clare elizabeth ponchak

born @ 4:11am, 12/9/05.
6-lbs, 3-oz, 19-inches.
mom & baby are doing fine.

more pictures at our fotoblog site.

20 years

yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of a life-altering moment at a young life youth retreat on a cold december night spent sitting on a rock at the laurelville mennonite church camp. that was the moment i had my evangelical "born again" experience. nothing in my life has been the same since. i've been thinking about things i thought i thought then & think i think now. here's just a few things i've come to believe:

1. while i do not doubt the important role it played in my life, i don't think that kind of born again experience is necessary for salvation. it is important that we decide to own our faith, to make it ours, but i don't think the particular experience of "asking Jesus into my heart" is the only way to do that. salvation is ultimately a gift of God--"it is by grace that we are saved". grace is completely free, utterly unearned, recklessly lavished upon us by our Father, through the work of Jesus. to say that it depends on me asking Jesus to come into my heart puts the onus on me & it gets salvation backwards. it's not Jesus being invited into my life, it's me being invited into the life of the Trinity. it's this understanding that has made me come full circle in my thinking & understanding to re-value my baptism as an infant. granted this is a subject for an entire posting of it's own, infant baptism is the perfect picture of salvation by grace. freely poured out upon someone so obviously incapable of doing anything to deserve or earn it. that faith must be nurtured & if done right will naturally (or supernaturally?) lead to acceptance & ownership of that faith.

2. community is extremely important, even inseparable from our faith. that community is best found in small groups of people committed to experiencing the life of God. those small groups can be found in larger, traditional churches or in smaller, simple home churches. the important thing is that there is love of God & each other, honesty, trust, openness, and shared vision. how worship is done, where it takes place are secondary to this community of the heart & can even overcome apathy and routines of others in the larger body of Christ. going it alone is never an option for a follower of Jesus. this is one concept that hasn't changed in 20 years.

3. God's will if for each of us to be faithful, loving & whole. the job we get, the person we marry, the car we drive, the home we buy are all the context for his will to be experienced, but he doesn't have a perfect job, wife, car, home for us. discovering those are part of what it means to be free. we can drive ourselves crazy--i know i have-- looking for purpose & meaning for our lives through creation when what really matters most is finding our identity in the Creator. callings do not always translate to careers. i can be called to be a pastor & fulfill that destiny without ever being on a church payroll. his callings & gifts are intended for us to use in the context of everyday life. the highest way for me to show faithfulness to his will is to stay faithful to him and to selflessly love my wife & children. if i can succeed in those simple things i have done much with my life.

4. sin isn't as much of a problem as self. sin is simply the result of letting self have control, letting self feed it's hunger. the goal of discipleship in the here & now is to conquer the self and not get sidetracked by focusing on individual sins. this is the new testament's dirty little secret. "he must increase, i must decrease." "take up your cross & deny yourself." "it is no longer i that live but Christ that lives in me." the problem isn't sin, it's me. if i could just stop being so self-focused, self-absorbed, self-loving i would be in much better shape & so would those around me. the real meaning of humility isn't having a proper view of myself, it's having no view of myself at all.

A Thanksgiving Rhyme

'Twas the night of Thanksgiving, but I just couldn't sleep
I tried counting backwards, I tried counting sheep.

The leftovers beckoned - the dark meat and white
but I fought the temptation with all of my might

Tossing and turning with anticipation
the thought of a snack became infatuation.

So, I raced to the kitchen, flung open the door
and gazed at the fridge, full of goodies galore.

I gobbled up turkey and buttered potatoes,
pickles and carrots, beans and tomatoes.

I felt myself swelling so plump and so round,
'till all of the sudden, I rose off the ground.

I crashed through the ceiling, floating into the sky
with a mouthful of pudding and a handful of pie.

But, I managed to yell as I soared past the trees.... 
"Happy eating to all - pass the cranberries, please."

May your stuffing be tasty, may your turkey be plump.
may your potatoes 'n gravy have nary a lump.

May your yams be delicious, may your pies take the prize,
may your Thanksgiving dinner stay off of your thighs!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

(taken from an email sent to me by a friend)

sign of the apocalypse

this was an actual quote taken from the foxnews.com website today about the french riots:

 

"Only 1,173 cars burned in 226 municipalities across country last night; police consider that a good sign."

 

if that's the good news, i'd hate to see the bad news.

tempus fugit

i can't believe i haven't blogged since sept 3rd. time really does fly. here's some ramblings & updates (the good, the bad & the ugly)...

i found out today that i have diabetes. it really sucks to write that sentence. i'll find out more tomorrow as to whether i'll need insulin or just meds & diet. genetics is a bitch. seems bad blood (cholesterol, triglycerides, diabetes, etc) runs in my family & i got nailed. still trying to adjust to the news.

lisa is 32 weeks along today. baby clare is growing & kicking and we can't wait to meet her. we've finally have her room ready.

matthew's house is moving along. we formed a second home church in august and both groups are doing very well. i took october off from leading & dan schoonover did a great job leading us through lectio divina. we'll probably continue that through november as well.

i finally figured out blogger's post-by-email thing so hopefully i'll be able to stay more current with this blog. i'm sooo glad we switched from a fee-based blog (typepad) to free blogger because i would definitely not be getting my money's worth at this rate.

i started carpooling with two other co-workers & it really makes the 50-mile commute almost bearable. on my non-driving weeks i can get a cat nap in on the way to work & home. it's helping alot with our budget considering gas prices and has helped reduce road-rage related stress too. as someone who normally values my independence & had previously resisted carpools i would now highly recommend them.

my kids

i was just thinking today about what my kids have been exposed to compared to my childhood. they have witnessed the greatest terrorist attack the world has ever seen (9/11) , possibly the greatest natural disaster in world history (2004 tsunami), and now the greatest natural disaster in american history (hurricane katrina). i honestly can't remember a whole lot of major events from my childhood. i can remember gas rationing with odd & even fill up days, the assination attempts on president regan & pope john paul 2 and the space shuttle challenger disaster.

i'm not an end times fanatic. i figure Jesus is coming back at the appointed time & i may or may not be here to see it. i don't run around looking for "signs of the times". i don't buy the whole pre-trib rapture thing & if anything i'm an amillennialist. i just find it odd that these major events have occured in the short life span of my kids (9 & 11 years old).

tom

Blessings

I have been kind of hesitant to blog about this but I think it is time. Tom and I are expecting another baby! I am currently 20 weeks along. The reason I was hesitant is because my pregnancies are considered high risk. With my autoimune condition - Mixed Connective Tissue Disorder, my overactive immune system tries to reject my pregnancies and I start having lots of contractions early on. They actually started at 7 weeks with this one. With my other two I went into preterm labor and was on meds and bedrest but fortunately made it to 36 weeks. So far with this one my doctor is trying to keep me off the meds and he just told me to listen to my body and take it easy. Walking around a store can set me off so I have been good and keeping my feet up as much as I can.

Anyway, even though we were content with our 2 girls we believed and it has been prophecied over us that God had more children for us so we never used birth control and it took 9 years to conceive this one. Today we had an ultrasound and found out we are having another girl! We are excited. Tom loves his little ladies. The name we are probably going to go with is Clare Elizabeth.

Keep us in your prayers that the rest of this pregnancy will go smoothly.
Lisa

computers suck & i'm a fool

my wonderful, three year old dell computer died on me this week. without warning the hard drive crashed taking with it our digital family photos, my mp3's, our checkbook & matthew's house's checkbook, matthew's house's website and many other things. the definite lesson to be learned here is to regularly back-up your data. that's where the fool part comes in. my last back-up was done in september of 2004. at least i have that much. i took the hard drive to an IT friend and the geek squad and best buy. they couldn't get any thing from it.

on another note, if you haven't noticed already, we've moved our blog from typepad to blogger. considering how inconsistant we are at blogging i couldn't justify paying for a blog site ($80/yr) when i could get a perfectly fine free site. typepad was great but blogger has made some serious improvements to narrow the gap.

tom