Hope Interrupts…

“This may be a dark world but you don’t have to live in the dark. Hope interrupts.. Jesus Interrupts”

– Pastor Pete Hise

This morning I was listening to a message by Pete Hise, lead pastor at quest community church, in the current series titled “…Then hope interrupts”.  To be completely honest this message is what I needed to hear. I needed to be reminded that though the world around me may be dark, depressed and look rather hopeless we do not have to live in that darkness. Jesus is not just a promise to us he is the promise, the gift, the hope and the incarnation.

I have always heard that word incarnation or incarnational ministry, all through high school and almost every day at Bible college however, I always felt puzzled by it and confused, yet when Pastor Pete was talking about incarnation as in the context of jesus not just promising to bring us hope but being the hope it made a lot more sense. Not that I haven’t heard that before I am sure, but this time it sunk in. It actually means a lot more when I begin to understand the magnitude of Jesus being human, present and the Hope.

Pete mentioned in his sermon that for the people of Jesus time God felt distant, far off and for the greek and roman gods unthinkable that god would make himself known in a tangible way to humanity. The jews knew of the prophesies in Isaiah yet had trouble seeing Jesus because he Interrupted their picture of God and what the savior was going to come and do for them.

God is not distant, he is not far off and he is not simply a promise for the future. Jesus came incarnate. Human as the rest of us. He came as hope. He interrupted the disciples lives and forever changed their world. he wants to interrupt our lives if we will let him.

Trying to grasp Jesus as the incarnation, the hope, shatters part of my false picture of Jesus. I am no longer holding tightly to what I imagine Jesus to be in far of heaven but allowing God to renew my mind and thoughts about who jesus really is. Even after years of studying the Bible I need God to renew my ideas of who he is and restore my hope.

To often we focus on everything that we think will bring us worldly hope. When I was without a job this summer I was guilty of just making my hope come from the prospects of getting a job, or even now I have been guilty of putting my hope in my desire to be engaged or getting a new car or all these other things that the world screams I need, YET they leave me without any real tangible living hope.

Jesus is the hope. Jesus is the hope that needs to interrupt our lives on a daily basis.

Jesus Doesn’t ever say he is going to save us from our troubles and hardships, the storms are still going to come but Jesus does say that he will walk with us through the storm.

Open your Bible.

Allow Jesus to interrupt your day, your week, your life.

Do you need some Hope?

You will find it with Jesus.

Just today I was watching a youtube video about an interview with N.T. Wright who as my theology professor would always remind us is the modern day leading Scholar of the New Testament. In the interview Wright was asked if he had any tips on how we might read the Bible. He said “The Bible should be read Frequently and Throughly is the best answer… Allow the thing to wash over you “. 

That is a challenge to us. To frequently allow Jesus to interrupt our lives and throughly be reminded that He is our hope.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

P.s. Extra Stuff.

I would encourage everyone to listen to Pete’s message that can be found at

http://questcommunity.com/watch-listen/series-archive  under the “and then hope Interrupts icon.

Also the interview with N.T. Wright can be found here at

Day 41 “A Year of Thoughts”: Speak From The Heart

 

There are times when I fail to speak love from my heart. God has created us as human beings to love from the core of who we are. Yet we collectively fail at love each day.

 

I’m dying of heart failure for all the times I’ve failed to speak love from the core of who I am.

 

I’ve been selfish, withholding love. I fail at patience, I fail often at kindness, my words lack meaning and become that of a clanging cymbal. If my heart were a symphony I am the one instrument out of tune. My pride withholds love from those I might know to need it. If I am to live love, love always trusts, can I trust myself when my past is full of lies that lack trust, the failure to hold honestly to the truth.

 

                  But there is hope. 

 

Love still speaks because love keeps no record of wrongs, love forgives, it rejoices with the truth despite the evil of the past. It speaks through silence and pain, through joy and
laughter, love speaks when our hearts bleed. When we open them so that God’s love might begin to heal our wounds, so that we might find confidence to love despite our failure to love.

Love helps, it heals, it hopes, it’s kind and patient even when we aren’t. When I say I Love you I hope my heart speaks out of the core that I am.

 

1 Corinthians 13

 

Love speaks from the heart.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 26 “A Year of Thoughts”: BE

To be or Not to be

 

Those famous lines of Shakespeare haunt the nurseries, play grounds, and high school halls to the cubicles, kitchens and government buildings where human beings dwell. It is the question that every human being must face. To BE or not to BE? It sounds so simple yet it’s not.

 

While in Brazil I had the opportunity to help teach an english class at a church about 45 minutes away from the international school where I worked. One of the first lessons we went over in that class was the verb “to be”. For those of us who grew up speaking english this lesson would seem very simple and very elementary. Even a small child would understand what it means to be hungry.

 

However, for someone who does not speak english to be is a hard thing to understand. To Be is a very powerful verb. I even have a hard time still explaining it in a way that doesn’t use an example of to be. Many times we put to be with other verbs or nouns to describe who we are or what we are going. But what if we looked at to Be by itself.

 

To be or not to be.

Do we know how to just be?

To be ourselves.

 

Honestly in your soul what does it mean to be.

 

What is it that stands alone “to be”?

 

Do we need other things to define us or is to be to hard for use to understand by itself.

 

When it comes down to it I want to Be who God asked me to be. To understand who God asked me to be I must be. I must look deep within the reaches of my soul, I must throw off the labels, definitions, and feelings to honestly look at who I am. Who I am in the moment if I were to just be.

 

To Be Caleb Ross Hunter.

 

Many times people go through life trying to find the answer to their existence. They try to find just the right definition as to who they are, just the right label to fit under, just the right group to join, just the right family other than their own. But can we accept that God made just the right you to be you. Yet he also has given you the choice to ask the question to be or not to be?

 

Part of life is finding out the be, finding out what it means to be a human being. When God created Adam, God didn’t define Adam, he gave him the job of naming the animals and taking care of the garden but he seemed to let Adam explore, God walked with Adam in the garden. Adam’s job did not make him who he was, Adam was a man. There were not men in the beginning, and the story goes that woman came later. So Adam could simply be and in his being human he was in relationship with God. No label, no definition, just simply a human created by God to be in relationship.

 

So if for the first human being to be means to be in a relationship with God than to not be is going against everything that means to be a human being. When sin entered the world to be was complicated…

To be yourself is to be in relationship…

 

To be a human being is to be in relationship…

 

You know those moments when a conversation stops and you wonder what is going to happen next or someone breaks the silence with “awkward”, really in that moment just be. No awkward, no need for words, just be. Take in the moment and experience it. Sometimes my relationship with God brings me to those moments where I simply need to be.

 

I need to stop talking, stop trying to be anything, stop trying to figure out where I fit in the world and trust God enough to be the person he created me to be. That sounds complicated but really it’s simple when we are in relationship with God, it all makes sense. It’s like learning english, to be is a given for those who speak it or is is? Maybe we should rediscover what it means to be.

 

To Be

 

I wish to be…

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 18 “A Year in Thoughts”: Big Bird in a Small Cage

There are days that I feel like a little bird in a small cage with a lot on my mind. Big thoughts, big dreams, big hopes, big plans for the future, but sometimes the cage just seems to small. My soul sings like a big bird in a small cage. It mourns for things to change, mourns for the world to change. The world would like nothing better than to sit and sing along and yet do nothing to free the little bird that mourns.

 

Like a little bird in a cage humanity mourns for change.

 

For some reason today I felt kinda caged which could come from sitting in class and having little time to stop to think, create, and just reflect on this day that God has made. But as my evening slowed down just enough to have maybe an hour to spend sometime thinking and creating, I had this song running through my head. A song that I haven’t listened to in a while but for some reason it has always seemed really catchy to me and obviously has recorded it’s lines into my head. The song is “Big bird in a small cage” by Patrick Watson. In an interview about the song Patrick said he wrote the song seven years after he had visited this guy in Asia who had a house full of birds, and in those rows of cages there was this one big bird in a small cage. So he asked him why the big bird in the small cage, the the bird-keeper replied simply “because when you put a big bird in a small cage it will sing you a song.”

When I went back to listen closely to the lyrics of the song I found the song to be rather sad because when a big bird is in a small cage it mourns. It sings because it would rather be anywhere else but in that cage.

 

I don’t believe God gives us hopes and dreams and then puts us in a cage to small. We may find ourselves in small cages by own own choice and mourn every moment to be where our souls can be alive and free. The soul of humanity is mourning. Like a big bird in a small cage. But we are not created to be caged, not created to sit and do nothing about the state of humanity. God is leading people around the world to break out of the cages, to fly free and help others. God is healing people and turning their mourning to joy.

I don’t want to just listen to the birds mourn I wan to set them free. I don’t want to just sing along with humanity as it mourns but I want to show them to the truth that will set them free. You and I are not caged but free. Love helps. Love sings a different song. Love doesn’t cage the ones around us but empowers them to live a life more full. To move beyond the bars, barriers, doubts and fears. To stop mourning and see that the cage door is open. The life God offers is far greater than the life inside our little cages. It may not be as safe, or as comfortable, or as easy.

 

Humanity Mourns and God offers Life.

 

Not life in a cage he offers LIFE.

 

 

Life to the fullest

 

Think about (You can read about it on almost every page of the gospel)

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

 

P.S. Below are the lyrics to Patrick Watson’s “A Big Bird in a Small Cage” and a link to it on youtube. Think about it.

Big Bird in A Small Cage

There was a house halfway ’round the world
And I was invited in for a small taste of gin

There was a hallway a thousand birds long
But the biggest one of all was in a cage too small

I asked the caretaker ‘cuz he was their maker
He looked at me and laughed took another sip from his glass

He said ‘open up your ears and hearts
You put a big bird in a small cage and he’ll sing you a song’

That we all love to sing along
To the sound of the bird that mourns

Well we rolled into town and the sweet New Orleans
To the Apple Barrel bar it was a hole in the wall
The ceiling weren’t tall and the floors filled with grime
But the sound that you would make would just warm their hearts

Well it was quarter to 12 and the boys walked in
They got their black suits on and the songs would begin
You open up your ears and hearts
You put a big bird in a small cage and it’ll sing you a song

That we all love to sing along
To the sound of the bird that mourns
You put a big bird in a small cage and it will sing you a song

 

Day 7 “A Year of Thoughts”: To Travel… ALONE

To travel is a glorious thing, to travel alone is to wish upon yourself insanity.

 

It’s been a long day traveling alone, there was one point where half way through Missouri I felt like I was going crazy. I started questioning everything in my life and talking to myself. I stopped to clear my mind and my bladder, and thats when I got a call from my friend Seth Bartel. He too was traveling, a different route but alone. So talking to him for an hour about life and everything else helped me feel a little less crazy.

I don’t remember praying for someone to call me but God knew that was exactly what I needed. I think that call was a great reminder to me about humanities need for human interaction. A smile from the guy at the gas station is hardly human interaction.

I use to count cows to keep from going insane while driving across Kansas yet, I never once saw a real cow (the one on the chick-flea sign doesn’t count). Needless to say, I finally made it back to school, drained, a little crazy, tired and stiff, but excited for this last semester and some human interaction.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Mass Society (Broken Prose)

Mindless masses revolt as they reflect human change the canvas of inspired striving on earth for betterment of souls by society.

The great idea of community could exist had everyone felt like it.

The public increase of thought and freedom apparently does go on.

Society now human will be unhappy in life about material betterment.

People deny that they are alone.

The universal western picture leaves that mass in specialized competitive status-hungry privacy.

Friends rather of norms and standards controls a single group.

Put movement to light…

-Caleb Ross Hunter