This Just In

Update:

I called mom (God bless her!) because I needed to hear a familiar voice. I cried for a few minutes. I haven't cried in a very long time. Mom hasn't seen or heard me cry like that since I was a little kid. It was refreshing. Then we had a nice long chat about various things. I talked to some other folks online as well.

I'm still not sure what to do though. The fears and anxieties I've been feeling touch parts of my character that I simply can't access. That's annoying, because I want, very fervently, to change these things about myself. They're a lack of trust in God, an exposé of how weak my faith is. I suppose it's one more thing to add to the laundry list of character flaws I'm praying for God to work on, but geez! Will it ever end?

One thing mom and others said is that I need to get connected with a group of my peers and have a social life. DEFINITELY. It's so hard hearing about how everyone else's lives are bustling: friends they're seeing, things they're doing, places they're going, and not be able to share those experiences with them. Please, be gentle when you tell me how fun and exciting your lives are and how much fun you're having with other people. Chances are, I wish I could be there with ya.

By the way, this all relates to the post immediately following this one, which I wrote earlier, when I was going insane.

Several Atmospheres

I wonder if it was inevitable? I've been fine for most of the time I've been here in CA, but this weekend is different. It's too cramped in here. The walls aren't closing in on me, but they may as well be. Feels like cracks are forming.

I went out this afternoon with the intention of merging with a 20-somethings group my cousin told me about because they play ultimate frisbee on Sunday afternoons. They never came, so since I brought the book I'm reading, I found a dry shady spot and read for a while, then just laid in the grass. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and it was all fitting for me to praise God in that situation.

Then I went home. I worked out for an hour, got back, and was a touch set off by something. Only it hasn't been decreasing, it's increasing. It's growing tighter and tighter inside. I'm not really saying what I want to.

I miss folks. I miss folks a LOT. Everyone is busily going about their lives and interacting with their friends. I live 1000 miles from any of my friends. I haven't made any good friends my age yet. I've hardly met anyone my age, let alone Christians my age. I miss my parents, and alex, and Joel, and Nate, and Arron and Darren and all of UCU. I miss Tia...I miss Tia a WHOLE LOT. She left some IMs. They made me chuckle, but it squeezed out a tear. Right now I want nothing more than to close my eyes and open them to find her sitting on my couch, in all her Tianess, not going anywhere.

These are foolish ideas. In the absence of friends and family I have my Lord! I was reading today about how He made everything and is everywhere, and knows the innermost struggles and desires of my heart. From this morning's Bible study of Ephesians 5, Paul suggests, "Walk in the Spirit..." Isn't that what I'm doing? And yet, for all God's Omnipresence, I sure ain't feeling any of it. WHERE ARE YOU, GOD? There's something vile in this room and it's terrifying me. Please eject it, Lord. Forget my unbelief, it's not my own. It's hard to tell if anything is happening. I tried to pray, and I couldn't. That's not right.

But you might argue, "If God's Spirit is not present with you it is because you won't let it be." Do you think I don't know that?! You ask, "Jesus stands knocking at the door, why won't you let him in?" If I knew, would he still be out there knocking?

Of course I can't find fault with God. He knows what's going on; he's infallible. Therefore the error must lie with me? Some sin troubles me; God is distant; I'm worried. My fault; my failure; my selfish desire? I hate the error. I want some recourse, but there is none. There's just God, in all his bigness, and then there's me, a waste of a disciple, troubled by sin and plagued by worry. Do you not see that I despise even myself, Lord? If you know me so intimately, don't you know how I wish things were different? Don't you hear when I call on you to change them because I'm too weak?

And they persist. Oh, sometimes they may go away for a time but it always comes back and nothing ever changes. Is my flesh really so strong that God himself cannot overcome it? Isn't that what the Cross is for? I fight defeatist inclinations: that since little has changed, little will change. What is it going to take for this flesh to DIE DIE DIE!! Even the smoky man in The Great Divorce did not have to take the hand of the angel to remove his blight, only to give permission. WELL HERE'S THE PERMISSION, WHERE'S THE ACTION?

This is madness, insanity. If beating my head against the wall would do some good I'd gladly do it. I might do it anyway because it would give me something else to think about. I'm gonna go call my parents. God, how I wish they were here.

Plastic Pterodacty Phylactery Pneumonia Pressure

A new consonant every time!

I swear Kenton and Tia and I are the only ones who blog anymore. Maybe it's because we're all separated from UCU. We pour our hearts out because A) we like talking about ourselves, and 2) We think you're interested in our lives. But everyone else, no, we receive no word from them. So we hang on in eager expectancy, and are dissapointed Thanks for sharing YOUR lives with us you self-possesed Benedict Arnolds! (I'm joking, you realize.)

I found out that a league is equal to 3 miles, whichever mile you're using. If it's on land, it's a standard mile, if on water, a nautical mile. So that got me thinking, you know, Jules Verne was way off his rocker! There's no way you could go 20,000 leagues under the sea in any direction! If you were to go 20,000 leagues vertically, not only would you be on the other side of the earth after only 2500 leagues, you'd pop out of the other side and land yourself in an earth-trailing orbit some four times farther out than a geostationary satellite! By that time Capt. Nemo's boat would be so far above the earth's magnetosphere that they'd all die from solar radiation poisoning or escape earth's orbit entirely. If you were to go 20,000 leagues horizontally, you'd have to circle the earth 2.5 times. It's more feasible, but what's the point? You'd be half a world away from your port of departure. Not exactly the best place to run out of gas.

Are you High-Frequency?

I want to be a dangerous Christian. You don’t normally hear that kind of word applied to Christ’s followers without negative connotations. Well what about infectious? Or voracious? It calls to mind an image of an invalid, coughing pathogenic clouds onto passers-by, or one with large, pointed teeth, poised to consume an unsuspecting urbanite in a dark alley.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. Think about it, what sort of mushy ideals do we unconsciously set for ourselves? “I wanna love Jesus,” and “Preach peace to the nations.” Well that’s fine, but are you gonna go out of your way to do it? Will you get your hands dirty? One “worship” song that always irritated me went like this:

I don’t wanna be a casual Christian.
I don’t wanna live a luke warm life.
Cuz I wanna light up the night,
With an everlasting light.
I don’t wanna live a luke warm life.

Do you recognize it? Maybe you’re humming it in your head. It’s about the most milquetoast sounding song ever written, short of Kum-Bay-Ya. So you don’t want to be casual or luke-warm about your life. Good, cause you know what God will do with you? He’ll vomit you out. That’s a good earthy illustration for a Mylanta sort of attitude (i.e. lots of chalky aftertaste). But what will you do about it? That song may make you feel at ease with its aspiring platitudes, but you certainly won’t get anywhere just feeling righteous. I’d say that’s a sure sign that you’re not!

Think of some phrases from youth group or bible study or whatever that we’re called to live up to: “Be on fire for God.” Well what happens when you touch something that’s on fire? IT HURTS! “Be salt and light.” What happens when you look at the sun? IT HURTS! What happens when you put salt (i.e. disinfectant) in a wound? IT HURTS! There’s nothing cushy or soft about being a Christian, for you or this injured world. But the surgeon has to cut into the flesh to heal it.

So here’s what I’m getting at: be dangerous, be infectious, be voracious about your faith. Consume Scriptures and pray like it’ll be your first meal in a week. Take risks for God, stick your neck out, and do something insane. You want your Life to spread to others like some kind of divine epidemic, not be quarantined behind bible studies and worship ceremonies. They have their place, but so do you, and it’s out there.

Where’s all this excited energy coming from? The church I’m going to just had a seminar from a fellow named Sam Talbert called “UnveilinGLORY” which I recommend highly if you want to break out of your shell and understand what the hell has happened to the church in America. I’ll give you a hint, it has to do with YOU. That’s right, YOU, and I’m leaving YOU capitalized for a reason. When you think of knowing Christ, what’s the reason that first comes to your mind? Is it so that God receives glory throughout all the earth? No, it’s probably so that your sorry butt can escape hell. I won’t lie, that’s what I said when he asked us. But God, in his mercy, loves to teach me things, and I love learning them. (That’s a selfish statement right there, but bear with me.) Los Gatos Christian Church has a heart for missions rather beyond most. This is as it should be since we are called to go and “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” How many of you can say you’ve done that? I can’t, and it makes me indignant at myself. So God stuck me there, and by gum I’m determined to glorify Him in whatever way I can. He even put me in a perfect position to do it: I’m single, I’m not in school, I have no in-groups here, and being new to all this, I have no ruts to be stuck in. What a splendid idea, God! Here’s the essence of “Cat and Dog Theology” that Mr. Talbert spoke to us about:

A dog says, “You feed me, you pet me, you love me, you must be God.” That’s Dog Theology.

A cat says, “You feed me, you pet me, you love me, I must be God.” That’s Cat Theology.

Cat theology is crippling the church more and more every day. I love cats, but it’s disheartening to realize how ingrained such a self-glorifying, and ultimately self-defeating, ideology is in the Body of Christ. I encourage you to give the matter some thought. At the core of cat theology is at least one of two things: fear and pride.

The proud person wants the world to be for him because he thinks he’s so great. It’s him against the world and as far as he’s concerned, he’s in the right. (KAF, sometimes I worry about you.) And all you want is more blessings because God is merciful and abundant and has all kinds of free stuff to give out to you. But it’s like a bucket filling with fresh water. If the water doesn’t go anywhere it gets nasty and full of mosquitoes. If you put a cap on it and try to keep collecting more, it ends up ripping the bucket apart (think dry ice bomb). But if you punch a few holes in it and hang it up somewhere, all kinds of vegetation grows where the water spills out.

The fearful person wants the safest easiest, comfiest ride through life possible. This is me. I never asked for adventure or danger, I’ve always aspired to live a quiet, normal life. Well I’m finding out that’s not so worthwhile, since I’m already seeing those aspirations try to swallow my faith, nor is it what the Lord expects of us. He may put us in comfy situations, since there will always be rich people, but that’s no excuse to just coast along. If fear motivates your life, it halts your life. Mom, you always wanted to be a writer, but you never became one because you convinced yourself you couldn’t cut it. Today, you still want to write, but you won’t even write for fun because you’re afraid of the results. Then write for yourself, journal, make up short stories in Word and save them under boring filenames, start a blog and don’t tell anyone about it; but for goodness’ sake stop being afraid! If you reach out, especially with the goal of glorifying God, you may find that all sorts of good stuff trails along with it.

Your microwave operates at about 2.45GHz, which means that it’s like a light bulb with light of wavelength 12cm instead of 300-700nm (1cm = 10000000nm), and it heats your food as long as there’s water in it. Visible light, on the other hand, has a frequency in the terahertz range and heats almost everything whether it’s got water or not. Gamma rays have frequencies in the range of thousands of terahertz* and can rip atoms apart. Basically, the more high-frequency a wave is, the more energy it has, and the more work it can do. When it comes to God, are you high-frequency?

*A terahertz is 1,000,000,000,000 Hz.
A thousand terahertz is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Hz.
God, in his Cleverness, made math.
And Glory be to him for making it!