Here and Now

Wow - it's Friday already. I have SO much to get done... At Bible study this morning we were in Revelation chapter 15 and the chapter begins and ends with the idea of closure: 15:1 "Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and amazing: seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended." 15:8b "...and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were ended." Closure - endings. One of the pastors at the study told us about a husband and wife - separated but not divorced. The wife died and the children told the husband that he was absolutely not to come to the funeral... He was to have NO contact with his, is estranged the right word?, wife at the funeral home in any way (not even a private visitation for his own closure). I can't imagine the hate and hurt that must be going on in that family and I don't sit in judgement of the decisions of the children - it could be that he wa...

Well, I got mocked the other day for changing the time of our evening worship service on Superbowl Sunday... Something like, "Oh, I see Jesus isn't more important than football." Yeah, yeah... So, it's better to have people just not come to worship - or if they're there to be thinking about the game instead of God? Whatever... I won't appologize. We live in a difficult tension between our culture and our faith. It has always been there - Augustine wrote about it - Luther - Wesley - heck, Paul wrote about it... But how do we resolve it? How can we be "in the world but not of it?" Wish I knew. It's not easy - nothing important is, of course. The tension has caused the church to create an entire sub-society that is "sanctified." Like screaming, growling rock music? Here's Demon Hunter (and a thousand others) Like horror books? Here's "The Oath" (Peretti). We can have Christian: schools, music, movies, books...

The other day I was talking to Rachel, our five-year-old, about a CD I burned for her. She's pretty rough on her CDs so we let her handle the "back up copies" and I keep the originals safely stored away. She likes her CDs long - you know, 75-80 minutes. So I had copied Jars of Clay "Redemption Songs" for her and thought I'd add some more Jars songs to the burned copy (JoC was her first "rock concert" last fall - it was great!) and the only think I had laying handy was Front Yard Luge which is a bonus CD that came out with, I think, If I Left the Zoo . Rachel asked if there were any songs on it from the concert and I said no - but then I remembered that they did "Liquid" at the show, and there's a live version of the song on FYL so I told her that there was one song called "Liquid" from the show. She looked puzzled: "What's that about?" she asked. "It's about Jesus dying for us." I said. ...

It's almost tomorrow and I'm sitting in front of this stupid computer... Actually, I'm doing something good for my wife - getting Steeler videos down on CD for her... Kinda time consuming, though... I discovered something... I'm WAY less dexterous when I'm tired... No surprise, eh? Well, I keep typing bizzare things here (man, I'm gonna wear out the backspace on this keyboard...). Really strange - my head knows where my fingers should be going - just can't get them there... I bet we're WAY less dexterous spiritually when we're tired, too... But, I think I'm way more REAL spiritually when I'm tired... Might just be me, though... Well, God's used to hearing from me when I'm exhausted. And I don't have the energy for those long, eloquent, sounds really good on Sunday morning prayers...so I'm real... G'night...