Lessons from a hammer

A friend of mine recently wrote a really cool little post about stacking firewood, and a couple days later, I got a chance to help build my new deck (replacing an old deck we had to tear out).

Lessons learned from really good honest hard work.

1. You sleep better when every muscle and bone in your body is worn out.

2. It is best to hammer a nail straight and true, and hit it as hard as you can.

3. It is easier to pray while carrying huge beams of wood around your house than while typing up silly blog posts like this one.

4. The most beautiful piece of wood is not necessarily the straightest or best.

5. The right tool for the job is a blessing, the wrong tool is a curse.

6. Measure twice, cut once. 

7. You might be an expert in something, but not in everything. Listen to the guy who knows what he’s talking about, and do what he suggests.

8. Keep moving. Don’t stop. But don’t rush.

9. Buy some extra wood.

Any other thoughts?

Ducks.

So, I’m on my way to work this morning and this whole bunch of ducks is playing around in the water. Not fishing, not doing anything that is “productive”… I’m telling you they were flying back and forth, splashing as big as they could on landing (at each other), and I could swear that I saw them smiling.

Perhaps I should get out a guitar, crank up the volume, and make a bunch of noise to annoy somebody…

Have some fun today, preferably with some friends. Spring is here!

I’m not a Christian… (?)

Okay, I really am (I got you goin’ there, didn’t I), but I’m avoiding the word “Christian” pretty often these days. It’s a GREAT word, but the culture has changed its meaning (not it’s definition) and I need to engage my culture with the presence of God (Christ) in my life.

In Scripture, the word “Christian” (which appears in the original only two times) was originally applied by “non-believers” to the church to indicate (derisively) that we thought we were “little Jesuses” the way we served the poor and loved each other and stuff like that. Now, in many instances, we self-apply the label based on a creed or list of beliefs, and not necessarily also based on our behavior. Creeds and doctrine are vitally important, but they are not the way we show the world that we are followers of Jesus. We show the world that we follow Jesus based on our great love for one another.

I’m thankful to be in a church that is known for our deeds in the community, and people are attracted by that and end up engaging Jesus in all His fullness because of the way we love them!

(This is an edited version of a response I posted on another blog…)

Equip!

The past two weeks I had some stuff happen that made me really glad I’m where I am. You see, lots of worship leaders in churches would be in trouble if they were off the platform for two weeks. My church encourages it, across the board. (I think I’d be in trouble if I were up there every week in fact…) We totally get the Ephesians 4 exhortation to “equip the saints”. It’s not just in our DNA… it IS our DNA…

So… On Saturday I went to a great conference on worship leading, and some great folks were there to “show how it’s done.” On Saturday night I got into the church just in time to attend the service. I didn’t play, help setup or anything. Our worship team was better than the “pros” who had hosted the conference, in my humble opinion. No paid professionals on the platform.

The week before we had another great worship band play with an all-volunteer (unpaid staff I like to call them) group that was great, too. And… that weekend, we had a guest speaker that was one of our volunteers and he did GREAT (another “non-paid” guy)… AND… we had no staff in our Kids church that day either. In short, every aspect of the service was handled by people who were equipped by paid staff to do it, not paid AS staff to do it… and it went GREAT!

It’s a great time and place to be alive.