12/20/08
12/14/08
12/1/08
and oh yeah, Yeezy
I must confess, I am an avid Kanye West fan. Not an avid rap fan (at least not main stream), but definitely a fan of him personally. I can't put my finger on one thing about him. I certainly don't agree with his point of view on some issues (e.g., women and politics), but i just typed the word "issues." How many musical artists, especially popular artists will even come close to the issues? Not many, for sure. I respect that he has opinions. So many in our generation don't. I respect that he actually has a vocabulary and uses it. So many people don't.
He's just different. He does things no one else does. But most of all? He's passionate.
anyways, i don't have a man-crush on him. i just these past couple of days have felt a biggie-sized burden relating to Kanye. Lost = Kanye West. I don't think he really has a clue about why he's here on Earth. His mother died recently and he and his fiancee have split up. His new album 808s & Heartbreak is all about those two things. But the track that really kinda started all this for me is the last one on the album, Pinocchio Story. It's a six-minute live freestyle in Singapore. The fans are screaming because they don't know English, and it adds an eerie effect to what he's saying. Now, I know that people have been through much worse than Kanye, but it just goes to show that at the bottom of it all, the soul of humanity yearns for meaning. Some type of purpose beyond the temporal, day-to-day life that we live. He doesn't have it, and neither do people all over the world.
here's some of his freestyle:
Its so crazy
I got everything figured out
But for some reason I can never find what real love is about
No doubt
Everything in the world figured out but I can never seem to find what love is about
Do you think I sacrificed real life
For all the fame of flashing lights?
Do you think I sacrifice a real life
For all the fame of flashing lights?
There is no Gucci I can buy
There is no Louis Vuitton to put on
There is no YSL that they could sell
To get my heart out of this hell
And my mind out of this jail
There is no clothes that I could buy
That could turn back the time
There is no vacation spot I could fly
That could bring back a piece of real life
Real life, what does it feel like?
I ask you tonight, I ask you tonight
What does it feel like, I ask you tonight
To live a real life
I just want to be a real boy
They always say Kanye, he keeps it real boy
Pinocchio story is, I just want to be a real boy
Pinocchio story is to be a real boy
in some ways, maybe in the most real ways, Kanye West is no different than anyone else. Whether or not you have fame and fortune, you're still lost. And whether or not you're really lost or just barely lost, you're still lost. But that's the cool thing. A guy who was God carried His own cross up a hill called Golgotha and died on it. And the reason he did that was so that people like Kanye, people like you and me, could be found. We could never find ourselves, but Jesus can find us.
11/26/08
thanks
"So the administrators and the satraps went as a group to the king and said: 'O King Darius, live forever! The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or man during the next thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into the lions' den. Now, O king, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered—in accordance with the laws of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.' So King Darius put the decree in writing.
Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before."
Why is it that I am not thankful enough when living in a free country (which is my own)? Here Daniel is, already exiled from his home country, under intense scrutiny and he's giving thanks. Wait, he just found out that prayer to anyone other than King Darius would result in death by carnivorous lions. And he's still giving thanks. To recap, he's giving thanks, even though he's an exile, and even though it may cost him his life.
You see, I forget that Ephesians 5 says to give thanks for for "everything." Literally, everything. There isn't a lot of wiggle room in that word. I mean, certainly there are things that seem to lend nothing to the idea of thankfulness, but I think the idea is that we realize that God has a plan for us that is better than anything that we can come up with.
God has given me more than I could ever deserve. Do I know why? No. But today, and everyday, thanking Him for that grace will be something I do more often.
Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before."
Why is it that I am not thankful enough when living in a free country (which is my own)? Here Daniel is, already exiled from his home country, under intense scrutiny and he's giving thanks. Wait, he just found out that prayer to anyone other than King Darius would result in death by carnivorous lions. And he's still giving thanks. To recap, he's giving thanks, even though he's an exile, and even though it may cost him his life.
You see, I forget that Ephesians 5 says to give thanks for for "everything." Literally, everything. There isn't a lot of wiggle room in that word. I mean, certainly there are things that seem to lend nothing to the idea of thankfulness, but I think the idea is that we realize that God has a plan for us that is better than anything that we can come up with.
God has given me more than I could ever deserve. Do I know why? No. But today, and everyday, thanking Him for that grace will be something I do more often.
11/19/08
the profundity of simplicity.
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
~J.R.R. Tolkien.
Some of the most profound statements in life are expressed in the most simple forms.
here are some others to ponder:
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
-Jesus
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
-Jesus
"Love God, and do what you will."
-St. Augustine
~J.R.R. Tolkien.
Some of the most profound statements in life are expressed in the most simple forms.
here are some others to ponder:
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
-Jesus
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
-Jesus
"Love God, and do what you will."
-St. Augustine
11/18/08
i am not, but i know I AM
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."
~John 1:14
I just started reading Louie Giglio's book i am not, but i know I AM, and was reminded of this passage from earlier this year when Mark talked about it at CRU. The more i read that sentence, the more and more i realize just how intense it is.
The Word. It stands for everything about Jesus: His character; His purpose; His attributes. But do you see and? Jesus didn't just exist in heaven with all those things. On top of His love, His grace, His truth, His mercy, His kindness...and. And means action. It means that the Son of God left the riches of Heaven to put on skin. He is not a god represented by ideologies and human thought, and the reason why is that He is and He became. He is the only God, and the reason why is that He is the only God who has represented Himself--through Himself--in the human form which He created after Himself.
And. The second one is just as cool. Not only did He come, but He dwelt. He took up residence on the earth He created. On the earth in a tiny corner of a tiny galaxy in a tiny corner of an infinitesimal universe. On the earth filled with a bunch of iamnots who often think much more of ourselves than we ought.
I cannot, nor will I ever be able to grasp this. God dwelt among us. He did it so that you and i could know Him personally. Personally! He dwelt among those He created and thus among those who hated Him. And yet the very reason He left heaven was to die for the very people who hated Him. He came to show grace. And because He shows grace, He gives us the truth. The truth is that He came to give us life. And not only life, but life abundant and full!
do you know the God who created you?
~John 1:14
I just started reading Louie Giglio's book i am not, but i know I AM, and was reminded of this passage from earlier this year when Mark talked about it at CRU. The more i read that sentence, the more and more i realize just how intense it is.
The Word. It stands for everything about Jesus: His character; His purpose; His attributes. But do you see and? Jesus didn't just exist in heaven with all those things. On top of His love, His grace, His truth, His mercy, His kindness...and. And means action. It means that the Son of God left the riches of Heaven to put on skin. He is not a god represented by ideologies and human thought, and the reason why is that He is and He became. He is the only God, and the reason why is that He is the only God who has represented Himself--through Himself--in the human form which He created after Himself.
And. The second one is just as cool. Not only did He come, but He dwelt. He took up residence on the earth He created. On the earth in a tiny corner of a tiny galaxy in a tiny corner of an infinitesimal universe. On the earth filled with a bunch of iamnots who often think much more of ourselves than we ought.
I cannot, nor will I ever be able to grasp this. God dwelt among us. He did it so that you and i could know Him personally. Personally! He dwelt among those He created and thus among those who hated Him. And yet the very reason He left heaven was to die for the very people who hated Him. He came to show grace. And because He shows grace, He gives us the truth. The truth is that He came to give us life. And not only life, but life abundant and full!
do you know the God who created you?
8/2/08
Chains be broken, lives be healed
"Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.
Let us acknowledge the LORD;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth."
~Hosea 6:1-3
What an amazing picture of God's grace! Knowing the whole story of Hosea makes this passage even more powerful, because it's an incredible picture of God's unfailing love and grace to His people Israel; the same love and grace He pours on us today.
This is the story of Hosea. He had married a woman named Gomer, and they had two children. Well, Gomer decided that she was done with Hosea. And so she became a prostitute. A prostitute. Can you imagine going through that? Can you imagine just how incredibly sickening it must have been for Hosea to see his own wife choose that lifestyle? I can't. All I can imagine is that that must be one of the very toughest things that could ever happen to anyone.
But the story doesn't end there, and this is where it gets really mind-boggling. Read this:
Wow. Here's Hosea--who for all intensive purposes is a widower because his wife was basically dead to him--making the conscious choice to love her still. And this is no cheap love. It's definitely not romantic, and I suspect it never was from then on. But it was still love, to be sure. He has to buy her back! He doesn't just say, "Oh yeah, I guess I love her, God." No, he has to buy her out of slavery!
The most exciting thing about this is that Jesus did the very same thing. We have prostituted ourselves to anything and everything. We've deliberately forgotten and even forsaken God. Yet He loves us so much that He sent His own willing son to die the death only we deserved. What love is this!
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.
Let us acknowledge the LORD;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth."
~Hosea 6:1-3
What an amazing picture of God's grace! Knowing the whole story of Hosea makes this passage even more powerful, because it's an incredible picture of God's unfailing love and grace to His people Israel; the same love and grace He pours on us today.
This is the story of Hosea. He had married a woman named Gomer, and they had two children. Well, Gomer decided that she was done with Hosea. And so she became a prostitute. A prostitute. Can you imagine going through that? Can you imagine just how incredibly sickening it must have been for Hosea to see his own wife choose that lifestyle? I can't. All I can imagine is that that must be one of the very toughest things that could ever happen to anyone.
But the story doesn't end there, and this is where it gets really mind-boggling. Read this:
The Lord said to me [Hosea], "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods..." So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and 10 bushels of barley.
Wow. Here's Hosea--who for all intensive purposes is a widower because his wife was basically dead to him--making the conscious choice to love her still. And this is no cheap love. It's definitely not romantic, and I suspect it never was from then on. But it was still love, to be sure. He has to buy her back! He doesn't just say, "Oh yeah, I guess I love her, God." No, he has to buy her out of slavery!
The most exciting thing about this is that Jesus did the very same thing. We have prostituted ourselves to anything and everything. We've deliberately forgotten and even forsaken God. Yet He loves us so much that He sent His own willing son to die the death only we deserved. What love is this!
7/19/08
7/15/08
i have been slacking in posting to this blog, and for this i am sorry. by now i've probably already lost the few people who actually read this blog to boredom. While I haven't written, I've been reminded of just how good, how great God always is, and how utterly disappointing I am. Just as I start getting comfortable and used to the status quo, unwilling to put effort into further growth towards my Savior, that is the very moment I have forsaken my first love. John talks to the church at Ephesus about that in Revelation 2. "Remember the height from which you have fallen!"
And yet even in this, the incredible grace of Jesus shines through. For whenever you or I realize that we have indeed forsaken our first love of the Redeemer, whenever we seek to re-climb the height from which have fallen, so the Father graciously greets us back into His open arms. Like the parable of the prodigal son, He actually runs to welcome us back into fellowship with Himself. I think that we sometimes forget this, at least I do. There is no end to God's grace. It is infinite.
David was a man who understood this concept very well, however. He experienced intense breaks in his fellowship with God, and yet he always rushed back to the One who created him and loved him. To sort of sum all my thoughts, I think what David wrote in Psalm 139 is perfect. We can't hide from God, so why not embrace Him?
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain!
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
And yet even in this, the incredible grace of Jesus shines through. For whenever you or I realize that we have indeed forsaken our first love of the Redeemer, whenever we seek to re-climb the height from which have fallen, so the Father graciously greets us back into His open arms. Like the parable of the prodigal son, He actually runs to welcome us back into fellowship with Himself. I think that we sometimes forget this, at least I do. There is no end to God's grace. It is infinite.
David was a man who understood this concept very well, however. He experienced intense breaks in his fellowship with God, and yet he always rushed back to the One who created him and loved him. To sort of sum all my thoughts, I think what David wrote in Psalm 139 is perfect. We can't hide from God, so why not embrace Him?
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain!
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
7/2/08
"Why were we created? Was it that we deserved to be created? How can nothing deserve something? There was a time when there was no human race. How therefore could a human race that hadn't existed deserve something? How could a man that wasn't yet created earn anything or pile up any merit? It couldn't be so. God out of His goodness created us. Why were we not destroyed when we sinned? The only answer is that God of His goodness spared us. The cordial, kind-intentioned God spared us.
Why would God the Eternal Son bleed for us? The answer is, out of His goodness and lovingkindness. 'Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings' (Psalm 36:7). Why would God forgive me when I've sinned and then forgive me again and again? Because God out of His goodness acts according to that goodness and does what His loving heart dictates that He do."
That last question is one that we all would do well to ask of ourselves daily. Why would God forgive me when I've sinned and then forgive me again and again? The goodness of God is infinite and perfect. It has no beginning and no end, no height and no depth. It touches every atom in His vast universe and comes to rest in the hearts of men who allow it. Do you realize the implications of that? Do you understand how much that can impact a life? Yet it goes much deeper. In His goodness, it follows that God would be just and righteous. It follows that He has plans for us. What I'm saying is this: to realize (as much as our earthly minds can) the idea of God's goodness, there is a required reverence that believes in the miracle of His love and the necessity of His wrath. They are both equally perfect and eternal. To be less loving or less just would cause a forfeiture of His deity.
6/24/08
He is not small.
This little cheap god we've made up is one you can pal around with--"the Man upstairs," the fellow who helps you win baseball games. That god isn't the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He isn't the God who laid the foundations of the heaven and the earth; he's some other god....He's not the true God. He's not the infinite perfect, all-knowing, all-wise, all-loving, infinitely boundless, perfect God. He's something short of that. Christianity is decaying and going down into the gutter because the god of modern Christianity is not the God of the Bible. I don't mean to say that we do not pray to God; I mean to say that we pray to a god short of what he ought to be. We have got to think of God as being the perfect One.
~A.W. Tozer
That's convicting. At least it is to me. What's the use in claiming to follow a god if he isn't really God. THE God. Sure I'll tell you that God answers prayer and that He's faithful to keep His promises, but then I'll turn right around and neglect to give financially because I'm in a pinch. Last time I checked, God promises to meet our needs. The problem is that my mouth says one thing, but my heart follows my brain, which tells me I need to keep that money to myself and get myself out of my own bind. Personal pronouns abound. And there is a stench. I suppose when you and I stop focusing so much on our carnal selves and start giving God some attention and respect--fear even--then we will start seeing Him work in huge ways. You see, we can't limit God's attributes or characteristics, but we can to a certain extent limit how He impacts our lives. He won't force us to be blessed. He won't do big things in our lives if we make Him small in our eyes.
6/18/08
Kobe Bryant
if anyone ever compares Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan ever again, I think I will kick them in the achilles tendon. He does not win championships (his three rings are due to the presence of Shaq). He scores points when it doesn't matter. He plays defense only when he feels like it. He licks his lips in a disturbing fashion wayyyy too often and I wonder how much chapstick he must use. Must i go on? I'm sorry, but i had to write that. Go Celtics.
6/17/08
I have no title for this post.
there is nowhere I can go
where You are not with me
and the beat of my heart
is for You and You only
I have nothing to offer You,
Savior, You are my everything
I have nothing to give You, Lord
But the life that You've given me
my soul cries out to You,
Mighty Conqueror of the grave
I am thirsty! Living Water
Come and fill me!
These eyes of mine are weak
But they are looking for You
O Lion of Judah, return
Rule Your Kingdom on this earth
That's all. just a little song/poem that came to me. Sometime i might put music to it. If anyone that reads this (and i don't know if there's enough of you to go past the fifth digit of my left foot to count you) ever has anything you've written--whether poetry or lyrics or prose or anything--i would be extremely happy to read it. Furthermore, I enjoy reading anything, so if there are blogs that you read or books or anything, I would love to get info about them. It would give me more to write this thing about.
goede nacht.
where You are not with me
and the beat of my heart
is for You and You only
I have nothing to offer You,
Savior, You are my everything
I have nothing to give You, Lord
But the life that You've given me
my soul cries out to You,
Mighty Conqueror of the grave
I am thirsty! Living Water
Come and fill me!
These eyes of mine are weak
But they are looking for You
O Lion of Judah, return
Rule Your Kingdom on this earth
That's all. just a little song/poem that came to me. Sometime i might put music to it. If anyone that reads this (and i don't know if there's enough of you to go past the fifth digit of my left foot to count you) ever has anything you've written--whether poetry or lyrics or prose or anything--i would be extremely happy to read it. Furthermore, I enjoy reading anything, so if there are blogs that you read or books or anything, I would love to get info about them. It would give me more to write this thing about.
goede nacht.
6/14/08
"There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still."
The thunder of Your voice
Fills my heart,
Still I can hear you whisper
In the Dark.
Psalm 33:16-22
"No king is saved by the size of his army;
no warrior escapes by his great strength
A horse is a vain hope for deliverance
despite all its great strength it cannot save.
But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him,
on those whose hope is in His unfailing love,
to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine.
We wait in hope for the Lord;
He is our help and our shield.
In Him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in His holy name.
May Your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord,
even as we put our hope in You."
How often do I forget that incredible promise! I put my hope in myself or in the things around me, and forget about the unfailing love of Jesus Christ. WHY? Doesn't Romans 8 say that "neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord"? Whether or not we keep this amazing truth in our focus or not determines a great deal. When we remember His boundless love for us, we then have the courage to go out into the world with the brightest Light in our hearts to salt the earth with the gospel of Jesus. If not, if we forget like I so often do, then we become spineless. Acts is full of men who kept their hope in God's unfailing love rather than in themselves. In the fifth chapter, Peter and the apostles have been doing incredible things around Jerusalem, performing miracles and convicting people about Jesus. To make a long story short, they get thrown in jail for preaching about the true Messiah. However, an angel opened the doors of the jail that night, and then continued the next day. Well, the guys who put them in jail in the first place (the Sadducees) had them put on trial before a group of religious leaders who called themselves the Sanhedrin. Again, they tell Peter and the others to cease and desist. Peter tells them that he listens to God, and they are contradicting Him (doesn't make them too happy). It ends up that they don't kill these guys yet, but they have them flogged (cat of nine tails, look it up, it could kill you). Here's the part that I love so much. It says in verse 41 that "The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ." That is absolutely mind-boggling to me. They rejoiced because they were privileged enough to suffer for the Name. The Name stood for redemption. It stood for the hope that they had. "Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Along with the Name comes His unfailing love. That needs to be my focus, so that I can truly say with conviction "I love You, more than life."
Fills my heart,
Still I can hear you whisper
In the Dark.
Psalm 33:16-22
"No king is saved by the size of his army;
no warrior escapes by his great strength
A horse is a vain hope for deliverance
despite all its great strength it cannot save.
But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him,
on those whose hope is in His unfailing love,
to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine.
We wait in hope for the Lord;
He is our help and our shield.
In Him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in His holy name.
May Your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord,
even as we put our hope in You."
How often do I forget that incredible promise! I put my hope in myself or in the things around me, and forget about the unfailing love of Jesus Christ. WHY? Doesn't Romans 8 say that "neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord"? Whether or not we keep this amazing truth in our focus or not determines a great deal. When we remember His boundless love for us, we then have the courage to go out into the world with the brightest Light in our hearts to salt the earth with the gospel of Jesus. If not, if we forget like I so often do, then we become spineless. Acts is full of men who kept their hope in God's unfailing love rather than in themselves. In the fifth chapter, Peter and the apostles have been doing incredible things around Jerusalem, performing miracles and convicting people about Jesus. To make a long story short, they get thrown in jail for preaching about the true Messiah. However, an angel opened the doors of the jail that night, and then continued the next day. Well, the guys who put them in jail in the first place (the Sadducees) had them put on trial before a group of religious leaders who called themselves the Sanhedrin. Again, they tell Peter and the others to cease and desist. Peter tells them that he listens to God, and they are contradicting Him (doesn't make them too happy). It ends up that they don't kill these guys yet, but they have them flogged (cat of nine tails, look it up, it could kill you). Here's the part that I love so much. It says in verse 41 that "The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ." That is absolutely mind-boggling to me. They rejoiced because they were privileged enough to suffer for the Name. The Name stood for redemption. It stood for the hope that they had. "Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Along with the Name comes His unfailing love. That needs to be my focus, so that I can truly say with conviction "I love You, more than life."
6/10/08
Fairness or Grace?
As you can tell from the title of this blog, I am pretty passionate about the subject of grace. Well, what in the world is it? And why do I think that it's the greatest thing that's happened to me?
So, you are sitting across the table from God. He says to you, "You've got two choices, and two choices only. The choice you make will decide your eternal destiny." Then He puts the first choice on the table. It's labeled "Fairness." "Fairness involves you doing what you can to get yourself to heaven. And then, because you can never be perfect, I will send you to Hell where you belong. It's only fair, because I require righteous perfection, and I told you that 'there is no one righteous, not even one.' You choose to sin on the regular basis. The responsibility lies on no one else's shoulders but your own. Don't you see? It's very fair." Well that doesn't sound too exciting to you, but you hold off on your decision until you can see the second choice. So God throws fairness off the table and then puts the second choice in its place. "Grace" is the title that it carries. "Your second choice is Grace. Mercy is just allowing you to live on Earth without me striking you dead, but I will go even further and give you Grace. Unmerited favor. Basically, while you cursed me with your life, I sent my Son to die in your place. That sacrifice was enough to make you perfect in my sight. It was enough to cross an eternal chasm of death that fairness would have plunged you into. 'My grace is sufficient for you.' All that you have to do is just believe. Make Grace your choice, and you will spend eternity with Me in my Kingdom."
Do you see? That's the simple yet beautiful message of salvation and redemption. There is nothing but belief on our part, because the boundless grace of God above has done the rest. This is what makes Christianity different from anything else in this world. Grace is the unique component, displayed and contained in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
So, you are sitting across the table from God. He says to you, "You've got two choices, and two choices only. The choice you make will decide your eternal destiny." Then He puts the first choice on the table. It's labeled "Fairness." "Fairness involves you doing what you can to get yourself to heaven. And then, because you can never be perfect, I will send you to Hell where you belong. It's only fair, because I require righteous perfection, and I told you that 'there is no one righteous, not even one.' You choose to sin on the regular basis. The responsibility lies on no one else's shoulders but your own. Don't you see? It's very fair." Well that doesn't sound too exciting to you, but you hold off on your decision until you can see the second choice. So God throws fairness off the table and then puts the second choice in its place. "Grace" is the title that it carries. "Your second choice is Grace. Mercy is just allowing you to live on Earth without me striking you dead, but I will go even further and give you Grace. Unmerited favor. Basically, while you cursed me with your life, I sent my Son to die in your place. That sacrifice was enough to make you perfect in my sight. It was enough to cross an eternal chasm of death that fairness would have plunged you into. 'My grace is sufficient for you.' All that you have to do is just believe. Make Grace your choice, and you will spend eternity with Me in my Kingdom."
Do you see? That's the simple yet beautiful message of salvation and redemption. There is nothing but belief on our part, because the boundless grace of God above has done the rest. This is what makes Christianity different from anything else in this world. Grace is the unique component, displayed and contained in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
6/5/08
"The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination"
I have never read a Harry Potter Book, although after reading the following, I now plan to. J.K. Rowling gave the commencement address at Harvard today. Quite the honor. I hope to have that honor myself one day (not necessarily at Harvard). I was attracted to the speech first by the title, which is the title of this blog, because almost exactly a year ago I spoke at my high school graduation and my speech was also on failure. After reading this one, I'm not sure I ever want to read my own again, but all the same, I am glad someone so distinguished would choose the same topic as I. But I will now commence to shut up (get it, commence/commencement???? i truly am sorry for that). In all seriousness, this is an amazing address, and I can only hope that the Harvard grads--as well as you and I--will put it's principle's into action.
"President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,
The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much. "
"President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,
The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much. "
"You are mistaken, my friend"
"You are mistaken, my friend," said the abbé. "There are times when God's justice tarries for a while and it appears to us that we are forgotten by Him, but the time always comes when we find it is not so, and here is the proof."
With these words the abbé took the diamond from his pocket and handed it to Caderousse.
I love that excerpt from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
1 John 3:16
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers."
After reading that a couple of days ago, my journal had this to say:
Love. It's sacrificial. It places other lives before our own. It takes a giving-up on the physical, spiritual, and emotional levels. Jesus died for worthless people. That is love in its definitive form. There is no greater love, and anything called "love" that does not follow His pattern is nothing but fakeness embodied. Love is generosity. Love is grace. Love is mercy and compassion. Love takes time. Love is not easy. Love requires that it not share a throne with jealousy or pride. Love is beautiful and transforms the ugly into something worthy of the gazing eye.
That is why love in its simplest, most wonderful form is something that can change the world. It is not romantic in the least. It just involves doing to and for others. It isn't natural, and if evolution was very able, then it certainly would not exist anymore. That is why Jesus continues to be the most powerful, life- and world-changing human ever to step foot on this Earth. He alone was Love and never once failed to love others. He practiced the unnatural concept of true love to the very last iota. It worked. It still does.
6/3/08
Giving Up
"I love You
All of my hope is in You
Jesus Christ, take my life
Take all of me."
~Hillsong United
Every day. Everyday there is a battle that wages inside me. The "new creation" that I am since placing faith in Jesus must fight the sinful nature that I was born with and still feed at times to this day. This is no metaphorical happening that represents what I imagine. No, I know it is there because I see its results and I can feel each
victory, regardless of which side won it. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 7: "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing." I know exactly what it is that I am called to do on the daily basis, and yet on the daily basis I fail miserably in complete obedience. Why is it so hard?? The answer has already been written. "I fail miserably." In myself, I don't have the ability to do right. Even Paul said that. Then what's the point of being a new creature? Herein lies one of the most beautiful paradoxes that this shattered world contains. While the Holy Spirit makes us "new" in Himself, the only way we are to ever do right is to immediately offer that new self back to God, saying "Take my life! Take all of me!" You see, what the newness does is that it moves in us (if we allow it) to take that action. Before accepting the redeeming grace of Jesus we cannot yield our lives to Him. All we can do is ask Him to rescue us from the Kingdom of darkness, and precisely at that moment He not only rescues us, but He transforms us into brand new people.
I have trouble giving up things, even to God. That in itself shows how powerful sin is. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain when I lose everything of my own accord so that I might gain nothing other than what the Savior gives. I cannot do anything to further Christ's Kingdom if I do not daily take up my cross and follow Him. It will mean harder times than I care to know about right now. But it will also mean a firmer Hand of escape from those times than I can even fathom at this moment. All of my hope must be put in the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and the Redeemer of my heart and soul. The One who is Love.
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the One who would turn aside His wrath, taking away our sins."
~1 John 4:10
All of my hope is in You
Jesus Christ, take my life
Take all of me."
~Hillsong United
Every day. Everyday there is a battle that wages inside me. The "new creation" that I am since placing faith in Jesus must fight the sinful nature that I was born with and still feed at times to this day. This is no metaphorical happening that represents what I imagine. No, I know it is there because I see its results and I can feel each
victory, regardless of which side won it. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 7: "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing." I know exactly what it is that I am called to do on the daily basis, and yet on the daily basis I fail miserably in complete obedience. Why is it so hard?? The answer has already been written. "I fail miserably." In myself, I don't have the ability to do right. Even Paul said that. Then what's the point of being a new creature? Herein lies one of the most beautiful paradoxes that this shattered world contains. While the Holy Spirit makes us "new" in Himself, the only way we are to ever do right is to immediately offer that new self back to God, saying "Take my life! Take all of me!" You see, what the newness does is that it moves in us (if we allow it) to take that action. Before accepting the redeeming grace of Jesus we cannot yield our lives to Him. All we can do is ask Him to rescue us from the Kingdom of darkness, and precisely at that moment He not only rescues us, but He transforms us into brand new people.
I have trouble giving up things, even to God. That in itself shows how powerful sin is. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain when I lose everything of my own accord so that I might gain nothing other than what the Savior gives. I cannot do anything to further Christ's Kingdom if I do not daily take up my cross and follow Him. It will mean harder times than I care to know about right now. But it will also mean a firmer Hand of escape from those times than I can even fathom at this moment. All of my hope must be put in the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and the Redeemer of my heart and soul. The One who is Love.
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the One who would turn aside His wrath, taking away our sins."
~1 John 4:10
Jumbled thoughts
Here's a little stanza that just came to me:
underneath my skin
inside my heart
what never should have been
has just begun its start
Here's an excerpt from an essay that Clive Staples Lewis wrote and that was published in 1962 called Is Theology Poetry?. The essay as a whole is concerned with answering a question that had been put to him regarding the legitimacy of Christian Theology and whether or not it was just a bunch of mythical nonsense that Christians were going crazy about. This piece of the brilliant whole will speak for itself. I will say, however, that it should prove equally interesting to the Christian and non-Christian alike. Please don't hesitate to comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
since this post is already lacking cohesion, i will throw yet another random bit in. If you are in any way interested in knowing something about an economy, namely, the one we are apart of, then check out Greg Mankiw's Blog: Dr. Mankiw is a very influential economist in this world, and I would encourage you to check him out on wikipedia to see his vast education and accomplishments. It isn't dry, I promise, and you might even enjoy reading the blog.
underneath my skin
inside my heart
what never should have been
has just begun its start
Here's an excerpt from an essay that Clive Staples Lewis wrote and that was published in 1962 called Is Theology Poetry?. The essay as a whole is concerned with answering a question that had been put to him regarding the legitimacy of Christian Theology and whether or not it was just a bunch of mythical nonsense that Christians were going crazy about. This piece of the brilliant whole will speak for itself. I will say, however, that it should prove equally interesting to the Christian and non-Christian alike. Please don't hesitate to comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Long before I believed Theology to be true I had already decided that the popular scientific picture at any rate was false. One absolutely central inconsistency ruins it; it is the one we touched on a fortnight ago. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears. Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula or the remotest part obeys the thought laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory--in other words, unless Reason is an absolute--all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.
The difficulty is to me a fatal one; and the fact that when you put it to many scientists, far from having an answer, they seem not even to understand what the difficulty is, assures me that I have not found a mare's nest but detected a radical disease in their whole mode of thought from the very beginning. The man who has once understood the situation is compelled henceforth to regard the scientific cosmology as being, in principle, a myth; though no doubt a great many true particulars have been worked into it.
since this post is already lacking cohesion, i will throw yet another random bit in. If you are in any way interested in knowing something about an economy, namely, the one we are apart of, then check out Greg Mankiw's Blog: Dr. Mankiw is a very influential economist in this world, and I would encourage you to check him out on wikipedia to see his vast education and accomplishments. It isn't dry, I promise, and you might even enjoy reading the blog.
5/28/08
Seriously?
"Love God, and do what you want."
~Augustine
Sure, it seems at first glance like a license to do whatever the heck you want. But think about it. Don't just read it. Digest it. It's pretty amazing.
~Augustine
Sure, it seems at first glance like a license to do whatever the heck you want. But think about it. Don't just read it. Digest it. It's pretty amazing.
5/27/08
Jackasses like you and me. 5-26-08
Have you ever been at the point in your life when you are so completely floored by God's blessings and at the same time been totally overwhelmed by your devastating unworthiness to receive them? I'm there.
When was the last time you just concentrated on the good things in your life? If you're struggling to think of any, get over yourself. For starters, you're reading this on a computer, and I might venture one that's sitting in your lap. I'd say that's a pretty good thing. Secondly, you can read. Hopefully. I wouldn't want you to just be staring at this. Education? A blessing. You know what reading this page takes? Eyesight. Check? Good, some people don't have that. This could go on and on, this chain reaction of blessing in your life and mine. Now, it's easy to be happy about these things, but should that be our only response? I submit that it should not. With great blessing comes great responsibility. Jesus said, "and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." Well, we have already decided that all of us have been given an awful lot, so what would you call "much more" than an awful lot? A ton? It matters not. The thing is that we can't just sit on a pile of wealth and do nothing with it. The issue is not salvation, it's sanctification--or working toward the goal that Christ set.
Just as a reminder to all of us. The wealth that Jesus had was that He lived in Heaven, and then gave that up to be born in a feed trough used by cows. And then died willingly for jackasses like you and me. Jackass is another term for a donkey, which is a very stubborn animal. But before I become flippant, I want to get this across. He gave up more, immeasurably more, in His first breath as a human, than we could give up in all of mortal human life combined. Let that sink in just a sec. Without the value that He so graciously offers to give our lives, we have less worth and less to offer than the oxygen that the infant Jesus took into those tiny lungs of His over two thousand years ago. Our sins put Him to death. Our sins mock His name. And yet He still offers the gift. How amazing is that? That is the biggest blessing of all. Is it one of yours?
When was the last time you just concentrated on the good things in your life? If you're struggling to think of any, get over yourself. For starters, you're reading this on a computer, and I might venture one that's sitting in your lap. I'd say that's a pretty good thing. Secondly, you can read. Hopefully. I wouldn't want you to just be staring at this. Education? A blessing. You know what reading this page takes? Eyesight. Check? Good, some people don't have that. This could go on and on, this chain reaction of blessing in your life and mine. Now, it's easy to be happy about these things, but should that be our only response? I submit that it should not. With great blessing comes great responsibility. Jesus said, "and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." Well, we have already decided that all of us have been given an awful lot, so what would you call "much more" than an awful lot? A ton? It matters not. The thing is that we can't just sit on a pile of wealth and do nothing with it. The issue is not salvation, it's sanctification--or working toward the goal that Christ set.
Just as a reminder to all of us. The wealth that Jesus had was that He lived in Heaven, and then gave that up to be born in a feed trough used by cows. And then died willingly for jackasses like you and me. Jackass is another term for a donkey, which is a very stubborn animal. But before I become flippant, I want to get this across. He gave up more, immeasurably more, in His first breath as a human, than we could give up in all of mortal human life combined. Let that sink in just a sec. Without the value that He so graciously offers to give our lives, we have less worth and less to offer than the oxygen that the infant Jesus took into those tiny lungs of His over two thousand years ago. Our sins put Him to death. Our sins mock His name. And yet He still offers the gift. How amazing is that? That is the biggest blessing of all. Is it one of yours?
5/22/08
Lessons from Hitler and Korver--5/22/08
"'God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.'
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you."
-1 Peter 5:5-7
Honestly, pride is something I have always struggled with and continue to struggle with. And the worst thing is, pride is never just pride. Pride just grows and grows and multiplies itself into hatred and dishonesty and mistrust and hypocrisy and a host of other sins. Why? Because the problem with pride is that the person who has it begins to think that they are the source of good things in life, and other people and circumstances are the source of bad things. That mindset is just a breeding ground for everything else. Hitler is a prime example (I am too, but we'll get to that). As World War II progressed and Germany was dominating, Hitler was feeling quite confident. However, his pride led to a paranoia of managing the whole war himself. He was sure his generals were inept and trying to kill him. And so he had them killed. Of course this was a terrible strategy and ultimately led to his downfall (along with other things, but this is not a history lesson.) Do you see the logical progression of erosion? First of all, pride hits hardest when things are going well. Second, pride hurts our relationships. Lastly, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." Hitler wasn't immune to it, neither are you. And neither am I.
My senior year in high school is a prime example. I was coming off a good summer playing AAU basketball, and I was first in my class academically coming into the fall semester. I was feeling good about myself. Then to start off the year, I get an email from the head guru lady of the schools in our county saying I had received some county-wide achievement award. I'm grateful I received it, but looking back, it was just adding fuel to the fire. The first step of regression had started. Things were going well, and I thought it was all due to my own abilities and talents. Step Two didn't skip me either. It hit me full on, and the relationship that was most strained was the one with my younger sister. I just treated her terribly really the whole year, and it was completely unmerited. The fall came the last half of basketball season, which was the most disappointing half of a season I'd ever had. It affected me a great deal. I was angry with my coaches, I was blaming everything on others. Ultimately, I stopped caring much about spending time with my Redeemer as I once had. It was a fall. But herein lies the beauty of the Bible and the God who inspired it. It doesn't stop after pride takes you down. It offers rescue. Look at it, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time." There it is. I can tell you from experience that it works. I promise I didn't do it perfectly, but I realized that I had been sinning against others and against God, and I just confessed that to Him, asking for a spirit of humility. It was hard having to learn that lesson, but rest of my senior year was infinitely better. Do I still struggle with pride? Sure. Every day. But I'm learning.
There is one last part to that passage that Peter writes that jumped out at me today that I hadn't thought about before. He talks about humility and God lifting us up in due time, and the very next sentence says this, "Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you." What does that have to do with humility and God lifting us up? Here's what I think he's saying. Humility isn't easy. When you're a humble person, especially in the America we live in, you will take a lot of flack. It may mean not getting a promotion because you don't go tooting your own horn all the time, and instead just quietly get the job done. Or it may mean letting others get glory for something you contributed most to. Sometimes it can mean dealing with stressful financial situations because you are faithful to give 30% of your paycheck back to God, no matter what's going on in your life. Here's my point: humility as a lifestyle choice is not going to be an easy road. There will be anxieties, and when we have them, we don't have to carry them on our own. We serve a God who will take those worries upon His infinite shoulders. We serve a God who cares for us. He will not make us go it alone.
but gives grace to the humble.'
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you."
-1 Peter 5:5-7
Honestly, pride is something I have always struggled with and continue to struggle with. And the worst thing is, pride is never just pride. Pride just grows and grows and multiplies itself into hatred and dishonesty and mistrust and hypocrisy and a host of other sins. Why? Because the problem with pride is that the person who has it begins to think that they are the source of good things in life, and other people and circumstances are the source of bad things. That mindset is just a breeding ground for everything else. Hitler is a prime example (I am too, but we'll get to that). As World War II progressed and Germany was dominating, Hitler was feeling quite confident. However, his pride led to a paranoia of managing the whole war himself. He was sure his generals were inept and trying to kill him. And so he had them killed. Of course this was a terrible strategy and ultimately led to his downfall (along with other things, but this is not a history lesson.) Do you see the logical progression of erosion? First of all, pride hits hardest when things are going well. Second, pride hurts our relationships. Lastly, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." Hitler wasn't immune to it, neither are you. And neither am I.
My senior year in high school is a prime example. I was coming off a good summer playing AAU basketball, and I was first in my class academically coming into the fall semester. I was feeling good about myself. Then to start off the year, I get an email from the head guru lady of the schools in our county saying I had received some county-wide achievement award. I'm grateful I received it, but looking back, it was just adding fuel to the fire. The first step of regression had started. Things were going well, and I thought it was all due to my own abilities and talents. Step Two didn't skip me either. It hit me full on, and the relationship that was most strained was the one with my younger sister. I just treated her terribly really the whole year, and it was completely unmerited. The fall came the last half of basketball season, which was the most disappointing half of a season I'd ever had. It affected me a great deal. I was angry with my coaches, I was blaming everything on others. Ultimately, I stopped caring much about spending time with my Redeemer as I once had. It was a fall. But herein lies the beauty of the Bible and the God who inspired it. It doesn't stop after pride takes you down. It offers rescue. Look at it, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time." There it is. I can tell you from experience that it works. I promise I didn't do it perfectly, but I realized that I had been sinning against others and against God, and I just confessed that to Him, asking for a spirit of humility. It was hard having to learn that lesson, but rest of my senior year was infinitely better. Do I still struggle with pride? Sure. Every day. But I'm learning.
There is one last part to that passage that Peter writes that jumped out at me today that I hadn't thought about before. He talks about humility and God lifting us up in due time, and the very next sentence says this, "Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you." What does that have to do with humility and God lifting us up? Here's what I think he's saying. Humility isn't easy. When you're a humble person, especially in the America we live in, you will take a lot of flack. It may mean not getting a promotion because you don't go tooting your own horn all the time, and instead just quietly get the job done. Or it may mean letting others get glory for something you contributed most to. Sometimes it can mean dealing with stressful financial situations because you are faithful to give 30% of your paycheck back to God, no matter what's going on in your life. Here's my point: humility as a lifestyle choice is not going to be an easy road. There will be anxieties, and when we have them, we don't have to carry them on our own. We serve a God who will take those worries upon His infinite shoulders. We serve a God who cares for us. He will not make us go it alone.
5/18/08
Laminin
I bought a new book today, a New York Times' best-seller titled, What's So Great About Christianity?, and authored by Dinesh D'souza. I haven't gotten very far into it, but it's a very compelling read to say the least. It matters not your beliefs or lack thereof, you should read it if you get the chance.
However, before you do anything else you need to watch this video of Louie Giglio, talking about a protein known as Laminin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4
I'll be honest with you, I couldn't get through that without some tears and shivers of just incredulous awe of God. It amazes me that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by the Creator of the vast universe we live in, and not only that, but that He has chosen to have an intense interest in each and every one of our lives. He has offered forgiveness to us when we did not, and never will, deserve it; He has given us new mercies every morning, just as we complain and whine about the day before it even starts; and His son Jesus holds everything in this universe, including our own bodies, together in Himself. He wants to have a relationship with you personally. He loves every single part of you and me, the ugly and disdainful and the rotten, so much so that He offers unconditional free pardon, amnesty, and redemption to us. All He asks of us is a simple belief that His death and subsequent resurrection is all that we need to spend eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven. That's all. No turning your life around first, no going to the priest or pastor to ask forgiveness, no favorable balance of right and wrong in your life. None of that is required. Only a true belief in a Person and what He did. I can tell you my life since i made that decision has not been easy, but I now have a freedom and confidence that never was present before. I now have something to wake up for in the morning. I have deep joy. I have meaning. I am only lost when I lose myself. I am only found when I call for Him.
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."
Colossians 1:15-20
5/17/08
The Beautiful Letdown
I love Switchfoot's older stuff up through their fourth album, The Beautiful Letdown, which contains the following song sharing the same title. I think Jon Foreman is one of the best lyricists out there, and I've always thought these lyrics in particular were just full of gold. If you hate the music of Switchfoot, I'm sorry, but maybe just try to enjoy the words and humor me?
It was a beautiful letdown
When I crashed and burned
When I found myself alone, unknown and hurt
It was a beautiful letdown
The day I knew,
That all the riches this world had to offer me will never do.
In a world full of bitter pain,
and bitter doubts,
I was trying so hard to fit in,
Fit in, until I found out
I don't belong here
I don't belong here
I will carry a cross and a song
Where I don't belong
I don't belong
It was a beautiful letdown
When you found me here
Yeah, for once in a rare blue moon
I see everything clear
I'll be a beautiful letdown
That's what I'll forever be
And though it may cost my soul
I'll sing for free
We're still chasing our tails
In the rising sun
In our dark water planet still spinning
In a direction no one wins
No one's won.
I'm gonna set side
And set sail
For the kingdom come, kingdom come
Your kingdom come
Won't you let me down, yeah
Let my foolish pride forever let me down
Ah, Easy living, you're not much like the name
Easy dying, you look just about the same
Would you please take me off your list
Easy living please c'mon and let me down
We are a beautiful letdown
Painfully uncool
The church of the dropouts
The losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools
What a beautiful letdown
Are we salt in the wound
Hey, let us sing one true tune
It was a beautiful letdown
When I crashed and burned
When I found myself alone, unknown and hurt
It was a beautiful letdown
The day I knew,
That all the riches this world had to offer me will never do.
In a world full of bitter pain,
and bitter doubts,
I was trying so hard to fit in,
Fit in, until I found out
I don't belong here
I don't belong here
I will carry a cross and a song
Where I don't belong
I don't belong
It was a beautiful letdown
When you found me here
Yeah, for once in a rare blue moon
I see everything clear
I'll be a beautiful letdown
That's what I'll forever be
And though it may cost my soul
I'll sing for free
We're still chasing our tails
In the rising sun
In our dark water planet still spinning
In a direction no one wins
No one's won.
I'm gonna set side
And set sail
For the kingdom come, kingdom come
Your kingdom come
Won't you let me down, yeah
Let my foolish pride forever let me down
Ah, Easy living, you're not much like the name
Easy dying, you look just about the same
Would you please take me off your list
Easy living please c'mon and let me down
We are a beautiful letdown
Painfully uncool
The church of the dropouts
The losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools
What a beautiful letdown
Are we salt in the wound
Hey, let us sing one true tune
5/16/08
Mind Games
Why do we as Christians know relatively nothing about what we believe in? We know everything there is to know about Duke or Carolina basketball, or Alabama football, or how great Coldplay's new song is, or the latest fads of the day, and the list continues grossly on. But are we really intellectually sure about the core beliefs that we say we have? I can guarantee that our generation is the generation whose mind has been attacked and assaulted more than that of any other, but I can also guarantee that we have done the worst job of any other generation in being prepared for such an onslaught. It's because everything is right at our fingertips. Technology, as great as it is, has become a crutch of cheap, adulterated information. Do you want to know what it's culminated into? A lack of reading.
Reading, Korver? What in the world are you harping about now? Just keep reading. Yes I intended that pun. This has become at least an American tragedy, but I'd also tend to think it's become worldwide. However, while that's true, I'd like to write specifically to Christians at this point. Christians, we need to use our God-given brains. Be educated and make a concerted effort to know that which you believe. We are so clueless right now that we think reading the Bible for five minutes a day will suffice, or maybe five minutes thrice weekly. Are you kidding me? I'm sorry, but why in the world would you change your life (or claim to) for something you got out of a book that you only read 15 minutes a week (and listening to a sermon every other week doesn't count as reading). For crying out loud, my mom reads a cookbook more than that, and I sure don't see her revolutionizing her life because of the latest broccoli and cheese soup recipe. As I said, we have huge need for our minds, and yet we have not exercised them enough to be ready. They have atrophied to the point of disintegration. I'm going to call a spade a spade. It's sin. 1 Peter 1:13 says, "Therefore, prepare your minds for action." Peter says "therefore" because he's just been discussing the fact that we have no earthly idea when Christ is returning. In light of that, we need to always be ready, using our--get ready for it--our minds. We read "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" and tend to leave the mind just sitting there, doing nothing with it. Why? Why is it that the brain gets left in the dust? Are we afraid that our minds will tell us some truth that will disorient our foolish ideas of entitlement to comfort and happiness? Are we afraid that our minds will overrule our baseless feelings? Whatever it is, we need to get over it. From the verse above, it appears that we must if we are to truly love the Father. And that makes perfect sense. How can you love someone whom you know nothing about? You don't know his/her characteristics and attributes, what they've done in the past, what they said their future plans were, etc., but you say "Oh, but my heart tells me this!" Rubbish. In the same way, if you go through life trying to love Jesus based on the feelings of your heart and the longings of your soul, there will be a point in time when that "love" is no longer there. It's because we haven't kept reading the verse. We must.
You still haven't explained yourself on reading, Korver. I shall do just that. We must read if we ever hope to be an educated people of God. Oh, you don't like to read? Learn to. I hate to break it to some of you, but listening to "Christian" music (or any other kind of music) is not enough. Not nearly. But I must clarify. We need not be reading just for reading's sake. I can read all the Redwall novels I want, all the Grisham novels I want, I can read LOTR all day, every day and none of that is going to prepare my mind for action. First of all, we must read the Book that our faith rests solely in. The Bible. You and I need to read it every day, and whether it's one chapter or ten is not the key issue. What matters is that we think and pray about what it is that we are reading, so that our minds get a workout. Second, once the first is a habit, we must find other sources that are sound theologically (i.e. they match what the Bible says at face value) to further explain what it is we've read between Genesis and Revelation. Randy Alcorn, Chuck Swindoll, Andy Stanley, Ravi Zacharias, Tony Evans, and many other authors would fit into this category. I don't even have a third step for you. It's that easy, two simple steps. If you feel that I'm being dogmatic, you're probably right, but I'm not making this stuff up. As you've seen, it's in the Bible. That said, everything I've written applies just as much to me as it does to anyone who may read this. I have let my mind become a lard, too.
Again, I cannot stress how important it is for us to put aside the meaningless things that we do and make time for mind exercise, for reading and thinking and praying. Let's cut down on wasted time and insert reading into our daily lives. We must push ourselves forward or the world will push us over.
Reading, Korver? What in the world are you harping about now? Just keep reading. Yes I intended that pun. This has become at least an American tragedy, but I'd also tend to think it's become worldwide. However, while that's true, I'd like to write specifically to Christians at this point. Christians, we need to use our God-given brains. Be educated and make a concerted effort to know that which you believe. We are so clueless right now that we think reading the Bible for five minutes a day will suffice, or maybe five minutes thrice weekly. Are you kidding me? I'm sorry, but why in the world would you change your life (or claim to) for something you got out of a book that you only read 15 minutes a week (and listening to a sermon every other week doesn't count as reading). For crying out loud, my mom reads a cookbook more than that, and I sure don't see her revolutionizing her life because of the latest broccoli and cheese soup recipe. As I said, we have huge need for our minds, and yet we have not exercised them enough to be ready. They have atrophied to the point of disintegration. I'm going to call a spade a spade. It's sin. 1 Peter 1:13 says, "Therefore, prepare your minds for action." Peter says "therefore" because he's just been discussing the fact that we have no earthly idea when Christ is returning. In light of that, we need to always be ready, using our--get ready for it--our minds. We read "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" and tend to leave the mind just sitting there, doing nothing with it. Why? Why is it that the brain gets left in the dust? Are we afraid that our minds will tell us some truth that will disorient our foolish ideas of entitlement to comfort and happiness? Are we afraid that our minds will overrule our baseless feelings? Whatever it is, we need to get over it. From the verse above, it appears that we must if we are to truly love the Father. And that makes perfect sense. How can you love someone whom you know nothing about? You don't know his/her characteristics and attributes, what they've done in the past, what they said their future plans were, etc., but you say "Oh, but my heart tells me this!" Rubbish. In the same way, if you go through life trying to love Jesus based on the feelings of your heart and the longings of your soul, there will be a point in time when that "love" is no longer there. It's because we haven't kept reading the verse. We must.
You still haven't explained yourself on reading, Korver. I shall do just that. We must read if we ever hope to be an educated people of God. Oh, you don't like to read? Learn to. I hate to break it to some of you, but listening to "Christian" music (or any other kind of music) is not enough. Not nearly. But I must clarify. We need not be reading just for reading's sake. I can read all the Redwall novels I want, all the Grisham novels I want, I can read LOTR all day, every day and none of that is going to prepare my mind for action. First of all, we must read the Book that our faith rests solely in. The Bible. You and I need to read it every day, and whether it's one chapter or ten is not the key issue. What matters is that we think and pray about what it is that we are reading, so that our minds get a workout. Second, once the first is a habit, we must find other sources that are sound theologically (i.e. they match what the Bible says at face value) to further explain what it is we've read between Genesis and Revelation. Randy Alcorn, Chuck Swindoll, Andy Stanley, Ravi Zacharias, Tony Evans, and many other authors would fit into this category. I don't even have a third step for you. It's that easy, two simple steps. If you feel that I'm being dogmatic, you're probably right, but I'm not making this stuff up. As you've seen, it's in the Bible. That said, everything I've written applies just as much to me as it does to anyone who may read this. I have let my mind become a lard, too.
Again, I cannot stress how important it is for us to put aside the meaningless things that we do and make time for mind exercise, for reading and thinking and praying. Let's cut down on wasted time and insert reading into our daily lives. We must push ourselves forward or the world will push us over.
5/15/08
Which way?
"As for God, His way is perfect."
~Psalm 18:30
I don't know what you want to do with that, but I'd suggest you do something with it. If by chance you find another way that's perfect, then of course by all means disregard the above and follow another way. Let me know how that's working out for you.
just so you know, it hasn't worked for me. and going all the way back to Eve and Adam, "another way" just hasn't won many victories. none, in fact.
www.epm.org is a great website run by a wonderful author named Randy Alcorn. There are tons of great articles and links for anyone interested in actually maturing as a Christian.
Hey get pumped for Prince Caspian. i can't wait to see it. as a challenge to everyone, especially those searching for truth, go read anything you can find by C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity
would be a great place to start.
~Psalm 18:30
I don't know what you want to do with that, but I'd suggest you do something with it. If by chance you find another way that's perfect, then of course by all means disregard the above and follow another way. Let me know how that's working out for you.
just so you know, it hasn't worked for me. and going all the way back to Eve and Adam, "another way" just hasn't won many victories. none, in fact.
www.epm.org is a great website run by a wonderful author named Randy Alcorn. There are tons of great articles and links for anyone interested in actually maturing as a Christian.
Hey get pumped for Prince Caspian. i can't wait to see it. as a challenge to everyone, especially those searching for truth, go read anything you can find by C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity
would be a great place to start.
5/14/08
"I'll hold up a mirror."
"I do not exist," we faithfully insist,
While watching sink the heavy ship with everything we knew.
And if ever You come near, I'll hold up high a mirror.
Lord, I could never show you anything as beautiful as You!
~mewithoutYou, Messes of Men
What a great lyric, to be sure. The first time I read it, I thought that, "And if ever you come near" should be changed to, "Whenever you come near." But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is exactly right. Look at this, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned." (John 15:5,6). First of all, this is not talking about whether you're going to Heaven or Hell, because Jesus is talking to His disciples, calling those who've placed their faith in Himself "Branches." But did you see what happens when we choose not to have fellowship with Christ? We are like those branches that fall out during a storm and your dad (or you) brings them out to the street to be picked up by the DOT or whomever. Useless. Fruitless. What I'm saying is that we as Christians have a part to play in our own walk. If we choose to break fellowship with our Redeemer, then he will only come near again "if ever" we realize our wrongs and ask Him to forgive and restore that vertical relationship. If we do not come to that point in our lives, then we are lukewarm, carnal Christians.
Sadly, that's where most Christians are today (and I'm often guilty). We are the worst advocates for the love and grace of Jesus in the world. People are not always turned off by the message of redemption that Jesus offers, but rather by the people who have believed in that message and then refused to carry out their part of the relationship. It doesn't by any means change the fact that they're going to Heaven, but it means that they have placed their own selfish lifestyle ahead of the Life that Jesus gave up for them. He offers relationship. Relationships are contracts of two parties. How much sense does it make to accept the Gift offered by God, and then decide you don't want to carry out your part of the deal? In law, it's called a breach of contract, and it's not legal. Christ offers rescue from the Kingdom of Darkness and transfer to the Kingdom of Light, and we have to do nothing for it. All He asks after that transfer is some commitment on our part. I'd say that it's the very least we owe someone who died in our place. Sometimes, all we can do is hold up a mirror and say, "Lord, I've got nothing to offer you. I'm a poor wretch who succeeds much less than I fail. BUT, I know that You are faithful, just, merciful, true, holy, righteous, omnipotent, omniscient, full of unfailing love, redemptive, glorious, forgiving, and your list of attributes stretches on till infinity. Only when I make an effort to love and cherish the relationship You offer to me will my life make any sense."
While watching sink the heavy ship with everything we knew.
And if ever You come near, I'll hold up high a mirror.
Lord, I could never show you anything as beautiful as You!
~mewithoutYou, Messes of Men
What a great lyric, to be sure. The first time I read it, I thought that, "And if ever you come near" should be changed to, "Whenever you come near." But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is exactly right. Look at this, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned." (John 15:5,6). First of all, this is not talking about whether you're going to Heaven or Hell, because Jesus is talking to His disciples, calling those who've placed their faith in Himself "Branches." But did you see what happens when we choose not to have fellowship with Christ? We are like those branches that fall out during a storm and your dad (or you) brings them out to the street to be picked up by the DOT or whomever. Useless. Fruitless. What I'm saying is that we as Christians have a part to play in our own walk. If we choose to break fellowship with our Redeemer, then he will only come near again "if ever" we realize our wrongs and ask Him to forgive and restore that vertical relationship. If we do not come to that point in our lives, then we are lukewarm, carnal Christians.
Sadly, that's where most Christians are today (and I'm often guilty). We are the worst advocates for the love and grace of Jesus in the world. People are not always turned off by the message of redemption that Jesus offers, but rather by the people who have believed in that message and then refused to carry out their part of the relationship. It doesn't by any means change the fact that they're going to Heaven, but it means that they have placed their own selfish lifestyle ahead of the Life that Jesus gave up for them. He offers relationship. Relationships are contracts of two parties. How much sense does it make to accept the Gift offered by God, and then decide you don't want to carry out your part of the deal? In law, it's called a breach of contract, and it's not legal. Christ offers rescue from the Kingdom of Darkness and transfer to the Kingdom of Light, and we have to do nothing for it. All He asks after that transfer is some commitment on our part. I'd say that it's the very least we owe someone who died in our place. Sometimes, all we can do is hold up a mirror and say, "Lord, I've got nothing to offer you. I'm a poor wretch who succeeds much less than I fail. BUT, I know that You are faithful, just, merciful, true, holy, righteous, omnipotent, omniscient, full of unfailing love, redemptive, glorious, forgiving, and your list of attributes stretches on till infinity. Only when I make an effort to love and cherish the relationship You offer to me will my life make any sense."
5/11/08
Mother's Day
The feelings I experience on Mother's Day teach me so much more about love than anything I've ever seen on Valentine's Day. Love itself is not something people do together (i.e. sex, giving gifts, eating at Golden Corral or some other fancy restaurant), but is rather all about the sacrifices that we make for those we care deeply for. "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." That's why I have learned so much about love from my mom (and my dad, but it's not his day today). She has made sacrifices for me every day of her life. Por ejemplo, she walked around for more than nine months (i was two weeks late), looking somewhat like a blimp (i was almost ten pounds) just so that I could live on this earth. That may or may not be funny to you, but in all seriousness, i believe that the process of pregnancy can explain alot about love and why my mom's is so strong. Think about it, for nine months the mom is sharing everything she eats, everything she drinks, and everything she breathes with that little human inside her. It involves sacrifice. Sharing had to have been one of the first--if not the first-- sacrifices made after the Fall. "I have such and such in my possession, and I see that you don't. I'm going to choose to give away some of what I have so that you won't be lacking anymore." There it is, Sharing. Sacrifice. And therefore, Love.
Maybe a simple poem is in order.
The love of a mother
So Constant, Strong and Sweet
No hoarding, she gives up herself
And she does not keep
Mary watched in anguish
Her son hung on the tree
She had loved Him
The Sacrifice for her, you, and me
"So what is Love?
I have no mom!", you cried
Love is Jesus, who never fails
For us, He took three nails and was crucified
Happy Mother's Day!!!
Maybe a simple poem is in order.
The love of a mother
So Constant, Strong and Sweet
No hoarding, she gives up herself
And she does not keep
Mary watched in anguish
Her son hung on the tree
She had loved Him
The Sacrifice for her, you, and me
"So what is Love?
I have no mom!", you cried
Love is Jesus, who never fails
For us, He took three nails and was crucified
Happy Mother's Day!!!
5/10/08
i worked outside with my dad today fixing some things around the house. i also got my mom's Mother's day present. My parents are awesome, my favorite two people in this world. "Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you." ~Deut. 5:16
So, my older sister is halfway around the world right now teaching English at a university in Mongolia, near the Kazakhstan border. About two or three weeks ago there was a really bad dust storm in the city that she lives in, and the power went out. Original estimates said that it could easily be out 6 weeks, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see it out even longer. Well, the power came back on yesterday. I am going to go ahead and tell you that I know that God had a huge hand in that. You may say I'm ridiculous, but I'll explain why I'm so confident: Mongolia is still recovering from Soviet rule. If you know anything about communism or socialism, neither one has ever heard of efficiency. They both go completely against almost every economically sound principle known to man. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that power would never be restored in less time than they would have originally estimated. You may say, "Korver, don't you think you're stretching it a little?" No. Open your eyes to the world around you. Life doesn't always have pragmatic, scientific answers to our questions. There may be pragmatic, scientific explanations to our questions (and even they are not always existent), but explanations never got anything done. Here's a tough one for you: Meteorologists could talk for an hour on how the cyclone formed and devastated Myanmar, but I defy you to find anyone who could answer why it happened. Another example on the other end of the spectrum: Historians will go till they're blue in the face on how we somehow pulled off the American Revolution. But why was America born?
I am not asking illegitimate questions. I am asking why. No one seems to ask that anymore. Perhaps because the only way to find truth to that question is to think. To search. Have we forgotten how to do that?
So, my older sister is halfway around the world right now teaching English at a university in Mongolia, near the Kazakhstan border. About two or three weeks ago there was a really bad dust storm in the city that she lives in, and the power went out. Original estimates said that it could easily be out 6 weeks, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see it out even longer. Well, the power came back on yesterday. I am going to go ahead and tell you that I know that God had a huge hand in that. You may say I'm ridiculous, but I'll explain why I'm so confident: Mongolia is still recovering from Soviet rule. If you know anything about communism or socialism, neither one has ever heard of efficiency. They both go completely against almost every economically sound principle known to man. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that power would never be restored in less time than they would have originally estimated. You may say, "Korver, don't you think you're stretching it a little?" No. Open your eyes to the world around you. Life doesn't always have pragmatic, scientific answers to our questions. There may be pragmatic, scientific explanations to our questions (and even they are not always existent), but explanations never got anything done. Here's a tough one for you: Meteorologists could talk for an hour on how the cyclone formed and devastated Myanmar, but I defy you to find anyone who could answer why it happened. Another example on the other end of the spectrum: Historians will go till they're blue in the face on how we somehow pulled off the American Revolution. But why was America born?
I am not asking illegitimate questions. I am asking why. No one seems to ask that anymore. Perhaps because the only way to find truth to that question is to think. To search. Have we forgotten how to do that?
"Tomorrow will worry about itself."
I have always been the type of person who thinks a lot about the future, anticipates it, often worries about it. I don't think there's anything wrong with being someone who looks forward; in fact, the Bible says to "keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come." If you happen to be one of those people in this world who calls yourself a Christian, then it's obvious you're supposed to be ready for the imminent (any time) return of our Savior. Personally, I don't want to be cussing someone out on the basketball court right at the time Jesus comes back. Actually there's plenty of things I wouldn't want to be doing, so looking forward to that day (regardless of the date) not only gives me inspiration to do right, but incentive not to do wrong.
However, as important as that point is--and someday I'll come back to it--it's not the point that I want to make. I love to read, and since it's summer, I've picked up a few books, one of which is about the David of the Bible (you know, the guy who killed Goliath). Tonight as I was reading, I came across an interesting point that the author Chuck Swindoll made. It was simply this: ultimately, how awesome is it that we don't know what tomorrow or next week or next year has in store for us? In David's life, he had just killed Goliath, essentially saving the nation of Israel from captivity under the Philistines, and then Saul, the king, decides he wants to kill David. Not even a "hey Dave, thanks for saving my kingdom with one swing of your sling." But all kidding aside, he goes from a position of prominence and prosperity to fear and depression just like that. And he was in that valley of life for years. Something tells me that David was really glad that he didn't know about that future. If he had, he wouldn't have enjoyed each present day as it came along, and we probably wouldn't even know who he was. Another example that has hit home to me recently is that one of my own peers has cancer. I promise that she did not want to know about that ahead of time. Why would she? Instead, she must take it day by day, moment by moment, fighting with all her strength to beat it. Just like David. Saul eventually killed himself in battle, and after years of living one day to the next, he was king of Israel. I hope and pray that my friend will make the same recovery.
Where am I going with this? Basically, two things. First of all, I need to stop worrying so much about the future. Matthew said "Who of you by worrying has added a single cubit to his height?" (On a side note, maybe my worrying is what caused me to stop growing in between 8th and 9th grade?) Over and over in my life, I catch myself worrying about paying for this or feeling that way, or being perceived by so and so, etc. Even more disappointing is that the things I worry about are almost never things that matter in the long run anyways. Secondly, tomorrow can deal with itself. Sure I can prepare for what tomorrow may bring, but in the end that is all I can do. Live today fully. A great man named Jim Elliot once said, "Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God." In other words, wanting to know the future is fruitless when you come right down to it. Instead, concentrate on living the now so that you may be ready for that unknown day when it comes.
I have something that's heavy on my mind right now that concerns something down the road. It's very important to me, and I'm having a hard time not worrying about it and just preparing myself so that whatever the outcome may be, I can take it in stride. So, if you are the kind of person who prays, pray for me on that one. I need it. If you don't pray, then I don't hold it against you. Whether you pray or not, whether you have faith in the redemptive power of Jesus or not, please let's just live this day.
However, as important as that point is--and someday I'll come back to it--it's not the point that I want to make. I love to read, and since it's summer, I've picked up a few books, one of which is about the David of the Bible (you know, the guy who killed Goliath). Tonight as I was reading, I came across an interesting point that the author Chuck Swindoll made. It was simply this: ultimately, how awesome is it that we don't know what tomorrow or next week or next year has in store for us? In David's life, he had just killed Goliath, essentially saving the nation of Israel from captivity under the Philistines, and then Saul, the king, decides he wants to kill David. Not even a "hey Dave, thanks for saving my kingdom with one swing of your sling." But all kidding aside, he goes from a position of prominence and prosperity to fear and depression just like that. And he was in that valley of life for years. Something tells me that David was really glad that he didn't know about that future. If he had, he wouldn't have enjoyed each present day as it came along, and we probably wouldn't even know who he was. Another example that has hit home to me recently is that one of my own peers has cancer. I promise that she did not want to know about that ahead of time. Why would she? Instead, she must take it day by day, moment by moment, fighting with all her strength to beat it. Just like David. Saul eventually killed himself in battle, and after years of living one day to the next, he was king of Israel. I hope and pray that my friend will make the same recovery.
Where am I going with this? Basically, two things. First of all, I need to stop worrying so much about the future. Matthew said "Who of you by worrying has added a single cubit to his height?" (On a side note, maybe my worrying is what caused me to stop growing in between 8th and 9th grade?) Over and over in my life, I catch myself worrying about paying for this or feeling that way, or being perceived by so and so, etc. Even more disappointing is that the things I worry about are almost never things that matter in the long run anyways. Secondly, tomorrow can deal with itself. Sure I can prepare for what tomorrow may bring, but in the end that is all I can do. Live today fully. A great man named Jim Elliot once said, "Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God." In other words, wanting to know the future is fruitless when you come right down to it. Instead, concentrate on living the now so that you may be ready for that unknown day when it comes.
I have something that's heavy on my mind right now that concerns something down the road. It's very important to me, and I'm having a hard time not worrying about it and just preparing myself so that whatever the outcome may be, I can take it in stride. So, if you are the kind of person who prays, pray for me on that one. I need it. If you don't pray, then I don't hold it against you. Whether you pray or not, whether you have faith in the redemptive power of Jesus or not, please let's just live this day.
5/8/08
summer
I drove home from school today, and the whole way home i did a ton of thinking. thinking about what's in store for the summer, how my semester ended, how crazy it is that a sinless Savior would willfully die for sinful people. Concerning the latter, sadly i find myself losing sight of that foundational premise on which my professed beliefs solely rest. I can feel a lot of changes around the corner in my life, and i can't afford to do that any longer. to continue to do so would be detrimental.
This whole blog deal is sort of spur of the moment. I guess that my reasoning for starting is this: i have grown more and more weary of useless words and conversations that i have throughout the course of my life, and this is a way for me to spill my guts about what really matters to me. Without interruption and without reservation. Furthermore, it is my hope that whatever is written down here--whether journaling or songs or poems i've written, or what have you--that it would all be edifying to whoever may read it, and would bring glory to my Creator. I'm not trying to change anyone, because i lack the power to do so, but it is my hope that you'd at least think about the things that you read.
This whole blog deal is sort of spur of the moment. I guess that my reasoning for starting is this: i have grown more and more weary of useless words and conversations that i have throughout the course of my life, and this is a way for me to spill my guts about what really matters to me. Without interruption and without reservation. Furthermore, it is my hope that whatever is written down here--whether journaling or songs or poems i've written, or what have you--that it would all be edifying to whoever may read it, and would bring glory to my Creator. I'm not trying to change anyone, because i lack the power to do so, but it is my hope that you'd at least think about the things that you read.
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