..fleeting

The things that are fleeting are my thoughts, they are fleeting away from this place. I am wondering all over the world with my brain, and then coming back the the stancdard center of it all, me. There is nothing more disgusting in life than a self centered existence. Not only do you not include God in your life but you replace him with the most faulty thing, yourself. I long just to serve. I wonder what it would feel like to be on the other side of the globe right now, risking death and disease and just doing it. Waking up early, bathing your day in prayer and faith, and going to bed completely exhausted but fulfilled and overjoyed with the promise of doing it again. Tomorrow I have no such promise. I have the promise of 3 classes, plenty of food, comfortable social interaction, and selfish thoughts. Teach me how I am to live in the place that you have put me God. Teach me to be grateful for the circumstances, situations, and people you have brought into my life. Give me new breath where I need it and transform my eyes to see my world the way in which you do. You have a phenomenal plan for my life and I am too near sighted to see it. Give me your eyes God. Give me people who long after you. Make me your child.

..tension

The concept of tension has been one that has been consuming my life as of late. It seems that there is this divine tension in everything that happens to me and I embrace it and love it while simoteniously dreading its implications. It brings me to the place where I am not comfortable with certain things that I don't think that I should be okay with. Simple things such as where are my clothes coming from, and my food, and are the choices I am making with my financial blessings really glorifying God? I have the immense tension of being so incredibly blessed to be a Christian university and be experiencing the amazing things that I have but at the same time I feel as though an intimate relationship with Christ would be so incredibly real in a situation other than this. I long for peace about this situation but rejoice in the tension, because it pushes me to think and allows me to be okay with whatever circumstance I am in. I find tension in the way I desire to live and the life that I blooming before me. Perhaps that tension is simply there to drive me to my knees in my weakness and to cry my Abba father and beg for his presence in my life. It draws me closer to a Jesus that isn't always easy to understand but takes pleasure in his ambiguity at time, since you must rely on his power to know him. Benny asked me today if I knew that Jesus loved me. The answer is yes, but sometimes I wonder if my lifestyle choices reflect my love for my Jesus.

..revolution

The taste of the world revolution on my lips is a combination of excitement, confusion, and fear. I know that I am called to live in a way that directly opposes modern culture. I don't really know how to describe it but its as if this thing, currently called "the revolution", chose me. I was sitting in nice suburbia and then transferred in the same comfort to the city and then became irrated. I started to get angry with church. 'Christians', and my school and I didn't really know where that came from. Frustration with apathy, lukewarmness, and triggered for the teaching of Jesus. These feeling began to boil up inside of me and I didn't really know what to do and I saw glimpses of it in others around campus but it was just a glimpse. The crazy thing about it now though is that there are other people like me. Except they have translated their frustration into action and have begun to live a life that stands in direct contrast with our current culture.

I suppose I sit here and I read my Bible, the beautiful words of my crazy, homeless savior, Jesus and think that they were not just lofty ideal or only culturally relevant two thousand years ago. His words transcend the culture he was in and directly apply to the United States of America in the autumn of 2006. In fact they are more than applicable, they are truly revolutionary. How sad is it that to be a revolutionary all you must do is read your Bible and do it? God help the church and the people who make up the church.

As I sit here right now, I am approximately 9 days away from entering back into SPU land, a disenchanting combination of self gratifying good works and stale good news. I walk into this year different from the last. Last year I still had the beautiful, virgin ideals of an incoming freshman but after a year, they have lost their charm and have been broken against the rocks of white, wealthy, Christianity at its worst. I am very grateful that my awkward dance with mediocrity is over. I am very much will to start a new chapter in my life. Where I view the Bible as an instruction book, not just lofty ideas, but things that I must do if I claim the name of Christ.

I have always longed to be different. I think its a naturally selfish desire to be unique and different from the rest. How ever I long for me and a ton of people to be radically different. To stay in our situations and life callings but follow Jesus, and actually try to understand what that means. I want to meet the crazies that actually believe that following Jesus is possible. That heaven is not simply a destination in the sky, but a reality that Christians are called to develop on earth, despite the sin surrounding us and in us. It seems to me, that no matter what road we go down as Christians, whether we are accountants, artists, mathematicians, fighters, protesters, revolutionaries, soccer moms, doctors, missionaries, business people, or gas attendants.

I am ready for something different. Something that I have been waiting in anticipation for the last several months. God give me the faith to actually follow the words of your Son this next year and bring me into crazy, authentic fellowship with others that are crazy in love with you too.