'c' is for cookie

i finished reading habakkuk this morning, and no, i am not merely typing this blog because the name "habakkuk" is fun to say. (besides, it's much cooler in swahili, where the spelling is "habakuki" - which totally eliminates the way we oftentimes try to pronounce it and forces us to sound like we are offering someone a snack... 'ha ba cookie'?)

anyway, habakkuk starts out the book complaining. no, not about his name, but about wickedness and how the wicked prosper... but by the end of the book he's talking like this:

"though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet i will rejoice in the LORD;
i will take joy in the God of my salvation.
GOD, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places." hab 3:17-19

what changed the complaining to patient trust and joy? habakkuk got his eyes on God instead of the problems... he saw "His splendor... His brightness... His hand... His power." sometimes, an attitude change is as simple as a change of gaze.

i also used some of yesterday's "stuck inside because of ice and snow" to read part of "the God who is there" by francis schaefer. i think that in a way, the following quote ties in nicely with the point this blog is trying to make:

"the new theology... knows nothing of man being created in the image of God, nor of God revealing Himself truly in the Scriptures... probably the best way to describe this concept of modern theology is to say that it is faith in faith, rather than faith directed to an object which is actually there... modern man's faith turns inward. in christianity the value of faith depends upon the object towards which the faith is directed. so it looks outward to the God who is there, and the Christ who in history died upon the cross once for all, finished the work of atonement and on the third day rose again in space and in time. this makes christian faith open to verification and discussion."

so yeah... look at situations, look to me... depression/complaining. look to God... rejoicing/patient endurance.

"O LORD, i have heard the report of you, and your work, O LORD, do i fear. in the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy." hab 3:2

show me the way

I've been starting to think through camp messages. (Seeing as it's been 12 years since I've been the speaker - which means anyone who was in 5th grade when I last spoke is now at least 3 years out of high school - it seems to be a good time for me to speak again.) Our theme is 'Lost and Found,' so I have been meditating along those lines.

Well, as I think about myself and my biggest life frustrations, they generally have to do with lostness. Frustration #1 is when I can't find something. I am a man on a mission until it is found. It drives me nuts.

The specific situations that I was thinking of more, however, have to do with driving - and not nuts, but lost. I take pride (warning warning) in knowing where I am going. Ever since I was young on family trips, I was the one who got to read the maps for my dad and be his navigator, because I was good at it.

I'm still pretty good with the whole geography thing. God has brought some situations into my life to teach me lessons, though. Things to say, "Hey boy, cut the pride out, 'cause you don't know where you are. You don't know as much think you do." I can think specifically of a time when our team in Malawi got an SB, because I got us lost in the bush trying to get back from the lake, or when we got lost in Pittsburgh driving back from ATF, or when we followed mapquest perfectly and wound up at the end of a runway for a small county airport in Columbia, SC. Probably the thing that drove me most nuts was that I had others FOLLOWING ME, but I WAS LOST.

Well, I'd been meditating on that thought and just confessing pride (cause it's something easy for me to fall into) and asking God's direction, when I picked up my notebook that I'd been jotting in during my 52-week Bible reading plan (which I've nearly completed some 100 weeks later!), and I found some verses I'd jotted down nearly two years ago:

"Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, 'This is the way, walk in it,' when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left." Isaiah 30:18-21

Isn't it SO COOL??? Even when I'm lost, God knows the way. And even when I foolishly think that I'm the one in the lead, I need reminded, I'm just to follow Jesus. As long as I do that, I won't be leading ANYONE astray. He must become greater, I must become less.

Save the CD

Yeah, he cracks me up big time.

so i'll probably wind up getting "health and sport"

so the guy keeps knocking on the door across the street and peering in through the glass as if someone will finally come to let him in.... i have noticed this same activity over the course of 3 or 4 hours... i'm not quite sure if he gives up for random intervals, but he seems to be there whenever i take a moment to notice...

today started much like any monday of post-camp trip analysis (note that this is DRIPPING with irony and sarcasm)... drawing on the chalkboard and feeling glee that someone had recognized my statue of liberty, thus realizing that the other lines symbolized the tip of manhattan and the jersey coast (if you really call what lies along the hudson river a "coast") - thankfully, i'd gone to bed WAY early last night and was wide awake for the first period mission trip presentation to the juniors and seniors... just kinda going over some of the basics and whetting their appetites to become involved in the details...

at the office, i started to check the main internetty things which i do and discovered a couple of embedded videos on decapolis which caught my attention... one for the song "closer arrows" by monarch which was cleverly done - the other was a trailer for an upcoming documentary put together by ben stein (yeah, the guy from ferris buhler and win ben stein's money) - intriguingly, it's about how scientists have been ostracized in the scientific community for putting forth the possibility of a Creator God...

meanwhile, i'd left open a tab to northern records (the label for monarch) - and noticed a link for a podcast by the band luxury - so i started listening to it... since luxury is definitely on my list of top 5 favorite acts out of georgia (along with mars ill, joe christmas, dear ephesus and third day)... well, as i listened to the song "shake more hands, give more hugs", i remembered that i had never purchased their album which they put out on northern in 2005 (some 6 years after their previous album)... hmmm - i always loved to sing the falsetto with them and sarah always hated when i did...

anyhow, as i thought about the lyrics and my general proclivity toward introversion, i was reminded once again to thank God for bringing Jon Price and i together at pyn and him asking about snow camp (i probably would have never gotten kids together to go if i wouldn't have known anybody there)... so God's still working to get us where He wants us to be - even those of us too scared for our own good... and yes, He's not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power, of love and self-discipline... so i'll keep working to "shake more hands, give more hugs"

I will try to be more fun
Tell a joke or lie in the sun
Shake more hands and give more hugs
Smile like I did when I was young

For I don't want to die
Without a smile

It's the little things that make our lives this way
It's the sadness of every day
But I'll try to sing more happily and not ruin your day

...and yes, interestingly enough, i started this blog with the thought that "all the randomness does still come back to a point..."

one more for good measure...

just to continue the point from the last blog, here's a verse from the section of psalm 119 that i was learning today:

"my eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law."

hmmmm - is that MY reaction? what does our reaction to sin in the world say about our view of God's law? what does our view of God's law say about our view of HIM? how do psalm 69 and romans 15 put it... "the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me." help me to love you more, Lord.

call me an emo kid, but i saw a gorgeous sunrise this morning

it rose with an orangy glow over the snow covered west virginia hills, the fake power plant clouds and the icy river.... i was like "oh, that's really cool" temporarily forgetting how cold i was digging in my pocket for my van keys

well, as i drove out the road... i was thinking about my reaction - i noticed the beauty, but was i REALLY all that moved by it? and is it really so rare for me to notice such things? am i really so oblivious to the world around me and the grandeur of God? it's kinda like when g.k. chesterton said, "the amazing thing about people's funny noses is not that the noses are funny, but that they have noses at all!" when i first heard that quote, i thought, "you're right... God has created an AMAZING air filtration system that is constantly in front of my face but i BARELY think about it!"

so it's valentine's day, that emotional centerpiece of our calendar, and i'm driving along having this internal discussion about really noticing and feeling, and my heart being moved, etc. and i started to think about some of the verses i've been memorizing in psalm 119:

"my soul is CONSUMED WITH LONGING for Your rules at all times"

"HOT INDIGNATION seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake Your law."

"my FLESH TREMBLES for fear of You, and i am afraid of Your judgments."

"i open my mouth and PANT, because i long for Your commandments."

and i think, wow, these are strong emotional and physical reactions to God's truth by the psalmist. THAT is how i want to be. i want to see. i want to feel. God, help me. make me AWARE. OPEN my eyes. MOVE my heart!

And He set me on fire, and I am burning alive.
With His breath in my lungs I am coming undone.
And he set me on fire and I am burning alive.
With his breath in my lungs I am coming undone.
And I cannot hold it in and remain composed.
Love's taken over me and so I propose the letting myself go.
I am letting myself go.

You are my joy.
You are my joy.
You are my joy.
You are my joy.

(i get to see crowder in one week :) )

acting my age

i don't really pay attention to age that much. in fact, i can distinctly remember a time last week when i was stating what my age was and in the back of my head thought, "wait, is that right?" some people fixate on their age, not me. ironically, today's blog is going to spring out of how old i am....

i was reading today in 2 chronicles 21 about jehoram... not one of your "good kings of judah." his dad was jehoshaphat - a good king, his grandad was asa - a good king... jehoram, on the other hand, once he got on the throne and established his kingdom, "killed all his brothers with the sword and also some of the princes of israel" (guess he just tossed that second part in for good measure), he married one of ahab's daughters, built high places in judah, and led the inhabitants of jerusalem into whoredom AND made judah go astray...

let's just say that this guy was so bad that elijah, whose main ministry was in wicked israel (with ahab and such), wrote him a letter... i'll paraphrase... "you've been wicked (unlike your father and grandfather), so you're gonna be cursed and your family, too... oh, and your intestines are gonna come out."

well, the ethiopians and the philistines got mad... came and took all his stuff and his wives and sons (except the youngest) "after all this the LORD struck him in his bowels with an incurable disease. in the course of time, at the end of two years, his bowels came out because of the disease and he died in great agony.... he was thirty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in jerusalem. and he departed with no one's regret."

wow.

why am i writing this? well, i'm 32. jehoram sure made a wreck of the next 8 years of his life. hurting lots of people around him and suffering excruciating pain. (i will believe the Scripture when it says "great agony," having never really had a case of my bowels coming out). and nobody was sad that he died.

my prayer is that i will live differently. God help me to be a proverbs 3:5-8 man over the next 8 years (or however many You give me).

"trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. it will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones."