Conspiracies and the Kennedys

The other day I needed to be at work exceptionally early. It was the day right before the holidays began and quell nightmare. Those days are always pure insanity. 

I arrived and remembered that there are a few other people in the office who arrive that early every day. They are morning people by nature, admittedly I am not, but after a direct shot of espresso to the head and heart, I was able to chirp with the best of them. Except, instead of chirping, I listened. They were discussing JFK. 

I’ve always found discussions about John F. Kennedy to be interesting if not especially relevant. He was assassinated and there were many strange parts about his assassination. This is all true. And if you discuss the case from every possible angle, you will always find more and more strange things. Assassinations are always interesting because we don’t know what causes them. Most are usually done by the lone-nut-fanatic (John Wilkes Booth comes to mind) yet the idea of a shadowy hand directing the puppet strings still persists. Why is this?

The interest many people show in conspiracy theories and in New World Order ideas being propagated has always confused me a little. While I love to listen to conspiracy theories, back in my head I have this idea that none of this could possibly be true. There are some people who believe in the Masons and believe that there’s a group of about 4 or 5 men in the world that control governments and stock markets and mass movements and I don’t buy it. For starters, I’ve never met anyone smart enough to run an entire world on their own. Have you? The last time I checked, a country that produces reality television and Facebook is not intelligent enough to run an entire planet, but that’s just me.

In addition to the above, conspiracy theories and the idea that our world is run by only a select secretive few leaves out the possibility of God. In a world where we believe in God and believe that He is controlling all, the idea that the power remains in the hands of only some is just a wee bit foolish.

Setting these things aside, it seems to be that human beings believe in conspiracy theories because we like to speculate. Our social instincts drive us to gossip and to get together and rehash plans and ideas until they become tall tales larger than life. Eventually truth and lies merge in our heads to the point where they become one and the same and the truth, the real truth, is lost. It’s lost to the vestiges of time and the stories and implications of others.

Back in the office, as these thoughts were running through my head, I listened to those around me talking about JFK. For myself personally, the stories have always fascinated me. The Kennedys, love them or hate them, were a beautiful family. Graceful Jackie and darling John Jr. and Sweet Caroline captured the hearts of the American people and it’s easy to see why. My dad has a LIFE Magazine that published the details of Kennedy’s assassination shortly after it happened and when I was young, I’d stare at the pictures for hours, lost in the ideas and dreams of Kennedy Camelot. 

I suppose the reason I remain interested in the Kennedys, and why everyone else does, too, was because of that beautiful, fascinating quality they possessed. Setting aside the important things (Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cold War, etc.) one could learn to really like the Kennedys as a first family, and America did, and then the idea was shattered with a brutal gunshot. I suppose this is the reason why we still remain fascinated by them…because we all saw the dream and then it was gone with a bang.

I wasn’t around when the Kennedys were here. The only Kennedy remaining in that particular family branch I don’t care for (Maria Kennedy Shriver, you would have been a terrible senator). The magic, for me, is a secondhand magic. It’s usually the best kind. In my mind, the Kennedys are a series of pretty pictures. I didn’t ever have the opportunity to dislike them for the things that mattered (politics), I was just able to be enthralled from afar. Familiarity does breed contempt, as Shakespeare so famously put it, and I was never familiar enough. 

Listening to the others in the office who actually lived through that time though, I can understand why they would still talk about the assassination of JFK. I suppose we will continue to discuss it until all of us who saw the pictures are finally gone. 

Thoughts on a December Day

It’s Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. I always remember this date, although I think many others forget it. There are probably some who live in this country who don’t know what Pearl Harbor was. This is sad considering what those men and women went through on that day. It’s interesting to think about as well as grotesque – bodies being blown to bits, people being burned, mass hysteria…I’m grateful I was not there and I am willing to remember the sacrifice of everyone who went through something then not just to honor them, but so I can keep myself mindful of the prayers I need to pray so that never happens to me. I think this is the two-fold purpose of remembering the fallen. One, primarily to honor them and two, to make sure it never happens again.

Anyway, it’s cold outside and dreary, or it was this morning, and I have a bad case of allergies that have pounced on me and threatened to snatch my oxygen away. They’re such a pain, allergies. I read somewhere that eating clean for a few months can make them go away and I have considered giving up chocolate and bread of all forms just so this miracle can occur.

My Christmas tree still sits at HEB waiting to be purchased. It simply isn’t Christmas until my tree is set up in my living room and decorated. This December is already moving by at the pace of lightning – the first round of holiday parties begin next week and I’m sure they’ll continue until pre-diabetic comas have descended on the attendees. That’s the only thing I have against Christmas. I end up either exerting a tremendous amount of self-discipline or waddling. Neither of these are fun to experience and unfortunately there is no in-between stage one can levitate in - slightly waddling and slightly saying no.

How nice is it that we have the opportunity to buy Christmas trees and celebrate holidays. It’s such a blessed world we live in. We are free from dictators, from oppression of all kinds, and we are blessed with more than enough goodness, in terms of presents and food and friends and family. This American life is beautiful in so many ways, and I’m thankful to be alive, enjoying it. 

A random Monday

It’s been a hot minute since I had a chance to write something. I’ve been so BUSY lately…and also lazy. Lazy and busy and listless. Anyway, but today is the day where that ends and where new life and new verbiage begins.

Yesterday was a lazy Monday. Typically when you think of Monday it’s associated with words like “hectic” and “stressful” and “busy” and mine was all of those things until I came home from work. It was cold and rainy outside and a trip to HEB was the only thing worthwhile that I accomplished.

I enjoy grocery stores. Up North the grocery stores are small and overly packed with carbohydrates that I’m not interested in purchasing. St. Louis in particular had a depressing set of grocery stores. They were tiny and not very well-stocked and just a drag to go in. But here in Texas where we have the wonderment that is HEB, purchasing broccoli can be fun-filled and slightly joyous. Perhaps I’m the only person who feels this way. Probably so. In the countries I visited in Europe, the highlight of my trip was a visit to the local Eurospar. If you want culture, real culture, go to the country’s local grocery store. The cashiers typically do not speak English if they bother speaking to you at all, and there aren’t helpful signs translating everything into your local tongue. You are on your own amongst the cheese and bread and salami.

Followed up my trip to HEB with a visit to Chick-Fil-A because there’s nothing that says fast food quite like a visit to the grocery store. The heaps of produce don’t cook themselves you know! While in the drive-thru, the helpful young lady took my order. While we exchanged pleasantries, her male counterpart came over and made a awkwardly flirtatious attempt in her direction. She shrugged him off, annoyed. I asked her what he wanted and she looked at me, whispered, “he’s weird”. I laughed and she remembered I was a customer and smiled and said, “I’m just kidding,” but I knew she wasn’t.

Ah to be young and work in Chick-Fil-A where you’re certain that this is only a small stepping stone and surely greater things lie ahead. And usually they do. Especially at Chick-Fil-A. I’m not sure why, but the employees there are usually much more pleasant and well-groomed than your average fast food place. I’ve yet to meet a dumb cashier at Chick-Fil-A but at my local Whataburger, I had to repeat my order four times the last time I went.

It was still wrong.

So here’s to Tuesday! It’s the first day we’ve had without rain for a while now. This disappoints me a little – gloomy and rainy days speak to me in ways that merely sunshine days do not.

Life goes on! Thankfully.

There are a lot of things going on right now. I don’t just mean things in the world, although those are happening too, but I also refer to life. My life.

Currently I have the beginnings of a terrible onset of allergies. I let loose a sneeze like a cannon in church last night much to my shock and horror. It was one of those embarrassing moments when you feel like everyone is looking at you because you just distracted them horribly but what else was there to do? Sneezes must be sneezed.

In addition to this, each day since I arrived back from St. Louis I’ve tried to refrain from eating sugar but each day I have failed. There are mini candy bars scattered all around the office and what, pray tell, am I supposed to do with mini candy bars? Like 13 year old prima donnas, they beg for attention, their true dark natures hidden beneath a façade of crinkly wrappers (I refer to both the teenage girls AND the candy bars). So I eat them and then I regret the sugar consumption and vow once again to try and not eat sugar. But…it’s hard. Not eating sugar reminds me of that one heiress, when asked how she kept her figure replied, “all you do is eat less”.

!!!!

But I digress. Political things aside, weight loss issues aside (with a vengeance) life is beautiful and good and full of wonderful things. Thanksgiving is almost here, Christmas is right after that, and life continues although for many who voted for Hillary Clinton, it seems like it should have ended this morning around 2 am. I’m glad I don’t care about politics that much anymore although I used to. What a relief! And what a time to be moving and breathing and living.

Election Day 2016: a follow-up

It’s a gloomy day. A foreboding, gloomy day. That line belongs out of a Bronte sister novel or some kind of novel (the kind with murders and elopements). Perhaps it is foreboding because of the election. In reality  it’s just another day in The Woodlands, Texas and the sun is probably shining elsewhere. Who knows? 

There is a strange feeling in the atmosphere. It’s of anticipation and slight dread and overall peace combined. I have had many, many people talk to me about this election today at work. All agree that each candidate is unsuitable and the unspoken question is: what happens next? And who would we consider suitable?

I have a theory and it partially explains why people are so unwilling to commit themselves to either candidate. This immense polarization between candidates leaves polite people at a standstill. We all have our opinions, we all voted for someone (some of us with a secret ballot, unwilling to commit themselves – I am one of these) yet none of us want to discuss anything. We are all noncommittally taking, or rather, not taking, a position in this election, unwilling to be put in either camp. It’s because none of us want to be seen as something we are not. We don’t want to be seen as another cog in the Democrat-wheel, lurking in the dank political shadows where politicians bribe each other and greed takes over, yet we don’t want to be tarred with the Donald Trump brush that shouts and screams and doesn’t make a lot of sense. So we are just staying quiet. We’re voting, but staying quiet.

I wonder what would have happened if there had been a suitable candidate this year? Would we have voted for him or her? Would we be as willing to keep silent about our opinions?

Tonight I will go to church and learn more about Jesus and His will and plan for my life. I don’t think it will have to do anything with Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton – and just a thought, but how horrible would it be if it did? I’m so glad our lives can rise above politics and political events. God’s stories are far greater than ours.

In the end I’m reminded of one of my favorite verses in the Bible: “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” It’s a small verse but it says a great deal.

Happy Election Day! In spite of.

Election Day 2016

I would be sadly amiss if I didn’t post anything about the looming presidential election. Several million people have voted already (I am sure) and maybe you are one of them. I am one of them. I voted early because standing in line on Tuesday to support a list of laughable candidates was not appealing to me. 

This presidential election is not the most important election of our time. Regardless of what people might think, it really just is not. The most important presidential election has been every presidential election to date. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. It just comes as pure common sense that every election has led us to where we are; therefore, they have all been equally important.

As a Christian, I have heard many, many things about this election. Some of my fellow Christians have become remarkably vocal. Some have become remarkably silent. I have waxed both silent and vocal because I teeter between wanting to be a political junkie who must. be. heard. versus being an actual Christian who tries to love everyone, regardless of if they’re voting for abortion rights or gay marriage or other decidedly unchristian things.

This idea that all elections are important and that we should all have our voice heard is quite true. Unfortunately, there are quite a few people who don’t believe this way. I’ve heard many people, some of whom are my close friends, tell me that they weren’t voting because God is in control and whatever will happen He has planned out anyway. This response used to baffle and annoy me. Baffle, because it was true and I didn’t have a response and annoy because it wasn’t true yet I still did not have a response. Now, some odd years later, I know what I would say if someone confronted me with that statement. Regardless of if you are Christian or not, voting is important. It’s important because, although one can be a Christian, it’s not their only label. We are Christians in spiritual practice, but Americans in everything else we say and do. We pay taxes, drive on roads provided by the government, fight in wars, protest accordingly, practice our Amendment rights, etc. We are Americans AND we are Christians. The two are separate, distinct parts of our makeup. You can be an American without being Christian but you can’t be a Christian without being an American unless you weren’t born here in which case that’s another story. And that’s why you should vote. God does have everything in control and I find it completely unsurprising that this election wraps up with two of the most disliked candidates in the history of the United States (that I know of, perhaps this is not the only time). But just because He has it under control does not make you any less American.

One thing I have heard quite a bit this election is the phrase, “Jesus for president!” I’ve said it myself quite a few times and even wondered if I should write Him in. This theory of Jesus being the president is, of course, quite unrealistic. He would have a hard time being seen during the inaugural speech and it wouldn’t be fair to the other nations because He could read the thoughts and intents of their leaders. But never mind, Jesus for president is a great idea although an inherently kind of…silly one.

So tomorrow it happens! Luckily the Lord did foreordain that tomorrow I have church so I won’t be forced to venture out of my apartment to glue myself to a TV for election results. I will instead have things in their rightful place and will be focused on the One who really should be president (even if it’s a false idea) and that’s better than anything else.

Waiting

Full confession: I am a control freak, Type A, excessively perfectionistic type of personality.

I hate it when I can’t figure something out or when someone rejects my perfect solution. I have tried and failed at doing puzzles because the mismatched pieces make me feel anxious. I hate numbers that don’t match, and I don’t clean my house because when I finally start, I can’t stop because everything must be absolutely in order as well as be absolutely clean. (To my mother who’s reading this: I hope you buy that excuse.) 

Since God made me this way, I try to be myself but I am also very aware of how much most people dislike excessively Type A personalities so I temper myself a lot. A happy medium if you will. Sometimes it works, other times it fails miserably.

Because of my personality being how it is, I usually spend excessive amounts of my day planning and trying to figure stuff out. You can find several worst case scenarios with solutions in my back pocket just in case - (yes, I have a 401k and a rainy day savings account that I check religiously). Because I cannot help myself, even my downtime is planned out so really, it's not downtime, it's just another box to check off of my list. Relaxation = done! Approaching it from that perspective belies the point but that's another subject for another time.

What does all of this mean? It really boils down to the fact that I’m horrible at waiting because I plan my life out so I don’t have to wait and thus, I have been rendered incredibly impatient. This differentiates me from precisely no one else on the planet because we all hate waiting - it's a universal human trait. It isn't clear if we were born impatient but somewhere along the line, we all became that way. Waiting is HARD and if you don’t do it right, it’s exhausting.

That last sentence may have caught you off guard. It’s fine, many people don’t think about waiting except to think about how much they hate it. Most of us don’t consider that there’s a wrong way and a right way to wait. But there are means and methods to both.

The Bible does speak about waiting but oftentimes not in a direct fashion. However, the Bible is full of people who waited. Off the top of my head, I can automatically think of four people who were great for God yet still spent most of their time…waiting. There is Job, who waited while everything was taken from him. There is Abraham, who waited a whole century for his son, Isaac. Moses, who spent 40  years waiting in the desert, wandering in circles. The Apostle Paul, many people don’t consider him as someone who waited, but he spent most of his time in prison writing letters and waiting to be free. All of them waited. All of them felt impatient. And luckily for us, their stories are written down so we can learn the right and wrong ways to wait.

I actually want to pull this verse from Isaiah that illustrates how to wait. It’s a famous verse, many people quote it consistently, and it’s fully relevant to what I’m writing today.

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

This verse is used as an encouragement tool to those who are waiting, as it very well should be. But if you look at it closely, it’s also a set of instructions on how to wait. Zing!

So what do you do while you’re waiting? First, you renew your strength. Renewing your strength makes it sound as though you completely stop what you’re doing but that’s actually not the case. Any athlete who runs or does weights knows that the best way to improve your performance is to keep on going. You give yourself routine breaks of course, but you always keep doing what you’re doing. You never stop. Part of renewing your strength is maybe to take a break from one area and focus on another. This is why people who are serious about building their muscles work out their legs one day, then the next day they work out a completely different part of their body. They don’t stop, except for maybe one day a week, but they alternate the areas they exercise. They switch it up. 

Alternating ties in with the second part of the verse – flying with the wings of eagles. Eagles are known for their ability to soar, to ride high above the clouds and above all the other birds. Occasionally it becomes necessary to adopt an eagle-like mentality. You have to take a break, remove yourself from the situation and try to give your brain a fresh start. Soaring like an eagle gives you the ability to approach things with a new perspective. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you look at things from the outside of a situation, and perhaps from another person’s point of view. When you’re waiting, this can be key especially if the situation you’re waiting on doesn’t seem to be moving in the slightest. Also, a key note to take from this…when you’re soaring like an eagle, mountains actually don’t seem that tall or that big. This can be helpful to remember because mountains usually come across as unbending, unyielding, and definitely non-climbable. If your problem looks mountain-like, and most of them usually do, then approach it like an eagle from far above. It will seem much smaller from up top.  

And finally, the last part of the verse entails running without being weary and walking without being faint. This means that you are to never stop moving while you’re waiting. I think this is the most important key to successful waiting. When you’re waiting, you don’t stop working. Sometimes it seems as though you are getting absolutely nowhere but rest assured, if you keep walking, keep moving, keep running, keep going forward, then the waiting will not be in vain. Because although sometimes we think we're waiting on God to start working, the truth might be that He's waiting on you.

The Virtue in Not Being a Dumping Ground

It all started with cookies in the break room. Now, keep in mind, there are always cookies in the break room. Well, usually anyway. And okay, it’s not always cookies but brownies, doughnuts, pastries of some kind, whatever, will be found in one of our office kitchens. This is not unusual – every company worldwide has little office elves that fill it with excessive carbohydrates and other terrible things.

But here’s the thing: these particular cookies weren’t very good. This doesn’t mean anything, cookies are cookies and sometimes they get dried out or sometimes the vanilla proportions weren’t up to par or maybe they were overbaked rendering them dry and crumbly. It’s not really important. The important thing to note is that the free cookies in the break room were not that good…yet they were eaten anyway. All of them were gone by around noon.

It interested me. As an avid calorie counter and a dessert connoisseur, I’m interested when cookies are good and when they’re bad. If they’re bad, I won’t eat them. It’s too hard to expend the cost of the calories that one of those not too great cookies represent. But it seems that not everyone else feels this way because all of those so-so cookies were eaten without lack of thought or interest. They were just…consumed. And it made me think. Forgive me for turning cookies into a philosophical statement, but I wonder how many other things we mindlessly consume just because they’re there?

It appears to me that American culture has a lot of garbage in it. It’s all created for the masses, for people who don’t care about much of anything at all. From reality TV shows that showcase anything from Amish people to suburban housewives living one dramatic fantasy lie, to movies that essentially are one big noise, to songs that make no sense whatsoever and involve mostly more loud noises, there seems to be not too many things of value out there today. And it’s the valueless things that seem to take up more and more of the minds and hearts of the greater population. Forgive me for possibly sounding old and cranky (I am not old, I AM cranky) but what exactly are we putting on our plates here? Even our food is mediocre, created to be shoveled in in mass quantities without much taste. We buy without thinking, we eat without thinking, we dress according to current trend not according to principle, and we consume whatever comes along even if it’s corrupt and not fit for consumption.

These trends concern and alarm me. The culture is rotten. It stinks. So why then, do we consume it without thinking? Why are we so eager to spend ourselves and our dollars on mass media and mass-consumerism that adds essentially zero to our lives and in fact, is detrimental to our souls and to ourselves?

As Christians, we have a duty to ourselves and to Christ to treat our temples with respect. This speaks for both the inward and the outward part of us – the mind and body are two separate segments of one temple. Yet so often we just fill both our hearts and our bodies with garbage, without even thinking about it. Sometimes we don’t mean to and other times we just don’t care. This is what bothers me. As Christians, we should care. We should never expect for the culture to just float us along – it can’t. It will fail.

Today’s culture is not worth consuming. It really isn’t. It’s the equivalent of the dollar menu from McDonald’s; cheap and something you just eat to keep from dying. And so I have to ask today, what are you putting on your plate? 

Everyone Else has a Problem

Although I know I fall far from being perfect, there are a few times that I have been stumped when it came to the repentance part of my prayer time, puzzling over another hidden sin I might have done that I couldn’t think of. I think this happens to all of us. We are all far from perfect but generally speaking, we can’t always remember what it was we did to stop being that way.

And so, shielded from the memories of our past mistakes, we begin to look at others. It’s so much easier to find the flaw in a brother or a sister rather than look at the beam in our own eyes, isn’t it? It’s much more satisfying (at first) and unwinding over a good session where you pointed out flaws and failures and inconsistencies of those in your local community or church can make you feel righteous and smug. “After all,” you whisper to yourself, “I am definitely not perfect either but at least I’m not doing that.” And so it ends, our dissertation on others and their own failings.

I confess that I have done this myself. After all, I have a job, I don’t regularly do things that temper my holiness (or I try not to), I go to church faithfully and support the church faithfully…I am what you would call a good Christian. And good Christians have an unacknowledged right to point out the hypocritical tendencies in others…it’s how they can be saved, dontcha know.

And this is where we fail. This is where I fail. Because no matter how good I’ve done things, no matter how much I’ve given, none of it has taken me to heaven yet and the last time I checked the only man who was perfect was Jesus.

There’s one of the deadly sins at work here when we begin to look and completely focus on the issues of others. It’s called the sin of pride and for many of us, we relegate pride to “those people” who have huge mansions and cars and spend all their time and money on perfecting the outside. This thrust is well-deserved; pride does usually fall in the laps of “those people”. But that’s mostly because they’re participating in outward pride and in outward adornments. But how many times have each of us had pride hidden within our hearts that maybe didn’t come out in the form of an expensive purse or an expensive car? How many times have we picked something apart in our own congregation, harping endlessly on something we don’t see as right yet while looking around, there are no fruits from our endeavors anywhere? The answer is that far too many times we have rendered ourselves the judges and our fellow saints the condemned.

The only thing to counteract pride is humility and humility does not come so easily. However, it will come when you pray for it and usually in the place you don’t expect. So many times we think of humility in a completely bowed down fashion, living in a poverty-stricken stage. But sometimes humility comes when you don’t have all the answers to the questions even though you consider yourself to be intelligent. Or maybe humility comes when no open doors are provided to leave the place you want to leave and instead you have to stay where God has placed you, day after day and year after year.

God has unique ways of speaking and humbling us. But rest assured, when you pray away pride and self-righteousness, these ways will come and de-priding will probably be a painful process.

No one ever said being used was fun or being molded was a delightful task.

But, the benefits of moving completely past yourself and onto a world that needs you, you and the fruits of the Spirit you possess (you can have them, when you have no pride!) far outweigh the painful process of being humbled and molded and shaped into what you are supposed to be. And then, my friend, can God begin to really use you even in ways your formerly prideful self may not have imagined.

The Question of Right or Wrong (or if such a thing even exists)

I was listening to a Ted Talk the other day that I found extremely interesting. It was titled, “Why you think you’re right – even when you’re wrong”. The speaker, Julie Galef, was making the point that we believe certain things dogmatically because of our worldview and that occasionally this worldview should be questioned. After all, how do you know if your worldview is right or not?

Topics like this make me nervous in general. Not because I’m scared to question my beliefs, but because I’m concerned for the worldview of the speaker. Questions that invite you to examine your worldview and its accuracy can lead you down a long and complicated path filled with non-committal answers and a haze between right and wrong. Haziness between right and wrong is never good because how then do we base our morals? How do we plant our feet firmly on a ground that’s consistently changing by the picking apart of ourselves?

This is the age that we live in. It’s an age that invites you to question everything you believe and to dissect it all accordingly. To not do this is to render yourself backwards and close-minded. But I think that’s wrong. And lest you also put me in the “backwards and close-minded and 500 years ago” camp, let me explain myself.

There was a certain time in which people believed things without thinking much about them. We didn’t have to. Certain bedrock institutions of society didn’t make it necessary for us to question what we believed. Most people believed in God and went to church on Sunday. If you didn’t go to church on Sunday, it’s very likely that you were the oddball of your town. Homosexual marriage was not even a question because homosexuality was condemned, no questions asked. If you had a child out of wedlock, which didn’t happen that often because The Pill had not yet been invented and most people were too afraid to have sex before they were married (afraid of God or their mother or an unplanned pregnancy – you pick) you went somewhere else and hid out until the baby was born. Abortions weren’t as common because medical technology had not advanced that far. No one worried about pornography being a huge issue because to get a copy of something pornographic took a great deal of time and effort and most men weren’t willing to go through that trouble. Embryonic cell research wasn’t really a matter of ethics because that technology hadn’t been invented. Welfare wasn’t as big of an issue because not that many people were on it; churches and family members took care of you if you were down on your luck. The list goes on and on. And so many people didn’t have a hard time with the debates on certain moral issues because those options didn’t exist.

But, alas, they exist now and so we must use our brains and our hearts to determine what’s right and what’s wrong. And that comes to my issue. As Christians, we know certain things are wrong not just because of what we’ve been taught but because of what we read in the Bible. We know it’s wrong to have sex outside of marriage. We know gay marriage is wrong. And we know abortion is wrong because God references life in the womb as being a precious thing. And so there we have our moral stance. But what happens when we start to question it? What happens when we try to gray out the black and white areas of our lives?

It is the tendency of my generation and, in theory, the one preceding it, to reject anything that is traditional in favor of anything modern. We like to follow the “anything goes” trend. We mock and deride those with “old-fashioned” traditional values and look instead towards those who don’t seem to have any values at all. And this is where my generation sits. Not wanting to seem overly harsh and judgmental, we eschew traditional thinking because it’s seen as precisely that: harsh and judgmental. And now we have so shunned standards and ethics and morality of any kind that we are to the point where we don’t really believe in anything.

You see, the interesting thing about morals and standards is that they don’t change precisely because that’s what they are. They are a set of heart rules, for lack of a better term, and those stay the same. They don’t change with time and they stand up to scrutiny and suspicion. When you take away from those heart rules and repeatedly tear them down and take them apart, they don’t change, but you do. In fact you are the only thing that changes – what’s written in stone stays in stone.

If you find that your heart rules have changed drastically over time and if one day you decide something is right and the next day it’s suddenly wrong without whim or reason, then perhaps it’s time to check your heart. There is, after all, a great sense of relief in knowing that Jesus Christ never changes - He most certainly is unshakeable - and that if we believe in Him, we won’t either. 

Friday! But first, let's rehash Thursday

Yesterday I tried to make potato fries. I know it’s usual to assume all fries are made of potato but as it happens, everyone seems to be making everything into fry format lately so potato emphasis seemed necessary.

Anyway, the fry making process was exhausting and reminded me of why places like Wendy’s and McDonalds exist. I know, I know, quell horror at eating fast food! BUT really, has anyone ever made french fries as good as McDonalds’ at their house? The answer is no and with good reason because the process requires an inordinate amount of steps and thus should only be handled by professionals.

I decided to attempt this on my own, however, because I’m foolish and desirous of making my life difficult. So I went to town on some innocent potatoes, hacked them into fry-sized pieces with a large knife, did not slice any part of my anatomy in the process and proceeded to almost set my apartment complex on fire. Let me explain.

The recipe called for oil to be heated on a cooking sheet in the oven before the fry wedges were placed on it. I did this. However, I did not contemplate the oil dripping off onto the heated coils of the stove which happened promptly causing flames to randomly shoot up and scare me to death. I had visions of everything exploding and my entire unit dying in a fiery furnace (what a horrible way to go) or worse, surviving the flames and being a burn victim for the rest of my life unable to eat properly or go out in the sun. It was a scary five minutes.

However, I managed to turn off the stove, clean up the oil, partially anyway, and resumed making the fries shortly thereafter. I credit the Lord for giving me the courage to complete these tasks and also my own errant stupidity which did not even think about trivial things like “safety” or “apron” or “Whataburger is across the street and has french fries.”

In the end the fries were good, rather edible, and quite tasty when sprinkled with loads of salt (as is the case with most foods…I am a salt fiend). But never again. Never again will I try to do something that only costs around $2 when purchased from a restaurant. I do not care about cholesterol or sodium or any of the other food-trigger warnings. It’s much better to die of a heart attack than being burned alive.

So that consisted of my Thursday. Today is Friday and I can already hear the lazy calls of the weekend. Is it 5 yet?

Life in the 21st Century or...It's all about you, boo boo!

The 2016 presidential election is about 1 month away. The candidates are both horrifying, no one likes them, and everyone keeps asking the question, “how did we get here?”

It’s a valid thing to ask. When not a single person you know likes either candidate and is just as utterly surprised and dismayed as you are at the prospect of voting for them, it’s hard to see how something like this came to be. But, like all other atrocities in life, the answer is really very simple.

If you look at either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you can notice one thing: they are in a mad grasp for power, and they don’t actually care about Americans. Both smack of vulgarity and of false pretensions. They didn’t want to become president to make your life better, they only wanted to become president to make their lives better. It’s not about you, it’s about them. For Hillary Clinton, it’s about snatching the one position she’s always longed for and trampling over everyone else to get there. Hillary doesn’t want the position because she’s a woman and because she wants to make a stand for women’s rights. She doesn’t want the position because she loves working in politics so much. No, Hillary wants to become president because she wants to become president for herself. She only cares about Hillary. She might also want the power to lock away Bill for life, I’m not sure. Maybe to payback Monica for good (I jest).

Donald Trump is a joke and I’m not sure how a billionaire from New York (of all places) came to be the mouthpiece of the ordinary American. He’s never done anything ordinary in his life. He’s a laughingstock and each time he opens his mouth I’m suddenly seized by a desire to run from the room. To be quite frank, I’m not sure why he wants to be president. A lot of people are saying it’s because he wanted to help Hillary win since they have been such good buddies for most of their lives (a fake friendship based off political tradeoffs and favors, but that’s neither here nor there). This is an entirely plausible explanation. I don’t believe it’s because the good billionaire suddenly wanted to become the mouthpiece for the ordinary man, I believe that like Hillary, he wanted to run for his own selfish ambitions. He wants to become president because of the strings he can pull once he’s the leader of the free world (God help us) and because it’s such an impressive thing to add to your resume, dontcha know.

And so you have an unsettled election to put it mildly. It’s very serious in that the world is in a tumultuous, serious place, but it seems to be unserious based on the attitudes and behaviors of the candidates. Any debate that mostly consists of jabs and smirks and rolled eyes is not presidential in the slightest and makes a mockery of the participants. And so we come back to the original question: how did we get here?

The answer lies in ourselves. We, the populace of the United States of America, are the reason that we have two awful candidates. The fault lies directly at our feet.

There is a passage of scripture in the book of 2 Timothy that speaks on this and all churchgoers know it well: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

This passage speaks, shouts actually, and I think for many of us, the shouts fell on deaf ears. No one really thought that these things would happen. No one really considered the implications of loving pleasure more than loving God, of loving ourselves more than anything else. It just didn’t occur to us.

Candidates like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the rolled up end result of years and years and decades of selfish behaviors, thoughts, and actions.

As Americans, we encourage selfishness. We applaud it. We applaud the millionaire who stomped over everyone to rise to the top. We applaud the celebrity who exists off Instagram followers and the millions who watch her every move that she posts online. We criticize people who get married and have children too young, thus curtailing a life of selfishness they could have had. And then we wonder why our children are a wreck, why girls as young as seven now report having self-image issues about not being skinny enough and why young boys are out of control at school and at home. We wonder why our teenagers are rude and ridiculous. We wonder why our 20 year olds are purposeless and vacant. We wonder why our elderly are in nursing homes by the thousands and why our marriages fall apart more often than they stay together…it’s because we stopped caring. It’s because we embraced a lifestyle of living only for yourself and this is what happens when all you live for is yourself. People get hurt. Lives get derailed and ruined.

The solution to this problem lies in two parts. One, God comes first. Two, you do not.

God first. Not me. Now embrace the mantra and move forward. 

It's Fall, Y'all!

The weather has changed in Texas. It’s still in 80's during the day. BUT, two weeks ago it was 94 degrees with a heat index of 105 so this is much better. We are not complaining.

I sniffed the air this morning and felt fall leaves and pumpkins in it. They weren’t tangible per se, but they were there anyway! The fall aura told me so.

With the temperatures like this, I often feel more hopeful, like maybe life after the 2016 election won’t be so bad after all…right? Did anyone watch the debate? I did, for about 15 minutes. When I realized that I could do a better job of Donald Trump at debating, I soon lost my appetite and turned it off. I don’t think he really wants to be president. I think this is all as much of a surprise to him as it was to all of us. I honestly believe he wakes up in a new world every morning and one morning about 6 months ago he thought, “Gee, today is a GREAT day to run for president! Maybe I’ll try out. Should be fun!”

And Hillary…I don’t want to talk about her. There’s no sense in ruining a perfectly lovely morning with thoughts of Hillary Clinton.

On mornings like this I feel excited and joyful. I wonder if world dictators feel like this also. I wonder if they wake up on nice mornings and decide to execute only 50 people that day instead of 500. Are they affected by beautiful days? Was Hitler temporarily lifted from his madness when it turned fall in Germany?

These are strange thoughts but I’ve often wondered things like this. What really happens when Kim Jong Un has the flu? He must get sick just like everyone else. Dictators are people too, horrible, maleolvent people, but human beings comprised of flesh and bone just like the rest of us. I wonder if they get migraines…I wonder if North Korean officials secretly breathe a sigh of relief each time the dictator gets a cold. It's useless to speculate about things like this, but fun nonetheless. 

Anyway, today is a beautiful day and it is supposed to be a beautiful weekend. It’s a beautiful life, y’all! Enjoy the outdoors. 

Living for Something More

There seems to be a general sense of a lack of direction in many people’s lives. This results from a prevailing combination of factors that are too many to list here, but all draw back to one reason: apathy. In general, we lack direction as a whole because we don’t really care. We’ve forgotten what it was like to work for something and to work toward something. Our lives are not voiced with purpose, they are ran by our desires.

These problems are not solely limited to people in the “world”. They are increasingly a part of the everyday Christian’s life as well. We have our nice churches, we have lived our lives in the era of grace, sadly, of cheap grace in many cases, and there seems to be very little left to do. What else is there to work toward when your church comfortably seats 1500 and all bills are paid? And if your life is already full of blessings, which are easy to obtain in this time of economic prosperity that Americans are experiencing, it seems a little…unrealistic to live life as if there was really something to live for. After all, life is life and for the average American, it’s pretty good. Why strive for something more?

But what if this reality was not supposed to be our reality? As that sentence sounds a bit like something from the Matrix and altogether too philosophical, let me explain a little further. The world we live in is not supposed to be one we consider ourselves part of. As a Christian, we’re supposed to live in the world, but not be strictly of it. This means many things, among them a separation from the ideas and motivating factors that drive the world’s mantra. Christians are supposed to live lives that are holy, godly, and while we possess material items (i.e., technology and gadgets) they aren’t supposed to change our attitudes or our ways of living.

It’s very easy to fall in the trap that because we live in the period of the dispensation of grace, we can bend the rules somewhat and blur our lines a little. God’s grace and mercy are significant and eternal and all we have to do is ask for forgiveness, right? Well, yes. Yes, grace and mercy are always available. Yes, all you have to do is ask. Yes, we are blessed beyond measure in this aspect. There is nothing better than knowing that God still has His hand stretched toward you even after you’ve fallen and messed up over and over and over. However…

There is a reason to live according to how we should live and not according to how we can live. I’m referring to the fact that Christians are supposed to live for something more. We are to live for something greater and better and bigger than ourselves. We are to be the lights, the eternal flames that sit on a hill bringing illumination to our dark and shadowy world. There is nothing that says we are supposed to be constantly flickering.

Living for something bigger than yourself gives you a reason to act right. It lets you know there’s more to come, causes you to be aware that you aren’t the only thing in the universe. It’s the reason that immature people suddenly start to live normally and responsibly once they have kids. It’s the reason that we expect more from those in leadership because they are leading us into living for something more and the mantle of responsibility is supposed to give them a holy purpose.

Living for something more as a Christian is supposed to be second nature. We live for God every single day. He is something more. But sometimes I think we forget that this is the case. When we forget that we are actually not living our lives for ourselves, we start to stray. We miss church a little easier. We don’t take our commitments as seriously. The lines between what’s right and what’s wrong are blurred and fade as times goes on. Living with the mentality that life is only about YOU is a dangerous place to take up residence. If the church as whole is to grow and to expand, we are to become parents, no longer sold out to our own ambitions and desires, but married to the idea of the fact that we are responsible for spreading the light to those around us who live in darkness.

When you begin to live for something more, suddenly the light needs to be on all the time. Having it flicker is not acceptable. It starts to become a true second nature to live life in a holy state, a state of sacrifice and of self-containment. This is how the church should live. This is how we should be. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like a very fun world, but in the end, it’s a better one.

It is Better to be Kind than Smart

I struggle with the aforementioned title. I would rather be smart than be kind. I would rather win than love (sometimes). It’s easier to rattle off answers and numbers and facts than to lend a helping hand or to have compassion on the forgotten soul. I’m not sure why this is, but the best way I can think of it is some people are more predisposed to be kind, while others have to work towards it.

Intelligence is something that we are born and bred to marvel at and to compete with each other over. We all want to be the smartest, the brightest, the best in the class. Those people are rewarded the most and with the better grades and eventually the better salaries and promotions. Intelligence is valued in our society as it very well should be. Without a moderate degree of smarts, society ceases to move forward.

But what about kindness? Do we place the same values on it? The short and difficult answer is that no, we do not. Kindness and charity and compassion and love are not valued as highly as intelligence and competition are. Society simply does not care if you’re kind or not, kindness doesn’t add more dollars nor does it add to your pedigree. Essentially, kindness is done without thought of compensation or reward, while the pursuit of intelligence rewards more obtrusively and expensively. We can sometimes view kind people as weak, as unwilling to stand up for themselves while their neighbor steamrollers over them. Our society does not tolerate weakness; it’s hereditary. Since the beginning of time, the weak were left behind while only the strong survived.

This lack of balance in the scales of brain and heart is most unfortunate. Our biological instincts lead us astray in this one area. Because, while society cannot move forward without intelligence, it can also be said that it will cease to exist altogether without the repeated applications of kindness.

Interestingly enough, there are very few scriptures in the Bible that speak positively on the subject of human intellect. It’s usually the complete opposite. Over and over we find scriptures stating that our own brainpower and wisdom comes from the Lord, not from ourselves, and we find repeated implications that if you think you’re incredibly smart, the answer is that you usually aren’t. But when it comes to love, on the other hand, we find one of the most oft repeated texts from the Bible staring us bluntly in the face:

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;  but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13

These verses serve to remind us that without love, and thereby, kindness, we are nothing. Love cannot be purchased or measured but it wins friends and trust and a life of beauty in ways that our brains simply cannot. Love produces kindness and compassion in unequaled amounts; it cannot be compared to.

In the end love is the prevailing force that conquers all. Without it, we are nothing. But with it, we can accomplish more than we ever hoped to.

Purpose

Purpose seems to be on everyone’s mind lately. The Purpose Driven Life has sold millions of copies and is probably still on the bestseller list. I have heard countless sermons preached on finding purpose and how to find purpose and reassurances that yes! you have a purpose. My generation, and the one following me, are leaving the traditional workforce in droves because it doesn’t offer them a purpose, or, rather, it doesn’t offer them a purpose they find acceptable. The middle-aged, finding themselves with an empty nest and close to retirement, are also seeking answers about a purpose.

We are all looking for direction and meaning to our lives. I think this is fundamental to human nature and serves to explain why the age-long question, “why are we here?” exists. Being born, existing, and then dying are not feasible to us any longer. We want to live and experience and dream and live with intention. This is what our generation of today seeks.

It’s easy to see how we came to this current reality. Years of prosperity and a relative scarcity of combat situations that would cost millions of casualties have led us to a relative peaceful life that allows us the time and energy to ask these questions. Poor health, famine, disease, and war usually took these options from the generations that preceded us. It’s not that they didn’t want to find a purpose, but purpose to them was usually staying alive past the age of 40. If you could do that then your life’s purpose was satisfied – you were alive! But today we aren’t concerned with those details. I am grateful that we live such blessed lives that allow us to escape the worry about dying in childbirth (if you’re a woman) or being killed in a war or losing a limb performing dangerous manual labor (if you’re a man). But since there is no such thing as paradise on earth, today’s society must still confront some problems. And this brings us to my subject because I believe that one of society’s current big questions of life is how to avoid living a meaningless existence. Although the question is simple, the answer seems to evade many.  

So, purpose. What is it? Dictionary.com defines purpose as “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists”. So essentially, to find your purpose you need to find a reason to stay alive. To further your purpose, you need to find a reason to stay alive and a reason that makes you want to contribute to the world.

But how do you find your purpose? It’s almost a cliché to say that purpose isn’t found in material things – in money, in stuff, in better houses or better cars. We all know that the wealthiest among us are not the happiest. We know this intrinsically – it’s why children are just as happy playing with a cardboard box than with a new toy. But yet we reject this as we get older and we instead focus on more stuff. Stuff, and stuff, and more and more stuff…we literally have entire stores, large stores!, that are dedicated to re-selling all the STUFF we have consumed and no longer want. It’s amazing.

The secret to a life of purpose, I think, and a life of meaning is to spend yourself. To give it all up in the pursuit of something you really believe in. Granted, not all things are worth the endless pursuit. As a Christian, I find that my life is happiest when I’m pursuing a Christ-like life and when I’m spending myself, my time, my energy, my personal resources, on the things of God.

When I think of the word purpose, I think of the young men of WWI and WWII. Millions and millions of them died, sacrificed to the gods of war. Of those who did not die, so many more lost integral parts of themselves while fighting – eyes, legs, arms. But yet although they knew the dangers of war, so many of them still ran to sign up. They lied about their ages. The youngest soldier recorded in WWI was 15 years old. He, and so many others not only lied about their ages but left behind families and jobs and schools and ran to an almost certain death. And for many of us, that seems like a missed purpose. Why would you sacrifice yourself for something so horrible? Ask any 18 year old today to go run off to war and many of them will refuse. They don’t see the point. But young men and women, generations past, were not bothered by this show of common sense because they believed in something greater than themselves. Not only did they believe in it, but they believed in the evils that were soon to come if they didn’t go out and sacrifice for victory accordingly.

So purpose comes when you have a goal in mind. Purpose comes when you are passionate about something. And true, godly purpose comes when you are focused on something else besides yourself – when you are focused on God and His plan.

There are a lot of people who are searching for and finding purpose and meaning in things that are devoid of both. I admire and applaud people who take care of their health and who spend copious amounts of time at the gym. We owe it to ourselves to be healthy and to maintain some level of fitness. But my admiration and applause are limited; they only go so far. Why? Because it seems like a selfish pursuit ultimately. If it’s all spent on making yourself look better, and there’s no other reason behind what you’re doing, then what is the point of it all? Humans are made of clay. We all crumble and fall eventually.

The happiest people I know are those are busy and consumed by something that is greater than themselves. They are the ones you see at church all the time, on workdays, on non-workdays. They are the ones you see who spend hours outside soaking in the beauty that God has given us and they are the ones you see often reading His Word. They aren’t as worried about tomorrow. They aren’t as concerned about what will happen with their 401(k). These are the people who have discovered the secret to the age-old question. I hope that more of us can discover this – humanity owes it to ourselves. We have so many blessings, it seems wrong to waste them all on a purposeless existence.

Fall is coming!

The final notes of summer are sounding. However, since I live in Texas, it’s more like the final few notes that lead into the last triumphal march before the piece is finally done. Summer is done! No, never mind, it’s still going to be 90 degrees for a few more weeks.

But still, summer IS done and that is evidenced by the school busses I see everywhere. I remember when I was younger and I had to go to school that seeing those school busses brought tremendous heartache and heartbreak to my young soul. I hated the sight of them. To be quite honest, I still do, although for entirely different reasons (have you ever seen a school bus driving fast? No. It’s always a slow and unsteady 40 mph that is impossible and illegal to pass.)

I love the time of year that is about to come up. Fall is an utterly delicious thing in Texas. To compensate for the endless summers, we have cold fronts that make everything worthwhile. They are so wonderful to behold. If you’re at my parents’ house, a cold front makes itself known by the singing of the chimes on the front porch. If the door isn’t already shut it will proceed to slam shut on its own with the force of the wind. Speaking of that wind…cold fronts make it moan and groan around the house making the outdoors sound utterly desolate and forlorn. Usually a cold front comes in with clouds and rain on the first day and then the next day all is merry and bright outside but the weather is crisp and cool. Everyone wears boots on days like that because in Texas, if the weather is 60 degrees or less, you wear boots and scarves and hats and sweaters. We like fall apparel, okay? It doesn’t matter if it isn’t entirely cold…that’s not the point!

The end of summer signifies that fall and winter are coming and with them are holiday parties and feasting parties and hayrides and bonfires and smores if you’re so inclined to risk your fingers on a roasted marshmallow. Fall days are usually not that cold but the nights are chilly and if you happen to live ever so slightly out of the city, the stars shine with eternal warmth in the cold night sky.

Fall also means one other major thing and that is the beauty that is college football. Even if you don’t like football, which I don’t, you will love college football because it means chilly nights listening to the game, wings at Pluckers (an Austin original) and if you happen to be so lucky, sneaking into the student section at the actual stadium and cheering on the Longhorns in person. All football games should end on a high note, regardless of win or loss, if you end them at El Patio (another Austin original) which is located at the heart of Austin on The Drag (also known to outsiders as Guadalupe but who calls it that anyway?) El Patio serves the best Mexican food in the entire world and if UT happened to lose that day, there’s nothing like endless amounts of chips and salsa to lighten the mood.

This is what Fall is in Texas. This is my home, where I was born and raised, and there is nothing like it in the world. I love my Texas!

More than Food for Thought

I read food blogs. Lots and lots of food blogs. I can’t help it – truly food is a wonderful thing. I am currently hankering over a cheesecake galette from the Smitten Kitchen as well as every healthy thing you can imagine from the Whole30 Instagram feed. Two polar opposites, but food is a long arm of personality (at least I think so), so it makes sense that these two opposites appeared on my plate (no pun intended).

As I was reading the Instagram posts that detail each new recipe for its followers, I noticed a lot of things. First, most of the commenters are women (my gender is always in a mad rush to be healthy), and second, I noticed this mantra that following the Whole30 will change your life.

This interested me. Change your life, eh? And it had me wondering. Can someone’s problems be so small and trite that changing a diet would instantly solve them all? Could you become completely different just be eating differently? The short and long answer to this is no. A firm no. There is no diet potent and powerful enough to impact you in such a way that it changes you completely from beginning to end. It just isn’t possible. Food is not that powerful. YES, it does evidently have some power, but only as a tool of entertainment or as a means of self-preservation. We all know that if you don’t eat, you’ll die. But in and of itself, food taken on a daily basis cannot change you. It can’t take away your mistakes and it can’t solve your problems. It can change your blood sugar to erase your temporary bad mood, but it isn’t able to change your thought process nor your personality.

And so I continued to read comment after comment. “The Whole30 will change your life!”, “I finally read all the testimonials and I too became convinced so now I’m trying this out!” “I’m so excited about doing the Whole30…I think it will make me into a new person!” And so forth and so on.

While I don’t doubt that going on a very strict diet that allows no sugar, grains or dairy of any kind will definitely revolutionize your health and change your outlook on some things, there’s no way it can change who you are. There’s no way it can take your life from going one way and do a 180 so it goes in the opposite direction.

Since this is the case the question bears asking: why are so many people obsessed with diets and convinced that going on one will change them completely? And alternately, why do so many of these people, when confronted with the knowledge of Jesus, completely reject it? As a society, why are we so eager to wholeheartedly believe in a diet or a type of lifestyle while completely forgoing the only thing that will lead us to the right place in eternity? I’ve seen so many people who were so eager to share the news about their diet and how it had changed their life…why aren’t Christians sharing the same testimonies about Jesus? Is it because He’s changed us and we forgot how we were, or is it because we really have not changed?

Something to think on certainly as this scenario applies to me (full confession: I have done a Whole30 but I actually did not think it was life-changing). This reliance on diets and a way of eating as making you “clean” (pun intended) cannot, for the Christian, substitute spiritual rightness and a spiritual way of living. We must have the fruits of the Spirit working in our lives as this is more important than eating fruits and vegetables (pun AGAIN, I wonder if the Lord used food in the Bible for a reason; I’m sure He did). 

Satisfaction

“I can’t get no sa-tis-faction”. That’s the way the song goes, right? It’s one of those random songs that everyone knows it really makes no sense at all if you think about it.

To be honest, so many of those older songs don’t make sense at all. Take Yellow Submarine for example. I mean, what is that song really about? “We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine”. No one actually lives in a submarine. They might exist in one, certainly. We all can exist in one but living connotes that you take up more than just existence, that you make it your permanent place of residence. And no one would do that in a submarine. It simply is not possible. Plus I think you would eventually go mad from the claustrophobia.

Anyway, tangent aside, last night I heard a sermon preached on satisfaction and it caused me to wonder. The precise message of the sermon was along the lines that satisfaction is your enemy. It’s the enemy of your soul, the enemy of revival, the enemy of the pursuit of greatness. And that message is true. But the whole goal of our lives appears to be satisfaction, right? We climb persistently and insistently toward the top of a mountain we really can’t even name and our intent is to reach that goal. Reaching that goal will satisfy us. Satisfaction is what the American Dream was built around – the idea that a two story house in the suburbs with the nuclear family intact and a dog and a cat will bring you contentment. That American dream is supposed to settle your longing for more and I think for many people it does.

But what about the others? There existed in times past and to be sure, these people exist today, a selection of people who were not content to remain idly by. Who believed the world would be better if dreams were pursued and spectacular plans made and carried out. Many of these people history writes down to madness. And yes, I’m sure some of them were. Some had ideas that were reprehensible, yet pursued passionately. We remember them by the tragedies that followed in their wakes – the Red Terror, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Crusades, the list continues. These people were not satisfied but reached for the wrong things. Success in their minds was an evil and twisted picture.

What happens though, when people are not satisfied with the good that surrounds them and pursue betterment (the right kind) relentlessly? I would wager to say that beauty happens. The crossing of the Pilgrims to America, the creation of the Constitution of the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation, the scores of music that have been written since the dawn of time, and the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling…there are always beautiful things that were created by people who were not content to just be ordinary.

To not just be ordinary, to reject satisfaction and the status quo, one must give of themselves. It’s not enough to pronounce yourself extraordinary. It’s not enough to take that label and affix it to yourself in the hopes that speaking the word will fulfill the prophecy, no, one must act. One must dream and not listen to the naysayers. Naysayers sit on the walls and croak out things and words of discouragement. Or worse, a naysayer will encourage you but not actually mean anything by it.

In addition to ignoring the naysayers, we must not naysay ourselves. We must feel the urge to be better deep down inside. We all must have the drive to seek more, to be better, the fire must come from within before it can flame into someone else’s life. There is no point in thinking about a fire if you cannot keep it burning inside yourself.

Another thing about not seeking satisfaction is learning that sometimes the biggest dreams come true in the smallest ways. In fact, I think they usually come true in that fashion. How many times has a pastor dreamed of a thousand-soul revival? Probably several hundred thousand times over the course of human existence. But note that the thousand soul revival did not come with a bang, it came with a small series of explosions. A Bible study taught here, an all-night prayer meeting there, a day-long fast done once a week. Nothing big was ever built on big things. Even Rome was built not in a day, but in a series of loads of bricks and mortar and one person at a time. Nothing that was done for God was done in one big bang and then the process was complete. Even David had to kill a lion and a bear before he could kill a giant. There is always a season of preparation that a dreamer must go through.

The road to satisfaction should end at Heaven’s pearly gates. It simply won’t do to reach the threshold before then.

Today, July 7, 2016

I had a thought today (I have them every day, thankfully). There are so many times that our American life seems to be enough for people. We have everything we want (within reason) and we are far more abundantly blessed than what most of our ancestors ever dreamed was possible. Very few of us go hungry, we all have somewhere to sleep at night…within reason, we have enough money to satisfy our immediate desires. There’s very little American people need.

But this is not enough. To have the needs of your body met is good and well, but the needs of your soul far outweigh the needs of the body. The needs of the soul are eternal and cannot be ignored. There are many times when we can sit on our laurels and feel as though we have really made it. I see people every single day who think they have made it. I work with them and so do you. We also go to school with them, live next door to them, chat to them about the weather at the grocery store line, and sit near them at restaurants. They are the people we all see every day who, sadly, believe in the delusion that life is satisfied when the roof over your head is x amount of square feet and your car has x amount of features on it and there’s money in the bank.

This is such an easy delusion to buy into. Life is nothing but a series of checkboxes and once you have completed them all you die and…then what? What happens next?

We are so wrong in our thinking, in our preconceived notions that life is really about what’s on this earth. It’s not. This terra firma won’t last forever and when it does, where will you go? How are you living your life to make sure you go to the right place?

Unlike life where the series of choices you can make are endless, eternity only offers two: heaven or hell. This life offers you the option to live for either. That’s simply all it is. Yes, we live and laugh and breathe and enjoy things, but the main focus of it all needs to be on our Savior, on the One who made our blessings possible. Let us guard so carefully what he has given us and not be careless when it comes to caring for our eternity.