A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

I have a routine of sorts, a commitment that I have made to myself and a promise to the Creator God.

I won’t eat each day until I have spent time in the Word and time in prayer. My standard is to spend as much time feeding on the Word and in conversation with God as I might spend at the table feeding my physical body.

My prayer time is spent walking. If I were more time conscious I’d walk faster or even run and pray to get more out of my time/effort. I used to do it that way. Not any more. Now I just walk, saunter, trod, mosey along because my intent is to pray, think, listen, and pray. To exercise my spiritual self, not my physical self. My prayer walk is not particularly pleasant to the senses. There are lots of houses on one side, busy roads on the other, parking lots and even a large factory and some office buildings. There is one stretch that is especially unpleasant when I look down, so I don’t, remembering that the reason I am out on the walk is to look up. Sometimes, I also push Mia along. Perhaps some day she’ll ask me what I am doing, and I will tell her. Read the rest of this entry »

The great Samuel Johnson famously said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

I wonder how Dr. Johnson would have characterized the several million people who publish various thoughts on the Internet under what are called “blogs” and pass them off as writing? Are they writing for money, are they blockheads, or are they perhaps writing for some other reason?

All of the above are true. Some write blogs for money, some for fame, and some write because they can’t help but write. None of those make the writing good, except in this way: if someone has a gift, a facility, a talent for writing and uses it, even in writing a blog, that is good because the gift is being used. The worst way to treat a gift is to fail to use it. No one has to convince Barack Obama of that.

The president-elect of the United States seems to have a gift for marketing and public relations, especially when it comes to marketing himself. It is far from clear to me that he has a gift for leading, a gift for making tough choices, a gift for grace, or even a gift for change, because all of those things get swallowed up in the marketing.

President-elect Obama has now created a web site dedicated to — you guessed it — more marketing and p.r. for President-elect Obama. He’s already started campaigning for his second term (in fact he started doing so publicly in his speech on election night) and I’m confident we’ll continue to see that (and more) on a regular basis for the next two months or so. By that time he’ll have to actually start doing the job of President and stop campaigning for a while, and I fear it will be a shock to his system.

So I’m just a little concerned: I want Obama to be an excellent president, and I’m praying for that. And I want him to use his gifts in ways that honor God. But it seems to me that his best gift — self promotion –  is not a gift with which that is easily done.

In the sense of foretelling the future, I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. Eli Stone can’t say that, but I can.

There have been times, though, when I have — and I know this sounds very strange — “known” what was going to happen in the future. Call it insight, call it deductive reasoning, call it a hallucination, or call it a lucky guess, but I have known. You might even call what I have known “prophecy,” but I stick with my earlier statement about neither nor the son of.

Was Minister Louis Farrakhan acting as a prophet when he called Barack Obama “the Messiah?” To be fair, his statement might have meant that Jesus (the Messiah) was speaking through Obama. The proof he offered for his outrageous statement, in either case, was that young people were listening to Obama. Young people also listen to rap music, Shrek, and Big Bird, but I digress.

My point is that I foretold Obama’s ascendancy to the Oval Office years and years ago, probably during the 1996 DNC. (I used to live in Illinois, and the boy made a splash when Carol Moseley Braun was the first African-American woman to win a senate seat and he was credited with helping her do so.) Had I been a betting man, I would have known to call Ladbroke’s and get down 10 quid on Obama to win. Then on January 21, 2009, I could have retired. Instead, I’ll be continuing to work and pay taxes, only now I’ll probably pay more of them.

Obama himself is prophecying a “changed” future. That’s pretty easy — there is a new sheriff in town, so change seems likely — but what is tough is figuring out where the change will occur. One place that might happen is within Obama himself.

In fact I’d predict that, except that I am not a prophet.

I like to play indoor games, pretty much any kind that relies more on strategy than chance. It’s fun to play people who give their all, even to something as trivial as checkers.

What ruins a game for me is to have an opponent who gets so consumed by the competition that a loss makes them bitter and angry. I’ve seen such players display poor sportsmanship so that they lash out verbally or throw components of the game. Who can forget John McEnroe and his insults and racquet-throwing? 

Running for a political office is another kind of game, albeit one with much higher stakes. We’ve seen candidates do all kinds of things in the wake of an election, hoping somehow to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Does the phrase “hanging chad” ring any bells? Or remember how last year’s electoral corruption threw the supposedly stable country of Kenya into a frightening degree of turmoil?

Something in us wants to fight to get our way, to be recognized for our effort and ability. I’ve been chased all over the chess board, long after I should have just tipped my inept king over and admitted, “Enough!”

It takes a strong person to admit defeat, and to do so with grace and humility. Knowing personally how difficult that can be, I appreciate the way John McCain, during the U.S. presidential election 2008, conceded defeat to Barack Obama as soon as polls closed in California: 

The American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly. . . . I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences, and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited. . . . It is natural — it’s natural tonight to feel some disappointment, but tomorrow we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again. 

A thrice-quoted statement in the Bible speaks to this: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5).

I wonder what shape God’s “grace” will take in terms of McCain? in terms of me?

How do you know when God is trying to tell you something?

That’s a question a lot of Christians ask, and probably a lot of non-Christians, too. The truth is, although it sounds like a cop-out to some people, you just know. Take my brother, for instance, who knew that a knock on the head was a message from God.

My brother and sister-in-law (Bill and Dee Dee) live in Virginia where they are alpaca farmers. (If they did this same activity in the west it would be called “ranching.” In the east, raising anything on the land, including animals, is called “farming.”) Anyway, they have a place called Rivanna River Farm, around 20 acres of very pretty land with hills and trees and the Rivanna River running through it. And they raise alpacas.

Anyway, here’s the part about the knock on the head… Read the rest of this entry »

WARNING - This post is about golf…sorta…and doing the wrong thing…mostly…and paying for it in the end.

How does a sinner’s mind work? I don’t know about yours, but I reluctantly share here how my mind works.

I was hanging out at the Samsung LPGA World Championships in Half Moon Bay hoping secretly that the preacher was eating his heart out because I can smooze with Lorena Ochoa, the world’s #1 and Annika Sorenstam #2, and…okay, the world’s top 20golfin’ girls.

Feeling pretty good about myself because I can do what others cannot is the first step a sinner takes. Call it pride, I suppose.

Hole number four is a long one - 481 yards par 5. The neat thing, I think, is that to the left there is a long stretch of overgrowth. I usually notice these things because when I play my golf balls are quite apt at finding such places.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I was in high school about a hundred years ago, my grandfather said I should take typing and shorthand, courses rarely taken in those days by boys. His real reason might have been to get me to meet girls, but he said it was because those skills would be useful all my life. I looked around and noticed that my dad needed to type for his job, that papers often had to be typed, and so I took typing.

I got to be pretty good, but I never in my life learned to type like this:

The artist, er, typist of this piece was a man named Paul Smith, who was born in 1921 with severe cerebral palsy. You can read more about him, and see more of his amazing typing, at this web site.

Mr. Smith passed away in 2007, but he continues to inspire today. Seeing what he did, reading about his life and spirit, inspires me, in fact. Maybe it will inspire you to be patient with yourself as you work on your gifts and “keep on keeping on.” Maybe it will inspire you to not think of someone with an illness as less than they are. Maybe it will inspire you to glorify God with your life and gifts. Or maybe you’ll just look at this amazing work and wish you still had a typewriter.

“You Have Arrived”

How do you know when you get there?

That sounds like a simple enough question to answer, assuming you know the destination. And that isn’t always obvious.

Take my adventures during this past week, for instance. My wife and I, along with her mother and her brother and his wife, all planned on going on vacation together in Hawaii. You will note there are two destinations in that statement, and we only arrived at one of them.

The good news is, the one we failed to reach was the least important. We tried for two days to find adequate space on one of United Airlines‘ flights to Kauai, even traveling to Los Angeles in hopes of getting on a plane there. But we didn’t have any success, and the odds did not look good for the next day, either.

Realizing that our real destination was vacation, and not Hawaii, we selected a different geographical location — one that could be reached by car — and the next day found ourselves enjoying the beauty and relaxation of California’s Gold Country. (We might have headed east sooner, but our luggage did make it to Hawaii, so we made one more trip to San Francisco International Airport to retrieve it before leaving. That was the closest we came to the Islands, with the possible exception of using some Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen one day.)

As we headed for the hills, my brother-in-law put the address where we were staying into his GPS unit, and as we pulled up in front of the house the unit announced, “You have arrived.”

“Good to know,” I remarked. And I silently wondered if one day I would hear similar words from God.

But there are destinations to be reached before the ultimate destination, and one of those, the destination of spiritual maturity, is spoken of in Hebrews 5 and 6, especially in 6.1 which says, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity….”

Will you know when you get there? Will it be the place you thought you were going?

The Taliban admitted to being responsible for killing a Christian aid worker in Kabul.

Taliban gunment drove by on a motorbike in western Kabul and shot and killed 34-year old Gayle Williams as she walked to work. Her work, helping handicapped Afghans.

“This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to the people of Afghanistan,” militant spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press. “Our (leaders) issued a decree to kill this woman. This morning our people killed her in Kabul.”

How long, Oh Lord? How long?

The five last bastions of thinking are the car, the john, the shower, the church or synagogue, and the gym.

So says Joey Reiman, a “top” innovation consultant and CEO of BrightHouse (Inc. Magazine, June 2008, 102-03). On a page devoted to the topic, “how the creative stay creative,” the ideas included recommendations for organizations to:

• provide reflection-conducive space and time to think
• seek out diverse constituents
• reach across disciplines by inviting “luminaries” to speak and hang out
• publish inspiring thoughts, pictures, and articles for consumption by the group and beyond
• encourage flexibility by mixing up who does what on temporary teams to accomplish projects
• reward good ideas

and suggestions for individuals to:

• do something new, never before attempted
• be open to critique, ready for constructive interchange rather than defensive monologue

The notion that the church is a place to THINK is not commonly understood in our culture, but it’s spot-on. Far from being the “opiate of the masses,” the church community challenges participants to grapple with ideas of life-changing and world-impacting scope, to interpret scripture and bring it to bear on the given scenario of our complicated lives.

But how does the church score on displaying and encouraging creativity? This seems to vary a whole lot more from congregation to congregation, but in general we could do much better in this area.

In the beginning, God created…