Viva La Vida Al Máximo

I want you to imagine that you've already lived your entire life.
As you look back on the many years you've spent on this earth, you see that you've wasted much of your time, and disregarded many of the blessings which you were given. Without making an effort, you allowed many of the opportunities which you had to help others and to accomplish great things to simply expire, leaving you only with the unsatisfiable contemplation of what could have been.

Now I want you to continue imagining that by some miracle you were given a second chance, and were sent back in time to this very moment, to relive the years of your life in a more productive and meaningful way. Like Scrooge waking from his visions on Christmas day, there is now an inextinguishable eagerness in your heart to live every second in a way that is more pleasing to God, and more beneficial for every man and woman upon whom the light of your influence has a chance to shine.

Now quit imaging, and begin living this way for today and for as long as you live. Never again say that you wish you could go back five or ten years into the past to do things differently. Instead, thank God that you still have yet to live every moment of your life from this day on.



”Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord…”
-Colossians 3:22

“Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them”—
before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
when people are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags itself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.
Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”
-Ecclesiastes 12:1-7

*The first section of Ecclesiastes 12 is full of figurative language describing the process of getting old and losing things such as hearing and sight. So I wanted to include this passage as a reminder to serve God now.

Meeting Monday

This morning my alarm clock went off at 4:30am. Slowly my eyes and mind were able to muster enough alertness for me to attempt my Bible reading and memorization. At 5:00am I took the plunge out of my warm bed and proceeded with my workday routine of getting dressed, making breakfast, and preparing a lunch. Before I left for work at 5:45am I had a little free time and almost considered updating my status on facebook to express how tired I was after a weekend of camping; and how dearly I wished I could have slept some more. But my mind was still too numb to artfully express the thought; and my disposition was still so longing for the wrong side of the bed which I had awoken on, that I was unable to construct any sort of positive conclusion.

So with my cell phone lighting the ground before my feet ― I stepped outside to meet the 28° windchilled pre-dawn twilight.

As usual I arrived at work a little early. So I just sat in my truck and waited for the arrival of my coworkers and the keys which unlock the door to the employee time-card.

The one-hour-and-ten-minute-slow clock on my truck soon read "4:54", and yet none of my coworkers had arrived. It was a Monday morning though, so I didn't think too much of their tardiness. So I waited some more. And some more. And some more still.

I waited until 6:30am and besides the arrival and departure of a truck driver, no one else ever showed up. For some reason never in any way communicated to me, this was a no-work day. So I returned home with the first glimpse of the eastern sunlight shining through my truck's rear window. Once I got home and had climbed back into my warm bed I discovered something awful...
I was now fully awake.

Now warm and with a due smile on my face, I can tell of these circumstances.  I smile because it is funny; and because I am glad that I was able to learn a lesson from all of this. Despite my worrying and my dreading of the coming work day; my work day never came to be. Many worries in life are this way. We can spend hours fussing about any great number of things which will never happen. We should instead trust in God, and let come what may.


Time for a nap. :)

Work Shoes

Let me tell you about these shoes….

With the preparation for a move comes many decisions. Decisions about which stuff to bring, which stuff to give to my younger brothers, and which stuff to throw away. Looking at the above picture, you might think that the fate of these shoes is not only obviously the latter of the choices, it is also a bit overdue in the making. But you don’t know their story. Let me tell you about these shoes….

The year was 2004. My older brother Michael was working his first job, as a cook at the Pizza Hut in North Topeka. Anyone who has ever worked fast food knows that one of the employee’s required out-of-pocket expenses is some black slip-resistant shoes. Often employers have a program where money can be withheld from your paycheck to purchase shoes which are usually more comfortable, more stylish, and cheaper then the selection at your local Wal-Mart shoe department. So from a Pizza Hut employee catalog, Michael bought these shoes.

It wasn’t long before I turned 16 and also entered the workforce. In January of 2005 I became a pizza-making apprentice under my brother’s training. Regretfully, I opted for a pair of not-so-stylish and not-so-comfortable shoes from K-mart. The long shifts (sometimes 12 hours with no breaks) were murdering my feet, so I quickly commandeered his shoes when Michael found a new job at Ace Hardware.

Some time later, Michael once again required the use of these shoes. On top of working full time at Ace, he also picked up a part time job as a fry cook for Sonic over the summer. So he would wear the shoes during the times he worked at Sonic, and I would use them whenever they were available to me. They saw a lot of use that summer. Finally, about two years after they were purchased I escaped Pizza Hut; and the shoes went into temporary retirement. They moved with Michael and I to Denver in August of 2008; where they periodically saw some use being the comfortable and quick-to-slip-on shoes that they were. Denver was an expensive place to live, and it was hard for me to find a job at first. So I lowered my job search standards back down to fast food; and in May of 2009 the shoes were once again employed full time. Actually that summer they became employed overtime. I worked three jobs for awhile that summer. Wendy's, Subway, and finally a third as the front desk clerk overnight at a Comfort Suites hotel. My job at the hotel didn’t require non-slip shoes though, so these shoes got a little rest. I was soon stabilizing financially, and was able settle down to working at Subway only. And then I had my bike accident…. Though it only would cover a portion of the medical costs, I had to sell my car. Which meant walking to work. Getting to Subway was a tedious 40 minute walk each way. And believe me, I walk fast. Since I worked in these shoes, I also walked in these shoes. The speed-walking commutes I made to work five days each week were starting to take a toll on these shoes which was many times greater than what the several thousand hours of employed standing had already done. The padding behind the heels started to fall out, which caused the comfort level of the shoes to fade almost as quickly as the once non-slip souls beneath my feet. Seven or so months later I was able to start biking again; but so much damage was already done. Still I took the shoes with me when I moved back to Kansas at the end of August, 2010.

Though living in Kansas is cheaper, I still needed to work. So these shoes accompanied me as I found a job at another Subway, and eventually also at Red Lobster. When I first got the job at Red Lobster I used the shoes which I had purchased long before at K-mart. They were almost never used, and looked much more presentable than this worn pair. But that didn’t last long since they were still much more uncomfortable than the worn pair. I would just have to be careful walking on slick floors, and hope nobody looked at my feet. Red Lobster puts more wear on shoes than a standing only fast food job would; so again their stability started to decline.

So here we are eight years after Michael originally bought them. What you see in these pictures is what the shoes look like today. Many times throughout the last year I nearly broke down and bought a new pair of work shoes. But each time the comfort and ease of these ones called back to me. I guess in that regard, these shoes are much like living here in Topeka. There are better places to live; but Topeka is comfortable, cheap, and what I’m use to. So, after learning the story behind these shoes I hope you will understand my choice when deciding their fate. You have to consider that it is hard to throw away memories; and besides, my younger brother Thomas might be getting a job in a few years. So…

.

.

.

.                                             GOODBYE!

Restoration

Yesterday I was reading from the book of Luke when a particular verse caught my eye. The verse is Luke 18:8, or rather the last half of verse 8, which reads:       
            “However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”
It seems every time I read the Bible, I discover something as if I had just seen it for the first time . I think this verse caught my eye yesterday because earlier I had been reading in the Old Testament about the flood, and about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. I shudder whenever I picture a world where the light of the righteous was as faint as it was in the times of Noah and Lot; yet I have always taken comfort in my belief that times of such universal evil are gone, never to return.  The question posed in Luke 18:8 disturbed this comfort in my mind. I know from other verses that there will always be Christians until the day Jesus returns; but this question alludes to the possibility that the Church could some day just be a dwindling light. And that troubles me.

I should state that I am an optimist. I have long disliked the defeatist attitude often expressed in the Church when people talk about how much worse things are than they use to be; and how they use that fact to theorize about how bad things are sure get in my lifetime. Things might get worse; but many people talk as if that’s inevitable, and that all we can do is bunker down until Jesus returns. I combat such thoughts with the argument that “at many points in history things were very bad, and then they got better.” Look at the reformation. Look at the restoration. In both cases the Church was more endangered than it is now; and then the dedication and zeal of righteous people turned things around. I believe that the same thing can happen today! In fact I think things are lining up perfectly for a new restoration. All across the world, people are losing trust in governments, money, and the stability of life which they have always known. Also, even many who don’t claim to believe in God cannot help but admit that the current lack of morals on an international scale is extremely sad. Really, the ingredients are perfect for a big turn around. But as Jesus mentioned in Luke 10:2,  the people needed to foster in this change are lacking. The Reformation wouldn’t have taken place without men like Martin Luther, and the Restoration wouldn’t have taken place without men like Alexander Campbell. Without such people nothing would have changed. So yes, as long as we Christians hide our heads in the sand, things will continually go down hill until they get as bad as people say they’ll be. I don’t want to see that happen! I don’t want to read Luke 18:8 and decide that things can only get worse no matter what I do. I take this verse as a challenge for me to do my best to help the Church grow and to see that faith remains strong on the earth as long as I can. I believe things will definitely get better if we only stop acting like we’ve already lost. This is our chance to turn things around. I know we can do it! It is a time for a new restoration of the Church.

Good thoughts from far away

I just wanted to share a link from my sister’s blog Postcards From Deutschland. She has spent the last eight months as a foreign exchange student in Germany, and has used her blog to share some of her thoughts and snazzy photos. I begin to appreciate the convenience of modern technology more than ever, when I realize the blessing of being able to share thoughts and experiences while separated by thousands of miles.

She always has some great thoughts, but I especially appreciate her latest post about becoming better through the trials that we face. This is a lesson I have been learning more and more over the last year, and I am thankful for the encouragement I get by hearing about it from someone who is able to express the idea much better than I can.

Her latest post is titled
”When Surreality Becomes Reality”

The Unfairness of Life

Last night I was awakened by thirst at 2:30 in the morning. After getting a drink I found it difficult to get back to sleep; and as I lay sleepless in bed this thought ran across my mind….

Many times when people are faced with great hardship and troubles in their lives, they will ask God: "What have I done to deserve this?"
 
I would say to those people that their question sounds an awful lot like one which I often find myself asking. Jesus was sinless and perfect, yet he chose to die a horrible death so that we may be forgiven of all our many sins. What did we do to deserve this?
 
While I can never give a definite answer for the first question, the answer to the second is simple.... "Nothing".

Nothing we have ever done, or ever will do can cause us to deserve the great sacrifice which Jesus made on our behalves! What he did, he did out of an incomprehensible.
love for us all. That love is such a great gift that it overshadows any hardships we may face in this life; and it makes any questions about why we have such hardships seem unimportant. Whenever life seems difficult, we must remember that as long as we faithfully serve God, whatever difficulties we encounter will work out for good according to God's will. That is a very reassuring thought to all who have faith!
God's love is such a great gift that we should never worry about what we do or don't deserve. For we are unfairly blessed, and any attempt to measure out what we deserve will reveal only our debt to love God and others.

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This thought really brings the lyrics of a Relient K song to my mind.

"The beauty of Grace is that it makes life unfair."

Also, These scriptures....

"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."
-Romans 8:28

"....But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"
-Romans 8:37-39