a day in the life

Life really does change so quickly. I’ve lived a lifetime, it seems, in the last 3 to 4 years. So much living, in fact, that I’ve begun to forget some of it for the massive amount of information it presents to my wee, little memory.

Somewhere along the way, my life shifted. Not so much unlike the shifting of baggage in the trunk of a car, really. No wait, that just sounds like my life is nothing but baggage.. and over all it just seems like a very unappealing simile.

So then, my life did change direction, once upon a time, in a monumental way. I discovered quite suddenly that there was a God, and this God was indeed better than me and deserving of something from me just from it’s existence. It’s a discovery I’ve never gotten over, or shaken off, or been able to ignore for any real length of time. However, that wasn’t the ‘monumental way’ I referred to a moment ago; though, by itself, that was a big deal. No, the really big one was when I saw Christ as existent, powerful, alive and relating to me that things really changed. For the first time the Bible was more than just a book, and the reality of God and the spiritual realm was a real presence in my thoughts and understanding. Lot’s of questions, but surprisingly (now that I think about it) not the kind of questions that a skeptic has, or even the kind of ‘probing from the outside’ kind of questions that a truth-seeking individual would normally have when looking at a religion. Instead, I had tons of questions that, yes, sought truth, but also had the distinction of having a common answer REQUIRED within any response. I knew God existed and some things about this God which were evident to me from life, the world, and what-have-you (known to some as ‘general revelation’), and so some answers that certain people would try to give me to my questions didn’t make sense; primarily answers that centered on mankind or denied something eternal about God or just didn’t really rely on the Bible or Christ. It was like I had a truth-o-meter inside that, while it could be fooled for a little while, never rested or felt easy about a thing until it was complete.

I don’t know all things now, of course, but some things I know are what I would consider to be complete understandings for the moment. That is to say, they are what I need to know for the moment until I either need to know more, or I discover that they are insufficient to live with and work from.

I wish, at times, that I would be closer to my former community of believers who aided in birthing me and nurturing me, but seasons change, don’t they? Infants must grow and children must struggle and overcome, and all the while, never lose sight of their dependency on the parent; for the parent is an empowering presence to the child, and all is well when they are near. Praise God.

I’d like to take this moment to say that I really like my friends. I miss many of them, but without them I have begun to learn that I am only complete with Christ, my Messiah. Still, their lives are worth much to me; perhaps more than I’ll ever get to show, practically.

So here’s me at the desk in Dallas… this is where I spend a lot of time now.

reflections of the day: God and women

How can I appreciate God if I never stop and appreciate him? Redundant question? No. If I don’t pause and observe and reflect and enjoy who God is; essentially, if I don’t stop and make it a point to appreciate God and who he is, what he does, how he expresses himself; then how can I expect my sudden enjoyment and appreciation of his nature and person-hood one random day in the future? I think many people ‘know’ that they should spend time reading God’s word and praying, but only really because it’s been built up as ‘what you’re supposed to do’. At least, I think that’s how it’s been portrayed to me. But the value of those things comes from the reality of what they really are, and from the sincere hunger and honest desire to pursue them, and honestly, a lot of contemplation.

God’s word, the Bible, is God speaking to us through history, poetry, songs, narrative story and the witness of those whom he has dealt with. He uses people, events, real-life situations, nature and his personal intervention in the world all written down in one place, and, indeed, in our day to day lives, to communicate eternal facets of his character to the people of the world. In fact, because we have so much written down in such a way as that we can sit back and see the bigger picture, we can actually see God’s character better from a vantage point of hundreds of years later than we likely could if we were in the middle of those same events; though, God has not kept himself secret until the Bible’s completion, I think it’s still easier to be able to assess so much history at once. So God has made knowledge of himself available to us.

Prayer is the ability to participate in a relationship with the God who has revealed so much about himself, and just like any relationship, it works better with regular communication. Actually knowing the God of all things and being able to speak with him is a huge concept to really grasp, but it’s also very simple and matter-of-fact. Quite often, the conversation gets hung up on my wonder and awe at the different attributes of God and the many reasons he should be praised, and, indeed, the many ways in which he can be.

So, appreciation, then: the assessment of a thing which, in turn, causes the assessor to praise or look respectfully or approvingly upon the thing being assessed. You have to think about something and about some part of, if not the whole of, it’s nature and/or being in order to arrive at an opinion or overall observational inventory concerning that something. Without thinking on God or making observations about him, you can’t possibly appreciate him. It’s just not a passive process. There must be a vested interest in who God is and what makes him God for anything having to do with him to make sense.