Chase the Setting Sun...

I have noticed something over the last year or so. As I look through places like Facebook and Twitter I see a lot of people putting up posts about things going on in their life, some of them not so good things. Often they will get comments of encouragement from friends and family.


As I look through these comments I have noticed an overall trend of people saying something like "Sending good thoughts your way!" or "Sending positive energy." Now this typically wouldn't bother me and I wouldn't normally notice, but I have noticed that some of these people call themselves "Christians."


It seems wierd to me that a Christian wouldn't just say "I'm praying for you." Isn't that what we do as Christians...pray for each other? To me it just seems like these people are just afraid to just be transparently Christian and just straight up say they are praying for someone.


For some reason the phrase, "Sending positive energy" just sounds cultish to me. We're Christians, we pray.


Now, I'm not saying that telling someone that you are thinking about them is bad. That is a good thing, letting someone know you care. To me, if I am a Christian, I can be thinking about someone and praying for them. There is a difference to me, if only in how we are witnessing to the world (even if just the Social Media world), in saying "I am praying for you," vs. "I am sending positive energy/thoughts your way."


Non-Christians; continue sending "Positive energy/thoughts" to your friends and family in need. I think in some way you are praying at a basic level, whether you intend to or not.


Christians; let's be willing to let the world know that we are Christians and that we believe in the power of prayer. That's nothing to be ashamed of.


"I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone" ~ 1 Timothy 2:1


"And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well: the Lord will raise him up." ~James 5:15


"The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" ~James 5:16b

Tonight I spent three heavenly hours in a meeting for leaders of our church's capital campaign. Ok, maybe all three hours weren't heavenly. Nonetheless, it was beneficial in some ways. Just some background. A few years ago our church built a new sanctuary. It was long overdue and completely necessary in my opinion. Of course there are only two ways to pay for a new building like this 1) pay in cash and 2) go into debt. It is now our task to pay off the debt.


A phrase that our campaign coordinator brought up a lot was "sacrificial giving." His challenge to everyone in our meeting, as well as the church as a whole, was to "give sacrificially." I got to thinking, what does it mean to give sacrificially? Is it different for everyone, or does it mean the same thing? C.S. Lewis came to mind...


In Chapter 3 of his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says this,

"I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away way too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditure excludes them."

This to me is what it means to give sacrificially. As human beings we are particularly driven by our own status in society. What car do we drive? How big is our house? What kind of clothes do we wear? How many followers do we have on Twitter? We want to at least match if not exceed those in our income bracket in our possessions.


C.S. Lewis says that we should take a look at what everyone else in our income bracket has and make sure that we have less. He doesn't say that we should give away 90% of our income, but we should see how others are living comfortably (or more than comfortably) and give a little more. Our giving should make us a little uncomfortable.


The church talks a lot about tithing. Personally, my wife and I do tithe our 10% each month. However, I'm not sure that formula works for everyone. For some people, 10% is outrageous and would bankrupt them to just all of the sudden start forking over 10% of their income. For others, 10% is a drop in the bucket and they would have to go up to maybe 20-30% before they feel the impact.


I think giving sacrificially means the same thing for a person making $20,000/yr and someone making $1,000,000/yr. It is the specific numbers that are different. Give until it makes us a little uncomfortable.


So I am challenged to try take another look at our finances over the next couple of months before the giving phase of the campaign starts and see if we can sacrifice a little more. To be honest the 10% we do give right now feels like it hurts enough, but maybe God can help us find a way to squeeze out a few more percent to try and pay down some debt.


How is God challenging you to give sacrificially?

Ok, so I heard from my wife on Thursday this week that the Library of Congress will be archiving all tweets retroactively to March 2006. That includes everything from "I just ralphed at this crazy party" to late breaking news, to anything else under the sun. That's roughly 55 MILLION tweets PER DAY.

Now there are obviously good things and bad things about this. We can all see that bad side. Drunken ridiculous tweets are going to be immortalized in the Library of Congress Archives where people a few hundred years from now are going to be seeing them and thinking we were insane. There's definitely that going against it.

I think this is a pretty cool idea. If you think about it, since the Library started archiving it has mostly been distinguished authors, journalists, newspapers, magazines, whatever. Which of course give a pretty good representation of culture. With Twitter being in the archives now it gives people hundreds of years from now a minute by minute timeline of our culture. It shows what topics were trending on any given minute of any day or month; everything from Justin Beiber, to American Idol to the President and politics. They will be able to hear from the mouths (or fingers) of individual American's what it was like living through a big recession, or what it was like having family members in the armed forces. Even things as simple as what it was like when their favorite celebrity won a dance show.

It's about time we started archiving exactly who we really are. Of course, this is going to downgrade us in the eyes of many in the years to come. At the same time though, it might be one of the easiest way to document history. We will be able to go back and say at any moment in history what was happening in different cities, states, and countries. We will be able to see what the scores were of sporting events, what the emotion was in the stadium as a team came from behind to take the victory in the biggest game of the year.

I think, as crazy as this might sound, this is a very good step in the right direction. Of course, there are plenty of downsides to it but over all I think it is a pretty cool idea.

It's amazing how fast technology moves these days. It's almost impossible to keep up with. I was just discussing with a friend the other day about how five or six years ago almost no one used text messages or even had the option on their phone. Now, it's almost the main form of communication for a lot of people. I got my first computer in high school about eight years ago and only used it for school work and listening to music. Now we use our computers for absolutely everything.

One thing that has caught my eye lately has been the Social Media trend. Even just a month ago I was sitting in my kitchen with a group of friends thinking that things like Twitter and Blogs were kind of nuts. I'm only 25 years old but sometimes I can act like I'm way older. In the last month or so I have embraced twitter and picked up blogging again.

A couple of weeks ago I convinced my family's business Garrison Law Firm (where I work) to embrace it as well and create a Facebook page for the business and to start a blog. When I first suggested it you would have thought I was from Mars or something. After a little explanation of how things like Facebook and a blog could really help advance the company's name my dad (the managing partner) agreed to it and I created the Garrison Law Firm facebook page. I am also in the process of creating a blog for the firm as well.