1. Wake Up! Decide to make it a good day. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it” Psalms 118:24.
2. Dress Up! The best way to dress up is to put on a smile. A smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks. “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks in to the heart” I Samuel 16:7.
3. Listen Up! Say nice things and learn to listen. God gave us two ears and one mouth, so He must have meant for us to do twice as much listening as talking. “He who guards his mouth protects his life…” Proverbs 13:3.
4. Stand Up! For what you believe in. Stand for something or you will fall for anything. “Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up. So then, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all…” Galatians 6:9-10.
5. Look Up! To the Lord. “I have the strength for everything through Him who empowers me” Philippians 4:13.
6. Reach Up! For something higher. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and on your own intelligence rely not. In all your ways be mindful of Him, and He will make straight your paths” Proverbs 3:5-6.
7. Lift Up! Your Prayers. “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition…make your requests known to God” Philippians 4:6.

It’s official. Marriage makes you fatter.

USAToday recently reported on a study from the Obesity Society comparing weight gain among single and married young adults in their late teens and early 20s. What they found was that getting married adds about 6 to 9 pounds more than singles the same age.

Here’s USA Today’s lead quip,

Young adults might want to change their wedding vows to say they are taking each other “for better or girth.”

Funny.

Researchers suggest that single young adults aren’t as fat because they’re more active, watch less television and have the incentive of maintaining one’s appearance for dates. Hmm. Maybe we marrieds should take note. It seems staying active, limiting television and maintaining one’s appearance could prove helpful in marriage as well.

Guys — you’re explaining something to your girlfriend/wife, and while her eyes seem uncertain, her nodding is telling you that she understands and agrees. Right?

Wrong.

Apparently, a recent research group indicates that a woman’s nod is different from a man’s nod:

Body language differs by gender. Men tend to stare as they listen and nod to signify they understand. Women may nod when they don’t yet understand to encourage the speaker to keep talking.

So my wife’s nodding to me when I was explaining my desire to buy a new plasma television wasn’t an expression of her approval?

Most of us are familiar with the Book and story of Ruth. But most of us have more in common with Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi. Life had not been very good to Naomi. She had moved to a strange land (Moab) with her husband. She had two sons, both of whom married “local” girls (Moabites), one of them being Ruth. Naomi’s husband and both of her sons died, leaving her with two daughters-in-law, no grandchildren and no relatives in the area. Naomi decided to return to her native Judah simply in an effort to survive.

Although Naomi encouraged both of the daughters-in-law to stay with their families, Ruth returned with her to Bethlehem.

When the two women arrived in Bethlehem, the people said “Can this be Naomi?” (Naomi means pleasant)) Naomi replied:

Ruth 1:20-21:

²⁰ “Don’t call me Naomi, ” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

(Mara means bitter.)

Oh how easy it is to feel like Naomi when life deals us what seems an unfair or wicked turn. We, too, feel that God has abandoned us, brought misfortune on us. Do we understand God’s plan for us? God said “Your name is Naomi, Naomi you will remain.”

As the Book of Ruth tells us, Ruth married Boaz and bore him a son. And in Ruth 4:16-17 we again see Naomi, a happy, fulfilled Naomi:

 16 Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. 17 The women living there said, “Naomi has a son.” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

David, son of Jesse, son of Obed, son of Boaz, husband of Ruth. David, King of Israel. Jesus of the House of David. Jesus, the Son of God.

God has a plan for each of us. The achievement of that plan may bring bitterness if we aren’t careful.

Do you want to be a Naomi or a Mara?

It’s not an easy choice sometimes, but it is a choice.

We arrange our lives as best we can,
to keep your holiness at bay,
with our pieties,
our doctrines,
our liturgies,
our moralities,
our secret ideologies,
Safe, virtuous, settled.

And then you -
you and your dreams,
you and your visions,
you and your purposes,
you and your commands,
you and our neighbors.

We find your holiness not at bay,
but probing, pervading,
insisting, demanding.

And we yield, sometimes gladly,
sometimes resentfully,
sometimes late… or soon.

We yield because you, beyond us, are our God.
We are your creatures met by your holiness,
by your holiness made our true selves.

And we yield, Amen.

Walter Brueggemann – Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth

Recently, while reading Proverbs, I came across a verse that was a like a punch in the face to my definition of what it means to be righteous. See, I’ve always confused righteous with perfect, or holy with flawless. But in Proverbs 24:16 it says, “for though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again.” I had to read that verse a couple of times to make sure I understood it.

If I wrote the bible, that verse would say, “If a man wants to be righteous, he better not fall seven times.” That’s not what it says though, it says the very opposite of that. It promises that a righteous man is going to fall. There is little doubt in the author’s mind a fall is going to occur.

That doesn’t prevent the man from being righteous at his core, but note what happens after the comma, “he rises again.” I think that’s what this verse is ultimately about, rising again. In fact, I believe a lot of life is about what we do after the comma, how we react to a situation. When we say things like, “my sister died in a car crash, but when I tell her story, her life touches others. Or, “I got laid off at work, but now I have the time to see where God really wants me.”

Life is what happens after the commas. Perfect Gary or Perfect Mary or Perfect Frank, regardless of what your name is, don’t want you to know commas exist. They want you to focus on making the first half of that sentence perfect. But God loves commas and more importantly than that, he loves watching us rise again.

What’s the best way to tell someone about God? I don’t know. There’s a billion schools of thought on that one, with books upon dusty row of books available. And I think a lot of those ideas are perfectly fine, but I recently decided we need to talk about the crocodile and God.

I came up with this theory while reading the book of Job. I was struck that in the very end, when God focuses on one fairly simple message, “I’m more powerful than a crocodile.”

Those aren’t his exact words granted, but here’s a little taste of what he tells Job in chapter 41:

 5 Can you make a pet of him (the crocodile) like a bird
or put him on a leash for your girls?
6 Will traders barter for him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his hide with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
8 If you lay a hand on him,
you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
9 Any hope of subduing him is false;
the mere sight of him is overpowering.
10 No one is fierce enough to rouse him.
Who then is able to stand against me?

It seemed like such a random exchange. Here, with all the logic and theological arguments in the world at his disposal, God explained his being to Job using the leviathan (crocodile) as an example. At first I thought this was just another example of God doing something crazy. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that God was doing what advertisers do every day, he was putting himself into context for Job.

So when God compares his strength and might to that of the crocodile he’s using an example Job could easily understand. Crocodiles are clearly strong and dangerous. I imagine that just like today, they were prone to killing folks in the old days. When God uses a crocodile as a measuring stick, he is instantly telling Job how strong he is.

I think that’s why so many ministers or people trying to share God miss the point. They don’t look at crocodiles. Instead of taking the time to understand our culture and build a case for Christ on the foundation of an idea that everyone can easily attach to, like a crocodile, they try to use an example that makes sense to them. They ask people to learn their language, their ideas, their theology in order to access their God.

Do we sometimes get lost in our knowledge and lose touch with the person on the other side of the table? Where are the crocodiles in your day? How can you build context with the people that bump up against you? Those are the questions I think we should ask instead of asking someone to speak our language and or understand who God is according to our ideas.

I probably over show and share my emotions. I’m the guy that answers honestly when someone at a gas station says, “hey, how ya doing?” It’s a problem. I’m working on it. But in the last two years I’ve learned something about emotions and it’s a pretty simple idea really. Here it is: You don’t get to pick which emotions you experience deeply and powerfully.

That is, emotions are not like flavors of ice cream. You can’t say, “I want happiness and joy and laughter, nothing else please.” The problem with emotions is that they all tend to hold hands. And when you crack the door to let one out, they all storm the door and knock you over. Suddenly, the joy of a great moment you couldn’t contain switches to a sorrow that takes your breath away.

That’s not a positive thought I guess but it’s true and it’s why some people are so content to be unhappy. They inherently know that if they get happy, if they let a smile slip through that open door, a frown isn’t far behind. They stay flat and safe, but they miss the deepest joys. And that, regardless of whether you’re holding everything in or like me are making people at gas stations feel uncomfortable, is a sad thing.

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.  

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.