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Our family had 3 birthdays over an 8 day span earlier this month. My boy turned 3. My father in law celebrated 70. And I happily saw my life odometer click over to the 40’s.
As you might expect, there were some gifts involved. And plenty of unwrapping.
But, the unwrapping didn’t stop with the family celebrations. It carried into our Sunday teaching conversation, the last in our “For A Change” series.
In our 3rd week of studying the resurrection of Lazarus, we finally saw Him come out of the tomb. Alive. But still wrapped up.
Looking for parallels between Lazarus’ experience and our own, we noted that stumbling out of the grave when we hear Jesus’ voice isn’t the end of our transformation.
It’s just a beginning. We’re alive, but still need to get unwrapped.
And that process can take lots of time and require some help.
Want to hear more? Listen to the podcast HERE. (Note: The actual teaching starts 8:25 into the recording.)
Dying.
Yes, you read that correctly.
I hope you die this week.
And that I do to too.
Sound a bit crazy? Sure.
But I believe we need to do it all the same.
Over the Easter season our church community is learning about how spiritual growth happens through the story of the resurrection of Lazarus.
Yesterday we began with this idea:
You can’t have a resurrection without a death.
And if Jesus wants to give us a new life that is radically different from our old one- perhaps we’ll have to die to get it.
What does that look like? How does it happen?
Those were the kinds of questions we kicked around yesterday.
If you are interested, you can listen in HERE. (Note: The actual teaching starts about 7 mins in.)
This Sunday our faith community continued to talk about what we’d be missing if we took Jesus out of the story between God and man.
As a part of the teaching conversation, we talked about the thing Jesus is best known for- DYING.
Not so sure?
Quick- what is the symbol that most everyone associates with Jesus? Right- a cross. Or even more to the point- a crucifix.
Trying to see things from the perspective of someone who isn’t sold on Jesus, we wondered why His death is so widely remembered. After all, doesn’t everyone die? Even great religious leaders?
We spent a few minutes kicking around the idea that maybe Jesus is famous because He died young and tragically. I observed that our culture is prone to make icons out of celebrities who die before their time and/or as the result of tragic circumstances.
In fact, some people are famous to many of us simply because they are dead. For example, we may have never seen a James Dean or Marilyn Monroe film, but we’ve seen their likenesses plastered on lots of products.
Makes me wonder if kids 30 years from now will be wearing Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger or Corey Haim t-shirts.
Yes- just 3 days after my comments, it seems that we’ve lost another actor a bit before their time. Life imitating art?
RIP Corey Haim.
By the way, we concluded that Jesus’ death is so well-known for reasons beyond His age and the way He died. If you are interested in what makes His death so special, you can check out our podcast HERE, complete w/downloadable teaching slides.
Have you ever spent time studying yourself as a learner? Know anything about how you prefer to tackle new skills and info- a.k.a. your learning style?
The chart to the right is on attempt to capture the different ways we learn.
Here’s a summary of the diff. descriptions:
VISUAL: Prefer to learn via pictures/images.
AURAL: Prefer to learn via sound/music.
VERBAL: Prefer to learn via words, both- speech & writing.
PHYSICAL: Prefer to learn by using your body, hands & sense of touch.
LOGICAL: Prefer to learn via logic, reasoning & systems.
SOCIAL: Prefer to learn in groups/with other people.
SOLITARY: Prefer to work alone/use self-study.
Where do you fit on this chart? What’s your primary learning style? Have some secondary ones? Any that don’t fit you at all? Ever thought this much about this stuff?
Gaining a better understanding of how we prefer to learn might also give us insight into why we loved some classes/subjects/teachers and didn’t gel with others.
After all, what makes someone a great teacher might depend on the learning styles of the people they are teaching, right?
If there’s one thing Jesus seems to get credit for from multiple audiences- it is for being a great teacher. Why is this? What made Him so powerful in this regard?
And what would we be missing if we cut Him out of the story between man & God.
Give the podcast a listen and see for yourself.
(Note for all our visual learners out there: In addition to the audio file, we’ve added the teaching slides in a downloadable, pdf format so you can follow along. Enjoy.)
Could engaging with God be as simple as enjoying dessert?
You bet.
Last Sunday our church community explored the power of food to help us connect with our Creator.
Want to know more? Listen in HERE.
In my reading this morning I came across this great quote:
“Only if we serve, will we experience freedom.
Only if we lose ourselves in loving, will we find ourselves.
Only if we die to our own self-centredness, will we begin to live.”
May this be the orientation of our hearts and lives this week.
We love our neighborhood. For a lot of reasons.
Older homes- that don’t all look the same.
Big trees. Great location. Neighbors who wave each time you pass.
It was idyllic.
Until a month ago, when the local police dept. put a mobile unit on our street that measured our speed against the posted limit of 25mph
Of course, they chose to station this telltale device at the bottom of a hill to make sure they captured us at maximum velocity.
What did we learn from the digital readout? It seemed nearly impossible to hold it under 30mph- even with the brakes applied.
Until one afternoon when they placed a cop at the bottom of the hill.
Suddenly, 25mph seemed remarkably reasonable.
I used to bemoan our posted speed limit. Now, I’ve come to appreciate the duece-nickel restriction.
Even though the public defenders have disappeared, I still want to go 25mph.
Not simply to obey the law or avoid the ticket.
But because I want to learn to slow down.
I don’t want to rush out to my day. Instead, I ease in as my car crawls in 2nd gear.
I notice the leaves and the birds. Talk with God about what lies ahead.
In the late afternoon I don’t want to rush home into my time with my family either. Dragging the workday- and the list of things I didn’t get finished- with me.
Driving slowly lets my mind and body wind down as my tachometer does the same.
So, even though I never expected to say this: Thanks Town of Cary Police Department for the restrictions.
And the unexpected peace they’re allowing me to discover.
A few days back I completed a project called “40 Days of Water”.
From March 1st – April 9th about 45 folks in our faith community did our best to forgo all beverages except for water.
Our aim was 3 fold:
1. To practice discipline. Something I definitely need to keep working on. Especially when it comes to food and beverages.
2. To identify with the billions of folks who don’t have the plentiful choices available to us every day.
3. To redirect our resources. We challenged ourselves to keep track of the money we would have spent on other drinks and then to donate it to Blood Water Mission to help provide clean drinking water for folks in Africa who don’t have any.
Now that I’m a few days removed from it, here are some thoughts about the experience:
- The first week was really hard. I had headaches the first few days and noticed a huge dip in my energy levels in the early afternoons. I hated that.
- I didn’t miss my usual bevs of choice- or dislike drinking water- as much as I expected. I’ve always been a “I like flavor in my drinks” guy. Turns out water wasn’t so bad after all.
- I realized that there are TONS of beverage choices out there. And that life somehow got easier by simply ordering water.
- I had to overcome the food pairing thing. It was strange to order pizza and water….or BBQ and water.
- I found out that I like being free. The more distance I got from the caffeine jones, the sillier it seemed to “need” any specific drink to function.
- I upped my sugar intake too much. I love sweet tea. Since I wasn’t getting my usual dose of sugar that way, I compensated by having more sweets. This may explain why I didn’t loose any weight even though I cut out lots of liquid calories.
- I’ll probably drink a lot more water than I did before. I’m thinking that as a general rule of thumb, I’ll do water all day- and have something else at one of my mealtimes.
- With a little self-denial we can make a huge difference in people’s lives. My (and Jen’s) 40 day experiment resulted in a donation that will enable a couple of hundred people to have clean drinking water- and better health- for the next year. All together, our church of a hundred adults will give over 2700 people a year’s worth of clean water. Crazy!
Thanks to Kevin and Gayle for the opportunity, and to all of you who were kind enough to check in and encourage me over the process.
STATION 7: JESUS IS BURIED
Opening Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ,
take me along that holy way
you once took to your death,
Take my mind, my memory,
above all my reluctant heart,
and let me see what once you did
for love of me and all the world.
Scripture Reading:
John 19:41-42
For Reflection:
With daylight fading, Jesus is placed in a borrowed tomb hollowed out of rock.
The tomb is much like this day- dark, hard, cold, uncompromising.
Then a large stone is rolled over the entrance to seal the grave.
As it settles into the trough across the doorway with a thud, you can feel the finality and weight of what has happened echo deep in the hearts of all present.
If only Jesus’ friends remembered what their Rabbi had said.
If only they could recall His promises to rejoin them in a short time.
Then there would be hope.
But those words are lost on them for now.
On this day they walk away with nothing but sorrow.
Closing Prayer:
I adore you, O Christ,
and I bless you,
because by your holy cross,
you have redeemed the world.
Just Another Fred 