Lunch Prayer by John Monday

I was standing in line at the counter of Everybody’s Mom, my favorite greasy spoon within walking distance of the church, contemplating whether to have French fries or onion rings with my sandwich. It was lunch time with the normal bustle of people coming from the hospital making their way into and out of the café. I was alone in the line, and only vaguely aware of the people standing around me, when I noticed the couple in front of me move in an unusual way.

The man gently touched the elbow of the woman standing beside him, obviously steadying her, but as soon as he touched her she recoiled in pain. The motion was unusual enough that it pulled my mind away from the great onion ring debate and fully focused me on them. The young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, tenderly said, “Sorry Mom,” and they moved a step closer to the counter. Those were the only words I heard them say, but the pair held my complete attention for the next twenty minutes. The ashen color of the woman’s skin, the ill-fitting hat covering a head with thin splotchy hair, and the close proximity of Florida Hospital’s Cancer Institute were all the clues necessary to understand, at least partially, their situation.

After I ordered I sat at a table across the room from the mother and son, out of hearing but in plain view. I have no idea of their story, but I saw life in the interaction between the two that words could not have communicated with any greater clarity.

Was he a young man seriously contemplating death, perhaps for the first time? Was he considering harsh adolescent words that he wished he had never uttered? Was he thinking of a future without the mother that he thought would never leave?

Was she considering all the things that she wanted to teach him but hadn’t found the time? Was she thinking of his future wife, a women she might never meet? Was she thinking of the grand children she might never know?

I don’t know the specifics of their situation, but the love between them was palpable as were the broken hearts on their sleeves. So I sat there, thankful to be alone, reminded that we are in a world full of beauty and broken hearts, and I prayed.

I prayed for them, and I prayed for me. A prayer that I now extend to you: If you are comfortable and comforted in the heart of Christ, may your heart be broken for those that His heart is broken for, and if your heart is broken and full of fear, may you find comfort and rest in Christ. Amen.

John Monday

How Robots Will Take Over the World Unless We Stop Them by David Achata

I love science fiction, and robots fascinate me. My wife thinks it’s silly—but I think she’s wrong. In the new movie Terminator Salvation, Robots rule the world while the humans are the insurgents, trying to take back their planet. I can relate with this movie because I feel like I’m trying to take back a world run by robots

I was talking with my friend Zach today, and he was telling me about a book he’s working on. The idea is about how to prevent people from becoming religious robots. That got me thinking about how the idea behind robots is that they are supposed to make our lives easier. However, the truth is that the things we create often end up owning us.

I think Religion is like that. Religion isn’t bad, but it can get bad really fast. Religion is like the framework of a house. It gives me boundaries to live my life in, but it’s not my life. My life requires me to think, move and adapt, not to polish framework. Yet, I find people all around me who are religious robots. The framework that was supposed to empower them to work out how to live life has ended up owning them.

Perhaps unconsciously, we sometimes preserve a culture that’s long gone when the call of Christ is to create a new culture for a new time and a new people. His culture is a culture of love, compassion and life transformation, not robotics. Let’s win the world back from the religious robots.

David Achata

Growing Up by Jeff Cinquemani

The last few months for me have been painful to say the least. However, though the physical pain is centered in my back with a herniated disc, the real pain is in my "psyche". To now have to "sit on the sidelines," so to speak, while others are actively involved in sports or recreations is just not me. And, though my wife may not entirely believe me, it truly does pain me to have her lifting the water jugs while I stand and watch.

It’s well over a year now since I've turned 50, and during that time I had one of my physician friends tell me that I now will have to exercise twice as hard just to maintain my current stamina and strength. He said that everyday cells are deteriorating faster than they are building, and if that wasn't bad enough, I also found out that – with 50 – there comes a slower recovery time after exhaustion, a quicker fatigue time during exertion, and of course, a longer time to heal after any kind of set-back.

Talk about depressing! Well, I thought I would do a little investigating on my own, and sure enough, it really is depressing. Statistics show that, the closer you get to the "50 mark", the higher the rate of depression among both men and women. Now it was obvious that I was not the only one who researched this statistic. Everywhere I looked on the Internet were companies all targeting their ads at me with products, procedures, and programs all promising me a better, newer, healthier "me".

Wow! How engrossing this could get. I mean with enough money and a little help from my friends, I could actually turn back time – well at least make it look like it for a while.

And that is where I stopped. I thought, Wait a minute. If 50 is the proverbial mark that someone has finally grown up, then maybe I should. Maybe there's a really good thing about turning 50. Maybe that is where I stop worrying about me "growing up" and start focusing on something else for a change. What if I turned my attention from my adventure to someone else's? What if I thought first about someone else's prosperity and preservation instead of my own? And what if I looked first at how my experience could help others instead of making it my excuse for entitlement.

I told my wife a while ago, “Look, if all I talk about when I get old is my "regularity", my medications, and my ailments, then just shoot me.” Well, she hasn't bought a gun yet, but you can bet I'm still gonna get this back taken care of before she signs up for target practice.

Jeff Cinquemani

Could Sabbath Become an Idol? by Andy McDonald

As those who observe "Sabbath" on Saturday, what is meant when we say, "We are Sabbath worshipers?" Does that mean we worship God on Sabbath or that we actually worship Sabbath? When those who assemble for worship on Sunday are called "Sunday worshipers", is this an accusation of worshiping a day over God's seventh-day designation?

How possible is it that people might "Remember the Sabbath" while forgetting the God who said, "remember?" Is there a sense that Sabbath-keeping merits some favor from or merit with God? How far apart is resting as obedience performance vs. resting as a reminder of our "rest" in Jesus Christ for our salvation? If we are loyal to the Sabbath over love to God and our neighbors, has it become an idol? Will our worship focus on God/Father, Son & Holy Spirit, or will we elevate Sabbath higher than God ever intended?

In the last days, is loyalty to Sabbath more important than loyalty to the Lord of the Sabbath? Might it be a good exercise to check if we're making Sabbath an idol?

Andy McDonald

The Principles of God and the Scientific Method by Chad Hess

I have read several books that have talked about our relationship with God and the Christian preoccupation with principles. John Eldredge talks about how we seek to derive principles so we can control God's wildness. This is not to say there is no virtue in trying to understand the principles in a passage. I do think there is some legitimacy in it, but it can be taken to an extreme and be made an end in itself. But our search for principles can be quite closely entwined with the modern emphasis on the scientific method. One of the hallmarks of the scientific method is that a finding must be repeatable. If it is a true scientific fact, the results can be repeated if the same circumstances happen.

Do we try to apply this scientific method to God? If something is true about the way God works, then the result can be repeated in similar scenarios. If God never changes and God never makes a mistake, shouldn't we expect Him to respond in the same way? If the same result isn't repeated, then maybe that original result was imagined, or misunderstood or whatever. It certainly wasn't theological fact, because if it was, it would happen again. And I'm not just talking about miracles; I'm talking about the everyday workings of God. But isn't this approach an attempt to control God? If we can figure out "the way things work", then we can control things ourselves. Because when we're really honest with ourselves, there have been times when we wished God had done things differently. So if we can figure out all the principles by which God operates, we can manipulate situations to turn out the way we want them.

The problem with all this is that God is a person. He is a living being who is just as capable of free will as we are. And He doesn't like being controlled any more than you and I do. Besides this, we can never fully understand God and the way He works. If I could completely understand God, especially at my limited knowledge of 28 years, He wouldn't be a very great God. Again, I'm not saying there are not principles at work in the way God relates to us. I'm just saying there is a danger in putting our trust in those principles. Instead we should get to know this God as a person (not a fact), and trust in that.

Chad Hess