Life Is Like a Box Of... Dirt?

Exodus 36. This chapter isn't packed full of awesomeness by any means, but that doesn't mean God doesn't show us a bit of His heart through it.
In this chapter, we are told for the third time in the last fifteen chapters about how to construct the tabernacle. Each time is described in immense detail and with pretty much the same words each time. Almost as if the author used an ancient copy and paste for each description. By the third time reading through this description, my eyes were beginning to glaze over. I mean, let's be honest, I don't really care how they made their portable tabernacle. But as this thought crossed my mind, I realized something... God does. God cared so much about how they built His house that he told us about it not once, not twice, but three times.

Why?

I think there could be several reasons. The first that comes to mind is that He cares about attention to detail. God not only wants us to do His will and use our skill sets to His glory, but he wants to do the job well and spend time putting attention and meaning into the littlest details of the work.
But I also think there's more than that.
While this is true, I have seen time and time again that my God is not a God of the usual, conventional, or predictable. My God plays by His own rules. And these rules don't always make sense to us at first.

Of course He wants us to put meaning into the littlest details of our work, using the skills and abilities He's gifted us to use. That only makes sense. But what if it goes deeper than that?
What if this goes farther than just our work, hobbies, and talents? What if this goes into our everyday lives? The mundane. The boring. The routine.
What then?

I've come to say recently that the Old Testament can have some really epic parts, but all too frequently we stumble across chapters that are about as exciting as a box of dirt. Chapters like Exodus 36, for example. Now what do you do when you come across these boring "box of dirt" chapters? You can do what many do and decide, "You know, I'm not getting anything out of this chapter, book, or even the bible at all. Let's just give up!"
But that's not how I roll. I decided in March that I was going to read through the whole bible. All of it. And I would write something on each chapter I came to the day I found myself there.
So, planting myself firmly in that boring box of dirt, I waited. And while I waited, I tried to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit through the irritated complaints of the lazy adult in my mind begging the child God wants me to be, "Just get out of the sand box! You have a suitcase to pack, sleep to get, and yummy citrus tilapia to eat. There is nothing worthwhile here. IT'S JUST DIRT!"
"But I made a promise," I argue back. "There's gold here in this sandbox, I know it!"

Surely you remember being a child and being absolutely sure you had buried treasure in your back yard, or dinosaur bones, or that you could dig a tunnel to China, build a time machine, or be a world famous adventurer. Maybe you don't remember, but I do. I remember believing these things with such certainty that no one in the world could tell me otherwise.
Well, God wants us to be those children, hunting tirelessly for nuggets of His truth, beauty, and wisdom in every part of our lives. But sadly, we tend to listen to the other voice, the one telling us to leave this hunt for other things.
The thing the other voice doesn't realize is that life may not always be glamorous. In fact, it's usually as boring as a box of dirt, but that doesn't mean God isn't in it, with us through the mundane and boring.

Recently, I read an article titled, "15 Questions To Ask While Dating." The idea, was things you should think about before considering marrying someone.
One of the questions read: "Do we enjoy doing the mundane together?" Laundry, budgets, grocery shopping, chores, and all the other very not exciting parts of life that make up a lot of what marriage is.
But if marriage is supposed to be a picture of what our relationship with God should be like, shouldn't we be looking for Him in even the boring everyday? Shouldn't we look for ways to worship Him and give Him glory not only in awesome spiritual highs, but also in the dreadful lows and the boring boxes of dirt?

Their Path vs. My Path - Destructive Comparisons

Three months ago, I began a long trek through the gospels. At one chapter a day, I have finally finished. My method was simple. Read through the chapter, underline things that stick out, go back through the chapter with a journal and write down the underlined bits and thoughts/comments/cross referencing.
What better way to wrap up my journey through the gospels than with my favorite chapter in all of the gospel narrative? If you have never read John 21, you really should. It is packed full of awesome stuff. From the way people react to difficult situations, to trust. From what it looks like to actively follow Jesus, to insecurity. The sheer number of things this chapter alludes to is enough for me to spend several blog posts dissecting, but I shall only focus on one.

When most people think of John 21, they think of the all too familiar passage where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him in verses 15-17.
There are many speculations about this passage. What Jesus meant by "Do you love me more than these?" in the first verse could mean a variety of things. Did Peter love the Lord more than he loved his fellow disciples? Did he love Jesus more than his fellow disciples loved Jesus? (For Peter often claimed to have devotion that outweighed the others.) Or maybe, did Peter love Jesus more than he loved these things (his job and his fishing gear)?
Whatever it is Jesus exactly meant by the question, we don't know. Maybe Jesus wasn't specific on purpose. Maybe he phrased it the way he did so Peter could bring to mind whatever he might be putting before God in his mind. Whatever the case, I do believe the threefold question was designed to stand in contrast to the time just a week or so before when Peter denied Jesus three times.

While this is a good passage, people often don't know that the third time Jesus says, "Feed my sheep," isn't the end of the conversation. In fact, it's not even the end of His thought. Within the same breath of saying, "Feed my sheep," Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."
As explained by John, who was both listening to this conversation between Peter and Jesus and lived to see Peter's famous upside-down crucifixion, Jesus said this to "indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God."(v. 19)

As you read on, Peter looks back over his shoulder while he and Jesus are walking and talking, and sees John following them. Why John followed them, he doesn't say, but Peter does seem concerned as to what God's plan is for John as well. He asks, "Lord, what about him?" (v.21)
There's some history between John and Peter you should know. Basically it goes like this. Jesus had about 70-80 disciples. The Twelve were his closest. The others would follow most of the time, but the Twelve rarely left his side and were with him during most of the most important things. There were three of the Twelve who were even closer than the others. Simon (who Jesus called Peter, which means "the rock"), John, and his brother, Andrew. Not much is said about Andrew, and, honestly, I think that's because he got it better than John or Peter ever did. If you notice, Peter and John were always trying to prove which one of them was the best. They both wanted to be Jesus' favorite. It kind of makes you wonder if the reason John refers to himself as "the one whom Jesus loved," as he did countless times through out his writings, was because he felt left out after Simon was given a new name by Jesus.

So naturally, with all this competition going on, Peter wanted to know what the Lord had in store for John. Just like Peter, we often look at what God is doing in other people's lives and wonder if God is handing us the short end of the stick. I mean His will in their lives looks so much better than what He's doing for me.

Sometimes, I think, we get so distracted looking at God's path for someone else that we stumble off our own and get lost in the woods around us. According to Jesus' reply to Peter's concern, He seems to hold similar sentiment as I do.

He says, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?"

Jesus wasn't saying John would live forever or anything like that, but asking Peter if he would still trust and love his Lord even if His will was for John to live forever while Peter died.

What I think this all comes down to is whether or not you trust God's will in your life. Yes, His will for someone else's life may look more exciting, fun, or glamorous, but each path has it's mountains, struggles, and pitfalls. We just don't always see that in another person's life because we're looking at it from the outside.
If the answer is "Yes, I do trust God's will in my life," then you shouldn't worry about whether His will for someone else is better than his will for you. 

We just must stop comparing our lives to other's and start trusting God's plan with wonder and faith.

Your path may seem narrow and rocky, but God has some glorious things to show you along the way.

Blessings, Faith, and Childlike Wonder

Recently, I've been noticing a lot of the little blessings God has been putting in my life. When I say recently, I don't mean that they've only been recently, rather He's been giving me them forever, and I just failed to notice until recently.
Jesus once said that we must become like little children to see the kingdom of God. But what does that mean?
To be a like a child is to embrace the wonder of the world around you, seeing more with your heart than with your intellect. For isn't it true that Jesus' words speak to our hearts while our minds are still mulling over the confusing logic?

More often than not, our minds tell us that something can't work before we ever try it out ourselves. It renounces the dreams and longings of our hearts and tell us to "be realistic" and "think like an adult."
But what if I don't want to be realistic? What if being realistic and ignoring my heart's calling leaves me feeling empty? What if thinking like an adult is holding me back?
Just like our minds, more often than not, tell us to ignore our hearts and be realistic, more often than not, following your heart can lead you to see all the little blessings all around you.

I call them "little blessings," but in reality, they're not so little after all. They come from small things, but they blessings brought can be enormous!

As you probably know, my dream is to be an author. But this longing of my heart is so much deeper than that. I, like most readers, have experienced the profound connection between reader and writer, storyteller and listener. You have moments where you feel like they know you, like they're speaking right to you, or where you feel like you know them. It's amazing how you can have such a connection with someone you've never met through the gift of words.
All of these things are "small things." Words are a small thing. Books are a small thing. Even connection is a small thing. All of it adding to the small act of reading. It's small because it's singular. It's not something you do as a group, but by yourself in quiet solitude, yet the impact can be immense.
So, what is my dream? The longing of my heart?
My dream is to create something that makes those little connections with others.
Will I ever know if I have reached this? Probably not. But what I do know is the stories that impacted me the most were God inspired. God spoke to a simple man's creative heart and told him to write, and he wrote. (For more about how such simple obedience has effected me, go here).

Recently I have been to the Re:Write conference (another little blessing with a glorious outcome), where we were encouraged to see through the eyes of our heart. The eyes of wonder. The eyes of a child. We were told that writer's block is a lie. That's all it is. Simply a fear based lie that we aren't good enough, that we'll never be writers, and that no one will ever want to hear what we have to say.
We were told the best way to overcome the lie of writer's block is to turn away from what we think we know to embrace what really is. We had to shut down our intellect and connect to God, heart to hear, soul to soul, realizing that our fear and other's opinions do not define us, but He.
And He thinks our art is beautiful.
Why? Because it came from our hearts, which he created.

This understanding, a small thing, though missed by many, has been another amazing blessing. It, however, is not something I understand with my mind, for it goes against the logic this world has instilled there. This understand is one deep within my being.
Along with this understanding of who I am and who God is, came the acceptance of a simple fact: I might not get published.
Tell me that a month ago, and I'd have fought you. I'd have told you that I will, I have to. I need to reach people. I need to reach my dream, or my dream is worthless!
Today I will agree with you. I might not get published. I might not have my books on shelves where countless people can read and have a connection that only happens between storyteller and listener. But that's okay. Because I know it's not my job to get this out there. I know it's not my job to make connections, or even write beautifully. My job is simply to write. Why else would God have planted this longing within my heart?

Over the past week I have been reading a book called A.D. 30, about a woman from Arabia who has a life changing encounter with Jesus. I read a conversation last night that helped pull the swirling thoughts that became this post together. I felt like I should share it.
The conversation takes place between a man named Judah, a Jew from a nomadic tribe in the desert who comes to Israel to find the king his elders told him about, and a Pharisee, who is later revealed to be Nicodemus (the man Jesus taught about being born again in John 3). Here is a snippet of their interaction:

   The Pharisee spoke barely above a whisper now, as though afraid his words might carry beyond the walls. "With Yeshua, God seems so be intimate, as though breath itself. The rabbi calls him even Abba. And we his children, to be born not of Abraham but of Spirit. Such things are not spoken elsewhere. And yet he asks us to follow."
   "But to follow where?" Judah demanded.
   "This too is a mystery." The Pharisee sighed. "You must understand...to have faith is to let go of knowledge as the means to salvation. To do so, one must embrace trust and mystery rather than man knowledge one's god... It is not where that matters so much as simply following. Faith, you see? Trust, like a child. It confounds the mind."

So I, like a child, follow Him down a path that's destination is unknown to me. But He tells me it will be beautiful, and I believe Him.
For isn't that what faith is? To follow with simple trust like a child?
I have chosen not only to follow like a child, but to view God's creation (and my creation) with childlike wonder!