to blog or not to blog...

...that is always the question. I've been out of the habit, that's for sure.

But I'm still here, still kicking. Looking forward to about a month from now, when things will calm down a bit. And then a little more so a month after that.

Seasons are so needed in life. We need a little sunshine, we need a little rain, a little warmth, a little cold. When we taste something bitter, the sweetness we taste later is all the more sweet. And though no one wants pain, how could we know how good life is if we didn't have that faint memory of hurt for comparison?

I think this is why grace is the greatest, most glorious thing in the world. Because we, all of us, know what it means to be undeserving of any good thing. We know true worth or value when we see it, and we realize how far off we often are from its mark. But when grace is imparted, a little of the goodness of the one who gave it is imparted onto us as well, and all of a sudden redemption springs up inside. The worth we had somewhere buried is made worthy again. It turns the pain into soothing comfort, radiant beams of warmth and light.

How much grace have you imparted today?

'the frequency with which i remember it' picture?

late JANUARY 2007 PRAYER LETTER

Here's the current prayer letter I send out to supporters of the ministry...

R E N O V A T I O N S

We definitely have some more changes going on, once again. That seems to be the theme of the ministry of h2o! Maybe God just wants us to learn patience and trust. Maybe He wants to equip us with the ability to remain calm for any future hardship that comes. If so, I’m very grateful to Him! I think He’s constantly working something out in our hearts. Wisdom I’ve come to live by goes something like, ‘It’s not what happens to you in life, it’s how you respond to it.’ Our God is a gracious and loving Father, and He does nothing to harm us. But He does test us, to help us realize how faithful or unfaithful we are, to remind us once again how weak we are when our pride swells and we believe we are self-sufficient. And these are not cruel tests, far from it; they are some of the kindest things done for us, and we should be thankful.



These pictures are the current state of so.zo (the first one is looking toward the back as you walk in, and the second one is looking toward the front from the back), and it has been this way for a number of weeks now. Remember back in August when we demolitioned the interior and prepared and painted the walls in about a week’s time? Well, this stuff is taking a lot longer! What we’re waiting on to keep moving is the building permit from the city code enforcement office. Once we have that, we are going to refinish these awesome wood floors, build a coffee bar (it will be on the right side as you walk in) and install handicap accessible bathrooms in the back. Christopher, my older brother, is an architect down in Knoxville, TN and is designing the build-out; he’s got some awesome ideas for down the road when we get some more money together! We are also working on forming a business team along with investors to make so.zo truly a great coffeehouse in Morgantown. I will tell you more in future letters about the vision for the space and how we hope it will impact lives here for the Kingdom, but for now, please pray for some specific things concerning the renovation:
1. Pray that the building permit is given to us within the next two weeks so we may get the floor ready to build on.
2. Pray that the floor is ready by the last weekend in February, and that it works out for Christopher to travel here then and has the help of many of us h2o-ers to put in an intense work weekend to build the bar and bathrooms.
3. Pray that there will be a good response and subsequent meeting to our request for investors and business partners.
(If any of you, my faithful supporters, feel led to invest in so.zo or want more info, you can of course call/e-mail anytime!)

Meanwhile, as we wait for these things to take place, h2o has been meeting Sunday nights at Trinity Episcopal Church downtown. It’s been fun setting up and tearing down with everyone, and the worship and general atmosphere has been very sincere and heartfelt, and we are seeing new people come as our people have been taken up the call to invitation; we want to be more inviting people in 2007, not just to h2o, but into our lives and to Jesus. The temporary dislocation has helped us, actually, to be refreshed on our identity, which isn’t necessarily tied to a physical place. We are a community of young people who come together and celebrate the goodness of God and to encourage each other as witnesses of that goodness and that God. Pray for h2o, not just the service but the people, that as we look forward to what God will do in 2007 we are expectant, enthusiastic and willing to join Him in His work.

almost ready to say something real

real post coming soon

'daily' picture

revolutions

Everything that has a beginning has an end.

That's the tag line for the third Matrix movie, The Matrix Revolutions. Though the film was criticized on many points, especially regarding the ending, I thought it was a clever general idea to wrap up a trilogy. All things that start must finish. What goes up must come down, and any other idiom you like along those lines. It suggests that there's a natural rhythm to life, an ebb and flow of which we are all a part, a certain reliability of the tide amongst life's troubled waters.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. It's very evident in each of my days, weeks, months and years. I see it with, for instance, this blog. About once a week I really get the urge to write on here. I feel like that should be the bare minimum. I go to the web page, sometimes even log in, but then I get distracted with something else oftentimes and sure enough, it's about a week before that urge comes around strong again. If you look at the dates on my last month of posting, you'll see that I must have gotten distracted in the middle weeks and ended up only posting every 2 weeks, as I am again now.

Some rhythms are in direct competition with each other, and one must inevitably bow out to the other. It's up to us to decide which rhythms continue and which get cut short.

If you'd like to hear more about the idea of rhythm and how it intersects with spirituality, you should come to h2o for the next few weeks, 6:30 PM on Sundays. Right now we're meeting at Trinity Episcopal Church for a few weeks till so.zo (a new coffeehouse and our future meeting place) gets renovated. This is a great series and is something, Billy, our speaker, is very familiar with.

Well, I thought I'd leave you with a picture. A friend of Billy's had a blog where he decided to put a picture of himself up everyday. I'm not sure I'll be THAT persistent, but now with my built in iSight camera on my MacBook Pro (more about the joys of this machine soon) it will be a lot easier to keep you caught up on my day-to-day (or every other day) appearance. Au revoir!

new year

Hi! I thought I'd post one more little one before the end of the year.

You'll read and hear a lot about new year's resolutions, turning a new leaf (which I claimed to do with blogging a few months ago) and the like this week. You'll read about new diets, new financial help plans, new self-helps of various kinds. Many of you will resolve something or other that you've been meaning to make a habit for some time, and many of you will find success for a time. Some of you will succeed long-term. I've been wanting to run more, drink more water, read the Bible more, make some decent recordings, etc. Chances are, some of these things will happen for a while but then I'll hit the natural downs of life and feel silly or disappointed in myself or like a failure.

Chances are, most of you have gone/will go through these same things. We've all heard this before and we've all experienced it so I don't want too many unnecessary words. But I want to ask: what will it take to break the cycle? Is the cycle meant to be broken? Do we have any hope of ever actually changing for the better and accomplishing something good?

I certainly don't have all the answers or even a few of them, but I think a few things to keep in mind, like perspective, might help. Making attainable goals and going bigger from there. God asks us to be faithful with the small things so He may entrust us with the larger things later. Look back on the last few years of your life and evaluate it a little: what have you done that you're proud of? What have you done that you're not proud of? That you never want to do again?

I try to take things, rather than a year at a time, a day at a time. One of my favorite songs is by the band Five Iron Frenzy and it's called 'Every New Day.' It's better with music of course but the end of the song says:

Freedom means love without condition, without a beginning or an end.

Here's my heart, let it be forever Yours; only You can make every new day seem so new.