Testing the MT 3.32 upgrade I just did. Gonna add a picture in too, just for giggles to see if that worked.
That’s Cookey again.
Oh, let’s see if the acronym plugin is working: ICOC
And Scripturizer: Acts 2:38
God: The BIGgest Difference
This is something I’ve been meaning to post for months. This first appeared in our church newsletter this past spring, and most recently at Disciples Today (subscription required).
The day that Ryan was baptized was an amazing one at church. It was the first baptism at a church service in a long time, and it was amazing to hear a lanky 17 year old African American kid, publicly share, with tears, how much his grandma meant to him and thank her for sending him to church.
The following was written by JB, the big brother in this powerful story. JB’s putting his faith into action is an inspiration to me.
If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:26-27
One goal of the BigBrother/Big Sisters program is for every “Lil” that is matched to learn to walk a better path of life into adulthood as a result of the impact impressed upon them by their “Big.” And, as I witnessed Ryan’s appreciation, devotion, and love for our great God grow, I changed my visions for him. My goals were no longer for him to stay out of trouble and be the first in his family to graduate from high school and matriculate into college same year. But, I felt that if he were to see me living the Christian life and love him as my neighbor; then perhaps he’d desire such a life too, and by choosing to do this, any of the goals outlined by BBBS would be surpassed.
Over the past 2 years, it’s been extremely gratifying to see my vision for Ryan’s life, become his own vision for his life because of our Incredible Father. And, I know that February 19, 2006 is a day that neither of us will forget.
Ryan’s Story
God reminds us to look after widows and orphans. Ryan’s grandmother, Cassie, did just that by choosing to care for him almost from birth, since neither his mother nor father were able to. And, instead of having Ryan or his brother and sister go into state custody, Cassie fought for them and won. Yet, she knew that she could use some help.
JB’s story
After becoming a Christian (1995), I ceased my involvement in my fraternity, as a way of “cutting off” a lifestyle that fostered my own arrogance and pride – yet, the tenets of strengthening the African-American race were still well-rooted within me. One particular newsletter featured an article on the work my fraternity was doing with BBBS. I then took this as a sign that I should re-activate my membership and be apart of this cool mentoring program.
The Match & Activities
The social worker weighed my interests with Ryan’s, our talkative personalities, and looked at our addresses and realized that we were only a 5 minute drive from each other; and recommended that we become a “match.” I believe it was God’s hand working ultimately, though. I believe that God wanted Jesus to become Ryan’s Big Brother and that for that to happen, he’d wanted to use me, Courtney (my wife), the Teens, Cellinos, Rhodes, and the entire Columbus Church of Christ family.
Over the first few years, Ryan noticed how important worshiping God was to me. He also saw how Courtney and I never yelled, or cursed at each other. Conversely, I noticed that Ryan was not catching his local church bus anymore, so I asked his grandmother if he could come to our church for an outdoor service. She consented and he can probably still tell you this day what it was like over 5 years ago to have been hugged by strangers. But, now what’s cool is that he’s giving hugs and initiating conversations.
Ryan begins pursuing God
After I became a graduate student (again) and a father, and Ryan moved down the street our hang times seemed to become more. We’d talk, play basketball, I used to cut his hair, run errands for his grandmother, and some times Ryan would just randomly stop by. Over time, I felt more compelled to serve not just Ryan, but his family as well. This was reciprocated, because he now felt extremely comfortable around my family and friends.
Ryan began showing an interest in coming to church with us. He started making friends like Owen, Greg, and James. He felt that his friends at school were not genuine, but that the people at church loved him unconditionally. Ryan began to soak up God’s Word so much that he would often be able to describe key points in each sermon to us as Courtney and I would give him rides back to home. Ryan also began to attend the Teen activities that were planned.
I believe that the Teens and their activities helped Ryan feel and see the power of God’s love and helped him realize that he could one day stand up for God as a High School student. Seeing others change and get baptized made the ideal very tangible. He was having fun with kids his own age, as his grandmother wanted, but the type of fun he was having was fun as God intended it to be.
So, in January of last year, Ryan committed to learning and applying some of the principles associated with righteous living. Then this January, he began learning about Discipleship, told us that he wanted to become a true follower of Jesus’, and challenged Greg and I to be more vigilant in teaching him. Finally, there came February 19th. The day that “Lil’ Ryan” proclaimed before his grandmother, mother, and spiritual brothers and sisters that Jesus is Lord!!
To infinity and Beyond!
The bond that Ryan and I share had always been special, but now it’s eternal. Instead of just doing homework together and going on bike ride, now we’ll share our faith together and teach his friends and family that the only way to truly be on a better path in life is to be grateful for God’s love and make Jesus Lord of their lives, too.
This is a Test of Future Posting
The time now is 12:00 PM, 9/15/2006. I’m going to set this to publish at 12:30. If it makes it to the site, that means I set my cron job up right.
Trying again:
The time now is 2:08 PM, 9/15/2006. I’m going to set this to publish at 2:30. If it makes it to the site, that means I set my cron job up right.
Trying again, again:
The time now is 3:41 PM, 9/15/2006. I’m going to set this to publish at 4:00. If it makes it to the site, that means I set my cron job up right.
If this works, I can write a bunch of stuff and set it to publish while I’m gone. Auto-blogging! (Not to be confused wiht Autoblog)
Remembering
Check out 2,996:
2,996 is a tribute to the victims of 9/11.
On September 11, 2006, 2,996 volunteer bloggers
will join together for a tribute to the victims of 9/11.
Each person will pay tribute to a single victim.
We will honor them by remembering their lives,
and not by remembering their murderers.
They’ve actually got over 3,000 bloggers signed up. Each s writing a post about one of the victims of that day 5 years ago. The list is here. What a great idea and I only wish I had heard of it in time to participate. That’s a powerful use for the thousands of blogs out there, most (like this one) of little consequence. Thanks to Bill (De) at The Thinklings for the link.
I can remember growing up my parents and those in their generation telling us how they all knew right where they were when they heard that President Kennedy was shot. They all would recount with detail where they were at that time.
9/11 is like that for me and my generation, it’s as if we were right there.
I remember, at my job we had a meeting each morning to review the day’s activities. In that meeting on 9/11, it must have been at 9:00 AM, one of the guys in the shop had heard fro his wife that some idiot in a Cessna had flown his plane into the World trade Center. We laughed at how stupid that was. It wasn’t long, as the details became known, that we stopped laughing. It wasn’t stupid at all. It was coldly smart, cunning, calculated and evil.
We tried to get some work done. Instead, with no TV in the office, we kept hitting refresh on CNN.com and listened to NPR news, trying to see and hear the latest. I remember CNN.com and other sites having streamlined front pages to load faster to handle more traffic.
I remember the plane hitting the Pentagon and wondering, dear God, what was happening. I thought of a possible World War III, my family at home, what would be next. I was genuinely scared by the prospects.
I remember being in line at Big Bear grocery store, buying M&M’s when the first tower fell. We had a project for a bulk food bin manufacturer to design a dispenser for M&M’s and we had eaten all our test samples and needed more. As I stood there buying several pounds of M&M’s I watched the TV set up in the isle as Tower 1 fell. The M&M’s didn’t seem to matter much.
After work, I remember being glued to a Aaron Brown on CNN who’s calm, personal, conversational delivery was both odd and somehow reassuring. I think he had just started on CNN the day before or something. I stayed up half the night, like a train wreck, I couldn’t look away. I think I did the same for several nights in a row.
I have other memories of the World trade center on this anniversary day. Over 10 years before 9/11, I lived in NYC on an internship during my college senior year. These pictures, digipics of 35mm prints, are from that time.
The first is a scrawny, single me (with some strange fuzzy stuff growing on top of my head) and a sister named Amy, on a date. I don’t remember Amy’s last name, and the picture just says Amy. I guess I thought I’d remember her forever. It was taken on Ellis Island, looking back at Manhattan. I had forgotten how the WTC dominated the skyline.
The second, I believe, is from later on that same date, up on the top of the WTC, looking down on the city. That’s the East river and the Brooklyn Bridge in the background and those are 30, 40 , 50 story buildings in the foreground. Being up there was amazing. I could have spent hours looking down and examining the buildings and streets.
The last is the view of the second tower from the first, in the glow of a mid-winter sunset. We stayed up there through sunset that evening and it was phenomenal. We watched the lights come on and the city grow dark.I went up again, later that winter of 1991, when Mom and Dad came to pick me up after my job was done. Nearly 11 years, later, just weeks after 9/11, Mom and Dad flew to NYC for the Macy’s thanksgiving day parade. Mom was dancing in it. They visited ground zero, still smoking. There were armed guards preventing picture taking, out of respect I guess. Dad had to break the nail file off of his nail trimmers before getting on the plane. The nail file, on a little pivot, would be near useless as a weapon, but then again, who ever thought a box cutter was a formidable weapon before 9/11.
After coming home, Dad remarked how strange it was to look up in the empty sky and think, I stood up there once. Way up there, in the now empty air and clear blue sky, high above all the other structures, he, Mom and I once stood. Now there was nothing to stand on.
What do you remember?
Hebrews 9
Hebrews 9:11-14 – I have to wonder what this meant to the Jews it was written to. Jesus went, not to the Most Holy Place, the most sacred space known to them, where only the high priest went once a year. But that most sacred of spaces was not good enough for the work Jesus had to do. He, when he left this Earth, went to the place that these things were meant to represent, the Most Holy Place of Heaven itself. (Hebrews 9:24)
But that’s not the most amazing thing. In doing so, Jesus did not simply cleanse our flesh, he cleansed out consciences themselves. Not just for now, but for good. This is a profound thing for me here and now. How much more for the Jew of that day, where the temple was still functioning and sacrifices still being offered?
Hebrews 9:22 – Sin is serious, it requires a death to be forgiven. At one time, it was sheep, goats and bulls, but now it’s Jesus.
Meet Cookie Cooky Cookey
I’m not sure if I should be concerned about my mental health or encouraged because of my obvious manliness. After all, I’ve managed to attract 8 females to my lair.
On the other hand, 4 of them are feline and 3 are my offspring.
Meet Cookie Cooky Cookey (Silly Daddy, thought he knew how to spell Cookie, uh, Cooky, I mean Cookey.), the newest addition to our cat family. This makes four cats in my house, all girls. Cookey will be Emily’s cat. Midnight is Jessie’s, and Audrey has adopted Cally, the cat who rode back from Missouri on the engine of our van (That was her idea, not ours). Pleiades is Mom’s, and has been Mom’s longer than I’ve been Mom’s.
Emily is ecstatic about Cookey. She loves the idea of having her own cat. Cookey will stay in her room for a while before getting introduced to the others.
Four cats. I’ve decided, I must be insane.
This is Buckeye Country
I’m not a big football fan, but when you live in Columbus, you can’t avoid the Buckeyes. And if they’re #1 and playing #2? Fugetaboutit.
So, my kids are at a birthday party and I pick them up just after kickoff. As I walk up the driveway, some big play unfolds. I hear the roar of the crowd – wait, I’m in the suburbs and the game’s in Texas. That’s Columbus on game day, deal with it.
As I type it’s 14-7 Buckeys at halftime after a decisive OSU drive at the end of the half. Go Bucks!
Hebrews 8
Hebrews 8:1-7 – I love how this is beginning to open up a whole parallel, spiritual reality. Jesus doesn’t fit in the earthly temple and temple system. They are simply a copy of the heavenly ones, where he serves. He is “a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.” It’s an amazing thought, and I’m sure was more so for his Jewish audience who was immersed in the temple system, surrounded by it from birth, taught it and understood it as the long standing means for God to relate to man. Now to know that it’s time has gone and Jesus is seated in the heavenly temple had to blow my mind.
I once read (somewhere, I which I could remember where) that Jesus’ sitting down at the right hand of the throne (Hebrews 8:1) was a powerful symbol in itself. The earthly priests, when on duty, never sat down as a testament that there work of atonement was complete. When Jesus sat down, he was saying it is done. There will be no more sacrifices, the work is complete.
Hebrews 8:8-13 – When he quotes this passage from Jeremiah, I wonder what it meant to the Jews. Had they heard it for years and never expected it to be fulfilled in their lives? Had they a vision of what it would mean for God to fulfill this passage? How did that fit with what they heard in this letter?
Hebrews 6:13-7:28
Hebrews 6:19 – I love this verse. God’s promise is an anchor for our soul. And where does it anchor us? The inner place, behind the curtain, where God was in the temple. One end is tied to our soul, the other end, with the anchor, is with God. The hope, God’s promise to us, ties us together. How cool is that?
Not only that, but Hebrews 6:20 says it is where Jesus has gone – into God’s office if you will – on our behalf. It’s as if Jesus ties this rope to our very soul, tied the other end to the anchor, and took it too God’s office and left it there so we would never be lost, no matter how bad the storms get.
Hebrews 7:15 – I love the logic of Hebrews, how the writer uses Melchizedek to prove that Jesus is a priest of a different order, not by heritage, but “by the power of an indestructible life.” He was a priest because of who he was, meaning how he lived and what he did, his character. Amazing.
Hebrews 7:25-27 – “he is able to save to the uttermost” To the uttermost. The old priests couldn’t do that. They could “save” from one day to the next, but it did not last. The sacrifices had to be made, and salvation obtained, again and again. But Jesus “did this once for all when he offered up himself.”
10 years
This weekend, the Columbus Church of Christ celebrated its 10th anniversary. Ten years ago, 25-30 would-be-disiples (Inside joke for my ICOC readers) came from Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati to start this church. My wife and I quit our jobs and packed our stuff and 18 month old Jessica and moved to Columbus. It happened almost that fast.
We had interviewed to be on the mission team earlier in the summer (the trip to Chicago for that was an adventure in itself) and then told at the beginning of August that we weren’t chosen. We were disappointed, but understood. We were living paycheck to paycheck and had a fair amount of debt at the time. Not ideal candidates to drop everything and go on a church planting.
A week or so later we got another call. “Bro, you know how things go in the kingdom! Ha ha ha! We’ve decided that we’d like you to come after all. I know it’s late notice, but if at all possible, we still need you there by the end of August.” (After we arrived, they ‘asked’ us to lead the children’s ministry. Now we knew why we were suddenly wanted.)
So, we gave less than 2 weeks notice to our jobs, wiggled out of our apartment lease, packed our stuff and headed onto the unknown. We had no jobs lined up, no apartment lined up (We stayed in my sister’s basement the first month) and the day we left, we found out Maria was pregnant with Emily. And we had just left our health insurance with our jobs.
Twenty some others did the same thing and 10 years ago we had our first service in the basement of the minster’s home. Amazing things happened those first months and years. Faith stretching, mind expanding, unbelieveable things. For just us personally, we got a nicer townhome that was cheaper and bigger than out apartment in Detroit (with no income to report for the lease. “I’m sure you’ll do fine” the landlord said.), I got a great job that really launched my career (and had health insurance that covered that pre-existing pregnancy) and friendships that will last forever. It was an amazing time, I’ll have to tell some more of those stories some day.
So this weekend we had a celebration of all that God had done in the last 10 years. Four of the five ministers who served here were there on Sunday, missing was AT Arnesson, the first. For a while we were on the 3 month plan. Back in the day when leaders from above would, and did, shuffle ministers around at will, AT stayed for 3 months and Darryl Reed after him for another 3 months. When Tom Caswell passed that mark and entered his 4th, we all rejoiced. I’m not sure the actual breakdown, but I think that Tom, Greg Miller after him and now Doug Geyer each served for about 3 years, give or take.
Darryl was here from Washington DC and took us to the cross and Greg, in from Washington state, preached a great lesson, pointing out that for many of us, 10 years is nothing compared to how far we have to go. We are a relatively young congregation, mostly in their 30’s and 40’s, so most will serve Christ here on Earth for another 30, 40 even 50 years (for the teens – 60, 70 or even 80!). Puts this anniversary, and my 18th spiritual birthday in perspective. He asked if we will have the freedom to choose in heaven? He thought yes, we have freedom to do so here, why not there? If so, why won’t we sin? Because we will be with God and will see Him clearly and there will be no wordly pleasures to tempt us. We cannot excape the world, so we must keep seeking God and to see Him for who He is to make it to the end. Hopefully, his message will be on the web site soon.
We saw a video montage of still pictures and video snippets from over the years. It was funny to see the old pictures & hairstyles (or just hair) and sad so see the faces that are no longer with us, for whatever reason. We saw pictures of a couple of the teens who were baptized this year when they were in kindergarten or 1st grade.
It was very good to see old friends, especially the Millers who now live in the Tacoma WA area and other friends and family from Missouri, Washington DC, Toledo, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Minnesota. If only others from Wisconsin and Kentucky could have joined us, taht would have made the day that much more special.
It was a good day. As I looked at the larger-than-normal crowd from on stage where I was helping with the song service, and I listened to the voices raised in song, I imagined the crowd of angels hovering over the building singing & rejoicing with us. Even without hearing the heavenly song, the singing was incredible that day. It did my heart good and tears threatened to fill my eyes (Being an emotional guy, I’m pretty good at the art of looking for distractions to keep the emotions at bay. Look, there’s a ceiling tile loose. And a light bulb out. Should tell someone about that.)
God has been at work here, in spite of our sin. I can only hope that for the next 10 years, there can be more of the former and less of the latter.
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