thank you audrey

...for having one of the most encouraging, insightful, relevant, and faith-centered blogs out there.  Read her blog at: http://moomooaudrey.wordpress.com/.  Also, I'm so happy that her first EP, Midnight Bloom, was just released!  Listening to it right now... hooked already.  Listen here.  And purchase here.  I'll probably write a blog post or two about her songs at some point... for now, I'm just thankful for this dose of much-needed encouragement this morning.

pounding heart, pounding nails

One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes goes like this:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

I first read this during a Family Group study sometime during my junior year.  I don't remember what the study was about (sorry Josh...), but this quote stuck out to me.

I just don't understand why it's so hard to love and not get hurt.  Why can't everyone just love one another and be happy, all the time?  This sounds so... happy-go-lucky, it's sickening.  Of course I know why.  We all sin, we want what's best for ourselves, and in the end, whatever love we find with another person is only temporary.  If a host of other factors doesn't kill the relationship, death will.

In college, I screwed up a lot of friendships with my "open book" personality and habit of delving into everyone's personal lives to make sure they were "okay."  Even now, any defensive, flat, or hostile comments from friends are bound to set me off into a tailspin of "oh my God, what did I do wrong?  Why can't I love people?"  On the one hand, this is arrogant - and on the other, it's completely impractical - you simply can't live that way.

Many times, I have tried the opposite tactic - of nailing my heart in that coffin - of ignoring and breaking friendships in my head in drastic scenarios.  My thinking: if I can't love everybody equally well, and all the time, then I'm not going to love anyone - I can't deal with the hurt.  The problem?  Every single time I pound a nail into my coffin of security, I come up short.  Relationships, more often than not, revive, and it's only myself that I'm torturing.

Every single time I pound a nail into my coffin, I feel like I'm pounding one into Jesus, stretched out on that cross.  And this is why I cannot stop loving.  This is why love is "the greatest of these."  (1 Cor. 13:13).  This is why, even though it hurts like hell sometimes, I will keep loving - because Jesus did it first.  May all of us continue to follow His example.

Edit: The C.S. Lewis quote comes from his book The Four Loves.

total depravity, irresistible grace

It is currently 4 am, and I am somehow still up, trying to fill an empty page with a string of words that actually means something. Spent an hour looking for jobs instead of writing my paper, which, interestingly enough, is on Crime and Punishment. Actually, I think the whole theme of the story can be summed up by the four words in my entry title. Then again, they also summarize my whole life up to this point. There's a reason why these two phrases go together (besides accounting for the T and I in TULIP, something that I'm not equipped to write about at this point, but maybe someday...) I don't think you can live in total depravity without realizing irresistible grace - to do so is to diminish God's boundless love for us.

Let me explain. For the past two years (and intermittently before that), I've been living in what amounted to an emotional black hole - all my life experiences, good and bad, and all the feelings associated with them, disappeared into the mass of unfulfilled expectations and failed attempts to be "happy." As time passed, my daily attitude became "wow, I suck at life, and there's no hope for me." Obviously, this didn't exactly help my mood or productivity, and I felt, in a sense, "totally depraved."

Now, as a senior facing an uncertain job market, (still) unfulfilled expectations, and a questionable future, I still have those moments, quite often, actually. Recently, though, I've come to the realization that my attitude of "there is no hope" is actually quite accurate - but missing a crucial piece - that of reconciliation. To quote Paul, "For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" (Romans 5:10).

The implications of this verse are enormous - it is not enough to realize that we are saved from our sins through Christ's death on the cross. True, that is an integral part of Christianity, and probably the concept most of us would use when justifying our own failures. We must realize that in addition to being freed from sin (a sort of negative construction), we are also free to live without it (a decidedly more positive one). This isn't to say that we will never sin again (because of course we will) - but that our actions need not be hindered by the fact that we are awash in sin and can never do anything right - because we are reconciled and justified in Christ. In essence, Christ's death means that our guilt is taken away, and we can live with Him forever, but His resurrection means that our shame is taken away too - and that we can actually begin to live through, and for, Him.

I'm going to end this with something a dear friend once told me: "Of course, God's always there to be like... 'Hey guess what, I'm in charge. You will never be successful enough that you won't need Me, or such a failure that I leave you.'" When we finally realize how totally depraved we are, that's when God's irresistible grace comes in - and shows us why we truly live.

EDIT: I wrote this sometime last fall, before I took a year off from school.

reflections on unified 2009

So last night was our third annual Unified Praise Night. I was pretty excited about it, as I was expecting a lot of energy and passion. The set started out strong, with two songs by Chris Tomlin and one by Starfield. I remember thinking that it was taking me a while to get into the music, but I didn't think anything of it as this occasionally happens. Divine Rhythm, WOV (With One Voice), and Catholic Choir were all great, as was the speech for Hope for the Homeless. At that point, I was feeling pretty content, and I waited for the sermon to start. After the first few minutes, however, I sort of got lost, because I couldn't figure out why the speaker seemed to jump in between Bible verses. I eventually fell asleep, probably a result of my having gone to bed at 6 am the previous night, and being in the library all afternoon. When I woke up, the sermon was nearly over, and I naturally felt really bad. I thought "hmm, maybe the music will help me get back in the right mindset for worship." Unfortunately, I only knew about half the songs in the latter set (Hillsong and Starfield), and I became frustrated by the fact that I still couldn't get into the "right" attitude. When we got to the song "The Stand" by Hillsong, I finally felt some emotion, particularly with these lines:

"So I'll stand,
With arms high and heart abandoned,
in awe of the One who gave it all.

So I'll stand,
My soul, Lord, to you surrendered,
all I am is Yours."

When the final prayer ended and I walked out, though, I felt strangely unfulfilled, but I didn't know what was missing. It had nothing to do with the worship team or the speaker, and I did enjoy the experience. It just felt different from years past. Ironically, the last two years I went, I couldn't see the song lyrics, which usually does take away some of the passion because i can't sing along, and I still loved it. Yesterday, however, I could see everything, but I just couldn't sing.

One of the Chris Tomlin songs we sang yesterday had this line: "How can I keep from singing Your praise?" I thought about that question through the night, but I couldn't answer it. There was one point where I wanted them to play quieter, slower, more reflective songs, but of course, this should have had no effect on me praising God. Right? I just felt... almost empty, like this was just another event to go to, to let pass by. Of course, the fact that I didn't know half of the worship set probably didn't help, and I probably should have slept more the previous night. Was this just an off night for me, then? Or am I making excuses for a deeper problem? Why couldn't I appreciate or understand the sermon? Was it arrogance or just an unwillingness to listen? I was really looking for renewal, but maybe I was searching for the wrong thing, or in the wrong way. Now, just a few hours before I leave for church, I still don't know exactly what I'm looking for, or why I felt so lukewarm last night. I hope things will turn around today... we'll see if I find any answers.

EDIT: This was sometime during the spring of my junior year, imported from a previous blog.