the phony in me puts on the appearance of strength, but with less than satisfactory results.

it does not require close inspection to realize that although our man “el gigante” is very tall, he is wearing a suit with the muscles drawn in. and randomly placed shag carpet. i’m sure this struck terror in the hearts of his opponents, but probably not in the way he intended.

putting on appearances, play acting, pretending…. it’s such a ridiculous endeavor. and yet, i often find myself carefully putting on my muscle suit, ready to parade around the ring, hoping no one will notice. i need to be rescued again and again from the charade.

i long to find true strength. christ in me, the hope of glory. maybe something a bit more like this >>
no pyrotechnics, no flashbulbs. just accomplishing a task that seems impossible, reaching for something beyond me. not literally, of course (although being able to rip a phone book in half or break a bunch of cinder blocks with my nogging would be pretty great), but the inner transformation from fear to courage, from apathy to passion.

becoming an easter person. alive. strong. maybe even pulling a tractor or two along the way.

so much of life is lived somewhere in between…

with a nod to tony campolo, good friday was yesterday and easter sunday is coming tomorrow… and here i am, on this holy saturday, reminded of how this day represents so much of what life is like. waiting. uncertainty. hope, but not yet fulfilled. (here are some meaningful reflections on this theme)…

i want to celebrate the joy of easter without seeming like a phony used-car salesman. i want to know the reality of His resurrection. i have grumbled so much recently, grousing about ungratefully about how things *should* work out. i want to be able to wait on God without tapping my foot nervously & annoyingly, anxiously checking my watch and clearing my throat just loud enough for Him to know that i am unhappy with the delay.

we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body – 2 corinthians 4:10

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further up & further in!

one of the great things about our neighborhood is the local community center. there are classes for our daughter, a pretty good workout equipment area, and a gym. i have been dropping in to play pickup basketball lately.

it is amazing how competitive some of these old fogies can get. (for our purposes here, “fogie” can be defined as anyone more than four years out of high school)… i’ve seen name-calling, venting & cursing, pushing & shoving… sometimes it seems more like the kidwatch babysitting program than a group of working professionals. after one particularly contentious exchange, one guy wandered off into a self-imposed timeout.

a brief aside: i am reminded of my first pickup game at seminary. somehow, i ended up being the second-tallest person on the court and ended up guarding this dude who was about six foot three, and very athletic. his first move to the hoop was a two-handed tomahawk dunk. as the realization that my only defense against this dunkitude was a slow-motion lunge, this scene repeated itself many times throughout this game, usually followed by a grin and a shrug. it was months before i mustered up the courage to play again.

anyhoo… i was playing earlier this week at our local gym, and i ended up jamming my ring finger something good. i should have listened to the voice in the back of my mind telling me to take off my ring finger to prevent unnecessary swelling. by the next morning, my finger had become more of a purplish hotdog than a proper human digit. and, sure enough, my ring was further squeezing my swollen finger.

i had these paranoid thoughts that i would need to be rushed to the e.r. “put that man on a gurney! i need thirty cc’s of epi… stat!” (i’m just trying to remember any of the word-sounds i’ve heard on tv’s e.r. before)… my biggest worry was that they would have to cut off my wedding band in order to treat my injury.

when i look at my wedding ring, i am reminded of how lucky i am to have married the love of my life. i also have this strange tendency to turn it around in circles around my finger when i am worshiping God through songs. i’m pretty sure it’s more than just a nervous habit. i don’t know when i became conscious of this action, but i realized that i do it because my wedding ring also reminds me of love that came down, filled with eternity and rescue. through the loud and quiet, the applause and jeers… the loving commitment of God endures…

thankfully, no rings were harmed in the healing of my finger.

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when my anxiety starts kicking into gear, i imagine all kinds of worst case scenarios. it’s not enough to end up in some kind of emergency, but i imagine being on one of those tv newsmagazine expose-type deals… “you’ll never guess what surgeons left inside this man’s guts… three rolls of surgical tape!” or getting some kind of horrible staph infection afterward…

in a bit of doctor humor, my brother-in-law has always wanted to print retreat counselor shirts that read “event staph” on the back. *grin & shrug*

we signed up our daughter for a toddlers’ tumbling class, which began this morning. afterwards, in celebration of this special day we went to mcdonald’s for breakfast. it was there that we picked up the morning paper and came across this article.

it is troubling the lengths to which some believers will go in order to define and defend the boundaries of their faith. the visigoths (in this case, tolerance and/or homosexuality) are closing it – quick, bar the gates! strike pre-emptively! sound the alarm and circle the wagons! if you are with us, then get on board – and if you’re against us, look out!

there is certainly a place for truth. following Christ always includes the call to holiness.

however, it is wrong to put grace and truth in opposing corners, in some kind of either/or deathmatch. when the word became flesh, he came into his world full of grace and truth. i don’t imagine grace and truth were like a jar of goober grape, as some might imagine – the peanut butter of grace and the grape jelly of truth co-existing in the same jar side-by-side, but easily separated and never co-mingling. some christians would make it seem as if the only way to take a stand for truth is by becoming belligerent or contentious because grace makes you into an anything-goes welcome mat on which others will trample.

there is also a place for outrage in our faith. there are things that should cause us to get mad, to yell and curse, to pull our hair out. children sold into sexual slavery. people dying of entirely curable illnesses. the socioeconomic disparity revealed by katrina. genocide in places like darfur.

it is regrettable that the angry street preacher-types are the ones with the best soundbites. rants about who God hates play well in the media. nuanced discussions characterized by grace, respect and understanding don’t make for good tv. perhaps this is why scripture tells us to let our gentleness be evident to all – broadcasting the character of Christ over our personal politics and preferences.

there might be some faint glow of truth in this argument against tolerance. but the answer is not to become some kind of intolerant jerk. in the workplace and on the campus, there probably needs to be some kind of standard for interpersonal relationships in the community. however, for God’s people, mere tolerance sets the bar too low. we’re not called simply to put up with or endure those who are different from us. there is the impossible call to love our enemies. and, whether we are right or wrong about who we consider actually to be our enemies, we are still called to love them.

this can only be accomplished through Christ in us, and that through much hard work, earnest prayer and self-sacrifice. not flippant, virulent shouts or slogans, nor through the mentality that we alone are the True Defenders of the Faith (as if God were to greet us in eternity with, “boy, i was really in a bind with that whole homosexuality deal. i’m really glad you distilled my word into obnoxious bumper stickers and hateful t-shirts. well done, good and faithful servant!”)…

to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of us…

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i don’t want to become the kind of believer who is defined by how i criticize other believers. that’s just as bad, maybe worse, than the above. i want to love mercy, to do justice and to walk humbly with my God and His people.

lake superior state university (greetings from michigan, sufjan!) publishes a list of banished words every year. officially, it’s the list of words and phrases banished from the queen’s english for mis-use, over-use and general uselessness. past winner (losers?) include: metrosexual, chad, first-time caller and holiday tree.

this year, i’m casting my vote for “make no mistake”. if i could also outlaw the look that goes with it (you know – squinting your eyes to affect steeliness) i would. it’s one of those strange rhetorical devices that i’m guessing is supposed to imply toughness but is just plain confusing. if you’ve already spent twenty minutes trying to convince me of something, would i really make the mistake of thinking you’re going to change your position in the next sentence?

another verbal pet peeve: asking a question and then immediately answering it. imagine: “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? eight hundred seventy three! that’s how many.” wouldn’t it save some word mileage to simply say, “it takes eight hundred seventy three licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop”? actually, i think this one bothers me because a pastor i knew from the east coast would use this technique at least three or four times per sermon. which segues into part two of my lil’ rant….

i think pastors should not be allowed to preach a single sermon that is longer than twenty-five minutes. i think there should be an agreement with the congregation: after a predetermined period of time has elapsed, the congregation can begin waving the preacher off the stage, as they do on showtime at the apollo (like this). if that doesn’t work, then savion glover will unceremoniously tapdance you out of the pulpit. lest you think i’m being too harsh, i would apply the same agreement to myself (as i find myself preaching most sundays).

and, just to toss out a couple of parting shots, i think revealing the number of points you’re about to make at the outset of the message should be likewise banished. this never fails to trigger the countdown in my mind… only two more points and three sub-points to go!

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the things that get under our skin are so strange. i had a friend in college whose nervous habit was to tap his fingers across his laptop keyboard without actually applying enough force to make the character appear onscreen. come midterms, you could hear the faint tappity-tap-tap echoing stressed-out strains from his room…