Sacrifice

It's worth it to sacrifice your immediate interests and desires when the clear choice exists between doing what is right, and doing what you desire. It's worth it even when the perceived gap between the path you wanted to take and the path you chose seems to be all there is to the story.

It's something we have to accept, and hold on to, by faith. Especially at times when the path beyond the other choice seems like it would have been so much smoother.

Small Things

The sort of person you are is something that is not just proved in the big things, like jumping in front of a subway to save a man who fell onto the tracks. It is something you resolve to be in everyday life, and you have to make the choice again, and again, and again.

You do not invite someone over once and call yourself forever hospitable. You do not forgo unmarried passion once and forever call yourself chaste, you do not hold your temper once and call yourself peaceful.

C.S. Lewis has described Jesus as a man who must have faced seemingly infinitely strong temptation, because temptation is often something that yells louder and louder in your ear the longer you resist it - this he said to answer those who claim that Jesus, in being perfect, must have had an easier time resisting than those of us who fall.

Faithfulness is something I must choose daily, and it is always the harder road. To believe God for another day, though the disappointments cry for me to walk away. To set aside my money, my time, my leisure and serve others is not something that is done once and then becomes a new autopilot.

To follow the path of least resistance is a broad, easy way that leads to destruction. The narrow, difficult path that leads to life is one where everything tells you to turn aside to the other path but, like climbing a mountain, though there are many paths that are easy and downhill - it is the one that is difficult and uphill that you have to take to reach your destination. And so it is in choosing to go up when you want to go down - and doing so again, and again, and again, and again that we show ourselves to be faithful or unfaithful.

It is not easy. And I do not know what the destination will look like in my life. I have only the written records of a man who said it would be worth it.

On Gay Sheep

Premise: Sin is the domain of moral actors - angels, and humans.
Fact: 8% of male sheep look for sex only with other males.

What possible conclusions can we reach? One is that the Fall affected all of nature, and so unnatural things happen in nature as a result of our sin.

But homosexuality is interesting, in that the desire is listed in Romans as an offshoot of man's turning away from God. "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator— who is for ever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." Can the same be said of sheep? Were they given over to the same shameful lusts for the same reasons?

How do we deal with animals who behave in ways that are immoral? When chimps attack and kill each other, seemingly out of anger; when rams look for sex with other rams; when monkeys pay for sex?

If the biology is the same, do we simply say that as moral creatures, we do not have the excuse - we are expected to control our passions. What other alternatives might there be?

Death

Saddam Hussein, former President of Iraq, is due to be hanged, even in the next 24 hours. Presumably, the talk shows are rejoicing that an evil man is being taken from this world. Some may be rejoicing that he will go to everlasting damnation in the fires of hell.

I am sad.

I did not like the man, and was glad to see him removed from power. But Saddam is made in the image of God Almighty, and to see someone reject God and reap eternal punishment is sad.

Jesus died for that man, sacrificed himself that he could be recconciled to God. Jesus died for Saddam Hussein. The he would reject that gift is a sad day, for God is willing that none should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Thanksgiving

Some things I am thankful for, in a season when it is all too easy for me to not have that attitude:

1) The guy that put lemon juice in a squeeze-bottle. I am rediscovering how refreshing a little (well, a tablespoon or so) of lemon juice is in a glass of ice water. Is that a lot? I'm trying to wean soda, including the diet and artificially sweetened kind, from my diet. Not completely or ever, just more often than I used to. A slice of lemon is nice, but lacks staying power, and a whole lemon in a glass is a lot of effort, with seeds, and is not very cost effective. The bottled juice is wonderful.

2) The old friends who sent me Christmas cards this year. I've been feeling pretty Grinchy the past few weeks, and remembering that life does not end when one is 28, unmarried, and (in my case, a given) childless. With the swarm of babies being born to friends and family right now, +/- 5-6 weeks, that has been occasionally hard to remember. Just being remembered in a season that has come to epitomize both the swarm of rejections that have happened at this time of year and the celebration of those close to me who have exactly what I miss, helps me realize that I am who I am - not who I am not - and that defining one's life by negatives sucks.

3) The Lange kids. Feeling like a non-blood-uncle to some young kids helps when I have none of my own to play with. Holding one when praying that someone will see get the candles we gave out and be reminded of the God Who Became Man reminds me what a step that was. Though Jesus was not a blue-eyed, blond-haired girl, I wonder how often he wanted to talk when the adults were trying to be quiet, how often he wanted to just go tearing around the room, (perhaps chasing his cousin John), how Mary and Joseph must have taught him to eat, to drink, to be a creature of flesh and blood. For the record, I think hearing kids being kids when the adults try to be quiet and reverent has always enhanced my appreciation for Christmas - because Jesus was just one of those kids, too. When we make it all "Silent Night," we lose something. The Jesus crying for Mary's milk is the Jesus of the cross. The "Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes" is the Jesus of the crucifix.

Amusing Quotes

From tonight's episode of The Simpsons:
----
Homer, after starting a fight with the Easter Egg Hunt Referee, Hugs Bunny:
"Silly wabbit, kicks are for ribs!"
----
Milhouse, after receiving a much-coveted kiss on the cheek from Lisa:
Milhouse: "I'm the luckiest guy in the world!"
Nelson: "Don't fall in love, stupid" [punches Milhouse in stomach, who then crumples to the ground.]

Unwelcome

We have an instinctive feeling that, no matter who we are, no matter our follies, foibles, shortcomings, we should always belong. With our close friends, and with our families, we should have a place where we fit in.

We hear the story of the prodigal son, and despite the horrible things that the son does, it still seems somehow right that the father welcomes the son back. Some of the worst stories that pull at your heartstrings are those of parents abandoning their children. That feels so, wrong, so unnatural, that you can hardly believe such things happen. Rejection by those that are supposed to love you unconditionally, by those who know you best is the most complete rejection one can experience.

So when Scripture tells us that Jesus came to those who were his own, but his own did not receive him, we have a picture of what that is like. The Hebrews were God's chosen people. They were brought out of Egypt, given the laws of God, brought into the Promised land, led by the judges, the phophets, the kings, and even when hundreds of years of the most vile sins had sent the Israelites into exile, they were brought back to their land, with their culture intact, awaiting the promised Messiah.

If there was any group of people that should have recognized and welcomed Jesus, it should have been them. But Jesus was rejected, viilified, and executed. God himself enters the world and suffers first-hand the worst the worst that humanity can dish out, including rejection by his own beloved people.

Canvas

As I was leaving work today, I looked to the west and saw a beautiful sunset. My first thought was "this is so beautiful it ought to be a painting." But why should I somehow think that the sky is a canvas somehow unworthy of such beauty?

Consider that a painting is but the application of soluble dyes to paper or parchment, a limited perspective that cannot capture the intricate detail of a single sunset. Is it more amazing that we can create such small works of art (even a mural with the surface area of a city would be dwarfed by the size of a sunset), or that such beauty can be painted in the very air itself?

Imagine that you had the freedom to move about a single sunset and examine it from the infinite perspectives from which it exists. Here, behind a tree; here from on a roof; here from above the clouds. If you turn around, you see the colors that light the sky painting the whole horizon. How could a two-dimensional canvas ever show such magnificence? And yet, these colors change moment-to-moment as the sun rises and sets every day.

Should a sunrise or sunset be less valuable because we know that it comes through the refraction of light as it hits the atmosphere in our locality at a sharp angle, preferring the red end of the spectrum instead of the normal blue? Or should we celebrate that the Universe is so designed that the sky has been painted twice a day since the beginning of the world with a unique display never again to be seen?

I once had the marvelous experience of flying from Salt Lake City to Reno as the sun was setting - a flight chasing the sunset. As the plane left the terminal, the sun was dipping behind the mountains. As we rose, the sun reappeared, brought back from our new perspective. Not until we began to circle for descent into Reno were the last colors of that sunset fading, such that by the time I emerged from the airport night had fallen.

As the flight went just so much to the south that I could not see the sun itself suspended in the sky, I got to watch clouds change ever-so-slowly from a dazzling orange to a soft pink, fading in the background to darkness. I considered myself amazingly fortunate to see such a thing, and yet most of the people on the flight closed their window shades, hiding from the beauty that was out there whether or not they cared to see it.

Only a few children on the other side of the plane noticed, reminding me of something I read in C.S. Lewis (who I believe was inspired by G.K. Chesterton in this): that we see repetition as mundane and so we attribute a deist's clockmaker to the role of God - one who sets the Universe on its course but does not take part, whereas perhaps to God daisies are not all alike because of simple genetic repetition, but because God loves those daisies and like a child amused at a trick says "Do it again!" That sin hardens us to the simple pleasures and that "our Father is younger than us, for we have sinned and grown old."

The Image of God

What does God look like?

When you consider the Almighty, what images come into your mind? Clouds? Sunlight? An old man with lots of white hair? A book?

Take a moment.

Take another moment.

Of many images that come to my mind, one of them is usually not Christians. I am used to seeing God as a great ideal - the perfect Christ, or a seperate-from-the-world spirit. But not the otherwise mundane people sitting around me in church. We are there to think about God, to sing to God, to pray to God, to learn about God. But it should be more than that.

We are there to be God.

Not that we transform ourselves into divinity - not that I myself am actually God, or that any person around me is. But the Church is the body - the flesh - of God in the world today. Why would God do such a thing? Why would he entrust his image to us - lustful, murderous, prideful creatures of dust?

1) To demonstrate the power of God to transform and change.
2) To grant us a share of God's work - the redemption of the cosmos.
3) Because it is utterly unexpected.

Honestly? I don't understand. I'm sometimes not even grateful. Because, as has been stated before and will be stated again - in this life, to some people, I will be the face of God.

The Human Body

In the Likeness of God is a compilation of two books written in collaboration by Phillip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand. I have reflected to an extent on how interesting our bodies are, but Dr. Brand spent many years as a surgeon treating leprosy. His thoughts on the amazing systems that have to work for our bodies to function normally have kept me up too late at night, often reading for hours after I should be asleep.

The reminder that our bodies are collections of individual units of cells that have become so uniquely specialized and cooperative that I can sit here, recalling information I read when light bounced off of a page, registered on thousands, millions of cells in my eye designed only to send out an electrical signal when light or perhaps only a specific wavelength of light strikes them, my brain - a collection of further individual cells - interpreted the electrical signals from my eyes and turned that into information to be stored away, which I now recall and send to my hands, with muscle cells in both arms contracting and relaxing in the precise order that allows my fingers to be leveraged into the positions of keys on a keyboard: while my kidneys, intestines, back muscles, heart, lungs, diaphram, stomach, eyelids, and a host of other organs do their job without me even thinking about it.

Computers seemed complex just a week ago. Now I find myself reminded that I am "fearfully and wonderfully made." The most elaborate supercomputer is dull by comparison.

Islands and Continents

"No man is an island unto himself..."

The Evangelical tradition places a lot of emphasis on the individual and that person's one-on-one relationship with the Almighty. I feel that... far less often than I would like. But many things in my past I have taken, not from my own gut feelings, but from the people around me. Do I have the Spiritual Gift of Teaching? I have been told often that surely I do, but I have more than a few doubts of this. I am often told at work, and more than a few times by my pastor that I am a very positive and happy person, yet for me to feel simple melancholy and not a deeper depression seems like a good day. So who do I believe?

Do I take the word of those who are perhaps a more unbiased observer of me than I am of myself? This is not an unlikely assesment - I have hurt more than a few people by what I felt to be well-chosen words at the time, revealing that my own desire to be (or belief that I belong) on a certain path makes it very easy to find observations and conclusions that will lead to that result. Premise: I will always be single. Observation: I have never been on a date, and am working on my 27th year in life. Conclusion: I am unattractive, perhaps repulsive to women - my very attention could be a undesireable element in their life. Result: I am unable to speak to women, being gnawed at by self-doubt until said prediction comes true.

On the other hand, should my life course be directed by people who do not know everything about me. Most conclusions other people draw are, by their very nature, based on incomplete data. If I choose a positive countenance to avoid the hassle of having to tell people "Well, I'm feeling despondent and lonely because the Valentine's Day advertising push is kicking into high gear" when they ask how I am doing - people will then naturally assume that I am doing well. I can't help but try to read people's body language, and so I try very hard to not send the same "tells" that I notice in others. Meaning - when I lie, I can often do so convincingly if I choose to. But if my facade is what people use to identify me, how can I trust their conclusions?

Trust misplaced is a deadly arrow. But too many people assume that this only means trust in others that is misplaced. But overconfidence in one's self could lead to even more calamitous results.

Who then do we trust?

Reality Check

It is easy to get lost in your own little world some times, to become fully absorbed with the ins and outs and ups and downs of making it through a day. To go to work, eat lunch, come home, entertain yourself and not think for a moment of anything else.

Through some random websurfing through the few sites I know, I came across this video. You need Quicktime to see it, but I highly reccommend taking the time to do so.

The answer to Phillip Yancey's titular question in Where is God When It Hurts is another quesiton: "Where is the Church when it hurts?" I believe the Church to be the "Body of Christ," not just that it is diverse in its members, but that it is the presence of God in the world. God can work in many ways, but I believe that the defining way that God works in today's society is not through signs and wonders, but through the most mundane people doing the most mundane things. Average people who do their small part to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to touch the untouchable.

To Whom Much is Given, Much is Expected.
-Jesus

Excitement

Anyone who has seen me at a college football game knows I can get... a little aggressive in cheering for my team. I think one of my most inventive lines when verbally chastizing an official was "The stuff I cough up in the morning could officiate this game better than you." Not that I generally cough things up in the morning, but it's the point that...

At any rate, I cheer until I go hoarse, and that's before the game even starts. I get thrilled when I see an impressive play, I get dejected when I see an impressive play by the wrong team. I am vocal and involved. I do the same when watching a game alone if it concerns a team I root for. I once nearly punched a hole in the ceiling at my parent's house jumping up and signalling "Touchdown!" by... raising my hands straight up as I jumped.

I often come across as a very mellow person, but I can become a raving lunatic if sports are involved.

So, assuming that what I believe is true - that I, a sinner in hostile rebellion against the God of the Universe, was pardoned when God in His infinite mercy sent His only Son to die in my place, and that through this sacrifice, I am not only forgiven but adopted as God's son, destined to reign with Him through the countless ages of eternity - why can I barely muster a head nod to signify my agreement with these truths?

"Emotionally Constipated" is a phrase I glean from Disney's rendition of Tarzan, but it seems very appropriate for my plight and that of other Evangelicals I know. Why do these truths not light a fire under me until I cannot help but leap into the air, shouting praise to the wonderful God?

Why do I not shout for joy?

And worse,

Why is my first reaction one of shock-and then one of vicarious embarassment-when people do?

Beauty

If you have not yet seen the Extended Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, go watch it now. When you are through, watch the short film in the special edition about the young filmmaker that inspired the song "Into the West" that closes the movie. In particular, watch the first of the two fils he made which are included on this disk.

There is a line in that film about "Things so beautiful it makes you hurt to look at them." I had one such moment while visiting the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive. The link of the day took my breath away.

For me, beauty is an echo of a perfect world now shattered, a reminder of how it ought to be. Beauty reminds us that death and decay are not how things were meant to be. I love sunsets, not just because of the colors, but because of the brilliance of the sun peeking through the clouds that so often obscure our vision.

Sometimes to make it through the day I grit my teeth, stare at the ground before me and stagger forward one step at a time. And then, as for Sam on the slopes of Mount Doom, I spy "beauty that this darkness cannot touch." And while I long for the day when I need not view that from a distance, I am encouraged in the meantime just knowing it is there.