The past couple months, I had been having a tough time finding a church that I really felt comfortable in. I attended a church about 15 minutes away that had great messages, but I did not feel comfortable enough to go alone. So on days when no one else could go with me, I went back to the church I grew up in. I decided the best way for me to feel connected to that church was to contribute myself.
So, I started teaching Sunday School. My age group contains anyone that is younger than middle school. So... that normally equals out to: 2 third graders, a second grader, a first grader, a kindergarten boy, and a three year old.
A couple weeks back we did the story of Jonah and the Whale. The kids sponge painted while I read from Jonah chapters 1 and 2. I am going to assume we all know the story... but the best part was following when the kids acted out what I had read. The kindergartener was the captain of the ship because the captain got to wear a hat. :) We had a Jonah, thankfully, that had paid close attention to the story. And we had a whale (an upturned table with a dark blue sheet over it with paper plates for eyes). It was such a joy for me to watch them act it out. And then for the boys to go inside the whale and punch its stomach. My point? The joy that they add to the world around them. The passion that they use with every movement and thought. The innocence....
As I read through the material before the lesson, I found it interesting the focus verse that they chose.
"Love God and Love Each Other!" Which is actually: "And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother." I John 4:21
After all of these years knowing that story, that was never the message I took away from this story. Upon looking more closely, the reason Jonah refused to go to Ninevah (and was swallowed by the whale) was that Jews thought of themselves as superior to the Asyrians that lived there. In one of the most popular and well known Bible stories, we often miss the point. God does not care about our differences! We should not either. Throw your prejudices aside! Throw away your judgments. God loves all the people of the world and calls us to do the same. Jonah was sent to Ninevah to convince them to repent. Why was he told to do that? Because God valued the lives of the Assyrians, and longed to be in relationship with them just as much as he longed to be in relationship with his Chosen people.
Oh, Lord, how you continue to amaze. You are a glorious God. But, why am I so amazed that he loves us all the same? Because I continue to forget that God is not human... he does not think like I do, or show favoritism.
And so is the downfall of religion... it is too much humanity and not enough God. Oh, us! Why do we have to try to fit God in such a little box??
I better quit, before I really get on my soap box. ;)
Oh! Here is a little tid bit of fun... I haven't heard this song in years, and I feel it is often under-appreciated. And I Like Owl City...My Hope is Found
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Strength and Purity in Fire
As many of you may know, this past year or so has been a large time of transition for me. I was married just under two years ago, and everyday we are still learning about each other and how to be married. I graduated from Purdue in May, and we did not want to stay in West Lafayette. So decisions needed to be made where to move to and what to do next. I felt led to apply for the Teach for America program, and went through a very long interview process with that (4 months) and in the end was not chosen for the program. By then it was just a few months before graduation, so we decided to move to Nashville, TN so that my husband could pursue a career in music. Then spring came, and there was the flooding of Nashville, so we took it as a sign for us to choose a different location. We moved back home to our parents in Northeastern, IN.
Since then, I keep searching and searching for a job that uses my degree (Communication- Human Relations). I did farm work that helped me lose some of my extra college pounds but that was a little dangerous, and was not something I enjoyed. At the end of August, I got a job at a local pizza place delivering pizzas. It was not a job that I was striving for, but I had been praying that God would bring an opportunity... and there it was. It has turned into a pretty fun job, that is paying well. But I keep looking for positions more related to my field of interest.
I would not directly say that lately has been a time of trials, but it has not been a walk in the park either. I keep praying that the Lord will show us new opportunities. I actually have an interview next week, that I really hope turns into something!
On a slightly different note, when I first moved north, I felt that my prayer life was really suffering. My mother reminded me that there are mountains and valleys in life, and the low points teach valuable lessons that help one to grow.
Peter describes the faith of many followers in using the metaphor of gold in this passage. As part of the second bunch of Christians we have a very different perspective of faith than did the first disciples. I believe that God tests and puts fire under our butts so that we can grow and strengthen. As Christians we are called to be pure as Christ was pure; set apart from the world.
As a closing thought, think of a piece of wood. The end product that we want is smooth, soft, and pretty without blemishes. How do we get those? With sandpaper! Sometimes God needs to be rough on us, so that our end product is smooth and beautiful. :)
Since then, I keep searching and searching for a job that uses my degree (Communication- Human Relations). I did farm work that helped me lose some of my extra college pounds but that was a little dangerous, and was not something I enjoyed. At the end of August, I got a job at a local pizza place delivering pizzas. It was not a job that I was striving for, but I had been praying that God would bring an opportunity... and there it was. It has turned into a pretty fun job, that is paying well. But I keep looking for positions more related to my field of interest.
I would not directly say that lately has been a time of trials, but it has not been a walk in the park either. I keep praying that the Lord will show us new opportunities. I actually have an interview next week, that I really hope turns into something!
On a slightly different note, when I first moved north, I felt that my prayer life was really suffering. My mother reminded me that there are mountains and valleys in life, and the low points teach valuable lessons that help one to grow.
God has really been laying on my heart the book of 1 Peter. I have read it several times lately and just keep coming back to it.
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." -1 Peter 1:3-9
Strangely enough, the portion I would first like to point out, is actually towards the end, verse 8.
In my mind, there are two bunches of Christians... (hear me out)...
- The first bunch were those that met Jesus. The people that heard him speak, saw his face, met those who had been healed by his miracles, and even those who saw him crucified. There were thousands of people who encountered Jesus during his lifetime here on Earth.
- The second bunch are the Christians that Peter talks to in this passage. They have only been told about Christ or read the letters and teachings of Christ, and have heard about others' personal experiences with Jesus.
Obviously, we fall into the second category, because we were not alive when Christ was almost 2,000 years ago. Peter praises the church today, because we have to have a higher degree of faith than those who encountered Christ in person. Like those who did meet him, and recognized who he was, we can be filled with joy by knowing that he loves us and has covered us with his grace. I also really, really love that Peter describes the joy that we have as inexpressible. Many times I am filled with such great joy because of the knowledge of God's love for me, and I really can't express it.... not even to him.
It is a great comfort to know that God's power is shielding me from any real danger that I may face. It comes to the saying: "If he will put you to it, he will bring you through it."
Upon deciding to write about this passage, I did a little research on gold smithing and refining. Now, what I found may not be exactly what they did in Biblical times, but it was what they did in the late 1800s. At that time, if you purchased gold, it was very unlikely that it would be pure. Gold smiths, being the professionals that they were, knew the temperatures that gold could withstand as a noble metal in comparison to other alloys. After being placed in the fire, the other elements would rise to the top of the crucible and could be removed. Then, the gold smith just waited for the pure gold to cool, and plink, out it would fall ready to be made into jewelry, coins, etc.
As a closing thought, think of a piece of wood. The end product that we want is smooth, soft, and pretty without blemishes. How do we get those? With sandpaper! Sometimes God needs to be rough on us, so that our end product is smooth and beautiful. :)
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Oh, How He Loves...
So, I have found myself struggling to be able to find ways for me to connect to God on a daily basis, so I told a few friends that I would start posting "food for thought" three times a week online. I would love feedback whether on here or through my facebook page.
A couple of friends and I met weekly over the summer for a Bible study. They all went back to college, and left on my own, I took a month off from doing anything really like this (unintentionally). One morning this week, I woke up with the song How He Loves by David Crowder in my head. I don't have a radio in my car, so I sang it to myself all day. With it in my head all day, I started looking up some scriptures and then did a little internet research. When looking for the lyrics, I found a blog that criticized them and included a page of comments arguing for or against the absurdity of the song. When reading through those comments I found this:
"I actually heard this song for the first time tonight at a culminating music festival on my campus and was looking up the lyrics/artist when I came across your page. While reading the lyrics, the following discussion about them, and then looking back at the night, I was definitely able to laugh at how poeticly cheesy they are, but I can honestly say that this song moved me more than any other from tonight.
Granted, we had a fantastic group of guys/girls from campus to lead us through the night, which gave it an extremely powerful atmosphere, but even the most mockable lyrics ("...heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss") have a tremendous amount of power when you're actually in the mindset of worship. Being able to imagine God's gift as something that is as personal as an embarrassing kiss from a loved one is a gorgeously connected feeling. It doesn't come off as something dirty or "teenage love-y" to me at all, but instead brings up the imagery of a kiss from someone you're so close to that it doesn't really matter how it "lands," it's just a kiss to show a level of love, not any value of lust. It drives home a very important facet of Christianity as well, which is that God's love is personal and *real*; we're not just worshiping an emotionless, omnipotent, "man-behind-the-curtain" creator, we're in a relationship based on true love from a God who can easily match our passion for Him.
It's really amazing how the simple line "Oh, how He loves us" can provide such a rich palette of emotions, too. The build up from the poetic lyrics only help lead up to the driven, single-line-repitition chorus, as excessively metaphorical as the verses are. Even though the descriptions of God's love being like a hurricane, while we are a tree are over-the-top, it's powerfully accurate. Each verse is just trying to restate how unimportant the trials and difficulties of life are with God's love at your back. It's not meant to be something we sing placidly about, it's a tremendous weight that should entirely depict our life, in the same way that a hurricane has the ability to apply ridiculous force to a tree or the vastness of an "ocean of grace"; seemingly unending (or in a non-metaphorical sense, God's love really *is* unending). The things the artist used to describe His love were intentionally powerful, albeit destructive, because God's love has some intensely powerful implications. The artist/author used the descriptions of things that are physically powerful to describe something that is emotionally very powerful. Having just lost a close friend, God remained as his inspiration for praise. I especially like the line leading into the final chorus[es]: "I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way [that He loves us...]"
Again, this is really just my interpretation of the song. :) It was a wonderfully happy feeling to be yelling out the words to this simple chorus with hundreds of other Christians going through much more hardship than I was, knowing there's still a God in control through life's crap."
And I believe that it does an awesome job of describing the song, and what worship songs can really do when a heart is open to the Lord.
He is Jealous for Me. He is a Hurricane, I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
I only had the first few lines of lyrics running through my head, so those were the ones that I concentrated on when I began looking up scriptures (NIV).
-1 John 4:16: "And so we know and rely on the Love God has for us. GOD IS LOVE. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him."
-Deuterony 4:24 "For the Lord you God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."
- 2 Samuel 24:14 "I am in great distress, let us fall into the Hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great."
- Titus 3:5 "He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy."
- Ephesians 2:4 "But because of his Great Love, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ."
-In 1 Kings 19, Elijah cries out to the Lord to feel his presence. God is not found in the fire, or the earthquake. But in the stillness and strength of the wind.
"I actually heard this song for the first time tonight at a culminating music festival on my campus and was looking up the lyrics/artist when I came across your page. While reading the lyrics, the following discussion about them, and then looking back at the night, I was definitely able to laugh at how poeticly cheesy they are, but I can honestly say that this song moved me more than any other from tonight.
Granted, we had a fantastic group of guys/girls from campus to lead us through the night, which gave it an extremely powerful atmosphere, but even the most mockable lyrics ("...heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss") have a tremendous amount of power when you're actually in the mindset of worship. Being able to imagine God's gift as something that is as personal as an embarrassing kiss from a loved one is a gorgeously connected feeling. It doesn't come off as something dirty or "teenage love-y" to me at all, but instead brings up the imagery of a kiss from someone you're so close to that it doesn't really matter how it "lands," it's just a kiss to show a level of love, not any value of lust. It drives home a very important facet of Christianity as well, which is that God's love is personal and *real*; we're not just worshiping an emotionless, omnipotent, "man-behind-the-curtain" creator, we're in a relationship based on true love from a God who can easily match our passion for Him.
It's really amazing how the simple line "Oh, how He loves us" can provide such a rich palette of emotions, too. The build up from the poetic lyrics only help lead up to the driven, single-line-repitition chorus, as excessively metaphorical as the verses are. Even though the descriptions of God's love being like a hurricane, while we are a tree are over-the-top, it's powerfully accurate. Each verse is just trying to restate how unimportant the trials and difficulties of life are with God's love at your back. It's not meant to be something we sing placidly about, it's a tremendous weight that should entirely depict our life, in the same way that a hurricane has the ability to apply ridiculous force to a tree or the vastness of an "ocean of grace"; seemingly unending (or in a non-metaphorical sense, God's love really *is* unending). The things the artist used to describe His love were intentionally powerful, albeit destructive, because God's love has some intensely powerful implications. The artist/author used the descriptions of things that are physically powerful to describe something that is emotionally very powerful. Having just lost a close friend, God remained as his inspiration for praise. I especially like the line leading into the final chorus[es]: "I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way [that He loves us...]"
Again, this is really just my interpretation of the song. :) It was a wonderfully happy feeling to be yelling out the words to this simple chorus with hundreds of other Christians going through much more hardship than I was, knowing there's still a God in control through life's crap."
And I believe that it does an awesome job of describing the song, and what worship songs can really do when a heart is open to the Lord.
He is Jealous for Me. He is a Hurricane, I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
I only had the first few lines of lyrics running through my head, so those were the ones that I concentrated on when I began looking up scriptures (NIV).
-1 John 4:16: "And so we know and rely on the Love God has for us. GOD IS LOVE. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him."
-Deuterony 4:24 "For the Lord you God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."
- 2 Samuel 24:14 "I am in great distress, let us fall into the Hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great."
- Titus 3:5 "He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy."
- Ephesians 2:4 "But because of his Great Love, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ."
-In 1 Kings 19, Elijah cries out to the Lord to feel his presence. God is not found in the fire, or the earthquake. But in the stillness and strength of the wind.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Here We Go...
So, I have had a Blog before, but never really used it. I have found that Journaling myself is a great thing for me to do. But, why not online?
Facebook just is not holding up its end of the deal these days.
So... here is my inspiration for the creation of the blog...The Walrus and The Carpenter
Facebook just is not holding up its end of the deal these days.
So... here is my inspiration for the creation of the blog...The Walrus and The Carpenter
So, I do not really know what my new obsession with this is, because I have not actually read the book by Lewis Carroll, but I watched the Disney film...a couple months ago and can't get it out of my head. I searched the internet thoroughly for a photo of Tweedledee and Tweedledum as the sun and the moon at the beginning of the poem with no avail.
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