CHRISTMAS BREAK!

Hello Western Washington! Nice to see you!

I'm back for the Holidays which is Oh so nice and i'm loving visiting friends from home that i haven't seen in awhile. I've gotten to visit with friends that i have missed and hear all about their lives and new schools.

Today i met up with some friends from high school at our old Bible study "meet up spot". I loved hearing all about the crazy room mates and transition time that each one of us experienced. It was so nice to hear about all the change and difficult times we had gone through in our first semester of college and all the fun we were waiting to experience for our next!

4 hours later we decided to say good bye, only because all we had put in our bodies that day was large doses of coffee. I was feeling a bit jittery, i had to go to the bathroom, and i was hungry... So good to be home and see those sweet friends!!

We will do it again... and i'm not just saying that

A loooooong Walmart trip

What happens when you take a boy from the brother house to Walmart... this:

   First i had to get gas so we went to Cetex ( I had never heard of it). This part was actually my fault but in my defense... i had never seen a gas pump like this in my life. 

noz·zle/ˈnäzəl/

Noun:

A spout at the end of a pipe, hose, or tube, used to control a jet of gas or liquid.

So when the gas pump says, "lift nozzle and press handle to start pumping" I would assume that meant to lift the hose, stick it in my car, and the gas would start pouring into the gas tank. According to the gas pump... the definition of nozzle is actually, "the plastic vessel that holds the gas pump". I stood there for five minutes before i shamefully asked Kevin (the guys from my brother house) what i was doing wrong. He stepped out of the car, flipped the holder up, and got back in the car... my bad.

  We had a nice conversation on the way to Walmart and we made it to the land of crappy produce, poptarts, and khaki pants. Once we got there i found out that Kevin needed to print out some pictures. On our left side there was a small studio to take portraits. I didn't think that was where we needed to be in order to print off pictures from a USB so i suggested we ask Customer Service where the photo center was. Kevin conceded and we walked across the store only to find the line was filled with women and shopping carts full of Christmas gifts that they had decided would not make their husbands, aunts, or grandchildren happy. Soooo we walked all the way back to the portrait center to be told by a not so kind woman that they printed all their pictures in Missouri. I explained to her that we needed to just print some pictures from a USB and she pointed to the back of the store.

   The back of the store has a small photo center and a couple kiosks to plug in your USBs. Strangely there was a very clear space to put your floppy disc in but underneath the machine there was a space for the USB drive to be plugged in... you would think Walmart of all paces would be a little more modern. Kevin plugged his USB drive and a single picture popped up. I thought he forgot to put his pictures on the drive BUT... yes... we had driven all the way to Walmart to print off a single photo... and to our wonderful surprise, this Walmart was a 1 hour photo center. So we set out to wait for an hour for one picture. 

   We spent an hour eating Subway, looking around the store, and laughing hysterically at the fact that Kevin spent a good 30 seconds trying to open a peachy folder from the opposite side. I had to correct him by turning the folder around.

   Once our hour was up we went back to the photo center to be told that the machine had broke and it would be another half hour. So we sat down...

   20 minutes later, in the most distressed tone i had ever heard, the photo attendant came to tell us that every single one of the photo attendants were going on break and wouldn't be back for another half hour. 

   If you have ever imagined the stereotypical man who lives in his mother's basement... this was the photo attendant. He was wearing his khaki pants, a blue polo, a white wrinkled lab coat, and a name tag. He wore each one of these as if they were a CIA uniform and badge. As he was telling us that we would have to wait for another half hour (which we couldn't do because Kevin had to be at work in a half hour) mid sentence, he pauses, looks back, and sprints to the counter to check the picture. (Kevin and i start laughing hysterically). From across the store he looks a us, points, and screams, "YOU MY FRIEND ARE THE LUCKIEST MAN ALIVE"! (yes because waiting for an hour and a half for one picture makes us very very lucky).  He wraps the picture up, and very cooly slips the picture to us, winks, and says, "this is free".

  

A 2 hour Walmart trip, lots of laughs, and a story to tell our housemates... I would deem the trip successful. 

   The other day i had an assignment to listen to Francis Chan's sermon at a nearby church. I was really disappointed with what i listened to and went away from the sermon feeling a little bit less respect for Mr. Chan.
   The majority of his sermon focused on having "Crazy love" for the church. I can dig it... (I've been listening to late 1980's and early 1990's rap music). The beginning of his sermon focused much on scripture and he dove into examples of how his church had been showing love to one another and to the community around him. I was impressed by his elder board and their ability to give up the comfort of life insurance and look at one another in the eyes and say, "If something happens to you or your family, i'll take care of you." I was also really amazed at the fact that he was throwing a huge dinner for the homeless men and women around his neighborhood. Lobster, live entertainment, lavish gifts, and new outfits for each person was an expensive (and kind) thing to do. Theeeeen i started to feel uncomfortable. I couldn't get over the fact that he no longer was preaching from the Bible, but from his experiences and his excitement about what HE was doing and what HIS church was doing. I felt uncomfortable with his statement, "I'm excited to feel like God." (weird??)
   I walked away that day with a rock in my stomach and questions in my mind. I have a feeling that Francis Chan would never admit it but... i think he would agree that worshipping God and loving Him is by doing radical actions. All of his extremely specific actions were radical... crazy... controversial... EXCITING!! I didn't know what to think... i STILL don't know what to think. I don't like the idea of giving up insurance and spending lots of money on people i don't know and don't necessarily trust.

Then...

I started reading Crazy Love. (I know... that's so 4 years ago). This book has a chapter titled "Profile of the Lukewarm". Understanding what a lukewarm Christian really is takes up the majority of this chapter.
Lukewarm people:

• Attend church because it's "good"
• Give money to charity as long as it doesn't impinge on their standard of living
• Tend to choose what is popular over what is right in a conflict
• Don't really want to be saved from their sin; they want to be saved from the penalty of their sin
• Rarely share their faith because they don't want to be rejected
• Gauge their morality by comparing themselves to the secular world
• Only let God be a part of their lives
• Do not love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength
• Love others but do not seek to love others as much as they love themselves
• Will serve God and others but limit how much time and money they give
• Think about earthly life much more than eternity in heaven
• Are thankful for luxuries and do not consider giving as much as they can to the poor
• Do whatever is necessary to keep themselves from feeling guilty
• Are continually concerned with playing it safe
• Do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they don't have to
• They equate their partially sanitized lives with holiness, but they couldn't be more wrong

I started to think about these things in their entirety. Along with this profile came Bible verses that ransacked the ideals of a lukewarm Christian and put into perspective the love Jesus had for each one of us. NO WHERE in the Bible does it show Jesus's loving actions being lukewarm. When one man told Jesus that he needed to bury his dead father before he followed him, Jesus's answer was, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
   I'm not saying that i necessarily think that all actions of love must be radical and we should all go around giving our houses to the bum on the street corner but i have been contemplating these things and wondering, "How am i different from a lukewarm Christian? Do my actions differ from this definition?" I think if anyone looked at this profile and then looked at their actions they would find it hard to say to themselves in all honesty, "I'm perfect". I don't necessarily DISagree with the statement that radical action should be the norm of the church... then again i don't DISagree with the statement that giving a meal to your neighbor who is hurting should be the norm of the church.
   I have been learning a lot about love these past few weeks and am feeling really convicted about my actions. I think Mr. Chan deserves a little credit for this one...

and God... also.