Category: Uncategorized

Save Your World.

 

You are not responsible for saving the world. There is a God who is much more qualified for that role. Regardless of how you feel about this last year’s election, you probably feel like you are responsible for changing someone’s mind regarding an issue close to your heart.  You want to save people from their ignorance. You want to save people from hate. You want to save refugees from harm. You want to save babies. You are responsible for what’s happening. You’re responsible to a God who is saving the world. Especially if you call yourself a Christian.

 

Politics bore me to no end. I’d rather do my taxes than research issues. But my disinterest in political happenings does not excuse me from trying to solves the problems we face. But I’m a writer and I care about writing. I have a responsibility to use my gifts and my talents wisely. I can sow discord or I can sow hope. I can be a spectator or a speaker. I can pretend to be impartial, I can pretend you are impartial. We all know we are not. Disagreeing has never been a bad thing.

Can we agree on one thing? You are responsible. You hold influence within the spheres you are. Do you turn away from those who are “other?” Do you box in and trap those who disagree with you? Do you beg for “peace,” when you really just want silence? Do you scream and expect others to listen? The middle child within me just wants us all to “Get along.” The middle child within me wants to say outrageous things to stir up some controversy and see what happens. Neither option is good.

You don’t have to change the world, but what can you change for the better?

Psalm 84:10 Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”

Better to be a humble doorkeeper for Jesus, than a comfortable man in living in luxury of evil people. Better to be a toe, or a foot, and stop pretending you’re the head of the body. Better to be a part of the body than a lonesome (and slightly creepy) body part struggling by themselves. Be who God wants you to be, and not who the doubters tell you is your only option. Better to be a toe on a healthy body than an eye of a body that’s diseased. Better to ask God who you should be than to wait for the culture to tell you.

So go, save your world. One person at a time.

Out of the Pain, We Rise

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. 4Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else,”

You reap what you sow, you sow what you reap. I read recently in an article that when choose actions now that will help us in the future we’re really showing compassion for our future self. So if you choose to do something hard, unpleasant, or tedious today that will make tomorrow or the next day a lot better, you are saying to your future self, “Hey, I care about you.” When I get up in the morning I say to myself “I care enough about my future to choose the hard thing now so that down the road I’ll be sick less, have less stress, and feel good about my body.” The temporary pain provides long-term benefits. But you have to choose the hard, the uphill battle, and the pain over and over again until finally you sit back on your deck and sip some lemonade and say “It’s good.”

Right after my Mom died it was hard to see a future. Logically I knew that tomorrow would come, and the next month, years and so forth. But I had to make my life from scratch, and everyone knows those pre-made cake boxes are darn easy to throw together and using high-quality ingredients is expensive and hard to find. My first bite of cake at the shop where I work ruined convenience and cheapness for all other desserts for me. Seeing the behind the scenes of a bakery made me realize just how incredibly difficult it is to make a beautiful cake. One single cake takes at least three people: One to make the frosting and batter ahead of time, the baker mixing, baking, being covered in batter and then depanning. And then the froster has to over it several coats of frosting and has to drag a spatula across to make it surface.  and that’s only half of it.  Don’t try to make your life over from scratch by yourself. If a cake takes a team, then your heart takes a team.

Your batter makes the cake, so make good batter. That’s it. You reap what you sow.

And yes, the relationship between what you put in and the results you see is murkier and more of a “grey” area than we like. Don’t. Give. Up.

“Broken people, we can be made whole, we can be made whole.”

The Brilliance, Will We Ever Rise

Can you live without comparing yourself to others? Can you live and let others carry your burdens with you? Life is much, much sweeter when you get to share it with other people. At my work we have a 10 gallon bucket that collects all of the espresso machine’s runoff. This includes cake crumbs, coffee grounds, syrup, and stale shots. We call it the “sludge” bucket. At the end of the night, it’s our job to make sure this bucket gets emptied into the mop closet sink. We made so many drinks one day that the bucket was practically overflowing with brown sludge. It was too heavy for one person to carry it without spilling this lovely concoction all over the floor. Me and my coworker had to carry it together. Don’t try to dump the sludge bucket of your life by yourself. Don’t wait until it’s too full for you to carry. Don’t pretend ugly brokenness isn’t inside of you. We need each other.

Back to lemonade on the porch. It’s sunny and your arms are streaked with dirt from working in the garden. You look over to see your most beloved grandparent, your best friend, or the love of your life.The struggle is over. Beauty is inside of you and outside of you. Plant good things.

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We, a Community

“I can’t wait to see the woman you are in 5 years,” a roommate told me three years ago, and I thought it profound enough to write down in my journal. I remembered how my heart swelled when I heard it. It was a Mansion moment. Just one moment in a house of 16 women which we called the Mansion. It shouldn’t have worked. Common expectation was that we would tear each other apart. After I moved in someone (can’t remember who) informed me that in technical legal terms a house with over 15 women was considered a brothel! We were not. We were a community house facilitated by the Christian club we were a part of on campus. We fought about chores and dishes, a Bible verse was easily found, and the house was always full of people, sound, and life. I spent some time crying and thinking on the top of the stairs that year. It was an old service stairway from back in the day when the house had needed a separate entrance for servants. You could watch the stoplight down the street change from red, yellow, and finally to green through a large window across from the top stair. I laughed a lot on the couches with my roommates on lazy Sunday afternoons when the sun poured in.

I’m stacking all the photos in the front of a book

And feeling down, down, down

These walls have seen the bones of us

These walls… will never fall

-“Stairwell Wall,” Ben Hammersley.

There were 16 of us in that house, and now there are 15. We couldn’t wait to see who Jessica was going to be in 5 years. Everyone knew about her dream to become a veterinarian. We all heard her stories around the two tables smashed and literally tied together to function as a dinner table. I remember her walking to her truck in high-heeled boots and a nice blazer, “Jessica! you look nice!” I told her. I remember her opening and closing the cupboards as I sat eating cereal. I remember her being a roommate. To lose her feels like a breaking of the table. It reminds me of the Chronicles of Narnia when Aslan breaks the stone. It cracks with the grief and triumph over death. That’s what grief is though, a piercing point that spreads out like little cracks across a community. and at the center is a family, and theirs is the greatest. I can’t pretend mine is the same.

Every loss is fresh. Every joy is punctuated with hope.

Isn’t life a lot like a stoplight? Stop, wait, go. Stop, wait, go. Just when you get used to the frenzy of a green season where it’s all speed and change and progress you find yourself stalled in the glow of yellow light telling you to wait. How quickly we ignore the warning signs and put our foot down on the gas pedal and speed through the chapters of introspection and closed doors. Until suddenly, the red light comes, and we must stop. We must stop and listen to our breaths, stop and listen to our hearts, because death and pain demand an answer, death is the stop we hate to admit must come. Perhaps, it’s softer than that. Perhaps the stop is merely a setback or a disappointment. Or a case of the flu.

Stop,wait, go. Stop,wait, go.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

I have eternity set in my heart, and feel trapped in this world with it’s limits and stops. Yet everyone knows that a comedian’s pause fills the room with the most laughter. A rest in music creates the dramatic tension where we must breathe in. When we take in current events, we feel the panic and division rising, yet we know that we exist forever. How does this dichotomy get resolved? Do we march, shout, and struggle? I find solace in art, most specifically well written pieces of writing. Maybe a painting a two. Or perhaps a house full of people, life, and sound.