Where I'm going today

this

is where i'm going today. SuburbanRails has taken me on as friendly fone guy for a while. My friend James is more than kind to do so.

This park just got completed by SR, and we're heading up there today for a "bizness" call. Hopefully there'll be a bit of shredding there, as well.

young Jordan, pictured in first link, is one of the Effort guys. He's the most gonz-friendly, creative skater I know personally.

It's a priv to work in skateboarding and skateparks.

yesterday I visited and helped a bit at a neighbor's house, building their half-pipe. that should be good.

Well, gtg.

gratitudes...

this morning is COLD. it was in the 30's last night. and I woke up with that headachy shaky feeling I get when the weather changes out from under me... and i feel so grateful!

one of the things I'm grateful for is the "one-hundred dollar hoopty". It's this wreck of a car-a toyota corolla- from 1991 that got donated to us... a gift of love that was difficult to understand at first.

I put just under a hundred dollars and about 20 hours into her and got her running good enough.
she needs a new muffler. badly. but she's just 4 cylinders, so it's not that loud... i drive like a grampa, so no worries...

there are a LOT of "real" things I'm grateful for, though. Like Aaron Mansfield's new marriage, and the babies born in our community here. Like Kadin and Seth playing after school. Gosh, Kadin is a genius! He builds the most fascinating lego weaponry on sunday mornings.

I'm grateful for Charlie and Crystal and my man Riley. (how do you guys spell him?) I'm grateful for finding my friend Greg, and how Chris Deering's mouth has spilled so much grace this month.
I'm grateful for Sam, one of the godliest young men I've known. He's like when JP was young! Fired up! and silly! and wise!

I'm grateful for marcelo, my Brazilian boy, who at 17 has crossed the equator to spend a year in grey Ohio. All of his comparisons show us lacking. and we are. He has learned to shred on a skateboard, lately. I'm proud of him because he's braver than he looks. He is slaying dragons.

I'm grateful for my man aaron ross, who got his hair cut yesterday. at 13 he's dealing with the world in a wisdom from above, from time to time... he's a good man in training and i'm honored to be his dad...

it goes on, deeper and deeper, ending with my wife. there is simply nothing better on this earth than the love of a godly woman. having a wife who loves me less than she loves Jesus--whose first and almost only love is our Lord--has sanified me. She is a constant source of truth and wisdom. She isn't afraid of the trials of life. amazing. fearless...

some thoughts today.

and JP, thanks for the call.

What isn't there to love about my eldest son's love of skateboarding. The thing I like the most is how he learns to do what HE wants to. All of his skateboarding is HIS.

The Poor: Discovering that you are them...

...and yet, as we enter into friendship with the poor through daily contact with Jesus, on his madman path of life in the Spirit...

we will discover, as soon-to-be-formerly-rich-people, that we are not rich at all. We'll find a bravery and a freedom among the poor saints that we lack. A peace and unfetteredness--a readiness for the Kingdom Above... and we'll find ourselves jealous and ashamed...

yet we are called to turn our visits into residency. your trips to mexico and Kenya... just go there. go and lead and be and grow. go and die and rise again. go and attain to the better resurrection-that city with walls whose builder and architect is God, who, in Christ, endured the cross, counting its shame a small thing...

comforted by angels, you will know God's face. pure in heart.

you will see that before you came here, with Him, you had nothing, and now you have everything.

all you rich christians! You're going to lose it all, soon. Either crisis, or death, or sickness, or God's hand of circumstance will soon enough peel the false face off your life. seek for the depth of God! give up STUFF along the way.

then your use and enjoyment (1 tim 6) of it will be free of greed, which finds itself next to homosexuality on the naughty list. do you want to be found with that on you? then plow up your fallow ground. (hos.10:12)

read these scrips and comment me others! get into this with God...

The Poor: Becoming them

you know what? one of the most difficult things about what Jesus says about the poor is that we'll become them...

look at the loss we'll suffer:
sell all, give to the poor, follow me...
love your life in this world? Lose it.
poor are rich in faith to inherit the kingdom
rich get in by a miracle of God-very difficult for them
poor have high position
woe to rich
blessed the poor...

look at the teachings of the master. Why do we cling to wealth? we do.
stop.
don't.
cling to the cross...

aah the cross. There's another thing. Not just His teaching, but his example. "He who was rich became poor so that we, through His poverty, may become rich..." look that up. someone tell me what scriptures I'm speaking from...

Jesus modeled the "downward mobility" of becoming a leaf on the wind... even better, the Wind itself...
isn't that the basic teaching of the kingdom he gave the old religionist in John 3? That those who are really Jesus people: born of the Spirit... that they're like the Wind. Not a leaf. The Wind.

Are you like the wind? or are you attached to this world in your heart. Lay it bare again, today, before the Master and make a fresh 100% surrender.

This is me in the Philippines with "Shadrach". I have very little clue to what he was saying to me, but I think it was, "Let me have that guitar for a minute." He wanted to play me a song.

Cough Receding

I know I posted about contracting the "Whooping Cough", "pertussis", a while back. Well, my doc put me on a med that was not "for" pertussis. It helped and knocked the cough back during my trip to the Philippines, but during the last couple days and into my settling back in, the cough returned to pummel me nightly. As of yesterday, I have slept on the couch for a long time, since my frequent awakening and nightly coughing bouts awake Judy.

But last night, on our trip to Portland, ME for training in the State Department Grants programs that we work with, I slept all night. All night. A full night's sleep. What a blessing!

Thanks God for a full night's sleep. I feel terriffic! and I also recognize that there are so many people today suffering from chronic illness who don't get to sleep or rest because of pain. Thanks God for all the people who pray for me and put up with me in the real-time of life.

All of you at Northside and across the country who love me and pray for me and my family: thanks to God for you.