A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

Keith loves his shirts, especially the ratty, comfy ones. I’ve given up suggesting he throw them out or convert them to rags because he just says no, or, when pushed, “I prefer not.” I can’t fire his speaking coaches, Nancy Reagan and Bartleby the Scrivener. And I can’t just throw his stuff away without permission; I have my own integrity to maintain. What to do? I’m hoping a new strategy, admittedly passive aggressive, works: I leave the shirts hanging in the garage, where they stay in perpetuity, and he doesn’t see them because they are not in his closet. (Not gone, just “missing.”)

So today I put my plan in action. I went through our laundry limbo, the place where shirts are hung up upon their removal from the dryer. Instead of grabbing the whole lot to put away, I inspected each specimen for ragged collars and cuffs to leave behind. Mwoohahaha: I am woman, hear me roar.

Two men’s shirts stood out from the others. One, with a collar so frayed that only an outer layer of fabric remained attached, had been a $35 LL B–n catalog purchase for Keith’s birthday. It had shown significant signs of wear within a few months of acquisition (though two other Oxford shirts of exactly the same model and vintage still look great after a couple years’ wear). The other shirt, a Ralph Lauren Polo long-sleeved button-up, had been given to me 25 years ago, by my friend Patti Strawn, who scored it working an on-campus special sale; it still looks pristine.

I would have guessed that both of these shirts were high quality, but I would have been wrong. The costlier one was a complete waste of money (well, except that Keith really, really, really liked it), and the freebie would have been well worth the high retail value.

If you don’t have experience with fill-in-the-blank, it can be hard to judge what is treasure and what is trash. You’ll see what I mean at any garage sale. Sometimes you just have to hang out with something for a while before it becomes apparent what is what. But when you figure it out, for heaven’s sake — no, for your own sake — take out the trash!

Jesus had his own way of figuring out what had worth. As he put it,

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (NIV)

On Sunday, October 12, 2008, a significant part of the Palo Alto Church of Christ participated in worship service.

We often call — as do other churches — a “normal” Sunday morning gathering of the members a “worship service,” but it isn’t, really. We might be closer if we called it “a time of worship,” or “a gathering for worship,” but there is seldom any service to it.

In fact, there is so little actual service that the word service has come to mean (and this is the third meaning in my little dictionary) “a ceremony of religious worship according to a prescribed form; the prescribed form for such a ceremony : a funeral service.”

Now that describes most of our Sunday mornings. No, I don’t meant the funeral service, I mean the “worship according to a prescribed form” part. Ten songs, five from The Red Book, five from The Blue Book, three linked prayers (two for communion, one for offering), two prescribed prayers (opening and closing), one sermon (not too long), and a partridge in a pear tree.

We are not unique in doing almost exactly the same thing on one Sunday that we did the previous Sunday and that we will do the next Sunday. Many churches fall into a pattern, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. At least not until the form becomes more important than the content, or the outcome.

But this past Sunday, as I wrote earlier, we participated in worship service. How? We served people, and in doing so we worshiped God.

Would that all our worship were that genuine, that it would put us in such proximity with God.

In case you were wondering, the Sun has been going through a quiet phase this year.  Most news agencies ignore things that are working well preferring instead to report on the stock market, or some natural disaster. It turns out that every 11 years the Sun’s magnetic field sorta re-configures itself.  We are in the midst of a very quiet period of time right now. For the Sun.  That means there are very few sunspots and solar flares happening.   Most people go along and take for granted this star that our lives depend upon and never give it a second thought.  But, if you look a little closer, you will see the wonder of the thing right before your eyes, well at least those people reading this during the daylight hours.  Oh, and I suggest you use something safe to view the sun, like the internet.

Solar Picture

I’m a fan of quiet.  I’m glad our sun is a warm star, not too hot, and not too cold, but just right.  It would be more interesting if we had a double star, but then our solar system probably wouldn’t have nearby rocky planets to live on, so we have to live with our boring quiet medium sized star.  Still, I find it quietly speaking to me.  Psalms 19

Did anybody else notice that the PACC blog now has a Page Rank of 2? That and $5 will get you breakfast at Peet’s. But, PR2 is better than PR0 and closer to PR4 or 5.

Page Rank is a valuation that Google places on a blog that takes into account content originality, longevity of the blog and consistency in posting as well as frequency of comments and their quality as well. Of course, Google is apt to have more variables in its algorithm for determining PR, but these are the basics.

There are debates in the blogosphere about how to please Google, how to climb the PR ladder, how to please the Landlord, John would say.

PR is important to some. The better the PR the more apt a writer is to be heard/read/found by the multitudes when they write about current events. The more a writer is read, the better the PR, the more they are read…this kind of thing.

It’s interesting that the first two letters in Google are the same as the first two letters in the name of the the one we want to please…God. Though, make no mistake about it, the similarities stop there as far as I am concerned. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we had a power outage for about 10 hours, from mid-afternoon until after midnight.  This had an impact on our family life in several ways, including what we had for dinner, what we did after dinner, and what time we went to bed.

The absence of electrical power was definitely noticed in my household.  My 12-year-old son in particular missed his computer time and emailing his friends.  My 9-year-old daughter made do with the Nintendo DS.

What do you notice when it’s missing?  And is that good or bad?

I read somewhere (maddeningly, I forget where), what if the Bible and everything it said were suddenly to disappear?  What would life be like?  (Or something like that.)

At the Pepperdine Lectures last April, one of the teachers asked, if the Holy Spirit were missing in the time of the book of Acts, what would have been the difference in what the apostles did?  In contrast, if the Holy Spirit were missing in the life of many churches today, what would be the difference in what the church leaders do?

Shane Claiborne said,

As my teacher Tony Campolo used to ask, “Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus?  Would you follow him for the life, joy, and fulfillment he gives you right now?” … No wonder the early Christian church was known as the Way.  It was a way of life that stood in glaring contrast to the world.

What difference does His power make in your life?

Matthew 25.31-45 is a powerful and challenging section of scripture. A question asked there is, “When did we see you a stanger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?”And Jesus’ reply is this: “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.”

Here’s how you can do exactly that. Read the rest of this entry »

So, I’m hanging out at a friend’s house while I am in Vegas. I’d tell you who but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Anyway, this friend is moving out and told me I could pick and choose from the pile of books that was on the floor. Thinking, I’ll need something to read on the plane on my way home, I pick up The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell.

As many of the PACC folk know about me, most of my thoughts, (Okay all of them) are things I think, conclusions I have come to after much thinking and not something I picked up in a book, unless it were the Good Book. So, I am often hesitant to say “I read in a book…” But, I’ll give it a try here. In the first chapter I came across some thoughts by Colin Powell that I thought might be worth mulling over given that PACC is in the process of choosing who will be her leaders.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was supposed to leave tomorrow for Miami to enjoy a short visit with my brother and our two cousins, but instead when I got up this morning I sent them all this note:

It started Thursday night, picked up steam on Friday night, kept building through Saturday and, even though I slept 12 hours Friday night and Saturday night and left church right after the sermon on Sunday, hit me like a freight train last night.

After 14 hours (mostly) in bed last night, my chest is still rattling like a toy in a playpen, and my breathing is as shallow as the thinking of a philosophy freshman. Food turns to ashes in my mouth, I can count every pore on my arms and legs as they stand at attention every time I touch something even mildly cool, and I have the energy of a triple-A battery that’s been running the Hoover Dam for a day.

The good news is that I’ve lost about 3 pounds in water weight, although my sheets last night looked like someone had mistakenly watered them instead of the four potted flowers on our patio.

Every time I have a bad cold, or the flu, or whatever combination of things I have, I think about these words: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” That is 1 Corinthians 1.25, and Paul goes on to write, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.”

As humans, we think of ourselves as being quite strong, very wise, and able to accomplish all we can dream through our cleverness, perseverance and strength. And we certainly can do a lot, but we cannot cure a common cold.

I know that Paul’s words have a deeper meaning than that, but I think they apply to my condition — being human. And once again I am humbled by the wisdom and strength of God.

May God give you wisdom and strength this day that are not of this world and not of your own doing, but are straight from the source.

And, if you feel like I do at the moment, may he also give you some chicken-noodle soup.

The old quote from Mark Twain, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand,” is both humorous and true for many of us. One of the explicit statements in that quote is that there are, in fact, parts of the Bible that we cannot — or at least do not — understand.

Some of that is quite, well, understandable, because even God tells us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55.8-9, NASB)

But sometimes our failure to understand the Bible is our own failure. We don’t dig, we don’t work, we don’t ponder, we don’t observe, we don’t practice, we don’t ask for help — from people or from God — and we move on too quickly. The result is that we become “dull of hearing” and we fail to progress, or perhaps even go backwards, in our ability to understand what God has to teach us (see Hebrews 5.11-14).

I was reminded of that just this morning when I received Read the rest of this entry »

As an adult, I’ve learned to extract a lot more fun out of life than I ever did as a (boring) child. At almost every minute of the day, there is entertainment to be had, no matter whether a person is working, eating, talking, walking, or whatever. Don’t you agree?

One potentially amusing activity people naturally do with folks they like is called “mirroring.” As a way of establishing rapport, we imitate each other or respond in kind to a given statement or action. When I say, “Well, hello, Mr. B!” Bill, if he feels like playing along, will respond, “Well, hi, Mrs. M!” (We don’t imitate each other too exactly because that looks and feels like mockery, an expression of disdain.)

Sometimes people don’t want to engage in this verbal and behavioral play. Maybe they don’t like us, don’t get it, or can’t be bothered. When I visited Paris, France, several years ago, I would get radically different responses from waiters and shop clerks depending on whether I first engaged in light pleasantries (”Ca va?” “Ca va bien.” “Bien.”), or cut to the chase in my efficient American way (”Two baguettes, please.”) In the former scenario, whoever I dealt with would be warm and friendly for the rest of the interaction. In the latter, they would turn cold and taciturn, even brusque and rude.

God engages in this kind of play with us, where the initial kickoff occurred “in the beginning” when he created us “in his image.” He placed us in the best arena ever conceived, and explained the one rule of the game: “don’t eat from that tree.” It wasn’t long, though, before the beautiful symmetry was broken. By chapter 3 of the story, we had eaten from it, felt fear, sewn clothes, and hidden. Most of the rest of Scripture is devoted to showing how God tries over and over again to reestablish that early relationship of naked trust and delight. His all-hands-in appeal is made when he joins us in the physical form of Jesus, a form we recognize and relate to.

It’s a long, slow dance from where he started in making us like him to the incarnation when he made himself like us. But it’s all mirroring and all for the purpose of drawing us to him for life, for play, for fun and joy.

The question is do we have the will, wit, stamina, and spiritual discipline to respond in kind? How can we deliberately mirror God?