Allow me to paint a picture in your mind. It's middle school. 7th grade. Middle of spring. You show up to school and scurry inside the building, hiding your face so as not to be associated with the dork in the station wagon that just dropped you off. Your heart races as you try to find some of your friends to sit with in the lunch room before homeroom. To your satisfaction you see a group of boys you feel comfortable sliding onto the seat beside. Then it happens. You feel a fiery pain on the back of your arm that nearly forces you to jump over the table. Your voice cracks out an "Owww!"
"Your not wearing any green." The sadistic torturer informs you.
"OK, you just pinched the crap out of my arm. Are we all pointing out the obvious today?"
"It is Saint Patrick's day, you gotta wear green or you will get pinched."
You feverishly check all of your clothing from bookbag to socks to find some speck of green. If you are lucky you find that the emblem on your shirt is green or that it is on a bracelet you had tossed in your bookbag. If you are unlucky, you find that the boxer shorts you begged your mom to buy you contain green mixed among the plaid. You will now spend the rest of your day watching for pinchers ready to announce that the green is on your underwear. However, if you are still rocking the whitey tighties and the rest of you is without that elusive color, you are doomed. You see all of those boys that you thought were your friends turn to you with a devilish hunger in their eyes. Today is not going to be a good day.
Sometimes I find myself concerned with just what it takes to be a Christian.
Intellectually, this makes me wonder, what is the baseline requirement to be a Christian? It concerns me that this does not seem to be a question that Jesus was concerned with answering. People ask him all the time, and it seems that he gives a slightly different answer every time. Sometimes it is believe (John 3:16). Sometimes it is serve (Matthew 25: 31-46). Sometimes it is give away everything and follow him (Matthew 19:16-30).
Practically, I ask: am I doing "enough?" This question always returns disastrous results. If I answer yes, then I am complacent or prideful in my self-assessment. If I answer no, I console myself with the idea that I will never be able to do enough. This only grants me half-comfort and still challenges me to keep trying.
The imagery of light is often used in relation to the Christian life. The cool thing about light is that it does not have just one purpose. It is warmth, security, clarity, beauty, fuel, necessary for growth, comfort, and ultimately life-giving. Light is invasive and is exponentially potent.
When Christ comes into our lives, this light permeates our existence. This light comes into our lives and illuminates the dark corners of our souls. It gives us purpose and direction. It gives us peace and comfort. It pours out of us dispelling the darkness both inside ourselves and in our world.
So no longer should we be the kid living in fear of St. Patrick's day. We should be the one who brings in enough clover-leaf necklaces to save everyone from pain. We should stand atop the lunchroom table bidding others who are persecuted and burdened to come and fear no more. We can then celebrate this nonsensical holiday with the utmost of joy and live our lives with hope again.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Car Problems
I am plagued by car problems. They seem to follow me around. Not just normal ones either; they are usually squirelly and uncommon. Cars are becoming more and more complex as the years go by, and there will soon be a day when any powers as a mechanic that I have will be rendered useless by computers, but that won't stop me from trying. I both love and hate working on cars. The joy of completing a project and cranking the car up to feel that sense of accomplishment is matched only by the pain of seeing steam pour out from under the hood or turning the key and having nothing happen.
A car is much like life. Sometimes there is joy. Sometimes there is disappointment. Ultimately, the car, like your life, is on a steady decline until one day it will be dead (barring of course show cars that live in garages and people that would basically pay the price for a new car to replace the innards of an old one out of sentimental reasons (There is no parallel for this in life, sorry)).
It is unclear just how God works in the world. It is evident that he does interact with our lives, but to what degree? Is he active in making sure that you get the last corndog in line at the stadium? Is he also active in killing someone you love with a vicious disease? Is he choosing to let us have our own way on earth to our own demise? Is he controlling every decision we "make" to his own will? I have neither the intellect nor time to address these issues here, but it is important that we decide how to react to life.
I have found in my personal life that my gut reactions to events in life don't always reflect my personal beliefs in how God works. I have images of a God who is constantly giving and taking and who also gives us the ability to make decisions that actually change the world around us. Sometimes these two don't agree. I end up thanking God for something he may not have directly given to me or begrudging him for bad things that he may not have caused.
I have never really liked that passage in Job where he says that the Lord has given and taken away and then he praises him for it. I always thought that Job sounded like some kind of zombie, after losing everything because of God to praise him seems absurd. I thought that maybe it was out of some sense of duty, as if Job said, "God is still God so what am I going to do about it? I might as well praise him." That doesn't jive with how I believe that God wants us to worship him. If he wanted us to praise him for his power then he would have sent his son to conquer not to love and to die.
Ultimately, we can't understand the way that God gives and takes away, but the Bible does say that he takes care of us. This doesn't mean that he gives us what we think we need all the time. What God gives to us, rather, is a transformation by the renewal of our minds. Thus, the ins and outs of the workings of God are not up to us. They should not concern us as much as how we react to life.
At the end of the day, I love cars and working on them. I don't hate the problems or blame the car for them, rather I love it all. The same is true of life. Life is not good because good things happen to us, it is good because it is. It is good because a good God made it that way. We can know that it is good because when he comes into our lives, he changes things. Therefore when all the things that can go wrong do or when everything falls right into our laps, we can say, like the old hymn, that it is well with our souls. Love life.
A car is much like life. Sometimes there is joy. Sometimes there is disappointment. Ultimately, the car, like your life, is on a steady decline until one day it will be dead (barring of course show cars that live in garages and people that would basically pay the price for a new car to replace the innards of an old one out of sentimental reasons (There is no parallel for this in life, sorry)).
It is unclear just how God works in the world. It is evident that he does interact with our lives, but to what degree? Is he active in making sure that you get the last corndog in line at the stadium? Is he also active in killing someone you love with a vicious disease? Is he choosing to let us have our own way on earth to our own demise? Is he controlling every decision we "make" to his own will? I have neither the intellect nor time to address these issues here, but it is important that we decide how to react to life.
I have found in my personal life that my gut reactions to events in life don't always reflect my personal beliefs in how God works. I have images of a God who is constantly giving and taking and who also gives us the ability to make decisions that actually change the world around us. Sometimes these two don't agree. I end up thanking God for something he may not have directly given to me or begrudging him for bad things that he may not have caused.
I have never really liked that passage in Job where he says that the Lord has given and taken away and then he praises him for it. I always thought that Job sounded like some kind of zombie, after losing everything because of God to praise him seems absurd. I thought that maybe it was out of some sense of duty, as if Job said, "God is still God so what am I going to do about it? I might as well praise him." That doesn't jive with how I believe that God wants us to worship him. If he wanted us to praise him for his power then he would have sent his son to conquer not to love and to die.
Ultimately, we can't understand the way that God gives and takes away, but the Bible does say that he takes care of us. This doesn't mean that he gives us what we think we need all the time. What God gives to us, rather, is a transformation by the renewal of our minds. Thus, the ins and outs of the workings of God are not up to us. They should not concern us as much as how we react to life.
At the end of the day, I love cars and working on them. I don't hate the problems or blame the car for them, rather I love it all. The same is true of life. Life is not good because good things happen to us, it is good because it is. It is good because a good God made it that way. We can know that it is good because when he comes into our lives, he changes things. Therefore when all the things that can go wrong do or when everything falls right into our laps, we can say, like the old hymn, that it is well with our souls. Love life.
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