Would You?

If I never prayed quite right
If I never sang it strong
If I never let you close
Would you save my soul?

If I never shared my secrets
If I never listened to your whispers
If I just lived for me
Would you make me whole?

If I never gave another dime
If I never tried to get to church
If I never hung out with brothers
Would you still draw near?

Yes.

Racing

Here's a racing pic of some of the guys and gals before the crit race. Note my partner in crime with the yellow helmet and same club colors.

Breakfast

Here is breakfast at the cabin. There is no better place to start the day. This one involved pancakes, which is one of my favourite foods. And Terry, who is my favourite person.

Life

Bike racing is a microcosm of life. Last night was our criterium championship race and I lined up with at least 4 other guys in our group who could, and most likely would, beat me. Not a problem, I enjoy racing, win or lose.

But, just like life, things happen. The top two contenders got in a fight mid race and that allowed the rest of us to get away. That's two down. That changed everything and myself and a teammate then took control of the race which I won in the end. I would not have been anyone's pick as the winner but through changing circumstance I was able to come out on top.

Did I deserve the win? Who cares, you get a lot of things you don't deserve in life and the rule in cycling is the first guy across the line is the winner. Did the others deserve to lose? Who cares, sometimes things happen you just can't control or couldn't forsee happening.

Life just comes at you. What you do with it is what counts. You can't control it anymore than you can control all the variables in a bike race. Accept the unknown and use every variation to your advantage to get across the finish line. Keep alert and look for opportunities. Team up with somebody, maybe Jesus. Don't start fighting with each other. And if the win presents itself, go for it and don't look back.

Brain cooked

It's 2.30 pm and my brain is cooked already. A bike ride looms, after which I will be able to function again.

Did you know I made a super excessive effort (for me) last night to load some teaching CD's into itunes and then burn disks only to find out that they loaded backwards? The first track says, "Thank you for listening to this life changing message....." and then it's all in reverse from there. I have yet to make itunes work for me.

Did you know there are 2211farms in Canada that earn over $2 million in revenue every year? And 3700 that earn over a million? Not bad coin. I'm doing my analysis of the farm industry this week and I know lots of neat stuff now. Pays to know the size of your market. I think I qualify as a business apostle for being such a student of the industry.

Which reminds me. Someone told me that I suffer from spiritual slumber in the summer and that all my brothers and sisters do to. A bunch of pastors got together and figured it out. Told me to wake up and be alert because God was going to do something big and I might miss it. Rubbish, pure fiction made up in the minds of men. I'm awake and so are my compatriots.

However, my brain is cooked so I guess they have a point of sorts. To the bike!

Jesus is wrecking things

Aaron and Bobbie gave me the third book in NT Wright's series on Christian origins and the Question of God called 'Jesus and the victory of God'. It's a serious threat to many of my cherished notions about Jesus, the church, Israel and my faith. So serious that I find it hard to stomach some of the things I hear coming out of the mouths of Christian leaders and teachers right now. So serious that I find it hard to stomach what's coming out of my own brain and heart right now. So serious that I wonder if I took a wrong turn somewhere because what I do is so pretend. I suppose that's the usual over-reaction and that I will settle back into a more balanced viewpoint soon.

There is something I really like about learning that what I believe is mostly made up by the church and not something Jesus meant at all. Or that my carefully thought out theology on an issue forgot to include Israel and what Jesus really was saying to them. Or that a concept like 'the kingdom of God' means something quite different to me than it did to Jesus. There is something raw about the facts, something that just blows to pieces all the smokescreens of false notions and reveals that you're not anywhere as smart as you think you are.



I like it

Do I care?

What's it mean when you're going through life and stuff happens and you don't really feel like you care? It's not that I feel it's all meaningless it's just that I look at the issues that crop up day to day and feel like most aren't worth caring about. They're just too small somehow, too irrelevant.

I don't really care if I meet people's expectations. I don't really care if we have a healing room next year or not. I don't care if the Elijah breaker anointing is calling for a national consecration fast and that we all better get ready because something is about to happen in the heavenlies (that's an amalgam of various strident voices at present). I don't care if there is a new anti-oxidant chocolate bar that will clean up my arteries. I don't care if people don't understand why Terry and I make certain decisions that they don't agree with.

Maybe I am tired of caring. Maybe the Lord is showing me I care about the wrong things. Maybe I'm a fool. We shall see.

But for now, I don't really care.

The Fragrance

Just back from a trip to the US and, therefore, an absence at the hospital to pray miraculous healing over Andrew (why think less?). So I went up yesterday and Andrew's Mom immediately started talking about the last week and how hard it was for all of them. I could smell a fragrance, a purity, a beauty as she talked. I was drawn to her words and her eyes and I could feel the heart of God as I listened to the heart of this Mother.

I do not understand it, but there is something beautiful in the crushing, the breaking, the suffering of the saints. It releases a fragrance that, once breathed, begins to heal all that is inside us. Suffering crushes the flesh, the self-will, the independence, the unbelief and faithlessness. It moves us from a place of "I will" to "God will".

I told Andrew's Mom that she would never be the same after this. You know how we sometimes say in a radical Holy Spirit service that we will never be the same again? Same goes for this kind of radical Holy Spirit service. I told her she had the beauty and attractiveness of Christ. His gentleness, peace and quiet determined faith.

Don't let me mislead you, she was not talking about suffering and defeat. She was talking about suffering and victory. About overcoming the impossible, the evident, the natural. About overcoming her own fear and faithlessness. But she wasn't braggadocio about it, she was fragrant, soft, crushed, releasing pure words of life. Just matter of fact: despite all the suffering God was going to heal her son.

When I told her she was Christlike she said that a lot of people were telling her that lately. A lot of non-believers, doctors, nurses. One even told her she released a fragrance, not knowing he was speaking the words of God. And then she said a surprising thing. She said it was Christ people were seeing and smelling, not her. That's what we always say, isn't it? It's Christ in me.

So I told her she was wrong. I told her it was her that people were seeing. Sure it was Christ but it was her becoming more Christ-like. That's what being transformed means. We're not just dirty vessels with a clean Jesus in us, we're increasingly clean vessels with the nature of Christ replacing ours. We're who we were meant to be, at long last.

She seemed to have some trouble with that but it's OK. Anyone who smells that good doesn't need my help with semantics. Maybe it's better that she doesn't know she looks, smells and feels a whole lot like Jesus and that day by day she's being transformed into his likeness.

What a wonderful God.

Pa