The Earth, The Sky and Everything In Between

So today is Memorial Day, and at 9:08pm, I think I'm just now making my first attempt at productivity today. Actually, I did attempt to work on my car this morning, with zero success, and spent most of my time from that point sleeping, watching movies, and sleeping. Maybe that kind of time was needed, but I tend to think waste probably found its home somewhere in there, too.

So now I figure I have about two more hours of productive time, keeping in mind the alarm that will go off 8 1/2 hours from now.

What to write...what to write....

Song notice for today. If you haven't heard it, I highly recommend 'Toxic' by Nickel Creek. It's currently listenable on my myspace account: www.myspace.com/casadean. Fantastic song.

I'm beginning to hit that 'I'm fading' stage. It's now 10:27pm. I don't know what's happened to the last hour. I wish to death I had something big and meaningful to write about, but I'm not sure I do. I suppose, however, I can certainly take my best shot at it and see what happens.

I am continually amazed at how gracious God is in his patience with us. Of course, in saying this I really mean I'm amazed at how patient He is with me. I know my heart and the struggles that happen within it, and how petty they are when set against the words He's provided and the experiences He's given me. This all came to a point yesterday when, for the first time in any recent memory, I gave serious thought to the big 'is this Christian life, the pursuit of God, really worth it?'

Now, before I start getting random calls from sympathizers who're really questioning the condition of my soul, let me explain, because those big 'is all this really worth it' questions are borne out of a really important part of everyone's walk, and that is the part where we separate the active and present nature of God in relation to our lives from the practice and pursuit of His heart, His law, and His love. What do I mean by 'separation'? By this, I mean when we forget, or neglect, the reality of the character of God with all his personality and character traits, from our faith practice.

This can take shape in one of two ways. The first, and maybe the more uncommon and less-dangerous of the two, is when we remove the sense of an active God from the equation alltogether. In doing this, we heap our entire faith practice squarely upon our own shoulders, leading to a certain burnout. The second, more common and dangerous than the first, is when we replace the actual existant God with a more personalized version of the Most High. I think this is incredibly common among the most devout of Christians. As long as we have this sin influence involved with our thoughts and actions, we're always going to struggle with maintaining a true biblical image of our Father, Creator, and Saviour. Our sin likes to cloud these images, and substitute out certain character traits that conflict with today's self-pursuits. In this way the second possibility becomes far more dangerous than the first, which simply holds both our faith practice and our sin out in the open, both unjustified and un-supported by anything bigger than ourselves. In this light, a person can discover the emptiness of both pursuits, and perhaps re-discover the true, loving, and active God. The second substitutes our version of a new and improved God who amazingly lines up in accordance with what we want. To rediscover our true Father, we must forsake our images and perceptions of that false God, and the longer a person has held to those images, the harder they are to let go.

So where did I fall yesterday? Where am I still falling today? Probably under the second example. I really like to cloud God up with my own revisions to His character. Amazingly, while this helps me justify my sin, it also makes Him (or my image of Him) seem pretty lame. So after I go through my period of doubt and reconsideration of this whole faith-thing, I begin to consider this image at the heart of the faith I'm questioning. What I discover is perhaps the holiest thing happening was the questioning itself, because it makes me re-evaluate the image behind my faith, an image I find is inconsistent with Scripture, the liturgy of those God used to build His church, and with my own limited experience and understanding of who this God is really supposed to be. Fortunately, the next step is pretty clear. Once the falsity of our faith-image is realized, its back to Scripture to refine our image back to our true Father. Maybe He's not as accepting as we'd like, and maybe His agenda is somehow different than ours. But seeing as how we're pretty stinking small blips on a blippy planet anyway, His agenda might not be so bad. So that's where I'm left off, and its back to the Bible for me tonight. I promise I'll follow through and report how He's refining my image of Him.

So there we are. It's 11:06pm, and that alarm is a cruel 6 1/2 hours away. God bless. Goodnight.