New blog

A new, less spiritual blog at www.scottstime.wordpress.com.

See you there.

Laminin

First of all, I wanted to clarify that, yes, I did steal the laminin idea from Louie Giglio.

I have been reading through Colossians over the last couple of days. In chapter 1 Paul says that all things are by Christ and for Christ. Then he says something weird, that He holds all things together. The idea that without God everything would just fall apart was strange. Like somehow if Christ stopped doing what he does that my cells would fall apart and I would melt into a puddle like the girl from the Secret World of Alex Mack. I guess she didn't believe in Jesus some of the time. Sounds like most Christians actually. Anyway, I was thinking about this idea of the creator of the universe holding me together. That sounds really personal to me. Then I ran across a Louie Giglio clip on the same idea. He talked about laminin. Apparently laminin is a protein molecule that holds our cells together. And it looks like a cross. Cool.

Jesus and Swing Sets

I have been having kind of a rough couple of weeks. Things just don't seem to be going my way lately. Unfortunately, this has really been bad for my spiritual well-being. For some reason when bad times come I spend less and less time with Jesus. In hindsight that seems really backwards but it happens. It is a hard thing to control. Tonight might have been a breakthrough.

I took a walk tonight. I really like walks but I don't seem to take them very often. When I go for walks I like put my ipod on and just kinda go. Nowhere in particular usually. Sometimes I go on long walks, sometimes they are really short. Tonight I ended up walking around a nearby elementary school and eventually I found myself on the playground. I decided that would be a good night for a swing. So I swung on the swing set. It was really weird for me for a lot of different levels. Mostly because I am over 6 feet tall and was swinging.

The first memory I have of my wife-to-be was during the 5th grade around the swing set at our elementary school. I spent some time thinking about how lucky I am to have her tonight (I also was very lucky that the swing set designed for little kids did not break when I was really high). Then after that I was just quiet for awhile. I wasn't stressed out or worried or mad or sad or happy. I was just me swinging on a swing set. I talked to God tonight. It was amazing. I just started thinking about the swing and about God. These are some probably corny things I learned about life and God from the swings:

1. My spiritual life is kind of like that path of the swing. I move forward so quickly and when I feel like I am getting so close to God some unknown force pulls me back. Then when I go backwards as far as I can I start moving back toward God. It really is just a back and forth kinda thing for me. Sometimes I stay close to God for a bit longer but I always seem to rock back eventually. I really don't like that. Sometimes I get lost in myself and don't even realize I am headed in the wrong direction.

1a. I will never make it over the top. I think every little kid tried to see if they could swing all the way around the swing set. A full 360 degree loop. That would be so awesome. Unfortunately it is not physically possible on a swing set. I learned that part from an episode of Mythbusters. The same thing goes for my journey to be more like Jesus. I am never going to get there. I will never be Jesus and I think that would kind of defeat the purpose of Jesus to begin with. I will never be complete. I just need to try and work out my salvation with fear and trembling.

2. I am starting to understand what it means to have faith like a child. That has always been a bit confusing to me. Does that mean we blindly believe in Jesus like a kid believes in Santa? No, the truth is really on our side. I think what Jesus means when he says faith like a child is to have a simple faith. When he was spending time hanging out with the kids everyone else was standing around debating about why Jesus was doing that. All the kids cared about was being with Jesus. I think a lot of times we get caught up in all of the "stuff" that we think Jesus is about. We focus on things other than Jesus. Kids don't have time to worry about all of that stuff. They just want to spend time with the King.

3. God shows up in weird places. I spend a lot of time in Church. Sometimes there is loud music or communion or fancy lighting or some sort of illustration involving live animals. These are all designed to create a worship experience. And that's OK with me. But the problem is when we believe God needs all of these thing to speak. Tonight I heard God speak on a swing. It was almost completely dark and there was no Christian music playing or candles of goats. It was just me and God. All God really needs is for us to take some time to be quiet before Him and to wait to hear Him speak. That's all.

4. U2 is one of the greatest bands ever. I was listening to them on my ipod while swinging. I am pretty sure that Jesus is a big fan of Bono. And probably The Edge, because he uses a lot of delay. Everyone knows that delay is the prefered guitar effect of Jesus Christ.

I was going to try to add another thing about jumping out of the swing when you get really high. As it turns out there is not spiritual significance to this at all. It is just fun. And yes, I did jump out of the swing.

Gas

I think Jesus hates high gas prices.

Stranger Danger

I heard a sermon by a friend of mine a couple years ago (I'm talking about you, Nick A.) that really changed my view of who God is. When I heard this for the first time I was still in high school. That seems like such a long time ago but every once in awhile I still think about it. Today happens to be one of those days. This will probably be one of my more serious posts so far but I will probably throw in some sarcasm at some point.

I used to have a friend that would always say that the most beautiful things in life are also the most dangerous. Things like fire, the ocean, and women. All very beautiful all very scary if you aren't careful.

Anyways, back to the whole sermon thing. The sermon was about God being dangerous. Not mean or spiteful or I'm gonna stab you with a knife if you aren't careful dangerous. Just not safe. Basically when you read stories about people who had face to face encounters with God they were all scared. God even tells Moses that no one can see God and live. Moses has to hide in a rock and after God walks by Moses pops his head out and sees where God had just been and his skin starts to glow.

My favorite story about someone seeing God is in Isaiah. Chapter 6 starts with a beautiful description of a huge God sitting on a throne. The first time I read it I thought Isaiah was getting ready to break into a Steven Curtis Chapman kinda song. Then he says something totally unexpected, "Woe to me...I am ruined!" I never thought about seeing God as something that would ruin somebody. I thought there should be harp music and God should be wearing a Dbacks hat. But Isaiah freaks out a little and goes on about how his life is pretty much ruined.

You see the point is that when a sinful person is in the presence of a sinless God they tend to feel very small, very unworthy. Our God is dangerous. I think if he were to walk into my house I would probably either die or react like Isaiah did.

I think part of my problem was that I got so used to hearing about a God who was made of cotton candy and jelly beans. Not really, but you get the point. I thought God was just a big softy who really like hugs. But its important to know how big God is. How dangerous he is.

Maybe the most scary thing is that when someone sees God things change. When Isaiah saw God his life got turned upside down. He had to go and he had to do and he had to trust God.

Hey-O!

Aside from being my newest catch-phrase, Hey-O!, is loosely related to the topic of this blog. This blog is about loving strangers. I think sometimes Christians pull a classic bible move (see Luke 12) and try and decide who our neighbor is and who it isn't. Here are some rule I think we have mistakenly applied:

1. Anybody living on my street is my neighbor, unless I don't like them.
2. Anyone I work with is my neighbor unless I am gossiping about them.
3. Anyone in one of my classes at schools is my neighbor, unless there is an empty seat between us.
4. A person you share an elevator with. (a simple head not counts as being a good neighbor, then you can just ignore them completely.)
5. Your spouse or significant other.
6. Your best friend and his/her immediate family.

That pretty much sums up our neighborly list. But when someone asks Jesus about who exactly counts as a neighbor Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Basically what Jesus was saying is that even the people the world would expect us to hate is our neighbor.

Here are some ways that I think this could practically play out in our lives, by the way, I like lists.... :

1. Be nice to the fast food person. They are making minimum wage putting freedom fries in a greaser. Give them a break.
2. Use the name of the person at the grocery store. They where nametags, why not take advantage of it. I think Jesus would use people's names.
3. My fiance just got a shirt that says "Arms are for hugging." I like it, give someone a hug. *note-don't do this to strangers, that's not love, it's just creepy.
4. Instead of gossiping about someone, go ask how their day has been, it helps if you mean it too!
5. Smile.
6. Go out of your way to talk to the weird guy at church. You know who I mean, every church has at least one. If you don't know who the guy at your church is, its probably you.
7. Just say hey to someone. Or Hey-O if you wanna be more like me.

Ballsy

Check out this video. Basically this church had about 75% percent of everything they use packed in a trailer. Someone stole the trailer that had almost everything they need for a Sunday morning service. They responded with the billboard on the left and the video. I think I like that church.