Encouragement

I was able to talk to a friend on Wednesday. He was very encouraging, and his stories also reminded me that I need to be more serious about my prayer time and maintaining my spiritual health. Hair-raising stories about spiritual conflict tend to have that effect.

This morning I engaged in one of my more peculiar hobbies: creating analogies. For some reason I randomly remembered a speaker from NCU chapel telling us that a husband is like the bow of a ship. When an icy storm hurls itself at the family ship, he takes the beating and clears the path. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that the wife is the sail. She is the one who propels the husband and the rest of the family.
Now here is the cool thing. God is the sailor. He controls the husband with the rudder and the wife with the sheets (ropes that control the sail). In order for the ship to sail correctly, both husband and wife need to be obedient to God. If the husband refuses to let God steer him with the tiller, the ship will wander listlessly about the ocean. In large waves, it will almost certainly capsize. How many kids do you know who seem to have been raised on a directionless boat? If the wife refuses to let God hold her taught in the wind, the ship won't go anywhere. In a low wind she will settle into the position of least stress and sit there, doing no good to anyone. In a high wind She will flutter and flail, making a horrendous amount of noise and swinging wildly back and forth across the deck- a serious safety hazard- and no progress will come out of any of it. Without any forward movement the tiller does minimal good, and once again the ship is in serious danger of capsizing.
I should probably end the analogy there, but I thought I would throw kids into the mix. The kids make up the hull (other than the bow). They might feel like they are just along for the ride, but they have a huge amount of impact on how the ship sails. If one of them becomes damaged, the ship leaks. The bilge pumps from one end of the ship to the other need to go day and night to make up for it, and the hull defect will slow the ship down. If the child declines too far, they could drag the whole ship to the bottom. Furthermore, this is a type of ship where bilgeboards run the full length of the hull. If a bilgeboard is not down at the right time, the ship will be blown sideways by the wind and not be able to hold it's course. If it is not pulled up at the right time it will create extra drag and slow down the ship. Worse, in shallow water, the bilgeboard could get damaged or the ship could get hung up. Each child needs to allow God to constantly adjust the bilgeboard on their portion of the ship. If they don't, or if they twist their bilgeboard into a shape that God never intended, they will seriously hamper the progress of the ship.

Deuteronomy 10:20

I love this verse. It talks about fearing God. So many people have problems with the idea of fearing God. Some of them wonder why they should be afraid of a loving God, and they water the term down until it means nothing more than a vague respect. Others are in the camp that portrays a short-tempered God who unleashes wrath upon anyone who gets on His bad side. This verse gives a much broader view.
"You shall fear the Lord your God"-- what does this mean?-- "Serve Him" --actively acknowledge Him as Master. This means that we do His will, not our own. Why? Because He is our legitimate King and Master. He has unlimited rights over us. -- "Cling to Him" -- The first piece challenged the camp who waters down the fear of God. This part challenges those who take a more fire-and-brimstone approach. A proper fear of God does not repel us from Him in terror. Rather, it forces us to acknowledge that even if God is not "safe," our only proper place, the only place where we will ever become everything we were meant to be, is in His arms. I believe C.S. Lewis portrayed this concept well when he chose to make Aslan (a figure representing Jesus) a lion. He was terrifying, but to those who knew Him he was their closest friend. To quote Mr. Beaver, "Of course he isn't safe! But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." The other aspect to this is that a proper fear of God acknowledges Him as the supreme authority over all of the other things in the world of which we are often afraid. Poverty, child abusers, terrorists, cancer, creepy demonic things- they are all subject to God. The one thing more terrifying than the boogey man is the one who makes the boogey man run in terror. But if it turns out that this terrifying being also loves you, then it makes sense to come to his side, however terrifying the experience might be at times, because you know that it will free you from the boogey man -- "Swear by His name" -- Swearing by a name indicates that you will voluntarily make yourself accountable to that entity for your fulfillment of the vow and you believe that this entity has the highest possible authority, ability, and motivation to hold you accountable. If the receiving party has reason to doubt any of those three qualifications (authority, ability, and motivation) then they won't accept the vow. God does not want us to bind ourselves to anyone but Him. Furthermore, it would not be logical for the other party to accept a vow to any other.

...then never

In this blog I will teleport you backward one week. It was, as you may recall, resurrection Sunday 7 days ago. My parents and I drove up to Bemidji and spent the day goofing off with my brother. Here are some fabulous pictures of our adventures. And maybe a video or two, if I can get them to load. The DSL is painfully slow sometimes.

People ask me where I am from originally. This is it, central Minnesota.

We tossed a frisbee around for a while, and Dad tried to hit the camera. He came really, really close. Out of our family, he is usually the most accurate at disk golf.












My brother conquered the plastic playground mountain. I then proceeded to boulder almost the entire way around it without touching the ground, with some guidance from dad, who could look around the corners for me and find holds.

We didn't know if we would fit, but we managed to get all three of us- my dad, my brother, and I- in the slide at once.

This is the closest we could get to a normal family picture. We are way too goofy for serious pictures.

Give Heed to Yourself

"give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons."- Deuteronomy 4:9

Give heed to yourself. That doesn't mean we are self-absorbed or self-centered. It means we are self-aware. Quite simply, nobody needs to make us drift away from God. We do it all on our own in the process of time if we do not guard our souls diligently. We need to be proactive about pursuing God and remembering the reasons for our faith. We need to daily review the evidence that led to our belief ("the things which your eyes have seen") and integrate them into the way we live and react to that which is around us. True faith moves from the head to the heart, where it becomes the guiding force for even the most gut-level reactions. When we allow ourselves to stagnate, the faith begins to pull out of the heart and return to the head. This results in hypocrisy. Actions reflect heart belief and influence mind belief. Eventually, as the small amounts of hypocrisy grow into larger amounts, and the natural repercussions pursue, the mental faith seems more and more illogical, since it is increasingly out of line with experienced reality, and even the mental faith begins to warp into a syncretistic mockery of truth. If left unchecked, the collapse is spectacular and often hurts many more people than just us.

It also robs the future generations of a heritage. Maintaining our spiritual health is more than just a service to ourselves and an honor to God; it is also the hope of the future. We need to pass on a vibrant, logical faith to the next generation. We need to give them evidence, not just slogans. We need to model men and women after God's heart, not just people who know lingo and some christianesque dance steps. We need to be consumed by a constant pursuit of God, not a constant pursuit of religious business.
The gifts from God are the most priceless things we possess, both for ourselves and for those around us. May we guard them with the ferocity of a rottweiler.

French

I now have some new French materials that should help me to go at the language in a much more systematic way. The BBC website has given me a lot of nice little phrases, but I prefer to be able to parse lists of verbs and memorize vocab lists, even if it is more boring.

The Barn

This post is primarily for my parents. One of those bald eagle pictures that I took made it look like there is a barn on our property that isn't there. So I went back and looked through the rest of the images. Two others show the same barn and make it clear that it belongs to the neighbors. Unfortunately, when I left home this morning it was too dark to see clearly, so I guess you guys will have to go see for yourselves.

This is the picture that originally puzzled us. In the foreground is the eagle, in the middle ground is my mom walking on our hill, and it looks like a barn is sitting just on the other side of the hill- just below where our garden actually is.

This picture helps to show that the barn is actually much farther away. Too bad it is so blurry. The Winters' barn is probably a half mile farther from the camera than our place, so it is amazing that it could look so large in the first picture.
Oh- and don't get our silo confused with the one in the first picture. Ours has no red markings at the top and has a cross hanging on it.

Click on the picture to see the full size image, and look at the far right edge.

Makeup Work

Back in college when I missed a week of class I had to do makeup work. This blog posting is my makeup work for the last two weeks of almost complete non-communication. My excuse is that I now live with a family in the house pictured on the right. So I spend most of my precious free time harassing my adopted brothers or going to their games or teaching them stuff or whatever, rather than nurturing my e-life. It's a good trade, but y'all get the short end of the stick.
Speaking of sticks, the family I live with is a woman and three goalies. The husband played goalie for NAVY back in the day, and now the older son is a lacrosse goalie and the younger son is a hockey goalie. And I, as an obsessive photographer, have been chronicling their respective rises to stardom... or something like that. Here they are:

The younger son in action

No wonder he keeps complaining about pulling things.

Go! I mean, STOP!

Denied!

Here is the older son in action against:

Intense!

Like Fran Tarkenton with a stick.

Lacrosse is like football without pads where the guys are allowed to whack each other with sticks. And for the goalie, it is like being a baseball pitcher who TRIES to get hit by every line drive that crosses the mound. A good high school lacrosse player can fling the ball 90 mph+ and it is harder than a baseball.

I also got out for a half hour photo shoot this week and got some shots of an old railroad about 4 miles from the house.

Note to a Hurting Stranger

During my freshman year of college I came to a full understanding of the concept that my life was not about me. I have believed in God for years, and I have believed that God had some vague interest in me, but it suddenly occurred to me that if, indeed, there was a God, and if, indeed, He cared even a tiny bit what I did, then ultimately my happiness and desires and ambitions didn't matter. He is so much more important than me that all that really matters is figuring out what He wants me to do, and faithfully doing it. You would think that this revelation would have been unbearably depressing, but it has been exactly the opposite. I no longer have to worry about how I feel. I no longer have to worry what people think of me. As long as I am pleasing God, their opinions don't matter. I still listen to people. I still value their input, but if they wrongly criticize me I just forward the message to God, since the accusation is against Him anyway. And I have found that, happily enough, God actually wants what is best for me. By following His will I not only have a higher purpose, but I also have more fulfillment, and with it, pleasure.

I don't have to waste my time and energy looking for the next greatest temporary thrill. I have a higher purpose. I don't have to obsess over who is my best friend or wonder who cares about me. I already know. Jesus is my best friend.

Jesus loves you too.

Jesus is not a painting. Jesus is not a wooden figure in a church.
Jesus formed you in your mother.
He watched your birth with a huge smile on his face.
He has cried when you got hurt, he is furious every time someone abuses you. When you laugh, He laughs along.
You do a lot of things that make Him sad. Rather than hate you for them, He decided to take the blame and died for you in the worst torture the Romans ever invented. He came back to life, and now He wants to be your closest friend. All He asks is that you surrender yourself to Him, which makes a lot of sense, seeing as how he made you in the first place.


p.s. Why do I think this will help? I will use a short story to illustrate where I am coming from. I was tempted to become anorexic. It bugged me for a day or two, and it had a solid hold on my mind. Then I remembered that God made me the way I am for His glory, not mine. If He made me that way, then it is good for me, even if I don't think myself perfect all the time. Bang. It was gone. Completely disarmed. I had already wasted hours trying to talk myself out of it, slapping myself with logic, trying to deny that it was in my head. I could tell that none of it was working. But when I realized that the whole thing was based on a faulty premise- that my feelings about physical appearance were more important than stewardship of the body God gave me- the whole thing crumbled. Your description of finding ways to make yourself happy are similar. Happiness is a fleeting thing. It is dependent on your mood and can be heavily influenced by others. Instead, seek joy. Joy is found in a right relationship with God and it transcends your circumstances.