"Finding a Healthy Motivation to Exercise"

This blog post actually exists at this link:

http://www.boundlessline.org/2011/06/a-better-motivation-to-exercise.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boundlessline%2Fblog+%28Blog%3A+Boundless+Line%29

It is there because I am officially blogging for the Boundless department with Focus on the Family!!!

However, the truth is that the post was absolutely inspired by a blessing from the wall, so at least a link to it belongs on this blog also.

God Bless!

Megan

"The Man"

Have you seen "V for Vendetta" ?

"Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot...

But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

But who was he really? What was he like?

We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world.

I've witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them... but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it... ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love...

And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man... A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget."

~Evey Hammond

I would like to compare this opening scene of the movie with another pretty awesome story...

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin." Hebrews 4:15

Evey Hammond talks about ideas, and how influential they can be. I'm sure we can see this in our own world - political ideas, economic ideas, and even religious ideas move people to do extraordinary things. She's right...even after 400 years, an idea can still change the world.

But what impacted her personally? A man.

That's the awesome, amazing thing about Christianity. It is not about an IDEA or a practice or a habit or a theory or believing in the future or the past or the potential of humanity or anything else... It's all about a man. Or more specifically, God who became a man. God could have sat in heaven and fixed everything without touching us dirty, filthy humans, but he chose to walk among us, and even to die for us.

It's crazy. And it's everything we've always needed.

The other cool thing is that the images in V for Vendetta even suggest a Christ figure...

I wish I could post the pictures, but I can't find them. However, next time you watch it, keep your eyes open. When Guy Fawkes is getting hanged in the first minute of the movie, he looks strikingly like Jesus Christ up on the cross, and there is a woman in the crowd below looking up at him who looks strikingly like historical religious images of Mary looking up at him. I wonder if the movie makers planned that.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Megan

"God's Eyes"

When I was a kid, one of my favorite videos was a half-hour film of a Mary Rice Hopkins concert. She sang simple Christian kids' songs, and I think there were ten songs on the video. It's one of those videos I watched so many times that if I popped it in the VHS player now, I could probably still sing along with every word. Right before one of the songs, she pulled out a giant yellow pair of glasses, much like these, and she looked around at all the kids and said "Whoaaaaaa..." She said the package they had come in had read, "God's Eyes." She said we would be amazed if we all saw each other as God sees us.

It's amazing how a kid can learn the same lessons as an adult, but the older you get, the deeper meaning the lesson takes on because you can apply it to a longer repertoire of life experience. I have been blessed to have a week off between a mission trip and starting a new semester of college. I spent several hours in the Word each day this week at different coffee shops. One of the main questions I've asked God during this time of meditation is, "How do I relate to others when we're both coming into the relationship with different values, especially about spiritual things and the role of God in our lives?" I long for deep, authentic connections, but I often find myself in a world of surface-level relationships. Anyway, the questions I asked were not so important as one of the answers I uncovered.

I was humbled by the fact that, while I value spiritual reality, I have failed to look at others as they really are IN CHRIST. There are a lot of words that, even after being 'religious' for a long time, can still go in one ear and out the other as religious jargon and don't take on real meaning for the listener. But the fact that we are redeemed by the blood of Christ is not just a line on a page, and it is not something reserved for heaven, it is SPIRITUAL REALITY - it is more real than the reality we can see. For example, Hebrews 10:14 says, "By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." Being made holy, I believe, is the process of sanctification where we become more like Christ in the physical, visible realm. But before all that, his work on the cross has made us perfect forever. This is real. All Christians are perfect, because his word and sacrifice make it real. And in the physical realm, this is super-confusing...we ask, "How can my Christian friend really be perfect when I can see he does this or that?" But this is us looking through our own, blind physical eyes. This is where we need to put on the BIG YELLOW GLASSES and look at our Christian brothers and sisters through God's eyes. And when God looks at us, what does he see? CHRIST.

The Christian who struggles with lust? God sees Christ.

The Christian who embezzles money from his employer? God sees Christ.

The Christian who neglects his wife and kids for the sake of his job? God sees Christ.

The Christian who keeps tumbling to laziness? God sees Christ.

The Christian who, like me, has embraced God's grace for herself but struggles with pride and with seeing that God gives just as much grace to every other Christian? God still sees Christ.

That is the most humbling part - that I don't deserve for God to see Christ every time he looks at me, but he does, and the least I can do is be intentional about seeing Christ when I look at everyone else. Seeing Christ isn't just a metaphor...it is the spiritual reality that we can't see until God lifts our spiritual blindness (aka causing our faith to grow). But think about what that would really mean? If every time I walked people sitting in the computer lab playing computer games and thought, Christ is sitting there, how would my actions, and even my attitude toward them, be different? Every time my mom asked me to do the dishes, would my insides grumble if I heard Christ asking me to do the dishes? Every time I pass a student in the hallway that I'm inclined to dislike because I dislike some of his or her habits, what if I saw Christ walking down the hallway? Would I intentionally say hello? Would the attitude of my heart at least be different? I hope that this would be true at the very least.

Sometimes Bible stories lose their meaning when we've heard them so many times until you hear them explained in a new way. I've heard the following story many times, but there's more to it than I ever gave it credit for:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:34-40

TRULY, he says. Not metaphorically. Truly. By Christ's blood, we are spiritually perfected and Christ lives in us. Often our process of sanctification involves simply being aligned with and agreeing with the truth. I want to leave you with one final image from C.S. Lewis's sermon "Weight of Glory," who is far more articulate than I, which helps me to further grasp this truth:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

Humbly IN CHRIST, as are you if you are his redeemed child,

Megan

"Learning To Meet People Where They're At"

We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done... so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Psalm 78:4&6

There is a church in Chicago called Chatham Fields Lutheran Church. Its members are mostly African American, as are the residents of the surrounding neighborhood - which is rather safe, but as any resident would tell you, "You're still in the city."

The pastor of this church is Kenety Gee, a native of Liberia who has lived in the states with his family of nine for about 13 years. I came home this past Friday from spending a week living at the parsonage of this church, along with an average of 23 people - 16 of them students from the high school I went to, and the rest chaperones like me. It was the third January mission trip I've been on with my high school - the first year as a student, and the second and third years as a chaperone. If there's one thing you come to expect about going on mission trips, it's that each trip... probably will not be what you expect.

The overall goal of the mission trip was to show up and serve. My pastor, Chris Navurskis, who leads the trips, doesn't like to plan everything out and end up caught in red tape; he prefers to latch on to the urgency of Matthew 28:19 and "Go!" As long as he takes a few planning-oriented people with him (like myself, for example), everything always works out.

The students were an eclectic group of seniors, a few juniors, and a sophomore. The mix of chaperones changed throughout the week depending on everyone's availability - a pastor, two college students, a teacher, a mom, a nurse, a lay minister, and a seminarian were around at different times. Our first main accomplishment was creating a youth room in the basement of the parsonage for the church's youth, including a hand-installed tile floor, freshly painted walls, a long free-standing room divider, and a gorgeous mural (which Allie is painting in the picture above) on a perfected wall. The second was re-plastering and painting the pastor's office at the church, as well as fixing his rotting floor and ancient toilet in the adjoining bathroom. I won't bore you with every detail, but because this blog is all about blessings, I want to share some snapshots and themes of the trip that were blessings to me.

My main prayer going into this trip was that God would help me touch the lives of the students somehow. Connecting to high schoolers has not really been easy for me, even when I was in high school. I tend to take life seriously and they tend to NOT, and that ends up being a stumbling block for me when it comes to finding initial grounds for relating. Did he answer my prayer? Of course. Did I have a deep, soul-sharing conversation with every one of them where I got to proclaim God's grace to their inner brokenness? Yeah right. In fact, I'm not sure I got into a very deep conversation with any of the students at any point during the week. I did with a few of the leaders, though, which I praise God for. And while I was actually rather quiet throughout the week, I was extremely comfortable in my own skin, which is an incredible blessing. And I felt strong. Kenety Gee talked about having a strong spirit and shining our light on others. I don't know if I've quite reached the 'shining' part yet, but I know a light inside me is growing and being fortified.

One of the main things Pastor Chris wanted us all to get out of this trip is to learn to ask the questions, "What's my address, and what time is it?" He means that we should learn to take notice of who the people around us are

, and really get to know them, so we can reach out to them better with the Gospel. Not necessarily in a stereotypical, "Hi, my name is Megan, and I'm going to tell you about Jesus now" way, but that's the whole point - knowing who people are so you will know how to reach them. We got to see Kenety's ministry, and his vision that his congregation would have a focus on raising up the next generation in Christ (we chose the Bible verse for the mural because Kenety had just asked his congregation to memorize it). We visited the second-oldest LCMS church in Chicago and learned about its history and its legacy of embracing the people in the surrounding community which, for example, now happen to be Asian immigrants, so they're holding conversational English classes. We visited Willow Creek, the megachurch, and we discussed the kind of people that church is designed to reach. Ministry means something different wherever you are. So ask. What's YOUR address? And what time is it?

Ironically enough, on this trip, the bathrooms were far less blessed than the one in our dorm. I mentioned already that the floor under the pastor's office toilet was rotting. Besides that, our parsonage had only one shower and two toilets for all 23 people, and at different points throughout the week they each managed to overflow and/or plug up. Yuk. :P Oh well.

Hmm, I feel like this blog post could have been written much better...but perhaps that's my

perfectionist nature coming out. Maybe I'll edit it later. But for now, I want to share. Praise God for blessings and struggles that all come together in one package.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Megan