The Old Life Update

Lindsey and I are both in our final year of school! Yeppie! She will graduate with her M. Div. from Vanderbilt in May and I will graduate the week after her from Belmont with my Bachelor's degree. The plan so far is to vacate Nashville the summer after graduation in order to make a new home in Chicago. I hope to get my Masters of Nonprofit Administration from North Park University up there. 

Meanwhile, we are off to the Christian Community Development Association's (www.ccda.org) annual conference this week. 

Patrick Swayze Was My Role Model

Patrick Swayze and Tom Cruise taught me everything I know about being a husband and how to treat my wife. It is sad but true. After Lindsey and I got married we weren’t quite sure how a husband and wife were supposed to act. After all, neither of us had ever been married before and we weren’t quite sure how to treat each other, talk to each other, or think about each other. So, we turned to what we knew: Pretty Woman, Top Gun, and Dirty Dancing.

Our individualistic/isolated/short cut lifestyle made it impossible to invest the kind of time and stillness necessary to understand the covenant we had just entered into. After some frustrating and confusing struggles of trying to figure out why marriage on the big screen didn’t help our marriage in real life, we finally received the wisdom we sought.  We set our eyes upon and imitated couples around us whom we admired greatly.

I am realizing that my faith often falters in the same way. I find myself frequently imitating Evangelical pop culture instead of Christ. I substitute cheap and easy behaviors for the life Christ has called me to imitate.  I bury myself in silly things like speaking Christian-eze or listening to the right radio station or  being seen at the appropriate church function and call that being faithful.

I long to keep my eyes focused on the author of my faith who so clearly demonstrated a life of service and care for others while mired in the everydayness of life. I look forward to getting my hands dirty as soon as I finish putting my new icthus on the back of my car. 

The Rabbit

As most of you know, I now work fulltime and attend Belmont University fulltime. So, blogging has taken a backseat to the insanity of my new life. However, I still think about blogging all the time and suddenly find myself with an extra few minutes and a thought.

I found this Dallas Willard quote on Bob Buford’s website, ACTIVEenergy.net. “One of my favorite stories,” Dallas continued, “is about the dog races down in Florida. You know, they train these dogs to chase an electric rabbit, and one night the rabbit broke down and the dogs caught it. But they didn’t know what to do with it. They were just leaping around, yelping and biting one another, totally confused about what was happening. Well, I think that’s a picture of what happens to all sorts of people who catch the rabbit in their life. Whether it’s wealth or fame or beauty or a bigger house, or whatever, the prize isn’t what they thought it would be. And when they finally get it, they don’t know what to do with their lives. This is a huge factor in finishing badly: people need a rabbit that won’t break down. But that’s not something the superficial values of this world can really give them.”

I don’t know about you, but I greatly fear finishing badly. I fear becoming distracted by physical things or issues that in the end don’t really matter. I fear catching the wrong rabbit and then realizing that what I chased and fought for was for naught. I want to finish well.
This is an issue on the forefront of my mind these days as I contemplate life after school. On one hand, I understand chasing the rabbit of the big picture; the faith rabbit. I desire to serve the Kingdom of God for all of my days and specifically to be a follower in the way of Jesus. That rabbit I get. It’s the smaller sized rabbits that confound and distract me. They tend to be flashier and more immediate.

In this Lindsey and I pray that we can live in community one day with a group of people willing to be open about these issues. A community that interprets each other’s lives in the light of the Holy Spirit. A community that helps keep the right rabbit locked in our sights.