There is no way that I could begin to count the number of weddings I have been to and been in now. I have experienced quite a variety of weddings, from bare-bones minimalist to extremely extravagant. I have seen short weddings, long weddings, boring weddings, touching weddings, traditional weddings, strange weddings, and everything in between.

Now that I am a "full-time" campus minister, this means two things: 1) I will continue to constantly attend weddings, and 2) I will be asked to officiate weddings (and, indeed, already have been). Now, I have known this for a while so I have been carefully observing how the weddings I attend are officiated. I have developed quite a list of mental notes, but one of my friends called me out today because he could see how I was visibly reacting to something that the minister was doing in the wedding many of us attended.

Now, as a disclaimer, if you are connected to this person I must say that he did a fine job. It was a beautiful wedding that was officiated very well. But there is something that I have seen in many weddings that I must comment upon because I think it subtly undermines the beauty and joy of a lot of wedding ceremonies.

The wedding ceremony is not a marriage counseling session.

Many officiates use the wedding ceremony as a chance to speak about the realities of marriage. Marriage is not easy - this is something that I believe is readily obvious to most people. Marriage will include difficulties. Marriage will include days, weeks, months, and possibly years of challenges and will most definitely include times where both may contemplate ending the relationship. Marriage will include friction, arguments, misunderstanding, conflicts, and dark temptations. Statistically, in America around one out of every two marriages will end in divorce. Since all of these are realities, it seems expedient to many officiates to address these things directly to the new bride and groom. In many cases, the wedding leader does little more than spend 10-20 minutes (and sometimes more, and sometimes much more) standing before the bride, the groom, and the family and friends and speak of the darkness that is to come. This is wrong.

Think I'm exaggerating? I was at a wedding this summer where the minister, who also happened to be the father of the groom, said, and I quote: "The worst that could happen obviously is that this ends in divorce." I am not making this up. I literally almost fell out of the pew.

The wedding is not the place for this. The wedding is the celebration and symbolic binding of a love that is second only to God's love for Jesus Christ and for mankind. This is a radically profound kind of love, especially if we are celebrating the commitment of two Christians to each other under God. The wedding is a celebration of love. The wedding is a joyous communal witnessing of two people coming together for a lifetime of love, service, and devotion to each other. The wedding is the symbolic representation of something that two people having committed to - imitating God. This is a point that the minister today made very well. It is a covenant vow - something that God has been very serious about observing with mankind for a very long time.

To me, these ideas are so powerful that we could discuss them for lifetimes and never see the end of their depth and meaning. If we are spending our time at the wedding celebrating the wonderment of these ideas, why is it that so much talk of the dark side of marriage gets mixed in? Nobody is denying that, but let's put that where it belongs! This is the stuff of marriage counseling, of relationships with other people, of open and honest communication with each other, of daily living in the marriage relationship, and of prayer together before God. The wedding emphasizes the love that will oversee all of the difficulties, not the difficulties themselves!

So, this is my challenge to ministers and other wedding officiates everywhere, including myself: quit the marriage crap talk. We all know that it will be a challenge. We get that. We see it every day. Instead, help the bride and groom and everyone assembled see a glimpse of the glory of a love that comes from God and has manifested itself in a relationship between two people.

And do it briefly. I'm hungry and there is a magnificent spread are cheese cubes at the reception.

In a life where you are supposedly committed to the vague and idealistic task of "making a difference in people's lives," it is often difficult or impossible to know if that is actually the case or not. The distractions of daily details, the almost constant grind, the discouragements of difficult people, and the somewhat continual sense of falling short sometimes put really huge blinders on being able to see that God has actually done real work in affecting someone's life through you.

But, I have also found that when that doubt nags at you the worst, God seems to always give you the exact kind of shot in the arm that you need to know that something has come of your investment in others in some sort of important way. For me, it has been a couple of short notes recently sent to me from unexpected sources. Notes that say, simply and straightforwardly, that something about their lives is different because what God has done through our relationship. I'm not going to lie, I get a little teary-eyed at that. It's something that puts the big picture back into clear view and helps me to remember that something much, much larger than myself is taking place here.

Another thing that it does is help me to know how much I need to be expressing my appreciation to all those in my life who have and continue to impact me in important ways. One of the five "love languages" is words of affirmation, and is definitely one of my "needed" languages. I want it to be one of my top "expressed" ones as well.

So, always have faith that your life is making a difference if you are determined for it to do so. But never judge the success of that by what you see or experience yourself. You may or may not know all the time just exactly how until the rare occurrence that someone actually expresses it to you, which may or may not happen. Either way, press forward.

Saw this one at a garage sale today. It made me laugh.

If there is anyone who reads this blog who is interested in Biblical resources for bringing scripture alive, there is nothing I can recommend more than the movie The Gospel of John.

This semester with Cats for Christ we have done a series called "Who is Jesus?" which has been a journey through the Gospel of John in effort to draw out the identity and characteristics of Christ. I decided to do this through a three-pronged approach every week, beginning with the Sunday morning Bible class, continuing into LIFE Groups, and culminating with Wednesday night worship. I wanted to hit a different learning style with each. On the visual front, I decided to use The Gospel of John and I think it has been one of my best teaching choices in a long time.

Frankly, I do not like most Bible movies, especially ones that are done directly from the text. I have come to believe that scripture is not suited well to be directly adapted as screenplay. It is often wooden and unnatural and doesn't make sense visually. But the producers of The Gospel of John pulled it off brilliantly and believably. I believe it has set the new golden standard in Bible-based movies. Every aspect of it is very well done, from the convincing acting of every major character (especially Henry Ian Cusick as Jesus and an awesome performance from Stephen Russell as Pilate) to the authentic soundtrack to the smooth, conversational, and grandfatherly narration of Christopher Plummer.

Nothing is skipped or changed in this movie from the text - it literally follows the entire book of John verse by verse, word by word, from 1:1 to 21:25. Thus, it gives a visual and dramatic look at every part of the entire gospel - historically accurate due to the use of experts from all around the world but leaving you with the feeling that it was a masterful work of art more than anything. You will never get from just reading the words on the page what this movie delivers with power. There are some things that even the best imagination cannot do while simply reading a page of a book. Our use of it over the entire semester has been very impactful for the students and I recommend that if you are ever in the neighborhood of John for anything that you are doing, whether publicly or privately, include this movie in your plans.


An end-of-semester recap we did using scenes from the movie.

There are some things that happen in the world that are so shockingly appalling that it makes you wonder if they are even real. One of those that is absolutely baffling me right now is the behavior of the government of Myanmar.

As you probably know, a massive cyclone plowed through a large swatch of the southeast Asian nation several days ago, and some estimates have put the death toll as high as 100,000. Entire regions are destroyed and multiple millions are suffering right now. Katrina was an afternoon sprinkle compared to what is going on there right now. Those people need an unprecedented level of worldwide aid. Thankfully, this aid is readily available.

Yet, the government of Myanmar, which is a military junta that has ruled since 1962, is refusing aid efforts and workers. Just hours ago the UN landed two massive planes in Rangoon with enough supplies to feed 95,000 people, but the government has refused to allow them to distribute anything and all of it is sitting idle at the airport. They are refusing to grant visas to aid workers. Their embassy in Bangkok, where huge aid groups are lining up for entry permission into the country, was closed today for a "holiday." Aid offers from the U.S. are being flatly rejected.

It is simply impossible to understand how a government not only idly stands by but also actively resists worldwide help while millions of its own people suffer and die. It states that it is "not ready to accept large-scale foreign assistance." What does it need to be ready? A few million more dying of malaria because of malnutrition and lack of water? International aid exists because of the very FACT that most nations are not ready to handle disasters like this.

So, to the State Peace and Development Council of Myanmar, do not be surprised when you receive the just rewards of the willful abandonment of your own people.

I rarely talk about political things here on the blog. But I have been following the Democratic nomination race very closely and have become perplexed by one thing: the apparent fact that Hillary Clinton is going to push through all the way to the bitter end.

Barack Obama has been the overall leader for almost all of the race. Hillary has had her victories (mainly in California, Texas, Florida, and New York), but Obama has commanded most of the rest of the primaries, (all of the South and the Midwest). But what matters now is the number of delegates that it is likely for each to get among the remaining six primaries and the number of remaining unpledged superdelegates.

So, let's reason this out, using a nice little tool developed by CNN - the Democratic delegate calculator. Before we do anything else, let's look at what may be an extreme and unlikely scenario - Hillary Clinton wins the remaining six primaries by a 20% margin in each. If we set the overall slider to reflect this in each of the elections, we see that Clinton builds her delegates to 1,811 and Obama to 1,923. Even with commanding wins in each election, Obama is still ahead! Now, we sill have the remaining superdelegates to add. So, let's give Clinton a 20% lead there, too. That brings her total to 1,977. Obama still gets 111 for a total of 2,036! It takes 2,025 votes for the nomination.

Now, what is the reality likely to be? Let's look here for what has already taken place. Three of the remaining primaries are Oregon, Montana, and South Dakota, all of which are in the Northwest and Midwest, which has been overwhelmingly dominated by Obama (80%-17% in Idaho, 61%-38% in Wyoming, 68%-32% in Nebraska, and so on). I'm going to take a risk and say that any kind of win for Clinton here is unrealistic. So, that leaves Kentucky, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico. Kentucky and West Virginia sit on what seems to be a dividing line in the eastern half of the country between Clinton and Obama, so these states may go either way. My guess is that it will be close, whatever the results are. I have no idea which way Puerto Rico will go.

So, what do I think realistic numbers will be?
Here's my very conservative guesses:
Oregon: 48%-52% Obama
South Dakota: 60%-40% Obama
Montana: 60%-40% Obama
West Virginia: 55%-45% Clinton
Kentucky: 55%-45% Clinton
Puerto Rico: 49%-51% Obama

I'll leave the superdelegates evenly divided. These numbers give a lot of leeway towards Clinton. We see that even in what I consider to be a best-case scenario for her, she still can't get the nomination. With more realistic numbers, the outlook is even worse.

I'm not anti-Hillary. I just can't figure out why she is still going. She doesn't even have any more money. She spent $6.5 million out of her own pocket in the last month alone. No money, no realistic chance at the nomination, no presidency!