Holy Hairstyles

Should you be forced to cut your hair?

I was talking with someone just the other day who had been raised in a pretty extreme holiness church.  What I mean is that particular church, or stream of the Christian church, tends to focus a great deal on the different rules you must follow to be holy.  If you do not do these certain things (or if you do other things) then you are not Christian.  One of the rules that ought to be followed is in regards to hair length for men (and women).  What is the rule?  Why would a Christian church teach that men cannot have long hair?  What is the scriptural mandate for this?

I have worn my hair both long and short.  It is currently on the longer side, so I thought these would be interesting questions to explore, especially since the current sermon series is on holiness.

What is the rule?

The rule is that men cannot have long hair.  “Long” is a subjective term.  Is it covering the ears?  Is it to the nape of the neck?  Is it to the shoulders?  The follow up rule is that women ought to have long hair, and while that does not seem to cause as much trouble, there are those extreme holiness churches that, God bless them, strive to be entirely consistent on this.  Under this rule men cannot have long hair.  It is a “disgrace,” or “unnatural” and a man cannot have long hair and be a Christian.  Admittedly, there are more “liberal” churches that may not question your salvation on account of your hair length, but they would still certainly not consider it proper or the thing that a Christian man ought to do. Continue reading “Holy Hairstyles”

Contentment and miracles

Contentment

During my prayer time today I was contemplating contentment. What would it mean to be truly and totally content in the Lord? I’m not sure what exactly spurred this (besides the Holy Spirit working in my mind), but I think there was something in the Psalm reading from the morning office that got me thinking. The Psalm was 45:1-8 and it is a song of praise for the Lord as King and warrior. It’s a stirring image. I reread it and it struck me on how the hopes of the Psalmist were totally upon this King, the Lord. From that, I think, comes contentment. From there I thought of Paul’s writing about contentment, so after prayer, I looked it up. Philippians 4:11b, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have.”

Contentment can be a tricky thing to pin down. There’s always “more,” and there is usually something we “used to have.” Focusing on the “used to” and the “more out there,” seems to keep our attention on either the past or the future, but definitely not on the present. How are we content with the present? Perhaps other people have an easier time with contentment. I don’t think I’m one of those people, so contentment in all things strikes me as miraculous.

It would be helpful at this point to look at the whole paragraph from Philippians in which this verse is found. Continue reading “Contentment and miracles”

Sharing the Divine Life

The prayer for the week last week out of the Divine Hours is:
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Wesleyan movement focused on holiness in a way that really connected and affected people in their day. Holiness in the Wesleyan sense, is the idea that God’s sanctifying grace will work in the life and heart of the believer and continue to perfect them. In other words, God loves you as you are, but God loves you too much to leave you there. Holiness – the Wesleyan perspective is that we ought to expect something to happen in us, by the Holy Spirit, because of Christ, to the glory of God the Father.

There are a couple of articles that I have been meaning to link for a bit that have to do with discipleship. I’ve been thinking about what it means to make disciples in the church and what that implies in regards to our leadership (or more specifically my leadership). Are we focused on the depth of people’s relationships with Christ? What does that look like? How do we lead in that? The first article is in regards to leadership and it is titled “An Unspoiled View.” The second article is a brief interview on the blog “Church Marketing Sucks,” and I linked it specifically because it mentions counting “life change” in coming up with measurements by which to judge the effectiveness of the church. They are interesting reading.

One of my biggest desires is to be in the midst of something exciting that God is doing – and God’s restoration of the human dignity that He created is an exciting thing to see, every time I catch a glimpse of it.

for our natures to change

I love Christmas music. Every year I spend some time looking for new songs or different renditions of old songs I enjoy. This year I found a song by Frightened Rabbit, a Scottish independent rock group that I enjoy. It is called, “It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop.” They sing that it is Christmas, so we should stop conflicts and actions of hatred.

“We’re built to give at least once each year
Now that’s better than never I guess
And life might never get better than this
With the perfect excuse for our natures to change”

It’s a fairly common sentiment, I think, that somehow we ought to treat each other better during Christmas, or that we ought to be more generous during Christmas. Continue reading “for our natures to change”

In the Midst of the Storm

Here is a piece I wrote for our newsletter for October.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
John 6:16-20

Just the other night a group of pretty intense thunderstorms passed through the area. They knocked down trees in town and the church was without half of its power the next day. School was canceled in Carson City due to power outages from the storm. The storms had high winds, constant flashes of lightning followed by rumbles of thunder, and plenty of rain.

Our kids were in bed when the storms picked up intensity, and they were both awake. Elijah, who is almost 4 now, has become convinced that he enjoys thunderstorms, even if they do get a bit scary, so he was doing pretty good that night. Alexandra, on the other hand, just turned 2 and did not care for the noise and flashes of lightning at all. Continue reading “In the Midst of the Storm”

Spiritual Harvest

Here is a piece I wrote for our July Newsletter.  I thought it would be good to share via the blog.

I really enjoy my garden. I don’t know how good of a gardener I am, but I’m good enough to have tomatoes, peppers, and other veggies to eat at the end of the summer. There is nothing like vine ripened tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumbers from your own garden. We celebrate the harvest with BLT’s, stuffed peppers, homemade coleslaw, and fresh broccoli. This year I’ve tried growing lettuce for the first time, and already it has been fun to step out the back door and grab some fresh lettuce to top our grilled burgers. Continue reading “Spiritual Harvest”