When she sits behind the wheel of her white pickup truck the world seems livable. When she looks out the window she sees the beauty of an uninterrupted creation. A creation that has no faults or errors. However, when she starts driving her pickup down the highway at a mere fifty miles an hour, she starts to see the side- effects of a lost and alluded reality. She drives over road kill, gets honked at for going too slow, and even feels the anger rise up in her heart as someone cuts her off.

Living faith is a lot like driving a pickup truck. The first time you get behind the wheel you have a sense of excitement and wonder. You feel a certian amount of freedom from your old life of asking for rides to your new life of independence. There is a sense of excitment and sense of legalism when a person enters into the faith. We throw away all of our "bad" c.d.'s. We burn all our "bad" books, we throw out all our "bad movies" and we live in a world of compete abstinance. We don't cuss, drink, spit on the floor. We become perfect moral beings.

We live in a moral perfection until we get hurt by another christian, or until we are confronted by a situation where morals don't apply.

Our perfect morality that starts our faith journey off suddenley comes to a hault as we realize that Jesus didn't come and die so that we could be good, neat, moral beings.

When we find ourselves living by our own moral standards we find ourselves treating our faith cheaply. The reason I say this is because when we balance our own lives on the thread of morality we are living in the shallow end of the pool. We have created our own personal law and that at times becomes an idol. The church often gets focused on doing. The church often gets focused on saying. If we do and say then we will achieve our salvation. If we serve the church until our fingers fall off and if we say that we are christians until we loose our voice we still are not grasping the reality of faith. Doing and saying are wonderful venues of showing people the Gospel. But they are not the foundation of our faith.

Our faith cannot be morality, or actions, or words.

Our faith is believing the story and living it out. Not just teaching the story, or praying the story, or moralizing the story, or acting the story, but actually believing the story.


When we believe the story we seek to holistically represent the Gospel in our human existence.

Our faith will bind our divided parts. Our faith will be a catalyst and a sustaining reality in bringing us into completion through Jesus.


But, we first have to believe in the story.

Sunday School

                                           "God blesses those who mourn,

                   for they will be comforted."
Matthew 5:4

Don't take scripture for granted. Scripture will reach you in your humanity when you decide to soak your life in it. I have decided to teach the sermon on the mount to my Sunday School class. I have a group of young women who have been in church together since they were little.

The Sermon on the Mount was meant for the kingdom people to digest. Jesus is teaching with an expectation for people to wet their appetite and to devour his words with an absolute hunger. He is not teaching to a group of people who are going to walk away and forget his words. He is not teaching to luke warm people. Jesus is teaching to a group of men who will be rembered for living out these words, throughout their lives and throughout their deaths.

I was studying the beatitudes because it will be the first section of scripture that I teach. While I was reading the mourning verse caught my eye. Blessed are those who mourn. This seems so odd at first. When I think of mourn I think of someone mourning the loss of a family memeber, or a friend. This is true to some extent. However, it is a very narrow view point of a mourner.

A mourner is one who mourns the loss. Not necessarily the loss of someone, but just the loss. The loss of a job, the loss of a position, the loss of a name, the loss of a specific identity, the loss of time, the loss of completion.

A mourner is one who despairs in the loss of completion. 

It is someone who recognizes the world as a broken place, and cries out in pain. Someone who hides under the covers and cries for the world. Someone who carries a heaviness around for those who are lost. Someone who can love no matter how many wounds they have been pierced with.

Someone like Jesus. A man who cried for the loss of Israel, for the brokeness of Israel.

A mourner is one who despairs in the loss of completion.

This mourner is blessed, and he will be comforted.

This idea of comforted actually is a demonstration of companionship. A demonstration of completion. The mourner is blessed. He is free from his tedious life. He is free from the world's pain. Because of this freedom a disciple can mourn. Because of his freedom a disciple can be comforted.

Without this freedom, without this blessing we all find ourselves in despair. We find ourselves living as a nihilist. However, with this freedom we can mourn the loss of completion, but we can also be comforted because of the glimpse of restoration that will be.

Those who mourn, who hide under the covers on dark days, know that there are glimpses of the wonderful completion that we will all receive.

"Trace the shape of my heart
Til it becomes more familiar to your eyes"

My walking days.

I walk almost every day. The practical reason for walking is to get exercise and to give the dogs an opportunity to exercise.

But, do I really do anything that is just practical? I like walking because it gives me an opportunity to create space in my life for God to move. I see things when I walk that I wouldn't normally see while I drive, or even ride my bike.

Some of things I have seen on my walks;
 A fox run across the road,
a sunset,
trees that touch the sky,
little children,

I see a lot of things on my walks. But, my walks are also ways where I get to talk with people. I see people around town that attend our church and I get to sit down and talk, or just wave and smile. In a way it is a slight reminder that says, hey, I am in this with you.

Today I was walking and I saw Margie on her front porch reading the newspaper. Margie is our 92 year old door greeter. Every Sunday I ask her how she is doing and she pulls me so that my ear is next to her mouth and tells me that she is mean as ever. On my first meeting of Margie I found out that she sews all her own clothes, she mows her own lawn, and she still drives. She also warned me not to go to the doctor, or to trust lawyers.

Well I have gotten to know Margie over the last month we have lived here and she is a foundation of the Gospel. I sat with her this morning and she gave me the wisdom of her age. She encouraged me to save my money, to settle my disagreements with my husband quickly, to always talk affectionately to my mama and pap.

I also found out today that Margie has lost four sisters, a set of parents, a husband, and a son. She is what our society calls a survivor. This women has experienced the pains and sorrows of life. She has lost much, but she gets out every day. She drives all over the place, visiting our Christian brothers and sisters in the faith who are shut it, hospitalized and reside in nursing homes. She visits with these people and she prays with them all. She is crass and earthy like our good old Anne Lamont, but she has the age to live it out.

I am not trying to romanticize Margie, I am just trying to show that it takes all kinds. Every person, young, and old are called to be faithful. At 92 Margie could have easily given up by now. She has lost almost everyone around her that she cared about. She could sit in her own self pity, but she is a light even now.

We are called to live out our conversion in every decision that we make. Even when we have lost everything. Even when we have gained everything.

Creating Space.

There is a house across the street from us that reminds me of a modern fairy tale. The house looks too modern to hold any old fairy tale, but I could definitely see a newer tale being spun around the atmosphere. It is a very tall house and it has a castle spiral at the top. The brick has been kept together for a long while. The house has a long fence around it that goes all around the house. There is a garage in the back of it and it has a jeep and a yellow corvette. The grounds of the house contain a very kept up yard with a spiral bush that has been manicured to look just right. The house is also a keeper of an underground pool. It is guarded by a fence, but at night the lights come on around it, and it looks to be very exciting and refreshing.

That is the funny thing about this house. I never see anyone out of the house during the day time. It is like no one actually lives there. However, when the sun comes down there is a family that seems to come out and play on the well kept yard. This is why I think it would be a place for a great tale. I am sure there could be a wonderful story that is kept with the house.

The atmosphere of the house truly cultivates the ground for a good story. For a story that is worth reading.

If the house was a ranch house, or a split level, or even a two story house the story wouldn’t match. Those simple houses are seen everywhere. There is no significance, and no uniqueness behind them. They cultivate good stories, but not stories that change your life. Not stories that refresh your soul.

The church has the ability to do the same thing. They have the ability to create an atmosphere that gives way to a life changing story. The church can truly, and I think has the command to create the atmosphere of life change, through prayer, through scripture, through community, and through story. However, if the church is not creating this atmosphere, the life changing story will get missed in the emotionally charged music, in the good intentions, in the scripture filled service. If we are not living out the story and creating an atmosphere in our own lives, creating space for the Holy Spirit to move, then we will never be able to communicate the life change. We as the church need to stop depending on our church service, we need to stop depending on the alter call to wrap people into the story. We need to individually create the atmosphere for the story to move.