UnconditionalHurricaneLove

1836 confirmed deaths.
705 bodies never found.
175 mph winds.
$89 billion in ytd damages.
At least 3 countries greatly affected.
Category 5 label.
Katrina.
The costliest hurricane ever recorded. The sixth strongest winds. Top 5 deadliest ever. Katrina changed the face of an entire population. Millions of people lost their homes overnight. Some of them still have not returned. To say that Katrina had power to change things is an understatement. Lives. Geographical land. Mindsets. All of it changed in a rush of water. Powerful stuff -- those hurricanes.
I was chatting today with a student over Nantucket Strawberry-Watermelon juice from JP's Coffee. We were talking about love. Real love. Not just the between-a-man-and-woman kinda real love. But just simply real, unconditional love. What is unconditional love? This question made my mind go to a passage in Romans. I could remember the exact wording and what book it was in, but it took me a long time to find exactly where it was. I found it. Romans 5:8. "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." I began to think about Christ's entire gospel. His purpose. What He did. What He said while He was here. I thought about the question: "Was the cross the only act of 'unconditional love' that He expressed?" Did He, by chance, live unconditional love every moment? Could this be why so many people were attracted to Him? Isaiah says that He had nothing that we would physically want. There must have been something else. Did He have a catchy personality? Was He flamboyant? Did He have this great radio voice that everyone wanted to listen to? Or did He just simply love people? To the point that everyone following Him around could just feel it coming from Him? Like the warmth you might feel from a room heater? Was His expression of life-love as influencing and powerful as a hurricane?
Hurricanes bring... Devastation. Loss. Pain. Uncertainty.
Love brings... Renewal. Restoration. Healing. Affirmation. Safety.
To compare the two is just absurd. But not if you think solely about impact. Many people would tell you that Jesus changed a lot of things. They would use words like "revolutionary." They would say He was the most important person to ever walk the earth. But why? I think maybe it was because he, in full confidence of who He was, swept in over land like Katrina. Even though we knew Katrina was coming, there was no stopping her power. Jesus we knew would come too. And not even Katrina's power could have matched the power of Jesus' unconditional love in the lives of those He walked with -- of those He is still walking with. Unconditional love might just be the only thing that can really change anything at all. Think about it. What if we all loved each other unconditionally (I know this is an idealistic idea but I am just posing the question)? What if it did not matter what she looked like? Or how he smelt? Or how she talks? What if it did not matter what he did to me? What she did to me? Would there be changing power in that? What would happen?
Every time I realize I am giving someone conditional love, eventually my mind heads back to that Romans passage. Nothing anyone has ever done to me could possibly come close to the things I have done to Him on a daily basis. And yet... and yet... He still died for me. And has given His Spirit to continue walking with me.
We make so much of love nowadays. You see the word all the time. Everywhere. We use it to describe intensely something that we like. We use it to describe two people having sex. We use it along with food-chain slogans. And exclaiming to someone: "I do not love you anymore," might just be the worst thing that person ever remembers hearing. We hear people say things like: "Why can't we all just love each other?" People go to church and leave with a "Love Wins" sticker on their bumper. I think Satan loves how much we use the word. The more meanings we attribute to it, the less we understand the real meaning. Perhaps 1 Corinthians 13 can help clear a few things up.
Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love does not envy.
Love does not boast.
Love is not proud.
Love is not rude.
Love is not self-seeking.
Love is not easily angered.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil.
Love rejoices with truth.
Love always protects.
Love always trusts.
Love always hopes.
Love always perseveres.
Love never fails.
If we broke down unconditional love into all of its parts, this is what we would get. This is Jesus -- in 16 acts. Replace the word "love" with Jesus and it always works perfectly. Replace the word "love" with Nat and things get bumpy really fast.
Here is another passage that comes to mind. 1 John 3:16. "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." If this laying our lives down is to really be love, there are no conditions for who "our brothers" really are. I know for me whenever I read this passage and get to those last two words, my mind immediately goes to all the people I know who I would willingly die for (and not just literally dying for, but putting aside my own wants and desires). My mind automatically categorizes out all those people who I would rather not love like this. I can think of a few right now.
Lets travel back to that original passage in Romans. Here is what the verse ahead of verse 8 says: "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die." As much as verse 8 is a reflection of Christ, so verse 7 is a reflection of me. For a person I deem good, I might lay myself aside. But Christ, in this insane unconditional-love stuff, died for man while they were doing every kind of evil thing against Him. And we call Him a "revolutionary." I say He changed a lot of things. Hmmmm....
Imagine if we sought His definition of love? Just think about the implications. We will never totally get it right. But just think if we started asking God for strength to live out those 16 definitions? What if I started asking God for this strength?
There is no doubt that the quality of love with which Jesus showed was unlike anything anyone had ever seen walking the streets of a human city. As John 1:14 reads in The Message, "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son." Do not quickly move from those words. Read them again with your eyes. Close your eyes and picture the scene with your heart. He did not make sense. That is why it was so hard for so many people during Jesus' time to believe He was who He said He was. That is why it is still just as hard. If those who could see Him with their own eyes had trouble believing. How much more today? But... He was... simply put... the man-flesh expression of God's UnconditionalHurricaneLove.

Oh, to have UnconditionalHurricaneLove.

The Man from Ick

"Once there was a town called Ick.

The people of Ick had a problem – they were icky.

For some unexplained reason, everyone who was born in Ick ended up icky. Scientists, doctors, and experts from all over the world had tried to analyze the people of Ick, and although they all agreed that the people of Ick were icky, no one could agree on a cure. In fact, there was no cure.

The scientists, doctors and experts agreed that the only thing they could do would be to give people suggestions on how to cope with their ickyness.

But experts or no experts, everyone learned to cope in their own way. Some pretended they weren't icky. Some tried to keep busy and forget their ickyness. Others decided that being icky was better than not being icky… and they got ickier. Some just didn't care. But if you were able to get a person from Ick to be honest, they really didn't like being icky.

Well, you can imagine how many people arrived in Ick with a cure for ickyness. And you can imagine how many people were always willing to try each new cure that came along. And strangely enough, some of the cures seemed to work… for a while. But eventually, the cure would stop working and everyone would be icky again.

One day something happened that radically changed the people of Ick.

A long-time resident of Ick began to suggest publicly that he had a cure for ickyness. It was very difficult for the people of Ick to believe that a person who lived in Ick himself could have a real cure for ickyness.

But then something strange happened. One of the ickiest people in all of Ick believed in this cure and was changed. He simply wasn't icky anymore. Everyone thought it was just temporary and waited. But it didn't go away, and before long lots and lots of people started believing the man from Ick… and everyone who believed was cured.

It was incredible! And one would think that the people of Ick were overjoyed. But the people weren't overjoyed, and soon a town meeting was called.

The fact of the matter was, the business community of Ick had been built around the basic fact of people's ickyness. And with more and more people losing their ickyness, the economic future of Ick was threatened. After an extremely heated discussion, it was generally agreed that what appeared to be a cure for ickyness was probably like all the other so-called cures and would soon turn out to be a hoax. And since so many people were being misled, and since it was possible that many more people could be misled, and since a person who would perpetuate such a hoax on a community like Ick could affect the stability of Ick, the savior of Ick was asked to leave. He refused. He continued to cure people, and each day those responsible for the stability of Ick became more and more concerned.

One day, however, the savior of Ick disappeared. It caused quite a commotion, and no one to this day knows what happened. Some said he was done away with. Others said they actually saw him the day after he disappeared. But what was strange was that even though the savior of Ick was gone, people who believed in him and his cure suddenly would find their ickyness gone. And even though the majority of the townspeople were in agreement that this savior was a hoax, all those who believed in him were still cured.

The people who had lost their ickyness thought everyone would jump at the chance to be cured. They were sadly disappointed. Very few were even interested. So the ex-icky people did what they could to convince the icky people that their cure was not a hoax, and every once in a while someone would believe.

Apparently – this is only hearsay – a small group of ex-icky people began to worry that if they or their children associated too much with icky people, they might be contaminated or become icky again.

It wasn't long before these people banded together and moved to the top of Ick Hill, an isolated spot on the edge of town. They worked, shopped, and went to school in downtown Ick, and then returned to Ick Hill for their evenings and weekends. But it wasn't long before the people of Ick Hill became so fearful of contamination that they built their own school, market, gas station, and shopping center.

One morning, several months later, the people of Ick woke up to see Ick Hill covered by a large glass bubble. Ick Hill was now a completely self-contained community with everything completely under control.

One particularly cold morning, an icky person in the city of Ick noticed that there was no visible activity going on inside the glass bubble of Ick Hill. A rescue party was sent to see if everything was all right.

After breaking through the glass bubble, they were shocked to find the entire population of Ick Hill dead. Autopsies were ordered, and the cause of death was the same for all.

Suffocation."

That was a parable I found in the book: Get 'Em Talking. Written by Mike Yaconelli and Scott Koenigsaecker. Very intriguing.

Jesus Sitting In The Third Pew

Have you ever had a difficult time starting something? Maybe a sentence while talking to a friend or a paper you needed to write for that psychology class last semester? I know what I want to talk about but I am having "starters block."

What do you think about in the shower? Ok… I admit that is an awkward question to ask. This morning in the shower I was thinking about Jesus. I am reading Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What. I had just finished a long chapter titled: Jesus. In it, Mr. Miller sets out to describe who Jesus is. Although Miller is the anti-list, anti-formula writer, he gave a list of eight personality traits or facts he saw in Jesus after reading through all four gospels 10-times each. He wanted/needed to know who Jesus was for himself. The things Miller found were beautiful. Here they are: He believed all people were equal, He was ugly, He liked to be with people, He had no fear of intimacy, He was patient, He was kind, He was God, He is I AM. I know there are many more things to Jesus than just these eight items. Having spent the morning reading Miller's chapter on Jesus, I jumped into the shower with many thoughts rumbling around in my head.

I had this scene flash before my eyes: I enter the building where my church meets and walked toward the entrance to the Sanctuary. I scan the seats as I round the corner. A man is sitting in the third row from the front on the right side about 4 or 5 chairs in from the center aisle. He has dark hair. I see the man's head turning slowly from left to right, scanning the room in front of him. Every so often I see him put his head down and look at the ground. Something seems heavy on this person. I go to take a step toward the man when a bone in my body loudly creaks. I pause. The man hears the noise and turns his head to me, staring. I catch a glimpse of his eyes. I cannot describe them beyond the sadness that I saw. I knew almost immediately who it was I was looking at. It was Jesus. Jesus was sitting in the third pew from the front on the right side. I did not notice any color to his eyes (although I admit that my mind wanted so badly to give him blue eyes… I know Jesus did not have blue eyes). What I did see though was the sadness. He seemed to be speaking to me through his eyes. Saying to me that he was hurting here in this room. I said nothing to him. I partly knew why he looked so sad.

Why did Jesus come to die? Was it so we would have the freedom to spend half a million dollars a year on "running" the church? Was it so that we could have a stage with sound equipment and lighting and a candle burning and a pulpit and a table with plastic bread and a dusty wine goblet? Was it so we could have pews and chairs all lined up perfectly? Was it so that we could have budget meetings and be "good stewards of what God has given?" Was it so that we could join others who doctrinally and politically believed the same things we did? Was it so that we could come together for an hour once-a-week to hear some preacher dude bring down the house with his incredibly Spirit-inspired words that he wrote three days before? Maybe this is why Jesus came to die. Seems like such a small thing to come and die for.

When I looked into Jesus eyes and saw that sadness, I knew that he was saying to me: "Kevin, this is not what my message of life was supposed to be about. I love my Bride. But it seems that while my Bride was trying to find me and glorify me, she found something easier and more entertaining to care about. I just wanted to give her new life. A life filled with love and the realest relationships she could ever imagine. I wanted to give her myself." Jesus and I continued to look at each other in silence. Then the image faded from my mind.

It has me asking a lot of questions. I guess the first is: "Who is Jesus? Really?" I want to read the gospels with this question firmly in thought. The next few questions I have are these: "What would Jesus have to say about what His Bride seems all about?" "If Jesus came to heal the sick, why are we all trying to pretend like we aren't sick?" "What happened to the realness of the gospel and the power of the Spirit?" "What do all of our traditions really mean?" "What happened to genuineness?" "Why does the Bride look more like a business or golf club than a Kingdom under its righteous King's reign?"

I admit, these are just questions. I know intrinsically there is more to this life with Christ than we have right now… than I have right now. I know… and I have known for many years that something wasn't right. There is this self-focus to everything we seem to be about in church. God doesn't seem to exist beyond the many words we serve up each Sunday morning. Behind each of these questions lies my heart's true intent: "God, I want more of You! I need you to be REAL! I do not need the happy-thought of you. I need You!" I feel like I have lost sight of Him, because I have been more concerned with what others think. Men. Not God. Jesus seemed to be about healing and love and sacrifice. He looked at people in the eyes. He was patient, as Miller already stated. He cared about people. People were people in His eyes. His own creation… that He desired to bring back to His own perfect intent originally designed for them. People were not objects on a chess board to be moved about in a step-by-step preplanned-out process of winning a game, as I think the church seems to think we are. I AM NOT A CHESS PIECE! I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE GAME!

I have talked before about the hole I feel in my heart. I am realizing all the things I have tried to put in my heart to fill it. Girls… or more accurately a single relationship with a girl… have been my number one filler. Each time left me still empty and hurting. The number two thing I try to fit inside my heart is other people and everything that comes with having them acknowledge my existence. The number three thing is all the material possessions that seem to bridge a "happy-gap" from moment to moment in my life. The number four thing I have learned is I try to fill my hole with the church. I have looked for the church to answer the question: "What is the purpose for life?" I keep asking church to answer this question or that question and when it can't I get frustrated with it and call it mean names and storm off in the other direction. When all along I am just misusing it. All I really want is to feel validated. To be a part of something.

I am still figuring out why the Son of God came and sat in the third row of my church this morning in the shower. I guess I needed to see Him in there. And I suppose I needed to see the sad look on His face to know that there is more than I have been feeling. That church cannot fill my hole… only Christ can do that. But also to know that something is making Jesus sad about where His Bride is focused. Honestly, the umbrella leadership of the church looks not-so-different to that of the Pharisees. Jesus came up hard against the Pharisees. They made Him very sad and a little frustrated. He died for them too, you know. But they just wanted their law – a safety-net of right and wrongs. What they really were doing was waving their hand back and forth at God trying to draw His attention to themselves and say: "Hey, look what I can DO… look what I can DO!" They pushed God out of their everyday breathing. And we have not fallen so far from the apple tree.

Jesus. Let me see you again. I felt close to you this morning. I am sorry for the mess we've made of your Bride. I am sorry for my own involvement in that mess. I really just want to see You. Let's meet up again.

Papa > Hole.

Papa.
I am lost.
I do not know what I am doing.
I do not know who You are.
I hurt people.
I confuse people.
And all of this hurts You.
The love of the cross seems so far away right now.
I cannot see it.
I need You.
Only You.
Please, finally fill me.
I cannot go on like this.
With this hole in my heart.
An open wound is more susceptible to infection.
And that is what I have allowed in.
Infections.
Papa, I am gross.
And I need You to heal the wound.
To suck the infection out.
Because I keep making it worse.
I do not like this feeling.
I need You.
Please.
Let.
Me.
Feel.
You.

I feel so feel-less.

Please wake up.
Arise.
From this slumber.
Come quickly to my side.
Papa, come save me.
Snatch me from the thief's grip.
Rescue me from myself.

Fear.

Fear.
What is the fear of the Lord?
What does it mean to fear the Lord?
I would like to hear some thoughts. I have been thinking about this topic for a couple days now. I have lost the fear. "Come here Fear... come here. Sit... sit... good Fear. Now, who are you and what do you want with me?" When I thought for a moment that perhaps I have lost the fear of the Lord, the ground seemed to open up before me and a huge fire-breathing, black-silhouetted, Chihuahua-looking, winged creature rose up and, looking me up and down, snubbed its three heads, turned to give me his back in a sort of "I am better than you sort of way," and headed back down into the deep darkness from whence it came. I think that God is asking me to fear Him again. I have asked Him to help me fear Him.
What happens when we lose the fear of the Lord?
What happens when we do fear Him?