Friday, October 31, 2008

Random Thoughts


Today is a great day. Free burrito day at Chipotle if you wear some foil.

The World Series ended rather abruptly. So when does spring training start?

UNC is unanimously ranked #1 in basketball to start the season - is it too early to switch allegiance?

I may be getting a new phone number soon. Hopefully it accompanies an iphone if my lovely wife will give the OK for my birthday.

Today is also halloween - and the first time I will be at home doing nothing for a decade or so. I used to help run Harvest Festival at my church and now - well, I get to hand out candy. So nice.

Durham is absolutely beautiful in the fall. Seriously.

My mom is flying in to visit in a few days.

We keep meeting new people here in Durham, so many of whom share our story of just moving here and not really knowing anyone.

It looks like Thanksgiving is going to be crazy fun. We may have more than 30 people in our house! Wait, didn't we just move here? How do we know that many people? God is sooo good!

The Office was amazing last night.

Is gas really $2.65?? When did that happen?

My wife is now blogging. http://kimicope.blogspot.com. Check it out!

Your turn. Tell me one random thing you're thinking about.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Picking sides

Anyone else tired of all the political banter yet? The commercials are killing me. It's finger pointing, blaming, vilifying, scaring, etc. The candidates can't stop talking about each other, and it seems like many voters are boiling over as well - ready to explode on each other at the drop of a hat. I've recently been reading comments from a couple of friends as they go back and forth against one another, one even accusing the other of not being a Christian because of his political views. It's crazy isn't it?

I was thinking about this need to pick sides. Are you with us, or are you with them? Are you in, or are you out? We want to box people in, identify them, and either bring them into the fold or ostracize them. All the while, both sides are claiming that God is on their side. Have you noticed how God always agrees with us? Whichever side we are on, it's God's side. It's funny because in the New Testament there are often two competing groups as well. The Pharisees, and the Sadducees. Or sometimes it's the Pharisees and the Herodians. Each side is often coming to Jesus with some sort of issue - assuming that Jesus will be on their side. So it may be about taxes, or about resurrection, or about how to enforce the law, but each side assumes Jesus is on their side. And then Jesus does something cool. When faced with an "A or B" situation, he often comes up with C. Jesus refuses to take sides. He refuses to join in on these useless arguments that vilify each other. He's much more interested in hearts, in community, in unity, in grace. I heard someone say once that you know you've made God into your own image when He hates all the same people you do. If the way of Jesus isn't difficult for us, then I wonder if we've missed it altogether. It's difficult to love people that don't agree with us. It's difficult to respect and obey authorities that we didn't vote for. And yet, it seems to me that the Bible calls us to those very things.

It makes me wonder, what if Jesus were to be interviewed here in our political climate. What if he were part of the Saddleback forum, right between Obama and McCain. Many of us assume he would join forces with one of these candidates. But I wonder if He wouldn't surprise us. Maybe Jesus would take the discussion in a totally different direction. Maybe he would address our hate for each other, or our pride in being so righteously moral, or our arrogance. Maybe He would remind us that it doesn't matter who is the next President, but that He's still in control. One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Isaiah 6. It starts out like this "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on the throne." King Uzziah is this long standing great ruler in Israel. And suddenly he's dead. You can imagine the sense of panic, the feeling that things are out of control. There must be questions about who the next king will be, what kinds of things might change, what new laws might be coming. And here is this subtle reminder that amidst it all, even when the earthly king is dead, the real King is still sitting on His throne.

So how do we forge a different path? What does path "C" look like for you?

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Five


I can't believe it, but my little girl is five years old now. These past five years have gone so fast. She amazes me more and more each day. The thing I love the most about her is her sweet spirit and compassionate heart. She is so much like her mom. Her heart beats for the poor and the ones that are suffering. She has a heart for the orphan. Every time she gets money, she immediately puts it in a jar "for the kids". She saves it in order to send it to help with world hunger.

For her birthday we got her a hamster. She loves it. She named it Chocolate. Chocolate doesn't do much yet, but she sits there and stares at it anyway. When we got it she said "Am I dreaming?" because she couldn't believe that she was getting her own pet hamster. How cool is that? So stay tuned for the adventures of Chocolate, a mini-series coming this fall to a blog near you.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Michigan

We've been in Michigan since Thursday. My wife's grandmother died and so we drove out to Grand Haven for the funeral. It's been a good trip so far. We drove all night Wednesday in order to take advantage of the hours our kids were sleeping. It's the only way to go, but quite tiring. I drove from about 8pm to 4:30am before my brother in law took over for a while. Anyway, the funeral was Friday and it went well. Grandma Kleist was a great woman who loved Jesus. It's always a different feeling when you go to a funeral of someone who loved the Lord. While there is still grief, there is great hope and celebration as well. We've had a fun time sharing stories, looking through old pictures and spending time with family.

Tomorrow we'll be driving in to Grand Rapids to attend Mars Hill Bible Church, and hopefully hear Rob Bell teach. It's one of those churches I've wanted to attend for a long time, so I'm excited that we're getting that chance. After that, we'll spend some time with my wife's other grandparents, and then another all-night drive back to Durham. Pray for our drive!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

What's a bomb?

I was listening the other day to my daughter play with another friend. They were pretending all kinds of things. I don't really know the context of how it came up, but the other kid wanted to pretend that a bomb fell and things were blowing up. It was at this point that my daughter dropped the bomb of a question and asked "What's a bomb?"

Can you imagine a world where you didn't know what a bomb was? What if there was peace - real peace all over the world? Many will say that day won't ever come until Jesus returns. That may be true, but shouldn't we long for and work toward that day anyway? Think about the innocence of that question that Hannah asked. She has no understanding of a weapon that is made to wipe out hundreds or thousands of lives at one time. She doesn't understand something like war. I wonder if kids in other parts of the world ask that question. I wonder if their worlds are so safe and so innocent that the idea of a bomb is totally foreign to them. Don't they deserve that kind of innocence? Shouldn't we long for and work toward that as well?

Remember that time that Jesus said "Love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you"? I wonder if He meant that.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Citizens of Virtue

Ok, so I got a weird email the other day about this website called Citizens of Virtue. It was actually an invitation to some sort of game revolved around this website. Some how it was connected to Rob Bell's new book. Thus, my introduction to the world of ARGs (Alternate Reality Games). I don't really know how to explain this whole thing. It's basically like living in a movie like National Treasure - where everything is a clue. The object of this story is to find a guy named Xander Greene, the nephew of one Lila Greene who is concerned about her son's involvement with the Citizens of Virtue. He has gone missing and no one seems to have heard from him. So there's this whole group of people online who are contributing by figuring out the puzzle pieces. Clues have come from a phone number, from text message, songs, from sounds, from books, from the Bible, from hidden websites with secret passwords, from cryptic messages within song names, and all kinds of things. I can't believe that some one came up with this. I'm even more amazed that this is somehow connected with Rob Bell's book. I don't know if it's him, or the people around him, but I am continually amazed at the creative things that come from him, from Noomas, from Mars Hill, his books, etc. It's really unbelievable.

So, I'm guessing that if you read this, you might be really confused. I know it sounds crazy, but go to the websites I linked above. Start following the clues, look it up on Facebook, or through google. You can also call this number 1-888-64 VIRTU and dial extension 704. It looks like the game will last 7 weeks or more. So we'll see how this thing ends up.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Don Miller



I got to meet Don Miller today. He's a guy I look up to quite a bit. His books have meant a great deal to me and my own spiritual growth. He's a guy who doesn't just talk about faith, but is seeking to live out the way of Jesus in every way. He recently completed a bike trip across America in which he and a team raised tons of money for Blood:Water Mission - an organization that builds well in Africa. He is also the founder of the Belmont Foundation, which is an organization that seeks to partner with the church in mentoring kids that grow up without fathers.

Anyway, he was in Chapel Hill at UNC as part of the Obama campaign. He led a forum where he simply spoke about his own journey of faith, the issues that are important to him as a believer, and why he feels Obama is the candidate that best matches his values as a Christian. It was a pretty interesting hour or so as he not only spoke but answered questions. You can visit his blog if you want to read some of the things he was speaking about today.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Reading Binge

I'm going through this phase right now where I am reading a ton. I like these times. I just finished Rob Bell's newest book which is called Jesus Wants to Save Christians. Now I'm back to Shane Claiborne, and his latest Jesus for President. A couple of people commented before about Shane's book, so I'm looking forward to getting into this more and maybe seeing what kind of dialogue we can get going. Anyone read Bell's latest yet? I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'll share mine soon.

What about you, what are you reading?

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