Spontaneous acts of controlled synesthesia
A contract is based upon lack of trust, a covenant is based upon commitment.
You will reap what you sow, and you will reap where you sow.
A marriage will only be as good as WE decide it is going to be. Working together. Fighting at each other’s sides. Choosing together. Holding on as we face each other.
Everyone is pouring their life into something. The question, is it worth it?
The basis of the message is a situation in David’s life while he is king of Israel and in the middle of a violent conflict with the Philistines. In this moment, David is tired and dehydrated. He and some of his closest allies are sheltered in a cave, the Philistine army occupies a valley separating them from Bethlehem and dividing them from their resources. Out of extreme commitment to David and belief in his God-ordained cause, three men fought their way through the Philistine camp, reached the well in Bethlehem, then fought their way back through the Philistines (without spilling the water!) just do David could have a drink and begin to restore his strength. Recognizing their courage and devotion, David honored these men in front of God. 2 Samuel 23:13-17
Everyone is devoted to something, whether they will admit it or not. The common drive of modern culture is to be completely committed to serving ourselves. After all, if you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will. Right? Possibly. But that philosophy makes an assumption that everyone else is only looking out for themselves as well.
Any botanist or someone who has ever owned a plant will tell you, what you water will grow; what you don’t water, won’t. The same is true in your life. What you nurture, where you invest yourself, that is what will grow and who you will become. What you neglect will die.
Even when it breaks your neck, this life, your life, and the lives of the ones you love hinges on how much you are willing to invest.
Jesus wants to invest in this life, in your life, with you.
The heart of our problem is a problem of our heart.
If we live by the spirit, we must keep in step with the spirit. What does that even mean? Is our purpose to Mamba through life with Jesus like a super-spiritual Dancing with the Stars??
No….
Keeping in step is a figure of speech meant to encourage us to align our hearts and desires with those of our Creator. Throughout our lives, seeds become planted in the soil of our spirit. We have the option to nurture these seeds (or not) and it is our responsibility to discern which plants should grow and which need to die.
How do we know what seeds deserve life and which do not? We must look beyond today and consider the fruit they will bear. Every plant is designed to produce a specific crop. Some produce in order to feed other organisms, some plants are complimentary and their purpose is to grow a biological product that is required to reproduce in cooperation with another plant. Tomato plants yield tomatoes, apple trees grow apples, but you’ll never pluck a sweet Muscadine grape off of a poison ivy vine…..
What fruit are we designed to produce? Our fruit is based in love and unity. These fruits build each other up and reject any notion of placing ourselves on a pedestal above another life. Galatians 5:22-23
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Fear tells you what to think, truth shows you what is real.
Love is the truth.
The ability to connect words to images to emotions as an intricately woven tapestry was engineered into the hardware of the human mind to guide our physical survival as well as inspire spiritual hunger and growth. Professional memory competitors (there really is such a thing) will explain strategies of connecting a name to a face using a unique object and attaching a story to that object, much like Micheal Scott’s mnemonic device to remember names in The Office. Culture has understood this from the earliest days of humanity, which is the reason folklore, oral tradition, poetry and simple parables are so critically important to the framework of culture. In the modern world, media holds the reigns of this driving force, for better or worse. Musicians, authors and directors reflect life which then mirrors the stories being told. Our minds assign meaning to the images, so the dance of fiction versus reality is very much a cooperative partnership.
This Christmas season, Journey participated in this dance, taking a look at three popular stories told during the holidays in the United States, extracting the theology and inspiring messages told through each. The Grinch, Elf and The Polar Express. Each entry is summarized with their corresponding drawing below. I hope you enjoy and celebrate a joy-filled Christmas season this week!
New Christmas series started today, Journey Through the Movies. Today’s movie? The Grinch.
Life and people hurt us, our hearts wear the scars. We build fences around our hearts to protect us from these wounds, but God’s love tears down these walls.
We have a choice after we are hurt. Get bitter or get better. Choose to let your heart grow and plow down the fences around it.
The larger our hearts grow, our capacity to experience joy within the world around us grows larger and burns brighter. Joy was our focus this second week of the Christmas season. Buddy the Elf teaches us the true nature of joy. Loud, obnoxious, boisterous joy as only Will Ferrell can fully embody on the big screen. What Buddy shows us with pristine clarity, is joy is contagious. When we are happy, people notice. When we are joyful, they want to join us (even if they don’t want to admit it)
The world around us is cold and hard. We are surrounded by negativity; depressing news, disappointing turns of events, unmet expectations. We are candles in a cavern of ice. Joy is our flame. When we step out in the open and take hold of incomprehensible joy, the frigid walls around us cannot avoid taking notice and reflecting our dancing flame. Slowly, the warmth of being present makes the hardened walls begin to melt.
In the words of a wise mentor of mine, don’t go out and try to set the world on fire. Set yourself on fire, then see if it catches.
Our final movie for this season is The Polar Express. This movie presents us with a child who is jaded and skeptical of anything he cannot physically see or touch. He observes the faith of his friends and family, but refuses to risk taking the same step into the unknown himself. In this story, belief (the evidence of faith) is represented by a cherished bell. Only those who believe could hear the crisp ring of the bell as it is shaken. Those whose faith is being withheld in wait of adequate proof shake their bell but hear only silence.
Faith is such a huge concept, I struggled with a single image which could be completed in the twenty-minute time-frame I limit myself to finish my drawing each week. I struggled until Michael made this statement; “Faith is taking the next step without seeing the whole staircase.” The instant he mentioned the staircase, the Penrose stairs came to my mind. The Penrose staircase is an optical illusion, an impossibility in architecture of a four-tier staircase which endlessly climbs upward. At each pass around the staircase, the figure passes the bell, suspended within arms reach to be rung with every lap.
Belief is confidence.Confidence keeps moving, without knowing the next part of the story, what lies at the top of the stairs, or even if your foot will find the next step to support you.
Keep walking, keep climbing. One step at a time, keep moving forward.
Believe.
Merry Christmas and may your 2017 be filled with joy and new hope for you and your families.
Think about ‘work’ for a moment…..who gets excited? If you do, either something is very wrong or the majority of the working public envies you. Where did this whole idea of working for a living start? Many Christians would say with the fall of man. Creation’s fall from grace made life hard; before sin the earth served human kind hand and foot. They are wrong.
Before Adam and Eve decided to test a different path, God placed them in the garden. Not placed like a stop on a destination cruise, placed like an assignment; and assign them He did. Genesis 2:15 specifically states, God placed them in the garden to work it and keep it. This assignment came before experimenting with the tree of knowledge. God designed our work before day one.
Why would a loving God design an exhausting, time-consuming, monotonous institution? He didn’t design it that way, we did. God blesses us and He uses us to do it. Our work is a service to others. Some vocations are more obviously “people blessing” than others. It is an undeniable fact that every job serves someone in some form. The word ‘vocation’ is derived from the root word ‘vocatio’ which means a call or summons. To perform a task as your vocation is to perform it as your call, as if you were summoned to complete that task. The flip side of that is if you do not perform your task properly, then you are not complying with your summons. An offense which temporarily revokes your freedom in the United States. I also find it interesting that, as a noun, the word ‘summons’ is to be called for a purpose. As a verb, ‘summons’ is to serve. Our work is serving others. Your vocation is your calling, but your calling is not always your career. We are each individual pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. The absence of a single piece renders a puzzle broken. With proper restraint from idolizing our work or being idol in our work, we own our piece of the puzzle to bring the image to completion.
A few Super Bowls ago, the advertising department at Chrysler designed a commercial which focused on the dirty nails, thankless labor, and relentless work of the farmer. The marketing angle was emphasizing the stage their product filled. The catch phrase that grabbed our emotions was “So God made a farmer.” The assembled jigsaw puzzle of today’s drawing contains that phrase, with minor but important details.
First, the word farmer is crossed out. Not because a farmer’s job is unimportant, but because it is not just someone else’s job. God placed you here, in the garden, to work the land. You may not be the one turning the dirt and planting the seeds, but you are working the land of your vocation.
Second, there is a hole in the image. One piece is removed from its place, not yet responded to its summons. That puzzle piece shapes the word ‘YOU’. You are the missing piece. Acknowledge your place, however mundane or insignificant it may feel. Fill your place and fill it well. God didn’t just make a farmer, God made you.
Now I’m going to go fill one of my roles; off to play ball with my boys.
