We're all under the same starry sky

I have faith in God, and faith that humanity can find Him. I have faith that God has the power to change people. He has the power to change the hearts of men and that once we are found in God, we are found in love. And I believe the task of the church is to show this love all over the world to every person they meet.

But I have to say that I'm disappointed in humanity. I'm saddened because somehow, people don't realize how precious they are. I'm sad that somehow, young kids are being denied love from their own parents, that people feel the need to cut themselves, that right now, people are committing suicide because their lives are no longer worth living.

What's happened?! When did people get so selfish and introverted that we no longer even have a purpose for continuing on with our lives. A gentle touch, a kind word, a smile, a laugh, a comforting conversation, a willingness to forgive and forget. Those are only little things we can do to help one another. Anything to let others know that they are noticed, that they're soooo important! I hate (and yes, I'm using that word) the lack of love in our society. And I wish that people would not have self-ambition, but a drive to help others.

Why is it that there's this clear division within society of the rich and the poor? Even geographically speaking, the East end is always poor, the West always rich. Why? Society has created so many divisions that we rarely know how to break them enough to learn that we're all under the same starry sky. And no, I'm not a communist, but I do believe that a person growing up in the west end with a two parents and even enough money to just meet ends meet will have a much better chance of getting a good job in life than a person growing up in the East end with a single parent, often switching between foster homes and parents. And I don't think any political system will technically fix that. I believe the only thing that ever could is God's love, manifested in his church.

So ya, here's the thing. The church, which includes me, needs to get their butts moving. I can't stand to see the Face of Love being dimmed in this world. We need to shine on a hill. Let everyone know that they are precious. That God values them more than they could imagine. Then we'll see a revolution of Love. What a breath of fresh air that'd be!

I hate Coke ads. (And more philosophical thoughts.)

So I've been thinking lately... Yes. It's true.

Ever feel like God is watered down? Sometimes I feel like people like to sell him, like a bottle of Coca-Cola. "He loves you", "he'll never abandon you", "he'll hold you close and never let go", "he puts the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart".

And I have to laugh here because I find myself doing this all too. And it's not as if God isn't all these things. But he's got WRATH. And I think that's kind of scary for people. Wait, not for people, for me. He's a jealous, angry kind of guy. (We sing these qualities very nicely into our worship music however-"He is jealous for me, Loves like a hurricane, I am tree"- OH NO.) Well, you know what? I think I need to hear about God's wrath. I need to know that God isn't a pansy. lol. I'm half-joking here, half serious.

Cause here's the thing. People need to understand that God isn't a brick. He gets angry when we do things that are wrong. And the entire message of Jesus dying for our sins is nothing without the understanding that Jesus died on the cross to take away God's wrath on the world.

If we think that God is perfect and humanity is sinful, then we know that God cannot possibly be reconciled to humanity because God hates sin. He loves us, he just hates sin. (And yes, there's a HUGE difference) Hence, the Old Testament is filled with bloody sacrifice and fighting and slaughter and war. All this in an attempt to somehow find God in the midst of our own sin. And this is probably the saddest thing to read about. And so, here's where the love story starts to become clear. Jesus comes down to Earth and never sins. God's wrath is not upon him because he is perfect in every way. And then, committing the most selfless act humanity has ever seen, Jesus lets humanity nail his wrists and his ankles into a piece of wood, hang from the wood in front of a mocking crowd, suffocate to death, and have enough love to act as the perfect sacrifice for the people who have done this to him.-Wow. And as the curtain of the temple is torn into two, God is finally able to reconcile himself with humanity. Because by confessing our sins to Jesus, we realize that He acts as our sacrifice, as my sacrifice, to cover the sins that would normally evoke God's wrath, and instead, clean me up, so that I am now under grace and can discover God's love. AMAZING.

There's nothing better than realizing from HOW MUCH we have been redeemed. So yes, please don't water down God. Cause he's pretty cool just the way he is.

Patience is a Virtue. But a Hard one to get.

Michelangelo said that "Genius is eternal patience." I guess I have a lot to work on.

Learning to wait for something is probably one of the hardest things for me. Ever. If I could, I would make everything happen right now, achieve everything I want right now, make things happen, right now. Seriously, I always do things as soon as I think about them. I like results. Fast. But I guess that's really a problem. Cause sometimes patience can teach me so much more than I could ever learn by getting something I want immediately. It's pretty funny actually, and I hate to admit it, but Miley Cyrus got it right-It's the Climb. It's really hard sometimes to just wait for whatever that thing is that you really want. Maybe it's a job, maybe it's a special friend, maybe it's a promotion, maybe a house, maybe even that card you lost a while ago. But there's a journey we need to take when we're searching, and sometimes that journey is what makes us into the person we need to be once we reach the destination. Who would we be without the conversations we had with people, without the connections we've made within a community, without the self-discovery we endure as a single, without the experience of being rejected, without the growth of ourselves within this community of people called humanity.

If only patience was easy though! It's hard for me to see what God really want from me, to see His plan when all I want is a final destination. But I guess the other half of patience is trust. Especially trust in God, realizing that I don't understand everything, but that He'll lovingly guide me along this path called life in the direction which He knows will lead to the best me.

I'll be praying for that in my own life. Peace!

Romance Ruined

So I'm pretty annoyed with the portrayal of "love" in our culture. I'm sick of the stupid Disney movies where the princess acts like a silly little filmsy nothing of a woman, and only has to look pretty and sing some tunes, when BAM! Her prince charming comes along. I'm sick of the damsel in distress movies, the children who decide that they must have a relationship with a person of the opposite sex at 4, the parents who encourage it, and the stupidness of thinking that being single is a curse.

Someone came up to me the other day and was like, "Do you have a man in your life? Cause I mean, it's good to marry young so that you have your life to spend with another person and work out your problems together?" Well thank-you VERY much sir for pointing out how little faith you have in me to handle my OWN problems. I mean, seriously! Sometimes, God uses single people to do things that married people cannot do, and who's to say that maybe God's using my singleness right now to help me do stuff that I couldn't do as a wife. Give me a little credit here, okay? I don't need to be rescued or saved or swept off my feet and I especially don't need to pop out babies anytime soon. I am NINETEEN years old for Pete's sake!

And you know what? I don't think that romance works quite the way the movies show it to. I mean, if some girl was going around singing all by herself in the middle of a secluded forest or what not, I might just think she was a little bit nuts. What happened to relationships where the man liked the woman because of her character? Because she was the person that he could be a better person with than without? Whose to say that a girl with a compassionate heart and independent mind isn't just as attractive as a beauty queen?

I'm happy to be single, at least, most of the time. Sometimes it sucks. But God's teaching me to be patient and rely on Him to provide. I really need to clear my head of all these preconceptions that marriage is a necessary step in life, cause it's really not. Women work today and we don't NEED to get married if we don't want to. I'll get as much love from God and my friends and I would from a husband. Then again, maybe God does have someone for me, in which case, I can't wait to meet him.

But in the meantime, I'm just going to be me. And I kind of like that.

Peace!

Reality?-check

Every now and then, I pause and take a reality check. Which is kind of funny, because it means that somehow, somewhere, we've lost track of exactly what reality is. But maybe that happens because in some way, our reality is rarely what it appears to be, or even what it should be.

A lot of my friends tell me that when they grow up, they want what has been often classified as the "American Dream." They want to get married, have a big house, a nice car, one (or none) kids, and lots and lots of money. Fairly standard, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if several of the people reading this wanted the same thing. But I always want to scream at them "WHY???!!!!!" That sounds like the worst and most boring life I can imagine. Because in the end, you are only living for yourself. Our selfish little awful lives where no one talks to their neighbour next door and everyone is dying of loneliness and disconnection. Sometimes I even question the purpose of university, the "institution of the highest forms of knowledge and discovery." I mean, really... how much do you learn there? How to write a paper with the appropriate margins and word choices? How to draw a diagram without error? and this helps me how? not to say that I'm not learning. oh no, my 4.21/4.3 GPA will most certainly get me a job. or maybe not, since it took me two and half months to find a simple summer job since I've gotten back. And I applied for restaurant positions. hahaha. well, anyways, God blessed me with a job better than any restaurant position anyways and I am learning to be patient with His help. anyways, now I'm off track. lol.

All this to say that maybe our pursuit of money is not the reality that would make us most happy. Because in the end, money doesn't talk to you, it doesn't have a shoulder to cry on, it will never love you or hurt you or make you a better person. It will only give you THINGS. And at the end of our lives, I don't think I'd want to be known for the money I spent. I want to be known for the love I gave to the relationships with the people around me. And if that's the case, what should my reality be? Should it be university? Should it be the great job, the perfect family, the never-ending supply of money? Or should it simply be living in such a way that I can love people until it hurts? I choose the later.

The next time you say you want a certain life though, ask yourself why. And then why you answered that way. We pursue certain lives and certain lifestyles because of the things the government and the media tells us. But who says they're right? Decide for yourself :)

To Passivity and Keats

So I thought I'd share some thought from some of my reading this week. In the book, Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, they talk about peacefully approaching our "enemies." They suggest DISARMING others. To refuse to oppose evil on its own terms but instead to transcend both passivity and violence in a third way. I thought I'd pass on a beautiful quote to whoever might read this.

"Evil can be opposed without being mirrored... oppressors can be resisted without being emulated... enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed."

In the three examples Jesus gives in Matthew's account, there are outlined three ways to disarm others. One is to look them into the eyes and let them see your scared humanity, not responding in anger but in humility. In Jesus' times, if you hit someone with your left hand, you could be banished for ten days, so you'd use a backslap to hit someone on the right cheek. A backslap is an insult, degradation, and form of humiliation. By not responding but leaving your right cheek available for the slap, you are showing them exactly how inhuman they are acting.

Second example is that if someone sues you for your clothes, give them your cloak also. In Jesus' times, only the poor were subject to this abuse since they had nothing else to give. By stripping themselves naked, the poor expose the greed of the rich and pour shame onto the one who has caused their nakedness.

The last example was that if a man asked you to walk a mile with them, you should walk two. Under Roman law, a citizen was required to walk a mile with a soldier to help them carry their supplies. To walk a second mile was actually an infraction of the military code. By walking that second mile though, they were saying, "I want to get to know you; You're important to me and I want to get to know you as a friend. I am willing to do more than you ask because I realize that you are a child of God."

These responses are "neither submission nor assault, neither fight nor flight." It is simply a loving call to those who haven't experienced the love of God. Our enemies are simply versions of humanity that have gone a little astray. And since God is love, if we deny someone love, we deny them God. And I'd hate to be the one looking into God's eyes when He finds out that his little child was denied access to his love because of a stuck up Christian.

To change the topic again, I read a beautiful poem by Keats and thought I'd share it with you.

"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair lady's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death."

Comfort isn't very satisfying

I'm bored with my life. I have all this stuff and if I can be completely truthful, I really don't need it. I like it, but I don't need it.

You see, life is full of these things that last close to half an hour and then get boring. I buy a new set of clothes and am happy with them for about... 2 weeks and then get bored with them. I go out all the time because I'm never happy to do something in my own home and always feel like I need to be entertained. Why? I'm pretty sure my life is full of clutter and things that I need to get rid of. It's time for some spring cleaning in my own life. Ugh.

I want to escape the stupid lifestyle that everyone tells me I need to have. Maybe I don't want a lot of money, a nice house, a beautiful car, or some perfectly clean house that looks like its never been lived in. If I had a ratty old shack with a roof that was falling apart at the seams and old used furniture, but at least had friends and family who I loved and who loved me more than anything, I would be the happiest person on Earth.

Jesus was an amazing guy. He loved people sooo much. He lived, he cried, he laughed, and he loved like no person before. not only that, but he did all that with only the sandals on his feet, the clothes on his back, and the small provisions that he picked up along the way. If I can be even a tenth of the person he was, I would say that my life meant something. now, to get rid of the clutter... *sigh