Ever caught yourself saying these words: “this holiday is going to be different,” OR “this year, we’ll really celebrate?” Then, after putting your best foot forward, you simply fell into what you always do. You respond partly out of nostalgia, partly out of tradition, but also partly out of fear.

It’s like every holiday is in some way, lived under the mistletoe. Instead of kissing someone with passion and with the energy that says, ‘I love this and I love you,’ you find yourself looking up to see if you’re really standing there and then you look over and see that someone else is also there and now what? Awkward….

Mary Oliver writes in her poem entitled “The Place I Want to Get Back To” these words:

“I go out to the dunes and look

Irresistible grace.

Calvinism:

In Calvinism, this doctrine means that if God is chasing you, you are powerless to resist Him. (A blunted definition, I know).

Again, in the effort to emphasize the Sovereignty of God, a question arises:  If the grace of God is extended to someone, does that person have the capacity to resist it? If the person does, doesn’t that somehow diminish the Sovereignty of God?

This is about as useful as the old question of: “If God is all-powerful, can He make a rock He can’t lift?”

In other words, it’s of no use at all! “Is God powerful enough that if He extends His grace to certain men they are unable to resist it?” Of course He is.

"God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble."

If there’s one thing above all others at the root of the ills of the human race, especially in these changing times, it’s pride. Wise King Solomon penned what is undoubtedly the most well known verse on pride in the Bible, and it speaks volumes about the damage pride can do: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

Look at that last word: fall. When we read this verse, we usually think of a setback or someone getting knocked off a pedestal because of pride. But the word has a much more cosmic meaning when you think about the fact that pride was at the root of Satan’s rebellion against God and his banishment from heaven. “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High,” Satan declared (Isaiah 14:14).

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   I got a call from Lily’s kindergarten teacher asking if I would come in and volunteer at lunchtime as a playground dad. Someone else could not make it and they needed a replacement. It was early September and the year had just begun.  I agreed and showed up the following Friday for duty.

            Somehow, that one afternoon has turned into four years of Friday lunches, countless dodge ball games and amazing opportunities to let kids know they matter.

            More then anything, it has been a chance to be available—available to my daughter, available to her friends. I never show up with an agenda and I don’t really consider it ministry. It is just life. It is my daughter’s life, and I get tobe a part of it in a way that matters to her.

Grace, Love & Murder?

May 20, 2011

Christian Buckley  

Some questions, or rather problems, are too big for my head to get around.  I try my hardest to work through and dissect them – but my mind just gives out.  It is like when you ask an old computer to do too many things at the same time and it just locks up and stares at you with indignation.  That’s what happens to me when I try to figure out something like how Grace, Love, and Murder  - a specific murder – fit together. Brain lock. 

A couple of preface notes to what follows are in order. 

--     This is a horrible post and will unsettle you – I hope – assuming you have a soul.

--      I, unlike I would venture to say 99.9999% of you, have first hand deep experience in this topic.  I go to death row in California every couple of months because I represent men there who have murdered people.  That work takes me through dark places, lives, and realities I didn’t know existed and still wish I didn’t.  That doesn’t make me special – it just gives you some background and probably gives me a different view of the topic.

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This past Thursday, Nate and I took the metro into downtown LA for the monthly art walk event.  Dozens of business and stark empty halls transform into colorful displays as dusk approaches. 

First, we found our way to the menagerie of food trucks nestled tightly together in vacant parking lots.  Now full with colorful doors and windows shaping an eclectic food court, we were almost paralyzed by our options: pulled pork, creative wraps, dim sum, fusion tacos. It was a feast for the eyes, ears, and nose for sure.

After our bellies were content from the Lobster Truck and French Fried Chicken Truck, we meandered through the different art galleries.  We pondered the meaning of someone taking old scraps and binding them together with glue and paint to make a wonderful art statement.  We were also struck by the notion that in a city struggling to redefine itself, we were instantly handed maps to art walk despite the others walking by too.  Did we stick out that much? 

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The devotion I have written for Tuesday's Links Daily Devotional speaks to issues of grace and spiritual growth. It may be helpful here in light of recent discussion:

 We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience… (Colossians 1:9-11, NIV)

Johnny Miller couldn’t get over it. He kept returning to the statistic about Nick Watney’s short game.

Last year Watney, who won the WGC-Cadillac Championship on Sunday against the world’s best players, was 146^th on Tour in scrambling, the ability to get up and down from off the green to save par. After Sunday, Watney is—and this truly is amazing—second.

That’s right. Watney’s short game has improved so much that he has gone from one of the worst regulars on tour to nearly the best. I’m with Miller. This is both impressive by itself and indicative of why Watney walked away with the trophy on Sunday.

Brandon Davies. Rob Bell. When it comes to hot bulletin board topics this week, you probably have to take your pick.

I’ll let you read for yourself all the Rob (Hell) Bell stuff. In this space, I’ll be sticking to Davies. And premarital sex. And LDS morality. And, hopefully, Scripture.

In the afterglow of BYU’s second win of the season over Mountain West basketball rival San Diego State, all should have been well in Cougarland. The blue-and-white appeared poised for a possible No. 1 seed come next Sunday’s NCAA tournament selection time. 

Then the fan started spinning and the result was not pretty.

Davies, you likely know by now, had violated the university’s honor code, having had sex with his girlfriend sometime last fall. The university didn’t actually come forth with this information. It leaked. So while some were quick to want to forgive Davies over a “common college activity,” for all we know this was no singular incident. University officials may have already “rendered grace.”

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For a while I wondered why Jesus went to the cross.  Seemed a little extreme. I was a decent person, relatively speaking, and quite liked the idea of being judged based on my rule following.  A gifted Pharisee seems to have no fear of morality.  What she fears, rather, are things like love and forgiveness and living by faith alone. 

Someday maybe I’ll write a book about the characters that line our street.  Today I’ll simply mention two, and how they’ve been gnawing away at my Pharisee-prone compulsions.  

We live in a transitional community, so it’s constantly lending lessons and paradigm-shifts to concepts like “family,” “wealth,” or “the Gospel.”  A neighbor and close friend of ours, whose name I’ll leave concealed, knocked yesterday at 8am.

It’s a running joke between my brother and I who’s adopted. Whenever we introduce each other at church (North Coast) and they know Richard or myself, eventually we’re asked…uh…are you sure you’re…related? 

“He’s adopted.” I say.

“She’s adopted.” Richard says. 

No! Kidding. But, seriously…was I?

For all intensive purposes my brother is perfect. Athletic. Tall. Tan. Good looking. Never. Had. A. Health. Problem. 

Growing up, I missed out on everything, and he was involved in everything. It was tough not to hate him or envy him—or both.

[Insert many years here.] 

Last year I quit my job and it took me a year to get over it. Why? Because I think I got lost and tried to cover it up. I’m…perfe….wait.

Grace defined 

I am the prodigal daughter. More like the envious one of the brother who got all the attention. Not to say that my brother is a bad person…because he’s not, but why is it most people and pastors don’t define grace by the prodigal son’s brother? They use it all [GRACE] up on the prodigal son himself.

Well what about the wallflower that used to be me? 

I fought hard against that stereotype. To overcome bouts of health issues including eczema and anxiety. To read my story, Renee of the Fourth Chance read here.

Once I… finally…succeeded….and got the attention I thought I deserved, I fell away from His graceland and ended up in…well…legalismland. 

You-know-the-kind-that-judges-everything-based-on-performance-how-good-you-are-how-much-money-you-bring-home-your-status-friends-image-you-name-it!

Yuck! Just thinking about it makes me want to crawl back into comfort of lega… 

NO! I can’t. What's WRONG WITH ME?????