Musings

I went to a show on Friday. I'm embarrassed to say that it was the first show I've been to in a few years. It was a benefit concert with opening bands I had never heard of. Really I was there to see my favorite ska band ever. But I need to find some new music... I feel like such an old person when all I listen to are CD's I bought 7-10 years ago. So I listened to the opening bands too. The first band took the stage. Cue fog machine and fancy lights, and background track with a creepy voice recording for the creepy-looking guitarist to mouth along to... I'm not impressed. Really the music wasn't terrible. It was a flashback relief to FEEL bass instead of straining to hear it beneath the vocals (which is what happens at most churches--the primary place I hear live music these days). I was reminded of my "bass chick" days, as the lead singer thrashed/danced around with intensity I could never fake. As he stood on the monitors in his skinny jeans and prompte...

I think relevance isn't about being "cool." It's probably not even so much about culture. I think it's about pointing out God's work. I was thinking about how I love hand-made stuff, how I love beautiful things like waterfalls and paintings and music and trees and fire and clouds and people--people who live for important things and hold their ground respectfully, people who are humble and want to teach others, people who are quick to encourage and full of joy--and how confessing these things as being from God makes Him relevant. A lot of people seem to experience His relevance in the opposite way--He allows/causes disasters and trauma, He fuels the radical conservative politicians and TV preachers, or He is absent and harsh (based on loneliness and guilt). One of the things that has stood out to me from Donald Miller (I'm reading Blue Like Jazz now) is how people do things because of what affects their hearts: I don't believe I will ever walk awa...

This book I've been reading has been rocking my socks off. I bought it several years ago--it is one of many books which I've packed and unpacked each time I've moved and thought, "I wish I had time to read that right now." I've been reading a chapter a day for the last week or so. And every day I get that "Man, I wish everyone could read this book!" feeling. It's a Christian book, a creative telling of the Gospel, that I would feel totally comfortable recommending to my non-Christian peers. Searching for God Knows What  (there are super cheap used copies on Amazon, if I'm convincing you it might be worth reading). For those of us Christians who talk a lot about ideas and trends and like to analyze often, there has been lots of talk about postmodernity, narrative, our need for relationship, what the Gospel is, etc. Some people enjoy reading thick books by theologians to understand such things. Others want things that are easier to read in or...

In many ways, being in Grad. School/Seminary is incredibly overwhelming. Do you ever try to read something--maybe an article online--with somebody else, and the other person is reading much faster than you, so they turn the page/scroll before you're ready, and you feel like you're missing half of the article? That's something of what grad. school feels like... like I want somebody to slow things down so I can actually process them and fit it all together and analyze things. Unless I want to take one class per semester and be a student for life (which I wouldn't mind all that much, if it didn't feel so impractical), I'm realizing that will never happen. Anyway, in spite of not being able to actually take in all of the complexity of what I'm supposed to be learning, there have been some big themes which I've noticed.... those paradigm shifters, those lightbulb "a-ha!" moments. In example, marital counseling is complex, because people are compl...

The last year and a half that Matt and I lived in Chicago, we had the privilege of being interns in our church's ministry training program, Chicago Plan. One year we talked a lot about what it means to be "missional." At the end of the year, each intern wrote and presented a paper in response to all of our discussions. When I wrote my paper, I was again working through the reality of God as a Being. So, while it is written in the context of Chicago, Holy Trinity Church, and my job at Jimmy John's, may it help you to consider whether you've had similar experiences in your own context.                 The Bible is not God. The Gospel is not God. But there is a Creator who is Ruler over all, who defines reality and truth. He is just. He is Love. There is a Savior who frees the enslaved and brings hope to those in despair and loves so deeply that I often can’t understand it enough to be emotionally affected by i...

Relationship with someone I have never seen with my own eyes, and whose voice I've never audibly heard, but whose presence is everywhere (including within me) can be challenging. Specifically, I have had various times throughout my relationship with Jesus when I've realized He seems more like an idea than a Person. Those realizations usually make sense of my spiritual apathy. As I again try to realign with the reality of Jesus' person, I'm looking back on previous times I have worked through this and sharing some things I wrote during those times. Like most Moody students, one of the best classes I ever took was Images of Christ in the Novel, taught by Dr. Rosalie De Rosset. Below is an edited version of the first paper I wrote for that class, 4 years ago: My image of Christ is blurry. In the last year I’ve become a little flustered with how abstract God is to me. It’s shocking to be raised in an evangelical church that emphasizes relationship with Christ, only...

    I have always squirmed when people talk about being "nothing" without Christ, being able to do "nothing" on our own, etc. In our self-esteeming culture, it doesn't easily integrate with our personal philosophies. I've never been the type to beat myself up; I don't really struggle much with feelings of failure. But through reading (again) The Search For Significance (by Robert McGee), I've realized that's because I don't often try the things I would probably fail at. So my confidence is based on my own performance just as much as a discouraged person's lack of confidence is based on their performance.      So how have I been dealing with this? By thinking more about my identity in Christ. It's a concept I had heard references to for years, but didn't really start to grasp it until a Moody professor taught me and my classmates to notice all of the references to Christ in the first few chapters of Ephesians. In looking at thos...