I’ve decided that I need to post some of the song lyrics that I’ve heard lately that have encouraged me or helped me. The first is Stephen Curtis Chapman’s Miracle of the moment. These in particular hit home:

So breathe it in and breathe it out
Listen to your heartbeat
There’s a wonder in the here and now
It’s right there in front of you
And I don’t want you to miss the miracle of the moment
And if it brings you tears
Then taste them as they fall
And let them soften your heart
And if it brings you laughter
Then throw your head back
And let it go, let it go
You gotta let it go

Schaefer guys tend to be a little, uh, uptight about how things go. There’s a right way for things to go and if they don’t go that way (they frequently don’t), we get a little, uh, frazzled. Those who know us know that’s a little, uh, understated.
These lyrics helped me see that wile I was worked up about getting things right, I was missing the moments. While I was fuming about not having things just so, life was passing by.
So now, I try to hear that song in my head, and breathe in and breathe out as I feel my temperature rise. I try to look around and see the wonder, right there in front of me. There’s an awful lot of it, if you’ll let yourself notice.

Phillip Yancy from his book Prayer, Does It Make Any Difference?:

If I spend enough time with God, I will inevitably begin to look at the world with a point of view that more resembles God’s own. What is faith, after all, but believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse?

This resonates with me as I saw so clearly in my study of Luke how Jesus perspective was on a completely different plane than the disciples. Over and over, he taught them things that went straight over their head. it wasn’t until the cross, and more importantly the resurrection, that their thinking began to align with his.
The reality, I think, for all of us is that it won’t be until we meet him in heaven and we can look back at our lives will we see how it all made sense. Then we will see what God has seen all along. Faith means trusting that God’s view is clear & right, even when it makes no sense to me.
Hat tip: Thinklings

[Edit 12-18-2008 – Replaced video as the old one had been removed.]
This year, this song has struck me more than any other Christmas song. I particularly like this Amy Grant version with the full orchestra rising to the crescendo for the 3rd verse. The video is from 1992, but it’s only here for the music anyway.

Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see; hail the incarnate Diety
Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Immanuel

Stop and ponder that for a minute. Whoa.

Come, desire of nations come! Fix in us thy humble home.

Amen to that.
Merry Christmas.

Our church is doing a short play (that my daughter and I are participating in), written by our minister for our service this Sunday called Securing the Season. It’s a neat little story about how a lone little security guard made a difference for the folks he’s supposed to leave alone – the shoppers in the department store where he works.
The cool thing is that we aren’t just doing this for ourselves. We performed it for a nursing home last light and we’ll be doing it at Children’s Hospital tonight. We hope that this will be a springboard to a real arts ministry where those with talents can use them to bring hope and to honor God.
We’ll be at Grandview High School at 4 PM this Sunday if you’re in Columbus and care to drop by. We’ll be singing some songs and taking communion too. Directions and details on our church’s website. Make sure you say hi if you come.

From Alan’s great post on building the church comes this quote from Dietrich Bonnhoffer:

Love community, and you will kill it. Love your brother, and you will build it.

Brilliant. How many times do we try to produce the fruit of the kingdom rather than simply seeking it and living it and letting it produce it’s own fruit? We look at all the good things that God promised we would have or told us we should have, and think that we are responsible for achieving them. No, we are responsible to simply obey Jesus. If we do that, the fruit will come.
Love God, love each other and watch God produce the community.

No Thanksgiving post here last week. I generally don’t do the obligatory holiday posts because, well, ’cause I don’t. And I know it’s a little late, but go read Jared’s Thanksgiving advice. Good stuff and buried in the middle is this awesome quote:

Vomit grace all over the table, horn-o’-plenty centerpiece and all. Be Jesus at that table and overturn it with kindness.

Don’t let the mental picture scare you away, the post is really good. Check it out.

I had written this back in July but never posted it. I guess I thought it needed something, I don’t know what. Seems finished as I look at it here in November, so here it is. 🙂
Dan Edelen has a great post today back in July about divisions and finger pointers, appropriately entitled Throwing Stones in Glass Houses of Worship.
Prompted by a debate over the modern existence of the charismata (Dan’s a charismatic) on another blog, he rightfully points out that there are nut-jobs in every stripe of Christianity, including our own. We love to tear down those who are in another tribe by singling out the public crazies and then characterising the entire groups as just like them. It’s far too easy to do, and I find myself doing it too. You find out someone’s denomination and you immediately assume a lot about them, based on the infamous in their group. It’s sad and we need to battle this every day.
I once had a guy show up here from a comment I left on another blog. He came by, not because he thought I had said something interesting, but because he had heard I was from the ICOC. I mentioned that there were reforms happening and his comment, after many disparaging comments on my church (calling it a cult) and indirectly on me, was something along the lines of “Time will tell just what kind of reformer you are.” Part of me was offended, but mostly I didn’t care. I was seeking the truth and continue to do so, and will hopefully continue to grow and change. Hang around and see what I am, I thought. Unfortunately, he left no email address and he hasn’t bothered to come back. He had made his statement on my faith, and that was it.
Why do we do that? Certainly, there are plenty of crazies in the ICOC saying and doing crazy things. There are wacky, embarrassing mainliners too, and Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and on and on. They seem to get all the attention. Why? Because we like to look at them, point our fingers and say “Look at that nut job!”. If they’re nuttier than we are, then we can breathe a sigh of relief and take the focus off of ourselves.
The other night we had a little knock down drag out thing with the girls before bed. Jessica was wronged by her sister, reacted badly and then I reacted badly to her. She lamented that she had told them repeatedly that she didn’t want them in her room when she wasn’t around. Why do they keep doing it when she asked them not too? She was indignant.
I reminded her that she’s been doing that to me for 12 years. Why doesn’t she stop? I think it hit home. 😀
Near the end of our talk, I had to apologize for yelling at her. I told her that it’s just part of being a Schaefer man. I’m not sure what it is, but we slide right into shouting with the quickness. My Dad does it and his dad did it too. We hate it and we battle it, but it rears its ugly head all too often.
My point was that we all have issues, it’s part of being human. To keep harping on others’ issues is to pretend that we don’t have our own and only distances us from those who see their own issues all to clearly and are looking for help in dealing with them. When people do wacky things to us or act in wacky ways as Christians, we need to fight the natural reaction to judge and instead act in grace. Sure, we can teach, admonish and even rebuke where appropriate, but all in the spirit of grace.
What would Christianity look like if we all focused on these 2 things?

1. Doing our absolute best to act according to God’s will (and always learning better what that means).
2. Overlooking it as much as possible when others fail at 1.