Tag: bible

speech | grandpa’s funeral :: 2012

This was a list of iconic items that will forever remind me of my legendary grandfather, Robert David Goodrich…

This was a list of iconic items that will forever remind me of my legendary grandfather, Robert David Goodrich:

bb guns
baseball games
bus garage chats
blue spruce fields
froggin ponds
robbie the robin

early morning prayer
grandparents day
huge wheat cereal
allegan country roads
campgrounds
hiking trails

dollar bills in a birthday card
the smell of fish
funny songs that no-body knows
put er’ there and letting us win
a love note in a bible
a Christmas speech

a charge
to love
the women in our lives

grandpa,

you lived a life worth remembering
a life filled with deep hardships and pain
and a life filled with love and redemption
experienced even deeper as a result

in fact, I am convinced that your experiences
shaped you into being the man you became
a man who cared for and talked to anyone and everyone
with laughter and genuine concern for eternal wellbeing

we honor you today
as we remember and celebrate you
knowing full well, that without you,
none of us would be here in this moment now

Interview with Shane Hipps – The OAT Podcast

Check out my interview with Shane Hipps for the OAT Podcast!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCh68gAOOBY&w=480&h=300]

Oh, how easy it is to miss the point.

If I have learned anything about the God of the Bible from my study of it over my few years of life, it is that this God has a consistent historical tendency to side with the underdog, the weak, the oppressed, the persecuted, the beat down, the immigrant, the outcast, & loser. If I have learned anything about the successful, rich (I especially include myself in this category), strong, affluent, high and mighty, arrogant, entitled, native, winners, it is that there is a consistent historical tendency to be convinced that God is siding with them.

One of the larger misconceptions we have about God is that God is insecure like we are. I am just so thankful that God does not stoop to treat it’s enemy like we have a tendancy to treat ours and even goes so far as to ultimately demonstrate and instruct humanity to love them.

Everywhere I look around me, I see examples of people trying with all their might to make life a living hell for their enemies, if not right out condemning them to hell with the presumed authority of God.

God, forgive us. We have no idea what we are doing most of the time. Don’t give up on us. Turn us to your “crazy” ways and us from our “wise” ones. Help us to use our hearts and heads and to hear you and see your ways as brilliant and as subversive as they are.