acts.1.eight

for the past few days i have been subjecting myself to a bit of torture. while painful, no doubt, i think it’s been beneficial. i have been forcing myself to revisit a lot of memories from last year at this time. from june 18 to june 24 last year… those were probably some of the greatest days of my whole life. the night of june 24 was when the bad news began.

but i’ve been looking back at the days leading up to it. my night in st. paul with katherine, lisa, and jeanie. my first days of orientation for new staff. my family group. the iowa girls. the california guys. beth from fresno. jon from st. louis.

the first day of new staff orientation, june 19, i wrote about meeting a girl. the second day of new staff orientation i said this about her: “it’s just one of those cases where you cross paths with someone and you are attracted to them and you have things in common, so you hope for the opportunity to cross paths with them again. that’s all it is. i hope my path crosses her path again. i may never see her or speak to her again and i’m ok with that.” after the 24th, my path crossed very little with her. and since i left madison on the 28th of june there has, obviously, been no crossings of our paths. until this week. sort of.

i was cruising facebook the other night. looking through the lists of people that have intervarsity listed as their employer. i found members of my family group. i found jon from st. louis. i found the iowa girls. and then i found her. i wasn’t even sure if i should request her friendship, but i did. she may or may not remember me. she may or may not accept my friend request. either way. i’d like to say that our paths have crossed again. sort of.

i was telling the truth a year ago when i said that i’d be ok if i never saw her again or spoke to her again. but i had no idea on that day what sort of circumstances would come about to cause the not seeing and not speaking. i had no idea i wouldn’t be at urbana. i had no idea my time with intervarsity was over. and from where i sit today, i am not ok. i suppose to some extent, right now, she is the personification of everything that was beautiful about my time with intervarsity. my crush, so to speak, was short lived and exciting. and it was forced out like breath when kicked in the stomach. much like my time with intervarsity.

i have no idea what my future holds, perhaps that is the thing that caused me the most frustration. but i have to believe God has something planned for me. only time will tell.

there are two major things that i want to write about. maybe three. we’ll see if i can get through all of it.

first of all, this week, the fargo city commission had to address a sticky ongoing situation. for sometime now, the red river freethinkers have been raising a stink over the presence of a monument of the ten commandments that happens to sit on publicly owned property, specifically in the green space outside of city hall. a few years ago, a district judge ruled that the monument was not a violation of the constitution because it is indicative of the cultural heritage as well as a religious reference.

but the freethinkers were not finished fighting. they recently approached the city with regard to placing a monument of their own in the same space as the ten commandments. by doing so, they forced the city into a bit of corner. either allow all sorts of religious, or non-religious groups to place monuments on this public property, or face the prospect of another lawsuit. it was a clever and shrewed move by the freethinkers, really.

so it has all come to a head now after this weeks city commission meeting. two decisions were made. the first was to deny the request by the freethinkers to put their monument in place. and the second was to entertain offers by private entities for providing a new home for the ten commandments monument. so to some extent, the freethinkers won. they have managed to force the city to remove the ten commandments from the public space.

so what’s my opinion on all of this? i’m sad. not because the monument will be moved. not because i feel like the city caved in and is accommodating a small minority. and not because i feel like christianity has taken a hit. i’m sad because this is what people chose to spend their time and money fighting about. i’m sad that there there aren’t more important things to bring before the city commission. i’m sad that there aren’t greater injustices to be addressed. i’m sad that there aren’t greater wrongs to be righted. and i mean this towards both sides of the argument. the fact that this has been ongoing for multiple years now is ridiculous. but i really am especially ashamed of my christian brothers and sisters that continue to fight this out. we are doing more to try and protect a monument (a false idol, perhaps?) than we are doing to try and share Jesus with the people of fargo/moorhead. the church population is on the decline in this area and yet we need to fight over a piece of stone? there are a growing number of homeless people in the area and yet we would rather circulate petitions than volunteer at shelters. you know what i say, give to caesar what is caesars. let them have their public space without reference to religion. but give to God what is God’s. let’s poor our hearts into serving this community like Christ did when he walked the earth.

i love fargo as much as anybody can love a town. but i am a citizen of Christ’s kingdom first. His laws are written on my heart, and i don’t need any government document, or public monument to remind me of that.

i would sleep without dreams
i read this blog called dumb little man – tips for life on a fairly regular basis. mostly i read it because it has info and advice about things like resumes, cover letters, and sleep. i don’t read much of the other things that they have like tips for buying digital cameras, or how to increase your memory. today, they had an interesting list: 39 ways to live, and not merely exist. i immediately read through the list and found it to be very interesting. i would encourage you all to go and check it out. obviously, this list is not a “start doing all 39 of these tomorrow” type list. it’s merely a list of suggestions for things you can do to live to the full. here are the ones i think i would like to work on:

– love
– get outside
– take chances
– find your passion
– pull away from the internet
– rediscover what is important
– slow down
– learn new skills
– find spirituality
– do nothing
– be in the moment

truthfully, i’d love to be able to work on all 39 of the things on this list, but these were the ones that stuck out to me most. i’ll probably address them individually at a later time.

i’m not going to get to my third topic tonight. it is too late. and i need to work on pulling away from the internet and rediscover that sleep part of what’s important.

“sleepless eyes open wide, before Heaven i stand again. if there’s no winning this war tonight, i was wondering, if you could steady my spinning head”

today marks one year. while the bomb didn’t drop on this date, you could say that this was the day that the fuse was lit. there is a dull ache on days like this. right above my stomach and below my heart. i can feel it radiating out and like the rays of the sun, only it’s not a warm feeling. feels more like empty than anything else.

“thought i was a good man and fell short of my standards. now what am i left with? all or nothing? and my first taste of freedom.”

i am grateful for today though. there are very few ‘firsts’ that are left for me to endure. i’ve been through the first chapter camp, the first start of the school year, the first fall retreat, the first urbana, the first breakaway…. now i am hitting the first aniversaries. soon it will all be past and i will go through the cycles again. and with each subsequent time through the rotation things will get easier and the sting will be lessened.

“i know weeping is cast for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

there is a new set of firsts. that i will look forward to. and while i may not be present for all of them, they are full of hope and excitement. first words, first teeth, first steps…

if you will, allow me to remain melancholic for another paragraph… i know all the rhetoric regarding babies being blessings, and God not making mistakes. but i still can’t help that i have been hurt through a lot of this. i still can’t help but be upset with myself for not making better decisions. i knew better and yet i walked right into it. a year ago i was nearing the end of my full time job, stepping out into full time ministry. a year ago i was preparing to leave for new staff training. a year ago i was living out my dream job, on my dream campus. now i enter into what will surely be some of the most difficult days as i try to acclimate myself to every other weekend. i must hope that those two short days every two weeks will be motivation enough to get me through the grind of the remainder. the fallout has been tremendous and i know there is a lot of healing that still needs to take place. in me, in the iv chapters, and in other individuals. please know, i don’t associate any of these negative with gunnar, he is awesome. it just hurts to not be where i thought i’d be.

“if i fall down
if i fail you
when i fall down
when i fail you
i hope to find you there
i hope to find you there
i know i’ll find you there
i’ve always found you there”

some sign of life among the coals
i was able to spend some time with an old friend today. it was good to catch up and get a glimpse back into his life. he had been across the sea for some time now and it is good to have him back. we share similar visions for the church and for christianity, although, i believe he is likely more well-read and can easily crush me in terms of sheer knowledge of the subject. but our passions, nonetheless, are the same. we want to see the gospel lived out and the church to be reborn. we want people to know the Jesus that we have encountered and that we do our best to follow. i am excited to speak more with him. and as he said before we parted, to continue to scratch those things that are below the surface. i needed that conversation today and i am grateful for it.

i have a new pet peeve. it has been popping up mostly on flyers for shows, but i know i have seen it other places. the problem: when people want to communicate that a show costs five dollars, they put it on flyers as 5$. but last i checked, five dollars should look like this: $5. did the rules change without me knowing? has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

remember in my last post when i talked about how Jesus loved with out expectation of return? how he loved people that he knew would never love him back? i don’t think would be out of line to say that Jesus loved unconditionally. seems pretty basic isn’t it? i mean i have been told over and over that no matter what i do, i can never make him love me less. so that means he always loves me, even if i never obey him, or change my ways, or do anything good. if i am wrong about this, help me out. certainly, his loving me does not exempt me from the consequences of my choices. the bible tells that there are eternal consequences if we don’t believe in him and i believe that to be true. but a loving parent holds you to the consequences that they’ve laid out, so why wouldn’t a loving God do the same? still, while holding us to those consequences, he is loving us. unconditionally.

this past sunday, a certain person, who shall remain nameless, spoke at our church. he and i don’t tend to see eye to eye on certain things and i find myself frustrated with how he communicates with the crowd in our church. this week was not much of an exception. let me just say, i think he has a great heart and i think that the essence of his messages are ok. but he loses me in his delivery. it seems as though he is not always saying what he means. like one of those people that when confronted would probably back track and say, “yeah, that’s what i said, but that’s not what i meant.” this only really concerns me because he is addressing a crowd from a position of authority.

at one point in his sermon, he basically made the point that we should only love people to the point of their willingness to change. he said that our love should come with conditions. he used multiple examples of people that were down on their luck, who had come to his previous church looking for help. when the church helped them out, the individuals didn’t make changes, and then were cut off either by the church or by individuals. while i don’t believe that the church should be an enabler of people that don’t change, i think it’s still our responsibility to love them. maybe the problem is not that they won’t change, the problem is that we won’t change. we rely on certain methods of help and if they don’t work we cut them off. we don’t explore different methods of helping people out.

if there is nothing we can do to make Jesus stop loving us, then there should be nothing a person can do to make me stop loving them. if our love for people is conditional on them changing, then people are merely projects for us to work on that we either complete or give up on when we reach the point of perceived failure. i wonder how history would look if God would have given up on certain people when they didn’t change. like david who was a murder and adulterer. or peter who denied him three times. perhaps God should have just sent them away and said, “i guess you aren’t going to change, i can’t help you anymore.”

or perhaps last year, when i made my bad choices, God, the church, and everyone else should have sent me away. perhaps they should have noted that i continue to screw up and then cut me off. thank God they didn’t.