Keep Pointing in Waterloo

what did you get for Christmas?

So, what did you get for Christmas?  Here's what I received:

• rest
• time with family, from home and abroad, inside and outside
• great food
• ties, sweaters, and gift cards to sporting goods stores
• joy from watching my son play with his new toys

All in all, it was wonderful.  And very much like what I'm used to.  Most Christmases - no, every single Christmas that I can remember - was something like that.  Joyful, hopeful, warm.

But it wasn't this way for everyone in our community.  In fact, one teenager in Waterloo received a bullet wound for Christmas.

Take a moment to read that story from the Courier, just in case you thought about skipping over it and reading to the end of this post.

Seriously.  Take 30 seconds and read it.

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What did you think as you read that?  What did you feel?

I read that story when it was first published on Christmas day.  I think it came up in either my Twitter feed or one of my web readers.  And I read it in my living room, which was at that point an absolute disaster of wrapping paper, toys, candy, stockings, all mixed together by the hands of my 18 month old son.

As I read that story, I wondered to myself:

Did either of these boys in this story ever have a Christmas like I have had every single year of my life?  Did they ever have a Christmas like my son just did?

I don't pretend to know these boys' story, their family lives, their home life, or anything else about them.  And I'm going to do my best not to assume, to stereotype, or to dehumanize them by putting them in some sort of generic and distant category of "broken."

But:

I can't imagine the set of circumstances that would lead to my teenage son being at a bar early on Christmas morning.

I bet his parents didn't imagine that for him when he took his first few breaths and made his first few cries.

I bet he didn't think that he'd end up in a squad car on December 25th, 2011, facing incarceration and then potentially a life in and out of the justice system.

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This is the community into which we have been called.  And not to this part only.  But we'd be missing the target if we missed these families, these teens, these problems.

I want to share with you a story of how we have recently had the chance to impact these families.  As the year ended, we had some monies left over in our Urban Compassion budget.  We decided to bless the Boys and Girls Club - both their staff and the families that they serve - with the money.  Below is an email from Chuck Rowe, director of the Club, detailing how it was spent:

Last week, Carl Carey arranged for some awesome gift giving with his friends from Prairie Lakes Church.   His church raised about $2,500 to bring families in need, Christmas shopping.  Our staff identified Club Member families who were having a tough time this season.  Families would meet at the Club and then our staff or Prairie Lakes Members, would bring a person from that family shopping . . . To find gifts for the rest of their families.     Although we picked several families to attend, there were two that personally touched my heart.   

The first was a family, where a brother and sister come to the Club.  The brother is a handful to say the least.  He has such a hard time in school that they had to take him out of the school and put him in a class that focuses on kids who need extra help.   This young man has absolutely no attention span, and gets in his share of trouble.    However our staff loves him (and his sister) and do what we can but when we learned of his family background, it helped make sense to some things.   Their mother is not around, and his father is paralyzed from the neck down.   As a result the grandparents (who are older) have to raise the kids.  As you can imagine, this is not easy at all for the grandparents . . . Financially or discipline wise for the kids.    So when they went shopping, you could see and hear the joy in their hearts.   This opportunity could not have come at a better time and they were extremely grateful to our staff for selecting them. 

The second family I wanted to briefly tell you about was a family who had their house burn down last month.   When we selected them, the mother was so thankful and said that they had nothing due to the fire.  What a better way to help the family get back on track then to provide them with a fun Christmas for the kids.    What a life changing difference for them. 

Thanks Carl (and your friends from PL Church) for making this happen.   I know our Boys & Girls Club families needed that extra hand. 

In 2012, we are going to continue to ask how we can make an impact on Waterloo families.  We should be seeing some pretty cool opportunities to do so as a church as the year dawns.  But as we wait, let's not forget the admonition that James gave us:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 
James 1:22

Christmas @ Waterloo

Just a few friendly reminders.

Our Christams Eve service will be held at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow (contrary to the misprint in the Courier on Sunday, which they have since corrected!).  Pastor Carl and I had a chance to sit through the dress rehearsal just last night, and... it's going to be powerful.  Hits the mark.  You'll want to get there and bring someone who God's working on.  Remember: live teaching at our campus this weekend.

We'll need a few extra hands to help tear down the sanctuary on Christmas Eve.  First Lutheran's service begins at 5:30; ours will end at around 4:40-4:45.  If you've got a few minutes after the service, we'd really appreciate a few extra sets of hands - especially since many of our normal volunteers are out of town for the holidays.  We're aiming to have that room reset as close to 5:00 as possible.

Remember the Christmas Eve "Eve" service tonight, 7:00 p.m., over at the Cedar Falls campus.  This is great for those of you who are serving at Waterloo on Christmas Eve outside of the sanctuary, but don't want to miss the service. See you over there.

There will be no service this Sunday, Christmas Day.  Enjoy it with your families.

Finally, we will be having our normally scheduled 11:00 a.m. service on New Year's Day.  If you can stay out for New Year's Eve, you can get out to church. That's right.  I said it.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

that's my kid.

Warning: some of this material is a little more mature in nature. It's not intended to shock. But, nevertheless, you may want to screen it before you allow younger eyes to see.

A little while back I tweeted:

Sometimes I'm struck by all of the really good, strategic, common sense, reasonable reasons... NOT to obey.

That's been a theme in my life with God as of late.  I'm seeing myself spend time on a lot of good things, godly things even... at the exclusion of doing some of the more uncomfortable things that God calls all of us to do.

Maybe that doesn't resonate with you.  Maybe you don't think it's a good idea to elevate one good thing over another.  Maybe you think that really all good things are on the same level, and it's up to us to do the best we can.  

Well, Jesus would have disagreed with you: here, and here.

I think that most of our lives with God are lived in this tension between good things: 

• the tension between what is natural and what is supernatural  
• the tension between what I can do for God and what I can only do with God  
• the tension between where I am strong and where He is strong in me  
• the tension between doing what is right and doing what is transformational

Let me put it differently.  If I were to make a list of what I spend most of my time doing, it'd probably look a little something like this:

• I show up to my job and work hard.
• I am present at home and love my family.
• I go to church on the weekends.
• I do the things that I enjoy: hunting, watching sports, reading, conversations with friends.
• I pay the mortgage, taxes, and take care of what possessions God has entrusted to me

And that list could go on.  Most of you probably have a similar list.

But if I were to complete that list, I'd be forced to admit that some items are notably absent, or at least, not present in my life to the same degree:

• Spending my time, talent, and treasure on the "least of these"
• Loving my enemies
• Creating adequate space in my life to love God with all of my heart
• Being attentive enough to the Holy Spirit to follow him on some divinely inspired interruptions over the course of my day

Which leads me to a story.

Over the past few weeks, I've been bombarded with images that God has used to slip past the defenses of my relatively good, stable, safe, responsible life to create a "holy wound" within me.  Some of the images were haunting.  Others had more political overtones.  All made me uncomfortable - uncomfortable in a way that prompted me to act.

"Things should not be this way," I thought.  Somehow, someway, God connected me to that pain - the pain that must be in his heart when he sees his creation rebel, whether in sins of comission, or sins of omission. And me? I've just been idly standing by, doing mostly good things, while failing to do what was necessary.  I had to do something about that. God was compelling me to do something about that.

And then Pastor John preached this message.  More good food for thought.

Which leads me to my car ride from lunch back to the office today.

I had stopped at a gas station on University Ave. - the Casey's there at Rownd, to be exact.  My wife and I had switched cars today, because one of her tires was low on air.  So I pulled into the lot next to the compressor, filled the tire with air, hopped back in, and was quickly on my way again.

Then, I saw them.

He was holding her hand.  She was maybe up to his waist.  Maybe.

He was smoking a cigar.  She wasn't wearing a hat.  Cold front came through last night.

They were in the median, walking in the opposite direction that I was headed as I and several other drivers were zooming past them.

On any other day, I probably go right past them - just like you probably would.

But then, this holy thought - not my own, but God's - pops into my head:

That's your kid.

That's your kid. Love your enemies.

That's your kid. Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

That's your kid. Love your neighbor as yourself.

That's my kid.  Disobedience is not an option when it's my kid.  Disobedience is not an option when the Voice is so near and so clear.  In that moment, I feared more of what it would mean to not obey than how awkward or inconvenient it might be to have the two of them in my car for some period of time.

So I pulled a u-turn, said a prayer, came up behind them, passed them, and then pulled into that same Casey's where I had been just a few minutes earlier.  And wouldn't you know it, they walked past me and went inside.

So I got out, followed them in, grabbed a pop, and hung around to wait for my opportunity.  

As I spied on them, it became readily apparent that he loved her, and she loved him.  She playfully ran around the store, asking for everything from pop to candy, while he corraled her and began to make his way to the counter.

I beat him there.  After paying for my bottle of pop, I turned around and said:

"I noticed you walking.  Can I give you a ride anywhere?"

"No, thanks.  We just have a couple of blocks left.  It's some time that we get to spend together."

"Great.  Merry Christmas."

And that was that.  I walked out to my car, and saw him walk out with his daughter, this time in his arms, into the neighborhood behind the gas station.

The result, I'm sure, was much more transformational for me than it was for them.  God got a little bit more of my heart today.  

I pray that He does the same with you this week, and in so doing, becomes more glorious in and through your life.  He is With Us.

Christmas isn't about family [seriously]

Something clicked for me tonight.

I'm kind of a night owl.  Always have been.  Couldn't even really take naps when I was a kid.  I was always awake.  Never really enjoyed the prospect of having to go to bed.  It's always seemed like one more task that I don't really want to do.

Tonight was one of those nights.  Quiet.  Son and wife in bed upstairs.  Me down in the recliner in the living room.  Very peaceful.

On a whim, I grabbed my guitar, and was plucking around on it.  Nothing in particular.  Just enjoying some time alone.

Eventually, the "nothing in particular" became Christmas carols - and for some reason, Away In A Manger.  Something about that first verse grabbed my attention:

Away in a manger
No crib for a bed
The little Lord Jesus
Lay down his sweet head

As I hummed and played, reflecting on those lyrics, I began to think about the little kids right here in my community who are like him - just like Jesus - having no crib for a bed.

That's a sobering thought. 

Kinda brushed the dusty sentimentality off of that song and let the truth shine through it for a bit.  I like it when God does that.

So I let that wash over me for a bit.  I began to thank God for what he's given me - a good family who raised me, a wonderful wife, good house, good son, good church.

Then I began to think how rare that really is - how few people could tell a story like that or thank God for those things, since they never really had most or sometimes even any of them.  Instead, most could tell of how messed up their childhood was, or when their parents divorced and how hard that was, or how they never really knew their dad, or how they hated the holidays because they bring with them all of the pain that they don't have to think about the rest of the year.

And then this came into my head:

Christmas isn't about being with family, I thought.  Christmas is about God being with us. 

I wondered if by us making Christmas so much about family that we don't sometimes alienate those who don't really have families - distancing them from the transformational truth of Christmas: that God came to earth to make a new family, where we all could become his sons and daughters once again.

I continued to play and hum, letting that speak to me.

And then I heard some dissonance.  Sour notes clashed with the melody coming from the guitar... although they weren't coming from the guitar.  Gradually, the dissonance crystallized into a cry - coming from the member of my family who thinks that the best thing in the world is a banana, milk, and Curious George at 7:30 every morning.

And I never do this - ever, simply because of how cliche it seems - but I took my guitar up with me to his room.  The little guy was standing there in his crib, pacifier still in his mouth, blanket in his hand, waiting expectantly for either me or his mom to come and recognize that he was snotty, didn't feel good, and didn't really know what to do about it.

Fair enough.

So I picked him up for just a bit, felt him rest his head on my shoulder, then put him back in his crib.  Covering him with the blanket, I propped his head up underneath another one.

Then, I sat down and continued to play and hum Away In a Manger.

Be near me Lord Jesus
I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever
And love me I pray

Bless all the dear children
In Thy tender care
And take us to heaven
To live with Thee there

Eventually, I heard my son's sniffles turn into snores.  As he slipped back into sleep, I continued to sit there, enjoying a moment that my son is not yet old enough to even remember.

And I thought:

This is God with us.

This Christmas, at Prairie Lakes Church, we've created some space for all of us to enjoy this wonderful new reality that Jesus brought with him - at his birth, in his life, through his death, and because of his resurrection.  God is With Us.  He came our way.  He made a way.

So as we wind down our series and head toward Christmas Eve, look for the ways that God wants you to enjoy this gift.  Look for the ways that God wants you to share this gift with those who have yet to experience it.  Once you see them, do what Jesus did: enjoy and share in the blessing of God with us.

sometimes a simple bag of food makes an eternal difference

Below is a letter we received from a kid in Waterloo in response to the food he received from us via the Northeast Iowa Food Bank at Thanksgiving.

He's a student at East High.  We've removed his name for confidentiality's sake.  

Such a good reminder of what God can do with even the simplest obedience.

With Us: Christmas Eve @ PLC Waterloo

One statement that Pastor John made this past weekend really grabbed me:

God chooses people who let Him overwrite their story with His.

How true this is!  And also how challenging.  Stop for a moment in your normal rhythm today and create some space to really ask:

How does God want to overwrite my story with His?  In what area am I not letting him write His story, and instead continuing to write my own?

Alright.  One important business item.  We will be having our Christmas Eve service at Waterloo again this year.  But, because First Lutheran is holding their Christmas Eve service at 5:30 p.m., we will be holding ours at 3:30 p.m.  

I know that may not be the optimal time for everyone.  But, with how new and fresh our partnership is with First Lutheran, we've decided that being a good partner means adjusting our service time.  

So, if you and your family would like to attend our Christmas Eve service, make your plans accordingly.  And if that time doesn't work, the Cedar Falls campus will be holding their services at 5:30 and 11:00 in addition to a 3:30 service.  Also, they will be holding a Christmas Eve "Eve" service on the 23rd at 7:00 p.m.

Merry Christmas.  Take some time today to thank God for how he's blessed us.