wonderings and wanderings

Prayer and Contentment

2010-08-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

I like to try to take time to read the Bible and pray on a fairly daily basis (its a lot easier now that I am unemployed and not in school). I use a book given to me called, "A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants" given to me by Becky Modesto. Each week there is a new Psalm, and each day a new passage to read, but it always has the same statement for prayer, "V. Prayers: for the church, for others, for myself." Sometimes I find this incredibly broad and difficult to approach. I'm sitting there in my sweats drinking my tea thinking "...ok I pray for the church uh... that you would help..." it's a very unmotivated prayer. Then I realized that in order to pray I have to have an element of discontentment with things. I have to have a will that is similar to what I know God's will to be. Perhaps the reason I cannot pray comes from my present contentment with the world in my own experience of it. Its easier for me to pray when I am anxious about something, but for those precious days or weeks when I find myself content, I have no reason to pray. However, this is worldly.

Peace and contentment should come, though. Philippians 4:6-7 says, "...by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guide your heart and your minds in Christ Jesus." Of course this contentment comes right when we are least hospitable to it. If we really align our will with God's will (so as not to be content in our own worldly experience) we start to get these rules for ourselves like, "I will only have peace once every homeless person in San Diego has the option to stay indoors" or "I will only have peace when everyone in the youth group has a relationship with Christ" or "I will only have peace once there is peace in Africa." Ministry is a response of faith! Yet, often it leads to more discontentment than if we had never gotten off the couch in the first place. That ain't right. This discontentment again is worldly. It is walking a thin line of being concerned about being involved in the work of God in the world, yet remembering that it indeed is God's work in the world. Ministry is the faithful way of living. Once it becomes a task force or a cause, it will not lead us to contentment. Somewhere, we are need to find contentment and peace in the act of faithfully calling on God with our words, through prayer, and our actions, through ministry.

I think this peace comes from our belief that we are being obedient to God, and from a greater belief that God is ultimately going to win, that God is ultimately going to restore peace and wholeness to creation, and drive out evil and death. The former type of belief is called faith; belief in what God has said and done as it is known through scripture, church tradition, and personal experience. The latter belief is called hope; a belief in what God has said God is going to do, even in spite of our own present experience.

Rules

2010-02-16T21:00:00.001-08:00

So tonight I'm doing the Salvation Army thing, serving out some coffee and chatting with people and this theme of rules came up in two of my conversations and I feel like there's something about that. I'll start typing and we'll see what we figure out.

The conversation was with a man I talked to last week. He's a Christian, very sensible and well spoken. He started a conversation by asking me about the rules of fasting for Lent. If you should eat meat on Sundays and what not. I started to share everything I know about ways of practicing Lent; the differences between Catholic and liturgical Protestant ways of doing things. He said something to the effect of "I just want to know the rules. I think it's good to follow them." Then I talked about how there's not really rules, even in the Church there are different ways of practicing Lent. And we can't overlook the words of the prophet Isaiah: (do yourself a favor and read the whole chapter)

Isaiah 58

"5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD ?
6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

So yeah, fasting isn't a show. It isn't an end in itself. It's a means to an end. The "rule" of fasting, as my friend put it, is only a way to come to a deeper understanding of our need for God. However, the rules that we choose to follow or not follow for the season of Lent tell something about who we are.

Okay, so then I run into another friend who I hadn't seen in a year. I barely remembered his story. He remembered me though. And he started telling me about his life. He had gotten drunk the other night and woke up to find himself detained by the police. He's lost all his stuff, and is pretty fed up with life on the streets right now. We started talking about his options, and I mentioned the SD Rescue Mission as a possible way out. "No I couldn't do that. I couldn't handle all the curfews and stuff. All the rules." I thought about that a bit and we talked about it some more. I pointed out that in my life, there were choices that I make and as a result there are certain rules and obligations I have to follow. For example to stay in the nursing program I have to maintain a certain GPA, to stay in my house I have to pay rent. However, he revealed to me that when you live on the street, you have a new reality. There are no rules; the only rule is survive. As long as you don't mess with people's turf, you pretty much come and go as you please. It's hard to make that transition back to understanding the value of rules for survival and life in society outside the streets.

So I'm thinking about rules; about how our rules dictate our reality. Or vice versa. There are rules, obligations, orders, that keep us committed to what we do. Our rules and commitments are means for upward mobility and growth, but they also define our growth; they identify those who are able and those who are unable. In some ways that is a good thing. I do not want to visit a doctor who has not followed the rules in attaining her position as a doctor. The classes she passed, the clinical work she did identify her as a professional, more worthy to assess and aid my health than the person who bags my groceries (more often than not). Granted however, it is not the following the rules that makes someone a good doctor, just a licenced one.

In the same way, my friend who doubts his ability to follow the Rescue Mission's rules has his identity as one who is unable to cope with the realities of living in what we call functional society. Those rules separate him from me.

So I'm not saying rules are bad, I am just saying that we have to be aware of the rules we follow. We have to be aware of how the rules that we follow define who we are and who we are not. We have to love people despite what rules they follow.

And ironically these two conversations come full circle to reveal the real rule. There are rules like fasting, tithing, praying, but the rule that sums up all other rules is to LOVE. Especially remember to love those who do not and/or cannot follow the rules.

^"Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard."

Lent

2010-02-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

Lent starts this Wednesday (Ash Wednesday), Feb 17. Lent is a time where we focus on the imitation of Christ's suffering and passion on the cross.

It becomes clear as we're reading the gospels that Jesus is not a superhero content with gallantly meeting the needs of people. Christ's life on earth was about being obedient to the Father. The Father is surely concerned with the plight of people who are poor, imprisoned, orphaned, undocumented, widowed, addicted, depressed, and ultimately poor in spirit; and I'm convinced that it is impossible to follow God without caring for the needs of others. Yet Jesus did not come to earth to start a non-profit. Jesus came to earth to show us obedience to God. In Jesus's life we see the love of the Father for humanity revealed to us by sending Jesus, his son, to die on the cross.
The cross is a struggle for every disciple to understand. It may even be true to say that the cross was a bit of a struggle for Jesus to understand. Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? If God is all-powerful than there should be no need for God to jump through hoops to save God's people. I can't reason it out any other way than to say that God chose to have Jesus die on the cross out of love for humanity. For the Jews living in Rome, a picture of God's Son dying on the cross was an image that could lead them to begin to understand the mystery of God's love for people. In our response of faith to the faithfulness of the Son we are saved.

The image of the cross is something that doesn't necessarily translate to our culture today. We have no capital punishment that quite equates and we've lost an understanding of atoning sacrifices. In spite of all that we come this week to the season of Lent. The 40 days leading up to Holy Week where Jesus suffers on the cross.

Lent then is our chance to echo St. Paul's words to the church in Philippi:

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."

So in this time we fast from something in attempts to be reminded of God's sacrifice. This is a time where we as the church can live with the disciples in the second half of the gospels as we seek to understand what it means that Christ would die. In advent, we anticipate the joy that comes with God's coming. We can see why that is exciting. Lent is a little more somber. We join with the disciples not really getting it. It is a time where we seek to understand. It is a time when we walk on the road to Emmaus and find ourselves surprised. Our eyes are opened, and we find our hearts burning within us. Christ is risen! The scriptures are opened to us! Now I get it! I didn't see this coming! But hallelujah Christ is risen! The mystery is being revealed!

Burrito Love

2010-02-13T07:53:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a while since I posted something on here. I'd like to get back into it, but until then feast your eyes on this poem. I won a free dinner for 2 to chipotle! (not because it was any good but merely because I entered the contest). But this was fun. "Who will you take to chipotle?" you may be asking yourself...well it depends on how nice you are to me!

Burrito Love

Yes, I see you burrito

From the outside you're not much to look at

A large, bland tortilla

White and somewhat crusty...

But I see what's within

Hot and steamy beans

covered shamelessly with cheddar cheese

please!

You tempt me with your foreign rice

and sexy spice

and oh! I know!

Cilantro!

Carne Asada

Send me to Tiajuana.

Salsa and guacamole,

I'll pass on posole

and just say "si" to your

burrito love.

The Crude and Insensitive Reflections of a Nursing Student

2009-09-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

Your lungs don't work? we'll put you on a ventilator.
Your SA node gets off beat? we'll give you a pacemaker.
Your sphincter can't hold it in? we'll give you a Foley catheter.
Your kidneys refrain and retain? we'll put you on dialysis.
You can't digest this? We'll give you total parenteral nutrition.

This is not poetry, there is nothing poetic about this.
There's no beauty in the words sphincter, dialysis, total parenteral nutrition.
I'm not going to dignify them by trying to think of their rhymes.

Human, where are you?
What are you doing for yourself?
If I want care for you I will care for the machines.
Maybe you'll heal.
Maybe you are only a temporary ROBOT!
Or maybe not.

Maybe your lungs and kidneys have gone to heaven.
Maybe they are waiting for you next to your memories, reason, and sense of humor.
What are you doing here?
Who's keeping you?
This all sounds terrible.
What should I apologize for?

"The Spirit of the Marathon"

2009-09-13T08:53:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I watched this documentary called "the Spirit of the Marathon". It follows the stories of 6 runners preparing for the Chicago Marathon. Two of the runners are elite athletes in who hope to finish first in their gender groups. The others are runners of various ages and experience levels. It really protrays the uniqueness of not only the sporting event, but also of those participating in it.

The marathon is such an interesting event because few people can just wake up one morning and decide to deck out 26.2 miles, however, I also believe that few people, with adequate training, are incapable of completing a marathon. So in that way it takes oridinary people and transforms them into someone extraordinary, someone who can complete a 26.2 mile run/walk/jog whatever you need to do to finish it.

And that's what I like about a marathon; everyone has a story for how they got to the starting line. Training your body to be able to take 26 miles is not something you have to do to be human, so why do it? What does it mean for people to complete this? What are they competing against? What motivated them 4+ days a week for the last few months to get up and run for hours on end?

I've volunteered at the finishline of a marathon before, and its quite an amazing experience. People's emotions and expressions at that place show me that they have done something much greater than running 26.2 miles. And that's what I really like about it; you take your challenges, doubts, demons, divorces, weaknesses, whatever it is that drives you to run, and you move through them. You don't just sit and journal, but you take your mind's thoughts, your soul's dreams, your exocrine gland's sweat, your muscle's glycogen and ATP, your lung's oxgen and whatever else you carry with you and you physically move yourself for 2-6 hours (depending on who you are). Finishing a marathon is a holistic victory.

Working Through Money

2009-06-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

Today I was in the office talking with Ruth Bloom and all the sudden she hands me a check. The check isn’t from her or the mission; someone sent that check to me. Now that check doesn’t have the largest amount of money I’ve ever received (ahem, I did work in the school cafeteria), but it is probably the most significant check I’ve ever gotten. It’s hard to swallow because you see; it’s not really part of the deal. The deal is that I come here for the summer, work hard, try to live out the kingdom with all the grace I can muster, and I get to stay and eat here for free. I’m staying in a trailer usually occupied by teachers, and I eat whatever the church groups bring, or what the Bloom’s provide for me. I have all things necessary to my salvation. I don’t need anything at the moment (though my school loans may tell a different story, but I get a six-month grace period). Then I get this check, like I’m a real missionary or something. Unlike many missionaries, I didn’t have to ask for money to come here, but someone sent some anyway.

We like to say that every Christian is a missionary. And until today, I never really questioned that. But one big difference between local church ministers and those in “missionary” situations is this thing about money. This check feels nothing like a pay check. When I get a pay check, I might think about how I’m thankful to have a job and the privileges and skills I have that make it possible for me to keep the job, but mostly I look at the hours, wage, taxes, and think, ok, that’s fair. But this is a gift with no tear-off part at the bottom to show me how it worked out. And for some people, that’s the reality of their Christian life. It’s beautiful isn’t it? To work purely to serve. Yet it’s scary (for those lacking in faith, such as myself), to have to wait and hope for provision. That’s a huge reality of being a missionary that I haven’t experienced much of in my life.

So now what do I do? With the money. With the thoughts. With future money I “earn.” If I really believe that every Christian is a missionary, then maybe I should only take what I need from my pay check and give away the rest. Does it make sense to put my money in the bank so it can accrue interest, when I could put it in the church so that it can be used to store up treasures in heaven (and I don’t mean heavenly segways that take you from cloud to cloud-but not down stairs, I mean souls). Maybe that’s not being wise. But that’s often the question for Christians isn’t it? The tension between generosity/hospitality and responsibility, between giving and saving. It’s thick mud and I’m always getting my feet stuck in it. When that happens, pray I get out by grabbing a vine of faith, not greed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, I really am. Whoever sent this money is going to help get me back to San Diego in August, but it means a lot more to me than that. I want to get what I can from this experience, but not overthink it too much. Ruth said I should rejoice in my gift, so I think I will.

Immanuel thus far

2009-06-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

A huge part of my experience here at the mission so far has been meeting the church groups that come in. Each group is different, and all the groups are very different from the California group. I’m much more thankful now for the program that VBC has for mission trip because there seems to be a lot more chances offered for participants to reflect on their own lives and engage in the growth of others in the group. But these other groups have been really fun too, and now I am making friends in all areas of the country.

Here’s a recap the groups so far:

Colorado: small group with older people. except for good ol' fourteen year old Kristen who loves Chris Tomlin. These people were super nice and Janice and Paul (not in the picture) are an older couple who recently drove up to Alaska and most of the time slept on the side of the road on a matress in their Astro Van. So awesome.

Then the Iowa people came. This group was fun because most of the poeple on the trip were around my age. Interesting church too, it broke from a larger church and recently combined with another church. It's a really young church. John Bloom's son Davey is one of the elders (he's 36 I think). Anyway by the end of the week I was super tired because on top of their work projects and staying up until midnight playing camp games and screaming ninjas, they did an activity like hiking to the dinosaur tracks, climbing up Seh-sa-uh (sp?) and going to the canyon almost every day they were here. I may decide to go to Iowa sometime next year on a road trip.

Finally last week's group was from Oregon. I don't have any pictures yet. They were a mixed group of family and youth. It was weird because two of the youth leaders who came were married to each other and another was getting married in a week (both were close to my age). It's not like I haven't seen a young married couple (I do go to Point Loma), but man so young. I've talked to a lot of people here who were married young. Those Brethern folk may be worse than Nazarenes! But they were fun. I ended up getting in a discussion with the youth pastor and found out that I was more Wesleyan than I thought. I still don't really know why, but I'll take his word for it. On the last day the group was here we went to the canyon and this kid cracked his head open on a rock. It was really fun to ask him the same questions every 5 minutes because he had a bit of short-term memory loss. He's fine now though, 12 staples later.

This week there's no church group, just one man from New Jersey who's helping out a little here and there. It's ok though, it's kind of exhausting living out mission trip every week of the summer. I'm really enjoying my time here. I think this week will be a good week of rest and reflection (after a full work day). But we'll see what the Lord brings.

Jesus Prayer

2009-06-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve been busy since my last update things like paint projects, VBS, meals, hang out time, runs, and climbing up rocks and mesas have taken up most of my time. I’ll write more about the happenings later, when I can include some photos. For now, here’s some thing I’ve been thinking about:

I was reading Reaching Out by Heri Nouwen (I like to read every Nouw en again…. Ha ha). Anyway so Nouwen writes a lot about prayer and solitude and in this book he teaches us to pray by teaching us an ancient prayer uttered by Haychast Christians called the “Jesus prayer” consisting of the simple words “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me.” I’ve heard this prayer before, and in the past I’ve tried to make it a part of my life, but until recently I have never found any comfort in it. The prayer served to remind me more of me and how I’m always needing grace and mercy, which of course, is true and probably needed in my life more than I like to admit. Yet, prayer is not really about beating ourselves up; it is a chance for the Spirit in us to commune with the Father on our behalf. In this we find place for us to be, rest, cry, and/or rejoice, but mostly we pray in obedience to enter into the community of God. Anyway, I’ve found it more beneficial lately to carry the words of the Jesus prayer in my heart throughout the day along with a response that says “Lord, thank you for your mercy.”

I think that a response of gratitude to God’s mercy not only reminds us that we not only are in need of God’s mercy, but that God gives us mercy according to God’s unfailing love. It not only reminds us of our condition, but also of God’s. It challenges us to see the redemption in our lives, despite our ever-present need for grace. So, take that on the road with you if it will fit in your pack.

A Prophet Without Honor

2009-06-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

I was watching an episode of 30 days, Morgan Spurlock's show inspired by his documentary "Super Size Me." There's an episode where he goes to live on an Indian Reservation which happens to be the very reservation we are on right now. Except most of the show takes place a couple hours east of where I am probably in New Mexico somewhere. You can look up the episode online http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/30days/

Anyway, what made this episode really interesting to watch is that I did so with Lorena (pictured in the previous post). She is a Navajo missionary who lives at Immanuel. So far, she's probably my best friend on the mission. I admire her a lot.

During some school years, Lorena teaches a class on Navajo culture. It includes things like preparing Navajo dishes, teaching the Navajo language, and teaching about the culture in a way that gives honor both to the Navajo and to God. Many families are very thankful that she is willing to teach this. Some families are not. Lorena says that these families tend to be the (Navajo) Christian families who believe that the Navajo have to "leave the old ways behind." To Lorena this doesn't make much sense. She says that "We can't stop being Navajo, God made us Navajo."

Such an interesting concept, right? Not that God scattered everyone at Babel and now is trying to get it all back together. But that God actually made people who belong to certain nations. I think it's really hard to understand because in America there is so much distance (literally, unless you're a Native American) from your past culture. If anything, the American Dream is to forget your past and move up. (where is up?--Dunno, possibly Danville or La Jolla?) I don't really feel like God made me American because what does it mean to be American? Whatever you want it to mean. Which ironically, is sort of meaningless.

It's just interesting to hear Lorena's struggle between the Christian and Non-Christian Navajo. There is conflict present on both sides. But she plays such a significant role on the mission as being a bridge between what it means to be a Christian-Navajo. In a way, she almost has to be the Navajo Jesus.

"Only in his hometown, among his own relatives and his own house is a prophet without honor."

Arizona: I'm here!!

2009-06-10T20:52:00.001-07:00

Hey Friends,

I am here at Immanuel Mission. Before I talk about life, here's some contact information:

You can always send me mail:

PO Box 2000
Teec Nos Pos, AZ, 86514

*remember, you can always send me packages! It's not like I'm in the army or something...

I have internet access in certain parts of the Mission, and I'll try to get online at least once a week so you can: email/facebook/comment on blog

I also have a phone in my room. There's only one line on the mission, so they say keep it to 20mins, but even that's not as big of a deal during the summer. I'm in the trailor in the evenings sometimes. It's one hour later than CA here.

917-254-4023 ext. 26

Ok so I got here. It was a lot of driving, but I didn't have to stop and sleep at all, I also did not hit a moose, and also I did not get blown off the road. The roads in Utah and Arizona seem a lot less tame than those in CA. I went slow; big rigs passed me on a two-lane road. But Utah is really beautiful in some parts. Especially Moab. I'd like to go back there. I think there's been road work on every interstate I've been on. I know people prayed for me, and I think that helped a lot.

Ok so when I first got to Immanuel Mission, there was no one here. It was so different from coming with VBC in July. It was abondoned and super windy:

I was first greeted by this guy:

John Bloom's dog I think. He hasn't picked a name yet I don't think. Some people call him "Go Home."

Then after about 10 mins the Tom's came by and let me into my trailor:

I love it.

So highlights from my trip so far:

- Going with John to an auction in Farmington, New Mexico. Can you say yee-haw? He bought some stuff for the mission. I met cowboys. It was definitely an experience. Wish I brought my camera. Maybe next time.

- Getting to know the first church group to visit. They are from Colorado. There's only one teen-ager. She's really talkative and she loves Chris Tomlin. She's the kind of girl you talk to and you think you've got her pegged, but everyone has a story... They are a really nice group of people.

- Meeting Loreena and Karen. We went out to one lady's house named Anna, who lives next to one of the missionaries. We cleaned Anna's house and had lunch at Kathy's (the missionary) here's a picture:

-Karen (the one on the left) lives in Kansas. A few days after this picture was taken Loreena (right middle) and I went to Durago, CO to drop of Karen. Such good conversation. She remarked how it really was the Lord that brought us together that time for lunch. How else would these 6 people meet up together in the middle of the Navajo Nation? So crazy.

-Some of us went to Big Sitting Rock (no one calls is that, but I don't know how to spell the Navajo name). Anyway we sat under the stars and I saw a full moon rise over a mesa. I can't even explain how beautiful it was.

I've been busy mostly with various work projects and being with people. Really good times of reading the Bible though. I don't really have a concept of time out here so I think it makes it easier to pray and read.

I'm really trying to get a feel for life here. Part of me loves this adventure, but another part of me always has to remind the other that this summer is not really about adventure, that beneath my "experience" is real, deep need. There are people here who have been faithful to a place with beautiful people and surroundings, but also great poverty and deep hurt. My summer is bigger than me.

Loreena talked to me a lot about her life and the life of the mission and you just get this feeling like man there is so much need, how can God hold this all together? You know? Like think of all the people you know, everyone needs so much love. And think of the communities you know, everywhere there are people and persons hurting. And our God is one that holds it all together. It's good and neceassary to remember that God provides and that God is big and faithful, but I think it's also important to live in the confusion, mystery, and tension that asks how? That's the God and man, that's the already, but not yet, that's Jesus.

So there's a lot more I'd love to talk to you about, but this is way too long already. Thanks for reading!

On my way to AZ: Traveling Mercies

2009-06-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

Ok so tomorrow I'm getting up at 5am and heading for Utah. My Aunt lives in Park City and I'll stay with her fam for 2 nights, and from there it's almost straight down to Sweetwater, AZ.

I'm really nervous about the drive so if anyone is reading this before June 5th please pray for me and my car and my safety. I believe the term is "traveling mercies." I think my car needs mercy because it is a Saturn which is a product of GM which is a very destructive company that tax payers now have to bail out of bankruptcy. And I need mercy because I'm a helpless sinner who is traveling. Traveling Mercies.

I feel a lot better about my actual time on the mission. I have received peace concerning some of my anxieties. I'll write more about this later. Right now I want to get some decent sleep. Basically with this post I want to let you know that I'm going, thank you for any prayers you've spoken on behalf of me so far, and ask for more of it. Thanks.

Preparing for AZ: my doubts

2009-05-19T23:07:00.000-07:00

So, I don't want to go to Immanuel Mission without some preparation. For me, this is mostly in the form of prayer/reading the Bible. These are things I know I should do anyway, but I guess I take them more seriously when I'm going to a mission campus in the middle of the desert. Silly, I know, but save me the sermon and let's move on.

So I'm praying more, and making it a big deal about going to this place. I wanted to take the last month to "get right with God" as they say, and be ready to serve wholeheartedly when I'm there. I wanted to eat, speak, and make my kidneys reabsorb gospel. I wanted to be totally prepared for the journey ahead in Arizona, except I'm finding this preparation to be a journey in itself.

In forcing myself to read the Bible and pray more I am faced with all my inadequacies. I see the way I trail off, and half-ass my prayers. I see how I am reluctant to share the gospel with friends and family. I see how I'm tempted everyday to turn from God. I see all these things in and out of me and I'm discouraged. First comes the doubts: How could God ever use me? Am I even ready for this? Then comes the fear: What will happen if I'm not ready? I'll let everyone down. I'll make a mess that someone else will have to clean up. I'm not a stranger to letting others down, getting in over my head, or making messes, will this summer be any different?

insert: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" sermon here.

Yeah. I know, I know. Grace, grace, faith, faith, hope, hope. My mantra. Despite my doubts and fears, something beckons me to that desert. Faith, curiosity, desperation, who knows? But the mission is called Immanuel. God with us, even me.

Please pray for me, if you do that sort of thing. If not, a positive thought is ok.

Preparing for AZ

2009-05-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

So I'm spending this summer in the at Immanuel Mission in Navajo Nation in Sweetwater Arizona (Four Corners area). There's a lot of things that drove me to go, most of which I do not want to post on this blog, but suffices to say that I feel good about going. I don't know if I would say I was called to go, but I would say I feel permitted. I prayed about it. And at least one of those prayers was convincing.

So I guess I'll spend most of this blog revolving around my experience at the mission this summer. Not that I'm doing anything particularly revoluntionary, but this is my blog and my life and for me, this trip means something. I just don't know exactly what.

I'm going into this without a lot of information. I don't know where I'm staying exactly. And all I know of my work is that I'm going to be working with youth groups that come in.

As Kel would say, "Aw, here it goes."

journal entry from nursing school. this was from my same-day-surgery experience.

2009-03-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

I want to take this journal entry to debrief about the breast augmentation surgery I saw. As a student, it was a good experience. The surgeon was nice and explained what he was doing and the difference between his sub-muscular implantation site versus sub-glandular which has more risks involved including higher rate of infection.
It is important for nurses to be non-judgmental, and to never let their own feelings interfere with their level of care, so of course I made no personal comments to the hospital staff or the patient. But, now I have space in this journal to respond not as “student nurse” (robot) but as a real person. My feelings about breast implants are some things I had never really thought about before the surgery, but as I was watching the surgery I started to feel really sad for the patient. I wondered who was pressuring her to get these. I wondered who she was trying to impress. I wondered if anyone had called her ugly or made her feel like she was anything less than a product of God’s workmanship intentionally created with love. I wondered if it was me. It’s a pretty easy surgery, there’s not much blood or cutting, the surgeon himself said it wasn’t “real surgery” (he also said that anything a obstetric surgeon does—including c-sections—isn’t real surgery either, but that’s another journal entry…). Anyway, all that to say that if the surgery is so simple, why did it seem so violent to me? Just seeing the surgeon separating her pectoral muscles and inserting a balloon and inflating it to an ideal size (450 extra mls if you’re interested), then inserting this ball of fluid. I don’t know, there was nothing sexy about it, you know? It was fake and expensive, it took a lot of drugs, and it took intubation.
What a metaphor for the vainity of life though. How often do we entrust ourselves fully in other people to make us who we are? Sedate me, paralyze me, give me an artificial airway, program my oxygen, make me beautiful, give me the drugs to deal with the pain of your procedure. It is not a disease that brings us to the hospital. Or is it?
But how different am I? I wear make up, I put products in my hair. I’m not saying I can’t understand where this woman was coming from, or that I hold her decision against her. I just really hated the surgery. I hated what they did to her. Even though the surgery went well, and she’ll probably be happy with the results, I thought it was a terrible surgery, and I would not recommend it to anyone. Anyway, that’s just my thoughts about it as a person.

I wanted to note my thoughts

2009-03-17T10:18:00.001-07:00

Amazing how much my blogging habits have increased since I've been fasting* facebook for lent.

Anyway, I just had a cool conversation and I wanted to note my thoughts. Lately I've found myself in this struggle in ministry: I want to give, but how much do I give? Life is full of tensions, I am convinced of it. If anything is certain, it's the idea that you will always been uncertain about some things. For me, I am uncertain of this idea of giving. Is it trusting to ask how much do I give? OR is it irresponsible not to?

"Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." Matthew 6:33

"His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'" Matthew 25:21

I must be faithful in my works, but I must also be faithful in the God whose works are above my own. This is the God who holds all things together and is bringing all things together.

It is in this tension that we find the Freedom of Christ. Freedom of Christ is that when I am operating with Christ's love, there is no wrong answer. I may choose to pay off my debt so that I will be able to give more freely or I may give from the little I have (borrowed) trusting that God will provide.

The heart, the attitude, is one of love. Either work is one of love. If love is there with a genuine desire to be obedient and faithful, there is not a wrong decision. Either work requires a heart of trust. It is in this freedom of choice that I find joy.

*Pastor John Wright said in his Ash Wednesday service that he doesn't know what to do when Lent becomes trendy. When all we do is ask "what are you giving up?" do we really experience what it means to fast and to share this discipline with the Father who sees what is done in secret? I think that a Lenten fast is different from an ordinary fast. A Lenten fast is one that is shared with the Church catholic. In a fast which we all participate in together we are able to do more than ask "what are you giving up?" but we are able to keep each other accountable and to learn from each other. Lent is a time when the church shares the same journey in the midst of our own journeys. This journey is the suffering of Christ. In Lent we acknowledge the incompleteness in ourselves, and the completeness of the community of Christ brought together by the Holy Spirit.

An American Girl's Letter to the World

2009-03-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

Well hello World,

Nice to meet you. Though I don't know you very well, you seem like someone who I'd like to know better. I'm rather frustrated with some I know of you so far, but I realize that there's a lot more to you that I haven't seen yet. I think you're mysterious and enchanting. I've become quite infatuated with you actually. I think you must be full of beauty.

I think there's people and places where things are more organic. And by organic I don't mean the kind that has the sticker and is washed by automatic showers every hour. That's the way it is here in America. We expect synthetic, we expected modified, we expect artificial so the more natural, the more real a product or resource is the more marketed it is. But world I think you are organic in a different way. Your realness is not advertised or labeled, it's dirty and painful. But I like to imagine that there is joy in you too, that there is hope and love as raw as your suffering.

World, I also know that there is more to you than what I would see if I were to visit you today. I know you have stories. You have a history. You've been blessed and cursed, and seen victories, tragedies, and triumphs. Teach me these. Tell me about yourself: who you've been and how you got here. The American dream is to forget the past, but I know the world remembers and values what has happened.

World, you might not want to know me. You may think that we have nothing in common. I've chosen department store over handmade, I shop at grocery stores not markets, I exercise on machines when I could walk outside, I'm part of an Internet community that replaces the face to face, I drive my car over paved earth, I straighten my hair, I take pain-killers with carbonated water, I use light bulbs and coffee to defy the sun and the night's opportunity for rest. And though these habits and lifestyles are much apart of me, I confess that am not created to eat Big Macs and shop at Wal-Mart anymore than you are.

World, I know God your Father and Mother. Your Creator is mine as well, and we are made of the same dust. The truth is I am in you and you are in me and God is in us. Though I more often worship under moving powerpoints and electric guitars than shaded trees and singing birds, we are made to praise the same God. This is the God that will bring us together and reconcile our differences and forgive our sins.

World I pray you have grace with me. I am made to love you. I am your neighbor. I'll see you when I see you.

With love,

Maddie

A Question for Lent

2009-03-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

The central story that inspires the Christian season of Lent is Jesus's 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. Jesus, after his baptism is lead to the desert to be tempted. This theme of a 40-day trial is not unique to Jesus's in the gospels; the Hebrews were in the desert 40 years after their "baptism" through the Red Sea, Noah, his family, and the San Diego Zoo are in the ark for a 40 day flood later referred to as a "baptism."

So this 40 day/year event seems to be significant in the stories of the faithful, or at least in testing the faith of the people of God. And in all cases it is God who leads his people to these deserts. Why is it then that Jesus prays that we would not be lead by God to temptation, but would be delivered from evil? It's almost as if Jesus asks God not to let what happened to him happen to anyone else.

I don't know the answer. But I think it means that Lent is not something to be taken lightly. That Jesus being led into the desert to be tempted was a challenge for Jesus; something he doesn't want others to experience. Israel did not stay faithful in her 40 years in the desert. Jesus stays faithful, he passes the test. And Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel. He upholds their end of the covenants. Perhaps the time of testing is over. Yet we remember this testing during Lent so that we will be humbled by Jesus's ability to do what we could not do for ourselves, and praise God for his love for us.

Invisible Children: The Rescue

2009-02-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

I just came from Point Loma's showing of Invisible Children: The Rescue. It's a new Invisible Children movie supporting a massive campaign to set free the children abducted by Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army of northern Uganda. The Rescue event takes place on the 25th of April and there are various events and means of supporting the event that precede it. But the rescue itself is a day much like the Night Commuters or Displace Me campaigns run by Invisible Children where participants dramatize and attempt to empathize with the effected children of Uganda, except the Rescue event ends with us actually being rescued. The rescue comes from politicians, celebrities, and I suppose various other people of authority involved in the issue.

And maybe that's why I am struggling right now with making a decision to be involved or what to do to be involved. And I mean, how can I say that, right? Being given this information, watching this movie depicting people with disfigured faces and bodies, of course I should do something. Maddie, you've always wondered how you would have reacted to the Holocaust and now you have one right in front of you and you are reluctant? I mean it's only three dollars a week, it's only 2 nights, and I can do more than that!

It's just that as I fill out the form stating that I want to be involved with this Rescue, I can't help but think how foolish it is that this Rescue is coming from politicians and celebrities. We've got to stop thinking that Bono is Jesus.

But it happened before. World War II is over. Jesus didn't come down here and stop that, people got involved and it was really messy, but in the end, Nazis stopped killing Jews (in a mass, organized way anyway). It took politicians to end WW2. Have I no hope? Have I no hope that God can use our generation, our celebrities, our politicians to end something that God hates?

It's just so big. I like what I am doing now at church. I like that I can see the way things are changing for Jose, Precious, Yacksi, Burto. I like that I can see something that I am involved in change these kids a bit. I want to support everything that brings God's justice to the world, that preaches Torah, that preaches the gospel. But can I support everything? And is this supporting it?

I don't know why I feel so unsure of this. I wrote a blog to sort it out, but please, please offer me any advice, thoughts, or words.

http://www.invisiblechildren.com/ to get more info.

Thought necklace: a string of thoughts loosely bound together

2009-01-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

At this point, I reckon that life is a lot about living in the tension of things. Some people may think of Christianity as an escape from the tension. They think, "My faith gives me all the answers; my faith tells me who to be." When really our faith gives us one more tension: living in the world and the kingdom of God. There is really not one thing we should always be; there is no mantra, no costume that we can wear that morphs us into invincible superheroes, no monastery that frees us from the tension.

One might say, "Well, we are called to be faithful, therefore we must always strive to be obedient disciples." I completely agree, but often times we don't know what exactly it means to be obedient, and if we do, we find that being obedient means acting differently in different situations. Sometimes we should give, sometimes we should save, sometimes we should comfort, sometimes we should confront. All this is living in the tension.

I think that's why it's hard for people to believe that God loves them. There's a certain ease to life that comes with love. There's protection, safety, belonging, and trust. Yet we know that life is not easy. There are situations that make us feel unprotected, unsafe, alone, and untrusting. How do we live in the blessing of God's love and the suffering of the world? Where do we rightly find God's love?

I try to think of what makes we worthwhile. Is it my gifts and abilities? My performance? My personality? My family? My church? My relationships? My faith? As of now the only thing that I can really conceptualize and say, "Yes, this is why I matter" is the fact that I am created. That for one moment (or whatever the heavenly, timeless word there is for moment) God thought that I was a good idea. That goes for everything else created as well. Which means that even the five year-old kid with terminal cancer, even the still-born baby, even the 24-weeker in the NICU, even the person who will never attend a "normal" school, hold a "normal" job, or be able to function "normally" in society, even to those God shows that it was right, it was good, it was better for them to be created than not. I couldn't tell you why, and I will never try to. But I believe that anything created (even anything not alive) was not a mistake and was put together with love, care, and intention. It's kind of a bold statement if you think about it. It's kind of life-changing too.

Resolutions (same old, same old)

2009-01-03T00:44:00.000-08:00

1. Be a friend.
2. Be healthier.
3. Be prettier.
4. Be happier.

2008-12-30T19:00:00.001-08:00

Carbon Dioxide: Breathe This

Without sin, without feeling;
without pain, without hope.
So, you are not hopeless
for we can only hope;
it is only because of hope that you can know your despair.

You are not without God!:
because you have pain,
because you have hope
and for this creation groans.

So here we are. Not hopeless, but faithless.
faithless that things will change.
how can things change?

Effortlessly.
wind is wind.
ice is ice.
sun is sun.

winter is winter.
summer is summer.

Not effortlessly.
Tree is blown.
Tree is barren.
Tree is grown.

Persevere.
Persevere.
Persevere.

2008-12-11T22:08:00.000-08:00

Dear God,

Where is peace? Where is freedom? Where is joy?

if my mind and heart could vomit every thought infecting it, it would look something like this. clean up on asile 2. bring the sawdust.

2008-11-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

What can it mean to be Christian and not to be part of the world? How do you be Christian in the world? What came first the world or Christianity, is one defined as the absence of the other?

Christians often turn to asceticism to separate themselves from the world, but the way I see things, it seems like in America everyone has a bit of asceticism in the name of individuality. Many people religiously deny themselves things in the name of worshiping their identities. People refuse to eat certain food, wear certain clothes, buy certain products, and what not. It's not like these denials are always particularly superficial at all. In fact many come out of the very core of ourselves. My conscience tells me I cannot behave in particular ways and support certain ideas. To thine own self be true right?

I guess that's where my question comes from. The part of the world that I live in tells me that truth can be found anywhere, but the truths are validated by soul, my conscience, my intuition. I have no peace if I don't feel at peace. But what if something untruth gives us peace. Can I be trusted to recognize truth? Or maybe its not really me, maybe it's the holy spirit. Is my gut feeling the holy spirit? How do I know the difference.

In Eden there was not this dualism of world vs church or of sacred vs profane. People were created naked in all their hairy, awkward glory (well actually God's). Things just were; there was no need for jugdemental adjectives. Though for us, Jesus's death on the cross reveals that we are able to become something new from what we were before, we are not really becoming something new as much as we are becoming what we were; what we were intended to be. To find out what holiness and wholeness looks like perhaps we do not need to look forward as much as we need to look back. And looking back brings us back to the time where we did not need to frame things in order to make them Christianly acceptable. When people spoke of love, they mean love that came from God, when they spoke of sex they meant that it was God ordained, an act of obedience, when they spoke of truth it was something really, deeply, inescapably true.

I guess I struggle with wanting these words and behaviors like love, truth, sex, happiness, wholeness to be organic; to be as pure as taking about the creations of mountains and sunsets. But they aren't. Sin is here and it's deceptive and it draws lines between holy and unholy, pure and impure. This is not just a language issue but a need to validate the desire of the heart.

Am I pure? And if not now when? And if I'm not then how can I descern what is true, holy, or good. And if I can't discern sin using my intuition, how can I descern peace?

Hope is the origin of faith

2008-10-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

Today our class lecture was about pediatric hematology and oncology. We ended with this documentary about a family who was dealing with their son's losing battle to cancer. Following the son's death there was an interview with the father about his spiritual life. I didn't get the vibe that the father was particularly devout to any certain doctrine through he did say he prayed a lot more. One thing he did say that made me stop and think was, "I really, really hope that there's a better place."

Faith is being sure of what we hope for...

That's what Hebrews 11 says, that faith is the assurance of things hoped for. We are faithless, but never without hope. Faith is something we have to be taught, it's something we have to have modeled as seen through God faithfulness to Israel and through the life and death of Christ. But hope does not need to be taught. Hope is all we know how to do. Even when we say things are hopeless, what we mean that there is no realistic way of ever getting what we really hope for. Hope, hope: our desires, dreams, wishes, yearnings. My hopes have done terrible things to me.

But it's these hopes that lead people to cry out. Like some sort of grassroots prayer, it's people crying out through tears and sighs and frustration saying "this is not what I hope for; this is so far from what I hope for."

Faith is being sure of what we hope for

So faith is taking these hopes and being sure about them. When hopes stop being wished for and start being waited for there is faith. So we take these hopes we have and we look at God and the things God seems to be faithfully working toward and we decide which hopes seem to be worthy of our faith.

I really, really hope that there is a better place.

Nursing a Thought

2008-09-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

Another thing that I've been learning from Mother Teresa's story is a little more of what it means to be devoted to Jesus. Though her heart was for the poor, to whom she was called, her devotion was to Jesus; it was her dedication to his will that brought her to the poor. I think sometimes in ministry we have to hide the name of Jesus, the "share the gospel always, and when necessary use words" sort of idea. And I buy that, I know the kingdom isn't words, but a place where things happen, where real life happens. If we don't do works our faith is incomplete. The problem though is when we don't speak the name of Jesus in our motivations and prayers and hopes for those we minister to. We forget what we are doing this for.

See for a while I saw me studying nursing almost equal to me being a Christian. So last year when things started going downhill, I felt like my poor grades was just like me being disobedient to God. Like because I wasn't being successful, I was letting God down and falling short of myself. But now I'm beginning to see that my call, my first call is to love and to care about others. So before I'm a nurse, I am a Christian. Nursing is a way for me to care for people, but if for some reason nursing doesn't work out I'll still be able to love and I'll still have hope and I can still be obedient. And I can justify spending time doing other ministry, because ultimately my goal is not to be a nurse, but to minister. It's kind of a 1 Corinthians 13 sort of deal "If I have the gift of nursing and can heal everyone and administer all treatments but have not love, I'm nothing but a doctor's bitch."

Now, I do want to be a good nurse because nursing is a good thing. I once read that the first nurses were those in the early church, and I love that. Actually I kind of have a dream to one day to start a Christian nursing school where we care for those homeless and the people who come over from TJ or something like that. The school would revolve around a hospital and it would be our life. At chapel we'd pray for the sick and meet their families. We'd learn to love, to heal, and to minister. I don't know I'm working on the idea, we'll see what comes of it.

Momma T you're more than a flute to me.

2008-09-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a while because I haven't really had anything worth writing about (since all my blogs are usually super inspiring, right...) Whatever, anyway today I have something to say, hopefully it's at least a little satisfactory.

So I'm reading this book by Mother Teresa called, "Come be my Light" about her life and struggle to please God within the hierarchies of the church and the darkness she often felt in ministry. As one would suspect, it's inspiring.

I was talking to Heidi Snow about it the other day in class and for some reason, I mentioned that I was reading a section about talking about how Mother Teresa was "nothing but an instrument." When I first read that I thought, man that's humble and it reminded me Jimmy Eat World's "Goodbye Sky Harbor" but I really didn't analyze it too much. And when I mentioned it to Heidi she said something like, "Well that doesn't sound very uplifting, just to only be an instrument and nothing more." And I thought something like well Heidi, that's cause you care too much about other people's feelings.

Today though I spent some time in prayer and I was thinking about what it meant to be humble. Are we really just instruments? And I realized that, no, there's no way I'm only an instrument. I've made too many mistakes, had too many times of hurt, and have too much of a soul to be nothing but an instrument. And I know it was even more true for Mother Teresa. God did not create me as an instrument, God made me a person, or for the sake of the metaphor God made us musicians. We are called to play songs of compassion, giving honor God and bringing notice to Love and Beauty. We don't downplay our role or sit quietly in the back, we play our parts as best we can and we try to keep in rhythm with the Music. Our humility comes not in making ourselves objects, but in realizing our being, and playing in a way that compliments the Orchestra, honors the Song, and doesn't upstage our brothers and sisters.

2008-07-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

I love, love, love this poem by Kathleen Norris.

Bean Song

A bean does not know much,
but it remembers the winter.
It sweats in secret, its skin grow tough
and smooth as it pushes up against the darkness,
against the weight of the universe.
Somehow it displaces just a little earth,
and everything shifts to one side.

The bean flower stands up
to see if it's in the middle of a field,
or in someone's pot;
it is beautiful and bitter,
and dies after a while,
but the bean keeps singing to itself
and song about the stars,
and the cities, and the people
who live in sunlight.
No one hears it singing,
only a few ever hear its song.

At night, when I sleep alone,
I sing it for you.

Poem a day project: day 2

2008-07-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

So I'm going through the book "The Poet's Companion" by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. In the introduction they say good poems the writer writes about what they know and asks a question. Here's a funny excerpt from a poem by Ellery Akers that illustrates writing about the mundane:

"I cook, I shell peas, breaking open the pods at the veins with a snap: I take vitamins--all the hard, football-shaped pills--sometimes they get stuck in my gullet and I panic and think what a modern way to die, they'll come and find my dead, perfectly healthy body."

Ok so here's my second attempt at a poem. Its a little rough in some parts but c'est la vie. I have no rhythm or structure. I don't know how. In all honesty I really don't know what I'm doing. So I just write sentences of sorts.

My Chore

All I can do is wait
to rake the fallen leaves come autumn.
And all the other fallen things.
Springs best efforts retire as memories
and become a chore.

With all the fallen leaves
I remember
fallen plans
fallen short of the intent
the times I’ve fallen from grace
and blaming the fall of man
the heart fallen to pieces
after having fallen in love.
And all the other times I fall for no reason it seems.

With the fallen leaves I leave those dreams.

My hopes now lie in worm excrement.
My hope is reduced to dirt.
Perhaps my dirt may flower,
and blossom into something beautiful
or become something sweet
and nourishing.
No doubt though some will produce
next season’s fallen leaves.

Poem a day project: day one.

2008-07-24T00:26:00.000-07:00

This is my first poem for my poem a day project. It's about redwood trees and the Church of the Nazarene. It's pretty obvious, but give me a break, its my first one.

Fairy Ring

First Church of the Nazarene is not what it used to be,
I hear
A fire broke out in the woods,
And burnt the redwood,
But the lightening underestimated the tree
Not knowing of its goodness,
Its willingness to share,
And the strength of its family.

The church has grown and spread elsewhere.
The tree remembered its substance,
The letters of its genome
And spread the stuff in a fairy ring
Around the broken tree.
The tree, the church is resilient.

can I share a Rumi with you?

2008-07-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get into poetry lately. I think its a very brilliant thing, that poetry stuff. You take this profound truth a speak it in a creative way. It's kind of like finding buried treasure, digging it up then putting it back in the ground again and giving someone a general map of it's location. Maybe they find the treasure you buried or maybe they find their own, but either way they use your map to get there. Anyway, I don't really know anything about poetry save the little I remember from high school English and Shel Silverstein's, but I got a few books from the library and my aunt gave me some too. One was a collection of Rumi's poems which of course are timeless and fantastic and another was about how to write poetry. These are some of Rumi's:
*****

"Someone who goes with half a loaf of bread
to a small place that fits like a nest around him,
someone who wants no more, who's not himself
longed for by anyone else,

He is a letter to everyone. You open it.
It says, Live"

*****

My Worst Habit

"My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you're not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in the habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back to you."

*****

Enough Words?

"How does part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don't try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don't wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow keeps up.
Sometimes it's in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
You boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don't open your mouth for even a coooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. The frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.
Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?"

So good. So good. I'm going to try to write one poem a day. You should write one too, and leave it as a comment!! or, you know, don't.

Little House on the Prayer-ie

2008-07-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

I remember my junior year of high school I had this crisis time with God. I remember sitting for an hour after youth group with Tim telling him why God was super confusing to me and why it all seemed like this trick. There's all these paradoxes like, we seek to know God but we can never fully know God, we pray to God but God does whatever anyway. I think it was because my junior year was super busy and I often got up at 4 in the morning to finish my math homework, it's really hard to believe in God at 4 in the morning, and I'm not just trying to be cute by saying that, I'm serious. Anyway, I say all that because I still struggle with prayer. And usually I just kind of deal with it by either praying through it or not praying at all, but I'm going to be hanging out with middle school and high school aged kids this month at camps and I want to be able to pray better just in case I have to pray with them. And actually I think prayer is important to being a disciple and if I'm trying to make them disciples, I should at least know how to pray.

My prayer time sometimes feels like 4am. I'll walk into my room or Prescott or wherever with a lot on my mind, ready for quiet, ready for peace. Then I go to what I like to call sixth-grader-in-a-closet mode because all the sudden I have all these "am I doing this right" questions, like a kid playing seven minuets in heaven. All my prayer insecurities take over and once I finally start praying I wonder if God's even there anymore. God's a busy man right? actually no, not at all.

So finally I start talking then I don't know what to say. I remember this counselor at Mt Hermon saying something like, "God wants nothing more than to hang out with you." As I get older I doubt that statement more and more, but honestly sometimes I need that to be true. Sometimes I need God to listen to me talk about all the crap on my mind that no one ever asks about. Sometimes I need God to be my best friend. Sometimes I need God to "dry my eyes and count my tears" as Jars of Clay says. But often after I'm done telling God why I'm such a shitty Christian and making lame explanations for it all I hear is, "get over yourself white girl" and I don't know if that's God.

But I don't want to just go on rambling to God about stuff. I would never just uncensoredly tell all that crap to a friend, so why would I want to put God through that? There must be a certain propriety we have about prayer right? Or maybe not, maybe prayer allows us to drop all our fancy coats and clear off our make-up.

"Help us to not be so self absorbed with our own problems, but let us be the brother or sister to someone else that we so desperately need ourselves."- Pastor Steve prays these words every Sunday, and I'm glad. I think my self absorbency comes out most profoundly in prayer which I'm sure is missing the point. Well maybe.

I've got a lot of questions about prayer. So I think I'll blog about it again, but maybe later.

traveling, debt, responsibility, obedience, trust, living the dream

2008-06-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

Here's an issue I'm wrestling with right now and I'd appreciate any thoughts you guys have. I think its something relevant to a lot of college students:

Hey Pastor Steve,

I'm struggling a bit with a question. This year I have a lot of plans to take trips of varying length from smaller trips like senior high camp to larger ones like Israel. However, as I have these plans and ideas, I can't help but feel a sort of tension in my conscience. It is such a privilege to be able to travel; it's something that not everyone has the chance to do. At church today there were people praising that they had jobs, and here I am trying to get time off. I'm not even completely confident that I can afford all the traveling, but I'm sure if I just take out school loans and such I can make it work. Yet its not even the trips themselves that cost money, its also the fact that taking trips means I don't get to work and make money (this is especially true during the summer). Now, I know making money isn't everything, but I get the sense that working and making money is a responsible thing to do, if nothing else, making more money means that we can be more generous with it. My bottom-line question is how do I be obedient to God in making these traveling plans? Is it ok to "take advantage of the opportunities that I have" or is that just a worldly way of looking at things? I hope you get a sense of what I'm asking, even if its not completely clear. Thanks for your guidance.

Maddie

Hi Maddie,

Yeah, I understand your struggle. The short answer is, there's a season for everything. You have the rest of your life to "be responsible" and hold a job and make money and be generous, etc. Going to senior high camp and Israel aren't exactly every day opportunities that you can count on having the rest of your life. But I would say this. As you travel and as you don't work as much, be sure to learn to be generous with what income you do have, so that when you have more income the habit of generosity is already established. And as you travel, spend responsibly and be a gracious guest, so that when you're not traveling you are able to live responsibly and offer gracious hospitality. Avoid as much debt as possible. Never let yourself get so indebted that you feel like you can't afford to be generous. Ultimately we trust in God to provide for us, so while we calculate and take debt seriously, debt is not our Lord.

Finally, you have to live so surrendered to God that you're willing to not go, if you think God is checking you on it, and also so surrendered that you're willing to go, if you feel like God is leading you to go. Once you're that surrendered in both directions, often times things get a little clearer and peace comes with whichever decision you feel led to make.

There's a time to travel, and there's a time to grow roots. The Lord will help you to discern what time it is, And the Lord will give you peace.

Hope this helps, gray (or colorful) as it is.

Pastor Steve

choosing a church

2008-06-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

In different times of my life I've regularly attended a Catholic church, a non-denominational church, and a Nazarene church. In each I was faithful to the church in the best way I knew how whether that means going through sacraments like First Communion and First Reconciliation, being a member of the SALT team and going on mission trip, or helping out in ministry and being there for events. I haven't formally committed myself to any church through confirmation, membership, or whatever you do for non-denominational churches. I think one of the reasons for this is because I don't understand what it means to be apart of the church.

Some would say that doctrine is a good way to decide what church you should belong to. I don't give much faith to that idea. I have a few friends who are apart of churches in which they don't fully buy everything that the church says they believe in. Alec was telling me earlier that the Nazarene's especially are based on a movement and ideas that have become irrelevant if not obsolete nowadays. Yet the Nazarene church continues to exist because it is a network of believers who pursue community and do good works. I guess my belief is that doctrine is cheap and the real values of the church manifest themselves in the lives of the people. Besides if choosing a church was really a theological question, it seems like Jesus would have placed a greater emphasis on the importance of theology classes rather than minstry.

One of the reasons I left the Catholic Church in high school was because I didn't believe in the doctrine. Now that I am starting to question doctrine, and my ability to judge doctrine, I am starting to turn back to my catholic roots. If Alec continues to be Nazarene because he is Nazarene--socially not theologically--then maybe I should be Catholic. Or maybe I'm now a Nazarene. Hm, one reason I won't rely on Alec to tell me what I am, his reason doesn't work in my life. So where do I find myself? It is a social question more than anything. In the future where will I go? So far it seems that God has brought me to these churches and I've found myself there so I guess God will lead me where I should be.

As much as I can tell, the church acts justly, loves mercy, walks humbly, and says Christ is Lord. As I continue to move around in my life, I do not want the church to become a personality test in which I find the one that best fits me. Honestly I don't really want to choose a church; I want the church to choose me.

Take this with a grain of salt or, better yet, a grain of sugar because maybe I'm just bitter.

2008-06-08T21:48:00.001-07:00

When I think of being a "Woman of God" the role doesn't really appeal to me. Honestly I think I'd rather be a "Man of God".

I've seen a lot of both men and women in leadership positions at church and school. I think Point Loma in particular does a pretty good job of not discriminating against gender when it comes to leadership positions especially (I hate that it makes sense to qualify it like this) for a religious institution. Although power seems to be pretty well distributed and is increasingly improving, respect seems to still fall mainly to the male leaders and students. One of the ways this is best illustrated I think is in chapel. I've noticed a lot more background talking and disruption when females are speaking in chapels as opposed to males.

A lot of women who are respected, but they are respected in more subtle small ways than men. Women are important and so of course they are respected but that respect often comes from their roles in relationships, I think many women lack the large-scale respect that is more often given to males.

I think a lot of people don't mean to be sexist or discriminatory either, I hear a lot of things like:
"I think it'd be great to have a woman president, I just don't want it to be Hilary" or
"I don't mind female chapel speakers I just find it difficult to track with Mary Paul."

Why don't we take these people seriously? Why supposedly aren't these women right for their positions? What would it take for a woman to gain our respect? what would she have to be like? It seems like these people are too far from the male standard of leaders and too far from our standards of female roles.

I don't know the answers to these questions and I'm not completely sure these questions are the right ones to be asking.

Is it wrong for me to want to see that respect for me and my sisters and mothers? And I'm serious about that question. Maybe the small-scale respect is what is really important and maybe asking for respect is not the way to get it and maybe even trying to earn respect is not the way to get it. Maybe this blog entry does more harm than good.

Just don't ask me to become a "woman of God" because when I think of what that means I think of becoming a children's or women's minister, being an awesome mother, or a pastor's wife. And in all actuality, I wouldn't mind becoming those things. I don't really plan on living a life that radically pushes cultural gender roles especially just for the sake of pushing them. I hope to become a nurse someday, I wouldn't mind being a stay-at-home mom for a period of time, and I'll probably shave my legs fairly regularly. I just don't want to be only those things. I want my identity to be in Christ where there is no male and female. I don't want to be respected any differently than men, I just want to be a person of God. Challenge me to be that.

Can I be honest?

2008-05-21T23:46:00.001-07:00

I believe that God is faithful. I see it in my schoolwork. No matter how hopeless the situation looks, I manage to keep my grades where they need to be. And maybe that's because of my faithfulness to God that comes from my effort, but I know God has helped me first. I don't really want to talk about the theological implications of this right now. Trust me, God has been faithful to help me. And I don't know for what purpose specifically, but I am in God's hands.

"be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."- Deuteronomy 6:11

God is faithful, but I am very often unfaithful. Despite God's provision, I feel lost and unsure. My questions, my anxieties, my insecurities, my reluctance, my shame--they overpower my faith. I don't know how God can minister through me. I don't know how I could possibly be doing any right. Sometimes I feel like I don't know anything.

Where is my freedom? Where is my soul? What does it mean to lose myself, can this be it? I look at myself and I think, "this can't be right. I've missed it, where did I miss it?"

God She's beautiful

2008-05-18T23:28:00.000-07:00

So I was driving home today on the 205 and I was looking out at the rolling, golden hills thinking, "Man, that's so pretty. God created things so beautiful." Then I got a little annoyed with myself because it was a very cliche thing to think--and usually my thoughts are so original and inspiring, right? As if. Anyway, I thought about it a little more and maybe what's significant is not that God created things beautiful, but that God created beauty. Like God just created good things and they aren't really beautiful, they just are. What's cool is that we can appreciate beauty. And who knows really what beauty is or what makes things beautiful. (please don't try to explain it to me, because you can't- beauty's kinda like humor; it can't be logically explained and if it is its not funny/pretty anymore) What a gift though, huh? It seems like a pretty unnecessary thing though (according to Maslow), it doesn't really help us survive day to day. Yet it's beauty that reminds us of God's majesty so perhaps in that way it's very necessary. God reveals herself in Creation right? So we see in God's creation of beauty that God is not a God who perceives the world logically and advantageously. She is a God of beauty, reminding us that there is more to life than practicality and maybe there is no true life in strict practicality. God not only reigns, She reigns in glory. Alleluia.

I kissed dating Jesus good-bye

2008-05-14T00:13:00.000-07:00

So I'm single. I figure it's a good time to "invest in my relationship with God"--as I might have said some time ago. What an opportunity right? It's a win-win, either I become a better candidate for marriage to a nice, Christian boy or I get closer to God (aka never feel empty again). Some would term it "dating Jesus," this idea that God/Jesus will fill up the emptiness and loneliness inside us and I suppose this lasts until you find a real life person to date. I dunno about that stuff anymore.

Here's the thing I've found about loving Jesus: not only is it hard to conceptualize, it's a pretty hard thing to do alone. We want it to be this romantic thing so we do silly things like go on dates with Jesus, ballroom dance with Jesus, read Song of Solomon with Jesus (ew). After all, like a rose trampled on the ground, he took the fall and thought of me above all, right? I forget the reference, but I think that's in the Bible somewhere.

John 15 says that love looks like obedience. Not exactly romantic. Sometimes in this obedience God seems silent and slow to respond to us. Obedience is what brought Jesus to the cross. Obedience is what eventually caused Jesus to ask God why God had forsaken him. Yet Jesus goes on to say in John 15 that he told us to be obedient and to love God so that his joy would be in us and made complete in us. There is joy in faithfulness somewhere. There is joy in laying down your life for your friends. There is joy in the freedom that can only come through faithfulness to the Father.

So, my relationship with God is not exclusive; I am not God's bride--the church is. My faithfulness shows my love for God just as God's faithfulness first showed God's love for me. My faithfulness and love to God is expressed in my ministry and devotion to the church and to those who might belong to the church. Jesus is not my rebound. Jesus is my way, truth, and life; the example of love and faithfulness to the Father.

If Jesus read my blog

2008-04-24T23:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Jesus,

I'm writing to you on this blog to say somethings that I could just pray, but maybe if I write them on here people will read it. I guess I want them to read it so they can know the things I want to tell you and maybe I'll even talk about it with them.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I've been thinking about who I am a lot more than usual in the past month or so, and I realized there's a lot of stuff I don't like. It's not exactly "sin issues," as they say (whatever that means), that I'm referring to, its more like as I look at who I am I don't really like how I got here. Mainly I feel fake. Not false, not ingenuine or dishonest, but like a fake human, a cheap imitation of what it really means to live. It seems like a lot of who I am stems from conformity to others based on a fear of the responsibility that comes from being myself. Now I don't really buy the idea that "myself" is this unique thing, separate from the influence of others--I actually don't believe that at all. My problem is not that others influence me but how I go about letting them influence me.

Jesus, I think I want to find myself, or create myself or whatever it is you do to be fully alive. I've heard through various sources such as books, movies, country songs, and stories that this journey of the self often leads us very close to where we started. I'm ok with that. I still want the journey. Maybe its wiser to just learn from the conclusions of others, but my problem with that is my mind ends up getting way more further along than my heart. So I'm hoping that if I take this journey my heart and my mind can go together to figure things out; maybe they will even hold hands.

Jesus, maybe you know that this whole blog entry shows me to be a little more cheesy than I like to admit, and these next few lines aren't going to redeem me any further. If I do officially embark on this journey, I want to you be there and to keep me from making people objects in my life. I want people to be more than things that help to shape me, because I hope that as I find myself I find other selves too. I don't know if life is a journey. But I know that life isn't my journey. So Jesus, please help me to find truth and please stay with me through the mistakes I make to get there.

love,

maddie

2008-04-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I struggle with loving God. And its not for any noble reasons like the little kids who are dying of cancer or any of those devastating things. Its actually for very selfish reasons. Very human reasons. Which I figure makes some sense because it seems easier to really love someone you know and I'm never sure how much I really know about God and for that matter I don't know how much I can know.

I've never really followed celebrities. And I've never had a celebrity crush. I wonder if that's why I find it hard to love God. I think loving God can be a lot like having a celebrity crush. You have all these ideas about celebrities, and maybe through the music they've made or the characters they've played your soul has been touched and changed in a real way and so you associate all those emotions of adventure, thrill, romance, lust, passion, happiness with them. Deep down inside us somewhere we know that we don't really know these people, that we are not in fact in love with them, we are in love with the way they make us feel, but they are so far off that we can convince ourselves that we love them.

The funny thing is that celebrities love us too. They don't know us personally, but they know that they would be nothing without their fans. It's really quite sad how we objectify each other, but I guess its ok because its not like its real life, it's just buisness. I think its that objectification that's the reason I can't even be fun and pretend to have a celebrity crush; there's nothing real there, its all buisness.

If I'm honest, I tend to think of God's love like a celebrity's love. God loves the world, God loves creation, but what does that mean to me. I mean currently there's this many people living in the world. And if God's just loving everyone and everything God created, then how much does that love mean to me personally? You know what I mean? So does God only love me because I am God's creation? Does God look at me and say "Maddie, I love you" or does God say "creation, I love you." How can God love, I mean really love not just tolerate, not just love the idea of, everyone?

1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.

5 You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"

12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!

18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.

give me Jesus

2008-04-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus
And when I am alone, give me Jesus
And when I am afraid, give me Jesus
You can have all this world, but give me Jesus

This is a really pretty song, here's a rendidtion of it sung by Fernando Ortega, and if you're anything like me you might want to minimize the page in order to avoid the sappy video.

I used to struggle with the lyrics to this song because I thought they were kind of a cop out. As if Jesus was an escape from lonliness, fear, and the world. As if Jesus didn't want things to be hard for us and so when life hits us and it hurts the correct response is to hide under our covers and wish that Jesus was here (as if Jesus was hidding under the covers too).

But I think I misunderstood the words to this song. Jesus isn't an escape from life, Jesus lived life and so do we. So when life is characterized by fear and lonliness we can ask for Jesus to be there in the midst of it. I've come to find Jesus in these cracks between hope and suffering, and I've never found him hidding under the covers.

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." phil 3:10-11

peace

2008-04-01T13:38:00.001-07:00

Lately I've been wrestling with this idea of a call. How do we know when we are called to something? That question is rooted in the even deeper question, that I'm sure resonates within every Christian, well every person really: how do I know the voice of God? How does God communicate with me?

So here on earth we have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the revelant God. It moves, it walks, it has a rhythm. As far as I can tell, the Father is in heaven and Jesus is seated at his right hand, but the Holy Spirit is in the hearts of the church. So I guess the more appropriate question is how do we "hear" the Holy Spirit? How do we keep in step?

I don't consider myself a person of great faith, but I am learning, and in the midst of that I've come to understand that the Holy Spirit communicates to us through peace. Well that's not completely true. Actually, I think the Holy Spirit talks to me through violence and chaos. Because its not really God that's speaking to me in the chaos. That's when its not God speaking. It's only when God is not speaking to me that I am aware that he is there (or not there). I seem to only notice when God and his Spirit are missing, not when God is there.Its when I'm in those places of distress and unrest that I know something needs to change.

But something always needs to change. The world is being restored, and it needs to be restored. So we're in these places of transition, a place of struggle and suffering, in the shadow of hope. Can we have peace in the midst of suffering, or is suffering lack of peace? If suffering is lack of peace, then the only peace we experience through suffering is by grace, by God. God uses suffering to fix suffering, because suffering isn't the end.(true or false)

I write all this to say that there is tension between us somethimes. There is lack of harmony and there is confusion and unrest and even suffering. It seems like things take time to heal, but although time is the answer to the distress, time is not always the answer to the hurt. A lot of times it sucks to wait. But can we have peace in the waiting? As we wait for time and God to restore our relationships with each other and with God, we need peace to get through. Because we can have peace, but still not be fully restored yet, right? But if peace is not resotration, what is restoration? If suffering is not the end and peace is not the end, what is?

(this draft is more me thinking and searching for truth than me proclaiming truth so please share any insights)

"hey come to my church"

2008-03-19T23:29:00.000-07:00

I remember Brad Lide wearing homemade shirts like that in high school. That's what we were encouraged to do; invite people to youth group. At youth group there were cool college-aged kids who play guitar (/guys who could grow facial hair--they shone like stars against the petty high school boys), fun people to hang out with who didn't drink, music, games, trips, and other fun events to keep you entertained, what high schooler wouldn't want to be a part of that community? It wasn't like we hid the message of the gospel though. I remember we used to say our mission statement every week during announcements it went something like, "At Valley Bible we like to have a lot of fun and laughs, but our central purpose for being here is to spread the gospel of Christ with those in the valley and beyond." Even though the gospel was preached every time we met; there was something missing. I kinda felt like there was a pressure to make this church thing so cool that my non-saved friends would forget that they were at church (I wasn't very successful). It wasn't so much that I was ashamed of the gospel or of Jesus; in some ways I was ashamed of the church.

Southeast has turned my view of church on its face. It's a raw, honest parable of the gospel. It's not a very cool church, but it's good. Instead of being mentored primarily by attractive twenty-somethings, its the crazy lady with the walker, the old guy who's always getting on your case, and the energetic woman who loves to lead the chidren in songs containing theologically sound lyrical expressions like "God's not dead" and "Heaven, I want to there uh-huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" who teach me what it means to be the church and what it means to be faithful. Now my favorite songs are not accompanied by a shredding guitar part or a catchy baseline, they're found in the middle of Sunday morning prayer. These days, I love to invite my friends to church. I'm so honored to be a part of Southeast. I feel like as I am accepted there, I'm fitting a camel through the eye of a needle; I am accepted into the kingdom. I like that at Southeast we don't need to present a mission statement every time we get together for an event because the gospel of Christ is there, its happening, and its powerful. So if you haven't been before, come check out my church.

2008-03-11T23:42:00.000-07:00

question: is there a difference between an "unnecessary" burden that we carry and our cross? how do we know? and for that matter, if Jesus' yoke is easy and burden is light, why does he tell us to carry our cross daily? surely our cross is not easy and light?

watch your step, this is holy ground fool.

2008-02-21T18:33:00.000-08:00

This is a weekly journal entry that I wrote for clinical last week. It was a gift so I thought I'd share it:

"Today’s clinical experience was sacred. My patient was a 21 year old male with leukemia. For his particular type of leukemia, the 5 year survival rate is 80% in children and 40% in adults. I’m not educated enough on the disease process to know which percentage is closer to his age group, but I don’t really think it matters. Today I got to speak to the client’s mother about her struggle with her son’s diagnosis. The furthest thing from my lips were statistics about mortality rate. After all the 20 and 60% of people who do not make it past five years probably have mothers just like her.
It is always an honor to serve and minister to people. One who finds themselves in a place where they can give to others should walk through service with humility and respect, knowing that it is by grace that she is able to give and that she is just as reliant on God and others for her needs. There have been a few acts of service that have truly blessed me so much so that I felt like I was in a sacred moment. Hearing the mother’s enthusiastic acceptance when I asked her if I could pray for her son, seeing the tears in her eyes and feeling the strength of her hands as we prayed for healing and comfort made me want to remove my shoes, because I was on holy ground (of course that’s not exactly following universal precautions so I refrained).
I pray that I will be able to experience more of these moments. I’m grateful to God that I can be there with people in these times of their lives that are so full of fear and desperation. So often clinical is all about the day, the 8 or so hours that we are in the hospital, but these are people’s lives. There's so much of something powerful in the hospital, but its so easy to ignore especially as an overwhelmed nursing student."

Recently I've been sensing the notion that I'm not reverent enough in ministry. In the same way I fear God, I feel like there is a need to fear the people I minister to (just as there is a need to love others like God). Maybe its not so much the people I should fear, but the work of ministry. People deserve respect for sure, but people are relatable in a way that God is not, and I think that separation is part of what makes God worth fearing. But ministry is a gift. God by grace invites us to love people like God does does. What greater honor is there? So I guess my point is that we should be careful in ministry. We should aknowledge it as a gift and respect the work that is done in ministry as holy and sacred. It's not a means to self-fulfillment, or a time we graciously give to God (as if). It is a noble duty of a humble servant; a gift for God's children.

the ocsars of life: why i hate psych 101

2008-02-03T23:52:00.000-08:00

If life is a journey, if life is my personal journey, if life is my story then its about me. I can't seem to reconcile this "personal journey" talk with a the life of a Christian. See, if life is a journey then all that matters is that everywhere I go, there I am; no matter what happens I am the common denominator in everything I know. I might want to be independent and separate enough to reflect on my journey if I thought that sort of distance would bring fulfillment because it would lead me to truth. However, I feel this tension that the more I pursue things that bring me satisfaction, the more I see myself as the main character of my story and the less I see others as having any higher role than supporting actors. But really, people are more than supporting actors, and I am less than a star.

I don't think I can see myself as the hero and do Christianity. It seems to me that living as a holy person means viewing others as the heros and the main characters and taking the supporting role. In that case there is no use for self reflection beyond the purpose of better supporting others and God. Anything else is indulgent and self-glorifying; upstaging. I imagine it takes very different characteristics to win an oscar for best supporting actress than it does for best actress.

Maybe though, the characters aren't made to illustrate other characters, but rather to tell a greater story. So what is the story? Is it character development? is it redemption? is it grace?

Well I don't know what the story is, but its enough for me to know that its not my story.

one more thought- when we love people we love God

2008-01-03T17:35:00.000-08:00

Are people worth loving in and of themselves? Can we love others before we love God?

Yes! People- because they are created by God, because they are made in the image of God- can be loved intuitavely. Of course! Even heathens love. Christians do not need to fear loving people more than God as long as they remember God the Creator and Definer of love. Glory to God who is at the bottom of every true love!

just thoughts

2008-01-03T17:20:00.000-08:00

"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins."

Not that our acts of love cancel out our sin. Not that our acts of love by themselves make us right with God. The only act of love that truly, intuitively made us right before God is God's own act of love in sending his Son to earth to be emptied and die on a cross. This is God's kindness that leads us to repentance.

Now our love is the mark of faith and repentance. But our love does not and cannot stand alone to save us. Nor, dare I say, does Christ stand alone to save us. It is through faith in God's grace that we are saved. This saving faith is made complete by our acts of love. Therefore our love is our faith, and our love is our new clothes, covering and replacing our sin.

the gentle whisper

2008-01-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

1 Peter 3:3-6:
Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

I was inspired to read this passage after watching a few episodes of America's Next Top Model. It's hard to watch that show without questioning what it really means to be beautiful. According to Tyra and her modeling posse, beauty (well modeling anyway) is all about being "fierce" which is difficult to reconcile with the gentle and quiet spirit that apparently is of great worth to God.

What does it mean to have a gentle spirit? What would that look like? Is there a difference between being gentle in action and gentle in spirit? Well I looked up the word "gentle" in other places in the NIV. One passage that particularly intrigued me was the "gentle whisper" that was the presence of God to Elijah amidst the fire, wind, and earthquake. Now I don't know how the Hebrew and Greek words for gentle in these passages relate or have similarity, if they do so at all. But, perhaps, women are invited to be that gentle whisper of the presence of God in a world looking for answers in the loud and destructive things. Perhaps this verse about proper female behavior is not God's effort to limit the influence of women, but is God's will to reveal to the world His (or more appropriately Her) truth, character and presence through Her Spirit.

We are the daughters of Sarah if we do what is is right and do not give way to fear. The earthquake, wind, and fire are certainly more intimidating to me than a gentle whisper. In order to make an impact in the world, I would be inclined to take on those characteristics of a natural disaster before that of a whisper. However, if God him/herself came down as a gentle whisper, who am I to desire more than a quiet and gentle spirit.

Resolutions: 8 for 08

2008-01-01T10:59:00.000-08:00

These are things I'd like to amend in my life. I'm a sucker for resolutions.

1. spend more time outdoors (surfing, climbing, hiking, NOSing, sleeping, admiring,...)
2. spend more time in prayer
3. make more environmentally and socially conscious decisions
4. eat less and healthier
5. learn some Spanish
6. learn some guitar
7. listen to/find good music
8. study for nursing more

more than watchmen wait for the morning

2007-12-22T14:37:00.000-08:00

I confess that I have not been practicing advent well. I have not given it the time it deserves. I wrote earlier this month about the discipline of waiting. I stil am not sure I know exactly what to wait for; however, that doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I do not know how to wait. I am taught from my culture that there is no sense in waiting. Either I should be able to readily grasp what it is that I desire, or for the things that take time, I should be able to use that time to do something productive. Thank goodness I have my cell phone with me so that everytime the world tempts me to wait I can call or text a friend because waiting is a terrible waste of time.

Now I don't know how God wants us to wait. These days I am waiting for my semester grades to come in, but I am not sitting around by the computer refreshing my portal every three minutes. Waiting is not normally something that consumes the moment.

Psalm 130 tells of a different manner of waiting:

5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
6 My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
7 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
8 He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

Apparently there is a need for redemption that I am not aware of. Its almost a funny thing to say considering I often am surrounded by those in circumstances that explicitly shows this need for redemption of the world. Paul in his letter to the Romans mentions as well that "creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed" and we too "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." Again, redemption! How is it that I forget my/our/the need for redemption? What am I settling for? If I have no need for redemption, I have no faith and without faith where is my hope?

No, I don't think that sitting around and waiting for God to restore is God's call on our lives. Suffering (with others), maybe, is how God wants us to wait. Because in suffering, we are aware of the need for redemption. We won't wait unless we suffer with others. In suffering though there is room for joy because we have hope for resoration.

Isaiah 30:
15 This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.
16 You said, 'No, we will flee on horses.'
Therefore you will flee!
You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses.'
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!
17 A thousand will flee
at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
you will all flee away,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
like a banner on a hill."
18 Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
he rises to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

Hosea 2

2007-12-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Israel Punished and Restored
2 "Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
3 Otherwise I will strip her naked
and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
turn her into a parched land,
and slay her with thirst.

4 I will not show my love to her children,
because they are the children of adultery.

5 Their mother has been unfaithful
and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, 'I will go after my lovers,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.'

6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
'I will go back to my husband as at first,
for then I was better off than now.'

8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal.

9 "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her nakedness.

10 So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.

11 I will stop all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts.

12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
and wild animals will devour them.

13 I will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,"
declares the LORD.

14 "Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.

15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

16 "In that day," declares the LORD,
"you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master. '

17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
no longer will their names be invoked.

18 In that day I will make a covenant for them
with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.

19 I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.

20 I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will acknowledge the LORD.

21 "In that day I will respond,"
declares the LORD—
"I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth;

22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel.

23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.'
I will say to those called 'Not my people, ' 'You are my people';
and they will say, 'You are my God.' "

2007-12-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

How do we know if should be waiting for God or if God is waiting for us?

Advent Resolution: Waiting

2007-12-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

I learned on Sunday that waiting is a spiritual discipline. I never considered that before (but Foster didn't add into the Celebration of Discipline, so its not my fault). I feel like I've been trained to combat every problem in life with prayer and action, because if something is going wrong, we should fix it. To simply stop thinking, considering, trialing, creating, etc, and instead to just wait is a new concept.

This is a little dangerous isn't it? Maybe I'm afraid that waiting will lead to idleness, but maybe my fear is deeper than that. What if I'm really afraid to wait because I don't know what to wait for? What if I work not to keep me from being lazy, but what if I work because I'm not satisfied what God would have me wait for. So I work and imagine more and more in a vain attempt to find a conclusion that suits me.

I think that God does give us power to change things here on earth. I think God wants us to dream and hope for better than what we see. However, even in the midst of ministry and the love's best intentions there is room for patience. As a resoltion for this new year, I think that as I go into ministry I want to be guided by more than trial and error, and instead wait for God to reveal opportune moments through the Holy Spirit for me to act in. After all it's God, not I, that is mighty to save.

I'm trying to learn: How do we wait? Please contribute.

Psalm 131

1 My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.

Because of Winn-Dixie

2007-12-01T17:17:00.000-08:00

Friday at the elementary school I borrowed the book, Because of Winn-Dixie. I read it Saturday morning, and I was actually quite pleased with myself because I've never finished a whole book like that in a morning. It didn't occur to me until after I'd finished it that all I'd managed to do was read a 183 page book that was relatively the same size as my hand,size 12 font and double spaced proving to me and every one who questioned that I indeed had surpassed the fourth grade reading level.

None the less I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I got a lot out of it. I think I may read some more children's books because I figure that everything you teach children is more or less everything worth knowing. Maybe I can finish the Chronicles of Narnia (or as I like to call them the Chronicles of gnar gnar- silent "g" of course) over break.

Anyway Because of Winn-Dixie has this interesting quote that spoke to me, "Gloria says that you can't hold on to anything. That you can only love what you've got while you've got it" (DiCamillo 167). I feel like we know that nothing lasts forever so a lot of my love may be motivated by making people want to stick around more. But I'm being taught how to love people not because I want them to stay, but just because they are there. I want to be more aware of what/who I've got and how to best love them and enjoy them for the sake of the moment.

The book also makes me want a dog.

this post is about my grandma

2007-11-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

My grandma is my hero. Only in the last few years have I realized that my grandparents are really people who have struggled and hurt and experienced life, and not just innocent, simple jollier versions of my mom who make cookies and play golf all day. For my nursing class we have to do a "Well Elder" project where we interview an elderly person and comment about the aging process and how our client has responded to it. So I'm interviewing Grandma Bunny (I don't really know why we call her that--but maybe you understand my disillusionment a little better now). Anyway, she has an amazing story.

My grandma and grandpa got engaged after a grand total of three weeks of knowing each other. My grandma was 18 and my grandpa was 30. At the time, my grandma was just starting to explore her faith in a Presbyterian church youth group. She was attending college at, Michigan State, and was very successful and diligent in her studies. After she got married though, her whole life changed and she began, in a way, to lose herself. She stopped going to school, and within two months of marriage became pregnant. My grandfather was Catholic and demanded that his children would be raised Catholic, so in order to keep the family unified and be respectful to her husband, she became Catholic and cut all ties with other parts of the church. She said she can still remember the priest explaining that she was expected to be submissive, and what that meant for her marriage. She needed to keep the house in order, be a supportive wife, and adhere by certain Catholic ways of doing things, including a kosher means of "birth control" resulting in the births of seven children over the years. Now, its not as if my grandma did not enjoy motherhood. In fact being able to hold and care for babies became a sense of emotional release for her. As she told me of her life though, she explained this sense of loss of identity that she lived without for 30 years. When she finally started to regain a sense of herself she started participating in Bible studies in a protestant church, taking classes at a community college, and thinking of herself as an individual.

I don't exactly know how to explain my admiration for my grandma without creating some sort of paradox, but I feel like life in general is better characterized paradox than logic (or maybe just mine). I think that her sacrifice was a noble thing. She was able to maintain a personal faith in God over the years, despite being forced into a Catholic manner of doing things*. She is a very strong person, I think, for being able to raise seven children (one of which has extensive mental and social disabilities). I think that if I ever get married and have a family and all that I would desire to have a similar selflessness. However, the fact that she had a loss of identity makes me question what it means to sacrifice and serve people; I don't think I want to live like that. There is a sense of dignity that my grandma was robbed of for 30 years and I think that is wrong. So my struggle is how do you balance your sense of identity and purpose while living out Jesus, in the language of Philippians 2, considering others and better than yourself and emptying yourself for them.

I think I actually have an answer to this one. My grandma may have been living it right. She was being Jesus for her family. Its not my grandma or her service who is at fault, but people's response to it. It was her society that was to blame, it was her family, it was the church that was in the wrong. The problem was not that my grandma was acting as Jesus would act, but that people treated her as they treated Jesus. I hope that we as Christians and disciples have at least learned how Jesus should have been treated. That when people lower themselves, they are to be raised in praise. When people sacrifice themselves to us, we in turn sacrifice ourselves to them. We submit to each other out of reverence for Christ. Too often we step on those who lower themselves, and we demand every last drop of those who empty themselves. Maybe more of our problems with the church and the brokenness that often characterizes it can be resolved not simply by people trying to act more like Jesus, but with people trying to treat people more like Jesus when they see him in others.

So, Jeff I think I'm beginning to understand the importance of giving each other identities.

*I get that the Catholic church is a dynamic thing sometimes influenced by cultural and societal forces apart from spiritual ones. I don't mean to attack Catholics or condemn them as if they are the only ones guilty of screwing with the word of God. I do think though that in general Catholic and Protestant faith is very different. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, but either way, in my experience, its reality and even more so in the past.

"he was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious?"

2007-11-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

1 corinthians 11:
3Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is just as though her head were shaved. 6If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. 7A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. 8For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.
11In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God. 13Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. 16If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.

It would be tempting for me to throw out this whole passage seeing as no one really seems to take the head covering thing seriously anymore. I confess I don't really know how to read this passage; I don't know how to separate the eternal truth from the cultural truth or if there is a difference. I kinda feel like I need to learn Greek before I tackle this text, or at least take New Testament.

However there are some themes in this section that make me question my identity in God as a woman, or young woman, or girl--whatever I am. “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” Am I made to serve men? Because honestly—and this may be crossing the personal-information-you-don’t-post-online-line, but sometimes I feel like I am. It’s easy, I think, for girls to fall into this line of thinking that we need a man to make us complete; to fulfill our purpose. I’d like to know how much of that is creation and how much of that is crap. Sure, using whatever power I have in hermeneutics I can think of verses that contradict that sort of thinking, but then again, those verses were written by Paul (he’s a dude). It seems like most of the references made to women in the Bible follow the same sort of thinking. I don’t know what to think about myself. I don’t know what to believe.

Of course, I can’t ignore verses 11-12 either. That at the bottom of things men and women are not independent of each other; we are both in fact dependent on God. So that means we need each other. I guess the questions is, how we need each other. Do we need each other differently? And what/who do we need to be?

I also think I should add 1 corinthians 7:34 which says, "an unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit." Of course that's also from a sort of cloudy area of scripture.

I don't know. Can someone make some sense of this?

I will seek him and find him when I seek him with all my heart?

2007-11-11T18:59:00.001-08:00

I remember during my senior year telling Sarah Burns and Vanessa Rude how excited I was to go to Point Loma soon. Then, I thought, I would be away from all the distractions and expectations I had at home and would be able to start over. I thought I'd be able to seek God more devotedly and leave all my hinderances at home. Unfortunately I brought myself with me, and here I am wondering if I've moved anywhere. There are still big questions, there are still boys, and there are still friendships I don't know what to do with. I don't know if I'm any closer to realizing God than I was two years ago, and that makes me lose hope.

What does it mean to seek God? How much does it have to do with ourselves?

2007-11-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

at work today two kids came up to me on separate occasions asking me if I was a nerd--simply based on the fact that I was wearing glasses. i miss those days.

2007-11-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

True or false? Jealousy seems to be the only emotion that God feels that we can't righteously imitate.

2007-10-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

We're one
But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

- U2, One

Dirt

2007-10-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

Coming up at Point Loma is a "theology on tap" discussion about the question "does God have a plan?" I've been thinking about it a lot because I don't really think I understand the significance of the question. I don't like it too much. To me it seems regardless of the answer to that question, we have to live and make choices. In my experience God hasn't given me a lot of insight into the specifics of this "plan" before I live it, and I find he cares more about the way that I live than the what that I live. He tells me the way more than the what.

However, certain pericapies (yes!) in the Bible seem to show that who and what we are is kind of out of our hands. That's discouraging to me, especially when I read the parable of the sower and I start to think about which dirt I am. We are the dirt in that parable right? That's what I thought. Anyway, if I am the dirt with the thorns, I'm not too happy about that. But I don't really know how to go about changing that. I really want to be good dirt, however my life has shown that I definitely am a little thorny. ha. What I mean is in the past, the worries, pleasures, and greed in the world get in the way of the growth of the word of God in my life. And I feel like I have seen people who are good dirt, and I'm not like them. If I'm stuck being throny dirt I'm pissed.

Jesus, what's your point, why would you even tell us this parable if we had no hope of change. Can I be good dirt?

Homelessness is the new Africa, except a hell of a lot cheaper

2007-10-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

It seems to be the trend nowadays. Maybe it's not a trend, but a revolution (or maybe its a trend brought on by someone else's Revolution--sorry, i couldn't resist making that reference...it was Irresistible...ha. maybe only i thought that was funny, but that's ok because that makes up 33% of the people who will read this) Anyway, yes homelessness. I had a long meeting with Becky Modesto yesterday about bread of life and homeless ministry. We talked about ways to handle all the eagerness to get involved. The thing is, having all the people who want to be involved is kind of overwhelming because homelessness is a very fragile thing, and its quite rude to think that just because you bring a few PB&J's and the best intentions you have the right to come into someone's living space and stay awhile. Oh crap, did I just convict myself?

In response to all the interest, we (some really spiritual people with leadership positions) are going to be taking steps to educate the point loma community (get over it) about homeless ministry. During my meeting with Beck-dawg she asked me if I found any unexpected prejudices while doing ministry. As much as I hate this, I really do have prejudice against the point loma community. I have a lot of doubt about the sincerity of this sudden interest in homelessness. I don't think people realize the commitment that homeless ministry takes and I only say that because I am only starting to realize it. In homeless ministry we don't minister to the homeless, we minister to homeless people, ideally. Ahh I'm getting frustrated writing this because I don't understand anything this paragraph is done.

Well actually what I really wanted to say was that if I really cared about homeless ministry, I think I would get really excited about all the sudden enthusiasm of homeless outreach. After all didn't Paul say that the important thing is, whether from false motives or true, that the word of God is preached? And how can I judge people's motives without even giving them a chance. I hope that in the future I can have more faith in point loma and ultimately more faith in God and his work in the ministry. I hope that I can look past my doubts and concentrate on the opportunities we have. We are the church and we should be in this together and I really don't want my prejudice to get in the way of God's justice. I know that none of us really know how to do good homeless ministry, but we can learn if we are taught.

2007-10-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

Ok so here's an email that I wrote to a couple of profs on campus. Not all of them replied and none of them replied in great detail, but I still found it interesting. Check it out:

Hi,

A friend and I have been talking lately about how our options (as Christians) for ministry and our ideas for hope and change are limited by our rules and assumptions as Americans. In our discussion we started talking about passages in the Bible like those found in Romans 13:1-7. Can statements like, “there is no authority except that which God has established” be applied to our government today? What responsibilities (if any) do we have as citizens to the American government? To what extent are we to let the laws of the land determine our actions (especially when these laws limit ministry opportunities)? Obviously these aren’t easy questions to answer, but I assume you all have had to come to some sort response to these struggles. Hopefully in getting multiple responses, my friend and I will be able to come to some sort of conclusion. Thanks.

Maddie Flaig
Soph. nursing major

Hello Mary. I suppose if it applies to the US, then it must also apply to Iran, North Korea, the former Iraq, and so on.

There is much, much more that can be said about all this -- and I'd be happy to meet with you (and/or your friends), but just can't type all that out right now. Suffice it to say that, as far as I'm concerned, the Church is our most fundamental social / political identity, and it is not subject to human boundaries, borders, languages, etc. I do not believe at all that being a Christian obliges us to be unquestioning supporters of our country -- and that in fact it will always move us toward resistance against collapsing Christianity into national identity / support.

Dr Lodahl

Maddie,

Good to hear from you. Wow. This is a big question (and a really good one!). Of course, much too big to give a quick answer to. Let me at least suggest an important starting point for the scripture texts angle. As a biblical scholar, I would want to put on the table that all of our consideration of biblical passages like the Romans one must begin by thinking about them in context. What was the context of Paul's statements there? Why does he say them? This is important because, as you know, we do not simply take whatever the Bible says and apply it directly to our situation (ex: women covering their heads in church!). So, we should not feel like such passages demand that we give a certainly loyalty to a government, especially when such a government is acting in ways that are clearly out of keeping with the messages of love and forgiveness found in the Gospel.

Does that help any?

Thanks for thinking about this stuff!
Best,
Dr. Kelle

Maddie,
Since I do not know you or the context of your question I can only reply in general terms (but will be happy to be more specific if you want to talk in detail).
Does Romans 13 apply today?--Yes. If it was true for the Roman dictatorship, it is certainly true for the U.S. By the way, when I lived in the USSR in the 1980's Christians there also recognized that it applied to their government.
Of course, there is always the great Acts 4:19-20 qualification--all Christians recognize that the laws of God are superior to the laws of man.
Blessings on you as you wrestle with these issues.
Prof Wood

2007-10-18T18:19:00.001-07:00

hi jeff!

loving God and loving people

2007-10-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

Here's something tough to chew on. So I was talking to Rabbi Jeff today and we came to an interesting realization. I was talking about how hard it is to share my struggles with people even though ideally I should be able to rely on God's worth in me enough to not be afraid of what people think of me. If we look for our validation in God then other people's opinions of us shouldn't matter right?

Well Rabbi Jeff thought that idea was misguided. He said that in the same way we love God by loving others, God loves us through the love of others. That its acutally ok to get our validation from others. What a beautiful thought, maybe. Acutally its not because unlike God, people can be nasty to each other without just reason. We can't trust others the way we trust God, right? So then how do we go about putting our hearts in the hands of others?

It seems like we get stuck somewhere on either end. That we either look for love and validation only from God and then we are stuck in the guilt-ridden misery of trying to pretend that we don't care what others think or we are whores to our friends and have no sense of intrinsic worth. I've made no conclusion yet, sorry.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

homeless ministry

2007-10-06T09:41:00.001-07:00

There are so many people who want to be involved with homeless ministry. Enough that I feel like we could really do something. Maybe we already are. I was talking to a lady last tuesday who said that Point Loma kids had a pretty good reputation on the streets.

Here's a prayer for it (is it really biblical to write prayers on a blog?):

God, I don't want to pretend to be the answer to homelessness. I help me to simply be obeidient to you. Guide me as your hands and feet and help me to see your face in those I touch. Make this path straight. In your son's name. Amen.

2007-10-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

I hate that blogs can evoke so much vainity.