Breathtaking

Breathtaking, originally uploaded by Jeromie.

I Love Her

Beware proud rose,
Thy beauty does not last!
The weight of time
Will bend thy haughty neck
And petals once aflame with glory
Shall fade and lightly fall.

Not so my Liz!
Though the hand I love to hold
May one day slip my feeble grasp
And alabaster skin
May lose its brilliant luster
Still I will proclaim her beauty.

For though her features, radiant,
Outshine any rose:
A graceful neck to make a sculptor weep,
Hair that shines like copper in the sun,
Lips that tempt me with a stolen kiss;

When I gaze into her jeweled eyes
And see beyond
The heart that lies within
I know beauty certain to endure
The cold, hard stare of Time
And even Death.

So weep, poor rose,
That you cannot know
The fullness of my lover's beauty;
Brilliant image of our God eternal
Manifest before me every day
In this woman given me to cherish.

Aspen Grove

Aspen Grove, originally uploaded by Jeromie.

Rain in the Distance

Rain in the Distance, originally uploaded by Jeromie.

Sorry for the very long absence - I basically went underground for the last half of this semester. I used my freedom today to go on a meandering bike ride with my camera in tow. This was one of the views I came across.

Student Savings

How does a family with two graduate students and one part-time job make ends meet? The short answer is that we don't... we've had to draw upon our savings to make sure that all the bills get paid. However, recently we've been looking at strategies to save a bit more money. Since we're both really busy, methods that take a whole lot of time in order to save a few bucks are probably out, but here are some things we've started doing.

• Visit the food pantry at our school and a local church to supplement our trips to the grocery store. Potential savings: $15-20 a week.
• Change our shared cell phone minutes from 700 to 550 a month, which is about what we use anyway. Also apply for a student discount with the cell phone company. Savings: ~$20 a month
• Reduce our out-to-eat budget from about 15 dollars a week to about 5 and only go out once every couple of weeks. When we do go out, split portions at restaurants. Savings: ~$10 a week
• Camp out at Chick-fil-a openings so we can get free coupons that allow us to go to CFA whenever we want. (This helps make up for having such a small out-to-eat budget.) Savings: ~$500 a year
• Reduce the insurance on our 13 year old car to the minimum that we need to have. Potential savings: ~$30 a month
• Resume closely tracking our spending and reconciling it with our budget. This is probably the biggest thing we can do - with the stress of school and the sense of futility trying to make our income match our expenses, we gave this up for a while. We've started again, though. Potential savings: $???.??

Any other good ideas?

Who is the Church?

Anybody who tells you that love is easy has probably never really loved. Relationships never quite go the way we expect. Loving makes us vulnerable, opens us to hurt, reveals our areas of weakness. So it is with other people, and so it is with the church.

The next part of this story is about my development as a leader and my perspective on the church that came out of that process. It is also about the fruit of what may be the most dangerous prayer I have ever prayed: I asked God to make me humble. Let anyone who fears that God does not answer prayer take notice of my life: when we ask God to move in ways that are according to His will, there are radical results. But what comes of those prayers are not always what we expect.

About a year and a half after I became involved with house churches in DCF, I decided to start a new house church in my home. It seemed like a logical step - the house church I was part of had begun meeting in smaller groups several times a month, and I was already leading one of those groups in my home. After a period of consideration and preparation, that small group decided to officially become our own house church.

I honestly can't remember a lot of the details of that time, but there are a number of impressions that have remained with me. I can remember the sense of insufficiency that I felt. I can remember the struggles I had with adequately preparing each week. I can remember all of these shortcoming being covered up by God's love within the group, especially as it was lived out by one particular person. I saw firsthand how the gift of love is greater than any number of other gifts that we might bring to a community.

Life is ever changing, and the individual that so embodied God's love within our group had to move away. When she left, there was a tremendous vacuum. While she had never been officially named a "leader," she certainly brought gifts that I did not have. In many ways she was the glue that held our group together. After her departure, a burden fell upon my shoulders that I could not bear. Because I couldn't find anyone else to take her place, the group eventually folded back into the larger house church.

I don't know if I recognized it at the time, but I think I was pretty shaken by this experience. The pride that I had begun to feel in myself and my abilities as a leader came crashing down, and that was a painful, painful process. But I wouldn't trade this time for anything. My trust in myself was shaken, but my love for the church became even more deeply rooted. Looking back, a lot of my beliefs about the church are founded on what I experienced during this time.

My ecclesiology was forever shaped by the recognition that a member of our group embodied God's love particularly well. While all of us are called to allow love to permeate everything we do, there are those for whom it is a particularly dominating theme. At the same time, I looked around and saw others who made visible God's grace or God's truth. This changed my view of spiritual gifts - I believe that they are not merely things we do, but also who we are. When the people of God gather together, we more adequately reflect the nature of God than any of us can do while apart. This is for our own benefit; it allows us to understand and worship God more completely. It is also for the benefit of the world. The Church should be the most visible representation of God on Earth.

Now hear me carefully - this is not a disguised pantheism or a veiled attempt to say that we are God or gods. It is the Holy Spirit dwelling within us that allows us to reflect God's character. Nor are we a perfect picture of who He is. I believe there are aspects of God that can never be reflected or comprehended by humankind. But the Bible talks of Christ as the head of the Church, and even uses the marriage language of Christ being united with the Church as one flesh. Throughout the gospels, the activity of Christ is constantly pointing to who He is. (For instance, in Mark 1 the exorcisms and healings of Christ point to His true authority and status as the unique Son of God.) So it is with the Church. The activity - the visible expression of spiritual gifts - is pointing to a deeper truth about who we are.

In my mind, this changes everything. It changes the nature of our meetings, because each person must use their gifts to reflect who God has already made them to be. It changes how we lead - no one man or woman can adequately express the full character of God, nor should any leader seek to force everyone under their care to be exactly like his or herself. It changes how we worship. We must carry with us the humble recognition that we need the Church to come to the fullest possible understanding of who God is. It changes our vision of the future. When we imagine people from every tribe, tongue, and nation gathered before the throne of God in worship, we acknowledge that God's purpose for the Church will not be realized until every man and woman He has called is among that assembly.

I don't think this idea stops at the local level, either. When we look at the various communities of God's people gathered throughout the nation and the globe, each one has a unique character. If what I believe is true, then it is only by looking at the gathering of God's people across the globe and throughout history that we see the fullest picture of who the Church is supposed to be.

One important caveat comes with this perspective. Just because I emphasize a particular aspect of God's character when I am living out of who I am does not mean that I am off the hook in other areas of my life. Every person is still called to love. Every person is still called to be truthful. Every person is still called to live a life of justice. But if a distinct emphasis emerges, that's okay. I can live true to that, and still recognize the value of those who are different than myself but still true to who God has called them to be.

I had intended to continue to talk about the consequences of my prayer for humility and what that has meant for my life in particular, but this post is long enough as it is. The rest of the story shall wait for the next entry. In the meantime, I'd love to hear what you think about what I've written here. I'm just beginning to commit these ideas to writing, and I'm sure there are places I have not expressed what I am thinking well. It is likely, too, that there are holes in my theology that haven't come immediately to mind. Please, share your thoughts - part of the reason for putting this in writing is the opportunity to refine what I believe and how I present it.

Snowy Sunset

Snowy Sunset, originally uploaded by Jeromie.