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Worldliness
I’ve been called worldly and looked down upon because I believe that it’s ok to drink, and do so, it’s ok to curse, and do so, and it’s ok to not fit the mold, and (most of the time) do so.
Then I read a handout from a church in which 3/4 of what’s written talks up the numbers for the church, those numbers being mainly attendance based.
Oh, not to mention the 2-Disc CD that the Student Worship Band put out this year.
And I’m wordly?
Give me a break.
I can haz tiketz?
Link.
Yeah, this is being held in Atlanta Sept. 11 and 12, for Becky and I to go will be $130 dollars, but I think I’m going to pull together the scrath to pay for it.
BTW- If anyone is attending and needs a couch to crash on (and isn’t allergic to out dogs and our cat) then shoot me an email.
Renewal
If you’re like me your a prophet with a belly full of fire who can’t be stoped by anything.
Except time.
I have a tendancy to run hot and cold, normally my hots run quite hots whereas my colds are actually lukewarms, but the point stands that I tend to live a life in which I get passionate about something and lose that passion somewhere down the road. Over the (brief) course of my life I’ve probably run the cycle of passion and calm dozens of times over dozens of topics, never quite learning from my previous cycles. It’s really the story of our lives often times, I guess most people play it out over longer periods than I do, but still this cycle seems to repeat itself in most of the lives I see.
Sometimes, we just need a little renewal, a second wind, all this time I never found a way to grab that second wind (let alone the needed third wind to make a passion into a lifestyle) and instead found myself moving on to the next passion. All these years, I never really thought about going back to the source that started the passion.
Maybe you’re in the same spot as I am. Maybe passion’s run out for you, maybe the belly full of fire that you once had is cooling down, you see it, you don’t like it, but complacency feels so good to us. The status qou that we held before we began is so much easier to keep up than the activity that passion requires. Sometimes you see how high the wall that your passion wants you to tear up really is. You realize how difficult it will be to take down that wall is. You see how much you will have to sacrifice if that passion is to be sustained.
I started my slide toward complacency in earnest just a few week ago. No longer were books being devoured, no longer were thoughts churning in my mind, no longer was imagination flowing freely, its a sad time in life when that happens, but then I was jarred out of it when I caught a glimpse of how high and powerful one of the walls I want(ed) to take down is, and how deeply rooted the wall is in my life.
We (being Becky and I) talk(ed) all the time of non-violence, of the imaginative third way, we debated others about it, and we’ve taken the so called high ground on the subject of violence in our lives. Now, for two people who claim such ideals, my actions Saturday night certainly show how far I have to go.
To make a long story short, we were victims of some drunken road rage Saturday night after leaving my parents dinner. The driver of the vehicle got out of his car and threatened to rip up my ass and such, to which I would have hoped an imaginative third way would have came in (third way being not violent nor passive), maybe several months ago I would have reacted in such a way to diffuse the situation in such a way that was on par with my ideals. My response however was to give the guy the finger and stare straight ahead.
Pathetic.
Anyways, this night kind of jarred me into looking at how poor my response was, and how far away I am from where I want to be. I realized that for me to waste all I have learned and strived for over the past year would be pathetic. I realized it was time for renewal, time to return to square one and relook at the things that first brought me to my passions.
I realize how close this is to sounding like an old school revival service, where the travelling pastor encourages the flock on the last night to resubmit their lives to Jesus, and every impulse I have urges me away from the route, so I leave it at that. It’s time to return to the source.