A Confession and Affirmation of Faith

...based on the second commandment, for our series on the commandments entitled "Experience God Now". In the series we will articulate the positive expression of each commandment:

1. Accept No Substitutes
2. Take God Seriously
3. Take regular breaks with God
4. Submit to God's Authority System
5. Affirm Life.
6. Honor God's View of Sexuality
7. Help others in Need.
8. Be an Encourager.
9. & 10. Be Content.
Summary: Pursue this relationship always.

Anyway, here's the confession / affirmation:

God, you have invited me into the brilliant reality of knowing your name,
of recognizing how separate you stand from all of your creation.

Stone, tree, fish or human –
all of these are categories of what has been made.
But you are creator.

How quickly I forget to set you apart,
how easily I fail to recognize your holiness.
In the things that I have done, or have left undone –
even in the way I think or speak of you –
I treat you as just another thing to check off my list.

But you are Holy.
Your name itself is Holy.
You are truth, purity, and life.
In your presence, in the light of all you are, I recognize my own brokenness.

Yet you do not leave me in brokenness.
You, the God who is above all creation,
came into your creation in Jesus Christ to redeem and save me.

You call me away from the irreverent use of Your name – away from those patterns that minimize the name that is above every name. You invite me to a new way of living, a life in which I can call upon your name in every trouble, praying, praising, and giving thanks to You.

Thank you for the gift of your name. Help me always to remember its holiness.

© 2006 Rick Lindholtz

Improvement today

Miles had a much better day today than he has in the past 10 days or so. 75% of his readings were within target today, no fever, no ketones. Didn't eat much, but ate. Thanks for your prayers.

Alicia and I spent the last 90 minutes watching the first 2 hours of season 5 of the show "24". I've heard a lot of talk about this show. Now I understand why. It's a pretty grip-your-throat production style. I think I'll keep watching.

It had to end eventually

Miles has had a seven year run of really good management of his diabetes, but the last week has been the unhealthiest he's seen since his diagnosis at age 2. He had high numbers (over 500) and ketones much of Wed thru Sat last week and finally we went to the hospital downtown to put an IV in him and rehydrate him (ketones and high numbers demand a lot of fluid to wash the toxins out of him).

Last night we were up until midnight dealing with nausea and low numbers. Today Miles is home from school - for the 4th day of 5 days. Our endo is giving us some new instructions for Miles' care.

This is one miserable little boy and a couple of exhausted parents.

Pray for Miles. And pray for a cure.

End of the Spear -Finally out

The movie is in theatres now and it's well worth your viewing. I took the Faith and Film group to go see it on opening night, Friday the 20th. There were 14 of us in a filled theatre, 11 of whom went to Starbuck's afterwards to discuss the film.

I'm also reading the book (linked here from Brad's site so that profits will go to mission work in Guam). It's an excellent read and also well worth your time.

Order yours today...

Logo conceptual - what do you think?

This is a logo idea we are considering. How does it strike you? What does it suggest about the church on whose sign or literature you see the logo?

My impressions:

1. I want to move the crown down a little so that it doesn't appear to be another word. (A couple people thought it was a continuation of King, as in, perhaps, "Kingdom".

2. I want the white part of the crown to be solid white so that the cross doesn't show through the crown.

3. I'm not sure about the font. Another font might work better with the graphic.

What do you think?

Amazon's Music clips

Lately I've bumped into a number of very nice musical clips to be found on Amazon. They are attached to certain product description pages. The first one I found was this wonderful performance of "Born to Run" by Springsteen. It's a performance from the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975, the year that Born to Run exploded and put Bruce on the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week. It sure looked like very effective hype at the time, but Bruce has proven himself to be a lasting artist, and this performance from '75 proves what the fuss was all about. What an incredible performance. I enjoyed seeing parts of Bruce and the band's more recent Live concert DVD, until he started into his mock preaching mode, which I found offensive. Give me the 70s Bruce. This clip demonstrates what all the commotion was about.

This weekend I was pointed to this Paul McCartney performance of "Please Please Me" from his 2005 tour rehearsals. He's great as always. I love it when he digs up old material that hasn't been part of his repertoire for the last 20 years. His 2004 European tour had at least 10 first time concert performed songs, and this year's US tour had another 6 to 8 brand new appearances, including "I'll Get You", which was the b-side of "She Loves You", if memory serves. I never need to hear "Hey Jude" or "Jet" live again, but they show up on every tour, and I guess I understand why.

Fogo de Chao

If you live or travel near Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, Washington DC or Chicago, this Brazilian Restaurant is the place to take your special someone for a memorable evening. The salad bar is really a bar of vegetable dishes - marinated asparagus spears, pepper slices or sundried tomatoes, as well as fine cheeses and more typical salad items, plus rice and black beans. But don't fill up - the meat is coming and this is really a meat-eater's restaurant - 12 different kinds of meat fire-roasted on spits and carved at your table by wandering waitstaff. You have a red and green disc for each diner. Green means bring me food; red means leave me alone for a while so I can eat. And the sides that will be brought to your table include garlic mashed potatoes, grilled polenta, cheese bread puffs and friend bananas. Incredible food; incredible decor; incredible service. Yes, it's pricey - plan to spend $50-65 per person, so for us it's an anniversary thing, the one night a year we don't look at prices on the menu (of which there are none at Fogo anyway). We shared a Flan for dessert, and the lovely former Alicia Martinez said it was the best she'd tasted (to which I carefully added "except for yours")

Movie Reviews

King Kong - too long for my tastes at 3 hours; special effects looked - well, computer-generated; several parts were too gross to watch (the giant cockroach scene in particular); but the faithfulness to the essential story of the Fay Wray classic. Much better than the mid-70s Dino de Laurentis version ("Nobody cry when Jaws die. When my Kong die, people cry.")

Good Night and Good Luck - A wonderful George Clooney film. Shot in grainy black and white to capture the 50s television feel, it's a film about Joe McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow and William F. Paley and the HUAC Communist blacklisting. The actor who plays Murrow is dead-on accurate. The story is great and fairly balanced and the jazz soundtrack featuring Diane Reeves is fabulous.

A Creed

You are the God who calls me to draw near:
Creating Father, whose fingers formed all that I see
and the things that are invisible.
You spoke and all things came to be.
My faith is in You.

You are the God who came down to save:
Jesus Christ the Son, from whose virgin-born hands
Nails drew guiltless blood –
You, who saw a morning of resurrection power,
My trust is in You.

You are the God who makes a home within my heart:
Holy Spirit, leading me into all truth
And calling me onward in faith.
You are the guarantee of all that has been promised.
My hope is in You.

Father, Son, and Spirit:
One God, in three persons.
Let my life be a canvas
On which you paint
Your masterpiece of joy and glory.
I believe in You.

Rick Lindholtz 2006

26 years

Alicia and I walked down the aisle 26 years ago today, at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas. What an amazing journey it has been. Home has been Portland, OR; Dallas; Chicago; Eureka, CA; Davis, CA; Chicago again; Muskegon, MI; Denver, Dallas again; Lansing, MI; Kent, WA; and Kingwood TX, where we've lived for the past 7 years. That's longer than anywhere except the almost 8 years in Lansing, and longer in this house than anywhere we've lived before.

On our first anniversary, over dinner we looked back and recalled the best and worst thing about 1980. That started a pattern we continued for a long time - best and worst for every year. Over the last year or two we've had a hard time doing that - both because we have a tough time remembering each year individually, and because we have to start the litany almost before we get in the restaurant door!

In 1987 we went to a movie before our dinner, and that started a pattern as well. We almost always do movie and dinner now, and today we're going to see King Kong AND Good Night, Good Luck. We don't get to theatres for grown-up movies too often so it's a fun escape from the ordinary.

I'm thankful for the pleasure of looking back over 26 years being married to my best friend. And I'm amazed at how quickly the years have flown past, especially as I look at the kids.

Top Ten Films of 2005

Here's the take as reported by two Books and Culture Contributors. How different would your list be from theirs?

I find this helpful as I am starting a "Faith and Film" study group that will be attending films in theatres (or in homes, for overlooked already-released films) and discussing how the films interface with spiritual convictions and especially Christian faith. What recent films do you think speak to the human condition and have something to say to Christians?

THE CREATIVE SPIRIT

My dear friend and mentor in the arts for more than 30 years, Byron Spradlin of Artists in Christian Testimony, has sent me a magazine by that name, produced by Belhaven College. Its contents in this issue consists of the Occasional Paper on "Redeeming the arts" published by the Lausanne Committee. I've only read a bit of it but it is very impressive.

End of the Spear

On January 20, the film End of the Spear opens in over 1000 theatres across the U.S.

My friend Ed Delgado and I had a private screening when we were in Tulsa in September. What an amazing film, capturing the essence of the story of Nate Saint, Jim Elliot and their three colleagues, but most importantly, capturing the true story of redemption, forgiveness, and grace.

Jim Elliot is the name most familiar to many people, notably for the quote from his journal, shown above in a scan from the journal itself. I knew the name Saint mainly because my brother lived in Saint Hall when he was at Wheaton College.

This film takes two perspectives that many people have never heard:
• the perspective of Mincaye, a member of the killing party who killed Nate Saint.
• and the perspective of Steve Saint, Nate's son. Only 5 when his father died, he followed his father to the jungles of the Waodani tribe, largely because of the influence of his aunt Rachel Saint, who had gone to live among the Waodani and teach them of Christ.

Most of the world never heard of the results:
• in a tribe judged among the most violent in history, among whom 60% of adult deaths were homicides by the spear, the killings stopped - just stopped - when the gospel came to them.
• when Rachel Saint died, the Waodani invoked a custom that requires a relative to step forward to fill the role of the deceased. They asked Steve Saint to come and live among them, representing their culture to the encroaching world. And he did. In doing so, he embraced the man who had been his father's killer.

It is an amazing story and an amazing film.

Today Steve and Mincaye are in Dallas at a premiere of the film, and a friend of mine with the production company, Every Tribe Entertainment, was going to arrange for me to meet them and interview them. But alas, the word came in this morning: media presence there is very heavy. In fact, there are some national media who couldn’t get interviews on their shows who have RSVP’ed for this one in hopes of getting interviews at the theater.

So we won't be making the drive. We'll wait for the opening night, when I will be taking a group to see the film. I hope you'll go see it on opening weekend, too.

A New Year Begins

...and the Lindholtzes wish you well.

2005 ended very differently than I thought it would. We began the year with a strong sense that we were being prepared by God for a change - a change that eventually came, but differently than we expected. We thought it was going to be a change of location. There were several conversations - but one church decided to continue looking elsewhere, and another one, though it had much of the right stuff going for it, did have a couple things that caused me to send some not-interested signals which they picked up and we let it go. It was just afterwards that I was invited to take on a few new responsibilities and stay where I am at CTK - which was the right thing for me and the right thing for my family. In retrospect I believe the whole episode was an opportunity to trust God in a time of stress; an opportunity for myself, my wife and daughter, the chruch, and the staff. I look back over 14 months to a day when I was sure that by this time I would be gone from Kingwood, and I am happy to be exactly where I am.

What does 2006 hold for us? It's hard to say. We're hoping for a couple vacations to see family - in the Carolinas (July?) and in Mexico (March?). It may hold a chance to visit California as well, in February or March. It will provide EC and I with a Colorado trip with the CTK youth in June.

I hope that a year from today will see progress on debt retirement and savings growth. Most of all though, I am hoping that the year 2006 will be a year in which the Kingdom of God holds ever-deeper influence in my heart. May it be so for you as well.