Some great words, that I really could not have said better myself…from DashHouse
“It takes time… A couple of themes have converged in my life fairly recently.
Charlene and I have been married over 18 years now. I’m not surprised when I talk to other couples who are going through marriage difficulties, because we’ve been through our share. Maybe more than our share. But I also have a lot of hope because we now have a great marriage. I can’t take any credit for it, but I never imagined that marriage would be so enjoyable at this stage. But it’s taken time.
I’ve been at Richview over ten years now, but it’s only really felt like home for the past two or so years. For the first eight years, it wasn’t all bad, but it was a struggle. Don’t get me wrong: we have a long way to go, and there’s lots of work to do. But it’s taken time to get to the point at which it feels we have some traction and that we’re moving (slowly) in the right direction.
I sometimes thought about how easy it would have been to give up during the hard times. I’m glad I didn’t. It just takes time.”
A quote to make you think, regarding the culture that we live in:
“And ultimately we are shocked again and again by the fact of death. That which our forebears took for granted (having large families because a sudden epidemic could carry off half of them in a few days) is banished from our minds, except in horror stories. Similarly, death is banished from our societies, as fewer and fewer people die in their homes and beds. And it is banished, too, from our deep-seated societal imagination, as the relentless quest for sexual pleasure—and sex, of course, is a way of laughing in the face of death—occupies so much energy and enthusiasm, and dulls the aching reminders that come flooding back with every funeral we see, every murder the television brings into our living rooms. We ignore evil when it doesn’t hit us in the face, and so we are shocked and puzzled when it does.”
Once a month, some of us from Kairos join Hope with the USDA grocery food distribution to local residents (mostly elderly Armenian, Hispanic, and Filipino folks.)
The USDA works with us as a drop-off place for the groceries, to distribute in the neighborhood.
Here is Arturo, who lives in the neighborhood, and is our Armenian translator. (not sure what he is always saying, well I never know when is speaking Armenian, but our Armenian neighbors seem to listen to him)
Here is Greg (with the Colts hat, and a new friend), Lenny (who runs the program), Matt (who is a good friend, is in our canvas group, and always serves here) & Caleb.
A friend of mine and Michelle’s here at Kairos wrote this on her blog recently, and I was challenged by it.
As Michelle has said about her in the past — ‘that girl is insightful’ .
“…spiritual health and emotional health are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other, they are codependent. We can walk around giving the illusion that we are righteous, bible reading, prayer-filled, spiritually healthy people but we know if God where to turn us inside out and reveal to the world the emotional diseases that we carry, we wouldn’t be holding our spiritual heads so high. In the same way when we live our lives with our emotional diseases visible to the world and do nothing about it, all we have to offer is rotten spiritual fruit.”
A great quote from Tim Keller on the need for evangelicals in the city and urban areas. Some of this I think is obvious, but maybe not as much as I assume…
“We have to have Christians and churches everywhere, but the fact is that evangelical churches are the least urban loving churches or religious communities in the land. Jews, Muslims, Catholics are all much more represented in the city than evangelicals. White evangelicals don’t really like the cities and I cant help but feel that we don’t like being around those who are not like us. If evangelicals have a chance they get out of urban areas as fast as they can.”
“But the city is so strategic because it where the poor are when they 1st come here to this country. It is also where students and young professionals live before they get married and move out to the rest of the country. It is so crucial, that if we do not have really vital Christian communities in the major cities in the world, we simply will not be reaching the world for Christ.”
So, I spoke at Kairos on Sunday and it was an interesting discussion afterward. To explain for those non-Kairos people that frequent this blog (all two of you – my mom & grandma), sometimes after my talk at Kairos, we have a discussion where people can either make a comment, or ask a question either verbally, or by texting it to my phone.
The topic this last Sunday was on what is ‘the good news of Jesus’ ? I took much of what I spoke about from an article by Tim Keller entitled The Gospel in All its Forms.
I know, I quote Keller a lot, but I find so much of what he says, and how he says things — to deeply resonate with me.
Anyway, as he says in the article ‘So yes, there must be one gospel, yet there are clearly different forms in which that one gospel can be expressed.’ However, with trying to explain that there are different forms (or aspects) of the gospel, I had the sense that these ‘Individual and corporate aspects of the gospel do not live in easy harmony with one another today.’ As some did not agree with this, some I think were a little confused as they had never heard this before, and a number of people said they absolutely loved the discussion.
Anyway, if you have time – read the article, and let me know what you think.
well, no big surprise, but Coldplay won the song of the year at the Grammys with Viva La Vida
I love Coldplay’s music, but I always get a twinge of sadness when I listen to their music, & really pay attention to their lyrics (like when he says ‘for some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter wont call my name’ from this song). Here is an excerpt from Rolling Stone from 2008 with him regarding his upbringing, and his experience with the church (HT: Dan Kimball):
Here’s a bit of the interview:
You grew up in a rural part of southwest England, in a pretty religious environment. How did that affect you?
“I grew up with the prospect of heaven and hell looming ever large. What I grew up with was, if you even think about boobs, you’re going to hell. It was drilled in: These things are wrong. It was black and white, the way it still is for millions of right-wing Christians in the middle of America. I spent a year thinking I would be punished if I sang “Sympathy for the Devil”.”
Punished as in go to hell?
“Yeah. When I was about 14, the first band I played in wanted to play “Black Magic Woman”. I was like, “I can’t sing that because I will get bad karma.” As a kid, you don’t know any better. But then as you go on, the cracks begin to appear and your’e like “I’m not sure about this hell thing. And I’m not sure whether it’s really right or wrong to be gay, and I’m not sure whether we’re right and they’re wrong.
Did you ever think you might be gay?
“It was more like “Oh, s#%, what if?” Because I was brought up to think that was really wrong. But it struck me. Who gives a s#%? And then it wasn’t a problem. It sounds silly to say it now, but when you’re a kid you think “I’m going to burn in hell for eternity if I like other guys or if I marry someone Jewish”.
What was the first music you responded to?
Probably Bad, by Michael Jackson, and “Take on Me.” by A-ha. We’d always be in church, so the thing I heard most was hymns. That’s probably where all the life-and-death stuff in our music comes from.”
- Rolling Stone, Issue 1055, June 26, 2008
