2 Chronicles 20 includes a battle story.  Israel is surrounded by a vast army.  The King calls the people to a time of fasting and prayer.  In the midst of that time he says these words, “Lord we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”  Why are my eyes on God?  Because I’m convinced that no one else can help me.

Where are we looking?

Psalm 121 describes a similar eye-challenge.  The psalmist writes, “I lift my eyes to the hills.  Where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.”  I often hear people mis-interpret the “eyes to the hills” picture.  If we don’t know Israelite history and culture we just think, of course, when I look to the hills, I’m reminded  of God.  God is up high, majestic, etc.  But that’s not the meaning of this Psalm.  The psalmist is looking to the hills because the “high places” are the places where people built places of idol worship.  So the psalmist is saying, “I have a choice.  I can look to God for my help or I can look to idols for my help.”  His decision?  “My help comes from the Lord.”

Where are we looking?

At the moment, in our community, the direction of our eyes is a vital choice.  Perhaps one of the most encouraging things in our community right now is the growing proliferation of people gathering to pray.  When we pray, we are simply directing our eyes to God, asking him for help.  So I just want to let  you know about some opportunities to direct your eyes — and your voice — to God.

PRAYER-WALKS: From Friday the 11th — Thursday 17, people from Calvary will be prayer-walking the campus. We will follow the format we used for Calvary on Campus, except two changes.  If you want to have the schedule — time and where to meet — go to PrayerWalks.  Friday night leaders from our Calvary Classic gathering will meet at 6pm at the Eisenhower Auditorium plaza to go prayer-walk.  (But feel free to join them even if  you do not attend Calvary Classic.

THIRD PLACE PRAYER RETREAT: Saturday 8-11:30am at Harvest Fields. You don’t have to be in Third Place to join with them and the primary focus will be on praying for PSU and the community.

COMMUNITY PRAYER SERVICE: Tuesday 15th at 7:30pm at Grace Lutheran. This will be primarily downtown congregations so it will have a mainline feel, I will be leading one of the sessions on prayer.  Come pray with friends and co-workers from the community.

CITY CHURCH PRAYER GATHERING: Wednesday 16th at 7pm at Unity Church of Jesus Christ.  This prayer gathering will have a whole different feel and will be a great opportunity to be with the other citychurch congregations.

Please feel free to join us and if you don’t join us, I encourage you to join with someone else and pray.

Grace.  We’re probably not ready to talk about this yet.  Grace.  There are few things more scandalous than grace rightly understood.  I’m not talking about a cheap grace that looks the other way, or calls everything okay.  I’m talking about the scandalous grace that is hard to believe and hard to receive and almost impossible to give.  I’m talking about the kind of grace that looks sin square in the face and then scares the hell out of it.  I’m talking about the kind of grace that involves a cross and costs someone so much that when it is given away… it’s scandalous.  That kind of grace.

Grace teaches that God does for others what we would never considering doing for them…not them, anybody but them.  If I was God I would start with those more deserving, the not-so-bad, like me.  “I don’t fully deserve grace, God, but surely I deserve it more than some.  More than him.”  But in the Bible, God starts with terrorists (Paul) and those who abuse their power for their own pleasure (David) and owners of brothels (Rahab) and murderers (Moses) and cowards (the disciples) and pours out life-changing grace. That’s scandalous.

If we aren’t careful, grace almost seems like we are saying that sin is no big deal.  But that’s just because we don’t understand grace.  We think it can — at least partially — be earned and thus at least partially deserved.  In fact what we really don’t comprehend is the vile nature of our own capacity for sin.  We dismiss our part in the communal nature of sin, in other words if there is sin in the camp, I’ve played a part. No I didn’t molest a child.  No I didn’t cover it up or look the other way, but how often did I cry out to God for our community.  How often did I make a choice that was me-centered, instead of other-focused?  How often did I embrace pride?  How often have I asked God to slide over on the throne of my heart to make room for something else?

In the valley of not-so-happy, this week we have been reminded that we can look good… and even do good… without being good.  The bad news is that I’m more messed up than I care to admit.  But the good news is that God’s grace is more ridiculously lavish than I could ever imagine.  The dark under-belly of our culture is the frequency and shame of sexual abuse.  No one is immune.  It has the power to wound hearts in such deep, deep ways.  But it is this same scandalous grace that has the power to heal those wounds and make whole those hearts.

I understand the emotion of the responses pouring forth in the valley.  The sin is disturbing.  The plight of the powerless must be our passion.  But the bottom line is that the response of those whose lives have been been redeemed by ridiculous grace, must be different.  I’m praying that here in our valley God meets the scandal of sin with scandalous grace…and starts a redemptive tidal wave of cross-sized proportions.

To be honest I’m not sure what to write.  Like most people in the valley of used-to-be-happy, the events of the last few days have dragged my mind and my heart all over the place.  This morning as our pastors gathered, it was our primary topic of conversation.  As you walk through the grocery store you hear the conversations.  When you drive through town, you likely are driving past someone who is listening to the latest report on the radio.  And Facebook?  Every other status update.  The responses range far and wide. Lots of anger.  PSU Icon with a tear.  Comments about what is hoped will happen to Sandusky in jail.  The call for a blue-out on Saturday.  Fire Joe.  Stay Joe.  The end of everything at State College.  The end of nothing at State College.

I’m still processing, but here are some of my initial far-and-wide thoughts, for what it’s worth.

– I’m pondering how surprised we get by sin and it’s accompanying brokeness.  Yes I’m using the “s” word.  That’s one thing about the sexual abuse of a child, we pretty much all agree it’s sin, (the parallel sins being anything that accompanies the abuse, such as cover-up, or looking the other way).  We call it Happy Valley, but come on we all realize there are hidden depths of brokenness — sexual, family, emotional, relational, financial, etc — that lay just below the surface.  I have no idea who did what, said what, reported what, or covered what up, but I do know sin and brokenness run deeper than we like to imagine.

– Here’s the real kicker.  You’ve heard the phrase, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”  Say it to yourself right now.  It’s a true statement.  I think part of the difficulty is that there are some of us in Happy Valley who think we have earned grace…or at least we deserve it more than someone else.  But the reality is that I don’t deserve grace…anymore than a child abuser, or someone who covers the abuse up.  The bad news is that you and I have a greater capacity for mess/sin than we ever realized.  The good news is that we are loved by God far more than we could ever imagine.

– I travel a bit and whenever I tell people I’m from State College (by the way most people think of College Station, no one knows State College, but everyone knows Penn State) invariably I’m asked the questions, “So are you a Penn State fan?”  My response, “You can’t live in State College for 18 years and not be a fan.”  I’ve lived in State College almost 18 years, it’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere in my life.  I know, having spent 31 years elsewhere I probably can’t claim the title “townie,” but I love Happy Valley.  I love Penn State.  With all my heart I believe that God calls us to love the city where He plants us.  But you don’t have to close your eyes in order to open your heart.  When we catch a whiff of grace, we can open both our eyes and our hearts.  This is not the end of everything at Penn State, but it might be reminder that Penn State never was all that we hoped.

– My heart goes out to the kids.  Eight have come forward in this case.  There are about 14,992 more in the Centre Region.  That’s a rough estimate of the stats put out by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 guys will be sexually abused by the time they are 18.  I cannot even imagine how this story is affecting them.  We need to pray for them and we need to strive to do better for the kids.

– I hope we don’t miss the opportunity to do some personal soul searching.  Where do I put my hope?  What are my values?  What actions — big or little — flow from my life that honor or dishonor others?  No one lives in a vacuum.  Each one of us add to or detract from the life and vitality of our community.

One more thing — I’m pondering how easy it is for us to forget…how desperately we need God.

There’s more thoughts rolling around in my head and heart…not sure if they will come out.  Maybe.  Meanwhile, for those of us who believe in the power of God…it’s probably better for us to pray, than to blog anyway.

Too many days of travel filled my last three weeks of living.  Coaching Certification in DesnMoines.  Converge Overseer Board meetings in Cleveland.  A gathering of large church pastors in Charlotte.  A seminar on story-telling with the Chief Story-Teller of Pixar films in New York City.  Too many days on the road.

I like to travel, but I don’t like being away from home, away from my family.

So when a blog-post by Jon Acuff (The Biggest Lie about Travel We All Believe) caught my eye, it also convicted my heart.  Jon had been traveling for awhile and made this observation about being distant from family.  He writes,

But in doing that, I ran across a dangerous lie that wounds countless marriages.  I bumped into it after the 49th person said to me, “I don’t know if I could travel like that and be away from my wife and kids that much.” And here’s the lie hidden inside that statement: “You need a plane ticket to be distant from your family.” You don’t. You just need an iPhone. Or a laptop. Or a million other media distractions we throw our lives at.  I have friends who travel less than me but are less present in their marriages because when they’re home, they’re not really home.

You probably don’t need to worry about the distractions of media, but I know that quote convicted my heart.  Of course I’ve been prepped a bit by my friend Chris Heinz who has been pondering this same issue. (You can read the first of a three-part series he did by Clicking Here.)

I know that I’ve spent at least one too many nights at home with a laptop on my lap.  One too many dinner conversations have been interrupted by a smartphone txt, twitter, facebook alert or email notification.  When I was in Des Moines for four days, that distance was obvious, pronounced, unmissable.  I was away from my family.  But sometimes virtual distance leaves us more “away” than the mileage.

The point was driven home last week when I was driving home from Cleveland.  Usually my alone time in a car while driving long distances is my best time with God.  For a variety of reasons, this time I was really looking forward to that time alone with God.  But this black little droid kept stealing my attention.  Amazing that the possibility a new email might have come in, or that someone might have liked my note on facebook could steal my moments with God.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m going to get rid of all my technology.  I’m not sure what I would do without my laptop.  I’ve even been looking at a tablet (nope not an ipad, not drinking that cider).  But here’s what I’ve decided:

1) I think I’ve decided (yes that is hesitancy creeping into my voice) that my smartphone is getting a downgrade.  It’s too easily immediate.  I carry it with me everywhere I go and it has this tendency to rudely interrupt personal conversations.  I’m hoping that a dumb phone might make me smarter.

2) No more email on my day off.  If you send me an email on Thursday, it won’t get answered till Friday…at the earliest.

3) No more laptops on my lap when I should be connecting with people.  No more laptops during the day at meetings and no more laptops at night with Lynn and my family.

It’s time to come home, don’t really like being away from family that long.

E=MC² — NOT?  I’m not sure if you heard or not, but light might be losing it’s #1 speed-ranking.  An international team of scientists are suggesting that they have found something faster than light, some sort of sub-atomic particles.  If they are right, Einstein was wrong.  One of Albert Einstein’s long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe is that the speed of light is a cosmic constant and that nothing is faster.

Wow.  If this is true, just imagine how many sci-fi movies and books would become obsolete.  We will never again be able to use the phrase “speed of light” as a descriptor again.  You’ll be at a Penn State football game watching Devon Smith outrace another defensive back and you’ll say, “Wow, he’s faster than the speed of light.”  And the person next to you will say, “That’s nothing, have you heard about those sub-atomic particles…?”

One international scientist declined to speculate on what it might mean if it’s true. “I just don’t want to think of the implications,” he told Reuters. “We are scientists and we work with what we know.  …conceptually it is incredibly important. The finding is so startling that, for the moment, everybody should be very prudent.”

I’m not a physics-guy, but I think I understand his struggle?  So much of what he knows about the physics of the world is based on Einstein’s equation, that if Einstein’s formula is wrong… well if it’s wrong, his physics-world is suddenly turned upside down.

The Midas Touch — most of us understand that reference — sometimes known as the golden touch.  King Midas did a good deed for the god Dionysus (Greek mythology), who gave Midas his choice of reward.  If you were given one wish, what would you request.  Let’s take it out of Greek mythology and bring it home.  You landed your company’s #1 client and your boss says, “Name your reward, if I can make it happen I will.”  What is your wish?  If make a great sacrifice for a friend or a spouse and they say, “Tell me what you want, if I can give it to you, I will.”  What do you request?  Your reward is limited only by their capacity.

What if the offer came from God?  Perhaps you made a great sacrifice or you were being called to a great mission, or more likely it’s just grace… and God says to you, “Name your reward.  One wish.  One choice.  One chance.  I will give you whatever you ask.”  Now the capacity of the giver is unlimited, so the range of reward is unimaginable.  What is  your wish?  One choice.

If you know the story of Midas, he asked that everything he touched would turn to gold.  When he touched the oak tree and the roses in his garden, he could barely imagine the potential of his wealth.  When he touched his food to eat, he realized that his gift was going to starve out his life.  When he touched his daughter, he realized that his wish had turned into tragedy.

This has happened before in the Bible.  Solomon was given a choice.  He asked for wisdom instead of wealth or power.  The request pleased God.  When Jesus passed a blind beggar along the road — calling out for help — Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”  If  you had one choice, unlimited reward, what would you request?

Imagine that you are even wiser than Solomon and completely full of trust in God and when God asked you to make your choice, you responded, “God I would like you to choose my reward.”  If God could give you one thing and one thing alone…  If God had it in his heart to give you the greatest reward He could imagine… If God had one choice…  What would God give you?

I think He would give you… God.  Himself.  Jesus.  His Spirit.  What greater gift could He give you than Himself?  Perhaps that’s why we rarely ask Him to choose…  God forgive us for missing the reality that you are the greatest gift.  May we seek you with all our hearts.

I live in the midst of Penn State University…and I love it.  I love the energy.  I love the potential represented in the next generation.  I love hanging out with and brushing shoulders with the future.  But I also hurt for people who are trading bits and portions of their future hope for something that barely satisfies in the present.

Last week, one of those young women in our community, shared some of her views on sex.  In a column in the Penn State University entitled, Mounting Nittany, Kristina Helfer wrote these words about sex,

At Penn State, it’s more than in the bedroom — it’s a lofted bed, a walk-in closet at a fraternity or the Nittany Lion Shrine.  For some, it’s a moment of true intimacy, for others it’s just another good night. Sex is the most universal thing in the entire world. Almost every species — except for asexual ones — has sex in one form or another. We were given these parts for a reason, so why not take advantage of them?  The thrill of having sex is like nothing else. It’s exciting, and everyone’s talking about it.  College is the time when those whispers become a reality, when people take others’ virginity and roommates are sexiled.  And it’s about time we start talking about it.  I’m not going to tell you to change your beliefs and go crazy, but it’s time to start being open.  It’s time to break society’s chains (or not), and look at sex from a different perspective.

So what is Kristina’s perspective? Well if her article is representative (Click Here) her perspective is not all that different from the perspective portrayed in all most movies, songs, and books.  Sex is just a physical act.  Sex is exciting.  Sex is a way to say thank you for a good date.  Sex is an antidote for loneliness.  Sex is no big deal.  Sex is a rite of passage.  Sex is common.

My heart breaks for Kristina…and her friends.  They are missing the mysterious wonder of sex.  I don’t understand exactly how it works, but sex is an act of oneness that goes deeper than a physical connection.  It’s even deeper than an emotional connection.  It’s a soul thing.

In my whole life I only walked out of two movies.  The Muppets Take Manhattan — when they came to a fork in the road and it was really a “fork” in the road, I couldn’t take it anymore.  The other movie was Christmas Story.  I won’t share all the reason that movie didn’t hold my attention, but I do remember one scene, a little boy sticking his tongue to a flagpole on a cold winter’s day.  I still hurt to think about the pain that came when he pulled his tongue off the pole… and left a part of himself behind.

What if that’s a limited look, a metaphorical image of what happens when we have sex…and then walk away.  A bit of our soul rips away.  My heart breaks for Kristina…and her friends.  Moments of pleasure in the present traded for soul wounds in the future.

I agree with Kristina, “It’s time to break society’s chains and look at sex from a different perspective.”  But the question is what are the real chains and what perspective will give us freedom?

Last week I was in New York City attending a seminar on story-telling.  As part of the experience we went to the site of a story that has — in part — shaped our culture for the last decade.  We went through the World Trade Center Memorial.  Maybe I’ll talk about that experience later, but I wanted to set the scene.  Right across the street was the Occupiers Camp — the Wall Street Occupiers.

It was an ironic scene.  On one side, the building of a memorial that was tied to the destruction of centers of finance; on the other side people protesting the current centers of finance.  But here is what I saw in common — both sides of the street were protesting a loss.  Hang with me.  Don’t be offended that I’m comparing the Occupiers protest to the World Trade Center loss.  I understand the difference.  But at the heart of both is a protest of loss — loss of life, loss of livelihood.

If you have followed the Occupier story, they finally came up with a slogan that has stuck.  We Are the 99%.  The back-story of the slogan is that the majority of the wealth and opportunities of our country is concentrated in the hands of 1% of the people.  The Occupiers are crying out for greater opportunities for the 99%.  We Are the 99%.

Here is the problem.  Most of America’s 99% are the world’s 1%.

If you have never run across the website Global Rich List click it and go there now.  Enter your annual salary and see where you rank.  My son’s summer job put him in the top 15% of the world.  If you make more than $47,500 you rank in the top 1%.  We are the 1%.

The 911 tragedy was exactly that.  So was the Indonesian Tsunami and the Myanmar Cyclone and the Haiti Earthquake.  The economic downturn has been a burden, even at times a devastating burden for many people.  But half the world barely survives on a dollar a day.  The Wall Street Occupiers are eating better than the refugees in Somalia.

I think for America to embrace God’s redemptive plan for us, we must focus less on what we have lost and more on what we have been given — all of us — and let that gratitude give birth to generosity.  I’m not an historian, but it seems like some of the greatest seasons of our country have been shaped by generosity…and some of the worst seasons of of our lives have come when we were focused on hanging on to what we have or getting more than what we had.

To the rest of the world, we are the 1%.

I watched someone die yesterday.  I wasn’t close and I couldn’t actually see her…at the time we weren’t even sure there was a “her.”  We looked out the window at Harvest Fields moments after the accident took place.  We saw people get out and rush to the car to help whomever was inside, but before they could get there, the car was engulfed in flames.

I don’t know her name.  I don’t know how the accident happened.  I don’t know if she had a family.  I don’t know the ways in which she loved and touched the lives of people around her.  But I would guess that she loved and was loved.  I am certain that she is and will be missed.

Yesterday I quoted from a Stanford commencement speech given by Steve Jobs.  He said,

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Those words give a certain sense of hope and inspiration.  It is a clarion call to live life now.  It brings to mind great lines like: “You only live once.” “Seize the moment.” and “Make your life count.”  But the hope is limited; “…someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.”

How much comfort would those words give a funeral?  How much comfort would those words give to someone who doesn’t have the same opportunities to “seize the moment” as someone in my current shoes or Steve Job’ sneakers?

Now here’s the deal.  If there is nothing beyond death, then those words of inspiration spoken at a Stanford commencement are perhaps the best gospel around.  But hope always has an object and what (or who) we choose as the object of our hope matters.  Who (or what) I choose as the object of my hope will shape how I live my life.

The apostle Paul was not the object of his own hope, and his hope went beyond this life. In his letter to the church at Corinth, he wrote, “If in this life only, we have hope in Christ, we are of all men, the most pitiable.”  It was that hope that gave him the passion and perseverance to change the world.

I agree with Jobs, death is life’s great change agent.  But I have a different hope for the changes it brings.  Paul wrote, “Therefore we do not lose heart.  Even though outwardly we are wasting away, on the inside we are being renewed day by day.  For our troubles, which will only last a short time are shaping us for a far more wonderful and eternal glory.

Those words birth life-changing…and death-defying hope.

At first glance I would call it ironic.  At second glance I would call it related.

Perhaps you have heard of the Occupiers.  At this moment, somewhere between hundreds and tens of thousands — depending on the website — of people are camping out, marching and protesting in cities around the country; New York, Boston, Seattle, Washington, San Diego.  Calling themselves the 99% — as opposed to the 1% super wealthy — they are protesting corporate greed.  At the same time, a similar number of people are leaving flowers at the stores of the wealthiest company in the world to honor one of the richest men in the world, Steve Jobs.

At first glance, ironic.  At second glance related.  How so?  I think it has to do with hope.

As Andy Crouch writes, “In the 2000s, when much about the wider world was causing Americans intense anxiety, the one thing that got inarguably better, much better, was our personal technology. In October 2001, with the World Trade Center still smoldering and the Internet financial bubble burst, Apple introduced the iPod. In January 2010, in the depths of the Great Recession, the very month where unemployment breached 10 percent for the first time in a generation, Apple introduced the iPad.

Politically, militarily, economically, the decade was defined by disappointment after disappointment—and technologically, it was defined by a series of elegantly produced events in which Steve Jobs, commanding more attention and publicity each time, strode on stage with a miracle in his pocket. …Steve Jobs was the evangelist of this particular kind of progress…

In other words, he gave hope.  Technological hope, but still the hope of something better.  The occupiers aren’t so much giving hope, as they are looking for hope.  One Occupy website includes this call to action,

The American Dream has been stolen from the world. Workers are told that they aren’t allowed health care, shelter, food. Students are told that they aren’t allowed jobs, and that they will be in debt for the rest of their lives, unable to declare bankruptcy. The 1% has destroyed this nation and its values through their greed. The 1% has stolen this world. We will not allow this to occur.

They are looking for hope.  Hope is the related theme, but Steve Jobs’ hope and the hope the occupiers seek is flawed.  Hope is a vital optimism, a quality of spirit that flows from a deep belief that the best is yet to come. It’s a conviction that history is moving somewhere, that life is not just a series of random events, but rather it has meaning, and will one day, be redeemed.

This is not the hope of Jobs.  In an oft quoted commencement speech from Stanford, Jobs stated the source of his hope when he said,

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

In other words, you are your own hope.  There is no ultimate meaning.  There is no final redemption.  All  you have is now.  Perhaps that was enough hope for the 42nd richest man in the world.  Perhaps that’s the hope that the 99% are seeking.  But is it enough for the hungry child in Somalia, or the abused little girl struggling to wonder why her father doesn’t love her, or the single parent who just lost his/her job?

Christ offers a better hope.