Balloons.

Yesterday was Halloween. I am not a huge halloween fan but it usually provides opportunities for fun with kids. And as Christians, it often provides an opportunity to engage the culture for the gospel. Enter Willow Glen Baptist Church in San Jose, CA... a church I have been attending for the last month and where one of my best friends pastors. For the last 22 years they have put on a "Harvest Carnival" on a Sunday around Halloween and where no less than 700 people come and attend. This year there were 1300! In a matter of three hours! People from all walks of life and all sorts of costumes showed uplast night. I saw cops, transformers, scream characters with a bloody face (which made me scream), animals, etc. They all came to jump in the jump house, throw bean bags at a huge wooden clown, try to catch gold fish, and... get a free balloon.

At the end of the night I looked up into the roof of the rented tent to see a vast array of balloons which had been released by small children. Perhaps this is the reason many children came back to get a second balloon because they had "lost" the first. It always amazes me what enthralls little children. Give them a balloon and it can calm the loudest cry and dry the wettest eyes. As I considered this I wondered: are we as adults any different?

Of course I am not speaking about something as simplistic as balloons, but there are things in our lives that serve as our adult balloons. So many of us worry and stress about our financial security. We are on the verge of tears. We are wailing and crying because we are scared of what will come next in our lives.... and then we receive a paycheck, or a monetary gift, and we are happy and pleased. We received our balloon. And just as quickly as we received that pacifying balloon, we lose it by spending money. Or maybe for some of us it is security in relationships. We feel like our lives are falling apart and then that person whom we hurt comes back and accepts our apology, only to have us hurt them again the next day. Or maybe it is our jobs, our family, our homes, our future, the political figures we follow, etc... you get the point. We all carry (and lose) balloons.

Now, certainly I am not against giving balloons to children. I love balloons too! What I am calling our attention too is how often then can control our lives. I would even say that so many of us put our hope "in" those balloons. When we do this they become, as I have mentioned in previous postings, an idol. A false god. Recently I was attending a group and the topic of hope arose in conversation. A distiguishment was made between things we "hope for" and things we place our "hope in." When we hope in something we are placing all our trust and faith in that item or person. When we hope for something, we recognize that, while we desire that person/item/security/etc., our ultimate trust is not in that thing but in something greater. Consider Paul's words in the letter to the Romans:

"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his won Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died---more than that, who was raised--who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? [...] No, in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:31-39, ESV)

Indeed, I pray that our hope is found in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross. I pray that our hope is in the Gospel of Grace. Balloons are not bad, but when our hope is found in them it is sin. When our hope is in anything but the living God of the Bible it is sin because we have elevated that thing to the place of God in our lives. We can hope for other things. It is not bad to hope for financial security, or a marriage relationship, or a vacation, or a better job... but don't hope in those things.

I was reading today in Time Magazine an article about the future of the United States. It actually was a very interesting article about how we need to focus the majority of energy and investment on our major metropolitans areas because they are the wave of the future. The argument was that they produce most of our GDP and 2/3 or the people in our country live in them. As I read this I couldn't help but wonder how many of those people who live in those cities have placed their hopes in balloons that will eventually fly away or get popped.

I pray today that we will not hope in balloons, but that we recognize one day they will deflate, or fly away, or pop. And when they do... I pray that we will laugh and move one, because our hope is found secure in Christ.

For God's Glory and the Sake of The Gospel.

Chocolate Covered Bacon.

Since I advertise that I write about God, life, and food... I feel the need to commnet briefly on a nee item I consumed last Friday in Santa Cruz, CA. The town is a laid back beach town with a beautiful pier reaching out into the Pacific Ocean. On this pier there are numerous shops for clothing, souveniers, and food. On this Friday afternoon all I wanted to do was grab a cup of coffee and go sit at the end of the pier, staring out into the ocean. As I walked into this espresso shop I discovered that they also had lots of sweet treats to complement your coffee. One they advertised was chocoloate covered bacon.

I couldn't resist trying at least one, because it seemed like an odd pairing to say the least. They even promoted a "hot and spicy" bacon, which I chose not to eat. After I grabbed me coffee I went down to the end of the pier, sipped my coffee and took a bite out of the bacon. The sensation was one of chocolatety goodness of the outside, but then I hit the bacon. It was chewy, as you expect bacon to be, and I had to chew it for a few minutes. After the first bit all I remembered was the bacon; the taste of chocolate had been swept away. Thus, chocolate covered bacon really turned into me eating bacon and drinking coffee on the end of the pier. Which begged me to ask the question: who's idea was this? Because it was an awful idea.