Within Arms Reach (Picture Included)

I said I would share some adventures from our vacation, here's one.

Part of our vacation, I had the opportunity to stay with a college friend from Seattle Pacific University, Jason and his wife Emily. They are superb people. They were so hospitable to us, and took great care of us while we were there. I am sure I gained weight while there because of the scrumptious food.

Jason's Dad has a boat, so they decided to take us out in it while we were there. They live in Encinitas, right out side San Diego, and the place they took us was in San Diego Bay, right off Coronado.

Jason, his dad, and I went down early to the boat launch to ensure that we would get some prime parking, so to waste some time while waiting for the rest of the family, we went out to the open ocean through the bay.

What's interesting about the mouth of the bay, is that you can be a mile from shore and the water is only about 30 feet deep. While we were out there, we spotted a pod of dolphins! Man, it was so so cool! There was about 5 or so of them swimming together, so we drove the boat up to try and get closer to them.
We got so close that our boat was actually right on top of them, I was laying down on the bow of the boat and there were two dolphins on either side of the boat under the water just a few feet. It was exhilarating to see two fantastic creatures in the wild! I had never been so close to a dolphin before in my life!

Jason did his best to maneuver us close to the dolphins, and as I was laying on the bow of the boat, with my arm fully extended in the the water, I came about 6 inches away from touching the dolphin!! I was literally screaming with excitement! It was one of the neatest experiences of my vacation.

As we were coming back into the bay, I was thinking to myself how awesome it was to see such a beautiful animal in the wild. To watch them swim and jump with each other and think how God wonderfully made these creatures. It occurred to me, how is it possible that people think that there is no God?

To me, there is no possibility that we are a random organism that evolved out some green ooze. Viewing those dolphins brought to my mind the fact that God created them, and us, and that's a beautiful thing.

Remind yourself of that today. You were created by God. So were the dolphins.

be blessed today
matt

here's the pic I took with my phone when we were coming up on them.

It Don't Matter If You're Black or White

My son has a new found love of Michael Jackson music. I admit, I may have contributed to it somewhat. When I got Gabriel his mp3 player, I put 2 MJ songs on there, 'Wanna be startin' somethin' and 'Billie Jean'. Two epic MJ songs.

Well, through a weird coincidence, MJ died a few months later, and my son has now become very interested in his music. I updated his mp3 with some Jackson 5, Bad, Dangerous and of course Thriller. We were on YouTube the other night watching videos of MJ. Pretty cool.

So my son walks around the house singing MJ songs all day, and yesterday he was singing "It don't matter if your black or white". It really got me thinking about race a bit. Its been quite an issue in the news the past week, with the whole Cambridge Police vs. Gates/Obama thing. I'm not sure why that is, but it seems that this race thing is something we can't seem to get over.

No matter what you're race is, I'm sure that at some point you were treated a certain way because of your race. Its sad, but true. There are still people out there that make decisions based on race. It shouldn't be that way, God never intended it that way, but its the way that it is for a lot of people.

Here's my thought- God doesn't care what skin tone someone is, and we shouldn't either. God is going to deal with us on the heart level, and to us, we are called to do one thing- love. That's it. Nice people, bad people, funny people, dumb people, tall, skinny, fat, ugly, pretty, smart and dumb. No matter what, we are supposed to LOVE people.

One of my favorite Bible verses is from 1 John, it says "whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love". That's our calling. That's our mission. To love with the passion that God loves us.

As ol' MJ says, it doesn't matter if you're black or white, and it doesn't. Truly doesn't. If we would love people, all people, this race thing wouldn't be such an issue.

Go love someone today.

Matt

How to Cope With Loss

I told you I wanted to share some of my stories from our vacation, and today is the first one.

On our vacation, we went to Disneyland. Yes, we went there again. I know, some of our friends think we're crazy, but we love Disneyland. Its a great place for us.

While we were there, our daughter, Faith, wore a cute little pink visor almost every day. It said, "25% cute, 25% sassy, 25% something, 25% something (I forget), 100% princess". Its a cute visor. And she loved to wear it.

Well, at the end of the day, after we had been at the park for about 15 hours, we had to get on that train/tram thingy and ride back to the parking lot to get our car. As we were riding, Faith became aware that she didn't have her visor, and became quite upset. Apparently, she had set it down somewhere in the park, and forgot to pick it up.

Obviously, this did not sit well with her, and she began to cry a little bit. I know, its only a visor, but she's 6, it was a long day, and she was hot. Crystal and I tried to console her, to no avail. And then, it happened. My 9 year old son Gabriel offered his wisdom to the situation- "Faith, if you love something, set it free".

Then she really started to cry. I'm not sure if it was because of what Gabe said, or because of our uncontrollable laughter, but she wailed, and we laughed harder. It was so hilarious to hear that nugget come out of my sons mouth.

I know the blog title is about coping with loss, but on some level I think this story illustrates a truth about all of our own condition. We all have things that we love and cherish, and at times we lose them. Its not easy, or fun, but it happens. It may be something big or small.

Gabe's truth has an encouragement for us all. Sometimes, when we relinquish our own need to control and possess that which we truly love, we show our ability to truly love it, by setting it free. In a Christian connotation, it could be manifested by giving something over to God. Its hard. Its not easy, but sometimes its the best thing we can do.

Is there something you need to set free today? Something you need to let go of? A thought, a pain, a person? Let it go to God today and put it in his hands and watch what he can do with it.

Oh, and we bought Faith a new visor.

Blessings
matt

Why You Can't Live On Vacation

I'm back from vacation. It was a great two weeks. We had a fantastic time. We've been pastoring for 6 years now, and have never taken 2 weeks off together as a family, so it was a real treat for us to be able to do it.

We started our vacation on the Oregon Coast, drove down the 101, saw the redwoods, went to Monterey, San Diego and Anaheim (Disneyland). Met people, visited people, and had a ton of fun.

There are some great stories from my vacation that are going to be blogs over the next few weeks. I don't want to use them all up on the first day back. That wouldn't make sense would it?

Vacation is what it is, its a vacation, from things, from people, from responsibility, but the reality is that when you come back to reality, you have to realize that is not the way that life is. You have to work, you have to be connected, you can't eat bad food every day. There has to be some sort of order and continuity to your daily life.

There is a certain comfort found in routine. Sometimes you have to break it, but its nice to come back to it.

Maybe you're in your routine right now. Perhaps you're stuck without being able break your routine, and that's okay. We honor God with our routines, or at least we have the opportunity to. We can decide, in the midst of our daily grind, to realize that we honor God, our families, and ourselves with the daily things that we do.

Here's to having a great week. I've missed writing the blog. It will take a bit for me to get back into the 'swing', but it will be good.

Keep watching this week for more from vacation!

bless you
matt

How Can You Jam, if You Can't Hear It?

Yesterday, a guy from my church and I went to Guitar Center in Tukwila to get the Church's guitar fixed. We've only had it for about a month, but it was acting up, so we wanted to take it back to see if we could exchange it, or at least get it fixed.

We got there at about 955am, because we thought it opened at 10, but no, it didn't, it opened at 11am, so we spent some time roaming around the mall, looking at shoes and inhaling the pungent cologne smell that wafts from the Hollister store.

We got back to the store, and were sitting in front of the door, when one of the employees came up to get in for work. We had been talking to another guy, who asked him if he was the manager, and the guy said that he was the guitar repair guy.

In good Matt fashion, I asked him about our guitar, even though the place wasn't open yet, and he wasn't on the clock yet. We opened our trunk, and showed him the amp and guitar, and he said, "more than likely you've got a bad cord".

When the shop opened, we went inside, and sure enough, the guy was right. The cord that we had that connected the guitar to the amp was no good. It was a real easy fix, all we had to do was buy a new cord.

I meet alot of people in my travels. As a pastor, what I hear alot of people tell me, is that they want to grow closer to God. To grow spiritually. To get back on track, to learn more about Jesus. It comes in different statements, but its all the same, they want to be somewhere spiritually, that they currently are not. And the big question is how.

Yesterday's adventure at Guitar Center illustrates a point. If we were guitar, and we wanted to connect with an Amp(the amp representing God, because an electric guitar without an amp is useless), we would need a good cord, to make a good connection.

What would this cord be made of you ask? Its simple,once you know who God is, you maintain that connection with a braided cord of prayer, scripture, worship at church, service, and giving. People want to know the way to get connected, that's it.

Its quite simple actually.The concept of connectedness with God can be understood in the simplicity of a braided cord. You just have to make sure you're using one that isn't broken, or else you'll never make that connection.

Get connected and stay connected. You'll grow spiritually.

Bless you
matt