I’ve been learning recently about the life of contemplation and have (occasionally) been trying to pursue it in my life. One of the concepts that has struck me and come at me from different sources is the fact that we can experience the divine in the most mundane of our experiences - something that would be wonderful given the mundaneness of being a father of young children.

This is not to say that fatherhood is not a wonderful experience - it is, but much of what we as parents do is mundane - change diapers, give baths, tuck into bed, do the dishes. And yet it was in the last activity that I just managed to experience the divine in a profound way.

One of the ways that I have been able to experience God’s beauty has been through music. God has used certain songs to poke through the wall which separates me from himself and speak directly to my heart. And so he did tonight, as I, of all things, did the dishes. It was Mat Kearney’s Renaissance which led me into this time.

It happened fast in a flash, just this evening
As I hit the gas, horn blast, brakes were screaming
As the car crashed, broken glass, broke my dreaming
I hit the dash, so fast my ears are ringing
My sister’s on the right side just slightly leaning
I grabbed her hand hard until she started breathing
My brother’s in the back, jaw cracked from the beating
The breath in my chest has slipped and I’m sinking
Blinking through diamond spider webs of cracked glass
I’m trying to remember all the words you said in the past
Through the ash, siren screams and red beams
I hear you sing softly to me

There is such beauty in our savior, who rescues our lives from the pit. Who reaches out to us in tragedy and loves us where we are. Who binds up our physical and spiritual wounds and carries us on his shoulders. He is the God of the slums. The God who stands beside the mother who is forced to watch her child die of AIDS as she herself succumbs. The God who weeps with those who lose entire families in war. The God who brings salvation from oppression, healing from disease, and wholeness from brokeness.

I got a letter today of why she went away
She said, “It’s better this way, you knew I never could stay.”
Half empty closets and frames, all that’s left to my name
As she left in the rain and left my heart on a chain
Three years I’ve built this two-face tower for hours on a lease
You gave me one yellow flower that said rest in peace
In pieces I’ve broken open to think too much or just enough
Alone to trust midst the rubble and the dust
Humbled, it took this much to break down and understand
Spent my life this far on castles made of sand
Tossed in the breakers in the palm of your hand
Now I can finally stand

There is beauty in our Lord, who casts off his righteous judgement in order to envelop us in his Grace. A grace which can never be understood, but only received. The grace of our Father, who seeks out the lost. The grace of the One who lives with the outcast, the sinner, the Other. It is this God who loves us where we are at, not where the religious say we should be. It is He who teaches us to follow and obey, and transforms us through that process so we can lean more deeply into his love.

This is my renaissance
This is my one response
This is the way I say I love you

This is my second chance
This is my one romance
This is the cutting line
On which I stand to show you

My apologies to Mat Kearney, whose lyrics (italicized above) I have so freely repurposed here.

Today, my church participated in the Weekend of Prayer and Action for Darfur which was sponsored by Evangelicals for Darfur. I was given the honor of sharing about how our church could participate:

Before I begin sharing with you today about the situation in Darfur, I would like to read from the book of Isaiah chapter 58, the second half of verse 9 through verse 10:

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday. “

The prophet Isaiah speaks quite a bit more eloquently than I ever could as to why the gospel compels us to care for the poor and the oppressed in this world. And certainly, by any standards, the suffering people of Darfur, Sudan, qualify as the poor and the oppressed.

In your bulletin, there is an insert entitled “Background on the Crisis in Darfur”. When you get a chance, please read this as it will give you more information about the genocide which is taking place there and how you can be praying in the following days and months. As an overview, since 2003, there has been a deadly conflict going on in western Sudan. This conflict has killed more than 400,000 people, and led to 2 million refugees. Thousands have been made widows and orphans. Thousands more have been sexually assaulted and brutalized. Unfortunately, despite a peace agreement signed in May of this year, the violence has only been getting worse. The displaced population from Darfur has been dependent upon international aid for survival, but now the violence has become so bad that even this lifeline is being pulled from them. The situation has seen a marked deterioration in the last two weeks, and has even spilled over into neighboring Chad where many of the refugees from Darfur are now confronted with the possibility of facing displacement, rape, and murder yet again.

Today we have a chance to play a small, but important, role in seeking an end to the genocide which has engulfed Darfur. A few weeks ago, an advertisement was placed in several national newspapers calling on President Bush to do whatever he can to get a more robust peacekeeping mission in Sudan. It was sponsored by an organization called Evangelicals for Darfur, and signed by over 20 of our nation’s leading evangelical leaders from across the political spectrum.

Now, as Martin Luther King said:

“When evil men plot, good men (and women, I might add) must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.

Where evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a real order of justice.”

So today we’re going to get together and do a little planning on behalf of the suffering people of Darfur.

First and foremost, we’re going to spend some time praying. We know that God is the only one who can bring salvation to the suffering people of Darfur - both from the injustices being perpetrated and into eternal life. And we also know that we are powerless to do anything about it unless he is behind us. So our action must be under-girded by the power of prayer.

But we are also Jesus’ body here on earth, and that means we have a responsibility to take action in response to our prayers. As a starting point, I want to recommend that we all follow the lead of the Evangelicals for Darfur organization and call the President’s comment line expressing our concern for the people in Darfur as well as our support for the President in pursuing an international peacekeeping force. If you go to the Evangelicals for Darfur web site, you can also sign an online email petition. However, in politics, phone calls are listened to more than emails, so please do both!

There is a box on the back of this paper with all of the information you need in order to make this call. This is a tithe of but ten minutes of our time, but it will show the world that the body of Christ is standing with the people of Darfur in this dark time. I would also encourage us to remain engaged in this issue - in prayer, and in action, in the weeks and months ahead. There are some great resources on the Evangelicals for Darfur website, including a link to the Save Darfur Coalition, which can help you to get involved.

Thank you all for letting me share this with you. Let’s pray with hope in God’s power to bring miraculous salvation from the injustice being inflicted on the people of Darfur.

If you are an American, please join us in calling the White House comment line (202-456-1111) to encourage the President to do more to stop the violence in Darfur. If you’re not an American, call your leaders with your concerns. The future of a whole generation of God’s children is at stake.

Update: Apparently, the day of prayer was moved at the last minute to December 10. Oh well, I guess we just got a head start!

As bad as things have been in Darfur, it appears to be getting worse, as the violence spreads across the international border into Chad:

This violence has now escalated. In the last ten days more than 20 villages in Chad have been burned in the same way as the attacks in the Darfur region of Sudan. The perpetrators have come from Sudan, wearing Sudanese military uniforms, and have joined forces with Arabs here in Chad. Now this Arab-on-African violence is moving deep into Chad.Hundreds of people have been killed in the last ten days and thousands are fleeing. We are hearing every day about villages being lit on fire by these Arab militias, who locals believe have been uniformed and armed by the Sudanese government. The militants are shouting racial epithets, gang-raping women and killing the men.

This Sunday, a group called Evangelicals for Darfur in conjunction with the Save Darfur Coalition is sponsoring a time of prayer and action in churches across the country.  The fact is, we are well beyond the time where we can sit back and do nothing.

If you need to know why we must act, read the article above.  If you need to know how you can begin to act, follow the links to Evangelicals for Darfur and the Save Darfur Coalition.  Hundreds of thousands of people, a large number of them children, are suffering at the hands of evil people.  They cannot afford to have good people stand by and do nothing.

So stop standing!

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good election night. Fortunately, the American people have decided to send a message to the Bush administration and the Republican party that there was no mandate in 2004 and they want their country back!

(And by the way, 34 and 6 seems like it is within reach if Tester, McCaskill, and Webb can hold their leads.)

I’m going to play a little blogo-Pat Robertson here and state that God has told me that the Democrats will pick up 34 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate, giving them control of both. Really! That was what popped in my mind while I was praying a couple days back.

Then again, maybe it was just my wishful thinking getting involved. Either way, we’ll know for sure by late tomorrow night.

Talking Points Memo readers are reporting on deceptive robo-calls from the Republicans:

We’re getting reports from a number of congressional districts that one or another of the GOP committees is sponsoring robocalls that begin with “I’m calling with information about [fill in name of Democratic candidate].” Apparently, many voters, irate with the flood of calls, assume that the Democrat is the one sponsoring the call.

Apparently, they’re already being investigated in New Hampshire. Where, remarkably enough, they were convicted of electoral fraud in the last election.

This is what the modern Republican party has come to.  They can’t win this election on the issues, so they’ve decided that it is better to lie than to lose.  The party that preaches about its commitment to “moral values” is displaying in this election an appalling lack of values.

First, continuing in a long tradition, they have chosen to vilify their political opponents and the sixty percent of Americans who believe that the administration has driven our country over a cliff in Iraq by calling us terrorist sympathizers.  In Tennessee, they have run an subtly racist campaign to save the bacon of their Senate candidate - and unfortunately, it appears to be working.  And now this.  Openly lying to voters about the origin of automated phone calls to turn them away from the Democratic opponent.

Our democracy hangs by a thread.  If the Republicans are not punished at the polls for this behavior, and are able to steal this election through deception, then we might as well kiss our democracy goodbye.

Ted Haggard, former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, has been forced to resign as senior pastor:

In the wake of accusations by a former male escort that the Rev. Ted Haggard had a three-year sexual relationship with him, an independent oversight board at Mr. Haggard’s New Life Church found that he had “committed sexually immoral conduct” on Saturday and dismissed him as senior pastor.

I personally disagree with Mr. Haggard’s position on gay marriage, and I do so based on the scriptures as I understand them. But rather than cast the first stone as so many others in the blogosphere have done, I feel it is important to view this situation through the lens of compassion and understanding.

Compassion, first and foremost, for Mr. Haggard’s wife and children, who will now need to sort through the wreckage of their marriage and try to overcome the damage which has been done to their family.

But compassion as well for Ted Haggard, who, like all the rest of us, is a sinner in desperate need of forgiveness. By violating his vows to his wife and his responsibility to his family and his church, he has much for which he should make amends. And his wife would be justified if she chose to divorce him. Which should make our compassion for him all the more real, as he watches his entire life collapse before him because of this sin.

However, this incident calls for understanding, as well. Understanding that perhaps it was the very “taboo” that conservative Christians put on homosexuality which made it more difficult for Mr. Haggard to confront his struggles with fidelity to his family in light of his struggle with lust and addiction.

Furthermore, it calls for understanding that the actions that so many on the religious right have pursued against gays and lesbians are based not primarily on scripture, but rather on personal bias. While I don’t mean this to say that there is not a genuine discussion to be had over whether homosexuality is a sin or not - I believe that there are arguments from scripture on both sides of this question - I believe that the vilification of the “homosexual agenda” and the ostracization of homosexuals from certain segments of the church have no basis in scripture.

When we look at the way Jesus loved people, he did not do it by telling them that they must act a certain way or live a certain lifestyle before he would have fellowship with them. Instead, he ate dinner with them. He called them to be his disciples (even a rather irredeemable zealot who would later betray him). He cared for their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Only afterward did the call to obedience to Jesus transform their lives.

I believe this should be the model for the church today - even and especially for evangelicals. You know what? There are a lot of people out there in the world with whom we may not be terribly comfortable. And we may have some questions about whether their lifestyle is the right one to be living. But rather than condemn them before we even know them, shouldn’t we follow the example of Jesus and love them as they are? And then, if they choose to commit their lives to him, we can walk alongside of them and figure out what the scriptures and the Spirit are calling them (and us) to do - together.

This process is as much about us as it is about them. Perhaps we are right and they really are the sinner in need of repentance. But then again, perhaps the sinner is ourself? How will we know if we are not willing to apply that unconditional love of Jesus?

Ted Haggard’s fall gives those of us who are evangelicals a chance to examine ourselves so that we may love people as Jesus did, rather than push people away as the world does.

But will we find the strength to do so?

Here they are:

Under a new federal policy, children born in the United States to illegal immigrants with low incomes will no longer be automatically entitled to health insurance through Medicaid, Bush administration officials said Thursday.

It’s not a culture of life if you stop caring about children once they are born.