Father

My most import job that I have right now is being that best father that I can be. I was reminded of that this weekend. All other things come second.

I want my kids healthy and happy.

WOW!

Its been a long and crazy week. I feel under attack. Pray for me.

Lord, be my strength and my shield! I can do all things through you! AMEN!

Pole

We met at the pole this morning. Just a few in numbers but strong in faith.

We met at the pole to pray for our nation, our town and our school.

We met at the pole and locked hands and prayed.

I prayed... I need YOUR voice in my heart.

WE need YOUR voice in our halls.

We need your LOVE in our LIVES.

We met at the pole... what happens next?

Humpty

I used to think my heart was like Humpty Dumpty. It was broken and nothing could piece it back together again.

Now I am beginning to see that it is broken... True! But it can be like a mosaic. Broken, sure, but given to the right Artist it can be worked back together into something better than it ever was.

I am writing a new song...

Beautifully Broken, Wonderfully Saved

Homecoming

I just found out that there won't be church on Thursday night because of my school's Homecoming coronation. WOW!! What a letdown. I am really burning for church and fellowship and Word and worship and praise. I don't want to skip a week for a popularity contest...

Let me tell you something... the only KING is Jesus Christ. and the only Homecoming that matters is His!!

Not the Point

I had a strange experience the other day. An old friend sent me a rather nasty message through a social network. He was concerned that I wasn't living a virtuous life and that I had fallen away from my faith. It was quite judgmental and condescending.

His heart, I believe, was in the right place. And believe me, I have been running from the Lord a lot lately. I have turned off my creative juices and tucked up into a ball like an armadillo to protect myself from old wounds. And that hasn't worked for me at all. I just find myself cold, lonely and separated from that warming Spirit that gives me a greater purpose than getting up to turn off the alarm clock every morning. But this person 's message did not pull me through. It just made me mad.

It's funny. If you are truly concerned about a brother or sister, what you should do is reach out to them. Ask them, "Hey man... how ya doing?" or "Is everything cool with you?"

It's a very Christ-like thing to reach out to someone who is struggling. And He reached out and offered hope. He gave the light. He offered healing, love and redemption. That is best done with an open hand and kind heart.

I am working at this relationship with Christ. I am laying down some old pain and getting back into the world as a missionary for Him right where I am. I will have my ups and downs. I will fail at times but I am back and I am following Him.

I look around my life and I see many people that seem shut off and in pain. I see friends that were once very close to the Lord who have fallen away also. Part of this new quest is to reach out to them. I strive to show them love, kindness and caring. May that be the light that leads them to back to Jesus.

Obsessions

Back in high school we were assigned to read Melville's epic story Moby Dick in English class. It turns out that I never had time to do so. I was too busy combing my hair or whatever I used to do back then. But thanks to an episode of the equally classic 90's Saturday morning cartoon, Bettlejuice, entitled Moby Richard, I was able to pass the test over the story. No problem!

Later in life, now that I have developed a slower pace and a deeper appreciation for stories without spaceships and laser guns, I have enjoyed going back and rereading those stories that I blew through in a hurry... and finally visit those I never even touched at all. It has been quite the learning experience.

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it."
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville

And so our hearts do become cold and wicked. We pick an obsession and we chase it to the end. We go down with the ship, blind and oblivious to the ramifications of our madness. Often times in life I have pressed the accelerator to the floor in my own name. I have let curses spill from my lips and have have cared not for what I ran asunder on my quest.

That is not God. Christ wants us to be poured out as a sacrifice... not to plummet to a self-centered doom. It is the tale of man from Adam on down. We see it in David and his affair with Bathsheba. We see it over and over. When do we stop the hunt? When do we yield? When do we let our made-up white whales slip beneath the sea and allow vengeance to escape through our fingers like sand?

When do we trust in Him?

Through the Fog

I was driving into work this morning. I rounded a bend and I drove into a bank of fog. It was so thick, like a soup. I was lost in gray, hazy nothingness. It was terrifying. I lost all my bearings.

I caught my breath, looked around, and the only thing I could find in all the fog was the sun. It tore through the thickness with a burning orange light. There was the sun... and then there was the wall of this world that I was lost in. I focused, relaxed and drove through the mist safely back down the roadway to work.

Now, on the other side of the wall of fog, I am left thinking about the larger metaphor and where I am now in my life... and my walk... if you can really call it a walk at all... with my Savior. I am left searching through this fog... and the only thing that matters is the SON.

--- Not my cool new shoes.
--- Not my brand new cellphone.
--- Not my shirt from the buckle.
--- Not my weight loss or how much bigger my arms are...

Those things haven't brought me out of my fog. They only have left me searching. I need the sun... I need the SON burning orange hot through my fog.

So... I do not walk back tonight. I RUN BACK. I am the prodigal. I see Him and I will beg to but be as a servant feeding the swine. Tonight I run back through the fog.

I'm coming back to the heart of worship and its all about you... all about you Jesus!

We buildt ourselves a pillar but we used it as a crutch

I have been traveling through a dry time spiritually for almost a year now. I have been inside myself... mulling over things like a wine taster savors a bit of wine in his or her acute mouth. For a long time I had no voice like a sick person has laryngitis. But slowly that internal itch has started to revive in my mind. The voice is starting to come back. I am wanting to write again, sing again, speak of Jesus again. One thing comes to mind... One obstacle that I have seen in others and my own walk (my own stumbles and my own falls as well).

I believe that we often find things in life that we think are pillars, strong stone things that we choose to build with. We set out to support our lives, our mission, our ministry upon these pillars. But we are weak men. Too often we take a pillar and turn it into a crutch... we become so dependent on them that our mission and our ministry becomes feeding that act, or being important enough, right enough, or righteous enough... we lose sight of what was important in the first place.

It's like the foolish scribes that memorize the Bible but never take a moment to understand, never let the Spirit reveal the deep Truth that is the WORD of God. They go to build a temple based on the Word but in the end only worship the words. Or people that spend so much time focused on shepherding their flocks that they become councilors and not holy men.

What can I say about this? I have been guilty of the trappings of the crutch syndrome. I believed myself to be the savior of a group of kids... and really I was just a vessel. My intentions were noble in the beginning but I let my ego get so out of hand that I lost touch with what matters in the big picture. In the end I guess we just have to strip down everything, wander into those dry times, and come back to the root of what matters...

THE BLOOD OF CHRIST!

At His feet I regain my right perspective- focused on HIM... at HIS CROSS I am face down and asking forgiveness. Let everything else melt away. In the end there is only Jesus. HE is all we need.

I think I am ready to write again...

I think its time I start penning these little ramblings again. I don't know if anyone will read them anymore... but that might not be the point. Maybe I just have some things to tell myself.

Stay tuned.

Hope vs. Hate

I fell asleep last night listening to the Hawkeyes play the Badgers of Wisconsin on WHO Radio 1040 out of Des Moines. When I woke up, the radio was still on. A radio preacherman was giving a sermon and I was very intrigued by his message. He was speaking about how the devil tempts us and tries to silence the Gospel. This is a topic dear to my heart. As a fan of C.S. Lewis and The Screwtape Letters I rolled over towards the radio and listened intently.

What I heard was a long rant on witches in our churches, boogiemen behind the doors and that one driving factor should bring us closer to our Savior... FEAR!!! Fear of everything.

After about fifteen minutes I couldn't take it anymore. I turned the channel to Iowa Public Radio. There I heard stories that inspired. Stories that shared the amazing glory of the Lord. They made me want to jump up and down and run out into the street and share a testimony of His power. There was a story of stained glass windows in the Bethlehem Cathedral in Washington D.C. and how their kaleidoscopic light shines in the dark worship hall as a metaphor of how Christ's Light shined into our darkened world as in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. Next folk music icon Emmylou Harris sang a song called 'The Pearl' which brought me to tears. It was the most beautiful song I have ever heard. Her haunting voice called through the radio like a ghost. These and the stories that followed shined a bright spotlight on God's awesome power and how only He can pull us up.

I thought about how glad I am that I was a Lutheran. I am free of fear. I can ever live in that freedom that Mike Williams used to preach on... A freedom in Christ to stop worrying and start reaching out to others in Christian Love. Light calls me to Christ... not fear of the dark.

The Gospel is filled with the message of LOVE and rescue. 90 percent of it is about love. The other 10 percent may warn us of how we falter and trip up but why would a ministry set out to inspire the masses with a doom and gloom. Christ wants us to reach out and spread love and life. He wants us to be the Light of the world... and how we do that is to show the AWESOME HEALING POWER OF HIS TRUTH AND HIS LOVE.

I am glad that I am free to live a life that FREE in Christ. WHO SHALL I FEAR??? Nothing can stand in the way of me and my Jesus... Not angels or demons or men or boogiemonsters. NOTHING.

Life Lessons by Brant Bollman

Lesson- Always brush your teeth with the lights on.

Reason- Vitamin A and D Ointment makes a very poor toothpaste!

Hey friends

Sorry I have been absent. Getting settled into a new school is really crazy. I have so much work to do right now its dizzying. Yearbook is a challenge and setting up a new course is kicking my butt time-wise. But I like my new school and have met some good friends.

I made this site private for a while. I may lift that sometime but I had a lot of high school students looking at my tattoos and stuff and that's not the point at all. If they want to see my tatts that can follow me to the pool or something. I guess I should look at the bright side, I'm kinda like a celebrity.

Personally, life is kind of crazy. Mary is looking to move again closer to Ottumwa to save on gas. This means that the kids will be farther way from me and overnights during the week will be much harder. But we are working things out. We will have more secure daycare and that's good.

Chris, Eric, Amanda and I went to a hawk game two weeks back. It was a great time. I will not mention what transpired this past Saturday. I am still in denial.

Pray for me... I am still walking the rocky road.

Grace and peace,

Brant

PS- I have a poem coming soon. Stay tuned.

God is Bigger

I have discovered one of the great parts of being a parent is teaching your children to rely on God when the world's trials arise. Recently my son has had a lot of bad dreams. He started to not what to sleep in his room anymore. I used this opportunity to talk about GOD.

"We don't have have to be afraid, buddy. Because God loves us. He made us and He's watching over us. And He is bigger than the monsters in our dreams."

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.


The next day we went down to the public library and checked out Where is God When I am Sc-scared, A Veggie Tales video. Addy watched it four times. It perfectly matched what I had said and addressed this problems. We continued the dialog about God and our fears through that entire day. When night came Adison went straight to bed with no problems. I watched by to check on him and I found him curled up with his stuffed puppy dog singing, "God is bigger than the boogie man. He's bigger than Godzilla or the Monsters on tv. Oh God is bigger than the boogie man and He's watching out for you and me!"

The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

If funny. We all can learn from Bob the tomato and Larry the Cucumber on this. God isn't just bigger than the problems we imagine. He's bigger than the real struggles we face everyday in our real life. Give your fears to God and He's carry you through.

Let it shine, let it shine let it shine!!!!

I was taken to task last Sunday. I was sitting in the back of a church in my new home town. I came because of a promise I made Britta in the middle of the night. I was gonna stop letting disillusionment get in my way. I was heading back. I was getting back into the Word, I was gonna start playing my guitar again. I was gonna stop telling the Spirit that my heart is just too hurt for Him to work in me right now. I was going to finally let it go.

It was a fine service with a good message but the entire time I keep having this line of scripture run through my mind. I tried to ignore it but it wouldn't go away.

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:14-16

After about thirty minutes of this I figured I'd better pay attention. So I prayed, "OK, Jesus... what are you trying to tell me?" And to this I felt the Spirit fall harder than I have since West Virginia. It was like a thunder clap. It's time, He whispered. It's time to shine your light. Or else you are going to smother it.

So It's time for me to start sharing my light again. It's time. I don't know what I'll be called to do, be it music, ministry, service... or just standing on the corner and waving like that old crazy guy used to do in Ottumwa out by KFC. But I'm not hiding it any more. I'm gonna let it shine!

Witch Hunt

Ever been part of a witch hunt? I unfortunately can say I have. As I have said before their was a pursuit of judgment, never justice. And unfortunately, that experience has left me very disillusioned with the entire process. I just keep playing this scene from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail over and over again.



The church, despite whatever twisted logic we force onto it, was never meant to scorn, cast out and punish those that are different. Christ came to save, heal, restore. Christ went to the rejected, the cast out, the fallen.

The Calling of Matthew
As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Matthew 9:9-13

Just as doctors do not treat the physically fit, Jesus did not come to create an elitist clutch of like-minded, pressed collared snobs. He came to save everyone. Jesus came in love, and loved us so much that He gave Himself in love on a cross so that we might enter into death and ever-lasting life with him.

Jesus called on us to help others, love our neighbors and spread the GOOD NEWS. That is out calling. We aren't to beat the hedges looking for phantom witches and make-believe boogie monsters when our lives start to go off track. That does unite the crowd, yes... but in who's name?

Christ stopped the crowed on the witch hunt. He stopped rebuked them... and He saved Her life.

SICK CYCLE CAROUSEL

I have talked with Aldger not longer a go. We shared of the same mistake. We both follow a God so big and so mighty... but we both try buiding something here with our own hands that might impress God. We both forget that God can do things so much more awesome than our two hands.

Sick Cycle Carousel
Lifehouse

if shame had a face I think it would kind of look like mine
if it had a home would it be my eyes
would you believe me if I said I'm tired of this
well here we go now one more time




I tried to climb your steps
I tried to chase you down
I tried to see how low I could get down to the ground
I tried to earn my way
I tried to change this mind
you better believe that I have tried to beat this

so when will this end it goes on and on
over and over and over again
keeps spinning around I know that it won't stop
till I step down from this sick cycle carousel

We learn the lesson. We take Him in. He changes our life but still, the promise of paradise is so hard to believe... that we don't have to do anything to earn this gift. We aren't doing the work.. we are just giving up control to Him so that He can take over and do amazing things through us.

I am back off the carousel and on my knees again.

Everybody hurts

Some people I know blame all sin on Adam and Eve. They make it sound
like that they suffer just because Adam and Eve fell in the garden. They make it sound like that if not for this curse placed upon them they would have never sinned. I feel this is missing the point and missing something very important about sin.

The very nature of being human is that we fall. We all do. We try and try but on our own we never make it. Everybody is bitten by sin. Everyone is effected. Sin is like a virus in this world. We all suffer. We all hurt. All of our lives are bitten by sin.



Sin is an opportunity to heal. Doctors on the battlefield do not skip over the injured to give vaccines to the healthy. No! They chase down the fallen, the bleeding, the dieing. That is how Jesus was. He searched out the leaper, he hunted for the blind, the crippled, even the DEAD!
He touched them and He said, "You are forgiven. You have been restored!"

If you say that you are without sin you are joking yourself. If you think its just Adam and not your own bloody hands, you are deceived. We are all either hurt, hurting or being healed. We all need Jesus!

The Cat

THE CAT
Poem — Ryan Alexander

In April 2004, twenty-eight-year-old Ryan Alexander deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army's Stryker Brigade Combat Team. (Alexander had served in the U.S. Marine Corps but was honorably discharged in 2001. When Operation Iraqi Freedom began, he volunteered to work with the SBCT as a civilian. The specifics of his job cannot be disclosed.) Alexander wrote the following poem about a cat he encountered soon after he arrived in Mosul.


She came to me skittish, wild.
The way you're meant to be,
surrounded by cruelty.
I did not blame her.
I would do the same.

A pregnant cat, a happy distraction;
some sort of normal thing.
Calico and innocent.

The kittens in her belly said feed me.

And I did.

She crept with careful eye,
Body held low to the dirt,
Snagged a bite,
And carried it just far enough away.

She liked the MREs,
the beef stew, the chicken breast, the barbeque pork,
but she did not like canned sardines.
I do not blame her.
I would do the same.

She came around again and again
finally deciding that I was no threat,
that this big man wasn't so bad.

I was afraid to touch her as the docs warned us.
Iraqi animals were carriers of flesh-eating disease.
I donned a plastic glove and was the first to pet
this wild creature who may be

the one true heart and mind that America
had won over.

After a while I forgot the glove and enjoyed
the tactile softness of short fur,
flesh-eating bacteria be damned.

Her belly swelled for weeks
and she disappeared for some days
until her kittens were safely birthed

in the shallow of a rusted desk
in the ruins that lined the road behind us.

She came around again slim
with afterbirth still matted to her hind legs.

She would return, but not quite as often.
She came to eat and for attention,
but there was nursing to be done.

One day she crept up with a kitten in her mouth.
She dropped it at my foot and stared up at me;
she expected something, but there was nothing I could do.
The young black and white kitten was dead,
its eyes not yet opened.

It looked like some shriveled old wise thing,
completely still, mouth puckered,
small body curled and limp.

She let me take the baby without a fight.
She knew, but seemed unaffected.

She had fetched me a gift,
a lesson,
among the worried nights,
shot nerves from poorly aimed mortar rounds:

Everything dies.
The evil, the innocent,
her baby and
me.

I thought I should say a prayer and bury
this poor little thing,
but I did for it what will be done for me.
I laid it in the burn can amongst the ash
and said I'm sorry.


From NPR 'Operation Homecoming'

Thank God

I thank God that we are...

Just the fact that humanity exists is at all is quite something. The earth exists at the perfect distance from the sun, has the perfect climate and meets our needs. It is a wonder that everything lined up perfectly that our world is hospitalable to us. It is an amazing thing to ponder.

I thank God that we are made...

Perhaps the greatest gift of life is breath, getting a chance to live. We have one life here on this earth and it is such a wonder, so rich with ups and downs, highs and lows, the very daily struggles that make life a miracle.

I thank God that we are made to serve...

We are placed here for a purpose. We aren't just mindless robots. We aren't just animals that go about meeting basic survival needs. We think, we reason, we dream. This great gift drives us towards goals. Make no mistake, we all serve something. OUr endevours work to build something. What a gift it is to work towards a purpose.


I thank God that we are made to serve HIM.

Even though God is big, bigger than the moon, bigger than the sky, bigger than anything we can grasp, He created us and called us to come back to Him and serve Him. He loves us and cares for us, even when we cannot see His hand at work in our lives. We aren't complete until we sacrifice our own lives and give them to his purpose. That is when we truly become alive.

Yes it is a miracle this gift of life. The fact that humanity exists at all is a wonder. But without a purpose, without God's perfect plan, we are just chance, a lucky run of random hapenstance. But with a wonderful creator of everything laying out a map of marvously miracles to place us here, called to the destiny of becoming His children, with a goal and a challenghe to live for, now that is an awesome thing to contemplate.

Thank GOD!