Here Comes Christmas / Part III

Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” - John 10-25-30

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God." - C. S. Lewis

Response and perspective can only carry us so far. Beyond that we need to produce a defiant faith. A faith that does not rely on logic, proof or any submission to the insistence of man for empirical evidence. In so many ways each person, when they take this step, becomes a living miracle. Much as that baby in the manger. It cannot be said enough that faith is the single most powerful human emotion, for it encapsulates not only the intellect but the soul, marries the two and produces a freedom akin to heaven itself.

Those that "buy in" to the Christmas Story find, before long, an unsettling sense of self. You, that person you know best of all, is getting pushed aside, on the inside. Not in a rude way. There is no imposition here, no forced entry. It is a sweet surrender. As scripture puts it faith, "..is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1). Note the words "sure" and "certain". How you view your inner-self, the world around you and your circumstances are all now subject to a transformation that is necessary, sometimes painful but always rewarding.

How does one become sure of "hope" and certain of what is "unseen"? It starts with the Christmas Story and emerges from there, in the narrative of the life of a man who was far more. A man who stopped for all the hurt in the world, took the time to listen and love, to heal and encourage. From one birth, against all odds and in defiant faith, has come the rebirth of billions of people.

I may not always have the best command of scripture. I often do not have the answers. But I do know one thing: I have that baby. And I will not let go of him until the day I die, when He, at last, will be the one holding me.

Here Comes Christmas / Part II

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." - Romans 8:28

"Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." - 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

I don't know about you but this year has been amazing. I have been blessed in so many ways. Every time I was knocked down the Lord picked me up and whenever I was getting a good old fashioned beating? The Lord had my back. Confused? If you're not then you probably didn't read my blog from yesterday. If you have the time, stop reading this one now, go read that one and come back.

Whereas yesterday I was trying to make a point about our RESPONSE to Christmas...today I'm going to try and make a point about our PERSPECTIVE of Christmas.

What is your perspective on Christmas? I'll bet that, whatever it is, it's very similar to your perspective on your life. Keep in mind that perspective is not only the angle by which we perceive something but also the depth by which we perceive it. How deeply you feel something is as important at how you feel it. My point? I know a few folks who look at this day and Christ in general from one viewpoint or another and say, "Nah." But deep down inside? They aren't so sure. So they hedge their bets. They go through life much the same way: life is hard so God must not be such a good God, right? Bad things happen. There's evil in the world. So God's not so good, right?

The perspective of the Christmas story is that though life will not always be easy, the birth of a new hope is always there. We must remember that of our own lives as well. Blessings come in all shapes and sizes and in the midst of all of our circumstances, all day and each year...we will see them, but only if we maintain the right perspective. 

Here Comes Christmas

I don't know about you but this year has mostly sucked. It's been one challenge after another, one day a knockdown the next day just a good old fashioned beating. I won't lie. It's been a struggle and more days than not I've made it all about me.

I have a few friends who are strong NON-believers. I marvel at how they get through the bad years. Sometimes when I'm with them I see that faint smile come over their face as I witness one second and share a misery the next. It's that "poor, naive Christian" kinda smile. I know that smile very well. I used to wear it myself. They love me. They just don't understand me anymore. That's okay. They don't have to because I love them too. And neither love nor understanding have ever been a prerequisite for the other.

But just when I'm about to give up trying to figure it all out? Here comes Christmas. I read a blog yesterday where the point was made that this holiday isn't JUST about Jesus, it's even more about God's dominion in the world. I suggested that it's even more than that.

I think Christmas is not only about that little baby in the manger but the RESPONSES that his very creation, existence, birth and life brought about. From Mary approached by an angel with this amazing idea, to Joseph confronted with the reality of a virgin birth, to the Wise Men who traveled so far with eyes of hope, to the people and the apostles and the Pharisees and the Romans who awaited in the years ahead...to you and to me. It's always been about how we RESPOND to Him.

Here comes Christmas. If you believe please open your heart wide and pray. If you don't believe? Please just open your heart a tiny bit. Christ will take it from there. As he has since that first cry in the manger.

Discovered

"What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.  In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish." - Matthew 18:12-14

Today I want to talk about the lost and found. I've been in both. Found is more fun than lost, though being found does not guarantee never getting lost again. When I'm found I have a better sense of where I am, of where I'm going or, gasp, where I've been. Found is a place, that's all. Like any other place the most it can ever offer is perspective. What we see when we're there is rooted in the eyes by which we see, which is often influenced by the lenses of what we believe.

When I'm found I notice my kids and my wife more. I'm more patient and attentive. I help with the homework or the bath, I make my famous grilled cheese sandwiches (which Anthony claims are even better than Foster Freeze, though I'm not sure that ranks as a compliment) and I'm calmer, less prone to my "bull in a china shop" persona. Found is a happy place. I realize that I'm not alone there and, well, God is more visible.

When I'm lost? Well, that's a different story. Lost is a place like no other because it's a place between places. You're not really "anywhere". You're just "there". On road trips you end up lost when you're going from one place to the next and forget the way. But on the journey of life you mostly end up lost because you have forgotten the why. There are many why's. Why am I here? Why am I alone? Why am I afraid? Why can't I figure it all out? The why's multiply and are so thick that you can arrive at lost and...well...get stuck there.

When you're lost the single, most important thing to remember is that you're worthy of being found. Scripture tells us that to God you are worth searching across the ends of the earth for. He's searching for you right now. He's waiting for you to be ready to leave the "why's" behind and rest in a whole new place that's neither lost nor found but, even better, a place that's called "discovered".

Run the Miles and Earn It

There was a time in my life when I would've demanded to be heard. Straight up. I would've bullied my way into the presence of those that "needed" straightening out with a tyrannical intensity. Self-confidence (read: arrogance) was not a problem for me. You either ended up agreeing with me or you were an idiot. I was so passionate in my beliefs that there simply was no room for yours. I had it all figured out. Life was a zero-sum game; somebody wins and somebody loses. I had no desire to be a loser.

I don't know about you but when I read the bible I see a lot of my past self in a number of people. Certainly in the early Paul (I would've been there, full of self-righteousness, to judge Stephen because, well, he would've dared to disagree with me) and again in Peter (when Judas showed, with his cadre of Roman soldiers, I too would've done a quick survival assessment and cut my losses, even if that loss was Christ) and most certainly in Thomas (I've often asked for proof in the place of faith, because it's a hard world that wants hard answers).

God knows this about me. These men are my mile markers in the bible. For some of you it's Solomon and James. Others of you will identify more with Ruth and the woman at the well and still others will find a lot of yourself in Luke and the prodigal son.  In all the many individuals of the bible there is someone for everyone, and that's the point. How could the word of God speak to each of us if there, inside it, weren't a little bit of us too? But in recognizing your mile markers do not miss the point: you are running a marathon and when the race is done there's only one person you should identify with the most and that person is Jesus.

Jesus wasn't about winning or losing, he was about doing and struggling. And Jesus never demanded to be heard. He earned that right. I think he expects us to earn it as well, a little bit more, each and every day. How? By sharing in the lives of all those around you and being there whenever there is hurt. If Jesus proved nothing else it's that there's not a hurt in the world that cannot be loved away.

A Simple Question

"Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” - John 8:12

What are you doing with your life? I mean, really doing with it? What do you represent to those around you? Do you represent desperation and defeat? Do you represent assurance and victory? Is what you became what you expected to become? Or is life just happening to you, like a movie?

On any given day I know what I can represent: all the above. Some days I stride around surrounded by a shield of humbling and empowering faith. Other days I can barely put one foot in front of the other.  I can't speak for other faiths but I know that in Christianity the struggle is what it's all about. Because only the struggle of this world can lead you to Christ. One cannot be "saved" unless they are in need of saving. Who needs saving? The desperate, those in pain, those who are lonely and confused, those who are lost.

Last time I checked, on any given day? That's you and me.

The difference between the "saved" and the "not yet saved" is not a position of dominance, superiority or righteousness. Quite the contrary; it's a position of submission. It's not saying "Oh, I'm past all those forks in the road and I know where I'm going now" as much as it's about saying, "Man, I get lost too, but I have a map now. I have a compass." I am now called to serve, not preach, to help, not judge. Sadly, many of the Christians who get all the press are either promising people prosperity or damning them to hell. In other words, instead of worshiping God they're playing God.

Jesus washed the disciples feet. He loved. He forgave. He listened. He helped. He came and he left but whether it was with the woman at the well, or with the Pharisees, with countless strangers or within his own inner circle of disciples, he seemed to be asking the same question over and over again: What are you doing with your life?

So today, will you take the time to answer him?

My Name Is Four

"Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; The fruit of the womb is a reward." - Psalm 127:3

Recently my wife returned to the world of full time work. It's been a transition in our household, with tasks and chores being shifted around, schedules being changed and a little unexpected chaos as the Captain of the U.S.S. Casa-Faggioli has been forced to leave by 7:30am each morning.

The kids and I braced for this change. None of us knew what to make of it, with Dad doing a school drop-off here or there, almost all the school pickups and - joy of all joys - the kids learning that having a self-employed father means, well, you get to go back to work with him after school for three hours each day.  God willing we'll be staffed back up in my office soon but until then, each day as we load up into my car after school I call a huddle, hands to the center, and the kids and I give a shout out as to how many days we have "survived" this routine. Yesterday was "10".

I feared this change would be a burden. Instead the Lord has made it a blessing. It's been revealed to me that before I wasn't just missing out on some things in my children's lives, but a lot of things. For example, I never knew what a zombie Sophia was when waking up every morning for school and I have taken great pleasure in doing the "good morning" dance for her each day, complete with out-of-key singing (most of you will have a hard time picturing me singing and dancing...trust me, you don't want to, it's pretty bad). If this doesn't work I flick the lightswitch on and off until she flies out of bed with her little paws up for a fight. She LITERALLY growls at me, with her hair in fifty directions and her eyes all puffy. Then, in spite of herself, she starts to laugh.

I also love hearing about their day; the way the girl that Anthony has a crush on perplexes him ("Dad, why is it that girls act differently around their friends than they do when it's just you and them?"), or what Sophia really thinks about this whole "color card" system in kindergarten ("It's not that hard Dad, you just don't get in trouble. But there's this one boy, he just doooooeeeesn't get it.").

I now get the chance to slip a little note in Sophie's lunch box or pep-talk Anthony the morning before a big test. They, in turn, can give me a head start on my day as well. Like yesterday, when I was leaving the house early and I saw a post-it note from Sophia that read : MY NAME IS FOUR. I had no idea what she was talking about, or what it meant, but it made me chuckle nearly the whole drive to work. 

Do Not Go Gently...

"Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." - Matthew 20

How firm, how strong, how rooted is your faith? Some of you who read this blog have a faith that is strong, others a faith that is holding the line, and others a faith that is, well, dormant. A faith that is strong need only hold the line. A faith that is holding on need only persevere.  But a faith that is dormant is a faith in trouble. It is, by definition, alive at some level, but not growing.

A dormant faith is asleep. If this is your faith then know this: you must wake up. A faith that is asleep too long runs the very real risk of dying. Don't let that happen. Wake up. If not for yourself, then for those around you.

Right now in your community 1 out of 4 children is skipping lunch at school because their parents can't afford it. In the United States a rape is reported every 5 minutes. That's a scary number. Until you realize that only 16% of rapes are ever reported in the first place. Last night anywhere from 2-4 babies were born immaturely and are fighting this very moment for their little lives at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. That's only one out of over 1300 NICU's in the country.

My point is this: there is hurting all around you and people you don't even know, whom you haven't even met yet, who need you. How can you be there for people you don't even know in circumstances you have no idea how to handle without faith? How? It simply isn't possible. Because those people need hope. They need love. They need you.

Do not go gently into that deep responsibility. Rush in. Respond. Reach out. Use the hurts the world has thrust upon you to help others overcome their hurts and realize that as you do God is pulling for your glory.

Rocky

"Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses." - 1Timothy 6:12

There is a pattern to life; peaks and valleys. We have songs and poems that tell us of this pattern. We have books and movies too. The tendency for most of us is to duck in the valleys and stand tall on the peaks and, as such, we miss most of the scenery. There is a type of blindness to both places. At the summit everything below you is too small to really see and when you are hiding your head in the valley you can't see anything at all. On the peaks of life we can lose perspective and in the valleys we can lose hope.

I know I am dating myself a bit here but one of the reasons why I loved the movie Rocky was that he got it. He really did. He was just as happy drinking raw eggs and training until he collapsed as he was in the ring, advancing like a wounded bull at Apollo Creed in glorious combat. It wasn't that Rocky wouldn't go down, it's that he already had been down. It was a place he knew and was not afraid of anymore. So he kept advancing, taking shot after shot and giving in return. It wasn't the crowd or even Adrian, there in the front row, that kept him going. It was his heart.

Remember that the air is thin on the peaks. You can get dizzy and start seeing things that aren't really there. The same is true in the valleys, where it gets awful dark and the shadows can be misleading. None of it is important. Not a bit. Enjoy life, yes, but don't forget that you weren't created solely for this Earth, this place that is all peaks and valleys. If you were then you'd never be leaving it.

But someday, you will. There must be a reason for that. So keep your gloves up, stay true to your heart and remember that above all peaks and above all valleys there is a very big sky.

An Army of Sum

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up." - Ecclesiastes 4:9

One of the greatest lies ever told by the evil in this universe is that you are alone.

Part of the human experience is that first moment of self-actualization when you realize you are a being unto yourself, with a mind and thoughts all your own. At some point shortly thereafter you realize that it can get lonely in your head. No one knows you like you, and there is an inherent risk in reaching out to others, who may accept you or - just as easily - may flat out reject you.

I'm not talking about matters of love. The heart is a subject worthy of its own blog. I'm specifically focused today on our minds. After all, scripture tells us that this is the place where all the wars for your soul are fought. Who in their right mind (no pun intended) would fight a war alone? Especially against an adversary that has been taking out souls left and right for thousands of years.

When Jesus came to this earth what's one of the first things he did? He recruited the twelve disciples. Did Jesus, as God himself, need the twelve? Of course not. But like almost everything else in his short ministry he was teaching us how we should approach life. The lesson was clear: you need your own posse, as it were. You should not go it alone. The only time we find Jesus truly alone in the Bible, who was there, almost immediately? Satan. This, too, is a lesson. If evil was unafraid to come after Jesus how much bolder will it be to come after you?

Look around you, though. How many people has God placed in your life to keep you going on this journey? You are not alone. In your neighborhood, in your family, and amongst your friends are allies in faith who can come to your side. This is also why it's so important to go to church and to be a part of a small group, as this can only multiply those people in your life who can help to keep you grounded in hope and lifted in perseverance. 

How many allies do you need? It doesn't matter. You simply need an army of sum. So get out of your head and away from your fear of rejection. Gather your own little army to help in the challenges you will face in life, face in time and face in faith.

Sleep...Sleep Tonight

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." - Victor Hugo

God never sleeps. There should be comfort in that but I had a friend today relay the news that neither the combined efforts of her tea, her melatonin pill and her Ambein was a guarantee that she would get any sleep tonight. I had another friend tell me just last week that he is averaging only three hours of shut-eye per night. I will admit that I am sometimes no stranger to the world of 3:00 am myself. It happens. Life happens. Bills happen. Problems happen. We are surrounded by these happenings and the first thing to go out the window is our peace. Peace of mind. Peace of spirit. Peace of being.

Our pastor at church lately has taken hold of a passage of scripture and refused to let go of it: 

"Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."  - Phillipians 3:13-14

For weeks now he has been hammering it home. Sometimes to begin the service, sometimes to end it, sometimes repeatedly in between.  Scripture constantly reminds us to strive, to strain, to seek, to pursue. These are all very active verbs and their goal is always God...and the peace of God...which transcends all understanding. If you believe the bible then if you aren't at peace it's because you aren't seeking God, or you're seeking him in the wrong ways or you've gotten lost somehow, as we all do from time to time. Believers, non-believers or kinda-believers...it's all the same. We all have to decide whether or not we will dwell in midst of sleepless nights or instead, lying in the hands of God, we will close our eyes and surrender our worries, like the weightless things they are, to the winds of faith.

My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken. - Psalm 62:1-2

There's Blood in the Water

Jesus answered and said unto her, "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." - John 4:13-14

There's a Dave Matthews song called "Don't Drink the Water". In it he portrays the persecution of the American Indians by the settlers of those days and tells of the oppression and crimes committed against them in lyrics that show the cruelty of the times. "Don't drink the water...there's blood in the water..." It is song of remembrance so that, as a nation, we will not forget what we did, and how we did it and why we can never do it again.

But there's also a danger in going from not forgetting...to also not forgiving.  This is true of us as a nation but even more so of us as individuals.  Let me ask you: how much blood is in your water?

You may not know this but you were born with a well of fresh, cool water to draw upon, there within you, for the life ahead of you, and as soon as you were able to you began to poison it. It's that whole "free will" thing. How can it not lead to sin when you have no clue how to wield it when you first realize you have it? Some people are truly blessed by the Holy Spirit at a young age and they avoid a lot of the bad choices some of us make, but I can tell you that....my well? It was a bloody mess. How about yours?

In the scripture above Jesus is addressing the woman at the well. She is a sinner, like you and me and she is lost, like you and me. But Jesus senses that she is also like you and me in another way: she wants to be found. He speaks of the water in the well in a literal sense (drink all you want, someday you will drink your last, you are only mortal after all) but also in a figurative sense (quit drinking the water of this world and drink the water of salvation, the only water that offers eternal life and can quench that burning fire within you of frustration, sorrow and hopelessness).

In June of 2008 I stopped drinking from my own well. All that blood was making me sick. As I was baptized I came up through cool water into the open face of a brilliantly blue sky and that well within me? It ran clean once again. I'm a billion miles from perfect. I am a man of many wounds. But the water I drink now? It heals me.

Triumphant Faith

You may not want to hear this but faith, true faith, is often predicated by defeat.

In the Western World, where "winning" is everything, this is a very hard concept to grasp. But I can tell you that even in something as simple as learning how to a hit a baseball I had to miss, whiff...fail, dozens of times before I finally learned how to get it right. It took hundreds of more attempts to get it right consistently. That's a baseball. Life and God are much bigger than a baseball.

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell presents study after study that prove that before anyone can truly have any hope of becoming an "expert" at something they must try it a minimum of (are you ready for this?) 10,000 times! 

The truth is that life is frustrating. If we're not careful we can misplace that frustration and start blaming God.  It's not unlike the painting telling the artist that it's not very happy with how things are looking when, first of all, the painting can only see within the frame of its own existence and, most importantly, the painting isn't even finished yet.

When you are frustrated with God ask yourself how many times have you prayed to him, spoken to him, confided in him in your life?  Is it at least 10,000 times?  If not then I've got news for you: you better keep praying. Only then will you find a faith that is not only solid, but triumphant.

Who and When

“And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." 
- Jesus (Luke 11:9-10)

If you read my previous blog you've had a few days now to hopefully let go of the "why's" and "how's" of life and focus a little more on "what" and "where".  But this is a little tricky if you haven't yet figured out the "who" and "when".  Who will you follow to the end of this life, and when will you decide to get to it?

Early in my life I grew up in a pretty violent neighborhood that was half African American and half Hispanic. There was me and one other white kid named Andy, who had blazing red hair and freckles, and was fresh from Ireland, so he even had the accent going against him. Most of the other kids picked on him mercilessly and one day he had enough and turned on one of his aggressors.  Now mind you, when I say "violent neighborhood", I mean it. Rocks and padlocks were in jeans pockets all over the playground, and we're talking third and fourth grade here.  Unfortunately, Andy was new to the school and the black kid he turned on, Reggie, had a reputation for laying down some heavy hurt. This was not going to be good. I had to do something.

Feeling crazy I stepped right through the mob of instigators and between the two boys and put a hand up to each one of their chests. "Stop!" I said, "You can't do this." Everyone was stunned. "Why!?" Reggie yelled at me. "Yeah!" Andy fired off, pushing me away from him. I must have had God on my mind, having gone to church for the very first time the previous day, because I just blurted it out: "Because Jesus wouldn't want you to." 

Five simple words from a kid who knew more about Fonzie that he did about Jesus. It sounds silly now, telling the story, but what happened next would stick with me for the rest of my life. Both boys looked at me and then at each other, the bloodthirsty crowd of nine year old's went completely silent and then everyone dispersed without another word. I mean everyone. That day I learned there was something powerful to that name: Jesus.

I think part of it was that God had used an unlikely witness that day (he almost always does). I was the kid who the prior year had gotten my nemesis in a schoolyard pin and tried, repeatedly, to stab him through the head with a tree spike. I was the boy who was shy and quiet but just a teeeeeny-bit crazy, who had gotten into a good half dozen fights and been suspended a few times by then. So who was I to now play the pacifist and toss around the name of God? It didn't matter. By injecting Christ into that moment, I had chosen. Even if I wouldn't really admit it to myself for another twenty-five years.

We all must come to some decision about who we are going to worship and when. Have you? It's not a prerequisite to life, but it is to really living. So if you haven't already decided then please do. I think my blog makes it very clear which direction I hope you take, and which door you will choose to knock at.

Why's and How's

I don't know about you, but lately I've been living one of those "Dad Story" kind of lives: I've been going up hill, both ways, in the snow, with a heavy load, in a blinding blizzard, with a sprained ankle.  The result? I'm tired. What am I thankful for? That I'm not SICK and tired.

There. Was that uplifting or what?  Stick with me. I may be going some place with this, I'm just not sure yet. Truth be told I don't understand God sometimes. I really don't. I've got a million "WHY's" and few answers. I spoke with a friend this week and she equated too many why's with Eve, and original sin...why, oh why, can't I eat from the tree of knowledge?  God's warning to Eve on this matter was pretty blunt: "For surely, you will die."  We've all been dying since. Anyone who has lost someone they love surely knows the cost of this. I would gladly trade the million why's I have now and ten million more just to have one more day with my father.

So if not "why", then how about "HOW?" Clever, right? Run with that for a few minutes and you realize that how's multiply as swiftly as why's. How gets you nowhere either. Asking God why He does things or how He lets some things happen are questions which are healthy insofar as they remind us of our limitations...that is to say, insofar as we realize that we should let these questions go.

We are then left with two questions that are worthy of followers of God: what and where. What do you want me to do (today, this week, with my life, with my soul) Lord? And where do you want me to do it? These are questions that a servant asks. They are questions which force us to humble ourselves and admit our true station in life, in this massive universe, a station that is miniscule at best but, if equipped with enough faith, can have the profoundest of impacts.

I heard someone once say that we are all domino's; all we do is fall.  Untrue. We are all cells, multiplying, as we have from the first moment of our creation, into a blossom of such color and glory as to blind the eye. So today, will you slow down with me? Breathe. Still your mind. Settle your soul.

And ask God: "Where do you want me to go? What do you want me to do?"  Let Him know that you're tired of all the why's and all the how's and that your ready, at last, to let go of these questions and start living some answers.

Shiny Marble "Thought-Thing"

I was driving into work this morning when I was hit with my very first, bona-fide "Proustian moment". I thought I already had a few of these in my lifetime but boy, was I wrong. Way wrong. One minute I was driving along absentmindedly counting the chores of the day and then...I hear a few notes from a distant song on the radio and then...WHAM! It's 1983. I'm 16.

Let's stop for a quick moment. I realize that many of you have no idea what a "Proustian moment" is. So let me briefly explain. Marcel Proust was a French writer from the early nineteenth century. His book, In Search of Lost Time, is considered by many to be the finest work of fiction ever written,  starting a trend of character driven novels (versus the dominating concept of his day, which was plot driven novels like those by Tolstoy) . Within its 3200 pages the protagonist navigates a labyrinth of some 2000 characters, studying the life of the French aristocracy of the day as a feint to what's really going on, namely the protagonist's deepening obsession with the notion of "involuntary memory", which first happens upon him one day as he eats a madeleine and is sipping tea. For fun, follow this link to read the moment:

http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/proust.html

In short, the idea is that our minds sometimes store certain memories as mental "time capsules", usually due to a trauma or complexity of a moment in our lives that our mind automatically recognizes that we cannot deal with. So the issue is shrink wrapped in a trigger of some sort (a song, or the taste of something we are eating) to be dealt with at some later time in our lives.

My moment came via that song. I am so geeked up about this I cannot tell you! But to be teleported to a place and time within myself, to a younger me that is still alive somehow, so deeply and so vividly? It was equal parts wonderful and terrifying. I can totally see why someone would dedicate their lives to trying to study this phenomenon, or trigger it, or experience it. In that moment within myself, wrapped up in that song, was a message from my younger self to my older self about myself.

Now comes the hard part: it was a unique moment, but what did it mean? It was a shiny marble "thought-thing". And to be truly appreciated, like any good marble, it needs to be held, not just seen.

Little Kisses

Sophia stands beside me as I lounge in the patio chair beneath the setting sun.

"So Dad, can I pleeease stay up to watch my show?" Blink, blink. Puppy dog eyes. Smile.

I let loose an exaggerated sigh. "Okay."

She turns to bolt away before I can change my mind. "Hold on a second!" I shout out to her. She freezes, then turns around. "Yah Dad?"

"First I need a kiss. Riiiiiight here," I say, pointing at my right cheek.

She smiles and her smile is a force. When she is older it will freeze people in their tracks, break some hearts and teach more than a few poor souls who dare to treat her lightly not to.

She bounces over like Tigger and, standing tippy-toe, stretches up to kiss me on my stubbly cheek. I look down and see that her toe knuckles are white with the effort. Then her little feet are scampering off again towards the back door.

"Hey!" I cry out.

She stops again, perplexed. "Yah?"

"My other cheek feels very sad that it didn't get a kiss too," I say.

She tries to hide her joy at being fawned over by rolling her eyes at me, but it's no use. Girlfriend loves the spotlight. So over she comes again and plants a wet one on the other cheek and, for good measure, kisses the back of my head too, her little arms wrapping around my neck from behind, her fingernails with chipped red nail polish looking like tiny berries.

"Thanks baby!" I exclaim.

"J-Welcome Dad," she giggles, double timing it to the back door before I can make another request.

Those of you who read this blog know that I joke that my daughter has a mild speech impediment. She loves to take words and make them her own. I can respect that. I'm good with "J-Welcome", "Biznaztics" and "How time is it?" for as long as I can have them, which won't be long now with kindergarten right around the corner.

I sip at my soda and wonder at this little person, about her life ahead, and that kindergarten teacher who will correct her to say "WHAT time is it?", and of her first prom and the first boy I will have to beat with my Steeler's helmet when he hurts her feelings someday. Ahhh life. Not unlike a windmill turning slowly on a sunny day; mostly noise with only a little motion and a lot of waiting.

Someday I will have to share her with the whole world. But not yet. Right now she's still all mine.

Dukes Up

I recently asked a man how things were going. "Taking a beating," he replied. His eyes were weary and the tone of his voice was sad. You could tell he was stirring a week's worth of worries into his first cup of coffee. I looked at him and smiled, "Sometimes all we can do is give it right back, punch for punch." He laughed. It was a good laugh. A "Yeah, I forgot about that part!" laugh.

Here's the thing about the "fight of life": you will not win it. None of us will. We all end up on our backs in the final round. That's not what matters.

What matters is how much you care. Like boxers who are outmatched in the ring, it's not about victory so much as it is about the size of the fight in them, the amount of heart they put into the effort and the relentlessness in which they come off the stool round after round after round. A winning boxer who hardly breaks a sweat never gets the cheers, it's the guy who breathing heavy around his mouthpiece, with fixed eyes and hunched shoulders, who circles and circles and occasionally lands a few punches and then...cracks a tiny grin. That's the guy we cheer for. That's why we all love the underdog; because deep down we know that he is us.

So as you face a new week, face another round, do so with your dukes up and your heart on your sleeve. And remember to grin, because God's in your corner. Always.

.

Limitations

Last night Anthony graduated from Cub Scouts. It was a special moment but bittersweet, as he had to face up to his decision not to bridge to Boy Scouts.  One by one he watched his buddies go through the bridging ceremony and on to the next phase of scouting and the feeling of being left behind overwhelmed him.

It's tough being stuck between wanting to be included and yet not wanting to be accommodated for. I think this is especially true for those with special needs. It's not about being ungrateful for the love and effort that people all around you are putting in on your behalf to make you feel included in things, but rather more about wanting to be independent, self-sufficient and proud enough to stand on your own without the help.

What I tried to explain to my son was this: we all have limitations. I may be able to throw a football well but I am laughable on roller blades. I may be able to write but I cannot help him with his fifth grade math homework each night. He MAY never scale a mountain, or hike six miles to a fishing pond, or swim in a lake. That will all depend on two things initially: how hard he is willing to work on himself physically (stretching, yoga, swim lessons and the treadmill at the gym) and mentally (being willing to push himself beyond his fears of injury, wheel chair time at school or another surgery).

After that? What's left will depend on God, who makes us all, in outline form, sketches as it were, before allowing us to fill in all the details and colors of who we will be. In the Lord we must respect the boundaries of that initial sketch and trust in Him that we are drawn a certain way for a reason and for a purpose. There are innumerable examples of men and women who conquered their limitations. Einstein, Edison and DaVinci all overcame dyslexia. Keller was blind. Lincoln suffered his entire life with chronic depression. Newton, Dickens and Alexander the Great all struggled with epilepsy. Even one of the doctor's who helped bring Anthony into the world is handicapped and now runs the entire NICU at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, watching, like an angel, over all those at-risk babies and helping to shepherd them through their crisis.

Someday Anthony will see that, viewed in the proper way, every limitation is really just an opportunity of transcendence.

The Calm, The Silence, The Roar

If you study each day very carefully you will notice that a pattern develops, a carefully crafted series of events that fall into one of three categories; the calm, the silence and the roar.

The calm is where you want to be. We all know the feeling, even if it is fleeting. We are at ease, free from fear and worry, not bothered by guilt or regret. You feel "right" somehow, as if your soul has managed to align itself with the universe. You are aware, but beyond the "bewares". It's a cool place, like the rocky shoreline beside a slow moving river on a spring day, when the currents in your mind are not unlike the eddies in the water before you; fluid.

Then there are moments of silence. These can break either way. They can lead to a place of calm but just as likely they can lead to a place of creeping unease. Many of us avoid silence because within it we think too much. Silence can provide us with a time of reflection or deflection. We choose. Choose wrong and the gears in our heads lock up. Even in the movies we are taught this "vibe". There's always the scene where one of the characters says, "It's quiet...too quiet."

The roar is the place you want to avoid. There is no calm there. No peace. This is where you do the forensic accounting of your life; debits to one side, credits to other. In this place your sole pursuit is the metric of pain.  There is a reason why the Apostle Paul said the devil "prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1Peter 5:8). The evil that is out there wants to attack you, blot out your calm, fill your silence with pain and roar in your face.

In the calm moments remember to talk with God. In the silent moments? Seek Him. And in those moments that roar at you? Remember...nothing is louder than a prayer.

Reach

Our pastor at church has a point he likes to hammer home about life: "Circumstances should not dictate our faith, it is our faith that should dictate our circumstances."  I have the hardest time with this concept even though I have no doubt that it's true.

No matter how much you do or don't believe in God, you have a life to live. For most of us life is hard. There's just no getting around that. There's no need to list all the challenges here but think back to when you were thirteen (when life was "care free") and start counting forward to today. From pimples and first loves in high school to career decisions after college, to job issues and finances, getting laid off or fired, to your first mortgage, the challenges came and came and came. I know someone who reads this blog who lost a parent in high school, another whose parents informed him they were getting a divorce the day he got accepted to college, someone else who lost a husband to cancer before they could start their family and someone else who struggled for years to have children. What's it all mean? It's not a happy thought but here it goes: pain and suffering are a part of life.

We can stop there and be totally depressed or we can ask, "Why?".  In the context of a universe that seems to show no mercy we can see that nothing could be further from the truth. Listen, we've all been nailed more than a few times but get this: we've all survived. We've lived through these moments. If you are reading this you're still here, which means you're still going, one day at a time. You have a choice now: believe that all the up's and down's of life are random and meaningless things or decide, once and for all, that they have a purpose. It's an important decision. Because if you decide they have a purpose the next question is, "What purpose?", which leads to hope and the ultimate question, "Who's purpose?", which leads to faith.

Faith is a good thing. It's what you had the first time you pedaled without the training wheels and it's what you need each time you reach out to a loving God who will never, not once, fail to reach out to you.

The Forest for the Trees

Within the word BELIEVE are three letters: L-I-E.  I can't take credit for that. It was actually one of the best "word effects" of the Achtung Baby tour U2 did in 1992. I was in my early twenties and I remember going particularly bonkers over this. It struck a chord in me. Deep. At the time I thought that was cool, and I still do, but I also think it's quite sad.

For me it hit on a personal truth: most of what people tell you to believe is a flat out lie.  The X-Files would come along later with a fantastic slogan that I also ate up: "Trust No One".  I added these slogans to my own favorite quote "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer", which came from my  personal "bible" at the time, The Art of War by Sun Tzu.  Do you get the picture? I was an incredibly dark minded individual with no faith in people whatsoever and a mindset built for war, of any kind, with anyone and for almost any reason.

I hope you don't see the world this way. If you do, take it from me: you are blind. You literally will go through life not seeing the forest for the trees. Flip those quotes around for a second and maybe you'll see why:

BElieVE: It's usually the liars who always think they're being lied to. What are you hiding? Or what are you hiding from? By believing in nothing and no one you will have nothing to believe in and no one who will believe in you.

Trust No One: A person cannot be trustworthy until you are first willing to trust them. By trusting no one you will condemn yourself to a life of complete loneliness.

Friends and Enemies: To keep your enemies closer than your friends is to short change your friends and to attempt to manipulate your enemies. Instead, Jesus tells us to love them. Why? Perhaps another U2 song gives us a hint:

"Choose your enemies carefully ‘cause they will define you,
Make them interesting ‘cause in some ways they will mind you,
They’re not there in the beginning but when your story ends?
Gonna last with you longer than your friends."

Es la Ley de la Vida

"Nothing to do but work and work some more, right?" I said.

"Es la Ley de la Vida," the McDonald's guy tells me this morning as I make my way through the drive-thru.  It is the law of life.

I laugh. In my forties I expect a comment like this to fly out of my mouth from time to time. Grousing is a right, not a privilege, after a certain age.  But my McDonald's friend? He's about nineteen.  The only law of life he should be adhering to is enjoying his youth.  We all come to the table with different life experiences. I'm sure he has a story that explains that weary look in his eye, but the drive-thru is a merciless place, with no time for chatting. So I pull away with the correct change, but feeling short-changed nonetheless.

I have just brushed up against another life. Not the same as the last one I brushed up against and not the same as mine, but a life it is.  If you really wanna trip yourself out stop for a second and contemplate the trajectories of all the lives around you; at work, on the freeway, at the Laker game. Each person is making choices: believing things, denying things, hoping for this, praying for that. At any given second they are stuck in the past, engaging the present or contemplating the future. We spend a lot of our lives looking for answers to a lot of things and contemplating the "laws" of our lives.


Isiah has a suggestion about the past: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past." (Isiah 43:18)

Solomon has a suggestion on the present: "So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 8:15)


Jesus tells us point blank how to handle the future: "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own". (Matthew 6:33-34).


If God can track the trajectories of 7 billions lives and yet  provide us each with such simple advice in His law, maybe...just maybe?...we should listen to it.

A Name In The Guestbook

 

"I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is." - Albert Camus

I went to a funeral recently where God was simply not part of the equation. I mean...at all. No minister, no pastor, no priest. Nothing. The deceased was a good person, about my age, a gentle soul who was kind as could be but who wrestled for many years with the twin demons of alcoholism and drug abuse. Those demons took his life and, when it was over, nobody ushered God into the picture. 

The eulogy was given first by the man's father, then by his twenty year old son. Bookends to a life. But no scripture was read, no spiritual viewpoint advanced, not even a mere mention of heaven.  Don't get me wrong, I am not criticizing anyone here. I respect the rights of all faiths, even the right to have no faith. This funeral was still about people who loved someone, going through the grieving process, saying goodbye in their own way. There were tears followed by the usual arithmetic of loss. 

I stood off to the side next to a business friend who is a huge believer. He prayed quietly the entire time. I did not. I hate to sound naive but I was just too stunned. The whole thing just did not compute. To live life, to face death, without God? That's one thing. But to say the final goodbye without Him being acknowledged, without an afterlife being hoped for?

As we left the funeral I went to sign the guestbook. Do you know what I saw? Dozens of people who had been in line ahead of me who had written their names, addresses and the word "God" in their comments; "May God Bless You", "May God Be With You", "May God Comfort You". Proving once again that God is always there, even when we don't realize it.

That young man will miss his father dearly in the coming weeks and months. When he does he may open that guestbook and see that one word, over and over. Maybe then his pain will start to ease and he will begin to find his way. I know another man who did, years ago, when his father died way too soon.

Me.

Dictionary Wisdom

Inspiration comes and goes as it pleases, kinda like a stray dog.  I know that's a rather rough way to start a blog but it explains my absence the past few weeks in posting here. Sometimes you only have so much energy to go around and between work, the kids and whatever other commitments we have in life we can sometimes forget to stop, be still and just...be.

The definition of "doing" is: action, performance and/or execution.

How much of your life is spent doing? Doing this, doing that or doing the other thing? Some things we have to do. Bills don't pay themselves, kids can't teach themselves and people we know and love sometimes can't really help themselves. Knowing who needs a hand and being willing to give it is a great thing but so many of us forget to allow others to help us or, even worse, we forget to help ourselves.

The definition of "being" is: the fact of existing, existence, a living thing.

I love it when man gets something right. Here we have a great bit of wisdom in a simple set of definitions. One does not become "a living thing" by doing. One does so by being. Often we confuse the two and convince ourselves that by doing we can forget about being. Our worries and concerns, you see, can easily be buried in our tasks and habits. This is how so many of us can be adults and still act so much like children; our bodies have evolved but not our minds and, far worse, not our souls.

So take a moment and find your inspiration. Turn off the phone and the television. Read. Pray. Ponder. Sit still. Recharge those batteries and be a living thing.

Let It Beat

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to their grave with the song still in them."
- Thoreau

"I can't believe that we would lie in our graves, wondering if we had spent our living days well. 
I can't believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been, 
could have been, 
maybe." - Lie In Our Graves, Dave Matthews


How many steps do you take each day, pressed down and worn out? I marvel at the lives we all live, our painful moments of self-affliction or self-deflection. When it comes to the world around us we follow the same patterns. We either spend each day with the shields up or our hands down. It's all about the punches; we're either blocking them or taking them.

This is not how God created us to live. I guarantee it. I'm the worst example of living life to reflect this belief, but I'm trying.  It's Easter Weekend and I am reminded yet again that at the end of the day, it's not about me.

A living example of how life should be lived can be found in the very walk that Jesus took to die. He prayed. He took his beatings. He took up his cross. He carried it as far as he could, then he was willing to accept help (from Simeon, who was ordered to his side by the Romans). Jesus then prayed for those very souls who were persecuting him, including the thief to his left while, amazingly, hands and feet nailed to a cross, he witnessed and offered salvation to the thief to his right. Then, ever the teacher, in the ultimate act of education he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Not a cry of defeat but a direct reminder to those present of Psalm 22, written some 1500 years earlier, that predicted his coming, his life and this exact ending to it, including a ton of the actual details. His apparent moment of defeat was, in actuality, his greatest triumph.

And the rest of that Psalm? It's all about hope. So is the rest of the story that followed the cross and that empty tomb. That's all about hope as well.


Which means you and I should answer those feelings of desperation and confusion that come over us from time to time with that very same thing; hope. Hope is what your heart is made of. So let it beat.

Letters From "Bamma"

"Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. " - Proverbs 22:6


My mother-in-law, Carol, used to write little notes to Anthony when he was an infant. She wrote one in the "Baby's First Bible" she bought him when he was still in diapers, and a few more, here or there, over the years in other books or on scraps of paper she would put in his lunch box before she would walk him to school the next day. That she did this was very sweet. That she did this while she was slowly dying of breast cancer is profound.

Earlier this week I blogged about the sudden and unexpected death of a sports journalist I never knew and the futility this seemed to convey in how we all live our lives not knowing our ends.  I went home that night to find a letter, typed and framed, from Carol to Anthony. It was the scripture she had prayed over him every day of his infancy as he clung to life, eleven weeks premature into this world, at just over three pounds. The scripture? Psalm 139:13-16. At the bottom of the letter she wrote a few words in her own hand, as if to stamp it personally and formally, as if to say "I read this. I attest to it. It is factual."

I sat down in our living room holding her letter and I was humbled. Some of us do know our own ends and some of us make the most out of them. For some people that's skydiving and bull riding I guess (or so that song goes). For Carol it was about doing all she could to pass the Word of God on to her grandson, to train him in it, rear him in it, bathe him in it.  In so doing she made her death a thing about life. The life of another human being. A life she would never see grow past the age of six. I thought to myself, "What brave foresight."

Then I found out today that there are notes left behind for Sophia too, as she grows and reaches certain ages. Notes for a little baby that was only months old when Carol died.

Time The Avenger

I got a "tweet" a while back from a sport's journalist I follow who was paying respects to an esteemed colleague of his who had suddenly died.

I did not recognize the deceased writer's name or where he was from so for some odd reason - perhaps morbid curiosity - I looked up his profile on Twitter. I was stunned with what I found there.He had sent out his last tweet only seven hours before, at 11:17pm, right before going to bed in his hotel room.

The tweet was normal stuff, a quick goodnight and a shout out to a few guys he knew about getting together the next day. He presumably then went to bed where, sometime before dawn, he suffered a massive heart attack and died in his sleep. That's it. A sudden and unexpected exit that hopefully, for him, was just part of a quiet dream that never ended and looked a lot like heaven.

It seems so stunning to me that it can just end like that and I admit that this tweet, which I read months ago, still haunts me in a way that I can barely put into words. It's not about what that writer would have done differently had he known it was his last night on this earth, it's about recognizing that none of us ever gets to know the exact moment of our end and, as such, we should focus on enriching what we know we can in our lives, namely that thing called "now".

Solomon warns us repeatedly in Ecclesiastes that time is fleeting and that life is a meaningless chasing after the wind, especially without God there to guide the journey. Yet so many of us, every single day, choose to go it alone. And yet there is never a "good" time to go. There's always unfinished business, a life still in full swing, a love still not fully claimed, a child still not fully raised or a grandchild not yet seen.  I don't think a single person on this earth dies without saying "Wait a second here.."

But time, that ultimate avenger, has no more seconds to give. And our best defense is in knowing that, with God at our side, we exposed time for what he really was anyway; just a shiny little thing between here and there, that may have framed our days, but not our lives.

Rear View Mirror

Don't look in your rear view mirror. There's nothing good back there. Just a lot of traffic or maybe a motorcycle cop. I really don't know why cars have rear view mirrors anyway. They serve very little purpose and even when being used while backing up they provide a false sense of security; you're still blind to about 70% of what's really back there. Which means you're not seeing the real picture.

Did you also know that you have a rear view mirror in your head? You do. Don't use that one either. It's even more dangerous than the one that's in your car, because it makes you look back at all your past hurts and all your past failures, at all those fears and insecurities that are lurking there over either shoulder, on any given day, like goons and goblins.

Checking the rear view mirror every now and then in your car or in your head is not necessarily a bad idea, to be safe or maybe just to reflect. But look back there too long and inevitably you're going to crash.

That's why God put our eyes in the front of our heads. He knew that it's better to live your life looking at the road ahead and finding wholeness in the opportunities He's placed before you, than focusing on what's behind you and ending up in pieces.

Besides...that stuff behind you? 70% of it isn't the real picture anyway.

Walk This Way ...

 “Lord, open my eyes and heart that I might learn what it means to walk with you.”


I don't know about you but it's easier for me to run to God with my problems than it is for me to just walk beside Him each day.  That's sad because I know which way He prefers it.  It's obvious because whenever I need Him? Guess who's right there? That's the glory part of God; even when you won't walk beside Him, he still walks right beside you.  Even when we insist on walking miles out of the way or completely in the wrong direction. That level of patience is divine indeed.

Have you ever wanted to just go on a permanent vacation? Just go off to a campground like in Big Sur or an island somewhere and just...stay! Just kick back. Chill. Put your naked feet into a cool, running stream or bask beneath the light shade of a palm tree under the warmth of an ocean sun. Enough already with the stresses of life and work. Enough with the cares and worries and debts and those marching ants of fear and kick back, long term, like...forever.

Sorry guys but that's heaven. Here, before long, the campground will get boring, the Coleman stove will break or, for no reason at all, even the squirrels will get annoying. Here, on that island, eventually you will have to start a fire and that will take hours, if not days, and coconuts are hard to crack and every now and then a fin will pop up just off the shoreline and ruin any thoughts of a nice swim.

Here, in this life, the only taste of peace we will ever find is in a good, long walk with God each day. With God comes the context for each moment you live, and nothing you could ever do or say will make Him love you any less. On these walks you give Him the chance to remind you that you are such a special creation, meant for a special purpose, made by the same special God that created Jupiter in one hand and monarch butterflies in the other. This alone will be enough to carry you through the peaks and valleys alike.

Because when you are walking with God you are never, ever lost.

Unshakeable

"His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ." - Ephesians 1:5 (NIT)

As the parent of an adopted child this piece of scripture has significant meaning to me. Truth be told when I was younger and trying to decide between Buddhism and Taoism as my spiritual path for life, I kept running into a problem. There was this guy; about thirty or so, beard, beige cloak, peaceful demeanor, crown of thorns and all that. I just couldn't dismiss him. I also just couldn't understand him, or his death or why any God of the universe would seek to sacrifice him for my sake or anyone else's.

I wonder if any of us could sacrifice our child to save ten billion people and counting. Especially when the "sacrifice" was mostly figurative, not literal in an eternal sense. Taken from God's perspective He was just bringing Jesus home, to heaven, to a place much better than Earth in every way. The ending was brutal and yet we humans - the object of all His tireless efforts - have a tendency to mostly focus on valor and glory only when they are properly framed in the right measure of brutality. Whatever. So be it. Lesson given. Example displayed. But why?

In adopting our child, Maxime and I had to pay a price and make some choices: we had to be willing to change our lives and mess with our son's singular identity as an only child. To be honest, he was kinda digging that role. But Anthony had to be on board with the whole idea and we as a family had to find it in our hearts to reach out to another human being, another human life, a little girl as it turned out, and bring her to us, and take her in and love her no matter who she wanted to be or how she turned out.  Yet Sophia could have come to us blind, with a genetic or emotional defect of some kind, or of a race that we weren't sure we were equipped to raise, or even drug dependent in some way. In short, she wasn't "blood" (as if that really ever guarantees anything, but you get the idea). We just couldn't be sure what we were getting. As you can see our adoption was very human, in many ways, filled with human thoughts, human conditions, some selfish concerns, a ton of hope and not a little bit of fear. We had to try and transcend all that, and get as close to faith and unconditional love as we possibly could, just like all adoptive parents have to.

But in adopting us God did not have to pay any special price. But he did. Why? To get our attention. God says "Look at the price I will pay to adopt you into my family." We see the sacrifice of Jesus and then what does God do immediately after that? "Oh, and thanks for noticing that sacrifice. By the way, here's a little proof of heaven. He's resurrected. He's fine. He's now appointed as your savior. All you have to do, just like Doubting Thomas, is reach out." Once that happens God's adoption occurs and it is like no other, because God brings nothing but love to the table. Nothing. You are adopted into a family like no other; one that is full of grace, that does not judge, that is unshakeable and even free of death. What an amazing gift that is.

Open Highways, Big Skies & Islands

I remember when I had no faith. It was a lonely time. Cruising through life, with its wide open highways and big skies, as the only person in the car is a little scary. If we're honest most of us don't know what to do if we break down on one of those wide open highways or if a massive storm blows in across those big skies.

When I was young I figured it didn't matter. No breakdown could not be fixed, no storm could not be weathered. I was naive enough to believe that this was my way of thinking, instead of the way I had been programmed to think as part of the world in which I was growing up in.  As I got older and met people from other cultures I began to realize that Western Society - though special in a lot of ways - is very weak when it comes to building a sense of community, of shared values and of common efforts.

I have now come to realize that the "go it alone", the "my way or the highway", the "be your own man and others be damned" mentality that we still have in this great country of ours can be a dangerous thing indeed. It's an individualistic concept pumped into us at an early age. We are told that the best way to win the "wars of life" is to count on ourselves alone. Ironic isn't it that this is the very opposite approach used by the military, who fight real wars, with real lives at stake. No. From the first day of boot camp they erase all that silly "me, me, me" stuff and hammer away at loyalty to things outside of self (unit, country, God). Why? Because the military knows that for every Washington there are a hundred thousand Custer's, and most of us will make one last stand after another before we die in the vain hope that things will change if people will just listen to us.

Some of us get past that when we get older, some of us not. A lucky few will figure this out way early in life. The truth of the matter is we were not created to go it alone. We did not create ourselves, we do not create each day and even our own endings our mostly out of our control.  I firmly believe that the evil in this world that takes deepest root is that little whisper which convinces us to stay within ourselves, to not share our dreams , or our hurts, or our burdens. The quote "No man is an island entire of itself" is a famous one, and for good reason, and that John Donne would say later in that very same same poem "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee" is no coincidence.

Joy Division

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, [2] where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.” – Luke 4:1-2

Today is Ash Wednesday. Many of you are preparing for Lent season and will give up something important to you for the next 40 days to commemorate the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert. We sacrifice for a little while as he did his whole life and, indeed, even unto death. For many of you this is such a beautiful and special time to offer up a sacrifice to God, a gesture if you will, of thanks and reflection. I respect that to no end and I encourage you as you do it.

Then there are some of you, like me, who won’t really do the whole sacrifice thing. That doesn’t make us bad people. There are 325 more days of the year to hold the line in other ways and I don’t think that God necessarily cares if I give up Diet Coke or ESPN for a month or so.  I come from a very large Italian Catholic family and I’m sure a shudder just ran through their entire rank and file. But maybe not. As an Evangelical Christian they love me but most likely think I've lost my mind anyway.

Instead I want to feast on God’s word the next 40 days. I hope you will too. Maybe you have a bible nearby all the time. Maybe you will have to dig around and find one at home. But do it. I will, because I want to reflect on what an amazing display of faith, strength and courage Jesus gave in that desert. I mean…many of us cannot even watch a movie with some caricature of Satan in it without freaking out, so can you imagine being all alone in that vast desert, squaring off with him face-to-face like that?  Confronted on all sides, with every temptation imaginable, Jesus withstood the assault. He was God, God blessed, and on display for us all. He was leading by example. For this wasn’t a battle of angels and demons; ironically it was a very human battle, it was a battle of wits. 

And that’s a huge clue, I think. Ultimately, the battle of good and evil, the very battle for our souls, is mental. In our minds we must stand firm. There can be no division of our faith, and no division of our joy. When you find yourself lost, afraid, tormented or depressed stop for a second and notice what’s going on…in your head.  

Then remember the man from Galilee who held the line…for you, for me, for all of us.

Two

There's a reason why God paired everyone up on that ark, a reason why the bible tells us two is better than one (for one can help his brother up when he falls), a reason why even Jesus called the twelve disciples to his side; in short, we aren't meant to go it alone. There is force in numbers.

I marvel at people who try. I think they are equal measures brave and crazy. Some of them will say they are alone not by choice, but by circumstance. I don't know about that. We can make friends in a number of places, re-establish contact with old friends and - if you are single - wait for love not in despair but with the heart of a warrior-poet, fighting versus while writing verses.

Solitude is a good thing in very small doses. Beyond that one can become so encapsulated in their own little world that things only get worse. Before long loneliness usually marches in and with it sadness. There's a song out now by some guy called Gotye that says "We can become addicted to a certain kind of sadness." I totally agree. Sadness is just as insidious as cocaine or alcohol. It's a quiet disease and it can cripple a life, a marriage and all sorts of other things.

You need to remember that you are never alone. Never. Even in the dark, in your bed at night. Above you are a billion stars and one pair of eyes just waiting for an invitation to join you. He never misses a call, never forgets to show up, never is pressed for time to see you. Some of the best rest you will ever have in your life will come on those nights when God talks you to sleep.

Remember, you are never one. With God you are always two.