Jon Acuff's Blog, page 68

50 Shades of Amish Romance

(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s one from Jennifer Faddis. You can check out her blog here. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)

50 Shades of Amish Romance

As Christians, we certainly can’t be seen clutching a book for our reading pleasure that is 40, 50 or even 60 shades of any kind of drab color. So, we quench our thirst for romance with the wholesome and seemingly prolific Amish romance novel genre. Who knew the plain folk had such intriguing love lives?

The “Real Housewives of Bird-In-Hand” feature tidy buns and sporty little kapps (that’s caps for you who don’t know your Amish speak). If the ladies are searching for a hearty bachelor to receive a rose, they need to look no further than the nearest fresh-faced fellow in black pants and suspenders! ‘Cause everybody knows the hot guys with the Methuselah beards are already off the market! What a rip-off for these hard-working chaps, by the way. At the wedding, instead of exchanging rings, the groom has to say “with these whiskers, I thee wed.” Instead of some new bling, he gets to pitch his razor. Makes sense.

However, he may not make it to wedded bliss if he is the first love interest to show up on Miss Yoder’s doorstep. Sadly, that means he will most likely meet an early demise, often in the form of a terrible buggy accident. Cue the tragic, soul-filled music for Days of our Amish Lives. Which, by the way, fits in well since the sands through the hourglass do not require electrical power in order to operate. After a period of grief – during which nobody cuts her a break in the chores department – she continues to fill her hope chest with durable goods.

Now, love interest number one’s younger brother or best friend will be taking young Miss Yoder around in his accident-free “courting buggy.” Yes, that is actually different from a regular buggy, as it is made just for dating, but not to be confused with a sin wagon! She will then fully win him over with her blue ribbon pies and 50 shades of canned vegetables. Proving his love, a house or barn will be constructed in one day with the “it takes a village” concept, and they will live happily ever after with fruitcake for all. Barring any spooked horses, overturned buggies or blacksmithing disasters!

Do you enjoy keeping up with the Amish and their fictional love stories? Have you detected a formula to many of these books?

(For more great writing from Jennifer, check out her blog!)

How to save seats, like a boss.

If you’ve ever been to a Christian conference or a camp, you know that saving seats is a must.

You’ve got to sit near the front because the Holy Spirit doesn’t even go to the back of the auditorium.

Plus, folks saved seats for the Sermon on the Mount. A lot of people don’t know that, but it’s true. I’m pretty sure they threw down palm branches.

Yesterday though I saw a teenager save seats like a boss.

He was like an NBA center. Tremendous wingspan. I loved his approach.

Forget bulletins or Bibles, here’s how to really save seats.

 

The frustrating thing about God.

It’s the spring of 2010 and I am in a meeting.

I don’t understand most of the words being said in the meeting.

The people saying them are smart, talented and incredibly nice.

But I am in the wrong place.

This was years before writing Quitter. Years before I’d ever hold the Start Conference and help other people close the gap between their day job and their dream job.

I am stuck in a cubicle and I am asking God the same question over and over.

“Do you see me God?”

I am fairly certain he does not. If he did, he’d realize he has given me a different passion. He has set my heart toward other things and yet, I am in the same place.

I feel invisible to him.

Three ridiculous years later, I have learned one thing about God.

The most frustrating and beautiful thing is that God doesn’t do early.

He only does right on time.

Try as we might to force his hand, he will not be rushed. His will cannot be sped up. His plan can not be microwaved.

He does not do early.

He does right on time.

When you’re in the meeting, that is frustrating.

When you’re looking back, years later, it is beautiful.

I wish it weren’t so, but God refuses to keep my calendar.

Thank goodness.

Dating Jesus.

I attended a small Baptist college in Birmingham, Alabama called “Samford University.”

I love that school despite their refusal to have me come speak. (I was on social suspension Freshman year for a Halloween incident gone tragically wrong and I don’t think they’ve forgiven me yet.)

Be that as it may, I did tend to bump into an interesting phenomenon.

Sometimes, when I would muster up the courage to ask girls out, they would say, “I’m not dating anyone right now, I’m dating Jesus.”

Growing up in Massachusetts, I had never, ever, ever, ever heard this and it raised a few issues:

1. Is there anywhere in the Bible that Jesus says, “Take up your cross and date me?”

2. Shouldn’t you be married? Dating seems awful casual. I mean, I don’t want to Jesus Juke you but dating is too light.

3. If we start dating, does that mean you have to dump Jesus? That can’t be good.

4. If Facebook had existed back then, would your relationship status have been “Dating Jesus?”

5. If the guy you really liked came up to you and asked you on a date, would you still be “Dating Jesus?” Or is that a line you use primarily on guys named “Jon Acuff?”

6. Would Jesus be OK with us just getting coffee? Or studying together? Frisbee in the Quad? Anything?

7. Do you give him Valentine’s gifts? Someone people at Christmas throw Jesus a birthday party. I’m OK with that, but if you’re expecting Jesus to get you something from Kay’s Jewelers, every kiss begins with K, I’m concerned for you.

So questions about that line of conversation.

Have you ever heard something like that?

 

Happy 4th of July!

I hope you have a great holiday!

Stuff Christians Like will return on Monday, July 8th!

Jon

Thinking God will run out of welcome home banners.

It’s summer and that always reminds me of the story of me and Michael Jordan that I’ve shared before. No, it’s not that time I dunked on him. I had to sign a whole lot of confidentiality agreements about that. This story is different.

I met Jordan one summer while he was golfing at a country club in Pinehurst, North Carolina. My uncle and his family lived on the golf course, and I was spending a few weeks there before I started the eighth grade.

When word spread that Jordan and a gang of other important people were in the clubhouse that morning, we all went down to get a closer look. This was before Jordan became human. Before the gambling and the baseball experiment and the tabloid fodder. Jordan was a god at the time, and I had a Nike swoosh mark shaved into the back of my head to prove it. I told everyone in Pinehurst that summer that I had my haircut that way as a tribute to a friend in Boston who had been shot and killed for a pair of Air Jordans.

I’m not sure why I lied like that. None of that was true. Maybe I’m like Samson, razors bring out the worst in me, but Michael Jordan didn’t know any of that. Neither did Dean Smith, the legendary coach of UNC, or Dr. J, who were both with Jordan that day.

They all signed the back of my shirt with a big marker. Later that afternoon, with the autographed shirt safely tucked in a drawer, I went back down to the clubhouse. It had been 3 or 4 hours and I wanted to see if I could get Jordan’s autograph on a piece of paper I could frame.

The party had already finished golfing, and all the fans had gone home. I saw Jordan walking to his car in the parking lot. I ran out after him as fast as my little seventh grade legs would carry me and said, “Excuse me Mr. Jordan, can I please have your autograph?”

He stopped in his tracks and turned, a golf bag resting high on shoulders that towered over me. With a look that froze opponents on basketball courts across the planet he said, “Didn’t I already sign you kid?”

Life is Limited

In the real world, in parking lots in Pinehurst, North Carolina, life is limited. Your hero turns to you and tells you that he’s not going to give you another autograph. Your hero tells you he remembers you and that you’re not getting a second signature, the only thing you want that day. That stupid summer, with a lopsided swoosh mark growing in the back of your head, and a mouth full of lies.

Sometimes I think God is like that. Bothered by me, tired of my requests for His time, even if it’s just 3 seconds for Him to sign off on some prayer I’m saying or need I’m sure I can’t live without.

He’s on His way somewhere important after a round of golf with Moses and Elijah or Elisha, whichever one plays. I’m chasing Him down in the parking lot. He turns with His big God golf clubs, and He looks down at me. And He says in that massive voice of His “Didn’t I already forgive you kid?”

Forgiveness is the thing I ask for the most. In my head, maybe I know that God’s forgiveness is eternal and inexhaustible, but in my heart I feel like He’s going to run out of it. That He’s got a limited supply. And I’m burning them up, one by one, sin by sin.

The Day After The Party

I’ve read the story about the prodigal son more than anything else in the Bible. If you’ve messed up life like I have, then it’s a pretty good read. When you get arrested, they should read that to you right after the Miranda rights. That’d be a nice way to take a little sting out of going to jail.

Part of the reason I’ve read that story so many times, though, is that I think there’s something missing. I feel like there’s some verse or passage that I must have skipped that makes the whole thing make sense. It seems too good to be true. The prodigal son takes his inheritance, blows it on fast living, ends up in a pig pen, and then gets a party thrown for him when he returns home. I’ve always wondered what the day after the party was like:

The first rays of sunshine crept across the floor and landed on a pile of party favors being swept up by a servant. A welcome home banner was being taken down and across the house the sounds of morning reverberated.

In his old bedroom, the prodigal son rolls over and opens his eyes. He’d dreamt it so often, dreamt of this place so often, he didn’t believe it was real. Those nights in the dark, curled under a bush or beside the barn when his money was gone and his hope with it, he’d wondered if he’d ever know safety again. He sat up, surprised to find himself there, laughing at the memories of the night before. The feast, the party, the ridiculousness of it all.

His family who celebrated his return, as if his absence had increased their love for him, amplified it. None of it made any sense. There was a knock on the door. He had a door again. That was something he had missed.

The head of a servant peered in:
“Sir, your father is waiting for you in the kitchen.” This servant didn’t go to seminary either and didn’t seem that concerned that in biblical times “kitchen” was definitely the wrong word to use in that context.

With a yawn and a scratch of his head, the prodigal son got up. He put on his clothes and made his way to the kitchen. There, at a small table, sat his father.

“Sit down son.” He said, motioning to a chair across from him.

“Thank you for the party father. I never expected that and …”

“Son, we need to go over the list.” His father said, interrupting him.

“The list?”

“Yes” he replied, touching a large pile of blank paper with his hand. “We need to make a list of all the money you spent, all the mistakes you made, and all the people you hurt. Then we need to figure out how you start repaying your debt,” the father said.

“I had a plan, father. I had a plan when I was walking home, but when I saw you running I didn’t think I’d need it. At the party, I forget what my plan was,” the son said, with a voice of shame and sorrow that had taken but a brief hiatus during the previous night’s celebration.

“Well, you’ve got the rest of your life for it to come back to you,” the father said, taking out a pen and writing “family inheritance” at the top of the list.

For most of my life, this is how I would have written the second part of that story, the directors cut if you will, an alternative ending that was too harsh for the version they released in the Bible.
 The father’s anxious sprint toward the lost son doesn’t make any sense. That’s not how life works. People pay for their mistakes. They don’t get a party for them. When you return home from wasting your inheritance on the world, your father says “Didn’t I already bless you kid?” End of story.

Forgiveness

I don’t understand forgiveness, and it’s always depressing to me when I read a book that tells me that’s the first step of the Christian walk, believing that God forgives you. If I can’t get past that first step, then the rest of it, all the rest of it, remains completely closed to me.

It’s not that I think I don’t need forgiveness. I just don’t understand how it’s possible.

If I can’t earn it, then it’s out of my control and I’m powerless.

I heard a minister once say that His forgiveness, God’s grace, is given wastefully. He pours it out on us in such abundance that it’s almost wasteful.

I think that’s true, but sometimes it’s not easy to believe.

I have to confess that some days I still think there’s a list God will ask me to work through the day after He throws me that Welcome Home party. I have a hard time understanding how something can be true and illogical at the same time. And so much of God is that way.
 But some days, when I least expect it, in ways I can’t control, I believe a different story about God’s forgiveness.

The first rays of sunshine creep across a dusty road and grate against the eyelids of the prodigal son trying to sleep uncomfortably on a bed of gravel. His teeth felt dirty, his mouth and hands stained with the red of cheap wine. A long scratch ran across his cheek, a shoe was angled beneath his head for a pillow.

“How many times did this make?” he thought from the part inside him that still remembered returning home. He was doing so well, things were so happy but his “never agains” always seemed to fail him in the end. How long would he be gone this time?

Miles away, a concerned father stood by the front window of his house as a servant approached with a message.

“Sir, I checked his bedroom and the barn. His things are missing. He’s left again.”

“I know,” the father said with sad eyes.

 And then, with slow steps, he walked to a large closet and motioned to the servant.

“Help me with this Welcome Home banner,” he said pulling one from a pile of ten thousand.

“Today could be the day my child returns.”

Getting wrecked.

Wrecked, not wasted, that’s a completely different post.

If you’re a Christian and you find some degree of enjoyment in something, it is best to say that said something “wrecked” you.

If you say, “I liked it,” you are a horrible monster of a human who doesn’t know how to properly compliment a Christian CD.

If you say, “That book was great!” I will assume you did not read the book and may in fact be in a cult.

If you say, “That sermon was fantastic,” you probably hate the pastor and sweet baby Jesus too.

No, my friend, it’s wrecked or it’s nothing.

Bonus points if you cry as you tell someone it wrecked you or add the phrase, “I pray that God will break my heart for the things that break his.”

It’s true, next Sunday listen for this word.

When a pastor “kills” a sermon, our verb of choice even if the sermon is about turning the other cheek, you must use the word “wrecked.”

I recently did an article about Christian words for Relevant Magazine and this word kept coming up in my research.

To be quite honest, that article is going to wreck you.

 

How do I know I live in the south?

Because I just saw this sign.

The Trials and Tribulations of the Christian Wingman

(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s one from Guy Logan, a screenwriter in London. You can follow him on Twitter here or help him find a flatmate here . If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how! )

The Trials and Tribulations of the Christian Wingman

On face value, it’s fair to say that being a Christian wingman should be one of the easiest jobs on earth, ranking somewhere between hotel critic and quality control for Skittles.

After all, there are nearly twice as many single women as single men at church–it’s akin to shooting fish in a barrel. With a shotgun. And the fish are Swedish.

Yep–on face value, Christian wingmanning is straight forward. 1) Help your brother pull the log out of his eye. 2) Assist in the Wife Candidate Selection Process. 3) Run interference on competitors. 4) Coach him during the turbulent dating process. 5) Provide ample High Five Support when he moves to “it’s serious.”

But while we’re taking things like Phil Collins, it’s important to remember that it’s never this simple. Against all odds, many eligible Christian men can remain unwed for years.

Sure, there can be many reasons for this. Maybe their King David-esque facial hair looks more John the Baptist (or Robin Williams)? Maybe they’re approaching 40 and more set in their ways than Clint Eastwood in pretty much any movie since 1990?

Whatever the case, it’s up to guys like me to change that. Even if my brothers have the gift of singleness and are actually quite content. Even if they have no problem meeting women.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Jane Austen’s Emma (required reading to enter the UK), it’s that everyone forgives you if your heart’s in the right place. Plus Jesus says I’ve got 77 chances before people can stop forgiving me for trying to set them up. Or something like that. (Maybe the Bible should be required reading here too.)

But despite the apparent simplicity, setting up blokes who don’t want to be set up is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Christian wingman problems.

Another conundrum is when the Intended has plans of her own. Maybe she’s in love with the metrosexual worship leader or has her heart set on becoming a nun. Whatever it is, your goal as a Christian wingman is to subvert those plans and set up your boy as the next most eligible bachelor since Timmy T.

Harsh? Was Jacob wrong to steal the inheritance from his brother? Did Jesus condemn the shrewd manager for his dodgy dealing? Whether you’re prayer shot-blocking or just guiding the worship leader in a different direction to make the Intended’s decision more straightforward, the Christian wingman walks a fine line.

But the biggest problem that can stop a Christian wingman in his tracks is the Own Goal. No matter how subtle his moves, sometimes even the best wingman gives the wrong impression. The girl, or one of her friends, gets the wrong impression.

When this happens, all bets are off. Any aim of helping two star-crossed lovers unite in holy matrimony is placed on hold as you pull a Jonah and jump ship. Bide your time in the belly of a whale and pray there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Attempts to ride out the storm or redirect misplaced affection can backfire worse than a Jesus Juke instead of a tip. And a bad review can ruin a Christian wingman’s entire career.

There you have it–some of the greatest challenges faced by Christian wingmen. What other problems are there?

Question of the week.

On a scale of 1 to become an atheist, how mad will you be if we don’t get to regularly ride unicorns in heaven?