Recently, I learned I have a serious handicap: I don’t live in fear. 

It’s an inverted notion, I know, since living in fear itself tends to indicate a handicap of sorts. But I’m talking about fearing God. God struck me with this peculiar idea during one of our predawn meetings. Before, I always considered “the fear of God” as rather Old Testament, outdated, if you will, that is, after Jesus came on the scene. I was living in the era of Grace, free and fun, and…I know, I know, Truth too. But, as a Christian, my salvation already sealed by the Holy Spirit, I hardly worried about Hell at all. Except for those bad days at the office, you’d rarely find me cowering in the closet corner at the thought of God sending me packing to Babylon, if I stepped out of line. Although, now that I think about it, He very well could, if we reinstate the draft.      

But I was missing the point. There’s real power to be had in fearing God. And I was just as surprised as anyone to find myself suddenly praying for the gift of this holy fear. After my many failed attempts to live like Jesus, who is sinless where I am not, I realized that fear–fear of messing up, fear of not being liked, fear of God bailing on me, fear of fear itself (props to FDR)–bullied me like the high school hoodlum (no offense, man…please don’t hurt me!). As it turned out, fear was often the ringleader to my compromising my faith. It loomed over me as an ever-present obstacle to my living life to the fullest, how Jesus said. I soon discovered a secret Peter crouched inside my heart, waiting to leap at the chance, given the right mix of scary circumstances, to deny his Savior three times, even more.

When I finally got it through my thick skull that fearing God wasn’t a bad thing, I started to see the benefits it offered. It boiled down to a near-mathematical equation: fearing God equals fearing nothing else. Wow! It’s like having a super power! If I could fear God, let’s see, I could face kings, wild beasts, and even the uncertainties of the Wendy’s acquisition.

Of course, this did not mean all the symptoms of fear would magically disappear. Oh, I knew my legs would still turn to spaghetti and my voice weaken the next time I was elected to stand up and give an impromptu speech to a room full of strangers (which I hope never happens). But–and here’s the big “but”–if I had the gift of fearing God, fear would no longer stop me from doing God’s will. How great!

This new revelation made me want to kick back and smoke a big freedom stogie (although I strictly smoke secondhand). But the image I’m trying to conjure is that of a free man, a truly free man, free in the inside, no matter the hostile environment, free to live the good life, free because of fear–the fear of God. 

Whew! Now, for my next act, I’m going to jump out of a plane. Not really, the thought of it scares me to death.       

Categories: Christianity
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Underoos were the bee’s knees when I was a kid. Cartoon underwear fashioned after superhero suits–what kid wouldn’t beg his mom for a pair? Let’s see, they had Superman, Batman, and Spiderman (my favorite), and, oh yeah, Wonderwoman, too, so not to leave out the girls. I wore Batman and Spiderman.    

Around the same time I donned these flashy undergarments, I was also heavily in to watching Saturday morning cartoons. Every Saturday from 9a.m. to noon, kids had somehow managed to gain complete control over all the TV stations in the world. I dabbled a bit in Smurfs and School House Rock, but the main attraction, hands down, was Superfriends. No normal kid could stand to sit still after absorbing a half-hour’s worth of the Superfriends (including the Wonder Twins with sidekick, Gleek, the caped space monkey) foiling, once again, the evil plans of Lex Luther and his Legion of Doom. So, after my cartoon fill, I’d suit up in my Underoos, dart outside like the Flash, and take to the skies in pretend flight through the neighborhood.  

Barefoot, half-naked, and unashamed, I fought crime in a pair of snug blue briefs and a Spiderman T-shirt. Often, an imaginary spiderweb did the trick for getting me around. I’d breeze through the summer lawns as Spiderman would the streets of New York. Whenever I reached the length of my web, I’d perch myself on an old, termite-ridden log that had rolled off our backyard woodpile onto the grass. A log always made for a nice imaginary flagpole, especially one that hung from the 50th story of the Daily Bugle. Up there, I’d ponder the crime-filled streets below. When it came time to move on, I’d flip my wrists over, bend them just slightly so, and emit two suddens bursts of sound: psst, psst. In my opinion, these sounds–a sort of hiss placed between a “p” and a stong ”t”–most accurately described my shooting webs from my wrists. Once my web grabbed hold of something sturdy, like a skyscraper, a radio tower, or a large man’s back, I’d give the web a tug for good measure, then sail off to my next destination.  

Sometimes it became necessary to set a web trap for the bad guys. This took a lot of psst’s. A neighbor curious to see what the fuss was about could look outside in time to see a streak of legs disappear around his house corner or behind a wall of trees. The same neighbor might also have wondered just who had taught this odd little boy how to run with his hands clasped in a ball above his head. It was like he hung from an invisible thread. He’d never play sports. 

One day, I had the Joker and his villainous cronies on the run. My plan was to cut them off in a back alley somewhere. So, I took a short-cut through my backyard and, to my dismay, landed my barefoot on an angry bee collecting dandelion pollen. A sharp pain shot up my foot. It worked on me like Kryptonite (blasted Joker!). But instead of falling weak and listless to the ground in typical Superman fashion, I burst into tears and bawled like the 4-year-old I was. Finally, I collected myself enough to hop home on my good foot. Mom doctored my war-torn foot and, although I didn’t quite know it yet, I had learned something: justice is not always embraced in this world.    

Later, after my Underoos grew too tight, my mom hit up Jo-Ann Fabrics, and I upgraded my superhero wardrobe to capes. I had a Batman one and Superman one. They both were very cool and did wonders for my crime-fighting. Although, as I got older I grew tired of pretend flying. I wanted to fly for real. So, one gray day, I tied on my Superman cape, went outside, and started jumping, both arms out, with the intent that I might eventually stick in the air. When my efforts failed, I turned to God.

“Please, God, give me the ability to fly.” Jump. Crash. Then again, “Please, God, I want to fly.” Jump. Crash, again.

I carried on like this for nearly an hour. Eventually my bones started to ache, and I realized (could it be?) I was a victim of unaswered prayer. Or worse, a prayer forever answered with a disquieting ”no”. 

What’s with this not letting me fly stuff? I mean, am I missing something? Is this not a noble request? 

I was mad. I had prayed really hard, with my eyes shut and everything. The thing was, I’d been to Sunday school and knew that God was all-powerful. If He wanted me to fly, then I could fly. It was clear that He just refused to let me.

In my teens and early twenties, I would sometimes look back at that day and think what a cute but silly prayer it was. It was a little-boy-with-an-overworked-imagination prayer. Of course God wasn’t going to let me fly. Why would He?  No one could fly, except Superman, and he, first of all, was a sun-powered alien, not a human, and, second, wasn’t even real. The whole thing made me laugh at myself. My prayer wasn’t practical, it wasn’t scientific, it wasn’t…wasn’t important, what with half the world starving the way it is.

But the funny thing is, now I see things in a different light. That little boy with the Superman cape may have known what he was doing. As I read the Book of Isaiah, I find a new answer to my boyish prayer. And the suspected answer may not have been ”no”. Nor do I believe God blew me off with a light, good-natured chuckle. But instead, if I’m reading Scripture correctly, I believe God’s answer was “wait”:

[B]ut those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles (Isaiah 40:31).   

 And besides, Superman is not the only person who can fly. According to Luke, Jesus flew up to Heaven. And if Jesus is the prototype of the resurrected man, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that I should fly too someday. With that said, Jess has a sewing machine in the basement, and it looks like I have a date with Jo-Ann Fabrics. And maybe this time I’ll swing by DSW for some superboots, to ward off any Kryptonite bee stings.

Categories: Christianity, Fashion, Television
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Driving to Marion Correctional Institute on a cold Saturday afternoon, I played Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” in my head. Besides “Jailhouse Rock,” it was the only prison song I knew. 

Who’s to say if this helped lighten my anxiety. All I knew was that sometime ago with the church I’d nonchalantly signed up for my first prison visit, thinking little that that day of service might actually come. And now - tada! - here it was. 

Our car carried us mind-numbingly up 23, toward our dreaded destination. Jess sat passenger, warming up her voice with the songs on the radio. She’d agreed to sing at the prison church service and would be the only female on stage. For all I knew, it’d been months since the prisoners had last laid eyes on a woman. I chose to think about Johnny Cash, instead.  

I dimly remember having a slightly selfish motive for going. Somehow, someway during the trip, I hoped to build more compassion for the downtrodden and for humanity, in general. What better way to do so than to toss myself into the center of the dregs of society.

Once there, I half-expected the prison chapel to be a dingy gymnasium. There’d be a makeshift stage and some plastic chairs set outside a beat-up, chain-linked fence for containing the prisoners. I imagined the guards occasionally clubbing a prisoner on the head if one tried to reach through and grab a piece of one of us. Innocently, having never set foot in a prison, I knew only this kind of scene. Perhaps, it came from too many movies, from the various concoctions of jailhouse life Hollywood has served up over the years. 

But, things looked a bit differently. The prison chaplain, a quiet bearded priest with a collar and a ball of keys on his hip, led us through several prison gates, closing each behind us with a definitive clank. Through the network of iron bars, I watched for signs of chaos or take-over attempts. I saw no prison riots, no Hannibal Lectors, either. Oh, you had the prison bars, the razor wire, strung along the compoud walls like deadly tinsle, and all of that, but minus these minor distratctions, the prison chapel looked, well, like a church. The room was spacious, the ceiling rose several feet, and an aisle split two lines of wooden pews.

Hmm…where do the prisoners sit? I saw no fences, no cages, nor anything else to keep us safely secluded.  Maybe they’d come chained together in black and white striped singlets, as was George Clooney and his buddies in Brother Where Art Thou? and forced to sit in the back with stern-faced guards in sunglasses standing over them.

“How many women you got coming?” asked Pastor Buddy, the prison pastor, a bald, friendly man who had used a cart to help transport our band equipment across the prison.

“About five or six,” I said, unsure. Although I tried to act indifferent, my eyes must have given away my thoughts: why do you ask?

“They won’t hurt anyone. Most of the guys are Christians. But keep the women seated inside of you. Some like to ask for phone numbers and addresses. Don’t give it to them.”

 Don’t worry, Pastor Buddy, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Before I could raise the long list of other concerns I suddenly had, such as prisoner-to-guard ratios and where the best place to go incase of a tornado, Pastor Buddy had moved on, leaving me alone to consider the increasing horror of my thoughts.

For the next half hour, I sat stiffly in the front pew, watching Jess and the band set up on stage. I considered the endless dangerous possiblilites of sharing a pew with convicted criminals. Would they start pushing me around about where I live? I shivered at the thought, or was it from the icey draft from the open barred windows.

Then, I worked through several scenerios of muscle-bulging inmates, smiling menacingly as they carried Jess away. Trying hard to squelch any instinctual thoughts of every-man-for-himself, I turned my focus to how, if the occassion called for it, I might protect my wife. My muscles suddenly felt useless and weak. Chaos was inevitable.

Like Jason Bourne, I scanned the place for useful objects to defend Jess with - a music stand, a microphone, my belt? How much more effortlessly could an inmate turn the same objects on me? I wouldn’t stand a chance. Suddenly, I pictured myself on the ground, helpless, arms covering my face, at the receiving end of a keyboard, a crash of dissonate chords breaking the air with each blow.

But then something gave me a moment’s relief: on my side, would be the adrenaline of pants-wetting fear. This promised an element of superhuman strength to my flick of a body, the kind that gives a toddler the strength to lift a car off his pinned parent. Wild with fright - this was my only means of defense.

To get a grip, I went exploring. The service was scheduled to start in an hour. To set up, the band and I had arrived two hours before the other church volunteers, so besides us and a few nice volunteers in navy pants, the room was empty.

In the back of the chapel, I found some christian literature available for the inmates. I leafed through a few pamphlets. Then, before venturing out, I poked my head outside the room. I scanned the solid block walls and linoleum flooring of the hallway to make sure no prisoners had got loose before it was time. I did not want to end up a human bargaining chip for some desperate criminal trying to bust out of the Big House. Hey, I must admit, stereotypes I didn’t even know I had filled my head. I’d seen Shawshank Redemption and various scenes of Cool-hand Luke; I though I was wise to the going-ons in prison.  

My hallway adventure lasted only a minute before I made my way back to the safety of the chapel room. In the doorway, I ran into a bright, cheerful man who I’ll call Roy. He was on his way out, without a trace of fear in his face. This put me slightly at ease. I laughed inside, feeling ridiculous for overreacting all this time.

“Hi, I’m Roy,” he said, offering a friendly handshake.  Roy was lanky and bald, and wore a tightly-trimmed gray beard with a matching gray sweatshirt. His face beamed. He wore navy pants, so right away I pegged him for a volunteer. Although, I did not know what church he was with. 

I introduced myself and reached for his extended hand.

“I’m looking forward to worshipping with you today,” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” I said, awkwardly.

Then, he took off happily down the hallway in search of a friend.

Nearly fifteen minutes had passed before I saw my new friend Roy again, lounging in a pew and chatting with other volunteers in navy pants. I joined Roy and his friends, took a seat in the pew behind them. Roy turned and gave me a warm smile, which instantly included me into the group. I got some more questions ready to ask him, such as what church he went to? and, how long has he served in the prison ministry?

I figured, as long as I stuck with Roy, when the prisoners rolled in, I’d be okay. He really seemed to know his way around. 

“I’ve never been to prison before,” I confessed (like he couldn’t tell).

My words surprised me halfway out my mouth, because suddenly something clicked. I understood something I had missed earlier.

“What’d it feel like when those gates closed behind you? Weird, huh?” said Roy.

“Yeah, it was kind of weird…”

Wait a minute…navy blue pants… Nearly everyone around me has them on. I’m a volunteer, and I’m not wearing navy blue pants. What’s Roy’s tag say: I-N-M-A-T-E…ooh!

“I’ve been here sixteen years,” said Roy. “When I first got here, it was a very dark place. Of course, I was a heathen then. But God is doing great things in here. You can feel his Spirit at work.”

A young man sat next to me, clutching a Columbus State University class scheduling booklet.

“I get out in ninty days,” he said.

He planned to go to college and get a degree in business management. Then he told me about his plans to one day open a ministry for the youth called 3-to-6 - the peak time when kids got into the most trouble. Nonprofit businesses need managers, too.

“But the main goal is to save souls,” he said.

When the rest of the church finally arrived, many wore the same nervous, unsure faces I must have worn. Won’t they be surprised to learn about the good men who live here, harmless, loving, ready to serve, filled with a thirst for God, identifiable only by their navy pants and their broken hearts.

Nonetheless, my heart went out to my fellow church members. I sympathized with them as they absorbed their cold new surroundings with wide eyes and uneasy smiles, trying to pick out the inmates from the rest of us, trying to crowd out the piercing question with an open mind: Are the prisoners dangerous?   

“Can I get you some coffee? water?” Roy asked me.

“No, I’m okay, Roy. But thanks for the offer.”

Categories: Christianity, Community
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God takes on a different light when your head’s buried inside the toilet.

The stomach flu of the century struck my system sometime after lunch on Friday. At first it disguised itself as nothing more than perhaps an office thermostat malfunction (stuck at around 100 degrees) and a small upset stomach. 

“Are you hot?” I’d ask my co-workers.

“Yeah, it’s a little warm,” one would say, nonchalantly, tugging at the front of his shirt just to humor me.

A little warm? You mean it doesn’t feel to you like someone is holding a lit match to your neck? - I didn’t say this, but this is how it felt to me. 

Four hours later, I might as well have swallowed dynamite. I rocked back and forth on all fours moaning with cold sweats, cheek-to-cheek with the toilet seat, which I wished I’d cleaned last week like I was supposed to. My skull throbbed and somehow my senses mysteriously heightened to superhero proportions. All light, even invisible light, tore at my retinas. Even the gentlest brush against the skin felt like a million paper cuts. Everything hurt and smelled bad. Everything threw my stomach into a mess of pain. Crouched in the fetal position like a sick and useless Peter Parker, I tuned my newly acquired supersonic hearing to the conversation of the bugs outside: “Bzzz…bzzz…it’s cold out here.” “Yeah…bzzz…look a light!”  

I was convinced the end was near. And I welcomed it.

It’s interesting to note the quick progression of theology that drifts through the mind of someone who, believing God is good, thinks he’s dying. At first, attempting to gain a proper prospective regarding this violent illness, I accurately nailed down the right source for the hostile feelings I was having toward involuntary retching. No, man, you got it all wrong. It is not vomiting that you hate. No, no, it is the thing that makes you vomit that you hate. (A good part of the disillusionment of the sickness played out with me talking to myself.)

This new line of thinking helped set me straight. I held my head up with the cold, hard porcelain of the toilet seat and  marveled at another one of God’s little miracles, so often overlooked. NEW APPRECIATED FACT: God, in all His infinite wisdom, installed in the human genetic make-up a remarkable mechanism that tells the body when to expel bad Chinese food or any other poison from the body.

I considered this miracle for an extra minute before I thanked God in my own special way by cranking my mouth open wider than I had ever dreamed (or hoped). I watched firsthand as God’s perfect plan unfolded into action. The first round of flu escaped my body in a warm wondrous rush that sent my spine crashing to my sternum. Then again. Five more times for good measure. My heart miraculously did not explode. Praise, God…Bleh…

“Joe…do you need anything?” asked a meek voice. The words drifted in like a weird dream. To my half-coherent skull, it sounded distant and small, like how a speaking mouse might sound. Married a little less than two years, Jess had never seen this ugly side of me before. She didn’t quite know what to do with me. And neither did I.

Instead of answering the mouse voice, I did a sort of backwards half sumersault - a skill involving nothing more than letting go of the toilet - into the bedroom closet (which connects to the bathroom), where I lay in an icy sweat, mumbling the jabber of the seriously sick.

On my back, in the closet, among the nauseous light that burned like the Saharan sun, and the tossing shadows, I resumed my theological studies. During a brief session in between stomach cramps, I moved past considering God’s creations, namely the gag reflex, and on to the mysteries of pointless suffering.

Does this terrible pain inside my stomach count as pointless suffering? And, why would a good God allow it? After who knows how long, the answers to these questions failed to materialize. This of course was of no surprise, given the fact that brilliant philosophers and theologians have been wrestling with these very questions for centuries with no definite conclusions. Chances were, a man, lying in his closet, half mad with the flu was an unlikely candidate for stumbling upon any keys to discovery.

It didn’t matter anymore anyway, because the second wave of flu came on strong and mean. The pain buried itself deep inside my gut and the world spun around like the Gravitron at the Ohio State fair. No more questions, no more thoughts. Everything seemed to boil away. Suddenly, Reality became quite simple; there was me, the pain and God. 

In some circles, my prayer that night doubtfully qualifies as a prayer at all. But it counted to me, because I really, really meant it, and I really, really meant it to be heard: “God, help me!”   

When the sickness finally lifted, it goes without saying that I had not exactly joined the ranks of, say, St Augustine, Calvin or Kierkegaard. However, I was able to establish three certainties: (1) God knows how to win my full and undivided attention; (2) God is good, for He created Gatorade for such occasions; and (3) If it is possible, I always, always prefer less excruciating pain in my interactions with God - please?!

Categories: Christianity, Life
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Warning: I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, is not for the faint hearted. Just whatever you do, stay away from the dark. I’m not kidding.

During one particular stressful movie scene, I contemplated calling 9-1-1. The diagnosis is still out, but I’m ninty-nine percent sure I suffered a mild heart attack and a slipped disc from jumping in my seat. At any rate, the claw marks in my arm rest will forever be a monument to the terror I felt as a hyperventilating Will Smith whispering for his lost dog so as not to be heard, searched the screaming, dark corners of the darkest places with the tiniest flash light. Somewhere along the way, a camera man had to have gotten bitten while filming. And that reminds me, I still need to schedule a dental appointment for these molars I grinded to the nubs. 

But, by the grace of God, my wife and I held on till the movie’s end and discovered the Jesus story in the most unlikely of places. In case you wondered what this film is about - based on the previews, which are blatantly mute on its subject matter - it can be summed up in one Bible verse: “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1:5)”  

Going in, I half expected the basic jist to be nothing more than a last man on earth sort of flick, where humanity had once again been eliminated by a virus, a bomb or an ill-received climate change. I expected Will Smith roaming a vacant city, desperately seeking at least one other human to talk to. And it was…at first.

The first half hour, the plot felt nice and comfortable. A false relaxation seeped into our unsuspecting bones as strains of Bob Marley plucked lightly in the background like a breezy Jamaican sunset. We were suggested to not worry - “about a thing.” Like gullable little children, we happily accepted the reggae king’s advice. We were fools.

Not to give away too much but, just when I thought it safe to breathe, the plot’s predictability ran out and the movie transformed into what I first considered a demonic roller coaster. Lots of things jumped out from lots of places. And to intensify the effect, at one point during the movie a man in a long coat found it necessary to dash past our seats, nearly causing me to drop my popcorn, if I had some. The long-coated man probably just wanted out of there. Heck, we all wanted out of there. The movie theater was an insane ball of fright, with Will Smith as our half-crazy leader (he argues with mannequins, for crying out loud). 

Everytime I checked on Jess, her hands covered her face and she whimpered to leave. 

“But we got to know how it ends,” I’d say, in a false comforting tone.

Only toward the end did we discover to our delight, despite all the raw soberness of the scenes we’d just lived through (the experience itself probably knocked a few years off my life), that the movie illuminated obvious Christian undertones. There was a definite message and purpose here, something other than just scaring us to our knees.   

Turned out, it told the story of God and the sickness of sin in humanity; how humans are diseased-ridden mutations of what we originally were meant to be before Adam and Eve ate the fruit. How destructive, selfish, hate-filled and violent sin has made us. And still, though humanity has rejected God, spit in His face, even killed God, God, in all His infinite generosity and mercy, still continues to offer the only cure - Jesus - to us for as long as we live.     

Leaving the theater, I felt an undefined sense of myself. As I went along, I realized I felt distraught. But it was no longer because of the film’s content. I had seen myself on that screen. I had seen myself as I once was from the perspective of a Holy, Loving God - my Best Friend who reached out to me, loved me anyway despite my attacks against Him, saying, “I can heal you if you just stop and listen. If you just trust me, I can make you better. I know it does not make sense now, but it will once you see.” And it took way too long, but I finally accepted His advice. Now, when God sees me, He sees His Son. 

Overwhelmed by God’s love for me, an empty sorrowfulness passed through me for all the years I didn’t love Him. Yes - I am thankful to know God now, but it dawned on me more real than before that God experiences serious heart ache to save each and every one of us. He places Himself in our abusive paths for a chance that we might know Him. And those who reject God all the way to the grave, well, I imagine God is forever sick over it.      

Categories: Christianity, Movies
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Modern day Lepers,

Can’t scrub veins free of Aids. 

Soap is much too dirty,

And bleach is poison to the blood.

Death is a disease, born at birth -

Walking, talking corpses, strung up,

Like marionettes for the woodpile.

Can moral medicine cure dead legs?

and can religion resurrect?

God is a life-giving dove,

lighting on the unfit soul.

All the sick can do is ask,

Those Jesus came to heal.

Categories: Christianity, Poetry
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Morning sun pours in,

Like winter warmth from heaven.

Golden life and sun-stained windows,

Wakes the singular soul. 

Shadow-rich pages, like plush pools,

Groans deeper than mere atoms;

Where the Creator greets my heart.

Categories: Christianity, Poetry
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Saturday morning we did not sleep in. Instead, Jess and I headed out to W.A.R.M. (Westerville Area Resource Ministry), where some friends and we had signed up earlier in the month to volunteer for their annual Thanksgiving distribution. W.A.R.M. is a cool little non-profit Christian organization, whose chief objective is to get those in Westerville who’ve had a tough run of circumstances back on their feet.  In an effort to do this, they collect and offer food to those in need (”clients”) and provide all sorts of career, family and Christian counseling. 

Its operations are housed in a low building directly off uptown Westerville’s main drag, tucked away in a small slumbering neighborhood. Through its doors are a handful of counselor rooms, a larger room for holding meetings, a waiting room for clients with appointments, and the inventory room, complete with donated shopping carts and canned and packaged food filed away on shelves in orderly fashion. A recently painted mural by volunteers decorates the back wall where food donations are deposited into a metal drop slot.     

We were assigned our positions beforehand via email, and I was given partial responibility for parking cars. The other parking attendants included my friend, Ben, and a spry older fellow named John, who wore an Ohio State cap and was very glad to meet us. Jess was especially pleased with her lot, for she was handed a camera and instructed to fire snapshots of the event at will. And Kelly, Ben’s pregnant wife, who is due with her second in less than a month, was placed in charge of greeting the clients and handing out pies until they ran out. 

Before the event took off, the staff and volunteers opened with a prayer, which Jess and I gracefully stumbled right into the middle of, because we were late. After the “Amen’s,” the woman in charge ran down the attendance list, and deciding that all but three of us were present, sent us directly to our stations.

 Ben and I were ripped away from our wives, who had long forgotten about us and were eager to get right down to business, and led outdoors to the frigid parking lot. Jess was nice enough to lend me her mittens. Here we were given complete reign over the parking lot, with nothing more than our arms for waving, our fingers for pointing, our mouths for screaming incase we got hit, and the specific instructions to park cars.     

A mother and her daughter were set up at the parking lot entrance for gaining the clients’ attention and to funnel them through to a smiling Ben, who would direct them my way. We stood like a bunch of winding clocks, waving our arm in a circular motion, guiding the general flow of incoming traffic. 

At first, it was widely held that my job was to throw the drivers into utter confusion and to obstruct any of their efforts to get to the W.A.R.M facility before the Ohio State-Michigan noon kick-off. I nearly arranged for a head-on collision between two cars, and, unknowingly, there was a further attempt on my part to lure a woman in a minivan into a defected parking space, containing a nasty looking piece of wood.

“I saw that wood,” said the lady out her minivan window, parking anywhere but the spot I was leading her. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I ran over and moved it to the side.

With time, however, the communication between Ben, John and me improved and it wasn’t long before I felt like I’d been parking cars all my life. “Got one coming your way,” I’d shout to John, confidently.

“Got ’em,” John would say, beaming, his left arm straight out, pointing the way like the North Star, his right bringing the driver home nice and steady. It was just like clockwork. At the bend, Ben was looking quite comfortable, too, and when a homeward bound car tore past him, attacking him with an emphatic ”O-H,” Ben fired back an “I-O” without so much as a hitch in his wind.

The clients were an exceptionally nice group, and almost everyone pulled up wearing Ohio State gear and joyful smiles. When the drivers got out, we’d converse in the universal language of Ohio State football. Then they’d go their way smiling and shouting “Go Bucks,” leaving me to think how great God was for creating sports and food for bringing together people we’d normally never meet.       

After it was all said and done, I’d managed to wolf down a brownie offered to me by the W.A.R.M. staff and a cup of hot coffee. Things got slightly more challenging with a cup of coffee in hand, but by that time, I’d already mastered the art of parking cars one handed.

When 11:00am rolled around, we reconvened back inside where it was warm and listened to some of the stories shared about the day. The strong staff-client relationship was clear. There had been hugs, discussions of blessings, and an exciting annoucement by one lady about landing a steady job.

A good time was had by all, and we were glad we had volunteered.  

Categories: Christianity, Community
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I ran across this quote from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis this morning and forgot how much I love C.S. Lewis. He had made such an impact on me in my early walk. For those who have not read The Screwtape Letters, I highly recommend it. The fictional book gives great insight on spiritual warfare, and is played out through the correspondence between two demons plotting against the salvation of a certain individual. Anyway, here is a section of one of the demon’s letters:

“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy’s [God's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” - C.S. Lewis

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Jesus on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Categories: Books, Christianity
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It’s always exciting when you’re skimming Scripture and you find yourself suddenly singing the words you’re reading. Normally this happens when I’m all alone, attempting to untangle some unfamiliar passage in Isaiah. Then - Boom - a block of recognizable verses jump out of nowhere, and my head breaks out into song.

This was the case the other night in our living room. Jess has been reading a Psalm a day. As she read her NASB version, she stopped and exclaimed, “O my gosh! We sang this last year in Christmas Choir!” It was Psalm 3. “O yeah!” I exclaimed. Then, since it was the Old King James translation we had sung, I pulled out the ancient version, dusted it off, and we began singing Psalm 3 together, minus that part about God breaking the teeth of the ungodly, of course.

“But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; the glory and the lifter of mine head…”

Now, old English isn’t typically my speech of choice, but that night it sounded wonderful.

Categories: Christianity, Life, Music
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