Violation

Two weeks ago, we got served.  After being in our neighborhood for nearly five years, we received our second grievance during such time.  Our neighborhood has an association with rules and regulations which, if not obeyed, will result in such grievances being filed.  Both times we've received our notifications, it was for the same thing, weeds and lack of mulch.

The first time we got our notification, we had been in our house for less than a year.  My wife had just given birth to our second child and I had started seminary three months earlier.  Thankfully, some friends from church had come over to put an, "It's a boy!" balloon on our mailbox, clueing in everyone around us that we had a few things happening in our lives at the time.

Last year, in the midst of everything happening with my mom, the weeds began to pile up again.  A true friend from church came over and donated her time to rid our landscaped area of the weeds that had overcome it.  I was so grateful.  There was no way that I was going to find time to weed and mulch in the midst of all of that.  I wasn't even able to cut my lawn and was also grateful when someone donated some grass cutting to us until the end of the summer.

The funny thing is, I now have a reputation in my church for the weeds in my landscape beds.  Justified or not, I find great humor in it.  I am sure that there are people who don't find it as funny, but the way that I have always looked at it is that if I have the choice between weeding and making things pretty or spending time with my family doing something a little more meaningful, I'll choose my family every time.  The nice thing is that my kids are getting old enough now where they can actually be one in the same, the weeding and mulching can be a great bonding experience for our family.

And that's just what it was the other day.  I had mulch delivered, expecting a fairly decent week weather-wise.  I was greatly disappointed when the weather hardly cooperated, raining just about every day from the point that the mulch was delivered until it was actually laid.  As I continued looking at my windows at the rain, I tried to estimate the extra weight of the mulch as it became more and more saturated.

I finally realized that my time window was running out and I planned on getting home from work a little early so as to jump into the project.  My neighbors had some wheel barrows that they told me I could borrow, so I went over there to grab them and their boys started getting their stuff already to come help me.  They brought the wheel barrows and pitchforks to move the mulch, they started diligently to work as I began the arduous task of moving 8 yards of mulch.

The boys recruited another neighborhood girl and my youngest son and made an assembly line of sorts.  The system was pretty efficient, other than the fact that I was the only one actually spreading the mulch.  Before I knew it, the skies began to darken and the rain came.  At first, it was slow, but eventually, the skies opened up and I thought someone was standing above me with buckets of water, just pouring them over my head.

In a matter of hours, we have moved at least five of the eight yards.  Everyone began to retire for the evening and I wonder whether or not I would even be able to move the next day.  It's been a while since I had exerted myself to that extent.  I knew I still had two to three yards to move, but I was pretty proud of what I had accomplished.

As I thought about the whole situation, I was struck by a few different things.  First of all, someone had driven by my house, at some point, and noticed the weeds.  It annoyed them enough that they wanted something done about it, but they bypassed relationship to go for the "quick fix."  Instead of ringing our doorbell to see if everything was all right, they did the easy thing: they made a phone call and complained.  I guess ringing the doorbell would have taken too much time and it might have required them to actually give of themselves.  They might have had to pretend that they cared.

On the flipside of that was my neighbors.  They offered their help to us simply because they cared.  They weren't looking for anything, they hadn't complained about the weeds, if they had, they most likely would have called or rang the doorbell.  They just wanted to help out and lend a hand however they could.

Life moves too fast not to slow down and take notice of things once in a while.  Next time you see something and want to complain, maybe you should take the time to ask what else is going on beneath the surface.  If you take the time, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.  You might find that you have a lot to offer someone who has little.  You might find that someone just needed someone else to talk to.  You might find that taking the time leads to a long-lasting friendship and someone who has your back.  It's easy to look at the surface and make our own presumptions.  We could all stand to take the time to dig a little deeper to find out what's below the surface.  Who knows, we just might learn something and our lives might just be a little more relationally rich than they were before.

Pre-School's Done...

Yesterday was the pre-school graduation for my oldest.  It was definitely one of those days when you try your best to slow everything down, take it all in, and hope that you’ll actually remember it.  Not the easiest thing to do when you’re trying to videotape, run sound, and pray an opening prayer.

It was kind of funny though, I kept hearing or reading about all of these moms who were starting to get teary in anticipation of their child’s pre-school graduation.  I snickered to myself, thinking that I wouldn’t really get choked up.  Then the day came.

It never helps your emotional state when you’re bordering on exhausted.  It’s been a long and tiresome week which was capped off by spreading 8 yards of mulch yesterday with the help of the neighborhood kids.  If those kids hadn’t helped me out, I think that I might still be out there trying to move and spread that mulch.  But that’s another story and another post.

I even had a chance to preview the video that had been put together for the program, but I think that a combination of my tiredness, my dad and aunt and uncle’s presence, as well as the raw emotion of just thinking about how much I wanted my mom to have seen this day led to me starting to choke up before the program even started.  I was scheduled to pray the invocation prayer at the beginning of the program and I frantically began to write stuff down in case I was unable to put my thoughts together on the fly like I normally do.

Other than the emotion of it all, it all went well.  We had a little party for family afterwards (including our adopted family who we’ve become close to since we moved here).  My oldest helped me pick out a cake for him the other night as we waited for his last minute haircut.  Props go out to Pamper Salon in Glen Allen for agreeing to cut his hair despite the fact that I showed up at the last minute.

As my wife and I were talking later, I told her that I couldn’t help but think about how my mom was supposed to have been here to witness the day.  She loved my son, he was the apple of her eye, and she would have been so proud of him.  After sharing this with her, I figured that I needed to take advantage of the opportunity to share it with my son. 

I took him on my knee, leaned into him, and whispered in his ear, “You know, Grandma would have been really proud to see you today, just like Mommy and Daddy are proud of you.  But I think that maybe she might have been looking down from heaven and that she was still able to see you today.”  My voice didn’t hold up and the tears began, but I was so grateful that he’s at the age where he humors his dad, not interrupting me, but hearing me out.

I fully expect that life might just begin to speed up now that we will have one in “real” school.  All the more reason to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way.  I joked with my sons before that they were turning into pizzas because we’ve had so many days in a row of pizza for dinner.  I picked them up, smelled them, and happily reported to them that they smelled like pepperoni and cheese and that they would have to be banned from pizza.  After my maniacal laugh, we all shared a laugh together.

I smiled at the fact that my senior year of high school yearbook quote is still true, “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid!”  Life’s too short to get too serious and I needed that reminder, the reminder that it’s really good to laugh.  The minute that I stop acting like a child in some ways is the minute that I’ve begun to take myself too seriously, and frankly, it’s these crazy moments that my kids are going to remember years from now. 

I know because it’s those moments of laughter that I remember most from growing up as well.  Not that there aren’t other memories in there, but the ones that bring smiles to my face are the ones filled with laughter.  Yes, pre-school’s over for my oldest and a new chapter of life is just beginning, but I can’t wait to see what’s right around the corner.  He’s only five years old and I’m so proud of him already, I’m looking forward to more opportunities to be a proud parent in the future.

Rules, Part II

What do we base our rules on?  When we come up with a system of guidelines, laws, or principles, how do we formulate them?  Many people will say that laws are based upon ethics and a system of ethics.  Generally, we can all come to some amount of agreement upon an ethical system, formulating rules which are workable.

The problem that I see with some ethical principles is that they can easily become relative.  We can easily move into a system of normative relativism which implies that even ethical beliefs that are contradictory may both be right.  There is also the concept of metaethical relativism which says that people legitimize their ethical principles based upon who they are, what their religious beliefs are, and what their culture is.

The ongoing question is whether or not there are moral absolutes or whether morals continue to be flexible and relative.  Moral relativism can easily slide down a slippery slope to become “mob mentality.”  We have seen the destructive nature of this throughout history.  Slavery seemed to have been a good idea to someone, once upon a time, and somehow, it caught hold and was embraced.

I go back again to the question of the normalization of our ethical and moral systems.  How do we keep things from becoming too relativistic?  We can probably all come up with examples in our heads of what things are morally acceptable and what things are not.  But what prevents those things that are currently unacceptable from becoming acceptable?

There is a place for moral absolutes, I believe that the Bible gives us a moral compass from which we can determine those absolutes.  But what do we do with those who don’t subscribe to the authority of Scripture?  Can we really mandate morality on people whose system of beliefs is in direct opposition to what the Word of God teaches?

This is where I get hung up.  I choose to live my life governed by a set of rules that are given to me by the One who created me.  Others choose not to do so.  If I tell them that they are wrong and implement a system by which they are forced to subscribe to my belief system, will they really be convinced that it’s a good idea simply because they are legislated to follow that system?  Or will they resent that system more because it is being forced upon them?  Would it be better to open up a dialogue to express our differences and viewpoints?

The problem with dialogue is that it takes time, and in a broken and fallen world, we are not always willing to commit to the time that it takes to generate dialogue and begin a conversation.  To me, dialogue implies that the conversation is ongoing, it continues as long as people feel as if there is movement or progression.  It needs to be filled more with wonderment than with dogmatism, otherwise, it’s not really a dialogue but a debate.

But there are times when people’s hands are forced, when they have no choice but to stand firm rather than entering into dialogue.  What happens when organizations that previously held to a system of moral absolutes devolve, holding instead to a system of moral relativism?  What happens when organizations that once held to a “True North” allow instead for their North to be magnetic, changing based upon the poles of a constantly evolving culture?

The definition of the word “conviction” is, “a fixed or firm belief.”  I wonder how many of us can articulate the convictions which we hold.  I wonder how many of us are really convinced of our convictions, instead embracing something that has been handed down to us rather than doing the difficult work of working it out for ourselves.  I wonder what our convictions are based upon: a constantly changing culture, our emotional state at the time, or something that remains constant, never-changing, always staying the same?

I didn’t fully appreciate that my convictions needed to be my own until I was in college.  The process of working them out was formative for me, allowing me to wrestle with difficult questions.  After that wrestling, I landed in a place where my convictions are based upon what I believe to be absolute Truth, unchanging, always the same.  While I hold to those convictions and that absolute Truth, I do my best to remain humble, admitting my own fallibility and brokenness.  But if I let my own fallibility and brokenness inform my convictions rather than allowing my convictions to inform my fallibility and brokenness, my system of beliefs will change constantly.

Paul said in Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”  We must work out what we believe and why we believe it.  We must work out our system of rules with a willingness to ask difficult questions and hold in tension certain things.  If we approach the formulation of our convictions with anything less than humility and grace, we will simply be dogmatic, leaving no room for transformation.  Is it possible to hold to convictions and still have some wonderment over mysteries that have yet to be revealed?

Rules

I have yet to find someone in life that likes rules.  Generally, if I find someone who claims that they like rules, I can always push them hard enough to find that there are some rules that they don't like.  There are some people who claim that rules were meant to be broken, the rebels among us who like nothing more than to buck the system and break as many rules as possible.  Others just love rules, they love the order that they bring to the chaos of their lives.  They love to have structure and routine.

Still, there are others who like to push right up against the rules, tiptoe along the edge of breaking them, and then begin pointing out the technicalities of the rule system to specify that they haven't indeed broken any rules, they've just "expanded the strike zone," so to speak.

It's hard to classify myself in a category in regards to rules.  I probably fit with the large majority of the population that says that there are certain rules that are just plain dumb, they don't make sense.  I honestly believe that rules are meant for protection, they're meant to provide some order and structure to life.  Without rules and systems, life would have the potential of turning into utter chaos.

The key to rules is determining exactly why they are in place.  Most teenagers believe that rules are put into place simply to make their lives more miserable.  They think that there is a conspiracy instigated by their parents and most other adults to use rules to make their lives anything but fun.  Sadly, there are adults who espouse the same beliefs and theories, they just simply never grow out of them.

But there may be something to those theories.  Sometimes, rules and systems can get in the wrong hands.  Sometimes, there are individuals who take rules which were intended for good and positive things and they misuse them to manipulate people and to lord their power over others.  Their intention isn't to protect people but instead to show how much control they can have over the lives of people who fall within the system of rules.

Each and every one of us is capable of taking rules and using them for our own self-interest.  Our motivations may differ, but it is possible for systems and rules which were intended for good to be abused.  We have seen this in communities, in states, in countries, in churches, and in other places throughout our world.  Dictators come in and make the rules as they go, becoming the adult equivalent of a three year old playing a game that he or she has made up with the only rule being that they will win no matter what.

Rules can be used to measure ourselves against others.  Generally, we can come out looking really good or really bad in comparison.  If we follow the rules, we may consider that we are deserving of something, that we have earned something.  If we don't follow the rules, we may not be surprised when there are consequences to breaking those rules, but it probably won't stop us from crying about the injustice of it all.

The best systems that I have experienced are the ones in which there are some sort of checks and balances, put in place for the protection of everyone involved.  While they certainly aren't foolproof, they may prevent some of the strong abuses that could easily become prevalent under broken and sinful people.

When Jesus walked the earth, there was a group of people who liked rules.  They liked to keep the rules and point out everybody who couldn't keep them.  Truth is, they were deluded in thinking that they could actually keep the rules.  Outwardly, they had kept the rules, but inwardly, they were in major violation of them.  Jesus reserved some of his strongest words for this group.

God knew that no one was capable of following and obeying all of the rules, that's why he sent Jesus.  He was the only one who could live perfectly, without breaking the rules, outside or inside.  Jesus' words in his teaching were that he had not come to do away with rules, but to fulfill them.  He had come to show that it was impossible to follow rules and that he had provided a way for us to still be okay despite the fact that we continue to break rules.

We all have to live by rules and we generally can't do anything about that.  What we can do is make sure that when we are the ones enforcing the rules, we can keep ourselves in check and have others do the same thing.  We can do our best to make sure that our own self-interest and selfish motivation doesn't take advantage and abuse a system that was put into place for the benefit and well-being of others.

There's more to say on this topic, but I'll reserve that for a Part II.

Where Are We Going?

In the last few years, I have had a recurring experience with books. I love to read and do my best to find time for a book, even when I have lots of other things going on. It usually doesn’t matter whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, if I can sink my teeth into a good book, I can become a much better person, a much more pleasant person to be around.

What’s happened over the last few years is that the inflow of books into my collection has exceeded my ability to read them all. It’s a little difficult being in seminary and trying to keep up with all the required reading for my classes as well as the reading that I want to do on the side. So, many books lay in piles around rooms in my house and in my office at the church. Occasionally, they will be shuffled around and toted here and there in a moment of motivation, but many times they go untouched.

I’m not really sure of the criteria for what rises to the top. It’s usually just an impulsive moment as I grab a book off of the pile and thumb through it. Sometimes it's the recommendation of a friend, or a few friends, who were struck by a specific book that's been sitting on the pile.  Oftentimes, I can tell whether I’m going to get into it or not by just the first few pages. And to be honest, over the last few years, there have been many books that I have tried to get into 3 or 4 times only to be stifled for one reason or another.

“Chasing Francis” by Ian Cron was one such book. I knew Ian when we lived up in Connecticut. I attended a Sunday night service where he would preach during my days after college. There was a synergistic feeling in the gatherings as many young people would come together to worship. I spent some time here and there with Ian, enough for me to have gained an enormous respect for him.

When I found out that he had written a book, I was intrigued. Even though we had left Connecticut, I had still heard about the things that were happening at the church that he had planted in Greenwich, CT. My wife and I have a friend who had been going there and was really getting plugged in. Before I knew it, I was seeing Ian’s name in a lot of different places that I had not expected. He was doing videos with a group called “The Work of the People” and a second book was on its way.

I’m not sure when I bought “Chasing Francis,” but it was probably at least a year ago. Back in February, as I prepared for my trip to St. Paul, MN, I grabbed a few books that were sitting on my shelf at home and threw them haphazardly into my bag. I intended to get to at least one of them as I traveled to middle America. Having made many attempts and false starts into Cron’s book before, I somewhat expected a similar experience this time around, but I was wrong.

Between the Richmond airport, a flight to Chicago, and a subsequent flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul, I came within 30 pages of the end of the book. As I finished the last few pages one evening, I realized why I had opened and shut the book many times before. This was precisely the time that I was supposed to have read this book.

Here I am, coming to the end of my seminary experience. I have been blessed to have had an incredibly supportive wife, family, and church in the process. I have made some incredible friends that I fully plan and expect to continually connect with in years to come. And if anything, I probably have more questions as I approach the end of this journey than I did when I began. And that’s all right.

As I read through “Chasing Francis,” the main character found himself in a place where his faith had been figured out, there was no mystery to it anymore. He had become a CEO of an organization rather than a shepherd of a church. This theme has weaved through so much of what I have read in the last year.

You see, I’m tired of seminaries that churn out executive-type pastors who can plan and organize the crap out of things, leaving very little room for the Holy Spirit to work. While there are probably some exceptions, I don't get the feeling that the seminary that I have been attending is churning out these kinds of leaders. I have seen people transformed over the last few years, they have become different people, people ready and willing to accept that faith is full of tension, and sometimes full of more questions than answers.  One friend and his family are up and moving to Haiti as they are being "wrecked" by God, following the difficult call on their lives.

Over the course of Cron’s book, the main character goes on a pilgrimage to find what has been lost. He rediscovers the beauty and mystery of his faith. He begins to seek out a new way to go about living out his faith and is eventually voted out of his church (not that I’m looking toward a similar demise myself). He recaptured the mystery and tension of knowing and being in community with the God who created him.

This was an incredibly timely read for me because I have been growing more and more frustrated with myself, with the Church, with Christians. I have grown tired of falling into step with the status quo and have longed for something that recaptures the brilliance of my faith. I long to take off the sepia-toned glasses that have lulled me to sleep, and exchange them for Technicolor ones instead.

I saw a glimpse of this during Advent last year. I saw how we can creatively worship God in a way that defies “how we’ve always done it before.” Sure, there’s always the danger of repeating things enough that it just becomes rote, but that’s why we need to creatively think through how we worship God together. It’s not a job for those who are on staff and paid within the church, it’s the job, no, the responsibility of everyone who considers themselves a follower of Christ.

Just once, I would love for people to actually show up to a corporate worship gathering with the expectation that they will see God in a new and fresh way, that they will see Him knock their socks off. It would be such a refreshing change from the typical “I’ll put in my hour” attitude that so often pervades our churches.  But the change doesn’t start with anyone else but me. I can rant and rave about others, but the only one that I can change is me. What am I going to do to make a difference? How am I going to approach things differently than I did before?

I think that those of us who consider ourselves Christ followers can make a difference in this world. Not because we’re so wonderful, but because God is. If we would let God be God and stop getting in the way, I would expect that we would see things go a lot differently than they have been going.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that there’s a lot of potential, if we would just step aside and let God lead us. Where are we going? It depends on who we’re following. If we’re the ones who are leading, we’ll probably just end up chasing our tails, winding right back where we started. If God’s the one who leads, there’s no telling where He’ll take us. Sounds like an adventure to me, and that’s an adventure that I’d like to be on.

Room For Doubt

Reading through the Bible, there are books within my own that get a lot of wear and tear.  The Psalms are a constant source of comfort to me.  I find myself in Paul's letters a lot for encouragement and teaching as well.  There are some books within the Bible that, while I don't avoid them, they just don't get a lot of airtime.

A few months ago, I remembered a verse in the book of Jude, a very short 25 verse long book.  A friend had brought one of the verses in Jude to my attention years ago in a conversation.  Jude 3 says, "Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people."  After constantly stumbling upon this verse and remembering our conversation, I was led back to Jude to see what other insights that it might hold.

Over the past few months, I have read through Jude a number of times, at least once a month if not more frequently.  The beauty of Scripture, to me, is that there is new insight to be gleaned every time that I read it.  I am constantly amazed at how I can read something hundreds of time and one day, I read it and notice something that I had never noticed before.

That very thing happened to be this morning as I found myself again reading through Jude.  Jude 22 says, "Be merciful to those who doubt."  I really stopped on that verse and began to think about it.  There is an ancient practice of Scripture reading called Lectio Divina in which the Word of God is read, meditated upon, prayed upon, and then contemplated.  As I read through Jude this morning, I felt like I hit the brakes when I read this verse.  It was a moment for meditation, reflection, and contemplation.

I have wrestled with doubt in my life.  It was far greater when I was younger, but every once in a while, I still find myself having questions and doubts.  They are more to do with what I am doing and where I am going, though the occasional "existence of God" doubts can sometimes take center stage.

This morning as I read through Jude and stumbled upon this verse, I began to think about so many people who had decried doubt as if it were a sin.  As we read through the overall narrative of Scripture, we encounter many people who have had their fair share of doubt.  I recall the man whose son was possessed by a spirit who said to Jesus, "I believe, help my unbelief."  I recall the disciple, Thomas, who needed to put his hands onto the wounds of Jesus after he rose from the dead in order to fully believe.  Those are just two cases, but there were others who doubted, who struggled to hold onto faith.

It is a myth to say that the Christian life is all rainbows and roses.  While some may criticize me for having a "doom and gloom" approach towards life with a statement like that, I'm only basing it on what Jesus said to his followers.  He specifically told them that in this world they would have trouble.  He told them that he had been persecuted and they should expect to be persecuted just as he was.  But he never left it there.  When he told them that they would have trouble in this world, he told them that he had overcome the world (John 16:33).

Doubt isn't a bad thing, it's what we do with that doubt.  Do we let it plague us, pull us down, overtake us?  Or do we wrestle with it and seek answers in the midst of it?  Job went through a crisis of faith, rightfully so, who wouldn't experience the depths of loss that he experienced and not go through a crisis of faith?  He eventually heard from God who set him straight and restored what he had lost.

We will doubt.  When we do, be careful not to listen to the voices of those who would cry against it.  Amidst our doubt, we serve and know a God who can hold that doubt, who is big enough to handle when His children struggle with their faith and questions along life's journey.  There is room for doubt in this life, it's just a question of what we do with it.

We will also encounter others who doubt, and despite the journey that we have been through that has brought us to our current place, others have not necessarily had similar circumstances and experiences.  What may seem logical to one may seem impossible to another.  As we encounter those who wrestle with doubt, we aren't called to beat them over the head with our experiences or what we have come to believe and know as truth, we are called to love and to be merciful to them.  If we have doubts, wouldn't we hope to have others be merciful to us?

There is room for dialogue and conversation in doubt, if we would only stop and find the time to engage in these things.  As we talk and converse, wrestling with our doubt, the ministry of presence from others as well as the mercy that they are called to can help us through these doubts.  Remember Job and his friends, while they ministered to him with their presence, some of their advice was less than sound.  A conversation requires both sides to be engaged in order to be fully successful.

The doubts that I have experienced are not behind me, one day they will rear their heads again, but how I handle them is my choice.  If I handle them honestly, they can be used for strengthening, rather than weakening my faith.  May we allow our times of doubt the opportunity to strengthen our faith.  God is big enough to handle our doubt, don't let anyone tell you differently.

Impossible

One of the things that I have had in my heart since I started in full-time vocational ministry 8 years ago was the desire to raise up the next generation.  When I was younger and in high school, I didn't have a lot of young people in my church to spend time with, our youth group was fairly small, only about 6 of us.  I ended up spending a lot of time with people who were older than me.  I played a lot of ping pong with my youth pastor and had tons of conversations about everything.  A lot of people took the time to invest in my life and help to steer me in the right direction.

Now, I am in a place where I'm the older person and I have the opportunity to speak into the lives of young people who are making many decisions about their life.  I want to pass on the very thing that was so important to me and encourage them in the faith that has become such a large and important part of my life.  Thankfully, through music, I get a lot of opportunities for that and it's always exciting to see people grow.

Amidst my experience, I have what I call "trophies of grace."  These "trophies" are young people that stand out to me above others.  It might be that I spend more time with them than I do with others.  It might be that there is some characteristic of them that stands out to me.  Regardless, there have been a few young people who have probably influenced me way more than I could ever influence them.

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to go to a piano recital for one of those young people.  This young man is an only child.  He loves Harry Potter.  He's brilliant.  He's talented.  He's determined.  He was born with only two fingers on his right hand, but that hasn't stopped him or slowed him down too much.  His name is Raleigh Browne.

As I sat and listened to him play music on the piano that someone with 10 fingers would struggle with, tears welled up in my eyes.  His mom shared her anger with God when he was born, her frustration that he would not be able to do all the things that she had hoped he could do.  His piano teacher spoke of the inspiration that he was and the opportunity that he had to meet George Winston, a famous pianist.  His music was heartfelt and his determination was contagious.

He took a moment in the recital to thank those who had taught, coached, and mentored him.  As I turned over the program, I saw my name listed among others.  I wondered how I could sit among other such influential people.  I wondered if I had really made a difference.  Yet he called me by name.

I smiled to myself and wondered if he knew how much I had learned from him.  I felt a twinge of guilt inside for the many times that I had faced a seemingly impossible situation that had caused me to want to throw in the towel and give up.  I wondered how many times someone had told Raleigh that he couldn't do something only to eat their words later on when he proved them wrong.

God doesn't make mistakes.  I might not understand everything that happens and I know that we live in a world that is marred by sin, but I know that God remains sovereign.  I look at Raleigh and I wonder what would be different had he been born with two normal hands, but then I realize that he is who he is in part due to how he was born.  His character has been shaped and molded by the obstacles that he has had to overcome.  His determination and sheer grit have been formative for him and all who have come in contact with him.  He is an inspiration.

In Matthew 17:20, after the disciples were unable to cast out a demon, they ask Jesus why they were unsuccessful.  Jesus says to them, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."  I don't know what Raleigh wants to do when he gets older, but I have a hard time thinking that he will be anything less than successful in whatever it is that he puts his mind to.

I am privileged to have been used, in however small of a way, to encourage this young man.  God has a special plan for him and it's encouraging and inspiring to see.  My prayer is that I might face every obstacle and adversity with the same grit and determination that Raleigh has faced his, knowing that nothing is impossible.  May we all eliminate the phrase, "that's impossible" from our vocabularies.