Wednesday Link List

Click the image above to learn more about the comic book version of the book In His Steps, where the whole WWJD thing originated.

• A really heartfelt story from Shaun Groves describing the somewhat atypical process whereby their family of five became a family of six. 
• A follow-up report on the aftermath of the Waldo Canyon fire on Navigator’s Eagle Lake Camp and Glen Eyrie Conference Center.
• Tim Stevens introduces a cool church property rebranding that reflects a heart to reach the community: Granger Community Church is now Granger Commons.
  
• The Evangelical church gave thousands of kids their dreams of being a rock star and made up this new staff position called “Worship Leader”.  According to Carlos W., it’s time for some to lose that dream.
  
• Philip Yancey encounters Hanna, a woman both blind and autistic, on her first visit to the United States. 
• Here’s a very well-written look at confronting our fears in the wake of the event in Colorado and similar events elsewhere.
• And in the wake of the shooting, a most unusual good news story about a girl who was saved by a birth defect she never knew she had. 
• Really enjoyed the Pete Wilson podcast, particularly the question from an aspiring pastor who asked if he could come to Cross Point as an intern.
  
• Nearly 15 years ago, ‘print on demand’ technology was supposed to bring back many out of print books, including Christian titles. The technology works, but where are the books? 
• Ouch! Every year dozens of boys in South Africa die from botched circumcisions. I read the article but skipped the video.
  
• A Canadian version of the oft-repeated story wherein the owner of a Bread and Breakfast refuses to rent a room to a gay couple, and pays the price in court.
• Doing camp ministry in North America this summer? Here are six reasons why it would be quite different if you were in Slovakia.
  
• If you like your Christian music LOUD, then you need to visit all the new lyric videos posted last week by the band House of Heroes.
• Randy Morgan finds a great book excerpt from Garrison Keillor, speaking in the voice of Guy Noir, Private Eye; on the subject of modern teenagers.
  
• Zondervan continues its Counterparts series with Four Views on Christian Spirituality, comparing Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Liberal Protestantism.
• A large auditorium is a large auditorium, right? Not in Wisconsin. A Federal court has ruled that school graduations that took place in churches were unconstitutional. 
• Here’s one of my own pieces at Christianity 201, about getting the nerve to ‘pop the question’ to someone with whom you’ve shared your faith.
• And another one at C201 about what kind of people get picked to spread the good news.
  
• Wanna be a priest, a minister or a rabbi? (No this isn’t a bad joke.) Well, if you have a smart phone, you could always download Ordain Thyself. Tony Jones spotted a mention of it at CNN.

Post # 999 – Missing The Moment

I’m the last person you want to whom you want to give tickets to a sports event.   Seriously.   It’s not that I can’t appreciate baseball, football, basketball or hockey; it’s just that when one team actually scores, I’m usually focused on something else happening on the sidelines, or watching the TV crew, or checking the printed program.

Of course I am fully aware of the aftermath of the home run, touchdown, basket or goal in question, and I cheer along with everyone else, but secretly I wish I was watching the televised game where I could at least catch the replay.

Or worse, I’m one of those people who turns to his friends and asks, “What just happened?”

I did it again last week, only I probably will never in this lifetime get a chance to catch what I missed.

The 2010 Winter Olympics are being held in Canada this year, and so the Olympic torch relay is now in progress, making its way from one end of this very large country to the other;  and, as it turned out, passing right by my workplace on a day I was working and free to venture outside to watch.

I stood there with a guy who works in our building.   He was to my left.   The runner was approaching in the distance and then ran in front.    He passed by the guy to my left, and then passed by me on the right.    I watched for a few seconds more, and then turned to the guy on my left and started a conversation.

I can’t help it.  I’m a people person.   I like to talk.

By now, I would expect that the runner was a considerable distance down the block, but my building neighbor was continuing to point is camera to my right, and at one point got rather animated about something — like, oh, I don’t know, some idiot gabbing away about nothing in particular — and I turned back to see that the runner had only advanced a few more inches since I’d looked away, and had just passed the torch to another runner just a few steps from where I was standing.

And I’d missed it.

That’s why they call it a relay.  Seeing the Olympic flame pass from runner to runner is a big deal    It’s history.   And I missed it.  (And I think I kinda wrecked his video of the whole thing…)

I wonder sometimes if we are guilty of ‘missing the moment’ in our spiritual journey?   You can be ‘right there’ and it can be happening ‘close by’ but you don’t catch it because you’re distracted with other concerns.

You can be a member of your church’s board, or a worship leader, or maybe you even have a Christian blog; but God is busy making history right nearby and you’re not seeing what he is doing.    Maybe because you’re looking at — or  doing — something else.

Matt left a comment on a Francis Chan book review here which linked his site where he blogs through the book and poses this question on a December 26th post:

If you read your own biography or heard a speech at your funeral, how much of it would be about what you’ve accomplished as opposed to what God’s accomplished in and through you?

We can be so busy — even busy doing “the Lord’s work,” but we can miss some fantastic moments where God is working out something far better than the deal we have cooking.   Something where we could be the one making history.

I grew up in a family that celebrated the milestone moments when car odometers roll over to a significant number.    Two summers ago, we had a couple of cars roll over to the 100,000 (km) mark, but while I knew both were coming up, I got distracted both times and missed the moment.   (Tomorrow’s roll over to blog post 1,000 reminded me of this, but alas, there’s no odometer equivalent.)

I think that distraction is the enemy of spiritual awareness.   And busy-ness is just another form of distraction.   (If the devil can’t get you to watch pornography online, then he might get you addicted to blogging!)

Don’t be so busy that you ‘miss the moment’ spiritually speaking.

Don’t be so distracted by the TV crew, or the program, or the sidelines that you miss the game play.

While there are other days and other games, some things, like the Olympic runner passing right by your front door, only happen once in a lifetime.

God is working.   Lives are being changed.  You can have a part in a great adventure.

Don’t miss out.