9 Cups Later
cafe' brazil. hands down my favorite new restaurant in mckinney. food is excellent. coffee keeps flowing and the staff is mucho excillante'. one gentleman is totally cracking me up! here's the routine. walk to the coffee bar, grab a new cup, fill it up slightly, walk all the way back to his seat, take a few sips, discards drink, puts used cup on a dirty table, goes back up to bar, grabs new flavor, repeat process. he’s elderly so you can imagine the snail pace and the eternal hike it takes him to get from point "a" to point "b." i laugh. yet, i mourn knowing ill be there one day.
speaking of mourning prayers for evan and erin during this time of loss.
loss? yea, Jesus was a loser (according to this world) as my friend matt neely says, "losers win." man i can scream "loser" and mean it. so we did a screamo song last night to talk about the history of emo music, to relationships, to passionate relationships. you can't screamo a song without meaning it! so i scream "remember to breathe...” then i loop it back around to my first kiss. how sloppy an affair that was, how embarrassing, and why the heck did i do that anyway, thanks high school friends for creating an invisible time table in how far i was to go with my girlfriend! so i repeat the words of my former youth director Paul, "ed, you are the future husband of some beautiful bride God has designed for you. likewise, your wife is out there floating around this universe just waiting to meet you. respect her by respecting your body. likewise you should expect her to respect herself by respecting her body. in doing so we honor God." i finally shared one of the only kissing stories in the new testament: judas, you know it. through all these loops i jumped through the kids got it!!! man did they get it.
victory stories: "i have been really wrestling about sleeping with my boyfriend." "i get so worked over the kissing thing. maybe God is working me up to share this passion with my husband." "i've kissed a lot of people ed, but the next person i kiss will be my wife."
o.k. i wasn't telling these kids they shouldn't ever kiss someone. i told them they needed to create their boundaries.
so this kissing thing. my last youth group was so close with each other they actually practiced the catholic thing, which is actually rooted in the early new testament church, passing the peace through a kiss on the cheek. it wasn't a weird thing for them. they really were just that close. they truly lived on the edge that this might be the last time we meet. they knew this story too well. in my interim at that church we had 1 student drown during a youth trip, we had 1 student die in a car accident, we had 1 of the aggies in the bonfire collapse pass away... yea the group was familiar with death, which made them appreciate life that-much-more.
now im not suggesting that we promote kissing in our youth programs but you get the picture.
it still blows me away that judas betrayed our master through a kiss. what the heck must have been going through his head as he walked the religious leaders and roman soldiers to that valley? did judas plan the kiss of betrayal? what it must have been like to have to approach your master, smell him again for the last time, come that close to his face. did he whisper, "i'm sorry" in Jesus ear right before he kissed him? did he say, "i win?" i need to duct-tape my brain on this issue.
likewise, when a husband and wife share that kiss on the alter of their marriage? does 55% of them say, "this is temporary" because i can always "kiss another" if this marriage becomes inconvenient? did Jesus become inconvenient for judas?
a kiss is a very passionate thing not to be shared, as one my kids screamed last night in the middle of my sermon, "there's nothing funny about any of this guys."
so the coffee is brewing, i mix all 9 flavors together just because i'm like that. hmm maybe i'll just get 9 different cups put them on my table and randomly pick a cup. maybe ill start a new trend here at brazil's. maybe the staff will kill me here!!!
posted by Ed Whipple @ 8:30 AM
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