bleeding out loud

Not long ago, Newsweek included Grand Rapids on it’s list of top ten dying cities. Those of us in GR were rightly put off. Not long after, Rob Bliss coordinated the biggest lip-dub video ever made to show that Grand Rapids wasn’t dying but thriving.

But even before the Newsweek article or the lip-dub video, Grand Rapids had some serious moxie. There’s a sense in Grand Rapids that something beautiful is happening in the community, or better yet, that the community is capable of doing something beautiful in the world.

Chrysler’s super bowl ad is a prime example of Michigan tenacity.

A friend of mine owns a t-shirt company called Michigan Awesome. More than just a sweet t-shirt, there is a story that underpins the shirt: that Michigan is capable of so much.

Another group of people I know decided to put together a digital magazine called the Elemental Project. It’s sole purpose is to highlight and inspire stories of positive action. In a world of negative news, Elemental is telling a different story, a better story.

But this insistence that there’s a better story to tell, that so much is possible, runs deep in this community. Take Ron David for example. Ron is a successful corporate attorney in Grand Rapids. A few years ago, on a trip out East, Ron randomly read the first three chapters of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is a book in the tradition of Hebrew wisdom. The narrator of the book sets out to find out what makes a life meaningful. He explores wealth and pleasure and learning, and yet despite indulging all of these things he finds that none of them satisfy. After reading the chapters, Ron got to thinking about his own life. On paper he had everything. He was successful. He had enough. But like the narrator of Ecclesiastes, he sensed something missing.

A week later Ron read another book. This time it was a book on Jesus’ teachings on the stewardship of wealth. When he put the book down, he and his wife Renae made some serious decisions. They sat down and determined the annual dollar amount required for them to live, and they set that number as an income cap. Any income they brought in over that figure, they would give away to the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner, the four great images from the Old Testament of those who are at risk.

Ron and Renae didn’t stop there. They decided that every 5 years, they wanted to reassess their situation and lower the cap figure so that they could give more away to those who needed it. Ron also cut his work schedule by 20% in order to volunteer his time to different causes. More recently, Ron has been helping to oversee a micro-finance project in Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world.

What Ron and Renae are doing is incredibly compelling. As a successful attorney, Ron could be fully engaged in the game of upward mobility, amassing wealth and accumulating stuff. When you compare the story of a successful attorney with the story of a successful attorney who has found something more compelling and starts giving everything away to people in need, why is the second story so much more interesting and inspiring?

Ron and Renae, and many others in Grand Rapids, have discovered what it means to choose the path of downward mobility. They’ve begun pouring themselves out for the good of people around them and have tapped into something way bigger than themselves. The world needs more Michigan Awesome’s and Elemental Project’s and Ron and Renae David’s because we need to be reminded again and again that so much is possible and that there is endless redemptive possibility for a groaning, gorgeous world.

Advent means “arrival.”

Throughout the ages, kings and emperors have manipulated the human longing for “the one who is long awaited” for their own political purposes (see Christ & the Caesars by Ethelbert Stauffer), and as I was watching television the other day, I realized that it’s still going on.

This is a commercial from Audi. The theme is progress and the tag line is “Progress can’t be stopped. But it can be driven.” It follows the footsteps of something coming up out of the ocean, then making its way across the sand, to dinosaur feet running through a jungle, and so on until you get a fleet of Audi cars driving across a barren landscape. What this clip doesn’t show is the nationwide event that was advertised at the very end of the commercial. The nationwide sale event is called “The Season of Audi Event.”

Advent. Audi-Event.

Progress. Coming. Arrival. Everything you’ve been waiting for and longing for. Wholeness is just a transaction away.

Smart advertisers, like the savvy kings and emperors of the past, know how to speak to you in such a way that suggests their product is the fulfillment of your deepest longings. My friend Shane left advertising to become a pastor when he realized that the best advertising, the kind that wins awards was a “counterfeit gospel.”

Instead of anticipating a product we’ll consume, advent is a time to anticipate the arrival of a love that pours itself out for the good of the world. And we anticipate the arrival of this love by pouring ourselves out for the good of the world rather than filling ourselves up at the expense of the world.