Keep It Simple
Welcome to 2019. Many of my friends told me they were glad to see 2018 go away. Actually when I was on the road playing music NEW YEARS EVE was a big deal! With all the excitement and anticipation of ringing in the New Year, I never felt excited about New Year's Eve, I was always sad about the year, which had just passed. And to be completely transparent our family had a rough 2018, so this year I was ready to move on to the New Year.
Everyone seems to make resolutions in January and we normally break them by February. I decided this year I would keep it simple. I would start walking, drink water instead of soda and watch my portion size on my meals and I could lose weight. Ok we are the third week in and my alarm clock goes off at 6am and I walk 5 days a week for 2 miles and have been drinking mostly water and I have lost 10 pounds. I have found myself at peace walking /praying in the mornings and I do feel better, the 6am alarm is annoying but I have gotten through it. Now the trick is in a month will I still be doing it?
Do you have a goal or a resolution you are trying to keep? Many of the new resolutions consist of going to church more often, read more of the Bible, lose weight, be healthier and start exercising or maybe learn a new hobby. Whatever it is you have got to keep a goal in mind and try to reach that goal.
Psalm 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.
The challenge to myself for this year is daily. I want to be a person who says, “ I am glad I did that” rather being the person who said, “I wish I had”. Now, just to be clear I am not signing up for skydiving or anything like that. It can be as simple as opening the door for someone or helping my neighbor. When I end my day I want to be able to say there was more “I am glad I did that” than “I wish I had”. If I can say that I feel I have won that day. Never have more than two days where I did not “Win the Day”. If I can just keep it simple I will become a better person.
Good luck with your goals for this New Year. How many “I am glad I did that” will you have?
The Other Book In The Pew
I was trying to make space in my garage over the winter break and came across some boxes labeled “downstairs books” that had remained unopened since we moved to Florida. When I opened them I found, amongst many other books, several hymnals from the Church of the Nazarene. It was at that moment that I realized I probably had a problem. For whatever reason, at some point, I thought it was an excellent idea to collect hymnals (Marie Kondo would be so disappointed in me). I would have collected United Methodist Hymnals too, but there’s only one and it was published in 1989.
Yep, 30 years ago the UMC received it’s first and only(ish) hymnal. Several things have contributed to the lack of new hymnals. The prevalence of good projectors that can display lyrics and liturgy, the cost of physical books, the availability of lyrics and information online, and the increasing number of new songs. In one sense, as soon as you publish a hymnal it’s already out dated. While the UMC hymnal was published in 1989, it was approved in 1988. The latest song that mad it’s way into the Hymnal was “Hymn of Promise” by Natalie Sleeth in 1986. (For a modern comparison, if we released an official hymnal this year, Good Good Father would be just as old).
I’m old enough to remember singing out of hymnals on a regular basis. My dad was a minister of music for my entire childhood and I don’t think there was ever a Sunday when a hymn wasn’t sung in some form. I still love several hymns, and whenever I actually attempt to piddle around on the piano, it’s usually to the hymnal. But even with my deep connections to the hymns, I’m ok with the fact that my kids will likely never sing out of a hymnal in their life.
Even just typing that seems weird and like a violation of some deep, universally understood rule. But the more I think of it, the less sure I am that there will ever be a need for them to sing out of one. I’m sure they will learn the great classics, they already have been exposed to parts of the hymnal I never used as a child (the Great Thanksgiving was new to me when I became a Methodist), but I’m not as worried about them learning all the ins and outs of hymns as I am them appreciating the poetical and musical complexity of them (and whatever other songs we sing in church). Take lyrics like “Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise / Thou mine Inheritance, now and always / Thou and Thou only, first in my heart / High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art” (6th century) and compare them to “Jesus is the rock and he rolls my blues away / bop shoe bop, shoe bop whoo” (1974). We can do better than that. Which is why I’m grateful for the modern songs that still embrace theologically accurate, poetical, and beautiful melodies.
In the end though, it’s not even about the music or the poetry. It’s about the God that the songs are glorifying. It’s been 30 years since ink met paper and formed our hymnal, but we could sing for a thousand more years and still have new songs to sing about God’s love. Our worship isn’t limited to what is inside a book, but rather basking in the presence of a limitless God.
So That...
As a borderline millennial, I am in the unique position of seeing the humor in some of the crazy things millennials do and also the crazy side of what some of the older generations accuse the millennial of. One of my personal favorites are companies blaming millennials for killing the fabric softener and laundry detergent industry. One large company even said that millennials don’t know what fabric softener is used for and so that’s why they don’t buy it. Here’s a bit of a confession, I don’t really know what fabric softener is used for, so they weren’t completely wrong. But, if I were going to take a wild guess, I would say that it softens fabrics. I’m aware it probably does much more than that. I would assume it also conditions the fibers of your clothes, helps them to last longer, and because of the “softening” makes them more comfortable to wear. Confession #2- I have never bought fabric softener in my adult life. When I have used it, I can tell that the towels seem to be a bit more fluffy but that’s about it. And because having fluffy towels is low on my priority list, I (like most millennials) choose not to spend extra money on fabric softener. Millennials also are more likely to wear clothes more often between washing. This can potentially sound way more gross than it is, but according to cleaninginstitute.org you can wear a pair of jeans three times before you need to wash them.
In short, millennials aren’t against people using fabric softener or washing their clothes after every individual use, they just have a different expectation of how much money it should cost to wear clean clothes. It can get all sorts of confusing. There are some who have very different definitions of clean, there are some who make their own laundry detergent in 5 gallon buckets for less than $20 a year, and then there are some who are actually against the chemicals in some laundry detergent products. It’s not like millennials planned to take out an industry or to change expectations, but many of them came to the same conclusion for a variety of different reasons.
Why is any of this important? Well, it’s not. At least talking about fabric softener isn’t really that important (unless you’re in the fabric softener business). But what is important is that for all of their quirks, millennial are at least good at asking “Why?”. Why are we spending tens of thousands of dollars on a college education that no longer provides the job opportunities that it did 10 years ago? Why haven’t wages gone up proportionately with the cost of living? Why are kids eating tide pods? Asking why is extremely important.
Almost as important is the phrase “So that…” For every “Why” there should be a “So that”. Why do you brush your teeth? So that my teeth are clean, healthy, and more importantly so that they don’t fall out. Why do we have a thrift store as one of the ministries at our church? So that we can have money to pour back into our community, helping meet their financial needs and point them back towards Jesus. Hopefully you can see the pattern by now. For everything we do at the church, someone is eventually going to ask us why we do that. Why do we eat bread and grape juice once a month? Why are we doing a fall festival on Oct. 28th? Why do you need Jesus? These aren’t just trivial questions, there is a lot of complexity, depth, and beauty in them. There is a reason why we do everything we do, and ultimately that reason is so that we can be better followers of Jesus. But sometimes you have to work to get there. Sometimes you have to ask a lot of whys and get through a lot of so thats, but the important part is that you are thinking about it.
The Last Straw
I would never have thought that something that weighs one sixty-seventh of an ounce would cause so much hatred. If you’re like me, ounces are already confusing (why are there 16 in a pound, it makes no sense. And don’t even get me started on why fluid ounces are completely different). Then you throw in a horrible fraction on top of that, and it’s hard even to quantify what it means. For the record, it means that it’s 1/1072 of a pound, or in other words, you would need 1072 straws to make one pound. That’s right. I’m talking about straws.
You’ve probably seen in the news or on Facebook that several cities and companies are moving away from the plastic straw. What was meant to be a small step towards protecting the planet and especially ocean life has turned into a huge debate. Here are some of the facts that have emerged.
There are roughly 7.5 million plastic straws around America’s shoreline.
There can are up to 8.3 billion plastic straws on the entire world's coastlines.
There are nearly 9 million tons of plastic trash that ends up in the ocean each year.
By piece, straws make up only 4% of the plastic waste produced.
By weight, they make up only 2,000 tons of the 9 million tons of plastic waste each year.(Source)
If you were to do a little bit of math, you could figure out that American straws account for less than 0.1% of the straws in the oceans, and 0.00000022% of the total weight of plastic in the ocean. If you are pro straw, those are some good numbers for you. So basically, the argument has become something along the lines of side A saying “American’s throw 7.5 million straws into the ocean each year, we should do something about it” and side B saying “That’s only 0.00000022% of the plastic waste, it’s not a big deal”.
Straw debates might also include something about money or people needing them. Plastic straws are super cheap, usually about half a cent. A paper straw is five times as expensive at two and a half cents. So yes, your straw budget would go up five times, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s still cheap (and yes I just used the same argument from above about percentage wise it’s not a big deal). And it's true that kids and some people with particular disabilities need straws to drink. Paper straws meet that need, but even if there were no straws provided, you can purchase metal or reusable silicone straws from Amazon for less than a dollar a piece and bring them with you.
I struggled with deciding where to go from here. I thought about the old story about a girl throwing starfish back into the ocean (the bottom line is even though she can’t save them all it makes a difference for the ones she can save), I thought about rehashing the “what would Jesus do” thing that I kind of covered in this blog post from a few months ago. However, I think I need to talk about buts for now.
At its core, this issue is about whether or not using plastic straws is the best thing for our planet. There is no way to say that it is. Everything that follows that simple question becomes a “but.” BUT paper straws taste gross (they do taste different). BUT people with disabilities need them. BUT plastic straws are the cheapest. BUT I like my straws. BUT they don’t even make up a significant percentage of the ocean plastic waste. All of those things might be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that plastic straws aren’t good for the sea turtles in the wild.
This principle applies to so many other aspects of life that matter more than a piece of plastic that’s .42 grams (see how much easier metric is). Here’s some simple questions for you. Is spending time with your kids more important than spending time on your cell phone? Are we supposed to love our neighbors? Should we spend time with God? The answer to all of those is yes. When it becomes that simple, it’s like a punch in the gut when you want to add on a “but” to justify playing candy crush instead of playing with your kid. Or trying to explain why an extra 10 minutes of sleep is more important than praying to God. When life gets complicated, make it simpler by asking the fundamental questions. You still might not find the answer you’re looking for, but you’ll find something along the way.
Model for Faith
On August 13, 2004, at 10:15 p.m. my wife and I and our dog Penny were covered up with a mattress in the center closet of our house as we hunkered down as hurricane Charlie bared down on our neighborhood. At 2:30 a.m. we walked out of the house to be overwhelmed by the smell of fresh cut wood.
Twelve oak trees were on the ground along our neighborhood. When daylight came, we surveyed the neighborhood, and a tornado had torn the clay tiles off of our neighbor's house ten houses away and slung them into homes next to it. All of the people in the neighborhood came together, and we had the road cleared in a few hours so we could get out. Although we were out of power for eight days in the heat of August, we all helped one another.
The sad thing was when everything got back to “normal” we tend to go back to our cocoons. When our backs are against the wall, we look to other people for help. The goodness of people shines best when our backs are against the wall.
During the past two months, I have witnessed the grip of cancer on my mother. On July 12th cancer took her. However, The cross has the final say. I have witnesses glimpse’s of heaven as she spoke to us.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; Trust also in me. In my Fathers house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Certainly, I am not the first to lose a parent, but it does not mean there is not grief. The disciple’s grief was turned to joy in John chapter 16. Jesus is trying to explain to the disciples he will no longer be with them. Jesus explains even at birth the mother goes through unbearable pain, but she forgets the anguish when her baby is born it turns to joy. During the whole conversation with the disciples, Jesus says with astonishment “You believe at last.” Here are the disciples who have seen miracles, eaten, prayed, and traveled with Jesus. And now they finally believed.
Later in John’s gospel Thomas (doubting Thomas), Thomas says “Until I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand in his side, I will not believe it.” And a week later Jesus appears to Thomas and tells him to put his fingers here and reach out your hand and put it to my side. STOP DOUBTING AND BELIEVE.
Then Jesus says, “Because you have seen me, you have believed, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Our hope and faith are in Jesus Christ and his promises.
“We live by faith, not by sight”
In our worse time when we are mad at God and when we question his ways, and it is difficult to have faith. Patience is the hardest virtue, but if we can look back on how God has worked in our lives, it is easier to have faith.
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”
I do know in the past few months I have a closer relationship with my sister, I know that would have made my mom happy. We are keeping a close eye on my dad who is adjusting to a new reality after being married 67 years. Through it, all faith has led us through hard times and loss. We will find joy. My mom said to each of us “When I pass to go ahead and morn for a week, then after that get on with your life.”
She was my perfect model for Faith.
Mike Conrad serves as our Worship Director. When he's not preparing for worship or playing an instrument, he enjoys spending time with his wife boating and fishing. Learn more about Mike here.