Prayer for the week...

My wife found this one from John Wesley:

I am no longer my own but yours,
Put me to what you will
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal
And now glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
You are mine and I am yours. So be it.
And this covenant now made on earth, let it be satisfied in heaven.

This is one we should pray slowly and often...

The bottom line is the moral question...

I am not a big Newsweek fan, but this article really summed up to me the difference between the Canadian and the US perspective on Universal Health Care. It's a question that doesn't get as much play as "How do we afford it?" (another great question) and "Shouldn't the government leave me alone?", but it is, from my perspective the most important question - "Is for-profit health care really a moral option?"

The fundamental truth about health care in every country," notes Princeton professor Uwe Reinhardt, one of the world's preeminent health-care economists, "is that national values, national character, determine how each system works."

Read the rest of the article here.

It's in all of us...

My prayers go out to all the wounded and the families of the fallen from the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, today. Although no one can know the motives behind something like this, it reminds me of what Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago as he writes about what he took to be the great moral gift that he had received in prison.

"It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains . . . an uprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in history: they destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them (and also fail, out of haste, to discriminate the carriers of good as well). And they then take to themselves as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more."

I am convinced that we cannot continue in the path we are heading without destroying ourselves. The way of Jesus is the only answer that deals with both the beauty of the image of God in humanity and the transformation necessary for the evil that lies within us.

Quote of the week...

No explanation or introduction needed...

"Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

--Frederick Buechner

Taking my brother to Hell...Hell's Gate, that is.

Well my brother and his family have safely arrived and my children made it through their arrival with no heart attacks from sheer excitement... although it was close. Today we laze around the house through the morning and will head out to Hell's Gate in the afternoon. I have a pass that let's me take in as big a group as I want for free, so it you want to join us show up there @ 1:30....

Word Creation Wednesday

My brother Mike and his family come for a visit today. This makes him the third and final sibling to come for a visit since I moved to Canada 16 years ago. I love it when they come and realize what a blessing it is to have siblings that I really like and love to spend time with. Thus this week's word -

"Funamily" - The experiences you have when you are enjoying time with family. I realize that some people are sorely lacking "funamily" in their life. I feel sorry for your loss. But I must admit I am looking forward to the next week of "funamily" in my life.

This week's sermon...

Not from this past Sunday, but from September 2007, but one that I liked, especially as I prepare for communion this week at our church.

Full study guide online here.

Quote of the week...

Here's a good one for this week. A long one from Barbara Brown Taylor, but well worth the read.

”Several summers ago, I spent three days on a barrier island where loggerhead turtles were laying their eggs. One night while the tide was out, I watched a huge female heave herself up the beach to dig her nest and empty herself into it while slow, salt tears ran from her eyes. Afraid of disturbing her, I left before she had finished her work but returned next morning to see if I could find the spot where her eggs lay hidden in the sand. What I found were her tracks, only they led in the wrong direction. Instead of heading back out to sea, she had wandered into the dunes, which were already hot as asphalt in the morning sun. A little ways inland I found her, exhausted and all but baked, her head and flippers caked with dried sand. After pouring water on her and covering her with sea oats, I fetched a park ranger, who returned with a jeep to rescue her. As I watched in horror, he flipped her over on her back, wrapped tire chains around her front legs, and hooked the chains to the trailer hitch on his jeep. Then he took off, yanking her body forward so fast that her open mouth filled with sand and then disappeared underneath her as her neck bent so far I feared it would break. The ranger hauled her over the dunes and down onto the beach; I followed the path that the prow of her shell cut in the sand. At ocean's edge, he unhooked her and turned her right side up again. She lay motionless in the surf as the water lapped at her body, washing the sand from her eyes and making her skin shine again. Then a particularly large wave broke over her, and she lifted her head slightly, moving her back legs as she did. As I watched, she revived. Every fresh wave brought her life back to her until one of them made her light enough to find a foothold and push off, back into the water that was her home. Watching her swim slowly away and remembering her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noted that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or being saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.”

I love that last sentence...it is just so true.

This week's sermon...

From I Sam. 16:1-13 - The last in the series on Samuel...

The spiritual benefits of diabetes...

This week I had my lab work done, specifically my hemoglobin A1-C test. I have to have it every three months to monitor my sugar level. As much as I hate it, it's a good thing for me. Most days I check my sugar at home. I do the old finger poke and the machine tells me if I'm eating right or just fooling myself. If I work at it, I can manipulate this daily routine. I can choose to test my blood after not eating for a bit, or just after exercise. In short, I can often make it say what I want it to say. Not so with the dreaded A1-C test. It reports on the average level of sugar in my blood over the past three months. It easy to play games for a daily check, but the A1-C takes a hard look at what's been going on inside over the long haul. The problem is that this tends to make me want to put it off. I find great excuses to not get the blood work done. After all, I have a busy job, four kids, a yard to keep up, etc. But finally I run low on medicine and need to go back to the doctor, or the guilt overwhelms me and I give in.

My numbers this week were okay. Could be a bit better, but could also be a lot worse. That's good. But it has started me thinking. What if there was some way to have the condition of our soul tested...kind of a spiritual hemoglobin A1-C? What if every so often all the illusions we present to ourselves and those around us were pulled back so that someone could see what's really been happening inside over the past three months. I think for all of us that would be a bit scary. Nobody wants others to see what actually happens in the depths of our heart and mind. But it's in that openness that we actually begin to find the power to change. The truth is that the A1-C forces me to watch what I eat, even though I don't want to. I know my cheating will eventually show up in my blood. So I eat better. Not perfect, but better than I would if I knew I could hide it.

In the same way, maybe the opening up and exposing of our soul to another on a regular basis, no matter how humbling it can be, would do wonders for our own transformation into Christlikeness. The forced acknowledgement of what is inside to another who loves us and wants the best for us pushes us to be honest with ourselves. It lets the light shine into the dark corners. It doesn't let us play games with matters of the soul. And just like ignoring my blood sugar will eventually kill me, ignoring what is actually going on in my heart and soul can have even nastier implications - for myself AND for those around me.

So here's to the development of a spiritual A1-C. I think it's already there and we call it authentic living within a community. But maybe this blog is a call to not avoid it, but to embrace it. We need it to survive...

"I'm way too close..."

From the "Dumb things that I will never do" Department...

Any reason that He keeps driving toward the storm?

This week's sermon...

I Samuel 15:1-35.  Tough text...it always is when God endorses genocide...

Quote of the week...

As much as I don't really like this...it appears to be very true.  So much for easy decisions when it comes to living a life that counts...

"No great deed, private or public, has ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty."

--Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic

Word Creation Wednesday

Ever stepped out of your comfort zone? While what stretches me may not seem difficult to you, you have to appreciate the fear I face tomorrow. This week's word expresses what awaits me in the morning...

"agefright" - The fear of interacting with a specific age group for an extended period of time. One example (purely hypothetical) might be going along as a parent volunteer with a class of third grade children on a field trip to the Vancouver Aquarium. Agefright is often prompted when a tremendous love for your own child (who is in the class) collides with a glaring lack of skill in working with children that belong to anyone else. Symptoms include sweaty palms, disaster scenario dreams, and an occasional slap to the forehead while exclaiming, "What was I thinking?"  

Occupational hazards...

Quote of the week...

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

--Henry David Thoreau

Enough

So I finished reading Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess by Will Samson.  I have read Will's blog for some time (although he hasn't posted in a while), and have always found his writing to be insightful, incisive, and practical.  Enough was even better.  Will takes on our culture's obsession with stuff, pulling back the blinders that we usually use to hide it, and not only points out the dangerous implications of living this way, but also uses Eucharist as a model for a different type of life.  His points are well researched, his suggestions are clear and very practical.  His own words will give you a clear inclination of what it is he is attempting with the book.

Is there enough for everyone? This is an important economic question, and in our discussion here I am certainly going to try to address the question from an economic perspective. But it is not just an economic question, is it? In fact, the question of whether there are sufficient resources in this world may be one of the most important theological questions of our time. How we answer it reveals much regarding our belief about the character of God: who we think God is, how we think God provides for the creation, and what role humans play in that work—this all relates directly to our understanding of God.

In this book I hope to narrate two distinct visions. The first is a vision of people and communities whose lives are out of whack and who are consumed by stuff. Our view of God and our understanding of the way we participate in God’s work in the world have become distorted, and we have transformed ourselves into unthinking consumers of products, ideas, and cultural narratives about what will bring us happiness.

The second is a view of people and communities who are guided, and even made more whole, by a vision of God and God’s work in the world by which they are consumed. Our decisions regarding what resources and how many of those resources we use are not rooted in oversimplified categories of “more or less,” but instead are nourished by a story of a God who is sufficient, active in the world, and forming a community of co-laborers to manage the created order.

This book is so worth the read.  Will challenges assumptions that we aren't even aware that we have.  And he presents a way forward that is faithful to what God envisions in the renewal of all His creation. There's a lot of stuff that we don't need, but this book is something that we do.

Want to read more for yourself? Go here.

Now here's an idea I've never thought of...

Enough Said...

The exact opposite...

...of the word of the week in the post below...