hubba hubba

i love donald miller. he's smart and funny. he has clever-humor. i like that. and every once in a while i need my donald fix and i'll listen to a session he did at willow creek several years back. it's about how we need artists to help people grasp the gospel and he was encouraging us to not give up. was timely for me, which might be why it impacted me so.

anyway, in the session he mentions how people have a hard time understanding the gospel or 'christianity' until we start to refer to it in terms of a relationship. he says that people don't think it's weird when guys will say, 'my wife wants me to love only her.' well, duh. but people get bent outta shape when they hear, 'God wants me to love only Him.' because we haven't done a very good job of explaining that it's a relationship.

when you get that it's a relationship.. so much else makes sense about God and why he loves us and how he wants us to love him.

i think christians often miss the mark on this.

we get rules. we understand them. they are measurable. quantifiable. translatable.

and so many times we confuse christianity with a set of rules. some people don't want to become a christian because they don't want to live by a set of rules. funny though - those people are usually married or are in a relationship and they don't mind living by certain 'guidelines' to respect their partner and make them happy. that's not living by rules. that's loving.

if you've got a spouse, think back to when you got married. remember those gushy feelings? remember looking soooo forward to the honeymoon? most of us actually take time off of work and leave our surroundings and the daily buzz to steal away with your beloved and get to know one another intimately. deeply. you pour yourselves into one another. you are strengthening your bond together and fall further for each other.

there's something magical about that time you spend. there's wonder and peace and delight all stirred up together. you meld.

why, then, do we take a brand new christian and yank the honeymoon rug out from under them by heaping rules upon them? they are in love! they are heady with the scent of their lover. their feet aren't on the ground. why strip them of that?

give them time to get to know God intimately. let them gush. let the magic happen.

and as they grow in their relationship, they are going to begin to make choices that respect God and that are a symbol of their love for him. not because there are rules to be followed but because they are drawn to living a life that pleases their lover.

God started the whole relationship thing - it's patterned for us right at the start of it all. "in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God..." soo... God wasn't alone. he was with the Word - he was with Jesus. there was union. a relationship.

i don't know about you, but looking at it that way is a huge relief. it's no longer a set of rules to live by. but rather, it is the greatest love story of all time.

now, how 'about that honeymoon? hubba hubba.

the glory of it all

one of the rides i've been doing to train for the MS150 (a bike ride to raise money for multiple sclerosis), takes me just north of stacy rd into a development that, once there, feels completely separated from the rest of the busy world i seem to live in. the trees overhang the road, you can smell jasmine and honeysuckle in the air, if you encounter a car they actually give you the right of way. it's like you cross stacy and time warp into the little house on the prairie or something.

and there's this one bend that every time i pedal round it i am struck anew with the beauty of God's creation. and i think, "You made this??"

i go to webb elementary on thursdays and mentor a 5th grader. well, i don't know if mentor is really the right word for what i do. i just try and build a relationship with her and give her someone to trust in. i've also been doing a few projects with her. this past week i brought in some sheets of origame paper and we folded them into boxes (i learned how to do it on youtube). after folding the first one and realizing how easy it was, she got really excited and wanted to make one for all of her teachers, so we folded more and more and more and she wrote their names on each one and she practically ran down the hallway to deliver them.

she was so proud of her accomplishment. so proud of her work! it was a treat to see and i pray she thinks about the joy of giving as well. i hope that now that she got a taste of it she will want to be giving more often and considering others.

but the point is that she was thrilled with what she made - even if she started with craft paper and a video from someone else - she made something and she delighted in it.

but God! - he made all of this from nothing. and he came up with the pattern of this world - it wasn't on youtube first, i'm sure of it. he is designer, crafter, maker, and creator of all of this. imagine the intricacies he considered, the massiveness he imagined, the sweet scents of jasmine he threw in, and all of the glory around us everyday. you know that glory, right?.. the one you drive past on your way to work?

glance at it next time and let the wonder of it all settle upon you.

and let it draw you to the one who fashioned it and become his.

spinning and paring

today was our first day of spin class 6-6:45 am. it's official: i'm insane.

had you any doubt?

the spin class instructor, however, was smart and slept in. or whatever their reason was for not showing up to tell us what to do. so we got a refund for the day, a free pass for an evening spin class session and permission to work out in the gym while we were there.

so we cycled for 30 minutes. it was, maybe, 2 minutes into the workout when i thought, "can i really do this?"

the ms150 is really 164 miles. split between two days that's appx 80 miles a day. i am told there's a rest stop at about every ten miles so we're looking at about eight jaunts of ten miles each on both days. that sounds more doable when you break it down like that.

plus i heard there was a barf bus (that's what my bro calls it) that will be following us and if you need more than just a pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road break, they will pick you and your bike up and take you to the next rest stop.

that's good to know. just in case.

after our workout it was still dark outside. my bro tried to make me feel better by calling it 'cloud coverage.' he's a good man.

read judges 6 and 7 this morning while i sipped my coffee and ate an egg and tomato sandwich. i think it's interesting that God told gideon he had too many people on his side for battle and that if they won with that many people they would say it was because they won it and not God so he pared down their number to 300.

i think he does that in my life a lot. reduces my 'size' (read: pride, confidence, ability, resources, etc) so that there is no way for me to claim that whatever success was achieved was due to me. he had to pare that down so i could only say, "God did this thing."

and yet during the paring process we whine and moan and complain and make ourselves and everyone around us miserable because we are so focused on ourselves we can't see what God is trying to accomplish through us (do we even get the enormity of that - of God allowing us to participate in his work when he doesn't need us a whit?).

maybe we should learn to be more patient and watch for the outcome before being such a pill.