Currently Listening Never Take Friendship Personal By Anberlin see related

>no-shave november correspondance<

Currently Listening Who We Are Instead By Jars of Clay Only Alive see related

>the book of Job<

since i don't really update my xanga anymore, i thought i'd copy and paste this essay i wrote recently on the book of job.  so read it and enjoy...it's kinda deep in some parts, but i strive to keep things engaging, so hopefully you don't get too bored...

I find myself in a sober mood this evening as I type this paper.  I can’t really explain it; I’m fresh off one of the most relaxing weekends I’ve had in about four months.  I went swing dancing, watched Braveheart, walked around downtown Indianapolis, held a pretty girl’s hand, sat on a roof and looked at the stars,  grilled hamburgers (and ate them), read Beatrix Potter’s “The Adventures of Tom Kitten” to the previously stated pretty girl, soaked in a hot tub, and I slept in not once but twice.  Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face.  But then I re-read that Larry Crabb article, and all of the sobering thoughts and memories return to the front of my head.

            Since graduating high school and being away from home, I have begun to experience brokenness and suffering in the world.  My best friend’s dad left his family on Father’s Day.  He was a deacon, youth leader, Sunday school teacher, etc.  He met another woman as a chaperone on my friend’s senior class trip and ran off with her.  They have married and are living happily. They even joined another church.  Fast-forward to this summer.  I had a camper confide in me that his mother was hitting him.  She had chipped his collar bone on a previous encounter and left a bruise on his arm from a fly-swatter the day before he came to camp.  He asks me why God would let this happen to him.  A couple of weeks later, another camper talks to me about his depression and suicide attempt this past spring.  He asks me why God would put him through suffering.  Fast-forward to the last couple of weeks.  Two uncles are getting divorced; one because his wife abused him.  Derek Richardson is taken in a car accident.  Hurricanes rip through the south and destroy millions of lives.  Thousands die in an earthquake in Asia.  I encounter prostitutes and crack-heads for the first time on the streets of Springfield during the poverty simulation for my Urban Ministry class. 

            Why is there all of this…bad stuff (for lack of a better all encompassing term)?  The last few weeks I’ve been reading 1 Peter for my Interp and Teach class, which deals with persecution and suffering for Christ’s name as one of its themes.  Then last week we got to read Job in your class, and its obvious topic.  Both of these two books helped me come to grips with suffering and why it happens to people.  It reminds me of a sermon illustration my pastor used long, long ago. It makes me laugh, because it’s the only thing I really remember out of all his sermons.  He said this: “Suffering is in a sense like squeezing a piece of fruit.  When you squeeze it, the juice comes out, revealing the inside content of the fruit.  Suffering squeezes us and our trueselves pour out.”   Pretty deep, huh?  But, after discussion in class and reading Job, that illustration seems to hold true.  While I might be taking the illustration too far, I think that when we go through suffering God is squeezing out all the things that get in the way in our relationship.  I think that holds true in Job’s life, in that he was much closer to God after all he went through.

            So the question you asked in class comes up again:  Why do you serve God?  Is it because of all the blessings or because of who He is?  To add the article by Larry Crabb into the mix causes things to become even more complicated. 

This article stirred up some long dormant thoughts on the book “Wild at Heart” and John Eldridge’s “follow your heart because your heart has been set free” mindset.  I read “Wild at Heart” when I was 17 years old.  I remember not enjoying the first couple of chapters because I had been taught and had read in the Bible that we were to die to ourselves and take up our cross daily, which contradicts the whole “follow your heart” bit.  However, the more I read “Wild at Heart”, the more I found it to make sense.  It feels so true.  It spoke to my heart and explained my desires as a man…ok, a very young immature person in the process of becoming a man.  I felt what he wrote about.  I wanted an adventure to live, a battle to fight, and a beauty to rescue.  I still do.  But something has always tickled the back of my mind about it.  It seems so selfish.  But, come on, Jesus said so himself that he came so that we “might have life and have it abundantly”, right? And in Jeremiah it says that God has plans for all of us, to prosper us, to give us hope and a future.  What about that? 

The point of Crabb’s article is to not be a major kill-joy.  It’s to challenge us and question our motives, especially in light of the big idea of Job.  When it comes right down to it, we are selfish beings.  We want the joy and fulfillment of the Christian life more than we want to know Jesus.  That’s what Satan was trying to prove to God at the beginning of Job, that He doesn’t have any followers, just people who get paid to love Him.

Therefore, once again, the question comes up: Danny K, why do you follow Jesus?  I cannot lie.  It is because of what He’s done for me.  But how can we avoid that reasoning?  It is so embedded into our faith, isn’t it?  I mean, Jesus died on the cross to give us life, right?  He did it to bring us into a closer relationship with God.  Therefore, I am able to know Him through what he did for me.  But then again, I suppose that is not an end, but a means to an end, if you follow me.  Therefore, now that I have this relationship with the Creator, I have the choice to follow Him or not.  So the question arrives again, only with fewer strings attached:  Why do you follow Jesus? 

            I follow Him because of who He is…which includes what He’s done for me.  He is a good God who loves me and wants what’s best for me.  If that includes suffering and tough times to bring me closer to Him and to get rid of all the sin that’s holding me back…then I will trust in Him and His judgment and His love for me.  And that is what we like to call faith.  And if or when the faith I have runs out, I pray that His grace will pull me through.

the end.   

Currently Listening All-American Rejects By The All-American Rejects Time Stands Still see related

>i am going stir crazy...and i don't know what's being stirred?<

People are weird.  Me especially.  My hair sticks up in strange places, i pick my nose occasionally, and I have a strange dependency on people.  Take right now for example.  I can’t do any work.  Why?  Is it a lack of discipline?  Probably, but it’s also attributed to the fact that I’m in a disheveled dorm room (ooh, disheveled. I could say that all day. disheveled) with no one to talk to.  I just got back from New Orleans, and I have all these stories to share, and no one to talk to about it. I have all of these thoughts brewing in my head, and they’re starting to go rotten.  No one to talk to!  My roommate has disappeared.  Chris and Jon are gone.  I can’t call anybody because stalker net is down.  And my girlfriend is no where to be seen.  Is this God trying to get me to share with him? I do not know.  Quite possible.  My life is not messed up, but just sorta pointless right now.  Maybe that’s just Satan messing with mind.  Actually, that’s probably quite true.  Regardless.  What happens now?  This week is going to be crazy.

And then the phone rings.

And then everything changes. 

Alex is bringing me my cell phone (my connection to people and the outside world)  and Smallville season 4.  My roommate walks in.  I hug him and he says it’s good to see me (it’s great to see him too!).  I then share with him this piece of writing…and he tells me it’s random and I need to go skinny-dipping.  And he says I’m random.

regardless, God knows what i need, and sometimes he delivers me.  other times, he just just gets me through the famine (Psalm 33: 19).  anyway.  i'm going to go call my parents and tell them i love them...after i tell joren about the 50's rockstar i met while i tore up a cajun man's water damaged wood floor. 

facebook is evil.

Currently Listening This Is The Blues Harmonica, Vol. 2 By Various Artists i'm not really listening to it, i'm in the library, but it would go well with what i'm talking about. see related

>david sang the blues<

after chapel today, i was walking over here to the libary to work the lunch shift, i remember reading Psalms this morning, when it hit me:  david sang the blues.  let me explain:  this past weekend, i went to chicago, and while there we stopped by a jazz/blues store that was amazing.  it was just some hole in the wall place with thousands of records and cd's devoted to Chicago Jazz and Blues.  While my amazing girlfirend and her roomie (she's amazing too, but just a different kind of amazing, as in the "i think you're a cool friend" not in a "i think you're a cool friend who i want to date and see what God has for us" way...yeah...you know what i mean, just keep reading) went around the jazz section like a 10 year old who just discovered toys r' us, i wandered around the blues section, due to my love of the harmonica (especially my Hohner Special 20 Marine Band which is safely resting in my pocket, as always).  I found a biography on B.B. King, and after flipping through it, i read something i really liked.  So i wrote it down on a brown paper bag and this is what he said:

"The blues came about 'cause people have problems, problems with money, problems with love --and as long as people have problems, people gonna be playing the blues.  Doesn't paint the pretty pictures other music does --it gets right down to the point, down to the music.  The simplicity makes it real.  The blues ain't no put on, it tells you the stories about real things."

And that got me.  When i'm upset, or depressd, or frustrated, or stressed, what do i do?  i pull out my harmonica and let my emotions pour into her, and she in turn translates it into some moanful tune.  All this to say,  that when i read Psalms this morning and after chapel, that David was the same way. He had problems, he struggled and was frustrated and angry and broken hearted...and his reaction was to write a song to his Father telling him about it.  I mean, c'mon, read some of the Psalms...especially some in the 50's...i was reading Psalm 51 and 53...the sorrow and angst behind it is beautiful.  But the thing i love about it all is this:  we have hope!  Notice the use of the exclamation point...i'll do it again, this time notice the use of capital letters and the multiple exclamatoin points to tie it all off...WE HAVE HOPE!!!  People and events that go down in our lives might bring us down, but we know a God who loves us with steadfast love that endures through any and all situations, and he will get us through those situations where we feel like pulling out the harmonica and expressing our frustration into a tin-can sandwhich of an instrument.  We need to place our faith in that hope.