Welcome to the Archive!

That's right, folks! After 4 years of using Blogger, I have decided to retire this particular service and I'll be continuing with future blog posts on my new site, thegraciousguest.org! Please feel free to peruse entries from the past few years as well as the links and resources, and make sure you stay tuned for future installments on my new site. God bless and take care, and remember:

                    Don't forget to wonder!

Based on What?

I've noticed a rather curious feature of human life that is pretty intriguing when you think about it. I'm talking about the seemingly inescapable desire, like an insatiable thirst, which marks our lives from beginning to end.

We go through life ceaselessly seeking all sorts of different experiences, relationships, and material treasures. We pursue achievements, titles, and honors in our academic and professional lives. We may spend years in search of the dream house, the perfect vacation spot, or the ultimate self-improvement method. We add to our lives everything and everyone we think will bring us happiness and satisfaction.

Despite the almost infinite spectrum of ways in which this human experience can play out, there seems to be a rather obvious common thread. I think it's so obvious that many of us miss it altogether. Amidst the frequently dizzying pace of this endless searching, every single one of us, without exception, comes to the same realization time and time again. It isn't enough. It's never enough. I always want more. But is this just a sign of greed? I don't think so. I think the truth is much deeper than that and far more mysterious.

It seems to me that in the final estimation what we all really desire is permanence. If we're truly honest about all this, it's not really true that we simply want more. We want all. We want genuine "fulfillment", to be full and even overflowing with life, joy, and love forever with no end. I challenge you to find one person who would seriously say, "Well, I think I've had all of the life, joy, love, and fulfillment I was looking for! I'm good!" 

The question I'd like to pose to you is this: Based on what? Just think about this for a minute. If there is one thing that should be abundantly clear and entirely indisputable for every person who has ever lived, it should be that nothing is permanent. Absolutely nothing! When's the last time you saw anything that was truly "permanent" or "everlasting" or "eternal"? Seasons always come and go. So do the people we love. So do the people we don't love so much. So do jobs, good bosses, bad bosses, good looks, not so good looks, health, incredible experiences, boring experiences, and mediocre experiences.

Everything passes away. Yet there is something that never passes away - our yearning for that which can never pass away. From our earliest memories until the moment when we draw our last breath, we endlessly seek firm footing in something utterly true and good and beautiful, something unchanging and unchangeable. We want permanent, eternal joy, bliss, fulfillment, and love. Why do you think that is?

Faith, Hope, & Love

"And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

1 Corinthians 13:13

Faith. Hope. Love. We hear about these all the time. This particular verse from Saint Paul frequently serves as the exclamation point concluding the passage preceding it at weddings. "Love is patient... love is kind... it does not boast." But why is love the greatest of these three?

FAITH is a gift from God. But it is also, mysteriously, something that requires some degree of effort on our part. It is a choice - a commitment to the will of someone other than myself. This is something we oftentimes don't entirely want to do because nearly every cultural influence around us insists that we ought to spend our lives seeking self-satisfaction.

That's where HOPE comes in. Living a life of faith is very hard work. It's downright terrifying sometimes. We need to trust that God has a plan, even if we can't see what that plan is. Hope is not optimism: "No biggie! It'll all work out somehow and everyone will be happy and nice to each other and we'll all go out for ice cream!" The fact is, most of the time, life doesn't work that way. Life sometimes sucker punches us in the stomach and we can't breathe or see any sense in the suffering we and our fellow human beings face. Hope is much, much deeper than that. It's a freely chosen, committed trust in the only One who really knows what's ultimately going on and where things are headed.

And that brings us to the greatest of the three "Theological Virtues" as they're known in the Christian tradition. LOVE. I've said it before and I'll keep on saying it until God calls me home, mostly because I myself need the constant reminder. Love is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. It isn't even a "power" or some vague experience of destiny. Love is the greatest of the three because love is the only one of the three that is a PERSON... Three Persons, to be exact.

"God is love" (1 John 4:8). God doesn't just have love for us. He isn't merely a loving Creator. He is love. He is by nature perfect self-gift, and because He is perfect He can truly, perfectly give His entire self away as gift. His self-sacrifice is literally infinite. It knows no bounds and it cannot be damaged or destroyed by anything. The only thing that can stop this love is our choice to refuse to let it transform our hearts and our minds. God's love for us is so perfect that He will never force us to choose Him - that's coercion, not true love. 

So, by His good grace I hope that I can pray this each day:

"Dearest LORD, please break down the barriers I've placed between Yourself and me. Lord - make Yourself at home in my heart, and may the love that is Your own presence spill over from my life into the lives of everyone I meet. Amen!"

I'm "Dad" now!

So I've been spending each day trying to roll up my sleeves and get to work on this whole "dad" thing! We've had the standard experiences all along the way: diapers, crying, diapers, feeding issues, diapers, consulting the 21st Century's Delphi oracle (i.e. Google) regarding our increasing list of baby questions, diapers...

It's easy enough to go about this whole new reality as though it were a job, a task to be achieved to some degree. But if there's one thing I'm learning by heart each day, it's that "Dad" is not a job title. I am "Dad" now. There now exists a tiny little human on this earth for whom "Dad" means just one thing - me. If that's not enough to blow your mind, I don't know what is!

Scripture is filled to the brim with fathers. Good ones, OK ones, mediocre ones, and even dreadfully evil ones. Look at some examples. First we might take a peek at the fatherhood of Jacob. Jacob loves his children dearly, but he plays favorites. God is up to the challenge, though, for He utilizes the situation of Joseph's maltreatment and abuse at the hands of his jealous brothers and his subsequent sojourn in Egypt to ultimately bring about the expansion of the Hebrew people. The old saying is quite true: "God writes straight with crooked lines."


Then we might look into a darker chapter, namely the fatherly relationship of King Saul to David. Saul starts off well enough, but in his prime he becomes a deeply vengeful, self-centered, wicked king whose heart is far from God. His bloodthirsty pursuit of David in order to eliminate any competition for his throne is nothing short of paranoid. And yet, God uses this deeply painful and tormenting experience to raise up David as the Great King of Israel.

Lastly, we look away from kings and great patriarchs to a simple and altogether unexpected place - a small, humble carpenter's shop in Nazareth and the quietest, meekest man in the history of the world (next to Jesus!) Saint Joseph is the penultimate father in the Bible. He never utters a single word on the pages of Sacred Scripture, and yet, he is the one whom the child Jesus called "Papa" each day. Joseph, though not biologically the father of Christ, was every bit the face of the Father in Heaven to the growing Messiah, the Son of God. If another child asked Jesus, "where is your dad?", it was to Saint Joseph that Jesus pointed. What an incredible responsibility! Joseph's fatherhood of Jesus is not a job, a task to be achieved. Joseph was "Dad" to the Son of God.

That's why I'm leaning on him so much these days. I look to Saint Joseph for my inspiration, for he's the greatest model of what it means to be "Dad." Saint Joseph, pray for us!

My Two Cents

Here goes. I'll keep this relatively brief. Let's begin with a quote I think everyone needs to consider right now: 

"If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:31-32).

If Jesus is right and the truth will make us free, then here are some things to consider. First of all it means that if we go the other direction and wander into deception we place ourselves in prison. Look around us. What do you see in the heavily orchestrated media coverage of this day and age? Rage. Anger. Fury. Fear. Panic. Pain. Violence. The list goes on. What is the source of all of this darkness? Everyone's up in arms and flocking to various banners in an effort to fix the problem. But here's the thing that not nearly enough people ever seem to understand.

The ultimate source of our woes is NOT even on this list: Trump, Hillary, sexism, racism, healthcare, war, immigration, contraception, abortion, the death penalty, education reform, poverty (etc. etc. etc.) Does that shock you? Well then... Would you like to know the secret? Would you like to know what the greatest and most central problem is?

The fundamental problem of human existence is SIN, and at its core, sin is always idolatry. Plain and simple, our problem is that every single one of us has made choice after choice in our individual lives to freely reject truth and embrace deception. We have cast eternal joy to the side in favor of fleeting, passing pleasures.

God is not some benevolent magical genie in the sky who grants wishes. "God" means the ultimate grounding of all being, or more precisely, the pure act of "To Be" itself. God is ultimate reality. That Reality is not something, but a Trinity of SomeONES - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is Love. He is not merely loving, but He is love itself. Love is self-gift, not just emotion or feeling, and love cannot exist apart from relationship. In other words, God's very essence is the perfect and total gift of self between the Three Persons of the Trinity. This is the ultimate truth that Jesus is getting at. This is the truth that shapes all of reality. When we reject that and seek ourselves, our own interests and desires over the needs of others and the demands of love, we lock ourselves in the prison we find ourselves in today.

If God exists, then the greatest requirement of Justice is to render Him His due - to place him on the throne of your heart. If anything else sits in that throne (yourself, sex, money, success, power, political activism, fame, self-assertion, being right, etc.) you cannot possibly be a fulfilled, complete, happy human person. You will never be able to comprehend your own purpose because you have lost the ability to understand what the purpose of human life is in the first place.

Are you upset with the world as it is right now? Good. I agree with you. That doesn't remotely mean we'll necessarily agree about every particular issue. But with all my heart I beg you, my brothers and sisters, stop taking the bait. Stop drinking the poison handed to you by the Devil. I am not your enemy. You are not my enemy. Our enemy is our own sinfulness. Peace, joy, unity, solidarity will never ultimately come from marches, demonstrations, hateful protest posters, self-righteous Facebook posts or vain Tweets. It will only come from virtue, wisdom, and genuine love. Start there. Start today. Call it my dare. I dare you to conquer yourself before you go out into the world trying to conquer everyone you don't agree with.