Manure

Hi Kids, welcome back to my thoughts!! :)

At camp a couple of weeks ago, the analogy was presented that the fruits of the spirit are grown in us not specifically for us, but for the world. As with many messages that week, the message didn't grab our group as much as the discussion enabled by the message did afterwards... In the discussion following that particular message, we talked a bit about the fruit, and had a funny little interlude where Jared mentioned that fruit grows bigger and better when manure is introduced into the equation!!

We joked about how in our lives it's also true: when the crap comes, that's often when we grow most quickly and best!! That's when we trust and rely on God more fully!!

I came home from camp with no idea that I'd be walking into a crappy situation a week later, but I did. For now, I won't really tell you anything about that, but it's stupid... and I've been thinking about that analogy from camp.

I've been realizing how easy it is to say to our friends: "just rely on the promises of God!!" and I've been asking my friends to pray that I'd be able to rely on those promises... God promises that He'll bring good out of any situation if we only trust in Him.

So I'm working on relaxing and trusting. And it sucks and it's hard.

And as I walk through this little valley of the shadow of crap, I realize...

Crap helps the fruit growing in us grow stronger and more tasty.

Crap makes everything around us smell so much sweeter.

So if you'd be so kind, say a little prayer for me: pray that the crap surrounding me helps me grow stronger and more faithful; pray that I'm able to fully trust God's promises; pray that the crap feeds me, and then goes away!!

Right??

love wins.

So my buddy Grant went to a church in Michigan called Mars Hill. There's another one in Seattle, but the one in Grand Rapids is the one I really like!! The pastor is Rob Bell... some of you know who he is. Some don't, and that's OK.

So they have this theme they've been going on: and they put out bumper stickers that say "love wins." That's it... lower case, black bumper sticker, white writing. So Grant picked one up for me, and sent it via mail. (This after we'd talked about both really liking that church and Rob Bell's messages that you can download from their website.)

So I put the thing on my car, and have been driving with it for the last several weeks. It's gotten me thinking about what it means to live like that. What's it mean that 'love wins.'??

So I was driving down Hawthorne tonight, and turned left onto 39th. I had a left turn signal, and this dood totally didn't stop to turn right. He had a red, and he just WENT!! So I flashed my lights at him as he cut me off. And I started thinking: is that loving?? Is it NOT loving?? What is it??

So what say you?? I'm honestly trying to figure out what it means to live in LOVE... like honestly, so many of us have no one in our lives that we can love like God wants us to love people... and the ones with whom we do come into contact are our waitresses and baristas, and how many of us are just jerks to them??

How many of us are jerks to people in our own lives... one of my biggest struggles is how I treat people who've been really close to me in the past and aren't so much now. I tend to close down towards them, and I TRY to be loving, but I suck at faking it. What's more loving?? To fake it and pretend to like them?? Or to be honest and let my feelings show??

So I really think that loving means living honest. I think faking it is so hypocritical. But honestly, if I choose to love, then I accept that I'll be uncomfortable sometimes... I acknowledge that sometimes I'll need to speak strongly to someone... sometimes I'll need to just take strong talk FROM someone.

And honestly, living in LOVE I think means just trying to always love. When you fail.... as I did the other day in a big way... ask forgiveness and try to make it right. Is that cheesy or what?? Am I turning into an old school cliche preacher?? I hope not... but that's where my thoughts have been.

(So yeah, I intentionally started almost every paragraph with a 'So') :)

crap.

I'm sick of it all.

I'm getting it from so many angles.

Master vs Father

We spent last week at Sr Hi Camp, doing the annual thing... my kids had a blast, but not cause of the traditional things: we didn't really jive with the band, and the speaker was great, but he had a distinctly different style than me, so my kids were having a hard time following things sometimes.

But the interesting thing was that all this allowed for us to have wonderful discussion times: after the speaker got done, we went off as a cabin or a youth group (depending on time of day) and talked about what he's launched!! It was really cool.

The theme we focused on Monday night--that followed us through the week--dealt with the concept of how we view God: Master or Father. In Jesus' day, he refers to God as Father often... But we often view God as Master. Funny thing is that it doesn't really matter how I VIEW Him, He is who He is. Just cause I have a distinct perception, does not change who He is and what He's about.

So rather than try to fit God into our box, we need to figure out who He really is and what He's really all about. Freedom comes when we see God appropriately--as a father figure: Today, not all fathers are good examples, many fail to love their children, and many abandon their families... as a result, many today might rebel against the idea of God as Father, and yet, that's the analogy given, so we may as well get used to it and figure out what it really stands for: We can contextualize what the Father analogy stands for... you lived with your father for the rest of your life in Jesus' day. You followed in your Father's career path unless you made it as a rabbi. There's more, but that's a decent start.

But we often view God as master... we seem to think that if we fail in some aspect of our 'duty' He's going to withhold something... The analogy I used last week had to do with my own dad: I called him the morning of Father's Day to ask him out for lunch, not cause I had to so that he'd buy me a Christmas present, but because I wanted to... Had I forgotten and remembered the next day, he would have laughed when I called, and wouldn't have cared... God's the same!! I don't live for God because I think somehow He's going to abandon me if I screw something up... I live for Him cause I want to Love Him Tangibly.

Rambling... Out.

Nature

I offended some people last night. I never want to do things like that, but I do. From time to time, someone comes to me and calls me on the carpet cause I was so 'angry' about something. I've had this same facial expression for the last (I have no idea how many) years. It's a look that I do from time to time when I'm confused. But almost always, it's interpreted as an angry look. Even people I know--who've experienced the look time and time again--misinterpret the look regularly.

So here's the funny part: I am who I am. I'm not an angry person. I think people know that, and therefore: why do they assume that I'm angry. But as a human, I have to realize that I'm obviously not seen that way. Obviously, people see me as a person who gets angry really easily: otherwise, they wouldn't respond to me like that.

It got me thinking about nature. Not leaves and camping kind of nature, but nature as in the nature of God. Cause while I was thinking about what I see as my own nature, and how I'm obviously not the way I THINK I am, I realized that we make assumptions about God as well. God is the way He is, and that's just that. He loves, He cares, He creates, He heals, He's fair, and on and on...

And the funny thing is that I can rely on those things. it doesn't matter if on Tuesday it feels like God doesn't care about me... I need to not jump to conclusions; instead, I should rely on what I know about God... rely on what I KNOW to be His nature. Rely might be the wrong word: rest might be better. I can rest in that knowledge. Rest brings peace. Peace is glorious.

So next time I give you a dirty look, please assume that I'm just confused and not ticked off.

USA

It's deep in the AM of Memorial Day. This morning, our church had vets stand up, and I was looking around, noticing how many teens I simply know won't ever consider serving in the military. That's cool. Every generation has those kinds, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just is.

But I'm tired of America right now. People here are too spoiled. People here have it too easy. We've never been occupied (militarily). We've never had to watch our neighbors get bombed, or pull a sibling out of wreckage. Of course, some have... some have pulled siblings from car accidents or drunken fights or drug overdoses, but so few of us have struggled with meaningless violence. I don't wish that on us, but I kind of wish we had some of that... it'd help us really fast get our priorities a little more straightened out.

We THINK we live in this horrible country that is sooooooo dangerous, and everyone's just out to get us, but we don't. We're spoiled.

We THINK that around every corner lies a possible sickness but they aren't there. We could probably never touch bottled water again in our lives, and our immune systems would probably just get stronger.

I talked with an ex-missionary the other day. He told me how his wife is retiring from the college she teaches at because she got spoiled by teaching young Africans who were so eager to learn. Spoiled in another sense, of course, than the way I used the word up above; spoiled in the sense that she experienced how it should be and is now experiencing the 'spoiled-ness' in the bad way: the way it's not meant to be.

She's retiring because the students at her current school are so self-indulgent. They feel so entitled. And don't we all, as Americans?? I mean, I had to sit through a drive-through tonight for 5 songs worth on my I-POD. 5 SONGS!! The last half of one, four straight, and the first half of another. How is that good service, and as I was griping about this, I realized how spoiled I am.

I'm just tired of it. Perhaps some calamity needs to strike. I hesitate to pray for it... God just might take me up on that. And then where would I be... my self-indulgent self would feel so assaulted by a 'cruel' God!! And all my non-believing friends would have a field day on me, asking "where's your God now??" And I'd have no answer except that He's still bring peace to my spirit. I'm frustrated with people, and able to sit here in peace, all the same.

I yearn for overseas again, sometimes.

I could blabber on longer, but what's the point?

I swear I'm not depressed... :) see, I smiled. :)

Whatever man...

really... whatever.

I just read a book called the Life of Pi. It was amazing. And then it was one of those that at the end it completely throws you and now I'm not sure if I still like it as much... but I do. But it twisted on me. And it turned way dark. I dislike that.

That's it... and life is just... whatever.