I miss the sound of your voice.

I've had Matt Nathanson's "Come On Get Higher" stuck in my head on repeat for the last two weeks.  It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. I LOVE that song! haha.

I have tried about 5 times to write a new blog on here, but each of them ended up somewhere I didn't want them to be. They didn't say what I wanted them to say. I hate that it's always that way. I can't ever say what I mean. I wish there was a way to capture incoherent thought and feelings and transplant it into someone else's head. It would make things easier. Maybe we would understand a each other a little more.

I was thinking this earlier while I set a record for most amount of time on the phone tonight, but I'm ok with it. :) I just wish that as always, I wasn't so awkward on the phone. Especially when I have to get off the phone. Thats the worst. Yish. Me and the forming of verbal words into coherent sentences = fail. 

These past couple days I've taken up reading again because its been so nice outside that all I want to do is lay on blankets and read. I've been alternating between Anthony Buzzard's The Doctrine of the Trinity (Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound) and Love This, and Masquerade. The latter being a teen book about quasi-vampire manhattan elite teen socialite fallen angels. If you're thinking that list seems a tad incongruent, its only because it is. I guess I needed something to balance it out. 

I'm really tired all of a sudden, so I think I'm just going to write more on this tomorrow. Yes. Lovely.

It made my head ache. It was that that great.

Today found itself midwest gray missing southern sky blue. Maybe that was just me. 

I always dislike the past couple days after an event (in this case, ABC-I) because it takes me a while to get used to having nothing to do and no one around. It takes me a while to get used to the nothing. It sounds horrible, and a little more than slightly depressing, but thats only because it is. This is why something had to give. This is why, as terrifying, and uncertain and sad it will be for Jaymin and I to move, it will be so worth it. It will be something new. Something with purpose and people. There isn't much of that here right now. 

Although to be completely honest, I think ABC-I worked on me this year. I'm only a couple credits short of my degree from there, I am trying to see if it would work out that I could go there this fall semester to finish before moving with Jaymin. I just don't know how the finances would work out, seeing as though I don't have any right now. It would certainly make my part of the move easier, to already have condensed most of my stuff and have it only a couple hours away. Plus, its something I've been wanting to do for awhile now, I was just afraid that I would be asked to stay here, that my dad or my grandparents would want me to stay, and that I wouldnt be able to say no. Silly reasoning, I know, but its a big part of why I left to begin with. I hate disappointing people. 

Just something I've been thinking about. 

I've been thinking about too many things recently, and I dont always know what to do with these manic thoughts spinning behind my eyes, so it helps to vent some of them, sometimes. I kind of feel like my brain only has two settings, swirling mess, or vapid vacuum. I'm either thinking too much or not at all, and I wish there was a medium setting. haha. 

I hope everything turns out alright. I am sure it will. 

"All I ever wanted was to know what to do." -Dave Eggers

This is what I was trying to say at ABC-I. It just didn't happen. Sucktastic. I thought you might appreciate reading it though Jaymin.

Direction Notes

Tonight we’re going to talk about direction, which I thought was a great topic to talk about, because I don’t know about you, but I’m still looking for mine. So all this stuff we’re going to be talking about, I’m learning too. I’ve gotten to the age where all my friends are graduating colleges and getting real careers or getting married or having babies...beautiful perfect babies with comic book names. And I’m still turning circles trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. 

Today we are going to talk about someone who had direction, it was just the wrong one.

In Acts 7 we have the stoning of Stephen, but we’re going to be focusing on Saul’s role in what happened. A little background information, Stephen is the first martyr for jesus, he gave a passionate speech that ended up really wounding the pharisees pride and they ended up stoning him for it. We’re coming in just before that happened. 

 

 54When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56"Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."

 57At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.

 59While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 60Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep.

1And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.

Now, it seems bad enough, here we have Saul, watching and even approving of the murder of a Prophet of God. Lets look a little deeper into that.

After 6 AD the Romans outlawed unaccounted for capital punishment within the Jewish community, in order stop vigilantes. So after that the Jews had to report and account for the people who were put to death, and the way they would do this was by throwing their coats at the feet of the person who was going to take responsibility for this. That, in this case was Saul. 

Now, this is made even more interesting because Saul is a student of Gamaliel, who was a famous and hugely respected Rabbi and member of the Sanhedrin, the jewish council at the time. 

Two chapters earlier we see that some members of the Sanhedrin wanted to put the apostles, and people preaching about Jesus--one of which was Stephen-- to death, and Gamaliel stood up and spoke for them, saying to leave them alone. To let them go, because if what the apostles were preaching was false like so many other disciples of random people claiming to be the messiah, then it would fail, it wouldn’t last. You see, Jesus wasn’t the first man to go around claiming to be the Messiah that the Jews were waiting for. Gamaliel told the Sanhendrin that if these men were false, God would take care of it like he did the others. 

And here we have Saul was so turned around that he was going against his teacher...he was defying the judgement of Gamaliel…This was unheard of. I can’t even think of a good analogy for it, it just didn’t happen.

And not only did Saul act against Gamaliel in this act, but he also began hunting down and persecuting others involved in The Way, which was what the Jesus movement was called at the time. He was looking for anyone he thought might be a threat to his religion, to his lifestyle, he went to their houses, door to door, finding people who believed in Jesus’ message and even doing that in his own country wasn’t enough, he began to travel to others and bring them back to Jerusalem for imprisonment… 

HE WAS GOING SO FAR THE WRONG WAY HE WAS CROSSING STATE LINES! haha. 

Here is a man that was not going in the right direction. 

But with a little help he gets turned around

In Acts 9 things change for Saul. 

1Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

 5"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.

   "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. 6"Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

 7The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

 10In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, "Ananias!"
      "Yes, Lord," he answered.

 11The Lord told him, "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight."

 13"Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name."

 15But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel.

This is Saul finding his direction. His purpose. Jesus himself lays it out for him. From then on things go pretty quickly for Saul, who is now called Paul, he starts preaching Jesus and within a couple weeks he already had the people he was working with before wanting to kill him. He’d found his direction.

Now, lets hope none of us have to be blinded to find out which way we should be going. I’d prefer that none of us send death threats to each other as well.

Switching gears a little bit,

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote- All men want, not something to DO WITH, but something to DO, or rather, something to BE.”

Direction might start with finding somewhere to go, or something to do...but it’s sustained by finding out who to be. 

 

When you know who you are, what you are here for, what you stand for--then your actions will naturally coincide with that a little bit easier. When you know that you are loved, blessed, set apart from all the crap in this world...that you are above that...that God made to you be someone to show his love in this world, today, to act out his mercy and grace and his compassion everyday with everyone around…that even though its difficult and even though you will make mistakes, you will have problems, it will be a constant daily battle...but you’re strong enough for it.  When you know that, your direction, it starts becoming a little clearer.

Saul was created to be a preacher of the kingdom--a chosen instrument, of jesus and his love and his message. Saul was meant to travel his world and preach to all sorts of people… He was created to change the world. 

Another thing to note is that Saul had all of this zeal, and all of this passion already in him, as it says--even following christians out of the country to persecute them. He was already using some of his passion, He was just going the wrong way. He hadn’t found his purpose, his direction. 

His story wasn’t easy. His direction wasn’t a path of little resistance. The verse after the one we read, Acts 9, Jesus is still speaking….and says: “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."

 Wouldn’t that be lovely, Jesus himself, saying...man, this is going to be hard. Oh, thanks Jesus, nice to know.

Saul’s story had action and tragedy and love and forgiveness and violence and all sorts of mess that makes it memorable. That makes him set apart. We read it in the bible, or if you come to ABC you read about him in textbooks and it all seems very monotone and oddly like the sound of your 3rd grade sunday school teachers voice--the one with the slight mustache that you couldn’t not look at...or maybe thats just me. But it seems very boring until you put it in the context that this was a man who lived and breathed his passion, who embraced every opportunity to live up to what he was meant to be, to constantly follow the direction that God laid out for his life. A man with a story so powerfully moving, so extraordinary that we read about it almost two thousand years later.

“Le monde est un livre dont chaque pas on ouvre un page.”

The world is a book, each step opens a page for us.

Awesome things happen in your life when you find your direction. When you let God help you to become what you were made to be.