Latest Musings

Serious, not so serious...we'll see where this goes. I call it as I see it.

I finished Into the Wild this past weekend. I really enjoyed it. Again, the whole solitude thing still intrigues me. Granted, I too get cabin fever after awhile but there really is something about being by yourself that draws me. The psyche of Chris McCandless was also strange, and his will persistent. The guy was stubborn, and was not deterred by setbacks. He made it from Atlanta to the Alaska range in two years time. Great book. Lots of good stuff in there about survival and the story behind Chris's travels.

Racheal and I watched Music Within Saturday night. Dang, Wheels, great movie. It made me think of good times. Some of the best years of my life, spent in a relationship very similar to that seen in the movie. I truely enjoyed it man, but moreso, I enjoyed spending 3 years of my life in the same room as you. I won't ever forget it.

I read in Hebrews yesterday about how Jesus provides all we need to please Him. Depending on the translation:

THE MESSAGE
"...Who led Jesus, our Great Shepherd, up and alive from the dead, Now put you together, provide you with everything you need to please him, Make us into what gives him most pleasure, by means of the sacrifice of Jesus, the Messiah."

NIV
"May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever."

The rest of the big ones read similar to NIV. Anyway, it's amazing how Christ sets things in front of us. Equips us. Get's the ball rolling on things. It's not about our ability to decide, deal, act, etc. It's our God-given ability to percieve. To percieve Christ as soverign and in control. When we die to our own managment and lack of trust, some awesomet things can happen, but, how do you get there. When someone says "just trust the Lord" sometimes I wonder 'what does that even mean?' or 'how can I PRACTICALLY exercise this discipline?' Truely an intriguing question. How do you will your conciousness to 'trust'? What does that even mean? How does one go about reaching the 'end' of themselves, driving them to no other way but to bow in broken dependence on Jesus? On the sometimes sullen journal pages of introspection I've sometimes had no idea what to do with the Scripture and council I'm attempting to digest and process. I hear "do this...don't do that...think like this...don't worry about that." Recently I've come to the point of such confusion, exhaustion, and anguish to have only one response to it all: 'show me how'.

A part of that response is perhaps the weak man in me only wanting what Larry Crabb would call 'recipe', a formula by which to live and solve problems allowing me to retreat once more to the comfortable shelter where weakness lives and manages life quite nicely in such a small hut. But perhaps the 'show me how' tag is also (hopefully moreso) a step into darkness, to piggyback Crabb once more. Maybe it's the state of confusion that allows us to take that step into darkness...where there's no light, only the voice of Jesus. By uttering 'show me how' I'm asking, pleading with Jesus to guide me, help me make sense of it, and walk me through the darkness. This seems to illustrate a life where comfort is out the window. Not an easy choice to make, versus the far easier choice of retreating to manage little spheres where I've got it all figured out. Bowling. Selfishly, if my ego needs a little boost, I can always bowl. Because I'm good at it. I know the game. On the flipside, some experiences at my job have made me feel about an inch tall. Like my skull is filled with nothing but the space between my ears. It's then when it's most difficult to 'trust' that God is soverign over such a painful experience. It takes everything not to retreat in moments like that.

It's all utter chaos as Crabb might say, a chaos that yields the only helpful response...life abondoned to Christ.

This was a fun, stream-of-concious post. No answers, just questions.