To provide a little perspective, my wife and I moved into this house over nine years ago, back before we had any children.  (Ah, the quiet life…)  Growing up, my family moved every four or five years, so this is officially the house that has been my home for the longest period of time.  It’s been a good place to live.

So now we’re getting ready to move.  The funny thing is that I am fixing things now that we’ve lived with for most of the time we’ve been here.  The timer knobs on the oven broke off during our first year here, and just the other day I found replacements for them.  No, I hadn’t been looking for them for eight years – we just grabbed the metal rod and set the timer that way.  It was livable.

All summer, our “way-back yard” has been overgrown, and I even gave up on the garden mid-way through.  Now, everything is clean and beautiful.  Even our little fire pit is newly refurbished with kindling ready to strike an evening campfire during the cool fall evenings.  We’re not likely to get to use it, but I finally got around to it.  (Well, actually I was procrastinating the daunting task of packing up the disarray in my shed, so I have a good excuse…)

I also fixed the basement doorbell, a minor leak in the roof, a stuck shower valve, a broken spring in our dishwasher, and a number of other things that were on my “honey-do” list.  All minor projects; all pending for some significant amount of time.

This got me to thinking.  Why is it that I was willing to live with things not-quite-right for so long when it was so easy to fix them?  Why was it more important for me to fix them for this other family that will soon be making this their home instead of ours?

How am I settling for the not-quite-right in other areas of my life?  Is it something that is easy to “fix”?  Just a thought…

Oh, and let me tell you.  Our “new” house won’t have any pending projects once we get all moved in and settled.  I won’t let them accumulate on me like they did at this “old” house… (please note intended sarcasm here)

By Christ

Everything that is or ever has been was created by Jesus and for His glory.  All the potential I can ever possess originated with Him, and any worth that I have came because it was given to me.  He gave up his life so that I could be reconciled to God.  That reconciliation comes as a free gift, and not because of anything I could ever do.  All I do is accept the gift.

With Christ

Because of His extraordinary sacrifice and the quality of His character, I want to spend time with Him.  I learn more about Him and bask in the light of His glory.  Just as the “big ball of dirt” that we call the moon reflects the light of our local star, even I can reflect the glory of God by spending time with Jesus.

Like Christ

The more time I spend with Jesus, the more I find myself becoming like Him.  I respond to others with more patience, grace, and mercy.  I am inclined to be charitable rather than critical.  I learn to love unconditionally.  I am filled.

For Christ

As I am being filled to bursting, the natural outpouring of Jesus’ unconditional love is for me to minister to others in His name.  I do these things not to receive favor or acceptance, because I am already favored and accepted as an adopted son.  I do things for Christ because I want to bring Him glory.  Jesus did for me what I couldn’t do for myself.  Now I have a chance to do for others in His name.

If I keep this perspective, I think I’ll have a pretty good day.

We talked briefly of our families, and then got straight to the meat of what I wanted to talk about.  Actually, it was more what I wanted to listen about.  He had tapped into something that was largely foreign to me, and I wanted to know more about it.

He described his experiences and why he was confident that God was leading him in his new direction.  Then, he asked me about my decision-making strategies.  Eventually he told me about a resource that he has used to help confirm God’s leading in things.  It involves prayer (obviously), but is a systematic and deliberate way of prayerfully approaching a decision.  It turns out that it is described in a book: “Developing Intimacy with God: An Eight-Week Prayer Guide Based on Ignatius’ ‘Spiritual Exercises’”, by Alex B. Aronis.  Based on his recommendation, I have decided to devote one hour per morning for eight weeks to work through this guide.  Today was day two.

No, I’m not going to bore you by regurgitating each day of this process…  I know that works for many bloggers, but it just isn’t my style.  Plus, I’m never sure how regularly I will be posting here and I don’t want to disappoint the random person who wants to be able to follow the process.  If that’s you, get the book.  It’s an easy read, and VERY practical.

The first challenge I am facing in deepening my intimacy with God is being able to see myself as God sees me.  I’m finding that I have first needed to examine myself and be honest about how I see myself.  When was the last time you did that?

Ask yourself two questions:

1. What is your primary purpose in life?  (Really, what is it?  Don’t just give the Sunday school answer here…)
2. What motivates you to pursue your primary purpose in life?

As I’ve asked myself those questions in the prescribed morning prayer time, I have found that my approach to situations during the day has been quite different than it might otherwise have been.  A simple recognition of those two facts has already begun to shape the way I interact with the circumstances of my life.

If God can change me that much in two days, what might He accomplish in eight weeks?

What about if I give Him that much time over the course of a lifetime?

I’ve recently received a barrage of comments from my old pen pal David, whom I had previously tagged as a spammer on new posts and who said goodbye once more “for the last time.”  My friend Jim posted a reply to David and received a scathing response in return.  Jim responded with his characteristic kindheartedness and was again rebutted by David.  All this (and an early exit from a Friday afternoon faculty meeting) got me thinking about tolerance (and intolerance) for other peoples’ points of view.

I’ve made no secret that I consider myself to be a follower of Jesus.  (Before David points out some historical discrepancy in that statement, let me say that this is Yeshua bar Joseph of Nazareth, the man who was crucified by the Romans at the request of the religious establishment of Jerusalem for what they considered to be blasphemous actions and words.  He is sometimes called Jesus Christ, and he stated on several occasions that he was the son of God and the “Son of Man”.  You know, the guy that the entire New Testament was written about.)  My pen pal David and my friend Jim both talk about how they follow and/or esteem that same Jesus in different ways.  Is it really possible for two individuals to “correctly” follow the ideals of one person in such different ways?  Religious relativists would say yes, while absolutists would say no.  In my estimation, David seems to be an abolutist.  Jim seems to be also.  I would classify myself as one as well.  No relativistic thinking here (unless we’re talking about physics).  I’ll let David and Jim say what they want about their own thinking on this matter.

So how should an absolutist thinker like myself deal with someone who holds beliefs so radically different from my own?  Echoes from the past of “burn the witch!” and “kill the heathen!” and various other battle cries haunt my conscience.  Jesus never condemned anyone.  Oh, wait.  He did condemn a few…  See, for example, Matthew 23:13-36 (NASB).

Jesus taught the requirements of salvation, and the greatest commandments, and lived a life of servant leadership and forgiveness.  The only condemnation he offered was condemnation to the religious elite who tried to tell everyone else the business of how they should relate to God whether or not they themselves did as they said.

As I see it, my obligation and joy as a Christ-follower is to do my utmost to live a life worthy of Him (whatever that means) and to share the “good news”/”Gospel” with everyone who will listen (whatever that means).  It’s the two greatest commandments all over again: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Would I condemn myself for having thoughts or ideas that are disagreeable?  (Okay, so I may have just blown a gasket there.  You get the general idea, though…)

A deeper question: what is the difference between tolerance and acceptance?  Between listening and following?  This is more important than simply allowing others to be heard.

Just my $0.02 at the end of a long and trying week.  Comments (especially those that are constructive) are welcome.  Rants are not.  Thanks for reading.

There’s the spoken information and the unspoken.  The verbal and the nonverbal.  More subtle than that, there is the intentional and the unintentional.  And as I start this new semester, I want my intentional information to be as clear and deliberate as possible, and I want to minimize (or at least do damage control) on the unintentional information.  Does it really matter if I communicate this information, or can it wait (perhaps forever)?  Am I communicating prejudice and judgment rather than love and acceptance?  Do I appear neutral, fair, and just or biased, emotional, and easily influenced?

Do I give any impression that I am a person who loves Jesus?  Do I really?

Or is it more important that they find out what I do and how well I do it?  Is my work identity more important than my eternal identity?

Or maybe I’m more concerned about telling them about my family…  But my adopted Father (the capital “F” there should clue you in that I’m talking about God here) is the most important family I can ever have.  Do I talk about Him?  What if I am in a situation where that is “not appropriate”?  Does “not appropriate” mean forbidden/illegal, or just frowned upon?  Does it really matter?  Jesus’ first disciples did a lot of talking about him that was forbidden/illegal and greatly frowned upon, to the point of being put to death.  Something to think about there.

So I have a couple of hours before I meet with my first classes.  We’ll see what impressions they make on me, and what impressions I manage to make on them.  I just hope that I choose the right things to communicate to them.

I got to see the sixth installment to the Harry Potter movie series (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), and I have to say that I really enjoyed it.  Having said that, I have some “Random Commentary” to add to the muck and mire that is floating around cyberspace.

The first is this: Yes, a conservative, evangelical Christian can in fact enjoy FICTION that is not based in reality and includes elements of things that are forbidden in the Bible (witchcraft, for example).  Plenty has been written on this topic in the past (both the pros and cons), and that is not the topic of this post.

Now that we’re far enough down in the post to avoid catching the spoiler-sensitive person unawares, I can get to the meat of what I would like to discuss this fine morning.  That topic is the alteration of a plot when adapting a movie to a book.

When I watch a movie, I do my best to suspend all disbelief and immerse myself into the world of the movie.  When I read fiction, I do the same thing.  I have managed to train myself to keep those two worlds separate; when I watch a movie based on a book, I watch the movie for the movie’s sake and immerse myself in that world and not the world of the book.  My wife will attest that that has not always been the case (I got a couple of elbows in the side when we watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and a few of the early Harry Potter movies had similar encounters within them), but I’m getting better.

My first pet peeve is when a movie within a series deviates from the plot/theme/layout of previous movies in the series.  Hogwarts (including the grounds and Hagrid’s hut), the Burrow, and even portions of the Dursley’s home have changed (sometimes gradually) from HP1 through HP6.  Some of this is related to the director, and that is fine.  Significant changes are frustrating, but not heartbreaking.  One significant deviation in HP6 was Dumbledore’s possession of Riddle’s diary.  Harry gave that diary to Lucius Malfoy in his clever ploy to free Dobby in HP2, so there is no reason for Dumbledore to have the book in HP6.  That, and it really didn’t add to the plot in any significant way.  Minor and petty, but frustrating.

Ever since the announcement that book 7 would be converted to two movies, many readers have wondered how they will dissect the book to make it work as two separate movies.  I even wondered what the titles might be, but they seem to just be going with “Part 1″ and “Part 2″.  Pretty lame given the separation in time for the two releases.

Now it seems that they altered the plot in HP6 in order to set up HP7 and HP8 in a different manner than Ms. Rowling did in book 6 for book 7.  One that particularly bothers me is the final scene.  Unlike my friends who participated in “Hogwarts Academy“, I didn’t miss the big final fight scene.  Leaving out Bill and Fleur (and their wedding in book 7) makes good sense to me in terms of saving time on tangential things.  Since they were left out, there was noone to be mauled by Greyback at Hogwarts.  No problem.  The problem came when Dumbledore simply told Harry to stay quiet and then went up onto the Astronomy Tower.  (Well, it actually came when Dumbledore and Harry apparated from the tower and not from Hogsmeade, but another minor issue…)  Dumbledore was supposed to body-bind Harry under the invisibility cloak.  This served two purposes: Harry is completely blameless in Dumbledore’s death (not so in movieland), and we know that Dumbledore is truly dead because the body-bind broke at the instant of his death.

My guess is that these changes were made partially to give more dimension to the character of Severus Snape.  In the movie (not the book), we see Snape telling Dumbledore that he really doesn’t want to fulfill his role in Dumbledore’s plan.  (Well, we see it in Snape’s memories that he passes on to Harry near the end of book 7, but that’s almost an afterthought.  We also see Snape telling Harry to keep quiet while he (Snape) goes upstairs to confront Draco and the other Death Eaters and then kill Dumbledore.  Was Harry finally trusting Snape because of Dumbledore’s insistance that he do so?  Was he afraid of Snape and unwilling to challenge him with the Death Eaters upstairs?  (I think the first, but you never know…)  In any case, Harry is an accessory to Dumbledore’s murder (or suicide?) in the movie when he was simply a bystander in the books.  This changes the fabric of his character, and I’m not sure I like movie Harry as much as I liked book Harry.  (That actually started in the diner when he was trying to pick up the waitress before Dumbledore came to fetch him in the beginning of the movie, but nonetheless.)

As a friend put it on Facebook, “Adaptations of books you love are always disappointing, …”.  Yet I still watch the adaptations.

I understand the necessity of leaving out subtle plot elements that can be included in a book but not in a movie (mostly due to time constraints), but wholesale plot changes really rub me the wrong way.  That’s showbusiness, I suppose.  Emphasis on the BUSINESS.  That’s the real reason why we’ll have eight movies instead of seven, right?  Why not make another two hundred million dollars or more by making people wait another nine to twelve months for the end of the story if you can?

Any thoughts?

(We’ll have some more substantial posts next week related to chemistry education at ChemEd 2009 and of course some posts on Biblical truth as well.  Time to get back into the swing of things as summer comes to a close in the northern hemisphere…)

I’m not into all this “BFF” stuff (or even BFFL, whatever that means) that “kids are into these days” because friendship is a unique relationship between two people and there shouldn’t really be a “best” about it.  And in my experience, there are very few things that actually turn out to be forever…

But that isn’t the point of this post.

Why do I have breakfast with my friends every week?  Because I need their help.

I’ve heard sermons and Sunday school lessons taught that say every Christian needs to have three types of relationships in their life: we all need a Paul, a Timothy, and a Barnabas (or Silas, depending on who might be teaching the lesson and what they think about Barnabas and Silas).

I need a mentor.  (That’s the Paul, for those of you unfamiliar with the New Testament.)

I need someone who allows me to mentor him.  (That’s the Timothy.)

I need a friend who will work alongside me and encourage me.  (That’s the Barnabas or Silas.)

My friends that leave the house an extra hour early each Thursday primarily fill the role of Barnabas in my life.  We talk about everything – relationship with the wife and children, issues at work, interesting things we have read or heard on the news, extended family issues, ministry opportunities, whether we have made progress on any of our pet projects…  Everything.  We ask each other tough questions.  We share wisdom we have learned (95% of the reliable wisdom comes directly from the Bible, by the way…), and we encourage each other with our own life experiences.

Sometimes, one of us steps up to the role of Paul and does a bit of mentoring.  (Usually it’s one of the other guys – I have a fair amount of information in my head but not a lot of practical wisdom that is worth sharing very often.)

Sometimes, one of us falls into the role of Timothy and accepts the guidance of the others.  (You guessed it – this is usually me.)

Sometimes the roles change.  What doesn’t change is that we are always there for each other, and we always take the time to pray together out loud before the time is done.  If someone has to leave early to prepare for something special at work, we usually pray early.  If someone misses the time together (as one did this morning because of a dead car battery), he calls one of the others to share news and prayer requests before going on with the day.  We consistently invest in each other’s life and are blessed by that time together.

This arrangement won’t last forever.  Someone might move, or get a job that prevents him joining us, or (hopefully many years from now) one of us will get older or sicker and “go from time into eternity” (that’s Christian-ese for “die” or “pass away”).  But I consider us to be BFFs because our friendship is focused on the forever part of the term.  We want the best for each other in an eternal sense, and we use our time now to invest for eternity.

It amazes me that no matter how tired I am or how difficult it has been for me to get up each morning that week, I manage to wake up on Thursdays ready to go and spend that quality time with my friends.  We’ve had swimming lessons with the kids (they’re little kids so we have to be in the pool with them) and Vacation Bible School every day this week, plus I’ve been doing work on our basement half-bathroom once the kids get in bed each night.  I’ve been tired, and I’ve been sleeping through or turning off my alarm each morning.  (I don’t have teaching responsibilities at the moment, so there’s no scheduled time that I need to be at work in the morning for now.)  Today, I managed to turn off my alarm and fall back asleep but still wake up in time to get a shower and go meet my friends.  This is a big deal.

One thing definitely has to change soon, though.  We need to find a place that serves better coffee.  Not that any of us needs the coffee, but it is nice to have a cuppa while getting a start on the day.

(If you’re thinking about starting something like this, I encourage you to invite as many guys as you possibly can.  We started with six to eight guys who came off and on, and now we are down to the three regulars.  At this point, it would be hard for a new person to join the group because of all the time we’ve spent together, but we would welcome him if he wanted to come.  It is easier to start with a large group and let it dwindle naturally than it is to add in new people as time goes on.  Just in my experience.)

I’ve just about recovered from our recent travels to a family reunion this past weekend.  It’s a mere 12-hour drive away (15 if you count the necessary stops when traveling with three children under the age of 5), and we managed to do the return route in one fell swoop (we did the trip out in three segments with visits to friends and a stop at the Creation Museum to break things up).

Any time you spend time with family, it can be a REALLY fun time.  It can also be a REALLY exhausting time, sometimes even exasperating.  This particular trip was ~65% fun, ~30% exhausting, and ~5% exasperating.  Not bad at all.

It was easier for me to spend time with my extended family before we had children.  There were things that I chose not to do that other family members chose to do, but it wasn’t a big deal and we enjoyed our time together even with (sometimes significant) differences.  Now that we have children, it’s a little tougher.  My wife and I spend a LOT of time teaching and training our children how they should behave and why they should behave that way.  That’s our job, according to the Bible (see Proverbs 22:6 and Ephesians 6:4 for examples).  So it’s interesting when family members do things that our daughter (who is a precocious almost-five-year-old) knows to be wrong.  (For those of you who are more “tolerant” and/or “accepting” than I am, please insert “morally unacceptable” or “contrary to Biblical teaching” instead of the word “wrong” in the previous sentence.)

Sometimes, she chooses my preferred course of action – she quietly goes about her own business and then asks me or my wife about it in private later in the day.  No confrontation, teachable moment.  Good stuff.

Sometimes, she asks an innocent question that (hopefully) the other family member doesn’t hear and we can answer discretely without causing a scene.  Sometimes this gets interesting when the question is overheard and possibly responded to by the other family member.

Sometimes, she asks the “judgmental” question.  “Why does <insert family member’s name here> do <insert questionable behavior> when God doesn’t want them to?”  Sticky spot… but consistent with what we’ve been teaching her.  The easiest answer is: “<Insert family member’s name here> might not know what God wants them to do.  If you want, you can ask them about it and see what they say.”  Since she is shy (for now), she usually declines.

So far, she hasn’t done anything more confrontational than that.  It’s only a matter of time, though…

Does anybody have any amusing stories to share?

Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.  (James 1:27, NASB)

Since a church is the place where most Christians work out their “religion”, it seems that the church should be providing support for these sorts of activity.

(I won’t even touch the last part – I don’t know of any church that does a good job of truly helping people to keep themselves unstained by the world.  That is a big part of why so many people think that Christianity is irrelevant; they don’t see any difference between most churchgoers and non-churchgoers.  Moving on…)

We are supposed to “visit orphans and widows in their distress.”  What does that mean?  We are to spend time with them and help to provide support for them.  Sometimes that support will take on the form of physical needs (food, shelter, etc.) as well as emotional needs (companionship, understanding) and spiritual needs (the ministering of the Gospel).  So does that mean that every church should have an orphanage and an old folks’ home?

I’ll start a new line so that it is easy to see my response to that rhetorical question: NO WAY, ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I could be missing something (if so, please point out where I should find it), but nowhere in the Bible do I see anything about retirement communities or orphanages.  In fact, I don’t see anything about segregation by age in any discussion about the fellowship of believers.  The New Testament church was all about sharing things in common – just read Acts.  So how should the organized church respond to James’ statement about “pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father”?

Most churches do a pretty good job of caring for widows.  As a society, we do a terrible job because there is no sense of responsibility within the family unit.  The way I read things in the Bible, it is my responsibility to care for any widow that is related to me in any way necessary.  That includes my mother (should my father pass away), my mother-in-law (should her husband pass away and no son is available to take her into his home), my daughter (if, when I am older she gets married and then later her husband passes away)…  you get the idea.  Most churches have groups of people who visit the elderly (especially widows) and try to care for their needs.

But most churches don’t do anything organized for orphans.

So, I believe our church needs to do something.  In a real, organized way.

What would that look like?

It shouldn’t be an orphanage – just take a look at how effective those are at helping children to gain the necessary life skills to go out and be productive, let alone how effective they are at communicating God’s love to them.

We should be bringing these orphans into our homes.  We should be adopting them.  It’s what God did for us:

He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, (Ephesians 1:5, NASB)

And it’s what some families in the church are already doing.  So, the church should support that activity.  How do we support it?  The same way we support parents who have children the “natural” way – baby showers, hot meals, etc.

But one significant difference between the “natural” way and adoption is that health insurance doesn’t cover adoption.  It can sometimes cost some serious money to adopt a child.  Some families can afford that expense, others can’t.  I think the church should help level the field for families who have a legitimate desire to raise children not born in their family as their own, in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

We don’t just write a check to “adopt” a child who lives in an orphanage overseas (although we should do that, too).  We help families within our own communities to obtain the resources they need to bring these children home.  They need homes, and we need to provide those homes.

I think I know what we’re supposed to do as a church.  But how should I transition from a personal conviction to a matter of church policy?  How can a burning in one person’s chest become an official church program?

More importantly, how ought things to progress from here?

(We’ve had a small group meeting and searched for resources and I’ve talked with our pastor and the chairman of the deacons and had some discussion with the body of deacons after that.  We’ll see where it goes from here…)

Questions for the public at large: do you have examples of working church programs in your area?  We’ve found a few through internet resources, but personal experience is far more valuable than propaganda posted on the web.

That’s the kind of thing you’ll hear from parents of young children from time to time, so my friends aren’t too surprised when that is something I say (especially first thing in the morning) every once in a while.

Last night, our son woke us up fairly frequently with loud yelling.  He doesn’t have a very large vocabulary (something we’re trying to work on), and I won the lottery – “Daddy” was the only thing discernable in most of his yelling throughout the night.

He wears some therapeutic footwear to bed, and his complaint is that his “boos” (shoes/boots) are bothering him.  I adjusted them to his comfort, so there shouldn’t have been any problem.  I massaged his feet, so he should be as comfortable as possible.  He wears them every night at home, so he should be used to it.  But still the screaming.

I tried being sympathetic and understanding.  More screaming.

I tried being gruff and stern (more natural for me).  More screaming.

No matter what I tried, more screaming.  I hope my wife got more sleep than I did, but that is unlikely since she is a lighter sleeper than I am.  It’s a miracle that our daughters weren’t awake all night as well.

Finally, at 4AM, something seemed to work (probably exhaustion), and I got another 90 minutes of sleep before starting the day.  An encouraging coffee and prayer “breakfast” with friends helped put a better perspective on it all.

So why is it that my natural inclination would be to get angry (even physically so) with my son instead of being understanding and trying to make him more comfortable?  I can blame fatigue, but that is just my body’s way of overcoming social norms to make me the person I really am inside.

Even in the heat of the moment, I need to remember that I love my son no matter what and that I have his best interests at heart.  I think I did a pretty good job last night, but certainly not a perfect one.  Definitely some room for improvement there.

I am so glad that God is more patient with me than I am with my children.  Another character quality that is worth aspiring to – longsuffering.