Joel 2:28-32

The Day of the LORD
28 "And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.

29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

30 I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.

31 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.

32 And everyone who calls
on the name of the LORD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the LORD has said,
among the survivors
whom the LORD calls.

I am MAN hear me roar!

I just read the first chapter of "Wild at Heart" for the first time. Good stuff! If you have read it then you will know what I am talking about when I say I am going to take my heart back. In light of reading this first chapter I come to the realization with the help of some stuff that one of my profs has said to me.

Why are youth so in love with music? Why do people raise their hands in the air at rock shows? Why do they raise rock on fists and scream their lungs out? Well I just might have an answer. This first chapter suggests that our world and sadly our churches and Christian families as well has stripped the meaning of what it is to be a man. By this I mean that we have taught our boys and young men to grow up into the nice mild mannered ladies we want them to be, and then we wonder where all the men have gone.( if you have read the book this is going to seem redundant, sorry.) Really we have turned them into women. Men were not created to be passive! Passion and adventure and risk is built into the Y chromasome that only the man has been given by God.

So now the answer to the questions previously stated. Now that we have tamed our young men and taught them to settle down and not be passionate and to be passive and to not follow their wild, seemingly mad dreams it is not wonder there are no men to be seen in our day and age. The reason concerts and rock shows and violent and wild movies like braveheart resonate with our young men is because it is the only environment that we have allowed our young men to express themselves outloud and passionately. As male in society I personally have this desire to yell and beat my chest and wear a kilt and to live with risk and to be bold. It is who I am created to be. So do not try and tame me. I am wild and unpredicable. I am fulling my cultural mandate givne to all men in Genesis to cultivate and subdue the earth and to be fruitful and multiply. I am producing fruit in embracing who God is calling me to be as a man.

Hallelujah by Paramore

Somehow everything's gonna fall right into place,
If we only had a way to make it all fall faster everyday.
If only time flew like a dove,
We're gonna make it fly faster than I'm falling alone.

This time we're not giving up,
Let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
We'll make it last forever.

Holding onto patience, wearing thin,
I can't force these eyes to see the end.
If only time flew like a dove,
Well we could watch it fly, and just keep looking up.

This time we're not giving up,
Let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
We'll make it last forever.

And we've got time on our hands.
[And we've got time]
Got nothing but time on our hands.
Got nothing but, got nothing but.
[And we've got time]
Got nothing but time on our hands.

This time we're not giving up,
Oh, let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
"Hallelujah".

I love these lyrics, and put the music it is that much better.

Beauty

This morning I have been listening to a song that speaks of the beauty of Christ. In our image driven society it is easy for me to dismiss this by thinking, "how do you know Jesus is beautiful? Have you seen him?" The song is also sung by a couple of guys and culture today has taught us that this is odd that a man would sing of the beauty of another man.

It clicked for me when standing in front of my mirror that I am, and I would assume many other people, have become habitually trained to be physically driven to the point that it is hard to not see beauty outside of that context.

"Jesus, oh holy one, I sing to you forgiven. Savior I'm overcome with your great love for me.

You are worthy! you are worthy! You are worthy of all my praise!
You are beautiful! You are beautiful! So I lift up my hands and sing!

You are worthy! You are worthy! You are worthy of all my praise!
You beautiful! You are beautiful! So I lift up my hands and sing!

Mighty King how beautiful you are. How beautful."

So when this song speaks of the beauty of Christ, whether it was intetional or not, it is calling the listener to see beauty outside of what we are seeing. The picture of Christ's love for his church is a beautiful thing. Christ's church responding to that love by proclaiming that he is worthy of all our praise and we will lift our hands and sing is a beautiful thing.

The gift we have been given to experience God's creation with five different senses is a beautiful thing. So why do we emphasize sight? What about smell? Smell above anything has the greatest power to in an instant fling me into memories. When I was in elementary school my family lived in this neighborhood where one side of the street we lived on had these trees that produced this amazing sweet smell when they bloomed in the spring. Now whenever I smell that I automatically think back to playing hide and go seek with my neighborhood friends at dusk on a spring night, and there is the perfect temperature in the breeze and I can smell those trees by my house. What about hearing? I love music for the simple reason that it has this power of moving emotions in people involuntarily. Last night we had a concert here at school and the second to last piece just gave me chills with the amsing harmonies and overtones and a couple hundred choir members singing the last line double forte. What about touch? There is something about touch that can be healing and comforting. It can be the slightest touch that is the most powerful, that can send chills through your whole body. Flavors have the same effect on our memories as smell does. Our senses seem to control us and maybe the only reason we emphasize our sight is because we depnd on it the most to manage our lives. What about the blind? I often think they are priviledged to not have their sight from how dependant those of us that have our sight are.

Find ways to see beauty ourside of your sight. There is nothing wrong with our sight, but we have been given more than just our sight to enjoy.

The Love of God

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

Refrain:
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

High School

Today I have had hihg school on my mind, and I think it started when I was glancing at some photos on facebook. Do you ever have memories that you wish to forget because looking back on them you realize that what you said was rediculous or what you did was embarrassing? And yet I think that most of the time we are hard on ourselves and most of the time our embarrassing moments are only burned into our own memories and no one else's who was there.

When I was in high school(especially senior year) I remember think that me and my friends were so mature, especially in comparison to the freshmen. I remember times when I thought what I was saying was profound or a nugget of wisdom to the underclassmen. I now look back on those memories and my perspective is so different. Most of the time my reaction is "Wow, that was stupid". I wonder if the same is true for me today. Do I think that I am more mature than I really am? Now that I am a junior do I feel like I have nuggets of profound wisdom to share with the underclassmen? I know I have already said and done really stupid things. What is it about me that puts such a high value on the opinion of my peers. Isn't that why we are so hard on ourselves when we remember embarrassing or stupid moments in our lives? In some ways I wish I could forget a lot of high school, but maybe that is because it is easier to remember mr stupidity than what me and some of my friends from high school would always call "good times".

I think junior high and high school are a perfect example of "growing pains".

More to come, but I have to go to class...

Rainy day in the Neighborhood.

It is raining today. I like it. I went for a walk to the gorcery store and back. Anybody want to come over for chicken fajitas tonight? It's only about $400 round trip from Seattle to Omaha.
I started to listen to Chirstmas music last week. I love it.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

"How's it going?"--"I don't care."

Last night I was in the Humble Bean(the on capus coffee shop) reading a book for one of my classes today. The jist of the book is all about poverty in America and couple chapters I was reading we addressing the issue of health insurence in the US. I was having a hard time reading cause I was often iterrupted by my brain trailing off and thinking about what I was reading. the chapter was giving statistics of how many people in the US do not have health insurence and reasons why. ON eof the guys in a couple of my classes is a strong supporter of writing letters to our senators about the injust happening in the world. He and I are both in a club of campus called Justice Matters which provides information about injustices in our world and also provides an opportunity and supplies to write letters to our senators about taking action. Last year we wrote letters concerning the issues in Darfur as well as the issues with sex trade and the kidnappings connected to that. All this to say that last night I struck up a conversation with this guy(Micah) about how I have a hard time not feeling fatalistic about all the problems and how it seems never ending. I asked him how the letters we write can make a difference. He responded with stating he understood where I was coming from, and that it is worth our time and to not feel like it is each individual's responsibility to address every injustice that plagues our world today.

After I left the coffee shop my mind was still cranking away at injustice. I was walking back to the other side of campus with a friend and starting discussing what I was thinking. We started talking about an assignment we have for "New Testament Prophets". We have discussed in class if there are modern day prophets and as and how the prophets we read about in the Bible were extremely bold, at times seemingly fearless, and they brought attention to the injustices of their time. So our prof is assigning us the task of finding a way that each of us in the class should look for a way that we can be a "prophetic voice" in our community. One of my fellow theology majors stated that he was going to have to grow some "prophetic balls" to pull this one off. Blunt but true that this could be a costly assginment that will need some boldness. So me and TIm, who I was walking back to the other side of capus with talked about some of the problems we see with our community within Dordt. I threw out the issue of our shallow and hanbitual way of living in relation to eachother. Who do we define as our friends and in relation to those people how well do we know them? A couple weeks ago the praise and worhsip team I am on played on a wednesday night and afterwards I was cleaning up the keyboard I used and someone I have known for the past 2 years here at Dordt came up to me and stated, "I didn't know you played piano you played really well!". My first thought was, "are you kidding me?". But this just further proved how much we are in the dark when it comes to how well we know eachother around here. Even the things we do know( where home is, favorite color and food and their current complaints about anything and everything) are nothing that falls in the category of meaningful.

So me and TIm continued our conversation in the stairway of the building he lives in for another 20 minutes and the only way I could describe how I felt towards this lack of compassion or caring, this fake genuity...I was hurt. I know many people feel this way. Yesterday I was walking past a couple people on the way to my apartment and said "hey" as I passed to at least accknoledge that they existed, and as I passed by one of them mumbled out "How's it going?". I didn't respond because by the time he had finished his question he was a couple feet behind me and walking in the other direction. It took me a second to realize what had just happened, but I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around. I watched as the 2 guy continued their conversation they had before I said "hey" a few seconds before. "How's it going?" he had no intention sticking around to show any interest in how I was doing. Now I don't blame him because this sort of passing greeting is something we all have filed into to our habitual responses along with fine, good, hey, yo, howdy and whatever else.

I wonder if the phrase "you don't know Jack" was a sort of response to this issue. Maybe somebody really didn't know Jack and a friend of Jack's spoke up about it. I think I am going to address this injustice in our community with a prophetic act of some sort, but I am not quite sure how yet. I might take a survey of random people walking by and ask them questions like what do they look for in their friendships, and maybe follow that up with asking who their best friend is and what their frined is passionate about. I don't really know yet, but something like that.

Another thing me and Tim talked about was as a result of this impersonal behavior that is so common, I then wondered what kinds of hurts are not being addressed in the lives of the individuals on this "Christian" campus because we do not have the slightest care about anything besides ourselves? There has got to be a lot of hurting people on this campus, and I don't think that Dordt is the only place this is true. Furthermore I think the church is doing a horrible job of addressing this issue, and this ball is totally in the church's court.

No wonder it's so easy to think fatalistically.