A Franciscan Benediction

I recently got a hold of Charlie Hall's CD Flying into Daybreak. I saw him and his band performing a few weeks ago in front of 3,000+. His words and music have moved me spiritually and drawn me closer to Jesus.

In addition to the great music, I was also taken by a Francisan Benediction he includes within the CD insert--thoughtfully and spiritually provoking. Check it out...

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Roots

How are you rooted? Are you stretching to find fertile soil and nourishment? To be grounded, do you need to bend and twist yourself?

From looking at this photo, those are the questions that pop in my head.

What do you see in this picture?

This was taken during a hiking trip this spring with my good friends, Paul and Jeff, at Giant City State Park, south of Carbondale, IL.

For the Love of a Father. For the Love of a Child.

The following is a soon-to-be-posted www.pop-culture.org article:

It is easy to get revved up viewing this Rockyesque, cheering-for-the-underdog Akleelah and the Bee. But I’ve done the underdog thang before (see American Idol).

In an interview on the DVD, I was moved by what Laurence Fishburne (Dr. Larabee) said when he mentioned that this really is a movie about a Father and a daughter. Interestingly and masterfully written, there are actually two separate father-daughter subplots occurring yet intertwined.

You have Dr. Larabee grieving the death of his eight year old daughter to illness. This traumatic experience caused separation between Dr. Larabee and his wife. It caused him to leave his on-campus university work, retreating to his home where he teaches on-line (relationship-free) college courses. He holds on to many of his daughter’s possessions, including her jump rope. He tends his wife’s former garden despite reconciliation not appearing on the radar screen. You have a man who has lost much, is holding on to the pain of the past, is reluctant to begin new deep relationships, and for the most part, because of all of this, has closed himself off from the outside world—a world that could cause him pain once again.

You have Akeelah (Keke Palmer) whose father was innocently shot down on the streets of south Los Angeles. Akeelah’s dad loved the game of scrabble. After his death, she found that the best remedy to stay connected with him and to remember her father was to earnestly grow her gift and her knowledge of words.

Dr. Larabee meet Akeelah. Akeelah meet Dr. Larabee. From this meeting, lives are changed.

For the moment, to have a daughter to love and to be loved by fills a deep hole in Dr. Larabee’s heart. For the moment, to have a father figure to love and to be loved by fills a deep hole in Akeelah’s heart. But in truth, as mortal beings, anything can happen. Pain could begin again in an instant.

But what about that deep hole? Don’t all humans sense a prevalent emptiness inside? There is something missing. We search for many things to fill it; spelling bees, relationships, work, recreation, but they never seem to completely fill this hole.

Could it be that this hole is one that could only be filled by one who could love us forever and whom we could love forever? Could this hole be filled by a relationship with God?

I believe yes to both questions, and the filler of that hole is Jesus Christ.

When time began, man had a perfect, intimate, loving relationship with God. But through a most unfortunate lapse in judgment, man decided to look for something more. This produced disastrous results. The perfect, intimate, loving relationship ended. But from the moment this relationship was severed, it has been God’s mission to make this relationship right again. He too felt a hole in his heart. Jesus came to this world and died for you and me so that this relationship could once again be restored.

Read the following passage from Psalm 139. It describes a relationship between a Father and his child that cannot be matched.

O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.
In this relationship, with God the Father, through his son Jesus Christ, that hole can be filled. Nothing can destroy this relationship, not even death on this earth. You can have the assurance that he’d never leave you. You can have the assurance that he knows you better than you may know yourself. You can have that hole filled with a Father you could forever love. He filled the crevice in my heart. By faith, I know he desires to fill the crevice in your heart.

In Akeelah and the Bee, you get glimpses of restored relationship and they are wonderful—but alas temporary. However, a relationship with the God the Father would not be a glimpse. It would be everlasting. If you are willing to take a chance, he would love to have that forever relationship with you. Be assured that he wants that forever relationship with you. This is clearly evident in the chance he took for you, sending his one and only son, Jesus, so that he and you could have that Father-child relationship.

Father meet _________ (fill in your name). _________ (fill in your name) meet the Father. May lives be forever changed.

Is There a Hero Inside of You?

Heroes - Ordinary People Discovering Extraordinary Abilities.


This is NBC's new epic drama -http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/about/. The second episode opens with one of the characters pondering whether his life was meant for something more. Does this thought spin around in your noggin? Churn in your insides? If so, where does this thought/feeling orginate? I am not saying I know, but would you process this with me?

I am currently reading N.T. Wright's Simply Christian. In the first few chapters, Wright argues that all human beings hear the echo of a voice calling out to us. We hear this echo in our "search for justice, the quest for spirituality, the longing for relationship, and for the yearning for beauty." These echoes function "as signposts to something which matters a great deal but which we can't grasp in the way we grasp the distance from London to New York..." He later admits that these echoes in and of themselves do not necessarily point us directly to God. But at the very least, they lead one to consider that there is something going on in the cosmos beyond themselves and what is visibly seen.

I'm guessing that this is not an exhaustive list. One echo not making Wright's list (so far) is an echo that our lives were meant for something more in this life. Have you heard this echo? Does the idea that your life means more than eating, sleeping, and working ring true to you? It does for me. Recently I saw Erwin Mcmanus (pastor of Mosaic in Los Angeles) speak at a conference. He had the audience recall watching movies such as Braveheart (my favorite movie) and Gladiator (one of my favorites). I am paraphrasing, but He said something like, "When you watch a film like these don't you most relate to the hero of the story? This is the individual you are cheering for and wish you were like. You're not rooting or empathizing with Longshanks. You are whoo-whooing Wallace. "

Personally, I hear an echo whispering to me that I was meant for something more in this life, I was meant to be a hero--an ordinary person doing extraordinary things, sacrificing my life and being used to help mankind. I don't claim and know if I have done any of these things, but the longing is still there. It should be noted that what extraordinary things may be completed in my life would not be done for my glory but for the One enabling me to accomplish such things.

I leave you to consider, hear and ponder this echo and the verse below.

Jesus said to his followers, "...anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)