Great Distances

I felt it tonight. You know that feeling? When you are experiencing worship, and lyrics you've heard before take on new meaning. You get it. You decide to seek God in worship, and when He meets you...wow!

A couple posts ago I talked about prayer. As I think about concepts related to my faith and walk with God (prayer, worship, faith, etc.) sometimes I feel a Great Distance. A distance between me and a God so Holy, so beyond my capacity to understand that it feels like a separation. There's the distance I feel between us, and there's the distance between where I am now in my walk/knowledge and where I want to be.

As I said before, 2008 was huge for me in my knowledge and experience of worship. The distance grew smaller. Now, as I feel myself honing in on prayer and faith, I sense a great opportunity to make great strides again to close the gap I feel.

And I keep describing this sense of distance as something I am feeling, not something that exists. I'm not accepting it as fact. I was thinking tonight about how the concept we have of Jesus returning one day....it implies that he left. That he's not here now. That builds up this sense of a gap/distance between us. But we know that he is here, now, living in us. Present with us when we sleep and when we rise. The sense of distance is created by me ignoring him. By my lack of faith in not believing that if I speak to him he will answer. By not spending time with him.

My best friend, Brian, was my closest mate in college. My best man in my wedding. There's a connection at the heart-level that will never go away, regardless of time or distance. And yet, I don't feel very close to him right now because I'm in CO and he's in CA, and we have busy lives and only speak on the phone about once a month.

Tonight, during the mid-week service, my prayer went something like this:
"God, I want to know you. I want to worship and serve you. I want to feel connected to you. But I'm aware of a lack of motivation or desire or something to act on these desires. Help me to want to seek you. Help me to remember to pray. Help me to know what to pray. Help me to believe that my prayer actually matters to you and can affect my life and others."

In closing, I was really struck by the words in "At the Cross":

O Lord, you've searched me
You know my ways
Even when I fail you
I know you love me

Your Holy presence
Surrounding me
In every season
I know you love me

Lord, give me the faith to really believe that you love me, even as a filthy sinner who forgets to (or chooses not to) seek you.

Off & On

I meant to blog this last night....oops.

Monday was "Off"...Tuesday was "On". Do you get what I mean, or should I elaborate? Ok, I'll elucidate.

I've thought of different reasons, explanations, excuses to describe what happened Monday. I felt really "off". It started out great, because I had a fantastic breakfast: eggs fried just right over toast with a couple crispy strips of bacon...perfect. After that, things weren't "bad"...just..."off". I left work at 3:00 to go to the doctor, so that means I was in the office for 8 hours (one of which was lunch), but I feel like I accomplished so little, my energy level was dragging, and I didn't feel collaborative, cooperative, or productive. (Sorry, I can't help but give three examples/descriptions/annotations to everything.)

The externals: my 3-week-long cold; not enough sleep; bad drive in; the co-worker I share an office with was absent.
The internals: didn't spend the morning with God - felt the annoying, scraping, mood-souring fingers of old sins/temptations trying to take little nips out of me; lack of focus and passion for what I was doing; "life" frustrations, stress and distractions at the front of my mind instead of pushed back out of the way so I could focus on work.

I'm not trying to "explain away" anything that was my responsibility (or lack thereof). I know that some things I bring on myself. I could get more sleep to help my energy and focus. I could make a greater effort to have my morning devotions - so often I think to myself that I can "do them later". Even if "later" does eventually happen (which it often doesn't when I postpone it), that's no help to me during the day.

Tuesday: I was feeling/expecting more of the Monday-type stuff. The day started off worse: I woke up late, rushed out the door, intending to grab a bite on the way in. When I went to pay the cashier at the drive-thru window, that's when I realized I had left my wallet at home. So breakfast was a bust; and lunch would be too, since I had really brought one.

However, my souring mood hit a brick wall of positivity. (Hmmm...perhaps an improper analogy...uh, my souring mood was suddenly lifted into the clouds by dozens of happy sparrows) At 9:00, our HR dept. was going to have a 3-hour team/leadership-development session. I was worried my mood would obstruct any progress for me personally, and hurt the team...but I did my best to squash that (with a little help from my homey, JC) and we had a GREAT session. Lots of laughs. Lots of good ideas. Lots of inspiration.

The switch had been flipped to "On".

Even though half my day was gone, when I got to work after lunch, I accomplished 10x more in the next 4 hours than I had all day on Monday. I'm starting to feel like this post is long enough to guarantee skimming/skipping from my readers, so I'll not go into the lengthy reaction I could share about what happened in that 3-hour session and where my thoughts are taking me now. Maybe later. Besides, I've got another post to write tonight.

Prayer & Encouragement

The two big topics for me this week...and (what feels like) my two greatest areas of struggle at the moment.

I've met with a couple different prayer warrior types over the last few months. Much like Worship was a focus for me in 2008, I see Prayer as being a major focus for me in 2009. And I'm quite excited about that.

*Flashback/Anecdote*

Around 8th/9th grade, our youth pastor at church went through a series on prayer, and what being a prayer warrior is all about. We were given little binders that were meant to be a tool to use over several weeks to help us grow in knowledge and practice in prayer. I remember thinking very convincingly, that I am not, and never will be a prayer warrior.

I just didn't get it...how does my talking/thinking to God change or affect things in life? Why does it feel "silly"? Why do I not care? Those thoughts when I was 12-13 solidified as I went through high school, even during the 6 years at a Christian university, even during the 4 years as a teacher at a Christian school.

I think I've come to a point where I'm saying, "Enough is enough." I know (cognitively) that prayer is a real discipline, it is required/commanded of us, it really does affect change...and I want to figure it out. It's humbling to be a Christian your whole life, even a leader of other Christians and organizations, and yet feel very "green" in such an important aspect of Christian life. But I guess I feel enough grace and encouragement right now to feel safe to explore this.

I think about how God became angry with Israel and was ready to destroy them. But Moses spoke to God and plead for mercy...and the Bible actually says this phrase: "But Moses implored the Lord his God....And the Lord changed his mind about the harm he said he would do to his people." (Exodus 32) That's a crazy concept that our prayers can change God's mind about something.

Another example of prayer's effectiveness:
Numbers 11:1-2
"11:1 And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some outlying parts of the camp. 2 Then the people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down."

Well, that's the discussion on prayer for now....I included "Encouragement" in the title, but this is already going long, so I'll save that for another post.

Fun Times

I ran across this free, online animated .gif creator. Here's a little something I whipped up to try it out:

gifninja.com Create custom animated gifs at gifninja.com!

Sweeney Todd

So....Sweeney Todd.
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The subtitle immediately gives one an idea of what to expect. I've never seen Sweeney Todd before, or heard the music, though I've known many who speak well of it. So I finally gave it a whirl. I was surprised to learn (via the special feature documentary) that this was supposedly Johnny Depp's and Helena Bonham Carter's first foray into singing...and musical theater.

My first thought was of the little snippets of "Yo ho, yo ho" from Pirates that we've heard Johnny do. But still, quite a risk for the director/producers to sign them on as unknown variables...yet it seems that happens often and gold is struck. (cast of LOTR? hello?)

Oh, and I didn't realize that Alan Rickman and Sacha Baren Cohen were onboard...nice surprises, performed their roles extremely well. I recognized Timothy Spall from Last Samurai and Hamlet.

Now, I suppose it's no surprise that I like the music, seeing as how big a fan I am of Into the Woods. The fact that Depp and Carter aren't the most skilled or experienced voices actually helps I think, lending the rawness/realness to their characters. The acting was perfect...Depp was uber-creepy. I think my favorite part is the opening scene as the boat sails into London Harbor. There is such a poignant mixture of pain, sorrow, and rage on Todd's face.

As for the weaknesses...I've seen many a violent action flick, yet there was something about the assembly-line throat-slitting and brain-splatting (esp. the last 15 minutes or so) that prevented me from enjoying the story. The story itself loses its pace during the last act and the characters seem a bit bereft of purpose and progression.

I know that in a traditional "tragedy" sense, that you can't expect a happy ending (and I wasn't), but perhaps I was expecting one that had a point at the end aside from "never forget, never forgive" and uhh...I guess madness ends in ruin for all? There's truth in the angst felt by all of the characters, but there's little redeeming value in the audience's ability to glean any wisdom or warning.

This is all still mostly gut-reaction, I'm sure if I studied the show and read up on it and knew something about psychology, etc. I'd be able to make a more intelligent analysis.

So I like Sweeney Todd for the music, acting, style...but I wonder if it would be possible to tell the story, and communicate the angst, rage, sorrow, etc. without the gore? At the least, I'm desiring to at least get the soundtrack.

Sick and Stuff

Ugh...I don't know why, but I haven't felt like writing any blog posts for a while. I feel like I want people to know what's going on in my life, but I don't feel like making the effort of typing out a few paragraphs every other day. There was an "Outer Limits" episode once where all the worlds' information was instantly accessible via brain implants, so people would just close their eyes to send/receive info. Although there are obvious pitfalls there (thus the point of the cautionary tale), part of me envies that.

Anywho...last Tuesday, Feb. 17, I started getting a cough. The ol' body rapidly went down hill, and I ended up staying home sick from work Wed - Fri. It totally sucked. I hate not doing something because of illness. I was the kid who would try to fake being WELL so I could go to school. (I think I missed all of 3-4 days during my 4 years of high school)

We've been pretty slammed at work, and I've kind of been the point person on some projects. My being away, unplanned, for 3 days rocked the boat fairly bad. Some balls got dropped, and I knew they would. I hate the feeling of letting people down. One time in college, I told a friend I would meet them for dinner in the caf at 6:00. I forgot, had dinner at 5:00, then saw them coming in on my way out. The hurt on their face still burns in my memory. That's just one example (and yes, I know, a fairly minor one - they got over it and we're still friends), but it gets my point across effectively.

Well, as of write now, I'm pausing mid-sentence during this post several times to cough up a lung. It was a bummer being sick during Fike & Dana's CD release concert. I had been looking forward to it for so long, it felt anti-climactic because I was so out of it.

Two other thing that sucks when I'm sick.
1. It physically affects my appearance so that people think I'm mad/sad/upset - which is rarely the case, being the generally happy, laid-back cool guy that I am.
2. Though part of me appreciates and desires concern for my well-being by others, at a certain point I get tired of "How ya doin'?" and "Sorry to hear you're still sick" comments. Why is that? How rude and unappreciative am I? I guess it's just a reminder at how hard I have to work at dying to self and allowing other people (with their own problems) into my life. That's probably why I have a secret wish for the life of a hermit-monk. Shut off from the world, no purpose or activity in life other than Bible-reading, prayer, and introspection. The simplicity and (in my mind) implied nobility of such a life appeals. But I know that is not why I am here. God is using me to interact with other people. It's through relationship with other people that my understanding of God is increased, and perhaps others get a glimpse of God through me.

*COUGH COUGH*

Ok, I surrender. Nyquil, then bed.

Valentine's Day

We've never really bought gifts for each other on Valentine's Day. Last night, we took advantage of a special deal at church. The high schoolers were offering childcare for $10 per kid for 3 hours. So for $20 we got to spend 3 hours by ourselves. Originally the plan was to try and go see a movie. But looking at showtimes, they all had start times about half-way through the 3 hour childcare time-frame (6-9). So we just went across the street to Old Chicago and spent the whole time just talking.

It. Was. Awesome.

As much as I really want to see Liam Neeson kick butt in "Taken", I had a much better time last night. I shared with my accountability group this morning about how the process of reading the "Real Marriage" book, and attending the corresponding class at church, has really drawn Wendy and I closer. We're sharing more of our hearts, fears, sins, hopes, and excitement with each other, in a way and on a level I don't think we've experienced before in our 7.5 years of marriage.

We ate the yummiest pizza in town, enjoyed a mini-pazookie and celebrated the fact that not only are we "still in love", but our love/adoration/admiration/zeal for each other is growing more and more.

Thank you, Lord, for such an awesome woman!

p.s. Thanks to Jeric for the love! =)