It started out with me running down a grassy hill in some small town somewhere (partially reminiscent of Grove City, PA) in jeans, a t-shirt, and canvas slip-ons. I was running to get to the start of the half-marathon and I was late. The race had already started. I passed a wooden sign that said “Marathon Start” and started frantically looking around for the “Half-Marathon Start” wooden sign. As I approached it I realized that I was missing something.

My signed release waiver and a car battery, both items I should have turned in at the pre-race expo. So, I ran through the streets of this strangely deserted town trying to find my car. On the way I ran past a security officer with a couple German Shepherd guard dogs. Across the street there was another guard, also with dogs. They were chatting and seemed rather oblivious of my plight.

The guard on my side of the street made eye contact with me as one of his dogs ran toward me. I didn’t slow down. I was certain that the dogs were on leashes or that he would call the dog back. He didn’t. Instead the dog jumped up and sunk his teeth into my right forearm. It really hurt! I wrenched his mouth open, staring incredulously at his master who nonchalantly continued his conversation. The dog then sunk his teeth into my right thigh. Again, I used my hands to pry his mouth open. This time I held onto his snout and used it to fling him away from me. I took off running across the street and then jumped down an embankment into a stream, thinking that if I did that the dog couldn’t follow me.

Still bewildered by the whole dog thing, I found myself running through a field full of parked cars. placed next to most of the cars were car batteries of different sizes and shapes. “Clearly”, I thought, “they’re not collecting those car batteries like they said they would. That’s good since I forgot mine.” Then I was at my car. I opened up the rear door and grabbed my release waiver, turning toward the start line on a course that would give me a wide berth around those dogs.

Then I remembered I still hadn’t changed into running clothes. I ran back to my car, climbed into the back of it and fumbled around with my clothes until I emerged quaffed in proper attire. Waiver in hand I began running down a dirt road to the empty start line. I heard a vehicle rumbling up the road behind me. I turned and looked over my shoulder and it was a pickup truck with a bed full of tired looking runners, all standing and trying to keep their balance as the truck bounced over the uneven road, kicking up clouds of dust in its wake. The driver leaned out and barked, “Up in the back, slow poke. Course is closed.”

THE END

That doesn’t exactly give me warm fuzzies for my race tomorrow. I hope there are no dogs.

First off, my training has been interrupted numerous times by weather. It was probably an unwise decision to pick a big race like this that would require all my training to be done in the winter. But who knew that this winter would have the most snow accumulation in this area since they started keeping records? Sheesh. I did finally break down and get a membership to a no-frills gym so I could at least get on a treadmill. But treadmill running is different from street running. It just is. If this race had been in October instead of March, maybe the weather would have played nicer.

Secondly, I’ve been hampered by a nagging, recurring injury that I came to understand is Illiotibial Band Syndrome. It presents as a pain in the outside of one or both knees, usually showing up when you’re about 2 miles into a run. The only thing that will make it go away is to stop running. The pain also recurs when walking down steps. It is caused by a big cluster of fibers snapping across the outside of the knee. I learned some stretches that help to delay the onset, and some deep tissue massages that will help to limber up the area. But, once it strikes, it can take a couple of days before you can run again.  Like most runners I tried to “make up” missed training sessions by adding lost miles into future runs. Big mistake. It doesn’t work that way. In fact, doing so will increase IT band flare ups.

I was also out of commission for a couple of weeks because I had a wicked sinus infection. All the while the calendar steadily marches on toward the race. With each passing day comes more and more frustration and more and more questions. I ended up throwing out any time goals I had. “Just finish” became the new goal. For a while I thought that one was going to have to go as well. The race is almost here. It’s already paid for. I’m going to start it. How I finish will largely be a byproduct of the time and effort put in leading up to race day and my constitution on the day of the race.

What other races are we running? In a figurative sense, what are the things that we are aspiring to attain? Have we made wise choices in aspiring those things? If we have, are we making a good faith effort to attain them in such a way that will position us to be happy, healthy, and able to enjoy them? I think that I made some unwise choices in my race selection. I made some unwise choices in training. I could choose to ignore the choices I made, keep my original pace goals, and likely end up injuring myself in the race. Instead, I’ve decided to admit that maybe I didn’t make the best decisions. Sure, some stuff was out of my control, but the whole reason I started signing up for races was to have fun! If I can’t finish happily and healthily then, for me, it’s not worth doing.

So, when next Saturday rolls around, I’ll shuffle off with thousands of other people, maybe not as fast as I’d hoped, but hopefully at a pace that allows me to take in the sights and sounds of the race and sees me safely across the finish line where I can say, “I did it.”

I don’t meant that in the “I don’t look good” sense (though that is certainly true, especially during a sinus rinse). Rather, I’m just depressing to be around when I get sick. I started feeling sorry for myself. I began looking at life and all I saw was the glass-half-empty side of things. By the time the weekend came around, I was ready to get out of the house and be around people again, even though I wasn’t feeling a whole lot better. I’m glad I did.

On Saturday morning my team held a training event for small group leaders. I’m the upfront guy for those kinds of events. During the round table discussions I had a leader come up to me and tell me that, of all the small group trainings he’s been a part of, this one was the best. He went on to say, “People who don’t come to this have no idea what they’re missing out on. This is really valuable stuff.” Now, this guy has been a small group leader for years in many different contexts. There are few things you can tell him that he hasn’t already heard. Coming from him those comments were a big deal.

Sunday after the first service I had a young man and his girlfriend grab me for a few minutes. I’d met with the young man back in the fall of last year when he needed some counseling. He was going through a rough time, living a couple hours away from here while his girlfriend lived in this area. He was finishing up school, trying to get a job transfer, not really sure about his relationship to church, and doubting whether his relationship with his girlfriend was going to survive. We talked for a while, I made some suggestions and that was the last I saw of him. They pulled me aside Sunday to tell me that he had gotten the job transfer recently, moved into the area and things between them were going great. They are regularly attending here and he’d never forgotten the conversation we’d had.

Not long after I’d parted with them, a woman that I’d never met came up to me and told me that she loves it when I get the opportunity to teach during the worship services. She said I’m a great speaker with a gentle humor that can put people at ease. She wanted to know when I’d be speaking next.

The weekend was also the weekend of our baptism services. One of the opportunities we create is for people who would like to get baptized on the spur of the moment, to come and get in the water. We offer some dry clothes for them to change into, though many of them choose to go home wet! Our baptismal pool is actually in the lobby of the church and a live video feed is displayed in the sanctuary during the baptisms. The second service was wrapping up, the senior pastor was already changing out of his wet clothes and a young man walked up wondering if it was too late to get baptized. I told him that the pastor was already getting dressed and the man replied, “Oh, ok. I’ll just do it some other time.” No way! I emptied my pockets, took off my shoes and told him that if today is his day, we’re not going to let it get away. We entered the water together and I got to baptize him. We both went home wet!

So, there I was, feeling sorry for myself, wondering if I was really in the right place at the right time doing the right thing and God strung together all those encounters. It’s been a long time since I felt such affirmation that I’m exactly where I should be. Sometimes doubting where we are and what we’re doing is a good thing. It gives God the opportunity remind us why He called us to where we are. Or maybe it gives us an opportunity to listen. Either way, doubt isn’t always a sign of weakness or faithlessness. Now, how to change my doubts that I’ll actually finish my first half-marathon in 9 days…

The title of the session was “Toward a Post-Atomic Age: Why Tomorrow Needs You Today”. Now I must admit that my understanding of nuclear weapons had been shaped mostly by the movie War Games (probably one of my favorite movies ever, if for no other reason than the scene where Matthew Broderick’s character uses a pull tab from a soda can to hot-wire a pay phone. I’ve tried that countless times and have never gotten it to work. I must not be holding my tongue right), so a 21st century discussion on nuclear weapons seems a bit anachronistic. Maybe that’s why I chose to attend, because I thought that it was an odd topic to be talking about so many years after the end of Cold War. In any event, what transpired over the next hour was a whirlwind tour of nuclear weapons history, policy, and theological implications. Easily the best session I attended at the conference.

My takeaways were numerous, and perhaps I’ll unpack them further in later posts if there is interest, but for now I’ll keep it brief.

1. Christians can’t support the use of a weapon that kills indiscriminately. Nuclear weapons aren’t just technologically evolved guns. TWS used the example of an “abortion bomb” that, if unleashed in a city, would kill every unborn fetus within a 3-mile radius. Pro-life Christians would never allow our military forces to deploy such a non-strategic weapon. It’s use is unconscionable. Detonating a nuclear weapon would have the same effect, plus it would kill the mothers and anyone else in the blast zone, destroy the buildings, irradiate the land making it unlivable for decades, and send the area into an immediate economic downward spiral. Even proponents of Just War theory have a hard time making a case for deploying a nuclear weapon while abiding by the principles of proportionality and minimum force.
2. Today, deterrence only breeds proliferation. Since the end of the Cold War our enemies have changed. The greatest threats no longer consist of large states with large military forces threatening land and sea invasions. Since 9/11 the focus has been combating terrorism. The shift is akin to the guerrilla fighting tactics the American Revolutionaries used to defeat the British Redcoats. Cold War era deterrence doesn’t hold water when the enemy can’t be targeted. Instead, the continued possession of nuclear weapons by the “haves” only makes the “have nots” edgier. The only way to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used is to eliminate nuclear weapons.
3. The world is at a critical moment in nuclear history. Right now there is broad consensus among top military, scientific, political, and theological leaders that the “now what?” question regarding existing nuclear stockpiles must be answered swiftly, convincingly, and finally. National security experts like George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and William Perry, along with Christian leaders like John Stott, Leith Anderson, Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, Chuck Colson, and Bill Hybels, are all calling for complete global nuclear disarmament. It is telling that the two paragons of the big political parties, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, are both outspoken proponents of complete, multilateral nuclear abolition.
4. If we miss this, it will undermine most everything else Christians advocate for. Our work on creation care, alleviation of poverty, international justice, and sanctity of life, could all be wrecked in an instant with the detonation of a nuclear weapon. The environmental impact of a nuclear detonation in the atmosphere would be devastating beyond the blast site itself, perhaps triggering cascading environmental effects for decades to come. The economic destruction impact our global economy, unfairly stressing emerging economies as financial aid is brought to a halt. With the attention of the world’s leaders shifted to responding to a nuclear crisis, the door for corruption and injustice in developing countries would be left open and unattended. Condoning the use of a nuclear weapon as either a first-strike or retaliatory measure by Christians would leave us hamstrung in taking a moral position on issues where we prize the unique and precious gift of life given to each individual.

So, here’s the deal. Nukes gotta go. It’s the only way to ensure they can’t be used. It’s a complex issue, to be sure, but complexity has never been an “out” for Christians. It’s not a sexy issue, no kids are going to write you letters thanking you for securing their future by keeping the bomb out of their village. It is a faith issue. If we serve the Prince of Peace, the One who will, with finality, beat swords into ploughshares, if we mean it when we pray, “thy kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven,” then our faith compels us to respond. Abolishing nuclear weapons won’t save the world. Jesus Christ already did what needed to be done in that department. Abolishing nuclear weapons is something we can do in response.

Want to learn more about the movement to abolish nuclear weapons from a uniquely evangelical Christian point of view? Visit the Two Futures Project website and join in. I did.

I’m copying the New Testament by hand and I’m using a pen. I figure that if I’m super deliberate about every jot and tittle, I shouldn’t have any mistakes. It’s copying, right? It’s different than a puzzle where I’m having to figure out what to write. All I have to do is look at a word and then replicate that word. My four-year-old who can’t read can at least copy words. I know because I’ve seen her do it. When I sit down to work on the copying, she gets out “Hop on Pop” and a piece of paper and starts her own copying project. It’s really quite cute.

Maybe that’s why it happened. Maybe I was distracted because both my girls were at the table with me as I’m trying to concentrate on a seemingly simple task. Maybe it was due, in part, to their incessant narration of their lives that seems to issue forth from their mouths with little to no cognitive awareness on the part of their ears. Whatever the reason, I messed up. And it wasn’t the kind of just-boldly-transform-that-wrong-letter-into-a-misshapen-right-one kind of mess up. It was the you-wrote-the-same-word-two-times-in-a-row-you-idiot-idiot kind of mess up. Check it out:

Right there at the end of Jesus’ temptation in Matthew I wrote “and angels ang came and attended to him.” Man, that’s frustrating! That got me to thinking about the transmission of Scripture. Before Herr Gutenberg, it was all hand copied. How were errors in transcription handled? What if, unlike mine, they weren’t caught? Could our Holy Scriptures have been significantly changed over centuries of sloppy, distracted copiers like me?

I consulted one of my favorite primers on Biblical Hermeneutics, Gordon D. Fee’s and Douglas Stuart’s “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.” They write briefly of textual criticism (read that again, we’re not talking about bad-mouthing your spouse’s cuddling ability), or the science of making sense of little errors or discrepancies in ancient manuscripts. They say there are external evidences, which have to do with the condition, age, and other things relevant to the manuscript itself, and internal evidences, which deal more with copyist mistakes. Regarding internal evidences they write:

When translators are faced with a choice between two or more variants [places where the manuscripts differ], they usually can detect which readings are the mistakes because scribal habits and tendencies have been carefully analyzed by scholars and are now well-known. Usually the variant that best explains how all the others came about is the one we presume to be the original text. (p. 37)

That makes me feel a little better. It seems that the people who copied these things back in the day took their copying seriously and the people who translate them take their work seriously, and anything that doesn’t look right is scrutinized until a consensus is reached as to what the error is, where it came from, and what the most faithful was to move on is. I guess none of these guys work from home with their little girls at the table. Good for them.

So, you can imagine my surprise when, after writing for about ten minutes my hand began to cramp. I had to take a little break. When I stood up, I realized that my neck and shoulders were a little stiff too. What’s wrong with me that a few minutes of writing causes my body to revolt? Ugh. As I stretched and looked at my hand I noticed that little red mark on my middle finger where I grip the pen was starting to return. I haven’t seen that callous since 2nd grade.

Enough about my ailments. As I was copying today I noticed echoes of my favorite New Testament passage John 15:1-8 in the words of another John, speaking in Matthew 3:7-10. What struck me (beyond the similarities) was the audience in Matthew. John is out in the desert, baptizing people for repentance and some of the Pharisees and Sadducees come up wanting to get baptized.

The fruit he tells them they need to produce is fruit of repentance. These guys were counting on two things to produce fruit: their genealogies and their deeds. Since they could trace their families back to Abraham and since they obeyed the law, they believed that God was then contractually bound to do good by them.

John is saying that they’re missing the point. The fruit that God is looking for doesn’t come from pedigree or works, but from the posture of the heart. Repentance is the key. Without understanding and acknowledging that nothing – including our family history or our best efforts – can put us in the good graces of God except His generosity, all our words and actions are empty. They need to understand, we need to understand, I need to understand that I am in no place to try and earn or bargain my way into a relationship with God.

However, because He loves me if I just admit that I need Him to rescue me from the mess I’ve made – good intentions or not – He will swoop down and lift me up. I think we have a tendency to forget that. Especially those of us who have been doing this Disciple of Christ thing for a while. When we were younger, we knew the pain of our mistakes. Over time, though, a callous began to form and those mistakes didn’t hurt us so much. Then we moved on to other kinds of screw ups that were easier to hide, more palatable. Maybe what we need to do is ask God to make it hurt again? Then maybe our fruit will be born of repentance.

The plan is to spend a little time each day on the project. I’m writing on the right-facing pages and leaving the left-facing pages for later notes. This could be a cool devotional tool over the coming years as I add notes and a cool heirloom for my girls later in their lives.

I must admit that the idea isn’t mine. It came via my friend Andy, who showed me a bound blank book titled “Proverbs” which outlines the idea of hand copying scripture. The book is published by a student group at Cedarville University (his alma mater) that calls it the first installment of the 17:18 project. This is a reference to Deuteronomy 17:18 which says that when the king takes the throne, he is to copy the law himself onto a scroll. I think that is a pretty cool idea.

My wife, April, and I homeschool our two girls. Hand copying is a big part of how they learn. Not only is it practice for their penmanship and reading, but the content sticks as well. I find that too often when I read a familiar passage in the Bible, I start to zone out and skim because I know the gist of what it says. When you are copying something letter by letter though, you scrutinize it at a completely different level. I hope to share some insights along the way. Who knows? Maybe there’s a book that will come out of this journey.

Life has been good lately. My last post was on the day of my most recent meeting with my Servants Quarters colleagues. We had a great meeting. I am glad to have these other people in my life. I hope that I can get to know them better (and perhaps communicate more frequently) as we sojourn on together. Our topic was Heaven. We discussed readings from John Yeats and Randy Alcorn on the Biblical picture of Heaven and what we might be able to anticipate about eternity. It was quite exciting.

The readings weren’t altogether new to me, but the implications still energize me. However, in the midst of all of this, I have been feeling a strong pull of skepticism. This is not unusual for people of faith. Without skepticism faith is not faith, is it? I have been struggling with whether or not my life really reflects that which I say I believe.

I know how to put on a good face and say the appropriate things at the right times. I am also convinced that the faith to which I hold has radically changed the lives of others. I can see where it has changed the trajectory of my life as well. Yet I still am going through a period where I feel empty inside. This is not like depression (I know that well), nor is it for a lack of evidence. I’m not quite sure I can explain its genesis. Nor do am I certain how to combat it.

As part of the fast, I’ve been reading nothing but the Bible. I’ve read through Colossians, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2, & 3 John, Jude, Job, Song of Songs, and now Isaiah. That is more Scripture in four weeks than I’ve read in a long, long time. My prayer life, however, hasn’t been very good. I guess that, spiritually, I’m in a funk. Which is a hard place to be when you’re trying to pour into the lives of others.

So I’m not really sure where that leaves me. Passion weeks begins in a few days, an appropriate time to think about all this stuff.

It’s not always as cut and dry as that. Sickness isn’t always the result of specific sin. Instead, it is more often the result of Sin being in the world at all. Just like innocent people can be caught up in the poor choices of others, sickness can come upon someone without it behind directly related to their sin or choices they’ve made. Jesus uses this opportunity to show his disciples his entire ministry in miniature.

He spits on the ground, makes some mud, puts it on the man’s eyes and tells him to go wash it off. The man does and he is healed. He can see. Now, that man still ended up dying. He grew older and died. We don’t know how many years he got to walk around on this earth seeing. What Jesus wanted his disciples to see, I think, was two things. First, that his ministry is all about taking away the sin, brokenness and their effects on God’s creation. Though this man’s blindness wasn’t linked directly into his sin, it was linked into the fallen condition of the world. Jesus took those effects away and made the man physically whole.

Second, it takes some faith and action on our part to receive that wholeness. The mud Jesus made wasn’t magic. He doesn’t have super spit. It was the man’s faith in Jesus that healed him. Jesus put goop on his eyes and told him that if he went and washed it off, he would see again (anyone remember Naaman?). In the same way, Jesus asks us today to put faith in him for us to be made whole.

As I go to Servants Quarters tonight to talk about Heaven, I am realizing that my faith in what Jesus has in store for us after this life really does have an impact on how I live now. Do I really believe that Jesus has “sight” in store for me? Am I living my life like the blind man, running to the pool because of what Jesus promised, or like Naaman, who didn’t really believe that washing in a nasty river would really heal him?

The image of living water is one of moving (as opposed to stagnant) water, teeming with energy and life. Jesus, at the Feast of Tabernacles,  proclaims to be the original Gatorade (thirst quencher). He states that out of whoever believes in him would flow living water. I am just coming to understand what an incredible statement that is. He doesn’t limit himself to being the provider of living water. Instead, he opens that up to all believers.

For a people like the people of Israel, whose history is peppered with times of desert living, water holds life. Here in America, we are spoiled with the amount of water we have access to. Those of us who try to conserve water are often looked at as strange. My family and I limit our consumption of water all the time (“If it’s brown, flush it down. If it’s yellow, let it mellow”) because we realize that we are fortunate to have so much clean water while so much of the world has none.

The idea that Jesus would both be the source of living water to quench our thirst and that we would then become the suppliers of living water to others must have been astonishing to those listening. Could they even imagine such abundance? What would it be like for Jesus to stand up in our midst today and proclaim, “If anyone is in debt, let him come to me and be paid-in-full. Out of the believer’s heart will flow unrestricted grants!”

Jesus is proclaiming himself to be the source of sustenance and his followers the delivery mechanism. Do we see ourselves that way? Do we feel sustained? Do we realize that we are the vehicle by which others will be sustained? That should be transformational in the way we operate in relationships. As N.T. Wright sums up, “We must come to Jesus and drink of the living water, not only to satisfy our own thirst but so we can be the people through whom God restores the barren and broken land all around us.”