Snow Gets Colder as I Get Older

Remember when you were 8 years old how a snow was almost as exciting as getting a new package of Garbage Pail Kid cards? On the coldest night this past week, the kids and I went outside for our evening visit to the family dog. We cleaned the pin, gave him some new straw to keep warm and replenished his food supply. By this time I was freezing and wanted to head back in. Guess what? The kids wanted to stay out and play in the snow! Are you kidding me…why would one do such a crazing thing? Then I suddenly remembered how awesome I used to think it was when it snowed…25 years ago that is. Time really changes things and I swear the cold cuts deeper and deeper each year. Regardless, I sucked it up and stayed outside watching them make snow angels and roll in drifts. They were covered with snow by the time we came in. Remember how you used to get snow in your boots, gloves and hat? They had it. Funny thing is, it never melts. It just packs in and turns to ice. You go and go and go and go…then finally the sting from the snow packed next to your wrists and ankles starts to sting. Thats when you finally say its time to go in.
Watching my kids this past week reminded me of these things. I quickly determined that the snow definitely gets colder as I get older!

Pew Haul…you are going to love this!

Tired of trying to get friends to go with you to church?
Try this service…

Indeed, the “Right Time” Is NOW!!! TODAY Is the Day of Salvation!!! (authored by Pip Whitney, Associate Minister Countryside Christian Church)

During my quiet times at camp over the past couple of weeks, I read through the book of 2 Corinthians. However, I never made it past the second verse of chapter six. Not because my quiet times petered out, but simply because I was so captivated by the first two verses of 2 Corinthians 6 that I kept reading them over and over, meditating on them and studying them. In November 2009, my article was simply 1 John chapter 3. Ahead of the article I wrote, “Sometimes I realize that everything I want to say God has already said.” This is another one of those moments. 1 Corinthians 13 refers to Godʼs completed S c r i p t u r e a s “ t h e perfect” (v10), and why t r y t o imp r o v e o n perfection? So I ask that you take some time to read this passage that has so entranced me and reflect on what it means for your life where you are at this moment.

1 CORINTHIANS 5:14-6:2 (NLT) 14 …Christʼs love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. 15 He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. 16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! 17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting peopleʼs sins against them. And he gave us this w o n d e r f u l m e s s a g e o f reconciliation. 20 So we are Christʼs ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. 1 As Godʼs partners, we beg you not to accept this marvelous gift of Godʼs kindness and then ignore it. 2 For God says, “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation. A few questions for you to consider:

1 )Have you received this “marvelous gift of God’s kindness”? This passage tells us that God made the sinless Christ sin itself so that our lives could be corrected. Have you accepted Godʼs grace and mercy, been “reconciled to [Him]” (v20 NIV), and had your sins washed away?

2)If you are a follower of Jesus, have you accepted the gift and then ignored it? The NIV says “receive[d] [it] in vain.” Have you taken Godʼs grace and mercy lightly? Do you view the reward for your faith as just a future home in heaven? If so, may you realize that “TODAY is the day of salvation!” (emphasis my own). Christ did not die just to give you life after death but to give you life in all its fullness TODAY! May you begin to live your life for Jesus as a blessed reward NOW and in the future.

3)Who do you know that needs to “come back to God”? Too often we think we have more time to take the Light into the dark world so we will get to it later. We have no sense of urgency about “seeking and saving the lost.” May this passage convict us that “indeed, the ʻright timeʼ is NOW!!! TODAY is the day of salvation!!!” (Again, emphasis is my own.) We are not guaranteed tomorrow or even the next second, and neither are our lost friends, family members, or coworkers. How can you be Godʼs “ambassador” to them TODAY?

His minister of reconciliation, Pip Whitney

A Must Read…

One Man’s Changing View from an Ugly Couch

Brandon Smith

1/31/2010 

The epiphany occurred on an ugly couch in our ministry center—a couch that resembled one my grandmother had in her living room. I was leading our college students through the first verses of Philippians. As usual, the apostle Paul had begun his letter with a prayer:

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best” (Philippians 1:9, 10).

Wait a minute. “What is best”—not “what is good” or “what is helpful.” We must be able to discern ”what is best.” Paul deliberately chose that word, best, which implies there are good things and better things and there are, most definitely, the best things.

I looked at my college student friends and dropped the bomb: “What good things do we have in our lives that are keeping us from the best things?”

Silence.

A Struggle with Being Good
I have struggled with being good. On that harvest gold couch, I realized my history was a series of mile markers commemorating good things. Good childhood, good grades, and good jobs. Good campus ministry, good reputation, and good opportunities. But, in all my goodness, I had misplaced the biggest piece of the puzzle and, despite my good efforts, the picture of my life was incomplete.

For example, I hadn’t consistently read the Bible to nurture my relationship with God in years, only perused Scripture to prepare my next good lesson. I hadn’t really prayed in months, only looked up to the sky briefly to seek God’s help as I started my day. I hadn’t felt the real presence of God in my life in ages, only slightly hoped that he would be with me as I scurried from one good thing to the next.

I realized on that hideous couch that things were not right. I had forsaken a living, breathing relationship with God and demoted my wife and children to the minor leagues. The ministry I was leading had followed my example: always sacrificing the best things on the altar of the good things.

I had been blind to this reality for a long time. After all, it’s not as though I was doing bad things. That’s one of the quirks about sacrificing the best for the good, the good is so . . . well, good. Very rarely must we choose between good and bad. Almost daily, though, we must choose between good and best.

Since this epiphany on the ugly couch, I have identified three areas in my life where the conflict between good and best flares up.

My God
I was a hypocrite. Day in and day out, I encouraged college students to pursue a deeper relationship with their Maker. I longed for them to connect with God in a healthy union, complete with deep love, commitment, and communication. When students filled our ministry center, I fronted this type of relationship with God as the norm for me. I spoke loudly of God and prayed eloquently to him. I led countless students into the trenches to serve him and his people. Like the worst kind of Pharisee, I looked beautiful on the outside. On the inside, though, there was no life. Only the bones of a dead faith.

To further the lofty view of my personal piety, I enrolled in seminary classes and spent hours reading, writing, and learning amazingly spiritual things. Ironically, I was reading more about the Bible than reading the Bible itself. Good, but not the best.

I felt like one of the folks Jesus describes who will say: “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” (Matthew 7:22). I imagined telling him, “Didn’t I deliver good sermons and lead good Bible studies? Wasn’t I a good campus minister, loving those crazy college students in your name? And have you seen my diplomas?”

Jesus responded plainly, “Yes, Brandon, you did many good things in my name. But the best thing never happened: I never knew you.” (See Matthew 7:21-23.)

These days, I strive to have a relationship with Christ that engages my heart and doesn’t just go through the motions. Bible reading and prayer have taken on a new dimension. When I sit down to read God’s Word, I don’t immediately flip to the passage I will be teaching this week or reading for my class (which I have dropped). Real communication with God, as in all relationships, is a two-way street. I don’t just talk at him; I listen for him. I ask God, “What would you have me read this morning from your Word?” And a funny thing happens when I listen for his answer—I hear it. And he directs me to the passage he wants me to read, knowing what I need to hear.

I attempt to retain this posture of humility throughout each day. God knows what is good for me and what is best. I long to hear him and respond. In doing so, I have found signs of life in my faith that had once been, in my estimation, suffocated by good things.

My Family
I felt as though I had done a fair job of keeping family above ministry. However, in attempting to provide more for my family, I unknowingly allowed a good thing to slip in and unseat what is best.

This may shock some readers, but a job in ministry does not bring in lots of coin. I have, over the years, dreamed up many ideas to keep food on the table. My last dream, though, grew legs. I started a small business that took off. I kept busy, and the money was good. Sacrificing Saturdays with my family, though, was not good.

Ten months in, I sold the company. I refused to allow this good thing to steal my best time from my family.

What does this look like for you? It could mean ending the premium cable package or foregoing the fall softball league. You could say “no” to the overtime this week. Or something else I did: drop the data package from your cell phone. Being constantly in touch with work or Facebook is a good thing, but not at the expense of an uninterrupted family dinner.

My Ministry
I lead a ministry to students at a public university. One demographic that does not need help keeping busy is college students. I realized, on the ugly couch, our ministry had played the wrong role in the drama. We were cast to play the part of Mary but learned Martha’s lines.

If you’ll recall, Jesus took a break from his travels and put his feet up in the home of Martha. Martha, pleased to play hostess to Jesus, busied herself with cooking, cleaning, filling glasses, and assuring her guest had all he needed. As Martha labored, her sister sat down and listened to Jesus tell stories. Mary completely forgot about, or ignored, all that needed to be done.

So, Martha did what most would have done: she complained. “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” (Luke 10:40).

Jesus’ response to Martha cuts to the heart of all of us who struggle with being good. “Martha . . . you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better” (Luke 10:41, 42).

Mary has chosen what is better. Martha had not chosen what was bad; serving your guests and meeting the needs of those around you are good endeavors. However, these good acts of service were overthrowing that which was better: sitting and listening to Jesus.

Our ministry was serving students well. But, we were so busy doing this ministry for Jesus that we had no time left for being with Jesus, which clearly is better. I was setting up our students for that dreaded exchange: sacrificing what is best (sitting at Jesus’ feet) for what is good (busyness in his name).

We now commit ourselves to avoiding that sacrifice. This means (gasp!) taking many good things off the calendar. We want to serve our neighbors and have fellowship gatherings in Jesus’ name. We want more, though: we want to know this Jesus in whose name we operate. We give our students the tools to nurture a relationship with Christ on their own. We train them to study the Bible for themselves and to talk to and hear from God in prayer. We instruct them on being sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading and encouraging them to find balance.

Jesus warns not to allow the good things to replace the best things. Clearly, the best thing is to know him and be known by him. Once this is made a priority in our churches and ministries, the many good things will fall into their appropriate places.

Back to the Ugly Couch
As I write these final words, I go back to the ugly couch. The view from here is now different. I spent this morning with my God, absorbing his Word and hearing his voice. I pruned several good things from my life and am now free to pursue him as he leads me to the best things.

Find your ugly couch. Sit there and hear from God. Follow him as he leads you out of your busy schedule of good things and into a place of freedom to pursue his best.

---

Brandon Smith serves as campus minister with Christian Campus House, a campus ministry serving Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville.

Different People, Different Conditions…Same God

Below is an interesting article that I pulled from CNN’s top stories this morning. It is not a faith based article…but I found myself thinking as I read it about how God meets the needs of so many different types of people. These people are nothing like me, live entirely different than I, and yet we are provided for by the same God. It’s awesome to think about how they can survive in these conditions…living off seal and getting water from chunks of ice at 40 below! I wonder if there are missions trying to reach these peoples with the gospel message of Jesus Christ?

“Climate change threatens life in Shishmaref, Alaska

When the arctic winds howl and angry waves pummel the shore of this Inupiat Eskimo village, Shelton and Clara Kokeok fear that their house, already at the edge of the Earth, finally may plunge into the gray sea below.

“The land is going away,” said Shelton Kokeok, 65, whose home is on the tip of a bluff that’s been melting in part because of climate change. “I think it’s going to vanish one of these days.”

Coastal erosion has been an issue for decades here, but rising global temperatures have started to thaw the permafrost that once helped anchor this village in place. Sea ice that protects Shishmaref’s coast from erosion melts earlier in the spring and forms later in the fall. As a result, the increasingly mushy and exposed soil along Shishmaref’s shore is falling into the water in snowmobile-sized chunks.

The crumbling land already toppled one house into the sea. Thirteen other homes — nearly all of the Kokeoks’ neighbors — had to be moved inland. The land they stood on washed away.

Now the Kokeoks’ wooden residence, which Shelton built by hand 20 years ago, stands alone — only feet from the edge of this barrier island.

But safety is only one of Shishmaref’s many concerns.

The warming climate and erosion threaten to steal the Kokeoks’ centuries-old culture, their unique language and the viability of their entire village.

They’re not alone. A dozen Alaskan villages, including Shishmaref, are at some stage of moving because of climate-change-related impacts like coastal erosion and flooding.

Around the world, as many as 150 million people may become “climate refugees” because of global warming, according to an Environmental Justice Foundation report, which attributes some of the moves to rising sea levels.

People in Shishmaref are aware that world leaders will meet next week in Copenhagen, Denmark, to try to hammer out an international treaty on climate change. Most of the talk at the United Nations Climate Change Conference will focus on cutting the industrial world’s emissions of heat-trapping gases, or trying to prevent climate disasters like those already seen here and in other coastal communities. Three students from Shishmaref will travel to Copenhagen as witnesses to the impact of climate change.

That doesn’t give Shelton and Clara much comfort. Many of their neighbors have resigned themselves to having to leave Shishmaref because of the changes.

Not Shelton.

“This is my hometown,” he said. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

Shelton is afraid to budge from his perilous location on the front lines of the climate catastrophe. To move would be to give in, to lose everything.

Already, he’s lost more than he can bear.

Harsh environment

As far as outsiders are concerned, Shishmaref might as well be at the edge of the Earth.

Only 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle and less than 150 miles from Russian Siberia, the village’s geography alone makes it seem uninhabitable.

Its 600 residents endure temperatures that drop to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. Polar bear sightings are common. Water is scarce. There’s no plumbing in most homes; ice is harvested from lakes in microwave-size blocks and melted in buckets. No roads connect Shishmaref to the outside world.

It’s a harsh, isolated and dangerous place but one Shelton has learned to love. Shishmaref’s tundra environment provides everything he needs.

The village island, about a quarter-mile wide in the center, sits between the Chukchi Sea and the wide estuary of the Serpentine River. That’s prime real estate for hunting and fishing, the main forms of survival and employment in the village.

In the winter, Shishmaref residents hack tiny cylinders of ice out of the estuary to fish for tomcod and smelt. In the summer, when the sun hangs in the sky almost 24 hours a day, locals harvest cloudberries, which are orange, and blueberries; caribou and reindeer herds gallop across the vast expanse of inland tundra.

When Shelton was growing up, he looked forward to the springtime hunt for bearded seals, spotted seals and walrus, which took place out on the still-frozen sea. Dried meats and oils cured from those marine mammals sustained the community year-round, even when other hunts or fishing seasons went poorly.

Shelton’s father taught him to hunt seals. They rode a dogsled toward an eerily flat horizon, where the thick slate of white sea-ice met an eternal blue sky. At the edge of the ice, they hunted sea mammals out of the frigid water below.

Shelton has raised his four children in Shishmaref’s unique traditions. Clara, his wife, still sews seal slippers. They speak Inupiaq at home. Dried seal meat, black and crusty, hangs on a wooden rack beside their house. They keep seal oil in the kitchen. Their kids grew up eating both.

Norman Charlie, Shelton’s youngest son, learned to chase down seals and fish as soon as he was old enough to handle the arctic elements.

The boy became a fine hunter. And that pleased Shelton.

On Norman, Shelton hung his hopes for the future.

Forced adaptation

Because of its remote location and live-off-the-land lifestyle, it could appear that Shishmaref has remained the same for centuries, as time passed it by.

That’s not the case. The village itself is an adaptation to outside influence.

Shishmaref’s people were nomadic, following seals and caribou, until the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs built a school on the island in the early 1900s and forced Inupiat children to attend. Some residents still resent that school; they say it punished those who spoke Inupiaq and stifled other aspects of the Native culture.

Over the decades, though, the community adjusted to its new stationary existence. And today, people are attached to this place.

Change also has come from within.

When Shelton was young, Shishmaref was nothing but an outpost of one-room sod houses with no electricity; some villagers made windows out of “Eskimo plastic,” the translucent intestines of the bearded seal.

It was difficult to import materials from the outside, so people got most of what they needed from the land and the sea.

Today, two stores in Shishmaref sell Cheez-Its, Coke, Tang, ramen noodles and Ruffles, all brought in by plane. In front of the local school complex, which has new computers and wi-fi Internet, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles drop kids off in the morning. In the past, dogsleds were the main mode of transit.

A sign in a high school class where students learn to make carvings from walrus tusks reminds them to put their iPods away.

The modernization of Shishmaref angers some people, including Shelton. He worries that Shishmaref’s youth don’t speak Inupiaq as well as they should, and he says people in town are getting fat and lazy in part because soda is available.

He had to wrestle with the fact that younger generations are carrying on village traditions in new ways when Norman decided to move away from the village, to Fairbanks, Alaska, for work.

His son returned to Shishmaref to visit. He still worked on speaking the local language and tried to carry on his village’s musical traditions by participating in a traditional dancing and drumming group. And, always, when he was home, he hunted.

But things were changing.

Shishmaref exists in a delicate balance with nature and with its own identity.

And, one morning in June 2007, that balance tipped for Clara and Shelton.

The storm

Morris Kiyutelluk, a short man in an orange ski jacket, walked to the edge of the sea on a recent day, pointed to the slushy water behind Shelton’s and Clara’s home and said, “That’s where I grew up.”

The land where his house stood has vanished into the ocean.

It was the middle of a stormy night during the winter of 2002 when Shelton and Clara heard the waves slapping the side of their house with a force that vibrated the floors and shook the walls.

Next door, behind their house and even closer to the roiling sea, Morris was rushing to evacuate his family.

By the time his wife and children were out, waves were clawing at the ground underneath his house, to the point that it hung off the edge of the island by four feet, he said. Neighbors wrapped a rope around the body of the red wooden home and pulled in unison. They were able to scoot it back just enough to keep it from tipping.

After that storm and a series of others, Morris’ home was among those moved to the other side of the island. At first he and his wife, Mildred, had a hard time adjusting to their new life on the sheltered side of the island. They joke that they’re “eastsiders” now, not “west side people,” like they used to be.

Mildred had trouble sleeping in the new location because the soothing sounds of the sea were gone.

But, over time, she’s learned to sleep through the silence.

“Apparently, I got used to it,” she said.

In part because they’ve had to relocate once, Morris and Mildred are among many locals pushing for Shishmaref to move off of this tenuous island and onto an uninhabited location away from the sea.

Morris says the changes in Shishmaref — the melting sea ice, the disappearing seals and polar bears, the crumbling coastline — are beyond the village’s control.

“We’ve got to move. There’s no question about it,” he said. “That seawall will stop erosion on this end, but the water will go around it. My ancestors said it will happen. It will happen.”

But planning the move has been anything but easy.

The village voted in 2002 to relocate from the island. Seven years later, it has had little luck finding a suitable location or funding.

A place called Tin Creek, several miles inland, is the most talked-about relocation spot at the moment. But many of the same problems that plague Shishmaref could be issues there, too.

Tin Creek sits on permafrost, and permafrost melt across Alaska has been accelerating. The site is further from the sea mammals locals depend on. And, to make matters worse, Tin Creek may also be situated atop “ice lenses,” thin sheets of underground frozen water that could melt and cause the ground to crater.

Earlier this decade, the people of Shishmaref applied for grants and started a Web site where the public could donate money for the village’s relocation.

Those efforts haven’t gotten the village far. That’s partly because there’s no federal or state government agency ready to pay for the coming wave of “climate refugees,” like those in Shishmaref.

A 2009 Government Accountability Office report found that 31 Alaskan villages face “imminent threats” because of coastal erosion, flooding and climate change. At least 12 are at some stage in the relocation process.

Moving an entire town is not cheap. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that Shishmaref’s relocation, if it happens, will cost up to $200 million. Relocations of other Alaskan villages carry similar estimates.

Who’s to blame is another contentious topic.

Residents of the industrialized world could be considered liable for the climate refugee problem, since they produce the bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions that alter the climate. Some say the government is responsible. Others say it’s difficult to prove with absolute certainty that a problem in any single community was caused by climate change because other factors, like land use and natural erosion, could be at play.

The climate refugee problem gets all the more complicated when considered on a global scale. The Environmental Justice Foundation estimates that unchecked climate change will force 150 million people from their homes by mid-century.

Please go to corresponding website for complete details.”

Christians Die for Their Faith

Rick Warren reports that last year 146,000 Christians died for their faith. He points out in his tweet that no one except Christians said a word. What is wrong with our media and communication channels if this kind of info is not getting attention? What are we to do with this knowledge? I can start by praying that I would be as bold and brave as these brothers and sisters that gave their lives for God…

thankful for a Christian family

Yesterday was Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s house in St. Joe (Mom’s side).  It was a wonderful dinner full of lots of laughter and family fellowship.  I am not only thankful for having the opportunity to eat a wonderful meal with family…but I most thankful that they all love and serve a risen savior.  After the meal, we all gathered in the living room and enjoyed a discussion about our faith in Christ.  Several had Bible’s out, several engaged in the discussion.  I am thankful to have a family that rejoices and worships together!  Although we don’t agree on every little thing…we love each other and will spend eternity together because we have the same Heavenly Father!

If you are not in a Christian family…you can be.  Start with prayer, move to His Word and He will show the rest.

Happy Thanksgiving!