The Good Samaritan...

I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point this weekend - getting ready to hear him at the Catalyst conference.

At one point midway through the book, he looks at an experiment by Princeton University psychologists John Darley and Daniel Baston inspired by the "Good Samaritan" idea. They took a group of seminarians from Princeton Theological Seminary and told them they would have to prepare a sermon and then walk to the building next door and present it. They introduced three variables into the experiment: 1.) Before the experiment started, they asked the students why they were in seminary, whether it was for personal fulfillment or to help others, etc., 2.) Some of them were told to develop a sermon on the relevance of the professional clergy to the religious vocation and the others were told to do it on the parable of the Good Samaritan, 3.) Half of them were told they were a few minutes early and could take their time getting to the building where they were supposed to give their talk. The other half were told they were a few minutes late and should hurry over.

On the path the students would take to deliver their sermons, Darley and Baston planted a man "slumped in an alley, head down, eyes closed, coughing and groaning." The expected result was that those who had responded that they were in seminary to help others, and those who had to prepare their sermon on the Good Samaritan (thereby having just spent time on the command to help those in need) would be the two groups most likely to stop and help the man. But the results shocked both Darley and Baston. Neither of those two variables made any difference. The only thing that mattered was whether the seminarian was told he was late or not. Of those told they had some time to spare, 63% stopped to help the man. Of those told they were late, only 10% stopped to help.

Darley and Baston said of the experiment, "It is hard to think of a context in which norms concerning helping those in distress are more salient than for a person thinking about the Good Samaritan, and yet it did not significantly increase helping behavior. Indeed, on several occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on his way."

That statement made me stop. And wonder.

Wonder how many times Ive stepped over someone in need because I was late for a ministry meeting, or to get to church, or to do some other "righteous" act for God. And wonder what opportunities Ive missed in serving Christ because I was too busy or too late. How God's heart must break in the times when His servants miss what He has put right in front of their eyes. Or right under their feet.

...

Lesson for Today: Tony Stewart endorses Burger King because he loves it. Or so they say.

To Relinquish, To Abandon...

One of the definitions of surrender is "to give up, relinquish or abandon." As I've been thinking about surrender tonight, I thought about how we view surrender as such a negative thing. Gary and I just recently had a conversation about how no guy likes the word "surrender." It is simply not something a guy wants to do, generally. He wants to stand up, defend, fight, win. Not surrender. I dont know many girls who like the idea of surrendering, either. Its because we are ingrained to look out for ourselves. Surrender goes against our very nature.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much we miss because we are not willing to surrender to our God. While, yes, part of surrender is giving up every part of ourselves for Him to do with what He will, the other part of surrender is abandoning ourselves to His love. To give up, relinquish, and abandon the pursuit of earning His love. We can't earn it. Ever. No matter what. All we can do is surrender to it.

Surrender to it in such a way that we are completely enveloped in it. Like a man in a canoe is powerless to do anything against the raging rapids - he is surrendered to the ride - so we, too, must sit in our canoe and let God's love take us wherever He wants. It may be over a waterfall we would call suicide. It may be down a tiny stream we would call simplistic. It may be in waters raging so hard we would call it uncontrollable. But that's the point, isnt it? If we are still in control, we havent surrendered yet, have we?

John Mark McMillan's song, "How He Loves" is a perfect picture of this.

He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight
of His wind and mercy...
He loves us, Oh how he loves us

Surrendering to his love means we are going to have to bend. Like a tree in a hurricane.

And all of the sudden
I am unaware of these afflictions
eclisped by glory
And I realize just how beautiful you are
And how great your affections
are for me...
He loves us, Oh how he loves us

But oh, to realize how great his affections are for us. The prize of His love is so worth the surrender.

We are his portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes
If his grace is an ocean
We're all sinking

We are his portion and He is our prize. He is our prize. He is our prize. I dont think we can ever fully understand the weight of that. For if we did, we would be falling at his feet and surrender wouldnt be the struggle it so often is. He is our prize.

And heaven meets earth in an unforeseen kiss
And my heart turns violently inside my chest
I dont have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way...
Oh, how he loves us all
Oh, how he loves us...

There is no reason to maintain the regrets we have when we realize His blood and His love cover all. Oh, how we loves us so.

Praise God for the opportunity to surrender.

...

Lesson for Today: Playing Cedric over Ray is the way to go in Fantasy Football...

Richness and Blessing...

More truth from Walter and Ragman:

In the terrible, terrible doing of ministry is the minister born. And, curiously, the best teachers of that nascent minister are sometimes the neediest people, foul to touch, [unworthy], ungiving, unlovely, yet haughty in demanding - and then miraculously receiving - love. These poor, forever with us, are our riches.

Oh God, let me know the richness you have given me by putting people all around me who are desperate and needing. For giving me people to love you through. For allowing me the opportunity to physically serve you. Thank you for the poor and the broken, the hungry and the sick, the imprisoned and the hurting; for it is through them that I can touch you, it is in their face that I see your eyes, it is on their skin that I feel your warmth. Make me know, truly know the extent of those blessings. Increase your presence in my life through them.

And thank you for their sacrifice and humility in receiving my help, that I may draw near to you in the journey.

...

Lessons for Today: The number of people whose last name falls in the A-D category here at WRBC is exceptionally long... Wouldn't have thought.

"It Involves the Supernatural"...

I sat with a man this weekend who obviously loves telling stories. He is 76 and from the "old country": Germany. He immigrated here after the war, and like my grandparents, strove to make a new life for himself in a completely new world. Being able to sit and hear the stories that comes from a life like this fascinates and challenges me.

As we were sitting around the table, he started his final story by saying, "This will be my last story, but I have to tell you...because you need to know." And then he began to share:

He lived in a small village as a child. His father was a farmer and their house was a ways off the main road. All the land they had in the back was filled with hay piles "about this big" he told us, pointing to the roof of the tent we were sitting under (about 10 feet high) and "three more feet out that way" he pointed, showing us an area about 10 feet wide. One night during the Second World War, his family got news that the Russians were coming to town. "They were coming to rape our women, kill our children, and plunder what little was in our town," he told us. So in order to save the family, the four grandparents had everyone crawl down into the basement and covered the doors with piles of firewood. "They were the only ones who knew where we were. And there was no way we could push that firewood away to open the doors. So if anything happened to them, we would suffocate in there."

That night, the Russians came. Somehow, the grandparents were found out and began to run (those details were left out of the story and Im a little fuzzy on why or what happened with the "finding out"). They ran into the back fields and decided to hide in the middle of one of the big hay piles. They dug a hole out of the center, all four climbed in, and they filled the hole back in. Now hidden, they could only pray that God saved them. 

Realizing they must be hiding, the Russians began to stab the hay piles with their bayonets. "When they came to the one my grandparents were in, 5 stabs went in: the first on the right of the end person, the second in between the two first people, and so on down the line. The last on went in on the left side of the person on the other end." Had it been any closer, they would have been found out, killed, and the rest of the family would have died in the basement. God saved their lives... by inches.

"Christianity is not just an ideal. It involves the supernatural." His point of the story was that God was merciful, and they recognized it as God - something many of us don't do anymore. We recognize a near accident that we just miss as lucky. We see our healing as the doctor's knowledge and modern medicine. Not that God doesn't work through doctors or medicine, but we need to give credit where credit is due.

And recognize that time and again, God saves our lives... by inches.

...

Lesson for Today:  If roasted with garlic and pine nuts, broccoli can actually be termed "good." I know, who knew?

God, I love you, too...

In reading Ragman by Walter Wangerin, Jr., I have come across two passages that have made me stop. 

Stop. And think.

For fear of diminishing the profundity of his words, I am simply going to leave them here, comment-less. Receive from it what you will:

For you are wonderful beyond describing it. And yet you love me. And still you choose to notice me. And nonetheless, you bend your boundless being, your infinity, into space and time, into things and into history, to find me, to preserve my life. Abba, Abba, Father! How it is that you care for me?

I whisper, amazed that you should care to hear it; I whisper, astonished that it could make a difference to the Deity; I whisper here, now, the truth of my heart and the wholeness of my being:

I whisper, God, I love you, too.

~   ~   ~

You emptied yourself to enter the city, and though your coming may not make it good, it makes you cry, and there you are. In the oily streets, damp with rain and human sin, lit by a single light, I see your face reflected. O God, your incarnation's in the streets. I see the city, and I cannot help but see you.

And I love you.

They ask me, "Whom do you love?" And I tell them I love you. They ask, "But whom do you love?" I point to the city. They insist, "But whom do you love?"

And since they cannot see you for themselves, I do the next best thing: I tell them stories. I tell them a thousand stories, Lord. For the city is active, and you are acting in it, always; and activity's a story. I tell them about you by telling them the story.... Convince them of your love, O Lord....

Because I love you, and I love them too. But yours is the mightier love, and I wish they knew it. Oh! I wish they could laugh out loud for the knowledge of your love for them.

So I turn to you, here at the beginning: Give them eyes, bright God, to see you everywhere. They are the city: to see you in themselves! Give them ears, thou roll of thunder, and feeling for your presence - ...in the streets because you choose to love them.

...

Lesson for Today: I dont regret anything about my wedding day and how we did things... But I have to admit that this comes close to making me wish we had been a little bit more out of the box.

Theres No Such Thing?...

Ive been reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Its a really interesting read on what goes on inside our subconscious, how we make decisions in a "blink" of time without thinking about them, and how those decisions can be right or wrong, depending.

In the conclusion of his book, he writes about how having too much information can be detrimental to our judgement.

We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we're well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of being inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding.

I was hit a little unexpectedly by that point. Its true that our world today gives us the ability to access any piece of information in mere seconds - milliseconds even. We can know almost anything about anything. And we think thats helped us.

Yes, it provides for ease. It speeds up trends. It moves us at a faster pace. But do we take it for what is? That all we are gaining is knowledge and information, not understanding? Or do we think we are a better people because our brains are filled more than the previous generation?

When I read Gladwell's quote, I thought of the song I used to hear on the radio as a kid, "Too Much Fun," by Daryle Singletary. "Too much fun, what's that mean? Its like too much money, theres no such thing. Its like a girl too pretty, with too much class. Being too lucky. A car to fast. No matter what they say Ive done.. Well, I aint never had too much fun." In our age today, we dont know what "too much" is. Isnt more always better? No, not always. Not when we think enough of one thing makes up for a lack of another. Not when we think information can take the place of understanding. For God has declared, "...a people without understanding will come to ruin!" (Hosea 4.14)

Sometimes, I think Gladwell is right - there IS such a thing as too much information.

...

Lesson for Today: Some people really know what it is to take advantage of a deal. 31 days of travel, spending 12 hours in each city. Way to go Joe and Clark.

God Saves...

I sat with a man tonight who obviously loves telling stories. He is 76 and from the "old country": Germany. He immigrated here after the war, and like my grandparents, strove to make a new life for himself in a completely new world. Being able to sit and hear the stories that comes from a life like this fascinates and challenges me.

As we were sitting around the table, he started his final story by saying, "This will be my last story, but I have to tell you...because you need to know." And then he began to share:

He lived in a small village as a child. His father was a farmer and their house was a ways off the main road. All the land they had in the back was filled with hay piles "about this big" he told us, pointing to the roof of the tent we were sitting under (about 10 feet high) and "three more feet out that way" he pointed, showing us an area about 10 feet wide. One night during the Second World War, his family got news that the Russians were coming to town. "They were coming to rape our women, kill our children, and plunder what little was in our town," he told us. So in order to save the family, the four grandparents had everyone crawl down into the basement and covered the doors with piles of firewood. "They were the only ones who knew where we were. And there was no way we could push that firewood away to open the doors. So if anything happened to them, we would suffocate in there."

That night, the Russians came. Somehow, the grandparents were found out and began to run (those details were left out of the story and Im a little fuzzy on why or what happened with the "finding out"). They ran into the back fields and decided to hide in the middle of one of the big hay piles. They dug a hole out of the center, all four climbed in, and they filled the hole back in. Now hidden, they could only pray that God saved them. 

Realizing they must be hiding, the Russians began to stab the hay piles with their bayonets. "When they came to the one my grandparents were in, 5 stabs went in: the first on the right of the outside person, moving down the line to be in between each body, and the last on the left side of the other end." Had it been any closer, they would have been found out, killed, and the rest of the family would have died in the basement. God saved their lives... by inches.

"Christianity is not just an ideal. It involves the supernatural." His point of the story was that God was merciful, and they recognized it as God - something many of us don't do anymore. We recognize a near accident that we just miss as lucky. We see our healing as the doctor's knowledge and modern medicine. Not that God doesn't work through those things, but we need to give credit where credit is due.

And recognize that time again, God saves our lives... by inches.

...

Lesson for Today: When you arent sure what to do with people you dont know, tell stories.

Therefore, Go...

...You know me... You discern my going out and my lying down... You hem me in behind... and before... You lay Your hand upon me... for darkness is as light to You... You created my inmost being... You knit me together... I praise you... I am made... I was woven together... Your eyes saw... days ordained for me... I am still with you... search me... know my heart... lead me...

Psalm 139

Have you ever thought of how God made us for a specific purpose, but we cant fulfill that until we know what it is? Is my purpose the same as yours? Is yours the same as his? Or is it like hers? No, its YOURS. God created you, with a very specific plan and purpose in mind. He created you to do something totally different than he created me to do. He created Moses to go, He created Jeremiah to weep, He created Hosea to love relentlessly. Our purposes are definitively NOT the same. Some are called to reach out to hurting women, others are called to youth, others are called to parents in crisis... The list goes on. What is your purpose?

I found out my purpose this week. After 22 years, I now know what gifts and talents, strengths and abilities God has knit together inside of me, and I know for what purpose He did so. He created me to "Reform to Alleviate." And the freedom in knowing that gives me a joy and excitement beyond what I have known before. 

Life Purpose Coaching "asks questions that unlock your stories and lead you into a discovery of purpose that empowers you the rest of your life." Through this process, the Holy Spirit led me to realize what my specific part is in furthering the Father's plans here on this earth. "Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away." My time here is limited. I have 50-60 years left, and then my opportunity to be the creature God made me to be here on this earth... That opportunity is gone. In the blink of an eye, I will fly away. 

But in understanding my purpose, I can live with intentionality every day, in every situation. I can be who I was made to be with a sense of satisfaction.

"I have called you. Therefore, go..." 

What has he called you to? Where will you go?

...

Lesson for today: Very few movie stores still have Quiz Show available for rent. It was made in 1994, which means it is just far too old to have on hand anymore.