Jan. 24, 2012

Yesterday I quoted the last line of this prayer. Below is the prayer in it’s entirety from Telliard De Chardin. After reading, I’m interested in hearing your answer to this question: What is your initial reaction to the phrase “the slow work of God” and why?

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. 

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. 

We should like to skip the intermediate stages. 


We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. 

Yet it is the law of all progress that is made by passing through some stages of instability and that may take a very long time. 



And so I think it is with you. 

Your ideas mature gradually.
Let them grow. 

Let them shape themselves without undue haste.

Jan. 19, 2012

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.”
-Teillard de Chardin

If you have been around church people for any more than a week you have probably heard Isaiah 40:31 quoted which says,

“But those who wait upon the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint”.

This verse, or maybe the one before it, was even quoted in the movie “Remember The Titans” some years back. We love this verse. Of course, we hate heavy traffic, lines at the grocery store, and waiting more than five seconds for a page on the internet to load. Truth be told, we’re not a fan of long sermons either - even, ironically, sermons on Isaiah 40:31. What we do love, however, is

Dec. 15, 2011

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
-Saint Francis of Assisi

This time of year we hear the word “wish” a lot. “Don’t forget to make your wish list”, children are told. “Don’t forget to check your spouses wish list!”, adults are told. And with our ever increasing technological abilities, these lists are getting even easier to make. On amazon, for example, you can select the items that you want and put them in your online wish list enabling all of your friends and family, in any part of the world, to see your list. They can, of course, purchase any item on your list with just “one click”. In fact, they even made a button for your browser enabling you to add items from other websites into their’s (you can bet the

Nov. 2, 2011

I watched this video twice yesterday and have been thinking about it (and it’s implications) ever since.

Oct. 10, 2011

This is a continuation of the previous post in which we looked at the importance of processing things at a slower pace. The first thing that we talked about was “Research”. Today we’re looking at the second:

REACTION

I was recently troubled after reading an article regarding Bill Hybels’ response to Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz’s decision to cancel his speaking engagement at Willow’s annual Leadership Summit. Hybels didn’t trouble me. Shultz didn’t trouble me that much. What troubled me were the comments in response to the article. The reactionary comments that Christians were making were not only offensive, but ignorant. This is not uncommon, it is how much online “communication” takes place.

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should

Oct. 3, 2011

Over the next several posts I want to examine the life of the mind and look at the ways that our head and heart work together...or don’t. Today I’ll examine the “instant mind”.

THE INSTANT MIND (Part I)

I’m thirty-three years old. My first gaming system was a commodore vic 20. I don’t think we called it a gaming system back than. I believe I was in the fourth grade when my parents gave me a commodore 64 for Christmas. It was the best Christmas gift ever. I can still remember the code that you had to use to load the games (shift 242,8,1). When I was first married my wife and I had dial-up internet. If you’re ever having a lull in conversation at your dinner party, just use the words “dial-up” and you will be sure to bring that party back to life with roaring

Aug. 8, 2011

As you may have noticed, I haven’t written in a while. This post has something to do with that.

There are many disciplines that I attempt to commit myself to. Prayer is one. I try to organize my life around fixed hour prayer and am doing alright with it. Not flawless, but alright. There are other activities that I desire to become disciplines. Here are a few:
Exercise (mainly running, with the hope of training for a half marathon than a full)
Study
Song writing
Writing
Working on my business - i. e. selling music.

I have read some good material over the past few years that have helped me understand the importance of discipline. In the writing field (these books apply to songwriters as well), Steven Pressfield reminded me that I have to, at all costs, fight resistance (to

Apr. 25, 2011

If you know anything about the church calendar, it really all leads up to Easter - this “feast of resurrection”. Easter is the day that all other days look forward to. If you go to church on Easter you can sense that something different is in the air. People dress up more than they usually would. The church workers work extra hard to make sure the service is extra special, partially because they are excited and partially because they are nervous (Easter services also have larger than normal crowds). So we sing and shout, dance and feast — and so we should! But today is the day after, and for most of us at least, life seems quiet in comparison. Yet it’s precisely in the quietness that we find the resurrection stories. Interestingly enough, none of the writers of the gospels

Mar. 10, 2011

“They treat me like dirt” she muttered through clenched teeth. She might as well have shouted it since she was in the desert alone, but this was not the shouting kind. This was the venomous, under your breath kind.

She had left town running, but didn’t have the strength to keep that up so when she was out of sight she continued at a pace somewhere between a fast walk and a slow jog muttering all the way. When she spotted the spring in the distance she slowed down. That’s when it hit her; she had no idea what she was doing. She was five months pregnant and walking alone in the desert in the middle of the afternoon with no plan and no place to go. She tried to silence her thoughts and be strong - God knows she was strong. But God knows she was practical too. Practicality was

Mar. 1, 2011

Somedays you wake up ready to take on the day, as they say. I’m not sure who “they” are, but I’m sure they have a thick Australian accent. You wake up hearing them — “Let’s take on the day”! Those Aussies. I love days like that. The shower is the perfect temperature, the coffee is right, the kids are acting like they’re from a 50’s TV sitcom. Today was not one of those days. I don’t remember the shower, but I do remember that the coffee was mysteriously cold. The kids were good, but I was not. I don’t think I was a pain to be around, but I was tired and unfocused in all regards. I got to my morning prayers late and they were interrupted. I wasn’t getting anything done at the office, and above all I couldn’t seem to quiet my thoughts. By about eleven o’clock it all started to get to

Feb. 10, 2011

This is my second Georgian winter. Winter here is different than I anticipated. Upon coming south I expected to see palm trees. There are few. Given the excessive naming of cities, streets, and TV stations after Georgia’s beloved peach trees, I thought I’d see a lot of those, but as it turns out, there are few of those too. I thought winter here would be warm. Sometimes it is. Two Saturdays ago, it was 70 degrees and we enjoyed the sun outside at our friends’ farm. I was hot in my t-shirt and jeans and returned home sunburnt. My daughter, wearing shorts and a t-shirt fell in the pond. Summer type stuff. 70 in the winter is the exception here, though. Winter here is generally mild, neither hot or cold. Will God spew us out of his mouth?

Today was another exception. It snowed. We saw

Feb. 2, 2011

Today (February 2nd) is the day the Church remembers the presentation of Jesus in the temple. The story is recorded in Luke 2:22-40. Mary and Joseph (as required by the law of Moses) brought their son to the temple to be “consecrated to the Lord” (which is interesting if you think about it long enough). According to the law, however, they were not to bring just their child, but an offering as well. Leviticus 12 tells us about the offering:

“When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering” (v.6)

But what happens if the woman can’t afford a year-old lamb?

“If she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves

Jan. 28, 2011

If you are a communicator or writer of any kind than you have to listen. You have to have “ears to hear”. In a previous post I wrote about “inscape” which is the ability to look at something and see what is in front of everyone’s eyes but few have the ability to see. It is for another post to talk about the philosophical side of this. Here I want to get practical. The question is,

How do you capture the ideas/insights when they come?

I mentioned in my last post that I received a few lines to many new songs over the the course of a couple days. These were amazing moments. A melody, lyric, and concept floated right in front of me, but in my experience, these only float for about 30 seconds before gravity hits and they fall to the ground never to be recovered.

I was reading Anne

Jan. 27, 2011

Sunday mornings are hectic. It’s unfathomable why it takes 5 people so long to get ready for church. We arrive at 8:15 most Sunday mornings. Sometimes 8:17 or 8:19, but never on purpose. I can’t complain about our “call time” though. When Marisa and I lived in Pennsylvania we had three morning services and our call time was not 8:15, but 6:45am. When we finally get the kids to their classes, finish sound check, etc. things are fine. But, Sunday mornings are hectic. Sunday afternoons are the opposite. I have a black chair in the corner of our living room that is right by the window. In the winter, after putting the kids down for an afternoon nap, I brew some coffee in our french press (as to resist the nap myself) and sit in that chair where the sun is beams perfectly and read.

Nov. 19, 2010

Have you ever heard or read Proverbs 22:6? It says,

“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it”.

Is this true? If you instruct a child in the ways of God will they serve Him forever? Teach them how to pray and read the Bible and you’re guaranteed that they’ll be a disciple of Jesus?

As a Dad, I love the concept.

As someone raised in the church, I know better.

I have a lot of friends whose parents love God and brought their kids to church three times a week, made them memorize scripture, prayed with them, and helped them earn badges at “Crusaders” (a kids church program with the worst name possible available). A lot of these kids, now grown, don’t go to church. Some of them are atheists.

What about the guarantee?

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