GRACE and TRUTH

I spent the day with a wonderful elementary school principal who leads the most challenging school in our community. Filled with kids, most whose home life is lacking. And that is describing it politely. Most of these kids live in an environment that we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. Her stories haunted me last night, wondering what I would do if I were the principal.

I bounced back and forth, “Kick them out. Send them home. Zero tolerance.”

“But why would you send them back to the living hell that will just make their behavior worse?”

“Well, then call the law on the parents.”

“That mom is just parenting how she was parented. She doesn’t know any better. She doesn’t know how to get out of her situation nor does she have the emotional intelligence to help herself.”

“Well then let’s get the state involved and let’s remove the kids from the home?”

And that argument would play over and over in my head. This struggle between my heart and head about GRACE and TRUTH. I struggled with this tension in my heart.

Often I want to push my faith and my heart in one direction or the other. Andy Stanley describes at as, “We like the verses about GRACE when it’s about me and we like the verses about TRUTH when it’s about someone else.”

The TRUTH makes me want to say that you’re accountable, but GRACE makes me say you’re forgiven.

GRACE tells me to say you will be fine, but TRUTH make me say yes, but you are broken.

TRUTH says you must work on it, but GRACE says God loves you.

If we as a community, especially a faith based community, are going to address the generational poverty around us, we are going to have to balance the tension between GRACE and TRUTH. We can’t just play one card or the other, it must be both.

John, who was an eye witness to Jesus, tells us that Jesus was full of GRACE and TRUTH. “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” John 1:17.

The issues facing this school, this neighborhood, our community……we will not fully address the potential for transformation until we balance both TRUTH and GRACE. 

Be Salt and Light.

VERBAL CLICK BAIT - Part 1

One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is the one where after being heckled at the comedy club, he then goes to the ladies’ place of work and heckles her until she runs out of her office crying. I think social media would change tremendously if this would happen in real-life.

I love sports and I think it would be the sweetest revenge for a coach to walk on the set of ESPN and heckle one of the pundits. Can’t you see the former LSU coach, Les Miles, walking onto the live set one day and getting on someone like Paul Finebaum?

“Hey Paul, you were 3 – 5 last week in picking games, do you not watch any game film?”

“When did you last play football? Was it flag football in middle school?”

“What qualifies you to talk about who should be hired and fired? Have you ever employed anyone?”

“Aren’t you most famous for a lunatic woman that called into your radio show?”

“You really do have a face for radio.”

“I just don’t get it. You are picking less than 50% of the weekly games correct and you have absolutely no background in football. I can tell you five people who would be better on this show than you.”

And then that wormy looking Amway Salesman Finebaum would run off the set crying.

Now that’s a show worth producing, A Coaches Time to Evaluate the Pundits.

I think some of these coaches on the hot seat ought to designate some grad assistant to evaluate everything these guys say on TV. They then can come up with the ammunition and go after these TV people.

Yet the TV people that just 2^nd guess and give the verbal click bait (soundbites that create hits to their twitter feed) have a short shelf life. They eventually get banished to anonymity along with Bill Simmons, Colin Cowherd, and Skip Bayless.

Straight from the Rabbi

It is funny how God puts people in our lives just at the right time. I was having coffee recently with a friend of mine who is Jewish. We were discussing of course our anxiety with the cultural problems our society is facing and the challenges around creating open and honest dialogue.

During our talk, my friend said, “Let me tell you a Midrash.” 

“A Midrash,” I replied? “Isn’t that something that I need to get a prescription for?” 

He just laughed. So my friend (I now call him my Rabbi) taught me a new word. A Midrash is a form of storytelling that explores ethics and values in biblical text. 

The story he told was..... 

“A group of workers is asked to do something quite difficult and complicated. 

They protest, ‘the day is short’; ‘the work is hard’; ‘the project is too big’; ‘we do not have the right tools’; ‘and, anyway, we are too tired’; ‘we will never finish this job!’ 

Their teacher replies, ‘it is not for you to finish the task, but…you must start the task.”

We will never solve the problems of tomorrow unless we start on them today. Are you ready? I am, and that is your Midrash for the day. Straight from the Rabbi!

Let's get to work. God Bless and Shalom!

Then God Shows Up

I find myself over and over asking why and how? I bet many of us are struggling with that question with God. Yet I always find out that God constantly intervenes with us. 

I love the excerpt from John Eldridge’s book Wild at Heart.

“Then the Lord intervened” is perhaps the single most common phrase in Scripture. Look at the stories he writes, There’s the one where the children of Israel are pinned against the Red Sea, no way out, with Pharaoh and his army barreling down on them in a murderous fury. Then God shows up. There’s Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego, who get rescued only after they’re thrown into the fiery furnace, and then God shows up. He lets the mob kill Jesus, bury him…then he shows up. Do you know why God loves writing such incredible stories? Because he loves to come through!

It strikes me as strange in that God always COMES THROUGH for us when we often doubt his authenticity or his existence or in this case his presence in our reality. But really…when has he not come through? I can’t stand that phrase “God never gives you more than you can handle.” Bull! For many people, this has been more than they can handle. For me it is just that through faith I have learned that I am able to hurdle the hurdles and God likes to come through.

He sent the freckled face little shepherd kid with a slingshot to fight Goliath, the trained killer. He cuts Gideon’s army down to nothing and then arms what’s left of the rag tag group with torches and water pots. He even got his message out to the human race by equipping a couple of prostitutes, a few fishermen with just an elementary education, and a tax collector. Then he passes the ball to us! (John Eldridge, Wild at Heart)

History proves that tragic events don't move people further from God, but CLOSER TO GOD. God shows up!!