things I don’t understand, part 12

Why churches must add an extra “e” to their names.

Owning a ferret.

The point of PO boxes at my post office. When I receive a package they refuse to accept it.

Driving across town to save $0.02 a gallon on gas.

Graffiti. You’re making your own neighborhood uglier.

Why scantily-dressed women with names like “AriannaVerySexy” find it strategic to follow me on Twitter.

Green tea. It tastes like grass.


Stretch hummers.

Churches offering “Christian sympathy.” Is there some other kind? What makes it different?

Why my grocery store sells ping pong balls.

Why they are displayed by the paper towels.

Death metal.




This. (Hat tip to my buddy Todd who found it.)

divine Wright

Years ago a friend asked me why I believed Christianity was true. I said it was because the story hangs together.

Genesis begins with the creation of the heavens and the earth and Revelation leaves us with the promise of a new heaven and new earth. The 14 generations noted in each phase of Matthew’s genealogy are sets of seven, indicating perfection (if not an exhaustive listing). The first-born sons of the Israelites are spared from the final plague before the exodus, but this mercy sets in motion a new sacrificial system and paves the way for The Son to redeem us all.

Perhaps it’s my hard-wired love of story or maybe it’s just my compulsive need for symmetry and closure, but the rich symbolism and connections running through the biblical account are one reason I believe God’s behind it all.


So I was captivated by N.T. Wright’s lectures on the Gospels this past Saturday. The good bishop spoke at a church here in Nashville and more than 500 of us crammed into the stuffy gym to sit on plastic chairs, take notes until our hands ached, and thoroughly love the experience.

Wright’s theme was we have missed the big picture of the Gospels: that they are the story of how Israel’s God became king of the world and the challenging, paradigm-shifting ramifications of that idea.

He urged us to consider four aspects of the four accounts: Jesus as the culmination of the story of Israel, Jesus as God’s return to his people after leaving the temple, Jesus as the beginning and renewal of the church, and Jesus introducing the empire of God vs. the empire of the world.


It was a full day and I’d need to write at least three more blog posts to summarize all the great material. But I was especially happy when—in addition to amazing discourses on Old Testament prophecy or the theology of suffering or a million other things—he also tossed in fascinating insights about the story.

For instance, those three generational accounts in Matthew not only symbolize perfection in each set of 14, but the overall structure—two 7s, two 7s, two 7s—point to Jesus as the seventh 7—the complete fulfillment, the year of jubilee.

Samuel foreshadows John the Baptist. Isaiah 55 replaces the thorns of Genesis 3 with juniper. Jesus defeats temptation where the Israelites could not—the wilderness.

On the sixth day of creation God creates man before resting on the seventh day. On the sixth day of a dark week 2000 years ago Pilate announced, “Here is the man!” before Jesus spent the seventh day “resting” in the tomb. (Implication? The 8th day of the new creation is going to be awesome.) And baptism is a symbol not only of our death to self and our emergence into new life, but of the Israelites’ rescue in the parted Red Sea, the creation of life from the waters, and the rescues of Noah and Jonah.

Maybe this is is stuff every first-year seminary student already knows, but we’ve already established I have some stuff to learn. One of Bishop Wright’s books has to be next on the list for Jen University. I’m starting Simply Christian today. Who wants to join me?

a list for friday—thoughts from ten days in Europe

I promise this will be the last post about my trip (although you can see 7,000 pictures on Facebook). It was a wonderful experience, jet lag and all. Here are a few thoughts from my journal.

– Dear Air France: it is legal on both continents to keep the cabin temperature above 55 degrees. Just so you know.

– If you look up “beautiful,” “delightful,” or “charming” in the dictionary, I’m pretty sure it shows pictures of Paris in May.

– French men will flirt with any woman who breathes. We hadn’t showered or slept for 30 hours and a shopkeeper wanted me and Breanne to drink champagne with him. If we’d been clean and non-grouchy he might have proposed.

– Bree is flexible and a ton of fun to travel with. We share a love of museums, an interest in history, a willingness to ruin our dinner by eating apple strudel at 3 in the afternoon, a love of rainy days, AND she can read a map. Which I can’t.

– There are actually people masochistic enough to climb the stairs to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I am not one of them. Neither is Bree—another reason she’s quality.


– If there is a better breakfast than espresso, baguettes, cheese, butter and jam, I have yet to eat it.

– I work too much. Okay, not a revelation. I was practically giddy at the thought of 10 whole days without email, deadlines, errands, chores and task lists.

– The French have a reputation for being rude, and it’s true they don’t much like our attempts at speaking their language. But on the whole we found them much nicer than the Germans. The Deutschland’s waiters are especially grouchy. Local expats said it’s part of the culture since they don’t work for tips. Not wanting to disturb local culture, we just didn’t tip the nasty ones very much.

– The Louvre is stuffy, crowded and hard to navigate.


– The guidebooks imply Berthillon ice cream is so good the world will implode if you visit Paris without trying it. They may be right.

– I’m glad I got a Kindle.

– I wish the US had the cafe culture of Europe’s major cities, where you can sit outside and people watch, read, write or talk as long as you want. I would do most of my work from a cafe table if I lived there.

– Also, America needs more trains.


– French women wear scarves and look effortlessly chic. I look like a woman wearing a really big piece of material around her neck.

–Every store of every size sells beer and wine, and there’s no legal drinking age. Yet we saw very few drunk people, and most of the ones we did encounter were Americans. Make of that what you will.

–Some of Paris is propped up by huge underground catacombs of bones from its 18th and 19th century residents.

– The German people are a paradox. They love rules—more than once we were instructed (without explanation) to carry our bags a certain way in a museum or leave by the exit door instead of the entrance door right next to it. Then there’s the U Bahn and S Bahn trains–there are no turnstiles or barriers to walking on one without buying a ticket, yet everyone stood in line to buy them and validate them in automated machines before each ride.

It’s not surprising to me that this rigid, authority-pleasing group has historically been so easily influenced by dictators. On the other hand, there was also a lot of the random—museums arranged neither chronologically nor thematically, train lines shut down without warning, restaurants without signs. It’s an interesting dynamic.


– Their nuclear shelters are still ready to go. Can’t be too careful.

– If you spend five hours at Dachau, and you see the crematorium, and you walk through the prison, and you see pictures of the liberation, and you read about the torture, you will not talk much on the way home.

–I like sausages and sauerkraut more than I expected to.

– I still don’t like beer.

– Berlin has history from the Renaissance, World War 2, and the Cold War—sometimes all on the same block, along with some of the cheapest food and coolest museums in Europe. I’m in love. Also, unlike Paris, it never smells like pee.


– I need to go more often. I love the USA, but on the whole I think cities across the pond are more beautiful, have better food, and offer a richer culture. I’m already saving for the next trip.

a list for friday–things I will be doing for the next ten days

Tomorrow I leave for ten glorious days traveling around France and Germany with my friend Bree.


Things I will do:

–admire the Sacre Coeur

–glide down the Seine in a Bateau Moche

–temporarily forgo vegetarianism

–shuffle through the crowd to see the Mona Lisa


–take the opportunity to say something about “flying buttresses” at Notre Dame


–feel light-headed at the top of the Eiffel Tower

–buy a tacky souvenir from a museum about East Germany

–tour the catacombs beneath Paris

–walk down the Champs-Elysees at night, missing my boyfriend

–be disgusted by at least one hostel bathroom

–eat something that ends in “wurst”


–try to sleep on an overnight train

–be left speechless by Dachau

–ride a bike through Berlin

–visit a castle

–gain weight


Things I will NOT do:

Work.

new conference

A few weeks ago I asked for help brainstorming answers to the questions “How did we get to a post-Christian America?” and “Where do we go from here?”

As expected, you shared some excellent thoughts and they helped me form my own response and shoot my (super low-tech) video for the Destiny Leader online conference.

The event starts this Thursday, May 5 at 8 am PST/11 am EST and is scheduled to last about four hours. You can watch any and all of it for free by registering on the website. And believe me, you want to be watching. I am the weak link in a strong chain of speakers including my dad (yay!), DJ Chuang, Mike Foster, Shaun King, Miles McPherson, Carlos Whittaker, Jud Wilhite, and even a couple of women (glad to be on the list with you, Allie and Lucille).

This is one of the busiest weeks of my year (more on that Friday) but I plan to tune in for as much as possible. These are truly good questions, and I can’t wait to hear some answers.

Check out the conference here.