Monday, August 24, 2009

Where is Hope???

Splattered everywhere in today's news are the headlines of the end of a fugitive's run...without going through all the details, a man killed his ex-wife. To impede the identification of her body, he pulled her teeth and cut off her fingers. Having disposed of the body, he ran...from California to Hope, British Columbia...where today people at his motel (pictured here) discovered his body hung by a belt from a coat rack...What happened? We can all speculate, but my guess is that, while something snapped in this guy to cause him to make decisions that ultimately led to murder and suicide, I doubt that he sat down one day and planned out the murder and suicide. What was the slope he slid down? Apparently he was a successful developer and investor...but he had also been part of yet another reality TV show...that incidentally was cancelled once the murder story broke. Was he just another "victim" of a society out of control? Or was he somehow "evil" to the core? I say "no" to both questions...My speculation is that people who commit such acts get to points of hopelessness and somehow believe that no hope equals no way out EXCEPT through such acts...I may be wrong, but my observation of people is that when they perceive no hope, some sort of end is near. Or, when what they had hoped in disappoints, and they see no worthwhile replacement for that hope, radical actions follow. An added twist to our culture and how individuals and institutions sometimes think and process - the woman's body was finally identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants...It's ironic that this guy's trail ended in a town called Hope...maybe this story will cause some of us to look at hope - where does my hope lie? Is my hope anchored in something or Someone that I can count on? Will that anchor hold? Ponder what the biblical writer sets forth in the book of Hebrews, chapter 6, talking about an anchor (a lifeline) of hope and where it's found...We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It's an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God. Could this be true??? Where is Hope?

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Is it a small, small world?

It's been awhile since I've posted...doesn't mean nothing has been going on...in many ways, quite the opposite...two weeks ago we got our daughter back after a year as a nanny in Switzerland. It's great to have her home! The seventeen-year-old high school graduate has come home a 19-year-old young woman. I hope we're ready...anyway, we were able to go over and spend time with her in her stomping grounds. A memorable trip...since her return, she's been catching up with friends and former classmates. My wife recounted one of her conversations with a classmate; how they spent an hour together and that classmate didn't ask one question about our daughter's year in Switzerland...now, I can be judgmental in a heartbeat and I don't mean to say that's all this classmate is about, but it seems that it's very easy in our culture to focus the conversation on myself and not get outside to view the other's perspective...so often we can make life "all about me". In that kind of mindset, the world is shrinking...around me...I thought of the Disneyland ride to a small, small world...Our daughter's world grew this last year...we asked her what changed in her. She talked about generosity, discovering who she is apart from us, viewing things from others' perspectives...all growing world kinds of things...how do we as parents facilitate the growing of our kids' worlds? And, as I've found, as we do that, ours grows too...Recently I was reading something that I believe, relates to this idea of a bigger and bigger world rather than a small, small world. Martin Buber is a Catholic theologian. One of the ways he describes God is as wholly other...when I read that before I thought that meant that God is different than us...of a different kind...I thought rather theologically...those things are maybe true, but this time I thought of it more relationally... (isn't God's nature relational?). God is love. Love focuses on "the other"...God is so wholly other in his nature that he makes his mission, his good news, about "the other"...about us...about you and me...and when I make my life about others, I'm expressing God...so, the growing world is about re-orienting my life (to use Jesus' words - losing my life) to others. My daughter is teaching me about that...