Realness

So my boy Nick was able to come out to Ames for a Salt Co last night. Oh, Nick, what a guy. He's a good friend from the Central days. We've been connecting a little more lately, kind of because we're both in the phase of graduating but not really moving on. But hey, it's because we're doing ministry, come one! We're not just playing video games in momma's basement... anyway sorry I got defensive.

Well Nick made the drive up from Pella to Ames for the sole purpose of catching a Salt Company service. It was cool to hear his outside perspective, always something that's hard to grasp when you've been in the mix and keeping focused on just this place, as is usually the case. What he said was almost a touch insulting, but nah it was cool. He's been doing the Pella/Central College thing for awhile now, so one of the first things he said was "Man, I want to sometime go and do ministry at a bigger place like this, the people are a lot more real."

Okay, cool thing to share, we can stamp that on our ministry now, "we're real." Yeah! But wait, Nick doesn't actually know anyone at Salt, he mingled with people for like 5 minutes before worship started, how could he have a deep conversation and dig up life issues and encounter our "realness" like that? Well, he didn't. That's the funny thing. He was mostly just judging off appearances.

Not a bad thing, mind you. He's been in the white-picket fence, painted on smile, perfect Utopian world of Pella for some time now. Things aren't very "real" there, at all. Sometimes sickeningly so. I guess one of my first internal reactions to his comment was "HEY are you saying we're gritty and unnerving, putting off a vibe of brokenness?" but now I am mostly thanking God that I have been rescued from the Pella homogeneity. And yes, I'm praising God for our gritty unnerving vibe of brokenness, too.

It makes sense that Nick would make that observation. He's never been one to yield to the "tulip and a smile" culture that tries to swallow Central. He's got a really cool testimony, too, that I got to observe large parts of. That'll be a story for another day. But in the mean time, praise God that, at least on the surface, we are Real here at Salt. But as Mark was teaching last night, Lord may you continue making us are REALER selves, the ones that are regenerated by Jesus's blood and indwelt by His Spirit. Thank you Lord. May you continue transforming us into shinier image bearers.

Pilgrimage

Psalm 84 is soooooo good. You might know it from the worship song "Better is One Day in your Courts" or whatever the title actually is. The heart of it all that strikes me today is in verse 5, where it says "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage."

There were several stirring preachers at the Urbana conference a couple New Years Eves ago. One stuck with me, Brenda Salter-McNeil, who said "be careful where you settle, because where you settle is where you die." She was talking about Abraham's dad. Now, anybody who has had a little Bible teaching can rattle off that Abraham is the dad of Issac who is the dad of Jacob, the 3 guys we call the patriarchs. The family who God used to invade the world with His love. We all got that one down, yadda yadda.

Now, the big Quiz question: Who was Abraham's dad?

If you said Terah, give your self a thousand Bible bonus points. Great jorb. Here's the summation of Terah's life that is basically all we know, from Genesis 11:31-- "Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran." Where you settle is where you die. He set out for Canaan. But he got to Haran and said, "meh, good enough for now." Made himself comfortable. Chilled.

I guess from this God could probably see that this dude didn't have the fortitude to be the father of many nations, didn't have the faith to receive and walk in what God was doing. Not like he was a bad guy, I mean he obviously did something right in raising Abraham.

So back to the Psalms verse. "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage." Set their hearts. That's the opposite of settling, setting your heart on pilgrimage. Committing to the journey. And it's obvious from the rest of this psalm what the destinatin of the journey is--the very DWELLING PLACE of the LORD OF HEAVEN. You will not reach it while you live. But you can seek it and search for it and bring it here. But you can't settle. What does it take to be a holy pilgrim for God? To be an Abraham and not a Terah?

just
**keep
***going
**and
****keep
*****going
*****and
********don't
*************settle
******************for
***************************anything
*****************************************other
*******************************************than
********************************************************HIM


Lord, that is my prayer. That myself and those around me may set ourselves on pilgrimage for your very Dwelling Place, that we will not stop striving til we look you full in the face and bow before your gaze and kiss your feet and worship in exaltation of Your Name and bask in Your glory. Instill it in us, God. We don't want to settle. We want YOU.

He really is that good, all the time

So let me tell you just how good God is. This is story number 1,564,345,267,234 of all time regarding His goodness, but hey I know we haven't fully expressed it yet so gotta keep going. Here's the deal:

I had a huge stretch of schoolwork staring at me for the next two weeks. Huge. Should be expected, since this is the last little lump I gotta swallow before graduating (Dec 20 what what!). Huge project, slightly smaller project, huge test, another assignment, I was sweating. Told the amazingly wonderful FG staff about it as we prayed during our Monday meeting. Staying to pray with them made me a touch late for class. I finally showed up, just in time to hear the professor CANCEL the test that was coming for us in four days. Straight up canceled. Said he'll put some of it on the final, but don't worry about it. Thank you Lord. Cut my workload almost in half. He's good, I just exhaled the stress that had been building up and inhaled his sweetness.

Situation number two: finances a little low this month. Saw the account balance last night. I'm not in trouble, I have a paycheck from last month that I still haven't picked up. Problem was, it was looking like I needed to pay my rent before the late penalty kicks in, and also I had sent a check in the mail that would be processing. So, it was looking like a collision that would overdraw my account if I paid my rent and the mailed check both before picking up my paycheck. I was sweating, because the mailed check was kind of important, and had to do with Jesus in a way so I wanted to represent Him well.

How many of you know that He will take care of the Glory of His Name, when you trust Him?

The real estate company called me up and said that I had credit in my account. They had mentioned it a couple months ago, but I had still been keeping up with my rent payments. "But this time, sir, would you like me to just rip up this check? You have almost a month and a half credited to your account already." Yes ma'am. Rip away.

So I went and checked my account balance online, praising God. And wouldn't you know it, that other mailed out check somehow had already been processed really quickly like a week ago and I hadn't even caught it showing up on my balance because I didn't think it would be ready. So, two huge charges that I thought would overdraw me, neither one do I need to worry about a single bit.

He really is that good. He really is.

Bill Johnson is a smart man of God

Just listened to this sermon by Bill Johnson out of Redding. The guy is pretty incredible. I don't care if you agree with him or his friends or his haircut or whatever, the guy loves Jesus and is gifted to teach the Bible.

Here was the nugget that turned my brain inside out:

"Fruitfullness comes out of Rest
and
Warfare comes out of Romance"

Wow.

It was just one of those things that looked me in the eye when I heard it and I instantly knew, "that is right and true and profound and lovely and would simplify things if I just understand it because I don't think that I do understand it now."

But why do we grow soybeans in Iowa? Because we don't like to rest the land, and corn year after year makes the land unfruitful.
Why do guys get in fights? Over girls. Helen of Troy, the face that sailed a thousand ships, or something like that.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to rest and get belligerent by means of some Divine Romance....

Keep yo love locked down, yo love lockdown

I don't know why I like rap. I can't place where it started. I think with DC Talk's Nu Thang that my parents had on a tape of the Top 10 Dove artists or something. If you remember Nu Thang, I tip my hat. My parents were worried and wouldn't let Molly and I listen to it, and they were pretty sure it was put on that worship tape by accident. They have since loosened their views on what inspired music looks like.

Anyway, that's a tangent, just to say that I like rap. One summer I had a job where I worked until 5 and supper at home wasn't ready until about 5:45. So in the post-work, pre-supper brain-dead zone, I would watch 106 & Park on BET pretty much everyday. It's the video countdown show for the rap videos on BET. I'm not going to pretend like I'm proud of that summer, it just happened. I wouldn't really endorse BET anymore, I dunno I haven't watched it in awhile.

Okay, so one day they had this guy named Kanye West on to talk about his new video. He was brand new on the scene, I think "All Falls Down" had just come out, his first video. No wait, "Thru the Wire" was his first... anyway, he was new. People just knew him as Jay-Z's beatmaker, some techie knob-turner who they unchained from the soundboard, let him make his own album since he keeps whining about it. Then, funny thing, it shot to the top. Whoa.

So he's on BET introducing this new video. Jesus Walks. And he's got like 2 or 3 different versions of the video available. One was kind of a standard, gospel choir, inner city church, Kanye pretending to be the pastor theme. It was good, moving song. Then there was the controversial one. Uh oh. They showed this one last, Kanye talked about how it was his favorite but people told him to make others because it was too heavy. Well, I'll describe it fast and maybe put a link, maybe not. I'll decide after this here description. Children 12 and under plus nursing mothers may exit the blog ... now...

The video has several different storylines running through it. Prisoners digging. Drug dealers getting caught by the border patrol. And this guy chopping wood and sanding stuff. You don't really know what the chopping wood guy is doing. Until like the climax of the song, when he puts on his white hood. KKK style. And the wood is in a cross, which he lights on fire. Then it falls over, he catches it and carries it, catching his whole robe on fire. Then as he's up in flames as this firey, almost demonic symbol of hate, he drops the cross, and the rain clouds that had been gather suddenly gush forth and wash this guy, as he's taking off his robes and soaking it in, having a "come to Jesus" moment. It's moving, I had tears in my eyes. Okay, I already described the controversial parts, so I'll go ahead and link to it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFKPd_TRVC8

So on that BET countdown show where this debuted, Kanye talked about the video afterward. He described the rain falling on the guy at the end as a baptism type of scene, washing the guy clean. Kanye said that was what the whole song was about, how none of us are too far away from mercy, Jesus can walk right into our mess. Whoa. And this comes right in the middle of 106 & Park? I was blown away. Jesus, look what you were doing! I went out and bought the album (edited version of course) from Wal*Mart later that night. I was blown away. JE SUS WALKS! Well, Jesus walked on water I guess walking on BET couldn't be that much harder. I was pretty sure that Kanye was going to start a revival and lead everyone who had ever listened to rap to Christ. Beautiful.

Then of course I gave the album a full listen. Jesus Walks, track 7. Get 'Em High, track 9. Yep that song was about you guessed it, drugs. I gradually fluttered back down to earth. I stayed a Kanye fan and tried to keep the faith, hey he was making some good music, better than other stuff out there. The first song release on his next album, Diamonds, has a reference to God in it. So did the songs Never Let You Down and Heard 'Em Say. But scouring his lyrics for a Holy visitation meant you had to push through a lot of references to girls and drugs and money and the usual rap fare. Nuts. Thought we had something, Big K. Thought we had something.

His popularity skyrocketed, though. He decided not to let Jesus walk in, but he went on the cover of Rolling Stone with a crown of thornes. Hmm. The next albums opened huge. I think mostly because of the void in the music scene. There was flat out no one else being creative. And Kanye was, if nothing else, creative. Hip hop violins? Bringing in the guy from Coldplay? Pretty cool. His ego got HUGE. But I think that might finally be getting leveled out. Exhibit A: 808s and Heartbreak. His new album.

That's what this post was supposed to be about from the beginning, sorry for my longwindedness. Kanye put out a new album last week. The last two that he made I rushed to the store and bought pretty soon after. This one, nah uh. As I said before he's creative, and yeah, that shows up on the new joint. He's got no qualms about flipping up his style. Problem is his, *ahem, talent.

Over break my dad and I were watching Conan O'Brian and saw Kanye come on and get interviewed and perform a song. My dad captured it well, that KWest seemed like a different duck. Kind of awkward. Add that with his new style, this slower, gritty computerized drum machine and a voice synthesizer, with Kanye trying to sing. Trying. He's not very good. He admitted it to Conan. He also admitted that the heart he was wearing on his breast pocket was made of legos. Hmm.

My dad mostly captured it. He's still the techie guy, a knob turner, that accidently wandered up to the mice. He's at his prime in the booth, but on stage? Not his gifting. I don't say it to be mean. All of us want to be rockstars, right? But it's not really in the cards.

Molly and I gave the Kanye album a listen, a free trial deal online. I seemed like something that one of your friends would make in his basement, and then you would listen to it all and look for good things to say to your friend, but really, it was a challenge to not hit "skip track" on most songs. It's really sad and contemplative, which I guess is still groundbreaking for a rap album. Just not something I'd like to listen to again.

Miss you, Kanye. Thought we could have had something when you did Jesus Walks. But I guess walking the straight and narrow wouldn't have taken you to the top. He's still waiting. He hasn't walked away just yet. Maybe, here, at this low point, you might be ready to find Him again.

Sea Admiral Cory Smith

So I got a text from Ma Boiiii Cory Smith the other day. It really blessed me, a little heartfelt message that you probably wouldn't get if I posted it. So just imagine a long time friend that you haven't seen in over 6 months saying something really heartfelt that just makes you praise God. Yeah, whatever you imagined, it was just about exactly like that.

The crazy thing is that Cory, friend of mine since first grade or so, has a girlfriend. Kind of a serious girlfriend. Now, that may seem like just a general comment on life, not newsworthy. But you are SO wrong if you think this is anything less than earth-shattering, the-apocalypse-is-on-us, "wait, is that a typo" type of news. Cory is an amazing guy and a great friend. But boyfriend material? Uh, well, let me tell some stories....

In High School Cory had this million candle-watt flashlight (is candle-watt the right unit? is a million even a big number for that? sorry, that's the engineer in me talking about an unfamiliar dimensional analysis). And he assembled a little crew, calling them the IACG. This was a random group, the members came and went, it was never official. But Cory was certainly the ring leader. Because of course, he is the only one who could come up with something like the
INVOLUNTARY
ABSTINENCE
CONTROL
GROUP

That's right, we would cruise around Muscatine to all the possible make-out spots with the million candle watt flashlight on high alert for any... loiterers? (for lack of a better term). In all my time riding with him, I don't think we ever found any cars with steamy windows. Probably for the better. I did hear about the time he caught a mutual friend parked with his girlfriend (nothing was actually happening [yet?]) and a car chase ensued, Cory narrowly evading the maroon Santa Fe driver that I won't name here. This car chase is second only to the famous Muscatine Mall "The Fast and the Gay" car chase of '04 instigated by Josiah Street. Epic. Both times, Cory and the nimble little Buick narrowly escaped with their lives. Seriously, this should probably be made into a movie...

Hopefully you're getting the picture of Cory a little bit here. A legend among those who know him. Just another guy with a size 8 head to those who don't. [Note: average head size is around 7.25] The saga continues:

During daytime hours, the IACG would morph into a different kind of Public Service: The Happy Smile Patrol. Again this involved Cory's Buick cruising the streets of Muscatine rocking Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys or Huey Lewis and the News. But this time we would have windows down to be able to assist any passers by, giving them encouragement and such. We would yell things like "HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE DAY" "NICE WEATHER ISN'T IT" and my personal favorite "I LIKE GOLF." The all-caps is hopefully conveying the urgency and power with which we proclaim the message. Loud and proud, possibly in a way that some might percieve it to be angry. But we at the Happy Smile Patrol take our job seriously, the message needs to get out there to the people. Oh, who am I kidding, we annoyed joggers and moms pushing strollers like no one before or since.

So this is the legacy of Cory Smith. Up to this point the loves of his life were the St. Louis Cardinals, ice hockey, and the poker game Guts--or more specifically, the hand Jack-Six and it's power to win every game of Guts.
Enter Sam.
The girl.
I hope she's a brave one.
She probably doesn't know about IACG. She would probably throw things at the Happy Smile Patrol. But for all the descriptions of Sam that I've heard so far, she seems like the PERFECT match for Cory. It's kind of unreal. I've yet to meet her, but she sounds amazing. I know that Cory has gone head over heels for her. It's pretty cool to see happen, even though I'm seeing it from quite the distance.

And now a twist of seriousness, of which the likes IACG and HSP have little capacity to combat. Sam is in amazing health, she's like a three-sport college athlete, or at least I know for sure that she's on the women's hockey team at her school. But in a routine physical a month or so ago, they caught the beginning stages of leukemia.

Lord, come. We need you God!

It's been cool to see how Cory's responding. This goofball is suddenly becoming, by the grace of God, a rock of refuge for this girl. He's there for her, even though he's got to be at his Navy base most of the time several miles away.

So please be praying for Sam. If she's as amazing as the rumors, I know she can beat this. Especially with the help of the Glorious One, Jesus Christ. He's been making this whole story glorious from the beginning.

The whole point of this post I guess was to say, I miss you Cory and I'm excited to see you and meet the lady here over the holidays. IACG 4eva, baby!

I think I'm really going to blog now

Yeah, blogs are kind of a cool idea. I made this one in August. It's the end of November. I think I'm going to start using it now. Nifty. Not a huge newsflash, just, well, yeah. Kind of a New Year's resolution, just coming a month early.