Part of missing the rains down in Africa entails missing this:

My good friend Robert is currently back in Kijabe, Kenya where we went to boarding school together. I saw this view a few times on hikes with him and others. I miss it so! Glad he gets to be back experiencing this!

What does it take to be the hands and feet of Christ?

it takes courage.

recently, i think that God has been placing people in my life for a reason. as i noted in previous posts, i took a course called the gospel of luke as a module course here at seminary. in that class two of the biggest subjects we dealt with were the hospitality of God and liberation for the poor. well, low and behold a few situations have occurred in the past several days that have dealt exactly with this.

last weekend, my sister and i had just finished grocery shopping when a lady motioned at us and came walking up. then she began her story. generally i just start to tune them out when that story starts and look for some change to give to them. but thankfully, my sister helped me not to do that. the lady's name was rochelle. she worked on the side of town where we were shopping, but lived with her young children at least twenty minutes away. she and they were hungry and cold and she didn't have a way to get back to them. we offered to take her to the bus depot, and she didn't want us to bother. but she did want us to pray. there in front of aldi's we prayed with her.

then tonight after a week of reading more into the gospel of luke, where just this morning i read about the good samaritan, about helping to usher in the kingdom of God, about asking God for our daily bread; libby and i encountered another similar situation. a gentlemen named terrance came up to us in westport, kansas city and told us of his young girls who needed diapers and nutritional milk. again, i longed just to end the conversation with me sticking my hand in my pocket and taking out some coins i got at the tip jar as a barista today, but thankfully yet again my sister continued in dialogue with the man. we went down to the local grocery story and got him what he had asked. he didn't come in with us, because he said he was already caught stealing some diapers earlier. this man had said that he had come to kansas city in hopes of a fresh start. he'd been a druggie in chi town, and wanted to take proper care of his wife, azetta and his girls.

it's times like these that we're faced with decisions. we can either just say, sorry i've got to go, or look to the scapegoat of some loose change. or, we can physically try to help these people. sure, there are cons out there. maybe even these people were cons. but we cannot be the judges of that. we're called to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the least of these. it's something that takes courage. it takes courage to take that step of getting out of our comfort zones and helping strangers.

yet, i also know there's so much more that can be done. i hope that i can find some meaningful ways, and i hope that the church can find some meaningful ways to help the rochelle's, terrance's, and azetta's which are all over our cities, our world.

the way we experience church

first off, i don't want to title this the way we worship. worship should be our very existence. there should be no separation between our life and our worship as followers of Christ. so therefore i entitle this the way we experience church. for now, i just want to touch on the notion of music in church. there will forever be a battle between the generations as to how we partake in the said subject whilst at church. i'm reading a book about christian ethics, by a collaboration of authors, at the moment, and in it the author of a chapter talked about music styles and whatnot. basically he was concerned that music styles play too much to the current culture. i agree with this. i don't think that church needs to be some flashy place that caters to the desires of the cnn and itunes followers. however, the author did seem to advocate the hymns of the past as the way to go. hey, i enjoy hymns, no quibbles with that. but the fact is that those hymns are culturally relative in themselves. yes, many do speak a great theological wonder and biblical truth, but many of them do not as well. i think i am coming to the point where i believe wholeheartedly that theological significance should be the way we deem music suitable for the church. personally i'm a fan of hillsong united. i don't necessarily advocate everything the leader of their parent movement, brian houston, preaches, and i find a certain youtube parody of their church quite accurate in many regards. but, some of their songs speak of what the gospel is all about, and i wouldn't mind singing this in church sometime. this song is called solution. especially after this gospel of luke class that i was in, i think it sums up some key points we believe about Jesus, his love, compassion and hospitality:

It is not a human right
To stare not fight
While broken nations dream
Open up our eyes, so blind
That we might find
The Mercy for the need

Singing, Hey now
Fill our hearts with your compassion
Hey now
As we hold to our confession
Yeah

It is not too far a cry
To much to try
To help the least of these
Politics will not decide
If we should rise
And be your hands and feet

Singing, Hey now
Fill our hearts with your compassion
Hey Now
As we hold to our confession

Woah-oh-oh,
God be the solution
Woah-oh-oh
We will be Your hands and be Your feet.
Yeah, yeah

Higher than a circumstance
Your promise stands
Your love for all to see
Higher than protest line and dollar signs
Your love is all we need

Only You can mend the broken heart
And cause the blind to see
Erase complete the sinners past
And set the captives free
Only You can take the widows cry
And cause her heart to sing
Be a Father to the fatherless
Our Savior and our King
We will be Your hands, we will be Your feet
We will run this race
On the darkest place, we will be Your light
We will be Your light

We will be Your hands , we will be Your feet
We will run this race for the least of these
In the darkest place, we will be your light
We will be your light
We'll sing

Woah-oh-oh,
God be the solution
Woah-oh-oh
We will be Your hands and be Your feet.

what i've learned in seminary this semester: modules

so this semester started for me two and 1/2 weeks ago on january 17th. i was in a module class. a module class at nazarene theological seminary is a two week intensive course. they are just that, quite intense. my module class met every week night for 4 hours and 45 minutes. some people take two of these and so they are in class for 9 and 1/2 hours. most modules have pre course work, course work, and post course work. they are crazy.

i was in the gospel of luke. i was pretty excited for this class. the learning started right away. my favorite book before the course started (during the pre course work) was Jesus and empire by richard a. horsely. this book really gave me an in depth look at what the roman empire was like during Jesus' day. i really discovered how brutal the empire was. in fact this book helped me during my writing of a sermon that my sister Libby and i co-prought (past tense for preached) at our parents church, salt lake city first church of the nazarene, the day after christmas. it was entitled the refugee God. basically we talked about how Jesus was born into life as a refugee, for his family fled to egypt right after his birth because of the brutal killing of male babies which herod imposed on the people. maybe i will post our manuscript on here sometime.

during the class the biggest themes which we talked about were hospitality, liberation and jubilee. the liberation and jubilee themes were talked about in relation to leviticus 25 and how this chapter talked of the year of jubilee which would be practiced every 50 years by the people, where debts were forgiven, where land would lie fallow, and where basically everyone would have a new start (it's a lot more detailed than that, so you can go look it up if you like). liberation was highlighted in the fact that Jesus brought liberation to people who were oppressed, both spiritually and physically.

lastly, we talked about hospitality. i was in a group which focused on the book "the hospitality of God" by brendan byrne. this book focused on how luke highlights the fact that Jesus practiced the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers in the gospel of luke. this all started through God's gracious hospitality which he extended to his people through sending his Son Jesus to them. then we saw how Jesus extended hospitality to those he came in contact with and how some of those who came in contact with him did the same.

my friend Jared brought up a good point, that maybe as wesleyans we would refer to this as prevenient grace. i think that i tend to agree with him, because God was preceduous in his extension of his hospitality through his love, both throughout the old testament, but also through sending his son to us.

it was definitely an intense couple of weeks of study. i enjoyed learning from my peers and learning from our gracious professor as well. i'm really glad that i took the class. it's opened up my eyes to how Jesus lived his life and how we are called to replicate this.

the city of fountains

i'm thankful for this place that i live. i'm thankful for friends here.

the new year

i will:

stay in shape

- physically

- spiritually

it's out there. i'm committed to this.

What are you willing to sacrifice for a friendship?

Five and almost a half years ago, I started my senior year of boarding school in Kijabe, Kenya at Rift Valley Academy.  Three years prior to that I started out there for the first time, in 9th grade.  When I first got there, a few great friends welcomed me the best they knew how.  One of them was a friend who had lived there for all of his life.  We hit it off from the get go, our passions for rugby and football draw us together.  His family too welcomed me in the kindest way possible.  I spent many hours at my friend’s house either working on homework, studying about God, fellowshipping with friends, or just resting.  I couldn’t have asked for anything more.  God had blessed me with a best friend. 

Now back to five and a half years ago.  It was the start of our senior year there at RVA.  My friend and I had taken a liking for a girl who seemed to have the qualities that both of us looked for in a lady.  We were on a collision course for disaster.  I had known that my friend had liked this girl the previous year.  I had as well.  But, when I found out that he liked her, I made a mistake.  I continued to pursue my own selfish desires.  This meant that there was now something which had come between us.  We were both fighting each other’s testosterone and our own friendship for something which in the end was all in vain. 

My friends told me to stop.  I didn’t listen.  I continued on down a path of selfishness over friendship.  Eventually, our friendship was almost nil.  If we weren’t in the same Sunday School class and teammates on a rugby team, we wouldn’t have interacted much at all.  The damage had been done, I had lost most of a friend who had meant three years of brotherhood in all aspects of life to me. 

Thankfully, the pathway to reconciliation was started at the end of that school year, and today we’re friends again.  But, the truth is that I regret the time that was lost.  I regret not being able to be there for a brother who had been there for me. 

Yesterday that brother got married.  I couldn’t be more happy for a friend than I am for him.  And I couldn’t be in more agony over the pain of what I had done to cause the rift in our friendship. 

I hope that something can be learned from the stupidity of my example.  I hope that others will seriously consider what they are sacrificing or giving up in their friendship with others when they enter into another. 

Love you man.  As you start this journey, I pray you have a life of blessedness with your God and your wife.