Axios: Come Alive

I don't often share the spotlight with anyone else on this blog. I like to keep things "All David, All the Time." So when I do offer a plug for someone else's project, you should take that to mean that there is a good reason.

On Tuesday, November 27th, my friends and former classmates in the worship band Axios will be releasing their first album, Come Alive. Here are three reasons that you should buy it and listen to it (besides the fact that they are all so good-looking, which I feel is so obvious that it can go unmentioned).

1. I'm not expert in music, but I really like music, and I like to think that I can recognize good music when I hear. And this album is good music. The bits of the album that I've heard absolutely rock. It's the kind of stuff that you can have playing while you're doing your dishes, and maybe you'll do a little jig in your kitchen when you're sure no one is standing outside your apartment's back door looking at you. (Not that I've done that, of course....) But in any case, if you like listening to worship music, or just to music in general, this album is for you.

2. One of my favorite things about Axios' songs is that the lyrics are heavily based in Scripture itself. I think that the Bible should be, not just our guide for doctrine and ethics, but our guide for worship as well. That's one of the great things about some of the classic hymns, and one of the reason that these hymns have remained in church tradition for so long is that they are grounded in the unchanging Word of God. It's a good thing when a worship song can use biblical phrasing and themes, and Axios' songs do that well. When you're singing or listening to these songs, your engaging with texts like Psalm 24, Romans 8, Ephesians 4, and Revelation 4 & 7. It's important for Christians to read, listen to, and study God's Word, and it's a big bonus when we can sing it too!

3. I've been to a lot of churches, conferences, and camps, and one thing I've noticed with some worship bands is that they treat what happens on the stage as the extent of their ministry. That's not how Axios rolls. One of the things I really respect about them is that they understand that ministry is about more than playing songs. They lead worship at a lot of youth camps and retreats, and they spend time getting to know kids and showing love to them, and that's what separates musicianship from ministry, I think. Also, they've partnered with an organization called Blackbox International, which aides boys who are rescued from sex trafficking throughout the world. Twenty percent of the proceeds from Come Alive will go to Blackbox International, so by purchasing a super-good album, you can also partner in that ministry, and everyone wins.

So on Tuesday, get yourself a copy of Come Alive on iTunes, or from Axios' website here. Also be sure to check out the band's Facebook here, their Twitter here, and their Youtube here.

Here's To You

When the United States celebrated its Bicentennial in 1976, it minted certain coins to celebrate the events. Ever seen these things? The Bicentennial quarter has a guy playing a drum on the back, while he's dressed like he's going to a New England Patriots game. If you ever get your hands on one, you look at it and say, "Oh wow! A Bicentennial quarter! I'm going to hang on to this one!" And it becomes the most exciting part of your day for the next five minutes, until you forget about it and use it in a vending machine to buy a Milky Way.

This post is a bicentennial of sorts (a bicentpostal?), because this is the 200TH POST on A Chicken in a Cage with a Ferret. If the United States gets a special coin for turning 200, I think it's only fair that there be something to celebrate my accomplishment as well. Maybe not a coin, but something. I already tried to get Macy's to fly a balloon of my face in the Thanksgiving Day Parade this morning, but they said it was too short of notice. Maybe we could make a commemorative quilt? One of you should get started on that.

In the last 199 posts, I've done a lot of writing about myself. However, I haven't done much writing about YOU. And so, on this 200th post, and since it is Thanksgiving, I thought it was time to give you your due. And so, this is my tribute to you, Reader. Enjoy it. Because it probably won't happen again.

I tried to think about what qualities my average reader probably possesses. The first on that I thought was "Extremely bored." It seriously shocks me that you've chosen to make your way here. Have you ever been on the Internet before? Do you know how much other stuff there is to do out there? I mean you could be looking at this or this or this, or even this, and all of that would probably be a more productive and entertaining use of your time.

I do realize, however, that "bored" probably isn't the most complementary quality to ascribe to a person, and it doesn't make for a very good tribute. So let's start over. You, O Reader, are...

1. Patient. I write a lot of ridiculous things on here, and I take a long time to say them. For instance, this is the real beginning of what I've wanted to say in this post, and it's taken me five paragraphs of introduction to get here. Most of my posts include a number of jokes that I doubt anyone will laugh at besides me, and just about every post includes an unabashed plea for a date, or for brownies (this post will be no exception, by the way). And yet, in spite of all my absurdity, you hang in there. If more Black Friday shoppers had your patience, I wouldn't be thinking about eating my Thanksgiving turkey raw so that I would get sick and not have to go to work right now.

2. Good-looking. When you were in Jr. High, did you ever notice that all the really good-looking people tended to hang out together. I was always wondered how this worked out. Did they take applications and hold interviews or something? At what point would they say, "No, you're just too average-looking to run with us"? If this trend continues into early adulthood, I have to assume that you, Reader, are very good-looking, because, well, I'm good-looking (patchy beard notwithstanding). So if you need to, take a break from reading this for a moment, go look in your bathroom mirror, wink at yourself, and rest secure in the fact of your natural attractiveness.

3. Generous. This is a quality of yourself that you still need to prove. But I have faith in you. Christmas season is beginning, and it is the season for giving. You'll be busy getting gifts for your family, friends, and significant others. But you know who tends to fall through the cracks in all of this? The bloggers in your life. And those bloggers are hungry. For brownies. And cookies. And cash.

But on a serious note, I do want to wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings, and I hope that you have a wonderful day with family and friends and pies and mashed potatoes. I am sincerely thankful for you and for the fact that you've chosen to spend a few minutes of your day here, and I'm really thankful for those of you who do this every week.

And if you do decide to go out shopping for Black Friday, please, for my sake, be kind and gracious to the employees who are working. Whenever you see one, picture him as a sweet little puppy that needs a kind word. And if he hits on you and asks for your number, just go with it. He deserves it.

Because I Can

Normally, I would be sitting in my Old Testament Criticism class right now. However, it is Thanksgiving Break, which means that today I have a (gasp!) free day! I have been sorely in need for a day like this for some time, because since Labor Day, I think, I have had to either work or go to class every day. The various obligations in my life have used up all my time and have dictated the way that I spend each day. But today is different. Today I could wake up and think "This day is mine; from this moment until I go to bed today, I can do whatever I want."

About a year and a half ago, I moved to Cincinnati. This is the first time that I have lived in a major city, and I was very excited to come because I really like cities. I especially like the "downtown feel" of major cities, and whenever I visit one, I like walking the sidewalks and looking up at the buildings and seeing the people. Since I moved to Cincinnati, though, I never actually went downtown (except to go to Reds games). I guess I always felt weird about taking a trip downtown. I wouldn't know what to do there, and I hate to pay for parking.

But on this day of unlimited possibilities, I decided it was time to mix things up and head to downtown Cincinnati for the afternoon. And it's been a really good day, to be honest. I walked around for a bit, visiting the giant bronze fountain the stands at the center of the city. I went to a burger place I had heard about to get lunch, only to discover it was closed down, so I instead ate at a burrito place nearby. I watched all of the white-collar business professionals scurrying about--the men in their slacks and ties, and the women in their skirts and heels--and I thought about how to them, I probably look like a Caulfieldesque vagabond. I walked around the outside of Great American Ballpark, where my beloved Reds play during the summertime, and I hoped to play a game of catch with Joey Votto if I bumped into him, bu the wasn't around. I sat on a bench in a park that sits on the Ohio River and read for an hour or two. I did the same thing at a riverfront park when I lived in Oregon for a summer, and it was nice to be in an environment with a similar feel, though there were a lot less hippies wandering around.

As I sat on that bench reading, I looked across the river into Kentucky and saw a Barnes & Noble on the other side. So after a while, I thought, "I should walk over to that Barnes and Noble and look around." But then my more rational side questoined that proposal. "Why would I do that? Do I really need to?" And the answer was, "No...I don't have to. But I can."

So now I'm sitting in that Barnes & Noble, sipping a Starbucks Chai Latte and looking out the window at downtown Cincinnati, reflecting on an afternoon that has been perhaps a little aimless, but that has been needed. I had no real reason to venture downtown among the office buildings busy people making the world run on their smartphones. But I came...because I can.

I think that from time to time, we all need to do something, just because we can. It's a shame that those opportunities don't come up more frequently for most of us. When you're a little kid, you have an imagination and you dream of endless possibilities of adventures you can go on, but you can't, because you're parents won't let you be out too late. When you exit that phase of life and become an adult, you finally gain that independence from parents' restrictions  but then you have work-obligations in their place. And when you get old and retire, you have freedom from the responsibilities of work, but you're aging body doesn't allow you to do what you once could.

You spend so much of your life bound to other things that determine what you can and can't do. There are so few occasions in which you can say, "I'm doing this, just because I can." And when those rare occasions do come, I think we need to take advantage of them. What I find happening in my own life far too often is that, when I do have some real free time at my disposal, I tend to waste it. I sit on the couch and watch reruns. I get stuck in routines instead of doing something new.

I think God makes us to be dreamers and to be adventurers. But so many times, we settle for being much less than that. We get caught up in the routines and in what we're used to instead of exploring something new. We lose that childlike wonder at what undiscovered amusements the world might hold. It is too rare that we set out and say, "I'm going to do this, just because I can."

I've really enjoyed today. I need more days like this. And maybe you do as well. And so, before my laptop battery dies, and before I begin the lengthy hike back to the parking garage that is housing my car, I want to leave you with a simple encouragement: When you get those brief windows of time that you are free from the obligations on your time, do something different. Go to a new place. Meet new people. Try a new restaurant. Date a new blogger.

Why? Simply because you can.

In Arabia

There are not many things more frustrating than when your computer freezes up. You've been there before. You'll be watching a movie, writing a paper, or facebook-stalking a cutie, and suddenly your computer decides it's a good time to take a break. So you wait for a few moments, you hit "Control-Alt-Delete," you mutter all the words that your parents never let you say growing up, you cry a little, and eventually you just shut the machine off and try again, dreaming about what it would be like to be one of those cool kids who sits in Starbucks with a Macbook listening to some musician you've never heard of before.

Sometimes I feel like my life is like that frozen computer. It feels like my life gets stuck. Like it's been put on pause somehow. It's gotten stuck in the mud, and I rev the engine, but the wheels just keep spinning while I sink a little deeper into the muck.

Early adulthood is an interesting time of life. It's a period during which many people begin what you might think of as "real life," and over the past couple years, it feels like many of my friends are setting out on this journey. Being a Bible college graduate, most of my friends are involved in ministry in some way, just as I am, but I hear of my peers beginning full-time ministries at healthy, growing churches where there is an atmosphere of vitality and excitement. I hear of friends getting married and starting families. I hear of friends looking for real places to live and cooking meals that you can't just pull out of the freezer and stick in the microwave. I look around at my social circle, and it feels like everyone else is moving forward.

But then I look at my own life, and it doesn't feel like that. It feels stuck. On occasion, someone will ask me about what's new in my life, and my answer is typically something like, "Oh, not much...still going to school, preaching, and working." And that about sums up my life, to be honest. I'm in my seventh year of post-high school education, so I still spend some time reading and researching and writing papers. I work at a part-time retail job that I really don't care for at all. And I preach on Sundays at a small rural church, and while I'm thankful for that opportunity and love the people there, it's a difficult ministry, and it can be really tough to always feel jazzed about it.

Other tell me about their exciting ministry opportunities, new relationships, and general life-progression, and all the while, I wonder why my life doesn't feel like that. Am I stuck? Is this all there is for me? Is there any purpose for my life to be what it is right now?

One of my favorite sermons that I heard in a chapel service while I was in college was preached by my former professor Shane Wood. (If you care to, you can hear the sermon here.) In the sermon, Shane teaches on Paul's experience on the way to Damascus, and his main thought is that all of us want that Damascus Road experience, but few of us want to go where that road leads. We want the Damascus Road; that is, we want the clouds to part and for God to speak to us in a powerful way. Also, we want what we see in Paul's ministry--we want to be like Paul in Corinth or Athens or Ephesus or Rome. What we don't want, however, is to go where the Damascus Road leads, which according to Shane, is to obscurity.

After Saul became a Christian, he didn't immediately start traveling the world as a missionary. In fact, Galatians 1 says that he instead went to Arabia for three years, and what is perhaps most interesting about this fact is that it isn't all that interesting. The book of Acts doesn't even talk about it. We don't really know what exactly Saul was doing during those three years, but we have to assume he was being prepared for the life of ministry God had for him. Because of those three years in obscurity, Saul became Paul. Because of those three years in obscurity, Saul was prepared for what would happen to him as he preached throughout the world. Because of those three years in obscurity, Saul's ministry was fruitful and effective.

As I was getting ready to graduate college, I decided to continue my education at seminary because I felt that it would better prepare me for my ministry. I want to be the best that I can be. And I hope that's what will happen. To be honest, sometimes I feel like I'm going in the wrong direction and that I was more ready for ministry two years ago than I am now. But I still try to hang on to the hope that when I'm done with school down the road, I'll be a more able tool for God to use.

Maybe you're in a spot in life where you feel much like I do. If so, I guess my encouragement to you would be to use your time of preparation well. I don't say this because I'm a good example of someone who is doing that, because I don't think I am. I struggle with this so much, and it becomes so easy for me to grow cynical and pessimistic, to constantly ask "What if I had made different decisions? Would my life be in a better place now?" In in those moments, I need to remind myself that God uses his servants' sojourn in obscurity to prepare them for lives of ministry and leadership, and I need to try not to compare my current state of affairs with those of others.

I often wish I could somehow fast-forward over the next 18 months to the point that I graduate, when I anticipate "real life" beginning. But maybe  a better approach is to be fully invested in this time of preparation as a time of preparation. My classwork in seminary can prepare me for the rest of my life. My ministry in the boonies can prepare me. Living by myself in the box of my urban apartment can prepare me. Even trying to maintain my life and my sanity while working retail on Black Friday next week can prepare me. And through all of this, I hope to emerge a better disciple, a better minister, a better thinker, a better friend.

Memory and Interpretation

I think that one of the most annoying experiences a person can have is to watch a movie with someone who has already seen it numerous times and who likes to recite lines from the movie before they even happen.  This person knows the movie. He sees the film playing through his mind in advance. He has viewed the move so many times that he knows he is frontward, backward, inside-out. Nothing catches him off-guard.

After you see a movie so many times, you might become so familiar with the film that it no longer conveys new meaning. The same thing is sadly true for the way many Christians read the Bible, I think. This semester I am taking an advanced Greek class, and each week our assignment is to translate a chunk of Pauline material from the ancient Greek text into English. Several weeks ago, my professor pointed out that a danger in such translation is to do more remembering than actual translating. These passages that we translate are not especially new to any of us. We are seminary students who have read the New Testament multiple times, and it can become easy to allow my memory of the English versions of a given text to dictate the way in which I translate it. Sometimes I might come across an unfamiliar Greek word or grammatical structure, and I think, "Well, it looks like it says this, but that can't be right, because I know it must say something more like that." This isn't translating. It's remembering.

This same thing happens, not only in translation, but also in interpretation. I've been a Christian for a while now, and I've spent a lot of time reading and studying the Bible. Because of this, I think I know what the Bible says. So each morning, when I flip open my Bible and pick up wherever I left off the day before, I already have an expectation for what I should find. Even just by looking at the book and chapter number, or the headings on the page, I begin with a notion of what my reading that day will tell me. The conclusions I'm going to reach are often decided before I even start to read. Because I have already read the passage so many times before, I remember what I have already been taught the passage means rather than truly interpreting it afresh.

Christians like to be told what they already believe. Pretty early on, we tend to develop a set of beliefs, and we hold to those beliefs pretty stringently. And so when we read the Bible or hear a sermon, we expect those beliefs to simply be reaffirmed.

You can become so familiar with a text or an idea that you stop really listening.

Do you ever really expect to find something new when you approach God's Word? Do you ever anticipate that one of your long-held beliefs will be challenged? Are you ever open to gaining a new understanding of God and of what his design is for your life?

I don't think Bible-study is meant to just be an exercise in remembering. We should seek to interpret. We should seek every day to come to God's Word anew, with ears and hearts open to what he has to say to us. If we only remember what the passage says and use it to pat ourselves on our back, we never grow or mature. We just stay the same.

That's not to say that this is easy, or even entirely possible. We always read the Bible through the filter of theological frameworks, personal history, and cultural paradigms. But as much as we are able, we must still ask each new day, "God, what are you saying in this passage today?" And then be ready to be surprised. Be open to a new way of thinking. Because sometimes, God isn't saying what we've always thought he is.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. That's where growth happens.

He who's sure he's already heard all there is to hear.....that's where maturation ends.