This is a video we did for a volunteer appreciation banquet last night at the Waco convention center. I am the 'President of ACC'. The video is a little jumpy and 'out of frame' from time to time but you can get the picture easily enough. Enjoy!
Monday, April 28, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Salt
What’s the deal with salt? Why does the Bible tell us to be the “salt of the earth” or for our words to be “sprinkled with salt”? I think most of us read those verses and scratch our heads, simply reading over them without stopping to think why God chose to use this ubiquitous mineral as a metaphor for our Christian life.
Just think about salt for a moment.
It’s a flavor enhancer. Taste a bit of mashed potatoes without salt and you have a bland white paste. Take butter without salt and you might as well eat a spoonful of Vaseline. Salt has an amazing ability to breath life into the foods we eat, like a black and white photograph suddenly bursting with color.
In this world we are to do the same. If we follow Jesus and His Spirit lives within us we will by nature breathe life into the dark drudgery of human existence. We become a flavor enhancer of life through our words and our attitudes - the way we treat people and deal with difficult situations. We should and must be different than the world around us. To go along with the normal flow of human nature is to lose your saltiness and ultimately your usefulness, beaten down and trampled beneath the feet of man. When we do the same as the world does we do not add to it…we perpetuate the gray blandness and black darkness of sin. But when we go against the grain, becoming ‘other’ in obedience to God He transforms us and uses us to change the world.
This comes primarily through love. Over and over again Jesus tells us to love one another, to love our neighbor as our selves. Love cuts into the heart more than anything in life. If we love as God loves, treating people as God would treat them we become the salt of the earth.
Salt is also a preservative. It halts decay. We don’t often see this use in modern times but up to several decades ago before refrigeration was readily available or affordable people would cure their meats in vats of salt. They could take a chunk of fresh pork and pack it in salt at room temperature and it would be preserved for quite a long period of time. The salt draws out water from the meat and dehydrates the bacteria that would otherwise render the meat a stinking, rotten maggot feast.
Salt slows death.
As believers we have the opportunity to slow the perpetuation of death in the world. Our enemy, the Devil comes to steal kill and destroy and wreaks havoc on nations and people. God has given us the power and authority to reverse these things. We cannot stop the ultimate death of our physical bodies, but we can slow the death divvied out by hell. Again, we do this through love. Being attentive to people’s needs whether the hunger of a homeless man’s stomach or the hunger of an executive’s soul. We set out to meet people’s needs. We reverse death by how we talk. Are our words void of complaint and criticism and full of encouragement and empathy?
It’s a flavor enhancer. Taste a bit of mashed potatoes without salt and you have a bland white paste. Take butter without salt and you might as well eat a spoonful of Vaseline. Salt has an amazing ability to breath life into the foods we eat, like a black and white photograph suddenly bursting with color.
In this world we are to do the same. If we follow Jesus and His Spirit lives within us we will by nature breathe life into the dark drudgery of human existence. We become a flavor enhancer of life through our words and our attitudes - the way we treat people and deal with difficult situations. We should and must be different than the world around us. To go along with the normal flow of human nature is to lose your saltiness and ultimately your usefulness, beaten down and trampled beneath the feet of man. When we do the same as the world does we do not add to it…we perpetuate the gray blandness and black darkness of sin. But when we go against the grain, becoming ‘other’ in obedience to God He transforms us and uses us to change the world.
This comes primarily through love. Over and over again Jesus tells us to love one another, to love our neighbor as our selves. Love cuts into the heart more than anything in life. If we love as God loves, treating people as God would treat them we become the salt of the earth.
Salt is also a preservative. It halts decay. We don’t often see this use in modern times but up to several decades ago before refrigeration was readily available or affordable people would cure their meats in vats of salt. They could take a chunk of fresh pork and pack it in salt at room temperature and it would be preserved for quite a long period of time. The salt draws out water from the meat and dehydrates the bacteria that would otherwise render the meat a stinking, rotten maggot feast.
Salt slows death.
As believers we have the opportunity to slow the perpetuation of death in the world. Our enemy, the Devil comes to steal kill and destroy and wreaks havoc on nations and people. God has given us the power and authority to reverse these things. We cannot stop the ultimate death of our physical bodies, but we can slow the death divvied out by hell. Again, we do this through love. Being attentive to people’s needs whether the hunger of a homeless man’s stomach or the hunger of an executive’s soul. We set out to meet people’s needs. We reverse death by how we talk. Are our words void of complaint and criticism and full of encouragement and empathy?
Most of all we reverse death by sharing the good news...the glorious truth of Jesus Christ!
Lastly, salt is useless and even bitter if it remains by itself. Eat a handful of salt and you’ll choke and spit. It wasn’t meant to be alone…but to be used…to be dispersed. Don’t remain within your “holy huddle” of Christian friends. Enjoy that community and encouragement but then allow God to send you out as a seasoning, as a preservative in a world that desperately needs it.
Lastly, salt is useless and even bitter if it remains by itself. Eat a handful of salt and you’ll choke and spit. It wasn’t meant to be alone…but to be used…to be dispersed. Don’t remain within your “holy huddle” of Christian friends. Enjoy that community and encouragement but then allow God to send you out as a seasoning, as a preservative in a world that desperately needs it.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Age
I believe it is a common habit of human beings to have a fixed self image frozen in time - like something branded on the brain - a definitive picture in our heads of who we are. My own physical self image seems forever bound to the mid-nineties while I was in college - a lean, muscular 165 pounds. As I write this that was well over a decade and forty pounds ago. I am fatter and grayer and my smile induced crows feet seem to get bigger by the month. Even-still, when I see a picture of myself I am filled with shock - thinking to myself - do I really look like that?
Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m not old. Let no offense be taken by those further down the path of life than I. 32 is young. Heck, these days the only people I consider aged are withering away in nursing homes. But when I was a kid I thought people in their mid-twenties were depressingly ancient.
Everyone wants to stay young. But age is a fact that everyone has to deal with in their own way sooner or later. For me, it seems that the issue is increasingly forefront in my mind.
Take my nightly ritual, for example. When I was younger I would step into the bathroom for a few seconds to wash my face (so zits wouldn’t invade by morning) and to brush my sugar-coated teeth. It was simple and quick. Now, however, my night-time preparation is a different story.
I still wash my face and brush my teeth, of course. But now I have this arduous saline treatment to clear out my screwed up sinuses. I dissolve a packet of medicinal salt into a plastic container of warm water that looks like a white genie’s lamp. After swishing this around with a little plastic spoon I tilt my head to one side and jam the long skinny spout up a nostril, pouring the liquid down my cranial plumbing and hydrating every crusty presence that would end up hampering my breathing in the night. After repeating this process over and over again from nostril to nostril I ‘gently’ blow my nose into a tissue which comes away about as snot-soaked as Tammy Fay Baker’s. Then, as if this weren’t enough I place a ‘breathe-right’ anti-snore nasal strip on my nose - it’s patented design widening the girth of my schnoz by a good half inch. With this done I look myself in the mirror, sigh heavily at the bags under my eyes and the gray hair on my head, and fat under my chin, and wonder how in the world my wife still likes to kiss me - which she does!
Yet despite all, I have to say that I am happier than I ever have been. The benefits of aging far outweigh the costs: marriage, kids, a job I love, not to mention the wisdom of a gray head...Proverbs 16:21! Leaving those younger days behind is fine with me.
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