strangers and aliens

The world gets smaller
Fewer faces, fewer places
to see
to interact
to be known.

Admitting I am a
Stranger and Alien,
Seeking a better country.
Not at home,
my heart is made for a journey
to Somewhere Else.

But the Kingdom has come here too
and I am also Not a stranger,
Not an alien.
I belong to God
And to you.

The world gets bigger
More laughter, more joy in my heart
for this little beauty,
Imaging God,
His goodness and grace,
Hope and a future.

release the hounds!

we worship at a wonderful little episcopal church, nestled in the blue-blooded, ligonier countryside. the drive to church is beautiful no matter what season, but it's also a little odd to drive past all the horses, gated hunting land, and i kid you not, a private polo tower. this afternoon on our way home, dylan and i had to slow our roll for a giant beagle crossing! seems someone was training a slew of thirty to forty dogs to sniff out the trail for upcoming fox hunts. where the heck do i live?

cotton baby

if you had told me even a year ago that i'd be cloth diapering my baby, i wouldn't have believed you. not because i wasn't into caring for the earth--even in middle school i'd lug my friends' and my snapple or arizona bottles home from the mall, not wishing that any should end up in the landfill. but cloth diapering? who does that in 2008?

we had a couple of accquaintances who were doing it, and i started doing my research. the more i read, the more appealing it sounded, and so jim and i decided to give it a try.

it's still pretty new. dylan is almost three months and it's only been about a week, but so far so good. i'm staying home with her and she is our only child, so i have the time. and what's another load of wash on top of all the baby clothes and burp cloths that already in pretty regular rotation?

i like that she doesn't have the chemicals against her skin, from disposables or from industrially-cleaned cloth. i like that it is reducing our waste exponentially. it's nice to pull clean diapers out of the dryer and know that another heap of diapers isn't sitting somewhere in a landfill not decomposing because of a little effort on our part. and dylan is as happy as can be!

this too shall be made right

last night at jubilee, derek webb closed a great set with "this too shall be made right," a song that is particularly striking:

there’s a time for peace and there is a time for war
a time to forgive and a time to settle the score
a time for babies to lose their lives
a time for hunger and genocide
this too shall be made right

he's lifting from ecclesiastes:  a time for every purpose under heaven.  a time to be born, a time to die.  a time to kill, a time to heal.  a time to love, a time to hate.  a time for war, a time for peace.

it's easy to look at those verses, to shrug our shoulders at the mess of the world and think, yeah, there is a time for all of that.  it's in the bible, and that's how it is.  

but not everything in scripture is prescriptive--telling us how to live. sometimes scripture is descriptive--exploring what life is like in a fallen, broken world among fallen, broken people.

just because scripture says that there is a time to kill, that's not necessarily indicative of how we are to live as followers of the risen Christ.

this too shall be made right, and not just not just one day in heaven.  a few years ago, derek webb spoke at another gathering in D.C. for pentecost, and he said something else that echoes in my heart still:

We are called to be people who push back the effects of the Fall.

when Jesus said to pray, your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, he meant those words.

we have a mission as Christians to be about the work of establishing the Kingdom of God here--in the flesh, among people, now.  there isn't time for trafficking, war, poverty, racism, oppression, or even death.  the Kingdom of God is about restoration and reconciliation of people to God, one another, and the earth.  it's about radical love and jubilee.

one day, all things will be made right.  

may that hope and resurrection promise invigorate our work today. 

your Kingdom come, Lord, on earth as it is in heaven.