Good News

Last night after church I was sitting with two of the men from the Open Door Mission. It was really great to talk with them. We were talking about the love of God, how that is the message of the Bible. Then one of them started talking about Jonah. It was really amazing to witness them preaching the Gospel to each other. I really think that we should share the Good News with each other more. Yes, we know it, but I think it would be good to be reminded of it too; let it come to the surface to breathe.

Just a thought.

Nice View

I like this guy: 10 years ago Alec Holden placed a bet with his bookie that he would make it to 100. They gave him 250:1 odds (how rude!), but he prevailed a picked up a check for 50,000 pounds (he's a brit). My favorite quote from him on how he has live so long: "I keep breathing. If you stop breathing, you're in real trouble."


You can read the full article here.

Death and Taxes

No need to reiterate it, you all know.

Taxes Suck :(

It Has Been a Good Easter

I woke, drove to my parents house and ate home baked kolaches. We then went to TBC to celebrate Easter. The service started with a skit showing the joy of God as it is proclaimed in the Gospel. There were three players, a man as the voice of God, and two women who, at the start were frustrated with life. Of course, by the end (after finding the joy of God), they were ecstatic with praise and thanksgiving. While I will not deny that God gives this kind of joy, I have never really seen it with my own eyes. I find that for me, joy is much less ecstatic, and tends to come in glimpses. While this may seem less, to me it is much more. They are moments, random at best, when I truly see and feel the grace of God. They are not moments of overwhelming emotion, but are the times when God allows me to see, for only a moment, his Gospel in the flesh, it begins and ends with God.(Surprised by Joy by CS Lewis is a good read on this subject)

It has been a good Easter.

While my cynical tendencies still abound when I contemplate the current state of the church, I am learning that, even though I have problems with some aspects of some churches, that they do truly bring others closer to God. I still struggle with my cynicism, but that is something I just have to deal with.

It has been a good Easter.

After church, we met at my parents house for a family gathering. It was wonderful to see aunts, uncles, and cousins whom I had not seen in a while. Susanne and Brad were in from California, and though we did not have a chance to really catch up, it was great to see them. After a wonderful meal, the women played Hand and Foot in the kitchen, while the guys watch the Masters and played poker.

It has been a good Easter.

I packed up the leftovers from the dinner (a ridiculous amount, it was a sickening reminder of the abundance with which we have access), and headed to church. Aaron preached a great sermon about the resurrection. While I know it is a, if not the, tenet of our faith, I realize how little a reality it is to me. I cannot seem to grasp it, not out of awe, but I seem to have a problem of completing the movement from head to heart. Don't get me wrong, I don't minimize the resurrection, but feel as if I have not been able to digest it act in it's graspable fullness. God help me.

It has been a good Easter.

After church a group of people gathered at my house (as is usual) and we watched several episodes of Arrested Development. It was great. After (almost) everyone left, I picked up Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. It is an amazing book.

For the last little while, I have struggled with the tension of my understanding of the Gospel and placing that belief into action. My problem is that I love generally, but love is never general; the Gospel is never general: it operates in the realm of specifics; you, me, that person. My frustration is that I have this grand vision of what it is to live the Gospel. I was reading. Shane talks of when he was working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and how he was struck by her view of action. "We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it." I am going to make this a motto. I will try to be okay with doing small things for God, instead of dreaming of the grand. I will take comfort in the fact that with the smallest act of love, I reflect the one Lover.

It has been a good Easter.

Soft Landing, Warm Dinner

Yesterday we made the drive from Corpus Christi back to Tomball; my dad in the passengers seat with his arm propped up on three pillows.

Thanks to all who prayed and to our God who heard our cries. We set down in a lush field of green to the open arms of friends and family. While no major bruises, there remain lingering thoughts of what may have been, and three rather nasty incisions in my dad's left wrist and forearm. The wounds will have to close up on their own, which should take about three weeks. That is, if we can convince him to go to the wound care clinic, and let if be dressed and cleaned by professionals. Driving home he set up his first appointment, but upon learning the price of the service, was determined to do it on his own. With a little persuasion we were able to convince him to go every other day, while changing the gauze himself (well, with moms help) during the intermediary day.

For me, as soon as we pulled up to my parents house, I threw my stuff in my truck along with two bags of range cubes, fed said cubes to the cows, and then trucked it to the store to purchase the ingredients for dinner with the people in my book study (aka. the drinking club).

This was what I needed. While I was not alone in Corpus, I was disconnected from a large part of my community. I have never been one to get homesick, but I missed engaging with friends.

What a reintroduction to my community: the art of dinner! I love to cook so I made four cheese tortellini and sauteed spinach. The meal was delicious, as was the conversation. Then after dinner we retired to the patio to go through the book.

We are going through Eugene Peterson's "Leap Over a Wall" and we ended up talking about change. How we now view change as a disregard for the past and an all-out embrace of the new. Peterson, and we agreed, thinks that we need to recapture an earlier definition of change. Instead of erasing our wrinkles, we should embrace them. Change is good, but change is built upon the foundation of our pasts. It is not mere change, but growth (and because Matt pointed out that I tend to use the word a lot, I will say organic growth). We can and should use the dirt and crap of our pasts to fuel a new growth in Christ (not to say we should be adding dirt and crap, but let Christ redeem that which is already there). If we simply "move on" without looking back or stopping to contemplate, we will be like a tumbleweed; always moving with the wind, and hollow on the inside.

All this to say that it is nice to be back.

josh

In Case of Snake Bite, Pull Cord

There is nothing more scary than receiving two voicemail messages, one from a cousin saying "Josh, call me" in a serious voice, and one from my brother saying "Josh, call me; something happened to dad." I immediatley called Justin to learn that my dad had been bit in the hand by a rattlesnake at our ranch in Freer.

Freefall...

Go home...

Drive to Chorpus Christi...

Pull Cord.

I never realized how big of a support network my father and family has. My mother found out about the incident while having dinner at her pastors house. I had been at a crawfish boil with Anna, who is a co-worker of Ellie's, whose parents were also having dinner at their pastors house. As soon as I got off the phone with my brother I told Anna what had happened and that we needed to go. Ellie and Jeremiah were across the table, so I informed them as well. She called her dad, he was sitting across the table from my mom and told her (of course, her cell phone was at the house, where it belongs).

We all converged at my parents house, then loaded up in the car, with my uncle behind the wheel. The cell phones had already been working behind the scenes, but the first hour on the road we all scrolled through our phonebooks calling everyone we knew. Everyone we knew called everyone they knew. I would not be the least surprised to find out that we had well over a thousand people praying for him and us.

Community is a strange, beautiful thing. I am now starting to see with new eyes why it is so critical for living out a healthy Christianity. We need each other. Sure, we can do a lot on our own, but when we do, it takes away from us, makes us less. With community we can deal with situations in a way that builds, that adds to our lives, making us stronger, not wearing us down.

We still don't know what pasture we will land in; thankfully, with the prayers that have been prayed for us and the grace of a wonderous God, we are hovering over the greener one. One thing that I know, though, is that even if we find ourselves in the other one, we will have a soft landing; not without scrapes and bruises, but soft.

Thank you all for your prayers.

Josh

Good, Not so Good and Bad

I have been thinking of sin lately, mainly because I am steeped in it, but, hey, thats me. Specifically, I have been thinking of the areas in which I am most tempted, and which many are similarly are tempted.

I have always loved the concept of God expressing his being to us through the good, the true, and the beautiful. I delight in art which makes me reflect on the beauty of creation; poetry with fills we with awe at the thought of Gods depth. And, unfortunately, this if usually where my temptations begin.

I believe that the most powerful and potentially destructive sins begin in the true, good, and beautiful. Sin begins as a slight perversion of these. Then, the more removed they become from God and remain as separate concepts the more they begin to fester with corruption.

One example of this can be seen in art. To preface: this is a gross generalization about art, so don't be too pissed at me. I have always appreciated the visual arts, I am very visual by nature and so they have always been able to communicate rather strongly to me. At the beginning, I loved art because it spoke of God's creation, and the inherent beauty therein. But it seems the trend has moved away from expression of the universal, to the expression of the individual. Within this trend, art has become more "dark" (something which I am not entirely opposed to: I hate kitsch). But it has become dark in a way that is not informing, but merely destructive.

On a more personal note, I have always been a lover of photography. And through this love, I came to an appreciation of the female form, for it has long been a popular subject of photography. The body in general is an amazing thing. It's form; such graceful lines and intricate connections. It is a true thing of beauty. However, this healthy appreciation led to pornography. While female form is something that should be appreciated, it can only be truly appreciated in the correct context. For me pornography gets its appeal from its depiction of this beauty, but it becomes destructive because it has perverted the beautiful into a consumable, something that is used for our own ends instead of initiating worship of God.

Spirit & Soul

The other night Aaron spoke on the nature of worship. During the course of sermon he read a passage (? address) from the message that said something along the lines of worship is our spirit/soul interacting with God in honesty. This sparked memories of past thoughts for me. I have often wondered what exactly our spirit is. This honesty of soul may be a good starting point for understanding this concept.

Something that has always struck me in the old testament is the use of names. Names were not just symbolic placeholders for individual identification, but spoke to who the person was, it was more than a name, as we understand the word. I wonder if this could inform the biblical beginnings of our new testament concept of the personal/individual spirit.

For a long time, I always viewed spirit, my spirit, as something "other" than myself. Now I wonder if there may be more to it. I wonder if my spirit is really myself at my core. If it is the culminations of my longings, my thoughts, and my habits. Day to day, I am separated from this spirit by my deviations of my core self, yet it informs everything I do. Given this view of spirit, it will change and develop over time as I change through my experiences and as my world view forms.

For me, this idea leads to another thought, the idea of Christ's redemption as played out in my own life. As I grow into relationship with God, this, if real, will begin to inform my behaviors and over time, change who I am at my core. On the other hand, if I delve into my own devices, my core will crumble.

Just some random thoughts.

Midlake and St. Vincent @ Walters on Washington

Last night I went to the Midlake concert at Walters on Washington. My brother introduced me to them a couple of weeks ago and we found out they would be in town.

The show was opened by St. Vincent. The band is made up of only one person, and unassuming woman with huge glasses and a voice that leaves you wondering how it came from her. She rocked out on the guitar playing a bluesy rock, with an occasional kick of the drum (yes, she would literally kick it). While she lacked the usual stage antics, the performance was great. I bought her three track LP which is good, however, I don't feel it competes with her live show.

After another opener (not really worth mentioning), Midlake took the stage. During setup they placed a paper-mache panther head in front of the keyboard and set a projector to display video behind them during the performance. Before they even started playing I knew I would like their performance, and I was not disappointed. The lead singer seemed almost pensive during the show, the seriousness of an artist delivering his wares. I appreciated the fact that they would switch instruments, they seem to really know music and use this knowledge to create a very mature style. The video clips in the background created an asthetic element to the concert which was almost meditative.

I would definitely suggest a listen to The Trial of Van Occupanther.

Back Again

Well, being that my sister has started her blog up again, and it has been almost a year since my last post, I figure I might as well try to start it up again, though no guarantees.

Just a brief catch-up on me. I have lived in the Montrose area of Houston for the last year and a half, but have recently bought a house in Tomball. The reason for the move back to Tomball is that I have been going to church at Sondays. One of my best friends, Matt Davis, plays the music and finally got me to check it out after about a year of bugging me. I have been going ever since. It is a group of about 50-60 people and we meet at a coffee shop Sunday nights. One of the things that attracts me to this church the most is that it is diverse and oriented towards social justice. A lot to most of the people who come either are or have been addicted to drugs or alcohol. There is a group from the Open Door Mission who come every week. Everyone welcomes one another, they talk about what is actually going on in their lives, it is a real community. I love it.

Anyway, I will be posting somewhat regularly (hopefully) and will continue to fill you in.

jp