Blog your Blessings Sunday

There's this meme thing going around on the blogosphere called Blog Your Blessings Sunday. I couldn't find the origin post, so, I figured I'd pick up the meme and make up my own rules as I go along. Basically, you Blog your Blessings each Sunday. Easy enough.

God has blessed me in every way, but today I want to write about my third son, Quin. Quin is a boy's boy. He loves to run and fight and loves to dismantle and destroy things. he has earned numerous nicknames, including Quin the Destroyer, Quintilla the Hun, Quinzilla, and Quinsidious. I've written posts on my other blog about him here and here is some video. But, contrary to that destructive nature, Quin is the best snuggler. It is as if, when he chooses to be sweet, he is doubly sweet because it seems so out of his nature. Today in church he snuggled up in my lap and began rubbing my furry cheek with his little smooth one. It was completely endearing. You know, that must be how it is when we, as rebellious, depraved sinners choose to worship God, our Father and Creator.

Thank You, Lord God, for blessing me with Quin. Please use him to teach me how to worship You better.

Run, it's an Evangelist!

Our Sunday school class is studying the book, Gospel Medicine, by Barbara Brown Taylor. In the first chapter she talks about evangelism becoming a very distasteful thing these days. Brown talks about watching Oral Roberts in the 1950's doing his ridiculous faith healing routine and her reaction was to pray she'd never meet an evangelist in person and to swear that she'd run for her life if she ever did. Even as a preacher years later, she was offended when someone called her an evangelical. Even as a preacher she equated evangelism with radical insanity.

The following is an entertaining and disturbing video of some of the sort of faith healing I think Brown was talking about. I don't know who this preacher is, but the only video of Oral Roberts I could find was so old and grainy that it was impossible to even see what was happening.




Let me set one thing straight right now. This is not evangelism. This is spectacle. Evangelism is simply the act of telling people about how good Christianity is. Sharing your experience with God's and Christ's true spiritual healing.

Jonah overboard

Today's sermon was on Jonah 1:1-17. The story of a man called by God but unwilling to speak up against the wickedness of the world. Jonah fled from his calling. You know the story. The sailors cast lots to figure out who was to blame for the storm, and found out that Jonah was fleeing from God. They tried to row to land but the storm got worse. They finally threw Jonah overboard and the storm subsided.

Now, I don't have anything in particular against literal interpretation of the Bible. In fact I believe it is inspired and inerrant. But one of the really neat things about the scriptures is that they are true on many levels, both literal and metaphorical. This story may be literally true, but it also stands as a metaphor for a situation that people find themselves in too often.

Running from God's calling to be holy (that is, unique, different) and to speak out against the evil in the world. When we do this (and we all do), we find that things get stormy. When we try to ride out the storm under our own power we find the chaos gets worse. When we commit ourselves to the company of people who are fleeing from God's call we find that the chaos becomes unbearable. There is no peace until we let go of them and let them fall.

Interestingly, that is what we are doing in Aikido - using physical conflict as a vehicle to explore this principle that sometimes people who are on the wrong path require more strength than you have to use to support them.