Reflection and Celebration

This weekend we get the chance to celebrate the marriage of our friends, Matt and Rachelle.  Summer is the time for weddings and this summer hasn't been any different.  It is a wonderful chance to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones.  You see who has influenced your friends to become the people that God has made them to be.

This mixture of serious commitment and joyful celebration is important in life. Formal times like this give us the chance to see our lives in their redemptive context and affirms the small decisions we make everyday to keep loving our spouse or continue following Christ.  In these moments, we gain a perspective on life that the daily grind doesn't always afford.  God truly does know how to give His children good gifts.

What times cause you to reflect and rejoice?

Thoughtful, Funny and Surprisingly Christian

I was just watching Conan O'Brien's recent Dartmouth commencement address to graduates and "old people who come to these things."  Besides being completely hilarious, Conan opened with the self-deprecating humor he is known for, observing that while a decorated war hero and former president sit on stage, a cable TV host is giving the commencement address.  Based on this, he observed, "I pray that I never witness a more damning example of what is wrong with America today."

Something surprising starts to happen about two thirds of the way into the message.  Conan goes from self-deprecation and shameless pandering of insider collegiate references (if I was giving a commencement address, I don't think I could shy away from these either), to a completely different speech.  He turns on a dime.

Conan shares very candidly about his dream of hosting "The Tonight Show" and watching that dream crumble around him.  That moment of failure brought clarity and forced him to innovate and strike out into the comedic "wild wild west".  His failure to live up to the ideal ultimately led him to cast the vision for his redemption and his future. It led him to strike out into new territory, living in freedom from his failure.

With these concepts, Conan crossed into grace territory. Parallel to his words, it is not our ability to please God or to live up to His standard that makes us right before Him.  When we embrace the free grace of God and accept our failure and inability to achieve God's standard, we are given a chance to live freely and be redeemed.  This profound embracing of failure is not defeat, but it sets the tone for sin's ultimate defeat.  Death destroyed by death.

I'd encourage you to watch Conan's speech and ponder. What stands out to you from Conan's commencement address?

       

Lessons Learned from First Year of Belief Blog

This grabbed my eye recently:  One year ago (and about 5 days) CNN started their Belief Blog.  I have to say, I haven't visited CNN's "Belief Blog" very frequently, but their observations about the climate of faith in the US today interested me. Here are a few that stood out.

Photo credit: clarita from morguefile.com

#3 People are still intensely curious about the Bible, its meaning and its origins.  

So often we hear that the youth are walking away from the church and that church has lost all relevancy. I think rumors of the scripture's (and the church's) demise have been grossly overstated.  People are searching now as much as they ever have been.  Recently, I heard in a sermon, "it isn't my job to coerce you or trick you into showing up on Sunday or to meet in small groups." The gospel is compelling, even to those that will ultimately reject it> The question of meaning and existence is something we are all wrestling with.  It is a part of the human experience.  And people know that the scriptures address these issues.

This is counter balanced by...
#4: Most Americans are Religiously Illiterate.

If you are involved in the local church, you see this all the time.  Many people are not able to lay out the basics of their faith.  The Belief Blog pointed out that oftentimes the ones with the most 'religious literacy' are atheists.  And most of that is in the form of tools meant to fight belief. 


In the name of sensitivity, I think we have stripped out "unpopular" areas of the church that ultimately make the church stronger and feed Christians that need knowledge.  I am excited to see ways that we can feed the quest for meaning and not just stop at "spiritual milk", but build strong and mature believers in the church.