This Strange Land

Sadly, many times I'm one of them...

HT: MockingBird

It's is officially now a tradition in the Watson home to embark on a two day trip in March to a local indoor water park.  This is the second anual Winter Splash and here are a few shots from the event.

A powerful example of forgiveness.

HT: Mockingbird

I've been watching an amazing documentary series on The National Park's: America's Best Idea by famed documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns.  As I fold clothes and fill out various paperwork at night I've worked my way through nearly 11 hours of content about the National Parks.  Here is the official description:

The narrative traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years. Using archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and what Burns believes is the most stunning cinematography in Florentine Films' history, the series chronicles the steady addition of new parks through the stories of the people who helped create them and save them from destruction. It is simultaneously a biography of compelling characters and a biography of the American landscape.

I highly recommend this series.  It will give you a new appreciation of nature and of the men and women who have fought to protect it.  I love learning about great men of vision do great and impossible things and this series is full of such stories.  Watching this documentary will make you want to hit the trail in search of God's most beautiful handiwork.  The video embedded below is an extended (27 min.) preview of the series.

Jack Cade and Max getting silly at the Children's Museum in Glenview.  Raising 3 boys in a 2 bedroom condo has made this place become our big play area especially during the long winters here in Chicago.

After visiting the museum this is often how the ride home looks.  Someone borrowed our van for the weekend and so all three were stuck right next to each other in the back seat of a Honda CRV.  Usually it's a constant battle to keep them from wrestling each other as we drive down the road but they look pretty harmless and, dare I say, adorable while sleeping.

Jack and Caden make the trip to Awana every Wednesday night to learn Bible passages, make crafts and run around the gym.  If you're just on the outside looking at this picture it seems very precious but just imagine if you are that lone grownup surrounded by that many 4-5 year olds...

Great reminder from a short post by Justin Holcomb over at The Resurgence:

Jesus’ life and shameful death informed Paul’s thinking. Jesus spent lots of his time with the lost and the least. He talked about the last becoming first and the first becoming last. He embraced the meek and the broken—the humble ones who felt swamped with heavy burdens. He died alone, bitterly forsaken by all.

This is Jesus’ upside-down approach to our world. It is the way of his grace. We live in a world where the biggest, best, and brightest succeed and the littlest, last, and least get trampled. But Jesus disrupts and interrupts our power-fetish and our lust for significance, polishing our reputations and annihilating other people for our success. The ways of our world are interrupted by the inverted way of Jesus. Because of this, Christianity has from its beginning prized weakness and rebuffed strength.

In his book on leadership lessons from 1 Corinthians, D.A. Carson writes: “God has not arranged things so that the foolishness of the gospel saves those of us with an IQ above 130. Where would that leave the rest of us? Nor does the foolishness of what is preached transform the young, the beautiful, the extroverts, the educated, the healthy, the wealthy, the upright. Where would that leave the old, the ugly, the illiterate, the introverts, the poor, the sick, and the perverse?”

Read the whole thing here.

Watch this and think about all the things you wish you had done better and not so half-hearted in your life.

Good short article here from Denny Burk on what a Christian should think about unintentional sins. These are some conclusions he comes to but click the link at the end to read the whole thing. 

1. We need the gospel more than we think we do. We are fallen and often sin without even thinking about it. Sin comes natural to us (Romans 7:18). It is likely that we have far more sins that we don’t even know about than ones that we do. We cannot, therefore, even begin to reckon our debt before God. This knowledge should not drive us to despair, but to an even greater awareness of our need for Christ’s blood-bought forgiveness.

2. We need to repent before God of our unintentional sins. Hopefully you are in the habit of confessing your intentional sins, but we all need to reckon with the fact that our offenses before God are worse than we let ourselves imagine. We are worse than we think we are.

3. We need to pray for the Spirit’s sanctifying work to eliminate our unintentional sins. We have them, and our prayers should reflect that fact. We don’t know our own hearts as we should, but God does. He wants us to ask Him for help. This is what King David modeled for us when he prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. . . And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).

4. Our ability to commit unintentional sins should cause us to be humble in our relationships with others. How many of us try to justify bad behavior with our spouses and friends on the basis of it being unintentional. “I didn’t mean to do it, so you shouldn’t be hurt.” Oftentimes, words like that reveal the very insensitivity that led to theunintentional sin. This is not to say that there’s no moral difference between intentional sins and an unintentional ones. There is. It’s just that in either case there is still an offense that must be dealt with.

Read the whole thing here.

Francis Chan with a very interesting article here. This is a portion that I resonate with to a great degree:

It is hard to be rejected. I hated it in junior high, and I still hate it today. It didn’t take long to learn how to fit in, in order to avoid the pain of rejection. That ability has stayed with me and begs me to use it. I know how to keep people from rejecting me and leaving the church. I know what words to say and which actions to take to keep people around. But when I do that, I’m no longer leading. I’m being led by the right or wrong desires of the people.

God calls us to give people what they need. Based on His word, regardless of whether they stick around. Jesus led. Few followed, but He kept leading.

Last summer I came to a shocking realization that I had to share with my wife: If Jesus had a church in Simi Valley, mine would be bigger. People would leave His church to attend mine because I call for an easier commitment. I know better how to cater to people’s desires so they stick around. Jesus was never really good at that. He was the one who said, “He who loves father or mother … son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” (Matt. 10:37 NIV) I’m much more popular than Jesus.

Having come to that conclusion, I came back to the church with resolve to call people to the same commitment Christ called them to. I knew that people would leave, and they have. I found comfort in that because, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.” (Luke 6:26 NIV) Over time though, the conviction can fade, and it gets tiresome seeing people leave. There is a constant pull to try to keep people around rather than truly lead the faithful who remain. When my church was started, I used to tell my wife that I didn’t care if we only had ten people, as long as they really loved God and desired to worship Him with all of their hearts. Where is that conviction now?

        Read the rest.

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There is a danger here too.  Sometimes, "faithfulness" is just a cover word for being a stubborn idiot.  Many people take pride in the fact that their church is small because they are the only ones being "faithful" when what they really need to do is repent for the fact that they have failed to do God's mission and lead their people in it. 

Is it hard to discern the difference?  Certainly, but having the humility to allow people who love you and don't fear you speak into your life and evaluate you will probably help bring clarity.