discounts

It's crummy being a restaurant owner. You're the victim, that manipulated guy that all your friends walk in expecting a 30% discount and appetizers on the house. My heart goes out to them. Feel free to join me in my annual April 23rd moment of silence for all restaurant owners with friends.

Never do I walk into a friend's workplace and expect to give, but I do feel entitled to receive a whole lot. After all, we're friends right? *nudge nudge*

A radical idea crossed my mind... What if I went into a friend's restaurant and expected to pay more? What if I tipped 40% because they were my friend and I wanted to honor them? What if I expected to give instead of get? And that got me going...

It says a lot about how much we respect and love our favorite musical artists when we pirate their music, how much we love our church by demanding they meet our needs, how much we love our roommates when we count the number of times we clean the house without their help, and how much we care about our friends who own restaurants when we expect to be treated like kings.

"Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 25:17)

To love God and to love your neighbor is altogether something radically different.

quite poignant

I want you to stop running from thing to thing to thing, and to sit down at the table, to offer the people you love something humble and nourishing, like soup and bread, like a story, like a hand holding another hand while you pray. We live in a world that values us for how fast we go, for how much we accomplish, for how much life we can pack into one day. But I’m coming to believe it’s in the in-between spaces that our lives change, and that the real beauty lies there.
Most of the time, I eat like someone’s about to steal my plate, like I can’t be bothered to chew or taste or feel, but I’m coming to see that the table is about food, and it’s also about time. It’s about showing up in person, a whole and present person, instead of a fragmented, frantic person, phone in one hand and to-do list in the other. Put them down, both of them, twin symbols of the modern age, and pick up a knife and a fork. The table is where time stops. It’s where we look people in the eye, where we tell the truth about how hard it is, where we make space to listen to the whole story, not the textable sound bite.
We don’t come to the table to fight or to defend. We don’t come to prove or to conquer, to draw lines in the sand or to stir up trouble. We come to the table because our hunger brings us there. We come with a need, with fragility, with an admission of our humanity. The table is the great equalizer, the level playing field many of us have been looking everywhere for. The table is the place where the doing stops, the trying stops, the masks are removed, and we allow ourselves to be nourished, like children. We allow someone else to meet our need. In a world that prides people on not having needs, on going longer and faster, on going without, on powering through, the table is a place of safety and rest and humanity, where we are allowed to be as fragile as we feel. If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health. Come to the table.

- from A New Approach to the Table by Shauna Niequist

control

I have responsibilities. I have clear work I need to do, and some things are certain - if I choose not to do the dishes, my kitchen will be dirty. Sometimes I'd like to say, God, why don't you find me a maid or something. But there's no point blaming God for responsibilities I have, because I'm fully aware.

But often when I've taken care of everything I need to, I stress out that people don't act the way I want them to, my heart doesn't go the way I want it to, and that the stars don't align so I can live out my Disney fairytale life.

This past week I had to face being emotionally distraught over something someone said. They meant no harm, but it hit a sore spot I barely knew I had. Then I wonder whether I should be doing more to toughen up to make sure I don't get hurt. I wonder what walls need to be built up to protect myself. I hated the fact that I wasn't in control of my own emotions.

I scheduled my entire Monday out only to find that for various reasons, everyone who I was slated to meet with canceled on me. My natural inclination was to get frustrated at how others were being inconsiderate and/or irresponsible.

But it's really not a dog-eat-dog world, it's a God-is-God world. God asks a few things of us, and we can do it faithfully. Then we trust Him for the rest.

Only let us hold true to what we have attained. (Phil. 3:16, ESV)

holy

For the Love of God - April 8, 2013
At its core, holy is almost an adjective corresponding to the noun God.

Whoa. What a sweet definition of a loaded term.

proverbs

Just in reading today, I found Proverbs 18 crazy because I've encountered these truths at some point this past year: