i know my redeemer lives

I come up with at least a half dozen good blog post ideas during the week. As is the case right now, I usually forget them. I guess thats why I’ve been doing so many update blogs.

As I have journeyed through the Bible the last few months, I have come to the book of Job. In case you aren’t familiar with Job, here is the short version:

Job is a good man who follows God’s commands. Satan comes to God and says “I bet I can get this good guy to forsake you.” God says “I’d like to see you try, under one condition… don’t kill him.” So, in the course of a chapter, Job loses his entire family to murder and all of his possessions to theft and disaster. Then Job gets a breakout of boils all over his body. The rest of the book is mostly a dialogue between Job and a few highly religious friends who are trying to convince him that the reason he is enduring these hardships is because he is such a bad sinner. Surely a godly man wouldn’t deal with such suffering.

So, when you read the book of Job, I am convinced that there are two equally unhealthy reactions you can have. The first happens when you are in a place of peace and contentment in your life. When you are in a stable place like this you can often read a book like Job (or Lamentations) where everything is depressing all the time and disconnect yourself from it. You kind of skim over it and don’t ever engage it because, well, its really sad and you aren’t.

The other bad reaction to Job is the one that I am constantly tempted to put myself in. I am constantly tempted to read myself into the Job story. Go ahead and take a second to laugh about what I just said. I like to put myself into the Job story.

“How could you put yourself in the Job story?” you might ask. “Your family isn’t dead and you still have some things and you don’t have boils on your skin.” You would be right about that. I still have my family, although I have lost many of my possessions. The boils thing is debatable… I’ve always had really bad skin that includes lots of weird rashes and painful sores… but I’ve never been forced to sit on the side of the road and dig shards of pottery into my skin to drain out the puss like Job did.

I put myself into the Job story because I take a lot of joy from the way that Job reacted to God. Job got mad at God. Job got really mad at God. However, he would always bring himself back to the place where he is putting God at the head of the situation. He knows that God loves him and has everything under control. Even in the moments of deepest despair, he always manages to get back to trust.

In chapter 19 Job goes through another one of his complaint sessions:

“How long will you torment me?… I call for help but there is no justice… my hope He has pulled up like a tree… He has kindled His wrath against me…”

But then, in verse 23…

Oh that my words were written…that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!

The hope that Job has gives me hope. He knows that his Redeemer lives… even though his Redeemer had not yet come to the earth. Incredible.

This time of discomfort that we are going through has shown me time and time again that our trials, as Paul says, are a light and momentary pain compared to our eternal reward.

So… on my good days I have hope that my Redeemer lives. On my bad days I’m a little less sure. I want to believe it every moment of every day.

some of my favorites

I wanted to share some of my favorite music from last year with you. In the past I have assembled a top 10 list, but to be completely honest, I haven’t listened to enough music in the past year to have a comprehensive list.

There is a band called Cataldo from Seattle that my friend Tony turned me on to. Their record “Prison Boxing” was, by far, the most listened to of the entire year. I had it going constantly. You can stream the entire album HERE on their website.

One of my favorite songs of the year came from Fleet Foxes‘ new record “Helplessness Blues”. There are several good songs on this record, but this song in particular is my favorite.

 

“Ghosts Upon the Earth” the new record from Gungor is absolutely incredible. It is one of the most beautifully constructed albums I’ve heard in a long time… especially in the market of music made by Christians. Listen to “Crags and Clay”:

At the end of 2011 I started listening to the new Florence + The Machine album “Ceremonials”. It is a deeply thoughtful and surprisingly theological album. I have always kind of chosen to stay away from F+TM because, well… they got popular before I started liking them, therefore I subconsciously ignored their existence. My bad. This album is really good. Watch the (very creepy) video for “Shake it Out”… a really great song that I interpret as being about repentance.

Mates of State put out a new record this year called “Mountaintops”. Here is a video for the single “Palomino”. Leah and I have been big Mates of State fans for years. This record is really solid and has lots of really catchy songs.

The Head and the Heart have a handful of really good indie/folk/pop songs on their self-titled record. I particularly like the song “Rivers and Roads”… it has a lot of parallels to our current life situation and how much we miss our friends and family back home.

I also enjoyed:

• The Rapture – “In The Grace of Your Love”
• Bon Iver – “Bon Iver”
• Death Cab For Cutie: “Codes and Keys”
• Washed Out – “Within and Without”
• Cut Copy – “Zonoscope”

In addition to some music from 2011 I also got into a few other records a year or so late.

• The National – “High Violet”
• Mumford & Sons – “Sigh No More”
• The Brilliance- “The Brilliance” 
• Kopecky Family Band “The Disaster”

to my secular friends

This blog post has a very specific purpose.

I have been writing posts over the last year or so about our family’s move to Boston to be a part of a church plant. Since these posts are mostly tailored to our various church families and Christian friends, I have thought often about how that are probably a bit isolating to my various types of secular, atheist, agnostic, and other generally non-church-going friends. Well, this blog post is for everyone who has respectfully sat through my posts about prayer and God’s calling without even the slightest hint of cynicism or judgment.

I’d like to talk to my non-Christian friends about our family’s decision to move to Boston.

First of all, I would like to apologize to a lot of you guys. I have been a bit of a coward in the past when it came to the topic of our move to Boston. Many of you have asked me “well, why are you moving to Boston?” and in responding I have either downplayed the role of the church in the motive for our move or completely eliminated it altogether. I’m sure that was really confusing to a lot of you. I’m really sorry about that. I’m sure that my motive for adjusting the truth (or flat-out lying) was simply that I was afraid that you would judge me or make fun of me or something like that. Pretty lame, huh?

Now that that is out of the way, I want to talk to you about the events in my life that led to our family’s move.

You probably know that I have been a Christian my entire life… sort of. I mean, I grew up going to church and would always self-identify as a Christian. More often than not I would tell you that I am a Christian and then spend half an hour complaining about other Christians so you would know that “I’m not like them”.

A lot of you have seen me act in ways that completely contradict the way Christians are supposed to act. You saw me act like a total hypocrite… especially people who knew me from about age 15 to 20. I did a lot of irresponsible things in that time that hurt people around me and made it seem like I didn’t take my faith seriously at all… which would be accurate. I took my faith as seriously as I had to so as the still be accepted by other Christians. That was about it.

When I was about 19 or 20 I starting hitting a personal faith crisis. I realized a few things. First of all, I realized that if I really believed all of the crazy junk in the Bible it meant that my life needed to look different. If I really believed that the perfect, holy God of the universe created the world out of a desire to create beings to share in His love and that sin ruined that perfect relationship with God, and that God came in the flesh as Jesus Christ and died and literally rose from the dead so that we could be reconciled to that original perfect love…. If I really believed all of that stuff my life needed to be different.

I decided that I did believe it. I can’t give you a scientific theory that justifies my belief in God. I can’t prove His existence rationally. All I can tell you is that I thoroughly examined all of those things that I learned as a child and decided that in the core of my being, I believed that they were true.

So, when I was 21 I got married to Leah. As you know, she shares the same faith that I do. We have made that faith the center of our marriage and our lives. As many of you know, we spent 4 years in a band called Save the Ship. We were a Christian band. Being in that band was something that I felt like I was supposed to do. That band was the reason that Leah and I moved to Panama City after college. It was a wonderful experience for us.

Then, back in 2009, I met a guy who was moving to Boston to start a church. I had always liked the idea of living in Boston. As you probably know, I have always wanted to live in a bigger city… and Boston always been an idyllic place in my mind. Then, when I met this guy who was going, I couldn’t stop picturing myself as part of this church. I kept seeing myself walking down the streets of the city (which I had never been to before). I got to the point where I couldn’t picture myself being anywhere else but Boston.

So, I took a few months to talk it over with Leah and think and pray about it. After those months we decided that we would begin saving money so that we could move in the summer of 2011, which we did.

We moved up here to help our friend start the church. We came to help with leadership, to volunteer, and to be a part of the community. I also had this curious feeling and thought in my mind that I should eventually become a pastor… an idea that freaked me out and made my wife even more uncomfortable (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Leah say, “I have no desire to be a pastor’s wife”). Part of the reason that we came up here was so that I could learn about my potential future as a pastor, and whether or not that was really something that I wanted to do.

It turns out that it is something that I want to do. I’m not sure what that means yet, but I do know that I want to eventually transition out of working a normal job and into ministry as vocation.

So, that is that. That is why we are here. That is why we saved thousands of dollars to move across the country. That is why we spent thousands of dollars to stay up here. That is why our family lived with friends for 6 months. That is why I work at a job that shreds apart my pride and dignity on a daily basis. We believe this stuff in the Bible is real and we think it is the most important thing in the world. We think it is worth the uncomfortable 6 months we have had.

If you have questions for me, or want to discuss my faith, my motives for moving, or anything else… please please please feel free to email me (thomasirby at gmail). No question or statement is off limits. Even if you just want to debate me and make me look stupid… please email me. I would love to hear from you.

Much love.

New Year’s Eve

So, it is our first New Year’s Eve in Boston. We are having a few friends from church over and will be pounding coffee to stay awake. I honestly haven’t stayed up past midnight in probably 4 months… I’m a little nervous about passing out on the couch.

It hasn’t gotten too cold yet (relatively speaking). I got up for work one morning to find temps around 18 degrees… that is about as bad as it has been. This weekend it is a pleasant 35 to 40 degrees. Honestly, we love this kind of weather. It is cold, overcast, and gloomy. For some reason Leah and I really enjoy it.

My mom and brother came up for a visit during Christmas. I hadn’t seen them since the first week in July when I drove up to Boston in a moving truck with our friends. It was really wonderful to spend the week with them.

Things have been really wonderful at church. The church has been growing rapidly in size and depth. The internship program that I am apart of has been really helpful. I just started reading a book about church planting for the internship and am starting to pray about the option of our family pastoring a church plant. It would be a big, scary risk with lots of change… but so was moving to Boston in the first place. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Also, I wanted to to share a few pictures of our new apartment!

Boston Update 12-2-11

I has been a long time since I have had to apologize for not posting in so long. Usually I have the opposite problem… posting too much. 

Right now I am sitting and drinking a cup of coffee in the dining room of the apartment that we have been living in for the last 2.5 months watching the sun rise over the city of Boston. Leah and I didn’t realize that this apartment had such a fantastic view of the city until mid-November when all of the leaves fell off of the trees that sit right behind our rear window. Now we can see right through the trees into the towers of the Boston.

Yesterday we found out that this will be our last week living with the Bennett’s in this apartment. They graciously offered to let us rent out a room until we found our own place. We did find our own place… about a month ahead of schedule. If you have been keeping track of us over the last few months you know that finding a job and an apartment have been a huge, long undertaking for us. We literally started looking for places back at the start of May. For a myriad of reasons we have had to wait on getting a job or having enough savings or whatever. Things just haven’t lined up.

We are so thankful and excited about this. God’s hand has been over this entire process of waiting and we have never had to go without food or shelter… not for a moment. We have even been able to buy appropriate winter clothes, which was a fear of ours.

We will be moving into an apartment complex literally right across the street from where we have been living. It is a one bedroom apartment that is exceptionally affordable and spacious for this area. If you know anything about the Greater Boston Area and want more specifics about where we are moving, I can tell you that we live in a city called Somerville. If you know anything about Somerville and want more specifics about where we are moving, I can tell you that we live on Winter Hill.

Here is a fun fact about Winter Hill: Until a few decades ago our neighborhood was run by the Irish Mafia. Check out this Wikipedia article about The Winter Hill Gang. 

An extra plus about the complex that we are moving into is that our new friends Ian and Natasha are going to move into the same complex this week! They were actually the ones that gave us a heads up about vacancies in the building. Natasha is very very pregnant and they will be having a little baby boy in the new few weeks. Keep them in your prayers.

Things are going well with our church too… there is a lot of cool stuff coming up for us. I will save that for later.

this is boston

My boss just moved to the Boston area from Virginia. I wanted to share a funny conversation I had with him the other day:

• Boss: “We just got a new account. It’s a bar in Boston.”
• Me: “When do you want me to do it?”
• Boss: “Well, its a bar so it probably opens around 4. Any time before that should work.”
• (Pause)
• Me: “This is Boston. Bars open at noon.”
• Boss: “Hmm… let me check” (looks up account information on the computer) “Yep you’re right. They open at noon.”

celebration

First of all, I would like to say that today is mine and Leah’s fourth anniversary. I am so fortunate to have her as my wife. She is an incredible lady who is so much prettier and smarter and funnier and loving (er?) than I deserve. This is our first anniversary in Boston, obviously, and we are celebrating amidst uncertain times. However, we are celebrating none the less.

I want to share with you a little story about how we pre-gamed out anniversary celebration on Monday night.

I was laying in bed at about 8:45pm (I had to be at work at 3:30am… so I went to bed early). I was in no way ready to sleep. I decided to reach over and grab my phone to check facebook. I saw in my FB news feed that this band that I really like (Kopecky Family Band) was playing in Cambridge that very night. They were scheduled to go on at 9:45pm. So, we decided to leave the sleeping Judah with our roommates and make a last minute trip to see the band play.

This is important for a few reasons:

1) Leah and I love music. We love going to see interesting bands play. However, I can’t remember the last time that we went together to see a band play. I think it was before Judah was born, honestly.

2) Since Judah was born the spontaneity in our marriage has trickled off. That is probably true in any family where a parent loves a child enough to not jack up its schedule. The only spontaneous thing that we usually do is make a fast food run in the middle of the night.

3) Kopecky Family Band has a song that really speaks to our current life situation. It is called “God & Me”. (You can listen to it HERE) I interpret the song to be about someone following what they believe to be God’s will and getting frustrated by how difficult and crappy things turn out. I’m not sure if that is the meaning they were going for, but thats where I went with it.

I listened to this song all the time while I was living in Boston alone for a month looking for a job. I was away from my wife and son. I was jobless. I was sleeping on a couch in someone’s living room. This was the longest month of my life.

There are a few awesome lines that stick out to me:

Now it’s just God and me, playing our parts just to see who believes

To me, this lyric means that you are kind of a stalemate with God where you are waiting for Him to act or provide or do something to assure you of His love (or sometimes even existence). At the same time, it seems like God is waiting you out to see if you believe in Him enough to be patient through the difficult circumstance. He is waiting to see if you believe in Him while you are waiting to see if He believes in you.

This mess I’m in, I’m not quite sure, but it looks a lot like yours

This one is kind of straightforward. Sometimes you follow God and things get messy. It can feel like God made the mess that you are in.

So, anyway… we had a wonderful time at the show. Kopecky Family Band was incredible. If you ever get a chance to see them live I would urge you to do it. The band members were super nice, and I think a bit surprised to see someone singing along to their songs in a city that they had never played before.

It was a very nice start to Anniversary Week.

thoughts from work

Since my new job has started I have seen several things and been several places that I would not have gone to otherwise. These include:

• a trash truck depot
• a church that was converted into a restaurant
• a church that was converted into a karate dojo
• a methadone clinic
• the Segway corporate offices (people in the plant rode around on Segways to get from one side to the other!)

Also, yesterday I went on a route that took me through Worcester (pronounced “Wuss-ter” for all of you Floridians). A gas station attendant said the following sentence to me:

“Be careful over by that trash can. I’ve been finding needles in there.”

ryan

The autumn in New England is beautiful. The leaves change colors and the temperature begins a pleasant descent before the horrifying, snowy winter plunge. October got cool enough to warrant me wearing a substantial coat as I work in the wee hours of the morning at my new job. Oftentimes I go into work as early as 2am. So far it has gotten down to about 42 degrees with a steady wind. Unfortunately the seasons began to change before Cintas got around to ordering me a name-emblazoned coat. While I waited for mine to come in I borrowed one from the supply room with the name “Ryan” written across the left breast. So, for the last two weeks, my name has been “Ryan”. Everyone assumes that is what my name is.

Today was a particularly cold and rainy day. My lovable, middle-aged Dominican co-worker and I made our way up to New Hampshire to service a kitchen and a few restrooms. For some reason, even though New Hampshire is only a 15 minute drive from the Cintas plant in Northern Massachusetts, the temperature always seems to be about 10 degrees cooler in New Hampshire. I spent most of the morning snugly wrapped up in my “Ryan” coat.

At about 7:00am we went to a restaurant near Manchester, New Hampshire that we were supposed to service. My co-worker went inside to take care of some paper work while I lazily sat in the van trying to fall asleep for just a moment. After about 60 seconds of slumping over the steering wheel I was startled by someone knocking on the window and yelling “We were in an accident!”

I opened the door to find a panicked mentally-handicapped teenage boy saying “Please help me! My dad is hurt! We were in an accident!” I jumped out of the van into the rain, shook the sleepiness out of my eyes, and walked with him toward the road where I found a green van with the hood crushed in and a silver car that had run up onto the sidewalk. I did the responsible grown up thing: I asked him if he was ok and then I called 911.

The next few minutes were really intense. All of the sudden I was the only responsible adult in this guy’s life. While I called the police he continued to frantically shout random thoughts out as they came to him: “I can’t see! My glasses fell off in the van! Can you get my glasses!?”, “I”m scared! I don’t want my dad to die!”, “I want to call my mom!”, and “That is my mom’s van! Is it totaled?”

After I called 911 I assured him that the ambulance was on its way but, of course, that did little to settle his frantic mind. He continued to yell through his fears: “I can’t see!”, “Is my dad OK?” Then he said “I’m cold!” which makes sense because he was only wearing a t-shirt in the cold rain. That was a problem I could solve. I walked back to the van and pulled out the “Ryan” jacket and helped it onto him (he was a little bit bigger than me so it was snug).

As I helped him with the jacket he looked at me and said “I’m so sorry. I’m scared. I don’t want my dad to die.”

I said “It’s going to be ok. You did a great job.”

Then he looked at me and said “I love you” and embraced me with his dripping wet arms. It took a lot for me to not cry (…ok I cried a little). I just couldn’t help but think about Judah walking around in a parking lot trying to get someone to call 911 because I was trapped in a car.

The paramedics arrived and informed us that his dad was going to be OK. He was trapped in the car for a while, but he was very responsive and talkative. A firefighter escorted the young man to the side of the car so that he could retrieve his glasses and talk to his dad. My co-worker and I got back in the van and watched as a soaking-wet young man with the mind of a child stood anxiously awaiting the rescue of his father. That was the last I saw of him… and that was the last I saw of the “Ryan” jacket.

I love it when God reminds me that I’m here for a reason.

things

So, things are good.

I am getting settled into my new job. I am about halfway through my two months of training. Leah and Judah are still enjoying being providers of care for an adorable two-year-old named Lilly. We have been living in our current apartment with our friends Mike and Ashley for almost a month now.

We have a lot of financial catching up to do. We blew through our entire savings this summer while we were looking for jobs. We acquired a decent amount of credit card debt and got behind on a few purchases… like Massachusetts license plates and winter coats. However, we have now purchased coats and have started paying back VISA for things like gas and groceries.

We are starting to see the fog clear on the horizon. We can almost see stability in the distance. Stability is a friend that we will welcome with open arms.

I also wanted to let you know that I have started a pastoral internship program at our church. I will be alongside three other guys as we serve as interns for Aletheia Boston. The goal of the program is to sort out what our call into ministry is. The is this weird thought in the back of my mind that I may just want to be a pastor one day. We’ll see…

So, the church has been growing a lot… like a lot a lot. When I started attending back in July we were averaging about 70 people per Sunday. In the last month we have been in between 90 and 120 every week. This is partly due to a connection we have made with the Harvard campus ministry group. The church launched in January… and it is already averaging an attendance of 100… that is serious growth for an evangelical church plant in Cambridge.

Pray for the church and its leaders. Pray for our family and our spirits. We have been feeling kind of gloomy over the last few weeks because of the tough finances and continual transition. Pray for me as I begin to test out my call into ministry.

Much love to everyone.