Luke 23:26-56 (TNIV)

The Crucifixion of Jesus

²⁶ As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. ²⁷ A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. ²⁸ Jesus turned and said to them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. ²⁹ For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!' ³⁰ Then
" 'they will say to the mountains, "Fall on us!"
and to the hills, "Cover us!"

³¹ For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?"

³² Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. ³³ When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. ³⁴ Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

³⁵ The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is God's Messiah, the Chosen One."

³⁶ The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar ³⁷ and said, "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself."

³⁸ There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

³⁹ One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"

⁴⁰ But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? ⁴¹ We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong."

⁴² Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

⁴³ Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."

The Death of Jesus

⁴⁴ It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, ⁴⁵ for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶ Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." ^d]">When he had said this, he breathed his last.

⁴⁷ The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, "Surely this was a righteous man." ⁴⁸ When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. ⁴⁹ But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

The Burial of Jesus

⁵⁰ Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, ⁵¹ who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God. ⁵² Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body. ⁵³ Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. ⁵⁴ It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.

⁵⁵ The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. ⁵⁶ Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.

YouTube Thursday: Always Be My Baby - David Cook

TiVo is the greatest way to watch American Idol. You can skip the inane intros, and the inane judge, and listen to the songs and what matters from the judges. This year, I'm pretty much thinking Adam Lambert has it locked up.

Last year though, it was pretty obvious that it was going to come down to David Cook and David Archuleta. I was always a supporter of Cook because I liked his harder edge to the songs he chose and performed (and that Archuleta looked dead behind his eyes). At any rate, I knew for certain that David Cook was going to win after the Mariah Carey week where he turned a lightweight fun pop song into a really solid rock ballad with "Always Be My Baby."

Jon Stewart: Yes,Conservatives, Being in the Minority Sucks

As I've stated many times, I'm an unabashed watcher of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Even as my watching of The Colbert Report has dropped to almost nothing, I still maintain my nightly release valve of watching the Daily Show and someone who was a second rate comedian that was blessed enough to find his niche exactly at the right time.

Last night, Stewart decided to take on some of the conservative angst being felt and expressed on talk radio and TV shows. (Some Adult Language)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
comedycentral.com
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On one hand, I found this a little disingenuous on Stewart's part because as he intimated at the end of the segment, he made a career out of lambasting and lampooning the Bush Administration and so while the conservative commentators might not be as funny as Stewart is, they're not essentially doing anything different than what Stewart did.

On the other hand, I personally have found the conservative angst about Obama to be fairly amusing. I can understand why people dislike his policies or disagree with him, but the "Armageddon is around the corner" sturm und drang that I hear every time I click over to some of our local radio talk show hosts or flip past someone on CNN who says that Obama hates America is honestly approaching laugh-out-loud funny. And so I take great amusement when someone, particularly someone so funny, takes out his pin to put some holes in the ballon of rage that seems to have built up.

Powerless Part 2

As a parent, one of the most helpless times you can have in your life is when your child is sick. There are certain steps you can take depending on the illness, medicine, doctor, humidifier, lukewarm baths, but ultimately all you're trying to do is speed up the healing process. You have to wait for the body to do its work.

This is the way Sheryl and I have been with Connor for the last little while. He will get these incredible coughing fits that make his little 2 year old body sound like a 50 year old man who's smoked 2 packs a day for 30 years. They're strong and powerful and ultimately do absolutely nothing to alleviate anything. His tonsils are huge and he get sinus infections that cause drainage which causes him to cough and cough and cough.

This last Friday and Saturday were two of the worst that I've ever heard from him. It would be no exaggeration to say that he coughed at least every five minutes and sometimes when he coughed, he'd moan in pain because it hurt. He had a slight fever and sometimes his coughs were so long and so sustained that he would throw up.

And I felt powerless. There was only so much Sheryl and I could do for him. We took him to the doctor. We started him on an antibiotic. We gave him cough medicine. We stayed up to comfort him through the night. But none of it felt effective. And honestly it was frustrating. We WANTED to fix him, to make him better, but nothing we did seemed to help. He'd get a little better for a while, then another coughing fit would hit him.

We prayed. We had friends pray. We had elders pray. I might have considered sacrificing a chicken to Jobu the god of curve balls.

Like I said yesterday, I hate feeling powerless. I hate not having control over the situation. And it's funny, I don't mind God having control, but if He's going to have control, I'd like the outcome to be the one I want. It's when the outcome isn't what I want that I tend to believe God isn't in control.

Connor's doing better and we're going to have his tonsils removed after he turns 3, hopefully alleviating a lot of his issues. We're grateful to God for his overall health and what a great kid he is. And we'll trust that God is in control, even if it mean long nights awake with a coughing and hacking 2 year old.

Powerless Part 1

If you'd looked up in the tech booth yesterday morning at Otter Creek, you would have seen me pacing. Back and forth, back and forth. Shaking my hands, waiting. It's because our presentation software, MediaShout, was acting up. The presentation was taking minutes to open when it should take seconds. I had tried opening it up at 9:50 and at 9:55, it still wasn't open. I restarted the computer, and by 10:01 it still wasn't open and Murray had to start the worship time. It finally opened up during the first song, and we had some issues with it later, but it ended up ok.

I take a lot of pride in what I do in the tech booth, trying to make it as seamless as possible and as unnoticeable as it can be, to make the worship service very smooth from a tech perspective, but there are simply times that I have done everything I can to make something work and it just doesn't.

And I hate it.

I want to be in control. I want to be the one making sure that everything goes smoothly and when it doesn't, I feel like it reflects badly on me. I know it doesn't because most people understand tech issues. But it doesn't make me want to succeed any less.

What I have to understand is that I'm not in control. I'm subject to the whims of technical snafus, but even more importantly, I'm subject forces out of my control. I'm subject to temptations from the Enemy and I'm subject to God's Hand in my life. In some ways, realizing that should be freeing, but it isn't in a lot of ways. It makes me frustrated that I'm not the master of my own destiny or even a Sunday morning. I'd have thought that in my late 30s, I'd have a better understanding of that truth, but I don't yet. And perhaps yesterday was an exercise in that realization.

Cult of the New

One of the pressures I feel in my life is what I think of as the pressure to join the "Cult of the New." What I mean by that is this feeling that everything in life has to be new or fresh or the latest thing. I have a major issue with this in electronic stuff, although some of that has waned as I'm starting to get older.

I feel some of this pressure with blogging as well. When I blog on Fridays, I'd love to have some great new theological point or perspective that make people sit up and think Wow. Or cause them to think differently in some way.

But that's dumb.

Are there new ways of thinking about faith? Of course. There are many ways that I haven't been exposed to before. And sometimes it's simple truths that I just don't think about often enough. Far too often, the "Cult of the New," the desire to do something different just because it's different, can lead us down paths that can lead us away from God, conversely though, it can lead to new insights and experiences that show us truth in a new or unexpected way. There must be spiritual and Scriptural discernment as we approach new ideas, individual and community discernment. Through these, what is negative can be rejected and what is positive can be incorporated.

YouTube Thursday: Sound of Music

So yes, to answer the question that's on almost no one's mind, yesterday was my April Fools' joke. I can't decide whether it's good or sad that so few people were taken in by it, outside of some people initially. At any rate, it was fun. And also, if you're looking to do the upside down text like I did in the follow up post, you can find it here: http://www.sevenwires.com/play/UpsideDownLetters.html

As part of my penance, I offer this YouTube clip of people dancing to Do Re Mi from the Sound of Music in a train station in Antwerp, Belgium.

ƃuıʇʇınb

(-: ˙ǝʞoɾ s,looɟ lıɹdɐ uɐ sı sıɥʇ 'sǝʎ

lıɥd

'ǝɔɐǝd

˙sʇɥƃnoɥʇ ɯopuɐɹ ɹǝɥʇo puɐ sƃuılqɯɐɹ lɐɔıƃoloǝɥʇ puɐ sǝɹnʇɔıd ʎlıɯɐɟ ʎɯ ɥʇıʍ ɯsıssıɔɹɐu ʎɯ ƃuıƃlnpuı ɹoɟ sʞuɐɥʇ 'uǝɥʇ lıʇun ʇnq 'uʍop ɯǝɥʇ ǝʞɐʇ oʇ ǝpıɔǝp ı lıʇun ǝlıɥʍ ɐ ɹoɟ dn ǝsǝɥʇ ǝʌɐǝl ll,ı

˙ǝnuıʇuoɔ oʇ ʇı ɥʇɹoʍ ɯǝǝs ʇ,usǝop ʇsnɾ ʇı 'ɹɐlndod ǝɹoɯ puɐ ǝɹoɯ ƃuıɯoɔǝq llɐ ǝɹɐ ʎǝɥʇ ɥƃnoɥʇ uǝʌǝ 'uıɐƃɐ ˙ʇıqɐɥuı ı ɐıpǝɯ lɐıɔos ɹǝɥʇo ǝɥʇ puɐ ɹǝʇʇıʍʇ puɐ ʞooqǝɔɐɟ dn ǝʌıƃ oʇ pǝpıɔǝp oslɐ ǝʌ,ı 'ɥƃnoɥʇ ʇɐɥʇ oʇ uoıuɐdɯoɔ ɐ sɐ ˙sɯǝǝs ʇı 'ǝuɐʍ ǝɥʇ uo ɟo puıʞ ƃuıƃƃolq ɥʇıʍ ʇı op oʇ ǝɯıʇ pooƃ ɐ ǝʞıl pǝɯǝǝs ʇı ˙dn ʇı ǝʌıƃ oʇ pǝpıɔǝp ǝʌ,ı 'ƃuıƃƃolq ɹɐlnƃǝɹ ɟo sɹɐǝʎ ㄣ ʇsoɯlɐ ɹǝʇɟɐ os ˙ǝɹoɯ ʎuɐ ʇɥƃıɹ ʇıs ʇ,upıp ʇsnɾ dıɹʇ ıʞs ǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ sǝɹnʇɔıd ǝsoɥʇ ƃuıʇsod uǝʌǝ 'ʇı ʇnoqɐ ƃuıɥʇǝɯos ʇnq 'ʞɐǝɹq ɐ ɹǝʇɟɐ uıɐƃɐ ƃuıƃƃolq pǝʇɹɐʇs ʇsnɾ ı ʇɐɥʇ ǝzılɐǝɹ ı

Quitting

I realize that I just started blogging again after a break, but something about it, even posting those pictures from the ski trip just didn't sit right any more. So after almost 4 years of regular blogging, I've decided to give it up. It seemed like a good time to do it with blogging kind of on the wane, it seems. As a companion to that though, I've also decided to give up Facebook and Twitter and the other social media I inhabit. Again, even though they are all becoming more and more popular, it just doesn't seem worth it to continue.

I'll leave these up for a while until I decide to take them down, but until then, thanks for indulging my narcissism with my family pictures and theological ramblings and other random thoughts.

Peace,

Phil

Yes, this is an April Fool's Joke. :-)

Ski Trip Pictures

A couple of weeks back, Kinsey and I went out to Colorado with my sister and her daughter and my mom and dad to do some skiing and snowboarding. And we had a blast.

Kinsey and Katy on board the plane.

Kinsey getting ready to go out.

Kinsey coming down the slope. With poles this year.

Kinsey, my mom, and sister coming up the lift.

Me on the lift.

Kinsey and I at the top of one of the mountains.

My mom and dad with Kinsey at the top of the mountain.

Kinsey riding with me up the lift.

At the top of the slope before our last run.

Kinsey and Katy at the top of the same slope before we did our last run.

In the village on the day we left.

Back Among the Blogging

Well, I gave all of you a break, but now I'm back. In the two weeks that I've been gone, I did some snowboarding in Colorado and some serious work on some projects at work. So as I ease back into blogging, I'll have some pictures and some thoughts about things in general, as per usual.

Off the Grid

Going to be off the blogging grid for a while. I'll be back when I get back (a couple of weeks probably...)

YouTube Thursday: U2 - Magnificent

Last week, super-mega band U2 played every night on the Late Show with David Letterman. I would say, "To promote their recently released CD 'No Line on the Horizon,'" but seriously, did they really need to promote it? It was going to sell a million or 15 copies anyway.

At any rate, here's the band doing one of my favorite songs on the new CD, Magnificent. And as you listen, ask yourself this question... who are they singing about?

The Designer's Dilemma

So let's say you're a designer. And you come up with a really cool idea for a design. Things expand and collapse as you click on them. You can move effortlessly from page to page. If there's further information needed on a question, you only see that if you click on a particular answer. It's pretty awesome.

Then let's pretend you get really excited about that design. And you want to show it off, because frankly it's the most excited you've been about a design in quite a while. So you show it off to your team members and they act appropriately impressed.

Then you decide, "I want to show the client for whom I'm designing this that I have initiative and I'm thinking in different ways about the application. So you show it to them and they really like it a lot.

So you're getting jazzed up about it. Getting excited. You're breaking new ground with the designs.

Until you show them to Development. And based on the timeline from the client, there's no way that they can do what you designed. And you like the Development team. You don't like putting them over a barrel where they have to say No to a client. And it's at that point that you realize your mistake. You got so excited about your design that you forgot to properly vet it with Development before showing it to the clients.

And now it's you who has to fall on his sword and tell the clients that you can't really do all the cool things you wanted and that they liked. And you can still do some really cool stuff, but just not AS cool as what you had before.

Not that anything like that has happened to me in the last 7 days or anything...

gah!!!

Ever been so busy that you couldn't even blog about your kids? Yeah, that's me today...

The Humor in Leadership

Friday, I talked about having transparency or at least translucency in church leadership. Another important aspect that was displayed to me this weekend was the ability to have a sense of humor.

Last Sunday, the elders at Otter Creek presented their ideas for the vision and priorities for the church, which you can read here. They taught a combined adult class, then three of the elders presented the sermon.

One of the opinions that came from those presentations is that while the information was good and most people were on board, how it was presented was not the most... exuberant. And recognizing this and having a sense of humor about it, the elders together with David Rubio produced the following video.



It's very, very good to serve under elders who know 1) when things have not gone over exactly as they might have liked and 2) who know how to use humor and poke fun at themselves.

Translucent Church Leadership

One of the things I like best about Churches of Christ is our denominational leadership structure.

We don't have one.

Each church is autonomous (pretty much) and has the ability to make decisions within itself. We're not bound to denominational strictures or fiats. Within a fairly loose set of doctrines, the individual congregations are not governed by a larger denominational body, but by elderships within each individual church. Which is where the fun comes in.

Through the latter part of the 20th Century, elderships were viewed almost as a board of directors. They were appointed for life (typically chosen by the other elders) and had basically unquestioned power of the church and its direction. This is still pretty much the case in more of the traditional churches of Christ. The shift that was happening in more progressive churches was from a director to a shepherd. And I think this is a very, very helpful shift.

Instead of being viewed from "on high," the elders lowered themselves into a position of guidance and counseling, while still acting as leaders. And the leadership styles went from being opaque into more of a translucent. As opposed to just giving directives, elders talked about why decisions were being made.

This is a style that I think really functions well, especially in the 21st Century. People like me (whether of my mindset or generation) don't want opacity from our leaders, we want to know why decisions are being made and that they've been thought through. We also want our opinions to be considered and heard, whether or not they're adopted or not. I think we would love complete transparency from our leaders, but recognizing that that's not always a possibility, we'll settle for translucency. We want to be assured that we're being led by people who love Jesus and want to be like him in their leadership, and will guide people to be disciples. I feel like I'm at a church where we have that, even if I don't always agree on how to do that.

I know our elders at Otter Creek are pursuing that and I am grateful for their leadership. I hope they continue be as transparent as they can be, guiding the congregation to look more like Jesus, both on a corporate and individual member levels.

The PostRestoration Podcast

Back in January of 2006, my friend Adam Ellis got it into our heads that we would do a podcast together, talking about issues related to faith, Christianity, and postmodernism (a fancy catchphrase back then). We call ourselves the PostRestorationists.

What's a "postrestorationist," you ask? Well, the name was kind of ripped off from Dallas Willard. Here's what I said 3 years ago...

The term "Post Restorationist" is pretty much stolen from an idea by Dallas Willard, but he uses the term "Post Evangelical" and defines it thusly: "Post-evangelicalism is by no means ex-evangelicalism... post-evangelicals are evangelicals, perhaps tenaciously so. However, post-evangelicals have also been driven to the margins by some aspects of evangelical church culture with which they cannot honestly identify."

Remove Evangelical and insert Restorationist and that's me and Adam. We love the Church of Christ and desire to see the Kingdom work through her. So we identify as participants in the Restoration Movement, but know that it is being shaped and evolving. We recognize a certain futility to trying to revive the 1st Century Church in Palestine and elsewhere as related in Acts and the Epistles in 21st Century America, but we recognize that there was a spirit/Spirit about those men and women that we can take inspiration from, as there has been in saints throughout the history of Christianity.

So that's what we consider a postrestorationist to be, and so we write from that perspective and we've now started recording the podcast again. I uploaded our first one back last night, and you can listen to it here: http://postrestorationist.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2009-03-04T22_01_43-08_00 In this episode, we discuss some of thoughts based on the Christian Chronicle article about Churches of Christ in Decline, found here http://www.christianchronicle.org/article2158685~Church_in_America_marked_by_decline.

If you listen to it, let us know what you think. You can also comment at the Post-Restoration Perspectives blog, where we have many other writers commenting and thinking about things along these lines.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss?

Just goes to show that the leaders may change, but a lot of the words can remain the same. Once again, the Daily Show plays court jester, showing the similarity of language between Bush and Obama on Iraq.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mess O'Potamia - The Iraq War Is Over

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

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Reading to the Class: In Praise of Kinsey

Friday, I went to Kinsey's school as a part of Read-To-Me week to eat lunch with her and read to her class. It's always interesting to me to go do that because school is one part of her life that I'm not really a part of. Sheryl takes her there almost everyday and picks her up, she goes and helps in the class once a week and is the president of the PTA (no comment about vice-presidential aspirations). I will help Kinsey with her homework when she needs it (which isn't that often, except in Math stuff), but except for that, I'm pretty separated from school, so when I had this opportunity to go and read, I jumped at it. I read Dr. Suess' The Lorax to the class, which was fun because I got them to do sound effects for it as I was reading and that involved them quite a bit.

What was most interesting to me was watching Kinsey interact with her friends and classmates. Like any 2nd grader, well, any child, Kinsey can get pretty hyped up and excited around her friends. But what I also noticed is that there are some kids in the class who act out some. There had apparently been some kind of altercation in a bathroom with some boys before lunch. But what I noticed while there and Sheryl has confirmed this from her visits that even as a 2nd grader, Kinsey has managed to maintain a sense of herself and what she'll allow herself to get into and to be and not cross that line and I think that's wonderful to see from her. I know she's going to meet some challenges to that and constantly be redefining herself over the course of her maturity, but for now, I'm very proud of her and how she's able stay true to herself and to trying to be like Jesus.

And when I told her this Friday when I picked her up from school, she got the sweetest little smile on her face and I hope that even with the frustration that she and I can have with each other, that that will be something that sticks with her.