Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong | Video on TED.com

Why it's more important to love than it is to be right... because you could be wrong.

Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong | Video on TED.com

How to Become a Friend of God

       by Patty Mapes Executive Director of Nexus Connection

The Bible sets the goal for us to be a friend of God. You may have heard people talk about what a great relationship they have with God. No longer being young I have learned to not just listen to what people say but to look for the evidence, to look for the fruit in their lives. Does the person speaking reflect who God is? Does the person have good friends? Have they had some of the same friends for years? What does this person know about being a friend of God, or anyone else?

You see, it has occurred to me that if we cannot be a friend to someone that we can see, touch, feel and hear audibly, we might not have the tools or capacity to have a friendship and deep communion with someone whom we cannot always see, touch, feel and hear audibly.

Would you agree that the same capacity for the attributes of friendship with each other, such as loyalty, honoring others, generosity, acting with accountability, and trustworthiness, are also required to become a friend of God? Would God have a friend who does not listen to what He says, is not loyal to Him, or not trustworthy? I think not. He will love us, He will care about us, but I don’t believe that He will call us His friends under those circumstances.

Imagine a line or continuum called Relationship. At one end of the line would be the beginning point we will call awareness (of another) and at the far end of that line would be intimacy. In between we move from awareness to acquaintance, to social friends, to advisors, to intimate friends.

Process of Relationship

Awareness  →  Acquaintance   →  Social  →   Advisor →  Intimate →

Levels of Relationship:

Awareness:        We know the person exists. They might be a celebrity, or a neighbor or someone who rides the same train as we do.

Acquaintance:   We are not only aware of this person but we have met them, know their name, and perhaps a little about them. They may work where we work, live in our neighborhood or have children at school with our children. They can also be people we met at church or at the grocery store. Some people we are aware of are also our acquaintances.

Social:                   This is the category of friends that we often think of first when asked about our friends. These are the people that we talk to regularly, go out with or have into our homes. They know more about us than our acquaintances and we may talk about some things that are important to us, or we may not. We care about these people and they care about us in varying degrees. Some of our acquaintances are also social friends.

Advisors:             Advisor is not a perfect word here, but I have used it for emphasis to describe a special subset of our social friends. Advisors are the people that we have some sense or level of accountability to. They are the truer friends than others; they will tell us the truth, even when it hurts or is unpopular. They stand for many of the things we stand for and believe in many of the things that we believe in. This doesn’t mean that we are identical, but we have a relationship based on things that we share a common and have a high value for. They love us and weep when we weep, and rejoice when we rejoice. Some of our social friends are also our advisors.

Intimate:             Intimate friends are the fewest of all of course. They know us deeply. They know things that are private and most personal and they are our most valuable friends (relationships). These are people who will sacrifice for us, and maybe even give their lives for us. Some of our advisors, are also intimate friends.

One characteristic of this process or levels of relationship that might jump out to you is that as we move to higher levels of friendship, the subset of friends that fall into the next category is smaller.

My friend gave a going away party for someone once, and they joked about inviting the person’s hundred “best friends”. Sadly, if you have one hundred “best friends” you may really have none, because your best friends are going to fall far to the right of center on this continuum. The honoree was long on acquaintances and, but lacked the understanding and the skills to cultivate deeper relationships. Our best friends are our intimate friends which should include( but not be limited to) our spouses.

Another important characteristic of these levels is that the attributes of friendship given above, increase as you move from left to right. You may have no trust for a person that you are simply aware of while they are waiting for the same train as you, but you will have a great deal of trust for your advisors, and more for your intimate friends.

One of the reasons that we need our natural friends is that healthy and enduring friendships nurture in us the very attributes that we need to be a friend of God.

John 15:10-15 says, If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done–kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.

“I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature.

This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you.

This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends.

You are my friends when you do the things I command you.

I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father. [i]

Implicit in this scripture is the message that trustworthiness, the capacity to receive correction, the ability to be loyal in the face of personal detriment, a willingness to listen, to give our time in privacy to another and to share our innermost thoughts and feelings, are part of walking with God and being His friend. Walking with God is walking in communion with Him, endeavoring to see what He sees, and respond in the way that He is telling us to respond.

If you are walking in an intimate relationship with God today, perhaps you might express your gratitude sometime to those friends and mates who have helped you cultivate that capacity in your own life.

If you are not walking in the depth of relationship with God today that you truly desire, then go after Him. While you are pursuing Him, perhaps it would be good to also practice on the friends you have around you?

---

[i] “Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright � 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.”

Why Do Bad Things Happen?

I participated in a lively group discussion last night. A group of friends have been gathering for a few weeks now. We eat together, worship a bit and talk about... stuff. So last night I threw out the following question: “Why do bad things happen?”

Now all those assembled have been around church circles most of their lives. Through the years we’d all been exposed to various theologies and philosophies attempting to explain this age old question. Here are a few of the answers we came up with:

• We are reaping what we’ve sown
• We’re out of God’s will
• There's a lesson we need to learn
• It’s warfare, a spiritual attack
• It’s the effect of our sin
• It’s the effect of someone else’s sin
• It’s demonic payback or backlash for our good deeds
• The injustice experienced creates an opportunity for Divine justice
• A combination of the above explanations

My guess is that you could add a few additional items to this list.

So, here’s my point, when bad things happen – do we really know why? Do we know with a definitive certainty why it happened? I think not. If we’re uncertain why bad things happen to us, then we’re even less certain why they happen to others. That uncertainty is a very good reason for grace. Grace toward others and ourselves; grace and dramatically less judgment. Bad things happen and we don’t always know why. When bad things do happen may our default position be one of grace.

What say you?

.

Priceless Insights from the Left

I am a Closet Christian

At least, until now. Because in my circle, nothing is more embarrassing than being being religious.

By Ada Calhoun
Dec. 22, 2009

It was Sunday morning in my scruffy Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood, and I was wearing a dress. Walking to the subway, I ran into a friend heading home from yoga class. She wore sweats and carried her mat over her shoulder. "Where are you going so early all dressed up?" she asked, chuckling. "To church?" We shared a laugh at the absurdity of a liberal New Yorker heading off to worship.

The real joke? I totally was.

Inside the church, it's cool and quiet. I read the Collect of the day in the Book of Common Prayer, which urges us: "While we are placed among
things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall
 endure." My recent layoff no longer seems like the end of the world. I take Communion and exchange the peace and listen to the sermon. As I'm walking back up the aisle, I feel reoriented and calmer, the indignities of the week shift into perspective.

These moments are not only sacred; they are secret. Outside, on the steps of the downtown Manhattan church, I think I see someone familiar coming down the sidewalk, and I bolt in the other direction.

Why am I so paranoid? I'm not cheating on my husband, committing crimes or doing drugs. But those are battles my cosmopolitan, progressive friends would understand. Many of them had to come out -- as gay, as alcoholics, as artists in places where art was not valued. To them, my situation is far more sinister: I am the bane of their youth, the boogeyman of their politics, the very thing they left their small towns to escape. I am a Christian.

I certainly wasn't born one. I was raised bohemian in New York's East Village in the '80s. I was fascinated by religions but also baffled by them. (If anything, I assumed I was Jewish.) When I began traveling around the world alone at 18, I longed for a religious experience, something that would inspire me to cast my lot with a denomination the way you choose a political party. But nothing really clicked.

I got a taste of the divine at Hindu shrines in south India, and when Mother Teresa grabbed my head and blessed me while I was working for her ministry in Calcutta I felt a kind of electricity rush through my body. Later, when I almost died from amoebic dysentery in New Delhi, I did hallucinate that the Jesus poster on the wall of the clinic moved. But these experiences were no more formative than the Tolstoy books I read on those 24-hour train trips across India.

In college, I majored in Sanskrit and translated part of the Atharvaveda for my senior thesis. I studied Jewish history, Zen and Hinduism with equal interest. The closest thing to my religious sensibility back then was either Pure Land Buddhism ("the world is emptiness ... and yet") or Gnosticism (though my penchant for makeouts kept me from achieving their level of physical self-denial).

When I hit my early 20s I found existential gratification in that feeling at the end of the night, drunk and awake and looking out into the rain while the bar closed and not knowing what was going to happen next. I worshiped at the altar of the Replacements and had romances that only made sense in the context of a Paul Westerberg song. I felt closest to figuring things out when I drank too much coffee and smoked too many cigarettes and stayed up too late.

Sometime later I got married, and the priest with whom my husband and I did premarital counseling had firsthand experience of closing bars, but he also was smart and eloquent and fulfilled. He showed me the best side of Christianity. Not how it's right or just, but how -- and this may sound stupid, but it's what I think about religion in general -- it works.

All of us need help with birth and death and good and evil, and religion can give us that. It doesn't solve problems. It reminds you that, yes, those challenges are real and important and folks throughout history have struggled and thought about them too, and by the way, here is some profound writing on the subject from people whose whole job is to think about this stuff.

The idea of an eternal community brings me comfort: I like the image of a long table extending backward and forward in time, and everyone who's ever taken Communion is sitting at it. The Bible at the 1920s stone church where my husband and I were married was filled with the names of people in the community who'd married, been born and died. When my son was baptized in our church in a traditional Easter eve service, the light spreading from candle to candle through the pews of the dark church made me feel, at least for one moment, we were united in a sense of gratitude for new life and awe in the face of the numinous.

Oh, I don't know. Unless you're William James or Saint Catherine of Siena it's hard to talk about any of this without sounding dumb, or like a zealot, or ridiculous. And who wants to be lumped in with all the other Christians, especially the ones you see on TV protesting gay marriage, giving money to charlatans, and letting priests molest children? Andy Warhol went to mass every Sunday, but not even his closest friends knew he was a devout Catholic until his death. I get that.

"[Closeted Christianity] definitely exists in Manhattan, some Democratic corners in Washington, and I'd bet parts of Northern California," says Amy Sullivan, author of "The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap." Sullivan says after her book about the Christian left came out, "colleagues in New York were taking me out for these clandestine lunches and leaning across the table and whispering excitedly, 'Pssst! I'm one of them!'"

The Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity asked people how they felt about those outside their close friends and family knowing they were religious. About 2 percent said they didn't want people to know, and that percentage is higher among people with liberal politics and people, like me, who are part of Generation X.

Barry Kosmin at the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College says it's ridiculous that, in a city like New York, where there is a church on every corner, anyone would hide their religion. He says he was at a conference in Seattle recently where atheists complained about having to hide their lack of beliefs. "Everyone's paranoid!" he says.

But if you're in a place like New York City -- or Austin, Texas, or Portland, Ore., or Los Angeles -- the "new atheists" surround you. In October 2009, the atheist organization Big Apple Coalition of Reason (COR) started a poster campaign to celebrate non-belief. "A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?" reads one such poster. A similar campaign in London led by the bestselling author Richard Dawkins reads, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Writers like Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Victor J. Stenger -- and, of course, performers like Bill Maher -- get loads of press mocking the dummies gullible enough to believe some guy a couple thousand years ago was God's son. But come on. It's like shooting Christian fish car magnets in a barrel.

I'll give the atheists a lot: The Creation Museum is a riot. The psychos shooting up abortion clinics and telling gay couples they're going to hell are evil, and anyone of faith has an obligation to condemn them. Abominable stuff has been done in God's name for centuries. The Bible has a lot of crazy shit in it about stoning people for using the wrong salad fork. Up with science and reason!

And yet, atheists are at least as fundamentalist and zealous as any religious people I know, and they have nothing good to show for it: no stained glass, no great literature, no great art, no comfort in the face of death. Just dissipated Christopher Hitchens sounding off on "Larry King Live" and a stack of smug books with childishly provocative titles.

A lot of my best friends are atheists, and there's no reason they wouldn't be. They find what I get from religion elsewhere, like from music and art. Not long ago, I told a priest at my church that my friends equated religion with horrible things. I expected her to tell me I had some obligation to stop hiding my faith, but she said, pulling a scarf around her neck to hide her priest's collar, "Those preachers on the subways make me cringe." She said she prefers Saint Francis: "Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words."

I could reassure my atheist friends that the Episcopal Church is a force for equality and social justice. It ordained its first gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in 2003. It takes the Bible as a mandate to fight hunger and disease and to rebuild after disasters. I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other politically involved religious groups who take the gospel as an excuse to spread hate and support specific candidates and propositions should have their tax-free status taken away.

Maybe, though, apolitical Christianity is on the rise. The Obamas are now in office -- a good Christian family in the truest sense of the term -- and the right wing is more marginalized than it was a year ago. My friend, the young (and kind of ridiculously hot) priest the Rev. Astrid Storm, whom I used to edit at Nerve.com, says she's sensing more acceptance:

"When I said I was a priest, it was always a conversation stopper," she says. "Recently someone asked what I did, and when I told him he said, 'How interesting. There are a lot of exciting things happening right now in the Episcopal Church, aren't there?' The diversity of opinion people are reading about in the news -- about gay marriage, female priests, poverty issues -- are showing how Christianity isn't monolithic."

Christianity in the popular imagination is decreasingly linked with evangelicals, agrees John Spalding, founder of the SoMa Review, so it's freed up people who were once embarrassed to self-identify as Christians. "It's no longer like, 'You're just like Pat Robertson. Leave this dinner party,'" Spalding says.

But faith and religion are hard to talk about; maybe they're not necessary to talk about. Even though I am a feminist, I've always had a problem with the personal being political. It gave me a lot of anxiety back in the '90s. If I enjoyed a book with a titillating rape scene in it, did that mean I should be stripped of my membership in the Women's Action Coalition? If I liked wearing Blackberry Revlon lipstick and an off-the-shoulder shirt, was I a tool of the patriarchy?

And now, too, I wonder: When I go to church, am I liable for every monstrous thing every denomination has ever done in the name of Jesus? Am I allowed to get spiritual fulfillment from something that has been, and continues to be, so disastrously invoked by other people? Am I allowed to just go to church sometimes and read the Bible sometimes without wearing a huge cross necklace and checking an official box on forms?

But also, increasingly, I wonder: When I'm getting a ride from some friends and they start talking about how stupid religious people are and quoting lines from"Religulous," do I have an obligation to point out how reductive and bigoted they're being, the way I would if they were talking about a particular race? Increasingly I wonder if I should pipe up from the back seat and say, "Excuse me, but these fools you're talking about? I'm one of them."

-- By Ada Calhoun

Friendship

Friendship
by Dinah Craik

Oh, the comfort —
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person —
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

From "The Best Loved Poems of the American People" (1936)

(ht Queenswest)

To My Friends

I read these words and I think of you…
You know who you are…
Thank you for being my friend…
Thank you for loving me…
Tom


"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." ~ Bernard Meltzer.

‘A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.” ~ Fr. Jerome Cummings

“Remember, the greatest gift is not found in a store nor under a tree, but in the hearts of true friends.” ~ Cindy Lew

“Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure!” ~ Jewish Saying

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." ~ Elbert Hubbard

"Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure." ~ Jewish saying

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” ~ Aristotle

“Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.” ~ Albert Camus

"The only way to have a friend is to be one." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“Hold a true friend with both your hands.” ~ Nigerian Proverb

"A faithful friend is the medicine of life." ~ Apocrypha

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.” ~ Anonymous

“Friends are like melons; shall I tell you why? To find one good you must one hundred try.” ~ Claude Mermet

"Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil." ~ Baltasar Gracian (1647)

"Friendship needs no words." ~ Dag Hammarskjold.

"The best mirror is an old friend." ~ George Herbert

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” ~ Walter Winchell

Friends are needed both for joy and for sorrow. ~ Samuel Paterson

“A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.” ~ Anonymous

“Count your wealth with friends not your gold” ~ Anonymous

“Plant a seed of friendship; reap a bouquet of happiness.” ~ Lois L. Kaufman

"I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship!” ~ Pietro Aretino (1537)

"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit." ~ Aristotle

"A friend loves at all times." ~ Proverbs 17:17.

"Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it." ~ Cicero (44 B.C.)

"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost" ~ Charles Caleb Colton (1825)

"Friends show their love in times of trouble.” ~ Euripides (408 B.C.)

"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives." ~ Euripides (408 B.C.)

"A good friend is my nearest relation." ~ Thomas Fuller (1732)

"My friend is he who will tell me my faults in private." ~ Solomon Ibn Gabirol

"However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship." ~ La Rochefoucauld (1665)

"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care to acquire." ~ La Rochefoucauld (1665)

"Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love." ~ Charles Peguy

"There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom." ~ William Penn

"No man is useless while he has a friend." ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." ~ Mark Twain

An honest answer is the sign of true friendship~ Proverbs 24:26

"A true friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else." ~ Len Wein

"A friend is a present you give yourself." ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world. ~ Leo Buscaglia

“It's the ones you can call up at 4:00 a.m. that really matter.” ~ Marlene Dietrich

“Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.” ~ Samuel Paterson

“Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.” ~ Sicilian Proverb

“The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.” ~ Sydney Smith

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

“It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

“A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success!” ~ Doug Larson

“Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.” ~ Czech. Proverb

“Friendship is to be purchased only by friendship. A man may have authority over others, but he can never have their hearts but by giving his own.” ~ Thomas Wilson

“Good friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget.”

“A best friend is like a four leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have.“

“When it hurts to look back, and you're scared to look ahead, you can look beside you and your best friend will be there.”

“True friendship never ends because true friends are forever.”

Most people walk in and out of your life. But only friends leave footprints in your heart.

Simply Amazing

I’ve been a follower of Jesus for more than 30 years. Over the past three decade I have lived through spiritually good, bad and down right ugly times. Right now is one of the good times. God feels closer. It’s easier to pray, it’s easier to hear and to see. The word is alive to me. I’m purposefully savoring every moment this time because I have known those other times all too well.

The prophet Isaiah challenges us to “Seek the Lord while He may be found”. Then he finishes the verse by exhorting us to “…call on Him while He is near” (55:6). At least for me, right now, He is near and easily found.

I’m convinced that some of the fruit of our 40 days of city wide prayer and fasting has been a thinning of the veil between Heaven and Earth. I’ve found that if I seek Him I find Him. It’s that simple and that amazing. I’m seeking Him for Him alone. Not Him for what I can get or want or need but just for the pleasure of being with Him. That’s the simple part. The amazing part is that when He shows up He brings all of the astonishing attributes of His character, His nature and His power with him. And oh my, He truly is astonishing!

I have no magic formula. No three steps to “Astonishing Intimacy with God”. All I do is show up and so does He. These are good days. I’m going to keep showing up. You might consider showing up yourself.

© Tom Zawacki 2008

The Friendship Dilemma

by Erwin Raphael McManus

Can pastors and church leaders be real friends? In our multi-ethnic, multi-generational community, yes, we risk growing close.

Early on I was told it is important for a pastor to keep relational distance from the people he works with. The objectivity needed to make hard decisions must not be compromised. (After all, you can’t be friends with your boss!)

I disagree.

I have grown to a conviction that it is not enough simply to hire staff or to build a ministry team, I am committed to growing a community of leaders who serve together on a common mission.

At Mosaic our eldership of five is Japanese, Chinese, Salvadorian, and Mexican American. Our leadership team and support staff are even more ethnically diverse. In age, we range from twenties to fifties (and soon sixties). Our differences could become an easy excuse for becoming, at best, co-laborers. Yet we would miss the amazing gift God has given us of friendships that grow as we serve together.

Friendship is a vital part of New Testament ministry and leadership. In fact, I am convinced that we have been unwittingly shooting ourselves in the heart.

We call God’s people to live in biblical community, yet we model something quite different. We tell church members to love one another when we as staff only work together. We are the ones responsible for the creation of community life while we live isolated lives. I have met too many pastors and their spouses who are painfully lonely and essentially friendless.

It’s unthinkable to picture Jesus in merely a professional working relationship with his disciples. If I remember correctly, he called those guys his friends. You might even say he loved them. They lived life together: no eight-to-five relationship and then go home. Theirs was a heart connection.

Jesus was growing a leadership community serving together on a common mission. More than a common vision, their hearts were ignited together by a burning passion. While vision can be cast from a distance, passion is transferred up close. Jesus got under his disciples’ skin and into their hearts.

This only happens as we laugh together, weep together, work together, and play together. From grilling salmon on the pier, to making staff meeting a day at the cinema - our team at Mosaic shares life together. Many of us have traveled on mission trips together. (Nothing unites like communal diarrhea.) Playing hoops or just dreaming about the future, we are more than a team, we are a leadership community.

I understand the painful downside of this approach. It may require a pastor to fire someone he loves. I’ve had to do that. In spite of the pain of those moments, I am convinced this is the best way. We must return to the kind of community where we love each other enough to speak the truth in love. When we know someone well enough, we will long for them to become what God longs for them to be.

In this community, everyone has a voice - and an opinion! We have the freedom to disagree. We fight - almost always fairly. My responsibility is to insure this culture continues to flourish.

I saw we were becoming a true community when the church faced a financial challenge a while back. One by one, the team started offering their salaries with a commitment that they would continue their work as volunteer staff. The sacrifice they were willing to make told me they are not working at a job, but they are growing together with me into a genuine community of leaders.

Weeding My Garden

My adult son lives about three and a half hours away from us. I picked him up earlier today and took him back with me. He’s having a tonsillectomy in a couple of days and will be recuperating at home. The hours alone in the car were profitable. The popular words of Psalm 46:10 came to mind “Be still and know that I am God”.

Over the past year I have discovered again and again the value of being still before God. He delights to reveal himself to me in those quiet times. Sometimes the busyness of life gets the best of me and I allow myself to be robbed of this precious gift. The past few days have been very busy. It was nice to have the alone time in the car.

The miles brought clarity then conviction and finally peace. The Lord reminded me that I will reap what I sow. It’s a truth, a natural and spiritual law that is inescapable. If I sow carrot seeds - guess what, I get carrots. If I sow tomato seeds I’ll get tomatoes. I can’t expect to reap cherries if I sow radishes.

For me the application was clear… the way I treat others is the way I will be treated. If I sow anger, I will reap anger. If I sow mercy, I will reap mercy. If I sow pride, I will reap pride. If I sow humility, I will reap humility. If I sow grace, I will reap grace and if I sow love, I will reap love.

Father, Jesus said you are The Gardener. Gardener come, tend my garden. Plow my soil. Remove my weeds. Remove my thorns. Remove my stones. Change my crops to your crops until your fruit is borne in me, amen.

© Tom Zawacki 2006

A True Friend

Many Christians are familiar with Ephesians 4:11

”It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers…”

Most of us have it printed on a magnet holding up some cute kid’s picture on our refrigerator or maybe on a plaque on our desk. The context of this verse is speaking about the maturity of the church, these five ministry gifts were given so that the church would become mature. Verse 13 makes it clear; check it out by clicking here.

Verse 15 tells us that one sign of this maturity is our ability to speak the truth in love. My experience in the church has been that most people will go to one extreme or the other. People will either speak all truth without any evidence of love or in a flawed attempt at love will forgo the truth all together. Maturity is required to strike that elusive balance.

Speaking the truth even in love is risky. Often it means putting a relationship on the line. If I take this risk will it cost me the friendship. Personally, I believe that giving into this fear is not only cowardly but also selfish, both sure signs of immaturity.

The writer of Proverbs had it right; “Wounds from a friend can be trusted”. A real friend is the one who loves you enough to tell you the truth, even the hard truth. I’m grateful to have just those kinds of friends in my life. When I grow up I hope to be just that type of friend to them. Maybe when we all grow up, when the whole body grows up into Him we’ll discover how to be true friends.

Lord let this be the day.

© Tom Zawacki 2006

Caricature

Why are we so afraid to be who we really are? Maybe it’s because we’ve experienced too much pain and too much rejection. The logic goes something like this… if I pretend to be what others expect me to be; maybe they’ll like me and won’t reject me. The problem is that they may not like fake you anyway and if they do, it’s not really you.

As I mentioned before I’ve been a Christian for the past 30 years and a pastor for the last 20. Over these past few decades I’ve discovered that church goers are great at playing this game. We hide ourselves behind a veil of religious jargon and performance hoping that no one will notice the broken and wounded person behind it.

As a result we become caricatures of who God created us to be. Pastors are especially susceptible to this. We’re the “professionals” we’re expected to have it all together, us and our families. So we play the game, it’s sad but true.

I’m trying to be more and more real… more genuine everyday. As I have undertaken exploring creativity the past few months, I’ve discovered or should I say rediscover an artistic side of me I had lost beneath the veil.

Most of the world, including the church rewards left brain thinking. These organized, methodical, problem solving managers are rewarded and promoted. Right brain thinkers on the other hand are… tolerated and appreciated only after their unconventional concepts bear fruit.

For years I’ve suppressed my right brain because people liked my left brain better. I’m discovering that God created both sides of my brain and said it was good.

So, after all there years maybe, just maybe I’m become less and less a caricature and more and more who God intended me to be.

(On a much lighter side, if you like the graphic above you can make your own at Vista Print. Caricatures belong on paper, not on our hearts.)


Copyright © Tom Zawacki 2006


I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did--Jesus crucified. I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate--I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it-- and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else. But the Message came through anyway. God's Spirit and God's power did it, 1 Corinthians 2:2-4 The Message

Freedom & Friendship

In John 15:13 Jesus said
“Greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends.”

In the Message Eugene H. Peterson puts it this way:
This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends.

In Strong’s Concordance the Greek word used here is philos and it’s defined as:
“a friend, an associate or a companion”.

Strong’s goes on to add this:
“one of the bridegroom's friends who on his behalf asked the hand of the bride and rendered him various services in closing the marriage and celebrating the nuptials”.

This word is used 29 times in the New Testament and all 29 times it’s translated “friend”.

So, friend here is a close friend a trusted friend, someone who might be the best man at your wedding or at least a groomsman. Someone you want with you, standing beside you on one of the most important days of your life.

The New American Heritage Dictionary points out in it’s Word History that:
A friend is a lover, literally. The relationship between Latin amcus “friend” and amo “I love” is clear, as is the relationship between Greek philos “friend” and phileo “I love.”

So there is a clear historical connection between friendship and love.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines friends as:
One attached to another by affection or esteem, an acquaintance.

Here are some interesting quotes about friendship

"Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget." G. Randolf
"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out." Walter Winchell
"A true friend is someone who is there for you when they would rather be someplace else." Len Wein
"The road to a friend's house is never long." Danish proverb
A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway. Fr. Jerome Cummings
Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure. Jewish Saying
"The only way to have a friend is to be one." Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. Aristotle
The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. Abraham Lincoln
"Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil." Baltasar Gracian (1647)
“The best mirror is an old friend." George Herbert
A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails. Anonymous
Plant a seed of friendship; reap a bouquet of happiness. Lois L. Kaufman
A friend loves at all times." Proverbs 17:17
"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives." Euripides (408 B.C.)
My friend is he who will tell me my faults in private." Solomon Ibn Gabirol
"There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom." William Penn
"A friend is a present you give yourself." Robert Louis Stevenson
An honest answer is the sign of true friendship. Proverbs 24:26
A single rose can be my garden, a single friend, my world. Leo Buscaglia
Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. Sicilian Proverb
The language of friendship is not words but meanings. Henry David Thoreau
A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success! Doug Larson
Most people walk in and out of you life. But only friends leave footprints in your heart.
Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together" Woodrow Wilson
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them." Mother Teresa
"No man is useless while he has a friend." Robert Louis Stevenson
"A true friend stabs you in the front." Oscar Wilde
Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing." Benjamin Franklin
"Promise you won't forget me, because if I thought you would, I'd never leave." Winnie the Pooh
There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship Saint Thomas Aquinas
Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down. Oprah Winfrey
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one." C.S. Lewis

Tonight I was fortunate enough to spend the evening with some of my closest friends. These are the people I could call in the middle of the night and tell them I need help and they would be there as fast as humanly possible. Not until they arrived would they ask what the need was.

These are the people who would take a bullet for me and I would take one for them

These are the people I want to be with when I’m at my best or my worst – they’ll tell me the truth either way

These are the people I laugh with and the people I cry with.

These are the people who have seen all my strength’s and all my weakness and love me any way

These are the people I can be real with and they can be genuine with me.

These people are my friends and I’m free to be me with them.

These are my friends: Rich & Lynda ~ Duane & Dawn and I would lay down my life for them!

I’ve never felt so free!

Copyright © Tom Zawacki 2006