I'm back home in Topeka now, sipping at a Mountain Dew, eating the Nutty Bars that Charlie forgot in our dorm room, and watching reruns of the Cosby Show. In other words, summer is already in full swing. For those that don't know, I'll be bumming around T-Town for the next week before I start a youth ministry internship at University Christian Church in Manhattan (Kansas, not New York. I'm not hardcore enough for that.) I'm really pumped about the internship and will covet any prayers you feel like sending God's way for me.
I don't really remember going to school this semester. I mean, obviously I was there, but I have no clue how it went so fast. It feels like I was in Honduras yesterday, but that was two months ago. But at the same time, this semester has seemed like a long one. It had to have been ages ago since Charlie, Ryan, and I watched all five Planet of the Apes movies on the projector, but it was just in January. So the semester has been both long and short. I'm not an expert in science, but I thought time was supposed to progress somewhat linearly, but the last four months have felt like more of a zig-zag.
I miss freshman year sometimes. It was so simple. I remember thinking at that time, "Man, college is so much crazier than high school." But I now realize that it really wasn't all that crazy. Sure, I was busy, but somehow I still had time to watch a couple episodes of Smallville pretty much every night, and I played a lot of basketball and ate pizza and took naps. That kind of time didn't exist this semester. After every semester, I think, "Man, that semester was out of control. I can't imagine it getting worse than that." But then the next semester is always just more out of control than the last one, and every year I realize that I have less of a grip on things.
When I handed in my Life of Christ final on Friday morning, I put a stamp on my junior year at Ozark. That means that I'm now a senior. (Technically, since I'm getting a five-year degree, I'm a "middler." Semantics.) Truth be told, I really have no business being a college senior. One would think that by this time, I would have my act together at least a little bit. But what I'm sadly realizing is that I haven't really matured much since high school. I still like ska. I still wear denim shorts. I can't cook anything that isn't microwavable. That's not maturity. A mature person is one that has an apartment and a job and pays bills and wears ties. I don't do any of those things.
But maybe that vision of maturity is skewed. I've seen people who are "independent" and look like they know what's going on. But then they still think it's cool to go get trashed on the weekend. They think the brand on their clothing tags is worth racking up debt. They backstab their friends and coworkers and whoever else in order to get ahead. And I don't think that's what maturity looks like, either.
When it comes down to it, I think that true maturity is found in true wisdom. Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do and then doing it. It's not about being "out on your own." It's not putting yourself over the rules because you're "an adult" now. It's about not being an idiot. It's about allowing yourself to be molded into Christ's image. It's about treating people respectfully, handling situations discerningly, and thinking reasonably.
So maybe maturity is something more than seemingly having life figured out. In the meantime, it's probably okay that I live in a dorm and have meals prepared for me. Might as well take advantage of it while I can, right? You're only young once. So I'll sleep in till noon, eat cereal for dinner, and watch youtube videos for hours on end. I can be older tomorrow.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Holy Father
Electricity is running to my computer right now. Which is quite the luxury, considering that Ozark's campus has been without power for the past three days. On Friday morning we had a nasty little squall come upon us, which I got to observe from the massive windows of the dining hall until they escorted us into the "storm shelter" hallway to wait it out. Since then, my days have consisted mostly of just laying around on my bed and going to Hardee's in attempts to check my email and charge my phone. It really is a sad commentary on my life that I find it so hard to entertain myself with no power. If I were a character is a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, I don't know what I would do with myself.
It's funny how when we pray, we often don't even think about the words that are coming out of our mouths. We have little stock phrases that we've repeated so many times that they just flow naturally. I know that pretty much every time I pray before I meal, I say "Thank you for this food and help it to nourish our bodies." And I really am thankful for the food, and I do want it to be good for me, but I don't always really think about all of that while I pray. Another such phrase that a lot of people pray is the address "Holy Father." I've been thinking some lately about what this really means.
Interestingly, the actual phrase "Holy Father" is only found once in the Bible, in John 17:11, where Jesus uses it while praying for unity among his disciples. It's curious that that a phrase that it so scarcely used in Scripture would find its way to such a prominent place in the Christian vernacular. Maybe because it's so beautifully true. God is holy. God is our Father. And I imagine we don't always dwell on those thoughts too much when we pray.
I'm going to go a little backwards, because first I want to talk about God as our Father. I understand that a lot of people have trouble with this concept because they've had crappy dads who were lousy at doing their job as father. Such fathers are awfully poor reflections of the type of Father God is. Actually, I think even the best fathers on earth don't match up with God very well. He's the perfect Father. All the things that a father is supposed to be, he is and even more so. He loves us more than we can ever even grasp. He doesn't abandon us. He desires our good. And best of all, he has the power to give us things for our good.
Matthew 7:9-11 says, "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"
In general, a decent father desires to give things to his children, especially when it's something for that child's good. Bread and fish are good for a person, so a father likely won't deny such a request. He's happy to do it. He desires his children to come to him, and it brings him joy to be able to provide. I think God has this quality too, but magnified to an infinite amount. He truly wants us to come to him with our needs. He wants us to talk to him about our problems. He wants us to lean on him after we've found out that the world doesn't live up to what it promises.
Sometimes I feel like I must really be getting on God's nerves. I mean, he's a pretty busy guy, I'm sure. And every day I pray and make requests and maybe complain a little bit. He must get aggravated by me. My voice must be like an annoying hum that distracts him from everything else he has going on. But the beauty of things is that this isn't how it is. I don't annoy God. He welcomes me and listens attentively to me. It may be that nobody else cares what I have to say, but he does. You've probably heard a little kid try telling a story, and it seems like it goes on and on and doesn't really go anywhere or have any point, and it typically ends with a climax like, "And then I ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch." It's hard for most people to appreciate such a story. But for the child's father, listening to that story is worth the time. And that's maybe how God feels about our prayers.
We feel like we encroach on God with our requests. We think, "I have no right to ask this; I'm sure he won't answer." But he tells us to ask! Do we really think God sits up there and says, "No, I don't feel like giving you wisdom. I won't give you boldness to evangelize. I don't want to help you know me better. I have no desire to mend your broken heart."?! Of course God wants to give us these things. He might not give us red Corvettes or fancy beach homes or a promotion at work, just like a father won't always give his kid all the crap he wants. But God does give us what we need, and he's glad to do so.
So God is our Father. But God is also holy. It's interesting to think about how these two aspects play out. God cares for us deeply and wants us to come to him. But he's also set apart. He's other than us. Sometimes we act like God isn't our Father and that we're unable to come to him. But at other times, we act like he's not holy. We treat him like he's our little "buddy," just like any of our other friends. God's got our back, and we don't really have to treat him with any respect or reverence, because he's our bro.
I don't think this is really the right way to approach things. The truth is that we don't deserve to come to God. He is so holy and righteous and pure, and we're so messed up and broken and sinful. He's beyond us. But that's the most incredible thing. Through Christ's sacrifice, we are able to approach God. The veil of the temple has been torn, and we can "approach the throne of grace with confidence" (Heb. 4:16). We can do this confidently, but I don't think we should do it too casually. God is our Father, but he's a Father that deserves respect. It's difficult for me to understand how God's holiness and his fatherhood coexist. But that's the awesome thing about God--he brings together such awesome characteristics and blends them into a perfect whole.
Yesterday was Mother's Day. I don't know that many mothers read this, but if any of you are out this, I hope you had a fantastic day, because you're incredible. And I hope all the rest of you called your mom and told her how great she is and that you love her. Don't take her for granted.
Someone needs to bring ska back.
It's funny how when we pray, we often don't even think about the words that are coming out of our mouths. We have little stock phrases that we've repeated so many times that they just flow naturally. I know that pretty much every time I pray before I meal, I say "Thank you for this food and help it to nourish our bodies." And I really am thankful for the food, and I do want it to be good for me, but I don't always really think about all of that while I pray. Another such phrase that a lot of people pray is the address "Holy Father." I've been thinking some lately about what this really means.
Interestingly, the actual phrase "Holy Father" is only found once in the Bible, in John 17:11, where Jesus uses it while praying for unity among his disciples. It's curious that that a phrase that it so scarcely used in Scripture would find its way to such a prominent place in the Christian vernacular. Maybe because it's so beautifully true. God is holy. God is our Father. And I imagine we don't always dwell on those thoughts too much when we pray.
I'm going to go a little backwards, because first I want to talk about God as our Father. I understand that a lot of people have trouble with this concept because they've had crappy dads who were lousy at doing their job as father. Such fathers are awfully poor reflections of the type of Father God is. Actually, I think even the best fathers on earth don't match up with God very well. He's the perfect Father. All the things that a father is supposed to be, he is and even more so. He loves us more than we can ever even grasp. He doesn't abandon us. He desires our good. And best of all, he has the power to give us things for our good.
Matthew 7:9-11 says, "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"
In general, a decent father desires to give things to his children, especially when it's something for that child's good. Bread and fish are good for a person, so a father likely won't deny such a request. He's happy to do it. He desires his children to come to him, and it brings him joy to be able to provide. I think God has this quality too, but magnified to an infinite amount. He truly wants us to come to him with our needs. He wants us to talk to him about our problems. He wants us to lean on him after we've found out that the world doesn't live up to what it promises.
Sometimes I feel like I must really be getting on God's nerves. I mean, he's a pretty busy guy, I'm sure. And every day I pray and make requests and maybe complain a little bit. He must get aggravated by me. My voice must be like an annoying hum that distracts him from everything else he has going on. But the beauty of things is that this isn't how it is. I don't annoy God. He welcomes me and listens attentively to me. It may be that nobody else cares what I have to say, but he does. You've probably heard a little kid try telling a story, and it seems like it goes on and on and doesn't really go anywhere or have any point, and it typically ends with a climax like, "And then I ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch." It's hard for most people to appreciate such a story. But for the child's father, listening to that story is worth the time. And that's maybe how God feels about our prayers.
We feel like we encroach on God with our requests. We think, "I have no right to ask this; I'm sure he won't answer." But he tells us to ask! Do we really think God sits up there and says, "No, I don't feel like giving you wisdom. I won't give you boldness to evangelize. I don't want to help you know me better. I have no desire to mend your broken heart."?! Of course God wants to give us these things. He might not give us red Corvettes or fancy beach homes or a promotion at work, just like a father won't always give his kid all the crap he wants. But God does give us what we need, and he's glad to do so.
So God is our Father. But God is also holy. It's interesting to think about how these two aspects play out. God cares for us deeply and wants us to come to him. But he's also set apart. He's other than us. Sometimes we act like God isn't our Father and that we're unable to come to him. But at other times, we act like he's not holy. We treat him like he's our little "buddy," just like any of our other friends. God's got our back, and we don't really have to treat him with any respect or reverence, because he's our bro.
I don't think this is really the right way to approach things. The truth is that we don't deserve to come to God. He is so holy and righteous and pure, and we're so messed up and broken and sinful. He's beyond us. But that's the most incredible thing. Through Christ's sacrifice, we are able to approach God. The veil of the temple has been torn, and we can "approach the throne of grace with confidence" (Heb. 4:16). We can do this confidently, but I don't think we should do it too casually. God is our Father, but he's a Father that deserves respect. It's difficult for me to understand how God's holiness and his fatherhood coexist. But that's the awesome thing about God--he brings together such awesome characteristics and blends them into a perfect whole.
Yesterday was Mother's Day. I don't know that many mothers read this, but if any of you are out this, I hope you had a fantastic day, because you're incredible. And I hope all the rest of you called your mom and told her how great she is and that you love her. Don't take her for granted.
Someone needs to bring ska back.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Distraction
Once again, it's been awhile since I've written anything. I feel like I say that at the beginning of pretty much every post. But I've been a little distracted I guess lately. When there's Greek papers to write, Royals games to go to, and laying around looking at the ceiling to partake in, it's hard to build up the desire to slave away at my keyboard for a few minutes. So I apologize.
And that's kind of what I want to write about today. Distractions. I've been thinking some about how we distract ourselves for a variety of reasons. Our minds don't have very good attention spans. We don't focus on one thing for very long at all. At times, we don't want to focus. At other times, we really desire to focus, but controlling our wandering minds is like caging a hummingbird hopped up on Mountain Dew. So tonight, I'm going to write about distractions. As per usual, I don't really have any conclusions or advice about anything. Just musings.
We don't like to feel bad. Possibly more than anything else, people desire to not feel bad. We want to feel happy. We want to feel content. We want to feel satisfies. But sometimes, life doesn't make us happy, content, or satisfied. It makes us feel the opposite. It makes us feel grieved, frustrated, and empty. And we don't like that. We resist it. It's like when you try to feed a baby some awful mashed vegetable that he doesn't like. He squirms and pushes and wails and does everything he can to prevent that dreaded spoon from being forced into his mouth. And when the world feeds us crap, we do similarly. We do everything in our power to keep the frustrations of life away. But sometimes they get shoved into our mouths regardless, and we have to figure out what to do about it.
So we distract ourselves. When something bad happens, we tell ourselves, "Oh, I'll get over it before long." When a friend is heartbroken, we vow to help him "get back in the game." When someone experiences the death of a loved one, we bring them a fruitbasket and take them out to a movie. When life hurts, we put anything else over it as a salve to distract from the pain. When there's a problem we can't do anything about, we sit in front of a TV playing Halo for hours. We pump music through our brains to drown out the voice of our own thoughts. We go buy some new outfit to rebuild our self-esteem. We sleep the day away because sometimes our dreams are more enjoyable than consciousness.
Thus, our problems are never really dealt with. They're just ignored. Those mashed vegetables for Baby might not taste good, but they're nourishing. And often, our problems and the bad things that happen in our lives are needed. But instead of swallowing, we spit it out because we don't like how it makes us feel. Maybe we're meant to hurt sometimes. Maybe it's good for us to realize that the world isn't all peachy. Maybe we need painful reminders that this life doesn't satisfy because it isn't meant too. I started reading Ecclesiastes yesterday. I don't totally understand what it's all about; I guess Jordan Reinhardt would be the one to ask about that. But in it, Solomon does a lot of lamenting about the meaninglessness of the world. Pleasure is meaningless. Success is meaningless. Work is meaningless. Even wisdom is called meaningless.
My heart echoes with Ecclesiastes sometimes. I look around and wonder what's the use of it all. So many things let me down. And it's usually not the fault of anybody. It's just how things are. And I end up going around generally hacked off at the world. If this is all there is, what a miserable existence it is. A great deal of the things we devote ourselves to don't last. Popularity fades, trophies rust, success is forgotten, and, unfortunately, even relationships don't always last. It's hard sometimes to wake up knowing that you have to undergo another day on earth, where "there is nothing new under the sun."
Minor shift in thought: In Luke 10, Jesus goes to visit Mary and Martha. As Martha scurries about trying to get the table set and dinner prepared, Mary, being quite the bum, chills by Jesus. If you've ever done any kind of service project in the church or with a youth group, you know what this is like. While you're busy working, someone else is standing around flirting with some girl or tossing a ball against the wall or whatever. So Martha, frustrated that all of the chores have fallen on her, complains to Jesus that Mary should be helping her, and he responds by saying, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
When I read this a few weeks ago, it was like getting punched in the face. Or at least what I assume getting punched is like, because it's never happened to me. The closest I've come is getting headbutted in the jaw playing Capture the Flag. Irrelevant.
But when this passage did punch/headbutt me, I felt like it was talking straight at me. It was a time when I felt especially burdened and weighed down for a number of reasons, and I could sense God saying, "David, David, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed." I'm not a very good Mary. I wig out about things all the time. I don't just sit at Jesus' feet and let him speak into my life. Like Martha, I get distracted. And we all do, I imagine. And our distractions are probably much less respectable than Martha's, who was busy trying to serve Jesus.
And that's where this connects with the first part of this post. We get distracted from God by our problems. And as a remedy for those problems, we try to distract ourselves with whatever will take our minds off of the issue. We distract ourselves from our distractions. We're looking for a way to heal our hurts, when the whole time it's found in God. Only one thing is needed! But instead of allowing him to perform surgery on our souls, we stick a cheap band-aid on our wound and hope we'll forget about it. There are days that I think, "I just can't read my Bible and pray today. I just have too much on my mind." What a stupid, stupid thought. That's when I need to come to God most. I need to offer my problems up to him instead of hoarding them, hoping that they'll eventually just disappear or I'll forget about them.
Life seems meaningless. There are days when I have absolutely no motivation to turn off my alarm and roll out of bed. I wish I could just fast forward to the future, to a day when I might feel happy/content/satisfied. But that's not an option, so in the meantime I use whatever I can to distract me from how much life sucks, and I miss out on the one thing needed. I need a cure, not a distraction. And that cure is available. It's just hard to accept sometimes.
And that's kind of what I want to write about today. Distractions. I've been thinking some about how we distract ourselves for a variety of reasons. Our minds don't have very good attention spans. We don't focus on one thing for very long at all. At times, we don't want to focus. At other times, we really desire to focus, but controlling our wandering minds is like caging a hummingbird hopped up on Mountain Dew. So tonight, I'm going to write about distractions. As per usual, I don't really have any conclusions or advice about anything. Just musings.
We don't like to feel bad. Possibly more than anything else, people desire to not feel bad. We want to feel happy. We want to feel content. We want to feel satisfies. But sometimes, life doesn't make us happy, content, or satisfied. It makes us feel the opposite. It makes us feel grieved, frustrated, and empty. And we don't like that. We resist it. It's like when you try to feed a baby some awful mashed vegetable that he doesn't like. He squirms and pushes and wails and does everything he can to prevent that dreaded spoon from being forced into his mouth. And when the world feeds us crap, we do similarly. We do everything in our power to keep the frustrations of life away. But sometimes they get shoved into our mouths regardless, and we have to figure out what to do about it.
So we distract ourselves. When something bad happens, we tell ourselves, "Oh, I'll get over it before long." When a friend is heartbroken, we vow to help him "get back in the game." When someone experiences the death of a loved one, we bring them a fruitbasket and take them out to a movie. When life hurts, we put anything else over it as a salve to distract from the pain. When there's a problem we can't do anything about, we sit in front of a TV playing Halo for hours. We pump music through our brains to drown out the voice of our own thoughts. We go buy some new outfit to rebuild our self-esteem. We sleep the day away because sometimes our dreams are more enjoyable than consciousness.
Thus, our problems are never really dealt with. They're just ignored. Those mashed vegetables for Baby might not taste good, but they're nourishing. And often, our problems and the bad things that happen in our lives are needed. But instead of swallowing, we spit it out because we don't like how it makes us feel. Maybe we're meant to hurt sometimes. Maybe it's good for us to realize that the world isn't all peachy. Maybe we need painful reminders that this life doesn't satisfy because it isn't meant too. I started reading Ecclesiastes yesterday. I don't totally understand what it's all about; I guess Jordan Reinhardt would be the one to ask about that. But in it, Solomon does a lot of lamenting about the meaninglessness of the world. Pleasure is meaningless. Success is meaningless. Work is meaningless. Even wisdom is called meaningless.
My heart echoes with Ecclesiastes sometimes. I look around and wonder what's the use of it all. So many things let me down. And it's usually not the fault of anybody. It's just how things are. And I end up going around generally hacked off at the world. If this is all there is, what a miserable existence it is. A great deal of the things we devote ourselves to don't last. Popularity fades, trophies rust, success is forgotten, and, unfortunately, even relationships don't always last. It's hard sometimes to wake up knowing that you have to undergo another day on earth, where "there is nothing new under the sun."
Minor shift in thought: In Luke 10, Jesus goes to visit Mary and Martha. As Martha scurries about trying to get the table set and dinner prepared, Mary, being quite the bum, chills by Jesus. If you've ever done any kind of service project in the church or with a youth group, you know what this is like. While you're busy working, someone else is standing around flirting with some girl or tossing a ball against the wall or whatever. So Martha, frustrated that all of the chores have fallen on her, complains to Jesus that Mary should be helping her, and he responds by saying, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
When I read this a few weeks ago, it was like getting punched in the face. Or at least what I assume getting punched is like, because it's never happened to me. The closest I've come is getting headbutted in the jaw playing Capture the Flag. Irrelevant.
But when this passage did punch/headbutt me, I felt like it was talking straight at me. It was a time when I felt especially burdened and weighed down for a number of reasons, and I could sense God saying, "David, David, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed." I'm not a very good Mary. I wig out about things all the time. I don't just sit at Jesus' feet and let him speak into my life. Like Martha, I get distracted. And we all do, I imagine. And our distractions are probably much less respectable than Martha's, who was busy trying to serve Jesus.
And that's where this connects with the first part of this post. We get distracted from God by our problems. And as a remedy for those problems, we try to distract ourselves with whatever will take our minds off of the issue. We distract ourselves from our distractions. We're looking for a way to heal our hurts, when the whole time it's found in God. Only one thing is needed! But instead of allowing him to perform surgery on our souls, we stick a cheap band-aid on our wound and hope we'll forget about it. There are days that I think, "I just can't read my Bible and pray today. I just have too much on my mind." What a stupid, stupid thought. That's when I need to come to God most. I need to offer my problems up to him instead of hoarding them, hoping that they'll eventually just disappear or I'll forget about them.
Life seems meaningless. There are days when I have absolutely no motivation to turn off my alarm and roll out of bed. I wish I could just fast forward to the future, to a day when I might feel happy/content/satisfied. But that's not an option, so in the meantime I use whatever I can to distract me from how much life sucks, and I miss out on the one thing needed. I need a cure, not a distraction. And that cure is available. It's just hard to accept sometimes.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Van Ride
I was in Honduras a few weeks ago, and some of you may know. One of my favorite things about the trip was just getting to spend time with the different people there. There were a number of people about our age that helped out at the mission, so it was an incredible pleasure to be able to work alongside with them and to laugh with them and to speak fractured Spanish. On our last night in Honduras, our team climbed into the mission's 15-passenger van with some of the Hondurans in order to take a few of them home. As the van crawled through the uneven, broken roads in Tegucigalpa and the guys we had been spending all week hopped out to go to their houses, a sobering thought hit me. These guys were leaving. I knew that I would see them for a little bit a church the next morning before we flew back to the U.S., but for the most part, our time together was coming to an end. It felt like as they were exiting the van, they were exiting my life, and that's pretty sad, I think. It's similar to how I felt while on camp teams last summer. I absolutely loved getting to work with and build relationships with college students from other schools' teams, but it was always a little harrowing at the end of the week when we would part ways. You spend a week seeing each other every day and building memories, and then it's over. And I knew that I would see a lot of these people again, but it still bothered me nonetheless.
On that van ride in Honduras, I thought about how our social lives are sort of like a big van. The passengers consist of everyone within my social sphere at a certain time, and they are sitting at different locations within the van. There are people who crammed into the same seat with me, those with whom I am especially close. And the intimacy begins to decrease the farther people are from me in the van. And, just as in the church van on a Jr. High trip after a stop at QT, the passengers don't sit still. Rather, they move all over the van throughout the trip, constantly switching seats. So for a while I might be close to certain people, but then they move a little farther away and others take their places, and there is this perpetual ebb and flow of how close I am to people as the van drives along. And, perhaps sadly, sometimes someone gets out of the van altogether, no longer being part of my social circle in more than an acquaintance-level relationship.
As life rolls along, these relationships change for a number of different reasons. Maybe a person is sitting next to me for a while, but then they see someone else they want to sit by for a while, so they move seats, and after a while I seem so far away anyways that they just hop out of the vehicle. Or maybe a person moves away or dies, so it's like the van door breaks and they just fall out. Or maybe I just tick them off enough after a while, so they prefer to hurl themselves out the window instead of staying in the van with me. But not everybody leaves the van. There are some who have been in my van my entire life, and they will remain there till one of us are no more. Others joined up partway through my life, and they'll probably stay for a long time. Perhaps others were right next to me near the beginning, but then they found another seat slightly more distant and are now cozy there.
I feel like I'm making little sense. I was just telling someone about how, when I begin writing a blog post, I generally start with half an idea and hope that it forms itself into a complete idea by the time I'm done. I've just been thinking lately about how relationships change over time. It happens in all of our lives. Chances are that your best friend when you were seven isn't your best friend now. That girl you fell in love with in middle school isn't your wife. But on the other hand, maybe that dude you couldn't stand two years ago is now one of your closest friends. Levels of friendship are always in fluctuation. I've experiences this even in my three shorts years at Ozark. Thankfully, there are a few guys on my floor that have always been there, and they have provided with with a very sturdy relational base. But beyond that, things are always changing. People I hung out with a lot freshman year now only get an occasional "Hey, what up?" as I pass them in the hall. Guys on the floor get married and end up in that mysterious land where we rarely hear from them again.
The road of life necessitates change. And many of those changes occur in the relational realm. Maybe we need to recognize this. A lot of people try so desperately to hang on to the same social position they had in high school, so they never mature or meet new people or expand their boundaries. But at the same time, perhaps we treat too many relationships too flippantly, not willing to put in the work to sustain a good relationship.
If you somehow liked my metaphor of the van, I have another metaphor that relates to social life: the ski lift. However, that one will probably remain unblogged, but for the right price, I might tell you about it if you ask me. Depending on where you're sitting in the van.
On that van ride in Honduras, I thought about how our social lives are sort of like a big van. The passengers consist of everyone within my social sphere at a certain time, and they are sitting at different locations within the van. There are people who crammed into the same seat with me, those with whom I am especially close. And the intimacy begins to decrease the farther people are from me in the van. And, just as in the church van on a Jr. High trip after a stop at QT, the passengers don't sit still. Rather, they move all over the van throughout the trip, constantly switching seats. So for a while I might be close to certain people, but then they move a little farther away and others take their places, and there is this perpetual ebb and flow of how close I am to people as the van drives along. And, perhaps sadly, sometimes someone gets out of the van altogether, no longer being part of my social circle in more than an acquaintance-level relationship.
As life rolls along, these relationships change for a number of different reasons. Maybe a person is sitting next to me for a while, but then they see someone else they want to sit by for a while, so they move seats, and after a while I seem so far away anyways that they just hop out of the vehicle. Or maybe a person moves away or dies, so it's like the van door breaks and they just fall out. Or maybe I just tick them off enough after a while, so they prefer to hurl themselves out the window instead of staying in the van with me. But not everybody leaves the van. There are some who have been in my van my entire life, and they will remain there till one of us are no more. Others joined up partway through my life, and they'll probably stay for a long time. Perhaps others were right next to me near the beginning, but then they found another seat slightly more distant and are now cozy there.
I feel like I'm making little sense. I was just telling someone about how, when I begin writing a blog post, I generally start with half an idea and hope that it forms itself into a complete idea by the time I'm done. I've just been thinking lately about how relationships change over time. It happens in all of our lives. Chances are that your best friend when you were seven isn't your best friend now. That girl you fell in love with in middle school isn't your wife. But on the other hand, maybe that dude you couldn't stand two years ago is now one of your closest friends. Levels of friendship are always in fluctuation. I've experiences this even in my three shorts years at Ozark. Thankfully, there are a few guys on my floor that have always been there, and they have provided with with a very sturdy relational base. But beyond that, things are always changing. People I hung out with a lot freshman year now only get an occasional "Hey, what up?" as I pass them in the hall. Guys on the floor get married and end up in that mysterious land where we rarely hear from them again.
The road of life necessitates change. And many of those changes occur in the relational realm. Maybe we need to recognize this. A lot of people try so desperately to hang on to the same social position they had in high school, so they never mature or meet new people or expand their boundaries. But at the same time, perhaps we treat too many relationships too flippantly, not willing to put in the work to sustain a good relationship.
If you somehow liked my metaphor of the van, I have another metaphor that relates to social life: the ski lift. However, that one will probably remain unblogged, but for the right price, I might tell you about it if you ask me. Depending on where you're sitting in the van.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Irrelevant Semantics (or, We're Gonna the 'Ship!)
I woke up at 6:45 today. And today is Saturday. That doesn't happen very often. Or ever really, unless I have a very, very good reason for doing so. And today, that reason was Rapha Run! Rapha House is a ministry in Cambodia that ministers to girls rescued from human trafficking and the sex trade, so today there was a 5K run to raise money for the mission. I had never run anything measured in kilometers before. I had never really run anything that wasn't measured in several dozen feet. As part of my training for the event, I went running with a few other people on Thursday. At the time, that was probably the farthest I had ever run at one time, but it was less than half the distance I did today. My goal for the 5K was just to run as far as I could and then walk the rest, but I ended up running the whole thing without stopping, and I feel very proud of myself, though I hope not in a sinful way. But accomplishing something you've never done before and doubted that you could do is a pretty good feeling. However, I never did receive that "runner's high" that they always talk about. All I got was "runner's intestinal pain."
This afternoon I went to Josh Negron's and Ashley Davis's wedding, which was fine. There was quite the Ozark crowd there. The cake was good, but I didn't get to eat any of the cheesecake Hershey kisses because Charlie and Caitlyn stole them all. Then after the wedding was the Michigan State/UConn game, which Michigan State won, bringing joy to everybody who's anybody. Championship game on Monday. Watch it. And if MSU wins, celebrate and buy me a present. And if they lose, leave me alone.
So here's what I want to write about today. This is a thought that came to me during the worship songs at chapel on Tuesday. I've decided that "gonna" should be it's own word. When we hear the word "gonna," we think of it as a contraction of "going to." We're lazy Americans, so we seize every opportunity to join our words together. After all, it's so laborious to pause between words. However, saying "gonna" instead of "going to" only makes sense in certain situations. What I've noticed is that we can only say "gonna" when it is followed by another verb in the sense of "I'm going to do something." We can say "I'm gonna play basketball tomorrow" or "I'm gonna marry David someday, I hope." But there are other times we say "going to" in which it would be nonsense to say "gonna." This would be when we talk about going to a place. For instance, I can say "I'm going to Chick-fil-A for lunch," but we can't say "I'm gonna Chick-fil-A today."
So "gonna" is something more than a mere contraction of "going to." So I guess it should be considered as its own word. I'm not enough of a linguistic expert to advocate that "gonna" should receive its own entry in a dictionary. Maybe it already does; I don't know. But if not, and some dictionary decides to put it in someday, I'll write the entry if they want me to.
Announcement for all you Joplinites: Chelsea Luckett and several other students are working on putting together a bake sale to raise money for a ministry (House of Hope I think, or something similar). But anyways, if any of you have the talent and resources and desire for baking, you should get in touch with her, because I'm sure she would very much welcome the help. I would bake something, but when I was a high school sophomore I was forced into partaking in a bake-off for the school newspaper staff, and my pineapple upside-down cake took dead last.
Sorry for wasting your time today. If you've read this far, I hope you'll read one of my other posts that has somewhat more significance to it. Even if you've already read them before, reread one of them. And then go to www.myspace.com/worthyprisoners and listen to "The Fight." And then go do something productive to make up for all the lost time.
This afternoon I went to Josh Negron's and Ashley Davis's wedding, which was fine. There was quite the Ozark crowd there. The cake was good, but I didn't get to eat any of the cheesecake Hershey kisses because Charlie and Caitlyn stole them all. Then after the wedding was the Michigan State/UConn game, which Michigan State won, bringing joy to everybody who's anybody. Championship game on Monday. Watch it. And if MSU wins, celebrate and buy me a present. And if they lose, leave me alone.
So here's what I want to write about today. This is a thought that came to me during the worship songs at chapel on Tuesday. I've decided that "gonna" should be it's own word. When we hear the word "gonna," we think of it as a contraction of "going to." We're lazy Americans, so we seize every opportunity to join our words together. After all, it's so laborious to pause between words. However, saying "gonna" instead of "going to" only makes sense in certain situations. What I've noticed is that we can only say "gonna" when it is followed by another verb in the sense of "I'm going to do something." We can say "I'm gonna play basketball tomorrow" or "I'm gonna marry David someday, I hope." But there are other times we say "going to" in which it would be nonsense to say "gonna." This would be when we talk about going to a place. For instance, I can say "I'm going to Chick-fil-A for lunch," but we can't say "I'm gonna Chick-fil-A today."
So "gonna" is something more than a mere contraction of "going to." So I guess it should be considered as its own word. I'm not enough of a linguistic expert to advocate that "gonna" should receive its own entry in a dictionary. Maybe it already does; I don't know. But if not, and some dictionary decides to put it in someday, I'll write the entry if they want me to.
Announcement for all you Joplinites: Chelsea Luckett and several other students are working on putting together a bake sale to raise money for a ministry (House of Hope I think, or something similar). But anyways, if any of you have the talent and resources and desire for baking, you should get in touch with her, because I'm sure she would very much welcome the help. I would bake something, but when I was a high school sophomore I was forced into partaking in a bake-off for the school newspaper staff, and my pineapple upside-down cake took dead last.
Sorry for wasting your time today. If you've read this far, I hope you'll read one of my other posts that has somewhat more significance to it. Even if you've already read them before, reread one of them. And then go to www.myspace.com/worthyprisoners and listen to "The Fight." And then go do something productive to make up for all the lost time.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
C'est La Vie
I always feel the need to have some kind of casual introduction to my blog posts. Something where I let you know what's been going on my life that is totally unrelated to what I'm really writing about. I wonder if this is an unwise practice. By the time you finish reading my meaningless space-filler, I'm afraid that you might have little interest to read any further. This present paragraph would lower my grade on any essay for school, for sure. But luckily for me, this is the internet, and any idiot can write whatever they want without concern of how significant or relevant it is. And you can do nothing about it, besides leave me nasty comments. In summation, I guess what I'm really trying to say is this: Michigan State beat KU in the college basketball tournament last night, and for that I'm very excited.
A while back, my roommate Charlie started saying "C'est la vie" pretty regularly. This is a French phrase that means "So is life." Charlie took a couple years of French in high school, and I think this is the only thing he remembers, except for how to say "I am not cheese." However, I'm not going to try to write that in French here, because I have no idea how the French language works and would decimate its spelling. Anyways, when we started saying "C'est la vie," I think it was mostly just as a joke and as a lame attempt to sound well-educated. If one of us gave a poor shooting display in basketball: "C'est la vie." If the ice machine runs empty in the dining hall: "C'est la vie." None of the causes of us quoting this phrase were in any way significant.
Lately, however, I've been thinking a bit about the idea of "C'est la vie," and it really is profound in a non-complex way. There are many things about life that I don't like, and I imagine the same is true of most people. We all have something that we would change. Maybe we have many things that we would change. Perhaps some of things are within my control, and some of them are beyond it. But so is life.
I often find myself thinking "If only...." If only this relationship was different. If only this event hadn't happened. If only I hadn't done that. If only I had said this. If only I was more like that guy. If only she hadn't gotten sick. If only timing had been a little different. If only I had more of that. If only, if only, if only. So we stockpile all of our regrets within ourselves, thinking that our existence would be just a little bit better if life had happened differently.
And then we hear something like Philippians 4:11, where Paul says that he's learned to be content no matter what the circumstances. And it hits us like a bowling ball in our guts. In a lot of ways, Paul had a pretty terrible life. He got beat up, ridiculed, ostracized, and eventually killed. At times he was running for his life with next to no possessions. And he was okay with that. He not only says "C'est la vie," but he says, "C'est la vie, and I'm all for it." Meanwhile, I whine and complain and stew because every little detail of my life isn't necessarily how it would be if I were writing an idealized autobiography.
I ran across Psalm 139 when I was in 8th or 9th grade at a time when I was feeling pretty despondent because of some situation, probably having to do with a girl or something. I honestly don't remember what it was, which I guess shows how important it actually was. But since then, Psalm 139 has kind of been my "Go-To Psalm." It talks about how God is always right there with us and how he crafted us in our mothers' wombs and how he knows all of our "anxious thoughts." One of my favorite Relient K songs, "I Am Understood?" echoes the same sort of idea: "You looked into my life and never stopped/And you're thinking all my thoughts/Are so simple but so beautiful/And you recite my words right back to me/Before I even speak/You let me know/I am understood."
Even now, whenever I'm feeling lonely or dejected or abandoned, I go to Psalm 139. The world lets me down. People let me down. Not necessarily because of any fault of their own. But the truth is that, a lot of the time, life sucks. Not because of anything anyone did or didn't do, but that's just the way life is. C'est la vie. But God doesn't let me down. He's the only constant person in the world. If everyone else in the universe decided that I was lame and they all left me behind in a ditch somewhere, God would still be there. When I have a crappy day and feel like no one cares, I can put my head to the pillow knowing that God still loves me. And in the end, that makes everything okay. Maybe that's what Paul's secret was.
If there were ever a blog post that I have absolutely no right to write, it's probably this one. It's definitely not like I have this figured out, and I can sit here and let my keyboard tell you how you can be more like me, because you probably don't want to be like me. Pretty much all my posts are about things that I struggle with, but perhaps this one more than others. I tend to overthink. And so when there's something that I don't like, I'll go around for ever brooding about it, feeling discontented and letting a constant stream of "If only's" to run through my mind. I'm generally hacked off at the world. And that's not a good thing, because the world is a beautiful place and I have a relatively awesome life and God takes good care of me. But it's awfully difficult not to wonder how life could be a little different. And we probably all deal with this a little bit. Discontentment is a universal wound. And because of that, maybe it's especially important for us all to be there for one another and encourage one other when life gets heavy. Because so is life. But fortunately, we don't have to go it alone.
A while back, my roommate Charlie started saying "C'est la vie" pretty regularly. This is a French phrase that means "So is life." Charlie took a couple years of French in high school, and I think this is the only thing he remembers, except for how to say "I am not cheese." However, I'm not going to try to write that in French here, because I have no idea how the French language works and would decimate its spelling. Anyways, when we started saying "C'est la vie," I think it was mostly just as a joke and as a lame attempt to sound well-educated. If one of us gave a poor shooting display in basketball: "C'est la vie." If the ice machine runs empty in the dining hall: "C'est la vie." None of the causes of us quoting this phrase were in any way significant.
Lately, however, I've been thinking a bit about the idea of "C'est la vie," and it really is profound in a non-complex way. There are many things about life that I don't like, and I imagine the same is true of most people. We all have something that we would change. Maybe we have many things that we would change. Perhaps some of things are within my control, and some of them are beyond it. But so is life.
I often find myself thinking "If only...." If only this relationship was different. If only this event hadn't happened. If only I hadn't done that. If only I had said this. If only I was more like that guy. If only she hadn't gotten sick. If only timing had been a little different. If only I had more of that. If only, if only, if only. So we stockpile all of our regrets within ourselves, thinking that our existence would be just a little bit better if life had happened differently.
And then we hear something like Philippians 4:11, where Paul says that he's learned to be content no matter what the circumstances. And it hits us like a bowling ball in our guts. In a lot of ways, Paul had a pretty terrible life. He got beat up, ridiculed, ostracized, and eventually killed. At times he was running for his life with next to no possessions. And he was okay with that. He not only says "C'est la vie," but he says, "C'est la vie, and I'm all for it." Meanwhile, I whine and complain and stew because every little detail of my life isn't necessarily how it would be if I were writing an idealized autobiography.
I ran across Psalm 139 when I was in 8th or 9th grade at a time when I was feeling pretty despondent because of some situation, probably having to do with a girl or something. I honestly don't remember what it was, which I guess shows how important it actually was. But since then, Psalm 139 has kind of been my "Go-To Psalm." It talks about how God is always right there with us and how he crafted us in our mothers' wombs and how he knows all of our "anxious thoughts." One of my favorite Relient K songs, "I Am Understood?" echoes the same sort of idea: "You looked into my life and never stopped/And you're thinking all my thoughts/Are so simple but so beautiful/And you recite my words right back to me/Before I even speak/You let me know/I am understood."
Even now, whenever I'm feeling lonely or dejected or abandoned, I go to Psalm 139. The world lets me down. People let me down. Not necessarily because of any fault of their own. But the truth is that, a lot of the time, life sucks. Not because of anything anyone did or didn't do, but that's just the way life is. C'est la vie. But God doesn't let me down. He's the only constant person in the world. If everyone else in the universe decided that I was lame and they all left me behind in a ditch somewhere, God would still be there. When I have a crappy day and feel like no one cares, I can put my head to the pillow knowing that God still loves me. And in the end, that makes everything okay. Maybe that's what Paul's secret was.
If there were ever a blog post that I have absolutely no right to write, it's probably this one. It's definitely not like I have this figured out, and I can sit here and let my keyboard tell you how you can be more like me, because you probably don't want to be like me. Pretty much all my posts are about things that I struggle with, but perhaps this one more than others. I tend to overthink. And so when there's something that I don't like, I'll go around for ever brooding about it, feeling discontented and letting a constant stream of "If only's" to run through my mind. I'm generally hacked off at the world. And that's not a good thing, because the world is a beautiful place and I have a relatively awesome life and God takes good care of me. But it's awfully difficult not to wonder how life could be a little different. And we probably all deal with this a little bit. Discontentment is a universal wound. And because of that, maybe it's especially important for us all to be there for one another and encourage one other when life gets heavy. Because so is life. But fortunately, we don't have to go it alone.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Shake What Yo' Mamma Gave You
So it's been a terribly long time since I've written anything. I was reminded of this fact by my sister, who has no room to talk because she writes about every three months or so. And even though she's probably the only person that noticed the lack of new text on this page, I do feel bad for not having written. I have had good excuse, however. The last couple weeks before spring break, I was working my tail of on a couple papers for school. It was pretty much homework from lunch till bed every day, so it was not the most fun time of my life. Then, from March 13-22 I went to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where four others and I worked at Mision Caribe. It was my first big international trip, and I absolutely loved it, and I'm anxious to go back. We did a ton of different stuff: preaching at churches, visiting people in their homes, going to a hospital and and a nursing home, teaching at a school, painting a lot, eating Chinese food, getting schooled in soccer, nearly dying. And I'm always happy to talk about it more with those who care to hear.
On the trip, I was talking some with Melissa Scott (who's a former Ozark student and now works at the mission) about how visas work. She was telling me that it's pretty hard for a Honduran to get a visa to come to the United States, even just for a visit. I found it surprising that much of the difficulty isn't from the U.S. refusing to issue visas. Rather, the Honduran government is not quick to let its citizens go to the the U.S. With the Honduran economy not especially prosperous, the country doesn't want its people running off to other nations to work or whatever.
This conversation, mixed with a lot of the other things I saw in Honduras, made me realize just how privileged we Americans are. People are complaining about how bad our economy is right now, but the truth of it is that we are the richest and most advantaged people in the history of the world. So many Hondurans can't get far outside their borders, but Americans can go just about wherever they please. What are we doing with all of our status and resources?
2 Corinthians 9:10-11 says, "Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God." God gives us things. He allows us to have resources. One pastor I know of with nice, slicked-back hair would say that this is because God wants you to have "Your Best Life Now." But I don't think that this is the case. God provides resources so that we can be generous with them. They're not meant for us. We function as distributors. What we have really isn't meant for us, but it should flow through us to the world.
Along the same vein, Luke 12:48 says, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." The Spider-man quotation may be a little cliche, but perhaps it rings true: "With great power comes great responsibility." We have so much, so we have incredible responsibility. We have religious freedom and all kinds of Christian resources at our disposal. We can go anywhere in the world and have the money to get us there. And so, we have a duty to take Christ to the world and to mend the world's hurts and care for those who don't have anything.
But what do we do? We spend our time and resources going to SeaWorld or shoving cheeseburgers down our throats or buying iPods or whatever. Meanwhile the world goes on as always, with most people not even knowing that Jesus loves them, scraping to get by. But we've got better things to do, I guess. After all, American Idol is down to ten people.
On the trip, I was talking some with Melissa Scott (who's a former Ozark student and now works at the mission) about how visas work. She was telling me that it's pretty hard for a Honduran to get a visa to come to the United States, even just for a visit. I found it surprising that much of the difficulty isn't from the U.S. refusing to issue visas. Rather, the Honduran government is not quick to let its citizens go to the the U.S. With the Honduran economy not especially prosperous, the country doesn't want its people running off to other nations to work or whatever.
This conversation, mixed with a lot of the other things I saw in Honduras, made me realize just how privileged we Americans are. People are complaining about how bad our economy is right now, but the truth of it is that we are the richest and most advantaged people in the history of the world. So many Hondurans can't get far outside their borders, but Americans can go just about wherever they please. What are we doing with all of our status and resources?
2 Corinthians 9:10-11 says, "Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God." God gives us things. He allows us to have resources. One pastor I know of with nice, slicked-back hair would say that this is because God wants you to have "Your Best Life Now." But I don't think that this is the case. God provides resources so that we can be generous with them. They're not meant for us. We function as distributors. What we have really isn't meant for us, but it should flow through us to the world.
Along the same vein, Luke 12:48 says, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." The Spider-man quotation may be a little cliche, but perhaps it rings true: "With great power comes great responsibility." We have so much, so we have incredible responsibility. We have religious freedom and all kinds of Christian resources at our disposal. We can go anywhere in the world and have the money to get us there. And so, we have a duty to take Christ to the world and to mend the world's hurts and care for those who don't have anything.
But what do we do? We spend our time and resources going to SeaWorld or shoving cheeseburgers down our throats or buying iPods or whatever. Meanwhile the world goes on as always, with most people not even knowing that Jesus loves them, scraping to get by. But we've got better things to do, I guess. After all, American Idol is down to ten people.
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