Now this is good news!

A proclamation of the Gospel that I love and seems timely:

The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew…

The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. […] God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it is not God’s will for us, nor is it the life in the Spirit which has its source in the heart of the risen Christ.

I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since “no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord”. The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms. Now is the time to say to Jesus: “Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord, take me once more into your redeeming embrace”. How good it feels to come back to him whenever we are lost! Let me say this once more: God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy….

The Gospel, radiant with the glory of Christ’s cross, constantly invites us to rejoice… Why should we not also enter into this great stream of joy?

There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter. I realize of course that joy is not expressed the same way at all times in life, especially at moments of great difficulty. Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved. I understand the grief of people who have to endure great suffering, yet slowly but surely we all have to let the joy of faith slowly revive as a quiet yet firm trust, even amid the greatest distress: “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is… But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness… It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lam 3:17, 21-23, 26).

I never tire of repeating those words … which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”.

Thanks solely to this encounter – or renewed encounter – with God’s love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption. We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being. Here we find the source and inspiration of all our efforts at evangelization. For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?

That’ll preach.

[Disclaimer: I didn’t write this.]

The first shoreline of the invisible world

There’s a beautiful bit in the On Being episode that was published earlier this week, from a 2008 interview that host Krista Tippett held with the late Irish poet John O’Donohue.

This quote reminds me of a lot of what NT Wright says about the spiritual dimension and about churches being beachheads where God’s kingdom overlaps and is shining into the world. Here’s what O’Donohue said:

The more I’ve been thinking about this, the way we make divisions all the time between the visible world and the invisible world, and it’s as if the invisible world is the poor relation and the visible world is ultimate ground and reality, and the more I’ve been thinking about this the more it seems to me actually that the visible world is the first shoreline of the invisible world. And the same way, I believe, with the body and the soul - that actually the body is in the soul, not the soul just in the body - and that in some way the poignance of being a human being is that you are the place where the invisible becomes visible and expressive in some way.

“The poignance of being a human being is that you are the place where the invisible becomes visible and expressive in some way.”

Beautiful.

Some months I need to clone myself, or, Chris gets work done, Orphan Black-style

So yeah, it’s one of those months. I need a clone. Or two. Or five.So yeah, it’s one of those months. I need a clone. Or two. Or five.

Think of it this way:

“Chris gets work done, Orphan Black-style”

Family

Orphan Black has Sarah - mother, sister, daughter, driven by love for family.

I have Dad Chris.

The Pretty Face

Orphan Black has Allison - perky suburban housewife who runs her own business and is dabbling in politics.

I have soon-to-be-a-manager-at-work Chris.

The Technical Expert

Orphan Black has Cosima - cute hippy scientist who gets crap figured out.

I have engineer-who-makes-sure-our-products-don’t-crash-airplanes Chris.

The Meanie

Orphan Black has Rachel - brutal corporate executive.

I have doesn’t-put-up-with-any-crap-from-program-managers Chris.

The Scary One

Orphan Black has Helena.

I have after-a-long-day-of-juggling-all-this Chris.

I think it would work out rather nicely.

[Yeah, we binged on Orphan Black this summer at our house. Love it!]

Happy Birthday, Laura! (2015 edition)

How am I old enough to have an 11-year-old? It doesn’t seem I’ve gotten that much older… and yet this young lady grows in stature, beauty, and general awesomeness every year. Whether she’s playing with the cat, hanging with her sisters, helping her Mom, or having some other sort of fun, she’s a delight.

Happy birthday, Laura! You’re a blessing to our family, and it’s a wonderful treat to be your Dad.

17 Years

Seventeen years ago, on a sweltering Friday night in Charlotte, NC, two youngsters stood before God and a few hundred friends and family and made promises that they surely didn’t fully understand.

In some ways it feels like it was just yesterday… until I start thinking about all the intervening events. 17 years later we’ve added three kids, cycled through about half a dozen cats, have a lot less hair, and still play church softball every season. (This year’s team’s infield: two married couples. One husband/wife at short and second; Becky at first and me at third. Such fun… until I start airmailing my throws to first!)

God has been good to us, and we keep learning every day (or at least most days) how to love each other better and become even better friends. Today is our seventh prime number anniversary, and here’s to another 10 or 12 primes before we’re done.

A little early-morning band action

I play with a band called Standing Before Giants off and on. (I don’t show up on the official band info, but they pull me in for gigs on a semi-regular basis. It works.) On Sunday we’re playing at Praise on the River - a fundraiser for the local free medical clinic.

To publicize things this morning we played a 30-minute acoustic set on the stage at the local Farmer’s Market. Nothing like having to be tuned up and ready to sing at 7:30 am!

If you’re around Cedar Rapids tomorrow (Sunday June 21), come down to the amphitheater and listen to the music! Full band mode will be engaged for that one (i.e. I’ll have my keyboard with me!).

Photo credit to the estimable John Walton.

A little bit of a bozo

Merlinmannwwdc2007.jpg My theme in any discussion over the past couple of years has usually come around to “well, yeah, but… it’s complicated.” So my head started nodding enthusiastically yesterday when listening to the Reconcilable Differences podcast, when I heard Merlin Mann say this about the possibility that he’s a contrarian (at about 22 minutes into the episode):

What a lot of people get and that some people don’t get is that you’re not trying to be difficult, but that the more you enjoy something the more you’re interested in seeing how it could be better. And here’s a thing that’s actually not such a big deal that you could make better. It’s not an insult, it’s not a slam. And for me, whenever people say “oh you gotta to out and set goals for yourself”, I’ll be “well, maybe”. You know goals can really be self-defeating if they aren’t updated and realistic. “Oh you should never have goals.” Well, that’s not true. Do you really wanna play tennis without a net? I feel like maybe I’m more of a contrarian? I feel like, whenever somebody comes up with something that’s, like, an unvulnerable pronouncement about how the world mostly always is, it gets my dander up a little bit, and I don’t feel like I have to say something, but I know I’m thinking that person’s probably a little bit of a bozo.

Preach, brother Merlin. Preach.

That old, old impulse to tweak and re-write

As a worship leader I confess I grumble from time to time about the current propensity of our songwriters to appropriate and revise classic hymns in ways that just drive me crazy.

For example, my worship pastor has heard me rant on more than one occasion about Chris Tomlin’s modification of the last verse of Crown Him With Many Crowns. The original lines directly address Jesus:

All hail, Redeemer, hail, for Thou hast died for me, Thy praise and glory shall not fail throughout eternity…

But Tomlin, for some reason that doesn’t entail the rhyming scheme, revises the words to talk about Jesus rather than to Him:

All hail, Redeemer, hail, for He has died for me, His praise and glory shall not fail throughout eternity…

Why, Chris, why? You could’ve modernized the language without screwing around with the perspective of the song. Argh.

Oh, and don’t even get me started about the multiple Christian-ese re-writes of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. Yikes.

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox.

This past weekend we had a garage sale, and among 3 big boxes of sheet music my Mom brought to the sale, I found a book that lets me know that this isn’t a new problem.

“World Famous Christmas Songs, containing the best and most popular Songs of the Nativity”. Compiled and Edited by the Reverend George Rittenhouse. Published in 1929, it’s an eclectic assortment of both secular and sacred songs.

What stuck out to me as I paged through was that when it says “edited” by Rev. Rittenhouse, they weren’t kidding. His fingerprints are all over this thing.

For instance, he rather ambitiously chooses to re-harmonize Angels We Have Heard on High with some extra movement:

Another place he appropriates Bizet’s L’Arlessienne and some old lyrics to create a rather bombastic tune subtitled “The March of the Kings”.

Then there’s this gem, wherein he re-writes the lyrics of “O Tannenbaum!” to give them a Christian angle:

O Christmas Tree! Fair Christmas Tree! A type of Life Eternal! O Christmas Tree! Fair Christmas Tree! Your boughs are ever vernal. So fresh and green in Summer heat, and bright when snows lie round your feet O Christmas Tree! Fair Christmas Tree! A type of Life Eternal!

A classic waiting to happen, right there. There are two more verses if you’re really interested.

The more things change…

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that these impulses have been around a long time. (Picture a musician in the court of King Hezekiah - “gah, why can’t we just sing that psalm the way King David wrote it?”) But it was comforting to see that confirmation, and to be reminded that history has a way of weeding out the material of lesser quality and holding on to the good stuff.

I guess I can be patient.

May I go through the day calling on you

A beautiful prayer, credited only as an “Ethiopian Prayer”, from today’s noon-time reading in Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours:

God, you have prepared in peace the path I must follow today. Help me to walk straight on that path. If I speak, remove lies from my lips. If I am hungry, take away from me all complaint. If I have plenty, destroy pride in me. May I go through the day calling on you, you, O Lord, who know no other Lord.

Amen.

A Meal Shared Among Friends

I’ve had the sacraments (especially the Eucharist) on my mind lately after reading James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, and then listening to the On Being podcast this morning I found this bit from Father Greg Boyle, a delightful Jesuit priest who has spent his life working with gang members in Los Angeles:

Jesus doesn’t lose any sleep that we will forget that the Eucharist is sacred; He is anxious that we might forget that it’s ordinary, that it’s a meal shared among friends, because if we don’t see that, then we’ll be unable to recognize the sacred in the ordinary, and that’s the incarnation.

Interesting to hear from a Catholic. But in my experience, this is a trap we Evangelicals have fallen into at various times, too.