in it to schwinn it...

Two years ago I finally broke down and bought what’s called a comfort bike. It’s a clever marketing name for bicycles for old people. For nearly thirty years I had a yellow Schwinn 12-speed that I pedaled everywhere…the kind with the super thin tires made for racing though you never did. And a microscopic seat that after a mile on the bike trail made you feel like you’d gone down the twenty-story Wedgie-O-Matic waterslide at the local water park. Plus, you’re hunched over like Quasimodo.

Hence, the comfort bike.

Some years ago I was riding my trusty old Schwinn when I came upon a subdivision under construction. At the bottom of a hill some kids on BMX-style bikes had placed a sheet of plywood on some concrete blocks and made a ramp that they were flying off. Naively, I thought, “That looks like fun. I bet I could do that.”—momentarily forgetting that I was no longer a kid and had a bike that should have been in a museum.

After watching several jumps from a distance, they were finally sitting on their bikes off to the side so I thought I’d be cool, zoom down the hill, jump the ramp and then ride off into the sunset while their mouths were still open. I took off down the hill, pedaling full speed and just as I hit the ramp I suddenly had a rational thought: “This may not have been a good idea.” In a panic I squeezed my brake…but the wrong one: I hit my front brake, which made the bike flip over head-first. As if in slow motion I shot off the ramp upside down and landed flat on my back on the asphalt, still holding on to the handlebars with the Schwinn straight above me.

I landed so hard on my back it knocked the wind out of me. If you’ve never had the wind knocked out of you, don’t. It’s a terrible feeling. You have no air in your lungs and you can’t get enough in fast enough. It’s like dry drowning.

And of course all the kids circled me on their bikes and in between uncontrollable laughter managed to get out, “Are you okay?”

Sometimes things happen to us that knock the spiritual breath out of us. A death. A divorce. A pink slip. An accident. A loss of some sort. It may have been your fault or it may not have. Regardless, you’re gasping for spiritual air…and you can’t seem to get any in.  Where are you, God? And quickly the temptation becomes seeing God as other than good. Doubts flood in faster than air: “Maybe He’s not good.” Or “Maybe He doesn’t love me.”

Tread carefully, friends.

Someday you may have kids and there will be times when, believe it or not, they’ll think you don’t love them because of something that happened…or didn’t happen. But of course it’s not true; it’s just hard for them to understand that.

So do you really think you’re more loving than God? Seriously?

In the end you simply have to get back on the bike again. Maybe you failed at something critical. Maybe you’re in deep need of forgiveness, or deep need to forgive. Perhaps the unthinkable happened. But faith by its very nature always involves some level of relational risk. And you may even respond like Peter: “To whom else would we go?”—caught between a spiritual rock and a hard place.

Never forget: you have a lot of road yet to travel. However mysterious and hidden the Kingdom of God may seem in those moments (à la Matthew 13:24-30), it really is advancing and needs you.

So get back on the bike. Ask God to give you a push. Trust me: you’ll soon find your balance. Chances are you’ll glance back and notice He was there all along.

the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy revisited

“The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. ~Jesus

In Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a computer named Deep Thought (you had to grow up during the Nixon/Watergate era to catch the reference) was built to find the answer to the meaning of life. Deep Thought was the size of a planet and after seven million or so algorithmic years, the answer was discovered: 42. There followed a collective, head-scratching “Huh?”

Problem was, everyone had forgotten the question by then.

But the original question was basically this: why do we suck air?

Or, what gives our lives meaning?

I believe that the heart of life—the challenge, frustration and joy of it—is the search for something valuable, something of worth, worth more than your own life.

That’s why when you first fell in love—that “head-over-heels-crazy-can’t-think-straight-lovesick-talk-till-4am-in-the-morning-get-up-at-6:30-for-work-kind of love”—your pursuit of that person was worth more than your own health, your job, your own thoughts about yourself, your friends, your everything. It was all-consuming.

The way you measure what is valuable is by asking: what is worth giving up everything for? Or go crazy: what is The One Thing worth giving up my very life for? That helps to remove selfishness as a motivational factor. When you have the answer, you are beginning to discover the meaning of life.

That’s why Jesus told those spectacular parables about the Kingdom of God as something that is both discovered and overtakes us. It overtakes us in the sense that it woos us like some siren. We walk around disenchanted with life until we discover Whose Voice it is that is calling us.

God has designed our souls so that we are the most fulfilled when that which we value is actually something of real value. Here’s our common experience: often what we think is valuable actually isn’t—like Fool’s Gold. Pyrite looks just like the real shiny and sparkly thing, but it isn’t. And when prospectors in the 1800’s first dug it up and bartered with it, they discovered it wasn’t worth its weight in pennies.

We find ourselves unfulfilled when we think we have gold and discover it’s actually pyrite. For some of us, fool’s gold might be material success. For others it can be sexual in nature. For some of us it may be power and the need to control. Or a relationship. We can be obsessive about this pyrite…and hurt each other to get it because it looks so good. The zeitgeist of this world has a way of masquerading value—its expertise is drawing our attention to valueless things for us to invest our time, money and energy into.

Madison Avenue is extremely skilled at this. There’s a reason why there’s nearly an hour of commercials during the Superbowl. I now buy pants that are called “relaxed fit.” That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Relaxed. You know what they should be called?—Pants-For-Old-Fat-Guys-In Denial. But that wouldn’t sell because you wouldn’t go into the Gap and ask, “Hey, could you show me where the ‘Pants-For-Old-Fat-Guys-In Denial’ section is?”

Look at the flip side: for those of you with a child, you fondly remember the day of birth or adoption. In that tiny bundle of life you witnessed the spark of worth, and you made a promise that you would lay down your life for this little miracle, a promise that you would do anything. There was a sense of fulfillment because you placed value on something that actually has real value.

We go through life discovering all kinds of different things worth giving up parts of ourselves for. And when those things actually have true value, our lives begin to carry a sense of meaning.

Now imagine the object of Ultimate, Infinite Value. That’s what Jesus is trying to describe. And that would therefore mean that our lives would begin to carry the ultimate sense of meaning.

Maybe it’s time to rediscover the value of the pearl. But here’s the kicker: even though life in the Kingdom of God is the treasure we are to discover, for God, you are the pearl of great value.

And worth enough to give His own life.

where’s dave?

Yeah, I know…the worst thing in this universe (or any parallel universe, multiverse or metaverse, for that matter) for a blogger to do is not post for weeks. The worst. I just got horribly behind.

SOS happened…which is total overload for our staff and literally hundreds of volunteers. And then I got sick as a dog, as my mom used to say. Fever, chills, headache…I’m really close to bleating again, aren’t I? Then I took some time off…my wife Anita and I went to Florida and stayed in a friend’s house for a week. With no internet there. Spent some hideaway time working on a book for Baker Publishing on outward-focused thoughts that was due last Friday.

Anyway, very, very sorry, gang, for being extremely tardy.

Let me catch up with a few thoughts here about the past few weeks.

First of all, for those of you on the outside, I can’t fully describe what really happened at SOS. Summer Of Service combines our best values at VCC. We had over 700 students come in from all over the Midwest. We actually have to cap it at that to be able to handle the outreach logistics. About twenty-five buses pulled up each day to take all 700 students to locations all around greater Cincinnati to simply serve others: free car washes, block parties complete with games and prizes (everyone wins…), face painting and big blowup bouncy things that kids pile into, mural painting in the inner city, housework for urban ministries, free water giveaways, etcetera etcetera. They do an outreach in the morning, then we take lunch to them, and then another outreach in the afternoon. They come staggering back between 3 and 4pm, have some free time, dinner at the church, and then a worship extravaganza in the evening along with a message. A ton of fun stuff is thrown in as well. Our student ministry gang handles all the speaking including the weekend…which is awesome for me: I get to lead some outreaches and don’t have to worry about writing a message that’s relevant to a 14 year old. The last night of their time with us we held an extended cranked worship set with baptisms…about fifty students decided to get baptized. Beautiful.

The following weekend we launched into the TXT series. On the first week, I asked people to take out their cell phones and text in the Big Question they have about God, the Bible, life, whatever, while one of our worship leaders, Jim Zartman, played a beautiful simple song called To Find An Anchor. It really created the right atmosphere. The questions were profound and at times intensely personal. We took the top five most asked questions and created the series. Adam Dressler took the next weekend and did a great job. Matt Massey, pastor of a church we planted nearly five years ago called Northstar Vineyard, was his always engaging, funny and passionate self. It was great to have him back. Andy Ransdell followed him this past weekend. Andy was sent out from us last January to launch LifePoint Vineyard in Monroe, Ohio. I love his heart for people who don’t yet know Jesus. Andy is a true pastor/evangelist…and a good friend.

Anyway, enough rehashing of history. Let me throw out something philosophical to get the thought processes pumping again.

I want to post something that was truly revelatory for me personally from the last talk I gave. It was the opening talk on how we all have big questions for/about God. And they’re typically driven from a very personal—and sometimes wounded—perspective, such as David’s opening lyric to Psalm 13: "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" That’s an intense longing for a personal answer.

But it hit me as I was studying for this that even knowing all the answers doesn't insulate me from pain. I think an impetus for wanting answers to our questions is that it would somehow ease the anquish we feel. But I’m not so sure. Consider this: Jesus knew a lot. He not only knew the “how’s” of life, he knew the “why’s”. He knew how Peter was going to die, but what’s more, He knew why. We are quickly coming to the point where we will be able to know what genetic disease we will succumb to; already doctors can pretty much determine through DNA testing if you’re heading toward Alzheimer’s. Would you want to know that? It still doesn’t answer the throbbing question: why me, God?

Now think about this: Jesus actually knew the “why” but was still referred to in scripture as “the man of sorrows”. He cried at his friend Lazarus’ grave. He wept over Jerusalem. Even if you knew the answer to everything, it doesn’t protect your emotions. Jesus knew how He would die…and why He would die, but still sweat drops of blood and wept in the garden of Gethsemane: “Father, please take this cup away from me.”

Don’t fall for the trap that if you knew the answer to everything—to all your questions—it would be easier to follow God…or to simply go through life. God Himself shows us that’s not the case. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask God questions, He welcomes them. Just remember it doesn’t solve the emotional and spiritual—and sometimes physical—pain we may have.

Now that was a new thought for me.