advent conspiracy

steve scott

fall baptism

come in and go out

one step at a time

It's been a while since I wrote here. Since May we've been focusing on and blogging about a brand new challenge.

Here are some of the ideas that I hope to reflect on a bit more in the coming weeks:

- The unparalelled joy of serving the one you love.

- The ever-increasing realization of the degree to which this world is broken.

- The widening scope of hope for restoration.

party people

What can you tell about a person by the way they party?

I've been thinking about this question, and, frankly, have become quite fascinated by it. I think it has great potential...

Just think of all the stuff about people,
about their “group” or
their company or
their culture… that you can learn by how they party:

Here's just a sample:

They ways we party reveal:
What we value –
what we think is important: worth celebrating
What we think about ourselves and what makes us happy,
Who we like, who we want to be like
what we long for,
what we believe,
what we love to remember,
what we want to forget,
how bad we want to forget it.

What we hope for,
Whether or not we have any hope left.

What we think about yesterday,
How we’re feeling about today,
What we expect from tomorrow.


My best friend is in an MBA program where all the projects are done in groups. Part of each assignment is figuring out what expertise each student has to bring to the table:
someone’s got experience in investment banking so they research the funding piece,
someone else is a great communicator –
so they give the presentation, etc.

My friend says some people are so good at what they do,
that they end up doing a relatively small piece of the whole project –
and others are OK with it,
because they do what they do so well that it
helps the whole team.

Pick (that's my friend) says there’s one guy in his program who,
everyone has agreed,
has only one job: to plan the end-of-semester parties.

(ya...and this is at the 8th – highest ranked business school in the country)

Pick says this guy is a world-class party-thrower:
that he has this incredible ability to plan these events
where people have the time of their life and
talk about it for months.

Apparently this party guy has the ability to get a
bunch of highly-driven,
super-competitive business students in their late 20s and early 30s
to absolutely enjoy life.

People love this guy – he’s creative and fun…
more importantly:
he helps people
see their pressures and
their failures and
their hopes and
dreams in a way that
puts everything into perspective
and enables them to live.


During the time of Jesus,
the Jewish calendar revolved around 7 festivals.

These were huge parties –
some were week-long feasts of celebration.

These feasts shaped the way Jew’s understood God,
themselves, and the future.

They were meant to put everything in perspective and enable the Hebrew people to truly live.

Not only did these festivals celebrate something that had happened in the past… they all anticipated the future coming of the Messiah.

In other words, each festival was
A common experience that
recalled an event,
taught a lesson,
and looked forward to
(found it’s fulfillment in) Christ.

which raises this question:
Why aren’t Christians better partiers?

We, who embrace Jesus as the Messiah,
should be the ones throwing the best parties.

If we really believe what we claim to believe,
about who God is and
about who we are and
about the peace and freedom of Christ in the present
and about what the future holds…

we should be the ones helping others
gain a perspective on the difficulties of life
that is truly life-giving.

Share

I'm selfish.

And that's a problem, because if there's something I can't stand it's selfish people. I want to grab selfish people by the shirt and shake them. I want to to shine a spotlight on all the incredible opportunities they're missing because they can't see past their own needs. Or desires. Or petty preferences. I want to re-introduce them to their children who are dying for their attention. I want to point-out the crushed state of their spouse's heart. I long to bring attention to the sickening and ironic fact that, in being selfish, they're making themselves miserable.

But like most things we hate the most, selfishness in others is maddening to me because daily I see signs of selfishness in myself.

The Christian Church is quickly approaching Lent - a forty-day season of preparing to celebrate the resurrection and triumph of Christ - in which each of us is invited to consider our need for a Savior.

Lent reveals our selfishness. Lent calls us to honest self-examination. It invites us to enter into a season of self-denial, not for self-denial's sake, but for the purpose of becoming whole. Lent calls us to first look inward and then act outward so that we may become the people we were created to be: less consumed with ourselves and more like God; less selfish and more giving.

I'm beginning to think (again) through the pieces of me that need to die in order to make space for the always-giving reign of a Good and Loving God.

I'm looking at my stuff, my time, my heart and my life and I'm wondering what it might look like to share.