I had a random thought today: “Does the way we live out a day (24 hours) represent how we’re living out our lives.”

If we procrastinate today over the long haul are we procrastinators? We simply live either in the past or the future, but rarely the present. I know I’m guilty of this. I have my eyes set on the horizon, but often fail to watch where my feet are stepping. And the sad fact is, God is here in the present to walk with us. If we’re living in the past or the future we’re missing out on Him here and now.  I know I miss out on God too much.

I think that if we’re really followers of Christ, we should be a restless bunch. Searchers. Seekers. Explorers. We should always be striving to follow after the wildness of Christ. Are we meant to be stable or stagnant? Hardly. It’s a journey that we’ll never fully arrive on, but one in which we must keep moving. We have to keep moving. Our soul depends on it.

I was working today and listening to the radio (www.pandora.com) and heard an old song by U2 - I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. It really spoke to those restless places in my heart. So how many of you are searchers and seekers? How many are burdened by the feeling that ‘there’s more.’ I love the fact that the Gospel is too big to live in our hearts and constantly forcing us to search and seek and live bigger. Let us not settle. Let us keep exploring.

I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing fingertips
It burned like a fire
This burning desire

I have spoke with the eternal angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I believe in the Kingdom Come
When all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well, yes I’m still running

You broke the bonds
And you loosened the chains
Carried the cross
Of all my shame
all my shame
You know I believe it

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I worked all day yesterday in a firework stand. My church’s youth group is running a firework stand to raise money for an upcoming missions trip. In that time, I’ve gotten to talk to all sorts of people and hear all sorts of firework stories. It’s truly amazing how many memories we have wrapped up in those explosive little buggers.

So my question for you to day is: what’s your best firework memory?

It can be a fond memory or one of blowing up things and the carnage that followed. Whatever works for you! Happy 4th of July!

My story:

During college, I spent a summer abroad in Cambridge, England. Leaving home, I was bummed because I knew there would be no 4th of July celebration. I love the 4th mainly because I love fireworks (I’m a guy - we’re hard wired for that sort of thing).

I had been Cambridge for a couple of weeks, then one night, some students and I all heard something. Boom. Boom. BOOM! We all went out to investigate. On in a back private gardens on the school grounds they were putting on an elaborate private firework show. It was an old professor 60th birthday. This was unlike any firework display I’ve ever seen. It was immense. We climbed inside the gates and and laid out on the lawn going unnoticed by the party goers. The show went on for a solid hour. The ground shook so much the hedgehogs were coming out of their burrows and scurrying about running around us. It was amazing.

I thought about commenting on the recent killing of students on the VA Tech campus, but I’ve read so many great posts on the topic - I didn’t feel I had anything poignant to add that hadn’t already been done better.  Here are the best I’ve read (great and different perspectives):

Angry and Shallow (keeping perspective)

Who Mourns the Killer’s Family (something we don’t think of)

Why? (gun control in America)

Stupid Fundamentalist  (how idiot Christians respond)

The Games Boys Play (the rush to demonize boy’s waring ways)

Va Tech and Youth (how to process this with kids)

This is in response to a blog I wrote last week about living the Kingdom life. While that is all true, the analogy isn’t complete. So I’m here to add another story.

There is an idea that exists; a grand sweeping idea that lives, moves, and breathes. It has the power to give life and take it. It possesses the hope of something more. Then there is us. We are a people living without a home. We are strangers and aliens in a land foreign to us. Because we don’t belong, the world around us hates us. But we live with the idea buried deep within our hearts. The idea gives us a hope that we have a home somewhere. We know it exists, but only within our hearts. It has the power to change us and those around us; even those that hate us – especially those that hate us!

The idea that I speak of is Christ. He was much, much more than simply a man. He was also a divine being that loved us beyond anything we can comprehend. This idea, this love, is what is meant to fuel us as Christians. But something has been lost.

“The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful “adjustment” to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.”

AW Tozer

We are apart of a Kingdom, yes, but we are pilgrims who are living far from our home. We must not lose our identity and become something we are not. But we are also not called to shrink away and hide. We are called to missional living.

“Jesus comes with saving love for the world. He creates the church as a missional community to join Him in His mission of saving the world. He invites me to be part of the community to experience His saving love and participate in it.”

Brian McLaren

We are meant to live open (Missional) and yet also closed existences (Kingdom). Just as Christ was both man and God, we must remember that we are called to be both Missional (man) and Kingdom (God) minded. At times they may seem to contradict each other, but it is that tension that keeps us in check.

Wikipedia [in describing Missional livng] puts it best, “All believers are missionaries who are sent to be a blessing to the culture around them through a lifestyle that mimics God’s kingdom here on earth.”