none of the cream and all of the blueberries

many times in my fathering life i encounter the uninhibited 3 year old's true feelings. at least it is only for one year ; ). it reminds me of the word of god.

this school year dutch, titus, and myself usually trek out of the house about 10 minutes til 8am. the season is now upon us where the days are short and the weather is colder (however, i am not about to start making weather complaints seeing as my main audience resides in the volcanic belly that is dallas texas). if there is one thing dutch does not care about when he is faced with a "must do" from his mother or me it is the amount of sugar coating we put on to play it up as "not that bad." it is getting much harder to get dutch out of the house to go to school. we have nearly a 1.75 mile walk each way to his school. in the mornings when the temperature is in the low 50's and the wind is blowing one of the worst things you could do is convince dutch that he should go outside. he will not shy away from telling you that it is too cold and that this was a bad idea. his celerity is not brimming with a confident swagger that my blood runs thick with upon a walk. this, in turn, transforms what should be a meager 20 minute walk (one-way) into a 30 minute campaign. my wife is a pro at cheering him on and convincing him of getting things done despite his desire to do otherwise. my attempt however, could be compared to an average 5 year olds attempt at beating bowser on level 8 of super mario bros. it just won't happen. so like dutch, i give up as well. so what do ya do?

so the revelation hit me at how i have been accustomed to making god's word into something that it is not intended to be. like my wife with dutch i can excel at putting lipstick on a pig and thinking, "mmmm, thats not so bad." the moment i try and make something say what i want it to say is the moment reality (the holy spirit) back hands me into coherency and i praise god for that. to be like my son?!?!? not being side tracked with the whistles and bells of not only a pure and righteous pursuit of god but to represent him in the same mode. to see through the "feel good" persuasion of a prosperity driven money getting gospel. don't sugar coat it for me, give it to me straight, this is going to be hard, this is going to cost me, this is going to take my whole life but, BUT, this will all be worth it! that is how i like to hear the word. i need to teach it that way.

dutch will not back down if he does not want to do it. he will let you know too. i cannot play it up and trick him into belief that this will be enjoyable and all his wildest dreams will come true (which for him would be to get hiro from the thomas the tank engine movies). dutch's 1st birthday cake was blueberries piled high covered in a home made whipped cream and he wore his disdain for that topping on his face loud and clear...he was having none of the cream and all of the blueberries.

god save the queen

i have this thing in which i want to be mr documentary. so before trips i tell myself that i am going to document and film and be descriptive so that people will know what it was like through my amazing footage. well...sadly i take to it about so long into the trip and usually forget that i had such a passion before hand. i only regret it later when i want to tell my audience of 20+ that we really did do more than this, i just, was a little forgetful.

we went to a leadership summit in chertsey england which is nearly in london. if london was a clock and the m25 (the motorway that goes all the way around) is the clockbase, then chertsey will fall on 8. we drove from little 'ole waterloo. you will see in the video that we boarded a train in the car and went under the channel. i have never done this before so it felt really really cool, er, wicked as they would say in england. "thas wicked mate!" and yes it would sound like they are saying "thas" not "thats."

among many things that go on in england driving on the wrong side of the road is not the worst thing. the first night due to our urgency of time to make the first session we scarfed down our fish n chips. the sea was rough that night my friends but fortunately jon vandeput was the only one who did not make it out of the loo alive (which oddly enough is a slang derivative of the town waterloo in the london area). the portions were hefty and the price was steep. it was great to be in a place where i did not need a translator...well, except for when those aussie's started their jive ; )

it was good to hear the key speakers bruce monk and glyn barrett. you should find them in their respected area via the internet and see all that they do. i know glyn has a major ministry in manchester and has many youtube videos for his church.

here are some videos i took of my excitement on the way across...

can't you see, you belong to me

it's hard to not be so sad when you leave those individuals with whom you have shared so many memories. my family and i had the amazing opportunity to return to the states and connect and reconnect with loved ones this past week and a half. my reflection on such relationships continues to press on my mind.

what would i do without these individuals?

as i sit here at 4 in the morning, suffering from jetlag just finishing a bowl of oatmeal (the only food in the pantry) and sipping on amazing nespresso coffee, i can't help but sing the police over and over again in my mind...every breath you take, yeah, i'll be watching you. nostalgia and technology make it impossible to forget the memories that keep the conversations entertaining and absolutely boundless on forging new ones.

this time was not any different in my joy upon returning and embracing my parents and friends. so many of you who are the reason i am what i am today. i constantly feel the debt and it is a good debt, if dave ramsey would allow me to describe it as such using those terms.

this time, when i prepared to return to belgium, i realized how much easier it is now becoming. my greatest hope was the bond between my two sons and my parents would grow stronger. i was praying that they would not have skipped a beat. and as good as god is today i tell you it was as if they had never been separated. my sons and my parents picked it right up where they left it on november 23rd 2010. and witnessing this, the reconnection of grandparents and grandsons made the trip back here to waterloo, belgium much, much easier.

as an individual who strongly desires the family unit to operate functionally, as a divine unit, as a kingdom of heaven unit, this brings me peace.

please, please make these kinds of relationships. the kind of relationships that you could be physically separated for months and months and upon seeing each other again it would be as if you had never even noticed the gap. just as you go to sleep and the hours that pass in darkness are only but a restful nights sleep away from the morning sun that will rise just as it has done from the beginning of your existence.

what say you?

i absolutely love this:

how do you account for jesus?

how is this concert and antiquity to be explained? did some unknown creative genius take an ordinary man, jesus, and invent his deeds of power and his words of love and authority and authenticity, then present this invented jesus to a church with such deceptive power that many people were willing from the outset to die for this fictional christ? further, must we believe that all the gospel writers swallowed the invention-and in the space of several decades while many who knew the real jesus were still living? is that a more reasonable or well-founded guess than the plain assertion that a real man, jesus christ, did in fact say and do the sorts of things the biblical witnesses said he did?

you must decide for yourself. to my mind, an unknown inventor of this jesus is more incredible than the possibility of jesus' reality. so for me the question becomes: "how do we account for a man who leaves a legacy like this?

i cannot morally reckon him among the poor deluded souls who suffer from pathological delusions of grandeur. nor can i reckon him among the great con men of history, a deceiver who planned and orchestrated a worldwide movement of mission on the basis of a hoax. instead, i am constrained to acknowledge his truth. both my mind and my heart find themselves drawn to yield allegiance to this man. he has won my confidence.

j. piper

-desiring god

short foolishness with no room for cream

there is a new starbucks in belgium. it is located in the central train station in downtown brussels. i have taken the boys on the train to meet up with liz on her way home from work a few times. it is good for the boys and for us to venture into our american embassy. the last time we did this i went into the cafe area to get our drinks while liz stayed on the outer part of the store. there is ALWAYS a line. this one wasn't too bad but as i was standing there waiting i noticed a tall, nicely dressed man standing to my right and i was getting the impression he was trying to cut. in my mind i was thinking, "who does this guy think he is?" i certainly was not dressed to impress and that fear of trying to be intimidated by a "business" man was creeping in my head. he sensed the tension and proceeded to tell me that he was in line before but had forgotten what his friend had wanted and so he tried to quickly return to his spot.

yeah, i wasn't born yesterday, get the heck outta here into the back of the line!!!

no, i didn't say that, i wanted to but then a sudden rush came over me..."buy his and his friends coffee." wait, what? again i felt it, "buy their drinks." i then asked the guy what his friend wanted and he told me. i said to him "well, let me buy your friends drink and yours." he bursted out in laughter, and when i say bursted that is an understatement. IT. WAS. LOUD. i thought for split second to decline the offer simply based on this obnoxious, loud laugh but i couldn't. i told him i was serious and i wanted to bless him and his friend. he said ok.

he then asked me where i was from and where i was going. i told him i lived in belgium and moved here to be a missionary. he said, "oh really." i said i wanted to train young people in the word of god. he said, "which god?" i said, "the god the bible talks about." he casually said, "ah, but they are different." i told him we could talk more when we were able to sit and enjoy our coffee.

he confessed to wanting to be a missionary when he was a kid and i responded by telling him i wanted to be a navy seal. as it turned out he was a lawyer and his friend was a mathematician. so here i was going to try and reveal the truth of jesus to two guys who would love to debate faith and justice. we didn't ever really debate but we did talk about faith and god. i told him my only intent in buying their drinks was because i wanted to show them an act of generosity in the name of jesus christ (i speculate that being a lawyer he didn't need my charity for the sake of cultural enjoyment). a seed was sown, and i felt at peace in my spirit as to where i left it.

i realize his fault, as mine on many occasion which is not the pursuit of knowledge, but the love of knowledge over everything else. sometimes i catch myself loving knowledge and even in the moments when i need to be reading scripture as the food for my soul i will venture off sometimes i start to think how great a teaching "this" could be, or "that." all in all, at the end of the day i am only as smart as the next guy who walks in the room; my knowledge is very, very, very, limited. it is hard to admit this but someone will always be more educated. that is the struggle for so many; pursuing knowledge until they literally kill themselves. i will leave you with this...for those who love knowledge so much.

1 corinthians 1:27 - ...god has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise...

i just hope i was foolish enough for jesus to shame every ounce of wisdom those men thought they had.