A mirror of what I'm discovering lately

I'm reading Blue Like Jazz and it's literally speaking to exactly what I'm discovering right now, this past week.

"I love how the Gospels start, with John the Baptist eating bugs and baptizing people. The religious people started getting baptized because it had become popular, and John yells at them and calls them snakes. He says the water won't do anything for them, it will only get their snakeskins wet. But if they meant it, if they had faith that Jesus was coming and was real, then Jesus would ignite the kingdom life within them. I love that because for so long religion was my false gospel. But there was no magic in it, no wonder, no awe, no kingdom life burning in my chest. And when I get tempted by that same stupid Christian religion, I go back to the beginning of the Gospels and am comforted that there is something more than the emptiness of ritual. God will ignite the kingdom life within me, the Bible says. That's mysticism. It isn't a formula that I am figuring out. It is something God does.

"One night I watched the sunset till the stars faded in and, while looking up, my mind or my heart, I do not know which, realized how endless it all was. I laid myself down on some grass and reached my hand directly out toward where? I don't know. There is no up and down. There has never been an up and down. Things like up and down were invented so as not to scare children, so as to reduce mystery to math. The truth is we do not know there is an end to material existence. It may go on forever, which is something the mind cannot understand."

Don't limit the limitless. God is the magic beyond what we can understand and grasp. Let that make your head spin!

Beauty in Being Unique [Part 2 - Lost Magic]

I just realized... it's real easy to have the "Christian thing" figured out and taken care of, even the elusive concept of "grace", but what about falling in love with it along the way? Why is it that we believe the most beautiful thing in the world and yet, instead of God being that lost bit of magic, intrigue and mystery we've been hoping for since we were kids, our lives are more like a system just to "get through"? I feel like I'm finally getting it! :)


I was always really into fantasy movies. I just watched a Harry Potter movie tonight. There's something about such movies that always makes me really happy. I want to know why that's missing out of my life with God. God is more wonderful and wide and beautiful than any movie can be... so I know if I'm not getting this sense of childlike wonder out of my relationship with Him, I'm definitely missing something key. There's nothing ordinary about God... He's awesome, just ask King David.


I've got a method. A system. And God doesn't work in systems. He works in beautiful, uneven, messy patterns. He loves sloppy, silly individuals who don't have it together. The beautiful rocks and canyons and waterfalls shout His beauty more than stained glass windows ever could. Come undone. Let your walls down. Let the Lord in and let Him show you how beautiful everything is in itself. Be silly and undignified... stop trying to be beautiful and collected. He makes you righteous. He makes you beautiful. 


We always wanted to believe in magic when we were little. Ask any kid. We want to believe that the impossible is both a) possible and b) personally available to all of us. We want to believe that each of us each has his own unique "powers", if I may push the boundaries of language into the near-heretical to make a point. By that term, I meant our own unique role and special purpose that we've been blessed with by God. Don't you desire that?


What if it were all true? What if God does give us each a unique role in the "impossible"? What if that magic that always kept us entranced as kids were real? What if that was God, and not some impersonal force? What if that were available to each and every one of us, and in addition to making us powerful and beautiful in meaningful ways, it actually cared for us and loved us? 


I'm just enraptured as I write this because I have a hope... because a new understanding for me is near. I can feel it. The system of getting on God's good side, that I made with my own hands, is breaking down. I'm not abandoning Christ. I'm just rediscovering for myself that God is Someone I can dare to love and love wildly. And anyone who tells you different is clearly content with chains. 


I want the world to fall in love with Someone that is mysterious, powerful, wonderful, kind, lovely, poetic, tranquil, violent, perilous, natural, enduring, vast, and yes, magical. God is that for us. I always knew He was good, even before I accepted Him into my life. I never had any doubt. But now my eyes are opening and I can see that God is my magic. He is my unexplained but undeniable joy. He's always here for me, and I delight in getting to know more about who He is. It's no longer about saving me, He's promised that. It's about falling in love with Him as our Joy that we've hoped for all along. 


And suddenly we can see, it's not about physical beauty, status, wealth, power, influence, education, style, or anything else. It's open to anyone at all. God is the God of all that was created, and if He is our only hope, then can we not dare to believe that he can do the "impossible"? Isn't there a sense of wonder and "enchantment" in that? 


Christ invites us to a relationship that will never fail. God is all about His own awesome glory, and as far as I'm concerned, that's worth my life! That's the biggest dream I can dream of!

When friends hurt you, what should you do?

Something that's been heavy on my heart lately is that whenever my friends sin against each other (for example, a crude joke, however light), the one who's offended just talks about it, but never confronts the other one on one... and so the offender never learns and grows up.


It's really hard to just watch people shy away from doing their part to helping their friends grow up. I don't know about you, but I didn't give up everything I used to live for just so I could just keep making the same mistakes over and over. 


So if someone says something that annoys you or just makes you think, "Wow, that's just wrong" or you simply feel convicted inside to tell them that was really not in good taste, just tell 'em. I'm going to work on this myself. I love my friends, but they definitely say some things that objectify women. And so do I. I just feel like there's something better than this. I'm not saying we have to quit cold turkey, because men have their man-talk, and I love a good laugh with the boys. Just hear me on this... and let's let the Spirit quietly convict us to maybe think about some of the stuff we're saying and if it's really healthy to our one-on-one relationship with God. Please don't think I'm being a Nazi about it... I'm only saying this because for me, maintaining a relationship with God is hard enough without having my mind in the gutter.


There's a much more serious issue at hand here than stupid jokes. If you don't confront a Christian who sins against you, you're showing you have no balls whatsoever. There have been situations in which I messed up without realizing it, and one tattletale rats on me behind my back and suddenly I have a whole group of proud, churchy people breathing down my neck. What happened to one on one? Why didn't you have the balls to just tell me you think I did the wrong thing? Don't you care? 


This is one of the things that pisses me off the most about modern-day Christians. Weak people lack the humility to confront each other one on one. If you say you love Christ, at least be real about it.  Love your friend enough to tell them what they did wrong that hurt you. Read Matthew 18:15.