A Champion Has Emerged...

Like David in the crowd, a single champion has stepped forward. The last installment in the series "Veni, Vidi, Vici" (for this day...)

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Conditions were established, a deadline was mutually agreed upon, and consequences were set. There is a price to paid.

We have finally achieved a peaceful resolution, and harmonious shalom has been established as nearly as can be on this side of the door.

The dark rain that pelted our small field has lifted, the countenance of the clouds has lightened, and "pax patris" has been re-established.

All is well.

But what is this? Do I hear lamenting and wailing from the shadier corners of my kingdom?

"I can't find my spiderman un'waaaaaaare!"

Veni, vidi, vici (part two)

in the ongoing saga of generational conflict...join us for Masterpiece theatre's production of Veni, Vidi, Vici, chapter 2...

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Tigger has begun his descent. He is turning to pagan gods as he begins to remove clothes, and chant, threatening ritual sacrifice and offering to appease pagan gods and endear his cause to their wickedness.

Flatulence and other offensive body functions have become part of his new and ever shifting strategy. Regressive behavior, such as thumb-sucking and grunting in place of talking has surfaced. Intelligence does not indicate that the enemy will fully regress to incontinence, given past patterns. But we cannot rule it out as a possible tactic. Conversation has turned to where babies come from, where mommies come from.

The sky is darkening and currents of high wind roil and bubble around the urban battlefield, though it is but mid-morning...

The determined but spiritually drained father is holding steady, but his demeanor and his mantle of righteous discipliner is thinning as madness begins to take hold. He begins to suspect conspiracy as the younger boy makes his way into the basement.

The battle continues to unfold...will contrition and grace rule the day? Or righteous wrath and loving discipline?

Veni, vidi, vici (part one)

On this day, it is a battle not of might, but of minds.

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Tigger sits, alone, solitary-will he be the victor?

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The father sits, facing down his son, as his son stares down yet another weak excuse for a glass of milk. It is a contest of will. Who will emerge the champion?

Will youthful exhuberance push forward, ignoring the pain? Ignoring as the lactic acid builds the burn? As the burning need to run and scream and shout leaps from his body like a static charge? Can he withstand the mounting pressure?

Will age and experience take the battle? Maturity in the form of quiet resolution, biding time until his opponent, his charge, his first born son finally cannot contain the fire within.

The boy waits, energy coursing and crackling around him, like the sound of bacon in a hot frying pan. The air around him sizzles with anticipation of the release.

The man counts minutes, wondering to himself how productive his day could be if only his firstborn would revert to ingrained patterns of consumption and resume participating in the natural order of things.

The sound of undisciplined power rings throughout the halls, wordless sounds, consonants, vowels, growls, grunts and outright blood-curdling screams as the boy attempts to cope with the energy that is raging through his small wiry body.

The younger child bounces around the house, mindful of this new...freedom, this uncommon gap in oversight. He .. touches things, new things, shiny things, dark, dark things. It is a mystical moment as he reaches out, changing the ontological structure of everything he touches, changing the relationship to the rest of the cosmos with one small nudge. Such power.

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Time passes...who will stand?

on being a church janitor...

I've done a lot of odd jobs. I've cleaned urinals and toilets in an Indian Casino. Every 15 minutes. Can you believe that? I've done some framing, I broke a wrist (mine) when I tried to billy goat across a deck (not mine). I worked as a busboy in a canadian pancake house. I ate a LOT of omelets that summer. WHOO! I graduated to server/host at a retirement facility's in-house fancy restaurant. I did that for several years. For awhile I filled in at my church as janitor while the real janitor took a summer off.

I've been fired twice. Once I think it was because I ate too many breadsticks and boxed too few pizzas (little caesars). The other time, well, I think I just didn't have the chops they were hoping for (Hoppe Construction). I laid a patch in Hoppe's parking lot with my Mercury Lynx. Totally. I think that was before I had to take the hood off because the latch broke. (Sorry, Amanda, I tried to take good care of her-but it was never meant to be...)

I've quit some pretty good jobs. I quit my job at Pella Windows because I was moving to another area code. I quit a job I didn't like very much, only to find out that it wasn't the job, so much as the employer. And I recently quit working at what I would argue is probably the best cabinet shop in the state. I had some very mixed feelings about that one...

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I seem to generate friction all by myself. Friction is generally something that occurs when 2 or more opposing forces come into conflict with each other. Somehow I manage to do it all by my one-sie. I mean, it's not riding your bike with no hands, but it's not nothing, and as Tigger says "Doing some-fing's NOT nuffin' ". I seem to create tension where previously there had been none. Maybe that's my special little imago dei - creatio et nihilo. Sum-(p)- 'fin from nuffin (that's not Latin, that's just Tigger).

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My faith, my education and my pleasure in words have enabled my tendency to opine (I say "po-tae-to," you say "po-tah-do," I say "o-pine," you say "pon-tif-i-cate"...). That can be an endearing trait, to those who are actually interested in other people's thoughts. However, that's not most of the people I've spent time with. At least at work.

I don't mean to repulse people. In fact I intend quite the opposite. I'm just not very good at it. I've been working on that. In all fairness I think I've come a long way over the past several years. But I'm young yet, and it's a pretty deeply ingrained habit (if "habit" is the correct word).

I don't want you to get the wrong ideas. It's not like I built a pulpit next to my bench and stood up there yelling at people. Frankly, I kept to myself for the better part. But you know sin: No matter what your intention, it's going to be interpreted by somebody else through their eyes. And my isolation came off as aloofness. That's often the case isn't it? You figure somebody who doesn't really engage with everybody else is... a snob. Or holier-than-thou. When really they're just not paying attention, or maybe they're actually scared of you.

Sometimes people thought I was trying to chastise them. But this is the truth: I was probably feeling the desire to participate! I was probably feeling the urge to escalate the darkness, to amplify it! To somehow exaggerate or continue whatever mischief was going on.

So I simply took myself out of that situation. Or said nothing. And often that was perceived as being self-righteous, or holier-than...or prudish. Or whatever. I don't know.

I have never seen a person won over to Christ because of my testimony, witness, or presence in their lives. The joy and relief, the knowledge that my inability to perform perfectly, or appeal convincingly---these things have not spurned those around me to ask me why. Nobody, to my recollection has ever said to me, "There's something about you that I want to understand better." I've heard plenty of people suggest that I have a "uniqueness" but not in a really envious or curious sort of way, if you get my drift.

It's been a burden to me that I have likely caused people to check Jesus off the list. It distresses me when I think for even a moment that somebody is walking around cursing Jesus with my name. The thought has given me many extra tosses and turns. At times I still hate that I left my last job, because I feel like there was so much unfinished business. But on the other hand, I also felt many times like I've blown it so bad with so many people just by being a flawed person that there wasn't any ground left to cover.

I've dreaded the day when I have to answer to God for my part of those peoples lives.

But then there is grace.

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I wrestled with the suggestion that I was running away from battle when I decided to quit my job and take on being a stay-at-home parent. Jesus stands over the entirety of creation and declares with confidence and expectation, that "this is mine." And he left the church to, by the strength and wisdom of the Holy Spirit, go about the work of reclaiming what had been claimed. And I left a battle ground. No. I practically ran from it. At least this is what the enemy whispers in my ear.

But I think the truth of it is that you can't escape the battle, just as you cannot escape confrontation with the enemy. There is no part of creation that is uncontested. The business of spiritual warfare is not something you can choose to just disengage with. You simply become subject to its currents unawares. My battle now is to raise up two men who will become great warriors and conquerers for King Jesus. And the enemy is working, even now, to make them spiritual pacifists-apathetic, unconcerned, undisciplined, and un-discerning.

My battle also has arrived on the scene of the institutional church. It has become a greater and greater role for me to help uphold, instruct, pastor, and care for the body of Jesus. I try, still a flawed human, to search the depths of ancient wisdom, to listen to and perceive the quiet whispers of the Spirit, and to minister to God on behalf of the people He's called. In other words, I sing with people. I sing FOR people who don't know how to let their spirit and heart sing. I have given people songs to sing. That's kinda my thing. It happens on a stage sometimes, but I've stood on the back edge before. I've never been "THE" leader. Just the first one to follow. That kinda works for me too.

We do small groups, and been on a variety of "teams" in our congregation. Set-up, worship-band, class leaders, small group leaders. We don't interact much with the "outside" world. And I don't always know how to reconcile that with the ministry of reconciliation that GOD is on. But for now, when people ask, I sort of shrug and say, well, I'm kinda a janitor of the church. I mean, we sort of all are supposed to be, I think. I don't clean toilets or anything. But I try to keep things moving when their s'posed ta, and to stay put when they ain't. Ya know?

tempted as we were...

I've been thinking about prayer a lot recently. And I don't know about you, but often, when I think of prayer, I think of Jesus. Go fig.

So, here's the deal: as many of you know, we've been in an ongoing struggle with the powers of darkness in an effort to sell our home (which we DEARLY love, and HATE to part with) so that we could buy a particular small farm near Suga' Momma's parents' house in the rolling hills of Madison Co. Well, last week, we found a buyer. Or rather, they found us through a rather serendipitous course of events. I believe with all the certainty I can muster that God reached down with His hand and guided that beautiful couple to our front door.

It was with great excitement that we (me and Suga' Momma) went to the owners of the farm to present our now very serious offer. And it was with disappointment that matched or exceeded our prior excitement that we left, rejected.

So what now?

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We have 3 options at this point. Settle with the current owners of the OK Corral, and move into a place that we had been looking forward to for the past year in spite of its MANY significant flaws (front door opens into...living room? No. Kitchen. Lovely. And the fake formica dark oak paneling in the living room is quite charming to boot). Or we rent an apartment/townhouse/condo/whatever for a period of time, and either wait for circumstances to change (no, not like having a BABY this month or anything like that! More like, sellers of said farm repent of their mean-ness, or new property comes on market, or we BUILD a custom house). Or we turn away divinely inspired couple who appears to love our house almost as much as we do.

Well, we've opted to pray. God has blessed us so richly in the past that we have full confidence that He will provide again and again. We've been for the last 2 days driving gravel roads, up and down, and back again. Looking for a sign (in a manner of speaking). The endless, dusty gravel roads of Iowa's rural counties are where I ALWAYS go looking for a sign from God. I mean, where else would you go? "Is this ... heaven?" "No. It's Iowa."

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I wonder though sometimes. Jesus spent a great deal of time alone in prayer. The disciples, his friends, must have felt great frustration at times. They wake up, people start asking questions-they must have looked at each other a few times, at that early hour, and wonder if the heat had finally gotten to him and he just left in the night.

The scriptures say that Jesus was tempted in every way, feeling everything that we feel; that he was human and understands our weakness. I remember when somebody suggested to me that Jesus had suffered stomach flu, and how repulsed I was by the notion of my Savior kneeling over a bucket and getting puke in his beard. Or worse. But it has to be true. Doesn't it? We sort of forget that he was a human, in a human body.

But here's where it gets a little murky for me. Do you suppose he prayed as we do? Do you suppose he ever sat on his little stump, or rock, or whatever, and just prayed words out into the air, and wondered, "Is there anybody out there listening?"

Being human, I would have to say, sure. Sure he did. But being sinless, I have to wonder if that defined his prayer life more so than his being human. The consequence of sin in OUR lives is that we suffer alienation from God's certain communion. Our salvation diminishes that alienation by degrees as we are justified through faith. But it is not fully conquered until we are fully justified, which is so far off, it seems. At times anyways.

So that leaves me to wonder...did Jesus ever just kneel and ask God, "Are you really out there?" And then his perfect faith compelled him to believe-his belief being different than a scientific sort of knowledge, empirically driven and verified. But belief IS a kind of knowing. It is a faith-based knowing. It is not solely empirical. I don't know.

God, I know You're out there. It is a belief-based kind of knowing. It is my faith. But sometimes I don't know what I'm hearing, or who I'm listening too. Shout in my ear, father. Maybe I'll catch it this time.