(Random thoughts that never made it to blog posts.)
The danger . . .
. . . with comparing: If two snails compare themselves, one of them is bound to think he is fast.
. . . with growing up Christian: You are told what is the right thing to do before you understand why. This is fine as long as you eventually figure out the reasons behind what you do. The danger is that many kids never make this transition. They continue going through the motions without knowing the reason until one day they grow up and decide that there are no reasons. Nothing could be further from the truth! Unfortunately it happens all the time.
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Some people try so hard to be real and sincere . . . other people just are. I prefer the second type. Every day I run across people who obviously believe deep down that they are practical, interesting people and are desperate for someone to realize just how real and un-fake they are. I wish I could tell them that the fulfillment they are looking for will never come from other people. They need someone who understood them before they were born, knows exactly who they are, what they have done, what they will do, and what they will be (Psalm 139). Unfortunately they are so busy looking in the wrong place that I fear it will be a long time before they begin looking in the right place.
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A quote from a speaker I heard recently: “Many people come up and tell me that they don't need to go to church to be a Christian. True enough. Also true: you don't need to go home to be considered married . . . but it helps!”
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I am soooooo ready to get to camp. I'm tired of preparing . . . I want to be there and start doing. If you'll excuse me I think I'm going to find a good piece of grass to stick between my teeth and some pockets to shove my hands into. Oh this whole farm theme is going to be way too easy =)
Friday, May 29, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
The cemetery
I climbed the deep grassy slope quickly, anxious to see what lay at the top. As I crested the hill, a single headstone greeted me, silhouetted against the sky.
It was not alone.
As I reached the top I saw another, and then another. There were many graves in that place, some so old the names were barely visible and some so new that that the stones looked like they had just been cut. All were different in shape and age, but they shared one similarity: the American flag. It fluttered beside each grave, caught in a slight breeze.
My feet slowed to a walk, and then to crawl, and soon they stopped altogether. My steps had led me to the edge of the cemetery, and there I stopped and looked.
For a place commemorating to death, the cemetery was a lively place.
Signs of life showed themselves all around. The trees, their radiant leaves glowing in the sun, gave silent homage to the life that had coursed through them all summer. All around me birds twittered as they flew from one patch of brush to another.
As I watched, a squirrel raced across the ground to claim a nut that had just fallen and started an argument between a chipmunk and a Blue Jay who obviously thought there were not enough to go around. Even the sky was alive, providing a brilliant blue backdrop for the entire entire valley and town below. In the distance, white clouds drifted slowly by, driven by the same breeze that played through the leaves and caught the flags, unfurling them like banners.
As I stood there I wondered if the people under the headstones, whose bodies had long since decayed, could appreciate this place. This was what they had fought for, liberty, beauty, clean earth, a blue sky, a fluttering breeze, the noise of birds. . . life itself . . . everything this cemetery was. It was a fitting resting place.
But as I contemplated this, the stark contradiction of the place struck me. This was only a resting place. They didn’t die here, here in this cemetery surrounded by what they loved. They fought and fell thousands of miles from here surrounded by death and misery, the very things they fought and hated most, helpless to do anything but wait for it to take them.
It was a somber thought, and I left saddened. I understood for the first time in my life that those who truly love life are rarely allowed to enjoy it but often die defending it for those who will not care.
It was not alone.
As I reached the top I saw another, and then another. There were many graves in that place, some so old the names were barely visible and some so new that that the stones looked like they had just been cut. All were different in shape and age, but they shared one similarity: the American flag. It fluttered beside each grave, caught in a slight breeze.
My feet slowed to a walk, and then to crawl, and soon they stopped altogether. My steps had led me to the edge of the cemetery, and there I stopped and looked.
For a place commemorating to death, the cemetery was a lively place.
Signs of life showed themselves all around. The trees, their radiant leaves glowing in the sun, gave silent homage to the life that had coursed through them all summer. All around me birds twittered as they flew from one patch of brush to another.
As I watched, a squirrel raced across the ground to claim a nut that had just fallen and started an argument between a chipmunk and a Blue Jay who obviously thought there were not enough to go around. Even the sky was alive, providing a brilliant blue backdrop for the entire entire valley and town below. In the distance, white clouds drifted slowly by, driven by the same breeze that played through the leaves and caught the flags, unfurling them like banners.
As I stood there I wondered if the people under the headstones, whose bodies had long since decayed, could appreciate this place. This was what they had fought for, liberty, beauty, clean earth, a blue sky, a fluttering breeze, the noise of birds. . . life itself . . . everything this cemetery was. It was a fitting resting place.
But as I contemplated this, the stark contradiction of the place struck me. This was only a resting place. They didn’t die here, here in this cemetery surrounded by what they loved. They fought and fell thousands of miles from here surrounded by death and misery, the very things they fought and hated most, helpless to do anything but wait for it to take them.
It was a somber thought, and I left saddened. I understood for the first time in my life that those who truly love life are rarely allowed to enjoy it but often die defending it for those who will not care.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Prayer
Luke 22:41-2 “And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
Of all Jesus prayers, this is the one I'm most grateful he said. It's also the one I find is the hardest to pray.
~Who a man is when he is alone and on his knees before God is what he is and nothing more ~ Tom Harman quoting someone else
I came across this the other day in C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. (For those of you who haven't read them, they are from the perspective of two demon's correspondence on how best to keep a man from being a true Christian.)
The best thing, where possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether. When the patient is and adult recently reconverted to the Enemy's party, like your man, this is best done by encouraging him to remember, or think he remembers, the parrotlike nature of his prayers in childhood. In reaction against that he may be persuaded to aim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have not part. One of their poets, Coleridge, has recorded that he did not pray “with moving lips and bended knees” but merely “composed his spirit to love” and indulged in “a sense of supplication.” That is exactly the sort of prayer we want; and since it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practised by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy's service, clever and lazy patients can be taken by it for quite a long time. . .
If this fails, you must fall back on a subtler misdirection of his intention. Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. when they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by the success of producing the desired feeling: and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment . . .
. . . For if he ever comes to make the distinction , if he ever consciously directs his prayers “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be,” our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all this thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external presence there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it – why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation – this real nakedness of the soul in prayer – you will be helped by the fact that the humans do not desire it as much as they suppose. There's such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!
Of all the things I've read about prayer, I'm finding out that I really don't understand it. However, I've also found out that the success of my daily walk depends more on that than anything else. I don't think we need to understand it as much as we just need to do it and make a conscious effort about it even when we don't feel like it. If we ask God for help and do our part, the rest is up to Him.
Of all Jesus prayers, this is the one I'm most grateful he said. It's also the one I find is the hardest to pray.
~Who a man is when he is alone and on his knees before God is what he is and nothing more ~ Tom Harman quoting someone else
I came across this the other day in C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. (For those of you who haven't read them, they are from the perspective of two demon's correspondence on how best to keep a man from being a true Christian.)
The best thing, where possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether. When the patient is and adult recently reconverted to the Enemy's party, like your man, this is best done by encouraging him to remember, or think he remembers, the parrotlike nature of his prayers in childhood. In reaction against that he may be persuaded to aim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have not part. One of their poets, Coleridge, has recorded that he did not pray “with moving lips and bended knees” but merely “composed his spirit to love” and indulged in “a sense of supplication.” That is exactly the sort of prayer we want; and since it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practised by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy's service, clever and lazy patients can be taken by it for quite a long time. . .
If this fails, you must fall back on a subtler misdirection of his intention. Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. when they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by the success of producing the desired feeling: and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment . . .
. . . For if he ever comes to make the distinction , if he ever consciously directs his prayers “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be,” our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all this thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external presence there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it – why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation – this real nakedness of the soul in prayer – you will be helped by the fact that the humans do not desire it as much as they suppose. There's such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!
Of all the things I've read about prayer, I'm finding out that I really don't understand it. However, I've also found out that the success of my daily walk depends more on that than anything else. I don't think we need to understand it as much as we just need to do it and make a conscious effort about it even when we don't feel like it. If we ask God for help and do our part, the rest is up to Him.
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