I found the following poem there this morning and I’m thinking about reading it in worship tomorrow night during our prayer time. I think I found it especially moving given the topic of the Disciple Bible study class I facilitated yesterday where the key word was Wonder. I hope you find it meaningful for you today as well. If you know of any additional resources like the ones I mentioned above or if you yourself are in to writing prayers/poems/liturgy, I’d love to hear about it! Just leave me a comment. 

there are some moments
at which we should only look sideways
because to face them head on will blind us

moments where words like wonder
and awe
are completely inadequate;

where we search in vain for new words
as yet uninvented
to tell of the truth

moments where it seems impossible
that we will ever forget
how extraordinary,
how remarkable
this life is.

until we do

so in this moment,
when we stand blinded by fragility
and wonder
we pause

and for all those moments we forget,
we take a breath
and say

thank you.

Almighty and merciful God, in your goodness keep me, I pray, from all things that may hurt me, that I, being ready both in mind and body, may accomplish with a free heart those things which belong to your purpose; through Jesus Christ my Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. AMEN. 

When I worked with High School students, I use to say to them that maturity in faith comes when we agree with God’s evaluation of what is truly dangerous to our lives. I know that my life changed dramatically when I began to see the Bible in a different way; not a set of rules and regulations designed to “steal” life, but rather a guide for experience the “fullness” of life. I think that is why John 10:10 where Jesus says that he has come to “give life and life to the full,” has always been a key verse for me. That thought stuck in my mind today as I read this prayer for the week. 

Today, as a way of inviting the people in my life to help me implement a slow change, I thought I’d share the one change I’d most like to implement in my life. As I wrote yesterday, “It’s the first change that I would wish for if only wishing for something could make it come true.”

5-6 years ago, over the course of 3-4 months, I went from weighing 220 all the way down to 187. I committed to a diet, went to the gym at least 3 times a week, and slowly the pounds seem to melt away. But like most people who experience that type of change, I reached my goal, fell out of the habit and over the course of 5-6 years, I’m now back in the 210 range. I know my wife can vouch for the fact that nothing would be a more positive change in my life than shedding those pounds again and returning to a healthy range in terms of my weight.

In the beginning of this year, I had tried to challenge myself to reach that goal in advance of my 30th birthday, but it didn’t happen. I wasn’t faithful to the diet, and I didn’t stay committed to working out as consistently as I should. But with school coming to a close, one of my biggest excuses is going away. I’m hopeful that taking that additional worry and commitment out of my life will allow me to focus my energy on this endeavor.

So friends and family, I invite you… to nag me with the grace and love of Jesus… I invite you to scold me like a third grader if you see me eating something I shouldn’t. I invite you to use any nearby projectile to knock the bad food out of my hand. I invite you to ask me how I’m doing in my commitment to working out and if you hear a negative response, feel free to give me a bad look and tell me that you won’t be my friend anymore if I don’t stay committed. [Obviously, a little sarcasm]

I’ll post a weekly weight update here if anyone is interested, and if anyone out there wants to join me in this commitment, I’d love the company.

For today, I’ll end with this. This morning I weighed 207.

22 pounds to go.

I’ve felt this way for several weeks during which time I’ve tried to figure out what is the source of my uneasiness. I thought to myself, “there is nothing too big on my plate right now that is burdening me. I can’t point to anything in my life and say, this is causing me stress.” Right before worship on Saturday, I sat down and wrote in my journal for a few minutes and I started thinking about all the things in my life that are about to change.

We’re moving to a new house…
We’re selling our current home…
I graduate in a few weeks…
We have a new baby that is due in August…

Now I am super excited about every one of those upcoming changes in my life, but what I’ve realized about myself is that while I love change, I don’t have a lot of patience for transition. I love the feeling of immediate change like when I rearrange my office or de-clutter my closet [which I did yesterday] but I really get anxious in the middle of change that takes time. Immediate change makes me happy, but transition makes me nervous.

I don’t really understand why it bothers me so much. Certainly, I can look at some cases in my life and point to my own selfish desire to have my way now. Yet even when I look at immediate changes that are forced upon me, I deal with that so much better than a drawn out period of transition. I feel like I can adapt to a new reality quickly, but I want to get it over with as quickly as I can.

Tomorrow, I’m going to write a little bit about how I feel like this pattern of anxiety in my life keeps me from implementing some of the healthy changes I’ve wanted to see in my life for a long time. There is one in particular that I want to write about, and encourage my friends and family to help me implement. Yesterday I was trying to think of the one change I could bring into my life that would have the most profound effect on my future. It’s the first change that I would wish for if only wishing for something could make it come true. Instead it requires a commitment to the process of transformation, and I’ll tell you what it is tomorrow.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

The winds hit us about 3:00 a.m. and it was really some of the strangest winds I’ve ever experienced. You could hear them starting off in the distance and as they came closer the howling got louder and louder and louder until your tent shook violently for a moment. As quickly as they came, they were soon gone which left you wondering when the next big one would hit.

Laying there in bed listening to the storm, I wondered about how much my life feels like those winds sometimes. I can tell when busyness and stress is coming. I can hear the winds starting to howl and pick up steam and when they hit, it’s shocking and sometimes it hurts… But then the winds die down again and I wait for the next big one to hit. It’s a continuous process that over time can leave me feeling pretty beaten up.

But the winds also made me think about God… about how powerful God is, and how scary God is sometimes too. I think the winds made me think about God because even though they shook my tent pretty hard, it was still exciting to experience their power. There was a short thrill from knowing that the wind had just found me.

I don’t think I spend enough time thinking about how powerful God is. I like to think about the compassion of God, the grace of God, the love of God… but I don’t take the time to consider the awesome and raw power behind God’s character. I like to think about God’s heart being moved… but I tend to forget that God has the power to move things as well. I think that’s a chink in my theological armor. I don’t know.

But I do know this.

I’ll drive myself crazy trying to muster up enough power to survive to the point that I am left begging for God’s power to show up. Maybe that’s backwards.

Maybe I shouldn’t spend so much time running from the wind. Maybe I should spend more time running towards it.

David’s steak (notice the bloody greatness!)

Johnny’s steak

Kyle can’t stop gnawing away…

Life is beautiful.

It’s going to be great.

It looked good, but luckily the Nix boys helped us out and devoured our chicken for us.

Thanks Josh and Jason.

23 more days to go.

Crisis averted. Marathon intact.