Round 1 was a success, with Rebekah ousting Caleb to become the first ever Saturday Showdown Champ. And as a small reward, she received two weeks of free advertising here on Life Before the Bucket!
Our competitors for Round 2 are just as good - I promise. Here are the rules:
I'll provide you with links and snippets of two blog posts from the past week that I really enjoyed (for whatever reason). I'll present them to you, and then we'll put them up for a vote. All votes must be in by sundown in Manhattan, KS on Sunday (the 1st in this case). The winner will be featured for two weeks as the current Saturday Showdown Champion (so... free advertising!).
Sound simple enough? Alrighty! Let's get ready to rumble!
This week, we've got two very different stories of service. Vote for the one that resonates most with you!
Emmanuel shows up on our front porch about once a week. His name means “God with us,” but if there’s anyone on the planet who appears to have been forgotten by the Divine, It’s him. He stands at about 5’4″ and has maybe a handful of teeth left. when he speaks, I catch about half of what he says, but there’s a childish innocence in his eyes that betrays the years of hard living he has endured since then.
We remember this day every year by eating Spaghetti, retelling the story, and thanking God for mercy. I don't know why there is so much suffering in this world. I don't know why babies sit in hospitals with teary-eyed mammas by their sides or why mercy and healing seem to stay just out of reach. I don't know why my baby is whole today when other mothers with sick kids probably prayed more, fasted more, read their Bibles more, and were over-all better woman than I ever hope to be. Yet their babies suffer on.
After you've checked out both of these blog posts, be sure to vote in our poll! (Refresh the page to see current results after you vote)
So there you have it! Who is going to be our next Saturday Showdown Champion? It's up to you, my friends.
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After you vote, be sure to leave a comment telling us why you enjoyed the post you picked!
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I'd appreciate you subscribing to Life Before the Bucket and sharing it with your friends. Thanks a million for reading
It seems like everything I touched broke this week - my fridge, my laptop, and, as you know, my blog.
Not a week I plan on remembering.
But it is still Friday, which is always cause for celebration around here, because we share our Win of the Week with each other!
Now, like I said, I had a pretty rough week. For a few days, I didn't feel like I could catch a break. But the week is over, and I think my "bad stuff" streak is coming to an end.
Luckily, this week, despite how rough it was, flew by at about a million miles an hour. That, in an of itself, is cause for celebration. Plus, it means we're only a month away from graduating!
But my real win of the week is something rather small and insignificant, in the grand scheme of things. You see, when I have bad days, I try to look for the little things to cheer me up - a kind word, a relaxing moment, or a funny meme on the internet.
That 'little' thing for me this week was my wife's amazing cooking. On Tuesday, she made us Chickpea Pot Pie, which I loved and devoured, despite never having chickpeas before. Then, on Thursday, she made us Penna Rosa with Shrimp & Spinach - a sort of imitation recipe of Noodles & Company, and it was to die for.
So... What about you? What was your win of the week?
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I'd appreciate you subscribing to Life Before the Bucket and sharing it with your friends. Thanks a million for reading!
Apparently whoever was hosting the image for the background to this design closed their account or moved the image. So far, I haven't been able to track down where I originally got my template from, so I'm left with these rather alarming black and white exclamation points and no background.
So if you're reading and see one of these exclamation points, don't worry. It's more painful for me than it is for you. And I pinky-promise it's not some kind of bug attacking your computer.
If any of you know a good blog-design site or person (for cheap - I don't make any money off of this blog), I'd definitely welcome your suggestions!
So, instead of reading an awesome post, you should consider writing one for Life Before the Bucket! I'm running pretty low on guest posts for our "Living to the Fullest" series, so if you've been thinking about submitting an idea for a post, now is the time to do it!
In the meantime, I'll be waiting to hear from you and working on finding a new blog template.
I hope you have a fantastic Thursday! Let me know how your day is going in the comments section!
Note from Adrian: This is our next installment in the "Living to the Fullest" guest post series. Today's post is from a writer who wishes to remain anonymous. Please be sure to be encouraging as you thank and leave feedback for this person for their contribution.
This blog, I am well aware, is a “Christian” blog. The author of it is an active member of the Christian community. The readers, I’m sure, are the majority Christian. This makes me a minority here. I am a white, middle class female, so being a minority is something that is fairly new to me. I’m still figuring out the ropes of how to live when most of the people around me are on the other side of a very serious life decision. One thing I’ve learned in my five years of conscious atheism is that it’s not easy.
For most of the time I’ve been open to myself about my religious beliefs, I’ve lied to others about them. I’m still not completely open with everyone about my lack of religion, hence the anonymity of this guest post.
It’s a scary thing to show someone a very important part of yourself, knowing that they will most likely judge you and possibly shun you. I’ve had people tell me that they thought less of me for being an atheist. I’ve had people tell me that I’m not sure of what I believe. They say, “You’re probably agnostic,” or “You just haven’t figured it out yet.” All of these responses, they’re things that hurt me. Each time someone tells me that I’m wrong, or I don’t know what I’m talking about, or I’ll find “The Truth” and they’re praying for my soul, I just want to yell at them to stop, and think about what they’re saying.
If you’ve never been told you’re wasting your life because what you feel is illogical, then you couldn’t have any idea of what it feels like. It tears at my heart and it brings me down. It makes me think I’m a terrible person and I’ll never be accepted, no matter where I am.
So how in the world can I live my life to the fullest if I’m being told everywhere I go that I’m living my life wrong? Well, let me tell you, it’s hard. It takes strength and courage and confidence, all of which I tend to lack. But I try. I try hard to live my life with happiness and love. I go out and have fun. I try to live in the moment, but I still think about my future.
I don’t hold grudges against all of those people who judge me and try to change who I am. I try my best to never regret the things I do, because I believe that a life full of regret really isn’t a life at all.
I believe that revenge should never be motivation for anything a person does. I believe in peace and joy and truth. These things are, to me, what make a fulfilling life. But, because my idea of truth is something that is unconventional and misunderstood, others believe I am a bad person.
Now tell me, does my lack of belief in a God make my life one that will never be full? I believe not, but you might believe differently. And I believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with whatever you choose to believe, because in the end, acceptance of those who are different is how to really live life to the fullest.
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Questions: How do your religious beliefs influence the way you live to the fullest? What beliefs do you struggle to be tolerant of?
This guest post was part of a guest post series called "Living to the Fullest." Interested in joining in? I'm still looking for submissions! Just write up a post, or even just an idea, and e-mail it my way!
I've got a story I've been wanting to share for some time now.
The man. The myth. The legend.
Last month, Shane Claiborne spoke at our small, insignificant school. He’s a guy who lives in community with the homeless people in his city, and actually literally lives with them. He looks totally different from most people we know, physically and spiritually, and doesn’t care about a lot of the stuff we care about.
He was the perfect speaker for our student body's "theme" that month: be bold. He talked to us about a variety of topics, but the most interesting piece of his presentation was the brief discussion he hosted following his talk.
During this time, there was an opportunity for us to ask Shane questions - nothing really seemed out of bounds at that point. So, after he spoke, one of the students at our school posed this question to Shane Claiborne:
“Do you think your lifestyle keeps you from being relevant and ministering to others?”
Wait, what!?
The question blew my mind.
We invited this guy who has dreads longer than my beard (which is saying something), who gives us the most vivid illustration of living in solidarity with the poor, and all we can think to ask him is, "Are you worried you're irrelevant?"
This, my friends, is a microcosm of what's wrong with what Greg Boyd calls the Bridezilla of Christ. But I digress.
I couldn’t believe that anyone would WANT Shane Claiborne to be “relevant” and care about the crap we care about. In choosing to live in solidarity with the poor, he has chosen to be relevant to those who could care less about relevancy as we understand it. He chooses to be Jesus with skin on, but what we want him to be is something more like a super "cool" hipster (who just happens to like Jesus).
This is absurd, my friends. Where have we gone wrong?
I can hear the objections now.
"But what about where Paul says 'become all things to all people?'"
I imagine this would be the biggest argument for some sense of so-called relevancy. So does this mean Shane Claiborne is wrong?
To answer that, I want to look at the life of another person who is going above and beyond in being a radical Christian: Katie Davis.
In case you haven't heard about this amazing woman, check out this video, which was made as an introduction to her book, Kisses from Katie.
And on the off chance that you aren't able to watch the video, but still want to know about Katie, here's an embarrassingly quick summary: after her senior year of high school, Katie took a mission trip to Uganda. Now, in her early 20s, she lives amidst the people of Uganda as the mother to fourteen Ugandan orphans.
That's some insane stuff, right there - which I suspect is exactly the sort of "stuff" Jesus is interested in. That's why we Christians feel so drawn toward the spirits of the Shane Claibornes or Katie Davises. We can't help but want to be like them.
But wait a second. We're talking about relevancy here. And these two people are the epitome of irrelevancy as far as we're concerned. One is a full-time homeless guy. The other is a full-time mother in Uganda. We can't relate to them. I mean, I know I can't. I have a home, and I'm most certainly not a mother.
So they must be doing it wrong... right?
They're failing in their calling to be "all things to all people."
Or are they?
What are we missing here? We know they're doing something right, but if we make them relevant, then these two wonderful people become just like the rest of us - boring, plain consumers on a mission to live the American dream - all for the sake of some misguided notion of relevancy.
What we're missing is this: we too often confuse relevancy with contextualization. Paul was all things to all people, but that was a hat-tip to becoming one with the culture he lived in, not one with the trends or popular ways of the world.
Relevancy deals with a fleeting moment - trends and popularity. Contextualization deals with culture - becoming all things to all people.
In his book, Viral, Leonard Sweet has this to say about culture:
Admittedly, the word "culture" is one of the most slippery terms used in the social sciences... When I refer to culture, I mean primarily the unvarnished vernacular of a place or period. In the 1960s, when a middle-class youth wanted to rebel, they grew beards and smashed stereos. When Amish youth wanted to protest... they shaved their beards and bought stereos. Culture shapes behavior and how we express our beliefs.
When I was in training to prepare for my time in the war-torn country of Sierra Leone, I was trained to contextualize, not to be relevant. I worked for weeks on learning the culture of the country, not what was popular or trendy at the time. I worked to understand the hearts of the people who lived there, not to understand the intricacies of soccer (their favorite sport).
And if I wanted to return to Freetown today, I could, because I was taught culture, not relevancy.
You see, being relevant is one of the biggest scams Satan has sold the 21st century Church (especially in the US). Millions of people have sold out to the whims of pop-culture (and yes, there's a difference) in the name of relevancy.
We say we're being relevant by immersing ourselves in The Bachelor or in Twilight or even (heaven forbid) The Hunger Games. We say we're trying to be relevant by obsessing over how we look or the latest fashion trends. We say we're trying to be obedient to being "all things to all people," but in the end, we simply look confused.
We have to stop pretending we don't enjoy these things, people. We like shows like The Bachelor and movies like The Hunger Games. We don't just watch them under some misguided guise of relevancy. We watch them because we enjoy them.
David Platt, author of Radical, recently interviewed Katie Davis. They discussed Katie's ministry, her heart, and her passion for the children she cares for. One of the most interesting questions that he asks Katie, though, is this: "Do you think what you're doing is radical?"
Unsurprisingly, Katie Davis said, "No."
You see, many spirits who would otherwise be radical have been subdued in the name of "relevancy." If those spirits had never been subdued, we wouldn’t even be talking about relevancy or even being radical, because what we call radical now is really just the basic way of life that Jesus calls us to. There’s nothing radical about that.
So let's make a pact. Let's stop pretending we don't enjoy these fads that we indulge. Let's stop the facade of relevancy (when we know we truly enjoy being popular, even if only for a moment). Let's stop the show.
Instead, let us be irrelevant. Let's engage our culture, but not its whims. Let's engage our people, but not their trends. Let's be genuine, loving, sacrificing people in the name of Love, but not simply because it will score us cool points with our friends.
Let's forget about relevancy and be irrelevant.
I suspect, in the shedding of our trendy wannabe-hipster skin, we'll see that what lies below is what we've been searching for all along.
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Questions: Have you ever thought of the difference between relevancy and contextualization? How can we be less relevant and more radical? Who are some other radical Christians that inspire you to be more like Jesus?
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I'd appreciate you subscribing to Life Before the Bucket and sharing it with your friends. Thanks a million for reading!
