5.9.2020 - week 54
on my friend darrin
my friend went to be with the lord this week in a hunting accident. the details are still a bit fuzzy, but i know he’s gone. my heart is just broken for him and his family.
darrin went through a different version of some what has happened in my life. a church fight for control masquerading as a morality crusade. he was treated poorly by many he had selflessly served. he was a good man who made his mistakes just like anyone, but had a tremendous love for god and people and pastors. he loved the st. louis cardinals so much it makes me want to puke just thinking about it. he was a proud dad and had a really fun juvenile sense of humor that always made me laugh. in one of those random life who knows how things, the day reid was born, he happened to be in town visiting my dad and ended up in the hospital room as like the 12th person to meet my second born human dynamo son.
i don’t have a lot of profound words to say about the tragedy, just a tremendous sadness. i also have a desire to acknowledge that he exemplified so much of what i have written about in this space over the last year to me personally. self-less-ly listening and offering encouragement when i was really down. he didn’t offer easy answers or christian platitudes, just kindness.
please join me and pray for his wife, amie, and their 4 children.
KG Korner
(a few wise words from lady kristen macdonald)
Tomorrow we celebrate mothers! Motherhood is a gift and yet it can be the most challenging, underpaying job on the planet. And as we turn the page on the calendar we would be remiss to not recognize all the groups that this day affects. There are those who are “celebrating” (if you could call it that) mother’s day without their mom. There are those who have a pained or strained relationship with their mom and although they want to celebrate her they don’t know how to do so without a painful conversation or wondering if they will hear back. There’s the young woman who dreams of being a mom someday but hasn’t found her mate and is wondering quite frankly if it’s ever going to happen. There’s the woman who has been trying for years and her fertility whether explainable or not is just wishing this “holiday” could be thrust into the wind. There’s the new mom who is tired out of her mind but struggling or maybe delighted because she’s being celebrated in this role as a mother even though it’s a lot harder and more wonderful than she ever could have imagined! There’s the mom who can’t think straight because of all of her kids and she wonders if she is going to make it through homeschool, quarantine, working from home - it all never ends. Or the mom of high school and college students who is willing to connect in some way shape or form and thus she’s taken to learning tik toks or watching the incessant tik tok dances. Then, there’s the mom of grown children who just hopes that her kids remember that she had the best and hardest job ever raising them and although she didn’t do it perfectly she tried her dang best and sacrificed a lot in the process and quite honestly wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I don’t know if it’s possible to meet all of those women in all of these varying circumstances, but as I walked through the Proverbs this week a nugget of truth came to mind that I hadn’t quite come to before.
Whether I have a room or a house or a mansion I can transform the whole place with my heart attitude to bless those around me.
As women we are a powerful force - God gave us this beautiful gift of getting to experience life in this full circle way and so much of what we do has no regard to what our actual home looks like. Just as we have figured out in the last few months that a church is so much more than a structure with a steeple, the home is so much more than the four walls. And as I worked through the proverbs so much of what we do doesn’t have regard to the money we spend but to our hearts.
Proverbs 31 reminds me that I can be a WOMAN who can chose to daily
...invest in the people right in front of us,
...we can fill our homes with peace,
...we can bring levity and love and laughter,
...we can leave people with a perspective of a full cup,
...we can exude joy,
...we can build trust,
...we can do good to those in our care or our reach,
...we can love with fairness and kindness in our speech
...we can let our family know that we value them by serving them with excellence and letting them know they are God’s good gifts to us,
...we can show generosity in our words, time and energy.
...we can nourish our own relationship with God so that we operate from a place of strength & dignity.
What a gift we can be to those around us no matter what position we are in. One of my favorite verses in the whole chapter is verse 30, it says, “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” The truth of the matter is that what is cultivated inside us because of the Lord is the most beautiful gift to those around you. I pray your home would rise up and call you blessed because you don’t live perfectly, but you set out each day to fill your walls with blessing those in your care whether you’re a mother or not.
cup of leadership
in my heart of hearts, i don’t believe in the masks. don’t believe they make a difference or really keep anyone safer. i could be wrong, but that’s my genuine intuition. but i’m wearing one where asked and doing so gladly. why?
because lots of people around me believe they will help. and they might be right. and even if they aren’t, romans 14 says to me that we need not pick a fight or upset people just to prove a point. right now in our world, many of us seem to be becoming SUPER versions of our weaknesses. more conspiracy minded or more fearful or more antagonistic to authority or more selfish or more obsessed with being right or more argumentative etc.
this small visible thing is a symbol to me of kindness and long suffering with the community around me .. if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. (rom 12.17-19), food for thought :)
(please please please don’t send me some video that DEFINITIVELY PROVES anything, i won’t watch it and that’s not my point, love you)
book review
a world class author looking back on his journey as a professor and public christian, reflecting on the darkest bits of his life? yeah … it’s great. buechner is great for evangelicals to read because he doesn’t share our assumptions or vocabulary. coming from a different angle, we can see different things. this book is a quick read, reminded me of some of the best nouwen books. i found his candor refreshing and think your will too.
every church and non-profit leader should read this book. in our desire for excellence, we have borrowed mindsets from the world of business that don’t serve us well. the ‘game’ we are playing lasts forever, has shifting rules, and our reward for success is continuing to play. i have loved sinek’s other books, but this is his most important work yet. sinek fundamentally believes that we treat employees like we don’t trust them, and they reward us by being untrustworthy. in the ever evolving world of leadership thinking, he is advocating for calling to people’s best selves and expecting them to show up. i was forced to see some wrong ways of thinking i have used in the past, but even more i was inspired to think bigger in the future. read the little snippets … i think you will be inspired.
content this week
if you need some encouragement, my wednesday night sermon (along w worship + prayer) are on youtube. the message was titled, ‘memorizing the melody of god’s voice’
the mac pack wack world of sports (my 3 elementary school sons sports show) is BACK with episode 6: a ranking of the top 10 kids sports shows of all-time + chicago bears draft opinions.
(they really want to get 100 views on this one, so click away)
verse of the week
the lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is for God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and
the love that you have shown for his name in
serving the saints, as you still do.
hebrews 6:10
pieces of good news I saw this week
1. there’s lots of those zoom choir vids floating around .. the pure verticality of this one blessed my heart, WOAH .. check this.
2. jerry seinfeld is back on Netflix with a new comedy special. it’s him through and through. amazing observations and smug new yorker vibe. i loved it.