Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts

Saturday, January 24, 2009

In between

It feels like I regularly find myself in between things in life. Right now I'm in between jobs, hoping that the Lord provides something for me soon. So far He's been more than good to provide for my needs, so I'm not really all that worried. I guess I'd just like to gain some forward momentum.

I'm working on a portfolio website, but I don't really think graphic design is what I want to do with my life. I like building websites but that's not it either. I've always loved making videos but the passion that drives that comes and goes in spurts.

We'll see where I end up. In reading Chambers and praying and thinking I'm realizing that God's calling and my response are really two different things. God calls me to relationship with Him, to follow Him into the thick of things and discover Him for who He is.

How I choose to live my life for Him is really a natural expression of who He made me to be. Often I think we confuse God's call with what we should do vocationally, but I do think they're distinctly different. God's call isn't to do stuff for Him, but to be with Him.

Our reaction to the overwhelming love we experience will certainly be to do something, but that's a separate though not unrelated issue. Whatever I feel most joyously satisfied to do with and for the Lord will be a good response to His love, but the response to His call is to simply be with my Lord and find my all in Him.

Not that all of this makes complete sense to me yet or that I have my answers, but I'll get them soon enough if I just hang on to Jesus for dear life.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

I don't get me

So I haven't written a real blog in a long time, this has been more a portal for keeping up with my videos and such (which there are quite a few of now, 10 up on youtube as I write this). I don't know if anyone regularly checks this thing any more, especially since the more perilous aspects of my journeys would seem to be taking a break.

I may not be living in Mafia infested territory, with prostitutes chilling on my corner or cars burning outside my bedroom; but life certainly seems perilous in other ways.

It's interesting how the sights and sounds, smells and sensations wrapped up in my time in France still come back to haunt me. The smell of cigarettes now reminds me so strongly of Europe, lying in bed with my sliding door open as cars ran by and pedestrians smoked in the day, hookers puffed their long stemmed cancer sticks at night.

Things back home have been good, if not bumpy. I returned to no job and no real source of income. God's been gracious to provide a great job for me (and a not so great job I had to quit because apparently I have these things called "morals") and I'm living in an awesome house with good friends in north Spokane.

But I don't really get myself. To be somewhat poetical I feel like I'm pursuing a destination, something for which I have a Holy Discontent and for which I was made. The journey to this place, however, is only the beginning as far as I can tell; and I'm not sure if it's that open ended nature of reaching what I now see as my goal that scares the crap out of me or if I'm just overtly confused.

Probably both. I'm charged, I have to get there, it was placed in my bones to live in this place and my marrow sings whenever I approach it. But the energy by which I am propelled closer to it somehow manages to drive me further from it as well. I'm drawn to it and it is simultaneously repelled by me. I don't get it, I don't get me.

There's a great level of mystery behind it, and how it interacts with my mind. I'm content where I am, but I know I won't be forever, and even if I'm content here there's a part of me that never will be. It's a Holy Discontent, something I believe God placed in me and something I'll spend the rest of my life pursuing. Even when I get there I won't be there, I won't be finished. I'll have to explore, to search, to conquer in a way or I'll go utterly insane.

And yet it's the one thing I can't conquer but must give itself to me, and must be something God brings me into. It's cyclical, repeated, I get closer and farther; more confused then incredibly lucid.

Oh well, so it goes. I try to break the cycle and end up broken, I try to fall deeper into it and end up crushed. The beauty of Christianity is often found in it's wonderfully, if not precariously balanced paradoxes. It seems I've found myself in one of those and like an eddy in a river I'm stuck swirling around until God comes along and plucks me out.

I suppose I should be learning something while I'm here. Eddies suck, whether rafting a river or braving spiritual waters.

In the meantime I'll just make videos and music and enjoy Jesus and friends. I've been blessed with so much, I'll be grateful for it all eventually. Until then I'll just focus on Jesus and try my best to follow Him one step at a time. There are no better, more valuable, more privileged options than this.

Enjoy Marshal Cane, the greatest Action Trailer to hit the internets since cold pie.