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Resurrection

{ July 28, 2009 @ 8:20 pm } · { Breaking Free, Life, Moving Forward, Ramblings, Spirtual, depth }
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Summer is winding down, and the best thing for me this summer was coming to the realization that God is all about resurrection. 

Let me elaborate. 

When anything goes wrong according to our plans or whatever you want to call it, the same phrase is always said, “well maybe some good can come of it”.  I loathed this statement for so long, I mean really hated it.  I had heard it during a time when I decided that the world was out of control and I questioned whether this omniscient God I had learned about on a flannel board, knew what he was doing when he breathed life into dust, or left noah to reinhabit the earth. 

I was completely bitter that: my friend died, that my grammy dealt with chronic pain all her life, that the gap between wealth and poverty grows still, that there is so much injustice in the world, that my addictions and struggles consistently haunted me, that we seem to hurt people out of our own insecurity, that divorce plagues so many families.  Am i missing anything?  The list is long and painful.
When you break it down my frustration was with the brokenness of the human condition, it seemed to me that since the fall of man, this cycle of sin had taken over pushing us further from God who is life, and so in that slowly dieing. 

I began to question why I even believed in God, why Jesus’ life was so revolutionary.  Why had people who experienced the same thoughts and fears found hope in this man.  I had no peace, I mean I was having a hard time sleeping.  This was a big problem I withdrew from people. 

Finally after months of this, I found peace in resurrection.
It seemed so simple i even felt ignorant for having overlooked something that was central to the faith i claimed to have.  Maybe I hadn’t overlooked it as much as I had neglected to allow the resurrection to penetrate every aspect of my life.  I had neglected this part of the story labeling it irrelevant to me…. I mean i haven’t died…

So there i was just sitting there experiencing the life of Jesus seeing it unfold and the power of resurection hit me like a train.  I mean this is it this is why there is hope, God can turn death into life.  I was so mad that someone i loved died unexpectedly but God raises the dead.  The dieing world will be raised to life one day. 

I have no reason to be bitter because God loves so well he can change even the most terminal conditions into good.  And i know he can because he did with Jesus and does all the time in ways maybe we can’t even see.
You see the truth is i was at a point where I wasn’t sure I could have faith in God anymore, and well a God that is all about resurrection, I can have faith in him.  I can love him, and I can serve him.  A God that will raise me from the dead I can have faith in that.

And the results of that are peace.  And on the coatails of peace comes hope. 

it was a strange reaction…

{ January 26, 2008 @ 12:17 pm } · { depth }
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It is a cloudy, foggy, cold day in Tulsa.  I spent the night at a friends house last night with some other girls, and we had a good time.  I woke up this morning glad that the weather was gray.  I love this weather.  So I decided I wasn’t ready to go home yet and I got bundled up got my coffee and went to the river.  I walked across the bridge and onto the other side and sat on a bench looking out over the water.  I watched the birds fly in random patterns, then dive down simultaneously to catch fish, or maybe they just do it because it’s fun.  I listened to the noises of the factory behind me with its smoke rising high and blending in with the fog.  I listened to the river rushing over the rocks, and the cars driving on the street across the way.  I looked at downtown and saw only the bottom parts of the buildings as the fog hid the tops of them from me.  I breathed it all in.  I sat thinking about the week.  It has been a strange week, but then again what weeks do you ever get to the end saying…”that was everything i expected”?  I don’t think I”ve ever done that.  Goodthing to that would be pretty boring.
As I sat on the bench I recalled all the reactions of my week.  How I reacted to different things I was told, or the things that I saw.  I thought about the reactions of my friends, or even strangers.  There is so much that we react to, when things go bad we react negatively and when they go as we planned the reaction is positive.  But of all the hundreds of reactions that occur throughout the day it is the strange reactions that we remember.  When people choose to respond to something negative with an optimism we are moved.  And it is the people whose lives are not ruled by thoughtless reactions that we remember.  Those people that can step out of the circumstance and speak from a heart that sees more then just the immediate, but also the eternal.  maybe if we could ascend the situations that we find ourselves in for a moment and see things for what they are and hear things for what they are instead of the immediate emotion they provoke in us, then we would be able to respond from something deeper and more meaningful. 
Sometimes I think my immediate reaction is the deepest most authentic, but I think authenticity has never been an immediate thing, and it is more beneficial to the people I’m around to show them depth.  Just some thoughts on the kind of person I would like to be. 

“…I slipped away last night
Took me away from sight and the place I know.
All crushed upon my skin
This mess I put you in and the punch i thrown.
It was a strange reaction
for someone like you to remain on side
And in a chain reaction
I was down and calling for a place to hide….”  Coldplay “your love means everything”

peace love react