April 3, 2009
I was at the gym the other day and I was listening to the Newest album by T.I. “Paper Trail” and usually when I listen to music while I am working out it is to pump me up and help me put less concentration on the pain of the workout. In the midst of working out a few days ago, I heard a lyric in a song that made me think. Though I cannot endorse this album due to the majority of the content I guess even in the midst of the negative content there are life lessons that are revealed, maybe because deep down, people, no matter who they are, are the same and have similar experiences.
The particular track I was listening to is called “My life, Your entertainment” and throughout the song T.I. is confronting cynics that are talking about him. The main chorus is “My life, your entertainment
You watch it while I live it (live it), I walk they follow, I talk they holla, Just here for your amusement
My life, your entertainment, You watch it while I live it (live it), You waitin’ for me to lose it, I guess I’m just here for your amusement.” After hearing this track I couldn’t help thinking about how some people when given the option to work for something to see their dreams come to pass or just live vicariously through someone else’s dreams, choose the latter.
I love to watch movies to be entertained and also because of the creative expression that is film but I have to constantly ask myself, do I want to live a life that is only one of observation of others or do I want to live a life that I am becoming a visionary and seeing my dreams come to pass? As a culture, I feel like many have succumbed to being satisfied with watching others live life that their ability to dream for themselves has dwindled. Instead of going and creating experiences I have experienced that many people would prefer to watch the same or similar experiences happen to other people on a show or in a movie. I am all about collaboration of people and networking with others and supporting them with what they are doing but beyond this, have we lost the ability to think for ourselves and realize that we can shape the world that we live in?
What is your experience? Why do you think people seem to prefer to watch other’s live dynamic lives instead of creating and enjoying their own dynamic lives? What can we do to encourage people to dream?
March 28, 2009
I was walking and praying today and I thought of something that I had not realized before today. A few months ago my fiancee and I were on our way to church when my car started to smoke really bad. Shortly after parking, the car burst into flames and the police and firefighters were on the scene in minutes. After I wrestled through this whole scenario I realized how faithful God was to us that the car did not burst into flames while we were still driving it. But more subtle than this display of God’s faithfulness and provision was something that happened regarding this incident a couple months later.
Both my fiancee and I were working at the time our car went up in flames so we needed to find a car very quickly. After spending countless hours looking on Craigslist and other posting type sites we had set out to figure out what we were going to do. The same day we were trying to figure out what to do, one of our friend’s on campus approached us and asked us if we needed to borrow his car for the year. My fiancee and I could not believe what we were hearing and definitely took our friends offer. Though we now had a car for the school year, the reality that we needed to find our own car was still upon us, so we continued to look and in that time we waited to see what God might do. A constant joke between my fiancee and I at this time was maybe someone will give us a car or will give us a car for like $100 dollars. Here’s where the irony comes in… A couple months later the owner of the car asked us if we wanted to buy the car he had let us borrow for… $100 dollars. I hadn’t really thought much about this until my fiancee brought it up in conversation today. It is times like this where I have a hard time doubting that God cares about our lives. There are just way too many coincidences for it not to have some sort of orchestration.
In the place in life that I am right now and even where our world collectively is, it is so important for us to remember God’s faithfulness and to lose sight of this brings a lot of anxiety that we could avoid had we just remembered that God is in control. Ps. 20:24 says “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”
March 25, 2009
How can we continue on in our lives living a life geared towards gathering more things, more pointless, soulless stuff, when people with souls around us are being slaughtered everyday? People whose hearts are being broken and flesh is being ripped off of their bones? A mass of people around the world raped and ravaged by diseases that we in America, have the cure for. Eyes wide… closed, ears sewn… shut, we are crying out against their cries of anguish. “make it stop” we say, swatting at our faces as if their cries are like the annoying buzzing of a mosquito near our ears. Minds foreclosed as we are stuck and sucked further into the black hole of our own existence. Sucked further into a consumer environment where I am chief and what I want, and think I need, transcends all others. By the way, you might want to check that shirt you just bought, chances are, its dripping with blood and sweat poured out in vain by a modern day slave.
Maybe I am getting us wrong, maybe I am getting myself wrong, I mean, I cry when I am shown in vivid color the suffering and pain that people around the world go through. I am moved to do something in that moment and my friends are too. Yet what does it take to move us from the place of tears and idle promises before God and others that we will do something about the injustice around the world to actually doing something about it?
I believe it only takes one. It takes one being educated, one person inspired, one person willing to sacrifice comfort for the sake of others freedom. It takes one talking to another and connecting with the people around them, taking all God-given unique gifts and using them to bring an end to this atrocity. It takes many people willing to embrace the one. The one that is around them. The homeless, the one in poverty, the orphan, the trafficked, the broken-hearted. These are the ones with broken souls
“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.” Mother Teresa
March 25, 2009
As I was standing on a high place yesterday after hiking up into the mountains I was left staring at a spectacular view of all the lights in the valley. Night had coated the sky and up on top of this mountain someone had placed a cross. In the past, when I have heard stories that pastors tell congregations in order to move them to action and evangelize those lost people around the world that will go to hell if we don’t do anything, I am moved. Those stories affect me. For example i heard a story about a bridge that had collapsed and cars were flying off the cliff into the freezing cold water below. So the story goes… someone is watching this horrific picture unfold and they decide to run up to the top of the bridge and give their life in order to stop the people from dying. When i first heard this story, the pastor told it with such vivid language and so much conviction. I was moved when i heard it. I was angry and troubled when i heard it.
As I stood on this place here again, staring down on thousands of houses that house thousands of people and watching the cars racing on the highway below, i was faced with the picture of that sermon illustration. I was faced with people’s passion to convert the masses. I was also faced with people in the past that were so consumed with their passion to see people know God, that they did evil things in the name of “God”.
As I have wrestled with my theology through this last few years, on one hand I could say that i have lost my passionate conviction to save those “sinners” from hell(even if this passion was driven by my love for people). On the other hand I feel as if my theology has evolved. I would pray that if I am growing closer to God everyday that my heart would ultimately be becoming like his, but maybe I’m not growing closer to him. Or here’s a thought, what i care about and am becoming is his heart, or maybe it’s his heart just for me (whoa i should stop with that relative language) Let’s go with the answer that i am actually missing the whole entire reason i am here on earth. I am constantly being indoctrinated in to an emerging/ postmodern thought process beacuse i read books by emerging authors, I am around people that have an emerging sort of attitude, and I am all about saving the world without starting wars.
Freeing modern day slaves is all about saving people from their modern day hellish situations. If people are driven by love, isn’t this sort of the same reason people desire to tell others about Jesus? Isn’t conversion about giving people something to live for that doesn’t leave them broken after they indulge in it? Giving them something that will ultimately satisfy them. Something that will ultimately make their lives worth something?
I know that loving God and desiring to reach many people with the love of Christ is a good thing. But doesn’t sharing Christ’s love through words yet doing nothing to clothe the naked man on the street or letting the starving child continue to starve seem completely contradictory to the entire message of the Bible? Please share your thoughts.
