Rock On

rock/räk/

Noun: 1.) The solid mineral material forming part of the surface of the earth and other planets.  2.) Rock music


On my best days, I feel like a rock - strong, steadfast, and enduring.  I can withstand any wave and make ripples of my own.  On my worst days, I feel like a rock - stubborn, heartless, and inflexible - more caught up in self-righteous convictions than in being responsive to the needs of others and desires of God.

Maybe you feel like a rock, too.  You might be interested to know that God has dealt with rocks before.  A few examples

- When His people were thirsty, God had Moses strike a rock with a rod to bring life-giving water gushing out of it.

- Jesus' lifeless body was placed in a tomb that was sealed with a giant boulder.  Stubborn as it may have seemed, God rolled it out of the way so that the life-giver could walk out from behind it.

- When Jesus was passing on the torch of his ministry here on earth, he took a rock - Peter, who's name in Greek literally means rock - and made him the cornerstone of a movement that has gone on to give life to countless billions of people.

However stubborn or heartless or immovable you may feel, know that God uses rocks.  He may have to hit you over the head, roll you in a direction you weren't ready for, or put you in a position you are completely uncomfortable with.  But given the opportunity God has used rocks to change the course of history, and given the opportunity He will use us, too.

Stand strong. Cause a ripple. Rock on.

My Young Hero

Today my hero is a 6 or 7 year old girl I may never meet again.

Last night, Ash and I had a Daddy-Daughter date at "the Taco Bell with the pwaygwound!"  After she hurriedly finished eating, she rushed out to the indoor play structure, disappeared through a tube, and scrambled up into toddler nirvana.  Since the big family that was out there was just leaving, she had the whole thing to herself.  I'm still not exactly sure what happened next.

As she got to the far tower of the structure, she slipped, or bumped her head, or something, and started crying. "Daddy, I'm stuck!!"  She needed to go up or down one stair to be able to get out, but whatever had happened left her scared, crying, and screaming, and she just couldn't muster up the bravery to do either.  Because of the way the structure is set up, I can barely see her.  The area under her is blocked off by walls and fences, and as I stare at the tiny opening she crawled through I'm sure I can't get to her.  I'm staying calm, trying to encourage, advise and negotiate in any way possible to convince her she needs to move.  My mind is racing through as many strategies and outcomes as possible, and my heart is breaking as she continues to cry for help I can't give.

Eventually, I decide I have to go after her.  I squeeze through the hole and slither around an enclosed circular staircase I am most certainly too big for.  I can get half way to her before I'm afraid my next move would break something and make this worse.  At least now I can see her and the one step she needs to make.  But still she won't move; still she cries for my help.

And then, my hero arrives.  This little girl, sent out with her little sister to play, comes scrambling up the stairs.  She seems appropriately surprised to run into me.  I said, "Hi.  Do you think you could crawl over there and show her how to get out?  She's scared and feeling stuck."  Without any of the reluctance I feared, she crawled over to Ash and began to show her how she could slide off the step without getting hurt and crawl back to me.  When Ash wouldn't budge, she patiently switched gears and showed her the best way to climb up the next stair to the slide so she could get out that way.  When Ash, in her emotional state, couldn't even make that happen, my little hero gave Ash a boost up that stair and escorted her down the slide to me.  I will never know her name, and am already forgetting her face, but every time I see a play set I will think of the little girl who saved my daughter.

I think sometimes we view helping others as some sort of monumental undertaking.  But how many of you know someone who just feels "stuck" in life?  Someone who feels like life isn't all they wanted it to be, but they have no idea how to get to their dream anymore.  Someone who feels like life has hit a dead end but they can't figure out how to get back to the last fork in the road.  Someone who is stuck in an addiction they can't escape.  Someone who is stuck between buying food or buying shoes for their kids.  We all know somebody.

Help doesn't have to be monumental.  Take time to listen to them.  Feel their fears and tears with them.  Get excited about their dreams with them.  Maybe you can use financial resources to give them a proverbial boost.  Maybe you can simply invite them to church.

Their Heavenly Father chooses to use us.  He is asking you to help them.  Be listening; be responsive; be a hero.

Pursuing God

I was journaling the other day and it sparked some thoughts I wanted to share.  Specifically I was thinking about shame, how we deal with our shame, and how God deals with our shame.  I was thinking of Adam and Eve and how their shame caused them to flee, cover themselves in camouflage, and do everything they could to hide from God.  It is God's response (Genesis 3:8-9) that starts the Greatest Love Story Ever Told, and sparked the following ramblings:


God is pursuing.  Coming after.  Calling to.  Searching out.  He is in pursuit. 

He kicked them out.  Yet still He protected them: with a boat, with a dream for Isaac... and for Ishmael, with a dreamer, with plagues, and with rules.  Then, after the people stopped dreaming and the rules failed to serve their purpose a moment longer, He pursued again. 

He came after His people as a baby among them, a teacher in the synagogue, a healer in the hills, and a sacrificial lamb on the cross.  He pursued them to the depths of Hell.  Then He chased away the burden of unforgiveness and the darkness of death in His desire to protect us for eternity.

Our God is a provider, staving off hunger with manna for the wandering and pig slop for the broken, staving off mortality with broken bread and blood-red wine.  He is a protector, blessing the monarch with humility and the martyr with eternal assurance.  And most of all, He is a pursuer, a Father leaving no stone unturned, a Lover calling down every alley, and a Savior reaching to every extreme to win the battle and bring you home to Him.


May you know the feeling of being pursued by your loving creator...

Lessons from Little Red

I was reading Little Red Riding Hood to my daughter this morning and couldn't help but make a couple of spiritual connections I thought might be worth sharing (nerdy, I know).  I am going to assume most of us know the gist of the story of this little girl who goes to visit her sick Grandmother and instead finds a talking wolf in her Grandmother's bed (side note: no one died in the version I read my little girl today - very different from the original, I believe).  The story was obviously intended to teach a moral or two, but I think there are some biblical truths buried in the story worth pointing out.

1.)  We all wander off the path.  In the story I read, Little Red's mother tells her to stay on the path and not talk to strangers.  Yet, when Red comes to a clearing of flowers, she decides to pick some for her grandmother.  This is a choice made with good intentions, and we might even argue it's a good choice.  It's made out of the goodness of her heart and is doing something nice for somebody else.  It can certainly be justified.  However, this good thing leads to her taking too long, letting the sun set, and running into the cunning wolf.  A good person getting caught in darkness, simply because she wandered off the path.

In our post-modern thinking, we get really agitated by all the dos and don'ts of the Old Testament and of sacrosanct religion.  We'd prefer to just focus on the love and do-good-ness of the Gospel and skip over all the rules and regulations.  But the rules are there for a reason.  God knows us and our ability to make the wrong choice and rationalize it until it sounds good.  So He put in place a set of rules to remind us that we are not invincible and need boundaries.  He also knows that darkness can be delivered wrapped in beautiful sunsets and evil lurks behind even the prettiest flowers.  The rules are there for a reason.  How many people get ensnared in bad things simply because they lost their bearings and wandered off?  Which brings up point number two...

2.)  We get ensnared when we don't recognize evil.  As Little Red Riding Hood enters her Grandmother's cottage, she is probably tired and a little scared from her travails through the now dark forest, but is otherwise unharmed.  In Grandmother's bed lies the wolf in Granny's nightie, a paltry disguise for such a different looking creature.  Yet the story says that Red had never seen her Grandmother sick before and thought illness had drastically changed her appearance. The famous conversation "What big eyes you have," "the better to see you with, my dear," etc. ensues.  With each proceeding piece of conversation, Little Red walks closer and closer to the wolf, taking the bait as the wolf intended.  Eventually, if it were not for the heroics of a woodcutter who happened to be passing by, Red would have become the wolf's dinner.  At the door to the cottage she had the opportunity to turn around and run, but she fell into the trap because she didn't recognize the evil she had met just hours earlier.

As we justify and rationalize our wanderings and wrong-choices, we convince ourselves that what is happening around us "isn't that bad."  Worshiping the idols of food, sex, cars, and houses is what everyone is doing, so it can't be all bad, right?  Ignoring our families, taking shortcuts at work, and gossiping (or "venting") are all done in the name of our "sanity," a way to make the ends justify the means.   Ignoring the homeless, health-less, and hopeless because we're too busy or too distracted becomes easier each time we close our eyes and our ears.  One day, we wake up and find ourselves feeling far from God, like the world has chewed us up and spit us and out, and we have no idea how we got here.  Like Little Red, we have choices to make: We have to see that evil must be recognized, named, and abandoned before its kills us with our own curiosity.

Mikayla Bragg

There's a sign in my hometown
That displays the names in lights
Of every servant of the flag
Who comes home from the fight
With "Welcome Home" splashed up with cheer
It marks the days, and weeks, and years
As one by one our children come
Back home where they belong

Through rain and shine that sign stands proud
As proud as signs can be
And name by name, child by child
It broadcasts our relief.

 But a new name went up in black today
And that sign seemed nearly bowed
Under the weight of heavy hearts
All across my little town
"May God Bless Kayla Bragg" it said
And it seemed right that it would rain
As the emptiness we felt inside
Couldn't ease a family's pain

Our hero she will always be
A reminder to us all
That peace comes with a pretty price
And our children take the fall


Mikayla, you have fought the fight
Now may your welcome home
Be sung by Heaven's angels
And find you right where you belong

An Angel (song)

An Angel
She walked this earth
For forty-three years
Church full of tears when she was gone

I was just nine
Lied and said I was fine
But inside, it hurt like hell

I didn't know she was gone too young
I just knew she was gone too soon

Now all I have in picture frames
Family stories and cassette tapes
I try to think back to the way it was
Before the cancer took her from us
But what nineteen years does to memories
Is hard to tell
Now all I know is an angel

I told myself
I'd never forget
All the things that she meant to me

But time has a way
Of moving beyond
All the things that we hold on to

I didn't know there would come a day
When memories would simply fade away

Now all I have in picture frames
Family stories and cassette tapes
I try to think back to the way it was
Before the cancer took her from us
But what nineteen years does to memories
Is hard to tell
Now all I know is an angel

She prob'ly wasn't perfect
She prob'ly made mistakes
Dinners burned and lessons learned
And jokes she couldn't take
But all these years and all these tears
Have washed all that away

Now all I have in picture frames
Family stories and cassette tapes
I try to think back to the way it was
Before the cancer took her from us
But what nineteen years does to memories
Is hard to tell
Now all I know is an angel

She walked this earth 
For forty-three years
Church full of tears when she was gone...

A short story

His large, workman hands pressed gently against the workshop entrance.  The over-sized, thick wooden door creaked open easily, allowing light to spill into the sprawling space.  The light flowed across the wooden floor to the shop walls, revealing the polaroids that hung there.  Every inch of wall space, around the entire room, was covered in overlapping pictures of the innumerable projects he had already created.  As he strode across the room to the large wooden table, his eyes twinkled with excitement.  Today he got to start a new project.

He carefully and meticulously laid out his materials and grabbed hold of his favorite tool: knitting needles.  As he held the needles in his hand, he looked over what lay before him and smiled.  He has always loved the process of making something new.  He had done this more times than anyone could count, but never tired of the joy it brought him. So with smile still shining and eyes intensely focused but still twinkling, he slid into his chair and began to work.  Lovingly, expertly he stitched together every detail.  He moved his tools and materials with ease and precision, never losing focus on what he envisioned the completed projected would be, and how every detail was completely necessary to achieving that result. 

Day after day he came back to this project, working in quiet calm, the needles clicking as he went along, tick marks of his progress.  Sometimes the needles would connect together so squarely it sounded like thunder echoing through the cavernous space.  Sometimes they would merely brush together, the echo sounding more like a gentle breeze.  But he never slowed down and he never hurried, always focused on achieving his dream, his love for this new creation growing with every stitch.  As it neared completion, as the form and shape started to materialize, saltwater began to form in his eyes, and his smile simply grew bigger.  It was just as beautiful and perfect as he had imagined. 

As he smoothly and joyfully reached the end  of his project, he was beaming with pride and excitement.  He leaned back and simply stared and what lay before him.  Where there once had been nothing, now there was another incredibly beautiful creation.  He looked around the room, almost chuckling to himself as he thought back on the process of making all of those projects that now hung on the walls.  Each one had been perfect, exactly as he had meant for it to be, just as this one was.  Oh, they went out into the world and got played with, hurt, and broken.  But if they came back to him in disrepair, he would always take them back into his shop and lovingly and expertly fix them up again.  In his eyes, new, used, broken or fixed, they were always perfect.

His eyes turned back to what lay in front of him.  He smiled at you like only a creator can.  You were his new, perfect, beautiful creation, and he was ready to send you out into the world.  He knew you might get hurt, bruised, or broken, but he would be ready for that.  He would always take you back into his workshop and gently and lovingly work to repair you.  Because in his eyes, new, used, broken or fixed, you will always be his wonderfully good creation.

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body

and knit me together in my mother's womb.

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!

Your workmanship is marvelous...

- Psalm 139:13-14

A Dying Flower

A song I'm not going to be able to play well enough to match whats in my head, so it'll just be a poem for now...

Have you ever seen a dying flower so beautiful
As a rose wilting on a hero's grave?
A weary image of the thorns of sacrifice
Blackened red just like the blood he gave

Have you ever seen a dying flower so beautiful?
A measuring of love and remembrance
Of the mark left behind by decent men
Who'd give their life just the same again

Have you ever seen a dying flower so beautiful
As the roses drooping on a widow's sill?
A reminder of the man that she loved and lost
A man who loved, no thought to cost

Have you ever seen a dying flower so beautiful?
A measuring of love and remembrance
Of the mark left behind by decent men
Who'd live their life just the same again

Have you ever seen a dying flower so beautiful
As the rose fading from a woman's cheek
As her last breath ushers in forever
And she smiles for the one shes dying to meet?


Have you ever seen a dying flower so beautiful?

Silver Bells.  Santa suits. Lit up trees and eaves.  Christmas is most definitely in the air.  And as we get ready for the 25th, I find myself thinking about how Mary and Joseph must've felt as they got ready for the first Christmas.  I remember how worried/scared/stressed/excited I was my daughter's day of birth approached.  And Mary and Joseph had more than enough reason to feel those emotions.

Much has been made over the years about Mary's position in her society as a pregnant, unwed young woman.  Suffice to stay she would've been ostracized.  Joseph had the opportunity to have her killed or black listed, but the Bible tells us an angel convinced him to stay with her.  I would imagine he was probably also ostracized.  On the other end of their journey to Bethlehem, their is the infamous small town with no rooms available for the son of God, only a stable with a humble manger.  But its that journey, the approaching Christmas that interests me this year.

As worried as my wife and I may have been about the logistics of having a baby, at least we knew we had our family around to support us.  We knew we probably had a hospital room.  We even knew what the hospital room was going to look like.  We had clothes, and a crib, and a car seat, and all of those things that the affluency of america requires us and allows us to have.

As Joseph hoisted Mary on that donkey to begin their journey, what was going through their heads?  They were leaving everyone they knew behind.  Mary was losing all of the women who normally help with the birth of child.  She was leaving family support and, in the process, the "nurses."  She had no idea where the birth would take place, who would help, or how the baby would survive.  Shoot, if 1 in 3 pregnancies in 2010 end in miscarriages (or so I've heard), how huge was the chance that Mary was going to lose hers?  But that couldn't happen, right?  God promised this child!  On the other hand, maybe it could...

Did Joseph wonder how he was going to deliver this child?  Men don't do that.  How was he going to take care of a baby that isn't even his?  What does a father teach a son when that son already knows everything?  Was this child really the son of God?  Of course it was - the angel told him so!  On the other hand, maybe he was dreaming...

As they laid their heads on rocks in the desert, together but incredibly alone, how did they convince themselves that they could bring this child into this world and actually take care of it?  Did they talk about their fears, or simply swallow their tears and trust God would take care of them?  Did they trust God?  Did they trust each other?  Was Mary gentile or pained and cranky?  Was Joseph gracious or easily angered?

Whether your life feels like the peace of a new snow, the ferocity of a shopping mall, the optimism of lighted houses, or the darkness of lonely desert night, I hope that you are anticipating Christmas.  As we do, I hope that we remember the gift that having family around is (even when it doesn't feel like it).  I hope we remember that Mary and Joseph were faithful despite doubts, not faithful without doubts, and we strive to follow their example.  Mostly, I hope we discover what Mary and Joseph discovered that Christmas morning:  God ALWAYS fulfills His promises.

F is for Fake-Believe

My daughter recently received a present from her god-parents:  A DVD by the band They Might Be Giants intended to help kids learn the alphabet.  One of the songs is called Fake-believe:  "F is for fun, F is for fun, F is for fake-belieeeeeeve...."  The song is about all the fun one can have pretending.  I can't tell you how the rest of the song goes, though, because the Baby Girl only likes to watch the first 10 seconds of every song.  Unless it involves puppets.  Or robots.

My realization is that fake-believe has been generally harmful to my adult life.   When I was a kid, I didn't play with a lot of other kids.  I preferred to live in my own "fake-believe" world, where I was Joe Montana, Ken Griffey Jr., or Michael Jordan.  Sometimes I would pretend I was me as an adult, setting the world on fire as the first three-sport pro athlete.  And I think all of that was good; it has made me a better thinker and problem solver as an adult.  I hope Ashlynn does lots of creating and pretending.  To this day, I still sit down with a video came and pretend that I am a Head Coach or General Manager as I lead my teams to championship dynasties.

The harmful part is that I still find it easier to pretend.  I couldn't hit a home run or dunk a basketball at 8, 10, 12 years old, but I could pretend.  As an adult I find it easier to pretend that I could be a good husband if I actually worked at it than it is to put in the time and effort.  I can tell myself my wife is a lucky woman because of what I am capable of doing for her, because of the father and husband I can be. Yet if I don't actually put forth the effort to show her that, it means nothing in the real world.  It is simply easier for me to lie to myself about whats possible than it is to work hard at proving the theory.  I know that sounds obvious, and a little horrible, but I have to imagine I'm not the only one.

And the list goes on:  It is easier for me to pretend that people would like the songs I write instead of actually playing them for people.  Its easier to believe I can sing and write like the people on the radio than it is to put myself out there for the criticism I know would be coming.  It is more fun to pretend than to face reality, so I choose to believe the fake-believe world I create for myself.

No matter how much people compliment my writing, it is easier to simply believe people would like a book I wrote rather than actually write one.  Its easier to come up with the excuses not to write one, tell myself that if I ever did write one it would be great, and simply live in the fake-believe.  Even if God tells me to write, its still easier to make excuses in reality and bask in the pretend.

I used to think that the hardest part of having an active imagination was the day all those dreams disappeared; the day I found out I would never be a pro athlete.  Today, I'm finding the hardest part to be living in reality...