My Anniversary

It continually amazes me how fast time flies. There have been countless examples of this in my life. The most recent example is the fact that this Sunday is my 1 year Anniversary with my beautiful wife. I can't believe that we have been married a year already.
To celebrate our anniversary my wife and I are leaving tomorrow evening and going camping. I am really looking forward to this time spent with her and being able to get away in a nice area.

An Instrument of Peace

During staff meeting today we were given an exercise to spend some time in prayer and listen to what God was speaking to us. The following prayer is something that God laid on my heart. I really hope that this is how I can live my life. I know that so often I fall short, but it is definitely something to strive for. This prayer is originally by St. Francis of Assisi and I think it rings as true today as it did then.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Wow, what an amazing prayer. What are some ways that we as Christians can be an instrument of God's peace? Let me know what you think.

Boxing

The other night my friend Norm and I decided that it would be fun to do some boxing. He had just bought some new gloves and headgear so we go together and well boxed. We videotaped the whole thing and so I am going to share some portions of that with you. I hope that you enjoy it and get a good laugh out of it. It is obvious that we are not professionals and really at most times have no idea what we are doing, but we had fun. Check out the video!



Let me know what you thought! It was a lot of fun and maybe Norm and I will have to get together and do this again.

The God Delusion

I've Been reading the book "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins. As the title suggests Dawkins is an atheist and believes that there no evidence that a being such as God exists. I am only a couple of chapters into it and it is a very interesting read. I hope to blog some more about this in the future, but for now I want to focus on a quote that appears under the cover of the book. Dawkins writes, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
When I first read this quote I chuckled to myself and enjoyed the wittiness of such a statement. It got me thinking though. What makes the God that I believe in any different than all of the gods throughout history that I reject. I by no means intend to find an end to this discussion, but I hope to start a conversation that perhaps many of us can dialogue together.
For me I cannot deny that there is something beyond myself and to understand what that force out there I put my trust in the writings that derive from the nation of Israel and the early followers of Jesus that we call the Bible. (I know this is no proof to someone who doesn't believe, but at this point I am simply trying to perhaps show why I believe in God. I'm not necessarily trying to write out a proof of any sort.)
For someone like Dawkins there is no room for faith. Everything he believes has to be able to be scientifically tested. For me though, I simply cannot accept that in life we can boil everything down to scientific proofs. From all of my experiences life spins in such ways that it is often hard to understand. There are things in this world that I will never understand and I am okay with that. In life I believe a certain amount of faith is needed and I place my faith in the God of the Bible. Do I have all of the answers, by no means.
This God, though is a God of love, mercy, compassion, and grace. These things are so needed in my life because I am so well aware of how pathetic of a person I am. I screw-up all the time and I am thankful for a God who loves me with all of my imperfections. This is also a God who does not sit in Heaven but chose to come to earth and is active in our lives not to control our lives, but to guide and give us strength.
These are some of the things that I think set this God apart from any other god in History and even sets this God apart from any other deity in the other religions that exist today.

Hidden Agendas

I was looking over the band line-up for Purple Door the other day and I came across a band that I had listened to a lot growing up but hadn't listened to in several years, so I decided to go to their website and see what they had been up to. I came across some writings that the lead singer of this band had done and I decided to take a look at some of them. One of them struck me in particular. If you want to read the whole thing you can go here.
I will try to summarize it for you. He was on a plane and was looking forward to sleeping and had a seat alone but then someone sat with him. At first he felt very frustrated, but figured perhaps God had a reason for sitting this man beside him so he talked with this man throughout the flight looking for an opportunity to share his faith with this man. He didn't have a very good opportunity to share his faith and didn't want to force it so as the time went on it didn't look like it was going to happen. He kept praying about it, but didn't bring it up. At the end of the flight though this man asked him if he went to church and continued by inviting him to a meeting that was a part of Christian cult known for its heretical teachings. The irony here is impossible to miss and the writer felt betrayed in a way because the passenger was not interested in having a conversation with him he was simply interested in getting to the point where he could invite him to a meeting.
I guess the point here is that if we talk with people only to get to the point to share our faith do they feel the same way? The writer at one point writes that he has often heard it said that, "Christians always seem to have a hidden agenda." I think a lot of times when we try to share our faith it comes out that way. Jesus called us to love others no matter who they are, what they believe, or what they have done. Relationships are important and can't we focus on having a relationship with others without having a hidden agenda. Maybe we should have and "agenda-less faith." If as we are getting to know someone and the topic of faith comes up great, but I don't think we should try to force it. Can't we simply have a relationship with someone because we care about them and not because we are trying to get them with a bait and switch. Our faith should be an out-poring of who we are and not some hidden agenda that we are looking to turn on someone.
Maybe if we are going to have an agenda it should be loving and serving others and not trying to force a rehearsed evangelism attempt on others. Let me know what you think.