If you look at my wife's website, I'm not sharing any new information.  But since she posted the news today, I'll write about it from my point of view.

We're having another baby!

Many people have heard me say, "I'm done!" when asked about whether we were going to have more kids.   I guess I'm not as done as I thought I was.  This "new one" makes a total of 4 for us.  I am the middle of three boys, and I have three boys of my own.  Depending on how you interpret that information we are either due for a girl or destined to have another boy.  I heard someone describe the difference between being the father of a boy and the father of a girl like this: "If you have a boy, that's the only boy you have to worry about.  If you have a girl, you have to worry about ALL the boys!"  Sounds like wisdom and experience to me.

I am so excited about having another baby.  It has been taking its time sinking in on me.  I have little realization every day, the biggest one being that I love being a father and am thrilled to be entrusted with another opportunity.  I have learned so much from my three boys.

From Ben:  I have learned to stop hating myself.  The things I see of me inside of him humble me, and they drive me to Jesus.  When we dedicated him I remember thinking, "Well God, this is the best I can do.  I am bringing you everything, my very best.  Please take him.  He is Yours."  Ben is pure and perfect.  I have never known a person so genuinely loving and compassionate toward other people.  Even when he was a baby, he would beg for a potato chip.  I would offer him the bag of chips and after all that begging, the first chip he pulled out, he would offer to me.

From Luke:  I have learned that I can be made to laugh in any situation and at any time.  It is nearly impossible to discipline Luke.  He makes us laugh no matter how upset we thought we were.  I didn't know kids his age could have comedic timing, but he seems to have been blessed with a double portion of it.  When he was only 2 we had a house rule of "We don't call each other STUPID."  Luke got around this by saying "Stu."  When I challenged him on it he said, "I just said STU, not PID."  2 years old!

 
From Ethan:  I have learned how much more love was within my heart.  Ethan has tapped a well of love and joy that I never knew existed inside of me.  He makes me understand the old King James language of the 23 Psalm, "My cup runneth over."  That is how I feel when I see him.  The instant he was born, I knew I was entering a love that I only barely approached before.  Not that I love Ethan so much more than other people, but that his presence in my life has caused me to contact a love so deep and marvelous that it changes the way I love everyone.

 
Who knows what will come from the arrival of this "new one."  Well... at least there is one thing I know already.  I have to buy a new car. 

The garbage truck was amazingly late yesterday.  I pulled into the neighborhood just behind it, after 8 PM.  Since our road is so narrow, I had to stop and start along with Hillsborough County's sanitation specialists as they slung plastic bags full of my neighbor's trash into the back of the truck.  Two guys - one driving the truck, one hanging off the back.  At the houses with more than the normal load, the driver would jump off and help out.  Man, they were fast!  I mean relatively speaking, for two guys working a huge neighborhood, it was fast.  Who knows why they were more than 12 hours later than normal pick-up but it was over 97 degrees most of the day, that could have had something to do with it.

When we moved into this house, one of my first purchases was our outside garbage can.  I went to Lowe's and bought the Big Daddy.  I barely squeezed into the back of our Explorer.  In fact, I had to leave the glass open on the lift gate just to cart it home.  I was so proud of myself.  My neighbors would spend 10 minutes every trash night hauling 3 or 4 smaller cans of trash out to the curb while I just tipped Big Daddy onto his sturdy plastic wheels and led him like a dog.  With smug satisfaction, I'd cruise back into the house - Suckers!  Shoulda bought the Big Daddy... 

My heart was going out to these two guys, working so hard at an unpleasant and usually thankless job.  It was still over 90 degrees even with the sun sinking below the palm trees.  They looked haggard too.  As they came to my house, horrible embarrassment flooded within.  There was no possible way the guy could lug my stupidly-big garbage can up to throw the bags into the truck!  He had to reach into it and grab one bag at a time.  Then, since I'm also disgusting enough to just throw loose trash into the can without a bag, he actually hung down into my trash can, half of his body consumed by the depth of my ridiculous garbage barrel.  It took at least 3 times longer to get rid of my garbage than it did any other house on the block.

I have been inviting the Lord to "fashion a whip" and drive out the things in me that offend him.  If you ask me the reason the garbage truck was late:  So the Holy Spirit can point out the way I have a tendency to do things without a single thought about the way they will impact people around me.  Bottom line:  I've got to get rid of that garbage can!

Most of my thinking along these lines - this parable of special operations and Christian service - have launched from the prayer of Paul in Philippians 3:10.  Paul boldly prays to "know Him."  He knows that means to really know Jesus, we will have to know Him in the fellowship of his suffering.  With the fellowship of his suffering in mind, I recently read a book that I have to pass along. Divine Nobodies, by Jim Palmer is perfectly subtitled: Shedding Religion to Find God [and the unlikely people who help you]. I have received permission from the author to give you a little sample, an excerpt from a chapter titled, "Sex, Lies, and Paratroop Deployment." Here it is, but be warned, you are about to be introduced to the suffering seen and felt by our Lord:

Have you ever stopped to wonder, Where was God today? Yes, I know God is "omnipresent," but I mean specifically, where was God today? Where did he go? What did he see? How did he feel? I begin imagining God present at that miraculous moment a precious life is born into the world, the joy and marvel of the newborn bearing God's image and uniquely fashioned by his hands. Taking in the beauty of a brilliant blazing sun slowly descending behind endless ocean waves, I have felt the company of the Creator amid the splendor of his handiwork. Jogging a woodland trail one autum morning I passed an aged couple leisurely strolling in conversation hand in hand. God must have been there smiling as these soul mates shared a ripe and tender love, a gift from God, who himself named Love. These simple but magnificent miracles inspire love and adoration for God deep within and draw me to him.

Then somewhere over the Atlantic, forty thousand feet above the earth, these thoughts about God give way to disturbing images I wish I could forget from my trip. Now the question Where was God today? tortures me. Today, a ten-year-old girl is being strapped down tight to a bed and brutally and repeatedly raped. God is present. Today, an eight-year-old emaciated boy is covered with a cardboard box and left to die. Slowly he slips into unconsciousness. God is present. Today, a young mom of three wails in bed as her skeletal body writhes with the unrelenting agony of AIDS.  God is present.  I'm angry. Why is God pushing these horrors in my face? I'm emotionally spent and want to go home to my world. God can have that world, that's his deal, he's God, I don't live in that world.

    Or do I?  (Copyright 2006. All rights reserved, W Publishing Group: pp. 143-4. Used with permission from the author)

Back to my own words, I don't know quite what to do with all of this yet... but I do want to really know Him. 

A few nights ago, I was walking across my house toward my bedroom in complete darkness.  While traversing the treacherous ground of the kids' toy room, I kicked some kind of large, solid, noise-making toy - HARD - with my left foot.  A bunch of cuss words later, I hopped to my room and crashed onto the bed to look over my stinging toes.  Everything seemed to be okay.  My smallest toe took the brunt of the blow so the nail was completely obliterated.  "Wow," I thought, "If not for that tiny little toenail, my toe probably would have broken."

The next day, I started thinking about the "body" analogy in 1 Corinthians 12, that there are parts that we give "lesser honor," but God gives them great honor.  My little toenail fits that category.  I can go for months without even thinking about it.  Then, one night, I'll go strolling through the pitch-dark minefield of my sons' toy room and I will discover the great honor and utility of the pinky-toenail.  It is so simple that it shocks me.  God has designed parts of my body to absorb impact, to take a direct hit, so that I won't suffer more serious damage.

That illustration in 1 Corinthians 12 goes on to say that we are all members of one another.  I am finally getting at least a small part of that heavy, heavy statement.  My toenail takes the hit so that my toe does not have to, so that my foot is not sending a charge of pain through my leg, up my spine and into my brain every time I try to put on shoes and take a step.  This changes everything for me.  When one of my brothers or sisters takes a direct hit, it's not just that I feel sorry for them and "hurt too," in some emotional, meta-physical way.  We are connected much more deeply than that.  In some way completely unknown to me, my brother or sister has absorbed some impact that was meant for me.  They jumped in front of the bullet that was flying toward me.  I know I'm being a bit overly dramatic, but it illustrates my point.  We are members of one another.  Like my toenail absorbing the impact of a blow that could break my toe and cause me nagging pain for a solid month.  I experience none of that agony because there was a member of my body filling the specific job of taking that hit.

If you are hurting right now, thank you.  I know that you have taken a blow that was meant for me.  You have absorbed impact that would have injured untold numbers of people.  We are grateful for you!  Next time, we'll take it on your behalf. 

There is an amazing conversation happening at my favorite Christian publication, Next-Wave, that has had me thoroughly intrigued and enlightened.  It is clear that the author of this much-discussed article has touched a nerve within the Big Church and anyone who loves Jesus and cares about his Bride would be wise to look into it.  In one of the more than 60 comments to the original article, one writer asks "What church did Jesus attend?"  His question is actually (I think) rhetorical.  He seems to make the point that Jesus did not go to church when he walked the earth as a man.

I disagree. 

It is clear that Jesus was often (we might even be able to say 'always') in the temple or the synagogue.  Now, that's not the exact same thing as the institutional church that we know, but it is the closest thing to an equivalent.  The Jewish house of worship was the religious structure and gathering place for people of faith and Jesus was there, participating.  I am as fed up as the next guy with what passes for church in most of the US.  I've written already about our need to hear what the Spirit is saying - what do we do now?  But I do not believe that abstinence is the answer.  Church can only be fixed from within.  I think that is why Jesus was actually there, because he was all about changing it.

"The church" of Jesus' day was lifeless, man-made traditions, religious debates that made no redemptive impact on the culture, powerless philosophy with no social justice movement whatsoever.  That actually sounds like a pretty accurate description of many of the churches I have attended in the last 2 years (and there have been plenty - more than 30).  Jesus was involved in it so he could be a catalyst - The Catalyst.  I don't know how many people know this, but we named our first son after Jesus' involvement in church.  In Matthew's account of the cleansing of the temple, it comes just after Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  The people cheer him as he comes and they shout, "Hosanna! Hosanna! To the Son of David," which in Hebrew would read, "Hosanna! Hosanna! Ben David."  The people begin cheering this specific phrase because it is something they have been taught to look for and to celebrate.  They have been told, from the Torah, that when the Son of David comes, he will be riding a colt and entering the east gate of the Temple.  They were right - Jesus was (is) the Messiah, but they didn't really get what that meant.  Their response seems to be more about group-think and the energy of a big crowd in which everyone knows how the whole system is supposed to work.  This is a lot of what church people reenact every Sunday morning around the US.  We all know the dance - we cheer at the right times, and we tell Jesus that it is all for him.

But it's not all for him.  That kind of celebration is like the party at the feet of the golden calf.  The people lauded it as "the God who brought us out of Egypt," but calling it that didn't make it so.  It wasn't God, it was their homemade representation of God.  The people weren't praising the entrance of the Messiah - they were praising what they wanted the Messiah to be.  Here is what gets interesting to me:  The cleansing of the temple.  Jesus dismounts the colt and then makes a whip.  He turns over the tables of the money changers, whipping things into shape - literally!  Matthew 21:15 states that as he does this, some children come through cheering, "Hosanna to the Son of David!"  Wow!  So the kids recognized the Messiah when he started purging the church.

I think this passage is prophetic, concerning "the church" our day.  It can only change from the inside.  It is going to take someone, with the Father's authority, to come in and whip things into shape.  This is how the younger generation recognizes Jesus.  They will see the Messiah when he gets church cleaned up.  I think the questions we need to be asking the Spirit are, "How do we make the whip?" and "Who do we need to use it on?"