Monday, April 5, 2010

Late night babbling sessions

It's late, and I have a million thoughts rolling around in my head. Unfortunately, I am one of those people who just can't stand to start something if I can't finish it, so I guess there will be some good stuff for another entry. I will say this past week, I learned some things. I'm always learning. Gotta be learning. What's the point of living if we are not growing and learning, right? That's my thoughts on it all. God spends the time to order everything so precisely, and His creation would much rather veg out in front of the TV (as I always say, "TV is the sugar to the enamel of the brain"), watching some American Idol karoake show or football or whatever else is on, rather than learning about and His infinite awesomeness. (When the knowledge of God and His love gets put into action, it has the power to change the world.) To each their own, I guess. Mediocrity is humanity's defining point. (Or maybe certain people truly aren't wired for certain things. Or maybe I am just being a little too hardball tonight.) As for me, I gotta be learning. Sleep might be nice too, but I get all these ideas at night. Everything just flows so smoothly.

The more I learn about God, the more I want to make this a better world for Him (and the people He loves) to inhabit. It doesn't matter if half (or more) of his creation is content to try to destroy it or burn it down (church people and non-church people alike). That has very little to do with my take on it. My task is to build it back up. This may seem irrational, depending on one's perspective, but it works for me.

Something else I am learning about God is that He intentionally takes imperfect people, like myself, and sprinkles the most beautiful souls around them. One may be content to call these people friends, but if you open your heart up enough, you may even come to call them family. I have a very large family, it turns out - people who love me in spite of my quirks and my unorthodox ways. People are always looking for God in science and man's limited intellectual capacity (when man can tell me exactly what gravity is, then I'll give him more credit - 'nuff said. Mankind, you just got 'dissed'), but God just doesn't fit in our boxes. I do know this, though. If you want to find God, and if you are too afraid to cry out to Him personally, you can find Him when you see love and unity. I am blessed to have a family that is both loving and united - in hearts and spirits and minds. And I am always learning more and more from them about how to love people like they love me. So that makes me a rich man.

Another thing I have learned is that there has got to be an evil power in the world that seeks to divide that unity. This past weekend, I experienced a weird circumstance that put me in odd feelings with some friends. It was an awkward situation right off the bat, but in the silence, divisive thoughts crept in my head. The bible says, "In you anger, do not sin." I was angry (more-so at the one who caused the whole thing, and rightfully so), but I clung to as much truth as I knew to cling to. I didn't try to be hurtful or 'return wrong for wrong'. As it turned out, there was a lot of misunderstanding on both sides. I was later pulled aside by two friends (who mean the world to me), and they talked to me, and I saw the full spectrum, and here we stand - united. Still. Like always. In spite of me forgiving them in my heart for how I originally felt (regardless of what had gone down - and I could now see it all), I still had to vent those feelings.

We've all felt hurt once or twice, and it is so easy to recall the emotions of years past when weird things happen. It's always easier to run away or to justify or cover something over, but who has the courage to stand and face it head-on? It is better to get those negative things out into the light and get rid of them, than to stuff them down inside. The bible makes another bold challenge: 'do not be controlled by your emotions.' The Christian life is one of freedom (if we allow it), where we don't have to live that way anymore. We have a choice. Hanging onto negative emotions only stands to make someone hard on the inside and possibly a bit jaded toward future things. And life will throw 'things' at us. Things that will shake our emotions. Emotions are funny things. They seem to stand apart from truth a LOT.

(Enter: the previous blog entry.) So I blogged. (What is a blog anyway? Is it a bloated frog? Who comes up with these geek names? Probably someone like me.) When all was said and done after blogging, I was approached by several people the next day who had been going through similar feelings in their own life experiences, and in reading it, a lot of healing came out of it. And then the two friends that I had felt so hurt by stepped up (unaware that I had been hurt - we joke around a LOT, so I could see their side very clearly) and there was all this mass healing. Me, them, and people who were not directly connected in circumstance, yet very connected emotionally. So another biblical idea presented itself: "And all things work for the good for those who love Him."

What is my response to it all? I'm blown away still by God's infinite mystery in using circumstances as a way of drawing hearts closer to Him. To those two friends in particular (and you will hopefully be reading this -after American Idol... okay, that was a joke - you know who you are), I am feeling so blessed to have you both in my life. Sometimes I wonder if I am even worthy to have such amazing friends in my life... but then again, are any of us worthy, in light of grace?

Good bless!!
- Joe

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for your kind words. God bless you, my brother! :)

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