A Big Night aka God Is Faithful

2011.

Here are some of the big things that have taken place so far.

I started a new semester at school. I’m taking journalism, communication, public relations, Spanish, and philosophy.

I started a new job as a part-time graphic designer.

I’ve been dating Kerri six months.

And tonight I saw God move across a community, reveal his heart for justice, and open up his storehouses.

For the past few months, through Resonate and Activate I’ve been helping to plan an event as part of an on campus awareness week focusing on global education. The event was a benefit concert and silent art auction with all proceeds going to Chris Low and his non-profit, Yokefellows.

A little over two months ago we had no musicians, no artists, and no place to reasonably host the event. So we prayed.

A month and a half ago my very talented friend Bart Budwig, a local folk musician, generously agreed to play for the event. Around that time Campus Christian Fellowship agreed to sponsor the event. The sponsorship meant we would be able to meet for free in the largest room in WSU’s student union building. A couple artists agreed to donate pieces for the evening. We still needed another musician, many more pieces, and many many other details taken care of. So we prayed.

A month ago, after some searching and much emailing, Samuel Dickison, an amazing and local musician, agreed to play for the evening as well. I asked about payment. He said ten dollars just to cover gas. A couple more artists got back to me and agreed to donate. Still, there was more needed. So we prayed.

Two weeks ago we were pulling hard into Resonate funds (a church plant has very little). My friend Brian Kalwat, the best graphic designer I know, made some amazing flyers to be handed out during awareness week. To my best count I expected fifteen pieces of art. We kept praying.

Last week our on campus newspaper heard about what we were doing for Awareness Week and gave us a weeklong half page ad. That’s a $1000 normally. My friend Matt Slotemaker worked throughout the afternoon and night making a video to promote Yokefellows and the benefit concert/auction. On Sunday four local churches let us show that video and hand out some flyers. Even more artists agreed to donate. And we kept praying.

Tuesday and Wednesday local businesses let us hang up posters for the event. ASWSU, WSU’s student association, heard about Awareness Week and agreed to allocate almost all the funds we needed to make the week a success. Still more prayer.

Yesterday I counted twenty nine pieces of art donated. And we continued to pray.

At 5 pm today a group of amazing people showed up to help set up for the event. By 5:30 there were twice as many there to help.

At 6 we realized the projector we needed for the night had been left in Moscow, a good fifteen minutes away. So Kerri let me use her car and I drove over as fast as I legally (and at times illegally) could. While driving I thought about the evening. I thought maybe fifty people would show up. I hoped for maybe two hundred dollars. As I drove back to Pullman with the projector I prayed desperately and with expectation.

“God, I expect 50 people. Give us 100 more. God, I expect $200. Give us $1000 more.”

Around 7:30, when the event was supposed to start, only a few people had showed up.

By 7:40, out of nowhere, people began to stream in. The musicians played and entertained. Works of art were set up on tables throughout the room and people were bidding.

By 11:00 the sound equipment was loaded back up, the tables were torn down; the cookies were gone; the coffee pot was empty; the art had been collected and brought home by its various new owners. And the final numbers were realized.

Around 20 volunteers. 45 pieces of art donated. More than 150 people attended. And over $2500 raised for Yokefellows.

Whether He gives or takes away, God is faithful to exceed our expectations—may He always be praised.


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Papa Bill

My grandpa died this week. Tuesday at 9:20 in the morning he passed away.

For the last five years my grandpa, my Papa Bill, has lived in a nursing home. He was ready to leave. For a Texas Baptist preacher who loved adventure a nursing home was a cage. Near his bedside hung a picture of him dressed as a classic western outlaw; cowboy hat, eye patch, and all. His small, two person room and its stale smell, the bedpan and automatic bed, these were not my grandpa. That picture though, now that was my grandpa–an outlaw and sojourner of this world and a resident of a world to come. My last memory of my grandpa is standing with my siblings by his bedside. As a tear rolled down his face he said in the smallest voice, “I just hope that I have shown you all how much Christ loves you… and how much I love you.” As I left his room that day that picture of him was the last thing I saw.

A few years ago my cousin got married and I had the honor of helping my grandpa get ready for the wedding. In the mirror in the front room of my grandma’s apartment I watched as he carefully straightened his tie and his toupee. Then my grandma walked up, hugged him from behind, finished straightening his tie, and gently said, “You look great Bill.” It was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen. I know my grandparent’s relationship was not always the most outwardly romantic, and I know they’ve had their struggles, but I can only hope that one day I have a marriage full of the sweet and heavenly affection I saw that day.

I don’t remember my grandpa singing very much, but my mom does. He loved singing. We even have a record of him at our house right now. A full album of wonderful hymns sung in the deepest, fullest voice. He hasn’t been able to sing like that for a long time.

Now he’s finally free of that nursing home. And his voice is as rich and deep as ever. He’s praising his Lord at the top of his lungs and he’s finally home.

Papa Bill, thank you for teaching me how loved I am by Jesus Christ. Thank you for showing me how much you love me. Thank you for living your life completely for the Lord, I very much hope to do the same.

I’ll see you soon.


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Jackass for Jesus

I am learning what it means to be a jackass for Jesus (and please excuse my King James). I don’t mean in the least that I want to be a jerk and tag the name of Jesus to my actions; that is quite the opposite of what I mean. No, when I say jackass (and I’ll use the word donkey from here on out) I mean the biblical realization of how God used donkeys.

While in a sense donkeys are quite a useful animal, they are in much more profound sense nothing but smelly, dumb animals. And yet in the Bible God uses donkeys in some incredible ways.

In Numbers 22 there’s a man, a prophet of God by the name of Balaam who was in direct communication with the physical voice of the Lord, who was sent out by a king to travel with a people of the region, the Moabites. As Balaam traveled on his donkey, an angel with sword in hand blocked his path; but it was not Balaam who saw the angel, it was the donkey. Three times the donkey turned Balaam around refusing to approach the angel. Three times Balaam beat his donkey. And then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and he spoke to Balaam about the angel. A donkey was given the ability to speak with a human tongue. Not only that, but the donkey revealed to a prophet a thing concerning the most high God.

And during Jesus’ time on earth, during His most glorified physical earthly moment, as the crowds shouted Hosanna, Jesus choose to ride in His glory on a donkey.

God used a donkey to reveal His plan to a prophet. God gave the donkey an incredible gift, a gift to speak in a manner that was infinitely above itself. And God let the donkey suffer well and persevere through it.

And God used a donkey of no particular value to ride in on glory. A donkey felt the physical touch of Jesus Christ.

I want to be a donkey. A donkey knows its weakness, knows its foolishness, and still lives according to its purpose. And God has used donkeys in tremendous ways.

2 Corinthians 12:9 says that His grace is sufficient for me; that His power is made perfect in my weakness. When I say I want to be a donkey I mean that I want to live in a manner that does not let my own weakness or foolishness stop me from living according to my purpose. I want to live in a way that I allow God to be made known not in spite of my weakness, but within it.

I want to be a jackass for Jesus.


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I Met a Carpenter Once

A carpenter seeking to build
A building across this old earth
A place of hope, a vast stronghold
The beauty of his death and birth.

When he looked for a foundation
No stone was found, no plank in sight
So he laid himself at the base
Hammered down in the darkest night

But the grave could not stop his work
He was the first board lifted high
And he’s been building ever since
A perfect structure in his eye.

A reprise in response…

Hire me holy carpenter
You’ve given me a second birth
Hire me holy carpenter
I long to see you known on earth


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Halloween and Crosses

When I was maybe five years old—I very well could have been four or six, I can’t quite remember—I learned an important lesson: When you live down a long, dark, and creepy street, trick-or-treaters don’t tend to stop by your house.

Growing up my family didn’t celebrate Halloween but as an ever acute child I knew that for most kids Halloween meant a grand time acquiring endless amounts of tooth decaying joy. I’m fairly certain that God gave humans baby teeth for the sole purpose of allowing children to eat as much candy as they want with few regrets.

One certain Halloween, although we had no candy at the house, I didn’t want to disappoint all of the potential trick-or-treaters who I eagerly expected to stop by. So I grabbed some construction paper and scissors and cut out paper crosses. As many crosses as my little hands could cut.

Then I took the crosses and asked my mom to write something on them. I could write decently but my lettering would’ve been too big to fit all the words I wanted to on the cross.

“Please write, ‘Just as you are knocking on our door tonight, Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart’,” I asked my mom.

And then I got on our computer, started up Windows 3.1, and wrote out Revelation 3:21.

“To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.”

I printed out that verse for as many crosses I’d made. And the verse would be used to tie the crosses together. And I’d give a completed cross to every person that stopped by my house. And I prayed that all who got a cross would come to know Jesus. And I waited ever so excitedly for the first knock at our door.

But no one came. All night and not a single trick-or-treater stopped by our home.

My mom says I cried. “With big tears, quiet sobs and this look of devastation,” she says.

This story has been on my heart a lot recently. Even now my heart is heavy as I think about it. It would be easy in reflection for me to question God. Why would you let a young child who wanted nothing more than to see you kingdom spread know such disappointment? But before I can even think the question God speaks to me.

Remember the prophets, whose lives were spent speaking words to a nation that refused to listen, God says to me. Remember my martyrs and missionaries, like Jim Elliot, who were not only ignored but were killed for proclaiming my name. I promise you though that Ezekiel never knew such a delight in all the earth as when I gave him my word and it was like honey to his lips. And I assure you that Isaiah never knew such ecstasy as when he saw my glory.

God is teaching me to be satisfied not in what I do or what I see, not in even what I see God doing in front of me, but to be satisfied in Him alone. “Whom have I in heaven but you?” the psalmist proclaims. “And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.”

God is teaching me who He is. He is teaching me how to be found and fulfilled in the person of Christ. And it’s a fearful joy that has begun to consume me.


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I hate poetry.

No one ever wants to read poetry.
It just develops so very slow-etry.

Rhymes of course are no fun at all-etry
Rather spend my day talking to dry wall-etry

Free verse too is so dull and dumb-etry.
Rather spend my day sucking my thumb-etry.

How about we make it illegal to read poetry?
Then the world will be full of joy-etry.

If person reads a poem in it's entire-etry
We’ll lock ‘em up and throw away the key-etry.

And yes, that even includes you… etry.


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Romans 6:1-14

I'd like to write about death and grief, such a classic of topics,

But the only death I've known is my own. And when I was layed down grief was nowhere to be seen.

Freedom was at the funeral though, joy too. But they only came to say good riddance, and then the three of us walked briskly away.

Read About It.




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