Mind The Gap!

I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.

-Ezekiel 22:30

This verse is used often when we talk of intercessory prayer. We pray for those who cannot (or will not) pray for themselves. We call this "standing in the gap."

We pray to God for others. We pray for healing for those with no words. We pray for God to embrace those with no hope. We pray for reconciliation for those with no friends.

But often, we focus entirely on the spiritual side of this question, and ignore the physical reality that is written into this passage. It's all about prayer for things to happen, and for God to act. But a faith without works is a dead faith, and so I would like to consider the real, physical, concrete implications this passage would have had for those who heard it.

The book of Ezekiel was written during the Babylonian exile, after the Jewish people had been defeated and carted off to the land of their captors. So the entire population would have been fairly familiar with the military metaphor in use, probably more than they wished.

For years, Israel had been caught between Babylon/Assyria and Egypt. It seemed that every time these superpowers would go to war, that they would stomp all over Israel. So Israel, for a long time, had been paying tribute to whichever nation offered better protection. For a while, it was Egypt. Then it was Babylon. Then Egypt again.

But King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon decided that he wanted Israel's tribute money, so he went to Jerusalem to "ask" for it. In the process, he took the current Israelite king, a bunch of money, and a bunch of the "high society" people back with him to Babylon. It was said that the only people left in Jerusalem were the very poor. The people that no-one cared about. And a "king" that Nebuchadnezzar appointed over Israel as a tributary.

But this new king, Zedekia, tried to play Babylon's game and revolted. Again, Nebuchadnezzer's army stormed in from the north, this time with orders to completely level the city of Jerusalem. It was in this last invasion and siege that the Temple was destroyed, and most of the remaining Israelites were carried off into slavery.

We talk often about how the Babylonian Captivity was God punishing Israel for it's sins. The prophets of the time are very explicit in this as well, that God was using the nations of the world to punish Israel. What we get, then, is a picture of a vengeful god, who will smite all who do not meet his impossible demands. But this picture is inaccurate, and might be due to a slight misunderstanding of the idea of God punishing Israel.

You see, we have been given a choice in all that we do. Israel had been given a choice. God had delivered Israel from slavery, and brought them to the promised land, and blessed them with global influence and great wealth.

And they had a choice: They could choose the world's way, or God's way. God's way is the way of serving. Of looking out for those who have no-one to look out for them. To help those who need it. To feed the hungry, and care for the sick. To be a friend to the lonely, to be a guide to the lost. In this way, Israel would be a light to all nations, displaying the power of God to all humanity.

The world's way is different. The world's way is protecting your way of life. The world's way is accumulating and collecting more and more wealth, and then using that wealth to secure more wealth. The world's way used military might in order to secure a future for yourself and your people. The world's way did not care for the weak, or the sick, or the poor. The world's way exploited those for the gain of those who wanted more wealth.

So Israel had chosen the world's way. And God was punishing them, but not in the malevolent, lightning-bolt-from-the-sky, hellfire and damnation way we are used to thinking.

I think it was a bit more subtle than that. What we have here is a nation that had been given a special calling to be God's people in the world, and instead of living up to that calling, they have decided to live the world's way. They have decided to play the world's game. Babylon's game. Egypt's game. Assyria's game. The game of empires.

And in this game, there are no winners. Sure, it may for a time look like a winning game, but in the end, all empires will fall, just like the ones that came before.

And so in the end, sitting in captivity, Ezekiel writes that God was looking for someone to stand in the gap before Him, so he didn't have to destroy the land. God was looking for someone to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and defend the city.

The listeners and readers of this passage would have known what that meant. They would have understood. They would have remembered seeing the walls of Jerusalem knocked over, they would have remembered walking through the gaps in the wall as they were being led into captivity.

And they would have known that they didn't stand in the gap.

Obviously this can be taken on two levels. To actually stand and fight against the Babylonian army would have been sure suicide, and those in captivity would have known that, so there is a different, deeper level that this can be understood at:

When God is standing at the front of the army and looking for someone to stand in the gap, God is looking for someone to defend the city. To defend Jerusalem, defend Israel.

And defending Israel means defending the covenant relationship that God had with Israel. Defending and acting out the obligations in that covenant relationship. Watching out for the poor, the sick, the lonely. Taking care of the orphaned, the widowed, the aliens among them.

God is calling out to them, saying,

"I looked for even just one person that was not playing the world's game. Just one person that was looking out for the poor and not just himself. Just one person that wasn't collecting wealth for himself. Just one person that was trying to live out the covenant relationship with me. And I didn't find that person. What I found was that my covenant nation was trying to play the world's game, by the world's rules. And now, guess what? The Babylonians are better at that game than you are."

Defending Israel means choosing God's way, not the world's way.

Standing in the gap means taking care of the sick, the orphaned, the widowed, the poor, the aliens.

Standing in the gap means fighting against oppression, against exploitation, against slavery, and not just fighting for your way of life.

And this is a universal call.

God is standing outside our city walls right now, searching for someone to stand in the gap.


wingnut

On Stickers and Being Nice

I have a dorky secret.

I am a sucker for stickers.

I love them. I would stick them everywhere if I could. When I was a kid, I had a huge book filled with all the stickers I collected. I would carefully peel them off of whatever they were stuck to, and paste them back into my collection book. It was massive, too. It had like, fifty pages, and they all had stickers on them. I would actually give even money to say that my mom still has it in her basement somewhere.

I still collect stickers. I have them on my CD books, I have them on my notebook, I have them on my water bottle, I have them on my paintball gear box.

I even have a stack that I'm holding on to, in case I find something worthy of their placement.

Actually, I would put them on my truck, but the Bride of Wingnut apparently thinks less highly of stickers than I do, and would not like to see our vehicle in public covered with "those eyesores".

I did manage to get one sticker past her, but that's because she thought it was one of those clingy decal things that you can peel off and place anywhere. Until after I stuck on. Hahaha!

Stickers are great for advertising and sending messages as well. They are cheap to produce, and easier to apply than graffiti. That's a win-win in my book! Want to promote your band? Make some stickers! Political allegiance? Stickers! Snarky comments and no money for T-shirts? Stickers, baby! Want to show everyone on the road behind you that you've been to Wall Drug? All you need is three dollars and a rear bumper on your car, and you too can be a real tourist!

Our church also has stickers that it hands out. I have a few of them. One sends the simple message that God cared for the environment (God is Green).

The other one says simply, Love Wins.

There's another reason why I haven't put a Love Wins sticker on my truck: I don't exactly drive like Love Wins. I drive more like I Should Win, Screw You.

When I drive, it's like I instantly pick up the chip that's been on my shoulder, and set it right there on the dashboard, where I can see it and remember it.

And it doesn't matter what kind of day I've had, either. I could be having the best day of my life, and still I will drive like I own the road.

I don't try to cut people off intentionally, but if they cut me off, I'm instantly on the horn. Then when I pass them, I give them a mean look.

I will speed up when people are trying to pass me, just so that they'll have to slam on the brakes and go behind me when we come up on slower traffic.

I slow way down if someone tailgates me. Sometimes I'll even slam on my brakes to get them to have to slam on their brakes.

Or how about this: Sometimes, when I see someone is trying to pass me to get over into my lane, I'll speed up so they can't get in. Then, when they move over and cut me off, I get mad at them for cutting me off. They shouldn't have tried it, right? They should have just merged behind me instead.

And I do all of this because they're doing the same thing. And I'm just giving them what they deserve, right? I'm teaching the whole world a lesson that it desperately needs. The lesson is that you're a bunch of idiot drivers, and I'm the only good driver out there.

So I know the way I drive. And I know it's not loving. And I don't want to put the sticker on my truck.

Because if I'm being honest, I don't want to drive in a loving way. I don't want to go the speed limit. I don't want to move over. I don't want to simply let it go when someone cuts me off.

But we are called to forgive.

We are called to love others better than ourselves.

How would this change my driving habits?

If I changed my driving habits, how would this affect road safety?

Maybe instead of putting the Love Wins sticker on the outside of my truck, so everyone else can see it, I should put it on the inside. Right on the top of the windshield, where they put those little oil change reminders.

That way, I would see it.


wingnut

Chasing "Cool"

When I was a kid in school, I sometimes wasn't the nicest person to my friends. Sometimes I said things to hurt them, sometimes I blew them off when I shouldn't have. I really wasn't a good friend to those who were good friends to me.

It dawned on me the other day that there was something behind all this. I have been coming to the realization that I was angry at my friends.

I was mad that they weren't the "cool" people at school. I was mad because I thought I should be hanging out with the "cool" crowd. I mean, I thought I was a pretty cool kid, and I didn't understand why the "cool" kids didn't want to hang out with me. So I became a little bit jealous and a little bitter and a little angry. And then I took it out on my friends. Sometimes by being mean to them, sometimes by just not being around.

It was like I turned a part of me off, waiting to turn it back on when my friends were "cool" enough.

Fast forward to today.

I find myself still chasing after "cool". I want to be the "cool" guy, the guy that has the great job, the guy that has the very nice house, the guy who is connected and whose friends are connected to "cool". The guy who has an awesome blog, and a new book that everyone is reading.

I find myself, some Sundays, getting jealous of Pastor Rob. I mean, the dude just oozes cool. He's got an amazing gift, an amazing image that he portrays, an amazingly successful ministry, and yet he is so approachable, so down to earth.

When I read through my blog roll, it seems that all these other blogs are much cooler than mine. They actually have readers, and their Technorati rating is way higher (lower) than mine. I start to think about how I can collect readers to my blog, how I can be successful just like they are.

I dream of the day that I can simply get by on the advertising I sell on my blog, so that all I have to do is post once a day and then work at being creative for the next 23 hours. Maybe with a speaking engagement here and there, and probably some Zondervan representatives meeting with me to discuss book options.

But then I read what Carlos Whittaker said over at Ragamuffin Soul:

"We are aspiring to be people who, let’s face it, are just better at painting their web 2.0 canvas than us.
And we hold up our canvas in front of our webcams and show the world 25 seconds a day of who we are.
And somehow that is translated as life.
And somehow that is seen as a goal to attain by you/I."

What I see in the blogosphere is just a tiny snippet of what these bloggers want me to see. True, there is a sort of honesty and transparency that might not be possible by other media, but these blogs, these online representations, they are not life. My blog may speak what I want it to speak, but it is not me. Likewise, Jim's blog is not Jim. Tony's blog does not define him. My friend Timmy is much more than what he writes. My sister and brother-in-law are not their latest post and pictures.

And yet I find myself chasing after these things as if they are true and real.

I just recently started following Jesus Community, a blog that examines and discusses theological ideas and underpinnings of faith in Jesus.

Today the focus was on Augustine and love. And how the object of our affection can quickly become an obsession, the center of our life. Instead of focusing our attention on God, then, we focus our attention on that which we love.

"All of God's gifts are to be received and enjoyed, but always with God as the center of our affection. We find out that when we know God's love and return something of that love to God, in other words when by grace we begin to live in God's love, paradoxically we appreciate God's good gifts in a way that actually brings more enjoyment and delight."

I am blown away regularly how what I read on my blogroll is exactly what I have been thinking and wrestling with at that time.

Didn't Solomon have something to say about this? Something about chasing after wind? Perhaps next time we read Ecclesiastes, whenever we encounter the word "wind", we should replace it with whatever we find ourselves devoting our energy towards.

Blog ratings.

Cool friends.

A nice house.

A bestselling book.

A good job.

Because when it's all said and done, these things are empty and meaningless. A chasing after the cool.


wingnut

Dispatches From the Line Mk.V

Gerald R. Ford International Airport and Wildlife Sanctuary

Tuesday night, as I was walking across my ramp after topping off my fuel truck, I heard a strange animal noise.

Animal noises are not all that uncommon around the airport, but this one was different. I had never heard this noise before, so I was curious, and stopped to listen. I still couldn't figure it out, and so I began a mental countdown of animals I have seen at or around the airport.

One would think that there wouldn't be much wildlife around such a loud and busy place, but there is. We have hawks, pigeons, a massive starling colony that is always flying around. Every fall, we get some Canadian Geese on their way south for the winter that will stop and visit us for a few days. There are seagulls that arrive every once in a while, and there used to be two snow owls that we named Pratt and Whitney. We've had ducklings wandering in our hangar, and there are always kildeer nesting in the rocks and grass.

We have skunks and woodchucks digging their burrows all over the place, and I've seen a fox or two wandering around at night. Deer and turkey are fairly common as well, because just to the south of the airport are wooded areas as well as farmland.

This past summer, I had a close encounter with two coyotes who were actually on my ramp, one I nearly hit with my fuel truck before it ran off. A few weeks later, a co-worker and I were out on the ramp and a young coyote started just howling at us from across the way. We climbed on top of our fuel truck to get a better view, and watched him wander around the north side of the field for a good ten minutes before he disappeared from sight.

Add to that all of the frogs, toads, snakes and other creatures we've caught crawling around, and we've got quite a thriving ecosystem here at GRFIA.

But as I tried to figure out the noise I was hearing, I was coming up short. Most of the animals I have listed I have heard before, or they do not make much noise except in times of great distress. I could not place the noise I was hearing.

It sounded almost like a human scream, yet not as loud, and much more raspy. The more I listened, the more confused I became. As I walked inside the hangar, I thought perhaps it was a screech owl.

I went to the Internet and tried to look for audio files of screech owls. I found some, and it turns out that the call of a screech owl is pretty similar to the call of a loon. Not at all what I heard.

It was just then that I overheard on the control tower radio a pilot call in. He was taxiing down a part of the airport near where I was, and reported seeing what he thought was a wildcat running across his path.

I heard that, and I began looking for bobcat noises.

This clip here is nearly what I heard the other night (just click where it says preview).

Not quite lions and tigers and bears oh my, but still pretty cool!


wingnut

These are all Tied Together Somewhere...

...I just cant seem to find it yet.

Or, perhaps more accurately, how these things have come untied, and we should retie them.

The book Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge. Jesus as anti-imperial. Sin becoming empire. Empire becoming oppression and repeating the cycle. The book Jesus Wants to Save Christians, by Rob Bell and Don Golden. The book Nonviolence by Mark Kurlansky. The book The Face of Battle, by John Keegan. The book God's Politics, by Jim Wallis.

Somewhere in this blogger's mind, an idea is growing. It's still all nebulous and cloudy, still hiding in the murky depths.

An idea about empire and oppression, an idea about violence and nonviolence, an idea about the masculine strength that comes from God alone, an idea about how this strength could change the world. An idea about the military-industrial complex, and how we relate to it. Homeland security, military budgets, protection of our society, violence in society, schoolyard bullies, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus, Paul, the Caesars of Rome, Egypt, Babylon, Jerusalem, and the call to all Christians to be priests in the New Creation.

I know. That's a bunch of stuff. But somewhere, it's all connected.

In short, an examination of living, breathing empire and how we, as Christians, must live outside of empire.


Wingnut

They shall not be forgotten...

“When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow, we gave our today” - John Maxwell Edmonds

Today, let us all take a moment to remember those who gave their today for our tomorrows.

One need not agree with the present conflict, or any conflict at all, to pause, reflect, and honor those who have fallen.

Let us take today for remembering and honoring the sacrifices made.

But let us not stop there.

Let us also take today as a starting point. Let us endeavor to abolish the world that demands such sacrifice of our best and brightest.

Let us today beat our swords into plow shares.

Let us today work towards a future free of conflict.

Let us today endeavor to show that Horace lied when he said: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and right to die for one's country)


wingnut

Come and Listen III(the mountain top)

We have a picture on our camera's memory card of a pregnancy test. I cannot begin to count the pictures that have come and gone over the past year and a half, but this particular picture has stayed on our camera. This picture is of much more than just a pregnancy test to us. It's a picture of life, of promise, of hope.

Every time we're cycling through the pictures we have taken recently, we look at it. Then we always end up looking at Elijah, who is usually doing unbearably cute nine-month-old things in his unbearably cute nine-month-old way. We marvel at the way that God has begun to heal us.

We were not always so aware of the healing, though. The road is narrow and long and rocky that brought us to where we are today. And truth be told, we're still very much on it.

After the door closed behind us that morning, there was only one way we could go: forward. I said in my previous post that something changed that morning. It was a palpable change. We could taste it, feel it in our very bones. Something significant had happened, a Sacred Moment, and we were understanding of that. We knew we had to do something in response to it.

It is important to remember that the change was not in our actual circumstances. It was only in our attitude. We were still very much grieving and hurting. But on that morning, the change was that we caught just a small glimpse of the Larger Story. Our suffering took on meaning in a way that was completely different. I remember, while we were still processing all these events, having a Bible verse pop into my head. You know how that happens every now and then. You don't even have to be thinking about anything scriptural, and suddenly there's a verse there out of the blue. This time, the verse was Romans 8:28: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Even in the midst of our grief, God was telling us that He loved us, that He cared for us, and that soon everything would be made right. The door had closed not on the pain we were experiencing, only the despair that filled us.

It wasn't magically all better. That's not what the verse says. When I read that verse, I imagine God holding us tight, wiping away our tears, and saying, "I know. I know this hurts, and I want you to know that it hurts me too. I don't want anyone to hurt like you are hurting now. But I promise you, I will bring good out of this pain. I will take this supposed victory of death, and I will change it into life."

We started small. Instead of sitting in the back of the Shed on Sundays, we moved towards the front. Baby steps, right? We recognized that we wanted to be where the action was, and so we sat as close as we could. We also got involved in a small group, something that we had been talking about for a long time, but not doing. With our crazy schedules during the week, it always seemed that there was something in the way, and we never ended up doing it.

But then we got serious about it, and found a small group that was just starting out. Matt and Staci were hosting it in their home, and we absolutely hit it off with all of them. Through the sharing of our story, Shannon found the W service on Wednesday night. The W service is just a prayer service. It's intense. Prayers for physical healing, emotional and spiritual healing, prayers for intervention, prayers against evil, you name it, they're praying it. It had an amazing affect on Shannon.

We began volunteering our time at church, I ran the sound board for the student ministry for fifth and sixth graders, and Shan volunteered to help out with the kids.

Another group that we got involved in was the Echo group, a group of women who are journeying together along the road of infertility and pregnancy loss. I really need to save that story for a separate post, suffice it to say that it was another moment where we were powerless to do anything but praise God.

It is nearly impossible for me to sort all this out chronologically. I have not been blessed with a mind like that. When I look back on it, this time in my life was simply a blur of impossible highs, and devastating lows. A roller-coaster ride, for sure. I can't give you dates, I can't give you what happened when. I just know that once we opened ourselves up to God and Mars Hill, that massive church became smaller than we had ever thought possible. We were constantly blown away by the powerful draw that the community had and continues to have on us. We had never experienced that before, and it was extremely unsettling.

As we began moving into more involvement with Mars Hill, we continued to try and start our family. Nearly half a year after our first miscarriage, we suffered a second miscarriage.

There is never a good time for this to happen, but the chill of winter was upon us, and it seemed that again the seasons mirrored our circumstances. The holidays were dull that year, stained with the frosty hopelessness that covered us. Our pain was made all the more acute when my sister had her second child, and then again when my cousins found out they were pregnant. It was torture, pure and simple. Here we were surrounded by celebration and new life, and my wife and I were talking to our doctor about taking medication to ensure that there was no "leftover tissue" that would cause future problems. Everyone around us was looking forward to spring, and we were stuck in the dead of winter.

Everyone else seemed to be pregnant, and we were stuck going to the hospital every week to make sure Shan's hormone levels were going down.

But it was different the second time. It hurt. It hurt a lot. But we were more aware of God's purpose. That's not to say that we knew what would happen or why, but we were reminded constantly of Romans 8. It still was very painful. But the God who brought us to Mars Hill that Sunday morning, the God who brought Israel out of slavery, the God who raised Jesus from the grave was making His presence known in our lives.

While we were struggling with this, our family came alongside us and walked with us. One of my aunts, in an e-mail, told us that although we were in a valley of our lives, someday we would stand on a mountain top so high and glorious that we would not be able to express it.

The picture on our camera is of that mountain top.

The picture is the first faint glimmer of hope.

The picture is a door opening.

We were terrified during the pregnancy. We were paranoid, obsessive compulsive, and probably a bit schizophrenic. Maybe a bit delusional as well.

I cannot explain to you the fear that we had when we went in for our ultrasounds. But gradually, as Elijah grew, and as we could watch him grow, our fear shrank. It was not the overwhelming monster it once was. It was still there, to be sure, but it was not controlling us as it once did.

We called the doctor more than our fair share of times, and definitely erred on the side of caution, but as the pregnancy progressed, we became more and more sure that this was it. This was our family.

The last few months were rough. Shan was sick for nearly all of it, and stayed home from work so much that they wanted to make her start her maternity leave early. We were in and out of the hospital constantly, worried about our baby, worried about Shan, worried about being sick, worried about lots of things.

But we still knew that God would be with us.

When the time came for little Elijah to make his entrance into the world, Shan's doctor suggested an inducement. His words were more like, "Let's get the baby out, before you get sick next week with something else weird."

For an inducement, the labor and delivery went quicker than anyone had figured, but it was still tough on Shan. We ended up having to use a vacuum to pull little Eli all the way out, but in the end, he arrived completely healthy, with just a big hickey on the top of his head, and a little cut where the heart rate probe dug into the skin.

He has been busy growing into a beautiful little boy, curious and full of life. He keeps his Mommy and Daddy very busy. He also reminds us to laugh, and to relax.

He also reminds us of his name: Eliyahu, "YHWH is my God"

Thanks for listening.

wingnut

The Obligatory Election Post, or Thank God it's Over.

This is probably the most you'll hear from me about the election. In the spirit of fellow blogger Jon Acuff from Stuff Christians Like, here is my "Obligatory Election Piece". Be warned, I am cynical and suffering from campaign fatigue.

Truth be told, I didn't find much difference in between the two, at least not enough to make my choice clear.

The major foreign policy issue cannot be solved from the White House alone, and to pretend otherwise is pure foolishness. Besides, both of them promised essentially the same thing: We will leave as soon as we can.

Ditto with their health care solution. There wasn't enough difference in the two plans to make me choose one over the other. They both sounded good and expensive. I recognize there is a problem, but I don't believe that nationalizing health care is any sort of good solution.

The economy, as much as anyone tries to tell you otherwise, is also not controlled by the White House.

In short, I guess Rush Limbaugh would classify me as a "spineless moderate". But I haven't listened to him since he bashed all over Michael J Fox for making that TV spot for stem cell research.

And can I just say that I think the straight party section on every ballot should be destroyed and never ever acknowledged again? Ditto for the electoral college, but that's a different post.

So with that out of the way, I would like to move on to what I would like to not see Wednesday, Thursday, the rest of the week, the rest of the month...actually, I would be perfectly happy not seeing any of this again until about 2011.

I would not like to see:

Conservatives moping around like their dog just died. It's a new president. It happens at least once a decade, sometimes even twice. And come on, are you really that surprised that your grumpy old man candidate lost to a younger, charismatic person? Especially after what has happened the last eight years? I ran into a guy at work, and he was walking slower, slouched over with his hands in his pockets like a relative died or something. It was pathetic.

I would also not like to see any more liberals running around celebrating like they just won the lottery. Do they really, honestly, truly believe that this candidate is that much different than all the other politicians in DC? Do you really believe that all the promised change is going to happen? And do I have to remind you who is going to pay for all his changes?

I would also be pleased if Evangelicals and the Christian Right stopped right now with the "end-of-the-world" attitude. Please, for the sake of all of us, stop with the sore loser bit right now.

Stop sighing and quoting Romans 13 as if the government has just been handed over to Beelzebub himself.

And stop with the fear mongering. My wife heard an ad on a radio station on the way in to work the other day that said that a vote for Obama is the same as killing an unborn child.

That makes me barf. And not just a little in my mouth either. It's "Christians" like that who make me not want to tell anyone that I'm a Christian.

Whatever happened to Romans 14? Is the political leaning of American Christians seriously too big for the Unity of Christ? Because that's what those ads are saying.


What we should all do right now is celebrate the fact that we are witnessing history. It is a beautiful thing, no matter where you happen to be on the political spectrum.

What we should all do right now is stop living in fear and panic. I think Jesus called that sin, if I'm not mistaken.

What we should all do right now is thank the LORD that we live somewhere that we can vote, and the worst we have to deal with is a long wait. Not suicide bombers or people with guns "asking" you to vote for their guy.

And Thank the LORD it's over.


wingnut