"Christ Above All"

"Christ above all"--that was the motto of my college and the part of the Alma Mater that we students sang out with the most passion and fervor. "Christ above all", words that ring out clear and precise; stating a desired goal, an an intended lifestyle, and a worldview by which ever action and choice is to be based upon.

It is a simple message, though the implications are far beyond complex. I, being a Bryanite, remember those words almost daily. Bryan College etched them upon my mind and it challenges me even now. It has been 1 year,  4 months, 25 days, and 8 hours since I graduated from my beloved school. Over the past 1.3 years I have faced reality...HARD. I've faced hard truths, I've dealt with ghosts of the past, I've lost a job, I've struggled to make ends meet, and I have wrestled with the condition of my heart and my soul. I have worked (and am working in) an environment that is toxic and  pushes one's ability to be gracious and patient (avoid working in collections people...trust me). 

Now I work in retail selling clothes, and I have to interact with wide range of personalities, worldviews, etc. Some people make it difficult to want to come to work, some want to take advantage of you, and others just cannot get over themselves. These are the people we face on a daily basis, this is the real world. There is good and there is bad and sometimes you don't know what you're looking at until it's too late. At Bryan I was able to run away from some of my problems, and I thank God for using Bryan to form and shape me, but now the time has come to face the long dark of the world (I almost typed Moria there...I'm a LoTR nerd!) and when we do, we are called to live with Christ above all. 

What does it mean to live Christ above all? It means that in all I say and all that I do, Christ will be on my mind. The best way to summarize it is by quoting a portion of the prayer of St. Patrick:

"Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in the eye that sees me,

Christ in the ear that hears me."

When we seek to live out a life that puts "Christ above all" then our actions change, our way of treating coworkers changes, how we do business changes,  how we spend out time changes, and we begin to live in a way that speaks to others needs. When Christ is above all we put others before ourselves. When Christ is above all we re-prioritize our lives and uphold our responsibilities. When Christ is above all we change the face of the World and our surrounding community and culture is shifted out of place, slowly brought to wholeness and renewal. When Christ is above all, the Government doesn't t have to re-disperse wealth, it just happens. When Christ is above all there is no need for food stamps, the hungry are fed. When Christ becomes above all, the World will know peace and progress like never before.

To friends, and to my fellow Bryanites, let us live out this motto to the best of our abilities so that we might honor our God, but also that we might change the world. Let us live: Christ above our fears, Christ above our desires, Christ above our traditions, Christ above our profits, Christ above our minds, Christ above our emotions, and Christ above our passions.

Grace and Peace,

Stephen

Christianese

Christianese…such a strange language, but it goes far beyond mere words and phrases. No, it’s full of non-verbals and habitual, repetitive actions. So much is communicated through action. Generally, Christianese is sprinkled in various parts of peoples’ language and lifestyles, only coming out in certain place, but occasionally it is possible to find some that have completely drowned themselves in it. Christians have created weird cultures.

Are we not supposed to be different? Are the cultures of the Church not supposed to vastly contrast the cultures of the world?

It is not wrong that the Christian culture is…different. It must not, however, be assumed that all Christian culture is healthy of beneficial. Too much Christian culture goes unchecked and unexamined. Do we not think of the consequences of our actions and trends? When did the Church become soft and about coffee and side-hugs? From congregations who have “no problems” in life to others that are experiencing unending onslaught of turmoil at the hands of Satan himself because they “are getting it right”.

“Dress up before you come.”—“Come as you are” 

“Be reverent”—“be free!”

“Chew gum and we’ll burn you”—“if you don’t leave a coffee stain on our carpet then you haven’t gotten the full experience!”

So what honors God? All culture is broken and sinful. There is no perfect culture, no perfect lifestyle. 

What is…church? I’m not asking about big “C” church. I’m asking about our congregations and faith communities. What is our interaction? What do you think of when you think upon your faith community? Who are they? Why are they? What focus or vision are they promoting? What were faith communities in the era of the early Church and how much of that should we be reflecting? It is a hard question to answer indeed. It’s easy to say “If it was good enough for them then it is good enough for me” or “Since it’s what early Church did than it must be most right.” We forget that the early Church identified with what they did because it was culturally significant. Yes, there were various elements of their worship that separated them from “normal culture”, but it wasn't 100% different. Worship is affected by culture…and culture is affected by worship.

Americans’ worship of “rights” and “fairness” led to where we are. Worship of new, better, faster, and stronger is a disease that is eating away at the soul of our nation and communities. The Church of America has been affected by this attitude! Prayers and proclamations of blessings and good things being spoke over people and sermons on faith for financial peace and stability have multiplied in the church. Perversion of the understanding of salvation and what it means to be an “adopted child of God”.

Or have they? Do I even know what God truly desires of us or how he interacts with us? Who am I to say one thing or another? Does God not reward the faithful and those who seek purity and holiness?

Grace and Peace,

Stephen

The Life of Clay

Isaiah 45:9-19English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK)9 “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him,    a pot among earthen pots!Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’    or ‘Your work has no handles’?10 Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’    or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labour?’”11 Thus says the Lord,    the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him:“Ask me of things to come;    will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands?[a]12 I made the earth    and created man on it;it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,    and I commanded all their host.13 I have stirred him up in righteousness,    and I will make all his ways level;he shall build my city    and set my exiles free,not for price or reward,”    says the Lord of hosts.

Recently, I was praying about life and, essentially, complaining to God that everything in my life was wrong. I was, more or less, accusing Him of all that has befallen me and the various aspects of reality that I have had to endure. Truthfully, I have done this for quite some time. It is so easy to begin complaining. It is one thing to share with God what you are going through, but there is a thin lines that separates the prayer said in broken honest and the prayer spoken in bitterness and accusation.

During this same time of prayer I was struck with the memory of the verse stated above. It was then that I was hit with conviction. Recently I was asked "What is [my] relationship with Christ?", to which I was a little insulted and wanted to respond with "He is my God and I am His creation." In my patience I refrained from stating so, but the thought continued to echo in my mind. He is God...and I am His creation. God brought this thought back into my mind as I was praying and combined it with the memory of the words of Isaiah. In the moment I got a divine slap in the face and a fist full of humility. It is not my place to accuse God or to Question His actions in my life. My job is simple: Love Him and love people.

I am to live life and not ask God "why are you doing this to me?" with any other attitude than one of humility and a desire to know the heart of God. So for now, my goal is stop asking "why?" and let Him fashion me. To go and live my life, trusting that He is going to direct my paths.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths" --Proverbs 3:5-6

Grace and Peace,

Stephen 

My Own Worst Enemy

Sometimes the hardest thing for me to do is see the good of the "now." Being the kind of perfectionist that I am, I grow restless when things are not as I believe they should be. Additionally, I am extremely hard on myself when I am not doing as much, or as well, as I believe I should be. Instead of looking at myself and saying "this is where I lack, and this is where I can improve" I magnify my lack to the point of not even allowing myself to recognize my good.

This is not a healthy way of living. I should live in the balance of recognizing both "good" and "bad" (for lack of better words). I guess the point is that in my lack of willingness to accept my non-perfection and in turn refuse to see any good at all. Why do I do this? Why this reaction to my disapproval than another? I'm not sure. I'll leave the Nature vs Nurture debate to the experts on this one. Ultimately, it is my fault either way. Regardless of it being genetics or as a product of my environment, I have the ability to make choices. Even if it is a genetic issues, I can override this through practice, prayer, and support from community.

One thing that I am beginning to accept is that I cannot do this on my own. It is my tendency to think it weakness to need help, but we all need help. We were designed to need community and to function within community. It is not a shameful thing to need others, and if those that you are closest to are not willing to help you or bear your burdens, then perhaps it is time to find another community to be apart of.

Grace and Peace,

Stephen

"I Do...I Do Believe in Fairies!"

G.K. Chesterton once spoke of the necessity of fairy tales. He held them such high esteem and spoke of them with great awe and reverence, as if they held the key to life itself. Fairy tales, as you might know, are often filled with magical, unearthly (or dare I say, extra-earthly) creatures and beings.

“Fairy tales make rivers run with wine so that we might recall for one brief moment that they actually run with water…fairy tales do not teach children that dragons exist. They already know that they exist. Fairy tales teach them that dragons can be slain.”

Is there any that is not inspired by The Lord of the Rings? The tale of an rather ordinary Englishman (pardon me…Hobbit) basking in his comfortable, lazy existence but is thrown into the world against his wish to accomplish an extraordinary task? Children lose themselves in stories of heroes who rise up to save the weak and oppressed. Even girls do this through their daydreams of Prince Charming, often focusing on their own salvation, as opposed to boys who dream of saving others.

One tale that has this glorious effect on me still is The Chronicles of Narnia. The book s stole my heart and my mind, and the movies-though not entirely accurate-stir my heart even still and I am inspired. There is not a single scene with Aslan that does not cause my mouth to yield into a smile that goes from ear to ear! I am forced to remember Christ and His love for His people, and I long to see Him as the characters in these books do. I would be quite happy to be able to walk into the woods behind my apartments and happen upon a massive lion that then roars my nerves right out of my spine and leaves me trembling on the ground…just to begin speaking to me and filling my soul with utter delight and fear.

“He is not a tame Lion…but He is good.”

Sometimes, we forget the nature of our King. Often, we neglect the mystery and paradoxical nature of Christ. Paradoxical in the sense that from our limited perspective and understanding, there are many times that we seem to think there are conflicting attributes of Christ, who is fierce as an untamed lion, but at the same time gentle and good.

There are those who so choose to focus on a single attribute of God so much that they forget the others and are then confused when God does something that they did not expect. This can even result in them misinterpreting their circumstances; ultimately missing out on what they could have learned and the reward they could have benefited from (not everything painful is a result of the Devil trying to attack you, my friends).

Christ cares about the happiness of His Church, but not at the expensive of her purity and growth. It is a difficult thing to understand the mind of God, and to try will eventually lead to humility…or insanity. We seek truth, but know that we are limited by our humanness. God is our Father, God is our King, and God is our…well, God! We so often focus on Him being a “father” and apply our own definition of what that should mean, when Him being Father should affect how we treat our children far more than how it should lead us to define Him.

Where was I? Oh yes, fairy tales…

If one is willing to see, they might find truth among fairy tales. That dragons can be slain, for example; that there is more to the world than what the physical eye can see; that the ordinary can do the extraordinary; and you might even learn a thing or two about yourself that helps to define the call that God has given to you.

Peace be with you,

Stephen

The Need For Retreat

Life is ______

People have a tendency to summarize/simplify life this way. Life is _____

The "blank" here can be any of the following: good, bad, hard, tough, easy, sad, complicated, simple, etc

But Life isn't all that simple is it? Can one truly summarize life in this way??? I think not. Life is...an incredibly complex and paradoxical equation of existence. All that is was and will be has and affect on this thing we call "Life." Sometimes, one might find themselves with too much going on or too much to process and their minds get backed up.

Imagine this: an old woman sits at a weaving machine. She has been working on an elaborate cloth and is working endlessly to create this beautiful masterpiece. Each thread, however, must line up perfectly or else it will come out wrong or fall apart. After sometime of work the woman leaves, and while she is gone someone comes along a cruelly begins to mess with the threads and shifts them around, and even breaks a few of them off.

The woman returns and gets back to work, she begins to realize that something isn't right. She must now make a decision. She can either ignore it and continue working, or she can back track her work and then take the time to fix that which was messed up.

For us, the choice seems obvious. Stop, back up, and fix. This is the only way that it will come out right and it is the only way to salvage her work. Why would she do otherwise? I mean, it is frustrating to have to back up and do all that work, but isn't it worth it? Of course it's worth it.

And yet this is how we often treat life when things get tangled. We keep trucking on and ignore the disruption, the tampering, and the misplaced. Instead of seeking help or taking the time to try and realign our thoughts, priorities, and emotions we act as if nothing happened and keep going, the problems becoming more and more apparent the further down the road we go.

I have done my fair share of this myself, and right now I'm finding myself in need of retreat, to get away from it all to refocus and to clear my thoughts; to prioritize and to start fresh. At the moment I find my desire to get away something that I cannot fulfill in the way that I desire to do it, but until I can I must make a conscious effort to do small things at home to begin the process.

Way that I plan on doing this are through various spiritual disciplines such as :

• Silence/breathing
• Meditation
• Breath Prayers
• Praying
• Fasting

Soon I hope to be able to retreat to a place of prayer and solitude to complete this process that I have begun.

Peace be with you,

Stephen

"The Best is Yet to Come" or "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!"

Growing up I often heard pastors and preachers say "Hold on, the best is yet to come!" and/or "You ain't seen nothin' yet!" In fact I saw a post on Facebook not too long ago where an individual was boasting about his church being full and said the latter of the two above phrases.

In seeing that post I was forced to ask myself "Is the "best" yet to come?" and "Is it accurate of us to say and think such things?"

We are to expect good from God and look brightly towards the future, but is there something to us saying "look at all this good, but this ain't nothing!" My memory is drawn back to the ending of The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. For those who are unfamiliar with the book, The Last Battle is listed as book #7 of the Chronicles of Narnia series, and my personal favorite. The phrase that stuck out the most was "further up, further in!" which drew attention to the world of New Narnia growing bigger and more beautiful the deeper they traveled in.

In a sense, the best IS yet to come for Christ will one day return and restore all that is broken and recreate the World as it is meant to be: pure and sinless.

Another thought my mind is drawn to in reading this statement is "the best has already come" for Christ came! He came, He died, and He rose again! He established His church on the Earth and paid the price of sin! But, we are still waiting for the work to be completed in the World...so again we are drawn back to Christ coming back.

I guess what really bothers me about the use of this phrase is that it rarely is stated in reference to Christ returning. It is usually being stated in terms of success, blessing (what ever that is), and numbers. It is materialistic based or business based.

I am truly torn in two over this.

We should expect good from God even before the return.
God is not obligated to make things better and we don't deserve better or even "the best".

God is a good Father to His "children" and gives good gifts to them.
Our hearts are perverse and are caught up in the self and material world.

When we say "the best is yet to come" are our hearts on the right things? Are diminishing the good that God has already been given us and devaluing what is already given? I think that we should expect good from God, but our looking and saying that more is on the away is often said in misplaced expectation and is often rooted in a twisted understanding of the Gospel. Let us be careful in our speech and let us search our hearts, asking God to cleanse us by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, that we might be made pure and holy.

Peace be with you,

Stephen

"From Breaking Chains to Breaking Bread": A Brief Summary

Over the last 5 years I have been an incredible spiritual journey that have deeply affected me emotionally, mentally, and theologically. It began, as such things usually do, quite unexpectedly-like an echo of an echo that knocked on the door of my heart. It was the slight itch at the back of mind. It was the deafening silence that screamed out in a whisper a single word: change. The growing uneasiness that told me "something is wrong" began in the final months of high school, but soon intensified in college.

For the majority of my life, I participated in churches of Pentecostal/charismatic tradition. In high school I became a leader in the youth ministry that I regularly attended and led small groups, taught at retreats, and prayed for other students at altar calls. I actually did this through the entirety of my college years, driving back and forth between Chattanooga and Dayton twice (sometimes trice) a week for 4 years.

I was a tongue talker and I was a "chain breaker"; I always had a bottle of anoitin' oil on hand and I was ready to go to war against "the principalities and powers of darkness." I have been present at two exorcisms, and I have prayed for dozens of people-yelling and screaming "freedom" at them as if my very action of speaking would cause the Spirit to charge into them and chase away all darkness and fix all that was broken instantly right then and there.

I've calmed down quite a bit since my graduation. I have begun participating in a local Anglican church and have found myself quite at home in the theological circles of the traditional and sacramental. This came out my experiences with reformed and traditional Christians that I met at my school, travels to Italy and Jordan where Orthodoxy and Catholicism are both very present in there prospective countries. Through my independent study, personal interactions, and in being forced to engage with various theological paradigms and beliefs due to friends who were also searching, I soon found myself in love with/drawn to this form of Church governmental structure and worship style.

In the end, I found that I could not be Catholic because of my lack of ability to justify belief in the Papal Authority. I loved participating in the Episcopal Church, but I found their theology far too liberal (and the presiding Bishop is a certifiable heretic). In the end, I have found myself in the Anglican circle and plan to be here for the rest of my foreseeable future.

Despite my change in church traditions and my way of viewing the purpose of the church, I still have a great love for those within my previous tradition and I see a lot of beauty among them and their worship. I realize that I now disagree with a lot of the philosophies and methods that they hold to, but I do not think that these differences should prevent us from being unity and from working towards the same goal: showing Christ to the World.

I still have my bottle of anoitin' oil that I carry with me everywhere I go. I still pray in tongues form time to time when I am alone in prayer, and my current tradition leads me to believe even more strongly that words that are spoken have an influence on the world around me. But now I come to church to meet Christ in my participating in Eucharist and in the deep and meaningful worship structure of liturgical worship. I am confident that Christ has led me to this and I am grateful for all that Christ has done in me through this tradition.

And so I leave you with these words: "Life is short and there is but little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be quick to love, and make haste to be kind. In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

Peace be with you,

Stephen

What's in a Name?

I have been working at Dillard's Inc. for nearly 6 months now, and about two months ago I received my name tag! (No, you're right, I was supposed to receive it sooner than that). After receiving the the name tag, I noticed very little change. People still asked if I worked there, but people ask me that even when I'm dressed way down and off the clock...and even when I'm in Krogger's! This past weekend, however, I have noticed a bizarre change in my customers. They have nearly all begun to thank me by name!

This might not seem significant in passing thought, but I noticed a change in my reception of the typical "thanks" given as I wish the customers farewell. There is something that hits me when I hear my name spoken. Why? The brain is a marvelous device of processing and thought, and perhaps it is my brain picking up on the unusual stating of my name and the attempt to process this is what stirs that feeling in my stomach.

Let's take that a step further. Not only is it unusual for me to hear customers state my name, but in doing so that have exerted additional effort to make their thanks more personal. They took the time to search for my name and then state it, knowing good and well that in doing so that were making a relational, personal move in their expressing gratitude. That means something. What caught me even more off guard was when customers came back and called my name from afar, thereby showing more effort to remember my name rather than simply state it in one brief moment.

A name is personal, meaningful, and identifying. It separates one from another, is used to make social ques or state relationship. For example, one who has deeper relationship with another might take the extra time to say their first name, while another with a more shallow relationship (perhaps one strictly based around sports) will use the last name. Nicknames also serve this function of bearing identity, or of hiding identity.

I have often thought about changing my name, and the only reason I did not was to avoid offending my parents. I did not want my parents to take my name change as a slap in the face, and being a 2nd makes that even more prominent. What I have noticed through this weekend's experience is that I cherish my name. I hold it dear to me because I am recognized by it. When my friends us it they are honoring me and saying "I recognize you as an individual. You are you and I am I; I realize your separateness and value it."

What do you think of your name or nickname? Do you wish you could change your name? If so, why? How do names affect your world and what would life be like without them?

Peace be with you,

Stephen