This is my favorite house on my drive to Anderson. They have about a million of these inflatable decorations and it just looks like inflatable carnage during the day. The ridiculousness of it all makes me laugh every time...yac
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Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Carnage of the Inflatables
This is my favorite house on my drive to Anderson. They have about a million of these inflatable decorations and it just looks like inflatable carnage during the day. The ridiculousness of it all makes me laugh every time...yac
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
And That Is Why I Love David Crowder
A Passage from David Crowder's Book, Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi --
To live how you were intended, to interact with God's creation in ways that were His breathings, brings life. Real life. Not just tedious existence, but life that breathes like a tree by a cool river with the grass of Eden stretching broad an embowering under limb. And to live in ways that twist and distort His creation brings death. Not just the redundant (none of use are getting out of here alive) burying of the corpses, but the walking around kind that tastes of dust rather than the Maker's exhale of love. It is repulsive. It doesn't hold together. It is not the genesis-shape imagined for a human.
This is the argument proposed in the first psalm, that praise erupts from "right living." We usually miss the psalm's intent when we attempt to define right living. Our cultural conditioning of Western nationalistic Christianity typically sends us headlong into pharisaical discussion of R-rated movies and cussing and drinking and smoking and the dangers of associating with heathen who do any of the previously mentioned activities. I am familiar with a copious quantity of people who do not participate in any of these activities yet walk around lifeless, as dead and intriguing as a pile of dirt. The coversation is bigger and grander than this. Right living doesn't have its roots in conservative American politics; it is not simply adhering to conventional ideas of morality, propriety, or decorum. It is the living of Eden, it is living in the way that was intended, it is true living.
This mirror of the psalms and this argument for right living exposes our distortions right here at the start. We are a long way from "the beginning." It has been many days since we have felt the grass of Eden underfoot. But there is a right living that is ordered by the ways of Christ. There is a right living that erupts from the embrace of grace. This is the reason for the psalms, this is why there is cause for praise: we have a God who is bringing us back and we are responding with every heartbeat. There is a choosing. Life is not trivial -- how it is lived is decisive.
________________________
It seems that if our motives behind living right are driven by the full understanding of grace in our lives, everything else falls into place. We are going to make better decisions when we realized that the sacrifice that has brought us grace.
I really dig David Crowder.
yac
To live how you were intended, to interact with God's creation in ways that were His breathings, brings life. Real life. Not just tedious existence, but life that breathes like a tree by a cool river with the grass of Eden stretching broad an embowering under limb. And to live in ways that twist and distort His creation brings death. Not just the redundant (none of use are getting out of here alive) burying of the corpses, but the walking around kind that tastes of dust rather than the Maker's exhale of love. It is repulsive. It doesn't hold together. It is not the genesis-shape imagined for a human.
This is the argument proposed in the first psalm, that praise erupts from "right living." We usually miss the psalm's intent when we attempt to define right living. Our cultural conditioning of Western nationalistic Christianity typically sends us headlong into pharisaical discussion of R-rated movies and cussing and drinking and smoking and the dangers of associating with heathen who do any of the previously mentioned activities. I am familiar with a copious quantity of people who do not participate in any of these activities yet walk around lifeless, as dead and intriguing as a pile of dirt. The coversation is bigger and grander than this. Right living doesn't have its roots in conservative American politics; it is not simply adhering to conventional ideas of morality, propriety, or decorum. It is the living of Eden, it is living in the way that was intended, it is true living.
This mirror of the psalms and this argument for right living exposes our distortions right here at the start. We are a long way from "the beginning." It has been many days since we have felt the grass of Eden underfoot. But there is a right living that is ordered by the ways of Christ. There is a right living that erupts from the embrace of grace. This is the reason for the psalms, this is why there is cause for praise: we have a God who is bringing us back and we are responding with every heartbeat. There is a choosing. Life is not trivial -- how it is lived is decisive.
________________________
It seems that if our motives behind living right are driven by the full understanding of grace in our lives, everything else falls into place. We are going to make better decisions when we realized that the sacrifice that has brought us grace.
I really dig David Crowder.
yac
Thanksgiving
I love Thanksgiving. Mainly, I love it because there is really no materialism involved. It really is centered around being grateful for what we have rather than what we want.
Sometimes I think the Advent season has lost meaning behind all the junk that we want.
Just random thoughts at 12:45 a.m.
That is all.
yac
Sometimes I think the Advent season has lost meaning behind all the junk that we want.
Just random thoughts at 12:45 a.m.
That is all.
yac
Friday, November 21, 2008
Messy Spirituality
I was rereading one my favorite books (ever), Messy Spirituality, by Mike Yaconelli (where I got my nickname from). These are just a few of the quotes from the book that I really like.
"I go into churches and everyone seems to feel so good about themselves. Everyone calls themselves a Christian nowadays. How dare we call ourselves Christians? It's only for Jesus to decide whether we are Christian or not. I don't think He's made a decision in my case, and I'm afraid that when He does I am going to be sent straight to hell. I don't feel I can call myself a Christian. I can't be satisfied with myself. We all seem to be pretty contented with ourselves in church and that makes me sick. I think all this contentment makes Jesus nervous."
-Robert Coles
"I have been trying to follow Christ most of my life, and the best I can do is a stumbling, bumbling, clumsy kind of following."
-Mike Yaconelli
"Jesus scandalized an intimidating, elitist, country-club religion by opening up membership in the spiritual life to those who had been denied it. What made people furious was Jesus' "irresponsible" habit of throwing open the doors of his love to the whosoevers, the just-any-ones, and the not-a-chancers like you and me. Nothing makes people in the church more angry than grace. It's ironic: we stumble into a party we weren't invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in."
-Mike Yaconelli
___________________________
This is where I predominantly disagree with organized religion. Who are we to establish hoops and hurdles for others to experience God. It's set up much like a "If one does this, then you can experience God fully." In a way, many churches are still glorified country clubs, where membership has to include the right income and accepted social standards.
We have been discussing the passage in Matthew this week that states, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Can we point out the flaws in our neighbor without pointing out the flaws in ourselves? Can we tell someone else that they need to fix their lives without looking inward to fix our own? Community (real community) embodies the idea that if I call your junk out, then you can call mine out too. I feel that we must be honest and yet open enough to acknowledge our own faults.
yac
"I go into churches and everyone seems to feel so good about themselves. Everyone calls themselves a Christian nowadays. How dare we call ourselves Christians? It's only for Jesus to decide whether we are Christian or not. I don't think He's made a decision in my case, and I'm afraid that when He does I am going to be sent straight to hell. I don't feel I can call myself a Christian. I can't be satisfied with myself. We all seem to be pretty contented with ourselves in church and that makes me sick. I think all this contentment makes Jesus nervous."
-Robert Coles
"I have been trying to follow Christ most of my life, and the best I can do is a stumbling, bumbling, clumsy kind of following."
-Mike Yaconelli
"Jesus scandalized an intimidating, elitist, country-club religion by opening up membership in the spiritual life to those who had been denied it. What made people furious was Jesus' "irresponsible" habit of throwing open the doors of his love to the whosoevers, the just-any-ones, and the not-a-chancers like you and me. Nothing makes people in the church more angry than grace. It's ironic: we stumble into a party we weren't invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in."
-Mike Yaconelli
___________________________
This is where I predominantly disagree with organized religion. Who are we to establish hoops and hurdles for others to experience God. It's set up much like a "If one does this, then you can experience God fully." In a way, many churches are still glorified country clubs, where membership has to include the right income and accepted social standards.
We have been discussing the passage in Matthew this week that states, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Can we point out the flaws in our neighbor without pointing out the flaws in ourselves? Can we tell someone else that they need to fix their lives without looking inward to fix our own? Community (real community) embodies the idea that if I call your junk out, then you can call mine out too. I feel that we must be honest and yet open enough to acknowledge our own faults.
yac
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Tell Three People...
Tell three people how much you love them - today. It's something that might just make their day.
yac
yac
Monday, November 17, 2008
So yeah...
So, I have no TV...and let me just say, I've been really productive...but I am about over it...
yac.
yac.
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