Hey guys.
It's been a while but despite my negligence I haven't forgotten about the blog. In fact I wrote a lot of things this summer while I was in India but for one reason or another (mostly laziness) they never found their way to the actual blog. To be honest, I think I am a bit intimidated - not quite sure what is "worthy" of this forum so I hesitated a lot because I believed my thoughts to be unpolished and not "Christian" enough. Regardless, I think I'm over that now.
Anyways, I'm in India again (after a brief stint in the US to get things packed). I'm doing full time ministry with EMI (engineering ministries international), "designing a new world of hope" as they would say. It's a place I would have never imagined myself a couple of years ago. That is not beacuse I would be against going on an adventure over seas, but because I never imagined myself doing full time ministry. It's still really weird. There is lots of praying and reading the Bible and depending upon God for things - all foreign concepts really.
I'll be giving periodic updates on another blog I started (firstbreathafter.blogspot.com). I know I can't even keep up with this one. For general information and a couple of quirky metaphors that is probably a good place to go.
But you must know that God is doing a lot in me right now. He has literally come to get me out of the darkness. I was doing pretty bad the past couple of years, stuck in a pretty extensive depression, thinking about the end of my life like it was much too near. It really got to the point where I told God - you need to come and get me because I can't go on anymore. And look at what has happened now. I'm in India, serving Him. I'm not out of the woods. My melancholy lean won't allow that just yet - but I'm on my way. God is moving me and I've never been more thankful.
Pray for me guys. I think I need it. Also if you wouldn't mind, pray for my dad. He's going to be visiting in a couple of weeks and I hope that God will be able to show him everything this organization is about allowing him to better understand the transforming effect that Christ can have.
BOOOOOOM!!!!!
ps. Ricky Rubio?
Monday, August 31, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
The Joy of Being a Child
I think one of the sweetest joys of being a child is that you cannot have everything you want. I was talking to Christy the other day, and a story she told prompted me on this particular tangent of thought. She mentioned to me how when she was a kid, her family would only go out to eat once every six months, and even then they would always order water as their drink. She recalled how one time at one of these rare occasions her parents told Christy and her siblings that they were allowed to order whatever they wanted to drink. To Christy, that glass of chocolate milk was the best thing she'd ever tasted.
I think this example is such a reflection of the way that our hearts and our desires work. It's not really the object of the desire itself that brings pleasure. That chocolate milk was probably no different from the chocolate milk she drinks today. But there is something about how constraints in our pursuit of what we desire will actually create greater joy in the long run. A specific example for me as a kid was my intense desire for ice cream every time I heard the jingle of the ice cream truck. There was something magical about that jingle that it had every kid on the block sprinting full on to catch the truck as it was turning the corner. These days I can buy all those cheap ice creams any time I stop to fill up gas. On occasion I do. But the pleasure is never the same. Sure the ice cream tastes pretty good. But there isn't that sense of wonder, of curiosity satisfied, of a pleasure that doesn't come often.
This would usually be the part of the post where I'd explain how I've seen this as a metaphor for something bigger in life, something spiritual even. But actually I haven't made that connection yet. Perhaps I will soon. In the meantime I'll mourn the loss of wonder in the ice cream bar and chocolate milk and perhaps try and recapture it.
I think this example is such a reflection of the way that our hearts and our desires work. It's not really the object of the desire itself that brings pleasure. That chocolate milk was probably no different from the chocolate milk she drinks today. But there is something about how constraints in our pursuit of what we desire will actually create greater joy in the long run. A specific example for me as a kid was my intense desire for ice cream every time I heard the jingle of the ice cream truck. There was something magical about that jingle that it had every kid on the block sprinting full on to catch the truck as it was turning the corner. These days I can buy all those cheap ice creams any time I stop to fill up gas. On occasion I do. But the pleasure is never the same. Sure the ice cream tastes pretty good. But there isn't that sense of wonder, of curiosity satisfied, of a pleasure that doesn't come often.
This would usually be the part of the post where I'd explain how I've seen this as a metaphor for something bigger in life, something spiritual even. But actually I haven't made that connection yet. Perhaps I will soon. In the meantime I'll mourn the loss of wonder in the ice cream bar and chocolate milk and perhaps try and recapture it.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Too Much of a Good Thing
It has been a dry season for me lately. Between raising support and being in a lot of transition, it has been difficult to spend a lot of time in the Word or in the study of it. Instead I've found myself reading several genres I haven't read for awhile: biography and science fiction. It is interesting to see how truth is spoken (often with greater meaning) through the means of story instead of proposition. Narrative instead of argument. One particular area where these stories have spoken to me is in the question of satisfaction. That is, what does it mean to be satisfied and where is that found?
A quote from a biography of Catholic priest Henri Nouwen:
"We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated intuitive knowledge--that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender kiss, no community, commune or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition. This truth is so disconcerting and painful that we are more prone to play games with our fantasies than to face the truth of our existence. Thus we keep hoping that one day we will find the man who really understands our experiences, the woman who will bring peace to our restless life, the job where we can fulfil our potentials, the book which will explain everything, and the place where we can feel at home. Such false hope leads us to make exhausting demands and prepares us for bitterness and dangerous hostility when we start discovering that nobody, and nothing, can live up to our absolutistic expectations."
I think Nouwen says it so well when he remarks that we would prefer to "play games with our fantasies" instead of facing the truth of our dissatisfaction head on. We fear the fact that nothing will truly satisfy us, and so we simply pretend that it is not true, and then immerse ourselves in all manner of sexual, success and relational fantasy to numb the pain.
Now from C.S. Lewis, in his science fiction book Perelandra:
"Looking at a fine cluster of the bubbles which hung above his head he thought how easy it would be to get up and plunge oneself through the whole lot of them and to feel, all at once, that magical refreshment multiplied tenfold. But he was restrained by the same sort of feeling which has restrained him over-night from tasting a second gourd. He had always disliked the people who encored a favourite air in the opera--"That just spoils it" has been his comment. But this now appeared to him as a principle of far wider application and deeper moment. This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards...was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself--perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defence against chance, a security for being able to have things over gain, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film... Money, in fact, would provide the means of saying encore in a voice that could not be disobeyed."
Lewis points out that when we find something we believe does satisfy us, we feel the need to make an idol out of it (though he doesn't use those words). He describes the way that we take the hint of satisfaction that this world offers and try and suspend it, or maintain it for as long as possible. In our world there is no sense of the reality that certain pleasures or satisfaction might have their time and place and then be finished. Or, even more, that the hints of pleasure and satisfaction that this world offers are mere signposts pointing us to the true source of satisfaction. It is as if we were traveling to Chicago and saw a sign saying "Chicago 30 Miles" and decided to stop there and bask in the joy of how close we were; setting up camp and seeking to cling to that satisfaction as long as possible, all while missing the point of the sign in the first place.
We won't be truly satisfied by anything this world has to offer, nor will we be able to turn its hints of satisfaction into something lasting. Whether it's biography or science fiction, the truth is the same: "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever" (Psalm 73:25-26).
A quote from a biography of Catholic priest Henri Nouwen:
"We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated intuitive knowledge--that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender kiss, no community, commune or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition. This truth is so disconcerting and painful that we are more prone to play games with our fantasies than to face the truth of our existence. Thus we keep hoping that one day we will find the man who really understands our experiences, the woman who will bring peace to our restless life, the job where we can fulfil our potentials, the book which will explain everything, and the place where we can feel at home. Such false hope leads us to make exhausting demands and prepares us for bitterness and dangerous hostility when we start discovering that nobody, and nothing, can live up to our absolutistic expectations."
I think Nouwen says it so well when he remarks that we would prefer to "play games with our fantasies" instead of facing the truth of our dissatisfaction head on. We fear the fact that nothing will truly satisfy us, and so we simply pretend that it is not true, and then immerse ourselves in all manner of sexual, success and relational fantasy to numb the pain.
Now from C.S. Lewis, in his science fiction book Perelandra:
"Looking at a fine cluster of the bubbles which hung above his head he thought how easy it would be to get up and plunge oneself through the whole lot of them and to feel, all at once, that magical refreshment multiplied tenfold. But he was restrained by the same sort of feeling which has restrained him over-night from tasting a second gourd. He had always disliked the people who encored a favourite air in the opera--"That just spoils it" has been his comment. But this now appeared to him as a principle of far wider application and deeper moment. This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards...was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself--perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defence against chance, a security for being able to have things over gain, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film... Money, in fact, would provide the means of saying encore in a voice that could not be disobeyed."
Lewis points out that when we find something we believe does satisfy us, we feel the need to make an idol out of it (though he doesn't use those words). He describes the way that we take the hint of satisfaction that this world offers and try and suspend it, or maintain it for as long as possible. In our world there is no sense of the reality that certain pleasures or satisfaction might have their time and place and then be finished. Or, even more, that the hints of pleasure and satisfaction that this world offers are mere signposts pointing us to the true source of satisfaction. It is as if we were traveling to Chicago and saw a sign saying "Chicago 30 Miles" and decided to stop there and bask in the joy of how close we were; setting up camp and seeking to cling to that satisfaction as long as possible, all while missing the point of the sign in the first place.
We won't be truly satisfied by anything this world has to offer, nor will we be able to turn its hints of satisfaction into something lasting. Whether it's biography or science fiction, the truth is the same: "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever" (Psalm 73:25-26).
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Unique Grace
The church that I have been going to here in Raleigh has been doing a sermon series on Doctrine and the topic of grace keeps coming up. The fact that God sent his only son to die for my sins so that I could live with him forever should continually astound me, but the sad truth is that I seem to grow jaded to this miracle.
I am going to go out on a limb here and talk about things that might be theologically inaccurate, so forgive me if anything I say is wrong, these are just some musings on a thought I recently had that really made me appreciate God’s grace even more. I’ve been reading “Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained” by John Milton, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_lost. I am on book 6 of 12 right now. So I’ll have to give a complete opinion of it once I am finished. It has been interesting to read about a subject (the fall of Satan) in which the Bible does not go into much detail. I admit this book is hard to understand, and I realize that I am not interpreting this line correctly, but it gave me an interesting thought. I think what is happening here is Satan (after rejecting God) has just been confronted by another angel.
“So spake the Cherub, and his grave rebuke
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible: abasht the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely, saw, and pin’d
His loss;….”
Mainly the words pin’d His loss got me to thinking. These words almost hint at a touch of remorse. I don’t think satan feels any remorse for rejecting God, but it got me to thinking. God did not send his son to save the fallen angels. The fallen angels will not be redeemed. God sent his son to save the fallen humans. God could have very well left us in that fallen state and he would have been completely justified to do so. But he didn’t. How amazing!! I Peter 1:10-12
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.”
The grace that God has shown us is so incredible, so unique that angels long to look, they long to look on something completely incomprehensible and unprecedented; God’s free gift of grace.
I am going to go out on a limb here and talk about things that might be theologically inaccurate, so forgive me if anything I say is wrong, these are just some musings on a thought I recently had that really made me appreciate God’s grace even more. I’ve been reading “Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained” by John Milton, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_lost. I am on book 6 of 12 right now. So I’ll have to give a complete opinion of it once I am finished. It has been interesting to read about a subject (the fall of Satan) in which the Bible does not go into much detail. I admit this book is hard to understand, and I realize that I am not interpreting this line correctly, but it gave me an interesting thought. I think what is happening here is Satan (after rejecting God) has just been confronted by another angel.
“So spake the Cherub, and his grave rebuke
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible: abasht the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely, saw, and pin’d
His loss;….”
Mainly the words pin’d His loss got me to thinking. These words almost hint at a touch of remorse. I don’t think satan feels any remorse for rejecting God, but it got me to thinking. God did not send his son to save the fallen angels. The fallen angels will not be redeemed. God sent his son to save the fallen humans. God could have very well left us in that fallen state and he would have been completely justified to do so. But he didn’t. How amazing!! I Peter 1:10-12
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.”
The grace that God has shown us is so incredible, so unique that angels long to look, they long to look on something completely incomprehensible and unprecedented; God’s free gift of grace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)