Let me love you: Giving and Receiving

We often forget that grace and karma are far from the same thing. We have this idea that as we become better and better people and do more and more church stuff, God will have more reasons to provide grace for us. We all should know that God grants us unrelenting grace upon request, and yet we live as if his love is conditional. We live as if God killed his son just so he could save a bunch of people who deserved it… that’s just silly.

Yet here we are. We won’t accept God’s grace because we don’t deserve it. Stupid pride. Stupid humans. We are stupid Christians.

I read a book that influenced me pretty heavily called “O₂” by Richard Dahlstrom; it is all about the ebb and flow of faith and specifically ministry. He theorizes that most modern Christians find themselves at either of two extremes, where they are either inhaling or exhaling constantly. They either serve constantly and pour out all their hearts into their ministries, or the other way around, they go to church and every small group during the week, but never actually do anything to help others. Even worse, most churches facilitate this by always asking the gifted folks to lead events and by asking the seemingly “not-so-gifted” folks to come to every event that the gifted folks put on. Sadly, when it comes to love I find the church is in much the same boat, with the majority of us being those who exhale and avoid inhaling as much as possible. My Nana gave me the saddest picture of this today.

I was visiting my grandmother (we call her Nana) in the hospital today after church and when we were alone we began talking about some more personal things. She talked about how surprised she was that this stomach problem had come on so suddenly and how she was so surprised that her issue is one that can kill if not operated on quickly. She mentioned she was so thankful for her relatives who took her into the ER and that she could be operated on so quickly. Then she started to change her tone. She said maybe it would have been a good time for her to go. Tears started coming to her eyes as she said that she was worried she was living too long and that she was becoming a burden to her family.

What you have to know about my Nana is that she cared for my Papa (her husband) for years and years before he finally passed in 2004. It was her whole life to care for him and when he passed she hardly knew what to do with her self. For along time she would still sign cards, “From Nana and Papa” and would hardly talk about anything else. When she finally began moving on she started caring for some friends of hers who weren’t able to get around quite as well as she. She would take them to the doctor when they needed or stop by and check up on them.

When my sisters and I were young we were home schooled and we would go over to her house once or twice every week and she spoiled us rotten. She would make waffles and a bowl of our favorite cereal for us and bring it out to us on a little tray as soon as we arrived and plopped down on her couch to watch TV. When my mom was a kid her and my Papa both worked a lot to give her the best they could manage; she was their only child.

And now, after eighty-six years of caring for other people, she doesn’t want us to care for her. She doesn’t want to be a “burden” to us even though she’s cared for our family for so long and she just started having problems last week. She’s asking us not to care for her and it’s a bit like saying, “Please, stop loving me.”

Riding back from my visit with her this afternoon, I wasn’t five minutes from the hospital before the tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t understand why I was crying. We have no reason to think that Nana is going to pass away soon and for the most part our visit was very pleasant. She’ll probably be out of the hospital in just a few days and yet I hurt and I wept. I started to pray and asked God to “soften her heart and to have her allow us to love her.” As the prayer came forth amidst quiet sobs I heard in my heart God saying, “Let me love you my child. I can see that you have tried and that you have suffered and even that you have failed. Now, put down your hands; let me love you.” God was showing me the sadness in his heart that comes from his children rejecting his love because we don’t think we deserve it. Like Nana and like everyone else, I am afraid. I am afraid to accept the words that I myself spoke to her this afternoon; “Nana, we love you too much for you to ever become a burden.”

There is a heart wrenching little children’s book called “Love You Forever” that I have mentioned before. This book depicts a mother who, no matter what upsetting thing her child does, she comes into his room every night and sings to him “I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always, as long as I love you my baby you’ll be.” That is our father’s heart… at least as accurately as I’ve ever heard it.

So please, join me. Get over yourself. Let down your guard. You are not good enough and you never will be. God knew from the start that he was going to have to go through so much heartbreak and so much rejection from a bunch of foolish children who thought they had to make it through life on their own. God did not send his son to die for a bunch of people who deserved everlasting life, he sent his son to die for us. I am about as broken as they come, and yet every night my Father comes into my room and sings to me, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always, as long as I love you, my baby you’ll be.”

Eye contact

We were greasy, cold, wet, tired and quite thankful for a patch of carpeted ground. Each night when we returned to the church after a fifteen-hour day on the street, my fellow Urban Plunge participants and I wanted nothing more than to sleep. I’m pretty sure each one of us had blisters on our feet by the end of the first day and I am absolutely sure that we were all very sore. Despite the discomfort however, each of us ended our time thankful for the experience.

Each of the five days of Plunge my fellow SPU students and I would spend wandering the streets of Seattle looking for homeless people whom we could ask about life on the street and how they ended up there. After that our only real concern was to find opportunities to eat and occasionally to rest and stay dry. Each day consisted of a fair amount of boredom and a fair amount of deciding where to go and what to do. The interactions we did have though were the real gold of the whole experience.

One of the more memorable interactions we had was with the street youth around Westlake Center. They were just like us in so many ways. They had their own outcasts, their own popular kids, many had cellphones, many had no desire to go to school or to work and each one had their own ways of finding, or at least needing, acceptance. One in being the guy who is a “lucrative business man” another in being the craziest guy on the street and still another in being the one who always does well with the ladies. It would be cliché to say that I saw something deeper missing in each one of them. However, I did see that there was so much acting on going and I just wanted it to stop. I understand that when most people in a society don’t want to interact with you at all it’s hard to be proud of who you are. I was just hoping that one day they would understand what their worth is. Last weekend, while doing some homeless outreach on Capitol Hill, I saw one of the kids I met in Westlake. He introduced himself as Garbage. It broke my heart because on the Plunge he had offered me his last cigarette and found cardboard for me to help me keep my stuff dry. Garbage is hardly a name fitting for someone so kind.

The natural extension of thought from the whole experience was to ask how we could help these people. Humans like us. Many of them had been dealt a poor hand and plenty others had just decided not to use their hand well. The question I tried to always ask of people who we met that had been able to leave the streets or who were in the process of leaving the streets was what had given them the motivation to get off. For most it was people they cared about or who cared about them. One gal said she had younger sisters who looked up to her and she wanted to set a good example for them. A married couple said they had two sons, who were then living with friends, and had lost their house so they were just looking for work to help them get back into a life. Another lady said she was tired of using drugs to get her through each day. Most revealing was what one woman at Mary’s Place shared with us. She said that for those who claimed they were fine with living on the street it wasn’t so much that they were ok with the street but that they didn’t believe anything better would ever exist for them.

In Seattle it’s not hard to survive on the street. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are available from shelters, soups kitchens, and the occasional do-gooder passing by. What’s hard is finding hope. Hope that if you pull yourself up from the bottom you won’t slip right back down. Hope that there’s someone who cares. Hope that there’s even a reason to get off in the first place. Due to its abundant resources for the homeless, Seattle is said to be the nation’s best place to be homeless. My prayer is that it can be the nation’s best place to quit being homeless too.

The hardest part about Plunge was partly the people that weren’t on the street who wouldn’t even look at you when you spoke to them. What was even harder were the ones who would look you in the eye when you spoke to them and say nothing, as if to communicate, “I know you were speaking to me, but you’re just not worth stopping for.” It serves to take away your humanity when someone won’t acknowledge you simply because your clothes aren’t quite as clean as they ought to be. For those who would at least say, “Sorry, I don’t have any change” we were very thankful.

With all of this in mind about giving hope and acknowledging humanity I would like to take the time to emphasize two services that seem to me to be especially effective, Mary’s Place and New Horizons. Both of these ministries make a point of being relational in their outreach and having people around who will talk with the homeless that come through not just serve them and get them on their way. New Horizons even owns a coffee shop across the street called “Street Bean” where people have made their way off the street through New Horizons can be trained to work as baristas, an exceedingly useful skill to have in Seattle.

My hope for all the “average people” who read this that may never want to live in a city let alone do outreach to the homeless is this: show them someone cares. If you can, stop for sixty seconds, ask them their name, and show them that there are people in the world who don’t just want to ignore them and who want to see them able to do something with their lives. If you want to be specific and talk about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they have food and some sort of shelter and safety, what they need next is love and belonging and that will ONLY come through human contact, eye contact being the simplest way to allow that to happen.

Carpe Diem

When I finally decided that I was sure I wanted to do pre-med I was uncomfortable with the fact that nine more years of school lay ahead of me. I knew it was “worth it,” but the idea was still very uncomfortable for me. My thoughts were along the lines of, why do I have to wait nine years to have a life? Why do I have to wait nine years before I do anything cool with my life? But then God, in the subtlest way possible reminded me of carpe diem.

Carpe diem means “seize the day” and people that live in this mindset often follow a philosophy that says do whatever you want and whatever feels good to you because you just might die tomorrow and you may as well live without regrets. I like the thought of living without regrets, I have a few significant regrets already, but I certainly wouldn’t mind not taking on any new ones. But then again doing what felt good has also been the source of my deepest regrets, so something has to change

Many who follow carpe diem would say that nothing matters but our own pleasure. I say carpe diem because I feel that everything matters. I can’t wait one day to settle an argument because the next day might not come for me, or for the other person. I can’t wait one day to tell people I love them because the next day they might all be gone. I can’t wait one day to show someone that they are truly valued because the next day they might be gone because no one ever showed them how much they were worth. Waiting until med school is over to “start my life” is not an option because I could die before I ever get there in which case my life would be the story of a man who had good intentions and nothing more because he never had the chance to live them out. All of this to say, my life has to matter now, because tomorrow is not a promise.

There’s my logic, now for my actions.

1. I intend to make every person feel valued, if I can. I want to value people when I see them, whether I know them or not because people need to know they are valued, myself included. Without value life begins to feel pointless and not worth living. I’ve known too many people who didn’t realize how valued they we’re and tried to take their lives because of it, and that’s something I never want to see again. I realized that I valued them and did not do a great job of showing it, and that’s a mistake I don’t want to repeat. Not that I can save anybody, but if I can make somebody feel valued then I will do what I can. Also, I can’t be a source of value, but I can be a supplement.

2. I try not to live for things. If I die tomorrow all my things will be wasted, and as such I try not to live much beyond my needs. No thing has brought me amazing joy and no thing has lasting consequences, but there is an action that does, and that is love.

3. I live for love, because God is love and because no other action has eternal consequences. You may say, “but what about faith? Surely our faith in God has eternal consequences?” In Galatians 5:6 Paul says that the only thing that matters is “faith, expressing itself through love.” In other words your faith must be shown by your love. I don’t believe in logic as a road to faith because if you can be argued into it, you can be argued back out. If you have love, however, you are not at the mercy of an argument, because love goes beyond anything we understand.

4. Live with excellence, not in the sense of being the best at everything I do, but in giving my best to everything I do.

In my short life I’ve already seen too many people who do not know what they are worth and what they are capable of. This needs to change. It needs to change now. And words of love are the only thing that will accomplish this change.

Post 13: And there stood before me a great wall... made of cantaloupes.

Many people have this misconception that prophets make big sweeping “prophecies” that are supposed to predict the future and that these prophets are supposed to be right every time or shut their trap forever if they make a mistake. Most people who call themselves “prophets,” or who at least claim to be “operating in the prophetic gift,” won’t usually try and tell you the capitol f Future, or even necessarily try to tell you you’re future. Most legitimate “prophets” I have heard of would probably just say that they know how to listen to God.

Now, we have a God who loves us so when he speaks he will not uncommonly whisper things very pertinent and real to the people who are listening. Or he may speak things to someone with open ears that are meant for someone who refuses to listen. This is where prophets come in and this is where it gets personal, powerful, and real. This is also where Herb Marks and I come into the story.

Herb Marks is a local “prophet” with a significant reputation. He served on staff at New Life Center, a huge Foursquare church in Everett, Washington, and while he was there, there was joking amongst some people that if you had any bad habits you shouldn’t go when Herb was speaking because he would “read your mail.” Herb is so gifted that he was hired by one church to do nothing but pray for people. Two or three years ago I saw Herb at Hope Foursquare in Snohomish, Washington, but I wasn’t there for his service. I was there for band practice and he was stealing our time because his service was taking too long. I was waiting in the back for him to finish up and head out when he caught my eye and, despite the fact that there was a large line of people waiting to talk him, he motioned for me to come up and talk to him.

At that point in my life I was skeptical, both of this guy and of the idea that God would speak through someone I had never met to say something useful to me. However, I went up and Herb walked me through a series of questions culminating in him asking me what the single biggest thing standing between God and I was, to which I responded… cantaloupes. I say that because the answer to that question was fairly personal and cantaloupes seem like a good substitute.

Two weeks ago I went and saw Herb a second time, this time with a very different mindset. Having now witnessed some very real prophecies and other incredible acts of God, I was more prepared to believe what Herb had to say. I was also strongly reminded of the fact that the cantaloupes him and I had discussed were still very present in my life. After Herb spoke he began to ask for people to stand if they felt a breeze against their legs. I thought I had felt the breeze but wasn’t really sure so I didn’t stand. He then said that there was one person who wasn’t standing because they weren’t sure if they had felt the breeze or not. I promptly stood up. When I rose Herb didn’t recognize me but began to tell me some pretty remarkable things. He made a point of saying that I needed to become a man of integrity, he also emphasized that he was NOT calling out sin in my life. This is rather important because some prophets can see the sin in people’s lives and will call it out in front of people, but that is quite destructive and is not the way that prophets are meant to handle that kind of information.

After speaking directly to me for a while Herb asked everyone that was standing to go and be prayed for by one of the people on the prayer team. God pointed out someone specific for me to pray with named George. Before I even approached him he came to me and asked if I wanted him to pray for me, I of course obliged. He prayed for me generally first and told me some things about myself that I may share another time, but not now. He then asked what specifically I wanted prayer for and I of course told him it was the cantaloupes. As he began to pray, God gave me an image of a small pink planet. I was standing on the planet and next to me was a large brick wall a few feet taller than I was. On the other side of the wall was the sun. The sun’s rays were shining over the top of the wall and my planet was entirely lit up despite the fact that the wall stood between the sun and me and I couldn’t see the sun itself. As George continued to pray the wall suddenly came down and became nothing more than a pile of bricks at my feet. I could now see the sun directly and step over the wall and it would not hinder me in the least, as long as I didn’t rebuild the wall myself.

Now, two weeks later, the wall is still down. Don’t get me wrong, the temptation has returned. I, however, have a new attitude about it. Now when the rotten cantaloupes show up, my attitude is one that says, “No, that’s a terrible idea! That is only going to be hindering to me and I should NOT do it.” As opposed to one that said, “Oh, I shouldn’t do it, but…” Two things that are helping me in this fight are the example set by the life of Jesus and the book of James. When Jesus was tempted he didn’t pussyfoot around and think about it, he immediately quoted scripture and walked away. The scripture I usually think of is in Phillipians (I think) when Paul calls people out for making their stomach their God, and for me, that’s a real quick shutdown. What James says in chapter 1 verse 15 is, “when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin.” So a natural extension of thought from that verse is to ask what it is I desire that I am trying to satisfy with a big orange fruit. So I’m asking God; what is it?

Rob Bell, in his book Sex God, talks about our desires. He says that our desires, in and of themselves, are not the problem. God gave us, and gives us, our desires. Problems arise when our desires are misdirected. Desires require an immense amount of energy and those desires, along with the energy that drives them, need to be directed towards positive things. In the book of Ephesians, Paul says that thieves first, need to stop stealing, but then they need to begin to work with their hands (the thing they once used to steal), and begin to work towards something good. He says this because, in essence, it’s impossible to focus on not doing something, so we need a positive to dwell on if we are to be rid of the negative influences.

The cantaloupes of my life used to make up a great brick wall that stood between God and I, but that wall has fallen. I still have those desires. Those bricks are still there. Now it is time to use the bricks to build a bridge to bring me closer to the sun. Or a bridge that will take me to another planet where I can help someone else tear down his or her wall. Or use those bricks to build a monument to God. Or crush the cantaloupes into some cantaloupe juice and bring the good out of them and share it with others. Or… well you get the idea.

Post 12: Jesus and Coach Huggins

Bundled up in a scarf and beanie with a few dozen other bleary-eyed SPU students, I stood in one of my favorite places; the canal right next to SPU's campus. It was 6:30 Easter morning and we all showed up to hear about see the Son risen while watching the sun rise. The morning started with an upbeat version of "Oh Happy Day" led by guitar and upright bass. I watched some people step back and forth or maybe raise their hands a little but most people were too cold to really be "into it." Charismatics are more fun to worship with than Methodists anyway. As I closed my eyes and began seeking the Lord, he showed me a picture.

It was about 2,000 years ago and Jesus was stepping out of the tomb. He was refreshed and smiling and as he stood there grinning, with a smirk he coolly said two words; "I won." Then WOOSH, fast forward back to 2010, my perception of the postmodern Jesus (jeans, flip-flops, V-neck and all) is standing at my side with a hand on my shoulder. Again, he only says two words; "It's ok."

That Easter morning I was feeling more than a little down about where I was at, and in some ways still am, in my life. "It's ok" was all I needed to hear. Feeling slightly embarrassed about old sins and dissatisfied about my relationship with him but also not feeling motivated enough to do much about you'd think what I needed was Pentecostal prayer meeting. Nope. Two words. "It's ok." That was all I needed.

* * *

If you like basketball at all you probably watched some of the NCAA March Madness Tournament. I have to say that the most remarkable moment of the tournament wasn't a slam-dunk, an amazing comeback, or even a Cinderella/underdog victory story. It was the West Virginia vs. Butler game.

It was one of the Final Four games and West Virginia, like all the others, was hoping to take home first place. Senior Da'Sean Butler, one of the best players in West Virginia's history and a major force on the team since his freshman year, was hoping to be an NBA draft pick. Da'Sean, obviously a key player, was bearing a lot of weight for the team and was needed desperately to take the team to the final game. If they won this would also be Coach Huggins first ever NCAA championship.

With a few minutes left in the game Da'Sean went for shot and came down with an obviously painful and serious knee injury. Da'Sean was writhing on the ground in obvious pain both from the injury and from knowing his career was probably lost along with the game. It was painful to see the anguish on his face. In a few moments De'Sean's coach Bob Huggins was running out to Da'Sean.

When Huggins reached De'Sean he basically got right on top of him, put Da'Sean's head between his arms and lowered his face to be just a few inches from his player's. I heard in an interview later that Da'Sean began apologizing right away. He apologized for letting down the team and especially for not getting the coach his first championship trophy. Huggins response was nothing short of fatherly. Huggins told Da'Sean "It's ok," that he was a very special kid, and, most importantly, he told him over and over that he loved him.

When we fall hard our Father comes running. He lowers himself down to where we are, gets his face in close to ours and as we lie on the ground crying out in our lowest of lows he says, "It's ok, I love you no matter what." What we have to remember is that it’s ok, God already won. Our sin is defeated and the trophy is his. All that's left to do is take his hand when he reaches down and accept his aid as he helps us rise again.

Post 11: What really caused the scar on my arm.

This is mostly a recap of what happened to me in June of 2009, it’s quite a story. It’s also the story of how I obtained the huge scar on my left arm.

Sitting next to my hospital bed in Harborview Hospital in Seattle (and typing with one hand) I want to take some time to reflect on all that God has done for me over the last few days. This desire stems a little out of boredom and a lot out of my desire to thank God for protecting me during and after my injury and for all the powerful things he showed me before my fall. For the sake of keeping things in a sensible order, I’ll keep it chronological. If you want the abbreviated version read the last paragraph.

Sunday afternoon (June 14, 2009) Stephen and I left for La Push, which is near Forks over on the peninsula. We left on our drive listening to Iron and Wine, Postal Service, the Album Leaf and all kinds of good chill music of that nature and talked about the whole point of why we were going: to give a weekend to God and to take some time to listen to his will for our lives, especially for the summer months. The whole trip over was very peaceful and our conversations were centered on God with the occasional tangent to talk about the sites we saw, like Kitchen-Dick Road just outside Port Angeles. The first stop of note was at Lake Crescent (or maybe it was Crescent Lake…irrelevant).

As we were driving around the lake my eyes kept losing the road for the sake of staring through the fog on the lake towards the silhouettes of the mountains and trees so subtly yet beautifully lit by the sun that was still surprisingly high in the sky. We decided to stop and have a look around so we pulled over and walked to the edge of the lake. Now my dad has told me that this particular lake is incredibly cold however, when I put my hand in, I felt the perfect temperature for swimming, I refrained from plunging in simply because I didn’t want to get wet before arriving at our destination. As we sat on the lakeside, I was peacefully overwhelmed by God’s presence to the point where I couldn’t keep from calling out his name as a thank you for showing off his power in such a glorious way. It was literally a small moment of what felt like perfection in our far from perfect world. As we continued to wander around the lake’s edge I continued to grin from ear to ear at the trees and waves and everything else that was around me, and honestly just the beauty of the whole setting. We then crossed over to the other side of the road from where we stopped the car, where God continued to show the power of his hand.

We entered into the dense wooded area to see an incredibly steep hill sloping up in front of us. As we began to climb the hill we realized the softness of every step we took was thanks to the thick moss under our feet, unfortunately this moss was easily torn up with every ascending footstep. Yet this moss covered every inch of the hill we were climbing, showing that no one had climbed that hill in a very long time. In other words no one else had bothered to pull over and look at the beauty, which was growing all around that area. What a shame to know that God’s beauty is everywhere if we just stop and look, yet it is so under appreciated because we wont.

Descending the hill to look at a clearing nearby us, I noticed a small plant that I had never seen before and it demonstrated so well what I think is one of the coolest things that plants do; they grow towards the sunlight. They will ignore their natural symmetry so that they can grow closer to their source of life. If I recall correctly this is a still unexplained phenomenon because though we expect plants to thrive near their life source, plants don’t have logic, conscious thought, etc, so how would they know to move themselves towards the sun? Pretty nifty I think.

When we reached our destination, we quickly set up camp and after getting comfortable we resumed our conversations about God and his will. We began talking about what we needed from God and after finding that we were in consensus about the need for first guidance and second comfort, we decided our time would be better spent seeking what God would like to show us while we were devoting time to him. Rather than simply asking for what we wanted or thought we needed we asked what our father (undoubtedly the greatest gift giver of all time) would like to give us. We then took some time for silent prayer and, this time in direct conversation with him, we dedicated our entire trip to God, yet again.

The following morning we awoke, ate and left for the Hoh rain forest, a beautiful place near where we were camping. The thing that sticks out to me the most about our stop at the rain forest was the fallen trees. There are massive trees of all types that have been torn up literally, at the root. Now, these impressed me for two reasons 1) they were so massive and beautiful and God designed and made them yet he also knocked over and killed them like it was nothing 2) something that died was still a source of life because there were plants growing all over these trees and in the hole where the roots once were. God made so much life and new creation out of the death of this tree.

After a few hours we left the rain forest and this is where I begin mostly repeating details rather than telling the story because I don’t remember much. We went to Rialto Beach, after leaving the rain forest, and we decided to play worship on the beach for a while. Then we headed up the beach and waded over to a massive rock we had decided to climb. I don’t remember the ascent other than that it was uneventful and that two Korean guys watched us the whole time. We reached the top and I remember looking off to the right and seeing three beautiful rocks/islands similar to the one we were sitting on. Then came the descent.

Apparently I went down from the rock on some route Stephen had decided it was not safe to take and at some point I lost my footing. I then slid/rolled/tumbled about thirty feet, then took a five to ten foot freefall and landed on some rocks and I apparently had a small rock slide coming down after me too. I’m told I stood up for a minute, but honestly all I remember is hitting my head really, really hard and thinking, “oh crap” while falling. Less than a minute later Stephen got to me, he says only by God’s guidance, as he is not an experienced climber yet he moved like Spiderman down that rock. Stephen wrapped his shirt around my seriously bleeding head then went for help that arrived awhile later in the form of a coast guard boat which took me to an ambulance which in turn took me to the ER at Forks. From there I was moved to Port Angeles ER and from there I was airlifted to Harborview. I recall waking up in the ER at Harborview and seeing my parents and my dear friend and former youth pastor Ryan Schlect. I am told I asked the same four questions over and over again 1) is Stephen ok? 2) what happened? 3) Can you call Madison and tell her we won’t be able to go to that show tomorrow? And lastly 4) that tube inside me means I can just let go and pee right? All of this happened Monday and I’m still here in Harborview on Wednesday June 17th, 2009 with not but a fractured elbow in need of surgery and some miscellaneous bumps and scratches. I’m so thankful that I have no neck or back injuries, that I can get up and walk around on my own power, and that my right hand is entirely usable and unharmed (with the exception of one tiny scratch on the back of it).

Since all of this happened, I have looked back numerous times on all the ways I could’ve died, but didn’t. This is irrelevant however because the core of this whole dilemma is the fact that God saved me. I don’t know what in the world he is going to use me for, but he did it because he loves me. From here it’s just a matter of going forth and telling people all about him. He is wonderful: don’t you know?

Post 10: This Mountainous Life

Life is like a climbing a mountain, you get sweaty, tired and sore but it’s all worth it for the companionship and the view…

A few weeks back I went on a hike to Mt. Si, which is near North Bend, WA. Leading the charge was the good doctor Luke Reinsma and following him were myself and a few other students and alums from SPU. After about an hour into the hike the group became fairly split up, my good buddy Andrew and I leading the way by about five minutes and the rest of our motley crew following at various intervals. As we carried on with our hike I couldn’t help but feel like God was saying pay attention… pay attention.

Initially the hike was a jovial one, everyone was fresh and ready from a good breakfast, we were bundled up and warm, there was lots of good conversation, and everyone was having a genuinely good time. As the hike progressed and we began to split however, the conversations died down and were mostly replaced by heavy breathing and the occasional grunt or groan, though Andrew and I did manage to continue discussing theological questions despite this.

Shortly after the group split I began seeing clearings in the trees through which I could see the view; this was a wonderful motivator. As we continued up the path the view kept getting better and better and the trail started becoming more and more lit and the excitement of knowing the summit was nearby was tremendous. Finally, we reached the peak and what a view it made the toil all worthwhile. There were many mountains and valleys all around us, and a beautiful blue sky with some thick, white, cotton-candy clouds interspersed through out it. There was a huge rainbow too, starting on top of a cloud and ending somewhere very far away (you can barely see it in the picture). Off to the right, behind the rainbow, we could see the very top of one Seattle building, probably the Columbia Tower, just barely peaking up through the clouds, which were covering all the other skyscrapers. Seattle feels huge when your downtown, but from atop that mountain it was very clear how very small man’s accomplishments are when compared to the beauty of creation. It made the whole venture more than worthwhile. As we sat on top of the mountain feeding the Canadian Jays (who will sit on your hand for awhile if you have food to offer) I began thinking about our journeys of faith and the trail up the mountain.

When we first meet God all is well. We feel warm and fuzzy inside, were full on our first meal of the body and the blood, and we have our fellow travelers all around us. As we begin the real ascent however, the journey quickly becomes challenging. The people we set out with at the base we begin to lose touch with as they go on ahead or fall behind on the trail. The pain and soreness that are bodies undergo begin to make the journey feel very unappealing. When all we can see around us are those same repetitious trees we begin to wonder if we’re really progressing at all. But when we begin to see the sun shining through the clearings we have our first glimpse of hope. And when we have a companion with us we have the encouragement to stay strong. Finally, when we hit the zenith it becomes very apparent that the whole journey was worth it for the beauty and the glory displayed before our eyes. And as we stand on top of the mountain and see the rainbow in the distance, we are reminded of the promise that God made; you will find rest and you wont have to climb that mountain ever again.

Fall quarter I was talking with my friend Daniel and he told me that he wasn’t really sure about what he thought of God in a lot of ways, but he also said that, “You can’t go to the mountains or go to the ocean and not know there is something bigger out there.” Daniel wrote a song called, “This Vast Expanse” which is essentially all about looking for God in the mountains and the oceans. The song is a beautiful ten-minute epic and it truly is a masterpiece. He performed it at the SPU talent show with a twelve-man band featuring a piano, two vocalists, a guitar, a bass, drum set, trombone, trumpet, cello, and several violins. That night as Daniel and the band hit the climax of the song with every member playing at full intensity, he not so much sang as shouted into the microphone, “Is this my God, this vast expanse?” I nearly cried as I thought to myself, yes, it is.

This is the view from the top of the Mountain