My New Year's Resolution...

...and I didn't even have to think that hard about it!

In the year 2006 I resolve to: Slap stupid people in the head. Get your resolution here

This could actually be kind of fun!!!

I need one of these...

I ran across this blog post tonight and was very intrigued by the idea of having a "wailing wall" of sorts. I guess you don't need a specific "place" to do this, but sometimes I think it would help. By "this" I mean:

"This is our place where God is big enough: big enough to handle our anger, big enough to not be afraid of rage, of bitterness unleashed, of unrelenting sadness over the state of things. This is where we lay it all out and say, "Do you really want me? Because I come with this.” This is where we hope to hear, “Yes. And do you really want me? Because I come with this too.”

Sometimes, I wish I had a "place" to unleash all of the emotion that wells up inside. When she talked about breaking the plates, it brought me back to high school when I worked at a local family restaurant. After a really stressful night, a few of us would take the empty ketchup bottles back to the recycling room and smash them to pieces in the recycling bin. Somehow, the physical act of smashing those ketchup bottles relieved, at least for a moment, the stress brought on by a myriad of frustrations one can incur in the service industry. There were never enough ketchup bottles to go around. Sorry about the bunny trail...getting back to having a "place". I know that I can pour my heart out to the Lord anywhere (not always in a demonstrative way), but it's almost as if there would be something sacred about having a particular spot to meet with God in such an honestly raw way. It would be like having a place of remembrance, much like the altars built in the Old Testament. Generation after generation would be reminded of the goodness of God. Or maybe in my case it would be more like season after season I would be reminded of the goodness of God.

Night Owl

Having more than one day off of work is dangerous. I have habitually stayed up late each night, poking around on the computer or watching some cheesy Christmas movie. I am definitely more of a night person, but I know that this will reak havoc with my sleeping schedule once I have to return to work! If I only had Nick's job, where no one cares what time he comes into work!

The best present of all...

...really wasn't meant to be a Christmas present at all. When I walked into my parents house this afternoon, my sister grabbed a few things off the counter and said, "These are for you." In the pile was a few random pieces of mail and a small box. In curiosity, I opened the box to find the Bible from Cal and Marian's wedding. It was dated September 27th, 1955 and was signed by the entire wedding party. As I thought about it, I realized that this year would have been their 50th wedding anniversary. The story of how they met is great. Marian had been a missionary in India for 4 years. Cal had just arrived in India to begin language school before going to Bangladesh, and was invited to the Bihar province in India for a conference. During the conference, a fellow missionary approached Cal advising him that the single missionary life would be very difficult for him. He then proceeded to tell Cal that there were several young missionary ladies at the conference and Cal should choose one. It was at this conference that Cal and Marian met for the first time. Because of the culture, their only communication thus far had been a mere introduction. The only acceptable form of courting was via mail. Over the next several months, they exchanged letters back and forth until by chance, they happened to meet again at another conference. During this conference, a few of the missionaries devised a plot for Cal and Marian to be able to spend some time together. Thanksgiving was right around the corner and the two gentlemen decided to go hunting for a peacock in the jungle. They invited Cal and Marian along for ride and for the first time, they had the opportunity to be alone. It was during this rendezvous in the jungle that Cal proposed. Shortly thereafter, Cal left for Bangladesh. They spent virtually their entire engagement apart from eachother with letters being their only means of communication. Marian used to tell me that she pretty much married a stranger. Seeing Cal and Marian together after 35 years of service in Bangladesh, it was evident that God had brought them together. They were very much in love and it showed in so many ways. It was wonderful to receive a little piece of their history, a remembrance that God has His own way of bringing people together to accomplish His purpose and plan for their lives. And by far, one of the best Christmas presents I could ever ask for.

Hurry Up and Wait

I hate that I am a product of our over-indulgent, instantaneous, self-gratifying culture. I don't want to wait for anything. Taking the time to cook a 20 minute meal feels like a small eternity, so I buy groceries that can be made in 10 minutes or less. Waiting for people who drive the speed limit is annoying. I avoid shopping on the weekends because the lines are horrendous.

Sad to say, this same attitude has creeped into my spiritual life. Perserverance? Yeah, right! I want God to meet me right now and it better be exactly the way that I want it to be. I tried to make a deal with God at the conference I attended in November. I said, "God, if you'll come and heal me, then I'll quit drinking from broken cisterns." I just want the quick fix. I don't want to wait...I want all of my problems solved now so that I can get on with my life. God's response? "I'm afraid it doesn't work that way." No matter how demanding I may be, God's ways are still higher than mine. He doesn't play by my rules. The truth of the matter is that God promises strength when we wait upon Him. Waiting usually means surrendering all notions that God works within our time table. I think that very few things with God are instantaneous. It's in the life-long process of waiting that God molds and shapes us into His image. John sent me a link the other day to Alan Creech's blog. This is what stuck out the most to me:

Letting Grace form and develop us takes a while. It is a lifelong process. Can we ever tell it's working? Sure we can. We will change - our desires, our attitudes, our emotions, our beliefs, and our actions. Notice which one I put last. Actions are the most exterior and temporary of the things about us to change. Yet, we focus on them more than anything. We are, by and large, ignorant. We DO have the capability to stop being that way - to get it and move forward. But again, it takes a while and we need to be patient with ourselves. We're pretty broken. And it's not simply a matter of waking up one day and thinking to ourselves, "I think I don't want to be broken any more" and then we just become "not broken." No, it doesn't work that way. And if it seems to for a time, it is that, only seeming to and it will fail. We need to get to the real thing - the deep and lasting thing - and forsake all this surface nonsense.
Let's move toward doing that. Grace be with us for this journey.

What is that saying...It's not the destination, but the journey that counts.

Romans 5:3-5
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Salvation

I can't really remember the context of the conversation, but today someone told me that they get saved everytime they set foot on a plane just in case. I grew up believing that it was possible for people to fall away from salvation. In college I had conversations with students from a Baptist college who believed that once you were saved, you couldn't lose your salvation. They argued that those who "fell away" from the Lord really weren't saved to begin with. In fact, just a few months ago, I had this same conversation with someone at a Bible study and began to doubt what I grew up believing. I have no idea what I believe anymore. It seems as though there are Scriptures that could validate both sides of the argument. Can people really lose their salvation? Can someone who has truly experienced the love of Christ walk away from Him? Does God ever say enough is enough? What about the verses where God says, "I will not contend with you forever."? Has salvation been so severely watered down by Western Christianity that we don't fully grasp the implications of what it means to be saved? The verse that really scares me is somewhere in Matthew 7 where Jesus tells the people who have prophesied and cast out demons in His name to depart from Him because He never knew them. It blows my mind that people can exercise such power and never know the source. It makes me begin to question whether or not I really know the author of my faith or if I am like those who have a form of godliness but deny its power. Every now and then, when the house is empty and no one has called all day, I begin to wonder if I missed the rapture (even though I don't really believe the church will be raptured before the tribulation, I still get that eerie feeling from time to time). It's funny how one little comment can trigger so many questions! If you have any comments, thoughts, or Scriptures, have at it!

Bittersweet

This morning as I was laying in my warm bed, dreading the thought of venturing out into the cold, my thoughts drifted to going home for Christmas. This is the first Christmas that I will spend without my friend Marian. As I began to reminisce over years past and all the special holidays we spent together, I crawled out of bed to grab the wool sweater that she gave me from Norway feeling that somehow that would comfort the ache in my heart from missing her. It's funny how such a festive and joyous time of year can also be so lonely in the absence of those we dearly love.

I Feel Really Old...

Someone at work asked me if I was 34 the other day...not that being 34 is bad or really old, but that's 5 years older than I really am. I still haven't come to terms with the fact that I will be 30 in 10 short months. Then he proceeded to tell me that he must have gotten me mixed up with Mark. I'm not quite sure how that could happen, but what can you do!