Message

I got this message today (Maybe I should start singing again after all): On this day of your life, Libby, we believe God wants you to know ... that the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang the best. Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you are, work with whatever is at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

Messiah

I had the most incredible experience Saturday night. Ben took me to see The Messiah by Handel, my favorite work of all time. I have studied it intensely, preformed it four times in college and the history I have with it makes it all the more meaningful to me. The story is the story of old, about what Jesus did for all humanity and, in turn, what He did for me personally. The Nashville Symphony Hall was superb, the night was filled with an electrical magic, and I couldn't be more grateful. Thank you.

Here is a link to my Alma Mater, Augustana College. Here my old choir director and pastor give you a little glimpse of how I feel about the Messiah. (my favorite part is that on the second performance ever the crowds were asked to not bring swords or wear hoop skirts because the place was so packed it needed more space!)


MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

New Music Weekend – Ruth Collins

Ruth Collins was born in Western NY and was raised on a 13 acre grape farm that has been in her family for over 200 years. She is the youngest of four girls who were all raised as musicians but she was the only one of her four siblings who really loved and fell in love with her music. She sings, plays piano and learned the violin beginning at the tender age of three! She was a true child prodigy who later added the guitar to her repertoire.

She left home at the age of 18 and moved to Boston where she attended Berklee College of Music for 3 1/2 years before moving to Nashville in 2006 to become a songwriter.

You may recognize Ruth from televisions “Can You Duet” where she and a friend, Victoria Gibson, sang as a duo named “Wild Honey” where they made it to 6th place on the show. After leaving “Wild Honey” Ruth has been focusing on her solo career of writing and singing. She has had the good fortune to work with some amazing talent including songwriters who have written for Taylor Swift, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Big and Rich. A plethora of talent to draw from for a talented young lady new to Nashville!

She has an amazing voice with a wonderful range and clarity to it that is easy to listen to and begs to be heard. Her song “Disappear” is a ballad of truth about many relationships and speaks of a hopefully easier way to breakup when “someone stays too long” and says they didn’t “build this bridge to burn it down”. The lyrics are so close to anyone’s heart about two people who just need to not be together anymore and is sung w/the accompaniment of her guitar. I really loved the song – tender and the lilting notes of her voice are so touching.

“Lesson Learned” is a soft swaying melody about falling in love the first time and the lessons we learn during life in romance – “We live and we learn and we crash and we burn.” She has a wonderful handle on new ways to express what we have all lived through and felt about life and her voice has just a slight raspy edge that gives the listener a picture of a combination of an innocent but slightly seasoned young lady singing about life. It’s an interesting combination and very pleasant listening.

“Chasing the Rain” is another ballad with piano accompaniment that showcases her amazing voice as she sings about being a fool that goes “chasing the rain calling out your name” and “praying for the wind to knock them down again”. It’s a song that parallels a love gone wrong with rainstorms and the fool she is that still wants to chase it anyway. Something many of us have done, huh? But she has the words to put it to music and actually make it sound interesting!

She is an amazing talent that should you certainly should be hearing a lot more from soon! To listen to her music please visit her at www.myspace.com/ruthcollins and you can follow her on Twitter and Facebook as well. A delightful young lady who also gives of her valuable time to charity – she is definitely worth your time!

Calamity Annie CMTT Music Contributor

Movin' On

I've dealt with my ghosts and I've faced all my demons
Finally content with a past I regret
I've found you find strength in your moments of weakness
For once I'm at peace with myself
I've been burdened with blame, trapped in the past for too long
I'm movin' on

I've lived in this place and I know all the faces
Each one is different but they're always the same
They mean me no harm but it's time that I face it
They'll never allow me to change
But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong
I'm movin' on

I'm movin' on
At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me
And I know there's no guarantees, but I'm not alone
There comes a time in everyone's life
When all you can see are the years passing by
And I have made up my mind that those days are gone

I sold what I could and packed what I couldn't
Stopped to fill up on my way out of town
I've loved like I should but lived like I shouldn't
I had to lose everything to find out
Maybe forgiveness will find me somewhere down this road
I'm movin' on

I'm movin' on
I'm movin' on

Here or there?

I was thinking today about how so many people use Jesus' life as a path to heaven. Although I'm not negating that that is one aspect of what Jesus' life was supposed to serve as, I often think we are missing the point. What is our conception of heaven? Traditionally we think of it as the afterlife. A place we go when we die after, hopefully, living a good life. Catholics look at it in terms of rules, that if you don't follow them and confess when you fail, you will lose your salvation. Again completely based on our own personal gain/lives. I think we are missing a bigger picture here. I have been asked before whether or not I think I am going to go to heaven more than the next person because of my belief. I answered honestly, "I don't know." How poor and pathetic would my faith in God be if I though I had all these answers. The purpose of my faith is that I don't have to have all the answers HE does. And I am much to miniscule an entity to think that I would know whom God would poor his amazing grace over. If I am measured by that unforgiving of a scale then I am screwed.

But back to Jesus' life. I asked my sister once, "What if you're wrong" in reference to the choices she has made in life to live according to the Gospel to the best of her ability. She shrugged her shoulders and said,"Then I have been able to live a beautiful life and that alone would be a great reward." I agree. I see people everyday who refuse to acknowledge God's presence in their lives, the work Jesus did, and what that can do to enrich our lives here and now today. If I use Jesus as a model, a mentor, etc. then my life only serves to enrich the lives of others which, amazingly, in turn enriches my own. This brings about a state of incredible happiness, peace, and my heart is filled with love. The closest to Heaven on earth I can get.

When I turn from this way of life I confront misery head on. A living Hell on earth if you will. Jesus shouldn't be used as a tool to gain/earn salvation so that "we" are OK. That is such a self centered goal. Jesus' life should be viewed as a way to make the world a better place than before we were here. If someone said what's the point, especially if there is no heaven/after life. To that I would say that the people you leave behind see a lot of point to it. I have to keep pounding it into my head that it's NOT ABOUT ME. Everything He has done is for His glory, my glory isn't important, it's not how I was designed, and I know what because every time I try to do something for my glory I come up unfulfilled, but when my purpose is in Him, it is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.

Take Martin Luther King for example. Look at the work He did, look how he used Christ as a compass, look at the good he left behind for us, for our progress and peace. Now if you said that there is no after life would we all have to sit here and agree then that there was no point to MLK's life? I would beg just the opposite, that the whole point to his life was what he was able to accomplish here. Now, I personally believe in an afterlife, but I truly have no idea of what to expect from it, the only clue that God has given me at all is the overwhelming joy I feel in my heart when I am filled with Him. I pray that this is the kind of feeling, only magnified, I would have were I able to go to Heaven. But I don't look at Heaven as a place to earn, or as a "reason" to do the things I do to serve the Lord. I do them because I know they are right, and good, and true, and the blessed gift He gives me back is a contentment in my life here, as close to Heaven on earth as I can get.

What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

This radical Christian's ministry for the poor, The Simple Way, has gotten him in some trouble with his fellow Evangelicals. We asked him to address those who don't believe.

By Shane Claiborne (As posted in Esquire...I've highlighted the parts that struck me the most)

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The other night I headed into downtown Philly for a stroll with some friends from out of town. We walked down to Penn's Landing along the river, where there are street performers, artists, musicians. We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn't quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don't know Jesus.

Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up. A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs, "God is not a monster." Maybe next time I will.

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin by saying that I'm sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it... it was because "God so loved the world." That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven... but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came "not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.

One of Jesus' most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan... you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I'm sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine... but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch.

It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly. God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute. In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David... at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since. So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting someone we think God could never use, we should think again.

After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on everybody else: "The tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you." And we wonder what got him killed?

I have a friend in the UK who talks about "dirty theology" — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him. (The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy that day.)

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

Your brother,

Shane

Live By List

John John gave this to me a while back. I've now laminated it and look at it at my desk everyday.

Live By List

The Greatest Problem to Overcome: FEAR

The Most Beautiful Attire: A SMILE

The Most Crippling Disease: EXCUSES

The Most Dangerous Pariah: GOSSIP!

The Two Most Powerful Words: I CAN

The Most Worthless Emotion: SELF PITY

The Greatest Shot in the Arm: ENCOURAGEMENT

The Most Effective Sleeping Pill: PEACE OF MIND

The Most Prized Possession: INTEGRITY

The Most Satisfying Hard Work: HELPING OTHERS

The Greatest Attitude: GRATITUDE

The Most Powerful Force in Life: FAITH and LOVE