19July2016 Hydrated

One imperative to desert life is you have to stay hydrated.  This can be tricky, dangerous even, because the dry atmosphere evaporates moisture so quickly that sometimes your body is screaming for water but you may not even feel thirsty.  Liquids have to been consumed throughout the day, particular if involved in outdoor activities, or you can rapidly become dehydrated.  

The same is true for our mental health.  This week we had the opportunity to get out of the city for a couple days.  Our hotel had a pool...and a water slide of all things.  As you can see from the photo above, we put it to good use.  At the end of the day, D and I looked at each other and said, "Why in the world have we taken so long to do this?"  We needed it.  Living in this place can dehydrate you physically and emotionally.  I imagine that can happen wherever you call home. A day of respite, swimming, hiking, flying a kite, fishing or just taking a long nap on a hammock can be a balm to the spirit.  Just remember to stay hydrated!

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” John 4:10

14June2016 Faithful not Safe

In light of current events, here's another great article, particularly for parents, by John Huckins.  

God has called us to be faithful, not safe!

In the wake of another heinous attack taking the lives of innocent civilians, the world feels increasingly unstable. The violence “over there” is no longer relegated to headlines on the other side of the world; it is edging closer to our doorsteps and threatens to invade our everyday lives.
In light of this reality, conversations ranging from our coffee shops to the halls of political power are shouting out the necessity to pursue security and safety above anything else.
I get it.

As a father of four little kids, there has never been a season in my life when I’ve felt more compelled toward security and safety. I can’t begin to comprehend the disorientation and paralyzing pain that would come with the harm of my family.

For the past five years, I have regularly been traveling to conflict zones in the Middle East, but the more kids I have waiting for me to safely return home, the harder it gets to step on that plane and make an intentional decision to move toward exposing myself to violence.
In short, when I hear our current political candidates talking about the paramount importance of “security” and “safety,” it strikes a chord and I find myself tempted to stand up and applaud.
AND THEN I PAUSE, step back for a moment, ask some harder questions of where my applause is coming from, and consider my kingdom allegiance marked by One who moved toward, rather than away from, potential violence.

Worshiping the idol of safety greatly inhibits our ability to worship the crucified and risen Jesus.

I’m convicted that my desire to applaud this “security at any cost” rhetoric and policy is a temptation to worship the idol of safety. It is not something to be admired — it is something to be acknowledged, questioned, and repented of (turned away from). Worshiping the idol of safety greatly inhibits our ability to worship the crucified and risen Jesus.

It’s not that I don’t want safety for me, my family, or the world. I actually want that more than ever, but when I look at this through the lens of discipleship (following Jesus), here are the issues I’m wresting with today:

1. The objective of terrorism is to instill fear.
Politicians then use that fear to shape a reality that advances their agendas. What they are offering us is nothing more than a pseudo-reality that requires we have the discernment to see through the smokescreen to what is actually real. My desire for safety is real, but in reality, I should be far more concerned about a car wreck, chronic disease, or natural disaster than terrorism. When I begin making decisions from a place of fear, I not only buy into a pseudo-reality that is being crafted by political power plays, I begin to close my eyes to the new and dynamic ways God is calling me to join in the world God is making.
2. The means through which we pursue safety often forces us to comprise our kingdom identity and can lead to less safety.
First, let me acknowledge that political leaders are responsible to tend to the safety of citizens and can make the decisions they feel are necessary to do so. With that said, we, as the church, can’t allow our political allegiance to trump our kingdom allegiance.

When we worship the idol of “safety,” we can quickly compromise our kingdom witness and begin to justify the means through which safety is achieved.

When we worship the idol of “safety,” we can quickly compromise our kingdom witness.

For example, when we celebrate the death of other human beings because it means we are “safer,” we may be worshiping the idol of safety rather than the enemy-loving God embodied in Jesus. When we demonize and punish entire groups of people (the vast majority of whom have no desire to do us harm) for the sake of our “safety,” we may be worshiping the idol of safety rather than a Jesus who loved indiscriminately. When we reject the very people (many of whom are children!) who are fleeing violence for the sake of our “safety,” we may be worshiping the idol of safety rather than a Jesus who calls us to care for the “strangers in our midst.” Finally, while these may feel like safety measures, it is growingly clear that these means don’t lead to lasting, sustainable security and safety. Rather, they more often lead to resentment, oppression, and instability, which then breeds more violence.
3. I can’t reconcile withdrawal, isolation, and a posture of defense with a God who moved toward violence, brokenness, and “the other” in Jesus.
As I’ve been wresting with this idol of safety, I’ve repeatedly been convicted by this truth: Jesus never called us to be safe; he called us to be faithful.
According to Jesus, faithfulness moves us beyond love of neighbor to love of enemy. If pursuit of my safety trumps my ability to love whomever God has in my path, fear wins, and I distance myself from God’s heart for the world. How can I love my “enemies” if I don’t know them? The idol of safety moves us away from people who are different than us and sends us inward to those who look, think, and act like we do. There is no love outside of relationship; there is only misunderstanding, demonization, and stereotype. Lastly, how can we know our “enemy” if we don’t cross the borders that divide us? The Jesus Way requires we reject the temptation to move inward and continually calls us to move toward “the other.”

Jesus never called us to be safe; he called us to be faithful.

Interestingly, I find myself wresting through this stuff during Holy Week. This is the week in which Jesus models to the world life as it was meant to be lived. It is a life marked not by isolation or triumphant overthrow, but by suffering, sacrifice, and selfless love for the flourishing of others. It is a life that crosses borders and boundaries to reassign the humanity, dignity, and the image of God in all the “wrong” people with whom he should have feared and stayed away from. A life that ended with the uttering of this prayer for his enemies: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” These are the stories we tell in Sunday school and say, “Wow, Jesus is a bad ass. He wasn’t scared of anything, and I would do anything to live and love like that.”
Imagine if instead he chose to worship the idol of safety and never left the safety of his little Galilean synagogue so he could read Torah and remain isolated from all the violence of the world? That story would not only suck, it wouldn’t reflect the heart of a God who literally moved into our human neighborhood to remind us what love looks like.
So, during this Holy Week, let’s pay attention to the very understandable fear, paralysis, and temptation to worship the idol of safety. If I’m completely honest, I’m still having a hard time with this. This is not easy stuff, and I’m not happy about having to make these intentional decisions to keep perspective in a world that feels so unstable. But, friends, this is the beauty, challenge and mystery of choosing to follow an enemy-loving God who — this Holy Week — invites us to love to the point of death, while being fueled by the hope and reality of Resurrection.
May it be so.

13June2016 Orlando. Too Good Not to Share

We are heartbroken by what took place in Orlando.  Our homosexual friends and neighbors are probably scared for their lives.  Our Muslim friends and neighbors are probably scared for their lives.  How does the Body of Christ respond in situations like this?  We are called to weep and/or mourn with those who weep and/or mourn.  How  doe we do this? Below are excellent words from Dr. Russell Moore.  We love you Orlando!

We woke up Sunday morning to news of the worst mass shooting in American history, as a terrorist murdered and injured over a hundred people in a gay nightclub in Orlando. In the aftermath, we’ve seen some of the best aspects of America: people lining up, for example, to give blood for the victims. We’ve also seen some of the worst—as the aftermath turned into an excuse for social media wars over everything from gun control to presidential politics. What I wonder is whether the country still has the capacity to grieve, together, in moments of national crisis.
When we’re accustomed to seeing news in real time on our television screens and on our phones, it is sometimes easy to forget that the news we are viewing is real. At least fifty people—created in the image of God—were slaughtered in cold blood. Families who were waiting to see their loved ones are finding out today that they will never see them again in this life. That ought to drive us to mourn.
Our nation has shared moments of crisis and tragedy before. Think of Pearl Harbor, when the country rallied around President Roosevelt and toward a common purpose of defeating the Axis Powers. Think of the John Kennedy assassination when the country—even the Kennedy family’s enemies—seemed to grieve together. Think of September 11—before the fracturing of the Iraq War—when the country looked to common cultural expressions from the service at the National Cathedral to the cold open of Saturday Night Live for a sense of lament together.
It seems now, though, that there’s rarely a time of grieving together. The time of lament morphs almost immediately into arguments over what the President should have said or whether this validates or annihilates someone’s views on guns or immigration or whatever. Some of that, of course, is just the speed of social media. People are able to discuss, rather publicly, issues much quicker than they could before. But there seems to be more than that.
Our national divisions increasingly make it difficult for us not just to work together, but even to pause and weep together. We become more concerned about protecting ourselves from one another’s political pronouncements than we do with mourning with those who mourn.
In some ways, then, national crises like this one feel less like the 1963 John Kennedy assassination than like the attempted George Wallace assassination of 1972. Reports are that some within the Nixon Administration, arguably even the President himself, contemplated planting George McGovern campaign literature in the would-be-assailant Arthur Bremer’s apartment. The shooting in Laurel, Maryland, was about, for them, the campaign itself. That sort of cynicism is, ultimately, dehumanizing.
How then do we weep with those who weep?
Let’s call our congregations to pray together. Let’s realize that, in this case, our gay and lesbian neighbors are likely quite scared. Who wouldn’t be? Demonstrate the sacrificial love of Jesus to them. We don’t have to agree on the meaning of marriage and sexuality to love one another and to see the murderous sin of terrorism. Let’s also pray for our leaders who have challenging decisions to make in the midst of crisis. Let’s mobilize our congregations and others to give blood for the victims. Let’s call for governing authorities to do their primary duty of keeping its people safe from evildoers.
And let’s bear patiently with those who jump the gun, in arguing about the politics on social media. For many of them, the jump to talk about gun control or Islam or military preparedness or any other issue isn’t so much about pontificating as it is about frustration. They, like all of us, want this horror to end, and they want to do something—even if that’s just expressing themselves on Twitter.
As the Body of Christ, though, we can love and serve and weep and mourn. And we can remind ourselves and our neighbors that this is not the way it is supposed to be. We mourn, but we mourn in the hope of a kingdom where blood is not shed and where bullets never fly.

11June2016 A Different Scream

Any parent can tell you, a house with children can be...no, IS noisy.  The amount of noise is directly proportional to  the number of children in said house.  Ours can generally be measured not in decibels but by the Richter scale.   "Get off me!" "Give me that back!" "You are a baby!" "MOM!"  Oh, you thought we are saints and our kids angels?

After constant exposure to a stimuli, you're likely to become immune to it.  So, there comes a point when a parent fails to notice the screaming.   Don't worry. This is relegated to our home.  In public, we are very conscientious of creating any commotions.  Anytime we go to a restaurant, shop, store, etc. we get stared at like we're on a reality show...and that's in America.  Imagine a large, white family walking through the mall in Anytown, Middle East.   We can do without any additional attention. In our apartment though, we sometimes ignore the hullabaloo.   

Last night, D and I were sitting in the living room, I was working on work emails, she was reading on her Kindle. From the other room we heard a scream.  No, it was more like a SCREAM!  Instantly we dropped what were doing and ran into the kids' bedroom.  Pandemonium ensued.  

A. and M. were preparing to watch a DVD on a portable player, which requires a electrical  converter.  While plugging in the player, A. put his hand on an exposed wired and 220 volts of electricity surged through his 50 pound body. THANK GOD, the shock caused A. to fall backward, pulling the wire, which was firmly gripped in his seven-year-old hand, out of the wall socket.  Again, THANK GOD!  Other than a few blisters on his hand and sore muscles (from contracting) and a new found respect for electricity, there are no residual affects of this little experience.  Except for dad.  I can't get the sound of that very different scream out of my head. 

8June2016 Ramadan Prayers

Please join us in praying for our neighbors and friends...and over a billion people around the world that will commemorating the holy month of Ramadan.  When pray for these people it's not out of any sense of pride, moral superiority, or even pity.  We love Muslims and so does their Creator.  Over the next four weeks, let us all look past the political bantering, hate mongering and xenophobia that's so prevalent today and lift these dear people to the Throne of Grace.  Checkout these words from Cryout:

Every year most Muslims fast for a month from sunrise to sunset.
Muslims follow the lunar calendar. In 2016, Ramadan likely will begin June 6 and end on July 5.

Christians serving in the Arab Muslim world are asking you to pray specifically during this time frame as Muslims take the month to fast.

Muslims eat at night during Ramadan, but this fast is a challenge and many take it as a spiritual time.
We pray Muslims will come to know Jesus Christ during this month focused on prayer and fasting.

In this prayer guide, you will find suggested Scriptures to pray through. Many prayer points are from Christians living in each country, and there are prayers of blessing for these nations.

5June2016 Quickshot: Waiting for the Crescent

Many are watching for the crescent moon and waiting for the start of Ramadan.  Looks like it begins tomorrow.  Please pray for our friends & neighbors over the next 30 days!