I’ve heard a few people tell me, “If I weren’t a Christian, I’d be a _____.” They fill in the blank with such things as naturalist, atheist, humanist, etc. Let’s get this straight, I’m not writing this to condemn anyone. What right do I have to do so? None. And for those who are not Christians, I don’t expect them to understand or agree with me. However, I’ve often found that such statements are made with an ever so slight sense of longing. Though I’m sure they’d deny it and it’s likely they are being honest, it seems as if they are really saying, “Sometimes I wish I weren’t a Christian so I could be a _____.” But when I’m in my right mind thinking about it, my own response is (or ought to be), “If I weren’t a Christian, I’d be dead.”

For me, there is no life outside of Christ. Without Christ, I’d quite possibly be physically deceased and would undoubtedly be spiritually and morally lifeless. And I don’t mean lifeless as in what happens after something has lived for a time, but as in having never once lived, a complete absence of even the faintest trace of life. Non-life.

Am I a better person for thinking this? Of course not. I am just as quick to give in to worldly thought and worldly living as the average Christ-follower, indeed, even more so. I’m outrageously susceptible to sin and am constantly underestimating its terrible power and influence in my own life. Nevertheless, when it comes to finding real appeal from adopting other worldviews, I simply cannot. I see no hope outside of Christ. I agree with Peter in John 6:68 when he replies to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” There is nowhere else to turn, nothing else that makes sense to me, no one else who offers an honest, practical, powerful, and reasonable solution to the problems of the human condition. I find no joy, no comfort, no meaning save that which comes from the death and resurrection of Christ. Without it I am forever lost; a creature most pitiable, doomed to roam in futility until its day of ultimate nonexistence. But in Christ I have life; eternal, glorious, victorious, abundant life! May it ever be so.

If, while cooking, you follow directions in the completely wrong order, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with a disaster that no one wants to eat. Life’s kinda like that. When we see someone whose life is a mess, we’ll often say they have the wrong priorities. They are placing too much significance on the incorrect thing and it throws everything else out of order. For a Christian, it’s necessary to approach faith with order and purpose, doing the most needful things first. I came up with a list outlining what I see as the proper steps towards Godly obedience. The items on this list are in order of importance, where each step follows another in a natural progression:

-Personal time with God in prayer and worship

-The Study of God’s word in order to better understand Him, ourselves, and the world around us

-Placing oneself under solid Biblical teaching and the instruction of a spiritual mentor

-Fellowship with other believers, unity of the body in praise and worship

-Doing the acts/work of God (reaching the lost, aiding the needy, ministering to fellow saints, serving one’s family, being a faithful worker for Christ, etc.)

Every part is important, but I believe there is a necessary order of operations to be followed. Let me know what you think, whether I’m missing or need to change something and why.

A while back I was talking with a friend about people I’d known who had been making some poor choices in their lives. It amazed me how some people who claimed to be Christians could follow lifestyles there were anything but Christ-like. I told my friend, “I guess they just don’t live what they believe.” But he wisely corrected me, pointing out that they were living what they believed, though not what they claimed to believe. I was struck by that idea: we all live exactly what we believe. When I think about it that way, but with the critical eye fixed on my own darn self, my faith appears to be so minuscule.

If I really lived out the things I claimed to believe to their logical outcome, I have a feeling my life would be drastically different from the one I’m now living. So what can I do? The only thing I know to do: go humbly before God, thanking Him for His grace and pleading for the transformation of this doubting heart. Only He can plant the seeds of hope and cause faith to sprout from the rocky grounds of unbelief. Only He can give me victory over the shortcomings of my sinful flesh so that heart, mind, body, and soul all work in unison toward the completeness that only Christ can offer.

As a wee lad, nap time was by far my lest favorite time of the day and I didn’t really look forward to bath time a whole lot either. But now I greatly enjoy taking showers (you were worried weren’t you?) and though I’m still working on it, I cherish every opportunity to get enough sleep. Though I still love eating as much as ever, my tastes for food have changed significantly over the years and my palate has been greatly expanded from the simple preference for waffles, fish sticks, and chicken pot pie (not that I don’t still enjoy those once in a while). Looking back, I see a lot of changes in my life; decisions and events that led me to where I am now. Unquestionably, there’s a lot of things about me that remain the same, the things that make me who I am. Perhaps some of those things will never change. However, while I can’t honestly say every change in me has been beneficial (I’ve likely become jaded in some ways and, for example, hate glitter now more than ever), I think the majority of the changes have been towards the area of growth and not decline.

And now it looks like a lot of changes are either upon me or fast approaching. Changes in where I’m living, the church attend, work, all kinds of changes and with them comes all sorts of decisions to be made. “Change is good,” or so they say. While that isn’t always the case, I think that it might be true in these circumstances. It can be frightening, all those changes coming at once. And yet, overall, I really don’t feel afraid (that in itself is a big change), despite all the unknown factors. It’s a good place to be, realizing my uncertainty concerning the future while not letting it cause undue worry. I don’t expect things to get easier but I do believe, in one way or another, they’ll be better, or at least more how they should be.

C.S. Lewis wrote that in everything we do, we are transformed in one of two ways. We are either becoming creatures of heaven or creatures of hell. I pray that the steps I take are ones leading up the narrow heavenly path. There are lot of opportunities for growth up ahead and I feel like I’m in a place of preparedness to make the right decisions, the ones that will honor God. Knowing my fallible self, I can’t be certain of this, but I have a hope and a deep desire for it to be true. There are many roads before me, but, God willing, I’ll choose the one He has purposed for me to tread upon, the one less traveled by.

Having just written about success, I’d like to also look at greatness, since I think they tend to go hand-in-hand.

Much like success, greatness is something you can find a lot of opinions on. As a matter of fact, even the little tab of paper attached to this morning’s tea had something to say about greatness. Though I’m not sure if it’s a motto I’d live by, I found it interesting and thoughtful at the least:

“Feel great, act great, and approve of yourself.”

When I think of personal greatness, it usually involves something huge, grandiose and very recognizable. Like writing a popular book that deeply affects those who read it, saving a village from starvation, winning a race, curing a disease, leading thousands to salvation, painting a masterpiece, curing a disease, standing alone against a wicked government, traveling to the moon, that kind of thing. But I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that I’ve been looking at it all wrong.

I was struck with reflective wonder when I read this quote by Mother Teresa in a book titled, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers:

“We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

It is not how much you do but how much love you put into doing it.”

In a magazine called Consp!re (it’s published by the same people that wrote the book I just mentioned) I read an article about a family who had committed their whole lives to serving just one person. It got me thinking about what true greatness is and how God might view greatness. In my thoughts of greatness, the focus is often on me more than the other people who would benefit from whatever great thing I did. But greatness should really be about others. Do I value people so much that I’d be willing to give my whole life to help a single person, even if it involved giving up some of my own comforts and even if that person was a very difficult individual to help?

Am I willing to do the small things, the needful things, the things that might not give me any honor or recognition at all, things that the world hardly bats an eye at? Things like sweeping a dirty orphanage floor, helping a stranger move, being the first person to show up at church just to wipe down the tables, giving someone a ride home, making a lunch for someone else, quietly praying daily for one in need, singing songs and reading books to your children, or taking the time to listen to a person who just needs someone to talk with; greatness can be found in such things as these. I pray that my eyes will be opened to see that not all greatness is accompanied by loud bells and flashing lights, most of it is done quietly and discreetly. It may be that in Heaven we will be surprised to find the most treasured things we’ve done were things we hardly noticed or remembered. Perhaps some of the most wonderful accomplisments are those that never received any praise from man, things that only our Heavenly Father sees. Such are the things I aim for.

For starters, I bring up the fact that I am a huge proponent of moderation. Time and time again and in all aspects of life I see the truth and necessity of balance and moderation; finding the happy medium between two (or more) extremes. It is often an essential part of just surviving the everyday toils of that astounding experience called life. However, moderation, as splendid as it is, cannot become our be-all-end-all. A person who is perfectly moderate in every single thing is not only likely to be a very boring individual, but is also, for better or worse, nonexistent. The very characteristics that make us human often cause us to tend toward certain extremes. No one is so moderate that nothing about them favors any one thing over any other thing. Such a person would be completely indistinguishable except in their indistinguishablility, but I digress on that matter. Not only is complete moderation nigh unattainable, but it is also not all that desirable. Can we really say that all extremes are bad and should therefore be avoided? Is it wrong to be extremely kind, humble, honest, loyal, etc? Indeed, there are many cases where it is preferable to be extreme. We must also consider by what basis we determine something to be moderate or “balanced.” There isn’t always a clear standard to determine whether or not something is perfectly moderate. So moderation can, in many ways, become mere opinion and opinions are not usually the best things to build your entire framework of living upon, they tend to shift and change, thus being, on the whole, not entirely stable life-framework building material.

When I think about the person of Jesus Christ, the word moderate does not immediately come to mind, in fact it doesn’t even enter the picture. He was, undoubtedly a man of extremes. The things He said and the ways He lived were not what I would call mediocre, mild, halfway, careful, tame, or low-key. Raising the dead, walking on water, accusing the religious authority to their face, forcibly driving out moneychangers from the temple, praying so hard blood came out of his skin; these things are a bit on what I would call the extreme side. That’s not to say He wasn’t a man of peace, patience, and prayer, after all He was sleeping in the middle of a life-threatening storm and He put up with a lot of foolishness from His disciples, but even in those things His methods were far different from the norm. Of course, Jesus had a specific role that no one else would or could fulfill, but if His life was characterized by such a large number of extremes, ought not our own lives follow a similar pattern. After all, it’s hard to imagine righteous living being anything but extreme, though perhaps not in the ways we might first expect.

All that to say moderation is good, but only when taken in moderation. (egads! that is a brain-bender, try not to think about it too hard)

“Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice”

Thomas Paine

So, I had another writing assignment. I don’t think anyone else really finished theirs, but I figured I’d post mine up anyhow rather than letting the time spent writing it go to waste. It’s no literary masterpiece, but hopefully you can glean something useful from it

This was this prompt:

In our spiritual lives where does God end and we begin or vice versa? Feel free to explore the subject in any way you see fit. There is one catch… It needs to be written as if your audience were an 8 year old child. This could be an essay, narrative, drama, or whatever.

And now for the story:

Many years ago a teacher packed up his few belongings and journeyed from a distant land to dwell in the small village of Karikayo. Over time, this teacher became well respected and there were few villagers who did not hold him in high esteem. As word of his knowledge began to spread, even the residents of nearby villages would come to seek the aged man’s advice. He became known as Taldir the Wise and the people of Karikayo set up guards around him for his protection. They even offered to schedule his appointments for him, since he had began to attract daily crowds of visitors seeking council. This last offer he kindly refused. He had also requested that the guards be removed, since they were unnecessary. But, out of their love for him, the villagers refused to leave their sage defenseless. So he allowed the guards, provided they did not interfere with his work.

One day a brash young man attempted to make a rush past the guards towards Taldir, who had that day chosen to seat himself by the village well. The guards, undeterred, caught the man, but before they could drag him away, Taldir ordered that he be released. “I shall refuse no one who earnestly comes before me, be they young or old, wise or foolish. How shall those who do not know ever learn unless they sit in the presence of those who do know,” Taldir stated. The guards obediently let him go and the man, slowly this time but still with a boldness to his stride, approached Taldir until he was standing directly in front of the teacher, who remained calmly seated cross-legged. “Please, sit. It is more difficult to learn while standing and few things but air pass through proud ears.” With a little assistance from a guard, the young man was seated.
Again, Taldir spoke, “Now tell me what matter is of such urgency that you find it necessary to  come before me in this manner, taunting these faithful guards and throwing away caution as if it was no longer fashionable?”

A hush fell over nearby observers as the young man began to speak, “I have a question that only a wise man can answer and, hearing from many that you are wise, I traveled a great distance to meet with you. Tell me this: if God is all-powerful, as many claim that he is, then why does he require us to do anything for Him?  Surely the things he asks us to do, he can do just as well, if not better on his own. And if God is better on his own then aren’t we, being creatures made in his image, also better left to the works of our own hands, so that each deals with their own affairs as is fitting?”

Some gasped or made scolding noises at the sheer brashness of the question while others, considering it to be a fair question, looked expectantly towards the teacher. Taldir smiled warmly and brought his hands together, folding his fingers across one another. He drew in a deep breath and all who were nearby leaned in closer to hear his reply.

“There lived a small girl who, one day, decided that she wanted to grow a garden. Having seen her mom gardening before, the girl guessed that she knew enough to try it out on her own. So the girl dug a hole in the ground, dropped a small pebble in the hole, buried it and then poured water over it. Then she stood nearby to see what would grow up from the ground. To her disappointment nothing happened, even after waiting for what felt like a very long time. She began to cry and her mother, who had been watching from a distance, came to comfort her. ‘Just give it a little time’ she told her daughter, and then she picked her up and took the little girl inside. When the child had fallen asleep, the mother went back outside and dug up the hole. She then planted a seed where the pebble had been buried. The next day, the girl was very excited to discover a small leaf poking up from her little patch of dirt. She ran to tell her mom the good news and they both celebrated together. The mom then began to teach her daughter the proper methods to growing a garden. When that first plant became a flowering bush, the child plucked a few flowers from it and gave them to her mother. ‘I made this for you,’ the girl told her. Although it was just a small clump of partly wilted flowers, to the mom it might as well have been an extraordinary bouquet. She was so proud of her little girl that she swung her in the air and then covered her with hugs and kisses.”

When Taldir finished his story, many of the children and parents who had been listening smiled and clapped for him. But the young man just sat there, arms crossed, looking unimpressed. “You have not answered my question.” He said, disapproval in is voice, “Besides, once the daughter grew up, she would know how to manage a garden on her own, she wouldn’t need her mother’s help anymore.” Taldir sighed, “Perhaps. I think you should hear to this next story. Try to pay more attention this time.”
“Fine,” the young man said, “if it must be a story. But I expect this one to answer my questions. As you might have noticed, I am no longer a child and since I am an adult, stories are of little interest to me.”
“Grown up you may be, but it requires more than age and size to become an adult. Even the most mature scholar knows that there is much to be learned from the heart of a child. And what a sad day it will be when we no longer find wonder in the telling of a story. But enough, I see you grow impatient.” Taldir cleared his throat and made himself comfortable by resting his back against the stone well he had been sitting beside.

“There once was a lamb who decided to leave his pasture and go out exploring on his own. Early one evening, when he was sure no one was looking, the lamb crawled under a hole in the fence and ran off on his own. Soon he came to a river that was much too wide and deep for him to cross. The river was not a very large one, but the lamb was too small and weak to pass through it on his own. By that time it had become very dark and he was tired, so he decided to drink from the river and then get some sleep until the morning when he could hopefully find a narrow place in the river to cross over. Since it was the first time he’d ever been on his own, fear and excitement kept him awake for a little while, but eventually he was able to close his eyes and rest.
He awoke with surprise the next morning to see a fallen tree laying across the river. I’m glad I waited until daylight, I must have missed this in the dark, the lamb thought. Fortunately for the lamb, the little tree was just big enough for him to walk across it to the other side of the river. Later that day, the lamb was having a wonderful time by himself exploring the countryside when he stumbled into a glade where two wolves were laying down. They quickly noticed him and began slowly moving towards the frightened lamb with their backs crouched low to the ground, snarling hungrily with each step. The lamb was so terrified that he couldn’t move. He was sure he’d be eaten alive once the wolves reached him. Just as the wolves were getting close, they suddenly looked up and froze. Then they turned around and ran off. What luck, I must look tougher than I realized, the lamb thought to himself.
But that night he wasn’t feeling so tough. Instead, he was feeling alone, afraid, thirsty, and very cold. As he shivered in the dark, wondering if he would be able to sleep at all that night, he felt something warm around his body. This is very strange, I must be growing out my wool coat very quickly, the lamb reasoned. The warmth comforted him and he was finally able to sleep. However, when he awoke he began feeling very lost and he realized how much he missed his flock and their shepherd. I never should have left them, this was a big mistake, he thought. Then he sat on the damp ground, bleating and feeling very sorry for himself when out from behind a tree stepped his shepherd. The shepherd picked up the lamb spoke to it in his rich, comforting voice, “Do not be afraid my little lamb, I have been with you all along. I was the one who made that log bridge for you, I scared away the wolves who were going to attack you, and I covered you with my cloak when you were cold last night. And now I will take you home.” True to his word, the shepherd carried the lamb safely home and the little lamb was happy once again.”

A look of disappointment crossed the young man’s face, “I come to you in search of great wisdom and all you give me is children’s stories,” he said with disdain in in voice. Taldir shook his head, “if you cannot understand that which is clear to a child, how will the weightier things be of any use to you.?” the aged teacher asked. The young man stood up and brushed himself off, “I am leaving now, it is obvious to me that you will not be of any help, for you have neither answered my questions nor revealed anything that would pass as wisdom.” And with that he turned and left.
As the onlookers turned to watch the young man exit, Taldir spoke, “This man did not come to listen and learn, but to impress others and assure himself of his own intelligence. Yet, there is still hope for him. As a youth, I was also very proud and arrogant. It took some very difficult lessons before I learned to be otherwise. As he ages, it may be that sense will come to him and reason will teach him to consider again the stories that he has heard and the wisdom hidden in them.” Taldir sighed and considered for a moment the days of his youth. Then he straightened up stretched his old neck this way and that, and said, “Now, both young and old and all who would care to listen, gather around for I have many more stories to tell and many lessons to teach and in them you will find wisdom, if only you will allow your ears to hear and your minds to accept it.” And so they did.

If you’ve known me for very long you will know that I’m a big (in appreciation and fascination, not in body weight) fan of board games. There’s a lot I could say about why they’re so great, but I’ll save it for another time. I did want to point out one thing in particular that I’ve noticed. In many games the rules include a tiebreaker, in other words some other factor by which to determine the winner of a game when two or more people are tied based on the common victory requirements. Some games even have a few tiebreakers in case the first one still doesn’t determine a winner. Eventually though, one reaches a limit to the things that can be used to break ties and, however unlikely in some games, there comes a point were players may, as one rule book puts it, “rejoice in their shared victory.” Some games don’t even have tiebreakers and commonly end in a situation where, “players can all delight in their wealth-there are several winners!”

Now I don’t know about you, but this is usually looked down upon as a flaw in a game. Few people enjoy the “there are no losers” scenario, unless of course it is a cooperative game in which everyone either wins or looses against the game system itself. In fact, games without a definite winner often seem pointless and childish. The truth of the matter is, we don’t like sharing the victory, we want to be the king of the hill, standing far above those we’ve defeated, shining in the brilliant glow of our triumphal efforts, all other noise drowned out by the cacophony of our sheer awesomeness, you get the idea.

Thankfully, God is not that way. Sure, Christ has been risen up and exalted far above all else for His mighty works. However, even though He rightfully deserves all the glory, He chooses to share it with us, though we have done practically nothing worthy of earning it. Even though we can hardly stand even the thought of letting someone else get the credit for our work, He wants us to share His victory with us. It’s like being in a big parade held in His honor and He asks us to come stand right next to Him on the main float. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it and so different from what we’re used to. That’s God for ya, always mixing it up on us.

This is one of my all-time favorite verses:

2 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.