Little Photography for ya today.  My son’s Cross Country team.

Click on a thumbnail to enlarge.

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If you like these, my flickr account is here and my photoblog is here.  (Same pics at both places.)

I had someone tell me last week that they didn’t believe in “constructive criticism.”  They went on to say that criticism is just that, criticism.  I took his point to mean that encouragement to change or grow shouldn’t be “critical” or negative, but, well, an encouragement.

That sounds good.  Too bad it doesn’t happen that way very often.

Even within the body of Christ, negativity toward something or someone that we want to see change or grow often comes with an edge.  While there is never an excuse for wounding one another, it would be naive of us to expect one another to be in complete adherence to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Dealing with that hurtful brother or sister is a subject for another day, but let us agree that, from time to time, we will have to deal with someone who desires some changes in our behavior.

Our natural reaction to this is always to push back.  No one enjoys being pushed on and we are particularly repulsed by unkind or insensitive words. However…

The wise man or woman will listen to all that is said, try to understand what the person wants and, more importantly, why they want it.

Then you are able to evaluate the challenge for what it really is and not for what you initially may take it to be as influenced by your emotional reaction.  More often than not, you will find some kernel of truth that might help you as a person.  Sometimes, you find they are just being selfish.  I’ve noticed that talking the “criticisms” over with others who are more neutral to be helpful in discerning the nature of these “suggestions.”

Bottom line:  When it comes to criticism, best not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Love this quote from Bob Roberts:

“Sharing the gospel is the responsibility of every single believer … I learned a few years ago that the church is the missionary … it means that every believer is a missionary and that my job as pastor is to help them to figure out beyond prayer and giving how they connect with the world like the men of Cyprus and Cyrene did, using their vocations and jobs and wielding a powerful story.”
- Bob Roberts, Glocalization

When wherever you are is your mission field and you are at your job more than anywhere else, it should change the way you look at your place of employment. It moves from a place where you work to earn money to get things to the place you go to live out the Gospel in front of others.

Since jobs are rarely ideal, it means you will often be put in trying circumstances… where the difference between one being redeemed and one not should become obvious to everyone.

The first thing that you should know about running a 5k… check that… about me running a 5k, is that cycling doesn’t translate to running.  They are based on a different set of muscle groups.  When a runner or a cyclist crosses over to the other discipline they will find a jump in their heart rate and a demand for oxygen from those muscles that haven’t been being used.

Which is a great argument for cross training, if training is your thing.

To date my thing has been just trying to drop some weight and cycling offered me an aerobic exercise option with no impact.  Which was huge.  Because I was huge.

If you want to understand this better, try running with a couple of 20 lb. sledge hammers, one in each hand.  Get the idea?  Now add another 15 lbs and you’ll understand how much weight I’ve lost.

So I biked because I couldn’t run.

Until last week.  My son was running in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.  I then found that several of our church family were also running.  It’s a great cause and personal as well.  My Mom, Annette, both of her sisters (my aunts Suz and Sandy) and, as of couple of weeks ago, my Mother in Law, Lynda, have all had breast cancer.

So I guess I was feeling froggy or just stupid and, when signing Jimmy up for the race, I signed myself up, too.

Keep in mind that I haven’t run in FOREVER.  I tried to run in the Spring and couldn’t, so I bought a bike.  I tried to run a few weeks ago and was moderately more successful, but honestly I only ran about a mile.

Pride? Foolishness? Arrogance? Whatever…

I have no idea what caused me to think I could run a 5k (3.2 miles), but I showed up with one goal.  Don’t walk.  Run the whole time. Even if you have to shuffle.

And I did.  Official Race time results:  33:41.85.

And now I hurt all over.  I can’t get on my bike because my ankle hurts. I feel worse than I ever have.  Well, maybe not EVER… but bad.

I hear the swine flu is making its way through our congregation.  Maybe I can catch it and feel even worse.

But then again, I don’t know that I have ever in my life run that far consecutively. And it was for breast cancer research.  And I didn’t walk.

So maybe I feel pretty good after all.

Ok, here are some pics (Click on the thumbnail for the full size pic):

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“The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared?” [from Martin Luther, as read in Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer]

Completely ripped off from: Joe Kennedy

I remember, over 20 years ago, reading Charles M Sheldon’s book, “In His Steps.” In that book, feeling himself challenged by a vagrant who is marginalized by the people of “First Church,” a pastor challenges his congregation to ask themselves the question prior to choosing a behavior, “What Would Jesus Do?”

The book was old when I read it, set, I believe, at the turn of the last century.  Ancient by modern perspectives. Yet, it had proven powerful for many readers and was equally so for me while I muddled through making my faith my own during my college years.

I also remember the time when someone in Christian kitsch put the letters, “WWJD” on a fabric bracelet to symbolize the question, which might have been more appropriately translated, “What would Jesus have me do?” since I’m pretty sure Jesus was capable of more than any of us at any given moment.  I think I wore a WWJD bracelet for all of a couple of months, but then realized that it had become the “in” thing among, well, everyone.

Last month, I caught a modern narrative.  My wife loves all kinds of reality shows, from game shows to documentaries, the latter of which had her attention on this particular evening.  The affair is called, “Intervention.” Aptly named, the series records families in turmoil being coached through confrontation between loved ones in the throes of addiction.

In this episode, two brothers were being challenged for their lifestyle of using and selling drugs, a pattern of life that had invited their parents’ home to be invaded and ransacked.  As one of the two sat, head in hands, the camera focused on his fingers as they wove through his greasy hair only to have the letters, “WWJD” come into focus as they dangled from his wrist.

I looked down at my wrist.

Decades after I tossed WWJD in the drawer, a yellow rubber bracelet adorned my right arm, engraved with the letters, “LIVESTRONG.”

I don’t know what you know about Lance Armstrong.  You probably know that he survived cancer and won the Tour de France.

You may not know that he won 7 times. In a row. That he is the most tested (for performance enhancing drugs) athlete ever.  That he has never failed a drug test.

You may know that he has become a tremendous advocate for cancer research and treatment, setting up the Lance Armstrong Foundation and Livestrong.com.

You may not know that he curses like a sailor, when not on camera.

Not to belabor the point, Lance is not a representation of conservative evangelcalism. Not now. Not ever.

Yet, I wear a bracelet that represents values he promotes while discarding the representation of values promoted by Sheldon, et al.

Why?

Because conservative evangelicalism has come to present itself to the world as shallow, self righteous, disingenuous… meaningless… separatist… a kitsch based lifestyle that is show without substance in the world.

Meanwhile, when you first get diagnosed with cancer and call Livestrong, a counselor will talk to you about all things related to your disease, including treatment, side effects and what is going to happen to your family.  They are raising money and last week at the World Cancer Summit, Lance spoke and elicited commitments from several nations to increase their investment in finding cures for this disease.

They are actually trying to make life better on the world and everyone can see it, no matter what they believe.

Bottom line: It seems to me that when asked “What would You do?” Jesus would most likely answer, “get involved with the healing of the sick, the comforting of the wounded and the betterment of the world, of course.”

And, no.  I don’t think He would want us to stop without sharing the Gospel and calling these people to redemption, but I do think that they are more likely to actually hear that message from a person working alongside them to raise money for cancer research than from a person wearing WWJD apparel and sitting on the sidelines.

This is the overview of my daily ride.

Click on the picture to go to the interactive map at LiveStrong.com.

My best time was 53:30 until I started knocking it down this week.  I took two minutes off of that on Monday morning to lower it to 51:30 and then another 15 seconds Tuesday afternoon to lower it to 51:15.

I really think I could have even done a lot better, too, but there was so much congestion on the trail in the afternoon that I was slowed several times.  I also look forward to riding this with a real road bike.  Right now I am riding the low end hybrid from Trek – the 7000 – which is a good and affordable bike, but it is basically a mountain bike with road wheels and a little better gear set.

Still, I love it and I’m grateful for it.  I will train on it until I can make the move to something better and then I will probably use it to commute to work.

In the meantime, I’ve lost about 50 lbs. and a lot of that is due to the exercise I’m getting on the bike.  It’s no impact cardio – until you wreck and then it’s high impact.  I wrecked in the spring and was out for about 4 mos. recovering and gaining back about 10 lbs.  I was able to shed that in the two weeks back on the bike.  It’s that dramatic a difference.

Oh, by the way…  I came up on this guy the other day:

As Jason Kearney is fond of saying, “You’re excuse for not riding a bike is now officially lame.”

Let me just add that this guy was moving. I can not even imagine what he would have been capable of with two human legs.