PneuProject Blogerrific
  • Blogerrific!
  • Survey About YOU?
  • Pneu You
  • Go to big life cc .org
  • Go to PneuProject.org

Sin and a House Cat

10/1/2012

0 Comments

 
Sin has gotten a lot of dramatic press.  I thought I would tell you a story of a personal sin so deep and dark that it turned my mom’s house cat red.

When I was 15, my mom and dad left me in charge of my younger brother and sister at home.  It was the first time I had been given babysitting authority, and believe me, it went straight to my head.  They cautioned me about how to care for younger children, but I was quite certain I knew all I needed to know.  As soon as they walked out the door, I settled in to my real agenda - watching some sitcoms they wouldn’t normally let me watch, Cheers and Night Court.  

Things were pretty quiet for the couple hours they were gone.  I enjoyed my time alone, and I thought I was in the clear.  But when they walked in, I heard a storm growing as they made their way through the house to where I waited with mounting anxiety.  They were mad.  Real mad.  

While I had been enjoying my self, my brother had fashioned a metal coat hanger into a tool - a tool he was busy applying to electrical outlets upstairs.  And my sister had carefully painted our cat with my mom’s lipstick...ALL over the cat.  (The cat was never the same; I think it suffered the indignity until the day it died.)  Suffice to say, I got in some well-deserved trouble that day.

Now you may not have been an accomplice to painting a cat with lipstick, but I know, and you know, that you have a couple too many stories like this.  We all have plenty of times we have done something we shouldn’t, and there was a cost and consequence we had to face.  This is the human experience.  We all fail, we all mess up.  We all miss the mark.  And we all pay a price for those missteps.

Missing the mark is how Jesus described sin.  It was a concept borrowed from archery.  And just like great shooting, steady, accurate, aim takes focus and effort.  It also requires learning and practice.  And everyone is going to miss sometimes.

Like a skilled sport, until we know why we do what we do, why we miss the mark, why we are making bad decisions, and how to correct the errors, we will continue to miss.    

Why we do what we do is different for each of us.  We all have our weak points that make us susceptible to our signature sins; I know I do.  Whether there are childhood issues, selfish desires, responses to stress, marital strife, or economic anxiety, until we identify the cause of why we are missing the mark we can’t expect to do better.  We are the one who is really undermining our best decision making, and until we look at ourselves honestly, we aren’t going to do better.   

God asks to help each of us do this.  God is the ultimate coach.  God wants our honesty, so He can help us put things right as only a loving, forgiving, encouraging, and healing God can.  And God is willing to do that with you and with me over and over and over again.  There is an endless supply of arrows and a patient and loving Instructor pointing the Way to our target.  That is amazing grace.  

This week we will miss the mark.  The question is not will we fail, the question is, will we be honest about why, and will we ask God to help us do better?  That is the life of faith.    

0 Comments

Words Matter in Times of Tragedy

6/6/2012

0 Comments

 
Monday in Oswego three teenagers were killed in a fatal car crash on 126.  In a moment, everything changed for them, everything changed for their families, and everything changed for the man driving the truck who survives.  I have spent my life as a minister trying to muster up words of comfort in situations where there are no good words.  I officiated my first funeral back when 21 years old; the service was for a 34 year old mother of four who died of cancer one year after I met her.  I have spent my life trying to reconcile Who I know to be a God of Love with the pain and grief of a motherless 5 year old and her sisters and brothers.  Anything I have ever said that was helpful in accomplishing this is only a gift from God.  Me?  I never know what to say.

But let me be clear, I do know what not to say.

Do not say, “this was God’s will.”  For all the traffic this phrase generates you would think it would have a central place in scripture.  This phrase is often referenced as though random tragedy is divinely ordained, but no such example of God’s will exists in the life and teaching of Jesus...or in the entire New Testament for that matter.  So I can say with no reservation, it is never the will of God to kill three teenagers in car wreck.  I do not assume my readers are Christians, but for those who are, please remember ours is a faith of resurrection.  God has destroyed death as the final answer and is forever on the side of life and love - in fact, God IS life and love.  And that love is stronger than anything else in this world.       

Do not say, “this could have been avoided if...”  Humans like me and like you make mistakes all the time.  I admit, I have texted while I 

Read More
0 Comments

Fair or Right?

3/12/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture


Remember school food?  Rectangle pieces of pizza, mystery tenderloins, and mixed fruit with one cherry?  I hated school food, with one exception: the cookies.  The elementary school I attended growing up in Iowa had the best cookies.  Oatmeal cookies with some government milk made for a good dessert. 

At the end of the serving line always stood an older woman, wearing plastic gloves, handing out one cookie per student.  I would beg her- beg her - to let me have two cookies.  There were always extras, always students who for some reason didn’t want a cookie.  I would explain, rationalize, and insist that giving me two cookies would not end the world.  Yet she would always say the same thing,  "If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone." 

We all know that is not true.  She could have just done it for me and me alone.  She could have just given an extra cookie to the kids who asked politely.  But she fell back on what so many people say - I can’t do it for everyone, so I won’t do it for you.  While that might work handing out cookies, it is a terrible philosophy of life. 

We know that life is not fair.  So do not strive to be fair.  Strive to do what is right, in the moment you are in.  If a neighbor is hungry, don’t tell them that since you can't feed the whole world you won’t feed them.  Feed them.  If a friend needs a place to crash for a day to work through his marriage don't tell him he can’t because if you did it for him you would have to do it for everyone.  Be compassionate to the person in front of you.  Just because I cannot share my faith with the world does not mean I ought not witness to some Good News to the person I see everyone morning at Starbucks. 

I think of Jesus healing the blind and raising the dead.  He did not let the endless mass of human need prevent him from ministry to the person in front of him.  And He did not do what was fair.  He did what was right.  And so should we.  

0 Comments

Yucko.

3/9/2012

0 Comments

 
At PneuProject, we recently partnered with Chris Baker of Ink 180.  He transforms gang and sex-trafficking tattoos into something beautiful.  We have spent the last couple weeks getting to know him and his ministry work better, and I tell you what, it is GROSS - as in human depravity style YUCK.  Not Chris - Chris is awesome - but why he is in business is straight up nasty.


See a tattoo is not an instantaneous process.  So he sits and works on a beautiful artistic endeavor for hours - on someone's body who has literally been violated, stolen, abused, made to BE worthless.  And they tell him their stories.


And since he is working through the law enforcement in order to provide his services, he talks with a lot of officers and agents, the courts etc, and hears THEIR stories about all the icky, nasty stuff that we all honestly hope is not really a part of American society.  But it is.  It is PROLIFIC.  And it is horrific.  I am so ashamed by what we are allowing - each of us - all of us.  Remember in school hearing about the people in the towns next to the gas chambers, how they insisted they didn't know it was happening?  Well we ARE those people - because it is right here, in our towns, on our watch.


Kids afraid, made to run drugs, beaten until they become part of a gang, kidnapped or sold into sex-slavery.  Tattooed by their 'owners'.  Marked, shot, arrested, scarred, lost, incarcerated...hopeless.  


And Chris allows them the chance to move forward without the sign of their oppressors still inked into their very bodies.  He gives them the simple dignity of choosing, perhaps for the first time in their entire life, what their life might look like...literally.  


If you feel obligated to find out more about what is happening right HERE all around us in comfortable suburbia, come out to Tap House Grill on 3/18 at 7:30.  We will be interviewing Chris & showing some of his work.  He may even bring someone who has chosen to make this transformation to share.



Click this image to find out more:
Picture
0 Comments

How does God look at you?

1/27/2012

0 Comments

 
God sees you as a little child. Innocent, curious, love-hungry.


And God sees you as a powerful individual, chock-full of largely untapped talent & skill & energy & relationships.

God looks at you with intense and hopeful love.


What does God not see in you?  


All the bad decisions.


Why?  


Honestly, I don't have a clue.  I keep track of all the stupid things I and everyone else around me has ever done.  They call this God-quality "grace."  It is simultaneously one of the most cliche terms in "Christian-speak" while being one of the hardest concepts to understand.  All I know is I like it.  It's Jesus. 
0 Comments

Big tent religion

7/20/2011

1 Comment

 
Picture
I have had a lot of questions over the last week about what we believe, what we are trying to accomplish, who we are targeting at PneuProject, etc.  So let me introduce you to a concept we like to call, the big tent.

Big tent means everybody is welcome.  Our tent is defined by being Christian, so we are going to talk about Jesus.  And Jesus talks a lot about how to love, non-judgement, addressing your own issues in life, forgiving others, living with them gracefully, etc.

If we take him seriously, we aren't EVER going to be telling you what kind of food is wrong, which categories of people are evil, etc.  Because that flies in the face of the things that he taught (see above).

Now, in our church experience, that has caused a lot of consternation.  People WANT to be told what to do towards God, what to believe, what political party to vote, etc.  They want to be told what we believe, so they can decide if they are for or against US not Jesus. 

And if we were to do it, the biggest problem with us spelling out what we believe and requiring you to conform to it, is that essentially, it is requiring you to think, pray, live, LIKE US. 

And while we are REALLY confident about Jesus and his purposes for you, we are still very much works in progress, and we would like the same opportunity we are affording you - to grow as God leads us.

1 Comment
    Picture

    Blogerrific!

    Devotionals
    & Thoughts on
    Faith in Jesus

    Featured:

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Go To:

    Picture
    Click to go to www.pneuproject.org

    Categories:

    All
    Atheism
    Bible
    Books
    Church
    Communion
    Death
    Evangelism
    Failure
    Faith
    Football
    Freedom
    Fun
    Grace
    Heaven
    Hell
    Hypocrisy
    Jesus
    Leadership
    Love
    Marriage
    Men
    Mission
    Money
    Music
    Prayer
    Sex
    Sin
    Traditional Church
    Women


    Get Involved:

    Follow Pneuproject on Twitter
    Tweet


    RSS Feed