Pumpkin ;)

Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin.   God lifts you up, takes you in, and washes all the dirt off of you.   He opens you up, touches you deep inside and scoops out all the yucky stuff– including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc.   Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside you to shine for all the world to see.  

God and The Biggest Loser

I love the show “Biggest Loser.” If you’ve never seen it here’s the premise: NBC takes several overweight people and moves them to a ranch with two personal trainers. Over a series of weeks, the contestants lose absurd amounts of weight and gain massive amounts of confidence while competing against each other for the right to stay on the show and a cash prize.

Most of the people are pretty whiny at first; the personal trainers are constantly uttering tired platitudes that seem like lyrics to the songs that play in the background of sports montages in movies from the 80s e.g. “Take it to the limit! Yeah!” But I’d still watch a thousand episodes if they had them on.

Here’s why: Redemption is a beautiful thing to see. Watching someone, even a stranger, radically change their life is amazing. Visibly seeing someone drop 150 pounds, essentially saving their life and preventing premature death is pretty breathtaking. I find myself cheering them on, concerned about their progress. I watch the tapes of their kids saying heartbreaking things like “I love my daddy just the way he is but I don’t want him to die,” and I hear myself saying, “come on, you can do it.”

My favorite two parts of the show are at the end of each episode. The first is the moment when each contestant that is sent home walks through the door of their house and reveals the results of the experience to their loved ones. Husbands and wives just break down in tears upon realizing that someone lost has now been found. The person they knew has been rescued from deep within a mountain of weight and shame and hurt. The second best part is when they make the contestants stand holding their old pants or dress and then drop to reveal their new body. The comparison is beyond “Before and After.” Inevitably, the contestant will say, “I’m not that person. I’m not that person anymore.”

The bottom line is I love witnessing transformation and redemption. I started thinking today in the car, what if God felt the same way? What if he liked watching my life change as much as I liked watching the Biggest Loser?

I used to think I wasn’t good enough for God, that I had to personally take care of my transformation in the shadows so that he wouldn’t see how morally out of shape I was. That unless I came home skinny, having dropped the weight of bad decisions, I couldn’t be near him. But what if all that was wrong? What if by trying to transform myself, I’m not only setting myself up for failure, I’m denying him access to his favorite thing on the planet, redemption?

The Prodigal Son story certainly supports this idea. The son returns to the farm fat with mistakes, the stink of the pigpen and the air of prostitutes still heavy on his skin. The father doesn’t say “come back after you’ve transformed yourself,” he throws a party. He celebrates. He shoots fireworks off and reacts like someone that has found their favorite thing. I’ve never thrown a Biggest Loser party. I don’t really even talk about the show with friends. Maybe God’s love of transformation makes mine look small and insignificant.

There’s a beautiful point of breakdown to this metaphor though. For I am but a spectator of The Biggest Loser, God is a participant of life transformation. I anonymously encourage the hard work the contestants put in. God personally empowers the difficult work of heart renewal. My support of the show is superficial. God’s support of life change is the very substance that makes it possible. He is the power, the deep pool of strength and energy we can all tap into. He is the one, that regardless of any personal trainer’s platitudes or NBC cash prize, keeps me going through the dark and sometimes difficult task of growing into the person I was born to be.

I think culturally speaking, there’s a part of each of us that wants to watch redemption. The popularity of shows like Biggest Loser and Extreme Home Makeover is proof of that. We enjoy seeing people go from the pit to the podium and that makes sense to me, because I like transformation too. But the more I think about it, the more I believe that God doesn’t just like transformation, he lives for it.

 

Reflecting God’s Love

God’s love for us is everlasting. That means that God’s love for us existed before we were born and will exist after we have died. It is an eternal love in which we are embraced. Living a spiritual life calls us to claim that eternal love for ourselves so that we can live our temporal loves – for parents, brothers, sisters, teachers, friends, spouses, and all people who become part of our lives – as reflections or refractions of God’s eternal love. No fathers or mothers can love their children perfectly. No husbands or wives can love each other with unlimited love. There is no human love that is not broken somewhere.

When our broken love is the only love we can have, we are easily thrown into despair, but when we can live our broken love as a partial reflection of God’s perfect, unconditional love, we can forgive one another our limitations and enjoy together the love we have to offer. - Henri Nouwen

God Rescued Us

“God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.” Col. 1:13, 14 (The Message)

Praise You, Lord, for Your mercies and grace. You did not leave us in dead end alleys and the dark dungeons of sin, but You lifted us up and gave us freedom through Christ Jesus our Lord. We are forever grateful to You for this unspeakable gift; a gift we did not deserve, a gift we can never repay. Thank You for Your abounding grace. Amen

Weird and Crazy

When people say that Christianity is weird, they’re right. Faith is weird. The idea of having a personal relationship with the creator of the universe is crazy. That’s a big, wild thing if you think about it and sometimes when I do, I can’t believe I have a relationship with God. But I do and that’s what God wants. A relationship, not a ritual or a reward system.

This Is The Air I Breathe

Awesome God

I live in awe. I was reminded of this a couple of years ago when I was driving around the Canadian Rockies. There’s this one ridiculous moment where you cross this river and the mountains are looming over you reminding you how small your big problems really are and the sun was blazing big and bright in a sky I didn’t create and I was in awe. My hope is that someday it won’t take a mountain vista to spark my sense of awe for God but that I will see that more in the people I know and the places I spend my days. But I’m cool with starting with a mountain and working toward seeing the beauty of it all.

Get Real Gary

This is me going through the motions of a relationship. This is me trying to do what I think good Christians are supposed to do. This is me church acting and bouncing between friendships as I pretend to be deeper than I really am, more connected to God than I really am and happier than I really am. I am tired of pretending. God demands that I be real…snap out of it, Gary.

Falling Short

I know by any measure I will always fall short. This is not a possibility when it comes to me and God. This is a promise. I will fall short. I could work as hard as I want to for the rest of my life, say all the prayers one mouth can physically speak and do as much charity as one pair of hands can accomplish. And it would still fall solar systems short of being worthy of God. Thank God he sent Jesus.

Edited For God

Ever edit yourself for God? Ever spend your entire day talking one way and then talk with a completely different vocabulary when you pray? Why do we do that? Is it reverence? Are we afraid to say something idiotic? I am. And in that fear I often end up babbling and ruining one of the most beautiful parts of prayer, listening.