Doest thou Twitter?*

As is my way with internet fads, I greeted the Twitter craze with a world-weary "What's the big deal?" ... only to try it and find myself rather instantly hooked. I particularly like the fact that 3rd party apps allow me to enter a Twitter update and have it appear on my facebook, myspace, and newsblog pages, keeping my presence on the internet fresher than it has been historically.

Doesn't that sound all marketing-ish and sensible? The truth is, it's really fun. Trying to sum up what's going on in your life at any given moment in a pithy 140 characters or less is an entertaining challenge. And watching your friends do likewise is enjoyable too.

I've gotten so into Twitter that I've even read a few blogs on how to do it well, from hardcore tweets like Third Day's Mark Lee and Thomas Nelson's CEO Michael Hyatt. Blogging guru Darren Rowse even has a new blog (TwiTip) entirely devoted to the tweeting art.

continue reading

My latest Christianity Today column is now online. It's an exploration of what Jesus might of meant when he said "Blessed are the peacemakers", and it's strongly influenced by a course I took on the Sermon on the Mount with Darrell Johnson at Regent College.

Most of the comments the piece has received so far seem to be processed through the filter of the recent US election. The column was in no way a comment on the election -- the editors require me to submit my columns three months ahead of publication so this was written in early August. And as a Canadian I had no dog in the US fight (although Canadian lives are certainly affected by our neighbours.)

continue reading

Recently, Today's Christian Woman asked me to write a piece on marriage in any direction of my chosing. I was stymied for quite a while as to what to focus on, and then realized I was stalling because I was afraid of the vulnerability required to really write what was on my heart. So ... I drank a good, stiff, Diet Pepsi and wrote the following. (It can be found in the November/December issue of TCW or online at their website.)

continue reading

In a previous post, I revealed the first of two events (that took place on the same weekend) that help illuminate why I find my husband Mark so darn lovable. I promised to follow up with a depiction of the second incident, but then got distracted by other things. (My districtability is, I hope, one of the things my husband finds lovable about me. Or at least tolerable.)

Anyway, I'm sure you've been holding your breath waiting for Reason Number Two, so here, at long last, it is:

Sunday afternoon, after church, Mark decided we should go for a family bike ride. Now, Mark has been an avid mountain biker for about 15 years. Traditionally, he meets up with several other men of exceptional skill and questionable wisdom, and they measure the success of their ride in mud and blood. I have resolutely avoided riding with him because (a) I enjoy my skin and bones in their present, intact condition and (b) I don't have a hope of keeping up with him, nor do I particularly want to. However, he promised this would be a leisurely family ride, no first aid kit required.

continue reading

Several months ago I took a chance and posted a new lyric called "I Am a Soul" here on Conversantlife. It was scary to go "public" with a baby song, especially when it involved sharing naked words without their accompanying music. Still, folks were kind and the process was useful enough that, well, here I go again.

This is another new song on deck for the project I am currently recording. It is my attempt to articulate some of my struggle with the way we (I) understand God's sovereignty as it relates to the events (monumental and trivial) of our lives. Not everyone is going to agree with my current understanding of things -- I can live with that. But I'm curious to know what the song says to people.

continue reading

I mentioned in a recent post my ongoing delight with A. J. Jacobs' book THE KNOW IT ALL, which documents the author's quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica from A-Z. An entry from way back in the "Bs" has kind of been haunting me:

The world's largest bell was built in 1733 in Moscow, and weighed in at more than four hundred thousand pounds. It never rang--it was broken by fire before it could be struck. What a sad little story. All that work, all that plannning, all those expectations--then nothing.

My newest CT column has just been posted on Christianity Today's site.

Theology in Aisle 7
Trying to organize a God who transcends.

I love office supply stores. Reams of fresh paper (Aisle 16) and boxes of unsharpened pencils (Aisle 5) still give me back-to-school butterflies, the sense that the future is yet to be written and anything is possible. But I'm most drawn to the bins, sorters, and all manner of organizational aids in Aisle 7. They glisten with shiny plastic promise, reminding me I am just one astute purchase away from transforming the paper-riddled chaos of my life into structured bliss.

Recently I found just the thing, a two-foot black box with an open front divided into eight sections. I used my label maker (Aisle 3) to give each compartment its purpose, happily imagining soccer notices and utility bills lying obediently in their designated places. My husband came home and grinned at the box, envisioning it as next month's addition to the rejected-organizational-aid pile. "That," he told me gently, "is a junk collector."

But it will be organized junk.

I labeled one of the compartments "seminary"; this time the back-to-school butterflies were not merely nostalgic. I've begun chipping away at a master's degree, and on the same day I bought my new organizer I decided on a concentration in Spiritual Theology. I've been longing for more structure, not only in my office but also in my faith.

I've been searching for frameworks, outlines, contexts; ways to more thoroughly understand what I believe. The studies I've chosen emphasize systematic theology. The very word systematic gives me that Aisle 7 rush. I can hardly wait to be organized!

But there are people—wise, godly people—who grin at me like my husband did at my organizer. "Do you think," asked my friend Barbara, who happens to be a theology professor, "that part of you is looking for control?" I stared at her blankly. No, part of me isn't looking for control. All of me is looking for control. I hate chaos and uncertainty. I am deeply bothered by doctrinal divisions within even the small confines of my own church tradition.  And honestly, I really don't like it when God behaves unpredictably, when he seems to be as much about mystery as he is about revelation, and when he refuses to fit into the slots I have labeled for him.

Faith would be much tidier if God could be contained within mutually agreed upon doctrinal positions. Scripture would be much more manageable if it were pure exposition, if there weren't all those sprawling narratives, wistful poems, and cryptic apocalyptic visions. Why didn't God give us his Word in sermon points that spell out catchy acronyms? Why is it all so messy?

Even our most precise expositor, the apostle Paul, holds revelation and mystery in tension. In his letter to the Ephesians, he proclaims, "God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure" (1:9, NLT). But for all the time Paul spends explaining things, he still has the nerve to celebrate everything he can't understand about God. "Oh, how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! For who can know the Lord's thoughts? … All glory to him forever!" (Rom. 11:33-34, 36).

This, I'm beginning to understand, is my challenge: to immerse myself in all that has been revealed about God while celebrating all that is mystery. We have a God who both transcends our messy lives and incarnates himself in them. That reality is hard to organize, but it's the best news there is.

There's a story, often credited to E. Stanley Jones, about a missionary who gets lost in the jungle. He comes upon a village in the middle of the trees, and asks a resident to lead him out. The local agrees, and for an hour he walks ahead of the missionary, clearing a way through the foliage with a machete.

Eventually the missionary asks, "Are you sure we are going the right way? Isn't there a path somewhere?" The villager smiles. "Friend, I am the path."

"I am the way, the truth, and the life," Jesus tells us (John 14:6); "I AM," declares Yahweh (Ex. 3:14). My ideas about God are not the path. My church tradition, helpful as it is in pointing to him, is not the path. I plan to spend the rest of my life learning the best terminology we have for our understanding of what God has done and is doing, but the terms are not the path. Only God is. Only he can lead me through the jungle that is my life and into the boundless adventure of life with him.

continue reading

I'm reading A. J. Jacob's THE KNOW IT ALL, which is the author's very funny and remarkably informative account of his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica. I've just reached page 194; Jacobs has arrived at "M", and discovered this quote from educational reformer Horace Mann's final speech to his students:

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

There are several bloggers I enjoy (many of them right here on conversantlife) but there is only one who consistently makes me cry. John blogs over at The Dirty Shame, and he's a writer, the way some people are sangers ... he can really do something with words.

John recently announced that he will be doing less with words on his blog (not quitting, but reducing the number of entries per week) so that he can put more energy into writing a novel. To explain his motivation for, well, getting on with it, author-wise, John shared the following quote:

"An idea that fixed him to one spot was that life was a death dance and that he had quickly passed through the spring and summer of his life and was halfway through the fall. He had to do a better job on the fall because everyone on earth knew what the winter was like."

There were two incidents last weekend that reminded why I am especially fond of Mark Arends. Here is the first.

At approximately 11:13pm PST Saturday evening, we were drifting off to sleep (we’re real party animals, all tucked in on a Saturday before midnight) when we heard some strange noises. At first we thought maybe one of the kids was stirring, but we soon realized the sound was coming from outside.

Mark lept to the window (he has catlike reflexes) and began pulling up the blinds so he could survey our backyard. “I think it’s just people in the neighbor’s pool,” he reported. “Hmmm. Wait a minute.”

Mark slid our bedroom window open. (I say “slid” but I really mean “wrestled.” The window sticks in a most annoying way. I keep meaning to get some WD40 or something.) Before I could apprehend what was happening, Mark was pressing his face against the window screen and barking, in the testosterone-amped voice he uses only in special emergencies, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY POOL?”

continue reading