Luke Parrott

Thinking Great Thoughts about Jesus

It's more fun to think great thoughts about Jesus then to actually do them.  It's more fun to talk about showing concern for the poor than it is to actually go get involved at the local mission.  It's more fun to talk about working with the youth than it is to start a small group and get them to focus on what you are sharing.  It's more fun to talk about raising money to build a water well than it is to actually spend the time to plan, coordinate, and promote your benefit concert.

Sometimes I think we prefer talking about the radical life of Jesus rather than actually living it. 

What I love about Jesus is that he never seemed to have the need to share the importance of something before he actually went out and did it.  He didn't get all his disciples together for a year long training program before they began to see him mingle with the poor and the prostitute.  He didn't teach them how to pray until he had modeled it for them so much that they begged him to teach it! 

He lived it and then taught it.  It was show and then tell.  

I think our culture is crying out for Christians to be a lot more "show then tell".

I'm excited to start reading through Mark with a group of friends.  (If you'd like to join with us just email me.  luke@campkivu.com).  Mark is one of those books that is all about action.  One story after another of Jesus serving with very little explanation.  As I go through the gospel of Mark, I hope to not just think great thoughts about Jesus.  But to live them out in all their uncomfortableness. 

Or as my good friend says, "Don't talk about it, be about it."

In a Culture of Noise...

...all we want is to be heard.

  

James 1:19 ...be quick in this way today.

 

How To Put Yourself in Prison

What happens when anger gets the best of us?  When pain nestles itself deep into our heart?  When its staying power starts to wear us down?  When bitterness begins to settle in?  When it finds great company in feelings of resentment?  When the heart becomes hard?  When we become unaware of our own grief?

Is this how you respond when you encounter tragedy?  When your heart is broken does it harden?

The sad reality is that some people allow tragedy to lead them to prison.  When the hurt never finds a place to heal, it leads us straight to the prison cell.  We become chained to our own pain.  We become enslaved by our own bitterness.  We become deceived by our own resentment.  We become isolated in our own holding cell of emotions. 

We are in prison and we don’t even know it. 

But it is forgiveness that frees us from the chains of bondage.  As Desmond Tutu writes, "There is no future without forgiveness."  Jesus calls us to offer the same portion of forgiveness to others that he has allotted to each of us. 

It was the unforgiving man in Matthew 18 that saw forgiveness as one sided.  He warmly welcomed it and begged for it from his master, but from his own friend he demanded payment. 

Where are you withholding forgiveness today?  Is it in a small squabble with a friend?  Is it in a long drawn out resentment that has been brewing in your heart for years? 

Why not release yourself from prison today by going to them and seeking forgiveness?  If God were as stingy as humankind in the way that we offer forgiveness, where would we be today?

Thanks be to God for his loving mercy!  It is new each and every morning!  May it be the same for us as we love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Reading Psalm 91 with a Global Perspective

"You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday."

This is a small portion of a beautiful Psalm that I've been wrestling with all day in my mind.  The whole Psalm speaks of God's protection.  But the above verses of the Psalm most likely would not be very powerful to many North Americans today unless they were seen in a different light. 

What if you were reading this Psalm in 1994 in Rwanda during the genocide?  It was this very Psalm that led one woman to maintain hope and find safety amidst the slaughtering of nearly one million people over the course of 3 months in this small African country.  Especially verse 7! "A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you."   Click here to read story at end of article.

Or what does this Psalm speak to a Malaria stricken nation where a mother is fearful that the next bug bite could take the life of her child?

Or a Dalit girl in India who fears she may be taken from her family only to find herself deep in an industry of sex trafficking?

What does this Psalm mean to a Filipino who knows the storms are coming and the threat of tsunami is ever present?

How would you have read this Psalm were you a farmer in Darfur in 2004 when the Janjaweed swept through villages massacring the people?

What does this Psalm mean to an Afghan teenage girl who is in a pre-arranged marriage with a man 20 years older than her who desires her only for her cleaning, cooking, and child bearing?  click here.

I challenge you to read this Psalm tonight with a global perspective.  What does this prayer of protection mean for believers other than just you and I?  We live in a world that is not void of danger.  But somehow most of those who read this blog have escaped the realities of "terror at night", "pestilence that stalks", "arrows that fly", or "plague that destroys".  Our comfortable living has largely removed us from what are global realities today.  Many of our brothers and sisters around the world hold this Psalm near to their heart and tight to their chest.  Because every word of this Psalm speaks directly towards a present danger. 

To read more on gleaning global perspectives on different scripture, I encourage you to pick up Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South.  It was this book that helped me see a new angle on Psalm 91.

New Video: Camp During the Winter

The Simple Life Explored

Here's a message from my good friend Sam who has been experimenting with a little simpler way of living.  Thanks Wes for piecing this together.  Great short, simple message.

Time Outside from Wesley Rumph on Vimeo.

What Should I Do With My Life?

This is a very real question for the arena in which I work.  Adolescence is now said to extend from puberty into the late 20's (some say even early 30's).  These are precisely the people I hang out with every day.  And the age group to which I belong.

From the 14 year old boy named David in Boulder who asked me, "You could do any job in the world, but why did you choose to work at a camp with kids?" to the 18 year old senior in high school who has applied to college but has no clue what to major in.

From the 20 year old sophomore in college who has changed her major 3 times already and is still confused as to what she wants to do to the recent college graduate who has his diploma in hand but no vision for what to accomplish in life.

This is the reason I do what I do.  It's also the reason we are about to launch the KIVU Gap Year.  Students simply are disillusioned about what to do with their life for several reasons.

1.  They haven't felt enough bumps and bruises in life to find out what breaks their own heart.

2.  They haven't lived in a community (of peers and adults) that see their gifts and purposefully and verbally encourages them to pursue those skills.

3.  They have not learned how to integrate their faith with their future profession.  They still think that doing labor for Christ means being a missionary or pastor.  They don't realize that this work can be fulfilled as a doctor, lawyer, business woman, engineer, teacher, etc.

4.  They don't know what it is that breaks their heart.

5.  They don't realize that God actually has uniquely created them to accomplish something beautiful in this broken world.

6.  They haven't realized that their greatest pains could become their greatest passions.

The KIVU Gap Year will open its doors next Fall 2010 to afford students the opportunity to wrestle with these questions in a community of like minded believers who can help them discover their passions.  To see how it fits perfectly in to their faith and who God created them to be.  To see it on a global level.

We don't have to have a Gap Year to navigate these questions properly.  But we need community.  We need bumps and bruises.  We need to feel the pains in this world in order to foster our passions.  We need to navigate through these real life questions.  We need to see a bigger picture of Christianity than just a personal ticket to heaven and a way to manage personal sin.  We need to see it as awakening our passions, engaging our world, and being the hands and feet of Jesus.

So to turn this whole blog post in on myself, I must ask "Luke, why do you do what you do?" 

Well, when I truly started following Jesus I realized that his Kingdom was to come to all the earth.  Suddenly I saw that my world was a bit larger than just my neighborhood.  I was ready to drop everything, sell it all and live in a hut in Africa.  Be my own Mother Theresa. 

But then I would not have been myself.  God had gifted me in working with the youth of America.  He had given me a passion to be in the outdoors and to be active and adventurous.  And he knew it would be more beneficial for me to show even just a few students how to answer the above questions and go out into the world than if I were just to disappear off the map and do my own thing.  Honestly, I never planned it all out.  I just kept navigating through the fog of all the above questions.

And that's what we need to be able to answer the question, "What should I do with my life?" 

We need community to bring about discovery.

What Do I Do With This?

 

2 weeks of mail can pile up on you.  But what do you do with this?  As I was going through all my mail last night, I was overwhelmed with all the organizations that were after my pocket book. 

The problem is that they are all great causes.  World Vision, Compassion, Amnesty International, United Nations, Heifer International.  But the theme throughout was "URGENT!" or "EMERGENCY" amidst stories of death, poverty, and immense suffering.

Shell shocked is all I could be as I sat there.  I'm just one person with just a little cash.

Well, the last envelope I opened was from a child I have been sponsoring in Tanzania named Bernard Joseph Alex.  Families in his community have an average monthly income of $8.  I have been sponsoring him and watching (thru pictures and letters) him grow up now for several years.  When I came to this envelope, my countenance changed and I smiled.

And I was reminded.

You can only do what only you can do.

With the popularity of social justice today, everyone is being exposed to every sort of injustice that exists on this round earth.  We can quickly find ourselves spread too thin trying to be a part of too much.  The moment we get involved in human trafficking someone wants our money for malaria nets.  The moment we donate to disaster relief in southeast Asia someone is asking us to support the local food pantry.  The moment we sink our teeth into issues of orphan care someone asks us to give towards a water well in Africa.

The reality is that you can only do what only you can do.  By that, I mean you need to find your niche.  Your groove as my pastor calls it.  What breaks your heart?  What makes you pound the table?  What keeps you up at night?  What makes you angry?  What cause are you most passionate about? 

Find one thing, one cause to which you will devote yourself.  And give that your all.  Not just your monthly donation.  Not just that one time Christmas gift.  Give your life to it.  Your time.  Your prayers.  Your thoughts.  Your all.

God has uniquely designed each of us to accomplish something beautiful in this broken world.

You can only do what only you can do.

When I Leave God in the Dust

Sometimes I can get so caught up in what God has called me to do that I leave him in the dust.  I get so excited about a vision that he gave me that I don’t stop to let Him develop it.  I get so wrapped up in the idea that I forget the One who first gave it to me.

My pride likes to leave God in the dust.  To run at my own pace.  To lean on my own understandings.  In those moments I become such a fool. 

The Psalmist says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understandings.”

But I fool myself to think otherwise.

C.S. Lewis called it the ‘great sin’.  He introduces it in this manner:

“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else… There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others... it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” 

Pride is a blind spot.  We can’t see it.  We don’t call it out on ourselves.  We hear others call us out on it.  Yesterday my great friend overheard a comment I made in a conversation and while he was making a joke about what I said, I walked away seeing my blind spot.  There was pride creeping in and I didn’t see it coming.

As I lay my head to rest last night I prayed this prayer, “Lord, if pride ever sneaks up on me and I become its puppet,  please remove me from whatever task it is that I have become so arrogant in.  I am unfit for such a work when I leave You in the dust.”

May God continue to humble me and may I always have friends in my life who aren’t afraid to point out my blind spots.

A Culture of NOW!

Did you get my message?  Did you see my text?  Didn't you see my twitter about that?  I sent that email to you yesterday!  Why didn't you respond? 

We live in a culture of the NOW!  We want communication to happen fast, in real time, and with efficiency.  We have time to text each other so we can also do something else in the process.  But to cross the line from texting to a phone call usually ends up in a screened phone call.  If we get an itch to buy something, we want to go online and order it NOW. 

If a store doesn't have my product in stock, I'm mad because I want it now---not in 2 weeks. 

If the plane boards 30 minutes late or sits on the runway for more than 10 minutes, I get frustrated.   

Our culture has become one of entitlement and high demand for immediacy in all things.  We expect a response from someone in 24 hrs if they are to be professional about it.  Our friends better get back to us in the next 20 minutes or we feel blown off.  

What have we become?  We are in slavery to the NOW!  The non Western world thinks our clock is our idol.  We worship the idol wherever we go.  We carry it with us.  We check it all the time.  We wear it on our wrist.  We keep it in our pocket.  We enshrine it on our walls and place it in our kitchens and bedrooms.  We worship time.

We say "Time is money".  Well, if that is so then Jesus has something to say about that. 

"No one can serve two masters."  Matthew 6

Jesus, of course, is not talking about time.  But he is giving a sermon that I continue to be unable to escape.  I'm in a place right now where every time i open up my Bible, I am drawn immediately to sink my teeth into Matthew 5-7.  As Jesus announces his Kingdom, he describes a new way to live in a broken world. 

He is speaking here about allowing wealth to become your master.  You can not serve God and money.  You will hate one and love the other.  Perhaps today, it would be good for me to hear that I also can not serve both God and time.  One is going to have to master me.

If you are mastered by time, you will not have time to do the things that God is about today.  Your schedule will not allow for you to stop and have a conversation with that person who needs a listening ear.  Your agenda does not include a visit to that person who needs some love.  Your budget does not make room for a donation to that organization. 

In a culture of NOW, we can not serve two masters.  Jesus said "he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other."

We can let the culture of the NOW to be our master.  Or we can allow God to work in His time, in His way, and allow Him to master us.

Okay, you better stop reading this blog and get back to that project.  Respond to that text and make sure you call her back.  Get off that computer because so and so is expecting you in 10 minutes and you can't be late!