This Plum is Too Ripe (The Fantasticks)

Take away the painted sunset.
Take away the blue lagoon.
What at night seems oh so scenic
May be cynic much too soon.

I'm in a down sort of mood right now. I can give you a laundry list of reasons, but then I want to leave this post feeling encouraged. We'll see what I can do in that direction.

I have a ton of work to do. 60 pages to read, then write a paper on by tomorrow. My life is scheduled hour by hour so that I do all of the things I have to do during the day. I'm stressed - no doubt. New Testament debate next week and two papers due the week after that. Talk about learning to balance your time and energy. And I just had a discussion with a professor who told me outright that I have to write my papers early and revise them in order to be successful. So I'm feeling the pressure. That's me.

I have one friend who's overseas and feeling very out of sorts. That's not what an abroad experience is about - it's supposed to be the best time of your life! What's the deal?

I have another friend who had crappy things happen with his friends recently. How do you move on from that? Delicately.

I have another friend who's going through an emotional time right now and can't seem to find the encouragement she needs, but also doesn't feel like being around people. How do you move past that?

Other friends are bogged down by work. One friend doesn't quite seem to be himself lately. All of my other friends are figuring out what their summers look like, I'm not.

Why is all this news bad news? Are we all falling apart? Have I just never noticed that people seem so out of it during this time of year? Do we ALL have senioritis and need to go home?

So how can I leave this blog feeling encouraged? Well I must amend my previous statement. It's not by anything that I can say. Christ alone is the source of joy in this dark world. And it is dark. There's something to that apocalypticism that Ehrman believes so firmly. I'm not saying it's totally correct theology, but total depravity is real. And it can depress us if we let it get the better of us, to push Christ out of our field of view (I've been taking astronomy....). And it seems like we all too often lose sight of the whole encouragement thing.

So here it is, straight from the source.

1 Thessalonians 2:16-17

"May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word."

Christ will lift us up if we will lift our eyes to him. So let us fix our eyes on Jesus.

Come Ye Sinners (Indelible Grace)

Apathy. Being unmotivated is a curse. It creates problems when you have homework assignments due. It creates problems when you have to think about your future. And it creates problems when you are a Christian trying to live in a secular world. Can anyone relate?

I haven't had a devotional in a few months. I continue to go to church, RUF, small group, talk about Christian things, but when it comes to the day to day, I'm not waking up thinking "Okay God, this day is yours. Give me strength." Which, as I understand it, is what I am supposed to do.

I come back to this question of "What would my life look like if it were governed by a proper 'fear of the Lord?'" What does it really look like to live each day for Jesus?

I have no idea. But it takes an amount of conscience. You have to be aware of living for Jesus. And this is what I don't do. I don't set out to live each moment for Jesus. I don't get excited about Jesus anymore. Talking with one of our RUF newbies, I realized that excitement is still an appropriate response - it's the ONLY appropriate response. God is at work, whether I am or not.

But how do you combat apathy? How do you go about doing something when you don't have any motivation to do something?

There's a song that tells me "All the fitness He requires is to feel your need of Him." But feeling fitness and relying on God's work doesn't exempt me from doing something. I still just don't know how to go about doing it.

It Is Well With My Soul (Horatio Spafford)

I was struck this evening at RUF as we sang this song - it doesn't mean what I've always thought it means.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Does this mean that in everything we should find peace? Be at rest? I always thought this was a hymn of comfort in the sense that everything's going to be okay. A "don't worry - be happy" type philosophy. But I was struck singing it this evening....

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

This is the "wellness" - it's in Christ and in assurance of salvation. Nothing can strip that away from us. So it is well with me soul not because God promises to comfort the weak and wounded, but because, eternally speaking, we have already been saved. And nothing that we can ever say or do will change that.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Woot.

Senseless (Echo and the Bunnymen)

¹⁸The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

²⁸Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. ²⁹They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³²Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.




Why do I not heed these warnings?

Candle in the Wind (Elton John)

In the wake of Carolina's most recent tragedy, a great many thoughts pace the corridors of my mind. I will try to articulate them, but time and confusion may render them senseless.

Andy Jones spoke at RUF last night. Using 2 Samuel 12:1-14, he discussed the nature of sin. "What sin does...." 2 things: it compounds itself, and it conceals itself. It's this compounding idea that strikes me now. People discuss this as if it's an anomaly. As if murder isn't a natural inclination; as if it were senseless and ungrounded in our society. We're better than that, right? Well I don't know who "we" is, but I know that I am not. Sin is not an isolated act. This is not some freak accident that tragically stole our student body president from us. This is evidence of the fall. This is evidence of the baseness of our nature apart from Christ. I am capable of committing the same crime against mankind, except that I have the Holy Spirit governing my heart and turning me towards the love of Christ.

But our campus doesn't understand that. At least, not yet.

So what's our responsibility? What's next? How do we cope?

We pray. And we love. And we pray some more. And we read Scripture. (Psalm 73 - see below). And we pray again. And we continue to seek God's justice, not to enact man's vengeance, but to seek God's will and purpose in this situation. And we probably won't ever know what that is.

But as people begin to ask questions, we must be prepared to answer as best we can. We know exactly why these things happen - because man is sinful. And we know the answer - Jesus. Does that help? Does that make the hurt go away? Probably not. But will God be glorified? Yes. Even in this, God is sovereign, and will glorify himself.

from Psalm 73
Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.

but as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.

Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.

When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you
But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

You're So Vain (Carly Simon)

Flute recitals are very bad for me. I've been to three now (Sarah Fenske, when is yours?), and I always spend too much time there thinking. I mean, besides listening to the beautiful music, what else there to do?

What am I thinking about, you might ask. That would be a good question. Basically, my thoughts all stem from, "Man, why am I not that good?" Then go to, "Man, I could have been that good, if I had only practiced." To, "Man, I didn't practice cause I didn't want to practice....there are other things I want to do with my life." So as I sit and ponder my future, my degree as an English major and then becoming a teacher, I realize "Man, I'm not particularly good at either of my fields of expertise." Again, I begin to think "Man, what am I doing with my life?!"

So right now, I feel very out of place. I haven't performed in anything since my freshman year in Symphony Band. That's about all I did in high school. What do I have to show for all my English stuff? Papers that I've written that haven't quite been good enough. Books that I'm supposed to have read but haven't actually. I could write an honors thesis, but nobody would take the time to read it except for my professors. (And I don't really like to do research anyway, so I'm rethinking that whole idea.) Anyway, in the course of my reflections, I realized that I don't have much to show right now for all the work I've put into school and my activities here.

So am I just writing to depress you all? Another valid question.

No. I'm really writing to chastise myself. Why am I getting all depressed about this? What does it matter if I can play a piece of music by some dead guy? Why does it matter what I get on all my papers? I mean, eternally, it doesn't.

I don't know what I'm supposed to be getting from this blog. But I know it's not "I should try harder to do something that other people can see and clap for me about." (Although I'd like some applause every now and then.)

Then I had to ask myself the question, is that what this blog is about? Not this entry in particular but the whole blogging idea? I don't know. But I know now that I have an "audience of one or more," so I guess some of my works are out there for man to know and enjoy. Will he enjoy them?

But here's the real question - what am I doing on a day to day basis in my life that glorifies God?

Still working on that one....