Walking Faith

I recently learned I walk incorrectly.  Apparently it is not uncommon for us as adults to learn bad habits in walking, standing, and other common motions.  My poor form was brought to my attention by our good friend Kelsey (who is amazing), who has a newly earned doctorate of physical therapy degree (so she is amazing, smart, and hardworking. She also is very humble which why I like bragging about her).

From Dr. Kelsey I learned my walking stride is amiss; I plant a foot, rock back on it, and let my knee lock before taking the next step.  I'm told this is bad for knees (who needs those?).

To make things worse I am especially prone to this poor form when walking fast, and unfortunately I enjoy walking fast.  In my family we commonly refer to speed walking as "Disneyland mode" because on family vacations you want to be first in line for Space Mountain.

Now I'm trying to walk slower and with proper form, which takes more time.  No longer can I focus my attention solely on the speed of my walking and on reaching my destination, but now have to consider my form and the methods I use to reach it.  

I have found this mirrors other aspects of my life and faith.  One example is how I live within our time oriented society.  A strong symptom of living in a minute conscious culture is a drive for efficiency.  We are so focused on productivity, goal completion, and performance we neglect to consider what means we will employ to achieve this end.  I can pack my day full of tasks to do, maximize my accomplishments, down-size my "wasted" time, and burn myself out in the process.  These advantages and disadvantages are all within the realm of the short-term; the long-term effects only compound over time.

Incorporating this consideration of both method and objective, requires rethinking my schedule and how I schedule.  It prevents me from cramming as much into a work day.  Proper health in my daily work necessitates allowing time to walk slower with proper form: physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.  By taking the time to contemplate means and ends, and then to choose the more holistic approach, I have the immediate loss of productivity, but I have the long-term benefit of not wearing out my knees and soul over time.  

So where are we rushing through life too busy and too focused on achievement to consider the affects of our chosen methods?  Because of our time oriented culture I find I have to repeatedly consider the balance between my form and goals.  I am also glad to have wise people and a loving God to help me and remind me how best to walk through life.

Thanks Dr. K and Jesus

Scripture Reading like Amino Acids

I love the Bible.  It's an interesting/difficult/confusing/challenging library of books.  There are numerous reasons and explanations of why we should read the Bible and the benefits of daily Bible reading.  Many explanations are well meant, but can be theologically unsound.  For example reading the Bible does not earn you Jesus points.  It just doesn't.  Our desire for control (qualifies as sin when over-prioritized) would love a formula such as the following:

[(X hours reading Bible + Y hours praying + W% tithe given)/168 hours per week] = Jesus Points.

Thankfully faith does not work like this.  Faith is relationship with God and therefore not something which can be quantitatively assessed.

Instead I think reading the Bible functions a lot more like amino acids.  Any introductory Biology course (or Wikipedia) informs us amino acids are the molecular building blocks our bodies and other organisms use to make proteins.  Proteins in turn make up basically everything in our bodies.  There are approximately 25,000 genes in our individual genomes which code for approximately 100,000 proteins that make up us.  We are composed of a lot of proteins built out of tons of amino acids.  But how is reading the Bible like amino acids?

I don't know how God speaks to you during your Bible reading, and it's fun to see how God speaks to people differently, but personally when God speaks through His word it is almost always not while I am reading the Bible.  Instead He usually brings up passages, stories, ideas, etc. from the Bible at other times (during worship, prayer, driving, eating, etc.).  For me reading the Bible is not a time to sit down and chat with God, it is a time to ingest raw materials and have those within me for future conversations.  I read the Bible to acquire building blocks God will later use to speak; each chapter, parable, psalm is like an amino acid which God will have available to bring to mind.

Some memorable examples God has said:
"Remember how I said I AM faithful? I have not changed."(2 Tim 2:13, Heb 10:23) or "An arrogant pharisee and a humble tax collector walk into the Temple (Lk 18:9-14)....which one of them is your religious spirit acting like right now?"

I am glad reading God's word is not a prerequisite for God to speak, but it does help facilitate our hearing Him.  I don't know about you, but I need a lot of help to quiet myself and listen for God's voice.  The Bible also provides a standard or baseline by which I can measure and calibrate my life.  More on calibration in future posts; for now let's go be people of the Word and acquire some more amino acid-like building blocks.

Another lesson from our dear friend Escherichia coli

A while ago I posted about what our dear friend Escherichia coli (E. coli) can teach us about raising up new leaders (click here), and today Escherichia will once again be teaching us another important theological principle; this time on sanctification.

But first an introduction to E. coli and a process known as Bacterial transformation.  Despite the bad reputation E. coli gets in the media, this little gram negative bacteria is essential to the proper health of our intestinal flora.  E. coli plays a key role removing in the toxic O² gas which otherwise would kill many of the obligate anaerobic (cannot tolerate O²) bacteria within us, and we need our intestinal bacteria!  So having E. coli is important.

Bacterial transformation is a process by which bacteria cells are able to find and absorb new DNA fragments from their environment.  This allows for a transformed bacteria to begin expressing novel DNA sequences and novel proteins.  Some bacteria are naturally able to incorporate environmental DNA, this characteristic is known as "competency", while other bacteria like E. coli require a bit of coaxing¹ into DNA uptake.  Transformation for E. coli is contingent upon prior external events, and only then is E. coli able to incorporate and begin expressing new DNA.

Cool, so what does this have to do with us?  I submit to you that we are like E. coli.  Despite all that we are capable of or our best intentions, left to our own devices Humanity will never save itself.  At the Fall we lost our identities, our humanity was warped, and ever since we have been shadows of who we were intended to be.  We are broken and hurting and we cannot change ourselves.  But in Jesus everything changes, He's a game-changer.  Through His work and His grace we are now able to be transformed; His victory is the external event upon which our ability to be transformed depends.  Like transformed E. coli expressing novel DNA, in Jesus we are changed and now able to express an identity which was previously foreign to us.  We are made human, as God intended in the beginning, once again.

I encourage you to allow Jesus to transform you as He alone can, back into who He alone intended you to be.  May we all live as transformed E. coli expressing our renewed identities.

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1. Ingraham, John L. et al.  Microbe.  ASM Press. 2006. p.187.

Bone Marrow Donation: Two Year Anniversary

May 12th 2011 was a big day in my life.  Several years ago I entered the National Bone Marrow registry, and I have since been occasionally called to do some lab work and see if I am a genetic match for someone needing a bone marrow transplant.  The registry supplies transplants for across the world.

The crazy thing about a bone marrow transplant is they are risky.  The genetic match must be much closer than even organ transplants because the transplanted marrow forms the recipient's new immune system.  If this new immune system rejects the host, known as graft-verses-host disease, the recipient will die and there is nothing modern medicine can do to help.  Even now with the best of our technology 10% of bone marrow recipients die within the first 100 days of acute g-vs-h.  Because bone marrow transplants are so risky they are a last ditch effort.

In the spring of 2011 I was determined to be the genetic match for a woman, and we began the "work up" process to prepare us both for the donation/receiving.  On May 12th 2011 I donated approximately a quart of marrow.  And she lived!!  Praise the Lord she lived.  After a year I have had the opportunity to speak with my recipient and we have exchanged a few cards (which has been so fun).

We just celebrated the two year anniversary of my donation.  What blows my mind is the fact she is alive because of the marrow I gave. Yes it was scary going into the donation and painful coming out, but the fear and pain were temporary.  I was on pain meds for a few days, it hurt to bend at my waist for a week, I could not run for a month; but then I was fine.  4-6 weeks after my donation my body regrew all my bone marrow.  Two months after the only evidence on my body were two tiny scars on my hips.  And a woman is alive because of this.  My temporary pain gave her a new shot at life.  This woman will hopefully get decades of life off of my marrow in her bones.  How awesome is that?!  And it affects her family too.  I just learned she is able to see her daughter graduate from nursing school this month.  Two years ago she did not think she would be alive to see this, and now her daughter gets to have her mother at her graduation because of a simple donation.

This reminds me of Jesus, who endured the agony of the Cross (much worse than bone marrow donation) so that we might have an opportunity at life.  He willingly and gladly endured the Cross to give humanity the opportunity to be saved.  Jesus knew the cost and He knew we were worth it.  How awesome is that?  We have life, hope, joy, and love because He said the temporary pain was worth it.

Jesus is so good.

Restore to Factory Default

You have probably noticed by now people can be pretty messed up sometimes.  Oppression and exploitation, empires, abuse and manipulation.  It's everywhere and it's not just "them"; we all have our moments of failure and selfishness.  Please don't think me misanthropic, I just don't believe humanity left to its own devices will ever save itself.  We were not designed for this; we were not meant to live and operate in sin.  In the Beginning God created us good, whole, and sinless.  

Ever since the Fall humanity has been glitchy; some of our files and systems have been corrupted.  Not only are we born broken into a broken world, but we pick up more bugs along the way (wounds, lies, wrong priorities, etc).  Our sin goes against our programming and slows us down from living as God intended.  In truth we become less and less ourselves as we accumulate more problems and stains of this world.  On our own we all will spiral down to the "blue screen of death."

This is where Jesus steps in.  He came to save us from ourselves and our glitches.  By God's grace Jesus comes into our lives and goes about helping us reboot our system and restore us to our perfect factory defaults of Eden.  Thankfully this does not wipe our memories or personality; instead we are freed up from the burden of harmful thoughts, patterns, and behaviors.  We are made new and renewed.  Praise God for accomplishing what only He can.  With this new freedom we are now able to walk in our true identities.  But this world is still a dirty place and we will continue to pick up glitches along the way.  Thankfully by the same grace of God we can be restored and renewed again and again and again.  I know I need this grace.