A few years ago my wife and I took a trip out to Vegas. It was a pilgrimage if you will, as Vegas is one of the few locations globally that hosts several permanent Cirque Du Soleil shows.  Yes, it’s true, my wife and I went to Vegas to see Cirque Du Soleil.  We are Cirque heads, or Cirquees, or whatever you call people that are obsessed with an adult circus that charges an arm and a leg to see a show. Let it be known that we didn’t go to see just any show, we went to see O.  The show of all shows, The Cirques of all Cirques.

Sure, we also saw Mystere (another Cirque Du Soleil show) while we were out there, but that was to be the appetizer to the sensory buffet known only as “O”.

So the day of the show arrives and we have to go stand in line at the Bellagio to obtain these tickets that we had reserved weeks in advance. The line was longer than I had expected but with three people working the counter, we were moving through the line at a pretty good clip.  With only two people left in front of me the anticipation of receiving my tickets was almost more than I could stand.  “I can help you over here, sir”  I could hear one of the ladies say to the first person in line, leaving only one person standing between me and the mecca of Cirque fanatics.

“I’m sorry sir, we don’t seem to have your reservation on file,” I can hear the lady say to the guy that had just moved over to be helped.  “Well, I made it,”  He replied in a tone and volume that let everyone know that his plans to see O were not going to be thwarted by some silly reservation system.  “Next in line please,” another lady working behind the counter said, and as the lady in front of me moved toward the desk, I now stood next in line to be helped.  “I told you I made the reservation.  HERE, this is the credit card I used!” yelled the guy with no reservation number – and apparently no seats.

“Next in line,” said the lady at the counter and as I stepped up to the open spot next to Mr. “No Seats” I give the lady my name, and the credit card I used to make the reservation.

“Well I made the reservation,” Mr. No Seats says to the woman behind the counter again, this time at a volume bordering on yelling.  He is so loud, in fact, I almost can’t hear the lady behind the counter tell me she can’t find any tickets listed under my name.

“Excuse me?” I say, as I suddenly start to feel sympathetic for the guy next to me at the counter who at this point seems ready to start taking hostages. “I don’t see any reservations under your name or made with this credit card,”  she says to me, probably still wondering if I am going to react like the guy next to me, who by the way is now demanding to speak to a manager.  “Well, I made them,” I say with more of a tone of defeat than demand, to which she replies “I’m sorry,” she says. “We don’t have anything in the system under your name.”

So there I stood at the ticket desk in the Bellagio hotel in Vegas with two options. I could attempt to take control of the situation and start acting like the guy next to me or accept the fact that the show was “sold out” and they didn’t have my reservation in the system.  I can tell you what I wanted to do.  However, I am happy to report that instead of reading this girl the riot act I said “Well… it’s not your fault.”  As I prepared to leave the ticket counter in defeat, the lady said “Give me one second sir, I want to go check something with my manager.”  So she walks behind the girl that is still being yelled at by Mr. No Seats and disappears through a door only to return a few moments later with an envelope in hand.

“Thank you for waiting sir, it seems as if my manager was able to release these tickets for you.  I do apologize for the misunderstanding and I hope you enjoy the show,” she said in a whisper, perhaps to ensure that the guy next to me didn’t hear what just happened.  Then she handed me the envelope with two tickets to see O that night.  If that wasn’t enough, the seats she gave us were in the 5th row and were dead center stage, far better than the tickets that I had reserved or should I say the tickets I thought I reserved.

I tell that story because as we prepare for our two week series “Waiting on God”, we often think that when God doesn’t respond to us right away or give us exactly what we want, that somehow He’s shortchanging us.  We act like that guy next to me in line waiting to get Cirque tickets.  We feel that we need to get involved, insert ourselves into the process, we need to take charge of the situation, we need to make sure things work out the way we want them to.  In short we would rather play God than wait on Him.

What if God wanted us to wait on Him, not because He was trying to shortchange us, but because His plans were far greater than anything we could even imagine? From landing the big deal to getting diagnosed with cancer, maybe God is asking us to wait on Him because He is at work in the middle of all of our situations working out results far greater than ones we could ever produce on our own.

If you can wait until Wednesday we will talk more about it then. Invite a friend out as we start our new two weeks series “Waiting on God”…

D.R.

In 1999, I went to see the movie The Sixth Sense. It was the big breakout movie for the new director M. Night Shyamalan.  Unfortunately it was one of the last good movies he made. (Unbreakable was the other.  Believe me when I say it has been all downhill since then.) The Sixth Sense was about a young boy who spoke to the spirits of people that didn’t know they were dead.  After a few terrifying events, he starts meeting with a child psychologist, played by Bruce Willis.

The movie was a huge hit and there was a huge buzz about the movie and this big ‘twist’ that happens during the movie. After a few weeks of constant buzz I make my way to Reston Multiplex, and about halfway through this movie, after my box of Milk Duds and the large vat of popcorn, and I start thinking about what this ‘twist’ could be.  So I start running all of these scenarios through my head, and all of the sudden it hits me… The child psychologist is dead and doesn’t know it.  I apologize if this ruined the ending for you, but it’s been 12 years so perhaps this could be the sign that you need to get out more.  (On a separate but related note, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.)

Back to the movie theater… So there I was now halfway through this movie and I am now viewing this movie in a completely different way than I had watched the first half.  I saw things as they were, not as the director wanted me to believe they were.  Think about it: the buzz around this movie was this huge twist.  The director was intentionally allowing the viewers to believe something that wasn’t true, and for the first half of the movie I just went along with it.  It wasn’t until I actually questioned what I believed about the movie, that I started to believe something else.  When my belief changed, so did the way I viewed the movie.

I bring all this up because when thinking about my experience in that theater, I realize that for the first half I had just accepted, without question, what the director wanted me to believe.  As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until I started questioning what the director wanted me to believe that I actually came to believe something completely different.  At that point, I was finally able to see what was actually happening.

What if that were true outside of our local multiplex as well? If it is, what importance would that put on what we believe?  The good news is, if what we believe is that important, I have to believe God might have weighed in on the topic.

I believe we will discuss this on Wednesday.

Invest and Invite,

D.R.

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Last year a buddy of mine invited my family over to his house on Easter morning for an Easter Egg Hunt. So on Easter morning we loaded the kids up and headed over to hunt down some eggs. Now I’m not sure what my kids were expecting but I personally imagined a couple dozen colored eggs strategically hidden around the front yard that the kids would joyfully collect until quickly unraveling into a scratch and claw fest for the final few.

As we pulled in the driveway, I could instantly see the front yard littered with eggs (I so would have dominated those kids), but not only was the front yard filled with eggs but the back yard was as well Seems that instead of a couple dozen eggs, my friend the night before had hidden almost a HUNDRED plastic eggs. If that wasn’t enough he had marked a special section as the “Kasey Section” where only my 2 year old daughter could go. It was amazing. The kids had an absolute blast and the adults were able to stand and talk and share in the excitement each time one of our kids yelled “I found another one”.

At some point during the morning, as the kids continued to turn up eggs I asked my buddy how long this whole thing took him to put together. He told me he had spent about an hour putting candy inside the plastic eggs and about two hours hiding them all. As we pulled away from their house that day I started to think about how there was almost a direct correlation between the time my buddy had spent preparing for that day and the amount of joy that everyone experienced.

Since that time I have also come to the realization that I have never spent as much time preparing for Easter, that my friend spent last year. Growing up completely “un-churched” my preparation for Easter was pretty much the same year in and year out. I would wake up hung-over (Easter is on Sunday after all) shave (maybe) and get dressed up to do something that I would only do once or twice a year: Go to brunch. Who in the world thought it was a good idea to schedule the first meal of the day at 11:00? It had to be a thin person, who also didn’t know what it felt like to wake up with cotton-mouth and very low blood sugar. By the way, if you were thinking I was going to say “go to church” perhaps we need to spend some time defining “un-churched.”

However, since coming through the doors of Christianity I have begun to grasp, (as I have to imagine we might never do more than that) the significance of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and I have to imagine that if it truly is and offers all that it claims to, perhaps much like the Easter Egg hunt last year, there might be a direct correlation between the time spent in preparation and the joy we could experience in celebrating it with others.

Come join us at Fuel April 6th, 13th and 20th, for a three week series titled: Easter prep

Invest and Invite

D.R.
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This coming Wednesday, March 16th we will begin a new three week series titled: “A Pirate’s Life for Me”

What is it about pirates that absolutely captures our hearts and imaginations? I can’t begin to put a number on the hours I have spent playing “pirates” in my house. We have pirate hats, and flags, we have pirate ships, Lego pirates and pirate games – all one would need to conquer the seven seas.

However, long after we outgrow our pirate toys, I still think we are captivated by the romanticized version of pirates. Anyone see Pirates of the Caribbean? How about the second or third one?  Plans on seeing the next installment, “On Stranger Tides”?  Here is a link to the trailer.  Watch it and tell me something inside of you doesn’t come alive.

To be honest I think we are captivated by the idea of pirates, because of the total freedom, complete purpose, reckless abandon, and countless riches. It’s all upside in the pirate’s life, or at least that’s the parts we play.

I think that those are the parts that captivate us as adults as well. We want freedom, we want to live on purpose, we want to live with reckless abandon, all with the idea that somewhere somehow we will discover the buried treasure that has eluded everyone else..

Come join us on March 16th at 6:30am as we set sail on this three-week series.

~ D.R. Carlson