I’m pondering this morning something I’ve come to know about God–something that actually gives me comfort, even when it sometimes frustrates me.
God does not always respond the way we want Him to, or the way we would respond were we in His shoes. He always responds as the situation demands.
As long-time readers know, my birthday is an anomaly of the universe. For some inexplicable reason, the lovely people of Mexico take to the streets and dance and celebrate in my honor every May 5. It has been this way ever since I was born. You don’t try to explain such things; you just embrace them.
Normally, on May 5 each year, I post a picture of these wonderful people celebrating me. But this year, a friend of mine posted a picture on my Facebook wall that was just too good not to share. So, dear blogger friends, I give you…Cinco de Mayo.
I know I must have written about this before, because this isn’t the first time I’ve caught myself doing this–but I’m noticing that it’s one of those times where I’ve been so bogged down in my day-to-day activities that I have to purposely come up for air. To stop and take an inventory of what is around me.
In catching up on reading/scanning some of the blogs I follow, I came across one from last week by nakedpastor talking about the dialogue between Christians and atheists, and how quick one group is to mock the other sometimes. Within that conversation he made one statement that resonated within me far beyond the topic of discussion:
“When someone thinks they are superior to another, they also feel no need to understand the other.”
True dat.
I’m still pondering some of the things I wrote about in the last post, about being guided by the God-given desires of our hearts to find a sense of direction. The past couple of days, I’ve identified one of those deep desires in a fresh way. Those who know me would probably roll their eyes back and say, “DUH!”, but I suppose that even though I’ve known this about myself, it has come to me as sort of a fresh revelation:
I thrive on creativity.
I mentioned a couple of posts ago that as my stack of questions gets bigger and my stack of answers gets smaller, my blog gets less focused on opinion and more focused on reflection and observation. That’s not to say I won’t ever utter an opinion again (you should be so lucky)–just that I hold my own opinions more loosely than I used to, so things come out more as observation.
…He is risen indeed.
It’s a bit surreal for me this morning. Even though I have not associated myself with institutional Christianity for a number of years, I realized this morning that this is the first Easter (Resurrection Sunday, for the purists) in decades that I have not actually been involved in a structured church gathering. When I lived in Tulsa, we celebrated in house church. Even since coming here, I managed to find myself in congregation on Easter Sunday for the past few years because I was helping out with worship. Last Easter was my last day to lead worship at my friends’ church plant, as I sort of broke in their new worship leader they’d hired. So this is literally the first time I’ve had an Easter Sunday with no responsibilities since I was probably in my early teens. Kind of nice, kind of relaxing, but kind of surreal, also.
Someone said once (or many times, but maybe I just heard it once) that a sign of maturity is when the stack of questions in your mind begins to get larger than your stack of answers. If that’s true–I must be growing up fast.
When I started off this journey of faith as a youngster, I admittedly had a lot more answers than questions. Knowledge puffs up, but presumed knowledge can be even worse. I had a lot of passion, but not a lot of wisdom, and somehow I thought my passion would overcome my lack in other areas. I did some good things, but I also hurt people along the way.
I’m a little hesitant to write this post, mostly because I’m concerned it will sound a bit narcissistic. But please understand that I’m just writing it to process some thoughts, and to let others in on it just in case others feel the same way, and perhaps can relate it to their own story.
In pondering my own journey over the past 10-15 years now, I’m coming to a moment of truth. This isn’t merely a journey of re-thinking faith, or church, or theology. Lots of people do that several times through the course of their lives, and it doesn’t entail the monumental shake-up (or shake-down) that occurred in my own life. No, this has to be something more, and I think I know what it is.
This is a journey of finding out who I really am.