waking up

Wow.

I’ve discovered that this is a means for me to dodge connecting with God.

Elton says, “Often times, in our pursuit of God, we end up pursuing everything but God.”

I just made the bombest beef stew ever.

I like to think I’m wise. I think it would be nice to hear people say that about me, because part of me believes it’s true, and that it means I’m worth something. But the other part of me says, “Warren, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing half the time. You don’t even have your own life figured out.” And this is true, too.

So I wonder, how could someone be wise, yet foolish? Weird, huh? So I went looking for some answers on this matter…

And James says God is the giver of wisdom. That means it comes from Heaven, or not us, and it is divine. And Paul says that Christ is the wisdom of God for us, so this means that it is as accessible to us as Jesus was real. And also that only the Spirit knows the deep things of God, which means that true wisdom comes from deep inside of us. So there is this kind of wisdom that is specifically Christ/Spirit/God-given wisdom, rooted in how He has revealed and continues to reveal Himself to us.

And then Paul also says, that to become wise, one must become a fool. Hahaha… I laugh because it sounds so ridiculous to put it that way. But in it, he beautifully shows that, somehow, heavenly wisdom only comes through earthly foolishness. Paul confirms this, and says that the Cross is foolishness to Gentiles (everyone who didn’t already have an idea of the God of Israel), and that this foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. So what is this wisdom? And how is the wisdom of God different from the wisdom of men?

Most people agree on the general definition that wisdom is applied knowledge, or some kind of enlightenment. That it’s this idea that wisdom is useless unless it is lived.

In the meantime, I find myself thinking about my life, and whether I am living it right or not. I always ask God to give me clarity and insight and perspective, but the whole time I’m hoping for a booming voice or a burning bush. Then I read this article that Nate posted:

***

This past Saturday, my husband nearly died.

On Saturday evening August 26, he was in the Lexington, Kentucky airport returning to Atlanta and learned that his flight—the last one out that night—was cancelled. He was given a choice of a 6:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. flight for the next morning. He said he wanted to hurry home to see us, but hesitated at the thought of getting to the airport early enough for a 6:00 flight and decided on the one at nine.

When he arrived the next morning, he was denied entry to the terminal by what was an unexpected and alarming number of emergency personnel. Then the news broke—the 6:00 a.m. flight was Delta-Comair 5191 that crashed on takeoff, killing 49 of the 50 people onboard.

When he got home to Atlanta much later that night, he told me that the man in line ahead of him asked for the early ticket and lost his life. He said he didn’t know his name, but kept thinking of his face. My knees went rubbery as I sat there listening to him talk, and I watched the whole story unfolding on the news. My husband came within a hair’s breadth of being on that plane. “Do you want the 6:00 a.m. or the 9:00 a.m. flight?” he’d been asked, and had a 50/50 chance of living or dying in the answer he gave.

I thanked God, of course, that my husband is still among the living and breathing. But still, it was a weird sort of say “thank you.” How do you say thanks for the preservation of one life in the midst of the loss of 49 others? “Thanks that such a horrible thing didn’t happen to us” seems a selfish sort of prayer. I’m profoundly grateful my husband will get to see the face of his unborn child, which he almost didn’t. But what of the newlywed couple just starting a brand new life who were on that plane?

It was problematic, too, when the story got out and some of our friends and family mentioned to us that God spared my husband’s life for a reason, that there is some grand, unfulfilled purpose in his life, something he must do, and this was made more obvious when his life was spared. “You should really pray to discern what that purpose is,” they told us.

Now, while I certainly don’t believe in random fate pushing us all about the stage of life like so many dust bunnies swept up by some clown with a cosmic broom, I wonder about that statement. I wonder if the fact that my husband is alive today and the guy ahead of him in line is not, really means any more than just that. Surely my husband wasn’t the only one in line God was looking out for or the only one God cared about. Surely my husband wasn’t the only one with unfulfilled dreams and purposes standing in that line at the airport, trying to get home to Atlanta.

Since we’ve been married, we’ve seen a lot of unexpected, tragic losses in our lives: death, divorce, illness, betrayal, broken dreams. As a result, one of our personal catchphrases has become “life sucks, but God is good.” In this world, people die too young and too soon. Bad things happen to good people. Bad people get away with doing horrible things. There is no perfection, no utopia, no protection from the reality of evil and good co-existing side by side in this world. It is why, like Saint Augustine, I believe our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. It is why I believe in heaven.

Maybe my husband’s life was spared because there is some great, unfulfilled plan for him that still must unfold. Or maybe it was just not his day to die. I’m not really sure.

When he and I talked after he got home, he mentioned that the biggest impact this had on him was making him realize that we can only tangibly affect the present. “Sure,” he told me. “I can strive to do good work, choose to raise children and instill ideals in them that might outlive me into the future. But, it’s really the day to day life, the present tense where I have the most impact.”

And maybe that’s the big lesson to take away from our brush with death: this minute is all any of us have to work with, really. As Lawrence Scupoli writes in his work The Spiritual Combat, “God has granted you the morning, but he does not promise the evening. Spend each day as if it were your last.”

So today, I’m offering up prayers for the souls of the victims of Flight 5191, as well as their families. Our family could have too easily been among their numbers. And I’m thankful, too, for the reminder that what matters most to God is not whether or not we figure out what great, grand plan he has for our lives in the future. What matters to God is what we do with this day, this hour, this moment, this breath. You never know when it could be your last.

-from Relevant

***

And this article prompted me to question my motives in asking God for these sights and sounds… Rachel said that sometimes people feel these really strong callings, but she has just kinda gone through most of life without knowing what the heck was going on, only to see that in hindsight, God had gotten her through many messy situations. I wondered at that. I think that calls for us to praise God, as we look back on things that have happened, where we know God was watching out for us.

And yet we believe that God is sovereign, that His will reigns supreme. And as amazing as that idea is, we still get caught up in thinking God is out to make us happy… Somehow there is a fine line we cross, between contentment and happiness.

Ecclesiastes 7:14a

“When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.”

And this follows to my first point:

Ecclesiastes 7:14b

“Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future.”

I don’t know exactly how he arrives at the “therefore”–maybe it’s simply because we can’t control how life happens… Anyway, the Teacher (some say Solomon) ends up saying that life pretty much comes down to fearing God, and that happy and sad people, wise and foolish people–all will face the tough stuff in life, and all will die. And at first he thought that wisdom didn’t matter because we all face difficulty anyway. But later, he kinda refines that statement by saying that wisdom is better than strength, because in a war, the strength of one side was overtaken by wisdom. And this is true to us, too, because I think we can all agree that it’s foolish to just muscle through life and expect to come out a success. Life is not under our control.

So there’s really no question why we should value wisdom. We value it beacuse it’s all we have to get through life.

And the Corinthians seemed to value wisdom a lot… Yet Paul chastised them, and told them the wisdom of men was not to be praised. And this is how Paul mocks the wisdom of men.

1 Corinthians 3:18-23

“Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’; and again, ‘The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.’ So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”

He says that because Christ is in us, we have everything we desire. We know everything we question. We claim so little while we belong to God.

All are yours.

Praxis

Praxis is a complex activity by which individuals create culture and society, and become critically conscious human beings. Praxis comprises a cycle of action-reflection-action which is central to liberatory education. Characteristics of praxis include self-determination (as opposed to coercion), intentionality (as opposed to reaction), creativity (as opposed to homogeneity), and rationality (as opposed to chance).

Liberatory Education

Education which is liberatory encourages learners to challenge and change the world, not merely uncritically adapt themselves to it. The content and purpose of liberatory education is the collective responsibility of learners, teachers, and the community alike who, through dialogue, seek political, as well as economic and personal empowerment. Programs of liberatory education support and compliment larger social struggles for liberation.

-from Wikipedia