Dirt Road

When Christ said “Come and follow me”, there are many things that we all have had to give up, in order to truly walk in a manner worthy of this high calling. As Christians, there will always be the tension between our flesh and the choices Christ calls us to make. However, if we as modern Christians boil the entirety of our walk with Christ down to a list of things we should and shouldn’t do, then we have missed the point completely. 

Something that has recently had me thinking about what it means to follow Christ is Kip Moore’s new song, Dirt Road. For those of you who don’t know, [I’m now wondering why we’re even friend ;)] Kip Moore is an up and coming Country artist with many radio hits- all of which I quite enjoy. This particular song struck a different chord this time around, because it speaks to a view of Christianity that I’m afraid many people hold, but unfortunately falls very short. Kip’s song starts out with the line “When the preacher talks of heaven, he paints it real nice, He says you better get to livin', better get to livin' right”.  Immediately this tells me that this “preacher” is preaching a sales pitch of heaven as opposed to sharing the glory, grace and love that stems from Christ himself- and Christ alone. The second verse goes on to say “You better quit your drinkin', you better quit your smokin' too, people trading in your backseat Saturday nights for a Sunday morning pew.” So IF you want to go to heaven, here are all the things you have to do- or moreover, what you need to not do. To me this paints a picture of a scale- weighing which is more important: going to heaven or doing the things that I enjoy here on earth. 

The chorus ultimately tells us that Kip is not convinced- this preachers sales pitch of WHY you should give up drinking and smoking and spend your Sunday mornings in church isn’t enough to keep his interest: “So unless it's got a dirt road, leading down to a fishing hole, With a little piece of moonlight, a couple cans of Bud Light- where I can cuddle with my baby and I can pull her real close, I don't wanna go, unless heaven's got a dirt road.” In this song, Kip accurately captures one of the reasons I love country music- enjoying the simple things in life with the people you care about most.  The things that he is lamenting about wanting in heaven are all good, enjoyable things- things to be enjoyed this side of heaven.

In light of these ideas, what does it truly mean to deny one’s self and follow Christ? Is the Gospel something to be weighed and measured against all the things we love in this life? Are all those who claim to follow Christ people who have simply decided going to “heaven” at the end of their life is more important than “enjoying” life here on earth? If that is the conclusion we’ve come to in light of the Gospel, then we have been following the wrong gospel. I am reminded of the C.S. Lewis quote from his book The Weight of Glory: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

If we reject the concept of “heaven” because there isn’t a dirt road or a fishing hole, then we are exactly what Lewis describes, one who is far too easily pleased. If we still see following Christ and living in light of the Gospel still something to be weighed against our own desires, then we have yet to have a true encounter with Christ Himself. For this life is not about getting a better life because of Christ, it is about getting Christ! Christ himself is like that holiday at the sea- we cannot possibly understand what that means when we are so preoccupied with the mud pies we prefer to continue making. The life Christ calls us to is so much more than a list of should and should not’s, it is a miraculous call to live in a whole new way- seeking Christ above everything else, and knowing that we are getting the best possible thing, Christ himself. 

Kip clearly states “I don’t wanna go, unless heaven’s got a dirt road.” Friend, is your view of Christianity, heaven and ultimately Christ so narrow that you would side with Kip and refuse to give up certain pleasures in this life? You certainly can go on “enjoying” the things this life has to offer, but once you have had a true encounter with the overwhelming love, the infinite grace and unfathomable peace, joy, fulfillment and faithfulness of Christ you will begin to wonder how that “dirt road” ever seemed enough. 

What Are You Worth?

We live in a society where the value of things are skewed. The things that society and culture value, at the end of the day, actually have no value at all. It makes me wonder: what gives something value? Rarity comes to mind. Gold and silver have value because they are rare and precious metals. If they were found on every street corner the value would go down. Well, Starbucks is found on every street corner, and yet a $5 grande light ice soy carmel macchiato still seems to have high value in our culture… why is that? Rarity might make something valuable, but so does desire. The more people desire something, the more valuable it is- right? That may be the case with over priced Starbucks coffee but it doesn’t apply to everything. We live in a very good world in a creation full of beauty and wonder hand-crafted by an almighty and sovereign God, but if the value of a thing lies with the value we as humans put on it, we will never value the right things. We might live in a very good creation, and we as humans may have even been made in the image of that same almighty and sovereign God who created the whole creation we reside in, but there is more to the story. We are messed up and broken, just like the world around us, which means, if left up to our own devices, the things we as a people group value are never going to be the things God values. What’s the main difference between a chunk of gold and a grande carmel macchiato? One has intrinsic value. It wouldn’t matter if the whole universe used bricks of gold as paper weights, it would still hold extremely high value. What about the value of an individual? Culture certainly holds different values for different people, and a lot of it has to do with what individuals can contribute to society. Mark Zuckerberg, according to our culture, has more value than a homeless person.  Monetarily yes, Mark Zuckerberg is “worth more” than that homeless person, but how does that effect their value- their intrinsic value?

Whether or not any individual on the whole entire planet finds you valuable, it doesn’t matter because our value is found in Christ alone. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” you say, “but it is not as easy to believe when you’ve been rejected or hurt or ignored.” I would wholeheartedly agree, but what I’ve learned recently is that how I feel about something doesn't necessarily (if ever) reflect the reality of the situation. Just like that brick of gold, you have intrinsic value.  You are rare, you are wanted, you sought after, by the only “Miner” that could possibly ever matter. What gives Picasso’s paintings value? They are made by Picasso, within the abstractness of his art is himself, the artist, the creator, and because of that ANY work by him has great and unchangeable value. My friend, don’t you see? The same is true of you! You are not valuable because of your social status, your bank account, your size, your accomplishments, your friends, your influence… you are valuable because you were CREATED BY THE GOD OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. He is the greatest Artist and His works are priceless. Why? Because we were made in the Artist’s image, His likeness. He infused Himself in us and therefore we are of higher value than anything else in creation. Unlike that grande light iced soy carmel macchiato, we are not of value because everyone wants us- we are more precious that gold or silver or any other precious stone or metal- even if some days all we feel like is a paper weight. Do you believe that? Do you believe that even if no other person in all of creation found you to be of value, that your intrinsic worth would remain intact because you were handcrafted by the almighty and sovereign God of the universe? Step into that truth, because if you allow that to go down deep into your heart, it can change the way you see yourself and those around you. I pray that you, whether you feel it or not, believe that you are of highest value because you were created in the likeness of the Creator. 

Waiting

We have all experienced times of waiting in our lives; waiting for a relationship, waiting for healing, waiting for a loved one to come to know Christ; waiting for God to answer any number of prayers.  Whatever season of waiting you might be in currently, this poem clearly speaks to the satisfaction of knowing God intimately and finding true fulfillment in Him during the hard and sometimes lonely times of waiting. He is absolutely faithful to hear every cry of our heart, but even more so, faithful to shape us with deep indescribable love, into the image of Christ. Rejoice in the waiting, for “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus!"

I did not write this poem, but it does accurately reflect my hopes and prayers in my time of waiting.

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried.

Quietly, patiently, lovingly, God replied.

I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate,

The Master gently said, “Child you must wait!”

“Wait? You say, wait!” My indignant reply.

“Lord I need answers, I need to know why!

Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?

By FAITH I have asked and am claiming your Word

“My future and all to which I can relate

Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to WAIT?

I am needing a ‘yes’, a go-ahead sign,

Or even a ‘no’ to which I can resign. 

“And Lord, you promised that if we believe

We need but to ask, and we shall receive.

Lord, I’ve been asking and this is my cry:

I’m weary of asking! I need a reply!”

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate.

Once again my Master replied, “You must wait.”

So I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut,

And grumbled to God, “So I’m waiting… for what?”

He seemed then to kneel, and His eyes wept with mine,

And He tenderly said, “I could give you a sign.

I could shake the heavens and darken the sun.

I could raise the dead and cause mountains to run.

All you seek I could give you, and pleased you would be.

You would have what you want- but you wouldn’t know ME.

“You’d not know the depth of my love for each saint;

You’d not know the power that I give to the faint;

You’d not learn to see through the clouds of despair;

You’d not learn to trust by knowing I’m there;

You’d not know the joy of resting in me

When darkness and silence were all you could see. 

“You’d never experience the fullness of love

As the peace of my Spirit descends like a dove;

You’d know that I give and I save…(for a start),

But you’d not know the depth of the beat of my heart.

“The glow of my comfort late into the night.

The faith that I give when you walk without sight,

The depth that’s beyond getting just what you asked

Of an infinite God, who makes what you have LAST.

“You’d never know, should your pain quickly flee,

What it means that ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’

Yes, your dreams for your loved ones overnight would come true,

But oh, the loss! If I lost what I’m doing in you!

“So be silent, my child, and in time you will see

THAT THE GREATEST OF GIFTS IS TO GET TO KNOW ME.

And though oft may my answers seem terribly late,

My wisest of answers is still but to WAIT.

-Anonymous

Unedited

I’m just going to write. So often I don’t have a fully formed thought in my head so therefore I don’t even bother writing.  But the truth is that once you start writing the rest of the thoughts come. There have been so many times that I have started thinking of something brilliant, but the thought never quite fully develops, so it is never written down. So really, I think I could be the most brilliant writer perhaps ever, if I were to just write down every crazy, unfiltered, and half brilliant thought I have. It seems to me that often these thoughts come at night as I am drifting off to sleep. Every time I think a half brilliant thought (which apparently I have many) I convince myself that I will remember it in the morning. This could potentially be a self-preservation mechanism so that I actually get sleep sometimes, or that I am just lazy.  Perhaps both. I’m not even sure I have a half formed thought in my brain right now, it seems to be more like a dozen less than partially developed thoughts. The problem with this is that these thoughts don’t add up like regular fractions do.  They simply each have their own line of thought that goes down past the end of my brain like a long straight train track getting smaller and smaller in the distance. The beauty I am finding about this particular string of thoughts is that as I think them, I type them. No premeditated thinking, no filtering or polishing, just raw unaltered words streaming straight from my head down my neck into one shoulder or another and then eventually pouring out my fingers. I feel especially fond of my fingers because I painted my nails today, and every good writer should feel fond of their fingers. Back to my thoughts. There are too many to describe individually, so I’m going to describe for you, beloved reader, if my thoughts were to be put together and made into an image, it would look something like this:

A small boy, around five or six is sitting on the floor of his living room next to a large blazing fire playing with all kinds of lovely toys.  Blocks of every shape size and color are currently taking all of his attention. These are not just normal blocks, but fantastic blocks made of every color of the rainbow (plus some) all sorts of textures and every beautiful and wonderful thing a child’s mind could imagine (these are things we adults have forgotten to remember). He is throwing the blocks high into the air, and every time they land, the blocks form together of their own accord and create a different picture or statue or thing.  The blocks fly high into the hair and come spinning down in to the shape of a boat rocking on the open sea.  Next the boy flings them high and they come crashing down into a magnificent oak tree, and after that a small treasure chest filled with wonder and mystery.  Over and over colors and shapes soar through the air, and fall back to the earth and form a new thing different from the last but just as wonderful.  The little boy is overjoyed with the wonder of it all, yet even though his imagination is expanding and soaring, he never understands how the blocks work.  The marvel of it is never revealed, but this does not deplete the magnificence of self forming blocks.

I must stress, once again, that the flow of words and thoughts are simply going unhindered from my brain to my keyboard.  This could turn out to be an amazing experience for both reader and writer alike, or it could leave us both pondering what exactly I meant by all my stringing along of sentences.  Truthfully, I’ll just be pleased if it still make sense in the morning.

The Question

“It is too noisy in here”, she thinks to herself, the noises of life are too much

Each person has thoughts, dreams and friends, worries and cares and goals

Together yet different, we sit in this box, intersecting but too close to touch

“Is this all there is?” She thinks once again, this thought is aged and worn

Some girls are laughing, a couple is arguing, others drive by unaware

That there is a girl, alone in a corner, crippled with a heart that’s been pierced

Just like a stone, she sits numb and defeated, by those who don’t seem to care

 Slowly they leave, the noise it decreases, but now the silence screams out

Stuck in the middle between silence and chaos, her face upturns to the sky

“Will this ever end?” she yells to the heavens, hoping that someone might hear

But no words have escaped, no tears have fallen, her life has turned into a lie

The blame has begun; she hates them for living, their smiles and laughter and loving

Her best friends return, names Hopeless and Lonely, declaring they’ll always be there

She starts to believe them, when there in the silence, speaks another soft, clear Voice

“I’m here,” the voice breathed, just barely a whisper, floating across the air

And just for an instance, a moment in time, the weight on her heart has lifted

The balance has shifted, between chaos and silence, now she can actually hear

Her desires and dreams rush in, for a second, before they fade and depart

“Is this all there is?”  She murmurs aloud, knowing now that the answer is near

She stands to her feet, holding only one thing, HOPE, and heads for the door.

Collision

I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I think a lot. The fact that I am sitting down with the very intention of writing out my thoughts, proves that point quite nicely.  As a kid you look ahead at your life stretching before you like a wondrous and magical path, slightly overgrown with colors of every shade bursting forth guiding you forward and you, as the sojourner, love every second of it. It’s like dreams and fantasies are the very fuel which motivates you to get up every day, and go to school or clean your room or empty the trash, because you know, someday you will be living out your dream of blasting in to outer space, or gracing the stages of Broadway with your glorious voice, or traveling the globe meeting all kinds of people without a care in the world.  Or perhaps your dreams were relational; marriage, babies, and friendships.  For you, those times of scrubbing the bathroom floor and conjugating verbs were often filled with wedding dress designs and colors, flowers and bridesmaid styles, rings and china patterns, from there your mind wanders to baby names and how they sound with your crush’s last name. No matter what you spent your time thinking about as a young person, you knew just around the corner your dream would be fulfilled, and you would be satisfied with your life. 

Then life happens.

That magical and wistful path you saw stretching far out in front of you, suddenly turns very grey and a little daunting.  You realize your dreams are not coming true, and some of them may never come true. This new thought, which can come very suddenly for some people, threatens to squelch all the other dreams, and even stop you from moving forward down your now less-than-glorious path of life.  For me, I feel as though I’ve stopped altogether. I’m just a blob of a person curled up in the fetal position on the side of the road, not even on the “path” anymore.  Disappointment, discouragement and failure sap my energy and makes the dreams of my childhood seem faint and out of reach.  I was racing full throttle down the proverbial path of life, eyes so focused on my goal that when a giant boulder turned up in the middle of the road, I was completely blindsided and collided with such force it left me so wounded and bloody, gasping for life- all I can do now is focus on healing before I ever get back up again. 

The other day during my run, I went out at twilight and tripped over the lip of a grate that was sticking up out of the sidewalk.  It took me completely by surprise and I went down, my right knee taking most of the force.  Even through my pants (which luckily did not rip) I sustained a good sized scrape and bruise which bled and hurt and took about 2 weeks to heal completely but has still left a scar. A week before, my friend Sarah had been long boarding at night hit a bump and crashed.  On a long board you go much faster than your typical runner, such as myself, and her left knee got torn up pretty badly- and it is still healing.  My point in all this is to say, the faster your velocity the harder you fall.

Well, I was moving at the speed of light.

The New Normal

    Every morning I wake up and look around my room at all the pictures of my wonderful time at Summit Semester. Every morning a now all-too-familiar weight in my heart settles for a moment as all the wonderful memories of the three months I spent at Snow Wolf Lodge come flooding into my thoughts. As I push those thoughts, mingled with joy and grief to the back of my mind, and drag myself out of bed toward my morning cup(s) of coffee, I can’t helped but be moved by the lasting impact of my time at Summit Semester.  Although as time marches forward and I look back fondly at my time there, I realize these memories will be with me for a lifetime, and as life gets back to “normal” it is a new kind of normal that has been altered now for good.

    It has been two months since that fateful trip from Durango to San Francisco marking the end of one very great adventure. I was heartbroken to leave my home in Pagosa Springs, but also very excited to see my family again and to see what God had in store for the next chapter of my life. I was also full of passion for what I had just learned at Summit Semester and was determined to put it to consistent practice.  But now as I look back over the two months that I’ve been home, I don’t have much to show for them. Oh sure, I’ve STARTED plenty of books, but the only book I’ve actually finished is the third installment of the Hunger games trilogy.  Yeah, I’ve exercised a few times, but my fingers get the most exercise from being on the computer all time.  And of course I try to spend time with Jesus, and certainly I have the time to, but because of my lazy sinfulness it doesn’t always happen.  Let’s just say (and I’m being overly kind to myself) the transition from Semester to Home is anything but an easy one.  The fact is, I’m wallowing.  I’m living mostly in the past with a few brief visits to the present.  I can’t imagine I’m the only one, but I am the only one I’m responsible for.

    In the joy and sadness I feel surrounding my thoughts about Semester, I am continually struck by the fact that I will never be going back to the life and community I had for those three months in Colorado.  That is often a very hard thing to swallow, and it is often that thought that cripples me and keeps me from moving forward. But what I have come to realize is that the only way to truly honor and enjoy the memories of my experience, is to live out PRESENTLY the things I lived and learned in the past. As hard as leaving was, we went there for a PURPOSE, and that purpose could not be fully realized UNTIL we left.  So there it is, my new normal.  Living presently, intentionally, and joyfully, filled with God’s grace, until the next adventure. 

…. And I am almost finished with A Severe Mercy.  So, good, now two books….