watch out mom and dad...here i come!
11.02.2008
9.20.2008
10 months...what?!!!
the kid and the dog (Wrigley) seem to be striking up a friendship of sorts...the other day they were chasing each other and Lina was literally cracking up because Wrigley kept coming and licking her face! hopefully Lina can continue to entertain the dog because the dog is driving me nuts...
another one of Lina's new favorite pasttimes is trying to walk with chairs...we finally bought her an actual toy for the trick, but she still returns to her first love, the chairs...what a strange kid...she must take after her mother!
well, it's raining in Washington state for the second straight day. it must mean Fall is here, winter is coming, and it's going to get grey and wet. lucky us!
8.27.2008
6.11.2008
7 months today!
it's amazing how much she's grown...
Lina is officially 7 months old today! wow!
enjoy some new videos from the past month...
Lina is officially 7 months old today! wow!
enjoy some new videos from the past month...
this kid is amazing. Jodi and i are totally and completely in love with Lina! she is a great baby, i wish everyone could know her! we're excited to head home next week and get out of the rain for awhile...
4.24.2008
4.04.2008
long awaited photos
sorry everyone, but we've been crazy busy with the Tulip Festival started for jodi and freshmen baseball underway for chad...
yes. we play baseball in the pacific northwest even though it rains every day...
our little Lina is almost 5 months old! can you believe it? check out how much she's grown compared to some of the older pictures below...
enjoy!
yes. we play baseball in the pacific northwest even though it rains every day...
our little Lina is almost 5 months old! can you believe it? check out how much she's grown compared to some of the older pictures below...
enjoy!
3.09.2008
ezekiel 37
i had the privilege of preaching this weekend...i never take these opportunities for granted...the text was Ezekiel 37:1-14, "The Valley of the Dry Bones."
here's the sermon (edited for length)...hope you can make it through!
God Grew Tired of Us
“Can these bones live?” Does God have the ability to take dried up, decaying bones and make life enter them again? My sarcastic nature wants Ezekiel to answer, “I don’t know God, can they?” But I don’t think the question is just about these bones that Ezekiel sees in his vision. The question isn’t whether God has the power, the authority, the will to make the bones live. After all, we know that God is capable of doing anything. Rather, it is as if God, in this vision given to Ezekiel, is giving us a glimpse of God’s vision. In giving a vision of the valley of bones to Ezekiel, God is showing Ezekiel how he sees the world. Can these bones live? In God’s vision; in God’s way of seeing the world, nothing is impossible. What might it do for us to get in on that vision? How can we make that happen? What would happen if we looked at things that seem as though they are dead, lifeless, inactive, decaying, and see potential for new life?
Lord, help us see the potential for new life in others. That is my prayer and desire for us today; that we would begin to get a glimpse of God’s vision for the world. But in order for that to happen we need a change in attitude; we need a change in perspective; our hearts have to soften and we have to locate our HOPE in God. I believe hope is an attitude; hope has a lot to do with our worldview; hope is about the future and where we think things are going. Our hope affects the things we do; the words we say; the way we think. We can lose hope, regain hope, place our hope in things, and practice hope. We can practice hope.
In today’s text the people of Israel declare, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” The people have come to believe that their connection with God is gone and they have lost hope. There is a sense that God is no longer among them. I am reminded of the text from Exodus that Pastor Kent preached on a few weeks ago where the people asked, “Is God among us or not?” The people had decided God was no longer with them. But why has this happened? Why would God’s people feel abandoned? Because Israel; the People of God, the people God chose out of the world in order that they might bless the world had a case of misplaced hope. The Old Testament recounts story after story of Israel putting its hope in things other than the LORD: other nations, their military, institutionalized religion, good works, money, other gods, etc. As a result of their misplaced hope, they are now living in exile, under the rule and authority of a foreign king. It is as a direct result of their misplaced hope that they feel hopeless. Their hopelessness is directly linked to their misplaced hope. Putting hope in things other than God eventually leads to a sense of hopelessness.
Recently I saw a documentary about the Lost Boys of Sudan called God Grew Tired of Us (you should see this film). For someone like me, like most of us, we don’t understand or have any familiarity with being forced out of our homeland. What is it like to be taken over; to be invaded; to be oppressed? The film follows young men who were refugees after violence erupted in Sudan in the 1980s and 90s; violence which rages in the Darfur region of Sudan today where people continue to be displaced and millions have died; this is nothing short of a genocide happening right now, in our lifetime.
In the film, one of the young men describes his experience as a refugee; struggling to survive; watching friends starve to death. He describes his duty in the refugee camps as a 13 year old boy; he buried the dead. With an immense sense of pain and anguish in his voice, he says, “Because of the situation and our time, what could we do? We had to do that. It was as if it was the last day, as people say in the Bible, that there will be a last day; that Jesus Christ will come and the earth will be judged. That was my imagination. I thought that God felt tired of people on earth; felt tired of the bad deeds; the bad things we are doing. I thought God grew tired of us and wanted to finish us.” I imagine this young man picturing the bodies he helped to bury and wondering to himself, can these bones live? Is there hope? This idea stayed with me; that God could grow tired of us.
I imagine that the people of Israel, finding themselves in exile, wondered, did God grow tired of us? Is God sick of us? That is a hard place to find oneself; to imagine that God has somehow given up on us. I think we can all identify with the feeling of God being distant, far off, hard to reach, impossible to hear. We see this in Scripture as well. Psalm 10 begins, “Why, LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” And Psalm 13 says, “How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” The idea of God growing tired of us or forgetting about us is not that hard to imagine. Most of us have felt this from time to time. Most of us have felt a sense of isolation, loneliness, or hopelessness. We find ourselves complaining more and rejoicing less. These are realities for most of us. We can identify with the dry bones.
Psalm 12 reads, “Help, LORD, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.” Why do I find myself resonating with this Psalm? Why do I feel as though the faithful are vanishing? Why does it feel like God has sometimes grown tired of us; given up on us today? Is it possible that we are more like the dry bones than we care to admit? A book came out recently called American Church in Crisis. Author Dave Olson, director of church planting for our denomination, shares some disturbing statistics that tell of the decline in attendance in American churches compared to the rising population. This is some depressing stuff to deal with. These numbers could easily lead people to lose hope; they could lead us to doubt whether the American church can turn things around. Listen to these words from a Covenant Pastor as he explains what he sees as the biggest challenge in his church today (i read the quote, he says Christians are the biggest issue). Have we put our hope in an institution; in doing church better; in the security of our own, personal salvation? What do we do with these words that seem so discouraging and so void of hope?
Thankfully Olson’s recommendations for the future are full of hope. He writes about churches that are growing in America today, and his findings are incredibly simple. You might expect him to talk about music style, outreach programs, evangelistic opportunities, the amazing coffee served, or other missional strategies. However, Olson contends that the churches that are growing the fastest today are growing because of one basic principal: they focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ. They locate their hope and their future as a church in Jesus Christ. I don’t want to be overly sarcastic, but what an amazing concept! A return to actually believing that the church, the body of Christ, should locate its hope and all we do as a worshipping and gathering community in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
For me and for our society, I think one of the hardest thing about having hope in Jesus Christ – having a resurrection hope – has to do with taking a long view. At the beginning of this message I said this story gives a glimpse of how God sees the world; particularly how God sees the future. As human beings our understanding and knowledge of the future is limited. For this reason, we focus almost entirely on NOW. We are caught up and consumed by immediacy in our lives. We are concerned with what makes us happy NOW; to fulfill our wants and needs NOW; to please us and comfort us NOW; to provide us with the quick fix, 7 steps, and 40 ways to improve our lives for right NOW. We hate waiting. We want it now. Hope in Christ requires us to look out there somewhere; to imagine a world to come; to continue to live right now, yes, but to live fully aware of what might come and what will come with Christ’s return. You see, we Christians – those of us who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – we believe, we put our hope, in the idea that Jesus Christ is coming again; that Jesus Christ is worthy of our hope; that Jesus Christ is worth living for and waiting for.
Ezekiel realized that God had not abandoned the people; had not grown tired of them. Sure, God may have been sick of their complaining and disobedience, but God didn’t leave the picture. It’s really more accurate to say that the people had abandoned God; the people had put their hope in other things. “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel demonstrates an extreme amount of faith here. His willingness to prophesy and believe that God could knit these bones back together again tells me that Ezekiel had not lost hope.
Ezekiel is told to do something that doesn’t seem to make logical sense; to preach at some bones. So I ask, are you, am I, willing to preach to the bones? Are we willing to proclaim the Good News, our hope in Christ, to those who have lost hope; who have given up on hope; who have no hope? We are told to be ready to give an account for the hope we profess. What is our hope? Our hope is Christ and him alone! Christ is our hope for the future. Today we will have a chance to confess those things in which we have mis-placed our hope. We invite you to come forward during the closing songs, and as a symbol of placing your hope in Christ, crumble your piece of paper, and place it on the communion table. It may be finances, family, your abilities and talents, politics, Oprah, or wherever else you mis-placed your hope.
I was thinking about how counter-intuitive it is to give up on these false hopes. Some of these things don’t seem so bad. Christianity can seem sort of strange when you get down to it. The way of Christ challenges a lot of our rational, American ways of thinking. Who among you, if I asked you how to get ahead in this world, how to land a secure job that would ensure safety and a good future, would offer this advice: give up all those ideas and follow Christ? Give up on the idea that money, family, security, education, and political leaders can save you. Put your hope in Christ; die to your selfish desires; pick up your cross and follow Jesus, the only one who is truly able to save. This is one of those things that we know is true; we know it; it is so easy to say, yet so hard to put into practice. Ezekiel knew this struggle in his day. In chapter 33 the LORD says to Ezekiel, “My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to hear your words, but they do not put them into practice. Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain.” Ezekiel knew about empty words.
But today we have an opportunity to come to the table and offer up our misplaced hopes and elevate Christ to his rightful place in our lives. This is not magic; we are not so foolish as to believe that this will automatically change everything, but it is intended to get us thinking about how to change our attitude and the way we see the world. Today we come to worship; to gather as the community of God; to be put back together – re-membered. (X) Last week we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, Communion. The Lord’s Supper is in many ways the central act of Christian worship where we remember our hope; are reminded of Christ’s sacrifice for us; and are re-membered as a community of believers in the love of Christ. Today we place on this same table those things that have clouded our vision and blunted our power to live for Christ.
“Can these bones live?” Will we, the Church, rightfully locate our hope? Will we, the body of Christ, proclaim the Good News to a world that is dying and in decay? Will we, Christ followers, live as if Christ matters? Will we, who believe the Holy Spirit dwells among us, knits us back together, proclaim that this same Spirit is available to those in our community? What are we willing to do? What are the limitations? The death of Christ seemed absurd to the disciples; it seemed crazy to them that the Messiah would come and die. However, it is in this amazing absurdity which we locate our hope. And the Holy Spirit continues to work in us that our hope might be realized now and for the future. May we be people willing to prophesy; willing to speak about the one true hope found in Jesus Christ. And may we realize that God has not grown tired of us, but desires that we see the world as he does; that we look for and reach out to the dry bones. May we be instruments of God’s hope for the hopeless in our world. Amen.
i "hope" you didn't fall asleep!!!!
here's the sermon (edited for length)...hope you can make it through!
God Grew Tired of Us
“Can these bones live?” Does God have the ability to take dried up, decaying bones and make life enter them again? My sarcastic nature wants Ezekiel to answer, “I don’t know God, can they?” But I don’t think the question is just about these bones that Ezekiel sees in his vision. The question isn’t whether God has the power, the authority, the will to make the bones live. After all, we know that God is capable of doing anything. Rather, it is as if God, in this vision given to Ezekiel, is giving us a glimpse of God’s vision. In giving a vision of the valley of bones to Ezekiel, God is showing Ezekiel how he sees the world. Can these bones live? In God’s vision; in God’s way of seeing the world, nothing is impossible. What might it do for us to get in on that vision? How can we make that happen? What would happen if we looked at things that seem as though they are dead, lifeless, inactive, decaying, and see potential for new life?
Lord, help us see the potential for new life in others. That is my prayer and desire for us today; that we would begin to get a glimpse of God’s vision for the world. But in order for that to happen we need a change in attitude; we need a change in perspective; our hearts have to soften and we have to locate our HOPE in God. I believe hope is an attitude; hope has a lot to do with our worldview; hope is about the future and where we think things are going. Our hope affects the things we do; the words we say; the way we think. We can lose hope, regain hope, place our hope in things, and practice hope. We can practice hope.
In today’s text the people of Israel declare, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” The people have come to believe that their connection with God is gone and they have lost hope. There is a sense that God is no longer among them. I am reminded of the text from Exodus that Pastor Kent preached on a few weeks ago where the people asked, “Is God among us or not?” The people had decided God was no longer with them. But why has this happened? Why would God’s people feel abandoned? Because Israel; the People of God, the people God chose out of the world in order that they might bless the world had a case of misplaced hope. The Old Testament recounts story after story of Israel putting its hope in things other than the LORD: other nations, their military, institutionalized religion, good works, money, other gods, etc. As a result of their misplaced hope, they are now living in exile, under the rule and authority of a foreign king. It is as a direct result of their misplaced hope that they feel hopeless. Their hopelessness is directly linked to their misplaced hope. Putting hope in things other than God eventually leads to a sense of hopelessness.
Recently I saw a documentary about the Lost Boys of Sudan called God Grew Tired of Us (you should see this film). For someone like me, like most of us, we don’t understand or have any familiarity with being forced out of our homeland. What is it like to be taken over; to be invaded; to be oppressed? The film follows young men who were refugees after violence erupted in Sudan in the 1980s and 90s; violence which rages in the Darfur region of Sudan today where people continue to be displaced and millions have died; this is nothing short of a genocide happening right now, in our lifetime.
In the film, one of the young men describes his experience as a refugee; struggling to survive; watching friends starve to death. He describes his duty in the refugee camps as a 13 year old boy; he buried the dead. With an immense sense of pain and anguish in his voice, he says, “Because of the situation and our time, what could we do? We had to do that. It was as if it was the last day, as people say in the Bible, that there will be a last day; that Jesus Christ will come and the earth will be judged. That was my imagination. I thought that God felt tired of people on earth; felt tired of the bad deeds; the bad things we are doing. I thought God grew tired of us and wanted to finish us.” I imagine this young man picturing the bodies he helped to bury and wondering to himself, can these bones live? Is there hope? This idea stayed with me; that God could grow tired of us.
I imagine that the people of Israel, finding themselves in exile, wondered, did God grow tired of us? Is God sick of us? That is a hard place to find oneself; to imagine that God has somehow given up on us. I think we can all identify with the feeling of God being distant, far off, hard to reach, impossible to hear. We see this in Scripture as well. Psalm 10 begins, “Why, LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” And Psalm 13 says, “How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” The idea of God growing tired of us or forgetting about us is not that hard to imagine. Most of us have felt this from time to time. Most of us have felt a sense of isolation, loneliness, or hopelessness. We find ourselves complaining more and rejoicing less. These are realities for most of us. We can identify with the dry bones.
Psalm 12 reads, “Help, LORD, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.” Why do I find myself resonating with this Psalm? Why do I feel as though the faithful are vanishing? Why does it feel like God has sometimes grown tired of us; given up on us today? Is it possible that we are more like the dry bones than we care to admit? A book came out recently called American Church in Crisis. Author Dave Olson, director of church planting for our denomination, shares some disturbing statistics that tell of the decline in attendance in American churches compared to the rising population. This is some depressing stuff to deal with. These numbers could easily lead people to lose hope; they could lead us to doubt whether the American church can turn things around. Listen to these words from a Covenant Pastor as he explains what he sees as the biggest challenge in his church today (i read the quote, he says Christians are the biggest issue). Have we put our hope in an institution; in doing church better; in the security of our own, personal salvation? What do we do with these words that seem so discouraging and so void of hope?
Thankfully Olson’s recommendations for the future are full of hope. He writes about churches that are growing in America today, and his findings are incredibly simple. You might expect him to talk about music style, outreach programs, evangelistic opportunities, the amazing coffee served, or other missional strategies. However, Olson contends that the churches that are growing the fastest today are growing because of one basic principal: they focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ. They locate their hope and their future as a church in Jesus Christ. I don’t want to be overly sarcastic, but what an amazing concept! A return to actually believing that the church, the body of Christ, should locate its hope and all we do as a worshipping and gathering community in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
For me and for our society, I think one of the hardest thing about having hope in Jesus Christ – having a resurrection hope – has to do with taking a long view. At the beginning of this message I said this story gives a glimpse of how God sees the world; particularly how God sees the future. As human beings our understanding and knowledge of the future is limited. For this reason, we focus almost entirely on NOW. We are caught up and consumed by immediacy in our lives. We are concerned with what makes us happy NOW; to fulfill our wants and needs NOW; to please us and comfort us NOW; to provide us with the quick fix, 7 steps, and 40 ways to improve our lives for right NOW. We hate waiting. We want it now. Hope in Christ requires us to look out there somewhere; to imagine a world to come; to continue to live right now, yes, but to live fully aware of what might come and what will come with Christ’s return. You see, we Christians – those of us who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – we believe, we put our hope, in the idea that Jesus Christ is coming again; that Jesus Christ is worthy of our hope; that Jesus Christ is worth living for and waiting for.
Ezekiel realized that God had not abandoned the people; had not grown tired of them. Sure, God may have been sick of their complaining and disobedience, but God didn’t leave the picture. It’s really more accurate to say that the people had abandoned God; the people had put their hope in other things. “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel demonstrates an extreme amount of faith here. His willingness to prophesy and believe that God could knit these bones back together again tells me that Ezekiel had not lost hope.
Ezekiel is told to do something that doesn’t seem to make logical sense; to preach at some bones. So I ask, are you, am I, willing to preach to the bones? Are we willing to proclaim the Good News, our hope in Christ, to those who have lost hope; who have given up on hope; who have no hope? We are told to be ready to give an account for the hope we profess. What is our hope? Our hope is Christ and him alone! Christ is our hope for the future. Today we will have a chance to confess those things in which we have mis-placed our hope. We invite you to come forward during the closing songs, and as a symbol of placing your hope in Christ, crumble your piece of paper, and place it on the communion table. It may be finances, family, your abilities and talents, politics, Oprah, or wherever else you mis-placed your hope.
I was thinking about how counter-intuitive it is to give up on these false hopes. Some of these things don’t seem so bad. Christianity can seem sort of strange when you get down to it. The way of Christ challenges a lot of our rational, American ways of thinking. Who among you, if I asked you how to get ahead in this world, how to land a secure job that would ensure safety and a good future, would offer this advice: give up all those ideas and follow Christ? Give up on the idea that money, family, security, education, and political leaders can save you. Put your hope in Christ; die to your selfish desires; pick up your cross and follow Jesus, the only one who is truly able to save. This is one of those things that we know is true; we know it; it is so easy to say, yet so hard to put into practice. Ezekiel knew this struggle in his day. In chapter 33 the LORD says to Ezekiel, “My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to hear your words, but they do not put them into practice. Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain.” Ezekiel knew about empty words.
But today we have an opportunity to come to the table and offer up our misplaced hopes and elevate Christ to his rightful place in our lives. This is not magic; we are not so foolish as to believe that this will automatically change everything, but it is intended to get us thinking about how to change our attitude and the way we see the world. Today we come to worship; to gather as the community of God; to be put back together – re-membered. (X) Last week we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, Communion. The Lord’s Supper is in many ways the central act of Christian worship where we remember our hope; are reminded of Christ’s sacrifice for us; and are re-membered as a community of believers in the love of Christ. Today we place on this same table those things that have clouded our vision and blunted our power to live for Christ.
“Can these bones live?” Will we, the Church, rightfully locate our hope? Will we, the body of Christ, proclaim the Good News to a world that is dying and in decay? Will we, Christ followers, live as if Christ matters? Will we, who believe the Holy Spirit dwells among us, knits us back together, proclaim that this same Spirit is available to those in our community? What are we willing to do? What are the limitations? The death of Christ seemed absurd to the disciples; it seemed crazy to them that the Messiah would come and die. However, it is in this amazing absurdity which we locate our hope. And the Holy Spirit continues to work in us that our hope might be realized now and for the future. May we be people willing to prophesy; willing to speak about the one true hope found in Jesus Christ. And may we realize that God has not grown tired of us, but desires that we see the world as he does; that we look for and reach out to the dry bones. May we be instruments of God’s hope for the hopeless in our world. Amen.
i "hope" you didn't fall asleep!!!!
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