Rambling since yesterday.
My jeep has been low on gas and flashing the little alarm thing all week so I decided to buz down to the other end of town to fill it up tonight on my way from work to home. Unfortunatly it was so cold that when I got down to the station the pump was iced up and gas came out in a little tinny trickle.
In other news tonight, it looks like optical computing may actually happen sometime before I am old and grey.
I’ve been studying CSLewis lately, specifically his book MereChristianity. I think he brings up a very interesting perspective on some ideas that have gotten warped in our society. Right now I’m thinking about the way he ties loving, liking and charity together.
After thinking about it and finding some examples in my life, I realize that you can love somebody without liking them. This brings up the question of what love is. I believe that it is not a feeling, but an act of the will. Charity should not be limited to giving to the poor, it should be a life attitude, the living out of our love. Liking, being fond of someone, is an entirely separate issue.
Sometimes liking comes naturally, sometimes disliking. In loving in the christian sence, I think we often learn to like. In setting our will to be charitable towards someone whom we naturally dislike, they become easier and easier to love, and even perhaps like.
The oposite seems to me also true. Natural dislike, if let fester, becomes contempt and hate. Even apathy, a passive rather than active vice, builds upon itself. Ignoring somebody as you walk by them on the side walk the first time is hard, and easy to feel remorsefull about. Ignoring them for the 50th time is much easier.
—-
Man has some intrinsic ability to notice his own depravity. Why?
I rebuilt my desk today. After rotating one of my monitors and having it fall over for the third time I figured it was time to be a little more organized about it, so I tore everything apart and built a new desk attatched to the wall with a glass top, more leg clerance, nicer wire (spagetii) management. I also took all of my monitors out of their shells to get them closer together and stable. The result is not pretty but very functional. Pictures to come.
The few days where I can go to bed without having to set an alarm are the greatest luxuries of my week!
Today is one of those days. You know the ones. The ones where everything seems to suck.
In all honestly, it’s probably my fault. I tried the pity-party technique of listing everything that was wrong, and most of them were my fault. To top off the last I woke up this morning and in a four o’clock delerium decided that I was mad at God for not making it snow. I supposed I should work on that.
It all started out yesterday evening durring dinner out. We were discussing how much we didn’t like meetings, which jogged my memory about a youth group leadership meeting I had forgotten earlier in the day. Much beating up of the self.
I ran across two more reasons why I am not and have never been enrolled in a school of any kind. Reason number one came from SundaySchool this morning in which a kid described the relative joys of having to write a 20 page paper on the health of the Uncompaghre river. The other is from Naomi Chana’s blog entry from the 12th, In Which I Cannot Bilocate.
We sang TheWonderfulCross this morning at worship. We sang this at Urbana03 and as we sang it this morning I was almost there again. I can’t wait to sing that in heaven when I will be able to actually sing.
To everybody who is concerned about my WebLog being too much about “my religion”, I’m sorry. Well not really. Fist of all, I am not making you read it. Second, as documented at the top of my PersonalHomePage, this site is /designed and organized primarily for my own use. Anything you gain by reading it is purely a side effect and I make no warranty express or implied as to fitness for any particular purpose./ This WebLog has been an extention of that and it is more of a journal than a typical blog. The most usefull things for me to re-read almost always relate to my relationship with my savior, JesusChrist.
That being said, constructive ideas on what else I can include along the way are always welcome, along with your FeedBack and SpellingCorrections.
Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own goodness or my ability to obey God’s law, but I trust Christ to save me. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. Philipians 3:8
I’ve been fasting today in behalf of out the youth I work with at church and around town. Actually all of the youth leaders split up the week so that one of us is fasting all the time.
It has been an interesting experience. I’ve fasted many times before, but I have found the day very challenging. I have never been through a full day at work with so much prayer for one thing interspersed.
The 7th and 8th grade classes at OurayHighSchool put on GodSpell this evening. I went just for the heck of it. My impressions from the night are as follows.
Yes, this will be a little bit odd for a weblog. These are actually my notes for tonights CoffeeHouse talk typed out into a semi-readable form. I would write something else, but this is what has been on my mind today; well for that matter the last week. If you think you’ll be offended by a what is basically a sermon stuck into my WebLog, you don’t have to read it.
—-
Today I am going to relay the testimony of a girl that I met at Urbana03 and look at some verses that I think both speak to the depth of God’s love for us.
Allison Miguel is a black girl in her middle twenties. This summer she was on a missions trip to Mokkattam Egypt, a subburb of Cairo. Mokkattam is a community of garbage collectors. They survive by going into Cairo and collecting garbage, and then bringing it back to their front yards and sorting it out, looking for little trinkets that can be cleaned up and re-used. In her second week there Allison was walking to her work site, some sort of rescue mission, when she saw a young girl sitting in a front yard sorting trash. Seeing people sorting trash was quite familer by this time, but this was the first child she had seen doing it alone.
She stoped and watched, and as she did so her heart filled with love and compassion for the girl, and she felt a strong desire to show her that. She could not speak the language, but she remembered the way Jesus treated people, and so so walked over and sat down with the girl and started sorting trash. After a couple of minutes however she began to feal nauseous, but she did not want to give up. She prayed to God and asked for another way to show the girl love or strength to carry through with this.
As she prayed she felt God speaking to her, saying, “I also am a garbage sorter. This is what your sin looks like, feels like, smells like, to me. Every day I sort through this stuff that your standing in so that you can be forgiven.”
To me this is a crazy picture of what my God does for me daily. As I listened to Allison I thought of all the garabage in my life and was humbled at the thought of what my God does for me.
Allison sat and continued to sort trash. Every time she looked at the girl her heart was filled with love and it gave her strength to bear the smell. After a while the girl got up and came over with her hand out and said “es-mig-nora”, or “my name is nora”, and then went back to work. Allison couldn’t bring herself to leave. She felt like this was how God was calling her to demonstrate love. After another few minutes the girl found a toy doll in the refuse. She started jumping up and down and shouting in excitement, and came over to Allison to show it off, then went to the street to show the kids that had gathered to hear her shouting.
As Allison watched the girls excitement at finding a toy in the trash, she felt God speaking to her again. “Allison, this is how excited I get when I find something precious in you, some gift that I placed in you from your birth, and I can clean it off and use it for my Glory.”
Several other adults came by and tried to tell her not to do this, that she was an American and a guest here, and this was disgusting — even critisized the girl for makeing her do this, but Allison said, “No, I want to do this, she is my friend and this is how I can show her love.” … and she did – she kept at it all day and several days after that. It lead to a deep friendship with the girl and her family.
This story really hit me because it is a very graphic picture of how outragious our God’s love for us is, it’s a love that has no limit and it get’s down and dirty. It’s a love that knows the cost and is willing to pay it.
Now think about Jesus for a minute. Jesus left his perfect heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, and He came to earth to live with us. Why? I believe He did it because by entering our sin scared world with all it’s filth is how he chose to show His love for us. As if comming here wasn’t enough, check out his attutude after her got here.
In Luke chapter 5 there is a story about a man who was covered with leprosy comming to Jesus. Leprosy is a disease that attacks flesh. People eventually die from it simply because their flesh rots off of their bones. This man comes up to Jesus and begs on him on his knees to be healed. He says, “If you are willing you can heal me.”
Jesus reply is really cool. He doesn’t just say, “Be healed,” like I’m sure he could have done. Instead he walks over to the man and puts his hand on him and says, “I am willing. Be clean!”
Godis not afraid of your garbage! I know that there is junk in your lives and in your minds, just as their is in mind, but God knows what it is and in spite of it’s stench God is willing to touch it and to take it away from you. Psalms 103:12: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
When I think about the man that I am I tend to get a little depressed. /For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God/. It draggs me down to think of my own righteusness because in God’s eyes everything that I can do for myself is /as filthy rags/. But there is something really awesome that I can grab onto here. /Now a righteousness from God…has been made known…this righteousness caomes from God through faith in Jesus Christ/. Yes, all have sinned, but /all are freely justified by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus…you see at just the right time while we were still powerless Christ died for the ungodly…God demonstrated His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us/.
When Jesus walked over and touched the leaper and said, “I am willing”, he was not kidding. He knew the filth and he knew the cost, but he was willing to pay the price. Not just for that lepper, but for every sin of the human race. As they nailed Him to the cross, the most horrible death that the Romans could come up with, he hung there in pain and looked at the soldiers who spat at Him and said, “Father forgive them.” That is God’s heart for you. He is willing. Be clean.
In old testiment times the Jews used to kill animals and offer them as sacrafices, symbolizing the cost of their wrong doing. Then Jesus comes along, the perfect Son of God, and offered himself, his own life, so that we could be free forever from the chains of sin. Hebrews 9:14, “How much more then, will the blood of Christ, who offered himself unblemished to God, clense our conciences from acts taht lead to death, so that we may serve teh living God.”
Jesus hung on the cross to demonstrate His love for you. Will you see it? Now he reaches out and touches you, and cleanses your mind, cleans it up from acts that lead to death, so that you may serve the living God.
What now? He has touched us, is willing that we be clean, but what do we do? I’ll tell you what we do! We enter presence fo God with confidence. /let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance fo faith, having our hearts sprinkled to clense us from a guilty concience and having our bodies washed with water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithfull. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deads…Let us encourange one another/.
As you go through your day think about encouranging eachother. When you see a friend down because of a rough day, or frustrated with a class, or elated with a good grade, or whenver, go to them, remind them of Christ’s love for them.
There is one more thing I want to share with you. If you are still feeling a heavy heart, feeling weighted down by you don’t know what, don’t be too surprised. This is still a messed up world. /We know that the whole creation has been groaning…right up until now. Even we ourselves who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our redemption.” God does not promise you an easy life, but there is comming a time when you will be rdeamed and /every tear will be wipped away/. Also, until that time he has promised his Holy Spirit to be with us as a guide and comfortor. One thing the Spirit does for us is pray for us. /The spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express,. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will/.
SnowBoarding, day 6.
It was good to be back in my home church this week. I feel like my time away was really great, but I’m glad to be back and hope I have learned things that will be usfull in this, the rest of my life. Speaking of being away, I may have finished typing out my notes on Urbana03 this evening.
