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| So at one point, i looked around, and i had 3 blogging places. I had Myspace, which i joined as a way of promoting a band i used to be in, as well as a way to connect with my students at Crestview. That's an interesting place, because i know my students read it, and as such, i have to be careful. I also have a blogspot blog, because of all the blogs out there, i think it looks best. But noone reads that, really, besides Jared, and i think he's an illiterate hillbilly anyway. Finally, i have Xanga, which was my first and original, which i've had for years and i can't think of letting it go. I went back and read through all my Xanga pages just the other day, and this one chronicles some of my time at both NCH and Crestiview, and i'm thankful for the reminder of those places. I also have a blog at Crestview website, but I don't use it much b/c i don't htink anyone reads it. maybe i should.
So anyway, i thought, why would someone like me have 4 blogs. i'm not all that important - noone's reading them, again, because i simply don't say all that much on them. So i thought i'd assign them categories - the blogger one would be about life, the myspace one would just be random, and the xanga one would be where i focused my church thoughts and "stuff." the crestview one is really just for advertising.
If you were to go right now and look through the myspace one and the blogger one, they're pretty full. alot of the times, they're the same thing, i copy and paste b/c different people see them. but over the last 6 mos, i've talked about music, and new toys, and bad stuff and good stuff in my life and put them on the web. it seems i've had no shortage of both the random (llike, the fact that i bought a new curtis mayfield album this week) and the profound (like, Kim and I are having a baby) in my life.
but if you look at Xanga over the past 6 months, i've had 2 entries.
why is it that someone who works in a church, the part of his "journaling" that deals with God is the part that would be the most quiet.
i can't answer that question. i can tell you that it's certainly indiicative of what i feel like has been going on in my life. i feel .... not distant from God.... but stagnant in my relationship with God. i don't feel like God has left me, though i do fear he's disappointed with me, but i feel like i'm just stuck, and i'm not really interested in becoming unstuck. and that's not really true - because i very much am. i'm just not sure what to do. it's not that God is absent, it's that God seems quiet right now. i suppose that can be either good or bad. i wish i knew.
so, this week, i began reading the book of proverbs. i've never read it before. but i need wisdom. it's really, really interesting, the promises made in proverb if I a. pursue wisdom and b. fear God. and honestly, i tihnk both are things i need to work on. | | |
| 5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
i feel strangely connected to Isaiah this month. I've been reading on the prophet, and as i look at some of the events in his life, i saw a lot of similarities. one, i'm painfully aware of my shortcomings and, as a result, fearful of stepping into the throne room of God. hopefully, it's a healthy fear.
this part, though, really caught me. Isaiah asks for how long he should go to the Israelites:
And he answered:
"Until the cities lie ruined
and without inhabitant,
until the houses are left deserted
and the fields ruined and ravaged,
12 until the LORD has sent everyone far away
and the land is utterly forsaken.
13 And though a tenth remains in the land,
it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
leave stumps when they are cut down,
so the holy seed will be the stump in the land."
basically, until God burns it to the ground. when i was in a different church than I am now, someone i respect alot asked me what i thought about the gift of prophecy. and specifically about if i had that gift - the ability to see and understand God's will for his people. when the rubber hits the road, though, will i be able to deal with the long term? | | |
| Revelation 12 has an interesting take on the Christmas story. There is no shepherds, no wise men. No angelic choirs, no stables no animals. Thankfully, there were also no malls, no holiday sales and no crappy cincinnati bengals missing the extra point, either, but that's a different story.
But there is a dragon waiting to devour the newborn child. "That ancient serpent, the devil" is what John the Revelator says. As i sat at church last night i was thinking about how Jesus is no longer dangerous. he's not threatening to us. well, let me change that. we no longer treat him as such. especially those in the church, we've made Jesus a formula; he's an input into a salvation equation that for the most part has little to do with either the scriptures or the ancientness of the faith. we let him be the baby - we'll even let him die upon the cross - but we don't necessarily need or want him to be into our lives. I think in some ways, that's because we know the same thing Satan knows in Revelation 12 - if this child is allowed to come to fruition, if he is allowed to become not just the child in the manger, but also the Lord of the Universe, Captain of the armies of Heaven - if all of that happens, our lives and our world will be fundamentally changed. Everything will be different. This is not some hallmark, Macy's-invented story that we celebrate (as much as America tries to reduce it to that) - this is the central story to the history of the world. All of history hinges on this child's birth - all the forces of evil know that this is what must be destroyed if they are to have any hope of victory. And in the end, they have no hope.
But we do. He is our Lord. He is the one who comes with authority. And with power - the power to fix everything we know is broken, both in our lives and in everyone else's lives. And that power is ultimately realized in the way that we treat other people - the love we show to others, the way we are willing to emulate the actions of our Lord and love other people at ridiculous cost to ourselves. And so the gifts we give today, they flow from there. they flow from a need to love people in the simple and incomplete-yet-best-way-we-know-how.
Merry Christmas. Most of you are my good friends and people i've cared about for a long, long time. i hope today, that the dragon is turned away, as he attempts to devour the Christ child yet again; i hope that today, you are taken into the desert, to the places God has prepared ahead of time for your protection. I hope that Christ comes in all his terrible beauty today in your life. | | |
| Luke 21 1As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. 2He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. 3"I tell you the truth," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."
i desperately want what i bring to God to be accepted as this gift of the woman was accepted by Jesus. but i don't give from my poverty. Kim and I give of our wealth - we are materially wealthy and we know that. We try - and i hope succeed - to always use that wealth to be a blessing to our friends and to other people, to support our church and other causes and to be available to be a resource to anyone we come into contact with. But in giving that way, we are giving from our wealth. We are giving from what we have.
But what is my poverty - what is it that i'm barely making it on week-to-week? What is that thing that i'm teetering on the edge of "bankruptcy" each week, or each day, and how can i give from it? Is it my time? is it my attention? is it the way i love others? And, in a scary sense, why don't i know? i mean, is there any chance that the woman here wasn't painfully aware that the last 2 coins she had were going into the collection basket? is there any chance that as she stood there, she didn't know that she was putting the last vestiges of hope that she had into that basket, praying and demanding action from God, or else she would surely die?
how is it then, that i don't know what my poverty is, and even less, how to give from it? | | |
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