thoughts from my unemployed life

I'm waiting to hear about a job that I applied for.  Everything is going well, the office is just waiting to hear from HR on the official offer for my position.  I'm getting poorer by the minute...but I've had a lot of time on my hands to do other things.

1) Blogs have taken over my life.  Not only do I read about 20 different blogs now, but I write one.  More blog ideas come into my head the more I immerse myself in this blog community.  But I feel really lame, like I don't have a life if I post more than once a day.  So I don't.  But today I am.  I guess I'm lame today.

2) I've gotten to spend way more time with God than I ever have in the past.   Instead of being a rushed thing I do in the morning before I go to work after waking up late because I like sleep way to much, it's a casual time where I can just sit and meditate on what I've read.  I can actually think about what I've read instead of remember the "moral of the story" from sermon I heard on the same passage however long ago.  I've learned to trust better, to listen better, to rest better, and to see better.   It's fantastic and I love it.

3) Switchfoot is the music of my soul.  I know that sounds super cliche and many of you will have the "oh my gosh, she never moved on from the epitome of contemporary christian music that was only cool when we were in seventh grade" reaction, but it's true.  Now don't get me wrong, it's not my favorite band.  But I still really like them.  I have every album.  I would love to go to one of their concerts.  And I can always listen to them.  I think it has something to do with when I started listening to them.  In Junior High School.  They were there for me at such a formative time in my life that it will forever be the comfort food of my soul.  What you go for when you need something comfortable.

what you want

I found this on Pintrest the other day.  It inspired me to write a blog about life.  Originally it was gonna be about a boy.  But then I was afraid and didn't want to put that out in the world for everyone (including the boy) to see.  So I thought about this quote for a little bit.  And then got smacked in the face by God.

I've been reading a TON of new blogs lately and I found one today that inspired me.  It's called the Good Women Project.  I read way to many posts.  I sat on the computer for hours just reading.  But God used it to show me that I've been lying to myself.  I've gotten way to comfortable in my own skin.  No longer to see my faults as things that need to be worked on to better glorify God, but as character traits that I claim proudly.  That's bullshit.  God told me in the shower.  Where I tend to get a lot of good thinking in.

I realized I've forgotten what I really want from life.  What God has shown me he has for me.  My favorite attributes of God that inspire me to want to change the world.  Things like Justice.  Being a voice for the voiceless.  Educating people everywhere about what it means to be human so that they might learn to love the humanness that is each person and every person.

When I first read this quote I thought of a boy.  How lame.  When a boy is everything you want, you know something is wrong.  What happened to the days when all I really wanted from life was to glorify God with everything that I am?  Where did that person go?  I think it'll probably take sometime to really remember that passion and all that is, but I'm really excited about rekindling my love with the important things in life.

So thanks to Pintrest, and the GWP for reminding me that there is more to life than the boy I want, but can't have.

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What about you?  What came to your mind first reading this quote?  What do you wish had come to your mind first?  What is it that you can't stop fighting for?  What are you so passionate about that it inspires you to take action?

God can handle our mood swings

As my last post shares, I finished reading the book of Job recently, and it blew my mind.  I loved reading it with fresh eyes and seeing things I'd never seen before.

But finishing Job means moving onto another book.  And since I started (however long ago) with the reading plan of reading straight through the bible, cover to cover, the next book is Psalms.  Most people, when they think about reading the psalms, they get excited.  It's like this book is somehow better than all the rest in the bible.  I mean, Christian culture has selected it to be a part of the New Testament, basically. How many people do you know who carry around those little pocket bibles of the New Testament and Psalms.  We love this book.

Mostly though, it just annoy's me.  *Gasp in horror*  Granted I'm only six chapters in, but every one of them just makes me a little bit angry.  I've read them all before, and didn't have this reaction last time....so I don't know what's wrong with me now.

Let me explain.

Today I read Psalm 4, 5, and 6.
     Psalm 4:: Totally normal and something you would hear today.  Lord protect me, bring me peace, let your face shine upon me.  We say these things.
     Psalm 5:: What?  It'd be like if someone today prayed, God you hate evil and arrogance, so you should destroy these people over here.  They are evil.  Please, please kill them.    I know that there are people who pray things like this, but most of the Christian subculture would still look down on this ..... Um, hello?  Have you heard of grace?
     Psalm 6::  You just got whiplash from the change in attitude.  Oh God have mercy on me, for I am a horrible rotten human being.  I am in anguish and only your love can save me.  But you just said evil was supposed to be dealt with by way of destruction?  Multiple-Personality Disorder?

Okay, Okay.  I know that the psalmist didn't put these in the order we find them in our bibles.  And I know it could very well have been written by multiple people.  But the disjointedness and contradictory fashion with which these are arranged makes me angry.  It's like dealing with a high school drama queen who can't figure out how she feels about life.  My response to that kind of behavior is usually something like....GROW THE HELL UP!  That's what I've wanted to say to the psalmist these last two days.  What are you, a 15 year old girl?

But then I decided I should reflect on it a little bit, instead of just 

letting my critical first reaction be the only reaction I had.....

and, surprise, surprise, God showed me something. 

The spastic nature of the psalmist is the same spastic inclination of our hearts (or at least my heart).  We go through those same drastic mood swings in our hearts in reaction to whatever little possibly insignificant things happen every day.  The psalmist is just being honest about it with God.  And isn't that what he taught me while reading Job.  Be wholly honest with God about how you feel, that is what kept Job in the right through the whole book.  This is another example of someone being completely honest.

So, all the times I react like a 12 year old...it's okay.  Well, as long as those reactions are directed at God and not necessarily if they are directed at the people around me.  I can have extreme reactions, and even one's the people around me wouldn't approve of.  If I'm being honest about how I feel, God wants to hear it.

Counterfeit: Job (integrity)

I finished reading Job today.  It's the part where God speaks...and I read five chapters instead of the three that I normally read.  But I just couldn't stop in the middle of God's speech.  It was too compelling.  I wanted answers.

God finally talks to Job.  But he doesn't answer any of the questions Job asks.  Basically God calls him out and says, "Who do you think you are?  I'm God.  I know what I'm doing.  And I'm allowed to do as I please, even if it doesn't fit into your little system of understanding the world."  There didn't appear to be a lot compassion for Job's situation.  It was a big fat SUCK IT UP and DEAL WITH IT.  And do you know how Job responds?  And this part blows my mind:: "Okay.  I'm sorry.  You are right."  No sarcasm (which is how I would have said it).  No more questions.  Pure, sincere acceptance of that answer. 

WHAT?!?!?!?! 

Who is this guy?  Who responds like that?  I mean, I know it's God telling him this and all, but I know I wouldn't respond like that.  I would want real, solid, concrete answers for why everything in my life was taken from me.  Props to Job, that's for sure.  We should probably all learn to be a little bit more like him.  

After I realized what had just happened....I stopped and thought about
what I had just read.  My mind made a slight change of topics.  

When you hear the story of Job retold in church it becomes this black-and-white-Job-was-right-and-didn't-sin-and-his-friends-were-incredibly-stupid-and-wrong thing.  Moral of the story:: Don't be like the friends, be like Job.  And while the moral of the story is still relevant, the way the story is told is wrong.  The whole Job didn't sin through the whole process doesn't hold up.  I mean, God rebuked Job.  And you can't really be rebuked unless you did something wrong.  Thus...Job did something wrong.  #logicforthewin.  I'm not quite sure what he did wrong, that isn't perfectly clear.  But he sure as hell was rebuked.  Read Job 38-41.  I promise.

BUT, he maintained his integrity.  Who knew you could, in the same situation, sin and maintain your integrity?  I sure didn't.  So I looked up integrity.  Dictionary.com, wikipedia.com, and biblos.com all have one thing in common when describing this trait:: honesty, wholeness.  Job maintained his integrity because he was honest about what he saw and what he knew of God.  He didn't try to change things in order for them to make sense.  Instead he asked God to explain it.  

I'm not entirely sure what the moral of the story is.  Sure, be like Job.  But, you're still gonna get rebuked.  Integrity doesn't mean being perfect.  So you may have more integrity than anyone else you know, but you're still not gonna measure up to what God requires.  Deal with it.  

(I couldn't resist this picture.  I'm not quite sure what the caption says, but Mufasa is definitely what I think of when I think of integrity.  Don't you?)

Counterfeit: Job (mind blown)

So, here's the thing. The whole blogging thing is obviously not my strong suit. I'm just not consistent, or faithful. Kind of like my relationship with God sometimes. After an unfaithful spell with my bible, I got back on the horse. I've been reading...just not blogging about it.

To be entirely honest, I felt a little bit convicted about the harshness of my first two posts in this series. I kind of bashed the church a little bit and felt bad about it. Sorry about that. I know what I did. That's one of the reasons I stopped blogging, even though I was reading. Needed to refocus a bit.

But I have been reading. Today I read Job 35-37. This book has been blowing my mind. I've read it before. I've even studied it in class. But this time around....man, good stuff.


Back to Job.

A lot of times in the book of Job, his friends get a really bad rep. Everyone who's ever heard anything about the book assumes that they are giving bad advice and are just horribly wrong in everything they say. But guess what?!?!?! A lot of what they say is a story version of what's in Psalms and Proverbs. It's pretty nuts. After taking a class on Hebrew Poetical and Wisdom Literature (bible college shout out!) I realized that they weren't completely off the deep end. They were using the accepted wisdom of their time, their understanding of God, to try to explain the situation.

How often do we do that? I know I use the accepted wisdom of today to explain away why bad things happen. Phrases like "Everything happens for a reason." Or "God works everything out for the good." Sure, great phrases that encourage....but have we ever stopped to think that maybe we are horribly wrong in how we apply those? I mean...that's what happened to Job's friends.

Sure, as readers of the story we knew that God had something going in the background that none of the characters knew about. God was testing Job. That was a concept they didn't understand at that time. If something was going wrong in your life, it was a sin issue. No questions asked. That was it. So when Job started questioning it....they went a little nutso. They didn't know what else to say to him.

I guess I just can't help but take this as a warning not to rely to much on the way we, as Christians, tend to explain situations we don't completely understand. I know I don't want to end up like Job's friends. I don't want to look like the fool.

So just be careful. Sometimes things aren't as simple as they seem. Sometimes we have to ask God what's going on. And then when he answers...all he's gonna say is "I'm God. Trust me."