Persona

  Y'all know just how much I love our local Starbucks! When were there at 5AM to be the first customers! We met  new baristas and shared stories of coffee and life, symbiosis indeed!

 One of the baristas is named Shelly. She has a smile that lights the room. She greets customers, that soon become friends, as they come in the door, long distance, and then up close at the register! She makes it a joy to go for a coffee because whatever kind of day it is, we know we will see her and be cheered. It is her persona, a simple joie de vivre that exudes from her soul. When she isn't working it isn't the same in our store, no slight to the others, she is just missed!

 This got me to thinking, pondering. What is my gift to the world via my persona? What is yours? Do I light the room with a smile and love or look like a grey raincloud begging to burst? I'm afraid sometimes its the latter!?! It's said, "a cheerful  heart does good like a medicine"and makes people, places and life just a little sweeter for the cheering? I want that, more of that! Don't you? For me and for others. Hey, what a gift to just give people a joyful face to look at wherever you go! I'm trying this.

It is said, the first 30 years of life make your face what it will be for the rest of it! Wow! Good reason to smile more, eh?

 I hope you have a Shelly in your life! I hope and pray you ARE one. We all need you…mucho! And I hope to see you in the coffee shop and share a smile and a wave and a cup,  Shelly style!

Parents Without Faces

Ok, I am as guilty as the next ab-user of technology, addicted. I'm on it too much. I can feel its pull, innocent seductive luminous opiate screen.

Today in a flash, I saw the effects of the drug in the micro world of a Panera booth. Exiting from a morning of email on the free wireless, I passed human bookends, matching parents; both sitting together, with their  smart phones, in the same hand (right) fingering their respective screens with the one appendage that gives us digital alacrity, freedom, the opposable thumb, useful. What was tragic for this mom and dad was one vacuous reality. Across from them, was a most delightful young man, about 7 years old, wanting, yearningly to engage his parents faces, but to no avail. They were tripping on their techno. Soaked in either a text or and inspirational message or the next pair of shoes that must be had…I don't know. This little champion looked up at me as I walked by, with hollow, lonely eyes, as if to say, "Who cares about me?" "Do I matter?" "Where are my parents faces?"

Practical living tells me that in a half hour, the "bookends" will drop "champion"  off at class.  They will go to work, and  he will be walking in the isle to his desk at school, immersed in various classmates gazes and greetings, from every walk of life, some you just might not want to know more about…really. His morning was faceless. In that golden hour of connection perhaps the technology could just have been  put away, in exchange for a little conversation, a little warm love in the form of familiar smiles and affirming words from mom and daddy-o. Are they  parenting and intermittently  temporary orphan, who is sporadically abandoned for one more fix of vital information, the temperature and 24 hour forecast and those shoes?

I wanted to stop at their table that morning and say, "Do you love that little guy across the table, and do you see the hourglass over his head, and your head, and over every soul of man in this place?"  (Damoclese sword might just as well been an hourglass, eh?) "Are you alive to the moments of a child's curious life like this boy, that are as precious as the very next breath you will breath? Is there anything more important, right now, that placing thunderous, extravagant, simple love beneath his Spirit and preparing him for a day of engagement with humanity that will pull, push and press him into a spectrum of emotions, words and snotty punches or worse or better?  I didn't stop; so I am a sinner, guilty, for a crime of omission,  not speaking love when I could have. Or perhaps it was the fear of  being misunderstood as a sentimental old fart who sees a kid who just wants to hear his parents talk some love to him at breakfast.

 I'm to a Ludite. I'm just  thinking there are great times to shut the stinkin' tech  off and give your lovely  face away to a friend or a kid or your wife or boyfriend or?

Coffee Cakes and Pearled Gates

He would have paid twice the price for a coffee cake half the size. The bid was $40.00. You see the baker has a reputation for investment. She had lavished butter, flower, sugar, cinnamon vanilla and mysterious love in a mixing bowl early that morning with one motivation, love. She transferred the sweet mix to a radiating oven filled with waiting waves of catalytic heat, ready to do its work of releasing the dulcet aroma and finishing the crispy creation to perfection.

Our annual church bake sale usually turned into both a laughter extravaganza, smack talking party and a bidding war for the best offerings brought to raise funds for global missions; sacred sweets! People who couldn't go to a foreign land could bake for the poor or bid on the goods; on behalf of  the forgotten and the yet to be freed by the Gospel's power. To give once more in a special way, for the faces they will see in heaven because they cared and baked and bought! Serious business…

Heavens gate are mysterious things. The first hand view of these portals of the majesty, is described by John on his visionary journey into the unseen realm of future things. Each gate is a pearl with lustrous, translucent glow so inviting to behold, and to step through forever. The gates are open and calling for the least, the last and the lost to come and rest. Imagine for a moment, with me, a small child who has never tasted more than a cup of rice a day and spent her few short years on violent streets, can enter Christ's glory because she heard a message, from a missionary, who was sent to a country, by money spent on a coffee cake. Isn't that a sweet thought? Pun intended! Sold to the man with the smile on his face for $40.00!

Reach and Touch

The drive from central Ohio to Philadelphia is a parade through the halls of ancient forests. These royal assemblies have been a home to native americans before any european settlement appeared. The goodness of their stature, shelter and sheer might is  sacred today as it was in Eden. The writers Lewis and Tolkien took a stroll on an english campus, graced with gigantic Oaks that had seen the likes of Hadrian and whose expansive branches overshadowed a half acre of ground beneath each of them. Lewis stopped in admiring wonder of the trees, looked at Tolkien and said, "And they call it a tree."

There is a change in the trees today, spring dawns and sweetens the air with scent and color. (I noticed even the snow liberated soil has a new scent in spring). The subtle colors of purple, pink and red at the tops of  trees are bundles of infant leaves springing out to meet the sky, God, light and freedom.

Impossible and invisible, on the tip of a branch, has become possible and visible. What was not, is, and radiates beauty and truth; a cycle of life; new birth and hope. Blossoming trees, reach and touch heaven en mass and as one. It's natures upward dance of worship spoken in ancient writings of Isaiah as "trees of the fields clapping their hands!" How like my arms and the tips of my fingers are these extended boughs  reaching once again, heavenward with all their might? They reach and touch; I can reach and touch heaven, with them, in God's sacred rhythm of new life and divine beginnings. Lord, thank you for the ancient halls of trees, mentors on earth and someday, Heaven!

Comfort and Suffering

Remarkable are the extremes of faith and visible are the beloved who have experienced them. John the beloved disciple is seen in Da Vinci's last supper with his head leaning lovingly upon the chest of Jesus. What a tender display of love communicated and affection given by Christ to this one who drew close and confided in the deepest secrets of  Jesus. This is comfort. This is Christ. All is well, for a moment.

Fast forward to a desert island, a prison island of rock and sun, wind and rain, rough elements fit for the wild and the blistered and banished. Enter John the beloved and blistered. This time he is resting his whitened hair on a roll of straw after prayer. And he is taked in the Spirit! The scrolls and scenes unfold before him and he reels with the thrill of a man who is crossed in to eternal mind of God, to the future passed and yet to come. He has known comfort and with it peace. Now he knows suffering and with it revelation, deep and powerful as an deep ocean current sweeping time and nations and planets and the souls of the living and the dead  in a rhythm of culmination ending in recreation of all that is known.

I am always ready for comfort, like John. I seek it. But I never seek suffering, it finds me, elusively, like living on Patmos found  John; prepared and unprepared, angry and embarrassed, reconciled and repentant, searching for meaning in pain. Not  knowing yet  that the revelation to come will be sweet and holy, terrifying and enlightening and both His and mine. Comfort and suffering are both a gift to one who will embrace them as divine love. Welcome.

The Public Square

Last week Judy and I had the joy of walking slowly through the Cleveland Museum of Art. We took in lunch, exhibitions of Medieval Armor, numerous paintings and even authentic Egyptian Sarcophagi. One of the highlights was the lovely Roman statuary. They were carefully lit from above and along side to reveal the subtelties of the artists work and accentuate the boldest details.

They reminded me of a story that I read about the artist Michael Angelo.  It is believed that one of his apprentices was troubled by the lack of bright light in the workshop. His latest creation wasn't seen as well as he thought it should be. Michael Angelo took him aside and said, "Don't be so concerned how your work is viewed in here, rest assured, it will be thoroughly tested and critiqued in the light of the public square!"

Hebrews 4:13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from Gods sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must all give an account.

Following

Following

In 2008 Judy and I had an amazing time of discovery. We visited Greece, Turkey and Israel following the steps of the Apostle Paul and Rabbi Jesus!

We discovered what CNN wasn’t saying; there is world of people just like you and I that want to know more about Jesus and live in peace with their global neighbors.

Why doesn’t CNN ever have a story like “Good morning, It was another peaceful day in Antioch Turkey, were biblical pilgrims and Turkish citizens met and made friends over coffee?”

One time Judy and I went one way, while our luggage went another way, while tracking a lost passenger! It seemed we moved best when we moved together…following!

We followed Rabbi Paul through the sun-washed Greek Islands and shoreline, to Corinth, Crete and Cyprus. We are still following his teaching and lifestyle, his encouragements and lessons today!

How about those Corinthians for a learning community?

Like Christians before us, we learned through living and experiencing life with each other.

Remember Peter, James and John, Christ’s close inner circle? His follower’s who were ready to pray with him, learn from him, fight and even die for him; well…almost.

He invested in them. His daily life was their classroom! He invited them to walk with Him, close to Him, following His every action.

A friend once said to me “Ron, Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a lifestyle believers live.”

He said “Will you follow me, to church Sunday?”

I followed him, who followed Him, and I am still following today.

And I wonder; how many more can we invite to follow Him? I am so glad He took the time to ask, “Will you follow me?”

Then Jesus said to them “Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.”

Ron