Chris's Musings

Ever wonder what Jesus was taking about in John 2 at the wedding at Cana when He told his mother "Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come." (John 2:4)?   To be honest, I hadn't given it much thought until this year, and specifically as I have started my 2023 devotional reading in John.... reading this year not chapter-by-chapter but thought-by-thought (which has taken me a little longer to get through this time).   I always thought, and probably because it's in line with what I've been taught, that Jesus was talking about His time to make His public ministry known, when He's referring to "my hour."  Also, there is a tradition that this act Jesus did in this narrative of turning water into wine was His first miracle... John says in John 2:11 that "This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him."  It could have been Jesus' first miracle, ...

This week, I had the opportunity to cross an item off my "bucket list" that has been there for 10 years.  I got up at the ungodly time of 2:30 AM (yes, you heard that right), and rode to the trailhead at Gray's Peak in Colorado for an 8 mile round trip and a 3,000+ feet vertical climb to the Gray's Summit at 14,278 feet.   This is my second 14er to stand on the top of, it's the first that I hiked from the peak base to the top from.  Here we are at 5:05am, at dusk at the trailhead.  Ready to go.  The sunrise was really amazing as we climbed. We took drinks from the mountain spring-fed stream (It tasted cleaner than the bottled water I brought) We saw this rockpile formations all along the trail.  I think it has some kind of spiritual significance for people, or perhaps it's just a "you're on the right path" trail marker.   I thought that Craig's air purchase was kind of dumb, that was until we were climbing at 13,000+ feet.  It's rosemary ...

  What does #FEXIT mean? Like recent secessionist movements like BREXIT and the threatened "CALEXIT" - it just seemed like a proper way of talking about dropping my Facebook account.  Considering that the nation of Facebook can be considered it's own political entity that comes with it's own rules, bylaws, governance, and mores, that a "Facebook EXIT" (or #FEXIT) just seems like a proper hashtag.  That is, if hashtags are valid ways of communicating in a non-social media world.   In 2007, some friends of mine on a mission trip talked to me about this new thing that people were starting to use to connect with old friends and share pictures with each other.  Being single at the time and wanting to connect with old friends through a more efficient means than email (which wasn't all that great... neither was Myspace which, admit it, you've used!).   I found this new social tool to be very helpful, and especially in the beginning I found ...

I picked up this book early this year as I was getting involved in Student Ministry at my church in Atlanta - and a lot of conversations among us leaders revolved around the impact of cell phone usage with our students... and quite honestly with us.  I expected to be a little convicted, because I am engaged on social media, but not to the extent that I was.  Tony Reinke (look him up - this is a smart dude) is a writer at Desiring God and John Piper put together the forward.  Uniqely - Reinke combines a theological rigor with the normal statistical "phones are screwing us up" research out there, and uniquely in my mind delivers the "so what" when it comes to the most important thing in our lives, namely our connection with Jesus Christ. He doesn't approach this topic as one outside of social media, but as one who is a digital native that understands the benefits of technology and the dangers that our "glowing rectangles" that demand our attention ha...

The Fourth of July has come and gone.  The election is starting to gain momentum with the first Democratic debate, and hold the memes... the food fight is beginning.   Actually, it has been going on since 2016.  The vitriol and name-calling coming from the Left and the Right alike in America, even among church people, has been crazy.  I picked up this book in the past year because I was intrigued by the title and because if I wanted to see real change (especially in the way we as Christians in America view politics), then the change starts at home and with me.  How the Nations Rage, Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age is a challenging book to read, regardless of your political affiliation.  If you are the typical conservative evangelical, it is extremely challenging because it challenges us to think about how we engage and challenges our blind loyalty to the GOP (let's be honest, it's there), and some assumptions that we get from C...

As a preface, at the beginning of this year I had set a goal to read more, and read a more variety (I tend to read primarily for quiet times and devotionals).  This means that I step out of my box a little, and included with my goal was to write my thoughts on the book and the takeaways I got from reading it. In a busy first half of 2019 which included three international business trips, a move from Atlanta to Colorado, and all of the craziness of establishing life in a new place, I hadn't gotten to the second half of this goal until now.  I hope that if you find this blog, that it helps you and enhances your life in some way.   So here we go...  What is a Healthy Church?  By Mark Dever  This was one of the first books on my list for the year.  Amanda and I had learned that we would be relocating to Denver at the end of 2018, and one of our first priorities when we arrive would be to find a good church.  Spoiler alert:...

Last Friday night, I had an overnight layover coming home from Helsinki through Amsterdam.  I hadn't been into Amsterdam in a while, so I decided to take a train into the Amsterdam City Center to soak in the city a little, and sample my fill of cheeses (and I did buy a piece of Gouda to take home). Fun fact:  Gouda is named after a small town in South Holland where the cheese was invented.  It's near Rotterdam.  It's on my list of places to see now.  If you get a chance to go to Amsterdam for a day, it's a really beautiful city. One of the first things you see as you walk out of the Amsterdam Central train station is a building by a Catholic cathedral that has two inscriptions on it. God Roept U (in Dutch), and Jesus Loves You (in English) As a casual observer who doesn't understand much Dutch, other than the American connotation that it means that you and your date split the bill, I decided to run the phrase through Google Translate; expecting that...