Hamlet's Blackberry: Book Review

I recently finished reading a book recommended on Kevin DeYoung'sBest Books of 2010 list called Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age by William Powers.  DeYoung recommended it as the most convicting book he had read all year, so I "picked up" a copy and read through it.  I don't know if I would use the word convicting, but it certainly was a thought-provoking book.  You already read one of the fruits of my thought being provoked,the reason why I never answer my phone.  Really, if I could sum up the whole book, it's the idea that we don't allow time for our thoughts to be provoked any more.  We are trapped in "the crowd" with no easy way out.
Powers separates his book into three sections; What Larks? The Conundrum of the Connected Life, Beyond the Crowd Teachings of Seven Philosophers of Screens, and In Search of Depth Ideas in Practice.  The middle section is his focus, where he takes the teachings and musings of seven "philosophers" like Plato and Shakespeare and discusses how the issues they were having with being connected relate to our world today and how their solutions might help us.  To be honest, I thought this section was the weakest of the three sections of the book.  Plato and Thoreau were really the best chapters, but the rest I could have skipped and still gotten a lot out of the book.
Powers really shines in the opening section (the first four chapters), and really that section alone is worth the price of the book.  If nothing else, it helps you to understand what being constantly connected is doing to you.  There is another book I'm just starting that promises to go into this in more scientific detail, but Powers doesn't need scientific detail because we can all see ourselves as he talks about the issues.  Boiling it down, since we are constantly connected, we flit from info to info.  Think about it, how many windows to you have open on your computer right now?  How about tabs?  Have you ever surfed Facebook, but then the computer dings to tell you you've got email, and there is a link to a blog post you click, so you start reading the post, but off to the side there is something really intriguing, so you click there, but just as you start reading, the phone rings and your spouse asks what time the store closes, so you Google the store to find the store hours, then you click back on Facebook and update your status to reflect how grateful you are that your spouse is running to the store, and then a chat window pops up and you start chatting with that friend you haven't talked to in forever.....  Sound familiar?  What Powers suggests is missing are moments to process.
So, the last section of the book talks about ways that we might find those moments to process.  One of the suggestions I liked was the "no screens" room.  He suggested setting up a room without "screens" and deliberately spending time in that room.  Now, I would change that slightly to allow my nook or Kindle, but that's because I don't have either of them set up for things like email and internet browsing would be horribly slow, and because I don't buy physical books any more and haven't for the last two or three years.  Anyway, just the idea of disconnecting and "getting away" occasionally is valuable.  Take time to ponder.
Now let me quickly go away from the book and draw a conclusion based upon the material.  The subject I want to mention really quick is Bible study.  After I read Hamlet's Blackberry, I was pondering how this applied to my spiritual walk and I suddenly realized just how counter to the way I process information Bible devotionals really are.  Let me explain.  I read a lot of books.  A lot!  As in, more than one a week.  I also read lots of blogs.  I use Google Reader and Flipboard on my iPad (which is synced with Google Reader) to keep up with all of those blogs.  I keep up on Drudgereport daily and read lots of emails throughout the day.  What I don't do is repeat a lot of content.  My reading of Hamlet's Blackberry will likely be the only reading of Hamlet's Blackberry.  I don't typically reread a lot of blog posts.  In other words, my intake of content is constantly new.  Bible study is quite the opposite.  Instead we are called to pour over and reread the same text as we ask the Holy Spirit to write it on our hearts.  This means reading the same material over again.  This means pondering slowly through passages of scripture.  This means training myself to slow down as I read the Bible.  Anyway, just a thought.

TRON Legacy: Album Review

Ever since rumors started surfacing about a new TRON movie, there has been a background discussion about the music being done by Daft Punk.  Having never heard of Daft Punk, that's not really the kind of news that gets me excited.  Subsequent news always seemed to mention the Daft Punk soundtrack and as trailers for the movie were shared online, again, the soundtrack was pointed at.  So, even though I haven't had a chance to see the movie, I thought I would point MOG at the TRON Legacy soundtrack and see what all of the fuss is about.

Let me be blunt, this is one of the best movie soundtracks I've ever heard (BTW, I am a movie soundtrack junkie).  I was blown away by the music here.  So much so that I just did some online research to try to figure out who composed the score with these Daft Punk guys, because the orchestration and the beauty of the music is simply astounding.  Well, the Daft Punk guys did all of the music.  They worked on the score for over two years, as you can tell as you listen to the interweaving of melodies, orchestra and techno music.  This score took time.  So much so that the movie was cut to the soundtrack!  If you understand the movie score process, you know that one of the last things that happens in the film is the soundtrack.  You can see the process in a lot of making of movies.  It usually involves the conductor standing in front of the orchestra with a screen showing the movie, and the orchestra literally plays the soundtrack to the movie.  This movie was cut listening to the soundtrack.  I can't wait to see the results!

The music on the album is a mix of orchestral music with techno.  This mix comes off well.  Some tracks like Derezzed are almost all techno music.  This is what Daft Punk is known for, and they don't disappoint.  The music is well sequenced and mixed with an originality that is rare in techno.  Where Legacy really shines though is in the use of the orchestra.  There are moments that sound like something from Batman Begins, moments that sound like Lord of the Rings in their scope and grandeur and moments that sound like the great composers.  No, I'm not exaggerating.  Adagio for TRON is incredible.  I actually stopped what I was doing, put the headphones on, started the track over, closed my eyes and listened.  Exquisite.

Something that is so different about this album is the interplay between the orchestra and the techno.  What you would expect would be the orchestra and the loops to be treated as separate entities, but since the Daft Punk guys created it all at the same time, the orchestra is simply another sonic tool for the layering of the music.  The result is something truly unique (at least I've never heard something quite like it).

What is important about this album is that I can listen to the whole thing and that I can listen to it multiple times.  It seems like movie soundtracks have really gone downhill in the last decade.  The aforementioned Batman Begins sounds much the same throughout and the new Star Trek wasn't much better.  Listening to Legacy I can hear what is missing from so many soundtracks, melodies and counter-melodies to go along with these wonderful chord progressions.

If you enjoy classical music, techno music or movie soundtracks, you really owe it to yourself to listen to this album.

Worship Geek Moment

Dan Strom just emailed me this link, and it looks like the best thing for our projection system since sliced bread. I can't wait to try it out. I'm picturing running the video for Sunday from a Google Chrome window instead of the massive resource heavy Song Show and being able to edit the show from my office or home rather than heading upstairs to the Projection booth, and Pastor Flack would be able to create and edit his sermon notes from right within the program... I'm really excited to try this out!

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Why I Never Answer My Phone

Depending on how well you know me, or if you have ever tried to get a hold of me, you will have quickly realized that calling me is pretty much useless, but if you send me an email, you will usually get a response in a decent amount of time. I've never really thought about why I'm like this, but I'm reading a book called, "Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital World," and I realize that it's my attempt to get some space. Picture in your head a friend who has a Bluetooth device hooked up to their phone. Have you ever noticed that people with them tend to talk on them a lot and have difficulty not answering the phone, even if they are involved in a real live conversation.

The phone has become the ultimate instant communication tool, demanding immediate response. When you receive a call, you are expected to answer it. If I am busy and phone rings, Jodie will ask, "Are you going to get that?" to which my typical response is, "If it's important, they will leave a message.". Why? There are only a few things in my mind that rise to the level of needing instant response and those types of things come from a small group of people (caller ID is a wonderful thing). Every thing else tends to fall into the categories of needing a quick response, a response, or no response at all. By waiting for a message, it gives me the opportunity to sort the message to the appropriate response.

This is why I love Google Voice. It allows me to filter incoming calls to my contacts only, and the rest it sends to voicemail, which is transcribed and sent to me in an email. Once in my inbox, it can be responded to immediately, starred for later response, or read and digested with no response needed. The difference is that I get to set the time when I will interact with my email. Now, granted, my iPad (by the way this is the first post I've written on the iPad) dings when I get an email, but I choose whether or not I check the ding. When I'm at work, I check my email immediately and respond immediately. People have figured out that if you email me during the day during the week, they get an immediate response. I used to check voiemails once a day at best and often slower than that. During my days off, I check emails a couple of times a day, and respond slowly or star for a later response.

Long story short, I have attempted to exert some kind of control over the busyness and sense of urgency in my life. I would encourage you to take a look at the things in life that are adding to your hectic day and yet don't really need to. This could be emails (I have a friend who checks emails once a day because then he can control the amount of time it takes), facebook, your Bluetooth, perhaps even something like checking the news constantly. Consider how you might gain a measure of control back.

If not, please know that if you need to get a hold of me, don't call, send me an email, and I'll get back to you!

Finally Excited for Christmas

There is a major difference between Jodie and me in our appreciation of holidays.  It comes down to this, Jodie likes to celebrate holidays, I really could care less about most holidays.  To me, the only holidays that rise to the occasion of being a day to celebrate are Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas.  The rest of the holiday schedule (including Birthdays) could disappear and I wouldn't be terrible torn up about it.

Now, not only does Jodie love Christmas, but she loves Christmas starting in the fall.  This year, she pulled out the Christmas music October 3.  Actually, it might have been earlier, but October 3 was the first time I heard it.  I have a firm rule that no Christmas music may be played before Thanksgiving, and really I could wait until the 2nd week of December to start listening.  It's not that I'm a Scrooge, I just get bored with music, and there are only so many Christmas songs to listen to before you start repeating them, over, and over, and over, and over again.  If I wait longer to start listening to Christmas music, then I don't get burnt out on Christmas music before Christmas even gets here.

What's worse than early Christmas music?  Shopping!  If I could, I would not leave the house on the weekends during the holiday shopping season (we live off of a shopping center, so we get to have fun with holiday traffic).  Drivers start getting punchy, lines get crazy long, and people generally loose common sense when shopping during the Christmas season.  This I find to be odd, since they mostly have common sense the rest of the year.  So, I have been shopping online for many years now, and will likely continue that trend.

Having read this far, you may be wondering how in the world the title matches the post.  To this point, I have complained greatly about the Christmas season.  Well, the title is true, I am finally getting in the Christmas season.  Last night was the Riley County High School Christmas concert, and it was really wonderful.   They had it this year at Grace, and the church was decorated nicely with candlelight around the sanctuary, and the music was great.  Then this morning, worship team practiced our Christmas music set (note: we've been singing Christmas music for a couple of weeks).  Then the kicker, this afternoon Lindsay Arthur came in to practice the Offertory for tomorrow, "Christmas Morning" by Shannon Wexelberg.  First of all, if you have not heard of Shannon Wexelberg, she was the worship leader at the National Worship Leader Conference this year who impressed me the most.  She led worship from the piano, and it was a moving time.  She has released a Christmas album called Love Came for Me, and it is one of the best Christmas albums released in the last couple of years, and the song Christmas Morning is one of the best (if not the best) original Christmas song written in the last couple of years.  Lindsay sings wonderfully well, and it was such a blessing to run through the song today.  If you are in the Manhattan area, plan on coming to either the 8:30 or 10:30 service tomorrow to hear her sing, hear Pastor Flack preach Advent from the Psalms and all of the other Christmas celebration in the service.

Before I leave you, let me leave you with the last verse of the song and a link to buy the cd (or you could listen to it on a service like Rhapsody or MOG).  Trust me, worth it!

This Christmas morning

As families gather all around the tree

Let’s tell the story

That Love was born to die for you and me

To mend the broken

To be what we could never be

This Christmas morning

Let us worship Christ the King

Love Came for Me

Another New Blog????....... Enough Already!!!!!!

Yes, I know, I have launched no less than three different blog sites over the last three years, agerling.wordpress.com, alan.gerlingfamily.com and amos5worship.com with a relaunch on that site.  So, here we are with another place to call blog home.  Luckily, most of my posts have moved with me as I have gone from site to site, with the exception being the posts I wrote while using habari on amos5worship.  I'll probably manually copy those over later.

Couple of reasons for the move back to Wordpress.  First of all, renewal was up for amos5worship, and I just couldn't justify paying for the domain when I don't use it all that often.  Jodie came to the same conclusion and moved her blog to psalm127mom.blogspot.com (I know, Blogspot :-( Ick!)  The second reason was the time needed to tinker within my custom design on my custom install of habari really resulted in me doing nothing.  With this blog, I've got it set up, and Wordpress worries about things like upgrades and design theming, etc.  That means that all I have to worry about is the content!  Oh, and did I mention free.  That's a pretty solid reason.

The last reason that I transitioned away from amos5worship is that I felt a pressure on myself to keep post to subject matter of worship and justice and related matters.  Not to say I didn't stray, but I felt weird writing a long post on Ubuntu on a worship site.  Worship Geek (a light-bulb moment that happened to be available) lets me flex the content since the title is really a description of two passions of mine, worship and all things geeky.  So, my hope is to post more often.  (I know, I've said that before)  I'm also planning to broaden the content a bit.

So, sorry for the change again.  I really do intend that this is going to be my permanent blog for the foreseeable future.  Thanks for being patient, and looking forward to sharing with you going forward.

Goodbye Rhapsody

For those of you who know me well, you know that for a long time I have been an avid user of Rhapsody.  Matter of fact, during my sophomore year, as I was using Audiogalaxy to download hundreds if not thousands of illegal mp3s, I began to feel convicted that what I was doing was stealing.  The biggest barrier to me purchasing all of those tracks on cd was the eclectic nature of my listening habits.  I listen to a lot, and I like to listen to new music often.  That is where Rhapsody came in.  Rhapsody launched in December of 2001, and I quickly subscribed.  For a monthly fee (that has gone up and down over the years, but usually settled around $9.99), I could listen to unlimited tracks by most of the artists I wanted to listen to legally.  The downside was that the service only worked streaming (they later added the ability to purchase mp3s).  This wasn't too much of an issue for me since most of my listening was in my dorm room.  Much has changed over the years, and much has stayed the same.  For many of those years, Rhapsody was a player installed in Windows, and recently, they launched a web player and iOS apps.

I have been a faithful customer for all of those years.  Rhapsody really has been a part of my music life, especially now that I'm a worship director, listening weekly to new albums and artists.  So, why am I saying goodbye after all of these years?  Simple, something better and cheaper came along.  This week, the Chrome app store launched, and one of the reviewers commented that the Chrome version of the MOG web player was really nice.  To be blunt, it blows Rhapsody away, and it is an early beta with features missing.  Rhapsody has been slow to change (in 9 years, the player changed little), and has become in many ways bloated, including the web player and the amount of resources it uses.  In my geekiness, I have switched to Ubuntu, and the only way to play tracks is through the web player, and it's just plain awkward, and it hasn't changed in two years.

So, MOG it is.  Maybe someday I will return to Rhapsody, but for now I'm going with the new kid on the block.  Oh, and did I mention that MOG is half the price of Rhapsody.  Makes a big difference!  I figured out how much I have paid to Rhapsody over the last 9 years, but I will spare you the wincingly large amount.

Goodbye Rhapsody, you will always be my first music streaming love.

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It's been a long day. This Sunday, the Flack family had gone out to Tuttle Cove (if you didn't know our Church Picnic is out at Tuttle Cove), and they came back and said that the site was pretty torn up. So, I went out this morning, and pretty torn up was a gross understatement. It is more like a grassless mud-hill. Certainly not a place where you can have 500+ people walking around, sitting, etc., much less building a stage on with sound equipment and a generator. So, the picnic is cancelled. Yes, yet another event cancelled. After trying every other possible venue in town, I ended the day frustrated. Thankfully, things like the meat had not yet come in, so the order could be cancelled, but honestly, I really look forward to these combined services.

If you look back through my blog, you will see that I often talk about my desire to see the congregation together more. It is a healthy thing for the members of the Body to occasionally see the whole Body gathered together. So, stick it on your calendars. Easter 2011 is coming up fast! Actually after all my calls, it looks like City Park might be a better venue for us for the college, so I'm starting to plan now!

That being said, I look forward to see God work Sunday. After the let down of this week, I am again reminded of God's providence (sovereignty). Nothing is outside of God's control or plan... even a muddy slick instead of a grassy hill! Poor example, but today I needed to be reminded. I think sometimes we get into the habit of talking about God's providence in the big things. When things are going really good, or when we are going through tribulation, we think of how God is sovereign in the situation. We forget that God is in control in the little things too. After all, in addition to naming and counting the stars, He also numbers the hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30).

If I may, let me quote quickly from Kevin DeYoung's book, "The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism"

"... Like most of us, ... students are much more at ease using passive language about God's permissive will or comfortable generalities about God being "in control" than they are about stating precisely and confidently to those in the midst of suffering "this has come from God's fatherly hand.... If God is a Father, then surely He exercises His authority of His creation and creatures for the good of His beloved children. Providence is nothing more than a belief in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, brought to bear on our present blessing and troubles and buoying our hope into the future...."

Lord of the Rings, Programming and Karate Kid

Poor kid, this morning started out with Isaac's 9 month appointment. All continues to go well. He's 93rd percentile in height and head circumference and 76% in weight. Healthy kid.

The worst part about these appointments are the shots. Jodie of course will have nothing to do with holding him down, so it inevitably falls to me. Every time, he has laid there calmly, making eye contact with me. Then out of the corner of my eye I see the nurse jab, and then a split second later, I see a jump, a realization that something just hurt big time in his eyes, and then the tears well up. Then the screaming..... You get the idea. Anyway, poor kid took a really long nap this afternoon.

So, while the Gerling family worked on their naps, I headed downstairs to continue my whirlwind quest to get all of the programming projects that have been piling up done. I hunted a bit and decided on Lord of the Rings for a background movie. I can't really say that I watched it all that closely as I was engrossed greatly in converting Jodie's Joomla website into a Habari one. Again, I love Joomla, I've worked with it a lot, and it works great for sites like the church website. However, the major complaint from Jodie has been that the comments don't work. I really have no idea why such a thing would happen, and therefore had no idea how to fix it. Habari has a nice elegant comment solution, so I spent my day learning how to create a template for Habari! You can see the result at psalm127mom.com. If you saw the site before, you actually really shouldn't notice that much of a difference (other than the fact you can leave comments), but rest assured, the site is now actually on a blogging platform!

This leaves one final project. I need to redo the Jodie Gerling Designs & Photography page. Jodie actually has had a design done for several months now, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I've spent most of the evening looking at various platforms for photo blogs with a nice gallery layout and after some consideration of PixelPost and ZenPhoto, it looks like the winner is ye old classic platform, Wordpress. Anyway, that's tomorrow's goal, so hopefully you can see the results soon.

Now, while I was trying out various CMS platforms, I put in Karate Kid II. I just can't believe that I always forget how much I love this movie. I know, some of you are saying that Karate Kid I is better, but I have always loved the sequel far more. Sure, the original has lines like, "Don't forget to breathe," and "Wax on, wax off," but how does that relate to you in real life? Really. The second movie teaches us about things like honor and sacrifice and has a wonderfully pure love story between Daniel and Kumiko. What could this be? A love story without any make out scenes or other junk that manages to work its way into modern movies? No, just a story where two people get to know each other by spending time together, realizing that despite being from different worlds, they have a lot in common and they fall in love. Note, it isn't till after they declare their love for each other that they even consider kissing! This is so much more like real life.... well, the way it ought to be, than what most movies portray.

Anyway, I digress. Let me just throw some quotes out there for digestion.

Mr Miyagi: "Daniel-san, never put passion before principle. Even if win, you lose."

Mr Miyagi: "Lies only become truth if other person chooses to believe them."

Would you not agree? So much more profound than, "Paint the fence."

 

Beautiful Things

A new group I've started listening to here in the last couple of weeks is Gungor. At the worship conference this year, one of the bands played their song Beautiful Things. The search for that song brought me to them. I will probably post some more songs of theirs, but this is the first one I heard. I love the juxtaposition of instruments that you wouldn't typically put together to form a worship band. I can't remember the last time I saw the glockenspiel used outside of a classical setting.

The Divine Commodity

The modern church is beset by a consumer mentality and filled to the brim with consumer Christians. That is the premise of Skye Jethani's book, "The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity."

Using a mix of examples from modern church leaders, Bible stories and interestingly, stories about Vincent Van Gogh, Jethani attempts to deconstruct different ways that the Church has adopted consumerism and restore Christians to use their imaginations. In the book, he deconstructs: our commodified view of God, our branded identities, our attempts at transformation through external events, our devotion to institutions as God's vessels, our unceasing pursuit of pleasure, our contentment with segregation and the individualism pushed by consumerism.

The book had a tendency to hit pretty close to home. I would imagine anyone involved in a church in America would see examples in their own experiences. I should make it clear that Jethani's purpose is not to tear down the Church, but rather to illuminate the power of the Gospel.

The chapters that spoke to me particularly were the chapters on attempting to transform people through external events and the chapter on our contentment with segregation. I am as guilty as the next person of using programs and ministries to affect change in peoples' lives, but we too often forget that it is the Holy Spirit that affects change. That, and it is through relationships with Christians living the Gospel that unbelievers see Christ. Also, the chapter on segregating ourselves according to our own tastes speaks so strongly to the situation we have now in the church. Like hymns? Go to the traditional service. Want to have fun in church, go to youth group, etc. The Church is a diverse Body, not a loose corporation of separate groups.

Overall, Jethani is a decent writer. I found myself getting bogged down several times, not following his connections from one thought to the next. I wonder if part of this was my reading of this book on Kindle. Perhaps in the print version, things are laid out such that there are distinct separations between subjects. That being said, there were many parts that I took notes and several times that I thought of people that would benefit from reading this book.

So, I would recommend this book to anyone who is a part of the American church, especially to those who find themselves disillusioned by the church. This book is eye opening and refreshing.

Random comment for the day.

A guy mentions randomly in a sermon that he happens to not like David Crowder's song, Everything Glorious, and almost a year later, he still gets accused of hating on DCB!  I love David Crowder.  I have spent money on cds and books by said musician.  I just happen to disagree with the theological implications of one of the songs that they sing!

Daily Blogging?

You might wonder what happened to the daily blogging thing that I committed to do.  Well, if you read back a bit, you'll see a post on daily walking.  It came down to spending an hour every day walking or an hour every day blogging, and frankly, I need to walk a whole lot more.  So, I will continue to blog as much as possible, but it will be spotty once again until I find the time to carve out for thoughtful consideration of blog posts!

The Toolbox

Either last week or the week before, I watched a series of videos by Nathan Nockels talking about the click track that they use for A Mighty Fortress.  You can find the first of the series here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XKC1gtXXYk.  As adamant as I have been in the past about using click tracks, these videos softened me to the concept.  I still stick by my question that musicians have been keeping time for centuries without a metronome piped into their ears, why can't we?  That being said, a click track allows the team to expand their sound and do things they couldn't do otherwise.

I don't know if you all know this, but I spent a summer once working in an 1875 cabinetmaker's shop making furniture with period tools.  Woodworking takes on a different light when you are using dovetail saws, and handsaws and foot powered lathes.  However, there were many occasions that we wished we could do something with the wood that it was either extremely time intensive or simply impossible to do with hand tools.

In the same manner, there are things that we could do to fill out our sound if we used the tools available to us.  So, this week, since Ryan (my intern) is leading worship Sunday, I've been learning the ins and outs of tools like Ableton Live and Reason so that we can try some click track things coming up on March 7th (the team that Sunday is right for throwing something completely new at them).  Of course, I am still of the conviction that there are teams out there that use click track far too often.  To use the woodworking analogy, they use a buzz-saw for everything.  I would hope a balance could be found so that we can use all the tools at our disposal.

What are your thoughts on click tracks?  Do you think they take away or add to the music?

God of Justice

I just posted the devotional for God of Justice.  Head over to the devotional page to check it out.  It's on God of Justice by Tim Hughes.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2332591&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1

God of Justice

I ran across this song a couple of months ago, and thought that it would be a perfect missions month song, but more than that it hits the themes that I think we need to be reminded of over and over again.  Justice.  Mercy.  Loving the unloved.  These themes go hand in hand with worship.

We’ve talked before about Amos 5:21-24.  God hates and despises our worship when it is not accompanied by justice and mercy.  Micah 6:8 follows along the same lines where it says, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly before the Lord.”  Yet again we see that theme of the Lord requiring of us justice and mercy and kindness.

How does this happen?  I think Tim Hughes does a great job of reminding us of both the purpose and the method that we might show the world around us love.  That God of justice was a savior to us all.  He came to rescue the weak and the poor.  Most importantly, He came to serve and not to be served.  That is our example, to serve and not to be served!  This was just as countercultural then as it is now.  The disciples were shocked when Jesus washed their feet.  This was the same Jesus who John the Baptist was unfit to tie His sandals, yet He was serving the disciples at a base level.  This of course was a picture for how He came to serve all on the cross of Calvary.

I don’t know about you, but I have trouble with knowing how to answer this call.  This call to go live to feed the hungry and stand beside the broken.  I have been contemplating justice for months now since David Nasser’s talk about being the Bride of Christ in the world.  In a completely unrelated time, I was watching today a message John Piper gave this week about C.S. Lewis and how he is the second most important dead person in his life.  About 50 minutes into his message, he starts talking about what Lewis taught him about the perils of introspection.  He quotes C.S. Lewis, and I’ll repeat the quote here.

This is our dilemma . . . as thinkers we are cut off from what we think about; as tasting, touching, willing, loving, hating, we do not clearly understand. The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think. You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humor while roaring with laughter. But when else can you really know these things?

You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment; for in hope we look to hope’s object and we interrupt this by (so to speak) turning around to look at the hope itself. . . . Introspection is in one respect misleading. In introspection we try to look inside ourselves and see what is going on. But nearly everything that was going on a moment before is stopped by the very act of our turning to look at it. Unfortunately this does not mean that introspection finds nothing. On the contrary, it finds precisely what is left behind by the suspension of all our normal activities; and what is left behind is mainly mental images and physical sensations. The great error is to mistake this mere sediment or track or by product for the activities themselves.

Then Piper ties it all together by saying this, “What this has meant for me is, first, that I see now that the pursuit of Joy must always be indirect—focusing not on the experience but the object to be enjoyed. And, second, I see that faith in Jesus, in its most authentic experience is suspended when it is being analyzed to see if its real. Which means this analysis always ends in discouragement. When we are trusting Christ most authentically, we are not thinking about trusting, but about Christ. When we step out of the moment to examine it, we cease what we were doing, and therefore cannot see it. My counsel for strugglers therefore is relentlessly: Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus in his word. And pray for eyes to see.”

How do we love justice and mercy?  How do we keep from just singing?  We focus on Christ, always on Christ.  How else will we know justice than to look to the perfect Judge Himself?  How else will we see mercy unless we see Him who showed such mercy and grace at the cross that we must be made speechless?  Our prayer should be, “fill us up and send us out.”  Just as Piper prayed for “eyes to see,” let us be praying for hands to love and eyes to see and feet to go.  I know that if that is truly the desire of our heart, He will open up opportunities, and before we know it, we will look back and say, “wow, look how God was glorified by serving those people!”

So, as we worship, let us remember that our worship is not just songs on Sunday, but rather our songs on Sunday are about our worship throughout our lives!

Jumping through Fires Review

I’m not sure what I expected when I “picked up” a copy of David Nasser’s new book, “Jumping through Fires: The Gripping Story of One Man’s Escape from Revolution to Redemption.”  I heard David Nasser speak last year at the National Worship Leader’s Conference.  If you know me well, you know that I often say that most people learn their theology from what they sing in church, not what they hear in church.  What you remember is not usually specific examples from the sermon, but rather the songs that you sing in your car, home and often in your head.  There are however a handful of times that I’ve heard a message by a speaker so riveting that I remember it starkly.  One example is when Pastor Mark talked about what divorce really is.  He talked about two becoming one flesh.  Then to demonstrate what happens when you tear that flesh apart, he ripped a teddy bear in half.  The one message that has been on my mind for the last half of a year or so is David Nasser’s message.  If you go back through my blog a bit, you will find the link to the video of that message.  It is powerful, but I highly recommend that you watch it a couple of times.

So, it was with that frame of mind that I sat down to read this book.  Jumping through Fires is a well written, engaging book.  I would say that it is an easy read, and I got through it in a couple of hours.  Nasser’s style is storytelling at its best.  He tells the story in a linear style, and then goes back and fills in the tangents that would have sidetracked most authors throughout.  The result is that you become so engaged in the story he’s telling that when he goes back afterwords and fills in holes, you appreciate more the stories he just told.

Reading about Nasser’s life is really reading about Jesus’ working through a tapestry of events that unfolded over the course of 20 or so years.  You really see how God moved through events, often events that are bleak, to eventually bring a young man to saving faith, and then send him out to touch the lives of people all over the globe.

The story starts when David Nasser is 9 years old, and his family is caught up in a religious revolution that changed their world.  Nasser talks about moving to America, going from shy Iranian kid, to school druggie, and then Christ taking hold of his life and story, and using it to spread the gospel.  One story that moves me is the story of his first visit to youth group, and how God used a team of worshipers with servant hearts to soften the hard heart of Nasser’s Muslim father.

I did find myself wanting more from this book.  Perhaps because the book is a strict autobiography, and at no point does Nasser go off on a tangent and start preaching at his readers.  He simply lets the events speak for themselves and lets the reader draw their own conclusions about God’s power in lives.  It does give me a bit of perspective on the talks I have seen him give, and likely on any future books I will read by him.

I would encourage you to go out and grab a copy of this book and enjoy!