We Didn't Know Beans...

When they think of Africa, maybe people think “safari”.  This is reasonable, since many of the animals we go see in our municipal zoos can be found roaming free in the Dark Continent.  But just 15 miles or so away from Nairobi, Kenya’s National Park – famous for their safari experiences – is the slum of Huruma.  Most of the people who live in the slums cannot afford the $20 entrance fee to their own national park, let alone the much greater fees to hire a driver and a mutate (four wheel drive van) to take you inside.

If you were born in Huruma, your life would be like the majority of Africans.  Their experiences don’t make the tourism brochures.

Imagine being a child, waking up daily with no parent.  A guardian rouses you to get up off the floor, along with as many as eight other orphans in a 10X10 home, half of which is occupied by the guardian’s bed or couch.  The only light flickers from a small oil lamp.  There is no electricity.  Water is scarce – not because it is dry, but because it is expensive.  You put on your torn school uniform (which you love to wear because it communicates to your peers that you get to go to class) and walk to school, avoiding the troughs of open-sewage and abundant garbage which lies randomly, everywhere.  Some of it is burning on the street.  You haven’t had breakfast.  It is Monday morning.  The last meal you ate was Friday – lunch at Furaha Community Center, where you attend school.  You survived on hot tea throughout the weekend.  You get to school and, despite the stench of a dump in the air - you have never smelled air devoid of smoke or garbage – you are thrilled to be present with your peers to learn, to move up in grade, to excel, to eventually rise above your desperate beginnings.

If this were you, how would you feel?  What would your outlook be?  How much hope would you have for a decent future?

You can make a difference for the 550 orphans who attend school at Furaha.  When we started feeding the kids lunch in 2008, we didn’t know beans would have such an impact on their lives and their future.  Since then, the results are incredible:

•  The kids stay in school all day because they get enough calories to sustain them.
•  Their health has drastically improved evidenced in the color of their eyes, the growth of their hair, and the fewer runny noses.
• The sound of Furaha has changed from a quiet place with tired kids to an appropriately, wonderfully noisy place where kids are getting their life back.
• The test scores for Furaha exceed Kenya’s national average – outstanding given their humble surroundings.

The number one variable?  Lunch.

I invite you to become part of the solution to extreme poverty in our world.  We can’t address every need, but we can do our part where we can.  If we each give up just a little of our excess, we provide for their basic needs.

• Give a one time gift of $10 (or more) between now and Easter in support of my #Fastforfuraha - 100% goes to buy their food.  If I don't raise support, I don't eat.
• How about going the next level and helping every month?  Or give $30/month to provide food for Furaha as well as those in need right here in Napa through CrossWalk Community Church.

Give now using CrossWalk's Giving Portal.  Select Africa/Nairobi to give specifically to our orphans in the slums.

Thank you!

Lent 2012

So, what are you going to do (or not do) from Wednesday, February 22 through Easter Sunday?

Our tradition has undervalued Lenten practices which have fostered growth in millions and millions of Christ-followers for centuries.  To help you get a little more out of this season of preparation, I have two challenges for you.

First, I challenge you to carve out time in your daily routine for prayer.  Spend most of it in silence, listening for God, rather than sharing your list of requests.  At first, the experience may be uncomfortable, but over the weeks leading up to Easter I think you will begin to recognize God's "voice".  You may notice certain themes popping into your consciousness, for example.  You may sense a leading to do something that you wouldn't have otherwise.  But you'll never experience this if you don't give your relationship with God the chance.  Silence on your part increases the likelihood that you will hear God more clearly.

Second, I challenge you to fast at some point during Lent.  Giving up any number of things can be good, but I hope you'll try a 24 hour fast.  Try a lunch to lunch fast, for example.  The point of fasting is to increase your attention on God.  Hunger becomes a reminder to pray, as well as a means of helping us identify with the extremely poor in our world.  Don't fast in order to lose weight.  don't fast in order to "get God to do something."  Fast as a means of drawing closer to God.

I would highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline.  It is a classic, valuable resource for any and every Christian.  It will expand your thinking about prayer, give you guidance on fasting, and expose you to a wide range of the most popular spiritual disciplines.

021212 Fearless 6: God Might Escape My Box

In these final chapters, Max Lucado draws attention to a final source of anxiety: the fear of God getting out of my box.  To illustrate this reality, Lucado references Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain top, when his appearance radically changed, and along with him appeared Moses and Elijah.  The transfigured Christ is Christ in his purest form.  It's also Christ as his truest self, wearing his pre-Bethlehem and post-resurrection wardrobe (Max Lucado, Fearless, Chapter 14). This experience settled for the disciples the question of whether or not life exists after we die, for sure, but it is obvious in the text that they were struck with awe at the sight of Jesus in this very different skin.

Lucado notes in chapter 14 of Fearless, Fire on the mountain led to fear on the mountain.  A holy, healthy fear.  Peter, James, and John experienced a fortifying terror, a stabilizing reverence of the one and only God.  I have had close encounters with God many times.  The first few times blew my mind.  It's not that subsequent times are dull - they are exhilarating.  These inbreakings from God happen differently for different people, but they all have a similar effect: awe.  Reverence.  Deep respect.  The disciples experienced this that day on the mountain top.

Lucado challenges his readers at this point to examine themselves with this question: How long since you felt this fear?  Since a fresh understanding of Christ has buckled your knees and emptied your lungs?  Since a glimpse of him left you speechless and breathless?  If it's been awhile, that explains  your fears.  When Christ is great, our fears are not (Fearless, Chapter 14).  I love that last line because it speaks great truth.  The more I open myself up to God, release myself to the Spirit, rest in the presence of the One Who is so much greater than I, the more peace I feel.  The more I do this, the clearer my head is about my next steps, how I should deal with people, how I should respond, etc.  It's like I am operating in the zone of God's Spirit, where my steps are willingly ordered by God.  Confidence and peace soar at these times.  The truth is, that can be the way life is all the time - in the zone - and is (I believe) largely related to what Jesus was referring when he said he can to bring abundant life.

For some people, knowing God exists is the big deal.  In our culture, you can go through most of your life ignoring God, building your personal kingdom with your own skills in the freedom of our country.  For God to be real, powerful, everywhere, yet right here is daunting.  Just the idea of this reality can be terrifying, because it brings with it a host of other concerns.  What kind of God is this? What if I haven't honored this God very well with my life?  What will this God want from me?  All of these questions and more can increase a person's desire to stop the pursuit, using all manner of excuses to justify their apparent indifference.  But the question - and the fear - remains.  If I am describing you, I want to assure you that this God is very real, very powerful, and very close.  I want to assure you also that as you become more familiar with God, you will recognize choices in your past and behaviors and attitudes in your present that are incongruent with God and God's Way that is Life at its best.  And I want to assure you that at the heart of God is grace abundant.  God isn't interested in kicking your butt.  God is very interested in a relationship with you that benefits not just you, but everyone, everywhere.  This has been my experience.  I hope it will become yours.

Trudy Brutsche is one such person.  Check out her story here.

But what about those of us who have come to grips with God's existence?  Do we box God in?  If we do, why do we do it?

God has pushed through many boxes I have created for my faith.  In the early days, God was "out there" somewhere - a good and kind being that was nice enough to give us a Bible, filled with neat stories and ethical principles.  It was a good box.  I enjoyed it for many years.  As a grew older, however, I didn't pay a lot of attention to the box.  It was just fine, there in the corner, collecting dust.  I knew what was in it.  Didn't need to open it.  No fear involved, because I didn't think there was anything more than I already had in my box.  Then I met someone who had a better box.  The God in their box couldn't fit into my little box.  But to give up my box for the next box was, in fact, very frightening.  I remember feeling vulnerable, uncertain, wondering if I was making a mistake.  Yet something compelled me to trust the call to a bigger God and a bigger box.

This has happened to me repeatedly ever since.  New people come into my life with different boxes.  I find myself having to continually make a new box because God keeps breaking out of the ones I've duct-taped five times over.  A new box was required when I was introduced to just how real and big and powerful is the Holy Spirit.  A new box was required when I went to seminary and learned so much more than I knew before about God.  A new box was required when I pastored my first church in Illinois.  A new box was required when I came out here over twelve years ago.  A new box was required when I came to grips with the depths of my brokenness, and subsequently the infinitely greater resources of God's healing and grace.  A new box was required when I was forced to act with grace - kind of an oxymoron, I know - and discovered a new facet of God.  More recently, I have upgraded my box as I have gained my doctorate, and since then as I have been introduced to more scholars who have incredible insights into the Jesus we seek to follow and the God he came to represent.

There is a lot of cardboard in my wake.

Some of you may be thinking, I am so glad I am not Pete.  Creating all those boxes sounds like a lot of work.  I'll stick with the one I have.  

That is your choice.

But I have to tell you that if I had to do it all over again, the only thing I would change is the pace at which I chucked my old boxes for new ones!  The wonder and joy I have experienced has only grown deeper and richer with each risk to move from one box to one bigger.  

Maybe you are afraid you will be disappointed in God.  God is a tooth fairy for you right now, granting small wishes here and there.  You may worry that the God you will discover is not satisfying.  Take my word for it, that will not be the case.  And if you don't trust me, read your Bible.  Countless people have been so thoroughly satisfied with the God they continue to discover that they have invested their entire lives in the pursuit, and have willingly died proclaiming their belief, even when tortured.

Maybe you need to change the orientation of your fear.  Perhaps you need to ask a different question which may rattle your bones.  What if you get to the end of your days and only then realize that you could have experienced so much more Life, so much more Depth, so much more Impact on your world for the better, and so much less stupid strife and unnecessary pain and squandered resources?

May you be brutally honest with yourself about the box in which you have kept God.  May you see it's smallness.  May your heart hear the cry from heaven for freedom - that God would be free to be a much bigger God in your life, and that you would be free to live with that bigger God.  Face your fears and lose the box.  When Christ is great, our fears are not....

020512 Fearless 5: Global Calamity

Reality check.  First, the weather forecast...  There is, in fact, going to be weather happening somewhere.  I think weather - and along with it earthquakes - are naturally caused, and not dictated by God.

We don't live in a perfect world.  Every human being is shaped by a wide range of influences with varying degrees of God's fingerprints.  Because we all have the freedom to choose to live however we want, this means we can expect that sometimes things are going to be wonderful.  I believe people are inherently compassionate, and when we are compelled to respond to obvious need, humanity is beautiful.  When weather calamities hit, people set aside their prejudices and national identities and see their fellow human beings as brothers and sisters.  A beautiful thing.

But we are also aware of terrible choices people can make that cause unthinkable harm.  The holocaust usually finds its way near or at the top of humanity's worst chapters list.  Genocide continues today in Africa.  Hunger can be eradicated but won't anytime soon because some people use food and other humanitarian capital as political leverage, or hoard it before it reaches the intended recipients.  Wars have happened and will continue to happen - a waste of human life - all because of our capacity to choose poorly.

Jesus was clear about this.  He told his followers to expect it.

Apocalyptic thinking.  According to reputable historians, apocalyptic thinking is common for communities who realize they are threatened from a significantly greater outside force.  When a group of people know they cannot overpower their oppressor, they look to the skies and proclaim that God will will save them.  And when God does, their oppressors will "get theirs" and we, the oppressed, will be rewarded with everlasting peace and joy.  We will be restored to power, and troublemakers will be no more.  This is how Native Americans felt when their home was overwhelmingly overtaken by settlers claiming the land for the crown and eventually themselves.  This is also how Jewish people felt centuries before Jesus was born, when their Promised Land was taken from them and they themselves were taken away from it.  Jewish people continued to feel this way all the way through the first century and beyond.  Early Christians felt this way, too, as they experienced martyrdom at the hands of Rome.  This way of thinking does give some peace for a moment, but it has a dark side, too, which actually makes life more difficult.

When we identify enemies, we sometimes excuse our own behavior.  If we believe that we are always going to be oppressed, that the world around us hates us, and that the media is always biased against us, then when we do experience backlash, we may overlook the fact that at times we deserve the push back.  While there certainly are cases where bias against Christians cause great harm, I also think there are instances when Christians cause great harm by their words, attitude, and behavior.  When Christians do not act like Christ, I think we invite backlash.  Christian hatred is an oxymoron, yet it exists and causes great harm.  Let's make sure that we do not deserve retribution before we simply excuse it as "anti-Christian".  This is one dark side of apocalyptic thinking.

Another dark side is giving up.  "Let's just circle the wagons and wait for the battle to end, when God rescues us with dramatic fanfare.  We will surely suffer now, but our reward is coming.  We can't change our horrible world, so let's not even try.  Let's let nature run its course."  Churches stop caring for their communities, people stop loving their neighbors, and apathy toward the world replaces the love exemplified in Christ.

I know this rhetoric is in the Bible, and I believe it is a reflection of what those respective communities were facing.  But I do not think apocalyptic thinking is productive, even though it does give some hope.  We embrace this way of thinking because it gives us a sense that God is in control.  But maybe our way of thinking about God's control is incongruent with the way it really works.

If God is in absolute control, it means that God allows (and tacitly directs) all global calamity.  There are some theological constructs that try to work around this, often touting how God's ways are so much higher than ours that we must simply accept God's good and perfect will.

But maybe another way to think about sovereignty is in terms of restoration.  I believe that God's desire is continually drive all things that restore all people to experience the joy of life.  Life is a wonderful gift to be enjoyed.  Lot's of bad stuff happens, but none of it beyond God's capacity to heal, redeem, and even bring benefit from its experience.  Finding this life is directly related to doing life with God.  Jesus spoke of it when he referenced the Kingdom of God - living under the rule of our benevolent God-King.  Shalom in the Old Testament and eternal life in the New Testament referred to a quality of life now that reflects all the beauty of being in the full presence of God.  The more we align ourselves with God, the more we experience God's incredible power to redeem.

And this brings us  to the answer to the question, how do we deal with our fear of global calamity?  The Bible speaks of false prophets who claim to offer the hope and healing (salvation) for which we long.  But they do not deliver.  More conservative circles narrow this down to a religious question.  If a person speaking on behalf of God doesn't affirm Jesus the way we affirm Jesus, that person is a false prophet and needs to be tarred and feathered, or maybe even crucified.

I think this misses the point.

I think the biggest false prophet we need to identify is not a religious figure, but ideals or powers that run counter to the Kingdom of God.

Preface: I love my country.

I think we in the US can easily replace God and pin our hopes and dreams on Capitalism and/or the US military or the US in general.  Some people justify this by claiming that the US - as a so-called Christian nation - has taken the place of Israel, and therefore should be seen as God's nation, which then means we can justify anything that promotes our nation.

Capitalism has it's benefits, but it is not the Kingdom of God.  The US military is the world's largest and most advanced.  In addition to defending our soil and people, it also serves humanitarian causes.  But the US military is not God.  The US is an incredible country.  Democracy is a beautiful reality when it works well.  But the US is not the Kingdom of God.  This means that giving too much allegiance to these may be an unwitting choice to displace God, to follow a false prophet.  Placing our hope in the US and it's ways is easy for us since we are the current global superpower.  But it is limited.  

Placing our hope in God, as exemplified in and taught by Christ, however, takes us to a much bigger fear-conqueror.  Our hope is not pinned to our national defense, but rather to a God who calls us to sow peace and respond in peace-promoting ways.  Our hope is in God who is able to get us through the storms of life and even create beauty in spite of it.  Our hope is in God who is with us now, and will welcome us home when this ride is over.  Our God is bigger than the US, bigger than Capitalism, bigger than the UN, bigger than terrorism.

How do you calm the fear of global terrorism?  By turning more and more to God.

May you, with eyes wide open, expect difficult seasons in life.  May you look to God for life even as you feel threatened.  May you have courage to be as Jesus and walk by another Rule, a better Way, that you may be connected to the Life that is greater and bigger than any adversary we might face.  May you then experience the beauty of God's redemption, repeatedly, as you help others experience the same.