Egg on the Floor

I returned home Sunday evening from our regularly scheduled men's basketball night to my lovely wife, who began to create a small meal for the two of us within a few minutes of my arrival. Shortly after I had popped a few popcorn chicken pieces into my mouth and tasted their wonderful flavor, I reached for the refrigerator door, which at that moment completely fell off its hinges and sent several items crashing to the floor, one of which was an egg.

Luckily, I was able to keep the door in a somewhat upright position while Lyndsay rescued the remaining items from their designated slots. We then spent the next thirty minutes scrutinizing the architecture of the door and were able to return the fridge to its former glory. So far that has been the strangest event that has happened to us since we bought our new home. And in case anyone is curious, Lyndsay had an important role in this process which only adds to her long resume of fixing bizarre items around the household. Her resume can be found here.

Closing

We closed on our house today.

Lyndsay will be painting like mad along with her father and Jody.

I drove 6 hours to closing and back so that I can be here when the moving truck arrives tomorrow.

We've been running at full steam and are very tired...but very excited.

Home

Lyndsay and I now have a contract on this ranch home, which was signed on our anniversary. Lyndsay keeps saying, "You bought me a house for our anniversary!"

In case you are wondering, we did have a signed contract on a different house previously, but the home inspector saw a few issues that turned into a twenty-thousand dollar foundation problem.

So this is our new home and we hope that we will be closing on it the first or second week of August. Furthermore, I am glad to say that this time around the home inspection went great. We are really excited to get all the paperwork done, so we can start moving into our new house.

I personally am very excited about this move, for it will be, for me, the first time in my entire life that the structure that I call home, will be owned by myself or my family. That's right, I've never lived in a home that was ours. Growing up in Streator we lived in a parsonage, when I went to college I lived in a dorm, after graduation I lived in an apartment, and for the last 6 1/2 years we have lived in a church owned parsonage. This will be my first home.

Redemption as a Special Dimension of God's Activity as Creator

Apparently, the subject of creation theology has been somewhat neglected by professional theologians in years past, and what's more, the subject has often times been subordinate to redemption. Stated plainly, it has often been the practice of theologians to consider God's real work to be redemption.

The reasons for this subordination of creation are listed by Terrence Fretheim in his book, God and the World in the Old Testament: A Relationship Theology of Creation, and are too many to list at this time. As I have read his book, I think that I have at times been guilty of this kind of subordination in my thinking and teaching. His suggestions have weighed on my mind for quite some time and have formed the way I think about creation and its relationship to redemption.

One passage from the book that I find especially poignant:

The redemptive work of God is a special dimension of God's more comprehensive activity as Creator. To equate the two would collapse all of God's work in the world into redemption and diminish God's more comprehensive work as Creator, including blessing. Generally speaking, God's goal for the creation is not redemption; God's redemption is a means to a new creation, and salvation will be the key characteristic of that new reality.

This understanding, in turn, has implications for how one thinks about creation; the creation is not something to be left behind as God works on more important matters, such as redemption. To equate creation and redemption, or to subordinate creation to redemption, is to endanger the status of the world, including human beings, as creation. It is also to place in question God's love for the creation itself, quite apart from the redemption, as if God's goal is to get beyond creation to some other reality. Moreover, such an equation endangers the recognition that redemption has to do with much more than spiritual matters; it includes the healing of the body (finally, resurrection), indeed the healing of the environment.

-Terrence Fretheim

My reflection upon these statements as well as the larger body of Fretheim's work has been very fruitful and provides a framework with which to approach the many environmental issues that concern many people today.

What Is God Like

Yesterday I read a portion of a book that resonated deeply with me and I want to share them with you for your own thought life. In the work that I've been doing on openness theology I have been wrestling with a very difficult question. Do the metaphors, narratives, and poems of the Bible really reveal to us what God is like? Certainly, God is a mystery to man, and we will never fully understand him, and that is fine with me, but the question is: are the words of Scripture reality-depicting?

I have always believed that when the Scripture said that God was angry, sad, or grieved that it meant that God truly experienced anger, sadness, and loss. Yet, classical theism, popularly expressed in much reformed theology states that God is not affected by the world and does not experience anger, sadness, loss, or joy, but exists eternally in a perfect state of blessed happiness.

Many say that these metaphors and narratives are an example of God "talking down to us." John Calvin wrote that God lisps to us like a nursemaid lisps to a child. With this understanding, it seems difficult to see the metaphors as reality-depicting, therefore many theologians and pastors for years have talked about the God behind the metaphors as the true God while the Scripture "speaks down to us" and gives us the God of revelation. For them it is not proper to speak of God experiencing emotion; it is not "dignum deo" for us to think of God this way.

There are many questions, concerns, and problems that arise if we start talking about the "God behind the metaphors." How could anyone really speak about the God behind revelation? How could anyone verify that the metaphors are not reality-depicting? How can someone make the claim that God does not experience anger or frustration at the obdurate nature that human beings can sometimes display? In order to have such information about the God behind revelation, wouldn't they have to have some kind of privileged access to God in order to see that he was in fact different than what we read about in Scripture?

The following authors reject a "God behind revelation" and believe that God has indeed revealed his essential nature in salvation history. These lines resonated with me:


The revelation of God in salvation history is a genuine self-revelation, not a temporary expedient or a public relations ploy, but a portrait of what God is really like.

-Richard Rice, theologian and professor at Loma Linda University

The very nature of God who is self-communicating love is expressed in what God does in the events of redemptive history. There is no hidden God....behind the God of revelation history, no possibility that God is in God's eternal mystery other than what God reveals Godself to be.

-Catherine LaCugna, Feminist Catholic Theologian, author of God For Us.

This revelation is a genuine self-giving. God's true self, God's innermost reality, comes to expression in God's dealings with creation. Consequently, God's saving actions become central to God's identity. In creating and saving a world, he commits himself to the world in such a way that his own destiny and his own identity are forever linked to that of his creatures. Like British generals who acquired their titles from their battlefield triumphs, God's name derives from his saving activity. For Christians the Trinity names God--as Father, Son, and Spirit--identifying God by the definitive moments in salvation history: the mission of the Son and the sending of the Spirit.

Now, if salvation history is a revelation of God's inner reality, we must think of God in a way that is consistent with what we find in this history. Since the qualities of sensitivity, care, commitment, self-giving, and self-sacrifice are prominent in salvation history, as the cross [of Christ] supremely testified, these are the qualities that characterize God's essential reality.

-Richard Rice


[Quotes taken from, Searching for an adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists. ed by John B. Cobb and Clark H. Pinnock. pgs. 196-197.]

So if salvation history testifies to the nature of God, then God is affected by our world; he is a God who suffers; he knows anger and frustration; he really rejoices like the Scriptures say. God has shown us his true self at the Cross of Christ; there is no God behind the curtain, for in the crucifixion of Christ we see God's true self--we see what God is really like. In Christ, we see that God is self-giving love.

United With Christ

Sunday was a great day! For there was a young man in our church, named Caleb, that was united with Christ at baptism, sharing in Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. He is now dead to sin and to the law and is alive to God in our Lord Jesus. For him there is now no condemnation, for his old relationship to sin has been crucified; his old self has passed away and he is free from sin.

Therefore, there is no condemnation for him, for he is now in Christ Jesus. He has been given the Holy Spirit so that he he may no longer be controlled by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, and with the Spirit he will begin to live the Christian life by putting to death the misdeeds of the body through the Spirit that lives in him.

The Spirit that he received has made him a son of God--an adopted son, who receives all the benefits of a natural born son. He is both our brother and a brother to the firstborn of our new race of mankind, a race of man that will one day be resurrected to a greater plane of existence where death will have no mastery, where we will exclaim that we are alive forevermore. Together we cry out with all of our enthusiasm, emotion, and joy, "Yeah Abba, Father: Yeah Dad."

Together, now we walk in this environment of grace as we become what God has always dreamed we would be--a people formed in the likeness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. While we still experience hardship, may we be reassured that the pain we experience won't be worth comparing to the glory we will experience when we are wholly formed and living in the presence of our great God.

So let us live victorious lives, knowing that God is for us, and that he has revealed himself to us, on the cross, as a God of self-giving love. And let us rest assured that nothing, absolutely nothing can seperate us from the love of Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6-8)

I am so excited for Caleb. It has been my honor and privilege to have been his pastor and to see him grow and mature on his way from third grade to the ninth grade, and I pray that his life will always be Spirit led. I praise God for all the adults that gave of themselves during a week at Church camp, for their effort made an eternal impact in the life of at least one young man, who will never forget one of the most important weeks of his life.

Our New Home

This is a picture of what will soon become our new home (assuming inspection goes well) in a new town. Lyndsay and I made an offer on this home and the sellers took our offer. We will be closing on the home in the beginning part of August and I will begin my work at a new church on the 18th. Lyndsay is still searching for a new job.

I have resisted blogging about this transition until we had told the church here, about our plans. We will miss them greatly, but we are also very excited about the work we will be doing in the future. I will update this blog more as we progress in our transition. I have purposely left out personal information about the location of the home as well as the church, so if anyone would like to know more info, you can email or call.

He Is His Father's Son

I knew the day would come when I would say, "Son lets try this video game." I had no idea the day would come before Xander was 2.5 years old. Nevertheless, I was excited to introduce him to one of my very first video games experiences, and I was ecstatic to see how much he was enjoying himself.

We played Duck Hunt on Sunday night and Xander admittedly wasn't the world's greatest hunter, yet he stayed at it for about 20 minutes until it was time for bed (FYI, toddlers playing video games before bed time is not a very good idea). When Lyndsay and i went to bed last night I said to her that if Xander is anything like his dad he will want to play the duck game immediately after waking up tomorrow morning.

Sure enough, five minutes after waking Xander was ready to pump some holes into the the pixeled ducks and when he came home from daycare he wanted to play again. Now up until this point he hadn't really gotten that "far" in the game; but he had managed to get to round two on one of his attempts and that attempt required some beginners luck. But early this evening Xander came into his own and blasted his way into the 6th round of flying ducks where the ducks fly "really fast."

I said, "Round six, mommy can't even make it this far!" My two year old can make it to Round Six! On Duck Hunt! I couldn't be more proud.

These Pictures Make Me Want More

Boring In A Manger

Last Thursday was Lyndsay's birthday, and that morning we were busy getting the kids ready for the day. I was feeding Avery her oatmeal and Lyndsay was doing her best to get a bite to eat, while Xander was running circles around all of us.

In the midst of all of this I say to Xander, "Today is mommy's birthday; this is the day mommy was born!" He then replies, "Mommy you were boring?" And before we get to laughing to hard he says, "In a manger."

We Are Famous

We made it onto the Tribune's website.

Go to fan photos on the right and find picture 54.

Edit: Since yesterday we have moved from picture 54 to 65, so you may have to scroll a bit.

Go Bears!

Despite our hulking forms, I doubt that we could make up one Brian Urlacher. Let's hope that the jerseys are good luck against the Saints this Sunday.

A New Blogger

It has been a while since I last blogged. Life has been pretty busy with the holidays, 2 kids, a thesis to write and a church to lead. I just back from a 4 day snowboarding/skiing trip with the youth of our churches. It was a blast, but now I am tired, a little under the weather, and have a bit of pain from one really hard wipeout.

I am excited to tell you that my lovely wife, Lyndsay has just made the decision to enter the blogging world after many weeks of reading the blogs linked to my own. You can visit her blog here.

Hope you are all doing well, and I hope to do some more blogging soon.