Life and Root Canals
I had a root canal the other day.
*hangs head in shame*
I’m not proud of it. Honestly, I hesitated to write this post.
Root canals should be kept secret, like an addiction to coffee enemas or collecting belly button lint.
People look at you differently when they find out. One minute you’re a lovely human being, and the next you’re the guy who doesn’t brush his teeth. People assume that you gargle with Mountain Dew and eat candy for every meal, that you seldom brush. I understand.
But that’s not me. I hate Mountain Dew, and while I enjoy candy as much as the next person, I brush and floss daily. I never go to bed with food in my teeth. I like to think I have good oral hygiene. In fact, at my last appointment—the one where they made this orally damning discovery—the dental assistant commented on how well I brush.
Yes I do, thank you very much.
So why the bad tooth? Perhaps because it has been a while since my last professional cleaning. Or perhaps I’m a sleep eater; maybe I wander into the kitchen in the middle of the night and snack out on peanut butter Oreo’s and grape soda.
Who knows? Does it matter? You are still probably judging me right now. So, why am I telling you this?
Because I believe good writing is all about honesty and vulnerability, and because I think my issue speaks, in a way, to the problems that we all face, perfect teeth or otherwise.
When the pain in my mouth showed up, I had to leave work, I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t focus on anything else because I had to keep ice or cold water on the tooth at all times. If I went more than ten seconds without it, a forest fire would spread through my mouth and quickly through the rest of my body.
I was miserable. It is probably the worst pain I have every experienced. How can that be?
A tooth is such a small thing.
But when the nerve at its core began to die, my whole body was hijacked. I was at the mercy of the problem, tiny or not.
There are so many little things, minor details that we overlook until they begin to malfunction and send our lives off course. These are things we have neglected or small problems left unsolved. These are seemingly insignificant relational breakdowns that are left to fester in the dark, only to one day cry out and demand undivided, sober attention.
It is only then that we realize the severity of the problem.
This is the married couple who used to have regular date nights until the kids came along. The priority shifted to the children, and since the marriage seemed to be healthy, date night became a former luxury instead of an essential escape.
This is the culture shift in a workplace that gives way to gossip, mistrust and finger-pointing.
It’s the church that slowly acquires a taste for comfort rather than sacrifice and slowly rots from the inside out.
Or the cavity that begins to form in a relationship when a spouse casually “friends” an old flame on Facebook—You know, just to catch up.
The trauma caused in these scenarios is microscopic, at first. But eventually the corrosion of neglect and foolish decision bores deep into the nerve centers of our lives, often causing irreparable damage.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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Photo Credit: purplemattfish (Creative Commons)
Turns out money actually can buy happiness.
Whoever said money can’t buy happiness wasn’t there the day I opened my Macbook Pro for the first time. They could not have been on my flight to Maui a few years back, and they have most certainly never watched the scene in Jerry Maguire where shirtless Cuba Gooding Jr. emphatically screams “Show me the money!” while dancing around his kitchen like a lunatic.
From what I can tell, cash is accepted wherever happiness is sold. Unfortunately, happiness, like money, is a limited resource. It’s circumstantial.
On any given day, an individual can start out in the best of moods and end in the worst, laughing one minute and crying the next.
Life doesn’t review your checking account balance before deciding to fall apart. It doesn’t consult your accountant or read through your five-year-plan. Trouble drives through the ghetto and the gated community, and when it shows up it doesn’t ask for your checkbook.
Sadly, you can’t buy your way out of a heartbreaking phone call at 2 a.m. You can’t pay for mental health or stability, and while money can definitely start a relationship, it can never sustain one. Just ask a Hollywood divorce lawyer.
Happiness, like the thin sheets of paper we exchange for goods and services, is fragile. And like money, it can disappear without warning. Read More…
How do we change the world?
For much of my life, I held the opinion that Christians were wise to keep their noses out of matters of state and culture. After all, Planet Earth, along with its unsavory inhabitants, is headed to hell in a handbag. A literal hell, with flames and tears and gnashing teeth.
Therefore, we should spend our limited time wisely, plucking souls from the gas-soaked Louis Vuitton before the match is lit, moving as many people as possible from lost to found.
What is the point of pushing social and political change in light of the reality of hell, to make the ride a little more comfortable?
How valuable is a vote or a tiny carbon footprint when eternity is crouching around the corner? Christians should be planting churches, not running for office or helping Al Gore combat Global Warming. Right?
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was operating from an Either/Or worldview, either focus on the culture or focus on God’s kingdom. But much of the faith experience—much of life in general—is actually Both/And.
Grace and Truth.
Justice and Mercy.
The Here-And-Now and The Hereafter.
John Piper says that “Christians tend to be in two camps: Caring only about suffering now or caring only about suffering in eternity.”
Sadly, for years I proudly pitched my tent at Camp Eternity—not that Camp Now is a better alternative.
Ignoring eternity to clean up the present is like dressing someone up for a car wreck.
So, what is the proper approach?
Author Eric Metaxes has written a fantastic essay on changing the world by “proving faith through works.” In it, he presents the way in which William Wilberforce and his group of influential friends, known as the Clapham Circle, managed to leverage their influence in politics, literature, and the arts to bring about remarkable cultural change.
“For one thing, Wilberforce’s efforts led to the British abolition of slavery itself 26 years later, and inspired the abolitionist cause across Europe and in the United States, too. Years later, Lincoln and Frederick Douglas hailed him as their hero. But more amazing, and harder to fathom, was that far beyond abolition, Wilberforce and his friends had a monumental impact on the wider British culture, and on the world beyond Britain, because they succeeded not only in ending the slave trade and slavery, but in changing the entire mindset of the culture.”
What if Wilberforce had taken a different approach to world change? “We need to band together and pray for Britain and the slave traders. If they get saved they will realize the sin of owning people and eventually slavery will come to an end.”
I have no doubt that Wilberforce was a man of prayer, that He appealed to God to change the sinful hearts of men, but at some point he left his prayer closet and went to work. He spent nearly three decades fighting for the freedom of the oppressed.
Should believers introduce people to The Living Water (Jesus) but ignore the millions who live without access to clean drinking water?
Should we pray for the sexually depraved among us but do nothing to rescue the women and children being sold into sex slavery?
Should we pray for our politicians but contribute nothing more than bitter rants about the removal of God from country?
The four Gospels present a Jesus with a sincere concern for both the future and current state of humanity. He taught his disciples to pray,
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”
(Matthew 6:9-10 ESV)
Reading through the New Testament and studying church history, it is clear that the followers of Christ did more than commit this prayer to memory and recite it in corporate settings; they made it an endeavor.
So, should we wait for the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to make “all things new,” to undo all that is wrong in the world, or should we join that mission already in progress?
Both/And.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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Photo Credit: ant.photos (Creative Commons)
Good News for the Bad News
Do you watch the news? If so, question: How do you usually feel afterwards?
Exhilarated? Peaceful? Chock-full of unbridled hope and restored faith in humanity?
Probably not, right?
If you’re like me, you probably just turn off your TV, lock the doors, google “cancer-preventing foods”, and vow to never watch the news again.
If you don’t watch the news, why is that? Probably because, like my wife, you “hate the news. It’s so depressing.” And it is. Sure, there are bright spots, but they are quickly eclipsed by one crisis or another.
Last night, in our student service, Transit, we did a mock newscast before the message, complete with sad stories and sensationalized journalism.
Tommy Tommerson (Tommy Pride) presented the following news:
Three young men were gunned down on the city’s east side. The killer is still at large. Hide your kids.
This season, Michigan is on the list of states with the highest influenza outbreaks. Avoid human beings.
The forecast shows at least two feet of snow over the next 48 hours. Power outages expected.
I then handed out tissues and told the students how hard it was going to be for them to ever find a job in our economy. Not really. I used the stories to contrast the bad news we are so accustomed to with the hope presented in The Gospel. Read More…
When Death Dies
“That cemetery is really small, isn’t it?” my wife asked, gesturing toward the right of the busy intersection.
She was right; the space was very cramped, almost as if the cemetery were an afterthought. Looking over the lot, I noticed something else. Just past the fence that surrounds the property, glowing through the gaps between the headstones of the deceased, was a big red sign that said, Donut Delight.
A donut shop stands less than twenty feet from the perimeter of a grave yard. I have driven past this for years and have never considered the juxtaposition. It’s bizarre.
I picture a group of old men getting together every week for breakfast. They sit by the window sipping coffee. They split a box of chocolate-frosted eclairs and stare out into the field of death, trying not to number their days.
That is what you call an existential breakfast. It sounds like a Samuel Beckett play.
So, why would anyone surround an old cemetery with restaurants and small businesses?
Because life goes on. One day we will all be in fertilizer, but while we’re here, we all have to eat and buy and work. So, pour the concrete and put up a donut shop.
Death is a part of life, right? It’s inevitable. Accidents happen. Old bodies fail. People kill people. We’re just used to it.
Take the news, for instance. “Three young men gunned down on the city’s west side. The shooter is still at large. And now, over to Jim for the weather forecast.”
Do you know why our minds can flip from fatal shootings to the doppler radar report in less than thirty seconds? Because we don’t know the parties involved.
That’s why I have passed the same cemetery for 27 years without giving it more than a glance. None of my loved ones are buried there. But, I’m sure there are people who break down every time they approach the intersection, because there lies Grandma or Dad or Charlie.
No one likes cancer, but you don’t start hating cancer until it shows up at your house. That’s when the threat of death becomes more than an inevitable someday.
It is at this point that we start to see death for what is really is: a thief. It robs us of joy and love and valuable relationships.
We should hate death. Jesus does; he died to conquer it. More specifically, he died to conquer the sin that causes death.
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:21-22 NIV)
Because Adam—AND Eve, ladies—disobeyed God, sin entered the world. Sin brought death to all living things, but the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was offered as a payment for that sin, and his resurrection stands as proof of his total power over the grave.
This is the hinge that all of Christianity hangs on. If Jesus didn’t raise from the dead, “then our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain.”
But, I believe he did, and attached to this belief is a promise.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
(Revelation 21:4 ESV)
For those who put their faith in Christ, one day these mortal, fragile bodies will be replaced by the immortal. All things will be made new.
Death will die. Murder will be murdered. Cancer will get cancer, stage 4. Inoperable.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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Photo Credit: Sean Bagley (Creative Commons)
Takeoff and Landing and Life
Flying—sitting in a tiny chair suspended at 30,000 feet—has a way of narrowing my focus to important matters; it puts me in deep thought. I think about the loved ones I left safe on the ground below; I worry that they’re worried.
I think about deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a blood clot that can form in the legs of frequent flyers and, according to an article I once read in an in-flight magazine, aspirate to the lungs and cause death. But, mostly I think about life.
It’s fragile and painful and wonderful.
To me, flying highlights the experience of living. It represents the journey, the ups and downs, the turbulence of the everyday, the shared vulnerability with complete strangers.
The most beautiful metaphor for life I have experienced on an airplane was on a flight to Pensacola, Florida a few years ago. My mother sat on the aisle, my wife in the middle, and I sat by the window on a crowded plane headed south.
Tanya, my wife, does not enjoy flying, but her least favorite part is the takeoff. And as the pilot issued final call and headed towards the runway, I felt Tanya’s fingers clamp around my knee, eyes shut, teeth clenched. The faster we went, the more she tensed up, and as I looked over to comfort her, I noticed my mother placing her hand into Tanya’s sweaty palm, giving her something else to squeeze.
Eventually, the plane leveled out and reached cruising altitude and Tanya’s fear subsided. However, when we approached our destination, as the plane drew closer to the ground, fear set in again, but this time not for Tanya.
My mother’s neck stiffened and she forced her head deep into the headrest and closed her eyes, preparing for impact. Tanya, calm and alert, noticed this and, without hesitation, reached for my mother’s hand. She held it until the plane landed and slowed to a stop.
The roles had reversed. In less than two hours, the comforted became the comforter, and vice versa.
This is what we all long for in life, someone to be there in our moments of weakness and fear, and when the time comes that those heroes need our help, we hope to be there to offer strength.
Some need help with takeoff, others with landing. Either way we need each other.
This is the way God designed mankind to operate, as relational beings. To the believer this is not a helpful concept. It’s a command.
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2 ESV)
Jesus, the one who popularized the phrase, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” modeled this all the way to his sacrificial death.
It’s no coincidence that life works better when we look outside ourselves, and when we are surrounded by others who do the same. Through times of turbulence, of doubt and pain, it is nice to have a hand to hold.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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Photo Credit: Cem. k (Creative Commons)
33 Ways You Know You Were A Youth Group Kid (From Buzzfeed)
I thought this was funny, only because it’s true. Enjoy.
We don’t need more Christian Music
As I write this, the world is buzzing with frantic anticipation for the arrival of music’s biggest night.
Somewhere, right now, Lady Gaga is being lowered into some kind of pre-civil war, steam punk inspired Transformers costume. Nicki Minaj is sifting through a Skittles bag, searching for the perfect wig color.
That’s right, the Grammy Awards are upon us. Millions of viewers will tune in to see which of their favorite artists will be awarded for their recent musical endeavors. They are looking forward to live performances from some of the world’s most talented individuals.
I am one of those viewers. For a long time I had no interest in the Grammy’s or popular music. It seemed like any pretty face with a gym membership and functioning vocal cords could get a record deal. Lately, there seems to be a resurgence underway, people shifting back to an appreciation for musicianship and strong lyricism.
Great bands like Mumford & Sons have gone from playing small festivals to packing out stadiums. This doesn’t make the hipsters happy, the ones who knew them before they were big, but I love it. I love music.
Having grown up in a religious context, I am well aware of the dividing line that splits many Christians between what we call “Christian” and “Secular” music. I have never done too well with this line, but I understand it. Much of the music that exists, regardless of genre, is pathetic. Degradation of women. Celebration of crime. Promotion of infidelity and promiscuity.
My parents didn’t want me singing along in celebration of these things, and I respect that. The solution? Listen to “Christian” music. It’s wholesome.
But while “Christian” music is void of sex and drugs and stickin’ it to the man, for me, much of it is void of originality, art, and honesty. There are exceptions, which I will cover later, but I have felt this way since childhood. Read More…
Have you seen yourself?
What is the one thing every driver has in common?
We all think every other person on the road is a complete moron.
No one can seem to change lanes properly. No one can text and drive quite as good. And when it comes to driving in the snow, forget it. We share the express way with the most incompetent people on planet earth.
It’s as if someone kicked open the doors to a psych ward and handed out car keys to every late-merging, nose-picking, lane-clogging knuckle dragger they could find.
“Get off the phone and drive, idiot!” you yell to the stranger ahead of you sitting at the green light. ”Sorry, what were you saying?” you ask the person you’re on the phone with.
People are so stupid. Think about it.
All bosses are clueless.
Most coworkers are useless.
Every other parent is doing it wrong.
If I were the Pastor…
If only others had my knowledge, my world view, my disposition, this world would be a better place.
Consider this: Read More…
The Importance of Unnoticed Work
This past Saturday, I spent all day, over twelve hours, working with two other guys on some much-needed projects at the church. We were busy hammering, sawing, painting, and cleaning. We fueled ourselves with Taco Bell and Starbucks Coffee—not a good combination—and worked late into the night.
The following morning when we joined the rest of the congregation for worship, not one person mentioned our contribution. No one said “Thank you,” or “We love what you’ve done with the place.” Nothing. How rude, right?
Not really. It’s not that we go to church with a bunch of self-absorbed jerks, though I’m sure there are a few in the fold. After all, what family doesn’t have issues? But, that wasn’t it.
No one recognized our efforts because they were hidden beneath the floor and tucked inside a breaker box. We spent the day fixing electrical issues and building wooden boxes for the cold air return vents.
Had we spent our time applying fresh coats of vibrant colored paint or remodeling our classrooms, someone would have taken notice. They would have commented on the work, even if only to express distaste for our color choices.
But what we did made no visual impact. It did nothing for the aesthetic quality of the space. Read More…
Anthony Garcia
NPR: Arts & Life
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