Excuse me for interrupting your weekend. There were just some bits of 300wordsaday business and notes that I wanted to take care of.

1. Back in June, Rich Dixon and I offered 5 sets of books to be given to names drawn from people who commented on a post. You commented, Rich’s wife Monte drew names, and Joel, Frank, Tammy and Mike should have books (and Stan needs to reply to my email.) Rich also said that out of the suggestions and conversations, they have a name for his project: Rich’s Ride: Together on a journey of hope. 

2. Last Saturday night, our small group talked a bit about doing a time audit, every fifteen minutes recording what you are doing. I said, “if you do that for twelve hours, you have 48 data points. If you do that for a week, you have 7 times that.” And then I said, “what would that kind of research show?” Lisa said, “It shows you how you are wasting your life.”

It blew me away.

3. This week I read Mudhouse Sabbath. Lauren Winner looks at several spiritual practices, like prayer, grieving, and fasting. She tells of her conversions, first to being an Orthodox Jew and then to being a Christian. She talks about her Jewish life taught her well in these disciplines. It was a quick read. She writes with honesty and vulnerability.

4. A powerful article from someone who lost a child. Two Minutes to Eternity | LeadershipJournal.net.

5. I’ve submitted a proposal to speak at #140conf small town in September. They ask what you want to talk about. I said:

3-continent parish.

How a pastor from a town of 1000 gives daily spiritual help to people across the world for $30 a year. and twitter.

It happens all the time in songs (and in stories.)

For the first two verses, everything is bad. And then the hero comes, the story turns, the cavalry arrives, the light dawns. We love to read these stories, to sing these songs, because they give us hope. The first two verses are exactly where we are. Adrift, in pain, needing relief, wanting answers. The last verse is where we want to be, acknowledged, accompanied, heard. And when the writer lived the words, all the better.

The practical among us don’t understand these songs: “Why include the doubting parts? They aren’t true, you know. The hero was watching all along.” But practical people, deep down, need hope too.

That’s why this song from the practical poet David can speak to all of us.

A reflection on Psalm 6.

God.

I know that you may be angry with me.
But if you are, please wait til you cool off before you punish me.
I am already fainting; please have mercy on me.
And the ache goes to my very bones;
I need healing more than I need more pain.
Inside and out, I am falling apart.
Can you please speak to me?
I feel like I’ve been waiting forever.

Change your mind and deliver me from all this.
Remember, dead followers can’t say good things about you.
And they can’t remember you very well either.

I groan and sigh all the time.
I can’t sleep at night,
the sofa is soaked with tears
My eyes are bloodshot
And all I can see is my enemies.

***

You know what, enemies,
you can just leave now.
God has heard me crying out
I’ve kept him up with my weeping.
And he finally heard.
And he’s coming for you.
You are going to run scared.

It happens to all of us. A friend, a family member, a coworker looks like they have picked the wrong track and are heading toward a trainwreck. Not physically, probably, but emotionally, spiritually, or relationally. I probably hear about more of these than many people because I’m one of the people that people talk to: “Jon, you’re a (social media) chaplain/pastor. You’ll know what to do. How do I stop them from wrecking everything?”

1. Maybe you are missing something. Probably not, but consider the possibility.

2. TV Movie endings are only in TV movies. If you want an intervention to always end with “How could I have been so foolish, I’m sorry, you were right,” you are going to be disappointed. Every time.

3. Humans almost always choose the short-term over the long-term. Even when the short-term looks painful, it’s because it is easier than the real hard work that would bring about long-term change.

4. Remorse and repentance aren’t the same thing. One is about getting caught. The other is about getting right. The first will only lead to avoidance. The second may lead to change.

5. Yelling almost never works. It just makes fingers go into ears.

6. Sin is fun like antifreeze is sweet. Both are delightful for the short term. And then kill you.

7. Self-destruction often isn’t evident to the self being destroyed. What looks obvious from the outside looks very different from the inside. Of course, the outside view can often see further down the track.

8. Consequence pain is often a good alarm clock. Sometimes people sleep through gentle warnings.

I know it hurts to watch. And you want to help. But sometimes the best help is to be around after the wreck. And to ask God for wisdom and clarity and the right words.

That’s what I do anyway.

Made me think, too. Friday’s post that is.

I paraphrased Jesus, “It’s more embarrassing to be moved down the list than moved up.” A couple people said, “What’s up with that?”

They ask a good question. I had pointed to a parable that Jesus told, but I paraphrased the punchline. And it felt funny. After all, Paul talks about Jesus and said, “Have the same attitude [of humility] that Christ had” who gave up everything. Everything we know about Jesus says that humility is a good thing.

So here’s the story. 

He’s at a party. With religious leaders. He notices that guests are looking for the best seats, the seats of honor, seats closest to the front.

Jesus tells a story, a parable. He says something like

Imagine you are at a wedding feast. You look at the numbers on the tables. You find number 1. You sit down. You say, “the number on my invitation must have been wrong. After all, the bride is my niece’s second cousin once removed.” You are feeling pretty comfortable. The tables are getting full.

Until the bride’s father taps you on the shoulder.

“These are for the bride’s grandparents.”

An you have to walk all the way to the back. To the card table set up by the kitchen door as overflow.

Ouch. Everyone listening to Jesus cringes. And looks up. And sees, over his shoulder, the people looking for the best seats.

Instead, when you show up at the party, stand at the back. Get to know the help. And then, if you really do know the family, you’ll get called up to the better tables.

So, was Jesus saying “fake humility is a great party strategy?” Or was he saying, “focus on being at the party. Let others worry about the seats?”

. . . What do you think about me?

I thought about that saying from a mug the other morning. I started reading Esther, a booklet in the Old Testament. Rather than start at the beginning, I jumped into the middle, and read this:

When Haman entered, the king asked him, “What should be done for the man the king delights to honor?”

Now Haman thought to himself, “Who is there that the king would rather honor than me?”

You don’t have to know the whole story to recognize that Haman has enormous self-confidence. At a time when a king can execute you for saying the wrong thing, it seem a big leap to me to assume that the king is always thinking positively of you.

But most of us understand exactly how Haman felt.

We work hard. We curry favor. We try to please. And when a person we admire looks at us to ask counsel, we feel pretty excited. We start to think we matter.

Haman was happy to answer the king’s question. He laid out an elaborate plan, complete with a parade and a town crier. And then discovered that it was his mortal enemy the king “delighted to honor.”  And Haman wasn’t in the parade. He was to be the town crier.

And he did. Cry, that is. And then said the wrong thing and was executed by the king.

It would be easy to draw a moral from this story. But I’d rather just remember Jesus sitting at a party with a bunch of religious leaders. They were all looking for the best seats, sitting at the head table. They wanted to be noticed. Their actions quoted Haman.

And Jesus said, “It’s more embarrassing to be moved down the list than moved up.”

Remember that at weekend feasts.