Unsettled, yet joyful as I watch Frego, the ferret, burrow through my unpacked stuff

Tonight I write with an unsettled heart, a frustrated heart. I've been here before. Many times. Apathy is hanging over my head, little motivation, too much on my to-do list, and a mind unable to allow me to process it all with any sanity. I guess I don't know where to start. Maybe that's my problem, I am looking for the place to start when I should just still myself upon my God and Father.
That can't be the answer can it? So easy, yet so difficult for this prideful, sin-driven flesh of mine. I just read Psalm 46 yesterday. "Cease striving, and know that I am God." Man, I'm dense! But that is why there is grace eh?
Perspective is so much of the Christian life. How we view things changes everything. I think of the popular proverb, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight." Leaning not on your own understanding, looking not through your own scratched and blurry lenses. Acknowledge Him. Recognizing who He is and what He promises to His children. Worship Him! Then your path will be straight. Why? Because your gaze is fixed once again on the only One who matters. Jesus Christ.

Just some writing (A Work in Progress)

Who do you want to be when you grow up? As a child, I remember wanting to be a firefighter, a doctor, and a soldier among many other things. These desires of course changed according to the game I was playing at the time. I lived to pretend and to dream. Many days I fought valiantly against the dragons invading my backyard, heroically protecting the beautiful princess in the jungle gym, I mean castle, behind me. I blew countless Nazis to kingdom come with my pine cone grenades and cap machine gun. I wanted to save the world, be the hero, and still have mom tuck me into my bed at the night. It was a perfect life for me. It was who I wanted to be. It was who I was, at least in my mind and isn’t that all that mattered?
Soon, however, I aged into middle school. A different reality dawned. It was one immersed in paranoia and total self-confusion. Everyone was looking at me, examining me and critiquing me to see if I won the approval of the prestigious “in-crowd”. That was my perception of it anyways and I’m quite sure I wasn’t alone. I was determined to meet these expectations, for my social life depended on it. Therefore my life depended on it.

I lived for the approval of my peers and ingested their fickle and ruthless words as gospel. Nothing outside of this worldview mattered. The Peer’s Word remained true. Parents, religion, friendship were all just means to the end. Acceptance. A smile from a cute girl, scoring fifteen points on the school’s basketball team, making fun of the awkward kid, this was my salvation. Recognition and approval was my motivation. But it was fleeting. Reaching one standard did not guarantee an eternal destiny of popularity. It only promised fifteen minutes of fame…….maybe. There was neither certainty nor rest for the weary. It was an addiction, a lust. A taste that never granted satisfaction, it only heightened the longing with every morsel that was devoured. I was a starving man in the desert chasing vainly after the mirages before me. I didn’t like it, in fact I abhorred it all, but I rationalized that my continued existence deemed it necessary. It was a necessary evil. So entangled in this web of influence, I entertained these thoughts as truth when the stench of their deception was so blatantly obvious.

The days of playful adventures and dreaming big dreams had long passed. Sand castles and mud pies were now ancient history. No more fun and games. It was about survival. It was about chasing popularity and reaching the status of "cool", the envy of my peers. I now wanted to grow up and be whoever the "cool" people wanted me to be. Yet these strivings brought me nothing but greater loneliness and disillusionment. I realized too much later the fickleness of shallow relationships and the impossibility of my pursuit. Heartbreak and despair was my only constant and faithful companion. But by God's grace those hellish years were brief and I soon began to find myself, but most importantly I found the One to whom my heart belonged…….Rescue was coming.

(More to come, God-willing)

Morning Thoughts

It is another glorious morning in the great state of Nebraska. As I am looking to move this coming Saturday it is becoming more and more real to me just how much I am going to miss it up here. Though there are many similarities with Kansas, my home state, I am finding there is just something uniquely different here. The sunsets are breathtaking, the stars are bright and majestic, and every single person (almost) you pass by as you are driving waves at you. I was taking a walk around my favorite park the other evening just reflecting on the goodness of God as I've spent a season of much struggle. As I walked around this pond, listening to the birds, watching the rabbits play, and witnessing another breathtaking sunset I couldn't help but worship my Father. One of the things I learned in the midst of such struggle was the great importance of worship and recalling the greatness of God. So many times we get lost in affliction and our focus turns in on ourselves and we quickly find ourselves spiraling further and further down the path of despair. But when we recall the faithfulness and majesty of our God we make Him our focus and that is exactly where our eyes need to be gazed. The Psalmist echoes this truth, "One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple." (27:4) His beauty must be our greatest desire. Our cry must be the cry of Moses who proclaimed, "Show me your Glory!" This truth was further affirmed in my life as I was reading in 2 Corinthians. When we behold the glory and beauty of the Lord it transforms us, not into a mere moral or good person. No, something far beyond what we could even imagine! We become transformed into the image of CHRIST! That is an astounding truth to me. It continues to rock my world and drive me towards the prize. Oh, that I may see Him! "Better is one days in Your courts than thousands elsewhere." In the words of a friend's blog, "Beholding is becoming." How true that is regarding our fellowship with Christ. So today I set my heart to see Jesus Christ. May I not get lost in the tasks of the day or the sin of my wayward heart. But that I may see Christ, exalted in all his beauty and splendor.

"But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit." 2 Corinthians 3:18