Wandering the savage garden…

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The most important day of my life

I’m using a writing prompt today, because I’m exhausted; I had some ideas about what to write earlier today, but I’m so worn out that I honestly can’t remember any of them. I meant to write them down, but I was too busy.

So the prompt today is to write about “the most important day of your life.”

My first thought was my wedding day, the day I managed to convince the most important person in my daily life to weld her life to mine. She’s awesome, and I love her. I wouldn’t be half the man I am today, such that I am, without her – I’d be a shell, a mockery of who I am, if I even managed to survive this long.

But then I started thinking: what about the day I was saved? What about the day I chose to act willfully in such a way that I could be considered honorable? (In other words, I was trying to do what was right instead of hoping that what I did was right.)

What about today, without which there would be no tomorrow?

After all, the choices I make even now are eternal; suppose I chose to do something horrible, something that betrayed my values and family. (Not tempted, thank you, but just imagine…)

That might shatter my family and future. That would be a decision that made today the most important day of my life.

But then again, my salvation is still probably the winner – my conversion from Judaism, to atheism, to a questioning Judaism, to Christianity was something that affected not only my daily living, but my eternal future as well. It converted what little good I did into something of eternal significance.

It’s tempting to say “my eternal life,” and I suppose such it is – but I’m still Jewish enough that I see “eternal life” as something surreal. Some Jews – many Jews, I guess – believe in it, and the New Testament describes it… but I don’t know what it would actually be like enough to imagine it, and I don’t know that a transformed and glorified “me” would be the “me” that received the “eternal” aspect of such a life.

I guess that goes back to how I see my life in Christ – I don’t worship and glorify His Name because He’s giving me a reward, but I do those things because of who He is. If I received nothing from Him in the process – no salvation, no sanctification, no nothing – He would still be the One, He would still deserve all glory and honor, and I hope that I’d have the honor and pride enough to give it to Him. I find “believe and receive eternal life” to be superfluous – “believe” is all that matters there.

So… I can think of important days, and it’s been worthwhile to try to think of days that might have been important. But I think the cliché wins – my day of salvation was the most important day of my life, even though I have no idea what day that would have been. (It was… summer?)

savage
February 9, 2016
Lifestyle
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Desires

I went to a small group meeting yesterday, where the leader asked each person to describe what they wanted God to show them through this year. It was an interesting question, because it makes you think about what, specifically, you expect from God.

I didn’t have a good answer, not really; I don’t think mine was impressive or surprising. (It was: “aid in transitions,” because I have three young men who are getting older – two of which are actual adults at this point, and I want God to guide their steps and grant them wisdom, whether they want it or recognize it or not. And I also want peace in my own heart as I watch them go through these transitions.)

But one other person there just wanted God to restore faith, and felt like she’d let Him down by … you know, living. Living a busy life, where sometimes we don’t have time to spend lots of time doing the things that we consider visible manifestations of faith, like explicit prayer or Bible study. (She said, rather tearfully, that she liked watching Downtown Abbey, and felt terrible that she spent time watching the TV show rather than in some kind of holy living.)

It got me thinking. One of my priorities this year is to do more explicit, self-directed Bible study, and another is to try to establish a habit of prayer every day; I’m sort of an informal guy when it comes to these things myself. (I pray, but it’s very much not something that you would describe as regular. It’s sort of a daily “Hey, where am I? I probably should remember to honor the Name…” thing. I’ve been trying to make prayer something I do when I wake up, and when I lie down.) So I know exactly where my friend was coming from; I’m there myself, really.

I’m there even though I know that that’s not quite how God works. Feeling like that paints God as a vending machine: if I show this kind of faith, God will reward me – perhaps by doing that, perhaps by doing this other thing. I don’t really care how the reward is manifested; maybe the reward is ephemeral, as simple as “I know I’ve done what God wanted me to do,” and that’s fine…

… but I can’t help hoping that He will reward me by lightening the burden I bear.

Maybe He could see fit to showing me His Hand on my son, for example, or maybe even dropping me a check to pay for the various expenses that come with a newly-minted eighteen-year-old.

Or maybe He could be a little sneakier, and somehow give me a bonus check from work (can you tell I’m enjoying various financial pressures right now?) or maybe He could even just take the stress I have in my heart and disperse it. (“Peace,” I call it, even though I don’t know if I would recognize it if He gave it to me like that.)

But… it’s still not how God works. I know that, intellectually and spiritually, but it’s still very tempting to want to define God that way. And how pleasant would it be to use a reward as a measure, like a prosperity gospel? (“You are making lots of money, you must have great faith and God loves you…” except if you don’t make lots of money, the prosperity gospel implies that God’s actually in the process of smiting you, you unfaithful slacker. The prosperity gospel is a lie, folks.)

It’s just curious how tempting it is to see God through invalid lenses to make ourselves feel better.

savage
February 8, 2016
Lifestyle
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The Differences in our Realities and Dreams

It’s Super Bowl Sunday! From the perspective of a football fan, I can’t really lose; I live in North Carolina, so if the Panthers win, I win (local team and all that); if the Broncos win, well, I used to live in Indianapolis and always respected Peyton Manning (and I have nothing against Denver). The only way I lose anything in the game is if it’s played terribly, or maybe if someone’s injured badly.

(I love football; I hate when people are injured in the process of playing a game.)

But I caught myself thinking about the excesses of the game this morning.

Mild shift in focus: this is where you’d see those wavy lines during a scene transition…

I’ve been in a lot of cities across the United States. I’m not exactly a world traveler (or a US traveler, really), but I’ve been around a little.

The city I dislike above any other is Las Vegas. New York is a distant second (and only because there are too many people in the parts of it where I’ve had to be – apart from the population pressure, New York is pretty nice.)

It’s not that the people in Las Vegas aren’t kind; it’s the excess you see everywhere. I can’t walk through Caesar’s Palace without thinking of how many hospitals could have been built with the money invested in the building, or how many of the homeless could have been sheltered, or how many children fed or educated (or both).

I know that it’s a personal reaction; Las Vegas is run by businesses, and I don’t know that the builders did not contribute to their societies as well as building these places.

But if it had been me, I think I’d have held off on the ostentation, and made sure there were none in Las Vegas who were sick, hungry, uneducated, or sleeping under the stars without choosing to do so for their own edification.

Wavy screen transition!

The Super Bowl always reminds me of Las Vegas; everything is over the top, and it’s over what is, in the end, a game. The halftime extravaganza is… just too much. (I haven’t been able to appreciate the halftime show in a long time, even when The Who was on it.)

So I caught myself thinking: “If it were me, I’d take the money I’d have spent on a ticket and given it to my local food bank!”

And there’s the problem: would I really have done that? Honestly? For true?

And the answer is “probably not.” I want to think I’d do that. And now, honestly, since I feel kinda bad about it, maybe I will give money to the local food bank as my conscience is instructing me to do.

But the thing that stuck out the most – and actually hurt – was the difference between the narrative in my head – what I saw myself doing, in pride and in how awesome I was – and what I actually do.

savage
February 7, 2016
Lifestyle
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More Persistence

I still feel like I’m on a plateau, writing-wise. I am feeling a little sorry for myself, and I keep thinking of Nehemya in the process.

But it struck me, in the midst of my mild self-pity, that Nehemya isn’t the only example of dogged persistence in the Bible. Instead, you find many, many, many people who stuck it out despite long odds and stretches of despair.

I was trying to think, “Who would have been the earliest?” but I think as soon as you hit any form of history you have the story of persistence in motion. Even in the bits of Bereshis that are pre-modern history (i.e., before Avraham) you have that same record of “I will persist.”

I think Avraham, though, is the start of persistence, someone standing in faith against everything around him. Ur was polytheistic; Avraham was a monotheist, and held his own as a champion of the One. Even though he failed (presenting Sarah as his sister, for example, which I don’t quite think I understand) he kept his faith – in stunning and frightening ways. (I don’t think I would have had the faith to sacrifice Yitzchak.)

Then you have Yaakov, waiting fourteen years to marry Rachael. Then he ran and reconciled with his brother Esau, whom he cheated.

Then Yosef, in Egypt, forced into slavery by his brothers and then rescuing his family from starvation.

Then Moshe. Then Y’shua bin Nun. Then the judges of the tribal league… even Yiptach, who sacrificed his daughter.

David, too, persisted. Shmuel.

In the end, I had a harder time figuring out the protagonists in the Bible who did not show that their lives were their worship of the One than finding examples of persistence. In other words, everyone showed that persistence was one of the core values – not just faith, but faith in this and every other moment.

In a way, that’s encouraging – it means that their faith isn’t being measured in the moment. Having faith when the chips are down, or up, isn’t the point, although it’s a point.

The key is realizing that faith is a picture, painted over a thousand days – from its birth in your soul to your last day on Earth. By trying, by living, you’re having faith, even if you may not feel like it.

Nehemya, for example… he probably had his down days. He probably looked around at the wall around Yerushalaim being slowly built, at the enemies around him who didn’t want the wall built, and had his moments of despair and ennui.

Then he might have remembered why he was there, and remembered the progress shown despite the obstacles, and decided that it didn’t matter how he felt – he could see the wall from his dreams, and see a world in which Yerushalaim was rebuilt and repopulated.

And he kept going – showing the faith and persistence he’s known for.

savage
February 6, 2016
Lifestyle
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