Until Heaven…

Please pray for the Owens family today. They’re having to say goodbye to their little boy. Please pray for them and their family and friends as they go through these difficult hours, and the days and weeks that will follow.

It has been a blessing to see the honesty with which they are living out their faith, and to see the steps of trust they have been taking day by day, and most recently, moment by moment.

I don’t know what else to say. But thank you for taking the time, however long it is, to send your thoughts and prayers their way.

God bless.

And it is beautiful.

I used to look at marriage as a very selfish thing. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t just be about me. You had someone to support and be supported by, someone to work with in all of your labours, etc. But somehow I came to see it as, compared to singlehood, selfish.

I wanted marriage and was single, and wanting marriage felt like a selfish desire. I didn’t desire it for the sake of my God or my future spouse directly. I was aware of those factors, but was thinking primarily of myself. Maybe in that context, it was a selfish desire.

But as I am approaching my own marriage, an entirely new world  has opened up before me.

A lot of my own emotional struggles that I’ve been facing (ones that most people probably discover and struggle with in the weeks, rather than months, leading up to the wedding, or even not until after they are married), have had to do with “losing myself”. For an independent young woman, the idea of marriage began to hold fear for me.

But I am suddenly arrested by the beauty of this relationship.

Marriage is used in the Bible as a metaphor for the way Christ loves us and it is incredible. I am not entirely certain how to express it, but God willing, I will be able to convey at least part of the wonder that has been opened up to me.

There is a lot of baggage when it comes to the Bible and marriage. One verse in particular has been viciously abused and causes many women, and men, too, to immediately recoil against it.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

~Ephesians 5:22 (NIV)

But this isn’t a verse that sits on its own. It is paired with the instruction to husbands, an instruction that is often missed in the debates against this verse.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

~Ephesians 5:25 (NIV)

Both verses are followed by further instruction, but it is the instruction to the husbands that receives the most explanation, almost as if Paul somehow knew how desperately we would need the clarification.*

I would encourage you to read the entire passage here. Don’t skip past the instruction to wives in anger or frustration. Try to read it and compare it with the instruction to husbands. Both have an equal level of severity and both, I think, are equally difficult.

They are difficult because of what they are each asking: complete and total surrender of the self for the good of the other.

I imagined, when I thought of marriage, that it would feel to me like it was about me and my own fulfillment (and to him like it was about his).

But it isn’t. It is so much more than that. And it is so much more beautiful.

A relationship that is primarily about my own fulfillment is colourless. I know what is going to happen next, I know how to get what I want. There is no mystery, no beauty, no depth in such a relationship.

But marriage is possibly the least selfish relationship there is, second only to parenthood. There is a selfish component to nearly every other relationship. You are friends with people who make you laugh, who make you feel good. You’re friends with people who agree with your perspectives and build you up. You’re friends with people who are the same as you, and you tend to steer clear of those areas where you differ, at least while you’re together. And nearly every other interpersonal communication involves some sort of trade-off where you are benefited as much or more than you are inconvenienced.

What is it about marriage that draws us so deeply into it? It requires this submission of yourself, this sacrifice of your will, laying your life down for the good of the other, and, as it should be, both of you laying down your individual lives for the sake of building one anew, glorious and glorifying to God.

Marriage is not selfish. I felt that way because I did not know what it would require of me. I still don’t know, not fully, and will probably never fully know (though more will be revealed over time).

It is beautiful, too, because I don’t pour myself out and find it spilled and wasted. I am pouring myself into him, and he into me. The source of these springs of ours rests in Jesus Christ– the pouring out is replenished. And eventually it becomes such a beautiful flowing exchange of love and mercy and grace and creation and instruction and growing and nourishing and building and peace and joy and hope and faith and trust and no longer can we tell what is mine, what is his and what is from God above.

I’m not sure what this has communicated. But marriage is beautiful. And… beautiful. I don’t know how else to describe it. We haven’t got there yet, but as we have tastes of heaven here on earth, so, too, can you have tastes of marriage while waiting for its approach.

And it is beautiful.

* Ladies, I hope that the command to submit tastes a little sweeter after reading this explanation of the instruction given to husbands: “Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies… For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and carefully protects and cherishes it, as Christ does the church.” Ephesians 5:29 (AMP).

Does this mean I’m old?

I just gave my little brother a crash course on VCR operation.

I have a massive collection of Disney VHS tapes that I hoarded from my childhood. I also have a VCR player that was just recently hooked up to the TV downstairs so that the fiance and I could enjoy a classic Disney flick.

Several days ago, I got into a discussion with my other brother (while the little bro was present) about such Disney goodness as Aladdin, etc. I declared that, not only did I have the VHS tape, but I also had the means by which to play it.

Well, today, the little bro, seeing the means, decided that he wanted to refresh his memory as to the wonders of “Ahladin”.

“No, no, it’s Aladdin.”

“Oh, right.”

So I pulled out the tape and handed it to him. But then I paused. Certainly he had watched many a VHS in his early years… but he is now the ripe old age of twelve and video tapes are a thing of the past.

“So you know how this works,” I said. After a hum and a haw, I decided I would at least begin the discussion and see where he picked it up, where his memory came in.

We opened up the VHS and I saw that, indeed, it had been stopped halfway through.

“Okay, you’ll need to rewind it first,” I said.

“Okay.” pause. “What’s rewind?”

Ladies and gentlemen, I tell you, I am not making this up.

So I did the only thing I could. I brought him to the VCR, sat him down and walked him through VHS Watching 101.

It’s interesting, because operating a VHS tape could be seen as simpler. You put it in the machine, when you want a break, you hit stop, when you want to start again, you just put it in and it begins where you left off. None of this “scene selection” stuff, shifting through menus, etc.

But on the flip side, with a DVD, you slide it in the tray, press play and there you go. No fast forwarding through commercials, no need to worry about rewinding when you’re done or the picture and sound degrading.

DVDs are definitely a step forward. It’s just amusing to see the constraint that time has on certain technologies. There are entire generations that have no idea how to operate video tapes.

A.W.O.L.?

I haven’t blogged in a very long time. I will leave it to you, reader, to determine how long it’s actually been. Frankly, I’m a little nervous to check.

I have a few reasons– though “excuses” may be more accurate.

1) Most of my observations on life have been shared with friends, family, journals, that are immediately present.

2) I started a serial story in the hopes of it intriguing me into writing more frequently. Unfortunately, though the characters, setting and plot are all different, it is very similar in tone and eventual theme to another story I am writing. It has been difficult to carry them both on, and this one is newer, so it fell by the wayside.

3) Every time I cook or bake something, I forget to take pictures!

4) I spend a lot of time on Twitter.

Number 4 doesn’t amount to much of an excuse, because I haven’t even been doing that all that frequently.

So, faithful readers, I am offering an apology.

Also, take a look at the headings on the blog. You will notice that I have introduced pages. I’ve given the story its own page (“Somewhere”), I’ve placed a few articles and short stories in a portfolio section, and I have decided I would like to examine literature the way that I did in undergrad.

That last section is more for my own enjoyment than anything else. It has been a year (or more!) since I was required to write an essay and frankly, I miss it.

So please browse, enjoy and contribute.

Dirty Laundry

Christians are remarkably good at forgetting about Christ.

I’ve been following several Christian blogs, reading different Christian books and listening to the cry of many Christians my age. Love, they moan, is missing from our generation of Christians. And it’s true. But in trying to amend that, we are making an entirely different mistake.

I confess something here that amuses me due to its paradoxical nature, but also bothers me. I poke at it, as one would a cold sore or a scab, dissatisfied with its presence, but relatively certain that time and appropriate care of the area are really the only way to usher these things out. It is this:

I can forgive everything except unforgiveness. I easily refrain from judging others, unless they are judgmental.

You see? A paradox.

There can be an aspect of pride to the above confessions, a pride that I hope I am not in possession of. In the Bible, Christ was compassionate and forgiving to everyone except those who had hardened their hearts and chose to judge those around them. So judging the judgmental and withholding forgiveness from the unforgiving can feel like echoes of Christ’s attitudes. However… I think perhaps we misunderstand what Christ was saying.

Christ’s example is to love everyone, even and especially our enemies. His command is to judge no one, to leave the judging to Him. Jesus knows the heart; that is why He can judge. We don’t; that is why we cannot. And the truth is, Christ’s forgiveness was offered to everyone, but those who had hardened their hearts were disgusted by it. Jesus’s message with regards to those people was one of warning, so that we wouldn’t allow our hearts to get like that: hardened and judgmental.

But it irks us! Christians who judge others really bother us, and so, in an effort to call them to account or to separate ourselves from them, we judge them. But this should not be. We should be forgiving of all and judging of no one.

We never know a person’s story. We never know what their background is. And we don’t truly know what their potential is, so we cannot judge.

And unforgiveness is a chokehold that clamps, not onto the other person’s throat, but onto our own. Holding something against someone rarely hurts them the way it does us. And oftentimes, the other doesn’t even know we are holding something against them. It is a stranglehold on our own lives as we harbour and rehash the bitterness we are holding onto.

We need to love those who don’t know Christ. We need to love those who do. And we need to remember that everyone is dear to Christ, regardless of how they appear to us. As He has forgiven us, so too do we need to forgive others.

Good News

Christians are always talking about the Good News, and about preaching it and sharing it. But as with anything, eventually terms wear out and names start to become meaningless. The “Good News” may be a term that many of my readers are familiar with but one that has perhaps lost the excitement it once had. And it may be a term that many of my readers have never heard before. So I am attempting to reframe—What is the Good News? What is being celebrated? What is God telling us?

He is telling us that finally, finally, the work He began at the creation of the world can continue. Finally, the gap between us and Him can be closed. Finally, He can redeem us and we can be part of His plan to make the world as it should be.

There are many things in this world that we look at and think, “This isn’t the way things should be.” There are wars and famines and floods, people dying, old and young alike, children sick, families going hungry, people living without shelter. Our thoughts are true: This isn’t how the world should be.

But this is what we choose, unwittingly or otherwise. We choose our way instead of God’s, demand our right to do what we want. We decide that we want to go our own way and be responsible to ourselves alone. And we’ve walked away from God. But there’s this “Good News”. What’s changed?

Jesus lived and died. That is a historical fact, but Christians differ from the rest of the world because we believe He didn’t stay dead. What an amazing thought that is. For someone to die and come back to life? Impossible. But what if we were to accept that this is true? What does that mean?

Jesus defeated death.

The biggest thing that feels wrong and wasteful to us has been reversed.

“The wages of sin is death,” so says the Bible. We have all done wrong things and therefore, we all die. “But,” it continues, “the gift of God is eternal life.” Jesus did nothing wrong. But He chose to die and to use His purity to take on the sins of the world. He had no debt to pay, so His death paid for the debts of us all. And now we are the good news. We are redeemed to God. We are now a part of His work to redeem the world and make it the way it is supposed to be.

It isn’t an easy step to take, I admit, for He asks us to give up everything that we have taken. He asks us to submit once again to Him, to again do things the way that He wants and to again live our lives according to His plan.

But through this, even though we may not see it in this lifetime, we can see and live in the world God intended for us to live in, with things the way God intended for them to be.

Following Jesus is difficult. But there is joy and hope and renewal. Redemption is the process of remaking. Something old made new again, something broken made whole. He asks all, He gives all.

This truly is Good News.

Geek toys

Doesn’t this look like so much fun?

[via]

Melody Gardot

My latest (potentially useless) past-time is browsing music on iTunes. It generally only lasts a handful of minutes before I get bored and turn my attention to something more beneficial. But when I am there, I am looking for the unexpected. At a swing dance, I like the standard vintage tunes, etc, but I love it when the DJ pulls out something really unexpected, sometimes a totally unheard of artist, or perhaps one you are familiar with, but one you never would have thought of dancing to. I always enjoy those moments. So I’m looking for those songs. Fresh artists, not to replace the standards, but to enhance. I’ll start with a genre or perhaps an artist and I will begin looking through related songs and albums. And usually I’ll click through the “New and Noteworthy” section of Jazz music on iTunes. Oftentimes the search is fruitless.  But sometimes I stumble across someone I really like, enough that I am willing to purchase a whole album.

I’ve never heard of Melody Gardot. Google tells me this is silly, as she has a website, several albums and a tour. iTunes assures me that this is okay by putting her in the “New and Noteworthy” section, so I’m not too concerned.

What I have learned is that she is a peer (twentysomething). She has four albums. And her voice is gorgeous. Incredibly smooth. Here is a MySpace link (gasp!) to some of her music. I wouldn’t say purchase the album solely on my recommendation but it is certainly worth checking out. I’m definitely enjoying it.

Yum!

Tantalizing, no?

Buffalo Chicken Fingers

Cut 2ish chicken breasts into strips; coat in crumb mixture (1 cup crushed soda crackers, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper); dip in eggs (beaten); coat again in crumb mixture; fry in 1/4 cup oil for 4 mins (flip halfway); remove to baking sheet; bake for 10 mins at 450º F; remove to platter; drizzle in sauce (2 tbsp melted butter, 6 tbsp hot pepper or buffalo wing sauce); eat delicious food.

Yum!

unChristian

I am currently reading a book entitled unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why it Matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.

It is a book that has me heartbroken and compassionate and angry and inspired all at the same time. This book is the culmination of a research project commissioned by Lyons, founder of Fermi Project, and headed up by Kinnaman, president of The Barna Group, a research firm “focused on the intersection of faith and culture”.

This research was begun to determine how our generation (twentysomethings and those several years older and several years younger) currently perceives Christianity.

I am only through the first two chapters and already I see a perception that is not far off from what I had come to assume, one that shows that Christianity has gone off track.

There is an old song that goes, “They will know we are Christians by our love”. That should be convicting to the Church today, because, according to this research, the Church and Christians — we — are not being known for love, either of each other, or of those outside of the faith.

The entire New Testament is based on two principles: Truth soaked in Love. Everything that Jesus did was motivated by these principles and in everything the early Church did, they strived to likewise live these out. Somewhere in recent Church history, we lost the element of Love and began focusing primarily, almost solely, on Truth. And now today, there is a movement of Christianity that, in an attempt to rectify past wrongs, focuses primarily on Love, fearing to bring Truth to light.

I had long believed that we were perceived negatively and it is heartbreaking to read the truth of it on paper. It isn’t even the negative perception I struggle with. There will always be people who disagree with what I believe. It is why we are perceived negatively. It seems to be often because of hurt.

Christians aren’t perfect. We make mistakes. But we also struggle to admit when we are wrong. We struggle to accept people as they are. I don’t think it’s just a Christian thing. It’s a people thing. But a Christian is a Christ-follower, and based on that title, our model of how to live is Jesus Christ. He accepted people exactly as they were. He called a tax collector (considered the scourge of that society) to be in his closest circle of followers. He accepted the sacrifice of a “woman who had lived a sinful life” (here). He was present when a woman caught in the act of adultery was dragged into the street to be stoned and he released her. He convicted those wishing to stone her such that they all finally walked away without a single stone being thrown. And then, as if he didn’t know exactly what had happened, he turned to the woman and asked, “Where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she responded.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” he said. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
(here)

What a man! What a God!

And what a mess we have made of portraying Him to the world around us.

Regardless of faith, it is an interesting book thus far and I’m finding it to be a good read. I may or may not post more as I progress through the book, but for those interested, the upcoming chapters cover the following perceptions people have of Christians:

Hypocritical;
Only interested in “getting you saved!”;
Antihomosexual;
Sheltered;
Too political; and
Judgmental

I will, at the very least, post when I am finished, in case anyone is interested in reading it.