SAY WHAT?!

My eyes skimmed over this verse in the middle of church today and I spent the rest of the service writing about it in my journal. I missed today's sermon, but gained a new insight!

1 Corinthians 1:16-31
V. 25 “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

SAY WHAT?! I find it so bold of Paul to put the words “foolishness” and “weakness” in the same sentence as God. I would never be able to even consider God as either of these things. But I guess that’s what it looks like from our point of view sometimes. I admit that sometimes I have looked up at the ceiling or up at the sky and said, “Are You sure You know what you are doing? Because I definitely think that should not have happened. Can You go back and, well, try again?”
Perhaps Paul is saying that even if God could make a mistake, if His foot should slip, and if He were to have some omnipotent brain fart, then that mistake would still be more thought through than a mistake I would make.
Why? Can you please tell me why it is so hard to trust God?! Seriously, why can I not just accept what He has put before me and take it without question? Why don't I remember that God is on my side? He is working with me and for me at all times. So I have another reason to say "SAY WHAT?!" It's what I always say to God when He quietly tells me that He has been carrying me the whole time I thought I was traveling alone, and it's also what I end up squealing with joy when I discover what He had in store for me the whole time. All I had to do was get out of the way.

One day...

I have always considered this song a little annoying. It’s so short and I can only sing it so many times before it starts to get on my nerves. I’ve heard and sung this a million times, but once again, I find new meaning in the words, and it has come to life to me in a whole new way.

“Come now is the time to worship
Come now is the time to give your heart
Come just as you are to worship
Come just as you are before your God
Come…

One day every tongue will confess you are God
One day every knee will bow
Still the greatest treasure remains for those who gladly chose you now”

Most churches start off the worship time with this song. I have always thought of it as a sort of in your face way of saying, ”Get your butt over here and praise God!” Don’t ask me why but it always seemed like this overbearing command type of thing. I was standing in church on Sunday and they started to play this song. I groaned a little inside because not only was I not really in the mood to worship, but on top of that we were going to sing my least favorite worship song. I was standing there in the congregation looking at the words on the screen when they suddenly came to life, and I realized I had been reading the lyrics the wrong way all this time. I had always focused on the “Come” part. This was the word that seemed like the overbearing command. It never seemed like a nice and inviting “Come” but more of a “Come!” But this time I focused on the rest of the phrase “Now is the time to worship”…
Hmmm, now is the time to worship? Now…why now? Then something inside whispered the answer, “Because now is when you have a chance to stand before your God. Now is when you are about to hear His words. Now is the time to worship the only thing that you should ever be worshipping!!!”
At that moment I felt the twinge of conviction. How many times a day do I elevate the pathetic and superfluous things in this world? Things that will rot and decay over the course of time, and things that may seem important now, but years from now I will forget ever happened or ever existed. But right now, right at that moment, I was sitting in a church and being given the chance (a chance that I rarely take outside of a church) to praise the One who gave me all the things that I enjoy.
With this idea in my head I continued to read the rest of the lyrics:

“Come now is the time to give your heart”
Whoa, I thought. This was a big one for me. “Now is the time to give your heart” Again, I asked myself the question why? Why now? “Because this is when it is safe to do so” I felt something say inside of me. How many times have I put my heart into something that was not really worth it? How many times do I invest in things that have no real meaning or won’t be beneficial to me in the end? But now, right here and in this moment I was sitting in church before the One who is able to take care of my heart and keep it safe. He is the same today, yesterday, and forever. I don’t have to worry about giving my heart to Him because He is the only One capable of doing good and only good for it.

“Come just as you are to worship
Come just as you are before your God.”
This is another beautiful phrase because I don’t have to pretend in front of God. It is quite impossible to do so in fact. The beautiful thing is that even though God can see right through me, even though He can see every ugly crevice of my heart He is willing to take me as I am.

“One day every tongue will confess you are God
One day every knee will bow
Still the greatest treasure remains for those who gladly chose you now”
This part of the song didn’t come alive to me until after the congregation sang them and the worship team continued to play with just the instruments. Then out of nowhere I heard this saxophone start to play. I hadn’t seen the musician before because he was tucked in the corner of the stage. He wasn’t playing anything too fancy, just the melody to the song. I watched as he breathed in and out of his gold music maker, I watched his fingers tap the little gold levers (I don’t know what they are officially called). He was concentrating on his music sheets. I could see it in his eyes. Then I got to thinking about musicians in general and how much practice it takes them to get their instruments to sound right. I think of when I was first starting to play the piano. My fingers would hit the wrong keys and the song would sound muddled, choppy, and just plain bad. But as I practiced more and more, my muscle memory would kick in, patterns would form in my brain and I didn’t even need to look down at my fingers to play. It’s always a trial to learn a new song. There’s this phase where your brain totally understands the notes on the page, but its getting your fingers to understand and follow through that makes you growl in frustration. I wonder if that’s how God looks at us sometimes. I think of Him as the brain part in our bodies. He totally gets it and understands what needs to happen. He sends us messages and signs. Sometimes these are not as clear as we would like them to me, but messages and sings all the same. Actually getting us to do what He wants us to do to make music seems like it must be a tedious task. But this last stanza gives me a little bit of hope because it says that there will be one day where the brain and the hands will move as one, and I will be playing the tunes that are most pleasing to the only Ear that is worth pleasing. One day my tongue will be speaking the words that are worth speaking. And one day, my stubborn knees will bend and I will gladly lower my countenance and my pride in the face of the Almighty One. One day…

The Bike Ride

May 26, 2009
I went for a bike ride today. It seriously was the perfect day for a bike ride. I don’t know the exact temperature but it was the ideal weather with the sun shining and a hint of breeze to keep the rays from being too intense. It’s nice to live on a hill. That way the when I start off the ride it’s smooth and fast as I speed down the street. There are a bunch of cul-de-sacs around. I love that the neighborhood is so quiet and not busy because I can ride in and out of them, zig zagging as I please without worrying about a speeding car coming out of nowhere. It really was a very amazing ride. Like I said the sun was out, there was a soft breeze, and I could cruise along in perfect ease. It’s moments like these that make me feel like life isn’t so bad after all. There can be beauty found in the simplest things. Nature in and of itself can rejuvenate the soul like no other speech, sermon, or pep talk ever could. I had my ipod in my ear as I rode along. It was on shuffle and it was just my luck that it decided to chose some smooth music from the Finding Neverland soundtrack. I love it when my ipod is mysteriously in tune with the mood that I am in. I wanted to listen to something non-sentimental, something that I could just listen to without any specific thoughts popping in my head. Well, as usual, that didn’t work. Especially on the ride back to my house. As I said, my house is on somewhat of a hill. I was all of a sudden not so grateful for that fact. Going up hill on a beach cruiser that only goes one speed isn’t the easiest thing in the world. That’s when I had an interesting thought. You know, one of those thoughts that you get when the light bulb turns on in your head and the mysteries of life suddenly start to come out of the darkness and into the light? Well, at the beginning of the ride everything was great. The ride was smooth, perfect, life was good, nothing could rain on my parade, and all I could focus on was the perfection of the moment. I soaked it all in with every inhale of that sweet breeze. But coming back and going back up the hill changed my perspective of the day. All of a sudden I had a grudge against the sun because it was just a little too uncomfortable. The breeze didn’t seem to be having the same effect as I started to sweat. I had to push my legs with more effort against the pedals as my calves burned. Why on earth had I decided to take this ride when I knew the ride back would be so hard? But stopping was not an option. That would only make the journey back up the hill more prolonged. The best thing to do was to bite the bullet and push till the end of the road. Such is life I suppose. What is it people say? “What comes up must come down?” Well in my case, what goes down must come up, but the analogy still works the same. Nothing stays the same. Something’s always going to change. I don’t do well with change. I like schedules, lists, and consistency. But there will always be a bump in the road that seems impossible to ride over. But we are here to take on the impossible aren’t we? How boring would life be if we weren’t pushed to our limits? Or if we knew what was around every corner? This kind of reminds me of a line from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring extended edition (yes, I am a LOTR junky!). Gandalf says to Frodo before they go into Moria, “There are many powers in this world for good or for evil. Some are greater than I am, and against some I have not yet been tested.” We see what he means when he faces the Balrog. Gandalf doesn’t come out of that battle alive. He has to sort of die first and become a new person. That new person is stronger, wiser, and more in tune to what he is supposed to do. When I got back from my bike ride I was so tired. My legs were wobbly. I was really shaken up. All I wanted to do was collapse and sink into my couch and indulge in a huge glass of ice cold water. Those first moments of fatigue feel like they are never going to end. It’s almost a sort of torture. All you can feel is the pain, the burning muscle, and the uncomfortable feeling of being sweaty and dirty. Again, you say to yourself, “That was SO not worth it! I feel like crap right now.” But as you catch your breath, your heart gets back to its normal pace, and your body starts to cool down. You feel pretty good because you say to yourself, “I did it. I didn’t quit and I didn’t let myself take the short cut.” That feeling is pretty good. When you are able to look back at something and say, “You know what? That was REALLY hard, but I know what I can do now. And now that the initial shock is gone, I can see that it was worth it.” I know that my heart is grateful to me for the work out. My calves are stronger because of that ride. And it also forced me to drink some water (which I tend not to do as often as I should). Isn’t that ironic? Getting to the end of ourselves always seems to lead us to what we were supposed be doing in the first place. Sometimes that’s really hard to admit. Perhaps that’s why people have to learn “the hard way” as they say. Maybe deep down we know what we are supposed to be doing, but we just want to make sure that we can’t do it our way first. I guess you could call it a process of elimination. Not wise at times, but effective in the long run. I get this picture of someone riding a horse. Though the horse has the legs and willpower to go where it wants there’s someone on top riding it, pulling the reigns right and left.
So anyway, back to my bike ride. It was worth it. I am wiser, stronger, and more in tune with what I am supposed to do with my body. Or at least I think I am. I guess I’ll just have to see what else God has around the corner for me. That in and of itself is exciting. There is nothing like the element of surprise.

The Merciful Heavens: A Dramatic Monologue by Jennifer Carbajal

You know what’s worse than not having what you want?
It’s having what you want, and then losing it.
You see when you want something that you have never had before it’s out there in that futuristic space where there is beautiful mystery and potential. For all you know you could be better off without that want, but there is an odd optimism that comes with the unknown.
And that optimism increases as that want gets closer and closer to the here and now and farther from that futuristic place.
Finally, it rests in the palm of your hands and you let it sink in to your mind, body and soul while your five senses take it all in. You experience this overwhelming joy because your desire has finally been met and your dream is now a reality and you thank the heavens for bestowing such a wonderful gift!
But then the heavens change their mind...
They decide to reverse the process and take back the gift you thought was yours to keep, so that what you were humbly hoping for you are now shamelessly and desperately pleading to get back!
And you can still feel everything...you can still smell and taste the experience.
The heavens are merciful that way you know? They let you keep the good memories...
But even that can be torture sometimes, because you don’t have the means to create them anymore.
-Jennifer Carbajal

If I had a warning...

So today in history of theatre we talked about the play “Everyman”. Basically it’s about a man that gets a warning about when he is going to die and he gets a chance to repent for his sins. Kari and Mary did the presentation and asked us to have a time of refection about what we would do if we had that warning. This is what I wrote:
“If I had a warning…”
i would probably quite school but continue in the theatre doing drama ministry. I think I would spend every moment that I could with as much people as possible- old, new, and lost friends. I would definitely spend more time in the Bible and talking with God. I might have hard time not saying what I really thought certain things like I usually do. I would probably share my feelings thoughts, and inspirations as a result of this experience with as many people as possible, I know that when I heart from people who have been in a situation where they don’t have a lot of time left it really inspires me. I would want to do the same.
Its not that long or groundbreaking but I thought it would be important to put in a place where it would last. Perhaps I will start to live like this even though I don’t have said warning. I should be anyway.