Stuck In a Glass Maze World

About a year ago, I had the fun opportunity to spend a day with some friends at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Not only is the museum itself huge, with multiple levels (including some underground levels), containing art from various time periods, cultures, and places, but the grounds are also filled with many modern sculptures. During this particular trip to the Nelson, my friends and I decided to wander the grounds in search of the giant metal tree that we heard had been added earlier that year. On our search, we came across a curious addition I had never seen before. Standing just down hill from the monstrous and beautiful silver tree was a glass maze. While not very big, the maze was still easy to get turned around in. With the glass kept amazingly clean, it wasn't hard to miss a turn and accidentally run into the opposite wall or get turned around and pass a needed turn to reach the maze's center (especially if you didn't want to look like a fool by bumping into walls over and over again).


I think in much the same way, we let ourselves get trapped by what we're told and the lies we tell ourselves. Lies like: I'm not good enough. 
I'm not smart enough. 
I'm not attractive enough. 
I'm too young. 
I'm too old. 
I have nothing to say, nothing to offer, and no where to go. 
I'll. Never. Amount. To. Anything.
"ENOUGH! Enough with the lies!" I want to scream, but if you're alive and breathing in the twenty-first century, especially twenty-first century America with its image saturated culture, you know that thoughts like these, or at least thoughts very similar to these, pop up everywhere.
But these lies trap us in the same way the glass maze traps us. For we can see outside the maze, we can see life going on beyond the glass, we can even communicate with those on the outside, but we cannot hear them clearly through the glass. We can't really connect. Or at least not the way our hearts long to connect.
These lies keep us stuck behind this glass with no true connection, making us feel isolated, even when surrounded by those who love and care about us. And when we finally get fed up with feeling this way, we start to look for a way out. But just like with the glass maze, we are too embarrassed by our insecurities. We won't let ourselves bump into the walls, even if it will help us find the right path sooner, because we don't want those around us to know that we feel trapped. We don't want them to see it. In doing so, we hide even more, further trapping ourselves and maintaining that we never connect with anyone.

As usual, I want to take this even further. I want to look into why we believe these lies about ourselves in the first place. I've learned in recent months that these glass walls that keep me feeling isolated are created by lies I've come to believe about myself. Sadly, many never realize this, because our enemy is crafty. He has mastered the art of lies, spinning them until they look like truths we can't easily dismiss.
But why are these lies so appealing if they make us feel so horrible about ourselves? I think it all comes down to who we think we are and who we think God is.
The day I started to tear down these lies is the day I realized that if God is who I think He is, then my image of myself  did not align with what I believed. If God is loving, compassionate, creative, and all powerful, and he made me in His image, then shouldn't I, as a follower of Him, be more than capable to do great things?
I mean, this logic makes sense, doesn't it? Then how come this isn't the logic used by many of us? What I think it all roots back to is what we think of God. If you're like me and you believe Him to truly be the Lover of your soul, then this logic isn't hard to follow. But how many people really believe Him to be these things?

My mom recently told me about a children's storybook bible she heard about where the author, having to summarize things to make sense to little kids, summarized all the lies that the serpent told Eve in Genesis 3 with one doubt instilling question, "Does God really love you?"
Well? Does He?
If you aren't sure on that, then I can tell you from personal past experience that you aren't going to have an easy time breaking down those lies.

The Devil's Favorite Tool

"Just because it scares us or we don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't real."
This seems a little obvious. I mean, you may be scared of outer space, rottweilers , or taxes, but no matter how much you do not understand or are scared of these things, they are still there and no amount of pretending they aren't will make you not run into them or something regarding them from time to time. Obvious, right?
So, so then, how come we live much of the rest of our lives this way in regards to truth and beauty?

That quote is a line that stood out among all other profound thoughts expressed in my Partner in Crime's newest blog post, entitled The Ache of Beauty. In it she describes how we all experience this longing when it comes to beauty, because we were designed for ultimate beauty. But this longing scares us because we cannot understand it, so we put up walls around our hearts and hide, just like we do with many other things that scare us and threaten our minimal understanding of things.

I have talked a lot about walls over the last couple months. I've talked about how we build walls and masks around ourselves to hide who we really are, why we do these things, and how we should tear town these barriers so we can embrace who we are meant to be. I have talked about beauty and how we are scared to show our beauty to others for fear of being judged. But something I didn't realize until now was it's not just our own beauty we put a mask over but beauty in general. As Miss McCall said in her post, we turn away from beauty and put walls around our hearts so as not to feel the ache.
How many times have you read in the Bible that someone "hardened their heart" and wondered what it looked like? I think it looks a lot like this. Because the ache stems from a longing for more, a longing that we have to leave our comfortable places to pursue. And we, as humans, are oh so scared of leaving the known and the comfortable for the unknown and potentially uncomfortable. We are scared that our actions would not be worth it and that we will make a disastrous mess and fools of ourselves. We are scared because we have bought into the lie that we cannot walk on water. I mean, surely I can't be the only one who has a hard time believing that story sometimes.

But the devil works on this fear. We think he's been getting more and more creative with how he personally attacks us and tears us down, but his tactics haven't changed. Since the beginning of time, his methods have always been fear and lies, fear and lies. So why do so many people seem much more hopeless, lost, and longing for more than ever before?
It's because in the busy, who has time to seek truth?  And who would want to, really? I mean, truth disrupts our busy lives with our meetings, soccer practices, dinners, and even relaxation time planned to a T. You don't even have to look at a working adult to see this. Look at a grade schooler. From school to piano lessons to baseball games to play dates, it's no wonder kids are more stressed than ever and more and more people are growing up to never know how to appreciate beauty at all.

Jesus said we must become like a child to be able to enter His Kingdom. But with kids being scheduled more and more like adults, where has the wonder and inspiration gone? We are being introduced at younger and younger ages to lie that says you aren't important unless you are doing everything. Lies that tell us that the truth is a lie.

But this isn't the first time the devil has used our fear of the unknown to keep us from pursuing beauty and instead keep us pursuing things much less worth our hearts and souls.
In Exodus 5, Moses follows God's leading and goes to Pharaoh to ask if the Israelites can go into the desert to worship God for three days. In response to Moses' request, Pharaoh orders the slave drivers to make the work harder for the Isrealites so that "they keep working and pay no attention to lies." In the same way, our society has told us that busy is better. "Pay no attention to the truth," it says. "You must work, work, work so you can be the best."

With so many people saying this and living this way all around, it is very easy for us to slip into the same rhythm and have trouble believing truth and seeing beauty altogether.

But we must not let our fear of the unknown and the judgement of others keep us from living the lives full of wonder and beauty that we were designed to live. We must start a revolution and start breaking free from the molds we've been put in.
I challenge each of you personally to slow down and embrace beauty when you see it. Let it make your mind run wild, even if that takes you into parts of yourself you haven't explored in a while. Let yourself dream again, but don't stop there. Pursue the dreams and longing for a deeper meaning of Beauty, Love, and Truth that can only be found in the One we cannot fully comprehend.

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.

The Truth

Today, my daily bible-prayer time brought me to Mark 14. Telling of the events leading up to Jesus arrest and crucifixion, this is one of the longest chapters in Mark. Seeing the length of it this morning was a little surprising, especially since I spend all of my bible-prayer time sitting on a concrete floor:

My Prayer Circle

But today, I knew it would be good somehow. And it was. I found one verse, a verse I've known forever, but never thought much about, that God decided to speak to me through. Let me give you some background first, though.

Jesus and the disciples had just finished celebrating Passover, and had gone to the garden to pray. While those who were set to keep watch dozed rather than staying alert and praying, Judas left to get the high priests who planned on capturing Jesus. Judas returned with a crowd of armed men and gave them his signal as to which one Jesus was.
Then, in verse 48, Jesus said something that stood out to me. He said, "Am I leading a rebellion that you have to come out with swords and clubs to capture me?"
When I came back to look at all the verses I had underlined in the chapter and start writing notes on each one, I looked at that one and my first thought was, "Do the men with the swords and clubs even pose a threat to Jesus?"
Before I had time to write the question down in my journal, God began giving me an answer, that I had to write down immediately before forgetting.

The Truth cannot be destroyed by hatred and violent acts.
The Truth stands, silent.
In the face of opposition, It remains the same.
It does not waver.
It does not falter.
It stands firm.
The Truth never changes
But changes people.
The Truth lives.