Grandpa died, but not really

I woke up early this morning and was pondering my late Grandfather. I was feeling somewhat melancholy because I felt like there were things I wanted to talk to him about, but just never did. Then I realized I had just had been dreaming and that of course he was still alive and kicking about 7 miles down the road. In the dream, there was a courtyard in a secluded corner of a public space. There were trees and plantings and such. It was quite a nice little setup. There were concrete tombs everywhere and another platform in the entryway to this space that had Germany inscribed upon it and also Wilser in another place. I was standing there with my Dad, and his best friend Brian. Oddly enough we had walked here with a man named Roy Crowder and his 3 six foot tall monkeys, although they had disappeared at this point. Roy was a big man you see, so he had to have BIG monkeys. Yeah I know, this is a weird dream.

My grandfather is a genius you have to know. He could probably build you a Blu-Ray Player in a couple of days time just with spare parts he could find in his garage. He will also fix your car, or your clock, or your 747 if you have one. He started a little company called Raleigh Flying Service in 1969 which had over 100 employees at one time in it's tenure. He ran it as a family business for 30 years before finally selling it in 2000. He was an old IBM guy that worked to produce the bar code system way back when. Yeah, I'm talking about the bar code that is on every product you buy in any store in most of the free world. It's possible that he even reads this blog, so this is sort of weird because he might be following along with us right now.

When I was lying there in my bed this morning, I was thinking of things that I wished I had talked to him about. Things like faith and spirituality and what it was like to be involved in World War II. Did he have any cool stories from being there. Hey Grandpa, are you aware that you say cuss words under your breath in almost any situation, like especially when we're driving around trying to find a bathroom because you have to take a steamer? Jerry Bruckheimer could probably make an action movie around my Grandpa's style of cussing. He really is better at swearing than Clint Eastwood, and he never uses the f-bomb. I'm talking old style swearing....the kind that comes with your dignity included.

So anyway, I'm glad that grandpa is still around for a bit longer. He's a cool guy, but very reserved. Maybe he'll open up and talk to me one day. Maybe he'll talk about His thoughts on God, or life or whatever. I hope he does. But if not, I'll just have to embrace the mystery of a man who loved his family in his own way, and left his insides up for interpretation. Not everyone can be as open as this blog you know....Monkeys? Really Alan?

Trendy Acts of Service

These thoughts are in reflection and summary of a sermon by Jeff Ramsey of Visio Dei Church in Raleigh, NC.

At the heart of my faith, I find a terrible dilemma within my own ability to be who I should be. Within the Western Christian church in general, there is a great pendulum swing between what you might call an emphasis on personal righteousness and conversely on Social Activism. You could also call Social Activism the performing of beautiful deeds to the world around us. These types of things are exemplified in drilling wells, caring for orphans and widows and so on. Few communities of believers have been found to exhibit a healthy balance of the two.

Over the past few years, our particular church community as a whole has become much more concerned with doing the great things around the world and within our community rather than be concerned about behaving perfectly in a personal righteousness sense. Honestly, some of us have enjoyed this position for quite some time, but as months turn into years we find ourselves facing an old problem with a slightly different face. We realize that our attempt to bring God’s goodness to the world around us, the projects in Africa, India, and Nicaragua simply become less and less cool. People stop caring or getting as excited about it. What is happening is that we are beginning to realize that it was all about ourselves in the first place. As we discuss this problem, and really get honest about it, we find that it was a road we had to walk and that ultimately, this new realization is a good one to have. The only problem is that the orphans at the Africa Hope Center are still orphans. The people in the Chinandega region of Nicaragua are still dying from the conditions in which they work, and people are going hungry and thirsty all over the world.

The good side to our problem is that swinging to the “doing beautiful acts” side of things only brings us back to an understanding that it is indeed WE who are broken and seeking to validate or even save our own selves. We find that there is some elusive balance to our lives that we can’t seem to correct, and so we experience God’s grace through Jesus once again in a new way. It is only with this grace that we can pick ourselves up and find center, or at least pursue center once more.

Titus 3:14 speaks of LEARNING to DEVOTE yourself to beautiful deeds. When the author speaks of learning to devote ourselves, He has to be talking about something we could call Conviction. Once this trendy good feeling wears off, you can either quit your efforts and go do whatever makes you happy, or you can revisit the true reason why your formerly trendy mission is in fact a good and beautiful thing and that perhaps Jesus Himself may have loudly or even with subtlety called you to this work.

I’m pretty convinced that any person who follows Jesus will come to this Crossroads at some point in their life, maybe even several times.

May we take the road towards maturity and allow our trends to become CONVICTIONS.