Jon Acuff's Blog, page 62

What my kids did to our manger scene.

This morning, my 10 year old daughter said, “Hey dad, Mary fainted in the manger.”

This kind of sentence very rarely leads to good things. I tend to file these conversations in my “Jon is a bad parent” folder, which is thick at this point.

I said, “What do you mean sweetheart?”

She replied, “Well, baby Jesus started doing pushups and she saw that his back says ‘made in Italy’ so she fainted.”

Awesome. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do that. Somewhere in the Bible it probably says, “Never make sweet baby Jesus do push ups in the manger, especially because he is naked.” Bet that’s in Revelation or something.

But maybe she was joking. My kids love pranks. So I looked at the manger.

Nope, Jesus was doing crossfit. He was probably in the middle of a burpee. Maybe that’s P90X. Hard to tell.

I took a photo. Here it is. I hope it makes you feel better about your own parenting. I am worse than you.

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Tis’ the season for hate mail!

Yesterday, I wrote a silly post about how some parents take Elf on the Shelf too seriously. I admitted that Jenny and I were already phoning in our Elf on the Shelf hiding places. I begged these overachieving parents to stop building elaborate, photo perfect scenes that make us look like horrible parents. The Elf on the Shelf people actually commented to me and thought it was funny. And yet, I then proceeded to get some pretty awesome hate mail.

Here is what one woman wrote me:

Now, I choose to believe this is a misguided attempt at satire. Surely no one would ask me to quit my given profession over a blog post about a magical elf. Surely no one would tell me I was rude and then curse at me a mere few sentences later. Surely no one is still actively employing the use of the term “negative nellys.” (I believe the correct plural is “nellies” unless you are talking about if we had multiple rappers from the St. Lunatics that were warning us it’s getting hot in here.)

What’s your take?

Serious anger or attempt at humor?

 

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Dear perfect Elf on the Shelf people, an open letter.

Dear perfect Elf on the Shelf people,

stop it.

Seriously, quit it.

You’re making the rest of us parents look horrible.

It’s only December 11th and do you know what our Elf did last night? I’ll show you:

That’s right. He’s in a freezer. Why? Because when our Elf on the Shelf iPhone “hide the elf” alarm went off, we were out of ideas. Let’s pause for a second. That’s right, we had to set a freaking alarm to remind ourselves to hide this thing. We are the worst parents.

So @JennyAcuff and I decided, “Let’s put him in the freezer. That’s a thing. We’ll make him hold a popsicle. That’s whimsical or something. Whatever.”

I think he’s sitting on a loaf of bread or maybe some ham. I don’t care. The day before that he hid in a jar. Why? Because jars are easy for me to open. Don’t judge me. You don’t know my life.

Then I get online and see photos of your elf. You’ve built a trapeze with the elf hanging from the roof of your house with some sort of homemade jet pack. The day after that he’s driven your car into the front yard and left some clever message spelled out with Skittles. You’re making the rest of us parents, who hide the elf in the Christmas tree 9 times in December, look bad. Plus, you’re not showing all of your elf days online, just the greatest hits.

And don’t tell me you got that photo in one take. You didn’t. You took at least 10 photos of that scene, I guarantee it. You tried 5 filters before you find the perfect one. Do you understand that? We’ve become Elf on the Shelf paparazzi. You also never show the after photo. The one where there are ants all over your counter because you left a trail of powdered sugar footprints when the Elf had a powdered sugar snowball fight with a teddy bear.

I think next year Jenny and I are going to have to move houses because we’ve run out of ideas. This is our 6th year. If this is your first, I totally give you a free pass. Have at it. But if you and your spouse are holding brainstorming meetings in November for elf planning, we’ve got a problem.

It’s exhausting.

Please stop,

Jon

p.s. If this is you, please sign this petition by forwarding this or sharing it on Facebook or tweeting it or doing anything you can to get it into the hands of perfect Elf on the Shelf people. They must be told.

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Leviticus, the read through the Bible in one year widow maker.

It’s almost January 1st, which means New Year’s resolutions!

Statistically speaking, 82% of Christians will try to read the Bible in one year. (I made that stat up because blogs.)

A lot of them will think it will be easy. That is dumb. Why? Leviticus.

Genesis kind of woos you with stories. Ohhh, Adam and Eve! Joseph and his wicked awesome coat! All the stories! Dem feels!

Then you head to Exodus and you’re feeling good. I’ve got this. This is like a crazy desert soap opera. There’s a priest who just stabbed two people having sex with a spear. This isn’t a boring Bible, this is an action movie! Stallone was probably in the original, he’s pretty old.

You get all cocky and feel like you’ll have this Bible knocked out by May. What kind of loser Christian needs a whole year? You are unstoppable!

And then … Leviticus.

In order to seem relevant, I have to contractually say, it came in “like a wrecking ball.”

Suddenly, the amazing stories are gone and in their place you know what you get? Detailed information on how to tell if a sore is infectious. That’s right, a detailed analysis on what color the hair in a sore will change. Riveting!

There, stuck in the Bermuda Triangle of Leviticus you’ll start to daydream about David and Goliath. If you could only get there. If only.

March bravely into the new year my friend. Be bold and strong!

But never turn your back on Leviticus. That book will murder you.

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The Christianary

(It’s guest post Friday! This one is from Kathleen Leslie! If you’d like to write a guest post, submit one here.)

Christians should have their own dictionaries—not as in a “you can’t look at my cool dictionary with Three Crosses On A Hill or White Jesus With A Lamb emblazoned on the cover of it because you aren’t Christian,” exclusionary kind of dictionary. It would be a dictionary that anyone could have. But only Christians would understand it. It would really be used as a tool for new Christians. Right after we have them stand up to a congregation of 1,000 and point to them as “VISITORS,” clapping wildly and eying them up for signs of recent sin, we can have an usher hand them a handy copy of the Christianary.

What words should be in it?

It should have standards in it, like fruit, defined as the result of Holy Spirit that church friends recognize in you, e.g., “The fruit of Alice’s hard work decorating the church with poinsettias this Christmas is her rosy glow and ability to prune the extraneous food stuck on children’s faces during fellowship time.” It would still contain the other definition (“the sweet and fleshy product of a tree or other plant that contains seed and can be eaten as food”). Naturally, that definition would be secondary.

Other words must have pride of place too, like:

Margin: What Andy Stanley wants us to have and what we claim to need while in church meetings (If I had more margin like Pastor does, I would have been able to alert him that hosting the usher’s appreciation dinner after 5 pm at a place other than Cracker Barrel is a no-go.)

Tithe: Ten percent, when speaking about others, and the amount of money I can part with this week when speaking about ourselves (I got my tithe out of the cup holder in the car this week)

Awesome: What God is when we see the fruit of his Spirit. (It was awesome the way God totally saw that I was in a hurry and convicted that old lady to swerve off the side of the road so I could hightail it to my XTreme Uprising YouthX group).

Epic: What every youth group event is now, if your church hosts it.

Important phrases and Christian slang should also be included, like:

Hands and feet of Christ: Your hands and feet, and mind and money, not mine; mine are on spiritual retreat (see also: sabbatical).

Pearls Before Swine: Important stuff that heathens can’t have or won’t get. (I’m not giving out my fish wristband bracelets to the skaters in the IHOP parking lot so they can use them for rubber band weapons; no point puttin’ pearls before swine.”)

What other awesome, epic words could be included?

(For more great writing from Kathleen, check out her blog and follow her on twitter at @KathLeslie10)

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Judging people that use the table of contents in their Bible.

Stop, just stop, it’s too late. I saw you. We were just told to turn to Nahum 2:4 by our pastor and out of the corner of my eye I saw you flip to the table of contents in your Bible.

Don’t, don’t try to explain yourself. I thought you loved God. I thought that when we weren’t at church together you were off somewhere reading your Bible, but clearly that was a mistake on my part. How long has this been going on, this, ugh, I don’t even like how the words feel in my mouth, this “using the table of contents to find books of the Bible?”

I felt like we had made so much progress. When we first met you had a Bible with those indents, those “dumb thumbs.” As in, “I’m dumb, I can’t find Titus, here is where I place my thumb.” But we got through that, we pushed through that and got you a grown up Bible without indents marking the different books.

And then today, today I catch you using the table of contents?

Who are you?

I don’t even know you any more.

Sure, you can find Psalms. Congratulations, you know where Psalms is. Everyone can find that book. It’s 60 pages long and in the middle. Yeah, that’s right, in addition to the location of the books of the Bible I know the length of each book.

Do you know what I did with my table of contents? I ripped it out and rolled it into a homemade shofar horn that I blow when it’s time for my family to come down and read our nightly Bible studies.

Go on, look up Nahum. It’s too late to save face now. You’ll find it on page 1466 and it’s only seven pages long. But what am I telling you for? You’ve probably confused Nahum with the Marvel comics anti-hero, Namor the Sub-Mariner, prince of Atlantis, grandson of the Atlantean Emperor Thakorr.

I’m so embarrassed for you.

(This is a Throwback Thursday post from deep within the archives of Stuff Christians Like!)

 

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The scars are lighthouses.

We come from a faith where the faults aren’t hidden.

That is the first thing that struck me about the beginning of the book of Matthew.

I usually skip the lineage lines. Or lines of lineage. That sounds like a bit of a tongue twister. Why do I skip them? Because I’m not a very good Christian.

But in Matthew, we see the line of Christ. The two things that stick out are the prostitute and the adultery.

In modern culture we tend to rewrite the histories of our heroes. We brush by their mistakes, amplify the triumph and hide the scars. We manufacture bright, shiny heroes. But the Bible doesn’t.

Rahab is not skipped over. There she is loud and present. The hooker. But as dramatic as that is, it’s the adultery that seems to most boldly fly in the face of our desire for mistake free lives.

When it comes to Solomon, this is how verse 6 in Matthew 1 could have read:

“David was the father of Solomon.” Done and done. Easy verse, simple idea. Nothing to see here folks, move along. Instead, the verse does the unexpected and says, “David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife.” They don’t even say “Bathsheba.” The verse makes a point of saying, this kid was born from someone else’s wife. Brutal.

And then we look at our own lives and think we need to cover up the lineage of mistakes we’ve made. We edit. We cut out. We rewrite our histories.

Don’t.

Roll your sleeves back up.

Stop hiding.

The scars you share become lighthouses for other people who are headed to the same rocks you hit.

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Happy Holidays.

My wife told me she was able to get this shirt for our kids for only $1.50 because we live in the South and other Christians didn’t want it.

I told her I was able to get us booked with our marriage counselor because I thought she was one.

Happy Holidays? SMH.

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The 5 best ways to survive, “Christmas Shoes.”

If you’re not familiar with the song, “Christmas Shoes,” then enjoy this ornament we have on our tree, give a short thank you prayer to our Lord and Savior and skip this post all together. That’s a pretty charmed life you’re living friend. Savor it.

If though, you have experienced the melodic tale of the boy who wants to buy shoes for his dying mother because he wants her to look nice when she meets Jesus, I have some good news for you.

Here are the 5 best ways to survive, “Christmas Shoes.”

1. If it comes on the radio while you are driving in a car, don’t forget to tuck your shoulder when you open the door to roll out into the street. If you can, try to time your roll when the car is going slowly and let your back take the brunt of the landing. If you’re driving, this is still valid advice. Your car might ghost ride for a little while, but you can always buy a new one. You can’t always unhear this song.

2. Don’t try to negotiate with it. Much like fear, the Christmas Shoes song cannot be beat with logic or rational thinking. Don’t waste time with questions like, “Where is this kid’s dad? Does he have a dad? Why shoes? Why not a Christmas dress? Why not a delicious bowl of queso? Has an 8 year old ever successfully purchased a women’s shoe in the history of mankind?”

3. Forget trying to make it an “acquired taste.” This song isn’t like algebra, it doesn’t get better once you get used to it. Don’t think that listening to it on repeat will solve your problems.

4. Keep it out of any Christmas playlist. I know what you’re thinking, “Jon, I’ll just hide it in the middle of a 100 song playlist. No one at the party will notice.” They will and so will you when you notice people are leaving your party.

5. Stop being friends with people who say it’s not a bad song. They’re wrong. Those people have terrible judgment and probably prefer unfrosted pop tarts as well. Stop doing life with them.

We’ll get through this friend, I know we will, but it’s going to take a village.

What is your best tip to survive Christmas Shoes?

 

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Wine at Thanksgiving.

This week, I’m staying in the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach, Alabama area with Jenny’s family.

As an author, I try to contribute to the family communication by saying things at the dinner table like, “Let’s all talk about Obamacare.”

But most of the time, I’m not the one who starts funny family conversations.

Yesterday, at 9AM, Jenny’s uncle said, “Does anyone want any wine?”

I said, “It’s 9AM. That feels pretty early for wine.”

He immediately replied, “We could call it communion.”

This is family.

This is Thanksgiving.

I hope you enjoy both.

Question:

What’s something funny that happened in your family during one of your Thanksgivings?

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