New York, New York

Cindi and I are on the third day of our eight-day East Coast trip to New York and Boston.  It’s been a refreshing few days together, which was the goal — to spend some good quality time together after four years of seminary, to celebrate Cindi’s first Mother’s Day, and to enjoy each other during the last summer (prayerfully) before Judah arrives.

We flew in to JFK on Saturday afternoon and took the subway west into Manhattan where we checked into our ridiculously cheap hotel (courtesy of Priceline) at 29th and 8th St.  After experiencing the empty glitz that is Times Square, we ate at Virgil’s Real Barbecue which is rated as some of the best barbecue in the nation.  It was as good as advertised (thanks for the recommendation, Jeff Lewis).  Then we picked up our New York Pass, which is definitely the way to do New York City if you’re wanting to see the major sites and attractions.

On Sunday we took the subway north into Harlem to 155th St. to find the mecca of streetball, Rucker Park.  We had to ask directions from some gentlemen playing chess at another park, but we got there eventually.  Since it was only around 11:00am, there weren’t any games going on, which meant that I actually got to shoot around on the court without getting my ankles broken by some regular’s nasty crossover.  I did get to play one-on-one with a nice high-schooler who was willing to play me, so now I can say that I balled it up at Rucker.

From Rucker we walked east across the Harlem River bridge towards Yankee Stadium where we had tickets for the 1:05pm Angels-Yankees game.  Cindi had never been to Yankee Stadium, so this was a key visit for us.  I’m not outspoken about it since it usually only leads to nasty remarks against which I don’t enjoy defending myself, but I’m actually a Yankee fan.  Before you question my loyalty and proclaim me a bandwagon jumper, you have to know that my late grandfather was a hardcore New Yorker who worked for the Port Authority in the World Trade Center (he died in the ’90’s), my late grandmother swing-danced to Frank Sinatra into the early morning in New York hotspots before taking the subway home to sleep for a couple hours each night, and my dad spent some of his early years in Brooklyn collecting Mickey Mantle cards and going to Yankee games.  As a kid in Oklahoma I grew up following Don Mattingly as I carried on the family heritage, so this isn’t a fair-weather affiliation.  It was neat to be back at the Stadium, especially with Cindi, even though the Yankees walked in the tying and go-ahead runs in the seventh inning and then lost 4-3 with Derek Jeter lining out to deep right-center field in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and a runner on third.  At least it was an exciting game.

Afterwards, we took the packed subway south to 68th St. where we attended the 6:00pm service for Redeemer Presbyterian Church, pastored by Tim Keller.  They have five services every Sunday in various locations throughout upper Manhattan, and Keller is teaching and writing a lot of cutting-edge theology regarding ministering in the city (check out A Biblical Theology of the City for an example).  It was encouraging to sing with God’s people and hear His Word preached, especially after being saturated in the tourist overkill of Memorial Day weekend and the blatant worldliness that surrounds the major city attractions.  After church we found a small Italian restaurant where we had a great conversation about our experience so far and some of the things we wanted to grow in this summer.

This morning we slept in a bit and then headed straight to the Empire State Building for a virtual helicopter tour of the city followed by some good time on the bustling observation deck eighty-six stories up.  From above, Manhattan looks like a bumper-crop of steel and skyscrapers surrounded by the encroaching wetlands of the surrounding rivers.  There’s something striking about a city like this, and the horde of fellow visitors has seemed to be a weekend-long confirmation of that.  After riding the quick Empire State Building elevator down to the ground and feeling the pressure in my ears change along the way, it was on to Madame Tussaud’s wax museum where we enjoyed the genuinely impressive wax statues of various celebrities.  In the afternoon we headed to the southern tip of Manhattan and the former site of the World Trade Center.  It was sobering to see the tributes to those who died, and especially those who gave their lives in the attempt to rescue others.  The last time I was here was only a short time after the towers had fallen, but it didn’t seem like today’s visitors were any less impacted by what happened.

We walked around St. Paul’s Chapel, the stone church across the street from Ground Zero that stood when the towers fell and then served as a place of refuge and refreshment for the rescuers.  It was neat to see how the image of God spilled out of unbelievers who cared for and served each other during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but it was sad to see the ecumenism that’s so highly praised whenever people turn to god and religion in the midst of a tragedy.  At the end of the day, though, it shows that for some reason, it’s pretty difficult to be an atheist when life goes terribly wrong.  Ironically, it is in the midst of the suffering and evil that we object to so strongly that we cry out most loudly to the God that we desperately hope will be there for us.  In the good times, we curse Him and deny His existence or at least His goodness.  In the bad times, we beseech Him and find ourselves instinctually calling His name lest we be left with the emptiness of being by ourselves in a broken world that only He can redeem.  For all the evil they do, may the horrific tragedies of our day do us at least this eye-opening kindness.

This afternoon we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge on our way to Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, perhaps the most famous pizza place in New York.  There were thirty people in line in front of us at 4:00pm, but it was worth the wait.  From there we walked to the pier below the bridge and had some ice cream at a well-known ice cream shop.  Cindi said it was the best ice cream she’d ever had (thanks, Rachel Smith).  After having been out pretty late (for us) the past couple nights, we decided to call it a day a bit early, so we hopped on the subway and headed back to Manhattan and our hotel.  Tonight we’ll decide what we want to see tomorrow and Wednesday morning, and from there it’s on to Boston where a whole new world awaits us.  I don’t enjoy site-seeing for more than a short time because I soon start feeling like I’m wasting my life, but I think that the timing, length, and nature of this trip are combining to make it a wonderful time of refreshment.  Praise God for brief seasons such as these.

Finally, being here has reminded me that the world is a lot of fun when it’s secondary.  I thoroughly enjoyed going to an afternoon baseball game at Yankee Stadium and eating a cup of Minute Maid Lemon Ice in the sun, walking around the observation deck at the top of the Empire State Building and seeing this amazing city from above, and watching the ingenuity of the human mind at work at Madame Tussaud’s.  But I can’t imagine living for these things or even making them a high priority.  There’s a lot of flash and bang at Times Square, and it’s certainly an interesting phenomenon, but I definitely wouldn’t want it to be what buttered my bread.  I have found that I enjoy the amoral entertainments of the world more when I’m loving God, not less.  I think this is because gifts mean more when you know and love the Giver.

Summer Plans

Because we serve in a dorm at a Christian college, our summer activities are always quite different than our semester schedule.  So for family and friends who might be interested and for those who like to pray with a schedule in mind, here are our tentative summer plans (including the past couple weeks):

• May 14-18:  Biblical Ethics class at TMS (Dr. Grisanti)
• May 15-17:  Student Life Senior Staff Retreat in Santa Barbara
• May 21-25:  Resident Director Exit Week
• May 26 – June 3:  Trip to New York and Boston with Cindi
• June 4-15:  Exegesis of Psalms class (Dr. Barrick)
• June 5:  Scheduled adoption ruling
• June 15-19:  Speaking at Northpoint Evangelical Free Church College Retreat on Catalina Island
• June 20-21:  Biblical Ethics class presentations (Dr. Grisanti) [my paper/presentation is on homosexuality]
• June 25 – July 6:  Theology of Missions class at TMS (Dr. Craigen)
• July 9-27:  Student Life planning and preparation responsibilities for August
• July 30 – August 3:  Resident Director Retreat
• August 6-10:  Resident Assistant Retreat
• August 13-17:  Servant Leadership Staff Retreat
• August 18-24:  Week of Welcome (orientation week for new students)
• August 27:  TMC semester begins
• August 28:  TMS semester begins

We’d appreciate your prayers for increased faith, passion, diligence, and perseverance.  We don’t believe that what we’re doing is better or more than what anyone else is doing, but we do want to do it well and for the Lord.  Most of all, please pray for us to walk with pure hearts and Spirit-led minds in all that we do.  I believe that the Lord will evaluate our summer not by our event schedule but by the object and the degree of our affections.  Pure hands normally come easier than a pure heart.  We pray for the latter because it guarantees the former.

Finally, we continue to pray that the Lord would direct the heart of our Ugandan judge to make timely decisions throughout June in favor of the families trying to adopt children from the Amani Baby Cottage.  Thank you so much for praying with us.  We have found it to be a genuinely happy thing to trust Him in this.

Thoughts from a Seminary Graduation

A lot has happened since my last post on May 10:  The college semester ended with the seniors graduating and all the students moving out of the dorm for the summer; the seminary semester also ended and I graduated along with about sixty-five other men from the M.Div. program at TMS; our families flew out from Oklahoma to celebrate and spend time with us; I decided to continue in the Th.M. program, at least for the summer (which I wasn’t sure I was going to do); I started a class called Biblical Ethics for the Th.M. degree the day after I graduated from the M.Div. program; I went on Student Life Senior Staff Retreat in Santa Barbara for a few refreshing days of peaceful relaxation and like-minded fellowship; and we went to the TMC Faculty-Staff Picnic today.  It’s been a full though brief period of transitioning from semester to summer.

Although my seminary graduation had been low on the radar for a number of reasons, it was a powerful and invigorating experience.  And although it happened a week ago, I think it’s worth sharing a number of thoughts from the evening.

1. Approximately eighty men graduated with degrees like Diploma of Theology, Bachelor of Theology, Master of Divinity, Master of Theology, Doctor of Ministry, and Doctor of Theology.  It was quite an experience to walk down the center aisle of Grace Community Church surrounded by a flood of faithful men who believe that they have been called by God to proclaim the gospel of His Son around the world.  It doesn’t make you feel big, important, or indispensable.  It makes you feel sober and privileged.
    
2. The graduates all sat in the first four rows on either side of the center aisle.  Before us on the stage sat The Master’s Seminary faculty.  Many of them are elderly men seasoned in the Word of God and the warfare of ministry.  Their labor and toil has greyed their hair and weakened their eyes and demanded decades of persevering sacrifice, but they stand faithful like a tribal warrior fighting in the middle of the village until the very last arrow brings him to his knees.  They will not die as spectators.  As I sat looking up at them, I felt honored to have been taught by these men, and I realize that I’ve only experienced a drop of the toil they’ve poured out through the years.
    
3. Before, during, and after the ceremony, I thought often about how the Lord has mightily used Pastor John MacArthur in the lives of so many.  Here is a genuine soldier whom God has gifted and commissioned to lead a church of hundreds and then thousands for almost four decades.  Without exaggeration, the ripple effect of his ministry has reached millions of souls all the way to the corners of the earth.  Tonight there were eighty graduates reflecting the breadth of his ministry.  And there have been twenty other graduating classes before mine.  To document his influence would be an exercise in futility.  And the wonderful thing is that one of Pastor MacArthur’s most oft-quoted proverbs is this: “You focus on the depth of your ministry, and God will take care of the breadth.”  His life and labor reflect this maxim.  If you examine his life and his giftedness, you will see Ephesians 4:11-12 emblazoned all over him.  This man is a gift from God to His church.  I have gone through my seasons of disillusionment regarding various types of churches and movements in the United States, and the more heavily conservative camp (along with its styles and emphases) has been the object of much of my questioning and criticism during those times.  But after years of study and half a decade of ministry and with much more of both in front of me, I continue to grow in my gratefulness to God for this man.  Few know how he has given his life for the gospel, and fewer know the price he has paid for that lifelong choice.  This is a leader of our generation.
    
4. Dr. Barrick was the commencement speaker.  He spoke to us from Psalm 119:97-104, the mem section in the alphabetic acrostic.  Two particularly powerful verses are 99-100:  “I have more insight than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation.  I understand more than the aged, because I have observed Your precepts.”  If you fill your mind and your heart with Scripture, you will have the highest education known to man, no matter what degrees you hold or lack.  And there are no qualifications or disclaimers for that statement.  Dr. Barrick’s message and his life make me see the beauty of God’s Word and and refresh my desire to know it.  Surely it is a delightful thing to meditate on the Bible.  What a pity that there are so many other things vying for our attention, and a greater pity that we give it to them.
    
5. One of my favorite parts of seminary was when the students would sing together twice annually as a choir, at Shepherds’ Conference and at graduation.  Clayton Erb, the worship pastor at Grace Community Church, would train us to sing various multi-part hymns during rehearsals, and then we would sing as a massive men’s choir as the kick-off to these two events.  And although I didn’t get to be in the choir this time since I was one of the graduates, it was a powerful encouragement to look up to the choir loft and see many familiar faces and to hear this multitude of my fellow students singing to the praise of the King as they called us graduates to stand firm in years to come.
    
6. I sat two seats to the right of my friend and college classmate Josiah Grauman.  From what I’ve seen and heard, Josiah is more inductively intelligent than almost anyone who walked across the stage on Sunday night.  But he didn’t have a gold cord over his left shoulder and silence followed the announcement of his name since there weren’t any honors or high GPA to announce.  I can guess why he graduated without honors, but I’m in a tiny minority.  The crowd oohed and aahed and gasped when the summa cum laude’s and the 4.00 GPA’s were announced (and I honor those whose labor earned them this recognition).  But I only wish that the crowd could’ve seen my brother’s faithful, emotional, demanding, exhausting, love-giving, full-time and overtime ministry as a hospital chaplain in one of the most crowded, needy hospitals in the nation.  He did this throughout seminary, caring more about patients than grades.  This is not to denigrate grades, but to give perspective and to highlight a friend who loves people more than academic respectability.  If I were at his funeral, I would feel somewhat like the queen in the movie Gladiator when she stands near Maximus’s dead body in the coliseum and declares to the surrounding soldiers:  “This man was a soldier of Rome.  Honor him.”
    
7. At the end of the graduation, all the graduates left our seats and walked to the bottom of the stairs leading up to the stage.  There we got on our knees and Pastor MacArthur prayed for us as the TMS board and faculty either bowed with us or stood behind us and laid their hands on us.  It struck me that here were brilliant minds, gifted men, veteran pastors, long-standing professors, former missionaries, and significant church authorities bowed low before the Lord.  And this is where we ought to be, all of us.  It is right and biblical to make distinctions in life between parents and children, teachers and students, authorities and subjects, professionals and amateurs, and elderly and young.  But before the Lord, we all bow low.
    
8. At the graduation it was announced that one TMS graduate had recently died, one current TMS student had died the week before graduation, and one doctoral student was absent because his wife was recently diagnosed with cancer and needed to start radiation treatments right away.  This didn’t dampen our joy, but it did temper it with sympathy and perspective.  It is not only a privilege to graduate; it is a privilege to live.  And more important, it is a privilege to die as the Lord’s.
    
9. Many gifted men graduated from The Master’s Seminary last Sunday night.  Even more students graduated from The Master’s College two nights before.  Fascinatingly, sins of pride like self-absorption, selfish ambition, and exaggeration of personal gifts are very common among young people, especially young men aspiring to full-time Christian ministry.  I say this not because I know others’ hearts but because I know my own.  We spend this season of formal education dreaming big dreams for the future, calculating the potential impact of our lives, and considering our own gifts and abilities to see how God might use us.  But who we are and what we can do and the circumstances God places us in are all His gifts.  Normally you’re humbled when you receive big gifts.  If you’ve ever been given something so big or precious or meaningful or surprising that it really staggered you, you can remember how undeserving and humbled you felt.  You simply didn’t feel worthy.  But somehow we’re not as naturally humbled by the personal gifts that God gives us to use in His service.  And we should be.  If you have a gift, a talent, an ability, or an opportunity, it is from the Lord.
    
10. We sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” at the end of the graduation.  There were many men present who have been tenaciously faithful to the Lord during their years teaching or studying at the seminary, manifesting rugged devotion and unwavering perseverance.  But the faithfulness of God outshines the tainted faithfulness of even the best of men.  That’s why we proclaim His and not our own.

May the Lord be pleased to multiply the fruit of His Word through the 2007 graduating classes from every God-honoring school on earth.

The Beauty of Creation: Pictures from Uganda

God has made some amazing things.  Here are a few illustrations from our trip:

Nile Monitor Lizard:  Cindi took this picture from a canoe on the Nile.  This particular Nile monitor was 5-6 feet long.  During our time in Jinja one of the orphanage volunteers saw one of these things walking across the road in front of her.  Hello.

Marabou Stork:  I zoomed in on this guy just as he landed in the tall bare tree that hovers over Kisinja Road just fifty yards from the orphanage.  When we walked back to our hotel every evening there were always 15-20 massive storks congregating in this tree.  This one looks particularly old (and happy), don’t you think?  Kind of like a gentle grandpa stork – a huge gentle grandpa stork with a ten-foot wingspan.  Maybe we could have him bring Judah home.

Green Chameleon:  I don’t know all the technical differences among lizards, geckos, and chameleons, but I do know that this one is a chameleon.  Someone had watched him walk from the red-clay road into the lush green vegetation, which is the only reason why we were able to know he was in the brush in the first place.  Can you say camouflage?

Big Spider:  I don’t know this guy’s scientific classification, but it’s probably something like arachnida grande.  Cindi encountered a small posse of these spiders when she had to make some hasty phone calls on the morning of our court date and the only place she could find reception was in a small area outside our hotel where lots of these significantly-sized spiders were hovering above her.  She still stood there and made the phone calls.  Lesson?  Don’t marry a wimp.  Besides the fright factor, though, these spiders are exquisite and beautiful.

Praying Mantis:  If only we were all so faithful.  This type of divine design makes me wonder if God purposefully created this insect to portray prayer.

Broad Palm Tree:  As with many of these plants and animals, I don’t know exactly what type of tree this is.  But obviously it’s at least a very unique and large tree of the palm variety.  I’ve often found myself wondering, both in Uganda and in the States, how many different kinds of trees there are in the world.  The diversity is absolutely stunning.

Home, Grass, and Sky:  This is the Amani Baby Cottage.  Its motto is “A Place of Peace.”  Considering the beauty that surrounds it both below and above, the motto certainly fits.

Sunset and Clouds over Lake Victoria:  I took this picture from the balcony of our hotel room.  For three weeks we had front-row seats for the best show on earth: the relentless splendor of God’s creation.

Dominating Clouds Over Jinja:  This probably won’t make sense unless you’ve been there, but this picture reminds me of Niagara Falls.  The connection is sheer, billowing, thunderous power.

Bujagali Falls:  About 15 minutes from Jinja is this beautiful area along the Nile River called Bujagali Falls (bootch-uh-golly).  It’s a strikingly pretty and peaceful area (although yes, those are bats in the fifth picture down).

 

Rowing into the Sunset on the Nile:  On our last evening together in Uganda(Saturday, April 21) we took a boat ride on Lake Victoria to the source of the Nile.  The sun gradually bowed below the horizon as we traveled along the steep, lush sides of the river observing eagles, monkeys, and kingfishers.  I mostly got good pictures of water and sky (not the animals), but that’s no drawback:

Uganda Rain:  It’s rainy season in Uganda during April and May.  At times, it can be something to behold (and hear).  This is also what it sounded like in our hotel room at night.

God has made some amazing things.  But perhaps more amazing are the minimalizing words of Job regarding things such as these:  “Behold, these are the fringes of His ways” (Job 27:14).  If these are just the loose threads hanging down from the cloak of God’s glory, our God must truly be an awesome God.  Today may we fear Him accordingly.