Search Results for: Friends and friends of friends

Someone reminded me of this sign today posted on the way of Shishu Bhavan, a children’s home in Calcutta. I quoted it in the front of Authentic Relationships, a book I wrote with my brother, Clay a few years back.

I really needed to hear these words again today. Maybe the will re-inspire some of you as well. Our actions are not about the outcomes we desire. Someone can completely destroy or repudiate a gift of kindness or an attempt to serve. This poem is about living with love and grace in a world filled with self-interest, that can easily treat our love with contempt. Love anyway!

Anyway

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Be good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People need help but may attack you if you try to help them.
Help them anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

Here’s an interesting exchange I had recently. I have many like it. It seems when people leave an old system, their first passion is to start a new one. The unspoken thought is that systems will work pretty well if the right people are in charge. The reality is that systems themselves are destructive to relational and organic growth.

It seems all of this stems from the fact that we really don’t trust that Jesus is capable of building his church—that he cannot give rise to the reality of his family if we don’t “start something”. It’s as if living loved and loving just won’t be enough to let him do all he wants to do.

Here’s a passionate brother who is anxious to start his own church and my responses:

Mike: I just found out about you and what you are doing because my daughter sent me to your web for information about how to start an open church at home. I am just a new born baby, about 4 years now, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit about 3 years ago and I have been preparing myself to follow God’s plan for my life. I am considering going to a Bible college this September and the Lord spoke to me and asked me to start an Open Church with some of my family members and friends. I have read some of your articles regarding Church and think have helped me tremendously on how to approach the Lord’s command.

My response: I’m pleased to hear of your passion, but I don’t have any advice on how someone should approach starting a church, except to tell them not to. People who start a church end up basing it around their vision or gifts and it will either bog down or simply become the outgrowth of one person. I am convinced real church emerges as an organic outgrowth of relationships people are already sharing. So the question is not, how do we start a church, but rather, how do we facilitate people caring for each other and growing spiritually together and see over time whether or not church life emerges from that reality? I really don’t think we need to start churches. Jesus started the only one that matters at Pentecost 2000 years ago. We just need to live in that reality instead of starting more institutions that only further divide the body. That’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but I honestly thing the way God works is very different than the way we do…

Mike: I guess I used the term CHURCH incorrectly, because what I want to do is getting people… friends… family and share with them my experience, to try to have them become true Christians and then share our love with Jesus. I love your honesty. God bless you.

My response: I’m sure Father will lead you. If I could encourage you in anything it would be to share your life freely, but look to come alongside someone else’s journey. Once we try to get people to have the experience we have, we’ll manipulate them instead of serve them. Jesus just wants you to come alongside folks and give them truth as they are ready for it. Once we start trying to manage people’s spirituality, people will run from us. God will show you. I love your heart and passion, but church leadership has done this wrong for a long time and its why people are fleeing from the church instead of finding God in her.

Mike: Thank you Wayne, I understand what you are saying. Please tell me in your opinion then what I should do. How do I try to tell people about how wonderful Jesus is, about eternal life, about relationship with GOD. I am so new at this. I am a 71 years old newborn baby so willing to do good. Any advice will be incredible for me.

My response: What should you do? Follow him. If you don’t know what that means yet, just live in his love and love others around you. In time it will be clear what he wants you to do. If you don’t know now, other than to follow someone else’s form, then maybe you are moving ahead of him. I’m really serious about this. We’re just asked to love like he loves us (John 13:34-35), to proclaim the gospel as we have opportunity and to help others follow Jesus who want to follow him (Matthew 28:19-20). We are not told to plant a church, for he said he would build his own. He’s good at this. He knows what to do. Just help others as God gives you grace. Don’t try to start something. Don’t try to ‘get people’ to do anything. Live your life before them until they are hungry enough to ask for help. Then help them learn to live loved and follow Jesus. And the gospel will spread…

* * * * * *

When I last heard from Mike, he seemed to have captured what I was saying. We must not forget that the ‘early church’ did not arise out of a plan to get people to do anything. The early church emerged out of a revelation of who Jesus is, and hungry hearts responded who wanted to know God and live in his life. There was no recruitment campaign and no strategy to manage people through a hierarchical system. They lived as a family and grew to discover how they could embrace his life together and live transformed in the culture.

I actually think when we try to ‘start something’, we’ve already made a step away from his reality. It’s not that God won’t go with us and that our efforts won’t be fruitful at some level, but they will never help people discover the depth of relationship and transformation that comes from a relationship with him. Unfortunately, for many, the thing we start will be come their substitute for knowing God themselves.

Somehow we have to think differently—that our calling is not to build the church, but to present an authentic demonstration of the Gospel in how we live and what we say. Then, we take the time to equip those who want to know him, how to live in a relationship with him. As a pool of people discover how to live loved and love, then the church can take on a variety of forms and expressions in various times and seasons.

Our focus will remain on him and what he’s doing in the world, rather than sustaining our institution, be it in a building or a home. Then we have a shot at the church of Jesus Christ being known in the world as a people who are being transformed by him.

You’d have to be fully off the grid, not to have heard of Susan Boyle, the 47 year-old woman who recently shocked the audience and judges of Britain’s Got Talent with the most incredible performance of The Dream I Dreamed from Les Miserables. It was featured on news shows throughout the U.S. and as of today the You Tube video has as of this morning been viewed over 12 million times.

It may be impossible to watch that video and not be deeply moved. There are lots of factors to that. If you want to read her back story, you can do so here. It’s great TV—the context, the diminished expectations, the surprise or an incredible voice and the passion behind her song. But I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something more. If you haven’t listened to the lyrics, listen carefully. This is the story of a young dream that life destroyed and the attempt to still find God in the disappointment. Here’s just a few lines:

And still I dream he’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather…

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed The dream I dreamed.

Part of the reason this is so powerful is not just her voice, but that her life seems a very parable of the song she sings. She had a dream to be a famous singer that had not be realized before last week, at 47 years of age. She’s not alone. A lot of very creative people live with similar disappointed dreams, and most won’t get this kind of break, even at 47.

Every child grows up with dreams, and the twists and turns of life often crush them. Sometimes that’s because they’ve been so abused and diminished that their spirit is crushed. Sometimes it’s simply that they don’t have the right look, or lived in the right place or had the right opportunity. But I suspect for many it’s because our dreams weren’t so much about the gift that was in us, but how rich, influential or famous we wanted that gift to make us. For every person that becomes a pro athlete, hundreds of thousands more get left in the dust. For every one who wins a gold medal, writes a best-seller, or cuts a platinum album, hundreds of thousands of others live like failures because they didn’t.

If our dreams hinge on the response of others, opportunities in this world are slim. By definition only a narrow few will end up playing professional sports, becoming a singing sensation or a best-selling author. If success only comes by being in the brightest spotlights, most of our dreams will be dashed as well. As I watched it for the fifth or sixth time last night, I couldn’t help but wonder if we’re not so deeply moved by the performance of this incredible woman because through her we are getting a glimpse into eternity. It’s not the crowd or the lights that make her performance noteworthy, but the fact that she is simply doing in the thrill of the moment what God created her to do.

In our twisted perceptions of the 21st Century, it is easy to think this talent wasted since she never got this chance until she was 47. But does the stage validate the gift? Was she, or her music, any less moving or less valuable when she sang to herself in the kitchen or in local gatherings in her village? Was it less moving to the kind of God who splashes wildflowers across mountainsides no human will ever see? Most of the best gifts I know in this life will never gather the spotlight, or wow the masses. I’m not sure God ever intended them to. Perhaps even the unrelenting attempt to find a mass audience or a bright enough spotlight so easily distorts the dream, or the gift, or the person as well. We all know how the realities of competition and glare of celebrity does more to ruin people than it does make them more whole or well-grounded.

When we finally arrive in eternity, no longer tethered by our false expectations, no longer competing against others with similar gifts, no longer measuring our worth by the false demands of a broken culture, we will all get to celebrate the full beauty of exactly what the Creator sowed in our lives. And I suspect we’ll celebrate it in each other, perhaps like we see it in Susan Boyle, and in doing so it will touch the deepest joys and ecstasies of our heart. And the Father will thrill right along with us.

I know the reality of disappointed dreams, as I coveted a mass influence through my writing from a very young age. It tortured me. The desire was a tyranny all its own, and God won it from my hands almost 15 years ago. For the first time I found myself for the first time content to write for the love of God and let him do with it what he will with the result. I found absolute joy in simply writing what was on my heart and making it available on a website. And I was blessed by each life it touched in the gentle obscurity of God taking it to those he wanted.

And now I know what it is to be involved with a best-seller over the last year and I’d be less than honest if I told you it was all the joy I dreamed it would be when I coveted it so long ago. Notoriety brings a different set of pressures and a different kind of audience, and it is now harder to do what God has asked me to do in the shadow of what the world calls success than it was before. I find more joy in helping one life find freedom than I have in perusing a best-seller lists. And now, I hardly write since my days are full of obligations and responsibilities far afield from that which God originally asked of me. Over the next few months I’ll be moving away from this space back to where Jesus has asked me to walk.

So here’s what I’m thinking as I watch that video: Isn’t it enough that all of us ply our creativity, gifts and dreams for an audience of One. It is enough that God hears us sing, that God reads what we write and that the truest joys are not doing it professionally, if we lack the opportunity, but doing it as hobby, sport and passion. Saying someone is an amateur has become a put-down today. But the root of that French word is people who do what they do for the love of it, not for money or the light of the stage.

And while I understand those who would love to see their passion find a greater voice and place in the culture, it is not failure for God’s grace in you to touch the people he has put before you, rather than the unknown masses. Your story is not validated because it spawns a book; your song is not more precious because it secures a recording contract. So sing, write, paint, plant, nurture, design, act, and build however it brings joy to your heart. And let God open whatever doors he has for it. Knock where you will, search as you have direction, but don’t despise the audience God has already given you—your children or spouse, friends and family, and local opportunities to touch lives in tens and twenties, rather than frustratingly trying to find a path to the thousands.

And I wonder if some of the dreams we carry in our heart, were never meant to find their fulfillment in this life. Perhaps they, too, are portals to a different age and time. Maybe they are a glimpse into that unrestrained eternity that will allow us all to be fully all that God created us to be. I’m convinced our greatest creativity and ecstasy lies beyond this temporal time zone.

And one day we will all know the absolute thrill of doing in freedom and joy the very thing God made us to do—that gives him and us the fullest of joys.

This email arrived in my inbox this morning and I wanted to share it here, not for the kudos it offers to me, but for the encouragement it might offer others who live where this woman has lived. I hope we all know by know that only God can win someone to his love and affection. Don’t get me wrong. That some of the things I’ve been involved in provided a conduit for him to be revealed in her is wonderful and encouraging to be sure. But the larger story is of how God makes his love known to people who have not known a lot of love in their lives. I want to share her story because I know there are hundreds if not thousands like her out there.

They were raised in the demands of a religion devoid of love. They didn’t find it from their overly-religious parents, and never found it whatever kind of “faith community” they were raised in. But God never gives up. He pursues us with a love that can overwhelm all of our failures and hurts.

If you’ve never known God’s love for you, don’t give up. Just keep asking him to make it real to you. And if you know God’s love be aware that some person like this one may cross your path today and perhaps God can give them a glimpse of himself through you. Perhaps a smile or a gracious word from you might open a door that will allow God to find someone he has been looking for, for a long time.

Words will not come close to expressing my thanks to you for your book He Loves Me. I was born into a pastor’s home. There was no real love but lots of condemnation. I didn’t hear God’s love preached from the pulpit. My childhood was an extremely sad place. When I was six I went forward to accept Jesus as my Savior six nights in a row at children’s camp. When my father asked me why, I replied, “Because I’m not too good saved yet”.

That has been my journey. No love at home so I couldn’t believe that God loved me. To say I have struggled with God would be a huge understatement. I have walked away for years at a time, come back when I was hurting from my choices of looking for the love and approval I so sought.

Last June after a particularly hard time I heard about the book The Shack. Oh my goodness! It tore apart all the false beliefs and showed me a Papa I had longed for. I’ve shared that book with my friends and talked about it to anyone who will listen! Over the next months I read So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. That book knocked my socks off. Then came along He Loves Me. “WOW!” is all I can say. Papa will have to bring to your heart the understanding of how powerful your book has been in my heart and my life. It has changed everything. Even that is a big understatement.

Wayne, one day we will meet in heaven and I just to warn you, I am going to be the one who jumps up and down telling you about how Papa used you in my life. We are now studying your book in our Bible Study and the women are loving it. Thank you for the remarkable work he doing in my life because of finally understanding HIS LOVE.

I think God did let me in on what happened in her heart. I teared up reading this. I can only imagine what it must be like for someone who has never known love to find for it full and free inside God himself. Isn’t that what the gospel is all about? We all have a Father that loves us more than anyone on this planet ever has or ever will.

THE SHACK will reach 23 different translations in the next couple of months, expanding the audience for that little book. Most of the publishers overseas are secular publishers, many of them doing books about other philosophies and religions. When many of our overseas friends find that out, they write us concerned that a company that doesn’t believe in the message will alter the translation to fit their own objectives. I’ve answered this so many times for people that I thought I’d address it publicly here.

I can appreciate the concern, but it seems to fall into a bit of the Christian paranoia that the world is always out to get us and to intentionally distort our message. In the early translations of THE SHACK, we have not found that to be the case. Believers we know in those countries, who were concerned as well that the translations wouldn’t stay true to the book, have since written to tell us that the books are remarkably accurate to the spirit and content of the story.

And why wouldn’t they? Publishers have a vested interest in getting the story right. If they unfaithfully translate books, they will get caught by the many readers who can and will read both translations. If they change a book’s content their credibility and future sales will suffer in irreparable ways.

Why didn’t we stick with Christian publishers? We wanted this book to get into places Christian books don’t normally go. And we’ve had wonderful results from early translations that have been done by secular companies. Even those that had fears a nonChristian publishing company would water down the book or change its meaning, admitted later that the translation was far better than they expected. But no one agrees on every detail. Translation is more an art than a science, since many phrases and words do not have exact counterparts in other languages. Some interpretation is essential to the process, but we have been pleased to hear that translators have been faithful to keep as close to the original as possible.

It has been said that just because people are paranoid doesn’t mean there aren’t others out to get them. Maybe it’s also true that just because people disagree with us, doesn’t mean they are going to distort our words to further their agenda, especially when it is in their financial interest not to do so. I find many believers by and large live with far too many suspicions of other people. They’d prefer to live inside of those fears, then let circumstances play out and see if there is in fact a problem.

I think Jesus said it best. Be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. Keep your eyes open, but don’t live to speculation when reality will always unfold on its own. That we can be kind and gracious to all, but not be played as a fool by those who are truly malicious.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written here, and I apologize for that. This last two months have been crazy and we’ve been horribly busy on so many fronts. What extra time we had, we grabbed to enjoy our children, grandchildren and friends. While this new year has been incredibly difficult at the outset for a number of reasons, I think God is clearly giving us a way forward. I continually live amazed at God’s ability to adapt his purpose and plan even through the most confusing and distressing of circumstances. Even when our lives are in turmoil, he stays constant—always present, always moving forward, always caring deeply for his children.

This weekend Sara and I have begun our third move in the last eight years. Crazy, isn’t it? My parents lived on the same farm for over 40 years. But it seems God has led us to move on yet again. Over the next few days we will be moving 15 miles south from our present home in Moorpark. We will now be residents of Newbury Park just a couple of miles off of the infamous 101 Freeway that runs up the coast of California. In some amazing ways God opened the door for us to get this home at the end of a very quiet street that borders some open space. I am really grateful since this former farm boy has always found city life in Southern California a bit claustrophobic. This will be a lovely setting for spending time with fellow-travelers on this journey, and hopefully an inspirational spot for the writing I hope to do in the coming years.

We will also be much closer to Brad and Kelly and their family, since our initial podcast adventure has taken us down other roads together we never saw coming. So all will be quiet here over the next week as we get moved and settled. Then we’ll be ready to start this new year and see where Father might lead. Of course, the podcasts continue, of course, if you want to keep up with us there.

We often pray for those being touched by the things I’ve written. In the last few weeks we have a lot of email from people in very desperate circumstances who are finding fresh hope again in the love of the Father. May that be true for you as well, wherever you happen to be on this journey.

I got a beautiful email last week and wanted to share it. I do so well aware that it could be easily misunderstood. This sister is in the early stages of moving from the stale emptiness of religion into a fresh and vibrant relationship with Jesus. God is revealing himself to her. Recently God began to open her eyes to one of the ways in which he works. I love it and resonate with the content of this exchange. This is God’s heart for her, her husband and many others.

However, I don’t want you to be put off by the form in which she shared it. She shares it as a conversation between her and God. I do believe he speaks like this, but people who don’t understand may feel that God never speaks to them this directly. I doubt it was a voice she heard externally, nor a conversation quite this way. When God reveals himself to us, he spills into our consciousness with insights that we then put to words. I think it is absolutely fair to characterize it as a conversation as our sister has below, but it could mislead others who think that engaging God happens quite this way.

So don’t focus on the form, focus on the substance of what’s shared below. I think it will encourage you too, especially those who are in the middle of this process:

I have really been praying a lot lately about the decision to leave church and how it has meant being misunderstood by so many people. So as I sat there I started asking why the journey out of (organize religion) needs to be a lonely one, I don’t always get an answer but the freedom to ask Him for some kind of insight has made me feel more like His child and less like an acquaintance.

With that one question I opened up Pandora’s box so to speak. I’m getting better at hearing that still small voice in my heart and it seems that sometimes the Father especially loves to have our ear. Immediately I felt like He was asking me if I really wanted to know Him. Of course I said yes! So he gently reminded me that there is a lot of him to know and that to know him is to know Truth. He IS truth. So much of what we have been taught is not the truth about Him, as if any religion could contain the One who breathed out the stars. “It’s so hard for you to see me through the deception that swirls around you like snow in January“. Instantly I got this image in my mind of a snow globe with the little plastic snow flakes floating slowly down. If we take a big step back from the noise of religion all the deception will fall away and what is left standing will be the Truth. “This is the beginning of really seeing Me”.

I also felt Him say that religion encourages us to live in our heads but to see Him we need to live on our hearts. So hard to do when you’ve been hurt I thought. “Children are all created to live in their hearts. Look at how easily they love and accept. But every time someone hurts you, you pack up a box…maybe trust or courage and you move it upstairs…from your heart to your head. After a while you’re living in your head and my voice gets far away.”

So how do I fix that?” I asked. “You don’t” was the instant reply “I do. I move the boxes downstairs one at a time so you begin to live out of your heart again.”

” So how do I let that happen? How do I know it’s you?”

“I will begin to move boxes downstairs one by one. As I help you unpack it you will begin to recognize ways in which I am teaching you to trust me. As you start to recognize each lesson you will also see more and more of me in it.”

As He spoke to my heart is was as if my spirit recognized the Truth and freedom and love in His words and my skin even felt tingly. It was as though He was infusing me with the strength to believe something that would require me to turn away from so much of what I had been taught for so long. I felt such hope and peace even in the face of going on in this without the support of our Christian friends. I know it has been hard for my husband as he is very hurt that people he believed to be close to us have walked away. I asked God to help him see this wonderful Truth and to help him to hear His voice more and more like I was beginning to. ” What should he be doing to hear your voice?”

“What does your husband know about a father/son relationship?”

Well, I know his dad is a workaholic and so he learned very young that to earn his father’s attention and approval he had to work…for…it….. Ohhhhhhhhh”

“What am I asking him to do right now?”

“Nothing. He has walked away from all the ministries he was in and now even church. He doing nothing right now”

“And because the doing and the relationship were so inextricably tied together it means the relationship he thought he had with me has been taken away and he just can’t see me very well right now. It’s like the shadow of me that he had in his peripheral vision is gone. But that’s OK. He’s where I need him to be because I am about to replace that deceptive shadow of a relationship with something far better.”

“So that can apply to almost all of us. What we learned from our parents or other significant people about what a parent/child relationship is has distorted our concept of what our relationship with you can be?”

“Exactly. And that is why so many of your friends have reacted so strongly. What you are suggesting goes against everything they have been taught about maintaining a relationship with me. If they stop the doing they won’t be able to see what they think is me anymore.”

The way He spoke with such compassion and tenderness about His children that are still living deceived was so beautiful. Immediately I felt my defensiveness fade away and I began to see them as He sees them.

For so long I never knew that He wanted to interact with us in such a personal and direct way. Imagine, my Creator conversing with me like an old friend. So many people think that we have to talk to God like he is the untouchable King and we are the unworthy slaves. But He calls us His children…His friends. I understand what so many have expressed. Now that I know the depth of relationship with Him outside of religion I will NEVER go back.

Don’t get caught up on the form of this sharing. There is a lot of wisdom and God’s heart in the content of it. I hope it helps you respond to him as well.

Yes, I did. Both Sara and I voted for Barak Obama. I know that won’t sit easy with many of my evangelical friends. I’ve received scores of emails the last few days warning me that this election was pivotal for America and that God wanted McCain to win. One even sent me a dream he had of Obama plotting with Satan to destroy the United States.

I hate fear and all that it destroys in the human heart. People still don’t see how horribly binding it is and how it distorts us into really creepy people. Emails from Christian friends driven by fear and appealing to fear in hopes of conforming the culture to their expectations, sickened me. I know they are just misguided. I know God loves them deeply, and that they are responding the only way they know how. But it is time for God’s children to move beyond fear. This whole world is in HIS hands and we are his children living in it. We need not fear anything, because God’s kingdom is the unshakable one. His purpose will endure and we dare not look to the governments of men as our hope.

Even though I disagree with many of Obama’s social policies, the Republicans needed their comeuppance. I am a life-long Republican, and have never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. But eight years of Republican arrogance and corruption in Washington has devastated this nation and destroyed our reputation abroad. How could I reward that with my vote? Are the Democrats any less arrogant or corrupt? Of course not!

But Obama sings a different tune. He speaks of hope and sacrifice, of bringing people together instead of manipulating our political differences to chop this country up into little pieces. To be honest, I’m ready for some sacrifice. My generation has saddled future generations with a horrible debt and an irresponsible, short-sighted, selfish approach to the problems of our world. It is time for a different course. Yes, I know when President Bush in his first campaign talked about being a “uniter not a divider”, he completely ignored his own promise. I can only Obama won’t do the same. I hope he’s serious about being a President for all of the people, even those who didn’t vote for him. I hope he brings diverse factions together and helps them learn to work together, rather than running headlong into a Democratic agenda. Time will tell.

This was a hard vote for me. McCain was my favorite Republican candidate from the beginning. I was surprised he won the nomination, but then even more shocked that he once nominated he became a mouthpiece for the worst elements in the Republican party. He quickly abandoned his life-long principles to appeal to the base of a party sadly out of touch with the demands of our time. I was disappointed by the lack of experience and gravitas in his vice presidential choice. I was disappointed in his negative ads that depended on rumor and innuendo. McCain has served this country well in days gone by. He didn’t do it so well in this campaign, except for his concession speech last night. That’s a McCain I could have voted for, even though I was disturbed by the mocking anger of those in his audience. He had to keep rebuking his own supporters who demonstrated such contempt for Obama. I hope that tells him something about the campaign he ran.

I know this won’t make sense to those who only focus on gay rights and abortion in voting for president. But I look at other issues that are being ignored to the detriment of our country. We need to build credibility abroad and make significant reforms at home. Obama offers us a fresh course and seems to display the intelligence, passion and fair-minded resolve to help us accomplish that. I do regret that he will serve with such overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses. That doesn’t bode well for serving the interests of all of the people. But I’m rooting for him to get this right and demonstrate a generosity of spirit to those who don’t see the world the way he does.

And when I watched the faces of my African-American brothers and sisters last night overwhelmed at the election of one of their own to the highest office in the land, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. The greatest stain on our nation’s history is the white arrogance that first owned slaves for hundreds of years, then when freed kept them repressed economicaly, socially and politically for over a century and a half.

Sara and I just spent a week in Virginia visiting Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello and the historic colony of Williamsburg. To think that the man who penned our Declaration of Independence citing that “all men are created equal,” and then returned to his plantation in ownership of African men and women only shows the extent to which human blindness can reach.

What a moment in history! An African-American family will occupy the White House. So many said it couldn’t be done. And while it alone won’t make up for 400 years of abuse, it does open a very wide door of hope for those who have been most marginalized in our culture. How could we deny them this joy, this fulfillment that all men truly are created equal. I will pray that this reality further heals the despicable divide in our culture and allow us all to celebrate what we hold in common.

The stakes are high. The opportunity is great. I do pray that Obama will be blessed with wisdom and insight and that he will live up to his promise to not represent the narrow interest of party, but do work for a common good that offers equal justice for all.

On January 20, Barak Obama will take the oath of office, looking down the Mall past the Washington Monument to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream Speech.” His election doesn’t fulfill all that King hoped for on that day, but it is a giant leap forward to fulfill a promise too long denied to people of color.

Some day I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren that I voted for the first African-American president of these United States, not because he was black but because he held the best promise to reverse the course of our failed politics and open a new chapter on American public life.

I pray he lives up to that promise. If he doesn’t, it really can’t be any worse than the last eight years.

Sara and I made it home from Virginia, and we had an awesome time all around. We met some incredible people and connected with some dear, old friends. I took questions from about 300 folks in a Presbyterian Church about THE SHACK and met with all kinds of people on relational journeys who are learning to live loved by God.

It’s great to be home for a while. If all goes well I’ll not have to board another airplane this year. Awesome, if true!

Someone sent this to me the other day. It is from a website called: The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus.

I love that. The dogma, doctrines, and rules just will not hold up when the storm surrounds you. Love, trust, and relationship with Jesus will. I get hundreds of emails from people who know the rituals, doctrines, and rules well. They have observed them all of their lives, but when the tide turns against you, those things are as shifting as sand on the shore.

Learning to live inside a relationship of love is where real Truth is found. Settling into the confidence that Jesus and his Father love you and that you can trust them no matter how hard the wind blows or the rain falls, is as certain as a granite boulder.

I’ll admit it isn’t easy making the shift. I hear that every day from people and I still remember my own. It’s incredibly disorienting when your doctrine lets you down and your rules aren’t enough to sustain you. It’s easy to get angry at God and others.

But there is no better time for Jesus to show you the way that really is Truth and Life. And finding that, you’ll find the incredible peace that endures even through the most despicable of tragedies.

But finding a relationship with Jesus and his Father is where this relationship really begins.

Sara and I spent the weekend in Charlottesville, VA with believers from all over central Virginia as well as those from as far away as Texas and Ohio who came to join us. Someone from ASSIST News Service wrote up an article about the weekend. You can read it here. We had three packed days of conversations with some wonderful people who are sorting out what it means to live in the love of the Father.

On Friday, Sara and I got to go to Monticello, the home of President Thomas Jefferson (pictured above) and then spent the last two days in Colonial Williamsburg exploring our early American heritage. Dovetailing with my work in BridgeBuilders, this has been a wonderful time to re-examine the history of those men and movements that culminated in our Declaration of Indendence and then a new government based on principle not monarchy or heritage.

Today it is back to work in Richmond with some dear, dear friends. One is writing a book on communion that will be an incredible gift to the church. Tonight I’ll make a a presentation at the Third Presbyterian Church of Richmond on THE SHACK and related topics. Then Sara and I will spend Friday and Sturday with some fellow-travelers on the north side of Richmond before heading home on Saturday night.