April 2012
1 post
Substance.
What kinds of ministers does such a culture produce? Ministers who are not at home with what is significant; ministers whose attention span is less than that of a four- year-old in the 1940’s, who race around like the rest of us, constantly distracted by sounds and images of inconsequential trivialities, and out of touch with what is weighty. It is not surprising that their sermons, and the...
March 2012
1 post
Blessed Are the Blunt.
It’s time for me to come out and just say it: I like you, Mark Driscoll.
I like you a lot.
This isn’t exactly a piece of groundbreaking news for those who’ve known me for any length of time, but it feels good to say it out loud. For some, I just made a dangerous confession, which is odd considering we’re talking about a guy who has gone to great lengths to avoid sugar coating and watering down...
January 2012
1 post
Resolve to Repent.
By now you’ve heard 127 versions of “Holly Jolly Christmas”. You’ve swiped your ATM card so many times that the strip on the back is actually bleeding red. You’ve eaten three times your weight in Hershey’s kisses, and drank another half of it in eggnog. You swore you’d start eating oatmeal for breakfast five days ago, but those left over cinnamon rolls keep creeping their way back into the...
October 2011
1 post
Down Colorful Hill.
The subtleties of fall. In the morning, we walk down roads and we talk, carefully remarking and noting the vague hints of color that start dotting the leaves, matching the coats of birds and other creatures that blend into their warm, inviting tones. Clusters of oranges, yellows and reds have started to spread from the centers, but you barely notice them bleeding from leaf to leaf until one...
September 2011
1 post
Everything In Its Right Place.
Optimist or Pessimist? What an unfortunate and limited way to have to define someone’s outlook and worldview, because both sides represent a near-sidedness that none of us probably want to associate with. The Opti gets accused of burying their head in the sand, oblivious to the realities, difficulties and potential problems of life, whereas the Pessi is accused of always taking such a negative...
August 2011
4 posts
So Tonight That I Might See.
What does one do to alleviate the dull ache that idols create in the heart of the Christian? I think when we talk about patterns of self centeredness we aren’t talking about getting rid of something as much as we’re talking about replacing something. In other words, there’s a place for that object, and when you decide to tear that object from the comfortable place that it’s shaped and molded to,...
Wait in the Dark.
Encouragement reminds me of a friend I had years ago. You never knew when he was going to be around, but when he was, life felt all the better for it. It doesn’t take much for us to be encouraged. A kind word spoken or some good news received unexpectedly can infuse just enough hope in us to change the entire course of a day, month, year or….life. When Paul tells Timothy to “be...
The Black Hit of Space.
I like records. I didn’t really grow up with them as much as I grew up with cassettes, but since they don’t make those anymore and there’s been a resurgance in vinyl over the past few years, it’s actually a fun time for those of us interested in an older technology to see something that’s made a decidedly modern comeback.
I’m not an audiophile (because...
It Couldn't Happen Here.
Oh ambition, I love that you’re a part of my life but I wish you’d slow down occasionaly because all that activity isn’t all that great for my heart…..
Like a lot of things, there’s probably a good and bad side to ambition. We need to wake up, think about the future, put a plan together and actually walk out the door and get moving, but the Bible talks about a...
July 2011
4 posts
In Between Days.
Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you’ve justified your existence by the words you write, the notes you record, the sounds you create and the melodies you sing to audiences of various races, creeds, colors and proportions. And maybe because of this, you’ve not felt deeply drawn to other, more mundane, less creative activities in life that in reality make up the majority of your...
Leave Me Alone.
I’m a reflective vacationer. As much as I like to “check out”, vacation is usually a time for me to “take stock” more than anything else, to have a real hard look at where I’m at and where the Lord is leading me and what He’s revealing to me about sin in my life and all sorts of other neat things. I promise it’s not as exhausting and painful as it...
Cloudbusting.
Do I even get to be cynical? I was talking to a friend the other day who said “You know, I could easily be cynical, but I choose not to”. Not a bad course of action, but the “realist alert” in me moved into the red as I immediately made some comment about how glazing over situations while trying to put a positive spin on everything is about as helpful as being pessimistic...
Running Up That Hill.
The patience required in the life of a Christian who wants to properly bear the name of Christ is something to behold. I look back, I look forward, I look to the right and to the left, always thinking I should be in a place that I’m not in….either yet or ever. I want to “press on” like the apostle Paul, while being “content in all things”, but it feels like some...
June 2011
9 posts
These Precious Things.
Too many men work too much. From their job, to their hobbies, to home improvements, to needlessly always being the guy to volunteer to do everything, some men never stop and it’s because they don’t know how and more truthfully, don’t want to. I’m not immune. Although nobody has ever had to tell me to take a vacation, I find my mind constantly in overdrive plotting new...
Computer World.
Ahh lists. You gotta love ‘em. I was never a list maker, but I kind of am now. I have this little digital post-it note thing on my comp that I add to and delete and add to and delete almost every day and I gotta say that it’s been kind of helpful. There are things that have to get done, things I want to get done, and things that don’t really matter if they get done or not but...
1 tag
Ready To Start.
The rumors are true, my favorite TV show of all time is Little House on the Prairie. No apologies….I mean…I think you should probably apologise if it was The Dukes of Hazzard, The Cosby Show, 90210, Dancing With the Stars or Jersey Shore, but that’s a whole other convo.
The fact is that I completely idealized the image that was portrayed of the Ingalls family: simple, hard...
Under Cover of Darkness.
How claustrophobic is your life? Do you ever spend time with someone and feel the weight and burden of overcommittment just hovering over them, waiting to bear down and crush them? Too many tasks, too many activities, too many committments, too much volunteer work, too many ministries, too many sports, too many hobbies…too many too many’s. Sure, we’ve probably all been at...
A Man Called Sun.
Summer is a strange time here in my newly adopted hometown of Ashland, Ohio. It can feel like a bit of a ghostown at times, people coming in and out, some leaving on vacation, moving into different schedules, keeping to themselves and their families a bit more, seasonal things opening for the summer, activities changing because there is now this thing called sunshine available, etc. It was...
Brilliant Trees.
I searched for weeks trying to find a theatre in either Columbus or Cleveland that was showing “Tree of Life”, and finally found it playing at The Cedar Lee in Cleveland Heights. A charming, older theatre in a refurbished part of town, right up the street from a great restaurant called Melt, Beth and I could hardly contain our enthusiasm. Three hours later we looked a little quizzical,...
Procession.
Routines can sometimes feel like madness. We like to think that time somehow stops every night for 8 hours when we sleep, providing a reset/restart when we wake up, but in reality, the motion of life never ceases. This morning it’s Sunday, so I wake up early and start contemplating church services in front of a window looking out at grey skies with coffee, a Bible and a computer screen...
1979.
There was such a nostalgic aspect to Super 8, a new film that came out Friday by JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg, that I left the theatre in a sort of suspended, animated, bizarrely joyous state….kind of how I always want to leave a movie feeling. The setting of the film went a long way toward mimicing some of my own “Goonies” style adventures of the late 70’s, early...
A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours.
The days tend to get away from you sometimes. And some months. And some years. But I don’t want to be a juggler. I don’t want to simply maintain the various elements of my life regardless of whether they come under the headings of family, church, music, job, friendships, hobbies or fill in the blank. I don’t want excercises in futility. I want to redeem the time that God has...
April 2011
6 posts
Five Leaves Left.
I was walking with M under heavy storm clouds last night, and it dawned on me that in four months (give or take) we’re going to be facing down fall again. When I lived in CA., I would count down the days and months until fall, which as a season didn’t mean so much since the leaves and temperatures didn’t really change until…well…I don’t know if they ever really...
The Great Escape.
Just finished reading Tullian Tchividjian’s “Surprised By Grace”, which is a thought provoking and heart convicting take on the story of Jonah. The national pride that Jonah had for his own people swelled to the point that he had no compassion or grace for the people God was sending him to deliver His message of judgment. His arrogance, self righteousness and anger toward the...
The Acts of Man.
I’m making a return to daily blogging, for better or for worse. And the love of God is as present in the better as it is in the worse, but I feel much more lonely when it’s worse.
The band Midlake has a song called “The Acts of Man” which I find timely in the week leading up to Good Friday and Easter. We’ll never be more keenly aware of our sin than when our eyes are...
Back to the Old House.
In the old days, Sundays meant antique stores. Being that my family’s made up of antique store fanatics, a lot of Sundays were spent hitting all the standard favs, and then ending the day back at the parents house for a BBQ and whatever else.
That was a long time ago now.
But today brough a hint of it all back. As the temperature hit eighty, we hiked the backroads of Ashland until we...
A Design For Life.
I’d never had a big window to look out into the neighborhood until now. It’s nice to sit at the table and stare through this rectangular looking glass, think about the weather, see the wind, and watch the people pass by on foot and vehicle. There’s a unique serenity of being so close to everything that’s happening, but actually be in another world on the other side of the...
The Soft Rains of April.
It hailed, rained and snowed all in a matter of hours, and now, nothing again.
I wonder at the sometimes frenzied yet inconsistent pace of change in our lives.
There will be nothing for years and years, and then suddenly an avalanche, as if underneath it all something has been building the whole time but has just been waiting for the right moment to unleash. And in those moments we...
March 2011
8 posts
Grow, Grow, Grow.
Progress. Move forward but be steadfast. Look to the future, but be rooted to the present. That’s the kind of language we hear a lot as we maneuver through the ins and outs of life and church culture. We are ambitious for many things, including our desire for more ambition, but it’s the object of our ambition that determines whether we are moving toward a future of faith.
I want to be...
All These Hours Undone.
The time change is SLAYING ME. I’ve no idea how one hour can completely unravel a less than wonderful sleep pattern anyway, but somehow it has and I’m one tired hombre.
Look, I’ve never been a “sleep in” guy. Just give me a good six hours and I’m ready to go. The tossing, the turning…I just can’t do it anymore. I get up, I read, I hop on the...
Never Let Me Down Again.
The one thing we don’t get is a picture of the future. I find myself talking to friends and agonizing over what might and might not be, but the danger is that it can lead to doubt and futility. Hope is tangible when it’s placed on the only tangible person, not object, in existence, and that’s God. Somehow we are drawn to having affection for objects rather than God because...
3 tags
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
Bitterness is the sleeping giant in the corner of our hearts. As much as I’ve been able to detect it in others, I’ve found it a bit harder to detect in myself (convenient, I know), so it’s no surprise that when I do those major “sweeps of the heart” to see what’s lurking beneath….it’s….uhh…there. A pastor/mentor of mine from the past...
5 tags
Blood and Roses.
The whole thing’s been blown to smithereens…..this daily blogging routine, that is. Nevertheless, I’m back to writing at the beginning of a jam packed weekend, coming off a week of typical highs and lows.
Charlie Sheen - I’d like to back up what Mark Driscoll said which was essentially that this joke isn’t funny anymore and we should be prayerfully concerned instead...
3 tags
Spice of Life.
Between Rob Bell and Charlie Sheen, there’s a lot of people in my sphere talking about two people they don’t know, but are still captivated by the hype. It’s hard not to be.
Bell has a book coming out that he hopes will redefine the notion of what the Bible meant when it talked about hell. And Sheen is just….well….winning. The two have little in common (I think),...
4 tags
2 tags
Low Life.
Teaching a message tomorrow night on brokenness at my church’s mid-week Bible study (called “The Fuse”). I’m indebted to Nancy DeMoss and her amazing book “Brokenness”, which inspired my title “The Beauty of Low Self Esteem”. It’s only when we have low self esteem that we can highly esteem Jesus.
Still learning how to do that every day.
1 tag
Bird of Passage.
I’m sitting here in the office while my women are in the other room playing Angry Birds.
That’s kind of it.
February 2011
24 posts
2 tags
Back in Black.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2011/02/26/rob-bell-universalist/
The division bell.
2 tags
These Are the Things That Dreams Are Made Of.
A drive in the snow. A bowl of soup. A snowman in the yard. A warm fire. A handful of popcorn. The new Cut/Copy album. Cat’s asleep on the couch. Unwrapping caramels for brownies. Recording drums and basslines. Looking out the window at all the white. And gladness is swelling inside.
See title.
2 tags
Super Trouper.
I found discouragement to be a lot more prevelant than encouragement this week. No matter who I talked to, there seemed to be a black cloud hanging in the balance. And that is the ebb and flow of life. Glass half full, half empty, optimist, pessimist, realist, surrealist….we are all faced with the reality of our circumstances and sometimes they’re not lovely. Or maybe we get more...
1 tag
Hungry Like the Wolf.
“Not to brag, but……”
It’s interesting how many conversations I’ve been in recently that at some point seem to have this line thrust into the middle, whatever the context. We seek validation like HUNGRY WOLVES. Yet Ephesians says “so that no one may boast” because we are “His workmanship”. Christians are not owners, but our sinful...
Vanity Fair.
I had a “kids” version of Pilgrims Progress that I read religiously growing up. For some reason I thought of it recently and remembered how much I loved the story. The character of Christian inspired me and I remember thinking about him often and his “every man” struggles through the fantastical trials of life that are portrayed in the book. I need to reconnect with that...
White Chalk.
The day started clear and cold, but was blanketed in white by the afternoon. I always thought of myself as one of those people who didn’t do well with changes, but I think something changed years ago. I think I became someone who doesn’t do well when it feels like things are never going to change or progress. I think that’s more accurately called impatience, but I don’t...
Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Watched Finding Neverland with Beth tonight. We’ve seen it periodically since it came out years ago, and once again I’m reminded that it’s probably my favorite film. There’s a timeless combination of magic, love and sadness that is inexblicably deep, profound and almost overwhelming.
How am I supposed to sleep now?
The Song Remains the Same.
A lot of songwriters work in isolation, and I’m no different. Because I’ve essentially been a soloist in the studio all of these years, my “inspiration” usually hits when working in the solitude of my own space. It’s come as an unexpected surprise and joy that my Beth has become a songwriter and we’re now spending time together working on her songs and recording...
A Means To An End.
I stacked wood today with a friend and was reminded of how much I like repetition. I think of all the things we do in life that repeat, and then I’m reminded in scripture that we’re to be steadfast in all things, because it’s the repetition of life that sometimes depletes us. I always think about Moses and how God took FORTY YEARS to prepare him for ministry. He thankfully takes...
Bigger than Us.
I got nothing. Truly. So here is something better than I could ever write from The Valley of Vision, a Puritan book of prayers.
Holy Lord, I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find Thy mind in Thy Word, of neglect to seek Thee in my daily life. My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, but I bless Thee that they...
My Funny Valentine.
It’s a tricky day for men. Most of the time I hear the typical cliches of ”it’s a greeting card holiday” or “it lacks emotion and is contrived if I do something nice just because it’s Valentines Day”. It’s funny that we don’t use that same criteria on birthdays or Christmas, so I wonder why there’s such a push back with doing something...
A Sort of Homecoming.
It was exactly a year ago that we came to Ashland, Ohio to see about a possible move to a new church and new life. I know that time seems to go faster as you get older, but I can hardly believe that it’s been a year since we got off the plane on Valentines Day weekend, wondering what on earth might happen. I remember being touched at how nice John and Joy Jentes were as they opened up their...
We're Looking for the Whales.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:33
The concept of seeking God first is a completely foreign state of affairs to our natural, sinful, wretched hearts and minds. The second part of the verse is not. It’s the “and all these things” part that we continually build on, stress over, and do our darndest to...
