Risen - We went to the movies.

I don't really do movie reviews, but here it goes.

Yesterday we went to see the movie "Risen".  It is the story of a Roman soldier in Jerusalem during the crucifixion of Jesus.  When the tomb is found opened and the body is gone, he is charged with finding the corpse.  His search leads him to discover God's nature through those who follow Him.

Of course, that is a journey we all take.

I hadn't heard of the movie until we were thinking of going to the movies and saw that it was playing.  I give it a thumbs up.

The previews are embedded below.  They are also here and here.

Nineteen Days

It's leap year,  So we get an extra day in February.  The purpose of leap year is to better make the Earth's rotation and the  movement around the Sun better match up and adding an extra day every four years seems to do the trick.  Well mostly.

Twenty-six times there has been a leap-second added to the clock. This is an extra second added on to the end of a day to keep the our clocks in sync with the Earth's rotation.  There is a group called the Earth International Rotation and Reference Systems Service who monitor the rotation of the Earth and how it affects the length of a day.  This is actually someone's job.  Who knew?  And the whole topic of adding leap seconds seems to mess with computer software and is quite controversial in some circles.

So what are you going to do with your extra day.  February 29 is on a Monday, and for me it will likely be like every other Monday.  We will go to work and school and do our chores and what ever else we normally do on a Monday.  And maybe, just maybe, at some point during the day we will have to record the date and say to ourselves, "Hey, its leap day." and then move on.  

I think that it would be great to make February 29 an international holiday.  You have an extra day, make the most of it.  Rest.  Relax,  Catch Up.  Work ahead.  It's an extra day, so make the most of it.

What would be even better would be to save all those leap days up and use them all at once.  Now stay with me here.  The average life expectancy in the United States is 78 years.  That means that the average person will experience 19 leap years in their life.  Nineteen extra days.  If at the end of your life, you could take those nineteen days and do something special, what would it be?  It sure does make you think.  Maybe that trip that you always dreamed of.  Maybe ending a long standing feud or just spending that time with the people you love.

But we don't get that extra time, not really.  Monday will be a day like any other and there is no way to save it all up until the end.  So the moral of the story is to take care of business now.  So we need to mend the fences, live the way we should and spend time with those who matter.  Now.  Today.  Without waiting.

In no place is this more true than in our walk with God.  We will not get an extra nineteen days at the end nor even one.  There is nothing that we can do to mend it on our own we need help.  However, the one thing that we can do is the one thing that He asks of us.  Surrender.  We need to come to a place where we acknowledge that our will is not the best way and that God's will is better.

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.

  We can't save up time to use at the end.  The nineteen days will be mixed in with all of the others.  We need to make the most of our every day.  And chief on the list is making things right between us and God.  He is waiting.

Have a great day.

Budgets

We all budget our money.  For some people it is a formal affair with columns and lines and debits and credit.  For others it is kept in their head.  I've got so much money and it needs to last me to payday.  I think for most people, it is someplace in the middle, but we all budget.

I have been involved with budgets at home, at the school and the church.  One thing that I've noticed is that there are really two types of line items in a budget.  There are limits and anticipations.  In limits we set boundaries for our expenses.  We will spend so much on Christmas presents, but no more.  We have control over these things.  In larger organizations it might be office supplies or advertisement.  When the money is gone, you stop spending and due without.

Anticipation line items have no limits.  They cost what they cost and we are going to pay it.  Think of the propane to heat the house.  We try to control our use.  We shop for the best price.  But in the end, we are going to heat the house and propane is out option.  We try to anticipate what it will cost and adjust the other lines accordingly.

I remember working on the church budget one year.  The economy was down and there were a lot of people reaching out to the church for help.  The line in the budget called "benevolence" was over budget.  The decision was to keep on helping people.  We started looking for other places to trim the budget and trusted in God to provide the rest.  

There are other things that we budget besides our money.  Time is one.  We can spend so much of our time on work and so much on relaxing and so much on chores, etc.  While we all have twenty four hours in the day, how we spend them is up to us.  We have to be careful which items fall into the anticipation and which into the limits.  If our priorities are off, we can spend most of our time on that which is least important to us and leave little left for our highest priorities.

One facet of our lives that we can't budget through is our character.  Even if we could add up the rights and the wrongs, having a positive balance might be good enough for us, but not for God.  It doesn't matter if we treat our own good works as limited expenditures, we will do this and this and this.  Or if we treat them as anticipated expenditures, doing all that we can where ever we can; it doesn't matter.  We can never. ever. ever.  do enough to shift the balance back to the positive.  Our account with God is always in the red.  And that is the amazing thing.

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.  It's a pretty short clip today.  So watch it.

We can never do enough good deeds to get our character budget out of the red.  No matter what we do it is never enough.  Following the Christian path involves surrendering to the will of God.  And then in our imperfect ways, try to do the best we can all the time trusting in God to make up the difference.

God takes our account from the red to the black when we surrender ourselves to His will.  And that is a pretty good deal.

When I Was Thirsty

Water is in the news quite a bit lately.  The problems related to the public water system in Flint aren't going away any time soon.  Furthermore it makes us all start thinking about our own systems.  How do we know that our own water is clean?

I find the water crisis upsetting on many levels.  Obviously, it is upsetting to think about drinking lead tainted water.  Or worse yet, giving it to your children.  The thought of the long term health consequences are hard to imagine, but some people are living it.  And not to minimize that problem, but I have been thinking a lot lately about the public trust.

We assume certain things about our public institutions.  We trust that electricity will flow from the outlets.  We trust that the roads will be plowed and repaired.  We trust that police, fire and ambulance will come if called.  And we trust that when we turn on the faucet, the water that flows will be worth drinking.  We assume these things, but it's not always true.

The purpose of this post isn't to dig into how this trust was broken or who was to blame.  I suspect the list is vast and crosses several levels of government.  But beyond that, I think that we all have a role in the public trust.  I think that we all have a role in looking of being our neighbor's watchdog.  The public trust extends beyond government and extends to each one of us in how we relate to our neighbors.

A few years ago I had lit the gas grill and it was heating up.  There must have been a lot of grease on it because it started to smoke and smoke and smoke.  I was letting it burn off when one of the neighbors can driving up in a hurry.  From his house there was so much smoke that he thought our house was on fire.  He came in a hurry to investigate.  This is the attitude that we all need to cultivate in our daily lives.  We need to look out for those around us and be prepared to offer a hand up when our neighbors stumble.

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.

When we offer water to the thirsty, whether it be to the rich or poor, it is like we are handing the drink to Christ Himself.  As we think about rebuilding the water systems in Flint and across the state, we need to think about what type of water system we would put in place if it was running through Bethlehem and Nazareth and to the home of Jesus.  Because in His eyes, we are.

Hey Hey I'm the Tax Man

It is Mid February so that means it is about time to sit down and figure out our income tax return.  I know that the deadline isn't until April 15, but we usually are getting money back so I like to get at it. By the time mid April rolls around, our return is not only back but long gone.

So as I work through the forms (yes, I figure them out myself and without the tax-prep software) I am always struck with how oddly our tax deduction/credit system works.  I see it like this.  There is so much that the government needs to take in to pay the bills.  If one person gets to pay less, then another person has to pay more.  So if we give a credit to people who have children, then childless couples pay more.  If we give a deduction for home mortgage interest, then people who have paid off there house pay more.  If we give a credit for child care, then people who don't send their children to day care would pay more.  And so on.  I think it would feel different if we called them penalties instead of credits.  It is the no child penalty or the house paid off penalty or not giving to charity penalty.

As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of the current tax system.  But I am a fan of paying your fair share.  There are a lot of things that we collectively do together better than we do individually.  I really like out National Parks and I want them protected.  I like to have good roads and I think that they should be maintained.  I suspect that we spend too much on the military, but I think our soldiers should be well compensated and cared for if injured.  And of course, I think that if we want high quality schools, we need to pay for them too.  

My point to all of this is that no one likes taxes.  Me included.  But I also don't expect to get something for nothing.

There is one part of our spending that I don't really mind spending money on, and I am surprised that so many people do.  That is the part where we use tax money to help people in need.  I am happy that the money is spent that way whether it is here or abroad.

I think that the frustration comes with the idea that there is someone out there who could be working but instead lives off the system.  And I get frustrated by those people too.  And I am frustrated that we give aid to countries and it doesn't get to the people in need, it only props up a brutal dictator.  But I think those concerns are not so much a sign that we need to stop helping people, but rather we need to get better at it.

As Christians we are called to what we can where we can for our neighbors in need.  Jesus tells us that it is better to give than to receive.  I f we give help and that help is taken for granted, that is between that person and God.  We need to be good stewards of the tax money collected, but we can't be so afraid that it paralyzes us from doing as Jesus commanded, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Watch this video from Pastor Chris.

Jesus told us to love.  First God and then each other.  In our world today, everyone in every corner of the world is our neighbor.  I think as Christians we need to constantly be examining our hearts in this area.  We need to show love and compassion rather than condemnation.   I'm not sure if sending food to other countries will help them see the love of Christ shine through us, but it has to work better than dropping bombs,

When I'm in Charge

Sometimes when I am teaching one of my classes I make a little joke that starts out, "When I am finally in charge of the world, the first thing that I will do......" It is usually over something trivial, but that fits into a larger point.  So it may be "When I am finally in charge of the world, the first thing that I am going to do is change the name from Planet Earth to Planet Aqua."  (It makes sense if you think about it)

This usually gets one of a couple responses from the teenagers in class; either a question about how I will be in charge of the world (Answer - I have a plan but I don't like to talk about it)  or some question like, "Really?  THAT is your TOP priority?" but most of the time, all I get is eye rolls.  And that's ok, they get the point.

I wonder if You or I were actually put in charge of the world, what we would actually do with all of that power,  They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely.  Or in the words of Spiderman, "With great power comes great responsibility." In the US our government has a system of checks and balances.  We have a general belief that any one person really can't handle it all themselves.  So they spend more time checking and balancing each other than governing, but maybe that is for the best.  They say that the American system of government is the worst system out there, except for all of the others.

So there is a scene that plays out in small town restaurants across the country.  A group of people sit around a table in the corner drinking coffee, having the occasional piece of pie and solving the problems.  It's all there; taxes, foreign policy, welfare reform, immigration, health care.... all of it.  And these guys have the solutions,  Maybe our problems could be solved if we created a new political party.  We can call it the "Old Guys Drinking Coffee Party" and we will put these guys in charge.

Of course at that point, there might be a different group sitting around complaining about them.

 

Of course there was a time when one person was given authority over all of the Earth.  When Jesus arose from the grave he proclaimed that all authority had been given to Him.  But he didn't use the authority to change the name or to fix the welfare system or to stop illegal immigrants from crossing borders.  He gave us two instructions: 1. Love God and 2. Love each other.  

Watch this video from Pastor Chris.

Jesus had been given all authority, he could have done anything with it, and he chose to command us to love.  God first, then each other.  I suppose that if we started there, most of the other problems would fall in line.  We can get around to renaming the planet later.

Hold the Pickles, Hold the Lettuce

In 1974 Burger King started a new add campaign.  Their main competition, McDonalds, had a reputation of being rigid in their choices.  A Big Mac was made a certain way.  If you don't like it that way, then don't order a Big Mac.  So Burger King went the other direction and encouraged people to get their burger just the way that they want it.  Their "Have It Your Way" campaign was a huge success.

These days made to order is pretty standard.  It's hard to imagine a restaurant not honoring special requests.

And it isn't just in the fast food industry.  Across the board we have gotten used to the idea that we can get anything just the way that we like it.  This includes everything from Nike Shoes to your own monopoly game to custom m&ms.  If you want to make your own customized action figure or bobble head or even postage stamps, there is a service that let's you do it.

So in our world on any way you want it, it sometimes seems odd to encounter God, who says that salvation is available through one way alone.  One way.  That's it.  Surrender your self to Jesus Christ and live for Him.  That's it.  THE way.  THE ONLY way.  And that is hard for us to wrap our heads around.

Blogger Peter Greene was writing once about our desire for choices.  He wrote (and I paraphrase) is that what we want more than choice, is excellence.  We would rather have an excellent meal, than a chance to choose between many mediocre meals.  We would rather have one loving spouse, than several acquaintances.  

This is how it is concerning our relationship with God.  There is only one way to salvation, but it is a great way.  A relationship with Jesus Christ goes beyond salvation and includes purpose for all of our days.

Watch this video from Pastor Chris.

There is One Way to the father.  It is the saving Grace of Jesus Christ.  One Way.  One.  That's it.  But it is an excellent way.

Not Just a Motown Group

So what tempts you.  We all have buttons that can be pushed with the right stimulus.  Everyone has that thing that they know that they shouldn't but they REALLY, REALLY want to.

Temptations are more than just Motown singers.  We all face them.  Some are just clearly wrong, but there are gray areas where we can find ourselves meeting Temptations enabling cousin, Justification. And why is that?  Why can't we look at something and say, "This is clearly bad for me, so I will avoid it and do this in stead."?

I don't say that I have the answer to why we are tempted.  Temptations are a little like gravity.  Always here.  Always tugging on us.  Not sure exactly why.  

Even Jesus was tempted.  When the Devil came to tempt Jesus he used the same ploys that we fall for today,

Jesus was tempted to eat during a fast.  This is the "What could it Hurt?" temptation.  The one where we think:  It's not a big deal.  It isn't that bad.  Many people do worse,  And while we may not be tempted to eat during a fast, we are confronted every day by little temptations.  So we get under charged at the store.  We are given credit for something that we didn't earn.  It was our fault, and nobody knows.  We know what the right thing is, and we are tempted to do the wrong.  The problem is that every time we choose wrong, we inch ourselves a little further from God.

The second temptation was that Jesus was tempted to show off.  This is the "Look at Me" temptation.  It feels good when we are recognized for our accomplishments.  But there is a difference between receiving recognition and showing off.  When we show off, the recognition is the purpose.  Jesus was tempted to jump off a great height just to sow that God would send the angels to save him.  Similarly, if we are using our gifts from God for nothing but our own glory, then we too are throwing ourselves off the roof.

In the third temptation, Jesus was tempted to take power over all the Earth.  Now, I can't say that that particular opportunity has come up, but we could call this "Do it my way." We are tempted to leave God behind and strike out on our own.  After all, God had a plan for Jesus.  Jesus was tempted to do it another way.  And THAT is a temptation that we all face.  Quite often.

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.

We all face temptations.  They are the things of this world that will draw us away from God.  If we let them.  It is during the times of the temptation that we need to draw closer to God in stead of drifting away,

Punch-Keys

We we are a store recently and there were a box of jelly filled pastries labeled packzi (which is pronounced Puunch-ki) and yes it is that time of year again.  Actually, Fat Tuesday isn't for another week but like Christmas and Halloween they like to get the season started early.

I'm not sure that I have ever had a real packzi.  I have had jelly filled doughnuts (too many if I am honest about it) but never an authentic Polish made paczi.  I understand that they are very good.  The problem is that I find the entire concept of Fat Tuesday to be a little confusing.

So in Poland they eat packzis.  In New Orleans it is Mardi Gras.  In Rio it's Carnival.  It is a time of gluttony and raucous behavior because tomorrow starts the season of no fun. Now I know that Fat Tuesday traditions have a life of their own.  Many or even most of the people who celebrate at Mardi Gras are not participating in the fasting of Lent.  Any more than all those who eat packzi are.  But shouldn't Lent itself be a celebration.  Even without the warm up gluttony.

The idea behind Lent is that through fasting we draw closer to God.  Do we miss the things of this world?  Sure, but at those times we are reminded to draw closer and to pray.  So when we give up sweets for a time.  Or coffee, or internet or what ever it is, we allow the absence to remind us to draw closer to God.  And that is a cause for celebration on its own.

Note- Usually I include a video clip from Pastor Chris.  By the time I got to the end, the message was different than what I was thinking when I started and now the video just doesn't seem to fit.  So no video today.  I will take another run at it tomorrow.

You Should Have Been There

Woodstock.  I was about 18 months old when the music festival rocked the New York farm field, so I can't say that it occurred to me to go.  But among those who are a bit older than I there is often a certain sense of nostalgia.  Although the concert had 400,000 attendees, I can't really remember ever running across someone who was actually there.  But I have met several who seem to have a profound sense of regret that they missed the defining event of the 1960s.

Sometimes we miss the moment.  We hear about the good time that everyone else had.  We were busy and didn't go and it was awesome.  We can hear the stories, but it just isn't the same.  

And it isn't all about a big concert or a fun party.  A shared experience is a shared experience whether it be good or bad.  It's not uncommon for friends to reminisce about that time that they barely made it.  Soldiers who were at Pearl Harbor or Midway or the invasion at D-day or the Battle of Khe Sahn or the fall of Baghdad all connect in a way that is impossible for those who weren't there.

So with this in mind, imagine those who were actually there at the Baptism of Jesus...

   Dude, you should have been there.  Jesus went down to the river where John the Baptist was.  And John wasn't going to do it, but Jesus talked him into it.  And then Jesus got baptized.  And the sky opened and the dove came down from the sky and we heard THE VOICE OF GOD.  I can't believe that you missed it.

It would have been the ultimate, "You should have been there" moment.

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.

It is the event that happened in the past, but we don't need to miss it.  We can share in the event, the immersion of Father, Son and Spirit as we make the decision to follow God.  It's a moment we don't want to miss.