The CCC Compost Pile

So, I built a compost pile at my house the other day.  As I was building it I thought to myself “Self, Community Christian Church is kind of like a compost pile”.  Basically a compost pile (or at least the one I did) works as follows:  You start off with a bunch of tree limps, branches and the like.  That forms your base.  You do this so that air can flow under the pile, which speeds up the process.  Then you make a “nest” out of leafs and grass clippings, that sort of thing.  This allows for airflow from the sides.  (Doing it this way you don’t have to turn the pile).  Then you pile in your garbage, which is just about anything but meat and dairy.  I think I had some egg shells, a few bananas, some lettuce and other various vegetables and bread product.  After you put your trash in the nest you cover it up with leafs and the whole process starts over.  Nest, trash, leafs.  Nest, trash, leafs. Etc.   Then the soil heats up, the bugs and microorganisms do their thing and before long you have great soil for your garden, to make things grow.  Then the stuff you grow eventually ends up back in the compost pile and becomes fertile soil for next years garden.  It really is amazing how it works.  You’ve got all this worthless left over table scraps that are magically converted to rich fertile soil.  Is the Church any different?  No, if it’s working right, not really.  We’ve got our base God.  Then we surround ourselves with a nest or support system: small groups, serving teams, friends that will help us.  Then we put ourselves in the nest.  Now, I won’t go so far as to call us “trash”.  But let’s face it, a lot of times there’s not much going on in us that isn’t trash, or I guess I’ll call it sin.  After we’re in the next we cover ourselves with Jesus and God’s amazing grace.  We learn to love God and love others.  And before long we develop into a rich fertile Christ follower.  Then we can remove ourselves from the pile and go out and help others grow.  And just like soil we eventually end up back in the compost pile, because we are always changing and growing to become even more like Christ.  CCC, bring your trash and compost with the rest of us!

Shameless Plug

Here is a link to a blog hosted by my good friend Andrew Marshall.  Of course, as I type this my guess is the same 6 people that read my blog probably got his e-mail about his new blog.  Then it dawned on me that we have quite the little incestuous blogging community.  Then it dawned on me that didn’t sound right.  What I meant to say is that there are about a dozen or so people that just all follow the same blogs.  And then it dawned on me all the people following the same blogs see each other all the time and could just talk about stuff instead of blogging about it.  But then it dawned on me that it’s more fun to be literarily cleaver on the internet then it is in person.  So my final dawning is that blogging is a good thing, no matter how incestuous it is.  Wait, that sounded bad again.  Well, you know what I mean.  Go look at Andrew’s blog, it is always entertaining.

Pass the potatoes

I thought this was interesting.  And I always thought my mom cooked us dinner because she loved us.  Come to find out she was just trying to ruin my teenage years.  Darn Her!  Guess my daughters (and son I guess) can expect home cooked meals from now until their 40.

Anonymous Comments

I want to thank the anonymous commenter to my last blog.  It's always nice to know that someone reads my mindless babblings.  However, you will notice I didn’t post your comment.  I’ve made it my policy to not post anonymous comments.  They’re usually very negative and sometimes nasty and obviously posted by people that have WAY too much time on their hands.  And I’m a positive person and try to avoid negativity if at all possible.  I’m not given to such things as anger and rants.  Give peace a chance is what I say!  Ok, those last three statements are a lie.

Anyway, I started to post the last anonymous comment I got, because it was positive, but thought that to be a double standard.  I mainly don’t post them because I’m the type of person that doesn’t mind expressing my opinion and doesn’t mind people knowing it is me that expressed it.  And, yes, that does sometimes get me in trouble, but I’m a pretty transparent guy.  I understand why some people comment anonymously:

1) They are too scared to put there name

2) It’s my mom and she doesn’t realize she can leave her name

3) It’s my mom and she doesn’t want people to know I’m her offspring

3) They don’t want people to know they wasted their time by reading my blog

4) Their name may in fact be Anonymous

So, to the 4 people that read my blog, keep sending in those comments, anonymously or not, and I’ll read them.  But if you want to share your wisdom with the world (or the other 3 people reading the blog) you gotta leave your name.

 

Hellfire and Brimstone

I had to have one of those tuff conversations with my son last week. He got busted doing something he should not have been doing. Of course I found out about it and had to sit him down and talk to him. At first he said he didn’t do anything. Then he said he did something but didn’t want to tell me because he was afraid he would get in trouble. Then he told me he was embarrassed and didn’t want to tell me. Finally, on his own and after many tears, he confessed what he had done. During this whole process I assured him that I was not mad at him. I simply wanted to talk to him about it. I wanted to answer any questions he might have. And I wanted him to understand that although I wasn’t mad at him and he wasn’t going to receive any punishment, what he did was in fact wrong and shouldn’t happen again.

Two things stuck me during and after our conversation. First I was reminded of all the times I’ve lied when I’ve sinned. I’ve lied to others and I’ve lied to God, as if you can really do that. I thought about all the great men in the Bible that lied to and tried to hide from God. We lie and hide because of fear. Fear of the consequence of our actions. I came to the realization that my son’s first instinct is to think of me in terms of punishment. Yes, there should be punishment for actions. But at the same time there should be grace and forgiveness. Now, by no means am I comparing myself to God, but I do believe He uses instances like these to give us a small glimpse of what He is like. He is able to dish out any punishment He pleases, and we deserve it. But instead, if we go to Him, He comes to us with love, grace and forgiveness. I could have severely punished my son for his actions, he deserved it, but I realized that instead of punishment he needed relationship.

And that brings me to the second thought I had. I thought about all the people out there that won’t set foot inside a church because of the fear of the consequences of their actions. They are so far from God that they 1) can’t imagine God accepting them, and 2) if He does except them, what form of punishment is God going to cast down upon them. And if that doesn’t get them then there is the fear of how others in the church will view them. There are broken people out there that have no hope of becoming whole because of fear; fear that has been put into their head from Christians and the church. Because the God that I read about is not known as a god of fear, He is a god of love.

If my son continues to view me only as a father who only dishes out punishment I have no hope of training him to become the Godly man I know he is. There will always be a great chasm between us. In the same way, if people only think of God as a person only interested in dishing out punishment they’re going to stay away from Him and the church. Trust me when I say that God is much more interested in having a relationship with you then punishing you. Yes, there are eternal consequences for your actions, but we must first give people the opportunity for relationship. Let’s present the God of love instead of the God of punishment. How do I know He would want us to do that? Because He did it. When we deserved nothing more then an eternity in Hell, He sent Jesus. He had every right to send punishment, but he sent love. God is love. No matter who you are or what you’ve done, God is love.