Play it Again

Not long ago I stopped posting to my old God-blog A Word of Praise in favor of combining it with this forum for a more integrated presentation of my thoughts. But there was some good stuff on that old site, even if no one ever saw it, so I'm going to start occasionally reposting the better writings, starting tonight, with a selection from April of 05. Enjoy.

The Best of Friends

What does it mean to have a friendship with God? Looking up from my little room in Jamul, squinting to see that all-powerful Creator staring unceasingly down from his enormous throne, the prospect of friendship is meaningless. No one with a hundredth part of His power would care to listen to the happenings of my day. No one with a minute fraction of His wisdom could bear to see me blunder as I do through my life. In fact, no part of my life merits the least moment of His attention.

But His perspective is not high above me, looking down as I, in miniature, toddle through my days. For He has come to this world as a man and can look me in the eyes. He has made His home in my very heart, looking out upon me as I do the stars. He has humbled Himself, knowing that I am nothing, and yet making me his world. And so, although I merit nothing of His friendship, He has made me important to Himself and extended His hand to me. I take it gladly today, gratefully and gladly.

Jesus Learned, and so should we

Following up my last post, I want to take a minute to reflect on the implications of Jesus' thirty years of patient education.

My first, most obvious reflection is that I'm 23. Jesus, God incarnate, waited seven more years before diving into his ministry. And yet for the last 4 years or so I have been chomping at the bit, pawing the ground to get out into the world and change it into something that looks more like, well, more like the world I see in my head - my ideal world.

But Jesus was content to stay in his carpenter shop, shaping tables and chatting with customers, or sitting with the religious teachers, asking and answering questions.

I realize that I need not change the world yet, which is hopeful. I think that perhaps I should not, which is frightening. I have learned that I yet have much to learn, which is exciting.

And so I find myself daily with a choice, as do you, I assure you. I can either feign an understanding deeper than my own, living as though life were my numbers and I life's calculator. Or I can embrace the truth that this life is more varied than my knowledge and its potentials deeper than my understanding.

I choose the latter. I will live as a student, even as I play the occasional role as teacher. For the teacher who does not learn is given other titles as well - hypocrite, imposter, fool.

Christ was none of these, for my Master was the master learner.

Jesus Learns

A guy I traveled with in Nepal thinks that during the years of Jesus' life that are not recorded in the Gospel, the Lord travelled to Asia where he was considered a Buddha. I'd like to offer another suggestion. It's not even a theory, so much as a hopeful idea. But it certainly doesn't contradict anything we're told, in fact it is rather well supported, at least in light of my limited knowledge.

I think he learned. Just learned. Learned in the synagogue, from the priests; learned at home, from his parents; learned in the workshop, from customers; learned about all these people.

No person that I have encountered - no politician, novelist, pastor, or parent - seems to have as deep an understanding of people as Jesus demonstrated during his short years of ministry. He knew their shortcomings and their strengths, he knew what they needed to hear and what they wouldn't listen to, he knew that they would follow him, ravenous for his teaching, and he knew that they would kill him for the same. Jesus spent thirty years learning about his Jewish people, and people in general. And he did it well.

If you remember, when he was young those in the synagogue were amazed by him - by his questions and his answers. Jesus was a talented learner. He picked up theology as if it were a book he already owned, and his teachers only had to turn the pages. He learned the politics of religion, and the dangers of politics. He learned what his people desired, what they lacked, what they offered, what they needed, and what they would respond to.

And finally, after thirty years of quiet study, he stepped out of the workshop and presented himself as one ready to teach, to help, to reach out. And not until then, at least as far as we know. There are mighty implications to this, my friends. Mighty.

The Money Lines

In dowtown Los Angeles there is a single street that separates the opulent commercial district from the beginnings of skid row. Those fortunate enough to have window offices but not so fortunate as to have them on the other side can sit in cusioned chairs in air conditioned rooms and look out upon streets full of tents, poverty, and crack.

In the southern- and westernmost corner of our country there is a dividing line of political sorts, but also economic. It separates a people marinating in luxury from those who don't have a steak to marinate.

Who can cross those lines? Are the homeless welcome into the skyscrapers? Are poor Mexicans invited to visit America?

So how is the one group going to know the other? Whose responsibility must it be?

On Proactivity

As it turns out, one can excel in the world of education - from K thru college - without being proactive. I know because I did. I succeeded in scholastic terms: lots of A's, good college, respected degree. But this success did not come because I looked at it among the myriad goals of the world and chose it, committed to it, and persevered until it was mine. No, I succeeded because my parents and teachers set scholastic hoops directly in front of me and yelled, "Jump, jump."

And it's a good thing they did. I can't imagine where I might otherwise be. But my point lies elsewhere.

After college, when all the hoops were jumped (if you will), I found myself in a world without ready-made goals. The 'real world,' as they call it, is a land of ambiguity and limitless choice (if not opportunity). It is a land where the simple following of instructions does not work, does not even apply. It is a land where proactivity is king.

In hopes of clarifying my own thinking on the subject I am going to attempt a definition of proactivity, one that began to formulate itself in the first paragraph, if you will remember. For the purposes of this post I will call proactivity the symbiosis of choice and commitment.

Choice in its purest form is arbitrary. If you have two options from which you must choose and one is obviously more appealing than the other, then your decision is a dictate of reason. It's when you see two equal or ambiguous options, two whose respective values you can not accurately contrast, that you find yourself in a matter of choice.

Commitment is the giving of oneself to a goal. In the light of commitment, fleeting emotion grows dim and obstacles are translucent. Commitment is unstoppable, even if its goals are unattainable.

Commitment to a choice is the essence of proactivity.

This is not to say that arbitrariness is the key to success, or that blind dedication regardless of results is the way to operate in the real world. But together they are the foundation of proactivity, and I believe that proactivity is the great key to success.

But there is a magic to it as well. A spark of proactivity is the Big Bang of human behavior. It is something where there could have been nothing.

You see, the world is a supermarket where the mass of shoppers stand stumped before mountains of apples and oranges, staring blankly back and forth. He who steps forward and takes and eats - he is filled.

A Terrible Situation Gives Me a Fresh Start

This past Friday I started a new job, though it's hardly a job in the ordinary sense. It's more of a pursuit, or a mission. I began working with Invisible Children, an organization working to help a whole generation of besieged youth in the northern part of the country of Uganda (find Sudan on a map of Africa and look south).

Let me give you a quick summary of the problem. A rebel army called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has been opperating in the northern region of Uganda for the last 19 years. Led by a man named Joseph Kony who claims the Holy Spirit as his prime supporter, the army abducts children and forces them to commit heinous acts against villagers, friends, and even family members, not to mention fighting against the government military. In the almost 20 years of the LRA's activities it is estimated that more than 50,000 children have been forcibly conscripted.

Children in a large region of northern Uganda live in constant fear of such a fate. To avoid it kids began a practice that has since been termed 'night commuting.' Their greatest risk exhists at night and in smaller villages that are more easily overrun by the LRA soldiers. So kids walk every evening from their villages, some for hours, to larger towns where they sleep communally in hospitals or churches, with little or no supervision. Along with the danger of children walking alone through a war-torn territory, the practicalities of hundreds of kids of various ages sleeping almost on top of each other night after night - well, they aren't good.

So that's the problem. Invisible Children is working on the solution. And I get to be a part of it.

For which reason I want to take a moment to thank God, and to praise Him for the work that He has done to bring me to this mission. But concurrently, I cry out to Him to save these kids, many of whom love Him dearly.

For more on the problems in Uganda, please read this article in Christianity Today. Be careful, though, the reality of the situation there is not for the faint of heart.

A Word of Thanks

Over the past few years God has changed my heart, and with it my desires and goals. Today He provided me with a wonderful opportunity to pursue those. Praise God, not only for forming a new creation out of the rough clay that I am, but for preparing a place for that creation.

Lord my thanks flow up to You
Even in the dark
But now your light dazzles me
The eyes of my heart
And so my thanks come streaked with praise
In this happy hour
All glory from my life is yours
My guide and my power

Composed, mostly, on a plane between India and Singapore

Into foreign spaces, under foreign skies
The grandeur of the places, the power it implies
The beauty in the faces, the mystery in their eyes

The journey's just begun.

Into foreign realms and breathing foreign air
Smell overwhelms, for a moment I can't care
For them in their hells - those beggars over there

The journey's just begun.

Into foreign houses and sipping foreign tea
Hindus and their spouses sitting there with me
Something in me cowers. Something else is free

The journey's just begun.

Into foreign lands, I walk through foreign parts
Holding foreign hands and hearing foreign hearts
My mind and soul expand in fits and trips and starts

The journey's just begun.

Into foreign laughter and rounds of foreign songs
Bouncing from the rafters. I am where I belong
And hope to come back after; and hope it won't be long

The journey's just begun.

Out of foreign countries, onto waiting planes
Into aisles of sundries and import-choked lanes
Home has its comforts but returning has its pains

My Journey's just begun.

(To be edited soon, as it has not been yet.)