Work, Faith, and Watermelons

Every Wednesday, every summer, I would help my dad sell watermelons at a local market in the early morning sun. We’d sling the big green fruit until the sun reached its apex and then head into the café for a burger and a Dr. Pepper. Each afternoon we’d park on an old bleacher at a cattle auction behind the café and watch dozens and dozens of livestock being sold.

The auctioneer would rattle off numbers in a kind of turbo-speak auctioneer lingo. It sounds like absolute gibberish to anyone uninformed but is more like music to those who get it. I learned to love it. One afternoon I learned to love it even more.

In walked this pitiful looking skinny little black and white calf. He was clearly incredibly sick. His hind quarters looked like they were covered in his own poop. This little guy was knocking on death’s door.

The auctioneer looked down at the calf, tilted his wore-out old cowboy hat back on his head, and leaned over to the guy next to him to whisper behind his hand. When he sat back up and spoke into the microphone the speakers kind of squawked as he told the two hundred people gathered, “Startin’ the bidding at fifteen dollars.”

We all just kind of sat there for a second. Even in my eleven-year-old mind I could remember thinking, “Who would want a sick almost-dead calf? Even for $15.” Just as I thought they were going to send the sick little calf back to his pen (and an almost certain death) my dad did something I had never seen him do before at the auction. He raised his hand.

The auctioneer looked around. He looked some more. He did some more of the secret auctioneer jabbering and finished with five words which changed our lives, “Sold to the Watermelon King.” My dad had just bought our first cow.

Over the years we would buy a lot more cows. Hundreds of cows. Thousands of cows. We would sell some. We would eat some. We would lose some to death, disease, and predators; but not that first little black and white calf.

My dad loaded him up in the back of his tiny little pickup everyone called “Jimmy.” That morning the truck had been filled with vibrant green watermelons. That afternoon it carried a calf on death’s door. Both cargoes had a lot to teach me about living a life of love. We drove the little cow home, named him Oreo, and nursed him back to health.

Oreo started a chain reaction. We would sell our watermelons, go to the auction, and dad would buy a calf. They were almost always sickly and small. Without fail every one of them needed to be fed by a bottle. In a single summer our farm became a nursery for the downtrodden bovine masses. We were like a safehouse for diseased little orphan cows.

I didn’t know enough back then to realize what was happening. Today it makes perfect sense. My dad, The Watermelon King, as I heard the auctioneer say so many times, didn’t believe in hopeless cows or hopeless anything. Dad has always believed when you mix hard work with big faith you can land right in the middle of great hope. When hope seemed like a longshot to so many my dad saw the opportunity.

I guess I must have picked it up along the way. It’s hard for me to see a hopeless situation. I embrace the challenge. I find it almost impossible to shy away from the opportunity.

I love that about my dad. Just like I love it about Jesus. In heaven’s roll book there are no hopeless cases. There are simply empty lines waiting to have your name written in them. Everyone has a spot. Everyone has an invitation. Regardless of history or hang-up.

I cannot remember a childhood summer not completely occupied by watermelons. Some kids remember band camp. Some can fondly recall team camps and travel baseball. For the occupants of the King Farm it was all about those watermelons.

There have been many summers when the conditions for growing watermelons were extremely difficult. Even in the best of conditions the work can still be brutally hard. None of those factors have ever deterred the Watermelon King. During the extra hot or the extra dry years, he pumps water to his plants from nearby ponds. If there is an abundance of pests taking the crop he sorts out countermeasures. Over the decades he’s come up against plenty of hard times. Still the watermelons come off the vine by the thousands. This year will be no different.

I don’t really know how I could even begin to quantify the amount of time I spent working those fields before life sent me elsewhere. My dad has done it his entire life.

It was sometimes backbreaking work. There was the planting season when we’d crawl on our hands and knees transplanting tiny plants. Later we would walk the same long rows of young plants again with a garden hoe in hand as we went around killing weeds. We would plow, and fertilize, and irrigate, and protect. All the things you do to protect such an undertaking.

Inevitably right around Independence Day each year dad would begin to pick some to check them. Once they were ripe the next few weeks would be a blur of picking, stacking, carrying, sweating, and selling. It was enough to make a young man start wishing for school to start.

Dad knew what his dad knew before. The Watermelon King learned it from Preacher King. Work makes winners. There is progress in the process. A watermelon doesn’t spring up overnight. A man doesn’t either.

It can be a hard way to live. It can also be a holy way to live. There is a simple joy found in it. A unique perspective. Years of toting all the ripe green fruit shaped me in so many ways. It strengthened my arms as well as my heart. It set the stage for what God has been teaching me now for more than twenty-five years—living things grow. There is beauty in the progress. Jesus knows no hopeless cases or empty fields. No conditions are too hard or intimidating. He works in us and on us and calls it good.

It starts with a seed in the soil. It sprouts, blossoms, and yields life. You can’t have a field without the work, and the field is fruitless without the process.

The faith life for those following Jesus is not so different. It starts with a small seed in good soil. Your soul sprouts, blossoms, and gives fruit. It gives life. You can’t have the faith without the work, and the faith is fruitless without the process.

Loving Your Neighbor Starts At The Front Door

Jamie and I bought our first home a few years back. It was a crazy process. One night, after working more than fourteen hours remodeling, we were all trying to get some shuteye when someone started banging on my door at four o’clock in the morning. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

I was wiped out from the crazy day of hard work, so I woke up in a daze. You may know what I’m talking about. It's as if you’re actually only half awake. If you’re anything like me, you probably slobber a little bit and are extra grumpy. I didn’t have time to think about how my eyelids were hanging heavy. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The person at the door was still banging away.

I was still asleep, but I was getting mad. After all, I had guests in my house—people who had worked hard helping us prepare our new home—and some crazy person was still knocking on my door. I stumbled to my closet in some kind of sleep deprived stupor and got my shotgun. I’m not kidding. Suddenly there it was again. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The front door still rocking on the hinges.

By then I was both awake and livid. I don’t even know how I had time to get so mad. It all happened so fast I didn’t have a chance to not get mad. Instinct just took over.

In a rapid blur of quick succession, I grabbed the door knob and threw the door open with a BOOM louder than the knocking had probably been. As the door swung open I stuck my shotgun right into the gap—right into the face of this tiny little pregnant woman. She screamed “Lawd Jesus!” and almost fell off my porch. I would probably scream too if someone stuck a shotgun in my face.

Actually, there was a lot more to this situation—even though this lady was pregnant, she was also not in her right mind. She was very clearly high on something and had come looking for gas money. She was very ambiguous, totally unwilling to go into any detail about her situation. I had put down my gun and was trying to ask her questions. To be honest, unless she would have been obviously wounded or injured in some way it wouldn’t have mattered. I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t help her. There were just too many cobwebs in my head from the fatigue of the day.

You see, this woman needed help, but all I wanted was sleep. I’d like to tell you I helped her, but I was so mad I sent her away. Any help I might have given wouldn’t have lasted long. By the time I was closing my door cops were coming up the street to take her away. Apparently, I wasn’t her first stop.

The truth is we can’t become too sleepy to care. Caring moves you forward. We must care about what happens around us. We desperately need to love the people God puts in our path because they may be desperately in need of love.

There is no doubt here at all on my part. I handled this situation very poorly in the story I just told you. I didn’t see. I didn’t care. I only reacted. Were there some valid reasons for my actions? Probably. Would I respond the same way if it happened again tonight? Perhaps. But I’m learning to have more compassion for the situations coming my way. I’m trying to see needs and meet them if I can. A lot like this guy named Ezra in the Bible.

Ezra was tired too. He had a whole country full of tired people he was helping after one hundred and twenty-eight years of struggles on their part. Ezra showed up right in the middle of a terrible situation because he was paying attention and looking for an opportunity to help.

We must observe! We must look around! I have gotten this wrong so often. I’m not the only one. I think it’s common anymore to hear people who are not followers of Jesus respond with an air of cynicism when it comes to those of us who do follow Jesus. In my experience this perspective has a lot more to do with the actions, and inaction, of Christians than it does with their simple lack of belief. Look, we have to care about what’s going on right in front of us before we can faithfully take the next step forward.

Ezra walked (literally) into a lost kingdom. He cared about the Kingdom. He was not apathetic and indifferent to the situation. He was not antagonistic or against the situation. He was compassionately aware of the situation. 

When Jesus talked about his friends and those who followed him he talked about another kingdom. He called it the Kingdom of God. How do we feel about those missing from the Kingdom of God? Through some painful self-reflection, it dawned on me we might learn our true feelings about the missing ones if they happened to find our front door at four o’clock in the morning.

Becoming apathetic toward those who haven’t embraced their invitation to follow Jesus is far too easy.  If we believe in the value of a soul, we must consider vital the opportunities to connect with those souls. We talk a lot in the Church about people finding Jesus, but what if Jesus sent them to you first? If that feels weighty, good. I think people ought to matter to us enough to make us uncomfortable with how we’ve messed this up.

I read recently how over two billion people call themselves Christians out of the more than seven billion people on the planet. Honestly, that’s a number so large I had to have my math teaching wife explain it to me. Any time you use numbers involving billions of anything you’re dealing with a staggering computation. So, let’s put this in a frame of reference that will help us understand.

What if we lined up all the people who gather in your church, at your local hangout spot, or maybe your gym on a Monday afternoon? If we lined everyone up how far would the line, go? Perhaps it would go a few dozen feet. Maybe it would stretch the length of a football field. Maybe it would even go a mile or two.

However, if you lined up all the people in this world who are not following Jesus, the number we collectively call “lost”. If we lined them all up and headed east from where I sit at my desk right now the line would go all the way across America. It would reach the Atlantic Ocean, travel through Great Britain, and across Europe, through the Middle East, and India, and Asia, and it wouldn’t stop there. The line would fly right back across the Pacific Ocean, fly by Hawaii, through California, across the Rockies, and the American Midwest all the way right back here to my seat.

The person in the front of the line could turn around and high-five the person in the back of the line. Then it would just keep going and going. The line would go around the whole planet two times, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, forty times. It would just keep going. The line would wrap around the entire world more than fifty times. That's how many lost people are in this world. We must see them.

Right here in my hometown. In this lovely part of the world we locals call the River Valley most people do not profess to follow Jesus. They haven’t followed their invitation. We need to acknowledge that. I need to acknowledge them. I need to put down my pet issues and stop brandishing them like a shotgun at midnight. I must stave off fatigue, fear, and financial worry. I must see them.

 That guy Ezra I mentioned earlier had a small part in a big story. He wasn’t afraid to dream big about his role. He wanted to do more because he cared. He was looking out at the world around him, and he saw a kingdom needing help. He did it. He never stopped moving forward. He led a four-month excursion across a thousand miles of bandit-filled desert. Ezra was like Mad Max with a camel instead of a Camaro. When his neighbors showed up in the middle of the night looking for help he didn’t pull out his shotgun. No, Ezra was devoted to helping his neighbors, his friends, his family, and even the strangers down the block learn who this great God of his was. He was devoted to helping them move forward. He was devoted to helping a lost kingdom become a whole kingdom, where no one was missing, no one was disqualified, and no one was shunned.

Ezra did it. It’s a cool story, but he didn’t do it alone. There were some guys with crazy names on board. These two fellas called Haggai and Zachariah helped a lot. They were prophets, which means they talked quite a bit about what God was trying to tell his friends. This guy Nehemiah was also there leading the workers and government officials.

You can read all these guys’ stories and it paints one big cool story. It’s the story of a group of people who had experienced generations of calamity and were trying to bounce back. None of them could do it alone. Thank God they didn’t have to.

Once all their work was done they partied. After their ruined city was rebuilt, and the walls fixed, and the place where they went to worship called the Temple was all patched up, they had a big to-do. It was like a barbeque, book reading, and concert all rolled into one. People cried, and people danced. They listened and loved. Neighbors rejoiced in the finished work and high-fived each other for the first time in decades. But what if Ezra and his friends had shown up in the middle of the night and someone had stuck a gun in their face?

 There is much work to be done and workers to do it. There are needs to meet and people to meet them. We must acknowledge. We have to wake up.

The Nathan I used to be couldn’t most of the time. I just didn’t have it in me. The Nathan I’m trying to be now can’t afford not to.

People are still beating down my door. Everyday my phone buzzes at least fifty times with people on the other end who need help. Guess what? I don’t hang up or ignore them. Maybe your phone is ringing way more often. Perhaps your door has already fell off the hinges from all the knocking. Do something about it. You’ve got it in you, and even when you run out of that God will help you find some more.

There are no closed doors, no shotguns, and no screaming pregnant ladies falling off my porch anymore. I am awake. Hopefully for good. You go be awake too. Find someone needing you to do better than you’ve done before and do it.

The Miracle of the Moment: When Faith Flexes

Late one night in March my son Ethan was born. It was an incredible day. The culmination of months of prayer, joy, nervousness, faith, and preparation. Jamie and I didn’t know how to be parents. Four kids and nine years later I often wonder if we still don’t. But it didn’t really matter at Saint Mary’s hospital in the infant delivery ward the day our Ethan arrived.

Like many first-time parents we were waiting expectantly for the day to come when we would be able to hold our little prince in our arms. Our friends and family celebrated the onset of our parenthood with gifts and parties. It was a season of incredible joy as everyone in our lives gathered around us. A heightened sense of anticipation descended on our circle of friends, close loved ones, and faith family. Ethan’s due date came and went with no small amount of nervousness on our part.

Jamie’s doctor departed for a family cruise and we were introduced to some new guy. He was not the kind lady we had spent the last nine months learning to trust. He seemed capable, sure, and kind, and all the kinds of things you hope for if the situation arises when you need another doctor to perform the baby-delivering equivalent of pinch-hitting.

A week passed. Jamie and Baby Ethan were perfectly fine according to all tests, but I was getting super nervous. Still, this was nothing compared to my dad. Finally, the substitute baby doctor guy announced early the next week he would need to step in and help the process along. Allowing nature to delay much longer would begin to cause opportunities for major complications. We trusted this guy because we trusted who invited him into our lives.

So, on a Monday morning we showed up at the hospital with all our bags packed to begin the process. Boy was it a process. All day tests were running, conversations were had, and doctors seen. It was a day of waiting, praying, and trusting. Like never before, and rarely since, Jamie and I both felt the muscles of our faith flex as if to say, “don’t be afraid.”

We shared the news of what was happening, first with our loved ones, and then the world at large across social media. The love poured in. It was as if dozens and maybe even hundreds of people were lending us their faith because each one knew this was new territory for us. With every passing moment we drew closer to the miracle we had prayed and waited for. As all those moments crept by, we could feel the reassurance of love.

It was like this incredible substance was propping us up. It was a palpable gathering of the unseen activated on our behalf. What one writer in the Bible described as faith via the evidence of things not seen. We couldn’t see it, but we could feel it. The ramifications were evident as our souls were encouraged.

The long day stretched longer. Someone, I think my mother, brought my favorite hamburger and a chocolate shake. I wasn’t hungry. How could I be hungry awaiting such a monumental miracle? But I ate the entire thing and remained not hungry as I drank down all forty liquid ounces of the superb chocolate shakey goodness.

The long day stretched, and yawned, and winked into night as a sliver of the moon rose above our small town as if to say it was almost time. Just like another man in the Bible described the arrival of a baby in a barn—it was the fullness of time, our time, and my son took his first beautiful breath on this earth.

I cried. My wife cried. It was faith made manifest. It was trust personified. It was the full range of the miraculous in motion and thrust upon our family with all the majesty of the moment. Faith was flexing big right before my eyes with the full force of the love God has for all of us.

Ethan was a promise given. A promise born. It wasn’t just a baby born that day, but it was a mother and father, a grandmother and grandfather, an uncle and cousins. A ripple of life echoed across everyone meaning anything to us and we were all changed. We were all made to mean a little more. We were all together in this and it was lovely beyond imagination.

Faith is a muscle we flex across a myriad of moments, but it is also a miracle that resounds with the finality of lightning. It is both ethereal and ever present. It is surmounting and inescapable in its subjugation of the right now and its dance across our unknown.

We can know, and we can hope, and we can see, and we can trust. Even when we don’t feel it, especially when we don’t feel it. Even when it seems elusive and illusive. When our faith seems deeply inadequate, we can borrow some from a friend.

There have been plenty of times when my faith was not enough. I had to look beyond my own hiccups and draw deeply from the reservoirs of a friend. My mentor, pastor, and close friend Mark is a continuing source of this for me.

Mark likes to joke that he is Iron Man because he has a mechanical heart valve. I’ve never done it, because I don’t make a habit of putting my ear to grown men’s chests, but his wife says she can hear it ticking away at home in the silence of the night. Every flicker of Mark’s heart is a faith moment as he trusts in what he can’t see. He’s lived a full life of putting Jesus at the center, loving people well, and leading and serving with great integrity. He is without a doubt one of the greatest men I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Mark had been my family’s pastor for a while. He loved us through some big changes in our life. He led us through even more changes. And he helped launch us into our dream of becoming pastors of our own new, growing, and healthy church family. All of it came with a lot of bumps, talks, prayers, conversations, and confidence. His faith muscle is even bigger than his biceps (which are gigantic). I know when my faith is flickering I can borrow some from him.

There was a guy like this in the Bible who met Jesus one day. He needed help. He needed a miracle. Jesus asked him if he believed and he said, “Yes! But help me with my unbelief.”

This guy’s story demonstrates what way too many people are being silent about in their own faith journey. We’ve spent years communicating (intentionally or otherwise) you can’t experience both faith and doubt at the same time. I’m not buying it. The faith in our life flexes so much more when there’s uncertainty to face down first.

Ethan’s first breaths weren’t the normal baby breaths doctors expect to be greeted by. There was something much different about them. Something alarming to the people who know what to look for.

So, after a moment of celebration and wonder the well-meaning doctor pulled our son from my wife’s arms and whisked him away to another room. Suddenly, here at the end of an already long and emotional day we found the depth of raw emotions butting up against our years of working faith. We prayed. People we love prayed. Friends, family, and our church prayed. Heaven was on the receiving end of a barrage of people flexing together. The culminating trust of so many echoed big along those hallowed corridors.

Part of me wonders if those who went home before us jumped in to lend their faith as they heard the echoes pass them by. It might sound like wonky theology, but I can just imagine Grandma and Grandpa King picking up the clarion call as they mustered their faith from their remarkable perspective. Jamie said it best from the midst of her confused and longing heart, “I want my Ethan.” Love wants what love wants. It wasn’t just a cry of desperation. It was a statement of faith echoing across eternity as it was repeated in the mouths of praying loved ones.

Ethan’s birth was the culmination of something hard to articulate in a few paragraphs. The sudden alarm for his well-being was something altogether different. As the combined prayers of the many continued in petition of our Heavenly Father the strange breathing normalized. Ethan was returned to mommy’s embrace.

Just like that God showed me how good the experience of our faith at work can be. He didn’t show it to me once. He didn’t even show it to me twice. He showed me twice in the same day.

Faith flexed the moment Ethan was born. It was the bright miracle of a new life entering this world for all to see. It was the holy awe of what it feels like to love a living creation of your own soul. Faith also made itself known as the alarming moments of misunderstanding fell away before complete trust in our amazing Father.

Faith is practiced. It is work. It is art. It is a muscle we hone, and it is also a miracle. The miracle of faith isn’t only a progression of movement between moments, it is also a sublime experience of the miraculous in the moment.

There will be plenty of moments throughout our lives when we must lean deeply into faith in the private spaces of our day-to-day decisions. There will also be those penultimate circumstances when a loved one, friend, neighbor, or son needs us and our faith.

Our faith is a beautiful thing when it stands on its own—trusting Jesus like the guy in the story I mentioned. Our faith is a glorious thing when it stands together as it did for us the night Ethan was born. Those are amazing moments of holding, helping, and hoping within a community of people all believing and trusting for the same thing. Such a myriad of personalities coming together and bombarding heaven with a joining of faith catches the attention of heaven in an entirely different way.

Faith is the substance of our hope. It is the evidence of what we don’t see. It is the everyday stuff, the working it out stuff, and it is the miracle happening just when we need it most.

Hug A Skunk

Have you ever hugged a skunk? Not those rare and elusive tamed pet skunks you sometimes hear stories about. I’m talking about wild, untamed, actual skunks. The stinky kind. No? Well neither have I, but I came close once.

When I was about eleven years old my cousin Justin and I were travelling down a country road deep in the mountains of Arkansas one summer night. It was sticky and humid, like most summer nights in our home state. Despite the humidity, dust danced up from the dirt road as the pickup truck bounced along the familiar way, dodging holes and the odd rabbit.

Justin’s cousin Jason was driving, and he tapped the brakes when something caught his eye in the ditch. Sweaty and happy, we all spilled out of the pickup like good little country boys to discover a litter of baby skunks on the side of the road. There were five or six of the little stinkers and they all just stood there looking at us.

We messed around with them for what must have seemed like an hour. We playfully attempted to catch them but in all actuality were just poking them with sticks and watching them turn to point their little butts in our direction. I don’t know the technical term for it, but the part of their physiology that makes the stinky stuff must not have worked yet. Instead of spraying us with their telltale scent they just looked like confused cats fending off our thin sticks with their fluffy tails.

It went on like this for a while before we all gave up and realized we needed to get back to the house or we would be in trouble. So, we loaded back into the truck and went home for the night—dust, skunks, and our hopes of making pets of them left behind.

We were laughing and having a great time wondering out loud what having a pet skunk would be like. It’s not like we really had any idea, but it was fun. It was the stuff of boyhood whimsy and fantasy, albeit an admittedly strange one.

It wasn’t until we got out of the truck that my Uncle Roy met us outside his house and marveled in his direct fashion just how bad we smelled. Had we hit a skunk? We hadn’t even thought about the smell. Because we couldn’t smell it.

But boy—oh—boy could everyone else at the house. Everyone was gagging. Their eyes watered with the weight of their mirth and the pungent stench of country skunk. Jason was laughing hysterically at a punchline unfamiliar to me. We were banished from the house for the evening.

Someone turned on the water hose and we stripped butt naked outside. Scrubbing with dish soap, vinegar, and the cold flow from the hose made the summer night seem not so hot or humid anymore. It was only when we began to be clean that I started to smell the stench.

Somehow the adventure of the moment had masked the associated odor. It seems unbelievable to imagine doesn’t it? Skunks may not be common in your part of the world, but there is an almost universal reaction amongst those I know who come across them. The reaction is not unlike my Uncle Roy’s, “That stinks!”

It makes me wonder what else I’ve let into my life that stinks. Maybe not literally, I’m pretty sure my wife would speak up about an actual physical smell. But what else stinks?

How do I treat my neighbors and friends? What’s my attitude like? How’s my work ethic? Do the people I don’t know very well think I stink?

I’m not sure how much I should worry about all those things, or even if I should worry about those things where most people are concerned. But I do want to worry about them where the most important people are concerned. I don’t want the good times, even the ones which might seem playful or innocent to cause a stink for my family.

I don’t want my neighbors to avoid me because I repulse them either. This can be a tricky thing these days. Especially in a contrarian culture.

Let’s be honest here for a moment. We’ve all met those Christians. The ones who are always causing a stink.

They get mad because a company celebrates Christmas in a way they don’t like. They are touchy about something a movie might poke fun at. Or they just want to kind of police the world with their specific brand of what’s right or wrong.

These Christians can be loud about it. They may even be right about what they have to say. But how you show up determines the reception.

I used to enjoy wielding my faith like a filter for acceptance. But the more I became a student of God’s love for me the more he trashed my filter.

I don’t want my faith to stink. I don’t want to pollute it. I don’t want to water it down. But I don’t want to beat people up with it either.

I think faith is at its best when it’s challenging me to embrace the work Jesus is still trying to do in me. When I get it right it’s winsome and it is inviting. It’s not repulsive or repellant. It’s compelling and endearing.

Often, well-intentioned followers of Jesus wield love like a test; but when you make love a test everyone fails.

There was a lady in the Bible having dinner with Jesus and his friends. Suddenly she took out a jar of extremely expensive perfume and just poured it on Jesus’ feet. It was her way of saying she knew her life was smelly. So, she gave up something dear to the only One who could really do anything about it.

Do you know what happened next in the story? While this lady Mary was crying and cleaning Jesus’ feet with her hair in a beautiful act of love; all the cranky religious people were busy being upset. They were surrounded by the literal smell of an unparalleled act of love. And were too busy making a stink to even catch the significance.

I don’t ever want to try to catch a skunk again. It did not go well. I don’t want to let anything stinky into my life. Instead I want to offer what I can to Jesus. I want to love as many people as possible. I want to let his work in me shape me into someone who is helping people find him.

I’m convinced all of us can stop being offended. We’re only offended because of our pride, and our pride stinks. Jesus didn’t die for our pride. He paid a high price for our invitation into a better way to live. Our every breath is another opportunity to learn it.

There Is A Place Only Love Can Go

Photo by Brandyn Morrow

When I first met Jamie, she was dating someone else, so at first, she was just another girl to me. I don’t mean that to sound ugly, nasty, or misogynistic in any way whatsoever. What I really mean is she was a young woman in a world full of them at a time when I was interested in none of them.

I had been through nothing short of relational disaster two years before. The entire thing had unceremoniously short-circuited most of my future in a way best described as a train wreck. That’s exactly what happened as a result. It left me an emotional wreck.

God had done a big work in me over the preceding months. During that time, I had begun serving college students through an organization that had helped me so much during my early college years. I had learned a lot about giving back and was excited about new adventures taking shape.

One day we took a big group of people to a nearby mountain. It is a great spot where people go to watch the sunrise and sunset. We gathered on the side of the mountain in the light of a setting sun and I played some songs on my guitar for a while. We sang together and shared laughter and stories. It was a lot of fun.

As we got ready to leave, I tripped, and as I pitched forward the full force of my guitar case smashed Jamie right in the top of the head. I felt awful. I had just gone full on caveman on this poor girl I didn’t even know yet. As I walked back to my car feeling forlorn and jerkish this inexplicable thought popped into my head. I will never forget it. “If you ever married her that would make for a really funny story.”

I don’t know what made the thought pop up. Being totally honest here. There were still no romantic feelings between us, but the thought came just the same. And well, we did get married. I’m not sure how funny the story from the mountain actually is. But the strange random thought turned out to be quasi-prophetic musing.

Jamie and I started spending a lot of time together. Not alone or anything. There still wasn’t any romantic interest anywhere on the canvas. But something beautiful happened. We got to know each other in the company of each of our best friends. We would all go out and hangout as one big group. We would run together. We hiked together. We watched movies, went swimming, and did all kinds of things.

This was all happening at a time when a bunch of religious people were making a big deal out of the idea of “group dating”. It was supposed to be this big thing where people who thought they might like each other would go hang out in groups and do things exactly like Jamie and I had been doing. We weren’t trying to do this at all, but over the course of time we got to know each other.

Eventually Jamie and her boyfriend broke up. A while later we were hosting a large group of young college students at the family farm for a weekend getaway. Something clicked in me that weekend. Something I hadn’t paid attention to in a long time. I realized I had feelings for this girl. Maybe the time at my home in the company of so many good friends had emboldened me. Perhaps it was something else entirely, but I decided to invite her to the movies, and she said yes.

The next week or so was kind of a blur. Those moments opened a part of my heart I had written off as unwelcome territory. Places that were a No Man’s Land of emotions I didn’t want to acknowledge or address. Somehow, someway, Jamie gave me the courage to walk into them, and she still does.

When I realized there were legitimate feelings for her I did two things I will never regret. I talked to my friends Heath and Christie, who were also my pastors, about it. Heath high-fived me and said, “go for it.” That night I did maybe one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I sat Jamie down on my front porch and told her every bad thing I had ever done in my life. All of it. I held nothing back. I finished, and she was still sitting there. Just the fact she hadn’t ran away screaming at some of the finer details of my story was a good indicator of just how special she is.

Jamie did, and still does, for me what all amazing women do in the hearts of the men who love them. The potential of her affection drew me into new places. It helped me go to God and find forgiveness and grace for a lot of the old places too. She came into my life during a time when so much of it felt like it was a recovering disaster. Large swathes of the land of my heart were still full of the wreckage and devastation of the previous two years.

It didn’t take me long to love Jamie. In fact, we had only been a real couple for just a few months. One Saturday night we were at a church we had travelled to with some friends of ours. We all enjoyed going to these small churches to share songs and stories to encourage the people. I was just about to walk on stage to lead the small gathering in some singing when I looked over at her and said the three words that always elevate every relationship to new places when they are sincere. I said, “I love you.” I’m pretty sure she was speechless. Or maybe I only remember it that way because about thirty seconds later I was playing my guitar and singing songs in front a few hundred people.

That was the weekend I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this wondrous woman God had put in my path. This amazing person who makes me better on every level. Isn’t it just like God to do that? To take two imperfect people and help them find each other.

There’s a cool story in the Bible about a guy named Boaz and his bride to be Ruth. Like Jamie and I, Boaz was much older than Ruth. Ruth entered his life by means of circumstance and surprise—at a time when Boaz was not really looking for anything romantic. Ruth invited Boaz into the places he almost forgot were inside him. Boaz took care of her. They grew together, and God used their family to fulfill a host of promises.

I often hear religious folks talk about putting God first in our lives, and I understand what they are trying to say. Or at least I think do. They are really saying God should be a priority.

I have never liked or identified with this idea that God is first in that sense. It probably sounds like terrible theology. I don’t know. Maybe it is. None of my degrees are in theology.

I think what God really wants has nothing to do with us segmenting our lives into schizophrenic religious weirdness. He doesn’t want a bunch of people stumbling through their days with a heart beset by a segmented organizational chart, quick to give God top billing, yet not access to any of the rest of them.

I’ve met a lot of people who live this way, and they are almost always incredibly weird. If you think about this for a moment you might realize you’ve known some of these weird people too. If you can’t think of any weird people like that, chances are you’re the weird one.

No, the older I get the more convinced I am God never intended for us to chop our lives into pieces and serve him the first chunk. Because usually what happens is we give him some small insignificant part that helps us sooth our conscience but rarely does much to change the rest. Instead, I am absolutely convinced we find the full goodness of God at work in our lives when he is invited to work in every area of our life.

I don’t know if God makes just one right person for everyone. It sounds romantic and wonderful, but also scary. What if you were supposed to marry Susan, but she chose Bob instead? You would be in trouble. I don’t think it really works like that.

I do however know I’ve gotten it right by God’s grace. I have found his grace in my misgivings and mistakes. Somewhere along the way I happened upon a different kind of grace in the form of a five-foot nine brunette I affectionately call Wonder Woman. I’m reminded of this every time we hear a song from our favorite band Needtobreathe:

 In my heart you'll always know
There is a place only love can go
There is a place only you can go

 There is a place only love can go. God goes there first if you invite him in. This place, the place where love goes, it isn’t solitary confinement. It is the rich part of our soul waiting to be shared with another soul out there somewhere who’s also had the courage to extend God the same invitation.

How Are You Doing?

​“How are you doing?”

“How’s it going?”

“How’s life?”

I don’t know how I’m doing. I should probably have a better answer for this because I feel like I get asked this question at least a dozen times a day.

The default answer is “good”, but am I? Like Gandalf in the Hobbit, there’s a bit of confusion for me about whether the intended query is speculating as to the nature of my health, my moral disposition, or something else entirely.

Recently one of my favorite speakers/authors defined this in a very illuminating way. How I am doing may best be defined by how those around me are doing? Want to find out how I’m really doing? Ask my wife. Ask my kids. Ask the team of people I lead in our church.

Maybe I’m getting it right. Maybe I’m acing it. Maybe not. I’ve learned who I need to ask—and I’ve tried to grow the habit of actually asking.

But here’s a picture of how good I hope I’m doing....

I want my life to be uplifting. I want to help everyone in the room get better by my having been there. I want to hold the collective gathering of those in connection to me to a higher regard and somehow help them stretch for a higher goal.

They may not make it. They may not even let go of the ball. But let us greatly enjoy the rise to the occasion and camaraderie built along the way. We aren’t just good with that. We are better for it.

The Boy On His Bike

Today I called an audible. For you nonfootball people (like me) that’s the moment when the quarterback makes a conscious decision to change the play just moments before its set to begin.

This morning I called the dad version of an audible—a dadible. It’s a technical term I promise. But you can’t look it up. You’ll just have to trust me. Also, you owe me $3 every time you use it.

My oldest son Ethan had been dreading an event at school all week. All week we had been trying to encourage him to embrace it and have fun. The event involves kids riding their bicycles at school. Something he hasn’t really worked on a lot. So he was nervous about it. And in his nervousness he wanted to avoid it.

I know you get that. We all sometimes long to avoid the things we dread. But we can’t. We can fight the internal dread. We can run from it. Or we can nod our head with honest recognition, offer to shake hands with it, and sit down to sort it out.

I’ve not always been the face-my-problems kind of guy. Mostly because I didn’t know how—and to a lesser extent I was intimidated by why. But God-willing my kids will be. And Ethan is the oldest so he gets to go first.

Step one: identify the source. I needed to figure out what was causing the problem. In Ethan’s case it was nervousness about his bike.

Step two: identify the catalyst. Source means starting point, but even a starting point has a cause. Ethan was nervous about his bike because of a lack of skill riding it. The catalyst was the size of the bike. It wasn’t too big. It was too small.

We got our son a junior style chainless learning bike two years ago. In growing boy time it might as well have been 6 years ago. He has grown like a weed since then! And his old bike is TINY. So he felt bad about it. He was intimidated by this tiny thing because it held him back.

We do that sometimes too don’t we? We let a tiny thing become a big thing on our way to doing a potentially cool thing. So instead we do nothing. Or we do something worse than nothing. We don’t have to. And once I identified the catalyst of my son’s disdain for the fun event I didn’t do nothing. I called the dadible.

Step three: don’t do nothing. Unless nothing is the thing you’re supposed to do to make it better. But that’s rare.

I bought Ethan a new bike. That’s right. I went to Walmart, found a shiny new Spider-Man bicycle, and took it to him at the school event. It wasn’t in the budget for this month. I’m sorry Dave. But I did it anyways.

Ethan had a blast. And you know what? He did well. He took right to it. He rode that bike. He forgot all about the possible pain he had feared all week. He was too excited about the new and the opportunity.

Don’t fear what’s not there yet. Don’t make a hotrod out of a hot wheel. And don’t avoid the small stuff that feels like big stuff, or the big stuff that is actually big stuff.

Face your problems like a boy on his bike. Just keep peddling. You got this.

All The Sweeter

Today I learned something amazing. My wife and I are having a baby girl. What?!?! The KingCasa will no longer be solely driven by the testosterone fueled mischief of an all boy abode.

For weeks when someone would ask about Baby #4 I would just say, “I assume we are having a boy until science says otherwise.” Science says girl. And we’re thrilled. Not because we were wanting to add ribbons and bows to the mix. We’re thrilled because this adventurous life just got bigger and better. We would have been happy with any result. But yeah, there is a certain Grandma in the scenario who was really angling for a little princess—as well as two of my closest friends who both have daughters of their own.

Isn’t it just like God to completely surprise you? I’ve always liked good surprises. Suddenly, like we so often do, Jamie and I find ourselves in brand new beautifully-terrifying-territory. I don’t know ANYTHING about girls. I still find it a little bewildering that I found one who likes me enough to stick around.

But the faith life is nothing if not an ever stepping trek into the new and the unknown. One more jaunt up a hill whose pinnacle of hope masks a horizon of promise painted long before the first sunrise made its away across the globe. God knows. He knew it. He made it so.

He hung it there for us to find. He sat it there for us to walk upon in our wild journey into all of the good things he makes ready for the ones he loves. That’s you by the way. It’s me too. What a ride. The joy of this journey of faith is sometimes juxtaposed against a sadness for all the ones I’ve known who never dared to give it a shot. For in faith’s embrace life is made all the sweeter.

Carried In

Today was a pretty special day all around. I got a little older today. For thirty eight years now I’ve been breathing the clean air of the Arkansas River Valley under its bright blue sky.

This morning we started meeting in our new location with our faith family New Life Church. I grabbed this pic of my dad with my youngest son.

There are so many cool things happening here. I don’t think my dad knew I was taking it. This is just him. Loving my son. Carrying him to church.

My dad always carried me to church. I know not everyone’s father does that. Mine did. Sometimes, like when I was little, it was in his arms. But my dad always took me to church. Because his dad always took him to church.

Faith, and love, and family will get us to where we belong. We belong together. We belong in the places and the spaces where we can be loved better than anywhere else.

I wouldn’t pretend to assume that our church is perfect. We make mistakes. We aren’t the best. But we try. We want to love well, live well, and learn how to do it better the next time. I learned that from a dad who always took me to church.

Where You Will Fill Up

I had lunch with my Brad today. Brad is my best friend. We’ve been friends for decades. I love this dude. He’s like a 2nd brother to me. 

As I was leaving, the fuel light in my car came on. So I did what you’re supposed to do when that happens. I pulled into a gas station. When I went to pump some gas there was a problem. I swiped my card and put in the required information—but no gas came out. Nothing. There was a disconnect between the input and the output. I really needed gas. But I couldn’t get any. I got back in my car, went down the road, and got my gas. No problem. No disconnect. The input matched the output. I filled up the tank.

There are so many people who are empty. They pull right up. They. Need. What. You. Have. If you follow Jesus the people who’ve pulled up to you need the light of life living inside you. They need the joy that lights up your every day world to make a life-giving difference in theirs.

We can’t afford to have a disconnect between the output and the input. We can’t put up borders, boundaries, or hurdles. The invitation to Jesus is simple. “Come to me.” That’s what he said.

People will go where they can get full. They will go where someone wants to be there for them. But they don’t want the fake stuff. They don’t want a show. They don’t want religious hurdles. They don’t want rules. They want gas. They want the thing they need that will get them down the road. They want life in all of its explosive awesomeness. 

The thing about gas is there’s no hiding it. It smells. It’s distinct. The moment it enters the scenario it matters. It’s a game changer. 

Go be a game changer for someone. Make a difference. Help them matter and mean it. Don’t fake it. If it’s at your coffee table, your coffee shop, or your church pew. Connect them with the good stuff. Just a little bit matters. But I bet you have more than just a little.