My friend Addie is four and lives in her own little world.  In Addie’s world there is no hurry.  In her world you can wear your clothes backwards and change them every hour.  In Addie’s world there is lots of singing.  There is much dancing.  There is no need to brush your hair.  Addie’s world is a collage of projects and music and make-believe games.  She occasionally emerges from her world and greets my world with a word of affection or a hug or a randomly placed, “buenos dias”.  She may remind you she is four and then revert back to her world of daydreams and songs.

I find myself being jealous of Addie and her sweet oblivion.  Even when her mom gets frustrated with her, it doesn’t seem to shake her out of her own rhythm.  This is something I pray she holds onto.  It seems other people can constantly shake me out of my rhythm; a misinterpreted comment here, a judgmental response there, my own off perceptions of what others think, all cause me to fall in line with the expectations of others instead of living merrily in the space God intended for me.  Right when I think I’ve given up any concern for what others think, it comes back, sneaking into my thoughts and perceptions.

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I am currently writing my second book for NavPress called "Beginning With Brokenness" and I want YOUR story. If you are in your 20/30's, please take a few minutes to fill out my short survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GRSLJXV

If you need to change your first name for privacy, please use your middle name. I look forward to seeing your name in print! Thanks for helping out.

A few weeks ago, I shared on why I'm happy to attend the Origins Conference in Los Angeles. One of the speakers, Eric Bryant, who is the Navigator Pastor at Mosaic Church is launching a new book soon called "Not Like Me." You can pre-order a copy on Amazon, and listen to this video I asked him create just for you! You can see for yourself what to do w/those peeps in our life who just happen to be not like you! :)

Go Eric!

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When Bridget and I had our first child, little Maeve, I began to consider for the first time what it meant to be a father.  I found my mind returning over and over to two concepts that more than anything have influenced my parenting over the last six years and I hope the next sixty.

The first was an image of a fatherly lion, like C.S. Lewis’ Aslan - good but not tame, with all that such an image might signify. I want my children to see me as the lion of the home and then to see God as the lion of their lives.  More on that some other time…

The second was the word delight.  Every time I think about being a father I think about the idea of delight. I want my children to experience my delight in them just as God delights in me.

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What shall I do to inherit eternal life?

This is the kind of question that is a primary question.  We have many questions in life, but only a few are primary.  This is one of those questions.

If our lives are but vapors, and if the choices we make in this life—the primary kind of choices related to the primary kinds of questions—have eternal consequences, then above all else, we need to be firmly settled in what we believe, and how we relate, to these kinds of questions.

You may be like me, and at some point in the past, you’ve said to your friend or spouse or parent that you have a question for God.  Maybe it’s a question to settle an argument, or a question about life’s purpose, or a question about why God did or did not do something in your life.  And you imagine yourself standing before God with the chance to ask your question.

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Fantasy is a powerful tool that brings us out of our reality and into a place of maximum control, typically to ultimate gratification. Our fantasies are the controllable wishes that directly contrast the out of control aspects of our lives.  Fantasy often happens in places of pain or boredom.  Fantasy serves as a coping mechanism to pain, whereas in boredom it often reveals our hearts by illuminating our desires and wishes. Fantasy is unplanned, which is why it typically happens in the moment of the stressors themselves.

When do you find yourself fantasizing most often?  What do you fantasize about?  For those of us struggling to make ends meet, perhaps it is fantasizing about what we imagine as an affluent lifestyle. For the timid, fantasy may be about walking into a bosses office, parent’s home, or other authority figures presence and displaying boldness. For Clarice “Precious” Jones, she fantasizes about being adored.

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The wages of sin seem apparent to me as death this hour. Not in the funeral, graveside sense of the word, though those are evidenced as well, but what confounds me this morning is death’s residue within contexts of life--sin's ability to rob my abundance of true living, by heart-centered suffocation of awakeness to my Purified state, clean and complete.

What confounds me is sin's enticing pursuit of me as life’s center. Likewise, then, its rejection of others, and the grandiose Story of others being an integral part of mine, and vice versa. I lose sight of ubuntu*. I lose sight of what is real, unloosing my senses to that which is not. I lose sight of the fact that I am lovable- that we are creatures worth loving.

What's confounding of sin today is its ability to embitter me, detaching me in an instant from from that which I truly love. I am infatuated by its choice, and similarly, by its choice of me. Choosing sin, in my case, often means choosing ecstatic pleasures of the moment—ecstacies that will romance me for a lifetime, but satisfy me not for a day. And often I concede to sin’s choosing of me (not on a basis of my Value, but in vehement commitment to arousing addictions toward that which is not). I’d rather be picked, it seems, than believe in patience that truer Love is beckoning to pick me. I’d rather be sought after in my insecurity, or inability, or inconsistency, or inadequacy, even if by an illusion…than accept my purity, and guard it as if my sole means to all Seeing.

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Over the weekend I tweeted and updated my facebook status with the simple statement: Muslims killing Christians in Nigeria followed by a simple question: Will we respond like Christ or like humans? It’s always interesting what captures people’s imaginations and provokes response.

After a year of conversations on facebook, I was still amazed at the response the simple status update received. Feel free to check it out here: http://bit.ly/auO0bH

Reflecting on responses, the following points are worth of mentioning:

1) There is no emotion like religious emotion.

Wars over the centuries have demonstrated that religions are frequently front and center in every war. Religious emotion is a product of two things as I see it. First, it is an indicator that people genuinely care. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t get so upset.

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The love of a man for a woman (or a woman for a man) can be of the noblest sort, and to those two people it may be the greatest thing of all. But what about the love of a man for a dog, a car, or a sandwich? Are those noble loves? Of course not. Those are what C.S. Lewis describes as "Need-loves," as in "I don't have any friends, so I need a dog," or "I need to be seen in this car," or "Right now I need a sandwich."

There's nothing wrong with loving something you need. Most close relationships are based on Need-love. We need the companionship, the warmth, and the love of other people, so we reach out in love. "Our whole being by its very nature is one of vast need," Lewis writes. Even our love for God is based on our need to be connected with the Creator of the universe, who himself is love.

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This is Part 3 of the Unseen Fruit of Obedience Series (Part 1:  “Go Tell Him I Love Him;” Part 2: “Unseen Fruit of Obedience”).

We had a pretty big snowstorm in Northern Virginia recently.  By pretty big, I mean 4 more inches than I ever experienced when I lived in Los Angeles.  Any of you in colder climates probably scoff at rookie drivers like me that are affected by a light dusting like this.  But it seemed to me that my car was buried under an avalanche.

I’ve never actually cleared off a car completely covered by snow.  Crazy, right?  But Anna and I needed to get to church the next day, so I headed outside to get the car ready.