Bathtime and our Heavenly Dad

Today was one of those fussy days for our 2 year old Eli.  The kind where most requests come out as a whine, and every thing that goes wrong is a huge traumatic endeavor.  So tonight, I’m giving my son a bath (that’s after his whiny “nooo” in response to my upbeat “Do you want to get a bath?”).  Shortly after he’s sitting in the water, he takes his right hand, raises it over his head and flat-hands it into the surface of the water.  This splashes me of course, but Eli lets out a little chuckle.

Now, my first instinct was to tell him not to splash…I didn’t really feel like being a part of the bath in that way.  But then in the few seconds before he raised his hand again, I had a change of heart.  A chuckle after all is a lot better than a whine.  This time as he smacked the water I jumped playfully (off the toilet seat where I was sitting) and screamed.  The chuckle graduated to a hearty laugh this time.

For the next couple of minutes this playful splashing on his part, and overreacting in shock on my part continued until he was red-faced and struggling for air through his laughter.  I was wet, the wall next to the tub was wet, the floor was soaked, and we were both happy.

I wonder about our Heavenly “dad”, and his enjoyment of us.  I don’t know about you, but I tend to think of God’s relationship to me in black and white terms much of the time.  Did I do the right thing?  Or did a just do something wrong (and disappointing even)?  I don’t naturally think about whether I just did something that cracked him up; something that was neither right nor wrong, but only me being his boy, and him loving it…and me.

Why, why, why do you die for me?

I am working on an interactive night for our youth meeting Thursday night similar to a liturgical practice called “The Way of the Cross”, or “Stations of the Cross”. It’s a reflective look at the suffering Jesus experienced in his last hours.

As Christians, many of us have a sense of our obligation to obey the teachings of Jesus. We can intellectually understand the connection of obedience to our salvation. God is supreme…He alone is the source of grace. We get that it is the grace of God, acting through the death of Jesus to forgive our sin. We get forgiveness. We struggle with obedience.

I offer another view to consider. Consider the word compulsion. Ponder for a moment the absolute awe, amazement, even disbelief you experience in that first moment when you really believe that Jesus suffered and died for you. That you did nothing to earn anything from God, and yet he gave up everything to give you life…real life…eternal life. I ask you to consider the meaning of compulsion:

An irresistible impulse to act, regardless of the rationality of the motivation

Have you been touched so deeply…

So profoundly…

Has God’s gift of forgiveness tasted so sweet…

So amazing…

That you are compelled to respond?

That all you want to do is anything and everything that he would ask you to do?

I end with these words from the Apostle Paul, who was so compelled by the grace he found in Jesus as to give all the remaining years of his life to tell everyone who would listen (and more) about it:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5

when the credits never roll

Last night my wife and I repeated a frequent ritual we call “dinner and a movie”. The bookends of our night out were spent with my parents’ as we dropped off our son for some time with Nana and Papa (read: for free babysitting). The movie was an intense suspense-thriller, that kept us guessing the whole way through, but was neatly resolved by the time the credits rolled. Then it was back to my parents for us. Back to reality.

We talked with them about some of the happenings in my side of the family; things that, like the movie, we didn’t know how they would turn out in the end. The difference (besides the lack of accompaniment music, explosions, guns, and sexy Hollywood actors and actresses) was that there never seemed to be an ending. In our story there was no tidy resolution; no neat wrap-up, tying up all the story’s loose ends just before the credits rolled.

My parents have been parents for over 32 years, and while the story changes tension and unresolved questions never go away. The questions change and the tensions shift, but the story goes on. Perhaps that’s part of the magic of the movie-watching experience: the story ends, the credits roll, and you feel a happy closure to the whole thing. So…here’s to us, for whom the story rolls on. Here’s to non-resolution and tension. Here’s to conflict and transition and questions and the unknown. I am thankful for all of these for when they end, that means my credits have rolled. Although I believe that is but another scene change and not an ending either.

Jesus inspired Tongue Control

I read in the book of James last night. In chapter 3 James writes (after warning people against taking teaching positions in the church!)

We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.

Well, I can definitely relate to stumbling in many ways, but it was this part about what one says that got my attention. “If anyone is never at fault in what he says…” If only! My first thought was to read on thinking no one meets that criteria. But I didn’t move on. Why was this verse here? Was it only so that people like me could read it and acknowledge how we fall short of another standard? There had to be more.

Then I thought, let’s just say someone was never at fault in what he said. What kind of man would that be? Are we just talking about a strong-willed, behavior-controlled person that regardless of the thoughts on the inside was able to control himself so that he didn’t let slip out those dark things that he thought sometimes?

Then I remembered that Jesus had said something about the mouth and words too. I found it in Matthew 15:

What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean’…But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. -Jesus in Matthew 15:11-19

So what kind of person is never at fault in what he says? It can’t be an outward, control-what-you-say kind of person, but rather someone who at a heart level has had a whole lot of God working with him at the core of his brokenness. It’s inward out, not outward in, Jesus is saying. This was a good reminder for a guy who’s done a pretty good job of preserving a good image, but has often struggled to let God deal deeply with his heart.

1 in 4 teenage girls has an STD

In case you missed this news release from last month, here’s a clip from the US News report:

More than 3 million teenaged girls have at least one sexually transmitted disease (STD), a new government study suggests.

The most severely affected are African-American teens. In fact, 48 percent of African-American teenaged girls have an STD, compared with 20 percent of white teenaged girls.

“What we found is alarming,” Dr. Sara Forhan, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a teleconference Tuesday. “One in four female adolescents in the U.S. has at least one of the four most common STDs that affects women.”

“These numbers translate into 3.2 million young women nationwide who are infected with an STD,” Forhan said.

You can read the rest of the article here: full article

I’m looking for information that may exist that is more specific to our community in Pinal County and Maricopa County. I have heard statistics that place teen pregnancy rates at Florence High School (which is the major high school in the community I live) atop the national averages. If our higher teen pregnancy rates equates with a higher sexual activity, then it seems plausible that tendency could translate into higher STD rates as well.

What are your thoughts?