Jeff Noble's Blog, page 41
April 17, 2015
April 12, 2015
April 5, 2015
Easter timelapse
I had no idea Greg Piper shot this video at our Easter Celebration service this morning. It shows the amount of work and joy investment of volunteers and church members. This was our first Sunday morning opportunity to worship in Blacksburg High School.
I like what John Crawford said of the video on Facebook:
This is a fantastic visualization of how much work goes on behind the scenes for any production. 18 seconds of this 86-second video was the actual service, while the remaining 79% was setup, practice, and teardown. And of course, this doesn’t include the amount of work that went on outside of the auditorium!
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April 3, 2015
The Easter Room
Whatever your religious or spiritual background, this weekend is significant for a large proportion of the world’s population – past and present. We Christians will reflect and celebrate on what we consider as the epic history-shattering and creation-resetting event: Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.
The stream of content that now inundates your Facebook and Twitter feeds is as varied as there are Christians. You’ll see embarrassing triviality. You may read a few provocative comments that make you pause. Depending on how hard-wired you are to resist, you may choose to belittle; others will be bewildered.
Another year, another Easter. What’s all the fuss about?
May I encourage and even urge you to simply withhold opinion and refrain from comment? Could you be gracious (even if Christians have not been gracious to you) and try to step into this big room of religious fervor for just a moment. Let’s call it the Easter Room. You don’t have to be the center of attention. Just grab your drink of choice, and sit on a chair near the door (so you can leave when you’d like). And just watch. Listen. Think.
What’s it all about?
Why does it matter?
Is Jesus really a myth?
Why don’t I get it?
What bothers me so much?
Are my objections legit?
As you’re sitting there, checking Facebook and reading Twitter (and maybe playing your favorite game app), you’ll hear snippets of conversation from Christians sharing earnestly, and sometimes tearfully, about how Jesus has saved them. Their sincerity and parts of their story may intrigue you. When you get up for a refill of your drink, you may overhear another story that sounds remarkably… just like yours. You’ll stop to listen, trying hard not to be seen as a creeper.
As you make your way back to your seat, you find yourself strangely moved by the story you’ve overheard. These are real people, you may find yourself thinking. You may not like all of us. You wouldn’t choose many of us as friends. But something real is here. And because you’ve taken just a moment to step into this Easter room, you’re now open again. Open to listen. Open to examine. Open to perhaps, for the first time, to begin something.
May this Easter provoke in you a new beginning.
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March 29, 2015
Inner prayer
I recently taught a seminar for our church on the prayers of scripture and how to have a vibrant prayer life (notes here). The sobering truth is that often mine isn’t. It’s not that I don’t know how. The fault lies entirely with me, not with God.
I’ve been reflecting more on prayer lately, even seeking to be more diligent to pray for ministry friends. I can’t overlook the reality that the vast majority of my prayers continue to be inner prayers. Simply put, my prayers are consumed with my internal world.
It’s amazing to me how much activity happens just in my mind and heart! As I struggle daily to surrender my will to God’s in loving obedience and real choices, I could spend all my prayer energies consumed with my own mental and spiritual issues. Yet, God is abundantly active and powerfully moving out there. Away from me – in other’s lives. In our world.
I suspect that you feel the same? An internal preoccupation in prayer seems to drag our heads down, like our noses have a fish hook in them, with the fishing line tied to a stake on the ground below us. We dare not lift our head up for fear of the pain it would cause. So we stay buried in inner prayers.
The reality is that God knows our need for our praying for ourself. The Psalms are full of inner prayers. Consider:
I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, and he will hear me.
In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
my soul refuses to be comforted.
When I remember God, I moan;
when I meditate, my spirit faints. Selah
You hold my eyelids open;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
I consider the days of old,
the years long ago.
I said, “Let me remember my song in the night;
let me meditate in my heart.”
Then my spirit made a diligent search:
(Psalm 77:1-6)
I’m grateful that the Father invites our inner prayers. However, I want to not stay inner but be diligent to pray for others, for our world, and most significantly, for God’s glory.
To think that God can actively hear (and listen to) all our inner prayers is astonishing. Who can think like the Lord or even scratch the surface of His works?! If I spent my hours attempting to record, catalog, file, describe and journal all that the Father is doing, I’d quickly run out of things to write for four simple reasons:
I cannot see beyond my own sphere.
I cannot interpret what He is doing.
I can only see that things are happening.
I do not know other’s thoughts/prayers and how God is working in them.
I can’t write it all down because I have limited observational skills, and I am finite. Plus, the world doesn’t have enough ink.
Even more incredible, God delights to use the ordinary to accomplish wonders. Random, routine conversations so often are used by Him to prick a heart, to speak encouragement, to change a mind. Even with music, who could ever track how God speaks to hearts, penetrating close-mindedness or stubbornness with a melody?
It all reminds me of the scene from Bruce Almighty where Jim Carrey is suddenly privy to everyone’s prayers and is driven crazy. To hear is one thing, to hear and to know the pray-er and see past, present and future is mind-boggling. God doesn’t just hear the prayer, know the pray-er, understand the context, but He also has a plan. His plan includes love for the pray-er and the redemption of the universe, and He is able to answer in a way that glorifies His Name and blesses the pray-er and the world.
How God does this is beyond us. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient: all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing.
I’m so thankful that God hears my inner prayers. I want Him to hear more from me. I also am eager to grow in my outer prayers.
In Mark 11.17, Jesus confronts the Jewish religious leaders about how inner their prayers were. In essence, these leaders were focused on themselves. Jesus said:
“Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
I think it’s obvious that Jesus wanted the temple to be open to people from all nations, to come and pray and seek God. However, I also think that Jesus wanted the prayers of His people to be for all the nations. That’s outer prayer.
Let’s pray.
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March 25, 2015
March 16, 2015
March 15, 2015
Prisoners’ letters to their younger selves
Photographer Trent Bell goes to prison and asks prisoners, “What would you like to say to your younger self in light of where you are today?” Bell then Photoshops the letters around portraits for a resulting art gallery display. The process and the public’s reaction to the portraits are worth watching.
HT: Buzzfeed
In early 2013, commercial photographer Trent Bell was shocked by the news that a friend – an educated professional, a husband, and a father of four children – had been sentenced to thirty-six years in prison. Over the proceeding months, Bell found himself haunted by not only his friend’s bad decisions and loss of freedom, but also moments in his own life when things could have easily taken a bad turn.
“There were times when my son would look up and smile at me,” recalls Bell, “and the finality of my friend’s situation would rush into my head and I would hear a cold thin voice say: ‘…there, but for the grace of God, go I…’”
Bell, who is known for his architectural photography in publications such as the Conde Nast Traveler, Design New England, and The New York Times, soon conceived of a photo project that would merge large-scale portraits of inmates in the Maine prison system with handwritten letters the convicts composed as though writing to their younger selves.
“Our bad choices can contain untold loss, remorse, and regret,” says Bell, “but the positive value of these bad choices might be immeasurable if we can face them, admit to them, learn from them and find the strength to share.”
“REFLECT: Convicts’ Letters to Their Younger Selves” is an artistic documentation of choices, consequences, and reflection. Bell’s portraits—along with video documentation by Joe Carter and additional prison guard portraits by Corey Desrochers. for more information visit: www.trentbell.com
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