Father of the Bride

“Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” These were the words I heard in a wedding rehearsal on a recent Friday night. And, there I was holding back tears. I think becoming a dad makes a man sappy. I mean for Christ’s sake it was just the rehearsal. And, my friend’s dad had just walked the wedding coordinator down the aisle. And, the wedding coordinator was too old and too mean to be a beautiful bride. So, why was I tearing up? I think it’s just the idea that a dad would give his daughter to be married to a man. That’s why I hope I never have a daughter to have to give away. I would probably kidnap her and lock her away rather than let her marry some dude that might not treat her as nicely as her mom and I would have.

I also almost cried during a visit to the movies recently. Janet Jackson’s character in “Why did I get married, too?” announced that she and her husband were getting a divorce. And, then they pursued to fight, one wanting to be married and the other refusing. And, the final chapter of the movie ends with them fighting and the husband being involved in a car accident. And, I sat there thinking I never want to be that couple. Once you’ve invested that amount of time into life with a person, you should fight for your love. I’m not saying that I’ll know how to do that if ever faced with the situation, but I hope I learn.

So, I know all of this is random, but guess what? On Friday, June 25, 2010, Kimberly (Patrice) Washington Wright will have been my wife for five (count them, 1-2-3-4-FIVE) years!! Her mom and dad gave her away and I hope they are happy with the decision. I hope to be her beau for many many more years -- maybe like 55 more. So that means we can have no divorces and no car accidents that could potentially leave us grieving for years.

Have you ever had a day like this?

Here's a great little entry on Thabiti Anyabwile's blog that made me laugh, mainly because it characterizes my life. I know exactly how the dinosaurs felt.

I Know Exactly How the Dinosaurs Felt

Are we the crazy ones?

Better yet, am I the crazy one?

Okay, I don’t shy away from the fact that I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And, I consider myself to be a follower. There’s lots of ways that people describe that. Some say that they are “saved”, “born again”, “a Christian” and there are many other ways to categorize the fact that you’ve trusted in Christ for your salvation. Now the tough part is that there are many world religions all with rather different purposes and different gods. And, today we live in a world where everyone has a voice and right to be heard for who they are and what they believe in. And, there are many in this era that would say of the many world religions and the many gods that there are several “paths” to God. But, with Christianity, it is not so. Those whose hearts are being molded by the savior, Jesus, know that he is the only way to God.  There is no convincing them otherwise.

So, the question I have is this, are those of us who claim to follow Christ (and not only follow him, those of us who claim to follow him correctly), are we the crazy ones?  Lots of people reject Christ out-rightly by saying they don’t believe him. Others reject him though they say they follow him, there is no fruit in their lives to say that they do follow him; because their lives look an awful lot like the lives of those in the world. (See 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 to know why this is rejection). And still others claim to follow him but mainstream Christians reject them because they say they are not following right. Examples include Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, SDAs and others. So again, are we the crazy ones?  And even beyond that people from other religions say that he's a prophet or a good man but not "the" Son of the "the" only true and living God.  But, I believe in absolutes. So somebody in this world is right and someone is wrong.

C.S. Lewis made the following quote about Jesus:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.

So here I am.  I am following this Jesus guy as best I can in a corrupt culture and I am really starting to take him at face value when he says stuff like “love your enemies” or “you can’t serve God and money”. But, I really wonder some days if I’m the crazy one. So as you think about the quote above and you wonder if Jesus is lunatic. Whatever category you place him in, you’ve got to move me there too. If he’s the Son of God then he has and is making me a son of God. And, if he’s a lunatic, then label me in the same way. Just know I’m probably still evaluating too!

Much love!

College and Community

There I was in my driveway on Monday night, trying to repair a window that didn’t want to go back up after letting itself down. And, while doing this, the battery died in the truck. I knew it was dead when the window motor stopped making noise and the interior lights got really dim. So, to prove it to myself, I walked around the truck and turned the ignition… “Click, click, click” is all I heard each time I tried. Important lesson #1, the dude’s that change my oil told me I had a bad battery in December. It lasted almost til June. I think I have validation in not heeding their warning because I got six months more use out of the thing. Important lesson #2, I don’t know why or how, but for some reason we no longer have jumper cables or a car battery charger. These are essential to living with any vehicle. So, I bought a set of cables.

Now, for those that made it past the important lessons #s 1 and 2, the jumper cable thing got me to thinking. When I was in college, I had no fear of going across the hall and banging on a door when I needed something. In the dorm where I lived for four of my four and a half years of college, it was like a close knit community. But, here I stood 12 years post-graduation and I looked at my neighbors houses and decided I didn’t want to bother them. But, really, it would have been a great time to get to know them and possibly even share our life with them. But, instead, I got in the other vehicle, drove to Wal-Mart, bought jumper cables and came back to jump the truck off without any help from anyone.

I know I’m old school, but I like small towns and being friends with neighbors. Oh, if the world were a simpler place, I would move back into a college dorm, but somehow I don’t think my wife would go along with that. And, I’m sure it would be creepy for the 18 to 22 year olds too if I were bee-bopping around. So, I am going to make community where I am and I hope that you'll make community where you are. God created us for relationship. So go relate with somebody. Make a friend for life.

Much love peeps!

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, Huh?! Say that again!

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism – Not my words… It’s a phrase that I’ve been running across in recent months though. And, it is what most teenagers and young adults in America think about God. Breaking it down, it means the following: 1) Deism – there is a God who made the world and is out there somewhere. 2) Moralistic – All I’ve got to do is be a relatively good person and I deserve the best out of this life and I will go to heaven when I die. 3) When I need God, he should be there to attend to my needs. What I’ve just described is a sad reality if that’s what the young of our society gather about God.

In contrast, here’s what I believe about those three points. God, is the creator of earth and all that is in it. But, he has been intimately involved with his creation since the day he made it. He seeks to be glorified by his creation and he personally made the way of our salvation that we would glorify him with our lives. Secondly, as moral as we can be, outside of accepting the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross, we are all destined for a terrible end – eternal separation from God – in the form of hell. And, the reasoning behind that is, at our 'moralest', we are still haters of God and rebels that deserve to die because of our rebellion.  And, as for being there when I need him, he is never far from any of us, but that is not his chief aim in the world. Again, God is the creator, he is the one to be worship and adored – not us.

So, the point I’d like to make here is that we must know more about our God – the true and living God. It is important that Christians know what they believe and be able to articulate it. Beyond being able to articulate it, we must articulate it. And, I think in so doing, just by looking into what it is to be a follower of Christ, some of us might find that we haven’t been following him at all. And, in that case, there is an urgent matter of knowing that you know him because without him, we are destined to perish.

Much love!

Roots

Okay, some of you will see the title of this entry and wonder if I’m going to cover the book written by Alex Haley covering the history of his family from Africa into slavery in America. Some others of you may see the title and think of black magic. I can’t think of how many times I’ve seen an infomercial where somebody says, “She put a root on me!”, exclaiming that someone had done something through use of an old evil practice to hinder that person’s progress through life. And, lastly some of you know that I’m just an old country boy who spent too much time in the hay fields and the woods of rural Sumter County, Alabama. So armed with that knowledge, you might think I’m going to cover horticulture. But, none of these are it.

Instead, I want to talk about the root of who we are and what we do. I recently met a seven year old kid. In him I saw lots of things that had a root of some sort. And, by that word root, I mean an origin. And, in the experience I learned things about myself that I wondered, what are the origin of these? My experience with this little guy made me question where his parents were and what they were thinking to not bring him up with a solid structure? It seemed that he had wondered through most of his life not experiencing real love; the kind of love that I received from my immediate and extended family when I was his age. They thought enough of me and of themselves to guide me through life. Their love affirmed me when I did well. It guided me when I lost my way. It corrected me when I was wrong. But, I looked at this little guy and it was as if he had no consistent affirmation when he did well. He was lost but he fought the very idea that anyone could show him the way. And, he found for himself that he was never wrong. It was only those that offered guidance and correction that could be wrong.

So, to the root of the matter, how far back does blame go for one child who is passed from home to home, never staying long enough to really soak in real love and experience what it is like? And, I am partially to blame because he passed right through here but I find some challenges are indeed too much for one man and his family when work and many other things are calling. Oh, I pray that God helps us to get something right before we leave this earth. Help us to love and help us to explore our roots and eliminate the cause of shallow ones –roots that is.

Much love my friends!
J. Wright

Toes

Okay. This has nothing to do with my toes. Because if you ever saw my toes which have been battered by many door facings, many bed posts, many sofa legs, and most of all the front of my running shoes, it would send you running for the hills so fast and so far that you’d get lost in the process.  So instead, see Baby Caleb's toes.  They're much nicer than mine.

Instead this post is about one of my favorite songs by a person who is somewhere on my list of favorite music artists. Norah Jones sings this song – Toes. And, the phrase that is key is that “[her] toes just touched the water”. This song reminds me of life here with people around us. When the current is swift and strong, we should be jumping in to live life deeply and intentionally, but instead we play around the edge daring to only dip our toes into what could have been.

We prefer life on the bank of the river where we can talk about sports, the weather, and our favorite TV shows. And, when that wears out, we can talk about other people and their faults to take the attention off of ourselves. Instead, we should be going deep, talking about our own needs, our own faults, our own true successes. And, then we should turn our attention to the world around us with love in our hearts and address the deepest need that it has—the need for a Savior King to redeems us from our fallen state. So, friends jump in (if you know how to swim) and show someone who you are and be a friend to someone that needs you.  I wrote this mostly for myself.  I owe a group of people an apology because I feel called to go deep with them but instead I dabble around the edge in bitterness and judgmentality.  And, hopefully soon, I'll have the courage to do that.  :)

Much love my friends!

For a play of the song, here ya go