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Barb and I had a wonderful week in Chicago. We are so grateful for the hospitality and kindness of our friends Bill and Karen Mills who hosted us on Monday and abandoned us downtown on Tuesday. We are grateful as well to the elders of HPC who carried on so well in my absence.

And we are especially grateful to our two daughters, Hannah and Jerusha, who in such a grown-up way gave us a great anniversary gift by caring for the house and for our seven year old Colin in our absence. You guys are tops!

You don’t want me to give a full report on our trip – that would be too tedious for all. However, two thoughts for which I invite your comments:

What we could give Chicago:

Grits. Would it be so difficult for a northern restaurant to whip up a pot of grits every morning for southern tourists? I just can’t comprehend a breakfast without the grits, and I grew up in Ohio!

What Chicago could give us:

Softball. Real softball. What the rest of the world plays is simply hardball with a big ball. In Chicago they play softball with a ball that is massive (16-inch circumference) and so soft that one does not need to play with gloves. Seemed like a great idea observed from a distance.

Our thanks to God for this great gift of time away.

(The photo, for those of you who do not know, was taken at Gino’s East, a famous Chicago deep-dish pizza place, where one is encouraged to leave graffiti! We did.)

Technorati Tags: Family

So far, I have ignored all your summer reading suggestions and headed down my own path. With my friend Mike 2/3 of the way through the Appalachian Trail, I picked up and nearly finished A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.

But then I hit Chicago and had to begin reading, while there, The Devil in the White City. No doubt this one will trump all my other leisure reading for the summer. Part architectural and technological history, and part murder mystery, this one has it all. Has anyone else read it? Fascinating and freaky at the same time. Its subtitle is “Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America”. Wow!

Technorati Tags: Literature

We are back from Chicago, and I’m monkeying around with the way the RSS feed is handled, in order to get a better ‘handle’ on how well read this blog is. So, if you have no idea what I am talking about, you should click here. I think using RSS feeds is the best way to keep up on the blogs I read, so of course I think it makes sense for everyone else!

If you already subscribe using an RSS feed, and something messes that up, LET ME KNOW. I very well could have really bungled things here, and I’ll need to know so I can try to unbungle it. Thanks Like everything else in my life, I only marginally know what I am doing.

Consider this a poetic follow-up to my post on the necessity of loving others out of reverence for Christ, not out of concern for who they are or what they give to us. Oh to have the poet’s gift!

If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
“I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently–for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

These are words worth pondering.

Technorati Tags: Church, Family

The marriage of a man and a woman is the uniting of two very different people. They may not be able at that moment to see their differences, but those will soon become painfully visible.

Similarly, when two or three or more people unite together in a church, this is a union of very different people. They may share many things in common, but they are in the end very different. That, too, soon becomes obvious.

The question is, how do people who are so different from one another successfully love one another?

I would not want to over simplify what is in reality a very complicated matter. But several ideas have been in my head recently, and they all seem in one way or another to lead back to Ephesians 5:21:

“…submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

This verse precedes Paul’s instruction to married couples, but it is seminal for all relationships. We submit to or serve one another not because of the worth of the other and not because of what the other brings to us. We serve, love, submit to one another, because we desire in this to honor Christ.

If I love another because of the worth in him, then I may be inclined to stop loving him when his worth changes. If, for example, I show love to my wife because she is pretty or perky or pious, then should any of those things change, my love for her will change.

If on the other hand, I love another for what he brings to me, then when he stops performing or producing, my love changes. Women will look to their husbands with this ideal concept of the income they will supply. But when the husband does not produce what the wife expects, she disrespects him and derides him.

We are to love not for the worth in the other (which may be great or, to our eyes, small) or for what we gain from the other (which may be substantive, or not so much). We are to love ‘out of reverence for Christ’ – that is, out of service to Jesus.

Each Christian has been loved fully and completely and undeservedly by Christ. We have been served by one to whom we can give nothing in return. Our inner worth deserved condemnation, not submission. But Christ has shown us the model of love.

And when we can begin to see that we are to love the others in our lives in service to him, then we will be freed to love.

Technorati Tags: Church, Family

My guess is that not many of us have neighbors who are Olympic athletes. In our first home in Wyoming, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb, the family home of a former swimming gold medal winner was just down the street from us, but that is as close as we’ve ever come.

At our BBQ on July 3, we spoke with one of our neighbors, Paul Schulte, who is on, we discovered, the US Paralympics basketball team. Paul is a paraplegic who has competed for a number of years at the highest level of wheelchair basketball, primarily with the Dallas Mavericks affiliated team.

Paul (with his wife, the former Meghan Greenwald – no relation, we think) will be heading for Beijing the end of August. The paralympics begin the week after the regular olympics end.

I’m excited by this. In previous neighborhoods, we rarely got to know our neighbors well enough to know who was living down the street. We have been intentional in this hoping that we could bless others. So far, the blessing has come our way.

We plan to have Paul and his wife over for dinner sometime soon. Paul is one of the world’s elite athletes. He just can’t walk.

Technorati Tags: Sports

Thirty years ago today a woman spoke two words which changed my life forever. Those words were, “I do.”

Wow. What an inconceivable thing, that someone would make a commitment to me and then keep that commitment not for five or ten years, but for thirty.

I thank God for Barb and her love for me and for her faithfulness to the commitments she makes. I have no question, on the basis of those two words, that this woman will be with me until death.

***

Due to the kindness of a friend and due to the willing commitment of our younger daughters to care for our young son, we are able to celebrate this milestone with a week in Chicago.

***

The song that was sung at our wedding continues to be our prayer for our relationship together. We share it with you here:

May the mind of Christ our Savior
live in us from day to day,
by his love and pow’r controlling all we do and say.

May the Word of God dwell richly
in our hearts from hour to hour,
so that all may see we triumph only through his pow’r.

May the peace of God our Father
rule our life in everything,
that we may be calm to comfort sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill us
as the waters fill the sea;
him exalting, self abasing, this is victory.

May his beauty rest upon us
as we seek the lost to win,
and may they forget the channel, seeing only him.

On July 3, 2004, my wife and I decided that one way to build community in our neighborhood and to get to know our neighbors was to invite the entire neighborhood to our house for burgers the evening before Independence Day.

This year, (July 3, 2008 – coincidentally, this always seems to occur on July 3), was our fifth BBQ, and it was, in our opinion, a great success. There are 120 homes in our neighborhood, and we have found over the years that generally there are a pool of people who attend every year. But that is okay. It gives at least a yearly chance to connect with those whom we’ve come to know.

This year, I placed by the front door 50 name tags, thinking that that was a good estimate of how many would come. Those disappeared very quickly. I’m guessing there were between 60 and 70 folks in our home (it was, of course, raining outside).

This year our BBQ was enhanced and greatly aided by members of the small group that we are a part of in our church. Members came, mingled, and engaged in conversation with our neighbors. The great thing about this was that they were able to help make our neighbors feel welcomed, and should any of these neighbors ever want to visit the church, there will be others there beside Barb and I with whom they will be acquainted.

Also, members of the small group did a great job of helping us prepare and clean up. This year’s event, though always a lot of work, was significantly less this year. Our hats off to our small group, and our appreciation to our neighbors who are ALL great neighbors.

Technorati Tags: Ministry, Outreach

Last Sunday morning I was reading Psalm 2 for my early morning ‘get ready for worship’ devotions. I was drawn to a phrase that has both puzzled and enthralled me all week as I have reflected on its implications. In verse 11 the kings of the earth are told to ‘rejoice with trembling’. I was stunned by that. How do you rejoice and tremble? The trembling seems to be a response of fear. Can one rejoice and experience fear at the same time?

I was also reminded that the puritan Jeremiah Burroughs wrote his classic Gospel Worship based upon Isaiah 66:2 reminding his readers that God shows favor to those who ‘tremble at his word’.

Here is the question: we come as Christians to worship the same God as David and all the saints before Christ. We come as those who have been brought into God’s favor by the loving sacrifice of the Son of God. We come as those with ample cause to rejoice (and to rejoice together as Geoff Henderson reminds us). But does the gospel remove any cause for trembling? Are we to tremble yet in the presence of God? And what does it mean to rejoice with trembling?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. I’d at least like us to ponder it as we come to worship, wherever that might be.

Technorati Tags: Worship

Strangely, there has been a mega-shift in the world of coffee shops, and no one is making a big notice of it, at least not that I can tell. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to make the announcement here. If you are the press and would like to interview me on the matter, talk to my people.

So, here it is: Starbucks in the US now has “FREE” internet access. I’ve put the word ‘free’ in quotation marks, because there are some conditions, but they are conditions that for me are no bother. This is a great boon for those of us who like to be able to work on the go.

Up until very recently, you could only access the web at a Starbucks if you were a T-Mobile subscriber. Now, under certain conditions, you can gain free access through ATT. The only requirement is that you buy something at least once every thirty days, and then your access time is limited to two-hours each day. Those conditions are no barrier to me.

Interested? Here is what you need to do:

1) Purchase a Starbucks card at a Starbucks or on-line. This is like a gift card you give to yourself. You load it up with $10 or $20 or whatever. Pretty easy to do.

2) Use this card every time you purchase something at Starbucks. There are a lot of perks to encourage this. If you use the card, you get free refills on coffee, and free syrups and shots and the like. It is worth it for me to have the card apart from the wifi access.

3) Register your card on-line. When you do this, you will see some information regarding signing up for WiFi. Do this. It is all free.

4) Then, at Starbucks, log on to the ATTWifi network, and open up your browser. You will be taken to an ATT login page where you enter your user name and password, and you are in.

All you need to do is buy a cup of coffee once/month and you are good to go. I’ve not tested the two hour limit yet. I’m not sure if I’ll get booted off, or what. But the two hours is enough for me to get a lot done between meetings or while I wait to pick up my daughter from work or the gym.

What is amazing is that Starbucks is not advertising this yet. They are in the stores pushing the cards, but in their promo for the cards, they are saying nothing about WiFi. But I can tell you that it works. Yeah!

Technorati Tags: Computing, Work