“When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” ~ Exodus 20:18-19 (NIV)
I am way cool now!
I have my very own Facebook page. My Tesia went back to college last Friday and both she and Maria use this Facebook thing, so I thought it would be good to give it the old Army try. I’ve also heard lots of conversations with people here at Elim about making friends on Facebook and I surely need some new friends, so I plunged right in. And it has been loads of good fun! I’ve made contact with a bunch of people I haven’t spoken with in years and enjoyed some laughs with people here at Elim who are glad to see me enjoying cyberspace with them. I passed funny notes back and forth with Tesia last night as she was studying some boring, snooty Biology book and caught up with my friend Larus in North Carolina last Saturday afternoon as he and I were both still sitting at our computers working. It has been great. I’ve got 38 friends so far and I’m not even trying real hard! Tesia tells me it is bad manners to refuse a friend request on Facebook unless it’s from some creepy, middle aged, bald man you don’t know. So this thing should be totally friends galore for me, since all the creepy, middle aged, bald men are probably just all former college roommates of mine!
So now that I’m a Facebook mover/shaker, I thought about this blogging thing going around. Since I’m supposed to be developing a blog on the new Elim Church website going online in a few weeks, I thought I’d better figure this blogging deal out too. How hard could it be? Much to my surprise, it wasn’t very difficult at all! This blogging stuff holds even more great potential than Facebook. Not only is it a great way to share and discuss ideas among friends, but I can also share sermons, outstanding newsletter articles (like this one!), lists of great Bible study books and cheap places to get them, links to good Christian websites, an easy, accurate map to the church and all sorts of other resources as I wish. And the best part of it all is that it is almost completely free. So now I’m a cool blogger too! But please, please, please be merciful in your comments; I am a total novice at this stuff.
But why the “Hog Shadows” name you ask? I know all you sophisticated, Facebook friendly, blog savvy people out there are asking that right now. I know you’re all just dying to know, so I’ll tell you…
I am a ground hog. I was born on Ground Hog’s day; some cruel women in my life say I even slightly resemble one! But I like ground hogs. There is something innately friendly and cheerful about a chubby animal that digs in the dirt and hides out from winter with a good book and a bag of Cheetos. I’ve used the email moniker “groundhogpastor” for years for this reason. It ain’t flashy, but it’s easy to spell and remember!
Yet ground hogs are most famous for the supposedly wise, mythical abilities of their shadows. Seeing their shadow is supposed to mean something to the world around them. And that makes me think about my role as a Christian and a pastor in the world. I don’t want to stretch the ground hog metaphor too far, but perhaps the shadows cast around you and I by God’s glorious light are supposed to mean something to the people around us too. In a way, aren’t we all sort of just God’s chubby, cheerful ground hogs? And if, as in our Scripture passage above, people are still afraid of approaching God directly, perhaps God might use the shining shadows cast from our lives in the same way God used His shadows cast on the life of Moses.
I like that idea a lot. I like the idea that God might use my experience of His sunshine to speak to others still too afraid to approach God for themselves. And so that’s where the blog name comes from…
Interestingly, after I finished putting my blog together, I did some research on the name “hog shadows” just to make sure I wasn’t stealing some other crazy, chubby pastor’s idea. I found something very interesting. I discovered that one of the many nicknames for U.S. Marine Corps snipers is HOG, which grimly stands as an acronym for the phrase “Hunters Of Gunmen.” There is even a recently published book available entitled, “Hogs In The Shadows” about the experiences of Marine snipers in Iraq. How ironic is that?
And yet this sober, Marine Corp HOG acronym is also an interesting metaphor for what I believe we’re called to be in the world. Jesus says clearly in Scripture that the “gates of hell will not prevail” against the church. And since everyone knows gates are used purely as a defense against attackers, this Scripture clearly implies the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to constantly be on the offensive. The devil, the gunman if you will, is supposed to be on the run from us! But we aren’t “hunting the gunman” with the angry weapons and ways of this world; we’re hunting like the humble ground hogs we are. We hunt the gunman best by allowing the warm and brilliant sunshine to cast God’s shadow around our lives.
So that’s also what the hog shadows are about… Isn’t that neat?
May we all fully enjoy the sunshine! May the shadows of the sunshine warm and reveal our wonderful LORD to the world around us!
Amen.
