Morning

The kids are still in bed and so is my husband. Scott isn't feeling well and the kids...well, they are teenagers and they won't wake up unless prodded.
Yesterday we traded in our SUV for a sporty small car with better gas milage. It is a lime green car and it is the funnest car we have ever owned. It is tucked away in our garage and I really can't wait to drive it. What is strange about this purchase is how uncomfortable I am about what people may think. Whomever these 'people' are...they have a lot to say about everything. They are the ones who tut tut about a vacation we are hoping to go on, how we raise your kids, how little or how much time we spend on any given activity, how little or how much money we have or don't have. They are the ones who seem to know when we change churches and how are kids behave in any given situation. I have no idea who 'they' are but they are powerful.
Working with teenagers every day I get the sense that they are also followed by these same 'people'. How afraid they are of not appearing a certain way, saying certain things and even changing because 'they' will judge and condemn.
I would like to find these people and ask them to let it go and let us be. One of them may be in the mirror, she will be the first I start with.
Then I will drive my sporty car around this little town and give them something to talk about on this fine, cold snowy morning.

First pure then peace-loving...

Some of the words in today's headlines...dead off Somalia, Iranian warships, cuts off state funding, sale woes deepen, starving NKoreans beg for food, deadly quake...Wisdom is first pure then peace-loving... I don't know about you but when I read the news I personalize the depth of instability and I begin to fray a t the edges. I know there isn't a thing I can do to make things right... but still I feel if I am not praying I am not doing anything. So, I pray...I pray for peace.
The thing is though that there won't be peace...for peace to happen there needs to be wisdom and for wisdom to happen you have to fear God and to fear God means you have to know God and to Know God you have to humble yourself and there-in lies the rub. Humility is as scarce as peace. We will get wisdom when we ask...but you first have to know that ignorance is our default and to ask means you have to know you are ignorant and who want to be ignorant...back to humility.
Oh God please make us aware how ignorant we are to even make peace in our own home let alone this crazy falling apart world.

It is really amazing

Another one of the books I am reading....this one is about being a servant in cross-cultural settings. It talks about an issue I have always wondered about. How can a person from the first world go into a third world situation and really serve? There will always be the idea of paternalism and arrogance. Never overt but if one is more educated, more wealthy, more in the know how could you not feel that you are better than rather then servant of. When we were in Papua for that one year what bothered me was the respect and 'hormat' given to me just because of the color of my skin and my assumed 'better-ness'. I can imagine if you live in that atmosphere long enough one begins to believe it. How can one really be a servant when most of those you want to serve seek to serve you.

This is what gets amazing...one thing never assumed of Jesus was that he was better then anyone. He came to serve and people assumed his service. Talk about a cross-cultural move on his part and how if anyone could feel better than, he should have or could have. Arrogance never seemed to trail his ministry ! Servant Leadership at its core is confidence dressed in humility. There was no one more confident then Jesus yet walking within that confidence was a servant dressed in humility. This is amazing to me...

Putting to death...

Death seems to surround especially in winter. There seems to be more funerals to attend and bad news to absorb. There is a death,though, that is necessary.

I am reading a book about self deception and a thought running its course in this book is the idea that when you decided to start putting to death the things that so easily entangle...the decision to begin is the start of the death process for the addiction. Addictions as complex as alcohol to that of approval and praise. We deceive ourselves when we minimize what so easily entangles...I like the idea ,that everything that needs to be overcome, is a process of starts and eventual endings.

I can't help but think about Egypt and its process of getting Mubarak to leave. That man like any addiction did not want to leave his post of power. No matter what seemed to be hurled in his direction, he would not budge until he was pushed. Unrelenting pressure from motivated souls felled the beast. If they had quit or had been intimidated by the fear of the moment, the difficulty of the struggle, they would have been overcome rather then overcame.

I want to get rid of my own Mubarak...sitting in my own Tahrir Square.

too much

It is one of those times when there is so much going on in both extremes that I am not able to write anything down with any kind of sense. It is external global, internal personal with all the various levels of emotions that carry the day. Funerals, civil unrest, havoc in the weather and keeping the normal pressures under control. I am overwhelmed with the emotional energy that has enveloped the past few days. In a few I am sure I will be able to unravel the knot...as of this moment, I am still caught up.