Relaxtion Technique #1

If you guessed this to be in the Florida Keys, you're right.  This is at Fort Jefferson, in the Dry Tortugas.  

The picture doesn't do it justice!

Rise Up

Bruce Springsteen's music is pretty much the soundtrack of my life.  At 16, I didn't know where I was going, but I knew for sure I was "born to run."  It was only in adulthood that I began to understand the prophetic voice that Bruce brings to rock-n-roll.  Right now it's Friday morning and I'm working on the Sunday sermon as I hum a song by "The Boss."  It's the stirring "My City of Ruins" about Asbury Park, a resort town where he'd hung out as a kid (Lyrics included below).

The song is laced with gospel, and begins by mourning the neglect of the city that has become a place of "ruins."   The chorus comes in strong with hints of Nehemiah, imploring the city to "Rise up, rise up, rise up."  Another verse turns to lament a lost love, and the awareness of how neglect led to the "ruins" of the relationship.  

It is the final chorus, though, where the gospel shines through in a prayer for strength, faith, and love that he might use his hands to build up what has been torn down.  It's a fitting song to listen to while you read Isaiah 40.21-31, which ends with, "but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles;  they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."  

Isaiah believed in a time when the people of Israel would indeed "rise up" and live in God's might, power, and strength.  He also knew that sometimes we get weary pursuing justice, sometimes we fall, and sometimes we can't make it on our own strength.  The good Word for Sunday's sermon is that no matter how tired you are, God does not grow weak.  God will indeed help you "rise up."

I hope you'll join us for worship this weekend.  Traditional liturgy is at 10:45.  Not-so-traditional is at 11:45.  No matter which service you attend, I'm praying you'll lift your face to the heavens and "rise up."

Listening for the sweet bells of mercy,

Pastor Gary

Isaiah 40.21-31

21 Do you not know? 
       Have you not heard? 
       Has it not been told you from the beginning? 
       Have you not understood since the earth was founded?

 22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, 
       and its people are like grasshoppers. 
       He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, 
       and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

 23 He brings princes to naught 
       and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.

 24 No sooner are they planted, 
       no sooner are they sown, 
       no sooner do they take root in the ground, 
       than he blows on them and they wither, 
       and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.

 25 "To whom will you compare me? 
       Or who is my equal?" says the Holy One.

 26 Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: 
       Who created all these? 
       He who brings out the starry host one by one, 
       and calls them each by name. 
       Because of his great power and mighty strength, 
       not one of them is missing.

 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, 
       and complain, O Israel, 
       "My way is hidden from the LORD; 
       my cause is disregarded by my God"?

 28 Do you not know? 
       Have you not heard? 
       The LORD is the everlasting God, 
       the Creator of the ends of the earth. 
       He will not grow tired or weary, 
       and his understanding no one can fathom.

 29 He gives strength to the weary 
       and increases the power of the weak.

 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, 
       and young men stumble and fall;

 31 but those who hope in the LORD 
       will renew their strength. 
       They will soar on wings like eagles; 
       they will run and not grow weary, 
       they will walk and not be faint.

My City of Ruins     

 There's a blood red circle

on the cold dark ground
and the rain is falling down.
The church door's thrown open
I can hear the organ's song
But the congregation's gone,
My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Now the sweet bells of mercy
drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner 
Like scattered leaves,
The boarded up windows, 
the empty streets,
While my brother's down on his knees
My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up 
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up

Now there's tears on the pillow
Darlin' where we slept,
and you took my heart when you left.
Without your sweet kiss
My soul is lost, my friend
Tell me how do I begin again?
My city's in ruins
My city's in ruins

Now with these hands,
with these hands, with these hands
with these hands, I pray Lord
With these hands, with these hands,
I pray for the strength, Lord
With these hands, with these hands,
I pray for the faith, Lord
With these hands, with these hands,
I pray for the faith, Lord
With these hands, with these hands,
I pray for the faith, Lord
With these hands, with these hands,
I pray for your love, Lord
With these hands, with these hands,
I pray for your faith, Lord
With these hands,
With these hands,
I pray for the strength, Lord
With these hands,
With these hands,

Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up

A Hammer in Heaven

It is earth's loss and heaven's gain that Millard Fuller has passed away.  You may not recognize his name, but I bet you recognize the organization he founded:  Habitat for Humanity.

His life included giving away his fortune in responding to the gospel of Jesus Christ with a kind of radicality I rather envy.  

His life also included creating an organization that has helped more than 300,000 people own a decent home at an affordable price.  

His vision mobilized countless people (like me) to give up Saturdays and vacations to labor alongside other volunteers to build houses and help improve the lives of others.

Most of us will live our lives today focused on feathering our own nests,  but if you're reading this, stop and take a moment to learn how Millard engaged the world with his faith.  Then appreciate your own house and the abundance of your life.  Then ask God to show you ways to help others around you.  

Jesus told his disciples at the last supper, "In my father's house are many mansions.  I go there to prepare a place for you."  Call me hokey, but I've got this strange hunch that Millard is working on one of those mansions in heaven for someone else right now.  Millard heard, "Well done, my good and faithful servant."  Then he picked up his hammer and went to work building a house for someone who will be joining him later.      

Sin Management or Careful Discernment?

There are a lot of occasions when I can't tell the Christians apart from the non-Christians.  At parties, grocery stores, courts of law, even in church.  Seldom do the actions of Christians distinguish them as Jesus followers.  We are these walking contradictions to grace.  For example:

We preach a gospel of grace that is inclusive of all - yet our churches are frequently cliquish and exclusive.

We preach against marriage rights for homosexuals - yet our divorce rates and adultery indicate we don't know much about heterosexual covenant keeping.

We proclaim that Jesus became powerless on the cross  - yet are unwilling to give up our own idols of power.

It's impossible to measure the distance between what we do and what we say we believe, partly because we have made following Jesus about sin management instead of a life of careful discernment.  We have exchanged Jesus' radical way of pursuing the spirit of the law for the actual law, perhaps because quick absolutes are easy to grasp in a life that moves at warp speed.  The problem is that absolutes don't flex, and they certainly don't allow for grace.  And, oh by the way, the law is impossible to keep.

Paul dealt with this in his letter to the church at Corinth.  It appears that they were struggling with whether or not it was right to eat meat that had been used as a part of pagan sacrifice ritual.  It all seems strange to our modern ears because we mostly buy our meat at a store, but pay close attention, because the case makes extremely clear that careful discernment about right and wrong trumps moral absolutism.  

Paul says that the meat ought not be a problem because those pagan rituals mean nothing, and, after all, the Christians there knew there is only one true God, so the meat was fine to eat.  Except for one little caveat.  Paul points out that not everyone had this knowledge, and so everyone must be careful "that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak."  In other words, if eating the idol meat might cause problems for others new to the faith, don't do it.  The fact was that love for others had to trump freedom to eat the idol meat.  The implication for us?  We must question our moral proclamations as Christians and admit that not everything in life is so black and white.  

Sometimes the answer to "is this right or wrong?" is "it depends."   

And "it depends" means we have to think carefully, pray carefully, and live carefully.  "It depends" is a heavier burden than strict adherence to the law because it requires that we ignore the sound-byte theology of pop religion, and engage in the utterly serious question of, "Is this right or wrong for me in the here and now?"  To fail to ask - and answer - this question is a diminishment of Jesus' grace that frees us from the law.   It is a stark refusal to appeal to love, rather than knowledge or law.  Hence, it is always easier to manage sin than to discern carefully.

This Sunday our church family will renew our covenant with one another.  It's something we do every January.  The sermon is going to hover over the issue of careful discernment because it is the task of any congregation trying to faithfully follow Jesus.  We'll talk about how to walk this path of discernment together in a sermon called Wii Church.  It's based on 1 Corinthians 8.1-13.  Bring your Bible and join us at 10:45 or 11:45.

Carefully,

Pastor Gary

Nathaniel and Barak

Nathaniel and Barak

The lectionary assigned us John 1.43-51 for this Sunday when we will be two days out from the inauguration of our nation's 44th president.   Is there a connection?  

Christian Century reported this week that Jacob Javits, a Republican senator from New York, predicted in a 1958 essay that America would elect it's first black president in the year 2000.  While Javits was off by 8 years, his prediction was right on one front.  Kavits wrote that, "despite his other characteristics, he will have developed the fortitude to withstand the vicious smear attacks that came his way as he fought to the top of government and politics."   You can read it for yourself in Esquire.

Just four days from the inauguration of our country's first black president, I have been reminded by a new flurry of racist emails and jokes about the President-Elect that our nation is still a long way from being unified on matters of race.  Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or neither, it's time for us to enter into some honest dialogue about our differences so that we can find some operational ground where we have similarities.

Nathaniel, when hearing about Jesus from Philip, asked, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"  It was a slur against Jesus based on Nathaniel's prejudices.  He took the reputation of Nazareth as a whole and hung it on the individual named Jesus.  Nathaniel had an awakening, though, and the proclamation he makes after his encounter with Jesus is "You are the Son of God!"

This is not an exact comparison because Mr. Obama is not the Son of God and he may end up being the worst president in US history.  However, Nathaniel exposes the need in all of us to examine our prejudices and make a conscious effort to withhold forming our opinion until we get to know a person.  As Nathan gawked in wonder at who Jesus really was, Jesus told him, "I will show you even greater things than these."

So, this Sunday we're going to talk about discipleship, and how following Jesus begins with examining our inner stuff that must be changed.  We'll start with our prejudices, look for God in some unusual places, and try to accept the fact that God wants our faith-lives to evolve from where we are.

If you're in Houston this Sunday you are invited to worship at Willow Meadows Baptist Church at 10:45 or 11:45.  And if you're off for MLK's holiday on Monday, I challenge you to make it more than another day to lounge around and barbeque, but to find a way to work for equality.  We are diverse by design.  

Jesus Calls Philip and Nathanael - John 1

 43The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, "Follow me."

 44Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."

 46"Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked. 
      "Come and see," said Philip.

 47When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false."

 48"How do you know me?" Nathanael asked. 
      Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you."

 49Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel."

 50Jesus said, "You believe^[a^] because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that." 51He then added, "I tell you^[b^] the truth, you^[c^] shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

  

Another take on Israel

So many in my Christian circles automatically jump to the defense of Israel given the current news.  I'm still undecided about who's right and who's wrong in the current Gaza occupation.  I do know that I hear a lot in favor of Israel, so for another side, I include a quote that came in today's email via Sojourner's.  I welcome your thoughts on this: 

Most people agree that Israel, like any other country, has the right to defend itself from outside attacks. However, in this unequal conflict between Israel and Hamas, Israel, as usual, has overdone it. When it comes to dealing with its enemies, Israel has a pattern of being extreme. “An eye for an eye” does not satisfy. It has to be more like one hundred eyes for one eye and one hundred teeth for one tooth.

- Alex Awad, dean of students at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank of Palestine. (Source: God's Politics)

The Historical Timeline of the Nativity

Or, How Are Parents Supposed to Know all this Stuff?

A new tradition for the Long family is watching the feature length live-action film The Nativity somewhere around Christmas each year. It's a great film for giving kids a visual on the Lukan birth narratives.

We watched it last night and somewhere around two thirds of the way through the Younger Sister asked, "Was the Ice Age before this, Daddy?"

I stifled my giggle and replied as flatly as possible, "Why, yes, it was."

She's seven now, so the question didn't really surprise me. It was cute that she knows enough history to ask the question, but not enough to place the two pieces in a contextual time line. You child development specialists could have a field day on that. But I think the more telling part of the story is not her question, but me stifling my giggle.

Why did I do that?

I didn't think long about that question. I know. She's the youngest of the three, and she's not acting like a little kid much these days. I stifled the giggle in the same way I push down on top of her head teasingly and say, "Stop growing up!" I stifled the giggle - probably mistakenly - because I like that fact that she knows some things but still needs me to place them in context for her. I stifled the giggle because of my own need to be needed.

I suppose we spend much of our parenting years in this important work of contextualizing life: helping kids make sense out of pain, plugging the holes in the meta-narratives, and answering those most important questions about love, sex, faith, power, and, yes, even where the Ice Age falls on the timeline relative to the birth of Christ.

Two Kinds of Waiting

You just wait 'til your father gets home!"  

Bill Cosby in a stand-up routine once told about coming home from work only to be greeted by his wife with the words, "I want you to go upstairs and kill that boy."  I've waited in my room, nervously knowing that my posterior was going to meet an inanimate object at the end of my father's arm.  I usually deserved it, too. 

That's one type of waiting.

There's another type of waiting, a glad kind.  It's what I experienced when my father took a business trip.  He'd be gone for several days but upon returning, he almost always bore a souvenir of some sort.   One time it was a piece of petrified tree from California, another time a perpetual calendar from Niagara, a pencil sharpener in the base of the Empire State Building, or a bag of volcano ash from Mt. Saint Helen.  No matter where he went or how long he stayed, I knew my dad would return to his family bearing gifts.  Those gifts were neat, but the real power was in how they conveyed a deeper truth:  He'd been thinking of us while he was gone, and had definite plans to return.

We Christians wait similarly.  We've been taught that though Jesus ascended to heaven, he is planning a return, and at that return he will bring about justice and restore God's rule.  That's a heck of a gift to bring your children after a celestial business trip.  Chapter three of a letter in the Bible entitled 2 Peter deals with how it is that we are to be found waiting.  Again we have two types of waiting - as those who live with no regard to holiness and may expect punishment for our deeds, or as those who pursue holiness and can expect to take part in God's great kingdom.  

In Advent, we celebrate the first arrival of Jesus by celebrating his birth.  But we also celebrate his impending return.  Peter suggests that as we await that return we should "...strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish...and forewarned."  The promise of Jesus' return is good, but there is a darker, nearly foreboding side to the promise:  How we wait matters. 

I'll be talking about this further in a sermon this Sunday(12/7) at Willow Meadows Baptist Church.  If you're in Houston I hope you'll join us for worship at either 10:45 or 11:45 that morning and see what all this "waiting hype" is about.  In the mean time, me and Richard Marx will be - 

Right Here Waiting For You,

Pastor Gary

And no, Richard Marx will not be singing at our church this Sunday - that was my attempt at humor involving a rocker from the 1980's - although it's debatable if Richard Marx could be accurately called a "rocker."  

For the Record

Rich Cizik's forced resignation as director of the National Association of Evangelicals was just plain wrong.  

Peace & Righteousness Will Kiss

Peanut Butter and Jelly

Larry, Moe, and Curly

Christmas and Carols

Some things just go together.  But sometimes things that belong together aren’t always kept together.  Like that lone ranger in your sock drawer, or the hex nut in your hand that is separated from the bolt that has declared “sanctuary” in your garage.   Through the course of time things that belong together get separated.  Maybe it’s you and a friend, maybe it’s you and your spouse.  Maybe you’re estranged from someone whom you love very much, but you find it exceedingly difficult to reach out to him.  

Advent, as it moves us toward Christmas, offers the promise of many things to come when God fulfills the Kingdom that is both here and “not yet.”  Psalm 85 speaks of a time when two things seemingly separated in our day will be reunited.   Psalm 85.11 speaks of a day of salvation when “love and faithfulness meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other.”  

That doesn’t sound much like the world we see around us.  The great news of Advent is that it points us again and again to the birth of the Christ.  And the birth of Christ set a plan in motion whereby God intends to bring back together all the things that belong together.  Me and you, us and God, the world unto itself.  This Psalm speaks of a day when the promise of peace and righteousness will become a reality.  

Join us at Willow Meadows this Advent season to prepare your soul to celebrate the birth of Christ as if it were the first time.  As you take stock of the things in your life that belong together but are separated, may you find joy in God’s promise that broken things can be made whole again.  Even your separated socks.

A good prayer for this December:  “God, help me to see my part in the broken relationships of my life and to work to mend those things.  May peace and righteousness, as well as love and faithfulness, guide me to participate in bringing peace and righteousness together in Your world.  Amen”

I'm a Winner

So far today, I've won the following things, and was informed via email:

1.  The Irish Lottery (1.1 million pounds - I didn't know the Irish had a currency in pounds???)

2.  A $1.15 million dollar inheritance from a man I apparently nursed to health in the Vietnam war who remembered me and wanted his estate to go the "brave soldier who saved his life."  Funny, I was born in 1970.  

3.  A $550,000.00 sweepstakes claim from Benson & Hedges cigarettes.  I was a little confused, however, when the email told me to reply with my name, age, social security number (for tax purposes, of course), my mother's maiden name, my phone number, my mailing address, and my employer's name.  It gave me a specific address to which I should reply because the "reply address" on the email was not monitored.  You'd think Benson and Hedges would at least take the time to send an email awarding half a mil from a monitored address, don't you think?  Strangely, the information they asked sounded just like the credit app I filled out for my mortgage.

And that's just today.  One can only ponder what will be in my email tomorrow!  What have you won recently?  

Thursday Aphorism

I don't think I got this from anyone else, if I did, my apologies:

A short memory is grace's good companion.

Grace for Monday

I know Monday's are hard for a lot of folk for a lot of reasons.  Here's a good quote from Frederick Buechner to keep things in perspective:

The grace of God means something like:  Here is your life.  You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.  Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don't be afraid.  I am with you.  Nothing can ever separate us.  It's for you I created the universe.  I love you.  There's only one catch.  Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.  Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.  

That's from his book Beyond Words - Daily Readings from the ABC's of Grace.  

I'm reading a collection of his sermons called Secrets in the Dark and they are fabulous.  I've never really enjoyed reading sermons in print because sermons are to living in a spoken kind of way.  This set is different, though.

My prayer today is that you and I would be able to reach out and take the gift of grace.   

Forgive Me Lord, for I am Becoming Intolerant

My Intolerance of Southern Baptists is Growing.

This article from Associated Baptist Press illustrates why Baptists are having an increasingly difficult time sharing the gospel with a lost world.  A gathering of the Baptist State Convention in North Carolina this week voted down a giving plan that would allow churches to designate a portion of their financial support to go to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

I don't find this startling news.  After all, "they's kin."  What I mean is, I came from good ol' North Carolina (EXCURSIS ALERT! By the way, the UNC basketball regular season tips off on this Saturday - from the moment of this writing, that's just over 27 hours, but who's counting?  And to my brother-in-law Andy, I am praying for you in your grief on November 19, the day after UNC plays UK.  Andy's a Kentucky fan who will watch his boys wilt under Roy's hand again this year).  Now back to Baptist stuff.  I understand the mentality.  Or at least I think I used to.

Having been raised a Baptist in NC, I was taught that local churches participated voluntarily with state organizations.  I was also taught that part of being Baptist was expressing our differences and celebrating our diversity - not about lockstep uniformity.  That uniformity now seems to be the highest value among conservative pastors there, not church freedom.  The details in the ABP article support my position.

This is deeply troublesome to me, but I really shouldn't be surprised.  Baptists have increasingly marginalized themselves over the last few decades as a few tyrants in shepherd's clothing have grappled for power and prestige.   The carnage along the side of the path to power includes good men and women, pastors and professors who have served Baptists faithfully for years.  That doesn't even count the lay people so disgusted by it all they have either gone to other expressions of Christianity, or left the Church altogether.  And who could even reasonably estimate the number of folk Baptists will never reach because of our tainted image as hypocrites and Pharisees.  We were so concerned with inerrancy and keeping women in "their place" that we forgot about telling the Good News, never mind acting justly and with mercy.   I believe God does not walk with the machine called Southern Baptists, because Southern Baptists have not walked humbly with God.

My fears about the ultimate isolation of fundamentalist Baptists subculture, and their ultimate irrelevance in American culture, were realized when I read that fellow pastor Eric Page of Victory Baptist Church actually said, "It's time for us to pop out a can of spinach and put an end to tolerance."   On the convention floor.  In public.  To other Christians.  I'm sorry, but there is no contextualizing that my feeble mind can fabricate to make this an ok statement.  

How can any self-respecting Christian say such a thing?  To "put an end to tolerance" would be a setback to our society, and to the cause of Christ.  Jesus' ways were about respect and grace.  Jesus did not call Pastor Page to "follow me and eliminate tolerance."  Jesus calls each of us to "follow him" - and there is no further amendment to that call, except to say that in following him we are to live out that Golden Rule.

Ending tolerance sounds antithetical to "loving neighbor as self."  Pastor Page and NC Baptists, for the sake of us all, could you please retract that or explain it?  Meanwhile, I'll be on my knees asking God's forgiveness of my intolerance of your intolerance.

Guest Column

Todd Ferguson is one of the Associate Pastors at Willow Meadows Baptist, where I serve as Pastor.  Todd handled the graveside portion of a funeral recently and wrote this great piece about the funeral industry.  Thanks, Todd, for sharing.  You may direct comments to him by posting here.

The Factory

 

The art on the wall was mass-produced, and the ficus was definitely fake.  The carpet was supple and industrial and dark forest green to make sure no stains would show.  There was even a coffee station.  The woman with the name badge looked at me with a genuine but well-rehearsed smile.  I told her who I was, and she replied, “Yes- You are in Grand Room 3.”  I graciously smiled back, but internally, I sighed deeply as I walked passed other rooms with fake ficus trees and fake art.

I sighed because I was not walking to any ballroom at any national hotel in America.  Sure, places like Holiday Inn or Double Tree are known for their Hobby Lobby-esque art, their industrial carpet, and their coffee stations.  I sighed because I was at a funeral home.

“Funeral Home” is such an ironic term for what I experienced today.  The word “home” implies a place of familiarity, of comfort, and of knowing.  The family that I saw today was not familiar with the couch on which they were sitting.  There was no dip in its springs from years of watching TV with the rest of the family, no Dr. Pepper stain from a Friday night 3 years ago.  Instead, this family- in the midst of their grief- was removed from all comfort and familiarity and placed in a foreign “home” so that they could mourn.

However, they couldn’t mourn too long because the genuine-but-rehearsed woman with the name badge guided us to the actual gravesite (while another family moved into Grand Room 3).   As we drove to the site, we passed thousands and thousands of other graves.  They were testaments to the thousands of other families who sat on that same couch back in Grand Room 3 looking at the same fake ficus tree through their weary eyes.

I could go on and on to describe the experience, but I’ll stop.  This funeral home, which is a franchised chain of thousands of funeral homes, did the best they could.  I am not blaming them.  The woman with the name badge was pleasant, respectful, and extremely helpful in facilitating a funeral.  I think, however, that the funeral home is a product of our culture.

Since the 1780’s, our culture has been creating factories because the factory system can accomplish things more quickly, efficiently, and cheaply.  It’s easier to build watches if all parts are made in one location with one streamlined method with one series of interchangeable parts.  That’s the factory system.  Before this process became popular, each watch piece had to be handcrafted at the watchmaker’s shop. 

Today, I experienced a funeral factory.  In this location, there was a streamlined method for how to take care of a loved one’s death.  Chapel, Grand Rooms, gravesites- they were all there at this one place, and it was efficient.  We celebrated this beautiful woman’s rich and full life in under 30 minutes.

            My question is this: “Is this the best place to honor Grandmother’s life and to lay her body to rest?”  A funeral and a gravesite are places where a person’s life is both celebrated and remembered.  But at these funeral factories, life can not be celebrated because life was not lived there.  This beloved Grandmother did not worship week in and week out in that chapel.  She did not get up and make coffee every morning at that coffee station, and she did not take a long nap every Sunday afternoon on that couch.  This place is not known.  And because it is not known, it is not a “thin place” where the holy meets the mundane.

Instead, the funeral “home” is a location that removes death from everyday life. It keeps the sacred apart from the profane.  This funeral factory contained acres and acres of thousands of graves, separated from actual daily living that continues after the funeral is over.  Having death so far removed from our society keeps us arrogantly unaware that we, too, are mortal, and we will die.

Many people, especially Christians, are realizing the factory-like nature of funeral  homes.  They are wanting to hold together the sacredness of death and the holiness of everyday life.  One way many churches fuse these two is by building columbaria within their garden walls.  These places allow a loved one to rest in piece in the space where they worshiped God each week; it is a familiar place.  And because it is familiar, it is known, which is the perfect “thin place” for God to meet us.

Sarah and the Moose

Here's a picture - not an endorsement - of me with Palin again.  It was hysterically funny to watch all the little kids get their picture made with her at Trunk or Treat (outreach event at our church).  

Palin-ized!

Guess who's getting "Palin-ized" for Halloween?  This is me and the wife working on our costumes for Halloween.  

Guess what?  She even plays the flute!

I'm back...

Yikes, it's been over a month since I've written anything for the blog.  I've been very busy writing for a Bible Study publisher, working on my doctoral project, and writing a series of sermons.  And that little storm that blew through Houston has been more than distracting.   

For mental breaks I've been playing the Eyeball Game - it is quite addictive, but I justify the time by saying it's good for my geometry skills.  You can find it at Woodgear.  

More Ike Photos

For those of you friends and family reading from around the country, Ike has decimated Houston. There are over 2 million people without power, trees block many of the roads, and water continues to be a problem in low lying areas and the typical flood zones. Here are few more pictures to give you a "look see." We have tons more, but have to convert them from raw to jpegs and computer access is presenting a challenge in this regard - they'll be up as soon as possible.

Photo above is Braeswood near Fondren.

The photo above is a home in Maplewood - this is typical for most every house in SW Houston that I've seen. Unfortunately, Willow Meadows neighborhood is one of the worst hit, but I've not captured photos from there yet. The western eye-wall of Ike passed right over Willow Meadows.

The photo above is Fondren Middle School - notice the sign blown out.

Ike Photos

The Long family has thankfully survived Hurricane Ike. The long-time Houstonians we've spoken to said this is worse than Alisha in 1983. Having been here only 6 years I have to take their word on that one. What I can say is that this damage is some of the worst storm damage I've personally ever seen.

The house in the above photo is three doors down from us in the Braeburn Valley neighborhood. That and all the photos of storm damage were either shot by me or Traci.

These two houses are about 3 blocks from us. The house on the left was under renovation, and received heavy damage not visible in this photo.

Above photo - still in the Braeburn Valley neighborhood - two friends are having a beer together to cool down. Ike blew over the brick wall these guys are sitting on, as well as the fence in the background. Next photo is right across the street from these guys.