"You're making me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry"

So I got angry today...but it wasn't like the turn green, rip off my shirt and smash everyone in town, but it was more just the type that you get in your head. It was the type of anger I'm sure we all have felt that ruins a great day and you get this sweet vision in your head where you "accidentally" bump someone off a cliff or something like that. Which got me thinking. When does anger turn into a sin?

Most know the passage where Jesus clears out the temple. In Matthew it says, "Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves"(Matthew 21:12). This same story is told in Mark 11:12-19 and. Luke 19:45-48. Jesus then goes on to say, "It is written, My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers"(vs 13).

Jesus got angry! But what comes next is NOT where Jesus goes off with his disciples live in their anger, but right in the next verse it says, "The blind and the lame came to Him at the temple and He healed them"(vs 14). Since Jesus, the perfect man who we are called to be like, got angry then when is it okay for us to be angry?

In Proverbs 29:11 it says, "A fool gives full vent to His anger, but a wise man keels himself under control." When does control turn to full vent? Some help could come from Ephesians 4:26-27 where Paul writes, "In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold." When, then, can I be angry without sinning?


PS- As I write this I am currently not angry, so this is not a rant.

Another incomplete thought...

[Tony]

Oh,

How my soul

Is so

Broken.

On the edge of the end of a season of death, of cold, of shadowy colors, I sit, and I wait, anxiously, for the air to warm, for the earth to thaw, for the rebirth of life and vitality. It is interesting that Jesus was born in the midst of a season of desolation and died in a season of rebirth. It seems that God performs a new creation every spring, bringing light to darkness, life to barren land, division between water and shore. Yet, I know that this cannot be true. The winter is part of creation too. Spring can only come if it is preceded by the cold winter. Creation is still alive. It builds and forms and changes because of what is happening now. I know that life can only be born out of the dead of this winter. 

I am still here.

I think of the word rebirth and immediately other words come to my mind: renovation, renewal, restoration-

Resurrection.

It seems so much easier, in the winter, to see the brokenness in the world. Maybe its because certain types of suffering and pain may become more tangible at times. Our hands get cold while we walk to our cars. No matter how hard we try,  its hard to keep our shoes clean when we walk through the streets. We know that there are people close to us who are suffering so much more than we are. We feel the cold. We can imagine what it would be like without gloves. We could feel it if we wanted to. We feel uncomfortable when brokenness looks us in the face and we recognize it in ourselves. 

God says to the animals, to the fish, to the birds, to Adam, to Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply.” 

Grow!

And so, God begins something. God creates a world that will grow, and change, and form, that can be built up, that can be torn down. I look like creation. The world was a child. I am a child. I grow. I learn. I change. And like the world, I am so broken. I am broken, and I know that my brokenness cannot fix brokenness. The brokenness in the world is my own brokenness. On my own, only winter will follow winter. The story from the fall seems to follow a pattern like this- brokenness leading to more brokenness. Then something happens. 

The Creator puts himself in the story.

In the death and desolation of the winter- in a barn, on the margins of the city, restoration is born. God becomes both author and character in the story. Jesus travels from town to town, preaching about a way of life that will transform the world. But, we are still broken- until the cross. On the cross, every brokenness, for every person, is washed away. Something else dies with Jesus. Out of death comes the possibility for life- renovation, renewal, restoration, resurrection. We are able to live a life of transformation because we have been transformed. We are creation and we have Good News. We are no longer broken. Our winter is over. Let us resurrect the world.

God, let us be your Good News to each other.

Live goldfish, piranha tank and my "bedroom"

Ryan (pup)
So you may be asking yourself, "How does a fifth guy move in to a house where there are already more guys than there are bedrooms?" The answer is that I don't really have a bedroom. Well I kind of do. It's behind a couch...on the floor. I call it more of an area than a bedroom.
Since I have moved in, I have been feeling the Lord doing a great deal of work in me; not that he wasn't before I moved in, but I have been able to focus more on Him and have been spending so much more time digging through the Word since I have been here (probably due to the lack of television). For those of you who know me, you know that karate is a big part of my life. I have been training in karate for years and for the past 2 years I have been the head instructor of a karate school in Hugo, but over the past few months the thought has been in the back of my head that the Lord has something for me that is much bigger and much more glorifying to Him than karate. I just kept shoving those thought back down and kept karate on that stand above God in my life. I had big plans for my life and I was planning on going places and wasn't about to change them.
But it was shortly after I moved in when I finally heard God say, "Time to live for Me!"
So as of April 1, I will no longer be head instructor of USA Karate Hugo and I am okay with that. When people ask what I'm going to do with my life, well I guess I don't know yet. I am constantly reminded though of Jeremiah 29:11 which states, "For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Now about the piranhas. I recently acquired a fish tank and some piranhas..three of them to be exact. Their names are Manfred, Yancey and Trevor (after Trevor Johnson). They live happily in our living room/kitchen area and I believe that they all love life. They enjoy eating (sometimes each other) and swimming and hiding in the treasure chest that they have. About the live goldfish...I'll let you figure that out :)

God Bless

The most beautiful people...

[James] ...the most beautiful people in the world are those who simply realize, and I mean deeply internalize and persistently strive to actualize, the depth of the Grace that has been bestowed upon them.

You will meet people in life, each one carries a different air about them. There are those who are bitter, those who are sour, those who are superficially happy and those who are mean. But once in a while, and study them if you do, you will meet a person, who is so consumed with the sheer revelation that they deserve absolutely nothing and yet have been given everything. These people will change the world.

A Mess and a Savior

[Tony]
Ryan Lindstedt, James, and myself spent this last weekend at Silver Birch Ranch in Wisconsin for the notorious annual high school retreat, Winter White Out. The focus of the weekend was on surrender, and in order to illustrate the idea of surrender to the high schoolers, we asked them to consider their own stories- their life stories, their pasts, their presents, their accomplishments, their defeats, and so-on. Then we provided a few stories of characters from the bible as examples of “surrender stories.” Anyway, with so much attention to the power of a story, I’d like to share one with you from this weekend. It isn’t a life story, it isn’t even really a surrender story, its kind of, well… a story.
Before our large group service on Saturday night, one of the tenth graders, who was staying in the same cabin I was in, pulled me to the side with a rather stressed look on his face. I asked him what was up- turns out, at some point in the afternoon, someone had clogged the toilet in the cabin. A few students apparently tried very hard to fix the problem themselves (probably so they wouldn’t have to tell me), however, in their attempts to make everything better, everything kept getting worse, until they stopped trying once the toilet flooded over onto the floor of the bathroom.
So, later that night, I went back to the cabin to find that the mess wasn’t actually as bad as I had pictured it, even though there was a little overflow in the floor and the toilet was still plugged. I tried for about fifteen minutes to unplug the toilet before another student came in. On the night we arrived, we were told that if there was any problems late at night, there would be a walkie-talkie available in the dining hall which we could just turn on and start talking into (and a staff person would answer back and come to our aid). So, I sucked up a little bit of pride and asked some of the guys in my cabin to go call for back-up on the walkie-talkie.
I was alone again for about ten minutes, trying to unplug our toilet, when Dave showed up. Dave was apparently the camp handyman. He was short and wiry- the kind of wiry that suggested a certain kind of raw strength that can only be built through the survival of life and its experiences. He had messy grey hair under a winter hat, and a scraggly beard that accented a face that was weathered and windblown, with deep lines around his eyes that spoke of age and hard work, but also suggested, in some way, a depth of wisdom. He wore a one-piece snow suit with a belt full of odd gadgets for fixing whatever random things high schoolers could possibly break (or clog), as they come and go in waves every weekend. His snow suit, his face, his belt, and the plunger in his hand when he walked by me made him look like a simple janitor- even though I knew that he was relied on for the maintenance of so much more every night at the camp.
He greeted me with a genuine apology, which surprised me, even before I could offer an apology of my own. “I’m sorry that the toilet is acting up on you” he said as he passed me by, on a mission for the bathroom. He walked right in with his plunger, assessed the situation and, without second thought or hesitation of the smell, or the other rather undesirable circumstances, started going to town on the toilet. After a while of working diligently on his momentary project, I noticed that he had some interesting little quirks. There was something about his personality that was comforting. He seemed to walk into our cabin screaming “Here I am. I am going to be absolutely nothing but myself. I’ll leave it up to you to decide who you are going to be.” The elements of that moment (and by elements, I also mean the elements on the floor and plugged in the toilet) didn’t seem to exist to him. It seemed to me that the only thing that mattered was that I had a mess that I couldn’t clean up by myself. All he wanted was to make things right- how they were before the mess. He breathed deeply and heavily. He walked rather quickly and deliberately, as if always pursuing something. He mumbled to himself while he worked. At one point, his nose started running, and instead of trying to hide it before I could notice, he wiped it on his sleeve and muttered “boogers, boogers, boogers…” I wasn’t quite sure if it was okay to laugh.
I realized, as I watched him work, that there was something about him that suggested a joy that was deeper than anything I have ever known in my own life. He was trying to unplug a toilet that was plugged by someone he had never met- at 11:30 at night. Yet, everything that I could perceive of him said that he was happier then than I may have ever been in my life. The only thing that could have made him happier would have been the knowledge that he was able to take this mess away so that I would not be burdened any longer with trying to fix it on my own. There was something that he had that I wanted very badly.
After about ten minutes of work, the toilet was finally unplugged. We cleaned up the floor and then, after another set of apologies (as this whole endeavor was apparently more of an inconvenience for me as it was for him…) he left again. Not a minute after he walked out, one of my resident sophomores came in.
“Did you get the toilet fixed?”
“Yeah.”
“By yourself?”
“No.”
“Oh, did Dave already come by?”
“Yeah. He just left. I’m surprised you didn’t see him.”
Then a thought came. My awareness of what might have just happened flooded my mind. I replayed the last ten minutes over and over, each time becoming more disappointed in my obliviousness to who this ‘custodian’ resembled, almost ashamed at the fact that I didn’t see it when he was right in front of me. I smiled at the student who was still standing close to me and said, “Sometimes I ask God to come into my life and I wait- I wait for some extravagant thundercloud with a booming voice like the wind, I wait for a burning pillar of fire, I wait for a burning bush, I wait for a shining, majestic, blue-eyed, fair skinned Jesus to come riding in on the clouds on a valiant white warrior horse. Then, while I’m waiting, Jesus comes into my life. He comes into my cabin, weathered, worn and determined, with a plunger in his hand. He talks to me, while he cleans up the mess I made because I tried to fix it on my own. When I come to these retreats, my desire is that every high schooler finds Jesus. Then, sometimes, I tell them, in indirect ways, how to look for burning bushes and riders on white horses coming through the clouds. I’m sorry that I haven’t been as productive in introducing you to the Jesus that I first fell in love with- the quiet, dirty, wind beaten shepherd who died so that his sheep don’t have to worry about their messes anymore. Sometimes God shows up as a voice on a mountain. Other times, God shows up as a janitor and asks you where your mess is.”

No sleep... time to blog.

[James] It has been far too long since I have last posted. And being that the number one rule to blogging is the importance of consistency, I have yet to master this art...

This morning I awoke at about 3:30am... wide awake and desperately parched. I chugged a bit of water, only to realize that my stomach wasn't feeling that hot. Maybe it was the spirit prompting me to spend some time in prayer. Maybe it was my stomach trying to digest the braut and the left over hamburger that I had around 11 before I went to bed. Either way, I am still awake and I decided to make use of the time.

Life in the house has been really good this past season. From Christmas on through the new year I have felt a great deal of joy in the house. And what might be most adding to that joy is the addition of a 5th roommate, Ryan Nyquist who was a former student of mine. As Tony calls him, "The Pup" has quickly adapted to life here in the community. He is getting his fair share of exposure to Christian living, including prayer, visiting prophets, sharing of resources and worship. He has added to our collection of gutiars and music, which is never a bad thing.

Some challenges or, I should say limitations, to living here have been consistency on my part. My life is and always seems to be full of its fair share of randomness, inconsistencies and scattered events of great value and of a horribly unplanned nature. However this makes it difficult for not only my own life as it makes it harder to create a healthy routine, but it also makes it difficult for living in community in which we would like to be doing things like community meals, times of prayer and intentional living in the community surrounding.

Today our house was filled with the incredible collection of small group leaders for the Senior High ministry. The 20+ of us filled our main floor with food, smiles and great discussion. I was reminded of how blessed we are to live in the place we do. I hope to continue being able to have gatherings such as these here in this place. And as I was leaving the gathering, I stepped out into the sun which absolutely has been lifting my soul over the past two days! As I was driving I was doing so with the window down and my face out the window trying to soak up every single second of the suns rays! So beautiful...

Well, I might try to get some more shut eye. Maybe it won't be so long before the next post.

Becoming Human- from Christmas Eve Sanctuary service

[Tony] If you were to ask my parents, they would tell you that I am afraid of babies; maybe in the same way parents are afraid to bring their kids into a china store. The smaller the child, they would tell you, the more fervently I will avoid interaction. It is a fear that is two-fold, and maybe some of you can relate: first, it is a fear of the immediate presence of a child's complete vulnerability-- so small, so fragile, so precious, and so not mine-- but most of all, so dependent, and so in need. The second face of my, potentially irrational, fear is the gripping reality of my own inadequacy-- the fear that, even if I could give every ounce of myself, a child would still need more from me, a fear of not knowing what to do when who knows what happens, or gets lost, or gets hurt, or comes out-- a fear that what I have to give is not enough to offer.
There was something about this child, about the way that He looked at me, that caught me off guard. There is something in the way a baby will look into your eyes that seems to speak gently, but clearly to something inside of your own heart that cannot ignore the words: "Hello. Yes, I am here. Yes, I am very real. I can be hurt. I can feel alone. I can know joy. This is what I am. This is all I am. You are all I have. I cannot live without you. I will be yours. I already am yours. How do I know if I can call you mine? Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Will you care for me? Will you comfort me? Will you keep me warm? Can I show you that I am frightened and know that you will protect me? Is it okay if I change your life? Is it okay if you become someone different than who you are now? Can I surprise you? Is it okay if I need you for the rest of my life? Do you need me? How will I know that you are there? How can I show you that I need you? Is it okay if this isn't easy? Would you believe me if I could tell you that you won't regret this? Will you talk to me? Will you sing to me at night? Will you hold me? Will you pick me up? Will you hold me? Do you love me?"
This child was in love with me even before I picked him up and held him. His need of my love was love. When I picked Him up; when He allowed me to hold him, something happened. I felt a vastness within me that I didn't even know was empty, become flooded. I became a child. I learned a love that was new and real and terrifying and irresistible. It was only while I held Him that I was able to truly love him, because it was only while I held Him that I was truly vulnerable. I began to ask the same questions, allowing myself to surrender to His answers-- "Am I doing okay? What do you need? Can I make mistakes? Where will you take me? Where should I take you? Do you love me?" If an almighty God can become a man, I would need Him to be a child first. In order for me to have a relationship with Him, I would need to know that He could love me like a child. This child is the Christ-child, yes, but this child is also fully human. My relationship with this child has grown much like He would slowly grow in front of His own parents. I was only able to start a relationship with God if He too became a child, because there is where my walk needed to start. He met me where I was and He walked with me from there. I was a child and He met me as a child— fragile, dependent, and so human.