Number 9

Ok, one more post before June expires. Wow. June. Gone.

It doesn't seem as late in the year as it really is. (In a couple days we'll be closer to '09 than we are to '07). I think that's because I'm waiting for summer vacation to start. Back home summer started the second week of June. Now here it won't start until the third week of July. Even then, I'll be really busy and time with push me along, like exiting a crowded Tokyo train.

I discovered something yesterday, a small revelation but an important one. I've noticed now with the eyes of retrospect that my relationship with God has been changing, almost in the same way the seasons change. This is not a hot to cold to hot sort of thing, it’s about the evolution of it. The seasons change slowly, but there’re always jumps and lulls of illogic. Maybe it hasn’t been as volatile as Minnesota’s change of seasons, but that really is the point. It’s been changing slow enough that I haven’t been able to identify it until after the fact.

Me and the Lord have been doing well – we’ve been talking a lot and I’ve been offering up quite a few things. Here’s the problem though: being surrounded by so many non-Christians, by so many atheists, by a very small and sporadically spaced network, by a very un-Biblical nation has made me think in relativity. I feel like I’ve already arrived.

This is very dangerous. It doesn’t make me cocky, it doesn’t make me look down on anyone – these people are my best friends - , it doesn’t make me doubt. What I have done is allow myself to become complacent. I’m not trying to be more like Christ because I feel he’s just cool with where I’m at. Arrived.

I have fallen on grace, and I always will, and it will always be the only thing that will save me. But Jesus has also called me to be more like him and last time I read the gospels Jesus wasn’t getting drunk or womanizing. I can still be cool without a cigarette behind my ear.

Now I’m not going to abandon my edge, and I’m not going to betray my personality. God made me unique and I will celebrate this fearfully and wonderfully created life. I just want to love God and love his ways more than I love the world.

God, I need you so much right now. I have so many needs that I’m trying to fill under my own power, and I’m just not making it. There’s always holes and as soon as one’s plugged the water starts spilling out somewhere else and I’ve run out of fingers. Hold me tighter. Crawl into that empty bed before me. Set me upon the world with clarity of purpose and a powerhouse of discipline. Fill my lungs with your cleaner air. Sharpen my mind and deepen my love. Love me until it spills over the edges and floods the lives of the people around me.

You, Lord, and not me.

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