catching his breath

Surface level stuff seems good in my life, but I have an aching that I am missing something deeper. Perhaps like Martha I’m distracted from spending time with Jesus, sitting at his feet, infusing the rhythms of his life with mine. When people sleep, events are over, activities at rest the emptiness consumes me.  

I wanted to pray today and couldn’t. Where are the deeper things? I’d like to think I drink of the deep well of God’s love, but I haven’t felt the refreshing of it.

The next few weeks I will seek to find the deep where I can anchor my anxiety. Hope compels me. I tried to pray today and couldn’t. So I wrote.

My family and I are leaving Hobart to go work with the Skiatook Church of Christ. We’re excited. I will be doing youth work again and can’t wait. There are so many things I can say but don’t know where to begin.

For those of you who know me (and know why some of the things have happened recently) let me simply say the church in Skiatook knows as well and have embraced my family and me. When we visited I sensed a deep awareness of God’s presence. They have agreed to provide a place of healing and transformation as we work together to find God’s activity and join up.

Thanks to God and to you all for remaining with my family and me.

Stayed tuned as I will soon begin sharing on the blog my  journey with Skiatook.

I’m on a streak. Two days in a row I’ve ran. I need to stay on top of my health and everyone I know that runs loves it, so…

I still hate it but am making myself learn to love it. Any runners out there want to share some advice? Best time to run? Form and technique tips? Shoes? Etc.?

Also, be sure to check out John Dobbs blog tomorrow. Click on the link for Out Here Hope Remains to the right.

God bless.

Recently I teamed up with John Dobbs in writing. His blog Out Here Hope Remains has had a profound impact on people. He writes with honesty and from a place of deep faith. He has experienced excruciating pain and yet, still, hopes in the resurrected Messiah. He is an inspiration to many. I’m glad to be a part of what God is up to through his blog ministry. So go on over and check it out.

I’ll remain posting here but only on some short thoughts and perhaps a bit of commentary on pop culture here and there. I’ll go a little deeper every other Friday at his site. Have fun and stay tuned. And thanks John!

God bless,

Josh

New adventures don’t scare me much anymore. My life has been lived as adventure it seems. So it’s not a new adventure just a new trail to take.

The path I am considering though…it’s one full of jagged rocks, ankle-twisting ruts and dangerous cliffs. It could end me but it promises life.

Thus I go.

Peace to each of you.

John Dobbs has launched a grass-roots effort to honor ministers by asking bloggers to blog about a minister(s) who has impacted them (you can read more about it at his blog). I love the idea. Here is my contribution.

I come from a family of preachers: a grandpa, an uncle, a cousin and a dad. Dad didn’t always preach full-time, but he served as a deacon, which if done right exemplifies the essence of a minister. Now (and for the last 10 or so years) he ministers in the pulpit for a small congregation in Texas. Not only that, he directed a week of camp at Green Valley Bible Camp for around 9-10 years, and a majority of those years were directed while he worked full-time as a network analyst. He took his vacation to minister to young people in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas instead of sipping margaritas on the beach (actually I can’t convince him to have a drink with me so he wouldn’t have done that anyway…but the line sounded good).

Even though I actually started preaching full-time before he did, he still produced an incredible impact on my journey as a minister. Honestly, my initial mode and style of preaching came from other places and not him. I endured an indoctrination at a school of preaching and struggled to find a message and ministry of grace. He deserves no credit for that part of my ministry.

Though he raised me around rigid conservatism, he actually showed me the path of questioning everything while still getting along with those with whom we disagree. While a deacon, dad rarely let the preacher off the hook. He wanted to know why the preacher said what he said. I remember frequently waiting for dad to finish talking to the preacher after all the lights had been turned out in the church building. He wouldn’t settle for a traditional answer, he wanted to know God’s direction. This momentum of questioning eventually caught up to me, moved through me and swept me into a new era of my own ministry. This is where dad gets the credit.

He taught me how to question. He passed on to me the gift of relentlessness when it comes to finding God. He showed me that going against the traditional flow is what we’re often called to do, even if it stirs up family Christmas and comfortable congregations. He never liked the taste of canned answers and I’ve inherited those taste buds.

So Tony Linton, dad: Thanks. I now enjoy a ministry flooded by grace and truth because you taught me to never settle and to never quit asking questions.

If you have a minister in mind then write up a tribute to him/her and explain the positive impact on your life. Thanks to John Dobbs as well for the great idea. Keep the flame of encouragement going… get to writing. There’s got to be some more good preachers out there, somewhere.

*Whine alert*

I have suffered lately through some financial stress and a mild depression, which explains my lack of writing. Out of the circumstances though has come several thoughts. Let me share them with you.

1. The work of a preacher shouldn’t exempt from the minister’s primary responsibilities the one thing that supports the naming of the role: preaching. I have, through a grad course I’m taking at ACU, found a new and profound respect for preaching. The preacher’s work is difficult and often misunderstood. Much grace should be extended to those who preach in our pulpits. This isn’t a selfish, aggrandizing plea for sympathy; it’s the truth.

2. Creating solidarity with others different and less privileged than us often produces messy situations and vulnerable moments. I have no doubt that merely creating a budget for benevolence and calling it good functions as a backdoor move to opt out of genuine responsibilities to love others. To express the love of Calvary calls for a willingness to suffer inconvenience and social stigma… to find oneself often arguing the nonsensical side of things and challenging others to defy conventional wisdom… to include in your circle of friends those you normally wouldn’t.

3. The dark cloud of criticism and perceived failure often surrounds those unwilling to cave to a world-oriented traditionalism that seeks to define and craft the body of Christ in its image. Again, the clash between what’s common and popular for Christianity and a simple desire to manifest Jesus (as his representative body) ignites a fire of competing agendas to co-opt what it means to be church. Too often the loudest and most tenured of the collective church groups, regardless of any attempt to found their opinions in the gospel narrative, force acquiescence from those weary of pleading with rocks.

These are just thoughts. They are somewhat negative and critical, I know. But they flow from an honest desire to see through some of the reasons I feel disconnected from an expression of discipleship as taught by Jesus.

You are welcome to add your thoughts and critiques of what I’ve said.

This hits home to my family and me… but I thought it was hysterically subversive. Check it out here.

[Disclaimer: If you're offended by mildly crude humor and some foul language just move on.  I'm telling you now. If you watch and are offended and aghast at my linking to the clip you are without excuse.]

A good friend of mine died yesterday. I am unable to make it to give her eulogy, but was able to write up something that will be read tomorrow. Below is what I wrote.

Pray for the friends and family. Rene, this if for you.

Rene wanted me here with all of you to celebrate her life and it pains me that I can’t make it. Yet I believe she would understand. She was one of the most gracious and encouraging people I’ve met.

Nothing can be said to change these circumstances or make the pain of her loss better, so I will avoid trying with my words to do so. To the friends and family of Rene who hurt, all I can say is allow God to experience it with you. Invite him into your pain and he will enter.

Rene understood this more than most, I think. She lost her son Brandon several years ago, unexpectedly and tragically. Then she lost her beloved Jim a few years after that. She was no stranger to pain. But that didn’t mean she was a stranger to God. Pain and God often and tearfully intertwine, and Rene embodied this bittersweet marriage.

Because of this and from what I know of her she still embraced life, even through heartbreak and brokenness. She understood that when God and pain dance together life will always ask to cut in.

Death does not have the final say. Pain cannot dominate us. When God steps into the experiences of death and the valleys of our pain life emerges as the consuming presence and ultimate reality.

So today isn’t about Rene’s death as much as it is about her life. Not just her life before her death but her life now. Yes… her life now. Even living within range of death’s putrid breath, Rene’s calmed and assured life echoed the mocking tone of Paul’s question, “O death, where is your sting?”

And though she has left the stage of earth, I can imagine her now, along with Jim and Brandon, chanting the chorus of resurrection, with fists in the air, defying death to make a move. “O death, where is your sting? Where is your victory? Bring it on for we have life and his name is Jesus!”

And just as she did many times through her tears on earth, let that chant march you through the mourning of this life until morning breaks on the next.

To know me requires a great deal of patience and frustration. I have a sordid history of an inability to really decide something or figure out what I want to do. So…

The blog. What to do?

Maybe, after talking to some friends, some of the things on here are useful. But don’t expect daily entries. Maybe a post a week.

Maybe.

The best thing to do is subscribe to the RSS feed and it will tell you when I post something.

God bless.