We got up at 5:30 this morning and we’re about to leave to take Jones to have surgery. He’s having ear tubes put in for the second time (he had them when he was about 8 months) and they’re taking out his adenoids. The surgery’s aren’t major in any way. But please keep him in your prayers today.

I met Lyman tonight on the way home from work. I missed my bus by ten seconds tonight after leaving Outback. So I naturally tried to catch it down the street a ways, but as it turns out it was a bit longer of a ride (on my bike) than I had anticipated. So instead I sat there on the side of the road and played with my phone while I waited the thirty minutes for the 11:20 bus. While I was waiting a drunk guy walked up and started talking to me. His name was Lyman. He was a vet. He told me that every memorial day he gets drunk and walks around making a fool of himself. I told him that he didn’t seem to be acting too foolish right now aside from sitting too far out into the street (at my suggestion he moved more onto the sidewalk at this point). He clarified by saying that he didn’t do too much stupid stuff, just cried a lot. Lyman went on to tell me all about the twelve guys that he spent a few years with in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. They were rangers. He showed me his Southeast Asia tattoo on his arm. I asked him if he would do it all over again which lead to us talking about the war in Iraq and how if he was 20 years old right now he’d enlist in the army and go over to Iraq and shoot every mother f#$%@& with a gun. That’s how you win wars, not by fudging around and going in…well, just fill in a whole handful of dirty and nasty words here…He told me about how they were supposed to get information from people. How are you supposed to get people to talk, he asked me. He answered his own question when he began telling me of different torture techniques they’d use to get people to talk. Of the twelve he went with only three returned to the States. The other two, Carl and John, both committed suicide within the first two years of being home. Prior to their suicide they told Lyman that they couldn’t handle things, that it was too much to have on their conscience. He retorted back that they just did their jobs. They did what they were supposed to do!
He asked if I had a smoke. I apologized and told him I didn’t, but that there were a few people smoking up at the bar across the street. Lyman began to head over there and then paused to turn around and tell me that I’d probably never meet him again. His pancreatic cancer came back and would probably kill him this time around. So I shook his hand and asked if I could pray for him. He didn’t tell me no, just kind of gave me an awkward look and walked away. I prayed for him silently instead. I wasn’t sure what to pray for. Grace I guess.

Who knows how much of his story has been colored by his big gulp filled with whiskey, by years of stress and storytelling. It doesn’t really matter. It makes me sad that we send people over there to wrap wet towels around peoples heads until they talk. It makes me sad that we send people to warfare that so damages them that it is better to take their own life than to live with their memories. I know plenty of people come away from war just fine, but the reality is that if you’re a vet (and we’re not just talking old crazy vets, because the highest suicide rates among vets is the 20-24 year olds who have served in the war on terror) you’re twice as likely to commit suicide than the average American. In 2005 an average of 17 vets committed suicide every day. If only we had a statistic for how many vets wander the streets nursing a whiskey and water out of a Slurpee cup while crying on strangers shoulders. How many vets hold signs on street corners asking for money? Where are those stats?

I hate war. War sucks.
Hey, if you have a second, in honor of Memorial Day (which as I’m finishing this post was actually yesterday) pray for Lyman. Pray for peace. Pray for the grace, love, and peace of Jesus be more evident through his church and in the world…’cause the world desperately needs it. We don’t need a presidential candidate that brings change, or hope, or a candidate that we can trust in because they’ve proven to be strong or courageous. Rather our hope and our future and our trust should be in the strength and change that only comes through the transforming power of Jesus’ love and peace. That’s why Lyman needs. That’s what our world needs.
Happy Memorial Day.

Is that offensive? Is it offensive that we’ve dubbed the first portion of our Bible as the Old Testament? To Jesus and to Paul and to the early church wasn’t the Old Testament simply the Scriptures. When they talked about the Bible (not that they used the term ‘bible’ of course) they were referring to the Old Testament. Doesn’t that make the New Testament primarily an exposition of the Old Testament? And yet I remember a time when my church’s public statement was something about being a New Testament church as if we dare not try to associate ourselves with the Old Testament! OK, sorry, I can’t stand it anymore, from this point on in my blog the OT will simply be summed up as the Hebrew Scriptures. Cool?
Don’t get me wrong, the Hebrew Scriptures at times completely baffle me and confuse me and raise more questions than they answer. The perspective and world view underlying the Hebrew Scriptures is so foreign to how my logical mind works. But the reality is that the New Testament is simply a continuation of the Hebrew Scriptures. We could sit down and work through a pile of New Testament passages to try to prove that Jesus’ intention was not to do away with his Bible but to live out and show it’s true identity and purpose. But that would be an even more boring post than this one. Why is it that I’ve graduated with a Bible degree and yet the only classes on the Hebrew Scriptures was a fourth grade level survey of the Old Testament where I learned to spell the books correctly, and a class on the book of Psalms. That’s it. I realize that there are lots of books and only a few classes, but doesn’t it make sense that if Jesus preached from it, if Paul based his theology on it, if Peter lived by it, if God wrote it, then it must be crucial for us to understand. Isn’t it foolishness to think that we could understand the words of a Jewish rabbi (Jesus) apart from a growing knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures?! Lucky for us the word of God is living and active, it grows with us, it transforms us even through and despite our lack of knowledge. Because no matter what the Bible (both the Hebrew and the NT) are simply a reflection of the God who stands behind them. That is very reassuring to me.

This is a picture that I helped Jones draw. He chose the colors and requested the different parts and aspects of the drawing. From the star tattoos, to the number of candles, to the matching belly buttons, Jones and I have created a masterpiece…they’re llamas by the way.

My wife and I went to McMenamins at Edgefield last week. It was amazing. Last minute my mother-in-law, God bless her, offered to watch India overnight for us. So as it turned out we were completely child free. If you’re not familiar with Edgefield then you’re not familiar with love, because it’s an amazing place. Jessica beat me in darts, I beat her in pool, we ate, we drank, we played games, we walked and talked, but most importantly we slept. We slept as long as we wanted and as often as we wanted. It was amazing. My wife is amazing. And Edgefield is amazing…but not as amazing as my wife…or God.