Ding, Dong

The witch is dead! Which 'ol witch? The Wicked Witch...

The correlation is inescapable. The first thing I thought upon hearing of the death of Osama Bin Laden was a recreation of The Wizard of Oz scene. Munchkins representing their Lollypop Guild jumping and celebrating the death of this horrible menace to their miniature society.

There is a trick to all of this however: He didn't just die, he was killed on sight. A man was identified and killed in a matter of seconds along with the four or five people in the room with him. Part of me wants to bust into a munchkin dance and give a "Christian equivalent" to the finger to the entirety of the insurgent groups, political groups, and terrorist cells that protected and supported him. Another part of me, just for a moment, takes pride in the idea that Bin Laden now sees the error of his Islamic ways and is suffering for his crimes. Then another part breathes a sigh of partial relief. My father is in Afghanistan. Part of his purpose in being there is the effort of the military to find terrorist leaders. Mission Accomplished? Then I feel a sense of nationalistic pride and want to watch Rocky IV.

At about this time in my mental process, my heart stops, my breath catches and my demeanor changes. A man just died, yes people die all the time I know, but this particular man died with an unrepentant heart and without saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Yes, what Osama Bin Laden did in his life was horrific. He ended or brought about the end of thousands of lives in the name of Allah. He cursed Christians and western culture in general; he damned us all to hell under the tenants of his religion. While I take hope in knowing that, by the power and perfection of God, justice will be served, I also can't help but hurt for Bin Laden's soul at the thought of eternal punishment. The grace that Christ extended to me could have saved Bin Laden from such an existence.

As I think about a sell-out crowd(near 50,000 people) in the Philadelphia's Citizen's Bank Park chanting "U-S-A" as news of Bin Laden's death permeated the crowd, I can't help but drop my head and think of Romans 3:22-26(God's prominence in our salvation; we have nothing to boast about) and how I could just as easily be damned in the tenants of the faith to which I hold dear. It is only by God's grace and provision that I'm any different than the man, whose death we cheer.

I can only pray that God make my reflections on this moment in history glorifying to Him. I can only rely God's power and knowledge to manage my conflicting feelings. So hard to see God's love in the face of God's justice, alas I resign myself to the faith and grace that saved and continues to sanctify me.

The Difference a Year Makes

Cold, unfeeling, clinical. That would describe my spiritual walk from late 2006 to mid 2010. I wanted God on my level. My life showed it too. I was uninvolved in church. My young marriage was stunningly stagnant. I lost touch with more people than I kept up with. I found myself unnecessarily dark and cynical. For a guy who was recently married, claimed to know the Savior and maintained a overpaying, albeit unnecessarily stressful, job, I was bitching way too much.

Then I made quite possibly the stupidest decision of my life. I quit my job without any kind of safety net outside of my savings.

The first month was absolute freedom, something I'd never felt before. The kind of freedom that I imagine I would feel if falling from a great height or floating adrift in a small craft in the Pacific. Rachel and I did what we wanted when we wanted. We spent time with friends, we went to Orlando(Magical World of Harry Potter is the best thing ever, Period.), we visited Family, we facilitated holidays at our house and others.

Like the feeling of falling, it ended and I began to see my fate. My tiny boat in the big ocean took on water. I again got stagnant, stale, cold, and bitter. Contentment, it seemed, was unable to be grasped. Somehow my expectations were never met, whether I was employed and working 50-60 hour weeks while taking classes or if I was unemployed and taking a minimal class load.

This is the part where I realized something was missing, but I hate to say it that way because it feels far too much like a crappy Christian novel. Like most cliches, however, there is truth to that sentiment. I was missing something. Fortunate for me and my bride, we knew what we needed, but It wasn't that easy.

We knew we needed to go to church. We knew we needed regular attendance and involvement with a body of believers, but it wasn't what we wanted. We wanted to be a part of a new breed of church(yea we're those people); we wanted a community to form and a Bible Study to start. We wanted to take the friends we maintained and turn them into our local body. We didn't want the regimented, calculated, board approved business that the church looks like today. We just couldn't get our friends on board. Everyone was happy in their herd of sheeple. They wanted to check the box and be a Christian that week.

Rachel and I broke and began attending a church. We weren't happy(and still aren't thrilled) with the system, but it is, undeniably, the body that represents Christ where we are. Not only that, but North Wake is truly doing wonderful things in the community and abroad. They certainly are doing more than Rachel and I were doing on our own.

Step two, we joined a small group; this was more what we were talking about. God showed us that accountability and relationship is available to us, we just have to get our hands dirty and do it. A month later we began fostering relationships with people we would have met otherwise. I met a group of men who struggle like I do. I met weekly with people who want what I want: community and Christ.

Problems don't go away just because you attend church though. We were still barely employed(Rachel and I picked up shifts a local high-end restaurant) and the bills don't stop coming. A new well pump, some tires, and some medical bills later, we were really feeling the strain. Still able to pay bills for several months without income, I wasn't immediately stressed, but I didn't want to give up my comfortable lifestyle and little rainy day fund.

We began praying for job opportunities. We prayed earnestly that God would provide something for us so that we could work together, as we always have. We got more and more pleading; we brought it before our small group, our friends, and random strangers(you never know who you'll meet). We prayed, finally, that God provide something that only He could and that we would give it over to Him instead of making it our own.

A month and a half ago a woman in our small group mentioned a job opening for a Marketing and Events Director where she worked. Naturally, Rachel and I were interested. Unfortunately the pay wasn't all that good and horrifically, we would never be able to work together if I took this job.

I took the job on a trial basis. We're working to see if it will be worth it in the long run. It's hard getting used to not being around Rachel most of the day. Heartbreaking in a way. As soon as I start getting whiny though, Paul won't shut up. All the illustrations of contentment that he brings up in the fourth chapter of Philippians start infiltrating my thoughts and I can't help but feel foolish. God obviously gave us this job, maybe not for a long fix, but for now. In this moment of His provision, perhaps I should feel thankfulness and contentment instead of selfishness and resentment.

I'm not on board the mega-church train, I actively remove "Christianese" from my vernacular. I buck convention for no reason other than to ask "why?". I do everything I can to incorporate my small group into my friends group. I never attend church business meetings. While all of that is true, my life has still been changed by being a part of a church body. Even though it is imperfect, even though it isn't what I want, even though I cringe at the thought of a church having a fiscal year, God is active and living in His churches. It was about time I realized it.