Laughter is a gift from God. When we refuse to accept it, it makes Him want to take it back. Like the unicorns.
I want a plan.
I want a 10-year vision with details and steps and instructions.
I want to map out the next 40 years of my life and know exactly where I am going and how I am going to get there.
And every time I pray about that desire, every time I ask God for that, his answer is really simple:
The photo at the bottom of this post is probably going to make me look like I have anger issues.
But in my defense, I made it very clear about what was going to happen that night.
The setup is simple. I was invited to speak at an awesome youth retreat at a church called Grand Avenue Baptist. (Fun fact: The youth minister’s name is Aaron Rodgers, and he beat the Green Bay QB to Twitter. He’s @AaronRodgers, the QB is @AaronRodgers12.) The event was a blast and concluded on Saturday night with a dodgeball game.
During the day, we did a Q&A session in which I told the students:
Sometimes, after I speak at a conference, someone will come up to my book table and say, “I’d never heard of you before today, sorry.”
My response is always the same.
“That’s nothing to be sorry about. You are a member of a very large group of people that includes most humans on this planet.”
Then we both laugh and I try to sell them a ten pack of Quitter.
Not knowing who I am does not make you rare. Not having read The Hunger Games makes you rare.
(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s a great one from Joel Stepanek. You can follow Joel on Twitter @lt_jstepanek. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)
Spontaneous Meal Prayer: A How-To Guide
The day was beautiful, everyone was smiling, and my sister and her new husband were simply beaming. The wedding ceremony had been emotional and moving and now it was time to have the introduction of the wedding party and newly married couple. And then, we were going to stuff our faces full of food.
As I waited in line to be introduced, my mind turned to thoughts about the meal I was soon to eat. I was interrupted by a tugging at my sleeve.
“Um, Joel, I know I forgot to ask you this earlier, but could you lead meal prayer?”
Last week, my wife and I saw a church van driving down the highway.
We immediately took a photo because of what was written on the back door.
And, don’t worry, my wife took the photo. I didn’t try to take it while I was driving. My job was to drive close enough for her to get the photo. I offered to put our car up on two wheels if that would have helped, but like most of my offers for car stunts, she passed.
Here is the photo:
It’s a little dark, something two wheels would have fixed, so if you can’t read it, it says:
“Knock and it shall be opened … Matt. 7:7”
My first 2 thoughts were:
1. Am I the one that thinks it’s funny when we abbreviate Bible names? It just looks so weird. “The book of Matt.” That’s like saying, “Did you read that new study from Beth Moore? It covers all four chapters of Jimmy.”
2. If I was going to paint a verse on the back of a van, what would it be?
That first thought was ridiculous, but that second one? Now we’ve got a bit of a conversation, a “caption this church van” situation, if you will.
So that’s today’s challenge. You’ve got a church van and can paint any part of it with any part of the Bible.
I’m coming right out of the gate with the story of Elisha calling down those attack bears on the teenagers. You put that thing on the back of your van, and no one is going to tailgate you.
What verse or story would you paint?
Four years ago today, this blog started.
I started it because I grew up in the church and it always weirded me out that sometimes we Christians didn’t use our best creativity to celebrate who we believe is the Creator of all creativity.
We tend to take a popular idea from secular culture, sprinkle a little God flavor on it, and turn it into a church idea.
“Got milk?” becomes “Got God?”
“Burger King” becomes “King of Kings.”
“Adidas” becomes “Add Jesus.”
So when the satire site “Stuff White People Like” blew up, written by the talented Christian Lander, I got an idea.
“What if I talked about this problem by committing this problem?”
That would kind of be ironic or postmodern or other words I didn’t really understand the meaning of at the time.
So on March 21, 2008, I wrote the very first post:
In our continuing look at Spring Break and the ways to survive, we pick up with part 2 of the story. (Click here to read part 1.)
Today, let’s talk about how to survive Spring Break if you live at home with your parents or work in a cubicle.
I got fleas on the best Spring Break trip I took in college.
In my defense, they might have been “Liger fleas.”
Long before Napoleon Dynamite let the cat out of the bag about ligers (feline joke in a sentence about jungle cats? That is rich!), a small homemade zoo outside of Panama City, Florida had a couple of them.
How did they acquire a deadly tiger-lion love child? I’m not sure. I was too busy getting fleas at that ramshackle zoo that was devoid of all the romantic comedy hijinks Matt Damon promised in his movie We Bought A Zoo.
My hope was that much like the origin of Spiderman, I would gain some sort of superhuman powers from the bite of the Liger Fleas. Thus far, that has not been the case. But I did learn an important lesson – it’s easy to have a fun Spring Break when you’re in college.
Even getting bitten by bugs, sleeping on the floor of a sad motel room next to 14 of your friends, and eating ketchup packets for dinner when you run out of money midweek is kind of fun. It’s Spring Break! Whooo!
And then you become an adult.
It’s guest post Friday! Here’s one from Aaron Chewning. You can follow him on Twitter or at his website. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)
CROSSRoads – by Aaron Chewning
On each episode of CMT’s Crossroads, a country artist and an artist from a different genre team up to play a show and swap stories. Some of the most notable episodes paired artists like John Mayer with Keith Urban, Lionel Richie with Kenny Rogers, and Ray Charles with Travis Tritt. It’s truly a fascinating experiment of forced friendship and musical genre-bending.
Being the CCM superfan that I am, I’ve developed a version of Crossroads that would pair a Christian artist with a secular artist. I think it’d be irresponsible to call it something other than CROSSroads. I’ve penned up a list of potential episodes for the first season of CROSSroads and here they are…
Recently I took a picture of God.
I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I was just taking a picture of clouds.
Big, angry tornado about to hit Tennessee clouds.
And yet, when I posted the photo on Instagram a number of people told me they saw God in it.
Including me wife and she is not one to casually see God in stuff. Like the sides of barns or toaster strudels. (The toaster strudel absolutely destroys pop tarts by the way. It’s like the one breakfast pastry to rule all pastries. You get to control your own icing distribution! There can be no debate on this subject.)
Here is the picture in question: