Religion

"It is a profound irony that the Son of God visited this planet and one of the chief complaints against him was that he was not religious enough."
-Rebecca Pippert in Out of the Salt Shaker & into the World

I love this quote, and the book is one of my favorites about sharing faith, but it scares me. It scares me that many institutions of faith, the Church, and "Godly" people are a lot of times too religious for God. What does that say?? Anyone who takes the time to really look into the life of Jesus will see that this was the reason people wrote him off. He wasn't good enough for their "religion". He ruffled their feathers just a little too much. Jesus wasn't religious. He had faith and conviction, but could never fit into the mold of the religious establishment of the day. Do we continually put ourselves at odds with what Jesus actually taught? If Jesus came today, would we be more interested in our own ideas of what he should say than what he would really say? A well known pastor of a church in California, Francis Chan, has said: "If Jesus came and started a church near mine, I would probably have more members." I love his honesty, because it speaks to a greater desire in all of us to pursue our own agenda and glory. I bet if we all looked deep into our views of faith, we would realize that we always feel the pressure to be more "religious" than God calls us to be. He calls us to be righteous and holy, but in that is the true calling to be REAL.

Turkeys

While we're in the season, I thought I'd give you some turkey facts...here you go:

-The turkey has no special meaning behind it's consumption on Thanksgiving...it just happened to be the most plentiful meat around at the time.
-Over 49 million turkeys will be bought and eaten this Thanksgiving
-The country with the highest consumption of turkey per person is Israel clocking in at 27 lbs/person/year
-Turkeys have been known to drown when they look up during a rainstorm
-They have an excellent field of vision that stretches 270 degrees around
-They can run up to 20 mph
-Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey
-The heaviest turkey ever found was 86 lbs.
-Their heads change colors when they're excited
-Baby turkeys are called Poults
-They have a long, red, fleshy area that grows from their forehead...it's called a SNOOD

Now you know more than you ever wanted to...

Thanksgiving

In 1789, President George Washington issued the Thanksgiving Proclamation to the people of the United States of America. Here's an excerpt: "Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country..." I don't think you'll hear that mentioned in school. Have we lost the initial meaning of this holiday? I think the answer, like the answer to the question of all holiday meanings, is yes, and I know most people would agree with me. I want to spend time this Thanksgiving really giving thanks to God. I think He deserves it.

Skiing

So, I finally went skiing in November. By myself. I made it up to Copper Mountain yesterday, my day off, and it was sweet. There was barely any snow on the mountain, (besides the man made stuff I was skiing on) and there was basically only one run open. The whole "ski cycle", the lift ride and time skiing down, took about 5 minutes total. I did it 30+ times and still left by 1pm. The conditions were not that great at all, but it was still one of the greatest days I've had in a long time. I put in my ipod shuffle headphones and hung out in the mountains by myself for a day. It got me thinking that I don't do that enough...or barely ever. We're constantly surrounded by noise: TV, radio, the internet, school, and annoying people talking. We were MADE to need time alone. I think we all need to recognize that and take advantage of living in Colorado.

Passion

If I use the word passion, a million different people would have a million different perspectives on the meaning of the word in their own lives. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and I've learned there is one thing that most people will agree on: for better or worse, passionate people are much more engaging and easy to listen to than someone who speaks or teaches out of obligation. It seems we all go through some sort of subconscious train of thought when deciding whether or not a teacher, speaker, mentor, or friend is saying something that has to do with us. We are amazing at being able to tune people, and their ideas, out if we in some way desire to. I think that the intangible and holistic quality of passion can be a large deciding factor many times. We always have two thought processes going through our mind: 1. What is it that is being said... 2. Do they actually believe that what they're saying is true, and if so does their life reflect it? The first is something that we do consciously all the time. We get information, we process it and then we attempt to apply it...it's a very linear process. The second is always happening when being engaged by someone, but is rarely noticed. It's heaviest influence seems to always be in the "application" part of the process. Simply put: we won't fully accept an idea or change a way of life if we don't see that someone else has done it and it is safe. This "someone" is usually the person teaching or speaking to us. Do we believe the things we say and tell others to do? Do we live out the truth we claim to know? Do we live out of our passions? It seems like you can't hide it if you don't.

What is this??

I have no idea what this thing is...tell me if you know. Somebody said a monkey...doesn't look like it.

Father Damien

I heard this crazy story the other night of a Dutch Catholic Priest named Father Damien. He travelled to Honolulu, Hawaii in the year 1864 and began work at a leper colony on the island. When he got there, they told him that he could do anything he desired to help the people afflicted with the disease, but like all people if he were to come in physical contact with them he would contract the disease and eventually die. He worked for years to help raise money for the colony, build quality health facilities, repair the existing homes and buildings in the community, and teach them all about God. After more than a decade of hard work in service of the people, there was still one thing that he hadn't done to reach them...he had never touched one of them. He finally made the hard and eventually fatal decision to really become one of them, to not treat them any differently by refusing to come into physical contact with them. Soon after he made this life changing decision he contracted Leprosy. Within no time, his body became disfigured beyond recognition and in 1889 he died. It is said that the most important thing he ever did was not his building projects, not his fight for sanitary health facilities, and not his constant service of the hundreds of forsaken people in the colony, but it was the fact that when talking about the people in his community he would always use the phrase "WE lepers." He has since been designated a Saint by the Catholic church.

What a story about truly caring for someone and giving up your life for them in order to reach them...I wonder if I could ever do something like that.

Stars

Did you know that if you totaled the number of stars in our galaxy, that number (about 100 billion) is roughly equal to the number of grains of sand that would fill up a 10ft x 10ft x 10ft room. The number of galaxies in the universe is around 100 billion as well. 100,000,000,000 x 100,000,000,000 is around the number of stars there are in the known universe (give or take a few billion to factor in galaxies of differing sizes =)), not to mention the number of planets orbiting around all those stars and the number of moons orbiting those planets. Wrap your mind around that one...

Picture: hundreds of different galaxies seen from a high powered telescope. Each of them contains billions of stars.

Daycare

This is where I went to daycare...

Seeds

These are Mustard seeds. They're about the size of the tip of a ball point pen. It says that if we have faith as big as one of these, we can move mountains. I think our first request sometimes is for more faith, as if when we got it then we would be living life truly as it is supposed to be. The answer to our request for more always seems to be: you have no idea how much you could do if you just realized what you already have. Fast forward a bunch of years, and that once tiny little seed becomes a tree. Not just any tree, but a huge tree that gives shade to everything around it. Makes you wonder doesn't it...

Candy Poll

Due to the fact that Halloween was on Wednesday, a very important question has arisen. I am taking a poll on people's favorite type of candy. Here are the following OPTIONS:

1) Fruity
2) Chocolatey
3) Nutty
4) Fruitychocolateynutty

click on the comment button below and give me your thoughts...AND WHY...

Hebrew

The hebrew word Shekinah (presence) was used by the ancient Hebrews to describe the glory of God living with the people. Whether it was in the old tabernacle (which moved around as the people moved) or the temple (which was a fixed building), it was understood by everyone at the time that God wanted to be close to his people. It was the one and only place where heaven and earth were connected.

Airplane

This picture is amazing...what just happened? Let me know if you have an idea...

Ducks

A duck's quack doesn't echo...no one knows why

Shadow Missions

Today, some of the church staff and I watched a video of part of Willow Creek's (a big church in the Chicago area) 2007 Leadership Summit. The video was of a talk by John Ortberg of Menlo Park Pres (picture), and his take on what a leader's greatest fear is. While failure, humiliation, and loss of interest are definitely up there for most leaders, John says that our real fear should be that we would pursue "Shadow Missions" our whole life rather than our true calling from God. A lot of time Shadow Missions can be disguised in the likeness of our God-given gifts and passions, but they ever so slightly head off in the wrong direction and become about ourselves and our dreams rather than God's call on our lives. He used the story of Esther in the Bible to bring to life what he was talking about. Go read it and it will blow your mind...I couldn't do it justice. Look for the ways in which Esther is put into a position of power to fulfill a mission that God gives her. Look for the ways that God puts people in her life to continually remind her of what her true calling is. It got me thinking about what my personal "shadow missions" were and I can sum up a big one in a sentence: "Do I have something to say, or do I simply want to be heard?" I think a lot of the time I just want to be heard, and so I spend most of my time thinking about my personal image as a communicator and not whether I really have something God-given to say. I think I've been bombarded constantly on how to reach people more effectively with a message and haven't spent much time thinking about the message that I have to say. The truth is that the message can only come from God, cause I don't have much to say that is really worthwile...I wouldn't listen to me if I was you.