Donut Fight

One of my goals for small group with my fourth and fifth graders is simply to “do life together.” Small group time is short – even shorter now than it was at the beginning of the year – so, some weeks, that isn't any more complicated than listening to stories as we walk along in the hallway.

One week it meant taking a field trip to go “spy” on the middle school worship from the balcony, so that my nervous fifth graders could see what they are soon to be thrown into. One week it meant bringing a stack of foam swords down to have a battle in the February sunshine. Sometimes it means splitting off into two and threes to just listen to each other.

This week, it meant taking the donuts they had earned by memorizing their verse outside into the weather that finally decided to play at Spring. It meant laughing together as they put more sugar into their bodies than they EVER needed, and, when they almost simultaneously decided that that was quite enough sugar, thank you very much, it meant tearing the unwanted ends into little bits and having a massive, laughing, running, falling over each other, donut fight out on the lawn.

None of it was planned, but it was GOOD.

It was connection. It was a chance to learn more about those kids and communicate more to them then we ever could have done sitting in a circle talking one at a time – or, knowing my group, talking six at a time, about twelve different subjects, while all trying to simultaneously hold eye contact with Jessica.

My kid who came two weeks ago, absolutely terrified of getting lost in such a big building with such a lot of people, ran and laughed and looked the farthest thing from worried as he walked with me to story, eyes sparkling, asking if I would be there next week, because he liked it here and wanted to come back.

My kids who came for the second time with a friend, fifth graders who tower a full head over my fourth grade boys but who want just as desperately to know that there is someone who cares them no matter what, crowded around after large group and burst forth with stories, real stories, the type that, ever so briefly, let you catch a glimpse of their soul.

My shyest fourth grader finally felt safe enough to reach up and bop me back when I tapped his head with a rolled up memory verse paper, opening up more with that one action than he has done all year.

Every single one of the kids sat closer during story than they ever have, a messy, irregular, tight sort of a clump that felt distinctly like family and like trust, the type of trust that allowed them to focus more on the video than they ever have and to look at me – and each other – and tell with their eyes when they got something because of that focus.

And on and on and on.

Next week won't look anything like this week did, because next week will be a different arrangement of kids and a different set of needs. Next week we might sit and talk more than we run and move. Next week the boys might not outnumber the girls by four to one. Next week, we'll figure it out as the kids show up and let their eyes tell the stories that their words won't.

Their virtue for the month is forgiveness. (Which, ironically enough, comes up quite a lot when just doing life together.) The “lesson” for this week , though, looked more like learning that God is love and God is safe (although not tame!) and that His Body can be those things as well.

Photo Scavenger Hunt

Gratuitous photos of our last night of Monday night childcare, just because I can.

And, because I’m going to miss these kids!

Everything

“And it is entirely possible that He will tell us to sell everything we have and give it to the poor.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Jesus has this habit of calling us to do just the thing that we would most like to push into a back corner and ignore. He calls rich young rulers to sell everything that they have and give it to the poor. He calls teenagers to give up the status quo for their summer and go on a ministry trip. He calls parents to send their kids.

At every turn we have to stop and ask and listen, because it is entirely possible that the crazy ridiculous thing you just heard about is exactly what He is calling you to do.

It might be for an hour. It might be for a day or a MONTH or a year. It might be for the rest of your life.

Almost a year and a half ago, He whispered in my ear a plan to pull teenagers out of their normal lives for long enough to encounter HIM and encounter His JUSTICE.

It wasn't what I had planned to do at all.

Rather than “sell all you have and give the money to the poor,” the whisper was “take all of your plans and give them up for these kids.”

It blindsided me so badly that, for ten minutes or so I. Did. Not. Hear. A. Word that the professor was saying (Yes, the whisper came in the middle of class.). That night, I took a candle to a dark, quiet corner of the house and fought with God about it. I still have those sheets of paper, the scrawled paragraphs where I realized that I could either do this or walk away, like the rich young ruler, sad that I could not follow Jesus.

I decided to go for it. What I didn't (and don't) have the power to do was make that decision for anyone else.

What is Jesus asking you?

What crazy thing are you wrestling with Him over?

How willing are you to let Him win?

Life or Death

“In a world that prizes promoting oneself, they were following a teacher who told them to crucify themselves. And history tells us the result. Almost all of them would lose their lives because they responded to his invitation.”

 - Radical by David Platt

This is an interesting one to me. Ever since high school, I have noticed this odd trend in the church. While the younger generations are running after a post modern, hipster, relational vision of Christ and Christianity, the older generations quote encouragement that sounds something like, “and they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony and that they loved not their lives to the death.”

As a seventeen-year-old, standing surrounded by fourteen and fifteen-year-old freshmen, it honestly creeped me out a little.

What kind of grown-up looks at a group of teen and pre-teen aged Americans and thinks, “Death. Martyrdom. Book of Revelation”?

It just seemed a little bit extreme.

And, the fact that they rarely included themselves in the statements only made it all the more disturbing. Where exactly were all of the adults going to be while we were giving up our lives?

I'm well out of high school now (although I still hear similar things said to teenagers on a fairly regular basis), and I think that I am beginning to understand. (I hope that I understand, at least. If I'm wrong, then I maintain the right to be creeped out.)

You see, as a teenager, death seems frighteningly close and real and unnatural. People your own age die in suicides and car accidents and gang shootings. They die when doctors can't find the answers. But, every time, there is a sense that it isn't right. That they were too young to die. That something went wrong.

Grown-ups have a bigger sense of the rhythm of life. People are born. They live. They often give birth to other humans. Then, sooner or later, they die.

Teenagers flee death. Adults assume it.

They thought that they were speaking passion over our lives. We heard them speaking passion over our deaths – which, to a teenager, is not the same thing at all.

In the midst of that, though, I think that we learned something that it is so easy to otherwise forget. We learned that you are not ready to live for something until you are ready to die for it, and that you are not ready to die for something until you are ready to live for it.

We learned, at least a little, how to long for heaven at the same time that we longed for earth.

We started to learn what it meant to live out an invitation to die.

What about you? Are you willing to die? Are you ready to live?

New Job

Two weeks ago I started working at a local elementary school as a reading teacher (paraeducator). Weirdest experience of my life.

I swear that I learn a new testing acronym or word every day (DIBELS, MSP, MAP, PSTF, CBA, fluency checkouts, progress monitoring, benchmark testing, etc), and some of them I'm still not sure that I understand! I know that third graders are supposed to get a MAP score (which is apparently similar to the Iowa Test of Basic Skills that we took as homeschoolers) of 194 in reading, but I have no idea what that 194 is out of. 3,000? Six million? 300?

The kids are fun, though, and I really do enjoy teaching, even when the curriculum is completely opposite of ANYTHING that Jessica would do naturally.

I had a first grader the other day tell me that she, “gets better at reading every week,” because she, “travels a lot and collects words from all around the world.... like Seattle and Portland and Idaho and California and Spokane.” Haha. Yes, I”m sure you do!

Plus, I'm still new enough to be the “nice” sub that the kids all like. We'll see how they feel when we start testing them hardcore in a couple of weeks...

Jump

“Ultimately, Jesus was calling to to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation to self-denunciation.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Oh how we as Americans love certainty. Studies have shown that political conservatives put a higher value on steadiness, on unchanging certainty, than political liberals do. Evangelicals tend towards political conservatism. (Not saying that there are not evangelicals on all ends of the political spectrum. Case in point right here.)

We love us some certainty.

We send our kids on ministry trips, but we like to know ahead of time whether or not they will be getting showers and how often to expect a text home from Bobby to let us know that he hasn't been abducted by monkeys.

We trust God with a tithe of our money, but we like to know that the rest of it fits into nice neat budget boxes. (I literally heard a four-year-old I was babysitting singing a song to herself in that little kid way, where they just make up the words as they go. It was a song about Dave Ramsey.)

Certainty isn't necessarily a bad thing. Until it becomes an idol. Until we start waiting to move, waiting for God to erase all of the uncertainty, all of the danger, and all of the giving up of ourselves, waiting for an open door the size of a small tank.

Because, sometimes, God closes those huge doors and opens up a second story window instead.

And then He tells us to jump.

And we have to give up all of our certainty and safety and self preservation and cling to the hope that the one who holds the universe will catch us before we fall.

Gimmick

“Contrary to what I may have thought about Luke 9, Jesus was not using a gimmick to get more followers. He was simply and boldly making it clear from the start that if you follow him, you abandon everything – your needs, your desires, even your family.”
 - Radical by David Platt

Anyone sensing a theme here?

Abandoning things? Not fun. I'm alright with giving away some things. I'll give away a shirt so long as there's still one left in my drawer. I'll give up a book so long as I know I can get it at the library. I'll give away a can of food if I know that there's still something left in the pantry or the fridge.

But, “abandon everything”? Not so much a fan of that. I have projects I want to finish, kids I want to watch grow up, impacts that I want to make on the world.

That's not the way that it works with Jesus, though.

Every morning, when I ask what He wants from me that day, He has one answer.

“Empty yourself, MacFarlan.”

Let go of it all. Forget the answers that you think that you have worked out. Quit trying so hard. Empty yourself. Let yourself be filled with me instead.

Be (you) being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps that's why, some mornings, I make a habit of not asking. Because, some mornings, I don't want to know.

Jesus isn't using a gimmick. He's issuing a warning. “Follow me. But, expect it to cost more than you think you have to give.”

Porcupine Love

“Plainly put, a relationship with Jesus requires total, superior, and exclusive devotion.”
 - Radical by David Platt

Ouch. See, I like to think that I am devoted to Jesus. Part of me is totally and completely, overwhelmingly in love with Jesus. But, even that part is often in love with Jesus the way that you might be in love with a pet porcupine.

You love it, but you love it from a distance, because, if you get to close, thing stop being comfortable. You get poked. You bleed a little. The thing that looked so soft and fuzzy from a distance is quite clearly not.

Jesus isn't fuzzy. He said things and did things (and says things and does things) that don't fit inside of my boxes, that make it hard to follow Him. He asks that I not be afraid to give up everything. He tells me not to worry. He has this nasty habit of sending people out who seem ill-prepared to do the jobs that He asks of them, so that nobody can make the mistake of thinking that they did it on their own.

He requires total devotion (don't put your hand to the plow and then turn back around).

He requires superior devotion (don't love your father, mother, or any other human more than you love Me).

He requires exclusive devotion (a man cannot serve two masters).

This relationship is not something that I can pick up on Sundays and Wednesdays and Tuesdays and then drop in between. This relationship is not one that I can ever expect to be easy or painless or simple. And, it's not something that non-porcupine lovers can be expected to quite understand.

After all, who in their right minds intentionally hugs a porcupine?

When you run into something “sharp” that Jesus says, do you back away, or do you hold it tighter, until you understand?

Bridge to Nowhere

The weather was gross Monday night, putting a significant gap in our childcare schedule where we would normally be outside, running the kids in circles.

As it turned out, it was no big deal, because the kids spent almost a full hour building a bridge of chairs across the room and back and then walking in never ending circles.

Who needs toys when a few stacks of chairs can keep you fully entertained?

Imitate

“We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”

 - "Radical" by David Platt

See, I like it when my religion centers around me. I like feeling important, like I'm in the middle of something. Part of me likes it when the Gospel presentation ends at, “Jesus died just for YOU, and all that you have to do is accept His gift.”

It's harder when we get to the part about being “imitators of Christ.”

Because, Jesus' life wasn't about Him at all.

It was all about the Father.

It was all about a plan to connect with the people who the Father loved.

It was all about giving up EVERYTHING.

It doesn't seem fair that Jesus would ask so much of His followers (don't bury your dead; don't love your father more than me; sell everything that you have; don't turn back), until I stop to think about what it was that He gave up. This was GOD.

He could have waited until the invention of air conditioning. But, He didn't.

He could have waited for YouTube and Blogger. But, He didn't.

He could have waited for lethal injection, or an electric chair. But, He went to the cross.

This baby, this toddler, this teenager, was GOD.

The Gospel is bigger than me because God is bigger than me. The question is, am I living that way?

Haiti!

When I was still in Kenya, one of my neighbors questioned me about Haiti. “Why do you [Americans/the American government] send money so far away to Africa when Haiti is just there [so close to your border] and the people living there are so poor?”

It wasn't something that we got into much at the time (foreign policy was a little beyond the often interrupted scope of the dialogue), but it was definitely a conversation that I remembered.

Ironically enough, I am going to Haiti this summer, with a group from the youth group at my church, because of an earthquake that snapped Americans out of a little of their complacency. July 22^nd - 31^st we'll be working with Haitian Christian Mission on a VBS – Vacation Bible School – for kids who have never seen that type of thing before.

Over half the team has never been out of the country, but they have been on other ministry trips before. In fact, well over half of the kids were on the Bridgetown trip just a few weeks ago.

Part of the first Haiti training included a note make sure that food was in Ziplocs – to keep out the ants. The girl next to me just smiled and whispered, “It's okay. You just flick them off.” [demonstration with her fingers of flicking ants off a Voodoo Donut].

Haha. Glad there's one thing that won't be new to them when we get to Haiti!