Well I've recently finished orchestrating a blog for our Guatemala missions trip and with a lot of help from the ten other team members I think it went smashingly - so here I am starting a blog of my own. I've dabbled with keeping a blog from time to time - sharing my thoughts and opinions but I've always fallen away from the commitment when I go through a season of dryness and frankly run out of interesting things to say (or at least as my wife would remind me - things that I think are interesting). Well one of the lessons that I learned in my Guatemala blogging experience is that it's a lot easier to commit to blogging when there is a clearly defined purpose to the blog and when there is a clearly defined end date. So with those lessons in mind I'm daring to take a stab at blogging once again.
This time around the season of life that this blog is going to cover is the season of Lent (which started yesterday for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Church calendar) and the subject of the blog is Transformers.
Now before you roll your eyes and hit the back button let me explain the deeper purpose behind the subject and why I think it's slightly more redeeming than it seems at first glance. Transformers (those robot toys from the 80's and more recently from poorly written Hollywood blockbusters) are a hobby of mine (my loving wife would argue for the definition of an unhealthy obsession) and I collect Transformers paraphernalia. Copies of the old TV shows, t shirts, posters, novelty items and of course - the toys. Over the years I have built a significant collection of Transformer toys - many of which are on display in my office at the church. I'm sure that many a parishioner have had a good chuckle at Pastor Chris' eccentricities. Well over time my collection has grown to a point where it would be downright unprofessional to keep any more in my office than are already there (some may argue that I've already reached that point) and Joanna is not particularly fond of me displaying too many in the house (I think she finds them a little creepy) so I have taken to storing them in our basement. Packaged up for preservation in their original boxes - some of them never even opened they sit taking up space and never seeing the light of day yet month after month my collection grows.
I have just recently returned from Guatemala on a short term missions trip (I only actually arrived home earlier today) and while on that missions trip I was confronted by God about my own greed and materialism. How could I look at people living in such poverty with such need while I sat comfortable at home in my life of North American luxuries making justifications for my consumeristic mindset collecting and hoarding children's toys? As I pondered the lessons that God was teaching me that thought churned in my stomach like a bad burrito and it made me physically ill. Surely I could do more, surely I could do something to change, surely Christ's work in my life deserved a better return on investment than I was generating. So I made a decision to change some things - the season of Lent was beginning the very day I was scheduled to return to Saskatchewan so I thought it a happy coincidence - or day I say providence - that I would be given such a convenient framework through which to exercise the infancy of my new way of thinking and living. So this is what I'm going to do:
For the 40 Days of Lent I will be going through my collection of Transformers in storage and selecting a figure to sell. At the end of the season (or perhaps at several junctures along the way - I haven't figured it out yet) I will list those figures on eBay for 99 cents (to guarantee they sell) and trust God to sell them for much more than that. Any money generated by the sales of these toys will be given to a charitable project that I'm trusting God to reveal to me over the course of this journey. I'm also committed for accountability to featuring every figure I'm parting with on this blog over the course of Lent and journalling (publicly) through this experience so that I will be forced to reflect on the reason behind this discipline for the entire season leading up to Easter. My hope is that the theme of Transformations will extend from the toys I'm parting with to my life and walk with Christ; eventually transforming me into a person with more kingdom oriented priorities.
Since Lent started yesterday and I didn't get home to begin this until today, my next post will be a double dose of decluttering as I part with figures for both day one and day two of Lent. But for now let me leave you with an invitation to join me on this journey. Please follow this blog, read the posts and if you are so inclined, hold me accountable. Harass me on facebook or by email if I'm not keeping up with my commitments and please if God uses anything I say in this journal to convict, encourage, rebuke, exhort or otherwise speak to you please interact in the comments. Also feel free to join the conversation if you have a similar story or if you are using this season of Lent to allow God to reshape your life as well. And lastly, if you have any suggestions as to where I should be donating the proceeds of this sale I would love to hear your suggestions. My prayer this season is that as God changes me he will perhaps use my life as an example to speak to some of you too.
Thanks for listening and God bless,
Chris
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