Texting gone bad

Vacation is over, the blogger is back. You may all breathe a deep sigh of relief.

While I was gone, I heard a story of two teens sitting next to each other sending text messages, or texting for short, during school. When asked why they were texting just inches away from each other, they said, "We don't want anyone to know what we're saying."



Now some of you may find texting rude (How hard would it be to just look at me instead of the Blackberry during a conversation?), dangerous (I hear you are four times more likely to be in an accident with a texter than a drunk driver) or technologically too much (What button do I push again?).

But the above story illustrates the greater problem. We've found just another way to sin: a new way to gossip and slander, an even more gentle way of sliding the knife into people's backs.

No one may ever see the "words" we type, but the poison fills our hearts and minds just the same, leaving a black stain on our soul. Or to paraphrase James 3:6, a treatise on the tongue: "No man can tame the keyboard. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison."

Passion

Pardon my lengthy blog absence. It's not that I didn't have anything to say, just that there were too many bits and pieces. But what I think I've meant to focus on is passion.

Passion is what drives people, for better or worse, for good or evil. When people start talking about losing their passion for something, it usually means quitting or giving up. It means the end of a job or a marriage, a loss of faith or friends.

And the result is usually that we continue carrying out our daily duties, but we are no longer engaged. We are going through the motions.

And that is really why this blog exists. I can go through the motions of faith on autopilot, but I need to do more. I need to, I must, find a way to kindle not only my own fire, but those around me. I pray you feel the same.

So with that in mind, I offer a song that captures passion with more eloquence than my pecking at the keyboard: The Motions by Matthew West.

Of Milestones and Tombstones

The milestones start with the day you are born -- your birthday -- and continue for the rest of your life.

Birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, graduations, moving in, moving out, moving up, retiring -- the milestones only end with a tombstone.

I've experienced a bit of both this week.

Today, I celebrated my 9th wedding anniversary with my wife. Anniversaries remind us of previous events in our lives, and in this case that's a good thing. And the higher the number of the anniversary, often times the memories are all the more pleasant because for one, we remember less clearly, and for two, because it reminds us of different times in our life. Times when our dreams and expectations for the future were different. Not necessarily better, just different.

Of course, the other nice thing about wedding anniversaries, at least, is the chance to spend a few hours reacqainting ourselves with that person we fell in love with in the first place.

Now, for all the memories piling up anniversary milestones brings, it also draws us ever closer to that tombstone.


That I was reminded of with the death of a co-worker this week. Mr. K, as I shall call him, died at the age of 59 after a year-and-a-half battling cancer. And might I say, even 59 seemed much too young to die.

But the good news is Mr. K was well-prepared for that tombstone day. "I won't live one day less or one day more than the Lord says," he often stated. He had a faith that was unshakable no matter the circumstances, and enjoyed the milestones of his life all along the way, down to one of his favorites, the Indy 500 just a few weeks ago.

And while I don't know what his tombstone might actually say, the things I have heard and read all echo a respect for the man, respect for someone who not everybody agreed with, but for taking a stand for who and what he believed in, for daring to be different.

May the milestones of our lives lead people to say something similar about each of us.

Home

I was driving home last night when the song "This is Home," by Switchfoot came on. The song is on the movie soundtrack to "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" (Highly recommended by the way).

I never fail to be moved by this song as it captures the allegorical nature of C.S. Lewis superbly.

If you've had that nagging feeling, like the Pevensie children, that you just don't belong in this world, if you've felt the pull toward someone or something higher, then you understand.

And if you've allowed the Lion of Judah to reign in your heart, you've already found a sense of home even now that will be far greater when you leave this world and arrive in a place not ruled by a tame lion.

The Point

So, how long has it been since you asked, "What's the point?"

Five minutes, five days, five months ... Sooner or later you're gonna ask.

The boss mistreats you, the husband/wife misunderstands you or you just misremember (a word according to Roger clemens).

What's the point?

Well, when it gets right down to it, there's only one good answer.

As a matter of fact, it's written on the inside jacket of Paul Alan's 2008 album, Drive It Home.


Redemption was the point.
The line comes from the album's title track. The chorus goes:

Come on and let it go
Let me drive it home
You wanted set free
But all you are is alone
Come on and let it go
Let me drive it home
Redemption was the point
When I rolled away the stone
Let me drive it home

It's a powerful thought, really. Think about it. There is no better story than that of redemption. The story of a troubled kid that eventually helps others in trouble, the fallen athlete that resurrects his career, the reformed criminal and the list goes on.

More often than not, about the time we are asking, "What's the point?" is about the time we need to follow the song's advice and let go.

When we're driving, we miss the point. When God's driving, the point is redemption.

Our redemption, the redemption of our friends, family and neighbors, the redemption of a sinful world with a holy God.

Point taken.

The sound of silence

After an idea came to him one recent morning, a colleague asked, "Why do these things come to you in the morning?"

And the answer came to me today, but not in the morning. It didn't come while I was watching SportsCenter or twittering, not while I was e-mailing or reading and most certainly not while playing 'Princess' with a 4-year-old.

No, it came to me as the steady drone of the lawnmower drowned out all distractions. And there you have it. These things come to us in the morning, or mowing the grass, or in the shower or lying in bed because these are the times when we are silent. Even when the world is not silent around us, our minds are free to think, to wonder, to create.

As I plowed from one end of the yard to the other thinking about this, I was reminded of an experience in high school. A small group of 8 or 10 of us went on an Easter weekend retreat. For a portion of Good Friday afternoon, each person was sequestered in a room by themselves. No TV, no radio, no conversation. Just a Bible and a notepad.

I don't remember coming up with any radical theology during this time, but as the rain pelted down outside, it seemed I never better understood what it might have been like on a hill outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. In the silence, I found an emotional connection that's nearly impossible in a sound-saturated world.

It turns out the Bible was onto something: "Be still, and know that I am God."

A bridge too far

You might have read or heard this story last week about the Chinese man threatening to commit suicide who was given a push by a passer-by to speed up the process. Of course, the bridge was only about 26 feet high, and the man suffered only back and neck injuries.

But there is a passer-by on another bridge in China that seeks to save those seeking to commit suicide. Meet Chen Si (pictured). A manager in a transport company by day, he is a super hero on evenings and weekends on the Nanjing Bridge.


The bridge was completed in 1968 and won a place in the Guiness Book of World Records as the longest highway and railway bridge. But it is now notable as a place where more than 1,000 people have killed themselves in the last 40 years.

Chen Si does his best to prevent that number from rising. In one story, Si talks about how he sometimes tackles the men to prevent them from hurling themselves over 100 yards into the swirling waters of the Yangtze River.

Si has been called a Good Samaritan, a guardian angel, a lifeguard and a one-man crusade.

Maybe we could all learn something from this Chinese man who began his patrols after his own grandfather starved himself to death to keep the family from squabbling about who should look after him. As of last summer, Si had saved 144 lives by his own count.

There are plenty of lost souls out there committing spiritual suicide. Are we like the first passer-by, simply giving people a shove because they are inconvenient to us?

Or are we daring to look for those who need help? Are we willing to even tackle those embracing the path to destruction?

Most of the time, I am neither. I am simply the hustle and bustle of traffic going my own way with the neither the time nor the interest in finding out if those souls on the side of the road need my help. And by default, that puts me in the camp of the pusher.

Jesus said, "For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me."

And he might have added, "I was standing on a bridge and you did nothing."