hope.

I was looking through my old blog posts for a particular one I distinctly remember writing. I think writing this post was a spiritual breakthrough, although I didn't realize it at the time. I wrote it in October of 2009. That's 2 1/2 years ago. I think I was wiser then than I am now.

The reason I was looking for this post, was because today I filled up the last page of my journal. A journal that I started on November 29, 2010. My journal is big, and my writing is small, yet I managed to fill the entire thing in 16 months. It has good ol' fashioned diary entries, prayers, sermon notes, printed out emails, ticket stubs, receipts, etc.

I decided to finish my journal off with a prayer, and when I put the pen to the paper, the C.S. Lewis' quote from my post so long ago floated to the surface of my mind:

"God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world."

His own novel. My prayer ended up being something like this:

God, you have practically written this journal as much as I have. Every thought, every action, every word, you have been beside me, even though so often I forgot. I pray that I will always remember this. The blessings you have poured out on my life are so many. The friends, the family, the support, my circumstances and opportunities - they are all from you. I have no idea Lord how you are using me, or why or what big plans and purpose you have for me. There are a lot of things I don't understand and a lot of things I struggle with. But at the end of the day, the end of the chapter, and the end of my book - there you will be - unchanging, loving, good. I want to seek you first. How quickly I forget that.

C.S. Lewis said a lot of things that are forever ingrained in my mind, and when I wrote "How quickly I forget that" another one floated to the surface.

"The thing is to rely only on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small price to pay for having been brought to the dependence. Meanwhile, the trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done."

The trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done. How true. And often it's more for me, sometimes hourly.

I could write a lot more, about "being brought to the dependence" or the hope that comes from all of this. The hope entry will come later, as it has become a reoccurring theme in my life as of late.

| insert non-cliche title about a new year and new beginnings |

A year goes by and I'm staring at my watch again, and I dig deep this time, for something greater than I've ever been, life to ancient wineskins. And I was blind but now I see.

([above]I always have to quote a part of the song New Years Eve by Five Iron Frenzy on the New Year.)


As I looked to the approaching new year, I realized a lot of things are going to be different. 

1. My brother Chris and his wife Angela are having a baby. The first grandchild/niece in our family. 
2. My other brother Nathan is getting married in May.
3. I'm moving to Ireland. 

2010 was grinding to a halt, and 2011 was revving its engine. Normally, I try to stay in the year and prolong Christmas as much as possible, but this year was different. The three things I previously mentioned are waiting in the future, and this is the first year in the history of my life that I'm not affected by the school calendar. 

Anyway, I wanted to start off this new stage of my life with a solid foundation. Something to focus me - start the new year off right. So I went to Passion. Passion is a Christian conference in Atlanta. That's an entirely different blog post that I'm honestly not going to write. So why don't you just ... check out the website? 

The Passion conference was a huge blessing, and a great way to kick off the new year. So here's a bit of what's been on my heart for my future. 

• Jesus Christ must be my one solid motivation for everything I think, say and do. He is the LORD, and the best possible thing for us, therefore if my life is solidly based on the fact that I believe my motivations are His motivations, then I will be a living testimony to Him and that's all I can hope for. 
• I believe that my peers and I have the power to affect the Church. And I feel an obligation to be the change that I want to see in the Church.
• The Holy Spirit is on the move. Everywhere. And I think this is one of the most vital things that if the Church could grasp, things could change drastically and be cause for motivation and movement.  C.S. Lewis wrote this in his Screwtape Letters (backup if you don't know about the Screwtape Letters. They are letters from one demon to another. Lewis used this book as a major work of "reverse psychology" for Christians.) 

• One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do riot mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. 

  So, do you have any New Year's resolutions? 
  

Distant shores

Life comes in themes. Like your refrigerator, dishwasher, and washing machine breaking at the same time. Or everyone you run into tells you about his or her vacation last summer in Switzerland. Or you just so happen to go to three different churches within a month, and they are all preaching on the same thing.

My current theme can’t be simplified into a sentence, so I thought I’d share the different things that I’ve been running into lately. Or maybe they’ve been running into me.

I first started thinking about it in the car, when I was listening to a song by Five Iron Frenzy called “On Distant Shores.” The chorus of the song said “If mercy falls upon the broken and the poor, dear Father, I will see you there, on distant shores.” I had this quote hanging up in my room for a long time, so in the car I was thinking about why. Because when I was a kid I was neither broken nor poor. Or at least I didn’t think so. The part that I really loved was the concept of distant shores, and meeting God there some day.

I continued on with my Five Iron Frenzy playlist and again, the idea crossed my mind when another song called “Far, Far Away” played. The chorus sang,

“Can you hear the bells are ringing far, far away? Can you hear the voices singing far, far away? I know that one day soon a song shall rise. You’ll hear it with the sleep still in your eyes.”

All this talk of distant shores and far away singing made me hungry. Hungry for some Lord of the Rings. I daydreamed my way into the scene of the movie where Gandalf is talking to Pippin about dying.

“The journey doesn’t end here. There’s another path; one that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back, and it will change to silver glass, and then you see it. White shores; and beyond them, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

I imagined being on a boat looking out towards a sunrise and hearing distant, beautiful music. And with the sleep still in my eyes, my heart is stirred and filled full with joy and anticipation and I don’t know exactly why. But I know it’s coming, and I’m almost there.

Even now, typing it out makes my heart beat fast.

I decided to dive into the Word for similar glimpses of hope, and found this: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it, we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3:20)

Like Paul also says “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” But he also realizes that staying is important so he can share the Gospel and fulfill what God wants him to on earth. It’s like being gone a long time from home. I think traveling a lot helps me understand this. When I’m traveling or out of the country my heart is never settled. I never feel as truly at rest or relaxed as I am at home. Our citizenship is in heaven. So it just makes me incredibly excited to know that even when I’m “home” in Indiana, I’m not feeling how much more at home and at peace I’ll feel one day when I am approaching those distant shores.

Besides the song playing on my ipod and getting my attention, most of these discoveries were self-induced. But I heard this quote this week under completely different circumstances: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”

And in a very strong and tangible way, my limited understanding makes the peace I mentioned earlier overflow into this life.

farewell to London

Hello everyone!

Apologies for the lack of updates, it was a whirlwind these past three weeks.

Yesterday was my friend Hannah and my last day in London. We're in Carlisle right now for about three more hours and then we're off to Germany for TeenStreet!

So another quick overview of what happened the last three weeks (in list form!):

• My friend from university, Hannah, arrived in London to be a communications intern with me.
• We spent hours writing/designing brochures, powerpoints, postcards, and newsletters.
• We were also a part of outreach teams (we requested to be on two separate teams to cover more ground)
• During the outreach, my team stayed at a church with no showers. Challenging, but the 15-minute walk to the pastor's house every other morning was ... invigorating!
• On our first day off, Hannah and I went to see Les Miserables.
• On our second day off, Becky, my supervisor boss lady from last summer came to London to visit Hannah, Lori (my supervisor boss lady in London), and me. We had a fun day eating, talking, and just catching up together.
• When the outreach was over, Hannah, our friend Dominic, and I went to Oxford for a day trip this last Monday.
• The next day, Tuesday, was our friend Nathalie's birthday, so we went to Queen's Park (a rose park/garden inside a larger park in London) with a group of people to celebrate and then we ended in a very local pub. It was amazing, there was a pianist who was playing songs from the 1920's - 40's and everyone in the pub knew all the words. There were people from ages 20 to 80 and they were all singing "On the Street Where you Live" and "I could've Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady. It was a fantastic birthday for Nathalie, and a perfect last night in London for us.
• Wednesday (yesterday) Hannah and I took the train to Carlisle and had a fantastic dinner with a couple that I had met here last year. But I think that dinner deserves an update by itself.

Okay, so I will be doing a picture blog within the next few days because some stories and things we did just deserve pictures. BUT for right now, I will leave you with another video that Hannah and I put together for our blog readers. So enjoy!

procrastinating.

This isn't for my web writing class, yet I find myself writing about another "Christian issue."

Any time I write a paper, I flip through some of my favorite books to get good quotes so it looks like I have cool sources. I'm now writing a paper for Astronomy, so I figured it was time to pull out the good ol' Mere Christianity. I must admit I'm a poser Christian. I've owned this book forever, and alas, I've never read the whole thing. But since I was writing about space and the universe and all that, I figured it was a good time as ever to read the chapter titled "Time and Beyond Time."

Of course this is one of those times where I'm least expecting it and God shows up and says "learn THIS about me!" and I learn a little bit more about my creator.

I guess since the majority of people who read this are Christians, you've probably already read this book/chapter and don't need me to talk about it because of course you already know. But it's one of those situations where I have to process it, and we all know I can't process anything without writing it down.

Anyway, the passage I'm talking about is this:

"God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world."

I think if maybe I had put two and two together, I could've figured it out myself, however never as eloquently as that. But I knew these things about God: he's out of time and space, and He died for me individually.

I think I always have viewed God like I view a popular person. Like the good popular person. The one that knows everyone's names, even the nerds and unlikeables of the school. The one who is personally invested in everyone's lives, and everyone is willing to tell this person everything. Everyone wants to be their best friend. I viewed God as a large-scale popular person. He knows everyone's names and personal stories, he listens to everyone when they talk and I kinda waved off the fact that 6 billion people were his concern at every moment. He's God, He can do what He wants.

So I think I also always assumed that when Jesus died on the cross he ran through his mind everyone's name that will ever exist and what sins they committed and took them on himself. Which, to some extent is what He did, but I was thinking along the popular kid lines like if this kid was having a party, he'd quickly go through everyone's name and put it on the list. We all mattered, but it wasn't that personal.

But this author/not constrained by time illustration just blew that out of the water. "He does not have to deal with us in the mass." So I got to thinking. I'm an author. What if I wrote a book about someone? I was their creator, so I automatically knew everything about them. What if I invested my whole life into this one book and it took me a lifetime? It reminds me of Stranger Than Fiction. This author is writing about someone's life and when she realizes that it's a real person, she is so invested in him because she actually "knows" him, she can't kill him like she had planned. Also, she doesn't kill him because the man knows he's going to die, and accepts it, but ends up alive. What if the author had to die so that her character would live?

So, since God is out of time and space, and to really stretch this metaphor for all it's worth, I imagine him picking up a blank book and completely investing a lifetime or more to get to really know me by creating me and being my author. Just me and Him. To me, that makes Jesus dying for me extremely more personal. When Jesus died, He was spending that lifetime with me and reading all my flaws in the book and knowing that to save me, he would have to die. What a personal God we have.

Mysteries

After a weekend at home for Labor Day, I was driving back to school listening to my ipod. Of course I'm tired of the over-430 hours of music I own, so I was brainstorming what else I could listen to. Then I remembered some podcasts I had downloaded at the beginning of the summer.

Okay, I'm not the most intellectual podcaster. My podcasts consist of Rhett and Link, MuggleCast (the Harry Potter Podcast), and Secrets of the Lord of the Rings. My more nobler podcasts are short stories by classic authors and NPR's talk of the nation. Okay, I've listened to the latter twice.

At first I chose the short stories and listened to a few by Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and H.G. Welles. I was drawn to the Secrets of Lord of the Rings podcast, but the first time I tried listening to it, the man speaking spent the first 15 minutes describing his walk through the gamer version of The Shire and Bilbo's house. I decided to give it a second chance and listened to the one titled "Tom Bombadil" and that brings me to the subject and reason of this post.

Tom Bombadil is first featured in the Fellowship of the Ring in the Lord of the Ring series by Tolkien. (PLEASE before you disregard this as a nerdy analyzation of a character, know that I will describe Tom Bombadil just to preface what conclusions I have come to because of his character.) Throughout Tokien's trilogy, different characters refer to Tom by different names, but all have around the same meaning- the Eldest. Some say the oldest being on earth, some say ancient, etc. Tom also puts on the ring and nothing happens to him, he makes it disappear and brings it back, and he also can still see Frodo with it on. The podcast explained that Tom is such a carefree person, and that he cares only for peace and not for power, the ring has absolutely no effect on him. It also answered the question I had asked, "why didn't Tom carry the ring?" he was too carefree with it. It had no meaning to him so he probably wouldn't understand the grave task, and either lose the ring or not care who got it.

But nonetheless, Tom remains a mystery. Where'd he come from? Why is he so carefree? Why do the trees and the rest of nature listen to him? The thought crossed my mind that to Tolkien, this could be the God figure. But i came to the conclusion that Tolkien, though his stories have Christian themes, is different from C.S. Lewis. There isn't a black-and-white God figure. There isn't even a black-and-white good and evil except the ring/it's maker is evil and destroying it is good. But Frodo, he's supposed to destroy it, but even in the end he can't really do it. Gollum is evil, but he has Smeagol which was his once-good side. Gandalf the grey dies and comes back to life as Gandalf the white but even he can't take the ring because he knows it will use him for evil.

I think in our culture, we used to like things black and white, especially in dealing with good and evil (superman, james bond, action movies in general, etc.) but even in relationships, it's always guy gets girl. But our culture is shifting. We no longer like the black and white. Movies like The Dark Knight make Batman neither good nor evil. The movie He's Just Not That In to You took relationships to that grey area.

I think people like these more because it's closer to truth than black and white. Nothing is truly good except for God. There's a definite evil, but rarely do we run into something or someone that is truly evil. Good and evil are intertwined in this life. So I think Tolkien got it right. Evil is in this world, and it's wrapped up in everything. But there's also light, and glimpses of God in that light. God can be seen through the sacrifice a person makes for someone, or He can be seen through a gentle, peaceful mind of another.

I saw a movie today where there were nine parts that functioned on their own, but together they formed something beautiful. I guess it could be seen like the Church, and how each person has a role to make up the entire Church. but God is also like this, that goodness inside each of us, that act that we do that someone else notices was a little piece of Love itself, and one day, we're going to see those pieces together, and all that Love combined and it's going to be overwhelming in a beautiful way.