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| Can someone please enlighten me? Why is it so difficult to read emails? Why is it so difficult to respond to text messages? Or, put in another way, how can one read an email or a text that clearly requires a response and fail to do so? Sure, if you're doing something, like driving, you wouldn't reply right away, but why are you reading it in the first place? And it's not as if you can't 'mark as unread' your emails or do something to remind yourself to respond. I don't understand. I mean, when someone sends you a wedding invitation with an RSVP, you make sure to let them know whether or not you're coming. How is email or text any different?
Please. Enlighten me.
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| How quickly thoughts, dreams, grand visions, ideals can drift away. How quickly they disappear and vanish into thin air. How quickly we can turn from what is intended to what should not be.
How quickly we can descend from the mountaintop.
I truly, honestly, believe -- and some of you will have heard this numerous times already but I will say it again -- that church summer camp is one of the closest things to what God first intended community to be like. I believe that this is why people so often turn to Christ after experiencing one weekend of this life. Because deep down inside, we all yearn to be loved -- truly loved -- for who we are. We yearn for a community that will accept us and bear with us, knowing full well exactly who and what we are, while, at the same time, still allowing us to be who God has created us to be. We long to have some kind of special connection with our peers and with that Mysterious Being who is out there somewhere. And summer camp, at least temporarily, fulfills that desire.
Because in those few days, we are given a place and an opportunity to share what is on our hearts. We have the security and safety to discuss our spiritual walks -- our small victories and achievements but also, more importantly, our brokenness and our depravity. And putting trust in this community, we allow ourselves the vulnerability to humbly confess -- to our friends and especially to ourselves -- our failures and we become better equipped to move past these hindrances and, together, we attempt to move towards the life that God intended.
For some reason -- maybe it is because, every moment, we are in the midst of the Word, so closely attuned to the Voice of God -- we feel compelled to disclose of ourselves and talk about these things that we normally never get around to after Sunday service. Perhaps, it is precisely because of this -- that we usually don't have the time to pursue deep, meaningful relationships with one another because we're too busy, or too tired, or even too scared. Perhaps, it is because we hear that Voice and It compels us to listen and to obey and so we strike up that conversation we would never have struck up otherwise, or we sit beside a new friend we have just made, or we invite an acquaintance to join us for a cup of coffee or for a walk. Perhaps, it is just because the still silence of a devotion group put together randomly -- or so we choose to think -- just becomes a little too awkward for ourselves and we choose to fill it with words. Perhaps, it is because some of us are finally beginning to really understand the messages and the devotions and we choose to make that move. It could be any of one of these things and we could continue listing tens of other reasons, but it would be a mistake to deny the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us in those moments because His presence is in all times and in all places and in all situations.
Whatever it is that eventually drives us to be that community -- never denying the work of God -- I enjoy it. I enjoy each moment. I enjoy what He has shaped in these short days. And isn't that the theme of this year's camp?
It brings me joy to be a part of this community -- that, when pushed to, can be so loving, so accepting, and so much like the Kingdom of God. It brings me hope that this broken Church might rise to the standard it has been called to, refusing to be nothing other and nothing less than the ideal of our King. And it gives me faith that God will use each one of us to make it happen amongst our church and in each one of our own communities.
But we must keep being that community. We must keep being who we were in those moments when we were in the midst of the Word, so closely attuned to the voice of God. For nothing will have changed if we leave it all that on that mountaintop. And we will have failed the King yet again.
Be true to one another and to yourselves. Be willing to risk yourself for the purpose of serving the community and for the Kingdom of God. But do it in humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, and speaking the truth in love, so that we might grow up in Christ and be that Kingdom, that community that we ourselves so yearn for. And pray. Don't forget to pray. Allow God to do His work and be willing to be the answer to your own prayers.
Because there is so much to benefit from, so much to have, so much that the King desires to give, that it would be a shame if we left all that we learned on that mountaintop, in those three days. It would be such a shame all that becomes of this community is the shadow of a dream, the outline of a vision. | | |
| i've come to learn that i am a person whose imagination and creativity are spurred on by the ideas of others. and that is why i am coming to believe that i would rather prefer not to have a family. as much as i'd like to right the wrongs that i feel my parents made, i would only have my own family upon which to base the upbringing of my own children. and that, i feel, would be a horrible mistake. i'd much rather that no family ever base their family life upon that of our family because there are no attributes there, no characteristics there, that are even close to what i believe a family, anywhere close to normal, should have.
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| "insignificant".... [3 weeks and 1 day short of] a year later, and i finally understand what you mean... you are not insignificant to me.
i am debating whether or not to watch the butterfly effect again. i would like to see the whole thing, but at the same time, i don't know if i want to put myself through all of that agony once more. as time brings me from the overwhelming emotions of that lingering moment into the rationality of this present moment, i wonder whether it was truly that agonizing or whether it was just what some call a "coincidence" that the events that occurred around it happened to occur at that precise moment.
reading your work gives me the desire to write better, to string together words that are actually coherent to minds other than mine.
and yet... i have no words in my head. it is empty. there is nothing there to reveal, to share, to explore.
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| so i was thinking about trinity and the crazy tuition and my scholarships.. and i'm thinking... could faith sort of be the same as "counting your chickens before they hatch?" sort of.. in certain ways.. i think, it is....
well, that's my one-liner for today...
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