Martha, Martha

     I have had issues for a long time about worry and fear. However, I found a little bit of solace through the story of Martha, her sister Mary, and Jesus. Found at the end of Luke 10, it is a story familiar to most of us on some level. Jesus comes to visit these sisters, and Martha tries to be the good host and is somewhat flustered trying to do it. Her sister Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to him speak and teach. Martha gets annoyed with her sister, and asks Jesus to make Mary help her.

     However, this is not what Jesus does. Rather, he says,“Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42 NIV)

     So what place does my anxiety have in my life, rightfully? "Few things are needed, or indeed only one," and that One loves me far too much to want me to worry about Him. While it is not that easy to get rid of worry, I think that every bit helps.

Mortalitly

   Long have I considered mortality a strange thing. It gives meaning to life, because we only have so much time to get everything that we want to done, so we live with it hanging over us. Most people would rather live longer if possible, and yet I, as a nerd, of course, have seen my fair share of sci-fi movies exploring immortality. Most of the writers came to the same conclusion, however. Immortality is a curse if it be layed upon any on this earth.

   Now, where did this come from? I mean, we use modern medicine to give us just a little more time, and the idea of extended life isn't exactly new to this century. Juan Ponce De Leon came to South America in search of the fountain of youth, the key to eternal young life. While alchemy is most famous for the pursuit of turning common metals of little worth into gold, many alchemists also sought out the key to living forever. Even some early doctors, astrologers, and 'magicians' sought out this. Perhaps it is pulled from our ancient heritage, with lifespans that have slowly dwindled down from the first two humans, who would have lived forever had they not sinned. 

   But how could earthly immortality ever end in good? If one person could achieve it, they would have to watch all they loved die around them, and then watch their civilization die, and if they were not yet mad and hermits, watch more civilizations rise and fall, rise and fall, until it all ended someday. Madness would be sure to strike them eventually, because how much can the human mind endure? We were made for a lifespan of roughly "threescore and ten" years (70 in layman's terms), so how many years past that could a mind survive sane? Would they survive to 200 years, or even 150? 

   Say, however, that you did not just make one person immortal, you made the whole world immortal, or something like just the rich or the smartest. Suppose that you could account for the brain, at least for a few hundred years or so, and keep it from going mad, and yet still intact. How would this be good, either? With the whole world immortal, society would fall into overpopulation, and then cruel dictatorships would arise, demanding population control, in any form it takes, with a likely output in eugenics. With just the few as immortal, the world would fall into an even crueller heirarchy. Money would dictate your life, and the few would live in luxury while the rest rotted in ignorance, depravity, and poverty. The rich would oppress the already poor to stay rich and not have to share. The brilliant would run out of ideas, eventually, and with the general population being uneducated in an effort by the rich to control them (because stupid people don't fight or think for themselves). Society would crawl to stagnation. The upper class would try to educate a chosen few, to have new ideas, but it is almost impossible to make a genius. Even if they did succeed in making geniuses, half of genius is free thinking, so this new batch of geniuses would be severely controlled and therefore unable to think truly freely, not to mention they would have so many ego problems to add to the already stinking humanity.
   And why do we delude ourselves in thinking any more time will help? In most cases, those who want more time the most are the ones who used the time given to them for the least. The ones who 'wasted' their lives, who could have done more with it, but didn't, and regret it. Either that, or they waste most of their life seeking it, only to fail in misery. Do these people deserve immortality, because what are the chances that furthering of their lives will actually get them to do anything with themselves? It is the same as leadership; those who wish to lead are often least fit to do it, and those who seek immortality are likely those who deserve it least.
    But then again, does anyone deserve immortality? Time changes people, and someone who is kind in a normal lifespan may become bitter after a few centuries. It doesn't even take that much to change someone. If man if fallible, what says he deserves to be immortally fallible? Our own sick pride? Or is it fear?
    If a fear of death can lead to one wasting their entire life in search of futile immortality, how else can fear this great affect us? 

Circular Reasoning

   Ever talk to yourself? If you said no, think again. I'm pretty sure we all talk to ourselves sometimes, even just mentally. Even as children, we set up alter egos of ourselves and called them "imaginary friends". I do it a lot. It helps me to think through things. I even set up mental debates sometimes, with two extremes of whatever I am thinking of, and then I work out as many angles of the issue as I can see. It really doesn't offer a second insight, but it does sometimes take me down avenues I wouldn't normally travel.
   Well, today I just had a conversation with the air. This was just me, pacing for about forty-five minutes, ranting to the air about the logical pointlessness of pretty much everything. I did it because when I am emotionally unstable (which is more often than I like), this tends to be as an issue I cannot overcome. I figured that if I discussed it while level-headed, I could aide my future self in this aspect. Turns out it felt really good right now, too.
   So after a long path of one thing leading to another, I concluded that yes, life is mostly pointless, but life is better than the lack of it, happiness better than sorrow, and religion better than atheism. Not only is religion better than atheism, though, Christianity is better than other religions, and Jesus is better than Christianity (sorry if I just lost anyone...). It is better to be alive and do whatever it is God has decided for you, because it could possibly make someone's life out there a little less pointless to them. There really may not be any feasible reason to life while we live it, but we can't see the wheels of a car while we drive, either. We only know why the car rolls because we have stood outside it. We could try to figure it out while in the car if we had never been outside it, but we probably would come up with a number of conclusions (without other cars to look at out the windows, of course). It would be ridiculous for any grown human to think that the car moves because the road moves us to where we want, but how would we know otherwise if we had lived in the car our whole lives and never seen the outside. But say someone managed to figure out the car indeed had wheels, would it be illogical for him to conclude that they moved by magic, or by little mice running in wheels, or some equally ridiculous means?
   So no, I do not think we will find the "meaning of life" in its entirety. Because we are not God, and we cannot see all of time and all of humanity that ever was, is, or will be. Because no one has ever come back from death to say, "Hey! I found the meaning of life!" and they probably never will. But talking to yourself about it might help you get a little closer to finding it :)

Growing up

   For almost as long as I can remember, I have been trying to grow up faster. I had a tendency to be rather precocious when I was younger, and wanted nothing more than to get this "growing up" business over and done with. It seemed like a time when you are not taken seriously even though sometimes you have something good to say, and that frustrated me. So, I started a quest for learning. I love to learn, and love to share what I have learned with everyone. The words, "Did you know that..." have been my close, constant companion, along with all those lovely question words. I find that Rudyard Kipling summed it up quite well;

"I keep six honest serving-men

  (They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

  And How and Where and Who."

    And yet now as I get a little older, and am now having a bit more freedom, I am finding myself yearning for childhood. I want to just go have fun, to dance under the moonlight. I want to listen to my music loudly and I want to run, jump, and just generally be an idiot before I am expected to be confined by adulthood. I am finding myself wishing for health when I do not have it consistently, and each day I find myself in a state of almost tense resignation of another "episode." I worry about little things, and find that my precocious nature when I was younger has robbed me of, well, I am not quite sure, but there is something lost from it.
    God put this experience of "growing up" in our lives for a reason, though, even if I find my own lacking. I guess the world needs some people to grow up fast, but can I never be a child again? Even the adults with the most childish natures, I discover often have a much darker, deep-thinking side that they hide under the simplicity of childhood. Maybe the whole point of childhood is God showing us what he wants from us; that the world really isn't as big and complicated as we say it is, that some fears are silly, and that the best messages are often the simplest and most direct. That, devotion, is with one's whole heart given with a smile.
    But do I really want to go back to that state? I look back and find myself hopelessly naive, easily impressed upon, easily pricked to emotion, and oh, so stubborn. Perhaps it is good that I have grown up, but then again, perhaps it is good that I have not fully yet.
    And, did anyone ever notice that the years before 18 are oft described as "the best of one's life" and that we should enjoy them, and not waste our precious youth, and yet no one ever seems to want to go relive high school once beyond it? Ah, the irony...

Love

   That four-letter word that brought us each of us into existence.
Genesis 2:7 "Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."
    The one who loved me enough to create me even after all the sin of my ancestors, reaching back to Adam and Eve, had even greater love than that.
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
     Love so great. Think about love for a second. Perhaps not necessarily this great and pure love, but any love. All love. Everyone who has ever loved or been loved, all of it, from the beginning of time until this very second. It shapes our world, for what do we do in life but what we love? Our music says what we love, or what the musician loves, or what someone loves. We laugh because we love to. We cry when our love breaks our hearts. We are angry and sad when are love is violated, or when we cannot have what we love. Our possessions are ours because we love them, or we love the person who gave them to us too much to get rid of it. We do sports because we love them. We go places because we love them. And, when someone dares to interfere with what we love most dearly, watch out, world. 

     We are creatures of love, like God, in whose image we were made. It makes sense for our world to revolve around love, if you think about it that way. So, if love is what our world revolves around, why does it fall apart with so much love in it? Because we do not love the right things. The world is lost, and it run from the one who can love us the most. The world is scared that, if it accepts such pure love, that surely there must be a price for it, and a horrible price at that. That, if it shows its dirty side to this love, the love will not accept it. But love that pure, how can it not? This is the love that sets us on fire and gives us "peace that passes understanding" as strength and hope to want to, as a revival speaker a year or two ago so colorfully put it, "go attack hell itself with a supersoaker."

    Love so pure, love so bold, love so patient, love so kind... love we do not deserve. Love we can never earn nor fully learn for ourselves. Love that comforts and disciplines. 

     Love

     Where's God's? You know, don't you dare tell me otherwise, you Christian, you. 

     Most importantly, where's yours? 

     

     Love

     

Love: a tribute

She found me at my darkest hour
   Torn by the world around me, I was lost. My tears fell daily and were no more noticed than as an annoyance. All others had either forgotten me or moved on, except for two exceptional girls. One will be given her due credit on another date, but to the other, this is for her. She came from so far away, and such a move could only have been directed by God. I was broken, torn, abused, and lost with only a meager light to guide me, until I met her. I already said that she found me, which really describes it best. I was so far gone and shunned by all with self respect, but she reached out anyway. She saw my pain, my tears, and showed me what I needed most. Love, the pure love of God.
  She gave me smiles when I was down
  She gave me hope when the world was darkest
  She held me when I cried
  She never asked why I hurt, which was better than any well-meaning but misplaced condolences
  She showed me the joy in the outcasts and the beautifully different ones
  She showed me the beauty in being unique
  She showed me the love that brokenness can create
  She showed me the power of the imagination
  She challenged me to think deeper
  She understood my needs
   And she gave me the greatest gift any human can give to another, a view at God. I once heard a man say, "Do I love my wife more than I love Jesus? Honestly, I'm not sure, because so often I see Jesus through my wife." She showed me love so great, love for everyone (even those who tried to hurt her), for everything and anything created by our Lord. I still don't truly understand how such love could ever exist in a human, but it was there. I can say she paid more attention to me, but I don't think she loved me more than any other, her love for all was so great.
   She may be imperfect, forgetful, not always the wisest decision-maker, in pain, and basically just a human, but none of it mattered in the glaringly beautiful light of her love.
  To one of the best friends I have ever had, never stop loving. The world will be a far darker place if you do. I hope that you can bless someone else half as much as you did me, because the world does need you, even if it means one person at a time. Perhaps she does not agree with this description but, God bless you, my friend.
   God bless you, Taylor Neas.

Down the Rabbit Hole

   As my close friends know, I am obsessed with books. They are an escape from life and a fantastic portal to amazing places and people. One book I have only recently read, is Lewis Carroll (I think I spelled that right...) Alice In Wonderland. And yet, I had read modern novels extending the classic story, listened to music inspired by it, and have seen many such similar movies and t.v. series long before I ever touched the book. So why do I find it so, I suppose the best term would be, magnetic, and why have I for so long? The story of a young girl chasing a well-dressed rabbit who just happens to speak English down a gigantic hole into a fantastic world of opposites, nonsense, and fantastics, when summarized, sounds rather plain, but it is exciting nonetheless. Why? I have never seen the movie rendition (deemed to psychedelic for a child by my mother), and have read hundreds of stories of ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary) children passing through fantastical gateways to strange and backward worlds. Why is Wonderland so different?  This is one question that I cannot find an answer to. Perhaps it is its very nature, so different from our own world, that fascinates me. However, I must admit to have taken a dive down the rabbit hole of my imagination and visited it for myself. And, it is truly, amazingly fantastic.