Category: reflections

Love the sinner…

How many of you can finish this statement:

“Love the sinner….”

Tony Campolo says “wherever someone is hurting, there is Jesus.”

But then he also finishes the above statement. For those who say, “I love the sinner, but I hate his sin.” His response is that “that is just the opposite of what Jesus says…. Jesus says, ‘love the sinner and hate your own sin; and after you get rid of the sin in your own life, then you can begin talking about the sin in your brother or sister’s life.'”

I continue to believe that the more we get to know people and know their stories and know their backgrounds and know their hurts — the more we realize how similar we are and loving them becomes that much easier.

Huge props to Theresa for sharing this video.

Monday Briefs

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highlight of the week ::
Sushi night.

While I hated that I had to enjoy the sushi alone, I was pleased with the outcome and surprised at how easy it was to make. I always imagined it being a much more painstaking process. It was time consuming, but not difficult at all.

quote i’m digging ::
“I can’t take the Eucharist and not be cognizant of the fact that I belong to a universal community.
I can’t take the Eucharist and not be cognizant of the fact that my primary allegiance is to God and to faith in Christ.
I can’t do that and then allow myself to go out and have another allegiance claim ultimacy in my life.
That is profoundly threatening if you start to think through the implications of what that looks like for the Christian who lives anywhere in the world.”

– Dr. Jeffrey C. Pugh referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology.

ministry-wise ::
Our group has decided to actively pursue a Laundry Love Project here in Red Oak. I’m excited about this! I hope its a great opportunity for our group to grow and serve those outside our normal walls.

I did some “site surveys” on Saturday and visited two local laundromats. The owners of the one laundromat we’ll likely use were very confused as to what we wanted to do.

Me: Hi, we’d like to see about scheduling a couple hours, once a month, where we come and pay for people to do their laundry. They come in, bring their laundry and we pay for it and provide laundry detergent for them.
Owner: I don’t understand.
Me: Well, we’ll bring several people and a bucket full of quarters. As people come in to do their laundry, we’ll fill the machines with quarters for them.
Owner: I’m still not sure I understand.
Me: We want to help people do their laundry – and pay for it – instead of them paying.
Elizabeth, laundromat customer: You can pay for my laundry!

I think the ultimate quandary for the laundromat owner was that he couldn’t understand why we would want to do this. I think he understood what we were wanting to do – just not why we’d want to.

As I talked to Elizabeth a bit longer, I found out that she spends $25 a week on laundry. Fifteen loads for her and her 3 kids. I can’t imagine!

Visiting the other laundromat, I talked with a guy who said that by himself he spends $7 – $10 a week on laundry.

I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of this initiative. If you’re interested in helping with your time or financially, please let me know.

looking forward to ::
Spending some time with Laurie this weekend to celebrate our anniversary. She’ll be out of town for most of our anniversary day so we’re planning to celebrate some time away on Friday and/or Saturday this week. Plus, we’re going to make our annual anniversary trip to Outback Steakhouse when she gets back in town Wednesday night. And… it’ll be all free thanks to credit card rewards!

Gardening Eden :: why the church should care about environmentalism

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Growing up, there’s one thing I remember most about working with my dad during the summers. No matter what — the radio would be on and we’d work listening to Paul Harvey and the man behind the golden EIB microphone — Rush Limbaugh.

As I look back now, I’m not sure if it was hearing Rush day after day, or just being around the people we connected with, but by the time I read Rush’s first two books – I was sold on the idea that it truly a battle between us and them. Good vs. Evil. Honest conservatives against the lying, tree-hugging, liberals.

Listen to Rush each day and then throw in a couple hours of Bob Larson each day and you’ve got yourself one hell of an education about the world’s evil doers.

Now I’m not trying to down anyone for listening to Rush or Larson, I know plenty of fine folks who do, but over the years I’ve come to see that they no longer subscribe to my personal beliefs. And I can pretty much guarantee that it’s not that they’ve changed one bit – but I can definitely say that I have.

Ten years ago I might have picked up a book about environmentalism. I might have even tried reading some of it. Fifteen years ago I would have scoffed and pointed out all I knew about why environmentalist wackos were — well wackos.
Continue reading Gardening Eden :: why the church should care about environmentalism

11 ways to be unremarkably average

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The other day I shared 50 Ways to Love Your Neighbor over at something beautiful. Small things that could be considered insignificant or average – but things that we don’t typically do on a daily basis.

Today’s a new day and a new list from Chris Guillebeau, who incidentally has really been inspiring me a lot lately with his blog.

He’s chosen to live a non-conforming non-average life and has a goal of visiting all 197 countries in the world before he turns 35. I believe today he hit the 108 mark as he landed in Haiti.

Chris shares 11 ways to be unremarkably average in his manifesto A Brief Guide to World Domination (a free pdf download).

1. Accept what people tell you at face value
2. Don’t question authority
3. Go to college because you’re supposed to, not because you want to learn something
4. Go overseas once or twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England
5. Don’t try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English
6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it
7. Think about writing a book, but never do it
8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it
9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work
10. Don’t stand out or draw attention to yourself
11. Jump through hoops. Check off boxes.

Let’s see I can check off 3, 5, 6 and maybe 7 (I’ve written the book – just taking my time too much time editing it), 8 and 9. Maybe even 11. Sounds like I’m still living a pretty average life. What do you think?

Is that good or bad? Do you see yourself in this list?

photo by dno1967

UPDATE: Order Chris’ new book:

Tuesday Briefs

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Late Tuesday edition…

highlight(s) of the week:
We had a great time helping host Fresha Peppa Cafe with Aaron and Keri this past Friday night. Laurie and I joined them and Tracy to host a “fancy” dinner for the Brian and Heather Treadaway. We had a lot of fun as Laurie was the paparazzi, Aaron was waiter Fredrico, I was Tiny the bus boy, Tracy was the local bar fly and Keri did most (if not all of the cooking). Lots

books i’m reading:
Still working on Gardening Eden by Michael Abbate’. So far its great! Need to get it finished so I can move on to several others waiting in the wings.

things that are annoying me:
Follower counts on Twitter. Like several others have suggested this week – I’d be totally cool if Twitter chose to remove the follower counts on the site. I could care less that you’re a movie star and have 1 million followers – and I could care less if you have 1,000 followers or 5,000 followers or however many. I’d like to think that Twitter’s not about a popularity contest. But of course if I had 1,000 followers too – who knows – I might catch myself braggin’ about it as well. 🙂

things I’m not looking forward to:
Laurie’s going to be spending some time out of town the next week or so for work. It might seem a little silly but we’ve never spent a full day apart since we’ve been married – two years next week. She’ll be gone tomorrow morning till Friday evening and then again two days next week – including our anniversary.

Of course I’m glad she’s getting these opportunities. She’s really thriving in her new job and I’m super proud and excited for her.

things I’m looking forward to:
Making sushi at home. While Laurie’s gone this week I’m going to console myself by trying my hand at making sushi. She’s definitely not a fan and not interested in trying it – so I’m going to try out my new “sushi for two” kit that I bought from Half Price Books last week.

The calorie counter

Been trying to get a lot better at tracking my calories. I feel like I do pretty good during the week and stay below my recommended 1900ish calories. However, the weekends tend to do me in.

We often end up eating with friends or family and I find it hard (and someone intrusive) to sit and try and figure out everything that’s going into the food I’m eating. Even harder when we do potluck for our community group each Saturday. Suffice to say, I usually track all I can on the weekend and then tag an extra 2-3k calories on top of that.

livestrong calories 04/21/09

It’s really amazing to see how many calories you ingest day to day. For example, my huge salad from Chili’s last night was 850 calories where as the roast beef sandwich I was given for lunch from Corner Bakery weighed in at 1000 calories. I did however check the Corner Bakery and saw that it reported the calories at 790. So of course I submitted the changes to Livestrong.com.

Either way – I would have to say I’m eating less as well as smarter now that I realize how quickly those calories add up (of course I guess the real judge is the scale and Laurie :-)).