Extreme Makeover Home Edition Gets it Right!

It is not too often that a random comment on television leaps out of the set and clarifies life as a Christ Follower, but it happened to me tonight. I was watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition as the team redid the Boettcher Family home. (I think I have that spelling right). "Pastor Steve" (Dad) has run a ministry to biker gangs and bikers for many years. His family also turned their garage into a recreation center for the town kids. Many of these kids were featured on the show, discussing the warmth and love and affection they found at the Boettcher home, in addition to home cooked meals and a little guidance. The Boettcher family lived in a 12 X 70 foot trailer, with their 20 year old daughter and special needs grandson, but they ran an amazing ministry from their garage and home. Mrs. Boettcher cooks each Wednesday for 30 - 40 kids in a kitchen no bigger than an RV kitchen. Ty Pennington, in his own way, was amazed at all the Boettchers have done out of this primitive and falling down home. "You've done all this in this home and kitchen?" he asked. Pastor Steve whipped his head around and looked genuinely surprised by the question, as if it had not occurred to him that these conditions were hardly ideal for running a family, let alone a community ministry. "It's the home I have." he stated simply.

With that, he floored me. What an attitude! Of course I ran my ministry out of here, this is the home I have to give. And with this falling down, broken trailer, Pastor Steve and his family turned lives upside down for God. Wow. If we all could approach our possessions and our lives with that same open-handedness, what would we accomplish? Of course...this is what I have. 

All of this kind of reminded me of the boy with the fishes and the loaves of bread, feeding thousands with "what I have." Or the widow, who offered to God's prophet, "what I have." Or Abraham, who placed on the altar "what I have." 

What do I have?

Extreme Makeover? If people really listen to the story told tonight it could be an Extreme Makeover indeed.

Disney World Rocks!

This weekend we are hanging out at Disney World for my birthday trip. So here's the question we've all been tossing around... What is it about Disney that causes you to know in your heart of hearts that it is fake? The hotels are themed and beautiful, but you find yourself longing for the originals, not the copies. The streets are amazing, but you wish there were some real traffic on them. By the time you leave Disney flowers no longer seem real and you mistrust your own ears. After all, at Disney Vero they play a constant soundtrack of a roaring ocean even on a calm day. So did that bird really twitter? Or was it a sound track?

David and I were discussing this longing we feel for the authentic when we are surrounded by the beautiful copies. There are so many spiritual analogies, and I will leave it to you to draw most of them, but there were two thoughts that surfaced for us. The first is that we all long for the ideal. Inside of us God has planted eternity. Our hearts are longing for heaven, for the real, for the original and not the copy. Disney awakens that desire in us. Secondly, people are amazingly good at telling the real from the fake. We want authenticity. This, of course, applies to nearly everything. My mind is busy applying it to the types of relationships and communities we develop. 

I'm dwelling in the artificial dreaming of the authentic. Let's go create it!