we were born for this

1.11.2011

President Jimmy Carter declared that the most pivotal catastrophe of the millenium is the growing chasm between the rich and the poor world wide. When 1 in 2 people lives on less than $2 a day, it makes the privileged "world" we are familiar with actually pretty small, eh?

the more i live, the more I get lost in the numbers of this world. you ever feel that way? there's a lot goin on with 6 billion people milling around all over the place. whenever i get a bright idea for myself, i get exhausted just imagining how i will stand out in a crowd that size (hey, we can't all be Taylor Swifts, ya know?). But there is one direction that is failproof... when I direct my energy towards helping those that can't help themselves.

whether you associate yourself with Jesus Christ and Christianity or not, the Bible is a fantastic read, but I'm gonna break it down for you: love God, love your neighbor, thats it. Jesus surrendered his immortality to live with us in our world and demonstrate just that- he encouraged us- GO and do likewise.

we have shining moments where love prospers (after tragedies primarily- but how ironic is that, it takes a something terrible to spur love?). One day a jet liner crashes... wait scratch that, if 100 jetliners crashed and 26,000 people were killed, the media would be all over it and we would all be forced to reflect and reassess our perspective toward life and others that day. But we get back to our own daily grind pretty quickly. Well, what if I told you its a fact that 26,575 CHILDREN die every day from poverty related causes. WHAT- How are we allowing that to happen EVERY day? That we don't treat this as an emergency-that's our crisis, but we don't, because they aren't oUr kids.
but our biggest mistake towards each other must be that we are indifferent to one another. Don't depersonalize the millions of faces of poverty.

"if you...spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will be like the noonday." isaiah 58:9-10

we were born for this, its not the government's job, its not the 'called's job, God asked us all, we should be the first responder to love.

the hole in the gospel by richard stearns is a read worth your time

24 years

{11.8.2010}

24 Years of hard walking and calloused eyes

unforgiving pavement haunted by the echoes of refrains come and gone, decoratively concealed with a managed ficticious perfectly practiced smile.

24 Years of writing and rewriting

definitions assigned by ineligible authors, input rendering life and death, authoring reality for yet another purposed life

24 Years of chasing sunsets

incessantly fading, tripping on an oblivion of treadmills in search of approval, groping around a perplexity of fallacy

24 Years of stop and go sprints

to launch this kite off into an airstream of freedom, to be weightless, and float on the soft swells of clouds straining against the single string holding it prisoner to earth.

But

24 years brought a new emancipation

hidden in the yellow and orange October woods of Georgia, a dawn treading dance that neither looked to the left or to the right for steely cold stares or nods of validation

24 years glanced over her shoulders, just for a second

and laughed at the rebellion of 19 and cried at self hatred and abuse of 16, 24 clung to the broken 22 and smiled at the innocence of 10.

24 held a box over her head

and hurled it to the ground with a choked laugh of hysteria, a freedom anthem 24 in the sky with diamonds and a pocket full of songs and new found liberty.

24 squinted against new boundless boundaries

pressures, expectations, rules, sizes, carbohydrates, and other restraining taboos flew out the window into the shrapnel of a 100 wars.

24 flew a new flag

of discovery, of questions, of intimacy, of self discovery and gratitude, all under the umbrella of one love, a creator holding the hand of a child walking into her destiny.

☮ ☮ ☮

i dare someone to write a pop song about this

Hey guess what- you want it? You got it. You feel it? Then do it. You crave it. Consume it. Follow your heart- go crazy. You deserve it! (sarcasm font).

Here's a thought: everything is permissible for me but not everything is beneficial (Paul in the Bible was the original writ).

Self denial allows you to dip into the spiritual and the spiritual might just be more fulfilling than all that s#@t you think is gonna change the way you feel.

Day 18 of a 21 day fast

why don't we fast more...

Jesus demonstrated the good life, we should try it more often

original love story

I love PDA. And all of these photos are the sweetest. But Frank Viola writes: "Yet the most powerful love story that any human has ever crafted pales in comparison to the epic romance that runs throughout your bible."

Put that Twilight poster awayyy, Jacob hasn't even survived his teens yet (acne is bound to strike), oh and fahgetabout The Notebook, turns out Allie didn't really have Alzheimers, she and Noah just fought so much in their marriage she was trying to block it out. BUT the ancient publication we call the bible contains an allegory running so severely and drastically deep concealing a dam of meaning, that tragically many will never understand it.

ok, so i am not THAT much of a skeptic, there really are lovely stories of people madly in love and absolutely committed to each other, but even these situations are merely an attempt of us, the created, to imitate what God our creator has played out before us and innately planted desire to love in our souls. Imagine that every plot of every romantic scenario is really just the human endeavor to display what we believe and feel, but is really just a pale shadow of what God is spotlighting throughout all of history.

Not a single word in the bible goes to waste. Every letter of every chapter is allegorical. Consider the introduction of Eve into the world. Eve was brought forth from Adam's side. Parallel this with the church (often referred to as the bride) within Christ. This would bring a whole new meaning to how Adam was "put to sleep" when Eve was created, and then how Christ was stabbed in the side by the Roman Centurian in his final fateful moments on the executionary cross and then was dead for 3 days. It was after Jesus was killed that the church came forth.

From Jesus' sacrificial death to you finishing reading this sentence, there is a story God has entangled through history of his pursuit of us, his creation and object of love. God is perfectly adequate within Himself. But because God is love, He is not content to be adequate in Himself. And because He loves us totally, He gives us the free will to choose to love Him back, or not. But this poses the question: why would we not choose Him?