#113 You'll Believe a Man Can Fly

I was going to write this blog last week, but life happened, so I'm getting around to things a bit late. December 15 was the 40th anniversary of Superman, my all-time favorite movie. In my mind, Superman is the Mary Poppins of movies: practically perfect in every way. I could go on and on about why I love Superman, but I'll try to simply highlight a reasonable number of things that I think are fantastic.

• John Williams' music is simply amazing. I can't hear his Superman theme without wishing I could take off and fly around. Such a beautiful, triumphant piece of music.
• ZOD! General Zod isn't even the villain of this film; he and his partners in crime are there in the beginning to set up the sequel. But Zod's speech to Jor-El (Superman's father) is incredibly chilling. "You will bow down before me, Jor-El! Both you and then one day, your heirs!"
• Young Clark Kent's comments after Pa Kent dies always get me. "All those things that I can do, all those powers, and I couldn't even save him." Brutal stuff.
• I absolutely adore the scene where the gunman tries to mug Lois and Clark. Margot Kidder is a fantastic Lois. She's unafraid of the mugger and even tries to kick the gun out of his hand. I love it when Clark catches the bullet and half-winks to the camera before going on to tell Lois everything that's in her purse. Classic.
• The big reveal of Superman is nothing short of epic. He soars up to catch Lois, who's plummeting toward the pavement. ("You've got me! Who's got you?") Then Superman catches the falling helicopter in his other hand. The whole thing looks effortless. It's brilliant.
• The chemistry between Superman and Lois is great. It feels like it should be cheesy when he flies her around the world, but it never comes across that way to me. The characters just seem to be head over heels for each other.
• Christopher Reeve knocks the Superman/Clark Kent role out of the park. He's mind-blowingly good. The way he transitions back and forth between the Superman persona and the Clark Kent persona when he picks Lois up for their date is so good.
• Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor is cunning and diabolical. He can be witty and even funny. ("You know why the number 200 is so vitally descriptive to both you and me? It's your weight and my IQ.") But at the core he's pure evil. As he says, he gets his kicks plotting the deaths of innocent people, millions of innocent people. Such a great foil for Superman.
• The feats Superman pulls in the climax are incredible. Director Richard Donner and company really understood how to challenge Superman without a huge fight: multiple emergencies at the same time. Superman is there to stop a runaway misslie, fix the earth's crust, save a busload of kids, shut off an out-of-control power main, and stop a river that bursts its dam. And all of that is leading up to the finale when he flies fast enough to reverse the rotation of the earth, go back in time, and save Lois. I understand how ridiculous that is, but I can't get past how cool it is. Superman does incredibly cool things. I love that.
• The conclusion of the movie, where Superman smiles at the camera as he flies in orbit around the earth, is just perfect.

If you've never seen Superman, I highly recommend it. If you have seen it, I highly recommend watching it again. Just let me know when you do. I'd love to watch it with you.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#112 Guest Preacher

As a Christian Reformed minister, I occasionally get assigned to go preach for other Christian Reformed congregations that are between pastors. I really enjoy doing this. I appreciate having an opportunity to interact with fellow Christians from nearby churches. A change of scenery once in a while on Sunday morning helps me stay fresh in my ministry. Plus, preaching to a different congregation gives me a chance to reuse a recent sermon that I thought worked well, which frees me up to accomplish other things during the week.

The only "trouble" is that different congregations have different orders of worship. Now this isn't really a problem; it's good that we don't all worship exactly the same way. But when I preach here in Kanawha, I don't have to spend much energy focusing on what comes next in worship. I'm used to our general pattern. In a worship service somewhere else, I don't know what to expect. But generally, as the guest preacher, I'm in charge of leading the worship service. I don't want to distract anyone from worshiping. So I tend to spend the service on high alert. It's really a good experience for me. It keeps me on my toes and helps me try different things. But after being gone for a week, I'm always glad to come back to my congregation. After all, there's no place like home.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#111 Raising a Toddler

Lanie: [points to a picture of cows] MOOOOOOO!

Me: You're right. Those are cows. Can you say "cow"?

Lanie: MOOOOOOO!

Me: Not "What does a cow say?" Can you say "cow"?

Lanie: MOOOOOOO!

Me: Say "cow." C-c-cow.

Lanie: MOOOOOOO!

Me: No, no. Say "cow."

Lanie: [goes silent]

I just can't win.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#110 The Cranky Mathematician Comes Back

I was a math major in college. Because of that, I tend to get frustrated when I encounter things that are mathematically incorrect or improper. Once in a while I stop to blog about one of those things. Welcome to the fourth installment of "The Cranky Mathematician."

My daughter, Lanie, has a shapes puzzle. She also has a shapes book. Sometimes we watch TV shows that teaches shapes. We often encounter the following shape:

That is not a diamond. That's a rhombus, a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. It really bothers me that we teach kids to call that shape a diamond. It's a rhombus. That's the mathematical term. Why in the world do we teach them to say diamond when they're little just so they can be taught in school that a rhombus looks like a diamond? Let's just teach kids the word "rhombus." R's can be tricky for little kids, but lots of words have r's in them. At the end of the day, "rhombus" really isn't significantly more difficult to say than "diamond." (Side note 1: I don't think I've ever seen an actual, precious diamond cut into the shape of a rhombus. I'm sure you could do it, but most diamonds don't look like that. Diamond is a silly name for this shape.) (Side note 2: That is the shape we use for the suit of diamonds in card games. However, clubs and spades aren't intuitive for most people. They just learn what each suit looks like. So I don't think we need to call this shape a diamond for the sake of cards.) I'm going to teach Lanie to say rhombus. And if some day she corrects you for calling that shape a diamond, know this: she's right.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#109 Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed Be Your Name

I'm fairly regularly in a situation where a group of people prays the Lord's Prayer together. (For example, our weekly community men's Bible study closes each meeting that way.) No matter the setting, we recite the Lord's Prayer this way:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

(Often there's one or two people who use "trespasses" instead of "debts," and some people say "forever and ever" instead of "forever," but what I've printed above is the most common form.)

We say the Lord's Prayer that way because that's the way we learned it. Elderly nursing home residents learned the Lord's Prayer that way when they were children. I learned it that way when I was a child. It's easy and good to use the prayer the way we first learned it.

But here's the thing: I have never owned a Bible that translates the Lord's Prayer that way. The form of the Lord's Prayer I've printed above is a cross between the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version. I've never regularly attended a church that still used either of those Bible translations in worship. I don't use "thee" and "thou" and "thy" when I speak or write, nor do I know anyone (as far as I know) who uses that language in everyday communication.

So why do we still say the Lord's Prayer that way? The answer, of course, is because we learned it that way. But why do we still teach it that way? Again, probably because we learned it that way. But I think that's a mostly silly reason. Using "thee" and "thou" and "thy" in prayer isn't wrong. The extra formality can remind us of God's greatness and help us be respectful. But we don't need to be extra formal in prayer. The words Jesus used when He taught His disciples this prayer were not extra formal, so we don't need to translate them that way. I think that teaching children this prayer with language they don't normally use and might not understand increases the risk that they will simply recite this prayer without much thought or meaning. And that's what we should really try to avoid when we use the Lord's Prayer.

If we pray the Lord's Prayer on our own, I think we should pray it however seems most comfortable and natural to us. If we use it with a group who all learned to use "thy," we should feel free to continue to do so. But if we pray the Lord's Prayer with those who are still learning it, such as in a normal church service, I really think we should use more contemporary and accessible language. It may be a bit uncomfortable for some of us who've done this before, but I think it'll help at least the newest of us (and maybe all of us) understand a little better. I'll even leave you the text from the NIV, which is pretty close to how I learned it but much closer to how I speak and think and understand:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever. Amen.

Grace and peace,

BMH

P.S. We maybe shouldn't use "hallowed" anymore either. We could use something like "make your name holy" or "may your holy name be honored." However, the NIV is meant to be written at an average reading level, and it keeps "hallowed." I'll keep thinking it about that. 

#108 Beautiful Simplicity

At the risk of stating the obvious, sports are often complicated. In order to play and watch many sports well, you have to have at least a decent understanding of a whole book of rules. Then those rules are enforced by imperfect officials who don't see everything, make mistakes, and are prone to be biased toward the home team. And if that wasn't bad enough, sometimes the team that plays the best isn't the team that wins. When we watch sports we often find several reasons to walk away frustrated or make excuses if things don't go the way we'd hoped.

But what if I told you that there's a sport that isn't complicated? What if I told you there's a sport with very few rules and almost no room for official error, a sport where those who perform better always win? This beautifully simple sport is cross country*. Now technically cross country does have rules about team size and uniforms and spikes, but for all intents and purposes it boils down to this: whoever travels the whole course from the starting line to the finish line the fastest wins. It's pretty hard to cheat in cross country. You could try to cut the course or to knock over another runner, but those things are pretty obvious, and other runners would pretty well eat you alive if you tried cheating. And officials really don't have to watch for much beyond that. The trickiest thing for officials is when multiple runners finish at nearly the same time, but even then it usually isn't as hard to determine the proper order as you might think. But the best part, in my opinion, is that you can't really hide or make excuses in cross country. If some others beat you it's because they ran better than you did. Period. Sure, you can have a bad day or be bothered by an injury and lose to someone you normally would have beaten. But whoever finishes first ran better that day than everyone else. That's all there is to it. You can't fake it. You can't really get lucky and win (barring, I suppose, a horrific injury or other competitors tripping over each other).

The beautiful simplicity of cross country is what I love so much about it. On race day it was simply myself against the other competitors out there on the course in whatever conditions. When it didn't go well, I had no one to blame but myself, and that was pretty brutal at times. But when the race did go well, there was this glorious sense of achievement. I didn't have to worry that I'd just gotten lucky or been favored by the officials. That day I was faster than however many others, and that was it. That made all the hard work of training worth it. If only more of life were that simple.

Grace and peace,
BMH

*Note: Much of what I say could easily apply to track, swimming, or cycling. However, I think those sports are more complicated due to things like more equipment and more limitations on the number of people who can compete at one time.

#107 Mini-Biographies

On November 18 I'm scheduled to preach at Trinity Christian Reformed Church in Ames, IA. The church asked me to send in a 2-3 sentence biography for the bulletin. So I started with two pretty predictable sentences: Brian Hofman is the pastor of Kanawha CRC. He has been married to Tessa for 5 years, and their daughter, Lanie, is nearly 2.

When I got to the third sentence, my mind starting going several directions. None of them seemed like great bulletin material, but I thought I'd share them here. So here's a few one-sentence autobiographies. Pick your favorite!

• Brian grew his beard to help others believe he's old enough to be a pastor.
• A native Wisconsinite, Brian believes there cannot be a more perfect food than a beer-boiled cheddarwurst.
• Brian will gladly talk your ear off about theology, the Milwaukee Brewers, or Superman comics.
• Brian studied mathematics and ran cross country in college, but he no longer does either of those things as often as he'd like.
• A Chris Farley enthusiast, Brian has a Chris Farley bobblehead on his desk and every Chris Farley-led movie on his shelf.
• Like a wannabe hipster, Brian listens to a lot of music by artists that most of the people he knows have never heard of before.
• Brian is fairly certain heaven smells like a climate-controlled acoustic guitar showroom.
• Brian thinks there are almost no circumstances where it is inappropriate to quote The Lord of the Rings.
• After 11 years driving a green Honda Civic named Janie, Brian now cruises around in a Honda Odyssey he calls Diana.
• Brian sometimes wishes he could be paid in Culver's double strawberry custard.
• During high school Brian wore sweatshirts so often that a few of his friends called him Hoodie.
• Brian used to organize jam sessions in college and still finds few things as enjoyable as playing his acoustic guitar, Autumn.
• Brian still hasn't given up hope that Jesus' ascension is a sign all humans will be able to fly like Superman in the new creation (even if he thinks that's theologically doubtful).

Grace and peace,

BMH

#106 "I Will Be Your God; You Will Be My People"

The book of Jeremiah has been on my mind a lot lately. Now, that isn't all that unusual for me to think about Jeremiah. I've felt strangley attracted to Jeremiah for about ten years at this point, and I took a whole class on Jeremiah in seminary. But right now I have two sermons left in a ten-week series on Jeremiah, and I recently finished spending about two months in Jeremiah during my personal devotions. So for the past eight weeks or so I've been thinking a lot about Jeremiah even by my standards.

Last week I came to a conclusion about Jeremiah that I think is worth sharing. But first, a couple disclaimers. I've done some study, but I am by no means an expert on the book of Jeremiah. Also, almost everything I know about the book I owe to Professor Michael Williams, so, while I don't think the following idea is something he specifically said, I've probably pulled the general idea from him.

I think the whole book of Jeremiah can arguably be boiled down to ten words: "I will be your God; you will be my people." This expression, or one close to it, appears several times in the book. (I found seven occurrences with some quick Bible Gateway searches: "I will be your God and you will be my people" [7:23]; "you will be my people and I will be your God" [11:4, 30:22]; "They will be my people and I will be their God" [24:7, 32:38]; "I will be their God and they will be my people" [31:33] "I will be the God of all the families of Israel and they will be my people" [31:1]) That expression describes God's covenant, His special and formal relationship, with His people. When Jeremiah accuses God's people of sin—which he does A LOT in this book—his accusations really boil down to charging the people with being unfaithful to God's covenant. They haven't been living like they are God's people and He is their God. When God brings judgment on His people, that's because those were the agreed upon consequences to their unfaithfulness to the covenant. God uses the judgment to show the people that He is their God and they are His people. He has the right to discipline and even punish them. The false gods the people have been worshiping can't stop the LORD's plans because He is the only true God and His people's only proper God. Then God in His incredible mercy promises a new covenant with His people after all the judgment is complete. They are still His people and He is still their God, and He will make a new, unbreakable, everlasting covenant to ensure that they will always remain that way. I think God's deep desire to be in relationship with His chosen and beloved people underlies everything He says and does in the book of Jeremiah. God's plan, God's purpose is simple: "I will be your God; you will be my people."

I think my argument can be taken even further. I think "I will be your God; you will be my people" is a decent summary of the Bible as a whole. Why does God create the world? The heart of His plan is to create a people to be His own while He is their God. Why does God continue to put up with humanity after our fall into sin? Why does He promise redemption and restoration? Because He wants us to be His people and He wants to be our God. What does God say to Abraham, the man He chooses for the purpose of blessing all nations? "I will establish my covenant…to be your God and the God of your descendants after you" (Gen 17:7). What's God doing when He delivers the people of Israel from Egypt? "I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God" (Ex 6:7) "I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people" (Lev 26:12). What does David see at the heart of God's purposes for his own family and for all of God's people? "You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, LORD, have become their God" (2 Sam 7:24). Why does Jesus come? Jesus describes His climactic work in His death and resurrection, which we celebrate in the Lord's Supper, as establishing a new covenant. He intends, as Jeremiah said, to make us His people and Himself our God. How do Paul and the author of Hebrews describe God's work in the church? "I will be their God, and they will be my people" (2 Cor 6:16, Heb 8:10). How does God describe the end result of His plan for all creation and all history? "They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God…. 'I will be their God and they will be my children.'" (Rev 21:3, 7). What God wants, what God is doing is bringing us into an intimate, exclusive, loving relationship with Him. Certainly there's more to it than that. God is complex; He is working out things that are more and greater than we can understand. But let's not forget this simple truth: He is our God; we are His people.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#105 A Conversation with Lanie

Lately Lanie has been all about playing with her baby dolls. She feeds them bottles, swaddles them, tucks them in, reads them books, and kisses them good night. Honestly, it's adorable.

One day while Lanie was playing with her baby, the following conversation took place:

Tess: Lanie, do you think Mommy and Daddy should have another baby?

Lanie: [shakes her head no]

Me: Lanie, do you want to be an only child?

Lanie: [shakes her head no]

Me: Then Mommy and Daddy need to have another baby. Do you want Mommy and Daddy to have another baby?

Lanie: [pauses, thinks for a little bit]

Lanie: [nods her head yes]

Good thing Tess and I aren't putting Lanie in charge of our decision-making process when it comes to having another kid. She's pretty unconvinced about the whole thing.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#104 Sin Is NEVER "Okay"

I've heard quite a bit of discussion about sexual harrassment and sexual assault over the past couple of years. This came up again with the allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I heard some comments along the lines of "It was a stupid mistake made years ago. Who didn't do something stupid as a kid?" and "Boys will be boys." I don't want to assume too much about what the people who made those comments meant, but those comments sound like, "It's okay." Here's my response to that: "No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no! NOOOOOOOO! You CAN'T say that!"

Let me explain. First, sexual assault is NOT okay. It's not. As Christians, we CANNOT give the impression that it is. Look at all the trouble the Roman Catholic branch of the church has gotten in because of sexual assault. Someone in the U.S. is sexaully assaulted every 98 seconds. 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Survivors of sexual assault are everywhere, and this trauma often affects the rest of their lives. We can't act like these survivors should just be able to forget their assault or let it go. I can't imagine sexual assault survivors will want to come to our churches if we don't clearly and consistently speak against sexual assault. The church should provide hope for God's healing to sexual assault survivors. (Note: I am well aware that Justice Kavanaugh has not been convicted of sexual assault. I am not assuming his guilt. What I'm saying is we should say that what he is accused of is a horrible thing.)

Second, sin is NOT okay. It is not a minor thing. We should not confuse God's grace with an indifference to sin. Sin is a big deal to God, and it should be to us. For one thing, I don't think there are very many sins that actually don't hurt someone else. For example, it's difficult to have lustful thoughts and not begin to think of and treat other people more like objects. Even sins that don't hurt others still hurt us. They destroy our conscience and pull us away from God. They make us more self-absorbed (especially if we think we can get away with no consequences), which isn't good. And most importantly, all sins offend God. To quote the Heidelberg Catechism (Q&A 11), all sins are "committed against His supreme majesty." When we sin, we essentially flip God the middle finger and say, "We'll decide what's right and wrong for ourselves, thanks. We know better than you." That is a BIG deal. That's such a big deal that the only reason we can be forgiven is because God Himself, without losing His divinity, became a human being and died for our sins. Let me say that again: our sins are so serious that it took the perfect Son of God dying to take care of them. God in His grace doesn't just let sin go; He still justly and rightly punishes it. God in His grace takes our punishment Himself.

That must shape how we talk about sin. There is no sin that is not forgivable. Sexual assault is forgivable. Racism is forgivable. Murder is forgivable. But these sins are NOT okay. They, like all sins, are absolutely horrible. They can be forgiven only through the unequalable victory of Christ Jesus' death and resurrection. To treat sin—any sin—like it's not a big deal is too cheapen the sacrifice and triumph of our Lord and Savior. To say that sin is okay is to lie about God. We CAN'T do that. We who have been forgiven must be willing to forgive others when they sin against us. (Important side note: It's not our place to offer forgiveness when someone else has been sinned against. We can still testify about God's forgiveness in Jesus, but those who have been sinned against should offer forgiveness.) But when we do, we should say, "I forgive you," not "It's okay." There's a huge difference between those two statements. Only if we treat sin as seriously as we should, can we truly understand just how amazing God's grace is.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#103 People Are Complicated

I read a fair amount of comic books. If you read my blog regularly, you might've noticed that I'll make at least a passing reference to comics once or twice a month. A lot of comic characters are pretty clearly good or bad. There are some characters who are a mix of good and bad, and I would say on the whole characters are more complicated now than they were in, say, the 1950s and 1960s. But still, in comics there are heroes and villains, and it often isn't hard to tell the difference.

I think that we like to think the world works that way. We like to assume people are either good or bad—period. Generally that means we think we're good and people we like are good while people we don't like are bad. But flesh-and-blood human beings aren't comic characters. People are complicated, and I think we really need to remember that right now. All of us are a mixture of good and bad. If we lose sight of that, we end up in some pretty unhelpful places.

Let's take the whole Justice Brett Kavanaugh debate as an example. Here a group of us seemed to believe that if Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Ms. Christine Blasey Ford as she testified, there was no way he could be a good Supreme Court Justice. But nobody is all bad. As a Christian, I believe that the Holy Spirit graciously keeps us and our world from being as wicked as we could be. We'd like to think that the most moral people would be the most skilled and successful people, but things don't always work that way. You could be the kindest and most loving baker in history but still make dry and bland cupcakes. Or you could be the most selfish and bitter author ever to live but still write amazingly beautiful and touching poetry. Now our good qualities may not be redeeming enough to make others want to be around us, but all of us are capable of doing what is right and doing things well.

On the other hand, a group of us seemed to believe that if Kavanaugh is a respectable person as he and others argued, there was no way he could have done something like commit sexual assault. But nobody is all good. As a Christian, I believe that sin and evil infect every single part of our lives. We'd like to think that we or others we look up to could never do something horribly wrong, but that is not the truth. The evil that we hate in others is inside us, too. Every single on us does things that are wrong. What's more, every single one of us is capable of things we would consider monstrous and horrible. I doubt it would take you long to think of a respected religious or political leader who committed sexual assault or who was deeply racist or sexist. By the grace of God, very few of us will go so far as to do something like take another person's life, but every single one of us wishes someone else were dead at some point, and all of us could murder if we had a bad enough week and let go of our restraints.

So we can't just hero-worship others. The very best of us have flaws and faults that are not respectable in the least. But we can't just dismiss others, either. The very worst of us have gifts and capabilities to help others. Nobody's perfect, and nobody's worthless. We need to be honest about ourselves and others. Seeing the good in others is important if we're going to love and care for them as we should. And seeing the bad in others is important to keep us from trusting them too much or allowing them to hurt someone else. We're all complicated people, neither as good nor as bad as we could be. Those who are supposedly the best of us and those who are supposedly the worst of us are much more similar than different. That should make us humble and careful. Most of all that should make us grateful that God offers us forgiveness us in Christ Jesus, that He shows what it means to be good, and that through the Holy Spirit He helps us to be better than we could be on our own.

Grace and peace,
BMH

P.S. I've got more I'd like to say about sin and its effect on our lives, but this is getting long, so I better save that for next week. Thanks for making it this far, complicated readers.

#102 Game 163

The Milwaukee Brewers are my team. I'm a fan of the Green Bay Packers, the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Wisconsin Badgers (both football and men's basketball). I follow and try to cheer for the Winnipeg Jets (not sure I quite count as a hockey fan yet). But my heart lies with the Brewers. An MLB regular season is 162 games spread over six months. From April to September, I check the Brewers score and stats pretty much without fail every single game. The Packers and Badgers have been much more successful in my lifetime, and the Bucks have had a lot more buzz over the past couple seasons, but no team brings me anywhere near as much joy as the Brewers do.

I'm not sure when my affection for the Brewers began overtaking my interest in other teams, but I know it solidified during the magical 2011 season. That year the Brewers went 96-66, winning their division (the NL Central) for the first time in my life. They won their first playoff series before losing to [*shudder*] the St. Louis Cardinals. With so many home baseball games each season, tickets to see the Brewers at Miller Park are normally pretty cheaply available, especially when the Brewers aren't very good (which is most years). In 2011, even as the Brew Crew soared, I went a personal record six times, including attending the first playoff game with my dad and sister. The Brewers won every time. By sheer chance (on our end, at least) we were at Miller Park the night the Brewers clinched the division title. The stadium went nuts. I hugged my family and high-fived strangers. It's one of the greatest experiences of my life. After that, I knew I would never enjoy another franchise as much as the Brewers.

This year the Brewers came back. There were a few rough patches, but for the most part, the Crew played good ball all season long. After an incredible six weeks to close the season, we ended yesterday 95-67, tied with the Chicago Cubs for the division lead. Because baseball can be played mutiple days in a row without much trouble, and because the folks at MLB are good to us, there are no tiebreakers for determining division titles. The tied teams simply play an extra regular season game: Game 163. Today, on my day of rest, the Brewers traveled to Chicago to determine who would claim the division. To my great delight, I could watch the whole game. Lanie napped until the 8th inning while I experienced a frenzy of emotions: anxiety, hope, depression, elation, fear, relief. I retrieved Lanie from her room just as the Brewers rallied to break the tie and regain their lead. I placed her in her high chair for her late lunch and paced back and forth while the Cubs batted. She looked at me like I was crazy, but she gave me a high five after great plays. When the Brewers recorded the last out to win the division, I jumped up and down and screamed with joy, nearly scaring my poor daughter to death. But when Lanie saw me smiling, she started to smile, too. Lanie doesn't know what happened today, but she knows it made her daddy very happy. Someday, when she can understand, I'll have to tell her about this day, a day I'll never forget. I hope the Brewers continue to play well in the postseason. I would love for them to go to the World Series for the first time in my life and win for the first time in franchise history. But no matter what happens after today, I'll always look back on 2018 as another magical season, a year when my team achieved something worth celebrating. As they've been saying in Milwaukee, "Let's gooooooo!"

Grace and peace,

BMH

#101 The End. Or Maybe Not.

One of my all-time favorite albums is The End Is Not the End by House of Heroes. House of Heroes is a (Christian) alternative rock band. I put Christian in parentheses because, while the band used to be signed to a Christian record label (they're now independent), I don't think they really openly identified and toured as a Christian band. If I really sat down and thought about it, I don't think The End Is Not the End would be my #1 album of all time, but it would definitely be in the running. This album came out 10 years ago this week, so I thought this week I'd listen to the album again and write a few thoughts. You're welcome to give it a listen yourself on YouTube by clicking on this link. Otherwise, you can simply read my thoughts. And if alternative music isn't really your jam, feel free to come back to the blog some other week. Here we go!

I really appreciate the energy of this album. Some tracks are slower, but the album never drags. Pretty much all the songs are catchy, and they've all got that solid guitar and drum rock feel. "If," the first real track on the album, is probably my favorite song on the album. The lyrics are pretty interesting in places, and I just think it's a cool song. I think this album has some good variety. The songs definitely don't all sound the same, though they do fit together pretty well. "Dangerous" has a chorus that always gets stuck in my head. Many of the songs of the album feel like they could be telling a WWII story. A good example is "In the Valley of the Dying Sun," which describes a soldier being forced to kill to survive. "Code Name: Raven" is another one of my favorites. I love its rhythm. "By Your Side" is more of a ballad, and it contains the album title as part of its lyrics. "Journey into Space (Part One)" is the last of my favorite songs. The instrumental section before the last chorus is great, and I've always enjoyed when the guitars drop out, leaving just vocals and drums for a bit close to the end. "Baby's a Red" is a lovely tune about being in love with a Communist, so that's fun. Another song snippet that always gets stuck in my head is the end of "Faces," which describes a fighter pilot being shot down. Part of why I love this album so much is its consistent quality. There are obviously some songs that I like more than others, but there's not a single song that I dislike or even think is just okay. They're all good, and a few are downright great. Plus, we get a bonus track at the end in "The Young and Brutal." Fun stuff!
Listening to this album always makes me happy. That must be why I listen to it so often. I hope you enjoyed it as well!

Grace and peace,
BMH

#100 Xenophobia

We've hit 100 posts! If this blog were a monthly comic book, like the old The Adventures of Superman series that my blog's name references, hitting triple digits would be a big deal. For a (normally) weekly blog, that's not as impressive, but, I think it's still pretty cool. Thanks for reading, everbody!

Now let's get down to business. This week I'd like to talk about xenophobia. If you're unfamiliar with the word, it refers to the fear of strangers. Normally, xenophobia is used to describe fear and even hatred of foreigners, but it can be applied more broadly. I'd like to use it in a broader sense here. Let's think of xenophobia as the fear of people who are different.

I think xenophobia is deep in every human heart. We tend to be more comfortable with people that we think are similar to us. Often we default to language of "us" and "them" in our conversations and thought. Obviously the membership of those groups varies based on what we're talking about, but there are few things simpler or easier than dividing humanity into people like us and people not like us. I would guess most of the time our us-them divisions are unconscious, and I think many times we don't mean anything bad by them. But we tend to think better of ourselves than others, and so we tend to think better of us than them. I think constantly thinking of other people as different from us makes it easier for us to be suspicious of them. Who are we going to trust? Ourselves or people who are different? It's easy for us to distance ourselves from others and let that distance turn into fear and then hatred. Think about our conversations about political parties or immigration or gender and sexuality. How often do we speak poorly of "them"? How often do we worry about what "they" might be up to? Simply by being biased towards ourselves, we can quickly become biased against others. It doesn't take much for that to lead to fear and even hatred. There are few things that I think we should be more concerned about in our lives that unchecked xenophobia.

Thankfully, in the midst of our xenophobia, Jesus teaches us to love everyone, including those who are different. I'm not sure I can think of a lesson that is more difficult or more important for us than that. Jesus calls us to love every person we encounter as much as we love ourselves, no matter how different they might be and no matter how much they love us back. Jesus could have treated everybody—you and me included—as "them." He's perfect. No one else is. But instead Jesus reached out to bring all kinds of people into "us," making all kinds of people His sisters and brothers. He challenges you and me to think of no one else as unable to be part of "us." Sure, people are different. Those differences can't just be ignored; many times, in fact, they should even be celebrated. But Jesus teaches that everyone is created and loved by God, broken and hurt by sin and evil, and able to be redeemed and renewed in Him. That common human condition can help you and me see past "us" and "them." Others may be different, but others are not totally different than we are.

Xenophobia doesn't fit with Christainity. But sadly, xenophobia has been taught to us and ingrained in us all our lives. Our biases are real and deep. We can't totally get rid of them. But what we can do is become more aware of them. (Click this link if you'd like some tests that could help with that.) We can try to be on the lookout to avoid slipping into us-them language. And most of all, we can ask Jesus to help us love others because "perfect love drives out fear" (1 John 4:18). This kind of love understands that others may fear and hate us, but it doesn't worry about that. This kind of love trusts that God can and hopes that God will use us loving others to help overcome that fear and hatred. Jesus loves us, and He wants to teach us to love others, too.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#99 Tolerance

Tolerance might be the highest virtue in the eyes of American society. We tell others, "You do you." We think that nobody has the right to judge us. We figure that if someone's actions aren't actively harming another person, then that's nobody's business. And for the most part, that sounds pretty good. Intolerance, in comparison, sounds awful. That brings to mind images of intense judgmentalism, people screaming that others are wrong, accusatory fingers pointing, people getting kicked out. Clearly judgment taken to the extreme isn't good.

But here's the thing: no matter what we may think, tolerance taken to the extreme isn't good either. Tolerance seems like love. It seems like respect for others and concern for their happiness. Many times tolerance is right. We shouldn't think less of others who have different tastes in food or entertainment. We shouldn't discriminate against others who aren't like us, especially when they're not like us because of differences in things we can't control. But ultimately tolerance becomes indifference. "Do whatever you want. I don't care." And that's not love. In some ways, that's the opposite of love. Love cares deeply about another person.

As Christians we're called to love. We can't just be tolerant without exception. I get why that's appealing. Many times Christians come across as overly judgmental. That doesn't look good, and it isn't good, either. It's not loving to be harsh toward others, even when they do wrong. But it's also not loving to simply allow others to do wrong. When it comes to moral issues, tolerance seems better than judgmentalism, and maybe it even is better than judgmentalism, but is not the answer. As Christians we believe that sins hurt us, even when they don't hurt anyone else, and even when they don't seem to hurt us. Love is finding a way to gently tell others when they've gone wrong while also being very honest about the fact that we go wrong in just as many ways. We need to understand that our sense of right and wrong can often be skewed and not be too quick to pronounce behaviors wrong. We need to be careful about not harshly judging others for things we do ourselves. We need to be compassionate and consider why people do things that are wrong. We need to be forgiving. But we can't just tolerate everything. We need to witness to what's right, and we need to love. We should treat others the way we want to be treated. And I know that I don't want to be tolerated; I want to be loved, even when learning I'm wrong may hurt.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#98 Daaaa!

Yesterday afternoon I took a nap. Lanie was outside playing with Tess and my parents, so I took the opportunity to crash. When my family returned after a pretty long play session, I was still passed out. Tess poked her head through the bedroom door, saw that I was still sleeping, and left to change Lanie's diaper. Once Lanie was clean, Tess set her back on the floor and turned away to wash her hands. Lanie, having figured out where I was, made a break for our bedroom. Tess had pulled the door shut, but it hadn't latched, enabling Lanie to smack the door open. She burst into the room, yelling, "Daaaa! Daaaadaaaa Daaaadaaaa!" while pointing at me. This wake-up left me more than a little surprised, but Lanie was just beaming, so proud that she had found me. It definitely wasn't the gentlest wake-up call, but I think it was probably the cutest. Don't worry, everybody: Lanie is here to make sure I'm not too lazy.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#97 The Ten Commandments

Yesterday I wrapped up a summer sermon series on the Ten Commandments. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the commandments and what they look like in our lives over the past couple months, and one of the many things I've realized is that, in a way, the Second through Tenth Commandments help us keep the First Commandment (You shall have no other gods). Let me explain my reasoning.

The Second Commandment (You shall not make for yourself an image) focuses on how we worship God. If we worship God our way instead of His way, it's quickly becomes easy for us to worship not the true God but a "God" of our own design.

The Third Commandment (You shall not misuse the name of the LORD) instructs us to give God the glory He is due. If we talk about God in a disrespectful or flippant way, it can become more difficult for us to really trust that He is real and in control. Then we're more likely to turn somewhere else for our security.

The Fourth Commandment (Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy) is a safeguard to keep us from turning our own work and efforts into our god. This commandment reminds us that ultimately it's God who provides for us and makes us secure.

The Fifth Commandment (Honor your father and your mother) teaches us to respect the authorities God has set over us as a way of respecting God's ultimate authority. It also reminds those of us who have authority that our authority comes from God; we are not free to do whatever we want.

The Sixth Commandment (You shall not murder) reminds us that only God has the power of life and death. We may not think we are gods and have the power to destroy others, nor may we let our anger, hatred, or desire for revenge control our lives.

The Seventh Commandment (You shall not commit adultery) keeps us from making pleasure and sexual desire the most important thing in our lives. Sex is a gift from God and must be enjoyed according to God's rules.

The Eighth Commandment (You shall not steal) teaches us not to make gods out of our possessions and material things. God tells us that we find contentment in Him, not all the stuff we have.

The Ninth Commandment (You shall not give false testimony) is a safeguard against the temptation to put our reputation first in our lives and say whatever we want to make ourselves look good and others look bad. God reminds us that we are accountable to Him and so must speak the truth.

The Tenth Commandment (You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor) instructs us to keep our priorities straight. We may not desire anything more than God. Having proper desires is a safeguard against allowing other things to become the most important things in our lives. We live by God's rules, not another set of rules.

Now there's a lot more to the Ten Commandments than what I've laid out here, but I think this is valuable because it's often easy for us to think about the commandments as ten distinct things. Each commandment is unique, but they're really not separate. They work together to teach us to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. And when we do that, we show it in part by loving our neighbors as ourselves. Living our way ultimatley leads to misery, so God teaches us the way to joy and peace and true life.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#96 11 Years and 132,274 Miles

Janie, my beloved 1999 Honda Civic, is no longer mine. After more than eleven years together, I traded Janie in on Saturday. She put on 132,274 more miles after I got her in high school, but she was really starting to show some signs of age lately. So while the weather is still nice and before we had to put more money into Janie, whether for repairs or new tires, Tess and I decided to get another vehicle. (I know I've said in the past that I wouldn't look for another vehicle unless baby #2 was on the way. However, THAT IS NOT THE CASE. TESS AND I ARE NOT EXPECTING ANOTHER BABY. We just wanted to make sure Janie didn't die on our hands.)

I'm going to miss Janie. Eleven years is a long time. I finished high school, went through college and seminary, and got two years into my first "real" job with that car. I knew all her little quirks and perks. Deep in my bones I knew what parking spaces I could fit into and how much time I needed to get up to speed when turning onto a new road. I developed a keen sense of how much luggage I could fit in the trunk, and I'd recently become an expert at feeding the seatbelt through a carseat. Tess, Lanie, my parents, my sister, and several different groups of friends rode in that Civic. So many of my most favorite memories involve my first car. Janie's a car, an object, and yet she was something more to me. Janie was practically my friend.

Saturday was bittersweet, but saying good-bye wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Part of that is probably that I actually do realize that Janie is a vehicle and doesn't have feelings. But part of that is also that, as my grandma Susan said to me a couple weeks ago, that car didn't owe me anything. She lasted longer for me than she maybe had a right to. We had a lot of great times, but it was time to move on. Janie's earned a rest. So I took a few pictures to commemorate our final moments together:

One last odometer reading

One more time behind the wheel

The last picture of Janie and me

So Janie is gone. But the Honda Odyssey (whatever her name will end up being) is here. We'll just have to get started on a whole new set of memories.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#95 Again to Carthage

At some point in my college running career I read my friend Ryan's copy of Once a Runner. This novel, written by John L. Parker, Jr., follows a collegiate miler named Quenton Cassidy, who develops into an Olympic-level talent. I have no idea what it's like to be that good of a runner, but the beginning of the book talked about the day in and day out routine of training, the highs and lows of working to get better bit by bit. I understood that, and I resonated with the descriptions of being part of a team, sharing the hard work and the commitment and all the crazy, goofy nonsense that comes from spending probably too much time together.

Over the past couple weeks I read Again to Carthage, the sequel to Once a Runner. This book follows Quenton Cassidy's attempt to qualify for the Olympics in the marathon years after his college days. I've spent this summer doing a little training to get in shape to run a respectable 10k, so I could relate a bit to the struggle of getting back to running hard as well as the familiarity and joy of settling into a routine and improving once more. But what really struck me about Again to Carthage were the scenes were Cassidy reminisced about the good old days of running with his teammates. As Parker writes, even when you're in good shape, it takes a while to run 6-10 miles, as my teammates and I did most days in college. You get to know each other really well over all those miles, and then you add in all the trips to meets and all the other times we hung out because we'd become such good friends through all that running. We became brothers.

There are times I wish I could run the kind of times I ran in college. Races didn't always go well, but when they did, they were electrifying. Sometimes I miss the training, too. I hated it at times, but there's something deeply satisfying about getting better and better and better. But what I really miss about my college running days is my teammates. I run alone now. For the most part I like it. I get some good thinking done on my runs. But being part of a team was so much better. We had a pack of guys throughout the week, and even on the weekend I could grab at least one of my teammates to keep me company. We'd talk about anything and everything because we had the time. We shared dreams and worries and so many experiences. I miss that. A lot. But at least the memories are there. I had seven seasons where I got to make best friends while doing something I loved. I won't forget that.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#94 Sometimes You Get What You Deserve

[Author's note: July was a rough month for the blog. Only 2 posts! Yikes! I'll try to be more consistent in August.]

When I was a little kid, I had nearly boundless energy. My parents and grandparents love to tell stories about how I would incessantly bounce up and down, even while doing activites that are normally pretty stationary, such as playing video games. In school I would rock back and forth in my desk, seemingly unable to sit still for even a moment. You could almost tire yourself out simply by watching me.

Now, a couple decades later, I have a child of my own. And Lanie, like many toddlers, just wants to go, go, go. This past weekend we attended my cousin Kaytlin's wedding. In between the ceremony and the reception, the guests chatted in small groups. Lanie quickly decided that wasn't fun for her. So she started running laps around a nearby group. Then she weaved in and out among the circles, happily yelling as she went. Then it was time for more circles. On and on it went. And all the while, Lanie kept looking back to make sure that I was following her because if she was going to run, I needed to come along. Round and round and in and out we went. Needless to say, I didn't get very many conversations in. But as I contentedly followed my nearly tireless daughter, I did manage to comment to my grandma and a few others who had watched me run around and around and around (and probably chased me themselves) years ago, "I guess I'm getting what I deserve."

Grace and peace,
BMH

#93 When I Became a Man, I Put the Ways of Childhood behind Me

Ever since I was a little kid, running in the summer has often meant racing. In my experience, most towns have a run/walk at some point during the year and often during a summer festival. When I five or six years old, my dad would go to a race, and I would run in a kids' run for 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile or something like that. Then, at about nine or ten I started running some 2-mile races and then, just a bit later, the occasional 5k. (That's about 3.1 miles for you metric-phobic types.) And that's how things went through my teens. And then I went to college, where my cross country race was an 8k (juuuust short of 5.0 miles) and in track I ran the occasional 10k (about 6.2 miles, but you figured that out already). A lot of these smaller community run/walks actually have two races: a 10k and a 5k or a 5 mile and a 2 mile (or sometimes the interesting 10k/2 mile combo). Now that I've become a man, I've put my childish runs behind me. I always take the longer option. And it's great. Pretty much all the high schoolers and quite a few of the adults go with the shorter race. Meanwhile, I, being unafraid of the longer distance, have much less competition, leaving me with pretty good odds at picking up an age group award at these little races in little towns. Plus, the longer distance makes me feel like I've done more with my life. It's really a win-win. All it takes is the willingness to go the extra mile(s).

Grace and peace,
BMH

#92 One Loaf

Last week I wrote about church unity, how God brings together all kinds of different people to form His new people in Christ. This week I'd like to follow up on that just a little bit. In 1 Corinthians 10, we read, "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf." According to Scripture, the Lord's Supper is a sign of our unity in Christ. And yet, I'm not sure there is anything that the church disagrees about more than the Lord's Supper (or communion, or the Eucharist, or the Mass—you can tell we don't agree just by how many different names we have for this practice Jesus instituted). Some of our disagreements are so severe that Christians from different traditions won't even partake together. I think that's a serious problem. Our understandings of what this practice means vary widely from Christian tradition to Christian tradition, but I think we need to find some way to be able to celebrate the sacrament together. Church leaders and theologians, please get to work on this. The World Council of Churches has made some great and encouraging progress with their paper on "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry." Let's keep working and discussing until we truly do share one loaf so that we and the whole world can better see that we are really one body.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#91 One Body

(Introductory apology: My thoughts on the following topic are not fully formed, and I doubt I'm going to come to some brilliant conclusion that solves everything, but hang in there, dear reader! Hopefully I'll say something worthwhile here that will get you thinking.)

My denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, has a system of classes, regional groups where the leaders of local churches meet to work together. Every once in a while a congregation will request to move to a different classis because they think their theological positions are too different from the positions of the other churches in their current classis. Each time I see a request like this on the agenda for our annual meeting, it makes me very sad. I can't help but think we've really gone wrong somewhere.

We humans naturally seem to seek out people that are like us. We join clubs or teams based on shared interests. We get our news from TV networks and websites and periodicals that echo our political viewpoints. We gravitate toward people who are our age or at least in a similar stage of life. Often we're more comfortable around people of the same gender or ethnicity or social class and so on. (These statements aren't true of every single person, but I think they hold true in general.)

I think a lot of our churches work the same way. Many of us are willing to leave one church for another that has a worship style we like more or that approaches theological debates and contemporary issues roughly the way we do or that has people who are more like we are in some way. Denominations split, and congregations realign with different denominations, and left to our own devices we risk becoming more and more compartmentalized. (Again, please forgive the generalizing. I'm trying to keep this from getting too long.)

But if our churches more and more become gatherings of similar people, then I think we've really missed God's design for the church. In Acts, God's Spirit brings people who seem like outsiders into the church on multiple occasions and shows that they belong just as much as the previous Christians did. Revelation describes God's people as being made up of individuals from every nation, tribe, people, and language. Ephesians argues that bringing different people together into one new people of God is a central part of God's unfolding plan. And 1 Corinthians' discussion of spiritual gifts teaches us that unity in the church does not mean uniformity or sameness but rather diversity and variety.

I don't want to downplay the differences between the beliefs of the various branches of Christianity. We have very distinct theological postions in some areas. I don't think it would be wise for us to ignore all our differences and only talk about general areas of agreement. The church here and now will never completely be what God intends until Jesus returns. But I think that even if our differences keep us distinct, they don't have to keep us separate. Maybe we can't just up and ditch our denominations and all worship together each week. But we can worship together from time to time. We can work and serve together in our communities and in our world. We can strive to have deep discussions that don't devolve into dead-end debates. I think the most powerful witness the church can give is to be a body of people who are different in every way that the world around us looks for sameness, a body of people who don't seem like we should fit together but who come together and fight to remain together simply because Christ Jesus brings us together and makes us one. Christ doesn't eliminate our differences; He transcends them and even delights in them. God is making the church the most diverse gathering of humans ever assembled. We who are many form one body. May we never forget or downplay that.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#90 Church Lanie

As Lanie becomes more active and more vocal, she's been enjoying church more and more. Lately she's been waiting for me at the front of church before the service begins. When I walk up the steps to sit behind the pulpit, Lanie climbs up after me and sits on my lap during the prelude. After the service, Lanie expectantly waits for me to pick her up so she can shake hands with me. This weekend it was brutally hot in Iowa, so we worshiped in the basement where the air conditioners were. That meant I was able to hear Lanie banging on the table and babbling away. After the service she kicked me with glee whenever one of her favorite people came over to shake my hand. Lanie has a ton of fun running around and saying hi to everyone. The church members are wildly entertained by all of this, and I think it's pretty sweet, but Tess is just a little bit stressed by Lanie's noise and energy. Lanie's pretty manageable for now, but it's only a matter of time before Lanie gets away from Tess in the middle of a service. Then we'll really have some fun.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#89 Man of Steel

As I've mentioned before on this blog, this year is Superman's 80th anniversary, and, as a huge Superman fan, I will be celebrating by occasionally writing posts about Superman things. This week—the 14th to be exact—is the fifth anniversary of the film Man of Steel. My little sister, Molly, and I went to see a midnight IMAX showing of Man of Steel on its release date. (It's the only movie for which I've gone to a midnight premiere, and at this stage of my life, it probably will remain that way.) I'd spent months, if not years, getting excited for this film. Superman was back! But I was also pretty nervous. My all-time favorite movie is 1978's Superman: The Movie, and I was worried that I wouldn't enjoy Man of Steel nearly as much. In the end my fears were unfounded. I love Man of Steel. Let me tell you why.

First and foremost, the visuals of Man of Steel were incredible. Director Zack Snyder and company shot Superman in a way that made the movie look like a comic book come to life. The flying scenes, especially the scene where Clark Kent first learns to fly, are simply breathtaking. Watching the movie pulls me into this world to the point where I believe a man can fly, move at superspeed, see through walls, and perform incredible feats of strength.

Second, Hans Zimmer's score for the movie is fantastic. I'm a big Zimmer fan, and the music adds a lot of weight and emotion to the film. The theme that plays when Superman flies is easily my favorite.

Third, I think Henry Cavill makes a fantastic Clark Kent/Superman and Amy Adams is a terrific Lois Lane. Superman beams in peaceful moments of flying and responds to serious threats and challenges with appropriate seriousness. (I'm always a little bit thrown off by superheroes who show eerie permanent smiles as they fight for the safety of the world. People's lives are at stake here! Focus on the work at hand! [Maybe it's because my normal face is pretty neutral, not super smiley.]) Clark naturally wrestles with being different, but despite his parents' concern for his safety, he jumps into action to help others when anyone needs saving. When Superman springs into action, I feel the hope the movie is going for. Lois is a nearly fearless reporter who holds her own throughout the movie and plays a big role in saving the day. And Lois and Clark are wonderfully comfortable together.

Fourth, General Zod is a great villain. He's intimidating, calculating, and extremely powerful. What really makes his character work is that he truly believes he is right. Superman's physical struggle with Zod is big and memorable, but the ideological struggle is just as important.

Finally, I really enjoy the story of Man of Steel. The opening history on Krypton is exciting and crucial to the film. I find Clark Kent's journey to discover his identity very relatable. We learn about Clark's psychological vulnerabilities. We see how choosing to fight for Earth means standing up for people who largely view him with suspicion. We watch Superman face challenges way beyond anything he's ever encountered or even thought about and find a way to push through because that's what Superman does. Finally we see him reject the people of his home planet to do what's right and save innocent lives. That's a hero. That's Superman. I've watched Man of Steel more than any other movie since its release. I don't think I'll ever get sick of it.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#88 Fried Chicken and Friendship

Today is the fifth anniversary of my return from Indonesia, so I think it's appropriate to tell one of my favorite stories from my time overseas.

A month or two into my stay in Malang, Indonesia, I went through a period of loneliness. I knew the people I worked with at the Christian international school, but they had all been in Indonesia longer than I had and had lives and friends of their own. My command of the language was poor at best, and I was often keenly aware that I was an outsider. One evening I was just feeling kind of down as I went out to find some dinner. I was lonely and needed a friend, but I don't think I could have put that into words as I walked around the neighborhood. That night I decided I would eat at a new restaurant that a friend had recommended to me. The place was dead when I arrived: I think I was the only customer. I ordered some fried chicken and white rice and sat down to eat near the cash register. The cashier, probably bored out of her skull, decided to make some small talk with me. Outside of the school I didn't encounter too many Indonesians that spoke English well, but this young lady did. (In fact, she was taking English courses in college.) We chatted for a while (the restaurant stayed slow that evening) and got along really well. Before I left, we decided that we would be friends and would try to hang out some other time. As I walked back home, it suddenly dawned on me how God had been at work. I wasn't even fully aware that I needed a friend, but God prompted me to go to a restaurant where I'd never eaten before.  There He lined me up with someone who spoke English, had time to talk to me, and was comfortable making small talk with a foreigner. I had the friend I needed, and we hung out a good number of times over my remaining months overseas. God's work in my life isn't always clear to me, and sometimes I go through long periods where I don't seem to get just what I need. But I will never forget this one night, and hopefully because of it I will never forget that God knows my needs and watches out for me.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#87 The Son Becomes the Father

I was born in 1991. That same year, Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Pretty early on my dad bought a SNES and began playing Super Mario World. As I got older, I found this game fascinating, and, as little kids do, I wanted to join my dad in whatever he was doing. So Dad handed me the spare controller and let me push the buttons and bounce around. Then I really loved the SNES. Before long I was old enough to actually play, and I still enjoyed it. Even as I got older and the SNES grew more and more outdated, I continued playing and having fun. So I kept the SNES with me as I moved to college and then to seminary and then to Iowa. One day a couple months ago I hooked up the old SNES in the basement. Lanie sat and watched me play for a bit, but she didn't seem to care too much. Then last week she decided that the basement was the most fun place in our house. Day after day we went down to explore, and before long she found the SNES. So I turned it on and handed Lanie the spare controller. Suddenly she loved it. The past few days she's been asking me to play with her, so I let us play for about 10 minutes. (She normally loses interest by about then anyway.) Things have come full circle. If Lanie keeps enjoying herself and the old SNES hangs on, maybe we'll get to the point where we can really play together. Then we'll really have fun.

Grace and peace,
BMH

P.S. Look at how cute Lanie is!