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This is my last in a series of three posts.

I’ve been talking about a group of people who made something, literally out of nothing, in Northern Uganda. What they started out with was an empty field and some dirt; what they’re going to end up with soon is a school for 250 high school students. These are kids from IDP camps, kids who were child soldiers or in other ways were affected by Uganda’s twenty plus year civil war. The folks building this school didn’t surround themselves with rolls of plans or a bunch of meetings, they surrounded themselves with a community of people and a big idea. They sent me a video a few weeks ago while they were still stacking bricks to show the progress.

When they started, I got a call and they said they had just made the first brick out of what they had – dirt, and they were putting put it in place. This morning I got an email from these same guys. Sixty thousand bricks later, they told me that the buildings which were in process in the video had all been completed, they had just put the last brick in place today and the buildings were ready to start putting roofs on. It reminds me of the people who followed Jesus. He took what they brought to Him, even if seemed like an impossible idea, a community of friends and some dirt. And somehow He multipled it into something better; something more useful; something which would serve others. And the hope created and then left over in the process, could fill a dozen baskets.

I told you yesterday about a group of people who got an idea to build a school in the bush in Northern Uganda. A couple of them packed up their things, moved to an empty field in Africa and just started building. That’s it. They just started. And they were so busy thinking about all of the possibilities, they forgot about all of the obstacles.

Jesus talked a lot about just starting too. He said that if we just started, it could change everything. And a couple people took Him up on it. He also said that if they just started, they’d risk being misunderstood. He told His friends that people would even think they were crazy for living thier lives this way – but like the disciples, these guys packed up their things and went with Him into this adventure. They didn’t have a plan or a committee or even tools; just a big idea about a big God. God, who came as a kid, who said He loves kids and said we’d learn a lot from kids too, if we’d just make time and a place for them in our lives. This group of people decided to make time and a place for 250 kids. Look at what’s happening.

What seems impossible to you, that you’re ready to start?

I was pretty proud of myself when I made a picture frame once. The reason I was so proud is that I had to overcome so many obstacles to build it. First, it took me a while to find just the right wood. Then I went to the store and bought an expensive circular saw to make a couple mitered cuts.  Then I had to buy some expensive wood glue and then even more expensive clamps to hold the pieces I cut together. After a couple days and a whole bunch of money, I stood with a pile of tools behind me holding the crooked frame I’d built.

Let me tell you about a couple guys who moved from San Diego and from the Pacific Northwest to Gulu, Uganda this year and are building an entire school campus – out of dirt! They figured out, with my law partner and some friends in Gig Harbor, how to compress the clay in the dirt, with a little cement, into blocks and are making state of the art buildings out in the bush – with nothing. You won’t believe what these guys are doing to build a school for the 250 kids and 30 teachers at the Restore Academy in Northern Uganda.

It reminds me of the creation story in Genesis, but it’s even cooler in a way, because I know these guys. They’re just like me and you, actually. And they had a lot of questions, probably like the disciples did. They asked me what construction materials we had to work with and I told  them – “dirt”. They asked if there was water and I told them there wasn’t – so they dug a well with freinds at Water4.  They asked how much money they had to spend and I told them – “not much”. They asked how many trained construction people they would have to help them out and I told them – “none”.  Then they asked who would train the workers if they could find some and I said – “you”.  So they asked when they had to finish the school construction by and I told them – “February 2012″.

They looked at each other, looked back at me, crossed their arms at the same time and said with one voice ….

“We’re in.”

You’ve got to see what these secretly incredible guys from the Restore Academy in Uganda have done. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as I’ve tried to follow Jesus, it’s that the poeple that do, often don’t know what an obstacle is anymore.

We have a place up in Canada we call the Malibu Lodge. It’s isolated at the end of an inlet and is only accessible by taking a boat or a seaplane fifty miles beyond where all the roads end. Because it’s so remote, we need to make just about everything, including our own electricity.

We generate power for the Lodge from a glacier on the property. It’s not that complicated, really. We use a river that has carved its way down one of the mountains. Two thousand feet up the side of this mountain, we collect water out of the river in a pipe and the force of the gravity pulling the water through the pipe is enough to make a turbine spin in a hydroelectric plant we built near sea level.  I’m still amazed that gravity and a little water we can generate 100 kilowatts of power every minute of every day for free – forever.

The equipment we bought to make the electricity is pretty cheap, actually. It’s building a road up the side of the mountain to the intake that’s expensive. Every foot of the three miles of road we’ve built so far has been blasted out of solid granite and for any dad with young boys, the idea of blasting miles of road together out of granite is irresistible. Nothing says fatherhood more, I guess, than a couple sticks of dynamite.

This winter, I decided that we’d build a bridge over the river at the end of the road. In order to build it, we needed to pour large concrete foundations on each side. These concrete foundations needed to be sturdy to carry the weight of the sixty foot span and the steel I-beams for the bridge. What I didn’t realize though, is how many trips back and forth through the river our big excavator would need to make in order to build the foundation in on the far side.  The way it worked out, with all of those trips, we actually ended up building a road through the river. And, guess what? Now we don’t need a bridge.  I suppose we could still use the bridge because it’s been built and everything, but who would want to go over a river when you could drive right through it?

We all set out to build things in our lives. Things like careers, or relationships, or faith, or confidence or even organizations.  And in the process of setting out to build one thing, sometimes we discover that we’ve built something else too. Something even more useful; more meaningful; more enduring; something that’s a better fit for us.

Some people talk about “building bridges” to people too. Usually, it’s when they’re describing how they’re trying to reach out to a friend who’s in the middle of their pain or where the gravity of life has become just too much for them. People talk about bridges when they talk about how God wants to connect with us too. But I don’t think I’ll use that phrase anymore.  You see, I’ve built a bridge. And while I ended up with what I set out to make – a way to get over a river, I ended up with something even better in the process – a way to get through it. I think that maybe God had in mind the same thing for us when He gave us our friendships. We think at first that we’ve built these friendships to help us get over the difficulties in life when actually, we figure out later that God was building those friendships to help us get through them.

When have you been surprised by how you started building one thing in your life and ended up with another?

One Christmas Eve when the kids were young, Sweet Maria and I we were up late wrapping presents. We were almost delirious and got most of the tape and ribbons stuck to ourselves. We had picked out just the right gifts for each of our children. Things they would love. Things which reflected what they were hoping for and who they were becoming. We finished up and slid the presents under the tree. “Won’t the kids love these?” we whispered to each other in the pre-dawn hours.

The next morning, the kids ran downstairs to the Christmas tree. Because the kids were only four feet tall, it must have looked like there was a mountain of presents there and everyone grabbed one with their name on it. The sound of excited giggling and tearing wrapping paper filled the room for a moment, but then was followed by absolute silence as the dull thud of
shattered expectations began ricocheting off of our decorated walls.

I don’t remember who ended up with what, but I think Richard opened up a doll, Lindsey got a BB gun and some ammo and Adam got a blender and box of cookie mix.  Instead of celebrating the gifts we’d picked out specially for each of our children, we spent the morning sorting out who was meant to get what. The reason for the confusion,chaos and disappointment under our roof was simple. Somehow, between one and two in the morning in our exhaustion leading up to Christmas, all of the tags for the gifts got mixed up and were put on the wrong presents.  I don’t know if it was Sweet Maria who did it or if it was me, but I bet it was me.

It’s easy for us to do the same thing in life. Just about now, many of us are feeling exhausted from a long year. A year punctuated by tremendous joys, painful sorrows, rich family times as well as incredibly lonely times. Times when our expectations were running high and when we’ve also felt let down by certain of our circumstances. For many of us, we’ve experienced tremendous uncertainty and periods of exhaustion too. If you’re like me, I mislabel my worries about the future as fear; my pride as regret; and my insecurity as anxiety. It’s the time where it would be easy to mislabel the other gifts around us too.

Let’s not mislabel the gifts. We’ll call our fears, regrets and insecurities what they are – they’re not gifts; they are residue of something else going on in our lives. They are probably exhaustion speaking with the wrong tag on it. They aren’t the things God picked out for us and are just noise in our lives.  What God picked for us was something more special; something better suited to us; something we were hoping for; something that points us towards who God is and who He wants us to become.  And we don’t even need to act surprised when we figure out that gift either. It’s our friends.

Forget counting sheep. Our friends are the blessings God wants us staying up late counting.  A few of us have the wrong people in our lives and if you do, you need to lose them. But for most of us, He’s picked out just the right friends for us to do life with. Ones who know what we’re hoping for and what God is hoping for us too. They know who we’re becoming in the confusion, chaos and disappointments of life and even in that, they continue to point us towards God with their lives.

This year, I’m going to make sure that I don’t I let someone sneak under the tree and mislabel all of the presents. Instead, I’m going to stand watch with a couple friends as God reminds us again of His tremendous love for us in the celebrations around a child King. Jesus is our gift; He’s the one with our name on Him and not surprisingly, He gave us a gift that we need the most in life – some great friends to do it with.  He’s left behind our friends with our names labeled on each one. Friends who are well suited to us; who point us towards Jesus; who help us figure out what we should be hoping for.  And before He left, Jesus told the ones who traveled with Him that He had a new name to describe how He felt about us - He said now He calls us friends too.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Bob

I got my law firm together this week for a Christmas party. I didn’t want us all to go out to lunch because I’m not good at holiday lunches, really. They always feel a little forced and awkward to me. This year my law partner and I took everyone tunnel jumping instead. It’s like skydiving, but you’re indoors and jump into a wind tunnel blowing 160 miles per hour. They say it simulates a free fall from 18,000 feet, but to me it feels like sticking your whole body outside the window of an Indy car as it races down one of the straightaways.

Tunnel jumping is a lot like jumping out of a real plane which I’ve done a couple times. The first time was in college.  There was a place down by the boarder of Mexico and for $40 you could throw yourself out of an old Cessna on a Saturday.  The training consisted of jumping off a pile of boxes – twice.  That was it.  “Fold into the ground” our twenty year old instructor who was wearing a tie dye shirt, sandals and a ponytail said to us with confidence. I figured there was a good chance that was exactly what would end up happening to us, because without any other training, a half hour later we jumped from a plane using what’s called a “static line.” It’s a piece of rope which is tied to the plane and it pulls the rip cord on your parachute for you.

I don’t think they still use static lines with novice skydivers. Probably because too many people ended up folding into the ground when it didn’t work.  When I jumped that first time, I knew I was betting my life on a piece of rope and because of that, I remember experiencing that terrible falling feeling as soon as I left the plane.

The second time I went skydiving was just last year. This time I did a free-fall from 10,000 feet with my sons and another buddy. I assumed some lawyers had been involved since my first jump years earlier, because this time, rather than using static lines to pull the rip cord, now they strap a guy to your back. I asked him if he knew what he was doing and he told me he’d done this thousands of times and he wasn’t scared. It wasn’t just what he said, but the way that he said it that gave me confidence as they connected us together using lots of straps.

We flew up to altitude and moved to the door. I could feel my heart beating in my ears as we counted down from three and then threw ourselves out into space. Because we were so high this time, we rocketed downward through the air for 45 seconds before the parachute opened. I had expected to feel that terrible falling feeling which marked my first try at skydiving. But this time I didn’t feel like I was falling at all. I felt like I was flying. I think I know why.

My first time skydiving, I had no idea what I was doing. I also knew that I was betting my life on a piece of worn rope. The second time I jumped was different. This time, I wasn’t hanging my life by a piece of rope. I was connected to someone who actually knew what they were doing. Someone who had done it before. Someone who wasn’t scared. Someone I could really trust.

I trust God for many of the same reasons I trusted the guy who I was strapped to when I went skydiving the second time. God came as a person, just like me.  He experienced life, just like I have and He’s dealt with the things I deal with – thousands of times. It’s not just what He’s said about life, but the way He’s said it that’s given me confidence. Most of all, I’ve felt connected to Him. Not just by rope or so many straps, but by grace and hope and love which hold me even tighter.

When you’re in a wind tunnel it’s not very scary. If something goes wrong, they just shut off the wind and fix it.  In life, it’s not as predictable and not as easy to shut down. Each of us has experienced that terrible falling feeling as we’re hurling downwards in a relationship, in business, in school, in life, even in holidays, imagining that we just might fold into the ground. And when we feel that way, we need to remind ourselves that we’re not connected to this life by a piece of rope, but by a person we can trust. And when we do, instead of feeling like we’re falling, we’ll feel like we’re flying.

Question: What makes you feel like you’re flying or falling these days?  I’d love to post your comments.

I’m taking the surgeon who repaired the damage done by a witch doctor to a brave little Ugandan boy out flying in a seaplane I have up the Pacific Northwest today. This doctor did what seemed impossible to me. He made new body parts out of old ones for this little boy. This trip is a small thank you for what he did. He loves to fly, and I’m delighted that I can help make that happen.

The plane is called a DeHavilland Beaver and it takes off and lands on the water. I can’t lie, this plane is tough, it’s rugged, it’s all guy.  There’s no sound quite like the one it makes when it’s huge radial engine starts and a cloud of oil soaked blue smoke explodes out of it.  Because it was built over fifty years ago, the engine leaks oil.  Not a little oil; lots of it.  There’s nothing wrong with the plane, it’s just what Beavers were designed in the factory to do; they leak. The oil gets on the windows, on the wings, on the passengers, on everything. It’s just great! People who own Beavers say with tongue in cheek, that you know when they’ve run out of oil, because they stop leaking.

I understand more about my faith when I think about that Beaver. We were made to leak as well; we were made to leak Jesus. We’re the ones who are supposed to love each other extravagantly, spontaneously, not just on Wednesday nights or Sunday mornings. And when we do, people might look at us a little funny, like there’s something wrong with us. But there isn’t. It’s what we were made to do. When we love each other extravagantly, our love gets on everybody and everything.

I know when I’m fearful, stressed out, distracted or hedging too. In those times, it feels like I’ve run out of love and what I notice always happens first, is that I stop leaking. My love isn’t as messy or spontaneous anymore. It doesn’t get on anything. It comes across as painfully polite, merely pleasant, barely tolerant, it’s somewhere in the mid-range rather that an explosion from a big engine and lots of blue smoke. When I stop leaking, I’m reminded that I’m not living the way I was designed to from the factory.

I’ve seen new parts made out of old ones by this surgeon. I’ve seen God do the same impossible thing with entire people. People like me. He takes the old version of us and whispers to us that we were made to leak our love. He tells us to do it with extravagance; to let it get on everything and everybody. What I like about the way God extravagantly loves us, is that He doesn’t make us love Him or anyone else either. Instead, He lets us decide every day whether we’ll play it safe or leak what we love.

When I get out of that plane this afternoon it will have oil all over it; I’ll have oil all over me and I’ll smile hoping that everyone who’s been near you will have evidence of what you love all over them too.

My friends at Thomas Nelson are looking for a top-notch marketing mind to fill the Senior Director of Marketing position in one of their non-fiction publishing divisions.

Here’s what they told me about it.

You’d be working with a team of professionals who love books, love publishing, and have a great team chemistry. Some notable authors they publish include Donald Miller, John MacArthur, Mark Driscoll, and Michael Hyatt among many others. They also have a passion for discovering and developing new voices. The chosen candidate will lead a full marketing team and have the chance to shape the vision and marketing philosophy of the group.

Here’s how they describe their ideal candidate:

•   5-7 years of marketing experience in Christian publishing or a related field
•   Has a strong passion for books in general and Christian publishing in particular
•   Can articulate a clear and compelling philosophy of effective book marketing in a digital age
•   Have a track record of building, developing, and motivating teams
•   Be experienced at building a strong relationships and strategic partnerships
•   Be well versed in connecting customers with content and integrating direct-to-consumer and retail
•   Possess strong presentation skills
•   Has strong technical and creative writing skills
•   Embraces new technologies and innovative approaches

If you’re interested in the position, you can send your resume to TNMarketing@thomasnelson.com.

Good luck!

Active Link to Job Opening:

http://business.thomasnelson.com/employment/JobDetail.do;jsessionid=CA88B4F39D90EAE4BBE8C326B5A628E5?jobPostingId=1114

I took an early flight out of Chicago O’Hare this morning for the West Coast. We tried to pull over to the curb just as dawn was breaking. As we did, a traffic cop standing in the street with a big badge started yelling at us and waving her arms wildly.

I couldn’t hear what she was shouting, but she seemed really mad – like maybe we’d run over someone; maybe even her, I thought. After we got our tongue lashing, she started yelling at the next car, and the next. Like us, none of them seemed to be doing anything wrong either. I said my good byes at the curb and walked back to where the cop was standing in the street yelling at the next couple cars. I walked out into the street with all of my luggage, pushing back the thought that she might mace me.

“Hi, I’m Bob, what’s your name?”

“Vanessa” she barked, “Why are you standing in the street?”

“You just seem really upset and I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

Vanessa looked at me for a second kind of puzzled; like she was deciding whether to reach for her gun or not, but instead, she started belly laughing and slapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t be silly, honey. I just pretend to be mad to keep myself warm.  It’s freezing out here!”

I’m going to think about that for the next couple weeks when I meet someone who at first seems mean, or short, or distracted or uncaring. It’s probably not me; and it’s probably not you either; they’re probably just fighting back the cold that might be surrounding their lives.