can you tell i've been cooped up by the scary ice storm

When we are born, we don't choose to be brought into this world. We don't choose where we will grow up or who our parents and siblings will be. We don't pick out the color of our hair, eyes, or skin, or even our own names. We don't pick the socio-economic status or religion in which we'll be brought up. I imagine that, for a lot of people, what they are born into is very similar to what they will die out of.

However, regardless of who raised us, where we were raised, and what we were raised to believe, we were born into this world in order to fulfill a task that God has created us to complete.

We weren't given a choice on a lot of things, but how we live our lives is up to us. We can choose to try to satisfy our every desire, controlled entirely by our fickle urges, until we destroy ourselves, for what we want and what we need are usually not the same. We can choose to deny our wants and needs, like eating and sleeping, to the point where we damage our bodies. We can jump on someone's bandwagon and become puppets, shadows of what we look up to, replacing our voice with another's. I would imagine that most of us, however, fall into a more grey area than these extremes.

We are told that we can have everything we want if we work hard and earn lots of money. We are also told that it is important, almost necessary, to get married and have kids. So many of us start a family, only to ignore them by working so hard to provide for their needs that we never get to see them. The more efficient new technologies make our workload, the more is demanded of us. These technologies were created so that we would not have to work so hard, but the opposite has happened. We are a world hungry for more.

Unfortunately, the ‘more’ we are feeding ourselves is not the more we need. We don't need bigger happy meals. We don't need four story houses. We don't need that shiny new car that can scream down the road at 160 mph making it impossible for the rest of us to see how cool you look in it. We don't need a bigger tv with thousands of channels. We just don't.

What we need, what we've overlooked in our efforts to create a life for ourselves, is to realize that God didn’t create us to live for ourselves. He created us to live for Him. He has a job for us. That’s why we’re here. It is what we were created for. He even gave us specific character traits and skills in order to perform our job. We have been uniquely created for it. No worrying if the boss will want to hire us for this job. We were made for it. We can never be fired from it, and it comes with a sweet benefits package that has been pre-paid for us. All we have to do is accept the job offer.

The job is to tell people about your boss. That’s it. We are here as God’s PR firm. Now, if you’re thinking that all you have to do is make a few flyers on Photoshop and staple them to a few trees in your neighborhood, then perhaps I’ve misled you. You see, what really tells a person about your boss is how you behave. Basically, your life is the reality show that reveals the heart of God. Does your life show God as the merciful, loving, undefeatable Creator of the universe? Or would people think differently about God when they saw you? Would they even see God or would they only see you trying to figure out this life alone?

In order for you to accurate portray God, you need to bone up a little on His character and what He wants us to do. The handbook has already been provided for you. God wrote it Himself. In it, you will find why this world exists, why we exist, and whether there is more to life than just the experiences we’re having right now. You will meet Jesus who loves us so much that He came to this world in order to save us from the consequences of being born ‘fallible.’ You may not have known it, and you certainly wouldn’t have chosen it, but when you were born, you were infected with a terminal illness called ‘sin.’ There’s nothing you could have done to keep it out of your life. It’s genetic, and we’re all infected with it. And if we aren’t ‘born again,’ we will die from it.

What in the world is being ‘born again?’ It’s our opportunity to choose who we want to be, who we want our Father to be, who we want our siblings to be, and where we want our lives to go. It is a choice. It won’t accidentally happen to you on the subway or while you’re dreaming; there’s no lengthy governmental forms to sign, and you certainly don’t have to spend any more time in a uterus.

Choosing to be born again involves understanding that we indeed have this illness called sin. It also involves understanding and believing that God sent His Son, Jesus, to earth to give us a sort of blood transfusion. He even paid the hospital bill already. In accepting Jesus’ free transfusion, our blood, thick with sin, is replaced with the clean, life-giving blood of Christ. There’s no waiting list for this blood-transplant to happen like there is with heart transplants or new kidneys. As soon as we ask for it, it is given to us.

Now of course, this is metaphor, but it’s how I understand it. As far as I can see, there’s nothing physically different about me since I’ve had my transfusion. I don’t actually have someone else’s blood flowing in me. And I still have this nasty ability to misbehave, which surprised me at first. I had thought I wouldn’t have to worry with sin anymore. But I became a Christian, not Christ. I’m still in this earthly body while I’m here on earth and because of that, I still have the ability to sin. Only now, I have better guidance and the strength from God to overcome the temptation to sin, when I ask for it. I ask for it pretty often since I’m tempted to screw up a lot. And I really want to thank Jesus for giving me this new life, this ability to interact with God the Father, Ruler and Creator of the Universe, so I try really hard to represent Him well by learning what my job here is supposed to be and then asking Him to help me accomplish it. Because I now have the ‘blood of Christ’ flowing in me, I have been adopted by God. He is my Father, and from what I read, He has a really nice inheritance for His kids. Not only that, but in my life right now, I am experiencing a peace that I never knew was possible. And I feel useful, worthy, special and loved. I thank God all the time for this life that He has made for me. I enjoy my today and look forward to my tomorrow. I hope to see you there.

nearly true story

I wrote this silly story after having an imaginary conversation with a friend about an actual thing that happened that day. Enjoy.

"ARGGGGH!" she yelled in a barbaric demonstration of dominance. She lifted the thick candle and smashed its base down on the paper towel. When she stopped shuddering, Lisa lifted the candle and the paper towel. There is was. "How can something so small freak me out so badly?" she wondered.

She wadded up the paper towel and threw it into the trash can. She watched as it slowly unfolded to reveal the roach still twitching and thrashing about.

"Gross," Lisa thought as she prepared for the next kill. She had been trying to take a pain medication and spilled diet coke on the kitchen counter. As she was cleaning it up, she moved the cordless phone base, and out ran three really big roaches. Lisa was used to smashing the teeny tiny ones. "These must be their parents," she feared.

After two more successful smashings, Lisa called her friend to discuss the victory. "I guess they won't be trying that again. Running for their life? Please, child. Mama's gonna get you every time," she declared in her most smug way.

"They probably won't be trying that again. Roaches learn really quickly," said JD in his most professor way. "If they learn that a place will likely get them discovered, they will move. If they think climbing up the wall versus running across the counter will be safer, they will do that."

"Are you telling me that roaches are smarter than humans?" I asked.

"By no means. Why do you ask?" questioned JD.

"Well, I can do the same thing over and over again in an attempt to achieve a different result. It's like I don't learn from my mistakes. Most everyone I know is caught up in something that when they do it, they pay for it. Why is it that roaches can learn and apply that knowledge, and we can't?" I asked.

The other line was silent for a while. When he did finally answer, JD said "I don't think it's that we don't learn. We do. But we choose to ignore that knowledge because we'd rather keep doing things our own way. It's either pride or fear that keeps us doing the same things over and over again. Our pride tells us that our way will work out in the end, and our fear of the unknown keeps us stuck in our routines, even if they repeatedly fail."

"And since roaches don't possess the ability to reason, they won't choose to disregard their knowledge. I see," said Lisa. "So it's not that they are smarter. It's that they don't have free will."

"Exactly."

wanted, but not needed

I was reading a friend's newsletter today and was struck by how un-needed we are in accomplishing God's plan for this world. Seriously. How many times have we disobeyed God in a way that could've disrupted His plan only to see Him use it for His good? The Bible is filled with experiences like this. My life is filled with experiences like this.

So should we just go about our lives without trying to fulfill God's plan if it's going to be accomplished despite us anyway? Aren't we just making more work for God?

Knowing God, He loves us so much, that He wants to reward us later for the kingdom work we do now.

I can relate. I know that I can quickly and efficiently fold and put away all the laundry, but when I ask my kids to help, they are rewarded with knowing they are mommies' little helpers. They usually don't do it the way I would, but their little hearts fill up with pride and worth when they feel needed and useful. How in the world could I ever keep them from that joy? Sure it might mean more work for me later, but the benefits for my children are far more desireable to me.

Maybe that's the way God looks at it too.

envy

I’ve been dealing with envy recently. I know, I know... it’s one of the seven deadly sins. It’s just that I’ve been really wishing I could be Jesus or Robin Hood. I have this mad passion to make the world a better place. But I’m completely incapable of making the difference I want to make because I’m just a girl with no superpowers or super resources. I just have a super heart.

I would want to be Jesus because He actually CAN save the whole world. His heart and His ability match.


I would want to be Robin Hood so that I could redistribute the wealth of the world. I don’t see how some people refuse to downsize their standard of living when there are millions of people who need clean drinking water, food, basic medicine and education.

Now I’ve been addicted to many things before. And I’m not taking about chocolate or a good tv show. I’m talking about those things that you need to take great measures to ensure you have them when you need them. Great measures like stealing, lying, cheating, lowering your moral standards in order to have these things. At one time in my life, I had enough motivation to break a few rules, to go without other luxuries in order to get my fix. I learned how to behave in order to not get caught and have the ‘things’ taken away from me. What I’m saying is that I acquired some serious skills in order to feed my addiction what it ‘needed.’

I thank God that He gave me the strength and motivation to starve that addiction, and I no longer feel driven by it. And sure, when I’m stressed and weak, I get tempted to return to those things, but with the help of God, I now can resist them.

What I learned is that I have it within me, and even more so now with the power and guidance of God, to achieve what I want to achieve. So I should be able to raise enough money to drill for wells of clean water in Africa if I feel it is important enough, as important to me as it surely is to the people who need it.

What is so frustrating is that I live over here, safe within a country without these immediate, life-threatening needs. I don’t live with the same desperation that these people are being forced to live with because people like me get distracted by the twisted, counter-productive desires that our hearts are fed by the culture and the marketplace. I get these catalogs and magazines delivered to my house filled with colorful, shiny pages of beautiful living rooms and fantastic gardens that I would love to recreate for my family and friends to enjoy. I could easily see myself investing much time and energy and money into making my family’s life more comfortable and easy.

But is that my purpose? As a wife and mother, I feel it is my duty to care for my family as best I can. So on one hand, yes, having a clean, nice home is one of the many responsibilities I feel God has given me. But on the other hand, I see these areas of the world just dying away and turning to violence in desperation because the wealth of the world is not evenly distributed. Am I a part of the problem or a part of the solution? Can I fairly and effectively live in balance? And what in the world does that look like?