Sabbatical Day 25- Fiddles, Stage Fright, and Rubber Ducks

The family that sings together stays together. Isn't that how the old saying goes? I have sang my entire life. I really didn't have a choice to be honest with you. When my parents discovered that I could sing I was immediately shoved up on stage. I hated it. It even bothered me more that I was somewhat good at it. Singing was not for me. Sports were my forte' and Singing was for girls. At around age 10 I realized that girls loved boys who could sing. ANNNNDDDDDD I'm in.

Music is something that is in my family's DNA. My Great Grandfather was a world class fiddler. He and his children all played instruments. Guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass, and banjo. My family hails from the rolling hills of southern Ohio and the mountains of West Virginia so bluegrass and gospel, as well as the traditional folk tunes of the day is what they played. If hillbilly's had a VonTrap family, they were it, and nothing makes me more proud to be a part of that heritage.

Before they came to Christ, they would play at Barn Dances and local events. Barn Dances in that day could sometimes go on for several days. Moonshine was often present, and it was a way for the "wayward sinners, and backslidden Christian" to have carnal fun. It was at one of these barn dances that my Grandfather, Robert Grate, found Jesus. On a hot and humid summer night after playing a set, he wandered outside and heard music coming from Fairplay Chapel. Fairplay is a small one room tabernacle used for church services, Revivals, and Christian concerts. Grandpa wandered over there out of pure curiosity, and when the preacher finished his hellfire and brimstone sermon, my Grandfather, in tears, went forward.

Upon returning to his gig, he announced that was no longer going to play at barn dances, but Great Grandpa asked if he would stay and play the next night to finish off the contract. Grandpa agreed. God disagreed. That night a thunderstorm blew in and rain ruined all of their instruments. A few hours later, they were all at Fairplay Chapel, and an entire family of musicians found Christ. From that point forward, they would use their gifts to glorify God. They became worship leaders. Reads like a movie script right? I mean seriously? Wow.

This gift was passed to my father. He was and is a gifted singer. For my entire childhood he was our church's worship leader and my aunt, Marla Grate Chambers
was the piano player. As a small child, I always watched my dad. At the time, the tears that flowed, the hands that were raised, the testimonies that would follow, didn't make much sense to me in a deep theological way, yet something happened in my heart that I couldn't quite explain. Looking back I now see that it was the Holy Spirit working in my heart. Sunday evenings were always a tad nerve racking. Sometimes they would just call you up front and ask you to sing. This is where the stage fright would come in. Are you kidding me? Dad would look over say his famous phrase that he thought was so wise. "Just wing it". For those of you who are MBC Loudoun attenders, you just got a major insight into why I am the way I am and why I think fast on my feet. I was taught how to "wing it" at a very early age.

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I was always terrified in those moments, and stage fright would often grip me, but then I would remember, that girls like boys that can sing....

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In hindsight, it was my father who taught me how to worship.

Now that gift is with me and my family and we are making music together almost weekly. It is one of the greatest joys of my life to worship with my family in a tradition that is generational. Emmy is excelling on piano, Elijah is strumming his guitar, Zeke is learning every Coldplay song he can on the keyboard, and Holly is, well, Holly:) I don't have adequate words to describe her talents and gifts.

This all comes together for me in an experience I had with my precious Emmy in 2004. She was three years old and we were at my parents for Christmas. On a cold and blustery Friday night Holly asked me if I would give Emmy her bath and get her into bed. I poured her a bath, retrieved her favorite rubber ducky and sat next to her on the floor. Next to me was a CD player and I popped in Shane and Shane's latest song that had had been bootlegged from a concert. The song 'Yearn" came on and what happened next has only happened a handful of times in my life. I was overwhelmed. Totally and completely overwhelmed. Tears began to fall down my cheeks as I celebrated the gift of my daughter, rejoiced over the blessing of my sweet Elijah, and my pregnant wife, carrying our yet to be born firecracker Zeke. I rose to my feet! My hands went skyward and I praised. With everything in my being, I praised. I sang as loud as I could. At that moment, everything was clear. I seized the moment.

When the song was almost done and music began to fade, I looked over at my daughter whom I had completely forgotten about. She was standing, eyes closed, with her arms raised up to the sky. She was worshiping. She had begun the process of investing in a generational tradition that had been passed down through the decades. When she noticed that I was no longer singing, and the music died down, she peeked out of one eye, laughed, and went right back to the wind up rubber duck...

Psalm 145:4


One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts.

In other words,
Your children will learn how to worship by watching you worship. 


Your children will learn how to love, by watching you love.


Your children will learn how to live, by watching you live.


Your children will learn to study the Word of God, by watching you Study.

It is a great question I suppose. When our children observe us, do their arms go up or down? Even today, whenever I get to witness or find myself stuck in a thunderstorm, I remember the courageous act of my grandfather, and the tradition of worship he started by walking an isle, kneeling at an altar, and surrendering all.

Sabbatical Day 23- Isis, Justice, and the Gospel of Jonah

The violence and immorality in Nineveh was legendary. It was beyond anything that we have have ever seen in modern history. As far as violence and debauchery go, Isis has nothing on the Assyrian Empire, of which the Ninevites we're a part. The prophet Nahum gives a vivid depiction in his prophetic work written in 612 BC.

"Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery. Its victim never departs. The noise of a whip and the noise of rattling wheels, of galloping horses, of clattering chariots! Horsemen charge with bright sword and glittering spear. There is a multitude of slain, a great number of bodies, countless corpses; they stumble over the corpses; because of the multitude of harlotries of the seductive harlot, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations through her harlotries, and families through her sorceries."

There are still to this day monuments that give depictions and inscriptions of the horrors of the Nineveh. Here are a few...

“I cut off their heads and formed them into pillars”
“Bubo, son of Buba, I flayed in the city of Arbela and I spread his skin upon the city wall”
“I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins”
“Many within the border of my own land I flayed, and spread their skins upon the walls”
“I cut off the limbs of the officers, the royal officers who had rebelled”
“3,000 captives I burned with fire”
“Their corpses I formed into pillars”
“From son I cut off their hands and their fingers, and from other I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many I put out their eyes”
“I made one pillar of the living, and another of heads, I bound their heads to posts round about the city”

So you can probably understand the hesitancy Jonah shows when God calls him to a city that uses human skin as wall paper. Ummm, I'll pass. Those people are crazy. I think I am going to make a run for it on this merchant ship. Just a few hours into his journey, he finds himself thrown overboard and in the belly of a fish. A big fish. It must have been a HUGE fish. Jonah responds by praying for forgiveness and making a promise to go to the evil city and warn them of the destruction that is coming if they don't repent.

As soon as his heart is right, Jonah goes to skin city and spreads the word of God's quickly approaching wrath that will destroy them and their entire way of life if they don't change. Amazingly, and probably to the complete surprise of Jonah, they do change, and they do repent, and for one of the first times in biblical history, Gods message from the mouth of one of his prophets was proclaimed to a non-jewish audience.

The people of Nineveh tear their clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes and repent. God declares in Chapter 3 Verse 10

"10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened."

Wait. Hold on. Thats it? With all the evil, all the pain, all the harlotries, all the murder and death, all of the contamination caused by these people and you just forgive them God? Doesn't seem quite right to me. It didn't to Jonah either. In fact Jonah in Chapter 4 declares that he would rather die than see these depraved people experience grace. What a depressing end to a great story. God even explains why he showed compassion to Nineveh. It didn't matter to Jonah.

Jonah had an addiction, and I am afraid the church of Jesus Christ has it too. We are addicted to Justice. We believe in grace to a point, but when we see a really bad group of people, or a disgustingly bad person, our grace gives way to justice. We genuinely want people to pay for what they have done first, then they can have Gods grace. Our Facebook feeds are filled with visceral indignation and wrath. Our hearts are bitter towards the one who has caused us calamity or pain. In almost a bloodlust mindset, we almost always, want justice, not grace. This is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is the Gospel of Jonah.

2000 years ago calamity was coming to mankind. Instead a baby was born in Bethlehem, Crucified, and rose again so that we could experience the inexplicable, unexplainable, counterintuitive GRACE of almighty God.

What do we do with that? Matthew 28:16-20 is the answer.

"16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

So the question before us is simple. Do we follow the gospel of Jonah or the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

We often talk about how the church should not be a safe haven for saints but a hospital for sinners. So, come ye prostitute, come ye thief, come ye poor, come ye disabled, come ye pauper, come ye murderer, adulterer, addict, and greedy. But lets be honest with ourselves in this moment of reflection. Is that who we really want to be filling the church that we attend? Would we be comfortable with that? Would we squirm in our seats?

These are the people who God is calling us to go to in Matthew 28. So let us tread lightly when our self-righteous hearts cry out for Gods Justice before Gods Grace....

We might just find ourselves in the belly of a big fish...

Sabbatical Day 22- Home-runs , Snow-cones, John Fogerty, and a mid-summers night dream...

His name was Jason Tanner. We were from different school districts, so I only saw him during the summer. The ball diamond is where our paths would cross. On this particular night, I would accomplish something that I would never accomplish again playing baseball, and it was miraculous. Jason had a beard when he was 11. Ok, maybe not a full grown but there were definitely whiskers. He was a good foot taller than everyone else and he threw hard. Mustang League was the first league that players pitched so it was the first time that the coach wasn't pitching the ball to you. In the first inning I struck out on three pitches. I never even swung the bat. My next at bat wasn't any better. 5 pitches, no swings, strikeout number 2. At bat number 3? Five pitches were thrown, no swings, strikeout number 3. He was terrifying. Like a giant throwing lightening bolts mixed with a wicked curve ball, we were dropping like fly's. You could hear the ball whiz past you. The thought of that ball hitting you was the most terrifying thing you could think of. Unless you were Joey Anderson. The only girl on our team who hit like Ted Williams, ran like Ricky Henderson, and had the pain tolerance of the incredible hulk. In the seventh inning, we were down a run with two outs and I was on deck. I was was PRAYING, that Robbie Ratzlaff would strike out so I didn't have to step into the batters box again. But Robbie Walked, and there I was for my fourth at bat against Zeus, god of pitching. The weight of the world was on my shoulders, and my eyes began to well up with tears...

Summer nights at Lincoln Park were magical times. Mom and I would usually arrive early enough to grab a snow-cone from the concession stand. Blue Raspberry was the flavor. If she was feeling charitable she would buy me a pack of big league chew, which is quite possibly one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. My mother would always bring a panasonic boom box (which is what we called them in Marion Ohio) and play "Centerfield' by John Fogerty before each game as we took the field. I pitched and played third base. Throwing the ball really hard was never really difficult for me. Batters were often terrified to face me. Not because I threw the ball hard, but because you never really knew where the ball was going to go. It could hit the backstop, five feet in front of home plate, or if you were really unlucky, somewhere on your body. They called me "Wild Thing". Ed Mcleese coached me all through little league, and his son BJ Gruber "caught" for me for all those wonderful years. Poor BJ. I think he set a record for trips to the backstop to retrieve the ball. I did have a few good nights. I threw a no hitter once. I walked in 5 runs but we did win and no one got a hit:) Injuries were common when I pitched. I broke Matt Curry's fingers when we played Millies Marauders. On one occasion, and I know this is hard to believe, but Marsha Grate can confirm this, I knocked the home plate umpire unconscious. He just fell straight over. I didn't have much empathy. His strike zone was terrible.

Oh the memories and heartache. Losses and wins. Championships and loosing seasons. Little league baseball was life.

On this particular night thus far, Jason Tanner had made it nothing but heartache. We were down one run, with Robbie on first, and I was up to bat with two outs. As I stepped up to the plate, my confidence level was zero. Hopeless and afraid, I was going to hope for the walk and pass the torch of responsibility on to someone else. 1st pitch- Fastball right down the middle, strike one. 2nd pitch- Fastball right down the middle, strike two.
My Father who was standing behind the back stop with his buddy Steve Jacobs saw the tears falling fast on my cheeks and said "come here." Wisdom poured forth like a fountain as he said, "do you know the number one thing you have to do to get a hit? You have to swing. You have to swing the bat Jay. What do you have to lose? Now, he is going to try and throw another fastball, and when he does, I want you to swing as hard as you can. Who cares if you strikeout. SWING!!!"

As I stepped up to the plate a renewed confidence came over me. Tanner pitched from the wind-up which translates in baseball terms "I am going to strike this guy out, so who cares about the guy on first." My Dad was right. Fastball on the inside corner was Tanners choice. I swung as hard as I could possibly swing, and BOOOOOOM! I hit it! I began sprinting towards first, and then to second! A Double to win the game!!!! Then I realized that it hit the top of the fence and went over. My first and only home-run in little league. Rounding second, I saw my father chasing after the ball. He wanted his son to have it. I still have it today. It sits in my office with a spotlight on it. We won the game 2-1. Every Tuesday when I arrive at work, I turn that spotlight on first. Its a reminder every single day that in order to succeed at anything you have to swing. We all have those moments in the late innings of life where we are beat down, broken, and scared. Failures have been the routine outcome. Circumstances have us depressed and filled with uncertainty. Of course this applies to all of life's circumstances, but it is even more evident in our spiritual lives. Wether its addiction, lethargy, problems with forgiveness, or intense suffering, we find ourselves standing in the batters box every single day, with two outs and a choice. To try or not to try. To swing or not to swing.

Sometimes, you will swing and miss. Thats not the point. God just calls us to swing. When you do, who knows...you might just win the game.

So....swing.

Sabbatical Day 21- Ohio State Football, A little boys tears, and the eternal weight of glory...

The entire state of Ohio lost its collective breath. Braxton Miller, heisman candidate and senior captain of the Buckeyes injured his shoulder two weeks before the season began. JT Barrett was now at the helm of a team that was picked in the preseason to make the playoffs, yet in one day Ohio State was projected to come in third place in the Big Ten. In years past, it would have taken me a solid three days to get over such news. This year, it took me 20 minutes.

I grew up in Marion Ohio. Its a town 45 minutes northeast of Columbus Ohio. Directly behind my house is Route 23, which turns into High Street, which takes you to the Horse shoe stadium, home of the Buckeyes. I grew up with the lore of Ohio State football. Like everyone else who will read this, and is passionate about college football, you know what it is like to have a team that you wait anxiously each season to see play. In places like Ohio, Alabama, Florida, Southern California, and anywhere in the SEC its a tad different. Every single season the unrealistic fans of their powerhouse teams fully expect a national championship or the season is a failure. I think I became a "rabid" fan in 1997 when Ohio State lost to Michigan State, beat Michigan, and then won the Rose Bowl by beating Jake the Snake and the Arizona State Sun devils. When Ohio State beat Miami for the National Championship in 2003 for the national championship, it went into an even higher gear. Actually, it went to annoying levels of fandom.

This crept into my oldest child. Elijah, at age 6 had become an Ohio State Fanatic. His Grandpa Syswerda, lifetime Michigan Fan, would have hilarious interchanges with each other during the football season. We had a countdown calendar for the first game. We followed recruiting. We woke up every Saturday morning and watched College Game Day after our walk to the local farmers marked dressed in every Ohio State piece of clothing we could wear.....in Michigan. I had created a monster, and I loved it.

At age 8, Elijah got the opportunity to see Ohio State play Florida for another national championship. We were favored to win this game. He painted his face, wore his AJ Hawk jersey, and donned a multicolored wig hat. Elijah was amped. Daddy was amped. When Ted Ginn ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown, we went absolutely bonkers. This was it. I was going to see my son celebrate a national championship. Then Florida scored. Then Florida scored. Then Florida scored again. 41-14 Florida. We got drubbed! Elijah began to stomp on the ground and huge alligator tears were flowing down his chubby cheeks. He was so broken. Or shall I say, he was TOO broken...

I began to ask myself some important questions about my passions.
What had I created? What were my priorities? What do I worship? What is he seeing and how is his little mind translating it? For the next week I felt like I was deprogramming a brainwashed runaway. It literally took him a week to get over it. My heart and my mind was in sync as God spoke 6 very direct and pointed, almost audible words- "this is too important to you". God was right. It was way too important to me.

Over the next several weeks I began to talk to Elijah almost daily about being more passionate about the things that God is passionate about than we are about Ohio State Football. I began to ask him questions like "What would you rather see happen? Ohio State win a national championship or see your friend who is without a father experience a better family life?" It paid off.

Three weeks later I found a somewhat morose Elijah in our back yard. He was aimlessly walking around, kicking the ground, and tears were falling fast on his cheeks. I walked outside and asked him what was wrong? Are you being bullied at school? Did you lose in kickball? Was math harder than usual today? He said nothing. Then he courageously and almost vindictively looked at me and said "did you know that there is still slavery happening in Africa? I said "I do" He then peered at me with narrow, focused, almost rebellious eyes and asked "what are we going to do about it"? We went inside and found a coffee can, put a piece of Duck tape on it and wrote "Africa Fund". My thought was that we could throw our change in it and make a donation. Nope. Not enough. Elijah went door to door. To make a long story short, Elijah raised over 1500.00 in two weeks. No one donation was over 20 dollars. We donated it to Poetice, http://poetice.org It is our favorite missions organization that best fits our passions as a family, and works each year setting those precious children caught in the nauseating world of sexual slavery free. Wow. Priorities in order? Check! So how did I respond this year? If you are a football historian, and even a buckeye hater, what happened was truly miraculous. Ohio State put in a freshman quarterback, JT Barrett, who became one of the best quarterbacks in the nation and led Ohio State to an undefeated record in the Big Ten. There was an outside chance we would make the first College Football Playoff. Then it happened again. JT broke his leg in the Michigan game. From the sidelines Cardale Jones, our third string quarterback lumbered onto the field. Somehow, and I am still not sure it was real, Jones beat Wisconsin for the Big Ten Title, Beat Alabama for a chance to play in the national title, and beat Oregon to win it all. It was unprecedented.

We watched the game, we cheered, we screamed, we jumped up and down, and then we went to bed. I don't think I have heard Elijah talk about it since. Why?

There are still slaves in africa...