As Jim Sees It

An Escape?

Jim Hunter — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:58:51 +0000

Occasionally someone will tell me, “I’m not very religious because I don’t need a crutch.” Or, “Religion is for people seeking an escape from real life.” Or, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” I don’t actually hear that last one a lot, I just wanted to let you know that I read a book one time. Anyway, you get the picture.

Crutch? An escape? I wonder which Bible those folks are reading. Mine has a couple of stories about people of faith, shutting the mouths of lions, quenching raging fire, escaping the edge of the sword, winning strength out of weakness, becoming mighty in war, being tortured, refusing to accept release, suffering mocking, flogging, chains and imprisonment. (See Hebrews 11: 32-37) If they were trying to escape, I think David might have been running the wrong way when he met Goliath and the disciples should have just divided the five loaves and two fish among themselves. To heck with all those other hungry people.

I know some people do actually use their religion as an escape, but don’t let that lead us to believe they are representing an authentic response to God’ call. Our Lord calls us to stand vulnerably and open hearted before the world, telling our friends and neighbors God loves them and is with them in the midst of life.

It sure doesn’t feel like an escape when the Spirit bids me to go where I wouldn’t choose to go on my own; to give what I would prefer to keep; to speak when I don’t want to rock the boat; to hurt and cry when I would rather escape; to walk and not faint when crutches look so inviting.

Trying to Remember

Jim Hunter — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:15:54 +0000

It seems like I am forgetting a lot of things lately. Where’d I put my glasses? What’s that football player’s name? Do I have a meeting tonight?

The other day I even found an envelope with some cash in it that I had forgotten about. I had set it aside for our recent trip to Greece and Turkey and I never thought about it again until I saw the envelope with “trip” written on it. (That was actually pretty cool and it may inspire the kids to help clean out my stuff when it’s time to head off to the nursing home.)

I really wish I could remember things better. Passwords, faces and names, directions, memory verses, all kinds of things are good to remember but mostly I wish I could remember to pray.

I mean it. One of my deepest desires is to simply remember to pray.

I forget to pray before I eat and that’s not good. It’s not every time but it’s often enough to be an issue. Everything we have comes from God’s provision and before a meal is a great time to nurture a grateful attitude.

I also fall short of my intention to pray before going to sleep at night. My plan is to pause every evening, think back over the day in review, offer thanks, ask forgiveness and lift up the coming day. I forget more times than I remember.

I guess I get distracted, or I’m thinking about the next thing, or I’m not thinking at all. It’s not like I don’t know about breath prayers, sentence prayers and simple sighs that can be a way of remembering God’s loving presence. I just forget.

Of course, my hope to change goes a little deeper than remembering to say, “God is great. . .” and “Now I lay me down to sleep. . .” What I really need is to bring the Spirit into the conversation when I am stressed, afraid, hurting, mad, tempted, and anxious. You know, all those things that can be handled so much better with a simple, “Help me Lord.”

Maybe I should try praying, “Lord, help me remember to pray.” (Seriously Lord, not just trying to post a blog here. Please help.)

eight-hundred

Jim Hunter — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:30:38 +0000

Two things before we get started.

First, this one is directed at young parents who are probably too busy to sit around reading “As Jim Sees It.”

Second, in a minute you are going to ask, “Where did that come from?” Let me answer before we get there. I am a preacher, an old man that came up in a time when the culture took Sundays off so people could go to church, and knowing that there are youth soccer games on Sunday morning drives me crazy.

So, here we go. Let’s talk about child development and math.

To start, we will assume that you and yours are church going people. That’s how you were raised or maybe you made that decision a while back. Either way, that is who you are.

Now, let’s say you have a child. I know it feels like he or she will be two forever and you have plenty of time to instill your family’s values. Truth is, you have maybe, eight-hundred Sundays. Those are the Sundays they have to go to church just because you say so. Eight-hundred. Seems like a lot when you are on your first fifty but it is a finite number.

Let’s say you miss thirty of the first hundred because it is just hard to get a baby up, fed, dressed and to nursery where they really aren’t learning anything anyway. Then you miss thirty of the next one-hundred fifty because everybody’s young and its fun to take them to the mountains and beach on the weekends. Then you miss a hundred of the next three-hundred fifty for all the above reasons, plus soccer games and they are spending the night with friends. Now they are twelve, stay up too late on Saturday night, “Johnny doesn’t go to church!” and they are going to come in late from various trips and band competitions. Plus, it’s tough to argue a teen or a tweener out of bed, into the shower, out of the shower, into the car, to church. Let’s say you miss fifty of the next two-hundred. Times up. You missed over twenty-five percent of your chances to instill your family’s church going values. Two-hundred ten.

I wonder if that’s too many? Don’t know. Do you?

Lessons From a Three Year Old

Jim Hunter — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:58:56 +0000

With apologies to Robert Fulghum, who learned a lot of cool stuff in kindergarten; here are three life lessons I got from my three year old grand daughter last week.

Lesson Number One: Skin color is just skin color.
Sarah has been friends with Karma, a classmate at daycare, for several months. They play everyday, go to the same birthday parties and call each other best friends. Sarah talks about Karma a lot. Her parents know when Karma has been good or put in time out. They know what she wears and what kind of food she likes. The other day, several months into this friendship, Sarah asked her father, “Have you ever noticed that Karma has very brown skin?”

Lesson Number Two: If you have enough, why would you want more?
When Sarah comes to our cabin we spend a lot of time watching three DVD’s. We watch “Happy Feet,” “Charlotte’s Web,” (Also known as “Charlotte the Web”) and we try very hard to a DVD with Ariel, the little mermaid in it but it keeps getting stuck and we never see much of it beyond the coming attractions. After watching each of these around seven-hundred thirty-four times, Kathryn said, “Sarah, we need to get some more movies up here don’t we?” Sarah replied, “Nope, I like these three.”

Lesson Number Three: Why would you want it if you know it’s not yours?
Sarah is puzzled by everyone’s habit of locking the car doors when they go in the grocery store. She pointed out to her mother that “You just have to unlock them when you come back.” Her mom tried to explain that we lock the doors to keep other people from getting in the car and taking it or stuff out of it. Sarah doesn’t get it. “Well, they will see that it isn’t their car and get out and go to their car won’t they?”

Makes me wonder what you think about if you aren’t filing people into categories, worrying about how to get more, and making sure no one takes your stuff away. Would we then be flirting with “blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God?”

His Mysterious Ways

Jim Hunter — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:58:22 +0000

I will tell you what I experienced, you can call it what you will. I will accept questions or proposed explanations but my feeling on the matter is; it was what it was, is what it is, will be what it will be.

I was driving east on I-26 on July 25, just past the I-95 exit in my 2000 Toyota. I was by myself and going around seventy-five miles an hour. I throw in that fact to let you know that it is highly unlikely that someone could stick their arm in the car and mess with the radio without me noticing.

It was around 5:30 or 6:00 in the afternoon and I had been traveling, counting a visit at my daughter’s in Spartanburg, since 10 that morning. I was feeling a little drowsy and considered calling Kathryn to clear my head. Instead, I started searching through the radio stations, settling on a NPR program talking about what happens to metal when you put it in the microwave. I found this show on 88.1 but moved up the dial to 89.3, where I got the same program on a station that I knew I would keep longer.

At first, the fellow was talking about putting a Klondike bar in the microwave while it’s still in the wrapper. Then, he started talking about how one can make “lightening in the microwave.” I heard him say it would be like the old Frankenstein movies as I put my head back on the headrest. I don’t think my eyes were open and I remember thinking that when he referred to the Frankenstein movies he was talking about how the monster was afraid of fire and the people would chase him through the woods with torches. Of course, I now realize he was talking about electricity jumping from one rod to another during a storm. But, I was kind of picturing torches in the woods, near a pond, in the dark, like one of the old movies with Boris Karloff that I used to watch on lazy Saturday mornings when I was a boy.

Suddenly, the radio switched to a song about God knowing the distance between the east and the west and the volume was a good bit higher. It was like the alarm radio going off. It startled me wide awake and I realized that I was either very close to dozing or was one short step from a long, perhaps very long, nap.

In the moments it took me to gather myself, I started wondering about the change from microwaves to a contemporary Christian song. I looked at the dial and it showed 89.7, the Christian station run by Columbia International University in Columbia.

Here’s my word on it. I had not changed the station and I did not turn up the volume. I was running around in the woods with Frankenstein and then I woke up.

Customer Service

Jim Hunter — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:47:32 +0000

“What up with that Modern Affirmation?”

“Yeah, we don’t like it.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, we don’t get it.”
“Don’t get it?”
“No! Let’s not do that any more.”

I don’t know what you did during the service when Kathryn exhorted us to “offer to one another signs of reconciliation and love,” but that is how the acolytes and I passed the time, I mean the peace.

Seems my young friends are somewhat attached to the Apostle’s Creed and wanted to make sure I knew that. So attached in fact, they sought me out afterward to make sure I got it. “Remember, no more Modern Affirmation.” Got it.

Well, got it sort of. We are actually using it again this Sunday. So much for customer service.

But all that does raise a question, or two, or three. Where’s the line between complaining and constructive criticism? Between, I don’t want to grow, and That creed sure means a lot to me? Between, our church serves the best spiritual ice cream in town, and sometimes you really need to eat your spiritual spinach? When do we move from being the customer, a consumer, and start being loyal to the United Methodist Church and upholding it with our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness?

I know we live in time when folks can be, and are, a lot of places on Sunday morning besides the Hibben sanctuary. We want them with us so our hope is to be the most welcoming, friendliest, most inviting, inspiring, joyful, meaningful, loving place one can find, and our prayer is for that to all come together on Sunday morning. But still, are we really trying to be a church version of Wal-Mart? “Welcome to Hibben!” “Did you find everything you were looking for?” “Please fill out our customer survey within forty-eight hours and you can take ten dollars off the next offering.” “Thank you for shopping, I mean worshiping, at Hibben.”

Of course that is all an exaggeration and being friendly, welcoming and helpful are good things. It’s just that our being friendly, welcoming and helpful is centered in God’s love, not our desire to make a sale.

Is that where we are getting confused? Are we so used to being the customer that we think that whether or not Suzie smiled at us, what the temperature was, whether the choir wore their robes or not or which affirmation of faith we used, is really what it is all about. Are we forgetting that we are called to be a part of a great mission to love as we have been loved and to call others to join us on this walk of discipleship?

Just wondering.

But I do have one last question for my young friends who are done with the Modern Affirmation. Do you really get more out of sitteth at the right hand and thence coming to judge the quick and the dead? I kind of like “this faith should manifest itself in the service of love.”

Still Meandering

Jim Hunter — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:50:55 +0000

No discernable thread here, just some random thoughts. Apparently, it’s what I do. Consider each paragraph as if you just hit the remote control on your TV.

-click-
This past weekend, Kathryn and I were in Beaufort, SC with some of her family. We stayed in a beautiful waterfront house on Bay Street that was built in 1852 by one of her ancestors from the Sams side of the family. If you saw the movie “Prince of Tides” you saw it when Nick Nolte visited the richest man in Beaufort. We also spent a good bit of time visiting the ruins of the family plantation and exploring family history. Often in our reading we would come across a first person account about how good life was in the antebellum South. Sometimes the writer would talk about how happy everyone was, white and black alike. Or, it would be mentioned that such and such was a good man and treated his slaves very well. After awhile I noticed that none of those glowing reports were ever written by a slave.
-click-
A few days ago I read a column by a fellow named William Murchison. The essence of his point was that the Church has been neglecting its primary purpose, to help people connect with God. He said that churches often resemble a branch of the Peace Corps and ministers act as if they have missed their true calling as research scientists, public policy experts, or congressmen. Ouch. That feels a little too true to me.
-click-
A while back a kid told me that I am not as funny as I think I am. I have heard that a lot and it used to kind of hurt my feelings. It doesn’t bother me so much now. I have realized that nobody is as funny as I think I am.
-click-
I was thinking about starting this post with an explanation about why it has been so long since I posted anything here. I was going to say that I only want to blog when I have something to say. Of course, if you have read this far, you know that isn’t true.
-click-
Back to the antebellum South. Along with a lot of African-Americans, I am glad Kathryn and I didn’t live back then. A girl whose family owned Dataw Island and half of Beaufort would have never even looked at a pig farmer from Davie county North Carolina.

Happy 36’th K. On May 27’th, 1973 you proved God sometimes blinds young women and blesses stupid twenty year old boys.

Meandering

Jim Hunter — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:55:03 +0000

Just some random and possibly self-serving thoughts.

-Kathryn and I are hosting an educational trip to Greece and Turkey, following Paul’s second and third missionary journeys, in November. We will be staying on a cruise ship in the Agean Sea at night and going to the sites during the day. So far we have a great group going with us. Wanna come? Want info? Let me know.

-I have taken a communication via technology giant step in the last few days. I am now twittering at JimCHunter on Twitter.com, I am giving FaceBook a try, and I started a church twitter at HibbenUMC. Seems like just a couple of years ago I was laughing at people who thought they needed a cell phone.

-On a political note. . . This may feel partisan but I believe I will still be keeping my vow of nonpartisanship. . . I was watching the president’s press conference tonight and couldn’t help but remember how when I was a little boy playing army in the woods of NC, I always felt like I, as a pretend GI in WWII, was standing for something better than the enemy. One of those things was that we didn’t torture our prisoners. . . Never thought I would live to see the day when there would be a serious faction of the population mad at our president for denouncing torture. (I will be looking forward to hearing from all the Jack Bauers out there)

-On a religious note (tried to tell you this would be random), we were looking at Psalm 23 during tonight’s bible study. Ran across something I had never considered as I prepared for the night’s discussion.Concerning the part about goodness and mercy following us, one scholar said that was like goodness and mercy is following us to clean up what we mess up. Reminded me of some canoe and rafting excursions I have been on when one of the guides was the sweeper. He or she would take a position at the back of the pack and when a raft or canoe tipped over, the sweeper would come along and get them back on track.

Messed up some how? Off track? Tipped over? Mercy will be along in a minute to get you squared away.

J.T.’s Grand Daddy

Jim Hunter — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:05:20 +0000

I have been wondering if being a father figure for a boy will be very different from being one for girls.

I will confess that I have approached being a Grand Daddy to the two girls with a great deal of confidence. After all, I happen to be the father of two incredible daughters so I must be pretty good with girls. Or, maybe I am at least smart enough not to get in Kathryn’s way. (my ministerial philosophy in a nutshell by the way)

But this boy thing, I have really been curious about how it will be different.

I spent a good deal of time with J.T. this past week and so far, not so different. I hugged him up, kissed him a lot, and called him sweet boy. When he cried, I didn’t tell him to get over it and get back in the game. Could have been Sarah or Maya.

As a matter of fact, when J.T. stares me in the eyes, he reminds me of the only other baby I have ever seen that stared at me like that, his mother.

But I have discovered one deep instinctual desire that is different in my and J.T.’s relationship. I want to play a role in showing him what it means to be a man.

With the girls, the prime directive was, make sure they know that you love them. Everyday it’s “I love you. You must know that Daddy (Grand Daddy) always loves you.” With J.T. it feels like the prime directive is, show him how to be a man. This is how you do it.

I’m a pretty liberated guy. I taught my girls how to throw a punch and I expected them to be honest, strong, wise, honorable, and brave. From the other side, I certainly think there is more to being a man than punching, strength and bravery. I’m just saying that it feels a little different when I hold the little boy.

Maybe I am just realizing that with this one, I am not supposed to get out of the way so much. I am supposed to crank it up and live the best life I can live. Then, hopefully, when J.T. is finding his path in the world, I will be one of the ones he views as a faithful guide.