jeff's blog

Blessed.
You are blessed.

Not blessed as the world sees
but blessed in the riches of the kingdom.

May you see the blessings of God
in your life
His hand guiding you
His spirit leading you

May you allow God to move you into a place of blessedness –
youre heart drawn as one
into the heart of Christ.

i’ve been back a couple of days, getting adjusted and processing. i hope to organize all the pictures better and hopefully have a slideshow or something up soon. in addition, i’ve created a video portfolio of various pictures i’ve taken over the years, and i just need to get it uploaded… unfortunately my upload failed yesterday with about 30 seconds left to go, so i may just get frustrated and take it up to school on a cd or something… who knows.

anyway… i hope to see or talk to each of you soon.

this will probably be my final update from thailand. my time here has been wonderful, and i’m sad to leave. the wonderful people in all the places i’ve visited have been an inspiration to me, and have reminded me that my true passion is ministering in the lives of others.

one final set of pictures are going up right now here.

i didn’t get to go to the coffee shop in chiang mai (or do much else that we had planned on tuesday) but it did give me several ideas for some future pics, as well as a couple in the here and now with becca’s camera.

anyway, hope to update more in the next few days.

pictures from english camp are up online. since i had 60 something pictures i decided to use postcardviewer instead of simpleviewer. i may stick them up in simpleviewer at some point, but for now i’m going to leave them there. anyway, mostly people pictures.

check out the pics here

hopefully tomorrow we’ll be going to a coffee shop that has some cool photo ops… we’ll see how that pans out. will be a busy day before we head back to bangkok.

just as a quick note, i’m heading to english camp tomorrow at cha-am and won’t be in internet contact until saturday night (here) at the earliest. i hope to have some good shots to post, but i don’t know what my internet situation in chaing-mai will be, so we’ll see how it goes.

take care.

new pictures are up at http://images.wisch.org/thailand.

for those of you who don’t know yet, i dropped my d70 down a flight of stairs this weekend… the camera is ok, but the lens that was on it was pretty banged up. it still takes pictures, but who knows for how long.

anyway, hope you are all being blessed.

A place of beauty – adorned by plain dirt floors, citronella candles, a small bouquet of roses, simple, hurting, grieving people, sitting in the warm night weeping, remembering their friends taken tragically. People questioning, not understanding.

The church, too small to hold all the people and the service held with the porch as a makeshift stage, the podium placed beside the intricately carved double wooden doors. Some were seated on under hastily raised tents, but most sat on plastic chairs under the tars, stretching into the street, effectively blocking traffic. It was no occasion for traffic, a scene so captivating that a passer-by might linger for just a moment to breathe the intoxicating citronella incense and listen, if only for a moment to the stories of life lived fully and without regret – to hear pain and confusion, but also beauty and hope, to watch the expression of beautiful, simple people, many of whom had nothing to offer but their tears and time, hoping to find peace and hope in the company of others. Young and old, rich and poor, it was the essence of community, drawn together because of a common faith and hope – a faith in a Savior who promises a hope for nights and places such as this – a hope that overcomes despair – a hope of life abundant that leads to life eternal.

the alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. leaving through the pages, he found a story about narcissus.

the alchemist knew the legend of narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. at the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.

but this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

he said that when narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh with water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

“why do you weep?” the goddesses asked.

“I weep for narcissus,” the lake replied.

“ah, it is no surprise that you weep for narcissus,” they said, “for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.”

“but… was narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked.

“who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder. “After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!”

the lake was silent for some time. Finally it said:

“I weep for narcissus, but i never noticed that narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, i could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”

“what a lovely story,” the alchemist thought.

- paulo coello

so for those of you who don’t know, i’m spending three weeks in thailand. not a lot of time to report right now, but pictures are available at http://images.wisch.org/thailand.

enjoy. i’ll post more soon.

as told by mclaren, originally told by Athanasius

Once upon a time there was a good and kind king who had a great kingdom with many cities. In one distant city, some people took advantage of the freedom the king gave them and started doing evil. They profited by their evil and began to fear that the king would interfere and throw them in jail. Eventually these rebels seethed with hatred for the king. They convinced the city that everyone would be better off without the king, and the city declared its independence from the kingdom.

But soon, with everyone doing whatever they wanted, disorder reigned in the city. There was violence, hatred, lying, oppression, murder, rape, slavery, and fear. The king thought: What should I do? If I take my army and conquer the city by force, the people will fight against me, and I’ll have to kill so many of them, and the rest will only submit through fear or intimidation, which will make them hate me and all I stand for even more. How does that help them – to be either dead or imprisoned or secretly seething with rage? But if I leave them alone, they’ll destroy each other, and it breaks my heart to think of the pain they’re causing and experiencing.

So the king did something very surprising. He took off his robes and dressed in the rags of a homeless wanderer. Incognito, he entered the city and began living in a vacant lot near a garbage dump. He took up a trade – fixing broken pottery and furniture. Whenever people came to him, his kindness and goodness and fairness and respect were so striking that they would linger just to be in his presence. They would tell him their fears and questions, and ask his advice. He told them that the rebels had fooled them, and that the true king had a better way to live, which he exemplified and taught. One by one, then two by two, and then by the hundreds, people began to have confidence in him and to live in his way.

Their influence spread to others, and the movement grew and grew until the whole city regretted its rebellion and wanted to return to the kingdom again. But, ashamed of their horrible mistake, they were afraid to approach the king, believing he would certainly destroy them for their rebellion. But the king-in-disguise told them the good news: he was himself the king, and he loved them. He held nothing against them, and he welcomed them back into his kingdom, having accomplished by a gentle, subtle presence what never could have been accomplished through brute force.

a child
her eyes wide
bright
with eager anticipation
excitement
longing.

May you await the working of Christ in your life with such eyes

May you see with wonder
the hand of God
moving in you
and through you.

But what about heaven and hell? you ask. Is everybody in?

My reply: Why do you consider me qualified to make this pronouncement? Isn’t this God’s business? Isn’t it clear that I do not believe this is the right question for a missional Christian to ask? Can’t we talk for a while about God’s will being done on earth as in heaven instead of jumping to how to escape earth and get to heaven as quickly as possible? Can’t we talk for a while about overthrowing and undermining every hellish stronghold in our lives and in our world?

…

Imagine you are driving down a country road on a journey west from New York to Los Angeles. You find yourself at a flashing red light somewhere in South Florida. You can turn left, turn right, or go straight. The road to the left heads toward Boca Raton. The road to the right leads toward Naples. The third road leads south toward Key West, through the Everglades. None of the roads leans in the general direction of Los Angeles. What do you do? Which road do you take? What are you doing in Florida anyway? The fact that you have to choose between these three destinations means that you are already far off track! But you have to go somewhere, so what do you do?

Here’s what you do: you admit that you’ve been lost for a long, long time – like for the last 750-plus miles. You whack yourself in the forehead for not realizing this sooner, and then you make a U-turn and head back north until you find I-10, which will send you west toward the City of Angels.

This is how I feel when I’m offered a choice between the roads of exclusivism (only confessing Christians go to heaven), universalism (everyone goes to heaven) , and inclusivism (Christians go to heaven, plus at least some others). Each road takes you somewhere, to a place with some advantages and disadvantages, but none of them is the road of my missional calling: blessed in this life to be a blessing to everyone on earth.

One signpost tells me that some people aren’t ever going to be blessed, so I should just rejoice that I am one of the blessed – meaning I can retire in Naples, Florida, and enjoy the blessings of golf on the Gulf. One sign post tells me that everybody is already blessed, so I can watch the sun rise each morning from the beach in Boca Raton. The other signpost tells me that maybe some are blessed and maybe they aren’t, which means I proceed straight ahead into the swamp and feel confused, not knowing what to do.

But my mission isn’t to figure out who is already blessed, or not blessed, or unblessable. My calling is to be blessed so I can bless everyone. I’m going to Los Angeles!

for those of you who haven’t picked up brian mclaren’s new book, a generous orthodoxy, do yourself a favor and grab a copy. i have only two chapters left after starting it this morning, and i’ll probably finish it soon. a seriously good book.

on discussing “personal salvation”:

1. Can’t seeking my personal salvation as the ultimate end become the ultimate consumerism or narcissism? In a self-centered and hell-centered salvation, doesn’t jesus – like every company and political party – appeal to me on the basis of self-interest so that I can have it all eternally and can do so cheaply, conveniently, easily, and quickly? Doesn’t this sound a bit shabby?

2. Doesn’t being preoccupied with our own individual salvation put is in danger of being like selfish people on the Titanic who were scrambling for the life rafts, more concerned about themselves than others? Doesn’t it make us less concerned about the possibility of saving the whole ship? Doesn’t it reinforce exactly the kind of “sanctified self-centeredness” that the real Jesus would have condemned?

3. Doesn’t the very importance of my personal salvation pose a kind of temptation – to want heaven more than I want good; to want escape from hell more than I want true reconciliation to God or my neighbors? An overweight man was concerned about his weight, so he had a stomach bypass surgery, after which he continued to eat unhealthy foods. In the end he died sooner from a heart attack than he would have died from obesity. Couldn’t this approcah to salvation tempt us to be like this man? By wanting thinness more than he wanted health, he ended up with neither – this is the danger of wanting personal salvation above all.

4. And doesn’t the preoccupation with hell tempt us to devalue other things that matter? in other words, isn’t hell such a grave “bottom line” that it devalues all other values? It so emphasizes the importance of life after death that it can unintentionally trivialize life before death.

deep stuff. more to come.

so after visiting houston camera exchange and being convinced that i don’t want to do lens reversal but rather to use extension tubes, i was also convinced to go ahead and buy a cheap vivitar 100mm macro lens. unfortunately it’s manual focus, which means that it doesn’t meter on my camera and therefore i have to do a lot of exposure guessing, but in some preliminary results it seems to take pictures that are every bit as good as my sigma – probably even a little sharper.

here’s four i took just after getting it: full res versions
keep in mind that these are handheld and at twilight.

The Eucharist is not only about the cross.

It is not simply about the death of Jesus or his glorious resurretion three days later. It is not about thirteen men who gathered together to have a passover meal not so unlike many they had eaten before.

The Eucharist is about all of those things, but it is so much more. It is a celebration of the life of Christ. It is an anticipation of the life we will live with Christ eternally.

But it is also a reminder that we live daily with Christ in the present moment – that our lives intersect his in a real and intimate way such that we become one – we eat his flesh and drink his blood.

So as we come to the body and blood of Christ let us not empty our thoughts of all save the cross, but rather fill our minds with the rich and fertile life we have – now – in Christ Jesus.

The Eucharist is not only a place for us to reflect on our shortcomings and Chrsits’ perfection, but to embrace our unity with a perfect and joyous Savior who asks us not to hide our lives, but bring them to his table.

The Lord’s table.