All Is Quiet

When I got home last night from meeting with the other elders at Christ Church, the toilet down the hall was running - not overflowing, just running almost constantly - an observation I passed on to my wife, who informed me that it had been doing that for several weeks (which explains the extra $10 on this month's water bill). Why hadn't I noticed? Probably because I am as oblivious to household chores and duties as a blonde is to a three-syllable word. Lindsey knows that if she wants my help, she's going to have to write it down in short sentences with lots of verbs. I can listen to three notes of almost any guitar solo played by Eddie Van Halen and name you the song, but I won't notice cabinets falling off their hinges until they almost brain me like Dickie Thon.

Actually the real reason why I'm just now noticing the whole toilet thing is because my house is really quiet (well, not at the moment - I've got my Texas Blues playlist on my iTunes blaring through my speakers - music was meant to be played loud enough to rattle your ribcage). Lindsey and Jonathan are over in Birmingham visiting our parents (Jonathan's grandparents) and getting ready for Lindsey's sister Abbey's baby shower on Saturday. So that leaves me here in Athens in a very, very quiet house where hopefully I can get some writing and yard work done.

By the way, I really loathe working in the yard. I use Joe Pesci (who's your buddy in the picture, Joe?) words when I have to work in the yard. Hell will either be a continuous cycle of yard work or packing, moving and unpacking.

So I got home at 11:30 last night and as usually happens after our elders' meeting, I wasn't really tired so I watched last night's episode of 24 via the wonders of the DVR. The two-hour season finale is next week and I felt like last night's episode was almost filler for next week - other than Jack wanting to pull a Patrick Swayze throat amputation, a la Road House, on that little weasel, Miles, not too much going on.

I finished that around 12:15 and was still wide awake, so I watched the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. Some of you (like my wife) haven't seen it yet, so I won't spoil anything here. When the show started last year, it really annoyed me as a show about everybody having sex with everybody and just for the sake of having more plot than a porn flick, they made it a 'medical drama.' I must say that I have come around on the show because of the quality of the acting (except for Patrick Dempsey who will always be the loser kid from Can't Buy Me Love and who always seems like he wants to cry) and the writing of the show which is usually good fodder for thinking about how to inject the gospel in the world around us. Last night's episode (which I won't spoil) was all about the theme of 'you can't choose who you fall in love with,' which sounds quaint and romantic and painfully magnetic, but at the end is a bigger pile of monkey dung than the Chicago Cubs. Following that sort of non-logic is what begets advocacy of anything from polygamy to pedophilia to the weird guy in your apartment complex who wants to marry his cat, Miss Pickles. Throw in a rather dramatic monologue about our choice to love someone and you have postmodern television at its finest - saying two antithetical things at the same time and holding them up as both right. This is why some of you don't watch TV - I know - but you're only doing that because John Piper told you to.

One of the effects of Lindsey being gone is that I am reminded how good God has been to put her in my life. I have a very long way to go to love her the way that Christ loves me - the gospel is really going to have to take root in my heart and mind. But I'm thankful for a lifetime spent walking together towards Jesus.

I am really encouraged and humbled to hear some of your stories about how God is using last Sunday's sermon to begin or continue gospel-centered restoration between some of you and your moms, as well as hearing more than a few of you who are moms and experienced the freedom of the gospel in its reminder that your value as a mom is not dependent on your performance but on Jesus' performance for you.

Comments

[Jesse Weber]

Hey Matt we have met a couple of times. I am a friend of Aaron Slaten's from Marietta. I helped out with the Senior High youth group. Anyways, I got to your site from his blog and enjoy your blogs. This one about Grey's Anatomy really struck a chord with me. In the middle of watching that season finale I started get a feeling in my stomach that all that was happening was way too familiar. I have tried to explain this to others but of course their response is "It's only a TV show." Which it is and I understand that. But this particular episode that brought the whole season together really started to burn me. It is very sad but it reminded me a lot of the attitudes of our society these days. Even worse I thought about the youth at FPC specifically. For a couple months now I have felt like the youth have no boundaries. Their parents never tell them no and they really feel like my decisions need to revolve around their desires. The Grey's Anatomy finale could have taken the whole season of heartbreaks and turned it into something good. Instead they went the other way and every character basically said "Screw it, I am going to do what makes me feel best." I think that is the attitude of the youth I deal with and quite frankly I am sick of it. I am not really in the position to really be able to change these kids attitudes nor would I know what to do if I was in position. I think society is in a world of hurt if this is the way these kids are growing up. I am glad to see someone else saw what I did Monday night.

[Matt Adair]

Jesse,
What's up and welcome to the blog. One of the challenges we face in personal ministry (like what you're doing at FPC) is figuring out how to live out and communicate the gospel to people living in a world marked by the self. One helpful description of our culture is that it is consumed with self-fulfillment ('life is all about me'), self-sufficiency ('I am my own authority'), self-definition ('I define who I am and what I believe'), self-absorbption ('Something is good or bad depending on how it affects me'), self-transcendence (expressed by a cultural obsession with spirituality), self-enhancement (boob jobs for 18 year olds), and self-security (which is one of the marks of suburbia). It is this reality that gives us our marching papers in loving people and pointing them to Jesus.