On Loving God and Loving People

Tonight, my daughter Samantha and I walked up to the playground at Lemme School. On the way we walked by one of our neighbors who was outside working in his driveway. He is an older gentleman who needs oxygen on a regular basis, and has a hard time getting around. I stopped to talk to him for a while, just shootin the breeze. When I was done Samantha said to me, "You love that man don't you Dad?" I thought for a moment and replied, "Yeah I do Samantha, I love him." Quite honestly, I hardly know the guy. I have maybe, talked to him a total of three times in my life, but that doesn't change the fact that God loves him. So if God loves him and I love God, that means I show my love for God by loving that man. Think of it this way. Remember the incident recorded in Matthew 22 where Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is? Here is a quick refresher:

³⁴ "But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again. ³⁵ One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

³⁷ Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments." ~ Matthew 22:34-40

So for a long time I just figured that Jesus couldn't count. I mean, the guy did ask for one commandment and Jesus gave him two. What does that mean except that to really, truly love God, you and I have to really, truly love people. God does...in fact today and everyday, you will lock eyes with people who Jesus died on the cross for. He loved them and we are to love them as well. Have a great day loving people and loving God! Love, Tom

Why Read Those Ancient Words?

Philosopher Emile Cailliet was born in a small French village near the end of the 19th century. His early education was committed to naturalism, leaving no room for God or supernatural intervention in human affairs. But his naturalistically inspirited studies in philosophy proved of little help during his front-line experiences as a lad of 20 in World War I. Confronted with the horrors of war, he asked:

What use, the ill-kept, ancient type of sophistry in the philosophic banter of the seminar, when your own buddy—at the time speaking to you of his mother—dies standing in front of you, a bullet in his chest. Was there a meaning to it all? A [person] can endure anything if only it appears meaningful…. I, too, felt—not with my reason, but with my whole being—that I was naked and, war or no war, destined to perish miserably when the hour came.

One night a bullet found Cailliet, too. An American field ambulance crew saved his life, and after a nine-month hospital stay, he was discharged and resumed his graduate studies. But he had to admit that the books no longer seemed like the same books, nor was his motivation the same. Reading at length in philosophy and literature, he found himself probing in depth for meaning. He testifies:

During long night watches in the foxholes I had in a strange way been longing—I must say it, however queer it may sound—for a book that would understand me. But I knew of no such book. Now I would in secret prepare one for my own private use. And so, as I went on reading for my courses, I would file passages that would speak to my condition, then carefully copy them in a leather-bound pocket book I would always carry with me. The quotations, which I numbered in red ink for easier reference, would lead me as it were from fear and anguish, through a variety of intervening stages, to supreme utterances of release and jubilation.

At last, the day came when he put the finishing touches on, as he said it, "the book that would understand me." He describes a beautiful, sunny day in which he sat under a tree and opened his precious anthology. As he read, however, he was overcome by a growing disappointment. Instead of speaking to his condition as he expected, the passages only reminded him of their context—of the circumstances of his labor over their selection. Then, Cailliet says, he knew that the whole undertaking would not work, simply because it was of his own making. It carried no strength of persuasion. In a dejected mood, he put the little book back into his pocket.

On that same day, Cailliet's wife had come into the possession of a Bible by extraordinary circumstances. Emile had always been adamant that religion would be taboo in their home, and at the age of 23 had never even seen a Bible. But at the end of that disappointing day, when she apologetically tried to explain how she had providentially (as he would later realize!) picked up a copy of the Bible, he was eager to see it. He describes what happened next:

I literally grabbed the book and rushed to my study with it. I opened it and "chanced" upon the Beatitudes. I read and read and read—now aloud with an indescribable warmth surging within…. I could not find words to express my awe and wonder. And suddenly the realization dawned upon me: This was the Book that would understand me! I needed it so much, yet, unaware, I had attempted to write my own—in vain. I continued to read deeply into the night, mostly from the Gospels. And lo and behold, as I looked through them, the one of whom they spoke, the one who spoke and acted in them, became alive in me. ~ Journey Into Light

Still Haven't Found What You're Looking For?

The Wisdom of Job

"God is not a mortal like me, so I cannot argue with him or take him to trial. If only there were a mediator who could bring us together, but there is none. The mediator could make God stop beating me, and I would no longer live in terror of his punishment. Then I could speak to him without fear, but I cannot do that in my own strength." ~ Job 9:32-35

A few weeks ago on her show Oprah said,

"There can't possibly be only one way to God."

Hmmm...Oprah, there is only one way to God. It took God in skin, living a sinless life. It took someone to die and come back to life. It took a man named Jesus.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me." ~ John 14:6

No matter what you do. No matter how hard you work. No matter what you scheme. No matter what you say, you can't fix the sin problem. Only Jesus can.

The Starbucks Experience

I have recently been reading this book called, "The Starbucks Experience". Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the book that I would like to share with you. "In 1971, the Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice store started business in Seattle, Washington. Before that first Starbuck opened its doors, people stopped by the corner coffee shop for a 50-cent cup that came with the promise of free refills. For some of us, the morning was not complete without a visit to the convenience store, where we poured our own black, murky brew into a white foam cup. To kill the taste, we doused the mixture with gobs of powdered cream and sugar, and stirred it with a thin red plastic stick (which was supposed to double as a straw). We would hand our change to an apathetic cashier who performed the job just well enough to earn the minimum wage. It was an unvarying and uninspired customer ritual and transaction. Despite the monotonous nature and poor quality of this transaction, most of us didn't know that there was any other way to "enjoy" coffee. While we were slogging through our days with freeze-dried, burnt, or lackluster home-brew, Howard Schultz, Starbucks former CEO and current chairman, asked an intriguing question: 'What would happen if you took the quality coffee bean tradition of Starbucks and merged it with the charm and romance of the European coffeehouse?' His answer: Starbucks could transform the traditional American coffee experience from the ordinary to the extraordinary. By all accounts, Howard's concept was an ambitious idea. How do you change people's view of coffee? After all, coffee has been with us for centuries, and there seemed to be little impetus for a major shift in customers' preferences. How do you inspire a coffee drinker to give up her regular routine while also getting her to pay six or eight times more for rich, exotic coffee blends when 'ordinary' is all she's ever known? Besides, who would make time for a European-style coffeehouse experience when one could grab a cup while buying milk, gasoline, and a newspaper?" ~ Joseph A. Michelli

So if Starbucks can get people to pay way too much for a cup of coffee as well as carve time out of their busy schedules to hang out in their "house", why can't the church take a much better product (Jesus) and do the same? At the beginning of the quote, Michelli describes the average coffee drinkers routine with words like: "murky", "kill the taste", "monotonous", and "poor quality". Sounds a lot to me like the average church goers weekly church experience, and we wonder why church goers are so reluctant to invite friends or people they know to church.

I have friends from Quincy, Illinois who absolutely love their church, The Crossing. Whenever Steve or Susan meet people they are always asking them if they go to church. If they don't attend church, Steve and Susan will tell them The Crossing is a place they need to check out. What makes The Crossing different? The Crossing is passionate about people experiencing Jesus and engaging in a relationship with him, and they will do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Likewise, here at IC Church of Christ we go out of our way to do whatever it takes for people to experience and know more about Jesus. From the handshake at the door, to the coffee and breakfast food, to the music, video, and message--everything is done to create this thought in everyone's mind: "I didn't expect that!"

Now we can do better, and we are always trying to improve, but the cool thing is doing church this way is fun! I mean really, who wants black and murky when a vanilla latte is available!

The Ability To See

It has been tough to blog this spring. There have been way too many things going on. It is the kind of busyness that just gets old after a while...almost nauseating. Thus the reason for this post.

I have been reading through the Old Testament in the New Living Translation (I really enjoy reading the Bible in this version). In 1 & 2 Chronicles, instead of using the word "prophet" the translators use the word "seer". Here is an example:

"Then the Lord spoke to Gad, David’s seer." ~ 1 Chronicles 21:9

I read that and thought, "I need one of those!"

I figure that the biggest culprit for most of my problems in life is a simple lack of vision. I just flat out can't see! I plow through life, doing the same thing day after day. Have you ever noticed how everything is so daily? It's like your life is mapped out for you. I find myself on the same yearly routine, and I wonder how I got there.

That same sort of thing happened to the cows on the family farm. It was somewhat humorous in a way. (Of course at the time dad didn't think it was so humorous). The cows would put their heads down and just start to eat grass. You have seen them do this. They just walk along munching grass, paying no attention to their surroundings, totally caught up in eating grass. Then when they look up, they have no idea where they are. There were a number of times we would find cows on the other side of the fence, out in the middle of a field and we had no idea how they even got there. Shoot, most of them had no idea how they got there.

The problem is that cow story sounds a lot like my life, and I don't want to live life like that. I don't want to be a cow. I don't want to just wander through life eating grass then wonder how I got on the other side of the fence. I want to be different. I want to blaze a different trail. I want to breakaway from the herd...and I know that I am not the only one who feels that way. Many in our culture want to get away from the herd. They just try to do it by dumping their wife,or buying a Harley and cruising the open highway, or maybe getting a different job/career...there are countless ways.

I really think that God wants us to get away from the herd too. In Romans 12:2 Paul writes;

"Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world,"

then later in Galatians 5:15 he writes,

"So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives."

That is really the whole idea behind this Wild Goose Chase blog. God desires for us to breakaway, we just fail to see. We fail to see that God has a guide for us who is wild, adventurous and free. We are just too busy eating grass!

So here is a challenge for you: stop what you are doing, look around, and see what is going on. Where is God working, what is he doing, where is he leading you? Pray daily that God would open your eyes to see; to see His Kingdom and to see that things that he cares about.