Grabbing for the pen

This is a pretty amazing time in my life. Its April and in less than two months, I will receive my PhD, get married, move to Richmond, and start a new job. My entire life is going to change over the span of a month and I couldn't be more excited about it! I know what's going to happen but what I'm not so clear on is how its going to happen. Back in January, I had it all figured out. I was going to have a job by February, I'd have my dissertation finished by the end of March, and I was going to spend my last month in Blackburg living it up in some kind of semi-vegetative state.

Well, that's not how things have panned out. The job search is going well, but noone wanted to hire me that early. My dissertation is going well, but I don't defend till April 22 (about a month "late"). I have no doubt that these things will happen but apparently my timing was off. Apparently, God had another Storyline in mind. My difference of opinion with God over this issue doesn't make me angry or distressed or anything really, but it has made me curious about where the differences in our two versions of my Story lay. God's version seems much more dramatic, with many things happening close together and perhaps a little to close to "the end" for my comfort. "That would make a great movie if we were in Hollywood God but this is my life," I think as I politely inform God of the "correct" timing for things. My version of The Story is comfortable and safe. It's predictable and I always end up living "happily ever after." Many times I've convinced myself that this is the story I want, this is the good story. And so as God is writing the Story of my life, I find myself many times trying to grab the pen out of his hands so I can take charge of the script.

But echoing down the halls of Scripture I hear a very different take on things. I hear Jesus saying that he "came" (was born, lived, taught, worked, died, came back from the dead) so I could have "life to the fullest" (John 10:10). I hear Jesus telling me, "I came to save you from a boring life, not to give you one." I realize that if the world were a theme park, my life is the rollercoaster not the lazy river. I know this and I've become more accustomed to this fact the longer I've known God. He surprised me, even scared me, at first when I found out God had a wild side. At first I was okay with God being the adventurous type - so long as he left me out of it. But then I realized he created me so I could go on the adventure with him. So I hear him again, even now, banging on my door and telling me its time for another adventure. My boring plans for the last few months of college are already shot anyways, I guess I'll go along with God and see how his version turns out...

To Die For (part 2)

Thanks to everyone who was kind enough to post a reply to the first part of this story. The "end" of the story is really more a reflection on the first. If you really want an end to the story just ask and I'll post the one I thought up. Now here's the reflection:

There's no indication in the story that I had any notion of the object in my possession having any value or meaning. My running initially was just a natural instinct - a simple response to being chased. As I'm being chased, getting shot at, climbing up on a roof, and standing on the edge of that roof, I come to suspect the value of the object because of the ends these men would go to get it. The men's action contradicts their own words on the roof when they tell me the object is of no value. Without even knowing the value of the object I possess, I am able to infer by other's actions that it must have some value even if I don't personally know that yet. And so I turn heel and jump. I'll find out for myself what's so valuable about this object ("soda") but I have to hold onto it long enough to do so.

Having no prior forethought to what I was going to write the other day till it was the screen, I feel very strongly that God gave me this story to tell and ponder myself. There was on part 2 written when I wrote the first. I've spent the past several days thinking about it same as the people who were kind enough to leave their thoughts. Personally, I take two things away from the story:

First, based on the actions of others, I can infer a certain amount of value on something even if I cannot initially see that value myself. But, based on those observations, I must hold onto it long enough to find that out myself. And so, even in the midst of many hypocrites, it was the genuine and passionate spirituality of some that lead me to develop a faith of my own - one based solely on the life and teachings of Jesus the Christ. And, like the story, my initial possession was opposed both by my own doubt and the scorn of others. But with a great deal of perseverance, I held onto my faith long enough to realize its value (Luke 8:4-15) - the value of which I continue to more fully explore and discover each day.

Secondly, and timely for this Easter, I realize that the value of anything is based solely on the ends one is willing to go to get it. It's like what my parents used to say about my comic book collection I claimed was worth so much money: it's only worth that if someone is willing to pay you that price for it. And so, as I reflect on Christ's cross, his death and resurrection, I know how much my life is worth because I know what Someone was willing to pay to save it. I realize that Jesus would rather die that be separated from me.

Standing here in the shadow of his broken body draped over the crest of that lonely hill, I'm humbled by a caliber of love that confounds the world even today. I'm humbled and thankful because I am that object of great value. Even if in my own mind I'm not always convinced of that fact, Jesus certainly was. Happy Easter everybody.

To Die For (part 1)

I want you to indulge me for a second while I tell you a fictional story that happens every day. I was in 7-11 one day when I decided that I wanted to buy a soda. I walked over to the freezer, walking past several men giving me rather strange looks. I heard mumbling behind me as I reached for the door handle, opened the door, and pulled out a soda. I turn around in just enough time to see one of those men lunge toward me trying to grab the soda from my hands. Another man stood behind him blocking my way down the aisle. I get a running start, pushing past him and sending him flying into the bubble gum display. As I run toward the cashier, the first man yells out, "Do NOT sell that soda to him!!!!" I'm super freaked out at this point so I slam a dollar bill down on the counter, bolt out the door, and run down the street. Ten seconds later, the two men run out of the door as well. As soon as they see me, one of them yells, "He's got the soda, GET HIM!!!" The men no sooner get out of the parking lot than the 7-11 behind them blows up in a fiery explosion. The air is filled with smoke and tiny pieces of brick. The force of the blow knocked me down and into the grass. I quickly recover and begin to run away from the men.

"Just give us the soda man, that's all we want," the man yells after me, huffing and puffing as we bolt down the street. Andrenaline has kicked in and I'm flying down the sidewalk with a death grip on the soda that, for whatever reason, these men want so badly. I run towards a building and tear open the first door I reach. I start up the stairs but then turn back, smartly locking the door behind me. When I get to the second flight of stairs I hear the sound of gun shots then someone kicking the door open. I think to myself, "Holy crap, they've got a gun!!" as I run up the to the top floor of the building. "You'll be the next thing I shoot if you don't give me that damn soda!" The other man calls after me as I run through the doorway to the top floor. Flying down the hallway, there's a door at the end that leads out to a balcony. A strong shoulder through that door and I find myself at a dead end.

Suddenly, the men run out of the stairwell and run down the hall after me. I panic and look around. "These guys are ready to kill me for a stupid soda," I think as I eye a utility ladder beside the balcony that leads up to the roof. I grab the ladder and hoist myself up. I only get about a rung or two up the ladder when one of the men grabs my left foot. I shake him off and climb the ladder to the roof. I don't even hear the men anymore, just the sound of gravel under my feet as I run to the other side of the roof. Suddenly at the edge I stop, looking down at an alley and another building too far away for me to jump to. I turn around to see the men have stopped half way between me and ladder. Knowing they have me cornered, they stop to catch their breath. Then, standing back up, one of the men points a gun at me and says, "It's not that important man, just hand us the soda and we'll let you go. You don't want to die for a soda do you?" He had a point there. Thinking about it for a second, I look at the men and then I look back behind me at the alley and a dumpster below. Taking a step back toward the edge, the man with the gun yells out, "What are you doing?!" In one single, fluid movement, I turn on my heel and jump off the edge. Falling three stories into the dumpster and running down the street. Safe - for now.

There's a part two to this story, I'll post it on Easter Sunday. Till then let me ask you a question, why didn't I just give them the soda? Post your thoughts in the comments section.

Who's in your fan club?

I am one of the most fortunate men I know. I really consider myself blessed in so many ways but what I'm most thankful for, by far, is to have people in my life that love me and desire me. That statement may seem a little silly so let me explain. I could pick up my phone right now and call my parents and that five minute phone call would absolutely make their day. Tonight I will have dinner with my fiancee and that time with me will be the absolute highlight of her day. Now of course the feel is mutual in both instances but what blows me away sometimes is the magnitude of this love. That someone would love me so much that even the smallest part of me (my time, my voice, my just being around) is cause for more joy than I would have ever imagined. Small as it may be, I have a fan club (my fiancee is the president and my mom is the vice president)! I feel so fortunate to have people in my life that love me like that. I feel equally blessed to love these people in the same way, how my fiancee's voice or simply her smile can change a crappy day into a good one so quickly.

As I write this, I'm glad so many people I know have this kind of love in their lives as well. But to an even greater degree I'm so grieved that many people in the world today, many people I know, do not have this kind of love in their life. People that walk around empty, hollow and almost lifeless because, whether they know it or not, they lack this quality of love in their life. People that would say they "know" people but no one who would be interested in being a part of their fan club. This isn't just an unfortunate fact of our world, God would call it an absolute tragedy.

Before there was even time, God was the founder of your fan club. He created you for just one purpose - to enjoy you. Not many people think about how God loves us. We know that He loved us enough to go to a cross for us two thousand years ago. We stand in awe of that fact, that single amazing act of love. But did you know that if you stared up at heaven today for even an instant, that you made His day. That the shortest, most uninspired prayer is precious to Him simply because it came out of your mouth. The fact is that God is completely and totally infatuated with you. He's head over heels in love with every part of you. Did you know that He threw a party in heaven when you gave your life to Him? Did you know that every day you stray from Him, He sits on His porch with your picture in His hands waiting for you to walk over that hill and return home? The fact is that you have a fan club, you always have. God is the founder and a lifetime member. The Gospel message, the Good News, that we try to make so complicated sometimes is simply this: You are loved. Our purpose today is two-fold, to believe that we are loved and help others believe the same.

Thirsty Fish and Spiritual Deserts

I've followed God now for a little over 6 years now and even after such a relatively short time I'm regularly suprised at how unexcited I can get about God from time to time. How quickly the wonder can wear off, how fast the thirst can wane. I know the excitement and the thrist that led me to God, I know how passionately I responded to Him once I found Him. How could I be bored with the God of the universe, how can I so quickly forget all the excitement I had when I first started following Him?

And then I realize that Sin has done this, it has shortened my heart's attention span. And so, as I've said before, Sin leads us in two directions: novelty and excess and this doesn't just fade away when we find God. Sin is still there questioning us, asking us whether we have found the Ultimate. It (or more accurately, he) asks us how we can be so sure there isn't something better. Same as Sin did in the garden when he asked Eve how she could be so sure that eating the fruit wasn't better than obeying God. Sin somehow tries to make following God seem boring. At first, I ask how he could possibly succeed in doing this but then I look around and see that he's convinced most of the world of exactly that fact.

We think, as Christ followers, that we have done our job if we haven't allowed our eyes to stray from God. If we haven't allowed Sin to entice us elsewhere. But I say that if Sin can get us to yawn at our faith, to be surrounded by God and godly things and yet still feel like we're in a spiritual desert, then Sin is just as happy with the job he's done. Sin doesn't care what we're passionate about or whether we're passionate about anything at all - so long as we are not passionate about God.

My task and our task, today and everyday for the rest of our lives is to keep our hearts fixed on pursuing God. Just like my relationship with my fiancee, I must freshly renew my love and committment to her regularly. Neglect can do as much damage as abuse. And so my daily prayer: I didn't just give You my life six years ago, Lord, I give it to You everyday and today is no different. Amen.

The Necessity of Pain

You know, one day I'm going to write an entire book on all of the things I've learned about God teaching college courses. Over the past two years, I've gotten the chance to teach three different classes here at Tech. Here's one interesting thought from that - think of it as an excerpt from the as-yet-unpublished book on the topic. It occurred to me the other day that, at the half way point of this semester, there are some things the students I teach are learning well and other things they aren't. Some bad habits they've gotten rid of, others that they are holding on to rather tenaciously. It seems to me that sometimes the only way to get them to stop doing some of things I'm trying to teach them to stop doing is to hit them in the gradebook. If I warn them about something, some will listen and others won't. If I start taking off points for it then everyone learns pretty quick. Now, I don't particularly enjoy deducting points (it wasn't that long ago that I was the student losing points) but I've learned that I'm not doing them any favors by giving them a grade they didn't earn. And so the lesson that I'm taking away from my observation is this: Sometimes the only thing that we as humans respond to is pain (in all its varied forms). Let me frame the scope of my arguement, not all pain is punishment and its certainly not all caused by God - we do our fair share of the causing. But within this, I have learned to understand the value of pain (or perhaps a better term, discipline) in my life. Hebrews 12:7 says, "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons." The truth is that God's not out to get me, He's not against me, and YES, He does have better things to do than pester you. But I know that God has a vision for the kind of person that I could be and spurs me on to make the vision a reality everyday by whatever means necessary. What so many people think God does out of hate, He does because He loves us. Truly, its easier to believe that at some times than it is others but we must, nonetheless, persevere in that belief all the time.

The two-fold path of Sin

Alright, this is my warm up. I'm getting used to writing each day. Just like running or flossing (I guess) I just gotta get in the habit of writing. But first I have to go to the bathroom...okay back. Wow, today is two months to the day that I finish my ninth year of college and graduate for good! I honestly don't know how I feel about that yet. In a time when I should be getting a terminal case of super-senioritis though, I can say that I am so motivated to squeeze every last bit out of this experience that I can before its gone. Lord, help me live life to the absolute fullest for these last two months here. One end is also a new beginning.

Now for a halfway useful thought. I was reflecting on sin today and the nature of it. If we understand Sin, by one of its many definitions, as the pursuit of fulfillment apart from God then I would say we are led by it in two ultimate directions: novelty and excess. Since we as Christians believe there is no true fulfillment apart from God (only watered down versions) then Sin is the pursuit of that which doesn't exist. This results in a trial and error approach to many other vices such as alcohol (of which I know a lot about), or sex, or any of a number of other things. At first, most sin does have the taste of something fulfilling but its aftertaste is always bland and unsatisfying. When sin ceases to fulfill, our natural response is to either "do it differently" or "do it more". My first few experiences with drinking were spectacular, nothing but fun and more fun. But as that experience started to wane, I had to either drink more or add some novelty to my drinking in the form of games, keg stands, or other such innovations. In cyclic fashion like a hamster on a wheel, each "new" experience provided by novelty or excess wained the process was repeated. Eventually, as it did in my case, novelty and excess were pushed to distructive limits that could have seriously hurt me if God hadn't given me another way. Releasing me from this cyclic pattern and putting me back on the path toward Him, I found the fulfillment I had searched for and pursued with such vigor. This time though, I found what I looking for because I was pointed at God, therefore such novelty and excess were unneeded. I do of course try to find ways to experience God freshly and in increasing fashion today, but this is not the frenzied attempts to find purpose and peace they were previously. It is the fulfillment I found when I first came to God that I now explore the depths of. All that's left is gratitude, thank you Lord.

Who's feet do you sit at?

Okay, so in the same Fortune article I was reading, Rick Warren also talked about role models. I think we'd all argee that modeling yourself off of great men and women is a good thing. We're not trying to copy them, we're not trying to live their life - but we can let their life inspire us just as they were probably inspired by someone before them. Living great lives is just our way of passing it on. Interestingly though, Rick recommended that, ideally, your models should be dead. I liked that, he said that its one things to run a good first part of the race and then flake out at the end, its a whole other thing to finish the race with power and intregity. I really resonate with that. I've been a fan of biographies for years. In fact, I should probably make time to read more of them than I do. Biographies are great because you get to sit at the feet of some of the most amazing people that ever lived. Who wouldn't want to be mentored by the greatest men and women? I may never get a chance to meet Billy Graham or Rick Warren but I can read about the apostle Paul, or Hudson Taylor, or George Mueller. I can be there when D.L. Moody was preaching to thousands, when Francis Shaeffer started L'Abri for wayward spiritual wanderers. Yes, I will continue to look forward to having coffee with Rick Warren or Ravi Zacharias one day, but for now I have all of the greatest people that have ever lived at my fingertips. I would encourage you as well to avail yourself to that opportunity.

Efficient vs. Effective

I love going to Barnes and Noble because you can sit down and read all of the magazines you might not otherwise read. So with the preface - I was reading an articles in Fortune magazine about the "the best advice I ever got". They basically asked 25 of the country's most successful people what was the best advice they ever got. The question basically got back to "who was/are your mentors"? A couple that I liked included: Find out what you are truly good at and then surround yourself with people that are strong in the areas you are weak. Do what you enjoy and do what you're good at. Balance is the key to success. And a whole lot of others I can't remember (so they must not have been that good).

They also interviewed Rick Warren in that piece. He said several things I really liked. First, he said that a lot of organizations (churches, businesses, etc...) focus on being efficient but not about being effective. Being efficient has to do with what's going on inside your organization but being effective has to do with what's going on outside your organization. Effective has to do with the people that are not using your product and why are they not. For the church it has to do with the people that don't believe our message and why they don't. I've personally seen a lot of efficient churches that run like well oiled machines, but they suck because no one who's not already a Christian would want to be a part of it.

I think that the more I read from Rick Warren the most I admire the man. He had another good piece of advice but I might make that another blog because it hits on a whole other topic.

My challenge

I've toyed with the idea of starting a blog for quite some time. I've always held off because, honestly, I didn't understand why the hell people did it. What a self absorbed waste of time (I thought)! I've come around on that opinion somewhat. I've always thought that journaling in its many forms is a vital discipline for the soul. Journaling is an excavation of the heart, it is the materialization of thought and feeling. What I don't understand is how so many people can do it online. A crucial component of journaling is the ability to be brutally honest about what you think, about what you feel. I don't think its impossible online, I just don't think most people have the balls to be that honest. Perhaps their consulation is that no one reads .00001% of all the crap people are blogging online these days. And so I too now throw my hat into the ring fully believing most of this will be posted for only God and I to read.

So why now? It has nothing to do with 'now' at all. But one day, sometime in the future, I want to be an author. I'm not going to just turn around and write my first book immediately. No, I have to learn how to write. I have to learn how to poor my heart out onto a page. I have to learn how to get all these ideas rattling around in my head onto "paper". And I have to make a habit of it. And all of a sudden all of the things I need to do sounds like a lot of the things that journaling allows me to do. I will blog because I've been able to journal privately for a whlie now. I must learn to do it where someone else might possibly see it.

I think, however, that I will be too honest for most. If my thoughts don't offend some, my language might certainly offend the rest. No apologies, no political correctness, but I will write from my heart. This is the start of my career as an author. I write to no one now, perhaps one day I'll write to millions.