Ever

Remember that verse in Psalm: "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart's desires." As a kid I always thought that meant that, when you're in touch with God, He'll give you what you want. This is what's referred to as the "vending machine God" - He's sitting around waiting to bless you and give you what you want.

Now flip through some of the other psalms and read about David's problems, his tests, his loss. The book of Psalms has some of the most desperate literature ever written; it is here that you can find a man at his most broken. "O Lord, how long will You forget me? Forever? How long will You look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God!" What about Paul, credited as one of the most intense servants of God? He was imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked - he actually said in his letters to expect persecution for our faith.

I'm pretty sure neither of them said, "Gosh, I'd really like to be persecuted - nothing would make me happier."

As I thought more about it, I thought this meant that, the closer you walk with God, the more His desires become your own desires. You will crave righteouness and the peace that comes with it, because you will understand what's important to God and what He wants for you.

This morning I was thinking about that verse, and it clicked: maybe instead of our own desires aligning with God's desires for us, maybe He implants those desires in our hearts. When the psalm says He'll give us the desire of our hearts, it doesn't mean He'll give us what our hearts desire - it means the desires themselves were placed there by God.

I've actually been noticing this in my own life lately. I'm an English education major, and I've been thinking about where I want to teach when I graduate. I've thought about Christian schools, since that's all I've ever known - fifteen years and counting in Christian education. But last year, during our winter missions conference (missionaries come in and tell us what they've been doing and try to hype you up to go overseas to "preach the gospel") I was talking to a friend of mine about potentially teaching overseas. She suddenly mentioned that we have a people here in America that we all too often forget about: Native Americans on reservations. I started doing a little research and found statistics about reservation education (in case you were wondering, they're appalling). And for maybe the first time in my life, I felt a reassurance that God was leading me somewhere, and that He had a plan for me. In late March of this year, I wrote in my journal:

"My God, I've been praying for You to show me what to do and where to go. I've asked for a sign, for a drive, for a passion...And I've started to question if You're really leading me or not. Everything been so foggy, nothing has been definite...Two weeks ago I sat under a tree, begging You to teach me, to show me. And now I hear You. Oh my God, my God, I have that realization, that knowledge, that assurance. I can't write it fast enough - I can barely sit still, I want to run and scream and tell somebody but I can't figure out words to say it...I know it now! I'm literally drawn to my knees, face-down on the floor, writhing on the ground from the realization that this is it! MY GOD, MY GOD, YOU ARE HERE, OF ALL ELSE I'M LETTING GO!! I'M COMPLETELY YOURS!!! TAKE ME!! HELP ME TO SAY WHAT YOU WANT ME TO SAY!! TAKE ME TO THE CHILDREN WHO HAVE THEIR CULTURE AND NOTHING ELSE!! SEND ME TO THE FORGOTTEN, THE LEAST OF THESE!!"

Since then I've been learning more about the Native American culture from classes and documentaries. In that time it's been reaffirmed over and over again that this is where I need to go. And it's becoming more than "I feel like I need to do this." I actually want to do this! I find myself looking forward to graduation, when the calling of my life can be fulfilled and I can begin to do God's work in kids that I've never met but I love already.

Maybe that's what that psalm means...I feel like I'm starting to "get it."

Unheard-of

I've been reading a book by Joseph Prince called Destined to Reign, probably for longer than is really necessary for a book this short. My pastor gave it to me back in the summer and said, "You have to read this book." And in typical me-fashion, I let it sit on my dresser for about a month before I picked it up.

Oh my word. Blew my mind after the first eight pages.

I've been raised on religion basically my entire life. It's not my parents' fault, that just happened to be what we were taught at the churches we bounced to through my childhood. After twenty years we've finally found the church where we "fit", probably because it's different from all the other churches we've been to. The main message is not one of conversion (although that's important, obviously), fire-and-brimstone, or tithing (thankfully - our last church was big on that). It's one of freedom - not a week goes by that my pastor doesn't say, "NO CONDEMNATION!!!" And this book that he's passed on is right in line with that.

Maybe because I haven't been raised on such a message (this is the first time I've ever really heard of God's love for believers instead of God's judgment), the book continues to blow my mind. I feel like I need to get a bunch of copies and send them out to people - so many of my friends need this book! And it isn't just a reminder for the seasoned Christian - it's new even for this Christian who's been in and out of church for twenty years, it's stuff I've never really heard before. I want to give it to my brothers and sisters who are fed up and discouraged, trying to keep up in the rat race that religion has put us in. And I want my non-Christian friends to read it so they can understand what my God is all about, because I think a lot of them have been severely misinformed. (Some of my work friends spring to mind.) They are under the impression that God is just looking for ways to punish us, that He's sadistic and gains pleasure from our suffering, that His standards are set impossibly high just so we can fail and be dealt His judgment. But even I'm learning that MY GOD'S NOT LIKE THAT!!! He loves me regardless of what I've done or will do! He wants me to succeed and actually encourages me when I fail! I feel so cheated that I've never heard any of this before! I want to send it to those who have walked away from God because they were jilted by people who fed them religion but no truth! I want to give a copy to my Jewish friend so she'll see the joy that can be had through literation that comes from living under the New Covenant! That's what this is - it's freedom that makes me want to jump up and down, attempt to dance, sing at the top of my lungs regardless of my swollen sinuses and smoker's cough! I can barely sit still enough to write this, I can't get the words down fast enough!

HALLELUJAH! MY GOD AND MY FATHER, THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOVE AND YOUR FREEDOM!!!!

Alright

In high school we learned about the writing process: draft, draft, draft, draft, revise, final. Introduction, three paragraphs in the body, summary conclusion. Then I got to college and learned to throw out that structure.

Apparently that included the writing process as well. Let me introduce you to the actual writing process of a college paper....This was last night, when I was working on the worst paper of my college career.

~~~

This is by far the worst case of writer's block I have EVER had. (How fitting since it's the worst paper I've ever written.) I'm a writer, for crying out loud - THIS SHOULD NOT BE THIS DIFFICULT!! But it's awful. For the last six hours I've been putzing along, a line at a time, and am about halfway down the third page, with a page and a half to go. I took about a forty-minute Monty Python break, so now I'm gonna hunker down and write this sucker. I will finish it. TONIGHT!!

So it's Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee." And it's a biographical analysis, so he's written this in response to something in his life, something tragic. According to Mr. Ingram's biography of Poe, it sounds like it's about his wife. She died about two years before the poem was written, but the gap in time is explainable, he may have been grieving and really unable to process his emotions. But it was written about five months before his own death. And the last stanza is about him laying down next to her grave...Foreshadowing his own death? Like he knew he was about to die, and he was simply biding his time until he would be with her...that seems like a stretch, but it works.

GET OFF FACEBOOK.

Alright, refocused. With "Watch What Happens" from "Newsies" rolling through my head, as it is writers block set to music. Wow, I just realized how sick I am of being sick - I've had a cold for the last five days. And this pseudo-smoker's cough if getting really old.

Oh...that reading for worldview development is really long...

Right. Poe. FOCUS.

It was published in his obituary, maybe as an explanation of his death. Like a suicide note, except not, because he died of illness, not suicide.

Am I really supposed to fill up five pages? I'm on page three and Ive said everything I needed to say! What else am I supposed to put?

GET OFF FACEBOOK!!

Had to listen to "Watch What Happens." Hush, it's motivation.

Aaaaand you're back on Facebook. Crap. Alright. Back to work.

Two more sentences typed. Considering how the rest of this paper has gone, we'll call this a "roll." And I have a title. We're movin' now, boys.

He seems to be laughing at some greater power through the piece. (I actually put that line in there.) Just as their love defies the separation of death, they defy cultural bonds, since they are children but love with a love greater than adults. They also defy the heavenly beings who separate them - "neither the angels in heaven above, nor the demons," yada yada. It's like he's assuring himself that their love is different, it's special; and regardless of those who tell him to move on, or the God who took her from him, they will be together.

Oh my Lord, why is it so much easier to journal about this??

ALMOST HALFWAY THROUGH PAGE FOUR!!!!!

Dang...I just got hungry.

The question now is, could I, in all actuality, finish this tomorrow? I mean, all I have to do is a couple classes, and this is the only thing due-

THAT IS A HORRIBLE IDEA!!!!

Not really, because I have a free hour-and-a-half before class on Thursday in which to edit it...And I have other homework to do now.

Let the procrastination commence.

~~

P.S. The paper is finished. I have to revise it, but the first draft at least is finished.

Remember

I was in Mrs. Anderson's fourth grade class. Since we were only ten or eleven, they didn't let us watch the footage, but we got the ten-year-old-terms version: something bad happened in New York City and a lot of people have died. Jordan read a verse, we prayed, and the day went on as normal. When we got home I sat on the couch watching the news while I worked on math homework; we were leaving for the mountains two days later and had to work ahead on school assignments. My dad is a pilot and hadn't come home from work yet, and even though we were a good way away from New York I was still pretty paranoid. But when he walked in our kitchen I thought everything was under control. Later that night he sat with my siblings and me and told us a bit more about what had happened. I was terrified he'd have to go to war (I'd seen "Hogan's Heroes," I knew about the draft), but he assured me he wouldn't be called. And for my ten-year-old self, life continued as normal.

I didn't know it at the time, but that day attributed to a shift of our nation back to God. Now, in the years after the fact, I've realized that America is a nation under God as needed. At that point "In God We Trust" was all over the place: bumper stickers, T-shirts, billboards. And then...well, nothing. It was like God had blessed America with a littl ehealing, a little rebirth, and we waved Him back into the clouds with a "we'll let you know if we need anything else."

And we shake our fists at the sky when things go wrong and say, "Where were You when this happened?" I can just imagine Him shaking His head and saying, "Sorry, boys, you didn't summon Me for this one."

Where is God when tragedy strikes? That's the typical question. Or the other one: why did God let this happen? If God is a God of love and compassion, how does He allow (or cause) horrible things to happen to innocent people?

People who ask these questions forget that little space between creation and the Flood in Genesis, between perfection and destruction. Remember the Garden of Eden? Remember when Adam and Eve screwed up and were kicked out of paradise? There were all those pronouncements: snakes won't walk, work will be hard, childbirth will be hell. Creation wasn't cursed because God was having a bad day - the current state of our fallen world is in reaction to man's sin. Plain and simple. Two people failed, and every single person (except One) since then has paid the price. You look at every tragedy that's occurred in the history of time - the Irish potato famine, the European black plague epidemic, the San Francisco earthquake; every tsunami, tornado, hurricane, and flood; the Cambodian killing fields; shootings at schools; explosions at hospitals; and, more importantly on this day, the murder of thousands by enemy terrorists - and it can be traced back to sin. Let me say that again: tragedy is a result of sin, NOT GOD.

THE WORLD AS IT IS, IS NOT HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE. When tragedy strikes and people die, God isn't sitting removed in heaven saying, "Yeah, you got what you deserved." And if we got what we deserved, we'd be punished every single time we sinned. Oh, that negative thought you had about somebody the other day? Punished. Bam. BUT OUR GOD IS NOT LIKE THAT!!!!!! He is a God of grace, who has given us a way out of that punishment that we earn every time we sin! He grieves with those who grieve; He feels our suffering; He sees the way the world is, and it breaks His heart, because it's wasn't supposed to be this way. The only people who will "get what they deserve" are those who ignore the grace and life He extends to us (Rom. 2.7-11). We don't serve a sadistic God who gets His giggles by making us suffer, because it's not Him who makes us suffer! It's like going to the doctor with a broken leg and blaming the doctor for breaking it and not preventing you from getting hurt. God is indeed there when the world suffers, but He's not the cause.

Oh, and to you who say 9.11 was God's way of judging America: we have the account of God's judgment on a whole people. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? God's judgment then wasn't an attack on one part of the city, it was total annihilation of the entire city. When that happens in the U.S., then you can say that God is judging America.

~~~

My thoughts and prayers go to the families of those lost eleven years ago.

Chair

This weekend has has been pitifully unproductive. I'm pretty sure 84% of it was spent sitting right here on my butt at my desk on my computer. I can't even what I did on Friday night/Saturday. Like, physically can't remember. And it's not because anything crazy happened since then to overshadow it...it was just so boring that it evidently wasn't worth remembering. Apparently I wrote in my journal, because there's an entry there from then. Oh, and I skyped one of my best friends from high school, and went to get severely-overpriced ice cream downtown. (For the record, it was good. But when you consider the outrageous hike there and back, plus nearly six dollars for a milkshake, I would settle for the dinky ice cream place across the street any day, gourmet or no.) I think a movie may have been included in there somewhere. Sunday was a church day (yes, I actually went. First time in nearly a month. Broke the streak), then we made homemade soft pretzels for lunch. Which were FANTASTIC. Linus and I came back and farted around for a while, I watched the Python oratorio (made my night) and wrote a letter. Then we wound up spending the next five hours with our friends at their dorm - five fabulous, Sorry-filled, brownie-ridden, movie-soaked hours.

This morning was the Labor Day firehouse (or, if you're from Pennsylvania, fire hall) pancake breakfast. Since we had a day off from classes and pancake breakfasts are one in a blue moon (which, incidentally, we had last week - Neil Armstrong was buried by it) we hiked downtown with our brother unit. It was actually a lot of fun. We came back in the drizzle and worked on homework for a while.

No, seriously, I did: I was so bored sitting here watching Monty Python and playing Freecell that I got a headstart on my homework due this week and beyond (a.k.a. my final analysis not due until December and a biographical analysis paper due next Tuesday...for which I should have started research last week). Went for food and fireworks at the Labor Day festival (first time in my life I've ever been close enough to fireworks to be showered by ash - as a friend of mine noted, it was like Vesuvius), had one of those laughing-so-hard-that-you-forget-you're-actually-walking journeys back to the dorm. Where I sit now. In my chair, as I have for most of the weekend. I shall call him Old Reliable, because I never leave him.

Scratch that: just got up to kill a bug. Should've warned Linus before I smacked the wall witih my shoe.

I didn't do anything productive in the past three days. I'm going home this weekend, and I'm sure I'll regret not working ahead when I'm ignoring my family on Saturday night writing a paper about Edgar Allan Poe. (Alright, I actually have two pages finished on that and it was super easy to whip out. The rest is opinion....how hard can that be?) I really didn't hang out with many people (except my brother unit, and they're pretty cool), didn't even leave the village. And aside from the bored-to-productivity bout at the end, it was really, really good. It was the first legitimately free weekend I've had since...spring break. I watched the "Life of Brian" debate and got some really good material for the paper I'm writing on it (the first paper in maybe forever that I'm actually excited to write). I wrote a lot on a fiction thing that randomly came to me earlier this week and is actually becoming something intriguing.

Tomorrow it's back to real life and class and homework and a schedule. But we needed such a break, even after two weeks of class. I think we'll be able to make it to fall break. : )

Oh, and I got to explain underlying aspects of a play to an actor who was actually in that play a few years ago. Felt very posh indeed. : )

Happy Labor Day to you, whether you labored or not.

Seriously?

I'm the only person I know whose faith has been influenced by Monty Python. If you don't know who they are (and you should, because they're wonderful), they are an English comedy group, most popular from the late-60s to mid-80s. Their credits include a television show, "Monty Python's Flying Circus," and four films, the most popular of which is "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and the most controversial of which is "Life of Brian." In various interviews, each of them have stated their distaste for organized religion because of the hypocrisy; Terry Jones said, "What's funny is that Christ said all these really good things about 'love thy neighbor' and everything, and then for the next 2000 years people are killing each other and torturing each other because they can't quite decide how He said it." However, where most of them have completely shunned religion, I chose to look for something different. As Shane Claiborne wrote in his book Irresistable Revolution, "I'm not a Christian anymore. I gave up Christianity to follow Jesus."

This realization comes at a pretty prime moment in light of the whole Chick-fil-a ordeal, which I'm really starting to get sick of, so please forgive whatever I may write here because I'm in my "I'm fed up, let me rant" mode. My Facebook news feed is full of "so-and-so expressed their personal opinions about Chick-fil-a" and "another so-and-so wrote some profound explanation of how their faith is different so they won't rock the boat and offend people."

Python was criticized for their film "Life of Brian" (which actually isn't blasphemous if you watch it in the mindset that Python intended). But they strove to offend people who followed man's rules of religion blindly without bothering to hear what God had to say (we call them "Pharisees"), and they did just that. I'm writing my own personal stance on the Chick-fil-a saga, knowing that I may get criticism. But it's my personal belief, and since everybody else is proclaiming theirs, I'm doing the same.

In an LA Times article, one same-sex advocate said that God supports all kinds of love. "Love is love," she said, "and God has given us love to be shared."

Really? Because I'm pretty sure the act of homosexuality is a pretty blatant no-no: "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads" (Lev. 20.13). I see no addition that says, "Well, it's OK if they're actually in love because all love is acceptable." Chick-fil-a is showing their detestation for the act of homosexuality because as Christians we are supposed to detest it. It's a sin - we are to have no stomach for it at all. But because of the fallen nature of our world, we who call wrong "wrong" are dubbed "intolerant" and "unloving."

I'm not saying that homosexuals will burn in hell, I want to make that VERY clear. The act of homosexuality - the actual sexual act, not necessarily the draw toward people of the same sex - is a sin, just like lying, coveting, and gossip, all of which I am guilty of. (Oh, you got me, I'm a Christian and human and I screw up.) "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His immense patience as an example for those who would believe in Him and receive eternal life" (I Tim. 1.15-16). I wasn't judged for my own sins - in fact, Jesus Christ took my shortcomings (past, present, and future), transported them from me to Him, and suffered in my place. And this isn't just me - this is EVERYONE who has been saved by Christ, whether they be liars, thieves, or homosexuals. And He didn't say, "You're a horrible person so I'm cutting off your hand so you share in the suffering since I took most of it." Our sins are GONE - no more, ceased to be, totally off our record. So we should feel no authority to judge other people because of their actions or personal beliefs because we don't have that authority!!!! We never have, we never will. EVER.

I'm gonna say it: I'm a Christian. I'm against the act of homosexuality, just as I'm against murder and lying and theft and gossip. I can't help it - when I was saved that aversion entered my nature and I can't get rid of it. But I have homosexual friends, just I have friends who are cut-throat and legalistic and atheists and very difficult to love. And I love them dearly because that's what I'm called to do.

In a world that cries for tolerance of personal beliefs, perhaps people who don't want to be judged shouldn't judge themselves. Christians shouldn't call out other people for being wrong and immoral - they should love them with Christ's love, because that's why we're still here on this earth. And maybe those who want tolerance for their sexual preferences should allow for other people's personal beliefs, like those who say that homosexuality is wrong.

Come on, people. Judge not lest ye be judged.

Picturesque

We lost an icon this week with the passing of Andy Griffith. As a figure of Small Town, USA, he represented a time when things were simple, life was sweet, and everybody knew your name when you sat on your front porch with a guitar.

Now, fifty years after Mayberry, that place seems a thing of the past.

If you're from Ohio, you'll remember the "hurricane" that blew through several years ago. For eight or ten hours, the wind blew at 80+ mph, taking down trees, knocking out electricity for days, and damaging houses. My siblings and I walked around our neighborhood in the middle of it to see who had lost the most trees. People checking their yards would wander over next-door to talk with their neighbors. Our city was only out of power for a few hours, but friends living on the outskirts went for four or five days without air conditioning or refridgeration. So we sent out an invitation for them to come to our house for showers, laundry, and dinner. Since their freezers were out, all of them brought food, and for several days we constantly had people in and out of our house, bringing clothes, Stouffers lasagnas, and frozen meat. My sister commented that every day found us asking, "Who's coming over tonight?" At one point we had close to twenty-five people.

It was strangely fun, and I was a little sad when their power came back on.

Why does it take a "natural disaster" to make people neighbors? "Neighbor" has come to mean "the person you live next to whose name you may or may not know." When did it stop being "the person you interact with, help, talk to, invite over for barbecues"? It seems we get so focused on our agendas and our priorities that we forget to look at the people around us and say, "I wonder how they're doing today." So often we live in a community without being a community, in the same way that Christians are part of the church whether or not they go to church. When did we lose the ability to embody "neighbor" and "community" and extend ourselves to others?

Are we ever going to bring it back? Will we ever again live in a Mayberry state-of-mind?

Rest in peace, Andy. You were more to us than just a sheriff. You were a symbol, one that we don't want to let go just yet.