Ok, I'm a rabid - and happy - UNC fan. The pale blue is pulsing through my glad veins tonight because the 'Heels Ty&Tyler took it to OSU in a satisfying, hard running, sprint down the court, maddening win. If you don't follow college basketball you can stop reading now, I'm about to rant.
If I hear "UNC took advantage of Oden's absence" one more time I may just puke. Ohio State played a phenomenal game and I'm not able to comprehend how his contributions, if he weren't sitting on the bench with a towel on his head, could have made them play any better. Bottom line is a great UNC team beat a great Ohio State team tonight.
End of story.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
C Sharp Recapitulation
To understand this, read the post called "A Toothless C Sharp" first. Then know that at bedtime the next night after the visit by the Tooth Fairy the Youngest Sister asked me, "What time will the Tooth Fairy come tonight?"
I was sad to say that the Tooth Fairy only comes once per tooth.
Still not convinced she asked, "So she won't turn my tooth into money again tonight?"
I was sad to say that the Tooth Fairy only comes once per tooth.
Still not convinced she asked, "So she won't turn my tooth into money again tonight?"
Monday, November 27, 2006
A Toothless C Sharp
It was a momentous evening in the Long household. The Youngest Sister lost her first tooth just before dinner and now lies sleeping with visions of a tooth fairy about to leave big bucks under the pillow.
The visions she has were put in her head by the Brother at the dinner table, where he described having once seen the tooth fairy. He used hand gestures and a very imaginative description to paint the picture.
Apparently, the tooth fairy is about 18-24 inches tall, wears a blue dress, and antes up three bucks per dentum. At least that’s the going rate in Texas, he says, which is higher than the measly two dollars he collected for each tooth when they were falling out of his head back in his former life in Virginia. Only nine years old, he made it sound like he was hammering out license plates “back in Virginia.”
I tried to argue with him that the blue was actually Carolina Blue, but neither of them was buying. With his chain-gang wisdom he clarified flatly, “No Dad, it’s a much darker blue than that.”
What he really meant was, “You’ve obviously never seen the tooth fairy. Not in person, not in a book. Not in Virginia, and definitely not in Texas. Now choke up a smoke, old man and let me finish my story.”
The Youngest Sister had already decided that Dad had never seen the tooth fairy and the Brother was clearly the authority in the room. She let us all know that she’d bought his description with a single sentence, “That’s how tall I was when I was a baby in a blue dress.”
After dinner the Youngest Sister had violin practice. She’s learning to play violin by the Suzuki method which means, for the initiate, that I as parent am also learning to play the violin. Tonight it was my job to pluck the notes to “Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star” and let her tell me their names.
She watched my hands fumble on her 1/10th size violin and correctly called out most of the notes while the rosin dust flew. I thought she sounded a little funny, so I watched her mouth and noticed that she was pushing her tongue through the new gap in her bottom teeth. She was clearly enjoying the new sounds her mouth could now make.
“Shee Shhhtharrp” = “C Sharp”
“Ohthpen A” = “Open A”
I don’t know much about Tooth Fairies or whether or not three bucks is a fair rate for peg of a tooth, but I do know my little violinist in the blue Scooby-Doo nightgown has a little finger big enough for my heart and the buzz-cut, blue eyed Brother who can eat everything in sight may have already beat her to the punch.
This dad thing, sometimes trying and tiring, still beats pretty much anything I’ve tried.
The visions she has were put in her head by the Brother at the dinner table, where he described having once seen the tooth fairy. He used hand gestures and a very imaginative description to paint the picture.
Apparently, the tooth fairy is about 18-24 inches tall, wears a blue dress, and antes up three bucks per dentum. At least that’s the going rate in Texas, he says, which is higher than the measly two dollars he collected for each tooth when they were falling out of his head back in his former life in Virginia. Only nine years old, he made it sound like he was hammering out license plates “back in Virginia.”
I tried to argue with him that the blue was actually Carolina Blue, but neither of them was buying. With his chain-gang wisdom he clarified flatly, “No Dad, it’s a much darker blue than that.”
What he really meant was, “You’ve obviously never seen the tooth fairy. Not in person, not in a book. Not in Virginia, and definitely not in Texas. Now choke up a smoke, old man and let me finish my story.”
The Youngest Sister had already decided that Dad had never seen the tooth fairy and the Brother was clearly the authority in the room. She let us all know that she’d bought his description with a single sentence, “That’s how tall I was when I was a baby in a blue dress.”
After dinner the Youngest Sister had violin practice. She’s learning to play violin by the Suzuki method which means, for the initiate, that I as parent am also learning to play the violin. Tonight it was my job to pluck the notes to “Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star” and let her tell me their names.
She watched my hands fumble on her 1/10th size violin and correctly called out most of the notes while the rosin dust flew. I thought she sounded a little funny, so I watched her mouth and noticed that she was pushing her tongue through the new gap in her bottom teeth. She was clearly enjoying the new sounds her mouth could now make.
“Shee Shhhtharrp” = “C Sharp”
“Ohthpen A” = “Open A”
I don’t know much about Tooth Fairies or whether or not three bucks is a fair rate for peg of a tooth, but I do know my little violinist in the blue Scooby-Doo nightgown has a little finger big enough for my heart and the buzz-cut, blue eyed Brother who can eat everything in sight may have already beat her to the punch.
This dad thing, sometimes trying and tiring, still beats pretty much anything I’ve tried.
Friday, November 24, 2006
What Are You Asking Santa-God for This Christmas?
The prophets of prosperity proclaim that God wants us all to be healthy, wealthy, and wise when preaching “ask and ye shall receive.” By twisting Jesus’ words, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer," you too can create your very own “Santa-God.” It’s a very convenient religious framework where Santa-God simply checks to see if you’ve been naughty or nice before hitting the “yes” button on the cosmic computer of material blessing.
Detecting my sarcasm, you ask, “So, Pastor, if I shouldn’t be working on my Christmas wish list when it comes to prayer, what should a Christian really ask of God? I mean what can we really expect of the big guy in the sky with the long white beard?”
Would you like to peek at my Christmas prayer list? I found every single item on my list in “The Lord’s Prayer,” where Jesus told us what we need to ask of God, both in holiday-season and out of holiday-season.
Give us our daily bread.
With eyes of history we see how God has always provided “enough.” In their wilderness wandering the children of Israel were given manna to pick up and eat, but if they gathered more than they needed for that day it spoiled on them. How much, then, is “enough” for us? Jesus teaches us to pray for daily bread, thereby focusing our dependence on God for provisions rather than our own strength, as well as calling us to a lifestyle where simplicity frames our needs.
Forgive us – as we forgive
Jesus told a story about a certain businessman who was forgiven a great debt by his master but in turn refused to release those over whom he held debts. The master threw that certain businessman in jail because he’d failed to be generous in grace toward others. Me? I might be that certain businessman, because I’m all about the old eye for an eye trick – until it comes to my eye. My life sings “Oh, how I love judgment” instead of “Oh, how I love Jesus.” Jesus reminds us that our un-forgiveness of others is inextricably connected to our own spiritual well-being.
Deliver us from evil.
This is a prayer seeking deliverance from evil we do not see. James Mulholland writes that this line is “not a personal mantra for protection” in his book Praying Like Jesus, but that it is a prayer with social and global implications. When we pray for deliverance with awareness, we recognize our tendency to march lock step into sins and shortcomings easily hidden behind corporate profits and partisan politics.
This Sunday I’ll be wrapping up this short series on the Lord’s Prayer entitled When You Pray. We’ll take up the three appropriate petitions of God, having considered in previous weeks what it means to pray “Our Father” and “Thy Kingdom Come.” If you’ve missed any in this series, you can contact the church office for tapes at 713-723-2870. I hope to see you in worship at either 9:15 or 11:45!
Beseechingly,
Pastor Gary
Not a Sermon – Just a Thought is a weekly column by Gary Long, pastor of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list, just contact me at glong@wmbc.org. You can read this and past issues over at the website for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, http://www.thefellowship.info/News/notasermon.icm. You can also check out my other writings at www.tothelees.blogspot.com.
Detecting my sarcasm, you ask, “So, Pastor, if I shouldn’t be working on my Christmas wish list when it comes to prayer, what should a Christian really ask of God? I mean what can we really expect of the big guy in the sky with the long white beard?”
Would you like to peek at my Christmas prayer list? I found every single item on my list in “The Lord’s Prayer,” where Jesus told us what we need to ask of God, both in holiday-season and out of holiday-season.
Give us our daily bread.
With eyes of history we see how God has always provided “enough.” In their wilderness wandering the children of Israel were given manna to pick up and eat, but if they gathered more than they needed for that day it spoiled on them. How much, then, is “enough” for us? Jesus teaches us to pray for daily bread, thereby focusing our dependence on God for provisions rather than our own strength, as well as calling us to a lifestyle where simplicity frames our needs.
Forgive us – as we forgive
Jesus told a story about a certain businessman who was forgiven a great debt by his master but in turn refused to release those over whom he held debts. The master threw that certain businessman in jail because he’d failed to be generous in grace toward others. Me? I might be that certain businessman, because I’m all about the old eye for an eye trick – until it comes to my eye. My life sings “Oh, how I love judgment” instead of “Oh, how I love Jesus.” Jesus reminds us that our un-forgiveness of others is inextricably connected to our own spiritual well-being.
Deliver us from evil.
This is a prayer seeking deliverance from evil we do not see. James Mulholland writes that this line is “not a personal mantra for protection” in his book Praying Like Jesus, but that it is a prayer with social and global implications. When we pray for deliverance with awareness, we recognize our tendency to march lock step into sins and shortcomings easily hidden behind corporate profits and partisan politics.
This Sunday I’ll be wrapping up this short series on the Lord’s Prayer entitled When You Pray. We’ll take up the three appropriate petitions of God, having considered in previous weeks what it means to pray “Our Father” and “Thy Kingdom Come.” If you’ve missed any in this series, you can contact the church office for tapes at 713-723-2870. I hope to see you in worship at either 9:15 or 11:45!
Beseechingly,
Pastor Gary
Not a Sermon – Just a Thought is a weekly column by Gary Long, pastor of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list, just contact me at glong@wmbc.org. You can read this and past issues over at the website for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, http://www.thefellowship.info/News/notasermon.icm. You can also check out my other writings at www.tothelees.blogspot.com.
Friday, November 17, 2006
400,000 Jedi Can’t Be Wrong
George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, has created a kingdom of his own. A recent news story reported that some 400,000 people declared “Jedi” as their religion in Great Britain’s 2005 census. It’s laughable because Star Wars is just a fictional world, the fantasy of a very good story teller. Still, Lucas’ kingdom is real because it exists in the hearts and minds of his fans. Within the epic battle of good and evil, the light and dark sides of the “force” have captured the imagination of millions of fans.
Jesus’ kingdom is a little like Lucas’ in that it only lives in the hearts of his followers. When he said, “My kingdom is not of this world” he was telling us that his kingdom does not compete with or imitate the kingdoms of this world, but in fact turns the reality of those worldly kingdoms upside down. Every time Jesus opened his mouth with the phrase, “the Kingdom is like…” his listeners found the opposite of what they expected:
The first become last.
The exalted are humbled and the humble are exalted.
The poor are blessed and rich are condemned.
The lion lies down with the lamb.
The spears are beat into pruning hooks, and swords into plow shares.
The kingdom of Jesus is made real when the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, and the widow and orphan receive care. The kingdom of Jesus is made real when the ignored are noticed, the neglected are loved, and the oppressed are released. The more people are willing to live in such counter-cultural ways, the more the kingdom of Jesus becomes the dominant reality.
You can see the kingdom of Jesus if you know where to look. The kingdom of Jesus appears in the most unexpected places, like hospital rooms, prayer rooms, and chat rooms. You’ll find it around the table, on the factory floor, and in the cubicle down the hall. Like Jedi knights, followers of Jesus come armed – not with light sabers – but with the hands and feet of service. Using spiritual gifts rather than Jedi mind tricks, these are the people who wage war on the dark side of the force, engaging the enemy with what Walter Brueggemann calls “little moves against destructiveness.”
I believe that if we allow the kingdom of Jesus to capture our imaginations and hearts as much as the kingdom of Lucas lives in the minds his prodigal “Jedi” we’d move the phrase “thy Kingdom come” from wishful thinking to prayer of commitment. This Sunday we take up another section of the Lord’s Prayer, the phrase “thy Kingdom come…” The sermon is called Thy Kingdom Come and its installment two in our series When You Pray. I hope you can join us for worship at either 9:15 or 11:45.
Replacing the batteries in my light saber,
Pastor Yoda
Wanderlust and Frost
Tuesday night a wind blew in the coldest air Houston has had in a while, though sadly not cold enough to frost. As the cold front rushed in, acorns rained on the roof over my bed from the Old Tree, a huge live oak in my back yard that I'd guess to be about 70 or 80 years old.
Wednesday morning arrived chilly and The Old Tree's leaves were crunching underfoot on the back patio as I headed out to take the Brother and the Youngest Sister to school. The sound and feel caused me to freeze for just a moment as I was transported across time and space by the power of colliding memories:
Eleven years old, I was standing under the giant pecan tree behind the little white pack house on my family farm back in North Carolina. All at once I smelled cured tobacco, pecan pie, and my grandfather’s Aqua Velva. There was a frost on the cut corn stalks in the field and I could hear myself laughing with my cousin over who could pee the highest up the pecan tree.
Simultaneously I was on a Thanksgiving day walk around the perimeter of the farm with my father and grandfather, rifles on our shoulders as we hunted for squirrels. Our feet rustled through the frost-burnt fallen leaves and I remembered feeling nearly giddy to be included on this very manly expedition.
As fast as the surge came, it went. But the smells, sounds, and sensations hung up in my brain and I violently missed home for the day.
The Hebrews of the Old Testament and today are called am haaretz, Hebrew for “people of the land.” My people are such people, called by some enigmatic and subterranean force to the farm we call "The Lewis Place." It's both the new and old Jerusalem in many regards, but for some reason I've spent my entire adult life exchanging the familiar for the foreign. Over the years I’ve missed that piece of North Carolina dirt and the people there, and that longing is the price I pay for my own wanderlust. Maybe it wouldn't feel so expensive a price to pay if we had more frost in Houston.
Friday, November 10, 2006
At Peace in the Father's Hand
Meet Allison, the second child of some friends of mine. They used to belong to our church but life did what it usually does - by moving on without my permission - and now they have relocated out of Houston. Allison’s aunt is a professional photographer who caught this shot and there are lots of things to love about it. She is adorable. The lighting is perfect. The lines make it a work of art.
But there’s one more thing, and to me it’s the most important thing to know about this image – the hands holding her are her father’s. If I were titling the photo I’d call it At Peace in the Father’s Hand.
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray he began by addressing God as “Our Father.” To a first century Jew it would have sounded strange because the rabbis referred to God mostly with names describing God’s holiness and power and might. Jesus’ model prayer teaches us that when we pray to God as Father we are invited into a relationship of love and intimacy, something more akin to nuzzling up to our holy parent than formally addressing the deity of the cosmos.
Praying “our Father” with awareness of my words changes the way I pray. James Mulholland writes in Praying Like Jesus that when he prays to God as Father, “I can approach God with confidence in his desire and ability to meet my needs. I can trust him to do what is best for me.” Trusting God to do what is best for us is to be “at peace in the Father’s hand.” Ultimately, the phrase “our Father” makes the Lord’s Prayer one of intimacy, responsibility, self-denial, and community.
I’ll be taking that up in this weekend’s sermon, part one in the series entitled When You Pray. I hope you can join us for worship at Willow Meadows Baptist Church. Jubilate!, a traditional worship gathering, is at 9:15 on Sunday and Overflow, a non-traditional gathering, is at 11:45.
Peace out,
Pastor Gary
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Hinder Not the Little Children
At my church one of our deacons buys the communion bread for us on Sunday mornings from Three Brothers Bakery. They really know how to make a great challah loaf. I tell you, if you've ever had this stuff for communion you'll never go back to those "chiclets" again.
A few Sundays ago we had a few unopened loaves of communion bread after the worship service and I was one of the glad recipients of a leftover loaf. On Monday I cooked breakfast for the Youngest Sister and the Brother. The scrambled eggs were begging for some of that bread, so I broke a few pieces off for all three of us. It was very tasty, I must admit.
The Youngest Sister, who is five years old was eagerly chowing down. We've talked with her about how, in our faith tradition, communion is a ritual only for those who have claimed aloud that they are followers of Jesus. You can imagine that as one who is usually only an observer of communion she must have been tickled pink to be eating this bread.
It just never occurred to me that she would connect the bread on the plate of scrambled eggs with the body of Christ.
I say that because I turned from the kitchen sink just in time to see her jaws packed like a chipmunk and a piece of bread hanging out of her mouth. She exclaimed, "Hey Dad, Jesus' body tastes great!"
If we each have to come to the kingdom as a little child, would you pass me a really really big piece of that bread?
A few Sundays ago we had a few unopened loaves of communion bread after the worship service and I was one of the glad recipients of a leftover loaf. On Monday I cooked breakfast for the Youngest Sister and the Brother. The scrambled eggs were begging for some of that bread, so I broke a few pieces off for all three of us. It was very tasty, I must admit.
The Youngest Sister, who is five years old was eagerly chowing down. We've talked with her about how, in our faith tradition, communion is a ritual only for those who have claimed aloud that they are followers of Jesus. You can imagine that as one who is usually only an observer of communion she must have been tickled pink to be eating this bread.
It just never occurred to me that she would connect the bread on the plate of scrambled eggs with the body of Christ.
I say that because I turned from the kitchen sink just in time to see her jaws packed like a chipmunk and a piece of bread hanging out of her mouth. She exclaimed, "Hey Dad, Jesus' body tastes great!"
If we each have to come to the kingdom as a little child, would you pass me a really really big piece of that bread?
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