January 1, 2011

Well, today is the day for resolutions, and the day for our family to say good bye to Christmas vacation 2010. As I sit on the plane next to Kaeley and Tara, I realized, a good goal for this year. I am going to do my best to journal at least a little bit about each day of the new year. The journals- which will be in the form of a blog, will come in various forms and focus on different parts of our lives, from teaching, to being a student, from our neighborhood, to our church plant, from the Compton initiative, to working with other churches in helping the city of Compton, and of course the basic daily life of a Schuring family in the melting pot of Los Angeles. Now, it should be noted from day one, this is not a made for tv kind of thing, or a journal that is being written to be made into a movie later, it is hopefully an honest and sincere look into our very average lives. Thanks for being a part of it with us.

January 1, 2011

Today started off with the disappointing realization that a Midwest new year is not really celebrated. The ball drops an hour before our new year begins, and Dick Clark completely over looks the long anticipated change from the old to the new year. We rang in the new year packing and preparing for our return trip home. Kaeley was asleep working on her fourth new tooth, and honestly hasn't really acknowledged the change in years yet. Curious :) the new year quickly began with a meeting to discuss a return trip for Faith CRC to Compton. After a great meeting with Karen and a look at some improvements and potential dates, I am very excited for the return of the Pella team. From there, the day of finding old friends in a new year began. I had the privilege of running into Katie Sopher at Smokey Row, and left quite amazed at how quickly time has flown by! Now that we have Kaeley, there are definitely indicators, with her walking and all, but to see how much lives have changed in such a short time is exciting, yet hard to grasp at the same time.

As we finalized our packing it was time for some of the traditional good-byes to grandpa and grandma Verros, the disappointing news of grandma DeGraaf's recent fall and broken pelvis, and a good bye to grandpa and grandma Schuring. We left Pella, for our series of Christmas returns, largely because we simply did not have room for some of the stuff and had a great lunch with mom, Nichole, Bailey, and cousin Hudson. As we finished up the tour of shops at Jordan creek, we made our way to the airport. We tried to work with the customer service personnel to get an earlier fight into LA. With that anticipation, we headed to the gate. As we walked we heard a lady yelling "Matt, stop!" Tara and I turned, looked at the woman and kept walking. She couldn't be yelling at us we both thought. Well, she persisted and we casually slowed down, just in case it was for us, and sure enough, it was grandma Maxine's sister Mary Hiemstra. It had been quite awhile since we had seen her, and when we were not expecting to see her, she completely caught us off guard. After catching up just a bit, we were on our way. I will never understand all of the extra security necessary for babies, but if you honesty think we could put something in my 10 month old little girls shoes, we will gladly send them through the belt :). After verifying her liquids and yogurt were what we claimed we were on to. Our biggest surprise of the day.

As we stood hopefully waiting for the earlier fight, a strange yet familiar face caught my attention. It was Brad! My friend Brad, whom i had not seen for probably 7-8 years was sitting at the terminal waiting for the flight we were hoping to get on. Whether or not Brad would have said "hi" to me or not, is not quite clear, but I was incredibly excited to see him! Perhaps another time I will get into the details of our relationship, but Brad is a very good friend, and no matter what happens in life, I will always be grateful for his friendship and will respect him and hope we can find a mutual respect, despite differing convictions/beliefs.

I'm not sure that I wanted to go down this road already, in my first entry of the new year, but one of the most difficult things in the activities of today, from a couple of looks at the facebook pages of some friends, to the unspoken parts of conversations a lot has changed for some of my old friends. I really miss the relationships that we had, the memories of trips to adventure land will never be forgotten, but the journeys that have occurred since then, are very different, and I'm not sure how excited I am as to where all of us have ended.

Perhaps that is why there is so much joy in looking at a new year. Maybe that is where I am supposed to find hope in my disappointments today. One of the beautiful things God gives us-is forgiveness, our journey is not over and we have not reached the end. We get to celebrate this each day as believers, when we ask Christ to wash our slates clean, to forgive us our sins, to allow us a fresh and new life/beginning. Each time I actually stop and reflect on what I am doing and realize the errors of my ways.

Today, I am thankful that our society/world celebrates a new beginning with the hope of a new year. This release from the baggage of the things left undone, the friendships forgotten, or the opportunities we found ourselves too busy for. This New Year has already been a great celebration for me spiritually. It seems to really have helped me remember the gift of Christ's sacrifice in a real and tangible way.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 sums this up pretty well: from the message translation:

16-20Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.

21How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

Easter 2009

Life has continued to do its thing and fly by. Just yesterday, Tara and I celebrated our two year anniversary! It is hard to believe that two years have gone by already. A lot has changed in the years following college. We have both adapted quite well to life out here in California, despite the chaos and flurry of activities that always seem to keep us running and more active than our bodies/minds can handle.

Easter is an amazing season to celebrate, it has always been my favorite holiday I would say. The deep theological meaning is very significant, but I also celebrate the rebirth that the world seems to undergo around this time of year. Plants have begun to sprout, flowers are beginning to bloom, and the evenings are becoming more and more full of sunshine. It is a great time of year. This year, we have even taken on a little gardening of our own. I have grown a couple of peppers (about a dozen) from seeds and they are starting to sprout, it is quite exciting to witness the miracle of plant growth! We also have a couple of tomato plants that are beginning to take off. The way a plant comes from such a simple seed into a great plant, full of life and fruit, is a miracle.

Speaking of growth and new things starting, last week, I was able to be a part of the first official gathering of the new Center City Classis of the Reformed Church in America. I could write about that for quite some time, but it was an amazing opportunity to be a part of! God is doing some great things in the RCA, and I am thankful that I am able to be a part of it! We got together with church planters from San Francisco, Denver, Philadelphia, and of course Compton/Los Angeles and had a great opportunity to share our stories and testimonies of God's great work in our lives.

Tonight Tara's family comes into town. It has been awhile since we have seen any of our family, so this will be a great gift. This is the third easter now that her family has come to visit us-what a great tradition!!

Life has been continuing, it has been full of exams and papers, scheduling and not scheduling, researching and defending, arguing and apologizing, and of course a lot of running around. I am working on starting a new journey in my life, one to help me find out where I am and a little more about who I am. Tara and I definitely feel the calling into ministry, we have been affirmed from the outside, we recognize we need to grow, thats for sure, and we feel a calling to Compton, but what does all of this mean? We have been blessed with a new home, we have a great community to minister within, but what does this exactly look like. There are things that we feel confident about, like our love to host people and to love our neighbors, but then there are things that we cry out to God for clarification of, like Tara's job. God continues to reveal himself to us, but I am not sure that I am always revealing all of myself to God. Why is it, that when I feel exhausted and tired, I run to the streams of refreshing from television that leaves me parched and wanting. I think that I realize God has streams of life waiting for me in his word, yet, I don't go seeking them. I feel like I am tired, yet I feel like I am not really "doing" anything. Today, I think that I am full of questions, yet somewhat empty.

God, please wake me up. I need your strength to continue moving forward. I hear you, but I don't hear your voice. I know that I need you, yet I rarely turn to you. As I prepare for Easter, give me the strength to release the pain that I hold onto. Help me to trust that you will free me from the darkness that seeks to control my life. Help me to be a friend, to connect with those that you have put in my life. Please God, help me to know who I am. Help me to find my way in you.

Life is good.

It has been a long time, since I have been able to write. Things definitely have been going well, but have been incredibly busy. I am sorry that I have neglected to write in some time, and really appreciate the clarity that writing in my blog brings to my own life.
I have been challenged to really consider where my life is heading. In particular with my internship at Emmanuel and how that relates to my job at Valley and my classes at Fuller. Please be praying for me as I consider all of these things.
As far as life at home is considered, things are going very well. We have been confronted with our Student Loans, (confronted in the sense that I realized how big they are :) ) and also with the potential bills that might be in our future. We continue to pray through where God is calling us. What he has called us to leave behind, or will call us to leave behind and what that all looks like in a very real and physical way. We are also praying through our housing situation. Are we where God has called us? How long have we been called to minister here? Is it specifically Paramount, Compton, Bellflower, Cerritos....???

I am very blessed with a wife that loves me and is open to the calling that God has placed on both of our lives. And together we PRAISE God in a very loud voice: "Thank you for hearing our prayers and providing Tara with a job she loves!!!!"

Our God is so big, He is so wise, and He is with us as we follow after Him.

Grace and Peace,
Matt

Finals Week

We are already into December, time continues to fly past us.  I had at one point thought that high school simply flew by, and then college, wow that went by quickly, but now it is life.  Life itself is flying past me, it would seem.  Perhaps it is from a schedule that is simply too busy, perhaps it is from not simply resting enough during my free time or my vacations, I am not sure.  I do know that I have not kept up with as many of my friends, as I would like.  It is as though not only my life is pulling me into so many directions, but then everything around me, the things that make my life a little more enjoyable, are pulling me as well.  I have so many friends from Iowa, from college, and even Los Angeles, that have moved away.  I love these people, they are very, very valuable to me and have left an impact on my life, I will be forever grateful for, but it seems that I cannot have the best of both worlds.  I am forced to choose between investing in the relationships and the people that are immediately around me and a part of my life today, or to continue investing in the relationships that are so valuable to me, yet separated by distance.  It is even more complicated than this, I think.  I mean, it is not that I even really have the time I need to invest in the relationships which are around me.  I am being called and pulled to be more intentional in my investments of people that I do not know yet.  It is as though, once someone becomes a good enough friend that you are comfortable and are able to grow and encourage each other, it is time to say good-bye and begin investing in someone else.  There is something kind of scary about this to me.  If we are constantly focusing on the new people that are walking in the door and leaving the ones who have been around for a considerable time to fend for themselves, I am not sure that we are doing justice to the Gospel.  It is kind of a both and kind of a deal.  We do need to be mindful and welcoming to the those that are new and visiting, they definitely need to be discipled as well, but how can we forget those that have been a part of our lives, the shaping of who we are today.  Again, I am merely throwing out thoughts, not things that I have come to definite conclusions on.

It is finals week at Fuller this week, I just submitted my paper on John Calvin and the doctrine of the Lord's Supper last night.  An incredible look at the church's development in such a mysterious and awesome gift.  To summarize what Calvin said, which I believe I have talked about before, the Supper is an outward symbol to the inner nourishment that our souls receive from the life and death of Christ.  In the same way, the waters of baptism do not physically cleanse us of our sins, but represents the cleansing that is occurring within the believer, the Supper is a representation of the inner nourishment, that our souls need, being met by Christ.  

Everything in life is going alright.  I will be very thankful to have my final behind me.  I have a 340 point final tomorrow night in my church history class.  It consists of 10 terms that total 100 points, 2 essays at 100 points each, and 2 random questions at 20 points each.  There is a ton of information that we need to have down.  I am sure that it will go well, but still am a little anxious, I just want to do well.  I can easily say that after this class, my interest and respect for the church historic is improved. This is definitely despite some truly troubling histories and confusions within the church.  I am grateful to know a little better my own history and in understanding that history can more clearly see  how things have developed to be the way that they are today.  

We went into Compton on Saturday and took pictures.  I had the opportunity to talk to a lady named Suzy who had her mail man recommend her house to be cleaned up by us.  She has adopted seven children since birth, one of which is now in his 20's all of them her nieces and nephews.  She is  a single lady doing her best to love these kids, and protect them from the gangs and hardships that pressure them.  She had a renewed faith in the goodness of man, and the blessings of God.  She was going to come and check out Emmanuel, she could not understand how a church could care so much for another city and a person outside of itself.  Saturday night, we also had the opportunity to talk with a guy from the reformed church, church planting committee who is looking at working with Emmanuel in assessing people to become church planters and helping in the initial church plants.

I am excited to begin planning for our trip back to Iowa.  Hopefully this weekend, we will have some time to clean-up around the house and start to bring some order back into our lives.  After Wednesday, Fuller is on break until January 7, so nearly a month of not concerning myself with classes!  Some random notes, we have our Christmas tree up and decorated, I hung the lights, and we have begun to listen to small amounts of Christmas music.  Not exactly a favorite of Tara's :).  

Well, I need to get to some projects, have a blessed day.

matt

A Brand New Day

Well, it definitely is a fresh new day in LA. It is actually raining this morning. I really love the rain, I love the fresh smelling air after a rain, the clear sky, the cool reinvigorating air during the rain, and the soft sound of the rain hitting the ground, but wow, in LA does it cause problems. So yes, we woke up to a beautiful light rain, one that we definitely needed, but then in turn, we have car accidents on several of our major freeways. The beauty of the rain, but for a price. I don't really have any other thoughts on rain outside of these, but I do thank God for all of creation, the way that it cares for itself, the way that rain is formed, how it falls, how it brings nourishment to the ground. We have been and are quite concerned with the future of the earth, and I too am quite concerned. I mean, I don't want to waste resources or pollute the air, I think that this is a beautiful world that God has given us, and I want it to stay beautiful. But isn't that a little conceded? I mean first of all, wouldn't God have known in his foreknowledge all of the technology that we would develop, but not only that, but also the effects of that technology would have on the earth. So no real answers, but perhaps some questions/thoughts to consider.
Right now, I am working on a paper for my church history class at Fuller on, John Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper. All I can say is "amazing." Calvin was an incredible theologian. His care for the use of every sentence, of every word, with such great intention into all of its meaning, I mean, I have to reread what he has written three to four times to just begin to understand the incredible point that he is making. I could go on for quite awhile when looking at the awesomeness of the Lord's Supper. So, I will do my best to keep it somewhat short. The catholics are very much believers in the transubstantiation of the bread and the wine. Believing that some how, mysteriously during the mass, the bread and the wine actually in a very physical sense become the body and blood of Christ. Luther believes in the eubiquity of Christ, which means Christ is in all things and that somehow he is even more present in the elements while we participate in the Lord's supper. He would say that in the physical sense, they remain bread and wine, but in a spiritual sense, they become the body and blood of Christ. Calvin on the other hand, believed that the sacraments were fully of mystery. He did believe that the elements changed in any form, but that some how in our participation in the Lord's Supper we are raised up and Christ is lowered down, so that we participate with him in the supper. It is important to also note, that he believes that we are adopted into the family of God in baptism, and that God being our father, loves us so much that he wants to care for us. In that loving care for us, he wants to nourish us and equip us for the life that the scriptures are calling us to live in. It is in light of this, that our Father in heaven feeds our soul through the body of Christ. It is a spiritual meal, that nourishes our soul for the life that we are called to live. In fact as Dutch Reformers, we follow more closely to Zwingli, who strongly believed that Jesus called it a symbol or a sign for a reason. It is just that. Nothing mystical about it, nothing mysterious to it, Jesus was just using an analogy just like he had in all of his parables.
So anyway, my personal belief...there is something more to it than Zwingli says, I don't understand it all, but I do know that my soul feels nourished and strengthened when we participate. Thank you God for the gift of the Lord's supper.
So, I haven't talked recently about Compton and the idea of Tara and I's moving in. I guess Frank and Cheryl have joined in the conversation/staying up on our blogging...welcome. I am sorry to have surprised you like this with some of our talking. We aren't really sure how all of it this is going to come together, and yes we did/do enjoy driving through Compton and thinking about purchasing a home there, we aren't going to be moving forward in this for a little while yet. So, the next question-what defines a little while...that's a great question, and I'm not really sure. It is really hard to determine where God is calling us. We are truly blessed to be a part of the ministry at Emmanuel and we love the opportunity to serve him through this church, but understanding the call that God has on our life can be difficult amidst so many amazing ministry opportunities.
God is working hard to reshape and clean up a lot of my theology and my understandings of him. There are definitely more questions than I have answers right now, and perhaps that will never change. Sometimes to do the best understanding, I have had to tear down some of the things that have held me up in the past and been a great support, and re-examining them, trying to understand what they were rooted in, how the theology was established, and then re-examining the scriptures and theologians of the past and present to help me re-establish my theological understandings. It is definitely a fun journey, most of the time, but one that is taxing on my spirit, and my head.
For the past couple of weeks, I have been struggling with the idea of prayer, how it works, what it does, what our role is in it, and what is God's. Do we have any power in prayer? Are there special words that should or should not be used in prayer? What does my heart look like most of the time while I pray? Why am I praying for this person, out of expectations I have on myself or others have on me, because I know that I should, how much am I praying for all of the people that I say that I am going to be praying for?
It isn't honestly a question as to whether or not God answers prayer. I know that he does. I am not even so much wondering why he chooses the prayers he answers and seems to not hear the ones that he doesn't answer. I mean, these are great things to consider, how egocentric of us to think that our needs are so huge compared to the lives that people across the world are suffering through, yet God hears our prayers-but not only that he answers them...yet children are still sold into slavery....thousands of innocent children die every year, because of decisions that are made outside of them completely, starvation is real, disease is real, brokenness seems to rule so much of the world, and yet God does step in, here and there, it is not that he is completely removed from it, and somehow in the middle of all that, he does hear our prayers too. He provides rain to the desert, he provides a home and the sale of a home to a single mother that desperately needs a change, he provides a good education for a little girl that needs love and support, He gives jobs that support our lives, He is the giver of all that we have.
I wasn't really planning on going into all of this...it is pretty interesting and difficult to wrestle through.
But life is interesting and full of questions most of which don't have answers, but praise God that we know He is in control and that we are just called to follow Him.
grace and peace
ms

Simple Chats

Chapter 1
Chats with Jesus
“Jesus, may I have a talk with you? It is presumptuous on my part, perhaps, to put it that way, but I think you will understand. My purpose in coming to you is to be instructed, to learn. I know that you became Man in order to redeem us, but I have also heard that you are the model of men and that you were sent by God to show us what the highest kind of manhood is. You once said: “Learn of me.” Well, that is what encourages me to try to look at you. If I knew you better I might be more Christlike in my actions.
It does not matter much what we talk about. In fact, there are so many sides to your character that it probably will take me a long time to grasp any one quality in you. How would it be if I just follow you through your public life and pick out points here and there on which I might do a little thinking and praying? You spent two and a half years in the face of men. You permitted them to come close to you. I would like to do just what the apostles were privileged to do, namely, to accompany you, to spend some hours with you in the hills, to observe you in the temple. It ought to be good for me just to be near you, to listen to some of those sterling truths which you spoke and to watch your character in action.”1
So why do I open with a long quote like this? A good question, I might say. But there is definitely good intentions here. I think that I am ready to begin some conversations with Jesus. I have found myself asking more and more questions while on the train. I am quite content with not knowing all of the details or all of the explanations. This is not something that is reserved for just today's blog, but will randomly appear throughout the blog postings. To me there is a real tension in the observation of who Christ was. Throughout history there have been heresies which label Christ more God than man or more man than God, some arguing that he was created by God later than God, or even that he was an angel sent by God, or I guess even as the Muslim's view him, as a great prophet. There is such a tension in how we talk with him, I suppose. I do not want to simplify him so much that I simply have meaningless conversations with him...and at the same time, I do not think that his intentions were to be a God that was completely removed from our lives, from our circumstance, and from what is important to us. The idea of tension, things that naturally contrast each other is heavy on my mind, there is a tension that is very real again in how we relate to Christ. So I am not sure if this is the most theologically sound approach, I am not sure that this is the best way to process or work my way through the conflicts that I walk through in my faith, but I think that it will work, I think that will help in my journey, and you know, if it does not help...I will probably just stop the conversation for awhile.
So I am not really sure how to start the conversation, I mean, he already knows everything about me, he definitely knows my name, he knows the number of hairs on my head, he pretty much knows it all, so now that he knows so much about me, maybe it is my turn to find out some more about him. That is not to say that he does not reveal himself quite clearly in all of creation, but there is still more to know, or perhaps a better way to phrase it, there is more that I need to understand about him.
So chatting with Jesus, not quite the fireside chats or the town hall meetings of the political hopefuls, more of two friends sitting out on a hill in the country, or maybe even on a crowded metro train car in Los Angeles. I am excited to find out more about Jesus, I really think he is the one who will help me struggle through the tensions that are all around me.

1.Russell, Rev. W. H. Russell. Chats With Jesus. P.J. Kenedy & Sons: New York, 1941.

Thoughts

Yesterday I lead our Life Group as we walked through Daniel chapter 1. A lot of people like to consider the similarities of the 6th century BC Babylonian empire and the American power of today, kind of interesting to consider. I am not so sure that I want to walk through any of the parallels that do or do not exist between the two, but I definitely find value in talking about how God moved in the book of Daniel. We talked a lot about the main theme that comes across right away, it is something that blows my mind. In Daniel chapter 1 we see that the Babylonians come and defeat Jehoakim and Juday, at first you read it as Nebuchadnezzar's might, but on a second read, you can see the way that God had it worded. It says that the Lord allowed for Nebuchadnezzar to defeat Jehoakim. Later we see that it is the Lord who allows Daniel and his three friends to find favor in the eyes of the guard, and there is also the power of God revealed in the favor that Nebuchadnezzar shows Daniel and his three friends in their final evaluation. We see all throughout the book that despite what appears to be in control, despite the might, power, and appearance of what is around us, God is actually in control. God is the author of what is going on, he is the one who determines how history transpires.
This is really incredible to consider on so many different levels. So often, we look at our lives and feel like we have no control as to what is going on around us. I did not choose so many of the pains and struggles that I have gone through. In fact, I could pretty easily say, that I would have hoped for some of the things to go a little differently. It is comforting to know that it is not an evil power over my life, or an evil force that is determining what is going on around me, it is not the Nebuchadnezzar's that are in control, it is God. God is the one who allows us to find favor, it is God who allows the defeat that seems to be too much for us to handle. God is the one who allows all of this.
But how does this play out in all of creation? If God is then responsible for all, does that then imply that God is then in control of all of the social injustice that takes place? Is God then in control of all the children that are sold into abuse? the children that starve to death in homes by themselves? How does this theology play itself out?
I have been listening to a book called "Irresistible Revolution" in the book the author talks about a comic he once saw. It portrayed two people having a conversation, the one man was struggling with all of the poverty and pain that is in this world. While he is struggling with this he runs into a friend and tells him that he is struggling with this. He asks his friend to help him in resolving this issue of injustice. His friend then asks him, why don't you ask God why this all exists? The friend replies, that he is scared to do this, because he knows what God's response will be. He knows that God will push back questioning the man with who he called to be his hands and his feet in this world.
God has called us to be his hands and his feet. What does this mean for me? How do we work to fight the social injustice that surrounds us? I am not happy with the state the world is in, but how do I play my part?