Because he has a sweet 'stache. And because I like peanut butter.
Polishing God's Monuments: Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times, by Jim Andrews
Because it makes no effort to give glib answers to our questions about suffering. This book tells the story of a couple, Paul and Juli, who go through incredible suffering and still cling to the hope of a good God. Juli is afflicted with extreme cases of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities and Paul with mono and CFS. It's worse than it sounds. A lot worse. It covers 17 years of the couple's suffering through letters written by Juli's father. The letters alternate with chapters that talk about the sovereignty and goodness of God in the midst of suffering as theological issues. The letters are SO depressing; nothing works out for the couple. As I read them I felt a cloud of despair form over my head. I'm about 3/4ths of the way into the book so far and it's still dark. How could God plan this for his children? Then I remember that the book is written by someone who has seen the awful hand of God's goodness in the midst of all their pain. I'm looking forward to see how it turns out. If I go through 17 or 50 years of suffering I hope I will cling to the same God that these people do. Challies has a much better review on his site.
My Gibson J-45
Because it has a sweet, woody tone and looks killer. I think it's one of the prettiest guitars ever made. I'm selling my Martin, Mayes and Fender guitars in light of this. And because Jesus tells me not to hold on to stupid crap on earth. Drop me a line if you're interested in buying some of my stupid crap.
Red Mountain Music
Because their albums are incredible. They take old, forgotten hymns and set them to folk rock. The music is great and the lyrics are rich; they deal with God's wrath and deep mercy, his justice and his love, our doubts and longings, and Christ's finished work and continuing work. You need to hear this music.
Tuna
Because they're huge. They're also delicious.
Lisa
Because she's awesome. True story: we had to make a pee stop at the Los Altos Starbys this weekend and decided to stick around for some quality coffee. She got a green tea latte and I got a carton of milk. After I finished the milk, I started sticking stuff into the carton - the straw and napkins at first. Then I made it my goal to place everything on the table into the carton via the small strawhole. I was able to cram five or six napkins and a small portion of the cup into it. I pushed and prodded until I could push and prod no more and then gave up. There was no way a single sliver of anything else could fit in there. The carton had defeated me. I hung my head in shame and defeat and wondered how I could ever look my family in the eye again. Lisa, however, did not see it that way. She took the carton and after a few minutes the entire cup was in the carton. Look at the gusto with which she is poking stuff into the hole. I'm so proud of her. The guy at the table next to us gave me a dirty look when I looked in his direction.
Exactly ten years ago I hit up a music messageboard with my 28.8k modem and read about a guy named Rich Mullins being killed in a car accident. I had a few of his albums and read a few of his magazine articles, but didn't pay much attention to him. As I read post after post of his music and his life, I realized the dude was someone remarkable. The loss sank into my gut and introduced me to a Christianity that boasted in the weakness of man and the wild love of God.
Over the next few months I read about this crazy guy who took people's leftover hamburgers and padded them with crackers so he could fill himself up and save money. I read stories of how he managed to offend his audience five minutes after walking on stage to perform. Not because he showed up barefoot and in dirty clothes (which he usually did), but because he confronted people with the real Jesus that American Christianity obscured so badly. I heard of how he dressed up as a server at an awards show to serve food to his fellow musicians because he wasn't comfortable being one of the honored guest. He once got into a fistfight with his bandmates in the swimming pool of a family that belonged to a church that was hosting his concert later that night. He literally took the clothes off his body to give to people who needed them more. I immersed myself in his thoughts, which God used to leave an indelible mark on my view of people, faith and Himself.
"For so many people that I know, Christianity's this matter of ... it has everything to do with morals. Christianity is a religion about morals. And they will even talk about Jesus. And they will say kids need to know about Jesus so they won't smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls that do, and all that kind of thing. And I kinda go, 'That's not why people need to know about Jesus. The only reason - the only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because we need a Savior.'"
"We do not find happiness by being assertive. We don't find happiness by running over people because we see what we want and they are in the way of that happiness so we either abandon them or we smash them. The Scriptures don't teach us to be assertive. The Scriptures teach us—and this is remarkable—the Scriptures teach us to be submissive. This is not a popular idea."
"If you’ve ever known the love of God, you know it’s nothing but reckless and it’s nothing but raging. Sometimes it hurts to be loved, and if it doesn’t hurt it’s probably not love, may be infatuation. I think a lot of American people are infatuated with God, but we don’t really love Him, and they don’t really let Him love them. Being loved by God is one of the most painful things in the world, it’s also the only thing that can bring us salvation and it’s like everything else that is really wonderful, there’s a little bit of pain in it, little bit of hurt."
"This life has shown me how we're mended and how we're torn; how it's okay to be lonely as long as you're free"
"You will be lonely for a good part of your life, so just get used to it. Remember, someday you'll be dead. It won't last forever. So while you still have life, love everybody you can love. Love them as much as you can love them. Don't try to keep them for yourself. Because when you're gone, they'll just resent you for having left. Love freely. Remember that, after we die - and I don't know how it all goes together - in fact, I know so little any more that I'm not really sure why I try and say anything to anybody. But I get the strong feeling from reading the Bible that after we die, that somehow, Christ is going to raise us up again."
"Save me from trendy religion that makes cheap cliches out of timeless truths."
"And when Christ has stripped away all of your 'phony-baloney' kind of systematic theology, all of your lame, Protestant kind of stupidity, all of your Catholic hang-ups, when Christ has stripped away everything that we have invented about Him, then maybe we will encounter Him as He really is. And we will know ourselves as we really are. So don't be afraid that your faith gets shaken. Could be that God is shaking you forward, and shaking you free. "
I don't know if you've ever heard, there's this Chinese guy that used to work at a deli, or at a little bakery shop, pastry shop, across the street from where Billy Sunday used to preach in Boston. And people by the thousands were going to hear Billy Sunday preach. Between services this little coffee shop would be jam-packed with people who had just been to church, and the people were so cruel to this kid. He was a college student, he was trying to get along. He didn't speak really good English and people were very angry at him because of that. People didn't leave good tips and people would leave chunks of trash on the floor after they'd eaten. He was so sickened by Christians and Christianity that when he went back to China and became Chairman Mao, he was determined to wipe the church out of China. What I'm wondering is what would have happened if people who were going to church, people who were discussing sermons would have been generous to him, would have been kind to him, would have in their dealings with him reflected the love of Christ? Sometimes we think that our writing and our music is so important that we have the right to run over people. Just please remember that we don't."
"So go out and live real good and I promise you'll get beat up real bad. But, in a little while after you're dead, you'll be rotted away anyway. It's not gonna matter if you have a few scars. It will matter if you didn't live."
"If you want a religion that makes sense, go somewhere else. But if you want a religion that makes life, choose Christianity."
Frederick Buechner: Old as balls and a really good writer
I became reacquainted with the writings of Frederick Buechner last week as I prepared my Sunday School lesson. His books were an anchor for me during my college years, when I often doubted the goodness of God. The Longing for Home awoke in me a longing for heaven. A Room Called Remember opened my eyes to the grace swirling all around me. Now and Then reminded me that God's hand directs every detail of my life. And The Magnificent Defeat made me want to drop to my knees and thank God for being God. If you have any taste for good writing at all, I highly recommend Magnificent Defeat. It's like reading one big, beautiful, grace-saturated poem. You will cry at the sheer beauty contained in its pages.
Quantitatively speaking, you don’t find all that much laughter in the Bible, but qualitatively, there’s nothing quite like it to be found anywhere else. There are a couple of chapters in the Book of Genesis that positively shake with it.Sarah was never going to see ninety again, and Abraham had already hit one hundred, and when the angel told them that the stork was on his way at last, they both of them almost collapsed. Abraham laughed “till he fell on his face” (Genesis 17:17) and Sarah stood cackling behind the tent door so the angel wouldn’t think she was being rude as the tears streamed down her cheeks. When the baby finally came, they even called him Laughter – which is what Isaac means in Hebrew – because obviously no other name would do. Laughter gets mixed up with all sorts of things in the Bible and in the world too, things like sneering, irony, making fun of, and beating the competition. It also gets mixed up with things like comedians and slipping on banana peels and having the soles of your feet tickled. There are times when you laugh to keep from crying like when the old wino staggers home in a party hat, or even in the midst of crying like when Charlie Chaplin boils his shoe for supper because he’s starving to death. But one hundred percent, bonded, aged-in-the-wood laughter is something else again.
It’s the crazy parrot-squawk kind that issue out of David as he spins like a top in front of Ark (2 Samuel 6:16-21). It’s what the Psalms are talking about where they say, “When the Lord had rescued Zion, then our mouth was filled with laughter” (Psalm 126:1-2), or where they get so excited they yell out “Let the floods clap their hands, let the hills sing for joy together!” because the Lord had come through at last (Psalm 98:8). It’s what the Lord himself is talking about when he says that on the day he laid the cornerstone of the earth “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7) and it’s what the rafters ring with when the Prodigal son comes home and his old crock of a father is so glad to see him he almost has a stroke and “they began to make merry” and kept on making merry till the cows came home (Luke 15:24). It’s what Jesus means when he stands in that crowd of cripples and loners and oddballs and outcasts and says “Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh” (Luke 6:21) Nobody claims there’s a chuckle on every page, but laughter’s what the whole Bible is really about. Nobody who knows his hat from home-plate claims that getting mixed up with God is all sweetness and light, but ultimately, it’s what that’s all about too.
Sarah and her husband had had plenty of hard knocks in their time, and there were plenty more of them still to come, but at that moment when the angel told them they’d better start dipping into their old age pensions for cash to build a nursery, the reason they laughed was that it suddenly dawned on them that the wildest dreams they’d ever had hadn’t been half wild enough.
