Caleb's sense of humor

Two days ago, Caleb and I were at Petsmart looking t the fish, birds, etc. One of the employees was bringing out a gekko for some kids to touch and pet. Caleb was one of those kids, along with 3-4 others. As Caleb is looking at and touching the gekko, his first comment is, "There's a gekko on TV!"

getting away again

This weekend is the big 4-0 birthday for me. Christa and I are headed out of town this Wed-Fri to celebrate. We've got a condo near Angels Camp for swimming, dining, hiking, maybe checking out a winery or two and also taking Caleb to Columbia State Park-the old gold mining town. Something tells me he'll love that

how to fellowship with God's Word

First things first...I'm listening to the new Springsteen cd as I write this. Quite a bit different than anything else he has put out. It's a collection of folk songs written by Pete Seeger set to a folk/Dixieland background. Pretty amazing. One review I saw of it said that Springsteeen's voice was 'a field holler'. Pretty well sums it up. If you've never been a fan of The Boss, ya' gotta give this a listen. It's a bit different.

Now to the other subject matter. One of the men from church named Bob approached me a week ago Sunday and was frustrated with trying to read/study...etc Scripture and could I help him. Well, we got together for lunch last week and I tried to give him some insights and ideas to follow.

The first idea is based on how we read. Most of us read to get information and to be able to use it in our lives. We often carry this over into Scripture as well. What facts can I learn to use later? Scripture is not meant to be used that way. It is not 'information' but 'revelation'. One of the ideas is learning to look at Scripture as God's revealing of Himself to us, not us gathering facts and theology about God.

The second idea is one of my main points about having a devotional life at all. It is not something that we do, but rather it is someone that we meet wtih. This is a revolutionary idea for our fellowship with God. We don't put a devotional time on a calendar as a thing to do and then cross it off when we are done. Rather, we need to learn to look at it as a divine appointment with God. One this begins to work itself into our everyday life, it will absolutely turn our devotional lives upside down.

With this in mind, I gave Bob the assignment to read through the letter to the Philippians every day for the next 30 days and to try to put these two ideas to work in the midst of it. At the end of these 30 days, we're going to get together and see what God did.

nasty bits

I just finished reading a book called "The Nasty Bits" by Tony Bourdain (author of "Kitchen Confidential", a great book about the inside of restaurant kitchens from one who's been there). One of his essays talked about the need to get away from the traditional fast food/corporate food that we all taje for granted so much. I'm beginning to be determined to do this in my life. When I am out seeing customers during the week, I don't want to do Burger King or any of that any more. This past week when I was out I had a burger at The Red Robin and a club sandwich at Bentelino's deli in Concord. today for lunch I got us some tacos and a quesadilla from El Sol, a Mexican deli down the street. Much preferable to Taco Hell. What is so great about El Sol besides the food is that when you walk in there, you think you're in Tijuana. The tacos are amazing, wll beyond the prefab crap from Taco Bell. So if you live around the Hercules/Pinole/Rodeo area, please, please, please check out El Sol.

never thought I'd quote Gerald Ford

Once Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford was famous for saying, "Our long national nightmare is over". I can say just about the same thing for the softball season that just ended. We finished with an 0-8 record. Never had a lead in any game.. Our typical game we lost about 15-2. Got shutout 3 times. Got hit with the 'mercy' rule about 3 times also. We couldn't hit, or field. major mental erros every game also. I had not played regularly in about 7 years and I didh't start coming alive until the last 2 games when I finally got my batting stroke back. I laso took one for the team in the last game. Neither of our pitchers showed up so I got pressed into service as the emergency starter.

All things considered, I want to play this fall also

growin' the goat

FOr the first time in many years, facial hair is making a reapperance on my face. Goatee time. Gary and Jerry at the office are doing it also. Kinda a guy thing. We just all said last we that we should grow goatees. And here I am on Day #3. Coming nicely already but I'm noticing that there's a substantial bit of gray on the chin. I'm not sure if I'm going to take care of that or not. I don't know if I'm that vain or not.

pleased with discipleship guys

I'm really happy to the way that the men in y discipleship have been responding and studying Scripture. Like the guys last year, it's a bit of a shock to the system the first week or so. IUt's not so much the time being put in but the type of work being done. It's not predigested in any way. The cookies are not on the bottom shelf.

Their work so far as been superb. They are beginning to pull things out of Scripture that are very detail-focused. One thing i want to teach these men is that no words in Scripture are wasted. They are all meaningful.

This Thursday will be the first week that all 5 of us are together. I'm looking forward to seeing the dynamic that emerges from this

spiritual gift of criticism

One thing that all pastors must deal with at some point is criticism. How are we to respond to such negativity regarding what God has called us to?

Case in point: Two nights ago, Christa and I were at Foster's Freeze getting ice cream when we ran into two women who used to go to Bay Hills. One now goes to another chruch. The other isn't going anywhere (perhaps a telling factoid). But the one who doesn't go to church right now pretty much laid into Bay Hills and all the things that she perceives we don't do. She said we needed a singles group, a single mothers group...and went on and on and on. Criticized our move up the street in August.

The question is how to deal with people like this. Ray Matthes says that some people have the spiritual gift of criticism. How true. I pretty much tuned her out after about 2-3 minutes, while Christa listened a bit more. Is either one the best response??

Off the top of my head, I can't think of much in Scripture that deals with how to deal with criticism, beyond generic ideas such as loving your neighbor. I could be wrong about this. When Jesus, Paul or whoever got criticized, they tended to blast thier opponent. Whe Peter criticized Jesus for saying He had to go to the cross, Jesus' reply was, "Get thee behind me Satan." Not a lot of compassion there.

I think perhaps the best answer is to listen to them and work on separating the criticism from the person or the attitude which they bring to the situation. Perhaps their criticism is legitimate but the way they present it makes it unpalatable.

By the way, while listening to this, I'm listening to the new Johnny Cash Cd 'A Hundred Highways'. His last before he died and it fits well as an elegy

getting regular (without bran)

The last couple of weeks it's been difficult for me to find a routine in writing this blog. Some of it, to be sure, is just they way my life has been. Normal routine disruptions just kill me. Being gone bakcpacking, then Christa being gone and then her beig back with Jen and her 2 kids. There's a sense in which life is just beginning to get back to normal.

I'm finding that the older I get, the more I like routine. Not exactly the image I want to have of myself, but there it is. I'd rather think of myself as a living-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of guy, but it's just not who I am. Maybe for the first time I'm beginning to accept than and learn that about myself

new duties at church

Dave is talking about me taking on some additional responsibilities at church. Although he has not said what (we're having breakfast this Thursday) I suspect ith as something to do with how to assimilate people into the church. He has started giving me some names and numbers of people who have checked the worship envelop saying they want to know more about God, etc.

If I were to do some assimilatin stuff at the church, one of the first thing to do would be to put together a 'cheat sheet' of all the ministries and who the contact people are. There's probably a whole lotta sxtuff going on that I and other contact people at the church are unaware of. I'm not the only one. A list of all the ministries and the contact people for them would be an imense help to all staff members.

By Thursday I'll know what Dave's plans and ideas are.

Pregnant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I guess the title says it all. Christa is pregnant with #2. She's about 9 weeks along right now, and we're both sturggling al bit to get used to the idea. We were pretty convinced that Caleb was going to be an only child. I think that's one of the reasons why human gestation is 9 months long. The parents need that much time to get used to the idea!

Of course the morning that I found out, Christa threw me a curbe ball. When we found out she was pregnant with Caleb, she came up to me in the shower with a stick and said, "It's blue!!" Didn't mean a thing to me. I found out shortly that blue=pregnant. So the second time, when she brought me a stick and said, "It's pink!", well, i thought we were in the clear. Once again, I shortly realized that she was using a different pregnancy kit. This time pink=pregnant.