Lord’s Prayer…sorta

My Father My Dad My Papa
Pops Old Man Coach Teacher Mentor
Dad
Father
You in Heaven
Hallowed holy righteous
Famous
Infamous
Glamorous
Fabulous
And glorious is your name
Your fame
Your kingdom
Rule and reign
That righteous rule and reign
Of yours my God and King
Come and be
Exist
Manifest
And conquer
This dull dead desiccated earth
Just as it is in that heaven
That marvelous heaven
Where there is no sickness
No pain
No death
No shame
That bright and shining heaven
Where you sit on your throne
And all the world sings holy
Righteous
Worthy
As you would have it there
Make it here
Here where there is hunger
Stamp it out
Tread it into the deepest crack of your book
Take hunger pain sickness poverty addiction
Malnutrition
Wars of attrition
Family friction
Mortification
humiliation
And every else that plagues this pestilential world
And give us life
Give us food and drink and freedom and life
Not death damnation condemnation and pain
But life
Even the pain we puny mortals so desperately
Inflict on ourselves
That self-mortification for the sake
Of self-gratification
Save us Lord
For you and only you
The king of kings
Lord of lords
Author and perfecter
Savior and deliverer
Creator master lover
Father.
Father.
Only you can save me.;

Touching Jesus Pt 2 – Touching the Father

Physical contact has spiritual implications. (Also, click here to read the intro to this series)

This is the first thing we must understand when discussing this concept at all.  Western Christianity and western thinking in general tends to segregate the physical, the spiritual and the intellectual but there really isn’t a biblical precedent for doing that.  Certainly scripture discusses the three separately, but it is assumed that they are inextricably intertwined.  This is why physical contact has the curious ability to spread spiritual uncleanliness.  “Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean and the person who touches it shall be unclean…” Lev. 5:2  There are plenty of other examples but if you do a bible search for the word “unclean” you’ll get to see them all.

Touching Jesus Part 1 – Introduction

There is an assumption that physical proximity leads to knowledge and understanding.  Now one of my love languages is physical touch so I am one of those folks who needs to be told that I have made that assumption, and believe me I have.  If you’re a Star Trek nerd like me, you may recall that scene in First Contact where Picard makes a big deal about touching the ship that would later take the first warp flight.  It’s like touching the original declaration of independence or the Gutenberg bible.  There’s something great and wonderfully reassuring about being able to touch and feel the artifacts that bear some kind of significance to us.

The art of “You’re welcome”

In general there are two responses a person gives when someone says “thank you.”  1) we can say “you’re welcome.”  Or 2) we shrug it off with comments like “it was nothing” or “don’t mention it.”   One of the things I tend say when someone thanks me for something is “well you know me, I do what I can.”  Which is almost worse because it’s like saying “yeah, I know.  I’m that good.”  It’s not only refusing thanks but it does so in an extremely not-humble kind of way.

Anyways, here are reasons why refusing thanks is bad.

The Dark Place

Ever heard someone say ‘I’m in a dark place right now’?  If you haven’t heard it before you have now. “The Dark Place” is where we go when we get depressed, discouraged and generally have problems facing the world. Its the private dark little corner of our hearts where we can ignore the world around us. For myself its a place where i can cry without shame. The world cant see me in the dark place and i can’t see me so there’s no shame in letting my heart grieve.
Now a lot of people say that the dark place is unhealthy. That going there is equivalent to not trusting God or that it is somehow as if im running away from him. Never mind that there is no shadow so dark that the light of God cannot shine, and nevermind that there is no place deep enough where God cannot reach me (cf romans 8:38-39 and psalm 139:11-12). The truth is that when i go to a dark place, when i need to hide from the world and allow myself to hurt, i go to the deep shadows of the dark place: the shadows of HIS wings.

Have mercy on me, O God,
have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.
I cry out to God Most High,
to God, who fulfills {his purpose} for me.

Psalms 57:1-2 NIV84

Reflections

I spent some time today looking over my posts from 2012.  About a year ago, almost exactly, I wrote a piece about my difficulty being stupid.  It centers on the idea of selling out for Christ and wiling to be foolish in the sight of the world for the glory of God.   I look at the person I was then and I honestly cannot remember what it was like.

I wrote another post about an awesome weekend I had where my boy (Then about six months old) slept through the night and how one of the kids in my youth group was able to just really bless me in a way I wasn’t expecting.  I wrote about weekend victories, and I wrote about settled-ness.  I wrote about people having arguments inside the body of Christ and I played around with bible mad-libs.

Then around April things kinda fell apart on this blog and in my life.  That came to a head towards the end of June.  My little jokes seem like empty echoes from a lifetime ago.  My deep thoughts from earlier in the year are still meaningful but hopelessly irrelevant.

My “Dearest” award

So half of you are thinking you’re going to get a great story about the humble award that means the most to me and then watch as I somehow turn that to Christ.  Maybe you’re right I’m still writing the post, so let’s find out.

My sister runs a blog over at Teach the Teacher where she talks about all the fun stuff she does and goes through as a teacher with two dogs, and a whole whole whole lot of food alergies (Yes Yuri that was more a jibe at you than information for anyone who might read this).  Well anyways, my darling sister nominated me for the great and information Liebster award.  Liebster is a german word that translates as “dearest.”  this is kind of like a way for bloggers to force some link love, but also a way for the community of smaller bloggers to encourage and love one another.