Seanie, My Gnome

On Friday night, Elevation had a family event called "Gnoming the Streets".  Over 500 people/children who participate in E-Kidz came out to find 25 garden gnomes hidden throughout the Blakeney Shopping Center and, if they were lucky, to find the "Golden Gnome" (aka my very own Seanie) who may or may not be convinced to give away a "golden ticket" (aka raffle ticket).  

Afterwards, the movie "Gnomeo an Juliet" was played in the Elevation Blakeney auditorium, and children were treated to candy, drinks, and popcorn...just like a movie theater :)  Except for free.  E-Kidz staff did an AMAZING job decorating the atrium like a magic forest, and I was more than impressed.  

My handsome husband in his gnome gear.  I think the fame went to his head because it was like pulling teeth to get him to take off that outfit and go home :)  "I think I'll just stay in it for the rest of the movie, ya know, so I can take pictures with the kids when they come out of the theater".  I think he's going to be a stellar dad one day.

Tons and tons of candy.  I'm going to say that I'm glad that none of these kids came home with me post-sugar hype.

Tons and tons of popcorn that poor Courtney Watson and company spent a solid 3 hours popping and packing.

The prize for the raffle winner

Donated cupcakes from Sas Cupcakes, which looked GREAT.

Seanie, prior to going to hide in the Blakeney Shopping Center

The Worst Disservice

As a precursor to my story, Jesus makes it abundantly clear in the Bible that He LOVES children.  I don’t even feel like it’s necessary to site specific verses to prove that, because I think it’s so obvious.  And I think, given that background, that the worst people to dishonor/lead astray/devalue are children.  Especially your own.  The Bible gives instruction after instruction regarding instruction of your children.  Unfortunately, however, it seems to me in my work and in life in general, that obvious devaluing of children is a common tendency. 

Last week, I had the opportunity to teach a small group of first graders in Elevation’s elementary school ministry and was told something by a 6 year old that has weighed heavily on my heart ever since.  I was explaining to them the most well known verse of the Bible, John 3:16.  For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only son so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  This verse is, in and of itself, descriptive of the Gospel, the entire basis of the Christian faith.

We talked about love, and how VERY much God loves them.  The kids told me about all of the people whom they love, and about the people who love them.  Next, we talked about the gift that God gave to us.  In an effort to show them what a BIG gift God gave us when he sent His son to die for us, I asked them: have you ever had to give something away that you loved in order to help someone else?  They told me about various puppies, kittens, and old toys, and we talked about how hard it is to give away what you love.  And then, I started to change the subject to my main point: what if your mommy or daddy had to give YOU away?  

I was expecting somewhat of a shock factor.  An understanding, on some level, that God must REALLY love us if he gave His SON for us.  But what a 6 year old in my group told me really surprised me.  What she told me, was this: “but if a mommy doesn’t really want her baby then she just throws them in the dumpster”.

Yep.  If a mommy doesn’t want her baby, then she can put it in a dumpster.  REALLY?  This kid is 6.  And unfortunately, at 6, she sees a trend in society for parents to view their OWN CHILDREN as optional.  She sees parental love as conditional.  She doesn't see giving children away as difficult.  In fact, she sees it as convenient.  After all, if that's what the mommy wants.  And she relates that to God.  And this kid, I feel it's important to point out, is from an intact family.  She doesn't strike me as distressed in any way, she's just telling me what people do.  What's one option if you don't want your kid.

I was caught off guard enough to spend a minute talking about how people who do that are very sick, and how that’s not how mommies and daddies are supposed to treat their children.  But the damage is done, and the analogy, obsolete.  How are children supposed to understand the incredible gift that God gave to us when people give up or disregard their children all of the time as soon as parenthood is inconvenient for them?  And how are children supposed to understand the unconditional love of Christ if they've never experienced that type of love.  If the only physical “father” that they know treats them as disposable?

I think that most people would agree that deadbeat parents cause great disservice to their children.  Children from the adversity of a broken home are, statistically, more likely to live in poverty, have learning disabilities, be depressed, commit suicide, enter into abusive relationships/marriages, get divorced themselves, etc. But quite possibly, the greatest disservice of all, is that by treating their children so optionally, they make what is the most important thing that children could hear, the Gospel, almost impossible to comprehend. 

It’s a thought that I’ve heard more than once that the most obvious way for the devil to destroy our relationships with God is at the level of the family.  If you can create havoc in a family, then you place a child at greater risk for all of the aforementioned adversity, you can create a normalcy that includes fake loyalty, conditional love, and advancement of an individual at the expense of everyone else, even their families.  And you can, thereby, destroy the faith of children, faith that is cited in the Bible as a benchmark for everyone one else by Jesus Christ Himself.  That.  Is sad.

I have an Elevation Church sticker on my car.

I believe that I am a generous person.  In general, when we have opportunities to invest in a ministry, gift, mission, etc., I always vote to give more.  I'm all about a hand-out to someone who needs it.  Whether that's because I'm more generous than Sean, or because I don't look at our finances and therefore have no real benchmark to refer to, is up for debate.  So yesterday, when Sean shared with me, what he shared with a random beggar in the Home Depot parking lot, I thought he must be joking.  I quickly let the issue of whether or not he was kidding to rest, and went about my day until we had some quiet time during which he was going to confess.  That time came around 7 or so, and we set out for a long walk, and a discussion of "beggars".

I told him about a time when a beggar at a rest stop had told my grand dad some long drawn out story about why he needed money.  My grand dad had responded with what was determined by my brothers and I to be an overly generous donation.  The beggar had gone and fist bumped his fellow beggar, and we were FURIOUS at how he'd just taken advantage of an 84 year old.  Pops didn't join in.

And here I am.  Married to someone who can't tell a liar in a parking lot when he sees one.  Luckily, he's married to me- the wiser.  During our walk, I sought to understand the reasoning of this soul that's now a part of mine.

Can we really tell whether or not someone really needs what they ask for?  Probably not.  But God calls us to be generous.  He doesn't qualify it.  I believe that.  That doesn't mean I always live it, but I do believe that we should be generous when called to be generous, and should trust that God can deal with the other person if they use your 20 dollar bill to buy drugs.  Still, I don't give all of my spare change to anyone who asks.  Because part of me thinks that I'll just know if someone really needs it.  Which is what I told Sean, and what led me to feel quite convicted afterwards.  Because that's when he brought up an interesting point.  One that I thought was worth sharing.

Sean said that he doesn't believe that generosity is about the other person at all.  Whether or not they really need what they ask for is TOTALLY irrelevant.  It's actually about you, and cultivation of YOUR spirit.  It's God giving you an opportunity to help someone who has less than you.  Spiritually, emotionally, physically, or in this case financially.  And whether or not you choose to take it.  Generosity  is a way that we can show the love of Christ to those around us, and therefore, is a way that we can become more like Christ.  And becoming more like Christ really should be the goal of our lives.  So that money to someone in a parking lot might buy a meal, but it also aids in the cultivation of your spirit to make you more like Christ, and we don't want to pass up that opportunity.

Sean finished up his explanation with "...besides, I had an Elevation Church sticker on my car".  And I definitely don't want someone's possibly only interaction with me to be one in which they learn that people who love Jesus don't love beggars.

Have I mentioned lately how much I respect my husband?

"Remember this- whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously."

-2 Corinthians 9:6

A Very Happy Easter :)

Easter weekend in Charlotte was SO beautiful.  We had my mom, Ladson, Lyndsey, and Nick up to Charlotte and cooked out by the pool before our Saturday night church service.  I'm so glad that we're back in the season of cooking out by the pool.  And of course, Elevation Easter was awesome.  Over 19,000 people came to 21 Elevation 3D Easter services all over Charlotte and prompted over 2,200 salvations.

The service began with a video about the desire of human beings to shorten distance.  We walked, then ran, then rode horses, then bikes, then cars/trains, then airplanes, etc. but that the one distance that we can't shorten is the distance between us and God.  But that Jesus came to make that distance possible to overcome.  Then, the rest of the service was about Acts 1:8.  This verse represents the VERY last human words spoken by Jesus on Earth, and reads "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth'.    Pastor Steven explored the verse in 3 dimensions, looking first at the Gospel in Jerusalem, which is likened to the Bible Belt, where the Gospel is known by almost everyone, but still applies.  And then the Gospel in Judea and Samaria, which is likened to Las Vegas, where there is little morality and/or knowledge/belief of Jesus.  And lastly, to the Gospel in the ends of the Earth, which represents distance that we can all feel from God.  I LOVED this service and felt like the Gospel came alive in a whole new way.  And of course, was in 3D.  A creative presentation to teach about the original Creator.   Listen to it!

Distance.

Nick and Lyndsey spent the night with us afterwards, which was awesome.  We walked down and got some ice cream, and stayed up and watched a movie.  Haven't seen them much since we moved up here and it makes us sad, so a sleepover was probably what we needed.

On actual Easter Day, I had to work.  Newborns in Need as well as another organization that I can't remember gave each of the babies an Easter basket to celebrate their first Easters.  They had handmade newborn washcloths, burp cloths, stuffed animals, books, etc.  I love that people take time to make/do that kind of thing for the NICU babies.

When I got home, Seanie had an Easter basket on our island with a note and some candy.  He'd spent his afternoon putting together the "Apartment 139 Easter Egg Hunt".  I was psyched.  Anyway, here's some pictures from the weekend, wish I had some of my family, but I don't.

Mogatu helping Sean clean our windows :)

My post-Easter Egg Hunt Basket

I love Easter :)

This is LOVE!

Last week, our church sponsored an event in Charlotte along with 26 other Charlotte area churches called LOVE Week (watch the video), designed to show LOVE to the city of Charlotte (Charlotte Observer).  The goal was 25,000 hours of service to the city between February 26 and March 6.  Sean and I served 20, and wish that we were here for the second weekend because we had an awesome time.  In this one week, 60,000 meals were made for families.  30,000 sandwiches were made for the homeless.  28 tons of trash were collected.  17,000 pairs of shoes were donated.  And of course, 34, 257 hours of service were given to the city.  Providence campus alone made over 20,000 meals for people in Haiti via Stop Hunger Now in just a couple of hours.  I think that that's incredible.  Pastor Steven Furtick said in his blog that this is what the church exists for, to show the city that they are LOVED, by their church and their God.

Photo online of Providence Campus's meal prepartion

LOVE Week Photo Video by Sean Lyon Photography

Our God is LOVE

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4: 7-12

On being FOR:

The idea behind LOVE Week was to show the city of Charlotte what Christians are FOR and to be known for that, since so often, we are known for what we are against.  I agree that it's obnoxious to watch people who claim to love picket outside of institutions and put people down.  That's NOT what Christianity is about.  And I don't think that that behavior is driven by and rooted in love.  But nontheless, Christianity IS a religion that's against a number of things, so I feel like I should address that before I press submit on this blog.  Christians are against certain things because we're FOR certain things (honor, marriage, life, honesty, and love), and you can't truly be FOR anything unless you're against something else.  Jesus said in Luke 11:23 that 'whoever is not with me, is against me..', so while that's out of context, I agree.  Other notable souls in agreement are Helen Keller who said that apathy is the greatest human evil of all, and a nursing textbook that I read that said that what you permit, you promote.

For example, you can't truly be for marriage, unless you're against divorce.  You can't be for life, unless you're against murder.  Thus why the notion of "being open-minded" kind of confuses me.  If you're for both marriage and divorce (and therefore open-minded), than you're not for either of them.  What you are, is ambivalent and apathetic.  True ambivalence and ampathy is a personality trait with which I have never come in contact with, probably because most people who are truly ambivalent/apathetic, are people who believe that there is no such thing as right or wrong.  Ted Bundy (a known serial killer) used this platform in one of his final interviews, so there ya go.  I wouldn't marry someone who was ambivalent about it, and I would worry about the children of parents who were openly AMBIVALENT about their child's health and wellbeing.  I think that most people, Christian and non-Christian alike, probably agree.  Mark Mittleburg said that without God, and thus without a true guiding post for what is right and what is wrong, what you're left with is preferences (I would call that ambivalent).  Murder might not be my thing, but that's great if it's your's.  I don't think that anyone wants a world like that.

So all of this to say that yes, Christians are against murder, dishonesty, dishonor, gossip, divorce, and that hasn't changed.  But that's because we are FOR LOVE.  Not the other way around.  We are not FOR love because we're against other things.  We're against things because we're FOR love, loving our God and our neighbor, SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY, that it makes it impossible NOT to be SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY against anything that gets in the way of LOVE.  And that is what we should be known for.

Red Carpet Premier

The church that Sean and I go to in Charlotte had its 5-year anniversary this past week.  It's grown to over 8,000 in regular attendance in that time, so to celebrate, a documentary was produced by one of the associate pastors about the story of the church.  The 'Red Carpet Premier' was Friday night so that's how we spent the evening.  Let me just say it was awesome.

The documentary is called 'This is How We Change the World' (Trailer).  It was mine and Sean's first red carpet premier of anything and our expectations were definitely exceeded...complete with red carpet, ice sculpture, the band, awards show, and all.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures prior to the event because we didn't have power for the 20+ hours preceding it (thanks to a drunk driver who hit our power pole), which made us late, and also made us sit on the back row.  But I do have a grainy far-away, low-quality video of an award being given, and a few pictures.

Totally awards show/movie premier style and it gave us a reason to dress up which is always fun.

The Band

-Maria

Honor's Reward

Part 1 (there's two parts.  the part that I originally sat down to write, and the part that I thought was crucial to understanding that actually turned out to be different, but still worth leaving):

I don't have the answer to why it seems like prayer doesn't work sometimes, and sometimes when you need it to work the most, nothing seems to happen, but I do have an interesting notion, based on an interesting book, based on a really interesting passage.  I've thought a lot about it, and now that I have a blog on which to pen my thoughts, I figured I'd share.  The book is one that Sean and I are studying in a small group entitled "Honor's Reward", by John Bevere.  You can download some of his stuff for free on itunes as a side note.  Anyway, the book is based on a passage in the Bible where Jesus is in Nazareth and is teaching at the synagogue.  Those in attendance asked where Jesus got his wisdom, saw him as the ordinary guy from down the road, and didn't believe Him.  The passage that the book is based on is Mark 6:4-6:

"Then Jesus told them 'a prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family'.  And because of their unbelief he could not do any mighty miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them.  And he was amazed at their unbelief"

In the passage, Jesus was limited.  He COULD NOT do any mighty works.  In other passages, Jesus raised people from the dead, fed the 5000, etc.  Backtracking in the passage, it is because they with held honor from him.  I could talk about this book for a long time and the concept of rewards, but you can buy the book or look up reward passages in the Bible.  It's just interesting that without HONOR, Jesus is restricted.  So if I'm not honoring God in my life and obeying his commands, then I can't expect him to do mighty works in my life.  If I don't HONOR Him in my finances, then I can't expect Him to come running and REWARD my financial situation.  If I don't HONOR God in my relationships, then I can't expect God to do mighty things in my relationships. Interesting thought, because I know that I, as well as tons of other people, are quick to pray to God for help, but not so quick to Honor.

Part 2:

I thought that the previous was well worth writing down, but I sat down originally to write the next part.  We're doing the workbook along with the book and there was a question about people that we know with what Bevere calls a "Grandfather Anointing", which he uses to describe John, who wrote another passage that the book focuses on.  When these people speak, the wise listen.  It's an anointing that people arrive at after living long and well, following a life calling, a post of assurance and strength.  The author says that he has had a handful of encounters with these types of people and outlines a few common characteristics.  For the sake of understanding, I'm going to repeat them.

1.  They instinctively locate the heart of the matter.  They don't beat around the bush, or waste time with the unimportant.

2.  They say much in very few words.

3.  The words that they choose are utter and weighty.  As a result, you might find yourself mediating on just a few words spoken by such an individual for months.

As a sidenote, I am one of the very few and very lucky 20-somethings people who have all four of my grandparents still living.  They are not young either.  All in their mid-80's-mid-90's, and all awesome.  Sean has 3 of his, and is lucky enough to have a working memory of all 4.  So last night, when we were asked in this book to identify who, if any, are those that we have met with a "Grandfather Anointing".  We had a lot to choose from just in our very close circles but looked at each other in perfect unison and said "Pops".  My grandfather carries all three qualities like no one that I've ever met.  So I wanted to take a second to honor him and his weighty words and picked a few to share.  Words that I've mediated on seemingly countless times.

1.  Sometimes, you have to smile at people that you don't like and give them candy.

2.  Always tell the truth, but don't always be tellin' it.

3.  Sean, Maria, I'm going to tell you something and I want for you to listen really close.  Kids mess up.  And they mess up a LOT.  And you just can't get upset.  

I wish I had a tape so I could upload these sentences complete with his slow, deep, old man voice, but I don't.  I have NEVER heard ONE, even one, negative word about anyone come out of his mouth.  He has taken adversity in stride, never felt sorry for himself, never complains.  Everyone loves him, he says what he means, and means what he says.  He works hard and has worked hard his whole life.  He loves his family sacrificially, and has put up with things that would send your average person over the edge.  His first concern is never what he's having for dinner, but what YOU'RE having for dinner, if you get my drift.  He gives of everything that he has.  He knows the Bible and understands it.  I can't put my grandfather into words, but know that the term "Grandfather Anointing" was practically made for him. 

Mountains: 2, Sean and Me: 1

Everybody who lives in the southeast knows that yesterday had the most perfect weather ever.  Sean and I decided, after abandoning the idea of an afternoon in the park playing tennis, that we'd go for a hike.  We decided on Crowder's Mountain, which is right next to King's Mountain, and set out.

We went with the "strenuous" 4 mile hike to the top and made fun of the "strenuous" part for the first mile. It ended up being pretty challenging though near the end and ended with a short scale up some rocks from which you could see Charlotte and all of the surrounding area.  I'd also like to point out that this is the first hike in the past year that I've "finished".  We did one at Table Rock, but it started raining before we got all the way to the top, and we did one in the Grand Tetons that I cracked a rib during, thus ending our trek to the top.  So I'm proud of myself, and still sore.

Us at the top..

Charlotte from the top...I think it looks like the Emerald City from far away.

After that, we finished this awesome day with a late dinner at Ruth's Chris, which is I think the nicest restaurant that I've ever been in.  We could go thanks to Charlotte Restaurant Week and a Christmas gift card from my mom.  So thanks.  It was the most delicious steak ever.  And I'm still tired.

In other news, Sean got pied in the face at church today which amused me :)

-Maria