Then I moved to personal evangelism, passing out Four Spiritual Laws and telling people “I found It” I went through the creation phase in my life, heaven-bent on showing the intelligence in the design. And then I had an apologetics season, where proof texts could destroy any secular argument.

Now, I realize I just need a faith fixation. All the end-of-days-evangelism-apologetic-creationism stuff really doesn’t matter when all you really need is Jesus.

My Shiny Object. This is one obsession I hope to never get over.

What do you obsess over? Is it work?  Housekeeping? Cars? Money? How do you overcome it? Comment here.

We  join Bonnie Gray’s Faith Barista Jam today. “Faith and Personality”

Ready or Not, Here It Comes!

(I am honored to have the following featured at High Calling Blogs, found here.)

It was impossible to ignore. The shrill siren blasted through the hallways and the strobe lights flashed in a dizzying display.

The dreaded fire drill. Why today of all days? I was just minutes from finishing my project. Why now?

I decided to take the coward’s path. I turned off my office lights and closed the door to hide from the safety captain as he swept the floor for stragglers. Of course, he found me, tapping away in front of the glow of my computer.

The captain delivered a stern warning, chastising me under the full force of his temporary authority. “You need to be serious about this,” he said, ”After all, it could have been the real thing.”

I rolled my eyes and marched out with the others. He was right. The truth is, I don’t like the tedious monotony of preparation, but it’s necessary in my work – and in life.

They were ready


Photo, “Fire Hydrant and a Fisherman,"
 by Ali Levinshtein. Used with permission

Nothing illustrates the benefits of preparation like the story of Air France Flight 358. The airplane overshot the runway at Toronto Pearson International a few years ago. Busting through the final retaining fence at 90 MPH, it finally dragged to a dramatic stop.

The danger was just beginning for the 315 people on board. The bumpy landing caused a leak in the fuel tank. Heat and spark ignited a fast-moving fire.

But the airport fire response crew was ready, arriving on the scene in an incredible 52 seconds, dousing the flames before anyone was injured. The quick response time is even more impressive when you consider that it had been 27 years since the last serious airport emergency. An entire generation of firefighters had come and gone without seeing a single incident.

Put yourself in the boots of those firemen. Every week, for decades, the team trained and drilled. How long can you practice before you grow indifferent? How many times can the fire chief ring the bell and cry, “fire, fire, fire,” before you realize it’s just another exercise?

But they were ready. And don’t forget the other professionals involved who followed their workplace training — the flight attendants, the crew and the tower. Everyone survived because everyone did the jobs they were trained to do.

In the workplace, we all have to practice and train in a variety of ways. An executive must go over his material before he makes a presentation. A musician practices scales in private so she can perform in the spotlight. A carpenter hones his skills in his own garage before he builds yours.

Preparation for real life

I’m going to have my fair share of crises with work, relationships and illness. It’s not everyday when my airplane misses its mark and runs off the path. It’s not everyday that I have to swallow a bitter pill or deal with temptations’ guise. But when these things happen, I need to be ready.

The best preparation I know is the stuff I do for my soul. I have certain routines that I repeat with great discipline, those weekly and daily practices of faith. For instance, I carve out daily times to pray and read Scripture. Some feed their minds with audio teachings or devotions. And others may find faithful observance through contemplative walks in in the silence of the evening air.

It’s easy to get complacent about these activities, but they are necessary and beneficial for not only the present, for the unforeseen future.

Life will come at me, whether I’m ready, or not.

Next time, I think I’ll have a better attitude for the fire drill.

****
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Living life: By the clock, or by the compass?

I have two options to live my life.

The first is to live it by the clock. I manage and measure my life by the externals like:
* Commitments
* Appointments
* Schedule
* Goals
* Activities

Another option is to live life by the compass, that is, to lead my life by such internal values like:
* Calling
* Vision
* Values
* Mission

Any advice on how I can morph from living life from the clock to living life by the compass? Comment here.

Back to the future

I sometimes wish that I could find a DeLorean, dump some trash in the fuel tank,and transport to the past. There, I would undo some things. I would say things differently, walk more carefully, and show a little more compassion. 


Truth is, I cannot untie the complicated knot that I've tied.


So, all I have left is grace.


 My friend and High Calling editor LL Barkat, said this last night, "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”


I have little seedlings I've been carrying around in my pocket. It's time I did something about them.

Photo by L. Nystuen

The most liberating verse in all of the Bible is this: “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14)

This is the beauty of the resurrection. What was once hopeless and tired is now new and fresh. It can happen to me. It can happen to you.


What was your most liberating moment in life, when you realized you were no longer a slave to the past?
Care to comment?