Footsteps on the ceiling

There are moments that cling to the edge of consciousness. Moments that brush against your mind like the tender wisps of a feather, teasing you to grab ahold of them, and laughing softly when you miss. Sometimes when I sit at my computer and try to write I get lost in moments like that. Moments when I don't even feel like I am grounded in my own body. Instead I hover just outside of myself and I pulse with each breath I take.
When that happens I usually realize that I have become so calm that I can look at myself as though I am someone else. What I see, well, what do any of us see when we look at ourselves that way? Like looking in a mirror, I see things that I am proud of and things that I am very much ashamed of. But I think the point is that I see them. Our generation is often described as being selfish, or self-centered, and I am not denying that, or even saying that it is a good thing. But I think that when people become self-centered they forget to be self-aware, and being self-aware is a good thing. Seeing yourself like someone else would see you is being self-aware. Taking a deep breath and really evaluating the parts of your character that you are proud of alongside the choices and character flows you wish you could hide in the deepest darkest depths of an ocean, that is a good thing, because out of that can come the change. Change into becoming the person you really want to be, and staying there; but not only staying there, but growing there.
One of my favorite authors you all will soon see, is J.R.R. Tolkien. His character of Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings is a character that is kind of half human, half tree. I like this character for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I think humans grow a lot like trees. We grow slowly, and we are shaped by what we grow towards. Trees always grow towards the light, and sometimes that can result in beautiful trees that shoot straight up, tapering into tall graceful elms and pines. Other time the trees have to fight and slowly twist around and around in order to get at the sunlight. This forms them into crazy, convoluted shapes. The thing is, they grew so slowly that if trees had a conscience, they probably wouldn't have noticed that they were growing into such a crazy shape, they were just following the light.
A Christians, we have the responsibility to look at ourselves and notice the kind of shapes we are growing into. Have to look at the kind of light we are aiming towards, and what it is turning us into. The good thing about slow change is that it can be guided.
Da pacem domine in diebus nostris. Qui a non est allius, qui pugnet pronobis. Nisi tu Deus noster.

13/365

Days go by quickly, don't they?
When I started this blog, it was in response to a sermon I had heard on the text, "So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:12 and I am realizing today that keeping track of the days and everything that you do in them does give you a good sense of perspective on what you do with your life. For me, this realization has been rather humbling.
I have realized that the things I tend to do with my time are things that do not contain any kind of spiritual gain. This realization drove me to reevaluate what I spend my time on, and how I structure my days. I realized that I had been depending on outside forces to structure my days for me when I should have been taking the bull by the horns and doing it myself.
Sorry to cut this short, but some of those outside forces I was just talking about interfered. I will talk to you guys tomorrow!

12/365

Speechless in the presence of God.

I kneel before you,
Helpless to reach for Your hand,
Needing to bow,
Before the sovereign throne.

Lost in a vacuum of wishes,
Prayers are all the words I have,
My hands are reaching for You,
And only end up digging through the earth.

Draw me close,
Reach for me,
Desperate for You,
I'm reaching in all the wrong directions.

10/365

This is beginning to be more of a journey than I thought it was going to be, but instead of holding forth in prose today, I am going to follow the example of a very good friend of mine who is also writing a blog this summer and write down some of the emotions I am feeling in the form of a poem.

A Moment in the Presence

Peace and goodwill,
Your gift to me.
Gentle melody and song
In a world full of green.

Shadows rend and distort,
And vision is splintered.
Keep me, Your child
Close by Your side.

Something to fight for,
Here on my knees.
Tell me Your story
Of assured victory.

9/365

Communication has got to be the hardest part of any relationship. There is so much that can go wrong, and misunderstandings are often the foundation of many a fight between friends, lovers, siblings, husbands and wives.

I hate fighting with people. Though I probably would be described by friends and family as having a fairly quick temper, I have struggled through my whole life trying to master it. The worst feeling that I have every felt in my life is the feeling of having driven dear friends, or family members away, or to feel that I didn't love them because of careless words that I had spoken in the heat of selfish anger.

As a Christian, I am beginning to realize that something that is very threatening to the evil forces in this world is the idea of the Body of Christ. There is great power in a group of believers coming together and worshipping together. As a body of believers we can uphold and encourage one another to great heights beyond anything any other group of people. And yet, in the context of the world it seems as though Christians have not accomplished much except the division of a unified church into multiples factions visibly at odds with each other. The reason? Satan is almost exclusively focused on breaking up the Body of Christ. Satan, in my mind rubs his hands with glee every time a group of Christians divide over a disagreement of theology or practice.

As I am getting married in 5 months, I have been thinking a lot about communication in the marriage relationship, and the marriage relationship in general. In Paul's writings, the marriage relationship is a great mystery that mirrors, and is supposed to be an image of the relationship between God and man. If a godly marriage relationship holds that much power, it stands to reason that Satan would attack this relationship with a special venom.

So I am resolved to commit the matter of the communication between me and my fiancee even now to much prayer, and I urge you all, my readers, to commit the matter of the communication of every marriage relationship you know to much prayer and care.

8/365

Sometimes I am fascinated by the ability of my sinful self to twist any which circumstance to a viewpoint in which I am victimized, or somehow made out to be the only party in the right. I'm sure everyone has had a moment like this, you find yourself thinking about a conflict you have had with a close friend or your boyfriend or girlfriend and you look at yourself and you wonder how you could have been so blind to their needs and wants and callous to everything but your own desires. My only response sometimes is to thank God that He opens my eyes to these moments so that I may learn from them!

7/365

My fiancee had the idea of writing about waiting for things. Patience is not my strong point,but lately God has been teaching me patience, and so I can share some of my own journey with you all.

I do not do well with waiting for things to happen. I am a person who likes to take action, and normally I will decide on a course of action as soon as I may, and then I will do as much as I can to make that happen. Sometimes it happens, though, that God makes you wait a while for Him to make clear the path that you are to take. This happened in my own life recently. I had to face the reality that I did not know how or if I would be able to return to school to finish my senior year of college. I spent half of a summer desperately working to earn the money I needed in order to return to school.

I spent four weeks that summer working as a tree planter in Northern Ontario. A tough job, I did not have the mental strength to handle it. Several times I was unable to work because I would hyperventilate over the stress of having to do more than I could manage in order to go back to school. One day I was in the hospital, afraid and stressed to the breaking point. I had brought with me my Bible with me and turned to Psalm 121

I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from where comes my help. My help comes from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer your foot to be moved: he that keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he that keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper: the Lord is you shade upon your right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve you from all evil: He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.


This passage comforted me, and gave me something to focus on, even as I realized that in that moment there was nothing I could actively do to make anything happen. Even as I focused on the Lord as my Help and did not expect myself to be able to make my own way to school, God made a way for me to return to my studies.

Waiting is still not easy for me, but I know now that no matter what, God makes a way if we but trust in Him and the wisdom of His ways above our own.