In the Studio...

...with Brian Mulder who is rocking my face off with an epic electric guitar part. We're working on the title track of Brian's new CD "Somewhere we're shining". We've been working all week since Brian and his brother Rob drove down from Holland, MI to visit and finish up some recording some tracks.

Here's a video.

Brian, Rob, and Matthew Recording from Brian Mulder on Vimeo.

Escapism vs. Baptism

I went on a great retreat a couple weekends ago with D. Merricks and the Ole Miss Wesley Foundation and the Arkansas Wesley around Little Rock. J.D. Walt was the retreat pastor and speaker. J.D.'s theme was "there are only two stories". Which is the theme of the Lenten/Spring Reader from Asbury Seminary this year. ( http://blogs.asburyseminary.edu/asbury-reader/start-here/ )

We are always trying to work our way UP, considering 'equality with God something to be grasped' but Jesus works his way DOWN to us 'not considering equality with God something to be grasped'. Those are the two stories and we live in one or the other, with either the mind of fallen Adam, or the mind of Christ.

Today though I've been thinking about Escapism vs. Baptism.

What's the difference? What kind of life do they bring respectively?

For myself, I'm seeing more and more that I want to preserve my controlled, familiar world and neglect dying to my self-preserving desires. I'd rather look out the window than be outside. (An example, actually, I had a great day out in the sun today.) It's easy then to end up with a fabricated pseudo-life wherein all the sensations of a real living committed movement and story are available without any of the actual attachments.

Entertainment can become escapism. I can get the feelings of adventure without the risks. I can save my life, but really I'm losing my life to meaninglessness and immobility.

I want to be Baptized. I want something real to happen to me. I want the legitimate hunger to be alive to be fed with the legitimate means of an actual life.

Even Jesus wanted to be baptized. And right after he was baptized he was tempted in the desert with the availability of escape from the pain and difficulty of real living. But he chose to walk forward in his baptism. Every day a baptism. And the result was life realized, good choices with actual meaning, living redemption.

What do you think about the comparison of Escapism vs. Baptism? What do you see?

Reminder...

Just remembering today that this whole "God loves us" thing is something we can bank on. It was all his idea in the first place. He took the initiative, he made the move, it was his idea. We didn't talk him into it, we didn't come up with some appeal and he bought into it.

Jesus isn't a God who has to be persuaded to love us or care about us. We don't have to win him over.

He's already there. He started this.

We don't have to use magic words to coax him into attentiveness when we pray, we don't have to try to manipulate him with religious procedure. If he didn't love us we would. And if he could be bought or bribed maybe those things would be worth the effort. But we don't have to bribe him or control him.

All the insecurity we feel about his love just isn't true.