for the love of panic

I was out of town & offline this weekend when everything started breaking loose with swine flu.  I believe it’s tragic that people have lost their lives because of this disease & I hope that people wiser than i are able to quickly and effectively provide treatment and help for those suffering from it.

however, i’m deeply, deeply concerned by the media and general public’s response to this disease outbreak.

clean.

this past weekend i accomplished the following tasks:

     -cleaned my bathroom

     -cleaned the dining room

     -caught the dishes up

     -cleaned out my car

and, in the past week, i’ve knocked my email inbox from 430ish down to 284 (still a long ways to go to my goal of 90, but well on my way).  and cleaned out several storage rooms at First Friends.

while the person who randomly stumbles across my office (yet to be cleaned) might not realize it, i enjoy organization.  there’s something about sorting through things and bringing order to chaos that’s strangely satisfying.  

but why should you care about my cleaning habits (unless you’re single, female, & looking for an amicable guy)?  well, because the virtue of sorting things out applies to our souls as much as it does to our spaces.

love is in the air

my friend Hannah recently wrote a note on Facebook talking about places where love is revealed in her life.  about how love can be very difficult to capture and even to give, but that it’s all around us if we’ll recognize it and let it do its outside the lines sorta painting.

i agreed with her.  i think love trumps all.  the Bible says this, too.  and though we live in a culture that encourages us to subvert love for our own demands and pleasure (proper name=lust), as the cultivators and redeemers that God has designed us to be, Christians ought to be the most affluent in spending love with their lives.  on a side note, when we approach culture without love as the life of our message, we miss the whole story of God throughout creation.

but this got me thinking, like Hannah, about pieces of my life where i see love reflected.  not just things or people i love, but what most regularly exemplifies love to me.  so here’s a few:

alleys of kingdom come

Jesus had just started.  he was just getting going.  and some guys came to ask him questions.  his cousin, John, had heard the rumors that Jesus was claiming to be the One.  the One that generations had longed for.  the One that John was wacked out for, living a life so outside the box that people couldn’t help but pay attention.

and so he sent some guys to find out the truth.

they arrive and ask this Jesus character if what they’ve heard is true.  is he the One?!  and Truth answers:

Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.

wait.

that’s not what i was expecting.  if the church today were “the guys,” what would we have told John?  because this seems a bit off message…  

You’re gonna die…

this past weekend i had the privilege of attending & speaking at a great conference in Pittsburgh, PA called Jubilee.  Jubilee has long been a spiritual pilgrimage for me…i think this was 7th or 8th time attending, though it was my first time leading breakouts (one on porn & one on youth ministry).  

Jubilee is put on by the CCO, a group that transforms college students to transform the world.  what it does better than any other conference that i’ve been to or know of is in challenging and enabling participants (mostly college-aged students) to grasp and live how Christ’s redemptive and restorative power is at work throughout the entirety of culture.  business, entertainment, education, healthcare, vocational ministry, social sectors, arts, literature…you name it and He wants us to be his agents of redemptive change.

Rick Warren’s round house kick

there was a lot of buzz a few weeks ago over the two prayers that were delivered as part of the inauguration.  i personally genuinely appreciated them both.  but what i didn’t grasp was an entire second level to Rick Warren’s prayer that Chuck Norris, using his super human round house kicking powers, lays out quite articulately in this article.  here’s the opening:

I know inaugural news and commentary are already passé. But I could not find one report this past week that caught what I believe was the most subtle, strategic and possibly subversive moment of the inauguration ceremony. Did you catch it?

 i am not particularly a fan of Chuck, but i think this is really good stuff.  what do you think?

>>ht to neatorama for the image and josh griffin for the article

broken

reading through my journal tonight, working on prepping some talks, i came across this & thought it was worth sharing:

“i spend so much of my life on affirming my worth and pursuing my pleasure, it is incredibly humbling to consider serving One who is, in all ways, the sum of perfection.  the disparity between my sin and his holiness is great than i could conceive or imagine.  the brokenness of my character is greater than i understand.

and so, in this disastrous brokenness, where do i look to with hope?  in what could i ever hope of hoping in?  

only in this One that is outrageously different.  this One, that by his perfection seems so far, is in reality the only hope for me coming close.  close to him, close to life & purpose, close to what i ought to be.”

sled riding

there were so many people at the sledding hill today.  before everyone else from my group arrived, i had 20 minutes or so to sit and watch and here’s what i observed:

something about childish games brings joy back to old bones.

something about brisk air that reinvigorates mundane adults.

today i caught site of children trapped inside adult bodies, seeing them relive their long-distant childhood with a thin piece of plastic and a long, steep, magic covered decent.

weathered men in carharts and camouflage cracking smiles for seemingly the first time across leathery faces. and then the smiles stuck, setting free wrinkles and laughs, cries of joy.

and the young ones, too; they seemed in their prime.  they slid naturally and skillfully, happily and free.

all together, now.  down and down.  first narrowly missing a returning explorer, just below the crest of the lip, hidden from site.  then, a head turns too late to warning cries and it’s a white-washed wipeout.  wild yet wonderful.  

ramps send more than bodies flying, but spirits and adrenaline and mittens and delight all soar together.  

bodies tire and it’s time to move on.  but memories will stay longer than the snow.

single

i’ve been thinking about my single status a bit more than usual recently.  while i don’t think it’s because of any single factor, i think it’s a combination of things including the holidays (which always have a way of making me feel lonely), my best friend’s wedding (which was great fun, by the way), and that i tend to go through cycles and i’d been in a pretty content cycle for awhile.  

anyway, i don’t have any intention of putting self-obsessed, whiny, why me posts up here.  first off because i think that we’ve gotta work with what we’re dealt.  and second because i think there’s a lot of value in being single.  and, unfortunately, the church has largely done a crappy job at making marriage an expectation rather than a gift.  but all that’s for another post.

one of the things that i was thinking of through all of this was how very little there is out there from folks walking through singleness.

16 things

From Facebook:

alrighty…cause folks asked me to & cause i thought it’d be fun, here’s 16 little known facts (some might call them inane details) about the man known as jdh.

1 Pittsburg: even though i’m a die-hard Cleveland sports fan (which the fact that i’m a sports fan at all may be news to some folks), i much prefer the city of Pittsburgh as a city and have spent more of my life in it than Cleveland. i do still hate the Steelers. i just love their city.

2 The West Wing: i view the tv show The West Wing as one of God’s gifts to humanity. it makes me a hopeless emotional wreck often, spurred me on in asking a girl out once, likely played a role in my political leanings, and gives me hope for politics in general even though i know they’re incredibly hopeless.

3 abnormal friends: i have two (that i can think of) “virtual” friends (meaning friends who i came to know & only know via the internet). dan & josh. dan i met back in the day when i had a xanga account & so did he & we would read each other’s and comment. josh i met through his blog and our little experiment in Amir’s Taxi Fund.

4 childhood: most kids set up lemonade stands when they’re growing up to earn cash & whatnot. i, however, didn’t do lemonade stands…i set up a rock & shell museum at the end of my yard along the sidewalk. i collected rocks & seashells from all over & researched & labeled them. business never really picked up, though.

5 blog: i relaunched my blog over Christmas break & i’m pretty pumped about it: http://joeldaniel.wordpress.com. i was going to label this as shameless self-promotion, but i think a list of 16 things about yourself pre-defines the entirety as such.