St. Francis and a man whose not so much a saint.

Thought 11: So I just finished a book call Chasing Francis. It is a fictional book about a pastor who planted an evangelical church in New England when he loses his faith in God right in front of his congregation. His uncle is a friar in Italy and takes him to Italy for a pilgrimage to following the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

St. Francis' time was much like our own. For the first time people started having some disposable income and wealth. Now we have three percent of the population with forty percent of the resources. The church was very central in this taking money to forgive sins and trying to keep themselves in power by making themselves the gateway to God. Nowadays we have the prosperity gospel being preached in many churches. Francis was also around when faith was starting to be replaced by science and today we are scientific people. People had been giving up on the gospel because when they saw the church they didn't see the gospel. They saw people just like them: trying to gain and keep power and wealth.

Francis was an aristocrat and a soldier that gave all his wealth away to follow Jesus. His followers were also aristocrats who did the very same. The ministered to the people Jesus had come to minister to: the sick and the poor. His lifestyle truly showed that money and wealth were unnecessary for happiness and that made people believe in the gospel again. He preached with his actions. He could be a wealthy aristocrat but he didn't want that cause all he needed was Jesus. His actions put the illegitimate churches to shame and people could easily tell which was the real "good news."

The pastor in the book comes back and makes a new plan for his church. He desires to strip them of their 'evangelical' title and make it a "come and see" church. Come and see how we care for the poor, come and see how we find God in everything, come and see how we create a community, and decide whether or not you want a part of it. Francis said "preach always and when necessary use words." God's truth is not to be proven with words because it can't be. Our God is irrational, unpredictable, and inconceivable. Our actions when guided by him go past the reasonable and reach truth and that is how we show God to others. Truth does not need to be defended because truth can stand on it's own.

Thought 12: A guy came into work last week and often at work I get asked if I am in school and what I want to do with my life. When I say I want to be a pastor I get the "really? good for you." From time to time I will get a story about how they used to go to a church or how they still do. This man told me a little bit of his story. He was born in Austria and his grandfather took part in the Holocaust. He was raised in a very prejudiced home and only ever hung out with straight, working-class, white men. He came to Vancouver with his wife and his wife asked if they could rent out their extra bedroom to a girl named Jessica. He agreed and him and Jessica became close often watching football together. One day he was at work and one of his co-workers asked if Jessica was living with him. He answered that she was and why he asked. The man said "oh never mind it's something that you won't like and I don't want to ruin it." Well the man answered "well you have to tell me now or else I will beat the **** out of you." The man told him that he knew Jessica when she was still known as John. Now the guy got angry and drove home. He found Jessica sitting on the patio and he went up grabbed her by the hair and threw her off. His wife then jumped on his back trying to stop him but he grabbed her by the hair and threw her off. He then went inside and watched football ignoring the weeping girls on his front lawn. He said it was then that he realized the problem wasn't with them but with him. Since that day he has tried his best to treat everyone as equals and that has brought him to God.

Battle Royale

Thought 9: If you were close to me than you know how rough the first half of 2010 was for me. If you are still close to me that you know how great the second half of 2010 has been. This was a poem I wrote for my class during my rough half of 2010. During that time I didn't want to share it. Now that it is over why not put it up. I don't know if it's good but here it is:

Palisade

He should, but he can’t. Never releasing
the scent of her perfume. Dreaming
about her lips, her leaving, her belief,
her ever-constant faith.
He comes to a wall, stopped here
at the base, at the interfering palisade,
wishing that there were answers to his journey.
Bound in the grip of frustration he shouts
at the gates in front of him.
He smells the crispness of the air,
its cold breath, its life-
inducing power, its slow brush along
along his cheek, and the grip releasing.
He wakens in a fresh clarifying view
of the narrow, lit pathway surrounded,
which seems just conceivable, because it tastes of her. 

Thought 10: On another note I have had a battle royale of decisions for my future as of late. There has been what I want to do, what others want me to do, and what God wants me to do. Now being laid out like that the choice should be obvious to me that I should do what God wants to do. The problem was that a few weeks ago I didn't know which one God wanted me to do. But last week God let me know what it is and now changes will be happening in my life. He revealed to me that I can't rely on one person to influence my decision. What he wants me to do is hard but he has given me peace and it seems peace to the one who matters so much to me. I am not going to announce it on a blog so if you really care what it entails than you will ask me.

Funerals and Worship

Well the title sure sounds cheery for today now doesn't it?

Thought 7: Funerals are a strange thing for the Christian. Because of our faith funerals should be a massive celebration for the person who passed on is now meeting Christ and going to be in their Father's arms. But we all mourn for that person because we won't get to see them for the rest of this lifetime. I was thinking back to some of the funerals I had been to. I was very sad that they had passed away and I wouldn't get to see them anymore but I never broke into tears over that fact at the funeral. When my grandpa (or papa as I called him) passed away from Alzheimer's I was at the verge of tears the whole time. I was in Grade 7 at the time I believe and it came time to place a rose on the casket. As I went up I was fighting back the tears and then I turned and saw my Grandma (or nana) crying and that made me cry. More recently at my grandma's funeral (not the nana one) I started crying once I heard the sobs of my mom, aunt, and uncles. I realized that my tears were caused not because my loved one was gone but because of the current pain of my loved ones now.

Thought 8: On a totally unrelated note I was listening to Sun FM on my way home last night and I heard something that upset me a little. First of all their is a commercial that Sun plays for themselves and it talks about looking at porn when your mother walks in and then saying you should have been on their twitter or facebook site. That was a little over the limit in my point but that is not what upset me. They have now the Sun worshipers club. Yup worshipers. People join this club so they can win prizes which is all good and fine but the name is brutal. Sun worshipers makes it sound like Sun FM is setting themselves up as God. I didn't like that too much and if they were to change the name it would be all fine with me but worshipers?

The Internet

Thought 5: Let us now reminisce on our younger days. The times when we had to ask for permission to go on the computer and again ask to go on the internet. One of the reasons we had to ask was so we could have supervision to get protection from all the nasty things that can be out on the interweb. The other was the curse of dial-up internet. If you were on the internet you could not use your phone and if you tried you would be greeted with what would become one of the most annoying sounds in the world. For those of you who do not know what that noise is go here: Dial up noise.


Thought 6: Still on the topic of internet I find one really annoying thing about trying to watch videos. As I was awaiting for a video to load I was greeted with a commercial that ran video. Now what bothered me so much was that the video was streaming perfectly fine and instantly however the video I was trying to watch would have to stop to buffer every 10 minutes or so. How come this commercial can play video instantly and smoothly but my video stops all the time to buffer? Can't we get the commercial technology for our videos?

Harry Potter and No-Shave November

Unlike my last post these thoughts are more about things presently happening in the world today. And even though the title kind of suggests it I am not attempting to link Harry Potter with No shave November (though that Dumbledore has quite the beard).

Thought 3: I was reading on mylifeisaverage.com a post on Harry Potter and how they use quills which made me actually think why do they use quills? If they are a “special” group of people with special skills why would they not decide to use pens and pencils? We no longer use quills cause pens and pencils work better. It’s the same as them using owls to send messages. We no longer use pigeons because e-mail works better. Why not just use e-mail? Just because you can use magic doesn’t mean you should use harder methods of writing and communication.

Thought 4: No shave November is in it's final week and it seems that most men were celebrating as facial hair was appearing everywhere. Everywhere but my face really. And as sad as it is this growth of fur on my face is more impressive than it was last year. One November world it will happen.

Random Thoughts of November 17th

Well yes, I have decided to start a blog. I find that I get random thoughts that usually don't come up in conversation so why not put them here so they can be shared to the world. So let us start accumulating the plethora.

Thought 1: For those of you who do not know I am an intern at Willow Park Church in the young adults program GENnet. Today during staff morning devotions our pastor Phil Collins (yes that is legit his name) shared a verse from Ecclesiastes 10:1:

"As dead flies give perfume a bad smell,
   so little folly outweighs wisdom and honor."

He then asked what the dead flies in our lives were? and I realized how often that question format is used. You can probably take most parables in the bible and ask the question "who/what is the <insert topic here> of our lives?" In this case the topic was "the dead flies." Earlier this month we were talking about the Samaritan women Jesus talked to at the well and the question was "who is the Samaritan woman in our lives?" It works pretty much every time and it took me until now to realize how often that format is used.

Thought 2: In the bathroom at the church (yes the bathroom) is a poster of Einstein with a quote that says "I want to know God's thoughts...the rest are details." This got me thinking (yes in the bathroom) about all that Einstein came up with in mathematics and physics and how he might have seen all that as just details and not important. E=MC2 meant nothing compared to God`s thoughts. Or perhaps everything he was trying to figure out and all the work he put in to his theories was his way of trying to understand God`s thoughts.