Mystery of His love

I've been getting into Poetry lately.  Part of the reason for my new found desire to read poetry is to expand who I am, and how I see things.  I'm starting to realize that the beauty of poetry is being able to describe that which cannot be systematically explained (or explained my mere facts.)  Poetry can describe beautiful scenery's or raw emotions in a way that simply listing facts can never detail.

Part of my "Whimsical List" is seeing God in different types of literature, such as poetry.  This hasn't been easy, mainly because there is a lot of poetry I don't get and as I read it my mind wonders to stuff like "why do kids eat their boogers but won't eat their vegetables?"  But I'm sticking with it because I have come across some poetry that reaches my very core.  Donald Miller writes in one of his books that the reason we find poetry in the Bible is to explain what cannot be explained my mere facts.

Now I'm not bashing systematic theology, it was one of my favorite classes when I was in college; and I'm not bashing people who think more on the side of facts and reasoning.  There are a lot of Truths in the Bible that are describe in fact, one of the most beautiful Truths in the world, that God would send His only Son to Earth to die for you and me on a cross.  What I'm saying is, for me when I started focusing only on fact, when I made everything black and white, a lot of things about  God didn't make sense to me.  When I started thinking of God in a "facts only" type of mind set, a lot of the beauty of our complex and wonderful Creator slipped away. Idea's such as how I could tremble in His holly presence and at the same time feel completely safe in His mercy and love. Like trying to describe the way the sun rise seems to illuminate the morning dew, the same beauty of a life with Christ cannot be fully justified with facts alone.

Our God is bigger than the words we use, or the facts we know can hold.  My prayer is that we don't get so caught up in knowing everything, but rejoice in the fact that we serve a great God who lets us know what we need to know. May we allow ourselves to be swept away by mystery that is God's love.

I love...Ballet?

There are certain things that cannot be explained by science like the way we feel about sunsets, or love.  I never thought I would ever go to the Ballet, in fact I didn't even know ballet had a "t" on the end of it until spell check caught it.  But that all changed when I met this girl in college.  See this girl was a beautiful princess of God (aka a hottie).  This girl told me she had always dreamed of being a ballerina (embrace-whimsy).  So I did what any gentleman would do, I called my mommy and begged her to buy me two tickets to the ballet.  The funny thing is I actually had an amazing time and now have a great story with someone I would have never had otherwise.

What I've realized is love can make you do things you wouldn't normally do.  For me just the chance that love might occur made me want to spend my moms hard earned money to go to the ballet.

It's the same with our relationship with God.  Is your relationship with God a love relationship or a list relationship?  Don't get me wrong we need rules, and guidelines, but if we don't first fall in love with God we won't stick with the rules and guidelines that are apart of worshiping Him.  I've learned in my own life that not until I had fell madly in Love with God could I follow rules to honor Him.  Guidelines and rules don't motivate people, they don't change people, only love has the power to do that.  If you are serious about following Jesus make sure you fall deeply, no madly in love with God first, before you worry following guidelines and rules, because until you fall in love with God you will be trying to do it on your own power and you WILL fail.  Let the creator of the universe be your strength.  And oh yeah....embrace whimsy.  I love you and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it!

embrace whimsy?

I'm a dreamer, I have been my whole life.  When we are young we have this unique ability to make things better than they really are, to create a dream world where what could be outshines reality (what is).  It's the scene of the kid playing with the box the toy comes in before realizing there is a new toy laying in the floor beside them.  This box could be anything, it has not yet been told what it has to be, or how its suppose to be played with. 

The reality is reality (what is) is sobering.  It wakes us up from the dream world and tells us what we have to be and how things are.  Sometimes reality stinks.  If we are not careful reality can entangle us like a fly caught in a web.  The truth is things don't have to stay the same,  things can change and so can "reality."

Like I said I'm a dreamer, one time my sophomore year of COLLEGE I skipped class to go to wal-mart.  That wasn't that strange but what was strange was the fact I skipped my Bible class and went to wal-mart to buy a fresh pack of G.I. Joe's.  As a boy I would play with my assortment of toys and create bloody battle scenes using strawberry jelly.  The strawberry jelly was to give a gruesome bloody effect, but also I was a chubby kid so it was fun to lick the jelly off.  The day I skipped class I played in the grass beside my dorm for hours recreating classic battles from my past.  I still do the same things, in fact when I go to the gym I sit in the steam room  before I begin my workout; most of the time I have my IPOD on a Hillsong mix where I put on the same concert in the steam room at my gym by myself.  In this concert I perform songs I have memorized and dream of millions of people coming to Christ because the Spirit is moving, I honestly cherish this time. 

The conflict is: the dream of what could be vs. the reality of what is.  I'm not saying we should irresponsibly live in a dream world, but I am suggesting that maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss our dreams of what could be.  Or, if we become inspired by music, movies, some one God has put in our lives, a sermon that has moved us and dream of a greatly reality.  Then we sleep and when we wake up reality sets in and the emotion from that inspiration is gone; what if we stuck with it.  What if even when that dream starts to sound silly, we stick with it and put forth the effort to try and make that dream of what could be a reality.  What if as followers of Christ we still dreamed of changing the world and then put forth effort to make the dream a reality of what is.  For me to embrace whimsy is to embrace a dream of what could be and make it my reality.  Not selfish dreams, but dreams of changing peoples lives for Christ.  That is one of the reasons I have started this blog, I have created "My Whimsical List"; a list of dreams I have to further the Kingdom of God that I will try and make a reality.  My desire is to embrace the whimsy of what could be, what can it hurt? What if it actually works! I would challenge you, if there is a dream God has put in your heart, embrace it. Chase after it, and see what happens and where it takes you.  Don't be stuck in "reality", Don't be stuck in the way things are. You don't have to be trapped in that web.  Embrace Whimsy.