How solving spiritual problems is like home improvement

I’m sore today.  Not as much as yesterday, though.  On Saturday I dug a 25′ long, two-foot deep ditch that ran alongside my house.  It served as a lesson in finding the root of a problem (Pun intended. You’ll see in a second.) and fixing it.

Though I’m not as clueless with home improvement projects as when we bought our house seven years ago, I still have a lot to learn.  It took eight hours and nine trips to Home Depot to complete. I’ve developed a Home Depot quotient that measures the difficulty of projects. Divide hours worked by the number of excursions to that huge store (.889 for this one).

An attractive billboard

Here’s the billboard that grabs my attention every time I’m at the traffic light on Glenwood Avenue and Route 224. You can’t tell from my amateur photo, but a number lights up in that blank spot to advertise the average time a guest to Northside Hospital’s Emergency Room has to wait to be seen by a medical professional.

What a brilliant idea!  Even though that facility is miles from my home, I’m still interested in the billboard because I’ve done the parent thing; hanging out in ER waiting rooms for hours with a sick or injured child.  In those situations, it’s hard not to speculate on why it takes so long.

Jesus was ticked off. Lucky for us.

Photo credit: ….Tim / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

The Hulk is a very confusing super hero. In the movie The Avengers everyone, including Bruce Banner (the guy who turns into the Hulk when he gets angry), is wary of the appearance of the green monster. But they know they need him at some point if they are to be successful against the evil Loki.

Towards the end of the movie when things were getting rough for the Avengers, Banner realizes that the Hulk must appear. He calmly walks in the direction of the massive enemy and reveals how he has learned to control when the Hulk appears. Captain America tells him that now might be a good time to get angry. Banner looks back just before he transforms into the enigmatic hero and says, “That’s my secret . . . I’m always angry.”

Why is it tough to be the beneficiary of generosity?

Great idea: (pre) Mothers’ Day Free Car wash

Moms always want a clean car.  Denny Pallay isn’t a mom, but he loves upkeep on cars and teaching people how to maintain their vehicles.  This picture is the result of the plans we made that I posted about during the kids’ Spring Break.

On Saturday, from noon to four pm, Denny led the way as a dozen or so people from the high school and junior high groups from our church washed, waxed and vacuumed cars for any mom. If that wasn’t enough, he recruited his wife and daughter, Sharon and Wendy, to put together sweets for the moms as they waited. And the charge for this? Absolutely nothing.

Why did Jesus leave you here?

Photo credit: Ken Schwarz / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

As has been humorously put, when we become Christians, there are two things we can do on earth that we won’t be able to do in heaven: sin and witness.  The question for us is to decide which one we think Jesus left us here to do.

-Mike Breen and Alex Absalom, Launching Missional Communities

An Emoticons Bible Translation?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I used to hate them but I’ve come to see their value. I’ve often told my kids that words are only a small percentage of how you communicate. For instance, saying “Sorry” can be either sincere or, with raised pitch in the middle of the word and elongated vowels, very sarcastic: “SoOOry.”

Greek and Hebrew don’t have emoticons, but they would have been helpful in interpreting the emotions or attitudes or reactions in the Bible. Here are a few examples I’ve thought of:

     In John 9, when the Pharisees were hounding the poor guy who had been born blind by continuing to ask him about Jesus, the man’s response was classic:  “Look!” the man exclaimed. “I told you once. Didn’t you listen? Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?" 

Lunk alarms work

It finally happened. In my post about Planet Fitness I made reference to the Lunk Alarm. It’s a large purple siren fixed high on the wall. It’s part of a sign that defines a Lunk as someone who displays their physical strength by shouting while lifting or slamming weights down at the end of some heavy reps. I’d not heard or seen the alarm go off in my four months there and I was beginning to think that its function was limited to decor.

When the siren went off my first thought was that it was a fire alarm, but nobody moved toward the exits. I noticed the light flashing when I got to the other side of the machine that had been obstructing my view. Everybody else must have experienced the alarm before that day because they kept going about their business unaffected. The culprits had been putting on a show that no one had been watching.

Shortsighted compassion

Jason Collins as a Celtic
(Credit: Wikipedia)

He’s the first active athlete of the four major sports in America to announce to the world that his is homosexual. Jason Collins, the 34-year-old center for the Washington Wizards, had an interview with George Stephanopolous on ABC’s Good Morning America after his announcement. When asked what he would say to a gay 12-year-old boy dreaming of playing in the NBA, Collins said, “It doesn’t matter that you’re gay.”

He’s right.

Mystery Visitor

Photo credit: Derringdos / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Do you have any idea what guests think when they visit your church?  Outreach Magazine has a great column at the back of every issue called Mystery Visitor: “An unchurched person reports on an unannounced visit to a local church.”

Why would Outreach Magazine do that and why would people want to read it?

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is in John 9. Jesus and the disciples were walking past a man sitting along the roadside. This guy had been blind his whole life. Somehow the disciples were privy to this info and it brought up a theological question that they presented to the Teacher for clarification.  They had been taught by the religious leaders that if someone had a physical ailment it was due to evil they had committed. If someone was born that way the belief was that it was the result of either what their parents had done or, believe it or not, what the child had done while still in the womb.

The Serenity Prayer – it’s not just for addicts anymore

Photo credit: Digital Explorer / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Actually, it never was. Alcoholics Anonymous adopted the prayer attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr that is associated with the famous twelve step program.

I had always heard the prayer in relation to people summoning the strength the overcome alcohol or drug addiction. Since I didn’t taste alcohol until my mid 30s, and have only had a few tastes of it since then, the thought that the sentiment housed in that prayer could apply to me had never entered my mind.