Searching for Meaning and Purpose...

As we move into a new day, it dawns on me again how thankful I should be for another chance to breath, think, live, and be. It's also a new day to see what God has in store for me as a minster and for my students. Not only that, but as we embark on citywide youth adventure number two (737 at the Middle School too, not just the High School) I am excited! The new song from Passion, God of This City, has me so stoked. The refrain comes around: "Greater things are yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city..." That resonates with me on so many levels. First is the fact that it is about this city, not just First Presby, or First Baptist, First Christian, or New Life, or First United Methodist. I work with a phenomenal group of youth workers who are passionately driven to see God's kingdom come here in El Dorado. They are SO not driven by personal kingdom growth (meaning their church and their youth group) and it is such an awesome thing to see ...

It's a funny thing going back "home." After a visit to our old stomping grounds in Hutchinson this weekend, I realize again how temporary things can seem to make enormous change in our lives. Today I experienced the loss of something, an undefinable longing, that made no sense to my mind, but was nonetheless palpable and real. It was the sense of looking for a permanent anchor, the sense that things are not the way the were, combined with the people who still care so deeply for me and my family (although some didn't realize we had even moved! They assumed we were going to one of the other 6 services throughout the weekend...). But, the longing for home (even though Hutch was only home for a few years) was still there. The desire to find what we had thought would/could be permanent, when it was only temporal. To return to the church we thought needed us so deeply, only to realize again that it was we who needed the church. Most interesting of all (and deeply fri...

I know I'd been doing this series of posts on "Problems with God" but, as life has a way of doing, it interrupts our best laid plans. My interruption wasn't pretty, nor has it been fun, but it was something that made me think, a lot. Our lives are filled with interruptions, but it's how we respond that makes us who we are. Some interruptions are good things: marriage, kids, good news, church, etc. Other interruptions are bad things: our screw ups, others screw ups, death, sickness, grief, church, etc. But, each interruption leads us to a place where we must change. When our life is interrupted, the path we were on can be returned to, but we will not be the same because of that momentary (or momentous) interruption. We'll unpack some interruptions and where they lead as well as Jesus' response to life's little interruptions. First, the interruption in my life most recently dealt with someone else's screw up. Yeah, that screw up affected me, b...

You know, it's amazing how little most critics seem to actually know about God before they pose a question. We've looked at hypocrisy and the problem of evil (why bad things happen to good people), but today we'll tackle my favorite: how can God say He is good and do the things He has done (like the Flood, the Israelites Canaan slaughter, etc.)? This question attacks the heart of faith itself. If God isn't good why would we follow Him? That is where many people get hung up. Especially reading through the Old Testament, we see God as seemingly capricious and extremely brutal. There is not much grace extended in the Old Testament while grace is the overriding theme of the New. How does all that make sense? Let's start in the beginning... First, we see God making everything and caring for it (sounds like a "good" and loving God to me!) with only one caveat: don't eat from this ONE tree. Sounds simple, right? But man eats from the one tree and is ...