Donald MIller

A Wedding and a Feast

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I confess that I haven’t always loved the idea of heaven. Back in the day, I somehow got the idea that heaven was an eternity-long church service. Now, that doesn’t sound so bad, but back in the day, church meant singing lots of hymns with words like “thou” and “thee” and “verily.” It also meant a lot of standing up and sitting down and listening to a preacher who yelled a lot. And also it meant wearing stiff uncomfortable clothes including dress shoes, a suit, and a clip-on tie. I may have ben stylin’ but I sure wasn’t lovin’ it.

I love the idea that heaven is a wedding. I’ve been to a few weddings, and the best ones were always a kind of celebration that left me feeling joyous. I still wore churchy clothes, but at least I was having a good time.

And I can definitely relate to a feast. As a self-diagnosed foodie, I love going to any kind of a celebration or party where there is food. Any time there was a church potluck or a family reunion, my favorite part (besides seeing the people, of course) was the food. Especially when it was the good kind with eight different varieties of fried chicken and enough casseroles to feed Custer’s army.

What made me fall in love with the idea of heaven was reading C. S. Lewis’ The Last Battle. Lewis describes heaven as waking up on the first day of summer after the school term has ended or the first day of vacation has begun. It’s that feeling of freedom and joy multiplied by infinity and stretched across eternity.

While I want to see my grandparents and all the other people that I loved and lost, the absolute best part will be seeing Jesus there. It will be the place where my faith finally becomes sight, where the best of my dreams finally come true.

More and more, I’m ready to go. The more I see of this world and the chaos and insanity in it, the more I long for the next. I long for the people I love to be there. All of them. That’s why I’m telling you again that the best decision you will ever make is to repent of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You will never regret it.

My Confession Booth (Stolen from Blue Like Jazz)

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I love the fact that they kept the confession booth from the book entitled Blue Like Jazz for the movie of the same name. I also love the fact that it is a very non-religious Christian movie.

The idea behind the confession booth is not receiving confession, but in giving one. Sorta like this.

We confess that we’ve done a poor job of representing God and Who He is. We’ve made Him in our image and had Him hate all the same people we do, people whose sins we magnify and villify because those aren’t the sins we struggle with.

We confess that we’ve made our faith a means to a political platform and getting our man elected. We’ve made our faith a means to more effectively climbing the corporate ladder and making even more money.

We confess that while we look down our noses at unbelievers, we don’t look much different. Our vocabulary and our lifestyles are too much like theirs for them to take our message seriously.

We confess that we’ve replaced the holier-than-thous with hipper-and-trendier-than thous, and made faith an exclusive club that you have to dress the right way and know the right words and the right people to be able to join.

We confess that we’re so proud of knowing God and have forgotten that the only reason we know Him is because He first loved us and revealed Himself to us. We confess that without His revelation, we’d be completely in the dark, the blind leading the blind, banging our heads against the same stone walls.

We confess that for too long too many of us have been ashamed of this Jesus who saved us and wasn’t above being made a spectacle in front of the crowds so that we could have life better than we thought was possible.

We confess that we have tried to give bumper-sticker answers to complex questions and given people Bible band-aids for deep soul wounds.

We confess that we’re not perfect people. We’re not better than anyone else or more holy or more likeable. We confess that we are the worst of sinners who have found out what it means to be forgiven and free. We want you to know what that looks and feels like, too.

I confess that I need to re-read Blue Like Jazz sometime in the near future because the movie reminded me how much I didn’t remember from the book.

I confess that it is way past my bedtime and I will turn into a flesh-craving zombie if I don’t get to bed in five minutes, so GOOD NIGHT AND GOD BLESS!