It is so bizarre to have an entire evening free, with nothing I need to do. Granted, I have accomplished much in the past 16 waking hours, so perhaps it is to be expected, regardless, the feeling of having a few hours to choose amongst a variety of non-essential options is an unexpected luxury.
After much deliberation (otherwise known as deciding that sleep at 8:00pm on a Saturday night is rather lame, and a CD drive that does not want to function) I decided that it has been a while since I have written much. So as a result, this entry will likely be somewhat lengthy – a scattering of my thoughts in the past week or so. As a result it might be rather hard to read and understand how my thoughts flow. Amazing how much I miss the ability to decompress what is on my mind with all of you on a consistent basis. I may end up posting a lengthy blog after sermons just to do this the “hard” way over the summer. It is also hard to believe that just over seven days ago I was still on the Iowa State University campus and in just over a day I start work.
There have been two events of note for me in the past week.
Thing 1
As a favor to both myself and my mother, I elected to go completely through my room back at my parent’s house. This involved unpacking everything I brought back from Ames, going through everything in my room that it has accumulated over the past years, and then deciding what to keep, what to bring to the Quad Cities, what to bring to Ames next fall, and what to toss. The details of the several day process are not as important as the slew of memories brought back.
Time and time again I was bombarded with memories – a memento there, a letter from a friend, a card from parents, a toy long forgotten, a worn out deck of cards. It simply amazed me as to the sheer volume of memories I found merely sorting through my things. Many joyful, many sorrowful, I got the full variety pack of emotion. Even now, I do not know what to do with a variety of the things I found – will I ever open the “letter to self” I wrote in 10th grade? What about those papers from high school or college? Or the letter from a friend, or the picture or gift?
It would seem so simple to merely toss them all, ignoring any sentimental value (and on the whole, most of those things have been in my room untouched for years so that sentimental value is not really being utilized...) they might have. In fact I have been at a loss as to what to do with these sorts of things. On one hand, it is more or less a collection of random things representing things I have done and people I’ve known. That is all there really is – it is just stuff. But what makes it so hard to get rid of is the fact that that motley collection of items contains a large percentage of the things which have influenced me to be the person I am today. Good or bad, I am a product of the consequences of what has happened in my life (and the more “bad” a memory is, it likely has far more lasting impact on the person I am today than those that are “good”) and how God has used them to forge me into the person I am today.
This process has led me to a lot of self reflection. I have memories I would not wish to happen again and being reminded of those things is not necessarily something I enjoy. But, and this is the key part, everything that has happened in my life has shaped me and made me the person I am today. I cannot just ignore things, but I can also not dwell on choices I have made.
Something I have really come to appreciate this semester is taking how easily I tend to see how naive I am in the past tense, but not only past tense but also present tense. It makes sense: it is so easy to look back upon our past actions and say “yeah, that was silly” but what that means is that at every instance we are doing the same thing. For whatever reason I have come to appreciate and understand the necessary conclusion from that, being that currently we are also being the same naivety – we just do not see it. So while it is easy to see my past naivety from things that remind me of my past, it is just as true (albeit much harder to see) that I am doing things now I will later view in the same light. The trick is to more quickly realize and change those things... which is why prayer and friends willing to point those things out can be invaluable.
Thing 2
The second thing of note is the message from this evening’s service. I had essentially decided I would not spend a lot of time “shopping” for churches in the area, because with a summer of only 13 weeks, it becomes difficult to realistically shop for a church and plug into the same church if several weeks are in the shopping phase. Fortunately, this afternoon while running some errands I noticed a church that was clearly in a commercial building before, drove by and saw that they had a 5:00 service on Saturday, and decided I’d check it out. Essentially your standard evangelical church, I believe it is called Harvest Bible College – worship music followed by a lengthy Bible based message. Seems to be a relatively solid church. I am not sure if I am crazy but I could just feel the presence of God in the church and during the worship. Pretty neat. Reminded me a lot of the Hillsong concert.
The message was quite inspiring. They must be going through a series on Acts, as the message was based on Acts 17:15-31, which happens to be the section talking about the “unknown God” the Greeks made an idol for. The theme was “Your Life’s Pursuit.”
The bulk of the pastor’s message was around three key points. The first being that, “we must avoid idols.” For some reason though, while I have understood how easy it is to fall into idolatry of all manner of things (money, enjoyment, etc) the message just clicked tonight. I feel much more compelled to look into my own life and root out the variety of things I idolize (see above and the ‘naivety’ part -_-) without even realizing it. Funny how a sermon essentially the same as quite a few I have heard in my life can have such a different impact.
Naturally, when we idolize what we try to do is find satisfaction from something outside God. It also turns out that this doesn’t work, ever, yet for some odd reason it’s really “fun” to continue trying? Rather depressing to think about how clearly and definitely idolizing things fails to hold up. Well, it’s only depressing because of how often I try to do it anyways in spite of that knowledge. The pastor, Dan, showed two different NFL quarterbacks – Tom Brady and Kurt Warner – and talked about their perspectives; both quite successful quarterbacks and successful by the world’s standards.
From a 60 minutes interview with Tom Brady
But with all Brady's fame and career accomplishments, Kroft was surprised to hear this from him: “Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, ‘Hey man, this is what is.’ I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think, ‘God, it's got to be more than this.’ I mean this isn't, this can't be what it's all cracked up to be.”
What's the answer?
“I wish I knew. I wish I knew,” says Brady. "I love playing football and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I’m trying to find."
Conversely,
"If you ever really want to do a story about who I am, God's got to be at the center of it. Every time I hear a piece or read a story that doesn't have that, they're missing the whole lesson of who I am." - Kurt Warner
It just blows my mind how you could say the things that Brady said without having someone tell you “no, you’re right, there is more” but... briefly stated the pastor phrased it as “must find it’s end in God” (referring to the Life’s Pursuit, complete with incorrect ‘its’).
Regardless, the combination of those two points and stuff I had listened to on the radio (I had found a station playing an interview with random sports players on the six hour drive this morning as I was trying to not fall asleep) really hit home. Definitely good.
His last statement was regarding the “well, now what?” question. It does not do a lot of good to say “yep, I idolize that, what’s up!” and not actually change at all. Again, the idea of repentance is one that often gets discussed but I had never really heard it phrased as a u-turn before. Perhaps the fact that I made several of them this morning and afternoon contributed somehow to a deeper understanding... but when you are driving and need to make a u-turn, in general it is because of one of two reasons:
1) you made a mistake and were going the wrong direction
2) for whatever reason the entrance to wherever you are going is blocked on one side of the road
Most of the times I make u-turns are for (1) and not (2) and I think that is exactly the idea that repentance embodies – we are going north instead of south, and what we need to do is turn around on the road, instead of trying to take a back road or the next turn and find our own way. Acknowledging that you are going backwards on the road is by far the best way to get to the right destination while driving, but as before, what is so clear in driving becomes so blurred in life. It’s so easy to make up excuses for why we should not just turn around but when it comes down to it we are better off just turning around the car when we first realize that we are going backwards instead of finding alternatives, because by the time you get turned around, you wasted a lot of time and energy.
Anyways, this has become rather lengthy and I have been up for some 19 hours today already. Hope everyone has a great weekend.
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