Just got back from four glorious days in DC. What a great city! Though we only had a few days and an understandably crabby daughter, I could not have enjoyed the sights and sounds and culture anymore than I did. A few highlights:

1) We only had a few minutes in the cemetary, but the Changing of the Guard at the Arlington Cemetary along with walking past the Iwo Jima Memorial right after was humbling and inspiring.

2) I snuck into two areas in the Library of Congress that visitors are not supposed to be in, what a place! Words cannot express it!

3) Through the friend who was married yesterday, we received a tour of the Capitol Building from one of Sen. Brownback's aides. This young woman was completely amazing, the most amazing woman I have ever met. She is completely blind (if she is in a room that is dark and a light goes on or vice versa she can sense that, but nothing else) yet led us through three buildings and countless sides rooms and gave us an unbelievable tour. Again, I have not met a person in this world who amazes me more than her.

4) Riding the DC Metro is a trip. I loved it! Clean, safe, lots of convenient stops, it took us a little bit to learn the ropes and such but once we got the hang of it (and held on tight to our map) we travelled quickly and cheaply with the car in the garage the whole time.

5) We were at the front gate of the White House taking in the views when we were quickly and tersely asked to move away, that section was being closed down until further notice. So we went to a side gate and were told the same. We moved to a safe location a block or so away from the gates and within a few minutes, in came the Presidential Helicopter landing on the front lawn, either bringing him or taking him away, and minutes later departing. That was pretty cool!

Of course, there's the normal other highlights (Holocaust Museum, Lincoln and Washington Memorials, etc.) that are on every tourist's list, but these I will never forget.

Some people think I text too much, I couldn't even hold my own according to Ian Jukes:

In a world where billions of text messages move through the ether daily — Filipinos hold the national record, having sent a billion texts per day in 2007

My good friend John sent this to me a while back, I've reflected on it often since then and wanted to post it here for any comments:

As Christians Jesus' unconditional love for us and acceptance of us is an indispensable part of our foundation in God. Without knowing that Jesus loves us there is no stability or hope for living; neither is there confidence or faith to be about the Father's business. There is nothing but introspection and speculation as to our position, posture and partnership with God. If you have accepted Christ as your Savior and if your desire is to live for Him alone you can feel confident and secure in His unrelenting love for you and His unshakable commitment to you. Furthermore you can be assured that His hand is always lovingly and kindly outstretched toward you. In Christ no circumstance is insurmountable, no consequence unredeemable and no sin unforgivable. All is used for good to sanctify, purify and conform us to His image which is perfectly holy and pure. Such conformity is the expectation and heart's desire of every son and daughter of His. However, the person who believes that Christianity is nothing more than doctrinal ascent, or merely "eternal fire insurance" that provides license to do any carnal, sinful thing with impunity will fall into Hell faster than they can say,"I was mistaken."

Today's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us: A bank in Oshkosh advertised a special for opening 2008 Christmas Club Savings Accounts. It's March 18.

Anyone involved in charity/ministry/philanthropic work should read this article from the Freaknamics guys in the NYT Magazine. A few highlights:

“On every mission, 500 or 600 children would show up begging for treatment,” Mullaney recalls, “but we could only help 150.” In a small Vietnamese village near the Chinese border, there was one kid who played soccer every day with the volunteers; they took to calling him Soccer Boy. When the mission was over and Mullaney and the others drove away, he saw Soccer Boy chasing after the group’s bus, his cleft lip still unrepaired. “We were in shock — how could he not have been helped?” That’s when Mullaney realized that charities like Operation Smile were badly in need of a new business model — or any business model at all, really — and he set out to invent one.

The system is just not designed to solve this problem.” The cancer-research community, he felt, was made up of countless well-meaning individuals who, collectively, turned into a hive of competing interests and misaligned incentives, where financing dollars and even information were hoarded.

Smile Train works as a charity because it is run like a business. Fixing a child’s cleft lip or palate is a relatively cheap procedure with outsize payoffs: cleft children in many countries are ostracized and have a hard time going to school, getting jobs and marrying, and the surgery reverses those disadvantages. Indeed, when pitching a reluctant government, Mullaney refers to cleft children as “nonperforming assets” who can soon be returned to the economic mainstream. He fights bad incentives with better ones: when Smile Train learned that midwives in Chennai, India, were being paid off to smother baby girls born with cleft deformities, Mullaney started offering midwives as much as $10 for each girl they instead took to a hospital for surgery.

Hopefully that's enough to whet your appetite to read the whole article.

Working as much as I can in Kenya, I receive a great deal of emails from people doing similar work, and most of them are of the same variety, a heart-felt tug, how can we let this happen, pity on the people there, etc. In fact, I tend to read few of them, passing them right into the delete section of my inbox once I feel they are of that variety.

I received one of those today and almost junked it, but for some reason felt I should give it a shot. I read it, it was well-written, focusing on one child and how their ministry made a difference in his life. But one small part really hit me for the wrong reasons:

I didn’t see him until the end of service where by chance I caught his eyes staring at me from behind some seats. He wanted so bad to approach but as I came to him he ran. I wanted to cry but we were still in church and I was up in a minute. “Rafiki, Rafiki,” I said. Slowly he came. That day Hasmin got a new pair of shoes, bananas, fried bread, and a Fanta. O you should have seen this boy eat. For hours we had a ball.

"I wanted to cry but we were still in church..." How can we so often miss the very heart of Jesus' message to us? How can we read and memorize the Gospels but miss what Jesus' ministry was all about. Do we not know that Jesus was on the way to Jairus' house to heal his daughter when the woman touched him, and did Jesus "wait because he was on his way to do the work of the Lord"? Do we forget that Jesus was "preaching the word" to the people when the men tore open the roof and lowered their paralyzed friend down? Did Jesus scold them because He was doing the work of the Lord? Of course not, He "saw their faith" and said "your sins are forgiven."

Here is where we miss the heart of Jesus , when we treat a building with four walls and a program as so sacred more sacred than the very people Jesus died on the cross to reach.

From Chuck Missler, why doesn't this bother more Christians?

This month we celebrate Easter. Whoops! Why is our most holy holiday named after a pagan goddess? It is at this time that we celebrate the very Gospel itself: "…that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; that He was buried; and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." Yet for some reason we have allowed the remembrance of Christ's death and resurrection to be muddled by ancient pagan traditions (rabbits that lay eggs and other such nonsense).

If you come to this blog and do nothing else, I highly recommend you check out Joe Boyd's blog, here is his latest brilliance:

Here's the point - none of these things are my true metanarrative - the biggest story that I align with, or more accurately, the biggest story that has made me who I am. (See Chesterton quote below.) My big story is not that I am an American, a caucasian, a pastor or a SAG member. My big story is that there is a living God who created all that is. He made us and we rejected him in order that we could live apart from him. Apart from him, though, our lives are meaningless, painful and shallow. My story is the story of a nation called Israel because my God selected that nation to reveal himself to the world. Again, through Israel, we rejected him. So he sent a real man named Jesus who called us from the world to follow him in order to be reunited with our God. He came to start a Kingdom ruled by Love that would never end. We rejected him too and killed him, but he was resurrected three days after he died. (I never said that my metanarrative was easy to believe.) His death also paid the price for our pattern of rejection and his resurrection set in motion a conspiracy to see evil conquered in the world through the power of love and life and hope. He then asked us to tell others the good news of our big story and to invite others into our story. This is evangelism to me. Inviting others to turn in all of their stories, including their biggest story, for the story of God and Jesus. It's kind of a ridiculous thing to ask of someone - to be willing to change their prime identity. But for those who are really ready for change (now I sound like a presidential candidate), for those who are ready for a new life, it really is good news.