"No Matter What": A New Year (part 2)

CHAPTER 3 – A NEW YEAR (continued)

            These things might have kept me on the margins of a few conversations, but these disparities were nothing compared to the difference in transportation.  Kids at our church had used BMWs and Mercedes, brand-new Mazdas and Toyotas, or full custom pickups and SUVs.  I drove (when I could get it) my dad’s brown 1983 Oldsmobile.  Most of the time, I went around like a beggar, asking people for rides.

            I didn’t have to beg for rides from my youth group much, because I was usually with my parents, but it was an everyday struggle at school.  Basketball was the last period of the day, and we never got out in time to catch the bus, so I was stuck without a way to get home.  No one wanted to commit to driving me home on a daily basis, so every afternoon contained the humiliating quest to find a willing friend to take me home.

*  *  *  *  *

            “It sucks, Dad,” I said, as we talked about it on the way home from a grocery store run on the last day of summer.  “I know there’s nothing we can do about it, but I feel like an idiot every day.”

10 Ways God is Different from "the Force"

With the hysteria at fever-pitch this week as Star Wars, Episode VII, is set to premiere later this week, I thought I would take a look at the "theology" of these movies compared with what has been revealed to us in the Bible about God.

This type of exercise is fun in a way, but it also serves a purpose.  Competing ideas about God are everywhere, and when a mythology such as what Star Wars has built becomes so ingrained in our cultural consciousness, it can create confusion.  Particularly if you are a parent of a Star-Wars-crazy kid (like I am), these distinctions might be some talking points to cover when you enjoy these adventures together.

And since everyone loves lists on the Internet, here are Ten Ways God is Different from the Force:

"No Matter What": A New Year, part 1 (excerpt)

CHAPTER 3 – A NEW YEAR

            It was a week before the start of my junior year, and I was back-to-school shopping with my mom—which was just as embarrassing as it sounds.  I was actually never the type to be embarrassed to be seen with my parents or family, though.  I love my mom, and, besides, am I supposed to be embarrassed I have parents?  That being said, there’s nothing that makes you feel more like a “little boy” than going in and out of a dressing room so your mom can see how your clothes fit, and you don’t exactly want kids from school seeing you do a model turn for your mother. 

            I had the reputation in my family as the “fashion-conscious” one, which would have been hilarious to anyone who actually saw me dress as a teenager.  (There was this dude my sophomore year who looked me over disdainfully one day and said, “I can’t believe you can throw those clothes on in the morning and think you’re ready for school.”)

"Calvary Characters": Barabbas

This is my first effort for my "Calvary Characters" project.  These are fictionalized first-person stories of people who surrounded Jesus during the time of His crucifixion and resurrected, based on Scripture and history.  This first one was based on a monologue I did for Easter a couple of years ago.  Let me know what you think.

CALVARY CHARACTERS - BARABBAS

            In a cave in the Negev of Judah, a hooded figure slips through the shadows to join a band of robbers by the fire.  As light from the flickering fire illuminates his face, gasps echo in the cavern.  The newcomer removes his hood and speaks…

            “Don’t look so surprised!  Yes!  It is me!  Barabbas!”

August 6th

August 6th is my son's birthday.  This year, he turns eight.  Eight seems pretty old to me, hard to believe.  (I remember when I turned eight, I thought I was big stuff, challenging my much larger brother with an ill-advised, "Don't mess with the eight-year-old.")

August 6th is also the anniversary of two of the scariest days of my life...

20-Year Reflections

It's a week for nostalgia.  Tomorrow we leave for a summer Kansas City vacation, just like I used to have when I was a kid.  It will be fun to take my kids and Liz to the sites I looked forward to visiting each summer, as well as spending some time with the people (whom I have rarely seen in the last decade or so) that made those trips so special.

Sunday is also our 12th wedding anniversary.  It's hard to believe it's been 12 years.  It's also hard to believe it's only been 12 years, since it's hard to remember life without Liz.  Twelve years is how long it takes to get through school, and I must say I've enjoyed these dozen years much more than those school years.

Speaking of which, chance would have it that tonight is also the day of my 20-year high school reunion.  I can't attend, of course, since it's pretty impossible to get to an 8 p.m. party on a Saturday night in south Texas when you need to preach in Arkansas on Sunday morning.  But I have been seeing pictures on Facebook, and, along with all the other nostalgia of the week (did I mention the KC trip winds up with a family reunion?), it's got me in a reflective mood.

I think the first thing that pops into your mind when you think about seeing people from high school is whether or not you have met the expectations that you imagine that they had for you.  I think I sort of imagined ten years ago that I was "proving" something when I was able to come and "show off" Liz a little bit (I did get married!).  And I was a little sheepish about my weight gain.

So looking back, I'm happy to realize that, although I've been packing it on lately, I'm no fatter than I was ten years ago.  And we've added three impossibly adorable kids to the family since then.  But I also remember the plans I told people about back then, and I've lived to see them altered, crushed, re-shaped, and re-made over the past decade.

I've also come to realize that these thoughts I've imagined in others are just my own insecurities and expectations reflected back to me.  Because my high school social circle was small and I've been removed from that area since that time, I'm firmly in the category of "Who?" or "Oh yeah, I guess I remember him" for 98% of the people in my class.  The question really is whether I feel good about my life right now, and my definition of success has undergone a radical overhaul over the past couple of decades.

"No Matter What": The Letter, part 2 (excerpt)

(read part one here)

            As I crawled into bed, my open spiral notebook caught my eye.  Near the bottom of the page, I saw my name, signed “Jay C. McGee.”  I paused.  The first clear thought of the afternoon shot through my mind: Did I really sign my name using my INITIAL?!

            The fog began to dissipate quickly as I remembered what I had done.  I remembered being so proud of it, but I struggled to remember exactly what I had written.  With a shaky hand, I reached for the notebook and began to read.

"No Matter What": The Letter, part 1 (excerpt)

 

CHAPTER 2 – THE LETTER

             Our standard birthday celebration for my dad was not enough to distract me from the inevitable thoughts that would flood my brain as I tried to go to bed that night.  So there I lay, with my stomach still cooled by the homemade ice cream we had that night and my mind relentlessly haunted by Nicole’s image.  I closed my eyes in a vain effort to sleep, but the only thing I saw was the vision of her, laughing, talking to her friends in the department store. 

            Why didn’t I talk to her?  Would she have talked to me if she had seen me?  Surely she would have at least said, “Hi.”  After all, she was one of the only girls that had shown any interest in talking to me at all before I got my contacts.

            I stared into the darkness and sighed.  Why is she such a roadblock to me?  Roger’s right.  I really should ask Amanda out.  Maybe Amy.  But I still liked Nicole.  A lot.  I had never asked her out, not in five years of knowing her.  Now here I am, sixteen years old, without a single date under my belt just because I can’t get the guts up to ask this one girl out.  Geez, she could say ‘yes’ for all I know.

            I moaned in frustration into my pillow and pulled it over my head.  How could I possibly tell her how I felt now? I can’t just come out and say it.  My feelings have gotten way too out of hand for that.  And of course there was no chance I would call her.

            So there in the dark that night, I made a decision: I had to do something about Nicole Ellis if I was ever going to get on with my life. 

"No Matter What": Summer Detox, part 2 (excerpt)

This is the rest of chapter 1, "Summer Detox"  Read part one here.

*  *  *  *  *  *

    It seemed to me that most guys looked at Nicole like cartoon characters—you know, the ones whose eyes would pop out of their head and tongues would hang to the floor?  But I really couldn’t look at her that way.  I didn’t know her all that well, but my feelings for her had always been strangely warm and caring.  Thinking of her in terms of her body parts, as so many of my friends did, made me feel wrong, even dirty.

    I came to this realization that morning in the shower.  Even during the summer, she would still enter my mind when at that groggy, vulnerable time most mornings.  I congratulated myself on my emotional depth and sophistication as I got out of the shower.  If only she knew I was better than those walking hormones who surround her all the time, I thought.

The Forgotten Nation

I invite you to imagine with me a country with a rich Christian heritage.  Old church buildings dot the landscape, once filled to capacity but now home to a dozen members in one building, a couple dozen in another, perhaps a hundred in the larger churches.  These nearly empty places of worship are signs of the declining influence and impact of the gospel in these communities.  A remnant remains, but these faithful people have aged, grown tired and defeated, seemingly overwhelmed by the cultural changes around them.

You might be imagining a country in "post-Christian" Europe, and though the country I am describing does have a population roughly the same as the United Kingdom or France, it is much closer to home.  Yet this country is usually seen not as a missions priority but as a stepping-stone for a young minister to gain experience for a couple of years before moving on, or a soft landing for a tired old pastor, working his way toward retirement.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, the "nation" I am describing is rural America.

Which 'Kingdom Character' Are You?

To get you started on the concepts of this study, I have created a quiz.

Which of the "Kingdom Characters" do you resemble most?

Take the Quiz!

Indiana Straw Man

A "straw man" is defined as "a weak or imaginary argument or opponent that is set up to be easily defeated."

It seems like the best concept to introduce when attempting to address the hysteria surrounding Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was signed into law in Indiana last week.

Now, with Arkansas passing a similar law today, we need to take time to see through the absurdities and look at what this is really all about.

It's easy to get people to hate a law when it is characterized as "a license to discriminate" (particularly against homosexuals), and boy do people hate it.  Companies have already announced they are not coming to Indiana, the NCAA has expressed concern about its continued presence there, a liberal church denomination has decided to change the venue of its upcoming convention to a different state, and now the governor of New York is placing some sort of restriction on travel to Indiana for state employees.  #BoycottIndiana has been trending on Twitter for days, and now it's #Boycott Arkansas.

How could anyone stand for such an odious law? 

The answer is that no one can and no one will, because the law as it is being portrayed is a myth.  It does not exist.  It is a straw man.

In a recent post, I expressed concern that the current political/news climate of our country is turning us into a nation of what the Bible calls fools.  In the Bible, fools are people who make no attempt at understanding but will angrily air their own opinions.  This post is an attempt to help us really understand what is going on here.

Movie Review: Disney's Cinderella (2015)

Today I saw Disney's new live-action Cinderella with my daughter Hope.  It may be that my heart was so full from having some quality daddy-daughter time that it skews my perception a bit, but it was a wonderful experience.  Right now I think it is the best fairy tale movie I have ever seen.

I may do a movie review from time to time just for the sake of sharing my thoughts on the quality of the movie, but this one had such positive themes that I will have to share some of the scriptural stories and principles I found at work in this film.

So read on for my Four Reasons Disney's (New) Cinderella Is Fantastic...

Oprah Wants to Kill White People with Alaskan Wolves (or something like that)

Every day, I check Facebook and Twitter, and on my newsfeed or among the trending topics are the controversies du jour.

One day, President Obama says "Michael and I" in a speech, thus "proving" (to some bloggers, at least) that he is, in fact, homosexual and Michelle is really a man named Michael (not that a very tired man misread a teleprompter at a minor state function.)

Another day, a Christian Mets player uses the outdated term "lifestyle" while trying to answer questions respectfully about how he feels about a homosexual activist visiting spring training, and thus revealing (to those who want to be angry) that he is really a hateful homophobe (not that these reporters already know his beliefs and are trying to entrap him).

This never-ending back-and-forth game we play is turning us into a country of what the Bible calls fools.

Two stories I saw in the last week are prime examples...

Judges 7 Moment in America?

I was reading the story of Gideon to my kids the other day, and it reminded me of the American church. 

The story is really amazing every time.  Gideon is about to face a coalition of the armies of several Midianite tribes.  His army of 32,000 men seems smallish already and woefully ill-equipped for this mission.

But God doesn't say they have too few; He says they have too many.  So Gideon invites everyone who is afraid to leave.  You can imagine how a couple of people left sort of sheepishly, until more and more decided to go, and then it hit a tipping point where it seemed everyone was going to leave.  When everyone had made their choice, 22,000 men had deserted, and only 10,000 remained. 

Now the army seemed really small, but God still said it was too many.  He had Gideon watch the men drink from the river, and everyone who got down on their knees and put their face in the water was sent away.  Well, that seemed to be the normal way to drink from a river in that time, because 9,700
men drank from their knees and were sent home.  Only 300 men remained.

What did these men have in common?  What does it have to do with the American church?

"No Matter What": Summer Detox (excerpt)

 

CHAPTER 1 – SUMMER DETOX

            It used to be that when a guy liked a girl, he couldn’t send a quick “Hey” to her phone or inbox and hope for the best.  He couldn’t hide behind text or a computer screen to maintain the façade of aloof coolness.  No.  He had to walk to the front door of her house, knock on the door, and tell her father to his face that he was there to call on his daughter. Imagine how exposed he would have felt when she finally appeared in the doorway.  All pretenses are gone.  He is there for one purpose: to win her heart.

            Thankfully for you kids, I didn’t grow up during that time or you would never have existed.