The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Good Stuff
I talk a lot about how pain and trials are just as much God’s blessings as laughter and joy. We tend to equate good things with blessings and trials as something we must endure to finally get to the “good stuff”. What I’m learning, though, is that the “good stuff” is the journey. God’s blessings don’t always come with a pretty red bow. More times than not, they come with a tear, some anger, and a gentle tug from God reminding us of who we are in Him.
I experienced that yesterday…Read More
The Good Stuff is the Journey
I talk a lot about how pain and trials are just as much God’s blessings as laughter and joy. We tend to equate good things with blessings and trials as something we must endure to finally get to the “good stuff”. What I’m learning, though, is that the “good stuff” is the journey. God’s blessings don’t always come with a pretty red bow. More times than not, they come with a tear, some anger, and a gentle tug from God reminding us of who we are in Him.
I experienced that yesterday.
I was asked to speak for about 5 minutes during our Sunday School class on a topic I love – ministering mercy to the needy and poor and how God’s grace is our pattern for doing so. I knew my topic and was passionate about communicating it to the class. About 15 minutes before I was supposed to speak, though, a crushing feeling of inadequacy and fear overcame me.
I prayed. I popped extra pieces of gum in my mouth. I asked people to pray. I drank some water. I slowed down my breathing. Nothing was working.
As I stepped up to the mic, everything began to fall apart. I stumbled over my words. I looked at every word I was supposed to speak with fear that they wouldn’t come out. I felt the un-comfortableness of the class and that made me uncomfortable for them. Fears of being judged overwhelmed me even though deep down I knew they weren’t. I started off on the wrong foot, and, as I hard as I tried, I couldn’t communicate what was on my heart. I was an utter mess. Every raw nerve was on display for everyone to see and I felt abandoned by God for allowing it to continue.
I was out of control and I hated every minute of it.
Eventually it all ended and I sat down next to my comforting wife. And that is when the real battle began.
Anger. Tears. Silence. Embarrassment. Out of control. Exposed. Why did those things matter to me? What did those feelings say about what I believed of God? Why was I blaming God for what happened? Why didn’t he help or protect me? I needed affirmation during this dark struggle – why do I need affirmation? God and I worked through those questions all afternoon and all night; and, I am still working through most of them with him right now. In my anguish and feeling of abandonment, He’s showing me himself.
Before, during and after that whole debacle, I had forgotten who I was. Even as I type this, I’m having to remember who I am.
I have the DNA of Christ residing in me and I’m made in his image – not in an image I can control or a situation I can remedy. I’m made in his image. I’m loved and desired by the one who calls himself “I am”. Am I still frustrated that God the Protector didn’t show up? Absolutely. But had he shown himself in that way, I wouldn’t have the privilege of working through these issues with him and knowing him deeper as a result.
That’s the real blessing – God coming along side us and saying “hey, let’s take a look at what happened today and work through that together.” It is him reminding me of who I am in Him, even during what I perceive as my worst moment ever.
The God of Our Comfort
2 Corinthians 1:3-7
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
On Being Social
From CultivatingIt.com: As I sat around our fire pit last night with my wife, kids and some great neighbors handing out candy to Dora the Explorer and various characters from Toy Story, I was fighting an inner compulsion to share what a great time we were having with all my Twitter and Facebok friends while we were having that great time….Read More
On Being Social
As I sat around our fire pit last night with my wife, kids and some great neighbors handing out candy to Dora the Explorer and various characters from Toy Story, I was fighting an inner compulsion to share what a great time we were having with all my Twitter and Facebok friends while we were having that great time.
Here’s a sad, but ironic picture: while posting a picture, sending a text or sharing a tweet about great conversations and laughter we are enjoying, I’m only grabbing bits and pieces of continuing conversations, jokes or stories. After “liking” someone else’s fire pit photo, I ask “Sorry, what was that? I didn’t hear what Jimmy said.” As I listen to my buddy tell an insightful story about how he grew up, I’m mentally processing about how “blessed” everyone else would be to hear that story and I totally miss what he was actually trying to communicate. While my daughter is roasting marshmallows and letting them fall into the fire pit, I’m thinking “I need to grab a picture of that so I can share it with my friends back home” instead of immersing myself totally in what is happening right before my own eyes and ears and enjoying the look in my daughter’s eyes as she loses yet another marshmallow to a fiery inferno. While packing everything up, I’m thinking about the various blurbs I can share on Facebook and what a great night we had, rather than reflecting on the smiles of all those kids as we loaded them up with real candy bars and caused their bags to overflow with more candy than the dentist would ever allow.
In my effort to be social with twenty other people who are not physically with me, I’m emotionally disengaging from the people I’m actually with. How sad is that?
I wonder how more deeply connected I would be with those around me if I viewed my social network spiritually and physically rather than virtually?
What If…
My wife Kathi and I attended the TrueFaced Intensive Conference this weekend. It was about grace, sanctification, removing masks, and trusting God and others with who He says we are in Him. It was the most impacting event we have ever attended.
The following is John Lynch, one of the co-authors of TrueFaced and presenters from the conference, on the New Testament Gamble speaking from the perspective of God. I highly recommend the book.
Perfectly Measured
So God supplies perfectly measured grace to meet the needs of the godly. For daily needs there is daily grace; for sudden needs, sudden grace; for overwhelming need, overwhelming grace. God’s grace is given wonderfully, but not wastefully; freely but not foolishly; bountifully but not blindly. ~John Blanchard
TEGA V2 Tablet: Would I Buy One?
So, on Friday I tweeted that I would be spending the weekend “iPad free”, giving the TEGA V2 a whirl. However, I quickly ran into issues that made me abandon that plan:
- I kept experiencing the freezing issue coming out of sleep. This issue goes away when hibernating, but the hibernating experience is vastly different than sleep: resume from wake, wait for drivers to load, wireless to turn on, etc. If I can’t press a button and quickly get into an app to do what I need to do, then I’m not going to bother. I expect the sleep issue to get fixed soon, so it isn’t a fair review question. However, it did affect my usage over the weekend.
- Touch friendly and resource lite twitter / facebook apps?
- Touch friendly and resource lite Bible app?
- Touch friendly email?
- Slowness of Thinix launcher
- Slowness of Internet Explorer
- Battery life of 4 hours compared to 10-12 on iPad
I do enjoy the ink and handwriting recognition advantage of the Windows 7-based TEGA V2, but it isn’t enough for me to forgo the iPad.
So the question I have to ask myself: would I buy one?
The TEGA V2 has a tremendous amount of potential. Its’ design is bar-none top notch and it crosses a design barrier that most tablet pcs have not been able to attain. A tablet-lover designed it and it shows through and through. Because I tend to be different than most consumers and business users, I’d likely buy one and I’ll continue to use the evaluation unit that TegaTech sent me. I’ll tweak Windows to the point that it’ll work for me and I’ll get to the point that Windows doesn’t bother me. However, I can tell you that my wife would not buy one, my teenage kids would not buy one, my friends wouldn’t buy one and I don’t see any of my business associates and clients buying the TEGA V2 in bulk, much less in single digits. The $799 price is attractive, but Windows 7 is a huge barrier to overcome on these form factors. My potential customers and business clients are looking for simplicity, intuitive, instant-on and long battery life. Those are the attributes that are causing my clients to buy the iPad in the hundreds and thousands. Windows 7 on this device is the antithesis of those attributes and why I predict the TEGA V2 will not see real success until Microsoft decides that they want to succeed in a market that they once owned and defined, but unfortunately gave up on years ago.
I’d buy one, but nobody around me will.
