Redemption

“He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.” Hebrews 9:12

The after-effects of redemption – cleansing. Pure. White. Fresh. New. Like this:

I find myself in a bit of a revelation this evening. I must have always pictured redemption as an instantaneous process. I’m starting to wonder about that now. As I experience redemption, a new beginning, that process of cleansing, I think it’s more like this:

He entered the Most Holy Place by his own blood.

It must have been like that for Him, then. Redemption doesn’t look like redemption on the ground. In the midst. It may not look like the chlorinated church baptismal.

It looks like suffering, it looks like something that would draw blood. It looks like the tip of a spear. It looks like darkness, and fatigue, and everything you wouldn’t want redemption to be.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again”. Being born must be one of the most traumatic affairs which one endures in life. The pain, the screaming, the forced emergence into something completely foreign.

The blood.

If being born of the flesh is analogous to being born of the Spirit, should we not expect a similar experience when being born of the Spirit?

Redemption is continual, I find. It is daily, even as it is eternal. And creation groans expectantly. Which means something eternal, deep, and aware inside me, groans expectantly.

Redemption sounds like a battle cry. It sounds like crying. It tastes like blood, it tastes like victory. It screams when nothing is left, that everything is ahead. It demands everything, but it takes us where nothing more is needed.

So I say, Let me be born again.

Nostalgia

First, watch this:



"Nostalgia" actually is made up of 2 roots. From the Greek, "nostos", meaning "a return home", and the Indo-European "-algia" meaning "sickness".

Janelle Wilson, who wrote "Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning", has this to say:

"Nostalgia goes well beyond recollection and reminiscence. It demands an emotional valence..I think it is more a longing to recapture a mood or spirit of a previous time. Or, perhaps, to rediscover a former self (a self that seemed more like the 'true self', for instance). Perhaps we "nostalagize" for those things which symbolize what we wish for. What we are nostalgic for, reveals what we value, what we deem worthwhile and important."

Today, I'm cleaning my apartment - like, for real cleaning. And I come across boxes, cartons, of old cassette tapes. So I start sorting, tossing, dusting off and playing these relics.

Mix tapes (remember those?) from middle school...high school...even college. Some crappy blues song we recorded when I was 14. Old Zeppelin and GnR. My sister's voice when she was 3 or 4, my mom in the background.

My own voice, addressing me in all its pre-pubescent glory.

Draper's dead on with this "time machine" concept. A carousel. And sometimes, I don't want to get off back here. Where I got on. Sometimes I'd like to go back and try again.

To get off somewhere back there, and try again.

Those times weren't especially good, or particularly bad either. They were moments, just like this one. Okay, so my angst was greater, my confusion more pronounced maybe. Every one of those moments has helped me become who I am in this one.

But that kid...he didn't know any better, and he didn't need to. No rent, no job (well, not a real one, that actually mattered...), no burden for spiritual maturity. Make a crappy video, make a jackass out of yourself with tin foil, torches made of notebook paper, and a Saturday night.

As I listen and reflect I feel nauseous. Sick. Nostalgic. So, then - who am I trying to rediscover? What do I want tonight? What am I saying is important to me?

Possibility. Promise. Hope.

These are the things I find myself swimming in nostalgia for. Because that kid, desperate and clueless and full of angst as he was, KNEW, and I mean KNEW, that there was something better down the road. Just make it through this, and it gets better from here.

Nowhere was this more pronounced than at Uni. The whole world laid out before me. Do anything, be anything. I knew I could pull off...anything.

I guess the question in front of me tonight, is am I fulfilling that kid's dreams? Am I the man he thought he would become? If he met me right here, tonight, would he be proud? Disappointed? Would he want to punch my face in?

And would he be right?

2nd Travel Blog

I'll be updating my travel blog with photos, etc. (http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Fort-Fun-Granola-Boy/) as I am able!

1st Travel Blog

Just finished up the first of several travel blogs. No, I haven't gone anywhere yet. Thanks.

And yes, that is my shower curtain.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja6P_XYx8G8&feature=channel_page

Now in HD!

Wanted - a Shedding of Pretenses

The following is something which I wrote a few years back, but it is more true to me now than even it was then.

It seems that most people, Christian or not, end up having small vision, small dreams, and, consequently, small impact in this world, because they hold onto this "life" too tightly.

Each man or woman, by necessity, will by degrees do one of two things: clutch desperately to what they think they have earned or deserve in this life, or lose his or her life, for His sake, and in doing so find their true self.

Those who understand this truth, and proceed to live it out, are fewer in number than I once thought. Like John the Baptist, who knew and acted: "He must increase, but I must decrease". Or Mary Magdalene, who never pretended to be worthy to wash Jesus' feet, but knew there was nothing but rags to lose, and infinite purpose to gain.

I now believe, at the risk or pretension, that most never live. Few are the number that hold so loosely, who have even once known the touch of the Father as they spread themselves before Him, stripped bare of hindrance, and with joy can proclaim, "It is well with my soul; O my Lord, it is well".

YHWH, help me find these people, who wish to live as I do.

A youth pastor parody

This isn't so much in-your-face funny, more like "Ugh...I think I know this guy" awkward-funny. It's especially revealing that some people don't realize it's a pardoy...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTn8FDoKBL4&feature=channel_page

Enjoy.

Social Anxiety

Now that the semester is over, I feel finally able to sit back and process a little. These times are good.

I know that sometimes I will hide behind a very structured schedule, and life, to avoid down time. I guess I've come full-circle, since I used to be neurotically anti-social and heavily sought out alone time to avoid others...now I'm more likely to spend my time neurotically hopping from activity to event to class to avoid being alone.

Yea neurosis!!!

Some of those close to me know (some don't, or at least didn't...) that I have dealt with some form of anxiety disorder for all my adult life. I don't make a huge deal about it, since it's something like 40 million adults in the US that find themselves in a similar boat. In fact, I used to think that "anxiety disorder" was just a clinical term that we make up.

It's always so much comforting to know that your seemingly unexplainable, irrational physical symptoms and emotional crises has a name...plus it's a lot easier to say, and saves us all some time.

Which is why, when my god speaks of my becoming a new creation, when He says that "creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay, and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God...", that it means a great deal to folks like me.

Which is why following Christ, for me, is hardly a crutch to help me through life, as some have claimed. I've never understood that argument, and dispute it more now than ever. The Jewish concept of redemption, and I would argue, the Biblical concept, has as much to do with today as it does eternity.

On my best days - my most confident days, the days where I truly feel connected to something deeper than myself, the days where I know the lives around me are better because we share something - on those days, I can literally sense the new creation taking shape, and the old begins to fade.

Days like today...like Paul emotes so eloquently in Romans 7, the old creation is not completely gone. Some days, it is as if redemption takes a back seat. I want nothing but to be left alone, and the wall grows thick. I don't want this, I know it isn't rational or right or anything resembling who I have become...yet here it is.

"Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, the help of my demeanour, my God."-Ps 42