Tears

This morning, we went over the story of the crucifixion with the 4^th and 5^th graders, and they watched a rather cheesy video of an investigator “interviewing” various people who were present during the trials and their aftermath. It was a little fuzzy on the basic storyline for some of my less churched kids, but, cutest thing ever...

One of my fifth grade boys spent most of the video in tears, wiping at his face every 0.5 seconds so that no one else would “see” that he was crying.

Somehow, past the intentionally terrible costumes and the overacting, he got it. He understood that we were talking about the torture and execution of a real human being, and he knows enough to understand the “why” behind it all.

Being a fifth grade boy, he made sure that he was visibly “over it” by the time we got back into our small group circle, but you could practically watch him continue to internally process whatever it was that had just happened. Super cool to see.

And... just to stick with tradition. Before said God moment, all of the kids were extra antsy and hard to focus during small group (from every week kids all the way to first time visitors), and we spent a good chunk of small group patching up a girl who managed to super man dive across the asphalt within ten seconds of leaving the building and scrape hands, elbows, knees, and arms.

Have I mentioned that these kids can sense God moments coming - and that it freaks them out a little?

7-11

Friday night was another middle school fun night, where they run through the main parts of the church like crazy children and hopefully have an awesome time just being kids. (Literally, after an hour and a half or so, half of the games have been abandoned in favor of "chase" and "hide from your friends" through the auditorium and foyer. :D)

The schedule didn't work out for me to be able to regularly hang with the middle school youth group this year, but I stinking love these kids. 

It makes my night to spend a few hours making sure that they don't shoot each others eyes out or strangle themselves on the volleyball net. (And, some of those kids have GOOD arms when it comes to throwing tennis balls!)

“The second question was more challenging. Was I going to obey Jesus? My biggest fear, even now, is that I will hear Jesus' words and walk away, content to settle for less than radical obedience to Him.”

 - Radical by David Platt

I would like to think (for nothing more than the soothing of my own conscience) that anyone who has been following Jesus for more than 0.5 seconds can relate to this one. I know that I can.

In eighth grade, I went on a weekend ministry trip, and, somewhere during the course of that short time period, I told Jesus, “No.” I don't remember what it was about or why – and I clearly made the decision NOT to journal it, which should tell you something about how into self preservation I was (am).

What I do remember is the next song that we sang was Trading my Sorrows. You know, the one with the chorus of, “Yes, Lord; yes, Lord; yes; yes, Lord.”

Yeah.

I thought I was going to choke on the words.

Literal, puke on the floor or the kid next to me, choke on the words.

That time at least, I failed at my, “No.” Since then, I haven't always been so lucky. What about you? When was the last time that you said no and got away with it?

Invitation

I keep getting calls, fb messages, and pass along comments from people who have been impacted by this book, so, I figured that it might be time to go back and take a closer look at it all. Over the next several days - weeks? - I'll be rambling based off of quotes that stood out to me. :)

If you haven't read the book yet, go do it!

“His invitations to potential followers were clearly more costly than the crowds were ready to accept, and He seemed to be okay with that. He focused instead on the few who believed Him when He said radical things. And, through their radical obedience to Him, He turned the course of history in a new direction.”

 - Radical by David Platt

This... this is hard for me. I was always one of those kids who looked around before starting anything, to make sure that I was not the only one. There didn't have to be a lot of other people doing it. One partner in crime was often enough. But, if they wasn't that one, well, I got good at sitting on things, at ignoring that squirming wiggle in my chest that just wanted to move, to go do whatever it was.

I trained my inner wiggle well. I learned how to bite my tongue. And, in turn, I learned to be less than radically obedient to the Spirit's promptings.

I learned how to say, “No,” to Jesus.

Because, it's not always fun to be radically obedient. It gets awkward to not have the answers or the actions or the stuff that people expect you to have. It's uncomfortable to explain that you are doing something because you heard – but not audibly – from God – who also happens to not be visible – that you were supposed to do it.

That's the sort of thing that, in non-religious circles, gets you medication.

But, that's what Jesus used. That's what he used to change cities and countries and continents. And, that's what he used to change every. single. life. he ever touched.

Jesus said hard things and then waited until all of the rumbling and surreptitious glancing to all sides had died down, waited until those who were ready to follow Him stood up and walked to His side, even if they were all alone.

He waited for them until they realized that any decision they made would be a radical one.

Because, not following the Son of God is just as radical as following Him.

To the IRS

Everyone's feelings about taxes are slightly different (feelings about HOW those taxes are spent are even more widely different). But, ever since I ran across it a few years ago, this letter to the IRS has struck me as brilliant. I love it, and I love the frank, forthright attitude that it is written in.

Check it out and let it make you think a little. 

(Photo Credit)

To My Sunday School Kids (part three)

M*ttie: You crack me up, kiddo. You can dissapear from our group for months, and then show back up as if you were there yesterday. Your face lights up when you're with us, though, and I've seen you turn down the "cool group" of all boys so that you can stay in this crazy place where we send you home to your mother with bloodstains on your shirt and grass marks on your socks. You'll sit anywhere but one of our chairs, but, the moment my hands press down on your shoulders, you melt and things come tumbling from your lips that make the other kids sit up and listen. I'll never know what prompted you to transfer yourself to my group, but we're glad you're here!
P*rker: Of all my crazy boys, you're the only one who I've turned around to find laying "dead" in the middle of the hallway, or hopping along behind us, with your knees up to your chest, under your shirt. You and C*nn*r planted yourselves in our group one day and made yourselves at home. I don't know what you saw in us or what you have seen, but I know that those eyes of yours don't miss a moment. You watch to make sure that I see you when you duck to "hide" behind a car, and you watch to make sure that I am paying just as much attention to the other kids as I am to you. I can only pray that, for a few hours at least, what you're seeing is Jesus.

C*nn*r: I'm pretty sure that I would trust you with the lives of the rest of these kids. You watch them like a patient father, laughing and acting like a nut with the rest of them, but always hyper aware of who is where and if they're safe. I got to watch the split second where you decided that I was a safe person for you and P*rker to be around, and, three minutes later, there you were, staring across the circle at me as if you had always been there. Slowly, I've gotten to watch you decide that, maybe, Jesus is a safe person as well, and I love watching you light up when we talk about Him. You're not such a fan of adult men, but Jesus you understand.

K*itlyn: We've missed you since you decided that it was a better fit to join your parents for church rather than come and hang with us, but I'm proud of you for being brave enough to make that decision. It's hard, in fifth grade, to admit that you'd rather sit with grown-ups than other kids, but you knew what you needed, and you acted on that. That takes guts. We miss seeing your laughing face, though, on the other side of a locked classroom door when you beat us back and hearing your dry, sarcastic (but always very, very true) answers to our questions. When God gave out a sense of irony, I think that you got a double helping. :D

Shakespeare for the Night

Monday night we hauled dozens of costume pieces downstairs to use with the kids during our normal “movie time.” A few of them went straight to work, writing scripts all night long – even while the rest of the kids were running in circles on the playground. (Or, looking at tractors across the parking lot, in the case of the little boys.)

Pretty hilarious. Script writing is, apparently, a very loud boisterous process that involves randomly bursting out into various – completely unrelated – songs, just because one can.

And, when you’re outside… anything more or less flat becomes a desk. :)

 

The better part of thirty minutes was probably spent trying on various outfits and chasing each other around with pirate swords. The mess was impressive, but well worth it, as the parents walked in to find their kids, not watching a movie and whining that they didn’t want to go home, but on stage, loving the mic that we had turned on for them and performing their “plays.”

And, the leaders were loving the fact that they could sit with a few of the littles and eat snack while the rest of the kids kept themselves entertained!

    

Bridgetown – p3

After Night Strike we picked up donuts for the next morning and headed to a different church to sleep. Minus the fact that we couldn’t get into the building.
Not. A. Single. Complaint. From. Anyone.
They just flopped their stuff down in front of one of the doors and started playing “Big Bootie” (kind of like “Who Stole The Cookie From the Cookie Jar?”) and “Umbrella” (which happens to be one of those games where the entire point is to drive the people who have never played before nuts trying to figure out the rules). By the time they finished “Umbrella,” the door situation was sorted out and they were ready to sleep.
Well, the girls talked for another hour or so, but they were in the general vicinities of their sleeping bags, so we’ll count it as sleep.
7:30am came a little too quickly, but they were spurred on by the thought of donuts. The ants, though, were also donut fans.
Twenty minutes later, the donuts were no longer moving – for the most part – and they ate them anyways, albeit, slightly more carefully than they might have otherwise. Eating ant infested food is a valuable life skill, right?
    
We left the church within minutes of donut consumption and a very short debrief (where one of the guys busted out an awesome analogy about a glass bottle) and drove as far as the Falls before we got out to hike.
Actually, the first leg was more of a run-up-until-no-one-can-breathe-anymore and the second leg was a hybrid between actually “hiking” and clambering-up-places-that-are-not-trail-but-look-cool.
Injuries = 0.
Mud on hands, shoes, and pants = 8.
These things happen when you let Jessica hike with seven teenagers. (They did wash their hands in the stream before we came back down, but I can’t say as much for their shoes or muddy knees.) Sometimes, you just have to get up close and personal with nature.
Lack of sleeping plus rapid hiking is apparently exhausting, though, because most of the van fell asleep on the ride home, one of the boys for long enough to earn himself a SpongeBob tattoo. He woke up during the application process (something about having a damp sweatshirt sleeve pressed against the back of your hand…) but was a really good sport about it and let them finish putting it on anyways.
  The team dispersed fairly quickly after we jumped one dead minivan, and I got to ride home in weather that was huge-blue-sky sunny, not too windy, and far warmer than Portland, full to overflowing from a very GOOD day with some pretty incredible kids and a seriously awesome God.
Bonus: I get to go to Haiti with some of these same kids at the end of July. (And… I think that some of them should come on the Focus Month too…)

Bridgetown – p2

  A little after 6:00pm we met back up as a “large” group of eighteen and headed down the street to a church, where we got our job assignments for the evening and a tour of part of the Shanghai Tunnels under the building that were once used for human trafficking. (The tunnels have been closed down and sealed off for years, but Portland is still a major US hub for human trafficking.)

While we were underground, more than a hundred additional volunteers had shown up for the “Night Strike,” to serve food, wash feet, cut hair, hand out clothes, paint nails, help with paperwork, pick up trash, and just generally hang out under the Burnside bridge.

We sang a few worship songs with them and then split up into our work teams for a quick orientation. Our kids were on every possible under-the-bridge work team (there were also “walkabout” and prayer walk teams who did things similar to what we spent the afternoon doing), and, from what I saw and heard, they jumped in and continued to legitly act out the things that they learn every Sunday.

There are not very many things that consistently scream out to me, “This is Church the way that it was meant to be!” The Reservation on Tuesday nights is one of them. Night Strike is another one.

Those. Hours. Are. Worship.

Getting to be there, and getting to be there with that group of teenagers, was right up on the list with Winter Retreat. I love those kids, and I love seeing them love others. Every moment of watching them serve (strangers or each other) ranks as a “coolest moment ever,” and makes my heart kind of want to leap out of my chest.

Points to the kids for not stopping when they were tired or just wanted to hang with their friends instead of more strangers.

(part 3 in the next post)

Bridgetown

A little before 3:00 this afternoon I pulled back into my apartment after spending thirty hours with an amazing group of teenagers (and a few pretty awesome leaders). We brought them – or maybe they just let us come along – on a quick trip to hang with some cool people who were homeless, and some cool people who were not homeless, in Portland.

Anytime that, within an hour of arriving at the church, there are several dozen sandwiches made and the response to someone not being there (and not answering their phone) is, “Well, let’s just go get him.” …it’s a sign that this is about to be a good trip.

We literally drove to one of the kid’s houses, piled all fifteen of us out of the vans, knocked on his door(s and windows) until he woke up, and took him the way he came out the door. Bed head. No toothbrush. No sleeping bag. Nothing but the clothes, shoes, and ipod he was wearing (and his wallet that had managed to make it to the church without him).

Points for a memorable start.

My van included the youth pastor, one of my cluster girls, the “kidnapped” one, another junior guy who had skipped school to be there, and a kid who actually lives back east now but was in town for Spring Break and came on the trip.

Points for legitly being there because they wanted to be there.

The trip over ranged from bad puns to castrated pirates and discussions of personal pet peeves. Yes. It really was that random, but, points for getting to know each other and having fun in the process.

Three hours of the afternoon were spent in groups of six, handing out sandwiches and trying to get to know the humans we were handing them to. I got to watch the kids in my group fix a pair of sunglasses with a bobby pin and a pocket knife, pray with a retired preacher who was living on the streets, and navigate their way through an area where they know more about where the homeless hang than they do about the insides of the shops.

I saw kids who are not naturally “outgoing” talk to perfect strangers. I saw them go slow enough to take things in and think about what they were seeing. And, I saw them grow frustrated because they just wanted more time.

One of my sandwiches went to a man with the most ridiculously amazing patchwork pants that I have ever seen and the other went to a dog named Mijo who belonged to a couple not much (if any) older than me.
Points to the kids for jumping in full force, with zero transition time, and giving it everything that they had.

(Part Two in the next post.)

One Day Without Shoes

I went barefoot today for One Day Without Shoes. Well, actually, I went barefoot most of today.

I nannied barefoot – much to the consternation of the little boy who couldn’t figure out why I had not left any shoes sitting inside of his front door.

I biked barefoot all day – which garnered a few odd looks from passing motorists.

I rode in the car barefoot – which is normal.

But, I “cheated” and wore shoes (flip flops) while I was on the Rez. Judging from the dirt on my feet when I got home a little before midnight, that may have almost counted as shoeless as well.