A quick video of Harper

This is Harper's first attempt at using her Christmas gift from her grandparents.

Love your neighbor - even if he acts like you

There has been a car parked on the side of the street in front of my house for a couple of months now. As the snowstorms have come through Madison with a total of 24 inches in December the snow plow has completely buried that car under loads of snow. Of course this has made it impossible for me to park my car there which is quite annoying.

A few days ago parking enforcement finally came through and informed me that on that day the tow truck would come to take the car away. "Good" I thought. Soon I will be able to park there again. How inconsiderate for someone to put their car there and not move it. It's just right that it gets towed now.

Just an hour later for the first time in months somebody was actually at the car trying to get it out. Of course it was an impossible endeavor as there were piles of snow as high as the car itself surrounding it. As I saw this guy with his friends I was able to look beyond the car that had annoyed me for weeks and I saw a person that needed my help.

I grabbed my jacket, went outside and asked how I could help.

A few minutes later I had gotten pickax, spade, snow shovel, ice hacker, etc out of my garage and we were trying to get rid of the iced up mountains of snow.

This took a good hour and we got into an intriguing conversation. He told me about his life story, how his mom had him when she was 15, how he grew up in the ghetto in Chicago and tried to get away from the violence for his daughters who are 5 and 1 years old. He told me about how he lost his job as an electrician and works at a gas station a few blocks down. He told me how he has to walk to work now because his car (the one we were trying to dig out) did not run anymore and how he noticed police standing along the side of the road several times when he walked home at night. He said that his boss told him that people had been concerned because there was a black man walking through the neighborhood at night. He laughed and said that he couldn't believe it because that black man was him.

I did not mention that he lives in apartments across the street from me. These apartments are generally occupied by people that get their rent paid for by the city. It's generally single moms, blacks and Latinos. There is quite a bit of drug use going on as well as domestic abuse as the police frequents these apartments.

He told me how his family moved to Madison to sublet an apartment from his brother-in-law only to find out that he had not been paying his rent and they got evicted. They then moved into a house with a friend who did not pay his rent which ended up with them getting sued for that money. That's how they finally ended up in these apartments.

We continued our conversation and when he asked me why I was helping him I told him that I was a follower of Jesus Christ and that I tried to live like him. He was extremely blessed by that even though I of course felt a bit funny about my attitude before I saw a person connected to the car that had been parked so stupidly.

Anyways, to make a long story short we needed more help to tow the car out of the piles of snow after we had dug it out. So I went up to my neighbor's house to ask him for a tow rope. This man had been extremely helpful in the past even though he is a bit rough around the edges as Vietnam Vet and a retired Oscar Meyer truck driver. When I saw him the first thing he said accusingly was "why are you helping THAT guy?" He went on to lecture me how people in those apartments don't care about the neighborhood and how the apartments bring down property value. He complained about the car having been parked there through the storms and why this guy wanted to move it now that it was going to get towed. When I told him that I was helping him because he looked like he needed help he just said: "When you will have spent some more time in the USA you will understand". He went on talking about the d*** Mexicans who pull mattresses off the curb and get their children infested with bug bites. In the end he sent me away empty handed.

This was such a strong contrast. Here was a guy who had the odds against him because of the color of his skin but tried to live an honest life picking up trash around his apartment complex and helping out where he could. And then on the other hand you had the neighbor who I know is not a bad man but has so many prejudices because he never took the time to get to know those he is suspicious of.

And in all this I was trying to find myself - being very similar to my Vietnam Vet neighbor in my attitude toward the parked car but then realizing that behind everything that may annoy me is another side to the story and that love requires taking the time to listen to it.

Preaching at Metro Believers Church

I want to share a sermon with you that I was able to preach at Metro Believers Church in Madison last September. It's about daily spiritual warfare - how to protect your mind, heart, mouth, and relationships, the main areas the powers of darkness attempt to attack every person in to influence them toward destruction. Just click on the title of this post to go to the website. Enjoy.

Atheist declares: "God sends me people like you"

I've been talking to a guy I met at the gym a few weeks ago. The first thing he said to me was a lecture that it wasn't good to shower right before going into the sauna. I just smiled and we kept talking.

We talked about saunas and Germany (I'm German). Then he told me about how stupid Americans are -- especially those 50% (his statistic) who believe in Noah's Ark and a young world.

"God is a mad black woman who is coming back to destroy everything," he said.

"That's interesting that you'd say that," I said. "I'm an interdenominational missionary."

"Really!"

I could tell I had sparked his interest and that he wanted to ask me questions. But by that time, it was just too hot to keep talking. We were in a sauna, after all.

Two weeks later I saw him at the sauna again. We continued our conversation right where we had left off.

"I'm a Jewish, Buddhist, atheist," he said. "I like to get Evangelicals to yell at me and lose their temper. I tell them that if God came down right now and told me to accept the blood of his son or go to hell I would spit in his eye and say f-you."

It wasn't anything I hadn't heard before. My missionary work has taken me to some rough places. And I was a little like him before I met Jesus. So he and I talked about the atonement. We talked about justice.

"Remember your comment about the ark earlier?" I asked. "Why are you so passionate about it? What would you do if I believed in the ark?"

"I don't want to offend you," he said, looking uncomfortable.

"Hey, I don't mind if you think I'm stupid." I told him about the healings and supernatural works of God I've seen in my life. "These things made it easy for me to believe what I read in the Bible."

"You're a better man than me," he said after a while, when I didn't lose my temper or get upset at him for his ideas or language.

This Jewish-Buddhist-Atheist and I kept talking. We talked about love and God, that love is a choice. That love is choosing the highest good for God, others and yourself.

He told me about his life and some of the struggles he's going through. He's taking a break from his job right now and is in therapy because of severe depression.

"I've gotta go," he said, sweat pouring down his face. (Remember, this is all happening in the sauna.) "But I really enjoyed our conversation. It is really nice to meet you."

Right before he walked out, he turned to me and said, "God sends me people like you."

Not bad coming from a man who 10 minutes earlier told me that he was an atheist.