A neat day of worship and affirmation

I wrote over on my family's blog about our recent decision to leave our church in Charlotte to pursue service in our hometown of Harrisburg. But I just wanted to share a little bit about how God made our last service there so rewarding and uplifting. Our prayer for Plaza has always been for its success as a church. But that's even more the case now as we leave that assembly and, in doing so, take our service energies and gifts with us. I mean, we have absolutely no delusions of being key to the success of that church, but practically speaking we've reduced the labor force there by some amount. And so our prayer is, "God, make that church flourish, if only as a clear reminder to us that Plaza is Yours, and that we are nothing but tools at Your disposal."

I was praying that prayer particularly hard prior to this past Sunday morning's service. I knew that the plan for the service involved some things that aren't typical. For one, I would be leading the "Praise and Worship" service segment with the electric guitar instead of the acoustic, which has never gone over very well there. Secondly, I knew that Amy and I would be announcing our departure, and doing so during a brand new "Family Time" segment of the service. Change, change, change all around, at a place historically hostile to such. But where I would have forecast disaster, God brought Himself to the party instead in a visible way.

Our Bible study class had a visitor, which is a somewhat rare event. After that class, we met still more visitors in the hallway. Four of the missionaries that the church supports happened to be in town and in attendance this week, and I later found out that of the twenty-some missionaries the church supports, my dad had wanted to speak with exactly those four people about a time-sensitive matter and was completely surprised to see them all there and on the same day, even. There was a spirit of happiness and hope in the air. Just prior to the service, I was standing outside the sanctuary getting some fresh air (I always feel like the heat is set too high in that building). I was approached by a dear lady who said to me matter-of-factly that our departure was no surprise to her — God had laid it on her heart a couple of weeks ago that we would soon be leaving in obedience to Him.

For the P&W segment of the service, I did something a little different. I asked that the house lights be turned down, and that the congregation engage in free worship. I wasn't going to ask them to stand, to sit, to sing, to listen, or to do anything except worship as they saw fit to worship. Wanna bang a drum? Come get it. Hiding a tambourine in your purse? Play it. Wanna lift your hands? Lift 'em. Wanna dance? Go for it. But by all means, focus on God instead of on the band. And you know? Many seemed to do exactly that. I felt like I was witnessing uninhibited worship for the first time in … well, in a very long time. And that atmosphere persisted through the entirety of the service.

I don't know what plans God has for Plaza Baptist Church. But I have to believe that if the spirit — or more accurately, the Spirit — that was present there this past Sunday morning sticks around, revival will come to that place.

From the "duh" department...

My wife asked me this morning if I'd ever read — really read — her Suave shampoo bottle. Turns out I hadn't. I mean, not really, anyway. And in that act of utter negligence, I had overlooked an amazing claim that Suave makes about their product:

Cleans and conditions hair in one simple step — for less than more expensive brands.

That's funny stuff, or at least funnier than less funny stuff.

(Thanks, Amy, for keeping our marriage light-hearted. And full of extra body and shine.)

Dear Wal-mart, Welcome to the Digital Age

A week or so ago, I finally got my family to sit still in our living room long enough to snap a quick family photo for use on Christmas photo cards we planned to send out this year. After editing the image just a bit to fix some weird shadows, adjust the colors, and try to fake some depth, I called Amy up to inspect the results. She was pleased: "It looks good. It almost looks like a professional photograph." So, I uploaded the image to walmart.com, selected the photo card layout I wanted, and ordered a bunch of them. Here's the photo:

I got a call a couple of hours later from the local Wal-mart Photo Lab:

"Hello, Mr. Pilato?"

"Yes I am."

"We're sorry, but we can't print your photo cards unless you bring us a release form."

"But ... but ... I took the picture myself with my little Canon S410!"

"We've been looking at the picture for a while, and it really looks professionally done."

There ensued another few minutes of hassling here, some of which revealed that if our fireplace had been black instead of gold, it wouldn't have looked so much like a faux matte background. Finally, the Wal-mart employee gave up some critical ground:

"Mr. Pilato, if you could just make a release form giving yourself permission to print the image, we'll do it. We just have to cover ourselves. I'm sure you understand."

"Wait. You want me to what? You know what — nevermind. I'll do it. Thanks."

I hung up the phone, paused for a moment to verify that I wasn't dreaming all of this, and fired up OpenOffice Writer. The following is the release letter I took with me when I picked up the photo cards the next day:

Even though I find it completely ridiculous that I have to do such…

I, C. MICHAEL PILATO, do hereby grant unlimited printing release to MYSELF for the following:

One (1) photo of my own family (Mike, Amy, Gavin & Amy), taken by myself with my own Canon Powershot S410 Digital ELPH camera (serial number **********) in my own living room, with the camera set to use the 10-second shot timer while sitting on a 6-inch mini-tripod atop one of my TV stands, in front of my fireplace – which is gold even though my wife wants it to be black (because that's what the previous homeowners liked, we suppose) – and Photoshopped on my wife's computer to crop the original image, brighten the photo, adjust the colors a little bit, and fake some depth by slightly blurring everything in the image except the human subjects in the foreground.

This release is fully transferable by the above named FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER, and a copy of this document should be considered adequate proof of release.

Note for printer: While I am not a professional photographer, I am a pretty darned good image editor, and pride myself on making photos taken with a sub-professional, non-SLR camera look as if they were taken by more advanced equipment. However, if further information or verbal confirmation is needed per your company policy, please do not hesitate to call me at ***-***-****.

I guess this bit of sarcasm is on file somewhere at Wal-mart now, protecting them from the threat of a copyright-related lawsuit.

Q4H: What did the seven thunders say?

Today's reading has me in the book of Revelation. This book is an interesting read, as the whole thing is a massive vision given to a man named John who was living in exile on the tiny Greek island of Patmos. Is the vision full of allegory and metaphor, or is it to be interpreted literally? Well, that's an entirely different — and much larger — "question for Heaven".

Today, however, I have a more specific question. (Though, I won't be surprised if this turns out to be just the first of many such questions I have about this book's content.) In chapter 10, John is witnessing a strange event. A mighty angel is straddling earth and sea and toting a little scroll. Read with me from Revelation 10:2-4:

2 He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, 3 and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. 4 And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven say, "Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down."

By now, my question is probably obvious: What was it that the seven thunders said, and why was John instructed not to reveal this?

I'd love to hear some scholarly opinions about this. Googling around turned up all kinds of not-so-defensible opinions, but maybe somebody else has a saner suggestion?

Faithless footnotes

Mood: A little confused, with a hint of irritation.

The Bible I primarily read is The Student Bible, an NIV version "with notes by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford." Today's reading has me in the minor prophet Micah's little book. As I started reading chapter 4, the text sounded a little familiar to me. Sure enough, I ran into one of the mini-sidebars in the text added for explanation presumably by Misters Yancey and Stafford. The note reads:

4:3 Parallel with Isaiah

Micah 4:1-3, which describes the wonderful future in store for the world, has an almost exact parallel in Isaiah 2:2-4. Isaiah must have quoted Micah, or vice versa, or perhaps both quoted a third unknown prophet. Both prophets spoke in Jerusalem at about the same time.

My questions of the note-writers are: "How can you possibly have crawled the entire Bible, adding scholarly notes at a rate of approximately one note per every two chapters, and come to the conclusion that the only way Isaiah and Micah could have both managed to reveal the word of the Lord near-identically is if they were sharing source material? Did it never occur to you that God might say the exact same thing to more than one person?"

Freedom and the legislation of morality

The United States of America boasts of many things, but this country has prided itself foremost on being a symbol of freedom — for its own citizens, as well as for those around the world who live under the thumb of oppression — for as long as I can remember. We sing about liberty and freedom in our songs. We chant them in our pledges. We've inscribed them into our Constitution and pretty much every other defining document related to this great country. And yet, every day someone in this country — or perhaps everyone in some fashion — hurts because there's a giant hole where some aspect of what they would deem their personal freedom should be.

A few days ago, Americans in three states voted affirmatively on propositions which ban gay marriages in their states via amendments to those states' constitutions. The most newsworthy of these appears to be the passage of Prop 8 in California, a state typically viewed as a bastion of liberalism. Homosexuals and their supporters are crying foul, frusrated that freedoms and rights have, in their eyes, been stolen from them by a statistically unimpressive majority of voters. Opponents of gay marriage, however, will celebrate these amendments as victories in their struggle to prevent government approval of lifestyles they believe are immoral.

The infamous Roe v. Wade decision which legitimized abortion over 30 years ago is far from a matter of settled case law. People are still investing their entire lives into either fighting for the reversal of, or fighting for the preservation (and perhaps expansion) of, that ruling. Those in favor of the right to abort fight in the name of women's freedom; those against fight for the freedoms of the defenseless unborn.

Freedom and its pursuit takes us into many other hotly contested areas, often with serious consequences for poor decisions. There are lives at stake in foreign wars. There are lives at stake in our immigration situation. In the financial collapse. In our lack of energy self-sufficiency. In our education system. In our collapsing family structure. Everywhere you turn you find cold, hard realities that demand an answer. On my darkest days, I'd swear that freedom is literally killing us.

As I approached the voting booth on November 4, all of this was weighing on my mind, so much so that I felt absolutely joyless as I participated in what should have been an exciting thing. As an American, I have the ability to influence (albeit somewhat indirectly) the leadership of my country. When you really think about it, that's awesome. I didn't get to choose my parents. I have very little choice about the links in the chain of command above me at my job. But I get to help choose which people will sit at — and in the neighborhood of — the most powerful desk in the entire world. But despite the sheer power I held in my black pen as I marked that ballot (we don't yet have cool electronic voting systems here in Cabarrus County), I felt no joy. None.

Why is voting such a drag for me? What tempted me so strongly to stay home on Tuesday and sit this one out?

I guess I have to blame myself, really. I've deferred for so many years the formation of a solid, defensible opinion about a single topic, and that topic has in the last two Presidential elections demanded a clear stance. The topic is the role of Government in legislating morality, and specifically how to balance the freedom we all have to sin with the fact that even personal sin isn't good for society as a whole. Perhaps naively I'd like to think that Government could gracefully back out of most of those discussions, but practically speaking that doesn't seem to be the reality of the situation. Whatever the state of things, by not having a clear stance on the matter, I feel like I cheated my country out of a well-informed vote. For this, I apologize. Unfortunately, I stand today in no better position than I did this past Tuesday.

It's cliché to say that Election 2008 was yet another instance of being forced to "choose between the lesser of two evils". Mind you, I don't actually think either candidate is evil. But I've been taught that those things which are unethical or immoral (by God's standards, not by the shifting sands of society's ideals) are precisely the things which ought not to be legitimized, romanticized, or endorsed by Government. And so it's very hard to be happy about even the most charismatic and intelligent of candidates when he'll likely be a fat rubber stamp on the sin-endorsing legislation of his far-less-respectable Congressional peers. But then, it's equally hard to be happy about even the more experienced candidate when you believe his best ideas are someone else's and the rest of his ideas are only as well-formed as, well, my opinions on this matter — that kind of cluelessness in the uppermost ranks also leads, ultimately, to lost lives.

So, it seems I've got some homework to do over the next couple of years. Studying the writing of our country's founders. Studying our Constitution. Understanding freedom. Understanding "rights". And trying to do it all while remembering that "a more perfect union" is an overwhelming challenge when all of its parts are so far from perfection.

Got suggestions for my reading list?

Oh yeah? Well...

About a week ago, a worship leader was introducing himself to me and my family. Gavin proudly routed around my legs to shake the stranger's hand.

"I'm Gavin," he offered. "And this," he said while pointing to Aidan, "is my brother Aidan. I'm five, and he's three."

Pretty routine, as introductions go, right? But then, after a brief pause, Gavin let Mr. Worship Leader know exactly how this particular introduction was unique — how at this moment the man was shaking the hands of a very cool family. Gavin aimed his grin at the man's face, and fired a single round: "And my Mom runs Linux."