Lessons Learned - in Vegas (Part Deux)

Have you ever been lost? Or, worse yet, have you ever been lost in a place where everyone else seems to know where they’re going? That happened to me this week. I spent 2-1/2 days in Caesars Palace – literally. From the time I checked in on Sunday, I didn’t go outside again until I checked out on Tuesday. Everything you need is right there – the hotel, the conference center, restaurants, shops, entertainment, the casino (if you’re into that kind of thing). And, while others seemed to navigate the tangled maze with ease, I pretty much got lost every time I left my hotel room. It all looked alike – slot machines and flashing lights and winding corridors – with very few signs to guide the way. I had conversations that went something like:

“Excuse me, but could you tell me how to get to the Centurion Tower?”

“Oh – you just go across the casino and past the barge and you should see it on the left.”

Alrighty, then – that clears things right up.

Or, how about this (yelled by a colleague from across the casino):

“Hey – Why are you heading towards the sports bar?”

“I don’t know – I’m just trying to find the conference center.”

“Well, you’re going the wrong way – What are you? Country come to town?”

Why, yes - Yes, I am!

I’ve actually come to the conclusion that the hotel/casino complexes in Vegas are designed that way on purpose. People are wandering around, trying to find their way, but eventually they get tired and give up – and guess what?! There’s a slot machine or a poker table waiting for them right there, so they might as well sit down and stay a while because they’re going nowhere fast.

Life can be like that as well. We’re all on a journey, but sometimes we get lost. We feel confused and turned around, and there aren’t any signs to point us in the right direction. So, we finally just sit down right where we are because it’s easier than pressing on and trying to find our way. But, the problem is – the longer you sit there, the harder it is to get up and start the journey again. Complacency sets in, and the next thing you know, years have gone by, and you’re left wondering where the time went…

Don’t let yourself get stuck at the poker table of life – Pull out your roadmap – your Bible – and remind yourself of where you were headed when you started the journey. Ask someone for some help. Look around for that open door that you need to walk through. God has a purpose for this journey that is your life, and the enemy would like nothing better than to see you get sidetracked before you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.

Hebrews 12:1-2 encourages us to persevere in our journey. I’ve read these verses many times before, but The Message translation gave me a fresh perspective. If you find yourself stuck in your journey, let these words push you to keep on keeping on today.

“… we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running – and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed – that exhilarating finish in and with God – He could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now He’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”
- Hebrews 12:1-2 (The Message)

Lessons Learned - in Vegas

The past few days have been a crazy whirlwind: family fun at the State Fair all day Friday, Chris Tomlin concert Friday night, out of town relatives visiting Saturday, church Sunday morning and a late evening flight to Vegas Sunday night for a work conference. And, just being in Las Vegas for two days is a whirlwind of its own. Pick your favorite vice, and there’s an opportunity to indulge it staring you in the face everywhere you turn, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s such a wacky, surreal place to be. Even now, sitting at the airport, there are people playing slot machines right in front of me. Crazy!

I had an interesting conversation with the taxi driver on the way to the airport this afternoon. This guy wasn’t your typical cab driver. He was originally from the East Coast, college educated at the University of Maryland, and still close to his family back home. But, he left all that to come to Vegas to pursue fame and fortune. He was, in a way, a modern-day prodigal son.

While thinking about this cab driver and the story of the prodigal son and some of the teaching that I heard this weekend, I found a recurring theme that really jumped out at me: Freedom can only be found in surrender. When the prodigal son left home, I’m sure that he thought: “Finally! I’m free! I can do whatever I want to do, go wherever I want to go, be whatever I want to be. I’ve got it made! I’m in control!” And that was fine for a while. I’m sure that he made some friends and had some fun along the way. But, eventually, those things that he was pursuing began to control him, and his freedom started to feel more like bondage. All of his indulgences started to cost him. They took more of his time and more of his money, until at last, he ended up in the pig sty.

At that point, he was faced with a choice. He could stay where he was, in the middle of the mess that he’d made of his life. Or, he could go back home and surrender himself to the will of his father. Because, after all, his father’s servants had it better than he did at the moment. So, he headed home, burdened with the weight of what he’d done and the shame that it had brought him.

But, when he arrived home and told his father what had happened, he got an unexpected surprise. At that point of surrender, when he believed that he was signing up to be a servant in his childhood home, his father welcomed him with open arms. When his father placed the robe on his back, the prodigal son finally found the real freedom that he’d been searching for all along.

There are so many people in that same condition. They’re desperate for freedom, but they’re pursuing it in all the wrong ways and in all the wrong places. They’re ending up in a virtual pig sty, just like the prodigal son, bound by the lifestyle that they’ve chosen. The weight of those chains is just too much to bear for most people. But, if they, like the prodigal son, can find it in their hearts to surrender to their heavenly Father, they too can find freedom.

Are there things in your life that are dragging you down or holding you back? Are you a slave to your possessions or your career? It’s time to let go. It’s time to surrender… because freedom is waiting on the other side.

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." -- Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)

World Statistics Day

We interrupt today's regularly scheduled blog post to bring you a special message:

Happy World Statistics Day!

What, you might ask, is World Statistics Day, and why do you care?

World Statistics Day is a day set aside to recognize the service provided by the global statistical system at national and international levels and to strengthen the awareness and trust of the public in official statistics. It serves as an advocacy tool to further support the work of statisticians across different settings, cultures, and domains.

And, why do I care? One of the things that most folks don't know about me is that I have a Ph.D. in Statistics. That's right - I'm an official, card-carrying geek - a pointy-headed statistician. And, that innate desire to analyze things carries over into every aspect of my life, much to the chagrin of those who know me best.

When I tell people that I'm a statistician, I usually get a blank stare - or a comment about how much they hated that one stats class that they had to take in college. In reality, it's a very interesting profession. It's the place where real world problems and data meet the analytical tools and methods that are needed to derive meaninful information. As one of my colleagues often says, being a statistician is never boring because it allows you to play in everyone's backyard.

So, now I've done my part to raise awareness of the statistics profession and to celebrate World Statistics Day. And, thus my parting question:

Have you hugged your statistician today?

Surprised by Grace

When we were preparing to have our first child, we took every parenting class that we could find and read every book that we could get our hands on because we knew we would need help once we brought a tiny little baby into the world. However, as we made it through the toddler years and the first days of school, I think that we may have gotten a little too confident in our parenting abilities. Our oldest is now entering that awkward pre-teen stage and some of our tried and true parenting techniques are not working so well anymore. So, I decided to take a few classes on parenting “tweens,” and I’ve found them to be both thought provoking and extremely useful.

This week, the instructor was looking ahead to the teen years and pointed out that sometimes parents and their teens get into a cycle where they are “knocking heads” at every turn – so much so that the teen just starts to expect a negative response from the parent no matter what they do. The instructor suggested that if you’re in one of those times with your child, sometimes it can help to simply stop and surprise them with grace. I thought that was great advice, but beyond that, the phrase that she used has been stuck in my head and in my heart all week long.

Surprise them with grace!

What a great thought! It works in a lot of situations – not just with a difficult teenager. If the cashier at the drive thru window messes up your order, rather than getting angry and glaring at them, surprise them with grace! If someone cuts you off in traffic, rather than honking your horn and calling them every unholy name in the book, surprise them with grace! If the checker at the grocery store is slower than molasses (and that’s the one I always get!), rather than grumbling under your breath and tapping your foot impatiently, surprise them with grace! If your spouse leaves his socks in the middle of the floor – again – rather than complaining or nagging, surprise him with grace!

Remember the bumper sticker that was popular a few years back? – “Practice Random Acts of Kindness.” Let’s take that one step further and “Surprise them with grace!” It might be just the thing that will remind them that you are able to show grace to them because God poured out his grace and mercy on you.

“Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” – 2 Peter 1:2

Worship and First Love

If asked to define myself, it would be hard to come up with a few succinct words to explain who I am. I’m a wife, a mother, a friend, a statistician, a teacher, a manager – and the list could go on and on. While each of the many aspects of my life are important, there are usually one or two that take top billing at any particular point in time. But, one of the constants in my life has been music. I started playing the piano when I was 8 years old, and I started playing for church when I was 12. Somehow, the congregation in that little country church suffered through my halting renditions of “Love Lifted Me” and “Just as I Am” and gave me the opportunity to get my feet wet as a lead worshipper of sorts. And thankfully, through the years, my skill has grown and my understanding of what it means to worship God through music has grown as well.

So, the past few months have been interesting as I’ve stepped back a bit from the musical aspects of leading worship in my church and focused more on writing. But, it has also given me the opportunity to reflect more broadly on worship and the role it should play in our church and in our lives.

One of the questions I always ask when digging into a topic is “What?” In this case, “What is worship?” The word has been used in a lot of different ways and for a lot of different purposes, so much so, that if you asked 5 different people to define the word, you would probably get 5 different answers. It is used to refer to what happens inside a church building on Sunday morning – “Did you go to worship service today?” It can be used to describe a genre of music. It has been used to distinguish between the more upbeat songs that we sing in church (praise) and the slower, more intimate songs that we sing (worship). And, I could go on and on.

So, I decided to do what every good researcher does these days and did a quick google search for the definition of worship to see what I could turn up. I found lots of good (and not so good) definitions, but the one that really spoke to me is the following, written in the late 1800’s:

“Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.” –from William Temple’s Readings in St John’s Gospel.

I like this definition because it emphasizes the fact that worship should involve every aspect of our being, and it should result in an intense adoration of our God that is reflected in everything we do. It’s not something that should be reserved for Sunday morning, and it doesn’t have to involve music – although music is a great way to express our adoration to our God.

If you’re married, think about the way you felt when you first fell in love with your spouse. You were likely consumed by that love (I know that I was!), and you were intensely focused on getting to know that person, on finding ways to spend time with them, and on showing them how much you cared. And, it was obvious to anyone who was watching that you adored the person you were with.

That kind of passion – that first love, if you will – should be evident in our worship of our God. And, it should show on our faces and in our lives. Think of Moses when he came down from the mountain after receiving the Ten Commandments. It says in Exodus 34:29, “…his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord.” All of the people were able to see that he was changed because he had spent time in the presence of God. The same should be true of us.

Are we living a lifestyle of worship? Are we pursuing God the way we would pursue our first love? Are we changed in a way that says to everyone around us that we have spent time in the presence of the Lord today? Those are tough questions, but they’re the ones that I’ve been asking myself recently.

Worship Wednesday

I have found that some of the best teaching - and learning - moments that I have with my children happen when we're driving around in our car. Most of the time, I have the radio tuned to KLOVE, and most of the time, at least one of us is singing along. This week, the song Starry Night by Chris August came on the radio, and I heard my 10-year old daughter asking her little sister: "Do you know what it means when he says 'plank-filled eye'?" My ears perked up because 1) I had never noticed that particular lyric although I've heard this song many times and 2) I wanted to hear her explanation. So, she proceeded to explain the scripture in Matthew where it admonishes us not to point out the speck in someone else's eye when we have a plank in our own eye. She further explained that this means that we shouldn't criticize someone for doing something bad when we've probably done something worse ourselves.

I was pretty impressed that she had heard the lyric, connected it with the scripture, and gave a sound explanation of what it meant - all on her own! It just goes to show you that you never know what your kids are actually picking up. What seems like background noise to us may be making a lasting impression on their hearts, so we need to be careful about what we allow them to see and hear. That is just one of the many reasons why I'm thankful that we have so much great Christian music available to us.

So, with that lengthy explanation, here is the song - Starry Night:

Worship as Missions

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.”

I love this quote from John Piper's book Let the Nations Be Glad. I first heard Steve Hawthorne teach on it when I took the Perspectives course in 1996, and since then, it’s been central to my thinking about both of those subjects – worship and missions. The phrase that really resonated with me is this: “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”

You may be thinking - could that really be true? We have awesome worship at our church every Sunday. And, while that’s one aspect of worship, I don’t think that’s what Piper is referring to in this statement. I think that he is referring to an attitude of worship – a lifestyle of worship – that is lived out every day and in every aspect of our lives.

God created us for His glory (Isaiah 43:6-7), and His greatest desire – His end goal, if you will - is for every tribe, tongue, and nation to glorify His name. He even says in Isaiah 48:11 that He will not yield His glory to another. When He is glorified – when His name is lifted up – He will draw all men to Him. It is our responsibility as His representatives here on earth to insure that His name is glorified. That’s where worship meets missions. While we may excel at worshipping Him inside the walls of a church building on Sunday morning, are we living a life on Monday through Saturday that glorifies Him in such a way that men and women are drawn to Him as a result? I know that I fall short many times and in many ways.

Through our worship, we can have a part in drawing others to worship Him, so that serves to make us all missionaries. Our job, then, is to keep worshipping Him with our hearts and our lives, in spirit and in truth – sharing the story of His glory through our words and our lives - until the day finally comes when ALL peoples are united in worshipping Him.

“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Habakkuk 2:14