Shame, Identity, and Rest

Well, I am back for a brief moment, having lost my blogging energy and time due to our urban project (GUPY). I have loved being with our 10 students this summer and am looking forward to heading to Mexico City on Friday for 10 days with them. Below I am pasting a reflection that I wrote for my students. When I return from Mexico, I hope to resume my series on giving.
One of my “go to” passages of Scripture is Isaiah 30:15-26, and I want to encourage you to spend some time in it yourselves, because it talks about resting in the Lord in order to receive strength. As you all can tell, I am a “do-er” in my flesh, and I will go and go until I cannot go anymore. I want to apologize for leading last night’s Bible study in my own strength and my flesh. I felt like we needed to just get it done, to complete the agenda, and in doing so, I think that the Spirit was not as free to operate, and in your tiredness you may not have been as free and able to receive what the Lord had for you.

As I was spending time in Isaiah 30 today, I read verses 1-14, and in those verses, the Lord rebukes Israel for carrying out plans that are not God’s and for depending on Egypt for strength. And then I noticed something interesting – in verses 3 and 5, God says that their dependence on Egypt leads them to shame. Over and over I tell people that God’s heart for them is not to feel ashamed. (Quick definition: guilt = I feel bad because I did something wrong; shame = I feel bad because I am wrong). So why would God let Israel feel shame? I think that it is because the core issue here (as in all sin) is independence (or lack of dependence on God). When you or I depend on anything or anyone other than God, in a sense we become our own God, our own provider. This then leads us to put our identity and our hope in ourselves and when we fail, shame enters. “I failed and because it was all up to me, I am wrong.”

Even in doing good things for God, we can operate in independence. I sensed that in myself last night, but I plowed ahead anyway. When the study did not go as smoothly as I hoped (I felt like I just could not communicate in a way that was grace-filled), I began to feel shame – I am wrong; I did not do a good job. Shame is a consequence of self-dependence.

And so, back to Isaiah, God tells them (and us) in verse 12-14 that when we depend on things other than Him, in His grace and mercy He allows our sin to become a high wall that cracks and breaks, crashing around us. That is God’s goodness to us to not let us persist in independence. He offers another way, the way of the Spirit, the way of trust. And that leads into Isaiah 30:15-26, calling us to repentance and rest for salvation, to quietness and trust for strength. I get so caught up in finding identity (salvation/strength) in what I do, that it is easy for me to drive myself and others to do more and more. But God is calling us to rest. So whatever that looks like for you, do it. I would suggest taking time to be quiet with the Lord and ask Him what rest might look like for you. It might be Harry Potter. It might be playing guitar. It might be Nerts. It might be sitting under a tree. One thing that I am fairly certain of, rest for us all involved going to sleep by 10:30 (or heading that way). I need to be present to my kids and my wife, to watch an episode of Lost, and to go to bed at a decent hour instead of staying up to give Dan and Erin a lesson in how to play Nerts.

I love you all, and again hope that you see I am on a journey with you in learning who I am in Christ and how to not depend on my flesh but on the Spirit.

Published online

An article I wrote about being robbed in San Francisco has been published on IV's student web site, Student Soul. Look for the article "Tenderloin Adventure."

A helpful link dealing with our identity in Christ

In my previous post I talked about the Believer's being identified with Christ and Christ living His life through us. This link is a concise article that explains this very well.

Giving out of grace, not law

OK, so let's get first things first. Why do (notice I didn't say "should") Christians give? We give because it's our nature. We are give-ers because we are in Christ, new creations who have the very life of Christ living in us (2 Corinthians 5:17). Who is more giving than our God, who did not spare His own son but generously gave Him for us (Romans 8:32)? Who is more giving than Jesus, who though He was rich for our sakes became poor so that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9)? The Lord does not change, and this same Jesus lives in us and has given us His very life and nature. So I am, by nature, a give-er.

So why don't I/we give more, then? Because we have been taught from birth to fend for ourselves, to depend on ourselves. It's the way of the world and the only way people who don't know Jesus can make life work. It's called "the flesh", and the flesh is any way that we make life work apart from dependence on Jesus. Once a person comes to Christ, they receive a new nature, but their flesh is still there. So Christ in me longs to give and be generous, but my natural instincts are to take what's mine, hang on to what is valuable, to save just in case I need it later. Living this way is self-provision, which is, more simply, sin. (Note: this does not mean that I do not have a savings account or that I am not planning for retirement or that saving is sinful. It does mean that perhaps I should worry about these things less and put my hope in them less).

Giving generously is a declaration of dependence on God, acknowledging that all we are and all that we have are from Him, and that we do not have to provide for ourselves. Its is an opportunity to live in freedom from our own efforts, freedom from materialism. It is an act of worship, declaring that we love God more than our stuff, and that we seek to honor Him by passing on the blessings that He gives us in order that others might be blessed.

Giving is also an act of grace - Paul prays that the Corinthians might excel in the grace of giving and even puts giving on par with faith, knowledge, earnestness, speech, and love (2 Corinthians 8:7). Giving is a spirit-empowered, grace-empowered act that reveals the goodness of God in our lives. It is a reminder that God is always the give-er, we always the receive-er. We would have nothing to give if it were not for God. We would not have life or breath or being if it were not for God the give-er (Acts 17:28). This not to say that we need to feel guilty about what we have but rather be thankful and from that thankful place, enter into the joy of our giving God by participating in this act of blessing.

To me, this is a grace-empowered, Spirit-led call to giving, and it is the place where we must begin.

Thoughts on giving

I've been thinking a lot about giving lately, and am not exactly sure how to post about it, so I figured I would just start writing and see what comes out. First off, I have to say that were it not for generous and sacrificial men and women, I would not be able to have the job that I have. Over my ten years on IV staff, many thousands of dollars have been given to enable me to minister to students and others full-time. Because people are generous givers, I have all of my needs and many of my wants, and I get to do a job that I love.

That said, I feel like I need to issue a call, a challenge to the Church (and myself) to reconsider how we give and how we live. We've fallen prey to the lie of Western consumerism and have allowed it to infiltrate our faith and how we practice it. This is a tricky issue, because I do not always practice what I preach in terms of simplicity and generosity. Also, money seems to be one of those things that we can't talk about or challenge each other on - it's our own private business and who is anyone to judge or tell us what to do with our finances.

But I think that the Bible inconveniently tells us a great deal about what to do with our money and what purpose it is given to us, yet we can be very selective in our reading and appplication of those verses and passages.

Before getting into those, let me outline my hopes for this little series. One is to call us to rethink how to live and how to give not from a position of guilt, shame, or law. I struggle mightily with living from those places, and can motivate myself and others from spiritual principles that are not rooted in grace and love. The New Testament does not set a specific guideline for giving, for instance. The tithe is a part of the Old Testament law, which all Christians are freed from following as a means of righteousness or finding favor with God. What we are called to give in the NT is what God puts on our hearts to give, and we are called to be generous and give joyfully. As Christ lives in us, He fulfills the law through us, and actually we often exceed the law's expectations (for example, the Law forbids adultery, but Jesus said that this extends past a purely physical act into the realm of what we look at and think about).

Second, I hope to bring Scriptures to the forefront which call us to generosity and sharing. My friend Alex Kirk has been blogging recently about the plethora of Scriptures dealing with justice, contrasting those with the verses dealing with sexual purity and suggesting that we overemphasize sex, though the weight of Scripture would call us to give more time and attention to justice. I think that a similar argument for simplicity and generosity can be made.

Third, I would like to share some strategies that have helped me and Diane to live more generously than is comfortable for us. A tension here is that I do not want to seem to be flaunting a form of self-righteousness or lifting myself up as a standard. The struggle is there, because one of the ways that I deal with my personal frustrations with the overall lack of giving in the Church is to become self-righteous in my anger. That is not living by the Spirit and it is not offering the grace and love that I have received from Jesus.

So, comments are welcome and I look forward to sharing more in the coming days!

Rent "The Boys of Baraka"

Last night my family and I watched a PBS documentary called The Boys of Baraka, which follows some boys from Baltimore's inner city to a school in Kenya for one year. The program is designed to prepare 20 middle schoolers to apply for and get into better public high schools and help them escape the cycles of poverty and crime that are rampant in their neighborhoods.

For Diane, it was the perfect movie, combining her life in Glenwood and her African roots, and there was so much familiar to her about both settings. It was amazing how similar the things that the boys said and how they responded to life were to what I hear from kids in Glenwood. Of course our neighborhood is nowhere near those parts of Baltimore in terms of violence and poverty, but the influences of hopelessness, seeing only a small portion of the world, lack of educational opportunities, and absentee parents (fathers and mothers in jail, out of the picture) are eerily familiar.

It's only 84 minutes long and they leave you wanting more of the story. While seeing the situations (and final destinations) of some of these boys is hard to watch, there are also moments of hope and lots of laughter watching these boys finally get to truly be kids as they play in their African home.

Not sure if you can just roll up to Blockbuster and rent this, but it available on Netflix and Blockbuster Online. (Side note: If you are not a member of either, I would suggest the Blockbuster $9.99 a month plan - movies are still mailed to you, and you get the option of taking them back and exchanging them for another movie in the store while you wait for your next mailer, and the movies get to you just as quickly as Netflix. To me it's a no-brainer about choosing Blockbuster over Netflix. We can get 8 movies a months for $10, and could get even more than that if we had time to watch them. OK, commercial over.)

What do you do with "grumpy Jesus"?

Today I attended a day of retreat for IV staff led by one of our senior staff in the region. Usually when you go on a guided retreat like this, you look at a passage like the prodigal son or the Jesus blessing the children or feeding the 5,000. But for this day, God led our director to Matthew 17:14-20 (click here to read it).

This is not warm and fuzzy Jesus. Instead, this is "grumpy Jesus", tired of dealing with people who time after time do not catch what He is teaching. He has just returned from being on the mountaintop talking with Moses and Elijah, and He finds a crowd of people around his disciples who are trying without success to cast out a demon. He calls them a "faithless and perverse generation," heals the boy, and tells the disciples that they failed to bring healing because they lacked faith. We all wondered how Jesus managed to be grumpy and yet not sin in the midst of that frustration.

All of us at the retreat would prefer to skip this passage. To skip the places where Jesus seems disappointed with the disciples, because for us it hits close to home. I often feel like Jesus ought to be disappointed in me and how little I "get it", despite being taught time and again. And I fear that He is grumpy with me because I just don't have enough faith, and passages like this tend to confirm that, if read without a lens of grace.

After putting on the grace goggles, the best I could do with settling this unsettling picture of Jesus is to guess that the disciples' problem was not so much an improper amount of faith, but rather faith that was misplaced, and thus useless. A mustard seed is not very much, and surely they believed to some degree that this boy could be healed. But was their belief placed in God or in themselves? They had done the healing/casting out thing before when Jesus sent them two by two, and I am sure that during that time, they were depending on God like crazy and they saw Him do things through them that they never imagined. So here is round two and the subtle temptation is to go through the motions, trust their experience, and have faith in their ability to get the job done while Jesus was on the mountain. A mustard seed of dependent faith in God can indeed move a mountain, but a mountain of self-reliant faith will produce little lasting fruit besides frustration.

As for whether Jesus is grumpy with us now, I think that He is not. We have been transformed, made into new creations, and we enjoy all the favor and blessing of His righteousness and Right-standing with the Father. He longs for us to have a dependent faith, and urges us to that place of constant trust in the Father, disciplining us and exhorting us from a position of love.

Things I learned at the grocery store

Today I went shopping (we had no food after our beach trip, and so our girls ate peanut butter toast for breakfast and peanut butter and jelly for lunch), and because Diane and I have decided to take part in the Grocery Game, I went to three stores.

I started at Aldi, which mostly has its own brand of food (i.e. does not sell the name brands), doesn't have shelves (the items are stacked on pallets) and you bag your own groceries. You also have to deposit a quarter to get a shopping cart and get the quarter back when you return the cart. The cashier scans your items and drops them in a waiting cart, which you wheel to the side when you are done to bag your items. For a family on a budget, I've found no place better for quality and price, and we have certain staples that we always get there (once we figured out which Aldi-brand foods we liked just as well as name-brand). While I was there I saw people from at least four different countries, and you could tell that the people there were thrifty and intent on saving money.

Next I went to Food Lion, the one near my house. This store is OK - it's not lightning fast at checkout, but usually has what you need. The mix at this store was much like the mix of our neighborhood - mostly African American and Hispanic, and the whites who were shopping there were either elderly or seemed to be poor-er. I also bagged my own groceries here (because there was no available bagger, and it gave me a chance to show off my skills honed at the Statesville Food Lion as a bagboy in high school).

Finally I went to the local Taj MaTeeter (Harris Teeter + Taj Mahal = Taj MaTeeter). Their produce section alone was nearly as big as the entier Aldi store. 95% of the shoppers were white, middle-to-upper class. Many of them sipped coffees from the Starbucks in the store as they shopped. At the seafood and fresh meats station, free samples of hot chicken stir fry were being given away, and two butchers stood by to cut meats to your specifications. This was not a grocery store, it was a sensory experience with shopping thrown in. The cashier and bag-girl each talked with me, asked me how my day was and how I was doing, were excited with me to see how much I saved, and urged me to come back again. (I could have picked out my items online, paid for them with a credit card, and had them bagged and waiting for me to pick up, too).

I was struck by the progression of service and quality of experience from one store to the next, and I think I was learning something about values and privilege in our country. If you have plenty of money, you can afford to value a sensory shopping experience over saving money. You can afford to value having your groceries bagged in a courteous and swift manner. It's not wrong to be able to afford that (I certainly was able to, obviously).

As I thought about why I was even in Harris Teeter to begin with (I usually only go there to buy orange Gatorade mix and the buy one-get one bags of chicken), I realized it was due to another small privilege that I take for granted - the ability to play the Grocery Game. I have an internet connection at my house (high speed), the ability to pay $10 every 8 weeks for the Grocery Game service (which you access online), the transportation and time to shop at three different stores in order to get the best deal, and access to simple information, such as the fact that there is such a thing as "the Grocery Game" out there. I am quite confident that if one looked at the demographics of who was using the Grocery Game, it would be largely white, middle-class (and up). There is nothing wrong with that. It's just that the poor are not even aware that this thing exists or have access to the resources to make it happen.

I've even thought about being able to shop at Aldi as being a privilege - there are many in Glenwood who go to Food Lion because it's reachable on foot. Aldi is several miles up the road, meaning a long bus ride or paying for a cab.

I'm not here to make a judgment on those who shop at Harris Teeter or condemn the affluent. I'm not even sure that I have a point except to say that there are all kinds of things we can learn about race and class in all sorts of places, even the grocery store, and I think that there are bigger things at play than I can put my finger on right now.

Relearning rest

Rest doesn’t look the same as it once did. It used to be that when I needed a break or a vacation, I did whatever I wanted. Slept in. Watched a lot of TV. Took extended times with the Lord. Went to movies. Funny how having three children under the age of four will disrupt such simple and self-focused patterns.

It has taken me a while to accept that rest looks different now than it used to, and I have found that the more I embrace where I am, rather than wish for where I was, the more rest comes.

A few weeks ago we went to the beach (and whoever said “getting there is half the fun” did not spend a full morning loading a Toyota Sienna with luggage, toys, a portable potty seat, and enough finger food to stuff a preschool class), and for the first day I was really frustrated. My kids needed and wanted to spend time with me. My wife needed and wanted time to read a book and relax. And I needed and wanted to rest, which I thought entailed my being alone, doing whatever I wanted, and playing with my kids when it was convenient for me. That expectation was being shattered, and for a while I resented and resisted learning to rest in a new way.

Thank goodness for the love of God for me and in me, as He began to lead me in letting go of my way and submitting to the season of life that He has for me right now. My children won’t be this little for very long. Precious times of playing in the sand, reading books before bedtime, fixing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches will be gone before I know it. And in loving my wife and kids, and being loved by them, was great rest. I came back from the trip refreshed and thankful.

This week, post-Rockbridge, has been a similar experience. There is a part of me that longs for the days when, as a single staff, the “comp-week” after Rockbridge was filled with, well, me-time. But this week I have been to the museum with Psalter, to the zoo with Eliza, Psalter, Diane, and Jacob, and to story time at the library with them all. God is redefining rest, and I learn that the most rest comes when I simply cooperate and receive what He has and find Him in the midst.

Ruined Again

Tonight was the next-to-last session of worship for Rockbridge, and once again I am so thankful for the ministry of InterVarsity and what God is doing in us in the area of multiethnicity. In the worship set tonight we went from a gospel song to a song in Swahili to a song in Hindi to a gospel-style medley to a Chris Tomlin song. I can’t describe how great it was to see students of all races worshiping God through various styles and forms, and not just going through the motions but really entering in and enjoying the different cultures represented. They were dancing along with the Gospel song, trying to sing the words in the Hindi verses, shouting in the call and response of the Swahili song. And they were being led by a worship team of black, white, and Asian students and staff who were all taking turns leading the music and singing. It was especially sweet for me to be led in a Hindi song by a white student from Wake Forest who, I am guessing, never would have thought his role as worship leader would have included that style of song. Yet he led us in praise to Jesus, and you could see joy on his face as he pronounced some very difficult words.

To me this is such a picture of what the Church should look like, worshippers of different races in one place, leading one another to see a bigger and bigger picture of the Lord Jesus and different ways to respond to Him in love. Perhaps it’s just that I have a heart for multiethnicity (ME), so I enjoy things like this. But I doubt that all 400 of the college students here at camp had ME as a high value or had even experienced worship like this anywhere except maybe Urbana. Yet they have embraced it and they worshipped God, whether or not they understood the words they were singing (we also sang this week in Hebrew, Korean, Tswana, French, Spanish, and Mohawk (Native American). I have seen African American students worshipping their heart out to “white” contemporary Christian songs and white students making up dances to gospel songs. This generation is so open to being shown new ways to praise God.

And so now it is hard to go back to my home church where our worship music is nowhere near as diverse. This doesn’t mean that the music is bad or insincere or that I am being critical of what is there. It’s just that being here with IV reminds me of all the worship forms that are not at my church (or at most churches), and I really think that when our worship is more monocultural, we are missing out on seeing and experience more of God. I know that in a few weeks I will reacclimate myself to worship that is more main-stream evangelical, and I will enjoy meeting God in that form, while still hoping and waiting to see the Church (and my church) move towards being a place of diversity in unity as we worship one Lord through many languages, styles, and expressions.
PS For a taste of what we were enjoying, or to even begin a journey of diversifying your own worship experience, order a copy of One Calling, Live, the worship CD from Urbana.

Remembering the Intimidator

Tonight Diane and I went with two friends to see Dale, the documentary about Dale Earnhardt Senior (to see the trailer, click here ). To get tickets I had to go and test drive a Chevy (I drove a $31,000 Silverado pickup), and I have to say that movie was WAY more than worth the time that it took to do that test drive. Whether you are a race fan or not, the story was compelling enough that you would enjoy yourself the whole time, and for me, it really was one of the most enjoyable movies I have ever watched. The Carolina Theatre here in Greensboro was nearly full, which was cool to see.

The things that I appreciated about the movie were the ways that it showed what a regular, “everyman” that Dale Sr was, and what a great sense of humor he had. On the track he intimidated and dominated, and off the track he fed his cows and farmed his land. There were also some very sad and poignant footage of Dale Junior as a kid, watching his dad from afar at the track and in victory lane, longing to be noticed and invited closer but not receiving that. It made me sad for him, and I could see why he was so driven to succeed in racing, seeing it as a way to get closer to his dad. I also see the everyman quality in Junior today – he doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, takes racing for what it is, and shoots straight with people.

I can understand now why Teresa Earnhardt is reluctant to sell the majority share of DEI to Dale Jr, too. She was Senior’s business partner, helping him build that company from the ground up, and I think that she really had a lot to do with its success. To put herself in a minority ownership position after all that would be hard.

There was great racing footage, too, and it was interesting to see how dominant DEI was becoming as a race team, with Senior, Junior, and Michael Waltrip. Had he not died, there’s not telling what that outfit would be now.

We laughed a lot, and everyone cheered when Dale finally won the Daytona 500 in 1998 (I remembered watching that race in my living room, pounding my basketball into the floor during the final laps). And the last line was classic. It was during the credits, and Senior was filming a “how to be a considerate driver” piece (it seemed like it was for young race drivers). He was talking about looking out for people around you and checking your mirrors, and then he said, “And if you see that it’s Jeff Gordon, put that sum-bitch into the wall.” A roar went up, the lights came on, and it was time to go home. What a fun night.

It's Bigger Than a Fence

Tonight at our neighborhood association meeting, we had a lively discussion about our Community Garden’s fence. Sounds riveting, I know (I think my journalism professors would give me an “F” with that uninspiring lead). But, as the title says, it’s bigger than a fence.

See, our garden is up and running with 20 plots built, 4x20 feet each, and people are planting and things are growing. But two weeks ago the city began construction on the fence around the garden and the poles were eight feet high! I was concerned. An eight-foot chain link fence does not say, “Welcome to our garden.” It says either, “Keep out!” or “We’re afraid of you!” or both. I mentioned this to my new friend Todd, who is very justice minded, and soon emails were flying. Todd began talking with plot holders, the people from the city parks division and county agricultural extension, as well as the neighborhood association leadership, and tonight we had a long discussion as a group about the fence.

It was a good discussion, but it was interesting to hear the opinions of each side of the argument. There were people saying, “They will vandalize”, “They will jump the fence,” “There are drug dealers out there in the park.” “I’ve seen them jump an 8-foot fence like it was nothing.” Then there was us saying, “Some of those homeless/drug dealers/prostitutes are our friends, and those who aren’t, we want to try to welcome them, not run them off. Plus, all our neighbors who come to the park don't fall into those categories.”

For me, I am not worried if people take my cucumbers or if they walk on my plants. I am not concerned with vandalism of the tool shed. A community garden is designed to build community, and it’s hard to lean over an eight-foot fence to talk with your neighbor.

But the issue is bigger than a fence. It’s a neighborhood in transition, trying to figure out how to build community across race and, especially, class lines. It’s prejudices and ideas about race and culture framing how we perceive the world around us. It’s the language of “us versus them." I’m not trying to cast the people on the other side of the fence (har har) in a poor light; I really think that they are sincere and are working out what they think a neighborhood should be.

This issue points towards gentrification, towards people with power due to race and class being able to move others on without much of a fight, towards those with a voice sticking up for those who don’t. It’s bigger than a fence. And it’s a conversation that will continue, that needs to continue, for a longer period of time. It was great to talk with my neighbors about this and to have a dialogue about a small thing that is actually very important.

For the record, we held a vote as to whether to lower the fence to 6 feet or 4 feet, and my group, the four-footers, lost 13-9.

Favorite-ism

In my Grace Life courses, they say that each person has three core lies that have shaped our life apart from Christ: a lie about God, a lie about ourself, and a lie about others. As we understand those lies, we begin to see a lot of what motivates us to live and act the way that we do in our flesh (flesh being dependence on self to meet our needs rather than depending on God to do that).

I remember when I was 10 or 11, my family got a new puppy, and I asked my step-mom if I could be the one to feed it. She asked me why, and I said, “I just want to be someone’s favorite.” At the time, see, I had at least one, if not two, baby sisters (I can’t remember exactly how old I was) and I am guessing that I was dealing with adjusting from being an only child for 10 years to being one of two (or three).

The story about the puppy is kind of cute and bittersweet – what kid doesn’t struggle some when the new baby comes around? But I think that this desire to be a favorite has continued to simmer in me, and may even be one of my core lies. I want to be significant and accepted (other words for favorite), and I depend on many different things to meet those needs. Sometimes it’s work, and so God gives me the gift of failure, like when the IV chapter I staffed went from 150-plus students down to 30 in a span of three years. Sometimes it’s “stuff”, so God gives me the gift of dissatisfaction with my “toys” that I buy.

Lately it has been people. I’ve felt extremely lonely in recent months, but am knee-deep in a river of wonderful friends. I have a small group of great people at church, a regular group of men that I meet with each week who really encourage and refresh me, some wonderful go-to guys that I can call on at any time, and a wonderful wife who has become my dearest friend. I’ve got friends on IV staff, friends at church, friends at other churches. Yet I was feeling so lonely and alone. Why? Because Diane and I didn’t seem to have another couple who was our “best” friend. We weren’t anyone’s “favorite”.

A couple of weekends ago we went to the mountains with two other couples who spend a lot of time together, and while I was excited to go and be with them, my thinking was dominated by worrying if we were the third wheel couple, and so I put on my fearful lenses and saw interactions through those. I was not myself, overthinking all that I said, and eaten up inside. Everything in me told me to just keep it in, to not risk with my friends and admit my junkiness and survive the weekend. But the Lord has given me another gift, the gift of being open and vulnerable (which is not always a fun gift) because I’d rather be known than be alone. And so I shared my heart with the men, and I was so encouraged. Not only did they affirm their love and concern for me and my identity in Christ, but they also shared their own fears of insignificance, and I think our friendship deepened and moved forward that day.

One thing that I began to think about while talking with them and praying was that maybe “favorite” is a term that God would rather us not use. Favorite implies ranking, puts people in classes and orders and elevates them on worthiness to be loved. God would rather us love and appreciate people uniquely, connecting with them on different levels of depth and interest, appreciating them in the moment for who they are and what our relationship is. He also reminded me, again, that my significance is only in Him. Not in people. Not in work. Not in stuff. Sadly, I also realized how long fear of not being the favorite has tainted so many relationships, leading me to be selfish in some, to run from others, to be fearful in still others.

I don’t think that the Father, apart from Jesus, has a favorite in His Kingdom. Except that I am His favorite me. You are His favorite you. Uniquely and wonderfully made, not ranked against other children, not judged or justified on a sliding scale. He simply and consistently loves, who we are, as we are, giving us significance and worth through Christ and the price He paid on the cross.

An unblievable morning

This Saturday I finally cashed in on my greatest birthday present to date - I went to Lowes Motor Speedway in Charlotte NC and drove a Winston Cup car (I mean NEXTEL CUP)! I can't begin to tell you how much fun I had and what a thrill it was. It wasn't thrilling in the "I was scared for my life" sort of way, but rather just to get a taste of what it was like to go that fast with that much horsepower under you was unreal.After reading this, feel free to check out the video I made of the experience.


The program was with The Richard Petty Driving Experience, and after some instruction I started out with a 3-lap ride-along, driven by one of the Petty instructors. I was able to get in the #8 Budweiser Chevy (just a nice bonus), and the acceleration in that thing was astounding. Going into the turns took your breath away as the g-forces pulled you up the track towards the wall, yet the car just stuck and went on around. I imagine that we went at least 165 miles an hour, and it was as smooth as can be. My legs were weak when I got out of the car, but 3 laps was nowhere near enough.

Soon it was time for my 8 laps driving, by myself (I thought that there was going to be an instructor in the car with me). They make it very easy for you - simply follow the pace car in front of you, staying right in their tracks. They pick the best line around the track, and as you show them that you can keep up, they will speed up. At first I was just amazed to be driving - it seemed surreal, and I had to remember that they wanted me up close to the pace car. As we got going faster and faster, all I could do was grin and yell for joy. It was not very hard to control the car - they are built to go fast and turn left, after all. But it was a thrill to go that fast, that near to being out of control, yet feel like the car would do whatever you want.

The image that sticks in my head the most is being in the middle of turn 3 - you just feel swallowed by the track because the banking is so high - you see pavement above and pavement below. (At the start of the day they took us around the track in a 15-passenger van, and at one point they stopped in the middle of a turn, and you just sort of hung there sideways).

As I got more comfortable, the speeds picked up, and it began to feel like I was really doing it. They had rules about when to get out of the throttle (there were cones on the track for when to give it gas and when to ease up in the turns), and the longer I went, the harder it was to hold off on mashing the gas until getting to the proper cone.The power that those cars have is unreal. In my car, you can be going fast and give it gas and it takes a little while to respond. There is no wait time with these. You hit it, the car GOES! After driving, I was tempted to think, "That's not so hard, what they do each Sunday." Then I remembered that their top speeds are more than 60 miles an hour faster, and they do it with 43 other cars all around them. Not that easy.

I noticed that a lot of the folks there had their friends/family/wives take a ride-along, and so I asked Diane if she wanted to take a ride-along. How often would we have this chance? So, after thinking a moment, she took me up on it, signed up, and soon was off for her own ride. I was glad that she was brave enough to try it, and she had a great time.Jacob was there, too, and unbelievably he slept through most of it! My friend Chris has a great blog post about taking his son to a race, and his contentment in noise is a picture of our opportunity to rest in Christ.

So, thank you to everyone who contributed towards this awesome gift. Special thanks to Diane and to Brian Walker, who organized the gift and who went with me to cheer me on. I hate to say it, but I think I need to do this again someday!

Shooting in the dark

No, this is not a story of crime in my neighborhood. Rather, it describes what I was doing at 8 pm tonight after UNC's loss to Georgetown. I have a tradition of shooting baskets each year after the Heels lose their last game of the season, no matter what time it is. Sometimes I am shooting at 11 at night, others in the afternoon. But most seasons, I end it on a court somewhere. So tonight, after listening to Roy William's postgame interviews, I went to a court in another part of town and shot hoops for a few minutes, making some of the baskets that the Heels just couldn't seem to get to fall this evening.

The first time I did this was in 1984. I was eight years old, and the Tar Heels had just lost to Indiana. There was no reason that this Indiana team should have beaten my Heels that year, what with Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins on the team. I had been allowed to stay up to watch the game, and when it was over, my dad suggested we go shoot some baskets in the driveway. When you're 8 years old and already up way past your bedtime, the chance to play 'ball with your dad at night was a rare treat. So we went out and shot, the floodlight casting long shadows. As far as I can remember, every year since then, that's how my UNC basketball seasons have ended (except for the years when I saw their Final Four losses in person).

I remember getting yelled at by an RA at Carolina in 1995 when the Heels lost to Arkansas in the Final Four because we were shooting on the Avery Dorm court after quiet hours (who was studying at 11:00 pm on a Saturday, especially with football players carousing in the balcony, apparently {and inconceivably} celebrating the loss?). I remember shooting in the dark in 2004, having given up TV for lent and thus relegating myself to trying to not listen to the Heels game against Texas (I dunno, I figured that listening to them was cheating or something), and hearing Rashad McCants' tying three fall short, went straight to dimly lit courts of Lake Daniel Park.

Tonight, more than any other night that I can remember, I was shooting in a fog. The way that Carolina lost, letting a lead slip away bit by maddening bit over the course of 7 minutes, letting a game that we had led pretty much from the start slip away because we could not get the ball in the goal, it just stunned me. I couldn't talk. I wasn't angry. I didn't want to throw anything. It just didn't seem real. Still doesn't.

Now there's 8 long months until the 2007-08 season starts, and I'm uncertain as to which players will still be on the team then. Maybe it's time to change my homepage from Tarheelblue.com to NASCAR.com. I just don't have the heart to do it yet.

A prayer for Glenwood, and beyond

Was reading in Isaiah this morning, alternating between the TNIV and The Message (yes, I have a parallel Bible with each of these "rogue" translations), and Eugene's translation of Isaiah 32:15-20 really made sense to me in the context of Glenwood and our new Community Garden (see this link for a newspaper article) that we have built (see this link for a news story and accompanying video).

15-20Yes, weep and grieve until the Spirit is poured
down on us from above
And the badlands desert grows crops
and the fertile fields become forests.
Justice will move into the badlands desert.
Right will build a home in the fertile field.
And where there's Right, there'll be Peace
and the progeny of Right: quiet lives and endless trust.
My people will live in a peaceful neighborhood—
in safe houses, in quiet gardens.
The forest of your pride will be clear-cut,
the city showing off your power leveled.
But you will enjoy a blessed life,
planting well-watered fields and gardens,
with your farm animals grazing freely.

Justice will move into the badlands desert
Right will build a home and where there's Right, there will be Peace and what does Right bear? Quiet lives and endless trust.
Are peaceful neighborhoods, safe houses, quiet gardens only for those who can afford them? Of course not. And this garden, I hope, is a part of bringing Right to Glenwood, not to exclude the poor but to bless them, as well as everyone who makes up our community.

In a sermon by Ray Bakke (an urban ministry veteran and "grandfather" in this movement) he recounted a conversation he had with some evangelical leaders in Chicago. They were hearing about his ministry, and one said, "When you talk about sharing the gospel with people in your neighborhood, I get excited, but when you talk about changing systems and things like that, I get uneasy because it sounds like a social gospel." This particular man lived in the suburbs (and there is nothing wrong with that, let me say up front), and Ray asked him why he chose the neighborhood that he did. The man proceeded to list the advantages - safety, good schools, great healthcare options, peace and quiet, and more. To which Ray replied, "All of those reasons that led you to choose your neighborhood are social reasons; you believe in a social gospel as much as I do. Everyone wants those things, but those who have them often say that those who don't should just be content to not have them and that we shouldn't get involved in those social issues." (this is a less-eloquent paraphrase of his story).

As Christians, whether we move in to hard places or not, I think we are called to bear the progeny of Right and work for peaceful neighborhoods and well-watered gardens for all, using whatever gifts and influence that we have on behalf of others, and I have seen many wealthy Christians in Greensboro who don't live in the harder parts of town do just that. I just think that in general it is easier to care about these things when you live on the unpeaceful street, because you are working not just for others but for your own living space.

Interestingly, I feel like my neighborhood association in Glenwood is working for peaceful streets and quiet space, but I fear that this will happen at the expense of the poor. Unless we plan now and make room for Right, for Justice, the peace and quiet will be affordable to fewer people. When others are excluded because they are forgotten and not fought for, that is not God's plan for Shalom, true peace and right-living. I don't think that my neighborhood association is out to get anyone or exclude anyone intentionally - many of them are sympathtic to this issue and sincerely are considering the implications, but displacement is going to happen unless there is intentional and creative planning and leadership.

Allow me to be cynical for just a moment

As an IV staff I am guilty of thinking that I am the expert on how Christians should present themselves to culture and interact with culture, and so when something seems somewhat cheesy, I am quick to jump on it and run it down. Sometimes I go overboard. Maybe this is one of those times, but this site, Godtube, just makes me squirm. I know that the intentions behind this site are most likely from a desire for Christians to have safe, "clean" options as alternative to "wordly" things that are admittedly tricky to navigate.

But to me this seems like yet another attempt to remove ourselves from the world, making ourselves insulated and isolated from those who might think differently than us or have conflicting values. It's all the same stuff as regular YouTube, only it's sanitized, Christianized, and mostly irrelevant to people who don't know Jesus. It makes me sad that tons of Christians out there are going to celebrate this site as a positive witness for Jesus on the internet, not realizing that for the most part non-Christians won't darken the virtual door of Godtube, unless it is to mock or shake their heads. Why do we as Christians continue to struggle with relevance, lacking creativity and drive to engage the world with excellence on the world's turf and terms? It's not easy, and it's certainly simpler to spoof and parody in Christian-ese and know that it will be accepted and liked by people who speak the same language. Sigh. Maybe I'm being too hard on this instance.

Couldn't be prouder

Now that my two weeks of spring break groups are gone, I can catch up on my blog posts (I have a list of topics in my tasks in outlook).

Each week of spring break we took the Salvation Army disaster van out on a Tuesday night to visit homeless men and women in the city and take them food and drinks. The second week our first stop was right across the street from Greensboro Urban Ministry, and because the weather was warm, the overflow beds were no longer available. Result? There were lots of homeless people hanging out on "the block", and so when our truck rolled up, they all came across the street. Just a few at first, then more and more. And as the first group came, I was across the street from the college students talking with a couple of men that I had met in previous trips out with Nightwatch.

So, there I was, the most experienced in this type of situation, all the way across the street, and a group of 10 college students, who were expecting to talk with maybe one or two homeless people at a time, on the other side with a group of 10 homeless men and women. When I got to them, the students all looked a little stunned, but as I reminded them to simply talk and pray with each person and led them in getting food and drinks out, they recovered and began to really minister. They laughed and talked with our friends, and each person who came was warmly welcomed and prayed with. Students were speaking truth about the Lord and were offering friendship, crossing racial and class and cultural lines, not necessarily with ease but with purpose and love.

While I have grown to realize the truth that the homeless are real people with dignity and real stories to their lives, that has taken time and many relationships and conversations. For most of the students, this was their first time confronting the stereotypes that many of us have, and they did it so well.

All the Pieces Coming Together

Many of you know that we have been running our tutoring program for about 5 years now, and it has continued to grow in size. However, we had size with little to no infrastructure, and so, as a friend of mine put it, it was like this tsuhami of kids crashed into us each week, and then we would recover for a few days and get hit again. There never seemed to be time to get thing under control, and it more felt like survival. That same friend has commented that with tutoring it's like you get two Fridays every week - one on Tuesday when tutoring is over and then the regular one on Friday.

This, however, is changing. God is beginning to move people into place to transform this ministry into one that is effective for the kids and more enjoyable for the tutors. He brought Regina Clark, a businesswoman who specializes in developing an infrastructure to make vision come to pass. He has brought Millie Smith, who has a degree in physical education, and works for a state organization that promotes health and physical activity. Millie now leads an organized play time for our kids and tutors each Monday, which has increased relationships and teamwork amongst them. God brought Jeb Burns, a graduate school education major who is a parent of middle schoolers and who also has a passion for middle schoolers, and he is helpind bring an organized curriculum to that portion of our program. God enabled Melissa Lewkowicz to come on as a paid staff with InterVarsity as an administrative assistant for GUPY and this program. God gave John Freeman, the middle school pastor at our church, a heart for the middle schoolers in our program, and so he serves one day a week. God has brought 7 adult tutors from our church and other churches, which has given maturity and presence to our class rooms. God has given us a tremendous resource in a reading teacher from Guilfor County Schools who is teaching us about discipline and how to help kids read.

Adding these pieces to what we had already has begun to transform our program. Regina has helped us implement a regular schedule each day, which the kids are responding to in a great way. The play time has taught kids and tutors to play together. And there is a calm and an order to our time that there hasn't been. Thus the tsuhami feels more like and regular tide, with some occasional rough seas from time to time (like today when one of the kids stopped up all the sinks in the boys bathroom and turned the water on, resulting in about 1.5 inches of water on the floor and some water in the ceiling below). God is positioning us to have a program next year that is going help the children tremendously.

Yikes

Diane and I had the privilege of going to the UNC-Duke game and had a great time being together and watching the Heels win. However, I have not experienced mass anger like there was in the Dean Dome after Tyler Hansbrough was bloodied by Gerald Henderson.

There was a moment where I thought things could get ugly, and I wondered if the refs would just get Duke off the court and call it with 14 seconds left. No one threw anything, no one went on the court. But the place was boiling. I felt bad for Henderson - he's just an 18-year-old kid, getting booed off the court and probably being called who knows what. And it was disappointing to feel like the mood at the end was more anger than celebration.

But this has now supplanted the "Bloody Montross Game" of 1992 as the game that UNC fans will remember and point to when thinking of this rivalry.
Incidentally, I have watched about 10 replays of the hit, and while I don't think Henderson was aiming for Tyler's face, he was coming in to commit an aggressive and hard foul after starting the play at the foul-line extended part of the court, and he was bringing his arm down hard, not swatting at the ball and not simply falling into Tyler.

I was disappointed by Coach K's implication that the injury was partly Roy William's fault for having Tyler still in the game with UNC up 11 or 13 and 14 seconds to go. 1) Coach K was calling timeout after his team scored to cut the lead to 13 with 50 seconds left. Certainly not giving up. 2) A sub had been waiting at the table for Tyler when Bobby Frasor was at the line, and Fraso simply missed the foul shot and Tyler got the rebound, setting up his ill-fated free-throw. See this espn.com article for more.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=2787890&sportCat=ncb