Dream Lite Tonight

This past Monday would've been my father's 80th birthday. Since it's been fourteen years since he passed away, it's always been with a certain sense of melancholy that I greet the 26th of August each year. He's come and gone, but he still remains in so many ways and though all the healing that's ever going to get done has already happened, there's still a certain ache to that day which can linger.

So it was that I wandered through Monday and Tuesday in a bit of a fog. Until last night that is, when, for no particular reason at all, I decided to kick it with the kids at bedtime. It was an impromptu sort of thing. They were tucked in with the lights out when I realized I left something in their room. As I crept in, I found them both dreamily gazing up at the light display from Sophia's Dream Lite Pillow Pet (a ladybug, of course). This has become a nightly ritual that I've been missing out on somehow, so I abandoned the search for what I was looking for, laid down on Sophia's bed and asked my children to tell me about the star and moon lights up there on the ceiling and to share their favorite memories of the day.

For Sophia it was playing and learning "more math". For Anthony it was his science class, where he learned how to use a microscope for the first time. I also learned some Dream Lite secrets, namely that as the lights fade in and out, they do so on a fifteen minute timer (Anthony's observation, of course) and that if you follow the lights around the room it helps you go to sleep better (Sophia, Princess of Sleep's observation).

Before long we had talked and laughed ourselves out. Mom yelled from the next room that it was bedtime, the kids had to be up early, it was past 9pm, blah, blah. As I said my farewells, my son made me promise that next time I will lay down on his bed so he gets a turn and my daughter held me tight around the neck, ran her tiny fingers through my beard and whispered in my ear that, actually, tonight, this moment, had really been her favorite part of the day.

My melancholy blues instantly evaporated. Proving once again that in the face of life - of truly living? Death doesn't stand a chance.

Unpack Yourself

"For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self control." - 2 Timothy 1:7

As I mentioned in my last blog, when you welcome Jesus into your life the game changes. You might've thought you were playing "pro ball" before when, really, you were just still on the varsity squad in high school...as a backup.  But now things get real.

You cannot box your life up into neat little compartments anymore, where rationalization provides the wrapping paper and logic ties the strings. Justifying who you are, asserting yourself in the world, demanding things, expecting things and judging things become exercises in futility. As Rick Warren famously says in his opening line of The Purpose Driven Life: "It's not about you."

Now it's about a spiritual awareness that's supposed to take precedence over reality itself. You begin to unpack yourself. It's not an easy process and there are no guarantees save one: salvation, which brings with it eternal life, and even that payoff is one based on a future principal. In a world of "me" and "I" and "now", the math of the soul is counter-intuitive; it says "you" and "them" and "someday".

Along the way your journey can prove itself amazing. You never realized what you realize when you truly turn to God; the stuff you're carrying around on your back, the pains and hurts you've buried and the fears that you've wrapped yourself up in. Suddenly you are given a spirit of power and love and self control.

From there it's up to you what you do with it.

Faith Differential

"And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith." - Matthew 13:58

"For we live by faith, not by sight" - 2 Corinthians 5:7

Jesus came to his own hometown, to those he knew best and who should've known him best, and was questioned, cross-examined and doubted. In response we get the impression that he was saddened and disappointed. In part of Matthew 13:57 Jesus says "A prophet is not without honor except in his own home town and in his own home."  It was the reply to those around him. But the first part of that passage says a lot. The people had taken "offense at him".

Can you believe it? They were offended by the presence of Christ, right there in their midst. Amazing. And yet...how different do we sometimes act in his midst? I mean it. How different? I doubt by much. Some of us have turned to prosperity preachers, a holistic faith or self-help guru's all because we have taken offense at the message of Christ. Maybe we can handle the physical demands of the ten commandments but not the mental or emotional demands that Jesus brought to the table. Moses demanded a steadfastness of faith, firm as a tall tree. Jesus came and talked of faith the size of a mustard seed, then demanded that we grow. On the surface it is a faith differential. Two concepts of faith, one Old Testament based and the other New Testament based, asking us to "be" and to "believe" in radically different ways. Can I be honest? The first time I met Jesus, face to face there in my bible, do you want to know what my response was? I said, "You're kidding, right?"

Growing is painful. It hurts. I'm hurting right now. Maybe you were hurting last week, or last month. Maybe you will be hurting tomorrow. I will spare you the inspirational Pinterest post-it's and cheesy advice to keep a stiff upper lip and instead I will remind you that even Jesus hurt, so much so that he stopped performing miracles for awhile, rejected as he was, cast aside and sneered at. It was a precursor to what the Romans would do to him soon enough and the amazing thing is he knew that. In the midst of his suffering at that moment he knew there was still worse to come and yet he still pushed on.

If that doesn't inspire you? Nothing will.