A couple of quick thoughts.

1st – Yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far for us here in Lancaster, we toped out at 76 degrees, which felt absolutely amazing. I’m realizing this year how much I’ve longed for Spring and to get through the winter. So yesterday was wonderful. The trees where blooming, the smell of grass and grills floated around the neighborhood, it was like a dream come true!

It was great.

Here are the tress on Queen street coming out of the city

2nd – Pearl and I are leading a group of 13 to the Czech Republic this summer. Each of the students are having to raise their own support and one of the girls got very creative in my mind, she’s sending a letter to the White House. Now her Dad did do something with snipers ,the Military police and was stationed at the White House at one point, but needless to say I’m really curious if we’ll receive any response from this letter.

Well, have a great day and enjoy the wonderful arrival of spring, well at least until the storm front moves in tomorrow.

work here we come...

First of all, I love road biking, but it’s completely not apart of my rhythms, so it becomes something I love, yet never do.

Second, I love to play with Pearl, now before you think I’m talking dirty, I literary mean play, as in having fun, goofing off, enjoying each other, Goosh I give up, you know what I mean and the more I type the worse this gets.

Third, Pearl and I have been wanting to exercise more

Forth, we want to do our part in being green

Fifth, we would love to save some gas money.

So with all those factors combined we are going to try and bike to work 4 times a week. Well not really 4 full times, so let me explain, we’ll drive the car in on Monday morning, taking the bikes with us and then bike home that afternoon leaving the car at the office. Then Tuesday morning bike back into work and drive home that evening, then repeating Thursday and Friday. We’ve worked things out so we will have the car on the evenings we need one and so we’ll have it for the weekend as well.

We’ve got several friends who are betting against us, saying we’ll not make it more than a week. Hopefully we can prove them wrong.

But we’re not off to a good start so far, we’ve done the trip twice and the first time I had a flat and the second Pearl did, and did I mention that it was 39 degrees and misting.

So the moral of all this is, if you see two road bikers sitting on the road next to yellow and white bikes, please oh please stop offer them a ride home.

And yes moms we are wearing our helmets.

The kingdom of God is like a coffeeshop...

I’m sitting at Square one Coffee on Duke Street in the city. I’m enjoying the smell of coffee, the air of anticipation as people are moving in and out, and the continual mind games of guessing where people are coming from, where their going and what they are generally about.

This little coffee shop carries a lot of meaning for me. Before Pearl and I moved to Lancaster almost 3 years ago I did a 3-month summer internship in this area. I knew a grand totally of 1.5 people coming up here. I say 1.5 cause I knew one person from school and the .5 was “friendship” a weird sorta-kind-of knowing way.

But that summer was one of the key transforming periods of my life. It exposed me to a different way of living, to a biblical worldview that was expressed differently then the worldview I grew up with, to city life, and it provided me enough loneliness to actually slowdown a little and reflect on life. And that is way this little coffee shop means so much to me.

It was here that I spent many of those lonely nights sitting, reflecting, pondering.

It was here that I observed different lifestyles

It was here that I debriefed with my friend what I was processing.

This place has provided the safety, yet inspiration for me to question, to wrestle.

So in a sense this coffee shop with it’s odd arrangement of artwork, exposed brick from decades ago, smells of delightful drinks and goodies, conversations happening around little round tables between people from all different walks of life reminds me a little of heaven.

You could say that the kingdom of God is like a local coffee shop, where all the colors and expressions of local life come together to enjoy and enrich each other, putting their personal differences aside for the united experience of enjoying the moment.

One day, followers of the way of Jesus will gather together in a local coffee shop in the kingdom of God, and share stories.

Why I want to blog more...

I’m trying to intentionally blog more, cause in a round about way I’m wanting to force myself to reflect and ponder about life. To slow down and notice the world around me. To find God in this world.

And in discovering God around us, be able to write modern day parables. Parables that expose God, his character, his heart, his desires.

To see God’s heart shown in how a mom walks her child, to see reflections of God’s character in
someone helping a neighbor, to point out grace in a hug, to show that God is alive and active all around us.

May our eyes be open to the beauty around us, to the reflections of God in our everyday world.

May we truly see truth.

Easter…. I know this is late but still

Easter is one of the cornerstone holiday’s of my faith. I have followed in the way of this faith for years and in thus celebrated numerous Easters, yet this year Easter looked very different for me.

Easter usually is a time when I reflect on the death of Christ, his selfless act of receiving the punishment of my sin, but mainly his death. As if the movie “the Passion” was the main focus and meaning of Easter, focusing more on the death and murder and not as much the coming back to life part.

With focusing mainly on how and why Jesus died Easter seemed to always be “stained or overshadowed” with a sense of shame and punishment. As if the holiday was designed to remind me of my sin, my shame, my unworthiness, etc. Basically a way to remember yearly how I’m viewed as “totally deprived.”

But this year Easter looked very different in my eyes.

I had the honor of teaching twice this Easter, once for a way-to-early, yet very cool sunrise service and the other being our young adult discussion gathering we do at LCBC.

A friend, Jason, passed a book to me to think through as I was gathering my thoughts. The book is called “Following Jesus” by N.T. Wright. Wright in his final chapter looks at the resurrection of Christ and brings to light what the Jewish understanding of this word was in the day of Jesus.

In a nutshell the word “resurrection” carried the weight of renewal, of making things “good or right” as they where originally in the Garden.

For example, the Jews believed that God would bring “resurrection” to Israel, making them a great nation and through them restore the world back to a “good and right” way of living. They understood Resurrection, or this renewal, to be a three part act. First the renewal of the nation, then the renewal of the world, and finally a renewal of the righteous dead.

So here’s how Easter changed for me.

The ragtag group of Jewish followers, who grew up entrenched in a Jewish culture, a Jewish teaching, a Jewish life begin to follow this Rabbi named Jesus, they listen to his teaching, his way of explaining Scriptures, his way of saying to do life.

They learn from him.

They commit their every waking moment to being in his footsteps, of knowing his ways.

They believe in him.

They fall in love with him.

He is murdered…He is gone.

For them it’s over

it’s done

they are left to pick of the pieces of life and try and move on.

But one day a friend runs into the house, saying Jesus is alive.

ALIVE!

They question, they doubt, they confirm, then they declare…

This is how Easter changed for me.

They not only declared that Jesus was alive, they declared, get this,

that he had resurrected.

The resurrection!

The resurrection had begin!

The great renewal that all Jewish boys and girls learned of and dreamed of had begin.

It was really happening.

God was in the process of now making things right, of restoring life back to what is was originally meant to be, of once again being able to declare “it is good”.

These followers lived to bring the resurrection to the world around them, of showing how because of Jesus things can be made right again, be put back to the way he designed them to be, to find renewal.

So Easter this year was not yet other reminder of how pathetic of a person I am, or yet other preachers chance to declare how I’ve messed up in life, to point out my sin, of how far I am from God.

But a reminder that God is making things right, He started this great renewal and in small ways it’s still continuing today!

That you and I have been invited into bringing “resurrection” to the communities and lives around us, that we, through what Jesus did on the cross, can help renew this world, to help make it right, cause guess what, the kingdom of God, the ultimate renewal, the ultimate resurrection is not going to take place in some distant universe, but here.

The great “all ready not yet”

The Kingdome is already here, just not yet in it’s fullness

So, may we be a people who pull the kingdom closer, that bring resurrection to the lives of those of around us, that resistant belittling those around us by declaring yet again their sin, but helping them discover resurrection for themselves.