Last night I was drinking wine and playing Pictionary with some friends after a gallery opening and posed this question:

What issues do you care about?

That evening everyone had an answer, and I would suggest that if you are able to take a hard look at our society and not find anything that deeply wrenches your soul in the deep of night - then there is something seriously wrong with you.

However, it is never enough to just recognize the problem.

Right now we are living in a society where it is prime time for participation.

Or to put it another way, "the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few".

This quote taken from the 9th chapter of Matthew shows the people of God in a serious plight. They were lost, handicapped, confused and run down to the point that Jesus felt compassion towards them. They were sheep in need of a shepherd - they were a people who were hurting, who were struggling, who had unmet needs.

And as we look out into our communities today we see many unmet needs, many people who are not reaching their potential - people who are suffering - physically, mentally, and spiritually.

And yet, from a Christian perspective, these times of crisis are also times of opportunity. The "harvest", the chance to help people, the ability to live a meaningful life, a life that transcends merely taking care of yourself, is indeed plentiful.

The tragedy is that even thousands of years later - the laborers are still few.

For those who do labor - I offer these two thoughts.

First, do not neglect the power of prayer. It works and it is free.
Pray with anticipation. Pray to the Lord to bring in the harvest. Pray for other people. Put people on your prayer list.

I challenge all Christians who read this to make a prayer list of people, whether strangers, family, or friends and simply pray for whoever is on your list and see for yourself the grandeur of God.

There is nothing more powerful than prayer. It puts you in the presence of and in conversation with an all powerful and all loving Heavenly Father for whom all things are possible.

Secondly, go with authority.

The enemy is nothing to play with. There is a great passage in Acts where someone is trying to cast out a demon in the name of Jesus and his servant Paul.

The demon replies, "I know Jesus and I know Paul but who are you?"

Whatever need you are trying to meet, whatever harvest you are trying to gather, whomever you are trying to help - it is impossible for you to be successful without building sincere, authentic, and personal relationships.

Whether you need to build your relationship with God or build your relationship with the community you are trying to help - relationships are the foundation of authority.

Ultimately, it is our relationships with other people that enable us to do the most good. It fuels our ability to help, to harvest, and to love.

We live in a season where the harvest is plentiful.

We live in a time that needs us to go from spectators to active participants.

Now is the prime time for participation. Now is the time to dedicate our entire lives to improving the communities, the cities, and the world in which we live.

I pray that you can find a cause that keeps you up at night.

I pray that you can love your community with all your heart.

I pray that you can labor until you are able to transcend yourself and live a life of servitude and love.

Amen.

I was hanging out with a bunch of friends one evening, and we were all enjoying tasty mixed drinks.

At some point in the night we ran out of ice and realized that someone needed to leave the gathering to go downstairs and get more ice.

No one wanted to get the ice, so we decided to play the game "Nose Goes" where the last person who touches their nose had to perform the task in question, in this case to get ice.

I am sure many of Art Star's readers have played "nose goes" with their friends as a way to solve minor disputes.

The essence of "nose goes" is that by touching our nose we say "Here I am, send somebody else!"

When we were young, some of us heard the story about Jonah and the Whale.

It is a classic story, both dramatic and gripping, a prophet who is eaten by a whale, and lives inside the whale's belly for three days.

However, as children most of us missed the main point of Jonah.

The reason that Jonah was devoured by the whale was because he decided to play "Nose Goes" with God.

Jonah - like many of us - was a good man. He was a prophet, a man of God. Jonah despised wickedness and evil. In fact, he believed that you reap what you sow - and that the sinful will perish.

So, when God asked Jonah to go to a town full of wicked people in order to save them - Jonah said "Here I am Lord, send somebody else."

Sometimes we can become wrapped up in our righteousness. Sometimes we would rather see the wicked perish than to give them a chance to repent and receive the grace of God.

Also, many of us would rather run away than do what the Lord asks us to do. In fact, I would suggest that anytime we want to disobey God there is always an available ship. Resources never seem to be scarce when you want to do wrong.

So, Jonah fled from God in a ship and the Lord sent a storm after him. We can run but we can't hide from God. Even though Jonah was going opposite of where God wanted him to go - "the hound of heaven" found Jonah and sent a storm his way.

Now, everyone who is reading this isn't like Jonah. You might not ever try to play "Nose Goes" with God. However, we are all sailor's guiding our own ships.

The sailor's had to suffer a storm from God because of who they had let on their ship. In our age of tolerance, openness, and compassion - sometimes we let people get close to us without actually knowing who they are.

Then, we become victims of proximity of other people's storms.

Even without knowledge of D.N.A. the old folks used to say "who is their daddy, and who is their mama" because they knew that "the apple seldom falls far from the tree."

We all know the rest of the story - Jonah was thrown overboard, swallowed by a Whale, was spat up to the shore three days later, and went on to do what God asked him to do in the first place.

How much easier would our lives be if we just listened to God from the start?

As we continue doing good things in this world, let us pray that we never become too self-righteous to realize that repentance and grace is always better than punishment.

Let us pray that we have the discernment to know who we let into our ships and our inner circles so that we don't become victims of storms by proximity.

Let us pray that when God calls us, we won't try to run and hide, we won't try to play "nose goes" with God, but we will be able to say "Here I am Lord, use me."

Amen.

Whether you are religious or not, whatever your faith, dealing with the idea of God is something you have encountered in life.

I write from a Christian perspective informed by Baptist teachings and Catholic theology with a high awareness of the other world religions and of course a sprinkling of Reformation theology.

When I was a young boy I would go to my black Baptist church and sometimes would wonder at all the theatrics going on. People would scream, shout, clap, cry, hop, hoot, and holler - all in the name of this idea called Praise.

From my perspective the extreme display of emotions just did not seem necessary.

Was it not enough to pray earnestly? To clap loudly? To sing songs? To mean it on the inside?

Why all the moving around, why all the shouting, why the tears?

When I had just enter adulthood I met a girl who would become my girl friend at a church. Everything was going right in my life and it was easy to praise God. It was easy to pray. It was easy to go to church. It was easy to realize that I had much to be thankful for.

However, a year later life changed - illnesses were discovered, relationships broken, dear friends moved away, disappointments happened - the world seemed dark.

And it was hard to say hallelujah, then.

It was hard to praise, to thank God, to go to church, and to pray.

But there was something about being able to say "My Lord, My Lord" - there was so much revelation about feeling utterly abandoned and just groaning to the Lord, of digging deep down pass everything superficial and quite a few things that were real and finding a Thank You, Lord.

It was then that I found my shout - it was then that I found my tears. And I realized a simple truth to my childhood question - those who shout, cry, and carry on in church often don't do it for attention or because they feel like it is expected of them - they do it because they have something to shout about. They do it because they have had to dig down on dark and lonely nights and find a hallelujah.

But once you have praised him in the dark, it is so much easier to praise him in the light.

And just to remind the reader, I am talking about praise and not prayer (although in truth they are probably the same thing).

It is far easier to call out to God for help in a desperate situation (and by all means do!) then to praise him for being God when your relationships are falling apart, when you are on the brink of failure in school or at work, when you are depressed, when you are considering suicide, when you have halfway abandoned hope, when you are on the brink of unbelief - to then be able to say Thank You Jesus, I Love You, You Are Merciful, You Are Good, You Are Mighty, You Are Powerful, You are God, Hallelujah!

After still being able to find God in those contexts how can one not shout? How can one not cry? How can one not be thankful?

We are creatures who are built for praise - and there are many ways for praise to manifest itself in our lives - and ideally our entire life and being becomes one joyful praise song to the Lord.

However blessed is the praise that comes from dark corners, blessed is the praise that comes when life is dim, blessed are those who shout, blessed are those who cry, and blessed are those children who grow up wondering why.

To those with ears let them hear.

Amen.

I had an interesting conversation with a girl from San Francisco about whether the pursuit of perfection is good or bad.

She said that if you pursue perfection you can never be happy. She recommended pursuing excellence instead.

I argued that excellence consists of mastering what already exists and pursuing perfection consists of inventing things that don't exist.

Pefection is an ideal. And, as a gentlemen from Washington added, ideals can be appropriated.

I think that there is nothing wrong with not ever being satisfied. In fact I would argue that not being satisfied is a christian ideal. How can one be satisfied in this world that we live in? Still, I believe one can be happy and one can be content and one can live a life full of meaning.

But I just don't believe that it is possible unless one lives ones life in pursuit of an ideal and what better ideal than perfection which is merely another name for God.

Even if one can never actually become one's ideal, the process, the journey one takes in trying to get there will lead to a vigorous and full life, and will also take you higher than you can conceive of.

It will cause you to dream and then to pursue those dreams. It will cause you to create things that don't exist. Pursuing perfection is our attempt for our mind's to romp with God.

It is where all great art originates - right at the point where we abandon the emptiness of excellence and embrace the uncertainity of creation.