Update, Prayer & Community

Yeah...I know. It's been months. Sorry.

Just a quick update for those who don't know - I've currently got Lyme's Disease. It's not been a great experience, but I am definitely coming out of it. Our family looks forward to driving down to Lynchburg, VA on Monday to spend a night or two with Mike & Beth Lyle and then on to Orlando, FL for the General Assembly of the International Church of the Nazarene. I'll be helping out on an unofficial reporting site (click here), namely the GS Election Tracker.

The baby in Meghan's belly is doing great. His name is "Braby" for now. We really haven't come across many options we like for a name. We'll see what we'll do. But we're excited about it.

Anyway, what prompted my post was actually a video from an acquaintance of mine here in Hingham. He's a monk at the beautiful Glastonbury Abbey, a Benedictine monastery. He speaks about prayer & community. God...I long for this.

Local Voices: Br. Dan Walters from Robin Chan on Vimeo.

Till next time. And I hope it's not several months again. Once I figure out the best way to format and update my blog on the new Mac, I'll get some things done, but not for a few week.

Peace.

Where The Wild Things Are

Long been my favorite young children's book, the movie is well on it's way. Here is the trailer:

Flags Removed from Global Ministry Center

So over at Naznet.com, Chuck Milhuff reports that by order of the Board of General Superintendents, the American and Kansan flags have been removed from the Global Ministry Center.

Which makes sense for the GLOBAL Ministry Center of the INTERNATIONAL Church of the Nazarene.

Here's the thread

Family Dinner Prayers

We rotate between three different meal prayers.  One is: "Lord, bless this food which now we take to do us good for Jesus' sake."  Another is the good ole "God, our Father" song.  And the third is "God you're great, God you're good..."  I have minor theological differences and/or dislikes with each one of them.  

So I wrote one for us:

We thank you, God, for the food we have

and the ground from which it came.

We think of those who have it not

And pray them help in Jesus' name.  

Amen.

Any thoughts?

Refuse to Lead

This video really hit home this morning.

Last night, Danny sang Jesus Take the Wheel on American Idol. I'm not a big fan of the song. The music's all right, but the lyrics fall short of my Wesleyan-Arminian understanding of the relationship between God and humanity. While it may seem a worthy thought to hand over the steering wheel of our lives to Christ, it doesn't really work that way. When we "give" our lives to Christ, we still play a major part in making the decisions of life. The change comes in that we've committed to living life in an understanding that we're following in the way of Christ. Sure, we have Christ's Spirit to guide us, but Christ is a guide...not an auto-pilot. The image I've seen used and used myself a couple of times is the difference between a road map and a compass: our lives in Christ are not lived by a road map which tells us exactly where to go, but by a compass, who gives us direction.

It's actually quite a beautiful thing...this interaction and relationship between humanity and God.

This video from Peter Rollins describes this in part on a human-to-human level within the Church. From the experience of some of my interactions lately...he's right on. I would like to say more, but probably shouldn't...