Sex, Candy, and the Abundant Life

As a lover of chocolate and peanut butter, the existence of God has never been an issue for me. You see, while these two distinct flavors may have come together as a matter of chance, the fact that together they are AWESOME smacks of the supernatural.

And it isn’t only my sense of taste that has me convinced of the reality of a higher, greater Being. How about the gifts of touch, sight, and others? My wife, with a scary ability to manipulates these senses, can move my consciousness in a heavenly direction at will.

When I ponder these things, it also occurs to me that God must be quite good. After all, it isn’t only that my wife has this God-given ability, but that I like it!

Getting back to chocolate and peanut butter, I have to say that the existence of evil is more than a fairy tale too. The proof is in the fact that my children’s Halloween candy is disappearing at a faster rate than their parents would allow. I know kids will be kids, but I don’t think the kids are the problem. We’ve placed the candy bag in a place that can only be reached by the adults in the house.

It’s time we got it through our thick skulls: God created boobs, sex, laughter, the cocoa bean and peanuts. He said, “Whoa, this is good! I’m going to give it to you. Let’s see what you can do with this stuff! Just use a little self control, okay?”

Then we started stuffing our faces and kneeling before the candy bag in the middle of the night. What did we get for our efforts? Cavities, and souls that are heavy and bloated.

I want more out of life. How about you?

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so they can have life. I want them to have it in the fullest possible way.” –Jesus (John 10:10, New International Reader's Version)

Certifiable Sanctificity

I consider myself to be one of the new men. You know: tough and tender and all that jazz. I’ll take a drag on the odd cigar with my buddies, and later on go fearlessly to one of my daughters’ tea parties. I own a motorcycle, and I’ve watched Anne of Green Gables (once…a long time ago). I try to stay balanced.

It was in this spirit of renaissance that I accompanied my wife to a baby fair a number of years ago. She was eight months pregnant, and there was no hiding the fact. If I had poked her with a pin she would have floated around the room like a wounded balloon. I figured that considering her fragile state we’d do a lap of the conference center, she’d go to the bathroom a few times, we’d go out for a nice dinner, she’d check out the ladies room again and we’d be home in time for me to watch reruns of the A-Team.

We got home a lot sooner than that, and me with my head barely attached.

I suspected a problem as soon as we got to the venue: there were absolutely no men in the parking lot. Bill, I cringed to myself, you are getting some serious brownie points for this! Vastly outnumbered but stalwart and brave, I walked around the end of the car to open the door for my wife.

We went inside and right on cue, Karen needed to use the facilities. I didn’t mind waiting- there were some deep leather couches nearby. They were way more comfy than those benches outside the lingerie store at the mall. That was as comfortable as I would get that day.

I knew I was in immediate, serious danger when I noticed the glares I was getting from every third or fourth woman. Mostly they were shot from the eyeballs of what I imagined were the grandmothers-to-be. I tried shrinking, but it wouldn't work. I’ve broken some baby-fair rule, I thought. Maybe this is only supposed to be quality time for mothers and daughters.

I was partly right. Here’s what happened: the dates had been mixed up and apparently I had taken my pregnant “girlfriend” to a bridal fair. Nobody noticed our rings, I guess. I can only imagine what they must have thought about me - finally deciding to marry the woman I had knocked up!

As far as near death experiences go, this ranked right up there with malaria.

My bridal fair fiasco shares some attributes with some churches. Nice venue. Crowded parking. Everyone dressed up.

And the glares. Holy cow.

If something is a little out of the ordinary people can really get crazy. A friend of mine once came to church with ratty sneakers but no socks. Nobody said anything but the message was clear, and that message wasn’t the gospel.

What happened to grace, people? What changed in us that we no longer identify with delinquents? Sadly, it appears that there is a fine line between sanctifiable and certifiable.

"It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ." (Ephesians 2: 1-5, The Message)

A Father's Love

-guest post by Mike Cala

I have three amazing, wonderful and loving teenagers.

However . . . they drive me crazy! They infuriate me! They have in the past reduced me to a red-faced, spittle flying, near epileptic, quivering mass of speechless astonishment/bewilderment with their antics. I have clutched my chest in near-apoplectic fits on more than one occasion. I have a bald spot on the front of my head from incessantly banging it against the wall!

They bicker.

They complain.

They fight.

They seem to possess an endless and very creative supply of reasons and excuses as to why it is impossible for them to complete the smallest task or chore they were given. And they have been kind enough to inform me that apparently, I don’t know anything. The eye rolls and head shakes I receive from them are proof of that. It seems my working knowledge of life is severely limited and archaic – they on the other hand, have solved all of mankind’s problems and have the answers to all of life’s complex questions and deep mysteries . . . I mean, I know I’m no SuperDad, but really?

But I so love them! I often wonder if they realize just how much they are loved - how much and how often I have sacrificed for them? Do they know that I would do anything for them? That I live for them and that I would die for them? That all I want for them is to be safe, happy and if possible, to live a life that is even better and more successful than mine?

Do they know how much I love them? I often think that they don’t. Or can’t. When I tell them “No, you can’t do that!” or “No way you’re going over there!” it’s because I want them safe. I want them happy. I want them to enjoy their lives. I would rather have my child furious, yelling at me and slamming the bedroom door . . . but safe at home. I’ll even endure a couple of shouts of “I-hate-you!” if it means that my decision will ensure his or her safety and well-being. I set rules to keep them out of bad situations. I deny them so that they will not have to experience the consequences of poor decisions. But they can’t see that – they only see me wrecking their fun, messing up their plans, making them look bad in front of their friends . . . they can’t see the love. They don’t see the heartache I feel when they are forced to deal with the results of a poor or mistaken choice. They don’t know of the silent prayers uttered on their behalf day in and day out. They simply are unable to see the love I hold for them.

Do we see the Father’s love for us? Do we understand how much He has done for us and how much He is willing to do for us? Are we intimate with the Father to the point that we are constantly aware of the endless, all-encompassing flood of love He pours out to us? Or are we like children, focused on what we didn’t get and don’t have, angry at being denied and told “No”?

And I ask Him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:17b-19 (The Message)

Holy Toe Jam

I would have liked to have been in the tomb when Jesus finally decided that enough was enough.

Imagine the still, dark air.

Silence. As silent as the Grave, they say.

Then Somebody took a deep, deep breath.

This no doubt was followed by a bit of grunting and groaning as He struggled to get those grave clothes loosened. (It’s hard to swing your legs over the side of a bench with your arms pinned to your side and your head all wrapped up.) Did He bend His head to the side and crack His neck? Did He stretch and pop His back? I wonder if He crinkled his nose at the overwhelming fragrance of misplaced potpourri; grinning as He realized that in His improved state it didn’t make Him sneeze with allergies like might have a few days earlier.

“Let there be light!” He said, for the second time in Earth’s history, and there was light as the angels rolled the stone away and let morning’s glow invade.

He took His time. There was no need to rush out - that cave held nothing that would ever give Him the heebie jeebies. It seems he was relaxed. He dutifully folded up the head wrappings, thinking of all the times His mom used to make Him help with the laundry. Mary would be so proud, He grinned to himself!

“You’ve got myrrh between your toes, Lord”, Gabriel quipped. Jesus glanced down and groomed Himself.

Good enough, He must have thought. I didn’t go through the last few days just to be worried about what I look like. So what if the ladies think I’m the gardener instead of the King. I am that I am, and a little holy toe jam won’t change that!


Have you ever found yourself in a time or place that seemed like a sealed grave? Close your eyes then, and be still. Inhale. Remember Jesus' first breath in the tomb. It could be you’re not alone after all!

the Golden Child (aka my sister)

To this day, my brother and I maintain that my sister was the favorite. The evidence is truly overwhelming. What criteria do you want to use? Spankings rendered vs. avoided? Relative size of bedrooms? Education?

Ahhh, education. That’s where it all started, if I remember correctly. I was in my 9th year. It was a year of possibilities… for her. My parents were, by that time, spiraling down into a multi-level marketing induced stupor. They had just purchased their first Cadillac (got to admit the power windows were cool), and we had recently moved into the freshest, glitziest part of town. Our new home was the latest in a string of annual housing upgrades. It had fourteen foot ceilings, a chandelier and a river view. All that was needed to surpass the Jones’ was to enroll us kids in a private school.

Alas, the budget was such that a premium education for all three of us was out of the question. I can only imagine that they figured I already had rugged good looks, and my brother possessed more street smarts than the average 8 year old. Marilyn, being genetically left out in the cold, must have needed the warm blanket of a good education.

I admit that she did very little gloating. Her plaid, pleated skirt and crested blazer did it all for her. Of course it all came with a new set of aloof friends, and extra-curricular options like jazz dance. She became the golden child. To her was given the keys to the family kingdom; her siblings were made subject to her vast aura of superior responsibility. She mastered the dark arts of propaganda, blackmail and fear-mongering; we countered by creating a terrorist cell dedicated to blowing the stuffing out of her plush Papa Smurf.

As for our education, my brother and I were left to slum it out as best we could in the local public system. For after school extras, I managed to convince the cutest new girl in class to smooch me behind the corner-store, and little brother became adept at pilfering coins from every pocket in the house to feed our growing arcade habit. “Classy” is not an adjective often associated with the 1980’s.

We all love one another now, though my sister’s affections for us boys may have been helped along by a healthy dose of self-preservation as we got bigger and more menacing. Papa Smurf, sadly, was never the same.

Lesson for the week:
Sometimes Christians act as if they are God’s favorites. Attending church and reading the Left Behind series has given many of us an arrogance that is quite unbecoming. As our Emerging brothers and sisters grow in wisdom and stature, we should take heed lest we find ourselves defending a plush spirituality that seems more suited to a two dimensional, make-believe world.

Jelly Booger Bitterness

For a good picking you need just the right booger, and the correct booger depends largely on what kind of picking you are anticipating.

I believe that the perfect picking happens without any forethought; it needs to be a spontaneous act born of habit and total personal self-absorption. I’ve found that my faux leather couch is the perfect venue for personal grooming, and Jeff Probst and Ty Pennington are the best companions for this sort of indulgence. They engage you in conversation while tactfully looking the other way.

And then there is the booger itself. I prefer that small dose of adhesive that lets the critter stick to your finger while being instantly flickable or able to be rubbed into oblivion, while leaving no visible residue.

Gross out all you want- we both know that you know what I’m talking about.

I believe boogers are like emotions, especially as they relate to righteous anger and bitterness.

Injustice is a nose that demands a good picking.

Righteous anger is the good picking. It creeps up on you (and sometimes your friends) without any warning. It is inevitable under certain circumstances, and occasionally makes others uncomfortable. It is desperately needed in a world experiencing an acute shortage of the Justice Kleenex.

We have to be careful, though. When you engage the finger of action you never know quite what you’re going to get. Sometimes you get the dreaded jelly booger of bitterness. You yank and pull and stretch and then *whip-ptsh* out it comes.

Bitterness wraps itself around the pinky of our wills. It shames, and rather than pulling us towards action it causes withdrawal and disappointment. We crowd in on ourselves. The best we can hope for in these moments is that we’re in the car alone, and nobody will notice us trying to wipe it off under the seat. Good luck with that, friend.

Jesus told a proverb that relates. He said that you shouldn’t offer to pick your neighbor’s crusties when a jelly booger is hanging down into your mustache… or something like that.

broken bride, broken friend

A naïve young girl fair and fine
Stole the heart of a friend of mine.
I loved her too and did my part-
Thinking she could do nothing wrong
Until the day she broke his heart.

I’m supposed to say something nice,
Be a chum and ignore the vice
Of the woman his only bride.
I’ll admit she’s simply stunning;
This makes the blemish hard to hide.

I’d rather tell of my friend’s love
For the broken he calls his dove
(And a million more cheesy names.)
After mortgages, kids and debt
He’s shown true love that’s more than games.

He’s aware of her darker themes,
Cleans up after her reckless schemes,
Owns her sin like it was his own.
He’s the better man, most wounded
And from whom the most love is shown.

Still his good true friend I would be
For love for her is love for me-
Try to help her love him better,
And helping him mop the messes.
Soft hearts bleed blood that is wetter.

Christian Suicide Bomber

I thought I'd showcase my artistic skills today.

Sometimes Joe Heathen gets mixed messages from us. Which one do you think he's going to pay attention to?

Jesus, and other Unexpected Friends

It was all she could do to control her breathing. Images of an impending doom flashed across her mind like a 1960’s nuclear film, and she wrestled to stay in control.

This was my mom dropping me off for my first day at boarding school.

Anyone who has met my mom knows that she is completely groovy. She is the ‘cool’ mom. One hundred percent real and always ready with an encouraging word or practical joke.

That being said, she is still a mom and is always ready to protect her kids. It was this maternal attribute that she was trying to rein in when she strolled around the corner and walked into my dorm room.

My roommate had already moved in and was in the process of decorating. War photos ripped from the pages of Time lined the walls. A confederate flag was draped over the window, and cast an eerie shade of red over the monochromatic stills of embattled soldiers and trench warfare. Heavy metal music played softly in the background.

I thought it was ridiculously cool. If my roomie didn’t disembowel me before my first REM cycle that night, I knew we’d be fast friends.

The coming year would bring a lot of changes to the landscape of my life. First French kiss. Lost my nerd status. Parents got a divorce. Did my own laundry. Hitchhiked to a nearby city for a crazy weekend that almost got me kicked out of school.

Grade eleven. Good times.

Oh, and I got the Shanghai Flu. Nasty little bug. I don’t remember much about it, so I won’t embellish, but I want to tell you more about my roommate. I was lying in bed sick when he came back to the room after school. I did not want to talk. I did not want to move. So I pretended to be asleep. Maybe he’d just leave and go to the dining hall or something.

He did leave.

Then he came back two minutes later, and with me still pretending to sleep he took a cool damp cloth and gently wiped my feverish forehead.

What kind of self-respecting adolescent tough guy does a thing like that?

Answer: the best kind.

He and I are still friends, as are our wives. I go to church a bit more than he does. He has more tattoos than I do. You could say that the Christian establishment has left a bad aftertaste in his mouth.

But I have hope for him, because when I was a sick, scrawny kid he reminded me of Jesus: often showing up with love and true friendship in dark, unexpected places.

Worm Resuscitation

My daughter Alyssa, like many preschoolers, has made a habit of demonstrating to us the vastness of her intellect.

It has astounded me at times. You can get lost in there, thus it is not territory that one approaches with frivolity. In fact, like her mother’s purse, my daughter’s brain is a place that I explore only when absolutely necessary.

Just the other day we let her go by herself to the end of our cul-de-sac to get the mail. Watching her from our front window, Karen saw her suddenly stop and bend down. The mail was all but forgotten as Alyssa skipped back to the house cradling a dead, dried worm in her little palm.

“Look Mommy! A dead worm!” she called from the porch. Then she carefully backed up a couple steps and as gently as she was able laid her immobile friend on our parking pad. The desiccated fish bait broke in half. “I’ll just put it here so that when the rain comes the water will make it alive again.”

I told you, didn’t I?!

Astounding.

My other daughter Kaitlyn just started grade one, and takes her role as the more educated sibling very seriously. Noticing that the shriveled Lumbricus terrestris hadn’t moved due to days of hot, dry weather, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

This is where the water hose comes into the story.

Kaitlyn gave that little worm… well… let’s call it a healthy squirt, and it disintegrated.

They both shrugged and walked into the house for a snack.

Lesson for this week:

I come across a lot of people who, like Alyssa and Kaitlyn, seem to have the mysteries of the universe all figured out. Their Bibles are nothing less than fifty pound cosmic text books, and their creeds are immobile massifs of ancient meditation.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be sure of some things, or that Truth is all subjective. Not at all.

What I am saying is that the most important subjects should be approached with the greatest dose of humility. We can only breathe and think and love according to what we know today, but the hues of tomorrow’s light might paint a clearer picture.

I’m creeping up on 40 years old. After roughly another forty years I plan on graduating from this preschool. All of us do, eventually. I believe that’s when the real learning begins.